Commons Sitting of 30 April 1973

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  POSTS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS

    Television Licence Fee (Pensioners)
    Mr. Redmondasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications how many retirement pensioners in Bolton are now entitled to old persons' homes television licences; and how many have availed themselves of them.
    The Minister of Posts and Telecom munications (Sir John Eden): There are 45 licences benefiting 1,876 people. Information about the number of people who may be eligible but who have not claimed is not available.
    Mr. Redmond: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that there are people who could take up this con cession and do not. Does not that really prove that not all old-age pensioners want television and that many who cannot afford the full licence fee do not get the concession while many who do get it can afford the full fee? Would not my right hon. Friend be well advised to have a word with his right hon. Friend the Chan cellor of the Exchequer with a view to giving all old-age pensioners the same benefits, irrespective of whether they want television?
    Sir J. Eden: Taking my hon. Friend's second point, the position of the Government is well known from debates that we have had in the House. On the first part
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    of his question, it would be helpful to have as much publicity as possible given to the existence of this special licence. I am sure that as it becomes increasingly widely known those who believe that they can benefit from it will claim.
    Mr. Golding: Is not the Government's attitude quite indefensible? Is not it unreasonable that private cinemas allow old-age pensioners to look at their screens cheaply when the Government do not assist pensioners to do the same in relation to a public service? Is not it inconsistent to say, at a time when old-age pensioners receive concessionary travel fares, that those who cannot travel should not be subsidised to watch television?
    Sir J. Eden: The Government's attitude is the view which was shared by the Labour Government, namely, that the proper way to help elderly people is through the social services.
    Mr. R. C. Mitchellasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications how many retirement pensioners in the Southampton area are covered by the concessionary television licences scheme.
    Sir J. Eden: The figure is 2,697.
    Mr. Mitchell: Is the right hon. Gentle man aware of the very small proportion that that represents of the total number of old-age pensioners in the Southampton area? Will he seriously consider extending the concessionary scheme to cover all those in receipt of supplementary benefit, if nothing else?
    Sir J. Eden: As the hon. Gentleman knows, in the Government's view there is no way in which to extend the concessionary basis without creating further anomalies. I think it is better to provide cash benefits to enable people to spend them as they choose.

    Telephone Kiosks (Vandalism)
    Mr. O'Halloranasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications what is his estimate of the damage done by vandalism to telephone kiosks during 1972.
    Sir J. Eden: The cost to the Post Office of damage due to vandalism was £473,000 in the year ended 31st March 1973.
    Mr. O'Halloran: I am grateful for that reply. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware

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    that in the Greater London area today it is almost impossible to find a telephone kiosk which is operative? Will the Minister say what research the Post Office is conducting into anti-vandalism equipment?
    Sir J. Eden: I am sorry to hear the hon. Gentleman's reference to the position in London. I am certain that the Post Office will wish to take into account the need specially to watch it. But the fact remains that a great deal of work is being done on vandal-proof kiosks, and this has improved the position. At the moment I cannot go further than that.
    Dr. Glyn: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that even if it is costing £400,000 a year it is worth speeding up research on this anti-vandalism approach to the kiosk because, whether it is in Lon don or anywhere else, my right hon. Friend knows that many kiosks simply cannot be used because of vandalism?
    Sir J. Eden: It was the result of re search which led to the introduction of about 4,000 vandal-resistant kiosks which have been specially fitted with strengthened equipment, fluorescent lighting and large panes of toughened glass. Research is continuing. I emphasise that this is a difficulty which the Post Office itself is most anxious to overcome, and of course the help of local authorities, local education authorities and communities is greatly valued.
    Mr. Frank Allaun: Will the Minister consider the placing of one kiosk in all blocks of council flats? Apart from discouraging vandalism it would provide a telephone for people who need one badly and in most cases cannot afford one of their own.
    Sir J. Eden: That is a matter for direct negotiation between the local authorities and the Post Office, because, as the hon. Gentleman will recognise, the installation of telephone facilities in buildings has to be financed and paid for.
    Mr. Fowler: What consultations have taken place with the police on the subject of ways in which these vandal attacks can be prevented? Surely that is the best way of preventing this crime.
    Sir J. Eden: That is a matter primarily for the Post Office. I have no information
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    to hand, but I will inquire for my hon. Friend.
    Mr. Golding: Is the Minister going to leave undenied the assertion that nearly every telephone kiosk in London is un usable? Did the incidence of vandalism last year increase or decrease?
    Sir J. Eden: It is difficult to deduce from the figures for one year, but the indication is that vandalism is on the decrease. Although the costs tell a different story, we should bear in mind that the costs of materials have gone up. Therefore, it is not easy to analyse the true situation from a straight look at the figures from one year to the next. The trend is certainly encouraging. I agree with the hon. Gentleman's observation on the first point. Obviously, if there were as widespread a disruption in London as has been indicated it would be a matter of grave concern.
    Mr. Edwin Wainwright: Does the Minister agree that the action of these hooligans in destroying telephone kiosks is most despicable? Will he guarantee that research will continue into finding a vandal-proof kind of kiosk and not cut away this form of passing emergency messages by people who might wish to use it? Will he also consider the application that has been put in for three telephone kiosks in my constituency, where at present three areas are without facilities for making telephone calls?
    Sir J. Eden: Many of the measures that have been suggested, not least by hon. Members, to combat vandalism, which I agree is a terrible crime, have already been tried by the Post Office, but I am afraid that most of them have been without any special degree of success. I am cautious about the statistics because the Post Office has recently introduced a new method for collecting statistics which is more efficient and thorough and therefore illustrates a more widespread degree of trouble in this area than had previously been shown However, the Post Office is extremely concerned about this matter and I assure the House that its research efforts are continuing.

    Post Office Questions
    Mr. Sydney Chapmanasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications if he will list in detail in the OFFICIAL

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    REPORT those aspects of the work of the Post Office on which he is prepared to answer Questions.
    Sir J. Eden: No, Sir. I follow the rules and practices that govern Parliamentary Questions about the affairs of all nationalised industries. These follow recommendations of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries and do not lend themselves to particularisation.
    Mr. Chapman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that there seems to be con fusion not only on both sides of the House but in the Table Office about what Questions may be asked of him? Is it not reaching the height of absurdity when supplementary questions may, apparently, be asked about matters affecting the Post Office as long as the main Parliamentary Question is prefaced by the remark, "Will he give a direction to the Post Office"?
    Sir J. Eden: One has to be very careful about the kind of questions one answers, to ensure that one does not trespass upon the day-to-day management responsibilities of those who have been appointed to run these businesses. My hon. Friend will find much fuller information on this subject if he turns to the conclusions in the First Report of the Select Committee on Nationalised Industries for the Session 1967–68, pages 186 and 187.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that many of us are quite satisfied with the reduction in the number of Questions that can now be placed with the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, thus avoiding the silly little questions—for example, about the late arrival of a letter from Knutsford to London—that we had in the previous Parliament? Does it not follow that he is grossly overpaid and that his salary ought to be reduced?
    Sir J. Eden: I have not considered the matter from that aspect. One of the great time-consuming factors involved in my present job is determining the right balance between ministerial responsibility and management concern.
    Mr. Gregor Mackenzie: Notwithstanding what the Minister has said about answers to Questions, a number of Questions have been put to him which, in my
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    view, involve other areas—for example, Intelsat and our relationships with other countries on communications of that kind. In the circumstances, would it not be right for him to answer questions of this kind rather than to refer them to the Post Office as he has done in days past?
    Sir J. Eden: I endeavour to answer Questions concerned with a wider context than the detailed matter of management. With respect, I cannot give an affirmative or negative answer to the question that the hon. Gentleman has put to me, as that would carry me into just that degree of particularisation which I do not think the rules allow.

    Telephone Rentals (Pensioners)
    Mr. Edwin Wainwrightasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications if he will give a general direction to the Post Office to grant concessionary telephone rentals to elderly citizens who are living on their own, and are not under the coverage of a wardens' system.
    Sir J. Eden: No, Sir. Subsidised telephone charges, whether as a general scheme to help a certain group of sub scribers or financial assistance to individuals in need, are a matter for the social services.
    Mr. Wainwright: Will the Minister show a little more compassion for people who are housebound, incapable of leaving their homes, living alone and having none of the privileges which obtain in a wardens' scheme? Does he agree that it is time the Government did something about it? It is no good his passing on the problem to some other Department.
    Sir J. Eden: I agree that there are many people for whom a telephone or some similar means of communications is an essential link. I am not denying that. All I am saying is that the financing of such a scheme is a matter for discussion with the Department of Health and Social Security rather than with the Post Office.
    Mr. Kinsey: I am sure that my right hon. Friend is aware of the need for handicapped people to have communication with the outside world. Will he use his good offices to intervene between the Department of Health and Social Security and the Post Office to give some help

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    to people for not only rental but installation costs, which are denied to many handicapped people if they have a small amount of capital?
    Sir J. Eden: The Post Office is willing to enter into discussions with the relevant authorities on these matters. As my hon. Friend knows, local welfare bodies have permissive powers to help certain people with the cost of a telephone, and they were given additional powers under the Chronically Sick and Disabled Per sons Act 1970 to provide telephones where appropriate. The Supplementary Benefits Commission may also consider claims for additional benefit to help towards the cost of a telephone. It is in these areas that work ought to be done.
    Mr. Pavitt: If the Minister cannot make this concession, will he get rid of the monstrous situation in which a large percentage of old people have to pay more for installation charges if they are hard of hearing and need a transistorised hand set? Is it not time that such charges were reduced to the level that people without hearing disabilities have to pay?
    Sir J. Eden: I understand the human problems which lie behind the questions by the hon. Gentleman and others who have raised these matters, but the fact remains that by virtue of the passing of the 1969 Act the Post Office was converted into a corporation. As such, it is expected to make its business pay and to cover its costs. Therefore, it must be conducted on that basis.

    Broadcasting (Inquiry)
    Mr. David Steelasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications whether he will now announce the membership and the terms of reference of the Government's commission to study broad casting services in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and rural England which was proposed in Command Paper No. 5244.
    Sir J. Eden: I have nothing to add to the answer I gave the hon. Member on 2nd April.—[Vol. 854, c. 1.]
    Mr. Steel: When the commission is set up will it be within its terms of reference to consider whether the next development in broadcasting facilities
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    should begin at the end of the country opposite to London and be finalised in London, instead of the other way about, which is what all licence-holders have had to put up with so far?
    Sir J. Eden: I will announce the full terms of reference at the same time as I am able to announce the appointment of the chairman.
    Mr. Edward Taylor: Will my right hon. Friend make sure that when the membership of the commission is announced it will not include people who are already so busy and occupied in other fields that they do not have time to watch television themselves?
    Sir J. Eden: I shall be appointing the best people to conduct the operations of the study group in order to bring conclusions to me as rapidly as possible.
    Mr. Ewing: Will the right hon. Gentle man consider examining this problem rather more urgently? Is he aware that there is a great deal of uncertainty in broadcasting circles in these areas mainly because of the Minister's failure so far to set up the commission and name the members to carry out the inquiry?
    Sir J. Eden: I need no encouragement to consider the matter urgently. It is with me almost hourly.
    Mr. Maclennan: Will the commission consider the problem of reception particularly in remote areas, where it is very bad? In the larger part of my constituency, BBC1 can be received, but nothing else, and even the reception of that programme is appalling. Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that under the present arrangements it is likely that by 1980 the situation will be even worse? There is a great deal of urgency in the matter, and I underline the points made by my hon. Friends.
    Sir J. Eden: That is to be one of the main purposes of the study group. It was that point that was highlighted in the recent White Paper.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Will my right hon. Friend give an assurance that someone from Northern Ireland will be on this commission? Is he aware that in my constituency there is great difficulty in getting good reception on BBC1? We get Scottish Television, but just as we

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    are anxious to press on with STV in our elections, so we should prefer to get BBC1.
    Sir J. Eden: The general point made by my hon. Friend will be considered by the study group. I shall announce the membership of the commission just as soon as I am able to do so.
    Mr. John Grant: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an assurance that he will receive and publish the findings of the study group before he makes any decision on the allocation of the fourth channel, bearing in mind the possible use of the fourth channel for improving regional coverage?
    Sir J. Eden: I have already under taken to bring before Parliament as much information as I am able to do on this and other matters—including the question whether, and if so how, to allocate the fourth channel—before any decisions are taken.

    Meetings with Members
    Mr. Juddasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications how many official meetings he has had in 1973 with hon. Members on matters concerning his relationship with the Post Office.
    Sir J. Eden: One, on 3rd April 1973.
    Mr. Judd: Following that meeting with hon. Members from both sides of the House, will the Minister clarify the attitude of his Department, as distinct from that of the Post Office, towards the commendable proposal that the Post Office might assist in fund-raising for charities by the sale of stamps? In particular, will he make a statement on the attitude of his Department towards the problem surrounding the use of the Queen's head?
    Sir J. Eden: I should rather leave that. I found the meeting on 3rd April 1973 of considerable value and I am closely studying the representations that were then made to me.
    Mr. Luce: Will my right hon. Friend state clearly why he appears to have ended the experiment, particularly as the vast majority of charities consulted last year by the National Council of Social Service supported it and particularly as the Post Office originally decided that it found the experiment administratively feasible?
    Sir J. Eden: I cannot add to my supplementary answer to the hon. Member for Portsmouth, West (Mr. Judd).

    European Postal Rates
    Mr. Biffenasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications what is the estimated impact on the revenue of the postal services of the proposal of the President of the European Commission, M. Francois Xavier-Ortoli, that Great Britain should charge domestic rates for ordinary letters and postcards despatched to foreign countries which are members of the Common Market.
    Sir J. Eden: The Post Office estimates the loss of revenue at about £2 million a year assuming that this concession were applied, as the Commission envisages, to letters at the first weight step and postcards.
    Mr. Biffen: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that M. Francois Xavier-Ortoli shows a charming innocence with regard to the finances of the Post Office to make such a suggestion at this time? Can my right hon. Friend assure us that the Post Office will carry out a comparative study of the cost involved in the dispatch of domestic mail within this country and mail to other countries within the Community before undertaking any such form of cross-subsidisation, as is seemingly implied in this suggestion?
    Sir J. Eden: I am sure that the Post Office will wish to conduct full studies into the matter. The concessionary postage rates in force between certain EEC member countries stem from separate agreements which were made outside the Treaty of Rome, but this is something which we are prepared to discuss with individual countries.
    Mr. English: But since the Common Market is spending between £30 million and £50 million on subsidising Polish barley and other sums on subsidising Russian butter, has not the right hon. Gentleman asked for a subsidy for this purpose—or has he asked and been re fused it?
    Sir J. Eden: Barley and butter are not matters for me.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: Does not my right hon. Friend agree that this has nothing to do with the Treaty of Rome, and that

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    the agreements which exist between some of the member countries of the EEC were concluded outside that treaty? Will he further confirm that the Post Office and Her Majesty's Government would have to conclude separate agreements with EEC countries before any such concession was allowed in this country?
    Sir J. Eden: I confirm what my hon. Friend has said. This is a matter for bi lateral discussion and agreement, if it can be concluded. These matters do not derive from the Treaty of Rome, which contains no specific provision relating to postal rates and imposes no new obligations upon Her Majesty's Government in this respect.
    Mr. Ewing: Does the right hon. Gentleman consider this to be a management or a Government matter? If he considers it to be a Government responsibility will he assure the House that he will resist the proposals and will, in the process, point out to the Common Market countries that any reduction in the cost of mail to them would increase the cost of mail inside this country?
    Sir J. Eden: This matter is obviously of interest to both the Government and the Post Office, and it is something which would have to be carried further through bilateral discussions.

    Broadcasting (Public Relations)
    Mr. Fowlerasked the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications whether he is in a position to make a statement on the talks he is having with the broadcasting organisations on relations between them and the public.
    Sir J. Eden: My discussions with the broadcasting organisations are continuing and I would welcome suggestions from other organisations and members of the public on the ways in which viewers' interests can best be represented.
    Mr. Fowler: I thank my right hon. Friend for that helpful reply. Perhaps I may make one suggestion. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the idea of an independent broadcasting council to hear complaints from members of the public who believe that they are aggrieved is one of the subjects under active consideration at these talks? Will he also recognise that many of us believe that that would be one of the best ways of
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    improving relations between broadcasting organisations and the public?
    Sir J. Eden: All matters concerned with the representation of viewers' interests are pertinent to the discussions that I am having. I must point out that these talks are likely to continue for some months and that I am not likely to be in a position to arrive at an early conclusion on this matter. The fact remains, however, that the broadcasting authorities themselves are anxious independently to make whatever improvements they can in the formal representations procedure that they have introduced.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Will the right hon. Gentleman treat with a great deal of caution the complaints of moralising busybodies outside, who want to be self-appointed censors for the rest of us? Does not he recognise that the number of complaints to broadcasting authorities is minute compared with the millions of people who watch and listen to broad casts for hours every day and that, with out any controversy at all, we have the best broadcasting services in the world?
    Sir J. Eden: I listen with great and equal respect to all views which are represented to me and I do not judge the quality of a particular opinion by the volume of representation accompanying it. It is important to have a balanced view on this vital subject.
    Mr. Evelyn King: In the course of those talks, has there been any discussion about the decision announced in today's Press by the IBA, to the effect that when a programme contains sadism or violence it will be marked by a little badge so that viewers may know what they will be seeing? Does the Minister agree that that would be giving a licence to the Authority to permit sadism? Is this not a deplorable suggestion, likely to do far more harm than good?
    Sir J. Eden: That is a matter for the IBA.
    Mr. John Grant: The Minister says that he is still welcoming suggestions in this matter, yet the Government's recent White Paper turned down flat the Select Committee's suggestion of a communications council, which it called undesirable. Can he say why?
    Sir J. Eden: That, of course, is another matter, but the suggested communications council went far wider than just broadcasting. It would also have included the Press. But this is a matter which I believe is to be debated later this week.
    Mr. Jessel: Will my right hon. Friend make it clear to the broadcasting authorities that there is widespread concern about the character of much of what is put out, especially by BBC Television, and that much of what is broadcast is harmful, or in bad taste? Will he also make it clear that if the broadcasting authorities want to improve their relations with the public they should look critically at what they are doing?
    Sir J. Eden: There is scope for more than one opinion on that subject, but I have no doubt that the broadcasting authorities will take careful note of what my hon. Friend has said.
    Mr. Robert C. Brown: When considering the representations of my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) about those people outside the House who moralise about things that appear on "the box", will the Minister be guarded in his attitude to the moralising of some people in the House, on programmes like "Tom and Jerry", which are greatly enjoyed?
    Sir J. Eden: As I have said, there are different points of view both within and outside the House, and I take account of them all.

  TRADE AND INDUSTRY

    Industry Act
    Mr. Horamasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will publish a six-monthly information sheet detailing, with statistics, the impact of the Industry Act on the Northern Region.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Anthony Grant): No, Sir. Information on the discharge of the Department's functions under the Industry Act 1972 will appear in the annual report to Parliament which is pro vided for in Section 16 of the Act.
    Mr. Horam: I am sorry to hear that. Is the Minister aware that he has not yet
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    come up with any decent information at any stage to Questions put down repeatedly by Opposition Members? Is he further aware that this silence is now accompanied by some disquieting rumours about the way in which the Industry Act is operating in practice?
    Mr. Grant: The arrangement whereby reports are made annually was approved by Parliament in framing the Act. That report will come forward. It is very important not to take up the time of too many people in settling information rather than getting on with the job of making grants. As for the success or otherwise of the Act in the Northern Region, its success is shown by the fact that un employment there has declined since March 1972 from 6·6 per cent. to 5·4 per cent. in April 1973.
    Dame Irene Ward: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that this is a very good suggestion by the Opposition? Is he aware that there are many things that I should like done under the Industry Act? How am I going to know whether they have been done or not if I have to wait so long? Will my hon. Friend consider this matter again? Of course we knew that unemployment in the North would be reduced under this Government, but that does not mean that it has been sufficiently reduced. There are always things to be done, so I hope that my hon. Friend will take a little more interest in this question.
    Mr. Grant: With respect, the Opposition did not suggest that reports should be six-monthly. When the Bill was going through, they agreed that reports should be made annually. In the first instance, I think that an annual report is more useful.
    Mr. Benn: Does the Minister believe that the withdrawal of money from the Northern and other regions, following the ending of REP, will not impose greater penalties on those areas than any help which they may have received under Industry Act procedures?
    Mr. Grant: No, I do not agree with that. Nor is there necessarily any evidence to suggest that. The whole question of REP and its phasing out will be discussed between both sides of industry and the Chancellor in the near future.
    Mr. Adam Butler: What information will be given in the annual report? In particular, will the aid to individual companies as well as areas, and the jobs created, be listed?
    Mr. Grant: The exact form of the report has yet to be settled, but it will pro vide for commentaries by the regional boards as well as by the Industrial Development Board itself, although at this stage I cannot say whether individual companies will be mentioned.
    Mr. English: The Minister says that he is not prepared to publish these statistics, Is he sure that his Department has not given similar statistics to the EEC Commission, as it is by law required to do?
    Mr. Grant: I do not think that that arises from the original Question, which referred to the publication of a six-monthly information sheet on the Indus try Act.

    Steel Prices
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyneasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what discussions he has had with steel users in Eastern Scotland regarding the extent to which they may pass on the increase in the prices of their raw materials during phase 2, and with the European Commission regarding the compatibility of this increase with the rules of the ECSC Treaty.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Peter Emery): None, Sir, in either case. The first issue is a matter for the Price Commission to deter mine in accordance with its responsibilities under the Counter-Inflation Act 1973; the second is for the British Steel Corporation.
    Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me if I say that I do not find that answer altogether satisfactory. Will he assure us that customers of the steel industry in Eastern Scotland who are facing cost increases running into double figure percentages will be allowed to pass on those cost increases to the full to their customers during phase 2 without being told by the Price Commission, in excess of the authority given it by this House, that they are acting illegally in so doing? Has he yet heard from the Commission in Brussels
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    whether the new pricing schedules are in conformity with the treaty?
    Mr. Emery: In selecting its basing points, the BSC has been concerned to reduce to a minimum the disturbance to its customers. As for east Scotland, Glasgow is the basing point of a wider variety of products than anywhere else in the kingdom. This is not expected to cause greater increases than 4 per cent. in the price of any products in east Scotland. Thus, when it comes to passing on prices, the position will be exactly the same under stage 2 for firms in east Scotland as anywhere else. The commission has been notified and we have had no comment.
    Mr. Douglas: Does the Minister agree that there are still considerable misgivings in the steel-using industry about the stocking of steel in advance of the price increase, in order to take advantage of that increase? Will he have this situation thoroughly investigated?
    Mr. Emery: It has been drawn to my attention, not only in regard to Scotland, that there has been some concern. I am examining that question at the moment.

    Newsprint
    Mr. Bishopasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he is aware of the position of the newspaper industry as a result of the newsprint supply situation, in particular following the closure announcement of Peter Dixon and Sons; and what action he is taking to resolve the problem.
    Mr. Anthony Grant: Yes, Sir. I am in touch with the industry, which is taking active steps to alleviate the situation and to assist any newspapers which may be in a critical situation over supplies.
    Mr. Bishop: I thank the hon. Gentle man for that reply. Is he aware that my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) has been in touch with him on this matter, since he has a constituency interest? Is he further aware that about 40 newspapers may be affected unless urgent action is taken, and that the pegging of the price of newsprint, in spite of the rising costs for pulp, is a factor? Will he assure us that he will take an urgent initiative in this matter, so as to ensure not only that people do not lose their jobs but that the serious

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    threat to democracy of possible closures is avoided?
    Mr. Grant: As regards urgent action, the United Kingdom Newsprint Users Committee has taken certain action itself, and it is confident that this will deal with the situation in the short term. My Department has seen the firm in Grimsby which the hon. Gentleman has in mind, but it has not indicated that it needs selective assistance; indeed, it says that it would not welcome it at this stage. We are keeping a close watch on the situation generally. In the first instance, we should leave the industry to deal with the matter itself.
    Mr. Jeffrey Archer: My hon. Friend will know that an American company has shown an interest in reviving the Peter Dixon firm. May we be assured that he will give every assistance to that company, to ensure that those in my constituency who are in danger of losing their jobs will be helped?
    Mr. Grant: We are in touch with the firm in question, and we shall listen very carefully to anything it wishes to put to us.
    Mr. Leonard: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that among the customers of Peter Dixon is a group of local newspapers with a circulation well in excess of 100,000, circulating in my constituency and in neighbouring boroughs, and that this group has to date been unable to find an alternative source of supply, so that the continuance of those newspapers beyond 30th June is now under serious threat? Will the hon. Gentleman institute an urgent inquiry into the whole question of the production, pricing and supply of newsprint?
    Mr. Grant: I think that the newspapers to which the hon. Gentleman refers may well find that they are helped in their immediate position by the proposals put forward by the United Kingdom News print Users Committee.
    Mr. Biffen: Does my hon. Friend realise that the newspaper industry is threatened as a result of arbitrary Government interference in the economics of the newsprint industry? What representations did he receive following the measures taken last autumn which pre vented a rise in the price of newsprint?
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    Does my hon. Friend believe that the present state of newsprint economics justifies the price being frozen at its pre sent level, and will he make a statement to reassure people in the industry that it will not be used as a sort of political whipping boy?
    Mr. Grant: I certainly give my hon. Friend that last assurance. On the specific question of Peter Dixon and Sons, my information is that the firm's difficulties have not arisen by reason of the counter-inflation measures. The general opinion, which is shared by the firm itself, is that the causes of its difficulties are, however, deep-seated.
    Mr. Crosland: The Minister will be aware that 300 jobs in my constituency are at stake, and I have already made representations. Will he be rather more positive and forthcoming than he was in previous answers? Will he say not merely that he is listening with interest to any proposal which may be put to him for purchase of the company as a going concern but that he will himself actively seek out a possible buyer both to help the local employment situation and to maintain the supply of newsprint?
    Mr. Grant: My Department will do everything it can to help within the frame work and the need for any proposition to be viable.

    Licensed Trade (Tied House System)
    Mr. William Priceasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry what action he proposes to take on the Monopoly Commission recommendations in respect of the tied house system in the licensed trade.
    Mr. Emery: The Monopolies Commission's only recommendation in its Report on the Supply of Beer was that the licensing system should be substantially relaxed. I would ask the hon. Member to await the outcome of the consideration by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary of the report of the Erroll Committee, which was set up to examine the social implications of changes in the licensing laws.
    Mr. Price: Is the Under-Secretary aware that the Erroll Committee has absolutely nothing to do with that matter? Is it not clear that the Government intend to do nothing and that the brewers are

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    blatantly using the tied house system for a variety of reasons, the most devious of all of which is the kicking out of hundreds of public house tenants and their replacement by managers? What protection does he intend to give these unfortunate people?
    Mr. Emery: The hon. Gentleman knows of my reply on the Floor of the House about the brewers' code. As regards the first part of the hon. Gentle man's question, the Monopolies Commission expressed no view about tenanted as against managed public houses.
    Mr. Price: Neither did Erroll.
    Mr. Mason: Is the Under-Secretary aware that among the most recent disturbing aspects of the brewers' monopoly are, first, its callous disregard for the consumer—namely, the draught beer drinker—and, secondly, its drive to close regionally-based breweries, as instanced by the Imperial Tobacco Group's recent decision to close the Barnsley Brewery? Is the hon. Gentle man aware that there is a callous disregard for the consumer, that the result will be a loss of 200 jobs in my constituency, and that these organisations are forcing on draught beer drinkers oxygenated swill which is to be trundled all over the country? Why does he not make representations to the Brewers Society that consumers and jobs matter, as well as profits?
    Mr. Emery: Certainly, jobs matter. The right hon. Gentleman knows that the rationalisation of the beer industry has meant a considerable amount of centralisation. I do not think that this question particularly raises the matter of the Barnsley Brewery. It is important for us to remember that, on the whole, brewers want to supply the drinking public with that which is demanded. The fact appears to be that the brewers are supplying the demand that exists.

    Japan (Minister's Visit)
    Mr. Sheldonasked the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry if he will make a statement on the visit to Japan of the Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs.
    Mr. Emery: My right hon. and learned Friend visited Japan last week for talks
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    with Japanese Ministers and leaders of the business community, during which he was able to urge that Japan should further open her domestic market to world and British trade.
    Mr. Sheldon: May I express the hope that the urging was rather more powerful than that which the hon. Gentleman expressed in his reply? Is he aware that there is extreme dissatisfaction at the manner in which Japan has used its position to amass very large balance of payments surpluses arising from its over-aggressive trade practices, and that even the floating of the yen is felt by many to be far from clean? Will the hon. Gentle man press his right hon. and learned Friend to pursue this matter more vigorously in the future than he has done in the past?
    Mr. Emery: I do not agree that this matter has not been pursued vigorously. My right hon. and learned Friend saw Mr. Nakasone, Mr. Ohira and Mr. Shintani—who are respectively the Minister for International Trade and Industry, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Minister of Transport—and, in addition, Mr. Aichi, the Finance Minister. My right hon. and learned Friend has been pursuing the matter very fully.
    Mr. Bishop: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that despite the talking that is taking place there is grave concern about the matter? What talks did the Minister have with the British ball-bearing industry regarding its future rôle?
    Mr. Emery: It would be unfair to pick out any industry at this moment. My right hon. and learned Friend has not yet returned to this country. There will be other opportunities for dealing with this matter.

  CIVIL SERVICE

    North-East Development Council
    Mr. Radiceasked the Minister for the Civil Service what representations on Civil Service jobs he has received from the north-east development council.
    The Parliamentary Secretary to the Civil Service Department (Mr. Kenneth Baker): On 9th April I received, at its request, a deputation from the North of

    789
    England Development Council to discuss the possibilities for more dispersal of Government work from London to the Northern Region. I assured the deputation that the case for the Northern Region would be considered as carefully as that for other regions.
    Mr. Radice: I thank the Minister for his answer, but does he not accept that the Government have a special responsibility to disperse their own Departments to regions such as the north, in which the percentage of the work force employed in white-collar jobs is much lower than it is in other regions? Will he confirm that at least some of the 151,000 Civil Service jobs now in the London area will go to the north and other development areas?
    Mr. Baker: We should not have set up the Hardman review if we did not believe that more jobs could be dispersed. We are looking at 86,000 jobs in central Government, not 151,000. There are, in addition, about 70,000 regional jobs in the London area. The share of the North-East and the Northern Region generally for Civil Service jobs is com mensurate. About 32,000 civil servants work in the North-East, and that is 6·6 per cent. of the total of the Civil Service, which corresponds roughly with the relationship of the population of the North-East to that of the rest of the country.
    Dame Irene Ward: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that it would be helpful if we had more civil servants in the North-East, since we should then be able to convey to the House of Commons the importance of our Northern Region, which sometimes seems to be over looked by the immense number of people who represent other constituencies? Civil servants are very good at helping to advertise our part of the world, and I want my hon. Friend to realise that we should welcome their help.
    Mr. Baker: The interests of the North-East will never be overlooked so long as my hon. Friend remains a Member of Parliament. I assure her that the one city outside London which has the greatest number of civil servants is New castle, which is part of the North-East.
    Mr. Duffy: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the latest available figures
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    show that Yorkshire has the lowest relative proportion of civil servants and almost the lowest relative concentration of Crown properties by rateable value? Is there any good reason why the hon. Gentleman should not now help York shire to attract to its territory one major Government office?
    Mr. Baker: Hardman has been looking into these matters. One of the difficulties is that there are conflicting claims from each part of the country.

    Scotland
    Mr. Edward Taylorasked the Minister for the Civil Service how many persons who were successful in Civil Service examinations applied for posting in Scotland during the last annual period for which figures are available; and how many were able to be given posts in Scotland.
    Mr. Kenneth Baker: The Civil Service Commission annually deals with over 100,000 applicants, and no records are kept of posting preferences, but it reports that in the executive officer scheme for 1972, to which, I think, my hon. Friend is referring, there were 800 successful Scottish candidates and 300 vacancies in Scotland. Most Scottish candidates would prefer to work in Scotland, but about 75 per cent. were willing to work elsewhere.
    Mr. Taylor: Is this not further evidence of the availability of suitable staff in Scotland and of the need to transfer more Civil Service jobs to Scotland? Will my hon. Friend confirm that all the offices which have been transferred have been very successful? Bearing in mind the availability of office space, the lower costs and the easier housing situation in many parts of Scotland, will my hon. Friend take steps to ensure that Scotland has full consideration for any jobs that are going?
    Mr. Baker: I agree with my hon. Friend that the availability of qualified staff is an important factor, but I am sure that he will agree that many factors have to be taken into account in the dispersal of Civil Service offices. I also agree that the dispersal of, for example, the National Savings Bank to Cowglen has been particularly successful and that,

    791
    on the whole, those who have gone there do not want to come back.
    Mr. William Hannan: For far too long the trend has been for young people to leave the west of Scotland and come south for jobs. Would it not be a good innovation if the present Government reversed that trend and took some jobs up to the people who are qualified and ready to take them?
    Mr. Baker: It was the previous Conservative Government in 1963 who instituted the former dispersal review—the Fleming review—which resulted in the dispersal of the National Savings Bank to Cowglen. If we did not think it right to disperse Government offices we should not have instituted the Hardman inquiry.
    Sir Gilbert Longden: Did I understand my hon. Friend aright? Did he say that only 75 per cent. of Scotsmen wished to work outside Scotland?
    Mr. Baker: I can only speak for those who are successful in the Civil Service examination.
    Mr. William Hamilton: Does the hon. Gentleman realise that an added attraction in Scotland is that the great bulk of the country, nationally and locally, is Labour-controlled?
    Mr. Baker: There are many added attractions in Scotland, but I should not put that at the top of my list.

    Parliamentary Papers
    Mr. Evelyn Kingasked the Minister for the Civil Service on how may occasions in the last two years printing required by the House of Commons has been delayed on account of difficulties at Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
    Mr. Kenneth Baker: There have been delays in normal delivery time for some papers in this period on 120 occasions. Of these, 26 were due to industrial action in the press, 48 to excessive work load, and 46 to other reasons. In most cases the delay was short, and on all occasions the House was provided with essential working papers by one means or other.
    Mr. King: First, in the light of that reply, is my hon. Friend aware that his response to me on 19th February last, when he gave the figure of 16 occasions
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    of delay, must have been wildly inaccurate? Will he look into the source of the advice which he then received? Second, is he aware that the position in which the Deliverer of the Vote is now being placed is becoming impossible? Third, will he tell the House how he proposes to deal with the growing difficulties, and whether he will consider seeking alternative sources of supply?
    Mr. Baker: I am not aware of any discrepancy between this and the earlier reply. The facts are as I have stated them. I am glad to take this opportunity to thank the Vote Office and the Deliverer of the Vote for coping very well with the difficulties in getting essential papers—the Votes and Proceedings and the Order Paper—to the House during the industrial disputes. On the question of alternative printing arrangements, I remind the House that the Parliamentary Press, just on the other side of the river, is a major operation, employing about 600 people, which prints only material for Parliament. It would be impossible to bring that sort of operation into the precincts of the House. Any basic rearrangement of printing services for the House is a matter not for me but for the Services Committee.
    Mr. Wellbeloved: Is the Minister aware that the Parliamentary Press suffers from serious environmental disadvantages for the workers, in that the temperature control in many of the print shops varies from very hot to very cold? What action are the Government taking to remove some of the causes of the industrial stoppages at the Parliamentary Press, such as environmental difficulties?
    Mr. Baker: Last year the Government spent a considerable sum of money on a new central heating and air conditioning plant. I am advised that the difficulties to which the hon. Gentleman refers have now been virtually eliminated.

    Government Departments (Press and Information Officers)
    Mr. Fowlerasked the Minister for the Civil Service what is the total of Press and information officers now employed by Government Departments; and whether he will make a statement.
    Mr. Kenneth Baker: The total number of staff at all levels in departmental

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    information branches was 1,109 on 1st April 1973.
    Mr. Fowler: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply, which I was not expecting. Is not one of the extraordinary features of the number of information officers now employed by Government Departments their distribution between Departments? Can my hon. Friend explain why at the last count the Department of Defence needed 10 times more information staff than the Home Office, and the Department of the Environment needed five times more information staff than the Treasury? Are not these extraordinary discrepancies?
    Mr. Baker: Whether or not they are extraordinary, they are not a matter for me. If my hon. Friend wishes to persuade my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to have more information staff, it is for the Home Secretary to decide. I am concerned with only one direct area of Government information, namely, the Central Office of Information.
    Mr. Kaufman: Is it true, as indicated in an informed Press article last week, that one of the duties of the Prime Minister's Chief Press Secretary is to organise a roster of Cabinet Ministers to make party political speeches defending the Government? Is that a suitable function for a civil servant?
    Mr. Baker: The hon. Gentleman must not draw upon his memory. I am responsible only for the Central Office of Information. We in the Central Office of Information are not concerned with putting out what may be described as party policy; we are concerned with putting over Government information services. Since 1970 we have reduced the staff of the COI by over 200.
    Mr. John Grant: Do the figures the Minister has just given include those who have been seconded by the Conservative Central Office to work in Government Departments to maintain links between the Conservative Party and the Government—such as Mr. Cope, at the Department of Trade and Industry?
    Mr. Baker: These figures do not include those people. There are literally only two or three of them. If the hon. Gentleman wants to put down Questions about those people I shall be very pleased to answer them.

    Government Offices (Dispersal)
    Mr. Willeyasked the Minister for the Civil Service whether he will make a further statement on the implementation of the Hardman recommendations on the Dispersal of Civil Service Departments.
    Mr. Kenneth Baker: The Government are considering Sir Henry Hardman's recommendations, which raise complex issues. In considering them, the Government will be consulting the Staff Side. Their decisions will be announced when the process of consultation is completed.
    Mr. Willey: Is the Minister aware that private enterprise in Scotland is making ambitious provision for office accommodation and that we will expect the Government to match this with Civil Service employment?
    Mr. Baker: As I said earlier, in reply to the hon. Member for Chester-le-Street (Mr. Radice), there are 32,000 civil servants in the North-East. The North-East, of all the regions, has done very well; it has 6·6 per cent. of the total Civil Service, which is higher than the proportion that its population bears to the total population of the country.
    Mr. Scott-Hopkins: When dispersing the Civil Service following the Hardman Report, will my hon. Friend bear in mind that not only development areas need a certain amount of Civil Service office facilities? Areas like Derbyshire, which are white areas where unemployment generally is low but unemployment amongst white collar workers is fairly high, have equally urgent requirements for this type of employment.
    Mr. Baker: Sir Henry Hardman has been looking not only at the more remote regions but at the question of dispersal of Civil Service work from London to all the areas outside the South-East.
    Mr. Grimond: Is the Minister aware that there is ample scope for moving out of London a whole Department, and not only part of it, and that that applies particularly to heads of Departments and in relation to oil?
    Secondly, what reply has the Minister given to the Lord Provost of Glasgow, who has been making strenuous efforts to attract more civil servants to Scotland?
    Mr. Baker: When the Hardman Report is published—I now confirm that it is to be published—the right hon. Gentleman will find that the proposal for removing a complete Department is considered. He will know that I saw the Lord Provost of Glasgow about six weeks ago. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that the claims of west central Scotland and Glasgow have been given equal treatment with the claims of cither regions.

HOUSE OF COMMONS

  Members' Correspondence
  Mr. David Steelasked the Lord President of the Council whether he will initiate proposals to establish facilities for free correspondence between Members and the public.
  The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. James Prior): If the hon. Gentleman would like to put specific proposals to me, I would certainly consider whether they should be referred to the Services Committee.
  Mr. Steel: Will the Lord President consult the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications about the advisability of creating a free post address for the House of Commons, so that members of the public may write in free of charge? This principle is already accepted in many Government Departments which send reply paid envelopes with their communications.
  Mr. Prior: On the whole, my answer must be "No". Such a facility might well be open to abuse. It is not asking too much of a constituent who has a genuine point to raise with a Member that he should put a 2½p stamp on the letter or visit his Member in his constituency. However, if there is a serious demand for this service in the House I will consider it, and ask the Services Committee to consider it. I believe that, on the whole, our practice has worked pretty well.

  PETROLEUM PRODUCTS (PRICES)
  Mr. Benn(by Private Notice) asked the Secretary of State for Trade and
  796
  Industry if he will make a statement on the increases in the price of petrôleum products announced on Saturday.
  The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry (Mr. Peter Walker): This is a matter for the Price Commission which has the duty of implementing the provisions of the price and pay code policy so far as prices and charges are concerned. The Price Commission announced on 28th April that it had approved, subject to certain reductions, applications for price increases for petroleum products submitted by six companies and that these increases reflected the higher costs of crude oil and freight charges.
  The circumstances of the companies, including their current pricing policies, vary, but the weighted average of the price increases approved amounts to a shade over ½p per gallon across the whole range of petrôleum products.
  Mr. Benn: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that a price increase that affects everybody in this country, raising the price of top grade petrol to 8s. a gallon and going right through industrial, distribution and export costs, was sufficiently important for the Minister himself to make a statement in the House and not shield behind the Price Commission whose Chairman, Sir Artheur Cockfield is not answerable to Parliament?
  May I ask these questions? First, was he himself consulted by the Price Commission? Did he approve the increases, and does he accept any responsibility for them? Secondly, did the oil companies, in accordance with the provisions of the Counter-Inflation Act, submit full details of their price structure, including their transfer pricing, the past, present and forecast profit margins, in order to allow a proper assessment to be made of the request for increased prices?
  Were consumers' organisations consulted either by the Price Commission or by the Cabinet Minister who sits in the right hon. Gentleman's own Department? What estimate of the effect have the Government made of these announced increases on industrial costs and on the cost of living over a full year?
  Finally, is not the right hon. Gentleman aware that the recent increases in

  797
  steel and food prices and now petrôleum prices, where there are further forecast increases in every case to come, while wages are tightly controlled, have exposed the Government's counter-inflation policy to be little less than a fraud?
  Mr. Walker: These increases were submitted to the Price Commission under the conditions created by legislation passed by this House. The full information was provided, and the Price Commission came to its decision. Under the legislation passed by this House, unless I wish to allow bigger increases than that which has been allowed, I am not in a position to intervene.
  As to the effects of this increase on the cost of living, to get it in proportion, which obviously the right hon. Gentleman's question is endeavouring not to do, if all the oil companies—not just six of them—increased the price of their petrol products by ½p per gallon it would have an effect on the retail price index of one-twentieth of 1 per cent., and, if the right hon. Gentleman wants to get it into full perspective, as a result of this increase in the price of petrol for motoring, where the biggest increase has taken place, taking price and taxation increases since this Government came to power, and including this latest increase, there will be an increase of 3½p, whereas on tax increases alone under the last Government it amounted to 9p.
  Mr. Edward Taylor: Would my right hon. Friend agree that, as this is the first major price rise, the issue at stake is far more important than ½p a gallon of petrol and is a question of constraints and control of prices? Could the Minister say whether he has had confirmed reports that some garages and companies raised their petrol prices immediately and some by more than ½p per gallon, and could he also say whether he is satisfied with the arrangements for policing these increases? Does he agree that if some garages have jumped the gun and others have raised their prices by more than ½p per gallon, the Price Commission, in consultation with the Minister for Trade and Consumer Affairs, should be seen to take immediate action under the Act?
  Mr. Walker: Any increases greater than that permitted or put into effect before approval was given should be reported to the Price Commission, which
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  is making arrangements to see that the addresses of the regional offices of the Price Commission are fully advertised in the appropriate newspapers and other media.
  Mr. David Steel: Will the right hon. Gentleman look at the machinery for announcing price increases from the Price Commission in view of the chaotic events of this weekend? Is he aware that different price increases have been charged, some instantaneously and some delayed, and that this is unsatisfactory?
  Will the right hon. Gentleman clarify what he said a moment ago? Is he saying that any garage which has increased the price by lp a gallon has acted illegally?
  Mr. Walker: I will examine any complaints which are received as to the manner in which it was done this weekend, and if there is anything to be learned I will bring it to the attention of the Price Commission. There are some small oil companies which do not have to apply for an increase but they have to comply with the code itself. It will be seen whether these have complied with the code when their quarterly reports have been examined.
  Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: Could we get this clear? Has my right hon. Friend's attention been drawn to the statement purporting to have come from the Price Commission yesterday that those pumps which have put up the price of petrol yesterday have acted illegally? Am I right in thinking that the Price Commission has no statutory authority whatsoever to declare any price increase illegal off its own bat? If so, would my right hon. Friend draw that matter urgently to the attention of the Price Commission so that it does not make statements of this kind again?
  Mr. Walker: I do not know of the statement to which my hon. Friend refers. [Interruption] If I may say so, the right hon. Member for Huyton (Mr. Harold Wilson), when he was Prime Minister, set up the IRC which made all sorts of statements which were not made by Ministers. In this particular case Parliament set up the Price Commission to do this job.
  Mr. Harold Wilson: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when we set up the

  799
  Prices and Incomes Board all matters of law were dealt with by this House and not by the Board? Its reports were purely for information and were brought to the House by means of a Government order for approval by the House. Will the right hon. Gentleman, not only in the light of the single day's shambles, reconsider and recommend to the Prime Minister, who is not here, that there should now be a change in the legislation to make the Price Commission responsible and accountable to this House in its activities?
  Mr. Walker: The Price Commission will be making quarterly reports to this House—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] The first report will follow two months of activity. The actions of the Price Commission were perfectly legal, in the framework of the legislation passed by this House.
  Mr. Biffen: Is my right hon. Friend aware that most hon. Members will echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Edward Taylor) in saying that, as this is the first instance of the use by the Price Commission of its powers, the House will be naturally jealous to see how they are exercised? Since we are all conscious of our responsibilities as law-makers may I ask him to confirm that unless and until an order is laid, or a notice is served on it, any garage that has been charging the full lp or a ½p is perfectly entitled so to do?
  Mr. Walker: This is an application by six specific petrol companies to increase their prices. Their figures were examined. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer the question."] The legal sanction is on the six companies which submitted their application to increase prices.
  Mr. Eadie: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he is giving us a foretaste of what is to come in the way that he is answering this Question? Are the Government to shelter behind the Price Commission whenever price increases are introduced so that Parliament and the people will have no say? Is he aware that people are beginning to wonder where this will end? We have had the petrol price increase and insurance premium increases are in prospect. Can he give some assurance to the House that
  800
  the peoples' representatives will at least be consulted?
  Mr. Walker: Except for one period of statutory freeze, under the last Labour Government prices could be increased at any time without Parliament having any interest at all.
  Mr. Kinsey: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, while he is arguing about what is right in legislation, the people are worried about prices? While it is inescapable that many world prices have increased, as is the case with petrôleum, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government have control over taxation? Will they do something to ease motor and petrol taxation?
  Mr. Walker: Unlike the previous Government, this Government have not increased petrol tax at all. One control over prices open to the Government is through taxation. When the Labour Party had that control it increased taxation. Petrol taxation is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor.
  Mr. Concannon: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that when I challenged a garage proprietor this morning about the price increase he said that ½p was for what we had read in the papers and the other ½p was what he was being charged extra for delivery by the oil companies? Will he look into this?
  Mr. Walker: The six oil companies concerned have published schedules of their increases. On some of those schedules there is no published increase for domestic fuel oil and other grades of oil. Most have concentrated the increase upon petrol and raised their total overall ½p in that way.
  Dr. David Owen: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the country will find it impossible to understand that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, responsible for a prices and incomes policy, can come to the House and tell us that he has no powers to intervene in such a crucial element affecting prices?
  Mr. Walker: It was this Government that brought in legislation—[HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]—to say that no price increase could take place unless it was the result of certain listed costs and had no effect in increasing the profits beyond a figure exceeding the average level of

  801
  the best two of the last five years. This control is far more real than anything done by the previous Government.
  Mr. Robert C. Brown: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the people of this country would be appalled if they could see the frivolous manner in which he has handled this subject? Will he not concede that as the Secretary of State allegedly responsible for the prices and incomes policy he has exposed himself as being about as productive as a neutered tom-cat? Does he not feel honour bound to resign? Before he does so, will he answer the question about whether the 1p a gallon increase is legal or illegal?
  Mr. Walker: The increase announced by the six companies is certainly legal. The hon. Member was a transport Minister in the Labour Government yet raised no objections to numerous increases in the price of petrol. He remained in office.
  Mr. Leslie Huckfield: What does the Secretary of State intend to do about all those profiteering garages which yesterday were charging the 1p a gallon increase upon old stocks? If the Price Commission cannot deal with a price increase like this what chance does it stand in the rest of phase 2, let alone phase 3?
  Mr. Walker: Any complaints about the operation of price increases can be referred to the Price Commission.
  Mr. Ronald Bell: Is it not the case that garages, generally speaking, because of their small turnover, are not subject to price control at all?
  Mr. Walker: That is so—[Interruption.] It was the position during the whole six years of Labour Government.
  Mr. Benn: Is it not a fact, as Sir Arthur Cockfield said this morning, that there is no price control at the pumps and that garages can charge what they like? Can he explain why his Department— because not even the establishment of a Price Commission affects his responsibility for administering this policy—gave no guidance by way of Press statement over the weekend and why the right hon. Gentleman tries to abdicate his responsibility to Parliament?
  Mr. Walker: I have not abdicated my responsibility. I wish to see that
  802
  legislation enacted by this House is carried out properly by the statutory authority. The number of activities that the right hon. Gentleman in particular carried out without coming to Parliament makes him the last person to make such comments. Unlike the previous Government, this Government have brought about a situation when prices increases cannot take place to increase profit margins.
  Mr. Harold Wilson: Will the right hon. Gentleman create a precedent by answering a question? If he did not hear the statement by the Price Commission on the radio yesterday, I did. Now he tells us that these garages are not subject to price control. If that is so, what is to stop them putting another 10p on their own profits? Yesterday the Price Commission said that this was "illegal". Will he now tell us whether any garage which put up the price of petrol by 1p a gallon on old stock, for which a price increase had not been approved, was acting legally or illegally.
  Mr. Walker: The position as far as—
  Hon. Members: Answer the question.
  Mr. Mason: "Yes" or "No"?
  Mr. Walker: As far as those companies that have a turnover—
  Mr. William Hamilton: Garages.
  Mr. Walker: Those companies having a turnover of less than £50 million a year do not have to obtain approval for these increases. They can make increases providing the increases do not increase their profit margins over the specified amount.
  Mr. Ewing: May I ask the Minister to show some conversion to objectivity? As the Secretary of State for Social Services has been sitting with a benign smile on his face throughout these exchanges, will the right hon. Gentleman have a word with his right hon. Friend and point out the very serious effect that the measures announced over the weekend will have on disabled drivers who have to use their cars to get around and whose allowance paid by the Department of Health and Social Security will be devalued by what has happened?
  Mr. Walker: They will be faced with nothing like the increase of 9p imposed under the Labour Government.

  NORTHERN IRELAND
  Rev. Ian Paisley: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 9, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
  "the condemnation by the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Irish Republic of the behaviour of the Army in the Ardoyne area of Befast, and his subsequent visit to that area."
  The House is well aware that the Parachute Regiment has been very effective in its campaign in the Ardoyne area against the Irish Republican Army and that its successes have sparked off a vicious propaganda campaign. The Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Irish Republic entered into this campaign and made a certain condemnation of the behaviour of the British Army in the Ardoyne. To the amazement of the people of Northern Ireland he then came to Belfast and began an on-the-spot investigation of the behaviour of the British Army in the Ardoyne area.
  It has now emerged from the Foreign Office that the usual diplomatic channels which operate in arranging visits by Ministers of foreign countries to a part of the United Kingdom were not operated in this instance. Dr. Fitzgerald has made it clear that he will go on many excursions to the North of Ireland and that he will
  804
  participate actively in the domestic affairs of Northern Ireland. I suggest that that would not be tolerated in any other part of the United Kingdom. If the Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Irish Republic wants to pass strictures on the British Army he is perfectly entitled so to do, but he is not entitled to come to Belfast and start an on-the-spot investigation of matters that are of domestic—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The issue is not whether the Minister concerned is entitled to go to Belfast. It is whether we should have a debate under Standing Order No. 9.
  Rev. Ian Paisley: I suggest that if these events took place in any other part of the United Kingdom or if another Minister of Foreign Affairs for a foreign Government came to start an investigation into a domestic matter, many hon. Members on all sides of the House would want the issue debated. As the Foreign Office has remained silent and has refused to make a public comment on this matter, the people of Northern Ireland are concerned to emphasise that it is just as important to safeguard their diplomatic integrity as to safeguard their territorial integrity.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member was kind enough to give notice of his intention to make the application under Standing Order No. 9 and I have before me the terms of his proposition. I have considered it, but I must say "No". The hon. Member must seek the other ways open to him to pursue the matter.

ORDERS OF THE DAY

  NATIONAL INSURANCE AND SUPPLEMENTARY BENEFIT BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  3.56 p.m.
  The Secretary of State for Social Services (Sir Keith Joseph): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  I shall seek to make a short speech because we have only a relatively short time for the debate.
  The Bill stems from the announcement first made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech and the more detailed statement that I made the next day. The Bill is backed by a White Paper, Cmnd. 5288, and by the Government Actuary's Reports, Cmnd. 5287.
  The Bill provides for the second of what are now annual increases in national insurance and supplementary benefits. The increases are intended to come into payment exactly 12 months after the 1972 uprating, in the week beginning 1st October this year. The main increase is £1 per week in the single rate of retirement and invalidity pensions, widows' pensions and widowed mothers' allowances, taking the weekly rate from £6·75 to £7·75. For a pensioner married couple the increase is £1·60, from £1090 to £12·50 a week. In both cases the increase is nearly 15 per cent. It will be the largest cash increase ever made in any period of 12 months.
  I can confidently predict to the House that when the benefits come into effect in October they will provide a significant real increase in buying power. Since Labour's last uprating in November 1969 the pension will have risen, by early October, by no less than 55 per cent. in cash terms. Between November 1969 and March this year—the date of the last cost of living increase report—the cost of living had risen just under 30 per cent., so I am entitled to claim a real and continuing improvement in pensioners' buying power under this Government.
  I turn to short-term benefits for the sick and the unemployed. These are being increased by 60p for a single person, from £6·75 to £7·35 a week, and by £1 for a married couple, from £10·90 to
  806
  £11·90 a week. Maternity allowance and Industrial Injury Scheme injury benefit will be increased correspondingly. We are confident that these increases will honour the Government's commitment to protect benefits against price rises.
  We believe that the extra that we are deliberately providing for the more than 8} million persons on long-term benefits will be generally welcomed. Of course, we would like to do more still for pensioners and other long-term beneficiaries, but the House must face the reality that extra benefits have to be paid for in extra contributions or extra taxes and that if the increases are too sharp one of the results must be higher prices.
  In addition to these broad general improvements, the Bill contains two selective improvements. The first is that, whereas the general percentage increase in cash terms is just under 15 per cent., invalidity allowance will go up by no less than 40 per cent. The result will be that in October about 60,000 people whose age at the onset of incapacity was below 35 will get an increase of £1·45 a week—£1 in the single rate of their invalidity pension and 45p increase in the invalidity allowance. Another 70,000 people, whose age at onset of incapacity was between 35 and 45, will get £1·30 a week more, and about 200,000 people will get £1·15 a week more. In addition to these increases, many of those invalidity pensioners will get an increase if they have wives or children.
  While dealing with provision for the long-term sick and disabled, I want to mention also attendance allowance. The Bill provides that the present higher, day and night, attendance allowance rate of £5·40 will go up by the same proportion as other long-term benefits and will become £6·20 a week. This benefit is tax free. Similarly, the lower, day or night, attendance allowance rate, which will first become payable from 4th June this year to the working age group— broadly, those between 16 and 65—is also being increased. It will go from £3·60 to £4·15 a week. In practice, therefore, the £3·60 rate will be payable for only four months, from June to September inclusive.
  Payment of the lower, day or night, attendance allowance rate is being phased in at what had up to now been planned

  807
  to be six-monthly intervals, but so far fewer claims have been received from the working age group than we had expected. That is perhaps not altogether surprising, as the higher, day and night, attendance allowance rate is now being drawn by about 90,000 as against the 50,000 originally expected.
  I am therefore glad to be able to tell the House that payment of the new lower rate allowance, at £4·15 a week, to the next age group—children—will begin from 1st October instead of from December 1973 as originally envisaged. Arrangements will be made to invite claims from parents and others caring for severely disabled children. If it is found possible to bring forward also the starting date for payment of the lower rate allowance to the two remaining age groups of older people born before 1908, this will be done in due course. I am sure the House will welcome the accelerated payment of the lower rate attendance allowance for children.
  The second selective improvement that the Bill contains gives effect to the decision that heating allowances under the supplementary benefits scheme, which are at rates of 30p, 60p or 90p a week according to the state of a claimant's health or accommodation, or both, will from October be paid in full on top of the new long-term supplementary benefit scale rates. Those who benefit will be, first, people who have extra heating needs but now receive no heating addition because their extra expenses in this respect are fully covered by the long-term addition. They will therefore receive a heating allowance for the first time.
  Secondly, there will be people now receiving reduced heating allowance because their extra expenses on this score are partially, but not wholly, offset against long-term addition. They will receive the full heating allowance for the first time.
  Our best guess is that, if we take these two groups together, about 400,000 people in all will benefit from the change. The majority are likely to receive 30p a week in full in the future, and it is on that basis that we estimate the cost at about £6 million a year.
  However, I must emphasise that some will receive more than 30p a week extra.
  808
  Many single supplementary pensioners living on their own—probably the most vulnerable group—will receive not only the extra £1 of the general increase going to long-term beneficiaries under both the national insurance and the supplementary benefits schemes but will also receive the 30p. They will receive an extra £1·30 in all in October, a bigger increase than ever before in cash or real terms.
  Mr. Michael Meacher: The change with regard to heating allowance was not a concession by the Government but was forced from them by the result of a High Court case. As the heating grant will no longer be offset against the long-term addition, will the same provision apply to other exceptional needs grants, such as special dietary allowances and clothing grants? If not, what is the logic of making this one change?
  Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong. The High Court decision was concerned with the use of discretion by the Supplementary Benefits Commission. In part of the Bill the Government have clarified the position in this regard. The change to prevent the heating addition being off-set against the long-term scale rates, however, constitutes a specific change of Government policy.
  I avoided the word "concession", because I do not regard changes recommended by both sides of the House as being in the nature of concessions. The change in question is one that I think both sides of the House have welcomed. It was deliberately introduced by the Government and is quite separate from the clarification of the law, which, as the hon. Gentleman correctly says, has been put in some doubt by a High Court decision. That clarification is made in a different part of the Bill.
  Mr. A. W. Stallard: How will the Bill affect those receiving rent rebates, for instance? Will there be a deduction, or will there be an adjustment in the rent rebate?
  Sir K. Joseph: The proposal I have just explained makes no change to rent rebates.
  Mr. Brian O'Malley: The right hon. Gentleman need not be so coy about the implications of the Simper case. We understand that the Government were put in a difficult position, as was the Supplementary Benefits Commission, as a result of that judgment. Will the right hon. Gentleman make clear whether other discretionary benefits will be treated in the same way as heating allowance?
  Sir K. Joseph: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. I failed to answer that part of the question of his hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher). I must make it clear that the change affects only the heating addition, and that, as has been clear from the first announcement—the hon. Gentleman, who follows these matters closely, need not express surprise—any additions made for diet, laundry or other purposes will continue to be offset against that part of the supplementary benefit that replaces the long-term addition.
  Apart from the change I have just explained, the Bill does two main things on supplementary benefits, in Clause 6 and Schedule 4. First, as on this occasion the Ministry of Social Security Act 1966 needs amendment, the Bill sets out new scale rates of supplementary benefits to be operative from the week beginning 1st October, instead of their appearing in separate and subsequent regulations subject to affirmative resolution, as is normally done. But I can assure the House that this way of proceeding this year is in no way a precedent.
  Secondly, in providing increases in supplementary benefits corresponding to those in national insurance benefits— £1·60 for a married couple on long-term supplementary benefit, £1 for short-term, married beneficiaries, £1 for single householders on long-term supplementary benefit, and 60p for the short-term single householder beneficiary—the Bill in addition incorporates the existing long-term addition of 60p into the long-term scale rates. The receipt of the long-term addition constitutes the qualification for receiving the long-term as distinct from short-term level of increases in the supplelementary benefit scale rates.
  This is a complicated matter, both conceptually and in drafting, and I am sure that hon. Members will wish to go
  810
  further into it in Committee. At this stage it will perhaps suffice for me to say that what seems technical and complex in print is intended to have the effect of ensuring parallel improvements in supplementary benefits to those being made in national insurance benefits, and to consolidate the long-term addition, which has given rise in the past to confusion and has not been well understood by many recipients. After October the result should be simpler and better for the great majority of those concerned.
  Nearly all supplementary beneficiaries have provision made for their rents in addition to the scale rates. The House may like to know the present basic income of a supplementary pensioner and compare it with what he or she will get from October. I am using rent figures which unfortunately are no more recent than November 1971. Those are the latest rent figures available.
  Mr. Alec Jones: It is hardly worth bothering about.
  Sir K. Joseph: The hon. Gentleman is wrong about that. I am making the point that the Supplementary Benefits Commission in nearly every case takes into account the current rent in assessing the amount of supplementary benefit. A single householder supplementary pensioner now gets £6·55 on the basic scale, plus 60p long-term addition, plus rent, which, on a national average in November 1971, was about £2 a week. Taken on a national average, the single householder supplementary pensioner now gets about £9·15 a week. When I say he gets that, I am being inaccurate. What he gets from the Supplementary Benefits Commission depends upon his resources. His allowance would amount to £9·15 a week, including the average rent of November 1971. In London in 1971 the average rent was about £3 a week, so the figure for a single householder supplementary pensioner would be £1015 a week in the GLC area.
  As from October the rates will be £8·15 basic—the long-term addition will have been consolidated and the increase applied—plus rent. There will be a total of £10·15 a week for a single householder supplementary pensioner using the national average rent, or £11·15 for those in the GLC area. For a married couple

  811
  the figures from October will be £14·85 or £15·85 respectively, including rent as described before, at November 1971 levels. The House may like to have on record those average figures. They do not take into account any additional discretionary payments that may be made in any particular case.
  Other weekly rates of national insurance and industrial injuries benefits are going up, with increases for dependants and children matching increases in appropriate main benefit rates. In particular, old persons' pensions—pensions going to persons over the age of 80—are being increased from £4·05 to £4·65 for a man and £2·50 to £2·85 for a wife That will be found in Schedules 1 and 3 of the Bill.
  No increase is being made on this occasion in maternity grant or in death grant. That, I know, is of concern to hon. Members on both sides of the House. Neither of those grants has been increased, except at very irregular intervals, and the Government have decided as a deliberate decision on priorities, that neither should be increased. That has enabled the Government to concentrate on increasing the long-term and continuing benefits, to which I have already referred.
  I shall give a brief explanation of Clauses 4 and 5. Clause 4 ensures that civil servants who have opted for unabated sick pay instead of claiming sickness benefit or other benefits, will go on to invalidity pension after six months in just the same way as anybody else. It also provides for public funds to be reimbursed by the Insurance Fund for the unclaimed benefits of the first six months.
  The first part of Clause 5 sets out formally the traditional interpretation of incapacity for work for the purposes of the insurance Acts—that is, incapacity for work that the person concerned can reasonably be expected to do. A recent High Court case caused some confusion about this matter and made it necessary to spell it out.
  Clause 5(3) is a technicality consequential on the Domicile and Matrimonial Proceedings Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and East Perthshire (Mr. MacArthur). That Bill introduces separate domiciles for husband and wife.
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  We need to be able to deal on traditional lines with a technically new situation regarding the effects on national insurance benefits.
  The cost of the Bill's improvements in benefits will in the first full year, 1974–75, be £550 million. Of that, just under £500 million will fall on National Insurance Funds, and just over £50 million on the Consolidated Fund, for old persons' pensions, the attendance allowance and supplementary benefit. We are proposing to meet these costs mainly by increasing graduated contributions paid on earnings of over £9 a week and by increasing flat-rate contributions paid by employers. In that way we continue to moderate the burden on the low-paid and to place a higher percentage of the total contribution on employers, in preparation for the changes envisaged in the Social Security Bill now before the House.
  The weekly earnings limit up to which graduated contributions will be payable will be raised from £48 to £54 from the beginning of October. The rate of graduated contributions for both employers and employees will be increased by ¼per cent. —the rate will become 5 per cent. instead of 4·75 per cent.—on earnings between £9 and £54 a week. Persons who have contracted out of the graduated pensions scheme will continue to pay at a lower rate—the rate will be ¾per cent. instead of ½ per cent. as hitherto—on earnings between £9 and £18 a week.
  The adult employee's share of the flat-rate contribution will be reduced by 4p a week. On the other hand, the employer's share will be increased by 14p a week for men and 12p for women. Of that increase, 2p a week goes towards the increased cost of industrial injuries benefit under the Bill. I apologise to the House for this torrent of figures, but it is necessary in order to explain where the large sums of money will go in order to secure improvements.
  There will be increases in the flat-rate contribution paid by the self-employed and non-employed men of 25p and 19p a week respectively. Regulations will ensure that the earnings threshold at which contributions normally become payable will go up from £6 to £7 a week, that the earnings level at which a self-employed person's contributions normally become payable will be increased from £5 to £6

  813
  a week and that the level at which a self-employed or non-employed person can claim exemption from liability to pay contributions will go up from £468 to £520 a year.
  The Exchequer contribution to the National Insurance Fund will be increased as a consequence of changes in flat-rate contributions by £27 million in a full year. In addition, the lump sum payment from the Consolidated Fund to the National Insurance Fund for 1974–75 will go up from £190 million to £275 million. Thus the Exchequer supplement will be maintained, in accordance with established arrangements, at about 18 per cent. of the contribution income of the National Insurance Fund. There will also be an increase in the Exchequer supplement to the Industrial Injuries Fund because of the increase in industrial injuries contributions. Therefore, the active working population is being asked to pay more for the old, the sick and others who are dependent.
  I apologise again for inflicting so many figures on the House. The Bill makes a further real and important step in progress which has, during the lifetime of the present Government, provided pensioners and other beneficiaries with an improvement in living standards. I commend it to the House.
  4.18 p.m.
  Mr. Brian O'Malley: Having listened to the introductory speech of the Secretary of State, I feel that it is no wonder that the House of Commons is so badly attended on so many occasions. All that the right hon-Gentleman has done is to give a description of the Bill which every hon. Member could have read in the relevant documents before coming to the House. It seems a great pity that the right hon. Gentleman should make no attempt to put the Bill within the general policy and the philosophical context of the Government's attitude, and should spend nearly half an hour telling us what we already know. That does the House of Commons no good at all. I propose to make some general statements which seem to be relevant in the broader considerations arising out of the proposals made in the Bill.
  I believe that there is a greater awareness today of the problems of the aged, the sick and the disabled than there has been for many years. That awareness stems
  814
  from growing public understanding of the cruel effects of the inflation which has been fostered by the Government's policies. The public mood is not confined to sympathy. There is a willingness to shoulder the financial obligations inherent in eradicating poverty among pensioners and the deprivations which they are suffering in the 1970s. All recent opinion surveys have demonstrated that willingness, and I believe that it is significant that the trade union movement is campaigning for increased pensions and for pensioners more strongly than at any time in its history and that it has expressed the preparedness of its members to play their full part in meeting the costs of the radical improvements which are necessary.
  It is, therefore, tragic that the Bill fails to reflect the mood of the country adequately. In the Budget debate on 8th March, the Secretary of State admitted what had not been previously admitted. He admitted that, if the 1971 and 1972 measures brought any improvement at all, the improvement was at best marginal. Yet, those were years uniquely favourable for any Government to make substantial inroads into the problems of poverty facing the aged, the sick and the disabled.
  Now, the Secretary of State expresses optimism that the Bill will provide, as he said on 8th March, "significant improvements". I have read that speech and I listened to him today, and I heard his replies to questions asked when he announced these proposed improvements. All of them add up to the type of selectively edited information, in particular, selectively edited statistics, about which the right hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Powell) was rightly complaining in criticising the Government in his speech at Chesterfield during the weekend.
  Therefore, the optimism of the Secretary of State requires examination. We have to make it against the background of policies which, over the last three years, have put vast sums into the hands of the wealthy—those who receive income from investment, those who benefit from capital gains, those who benefit from reductions in the payment of estate duty.
  It should also be noted at this juncture that the Government are continuing

  815
  to keep the Treasury supplement at 18 per cent., at which it has stood for a number of years under successive Governments. I have pointed out before that this is not a magic figure and that there is no reason why it should remain at 18 per cent. One might, with justification, say that, as the Government found themselves able, in the last financial year, to give away £3,000 million in tax release, there was a strong case for examining the possibility of substantially increasing the Treasury supplement at least over a period.
  More than that, if the proposals which the Labour Government put forward but which fell at the General Election had now been in operation—[Laughter.]—the hon. Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) had better wait—even if the 18 per cent. Treasury contribution had remained at that figure, there would have been by 1974–75 about £150 million more from the Treasury towards the payment of pensions than there will be under the present Government's Social Security Bill.
  Pensioners should be aware that if the Government, who have given vast tax handouts, had been prepared to increase the Exchequer contribution by 10 per cent., about £300 million extra would this financial year have been available for the benefit of pensioners.
  Mr. Julian Ridsdale: Surely what affects the pensioner is the increase in the gross national product, which is increasing at three times the rate that the last Government achieved.
  Mr. O'Malley: The tragedy is that, whatever is happening to the gross national product, the pensioners are getting very little out of it. I shall come to the relationship of national average earnings to average pensions, when the hon. Gentleman will see that the pensioners have not only not improved their position but, as a result of this Bill, will find themselves in an even worse position than as long ago as 1967 under the last Government. The degree of satisfaction and optimism expressed by the Secretary of State is not shared by the National Federation of Old-Age Pensions Associations, or by the TUC, or by numerous pressure groups such as "Help the Aged" and "Concern".
  816
  Before I look in detail at the defects and the vast gaps in the Bill, I want to welcome the increases. I listened with interest to the hon. Gentleman's comments and the additional information on the attendance allowance. We believe that it is right that there should be no increase in the flat-rate contribution but a greater emphasis on earnings-related contributions. The Under-Secretary of State is keenly aware, and the Government should be aware, following our debates in Committee on the Social Security Bill, that the Labour Party is opposed to a system of national insurance which provides flat-rate benefit for earnings-related contributions. We believe that if earnings-related contributions are to be made, there should be earnings-related benefits in return.
  The Bill splits into three convenient parts. Retirement pensioners and the recipients of long-term benefits will get a "large monetary increase", as the right hon. Gentleman described it, of £1 a week for the single person and £1·60 for the married couple. The right hon. Gentleman was almost saying that these are unprecedented figures. But these are unprecedented times. It takes the incapacity of the present Government to produce an inflation and madhouse economic and food policies—the latter now being haggled over in Brussels by the Minister of Agriculture and his European counterparts.
  The Secretary of State has claimed that for the retirement pensioners and the recipients of long-term benefits there will be real improvement. At this point, I remind the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) that on the Government's own figures the pension for a single person will represent only about 19 per cent. of national average earnings. It is likely that the figure will be 18 per cent. by next autumn and it could well have fallen by October 1974 to an alltime low during the post-war period. This 19 per cent. is lower than the 1967 figure and is one of the vital statistics and considerations which must be taken into account when assessing the merits of what the right hon. Gentleman described as an "unprecedented increase".
  The Secretary of State went on to compare movements in the monetary value of pensions and movements in the retail

  817
  price index, but the retail price index is not a good guide when assessing the financial ability of pensioners. What is far more significant is the movement in food prices. I am of course aware that the movement in food prices is somewhat higher than the movement in retail prices which the right hon. Gentleman described as having taken place during the past two and a half to three years. Nevertheless, we are faced with a situation in which we are setting the rates for retirement pensions and other long-term benefits not for 12 months ahead, even though it is an annual uprating, but for 18 months ahead, and we do so against the background of the lunacy of the common agricultural policy in the European Economic Community of which we are now a member.
  It is significant that in January of this year the food price index moved up by 2 per cent.; in February, it went up by 1·8 per cent.; in March, it went up 1·9 per cent. So in the first quarter of 1973 alone the food price index moved up by 5·7 per cent. I am not making estimates of what is likely to happen in the rest of the year and in the six months after that, but we can all recognise that that first quarter represents a movement in food prices at an annual rate of 22·8 per cent.
  Of course there will be seasonal fluctations with the coming of the summer, but there can be little confidence, in view of the state of world commodity markets and the present arrangements in the EEC, that those vast figures will be drastically reduced—certainly it is not the view of most informed commentators on the subject that they will be reduced.
  But it is not only the official figures that are interesting. Some of the random surveys are also of interest. In the Observer of 22nd April there appeared the "Observer Shopping Basket" in which one of the reporters of that newspaper said that she had returned to Slough where last October she had gone shopping with a housewife to find out which local stores gave best value for money. She found that between October and April there had been a movement in prices in a whole list of goods amounting in Tescos to 13·6 per cent., in Sainsburys to 12·2 per cent., in Waitrose to 12 per cent. and in Safeways to 13·7 per cent.
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  Those figures are extremely significant. While the Government are claiming that they are bringing down some prices as the result of the introduction of VAT, they are allowing food prices to rocket. We are entitled to ask for how much longer they will allow our basic foods, our staple foods, to remain unsubsidised, for how much longer we are to continue with the dear food policies that have characterised the Government's policies since they took office.
  All the Government can claim—if I may be selective for a moment—is that, according to the Sunday Times of 22nd April, if one wants to buy a four ounce Cologne spray of Yves St. Laurent Rive Gauche, its price has come down between 5 and 7 per cent. I am sure that every pensioner will regard that as being of enormous significance. The Government say that tennis rackets, too, are likely to come down between 4½ and 6½ per cent. On behalf of the pensioners, we are entitled to ask, as are hon. Members opposite, when we are to see at least some stabilising of food prices, let alone the reductions of which the Government are boasting for some of the luxury goods that concern pensioners not at all.
  Since stage 1 of the Government's prices and incomes policy began, meat prices have rocketed by 40 per cent., and there seems no hope of those prices coming down in the foreseeable future. Over the two and a half years to December 1972, fares rose by 42½ per cent. With such movements in prices, it is clear that these figures of £1 and £1·60 will assume a different significance in the incomes of pensioners. It is no wonder that the pensioners and their organisations and others concerned with the problems of family poverty are worried about the general level of retirement pensions over the next 18 months.
  I conclude on that section by agreeing with a spokesman of Age Concern who was reported as having said of the increase which the right hon. Gentleman regards with such optimism:
  "It represents the smallest possible increase the Chancellor could have made."
  Mr. Sydney Bidwell: Has my hon. Friend observed that many medical men are warning that price increases are occurring mainly among protein foods and that what will happen

  819
  is that many old people will therefore buy carbohydrates, which might make them appear to be healthy, but which in fact will greatly increase the incidence of skin disorders and affect the blood?
  Mr. O'Malley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I believe that every pensioner organisation and every pensioner and everyone who visits the homes of pensioners realises how they have been driven away from high protein foods simply because of prices, and I refer particularly to their visits to butchers' shops.
  The Secretary of State has been remiss in not at long last increasing the disregards available to retirement pensioners when they apply for supplementary benefit. It is years since the disregards were fixed. The result is that many pensioners who could benefit from these small increases in their pensions in fact will find themselves with no advantage.
  I come from the coalfields, and the mining community has a particular problem. It will affect many pensioners who have a small occupational pension. I speak feelingly on this subject because my own mother is in receipt of the miner's widow's pension, which is a half of the 30s. that is to go up to £3. All of us appreciate how small and inadequate that type of pension is, but let us see what happens when the miner's pension goes up from 30s. to £3.
  Substantial numbers of men who have worked in the mines all their lives have to depend on supplementary benefit to be able to live at all. They will gain 30s. in their retirement pension—for which they have negotiated and which they obtain from the National Coal Board— but they will lose all of it as a result of the Secretary of State's failure to make any change in the disregards, a change that has been demanded from both sides of the House over the past two years.
  Another significant omission from the Bill is any increase in death benefit. The level was set at £20 in 1949. It had reached only £30 in 1967. Originally it was intended that the level of the death benefit should be sufficient to provide a funeral of a minimum standard. At a time when a funeral of a minimum standard costs £65, £70 or even £75, quite
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  clearly the death benefit should be raised. I know from what has been said in earlier debates on the subject that the right hon. Gentleman will come under a great deal of pressure during the later stages of the Bill to do something about this glaring omission.
  Next, it is regrettable that the Secretary of State, having declined to dynamise the graduated pensions—the little old sixpences which are paid under the Boyd-Carpenter scheme—should continue to refuse to allow such pensions to be disregarded for the first £1 as occupational pensions are. I wish that the right hon. Gentleman would look at this. It is not a major point. But since we cannot agree across the Floor about the need or the justice for dynamism, I hope that, before the Committee stage of this Bill, he will see whether it is possible to give recipients of graduated pensions the same treatment for disregard purposes as those whose employers decided to opt out of the State scheme and to provide an alternative to the Boyd-Carpenter graduated scheme.
  I turn now to heating allowances. Now that the long-term addition has been absorbed into the general scale rates there is no logic in saying that the heating allowance will be estimated without taking into consideration such long-term addition but that the others will stay as they are. We welcome the administrative change which the right hon. Gentleman has announced because it will bring limited aid to many. However, we believe that other discretionary allowances should be similarly treated, especially in view of the integration of the long-term addition into the basic scale rates.
  In spite of all that the Secretary of State has said about the merits of the changes that he has announced in the heating allowance system, there are still many millions of people who will not be entitled to a heating allowance. The majority of old people drawing supplementary benefit will still not be entitled to it and the majority of those who are entitled will receive only 30p to assist them with their heating. When one looks at the evidence now available, from the Fox Report to the detailed comments on this subject which have been made in the Press in recent months, it is clear that the situation is still highly unsatisfactory

  821
  and that the heating allowance amendments proposed by the right hon. Gentleman go nothing like far enough.
  The Secretary of State explained that short-term benefits were to rise by 60p for a single person and by £1 for a married couple. There is not even movement with national average earnings for this section of the community. The Government say that they will give them price proofing, and price proofing, incidentally, on some optimistic assumptions about the movement of general price levels during the next 18 months. But it is a misnomer to describe some of the payments made under this heading as "short-term benefits".
  At the last count on 12th February 1973, of those unemployed, 110,700 were men and women who had been unemployed for between 26 and 52 weeks—in other words, any earnings-related entitlement had disappeared completely—and 176,000, including 160,000 men, had been unemployment for more than 52 weeks. It is alarming that since June 1970 when the present Government came to office the number of men and women—but predominantly men—who have been and remain unemployed for more than 52 weeks has risen by 78,000. It is intolerable that the Secretary of State should deal with this class of claimants as short-term claimants and attach to them a lower poverty line than is attached to numbers of other national insurance and supplementary benefit recipients.
  It is also alarming to read in page 5 of the Reports of the Government Actuary:
  "I have been instructed to assume for purposes of illustration … that in both the years 1973–74 and 1974–75 the number of unemployed, excluding school leavers and adult students, will average 600,000 …".
  We are likely to see the tragedy of the long-term unemployed remain with us for as long as the present Government are in office.
  It is scandalous that such recipients of benefits should be treated in this way. How can one run a supplementary benefit system which traditionally has set a poverty level and said that below that level none of our citizens must fall and then say that we are now setting two poverty levels whereby a deserted wife, for example, who has been deserted for 18 months will be on a different scale
  822
  of income from that of a deserted wife who has been deserted for two years or more. I do not see the logic of the situation, and I do not believe that the Secretary of State or anyone else can defend it.
  It is also regrettable that in the payment of short-term benefits the Government continue to treat married women as second-class citizens by insisting that they should receive lower benefits than men. It is time that this House erupted to stop this kind of Victorian discrimination against women, especially in view of the fact that over the past two decades increasing numbers of women have gone out to work whose incomes are an essential part in the budgets of married households to pay bills and to meet mortgage payments under this Government.
  Sir K. Joseph: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that a married woman who chooses to pay full contributions so as to have full benefit should receive the same as a married woman who chooses not to pay full contributions realising that she will get only dependant's benefit later?
  Mr. O'Malley: The Secretary of State is now demonstrating publicly that he could not be bothered to turn up the Committee stage of his Social Security Bill in the course of which we answered every one of these points—
  Sir K. Joseph: Answer the question.
  Mr. O'Malley: It is simple to answer it. We have said that we are not in favour of the married woman's option. I believe that the same goes for most of the women's organisations. We do not believe that it is fair that lower-paid men and single women often on low earnings should be asked to carry the burden which married women should be asked to share to pay for the pensions of their mothers and fathers who are the retirement pensioners of this generation.
  I turn finally to the broader question of family poverty. Whenever we discuss it the Secretary of State and his hon. Friends fall back on the family income supplement scheme. Now they are beginning to admit that the FIS scheme is not the answer to family poverty that they thought it was. The Secretary of State came as near as any Minister who has piloted a Bill through the House

  823
  could come to admitting that the whole thing was a terrible flop when he said in the Budget debate that the family income supplement scheme was not a triumph, but nor was it a failure. How could it be described as anything but a failure when there is only a 50 per cent. take-up? In the higher ranges we were told that it was a 75 per cent. take-up and that that was not too bad.
  But the relevant fact to put forward relating to the massive problem of family poverty is that the Government are prepared to expend £10 million a year. How can one defend something as not being a failure when only 75 per cent. of people are claiming entitlement? There would be an outcry in this House if a Treasury Minister came to the Box and said, "The system is not a failure because only 25 out of every 100 people are not paying their taxes properly to the State." Yet that is the situation in the benefits structure where 25 out of every 100 people entitled, even at the top range, and 50 per cent. over the range as a whole, are not receiving the benefits which they should have.
  The right hon. Gentleman has admitted that the numbers receiving and applying for free welfare milk are not high enough. At a time of massive tax reductions, against the background of successive Budgets brought generally topsy-turvey by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on what evidence there is, there are probably 500,000 children living in poverty or near the poverty line. Therefore, the Government have not fulfilled their election promise to the public and to the Child Poverty Action Group that if and when they were returned to power they would raise the level of family allowances. It will not do for the right hon. Gentleman to say that it is the fault of the tax threshold which the Labour Government left in 1970. They have now been in office for nearly three years. It is nonsense to say, "The system is too difficult for us. We cannot deal with the tax threshold, and the clawback system would be difficult to operate."
  How can any hon. Member on either side defend a tax benefit structure in which the poor receive less help from the State and the rich, particularly surtax payers, get more help? That is true. The Under-Secretary shakes his head.
  824
  He does so in ignorance. I suggest that he asks the Department for some briefs on the subject showing the effect of child tax allowances, family allowances, and the clawback system. He will then see the truth of what I am saying. It is regrettable that the Government have done nothing about the general question of family poverty by raising the level of family allowances, which would have been possible if they had the political will to do so.
  The Bill fails to live up to the hopes and needs of pensioners, of the sick and of the unemployed. Nothing short of a radical reform and a fundamental redistribution of wealth will abolish poverty in Britain. Again, in this Bill, the Government have refused to face that challenge.
  4.54 p.m.
  Sir Brandon Rhys Williams: There are many comments that one might make in favour of the Bill. The most favourable is that it has become an annual event. One of my right hon. Friend's great successes was to put uprating on an annual basis.
  I have often made the point that the annual Budget falls into two halves: the aspect concerned with the Government raising money for their purposes and expenditure; and the increasingly important element concerned purely with the redistribution of income. We are dealing today with the annual redistributive budget. We have not yet reached the stage of excitement which Budget Day still attains. However, this should be a matter of concern not only for hon. Members on this side of the House but, as I look at the rather depressingly empty benches opposite, for hon. Members on the other side too.
  Sir Herbert Tetley, the Government Actuary, in his analysis of the Bill has shown that £4,219 million is eventually due from contributions in 1974–75. That is a large total sum of money. Therefore, it is important that we should look at the wider implications and not consider only the particular changes which are being made. To that extent I welcome the remarks of the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley). I believe that we are missing an opportunity of looking thoroughly at the whole sphere of the redistribution of income. We

  825
  ought to cover all the cash transfers which are taking place in the redistributive system operated by the Government, including housing subsidies, to which I want to come back, health, education, family allowances, which have already been touched upon, and local authority rates and services.
  Although the Bill proposes large increases in benefits, right hon. and hon. Members must be disheartened that even when its effects have been felt we shall still have a depressingly large number of people dependent on supplementary benefit. I do not know whether the figure will still be above 4 million people at Christmas this year, but I fear that that will be so. The Department must realise that the nation wants something to be done to reduce the number of people who are dependent upon means-tested benefit, with all the humiliation involved in that. I am not a critic of the Supplementary Benefits Commission and its splendid staff in the offices all over the country. They carry out their job as humanely as possible in difficult circumstances, trying to tackle the casework of such an enormous number of applicants. Something must be done by an act of will at the centre to reduce this number as much and as quickly as possible because the public insist upon it. I hope that the Department will give this matter urgent study. We cannot coast on from year to year with this enormous number of citizens dependent upon means-tested benefit.
  I have often made the point that if we are to have better benefits there must be bigger contributions. No one will run a campaign in favour of larger contributions. Yet no one can deny that if we are to do for the large number of our old people in need what the nation wants done for them larger contributions must be made. I believe that if my right hon. Friend took a lead and insisted on larger contributions being made he would find that he had the support not only of the 7 million pensioners who would benefit but of the whole nation, because something must be done. We are looking to the Government to take a lead.
  Contributions are effectively becoming earnings-related. I find it distressing that the Labour Party is drifting away from its old cry for a contribution from each according to his capacity to each accord-
  826
  ing to his need. Now it wants to bring in an amendment to that. It does not normally amend its constitution, but it is amending this to say "to each according to his contribution" as well. It is not concerned about the poor any more, but about the wealthy who pay to make the party possible. It is not the poorest people; it is those who have used the power of organised labour to raise their standard of living and wages so that they are no longer in the area where they need benefits on account of poverty. Therefore, they want contributions and benefits to be related.
  Mr. O'Malley: The hon. Gentleman is sometimes engaging and frequently annoying with his misquotations of Labour Party policy. He knows as well as I do that the Labour Government's proposals would have meant a redistribution factor towards the lower paid of about £500 million a year when the scheme was operational. I wish he would accept and admit that which has been brought to his attention on a number of occasions.
  Sir B. Rhys Williams: If the hon. Gentleman is speaking of the Crossman Bill, it fell between two stools in this respect as in so many others. It was not as redistributive as the Government's Social Security Bill, but it had the appearance of being redistributive because it offered all the benefits on one plate instead of serving the meal on two different plates. But there is nothing more redistributive which can fairly be offered to the public than earnings-related contributions and flat-rate benefits, and I adhere to the principle that we should give to each according to his need. "To each according to his contribution" is a new-fangled concept, and I hope that for the sake of the poor the Labour Party will drop its campaign in favour of that.
  My right hon. Friend referred to two or three ways in which, as a result of the higher contributions introduced in the Bill, the structure of benefits is to be made somewhat more selective. Obviously one follows him in the increase which he is proposing in the invalidity allowance, the attendance allowance, heating allowance, and so on—this is all good stuff and will be approved by both sides of the House—but more has to be done, and I think we should do it by introducing a further element of selectivity

  827
  rather than by struggling to make blanket increases across the board for large numbers of beneficiaries.
  We want to see where the largest categories of need arise, and I have suggested that it might be advisable to go further in the direction than my right hon. Friend has gone in introducing a special higher rate of pension benefit for the over-80s. We could examine the possibility of an intermediate step for those over 75, or possibly over 70, and this would help to give back self-respect to those who cannot at present manage and have to go to the Supplementary Benefits Commission for help.
  More specifically, we want to analyse the structure of benefits as between single people, those living together with their families, and those living as husband and wife. I should like to put specific questions about the precise reasons why the figures have been changed in the way that they have been. I listened to what my right hon. Friend said, but I do not think he gave the House an indication of his thinking on this matter.
  An analysis of the old structure of the basic benefit for pensioners shows that a couple receives £10·90 and will receive £12·50. Within that structure, for a single person the benefit at present is £675 and will become £775. The benefit for a dependant is now £415 and will become £4·75. The element which can be calculated as being the common element which is deemed to exist where two people are living together is £2·60 and will become £3.
  I wonder why there has been that increase in the flat element, which can be deemed to be the cost of joint household benefits, at the same time as we are introducing housing allowances across the board, and not only for people living in local authority housing. I am not saying that it is necessarily wrong, but I feel that we need to analyse these figures which mean so much to so many people and to know precisely what is the Department's thinking in proposing this specific amount.
  If it had been decided to increase the benefit for a couple from £10·90 to £1250 it would have been possible to leave the common element at £2·60 and take into account the fact that, we hope, a very
  828
  much larger number of pensioner couples, not too well off, will be able to get the benefit of rent allowances for which they were not eligible last year.
  That would have made it possible to increase the single person's allowance to £4·95 instead of £4·75. It is possible that there would have been an unacceptably higher element of cost in doing that, but perhaps the figures might have been adjusted within the total money available to take into account the fact that housing subsidies are now becoming available.
  My right hon. Friend might say that although these allowances are becoming available the take-up is not on a large scale. I think that for people living in local authority housing it is reasonable to expect benefits under the Housing Finance Act to be taken up at about 100 per cent. I hope that where those entitled are eligible for supplementary benefit too, the rent allowances will be taken up at 100 per cent. But, speaking from the experience of my borough, which I admit has not had an opportunity of making a thorough analysis as the benefits have not been available for long enough, I have the feeling that people not in local authority accommodation and not eligible for supplementary benefit have not been swift to apply for their allowances.
  I believe that we shall be faced with the same problem of take-up as there has been with the family income supplement, or perhaps an even worse situation. The national campaign was perhaps the reason for the relative success of the family income supplement. I am not certain whether the local authority campaigns to take up housing allowances will be equally successful, particularly among elderly people. I should like the Department therefore to make a serious study of the next stage, which is the amalgamation of rent allowances with the pension and, in particular, with this detectable element in the pension which is the common household element both for single persons and married couples.
  I have pointed out, and I made the point in a memorandum to the Select Committee considering the tax credit scheme, that the same household benefit element appears in the structure of negative allowances in the income tax system. It would be a valuable

  829
  exercise to study the implications of the situation that will arise after the tax credit system is introduced, because it is bound to have effects on national insurance which have not been dealt with in the Green Paper. It needs to be studied now in view of the large implications and the need to phase in over a period of years any reforms which may be seen to be necessary.
  The tax credit system will attack national insurance and will make it fall into two parts: First, the continuous benefits such as pensions which, once a recipient has qualified, will continue, probably for many years; and, secondly, contingency benefits under National Insurance which may be available for only a few weeks, such as unemployment benefit, industrial injury benefit and sickness benefit.
  I hope that my right hon. Friend is studying the relationship between what he is doing in the Bill and what will happen when tax credits are introduced, the future relationship with housing subsidies and, next—a matter which arose particularly during the Committee stage of the Social Security Bill—namely, the status of women. The mood of the country demands that we should move towards some sort of unisex treatment under national insurance so that male and female alike are seen to be getting the same treatment and precisely the same benefits in return for their contributions.
  There was an interesting debate in Committee on the nature of the married women's obligation to pay contributions, and at this stage my right hon. Friend is rightly resisting those who think it would be a good plan for the married women's contribution to be brought up to the level of that paid by the single worker; but when there is equal pay for equal work the situation will be different, and at that point I shall be ready to accept the argument in favour of the woman's contribution being the same as a man's whether she is married or single.
  It is necessary to look at the problem of the one-income and two-income families, and to recognise that at present the two-income family is given substantial help. It pays lower contributions and taxes, and the one-income family will become a depressed area which will need subsidy and assistance if the married
  830
  woman who stays at home is not to be put at a particularly heavy disadvantage. I am ready to accept that, not now, but in a few years, it will become proper for married women's contributions to be put on the same basis as men's.
  Similarly, we then need to look at the two kinds of retired women—those who opted to pay a higher contribution when they were earning as married women—in past years it was not much higher—and those who preferred to pay the minimum and to depend on their husband's benefit. There are anomalous cases which need attention. Perhaps in the coming months my right hon. Friend would be profitably engaged in looking at the relative status of women in retirement in relation to the actual record of contribution which give rise to the differences in their rates of benefit.
  These problems range widely and I do not know whether there will be opportunities in Committee for any of them to be gone into more deeply this year. Naturally, I hope there will. I have made this speech because these points should now be occupying the Department's attention. I hope that my hon. Friend in his reply will be able to assure us that all these things are indeed receiving active study.
  5.11 p.m.
  Mr. Alec Jones: Several of the hon. Members present have served together on Committees dealing with national superannuation, social security or national insurance. When we were joined by the Secretary of State, all that I learned from him today was that he is a wonderful reader and a super-optimist. I only wish that all of us, and particularly the old-age pensioners, the sick, the unemployed and the disabled, could have some confidence in his optimism.
  We are getting used to this annual up-rating occasion. We all welcome the relief of an annual system to those on social security benefits, but that is like saying that half a loaf is better than no bread. Even hon. Member opposite will agree that the reliefs in the Bill are still inadequate. There are still "two nations." Although one does not see evidence of starvation, there are still millions in this country living in poverty, hardship and deep misery, and the Bill

  831
  does not touch the fringe of those problems.
  An annual uprating allows us to focus attention on the specific problems of those who depend on social security. We must recall on these occasions that we are dealing with millions of people—not just the old, but the sick, the disabled, the unemployed, the injured and the widows. We are used to having a three-hour debate on this matter, but it should not always be so limited. It may be said that few hon. Members are present, but attendance is related to the time available.
  As we said on last year's Bill and in Committee, the present level of old-age pensions is far too low, certainly as a percentage of our average national earnings. The figures given by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) about the food price index show that this uprating is inadequate. People are prepared to pay more now if they can be assured that pensioners will get the benefits.
  Some hon. Members will have seen a survey carried out by a lecturer at the London School of Economics, Mr. David Piachaud, which confirmed our view that the public accepts that pensions are too low. It showed that 94 per cent. believed that pensions were either inadequate or very inadequate. The House would be unwise to ignore that view.
  Those who took part in the survey considered that pensions should be, on average, about 60 per cent. higher, which would mean an uprating from £6·75 to £11·10 for a single person and from £10·19 to £17·50 for a married couple. The Government will say that we cannot afford that, and the Secretary of State talked about priorities, but there is plenty of evidence that people are becoming more concerned than the Government or the House with the plight of the elderly.
  The survey also showed that 85 per cent. of working people would accept being worse off themselves if they could be assured that the money would go to the pensioners. Six out of seven of those interviewed would have been prepared to give up 85p per week on that basis. I cannot judge the survey's validity, but it supports the view that I have gathered from personal experience and it provides a serious challenge to the Government
  832
  and the House to match their actions with the views of the public.
  The hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) referred to the depressingly large number of people still dependent on supplementary benefits. We have to accept that these benefits will be with us for a long time, even after the passing of the new Social Security Bill.
  There are anomalies, which should be investigated, in the so-called disregards. The disregard was introduced in 1966, and it is time for it to be re-examined. If there is need for a disregard—in my opinion, there is—the disregard itself ought to be uprated. The £1 and £2 disregards introduced in 1966 are worth far less today than they were at that time. The retail price index stood at 116·5 in 1966, and in February 1973 it had risen to 172·4, a 48 per cent. increase. Therefore, to match the original level of the disregard, the £1 ought now to go up to about £1·50.
  Moreover, under the disregard arrangements, different incomes are treated differently. I find it strange and difficult to justify when people question me about it that there should be two levels of disregard. For example, if part-time earnings of a man are in question, why is the disregard £2 unless that man is unemployed and registered for work at the employment exchange? Why should £2 be disregarded in respect of disablement and war widow's pension, but only £1 of other income? If the disregard is necessary, it is logical and right that it should be uprated and that the disregard should be similar for income from any source.
  I am concerned also that the so-called disregard is taken into account on certain occasions. For example, those who apply for a special diet allowance are, in the main, not only poor but suffering from a health problem which gives rise to the need for a special diet. I see no sense in saying that we disregard £1 of income in assessing supplementary benefit but, if the claimant is so ill as to need special diet, that which we have previously disregarded is taken into account in assessing entitlement to special diet allowance.
  Not only should the disregard arrangements as a whole be overhauled but there should be an immediate uprating

  833
  alongside the uprating now proposed for many of the other benefits.
  As to the attendance allowance, we all welcome the increases from £3·60 to £4·15 at the lower rate and from £540 to £6·20 at the higher rate. But there is still considerable concern throughout the country at the working of the Attendance Allowance Board. I mean no criticism of the members of the board as individuals. My concern is that we, as a House of Commons, may be putting too heavy a burden on them. Is there not a better way of going about it?
  We all know from our constituencies that there are many disappointed claimants, and that many general practitioners believe that certain of their patients ought to have the allowance although their applications have been turned down. The Minister has had many cases referred to him by Members on both sides, and we have had several debates on the subject. It would be a mistake to believe that everything in the attendance allowance garden—an awful mixed metaphor—is working nicely and smoothly.
  I was pleased to hear the Secretary of State announce the new timing for the phasing-in of the lower-rate attendance allowance. I have argued about this for a long time, and I am glad that something is being done. In my view, it was cruel and inhuman, and it still is, to say to the oldest people of all that they must be left to the end before being able to claim the attendance allowance at the lower rate. I had occasion this weekend to try to help a man of 85, and I had to tell him that he could not put in a claim for the allowance at the lower rate because of his age. He is condemned to wait till the end, and the chances are that he will not be here to benefit from it when the time comes.
  I welcome the improvement which will come as a result of bringing the phasing-in forward from December to October 1973, so that children will receive their payments in October rather than December, but I again emphasise how necessary it is to give proper attention to the problems of the most elderly.
  I have confined myself to the problems of the old-age pensioners, of those on supplementary benefit, and of those who claim attendance allowance payments to help the disabled, because those three
  834
  groups are, I believe, the most deserving of all. They both need and deserve far more than the Bill provides.
  5.26 p.m.
  Dame Irene Ward: The House ought to pay a great tribute to the Secretary of State and his Ministers for the work which they have done and the amount of work which they have been able to put behind the Bill. Having been a Member of Parliament for a long time, I tend to judge Ministers by the way they care for their Departments and the work which they do to enable their Departments to do their duty.
  We have a remarkable team in the Social Security Department now. It has been said, and I believe it to be largely true, that the country is now ready to do everything it can to help the more unfortunate. I come from an area which is by no means wealthy, but I know that people realise that we have a first-class team in the Department, and I want that put on record.
  Life itself does not always deal with people fairly. Some people are born with more brains than others. Good health is not an endowment which is justly bestowed. Unfortunately, some people do not have good health.
  I certainly criticise my Government from time to time, sometimes when it is not even necessary, but I do so to help my hon. Friends to tell Treasury Ministers or other Ministers that they are being pressed by that tiresome woman the hon. Lady the Member for Tynemouth.
  History is worth studying. I was very proud that in the 1930s, which was a difficult period for Parliament, we had considerate Prime Ministers and Secretaries of State, though of course in those days, before so many Departments were reorganised, the titles were different. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer decided on provision for maternity benefits and maternity centres. We should pay tribute to the medical profession's efforts to ensure that research is conducted where necessary. This has resulted in a great improvement in children's health compared with the days when I first came to the House. I am proud, of my party's record in general, and in particular, of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's record in introducing the Bill.

  835
  I am delighted with the decision about the heating allowance. I fully understand the problem about food prices, because I see a great deal of my constituents, but the lack of heating is a very sad matter for some people. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State sometimes forgets to boost himself. I had to ask him to confirm my impression that the heating allowance was to be paid over the whole year. This will make a great difference. I congratulate the Department on this decision, because it will relieve great anxiety. In the North there is far more poverty than there is in the South.
  As I am not very good with statistics I shall not bother with them. I have lived too long among statistics. They are sometimes right, sometimes wrong. Sometimes they bore me. I know that the family income supplement has caused the Government anxiety. Those who come to see me about their problems are rather fragile people and are very nervous of going to a Government Department. I fully accept that the Supplementary Benefits Commission does everything it can to help the cases I raise with it.
  However, the people about whom I am concerned hear all about family incomes supplement in a rather vague way. I am sure that the Government believe genuinely that advertisements are necessary—they have spent a great deal of money on advertisements—but those who are entitled to FIS do not always read newspapers or advertisements, or if they read them they cannot always understand them.
  This is why it is so important to have good social service workers in every area. We have a tremendous number of dedicated people. They could go to interview these people and persuade them to overcome their fears and apply for FIS. After all, fear is a very important emotion: it takes a long time for a new Member to overcome his fear of being shot down for doing something stupid.
  It always takes a long time to persuade the general populace to accept and understand any new scheme, however worth while and whether it is in relation to local government, getting into Europe, or taxation. I am sure that it is the fragile nature of those who really should apply for FIS that accounts for the very low take-up of this benefit.
  836
  I listened with great interest to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams), who knows so much about all these problems. He suggested many worthwhile courses of action. I sometimes wonder how my hon. Friend would enjoy coping with these problems if he had to tackle them in my part of the world. Although the British people are generous and want to do the very best for those who are not as fortunate as they are, very different analyses are called for in view of the contrast between the more well off South and the hard part of the world where I come from.
  In part of my constituency there is above the average of retired people and, consequently, a greater proportion of people living a pretty restricted life and not so many people earning from which to contribute as there are in the South. These problems are not as easy as some hon. Members on both sides seem to think.
  Many hon. Members opposite come from industrial areas. They have their thoughts. I have mine. This is a matter of humanity. Both sides want to do the very best for those in difficult circumstances. However, those who talk without really understanding the whole problem stir up feelings in my part of the world. My people ask "Why do not the militants stir up the people to strike?" I always return to my philosophy that if throughout the country everyone could do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay there would be much greater opportunity for hon. Members on both sides to argue with the Treasury, because we should have much more to spend.
  I do not wish to be controversial, but in view of what was said by the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) —and he said a lot of wise things with which many of us will agree—I wonder why, if the Opposition are so dissatisfied with this Bill, they have not come along to say so. If I am nothing else, I am a Member with a certain amount of experience, and I know that if there is tremendous feeling on any issue the House fills. I realise that there are not many Members on the Government benches. At the same time, we have a Government of whom we are proud. But the Opposition say that the Government have not done enough. In that case, why

  837
  are not the Opposition benches filled with Members? I find this situation extraordinary.
  The hon. Member for Rotherham kept saying what ought to be done. Would he not have felt happier if he had had a cheering multitude behind him? We are all human. I recognise that there is a great deal to be done. I dare say that if I mentioned all the things that I thought ought to be done I would find myself in disagreement with many hon. Members opposite, but I know that the Department of Social Security acts with sympathy.
  There are some very nice homes for the elderly. The other day I was invited to Whitley Bay, which is in my constituency, where we have above the average number of retired people. The young men who belong to the Round Table— when one reaches the age of 40 one has to leave and join the Rotary Club—do a great deal of good work for the elderly. They have provided a minibus for one of the old people's homes in Whitley Bay. In that part of the country there are many generous people who have not got much money but they express their generosity in the good work that they do, and they gave this wonderful minibus to this old people's home.
  The trouble was that, being in the North-East, it was so cold that it was difficult for me to find a suitable place in the grounds for the presentation of the bus where the old people could see the ceremony from the windows. However, although we were nearly blown away, we managed to do it.
  I am certain that the present Social Security Department team will continue to provide many of the necessities, as it has done under the present Government. I am sure that we could not have a better informed or more generous Chancellor of the Exchequer. But the Chancellor has got to decide his priorities. The Secretary of State for Social Services has got to get his priorities right, and then he has got to find the money. I take this opportunity of congratulating them. May they continue for many years, sure in the knowledge that the people know that they have a first-class team who will do all they can to meet the essential requirements of the elderly, sick and disabled and ensure that they have the
  838
  maximum support and comfort that this country can afford to give.
  5.45 p.m.
  Mr. Sydney Bidwell: I am sure that the hon. Lady, the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) will not expect me to share her tremendous enthusiasm for her Front Bench.
  Dame Irene Ward: No, I would not.
  Mr. Bidwell: I am sure that whoever comprises the Government Front Bench will for ever be grateful for her eternal militancy. She seems to deride militancy in other quarters, but I would respectfully suggest that she has, through her long and distinguished presence in this House, subscribed a considerable amount of militancy for various causes which she thought were just. So we do not denigrate militancy provided that it is for proper social purposes and for respectable aims, and provided that it is conducted by peaceful and persuasive means and within the law.
  Tomorrow when the demonstrations take place in support of the TUC and the London Labour Party against the Government's policies in general, because it is felt by a wide section of our population that those policies are unfair, at many of the meetings, and certainly at the meeting which I shall address in my constituency, the plight of the aged and infirm will be mentioned over and over again. That will certainly be among the objectives of trade union leaders of the calibre of Mr. Jack Jones, the General Secretary of my union, the Transport and General Workers Union, and Mr. Hugh Scanlon, the President of the Amalgamated Engineering Union— two of the biggest unions—and the officials of other unions will also be referring to our inability as a nation to fulfil our obligations to the infirm and aged. They will not be pulling any punches.
  If there is an element of realism in this country, it is in the trade union movement. Our leaders will not be paying compliments to previous Labour Governments and being content to castigate the present Government. They will be suitably critical, as I am, and as I always have been since I have been in this House under a Labour Government, and under the present Government, of our inability to face the problem of our aged people, and of our failure to move the requisite resources towards making the

  839
  necessary and overdue improvements and reforms.
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that bringing industry to a halt will assist our old people?
  Mr. Bidwell: Yes. I would like the hon. Lady to understand, whether or not she agrees, that there are millions of people who support such a demonstration. They have produced results in the past. This demonstration is brought about partly by the detestation on the part of the trade unions of the unnecessary Industrial Relations Act, which has now largely been placed on the shelf. There are many instances in our history of peaceful, meaningful demonstrations having some effect. It may be that such demonstrations would not find favour in the stony ground of the hon. Lady's mind.
  This is a one-day demonstration on Labour's traditional international May Day. In many other countries there will be demonstrations for similar reasons. If we had a decent Government we could declare 1st May a national holiday. There are plenty of people in the Labour and trade union movements who believe that we should have an all-out national general strike.
  This is an annual uprating Bill and, because of that, does not merit the same attendance as a motion of censure. It is not the height of controversy. There is no cliff-hanging decision to be made about whether old-age pensioners should get more than £1 in the case of a single pensioner or £1·60 in the case of pensioner with a dependent wife.
  I return to the contents of my Ten-Minute Rule Bill, which has a direct bearing on much of the argument about the urgency of relating the national retirement pension to national average earnings. Support for the idea of a better deal for the aged as of insurance right as distinct from supplementary benefit and other means-tested benefits is widespread. Many people, including those who support the Conservative Party, are in favour of this idea. I know from conversations I have had with Conservative Members that they regard this as being necessary.
  840
  I am sick and tired of the Government boasting about how much better they are doing than the previous Labour Government.
  Dame Irene Ward: It is true.
  Mr. Bidwell: Let us relate this to the pension. The Government can tell that to the Marines or, better still, to the old-age pensioners. Let them tell it to a single pensioner receiving £6·75 a week who is to get another £1 on 1st October and who is frightened to death by the crescendo of continuously rising food prices, particularly those for protein foods. Let them tell it to the old-age pensioners association and to Age Concern, an organisation which includes many people not necessarily sympathetic to the Labour Party.
  I was not too familiar with Age Concern until I introduced my Ten-Minute Rule Bill. Members of its task force—an energetic group of young people who assist the aged—came here quite spontaneously. I was thrilled to know that they had got the message about my Bill. I have a document produced by this organisation which is not ultra-critical of the Government. The Government ought to be pleased to receive any bouquets from this organisation. It speaks in glowing terms of the Social Security Bill.
  It is often said that we are lagging behind other EEC countries. Old-age pensioners in West European countries get incomes as of right without means-testing. That is the important point. The problem here is not to do with the pros and cons of the arrangements we make for future generations of workers. It is to do with the urgent arrangements that we ought to be making for the 8½ million pensioners of today. The hon. Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) put his finger on the weakness of our attitude towards an ageing population. This attitude reveals a British weakness—I might almost say "a British sickness". We are lagging behind in making these provisions. The hon. Member for Kensington, South says that there is a worrying tendency for the amount of supplemental benefit to increase. To me it reveals the weakness in the present system and shows that the true value of the retirement pension has been declining. It shows that a pensioner has to go for supplemental benefit

  841
  in order to maintain anything like a minimum living standard. Of course, many pensioners do not claim the benefit and the Department is forced to engage in costly campaigns to persuade them to take up their benefits. I would be interested to know the comparable take-up of family income supplement, other benefits that can be obtained only through means-testing and the supplemental benefits for old-age pensioners.
  It seems that the older people get the more dignified they become and the more likely they are to tighten their belts, buy cheaper food and put the grocery item back on the shelf because they cannot afford to pay at the check-out. I believe that is the situation facing a large number of the old-age pensioners, because 2 million out of the 8 million or so go for the supplemental benefit.
  My Bill is a Ten-Minute Rule Bill, but it has received more attention in this Parliament than a comparable Bill did in the previous Parliament. It comes up for Second Reading on Friday, and some people have doubts about whether it will be successful. If it is not given a Second Reading it will not be for lack of merit. I shall be presenting the Bill or Bills embodying a similar principle time and time again as long as I am a Member of the House because a large proportion of a whole generation of people had no chance to contribute to decent pension schemes in their working lives and attention to their problem is long overdue.
  6.3 p.m.
  Mr. Robert Boscawen: How much more valuable it would be if the Labour Party were to declare one day of work instead of one day of strike and to contribute the proceeds of the day of work to the long-term disabled.
  The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) began his speech by saying that there was no philosophy behind my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's Bill or speech. As usual the hon. Member's blunt gramophone needle is well and truly stuck in the groove. I detected a true philosophy behind the Bill in its emphasis on providing greater benefits in the long term. That is an important factor. It is the long-term disabled and sick and those who are retired who suffer the greatest hardship and poverty.
  842
  Therefore, I welcome much of what is in the Bill. I have some misgivings about its omissions, and I deplore one omission in particular. The philosophy of giving help to the broadest number of people means that some specific and selective needs have had to be left out. In particular, that applies to the very elderly. It was wrong to have left the very elderly age allowance at 25p. That should have been increased and paid for out of contributions. Perhaps less should have been given to those below the age of qualification for the very elderly age allowance. Why do we have to stick at 25p? This affects the people whose need is greatest now.
  There is one glaring omission in the Bill concerning those who do not get any death grant—again the very elderly over the age of 80. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said in Committee that he was not unsympathetic to this small group of people being included, even though they had not paid a contribution for the grant. I hope that in Committee we shall be able to press him again on the matter. It is serious and urgent for a small number of people, and it would not be a costly measure.
  We must look much more carefully both now and in the future at benefits paid to those who are suffering from long-term incapacity, whether it is a disability from birth or a disability from an accident at work or in the home. I realise that the Government are moving slowly and surely towards some form of disability income by means of the attendance allowance and the disability allowance, but there is a long way to go and there are many anomalies.
  Mr. O'Malley: On the point about long-term benefits, does the hon. Member think that older men particularly who have become unemployed and whose prospects of getting further employment are virtually nil in many areas should be regarded as long-term beneficiaries and should get a higher rate and not a lower rate as set out in the Bill?
  Mr. Boscawen: The hon. Member has hit on a valid point but I still think that the greatest priority should be given to those who are incapacitated from work through disability at a younger age, particularly those who are incapacitated

  843
  at work, in their homes—such as housewives—and, of course, those who are unable to do any work because of disability from birth. The problem is not straightforward. I do not wish to see the emphasis put on the earnings-related benefit for those disabled at work, because that is not the priority. The priority for the House should be to see that the severely disabled do not have to seek recourse to social security supplementary benefits because of their disability. Our aim should be to organise our affairs so that supplementary benefits do not need to be paid in such cases, so that their incomes are sufficient to meet their needs. If we were to organise our affairs properly, such a move would not cost the contributor or the Exchequer any more. These people should be able to receive as of right an income because of their disability which is sufficient to take them outside the supplementary benefit level.
  Perhaps my hon. Friend will say how many people will be taken over supplementary benefit level by the increase in the long-term benefits in the Bill. It would be useful to know how far we are along the road which I wish to travel. Undoubtedly, we have made substantial increases in the current uprating Bill. The fact that it is the second uprating Bill is something we are extremely pleased about. All of us on this side congratulate my right hon. Friend on his achievement, first, in bringing about an annual uprating of pensions, and, secondly, in seeing that the second of those annual upratings has been very significant.
  But let us examine some of the anomalies that still exist and come forward very soon with a sensible and practical plan for helping those who can no longer earn because of some form of long-term disability.
  6.10 p.m.
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Because I have only about three minutes available to me, I shall speak briefly about the death grant, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen), the increase in the disregards, the improvement in the position of women with a defective contribution record and the needs of the disabled who are in employment but
  844
  whose earning capacity is reduced because of their disability. They merit the Government's attention just as do those whose inability is such that they cannot be employed.
  I have received numerous letters about the death grant from elderly people who are deeply distressed to feel that they will be a burden on their relatives when they die. That is a spectre that hangs over those who were excluded from the scheme in 1948. Like many of my colleagues, I believe that it is high time a Government with the present Government's record of humanity and care put the matter right, at relatively low cost. The raising of the grant for those who already receive it is a lesser necessity, but I should like to see a step forward on that in the not too distant future.
  I also receive a large number of letters on the subject of disregards, many of which I send to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who always treats them with the greatest care. The time has come to increase the level of disregard so that people who have earned a disregard are not penalised as compared with those who do not have one.
  I turn next to the improvement in the position of women with a defective contribution record, a question that overlaps another Bill before the House. A number of women who have opted out of paying contributions find at a rather late stage in life, perhaps when their husband is suddenly taken very ill, that they wish to contract into the scheme. Possibly many of them are capable of working from 60 to 65, doing socially useful work such as nursing, as many do in my constituency. They would like to be able to work towards a full pension for themselves rather than merely the abated pension and the abated increments they can now earn.
  6.13 p.m.
  Mr. Michael Meacher: The Bill will be remembered for one reason only, apart from the fact that its omissions are a great deal more significant than its contents. That reason is that for the first time the Government have given a precise indication of what they mean by fairness.
  The short-term sickness and unemployment benefit is being increased by

  845
  60p a week for a single person, but for a pensioner the increase is to be £1 a week. That means that by October the short-term benefit will be worth about 19·2 per cent. of national average earnings, while the retirement pension will be worth about 20·2 per cent.
  Fairness, therefore—or, as the Secretary of State put it in his post-Budget statement,
  "The Government feel that it is right to do more for the pensioner"—
  apparently amounts to raising the pension by precisely one percentage point in relation to national average earnings. If that is fairness, I can only say that it is almost invisible.
  The Labour Party is committed to the £10 and £16 formula for pensions, to be financed partly by changing the contribution rates, the contribution ceilings and the level of the Exchequer supplement, and partly by redressing the grossly regressive slant of the tax handouts under the present administration. The formula aims broadly at a single person pension of one-third of national average earnings and a married couple's pension of half national average earnings. On that basis the Labour Party's view of fairness for the pensioner is to raise the pension by no less than 14 percentage points in relation to national average earnings compared with the Government's one percentage point. So much for this year's pension bonanza.
  There are three main issues in the Bill. One is how fair the Bill is in the immediate situation to pensioners and others with such low incomes that State supplementation is required. The second is how far it proceeds to what I take it is the central aim of national insurance and supplementary benefit Bills—the elimination of poverty. The third, at a time of fairly rapid social change, is how far the Bill shows signs of adjusting the social security system in line with changes in social values in Britain.
  On the immediate question of fairness, the Secretary of State is at once on sticky ground. He claimed last month, with a fair degree of premature flourish, that:
  "This is an uprating which redeems our promise of price protection for all the 11½ million people who will benefit from it."— [OFFICIAL REPORT, 7th March 1973; Vol. 852, c. 413,416.]
  846
  First, price protection is an exceedingly modest objective, but there is plenty in the Bill to be modest about. Even so, there must be considerable doubt at this stage whether the Secretary of State will achieve even his excessively modest goal.
  No doubt the right hon. Gentleman had not expected that price inflation would increase after the imposition of what has so inaccurately been termed a freeze, but that is precisely what has been happening. In November 1972 prices were 76 per cent. up on what they were a year before. In January 1973 the figure was 7·7 per cent. and in February it was 7·9 per cent. The March figure is likely to be 8 per cent., and we can expect prices to rise further under phase 2. At this rate it is quite possible, and indeed likely— contrary to the Secretary of State's boast earlier today—that the sick and unemployed will not have their income price-protected, as their rise next October will amount to only 8·9 per cent. This suggests a new dimension to the Government's concept of fairness.
  Hitherto sickness and unemployment benefit has broadly maintained its relationship with earnings over the past 25 years, which has meant that it has increased substantially faster than prices. Now, however, it has been downgraded to merely keeping up with prices while the rise in the retirement pension, which does no more than merely preserve the old relationship with earnings, is being eulogised as fair. Penalising the sick and unemployed in order to demonstrate otherwise imperceptible fairness to the pensioner must be the cheapest con trick in the social security business for the present Government, whose self-praise for their benefit-cutting ingenuities is so notorious.
  I warn the Under-Secretary and his right hon. Friend that they had better not make any claims about fairness for the Bill outside the House, or they might find themselves prosecuted under the Trade Descriptions Act for false and deceitful advertising.
  Even on the Government's own premises, how fair is it for the Secretary of State to be dispensing extra pennies for the pensioners while the Chancellor of the Exchequer is shovelling out extra pounds for surtax payers with unearned income? In this year no less than £300 million is

  847
  being squandered on the rich in tax reductions on unearned incomes. No less than 90 per cent. of this uncovenanted gain will go to the richest 10 per cent. of the population. Those are the Government's figures, given in HANSARD on 1st May last year.
  If that money were devoted to the pensioners and those in need instead of to the rich, the level of increases under the Bill would be more than half as much again. What is the fairness in that? Contrary to the Secretary of State's boast about the protection which he says he has given to the lower-paid workers against contribution increases, the increases could have been cut by more than half if the £300 million had been used morally. Another alternative is that the cut in rates for the lower-paid workers could have been considerably enlarged. Who is being fair and to whom?
  There is another striking example in the Bill where the Government, after their sudden conversion to fairness because of economic expediency, are seeking to make a virtue out of necessity. It is surprising that no Government statement has mentioned Mrs. Julie Simper. It may have been thought that the Secretary of State would have given credit where credit was due. It is Mrs. Simper, and the Citizens Rights Office of the CPAG, which championed her cause, who are largely responsible for Section 6 and Schedule 4. By winning their case in the High Court in February they forced the Government to end the scandal whereby the award of heating grants to supplementary benefit recipients is multiplied on the ground that the money is already being received in the long-term addition.
  I can give the Secretary of State some credit. He knows how to keep his cool. When a High Court decision might benefit up to 2 million claimants, it takes a bit of nerve promptly to change the law to restrict the break-through to 400,000 claimants only and then to present a Bill as a major gain for the elderly. That is precisely what the right hon. Gentleman is doing.
  First, the concession which has been extracted from the right hon. Gentleman has been made with thoroughly bad grace. The Supplementary Benefits Commission in the meantime is unrepentantly
  848
  adhering to its policy of automatically offsetting these grants against the long-term addition. It is arguing that it is doing so on the basis of the discretion which previously it denied that it possessed.
  Secondly, the concession has been illogically limited to heating grants alone. How in equity can heating grants not be offset agains the long-term addition when clothing grants, laundry grants and special dietary grants and allowances are offset? The Secretary of State gave no answer to that question.
  Finally, on the issue of fairness, there is one glaring omission—that is the low-paid worker. He has been well and truly hammered this year by the Government's double pincer movement of letting both family allowances and the tax threshold sink lower and lower. Family allowances are now worth no more than two-thirds of their value in 1968. The tax threshold before next year's spring Budget will have fallen to an all-time low in relation to national average earnings. The effect of that double neglect this year is to load the poor with most of the burden of what can only be described as a £600 million fiscal drag tax. Is that what the Secretary of State and the Undersecretary of State mean by fairness?
  The real purpose of Bills of this kind is the systematic reduction of the extent of poverty. Admittedly the Government have confused the issue by varying the level of means-tested State supplementation. In fact, there are now four poverty lines in Britain. They are, in descending order, for pensioners, for the unemployed and sick, for the working poor on family income supplement and for the 50 per cent. of the working poor who are entitled to family income supplement but do not claim it.
  There is a fifth poverty line which the Government invented when Professor Kaldor drew the attention of the Select Committee on Tax Credits to the fact that these proposals gave only £150 million out of £1,300 million to those with incomes below £1,000 per year. In reply —the matter was sufficiently embarrassing for the Government to produce a reply —the memorandum of the Department of Health and Social Security redefined the poor as follows:
  "families whose income will be below the break-even point."

  849
  On that basis no less than 42 per cent. of the total net cost of the package would be seen to go to the poor. In other words, the Government change their definition of poverty to suit their convenience. If they are giving State aid to the unemployed or the sick, they restrict the entitled poor below a very low income line. If they are trying to sell as an anti-poverty measure a scheme that gives greater and concealed help to the better-off, the number of the poor is expanded with unprecedented generosity.
  No doubt this is the first and the last time that the Inland Revenue will suggest that there are no less than 20 million poor in Great Britain. But even if the more conventional definition is used—that is, a more restricted definition—the number of poor in Great Britain today is far bigger than is imagined. Apart from the 5 million persons in households in receipt of supplementary benefit, there are probably 1 million to 1½ million persons living below the supplementary benefit line. Of course, there are supposed to be none at all.
  In a statement on the recent family income supplement uprating the Undersecretary of State implied that there were more than half a million persons living in families where the man was in full-time work but bringing home a week's wage below his supplementary benefit entitlement.
  The official figures also reveal that some 150,000 unemployed persons, including the families of those who are married, are receiving neither unemployment benefit nor supplementary benefit. The most likely estimate of the number of pensioners entitled to supplementary benefit but not claiming it is three quarters of a million.
  An answer I received three months ago indicated that there were about 150,000 persons in single-parent families who were entitled to but were not receiving supplementary benefit. Together with sick and disabled persons in such a situation, the total must be near 2 million persons below the poverty line in Great Britain. Even that excludes those who are deliberately pushed below the poverty line by official procedures. That involves the wage-stopped—that is about 50,000 persons, including their families—the rent-stopped, which is another 75,000, the unemployed who are deprived of benefit
  850
  under the four-week rule—that is 10,000 to 50,000 at any one time—and women and children who are deprived under the cohabitation rule; that is another 10,000.
  Even more striking, a recent survey by the Home Office's Community Development Project found that 45 per cent. of a sample of those in receipt of supplementary benefit were not getting their full entitlement. That was largely because of administrative errors but also because of the non-award of special needs grants. Altogether that suggests that the number of persons in Britain entitled to supplementary benefit but not getting it at all or not getting their full entitlement is well over 3 million.
  It is a staggering indictment of the Bill that not one of the 3 million persons in that category will be taken out of poverty as a result of the Bill. Worse still, the number of persons in poverty has increased under the present Government. The latest Supplementary Benefits Commission returns reveal that there are more than half a million more people in poverty—that is based on 312,000 extra regular supplementary benefit claims— than at the time of the last election. Moreover, under the Tories the poor have become poorer. A married man with two children on supplementary benefit received in 1968 about 45 per cent. of national average earnings. In 1972 he received only 41 per cent. That information was given in HANSARD on 13th February 1973.
  A similar picture about the working poor emerges from the Treasury's publication "Economic Trends", November 1972. Taking low-paid workers, who form one-fifth of the population in terms of income, a married man with four children in that group had an income of 79 per cent. of the national average earnings in 1970. By 1971, the latest date for which figures are available, his income was down to 72 per cent.
  Worst of all, it is clear that the Government have no intention of remedying the situation. Apart from uprating the family income supplement, which goes to a minute number of families and to only half of those entitled, the Government are doing nothing about the increasing poverty in Britain. Ministers have said repeatedly that all redress is now postponed in the light of the tax

  851
  credit system. Yet even if that system is implemented, its implementation is four or five years away. More importantly, it is not an anti-poverty measure.
  If the tax credit structure at nil cost is compared with the present situation, which is the fairest form of comparison, a Treasury answer which was given to me shows that the low-wage earner on £15 a week with two children would lose 30p a week while the £5,000-a-year man with exactly the same family responsibilities would gain £1·14p a week. The present posture of the Government towards the poor is consistent with the attitude in the Bill— "Nothing doing until the tax credits in 1977–78"—even though the tax credit proposals are patently an emanation from the Treasury and are not geared to reducing poverty.
  But the most important thing about the Bill is its omissions. It is a vista of lost opportunities. One item so conspicuous by its absence, as the hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen) rightly identified, is any advance towards a national disability income. Not a word is breathed about this particularly crucial issue, and we are still having to wait even until 1975 for the full introduction of the lower tier attendance allowance. Yet even that will cover only about one-quarter of the severely and appreciably handicapped.
  This is unforgivably slow progress for perhaps the single largest most underprivileged group today when, at the same time, the Government are giving priority to extending tax options for top executives up to four times their gross salary with unlimited capital gains written in. It is symptomatic of the Government's "Get rich quick and the Secretary of State take the hindmost if you're lucky" type of society.
  But there is another vital omission. This is the failure of the Bill to begin to adjust our social security system to the profound changes which have taken place in our society in the rôle and place of women. It is now becoming not merely common but usual for women to work. The wife's wage has increasingly become an essential element in total family income without which many families would sink back into poverty. It is precisely for this reason that the family expenditure survey
  852
  shows that families with children under the age of five are twice as likely to live at or near the poverty line as the family with older children.
  The clear indication of this changing situation is that women are now seen to have and themselves expect to have the right either to work or, in forgoing work, to be rewarded for the essential economic and social function of rearing children or caring for elderly or disabled relatives at home. Yet wives who do the latter are penalised by dragging down the family income when it is needed most, while at the same time the wives of much better-off husbands who stay at home are allowed the married tax allowance without any responsibilities.
  In fact, more than four-fifths of persons with a standard of living more than twice that of subsistence level have no dependent children and most of these are couples with no dependent children with the wife staying at home. Furthermore, at least 90 per cent. of those who live at a level five times the poverty standard have no dependent children, yet the wife still draws a valuable tax allowance.
  For a Government with pretentions to the last quarter of the twentieth century and who purport to believe in concentrating help where need is greatest, this situation is ludicrous; and when women stay at home to look after aged or disabled relatives and thereby save the State residential or hospital accommodation costs, now ranging between £14 and £70 per week, it is inexcusable. It is adding insult to injury when, under the tax credit scheme, the Government propose to abolish even the £100 dependent relative tax allowance that now exists.
  What equity now clearly and loudly demands is the award of a home responsibility payment to women who are not employed but who look after young children or aged or disabled relatives at home. If this were paid at an untaxed rate of £4 a week it would cost the Exchequer £850 million. But it could very largely be paid for by withdrawing the married tax allowance from wives who neither work nor have these home responsibilities, which would save the Exchequer £750 million a year.
  But of such vision or more imaginative social policy this Bill is not made. It is a pedestrian product of a plodding and

  853
  unenterprising approach, and although we will not vote against the Bill we shall certainly seek to infuse it with some life in Committee. Otherwise it is difficult to believe that the Bill will achieve more of a place in the historical records than as a monument to the fact that, after only three years, the Government have largely run out of ideas.
  6.35 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of Stale for Health and Social Security (Mr. Paul Dean): A Bill like this rarely gets much publicity and unfortunately this one will get even less than usual because of the newspaper shutdown tomorrow. But the Government are committed to improving pensions and other benefits each year to ensure that their value is at least maintained. Therefore, this is an annual Bill and one of very great significance to a very large number of people. About 11½ million people will benefit from the increases in pensions and other benefits, which will be paid for largely by those who are in work.
  The Bill also involves a very large sum of money, an additional £550 million a year. This means that for the National Insurance Scheme alone the income and outgo of the scheme will reach over £4,000 million a year. But the increase in pension of £1·60 for a married couple and £1 for a single person is the largest cash increase ever in any 12-month period. We are confident that it will provide a significant real increase in the buying power of the pensioners. Therefore, such Bills as this are of major social, economic and financial significance.
  Mr. O'Malley: As the food index has moved up by nearly 6 per cent. in the first quarter of the year, on what statistical evidence does the hon. Gentleman base his optimistic view that the Bill will bring about a real improvement in the pensioners' standard of living?
  Mr. Dean: My right hon. Friend deliberately said he was confident that the Bill would provide a real increase. I repeat that. The hon. Member is far too old a hand in government to believe that I shall fall into the trap he has so nicely tried to lay for me. I stick to what my right hon. Friend and I have said.
  854
  I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Dame Irene Ward) for her generous tribute to my right hon. Friend and those of us who work in the Department with him. I assure her that it will encourage us to try to do better in years to come. I am glad that she welcomed the improved arrangements for the heating allowance and that it will be paid throughout the year. She has played a great part in bringing about improvements in the allowances. She has been working for them for a very long time and I am glad that it has been possible to move further in this direction.
  The hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. O'Malley) mentioned the rise in prices, particularly of food. We are all concerned about rises in prices because nothing is more damaging to the pensioners. But the Opposition's criticism in making these very fair points would be much more effective and would carry much more conviction if the Government had had a little more support from them for our counter-inflation policies. It carries no conviction for the Opposition to be weeping crocodile tears about what is happening to prices and yet to be doing nothing whatever to support the counter-inflationary measures of the Government.
  The hon. Member for Rotherham made the point that there had been virtually no change in the ratio of the pension to average earnings over the past 20 years or so, and I accept that that has been broadly the position under all Governments. But we have to take into account the fact that the number of old people has grown substantially over that period. The ratio of people of working age to those of pension age in 1948 was about 5: 1; it is now about 3¾: 1. That has meant a massive transfer of resources from the working population to the pensioner.
  The best way in which I can illustrate this is to say that if the age structure of the population had remained as it was in 1948, it would have been possible for the pension to be about one-third higher than it is on the existing level of contributions. To put it another way, in 1949 expenditure on pensions was 2·24 per cent. of the gross national product; by now it is well over 4 per cent. of GNP. One has to take into account

  855
  those figures as well as the figures that the hon. Member mentioned.
  In his extravagant and therefore ineffective speech in closing for the Opposition, the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) committed the Opposition to the £10 single and £16 married rates of pension. I noticed that the hon. Member for Rotherham was more cautious in his opening. How unconvincing it is for the Opposition, in the light of their record in office when they had responsibility, to say that they would find it comparatively easy to raise the additional £1,400 million on top of the £550 million in the Bill, because that is what the hon. Member's proposal means.
  Mr. O'Malley: The Under-Secretary puts my hon. Friend in an invidious position. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as anyone that the official position of the whole of the Labour movement is that retirement pensions should be increased to £10 for a single person and £16 for a married couple.
  Mr. Dean: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be a little more specific about how the additional £1,400 million is to be found. If his answer is to withdraw the tax reliefs that have been given under the present Government, tax reliefs which are widely spread throughout the community and which benefit most family men, he should say so. Furthermore, the Opposition have already spent this money 10 times over. That argument is not convincing.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, South (Sir B. Rhys Williams) said that he supported the concept of earnings-related contributions for basic benefits. Indeed, he pulled the leg of the hon. Member for Rotherham on this subject and, as always, the hon. Member rose to the bait. I agree with my hon. Friend that earnings-related contributions are the fairest way of paying for increases in benefit. As a result we have managed on this occasion to get a reduction in the level of contribution by a person earning less than £30 a week. The man earning £30 a week will pay only lp more than now and the rest will come from those getting more pay. I agree with my hon. Friend that when we consider earnings-related pensions we should look to occupational pension schemes and, in default
  856
  of that, the reserve pension scheme as the most appropriate way of making provision.
  My hon. Friend asked whether there was a possibility of further selective improvements for the elderly, and he mentioned a possibility for those aged 75. We have started with the 25p addition for those who reach the age of 80. I assure my hon. Friend that the thoughts which he has expressed during the debate and on other occasions will be considered by the Government. He knows that in this as in all other matters we must have priorities.
  My hon. Friend made the plea that he has frequently made that we should consider tax allowances and housing subsidies and tax credit schemes and so on as one subject. I believe he feels that the Government's tax credit proposals will bring together the social service arrangements and tax arrangements in a way that has not previously been done. It may well be that the new rate rebates and rent allowances will also open up new possibilities of the sort of co-ordination that my hon. Friend has mentioned.
  Speaking of disability and especially of the attendance allowance, the hon. Member for Rhondda, West (Mr. Alec Jones) made some criticism of the working of the scheme. I do not say and I have never said that the scheme is perfect; it is not and we are learning from experience. But it is only fair to remind the House that it is a very new scheme, that the Attendance Allowance Board and those who serve it have done a marvellous job in getting no fewer than 90,000 allowances into payment in a comparatively short time. They are now working extremely hard on the extension of the allowance and my right hon. Friend was able to announce the acceleration of the second phase of the lower rate of allowance.
  It was after careful thought and on the advice of the Attendance Allowance Board that the order of priorities was decided. What matters now is to get the allowance to everybody entitled to it as fast as we can, and that the Government are determined to do with the willing help of the board and those who serve it.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Mr. Boscawen) mentioned anomalies

  857
  among the civilian disabled, and I very much agree with what he said. There are still many anomalies and there is a long way to go before any of us can be satisfied that we are providing anything like a complete or adequate service for the disabled. It is for that reason that my right hon. Friend has given such high priority in uprating Bills, including this, to improving the arrangements.
  My hon. Friend asked me to say how many people would be taken off supplementary benefit by the proposals for the chronically sick and disabled. It is not possible to give a figure, but I can assure my hon. Friend that some certainly will be. I was grateful for his welcome of the higher rate of increase for the long-term cases, including those on pension.
  The hon. Member for Rotherham was somewhat critical of this and seemed to give the impression that this was the introduction of a completely new principle. He knows that the concept of short-term and long-term levels has been included in the arrangements for supplementary benefit for a considerable time. What we are doing now is to extend it into areas where it has not existed before.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Wells made a plea for the increase in the age addition for people aged over 80 and for an increase in the death grant, and the death grant was also mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Mrs. Kellett-Bowman). I assure hon. Members that this year, as every year, the Government carefully considered what the priorities should be. Ultimately it is a question of picking the most urgent priorities at any one time.
  The subject of disregards was mentioned by the hon. Member for Rotherham, the hon. Member for Rhondda, West, and my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster. I can assure the hon. Member for Rhondda, West that since November 1972 the Supplementary Benefits Commission has not taken disregarded income into account against exceptional circumstances additions, and its power to do so is contained in paragraph 4(2)(b) of Schedule 2 to the Ministry of Social Security Act which is terminated by this Bill. I hope that what I have said will reassure the hon. Gentleman on that point.
  The hon. Member for Rotherham instanced the case of someone, perhaps on
  858
  a modest level of occupational pension, who has had increases but gets little or no benefit from them as a result of the reduction in supplementary benefit. One accepts that this is one of the problems that exist on the margin. I am not saying for one moment that there is not a case for improvement in the disregards: all I say is that an improvement in disregards, like improvement in benefits, is a call on resources. It costs money. One therefore has to ask oneself each year which are the highest priorities, and at least those who have additional resources have resources over and above the supplementary benefit level, which is not the case with those who are poorer still.
  I therefore make the point, not unsympathetically but to persuade the House that here, too, as in all the other aspects I have mentioned, there is this harsh reality of priorities which the Government have to consider. But, as has been said on a number of occasions from this Dispatch Box, disregards have not been improved for a long time now and the time will come when they should and rightly will come to the top of the priority list.
  Mr. Meacher: When talking about cost of disregards will the Minister bear in mind that the Government are at present running a Budget deficit of £4,423 million? Would it cost more than £5 million to double the disregards?
  Mr. Dean: We are here talking about a Bill which improves benefits to the tune of £550 million a year. It is in that context that improvement of disregards or anything else has to be considered.
  The hon. Member for Rotherham mentioned family poverty and said that the family income supplement scheme had been a failure. The fact is that although take-up is not as good as we would like, it is bringing much-needed help to 100,000 of the poorest in the land, to the extent in some cases of £5 a week, and that in itself is a significant factor.
  The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well in relation to family allowances which he mentioned that although the tax threshold has been somewhat improved under the present Government through the actions of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, there is still very little maneouvring room for an improvement of family allowances

  859
  Without clawback it would mean that nine-tenths of the cost of the increases would go to those above the threshold of improvement. With clawback it would mean that nearly all families with two or more children would be brought into tax, and a family when it had an additional child would find that it was paying more rather than less tax. It is not good enough for the hon. Gentleman to dismiss so lightly such arguments which remain valid although the situation is not as bad as it was before the present tax-reducing Government came into office.
  The Bill continues two themes which are now well established in the Government's social security policy. The first theme is annual increases in all the main benefits, and new benefits or higher rates of benefit for priority groups. The second feature is illustrated this year in this Bill in the bigger increases for pensioners and other people on long-term benefits, the 40 per cent. increase in invalidity allowances, the acceleration of the programme to extend the attendance allowance and the improved arrangements for heating allowances. We in this Government are never satisfied that enough is being done but we believe that the Bill represent significant improvements, and as such I commend it to the House.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

  NATIONAL INSURANCE AND SUPPLEMENTARY BENEFIT [MONEY1]
  Queen's recommendation having been signified—
  Resolved,
  That, for the purposes of any Act of the present Session to amend the provisions of the National Insurance Acts 1965 to 1972, the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Acts 1965 to 1972 and the Industrial Injuries and Diseases (Old Cases) Acts 1967 to 1972; to make further provision in relation to polygamous marriages for the purposes of any of those Acts and of the Family Allowances Act 1965; to amend Schedule 2 to the Ministry of Social Security Act 1966; to make parallel provision for Northern Ireland; and for purposes connected with those matters, it
  860
  is expedient to authorise the following payments out of money provided by Parliament—

  (1) Such additional payments as result from—

  (a) raising to £6·20 and £4·15 the rates of attendance allowance.

  (b) raising to £4·65 and £2·85 the rates of retirement pension payable by virtue of section l(l)(a) or (b) of the National Insurance Act 1970 or section 5 of the National Insurance Act 1971

  or from raising the weekly rates of the increases of those benefits (where payable) for children or adult dependants.

  (2) In connection with the increase of contributions under section 3 (flat rate contributions) of the National Insurance Act 1965 or under section 2(l)(a) of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1965, the payment of any resulting increase in the sums payable by way of Exchequer supplement under section 7 of the National Insurance Act 1965 or section 2(1)(b) of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1965.

  (3) The payment to the National Insurance Fund, in addition to the Exchequer supplements under the National Insurance Act 1965, in respect of each financial year after the year 1973–74 of the sum of £275 million, instead of the amounts required by section 3(3) of the National Insurance Act 1972.

  (4) Subject to the provision made by section 85 of the National Insurance Act 1965 for reimbursement out of the National Insurance Fund, or by section 61 of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act1965, for reimbursement out of the Industrial Injuries Fund, the payment of any increase attributable to the Act of the present Session in the expenses of the Secretary of State for Social Services or any other Government department which are so payable under either of those sections (any reference in this paragraph to section 61 of the National Insurance (Industrial Injuries) Act 1965 being taken to include that section as applied by section 13 of the Industrial Injuries and Diseases (Old Cases) Act 1967).

  (5) Any increase attributable to the said Act of the present Session in the sums so payable under the Supplementary Benefit Acts 1966 and 1971.

  And that it is expedient to authorise any payment into the Consolidated Fund which is attributable to the said Act.—[Mr. Dean.]

  ZETLAND COUNTY COUNCIL BILL
  (By Order)
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. E. L. Mallalieu): Before I call the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), I have to inform the House that the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) has not been selected.
  7.0 p.m.
  Mr. J. Grimond: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The Bill, which deals with the situation that has arisen owing to the discovery of oil off Shetland, may well point the way to better methods of controlling developments consequent upon oil discoveries in other parts of Britain. But the Bill has arisen because of the Shetland situation, and the Shetland situation is to some extent a special one. I believe it is essential that the impact of oil on a rathei unique island community such as Shetland—an impact which may be extremely serious but which certainly will not go on for ever and may be over after 50 years —should be controlled carefully. We must not sacrifice the long-term future of the community.
  Control should be exercised with several aims in view. The first is the well-being of all Shetlanders and all their descendants. The second is the maintenance of their traditions, which are largely Norse in origin and which differ from the traditions of much of the rest of Britain. The third is the preservation of the best land of Shetland—here I have in mind both its agricultural value and its beauty —and the protection of Shetland's existing fisheries, agriculture and industry.
  We should also arrange for the retention in the islands of a fair share of the income which will arise from these discoveries. We should ensure that this income can be used for the general well-being and for such purposes as making good if pollution should take place and the ultimate rehabilitation of sites which may be used and then discarded. The fifth aim is that service and other industries connected with the oil should be introduced in an orderly manner and at a speed and on a scale which the islands can absorb without disruption.
  To some Shetlanders the very minimum introduction of service industries is to be deplored. They see them as a threat to their way of life, and that way of life certainly is distinctive and humane in scale and is becoming very much valued in a world which has seen the squalor which arises from forcing human beings into great conurbations. The 1,100 people of the island of Unst, for instance, would view with dismay more than 500 incomers over the next four
  862
  or five years. I sympathise with that point of view. But there are already service industries in Shetland, for example at Sandwick. The discovery of oil is having an effect on the economy and it would be unreasonable and unrealistic to expect that we could keep them out even if we wanted to. Of course a refinery would be a very different matter.
  The Bill sets out to achieve orderly planning for the aims that I have outlined in the interests of Shetland as a whole. The general purpose of the Bill is set out in paragraph (2) on page 2. It is to ensure that facilities required in connection with the discovery of oil off the coast of Shetland should be provided
  "… in an orderly, co-ordinated and effective manner …".
  I cannot believe that anyone could object to that.
  The Shetland County Council has drawn up a development plan which has been submitted to the Secretary of State. It has appointed a firm of consultants to do more detailed planning of the main areas likely to be affected. It has the advice of Messrs. Rothschild's on financial and technical matters. It has been aware for years of the nature and some of the purposes of the companies which have shown an interest in the Shetlands. It has had discussions with many of them. Major oil companies such as BP, Shell and Conoco have approved of its proposals. I myself, county councillors and officials have held meetings up and down the islands. The development plan has been exhibited and amended in the light of public criticism. The Shetland Times has given wide coverage to points of view from all directions.
  Local planning authorities are accused sometimes of being too slow off the mark, ill-informed, prejudiced and secretive. But here we have a Bill which is an attempt to look ahead, which has been discussed with the community and which would enable representatives of the community in good time to take control of developments the ultimate shape of which it is very difficult to foresee.
  The most controversial parts of the Bill are the clauses which would give the county council powers of compulsory purchase in the areas round Sullom and Baltasound. I ought perhaps to explain in some detail why these are necessary.

  863
  It would be dishonest to pretend that they have not aroused understandable anxiety.
  The anxiety arises both from those who do not want ever to part with their land and perhaps those who want to part with it all too quickly and to make a good killing in the process. I have sympathy with those who regard it as a disaster that they may have to sell land which has been in their families for generations and on which they want to stay. It may be a tragedy that oil was ever found at all. But it has been found, and it is neither possible nor, I suggest, desirable to exclude from Shetland the service industries and the handling of oil which will go on almost certainly.
  I say to those people that these provisions are not designed to encourage the eviction of families which have lived perhaps for generations in Shetland. They are designed to limit the amount of land which may have to be taken, to see that the land which is taken is put to good use and to protect the crofters, who are tenants. Even if there were no compulsory purchase of land in Shetland, it would still be possible for landlords to resume the land and therefore there is a need to protect the crofters and to ensure that they get good compensation.
  Then I must explain why the county should not rely on the normal planning procedures and why the land needs to be acquired at all by public authorities. It may be argued that they have sufficient power under the planning Acts. Again I stress that we are dealing with islands and with special situations of small, defined communities.
  Property developers might buy up land. Some has been bought already and more is under option. Having bought it, they might keep it until its value had risen a great deal. There is already evidence that some land has been sold at below its potential value. Therefore the people affected will get a much better deal if it is valued by the district valuer at the market rate prevailing when it is required for industrial development. What is more, developers might take far more land than is needed. They might choose to put up a lot of small tanks rather than one or two bigger ones. They might seek to let it to service companies dealing with only one
  864
  oil company and again be extravagant in the use of land.
  Indeed, if we rely entirely on planning Acts there is no certainty that proper surveys and so on would be carried out. Under those Acts development could no doubt be confined to the designated areas, but proper planning within those areas would be more difficult. Conditions could not be written into the planning permission which would cover all possibilities. I emphasise that we are looking into the future, and it would be almost impossible to cover all the possibilities which might arise.
  Further, the initiative would have to come from the developers. Again, there is a danger that we might find in certain hands a monopoly of the valuable land in Shetland. Unless permission to develop were limited to a stated time, I understand that no detailed provision for the restitution of the land could be inserted in the authority to develop.
  I suspect that demands will grow and that it will be impossible, once planning permission has been given, to regulate these demands as we might want in the interests of the community. The result of relying simply on planning procedures could be that perhaps one man or one company would make a lot of money while the neighbours, whose amenities would be greatly affected, would get nothing.
  Why should not the council proceed with compulsory purchase under Section 102 of the Town and Country Planning (Scotland) Act 1972? I do not deny that this could be done, but there are great difficulties in the way. To my mind the proposed procedure is more satisfactory.
  I emphasise again the particular nature of the Shetland problem. It is an island community of 17,000 people and when the oil eventually ceases to flow there could be disastrous effects on a distinctive community.
  It would be difficult to put an argument to the Secretary of State which would meet the requirements of Section 102 of the 1972 Act. That section is primarily designed to apply to land which should be developed as a whole in connection with definite projects. The wording of the Act is "land is required". We are dealing with land which is not at the moment definitely required. We

  865
  are looking to the time when we are pretty sure that it will be required. It is control that matters, and it would be difficult for the Secretary of State to sanction the purchase of the land if the council went ahead at this time without a definite project. The procedure would not allow the county council to proceed with plans for housing, roads, harbours and so on. It can hardly do this without the absolute assurance that it would control the landward areas.
  Further, the council would have to purchase now and incur expenditure of perhaps £4 million or £5 million and it might not need the land for several years. The landowners or tenants would get less compensation now than they might when a definite industrial use for the land was determined. In the meantime the land can remain under its present use until it is definitely required. I am certain that the procedure would also suit the developers, because it would mean that the land was available when the actual development was scheduled to take place.
  The proposed procedure allows the county to grant leases into which conditions can be written which it would be almost impossible to write into any planning permission. This is an important point.
  I should like to draw attention to two or three recent experiences concerning planning. First, I do not believe that anyone thinks that the system of individual inquiries, as with Dunnet Bay and Edinburgh Airport, is satisfactory. Secondly, the new towns have always found it necessary to acquire land. They do not rely on the planning procedures. Thirdly, other counties are considering the promotion of orders or Bills.
  Lastly in this connection I refer the House to the speech by the hon. Member for Essex, South-East (Sir Bernard Braine) in the debate on 30th March when he pointed out the dangers of the totality of the effect of piecemeal planning decisions which have gravely affected the Thames Estuary, and on the siting of refineries he said:
  "The only principle appears to be that there are no principles".—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th March 1973; Vol. 853, c. 1725.]
  I do not think that the hon. Member's experience is satisfactory. It points to the need for this Bill.
  866
  Those who want what amounts to a free-for-all, subject to planning procedures, should bear in mind the interests of the community. To some extent the community has created the value. Had the county council not designated Sullom and Baltasound as development areas, the values would have been much less. Therefore, I maintain that the community has a right to take reasonable steps to control the land and to expect to share in the profits made from it.
  Parts II, IV and V of the Bill are largely concerned with the proposal that the county council should become a harbour authority. I believe it is generally agreed that something like this is necessary. It may be that in Committee various points will be raised on this matter, but in general this is essential. There are various harbour authorities in Shetland but they do not control the areas most likely to be used. The planning Act's provisions extend only to low water mark in the sea. There is a big problem over the protection of fishing grounds and facilities for the fishing fleet. Here I should like to mention the petition which has been put in on behalf of the fishermen.
  Mr. Tarn Dalyell: The right hon. Gentleman has suggested that the county council should become a harbour authority. Does the Zetland County Council have the expertise to become a harbour authority? Most of us who know something about harbour authorities appreciate what an enormous amount of expertise is involved.
  Mr. Grimond: That is true. I will deal with some of the points which the hon. Gentleman has in mind as I go along. It is suggested that the Zetland County Council is an innocent body without commercial experience.
  Mr. Dalyell: No.
  Mr. Grimond: It can command commercial experience in abundant quantity. It itself is quite experienced. There has been a great change in the staff of county councils. I do not wish to cause embarrassment, but we have a highly paid, able, competent, lively general manager and he is to have an assistant. County councils can call upon all kinds of expertise, as the Zetland County Council is doing in the form of Livesey and Henderson and

  867
  the notable Bank of Rothschild. When it becomes a harbour authority we can have every confidence in its being efficient.
  On the face of it, it might be said that the harbour commissioners for Lerwick are a very small body, but they are coping extremely efficiently with an enormous extension of the harbour with facilities for P & O and Olsens. The clerk to the harbour trust seems to have done very well. I have great confidence, particularly after Lerwick's experience, that these bodies can compete with their new responsibilities. It is essential that the county council should be a harbour authority.
  The fishermen in their petition appear to be frightened that the powers to be taken to construct harbour works, to dredge and so forth, are designed to limit or may have the effect of limiting fishing. The exact opposite is intended. The point taken is that this power to ensure the movement of great tankers and merchant ships through the area shall not too drastically or at all affect fishing. The idea is that harbour works should be constructed in places away from facilities reserved to the fishermen. It is partly to protect the fishermen that the county council wishes to become a harbour authority.
  There are other points to which in all honesty I should draw attention. First, in Clause 3(1) "the coastal area" is defined as:
  "the area of the territorial waters of the United Kingdom adjacent to the Shetland Islands".
  That is a quite big area and I have no doubt that the Committee will consider it. However, that definition is necessary because there may be mooring buoys far out and it would be desirable, if necessary, for the county council to be able to go to the Secretary of State and say "We want powers to deal with this situation."
  Clause 5 deals with
  "the conservancy of, and control of development in, or in the vicinity of, the coastal area."
  As I understand it, the county council could not undertake any works without applying to the Secretary of State, and there is a procedure for appeal against these works. Anyone who feels that his livelihood might be affected has that extra protection.
  868
  Certain parts of the Bill will be amended and I do not think I need go into them in detail. For instance, the parts dealing with the Post Office have been amended.
  Clause 28 enables the council to subscribe for shares. There are some who feel that this is a wide power to give a county council, but again this is justified. The clause does not say that the council must subscribe to shares. It says that it may, and it may by that means attract to Shetland more of the proceeds of oil than merely by charging rates or dues. This is a reasonable provision which will no doubt be looked at in Committee.
  Again, it may be asked whether the county council is capable of knowing whether projects will succeed. To that I say that the council will get advice which will enable it to go into partnership with private developers and enable the people of Shetland to feel that they are participating in what is an important matter for their islands.
  Part III of the Bill deals with the compulsory purchase powers of which I have spoken and which are of great importance to the crofters. These will be looked at in Committee if the Bill receives a Second Reading. The exact areas can be examined, and the provision of 28 days' notice might be extended. I stress the importance of adequate compensation, and in this the Land Compensation Act will help a great deal. I have asked the Government to look at the situation of crofters both from the point of view of compensation and in order to ensure that the minimum of agricultural or built-up land is taken.
  There is one important matter which worries my constituents, and that is what is called planning blight. Will they cease to receive improvement grants for houses if they are within the designated areas of Sullow and Baltasound? This is a matter of concern, and I hope that reasonable development of and improvement of houses will continue.
  I should draw attention to Clause 73 which allows the setting up—
  Mr. Dick Douglas: I wonder whether the right hon. Gentleman would care to say something about the provisions of Part IV, and particularly Clause 39.
  Mr. Grimond: I am always willing to say something. This is the clause which, under the regulation of harbour areas, applies when works are constructed outside the harbour—that is to say, outside designated areas. It is at this point that the Secretary of State is brought in, and action to extend the powers of the local authority as a harbour board can be taken only after the authority of the Secretary of State has been given. I hope that that covers the point raised by the hon. Gentleman. There is power in the Bill to extend areas which may be taken by the harbour authority, but they would require fairly careful examination.
  I was talking about the reserve fund. This will allow the county council to set up a fund—if one wants a precedent one might point to the old common good funds—which could be used in case of pollution or for the reconstitution of land after the oil boom is over.
  I have not today mentioned the important social and economic effects which will flow from the discovery of oil because I have referred to them on several other occasions, the last time being only about a week ago. Further, they are not directly dealt with in the Bill but they may well have the most important effects of all. I am concerned about steep rises in the cost of living in Shetland and in freight charges, and there is the possibility that existing occupations and industries might be disrupted. The Bill is intended partly to offset those hazards, for the reserve fund could be used to assist in a situation in which it appeared that severe damage was being done to the community.
  I suggest to the House that the Bill in principle is worthy of support. I think it is responsible and far sighted for the Zetland County Council to plan ahead in this way. There are—I have them all here—petitions against the Bill. Many of them make serious points. Many of them are made by people who have great experience of Shetland and are deeply concerned with it. I have shown that there might be desirable amendments. Indeed, I welcome the fact that all these will be carefully examined by the Committee if the Bill is given a Second Reading.
  It has been alleged that the Bill will deprive people of some rights of appeal, but there will be careful consideration by impartial people of all the points that
  870
  have been raised when the Bill is in Committee. There is also the question of the length of time that the Bill is designed to run. That too can be discussed, and I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
  We have had our share of rumours and efforts by some to apply the worst construction to everyone's motives. It is a difficult situation, but the local authority is trying to deal with it with skill and courage and I urge the House to give the Bill a Second Reading and send it on its way to its further stages.
  7.26 p.m.
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: I was the Member who objected to the Bill, and I say at the outset that the objection was a parliamentary device to obtain a discussion of the Bill and not an objection to the substance of it.
  I should like to congratulate the Zetland County Council on the speed with which it has hammered together a long and complex measure. If the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) thinks that my view is that the Shetlanders are either innocent or simple I should like gently to disabuse him of that, because no such thought had occurred to me. I am sure that they are neither innocent nor simple, and I should not wish to patronise the Shetlanders in any way.
  It is essential to have some serious parliamentary discussion of this measure, and that is why I objected to it before the recess. It behoves hon. Members to understand precisely what we are doing. Many of the laws of this country result from particular situations, and when a particular situation blows up perhaps we get legislation which somehow or other sets a precedent for other situations.
  I understand perfectly well that there are many particular issues which affect Shetland, but the right hon. Gentleman must understand that his authority is pioneering, trail blazing and perhaps starting a whole series of orders, petitions and private Bills, and there are many other people and, as the right hon. Gentleman said, other counties who will follow. If we are not careful we shall land up with a whole mosaic of private Bills. Is that really what we want? Do we want Orkney followed by Cromarty, followed by the authorities round the

  871
  Firth of Forth, Cornwall and parts of Norfolk? That is what will happen, so let us get it right the first time, rather than have an incoherent patchwork. If I am asked the basic objective of this form of parliamentary discussion, it is a plea for some kind of coherent approach to a unique problem.
  Let me voice my major worry about the Bill. I would accept a great deal of what the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland has said, but he should recognise that there is a serious problem of size involved. I do not doubt that the Zetland County Council has many competent and able employees. If it had not, it would never have produced so quickly such a complex Bill. Nevertheless, is this the optimum way to approach this matter?
  Are the Government really going to allow a development in dribs and drabs of something that calls for a national coherent solution? I am waiting for some kind of statement from the Government on their approach. If they say "We will just allow a series of private Bills like this", I should have the gravest doubts, as would many other people outside the House, whether this was the way to approach this challenge. I await with interest and eagerness the Government's answer to this question.
  7.31 p.m.
  Mr. Dick Douglas: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell) for having raised the central issue in this debate. Although we are discussing one Bill, and although I had some misgivings about the appropriateness of the procedure of objecting to a Bill when one agreed with the principle, this is a useful opportunity in view of the complexity of the issue faced in the North of Scotland, and which the country will face in coming years.
  It is not only an encroachment on land use in the Highlands that we are considering but the possibility of encroachment in the West of Scotland. I speak as a member of the Council of the National Trust in Scotland, which is very concerned about the incursion in terms of land use of associated oil developers at Drumbuie and the Balmacara Estate. So
  872
  I am trying to put the Bill in an overall Scottish and United Kingdom context.
  Within the constituency of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond), we are faced with a provisional order tabled by the Orkney County Council in March of this year which is 99·9 per cent. the same as this Bill. So we are apt to have a proliferation of this type of legislation unless the Scottish Office becomes much more aware—I say this in a censorious tone, but meaning well—of the impact of oil development on the Scottish economy, particularly the Highlands and Islands.
  Why is this Bill necessary and desirable? The answer involves not only the presence of oil but the technology of bringing it ashore. It is not just that oil is discovered to the east of Shetland and may possibly be discovered to the west; it is being discovered in very deep waters. The problems of bringing that oil ashore stretch the boundaries of existing technology. If we allow private enterprise development to run amok here, which would be the "traditional" Tory philosophy, this will be disastrous for Shetland. We cannot allow private enterprise speculation in terms of land use to run rampant here. That is why the Zetland County Council is right to promote the Bill.
  The Brent field, if present expectations are fulfilled, will bring between 15 million and 20 million tons of oil ashore. But there are others. Shell has been very circumspect about its Golden block. It has managed to bemuse the Press and the public into feeling that this is a dry area. This will prove not to be so. The field may not be as extensive as we had collectively thought, but it will produce oil, along with other discoveries which have been announced, particularly by Occidental, which will be brought ashore to the Shetlands.
  But this relates not only to oil, gas associated with the oil or gas on its own. Few of us can picture oil refineries in the Shetlands, and it is much more difficult to picture the oil refinery which is at present being suggested, plus a gas liquefaction plant. The refinery may be very remote, and we may have to go through many considerations as to whether it would be an appropriate development for that area or any other part of Scotland,

  873
  but a gas liquefaction plant is certainly a starter. There are difficulties in putting these installations in other parts of Scotland because of the terrain and the difficulty, if not impossibility, of growing trees in Shetland with which to hide such developments.
  In this situation, it is right that land required for industrial development is put clearly in the public domain. Private enterprise in this area is not on. Therefore, I support the general principle of the Bill, but I would suggest to the promoters one or two considerations which they might take up in Committee.
  First, the community in the Orkneys and Shetlands, but particularly in the Shetlands, is in dynamic equilibrium. There is no unemployment, thanks to the efforts of the Shetlanders themselves, aided by the Highlands and Islands Development Board, this community has taken off into self-sustained growth. The basic industries of that Community, wool and fishing, are booming, and if we placed extraneous communities into that situation we would cause havoc among the existing industries, and social dislocation.
  The oil companies that want to go there should be clearly advised to place the minimum of manpower, and woman-power—I do not want to offend my hon. Friend the Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton)—in the Shetlands itself. They should be long-distance commuters to the production rigs and the service facilities.
  There is also the problem of crofting. Crofting is a way of life, not just a question of land ownership and tenure. While I would not wish to embark upon it myself, it is a way of life which should be preserved or at least conserved. In this situation, I ask the promoters whether they would agree that the Crofters Commission should be consulted before any land is taken out of crofting tenure. In normal circumstances, that would be done, but the Secretary of State for Scotland has some proposals for the alteration of crofting tenure which might involve the ending of the Crofters Commission. We await those proposals, the nature of which is not yet clear, and I urge that for the duration of the compulsory purchase powers under the Bill— that is, until 1982—the Crofters Commis-
  874
  sion ought to be consulted. If we cannot have a clause to that effect, I should request the promoters to give the Commission, or, if not the Commission, certainly the local crofters' union, a binding undertaking to the effect that no land will be taken out of crofting tenure save only in exceptional circumstances.
  The protection of flora and fauna is another important requirement. I have seen the Sullom Voe area, though I am not fully conversant with the flora and fauna of all the Shetlands. I suggest that there should be written into the Bill something akin to Clause 9 of the Maplin Development Bill, as amended, under which the Nature Conservancy should be consulted about the effect of any development work on the flora and fauna of the area, with, perhaps, sums set aside by the promoters under the Bill to ensure that the flora and fauna are conserved.
  I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will say a little more about the powers under Clause 39. I am not sure that these powers are circumscribed in the way that I should desire. The Bill not only gives harbour authority jurisdiction to the Zetland County Council in relation to Sullom Voe and Baltasound but raises the distinct possibility that, subject to the Secretary of State's approval, the whole area of Shetland could eventually be a harbour development authority area if the Zetland County Council so requested.
  I can see the need for that. Immediately the issue is put in those terms in the Shetland context, there is no alternative but to ask for those powers. One of the reasons relates to the remoteness of the Scottish Office from the issue.
  I am not sure that the analogy of the common good fund which the right hon. Gentleman used in relation to Clause 73 is correct. If the Zetland County Council and the other authorities which may be set up are as discreet and intelligent as I imagine they are or will be, they will screw the oil companies; they will take under their control these vital areas of land and make the oil companies pay. There ought to be substantial profits flowing to Zetland County Council from the use of these resources. Therefore. I do not think that one can use the analogy of the common good fund.
  My overall impression is that the Bill is being pushed forward because of the

  875
  lack of a clear indication from the Scottish Office that it understands, and has a policy in relation to, the impact of oil on the economy of Scotland and of the Highlands and Islands in particular.
  I have already spoken of the National Trust. We are in danger of maligning ourselves in Scotland. We start off wanting Scottish interests to be involved in oil and oil developments, and then we read newspaper articles criticising the very firms which take up the opportunities on the basis of a free private enterprise economy I have already pointed out that if we pursue a free private inter-price economy in the Shetlands and other areas, it will produce the worst possible result. I think that the Scottish Office is now coming round to that realisation. Therefore, while wishing to see the Bill go forward, I plead with the Scottish Office to become far more aware of the impact of these developments and to give us an overall view. If we cannot have a comprehensive White Paper covering the matter as a whole, let us at least have a White Paper on the implications of oil and associated developments in relation to land use. We cannot have the Secretary of State not desiring to embark on planning inquiries and commissions while at the same time hoping that the problems will be solved by local authorities promoting Bills of this kind.
  By far the largest proportion of Zetland County Council's expenditure comes from the central Government. I am told that a penny rate in Shetland produces £2,000. Zetland County Council will be bearing this burden for the nation. It is promoting the Bill not necessarily for the benefit of Zetland but for the nation as a whole, and I do not think it right that the nation should sit back and let Zetland handle it. I say that not because I wish to disparage the county council but because I realise how tremendous will be the impact of oil on the north of Scotland. One has only to think of the consequences of tankers of 500,000 tons coming into the area. Yet power to make that possible will be given if the Bill is passed.
  I suggest that we give the Bill a Second Reading because of the lack of feasible alternatives from the Scottish Office, but I hope that that lack will be remedied in the near future.
  7.47 p.m.
  Mr. William Hamilton: It is significant that there has been no opposition in the House so far to the principles of the Bill, although, naturally, there are misgivings about certain details. I am sure that the Zetland County Council will take due note of what is said by all hon. Members who speak.
  I wish at the outset to express my grati-ture—I am sure that I speak here on behalf of my hon. Friends the Members for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) and Greenock (Dr. Dickson Mabon)—for the hospitality shown to us by the Zetland County Council and Shell Oil when we visited the islands last week. It was extremely helpful to see things as they are on the spot and to talk to the folk most likely to be intimately affected by the imminent landing of unknown quantities of North Sea oil and, possibly gas.
  After the recent debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire, I was taken to task for referring to the Shetlanders as gentle and simple folk. I was accused of being patronising and condescending. I should never be either to anyone. I did not intend my remarks to be understood in that way, and I do not think that anyone was in doubt as to what I meant. What I implied—indeed, I stated as much—was that a whole new complex of problems was hitting a community with the force of a tornado. I was doubting then, and am still inclined to doubt, the local community's capacity to deal with them as a whole.
  No one can visit the Shetlands and come away without an acute awareness of the enormous challenge, opportunities and dangers facing the native populace. Nor is one left in much doubt either about the clash of interests involved and not least, the clash of personalities.
  Most Shetlanders, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) said, would probably wish the oil had never been discovered or that it would go away; but it has and it will not. The problems with which the Bill seeks to deal are precisely those arising from the fact that the oil has been discovered, that it will not go away, and that it must be brought ashore by one means or another. One can question the speed of the operation; one may question the wisdom of going too fast

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  with the operation; but that it should proceed there can be no doubt.
  The problems were stated fairly by the right hon. Gentleman. The first is to ensure that as far as is humanly possible the onshore facilities for the oil industry should be so planned as to cause minimal harm to the environment—I made this point in the previous debate—and to the traditional way of life.
  My hon. Friends have repeatedly chivvied me for referring to a way of life of certain crofters. It is not unimportant that the House should devote some attention to the need to preserve that way of life, consistent with the development of this enormous bonanza that we now have on our doorstep.
  Secondly the county council is right to limit the new industrial developments that are bound to take place to certain well defined areas to be controlled by the planning authority, and, in particular, thirdly—here I make an appeal to the Government—to insist that adequate infrastructure—that is, housing, education and health facilities, and not least police and transport facilities—will be provided in good time to minimise the social and economic stresses which are bound to be caused by the influx of new workers from outside.
  Fourthly, we must make absolutely certain that the benefits accruing from the oil come back to the local people first— that should be a prime consideration— rather than to the fly-by-night speculators who are interested principally in the biggest financial returns for themselves and their shareholders.
  I trust that the oil companies themselves will be dealt with by the Government. We will see what develops. The Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry will no doubt be playing a part in dealing with the oil companies as they see fit, and I hope that they will accept as the basic principle that the public interest is more important than any private interest.
  The fifth principle which must be borne in mind is that we must ensure—I think the Bill does this—that where dereliction and environmental destruction or damage occurs there shall be cast-iron written agreements, comparable with the amendments which have been written into the Maplin Bill, that the companies causing
  878
  that damage or that pollution shall pay handsomely for restoration of the land as near as possible to its former state whenever and wherever the industrial exercise is completed.
  It has seemed obvious to me—my hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire has just referred to this—that the Shetland County Council has not got the financial resources to meet all the demands, whether it be for infrastructure or anything else, that will be made upon it. My hon. Friend quoted the figures that were given to us in good faith by the county manager. A lp rate brings in about £2,000.
  It is absurd to suggest that the county council can compulsorily acquire land and at the same time build all the infrastructure required even with a grant of 80 per cent. or 90 per cent. from the Government. The Government should take this on board as a public investment and help the council out to a much greater extent that than they have hitherto contemplated.
  As of now, it seems that the county council and the oil companies are co-operating satisfactorily. We heard it said that it is very difficult to get much hard information about what the oil companies need. I do not think that there need necessarily be anything sinister in that, because the oil companies do not know yet what the firm figures are. Such information as the oil companies give to the county council cannot easily be challenged, because I do not believe that the county council has the expertise to do so. I believe that the county council would concede that. Indeed, it was conceded that whatever information is given to the county council by the oil companies the county council is in no position to contradict it.
  I say in all friendliness to the county council that the liaison committee which is now operating between the county council and the oil companies could and should be strengthened by the addition of representatives from the Scottish Development Department, from the Department of Trade and Industry, and perhaps even from the Highlands and Islands Development Board.
  Meanwhile, we are faced with Nordport, whose managing director is a young man whom we met, a Mr. Ian Caldwell, Nordport is as busy as bees—or should I

  879
  say "as vultures"—securing land or options on it. Mr. Caldwell has an impressive record of providing 400 to 500 new jobs in the knitwear industry over the last seven or eight years. I am sure that the Shetland County Council and all of us are duly grateful for that. I do not wish to denigrate the man unduly.
  Mr. Ian MacArthur: The hon. Gentleman has already done so.
  Mr. Hamilton: I said "unduly". I think I have been fairly moderate for me. The hon. Gentleman should not incite me.
  It is my belief—in fact, it is my conviction—that Mr. Caldwell is the front man for Onshore Investments, North Sea Assets Trust, and, back through a labyrinthine net, for Messrs. Ivory and Sime of Edinburgh. Their consulting engineers are Bernard L. Clark and Partners of Victoria Street, Westminster.
  I am grateful to Bernard L. Clark and Partners for having sent me detailed plans—I think the firm has also sent copies to my hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire; if not, he is that much deprived—of what it hopes to do. They are ambitious proposals. They are designed, no doubt, with the welfare of the Shetlanders uppermost in mind, and the profits accruing from such developments would be a secondary, incidental consideration. One can believe that if one likes. Within the capitalist system, there is nothing wrong in somebody moving into Shetland or anywhere else where he sees rich pickings. That is what capitalism is all about. As one who does not believe in that type of system and wants to destroy it or, at any rate, drastically modify it, I see this as a battle between a publicly accountable authority and private authorities which move in mysterious ways and are accountable to nobody except their shareholders. This, I find, is the basic conflict of principle involved here.
  The second one, I think, is the question that was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for East Stirlingshire—the conflict between the desirability of piecemeal planning and overall comprehensive planning carried out by publicly accountable bodies. Here I think it might be apposite to refer to an article which
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  appeared in The Times last week, and which, in my view, after having been up there and talked to representatives of the oil companies and the county council, was unfair and inaccurate. I believe the county council has done its best to keep the public informed of what is going on, but it cannot supply information which it has not got.
  I do not think I have been brainwashed by the county council. I do not think it has held anything back, or that it has been guilty of a gross error of judgment if it has done so. I do not think it has deliberately kept anything back from the public. The article implied that the county council had no development plan, when the authors of the article must have known at the time the article was written that that was simply not true. It may be that the county council did not have a plan as provided for under the 1947 Act, but there was no need for it. The place was being depopulated. It is only now that the necessity for a plan has arisen. But the authors of the article knew very well that the plan was in existence when the article was written and that it had been widely publicised. The county council has currently in the pipeline three other studies for a structure plan for the county, a local plan for Lerwick and a local plan for Unst.
  The article went on to insinuate— indeed, it almost spelt out—that the county manager was a liar. It said that the county manager told the authors of the article, or they had found out, that the liaison committee met twice when they knew that it had met three times. In fact, it had not met three times at all. The first meeting was to decide whether to have a committee or not. That kind of article breeds the kind of suspicion and uncertainty in the minds of Shetlanders that does nobody any good. It seems to me, too, that the article tended to support the activities of Nordport, saying that it had the support of the Bank of Scotland. It had nothing of the kind. I understand that the Bank of Scotland had nothing to do with Nordport. If The Times is going to publish articles about what is happening in Shetland, I hope it will at least try more strenuously to ascertain the truth about the matter.
  There are one or two detailed doubts about the Bill which have been expressed, and I wish to repeat them. Clause 35 is

  881
  untenable and unacceptable. Whenever one talks about compulsory acquisition or eviction after giving not less than 28 days' notice, the occupiers think that they can be kicked out in 28 days. I do not think this is acceptable to anybody. The period ought to be extended to six month or even a year. I think the county council would be prepared to accept some modification of that provision.
  I think one must spell out to these people that their way of life is going to change. There is no question about that. They cannot at the same time have oil and have their traditional way of life completely unchanged. The question is where the balance lies. But there must be adequate compensation for the people for the inconvenience caused to them by taking over their land or the change in their way of life. It would be remiss of me not to express misgivings about what might happen in Scalloway. We must look very carefully at that community, as well as at Unst. The oil companies have made representations to us, and I make them to the Government, that they ought to consider an airstrip at Unst, because this might help to resolve the transport problems of the oil companies as well as assist the local community in general.
  The Shetland County Council has striven, with some measure of success, to meet the challenge which it faces. It has met completely new problems with a great measure of courage and forthright-ness, and I hope the Government will give this measure a fair wind and allow it to go to Committee where the petitioners can be heard and suitable amendments can be made to it.
  8.8 p.m.
  Mr. Norman Lamont(Kingston-upon-Thames): I should not like the occasion to pass without saying a brief word in support of the Bill. I say that with considerable trepidation because only a week ago I received a very angry letter from a constituent complaining that the Member for Kingston-upon-Thames had appeared on a television programme in East Anglia. Goodness knows what he would say if he knew that I was speaking in a debate in this House on a matter relating to the Shetland Isles.
  I ought to go through the formality —and it is a formality—of declaring an interest, in that I have a connection with the bankers Rothschilds who are the
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  financial advisers to the Shetland County Council, although that is something of which I became aware only recently, and which post-dated my own personal interest in this problem. Nevertheless it is a development which I very much welcome because I think that a community like the Shetlands deserves the best possible and most powerful advice in standing up to the oil companies and other commercial concerns which will pose problems for them.
  My reason for speaking in this debate is that, so far as I know, I am the only person in this House who comes from the Shetland Isles. Much has been said about Shetlanders and whether they be simple or cunning or otherwise, but at least I hope that in this debate I shall be able to contribute the proper pronunciation of some of the place names which have been mentioned. As I say, I was born in Shetland. I went to school there and I was brought up there, and I look to the islands with tremendous affection.
  I view the arrival of the oil and the oil companies with considerable trepidation. Boom time has come to the Shetland Islands. It is changing the way of life rapidly. Even the emigration from the islands has been reversed, something we could hardly have contemplated a few years ago. It is a threat to the culture and to the wild life of the islands. The hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) mentioned this. It is one of the biggest worries. We have only to think of a single oil pipe bursting along the coast to realise that thousands of years of evolution and ecology could be lost in a moment.
  The advent of oil threatens other values. I know from my friends in Shetland that there have been scarifying stories about the repeated offers that have been made and the absurd prices offered to people, not for their land but merely for an option on their land for a short time. I welcome the Bill because it enables the county council to come to terms with considerable problems like these that will descend upon Shetland.
  We were asked whether we should not consider all these problems in the broader context of a national policy. That may be so and I do not want to venture an opinion upon it. What I am certain of is that in present circumstances, in

  883
  the absence of such a policy, be it right or wrong, there is no alternative to a Bill such as this.
  It has three functions. The first is to bring forward measures to help conserve the development of the Shetland coast. The second is to prevent a situation arising in which there will be haphazard powers sought for the development of new marine facilities. For that reason the third function is to constitute the county council as a harbour authority. Rightly, the question has been asked whether the Shetland County Council can develop the expertise to perform the functions of a harbour authority. That is a real problem. Unlike many other local authorities it does not have tremendous experience in developing motorways or industrial sites or in slum clearance. These are new issues. Unless the council has the powers contained in the Bill, unless it has the bargaining power that will be given to it, it will not be possible for it to attract such expertise. I suspect that given these powers the expertise will be forthcoming.
  This is a positive Bill. It does not rely on negative powers. What I do not want to see in Shetland is a proliferation of harbour facilities such as we have seen at Milford Haven, where each individual company has its own terminal facilities. There has been a multiplication of facilities with damaging environmental consequences. I hope that by improving the bargaining power of the Shetland County Council vis-à-vis the oil companies the Bill will place Shetland in a stronger position to deal with some of the terrible social problems that will arise.
  We have seen something of this in Alaska. We have seen how the oil companies arrive and pay exorbitant wage rates, killing the local industries when labour is attracted away to a short-lived construction boom. We do not want that to happen in Shetland. It has taken many years to build up some of these local industries. A community like Shetland remembers what life was like before the war. It suffered more than most communities during the depression. It has taken years to build up those local industries and they must not now be destroyed simply because of the advent of oil.
  884
  The introduction of extra labour from outside by the oil companies will also mean fresh demands for non-existent facilities. Some of the companies have shown themselves willing to co-operate with the county council. Shell, Esso, Conoco and BP have all participated in the liaison group that has been set up. Not all companies have behaved as well as that. Some have resorted to rather cruder tactics. Some have been extremely aggressive in the buying of land and in their dealings with the county council. Those companies should be given warning that it will not be simply the hon. Member for Fife, West (Mr. William Hamilton) who will be watching to see how they behave. He will not be the only person to name them.
  The Bill is essential to give the Shetland Islands the powers they need to cope with the tremendous challenges ahead. They have a way of life in which I strongly believe, one which is unique and worth preserving. The Bill will enable them to do that.
  8.16 p.m.
  Mr. Martin Maddan: I, too, feel great trepidation in intervening, particularly with my arm in a sling due to a slight mishap on the Sussex shore beneath the Seven Sisters.
  Mr. MacArthur: Not a vulture!
  Mr. Maddan: I fully realise that the Shetlands are very much more rugged.
  The Bill arises from the oil developments in the North Sea. I see other hon. Members here who sat with me on the Public Accounts Committee examining certain aspects of these developments. In the course of those considerations we could not help but learn of the tremendous scale of what might take place in Shetland. I want to make one plea. It is that when the House has before it the resolutions to set up the Select Committee to consider the Bill, as I hope it will, it will ensure that those provisions contain authority for the Committee to visit the Shetland Islands.
  Normally, and I speak as one who has served on various Select Committee on Private Bills and recently on a Hybrid Bill Committee, a Committee does not have the power to sit outside Westminster. No finance is provided for this purpose. On other occasions I have come down

  885
  against a Select Committee being able to do this, because I have not thought it appropriate. On this occasion it would be very appropriate. No part of the United Kingdom is further from the capital than the Shetland Islands. Although I have never been there I have friends living in the islands and I understand that there is the feeling that decisions may be taken at Westminster without an understanding of local circumstances. I hope the Government will see that when the resolutions setting up the Select Committee are produced they contain powers enabling it to sit outside Westminster.
  Mr. William Ross: Before the hon. Member sits down, perhaps he can get this right. Am I not right in thinking that a Scottish Committee dealing with a Scottish Private Bill and Scottish provisional orders must meet in Scotland?
  Mr. Maddan: I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will be able to deal with that when he intervenes.
  8.19 p.m.
  Mr. Robert Hughes: I rise, as most other speakers have done, to give generous support to the Bill. There is no doubt that it is a pathfinder for the future. We have at the back of our minds the thought that it is the first of many such Bills. This is why we are so anxious to see that we get its form right and have a proper discussion. It throws into sharp relief the dilemma facing local communities. That dilemma is how to balance the needs of the environment, a traditional culture and a way of life with incoming industry and development on such a massive scale that it is difficult for anyone, sophisticated Members of Parliament or simple islanders, to grasp.
  Very few people are aware—I am probably included among them—of the kind of massive development involved and the impact that there is likely to be on remote communities and on their cultures. One of the things that have been shown up has been the inadequacy of existing planning procedures. I noticed the Under-Secretary waxing eloquent at the Standing Conference on North Sea Oil about the powers of plan-
  886
  ning authorities. I thought that he was being complacent when he suggested that local authorities had sufficient powers unto themselves to cope at present. If local authorities felt they had sufficient powers there would be no need for the Bill.
  The question arises how far local authorities can control development. This was highlighted clearly in the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs which looked at land use, at how negative are planning procedures and at how developments, however worth while, can be held up for four years, five years or a decade because they must be dealt with on the basis of one-off planning inquiries. That situation must be corrected as soon as possible, and the Bill as presented provides a useful way of taking care of the matter.
  We have to ask how local authorities can compete with the developers and with the oil companies which have such tremendous resources. We cannot say much about the Dunnet Bay inquiry because it is presumably still sub judice. We cannot comment in detail on the basis of Press reports, but some of the things reported in the Press make one's hair stand on end—although I do not wish to deal with that in detail. To talk, as was reported, of spreading the sand dunes with latex and then putting down a covering of porous concrete in order to provide some environmental protection is enough to make one panic at what may go on if developments are allowed to proceed.
  It makes one wonder how local authorities can manage without facilities to tackle the companies on their own ground with sufficient expertise and sufficient cash. It is about time the Government came forward with their considered views not only in a White Paper on the development in general but on the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs which dealt specifically and carefully with how some method should be found to provide Government cash and aid for people to object at local planning inquiries.
  The whole debate on planning, which was highlighted by the Select Committee, should not be left in limbo any longer, and it is time the Government provided time for a debate. I know that providing a debate is not the responsibility of the

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  Under-Secretary but he is responsible for preparing the Government's views and for having them ready for a debate. I hope that he will give us an assurance that these arrangements are being worked on and that we shall have a policy statement soon.
  The Bill takes wide powers, and I believe that they are essential to protect the interests of the islanders. That is particularly true in relation to the powers of compulsory purchase. The whole question of land use in Scotland has bedevilled the interests of people living in thinly spread localities for generations, and we have to tackle the problem. It would be as good a way as any if it were tackled by the local authorities.
  Perhaps one reason why there is suspicion and concern and why we are all anxious to get the Bill right is that it is rare for any part of Scotland, particularly the islands, to be faced with the problem of incoming industry. The problem has always been how to protect the islands and their people from depopulation and from industry leaving. We all know of the big changes that have occurred in the herring industry in Orkney and Shetland. Now we are presented with the opposite problem, and that is perhaps why we are taking a leap into the dark and why we are so anxious to get things right.
  I am pleased to see that the Bill takes powers to deal with dereliction to ensure that after perhaps a decade or two of exploration and exploitation we shall not be left with dereliction if demand falls off.
  I am still not sure, in spite of the explanation by the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) just exactly how some of the powers in the Bill will be operated. Clause 28 gives the authority powers to subscribe for shares in bodies corporate. Where will the authority find the money to subscribe for such shares? We have been told by a number of speakers that a penny rate brings in £2,000. That will not provide much money with which to buy a significant stake in the kind of developments we are concerned with. However, the money has to be found. What is at issue here is not simply the question of holding back development but how best the
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  developments can best benefit the community.
  The Secretary of State has a great rôle to play here. There has been severe criticism in the past of the Secretary of State and the part he has played, or, perhaps, the part he has not played. Clause 39 deals with developments outside particular harbour areas. Authority has to be obtained from the Secretary of State before works can proceed. Here the Secretary of State obviously must be on the ball. He must know what is happening, and must be prepared to take action swiftly and not allow a long time to pass between application from the local authority or the harbour authority and his taking a decision. Clause 70 provides that the Secretary of State must give his authority for the borrowing of sums to be spent for the purposes of the Act.
  While the Bill takes wide powers, there is no doubt that the Secretary of State has equally wide powers, and I applaud the way in which the Shetland County Council has approached the matter. However, I am frankly worried that all the effort it has put into the Bill will come to nought if the Secretary of State puts a dead hand on it. There are umpteen examples in many fields of where the Secretary of State has shown indecision and where he appears to be allowing difficult decisions to go by default in the sense that they are not taken swiftly enough. It would be a great pity if, in spite of the powers given in the Bill, the Secretary of State had the power to make or break the actions of the Shetland County Council. I hope that he will take an active interest in what the county council does and that he will in no way inhibit it from proceeding with what it considers to be essential developments by refusing it the cash.
  The dead hand of the Treasury has often been accused of holding back the development of industry in the community interest in Scotland. We do not want the dead hand of the Treasury simply to be transferred so that it becomes the dead hand of the Secretary of State. He must fight in the Cabinet for a share of resources. Whatever controversy there may be about whether Maplin should go ahead, if there are to be massive developments in the south-east

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  of England we need the Secretary of State to fight for a massive share of the capital required in Scotland. Clearly, Shetland is one of the places where the capital will be needed quickly.
  Despite one or two difficulties thrown up in the debate, I believe that the Bill will do a great deal to ensure that the people of the Shetlands benefit from the discovery of North Sea oil. I hope that it will go to Committee, and that we shall have a constructive reply from the Government. I hope that they will not simply say "We shall see how things develop", but will show themselves anxious to support the Bill and see the kind of developments that Shetland County Council wants.
  8.29 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office (Mr. George Younger): It may be for the convenience of the House if I intervene briefly to indicate the Government's general reaction to the Bill.
  I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Grimond) on the way in which he presented the Bill, and I should like through him to pass on my congratulations and admiration to his county council for the way in which it has tackled what several hon. Members have described as a very big and complicated undertaking for a county council. I warmly commend what it has done. I have been in touch with it personally and through my officials over the months in which it has been preparing the Bill. I have seen the County Convener about it and my officials have been glad to offer what help they can to the county council. Any further help that it may require is most willingly and enthusiastically given by the Scottish Office.
  Mr. Dalyell: Does that offer of help extend to every authority that prepares a Bill of this kind?
  Mr. Younger: That is a very sweeping question, but I can see no reason why I would not be prepared to offer the maximum help to any authority in similar circumstances to carry out such an undertaking. I would not like the hon. Gentleman to hold me to every conceivable situation that could arise, but I think that generally the answer in good faith is "Yes".
  890
  The Government recognise that the pressure of oil exploration work in the North Sea area east of the Shetlands and planning for development and production stages in those fields is already creating substantial needs for oil rig service bases and so on in Shetland. We also recognise that it is likely to create needs for more extensive facilities, such as pipeline terminals, refineries and other associated developments. Existing harbour facilities are undoubtedly inadequate to cope with these new developments. Already a number of new projects are in hand or under consideration. The right hon. Gentleman referred to some of them in his speech.
  Mr. Douglas: The Minister is choosing his words carefully. He referred to refineries. He is not seriously giving a view that we might have refineries in Shetland, is he?
  Mr. Younger: No, I am not seriously giving any view of that kind. If the hon. Gentleman will kindly do me the courtesy of listening to my speech as a whole he will realise that I am trying to describe the background to the Bill. I hope he will not try to commit me to having declared that there are refineries in Shetland. There are no such refineries, and the hon. Gentleman should know that.
  Mr. Douglas: Read it again.
  Mr. Younger: If the hon. Gentleman listens carefully to what I say as a whole, he will realise that I am simply trying to paint the background to the way in which the county council has presented the Bill. He would do us a great courtesy if he listened to what I say as a whole and judged it fairly, as he normally does.
  In the circumstances that I have outlined, there is clearly a danger of a conflict in land use demands between the commercial interests of oil production companies seeking the most suitable and profitable arrangements for handling their oil on the one hand and the public interest in the most effective use of existing and potential harbours in Shetland on the other hand, having regard to both the social and economic structure of the community and the protection of the environment.
  The principle of an overall port authority for an area has already been applied with success in other places, such as

  891
  the Clyde and the Forth, and Parliament has recently approved a similar arrangement for the Cromarty Firth. The appointment of a public authority with statutory powers in the Shetlands can ensure a proper balance of development and prevent a first developer using sites in such a way as to inhibit the best overall use of potential harbour areas. There is some evidence that the absence of an overall authority in the early stages of development elsewhere made for some difficulties of the kind that Shetland is seeking to prevent by the Bill.
  It is against that background that the county council is seeking wide-ranging new powers for harbour development, licensing and control and to purchase compulsorily large areas of land in places where it wants to concentrate new developments. That will enable it to reinforce normal planning controls, to secure co-ordinated development and to prevent any one developer from obtaining a monopoly of land and inhibiting the best overall use or holding other competitors to ransom. All these possible outcomes have been referred to by various hon. Members and by the right hon. Gentleman in presenting the Bill.
  Mr. Dalyell: Can all the desirable objectives which the Government have in mind be achieved by an authority of the size of Shetland? We listen with anticipation to the Government's judgment.
  Mr. Younger: That is a fair question. I have gone into this matter with some care in recent weeks. The point that the hon. Gentleman has raised is an obvious and immediate matter. I can reassure him to this extent: that, having gone into the matter with some care, and having spoken to those concerned on several occasions, I am satisfied that the authority can exercise these powers effectively. I am satisfied that there is adequate technical and other advice available which will help it to exercise its powers. For what it is worth, I have added the offer that the Scottish Office will give every possible help that it can. The answer to the hon. Gentleman's perfectly correct question is that I am satisfied that the authority will be able to exercise these powers effectively and that I hope it will do so.
  892
  We accept with this background the need for the proposals for harbour authorities. We support this part of the Bill in principle. In the conditions in Shetland it is clearly in the public's interest that powers of that kind to secure co-ordinated development should be made available, and the county council is the appropriate body to have such powers. The Government note that the Bill recognises the position of the existing harbour authorities, which themselves have proposals in hand for oil-related developments. That is an important proviso which is already in the Bill.
  There are naturally a number of technical drafting matters upon which my Department is already in consultation with the promoters. I hope that agreement on these matters can be reached before the Bill goes to Committee. In addition, two major points of policy arise which have attracted much public attention. They have been the subject of petitions against the Bill and they have been referred to by several hon. Members. One such matter is the power to participate in undertakings by the purchase of equity shareholding. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Robert Hughes) specifically mentioned that matter.
  It is the Government's provisional view that the county council's power to invest funds—that is to say, essentially current balances—should be subject to the limitations which normally apply to local authorities and that it would not be appropriate for the county council to raise funds specially for the purpose.
  The other matter is the power of compulsory purchase without the normal procedures concerning designated areas of land. The county council considers that the powers—
  Mr. Robert Hughes: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the question of power to participate, will he say something about the existing limitations?
  Mr. Younger: In general this refers to the use of direct ratepayers' money as opposed to the use of money which may be accumulated in draft accounts and so on by the authority concerned. That is the distinction which is normally drawn. This is only a provisional view and naturally the matter has to be gone into with great care in Committee. I hope that

  893
  it is helpful to the House to declare the Government's provisional view, which is that the normal rules which apply elsewhere to other local authorities should apply in this case.
  Mr. Dalyell: Is it the Government's intention to have a discussion on this subject with Rothschild?
  Mr. Younger: I should have thought that the normal thing for the Government to do—
  Mr Dalyell: This is not a normal situation—
  Mr. Younger: —would be to have consultations with the authority concerned. If there are particular matters that the county council or the right hon. Gentleman would wish me to discuss with Rothschild, I should be willing to do so if that was thought to be helpful.
  The other important point is the power of compulsory purchase without the normal proceedings over designated areas of land. The county council considers that the powers of compulsory purchase available under the Planning Acts fall short of what is needed to achieve the purposes for which it is promoting the Bill. Certainly these are unusual powers, but they are being sought in order to deal with a very unusual situation in a very special part of Britain with peculiar local characteristics, to which hon. Members have referred. The provision will have to be carefully looked at in Committee and the Government will reserve their position meanwhile on the details of this aspect.
  Mr. Douglas: We have to be careful here. Are we getting this right? I take the connotation of what the hon. Gentleman is saying as being that the Government are reserving their position on perhaps the most important aspect of the Bill. This is quite unusual. Will the hon. Gentleman clarify the position?
  Mr. Younger: I am not sure that I would agree that it is the most important part of the Bill. The harbour authority powers are perhaps the most important. However, I would not care to draw up a league table of important parts of the Bill.
  In principle and in general, the Government support what the county council
  894
  is trying to do but, like hon. Members we have to consider various aspects and they will have to be looked into very carefully in Committee. As the hon. Gentleman should know—and Mr. Speaker gave a ruling on this before the recess—we are not approving the principle of this Private Bill but agreeing that it should go forward for scrutiny in Committee, and the right thing to do is to indicate that we approve the proposal which the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland has put to us, that we are in support of it but that, like hon. Members, the Government will naturally wish to reserve their position on some matters which have to be discussed in Committee. In general, however, I make it clear that we are in support of the right hon. Gentleman's intention to bring the Bill before a Committee.
  Mr. Dalyell: We should clarify this point. This is very important in any sense because Shetland is a rather special, geographically and perhaps otherwise, part or our country. Precedents which may be set in relation to Shetland may not apply to other parts of the United Kingdom from the Firth of Forth to North Cornwall—choose where one likes. I think we should get that straight.
  Mr. Younger: The hon. Gentleman was choosing his words carefully. If he says that precedents may not apply to other parts of the United Kingdom he is probably right because the point is that each case of this kind is likely to be different to some extent. Some people have said that Shetland is a fairly unique situation. I do not, however, accept that there are no other situations anywhere where similar circumstances might arise, but I do say—and this is in tune with what the hon. Gentleman was saying earlier—that I do not think there would necessarily be exactly the same position in other parts of Britain. I recognise that there may be other situations of exceptional difficulty which may require some sort of similar treatment, and I assure the House that we will be prepared to look at that very sympathetically if and when such a matter should arise.
  Mr. Dalyell: I do not say this in a vituperous spirit, but the Government's thinking on this whole important subject is still in a primitive and immature stage, and that is astonishing.
  Mr. Younger: I respond in the same courteous way. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not mind my saying that it is not enough to say that Government policy is primitive or immature. There are two points of view. I would never subscribe to being told that the impact of North Sea oil was being underestimated. I think that the impact is quite tremendous. It is tremendous for our economy, for our environment and, in many parts of Scotland, for our way of life.
  The hon. Member for East Stirlingshire (Mr. Douglas) said that I did not appreciate the point, but I have devoted a great deal of time and attention to it for a couple of years. It does not follow, however, that one panacea is the only solution. I am concerned that we should have public control over what is allowed to happen within our shores of Scotland. My point is that the existing planning Acts contain effective powers of control for most circumstances.
  I am doing all I can to encourage local planning authorities to use those powers and to get it across to the public that people must realise that nothing can be allowed to develop without the approval of local planning authorities, which are elected by the people precisely for that job. Local planning authorities will get full support from me in the exercise of those powers, and that was what I was trying to say.
  If there are circumstances such as those that the right hon. Gentleman has brought before us this evening when the existing planning powers are not fully adequate for what a particular authority may wish to do, other action may have to be taken. I do not say that this is the only occasion on which we shall face a situation of this sort, but I think that most such cases will be different from each other. I think it is appropriate that Shetland should have decided in this instance to deal with the matter by Private Bill, and that is why I am generally in support of what the right hon. Gentleman is trying to do.
  Mr. Robert Hughes: I should like the hon. Gentleman to be a little more forthcoming. His reply to my hon. Friend's intervention has now taken so long that the hon. Gentleman has probably lost his place in his brief. So far he has said that
  896
  he approves of the idea that the Shetland County Council should be the harbour authority and he has left aside the fact that there is already an existing harbour authority. He has said that he does not approve of the use of Section 28, which would allow the authority to participate in a commercial undertaking beyond the limitations of local authority law, and he has said that he has reservations on the subject of compulsory purchase which he will leave until Committee.
  But the hon. Gentleman should say tonight what the Government's view is. It is not enough for him to tell the House that he has spent a great deal of time on the subject of North Sea oil and the problems facing the Shetland County Council and that the Government's views will be explained in Committee. He should clearly state those views tonight.
  Mr. Younger: I do not agree. This is a Private Bill and the situation is different from that when we are dealing with a Public Bill. Tonight we have before us a proposal, which I support, that this Private Bill should be sent to a Committee for scrutiny. I have said that in general I approve of what the right hon. Gentleman wants to do and that the place for these matters to be thrashed out is in Committee. I have done my best to be forthcoming. It may be that I have been too forthcoming, and that may be why the hon. Gentleman is trying to drive me further than I should go.
  It seems clear to me that the right procedure is for the details to be worked out in Committee. That is the procedure that is normally followed in these cases and I think that it is the procedure that the promoters would prefer.
  In case hon. Members are reading all sorts of sinister implications into what I have said—and that would be quite uncalled for—I assure hon. Members that all I am trying to do is to indicate those areas in the powers requested to which we shall require to give much closer scrutiny and on which we reserve our position until we reach Committee.
  However, I have made it amply clear that in general I support the right hon. Gentleman's objective. I have given what I hope has been useful help to Shetland County Council—indeed, I am given

  897
  to understand that by the County Convenor. Generally speaking, the Government approve of what the council is trying to do and I hope that that will be sufficient assurance for the House.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Younger: Several hon. Members are now asking me to give way. I have already given way a great deal. However, I will give way again to the hon. Member for East Stirlingshire.
  Mr. Douglas: I readily recognise the Minister's difficulty, and I accept his view that the matter should be dealt with in Committee. Nevertheless, will he be a little more forthcoming and specify, if he can, that, in the Bill as it stands, if the word "end" does not means the end in terms of compulsory purchase in advance of development, his advisers will try their best not to resist the end which the Shetland County Council has in view? That is to say, the end of acquiring land by compulsory purchase in advance of development is the end we all desire, and that is the unique part of the Bill in terms of compulsory purchase. If the Minister will not resist that end but try to devise suitable means of keeping that existing general planning end, I shall be happy.
  Mr. Younger: I do not want to be drawn further, or too far, at this stage, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we in the Department have approached the problem with the Shetland County Council all along in a spirit of helpfulness to try to make it possible for the county council to achieve what it thinks is necessary. In dealing with any other problems that come up, I shall continue in that same spirit. I hope that that statement will go some way to satisfying the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Dalyell: I made a very short speech on purpose so that the issue that interested me would not be clouded. That issue is the philosophy of the Government's whole approach to the problem. Are we to take it tonight that we are to have an Orkney Bill, a Cromarty Bill, a North Cornwall Bill and many other Bills? Do the Government see the approach to this national problem as being through a series of piecemeal Private Bills? It may be that the Minister cannot give a direct answer, but he can give an undertaking. The undertaking
  898
  I ask for is that he goes to the Lord President of the Council or the Legislation Committee of the Cabinet and asks what senior Ministers think they should do given this national situation. What is the Government's philosophy on the approach to this important problem?
  Mr. Younger: I was about to answer the hon. Gentleman's point in detail and as briefly as possible, and I think I can most usefully do so in the following way. I do not agree that this is a national problem. This is a series of local problems each probably very different from the others, but what is important is that they should all be looked at in a national context. That is what the planning rôle of the Scottish Development Department is for, and when all such matters come before that department we look at them in a national Scottish context. That is what we are there for and all the applications that come to us, whether they be harbour authorities' applications or applications for development of rig construction platforms, are looked at nationally. That is what the Secretary of State's planning control is for and what it is used for.
  The answer to the hon. Gentleman's problem, therefore, is that I think that the approach of the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland is an appropriate way of dealing with a particular problem such as that in Shetland. There may be other cases where similar but probably somewhat different problems arise where a similar procedure may be necessary, but for normal problems there is the normal control of harbours which is adequately and competently dealt with by the Harbours Act 1964. These powers are used in all normal situations and are very flexible and effective where used. But we shall never get away from the position where there will not be some unusual problems, and this is a very good and flexible method of dealing with them. That is why I support the right hon. Gentleman in what he is trying to do, and I very much hope that the House will do so also.
  8.55 p.m.
  Mr. William Ross: There is one unanswered question. It is the one first asked concerning piecemeal planning. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman did not answer it.

  899
  It is not good enough for the Undersecretary to say that different circumstances arise in different cases. Not very long ago I read a speech by the hon. Member for Ross and Cromarty (Mr. Gray) suggesting that there should be some measure of halt in the North of Scotland on the mainland so that we might make a re-assessment and see just where we were going in respect of all the applications coming forward for the use of parts of the Scottish coast for the purposes of building rigs and the like. I think the hon. Gentleman was right. Indeed, I had made the same appeal a few days before in his constituency.
  The point is that Shetland is different to the extent that it is geographically a unity in respect of which there is the one authority mainly concerned. So we have to congratulate it on appreciating the dangers to its community and the possible benefits, and on its desire to minimise the dangers and maximise the benefits by taking specific action.
  I know the communities very well. As a member of the 10th Battalion of the Highland and Light Infantry, I served in the Highlands. Not only did I come to know the Highlands by day; I had the job of picking up any place from Sullom Voe to Sumburgh Head by map reference in the middle of the night. I know every peat bog in the area. Equally, I know the nature of the people of Scalloway, Skeld and Unst. I nearly became the military governor of Unst. The people of Unst were spared that disaster by about a fortnight, when I was sent to warmer climes to serve in the Far East.
  Anyone who knows the struggles that the people have had to build up a viable economy and anyone who knows the success which they have had, with considerable help from the central Government and the Highlands and Islands Board, will appreciate just what this tremendous change will mean. Anyone who does not appreciate that should look at Nigg Bay at present where they have gone to the extent of mooring a large ship in the bay to accommodate the people working on the construction side. That is only one problem. That is the temporary problem. Then there is the permanent problem. No one seems able to give any local authority in the area an indication of what it is.
  900
  There is tremendous frustration, uncertainty and anger that they are not being given the full information that they require about the number of houses which will be needed, who is to build them, and the rest of it. Hon. Members should go to the area and talk to the local government people there as I managed to do when I was there recently.
  I do not under-estimate the difficulty. But suppose that Shetland County Council had taken no action. What would the Government have done about it?
  Mr. Dalyell: Hear, hear.
  Mr. Ross: The initiative for this has come from Shetland County Council.
  Mr. Douglas: Would not the Government have left it to such developers as Nordport, which have options on large sections of land?
  Mr. Ross: Of course. We have been told that the Government have no proposals for tightening up matters in respect of other parts of Scotland. The Conservative Whip has indicated that he feels there is a need for some action there. He suggests a halt, a reassessment, to see where we are going. If this is important for the Shetlands, it is obviously as important for those parts of the Scottish mainland in the north that we know will be, and are, under pressure. There have been meetings of crofters in Wester Ross. It is the same kind of terrain as in the Shetlands, but lacking the kind of unity that we have with the geographical position of the Shetlands. As the Government are conscious of the tremendous effect that this matter will have, let us see whether what we now say is absolutely essential to the Shetlands, on which we congratulate the Zetland County Council for taking action, is necessary elsewhere. It may be that the authorities in these other places are not prepared to take this necessary action. We must be careful about that.
  I do not blame the Under-Secretary for not being sufficiently forthcoming at this stage. However, I think that we have been fortunate, through the activity of my hon. Friend the Member for West Lothian (Mr. Dalyell), to have this discussion at all, and, thanks to the generosity of the Chair, to have roamed a little wide. As a result of this Bill we

  901
  have been able to talk about the importance of this matter to the whole of Scotland.
  I was disappointed at what the Undersecretary—I dare say that he reckons he was too forthcoming—told us about the Government's view on Clause 28. I had more than a feeling that that was to satisfy certain silent hon. Members on the Government side who are traditionally opposed to this kind of power being given to a local authority. The implication is that it must affect the Government's attitude to Clause 80, which is the power to borrow. If the Zetland County Council is to participate only to the extent of its capacity within its rate poundage and what that will raise, it does not mean very much at all. One point which has been underrated here is the contribution that central Government makes to the local expenditure of the Shetlands. It goes higher than 90 per cent. I do not wish to give out-of-date figures in case they may not be accurate. I stress the point about piecemeal legislation. It is important in the context of the situation now facing us.
  I may have been wrong in what I said about the further stages of scrutiny of the Bill. I should like the Under-Secretary to make the position clear, because there are private orders in respect of which joint committees are set up which sit in the places that are more concerned with them, be it Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, and so on.
  Mr. Younger: Perhaps I should have answered the point made earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Mr. Maddan). A Provisional Order Committee has to sit in the area which is affected. However, this is not a provisional order; it is a Private Bill. Therefore, the discussion will take place here.
  Mr. Maddan: I hope my hon. Friend will not be so specific in saying that it will take place here and will confine himself to saying that in the normal course it would take place here, but that if, for instance, the Chairman of Ways and Means were to put down a motion authorising the Committee to sit outside Westminster and to incur the necessary expenditure it would have the Government's blessing. That is what we want to hear from my hon. Friend.
  Mr. Ross: I agree with the hon. Gentleman and urge the Scottish Office on this occasion to find ways and means of making it possible for the Committee to visit the locus of the initiators and promoters of the Bill because it will then more readily understand the problems.
  On the whole, I do not think that anyone here wishes to hold up the Bill but we wish to ensure that when it goes forward for further scrutiny the Government will not water it down. We hope that the Government will not appear to be prepared to give certain powers under the Bill and then use other powers which remain to the Secretary of State to strangle the initiative of Zetland County Council.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed.

  INDUSTRIAL RATING (SCOTLAND)
  9.5 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Development, Scottish Office (Mr. George Younger): I beg to move,
  That the Rating of Industry (Scotland) Order 1973, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13th April, be approved.
  The purpose of the order is to continue for a further two years the derating of industrial and freight transport subjects at the level of 50 per cent. It may be helpful to the House if I begin by giving a brief outline of the rather lengthy history of industrial derating.
  Industrial properties in Scotland and England and Wales were 75 per cent. derated from 1929 until 1959, when derating was modified to 50 per cent. Derating was terminated altogether in England and Wales in 1963, which was a revaluation year, but the Government of the day decided that full rating of industry in Scotland should be postponed until the 1966 revaluation.
  Full rating from 1966–67 was provided for in Section 10 of the Local Government (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1963 but, as a precaution, power was included in the section enabling the Secretary of State to continue a measure of derating by order. It was in exercise of this power that the Rating of Industry (Scotland) Order 1965 was made, continuing 50

  903
  per cent. derating for the valuation quinquennium 1966–71. If that order had not been made, industry's share of the rate burden would have risen to nearly 21 per cent. in 1966, when the share borne by industry in England and Wales was still of the order of 14 per cent.
  The question of the continuation of industrial derating was again considered at the 1971 revaluation but although the revaluation slightly reduced industry's share of the rate burden it was clear that if derating had been allowed to terminate the rating position of industry in Scotland would have been almost as seriously out of line with that of industry in England and Wales as it would have been in 1966 if no derating order had been made. The Rating of Industry (Scotland) Order 1971 was therefore made continuing 50 per cent. derating for two years so that the position could be reviewed in the light of the effect of the 1973 revaluation in England and Wales. That order lapses on 15th May 1973.
  Full rating in 1971 would have increased industry's share of the rate burden from about 11 per cent. to nearly 20 per cent. as against 14·7 per cent. for industry in England and Wales, and Scottish industry's rate bill would have gone up from approximately £26 million to £45 million.
  While industry's share of the rate burden is a convenient basis for comparing Scotland with England and Wales, what concerns industrialists is, of course, the rates they actually pay. The periodic censuses of industrial production give us some information about this. The 1968 census showed that the rates paid per £1,000 of sales by industry in Scotland were on average almost the same as those paid in the rest of the United Kingdom— £5·9lp against £5·97p; not very much of a difference. The revaluation of 1971 in Scotland, which reduced industry's share of the rate burden from 11·9 per cent. to 10·9 per cent., must have given Scottish industry a slight temporary advantage, but the revaluation which has now taken effect in England and Wales has produced a similar reduction from 14·5 per cent. to 12·9 per cent., the effect of which should be to bring rate payments by industry on both sides of the border back into line. Therefore the case for continuation of 50 per cent.
  904
  derating remains unchanged. At present, it is still entirely justified on the grounds of equity with England and Wales.
  Derating is not a subsidy to industry but is simply a means of ensuring fair sharing between different classes of ratepayer. There is no absolute standard, of course, by which one can judge the proportion or the payments which should be borne by each class, but parity with England and Wales is a good practical test and a clear guideline at which we can aim.
  The continuation order is to apply for the next two years of the current quinquennium. We are proposing to review the rating of plant and machinery in Scotland and this may lead to the replacement of the present order-making powers by new provisions. Moreover the Local Government (Scotland) Bill includes provision for the extension of the present valuation quinquennium, which if enacted will make a further order necessary before the next revaluation. A two-year continuation of derating now will therefore allow the position to be reviewed again in the light of these and any other developments. The local authority associations and industrial interests have been informed of the intention to continue derating and no objections have been received.
  The order continues a measure approved on all sides: to keep the burden of rates on Scottish industry broadly in line with that in England and Wales and thus ensure that there is no deterrent to new industry coming to Scotland or to the expansion of existing industry. In those terms, I recommend the order to the House.
  9.12 p.m.
  Mr. Gavin Strang: The Minister has reminded us that the justification for the 50 per cent. industrial derating in Scotland lies in the objective of having an equal proportionate contribution from industry to the rates in Scotland as in England and Wales. His precise arguments were almost identical with those he used two years ago. The figures he has given are those that I read in HANSARD only a couple of hours ago.
  While I do not necessarily challenge the desirability of having a similar contribution in Scotland as in England and Wales, may I ask the Minister to give

  905
  us an up-to-date indication of how this disparity occurs? The Anderson Committee suggested that it was because domestic valuation in Scotland was relatively low compared with that in England and Wales. I had wondered whether this was either because we had a greater preponderance of industrial premises and plant or because the nature of our plant was different. An up-to-date explanation would be helpful.
  When we discussed the similar measure two years ago, the Government's Selsdon policies were in full gear. Investment grants had been ended and the pressure was building up from some Government supporters and from the whole Labour movement to bring them back. There was increasing unemployment, which was already intolerable. It was not surprising, therefore, that everyone agreed that the derating should be continued. However, although the Government have now brought back investment grants for industry, their lame duck philosophy has has been thrown overboard, and they have taken extensive powers under the Industry Act to encourage industrial development, there is a serious industrial problem in Scotland today.
  It is worth drawing the parallel that, although we have investment grants back, we are scheduled to lose the regional employment premium. I hope that, if we discuss this matter again two years from now, we shall find that the regional employment premium has been replaced by some labour subsidy under a different name, just as investment grants have been replaced by a similar subsidy under a different name.
  The rate of industrial expansion in Scotland still gives cause for serious concern. Only this weekend, there was considerable discussion in well-informed newspapers, such as the business section of the Sunday Times, about the overheating which is, apparently, taking place in some sectors of the economy in England, with a shortage of labour in the engineering industry. At the same time there is massive spare capacity in Scotland, and we have serious unemployment.
  In these circumstances, no one could justify opposing any measure to help industry, whether new industry to come to Scotland or existing industry to expand,
  906
  and the Opposition certainly support the continuation of derating. However, we ought not to accept without question that this is a desirable way of supporting industry. If there were not 50 per cent. derating, the money would go to the local authorities. The support for industry is coming from the localities instead of from the central Government, and to that extent we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. The money taken from the other ratepayers and given to existing industry reduces purchasing power in the area.
  Therefore, although we support this measure, as, so to speak, an ad hoc way of helping industry in the present situation, it cannot be defended on grounds of general principle, and one can only hope that, in two years, we shall have collectively decided to adopt a different approach. In the meantime, however, anything that can be done to help industry in Scotland will have the Opposition's strong support.
  9.18 p.m.
  Mr. Harry Ewing: In every rating debate since I came to the House I have said something about Scotland's derating problems. It is appropriate that the debate on this order should follow a debate concerned primarily with North Sea oil. I have never accepted that industrial derating in Scotland serves as an attraction to industry. Almost conversely, however, it is true that, once industry is established in Scotland, industrial derating is an incentive to keep it there.
  I make that distinction in view of the position of British Petrôleum at Grange-mouth in my constituency. British Petrôleum is probably the biggest industrial ratepayer in Scotland, yet there can be no doubt that it is at present dragging its feet on the question of expanding its refining capacity at Grangemouth.
  The order is scheduled to run until 1975. I doubt the wisdom of this. I believe that the order should run till 1976, because in 1975 the new local authorities will be coming into full swing and I hope that in the interim period serious discussion will take place on new methods of raising local government finance. I know that serious discussion has taken place over the last few weeks, but so far no viable proposals have been made. I hope that proposals will be

  907
  brought forward prior to the coming into force in 1975 of the new regional and district authorities. As the regional authorities are to be the rating authorities and as they will have much wider areas and probably much greater priorities to consider, I hope that the Undersecretary will agree that the order should run for another year.
  I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Strang), welcome the order.
  9.23 p.m.
  Mr. Younger: With the leave of the House, I will reply to the points which have been raised.
  I am grateful to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, East (Mr. Strang) and to the Opposition generally for supporting the order. I note what has been said. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about this not being regarded as a logical or permanent solution. This is why once again the order is scheduled to run for two years.
  I agree with the hon. Member for Stirling and Falkirk Burghs (Mr. Ewing) that it is arguable that it would be better if the order were to run to 1976. However, I would rather consider the matter again in two years' time, because I think that within two years there will have been certain changes. I hope that we shall have had a new look at the rating of plant and machinery which will enable us to look at the system again in the light of whatever conclusion is reached. I also hope that in two years' time we shall have a little more clarity as to the future form of local government finance.
  We could easily extend the order for another year, as the hon. Gentleman desires, if that were desired in two years' time.
  The hon. Member for Edinburgh, East asked about the disparity between Scotland and England and Wales which makes it necessary to have 50 per cent. industrial derating. I cannot give a very satisfactory answer. It is difficult to put one's finger on the reasons why this has happened.
  Rating is made up of many variable factors. There is the variable factor of
  908
  what valuations are in various parts of the country. There is the variable factor of what rate poundages are required in various parts of the country. Lying behind it, there is the variable factor of different levels of rate support grant and different balances of the communities. Scotland has a much higher number of rural and highland areas than most parts of England and Wales. If one comes back to the basic aim of trying to ensure that there is no deterrent to industries to set up in Scotland, one is tying oneself to trying to ensure that the ultimate amount paid by industry is broadly comparable between England and Wales on the one hand and Scotland on the other. The best answer to the question is that if one is tied to a parity of what industries pay on both sides of the border and one has behind it all these infinitely variable points making up this fixed figure, it is difficult to say which factor makes it necessary to have this adjustment of the 50 per cent. derating.
  The recent revaluation in England and Wales has left valuations in Scotland, not only of houses but of commercial and miscellaneous properties, at about 40 per cent. of the English level. It is clear, therefore, that our industrial valuations must, relatively speaking at any rate, be higher, but I am afraid I cannot explain in any more concrete fashion why this should be so. It is really a historical picture of an accumulation of many variable factors which partly go back to the differences of character between Scotland on the one hand and England and Wales on the other.
  I am afraid, therefore, that I cannot give a concrete answer to what I agree is a slightly perplexing situation. We all agree, I think, that the aim must be to make sure that there is no deterrent to industries to set up in Scotland. The way to achieve this aim simply is to carry on industrial derating for a further two years. I am grateful for the support of the Opposition, and I hope that the House will now agree to this order.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the Rating of Industry (Scotland) Order 1973, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13th April, be approved.

  FURNISHED LETTINGS (RATEABLE VALUE)
  9.27 p.m.
  The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): I beg to move
  That the Furnished Lettings (Rateable Value Limits) Order 1973 a draft of which was laid before this House on 16th April, be approved.
  This is an order which will enable the tenants of furnished flats and furnished houses first entered into the valuation list on or before 1st April this year to have access to the rent tribunals and to the protection which those tribunals give as regards security of tenure and stability of rent. The order affects only new furnished lettings—that is to say, premises which have been valued for rating after 31st March this year.
  The order arises in this way. Section 71(1) of the Rent Act 1968 sets out the rateable value limits above which dwellings are excluded from the protection which rent tribunals can give to tenants of furnished dwellings—as I said, the security of tenure and the amount of rent payable—and below the limits tenants can apply to a rent tribunal for consideration of security of tenure and rent. The rent tribunal will confirm, reduce or increase the rents and can grant up to six months security of tenure at a time. This is often done by deferring a notice to quit which has been served on the tenant.
  Those periods of security can be extended or renewed, and the rateable value limits set out in Section 71(1) of the 1968 Act are £400 for dwellings in Greater London and £200 elsewhere in England and Wales on the appropriate day. The appropriate day is either 23rd March 1965 or whatever subsequent date the dwelling was first entered into the valuation list.
  When a dwelling is entered into the valuation list subsequent to 1965 it is entered on what is called the "tone" of the valuation list. That is, it is entered in the list as if it had existed in 1965. By that means, until 1st April this year a similarity was maintained between those dwellings which were in existence in 1965 and so rated in the valuation list and those which came on
  910
  to the list later. Revaluation has taken place with effect from 1st April. On average it has increased rateable values of residential accommodation by a factor of 2·56. Thus a dwelling which, if first entered in the list on 31st March of this year, would have had a value of say, £400 will typically, and taking the average figure, have a rateable value of £1,000 if first entered in the list on 1st April of this year or after.
  To bring properties first entering the valuation list on or after 1st April within the protection of the rent tribunals, if they are similar to those already protected, the rateable value limits in Section 71 of the Rent Act 1968 need to be amended from 1st April. To maintain this comparability the new limits effective from 1st April should be £1,000 in Greater London and £500 in the rest of England and Wales in place of what I will call the old limits of £400 in London and £200 elsewhere.
  I stress that making this order to deal with new dwellings has no effect on existing protected tenancies. They retain the protection they have always had. The order will maintain the status quo for dwellings newly entered in the valuation list by amending Section 71(1) of the Rent Act 1968. Power was taken in Section 89 of the Housing Finance Act 1972 to alter by order the rateable value limits for protection.
  I must mention one other point within the order, namely the transitional provision. This is contained in Article 4 and simply allows a continuation of Section 79 of the Rent Act 1968 under which owner-occupiers letting their property furnished on a temporary basis may, if they give notice in writing before a certain date, be exempted from the security provisions. In these circumstances the tenant is not permitted to apply to the rent tribunal for consideration of security. This transitional provision is merely maintaining the same position as before in relation to new properties coming on to the valuation list on or after 1st April this year.
  There is a considerable market in furnished accommodation and it is common for newly-converted flats within the new rateable values to come on to the market and to be let for the first time.

  911
  Although this order is a narrow one dealing only with furnished dwellings newly entered on the list after 1st April, it is important. It ensures that the tenancies I have mentioned will receive the same protection as similar existing tenancies.
  9.35 p.m.
  Mr. Bruce Douglas-Mann: I accept, as the Minister said, that the order is narrow, but it is also mean. It seeks to limit the raising of the rateable value limits for furnished tenancies to £1,000 in London and £500 for dwellings elsewhere. However, the Government have accepted in Section 14 of the Counter-Inflation Act 1973 that rateable value limits which prevailed under the Rent Acts prior to the passing of that Act were inadequate and unsatisfactory. Section 14 provided for an extension of the rateable value limits for unfurnished tenancies to the sum of £600 in respect of old rateable value limits or £1,500 for new rateable value limits in London and £750 elsewhere. The fact that new furnished tenancies are to be protected only to the extent that they come within lower rateable value limits is simply one of the many ways in which tenants in furnished accommodation are discriminated against by the law as it stands.
  The House will be familiar with the arguments advanced by my hon. Friends and particularly by myself about the disadvantages of furnished tenancies. These were well illustrated by the Francis Committee's Report. Furnished tenancies already suffer disadvantages. There is practically no security of tenure. Security is limited to the fact that a tenant can apply to the rent tribunal for a suspension of the notice to quit and the tribunal may suspend that notice for up to a maximum of six months Although the tenant may go back once and conceivably twice, ultimately he has no real security in his home. Inevitably he can be evicted. The Francis Committee found that of a hundred cases which had been before the rent tribunal only 20 of the families were still living in their homes a year later; and 10 of the 20 were under notice to quit and five were trying to move.
  I am glad to see the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg)
  912
  present tonight. Considerable credit is due to him for mobilising middle-class pressure on behalf of those suffering from irresponsible landlords in upper-middle-class accommodation. But it is not only in the unfurnished sphere that people are suffering. As the hon. Member has emphasised, wherever there is a situation involving a private landlord with a private tenant defending his home, conflict is bound to result in extreme social un-happiness and the law must intervene if serious social hardship is not to result.
  Unfurnished tenancies now have protection extended to them in the higher-income levels by the Counter-Inflation Act. Furnished tenants within the same rateable value limits will not get this protection. The Government are proposing to extend the protection to furnished tenancies to dwellings according to rateable value limits of £1,000 instead of £1,500 in London and of £500 instead of £750 elsewhere. That would be bad enough, but it is being added to a succession of disabilities for furnished tenants. These include a lack of security and a lack of an effective right to reasonable regulation of the tenant's rent.
  The tenant in furnished accommodation cannot go to the rent tribunal without knowing that he is liable to be evicted, and consequently he continues to pay the extortionate rents being demanded of tenants in such accommodation. The furnished tenant, even if he goes to the rent tribunal, receives no protection in the level of rent assessed to take account of the scarcity value of the property. We have in the Furnished Let-tings (Rent Allowances) Act an inferior form of rent allowance to furnished tenants.
  The only consolation I have in the fact that the measure does not raise the rateable value limits for furnished tenants to the same level as had been set for unfurnished tenants is that, for the great majority of furnished tenants, the entitlement to go to the rent tribunal is a snare and delusion. In fact, that theoretical protection largely deprives the great majority of furnished tenants of the protection that the law is designed to give and should be giving to them, protection which, if they knew their rights, the law would give them. Section 2 of the Rent Act 1968, which merely re-enacts legislation that has remained the same since

  913
  1920, provides that a tenant is deprived of his protection as a furnished tenant only if the rent attributable to furniture or attendance represents a substantial proportion of his rent.
  Both in my capacity as a Member and as a solicitor I have had great experience of the problems of furnished tenants faced with notices to quit and threatened with eviction. In the course of a long professional experience I have seldom found a genuine furnished tenancy, one that would stand up to arguments in the courts if the question whether the premises were sufficiently furnished to take them outside the Acts was challenged. Unfortunately, it is challenged by only a minute proportion of furnished tenants.
  Thousands of landlords are deliberately, with full knowledge of what they are doing, ignoring the law which this House has passed. They are creating what they call furnished tenancies by providing a certain amount of furniture and a rent book with "furnished tenancy" on the front page, calling it a furnished tenancy and demanding a rent often two to five times what a rent officer would assess as a fair rent for the premises.
  How long can the House or the Government continue to tolerate a situation in which the law is completely and deliberately flouted in that way? It is flouted with full knowledge of what is being done by a substantial number of the landlords concerned. Many others think that simply by providing some furniture they are entitled to ignore the Rent Act, to charge what rent they like and to evict their tenant as soon as they wish.
  The only consolation I have from the order is that many of the tenants who might otherwise be misled into thinking that their protection would lie in going to the rent tribunal will find that their rateable value limits are too high, and instead they will challenge the issue in the county court. Whether or not they wait for eviction proceedings, they should challenge in the county court whether then-tenancy is furnished or unfurnished.
  The most essential point I want to make is that very few tenancies with the "furnished" label attached would stand up to examination in court to discover whether they are sufficiently furnished and whether the standard of furnishings and
  914
  service provided causes the proportion of rent attributable to that furniture or those services to be sufficiently substantial to deprive the tenant of protection under the Rent Act. If they only knew it and argued the point, the vast majority of furnished tenants are as fully protected under the law as unfurnished tenants. Unfortunately, they do not know it. Not only do they not know it, but it appears that the great majority of rent officers and rent tribunals do not know it, and a large proportion of local authority housing officers and so on do not know it.
  I have today had the opportunity of discussing the question with a county court judge, whose sphere of jurisdiction includes a substantial area of central London where the problem is perhaps at its most acute. It is an area where landlords are anxiously seeking to evict their tenants because they know that their property values have risen sufficiently to enable them, if they can get their tenants out, to convert the premises and sell them as flats to the middle class. I am anxious that the middle class should be housed, but it is even more important that those living in their homes should be protected from eviction.
  The county court judge told me that when cases involving furnished premises came before him, in the majority of cases the tenant was not represented. He said that even if the tenant was not represented he usually only asked whether there was an issue about whether the premises were furnished, and that usually the tenant said he accepted that the premises were furnished. But that is not the issue. The issue is whether the proportion of rent attributable to furniture is substantial, and where the tenant was not represented and sometimes even when he was, that issue which could have saved the tenants home, was allowed to go by default.
  Given the enormously high rents which are charged today and the very low level of the quality of the furniture provided in the majority of furnished tenancies, there are few tenancies which would satisfy the test. When Parliament passed the 1920 Act it intended that the proportion of rent attributable to furniture should be substantial if the tenant was to be deprived of Rent Act protection. It had in mind to exclude from rent control only such cases as transient families— for example, the man who came to

  915
  London for a short time for a job and when the premises involved were more or less boarding houses.
  Landlords are using this apparent loophole—it would not be a loophole if the situation were properly known—to ignore completely the intention of the Act. Consequently there are hundreds of thousands of households—there are at least 200,000 in London—where the tenant thinks that he has no security for his home. There are few situations short of going to prison in the near future which can be quite as distressing as the knowledge that a person can be evicted from his home. That is something which is contrary to the intention of Parliament.
  It lies within the power of the Government, if they will not legislate and extend security to furnished tenants, if they will not lay down precisely a definition of a furnished tenancy, to ensure that county court judges, rent officers, rent tribunals and local authorities know the test to apply to a furnished tenancy. Instead, the Government leave the matter to a handful of lawyers, neighbourhood law centres and community workers to establish the matter with immense difficulty, but with immense success in almost every case when a threatened eviction comes before them and the question of whether the proportion of rent attributable to furniture is raised.
  There are now thousands of families— certainly tens of thousands if not 100,000 or more—who are faced with a real risk of being evicted from their homes as a consequence of ignorance of their legal rights. That is something which I urge the Government to remedy as quickly as possible. But, given the inadequacy and the shoddiness of the measure proposed in the order, which only raises the rateable value limits for furnished tenancies to two-thirds of the level to which the rateable value limits for unfurnished tenancies are to be raised, I am not optimistic that the Government will take such an elementary step as to ensure that publicity is given to the test that the law provides for a furnished tenancy, and to ensure that families are not needlessly and cruelly evicted against the intentions of the law.
  Given the terms of the order, I can only hope that the Government will
  916
  nevertheless at this stage accept that there is need to give this matter publicity and will take steps to do so.
  9.50 p.m.
  Mr. Reginald Freeson: In pursuit of what my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, North (Mr. Douglas-Mann) has said, I must put now a question which I had every intention of putting in the first instance. What is the reasoning of the Government in making the distinction between limits for unfurnished accommodation in relation to security of tenure and rent regulation and the position with regard to furnished tenancies as set out in the order?
  This is a narrowly-based order. The right hon. Gentleman has not told us any of the Government's thinking about this part of the housing situation. The Opposition and some hon. Members opposite have been pursuing the subject for some time throughout the weary stages of the Housing Finance Act 1972 and on the Furnished Lettings (Rent Allowances) Act 1973. We were assured time and again that the Government were concerned, that the measures being put forward, particularly with regard to rent allowances for certain classes of furnished tenancy, were modest improvements and intended as such, and that the Government were looking into the questions raised in the Francis Report and by hon. Members and others about this housing sector.
  We wait and we wait, but are given no indication of what the Government think—or if, indeed, there is any Government thinking at all on changes in policy. Like it or not, and do as we may, it is clear that the Government will not, at least at this stage, accept what we propose in terms of security of tenure for furnished tenancies. But there are lines of action which the Government could take. My hon. Friend has indicated some of them. In implementing this narrowly-based order, for example, the Government should take the opportunity without further delay to undertake further steps. As my hon. Friend also said, one of these would be to make clearer, presumably by advisory circular, to the local authorities, rent tribunals and others concerned the law with regard to the

  917
  definition as between security for unfurnished tenancies and security for furnished tenancies and that it may well be the case that allegedly furnished tenancies are in reality within the scope of security granted for unfurnished tenancies.
  Other clear advice could be given and backed up by the Government—for example, a recommendation to local authorities that they should themselves undertake referrals to rent tribunals. I shall ask one or two questions—now that we have the opportunity—about rent tribunal actions.
  The Government should advise local authorities that they have, and should use, power to refer cases to rent tribunals for rent registration where there is a genuine fear by the tenant that he will be evicted, or a genuine threat by the landlord, and that in such cases the authorities should undertake the purchase of the property, with the backing of the Government if need be by a compulsory purchase order. It should be possible for the Government to indicate the city stress areas where that policy should be concentrated.
  It should be possible for the Government to advise rent tribunals to use their powers to extend security of tenure by six-monthly periods rather more frequently and for longer periods. Has the Minister any information on this subject? What is the rate of extension of security of tenure by tribunals where applications are made by tenants or where referrals are by local authorities? How many referrals to rent tribunals have local authorities undertaken annually?
  Are there any figures of the rate of growth of furnished tenancies particularly in the inner London area, where there is the biggest concentration of furnished tenancies? How many furnished tenancies are being taken out of the rental market and being held for business, tourist and other similar lettings? There have been increasingly worrying reports about this development in certain parts of inner London, and there are reports that it is beginning to spread to other parts of the country.
  The order is intended marginally to add to the area of a tenant's legal right to apply to a rent tribunal for registration and limited security. We are advised that there are about 600,000 furnished
  918
  tenancies throughout the country, of which at least 250,000 are in London, primarily concentrated in the inner areas. If that is the figure, what is the current proportion subject to rent registration and limited security? The figures that the Government gave me some time ago showed that only about 100,000 of the 600,000 were subject to rent registration and limited security. The make-up of that 100,000 varies with the passage of time because of the limitation of security of tenure. Is it the Government's desire that that proportion should increase? If so, do they intend to issue any advice?
  This subject is causing growing anxiety. As the Minister hinted, increasingly properties are being converted into expensive lettings. I wonder how long that, as distinct from conversion for sale—an increasing practice in inner London—will continue. We know from experience that it is becoming an increasing problem for people of limited means, not just poorly-paid working-class families, but people with higher incomes. We are entitled to know the Government's thinking.
  When the Government are marginally extending the scope of security and rent registrations, here is an opportunity once more for them to give an indication of their general policy on a subject about which there is more and more concern and which is important socially and economically in the inner city areas, especially London. To sum up, I ask the Minister to indicate why there has been this distinction—
  It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

  BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
  Ordered,
  That the Motion relating to Pensions (S.I., 1973, No. 313) may be proceeded with at this day's Sitting, though opposed, until half-past Eleven o'clock.—[Mr. John Stradling Thomas.]

  FURNISHED LETTINGS (RATEABLE VALUE)
  Question again proposed.
  10.1 p.m.
  Mr. Freeson: I will sum up as follows. Why have we the distinction in the ceiling for unfurnished and furnished tenancies

  919
  for rateable value and rent registration purposes? Is it the Government's intention to advise local authorities to use what powers they have to refer direct to rent tribunals and, where necessary and where tenants are at risk, to seek the purchase of properties? Is it the intention of the Government to issue advice which will clarify the law along the lines suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington, North in respect of local authority rent tribunals?
  Is it the Government's wish to see a much bigger use of the rights in law to get security of tenure, limited though it may be, and get registration well beyond the total of 100,000 out of 600,000 such tenancies? Is it the Government's desire that rent tribunals should continue to extend their powers to secure security of tenure in terms of rent registration which up to now have been used only to a very limited degree? Is it the Government's intention to introduce some broadly based policy which would enable local authorities and others to get control of the rapidly deteriorating situation in this area which has such a marked impact on the inner stress areas of our cities?
  10.3 p.m.
  Mr. Graham Page: I must first state that this is an order made under Section 89 of the Housing Finance Act 1972, and under that Act—and indeed under the Counter-Inflation Act 1973—it would not have been possible to make an order which would have extended the rateable value limit protection for existing dwellings. It could have been an order which increased the limits for new dwellings, but that would not have met the cases put to me by the hon. Members for Kensington, North (Mr. Douglas-Mann) and for Willesden, East (Mr. Freeson). It would therefore not have been possible under the order to meet their case.
  Parliament has accepted the Counter-Inflation Act 1973 and the Housing Finance Act 1972, which limits the orders which can be made to the type of order which I have brought before the House tonight—the amendment of the rateable value limits on new dwellings coming within the valuation list on or after 1st April. That is as far as the Government can go under existing legislation.
  Mr. Douglas-Mann: Can the Minister elaborate a little on the reasons why, under Section 89 of the Housing Finance Act, the Government are limited in the way he suggests? As I understand the section, there is power to increase rateable value limits for the purpose of the Rent Act 1968—under subsections (1) and (2) of Section 89 of that Act. For the purposes of Section 1 and 71 of the Rent Act 1968, Section 89 of the Housing Finance Act enables the Government to determine
  "as the relevant amount for a dwelling-house in Greater London, such sum exceeding £400 as is specified in the order, and (b) as the relevant amount for a dwelling-house elsewhere, such sum exceeding £200 as is so specified."
  I cannot see the provision in Section 89 which would limit the Government's power to raise the rateable value limits to the same levels as those to which they have been raised in the Counter-Inflation Act 1973.
  Mr. Page: With respect, if the hon. Gentleman reads the whole section he will find that power was given in the Act itself to raise the limit on new unfurnished dwellings but that it did not give the Government power to raise the limit on existing dwellings. I shall endeavour to explain the position more fully in a letter to the hon. Gentleman if he wishes, but without wishing to sound conceited I am certain that I am right in what I say. I should not have had the power to make the order for which the hon. Gentleman asks.
  In saying that, I have no wish to avoid on that ground the points which have been put forward in the debate. What the hon. Member for Kensington, North and the hon. Member for Willesden, East have argued is that the Government ought to have taken power to do that, and they have asked how in future we intend to take that power.
  The protection offered by the Rent Acts to the tenants of unfurnished accommodation was increased by the Counter-Inflation Act 1973. That was done by raising the rateable value limits, as they were then, to £600 in London and £300 elsewhere. Under revaluation those limits go up to £1,500 and £750 respectively. That was done because of the evident hardship to tenants whose flats had a

  921
  rateable value of £400 in London and £200 elsewhere in a situation where the demand for unfurnished tenancies exceeded the supply. As was pointed out in the debates on the relevant clause of the Counter-Inflation Bill, those tenants were being forced to pay inflated market rents and had no protection when landlords began the even more profitable practice of selling all their flats on long leases.
  The £400 limit had been chosen back in 1965 as the point beyond which there was a balance of supply and demand at that time resulting in a free market above those figures. That was a free market acceptable to both landlord and tenant at that time. But as the situation had clearly changed in terms of unfurnished tenancies the limits were raised to £600 in London and £300 elsewhere. This maintained a dividing line similar to that created by the £400 and £200 in 1965.
  We looked very carefully at those considerations at the time. They did not apply to furnished tenancies. The Acts have always acknowledged the difference between furnished and unfurnished tenure and the demand and supply of each. There is no automatic reason to raise the rateable value limits for furnished tenancies to keep in step with the unfurnished sector—
  Mr. Freeson: Is the right hon. Gentleman really suggesting that there is some kind of balance as between supply and demand in the furnished rented market?
  Mr. Page: There is above the £400 and £200 figures. There is very little furnished accommodation in London above the £400 limit. My Department has no evidence of undue pressure on the little furnished accommodation which exists above that figure. The demand for accommodation of that kind comes mainly from diplomats and businessmen seeking flats in London.
  In the circumstances, there seemed to be no need to tamper with the free market forces in those areas.
  Mr. Freeson: Will the Minister therefore explain why all people who are observing the ceiling are saying that there is an extension of the market for furnished accommodation at that level? More accommodation in inner London
  922
  is being emptied of its present tenants and held, converted, modernised, and so on, at higher rateable value, for diplomats, businessmen, tourists, and so on. It is going on now, and the Minister is saying that it is not.
  Mr. Page: I do not accept that all people are saying that. The people who need protecting are those within the limits of £400 in London and £200 elsewhere. Above that there is no pressure on the market which necessitates that protection. The extension of the Rent Act's protection to the unfurnished sector was made in the knowledge that that sector was declining. By comparison, the furnished sector is relatively stable. The 1971 census figures show an increase in the number of furnished lettings in London. In view of that indication, it would seem wrong to discourage such lettings by further control. That is why we refused, on the passing of the Counter-Inflation Act 1973, to increase the limits for furnished lettings in the same way as we had for unfurnished lettings. The hon. Member for Willesden, East asked me what the distinction was between the limits for furnished and unfurnished dwellings. That is my answer to his question.
  The hon. Gentleman also asked about the Government's thinking on this area of housing. The Government do not believe there is any need to increase the limits for furnished dwellings beyond those figures of £400 and £200 or to adjust them for new dwellings coming on to the valuation list on or after 1st April.
  I was asked whether, in implementing the order, we would undertake further steps to explain the law. It is not the duty or responsibility of a Minister to interpret the law. I thought that the hon. Member for Kensington, North was inviting me to teach county court judges their law. I assure him that I have practised, as he has, before county court judges for more years than I care to remember and have endeavoured to teach them the law, but I have never been well received in doing so. Therefore, I should not like to try now.
  We have the Citizens Advice Bureaux, which are wholeheartedly supported by the Government both financially and in

  923
  other ways, to which citizens can resort to find out their rights. The more we can encourage them to do so the better. We encourage local authorities to advertise the Citizens Advice Bureaux and to encourage people to go to them for advice. That is the only way that we can ensure that people do get advice.
  I was asked whether I would recommend local authorities to refer cases to rent tribunals. I am sure that local authorities know that they have the right to take cases before rent tribunals where the tenants ask them to do so. [Interruption.] I heard a murmur. Even if the tenants do not ask them to do so, they have the right to take cases before rent tribunals. Perhaps I should stress on the Floor of the House that there is no need for local authorities to wait to be asked. If they think that there is a case of harassment of a tenant they have the right to take the case either to a rent tribunal or elsewhere.
  Mr. Ronald Brown: Does the Minister agree that the general consensus in London is to advise against going to the tribunals because they cannot guarantee more than 28 days' or, at best, two months' notice? Consequently, the advice to the tenant always is "I would not go if I were you."
  Mr. Page: I do not accept that. The rent tribunals are there for the benefit of the tenants. I do not think that rent tribunals are so over-crowded that a tenant cannot get before one in a short time. When the tenant goes to a rent tribunal there is available a substantial security of tenure.
  The hon. Member for Kensington, North rather scoffed at the idea of six months, plus another six months, plus another six months, but these applications can go to the rent tribunals and they can extend the period of time for as long as necessary.
  924
  I was asked whether I would support local authorities in the purchase of properties where there was, I presume, harassment of tenants and where that was the only way of securing the tenants' home to them. I know of no case in which the Secretary of State has refused compulsory purchase on proper grounds of that sort. Where the local authority comes forward with a compulsory purchase order on proper housing grounds it is considered on its merits, and the merits are whether it is necessary to preserve the housing and provide housing for the people within the district.
  I was asked whether I would tell rent tribunals to extend the period of tenure. Parliament has given rent tribunals a discretion in this and it is not for Ministers to tell them how to exercise that discretion. To do so would be contempt of Parliament by the Minister concerned. The Act gives rent tribunals that discretion and they must exercise it as they see fit on the merits of each case.
  I cannot give the hon. Gentleman the answer to his question about the proportion subject to rent registration and limited security, but I shall endeavour to look up the up-to-date figures on that.
  I mentioned that there were a number of conversions of property which in the future would command a high rateable value. I do not think that it is necessary to provide protection for those, but where there are conversions which come within the limits of this order, the tenants of those areas should have protection.
  The order goes as far as Parliament allows under the existing legislation, and to that extent I ask the House to approve it.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the Furnished Lettings (Rateable Value Limits) Order 1973, a draft of which was laid before this House on 16th April, be approved.

  AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT FUND (IMMUNITIES AND PRIVILEGES)
  10.18 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Anthony Kershaw): I beg to move,
  That the African Development Fund (Immunities and Privileges) Order 1973, a draft of which was laid before this House on 16th April, be approved
  The purpose of the order is to confer upon the fund, and persons connected with it, the privileges and immunities which are required to be conferred by Chapter VIII of the agreement establishing the fund. The main importance, therefore, of the order is that we cannot ratify the agreement unless the order has been made.
  The African Development Fund is an international organisation established to supplement the activities of the African Development Bank, whose membership at the moment consists exclusively of African States. The participants in the fund will be the African Development Bank itself and several major non-African countries. The purpose of the fund is to make loans available on "soft" terms to African countries which are members of the bank and which, because of their economic situation and prospects, need assistance on those terms. The bank makes loans on more commercial terms.
  The scale of privileges and immunities to be accorded to the fund follows closely that accorded to the Caribbean Development Bank, a similar financial organisation, in respect of which a draft order was approved by this House in February last year. On ratification we shall make certain reservations which are permitted by the agreement. These will have the effect of limiting the privileges and immunities which the fund and its personnel can enjoy in this country. For example, it will mean that the fund and persons connected with it will be able to be prosecuted for traffic offences and persons connected with the fund who are resident here will be subject to United Kingdom tax. These limitations are already included in the order.
  The African Development Fund shares the headquarters of the bank at Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. It is not, therefore,
  926
  expected that it will set up an office in this country, so the practical application of the order will be very small. Nor will the fund operate, so far as one can tell, in its corporate capacity in this country, as it can, by its own charter, borrow only on "soft" terms and cannot participate in the issue of securities.
  I trust that the House will approve the order and so demonstrate our continuing support for and participation in measures designed to promote the economic growth of developing countries.
  10.21 p.m.
  Mrs. Judith Hart: I am grateful to the Minister for giving us a picture of the African Development Bank and the African Development fund. One has no objection whatever to this order, but since we have the opportunity to get a little more clarification, would he answer two or three questions?
  First of all, as the hon. Gentleman said, there are several non-African countries involved in the bank and in the fund. Could we have more detail? These matters become the more relevant in the light of our entry of the EEC and negotiations going on about the European Development Fund. It would be interesting to know which non-African countries the Minister means.
  Second, what is the present scale of British financial involvement in, first, the bank and, second, the fund? There is developing a view that it might be a good tiling if a higher proportion of our direct official development assistance programme were channelled through the development banks and the development funds, on the ground that these are now being run by people who know their own areas and their own problems and can make their own decisions about what is needed and what is not so badly needed. A little decentralisation of donor country aid in the direction of the development banks might be very welcome. It would be useful to know the scale of our involvement and whether the Government have plans to increase it.
  Third, to what extent are the loans given by the bank and the fund indeed on "soft" terms? One knows that some of the loans provided are on "soft" terms but that others are strictly commercial. One would like to know the

  927
  proportion between the two. If anything is becoming crystal clear in the "third world", it is the problem of debts, the rescheduling and repayment of debt and the payment of interest on debt which arises from loans given in the past by various aid agencies, both bilateral and multilateral, which were on pretty "hard" terms, the repercussions of which are now being felt. Would the Minister give us just a little fuller picture on these points?
  10.25 p.m.
  Mr. Kershaw: The non-African countries which have signed are: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and ourselves.
  Next, what are our existing financial commitments? As I apprehend it, there is none in this connection because we have not yet started. But we have it in mind to be committed. If I may, I shall write to the right hon. Lady about that and set out our future approach to the matter. At this moment I think I can say without fear of contradiction that we are not committed, though we intend to be, and that is the purpose of our joining.
  The normal "soft" terms—the right hon. Lady will probably recall this, having taken a leading part in her time in these matters—are a moratorium of five to seven years, with very low interest or a nil rate of interest, and total repayment time of 25 years. This is now the standard and those are the terms which we intend should be the "soft" terms at this time.
  I shall take careful note of what the right hon. Lady has said and write to her to clear up any questions of detail which I have not covered in this short reply.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the African Development Fund (Immunities and Privileges) Order 1973, a draft of which was laid before this House on 16th April, be approved.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT SUPERANNUATION SCHEME
  10.26 p.m.
  Mr. Ronald Brown: I beg to move,
  That this House takes note of the Local Government Superannuation (Miscellaneous Provisions) Regulations 1973 (S.I., 1973, No. 313), dated 26th February 1973, a copy of which was laid before this House on 9th March.
  The House will note that the motion stands in my name and that of the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg). In my view, the regulations should be opposed, but, as a matter of agreement in the House, the motion is merely to note them.
  At the outset I pay tribute to the Minister for Local Government and Development, who has been extremely courteous to me personally in discussing the matter in correspondence. I have drawn his attention in letters to the complaint being made by local authorities at the proposal contained in the regulations. There is total opposition to regulation 4. There is total opposition in the Conservative and Labour Parties both in the House and in the country. There is total accord between the employers and the employees in local government in objecting to this regulation.
  In the circumstances, when everyone else is against Regulation 4, it seems odd that only the Department of the Environment should be in favour of it. The onus of proof, therefore, rests on the Minister to show why all the people concerned in local government are wrong and he, the man in Whitehall, is right. I have heard him ask many times why local government should not be free to develop and carry on its work without interference from the man in Whitehall. This evening he must tell us why he believes that he is right and everyone else is wrong.
  As I understand it, the Minister bases his argument on the concept that the bigger an authority is the better it can do the job. Those of us who have been involved in local government over the years have heard that argument many times. It was one of the criteria laid down by the Herbert Commission, the idea being that

  929
  if the London boroughs were made bigger they could do a better job. Many of us did not accept that at the time, and I can only say that I do not accept it now.
  Apparently, the Minister justifies his "the bigger the better" concept by arguing that the scheme being put through is both a bigger and a better scheme. He claims that it is bigger because it brings in 300,000 manual workers, and he claims that it is better because some of the conditions formerly applicable are to be improved. In my submission, neither of those arguments is self-evident, although the tenor of the Minister's argument in correspondence with me and in the letters he has sent to the local authorities is that all is self-evident and he need give no further explanation.
  If the Minister's view is right, and the bigger the authority dealing with superannuation funds the better it will be, why did he not refer the whole thing to the Civil Service? The Civil Service has a vast pension fund which could be used. Therefore, why not use the Civil Service? The Civil Service has better conditions and it is bigger and better. It has a vast computer which would be available for carrying out this work. If it was truly an advantage to be bigger and better, the Civil Service was the best home for this superannuation fund. As the right hon. Gentleman has chosen not to do that, he cannot claim that it is valid to argue "the bigger the better".
  One of the complaints local authorities have is the manner in which the regulations have been laid. The Association of Municipal Corporations advises me that the Department has delayed bringing in the regulations for the last 12 months. I am told that within the last 12 months some members of the superannuation fund have retired on the promise that their scheme would be the new scheme when it was introduced. They have had to wait till now for the Department to bring in the regulations.
  Regulation 4 does not make it mandatory on county councils to constitute a superannuation fund. I have heard argument in Standing Committee many times about the effect of "shall" and "may". I am, therefore, suprised that the obligation is only to maintain a superannuation fund.
  930
  The power is created by an amendment of the Local Government Superannuation Act 1937. Yet the 1937 Act was repealed by the Superannuation Act 1972. Which Act do the Government believe they are amending?
  The saga of the regulations is even more open to criticism. First, the White Paper on local government reorganisation in February 1971 made no suggestion for termination of borough or district functions as to superannuation. Secondly, the Local Government Act 1972 made no suggestion of transferring the superannuation function or funds from boroughs to counties. In the Superannuation Act 1972 a regulation power was substituted for statutory—1937 Act—provisions. There was no suggestion or proposal to transfer function or terminate borough funds.
  The Minister must explain why there has been this great delay. It has not been because of consultation. If he had heeded the consultations he has had, the regulations would not have been laid.
  We are led to believe that in the autumn there will be a large and substantial regulatory procedure in which London will be included. However, that is hearsay. People talk to people in the Ministry and people in the Ministry talk to others who say, "It could well be so, because we ought to make London the same as the rest of the country"—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker(Sir Robert Grant-Ferris): Order. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will not mind my reminding him that London and everything to do with London is expressly and categorically excluded from the motion by the terms of the Act.
  Mr. Brown: I am not sure, Mr. Deputy Speaker, how you interpret that to be so. As I understand it, the regulations are general ones of principle. Regulation 4 is designed to establish de facto that the county councils are responsible for superannuation funds. If that be so, it must follow that the evidence which is being offered to local government that it is the Minister's intention to come forward with a similar order to ensure that it applies to London and—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, that may indeed be so, but it is not something with which we can deal at this moment.

  931
  I have to rule that London and the GLC is out of order on this motion.
  Mr. Brown: I find that extraordinary. I can understand that that ruling suits the Minister and the Government, but it seems an extraordinary situation when the London town clerks and London boroughs have been told that these are matters of which they must take note and with which they are involved. When a question was put to the right hon. Gentleman by an hon. Friend of his he did not say "This does not apply to London". He answered the question by saying "I believe this transfer will be in the best interests"—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: These are arguments which can be used, but the hon. Member must realise that I have to construe the rules of order of the House. This motion is concerned with counties other than London. London is not concerned and is, indeed, in terms expressly excluded. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will find some other occasion on which he can raise the very important question of London, and, knowing him as I do, I am sure that he will accept my ruling that he must leave the GLC out of his argument, which was going on very well indeed until he brought London into it.
  Mr. Brown: I shall obviously do my best to keep within your ruling Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that London will be delighted to know that it cannot be referred to at any time as being included under this order. I shall see that that information goes to local government in London, and I am grateful to you for your ruling, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Let me talk about other issues connected with this order. The principle which the Minister is enunciating is that these powers should be transferred from the districts to the county councils. One has to ask why they should be. Where is the evidence that any county councils are the right sort of bodies to have these powers given to them? If "the bigger the better" concept which the Minister has enunciated is right, let us look at the county councils to which he has referred as being bigger and better. He is transferring powers from authorities such as Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds and Bristol and giving them
  932
  not to London but to the Isle of Wight. That really is the bigger the better! We take these powers away from a massive conurbation in Birmingham with a population of 1,096,000 and give them to the Isle of Wight with a population of, I believe, 109,000. We have not got a borough in London with so small a population as 109,000. Yet it is proposed to give the Isle of Wight these powers because it is "bigger and better".
  It is interesting to consider some of the other authorities. Look at Salop, one of those authorities which are said to be bigger and better. That has a population of 337,000. Take Liverpool with 607,000, Manchester with 542,000, Sheffield with 566,000 or Leeds with 738,000. So there are about six London boroughs and 13 metropolitan districts each with populations of over 300,000. They have vast resources. Westminster has a rateable value of £114 million, but it has to give up its superannuation fund to the Greater London Council. The Isle of Wight with a population of 109,000 and a tiddling rateable value of about £4·4 million will not lose its powers.
  In his letter to me the Minister made an interesting comment, and I am sure he will forgive me if I read it. He says
  "We have concluded that this heavy task can be more satisfactorily accomplished by the new county councils and, in London, by the GLC …".
  The Minister thought we were talking about London tonight. The letter is dated 24th April. It is up to the Minister to explain therefore why he has so concluded.
  The letter goes on:
  "It can be argued that the London boroughs have the convenience of being able to run all their superannuation records along with pay and conditions of service."
  The Minister appears to be trying to tear at the minute argument about size and yet when he begins to explain the matter he automatically brings London into the issue, although I suggest that he should not. He indicates that in London there is clear evidence that the authorities should be left alone.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Even Ministers can find themselves out of order at times, and if a Minister began tonight in the course of the debate to talk about London I should rule him out of order as quickly as I would rule the hon. Member

  933
  out of order. The hon. Member had better leave the subject of London.
  Mr. Brown: I suspect, however, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the Minister will not want to talk about London now. He claims in the letter that it is possible to make useful savings in the calculation of transfer values. All the information I have received—I have been to everyone I can find who knows anything about these matters, to the treasurers, to the people of great importance from the borough councils and the London Boroughs Association—disputes this. I am told by the chief executive for the London Borough of Hackney that it has been said that there would be savings in administration from the operation of a central fund but it is thought that the only saving would be the elimination of the need to calculate transfer values where staff transfer from one London borough to another. Any saving is likely to be outweighed by the administrative work involved in the passing of information from the borough to the central office and from the central office to the borough on records of pay, conditions of service and similar matters.
  I sought an up-to-date figure today of the transfers which will take place in local government. I am told that for London up to 15 to 20 per cent. of the staff of the boroughs change within the boroughs each year. That is an enormous changeover, and if it is suggested that all these changes have to be recorded it will be impossible to argue, as the Minister has sought to do, that there will be vast savings. That is not true. There is a great expertise about superannuation funds among the London boroughs.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to leave the London boroughs and the Greater London Council out of the argument. The regulations are concerned with everything outside London. This is a definite ruling, and I know from my knowledge of the hon. Gentleman that he will respect it.
  Mr. Brown: I am trying to do that, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was only illustrating my point. The only sizeable authorities running such superannuation funds happen to be the kind of place I represent. I am the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury. I can only speak
  934
  for the boroughs I am talking about. En passant, I am suggesting that we have the expertise and that it is in London that we have the only authorities of the size that we are referring to. There is a vast amount of expertise available in the districts which can be used without their having to go to county councils.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is as far as we need to go on that. The hon. Gentleman has made that point. I have been very tolerant of him. We must now return to the non-London elements. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has been under a misapprehension. Perhaps another hon. Member, not representing London boroughs, should have been making this speech. The hon. Gentleman must now refrain from all reference to London.
  Mr. Brown: I have left that matter, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was explaining the expertise in the districts. There are no district councils in London.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I understand that. In his usual excellent style the hon. Gentleman has made his point. Now that he has made it, and has received some tolerance from the Chair, I now direct him to leave that question completely.
  Mr. Brown: I do not quite understand how I can be directed to leave a point that we are discussing when the regulations state that the county councils shall take over the superannuation funds from district councils. It is an integral part of the regulations.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I do not wish to be unfair to the hon. Gentleman. I mean only that I direct him to refrain from further references to the Greater London Council and the London boroughs and to keep to the terms of the regulations as they relate to the Act. Section 1 of the Local Government Act says:
  "For the administration of local government on and after 1st April 1974 England (exclusive of Greater London and the Isles of Scilly) …".
  Those are two very important places, but discussion of them is not in order tonight.
  Mr. Brown: The Act does include the Isle of Wight.
  What I want to complain about to the Minister is that the local authorities are

  935
  satisfied that he and his Department have made no case. On the contrary, he and the Department have been delaying the matter, making noises for a long time, and have in no way tried to justify what they are doing.
  The local authority associations and the local authorities are more than satisfied that they are well able to continue running the funds. Vast amounts of money are involved. When a man belongs to a superannuation fund there is a contract between him and his employer. He will be the employee not of the county council but of the district council. It is unwarranted interference by the Minister to try to take away from an employee a contract he has with his employer and put it in the hands of someone else.
  In his letter to me the Minister tried to adduce an extraordinary argument. He suggested that it made no difference because all that would happen if a man asked a question was that he would go to somebody, who would be designated, in his own authority to ask it and that that designated person would then ring the central fund and ask the same question and would then get an answer which he would transmit to the employee. If the employee did not quite understand it he would then go back to the officer designated to deal with these inquiries, who would contact the central fund for further guidance, and the designated officer would then return. It is a most extraordinary dialogue.
  I was horrified to receive the suggestion that the employer will still have a rôle to play as he will act as a post box between the employee, for whom he is responsible, and the central fund, which will be responsible for the information.
  The local authorities have made a powerful case. I should not have been intent upon representing their case unless I had tested its strength. The more I have examined it, the more I have tested the Government's argument, the more I have read the Government's letters to the authorities and the associations and the more I have re-read the letters to me, the more satisfied am I that the Government should think again.
  We have, I hope, highlighted to the Minister during this short debate that he has brought forward a measure which is
  936
  based upon no common sense and has been rejected entirely by the whole of local government in England and Wales. He has also brought about a situation where people are rather afraid of his motive. I urge him to take the regulation back. It is a bad one. I do not believe that he can justify himself. If he could do so he would have taken the opportunity to do so. He has had more than enough opportunity but he has not done so yet. I suggest that we should consider carefully the regulations before we pass them tonight.
  10.53 p.m.
  Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: I can see that I shall have a somewhat more difficult task than I first expected. This is an excellent opportunity to place on record the decision of all local government and to sound a warning to the Department of the Environment—I exclude the Minister because this is clearly a departmental suggestion—that it has not proved its case.
  I complement the views of the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown). We speak on this issue, as he said, for the united voice and views of all the local authority associations, the AMC and, if I dare mention it, the CBA. This proposal is being slipped in by means of a paragraph in a circular dealing with local government superannuation. It is a matter which affects tens of thousands of staff. It does not deserve such cavalier treatment.
  Recently my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley (Mr. Hunt) asked whether the Minister would reconsider his decision on this matter. My right hon. Friend said:
  '"No. I believe that this transfer will be in the best interests of the members of these funds."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 18th April 1973; Vol. 855, c. 110.]
  I hope that my right hon. Friend does not mean that. I should make it clear that NALGO, speaking for the employees, and the boroughs, speaking for the employers, were opposed, and are opposed, to that decision. Surely they know what they want. It is an unfortunate phrase which is reminiscent of "The gentlemen in Whitehall know best." I thought that lesson had been learned many years ago. I would have hoped that the Civil Service would have learned that that sort of phrase does not please the House.

  937
  I quote from a letter from NALGO— not the London branch, although it was written to me from London. It says:
  "I can assure you that the Association does support your Association's opposition to the proposals, in particular because as you say the outcome could be detrimental to Local Government staffs."
  Amongst many provisions the regulations insert a new subsection beginning
  "As from the date of their first meeting …"
  As far as I know, one of the county councils referred to is the GLC, but it appears in the Local Government Act 1972. If this proposal were accepted, the fund would be about £350 million, too large for any one authority.
  One of the arguments is set out by the Department in a letter to a town clerk who raised the issue. It talks about local authorities operating their own funds and makes comparisons and refers to authorities with lesser populations and rateable values. Wiltshire has a population according to the 1971 census, of 486,000 and a rateable value of £20 million; Northants has a population of 468,000 and a rateable value of £20 million; North Yorkshire has a population of 597,000 and a rateable value of £22 million; Oxfordshire has a population of 503,000 and a rateable value of £22 million; Buckinghamshire has a population of 485,000 and a rateable value of £22 million. The largest rateable value among those authorities, which are to be permitted to operate their superannuation funds, is £22 million. Camden has a rateable value of £35 million. I hope my right hon. Friend will note that.
  The Department's argument is, in my view, fallacious. I examined the equity portfolios of two authorities to see what may be the effect on employees. An equity portfolio in March 1968, the date of the last actuarial valuation, showed that the first authority invested in 327 different equities; the second authority invested in 159. There was a similarity between the two in that 113 of the second authority's 159 were held in the same companies as the first authority's portfolio. The first authority happens to be the GLC, and the second Camden. I do not say that there is here an index of performance, but it is important to note that at the actuarial valuation in March 1967 there was a
  938
  surplus of £90,000 in Camden while the GLC had a deficit of £13 million.
  I refer to this because paragraph 23 of the order talks of protected rights, and the protected rights to which it refers are those of the London Authorities (Superannuation) Order 1965. These are the employees of the former metropolitan boroughs of London, and the current order seeks to deal with and to change their position. They therefore have a particular interest in having their future pensions safeguarded. Having made the point about the actuarial surplus in the one and the deficiency in the other, let me say that if a new fund is created it may exceed £400 million, and, although it could have a greater spread of investment, if the judgment is bad there will be far more damaging effects than if there are 32 different judgments.
  There are arguments about simplification, whether inside or outside London. I quote a borough treasurer:
  "Naturally I have discussed the possibility of the transfer of the fund with my superannuation staff and they all share my concern. Indeed I have little doubt that some will try to transfer elsewhere within the Council's service prior to the appointed day and in this way the government's declared objective could be defeated. This is probably the reason why NALGO which is much closer to the feelings of individual officers than the TUC shares the LBA's opposition to the transfer.
  Whether or not the majority of the superannuation staff are transferred it is beyond contradiction"—
  this is the point to make about centralisation—
  "that every borough would need to maintain a smaller nucleus of staff reasonably expert in some aspects of superannuation so as to take the daily administrative decisions necessary in the employing authority. The smallness of their number will leave boroughs much more vulnerable than they are under the present arrangements."
  I have my own faint suspicion that the proposal to create a large regional fund is the product of a tidy bureaucratic mind wishing to repeat the provincial pattern in London. I urge the Minister to recognise the depth of feeling and to tell his officials not merely that this will not do but that he cannot sell it to the House of Commons, which is the important thing that needs to be remembered.
  I have known my right hon. Friend for about 24 years. I have known him

  939
  to be a man of flexible mind, not a man who is afraid to change his mind if it is shown to him that what was put to him originally and what he originally accepted is not necessarily right. I was comforted by two sentences from a letter by him on 15th February to the town clerk of Croydon. He said:
  "I have discussed your points with the Secretary of State. While we agree that the matter admits of argument, it seems to us on reflection that the interests of the members of the superannuation scheme would best be served by adhering to the proposal to have a single fund for employees of the London Boroughs and the GLC."
  As I have said, they are particularly concerned because of their protected rights under paragraph 23.
  As there are protected rights and as the Minister has admitted that the matter allows of arguments, I hope that, having heard the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury and myself explaining the situation in London, with illustrations en passant—although strictly in accordance with order, for, Mr. Speaker, you have been good enough not to rule me out of order—the Minister will say that having heard what has been said and being aware of the depth of feeling, he will bear in mind what we have said and the points made outside London by the AMC, which in this context does not deal with London. I hope that he will say that because we have spoken specifically about the transferred employees of the London Authorities (Superannuation) Order 1965, which was Statutory Instrument 621 of 1965, he will tell his officials that when they are working out the 700-page order promised for the autumn they must not tamper with the borough funds in London.
  11.5 p.m.
  Mr Gordon Oakes: The Minister will be aware that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, the local authority organisations and NALGO are all critical of these regulations in one way or another. At first sight they seem to make improvements. Certainly it is an improvement that widows are to receive one-half rather than one-third of benefit. But, for some strange reason, the Government seem to have got themselves into an awful administrative muddle over local government superannuation.
  940
  My hon. Friend the Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown) pointed out that we have been waiting a long time for these regulations. Yet we know from circulars issued by the Department of the Environment to local authorities that they are by no means final. They are merely interim arrangements, and major regulations on local government superannuation are to be brought out in the autumn.
  What can be going on when the Government find themselves in this position? They introduce temporary regulations and announce that further regulations will come later in the year which may be different from these or may incorporate them. Many people are wondering what exactly is to happen to their individual pensions. It may be that they are on the point of retirement and are waiting to see what the regulations are to be. Their anxiety is intensified because of the possible effect of local government reorganisation. They want to know quickly what their future pension position will be. Yet here we are considering regulations which have no degree of finality and which we know are not the end of the story, since other regulations will be coming along in a matter of weeks or months. How can a local government employee make up his mind, especially if he is in the throes of local government reorganisation, when the Government themselves do not seem able to make up their minds about the regulations?
  Both my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg) concentrated on regulation 4. I promise that no reference to London will pass my lips. I am concerned with the passing of the power to maintain a superannuation fund away from the districts and boroughs to the county councils. When we discussed the Local Government Bill in all its protracted stages there was no suggestion that the power to manage a superannuation fund would pass from the existing districts or boroughs.
  As my hon. Friend pointed out, we are dealing with enormous concentrations of officers and populations in places like Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. Yet we have quite small county councils still in existence.

  941
  The future districts are extremely incensed at this further deprivation of power and its concentration at county council level. I cannot understand why the Government have not differentiated between metropolitan districts and non-metropolitan districts. In every other way the Local Government Act differentiates between the two. It accepts the fact that in urban areas, in conurbations, where there are metropolitan districts, those districts should have considerable powers. True, there are metropolitan county councils but most of the powers rest with the metropolitan districts. Yet there is nothing here to distinguish between non-metropolitan districts and metropolitan districts.
  Surely the Government should have made such a distinction in deciding who should manage the superannuation fund. I do not know that it will be cheaper and that there will be a saving of money. There could be a wastage of money. A great deal of know-how has been built up, particularly by the cities and bigger authorities, in the management of superannuation funds.
  Some of these authorities, wisely and prudently and to the benefit of their members, invest funds locally. They know their area well, and they can recognise a good investment. They want to use the money from the pension funds in the district where it is needed. Will the county councils be so solicitous of district needs? Will they invest in this country at all? A great deal of financial power will rest with the county councils in areas such as the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Mersey-side. These funds might be placed in South Africa for all we know. The dispersal which is so important under the present system will disappear.
  Mr. Ronald Brown: There is also the case of the housing authority which uses these funds and pays the interest back to the superannuation fund instead of to some speculative enterprise or to moneylenders.
  Mr. Oakes: My hon. Friend is right. All authorities have used their powers wisely to get the best return on the money.
  There are one or two other matters to which I wish to refer. The first concerns
  942
  regulation 14. This alters the existing scheme whereby the average of the last three years' remuneration is the basis for the pension and concentrates instead on the last year. At first sight this may seem to be an improvement for the local government officer but in certain circumstances it can act against him. There may be some officers who, as a result of reorganisation, find that their final year is not as good as the three previous years. It can also have an adverse effect upon local authority manual workers.
  I cite the example of a bus driver whose eyesight fails. After 20 or 25 years he can no longer drive buses and is given a job in the depot, cleaning for example. That will be a lower-paid job. I would prefer that, instead of concentrating upon the last year, the regulation should say that it can be the final year or the best of the last three. That would be fairer to manual workers and officers who are displaced or demoted under reorganisation.
  Regulation 12 gives a specific definition of a full-time employee. It defines a full-time employee, whether he be a manual worker or an officer, as someone who works 30 hours per week, whereas the previous regulations referred to a substantial period of time. That degree of flexibility having disappeared one must ask: why have the Government chosen 30 hours? Under the Redundancy Payments Act and other legislation a full-time employee is considered as someone who works more than 21 hours per week. Therefore, I ask: why the differentiation between 21 hours and 30 hours?
  In the past there have been stories of part-time employees—particularly the humbler employees of local authorities, such as cleaners—who, having worked for a local authority for 20 to 30 years, found themselves at the end of that period not covered by local government superannuation. We hope that these regulations will give benefit to people who have given service, albeit in a part-time capacity, for a long period rather than react against them by the putting in of this period up to 30 hours per week.
  Reference has been made to the confusion in which local authorities find themselves. I understand that the Department has suggested to local authorities but not in these regulations—that

  943
  there should be a payment of three months' salary to a widow whose husband dies in service and of three months' pension if he dies during his period of benefit. If so, why is that not in the regulations? I understand that the Department has told local authorities that it believes this should be put into effect now. This is government by decree again, because the treasurer concerned has no legal authority to make these payments. Therefore, if the Government intend this to be done it should be included within the regulations.
  There are many things in the regulations which the Opposition greatly appreciate, but we think that they are late, that they are not fully effective, that they are interim, whereas they should be final, and that they have major defects to which we have referred.
  11.17 p.m.
  The Minister for Local Government and Development (Mr. Graham Page): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Widnes (Mr. Oakes) for his welcome of the majority of the regulations. Indeed, they go a long way to improve the superannuation position of local government employees.
  I regret that these are interim regulations. The whole of the regulations, which we foresaw in Section 7 of the Superannuation Act 1972, have proved a herculean task. Discussions go on between the employers and the employees' organisations and new ideas are put forward which mean the redrafting of previous ideas, and so on. It has been a long task to work out all the regulations. Therefore, I asked that we should have interim regulations setting out the important points that had been settled. Hence, these regulations now before the House.
  I regret as much as anyone that we have been unable to produce the full regulations. We have tried to alleviate the position by making announcements that they will date back, and in some cases we have perhaps overstepped the mark, as the hon. Member for Widnes pointed out, in anticipating what will be in the final regulations but could not be drafted in time for these interim regulations.
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  These regulations cover a number of benefits payable under superannuation schemes. They have the important effect of providing for the compulsory admission of whole-time manual workers who have completed 12 months' continuous service with the relevant employing authority. This is a major reform in local government superannuation schemes. Finally, they introduce various miscellaneous amendments, many of which will be of great advantage.
  The main objection to the order during the debate has been against article 4, in which provision is made for the counties, under the new local government set-up as constituted by the Local Government Act 1972, to have control of the superannuation funds. The hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury (Mr. Ronald Brown) said that he was totally opposed to the order, and that everybody was opposed to it. I am at a loss to understand how the hon. Gentleman can possibly say that in the face of the support for the order from the County Councils Association, the Urban District Councils Association and the TUC. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead (Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg) said that NALGO opposed the order, but my Department received a telephone call from Mr. Hayley, the General Secretary of NALGO, saying that he did not support the opposition to the order tonight and that a meeting had recently been held which confirmed that NALGO did not support such opposition.
  Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: My right hon. Friend said that Mr. Hayley was the General Secretary. Mr. Anderson is the General Secretary, and Mr. Hayley is a fairly junior official.
  Mr. Page: Mr. Hayley is the legal officer who has written to the Department on this subject. My hon. Friend is right in saying that Mr. Anderson is the General Secretary. What NALGO is worried about are the conditions of staff, but I think that in correspondence we have succeeded in satisfying the association on that subject. This is dealt with within the Local Government Act 1972 itself. On the staff side the TUC and NALGO do not oppose our scheme for putting these funds in the hands of the counties, so it is wrong for both the hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury and

  945
  my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead to say that everybody is opposed to this scheme.
  The hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury said that I had some idea that bigger authorities can do jobs better. I do not say that they can all do all jobs better. In fact, there are many jobs which one would not hand over to very large authorities, but where there are substantial sums of money involved and difficult problems to handle there are great advantages in having the schemes, as far as possible, within the hands of larger and fewer authorities.
  There has been a considerable number of amalgamations and mergers of superannuation funds. Until local government reform there will be about 1,200 local authorities, districts and counties. Since 1937 there have been about 500 separate funds, which have over the years been reduced to just over 400 now. Already there has been that tendency to amalgamate the funds, and I believe that great advantage can be obtained from the further amalgamations within the new counties.
  I think that anyone who first hears of local government superannuation schemes in the context of occupational pension schemes must be surprised that there are as many as 410 schemes in existence. There is one scheme for teachers, one for National Health Service employees, and one for the Civil Service, but in local government there are 410 schemes. That has come about because they have grown up over the years. Not until 1937 were there any compulsory rules about local government superannuation, and since then there have been about a dozen statutes endeavouring to improve on that scheme. It was because the superannuation rules were so inflexible and could be altered only by statute that, under the Superannuation Act 1972, we provided that in future they would be based upon delegated legislation; that is to say, their rules can be set down by orders which will come before the House for approval.
  Although the funds of the districts will in future become the fund of the counties, that will be for the purpose of financial management. The individuals will still be the employees of their employing authorities. To that extent the employing authorities will exercise the important dis-
  946
  cretions over the entitlement of the individual employees. For example, it will be the employing authority which will decide whether there should be added years for efficiency, and whether a person should retire through ill-health and receive his pension earlier. It will be for the employing authority to decide about consent to purchase added years to include those in indirect service or even to add years in order to get a key man into its employment. All those things, touching the individual, will still be in the discretion of the employing authority, which will, in many cases, be the district.
  It is in the management of a large fund that we see the advantage of the counties taking over. It is true that some of the counties are very small, but it is convenient that it should be on a county basis, and in many cases it will be a larger administration which can command the expertise of staff which will be so necessary in this future scheme.
  The hon. Member for Shoreditch and Finsbury was right to say that it will be a bigger scheme. It is far more complex as it is now being worked out by the employer and employee associations. I promise the House that we will not include in the one major order the management side of the scheme. We will have a separate order, under which can be debated the question which has been debated tonight—whether control of funds shall be for the counties or the districts. Within that order we shall be able to debate Greater London and the London boroughs.
  I did not agree with the hon. Member for Widnes when he praised the use of the superannuation funds for the purposes of an authority. The tendency over the last few years, certainly among the bigger authorities, has been to refrain from doing so. I would see some value in a restriction being placed on that use, so that only a small proportion of the funds could be used in that way. This may set at rest the minds of the district authorities, which feel that they will lose control over investment for the benefit of some larger authority to invest in that larger authority's undertakings. I would like to make some restriction on that.
  The interests of members of superannuation schemes would best be served by our proposals to have county funds alone

  947
  after 1st April 1974. In that way the employing authorities which are not county councils will still be able to exercise their powers over the individuals' rights, the funds will be better administered and the expertise of staff will be better applied.
  It being half-past Eleven o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  ADJOURNMENT
  Motion made, and Question proposed. That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Goodhew.]

  M3, WINCHESTER
  11.30 p.m
  Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: There is a lot of protest in Winchester about the route to be followed by the new M3 close to the city. A very active M3 Joint Action Group has been campaigning vigorously, under its able chairman, a Mr. David Pare. A protest meeting was held at Winchester College on 13th March, addressed by, among others, some powerful and influential Wykehamists. But I speak tonight not for these people, who do not live in Winchester, but for my constituents, many of whom are very worried about the scheme.
  The action group has been very active and has collected more than 19,000 signatures to a petition, 11,227 being from people who live in Winchester. Also, it has collected about 8,000 signatures from people who live away from Winchester, as well as 1,326, I believe, from young people under the age of 18.
  The petition which all these people have signed is as follows:
  "We respectfully petition the City Council to heed the strength of the case against the M3 and by vote in Council to rescind their previous support for the motorway between Popham and Compton."
  The petition has now been handed in to the city council.
  The group has also published various pamphlets, and I have sent copies of all of them to the Minister: I drove up to London by car today, instead of coming by train as I usually do, so that I could
  948
  bring about ½ cwt. of mail consisting of copies of its latest pamphlet for every Member of Parliament.
  These people have worked very hard, and I can only say "Thank heaven we live in a country where such democratic activity is permissible".
  In addition, the Conservative Association at its recent annual general meeting passed an emergency resolution,
  "That this Association supports the Government policy, as stated in Circular 56/71, which advocates the protection of historic cities, and strongly urges that, with this in mind, the Secretary of State for the Environment should reconsider his decision concerning the published route of the M3 motorway".
  That resolution was moved by Viscountess Enfield, and seconded by Mr. John Darling, a city councillor.
  Moreover, a considerable number of constituents have written to me, most of them, though not all, objecting to the proposed route.
  It is a curious fact that since the public inquiry two years ago and until the action group began its activities little attention was paid to the M3, at least in public. But the objections now voiced have worried me, and this is why I have kept the Minister fully informed, and why I asked specially for this debate in the House.
  So I think it fair to say that, all in all, the protest has been very fully ventilated.
  I should emphasise that this problem is in no sense a party matter. Opinion has been divided right across party lines, and in the recent local elections it was not an issue between the parties as such. One recalls that the basic planning for the proposed route was started in the Department under the Labour Government and continued by the present Conservative Government.
  Faced with all this protest, it would have been all too easy for me to put myself forward as a kind of knight in shining armour and join in the campaign to protect Winchester from a supposedly dreadful fate. But I believe it would not have been responsible to do so. For one thing, it seems to me that not all those who have objected or who have signed the petition have had an opportunity to receive an explanation of all the complicated questions involved and the various pros and cons of the scheme.

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  When one speaks to them, one finds that many people still do not really know where the motorway is to go, and do not realise that it will be effectively no nearer the city than the existing bypass. Unfortunately, the diagrams put out by the action group are not to scale, and some of them are rather misleading.
  Undoubtedly, therefore, there are many misapprehensions among my constituents. I believe it would be helpful—I hope this is a constructive suggestion—for the Department to publish a really large map, accurately to scale, showing exactly where the motorway will go and perhaps to take a full page in the local paper, the Hampshire Chronicle, for this purpose so that it can be clearly understood by everybody.
  My own viewpoint is this. First and foremost the present bypass is utterly inadequate and dangerous, as everybody who lives in or near Winchester will agree. The accident figures are appalling. Therefore, a new motorway somewhere to relieve the traffic is urgently needed. On some days in the summer, particularly on Saturdays, chaos is caused in the centre of Winchester by traffic diverting off the bypass owing to its hopelessly inadequate traffic capacity.
  The vital point, therefore, is whether there is any practicable and preferable alternative to the route now proposed. If there is to be a motorway—I believe that national as well as local interests make this imperative—it must go somewhere. Wherever it goes, some of my constituents will be affected and will understandably protest. If a different route were chosen, a different group would protest. I must be on the side of all my constituents. I can only be an "honest broker" between my constituents and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State who has the difficult job of making decisions on so many questions of this nature.
  The objections which have been put forward have been grouped mostly against three things: against noise, against visual intrusion and against cutting off the city from the countryside. From my personal observations—I have checked these recently—I believe that noise will not affect the cathedral, the close or the central area.
  As regards visual effect, the new road bridge which has just been completed at Bar End is higher, I believe, than any
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  works on the new motorway would be. Nobody has complained about the appearance of that new bridge. In fact, everybody seems delighted with it. It is a great step forward in safety.
  As regards cutting off the city from the countryside, I believe that the citizens would be no more cut off by the motorway than they have been ever since 1936 by the existing bypass. It could be argued that any alternative line, either through the area of natural beauty to the east or through beauty spots such as Farley Mount to the west, would be far worse than merely, in effect, widening the existing bypass.
  I have not, therefore, been able to understand fully the objections which have been put forward, although I do not question that they are very strongly felt and that they are put forward in all sincerity. It hardly needs saying that I would be against the proposed route tooth and nail if I believed that it would "ruin the city". Nobody can have the honour and the privilege of representing such a beautiful, peaceful and historic city without having enormous pride and affection for it.
  Also, I cannot agree with any criticism, explicit or implicit, of the city council about this matter. We in Winchester are fortunate in having a very able and dedicated city council and very efficient and conscientious officials, and it is absurd to suggest that they have "sold their heritage". I imagine, on the contrary, that the city council has gone into all the facts very closely indeed and is certainly in a better position to understand the pros and cons than is somebody who has merely signed a piece of paper in the street.
  Finally, I should like tonight to put six specific questions to my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary. First, can he confirm that his Department has genuinely considered possible alternative routes?
  Secondly, can my hon. Friend confirm that, taking into account all the factors —not only cost factors, but environmental questions in their widest sense, and agricultural questions—the proposed route is the least objectionable? Can he confirm that the Minister himself has personally inspected on the ground the details of the route?
  Thirdly, can my hon. Friend confirm that no need is foreseen now or in the future for a new motorway to the west of

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  Winchester, despite the importance of linking Southampton docks to the Midlands? This is a crucial question. Many of my constituents believe that there will be a need at some time in the future for a motorway to link Southampton docks, which are growing so much in importance with the huge container terminal, to the Midlands?
  Fourthly, can my hon. Friend confirm that the Department has considered what I call the Calcutt route, put forward by a Mr. David Calcutt, Q.C., for the M3 Joint Action Group at its meeting on 13th March? I have sent the Minister a rather small map of this suggested route.
  Fifthly, what would be the shortest delay involved in starting to plan a new route if any preferable alternative could be found? This also has a big bearing on the urgency of providing better approaches to the city and better roads around it.
  Lastly, can my hon. Friend confirm to the House the latest opinions of the three local authorities in the area?
  I believe it would do much to remove the anxieties of many of my constituents if the Minister would be kind enough to answer these six specific questions this evening.
  11.41 p.m.
  The Under-Secretary of Slate for the Environment (Mr. Keith Speed): I am glad that my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Winchester (Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles) has raised this matter. I confirm that he has most ably and forcibly and on many occasions, both to myself and to my right hon. Friend, represented the views of his constituents in this matter.
  A great deal of controversy, much of it misguided, has arisen since the decision of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State on the route of the M3 extension between Popham and Hockley was announced in February this year. This debate provides me with an opportunity to correct some of the misconceptions and misapprehensions on which this adverse comment has been based.
  First let me say that the motorway proposals in the vicinity of Winchester are in no way incompatible with the Secretary of State's declared policy to give full
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  weight to the preservation of historic towns when road improvements and new routes are being considered. An important feature of this policy is the relief of historic towns from traffic pressures, even if this means incurring increased costs on road construction.
  When the initial planning of the M3 route was being considered, the historic status of Winchester was one of the factors taken into account in deciding which route would best safeguard the city and its environment. The motion moved at the association's annual general meeting deals with that point.
  The route has been criticised by many people because of its proximity to the city. Much has been said about its effect on the cathedral, the college and other historic buildings. Do critics of the scheme really believe that the Government are not as concerned as they are to preserve Winchester's history? Of course we are. It is only because we are convinced that the character and amenities of Winchester will not suffer that we are proceeding with this scheme.
  The motorway will be approximately three quarters of a mile from the cathedral at its nearest point. It will not be seen from the cathedral or its precincts. The ambient noise level around the cathedral will be no greater than exists at present. It is most unlikely that the noise of traffic on the existing bypass or the proposed motorway will be distinguishable above the general noise level in the centre of Winchester.
  So far as the college is concerned, the motorway at its nearest point will be half a mile away, and the predicted noise level—I have been into this in very great detail—will be no greater than at present.
  Of course there are areas of the city where the motorway will be seen and heard to some extent, but measures which we have in mind and which have been discussed with the city council should do much to ameliorate these conditions. I will return to these measures in a moment because they are very important.
  We consider—so do the responsible local authorities—that the route chosen is the most effective way of diverting the traffic from the existing bypass. It has the added advantage of being fully compatible with Winchester City's Central Traffic Area Plan, which will channel

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  traffic towards the existing bypass via two improved routes at Easton Lane and Bar End, where it is proposed that interchanges should be provided with the motorway. This limitation of access to Winchester from the motorway will provide useful relief to a number of roads in the city.
  But traffic has to go somewhere, and the requirements of long-distance traffic, including the heavy lorries and container traffic to the ports which are so important to our trade and prosperity, must be provided for. It is an undisputed fact that something has to be done urgently to improve the ever-worsening conditions on the A33 and the sub-standard Winchester bypass. Accidents involving personal injury on the A33 between Popham and Kings-worthy nearly doubled over the five-year period between 1968 and 1972 from 18 to 34—a total of 131 during the period. On the Winchester bypass they increased by one and a half from 32 to 49 over the same period, when there was a total of 223 such accidents in that five year period on the bypass. Already this year four fatalities have occurred. There were two very serious injuries on 23rd April, and as traffic increases so will the number of accidents unless something is done. It is estimated—these are realistic estimates— that opening the motorway could reduce injury accidents by about 40 per cent. This represents about 50 personal injury accidents a year in the early years after opening.
  The county council, which is firmly behind the Department in this project, is constantly urging us to get the motorway built quickly. I have recently had letters from the county council to this effect. Its concern is that there should be no more delay. This is our concern, too. Nevertheless we should not be pressing on with the present scheme if we were not convinced that it is the right one. Certainly no one has put forward a better route. I wish those who are now so vociferous in their criticism had come forward at the time of the public inquiry with some really constructive suggestions.
  Many people are now suggesting that the route should be further from the city —usually somewhere to the west. They do not say exactly where it should be, although the Calcutt route has been put forward. They do not give a specific route, for the very good reason that they
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  are aware that any route they suggested would provoke the strongest possible objection.
  We are convinced that Winchester's interests would not be served by putting a new traffic route through either the western suburbs close to Winchester or through the unspoiled countryside further to the west. The charm and character of Winchester lies not only in its central area, important though that is, but in its surrounding countryside. Anyone who knows, as I know, the attractive villages and delightful countryside to the west of Winchester will realise the immense opposition there would be to a motorway route in that area. Similarly, a route to the east. which would pass through an area designated as an area of outstanding natural beauty, is really quite unacceptable. But in any event—this is most important—none of these alternatives would provide adequate long-term relief to the Winchester by-pass.
  On the other hand, the Department's route, by largely confining the traffic to the existing corridor, along the main desire line of the traffic, leaves the surrounding countryside relatively untouched and makes little new intrusion. It keeps all the traffic to one side of the city and avoids surrounding it with main traffic routes.
  Here let me dispel another misapprehension. Word seems to have got around recently, not least in the national Press, that the Government intend to build a motorway between Southampton and the Midlands within the next 15 years. This is not the case. There is no proposal to build such a motorway. It is true that the A34 features in the Government's trunk road programme as a route to be comprehensively improved by the early 1980s, and certain improvements are already under way or planned, such as Abingdon bypass, but, on present evidence and predicted future traffic flows, the need for a motorway will not arise within the foreseeable future. I give that categorical assurance.
  Mr. Douglas Jay: Suppose there were to be such a motorway from Southampton to Birmingham. Would the hon. Gentleman's view be that it ought to be to the west of Winchester or to the east?
  Mr. Speed: I have said that there is no likelihood of a motorway within the foreseeable future. Therefore, the question does not arise.
  Mr. Jay: It does.
  Mr. Speed: I hope what I have said so far will convince my hon. and gallant Friend and his constituents that we looked very carefully at all possible alternatives before deciding the published route for this motorway. The inspector at the public inquiry considered all the objections that were put before him and all the alternative proposals that were presented to him at that time. He suggested certain modifications, which we considered, and most of these have been incorporated in the made scheme. The final decision was not a simple one, nor do we claim that the solution we have found is perfect, but it is the best available. Both I and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Transport Industries went to see for ourselves the published route and spent a considerable amount of time tramping over it. The Winchester City Council, after careful consideration—I share the view of the city council put forward by my hon. and gallant Friend—came to the same conclusion and has taken the sensible view that it can best serve the city's interests by working closely with the Department in planning adequate safeguards to protect the city from noise and visual intrusion.
  My hon. and gallant Friend asked about possible delay. If there were to be a delay and we had to revert to a completely new route, the completion of the new route would take another four or five years longer at the minimum, and I believe that in that time conditions not only on the bypass but in the city would become intolerable. As for the accident record and the number of additional people killed and injured by that delay, I shudder to think how many there would be, but it would be a substantial number.
  Now let me explain the safeguards about which the city council is concerned. The House will know that the proposals for the motorway were published well before the Urban Motorways Committee reported and before the subsequent White Paper "Development and Compensation—Putting People First" was published; nevertheless the Committee's proposals were very largely antici-
  956
  pated when the Department's proposals were formulated, and now that the route has been fixed the Department's current policies as set out in the White Paper will, of course, apply.
  For example, an area of particular concern is where the motorway will encroach on the Water Meadows. It has been stated that the motorway will traverse to the centre of the Water Meadows opposite St. Cross. This is patently untrue. The motorway will, in fact, encroach—to the top of the landscaped bank—about 170 feet into the Water Meadows, which at this point are about 1,400 feet wide, and the total area of Water Meadows required for the motorway is about 9 per cent. of the whole Water Meadow area adjacent to Winchester.
  We propose to construct an earth bank 15 feet high alongside the motorway between the A333 and a point north of Garnier Road. It would be grassed, planted and properly landscaped. The motorway will be 20 feet lower than the existing bypass here, and the existing tree screen between the motorway and the bypass will be retained as far as possible and added to where necessary. Consequently the motorway will not be seen from St. Cross Meadows, and the noise level will be approximately the same as at present. The earth bank will be constructed as early as practicable in the contract period so as to reduce the inconvenience and disturbance to people living in the vicinity to a minimum during the construction of the motorway.
  Another point to which we are paying particular attention is the Winnall Flats, which are at present located less than 200 feet from the existing bypass. The motorway will be double that distance away, and the bypass will be closed along this length. Immediately opposite the flats we propose to erect a 15 feet high earth bank so that the noise level will be less than at present. I know from my own observations that it is now pretty noisy.
  Where the motorway cuts across the corner of St. George's Playing Fields it has been designed to minimise the visual and aural effects on the adjacent community. The carriageway furthest from the fields will be dropped by approximately 6 ft., and each carriageway will

  957
  be individually screened by an earth bank.
  St. Catherine's Hill—I climbed to the top of it—is another local amenity about which a great deal has been said—that the motorway will cut it off from the college and the town and so on. This is just not true. Access to the hill will not be affected. Indeed, it will be a good deal safer than it is now, because the present crossings of the main traffic stream at road level will be eliminated and replaced by bridges or underpasses across the motorway. [Interruption.] There is an underpass now, which I went under, but there will be additional underpasses and bridges across the motorway.
  I know that at one time my hon. and gallant Friend suggested that the motorway should be taken round the back of St. Catherine's Hill. I do not know whether he is still of that opinion, but I can tell him that it is a proposal that has received little public support, and at the public inquiry the college authorities were very much opposed to it. It has even been suggested that the motorway should be taken under St. Catherine's Hill in a tunnel, but this would cost many millions of pounds, and benefit only a very limited length of the route. That is why we have not pursued the idea.
  A problem that has been mentioned is that traffic noise will reverberate off St. Catherine's Hill across the Water Meadows and towards the city. There is no foundation for this statement. We see no reason to believe, after a great deal of thought, research and effort by highly qualified people, that noise levels in the Water Meadows will be increased. Indeed, because of the slope and convex shape of the hill in relation to the motorway there will be a tendency for the noise to be dispersed.
  My hon. and gallant Friend mentioned the Bar End Bridge. The motorway interchange will be no higher than the existing bridge. This is the highest part of the whole route.
  Mention has been made of the size and unsightliness of the traffic signs that will be required on the motorway. It is true that for essential safety reasons motorway signs have to be conspicuous to users of the motorway—they would not fulfil their purpose if they were not— but I do not think they are unsightly
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  seen from a distance. In any case, even without a motorway but with an improved bypass some large signs would be necessary.
  In conclusion, it might be helpful if I summarised the main objectives of our proposal. They are: first, to complete the strategic route between London and Southampton, including the connection with A34 for traffic from the Midlands, in accordance with the Secretary of State's trunk road plan annuonced in June 1971; secondly, to provide a route which will give adequate long-term relief to the existing heavily overloaded trunk road A33, in particular the Winchester by pass, on which conditions are dangerous and will become increasingly dangerous as the traffic volume inevitably increases; thirdly, to provide a route which, with suitable protective landscaping, which we shall introduce at considerable cost, will cause the least additional damage to the overall environment of the area, including Winchester city and its attractive rural surroundings; and fourthly, to provide a route which will carry efficiently and safely the maximum amount of through traffic, thereby giving maximum relief to the existing road ssytem in the area. I genuinely believe that there will be considerable relief to the already overloaded roads within the city of Winchester.
  My hon. and gallant Friend made an interesting and constructive suggestion about a map, so that his constituents who are concerned and are not too clear about the scheme could have more details. I cannot give him a firm answer tonight, but I shall consider his suggestion most sympathetically.
  We believe, after most careful study— two Ministers have been over the route, and we have carefully considered the inspector's report and have had the benefit of a great deal of technical expertise-that only one route satisfies all the objectives and will in the long term be helpful to the people my hon. and gallant Friend represents. That is the one adopted, which adheres as far as possible to the existing corridor.
  I hope that my hon. and gallant Friend's constituents and all those who are properly concerned will at least be a little easier after they have read what I and my hon. and gallant Friend has said tonight, and will understand the reasons why we are convinced that we are right

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  in making this admittedly very difficult decision.
  Mr. Jay: The Minister's speech shows such an extraordinary disregard for both the character and geography of the area that it will greately strengthen the opposi-
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  tion among those who really know Winchester to this altogether indefensible proposals.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at one minute to Twelve o'clock.