ACQUISITION OF SHARES

HC Deb 16 June 1975 vol 893 cc1099-153

Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

10.17 p.m.

Mr. Michael Heseltine (Henley)

I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Industry in a personal capacity to his new place on the Front Bench. It is no fault of his that he should be expected, after just a weekend in the Department, to steer this Bill through Committee. But the Committee may feel it strange, to say the least, that the Secretary of State for Industry is not here himself. The Government's commitment, at £2.8 billion, is the largest single commitment ever made to one British company. As he has had three days longer in the Department than the Under-Secretary, it is strange that the Secretary of State is not here at least to listen to the arguments.

But my surprise is tempered, because over the weekend I saw the right hon. Gentleman described as a consummate politician who never entered a room by an open door unless he could see another open door by which he could leave. Therefore, I well understand his reluctance to be at the Dispatch Box tonight.

The Bill and the strategy it represents form an integral part of the Government's policy towards British Leyland. It is, in reality, an open-ended and undisciplined commitment of taxpayers' resources to a company that, for whatever reasons, has now no other alternative source of finance open to it.

Indeed, for the past year, the company was encouraged to behave in a way that was bound to lead—what was intended to lead—to the very solution that the Committee is being asked to consider tonight. Mr. John Barber, in his evidence to the Select Committee on Expenditure on the motor industry, explained the attitude which induced the then Secretary of State in his negotiations with the company. Mr. Barber said: We had been working on the assumption, from the middle of last year onwards in Lord Stokes' discussions with the Minister, that we would not be allowed to go to the wall In other words, we had not started retrenching in the way in which, if we had been a completely independent company, we would have had to do in order to stay in business. There is only one conclusion from those words—that the then Secretary of State had quite consciously led British Leyland to behave in a way which might have seemed attractive to him at that time but could not conceivably have been considered as being in the best interests of the company, or of its work people, or, in the last resort, of the taxpayers, who are now called upon to repair the damage done in that period of drift and vacillation.

The position we consider in examining Clause 1 of the Bill is that no private investor could prudently invest new money in the company today. There are four reasons for that. First, the return by way of dividends will be nominal for years to come; secondly, the generation of adequate profits is expected so far in the future as to make the forecasts upon which those profits are based speculative and, at the most, charitable; thirdly, the assumptions about the company's ability to improve its performance and increase its market penetration are at odds with its past record of achievement; finally, there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that any person in the company, either employee, manager or director, feels one bit of commitment to the strategy which the Government have devised on behalf of the company.

Indeed, the reverse is the case. The mere fact that the Government have devised and accepted the strategy has already provided the alibi which will be used in future to explain that deviations from that strategy were the failure of judgment by the Government and not failure of judgment by employees or managers. So it is important to ask how it is that the Government came to accept the strategy upon which the Bill is based.

Once again, we have the evidence of Mr. John Barber to the Expenditure Committee. He said: We were asked in British Leyland to develop a concept study over 10 years on certain assumptions. The two main ones were the rate of inflation and a fairly free availability of cash. I hope that the Committee will not lose sight of the fact that the only two inputs that the Governments felt competent to make into the study of the motor industry at the time were the free availability of cash and predictions about the future rate of inflation. That was the basis upon which British Leyland, on behalf of the Ryder team, undertook the investigation about the future markets available to it.

The evidence is clear that British Leyland, putting forward the figures that it put forward, did not itself believe that those figures represented a realistic basis upon which investment judgments could be taken. The moment it had put forward those figures, it set about a realistic assessment of the conclusions and, indeed, costed alternative proposals upon which the company itself might well have proceeded if it had been in a position so to do.

But the important question is whether either the Ryder team or the sponsoring Minister responsible for the report ever asked British Leyland what its opinion was of the strategy which emerged from its figures. The Committee will want to understand why, first of all, the Ryder team never asked British Leyland whether the figures which were produced on behalf of the Ryder team in order to chart the way forward were realistic figures upon which such investment proposals should be made.

Even worse than that, when the Ryder Report was published the sponsoring Minister did not ask the Ryder team whether there was an alternative range of strategies, some lower, on a various scale lower, some involving a different organisation of the company, and some involving different priorities for development within the company. None of those questions was ever asked by the Secretary of State for Industry at the time.

The reality is that the conclusions were produced and accepted without question by the Government. That is a totally inadequate way in which to expect management and employees to respond to the challenge facing British industry. It is a totally reckless way to dispose of taxpayers' money on any scale, let alone the largest scale ever undertaken in this context by any British Government.

I want briefly to spell out the sort of reasons why acceptance of this strategy is misconceived. First, the Government as a whole do not believe the figures upon which the forecasts themselves are based. If they do, why have they commissioned CPRS to undertake a long-term marketing forecast of world demand for motor cars and trucks? In fact they know perfectly well that the figures are not reliable, and it has therefore been necessary to set up a Government inquiry of the sort now going forward.

If anyone considering the basis of the figures upon which the calculations are made asks whether it is not the collective wisdom of the motor industry, which to some extent it is, I would merely point out that it is the same collective wisdom that has led to a situation in which there is a world capacity to produce 20 million vehicles when the realistic demand is for only 12 million.

Secondly, the most important new business upon which the new development of British Leyland is based is an assumed doubling of car sales to Western Europe by 1985. As British Leyland exports are now lower by volume and by percentage of output than when the group was formed in 1968, it is difficult to encourage investment on that sort of prospectus.

Thirdly, the involvement of this company permanently with the public sector will raise a number of questions for the company that are serious and damaging for its future. First, no attempt has been made by the Ryder team, which perhaps should not have responsibility for it, or by the Government, who certainly are responsible, to show that the future returns to be derived merit the equivalent of the entire investment for British manufacturing industry for no less than six months. That is to say, the commitment to British Leyland amounts to the entire investment programme for the entire range of British manufacturing industry for six months.

Secondly, it has not been shown what profitable opportunities exist for the funds now being committed, funds that will be denied others because the resources will be committed to British Leyland. Perhaps even the most ardent enthusiast on the Labour benches for the White Paper "The Regeneration of British Industry" would like to contemplate for a moment just how much regeneration the National Enterprise Board will produce in circumstances in which it has £750 million and British Leyland has now cleaned up £2.8 billion.

The submergence of the British Leyland investment programme in public sector investment can have no alternative but the inevitable stop-and-go techniques that have affected every investment programme, particularly recently in the steel industry, as it comes under ministerial political or Treasury accounting.

Perhaps the single most serious objection to the whole strategy is one I have referred to earlier, namely that it is not the strategy of the unions, the employees or the directors. It is solely the strategy of the Government. Every failure, every deviation, will be blamed on the defective judgment of the Ryder strategy because no one in British Leyland has any incentive to do otherwise.

10.30 p.m.

Mr. Eric S. Heffer (Liverpool, Walton)

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the fact that in Western Germany the Volkswagen company is now contemplating laying off 25,000 workers? That company's strategy is to solve its problems with unemployment. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that this Government should contemplate such action rather than seek to rescue the jobs of the workers involved? Is he suggesting that the Government ought not to invest in industry but simply allow those workers to be thrown on the streets without any action being taken on the part of the Government? If that is what he is suggesting, I am certain that the car workers and workers throughout industry will note what he is putting forward on behalf of the Conservative Party.

Mr. Heseltine

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point and I will answer his question in clear and coherent terms which he will understand. It is that question which lies at the heart of the inability of this country to agree about industrial policy. It is the fear of unemployment, often exploited for political ends, that makes it difficult for management and unions to be reconciled with the gut problem facing us.

The hon. Member knows, in asking the question, that what the German Government did with the Volkswagen company was to provide the most generous redundancy payments at a level which vastly exceeds those available here. They produced retraining schemes relevant to redeploying labour where it can be permanently and profitably employed. They gave incentives for alternative sources of employment to be provided by other private sector companies so as to give more secure jobs for those employees. They said to the German worker. "Let us understand that this company cannot any longer guarantee your security and therefore this Government will help you."

Is that not more realistic than what the Government have done, which is to produce a report in which they say that there will be economies from the labour redundancy programme worth £400 million and then send Ministers round the country trying to pretend that not a single man will lose his job in any circumstances?

Mr. Heffer

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the trade union involved in West Germany opposed the Government strategy, as did all the supervisory workers? The German workers were bitterly opposed to the proposal. Is it not clear why this was so? There are now over 1 million unemployed in Western Germany. Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that this is a strategy we should adopt?

Mr. Heseltine

I have listened at over 40 Sittings of the Industry Bill to the hon. Member speaking on behalf of the British worker. It is a refreshing change, in this post-referendum phase, to find him speaking on behalf of the German worker. I am sure that the German worker will feel all the better for his support. The reality is that the German trade union movement is prepared to contribute a degree of constructive support to the capitalist philosophies of Western Germany of a sort which has led to the prosperity of the German worker on a scale with which we cannot begin to compete.

This House will meet over the year or so ahead to hear of unemployment reaching the 1½ million mark at a time when the German unemployment figures will be decreasing and at a time when the real living standards of the German people will be continuing to outstrip the standards of workers in this country. Perhaps for the best of reasons the hon. Member is not prepared to allow the truth to emerge. The truth is that unless we cure the gut issue of overmanning, wherever the fault may lie, there is no way in which we can equal the real standard of living anywhere in the western world, let alone Germany.

Mr. Hal Miller (Bromsgrove and Redditch)

Does my hon. Friend accept that the Ryder Report is based on a significant manning reduction in British Leyland and that one of the objections to continued injections of public funds is that there has been no commitment by the management, unions or employees to the size of that reduction, and until that bench mark is established there must be great caution about further injections of public money into this outfit? I am one of those who voted for the additional £50 million until that bench mark was established.

Mr. Heseltine

I am aware that my hon. Friend voted in that way. In all the circumstances, I am grateful that he was the only one who did.

My hon. Friend is right in saying that there is no commitment, not just from the trade union movement—because that would be a start, although perhaps the least likely start—but from the employees, the management or the directors of the company. Unless one understands that the essence of running any company depends on the people in it, and unless one gets their wholehearted support for the policies of the company, there is no way in which one will make a success of that company.

When the Government lay down the precise management formula and management command chain, when Sir Don Ryder, on the morning of the report, sacks the chief executive of the company without asking the board of directors or the unions, and without, as far as I can see, owning a share in the company, when it is said that £400 mil- lion worth of economic benefit will come from reductions in labour and increased productivity and one does not spell out to the people concerned what that means, one is deceiving the employees of the company. Because the Government will reap the wrath of the people who believe that they have been given a licence to go on behaving as they have behaved without being called to check, the Government have badly mishandled the way in which the report was conceived, prepared and presented to the people of British Leyland and this House.

There is another example along the lines of the £400 million, and it is another curious, almost unbelievable, omission from the report. How can the Committee make a serious judgment about a situation in which Chrysler has 13 plants and Ford has 21 plants in this country producing between three and four models and British Leyland has 55 plants producing 18 models and yet the rationalisation of those 55 plants, which everybody knows is necessary, does not merit a single sentence in the report? What interpretation are the employees of British Leyland to put on that omission other than that the business will go on as before? If it is to go on as before, there is no prospect of selling the cars on the scale and at the price that the strategy says they must be sold to bring the company back to profitability and respectability.

The reality is that the report has had the effect of glossing over the challenge which faces not just British Leyland but the entire range of manufacturing industry. The devastating charts which have been produced time and again showing that we are virtually bottom of every manufacturing league in output per man can no longer be avoided if we are to do what has to be done in matching the competition which is increasingly thrust on us from the outside world.

It is comprehensible to argue for this strategy only if it is hoped that some miracle will change the approach of the company and its personnel. They have not been asked to make a commitment. there has been no explanation what the commitment is and that is why the commitment cannot be expected and will nor be forthcoming.

There remains the central, hard-line British problem. We have to improve our productivity. This is a classic case in which the Government could have moved forward, decisively and generously, to do so. They have missed an opportunity and have failed to respond to the need of that moment.

We shall not solve this critical problem if the Government pray for it or the taxpayers pay for it. But that is all that the Clause offers, and I ask the Committee to reject it.

Mr. Maurice Edelman (Coventry, North-West)

The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) has made a typically negative and destructive speech. From his apologia for the past management of British Leyland, one would have thought that all the ills from which the company now suffers had been created since the dismissal of Mr. John Barber. But, as is clearly spelled out in the Ryder Report, the problems of British Leyland were due to an accumulation of causes for which the past management of must take responsibility—the facts that there were too many models, that the plants were irrationally distributed, that there was over-manning not of workers but of management. All these things were well-known and have been confirmed by the Ryder Report.

When shareholders write to me complaining about the fact that workers have gone on strike and saying, wrongly, that workers have been responsible for the low output at British Leyland—the facts speak against them, because the level of strikes at British Leyland has been relatively low—I feel that they should be directed towards the directors and the management of the past who had full responsibility for the conduct of affairs and at whose door the near-bankruptcy of the company must be laid.

The company came to this sorry condition because it failed to invest adequately and to modernise and re-equip. The hon. Member for Henley talks of increasing productivity. He must know that the main reason for the debacle was that there was a lack of new equipment, which made it one of the most backward complexes of motor firms in the whole Western world.

Mr. Percy Grieve (Solihull)

Does not the hon. Gentleman appreciate that sui- cidal strike after suicidal strike in the Ley-lands factories, particularly Cowley and Longbridge—

Mr. Ray Carter (Birmingham, Northfield)

Rubbish.

Mr. Grieve

—have resulted in a lack of confidence which itself has produced a vicious circle of lack of investment. That is the key to the problem.

Mr. Edelman

I fear that the hon. and learned Gentleman has the facts wrong. What he calls "suicidal strike after suicidal strike" was simply strike after strike for which there were legitimate occasions. If he suggests that a strike is itself illegitimate, he is on a different point, but as long as workers who have a grievance have the right to strike, they are entitled to exercise it. That is what happened at British Leyland. The fault for these strikes, as my hon. Friends know who represent British Leyland constituencies, must be laid at the door of past management.

I want to talk more constructively. There is a lot which needs to be said about the Ryder Report. We are dealing with the livelihood of 170,000 men and their families and with the injection of £1 million a day for about eight years of public money into British Leyland and other issues of public accountability. These matters, despite the late hour, should not be decided on the nod, but require debate.

10.45 p.m.

I regret the conclusion of the Ryder report that there should be a hybridisation of the company. I should have preferred nationalisation of the company, which would have created the basis of public accountability so that the firm could become thereafter more directly answerable to the House than in the indirect ways which are proposed in the Ryder report. Nationalisation would have provided a simple and direct way of doing that. There would not have been the conflict of interests which is bound to emerge later on.

At a later stage it is inevitable that the regular shareholders in the company will have different criteria for judging the success of the company, whereas those who are concerned with public investment in the company will ask how much re-equipment and modernisation has taken place. The shareholders will want to see the payment of dividends as rapidly as possible so that they may receive a return on their shareholdings. There will be a conflict of interests inside the company, which is likely to lead to danger.

The major shortcoming of the Ryder report, on which the hon. Gentleman touched briefly, is the fact that there is no general strategy ahead. We can see only a bottomless well into which this money will be poured. No one can see the shape of the strategy for this company.

Today the British machine tool industry is in grave difficulties. It is clamouring for the investment of about £16 million to put it on its feet. British Leyland will absorb as part of the rescue operation—and rightly so—£l million a day for purposes which we do not know in any detail. What harmonisation will there be between the purposes of British Leyland and those of the British machine tool industry? Will the £1 million a day be spent in a great orgy of buying foreign machine tools? Will the money be spent in some rapid exercise of buying machine tools in Switzerland, Austria, Germany or France, or will there be an attempt, by means of a mechanism, to harmonise the purposes of the British machine tool industry with those of the British motor industry?

Mr. John Biffen (Oswestry)

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that in the context of the referendum and the continuing British membership of the Community there is an obligation upon any public sector ordering agency not to discriminate against other Community machine tool suppliers? Is not he therefore misleading British machine toolmakers to suppose that the Government will be in a position to adopt a buy-British policy?

Mr. Edelman

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman, with his normally acute mind, does not see the difference between discrimination against a foreign machine tool exporter and positively harmonising the interests of the British machine tool industry with those of the British motor industry. There is nothing in the Treaty of Rome saying that the managing director of British Leyland, or one of its divisions, should not go to the managing director of Alfred Herbert in Coventry and say "Let us plan together our future programme for the next five years, so that your firm can produce the numerical control machines which we need, so as to develop a logical process in our motor factories."

When I speak of the logical process of production, let me instance the manufacture of Renault cars in France. There we can see a piece of metal going in at one end and emerging as a motor car at the other. There we can see the difference between the techniques of production, which exist through a highly integrated system of production, and what existed in the United Kingdom in the past, when some of our machine tools were over 30 years old. The Ryder report failed to emphasise the need for a broad strategy for the integration of the motor industry with the machine tool industry.

I should like to say a few words about a major point touched on in the Ryder Report which has not been developed and which is of great concern to those who work in the industry. The hon. Member for Henley very properly said that the only way in which the British motor industry can achieve success is by those who are involved in it feeling that they belong to it and that they have some part to play in it, so that they can all work together in the general interest. In the Ryder Report a whole chapter is devoted to industrial democracy and participation.

The Ryder Report is a kind of package in which the money is being offered to the company and in return the expectation is that there will be a form of industrial democracy in which the workers will be allowed to play their part, not simply by standing day by day in the production line and slogging it out in every shift but by having some sort of participation in the running of the firm. In the Ryder Report there is a sub-clause which says that until the Government's intentions are made clear about industrial democracy and participation, and the recommendations in the Labour Party Green Paper and the TUC report on industry have been crystallised, nothing can be done.

If my hon. Friend imagines that he is going to pour money into British Leyland without involving the workers of British Leyland in the judgment of its expenditure, then indeed he is riding for a fall, and so are the Government and the country. Until and unless there is a proper structure of participation by the workers from the shop floor upwards, we shall not get that sense of involvement in the firm which is necessary for its success.

We live in an age of patronage. We live in an age of Government intervention which Mr. Gladstone when he produced his Northcote-Trevelyan Report had not dreamed of. The Civil Service Commission which was created in those days has long failed to cover the whole area of Government intervention, as patronage has reached a degree such as Walpole himself never dreamed of. This is directly relevant to the Ryder Report and to this Bill.

We have to ask ourselves how the appointments to the company are to be made. We know that in the NEB it is the Minister who has the statutory duty, and that the appointments are within his gift. While one has a benevolent and efficient Minister—the Secretary of State for Industry, as we have had and as we have—we have certain guarantees. But the fact is that in connection with British Leyland, unless there is some form of structural arrangement for the workers to participate, through councils or committees, in some kind of autogestion within the firm, we shall have the old confrontations of the past which have led to so many troubles and even to the illusions held by the hon. Member for Henley about what he called, I think, suicidal strikes.

If we are to inject a new spirit into British Leyland we must have some constitutional structure in which the workers will be as much shareholders, with their own persons and energies, as those who have financial investments in the firm. Therefore, if there is any question of obtaining the wholehearted co-operation of the workers of British Leyland—and I believe that is the case—this very day when there are wage claims put forward and when the old discussion across the table is still as sharp and acute as it ever was, unless some sort of new structure of worker participation is married to this Government involvement in the firm, we shall get all the evils and the abuse and no benefits from this massive outpouring of money.

I fear that unless there is some sort of participatory monitoring, we shall get a Concorde situation with the same sort of open-ended commitment in which, because the Government and the taxpayer are tied to an enterprise and so profoundly committed, we shall see an outpouring of public expenditure without any adequate and relevant return.

Mr. Tim Renton (Mid-Sussex)

I do not altogether follow the hon. Gentleman's reasoned remarks. I wonder whether he has read a sentence in the Ryder Report which said Efforts by British Leyland to set up a consultative council at corporate level have not been welcomed by the trade unions". Can he explain why he thinks union members will take a very much different attitude when they are nationalised than they have taken in recent years?

Mr. Edelman

It depends on the nature of the council. It is possible to have the sort of sham councils we have seen in the past when people have been concerned with the working of the canteen and not the working of the company. There must be a much more profound participation by workers from the shop floor upwards. It is also not enough—and I say this boldly—to pluck out some trade union official and put him in a post of authority on the board of this company.

I do not believe that the traditional arrangements referred to in the TUC report on industrial democracy are adequate. There must be a real form of industrial democracy in which workers from the shop floor have direct participation so that their interest in the place of work finds proper expression.

I hope that my hon. Friend, when he replies, will tell us something about the monitoring of the public money which is being spent. Does this mean that somebody from the Treasury will go along to Oxford or Coventry, look at the books, see that the accounts tally and then go away again?

If that is what is meant by monitoring, it is not monitoring in the concept which I and many hon. Friends have of public accountability. The problem now facing British Leyland is to make sure that public accountability is concerned not only with the arithmetic but with the wisdom of the expenditure.

The real issue facing the Committee is not so much whether we should pay out the money provided for in the Bill. I think most sensible people would agree that the company has to be rescued and that the livelihood of the people involved has to be preserved. Few, except the most extravagantly doctrinaire, would want to drop the axe on those many people who have spent their lives in British Leyland and turn them on the streets overnight. That would be not only foolish, but iniquitous. If hon. Gentlemen opposite vote against the clause tonight, they will be voting in favour of a cruel and ruthless policy which will lead to a great misery and do damage to our greatest exporting industry.

The worker in his place of work has as much right to consideration as the shareholder in his own remote position. We are concerned today with the rights of the worker and the opportunities for him to fulfil his duty in his place of work, not simply by turning a part but by exercising and contributing his wisdom to the well-being of his firm.

11.0 p.m.

Mr. Michael Marshall (Arundel)

I am glad to have the opportunity of speaking after the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Edelman). From many of his remarks, I felt that there were at least certain reservations which I could share. In a recent article he described very effectively the "bran tub approach" to doling out Government money, which certainly covers some of the problems I want to discuss.

I join with my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) in expressing some reservations about the Ryder Report, which, after all, is virtually enshrined in the measure we are considering. The first basic problem which has to be restated is that the whole of the report seems to ignore fundamental changes in the whole of our economic situation. The changes which came upon British Leyland as a result of the energy crisis do not receive the recognition which it is self-evident should have gone into the report. I do not see how the problem of that great company can possibly be divorced from the similar problems of so many other major car manufacturers throughout the Western World.

It has been rightly stated as a fact that there are four major car companies in this country, and yet in the whole of the United States four major car manufacturers are sufficient for that vast market. The problem is, therefore, self-evident. As The Economist pointed out recently, there is indeed the argument, which must hold water, that car manufacturing companies must either merge or die. It is this first point that strikes me as a notable omission from the Ryder Report.

Some of us—and perhaps some Labour Members—have had opportunities of questioning Lord Ryder on these matters, but we have got very little change out of suggestions that the merger aspect has been closely considered. This has been pushed to one side, with the suggestion that it was looked at but not thought appropriate. All the way through in considering this report, one has the feeling that the judgments reached in many cases are far too shallow.

Similarly, we have had very little evidence of a serious examination whether other sources of money could have been found to help the company in this situation. The opportunities to seek re-cycled Arab investment, opportunities for investment consortia in this country—[Interruption.] Hon. Members may laugh, but these are possibilites which should be considered with the greatest care. I do not think that Labour Members would necessarily want to put all their eggs into one basket. After all, we are talking now about a massive investment which is outstripping the technological development costs of Concorde or even the cost of the Channel Tunnel. In considering measures of this sort we are entitled to ask why every other possibility was not fully explored and made clear to us as representatives of the taxpayers and the future shareholders of British Leyland.

I have reservations about the Ryder Report in general and I share the views which have been expressed frequently on both sides of the Committee that there are problems within the company which run, as it were, not in any one quarter but right across the spectrum of the company. One of the problems the report brought out was the lack of consultation with middle management. The Government must address themselves to this factor, in a way which at present they appear not to be doing by looking at the National Enterprise Board as their chosen instrument, talking in terms of top management and in terms of the shop floor via the trade unions. This is an important element to which the Government must address themselves.

There is also the worry which anyone who has read the report must have that it seems totally to ignore the effect of the energy crisis on other motor-car manufacturers—in other words, on the major competitors of British Leyland. Many hon. Members have read accounts of the report by Euroeconomics, which speaks of the unreality of the export projections in the Ryder Report. This is a grave concern to many people. If those projections are adrift and if one takes any kind of view as to the impact of the energy crisis on buying habits—the fact that people who were thinking in terms of a second car will no longer be doing so—all this brings one to the inescapable conclusion that it is not as easy as many would suggest simply to seek extra business outside this country. There is a fear that the level of trading demand may be drastically curtailed.

It is for that reason that I welcome the Government's intention to use the think tank in reviewing the situation. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will tell us a little more about that. The fact that the CPRS has been put into bat so soon after the Ryder Report suggests to many of us that perhaps there have been some second thoughts about Ryder and points to the importance of the study as regards future borrowing requirements.

The problems that British Leyland faces—and they are not unique—add up to what Ford recently described as being in the survival business. Being in that business is clearly a fact of life for many major motor manufacturers. In that situation there must be once more a return to some consideration of commercial principles.

Anyone who has had anything to do with industry must sometimes find it hard to accept the way in which the political battle lines are so quickly drawn up over the fate of a great company such as British Leyland. It is an inescapable fact—I move straight into the sensitive ground—that no one in the Committee can honestly deny that the Ryder Report could have been rather more blunt and honest and have said that British Leyland, as presently constituted, could have the same output and yet have a workforce some 30,000 to 40,000 smaller than it is today. That is the estimate of judges whose judgment we are entitled to respect. What are the Government's policies in that area?

We must address ourselves to the problems concerning the workforce. On such matters I have respect for what the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) says. When dealing with great companies and manufacturing industry, is it not one of the cruellest deceptions to suggest that we can prop up a workforce which is inflated when it is clear that there must come a point at which people will not buy motor cars which they do not want.

Mr. F. A. Burden (Gillingham)

Does my hon. Friend agree that the situation is somewhat the same as when the Secretary of State for Energy said in the House on 2nd August 1971, in another capacity, that in June 1969 he had written to Upper Clyde to the effect that unless management was reorganised, restrictive practices done away with and the labour force slimmed by 7,000 there would not be one more penny forthcoming from Government in support?

Mr. Marshall

I entirely agree with what my hon. Friend says. That points to the fact that across party lines there are moments when reality comes through. I believe that that was one such instance. I suggest that in the present situation we must have from the Government some clear-cut view as to their policy on job protectionism. That is the underlying ethos to be put forward and it should be put forward by the Prime Minister.

I was arguing that it is the cruellest deception to suggest that there is an opportunity for people to continue their careers in a company after the moment at which cars cannot be sold in sufficient numbers. I think that everyone accepts that there is a limit to what any Government and to what the nation can afford. Surely it is not merely a matter whether demand will meet productivity. Is it not one of the cruellest things we can do in this technological age to try to keep large numbers of people under-utilised? In a country where people have far greater opportunities for education, is it not a sad reflection on our society that we seem to be endeavouring, through the Government's industrial policy, to keep too many people doing jobs that many clearly find boring when we should be able to introduce machines to make work more interesting and less onerous? That is what the package is supposed to he about.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield (Nuneaton)

If 15,000 or 20,000 of my constituents lose their jobs through the reorganisation which the hon. Gentleman foresees, where will they find alternative employment?

Mr. Marshall

The hon. Gentleman should put that question to his own Front Bench. The Government's thinking is devoid of constructive proposals for the meshing in of redeployment, retraining and redundancy payments. That is the constructive approach, as opposed to the protectionist approach.

There are one or two matters which are particularly worrying in relation not so much to the Ryder report as to the Government's policy. The danger of massive Government finance has to be spelt out clearly. The first obvious danger of massive Government finance is that over-manning is difficult to handle and becomes a political argument. We have seen that again and again. Hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, will have to face the constituency problem referred to by the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Huckfield). These are not easy options, but the nettle must be grasped. If we continue to treat arguments of this sort on a short-term political basis, any hope of long-term economic judgment goes out of the window.

Each British Leyland situation creates A precedent. It adds massively to the public borrowing requirement and to the economic strains, as even the Treasury Bench has to acknowledge. The public are being forced to buy this pup.

I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will show his hand tonight in his "new broom" ministerial approach in the Department of Industry. Will he say whether job preservation is or is not the prime purpose of Government industrial policy? Will he recognise the problems which I have enunciated? Will he say whether the Government believe in the creation and preservation of giant monoliths? The Government bear a special responsibility. It was the former Secretary of State for Industry who, with the IRC, brought this corporation into being—a massively mistaken planning judgment, as history shows. That decision was made with insufficient capital backing by the IRC.

That raises once more the basic question which hon. Members must answer for themselves. Do we want to go on creating massive monolithic organisations, when we know the problems which result? It is possible for parts of companies to be hived off. For example, it is possible to split specialist car production from mass consumer car production. That would give individual companies the opportunity effectively to stand on their own feet. In a sophisticated economy such as ours it should not be beyond the wit of the Government and the City to come together in an effective working arrangement to facilitate that type of development.

I come to the question of Government planning versus commercial judgment. If the Bill goes through, the Government must tell us how they expect to implement the package. I do not believe the suggestion in the Explanatory Memorandum that no further staff will be required as a result of this legislation. I do not see how this can be so. If it is so, it is of great concern to us all.

One of the great lessons from the Rolls-Royce situation is that there are insufficient people with commercial judgment in Whitehall. Whether it is in the National Enterprise Board or the Department itself, somewhere along the way there must be found people of ability in commercial matters if the Government are to play any meaningful role in the dialogue with the future British Leyland.

11.15 p.m.

Finally, any Government's general investment strategy, in which they force the taxpayer to become an investor, should, if it is to be helpful, back some of the winners in this country and not just some of the lame ducks. I accept that all Governments have not shown the best judgment in trying to be more selective and more effective.

If we cannot be clear that the Government have a coherent industrial strategy, the Bill is simply throwing money down the drain and bringing in a short-term political judgment about unemployment for motives which I am sure attract many of the best feelings of many hon. Members. But I believe it enshrines a cruel deception that somehow all will be well if we can keep everyone doing what they are doing at present. I do not think that any hon. Member who hopes to see the regeneration of British industry could give such a deception his support.

Mr. Richard Wainwright (Colne Valley)

I hope that the Under-Secretary of State, whom we wish well in his new appointment, will realise the deep interest and concern in the matter put to him by the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Edelman) on the role of the British machine tool industry in the proposed re-equipment of British Leyland. I hope that the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West will get a full and detailed answer. It will also be of great interest to other hon. Members.

I want to approach the question from a different angle. I want to press the Under-Secretary of State to say how far he considers the machine tool industry is at present ready to fulfil the orders which will arise from the first and second tranches of Government money to British Leyland in its new shape. The hon. Gentleman must be aware that the pattern of re-equipment, and, from that, the sources of re-equipment, will be largely determined by where the orders go arising from the first and second tranches of new capital.

If the British machine tool industry is not equipped to meet most of the orders arising from this early expenditure, its chances of catching up later, even if it becomes harmonious, will be very much less. I hope that we shall have a full statement of the entire rôle of the machine tool industry in this matter.

Is it too much also to hope that, even at this stage of the Bill, we shall have at last, with the change of personnel at the Department, some effort to put this vast sum into the context of the general needs of British manufacturing industry. Everyone knows that many sectors in British industry are desperately in need of invest- ment. Yet there appears to be no inventory. The former Ministers at the Department were not even willing to guess at an inventory of the total requirements of British industry, alongside which this vast sum has to be judged.

For instance, as a random example, the national economic development council associated with the British clothing industry—a great employer of labour and in many ways one of our leading industries—recently made a detailed recommendation that a comparatively modest sum should be allocated to its requirements. Yet the Department has dragged its feet week after week on the issue, presumably because there has been such a massive pre-emption of Government funds for British Leyland and the purposes associated with the Bill. If Parliament is to retain its self-respect there must be an attempt before we send the Bill to another place to give us the context in which the whole matter falls.

Is it too much to hope, now that there has been time for the new set-up at British Leyland to do some stocktaking, that there might be a gesture from British Leyland's side, when all this money is being voted, to offer some of its peripheral activities as a means of providing a small part of the money? There are Aveling-Barford, Coventry Climax and Prestcold. Surely it would be reasonable—some people might think decent—for British Leyland to say "We are not supermen, and maybe others could manage these non-manufacturing businesses just as well as we could, or almost as well, and they would fetch a tidy sum on the market". That would be some contribution from within to set alongside the vast contribution the long-suffering British taxpayer, or the long-suffering creditors of the British Government, are being dragooned into making.

This is all being done on a prospectus which, if it were introduced in a normal commercial context, would be criticised throughout the financial Press as flimsy, if not extra-statutory or illegal. [An hon. Member: "Fraudulent."] It may turn out to be fraudulent, but I am not prepared to go that far now. I simply say "flimsy and inadequate". In our professional or personal capacities, or in advising our maiden aunts on their investments, we would never dream of recommending investment on the basis of the Bowdlerised version of the Ryder Report and the speeches of the former Secretary of State for Industry.

But the Government have the chance if not to open a new chapter at least to turn a page tonight. I hope that we shall be treated more frankly and with more care and respect by the incoming administration at the Department than that with which the House was treated by the previous incumbents. Nevertheless, however eloquent and frank the Under-Secretary is tonight, I shall recommend the Liberal Members to vote against the clause standing part of the Bill.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield

We have all noted the shift of Government resources on the Front Bench from mobile homes into mobile cars. I welcome my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to the Committee's deliberations.

What intrigued most of us who sat through the Second Reading debate, and still intrigues all of us on the Government benches, is precisely what the Opposition intend to do if the Bill does not go through tonight. I ask exactly what the Opposition would do, because as far as I can judge from all the speeches last time, and all that we have heard from the Opposition tonight, if they had their way most of my constituents would be on the dole.

In particular, we are anxious to hear what the Opposition would do with Austin-Morris, because we have all heard now what they would do with Aveling-Barford, Coventry Climax, Prestcold and the rest of the more profitable parts of the British Leyland empire. What will the Opposition do with the Austin-Morris part of the combine? They did not tell us last time, and my bet is that they will not tell us tonight. I hope that my constituents and the constituents of my hon. Friends representing Longbridge and the other parts of the British Leyland combine have noted that.

Mr. Tom King (Bridgwater) rose—

Mr. Huckfield

If the hon. Gentleman is prepared to tell the Committee what the Opposition intend to do with Austin-Morris, I shall give way.

Mr. King

The hon. Member is about to vote for a Bill which carries very severe implications for his constituents. What assessment has he made of the implications of the Bill for them?

Mr. Huckfield

That only proves the folly of giving way to the hon. Member He still has not answered my question. Conservative Members bemoan the losses that Austin-Morris is supposed to have made. One of the biggest losses of that division was probably in 1969–70 when it lost about £16 million. What is £16 million when set beside the £144 million loss of Volkswagen last year? What is £16 million when set beside the loss of £100 million by Citroen last year in France? If we are to examine Austin-Morris losses we should compare them with the performance of Continental manufacturers and then consider the way in which European Governments have been prepared quickly to help them out because those Governments appreciate the desirability of having a domestic car industry. I hope that that lesson will rub off on to the Opposition tonight.

In that big loss-making year Austin-Morris lost less than Vauxhall lost last year—£18 million—and less than Chrysler last year—£17 million. If the Conservatives want Austin-Morris to go bankrupt—and I am sure that it what the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) will say if he catches your eye, Mr. Murton—they must compare that division's performance with losses in other parts of the industry. If the Opposition believe that Austin-Morris should go to the wall what is their feeling about the other companies with even larger losses? I believe that Austin-Morris is well worth saving. I am glad that the Ryder Report recommends that it should be saved and that this is what is planned.

The Conservatives talk about overmanning. If they saw some of the First World War equipment with which my constituents have to work in Coventry they would understand why there is overmanning. By the time they have got together the man who puts the fag packet in the right place, the second man who is needed to turn the handle because one man is insufficient, the men who have to push the cars round at the end of the track—and bearing in mind some of the self-pushing tracks which are used in British Leyland—there is no wonder that by comparison with plants on the Continent there is overmanning here. Hon. Members will not find men having to push cars down the track in BMW. They will not find it happening in Daimler-Benz, Peugeot or Renault, but they will find it in British Leyland. It is because of the antiquated, almost antediluvian equipment in British Leyland factories that the extra men are required.

Mr. Michael Marshall

Does the hon. Gentleman accept as the logic of his argument that if modern equipment is put in there should be a rapid reduction in the manning force where those workers are being used ineffectively?

Mr. Huckfield

I have never concealed the fact—and if the hon. Gentleman had attended the Second Reading debate he would have noted then that I made the point—that if we equip British Leyland to the same level of capital output ratio as Datsun, Nissan or Fiat it will be necessary to use a smaller workforce. I accept that, and I questioned my hon. Friend who was then on the Front Bench on exactly that kind of point.

11.30 p.m.

I have taken up several of these matters with the Prime Minister and with the previous Secretary of State for Industry. But I should still like more reassurance, because I know that some of my constituents would, about the proposals in the Bill to integrate the quality car parts of British Leyland with the volume parts of British Leyland.

I speak as one of those who believe that the whole corporation should be preserved. I do not believe that Austin and Morris should be jettisoned, for the reasons I have just enumerated. But I doubt the wisdom of going in for a strategy that, as far as I and many of my constituents can see, will integrate Jaguar, Rover and Triumph with Austin and Morris.

When I took up this matter last time, I got half an answer and the answer my constituents have been given in Coventry is that a committee has been set up which is supposed to be looking into ways of preserving Jaguar, for example, as an independent entity. It will take a bit more than that committee to persuade me and my constituents that we shall see the Jaguar car company preserved as an entity in five years' time, because we very much fear that the next Jaguar to be produced will be not a Jaguar but a Rover with a Jaguar badge on the front.

Mr. Alan Clark (Plymouth, Sutton)

Would the hon. Member give way.

Mr. Huckfield

If the hon. Gentleman has a good point to make.

Mr. Clark

I leave that to the hon. Member's judgment. Would he not agree that if the Jaguar car company were to be offered in the City as a single independent entity, it would be perfectly possible to raise the capital not only to produce the Jaguar car but probably to expand its production more effectively and to maintain the whole work force now employed at Browns Lane?

Mr. Huckfield

The hon. Member knows that some of my constituents work at Browns Lane and Radford and other places. He also knows that the strategy that I have put forward and the strategy that the Government have put forward are to save not just Jaguar but the whole of British Leyland. That is why I support the implementation of the Ryder Report.

But in the implementation of the Ryder Report we have to take a lesson from what has happened to Fiat and Lancia. The Lancia car company got into considerable difficulties and was bought out by Fiat. Now Fiat is trying to produce a Fiat car with a Lancia badge, and that just will not work. I hope that British Leyland will not produce an Austin-Morris car—and I say this with the greatest respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Mr. Carter) who represents Austin—or a Rover car, with a Jaguar badge on the front, because that will not work.

I return to the subject of the wisdom of fully integrating the quality car parts of British Leyland with the volume car parts. I apologise for enmeshing my hon. Friend the new Under-Secretary in the details of the car industry so soon after his appointment but my next question is where British Leyland is to produce its sports cars. I declare an interest as an MG owner. I am not particularly convinced by the great rash of publicity that is trying to persuade people to buy more MGs under the slogan "You can do it in a MG". [HON. MEMBERS: "Can you?"] You can in the GT version. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about the gear lever?"] In the automatic version. I am not entirely persuaded that British Leyland intends to maintain sports car production at Abingdon. Nor am I persuaded that British Leyland intends to maintain production of the Triumph Stag at the Triumph works at Coventry.

What concerns me is that in future sports car production by British Leyland will be concentrated on Speke with the production of the Triumph Bullet in Liverpool. That may be welcome to my hon. Friends who represent Merseyside, but we should hear from my hon. Friend about the rationalisation and the centralisation upon which the changed management is now or should be embarking.

My constituents in Coventry want to know what kind of production facilities we can expect to see concentrated there. My hon. Friend knows that at the moment British Leyland is not doing too well in the truck and bus division, although it is not doing too bady with its heavy truck range. No one seems to be keen to take the Leyland National bus. My hon. Friend must know that British Leyland intends to concentrate production on the Park Royal factory for its new National double decker. What concerns me is that unless we have some policy decisions fairly quickly about where British Leyland is to concentrate bus production it will be the buses of the Swedes and the Germans that we shall see on the roads of many more of our cities.

I ask my hon. Friend to bear in mind the point of view of the municipal operators, the National Bus Company and the GLC, all of whom have to take some replacement decisions in the near future. I hope that he will be able to tell us something about the strategy of British Leyland in this direction, particularly about what it will do in future to produce standard single and double deckers.

My constituents need some kind of assurance that the Jaguar Car Company, in particular, will not be too integrated with other parts of British Leyland. I hope that my hon. Friend will tell us something about where British Leyland intends to concentrate sports car production and where the company intends to concentrate its single and double decker bus production.

I recognise that this Bill ought to pass through speedily because it is a Bill which will guarantee this country its own car industry for what I hope will be a long time.

Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn (Kinross and West Perthshire)

Unlike the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Huckfield) I do not have the privilege of representing one person employed in the car industry. But it should not be overlooked that this Bill involves every constituent in every constituency. Constituents are being asked to commit their money to this Bill. The extent to which they are being asked to do so should not be misunderstood. Although large in area—being 8,000 square miles—my constituency has only 35,000 constituents. Under this Bill, which, like all Bills involving large amounts of money, is short, they will be committed over the next eight years to raising £2,100,000 between them.

Before any hon. Member overlooks that point he should make the same computation in respect of his own constituents and ask himself whether he is prepared to go home and tell his constituents what he has committed them to. This commitment is to be made on the basis of what I believe is a bad report. That report assumes a rate of inflation which neither the assurances of the Prime Minister nor the Treasury Bench, would cause me to regard as reliable. That is the basis of the Ryder Report.

I come to this word "shareholder". It is a word hated by the Labour Party below the Gangway. But, by God, every single constituent of mine will become a shareholder in British Leyland, whether he likes it or not. They will not be able to restrict their investment and they will not receive even a controlled dividend from it.

Mr. Peter Rost (Derbyshire, South-East)

Not a vote.

Mr. Fairbairn

Yes, not a vote.

When we talk about the great concept of democracy of those involved in industry, let us be clear that every person in the country will have to be an investor, and there will be no democracy for them about how much money they invest, what return they will get or what the company does.

The second fallacy of this proposed investment on behalf of our constituents is that it is based on a report which involves itself in a concept which the House of Commons has for far too long assumed to be wise, namely, the concept of the shifting of blame or committee decisions. I find it strange that when the British Leyland company was politically created it was seen as reasonable, when it failed commercially, that one could bring together a small group of men who, in a few months, would produce a report which the House assumed to be total wisdom.

I do not think that it is a good report, a reliable report or an accurate report, but for some reason the House always accepts the reports of those to whom it shifts political and commercial responsibility. Every time it does, so every time it gets it wrong. It is time that the House stopped taking the attitude that commercial responsibility can be shifted to a committee whose decisions it can accept with alacrity and whose results it assumes to be accurate. This is a false approach.

I come to the immense and responsible matter of employment. I have the priviledge of serving on the Industry Bill Committee and I have heard many speeches on that matter, the most significant being that of the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Mr. Mikardo). Nothing is more important to the dignity of the human being than that his employment should be an extension of his personality and a right of his existence. But nothing could be less likely to promote it than that an inefficient business should be allowed, by taking money from other people who are employed, to give a false manning to a bad company.

I have seen no commitment by the management, unions or work force to the concept of making the company more efficient or making the jobs more intelligent and more fulfilling. A commitment of £1 million a day to be paid out of the pockets of other employed people will not, in the long run, guarantee the jobs of those employed. People will have to change their jobs unless this country is to commit itself to a political situation in which the employed remain for ever employed in an increasingly unviable industry or commitment. The message of the Bill seems to be that we shall take a badly organised and managed company, over-manned, inefficient and unattractive, and keep it as it is for ever at the expense of those who earn their livelihood in every other way.

11.45 p.m.

Let us relate the commitment of £265 million to reality. In our constituencies, it may be difficult for the noblest of charities, with the greatest effort, to raise £500. The Government own no money. We are committing the money of individual, human working people. We are not getting it out of the ground or issuing it from treasuries. We are extracting it from the efficient to give to the inefficient. [An HON MEMBER: "Printing it."] Printing it is just another way of demoting the salaries of those who earn.

The Bill should not cross party political boundaries. I know that the Labour Party would like to think that it guarantees employment while we deny it——

Mr. Huckfield

Hear, hear.

Mr. Fairbairn

That is exactly what they like to imagine. But I believe that if one insists on anachronising society—[HON. MEMBERS: "What?"] I know that none of those who have been comprehensively educated will understand language—[HON. MEMBERS: "Cheap."] If hon. Members opposite do not want a relevant——

Mr. J. W. Rooker (Birmingham, Perry Barr)

Get on with it.

Mr. Fairbairn

If hon. Members do not want a relevant observation on their interruptions, they have the opportunity not to interrupt.

Let us be clear what we are talking about. We are committing a vast amount of the money of individual human beings in order to ensure that a firm will not be competitive with any of its international competitors. We may decide to do that, but in the long run it will ensure that all those whom Labour Members pretend to care about will he infinitely more damaged.

Mr. Rooker

Until the hon. and learned Member for Kinross and West Perthshire (Mr. Fairbairn) spoke, this debate had moved on from the hysterical meanderings of the hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) who, in an intervention was once again screaming at the top of his voice about suicidal strikes, singling out the workers at Cowley, who can be adequately defended from this side. But they do not need our defence. That of the former industrial relations manager at Cowley should be sufficient. Writing in The Guardian 10 days ago, Mr. Richardson, who was industrial relations manager from 1966 to 1970, was talking about the introduction of the Austin Maxi in 1969. Production lines were laid down, he said, to flow at a rate of assembly which could not be matched by the production of body panels and which was subsequently found to be at a higher rate than that at which engines could be manufactured. The mess that that created among the labour force was never overcome, however good the industrial relations.

Those hon. Members who say that the Government are by implication not telling the truth about likely job losses in British Leyland are not doing justice to the Ryder Report. The hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) said that there was not one sentence in the report that suggested that there would be any transfer or rationalisation of labour or loss of jobs. He knows that that is not true. The summary of the chapter headed "Production" reads: (i) BL should reorganise its car manufacturing operations to provide for specialisation in body assembly work, power train and transmission or parts manufacture. (ii) The existing plants in the body assembly group should be engaged in all operations from receipt of stamped panels to final assembly of complete vehicles… (vii) BL should undertake an urgent programme to introduce plant layout.

That passage should be coupled with the sentence which says that careful forward manpower planning will be needed, particularly in the areas where major rationalisation of production facilities is undertaken.

It is all very well looking at those passages through the jaundiced eyes of the Opposition. However, looked at through the eyes of someone working in the industry, those words can be reinterpreted. My constituents, who are most affected, work in an old-fashioned British Leyland plant, where I once worked. There will be job losses. Anyone reading this report who does not think that British Leyland workers must move or lose their jobs is living in a fool's para- dise. The facts are in the report. It is not true to say that when the rationalisation takes place the Opposition will cry that the Government did not tell the truth, or that the Ryder Report did not tell the truth. It is all in the report.

Some plants produce the body panels, weld them together, paint them and put the windows in, but they do not fit the engines or wheels. The bodies are transported 10 or 15 miles on the back of a lorry, six at a time. That must stop. Ryder will put a stop to that. The alternative will be either to put the engines in at the one factory, or not to assemble the paint and bodies at the factory where that work now takes place. The Ludlow plant will become a body pressing plant, or the assembly tracks will be moved from Longbridge, with the consequent loss of jobs. We cannot have it both ways.

It is not true to say that the Ryder Report did not indicate that there would be job losses and job rationalisation. They will take place on a massive scale. Only someone reading the report through the jaundiced eyes of a politician would deny it.

What will be the situation of outside directors on the new British Leyland board? We often hear about the contribution which outside directors can make to our great public companies. The name of Jim Slater appears on the list of outside directors of British Leyland. He has served on the board for years. What contribution has he made to British Leyland? Will he be reappointed as an outside director? I should be glad if the Under-Secretary would answer that question.

Another point worth raising concerns the present state of industrial relations at British Leyland. We are supposed to see a clean sweep of management and a change in attitude. One example came to my attention at the weekend. At the Fisher Ludlow plant the management has constituted and, at long last, allowed a few trade unionists to sit on the joint consultative safety committee. The management has laid down all the rules in that plant, including how long the members will serve on the committee. There were no negotiations. This was a post-Ryder decision. If that is how British Leyland management intends to

conduct itself at the local plants we are buying a pig in a poke.

Mrs. Jill Knight (Birmingham, Edgbaston)

Less and less does this House do what the people want it to do. Let there be no misunderstanding about this. If a referendum were to take place on whether this Bill should be passed, the people of Britain would overwhelmingly reject it.

We are talking about spending £265 million of taxpayers' money. We are discussing this matter without being in possession of all the necessary facts. Where is the company's circular? It is essential that the company's circular, under the Companies Act arrangements, should be made available. Where is it? It is certainly not in the Vote Office. It is rumoured that it is in draft, but if it is in draft why have we not had it for this debate? How can even the Government properly discuss this issue without it? There are many questions yet unanswered. What about the employees? How will the shareholder stand? At the moment they do not know whether they should stay in with the Government as a partner or sell out at the derisory sum offered.

I am also gravely concerned at some of the things which are happening in the motor car industry. I have here a report from The Guardian of 20th May pointing out that one senior British Leyland executive last year received payments totalling £2,400 from the company which supplied Jaguar with more than £600,000 of assembly equipment. He worked at that time for Jaguar. He now works for British Leyland.

Mr. Leslie Huckfield

On a point of order. Is it in order for the hon. Lady to discuss a matter which is now before the courts?

The Chairman (Mr. George Thomas)

My attention was for the moment taken up with other matters. The hon. Lady will have heard the point of order, and she will know that we are discussing the Question, "That the clause stand part of the Bill."

Miss Knight

It is all right, Mr. Thomas. I have finished discussing the point. It is scandalous and ought to have been checked by the Government that the Jaguar management and unions—I hold no brief for either of them—have connived together in a scheme which will cheat the taxpayer because the management have agreed with the union that they will form the men's work pattern so that, working full time, they can still draw unemployment pay. This is an appalling scandal, and I put down a Parliamentary Question about it and asking that such cheating—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh!"] It is always very revealing that hon. Members opposite think it is very amusing that people should cheat the taxpayers. I do not. I asked the Minister to look into this practice and to stop it, and the answer that I received was a curt "No".

Many things are wrong with the British car industry. I have mentioned merely two. But let the Government not for one moment imagine that what they are trying to do tonight has the support of the people of Britain.

The Under-Secretary of State for Industry (Mr. Gerald Kaufman)

I thank the hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) and others for their kind welcome to me in my new Department.

I confess that listening to the hon. Member for Henley when he accused the Government, in this Bill, of entering into an open-ended and undisciplined commitment of the taxpayers' resources, I thought that I was back in my old Department, listening to the Leader of the Opposition talking about 9½ per cent. mortgages.

It is the Opposition who have blazed this trail that we are following tonight. The hon. Member for Henley quoted Mr John Barber on the subject of retrenchment. Retrenchment is not an issue in this debate. It may be an issue in so far as the Opposition are demanding it of us. What we are calling for and what the Ryder team call for in their report is rationalisation based on new investment.

The hon. Gentleman said that the assumptions for the future in the Ryder Report were at odds with the past record of British Leyland. But that past record, as my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Edelman) has pointed out, is based upon a sorry record of under-investment. As the Ryder team point out in chapter 9 of the Report, one of the main reasons why British Leyland workers produce less than workers at Fiat or Volkswagen is that so much less has been spent by British Leyland on new plant and equipment. One of the objectives of the new regime is to increase investment.

Mr. Rost

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Kaufman

I will not give way.

Mr. Rost rose——

The Chairman

Order. We cannot have two hon. Gentlemen on their feet at the same time.

12 midnight.

Mr. Kaufman

The hon. Gentleman had the opportunity to take part in the debate had he wanted to do so. He had the opportunity of intervening in the speeches of his hon. Friends or mine.

The hon. Member for Henley claimed that no one accepted the strategy that had been put forward, but the company and the workers both accept the strategy and a great deal of work is in hand to implement it.

Substantial progress has been made in the preliminary work needed to approach the shareholders for approval of the scheme. The court has now directed that meetings of shareholders should be held, and these are expected to take place on 14th July. A document giving full details of the proposed scheme, together with a covering letter from the board of British Leyland, is being despatched to all shareholders and convertible unsecured loan stockholders on 18th June.

The company has continued to make progress to bring about the re-organisation of the business along the lines proposed by the Ryder Report. Preparatory work on the scheme of arrangement is at an advanced stage and, as I shall be pointing out to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-West, who raised the matter, the Ryder Report proposals for involvement of the work force in decision-making processes have been the subject of preliminary discussions.

Mr. Heseltine

As the hon. Gentleman says the work force has accepted the strategy, can he fill in details of how many redundancies there will be this year, next year and the year after on the basis of which the work force accepted the strategy?

Mr. Kaufman

I am coming to that very point. The hon. Gentleman has been in correspondence with the Secretary of State on this matter.

The hon. Member for Henley claimed that this scheme had been forced on British Leyland and on the Ryder team by the Government, but the Ryder team makes clear in its report that it examined all possibilities before arriving at the scheme it put forward.

The hon. Gentleman also suggested that the money being employed for investment and loans for British Leyland could be used more profitably in some other way, but that would mean doing away with British Leyland and creating a hole one would then try to fill. But one would not have the same amount of money.

The Opposition Members who claim that the best solution would be to let British Leyland or Austin-Morris go to the wall do not take into account the massive sums of redundancy pay that would be necessary and the social cost of allowing British Leyland or Austin-Morris to go to the wall. They seem to assume there would be gross sums rather than net sums available for investment.

Nor do they take into account the massive effect on our balance of payments of letting British Leyland or Austin-Morris go under. This was one of the main reasons advanced by the Prime Minister for the Government's action over British Leyland. The company's direct exports in 1973–74 were worth £485 million. There would also be a very large flood of imports sucked in to fill the vacuum created by the failure of British Leyland.

The hon. Member for Henley has asked about possible redundancies and he was supported by the hon. Member for Bromsgrove and Redditch (Mr. Miller). But the hon. Member for Henley has totally misunderstood what the rationalisation will bring about. He seems to assume that rationalisation and money saving automatically means redundancies. Indeed, he wrote a most learned and complicated letter to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Industry, in which he set out various computations, based on even reduction, variable reduction and parabolic reduction, of what saving would mean in terms of redundancies.

But my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State clarified the situation—and totally undermined what the hon. Gentleman was putting forward—when he said in his reply to the hon. Gentleman, I am somewhat surprised that you have attempted to convert all the effects of improvements in efficiency envisaged in paragraph 14.11 into redundancies. It is quite clear from the sentence in the report that you have quoted that redundancies are not the only path to increased efficiency envisaged by the Teams: mobility and interchangeability of labour is involved here too". My right hon. Friend concluded, I can only say that it is quite incorrect to suppose that the total saving of £400 million can be simply converted into an equivalent number of net redundancies. Sir Don Ryder has said publicly that if British Leyland achieve the sales targets and increased efficiency envisaged in the report, he expects the company's total manpower requirements in the early 1980s to be broadly similar to present employment levels".

Mr. Heseltine

As the Under-Secretary will be insisting, under the Industry Bill which he will be recommending to the House, that every British company explains precisely the number of people it employs in any given three-year period, will he now say what is the number of people who will be employed by British Leyland over the next three years and what it amounts to in the Ryder Report, and explain clearly the basis upon which the calculations amounting to £400 million-worth of savings are made?

Mr. Kaufman

My right hon. Friend has replied very fully to the hon. Gentleman's invalid calculations. As for the future of British Leyland, this is clearly a matter for the British Leyland board. We are only now starting out upon this path. The company has not yet been set up. The hon. Gentleman is asking for impossible information at this stage, and he knows that very well.

Mr. Heseltine

I have listened to the hon. Gentleman's refusal to give the information which will be demanded from every major British company under the Industry Bill. Will the hon. Gentleman now say that if a British company replies to his right hon. Friend in the same terms as those in which the hon. Gentleman has replied to the Committee, it will be deemed to be sufficient excuse for not providing the facts which the Industry Bill gives his Department the ability to demand?

Mr. Kaufman

The hon. Gentleman knows very well that that is an invalid question. He knows the pitfalls of trying to tell the House one thing and then having to put it right later. From personal experience, the hon. Gentleman is very well aware of those pitfalls, and the necessity to apologise to the House if one misinforms it deliberately.

Mr. Tim Renton

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Mr. Kaufman

No, I have given way several times.

Mr. Renton rose——

The Chairman

Order. If the Minister is not giving way——

Mr. Renton

He has done so. The Minister must have given way as soon as I turned my head.

The Chairman

I should have turned it sooner.

Mr. Renton

I apologise, Mr. Thomas. I thought that the Under-Secretary had given way. Perhaps from the back benches I could help the Under-Secretary on the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) has been making. Is it not a fact that within the motor industry most people believe that 50,000 jobs at British Leyland will have to go if British Leyland is to get anywhere near continental levels of efficiency?

Mr. Kaufman

The hon. Gentleman is retailing rumour second hand. The Ryder Report is backed by a great deal of background information and I prefer the word of Ryder and his experts to that of the hon. Gentleman.

The hon. and learned Member for Solihull (Mr. Grieve) waxed eloquent on strikes, but the Ryder Report states clearly that the team did not subscribe to the view that all the ills of the company should be laid at the door of any kind of strike-prone or work-shy labour force. The report pointed out the handicap of operating with plant and equipment older than that in comparable firms. My hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Huckfield) described that situation graphically. The report reads: it is both essential and feasible to look for…more realistic manning levels and more mobility and interchangeability of labour. Later it reports: The improvement of productivity will inevitably mean a gradual reduction in the number of workers required to produce a given number of vehicles…". Of course, that is the position.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Edelman) and the hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Wainwright) asked valid questions about the purchase of machine tools. We very much hope that our machine tool manufacturers will take the utmost advantage of the great opportunities presented by British Leyland's intention to equip itself with new machine tools. Meetings with the representatives of the machine tool industry have already taken place. From what I hear of the outcome of those meetings, the outlook is promising. What we want to do is precisely what my hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman have asked for—namely, a phased operation so that the machine tool industry can get itself ready to respond in a phased manner to the needs of British Leyland as it expands.

Mr. Edelman

I welcome my hon. Friend's answer, but is it the intention to set up some ongoing constitutional committee, as between the motor industry and the machine tool industry, so as to keep in being a continuing dialogue?

Mr. Kaufman

Without guaranteeing a constitutional framework, I can assure my hon. Friend that the ongoing dialogue for which he asks will be—[Interruption.] Conservative Members below the Gangway would do a great deal better telling us about civilisation rather than having an ongoing dialogue. That kind of relationship is needed if what my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Colne Valley rightly ask for is to be brought about.

It has been implied that the reorganisation which was being proposed disregarded the wishes of British Leyland. Lord Stokes, in the letter which he sent out on 1st May to his shareholders, made it quite clear that a high proportion of the conclusions and recommendations of the Ryder Report are not regarded as in any way controversial. Lord Stokes said that they were derived from the corporation's existing plans and from various contributions made to the team by management.

The hon. Member for Henley implied that the report did not refer to the need for rationalisation. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) pointed out, the report refers to rationalisation in various places. I refer the hon. Gentleman to paragraphs 8.6, 8.7 and 8.10.

My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-West rightly stressed the need for the implementation of the industrial democracy and industrial participation that is mentioned in the report. Mr. Harry Urwin, the Assistant General Secretary of the Transport and General Workers' Union, served on the Ryder team. He made it clear again and again in his evidence to the Trade and Industry Sub-Committee of the Expenditure Committee that the machinery proposed, while not ideal from his point of view, was the best of its type operating in any company in British industry.

12.15 a.m.

I assure my hon. Friend that the Ryder Report identifies "Progress towards industrial democracy" as the most crucial factor in improving industrial relations at British Leyland and creating the conditions for improved productivity. The Ryder report made specific proposals for new consultative arrangements between the management and the work force.

The proposals have since been discussed at a meeting between Sir Don Ryder and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and a joint committee of officials from the CSEU and shop stewards from British Leyland. At this meeting the union side expressed its keenness to begin discussions with the company about the new arrangements. An initial meeting between management and a small group of work force representatives has already taken place within the company to discuss these proposals, and further discussions are planned for the near future.

In reply to my hon. Friend's question about monitoring arrangements, I refer him to the statement made by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on 24th April.

My hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Huckfield), was, rightly, concerned about the future of Jaguar. As he said, he has been in correspondence with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, and I trust that he was satisfied with the assurance he received. I am in a position to add to the assurances given by my right hon. Friend to my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton.

The Ryder Report recommends that British Leyland Cars should be run as a single profit centre. The report also stressed the need to make the most effective use of all the design, engineering, manufacturing and marketing resources of the new car company. However, Ryder considered that this structure need not detract from the distinctive product identities of the specialist cars.

British Leyland has adopted this structure, and the new managing director for British Leyland Cars, Mr. Derek Whittaker, has been appointed. He has given a good deal of attention to finding the most efficient form of organisation and has publicly stated that he is determined that Jaguar should retain its pre-eminence and reputation for high quality and distinction. He has also said that the recently announced decisions to make Jaguar Engineering report directly to him, and to set up a "Jaguar Operating Committee" will play a vital part in maintaining the Jaguar image and reputation.

We have listened to a number of speeches from the Opposition benches tonight, and it is perfectly clear that there has emerged from those speeches no coherent policy on this issue. In the Second Reading debate, the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) and the hon. Members for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley) and Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) put-forward a logical but disastrous alternative to the Government's policy—the alternative of allowing British Leyland to slide into bankruptcy. They speak only for themselves.

The right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph) in a speech he made at the week-end appeared to agree with them when he said: All ideological expenditures must be stopped sine die: nationalisation plans for British Leyland". One must read the message carefully, because the right hon. Gentleman went on to say: The message must be got over: no more wholesale rescues. Like his hon. Friend the Member for Henley—who advised workers in Cowley to take up bucolic pursuits in the Chilterns—the right hon. Member dared not propose closing down the whole concern because it would be too serious a blow for the economy, too serious a blow to Tory prospects in marginal seats. Like the Leader of the Opposition, he wants to avoid having a policy at all. The dangers to the Opposition of not having a policy in this matter were validly pointed out by the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath) in a speech in which he warned his right hon. Friends the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East that people are no longer prepared to be the passive victims of soulless textbook theory, seeing their living standards suddenly cut or finding themselves jobless. He, at least, has had to administer these matters and he knows the problems.

Our policy, unlike that of the Opposition, is clear. It is to save British Leyland as a national asset, an asset in terms of jobs, in terms of regional policy and in terms of the balance of payments. This is a rescue operation, but it is not merely a negative operation. It is a positive attempt to fashion a new, more efficient, more productive, more prosperous concern, with maximum participation by the working force. This is not pessimistic Toryism. It is constructive Socialism.

12.20 a.m.

Mr. John Peyton (Yeovil)

There was a time during this debate when I was a little nervous that we were not going to hear from the Government. Now I am not sure that I would not have been right to be content to live with my apprehensions and that it would not have been better not to hear from the Government.

Although the Under-Secretary of State is to be congratulated on his new appointment, and to be welcomed at the Dispatch Box in it, he nevertheless deserves sympathy in having been landed with this unpleasant job tonight. The Secretary of State is to be even more congratulated on his discretion in staying away. Obviously there was very little for him to say.

Perhaps I can help the Under-Secretary of State on the question with which he was not able to deal—on the redundancies in particular. It was put by my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine). Mr. Pat Lowry, the industrial relations director of British Leyland, who is retaining his job, is even more positive. He has said: We have to persuade people, whether there is a Ryder Report or not, that the need to reduce manning levels is absolutely paramount. He went on to say that there was a danger that, with the large amounts of capital that the Government were investing, many employees would think they had arrived at Eldorado. So the Government have not changed anything very basically.

As my hon. Friend pointed out, large sums of public money are involved. We greatly regret that the Government business managers should have seen fit to push this proposal through at this late hour of the night, with only an Under-Secretary here to support it. I do not want to go into that subject at the moment, but the way the House is being treated at this time by the Government—for instance, in the proceedings on the Community Land Bill—is an outrage and a current indication of the Government's scant respect for Parliament. I know there must be limits to your patience, Mr. Thomas, and you know that there are virtually no limits to my tolerance, so, although I am entitled to make that point, I shall not press it any further.

What we are complaining of tonight is that the Government, in their handling of this matter, have been guilty of providing a deficiency of information, of a deficiency of courtesy, of a deficiency of fairness, and of a deficiency of prudence.

Mr. Heifer

The right hon. Gentleman is suffering from a deficiency of argument.

Mr. Peyton

Deficiency of argument is something on which the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller) has long been an expert. He has long been good at covering up his own deficiency of argument. If he likes to press the point tonight, he can do so, but it will be at the price of keeping his right hon. and hon. Friends out of their beds.

On my first complaint—of deficiency of information—I am informed that the Secretary of State has in his possession now a draft circular, addressed to British Leyland shareholders, which gives fuller information that is yet available to this Committee. It the hon. Under-Secretary of State can deny it, I am only too happy to give way so that he can do so now.

Mr. Kaufman

There is certainly a letter that is being sent out to shareholders of British Leyland, but my reading of it—and I have read it—[Laughter.] It is dated later this week, which is why I have not—[Interruption.] I have read the letter, and it very closely parallels the information in the Ryder Report. It also offers certain advice to shareholders. But it would be highly inappropriate for me to quote in the Chamber a document which will not be published until later this week. It would be most discourteous, unfair and wrong. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that.

Mr. Peyton

I had not thought too much of this point until the Under-Secretary rose to deal with it. The fact that the letter is dated later this week is a matter of no importance to the Committee. It would have been of interest to all of us to have a chance to see the information it contained. If it means anything at all, that letter must deal with the way in which large sums of public money are to be handled. The Government are perhaps being less than—[An HON. MEMBER: "Frank?"] I think that is the word, but I was going to use a rougher word. The Government are falling short of the standards which we are entitled to expect, in not making such a letter available before the debate.

I also complained about a deficiency of courtesy. I wonder whether the management of British Leyland has been treated with the courtesy to which, as human beings, it is entitled. My information is that it was given the expurgated version of the report at about the same time as its contents were made available to the House and the Press.

I also complained that there had been a deficiency of fairness. In this respect I wonder whether Sir Don Ryder—[An HON. MEMBER: "Lord Ryder."] Sir Don Ryder has not yet informed us what exact nomenclature he will adopt. I wonder whether he and his colleagues who have sat in judgment upon the management of British Leyland would have been happy to be treated in this way themselves. It is very hard for people who have the burdens carried by the managements of immense industrial enterprises to be condemned upon the basis of a report the full version of which they have not yet seen.

The expurgated version that we have before us was rightly described by my hon. Friend the Member for Arundel (Mr. Marshall) as containing judgments which were too shallow. It would have been better if the report had been both more blunt and more honest.

There are some very important omissions from the version of the report which is before us. Chapter 2, "Prospects for the industry", is omitted. Chapter 5, the "Product range and markets", is aslo left out, although it is true that reference is made to the prospects in the summary, in which paragraphs 5 and 6 deal with the marketing prospects for cars, paragraph 5 dealing with the home market and paragraph 6 with the overseas market. These are very short paragraphs dealing with immensely complicated matters. The Committee would be well justified in concluding that the information given to it is of the most superficial and meagre kind possible to imagine.

The management has been greatly chastised on the basis of a report it has not seen. Only the most delicate hints have been given to the fact that all is not well on the industrial relations side—and it is important that we should make this point quite clearly. Although these enormous sums of Government money will be applied to this company over a fairly long future, nothing has been discussed, nothing demanded and certainly nothing offered by the trade union side.

No arrangement has been made for monitoring the progress of the company with the backing of this huge investment. The interesting remark by the hon. Member for Coventry, North-West (Mr. Edelman), who could manage to say only that it was essential to have some sort of adequate monitoring or we should be faced with a Concorde situation, is the kind of vagueness we are living with in this quite unacceptable proposal.

The right hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), who was until recently the Secretary of State for Industry and is now the Secretary of State for Energy, has been fond of making the point that the nationalised industries are responsible to Ministers who are answerable to Parliament. Anybody who has been in this House for a number of years must know that the process of making nationalised industries accountable to Parliament is one of the thinnest and hollowest farces known to our democratic procedures. No one on either side of the Committee is entitled to take any comfort from the reflection that there will be some means from time to time of challenging Ministers as to progress. It is highly unlikely, judging by past experience, that Ministers or their Departments will be capable of exercising any effective control until matters have gone beyond the stage at which they can be put right.

We have been challenged to say what we would do. We never would have put Austin-Morris together with Leyland, Rover Triumph and the rest. That was a very bad mistake. There is now a great deal to be said for separating them. The Government have far more information than we do. I greatly regret that they should have sought the assistance of Sir Don Ryder, who has produced a report which it seems to me is superficial and thin in its recommendations and unfair to the people it criticises and which pays very little regard to the public interest and the enormous sums which are involved at a time when the country can hardly be said to be at the peak of its prosperity.

Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill:—

The Committee divided: Ayes 285, Noes 242.

Division No. 235.]	AYES	[12.34 a.m.
Allaun, Frank	Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.	McElhone, Frank
Anderson, Donald	Fitch, Alan (Wigan)	MacFarquhar, Roderick
Archer, Peter	Flannary, Martin	McGuire, Michael (Ince)
Armstrong, Ernest	Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)	Mackenzie, Gregor
Ashton, Joe	Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)	McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C)
Atkins, Ronald (Preston N)	Ford, Ben	McNamara, Kevin
Atkinson, Norman	Forrester, John	Madden, Max
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)	Magee, Bryan
Bain, Mrs Margaret	Freeson, Reginald	Mahon, Simon
Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)	Garrett, John (Norwich S)	Mallalieu, J. P. W.
Bates, Alt	Garrett, W. E. (Walisend)	Marks, Kenneth
Bean, R. E.	George, Bruce	Marquand, David
Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood	Gilbert, Dr John	Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)
Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N.)	Ginsburg, David	Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)
Bidwell, Sydney	Golding, John	Meacher, Michael
Bishop, E. S.	Gould, Bryan	Mellish, Rt Hon Robert
Blenkinsop, Arthur	Gourlay, Harry	Mikardo, Ian
Boardman, H.	Graham, Ted	Millan, Bruce
Booth, Albert	Grant, George (Morpeth)	Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)
Boothroyd, Miss Betty	Grant, John (Islington C)	Mitchell, R. C. (Solon, Itchen)
Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur	Grocott, Bruce	Molloy, William
Boyden, James (Bish Auck)	Hamilton, James (Bothwell)	Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)
Bradley, Tom	Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)	Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)
Bray, Or Jeremy	Hardy, Peter	Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)
Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)	Harper, Joseph	Moyle, Roland
Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)	Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)	Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick
Buchan, Norman	Hart, Rt Hon Judith	Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King
Buchanan, Richard	Hatton, Frank	Newens, Stanley
Butler, Mrs Joyce (Wood Green)	Hayman, Mrs Helena	Noble, Mike
Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)	Healey, Rt Hon Denis	Ogden, Eric
Campbell, Ian	Heffer, Eric S.	O'Halloran, Michael
Canavan, Dennis	Henderson, Douglas	O'Malley, Rt Hon Brian
Cant, R. B.	Horam, John	Orbach, Maurice
Carmichael, Neil	Howell, Denis (B'ham, Sm H)	Ovenden, John
Carter, Ray	Hoyle, Doug (Nelson)	Owen, Dr David
Carter-Jones, Lewis	Huckfield, Les	Padley, Walter
Cartwright, John	Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)	Palmer, Arthur
Clemitson, Ivor	Hughes, Mark (Durham)	Park, George
Cocks, Michael (Bristol S)	Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)	Parker, John
Coleman, Donald	Hughes, Roy (Newport)	Parry, Robert
Conlan, Bernard	Irvine, Rt Hon Sir A. (Edge Hill)	Pendry, Tom
Corbett, Robin	Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford)	Perry, Ernest
Cox, Thomas (Tooting)	Jackson, Colin (Brighouse)	Phipps, Dr Colin
Craigen, J. M. (Maryhill)	Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)	Prentice, Rt Hon Reg
Crawford, Douglas	Janner, Greville	Prescott, John
Crawshaw, Richard	Jay, Rt Hon Douglas	Price, C. (Lewisham W)
Crosland, Rt Hon Anthony	Jeger, Mrs Lena	Price, William (Rugby)
Cryer, Bob	Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)	Radice, Giles
Cunningham, G. (Islington S)	Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Stechford)	Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)
Dalyell, Tam	John, Brynmor	Richardson, Miss Jo
Davidson, Arthur	Johnson, James (Hull West)	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)
Davies, Bryan (Enfield N)	Johnson, Walter (Derby S)	Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)
Davies, Denzil (Llanelli)	Jones, Alec (Rhondda)	Robertson, John (Paisley)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Jones, Barry (East Flint)	Roderick, Caerwyn
Deakins, Eric	Jones, Dan (Burnley)	Rodgers, George (Chorley)
Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)	Judd, Frank	Rodgers, William (Stockton)
de Freitas, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey	Kaufman, Gerald	Rooker, J. W.
Delargy, Hugh	Kelley, Richard	Roper, John
Dell, Rt Hon Edmund	Kerr, Russell	Rose, Paul B.
Dempsey, James	Kilroy-Silk, Robert	Ross, Rt Hon W. (Kilmarnock)
Doig, Peter	Kinnock, Neil	Rowlands, Ted
Dormand, J. D.	Lamble, David	Ryman, John
Douglas-Mann, Bruce	Lamborn, Harry	Sandelson, Neville
Duffy, A. E. P.	Lamond, James	Sedgemore, Brian
Dunn, James A.	Leadbitter, Ted	Selby, Harry
Dunnett, Jack	Lee, John	Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South)
Eadie, Alex	Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton & Slough)	Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-u-Lyne)
Edelman, Maurice	Lewis, Arthur (Newham N)	Shore, Rt Hon Peter
Edge, Geoff	Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)	Silkln, Rt Hon John (Deptford)
Edwards, Robert (Wolv SE)	Lipton, Marcus	Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)
Ellis, John (Brigg & Scun)	Litterick, Tom	Sillars, James
Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)	Lomas, Kenneth	Silverman, Julius
English, Michael	Loyden, Eddie	Skinner, Dennis
Ennals, David	Luard, Evan	Small, William
Evans, Gwynfor (Carmarthen)	Lyon, Alexander (York)	Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)
Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)	Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)	Snape, Peter
Evans, John (Newton)	Mabon, Dr J. Dickson	Spearing, Nigel
Ewing, Harry (Stirling)	McCartney, Hugh	Spriggs, Leslie
Faulds, Andrew	MacCormick, Iain	Stallard, A. W.
Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)	Urwin, T. W.	Willey, Rt Hon Frederick
Stewart, Rt Hon M. (Fulham)	Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.	Williams, Alan (Swansea W)
Stott, Roger	Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)	Williams, Alan Lee (Hornch'ch)
Strang, Gavin	Walden, Brian (B'ham, L'dyw'd)	Williams, Rt Hon Shirley (Herford)
Strauss, Rt Hon G. R.	Walker, Terry (Kingswood)	Williams, W. T. (Warrington)
Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley	Ward, Michael	Wilson, Gordon (Dundee E)
Swain, Thomas	Watkins, David	Wilson, William (Coventry SE)
Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)	Watkinson, John	Wise, Mrs Audrey
Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)	Watt, Hamish	Woodall, Alec
Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)	Wcetch, Ken	Woof, Robert
Thomas, Mike (Newcastle E)	Weitzman, David	Wrigglesworth, Ian
Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)	Wollbeloved, James	Young, David (Bolton E)
Thompson, George	Welsh, Andrew
Thorne, Stan (Preston South)	White, Frank R. (Bury)	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Tierney, Sydney	White, James (Pollock)	Mr. David Stoddart and
Tinn, James	Whitehead, Phillip	Mr. Laurie Pavitt.
Tomlinson, John	Whitlock, William
Torney, Tom	Wigley, Dafydd
NOES
Adley, Robert	Fox, Marcus	Le Marchant, Spencer
Aitken, Jonathan	Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)	Lester, Jim (Beeston)
Alison, Michael	Fry, Peter	Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)
Amery, Rt Hon Julian	Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.	Lloyd, Ian
Arnold, Tom	Gardiner, George (Reigate)	Loveridge, John
Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)	Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)	Luce, Richard
Awdry, Daniel	Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)	McCrindle, Robert
Baker, Kenneth	Glyn, Dr Alan	Macfarlane, Neil
Banks, Robert	Godber, Rt Hon Joseph	MacGregor, John
Bell, Ronald	Goodhart, Philip	Macmillan, Rt Hon M. (Farnham)
Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham)	Goodhew, Victor	McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)
Berry, Hon Anthony	Goodlad, Alastair	McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)
Biffen, John	Gorst, John	Madel, David
Biggs-Davison, John	Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)	Marshall, Michael (Arundel)
Blaker, Peter	Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry)	Marten, Neil
Body, Richard	Grant, Anthony (Harrow C)	Mates, Michael
Boscawen, Hon Robert	Gray, Hamish	Mather, Carol
Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent)	Grieve, Percy	Maude, Angus
Braine, Sir Bernard	Grist, Ian	Maudling, Rt Hon Reginald
Brittan, Leon	Grylls, Michael	Mawby, Ray
Brotherton, Michael	Hall, Sir John	Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin
Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)	Hall-Davis, A. G. F.	Mayhew, Patrick
Bryan, Sir Paul	Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)	Meyer, Sir Anthony
Buchanan-Smith, Alick	Hampson, Dr Keith	Mills, Peter
Buck, Antony	Hannam, John	Miscampbell, Norman
Budgen, Nick	Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye)	Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)
Bulmer, Esmond	Harvie Anderson, Rt Hon Miss	Moate, Roger
Burden, F. A.	Hastings, Stephen	Molyneaux, James
Carlisle, Mark	Havers, Sir Michael	Monro, Hector
Carr, Rt Hon Robert	Hawkins, Paul	Montgomery, Fergus
Chalker, Mrs Lynda	Hayhoe, Barney	Moore, John (Croydon C)
Channon, Paul	Heseltine, Michael	More, Jasper (Ludlow)
Churchill, W. S.	Hicks, Robert	Morgan-Giles, Rear-Admiral
Clark, Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)	Higgins, Terence L.	Morrison, Charles (Devizes)
Clark, William (Croydon S)	Holland, Philip	Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Hooson, Emlyn	Mudd, David
Cockcroft, John	Hordern, Peter	Neave, Airey
Cooke, Robert (Bristol W)	Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey	Nelson, Anthony
Cope, John	Howell, David (Guildford)	Neubert, Michael
Cormack, Patrick	Hunt, John	Newton, Tony
Costain, A. P.	Hurd, Douglas	Nott, John
Critchley, Julian	Hutchison, Michael Clark	Onslow, Cranley
Crouch, David	Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)	Oppenheim, Mrs Sally
Crowder, F. P.	Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)	Osborn, John
Davies, Rt Hon J. (Knutsford)	James, David	Pattie, Geoffrey
Dean, Paul (N Somerset)	Jenkin, Rt Hon P. (Wanst'd & W'df'd)	Percival, Ian
Dodsworth, Geoffrey	Jessel, Toby	Peyton, Rt Hon John
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James	Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)	Pink, R. Bonner
Drayson, Burnaby	Jones, Arthur (Daventry)	Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch
du Cann, Rt Hon Edward	Jopling, Michael	Prior, Rt Hon James
Eden, Rt Hon Sir John	Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith	Pym. Rt Hon Francis
Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)	Kaberry, Sir Donald	Raison, Timothy
Elliott, Sir William	Kershaw, Anthony	Rathbone, Tim
Eyre, Reginald	Kimball, Marcus	Rawlinson, Rt Hon Sir Peter
Fairbairn, Nicholas	King, Evelyn (South Dorset)	Rees, Peter (Dover & Deal)
Fairgrieve, Russell	King, Tom (Bridgwater)	Rees-Davies, W. R.
Farr, John	Kitson, Sir Timothy	Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)
Fell, Anthony	Knight, Mrs Jill	Renton, Tim (Mid-Sussex)
Finsberg, Geoffrey	Knox, David	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon
Fisher, Sir Nigel	Lamont, Norman	Ridley, Hon Nicholas
Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N)	Lane, David	Ridsdale, Julian
Fletcher-Cooke, Charles	Langford-Holt, Sir John	Rifkind, Malcolm
Fookes, Miss Janet	Lawrence, Ivan	Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey
Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)	Lawson, Nigel	Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)

Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)	Sproat, Iain	Tugendhat, Christopher
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)	Stainton, Keith	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)	Stanbrook, Ivor	Vaughan, Dr Gerard
Royle, Sir Anthony	Stanley, John	Viggers, Peter
St. John-Stevas, Norman	Steel, David (Roxburgh)	Wainwright, Richard (Colne V)
Scott, Nicholas	Steen, Anthony (Wavertree)	Wakeham, John
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)	Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)	Wall, Patrick
Shelton, William (Streatham)	Stokes, John	Walters, Dennis
Shepherd, Colin	Stradling Thomas, J.	Warren, Kenneth
Shersby, Michael	Tapsell, Peter	Weatherill, Bernard
Silvester, Fred	Taylor, R. (Croydon NW)	Wells, John
Skeet, T. H. H.	Taylor, Teddy (Cathcart)	Whitelaw, Rt Hon William
Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)	Tebbit, Norman	Wiggin, Jerry
Smith, Dudley (Warwick)	Temple-Morris, Peter	Young, Sir G. (Ealing, Acton)
Speed, Keith	Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret
Spence, John	Thomas, Rt Hon P. (Hendon S)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES:
Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)	Townsend, Cyril D.	Mr. Adam Butler and
Spicer, Michael (S Worcester)	Trotter, Neville	Mr. Cecil Parkinson.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Clause 1 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Bill reported, without amendment.

Motion made, and Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—

The House divided: Ayes 284, Noes 239.

Division No. 236.]	AYES	[12.50 a.m.
Allaun, Frank	Deakins, Eric	Heifer, Eric S.
Anderson, Donald	Dean, Joseph (Leeds West)	Henderson, Douglas
Archer, Peter	de Freitas, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey	Horam, John
Armstrong, Ernest	Delargy, Hugh	Howell, Denis (B'ham, Sm H)
Ashton, Joe	Dell, Rt Hon Edmund	Hoyle, Doug (Nelson)
Atkins, Ronald (Preston N)	Dempsey, James	Huckfield, Les
Atkinson, Norman	Doig, Peter	Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)
Bagier, Gordon A. T.	Dormand, J. D.	Hughes, Mark (Durham)
Bain, Mrs Margaret	Douglas-Mann, Bruce	Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)
Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)	Duffy, A. E. P.	Hughes, Roy (Newport)
Bates, Alf	Dunn, James A.	Irvine, Rt Hon Sir A. (Edge Hili)
Bean, R. E.	Dunnett, Jack	Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford)
Benn, Rt Hon Anthony Wedgwood	Eadie, Alex	Jackson, Colin (Brighouse)
Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N.)	Edelman, Maurice	Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)
Bidwell, Sydney	Edge, Geoff	Janner, Greville
Bishop, E. S.	Edwards, Robert (Wolv SE)	Jay, Rt Hon Douglas
Blenkinsop, Arthur	Ellis, Tom (Wrexham)	Jeger, Mrs Lena
Boardman, H.	English, Michael	Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)
Booth, Albert	Ennals, David	Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Slechford)
Bottomley, Rt Hon Arthur	Evans, Gwynfor (Carmarthen)	John, Brynmor
Boyden, James (Bish Auck)	Evans, Ioan (Aberdare)	Johnson, James (Hull West)
Bradley, Tom	Evans, John (Newton)	Johnson, Walter (Derby S)
Bray, Dr Jeremy	Ewing, Harry (Stirling)	Jones, Alec (Rhondda)
Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)	Faulds, Andrew	Jones, Barry (East Flint)
Brown, Ronald (Hackney S)	Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.	Jones, Dan (Burnley)
Buchan, Norman	Fitch, Alan (Wigan)	Judd, Frank
Buchanan, Richard	Flannery, Martin	Kaufman, Gerald
Butler, Mrs Joyce (Wood Green)	Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)	Kelley, Richard
Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)	Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)	Kerr, Russell
Campbell, Ian	Ford, Ben	Kilroy-Silk, Robert
Canavan, Dennis	Forrester, John	Kinnock, Neil
Cant, R B.	Fowler, Gerald (The Wrekin)	Lambie, David
Carmichael, Neil	Freeson, Reginald	Lamborn, Harry
Carter, Ray	Garrett, John (Norwich S)	Lamond, James
Carter-Jones, Lewis	Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)	Leaobitter, Ted
Cartwright, John	George, Bruce	Lee, John
Clemitson, Ivor	Gilbert, Dr John	Lestor, Miss Joan (Eton & Slough)
Cocks, Michael (Bristol S)	Ginsburg, David	Lewis, Arthur (Newham N)
Coleman, Donald	Golding, John	Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)
Conlan, Bernard	Gould, Bryan	Lipton, Marcus
Corbett, Robin	Gourlay, Harry	Litterick, Tom
Cox, Thomas (Tooting)	Grahamm, Ted	Lomas, Kenneth
Craigen, J. M. (Maryhill)	Grant, John (Islington C)	Loyden, Eddie
Crawford, Douglas	Grocott, Bruce	Luard, Evan
Crawshaw, Richard	Hamilton, James (Bothwell)	Lyon, Alexander (York)
Crosland, Rt Hon Anthony	Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)	Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)
Cryer, Bob	Hardy, Peter	Mabon, Dr J. Dickson
Cunningham, G. (Islington S)	Harper, Joseph	McCartney, Hugh
Dalyell, Tam	Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)	MacCormick, Iain
Davidson, Arthur	Hart, Rt Hon Judith	McElhone, Frank
Davies, Bryan (Enfield N)	Hatton, Frank	MacFarquhar, Roderick
Davies Denzil (Llanelli)	Hayman, Mrs Helene	McGuire, Michael (Ince)
Davies, Ifor (Gower)	Healey, Rt Hon Denis	Mackenzie, Gregor
McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C)	Price, William (Rugby)	Thomas, Jeffrey (Abertillery)
McNamara, Kevin	Radice, Giles	Thomas, Mike (Newcastle E)
Madden, Max	Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)	Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)
Magee, Bryan	Richardson, Miss Jo	Thompson, George
Mahon, Simon	Roberts, Albert (Normanton)	Thorne, Stan (Preston South)
Mallalieu, J. P. W.	Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)	Tierney, Sydney
Marks, Kenneth	Robertson, John (Paisley)	Tinn, James
Marquand, David	Roderick, Caerwyn	Tomlinson, John
Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)	Rodgers, George (Chorley)	Torney, Tom
Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)	Rodgers, William (Stockton)	Urwin, T. W.
Meacher, Michael	Rooker, J. W.	Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.
Mellish, Rt Hon Robert	Roper, John	Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)
Mikardo, Ian	Rose, Paul B.	Walden, Brian (B'ham, L'dyw'd)
Millan, Bruce	Ross, Rt Hon W. (Kilmarnock)	Walker, Terry (Kingswood)
Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)	Rowlands, Ted	Ward, Michael
Mitchell, R. C. (Soton, Itchen)	Ryman, John	Watkins, David
Molloy, William	Sandelson, Neville	Watkinson, John
Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)	Sedgemore, Brian	Watt, Hamish
Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)	Selby, Harry	Weetch, Ken
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)	Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South)	Weitzman, David
Moyle, Roland	Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-u-Lyne)	Wellbeloved, James
Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick	Shore, Rt Hon Peter	Welsh, Andrew
Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King	Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)	White, Frank R. (Bury)
Newens, Stanley	Silkln, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)	White, James (Pollock)
Noble, Mike	Sillars, James	Whitehead, Phillip
Ogden, Eric	Silverman, Julius	Whitlock, William
O'Halloran, Michael	Skinner, Dennis	Wigley, Dafydd
O'Malley, Rt Hon Brian	Small, William	Willey, Rt Hon Frederick
Orbach, Maurice	Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)	Williams, Alan (Swansea W)
Ovenden, John	Snape, Peter	Williams, Alan Lee (Hornch'ch)
Owen, Dr David	Spearing, Nigel	Williams, Rt Hon Shirley (Hertford)
Padley, Walter	Spriggs, Leslie	Williams, W. T. (Warrington)
Palmer, Arthur	Stallard, A. W.	Wilson, Gordon (Dundee E)
Park, George	Stewart, Donald (Western Isles)	Wilson, William (Coventry SE)
Parker, John	Stewart, Rt Hon M. (Fulham)	Wise, Mrs Audrey
Parry, Robert	Stoddart, David	Woodall, Alec
Pavitt, Laurie	Stott, Roger	Woof, Robert
Pendry, Tom	Strang, Gavin	Wrigglesworth, Ian
Perry, Ernest	Strauss, Rt Hon G. R.	Young, David (Bolton E)
Phipps, Dr Colin	Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg	Swain, Thomas	TELLERS FOR THE AYES:
Prescott, John	Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)	Miss Betty Boothroyd and
Price, C. (Lewisham W)	Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)	Mr. John Ellis.
NOES
Adley, Robert	Cormack, Patrick	Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry)
Aitken, Jonathan	Costain, A. P.	Grant, Anthony (Harrow C)
Alison, Michael	Crltchley, Julian	Gray, Hamish
Amery, Rt Hon Julian	Crouch, David	Grieve, Percy
Arnold, Tom	Crowder, F. P.	Grist, Ian
Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)	Davies, Rt Hon J. (Knutsford)	Grylls, Michael
Awdry, Daniel	Dean, Paul (N Somerset)	Hall, Sir John
Baker, Kenneth	Dodsworth, Geoffrey	Hall-Davis, A. G. F.
Banks, Robert	Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James	Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)
Bell, Ronald	Drayson, Burnaby	Hampson, Dr Keith
Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham)	du Cann, Rt Hon Edward	Hannam, John
Berry, Hon Anthony	Eden, Rt Hon Sir John	Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye)
Biffen, John	Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)	Harvie Anderson, Rt Hon Miss
Biggs-Davison, John	Elliott, Sir William	Hastings, Stephen
Blaker, Peter	Eyre, Reginald	Havers, Sir Michael
Body, Richard	Fairbairn, Nicholas	Hawkins, Paul
Boscawen, Hon Robert	Fairgrieve, Russell	Hayhoe, Barney
Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent)	Farr, John	Heseltine, Michael
Braine, Sir Bernard	Fell, Anthony	Hicks, Robert
Brittan, Leon	Finsberg, Geoffrey	Higgins, Terence L.
Brotherton, Michael	Fisher, Sir Nigel	Holland, Philip
Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)	Fletcher, Alex (Edinburgh N)	Hooson, Emlyn
Bryan, Sir Paul	Fletcher-Cooke, Charles	Hordern, Peter
Buchanan-Smith, Alick	Fookes, Miss Janet	Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey
Buck, Antony	Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)	Howell, David (Guildford)
Budgen, Nick	Fox, Marcus	Hunt, John
Bulmer, Esmond	Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)	Hurd, Douglas
Burden, F. A.	Fry, Peter	Hutchison, Michael Clark
Carlisle, Mark	Galbraith, Hon. T. G. D.	Irvine, Bryant Godman (Rye)
Carr, Rt Hon Robert	Gardiner, George (Reigate)	James, David
Chalker, Mrs Lynda	Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)	Jenkin, Rt Hon P. (Wanst'd & W'df'd)
Channon, Paul	Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)	Jessel, Toby
Churchill, W. S.	Glyn, Dr Alan	Johnson Smith, G. (E. Grinstead)
Clark, Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)	Godber, Rt Hon Joseph	Jones, Arthur (Daventry)
Clark, William (Croydon S)	Goodhart, Philip	Jopling, Michael
Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)	Goodhew, Victor	Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith
Cockcroft, John	Goodlad, Alastair	Kaberry, Sir Donald
Cooke, Robert (Bristol W)	Gorst, John	Kershaw, Anthony
Cope, John	Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)	Kimball, Marcus

Silvester, Fred	Morgan-Giles, Rear-Admiral	Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)
King, Evelyn (South Dorset)	Morrison, Charles (Devizes)	Smith, Dudley (Warwick)
King, Tom (Bridgwater)	Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)	Speed, Keith
Kitson, Sir Timothy	Mudd, David	Spence, John
Knight, Mrs Jill	Neave, Airey	Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)
Knox, David	Nelson, Anthony	Spicer, Michael (S Worcester)
Lamont, Norman	Neubert, Michael	Sproat, Iain
Lane, David	Newton, Tony	Stainton, Keith
Langford-Holt, Sir John	Nott, John	Stanbrook, Ivor
Lawrence, Ivan	Onslow, Cranley	Stanley, John
Lawson, Nigel	Oppenheim, Mrs Sally	Steel, David (Roxburgh)
Le Marchant, Spencer	Osborn, John	Steen, Anthony (Wavertree)
Lester, Jim (Beeston)	Pattie, Geoffrey	Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)
Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)	Percival, Ian	Stokes, John
Lloyd, Ian	Peyton, Rt Hon John	Stradling Thomas, J.
Loveridge, John	Pink, R. Bonner	Tapsell, Peter
Luce, Richard	Powell, Rt Hon J. Enoch	Taylor, R. (Croydon NW)
McCrindle, Robert	Prior, Rt Hon James	Taylor, Teddy (Cathcart)
Macfarlane, Neil	Pym, Rt Hon Francis	Tebbit, Norman
MacGregor, John	Raison, Timothy	Temple-Morris, Peter
Macmillan, Rt Hon M. (Farnham)	Rathbone, Tim	Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret
McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)	Rawlinson, Rt Hon Sir Peter	Thomas, Rt Hon P. (Hendon S)
McNalr-Wilson, P. (New Forest)	Rees, Peter (Dover & Deal)	Townsend, Cyril D.
Madel, David	Rees-Davies, W. R.	Trotter, Neville
Marshall, Michael (Arundel)	Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)	Tugendhat, Christopher
Marten, Neil	Renton, Tim (Mid-Sussex)	van Straubenzee, W. R.
Mates, Michael	Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon	Vaughan, Dr Gerard
Mather, Carol	Ridley, Hon Nicholas	Viggers, Peter
Maude, Angus	Ridsdale, Julian	Wainwright, Richard (Coine V)
Mawby, Ray	Rifkind, Malcolm	Wakeham, John
Maxwell-Hysiop, Robin	Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey	Wall, Patrick
Mayhew, Patrick	Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)	Walters, Dennis
Meyer, Sir Anthony	Rodgers, Sir John (Sevenoaks)	Warren, Kenneth
Mills, Peter	Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)	Weatherill, Bernard
Miscampbell, Norman	Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)	Wells, John
Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)	Royle, Sir Anthony	Whitelaw, Rt Hon William
Moate, Roger	St. John-Stevas, Norman	Wiggin, Jerry
Molyneaux, James	Scott, Nicholas	Young, Sir G. (Ealing, Acton)
Monro, Hector	Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)
Montgomery, Fergus	Shelton, William (Streatharn)	TELLERS FOR THE NOES.
Moore, John (Croydon C)	Shepherd, Colin	Mr. Adam Butler and
More, Jasper (Ludlow)	Shersby, Michael	Mr. Cecil Parkinson.
	Skeet, T. H. H.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Bill read the Third time and passed.