Commons Sitting of 7 December 1972

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PETITION

  Beam Trawling
  Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine: I ask leave to present a Petition on behalf of the fishermen of Rye and district who are concerned with the effect of beam trawling in the waters off the Sussex coast.
  The Petition concludes:
  Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House do most urgently debate the conservation and safety of Britain's Inshore Fishing Grounds to give protection to the livelihood of Britain's Inshore Fishermen. And that your Honourable House do approve to ban all Beam Trawling along the South Coast within Britain's Territorial Waters 12-mile Limit except by local Trawl Permits to meet special local area needs.
  The Petition goes on to say that the present inadequate antiquated system of patrol protection be substituted by
  a new system and a number of fast vessels competent to protect all areas under their control for the supply of food to the Nation from Britain's own fishing grounds and do urge your Honourable House to call for an immediate debate on these matters.
  And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
  To lie upon the Table.

ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  HOME DEPARTMENT

    Armed Security Guards
    Mr. Meacherasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on his policy towards the increasing use of armed security guards.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Mark Carlisle): I am not aware that there is an increasing use. It is not
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    the practice of chief officers of police to grant firearm certificates for protection purposes whether to security guards or other persons.
    Mr. Meacher: Is the Minister aware that there are now at least 100 persons in this country under the constant surveillance of armed security guards? What is the hon. and learned Gentleman's estimate of the cost to the British taxpayer of guarding Royal, political and diplomatic personnel from abroad? Is not there a danger of the matter getting out of hand if the practice escalates?
    Mr. Carlisle: It all depends on what the hon. Gentleman means by "armed". As the hon. Gentleman knows, under the Firearms Act, 1968, any application for a firearm certificate has to be accompanied by a good reason for having the firearm in question. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has recommended to chief officers of police that personal protection should never be regarded as a good reason for the purposes of the relevant section. The position of the civilian security guard is no different from that of any other person.

    Guard Dogs
    Mr. Laurance Reedasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will introduce legislation to strengthen the law on the keeping of guard dogs.
    Mr. Carlisle: No, Sir. I am not persuaded that special measures of control are necessary.
    Mr. Reed: Does my hon. and learned Friend recall the case of the small boy in my constituency who was attacked by three alsatians and a doberman pinscher? Is he aware that an eleven-year-old girl was attacked by the same pack of dogs, with the result that she has had to have 18 stitches in different parts of the body? Is it not time that the Home Office did something about the matter?
    Mr. Carlisle: I am aware that my hon. Friend asked me a Question about guard dogs on an earlier occasion. I am sorry to hear of the further incident in his constituency. If he cares to write to me about it I will look into the individual facts. But I must make it clear that in the present situation, those who,

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    unfortunately are attacked or bitten by guard dogs represent under 2 per cent. of all accidents involving dogs.
    Mr. George Cunningham: Does the Minister realise that that is no consolation to the 2 per cent.? Does he recall an incident in my constituency when dogs dragged a four-year-old boy under a fence because the fence was too high off the ground?
    Given that the Government are proposing, in another Department, to introduce legislation specifying the height and depth of fences used to protect lorry parks, does the hon. and learned Gentleman not think that the least we can do is to have some provision that ensures that fences around such dogs extend to a specified distance beneath the ground?
    Mr. Carlisle: The position is that the behaviour of guard dogs, like all other dogs, is subject to the normal provisions of the law relating to dangerous dogs. However, I must advise the hon. Gentleman that the advice that we have received from the police is that regulations would be difficult to promote and enforce, and that they would be unlikely to be fully effective. The police do not consider that legislation specifically related to guard dogs is necessary.

    Children (Adoption and Custody)
    Mr. John Fraserasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he proposes to introduce legislation to change the law in respect of adoption and custody of children.
    Mr. Carlisle: The Government will reach conclusions on this matter when they have completed their study of the report of the Departmental Committee on the Adoption of Children.
    Mr. Fraser: Does the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that the High Court case re "O"—a minor—earlier this week has highlighted the need for legislation? Have the Government not had an interim report, and the more recent report? There may be thousands of children at risk and there is an urgent need for legislation on this subject.
    Mr. Carlisle: The case re "O"—a minor—is not immediately at the front of my mind at the moment. I will certainly consider it. I am sorry that I was
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    not aware of it. The hon. Gentleman will realise that the report, which is a major one, was published only in October of this year. The Government have been asked to allow time for professional bodies to study and comment on it before coming to any conclusion on legislation. That is what we would wish to do. It is a major and complex report.

    Dangerous Chemicals (Carriage by Road)
    Mr. Huckfieldasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received from the British Safety Council and the Chemical Industries Association about the carriage of dangerous chemicals by road; and what replies he has sent.
    The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. David Lane): I have nothing to add at present to the replies given to Questions by the hon. Member on 9th November.—[Vol. 845; c. 214, 215.]
    Mr. Huckfield: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that so many new dangerous chemicals are coming on to the market that the only really satisfactory solution to this problem is a 24-hour emergency telephone service? Does he not accept that it is no good telling the British Safety Council that he is in touch with the Chemical Industries Association, when that association says that he is not? Will he not, instead, accept the British Safety Council's offer to provide this 24-hour telephone service?
    Mr. Lane: I can bring the hon. Gentleman a little further up to date than that. I accept that this is a very serious and important matter. With respect, he is doing a little less than justice to the progress that we have already made in extending these controls. We want to extend them more. On the point of the 24-hour service, I have been in touch with the Chemical Industries Association recently and it has undertaken to complete its inquiry and consultations as quickly as possible.

    Women Offenders (Psychiatric Treatment)
    Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what provisions he is now making for

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    disturbed women convicted of offences requiring care and psychiatric treatment.
    Mr. Carlisle: Courts already have powers to make orders enabling an offender to receive psychiatric treatment in hospital or within the community where this is medically recommended and suitable arrangements can be made. Within the prison system there are full-time medical staff with psychiatric and other specialist qualifications and experience in treating disturbed women; and consultant psychotherapists visit regularly.
    Mrs. Short: Is the hon. and learned Gentleman aware that provisions within the prison system for psychiatric treatment for women are grossly inadequate, that the service is understaffed, and that public opinion generally is incensed that women like Pauline Jones and Jacqueline Paddon are sent to Holloway and kept there for many months? Does he not think that it is high time that alternative accommodation to Holloway, and to closed prisons generally, was found for these women?
    Mr. Carlisle: The hon. Lady has asked me two separate questions. To deal with the second one first, on the named cases that she has mentioned I can only repeat that it would be completely wrong if there were any power to detain a person in hospital other than on medical evidence—and no such evidence was available. As for the general point about the prison service, at Holloway there are five full-time medical officers—all of whom have psychiatric experience—and six visiting psychotherapists. Holloway is about to be rebuilt as a medically-orientated prison.

    Immigrants
    Mr. Biggs-Davisonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress he has now made with the review of the scheme for the repatriation of Commonwealth immigrants.
    Mr. Lane: My right hon. Friend is studying the results of the first 12 months' operation of the new scheme, but he is not yet ready to make a statement.
    Mr. Biggs-Davison: Has this not gone on for rather a long time? Is my hon.
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    Friend satisfied that our election pledge is being fulfilled, and does suitable machinery exist for helping those immigrants who wish to be repatriated?
    Mr. Lane: Our election pledge was carried out by Section 29 of the 1971 Immigration Act, through which, as my hon. Friend knows, we are now using International Social Service to administer this new scheme, which is in addition to the supplementary benefits commission scheme. We have recently had a report from ISS. I met the director myself to discuss it, and we are seeing what lessons can be learned from the first 12 months' operation—whether the present criteria are too narrow. We are also considering possible changes to ensure that genuine demands for repatriation are being met, so far as is practicable.
    Mr. Evelyn King: How many families have been repatriated in the last 12 months and how many were repatriated in the year up to 1970?
    Mr. Lane: During the past year we have had inquiries under the new scheme from nearly 500 families. These inquiries take a lot of time but, under that scheme, 30 families have already departed or are about to depart. In addition, as I mentioned, there is the scheme operated by the supplementary benefits commission, under which an average of 100 families a year have been repatriated over the last four years. The figure for this year will be slightly over 100.
    Mr. Powell: Is my hon. Friend aware that the intention of Parliament in Section 29 of the 1971 Act has been almost completely sabotaged by the manner in which its administration has been entrusted to a small private body, virtually incapable of coping with the volume of work?
    Mr. Lane: I do not accept that the intention of Parliament has been sabotaged; nor do I accept the aspersions that my right hon. Friend casts on International Social Service. As I say, we are reviewing this matter, and if it proves necessary to widen the criteria we shall do so—and we shall announce it in due course.
    Mr. S. C. Silkin: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Government's election pledge is satisfied by the repatriation, under this section. of 30 families a year?
    Mr. Lane: I am not implying anything of the sort. I am implying that the machinery has been set up according to our undertaking embodied in Section 29 of the Act. We are naturally now seeing how it is working in practice, and we shall make changes if we think fit.
    Mr. Clinton Davisasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what consultations he had with bodies with experience in the field of immigration casework in formulating the new immigration rules.
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Robert Carr): These bodies had the opportunity to comment on the draft rules when they were published last year, and full account was taken of their comments in revising the draft.
    Mr. Clinton Davis: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that one of his predecessors at the Home Office, during the passage of the Immigration Bill, said that there had been no prior consultation with these bodies before the Bill was laid before the House? Is it not quite clear that there have been no real consultations with organisations that are really active in this matter, and could not they teach the right hon. Gentleman a thing or two and help him to get out of the present mess?
    Mr. Carr: The hon. Gentleman is entirely wrong. There have been frequent and continuing consultations with, for example, the Community Relations Commission, the United Kingdom Immigrants Advisory Service, the National Council for Civil Liberties, the Standing Conference of Asian Organisations in the United Kingdom, and one or two local community relations committees. What they have had to say in respect to the rules was in many respects taken account of, and the results of the consultations were seen in the changes between the original draft and the latest version.
    Mr. Stokes: Will the Secretary of State tell the House, apart from consulting these various bodies, what consultations, if any, he has held about the new immigration rules with the ordinary people of this country?
    Mr. Carr: My hon. Friend, along with all other hon. Members, represents the
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    ordinary people of this country, and the draft rules lay on the Table for over a year before the final version was produced.
    Mr. John Fraser: Members of Parliament are in a very difficult situation in considering long and detailed rules which they have no chance to amend. Is the Secretary of State willing to accept the suggestion of consultation and refer the draft immigration rules to the Select Committee on Race Relations and Immigration, so that hon. Members may have a chance to look at the detail and make comments?
    Mr. Carr: I believe that our normal consultation procedures here should be adequate. Hon. Members had well over a year in which to discuss the details with me, my predecessor and my colleagues in the Home Office. They had time to consult about this. Whatever else may be wrong with the rules hon. Members did not lack the opportunity for consultation. I would not, however, rule out something different in the future.

    New Year's Eve (Prohibited Activities)
    Mr. Sydney Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will list in the OFFICIAL REPORT those public functions and activities that are prohibited, including the limitations to the activities of individuals, on 31st December, 1972, as a result of this New Year's Eve day falling on a Sunday.
    Mr. Lane: The Sunday Observance Act, 1780 prohibits the opening and use on a Sunday of any place to which the public is admitted on payment for public entertainment, amusement or debate. Exceptions have now been made in respect of the cinema, concert halls, museums and picture galleries, and the like, lecture halls and theatres. I will, with permission circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT a list of the various statutes which impose restrictions on activities taking place on Sunday.
    Mr. Chapman: I thank my hon. Friend for that information. Will he confirm that no public dance can be held on next New Year's Eve and that if any other public function can be held those attending it will be inhibited and limited in

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    what they can do and enjoy? Is there not a genuine case for excluding from the provisions of the Sunday Observance Act and the Sunday Entertainments Act the odd occasions when New Year's Eve falls on a Sunday?
    Mr. Lane: There was no great difficulty when it last fell on a Sunday, five

    STATUTES APPLYING TO ALL KINDS OF ACTIVITIES TAKING PLACE ON A SUNDAY IN ENGLAND AND WALES

    Sunday Observance Act 1780 as modified by:

    Public entertainments for which admission is charged.

    Sunday Entertainments Act 1932

    Cinema, concerts, galleries etc., lectures.

    Licensing Act 1964, section 88

    Certain late Saturday night entertainments.

    Sunday Cinema Act 1972, section 1

    Cinema.

    Sunday Theatre Act 1972, sections 1 and 2

    Theatre.

    Game Act 1831, section 3

    Killing or taking of game.

    Gaming Act 1845, sections 12 and 13 as modified by:

    Billiards.

    Licensing Act 1964, section 182(2)

    Billiards.

    Shops Act 1950, sections 12, 22 to 23, 47 to 65 and Schedules 5, 6 and 7

    Sunday trading.

    Protection of Birds Act 1954, section 2(1) and (2)

    Killing or taking of certain birds.

    Betting, Gaming and Lotteries Act 1963, sections 5 and 10 and Schedule 4

    On-course betting and off-course cash betting.

    Licensing Act 1964, sections 60, 62, 65 to 67 and 70

    Sale and supply of intoxicating liquor.

    Gaming Act 1968, section 18

    Gaming in licensed clubs.

    Search Warrants
    Mr. Thomas Coxasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what are the requirements to be followed by police officers in applying for a search warrant.
    Mr. R. Carr: The provisions in the relevant statutes vary in detail; but, in general, the police must satisfy a justice of the peace by information on oath that there are reasonable grounds for the issue of a search warrant in any particular case.
    Mr. Cox: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that reply. He is no doubt aware of the wide criticism that is made of the apparent ease with which certain police officers can obtain search warrants. Therefore, is it not time that a system of reporting back to the magistrate who signed the warrant was introduced? This would go a long way towards easing the fears of many people that many officers can, on demand, obtain search warrants without afterwards having to justify their reasons?
    Mr. Carr: I am not quite sure that I have understood what the hon. Gentleman is asking, but I shall certainly study his question in HANSARD. However, the House would be wrong in imagining that the police are in some way abusing this
    years ago. I want to see how it goes on this occasion—but as the coming New Year's Eve heralds another year of achievement by the Conservative Government I am sure that there will be suitable celebrations, whatever the anomalies of the law.
    Following is the list:
    right. They have to go before a magistrate on oath—and a magistrate has considerable powers to question police officers and to satisfy himself that the request is justified. It would be very wrong of me to criticise magistrates in the exercise of their duty.
    Mr. S. C. Silkin: In view of the concern that has been widely expressed recently, will the right hon. Gentleman look into the question of the extent to which magistrates are taking the opportunity, which the right hon. Gentleman quite rightly said exists, of really going into the facts before they authorise a warrant?
    Mr. Carr: Yes, I will, but I am sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman will know that the Lord Chancellor issued guidance—instructions, I think I might say—to all those responsible for the training of justices of the peace in this matter. I shall certainly consider the matter and satisfy myself that magistrates are aware of their rights and duties.
    Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is it not a smear on the police to say that certain officers, whom the hon. Member for Wandsworth, Central (Mr. Thomas Cox) does not specify, are getting round the law in this matter? Is this not regrettable at a time when the police ought to have the fullest possible support?
    Mr. Carr: Certainly if any such smear were made I would reject it utterly, because whoever else is to blame in this it is not the police, for asking. They have a perfect right to ask. It is the duty of magistrates to examine and grant applications, but if warrants are granted the police certainly cannot be blamed.

    Alimony
    Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many letters he received in November 1972 from women who have not received the alimony they have been granted by court order.
    Mr. Carlisle: Three, Sir.
    Mr. Dalyell: I give credit to the Government for the measures that they have brought in, but is not the nub of this complex problem the fact that many women who are deserted no longer feel in a mood to get mixed up with lawyers and, therefore, do not pursue their rights under this legislation? In these circumstances, is there any possibility of the Ten Minutes Rule Bill which I shall he introducing on Tuesday, 12th December being given a fair wind by the Government?
    Mr. Carlisle: I do not know whether I ought to comment on women getting mixed up with lawyers, in view of my profession, but as far as I can see the provisions which the hon. Gentleman has been kind enough to recognise appear to be working. This is a complex problem. One has always known that. I can only repeat what I have said on many previous occasions to the hon. Gentleman, that in the end it is often the economic position of the husband against whom the woman is trying to get the order which affects the matter.
    Mr. John Fraser: Does not the hon. and learned Gentleman agree that this difficulty sometimes arises because of bloodymindedness on the part of the husband? Will he follow the suggestions made by my hon. Friend and discuss with the Inland Revenue and the Department of Health and Social Security a more effective way of collecting alimony and maintenance, either through the social security system or through taxation?
    Mr. Carlisle: I agree that the problem arises from inability or unwillingness to
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    pay, or a combination of both. On the second part of the hon. Member's question, his hon. Friend has taken up this matter with other Departments and has tabled many Questions to them. I must stand by the fact that it is not a matter for the Home Office, and that the Finer Committee is due to report shortly on the problem.
    Mr. Dalyell: When is "shortly"?

    Cruel Sports
    Mr. William Priceasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will now introduce legislation to ban fox hunting.
    Mr. Liptonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will introduce legislation to ban all cruel sports, such as fox hunting, stag hunting and hare coursing.
    Mr. Lane: No, Sir.
    Mr. Price: Will the Minister have a word with his right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and ask him—when he is next across at Buckingham Palace—whether he will explain to Princess Anne that the vast majority of our people are violently opposed to blood sports and are appalled at her determination to bestow Royal patronage upon acts of blatant cruelty? Will the hon. Gentleman also ask his right hon. Friend to explain to Princess Anne that some of us are concerned about the company she is keeping, and that the time has come when she really ought to see a little less of masters of fox hunts and a little more of the lads on the shop floor?
    Mr. Lane: A lot of what the hon. Gentleman has said is not particularly helpful in this difficult matter, on which varying views are held, inside and outside the House. The original Question was about legislation. The Government have a very full programme of excellent legislation, in which such a Bill does not feature, but it is open to any private Member to put one forward, if and when he wishes.
    Mr. Lipton: Will the Minister bear in mind that the Prime Minister and the majority of the Cabinet do not indulge in blood sports? Would it not be a good thing if others in high places who enjoy a comfortable living at the taxpayers'

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    expense followed the good example of the Prime Minister and many of his Cabinet colleagues?
    Mr. Lane: This is entirely a matter of individual judgment. I do not propose to follow the hon. Member any further down the road that he is suggesting this afternoon.
    Sir D. Renton: Is my hon. Friend aware that the late Mr. Tom Williams, when Labour Minister of Agriculture, said in the House that a plea to abolish fox hunting was no more than a plea to nationalise it?
    Mr. Lane: I am grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for reminding hon. Members on the Opposition side of the House of some things that have been said in the past.
    Mr. Paget: Is the hon. Gentleman—[An HON. MEMBER: "Tally ho!"] Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in a recent television programme the Secretary—I think—for the League Against Cruel Sports expressed himself as being in favour of pursuing a fox with dogs so long as it had been previously crippled? Is he further aware that Princess Anne's mother, grandmother and grandfather were keen followers of the Pytchley Hunt, and that in my urban constituency of Northampton at the last election I had 380 members of the Labour Party and over 2,000 members of the Pytchley Hunt Supporters Club?
    Mr. Lane: This is difficult country. I am very grateful to the hon. and learned Member for reminding the House both of the television programme and of his experience at the last General Election.

    Drugs
    Mr. Loveridgeasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the pattern of illegal drug usage in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. R. Carr: It is a matter of concern that offences against the dangerous drugs laws have been increasing. But so have convictions; and the enforcement agencies have been strengthened in a number of ways.
    Mr. Loveridge: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many parents of possible addicts will not approach the police
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    for fear of informing against their children? In view of the sharp increase in the number of convictions for the possession of heroin, will my right hon. Friend draw parents into the battle against addiction? To make this possible, will he consider setting up specially trained groups of police officers and medical workers to whom parents may go in confidence for advice in such a situation?
    Mr. Carr: I understand the sort of human situation which my hon. Friend mentions and I shall certainly consider his suggestion. He will, I think, be aware already that not only is there now a central drugs intelligence unit serving the whole country but that most police areas in England and Wales now have their special drugs squads. I shall certainly see in what ways their service can be extended to the sort of advice that my hon. Friend mentioned.

    Political Murder
    Mr. McMasterasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will bring in a bill to reintroduce the death penalty for political murder within the United Kingdom.
    Mr. R. Carr: No, Sir.
    Mr. McMaster: If the Home Secretary is unwilling to reintroduce capital punishment will he consider its reintroduction at least for the murder of a soldier or a policeman within the United Kingdom, as political murders, particularly those in Northern Ireland, are often committed by fanatical people who are difficult to trace? Is it not the Government's duty to protect civilians in these circumstances?
    Mr. Carr: Yes, it is, but of course the debate, as always on this matter, among other things, rests on one's judgment of the value of capital punishment as a deterrent. Capital punishment remains in Northern Ireland for certain of the type of murders to which my hon. Friend is referring, and it has hardly worked as a good deterrent there.
    Mr. Paget: Does the Home Secretary not agree that where murders are committed by fanatical people whom it is difficult to trace capital punishment is least likely to be a deterrent?
    Mr. Carr: This is a matter of personal view and conscience. It has nothing to do with normal party allegiance. It has been discussed in the House a good many times in recent years and few people are in any doubt that there is a natural and fairly strong majority here against any restoration of capital punishment.

    Parathion
    Mr. McNamaraasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether parathion is included in the scheduled list of poisons covered by List 2 under the Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933; if he is satisfied with the conditions for its sale; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Lane: Parathion is included in Part II of the Poisons List. Controls over its sale are strict and I do not think they require review.
    Mr. McNamara: I am grateful to the Minister for his reply and for the letters he has sent me in the past week about the unfortunate incident in my constituency. Action taken at that time, while very proper, showed that the police and fire services need to have continually brought to their attention new developments in this sphere, so that the type of alarm raised in my constituency will not occur again.
    Mr. Lane: We try to keep up with developments so that the police and fire services have immediate information. It is greatly to the credit of the fire officer who gave the alarm that he should have done so. Fortunately, it turned out that the canister contained malathion and not parathion. I gather that malathion is not as toxic as parathion.

    Ugandan Asians
    Mr. Bradleyasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will arrange for the Uganda Resettlement Board to provide long-term financial aid for the City of Leicester.
    Mr. Greville Jannerasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will arrange for the Uganda Resettlement Board to provide immediate and retrospective financial aid for the City of Leicester.
    Mr. Lane: Leicester, like other local authorities, has received guidance from the board about the financial assistance payable by it. Authorities may be reimbursed for one year for the total cost of temporary arrangements directly attributable to resettlement and may also qualify for 75 per cent. grant on capital expenditure on facilities which will have a useful life beyond the emergency. A grant for the re-opening of a primary school at Leicester has already been authorised.
    Mr. Bradley: Does the hon. Member not realise that the assistance is hopelessly inadequate? Leicester's problems are long-term and enduring. There is also a great deal of overcrowding in the city, with thousands of local-born citizens awaiting housing accommodation and hundreds of children unable to find school places. Why will the Government not empower the resettlement board to make grants available for much needed long-term facilities instead of leaving the burden to local ratepayers?
    Mr. Lane: I do not accept that the help offered has been inadequate to the extent that the hon. Member says. I appreciate the great problems that Leicester faces. We have already had several meetings with representatives from Leicester, and I know that there is a long-term problem which we can discuss further with the deputation from Leicester, which is coming to meet the Home Secretary in the middle of this month. If the present arrangements are not thought to be adequate in cases at the margin we can, of course, reconsider them.
    Mr. Janner: Is it not correct to say that so far Leicester has not received a penny from the Government by way of help in the present extremely difficult situation? Does the Minister not appreciate that the vast majority of my constituents regard the Government's handling of the situation as utterly deplorable?
    Mr. Lane: I understand that that is not the case. Money has begun to be paid to Leicester, and there is automatic provision, through the rate support grant, to help deal with these problems, which are not caused by the Uganda emergency alone. We are looking forward to discussing Leicester's problems with the

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    representatives in a couple of weeks' time.
    Mr. Evelyn King: Is not the rather curious view that these exiles, already unhappy and lonely, are likely to settle in rural areas remote from their friends and religion, a little inhuman? Would it not be better to accept that they will end up close to their relations, and should not financial provision be made accordingly?
    Mr. Lane: In the early stages the natural inclination of a large number of these refugees has been to go to places like Leicester, where they have friends and relations. We hope that from now on those still in the centres who may not have friends and relations may be persuaded to go more widely around the country. I see no reason, from the cases about which I have heard, why resettlement should not be carried out with good will to enable these people to have a good new life in these rural settings.
    Mr. Douglas-Mannasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many applications for entry to the United Kingdom by Uganda Asians with non-United Kingdom passports, but with wives, children or other close relatives in the United Kingdom, have been refused at ports of entry; and to what countries applicants have been sent following such refusal.
    Mr. R. Carr: Ninety-nine Uganda Asians with close relatives in the United Kingdom have been formally refused admission. Fifteen of them—all citizens of Uganda—were sent away from the United Kingdom, eight to Uganda, five to Canada, one to Germany and one to Switzerland. The remainder are still here pending further consideration of their cases.
    Mr. Douglas-Mann: The numbers involved are small and the hardship likely to be involved for these 99 is potentially immense, particularly for those returning to Uganda. Did the Home Secretary see the television programme last week about divided Ugandan families The great majority of people interviewed recognised that great hardship was likely to result from the refusal of entry to Ugandan Asians who have close relatives here and that, if allowed in, they would be likely
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    to impose a burden on taxpayers. But even those who do not wish to increase the numbers of foreign-born citizens here were anxious that these Asians should be admitted. Will the Home Secretary take appropriate action as a result of that?
    Mr. Carr: As I have said before, it was made absolutely clear to the husbands and wives of these people before they left Uganda that if we temporarily took their wives and children to safety here they would have to expect to reunite in a third country and not here. Of course, they are suffering hardship, but they would have suffered even greater hardship if we had not at least taken their wives and children to safety. I am prepared to consider how we can help the wives and children to be reunited with the husbands once the husbands have been established in other countries.

    Citizenship and Nationality (Legislation)
    Mr. Wilkinsonasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will now introduce comprehensive legislation to reform the British laws on citizenship and related matters.
    Mr. David Steelasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will undertake a comprehensive review of the law relating to citizenship and nationality.
    Mr. R. Carr: I am considering whether any changes should be proposed in our nationality law. It is a complicated matter, and I cannot at present say what conclusions will be reached.
    Mr. Wilkinson: May I draw the Home Secretary's attention to the debate that took place yesterday in the House of Lords which bears some relevance to this problem and also, in particular, to the situation of East Europeans who came here as refugees after the Second World War and who, because—like some Commonwealth citizens—they wished to return to their country of origin, retained their original nationality but did not enjoy the same rights in Great Britain as Commonwealth citizens?
    Mr. Carr: I shall certainly take that into account. Of course, the sort of case that my hon. Friend has mentioned serves

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    to underline that this a very complex subject, which will need a very thorough review.
    Mr. Steel: Because of the complexity of the subject the House will welcome the fact that the Home Secretary is studying the need for a review of the British Nationality Acts. We on the Liberal benches would not welcome any further piling of anomaly on anomaly in changing the existing rules.
    Mr. Carr: I take note of what the hon. Member says. It is a complicated matter and therefore any short-term answer to it is, to put it mildly, rather unlikely.
    Mr. Kenneth Lewis: Although there may be a case for doing nothing and making no change, many people believe that such an approach would not be correct. If it is necessary to make a change will the Home Secretary therefore agree that it should be done quickly?
    Mr. Carr: There is no question of delay for delay's sake. It is a difficult matter, and therefore unlikely to be solved in a short time, however much speed we try to make about it. I can, however, say that we shall not waste any time. But it is a complicated and difficult matter, which may also involve other countries.
    Mr. J. T. Price: Is the Home Secretary advised properly by his Department about this? Those of us who are interested in the question have repeatedly pointed out to him and to the Foreign Office that the British Nationality Act 1948 is an absurd statute, in terms of today's practice. It not only inflicts difficulties and problems for people not born here; it inflicts grave hardship on British subjects who were born overseas of British parents and are now in trouble with the passport authorities, and are having their British citizenship challenged? Is it not offensive to any hon. Member who has feeling for his country that the British subject is told that he must consult the Government of Barbados or some other ex-Colony before being issued with a passport, especially where that man has served in the British Army?
    Mr. Carr: We realise that the 1948 Act has become anomalous and difficult. We are reviewing it, and the technical studies involved are well in hand.

    Police (Recruitment)
    Mr. Ralph Howellasked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will compare the latest police recruitment figures with those for the same month in 1971 and 1970; and if he will show the net change in the strength of the police forces as a percentage of the total strength.
    Mr. R. Carr: The number of recruits in October, 1972 was 758 compared with 703 in October, 1971, and 609 in October, 1970.
    The percentage net gain was 0·25 per cent. in 1972, 0·33 per cent. in 1971 and 0·20 per cent. in 1970.
    Mr. Howell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many people believe that a much greater increase in recruitment is necessary to ensure that the law is adequately enforced and that people receive the protection to which they are entitled?
    Mr. Carr: Yes, indeed, and I am glad to say that with the important exception of the Metropolitan area, where numbers are almost static, the strength of the police force throughout the country as a whole over the last two years has been rising, and is continuing to rise. I hope that this situation will continue.
    Mr. John Fraser: Is not that situation of the Metropolitan Police much more serious than that? During the current year it has lost 1,035 experienced officers, which it can ill afford to lose. What is the Home Secretary doing to make sure that experienced officers who know their own community well will stay in the force and not be replaced by raw recruits who need time to get to know the job?
    Mr. Carr: This is a difficult matter. The commissioner is giving great attention to it, and we are also giving great attention to recruiting. The commissioner is well aware of the need to do all we can to retain those officers we have. It is wrong, however, to think that the total strength of the Metropolitan force is falling. It is rising very slowly, but not nearly as fast as I would wish.

  PRICES
  Mr. Meacherasked the Prime Minister if, at the next meeting with

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  the Trades Union Congress and the Confederation of British Industry, he will discuss an extension of the present scope of the freeze.
  The Prime Minister (Mr. Edward Heath): I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply I gave in answer to a Question from my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Adley) on 5th December.—[Vol. 847, c. 387.]
  Mr. Meacher: If the Prime Minister is genuinely concerned about assisting low-paid workers during the freeze why do the Government's tax credit proposals give the £5,000-a-year man six times the gains of the average low-paid worker, earning under £20 a week? Is not this the usual Tory story of giving the poor the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table?
  The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman knows, one of the main objectives of the tripartite talks was to help the lower-paid. If those proposals had been accepted they would have achieved the hon. Gentleman's purpose. The income, after tax, of a family earning £15 a week in 1970 has in real terms increased twice as fast as it did under the Labour Government.
  Mr. Tugendhat: Is the Prime Minister aware that so far the freeze seems to have been a considerable success in that grocery prices have remained virtually unchanged since the beginning of November—the first time that has been achieved for many years? Where there have been increases in the price of such things as meat, the increases have been more than offset by falls in the price of other commodities, such as fruit and vegetables.
  The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir, and the measures that the Government took had at the time, and still have, widespread support.
  Mr. Orme: As the Prime Minister torpedoed the talks with the TUC in the final half-hour by not conceding any of the major political points made by the TUC, what purpose is there in meeting the TUC again and what approaches has the TUC made to the right hon. Gentleman about future talks?
  The Prime Minister: There is no purpose in the hon. Gentleman's trying to
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  spread that myth. The whole country knows that there is no substance in it. If the hon. Gentleman accuses me of not accepting political demands, I remind him that the tripartite talks were not about political matters; they were about managing the economy of the country in a way that is acceptable to all three parties.

  BONN (VISIT)
  Mrs. Renée Shortasked the Prime Minister when he hopes to be able to announce the date of his official visit to Bonn.
  The Prime Minister: I am considering my programme of visits for next year and hope to be able to announce the dates of my visit to Bonn before long.
  Mrs. Short: That is not a very illuminating reply. Does the Prime Minister intend to discuss with Chancellor Brandt the recognition of the German Democratic Republic either before or after his visit to Bonn, and will he make the announcement before or after his visit?
  The Prime Minister: This matter obviously depends on a number of factors, many of which are of great concern to the Federal Republic. It is being discussed by the members of the Western Alliance now meeting in NATO in Brussels.
  Mr. Norman Lamont: Does not the decision of the Labour Party not to send representatives to the European Parliament show that the party secretly agrees with the opinion of Herr Brandt that the terms of Britain's entry are not renegotiable? If one were serious about renegotiating the terms, would it not be logical to use all the influence available to one within the institutions of the Community?
  The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right. As is well known, I regret any decision which may be taken not to attend the European Parliament. I hope that it is still not too late for a decision to be taken that all parties represented in the House shall take part.

  POST-APOLLO PROGRAMME
  Mr. Dalyellasked the Prime Minister if he will discuss European participation in the post-Apollo programme with the Canadian Prime Minister.
  The Prime Minister: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer which I gave him on 21st November.—[Vol. 846, c. 377.]
  Mr. Dalyell: Is not the programme of the European Space Agency at least four years on? As the Americans will be facing the major design, feasibility and engineering contracts by the late spring, is it desirable that we should go ahead on a national rather than a European basis?
  The Prime Minister: That is not a matter which I discussed with Mr. Trudeau.
  Mr. Dalyell: That is a very easy answer.
  Mr. Wilkinson: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the speech of the Minister for Aerospace and Shipping at the Western European Assembly today in which he pointed out that individually European nations already spend £200 million per annum on civil space projects. Is not the great thing now to get this expenditure, which is one-fifth of the American annual total, into the right institutional framework for an effective programme?
  The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend. That is the Government's purpose.

  PRESIDENT NIXON (MEETING)
  Sir Gilbert Longdenasked the Prime Minister if he will seek an early official meeting with the President of the United States of America.
  The Prime Minister: I would welcome such a meeting with President Nixon but I have no announcement to make at present.
  Sir Gilbert Longden: If my right hon. Friend does meet the President will he do his utmost to ensure that the NATO alliance speaks with one voice at the European Security Conference, so that the major Soviet objective, which is to disrupt the alliance, shall not be achieved?
  The Prime Minister: Yes, of course, all the matters which will be raised in the Security Conference will be discussed between the members of the alliance, either
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  together or bilaterally. I very much hope that there will be an agreed policy on this matter. At the same time, the best contribution that the members of the alliance can make to the conference will be in idividual matters—as well as alliance matters.
  Mr. Harold Wilson: The question of the European Security Conference is clearly being discussed currently in the NATO talks. As the House is to have an early foreign affairs debate, will the right hon. Gentleman consider whether, after the talks with the alliance, a statement should be made in the House or information given to it so that hon. Members on both sides can consider what they want to say without having to wait for the Foreign Secretary to introduce the subject at the beginning of the debate?
  The Prime Minister: I am willing to discuss that with my right hon. Friend when he returns. The first part of the Security Conference will probably be largely concerned with procedural matters in preparation for the major conference, so it may not be possible to discuss matters of substance. I will certainly discuss it with my right hon. Friend.

  REPUBLIC OF IRELAND (PRIME MINISTER)
  Mr. Duffyasked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his official meeting with the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic on 24th November.
  Mr. Wintertonasked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement on his official meeting with the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic on 24th November.
  Miss Joan Hallasked the Prime Minister if he will make a statement following his official meeting on 24th November with the Prime Minister of Eire.
  The Prime Minister: As I told hon. Friend the Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder) on 28th November, when Mr. Lynch suggested that we should meet during his visit to this country, I was glad to invite him to dinner on Friday 24th November. We discussed a number of issues of interest to both our countries, including the situation in Northern Ireland.—[Vol. 847, c. 103.]
  Mr. Duffy: Does not the Prime Minister agree that it is difficult to accept that he and Mr. Lynch could talk for three hours without each giving the other a small insight into his intentions? We know what Mr. Lynch was considering, and we know that he carried it out. Does not the Prime Minister see that the ball is now in his court and that he must be every bit as resolute, in view of the sombre but very perceptive comments made last weekend by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition?
  The Prime Minister: I cannot accept that analysis in the least. Mr. Lynch and I have had a considerable number of meetings over the last 18 months and we have always been able to discuss very frankly the issues affecting his country and ours. We do that as Heads of two sovereign Governments. I cannot accept that the ball is in anyone's court, or that we have to show any need to be resolute. For our part, we have been carrying through our actions, politically and militarily, and I am glad that Mr. Lynch has taken the measures he thinks right for his own country.
  Mr. Winterton: I welcome the meeting between the Prime Minister and Mr. Lynch and the tougher measures that Mr. Lynch and his Government are taking against the IRA, but is my right hon. Friend aware that in some quarters it is thought that a deal may have been done between the Government and the Government of the Republic over the unity of the two parts of Ireland? If that is so, will not more bloodshed rather than less result?
  The Prime Minister: I cannot believe that that view is held in any responsible quarter. I cannot believe that anyone can be under the impression that I or any member of the Government will do what my hon. Friend describes as a deal to bring about the unity of Ireland. I hope that neither he nor any other hon. Member or hon. Friend will create suspicion of that kind, which is absolutely and entirely unjustified and which, moreover, can lead to increased danger to the security forces, and increased bloodshed.
  Mr. Merlyn Rees: Is the Prime Minister aware that on my recent visit to Northern Ireland I was told by all sides that law and order had greatly deterior-
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  ated? Yesterday morning I met a delegation from the Unionist Party who told me clearly that unless the party got what it wanted in the White Paper there would be civil war. Did the Prime Minister discuss overall security with Mr. Lynch and arrange for co-operation between the authorities north and south of the border?
  The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman must form his own judgment about anything that he was told by representatives of a political party in Northern Ireland, but I hope that these matters will not be exaggerated or inflamed. As a result of the talks which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is having with political parties, I believe that it will be possible to get a much greater understanding of what the Government are trying to achieve in the political sphere. On every occasion when Mr. Lynch and I met we discussed security in great detail. We are prepared to cooperate in every possible way with the Republic to improve security on the border and anywhere else, but co-operation has to come from both sides.
  Miss Joan Hall: Will the Prime Minister say what information the Government have, and whether they have taken action, about the rockets of Russian and Eastern European origin which have been used in Northern Ireland?
  The Prime Minister: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office yesterday formally asked the Soviet Embassy for the cooperation of the Soviet Government in establishing the origin of the rockets. The embassy was given full details, including details of the markings on the rockets. The Soviet Embassy undertook to report this, and I hope that we shall have the co-operation of the Soviet Government in effectively tracing the source of the rockets.
  Mr. Harold Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the whole House will not only fully accept what he has just said about a deal but, if there is to be any surprise, the surprise is that such a rumour could even have been started. The whole House endorses what the right hon. Gentleman has said. As there has also been a Press suggestion of another deal with Mr. Lynch, about which there has been a démenti by Ministers overnight, will he confirm that

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  there is no suggestion of any agreement, whatever the right hon. Gentleman might have offered Mr. Lynch, to drop the case before the European Commission on Human Rights? Will he confirm that there has been no deal, as has been suggested in the Press.
  The Prime Minister: No, Sir, I have no arrangement with the Government of the Republic of Ireland.
  Captain Orr: I very much welcome what my right hon. Friend and the Leader of the Opposition have said in clearing the air about the suggestion of a deal. I accept that no such deal has been done. My right hon. Friend said that he had convinced Mr. Lynch that we were doing all we could in the way of co-operation on security on the border. Is he satisfied that machinery exists for co-operation from the South in preventing incidents on the border which are causing great danger to human life?
  The Prime Minister: I should like to leave it that we discussed this matter in detail and that we are offering every co-operation. I think that Mr. Lynch has shown by the actions that he has taken in the Republic in the last 10 days that he, too, wishes to deal with the problem.
  Mr. John Mendelson: As the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, with the full support of the House, is taking vigorous action against the IRA, will the Prime Minister assure the House that equally vigorous action will be taken against the extremist section of the UDA, particularly in connection with the illegal wearing of uniforms in public demonstrations?
  The Prime Minister: I can give the hon. Gentleman and the House that assurance. I have already explained, and many hon. Members accept, that for a long time on this type of legislation there was a considerable problem about the legal definition of what constitutes a uniform in this sense. The hon. Gentleman asks about the action taken. Since Operation Motorman more than 130 firearms and more than 15,000 rounds of ammunition have been seized by security forces in Protestant areas, and that shows that effective action is being
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  taken there. This compares with just over 500 weapons and 27,000 rounds of ammunition taken in Catholic areas. I hope that nobody will dispute that the security forces are taking immediate action whenever they get intelligence about arms.
  Mr. Harold Wilson: I am sorry to press the Prime Minister on this, but on the question of arms, which we have raised many times, is it not a fact that a high proportion of the arms which are being carried by people wearing uniforms—if the issue of uniforms is doubtful, it can be tested in the courts—are legal arms, and that these searches are directed mainly against illegal arms?
  The Prime Minister: I think that there is a genuine difference of opinion here. I know that the right hon. Gentleman maintains that all arms should be called in. In fact, full-bore rifles have been called in and are being held in armories. The need for existing licences is regularly examined. The real problem is to get at the illegal arms, which is what the security forces are doing. The figures since Operation Motorman show the extent that this is being done, whether it be in the Protestant or the Catholic areas.

TERRORIST ORGANISATIONS (UNITED KINGDOM ACTIVITIES)
The following Questions stood upon the Order Paper:
Mr. GOODHART: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what plans he has to seek to amend the laws relating to subversive organisations or organisations which support terrorism.
Mr. KILFEDDER: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) whether he will seek powers to ban the collection of funds for the purchase of arms, ammunition and explosives for use by terrorist organisations; and (2) if he will introduce legislation to render it unlawful for anyone living or residing anywhere within the United Kingdom to be a member of the Irish Republican Army or any branch thereof.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Robert Carr): I will, with permission, answer these Questions now.

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I have reviewed all these matters afresh in the light of recent developments. Certain precautions have been taken against the possibility of attempts by members of the IRA to seek sanctuary in Great Britain, but it would not be in the public interest to give details. I have already made it clear that, where appropriate, I shall make full use of the extended powers of deportation conferred on me by the Immigration Act which comes into force at the beginning of next month. Although I am not persuaded on the information at present known to me that there are grounds for seeking fresh powers from Parliament, I am determined that Great Britain should not become a haven of refuge for members of the IRA or of any other extremist organisation which resorts to violence. I shall keep the position under very close scrutiny, and shall not hesitate to ask for further powers if it seems that they are needed.
Mr. Goodhart: I thank my right hon. Friend for that reply. Will he bear in mind that many of us are concerned that now that the Governments in Dublin and Bonn are increasing, or appear to be increasing, pressure on terrorist organisations in their own countries, there is a danger that many dangerous men will seek to enter this country? Some of us are concerned lest London become the terrorist capital of the Western world.
As Lord Diplock is now carrying out a review of legal practices in Northern Ireland, to see how it can be made easier to bring to book those who plan and finance terrorism, will my right hon. Friend ask him to extend the review to the whole of the United Kingdom?
Mr. Carr: I think that we must wait and see what Lord Diplock has to say about Northern Ireland. We will certainly take into account anything he says.
I assure my hon. Friend that I am aware of the very real concern that there may be increased inward pressure into this country by people seeking a haven not only from Ireland but, as my hon. Friend said, from other places as well. I assure my hon. Friend that I keep the adequacy of my powers under very close scrutiny the whole time, but my view about the rightness of our present policy is one which I have come to after the closest consultaton with the authorities concerned.
Mr. McNamara: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many people would look with apprehension upon any system which chose to find people guilty by association or to proscribe organisations per se and which would not just take individual cases on their merits? Is he further aware that the nature of the legislation in Northern Ireland under the Special Powers Act and of the legislation just passed in the Republic is in many ways abhorrent to what we would accept as the standard British practice of having to prove a person guilty of an offence? Therefore, whilst one does not want this country to be a haven for murderers or thugs, wherever they come from and whoever they are—whether they be Catholic or Protestant, Jew or Moslem—we have our own traditional liberties to protect, which we would not want to lose.
Mr. Carr: I am sure that the sort of considerations which the hon. Gentleman has adduced would always be taken into very close account by any Home Secretary in any Government of whatever party. Hitherto, we have found, not only on libertarian grounds but on grounds of security of our own public, that our present practice of not proscribing organisations as such has been the better one.
Mr. McMaster: Is my right hon. Friend aware of the great concern felt in Northern Ireland arising from recent answers to questions by the Prime Minister, the Attorney-General and others, to the effect that neither the leaders of the IRA who have been invited to this country nor members of the IRA can be restricted or charged for any offence in this country, despite the fact that they have claimed responsibility for the cold-blooded murder of over 100 British soldiers and many hundreds of civilians, even women and children, by their activities in Northern Ireland, and despite the fact that both the Government of the Republic and the Government of Northern Ireland themselves have been able to introduce legislation to proscribe such organisations?
Mr. Carr: I do not draw that deduction from the answers I have heard given by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister or by any other member of the Government. I should point out, however, that if anyone who has committed a

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crime in Northern Ireland under the law in Northern Ireland, and has had an arrest warrant issued against him, comes to this country that warrant can be backed and can be enforced by the police against him while he is still here.
Mr. Thorpe: I do not dissent from the general principles enunciated by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, North (Mr. McNamara), but would not the Home Secretary agree that he has recourse to the courts in any case where there is likely to be a breach of the peace? Is it not also the case that anyone who belongs to the IRA and subscribes to its aims prima facie may well fall into that category?
Mr. Carr: There are several powers, but I think that the powers to keep out and to get rid of undesirable people are the powers which matter most. They are already not inconsiderable but will be further extended from 1st January next.
Sir F. Bennett: My right hon. Friend mentioned deportation. How effective is deportation in practice in view of the fact that anyone deported to Dublin can return straight back to England via another port of entry? My right hon. Friend has not mentioned the collection of funds. Is this to remain legal from the point of view of funds collected for the purchase of arms?
Mr. Carr: On the question about offence caused by the collection of funds, hitherto we have taken the view—I still take it—that trying to make such collection of funds illegal would be difficult to enforce, quite apart from anything else. There are, however, possibilities even there under certain laws, in that if the collection of funds is offensive in certain ways there are statutes under which action might be taken.
There is already power to prevent entry, and it will be stronger after 1st January. I assure the House that we are aware that there are undesirable people wishing to come here. But when they do come here, and are found to be here, there is power to ask them and to get them to leave, and, as I have said, that power will be stronger as from 1st January.
Mr. John Fraser: Is the right hon. Gentleman satisfied that he will have adequate resources at the ports of entry to make sure that these people do not enter the United Kingdom? Is he certain that he has adequate resources inside the United Kingdom to deal with people who might be members of the IRA but hold British citizenship and therefore could not under existing law be debarred from entering the country, but who should nevertheless be watched carefully while they are here?
Mr. Carr: To say that one has adequate resources is difficult. Whatever problem one has, no doubt one would always like more resources than one has to deal with it. I have considered this matter very carefully with the Commissioner, who is particularly responsible, and we are satisfied as much as we can be at the moment that our resources are reasonably adequate and that our powers are not only adequate but of the kind that we would choose to have, at least to meet the situation as it exists. Of course, I realise that the situation may change, and that is why I have promised the House that I will watch it continually.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Mr. Harold Wilson: May I ask the Leader of the House whether he will state the business for next week?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): Yes, Sir.
The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY, 11TH DECEMBER—Motion on the Detention of Terrorists (Northern Ireland) Order, until 7 p.m.
Afterwards, Second Reading of the Concorde Aircraft Bill.
TUESDAY, 12TH DECEMBER—Supply (4th allotted day). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion relating to Industrial Policy.
Motions on the Local Government (Northern Ireland) Orders.
WEDNESDAY, 13TH DECEMBER—Second Reading of the Fair Trading Bill.

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Remaining stages of the National Theatre and Museum of London Bill and of the Post Office (Borrowing) Bill.
THURSDAY, 14TH DECEMBER—Debate on Foreign Affairs, which will arise on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Motion on the Customs Duty (Personal Reliefs) (No. 1) Order.
FRIDAY, 15TH DECEMBER—Private Members' Motions.
MONDAY, 18TH DECEMBER—Consideration of Private Members' motions until seven o'clock.
Afterwards, consideration of procedure motions.
It may be convenient, Mr. Speaker, for the House to know that, subject to progress of business, it is hoped to propose that the House should adjourn for Christmas on Friday, 22nd December and resume on Monday, 22nd January.
Mr. Harold Wilson: The right hon. Gentleman will recall that I asked last week about a statement on steel. Will he confirm that there will be a White Paper on the steel industry before Christmas, and that it will be definitive and will go into the statistical and planning points which were discussed across the Floor of the House last week?
Secondly, can he say when the report of the Hardman Committee on the dispersal of Government staffs is to be made available, because the House I am sure will want to take note of it and to debate it?
Thirdly, has the right hon. Gentleman noticed on the Order Paper a motion by the Opposition urging that the Concorde Aircraft Bill, to be debated on Monday, should be referred to a Select Committee?
[After Second Reading of the Concorde Aircraft Bill, to move, That the Bill be committed to a Select Committee.]
Is he aware that we have put down the motion not in a spirit of wanting to hold up the Bill—we have made it clear that we want to facilitate it in every possible way—but because we believe that the House has the right and the duty to get more facts on this question than are being made available?
Finally, when is the Coal Industry Bill to be available?
Mr. Prior: I promised that a statement on the steel industry would be made before Christmas. I will try to see that it is as full as possible. I have never promised a White Paper, and I stick to what I have said in the last three weeks.
Secondly, I understand from Sir Henry Hardman that he is near the closing stages of the preparation of his report, and I take note of the right hon. Gentleman's wish for debate.
Thirdly, the Coal Industry Bill will be available after the weekend, and it is the present intention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to make a statement about coal on Monday.
Finally, I have noted what the right hon. Gentleman said about the Concorde Aircraft Bill. My present intention is to propose that the Committee stage should be taken in Standing Committee in the normal way, but that is a matter for the decision of the House on Monday.
Mr. Harold Wilson: We agree with what the right hon. Gentleman said about the Concorde Aircraft Bill. But, on the question of the steel industry, is he aware that some of his answers are liable to make the House suspicious of what is going on, although no doubt that is the last thing that he would want? But if that is what lie does want, then he is succeeding. The House understood last week that there would be a definitive statement. I asked then whether it would contain figures of the production and investment plans and so on, and he undertook to look into the point and said that he would probably contact me, which I do not think he has done. In view of the widespread suspicion that there is to be merely a holding statement—we have had such statements time and again in this Parliament—will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that there will be before Christmas, so that we can debate it soon after Christmas, a full statement, whether in a White Paper or by other means, give the fullest possible details about steel capacity, the investment programme and regional plans?
Mr. Prior: I made it plain to the right hon. Gentleman that it would be a definitive statement. It was not intended that it should be a holding statement. I never gave any guarantee about there being a

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White Paper, but I recognise the interest of the House in this important subject, and I thought I had gone out of my way to try to give it this information at the earliest possible moment.
Dame Irene Ward: May I ask my right hon. Friend about Tuesday's business? I understood that the Supply Day debate would be on shipbuilding, shipping and so on. It is most important that the House should know in detail whether it will be on shipbuilding, shipping and marine engineering. In particular, if I may say so with modesty, I want to make it perfectly plain to my Government that I hope we shall have a policy which the shipbuilders, the shipping people, the employees and those in the Conservative Party who want to see employment on Tyneside and other areas can put fully into effect. Therefore, I want to know whether the debate will be on shipbuilding, shipping and marine engineering, so that we cannot have a far-flung debate, which would enable the Government to skip out of saying what our industrial policy on these very important industries will be.
Mr. Prior: It falls to the Opposition to put down the motion, and it is for them to decide the business.
Mr. Harold Wilson: To help save the time of the House and to reassure the right hon. Lady, may I ask the Leader of the House to take note, if he is not already aware, that the motion we are tabling today specifically refers to the shipbuilding industry, among others, though it is not exclusively related to shipbuilding and machine tools, which are mentioned. In view of the hon. Lady's many requests to her own Front Bench for satisfaction, we are delighted to feel that she is getting that satisfaction from us.
Mr. Atkinson: Will the right hon. Gentleman take note of the dismay caused by his statement that we axe to have an extraordinarily long recess, until 22nd January, which can only mean that the Government have already decided to extend the 90-day wage freeze into the further period advocated in the Act? The right hon. Gentleman has not yet announced when we are to discuss phase 2 of the freeze period. If he works out the dates he will see that if we are to
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return on 22nd January and there is to be on 5th February the introduction of phase 2, there is not likely to be any lengthy discussion in the House, but merely an announcement from the Government. Can we now take it that they have no intention other than to extend the 90 days by a further 50 days?
Mr. Prior: No, Sir. The hon. Gentleman should not read into a fairly straightforward statement about the length of the recess any details about Government policies. All I can tell him is that the recess covers 30 clear days, which, to my regret, is rather less than the average Christmas Recess over the period since the war, but, to my delight, rather more than the average for the past 10 years.
Mr. Edward Taylor: Does my right hon. Friend recall the assurances that we should have a full opportunity to discuss developments in the Common Market? As it was announced yesterday that our Government had agreed to a Common Market budget of £1,850 million, which is considerably more than the estimate for 1977 in the White Paper, should not we have at least a statement on the Common Market budget and why we agreed to it, and a full debate on the reasons behind it?
Mr. Prior: I think that some of the matters raised by my hon. Friend would be in order in the debate on foreign affairs next week.
Mr. George Cunningham: With regard to the procedure motion which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned for Monday week and the motions to give effect to some of the recommendations of the Select Committee on parliamentary Questions, will the right hon. Gentleman say how the Government intend so to phrase the motion that it will be possible for the House to discuss the Committee's recommendations on the fixing of Questions by Ministers as well as changes in other procedural matters?
Mr. Prior: One of the procedural matters that it is proposed we should discuss on Monday week is the Select Committee's report on Question Time. The hon. Gentleman will have seen the Written Answer yesterday to my right hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Sir Robin Turton). I shall be

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putting down the necessary motions in a day or two.
Mr. Grylls: When will my right hon. Friend be able to find time for an early debate on the Government's very progressive White Paper on education, issued yesterday, which I am sure we should like to consider?
Mr. Prior: I am certain that the House will want an early opportunity to debate this important White Paper, and I hope very much that we can debate it soon after our return from the recess.
Mr. George Grant: The whole House will have welcomed the right hon. Gentleman's announcement that a Coal Industry Bill will be presented next week. Will it be debated before the Christmas Recess?
Mr. Prior: Subject to the business of the House, I hope very much that we shall be able to debate it on Second Reading before Christmas.
Mr. Crouch: When may we have an opportunity to discuss the proposed new parliamentary building? The Europeans are already laying the foundations for strengthening the European Parliament. Does not my right hon. Friend think that the strengthening is required here, and that we need an extension as soon as possible?
Mr. Prior: I agree that the problems of accommodation grow more acute each day, and that it would be appropriate to find time within the not-too-distant future for a debate on this very important subject.
Mr. Michael Cocks: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider Motion No. 60, signed by over 100 Members on both sides, urging the Government to ensure that official poll cards are ready for the first elections to the new authorities?
[That this House urges Her Majesty's Government to ensure that official poll cards are issued for the first elections of the local authorities to be held in 1973.]
May we have a statement about the matter before Christmas, because such cards will be invaluable not only in helping people to exercise their democratic rights but in familiarising them with the new electoral set-up?
Mr. Prior: My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary believes that for the first elections the issue of official poll cards should not be prescribed but should be allowed at local discretion. Accordingly, provision will be made in the local election rules, which my right hon. Friend will soon lay before Parliament.
Captain Orr: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the inadequacy of time devoted to Northern Ireland matters in this House, but we appreciate his difficulties. Can he say, in particular, whether we shall know before we rise the date of the Northern Ireland poll and have the regulation to bring it into effect? Shall we have time to debate the report of the chief constable?
Mr. Prior: I am not aware that Northern Ireland does not have enough time for debate on the Floor of the House. I think that even my hon. and gallant Friend and his colleagues will admit that on the whole we have been more than generous with Northern Ireland time on the Floor of the House in the past six weeks. But I have noted what he said about the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland of the date of the border poll, and I shall convey that to my right hon. Friend. I think that we should know a little more about it before Christmas.
Mr. Michael Foot: To return to the question asked by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward Taylor), does the Leader of the House appreciate that it would be quite unsatisfactory to suggest that the question of the British Government's contribution to the Community budget could be settled in a general foreign affairs debate dealing with all matters? Therefore, will he tell the House now—he must be fully informed on the matter—under what provision, and when, he proposes to ask for the approval of the House for the suggestions?
Mr. Prior: There will be ample opportunities to debate European matters over the coming months, and undoubtedly the budget will come up on one of those occasions.
Mr. Harold Wilson: Further to what was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Ebbw Vale (Mr. Michael Foot), will

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the right hon. Gentleman tell us what is the precise proposal for the House to vote a budget? Over hundreds of years we have had our own methods clearly set out with the fullest safeguards for the voting of a national budget here. Now we are presented with a bill for the Community budget far exceeding what the House was told two years ago. What procedure will be followed? Will there be appropriation procedures, or what? It is not good enough to say that there will be debates—Adjournment debates, foreign affairs debates. Will he tell us what the Government have decided about voting the budget with the authority of the House?
Mr. Prior: Many of the procedures, it was hoped, and I still hope, can be discussed by the joint committee on procedural matters that we hope to set up. As soon as we can set it up, we can get down to discussing these matters.
Mr. Marten: Is not my right hon. Friend aware that we want to discuss these matters on the Floor of the House? We are not concerned with ad hoc or any other ad committees; we want to discuss them here. Is he aware of increasing anxiety among those of us who are interested in the country's—[Interruption.]—I have not finished yet—who are interested in the country's position in the Common Market that we are not getting the draft directives that are around and should be made available to hon. Members so that we can debate in good time before any decisions are taken?
Mr. Prior: I shall not take it from my hon. Friend or anyone else that I am not interested in my country. But I recognise that there is keen interest in having debates on the Floor of the House. That is one of the matters that could be discussed in the ad hoc committee on procedural matters, and then we could decide how best items can be brought to the Floor of the House.
Mr. McBride: Welsh Labour Members fear that the Government have decided to abandon the discussion of Welsh affairs on the Floor of the House. Will the right hon. Gentleman say when a day will be devoted to a discussion of Welsh affairs? His right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary will tell him that a day is owed to Welsh Members. In view
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of the matters affecting the Welsh economy, in which steel is an important constituent part, will he say when that will occur?
Mr. Prior: I recognise the interest of the hon. Gentleman and of his hon. Friends. I hope very much to arrange a debate on Welsh affairs fairly soon, or very soon after we return from the Christmas Recess.
Mr. Buchan: Has the Leader of the House seen the motion on the Chrysler Corporation signed by myself and many of my hon. Friends?
[That this House, conscious of the vital importance of the British motor-car industry to the British economy, concerned that decisions affecting it are increasingly being made outside this country, and mindful of assurances given by successive Governments that the British interest in Chrysler, United Kingdom should be preserved, calls on the Government to take immediate action to prevent this further United States takeover.]
In view of the serious concern expressed on both sides yesterday and the frivolous statement of the Minister for Industrial Development, may we have an early debate on the issue and the related issue of the future of the motor car industry in Britain?
Mr. Prior: No, Sir. I listened to the exchanges yesterday and I thought that my right hon. Friend gave a very satisfactory explanation.
Mr. Heffer: When shall we have a statement on the question of the bridge disaster at Reading, and when shall we have a debate on the whole issue of safety in the construction industry?
Mr. Prior: I have consulted my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment, as I promised last week. He is awaiting the final report from the Murrison Committee on the basis of the design and the method of erection of large steel box girder bridges. After the report has been received I shall ask him whether he can make a statement to the House.
Mr. Kenneth Lewis: When do the Government intend to announce the names of those of our colleagues who will serve on the European Parliament? Will it be before Christmas, so that at

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least their wives and families can enjoy having them, knowing that they will not see much of them afterwards?
Mr. Prior: The announcement will be made in the fairly near future, and I certainly hope before Christmas.
Mr. J. T. Price: Can the right hon. Gentleman give the House any information about the large number of Boundary Commission reports which are reported to be in the pipeline? Will any of them be taken before Christmas? Will good notice be given, and will they be debated at a reasonable time? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that I am anxious to oppose certain Boundary Commission orders relating to my part of Lancashire, and that if they are taken in the middle of the night or at some other odd time, such as late on a Friday afternoon, going through on the nod, just as arrangements for the business going on in the yard outside were carried on behind the scenes, many hon. Members will feel that justice has not been done? May we have some information? These matters are important to many hon. Members, and we do not want to have them merely pushed under the carpet at an odd time when there is no one here.
Mr. Prior: I presume that the hon. Gentleman is talking about the district Boundary Commissions. I have noted what he said. Their recommendations certainly will not be debated next week, but they will have to debated before very long.
Mr. Fletcher-Cooke: Would my right hon. Friend revert to the question of our procedures relating to Europe and particularly the European budget? Could he set a deadline concerning the question of co-operation with the Opposition, because if there is to be no such co-operation the Government will surely have to give their own unilateral decision. Time is getting short. Could my right hon. Friend tell us when that unilateral decision will be made?
Mr. Prior: I still hope that the House as a whole will arrive at sensible procedures for discussing these very important matters.
Mr. Mendelson: Reverting to the right hon. Gentleman's statement about a future statement on the steel industry, will he remember that in the steel areas there is a growing demand for the Government to live up to their responsibilities? Does he recall that during his predecessor's term of office an undertaking was given that because the Government are directly responsible, and the matter was delayed to allow the Steel Corporation to submit proposals to the Government, the Government are obliged to give an undertaking that the statement will contain all the future details concerning investment programmes so that the responsibility of the Government may be clearly seen, and that any attempt to say that details will still be left to some other body will be wholly unacceptable to the House?
Mr. Prior: I have noted what the hon. Gentleman said. I note that the House wants as full a statement as can be given. I shall do my best to see that that is carried out.
Mrs. Renée Short: Has the Leader of the House been informed that yesterday it was necessary to call the Permanent Secretary to the Department of Health and Social Security before an Expenditure Committee of this House to try to obtain from him an explanation concerning the long delay in the ministerial reply to the Report on Private Practice? Is he further aware that the reply we received indicated that we are not likely to receive this much before Easter? As the report was published and available to the public and the House on 29th March 1972, this would represent an unprecedented delay of one year before the House receives the reply from the Department. Does the right hon. Gentleman not think this is a scandalous way to treat a Select Committee of this House? Can he say what steps he took when I raised the matter with him a fortnight ago during business questions and what action he intends to take to see that the House is treated in the correct manner by the Department?
Mr. Prior: The subject of this report is highly controversial. I knew that the Permanent Secretary to the Department of Health and Social Security was being called in front of the Committee again.

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I knew that the hon. Member would obtain those explanations from the Permanent Secretary. I have noted what the hon. Lady said about the length of time.
Mr. Urwin: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, having conceded that there will be a debate on Welsh Affairs at a fairly early date, he has almost accepted the responsibility to give time for a similar debate on the matters concerning the Northern Region, as we, too, are involved in the intractable problem of unemployment in the steel, shipbuilding and coal industries? One bears in mind that Wales and Scotland have their own separate days for Questions in addition to the lengthy period of time allocated to Northern Ireland Questions.
Mr. Prior: That shows the sort of difficulty one gets into. The Welsh have always had a special day on the Floor of the House for their affairs. I am fulfilling an undertaking on that point. The hon. Gentleman knows that coal will be discussed under the Coal Industry Bill. I have promised a statement on steel. The motion for debate on Tuesday on the Opposition Supply Day will give an opportunity to debate the other matters to which he referred.

CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER (SPEECH)
Mr. Speaker: I have a Ruling to give.
I will now give the Ruling which I undertook to make in response to a number of questions asked by the right hon. Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) yesterday.
The right hon. Member first asked me whether a Minister was free to quote out of context advice received from an official without laying on the Table a full record of the conversation or other context within which the question was made. To this I would reply that if the advice quoted is extracted from a document, the rule of the House is that the document should be laid on the Table, if it can be done without injury to the public interest. The authority for that is Erskine May, page 421. I know of no instance, however, where this rule has ever been applied to a conversation, and I do not think that such an application would be easy in practice.
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The right hon. Gentleman then asked whether Members were free to table Questions to the Chancellor on any advice which he might have received from the Department of Customs and Excise. The rules of Questions are a good deal more restrictive than the rules of debate, and there are many things which can be said during the course of a speech which cannot be included in the terms of a Question. Questions relating to discussions between Ministers and their official advisers are among those types of Questions cited in Erskine May, page 328, which Ministers have consistently refused to answer on grounds of public policy and which are therefore not in order.
The right hon. Gentleman's third question related to the powers of Select Committees. It is the duty of a Select Committee to interpret its own order of reference, and it is not therefore for me to rule whether any Committee could or could not seek from the Chairman of the Board of Customs and Excise evidence of the type which the right hon. Gentleman described.
In answer to the right hon. Gentleman's fourth and final question, I can only say that there is nothing in itself disorderly in the communication to the House by a Minister of the advice which he has received from any quarter. Whether it is prudent or desirable that he should do so is a matter upon which he must make up his mind in each particular case.
Mr. Healey: I thank you, Mr. Speaker. for your Rulings, which are clear and, if I may say so, very consonant with my own understanding of what the situation was.
I think you will agree, Mr. Speaker, that the situation as you have described it gives a very unfair advantage to the Minister in the House in that you have made it clear that the Minister is free, if he thinks it proper—the House might well have its own views on that question—to quote anything said to him by an official adviser out of context, and the House is in no position to ask any questions of a follow-up nature to discover whether the account given by the Minister is fair and calculated to inform the House properly of the whole situation which is under debate. Could you give the House any guidance whether there is any means by which we might seek to bring the rights

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of Members more into line with the rights which Ministers have according to your Ruling?
The second question I would put to you is this. Mr. Deputy Speaker, when this matter arose, referred to it as a question of etiquette. I wonder whether you, Mr. Speaker, with your deep experience of these matters, can recall any previous occasion when a Minister has sought in a difficult matter to skulk behind the skirts of civil servants in a situation in which it is impossible for the House to verify or confirm the statements he made as being truly representative of the views of the person quoted. Here there is a question of propriety not only for the House but concerning relations between Ministers and their civil servants.
Mr. Speaker: The right hon. Gentleman has put two questions to me. With regard to the first, it is possible to pursue the matter in debate. There is nothing out of order in pursuing the matter when a right hon. Gentleman has decided to refer to any advice given. It can be pursued in debate. So far as the other matter is concerned, I shall not comment on the question of etiquette. I hope that hon. and right hon. Gentlemen will carefully consider my Ruling because there are certain things to be read between the lines.
Mr. Harold Wilson: We note what you said, Mr. Speaker. We shall certainly study it to see what is to be read between the lines. We note that the matter is open for debate although not for Questions.
In view of the clarity of your Ruling, would it perhaps not be right that the Leader of the House should undertake to report your Ruling and this exchange to the Prime Minister to see whether, if the House has no redress in this matter, it should not be dealt with for the future by a Prime Ministerial directive to Ministers?
Mr. Prior: I should like to consider what the right hon. Gentleman said. I shall certainly draw my right hon. Friend's attention to your Ruling, Mr. Speaker, which you announced this afternoon, and also to the right hon. Gentleman's comments.
Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: I take it that it is not a point of debate about my Ruling.
Mr. Dalyell: A point of questioning, searching after truth.
Do I understand, Mr. Speaker, that, under your Ruling, if it is considered by the Secretary of State for Defence, for example, "prudent and desirable to do so" he may freely quote the views of the Chiefs of Staff, senior Cabinet Ministers, Permanent Secretaries and other officers? Is that to be the position from now on?
Mr. Speaker: I think that the hon. Member must take my Ruling as I have given it. I shall not deal with any hypothetical question.

MEMBERS (INFLUENZA INJECTIONS)
Dame Irene Ward: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It was arranged that those who wished to have them could have 'flu injections on Wednesday. May I ask why it was that without any prior notification the firm concerned or whoever was responsible for the arrangements to give the injections at ten minutes past eleven on Wednesday morning telephoned to say that the injections would not be given until the following Monday? This was very inconvenient. It do not know about the rest of the House, but it happened to very inconvenient for me.
If people are kind enough to make this arrangement, or if they are remunerated for doing so, and it is published in The Whip inviting hon. Members to turn up for their injections between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., it does not seem right that the firm should be allowed to telephone at ten minutes past eleven and put off the arrangement until the following Monday. I am not involved myself, but I should be annoyed if I were to get 'flu and be unable to take part in the debate on shipbuilding next Tuesday.
Mr. Speaker: Without accepting any responsibility, may I express my regret to the hon. Lady and hope that she will not contract 'flu. I shall go into the matter and see whether there is anything that I can do about it.

ORDERS OF THE DAY
  SUPPLY
  [3RD ALLOTTED DAY],—considered.

  PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE (REPORTS)
  4.12 p.m.
  Mr. Edmund Dell: I beg to move,
  That this House takes note of the First, Second and Third Reports from the Committee of Public Accounts in the last Session of Parliament and of the Treasury Minute on those Reports (Command Paper No. 5126).
  I am sure that the whole House will join me in expressing regret that my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever) is not able to move the motion. I am sure that we all wish to send him and his family our best wishes for a speedy return to good health. During the last Session of Parliament the Public Accounts Committee was stimulated, guided, instructed and amused by my right hon. Friend. Witnesses who appeared before the PAC may sometimes have been surprised—pleasantly I hope—when, after a lengthy and penetrating inquiry, he suddenly expressed the committee's complete and sympathetic understanding, but that was in line with what he said during the debate on the Report of the PAC last year and I shall read what he said because I am sure that if he were here today he would make the same point about the functions of the committee.
  My right hon. Friend said:
  "Our function is to encourage foresight and care in officials, not to discourage flexibility because of the feeling, if something goes wrong, that they would have been wiser to stick to more staid, if less justifiable, rules.…Members of the Committee will want the Civil Service to know that, in judging what has happened when things have gone wrong, we place ourselves emphatically in the minds of the officials themselves, not with a view to discouraging flexible initiatives, not with a view to encouraging the play-safe attitude which can always ensure that someone does not come before the Committee."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd December, 1971; Vol. 827, c. 707.]
  We know my right hon. Friend to be the most practical philosopher of them all. I should refer to him as a philosopher-king were it not for his well-known democratic sentiments.
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  I should like on behalf of the Committee to express thanks to the Comptroller and Auditor-General, Sir David Pitblado, and to the Exchequer and Audit Department from which the PAC draws its strength and is enabled to get through its very considerable body of work. It is their assistance and the fact that they have access to the papers of the Government which ensures that the PAC's proceedings take the form not of a loose exchange of untested ideas, statements and allegations, but of an inquiry into questions of administration and sometimes, though now, fortunately, rarely, propriety, where the facts and statements under discussion are substantiated, or may have to be substantiated, by the actual records of Government.
  May I also express the Committee's thanks to Mr. Phelps, the Treasury Officer of Accounts, who was always commandingly in attendance, and to Mr. G. C. Eccleston who has just retired as Clerk to the PAC, and may I extend a welcome to Mr. J. L. Rose, the new Clerk of Committee.
  Membership of the Committee seems to have a remarkable effect on the personal prospects of hon. Gentlemen opposite. In the middle of the year two Conservative Members—the hon. Members for Leicester, South-West (Mr. Tom Boardman) and Woking (Mr. Onslow)—were whipped into the Government and the Financial Secretary to the Treasury became the Chief Secretary. This, I take it, means that there is an emphatic demand from hon. Gentlemen opposite for membership of the PAC, and it is no doubt due to this extraordinary competition for a place on the PAC that this year the Committee is being set up so late.
  I should like to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the Committee still has not been set up, but I hope that it will be tonight. This is later than at any time while I have been a Member of the House and, I suspect for many years past, and this has the inevitable and serious effect of disrupting the programme that we prepare for ourselves.
  There has been a slight change this year in the Committee's practice in reporting to the House. There used to be three reports, the first dealing with excess

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  votes, the second dealing with virement—a word which I always found difficult to understand, and it has been abolished just at the point at which I began to understand what it was—and a third report, which was our substantial report, a bulky document, the publication of which was authorised in July, with eventual publication in the middle of the Summer Recess, perhaps in August or September. It was a bulky volume with which hon. Members no doubt amused themselves during the summer holidays.
  We felt that that was perhaps asking a little too much, even from our enthusiastic readers. We have this year adopted the practice of dividing our substantial report and publishing our Second Report as it was, which was authorised in May when the House was still sitting, and our Third Report which appeared at about the same time as our substantial report used to appear. I hope that that will be for the convenience of the House and I hope, too, that it will be the practice of the PAC in future to publish as we decide.
  I do not intend to go through the First, Second and Third Reports of the PAC. They are there for the House to read. I propose, instead, to choose a theme which unites certain aspects of these reports, but before coming to that I should like to refer to one item which falls rather outside the theme that I shall take, and that is our reference to the Commonwealth Development Corporation.
  Here we find the PAC perhaps in an unusual rôle of stimulant of public expenditure. I was interested to receive the Treasury Minute which comments on that part of our report. It says on page 4:
  "Because of the general pressure on the Aid Programme it has not been possible to increase Government advances to the CDC to the level mentioned in paragraph 9 of the Committee's Report".
  I regret that. It then goes on to say in the final paragraph of that section of the Treasury Minute:
  "The Government and CDC believe as a result of their joint discussions, now complete, on both future allocations and the improvement of arrangements for concessionary finance, CDC is in a position to extend its investments in projects of high development value and to extend its operations in those areas where they can be of particular benefit."
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  I was glad to see that response from the Government to what the PAC was recommending, particularly because the PAC was acting in what might be regarded as an unusual rôle.
  The theme which I take in moving the motion is the oversight exercised by the PAC on Government investment in industry. Before coming to my theme, I should declare an interest. I was a Minister when some of the matters covered in the report were the responsibility of the last Government. It is perhaps a curious feature of the practices of this House that ex-Ministers can find themselves members of the PAC and turning a critical retrospective gaze on matters for which they may have been responsible. Here we have the poacher turned gamekeeper. I am reminded of the passage from the "Mikado" where Koko says:
  "A man cannot cut off his own head"
  and Pooh-bah replies:
  "A man might try."
  I have "tried" to the best of my ability as a member of the PAC, and I assure the Government that with the passage of time we are getting deeper and deeper into their records.
  The relevance of what the PAC has to say about Government investment in industry is enhanced by the events of the last year. In the debate on the PAC last year, on 2nd December 1971, the Chief Secretary, as he now is, who was then the Financial Secretary, said:
  "The investment grant scheme has now terminated…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 2nd December, 1971; Vol. 827, c. 763.]
  But this year we have had the Industry Act 1972. The policy of the Government seems to have changed. I make that remark in that way, tentative rather than categoric, to avoid any suggestion that as acting spokesman of the PAC today I am dealing with policy. The PAC does not concern itself with policy directly but with the administration of policy and with the propriety of public expenditure.
  Many times during the passage of the Industry Act 1972 the Government appealed to the PAC as a protector of the public interest. The Second and Third Reports show the PAC at work in defending the public interest. I will give the House a few brief examples. With

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  reference to the Central Council for Agricultural and Horticultural Co-operation, we emphasised the importance of adequate vetting and monitoring procedures. I am glad to see that in the Treasury Minute the Government accept that. With regard to the Sugar Board, we emphasised the importance of efficiency. In the Second Report at paragraph 59 we said:
  "There is a clear need, particularly in view of the proposed entry to the European Economic Community. to ensure that sugar is produced by the most efficient methods. They trust, therefore, that the inquiry will produce proposals to this end and that reorganisation will follow promptly."
  I was interested to see the Treasury Minute's response to the recommendation of the PAC, which at page 6 reads, rather peculiarly, as follows:
  "Full account will be taken of the Committee's view that there is a clear need to ensure that sugar is produced by the most efficient methods."
  I am interested in the words, "full account will be taken". I know of many areas of policy where efficiency is far from the last word to be said on any question, but here I should have thought that efficiency is rather important. I wonder why the Government phrase their response in that odd fashion?
  We considered the affairs of the Atomic Energy Authority. We were limited because the Government are reviewing their policy. There has been the Vinter Report which we have not seen. There is the Secretary of State's statement of 8th August 1972, and now there is a further review in progress. We understand that the final decisions will be reached in about a year. The PAC must look at these matters further. It will wish to penetrate and understand the whole of the argument about the administration of atomic energy policy.
  One of the PAC's comments that has been most commented on since the report appeared was about assistance to shipbuilding. In the Third Report at paragraph 13 we said:
  "Your Commtitee are concerned that many millions of pounds of public funds provided for distribution to the ship-building industry through the SIB have been spent for purposes which had little to do directly with improving the industry's ability to compete in world markets."
  We are subsequently told that as a matter of policy—this is at page 6 of the
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  Treasury Minute—one of the purposes of Government assistance to industry is to support employment. I welcome that statement. I also welcome the fact that the Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry agree that further assistance from public funds should be used as effectively as possible for the development of a viable ship-building industry.
  The PAC commented on two Governments' experience with the RB211 aero-engine. We welcome the acceptance by the Department of Trade and Industry and by the Treasury of the need to assess the potential cost against the resources and commitments of the company. The lesson to be learnt is that when a Government embark on the financing of advanced technology—and not just then—they cannot rely on their commitment being limited by a contract such as a launching aid contract. They must understand the full responsibility that they are undertaking. That is a point which the Government now clearly express as their own view.
  Having indicated the areas of the report that bear on my theme, I refer the House particularly to an answer from Sir Anthony Part, the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry, made to the Committee on 8th March 1972. In the answer to Question 1548, he spoke of the Government's relations with firms in which they invest. To summarise what he said—I accept that a summary cannot do full justice to so long and important a reply—he said that the Government did not wish to disturb or confuse the responsibility of directors of assisted companies. Secondly, he said that the Government must be able to satisfy themselves in what are frequently very difficult areas of policy as to what exactly is happening in a company. It is not, of course, clear that these two points are always easily compatible, which is a fact of which the Department of Trade and Industry is aware.
  Sir Anthony went on to say, quoting an answer which the then Chief Secretary had given on the previous day, that no one should assume, unless the Government commit themselves to that extent, that Government investment implies that the Government accept liabilities for a company's debts. These are all matters

  1695
  which the Treasury, the DTI and the PAC will wish to watch carefully.
  The question which arises from these reports, and out of the comments which I have briefly summarised, is whether the House is satisfied that the PAC, as it now exists and operates within its present terms of reference, has the power and capacity to discharge its functions adequately.
  The power of the PAC comes from the fact, first, that it has the aid of the Comptroller and Auditor-General and the Exchequer and Audit Department, and, second, from the fact that it inquires into specific matters.
  There are, I think, two levels at which this House can control the Executive, if it will. The first is by the great debate on policy on the Floor of the House, and the second is by asking, through a Select Committee, the specific question—why do the Government expect to achieve their objectives by this means? In other words, it is to examine the adequacy of the proposed means to the proposed objectives, to query not the objectives but the means.
  This is what the PAC does retrospectively and with hindsight, but it does not ask every such question. For example, it does not enter, in a general way, into the adequacy of the proposed means to a Department's total objectives. It limits itself to specific examples. It does not ask such questions prospectively at the time of action, at any rate where there is a new departure.
  Parallel with the Public Accounts Committee, there is, of course, the Expenditure Committee, which has now presented the House with a number of valuable reports, and the House now has experience of the way in which the Expenditure Committee is working.
  Perhaps I might quote the order of reference of the Expenditure Committee:
  "To consider any papers on public expenditure presented to this House and such of the Estimates as may seem fit to the Committee and in particular to consider how if at all, the policies implied in the figures of expenditure and in the Estimates may be carried out more economically, and to examine the form of the papers and of the Estimates presented to this House."
  I should perhaps say that I informed the hon. Member for Walsall, South (Sir H.
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  d'Avigdor-Goldsmid), the new Chairman of the Expenditure Committee, that I would be referring to that Committee. However, there is a meeting of the Committee at this moment and he asked me to present his apologies to the House; he did me the courtesy of saying that he would read what I said.
  What I want to emphasise in the terms of reference of the Expenditure Committee is these words:
  "…in particular to consider how, if at all, the policies implied in the figures of expenditure and in the Estimates may be carried out more economically."
  That is looking prospectively—a form of activity which is parallel to, closely resembles, what the PAC is intended to do retrospectively. But, of course, the Expenditure Committee is also concerned with policy, and its order of reference permits it so to be.
  It does not have the assistance of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, and this might be a matter of debate—but it might be difficult, one can see, to have the Comptroller and Auditor-General working with a Committee which might use its information to query policy and not just means. Inevitably there is some overlap, or perhaps some complementarity, between the work of the PAC and that of the Expenditure Committee.
  I should like to refer particularly to a very valuable report of the Trade and Industry Sub-Committee of the Expenditure Committee, "Public Money in the Private Sector". The Committee inquired retrospectively, as a basis presumably for the comments that it wished to make on future policy, into the RB211 affair and into assistance to the shipbuilding industry. Indeed, permanent secretaries were rushing hotfoot from one committee to the other to give evidence on what were not very dissimilar questions.
  The question which arises out of this is whether the House is sure that, either directly or through Select Committees, we are prepared sufficiently to press these two specific questions on the Executive. First, is departmental administration adequate to its task? Second—this question to the Government—why do they think that this specific expenditure in industry which is now proposed will achieve their objective?

  1697
  Of course, the PAC does in effect deal with the second of these questions where it is inquiring retrospectively into a continuing policy. Thus, for example, by what we have to say in these reports on the Covent Garden Authority, on the Sugar Board accounts, on the Atomic Energy Authority, on the new investigation we are now undertaking into the exploitation of North Sea gas and oil—by inquiring retrospectively, we say also something of what we think is the way policy should be administered in future. But where there is a new departure, this cannot operate, because this would be outside the Committee's terms of reference.
  Is this sort of question to the Government—"Why do you think that this expenditure will achieve your objectives?"—a question for the Expenditure Committee which is a policy committee and may in this respect be handicapped from pressing that sort of question, apart from being handicapped by not having the assistance of the Exchequer and Audit Department? Is it a question for the PAC, with extended terms of reference, or is it a question for nobody in this House other than Ministers until the PAC inquires retrospectively into specific cases?
  I am sure that the last thing that the PAC would want is to discourage initiative or flexibility or to instil a timid attitude which feared responsibility. It is in that connection that our remarks on Section 332 of the Companies Act were made. This was intended to be helpful to Government and I believe that it has been taken to be helpful.
  I was glad to see these words on page 11 of the Treasury Minute:
  "As regards Section 332, the Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry fully accept the conclusions of the Committee. The Department are making a renewed examination of the implications of the Section and some notes of guidance have already been circulated to officials."
  I refer to that to emphasise once more that it is the wish of the PAC to be helpful in this area.
  Nevertheless, the question arises whether the House is adequately prepared and set up, through the terms of reference of these Select Committees, to deal with the specific types of question to which I refer. I should like to mention some remarks made on the work of
  1698
  the PAC by a very experienced and senior official of Government, now retired, Sir Richard Clarke, who was Permanent Secretary to the Ministry of Technology and who has discussed the functions of the PAC in his series of lectures, "New Trends in Government", particularly on pages 12 and 13.
  Sir Richard says, first, that there should be a regular report on the efficiency of a Department's financial procedures and on what is being done to get better value for money and, second, that permanent secretaries should be examined very searchingly on that report. That would, of course, be a departure for the PAC.
  He says that the Exchequer and Audit Department should, of course, continue to inquire into specific faults and that accounting officers should continue to be examined by the PAC on these matters, but he adds this point, which again would be a departure from present practice:
  "Specified officials would be designated as responsible for this purpose, just as, for some Votes now, the Accounting officer is a Second Permanent Secretary or Deputy Secretary".
  I believe that the intention of that recommendation is to put responsibility very clearly where it lies and to have the official responsible answer to the PAC.
  Of course, when permanent secretaries appear before the PAC, they are supported by other officials, but what Sir Richard appears to be suggesting is the designation of specified officials as being responsible.
  He then goes on to a point on which he has my full-hearted agreement and probably that of many hon. Members:
  "In my opinion, the Executive is too strong in relation to Parliament rather than too weak. But I do believe that changes, both for supply procedure and for audit, could be devised which would both strengthen the substance of Parliamentary control (while abandoning the shadow) and make a larger impact on the efficiency of the Department's administration."
  These are important suggestions. I raise these matters not because I wish at present to propose solutions; that would be far outside my remit today. But there is here a problem to which consideration needs to be given. I hope that the House and the Government will consider this.
  Mr. Dick Douglas: I have been trying

  1699
  to follow closely the interesting trend of my right hon. Friend's remarks. Would he agree that what is necessary here is for the Expenditure Committee and the Public Accounts Committee to have before them, almost simultaneously, some idea of the public expenditure surveys of the Government?
  Mr. Dell: I speak without full briefing on this matter, but the position of the Public Accounts Committee is that, through the Comptroller and Auditor-General, it has, in principle at any rate, access to the documents of the Government except the documents of the Treasury. I may be wrong about that. I would have to inquire into it. But certainly it always assists the operation of Select Committees of the House if they have access to relevant documents, and the document to which my hon. Friend has referred would be a very relevant document. But I am being more modest at present.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Terence Higgins): The right hon. Gentleman will excuse me for interrupting him, but I did not hear the precise word mentioned by the hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas), who was within a few feet of the right hon. Gentleman, in referring to a particular document. Would the right hon. Gentleman perhaps mention it?
  Mr. Dell: Yes. My hon. Friend was suggesting that the Public Accounts Committee and the Expenditure Committee should have access to the Public Expenditure Survey.
  I noticed in The Times two days ago that the announcement was made about the appointment of the Expenditure Committee and of the hon. Member for Walsall, South as Chairman of that Committee. The Reporter writes as follows:
  "Sir Henry … knows that he has to give the committee the status of the Gladstonian Public Accounts Committee, which is more than 110 years old."
  I should like to say to the hon. Member for Walsall, South—in his absence—that if there is anything that the Public Accounts Committee can do to help the Expenditure Committee achieve a status comparable to our own, I hope that he will let us know. The status of the Public Accounts Committee comes not
  1700
  from its age but from its responsibilities and its direct relationship to accounting officers; age is not, however, always a disadvantage.
  I have indicated to the House what I believe to be certain areas of concern in the control which the House now exercises over a particular part of Government expenditure. I have concentrated particularly on Government investment in industry. I hope that there will be careful thought as to whether it might not be appropriate, perhaps, following something like the lines of what Sir Richard Clarke proposed in "New Trends in Government", for the PAC's methods of inquiry to be adapted and to be deployed over a wider field, and prospectively as well as retrospectively.
  4.44 p.m.
  Mr. Peter Rees: I did not have the privilege of being a member of the Public Accounts Committee, like the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell), but I hope that I am allowed to compliment its members and those who helped them on their First, Second and Third Reports.
  The points I shall make arise in particular from the Third Report. If one can single out any particular Votes, they are Votes 15 and 19. The theme I want to develop is to some extent the theme developed by the right hon. Gentleman—Government investment in industry. Indeed, as the right hon. Gentleman remarked, the report of the Public Accounts Committee is in a sense complementary to the excellent Sixth Report of the Public Expenditure Committee, published in July, which I regret we have not had an opportunity to debate in any depth.
  Vote 15 relates to the assistance given by the Department of Trade and Industry to the shipbuilding industry. We learn that about £40 million was committed under the Shipbuilding Industry Act 1967, through the SIB, and that is beyond or before any sums that have been or will be committed to Govan Shipbuilders to get that company under way.
  Vote 19 relates to the launching aid given from the Ministry of Aviation Supply, as it then was, to Rolls-Royce in connection with the RB 211 aero-engine, and that amounted to over £90 million. That is before any capital which the

  1701
  Government may have had to commit to get the new company off the ground. So we are talking about very sizeable sums of money. Both these examples—there are many other examples studded through the reports of the Public Accounts Committee—raise questions which I shall suggest to the House.
  Are Governments, of whatever complexion, committing public money to commercial or semi-commercial projects in the right way? To put the question more crudely, perhaps, does the taxpayer get an adequate return, in commercial, strategic or social terms, on his money?
  The problem is simple for both ends of the political spectrum. For those who believe in an unclouded, free market, there is no problem, as there should be no Government money committed. Equally, for those who believe in an entirely Marxist economy, there is no problem, for an entirely contrary reason. But for those of us—I suspect, with suitable diffidence, that we are to be found on both sides of the House—who have become reconciled to a mixed economy with varying degrees of emphasis, this is an acute problem and is likely to be a continuing problem.
  The first question I suggest should be asked, even if no very clear answer will be forthcoming tonight, is, should public money be committed by a Department of State, or should it be committed through some para-governmental agency or—if the House will forgive me for using an unattractive word—through some "para-statal" agency?
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I hate to interrupt the hon. and learned Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees) but the fact is that at least one of us gave ample notice to the Department of Trade and Industry that we wished to raise the question of Rolls-Royce. The hon. and learned Member is asking some very important questions. Is it not strange that there is no DTI Minister on the Government Front Bench?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): That is not a point of order for the Chair.
  Mr. Rees: I am very happy to see on the Front Bench my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury. I
  1702
  have no doubt that he will convey our remarks to the Department of Trade and Industry. I am not optimistic that we shall reach any very profound conclusions tonight. But it is right that that question should be aired, because this is likely to be a continuing debate, not only in this Parliament but in many Parliaments thereafter.
  The problem was analysed with great lucidity and skill in the Sixth Report from the Expenditure Committee, to which I pay a further tribute. Perhaps not surprisingly, no very firm conclusion was reached, but it would be appropriate for me to quote the last paragraph:
  "We make a final comment. The post-war period, and particularly the last ten to fifteen years, has seen both a vastly increased commitment of public funds to private industry and a growth in the complexities and risks involved. It is not surprising that Government and industry have stumbled from time to time. The need is not to attribute blame and encourage recriminations but to draw lessons from which all will ultimately benefit. It is a matter for conjecture, and for debate elsewhere, how much money should make its way to the private sector in the years ahead. It is beyond doubt, however, that the complexities associated with such investment will multiply. We hope that others, in Parliament and outside, will carry the discussions forward."
  With suitable diffidence, I hope, I shall endeavour to carry the discussion a little further forward, beyond the point at which the right hon. Member for Birkenhead left it, although I do not say that I shall necessarily contribute anything more striking to the debate.
  The first question is, should we consider some kind of para-governmental agency, or should all public money be channelled through a Department of State, for whose activities a Minister is responsible in detail to us?
  It was noticeable in the evidence given to the Public Expenditure Committee that the weight of Civil Service evidence—this is not surprising, perhaps—was for the channelling of public funds through a Department of State. By contrast, the weight of outside evidence was that such money would be best channelled through a para-governmental agency. It is inevitable that prejudices will creep through, and I need not go into detail as to why civil servants should prefer to see this money handled through the organs of Government in preference to a governmental agency. My preference is for a

  1703
  para-governmental agency for the reasons which have been widely canvassed in the report.
  Mr. Dell: It is not for me to say how civil servants think on this issue but does the hon. and learned Member imagine that the replies of civil servants given to the Expenditure Committee are influenced by the decision, if any has been made, by the Government?
  Mr. Rees: Perhaps I speak with rather less experience than the right hon. Gentleman. I have not had the privilege of cross-examining civil servants in detail and I do not know whether they speak from a departmental brief or whether they draw on experience gained over the years. I am not in a position, therefore, to answer the question. I should prefer to leave it as a matter for speculation. My reasons for prefering a para-governmental agency are that I genuinely feel that Government and the Civil Service have already a wide enough field of activity to cover. I doubt whether they can take on added responsibilities in their present forms. Then again, I am not certain whether the training of our civil servants, admirable though it may be, necessarily equips them for a detailed appraisal of commercial and quasi-commercial projects, or for the supervision of those projects.
  So often when we come to consider in a moment of crisis whether Government money should be committed to such a project or not, there is a far-reaching debate and sensible conclusions may be reached. But one is left with the impression that after the money has been committed the pressure probably relaxes and the Minister concerned no longer has the time and the inclination to follow up what has happened to that money. The pressures perhaps build up in some other direction and he switches his attention elsewhere. We need therefore some kind of continuous supervision of what happens to the money. I do not say that we must continually breathe down the necks of the companies to which the money has been committed. That would be going too far. But a more sensitive form of supervision should be possible than perhaps can be exercised through a Government Department.
  1704
  It is not enough to summon a little outside assistance, perhaps a distinguished firm of accountants or a merchant bank, to make a quick appraisal which will then be the basis of a departmental decision which Parliament could adopt. If decisions are made in that way there will always be, I suspect, a tendency for the Minister concerned to say, "Let us for heaven's sake give them slighly more than they require so that we shall not have to go back to the House and justify a second request for funds." I do not consider that to be a very sensible way in which to commit public money. The problem must be kept under constant review committing as much money as it required from time to time, and I believe that this would be achieved more easily through some kind of autonomous agency, even though ultimately it would be responsible to a Minister.
  I wish to try to relate this debate to something we were discussing in the summer. I am a little gloomy about the experiment which has been foisted on us through the Industry Act. I do not believe that it is an adequate solution to give a Minister a sort of ad hoc advisory board in various parts of the country. We need a continuing body answerable to the Minister inevitably and ultimately, perhaps, because he will be appointing people to it, with access on a specified basis to public capital and able to act in a limited sphere on its own initiative and in a wider sphere on the initiative of the Minister. As for the precise financing of such an agency I doubt whether it is feasible to mix private and public capital in such a body. I suspect that any attempt to do so will lead to two sorts of capital being treated and accounted for on a different basis or both being subject to the standards of public accounting, which are perhaps not the most appropriate for a commercial or semi-commercial operation.
  Hon. Members opposite may suggest that my conclusions are leading irresistibly back to some form of IRC. It may be that, with the wisdom of hindsight, we were overquick to disband the IRC and that we could have drawn lessons from its operation. I believe that the IRC was wrongly conceived and, without introducing a partisan note, that it was set up in a period when we had a

  1705
  Minister who was restlessly tinkering with British industry. I must declare my political commitment. Although I advocate a para-governmental agency, I do not envisage it as a midwife attending at the birth of new companies and restlessly arranging matches between existing companies. That would take it beyond the kind of responsibilities that I envisage, because it would lead to big decisions which are perhaps more properly taken by the market.
  It is very difficult and improper for the Government and even for some kind of para-governmental agency to decide which two firms should link or to which kind of merger or reorganisation public money should be committed. That is a field of activity which is purely commercial and which should be left outside Government hands or control.
  I come, therefore, to the question of how and where money should be committed. Such agencies should have the power to make loans or to subscribe for preferred or even ordinary share capital or debenture stock. I have no emotional antagonism to the acquisition by such an agency of ordinary share capital provided it is not a covert form of backdoor nationalisation. In fairness, all of us would recognise that we have not evolved a proper systematic method of controlling nationalised industries and therefore I do not want to see that side of the nation's activities enlarged and I do not want to see such an agency used as a backdoor nationaliser. Beyond that I have no reservations about it committing money by means of acquisition of share capital where appropriate.
  The agency should have maximum commercial flexibility perhaps with the explicit reservation that it should be committed eventually to disposing of any shares it acquires in that way. I do not want to see it evolve as a sort of State-holding company, but beyond that it should have open to it all the methods available to a private merchant bank to finance industry. If such projects involve such an agency in putting members on the boards of private companies, so be it. That would be a perfectly logical step and must be one of the ways in which it could supervise investment in the private sector.
  Mr. Dalyell: On the question of how such an agency or, indeed, a Government Department operates in relation to people in companies which have this relationship with the Government, would the hon. and learned Member care to give any views on the way that the DTI, rightly or wrongly, has weighed in very heavily on the question of senior management of Rolls-Royce and has denied to Mr. Ian Morrow his choice of a managing director?
  Mr. Rees: I would not like to comment on the particular incident which the hon. Member raises, first, because I do not pretend to be in possession of all the facts and, secondly, because I do not know whether I see the Rolls-Royce situation necessarily developing by the means I am advocating at the moment. I do not mean that if there had been such a para-governmental agency we would have avoided the Rolls-Royce debâcle. The IRC was in existence, putting members on the board of Rolls-Royce during the critical period. But perhaps the question that the hon. Member is asking is going a little beyond my theme as to what rights of recourse members of individual boards should have. They have their rights of publicity and they have their contractual rights. I do not know whether beyond that that is a theme that I could legitimately develop in relation to the main theme I am trying to argue tonight. On another occasion I may be allowed to develop it with the hon. Member.
  Mr. R. T. Paget: This is a problem of limited Government interference once it occurs. Does the hon. and learned Member know of any instance of a firm which has had to seek Government financial assistance of this sort and has then succeeded in surviving? Do they not always become casualties?
  Mr. Rees: I do not know whether the hon. and learned Member will regard this as a fair answer, but I should have thought that British Petroleum was a good case. It did not seek Government assistance and the Government bought their way in for strategic reasons. Originally there was a majority Government holding which now is a large minority holding. I would have thought it was unfair to describe BP as a casualty.

  1707
  It is one of our more successful oil companies. The hon. and learned Member may not regard that as a fair example.
  Mr. Paget: That was a case where we needed it, not one where it needed us.
  Mr. Rees: In self-defence I must say that that is the reply I was inclined to give. Possibly we shall see when the Industry Act has worked itself out. But if the hon. and learned Member looks through the IRC's accounts he will see that sums of money were committed—and they were committed in a variety of ways, by loans, debenture stock, and so on. It would be unfair to the memory of the IRC to say that all these companies had become casualties. We tend to get a slightly highly-charged view in this House because we debate only the failures and not the successes, but there are successes and it would he fair to state that the IRC, lamented or not lamented, had its successes as well as its failures.
  My final question concerns to what projects should money be committed. There are commercial projects for which the market is not adapted. Perhaps the scale is too big and the return likely to come over too long a period. That is the case where money could be committed, either on the initative of the agency or of the Minister, and the success or failure of that commitment could be judged by the harshest and most realistic of tests: has it worked out commercially? Even if we were not encouraged to debate in detail projects to which such an agency had committed funds, at least when the Public Accounts Committee came to review its activities we should have the simplest possible test by which to judge the success or failure of a purely commercial enterprise.
  We could have socially and environmentally desirable projects with what I would describe as a commercial substratum. This calls to mind projects needed in the regions where unemployment is acute. This should be entirely on the initiative of the Minister, who should commit such projects for the consideration of such an agency, and if he instructed it to go through with such a project it should be made clear that he had instructed it to do so for social,
  1708
  Environmental or whatever noncommercial reason.
  One of the great difficulties we always encounter is the blurring of the criteria when we come to consider such a project. Here, I do not wish to uncover old wounds, but I remain to be persuaded that Govan Shipbuilders should or would be justified by commercial criteria. There may be good social reasons why the company should be set up, but it has been justified by a rather specious commercial argument. I do not mean to criticise unduly the report of Hill Samuel, but it is possible for anyone to read between the lines. The report said that there was just a commercial case but that it was for the Government to justify their action on social and environmental grounds. If that is the case, I would much prefer the Government to say outright that this was a project which they commended on environmental or social grounds. Unless we know for sure what the project is designed to achieve, we cannot judge it in any meaningful sense. In those circumstances, we should be unable to arrive at any conclusions which would assist those involved or those who come after us.
  Mr. Dalyell: What does the hon. and learned Member consider to be the possible damage of candour to exports?
  Mr. Rees: That is a difficult question to answer. It may be that if Govan Shipbuilders produces the ships, they could be sold at a certain price, but that is not the point I am trying to make. The point is that we were supposed to have set up a viable commercial entity on the upper Clyde which could stand the test of real competition. I am trying to debate this subject in general terms without relating it too much to any particular project. The point of a debate like this is that we should clarify our minds as to how this kind of problem should be approached, not so much in relation to what happened in the past but for the future, so that we can lay down the kind of guidelines which enable us to have a meaningful debate and to reach meaningful conclusions, and enable the Public Accounts Committee to do its work more effectively.

  1709
  Where there are projects of this kind that can be justified on social or environmental grounds, although they have commercial substrata, the Government must come out and say so. There is a dilemma here because if the people on the upper Clyde are told that they are not really a commercial entity it could, in stark terms, he extremely demoralising. But it is equally demoralising to ask people to spend their working lives in a company which consistently shows a loss.
  There are also projects which will seem commercial in their nature but which are justified on strategic or defence grounds. This is the case, as I understood it, which was put forward for the resurrection of Rolls-Royce. Such cases must be judged by quite different criteria, and it is right for a Minister who commits such a project to a para-governmental agency to say that it is not primarily a commercial project but in the last analysis it must go through for strategic or defence reasons. It will then be possible to judge such a project by those criteria.
  I have been able to sketch out only in very general terms some ideas on this difficult and continuing subject, helped very much by the very able reports of the Public Accounts Committee. But the Committee can at best carry out a skilled and relentless post mortem on the corpse presented to it. What we need is some hard, consistent and forward thinking on how any Government should commit public money to industrial and commercial projects, on how such projects should be judged and on how the money committed should be controlled. Finally, we need to build up in the House some coherent experience in this difficult field to inform our future debates.
  5.10 p.m.
  Mr. R. T. Paget: I join my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) in what he said about my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever). We all greatly regret his absence and send him the very best of wishes for his early return. I probably speak for all of us on both sides if I say how stimulating it was to sit and watch the bubbling and amusing fertility of his mind. He made that Committee into something the meetings of which we looked forward to and we shall miss him tremendously while he is absent.
  1710
  As deputy chairman of the Committee, I should like to express my thanks for the various professional assistance which we received. A committee is useless without professional assistance. We must not minimise the professional assistance that a committee system requires. I am a profound believer in the committee system. The House is far better in committee than it is on the Floor of the House. It gets down to work; it forgets about being partisan and becomes interested in a subject. I wish that we had more Select Committees to initiate legislation and not merely to discuss existing legislation.
  We once had a Select Committe which was equipped with a professional parliamentary committee from the Service Departments and the Treasury which drafted and provided us with the Army Act. That Act was accepted without amendment either by the House or by the Government. Since the example of that remarkable success in complicated and long-overdue legislation, the procedure has never been repeated. I can never understand why.
  There is, for instance, a great call for legislation on aliens and nationality. A more ideal subject to hand over to a Select Committee to find an agreed solution and to put into shape I cannot imagine. I have pressed for years for this to happen. Perhaps the time will come when it will, but I am not sure that this is the right moment to call for it.
  Since I have been on the Committee I have been impressed by its effectiveness and the influence which by its existence it has on Parliament, not merely through the Government and through the House. The fact that the Committee is there and that people must sort out their ideas when they come before it is important, and it works.
  I intend to speak shortly on the report and to deal with the subject which has been raised by the hon. and learned Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees). There are three headings which broadly cover the intervention by Government in what is broadly described as sick industry, or industry that looks like getting sick. There is shipbuilding, which involved the payment of £l3 million to Harland and Wolff, the greater part of which went in paying off existing losses

  1711
  rather than providing for the re-equipment of the industry. There is the Rolls-Royce story. I feel a certain sympathy with Rolls-Royce. The engine which the company achieved and is achieving now is a notable one. I am thankful that we took it over. When one compares it as a useful contribution with Concorde, that "daddy" of disasters, it is hard to blame Rolls-Royce. The final, and perhaps most interesting project, which was wholly unsuccessful, was the Beagle.
  I will read out a passage from the Treasury Minute which shows such an astonishing somersault by the Government after what we heard at the election that I can receive it only with applause and appreciation. I thought that the Government were wrong then. They now think they were wrong, and they have reversed the decision. That is good; we must not grumble. On page 6 the Treasury Minute says:
  "The Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry agree that further assistance from public funds should be used as effectively as possible for the development of a viable shipbuiding industry. But at the same time one of the purposes of Government assistance to industry is to support employment. As most shipbuilders are major employers in assisted areas where the level of unemployment is causing continuing concern, it may also be necessary to take wider regional and employment considerations into account when considering any further assistance to industry."
  Those are words which I applaud.
  It is important that we should realise that profitability is not the only criterion. Those who provide a service other than that of earning profits should not be spat upon because they are not earning profits. It is not disgraceful not to earn profits if it is made clear that that is not part of one's job.
  That applies to directly nationalised industries. For instance, when directly nationalised industries are told that they must not put up their prices as would a commercial concern, it should be made clear that that compliance with Government policy is a service to be charged to Government. The cost should be put in the accounts and debited to the Government. That is the only way in which it can be made clear.
  Equally, with partially assisted industries a major effort should be made to distinguish the expenses involved in com-
  1712
  plying with Government policy to provide employment in a particular area were it is not commercially feasible to do so, or to take on contracts at a price which is not commercially viable to provide employment in an area in which it is Government policy for employment to be provided. The cost of underestimating, or whatever it may be, should be charged to the Government. It should be made clear that the commercial price for the job is so much and if the Government introduce additional factors the Government should be charged with the difference between the commercial price and the actual price which is charged. I believe that it is important that this should be distinguished, and it is certainly important to the morale and feeling in industry that it should be.
  Similarly, I think that the other point which emerges from these experiences is the difficulty of limiting liability once the Government start to support an industry for Government purposes. One case is that of shipbuilding, with a limited support to improve the efficiency of the yards, and that capital support soon sunk by simple financial losses. In the Rolls-Royce case, we had what was termed a "launching liability" but it cannot apply to launching only. It goes on and we reach the position that we reached with Rolls-Royce. The Beagle experience is another example. The Government interest in that company was such that reasonable creditors could only regard Beagle as being the Government's and they let the Government take the decision. Law or no law, the Government had to pay Beagle's debts. That was the view taken. I think that the Government were right to take their decision in that case but they must recognise what flows from the line they take.
  On this aspect, paragraph 96 of the Third Report is of interest. It says:
  "The Treasury Minute records that the existence of a Government shareholding in a company registered with limited liability under the Companies Act does not of itself alter the legal rights and duties of shareholders, or of the Board, its officers and the company itself, or of third parties having dealings with the company;"
  It just is not true in practice. If one knows that the sole shareholders in a company are the Government and one does business with that company, one expects them to exclude their credit. The

  1713
  creditors thought so and any reasonable man would. Indeed, if the Government really tried to exclude their credit, they would find that the finance they were providing would become more expensive. That would not make sense.
  Therefore, I think that we should rather get away from the idea that in this sort of case one can really limit the liability once the Government have gone in. if the Government are going to accept liability, then I think that they must also accept the responsibility for managing, for which they are going to become liable. I think that probably the new Rolls-Royce type of structure may be the answer. Where the Government find a company in a position in which it can no longer carry on unless the Government provide the money, it is probably wise to say that the Government will also provide the directors. But at this point, if the Government want to put in their own directors, they need to have proper control, to know where they stand, and what they are going to do.
  I believe that more and more we shall find it very difficult to find a compromise between these two positions. I hope that we shall not be compromised on the issue by a partisan attitude either way towards nationalisation. "Nationalisation" has become an emotive word which really means nothing much else than an emotive word. I am not a nationaliser or an anti-nationaliser. I believe that nationalisation is one of the many instruments of economic organisation available, desirable in some cases and not in others, taking all kinds of different form. Sometimes it is the right solution and sometimes the wrong one. There are different forms of control, depending on circumstances. I hope that we shall be able to judge things on their merits and realise that limited involvement at the point where Government support becomes necessary is not in practice a viable proceeding.
  These are the only short points I want to make. In the next Session, the new Committee will be heavily involved in what is perhaps the most important issue which the Public Accounts Committee has ever had to look into—the management of North Sea gas and oil. I think that it will be a very interesting session for the Committee.
  Mr. Peter Rees: Would the hon. and learned Gentleman extend his proposition to all forms of Government commitment, whether it be by minority shareholding, debenture stock or loan? Surely he would not want to extend it to any situation where there is Government money in a company?
  Mr. Paget: I am not saying that it should always be done but we have to realise that very often a limited commitment is simply not available to the Government, that once they have taken the decision it has to be maintained for public reasons. In those circumstances, the Government find it more and more difficult to limit the extent to which that maintenance has to be held. That, I think, is the difficulty.
  5.26 p.m.
  Mr. Martin Maddan: I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate, and I am sorry that I missed the speech of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell). I echo what has been said about the right hon. Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever). I joined the Public Accounts Committee late in the last Session. I found the meetings not only useful and interesting but also agreeable, and that is a very happy position for an hon. Member to be in.
  I think that the most important thing which the committee discussed in the last Session was the very point we have been concentrating our attention on today. It is a most difficult point. We see in our report questions about Section 332 of the Companies Act and the responsibilities of directors not to be engaged in fraudulent trading; and the linking of that aspect, if there are Government directors, with information which the Government might have. It might seem that all this was extremely technical. It was extremely fundamental—rather like the filioque clause in the Creed. In the end, that one word split Christendom and the result 1,500 years later is still with us. In this technical matter of the responsibility of directors appointed by the Government when the Government are providing money, and of the view which creditors take of the company, we see the dilemma which faces the whole of the community in the question not only of a mixed economy but of mixed companies.

  1715
  I have some sympathy with the view just propounded that if one is in for a penny one is in for a £ and there may be no half-way house. That does not mean to say that every time the Government decide to take an interest in something it has to be nationalised in the old, steam style like the railways or the coal industry. If an equity base can be maintained, with the Government owning the whole—we have the Rolls-Royce case in this respect—that is a much more flexible means, it seems to me, for the capital structure of a company.
  In paragraph 97 of the Third Report the Committee noted that the Department of Trade and Industry attached great importance to making clear when the Government took an interest the extent of their involvement. I think that what has just been said focuses upon the question whether in practical terms that is a possibility. I do not want to say that it is not. We are in a position in which any hon. Member would be very bold to be too dogmatic about anything in this sector. We have to study, to learn and to experiment. But I would not like to see a position, although I recognise all the difficulties, in which the Government could not give some help to a firm because they feared that if they once gave a penny there would be no stop to the number of £s.
  If one regards the Government as a kind of merchant bank, they can go in for a certain amount and after that they can stop. But if they do that—and this is one of the lessons of Beagle—they must make clear from the start what they are doing, so that creditors and others concerned know what the Government are doing and if they misread the signs that is their look-out. There has been a lack of clearness in the past and assumptions have been made—again, Beagle is a good example. Assumptions were made in that case which, although in the letter of the law were not right, were nevertheless right in general practice. The last Government acknowledged the position and I am glad they did. So here we have an example where the conflict between Government capital being involved and a limited liability is clear. The conflict must be resolved by better definition of the Government's involvement if there is to be
  1716
  a limited Government commitment in a limited liability company.
  But there is the other point to which the Committee refers in paragraph 100—the position of Government directors on the question of reckless trading and their consenting to reckless trading. A director must not only consent to it to be in breach of the Act—I have had various lessons read to me by colleagues on this, and I think that I now understand the position; he has not only to be involved in reckless trading to be in breach of Section 332 of the Companies Act, but he must do so knowingly. The Government, of course, perhaps the major provider of funds in a company, must keep on informing themselves, and can do so much more readily than an ordinary shareholder perhaps with a minority interest would ever dream of doing or be able to do.
  Mr. Paget: But the Government very often provide the finance precisely because they know the company is insolvent.
  Mr. Maddan: That puts in a nutshell the whole dilemma, which leads me to my second point—that if the Government are doing this because they know that in an ordinary commercial sense to go on trading is not a sound commercial proposition, they may, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees) said, in some sense have to say so, because if they do not say so the position of the company and of the creditors becomes ambiguous and liable to many difficulties.
  Mr. Paget: So does the Government's position.
  Mr. Maddan: We must find a formula. It could be found through the Public Accounts Committee, but perhaps that Committee has had its innings on the matter. It could be through further examination by the Government or by examination by a special Select Committee. The subject of Government involvement in industry is not of minor importance. I hope that we shall find a formula that is spared the overtones of party politics. It will have to be one that makes clear to all concerned, if the Government are taking an interest in a limited liability company, what the limit of their interest will be. I hope

  1717
  that the Government will then have the principle to stick to that and not throw good money after bad, if they have gone into the company on a commercial basis—and they may sometimes have to do this because they may sometimes be the only banker a company can have.
  But if the Government have gone into a company on a non-commercial basis because of trouble of a different sort, a different situation arises, and the position of Government directors is extremely difficult unless the Government have made it clear that in those cases they are in up to their necks and without limit.
  Therefore, there are two distinct cases. One, is where there is a commercial reason and the Government are acting as a banker because for some reason other sources of finance will not fulfil that rôle. It is then a matter of making clear the limit of the Government's commitment. The other type of case is where the Government are really in for a virtually unlimited liability. There the whole relationship of the Government to the company and its management must undergo a radical change.
  I do not believe that any of us has the whole matter straight. I do not believe that we shall get it right in one go, or for every circumstance for all time. An immense amount of thought, discussion and debate must take place on the subject, if there is to be confidence in the trading community and in those working in companies receiving Government assistance, and if the taxpayer, whose money is being used, is to be confident that it is being used in a sensible way in the circumstances of the case. Therefore, I found it very instructive to be able to take part in the end of the proceedings of the Committee. I felt that we were at the beginning of a very important argument rather than at the end. Although the Public Accounts Committee has in a sense now laid down that topic I hope very much that it will be taken up elsewhere.
  5.39 p.m.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: The hon. Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) will forgive me if I do not deal with his theology or his formulae, or indeed the rest of his interesting speech, the more interesting because it was mostly impromptu.
  1718
  I join in the general good wishes to my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever), the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. I served under three chairmen of the Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson), then my right hon. Friend the Member for Sowerby (Mr. Houghton) and subsequently the former right hon. Member for Kingston-upon-Thames, now Lord Boyd-Carpenter, and I know how a chairman of the Committee can impose his own personality for good or bad on the Committee and the amount of productive work that it gets through. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Cheetham, who has gone home now, will soon return to us, and I send him good wishes.
  Precisely because I am not a member of the Committee now and some of my hon. Friends and Conservative Members present are, I should like to say something else. The House often seriously underrates the amount of work a small number of our colleagues do in the committees, and they do not receive the public credit that they should. If the work is done properly, it is a hard slog. There is a great deal to read. Therefore, I find it a little strange that no Minister from the Department of Trade and Industry has been present so far.
  I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs and Agriculture, Scottish Office, for coming. As the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and I have spent a considerable part of the past nine months, both upstairs in committee and on the Floor of the House, listening to each other on the Finance Bill, he knows that I have a high personal regard for him, and do not complain that he is the Minister who is to answer the debate. But that is not the argument. The argument is that it was obvious from the report that major matters concerning the Department of Trade and Industry were involved. It is not as though there were not quite a number of Ministers in the Department. There is a whole Roman cohort of them. Moreover, I, and I suspect others, warned the private office of the new Secretary of State for Trade and Industry that we should raise certain specific matters.

  1719
  It may be that the Under-Secretary of State for Aerospace and Shipping is at Cape Kennedy and that the Minister for Aerospace is in California, but there are others. I intervened in the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees). If I were he, I should be complaining at my party meeting—or is it the 1922 Committee?—that there were not Ministers on the Front Bench to hear my valuable speech. All of us are a little embarrassed at having to take the attitude, "Why wasn't the Minister here to hear me?", so perhaps I can say it more easily than the hon. and learned Gentleman.
  When hon. Members have taken a great deal of trouble, as do the Comptroller and Auditor-General and those who work for them, there is a substantial case for saying that at least the Departments most involved should be represented on the Front Bench for what is a comparatively short time. I shall leave that subject simply with the reflection that I wonder what better things the rest of the Department's Ministers have to do. I should like to be told precisely what engagements for each of those Ministers is more important, granted that two of them are abroad, doubtless for good reasons. What more important have they do do than to attend for five hours to hear hon. Members who have done a great deal of work? I can say that more easily because I am not a member of the Committee.
  I have given notice that I should like to raise three separate issues. The first concerns Rolls-Royce. I have two questions here, the first concerning paragraph 22 of the report, which says:
  "The real trouble was not so much the escalation of development costs as the rise in production costs, due to the need to incorporate modifications, and the liability for penalties for late deliveries, which meant that the company was going to make a loss on every production engine. Until a fairly late stage in the project the Ministry had restricted their technical monitoring to the development programme to which launching aid specifically related, and the possible repercussions on production of delays in development were not being examined."
  I do not want to reminisce, but on the PAC I went through the whole Bloodhound saga. One of the things that came quite clearly out of that was that it is all very well to talk about technical monitoring provided we have the technical cost
  1720
  officers. But it should be understood that the cost of having technical cost officers monitoring what is done by a major firm, such as Ferranti, Bristol, Rolls-Royce, is in itself considerable.
  Do the Government think that it is fair of the Committee to say—and it seems to be accepted in the Government report—that there should be more monitoring? If so, what are the consequences for the technical service at the Government's disposal? In particular, is it now a fact that the shortage of technical cost officers, which was very serious two years ago, has somehow been made up? If we want monitoring, we must have the means to do it. I question whether Government Departments have the means to do it on the scale suggested.
  Mr. Dell: It is not for me to say what individual members of the Committee might have thought to be appropriate in this case, but my hon. Friend will have observed that its conclusion, at paragraph 26, is rather different and in a way more modest, being that as far as possible the Department of Trade and Industry should establish that the company will be capable of carrying out the project and taking its own part of the risk, and that the company's general management organisation is sound and good. It stresses the importance of trying to establish the potential cost which might fall on the company. In other words, although reporting what had been said to it in evidence, the Committee came to a perhaps more modest conclusion about what the actual possibilities in such a case were.
  Mr. Dalyell: I take the point. I think that my right hon. Friend will agree that one of the things about the Committee, something that perhaps gives it authority, is that its conclusions are always stated extremely modestly. I have thought that perhaps it was the modest language that rather clouded the Committee's will in the matter. But I take my right hon. Friend's point, and I am glad to hear it.
  I turn to paragraph 26 for my second point. If we are to do as recommended in the paragraph, we must be concerned about the relationship between Government and senior personnel in a company. Therefore, I refer to HANSARD of 4th December, beginning with Question No.

  1721
  19 asked by the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South-East (Mr. Rost), who has had a continuous interest in Rolls-Royce. He asked:
  "Is my hon. Friend aware that even the auditors of the accounts admitted that they were unrealistic as the payments for the assets acquired nearly two years ago have still not been made, that a suspense account exists on the accounts for £77 million towards such payment? Why was the hearing of the independent assessor again deferred?"
  After his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry had replied, I asked:
  "Why was not confidence shown in the independent assessor?"
  I received a somewhat tart reply from the Under-Secretary:
  "I do not know what on earth the hon. Gentleman is talking about."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th December, 1972; Vol. 847, c. 896–7.]
  Having regard to all the water that has gone under the bridges, he must have had a clear idea of precisely what I was talking about. Therefore, I ask whether the Government have had any more thoughts on the question of the independent assessor.
  I turn to Questions Nos. 37 and 44 asked on the same day. In Written Question No. 44, I asked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry:
  "for what reasons he resisted the request of Mr. Ian Morrow in September and October, 1972, that Mr. Ronald G. Hooker should be given a senior position in the changed management structure of Rolls-Royce; and on what criteria his Department intervenes in the choice of people for positions in Rolls-Royce 1971 Ltd."
  The reply by the Under-Secretary was:
  "I do not think it would be right for me to answer any question asking why any particular person has not been appointed to any post, or to comment on allegations about such matters."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 4th December, 1972; Vol. 847, c. 288–9.]
  I do not wish to cause trouble over this matter. I do not wish to be personally malicious to any individual. There is a public issue involved concerning precisely to what extent the Department and the Civil Service interfere with the choice of people for a company which has the relationship that Rolls-Royce now has with the Government. I would have thought the time had come to ask this question, and to get a serious reply, as to the basis on which civil servants advise
  1722
  Ministers and on what basis Ministers, on Civil Service advice, choose people who are to hold supremo posts.
  For a Government to say to a chairman "You will not have X, Y or Z as a managing director" involves an interference by the State such as we have not had in this field before. It may be justified. At least Parliament should be told of the basis on which the Government are thinking.
  The second issue of which I gave notice concerns the Under-Secretary of State. I would ask for any information on the latest developments concerning what one might call the saga of the Nine Wells Hospital, Dundee. I am glad my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, West (Mr. Doig) is present because he knows a great deal about the Nine Wells Hospital. What is the latest information that can be given on the rising costs of Nine Wells? I ask that question for a particular reason. Perhaps the next major general hospital in Scotland is to be built at the new town of Livingston in my constituency.
  I should like it to be known clearly that out of the Nine Wells situation some lessons have been learnt. I ask this question not to cause trouble. It is simply that it would be intolerable after all that the Public Accounts Committee has said about the management of hospitals in Scotland, not only this year but on previous occasions, if some lessons for the good of the public were not learnt. For example, has anything been learnt about standardisation? What has been learnt about cost control?
  The Government reply is:
  "In Scotland, the Scottish Home and Health Department consider that the maintenance of sound financial control standards will be assisted by the new single-tier board structure, enacted in the National Health Service (Scotland) Act 1972 which should facilitate the development of an improved finance staffing structure headed by the designated treasurer of each board.
  Pending the reorganisation of the National Health Service the departments will not relax their efforts to see that the present hospital authorities obtain value for the money they spend."
  In its modest way the Public Accounts Committee was critical. That seemed to me to be a somewhat watery reply which the Government gave to the strictures of

  1723
  the PAC. The PAC said at paragraph 32:
  "In reply to a parallel inquiry by the Comptroller and Auditor General, following visits by his officers to ten hospitals in Scotland, during the two years ended June 1971, the Scottish Home and Health Department admitted that at six of the ten Boards of Management he overall standard of financial control had been for some time less than satisfactory, largely on account of staffing problems."
  Have those staffing problems been put right? Since the PAC says this with regard to six out of 10 cases the Treasury, to put it mildly, must have some thoughts on it.
  Whereas many of us have been sympathetic to the very real problems of hospital building, the Nine Wells situation seems to many of us to have got absolutely out of hand. It is all very well crying over spilt milk. My concern is that this shall not happen again. Therefore I hope that the Treasury has some kind of brief from the Scottish Office to see how future general hospitals, and in particular the general hospital at Livingston, will avoid some of the mistakes that happened at Nine Wells.
  My last point concerns the PACs statement on nuclear energy and particularly what was said about the fast reactor. Paragraph 49 says:
  "The remaining system under development by the Authority is the Fast Reactor system."
  It then sets out the history and it goes on to say:
  "Assessments have been made from time to time of the economic benefits to be expected from the Fast Reactor System, but these have produced widely differing results. As an example Your Committee noted that whereas the Authority had estimated the economic benefit expected from the Fast Reactor at between £1,300 million and £1,500 million, a subsequent study by a Joint Study Steering Group, on which the generating boards and the design and construction companies were represented, had estimated the benefit at only £220 million. The Authority attributed the differences in analyses of economic benefit mainly to the difficulty of making reliable forecasts of the costs of alternative fuels in 15 or 20 years' time and of the size of the nuclear programme likely to be installed over the next 15 years. They explained that the earlier assessments would in any case be superseded by the results of a comprehensive review of Fast Reactor developments being undertaken by the Department of Trade and Industry in parallel with the review previously mentioned."
  It would be a fair conclusion that this is a somewhat optimistic report compared to
  1724
  that which appeared on 25th November on the front page of the Scotsman signed by Maurice Baggott. I wonder how that report ever was highlighted. I have told the Department that I think this report, from all that has been said by Sir John Hill and others, has very little foundation. I said that to the Department because mud, once thrown, tends to stick. There should be some kind of a proper denial or comment on Maurice Baggott's report because if this is allowed to go uncontradicted, as has happened so far as many people are concerned, it is extremely damaging to what many of us, who have visited Dounreay three times, would think is a very worthwhile experiment. Therefore, I gave notice to the Department. That is one of the reasons why I am sad there is no Minister from the Department of Trade and Industry present.
  I should like to comment on four of Mr. Baggott's statements. His first comment was that a sodium-cooled reactor was not possible within present engineering know-how.
  Mr. Higgins: I am not entirely clear as to the relationship of this report to the PAC report.
  Mr. Dalyell: In the PAC report there was a full discussion of the fast breeder system at paragraphs 49, 50 and 51. One of the difficulties about this report is that evidence was taken and, similar to last year's Bradshaw, a good deal may be out of date. On this matter I am trying to be as helpful to the AEA as possible, because this report did appear; it was quoted in the foreign Press. The PAC report gives the Government an opportunity to state what their view is of a system that is of vital importance to Scotland. Therefore, I relate it to paragraphs 49, 50 and 51.
  The second point on which I would wish to comment is the following:
  "The decision to close Dounreay will have to come from the Government; but it is almost inevitable now that the engineers attached to the Government have given it the thumbs-down."
  I do not believe that for a moment but I should like a clear statement that there is no chance of that happening. The article continues:
  "However, nuclear scientists now believe that should the core be increased to commercial size there would be virtually no way of controlling reaction."

  1725
  This is the fourth point:
  "The 250-megawatt prototype, costing £25 million, was expected to be generating power for the grid on a fully operational basis by the end of this year."
  These statements appeared on the front page of a reputable newspaper. Presumably there was some discussion in the newspaper office before what was, frankly, a damaging article to Scottish industry ever got on to the front page, and therefore it is right—and today's debate gives us the opportunity—to have a full denial of the report that was put out.
  The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Gorden Campbell): As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have only just come into the Chamber, but another Scottish Minister was present. I think that the hon Gentleman has been talking about the fast-breeder reactor at Dounreay—
  Mr. Dalyell: Yes.
  Mr. Campbell: —and the Press report which appeared somewhat dramatically about three weeks ago. Perhaps I may tell the hon. Gentleman that the Atomic Energy Authority denied this very soon afterwards.
  Mr. Dalyell: I am aware of that but, whether we like it or not, the original report, not least in the foreign Press, received a great deal more publicity—as often happens—than the denial. I therefore thought it right, having given notice to the Department of Trade and Industry, that specific points should be denied by the Government Front Bench tonight. As will be borne out in the notice that I gave to the office of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, I do not believe the report which appeared in the Press, but what I am saying is that because of the widespread publicity which the report has received it seems worth the time of the House of Commons denying it, and denying it in some detail; and that is why I gave notice.
  I hope that the fast-breeder reactor system will be seen as long term and viable, even in a country that may be surrounded by North Sea oil and gas. These resources are finite. We went over all this in the Scottish Committee. My hope is that in the light of what the PAC said, and in the light of its report, the Government will take the opportunity to-
  1726
  night to express confidence in the fast-breeder reactor system.
  6.2 p.m.
  Mr. Stephen Hastings: I rise to make a comparatively narrow point and therefore I hope that the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) will forgive me if I do not follow him far into a speech which I found interesting but on much of which I am not sufficiently informed to make any reliable comment. There was, however, one thing that he said at the beginning with which I wholly agree.
  The hon. Gentleman drew the attention of the House to the great amount of work that is done by the PAC and other Select Committees which is not generally appreciated, perhaps even in this place, and certainly not outside. I know the hon. Gentleman from the past as a diligent committee man. I served with him for some time on the Select Committee on Science and Technology and can bear witness to that. I am sure he is right, and I hope that these debates will do something to emphasise the great volume of useful work that is done in this way. It is a part of government without which we would be vastly poorer.
  I have to declare a clear interest since I intend to allude briefly to those paragraphs in the report which bear on the Sugar Board, 52 to 59, and to paragraphs in the Treasury Minute which refer to them. I am retained as a consultant to Tate and Lyle, not on matters dealt with in this report but simply on European affairs. Nevertheless, my interest is an obvious one and I should declare it at the outset.
  The point that I have to make is brief, and I hope that the House will agree that it is fair. Any independent witness reading these paragraphs would, I am sure, agree that they imply a quite serious criticism of the present method of refining sugar in this country. That criticism centres on the private side of the industry, and particularly on Tate and Lyle as the biggest unit in the sector.
  I should like to point out to the PAC, to the House and to my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary that although I agree that if I had been a member of the PAC presented simply with the evidence as it appears in the report, I might well have agreed with the conclusion that is drawn,

  1727
  nevertheless I do not regard that evidence as presenting anything like a full picture. The reason is that the private companies were never summoned and that what emerged was to some extent one-sided.
  The criticism turns on the supposed extra cost of tranporting raw beet sugar to cane refineries where it is refined by Tate and Lyle, rather than its being refined by the British Sugar Corporation in what is known in the business as "white ends" to its existing plants—and that means extra investment not mentioned in the report—nearer to the beet areas.
  I contend that the costing of the Comptroller and Auditor-General would be challenged by Tate and Lyle, and I should like to make three brief points in that connection. It is significantly cheaper to truck raw sugar, to transport it in bulk in open lorries from the main beet-growing areas, which are predominantly in East Anglia, to areas of main population densities, such as Liverpool, Glasgow and London where the main refineries exist and to distribute refined packets of sugar from there than it is to distribute refined packets from the beet areas. I do not think that that was taken into consideration.
  Secondly, London and Liverpool are respectively the largest and third largest refineries in the world. They enjoy considerable economies of scale and as a result of good labour practices they are enabled to maintain continuous working. No responsible body has ever questioned their efficiency before, and a deep knowledge of what goes on there is necessary before criticism of the kind implied here could be justified.
  Thirdly, it is obvious that the cane refineries already exist and that to abandon them would be to waste important national resources. As I have already said, the PAC's cost comparison makes no mention of the cost of fresh investment in different parts of the country, in the beet-growing areas for instance, which would be necessary if such a transfer of refining capacity were to take place. Nor does it make any reference to the cost in human terms of the redundancies which would result in acute unemployment areas such as Merseyside and Clydeside, which could scarcely be balanced by an improvement in job
  1728
  opportunities in an area such as East Anglia where comparatively full employment already exists.
  Those three points seem to me to be deeply relevant to the evidence and to the conclusion reached by the Committee. They were not brought out, and they are typical examples of the sort of argument that can emerge only if all sides of the industry are enabled to put their point of view.
  There is a good deal more that could be said but, as my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary knows—and the PAC evidence refers to it—there is an inquiry in process on the future shape of the sugar refining industry—the so-called Cyriax inquiry—commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture and the various refining companies, and I dare say that when he replies my hon. Friend may feel that he is restricted in his comments on this passage of the report because of this inquiry. But I must draw attention to a passage in the Treasury Minute which was also referred to by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell). It reads as follows:
  "The production of raw sugar from beet by the British Sugar Corporation is one of the issues under consideration and full account will be taken of the Committee's view that there is a clear need to ensure that sugar is puroduced by the most efficient methods."
  The right hon. Member for Birkenhead asked: What does that mean? I ask the same. It seems to me that the inference from that passage in the Treasury Minute could well be that in some sense the Government agree with the criticism in the Public Accounts Committee's Report. I ask my hon. Friend to beware of any such thing, since it is based upon evidence predominantly from only one side of the industry.
  My hope is that when the Cyriax inquiry is complete and, happily, agreement is reached among the various sectors of the industry on how to proceed, the Public Accounts Committee will return to the subject of sugar and the refining industry, but that, when it does so—this is my earnest request—it will take into account not simply the Department's view but that of the very large responsible and efficient private sector as well.
  I see no objection to that whatever. Indeed, only when that is done, it seems to me, will it be possible to reach a balanced conclusion. It is my contention

  1729
  now that that is not the case from the evidence as produced in this report, nor in the conclusion which flows from it.
  6.11 p.m.
  Mr. Dick Douglas: I join all those right hon. and hon. Members on both sides who have expressed deep regret at the absence today of the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever). I too, though a comparatively new member of the Committee, have benefited by watching him in action as Chairman. I very much hope, as the whole House does, that he will speedily return to health and to his activities in this place.
  I shall direct attention to those parts of the Committee's Report which deal with the shipbuilding industry, with particular reference to the working of the Shipbuilding Industry Act. I shall refer to the subvention—I use the word loosely—given to the shipbuilding industry on the Clyde, and on the Upper Clyde in particular. It is worth emphasising that there are many shipbuilding yards on the Clyde, and in the main the ones which have been in difficulty have been associated with the consortium called Upper Clyde Shipbuilders.
  There is a sharp distinction between the activities prevailing there and those prevailing in Scott Lithgow on the Lower Clyde and, happily now, those prevailing at Yarrow Shipbuilders. For the benefit of the House and the benefit of the industry, that distinction ought to be made clear. I have had a long association with Mr. Archie Gilchrist and, naturally, I wish him and the others well in Govan Shipbuilders, but it was an unhappy prospect—this point is made in the Committee's Report and in the Treasury Minute—to see that, after 20 years, very little change had occurred. In other words, millions of pounds of public money have been poured into this concern but with little capital development resulting.
  As the minute indicates, there are other reasons for the subvention to the shipbuilding industry, for instance unemployment reasons, but if we are to build a viable shipbuilding industry, massive capital development is necessary. I contrast my experience at Govan Shipbuilders with my experience at Harland & Wolff at
  1730
  Belfast. Mr. Hoppe has had many difficulties to overcome, not the least of them being the present unhappy situation in Northern Ireland, but when one visits that yard one can see real prospects of its being capable, in terms of capital development and prospective capital development of matching the best shipbuilding yards in Europe, if not in the world.
  In paragraph 12 of our Third Report, we make the point that the Department had learned that
  "it was important to pay attention to management and manpower as well as money."
  If the Government will pay attention to management and manpower as well as money, the attitude of the Department of Trade and Industry is of considerable importance. I am not at this point complaining about the absence of a Minister from the Department of Trade and Industry, although my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) was right to do so since he had a matter of concern to the Department to raise. I am concerned about the attitude of the civil servants and of Ministers towards this industry, which is of supreme importance.
  I was therefore disturbed to read what one of the civil servants was reported to have said on his return from a visit to Japan. I quote here from Lloyd's List of 27th November, which reports this gentleman as having said that Japan could build only simple ships. The article goes on to say:
  "At present, he added, Japan did not compete at all in world markets with smaller, more specialised, ships"
  and he indicated, as I say, that Japan was at present capable of building only simple ships.
  Admittedly, there is an indication in the report that Japan might move to more complex vessels in the future, but that is not an expression of attitude which I want to see coming from a civil servant who is responsible, under the Minister, for the well-being of our industry. It is a most important industry. It is not—if I may put it in this way—an industry engaged in the "sexy" forms of technology like the Concorde. Perhaps I may point out in passing that we are spending hundreds of millions of pounds on an aeroplane for which we are not at all sure that we shall have any firm

  1731
  orders. There well may be good technological and employment reasons for doing it, but I contrast that with the position of shipbuilding and the constant strictures we hear about subsidising it.
  The hon. and learned Member for Dover (Mr. Peter Rees) said, in effect, that the Government should back winners and be sure of a commercial return. We know that there is now being developed and built a sophisticated type of ship called the liquefied natural gas carrier, for which there is a growing world market. Other countries are subsidising that kind of ship.
  Mr. Peter Rees: The hon. Gentleman misunderstood my theme somewhat. I did not say that the Government should only back winners. Most winners, or a great number of them, will be spotted by the market and be backed by the market. All I am saying is that, if the Government wish to back something which cannot be justified in purely commercial terms, they should say so and make their reasons clear.
  Mr. Douglas: I am grateful for that intervention because it serves to make my point. If the market is making a judgment on the industry and on the future demand prospects for certain vessels, it is reasonable to point out that there are winners there, provided that other countries do not unduly subsidise competitive products. This is what we have to keep in mind—not so much what is being done by the Government in the United Kingdom but what other Governments are doing to protect their industry or to protect their strategic position.
  I am reliably informed that the market at the upper level for this class of ship will be 170 vessels by the late 1980s. We are not building one in the United Kingdom and there is no prospect that we shall build any in the foreseeable future. But what is happening in the United States? I have figures to show that the United States Government, being concerned about the building of liquefied natural gas carriers for their own strategic purposes, are willing to subsidise these ships to the tune of 25 per cent. That may not sound much of a figure when one says it, but it is in fact 25 per cent. on ships costing in excess of £40 million each. It is £10 million a ship. That is what it is worth to them.
  1732
  Therefore, if we are concerned about employment prospects, if we are concerned about a viable industry, the Treasury, in consultation with the DTI, ought to be saying to our shipbuilding industry that this is the form of support it will be given, that it will certainly be given facilities to embark on design studies and that this is the form of subsidy it can expect for this type of ship or for other types of ship. It is a matter of regret that we have removed investment grants from ship owners. The Government have yet to state their policy in this respect. In terms of a declining and difficult market, they have yet to state their policy after their survey of the industry and what they will do to replace investment grants for ship owners or what form of assistance will be forthcoming under Sections 7 and 8 of the Industry Act to support the shipbuilding industry.
  That is an important industry. It is not a declining industry in world market terms. It is an industry which is in difficulty because it is being starved of capital development and because it has had numerous attacks made on it. That had led to difficulties in terms of manpower and management. At the risk of embarrassing my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell), I would say that the most imaginative management I have seen in United Kingdom shipbuilding for a long time is that now in the charge of Cammell Laird shipbuilders. I am quite sure that the assistance the Government are giving to that industry in Cammell Laird will be money well spent. I take a large chance on my interpretation of the abilities of that yard with that management.
  I turn briefly to the closing item in the Public Accounts Committee's Report where we say that we will investigate the question of North Sea oil and the way in which licences are given. It would be wrong of me to go into too much detail on that but I recognise that this is perhaps the most important event to have happened in terms of the United Kingdom economy. It is therefore important for this House that we make a searching inquiry as to the background and make an assessment of how the United Kingdom industry can benefit fully from the potential available.

  1733
  I conclude on a note of criticism of the DTI in relation to what is happening in this industry at the present time. The DTI has set up a Ship and Manufacturing Technology Requirements Board to facilitate the customer/contractor relationship. The members of the board are distinguished gentlemen, but there is not a Scot among them. It is a criticism of Scottish industry that we cannot get a man of suitable calibre to be a member of the board. We might look at the implications of that criticism. The Government have set up this body with extensive terms of reference. The board's field of interest includes shipbuilding, shipping, hovercraft, marine technology including navigation, safety under water and operational studies. At least a large part of that is related to what is happening in the North Sea. On the Heriot-Watt campus we shall have a Department of Offshire Technology which is being built up by private funds. There are no public funds available at the present time. I consider that appalling. I want to know what public funds we shall have. Certainly in relation to this important board I would expect there to be some Scottish representation. I welcome, if possible, some indication from the Treasury Minister when he replies tonight of how he will approach his colleague on the DTI on this matter.
  Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My hon. Friend rather sadly remarked that there was still no DTI Minister on the Front Bench. A number of us gave notice this morning to the DTI that we hoped to raise subjects specific to that Department. There is a whole Roman legion of DTI Ministers. Would it not be possible for one of them to be present at this debate on the Public Accounts Committee's Report?
  Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for the Chair.
  6.25 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Barnes: I should like to associate myself with what has been said about the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. It is sad that he cannot be with us today, but it is good news that he is now out of hospital. I begin by paying a tribute to his chairmanship. His style is in marked contrast to the rather daunting magisterial style of his predecessor, Lord Boyd-Carpenter. His mas-
  1734
  tery of the subject and the touch of irony which he often brings to our proceedings—which often go unnoticed by some of the witnesses appearing before us—make him a very effective chairman indeed.
  Although the Public Accounts Committee may have been fortunate in its chairman in recent years, I should like to start by making one or two observations on the difficulties that its members sometimes face in discharging their duties on the Committee. I have been a member of the Committee for the longest continuous period of any of the members at present on it, since 1967, and my main feeling about the Committee is that we have much more difficulty in getting on equal terms with the witnesses appearing before us than is often apparent from our reports. There have been one or two improvements in this respect in recent years, two of which stemmed from suggestions made by myself.
  When I first came on to the Committee I found it extraordinarily difficult sometimes to get at the true significance of some of the Comptroller and Auditor-General's reports, so neutral is the prose—and this applies to all Comptrollers and Auditors-General—employed traditionally in his reports. With some temerity I raised this matter in the Committee a few years ago. The Committee agreed to ask the Comptroller and Auditor-General to improve the method of briefing Members in order to point our noses more in the right direction. This is now done, and it has been a great help.
  A second difficulty I find on the Committee is the bewildering speed at which we switch from examining civil servants on aircraft contracts on, say, a Monday to the Forestry Commission on a Wednesday, and then the following Monday we may be looking into accountability for naval stores.
  It seemed important to me that we should not spend all our time on the Committee in cross-examination but that we should occasionally—certainly when we are faced with a difficult inquiry—spend a little bit of time discussing among ourselves on the Committee exactly how a cross-examination and the inquiry should be carried out. This we do, and it has been a considerable improvement. However, much of our cross-examination is still imperfect. We have

  1735
  too much difficulty in getting on equal terms with the people appearing before us.
  The accounting officers whom we examine are the permanent secretaries of Government Departments. They are men of high calibre. Men like Sir Michael Cary or Sir Basil Engholm have to be batting on a very bad wicket indeed before they have difficulty in getting on top of anything we are able to bowl at them. It is a fact about the British political system that we have a first-class Civil Service, composed of high-calibre people, who are on the whole cleverer and more able than Ministers and Members of Parliament. Ministers and Members of Parliament have different talents. We are supposed to be better at making decisions; we are supposed to be better at spotting bad decisions. My hon. Friends will probably not agree with me but it is my feeling that the intellectual armoury which we in this House are able to bring to bear, man for man, is somewhat inferior to that of our opposite numbers in Whitehall. If the object of the Public Accounts Committee is to protect the interests of the taxpayer and to uncover abuses in the way public money is spent, we need to have the dice loaded more in our favour than is the case at present.
  What I should really like to see is the PAC put out of business by a series of Select Committees for each Government Department. Such committees could scrutinise and investigate the entire working of a Government Department on a continuing basis. The members of such committees would build up a great deal of expertise over a long period. When it came to inquiring into accountability, they would be able to do a much better job than the PAC is now able to do.
  There are two examples in the Third Report of our proceedings in the last Session about which I am concerned because they show too lax an attitude towards the way in which the taxpayers' money is being spent. Both examples concern the Services. One is the Jaguar aircraft, which is dealt with in our report, beginning at paragraph 27, and the other is the refitting of naval vessels, which is dealt with at paragraph 82. My hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) remarked that the conclus-
  1736
  ions of the PAC were often couched in modest language. That is so. The trouble is that sometimes very important conclusions are only fully understood by those who are familiar with the language and the nuances that we bring to bear in our reports.
  The purpose of the debates which we have every year should be to point up some of the understatements that appear in our reports. I will do this by using as an example the Jaguar aircraft, which is an Anglo-French project. The Services saw a need for a supersonic advanced pilot training aircraft, which they wanted to have available in 1975. They then decided that they needed it in 1972. Then they decided that what they really wanted was a tactical strike version of the aircraft. They wanted that in 1973. They were prepared to defer the trainer version until 1973–74. But they would still have more trainers than tactical strike versions. They were to have 55 per cent. trainers and 45 per cent. tactical strike aircraft. They then decided that the trainer version was too costly and that what they really needed as a trainer was a completely new and less sophisticated aircraft. So they decided that that was what they would have for use in 1976.
  When the Committee inquired about the situation it was explained that it was perfectly logical. We record at paragraph 34:
  "It thus proved possible to adjust the Anglo-French Jaguar programme to changing circumstances and requirements."
  Perhaps those concerned with the project were very lucky. Indeed, we make that remark in the following paragraph and we say:
  "They"—
  that is the Committee—
  "trust that in future the Ministry will … be able to obtain cost-effective aircraft from good planning rather than good fortune."
  But the attitude involved is still very worrying. Those who are concerned with aircraft contracts, which cost a vast amount of money, and those who are responsible for persuading Ministers to agree to the placing of orders for such aircraft, must adopt a much more rigorous and less haphazard method of drawing up their requirements.
  My second example is the special refitting of HMS "Tiger" and HMS "Blake". The purpose of the refits

  1737
  was to enable both cruisers to operate four Wessex helicopters. The refits were planned to take 18 months and to cost £5 million each. The "Blake" refit took over four years and cost over £7 million. The "Tiger" refit took over five years and cost over £13 million. Thus over £20 million was spent on refitting two cruisers over five years to deploy eight helicopters.
  The contrast between the Jaguar and the refits is interesting. Apparently the Jaguar is needed for a world that is moving so fast that the requirements cannot be foreseen from year to year—the requirements kept changing between 1964 and 1969—whereas poor old "Tiger" and "Blake" and their helicopters are inhabiting a world that is so slow-moving that it is possible to take five years to do something that was originally intended to be done in only 18 months.
  Both examples are equally regrettable. It is necessary when we come across examples of this kind to try to get behind the Ministers and civil servants to the people in the Services who, in my view, are largely responsible for this kind of planning. By that description I mean the serving officers on the Air Force and Admiralty Boards. They are very senior officers who are largely anonymous. Many of us do not know who they are as they are shielded by civil servants and Ministers. I suspect that they are regarded with a great deal of awe by Ministers and that they are inclined to say "We had better have the aircraft. If there is a chance of having it, let us have it. We will worry about what it is for later" or, to take the example of the "Tiger" and the "Blake", "If we can get the work started on the cruisers, let us get it in hand. If other things are more important, they can be put down the list."
  The country spends vast amounts of money on defence, which is a huge burden on individual taxpayers who have to find the money. The taxpayers hope when they fork out the money that it is needed and that it will be properly spent. In my view the Jaguar and the special refits throw doubt on both points. I hope that the comments in the PAC Report will be a salutary reminder to the highly-paid Service chiefs that they need to be very humble in the spending of these vast amounts of money over which
  1738
  they exercise a great deal of influence. It is not just the State's money which is being spent. It is not impersonal. It is the sum total of the hard-earned money of many millions of individuals who in the main live a very different kind of life to the over-privileged existence that many people, such as the Service chiefs on the Air Force and Admiralty boards, are able to live.
  The service officers on the Air Force and Admiralty boards exercise enormous influence on the shaping of defence budgets. It is important that they should not remain as anonymous as they are now. It should be possible for the House—and I hope that it will do so in future—to probe more deeply than it has been able to do so far and to reach behind the Ministers and the accounting officers, who in the main are the people whom the PAC cross-examines, and to deal directly with the people such as the serving officers I have mentioned, who often influence very decisively the decisions which are made on costly and expensive contracts such as the two to which I have referred.
  6.39 p.m.
  The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Terence Higgins): This is a traditional occasion, when the House rightly considers the careful studies which the Committee of Public Accounts has been carrying out. It is probably true that one of the traditions is that the debate tends to be very sparsely inhabited, and after an all-night sitting on the Consolidated Fund Bill one might have expected that tradition to be well honoured on this occasion. Yet the House has been reasonably full throughout a debate on matters as technical as those which we have been discussing.
  When one considers the attendance which we had only a couple of days ago on a day devoted to value added tax—I sat through that debate as I have sat through this one—one sees that the number of hon. Members present has been greater on this occasion, other than during the opening and closing speeches. This shows the interest that both those who have served on the Committee and a number of others take in these matters.
  Almost every hon. Member has referred to the regrettable absence of the right hon. Member for Manchester,

  1739
  Cheetham (Mr. Harold Lever) who has served as chairman of the Committee. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Dell) said that the Committee had been stimulated, guided and amused by the right hon. Member. All of us have frequently been stimulated and amused by the right hon. Member; whether we have been guided on every occasion is perhaps another matter. But I think that I speak on behalf of the whole House in wishing him a rapid recovery. We hope to see him with us again very soon. This sentiment has been reflected in almost every speech and I am sure is shared by everyone. The right hon. Gentleman's character has imprinted itself on the deliberations of the Committee.
  The House will agree that the right hon. Gentleman could not have had a better deputy in moving this motion than the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, who carried out a very comprehensive survey of the work that the Committee has been doing, and took a particular theme on which to thread his remarks.
  I am reminded of a story that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Cheetham once recounted in the House. I cannot presume to tell it anywhere near as well as the right hon. Gentleman, but it concerned an examinee who noticed that previous examination papers had been mainly historical and proceeded to mug up the Kings of Israel in great detail for the coming examination. He was horrified to find, when he took the examination, that the questions were nearly all geographical, including the first. To that question he gave his answer, "I know nothing about geography but here is a list of the Kings of Israel."
  Any Financial Secretary replying to this debate is tempted to find himself in that position—namely, to say, "Enormous numbers of wide-ranging questions on the responsibilities of every conceivable Minister have been raised, but here is the speech that I intended to make anyway." That is not quite the case; I will try to reply to a number of specific questions, although a number of matters of policy do not arise on this occasion, because the Public Accounts Committee is concerned not with policy but with administration.
  1740
  It would be a mistake to suppose that the work of the Committee is without interest. I have a whole file of Press cuttings here of its various reports—notably, one in The Times of 11th September on public accountability and one in the Financial Times on 1st September headed "Learning from the Past". This is a theme which is now very much part of the work which the Public Accounts Committee has been doing in recent years under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Cheetham. As has been said, it has to consider the experience of the past in order to learn lessons for the future. This is a very important matter and I have studied carefully the various lessons which have been brought to our attention on this occasion as on previous occasions.
  This debate is an annual occasion. It has been held every year bar one since 1960, in respect to the wishes of the House, although the Public Accounts Committee itself goes back even further—to 1861, when it was established on a motion of Mr. Gladstone. It is appointed each Session under Standing Order No. 86. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead pointed out that the Committee for this Session had not yet been established, although, as he appreciated, there is a later motion on to-day's Order Paper establishing the Committee for this Session. I have to confess that I am not conversant with the precedents as to how long a delay normally takes place, but it is on the Order Paper today and both the right hon. Gentleman's name and mine appear there.
  The first meeting of the Committee is something that I view with some interest, because I am told that, traditionally, the Financial Secretary, although on the Committee, is expected to appear only at the first meeting, unless something remarkable happens. So I was looking with interest to see when the motion would appear and the meeting be held.
  It is important that members of the Committee should examine the permanent heads of Government Departments in their capacity as accounting officers. In that respect, the hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick (Mr. Barnes) stressed the need to ensure that there was a reasonable balance between those whom it was

  1741
  questioning and the Committee itself. It is important to remember the point of the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) who said that, in a sense, the main authority of the Committee depended on the mere fact of its existence. This is true. All Government Departments are well aware of the power and authority of the Committee and it stems from the careful scrutiny that it gives to many areas.
  It is true that, in the early years, it was primarily concerned with accounting regularity and propriety. Although that is still the case, in recent years it has been more and more concerned with getting value for money. If a theme can be discerned in the Committee's work in recent years, it is that. That being so, a number of lessons have been learned on which, from time to time, the Committee has concentrated, although perhaps it has never actually brought together the lessons in an easily tabulated form.
  There has been reference in the past to problems of evaluation, in the context of the Atomic Energy Authority for example. There has been an increasing number of cases in which it is a question of the problems of risk evaluation. This stems from what the right hon. Member for Birkenhead was saying, that the Committee has been concerned—for example in the question of the RB211 or of the Jaguar aircraft—to look at what the reasons may be, either commercial or technical, whether in the commercial sphere or in defence, and how well they were evaluated, and the extent to which the Government succeed in getting the right means towards the ends which have been set out in policy statements.
  There is also the question of the extent to which Government Departments should become involved with the accounting procedures of particular companies which receive Government money. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) particularly referred to this.
  The hon. Member for Brentford and Chiswick referred to the Jaguar project. The Ministry recognises the importance of being on the alert for changes in requirements which might affect development projects, whether they are on a collaborative basis or not. But it is not possible, he will agree, to avoid changes in requirements altogether, and the Royal Air Force
  1742
  is of necessity updating and adjusting its requirements in order to remain abreast of its defence commitments.
  The Procurement Executive exists to provide the necessary hardware at the right moment and it needs to react with flexibility. I should have thought that while the wording of that section of the report was framed perhaps with a little more subtlety than the usual bland expressions which are used, none the less this is an occasion when there is no ground for criticism. I think that in this case it is rather a question of the events turning out to be fortunate rather than unfortunate. The whole area is one in which there is great unpredictability, and the essential requirement is flexibility.
  It is fortunate here that there turned out to be the flexibility which was necessary in the changed circumstances. It is a little odd that whenever things turn out the wrong way we complain and when they turn out the right way we complain; and, that being so, I should have thought that there were grounds here for satisfaction rather than criticism at the out-turn, since it is the out-turn with which we are ultimately concerned. That is not to say that we should not do our best ex-ante rather than ex-post in anticipating problems as we go.
  A number of points have been raised by the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell). They do not all by any means refer to the Department of Trade and Industry, although on a number of occasions this afternoon the hon. Gentleman made a number of interventions concerning that Department. As he has recognised, a number of the Ministers in that Department are abroad, and this necessarily makes additional claims on their colleagues. However, I assure the House that no discourtesy is intended by their absence from the debate this afternoon. This is essentially a Treasury debate, and the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland have also been present and, indeed, have heard the hon. Gentleman's speech.
  I shall endeavour to answer the specific points which the hon. Gentleman raised. He referred first of all to the situation of the technical cost officers. I understand that the position is considerably better that it was two years ago. He may have seen Sir Michael Cary's answer

  1743
  to question 1902 in the Third Report, which dealt with that matter. I understand that the situation has improved even further since that answer was given in March. But naturally this is a question of staffing and it is one which puts claims on scarce resources. It is a question of trying to achieve the best balance possible. The elasticity of supply in these circumstances is not always as great as one might hope, but I understand that the point was covered in the answer to which I referred and that the situation has improved since.
  The hon. Gentleman raised other points concerning Rolls-Royce and the role of Her Majesty's Government in the management changes at Rolls-Royce (1971) Limited. He has had Questions on the Order Paper on this subject, to which he referred. He will be aware that the changes were made by the company, and naturally as the sole shareholder, the Government were concerned; they discussed the matter with the company and the changes were made with the Government's approval. I do not think that this is directly relevant to the report of the Public Accounts Committee, and it would be invidious, as my hon. Friend said earlier this week, to answer specific questions on the appointment of specific individuals. This is essentially a matter for the company.
  Similarly, on the question of the independent expert which the hon. Gentleman raised, this matter has been put in the hands of the independent expert, and the parties to the sale agreed on the procedure to be followed. I therefore do not think it would be appropriate for me on this occasion to go into greater detail.

  ROYAL ASSENT
  Mr. Speaker: I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified Her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

  1. Northern Ireland (Financial Provisions) Act 1972.

  2. Northern Ireland (Border Poll) Act 1972.

  PUBLIC ACCOUNTS COMMITTEE (REPORTS)
  Question again proposed.
  Mr. Higgins: To return to the points raised by the hon. Member for West Lothian, he asked what lessons had been learned from the experience at Ninewells and he related his question to a hospital which is to be built. I think there are several major issues connected with the construction of the new Ninewells Hospital and the new medical school at Dundee, which are in arbitration between the Eastern Regional Hospital Board and the contractors. As was indicated in the Treasury Minute of 8th November, 1967, in paragraphs 107 to 112 of the Fifth Report of the Public Accounts Committee 1966–1967, the form of building contract used in Ninewells demands the closest co-operation between the contractor and the design team, and the need to ensure effective collaboration in such circumstances has been generally noted.
  But the Ninewells experience also suggests that careful consideration should be given to the phasing of large building projects. Livingston Hospital will be built in phases, but the difficulties experienced at Ninewells may be less relevant to this project than would the experience gained in the construction of comparable district general hospitals in Scotland and elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Obviously, one would take into account the broad experience but one probably needs to check it rather more widely than the hon. Member suggested.
  Mr. Dalyell: This is, I think, rather a soothing answer, though I do not blame the Financial Secretary. The fact is that after all that has been said this afternoon about how effective the Public Accounts Committee is, this was raised for the first time nearly six years ago and still the position is more or less as bad as ever. The time has come for a hard look at what has happened. The relationship between the contractors and the design team must concern anybody who is concerned with public money.
  Mr. Higgins: I understand what the hon. Gentleman says, but I cannot go any further than I have gone on this occasion. I have taken a careful note of what he has said, but I am sure that he

  1745
  will appreciate that when an arbitration is going on it presents certain difficulties.
  The hon. Gentleman raised a final point which somewhat puzzled my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland. He referred to a report in the Scotsman of 25th November. I understand that there have already been official denials of the story from the Atomic Energy Authority and it has been made quite clear by my hon. Friend the Minister for Industry that there is no truth in the report that Dounreay is an utter failure—I believe those were the words in the report—or that it will be closed within three years. The construction of the 250 megawatt fast reactor has been commenced and it will be commissioned next year. There is general agreement between the generating boards and the Atomic Energy Authority, and in three or four years the stage will have been reached where a decision to order the first commercial fast reactor should be possible. There will be a continuing programme of work at Dounreay for many years. I understand that this has already been put on the record and I was slightly puzzled why the hon. Member should feel it necessary to raise this point on this occasion. My understanding is that the point had already been covered and that, indeed, Press reports had made the position clear.
  Mr. Dalyell: It was necessary to put it on the record, as I said, because, as in so many cases, once mud is thrown it sticks on a project. The fact is that in the foreign Press the original report was rather widely quoted, but the denials, as far as I can see, were relatively unquoted. This may have been because of the news of the day, but I thought it was important that the Government should put on record precisely what is the situation about the reactor.
  Mr. Higgins: Again, I understand what the hon. Member says. I must say that I do not think it is a unique experience, nor, alas, is it one which the Public Accounts Committee or myself will easily rectify.
  I think I am right in saying that those are the points which the hon. Member for West Lothian raised, and I should like now to say a word or two about a matter raised by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and on which comments were
  1746
  made also by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Hastings), and that is the question of the Sugar Board.
  I do not think there is much I can add at this stage to the information already before the House in the shape of the Treasury Minute. Transferring of raw sugar from rural beet factories to refineries at the ports is less economic than refining the sugar as a continuous process. This is not in dispute, but the issue cannot be tackled in isolation, as the Committee recognised. Total supplies are set by the needs to refine sugar. More refined sugar from beet factories must lower output at the port refineries, with consequent surplus capacity and loss of efficiency.
  I think that probably the right hon. Gentleman and I are familiar, in broad economic terms, with what the problems are here. I am speaking of particular technical and economic problems.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire referred to the use of the expression "efficient" or "efficiency" in the Treasury Minute. Of course, there is a number of variable factors here. The word "efficient" covers a number of different economic concepts. It may be in terms of costs of one plant against those of another in a particular location working at a particular capacity, or it may be a question of how costs vary as between the use of plants at different levels of capacity. These are familiar problems of economics and location theory. The position is that the Committee looked at it; it has been brought very carefully to our attention.
  I have taken note, as my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture will have taken note, of what my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire said. The House will appreciate that as my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture hopes to be able to make an announcement about our consultations in due course, I ought not to be expected to say more than I have already said at this moment, but we shall certainly very much bear in mind the points which the Committee of Public Accounts made in its Report. Obviously the question of ensuring that the job is done as efficiently as possible is one which will be in the forefront of our minds.

  1747
  I come to another point raised by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead. It was also mentioned, I recollect, by the hon. Member for West Lothian. I am sorry that I did not cover it in my earlier round up of the points the hon. Member made, but I think he mentioned it as part of the more general debate. I do not wish to quarrel with anything in this report on the circumstances surrounding the original decision that the Government should contribute to the launching costs of the RB211 and the unhappy events leading up to the appointment of the receiver at Rolls-Royce in February, 1971. These events have been set out in the Government's White Paper on Rolls-Royce Ltd. and on the RB211 aeroengine—Cmnd. 4860. The Government accept the main recommendations of the Committee. They broadly endorse the existing policy.
  As a general rule the Government are concerned that any aerospace company receiving launching aid must carry the primary responsibility for the technical and commercial success of the project and accordingly bear the cost of any technical difficulties. It is, therefore, important to ensure before giving launching aid that the company has the necessary financial strength to carry these risks. There may be particular cases which deserve particular and specific analysis and where the exact provision will need to be related to the circumstances to ensure that sufficient incentive is retained to encourage the company towards efficiency and profitability.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan) raised a number of points on this and the broader question of Government participation in whole or in part in companies. This has been a matter of great concern to the PAC now for several years. I shall return to that point in my concluding remarks.
  What I would like first to do is to take up one or two of the points which were raised about the shipbuilding industry. The Committee spent a considerable time in examining the Department of Trade and Industry on the financial assistance given to shipbuilding, both by the Shipbuilding Industry Board and by the Government. It paid particular attention to the assistance given to Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, Harland and Wolff
  1748
  and Cammell Laird. From this examination I think it true that the committee distilled two main lessons, that further assistance should be directed more effectively towards establishing a viable shipbuilding industry and should not be provided solely to meet losses, and that there should be adequate monitoring by the Government of the performance and prospects of companies receiving Government assistance These are obviously very important points.
  The hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) raised a number of points on the shipbuilding industry. I think I would be fair to him if I said to him that they seemed to me to be points of policy rather than of administration, although he has been concerned with looking at actual administration. In this debate we are not concerned with policy but with the report of the Committee.
  Mr. Douglas: I wonder where one ends and the other begins. I was concerned, as I think the Minister will accept, to indicate how we could have a viable industry by going for a market which is proven.
  Mr. Higgins: I agree that there is some problem in deciding where policy ends and administration begins, but my impression is that this was not a line which the Committee itself had trouble in drawing, and it is not one which on many occasions this House has trouble in drawing. I would not suggest that what the hon. Member said was out of order; it would be most unfair of me to do that. All I am saying is that if I were to try to answer the questions he raised I might be out of order.
  I want to take up one point to which he referred, the question of the losses and the question of monitoring a company's performance. Very large sums of assistance were given to UCS and Harland and Wolff both by the SIB and directly by the Government but, as, I think, the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget) pointed out, there were considerations of employment as well as the narrower question, and this is something to which the Treasury Minute refers as well. It would be a mistake to overlook the fact that most of the SIB assistance to the industry went towards the costs of reorganisation and of capital expenditure on new facilities,

  1749
  including modern shipyard facilities at Harland and Wolff. Such assistance was clearly directed to improving the industry's competitive position, and many of the new facilities are already showing their effect in increased efficiency. The SIB also helped the industry, as the Committee recognises, to sustain a competitive rôle by promoting improvements in management and financial control and encouraging greater collaboration from the work force.
  These are very broad issues. What we have done meanwhile is to introduce a scheme of temporary financial assistance to the industry to safeguard employment and to provide a period of stability. As the House will know, shipbuilders are eligible for the full range of assistance under the Industry Act, and the Government are prepared to use their powers to give selective assistance to encourage closer collaboration between shipowners and shipbuilders, to assist modernisation of United Kingdom shipyards, and to improve efficiency in both industries.
  The other thing is that I would assure the House that the Government will do all that they can to make certain that there is adequate appraisal of applications for such assistance and adequate monitoring of the firms which receive it. The ability of the Department of Trade and Industry—this is touching a little on the question of technical officers raised by the hon. Member for West Lothian—to carry out such appraisal and monitoring has been strengthened by the formation of the Industrial Development Unit, whose staff has been drawn from the City and from industry, and will have practical, financial and commercial skills. My right hon. Friend the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry referred to this on 22nd March, at col. 1547 of HANSARD.
  This is an area where it is difficult to recruit the right people, and we are doing all we can to ensure that those who are needed to monitor projects such as this are available and can do the kind of job which the PAC is anxious to do.
  I shall not go into details, because the House is well aware of the recent developments on the Upper Clyde with regard to Govan Shipbuilders and the Marathon Shipbuilding Company. But the Government have, in addition to that, agreed
  1750
  to provide assistance for major modernisation schemes with Harland and Wolff and Cammell Laird, and both these projects are going ahead. The provision of the new facilities will result in specific improvements in productivity, and again we shall monitor the performance as carefully as we can.
  I want finally to turn to the points raised by a number of hon. Members, among them the hon. and learned Member for Northampton and my hon. Friend the Member for Hove. My hon. Friend the Member for Hove put his finger on the expression which points the real dilemma we face here. He used the expression, "If we are in for a penny, are we in for a £?". He went on to say why there are some circumstances in which one can go in for a certain amount and then stop. What I think is now generally recognised is that it is important that the precise position should be made clear. My right hon. Friend referred to Beagle Aircraft. As he knows, Beagle Aircraft was operating at a particular airport close to both his constituency and mine, and that particular event was one about which the Public Accounts Committee has been concerned.
  But on the surveillance of firms covered in paragraphs 98–99 of the Third Report from the Public Accounts Committee the Committee makes various statements, and we accept what it says about the need to secure a sufficient flow of information without diminishing the responsibilities of directors or management, and without being unduly inhibited by Section 332 of the Companies Act 1948. This was a point to which the Public Accounts Committee paid considerable attention.
  The House will agree that the objectives must be, first, to ensure that public funds are used for the purposes for which they have been made available; secondly, to assist the success of the objectives for which the funds were supplied; and thirdly, to limit the call on public funds to achieve that purpose.
  Measures are being taken to strengthen further the Government's expertise in these matters and to enable the Government to be in a position to call for appropriate necessary information to secure these objectives. But it will not be easy to achieve the objective of having

  1751
  sufficient information upon a company's affairs without some risk of appearing to take over responsibility for its conduct and liability for the consequences of the management or the directors. This has been recognised throughout the debate today and has been a recurring theme throughout our discussions. Naturally the problem varies according to the nature of the Government's stake and the nature of the company concerned. But it is important, as far as one is able, to hit the right balance in each individual case.
  This is a tremendously difficult matter. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead recognises this from his previous experience as a Minister. It is tremendously difficult to judge. That being so, we obviously do not want to avoid this difficulty—indeed, I do not believe that it can be avoided—or the difficulties which might flow from Section 332 of the Companies Act by putting our heads in the sand and just not wanting to know what is going on.
  We would intend to obtain whatever information we judge necessary to achieve the objectives I have mentioned. We also feel that although clearly we must take into account Section 332 of the Companies Act, it need not necessarily inhibit the Government from providing or considering the provision of assistance in the first place; though the question of making sure the position is clear is one which is of great importance and one of the lessons we can learn from the experience of the past. It is one to which the Public Accounts Committee has particularly brought the attention of the Government and the House.
  This is a difficult area of law and one cannot lay down simple, hard and fast rules on which to operate. One needs to look at the individual cases, to take into account the various experiences which we have had and to draw lessons from them.
  On that note, which I think is very consistent with both the line taken by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Cheetham and, indeed, the theme taken up by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead in opening the debate, it would be appropriate for me to conclude.
  The debate will be generally recognised to have been a very wide-ranging debate
  1752
  indeed, and one which has raised problems which are of great difficulty and for which we must seek to find solutions. The analysis of these problems has been carried out, both in detailed questions and in seeking to draw from general lessons, by the Public Accounts Committee. I am sure that the House is grateful to all those hon. Members who have served on it with such diligence and such skill.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That this House takes note of the First, Second and Third Reports from the Committee of Public Accounts in the last Session of Parliament and of the Treasury Minute on those Reports (Command Paper No. 5126).

EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES (DEFINITION OF TREATIES)
7.17 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Anthony Royle): I beg to move,
That the European Communities (Definition of Treaties) Order 1972, a draft of which was laid before the House on 22nd November, be approved.
Under the terms of Section 1(3) of the European Communities Act, treaties entered into by the United Kingdom after 22nd January, 1972 cannot be regarded as Community treaties as defined in the Act unless they are specified in an Order in Council. The draft of such Orders in Council must be approved by resolution of each House of Parliament. An Order in Council under Section 1(3) of the Act may specify any number of treaties entered into by Her Majesty's Government. The House may agree that it is most economical of parliamentary time if several treaties are dealt with in one order rather than that there should be a separate order for each.
The present order is the first Order in Council to be introduced specifying Community treaties under Section 1(3) of the Act. The only major treaties which have been entered into by the United Kingdom in a Community context since 22nd January 1972 and which Her Majesty's Government propose should be included in the schedule to the present order are the European Coal and Steel

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Community agreements which were concluded with Austria, Iceland, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland, together with an additional agreement concerning the validity for Liechtenstein of the agreement with Switzerland.
The English texts of those agreements were laid before the House on 16th November. They were signed in Brussels on 22nd July 1972 and will enter into force on 1st January 1973, provided that all parties have notified completion of the necessary procedures by that date. Otherwise they will enter into force at a later date, not later than 1st January 1974.
They were all signed by the present member States of the ECSC and the United Kingdom and the other acceding States, which will be member States of the ECSC when the agreements come into force. In the case of Austria, Portugal and Sweden, the ECSC itself also signed.
The order is straightforward. I hope that it can be approved by the House without a prolonged debate, in spite of the early hour at which it is being taken.
The ECSC/EFTA non-candidate agreements to which Her Majesty's Government are signatories are undoubtedly new treaties falling within the scope of Section 1(3) of the Act. The terms of Section 1(3) have been closely followed in tabling this draft Order in Council, which can become a statutory instrument only after it has been approved by both Houses of Parliament.
7.20 p.m.
Mr. Eric G. Varley: The Minister has come to the House on a quiet Thursday with an innocent-looking little order to ratify what some believe to be innocent-looking treaties with our ex-EFTA partners. Yet all but one of these treaties, the exception being Iceland, embody a diminution of sovereignty for the British Government and further reduce governmental control over two basic public industries.
The Minister rather complacently gave the impression that the order would go through "on the nod". Furthermore, the treaties prove what many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have contended and what the Government have persistently denied, namely, that many of the benefits associated with the EEC could have been obtained without Britain paying the full
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and daunting price of full membership, a price which was quantified in Brussels this week by the Minister of State, Treasury at about £250 million in the first year. So we find that customs duties between Austria, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland and the EEC are to be phased out by 1st July 1977 on a vast range of coal and steel products. The products are detailed in the annexes to the treaties.
Those countries, without paying the price which the Minister of State mentioned, are to enjoy tariff-free trade on all these dozens of products. Britain could have had the same arrangement and I believe that we could have had it with the full-hearted consent of the British Parliament and people. However, the Prime Minister was obsessed with getting full membership. At least the treaties remove from the Prime Minister what was an obsession of his some months ago. Hon. Members will recall that famous Friday when he told the British Steel Corporation that it had to reduce its price increase at a stroke. We all know that on that particular day and for weeks afterwards he would not permit us to forget what he had done.
We believe it is right that the British Government should have control over the pricing policies of the nationalised industries. That is one of the reasons why we advocate public ownership. They can then influence the economy in whatever direction they believe necessary. An examination of the treaties shows that the Government intend to surrender even more control over the National Coal Board and the British Steel Corporation not only to the European Coal and Steel Community, which will happen in 25 days' time, but also to some of the countries mentioned in the order.
What is becoming more and more interesting, however, is what will happen when the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, for example, comes to the House very soon to tell us about his negotiations with the European Community and with the Commission, particularly concerning the position of steel prices during the freeze period. We all recognise with some fascination the leaks that are coming out of Brussels, not all of them authoritative, I am sure. There was a report in The Times yesterday by Mr. David Cross who informatively

1755
revealed that agreement would be reached in a day or two. When these negotiations are complete and agreement is reached, the Government will no doubt heave a sigh of relief.
Assuming, however, that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Foreign Office get the European Commission and the ECSC to agree to the present freeze on steel prices, will the Minister say—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Miss Harvie Anderson): The hon. Member is now moving beyond the scope of the order and it would be wrong not to draw his attention to that fact, because he is now asking the Minister to go out of order in reply. I hope that the hon. Member will restrict his remarks to the order.
Mr. Varley: I had hoped to show the connection in a moment or two, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was seeking to show that as a result of our entry to Europe on 1st January it will be necessary to reach an agreement with the ECSC. It is common knowledge that we cannot alter our prices unilaterally and that we must go to the Commission for permission. That process is taking place at the moment. Under the treaties there is also provision for the setting up of joint committees. One of the articles in these treaties suggests that there should be no public aid
"which distorts or threatens to distort competion by favouring certain undertakings or the production of certain goods."
If we get that arrangement, we should certainly have to go to those countries for their permission too.
The treaties are categorical. Article 19 of the treaty relating to Austria, Portugal and Sweden and Article 18 of the treaty concerning Switzerland and Liechtenstein give these countries a veto over certain activities by the National Coal Board and the British Steel Corporation. The articles declare that among the practices
"incompatible with the proper functioning of the Agreement "
is any public aid
"which distorts or threatens to distort competition by favouring certain undertakings or the production of certain goods."
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This formula relates directly to the freezing of prices by the BSC which in this situation is requesting compensation for losses incurred as a result of holding down prices under the Counter-Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Act. Such compensation, which is absolutely essential and must be forthcoming, is directly prohibited under the treaties.
No doubt the Minister will claim that Article 23 of the treaty with Austria, Portugal and Sweden and Article 22 of the treaty with Switzerland and Liechtenstein provide for permission to be granted for appropriate measures to be taken if serious disturbances arise in any sector of the economy. The freeze was brought in to cope with precisely such a serious disturbance in the economy.
But there appears to be a loophole in the treaties, so we may be able to breathe freely. The Government are permitted only to take these so-called appropriate measures under conditions and procedures which are laid down in the treaties in great detail. Sanctions can be imposed in specified circumstances and the whole process is supervised by joint committees which are set up separately under each of the relevant treaties. It is necessary, therefore, to ask the Minister certain questions and to have certain replies before we assent to the order.
The treaties come into force on 1st January. Presumably the joint committees will have to convene very soon afterwards. The agreements embodying the treaties were made four months ago. Have preliminary consultations taken place with the countries concerned to ensure that the joint committees will give speedy consent to the freeze arrangements where they are affected by the treaties? What shall we do if the joint committees demand a speedy end to the freeze arrangements as they affect steel and coal? On the one hand the Counter-Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Act over-rides the treaties, but on the other hand the countries concerned can demand through the joint committees that sanctions be imposed. This raises a crucial question. How will the Government's prices policy in the post-freeze period be affected? Will the joint committees be in a position to consider this too? The question needs an urgent answer where our membership of the ECSC is concerned but we now

1757
find that we need an answer in relation to the treaties we are at present discussing.
There is another important aspect. The House was promised that within a very short time a Coal Industry Bill would be presented. Only this afternoon the Leader of the House said that there would be a statement on Monday about such a Bill and that it would be given its Second Reading before the Christmas Recess. We anticipate that it will provide the NCB with large sums of money which we consider essential for the proper functioning of the industry. We arc certainly anxious that the Bill should be introduced, and provided that it is sensibly framed we shall assist in getting it through as quickly as possible. But with the best will in the world we cannot get it on to the Statute Book before 1st January.
These treaties come into force on 1st January. They specifically prohibit any public aid
"which distorts or threatens to distort competition by favouring certain undertakings",
and the relevant articles can be invoked. Will the Coal Industry Bill be compatible with the terms of the treaties or will there have to be included in it a clause similar to the provision which appears in the Counter-Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Act? It is preposterous and intolerable that these questions have to be raised, and I regret that I have to raise them with a Foreign Office Minister. It would have been better had we had assistance from the Department of Trade and Industry which, as the Minister acknowledged, covers a vast range of coal and steel products. This matter has to be raised tonight because of the way in which the European Communities Act was dragooned through Parliament. The questions need to be answered and I hope that the Minister will undertake to answer them, perhaps by writing to me.
We know to our cost that a measure of control over the running of the coal and steel industries has passed from this elected Parliament to the European Commission, but under the order a measure of control over the British Steel Corporation and the National Coal Board is to be exercised by Austria, Sweden, Portugal, Switzerland and tiny Liechtenstein. That is the pickle into which this im-
1758
provident Government have got themselves with these industries. We want to know the true position and we should be grateful for answers to our questions.
7.35 p.m.
Mr. Douglas Jay: The Minister might have given us rather more information than he gave at the start of the debate. He seemed anxious that the House should not know what the Government are doing and what is going on. If that is not so, I am sure that he will reply to the questions addressed to him.
I wish to ask a formal question arising out of the order. Why is Finland not included amongst the other EFTA countries which appear to have made agreements with the European Coal and Steel Community? I know that Finland is a member of Fin-EFTA and not EFTA proper, but I do not see that that is a substantial reason for Finland not being included. Is there perhaps another agreement that has not seen the light of day here?
The substantial question that I want to ask follows from what my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) said. Is the effective consequence of the order that something approaching free trade in iron and steel and coal products will be established between all the EFTA countries mentioned here and the European Coal and Steel Community, which means the EEC for the purpose of this debate?
Mr. Gerald Kaufman: My right hon. Friend is moving on from an interesting point which requires slightly more exploration. He asked why Finland is excluded. Each of the treaties names Norway as a participant, and one can only wonder what is the validity of treaties which name as a member of the European Coal and Steel Community a country which has specifically refused to participate in the EEC.
Mr. Jay: That question is for the Minister to answer, but I suppose that some future arrangement will be made between Norway and the Community. Perhaps we can be enlightened about that also.
Is the effect of these agreements and the order that free trade in the products

1759
concerned, both ways, will now be established between the EFTA countries and, in effect, the EEC? For instance, will it be possible for steel products produced in Sweden to be exported into EEC countries tariff free, as they will be from this and other EEC countries and vice versa?
If that is so, the result of the whole transaction is extraordinary. It means that all the other EFTA non-candidate countries obtain exactly the same advantages as we do in the EEC by these agreements, but that they do not have to pay any of the price in terms of contributions to the EEC budget, the restrictions of the common agricultural policy and the corruption of their parliamentary machines by the bureaucratic apparatus in Brussels.
That is an extraordinary result. Here we are looking only at iron and steel and coal products, but the same is true for the whole range of industrial products as between EFTA and EEC countries. Will the Minister confirm that over a large range of products that is the substantial result? If it is, will he explain what advantage Britain has gained compared with non-candidate countries by becoming a member of the EEC?
7.39 p.m.
Mr. John Roper: I hope that it will always be possible for the House to have as much time as it appears to have tonight to debate EEC orders, particularly when they are concerned with treaties. I hope that I am right in assuming that the affirmative procedure will always be used for future treaties so that the House will be able to have appropriate debates.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, North (Mr. Jay) has referred to the agreement with Finland. I understand that an agreement with Finland was initialled at the same time as the agreement with other EFTA partners. I assume that when the Finnish Government decide to sign it, it will be possible for the House to consider that agreement in the same way as we are considering the others tonight. Will the Minister confirm that a similar agreement was initialled but that the Finnish Government have not as yet decided to sign it?
Will the House have a chance to discuss before Christmas the EEC agree-
1760
ments reached with the EFTA countries on the same day as the ECSC agreements were reached? They are in some ways more important than the treaties which we are considering today. I realise that if I pursue that point further, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall incur your wrath and move out of order.
Austria, Portugal and Sweden have agreed to special provisions on prices and transport rates on the lines of the ECSC system which we shall be forced to apply from 1st January unless the Government can get an exception. Article 20 of the treaty relating to Austria, Portugal and Sweden states that the Community will apply Article 60 of the ECSC treaty to pricing and transport rates. Why is Switzerland not forced to apply the pricing and transport rate systems which Austria, Portugal and Sweden have been obliged to apply? One might think initially, given its geographical position, that Switzerland was more likely to be obliged to apply the system. Will the Minister tell us why the Swiss Treaty is different from the others?
Will the Minister explain in detail the reasons for the protocols to the treaties with Austria, Portugal and Sweden? The protocols allow those countries to operate a timetable for the reduction of duties. This applies particularly to Portugal and Austria. There are fewer exceptions for Sweden. It would be helpful to know why Sweden has been allowed a slower rate of reduction in duties than those which I assume will apply to this country as we go into the full ECSC.
The Minister mentioned in moving the order that for three of the EFTA members—Austria, Portugal and Sweden—the agreements have been reached between member States of the enlarged Community, and the Community, and the country concerned. For some reason the Icelandic and Swiss agreements have been made with the member States of the Community alone and not with the Community itself. I realise that an important technical point of international law may be involved, but I hope that the Minister will explain the difference between the various treaties.
7.44 p.m.
Mr. Gerald Kaufman: If I may, I will, through the hon. Member for Norfolk, South-West

1761
(Mr. Hawkins), address a brief message to the Patronage Secretary. The Government are fortunate that Opposition Members are so well behaved and orderly that they do not intend to force a Division on the order. If we did force a Division, there is no doubt that the Government would have insufficient Members present and the order would fall and have to be debated on another occasion. The message I send to the Patronage Secretary is that he may not be so fortunate on another occasion—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We are discussing this occasion.
Mr. Kaufman: It is because of this occasion that I feel it necessary to deliver these admonitory words. It is an abuse of Parliament that an order as weighty as this, on which two of my hon. Friends, one a pro-Marketeer and the other an anti-Marketeer, and my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) have asked important questions, for a Foreign Office Minister, and not a Minister who knows about the contents of these treaties, to ask the House to accept the order in a speech lasting four minutes.
The order ties our coal and steel industries hand and foot to the whims of the Prince of Liechtenstein, so that in future he will have a greater say in the pricing policy of the steel industry than Lord Melchett and a greater say in what aid can be given to our coal industry than Mr. Derek Ezrah. I regard this as utterly preposterous.
If this is a foretaste of the way we shall continue while this country is a temporary member of the EEC, we have taken a very bad way. I trust that the Minister, having introduced the order in so insulting a way—four minutes on five treaties of enormous significance—will pay some attention to the weighty questions which have been put in detail about the future of our coal and steel industries. If we cannot get that kind of courtesy on this order then, regardless of our Chief Whip, several of us will have to behave in an entirely different way when similar orders are before the House.
7.47 p.m.
Mr. Anthony Royle: I find the remarks of the hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman), who is a dis-
1762
tinguished Member of this House of Commons, quite extraordinary. I came to the House 20 minutes ago and introduced the order in what I thought was a perfectly courteous manner. I explained the details and the outline of what the order did. I then sat down and listened to the extremely constructive remarks and questions of his hon. Friends, and I will in due course endeavour to answer them.
The idea that the Government are pushing through the order in two minutes is the most bizarre I have heard in the 15 years I have been in the House. We are able to sit until 11.30 p.m. to discuss the order. I am available and I am only too happy to sit here until 11.30 p.m. If the hon. Gentleman has any constructive suggestions or remarks to make, I shall be happy to sit here until 11.30 p.m.
The hon. Gentleman implies that the Government are pushing through the order and bulldozing the House. I do not see the rest of his hon. Friends sitting on the benches opposite ready to object at the way the Government are bulldozing through the order. I am delighted to see the hon. Gentlemen who have spoken, three of whom have put responsible questions to me, because they are closely interested either in the development of the Community or have views of their own. The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Varley) rightly spoke for his party in asking certain questions, and I am here to reply.
I cannot accept the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Ardwick, either that the Government are bulldozing through the order or that I have been discourteous. I hope that he will withdraw the remarks that he made in the last few minutes.
Mr. Kaufman: I have clearly upset the hon. Gentleman. I have no desire to do so. I agree that the manner in which he introduced the order was courtesy itself, but a four-minute warning about five treaties with a request that we should pass them through immediately is unsatisfactory. The last thing I wish to do is to offend the hon. Gentleman. I would choose others of his hon. and right hon. Friends to offend rather than him. I gladly give him any apology he requests.
Mr. Royle: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's courteous remark, but I have never asked the House to pass the order immediately or in four minutes. Indeed, as I have said, we have three and a half hours left in which to debate it and I am happy to stay here until 11.30 p.m. in order to reply.
But perhaps I can turn now to some of the questions put in the debate. This is not an innocent order. It was never intended to be. It is necessary, as I have said, following the signing of the treaty.
The hon. Member for Chesterfield expressed his strong feeling that we need not have bothered to go through the motions of joining the Community but could have remained outside and got on the bandwagon with the rest of the EFTA countries and involved ourselves with the Community as members of a free trade grouping. That is not realistic. It would not have been possible because those countries were able to negotiate these specific arrangements for themselves with the Community as a result of and in the context of enlargement of the Community with the arrival of Britain, Denmark and the Republic of Ireland as full members. The hon. Gentleman knows that it would not have been possible to have negotiated this matter in isolation.
Mr. Jay: That is a most preposterous argument. If it is possible for these EFTA countries to negotiate a free trade area agreement with a Community of Nine, it would have been just as possible to negotiate it with a Community of Six. There is no technical, economic or political difficulty about that. There is no substance in what the hon. Gentleman is saying.
Mr. Royle: The right hon. Gentleman was a member of the Labour Government who originally applied for agreement of the Community to the enlargement of the Community. I do not recall that Government applying for free trade arrangements as such. I voted with the Labour Government on that occasion. I enjoyed doing it as a staunch supporter of British entry. We voted to open negotiations to join as full members. The present Government continued the process after the General Election.
I know the right hon. Gentleman's views on this subject. But I think that
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there is another aspect which he did not mention. I respect his views—he has held to them for many years. But these other countries—the EFTA countries—outside the Community do not, as members of a free trade area linked to the Community, have any control or any say in the decisions of the Community. We as full members are in the position of having a say in the development of the Community. The right hon. Gentleman knows that and I hesitate to repeat it because it has been said so many times, but it is another important aspect of our entry into the enlarged Community.
Mr. Jay: The hon. Gentleman may or may not remember correctly what happened five or six years ago, but he has given no reason now for supposing that it would not have been possible for this country to have reached an agreement such as this.
Mr. Royle: The Government's view was that it was unrealistic and indeed not in Britain's interest to appear to try to be a part or to apply to be a part of a free trade area linked with the Community. We wished to be full members and thereby to play an important part in the development of the Community.
The hon. Member for Chesterfield felt that the order was in some way being bulldozed through the House. He will remember the vote which took place in October 1971 on the principle of joining the Community. The majority of 112 consisted of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. He indicated that the Government might have bulldozed the subsequent legislation through. I cannot accept that. There were very many long debates. There was a long Committee stage. The debate on Second Reading was the longest such debate that I can recall in my parliamentary career. There was another debate on Third Reading. The legislation followed the overwhelming vote in favour of the principle of British entry. There was a very large majority for entry in another place—running into hundreds. A great deal of time was devoted to the legislation, when detailed opposition came from right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House. It has now become an Act, and on 1st January Britain will be a member of the Community.

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The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of steel prices—a fair point. There is great concern in the House about the matter. I assure him that whether I were a Minister from the Department of Trade and Industry or a Minister from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office the answer would be the same. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry was questioned in the House on the subject on 4th December. He explained that we are involved in discussions on the matter and that a statement will be made soon. It is not for me to go any further than that at present. But I have taken the point put by the hon. Gentleman. I understand the concern which has been expressed, but we must await the statement to be made by my right hon. Friend soon.
Mr. Jay: Next week?
Mr. Royle: That is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. As a distinguished former President of the Board of Trade, the right hon. Gentleman knows that these matters are for the Leader of the House of any Government.
The hon. Member for Chesterfield queried the date on which the treaties come into force. I confirm that it is 1st January 1973. Any preliminary consultations which may take place regarding the freeze arrangements which he mentioned are all included in the statement which my right hon. Friend will make, and there is no need for me to cover that aspect. But the hon. Gentleman can be assured that we have hoisted his concern on board.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick referred to Leichtenstein, feeling that somehow we were going to come under that Principality. I do not think he believes that. The reason for having an additional agreement for Liechtenstein is that the terms of the agreement establishing a customs union between Switzerland and Leichtenstein would not automatically have extended to the agreement made between the member States of the ECSC and Switzerland and Liechtenstein. An additional agreement extending its validity was therefore necessary. That is why specific mention is made of Liechtenstein.
Mr. Roper: Could the hon. Gentleman make clear whether the membership not of Liechtenstein but of the other countries in the joint committee to be set up between those countries and the Community will permit the governments of those countries to carry out the sort of things which my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman) suggested in relation to coal and steel policy in this country?
Mr. Royle: Of course it will not give them that opportunity.
The right hon. Member for Battersea, North raised the question of the position of Finland and Norway. I am glad he raised these points because they are important. In the case of Norway, the agreements were signed on 2nd July, 1972, while Norway was still an applicant for accession to the Community. That was before the Norwegian referendum.
The texts laid before Parliament are the texts as they were signed. It would not be correct for us unilaterally to make any changes in the documents themselves. They will, however, no doubt be scrutinised in due course by all the signatories, and amendments will be proposed to remove the references to Norway in the texts. They will come into force on 1st January, providing that the contracting parties have informed each other before then that the procedures necessary for this have been completed. Otherwise, in accordance with the provisions in the agreement, they will enter into force at a later date but not later than 1st January, 1974. It is intended to negotiate similar EEC and ECSC agreements with Norway and negotiations will begin in the new year. When this is done we shall consider the need for a further Order in Council.
Mr. Jay: It just shows.
Mr. Royle: What I have explained is the situation in relation to Norway.
Mr. Jay: Is the hon. Gentleman coming to Finland? It was Finland that I asked about.
Mr. Royle: An agreement between the member States of the enlarged ECSC of the one part and of Finland of the other part was initialled on 22nd July, 1972, but cannot be included in the present Order in Council because it has not yet been

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signed by the contracting parties. The right hon. Gentleman may ask why it has not yet been signed. I anticipate his question by pointing out that it is a matter for the Finnish Government and it is impossible for me as a British Minister to reply on their behalf.
Another question mainly concerned whether other treaties would call for an Order in Council. Treaties which call for Orders in Council under the second limb of Section 1(3)—that is, post-23rd January 1972 treaties entered into by the United Kingdom—must be subject to affirmative resolution. I hope that that meets the point. Treaties entered into by the Community without the United Kingdom as a co-signatory are not subject to affirmative resolution under Section 1(3) for the reasons explained during the passage of the Act.
I ask the House to accept that there is no intention by the Government at any time to bulldoze these important matters through the House. We welcome discussion on treaties and orders such as the one before us tonight.
The agreements provide for the continuation of free trade in coal and most iron and steel products between the United Kingdom and the EFTA non-candidates. In 1971 we exported about £21 million worth of these products to the non-candidates. The agreements provide a means of safeguarding and perhaps increasing this valuable trade. Moreover, they play their part—so far as iron and steel are concerned—in the creation of a wide trading area in Western Europe.
Mr. Roper: I included a number of detailed questions in my speech, particularly referring to the protocols and the reason for the slow reduction of tariff barriers by some of the co-signatories of the treaties. I realise that they are points of detail. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be able to reply to them in some other way after the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the European Communities (Definition of Treaties) Order 1972, a draft of which was laid before the House on 22nd November, be approved.

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
The Committee of Public Accounts was nominated of Mr. Michael Barnes, Sir Edward Brown, Mr. Richard Buchanan, Mr. Edmund Dell, Mr. Simon Wingfield Digby, Mr. Dick Douglas, Mr. Terence L. Higgins, Mr. James Lamond, Mr. Harold Lever, Mr. Martin Maddan, Mr. Paget, Miss Quennell, Mr. Rafton Pounder, Mr. Julian Ridsdale, and Sir John Rodgers be Members.
Ordered, That the Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Committee on 15th May, and reported to the House on 24th October, in the last Session of Parliament, be referred to the Committee.—[Mr. Fortescue.]

PUBLIC ACCOUNTS
  ADJOURNMENT
  Motion made, and Question proposed, Thas this House do now adjourn. —[Mr. Fortescue.]

SOUTH-EAST ESSEX (ENVIRONMENT)
8.6 p.m.
Sir Bernard Braine: It cannot be disputed that South-East Essex, which I have had the honour to represent for many years, has grown faster than almost any other part of the country in the past decade, or that it will continue to grow very rapidly in the decade ahead. The process of growth will be accelerated by the development of the third London airport and a new container seaport on land reclaimed from the sea off Foulness Island, which is also in my constituency.
All this will bring massive change to the environment in which our existing and future population will live. It is my intention, as the constituency Member most closely concerned, to ensure that as far as is humanly possible such change is for the better rather than for the worse. That is why I have consistently argued that planning decisions in South-East Essex should be made not in isolation but with regard to the totality of their effect upon our environment as a whole, bearing in mind that the capacity of the area to take growth on the scale expected is limited. It is because there is

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still some doubt in my mind about this that I raise the matter now and seek from my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State certain specific assurances.
Our environment in South-East Essex is already under assault from a number of directions. I should like to give the House just four examples. I could give more, but I shall concentrate on those. First, my hon. Friend will recall the decision last year to permit Occidental Oil to establish a large refinery on Canvey Island, where over 28,000 of my constituents have their homes. That was despite strong opposition from both the residents and the local authorities. My hon. Friend will be aware that all around my constituency there is a steady buildup of refinery capacity, that the neighbouring refineries at Coryton and Shell-haven are being allowed to double their output that the refinery opposite us on the Isle of Grain is being allowed to treble its output and that a new refinery is to be built at Cliffe.
Whether or not all that means an increase in atmospheric pollution harmful to health, it certainly means an increase in unpleasantness. On certain days noxious smells extend over a wide area. It means too an increase in the heavy tanker traffic in our congested river lanes and the building up of industrial fire risks in an area where the existing level is already too high. I am mentioning only the refineries, but I could talk also about oil-fired power stations.
Yet against that background we are faced with another application from another international oil company, United Refineries, to build a second refinery on Canvey Island, where, I repeat, 28,000 people have their homes, next door to the Occidental site and even nearer to the residential areas. This application, too, is opposed by the public and the local authorities, and in this connection we are waiting to see whether, when it comes to the point, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State will demonstrate his concern for our environment.
On this I have one very simple question to put to my hon. Friend. Is there no limit to the number of installations of this kind, with all their attendant environmental disadvantages and risks, that can be planted down within sight and smell
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of residential areas, or will my hon. Friend concede that we already have more than our fair share of them?
Already we are alarmed by public statements made by a Mr. John Black, who I understand is the Port of London Authority's Maplin Director, which were published in the Evening Echo on 24th November. When questioned on the proposal to site an oil terminal at the Maplin container port, which would be constructed alongside the new airport, Mr. Black is reported to have agreed that this would
"eventually result in a vast increase in the throughput of oil through the Thamesside refineries".
He asserted that while at present the amount of oil processed via the Thames was limited by the size of tankers using the estuary and the Channel, the establishment of an oil terminal at Maplin would do much to remove these restrictions and eventually fully-laden tankers of up to half a million tons could be handled there. That would mean that the need for Thamesside oil refineries would be even greater.
Mr. Black admitted that
"before any actual work can start we must of course submit detailed plans and give information concerning anticipated traffic, costs and financial estimates showing whether the suggested developments were viable propositions, but we have not yet got approval to start actual construction work".
I hope that, against the threat that Mr. Black's earlier words implied, approval will certainly not be given.
Mr. Black is clearly warning us to expect an increase in the number of refineries we must suffer. Who authorised him to make such statements? I ask my hon. Friend to repudiate any suggestion that the Port of London Authority can predetermine the pattern of refineries in an area where hundreds of thousands of people have established their homes and where, when the airport is developed, hundreds of thousands more are coming to live.
If extra refinery capacity is needed—and I have no doubt that the economy of the country needs it—I suggest that it be at Maplin itself, although other hon. Members may suggest that there are other parts of the country where such installations would be warmly welcomed. It is imperative that my hon. Friend takes firm control of the situation.

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My second example is linked with the first. For some years we have been witnessing, unhappily, a steady deterioration of standards of navigation in the busy Thames estuary. Inevitably, as the tanker traffic in oil products and dangerous chemicals grows, so the hazards to the riverside communities grow too. On Canvey Island we already have a high concentration of oil wharves, oil storage tanks and a methane plant, and we are to have at least one refinery. Next door, at Coryton and Shellhaven, we have two major oil refineries with their wharves and storage tanks.
I have raised this matter of safety before and do not propose to go into it in detail tonight, save to say that we had a serious warning in July 1970, when a 10,000-ton passenger vessel on its way to Tilbury veered off course, hit an oil jetty at Coryton, fractured fuel lines and caused a great quantity of crude oil to gush into the Thames, setting in motion a terrifying train of events. The oil burst into flames. It snaked around Canvey Island and set light to two barges which broke loose from their moorings, menaced a wharf on Canvey Island and bore down on a tanker unloading hundreds of tons of highly inflammable fuel oil.
But for the splendid exertions of the Essex Fire Brigade and the fact that the wind and the tide favoured the fire fighters, it is almost certain that there would have been a major disaster. Indeed, a spokesman for the Port of London Authority was reported in the Evening Echo as saying:
"We have been very lucky. There has been nothing like this since the war. It went off like a bomb. There was a terrible risk involved with so much fuel around"
I would remind hon. Members that he was talking about a place where 28,000 of my constituents have their homes.
Since then we have had tankers slipping their mooring ropes and going aground, tankers arriving with none of the crew able to speak English and incapable of understanding simple instructions. Yet against that background we have had instances in recent months of tanker captains coming into the estuary and refusing to accept the services of experienced Trinity House pilots when berthing in these crowded waters. By whose
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authority are these risks taken? Are the oil companies a law unto themselves?
Qualified pilots have said to me that the byelaws governing the handling of oil tankers are not always closely enforced, that more hazardous chemicals are now being shipped than ever before, and that the risks if anything goes wrong in the estuary could be appalling. I do not wish tonight to name anyone in particular, but I shall provide my hon. Friend with chapter and verse, and I trust that he will look into this disturbing state of affairs without delay.
My third example concerns the growing chaos on our roads in South-East Essex. I do not propose for the moment to discuss the direct impact on our environment of the third London Airport when it opens in 1980. We should have an early opportunity to consider that when we debate the Maplin Development Bill. It is essential, however, that the Government fully grasp the implications that the construction of the airport will have for our road communications in the intervening period between now and 1980.
Our main road system in South-East Essex is inadequate now. It cannot possibly cope with the construction traffic which must soon start to flow. When we had the one-day rail strike recently the A127 was blocked from Southend to London. At every major intersection there was a mile-long queue of vehicles moving at about an average of five miles an hour.
One would have thought that the highest priority would be given to the construction of a new motorway linking Maplin with London. But to our consternation we learnt early last month that it cannot be ready until 1979, one year before the first runway at Maplin will be operational. At least that is what the clerks of my local authorities have been told by the officials in my hon. Friend's Department.
I wrote to my hon. Friend about this matter. On 17th November he assured me that the new motorway would be given "the highest priority", that it would be open to traffic
"as soon as possible and before the opening of the new airport"
and that in the meantime improvements would be carried out on the A127.

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I sent a copy of my hon. Friend's letter to the Clerk to the Rayleigh Urban District Council. He replied:
"That sounds all very well but when the surveyor and myself were last up at the Department of the Environment on this matter we were told quite clearly there was no hope at all that the access road etc. would be available before 1979, assuming that the airport opened in 1980. If that is the programme the road apparently will be open say one year before the airport opens, but how does all the construction traffic get to the site in the meantime?"
My hon. Friend's letter did not answer the question.
Let us assume that the new airport starts to operate in 1980. Mr. Black of the PLA was also reported in the Press on 24th November as saying that the new motorway would not be ready before the sea-port is operational in 1978. That can only mean that our existing inadequate roads will not only have to take a great deal of construction traffic to the air and sea ports up to 1978 but will have to take heavy container traffic for the port as well after that. My hon. Friend may well say that the railways can help. I am a great believer in railways. Much more traffic should go on to the railways. But Mr. Black, who keeps popping up in this situation, was reported in the same newspaper as saying that all container traffic from Maplin for destinations within a 100-mile radius will go by road. Whom are we to believe?
If Mr. Black is right, the situation which he described is wholly unacceptable to my constituents. It is unacceptable to the local authorities, in particular to the Essex County Council, which have made strong representations to my hon. Friend's Department on the subject, and it is wholly unacceptable to me. The Government will have to do some fresh thinking about the timing of the airport, the seaport and the necessary access routes. They will have to do their thinking quickly before the situation gets out of hand.
Perhaps my hon. Friend will now see the sense of the proposal I made some time ago that a planning inquiry commission should be set up to investigate all these problems and to make some coordinated recommendations. That proposal was turned down by my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State. The onus is therefore on his successor to prove
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that his Department knows what it is doing and that a corporate planning approach will be adopted in respect of these problems without further delay.
My right hon. and learned Friend can begin, for example, by calling a halt to the building of any more oil refineries in South-East Essex; in demanding an explanation why risks can be taken with shipping in the estuary and insisting upon proper navigation discipline; in calling for an investigation into how quickly the new motorway can be built; or, if the situation warrants it, postponing the date by which Maplin is to be operational.
Ministers at the Department of the Environment frequently protest that planning decisions, at least in my part of the world, will be taken with the best environmental considerations in mind. I believe they mean it. However, I should like to put their assurances to a simple test.
Improvements to the much-congested A127, one of the two main roads linking South-East Essex to London, are long overdue. At the important Weir Junction at Rayleigh it is proposed to install a flyover and to destroy a large part of the only established woodland in the Rayleigh urban district. I believe there will be some small compensation in land. But if one destroys woodland it will be a number of years before the trees on the compensation land become mature.
The flyover will undoubtedly destroy the peace of mind and happiness of scores of my constituents. Houses run close to the A127 on one side and within 200 yards or so on the other. I have asked my right hon. and learned Friend to consider an underpass which would greatly minimise the nuisance and, to give him credit, he has promised to consider this. But already, in a communication I have received, a line of retreat has been laid down by the statement that an underpass
"would be very much more expensive".
Oddly enough, an underpass is planned for a junction further to the east where fewer residents are involved, and for that reason alone there is a case for an underpass at the Rayleigh Weir.
Let us be clear about this. I am striking a blow tonight not merely for people in South-East Essex but for people anywhere in the kingdom who are threatened by massive developments and

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changes of this kind. Safeguarding the environment will be a costly business One cannot do it on the cheap. But since the nation and Parliament have willed that the third London airport is to be built not in the Vale of Aylesbury but in my constituency, the means of mitigating its ill effects on the large numbers of people who live in South-East Essex must be willed too. My constituents have just as much right to be considered in this context as the people who live in the Vale of Aylesbury or those who live around existing inland airports.
I now come to my last example, the proposed new motorway which is to link the Maplin complex with London. I know that my hon. Friend is awaiting at the moment a report from the engineering consultants whom the Government commissioned to study the feasibility of a number of routes. I think they were appointed last February. I know that no decision can be made on this until the consultants have reported and there has been an opportunity for consultation with the local authorities, but this does not prevent a great deal of speculation about where the routes might run and, indeed, some distress to people who may feel that they may be affected.
Yesterday's Daily Telegraph, not for the first time, featured a story on the subject, accompanied by a detailed map showing three possible routes One of these passed through what would be the very heart and lungs of the new airport city, dividing the settled communities of Southend in the east to Canvey, Thundersley, Benfleet and Rayleigh in the west from the new urban development that must come about as a result of the Maplin project. If this idea of punching a major motorway, and perhaps a new rail link, through the heart of what is to be a new city were allowed, it would be the worst kind of planning that one could envisage and I ask my hon. Friend to note that such an idea is totally unacceptable to the people whom I represent.
As Sir Colin Buchanan—I suppose one of the most distinguished traffic planners in the world, and a member of the Roskill Commission—said in his minority report, there is no reason at all why the new motorway should not run well north of any new urban development. I beg my hon. Friend to get this question settled
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just about as quickly as possible in order to put an end to speculation in newspapers about where the route may run, with diagrams and maps drawn by people who have not the faintest idea of the geography of the area, its social patterns and the unhappiness being caused by such speculation to large numbers of people.
My purpose tonight has been to issue a warning about our environment in South-East Essex while there is still time to do something about protecting and enhancing it. But time is running out. I hope, therefore, that my hon. Friend will be able to advise me that he is alert to all these related problems and is determined to do something about them, not in piecemeal fashion but with an eye to their total impact upon our community.
8.32 p.m.
Mr. Dick Douglas: I do not propose to detain the House very long. We are indebted to the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) for raising this subject on the Adjournment. He has done it in admirable fashion and indicated the complexity of planning and development in an area which already has a high density of population in certain sectors.
The Minister knows that although I represent a Scottish constituency, some time ago in an Adjournment debate I raised the whole issue of the development of port facilities at Maplin. Tonight I shall confine myself in the main to those aspects of the remarks of the hon. Member for Essex, South-East which relate to port development and refineries and the dangers involved there.
I have consistently argued—and in the not too distant future there will be an opportunity to raise the matter again when we debate the Maplin Development Bill—that there should not be a third London airport at Maplin. I have also argued the dangers of the build-up of port facilities and adjacent industrial development. In his reply to my Adjournment debate the Minister tried to assuage my fears by saying that there would be certain constrictions on the industrial development that was likely to take place adjacent to the port but we know—and as the plans of the Port of London Authority emerge piece by piece we

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see this—that there is a gigantic plan based on the airport to build up port facilities and a tanker terminal to satisfy both existing and new oil refineries in the South-East.
The dangers to the public are environmental, but they relate also to ocean traffic. We are talking in terms of 250,000-ton tankers in stage one and 500,000-ton tankers in stage two. I do not wish to go over the "Torrey Canyon" incident again but my recollection of the evidence—I have not had ready access to it recently—is that the captain of that ship, apart from certain difficulties among the officers, made one fatal mistake in that he did not slow down, and because of the tide going against him he was brought on to the rocks.
We have the prospect before us of 500,000 tons in size, the dangers in that the Channel, greatly increasing the dangers of collision in an already congested area. In the next phase, when tankers go up to 500,000 tons in size, the dangers in that congested area will be enormous. Not only are port facilities and refinery facilities in contemplation at Maplin. They are in Rotterdam, too. The two have to be seen together in a European context.
I am appalled that vast refinery expansion is under way or projected in the South-East while we in Scotland cannot get firm plans from BP for the expansion of an existing refinery at Grangemouth so that capacity there may go up from about 10 million tons to about 19 million tons a year, which is what we need to take some, though not all, of the North Sea oil which might be available.
We in Scotland are as concerned about the environment as the hon. Member for Essex, South-East is, but we are able to point already to the presence of deep-water facilities at Hunterston. No dredging there would be needed, but the dredging necessary to give access for a 500,000-ton tanker at Maplin would cost millions of pounds. It can be justified at Maplin only if the airport development is bounced up. That is the justification for it in port terms. In the oil companies' terms, the justification is that they have to be near the market for their refined products.
What about the social cost? The hon. Gentleman gave some indication of it but it has never been quantified. The Under-
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Secretary of State speaks for the Department of the Environment. Can he tell us the cost which the community will have to pay so that the oil companies may justify their argument that they must refine their products near the market? What will be the cost in social disruption and danger? These are difficult matters to quantify in terms of cost-benefit. In Scotland, on the other hand, we have facilities open to us. An imaginative project at Hunterston could act as a land energy bridge for Europe and for other markets, and it ought to be considered in relation to the build-up of refining capacity in the South-East.
The Port of London Authority is in difficulty because of the nature of the dock system at present, but the House ought not to let these plans go without searching criticism. I have always doubted—I shall remain utterly sceptical—the need for the development of the third London airport at Maplin, and I should wholeheartedly oppose the buildup of port facilities there. Such facilities will be a danger, potentially a very great danger to the community in the South-East, and they are not necessary unless, of course, the House and the Government accept the oil companies' own analysis of their demands.
I hope, therefore, that when looking at this matter generally the Minister will give searching thought to the points I have raised. I want him to assure the House that the Department will require the oil companies to do some basic cost-benefit analysis on social grounds rather than on the narrow micro-economic grounds which they use to justify their expansion plans.
8.39 p.m.
Mr. George Lawson: The debate is directed to the situation in South-East Essex, but the subject was presented by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) in a way which almost gave a crying invitation to comment from the wider point of view. I do not argue that all the troubles of which the hon. Gentleman spoke should be transferred to Scotland, but I wish to relate what he said to the broader picture.
The Under-Secretary of State is a Minister at the Department of the Environment. The recent adoption of

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that title, "Department of the Environment", suggests that from a governmental standpoint we have moved a good way from the position which obtained a few years ago. Until not so very long ago even Governments virtually washed their hands of economics. In my younger days we were told that unemployment was something over which Governments had no possible control. I recall that one learned professor argued that spots on the sun were the direct cause of unemployment. Various other professors had all sorts of arguments in those terms on the economy of the country and how the economies of this country and other countries were completely outwith any powers of governmental influence or control. But those days are past. There is virtually complete acceptance, even by the present Conservative Government, of responsibility for considerable measures of economic control.
I am in line with what the hon. Member for Essex, South-East has so admirably said, that the time has clearly come when our horizons should be lifted beyond mere economics so that we should be thinking in terms of the whole environmental structure within which we live. That includes economics, but it includes a different approach to economics than the one to which we have been accustomed. It means taking proper account of those costs which were previously never taken into account—for example, environmental, pollution and other costs. It is not just pollution; it is the injury we do to the wild life of our country.
I feel very distressed when I hear responsible people say that if it comes to a choice between a flight of wild ducks and some job-producing agency, they would always choose the job-producing agency as if it were the choice between a flight of ducks and a number of jobs. Almost the whole environmental set-up is in danger of being destroyed. The flight of ducks is merely an expression of this. It may be possible for the ducks to continue, but if it is not, so much else is not possible for us in this country. I take it that that is the plea being made tonight, and I endorse it completely.
I shall not go into the same detail as my hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas). He has paid great attention to this. I will make one
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point. It is important that we should recognise that the fact of going into Europe alters the importance of different localities of the United Kingdom. When we were thinking in terms of the Commonwealth reaching round the world, with London principally as the centre, many parts were peripheral. In my judgment, for example, Scotland was peripheral. But when one is thinking in terms of Europe, especially the northern industrial areas of Europe and the great rivers coming right into the centre of Europe, one realises that the whole of the North Sea is an inland lake for Europe and the whole of the eastern side of the British Isles bounded by the North Sea, for the whole length of England and Scotland is part of an inland lake. It is all part of what can be seen as the front street in terms of the flow of traffic and ease of coming in and out, because this part of Europe lies right astride Europe's exit and entry to the world, either up the Channel, around the north coast or across from one or other of the various points on the east coast of Scotland or the east coast of England to a concentrated and small area down in the extreme South-East.
We should be thinking of the whole of that coastline and making the best use of it—an organised use and not leaving it haphazardly to groups of industrialists or oil people who usually like to concentrate their energies at Rotterdam. If one comes in, they all want to come in. We want none of that. If we think carefully of how best to locate, we should have a substantial say in deciding where industrialists, oil and others, locate their works. We are thinking in terms of making the best use we can of our country in a whole range of ways and making the proper charge for what is being done or for that which is being despoiled.
I should like to make a special plea for my part of the country, that narrow waist of territory, only 40 miles wide, between Glasgow and Edinburgh, with the Clyde in the west and the Forth in the east offering deep-water shelter to big ships. It is capable of considerable industrial development. Instead of overcrowding and destroying the South-East, we could utilise this area.
I hope that the Minister will say that his Department is aware of the many other possibilities and that some of these

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developments cost more than can be shown on balance sheets. It is said that the polluter should pay for his pollution. But pollution can mean more than atmospheric or water pollution—it can mean spoiling the whole environment. We should insist on being paid for any such spoilation. Such destruction should not be permitted unnecessarily. I, too, back the hon. Member for Essex, South-East in his efforts to safeguard that already overcrowded part of what, measured against other nations, is a very small country.
8.47 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths): I congratulate the hon. Members for Motherwell (Mr. Lawson) and East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) on managing to hang on to the South-East corner of Essex a number of advertisements for the advantages of Scotland in the location of industry. I admire their tenacity in doing this while waiting for their trains.
But the debate was initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine), who said that it could not be disputed that South-East Essex has been growing more rapidly than most other parts of the country. I hope that he will allow me to say that I do not think that South-East Essex has had a Member more assiduous in protecting its interests and raising them in this House than my hon. Friend. In preparation for this debate, I looked up a number of the Adjournment debates that he has initiated over the years and I found that there are few matters concerning the environment of the people in his area which he has not at one time or another, eloquently and forcefully brought to the attention of the House.
He raised many matters of concern to his constituents with his usual thoroughness and eloquence. My right hon. Friend and I, in our approach to the Maplin project and to all the associated and ancillary developments, are first and foremost conscious of the impact on the environment in South-East Essex, particularly on the constituencies of my hon. Friend and his immediate neighbours.
I agree with my hon. Friend that where change is necessary it must be for the better rather than for the worse. That
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is the whole intention of our policy. My hon. Friend referred to the need for a comprehensive approach to all these matters. He stressed the importance of the approach not being of a piecemeal fashion. Once again, I completely agree with him. I can assure my hon. Friend that the structure of the Department of the Environment has been set up to achieve a comprehensive or a corporate approach to the planning that he espouses. For the first time we have within one Department executive control over the whole range of transport, land use planning and other aspects of policy.
The general sponsoriship of the local authorities within the complex, which has been brought together for the first time, means that we have the ability to take a total approach to environmental management and planning. My hon. Friend will recognise that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry set up with the approval of his colleagues in the Government, a directorate within my Department which brings together all the disciplines which are needed to achieve a coporate approach.
We have within my Department the Third London Airport Directorate which is partly staffed from the Department of the Trade and Industry. It is staffed by experts in many aspects of navigation, many other maritime and air aspects. We have from my Department those who are expert in rail matters, land use planning, relations with the local authorities and the management of ports. For the first time they have been brought together within one directorate. We are taking a total approach to this very large project. The directorate is, of course, presiding over the work of the project.
There is also the Progress Review Committee, which I chair, which includes representatives of the major authorities with an interest in the project. That is to say, we have serving on the committee representatives from the Third London Airport Directorate, the British Airports Authority, the Port of London Authority, the Essex County Council, Southend, Civil Aviation Authority and a number of independent experts. At all times we are able to take a total view and to ensure that the many arms of policy are working along the same lines.

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I should add that we must not forget the crucial role of the Essex County Council, which is the planning and structure plan authority. I understand that it will be producing a new structure plan which will take into account all the momentous changes arising from Maplin and the associated developments.
I can assure by hon. Friend that the Government are fully alive to the need to tackle the momentous developments as a totality. That is precisely what we are seeking to do. I should also like my hon. Friend to accept from me that it is the enviromental considerations that are uppermost in our minds and the minds of the local authorities.
Perhaps I should refer to some of the comments which the hon. Member for Motherwell made in an eloquent and thoughtful intervention. I hope that the hon. Member will accept that the reason that the Government chose to go to Maplin in the first place was precisely that of the environmental considerations which he put forward. It would have been so easy to secure a large portion of middle England somewhere between London and Birmingham and lay a vast area of concrete, with all the noise and the communications problems of a vast new airport.
Instead, at considerable additional cost in economic terms, we have chosen to go to Maplin so that the majority of the noise and most of the nuisance will be dispersed over the sea and will not affect the people of this country. It was an environmental rather than an economic consideration that led us to choose Maplin.
It should also be recognised that within the site of the proposed airport it would have been less expensive to choose a position for the runways in a more southerly situation. But that inevitably would have meant, though the cost would have been lower, that the noise impact, particularly upon the people of Southend and North Kent, would have been much greater. Again it was the environmental and not the economic consideration that led my right hon. Friend to agree that the site should be site C taking into account the very human and environmental considerations that the hon. Gentleman mentioned.
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The House is fortunate perhaps in having a little more time than is normally available for Adjournment debates. Therefore, it is right for me to give one or two additional facts about the whole environmental aspect which may be of interest to my hon. Friend. For example, he will know that my right hon. Friend has already made available substantial sums for investigation and re-allocation of the bird life in the area. I am happy to be able to say tonight that a 630-acre site at the Leigh Marshes, part of it on Two Tree island, is being offered by the Southend Corporation to the National Environmental Research Council as a nature reserve. This council is undertaking research into methods of conserving wild life in the Maplin area. The Progress Review Committee, which advises the Government on all aspects of the Maplin project, will shortly be enlarged by the addition of a member specifically concerned with environmental matters, and I hope to be able to announce his name early in the New Year.
I must not go into further detail about the Maplin project because there will be an opportunity when we debate the Bill, but I think I must deal briefly with a number of suggestions which have recently received publicity in the Press to the effect that there is no need for the Maplin airport at all, or, if there is a need, it should come later. The need for this airport by about 1980 was fully established by the unanimous recommendation of the Roskill Commission. The Americans invented the word "overkill". We invented the word "Roskill", which means tens of millions of words of testimony in arriving at what is, I think by any measure, a well-researched decision. The Government have accepted that recommendation, and all the forecasts of air traffic still bear it out completely.
Thus the air transport movements in the London area have been growing at about 6 per cent. per year since Roskill started work, and there can be no doubt that more and more difficulties are being encountered and will be encountered in handling the traffic into London, especially at peak periods. There can be no doubt that even if there is a rather lower rate of growth in the future, we shall need this new airport as soon as we can possibly get it, for we must give

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some relief to the increasing noise and environmental problems that are being created at existing airports in the London area.
It has also been suggested that the Channel tunnel will be a significant rival to the airport, casting doubts on whether it is necessary. I can only say that if the tunnel were to be built, let us say, by 1980, and if high-speed trains were to run on either side of the Channel carrying passengers to it, and if they captured two-thirds of the traffic on the short-haul routes to Europe, they would still take away from the London airports only the equivalent of one year's growth in traffic. These estimates are not mine. They are estimates of the Roskill Commission, and I think they put into perspective the suggestion that the Channel tunnel can make this very large project unnecessary.
Mr. Douglas: Would the hon. Gentleman explain whether he means one year's growth in short-haul traffic or one year's growth in total traffic?
Mr. Griffiths: One year's growth in the traffic which needs to be handled at that airport. It is a mix which is very difficult to make precisely because of changes among airlines.
There has also been the suggestion made in some parts of the Press that somehow this airport could be avoided if by a severe pricing policy charter flights and the holiday trade were forced out of London to go somewhere else, but I hope that before anyone in this House endorses that suggestion he will ask himself the question, whether in the South-East of England, where some 13 million to 15 million people live, it would be fair or, indeed, even acceptable to the public to force large numbers of people to travel out of the region in which they live in order to go on charter flights for their holidays. I believe that would be creating a ground congestion problem and would be requiring people to go to airports in different parts of the country in a fashion which would be quite unacceptable.
Mr. Lawson: Is this strictly the way to describe it? Is it not the case that people are brought to areas such as this from other parts of the country?
Mr. Griffiths: I am sure that if the hon. Member takes a package tour nowadays he will get on the aircraft in Glasgow or Edinburgh—at an airport more suitable for him. Increasingly, leisure travel operators are offering flights from a variety of places. However, it must surely be wrong to ask the large numbers of people in South-Eastern England to remove themselves from South-Eastern England to go to another airport to obtain package flights.
Mr. Lawson: Surely this is not the argument. The argument is that by this build up one is bringing so many more people to the South-East of England than would otherwise live there.
Mr. Griffiths: I thought that was the point the hon. Member was making. I must tell him that all the evidence is that 80 per cent. of the Maplin passengers, that is, four out of every five, are likely to live in the area or to be visiting the South-East region, including London, and an important point is that very large numbers of foreign visitors who come to this country inevitably come to the London area. So 80 per cent. of the traffic will not be coming from other parts of the country. There will be more who, for one reason or another, are already in the South-East. One must accept that airlines, especially foreign airlines, which we cannot push around, are not likely to serve the very large amount of traffic generated in the South-East region by offering services from other airports in other parts of the country than the South-East. One must come back to the central point that there will be no hope of giving relief to those already living round the existing airports in the South-East region unless we can bring Maplin into operation as soon as possible.
I must come to the points raised by my hon. Friend. I start with the oil refinery. He referred to the permission given in November, 1971 for an oil refinery at Canvey Island. This decision was taken after a public inquiry at which all concerned had a chance to make known their views, and the permission was subject to certain conditions intended, in particular, to safeguard the amenities of the area. I have looked up some of the results of the inquiry. My hon. Friend will recall that at the inquiry the pollution assessor

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was satisfied that neither the air nor the water pollution likely to arise from the refinery could justify refusal of the application; that the medical assessor said that there was no reason—no reason at all—to conclude that the increase in ground level concentration of sulphur dioxide likely to result from the refinery would have any harmful effects on the health of the people on Canvey Island or the neighbouring areas; and that the navigational assessor advised that the increase in shipping would not cause congestion on the river, and that it would not materially increase the risk of collision. The navigation assessor, in fairness, also said that whilst there was also the risk of accident, the danger of serious oil pollution would be only marginally greater as a result of the construction of the refinery.
Sir Bernard Braine: With great respect, my hon. Friend is not answering an argument which I put. I did not refer to the oil refinery for which authority has already been given. I am referring to the application for a second oil refinery next door to it. While it may be that danger to health from one, two, three, four or five refineries may be said by many experts not to be as great as perhaps some members of the public fear, that was not the point I made. My point was that a concentration of refineries produces a smell nuisance, but, more important than that, it builds up a concentration of high fire risks, and we already have too many of them.
Mr. Griffiths: I shall come to the points my hon. Friend mentions. But it is important to demonstrate that the report of the public inquiry which recommended—a recommendation to which my right hon. Friend agreed—the establishment of the 1971 refinery was examined with the greatest care. The technical evidence was very sound.
My hon. Friend rightly says that it is not one refinery that matters but the concatenation of a whole series of refineries. All these refineries are subject to inspection by my Department's Alkali and Clean Air Inspectorate. The major pollution problem which refineries can create is the emission of sulphur dioxide. I suspect that this is the smell to which my hon. Friend is referring. But the
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levels of sulphur dioxide are going down, both nationally and in the Southend area. Indeed, I am advised that there is no indication that Southend is being affected by sulphur dioxide from the existing installations on Thameside.
Now I must pass on to the installations that do not exist on Thamesside. My hon. Friend referred to the build-up of refineries and raised the question of Mr. Black's comments in recent newspaper articles. It is not for me to comment on what may or may not appear in the Press. But lest my hon. Friend be in any doubt, I simply say that Mr. Black is not the planning authority or the authority charged with putting oil refineries in one place or another. The decision as to where refineries shall be is a decision in the end for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and not for Mr. Black or anyone else.
I must put the facts of the present situation, as briefly as I can. First, we have not given any decision on the application for a new refinery at Cliffe. No decision has been made about Cliffe. Secondly, I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has not been made aware of any proposals for expansion at Shellhaven or on the Isle of Grain. No such proposals have been presented to him. Thirdly, the expansion at Coryton allows for an increase in an annual throughput from 6·6 million tons to 8·3 million tons a year, which is a significant increase, although not a rise of the kind which is beyond the capacity of the environment of the area to handle against the background I have described.
Fourthly, there is a new application by United Refineries Ltd. to build a refinery on Canvey Island next to the Occidental refinery site. A public local inquiry on this application is due to start on 3rd January. I should like to give my hon. Friend at least the assurance that my right hon. Friend will take most fully into account the environmental factors and the views of the local people and of my hon. Friend before reaching any decision upon that application.
Sir Bernard Braine: I am grateful for what my hon. Friend has just said. He spoke about an earlier public inquiry but he did not mention that on that occasion all the local authorities concerned were opposed to the Occidental refinery. They

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were overruled. I hope that when the second application is the subject of an inquiry the Secretary of State will take note that the local authorities are still opposed and I hope that this time due attention will be paid to the feelings of the local people.
Mr. Griffiths: I have given my hon. Friend that assurance and I hope he will accept it from me. A working party within my Department has just completed an important paper on the selection of sites for oil refineries in this country. It is, I believe, a document of some importance and I shall ensure that the three hon. Members who have spoken in the debate this evening are each provided with a copy. It has just been circulated to the planning authorities.
I turn to what my hon. Friend said about navigation in the Thames. He will appreciate that this is a matter in the first instance for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. I can say on his behalf, however, that he realises that this problem is significant. He is in no sense complacent about it and he accepts the need to improve the arrangements for navigation in the Thames Estuary. I hope that my hon. Friend will recognise that that is an important statement by the Secretary of State. To this end discussions have been held recently by the Thames Joint Consultative Committee, the members of which include representatives of all interests concerned with navigation in the estuary. I am advised that agreement has now been reached on a new General Direction for navigation in the Thames. This is good news and I am advised that a Notice to Mariners following on that General Direction will be issued early in the new year.
I understand also that discussions between all the parties concerned about the berthing of tankers are now in progress. My hon. Friend mentioned examples of tanker captains refusing to accept pilots when berthing in these crowded waters. Of course, if it were the case it would be a serious matter. But I am advised that no incidents of tanker captains refusing pilots on entering the river are known to my right hon. Friend. My hon. Friend the Member for Essex, South-East said that he would let us have chapter and verse on this point and if he will do so I will undertake that the matter will be
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looked at urgently by the Department of Trade and Industry who are responsible in this sphere.
Sir Bernard Braine: I am grateful for what my hon. Friend said and I am sure the House is reassured. I would not have raised this matter unless I had had actual proof in my hand that serious risks were being taken. I have seen letters from two channel pilots which were sent to the Channel Pilots General Purposes Committee. The first referred to an incident in the early hours of 17th October when the services of a pilot were refused. The pilot reported:
"Whatever the reasons for not wishing to have assistance at unberthing operations I feel that unnecessary risks are being taken and that safety margins are being reduced to below an acceptable minimum."
In the second case, the pilot said, his services having been refused,
"Fortunately the unberthing was carried out successfully and the vessel proceeded to sea as planned. The Master … is no doubt a very competent shipmaster and certainly knows his own ship's capabilities, but I detected a certain lack of consideration in his attitude to other shipping which could have been endangered if the operaton had gone wrong, e.g., engine or steering failure with no tugs to rectify the situation. I therefore feel concerned as to the safety of life and property in the vicinity of … jetties if the practice of 'no tugs' is to become a regular practice, especially in the case of loaded ships with dangerous cargoes."
The dangers have therefore been spelled out very clearly. I hope that the instructions will be issued quickly that there will be no argument about them, and that discipline will be enforced in the Thames Estuary.
Mr. Griffiths: I take note of what my hon. Friend said and I repeat that if he will give me chapter and verse on these points I shall look into them at once.
Perhaps I could return to his further point about the impact on his constituency of the communication links to the Maplin site. In this connection he mentioned reports of a meeting in Southend at which the somewhat ubiquitous Mr. John Black was outlining proposals for the seaport. It is, of course, perfectly reasonable for the Port of London officials to outline their ideas for the future in public. I welcome the fact that they are entering into the spirit of public participation in this way. But I must make it crystal clear that Mr. Black and the Port of London Authority, if he is

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speaking on their behalf, are talking here only about their own proposals or their own aspirations. It is for them to propose and it is for the Government to dispose.
The Government have accepted in principle the case for a seaport at Maplin. But we are not committed in any way to any particular proposal or to any particular timing. The Port of London Authority knows that perfectly well. The timetable for all the work connected with the Maplin project, site reclamation, the plans of the British Airports Authority, the Civil Aviation Authority and even the Port of London Authority, the organisation, the links all these things remain under the Government's control and not under the control of the Port of London Authority.
Therefore anxieties that the port will somehow be ahead of the communication facilities may well be generated by speeches by officials of one organisation or another. But it is my duty to say on behalf of the Government that the timetable rests with us and the decision whether there will be a port, what kind of a port and when is a matter on which we would first require the advice of the National Ports Council and then under, I believe, Section 9 of the Harbours Act we would have to take into account a lot of other considerations, including the impact on other ports in the area and on the whole regional economic policy of the country.
I hope that my hon. Friend will accept my assurance, and that his constituents will accept my assurance through him, that whatever may be said by one official or another, the decisions on the timetable and on the port are with the Government and they have not yet been taken. I hope, therefore, that he will disregard much of the scarey headlines that have been engendered by Mr. Black's speech.
I must distinguish between two quite separate problems on communications that appear to be mixed up. One is the motorway, or the combination of motorway and rail link, which has the task of joining London to the new project as it is completed. The second is the problem of the traffic during the construction period, which undoubtedly could place
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an additional strain on the existing road structure of Essex.
On the first point, the new motorway and rapid transit corridor, my hon. Friend referred to recent reports on this subject in the Daily Telegraph. The Daily Telegraph is a newspaper that he and I admire. It might be that the newspaper did such a good job in objecting to the airport being sited at Cublington that it feels it must now give a fairer share of space to those who object to having it at Maplin. Whatever the reason, these articles and the alleged routes for the motorway that appeared in the map are sheer speculation.
The feasibility of the various possible routes between London and Maplin is being studied in depth by our consultants. They have not yet completed that work and their recommendations are not yet available to us. They have been told to put environmental considerations high among their priorities, but until we have their report we cannot make any proposal. Once we have the report, we shall put forward proposals as soon as we can. On the one hand, we have to avoid blight and on the other we have to bear in mind the improved arrangements for compensation under the new Land Compensation Bill. We also have a desire, which I know the House will support, that there should be wide public discussion in advance of any official decision.
In the early hours of this morning my hon. Friend, speaking on behalf of my Department, said that the Secretary of State had in mind to impose arrangements for consulting the public about all future motorways and to give an undertaking to publish consultation documents within about a month's time. We shall do all we can to allow full discussion by the public of the routes to Maplin.
I turn to the question of the local routes and the problem of construction traffic before the new motorway is completed. I ask my hon. Friend to tell those of his local authorities which he has consulted that to imagine the motorways need to be completed before the construction is begun is a reductio ad absurdum. To a great extent the construction will be going on long before the question of the motorway can be decided. We must first pick up the missiles from the sands,

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begin the job of dredging, build the sea wall and do all the other necessary jobs to get the port and the airport under way. The heavy construction traffic in the early stages of the project will be carried as far as possible by sea—I think largely by sea. That is one of the great advantages of the coastal site.
British Rail have told me that they are hoping to extend the existing Shoeburyness line on to the reclaimed land. That would be helpful not only in dealing with the construction traffic but also as a permanent addition to Maplin's communications. I do not accept the statement, whoever made it, that container traffic travelling less than 100 miles must go by road. It does not necessarily do so from Harwich or Felixstowe and there is no reason to expect that it will do so from Maplin.
We shall do our best to make sure that construction traffic is carried by sea or rail, but there is bound to be some extra loading on the existing roads. We are now giving urgent consideration to what further works may be needed to deal with this increase in traffic without imposing an unbearable strain upon the roads of the area. In so doing we are consulting the local authorities concerned.
We do not expect any major construction traffic problem before 1976, and by that time we expect to have completed the junction improvements, the grade separation, on the A127 and to have improved the east-west route through Southend. In doing so we shall have regard to making preparations for the new town.
My hon. Friend referred to the proposal to build a fly-over at Rayleigh Weir. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries has announced that there will be a public inquiry on this proposal. I am sure that my hon. Friend will attend the inquiry, if he is able to do so, to express his strong feelings in favour of the underpass rather than the fly-over. The inquiry will be held on 18th January and it will provide an opportunity for all the arguments, including those mentioned by my hon. Friend, to be put forward.
I have quite deliberately taken my time this evening in a fashion not normally possible in an Adjournment debate. I think that it has been useful to have a
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fairly wide-ranging discussion about the Maplin project, but I only hope that my hon. Friend will accept at the end that we are indeed approaching this whole project in a comprehensive way, looking at it as a total challenge to a Department of the Environment.
I ask the House to accept that, far from wringing our hands and lamenting this very challenging project, we should be relishing the prospect of what is arguably the largest single engineering project ever undertaken in Europe, and certainly one of the greatest projects that this country has ever taken on. By building the new airport at Maplin, we shall relieve millions of people who at present are suffering from noise; we shall avoid obliterating large communities which would have had to be obliterated if this airport had been put anywhere else in the kingdom; we shall be embarking on the construction on the south Essex coast of a new city whose whole environment we must ensure is built to the highest possible standards. In all this, of course, we must have regard to all those who are already living in the area, and I undertake that we shall do our utmost to do so.
Sir Bernard Braine: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the assurance that he has just given. But I made no reference to the impact of the third London airport at Maplin. That is a matter for another occasion. What I am concerned about is that, if the best environmental conditions are to obtain as the Maplin project develops, the environment is not ruined in the meantime by allowing piecemeal decisions to be made in regard to oil refineries, of which we already have far too many.
My plea to my hon. Friend tonight is that he should see the whole problem in the round. I have no quarrel with Maplin. I think that it provides great opportunity for our community and the nation. But there are so many other things happening in South-East Essex which may turn the whole development into a nightmare unless the right decisions are taken now. I beg him to see that adding one more oil refinery to the concentration we already have is totally unacceptable to our people. That will

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be the test of the good faith of much of what he has said tonight.
Mr. Griffiths: I thank my hon. Friend for underlining that point, which I recog-
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nise and which of course I shall bear very much in mind.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-eight minutes past Nine o'clock.