NORTHERN IRELAND (APPROPRIATION)

HC Deb 01 July 1977 vol 934 cc777-841

12.24 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. James A. Dunn)

I beg to move, That the Appropriation (No. 2) (Northern Ireland) Order 1977, a draft of which was laid before the House on 11th May, be approved. This order is being made under paragraph I of Schedule 1 to the Northern Ireland Act 1974. The main purpose of the order is to authorise the issue and appropriation out of the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund of the balance of the main Estimates provision for 1977–78, details of which are set out in the main Estimates volume and in the revised Estimate. Right hon. and hon. Members will recall that a portion of the sums needed for 1977–78 has already been appropriated by the Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order 1977, which was approved by the House on 10th March.

The present order also provides for the issue and appropriation of sums arising out of excess Votes for the financial year 1975–76. I shall comment on those later. The total of the main and revised Estimates provision for 1977–78, including the sum already voted on account, is £1,144 million, compared with a total Estimates provision, including supplementaries, of £1,148 million in 1976–77.

Of the £1,144 million, £854 million is classified as public expenditure for the annual White Paper purposes, with the remainder comprising such items as transfers to other areas of the public sector, transactions within Government and miscellaneous financial transactions. The public expenditure element of the Estimates is £13 million above the public expenditure forecast for 1977–78 set out in Command Paper 6721, "Public Expenditure to 1980–81." This excess is due primarily to the recent decision to extend the meat industry employment subsidy until 30th June 1977, and thereby requiring further provision of £10 million in a revised Estimate for Class I, Vote 3. Off-setting savings will be made elsewhere in the public expenditure totals. In addition, the Estimates include £7 million not included in the Public Expenditure Survey because it will be returned to Northern Ireland in due course as tax clawback.

I shall draw attention here only to the main increases and decreases in expenditure over 1976–77 appearing in the main Estimates. I shall, however, do my best to reply to any questions inclusive of any other matters contained in the order which right hon. and hon. Members may wish to raise in the debate.

In Class II, Vote 1 dealing with industrial support and regeneration, there is a decrease of £8 million compared with the 1976–77 provision. This is mainly due to reductions of £4 million for provision of land and buildings and £16 million in assistance payable to the shipbuilding industry, partly offset by an increase of £12 million for grants for the establishment and initial operation or development of industrial undertakings. Class II, Vote 3—general support to industry—shows a decrease in the 1977–78 provision, £28 million against £35 million in 1976–77. This is due to a reduction in provision for capital investment grants for industrial development.

Under Class II, Vote 4, £31 million was paid in 1976–77 to Northern Ireland electricity and gas undertakings in respect of compensation for loss of revenue incurred in 1975–76 due to compliance with the national policy on price restraint. The date of 31st March 1976 marked the end of the period for which such compensation was payable. The 1977–78 estimate includes £53,000 to provide for late claims for compensation expected from certain gas undertakings. The House will recall that a Written Answer on 7th April 1977 stated that the Government were proposing to make a grant to eliminate the Northern Ireland electricity services deficit that had accrued to 31st March 1977 and that proposals for the capital restructuring of the NIES were being examined intensively. The order does not reflect the possible impact of this situation.

Class V, Vote 1 —housing services— makes provision for, among other things, payments to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. These payments have previously taken the form of various grants and subsidies for particular purposes. The Housing Finance (Northern Ireland) Order 1977, which came into operation on 1st April 1977, provides for the payment of a single housing grant based on the difference between the Executive's revenue income and expenditure. Expenditure on grants for the renovation of private sector dwellings is also recouped to the Housing Executive. Total payments to the Housing Executive in 1977–78 are estimated at £76 million. This is some £13 million higher than the previous year's figure, but this provision includes £18 million in respect of the balance of moneys due at 31st March 1977.

In Class VIII, Vote 1—schools—there is an increase of £6 million, which is mainly due to an Increase of 650 in the number of teachers employed bringing the total number of teachers to 19,000 from September 1977. This will have the effect of reducing the pupil-teacher ratio in line with United Kingdom standards and of helping to minimise unemployment in the teaching profession.

In Class X, Vote 2—non-contributory benefits—there is an increase of £6 million due to increased rates of benefit from November 1977 made on the basis of parity with Great Britain. Class X, Vote 3, shows an increase of £11 million due to the introduction of child benefit with effect from 4th April 1977 and the full year's effect of increased rates of family income supplement payable from 20th July 1976. These, too, are parity items.

These are the only points in the main Estimates to which I wish to draw attention. I turn now to the excess Vote for 1975–76. There were excesses amounting to £3.5 million on three Votes of the Northern Ireland Estimates for that year —namely, Class II, Vote 4, public works and buildings, Class IV, Vote 4, teachers' superannuation and Class IX, Vote 2, employment and training services. The reasons for the excesses are set out in the statement of excesses, which was placed in the Library along with copies of the main Estimates volume and the revised Estimate. The Public Accounts Committee has considered the excess Votes and recommended that the necessary sums should be made available.

I have drawn the attention of right hon. and hon. Members to what I consider to be the most significant features of the order before the House. I commend the order to the House.

12.35 p.m.

Mr. Airey Neave (Abingdon)

We agree to the order and the substantial sums necessary for the purposes that the Under-Secretary of State has outlined. I want to raise only one or two issues.

My first question relates to Class II. On two or three occasions when these orders have come before the House I have raised matters connected with shipbuilding. There are one or two further points that I wish to raise, because there has been an announcement concerning Harland and Wolff since the last order was debated and an answer given to a Written Question of 27th April. As the House well remembers, an order was then announced for two liquefied petroleum gas carriers worth £60 million to £70 million from a leasing company for long-term charter to Shell. The Secretary of State and the House welcomed the order and announced that it would provide work for 2,000 men for two years.

I mentioned the Quigley Report when we debated another appropriation order on 9th December 1976 and I mentioned it last night. In page 52 it concerns itself with the future of the shipyard. I called for a frank assessment of the realities and asked what progress had been made in diversification. Although we all welcome the announcement made by the Secretary of State on 23rd April, we have often pointed out the need to secure the long-term future and prosperity of the shipyard. I do not think that anyone would suggest that these orders and the Government's success in obtaining them will necessarily provide long-term stability for the industry. There will be further difficulties unless the experienced and resourceful staff and employees at Harland and Wolff can be set to work on a more diverse range of enterprises. The Government referred last summer, somewhat obliquely, to various plans and possibilities, but when the new Economic Council that we discussed last night starts work —the sooner it begins, the better, in our view—could there not be more public discussion of the whole issue?

We are glad to learn that there is a more buoyant spirit among the smaller companies in Northern Ireland, but the problems of large companies, such as Harland and Wolff, must be constantly kept to the forefront. That is important from a financial point of view in the terms that the hon. Gentleman has explained. I hope that he will feel that that is an appropriate matter on which to comment.

My next point—it is the only other one I wish to raise—concerns what the Minister said about Class VIII, dealing with education and school building. The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office made his statement of secondary education on 15th June. We commented that it should have been made to Parliament, but I do not want to go over that ground again. If ever there was an important statement of Government policy, it was when the Minister of State, Lord Melchett, made his statement to a Press conference. I hope that that will not become a habit with the Minister of State or with any other Minister. An enormously important issue was raised in view of the fairly continuous debate that has been going on in Northern Ireland about education for some months past, and the contributions made by various interests in commenting on the Cowan Report, which was published last year.

Consideration should be given, in consultation with Northern Ireland Members, to holding a full debate in the House or in the Northern Ireland Committee on education in Northern Ireland, and particularly on secondary education. Lord Melchett referred to some matters of expenditure which I want to raise. First, he said: There is broad agreement that the feasibility study … is not an acceptable basis on which to reorganise secondary education in Northern Ireland. It appears that the Government have bowed to local feeling. The cost of reorganisation suggested in the Cowan Report was very low—£3¼ million. That figure seems to be ludicrously low. We pointed out last year that it would be quite insufficient, and the Government have now admitted as much.

No new figures have been given, although Lord Melchett's Press statement of 15th June clearly indicated that the cost would be met out of resources within the financial allocation that was forecast. In view of the change of heart, I should like some explanation. Presumably the funds being granted to the Department of Education for expenditure on schools will cover the cost of any comprehensive reorganisation requested, if it is requested, by local communities during the current financial year.

But what will be the position if no comprehensive reorganisation takes place? To what extent has this matter affected the Vote to which the Under-Secretary has referred? Perhaps we can look forward to the Department refunding that part of its grant designated for comprehensive schemes which remains unspent. We note that the schools grant is now £10 million higher than it was a year ago. Some clarification of this matter is needed.

Lord Melchett said: In present economic conditions it is necessary to consider availability of resources in the context of existing levels of expenditure, and without the guarantee of specific additional finance. By way of illustration of this, in 1976–77 about £17 million was spent on school building of which some £11 million was spent on secondary schools. If, for example, only half of this sum were allocated each year to building required for the introduction of a comprehensive system, this would result in some £30 million being available over a period of five years. These figures are only quoted to demonstrate that an effective programme of restructuring can be commenced within the limits of the existing public expenditure allocation. Has the grant been increased with comprehensive schooling in mind? We know that the Government are devoted to the principle of comprehensive schooling. Do they propose to go back to it at some stage? Can the Under-Secrctary of State give some assurance on that point?

Various inquiries and working parties have been set up over the last few years under the present Government. The number seems to be increasing. Perhaps that matter could be included in future as a separate item under Class VIII. We should like to know what it costs to carry out the present considerable number of inquiries into education.

We thank the Under-Secretary of State for is useful account of the different items in the order. However, we should like in the near future to have a full debate on secondary education.

12.43 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)

This is one of Northern Ireland's big days, when the great bulk of public expenditure in Northern Ireland comes before the House for consideration. It would be easy to draw mistaken and damaging deductions from the fact that there is a relatively sparse attendance in the Chamber. After all, partly, although not entirely, the situation corresponds with that of the debate on the Consolidated Fund Bills for the United Kingdom. I shall be borne out when I say that, even at this moment, the attendance in the Chamber is probably higher than the average attendance at the debates on United Kingdom Consolidated Fund Bills.

There is perhaps an undesirable tendency—and I think that the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) occasionally gives way to the temptation—to draw attention to the sparsity of attendance at some Northern Ireland debates and to draw the false deduction that neither does the Province want to be associated with the rest of the United Kingdom nor does the rest of the United Kingdom want to be associated with the Province. We should apply a very simple test and inquire of the parliamentary attendance and parliamentary time devoted in a year to any other part of the United Kingdom which represents one-thirtieth of the whole.

Therefore, we need not offer any apology for performing our functions of examining the proposals for appropriating this expenditure in the circumstances of this Friday sitting.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison (Epping Forest)

Is it not a fact that the attendance of English and Northern Ireland Members in the House when Welsh and Scottish business is being discussed is very sparse?

Mr. Powell

Yes, quite so. I could have elaborated and reinforced my argument. I simply did not wish to be wounding to hon. Members from other parts of the United Kingdom who might read reports of the proceedings of today's sitting or to cause offence in other parts of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman's observation is well founded, and my argument will be further strengthened when, in due course, our representation is proportionately the same as that enjoyed, for example, by Scotland.

Mr. Gerard Fitt (Belfast, West) rose—

Mr. Powell

I was referring to the representation of the Province as a whole, in which no doubt the hon. Member's party will share, so that we shall have the pleasure of an alternation, if not a variation, in the voices of those speaking in the Chamber on behalf of his party. He must find it a burden to be his party's sole spokesman, and, although we enjoy hearing the same speech over and over again in the same tones, the prospect of variety will no doubt be one of the considerations of which the Speaker's Conference will take account. [Interruption.] I appeal almost for your protection, Mr. Deputy Speaker, against being drawn away from the financial matters which are the proper subject of our debate.

The financial duties of the House presented with an appropriation order fall into two classes. They are the two ways in which the control of the House over public expenditure is exercised in debate. The first is the more general one, deriving from the principle of grievance before supply, which enables us to ventilate matters of policy, which the hon. Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) has done, and this function will be undertaken today by my hon. Friends.

I intend to restrict my remarks to the narrower question of the control of the propriety and appropriateness of public expenditure. It is wrong that we should always devote to discussions of policy the time available for the examination of public expenditure when much of our duty is concerned with policing, and supervising the policing, of the propriety of the expenditure and the accounting for it. In this respect we labour under some disadvantages under the present dispensation compared with hon. Members from the rest of the Kingdom.

The elements of survey of public expenditure are three: the forward view of the public expenditure White Paper, in this case Cmnd. 6721; the Estimates for the current financial year, which we have before us; and, eventually, the appropriation accounts for the corresponding financial year with the report on those by the Comptroller and Auditor General, the observations on that report by the Public Accounts Committee, and, eventually, the comments of the Northern Ireland Office on those documents. All those together constitute the weaponry of the House of Commons in the control of public expenditure in the narrower sense of the term.

Of course, we participate with other hon. Members in the debates that take place on the public expenditure White Paper, but it is not altogether easy to relate those figures to the figures with which we are concerned in the Estimates. A number of matters make it very difficult precisely to relate the increases and reductions shown in section 15 of Part 2 of Cmnd. 6721 to the increases and reductions to which the Under-Secretary was referring this morning. Even with the use of the co-ordination tables prefaced to the volume of Estimates, it would still puzzle the wisest of heads always to find his way round and to discover how the increases and reductions, which are the matters of policy in the public expenditure White Papers, are partially reflected in the Estimates on which this order is based.

One of the big factors, of course, is that the capital expenditure financed by borrowing does not feature in the Estimates, and there are many other exclusions. Therefore, the business of relating policy to the Estimates is a difficult one. That is perhaps irremediable, but I hope that a second matter may prove remediable, and I would be grateful if the Under-Secretary and the Northern Ireland Department would address their minds to it—that is, the fact that the appropriation accounts are classified quite differently from the Estimates.

I do not understand why it should be that we receive, study and discuss the Estimates for 1977–78 in one form—in the Yellow Book, so to speak—but then, when the year has elapsed and we receive the accounts, the accounts are organised in a quite different classification. I say this particularly because much is to be learned about the Estimates for the current year from the experience of previous years and the comments on that experience with which we are provided. I do not think that our task in drawing those lessons should be made more difficult than it will be in any case by the present difference of classification. I should be glad to hear either now or subsequently—I assure the Under-Secretary that that qualification applies also to the other questions that I shall put to him—why this difference of classification exists and whether it can and will be removed.

We have before us today, in respect of the most recent past experience—the appropriation accounts for 1975–76—the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern Ireland, which was ordered by the House to be printed last December. I intend to devote most of my speech to that report. I make no apology for that, because I think that it is only right that, when the main function of ensuring that public expenditure in Northern Ireland is properly controlled and accounted for is being exercised by the expert and devoted staff under the Comptroller and Auditor General, the records of the House should bear the imprint of some of the comments that have been made and some of the events and experience that the Comptroller and Auditor-General has established.

But we should dearly like to know what the Public Accounts Committee of this House thought about the appropriation accounts and about the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General. Here I have a complaint to make which I hope will be noted both by the Government and, if I may say so, by the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann). The right hon. Gentleman is very anxious —and properly anxious, as Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee—that the House should exploit the work of the Committee to the maximum, to which I say "Hear, hear" and "amen".

However, the right hon. Gentleman has so arranged his business in this Session that the report which relates to these appropriation accounts and this report of the Comptroller and Auditor General will not this year be ordered to be printed, like last year's, in the month of June.

Last year it was the Fourth Report, ordered to be printed on 28th June. This year it is to be only the Seventh Report, which may be ordered to be printed in the middle of July. So the Public Accounts Committee, in arranging its work, has not taken the steps which would make it possible for this debate on the Northern Ireland appropriation order to take account of that Committee's work. I say to the right hon. Member for Taunton in that respect "Physician, heal thyself. If you want your Committee's reports debated in the House, you should have them available as far as possible for the debate in which account can be taken of them."

The Government cannot entirely escape from some responsibility. Last year the corresponding debate to this one took place three weeks later. By co-operation between the Government and the Public Accounts Committee—a co-operation that has been absent this year—with the Public Accounts Committee bringing its report on the Northern Ireland accounts forward and the Government putting on this debate as reasonably late in July as possible, so that that report could be available we ought in future to get a better fix—if I may use that gunnery expression —on the subject matter of this debate. It is for that reason that I intend to draw attention to some of the major findings of the Comptroller and Auditor-General on the appropriation accounts. Those findings have entire relevance to the document before us, even without benefit of the comments of the Public Accounts Committee.

There is a respect in which Northern Ireland still is less well covered than the rest of the United Kingdom by the Public Accounts Committee. Perhaps I can best denote that by using the words of the Comptroller and Auditor General himself, who said: since the reorganisation of local services here —by which he means Northern Ireland— a greatly increased proportion of public money is disbursed directly by statutory bodies whose accounts, even in summarised form, are not laid at Westminster. He went on: the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland announced that he intended to take the action required to meet the Committee's wish —that those accounts should be subject to that Committee's scrutiny.

We have complaint enough that those statutory bodies are not subject to democratic control, and we wish to see, before very long, constitutional changes which in one way or another will restore democracy to areas of public administration where it exists in Great Britain but does not exist in Northern Ireland. But even before that we hope that steps will be taken—I hope that the Minister can say that they have been taken—so that, at any rate, the accounts and the financial accountability of these statutory bodies will be dealt with by the Public Accounts Committee in the way that they would be if these were statutory bodies operating in the rest of the United Kingdom. This is something which the Secretary of State has indicated would be dealt with. We should be glad to know when this will happen.

I now come to the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, and I re-emphasise that the work of the Exchequer and Audit Department is the real guts of financial control. We in this House can talk as much as we like about our responsibility for public money, and about our care for the public purse, but it is the work done by the Exchequer and Audit Department which is the essence of that control.

Our function is to support that work and to ensure that the criticisms which it throws up publicly—which are only the tip of the iceberg compared with the revelations that arise day by day throughout the year—do not escape the notice of this House and are brought forcibly to the attention of Ministers and the public. That is partly what this debate is about.

I come first to the comments of the Comptroller and Auditor General on the subject of education, which will be found in Paragraphs 35 to 37 of his report. He has three strictures there to make, with two of which I would associate myself. He points out that no proper inventory is kept by the education boards and that therefore the requirement for new or additional equipment cannot be properly assessed. That is a serious criticism. I hope that we shall hear from the Government, either this afternoon or in due course, what their answer is to that criticism.

I hope they will equally be able to say that there has been a remedy to the second failure to which the Comptroller and Auditor General drew attention in the work of the education boards—their failure periodically to review the sites which the boards hold in order that any rendered unsuitable or unnecessary by changing circumstances might be disposed of without delay". It is mostly the defence departments that are brought up in this House as dogs in the manger, sitting upon land and property which could be made better use of by the private citizen. That is not a criticism which is restricted to the defence departments and it is depressing to learn that the education boards at present are not even required to report that they have reviewed the sites which they hold so as to enable them to identify those that they ought to be able to dispose of.

In recent discussions with Department officials and, indeed, with the Minister of State, I have turned up more than one example where land is being held potentially fallow or arid because it might be suitable one day for a plan which is not going to be carried out and ought not to be carried out. I commend to the Depart- ment those two pieces of discipline for the education boards—proper inventorisation and proper review of sites.

I do not commend the third recommendation, which is that more use should be made by the Department of unit costs in criticising and examining the estimates put forward by the boards. My reason is my own experience 15 years ago as Minister of Health. Coming to the Department fresh, with all the illusions of those without experience, it seemed to me self-evident that splendid savings could be made and all kinds of problems could be thrown up for examination and solution by unit costs. I felt that we could have a unit-cost examination right throughout the National Health Service —unit costs for this, that and the other —and then we could apply this all round to the estimates and ask the question "Why are your unit costs in this area above the average?".

I worked hard at it. Volumes were produced—I hesitate to think at what public expense—analysing unit expenditure down to decimal points, and then I attempted to apply them. I discovered that the answer was a lemon. The attempt to apply unit costs in England, let alone over the United Kingdom as a whole— I believe that in this respect the Department is right—is foredoomed to futility. It is only by looking at the circumstances of a particular body, at the problems that it is encountering, and asking questions about expenditure in those circumstances that one gets rational administration and true economy. I hope that it will be some consolation to the boards to know that I do not associate myself with the third stricture of the Comptroller and Auditor General.

I come to the Fishery Harbours Authoority. It is a subject with which, no doubt, my hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry (Mr. Ross) will be dealing later. If hon. Members have studied this report they must have been shocked to know that in breach of the law no statements of accounts have been submitted by the Fishery Harbours Authority since its establishment in 1973. I do not know whether that is still the case, but it was the case last December. That is an actual breach of the statutory obligations.

I do not know whether the reason for its default is not even more startling. The Authority has not yet been told how much of the payments made to it by the Department were grants or loans. No loan agreements have been made and no terms and conditions have been arranged. "As a result", asks the Fishery Harbours Authority, "how can we submit accounts when we do not know whether we are to account for these sums as grants or loans?" You must admit, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that this is a matter approaching a scandal and we ought to know that it has either been cleared up or is being cleared up.

When one comes to housing, in paragraphs 77 to 79 of the report, the scandals mentioned include some which have been brought to the attention of the Northern Ireland Committee. The hon. Member for Belfast, West will need no reminding that they are very much located in his own area.

I shall not therefore restress what has already been put on the record in the Northern Ireland Committee about the fact that rehabilitation was costing twice as much in West Belfast Area C as it was in the other Belfast areas until a dramatic change was made in the method of costing and assessment. The papers on that matter have been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions for Northern Ireland. Perhaps the outcome of that reference to the Director of Public Prosecutions, if it has not been publicly notified, ought to be brought to the notice of the House one way or another.

But on rehabilitated dwellings, it is unsatisfactory to be told that the Housing Executive does not know what proportion of rehabilitated dwellings have been reoccupied. It thought, generally speaking, that it would have no difficulty in finding tenants. But one would expect a landlord to know which of his properties had been occupied. I hope that we shall be able to have a precise statement from the Housing Executive of the number of rehabilitated houses for which tenants have and have not been found.

There is no need for any hon. Member to apologise for placing on record matters concerning the control of public expenditure, because it is what this debate is all about. When we come to the next head, we find, ironically, that it is entitled "Planning Services". The centre of interest there is occupied by what has been going on in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) between Lurgan Borough Council and Craigavon Development Commission in connection with a gas central heating scheme which was not. The Department discovered that the Commission was in breach of a legally binding agreement, although there is some hope that if the Department goes to court it might secure from the court the termination of an onerous agreement which cannot possibly be fulfilled. This is a matter not only for the hon. Member who represents Lurgan but for the House as a whole, and the publicin Northern Ireland should know what steps are being taken.

That brings me directly to the next matter involving delay on the part of the Northern Ireland Government to take due steps at law to clear up a position. I refer to the roads, and here come to a matter of interest to my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South. My hon. Friend is by no means an uninhibited admirer of schemes involving the driving of five-track motorways over parts of the countryside around Belfast. I expect he knows about the story of the hotel to which damage, in respect of which nearly £200,000 has been paid, was incurred as a result of the negligence of the contractor.

The record is as follows.

The Comptroller and Auditor General in his report says: I was informed in August of this year —that is, 1976— (twelve years after the damage was caused, four years after receipt of the claim, and over a year after the compensation —£200,000— had been paid) that the Department of the Environment's solicitor was preparing a submission to the legal adviser on the question of possible recoupment. The contractor is the person who is liable, but for we-do-not-know-how-many years the public will bear the burden—I fear that they might find themselves bearing it for more than a few years—of something that is due to the negligence of the contractor against which the road services under the contract were protected. I do not think that that is a record which should go unilluminated in this House.

I do not wish to trespass too much on the area of my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South—

Mr. James Molyneaux (Antrim, South)

I have no objection.

Mr. Powell

I am grateful for my hon. Friend's assertion that he has no objection to my doing so. Indeed, we all trespass on my hon. Friend's constituency in the context of Aldergrove Airport. I do not know whether many hon. Members from Northern Ireland have read the story of the preparation of plans for the development of Belfast Airport. It is quite a story, indeed a gripping one, and it is told not without a little irony by the Comptroller and Auditor General

The central figure in this story is known as Consultant A. Consultant A has had £275,179 in fees—including VAT, which is some consolation. But when one reads the story of his performances, the mystery deepens from paragraph to paragraph. On no occasion was his work in any way acceptable to those for whom it was done. It was either found to be irrelevant or to make assumptions which were wrong, or else the consultant had arrived at plainly impracticable results. But, unfailingly, the Northern Ireland Airport Authority when the next stage came along had the man for the job. The man for the job was always Consultant A. So far as we know from the report, Consultant A is still busily at work drawing up plans for the development of Aldergrove Airport—plans which will never come to any sort of fruition but will serve to add to the colossal total of over £275,000 in fees.

You will be relieved, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to know that I am about to cease harrowing your feelings because, as Chairman as the Committee of Ways and Means, you must be particularly sensitive to any question of public money being misused or its expenditure not being properly supervised. That is indeed a matter within your province and it is under your presidency.

There is only one other matter to which I wish to refer; else hon. Members might not be able to endure the reiterated misery of these items from the Comptroller and Auditor General's report. Happily, this refers to the European Social Fund, and before we have to con- sider whether we shall bind ourselves even more closely, perhaps irrevocably to the European juggernaut, it is as well to be reminded what the experience has been.

The Minister referred, as he was duty bound to do, to the excesses of expenditure in 1975–76. At least one of the reasons for these excesses arises from the fact that we were always being promised money by the EEC but did not receive it. We did not receive the 1974 money until June 1976, and I assume that there is still a considerable delay on further payments and subsequent grants. It is all very well for the well-heeled public relations organisation of the European Commission to ladle out to the Press for publication in the newspapers in Northern Ireland, to a public that is only too anxious for a bit of good news occasionally, the information that so many millions are being given by the EEC. Little do people imagine that they themselves, the taxpayer and the Government of the United Kingdom, will have to find those sums year after year and pay interest on them until they are eventually received from the EEC. One does not get anything for nothing, and one certainly does not get anything for nothing from foreigners. There will be no net benefit by way of grants, gifts or loans from the EEC. But it is a charming chance that we should be reminded of this by the ability of the Comptroller and Auditor General for Northern Ireland in respect of the excesses on which we shall have to vote in the course of this order.

I hope that I have not wearied the House. We have until 5.30 this afternoon to consider this order, but it is the duty of the House of Commons, which is so well served by the Exchequer and Audit Departments on both sides of the water, to see that those reports are not just left to gather dust on the shelves but that we should obtain from the Departments, whose allies in this respect we are—we are the allies of Ministers—answers to the questions which those reports provoke, so that we may obtain for the public the best value for their money—which is what the public deserve to have.

1.20 p.m.

Mr. Gerard Fitt (Belfast, West)

The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell), I believe, anticipated that I should make some criticism of the sparce attendance in the House today. However, after listening to the first three-quarters of his speech, I withdraw any criticism that I was about to make and I think that those hon. Members who are notable by their absence today are wise. Indeed, if the constituents of the right hon. Gentleman were to read the verbatim report of his speech—and I suspect that that was his intention and I notice that there are Northern Ireland reporters in the House today—they would expect the report and his comments on the report of the Auditor General to be put on the tape in Northern Ireland.

I remember that last year the right hon. Member for Down, South told us on the occasion of the Appropriation Bill that that was an opportunity for all hon. Members to avail themselves of the right to put forward views on behalf of their constituents in relation to housing, jobs and all the other facets of life. I suggest that the speech that the right hon. Member has just made to the House—if it was meant for the record, I doubt whether anyone will read it, and if it was meant for us, there were few of us here—will not receive banner headlines in the Down Recorder. If it does, there will be one happy man in South Down, and that will be Cecil Harvey, who will use the report to his advantage.

Mr. Powell

Who is he?

Mr. Fitt

The right hon. Member for Down, South may have occasion to remember that name. The right hon. Gentleman said that he was looking forward to an increase in the number of hon. Members representing Northern Ireland. Perhaps he was thinking out loud that a seat would be found for Cevil Harvey of the UUUP—I believe that he is well known to the right hon. Gentleman.

I propose to limit my remarks to the problems affecting my constituency. However, the problems affect not only my constituents and the area of Belfast, West, but a great number of constituencies in Northern Ireland. I wish to refer to the Class II Estimates relating to the Department of Commerce.

That Department is charged with responsibility for creating employment in Northern Ireland. It is the Department that pays out incentives to attract industrialists to Northern Ireland and it tries to alleviate the scourge of unemployment as we have known it for decades in Northern Ireland. The Department itself would be forced to admit that it has not been enormously successful in past years. The figures for unemployment in Northern Ireland are a sad reflection on what has been done by the Department. I do not expect Department officials to perform miracles. Even prior to direct rule and the abolition of Stormont, for geographical and other reasons we had a high percentage of unemployment. However, that dees not detract from the distress and despair felt by thousands in Northern Ireland.

There are now in Northern Ireland many who, since they became of employable age, two or three years ago, have never had a job. They have not worked since leaving school. There are many young people in Northern Ireland who left school and signed the unemployment register and who will continue on the register. I mentioned yesterday evening—and I must speak of it again today—that it is predicted by those in authority in Northern Ireland, by the trade union movement and by others aware of the problems, that we can expect in a few months' time to have 10,000 young people receiving supplementary benefit. It will be supplementary benefit and not unemployment benefit because they will have never had a job. This is building up a lot of resentment and frustration, and it can create dangerous attitudes among those young people.

Young people are not now prepared to accept the conditions and pay that their parents received and to accept that there will be unemployment into the foreseeable future. That is why the Department of Commerce should do everything possible to alleviate the situation.

The Quigley Report pointed out the problem, but it did not give the answers. At least an opportunity should be given for hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies to debate the Quigley Report. We could debate it in Committee upstairs and it would be reported in Hansard. However, as the right hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Craig) pointed out yesterday, it is what an hon. Member says in the Chamber or by way of public speech that reflects his attitude to his constituents and determines whether his opinions will be accepted by them.

Many hon. Members representing United Kingdom constituencies are not yet aware of the enormity of the unemployment problem in Northern Ireland. If arrangements can be made—and I see no reason why they shoudl not be in view of how the business of the House has been going during past weeks and months—it might be an education for some hon. Members representing United Kingdom constituencies to stay in the House not on a Friday afternoon or late on Thursday night, but on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, for a debate on this subject, a debate on those days when hon. Members should be at Westminster. I should be prepared to limit my remark on such an occasion in the hope that hon. Members from United Kingdom constituencies would involve themselves in the depressing problem of unemployment in Northern Ireland. We could do that before the end of July, when we are to go into recess, because the problem in Northern Ireland will not improve during August, September and October before we return to Westminster.

Something should be said in the House to make the unemployed in Northern Ireland aware that we are concerned about the problem. Can we be told the success or failure rate of the Department of Commerce in attracting new industry to Northern Ireland? If the Department has had successes, can we be told how they were brought about? If there has been failure, or if potential industrialists from outside the Province did not come to Northern Ireland, can we be told why they did not come? Were the incentives not good enough? Were the industrialists afraid of the political trouble? Why is it that, although a vast amount of new industry seems to come to Northern Ireland, it always goes to one particular geographical location which is not in the area of greatest unemployment? Why do we not seem able to attract industries to those areas of Northern Ireland that have suffered the scourge of unemployment for decades? I refer, of course, to South Down, Derry, Strabane and other such areas.

Mr. Powell

What about Newry, which exactly corresponds to the description and to which many new firms have been attracted by the work of the Department in recent years, and in which area, I believe, the Department takes a close interest?

Mr. Fitt

I concede that Newry has been more lucky in recent years than for many decades, but there are still unemployment black spots in Northern Ireland.

It might be because those areas are not adjacent to a port or roads that they are not all they should be and there are still high unemployment figures. In Derry and Strabane the percentage rate of unemployment has never seemed to go below 20 per cent. and has been as high as 25 per cent. Whatever the reasons for industrialists not wanting to go there and whatever difficulties the Department of Commerce finds in attracting industries to those areas there are people there who have been receiving social security benefits for 10 years, 20 years, or even longer.

Mr. Concannon

I hope that my hon. Friend will acquit me of not dealing with this issue. Yesterday's debate showed that we have stepped up our efforts. Newry, of course, has the great port of Warrenpoint and it has had great help from the Department of Commerce. There are difficulties and we do tailor our incentives to the area west of the Bann—I think that this is the geographical line to which my hon. Friend was referring.

Even with the best industrial incentives in the world—and Northern Ireland has the best in Europe—the biggest obstacle to overcome is the image of the Province. This is a hurdle that I have to climb in America, the Middle East and, of course, in Britain. A period of stability in Northern Ireland would work wonders on the job front. Unfortunately, the events of May will not help my efforts; in fact, they will be a positive hindrance.

Mr. Fitt

I completely exonerate my hon. Friend. He has tried desperately to attract industry to Northern Ireland. One of the reasons for this difficulty is not only the abortive action of May but the political industrial action in 1974, which frightened away potential investors. There is a certain amount of instability in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, it was not the people who have been unemployed for years—sometimes decades—who were involved in the actions of 1974 and of May. These people have never had a job, and they live in areas far from the spots. in which those troubles arose.

I turn to the Class II Estimates for industrial training in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has better industrial training facilities than any other part of the United Kingdom and a great deal of money is spent by the various Departments. Unfortunately, those who benefit from the training do not always find a job after they finish training. Sometimes they do not find a job for years afterwards. I suppose that this is a way of keeping young people off the streets for a given period, but, unfortunately, after the training is completed, not all of them can take up employment. The argument is put forward that it is better to have skilled unemployed than unskilled unemployed.

Mr. Concannon

I do not intend to put that argument. However, I hope that my hon. Friend will not paint too gloomy a picture in Northern Ireland. If we are too gloomy, we could be guilty of turning people away by discussing such things here. A great percentage—in some cases all—of those who take industrial training courses find employment afterwards. In Northern Ireland we have 10 times more training centres than the rest of the United Kingdom, and after yesterday's announcement this will increase by 50 per cent. Those who do not get jobs straight away have a greater potential for finding jobs in the future if they have had this training.

Mr. Fitt

It may be helpful to Northern Ireland if hon. Members representing the Province by a series of questions at some time find out just how many persons have been trained, their age categories, and how many have been successful in getting jobs. Then we should know what we were talking about. I hope that nothing that I have said will deter potential industrialists, because that is not my intention.

I hope that anyone who reads my remarks or listens to them will realise that I have great faith in the future of Northern Ireland, great faith in and respect for the trade union movement there —very few industrial troubles have arisen in the trade union sense—and great faith in the potential of the Northern Ireland workforce. Anything that I say is geared to attracting people to Northern Ireland. Of course I want to see more industry in certain districts, but if industry is attracted to other areas represented by hon. Members opposed to my political point of view, I do not mind, as long as Northern Ireland gets more jobs.

I turn to the Ministry of Environment in Northern Ireland which, in the ultimate, is charged with the construction of roads, houses, sewerage, and the controlling of transport services and labour. In fact, it is concerned with all aspects of life in Northern Ireland.

I am not at all happy about house building and maintenance by the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. I have complained before about the deplorable state of repairs and maintenance in a high proportion of Housing Executive dwellings. I do not know the figures for those employed in maintenance and repair in Belfast and other areas, but I have been absolutely inundated by complaints from Housing Executive tenants who cannot get repairs done to their homes. They are suffering considerably from the inattention of the repair section of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. I think that the Executive would agree that it has not been able to carry out its promises, which we all thought it would implement when it was first created as the public housing authority.

In Belfast vast tracts of land are lying idle and vacant and have been so for a number of years. There is an area between North Queen Street and Garmoyle Street which has been lying derelict for four or five years. No one knows whether it is to be used for housing—and this is what I would prefer —or for industrial development. If it is to be used for industrial development, no one knows whether it will be used for new industries or for Northern Ireland-based industries which would be relocated to that area.

As I have said, I prefer to see a housing development there. There is tremendous pressure for housing in that part of North Belfast, but it seems that no decision will be made about the area, either in the near future or the foreseeable future.

We are told that planning consultants are still deliberating and are being held up by other people who are deliberating on matters such as transport policy. For whatever reason, it does seem a waste of land. This is potentially good ground that could be used for housing or some other purpose. If the Housing Executive, which is charged with the responsibility of creating homes, decided that houses could be built on these vacant plots, it would be creating employment and giving people jobs, by direct labour or otherwise, in building homes. Therefore, it would be tackling two problems at the same time—it would be doing away with unemployment and creating homes for the homeless.

There is an area in the centre of Belfast—and I must admit that I have a constituency interest—between Hamill Street and John Street where there are a number of terraced houses. This area is regarded as having one of the best little sets of terraced houses anywhere in the city. Only recently the Belfast Corporation, and subsequently the Housing Executive, fitted out these houses with baths and other amenities. Then someone last year thought that we needed a new road, so now the proposal is to drive a bulldozer through those homes to make way for a road. Naturally, there is great anxiety among the tenants, many of whom have lived there for many years.

Will the Minister indicate his thinking on this matter? Is it right that these houses should be demolished to make way for a new road? Is the traffic problem in Belfast so serious that it warrants the demolition of these homes, which are some of the best to be found in the city?

Earlier in the week an announcement was made in the House that financial facilities are to be made available for first-time home buyers. Are these facilities to apply to Northern Ireland? May we expect a statement from the Northern Ireland Office on similar lines?

I turn to provisions for historic buildings and monuments. Anyone who was in Belfast on Monday will know of the controversy surrounding the subject which affects my own home. The hon. Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Carson) and I recently queried the financial implications of some of the policies carried out by the Housing Executive. We were concerned with the rehabilitation of houses in the Hillman district.

We know that the provision of a bathroom and some other facilities in a kitchen house with two bedrooms costs the Executive £8,000. I cannot figure why it is so expensive to put a bathroom and other minor facilities into a house. I want to see everyone living in a house with a bathroom and other modern facilities, but I have yet to be assured that the right things are being done to warrant this totally unjustifiable expenditure.

My home is in Antrim Road, which is well-known to the hon. Member for Belfast, North. It is on the fringe of a redevelopment area. A number of houses are involved in the designation of that area. On Monday this week there was a housing inquiry, which I attended on my own behalf and on behalf of the people who live in the proposed redevelopment area—I represent them at local authority level. The proposal is that the Housing Executive should acquire my home and those of three other people and rehabilitate them. It appears that the houses concerned have some architectural merit.

I am told that the inside of my home is fit. No repairs need to be done by the Housing Executive. Over the years I have done all the repairs. But the Housing Executive wants to acquire my home and pay me minimal compensation based on market value—whatever that means in Northern Ireland. Then it wants to re-do the front of my home to bring it up to its original Georgian or Gothic state— or whatever state it was. That will cost the Executive £12,000. I have no hesitation in saying that if I had £12,000, I could find a better way of spending it than painting the front of my house. The Housing Executive has said that if I cannot spend that money on re-doing the front of my house, it will take it away from me, pay me small compensation, and I shall become a tenant paying £10 or £15 a week in rent.

The Housing Executive should not have these dictatorial powers. I can understand its taking this step if a house is in a bad state of repair, if there are no amenities, and if those concerned would be better off as tenants. But in this case the Housing Executive is adopting a dictatorial attitude.

I hope that I shall not be charged with having a pecuniary interst. The Executive has no chance of putting me out of my home. I am told that it is of architectural merit but today it is barricaded with barbed wire. There is a closed circuit television and other protective measures are in operation. No one looking at my home from a passing bus would think that it was neo-Gothic or Georgian. It is just a barricaded property.

Mr. John Carson (Belfast, North)

Does the hon. Member agree that this applies not only to his house but to many others in Belfast on which people have spent many thousands of pounds? They, too, are being forced to pay rent.

Mr. Fitt

I agree. The whole situation is ridiculous.

One of the reasons put forward by the Housing Executive for designating this redevelopment area was that it wanted to bring about a more balanced population. At first I was rather annoyed, because that seemed to reflect on the present population and imply that it was not balanced. Although some people think that about the New Lodge Road area, it is not entirely true.

The Housing Executive was introduced because of the criticism of local authorities. Some of it was justified and some unjustified. Today there are more offices, personnel and telephones attached to the Housing Executive than to any other organisation in Northern Ireland. I support the continued existence of the Executive, but it is right that we should criticise its actions openly and honestly.

My remarks have been related to houses and jobs. I know that the Minister will not be able to give answers to all the problems that I have raised. I hope that he will take note of them and perhaps write to hon. Members. After that we shall see whether we accept his advice, as given to him by the Departments, or whether we shall pursue the matter.

1.49 p.m.

Mr. Wm. Ross (Londonderry)

I shall refer briefly to the matter raised by the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt). He really asked whether any public body has the right to decide how one should live. Many people who live in deplorable housing conditions are nevertheless content to live there. This question has never been satisfactorily answered by anyone, either in the House or outside. How far can society go in demanding that an individual lives in the conditions that it specifies?

Leaving that aside, I should like to deal in some detail with my interest, which is farming, and the problems of the farming industry in Northern Ireland. I am dealing with this issue in conditions in which there is no long-term plan for farming by the Government, or, for that matter, by anyone else. People in the United Kingdom do not want the CAP, we pay lip-service to the old system of price support, and we are caught between two stools. Many problems have arisen from this, and none more so than those that have arisen in the past with beef, and those that are now arising with milk. It is those two aspects of farming with which I should now like to deal.

The Meat Industry Employment Scheme has been favourably received, and rightly so, because it has helped to maintain the beef industry in Northern Ireland. Not only has it helped to maintain the production of cattle, but it has helped to provide jobs in the meat industry outside farming. The difficulty is that when the scheme was first introduced it was brought in for a month. There was then a second period of three months. That was followed by another period of three months, and we are now in a third period of three months.

That is no good to the people who are producing beef cattle in Northern Ireland. A three-month period is not enough to enable people to plan ahead and to make up their minds what line of action to take in the production of beef. A long time passes from the birth of a calf to its being slaughtered. The animal has to be kept, and considerable expense has to be incurred before the farmer has any idea of his final return. Surely we can be given an assurance that the Meat Industry Employment Scheme, or some other means of guaranteeing the end price, will continue while the difference exists between the Irish green pound and the British green pound. We have not been given that assurance, and it is necessary for the future of the industry that such an assurance is given,

The former hon. Member for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, the leader of my party, Mr. Harry West, wrote to the Secretary of State about the difficulties facing the agriculture industry in Northern Ireland. I hope that the Minister's Department is giving due weight to what Mr. West said, because everyone in Northern Ireland—and I think the Minister will agree with this— realises that there are few people who know more than he does about the farming industry in general. He was for many years Minister of Agriculture in Northern Ireland.

When Mr. West sent that letter to the Secretary of State—and I am sure that the letter has been studied closely—he drew attention to all the problems that have arisen in Northern Ireland in the agriculture industry, and none more important than those that have arisen as a result of our membership of the EEC. He drew particular attention to the problems of the meat and milk industries, to the problem of feed prices, and to the cost of grain that we have had to import from sources other than North America. Can the Minister give an assurance that the points that have been put by Mr. Harry West will be considered in the Department to try to produce a more reasonable policy for Northern Ireland agriculture?

Mr. Dunn

I assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that any representations that are made to us, from whatever source, are studied carefully and that, as a matter of courtesy, a reply is sent dealing with all the points that have been raised.

Mr. Ross

I thank the Minister for that statement. As he has given that assurance I shall immediately pass to more specific questions that have arisen over the present situation with beef in Northern Ireland. The Minister has this week been meeting representatives of the meat plants and discussing problems that have arisen as a result of MCAs. I should like to mention some of the problems that have been brought to my notice.

First, there is a shortage of beef cattle in Ireland as a whole—not only in Northern Ireland—and this will persist for this year. The former Minister for Agriculture in the South, Mr. Clinton, seized upon that as one reason for getting rid of MCAs. In the South there are certain advantages that do not accrue to Northern Ireland. First, there is a provision whereby 50 per cent. of the beef killed can go for intervention. This must be a profitable business, because each week meat plants put 50 per cent. of their production into intervention. If it were not profitable, I do not believe that they would do that.

In addition, there seems to be evidence that those owners who have meat plants in both the North and the South are moving a large proportion of their beef across the border for slaughter in the South. There is nothing wrong in that from their point of view, but it seems to outflank the intentions of the Meat Industry Employment Scheme. If it were more profitable to slaughter in the North, the slaughtering would be done there.

I conclude—and I think that the Minister will conclude from a study of the representations that have been made to him—that the 3½p per lb. boning out allowance in the South, with all the trimmings that arise as a result, must be a profitable business, and that as a result we are suffering. There is a danger that in the fairly near future meat plants will close in Northern Ireland, or at least they will reduce their work force, with all the ramifications that will flow from that for the people there.

Having told the Minister that there is a general shortage of cattle in Northern Ireland, I must point out that this is the direct result of the policy mistakes made over the beef breeding herds in 1973 and 1974 and which have now worked through the system. We foretold this happening. Some people did not believe us, but I have no pleasure in having been proved correct by events.

Even after all the excuses that we have heard during the past week about the difference of prices and the way in which the system operates, I am left with a rather puzzling problem, which is that the difference in the market prices for beef in Great Britain and Ireland is currently about £7 per 100 kg, or £30 per head. The difficulty that I find is that a normal and reasonable difference should be only about £3 or £3.50 per 100 kg. The question that must be asked is, where is the extra money going? It must be going into somebody's pocket, and therefore presumably the wholesalers are making a killing out of the problems in Northern Ireland.

I come now to deal with the problem of milk. The whole future of the milk industry is overshadowed by a vast thundercloud on the horizon. This thundercloud will burst upon producers with torrential force when the present arrangements cease at the end of this year. The effects of that will be felt far beyond the producer. They will be felt by the factories where the milk is processed, and they might even be felt in England if efforts are made to export liquid milk across the water. Not only the milk industry but the beef industry, too, will suffer if there is a cut-back in the milk herd in Northern Ireland.

The Minister will be aware that the Quigley Report looked for more employment from the processing of farm production and the White Paper "Food from Our Own Resources" looked for increased milk production in the United Kingdom. The difficulty is that the EEC wishes there to be a reduction. It has sought to destroy the marketing boards, and they have survived only because they have managed to sell themselves as co-operatives. But the difficulty in doing that is that we have lost the pooling arrangements.

I do not have to repeat that which I said in this House in an earlier debate on this matter, but I am still waiting, and I think that the milk industry in Northern Ireland is still waiting, for clarification of what will be done to maintain milk production and the milk herd in Northern Ireland after the end of this year, for to date we have had absolutely nothing. We are left in the dark, and confidence is being severely shaken.

That is not something that the farming industry can look upon lightly, because milk is one of the bases on which the whole industry is built. An interference or rundown in production or in the herd can have the most terrifying consequences for the whole industry in Northern Ireland.

While I agree that there are modifications which can be made in the CAP arrangements—there could, for example, be an increase in the size of disadvantaged areas—the basic problem remains that the CAP does not suit us. It never has and never will do. We must find a system more in keeping with the problems which we experience as an industrial nation with a small agricultural production.

I now turn to another problem which has troubled me for some time. This is the first opportunity I have had of raising it. I refer to the problem of harbours and harbour boards in Northern Ireland. The Minister will be aware that I asked a number of Questions a considerable time ago about the replacement of the elected body of harbour commissioners in Londonderry with an appointed body. I am not one ever to welcome appointed bodies. I deplore them. I believe that responsibility should be put into the hands of the people who elect those who will represent them.

I realise that there were grave shortcomings in the electoral system that was used. There was a restricted franchise, it was archaic, and it needed to be modified. But I do not believe that what was wrong with the system was sufficient to justify removing the whole concept of an elected group responsible to its electorate.

In Londonderry we have always had a long and bitter cry from our political opponents because of the control of the harbour board being always in the hands of those who were Unionists. The difficulty for those who made the complaint was that at no time was there an election held because at no time did any of those who complained ever stand, despite the fact that their theoretical electorate on the electoral roll was much larger than that of the nominal supporters of the Unionist people who were on the harbour board.

One must conclude, therefore, that the users of the harbour and those who were employed on the harbour must have been quite happy with the commissioners. I think that they had every right to be. The harbour was very well run. It was adequate for the city until comparatively recently. There were some difficulties with coal dust and shallow water and a dredging problem, but the commissioners were all forward-looking men.

The Minister will no doubt have seen the interim report on the feasibility study on moving the harbour to Lisahally, which was published in September 1974. This study not only encompassed the harbour but encompassed many other matters in the Londonderry area. It dealt with the whole infrastructure of the area. It was a marvellous report, and it seems to me that some of the things said there deserve much deeper study than they received, since nothing, apparently, has been done about it. Indeed, it would appear to me that some of the statements that were made started from the principle that "This is what you are having and we will build the rest round it", rather than saying "This is what we need and we will start from that end."

The harbour commissioners proposed moving the harbour. The new site is excellent. There would be a high cost, of course, but the possibilities were tremendous. It was to be right in the heart of any major industry in the area. It was away from the city centre, and it had everything to commend it. The water was deep. We should get rid of the dredging problem. We should get rid of all the difficulties with the traffic on the quay—everything. It would all be moved to a far more suitable site.

Therefore, I believe that not only did the commissioners do their job well but the people who prepared that report did their job well. But what has been the fate of the harbour commissioners in Londonderry? They received practically no support from anyone.

I now give some figures which I have obtained about various grants made from the EEC. Warrenpoint harbour, handling roughly 500,000 tonnes a year, received an EEC grant of £500,000. Coleraine harbour, handling up to 180,000 tonnes, received an EEC loan of £70,000. Londonderry port and harbour, handling 1,250,000 tonnes in 1974 and just over 1 million tonnes in 1975, received an EEC grant of £60,000. That seems to me to be rather out of line with the amount of work that was being done. I wonder whether it is an inverse reflection of the way in which the different harbours were being run. I would not like to say that since one of the others is in my constituency, too.

On top of all this there arises another slight problem. One of the Minister's predecessors, in a Written Answer to a Question from me on 22nd March 1976, pointed out that the rates of interest varied from 3¼ per cent. to 13¾ per cent., depending on the different harbours and the different loans that had been made. It so happened that most—perhaps all— of the EEC grant was then applied to wiping out the old loans. Strangely, it did not wipe out the ones at the high rates of interest. It wiped out those at the lowest rate of interest, which is something no reasonable business man would want to do. In view of all this, why was Londonderry harbour not given much more support than that which has been evident up to now?

I shall now look at the cost of the commissioners and the cost which will accrue as a result of the change-over from commissioners to an appointed authority. The old system cost practically nothing. The commissioners did not receive any pay. They received only out-of-pocket expenses, and all those involved lived within the confines of the city or very close by.

The new authority will cost more. Its members will be paid for the same work, with roughly the same number of meetings and the rest. The costs will at some stage include the chief executive's salary, because they will not all, I think, be satisfied with the chairman's salary even where the chairman's and chief executive's posts are combined.

We are then left with the slight problem why it was considered necessary to replace the harbour commissioners. The men concerned were not stick-in-the-mud. They were competent. The system was cheap and effective. So why change?

It so happens that—to adopt a phrase which you occasionally use, Mr. Speaker —for the sake of, shall we say, greater accuracy, some kind soul has posted me a number of documents and letters which I found most interesting, since they deal with the replacement of the commissioners. In one letter from the Department of Commerce at Chichester House dated 8th January 1976 we read in the final paragraph: In conclusion I should make it clear that nothing which has been proposed here reflects in any way on the services which have been rendered by the present Commissioners and their predecessors. The Department fully appreciates the contributions which they have made to the running of the port, often, as at present, against a background of difficult economic circumstances. So it would appear that, although, under Section 6 of the Harbours Act (Northern Ireland) 1970, the Department had to consult the commissioners, the consultation was confined to saying "Thank you very much, but we have decided to get rid of you."

Then, in addition to that document, I was sent a copy of minutes of a special meeting held in the Londonderry Harbour Offices on the 28th January 1976, present at which were harbour commissioners and officials from the Department of Commerce. One of the officials went on to say that the Minister had confirmed to the chairman the plan originated by Mr. Hume to reform harbour boards, and that this had been in the pipeline for some time.

The report states that the commissioners agreed at one stage during the meeting that the percentage of attendances per member would probably be higher on a paid board". It usually is. The report goes on to say that The Minister did not intend to make any changes in the operation or staffing of the port. Having reconstituted the Board the members would continue exactly as before. No additional finance would be available other than normal port modernisation and improvement grants. Then we also read that there is a strong political view"— I wonder where that came from— that the board should be reconstituted". Then later there is a reference to Mr. Agate, and here we find out a lot about the situation in Londonderry, because he has since been murdered. Among the points made by Mr. Agate was that nominations to the board should be non-political". It was agreed that a board of eight members could run the port if eight people with sufficient ability and time could be found". There had not been any difficulty in getting them for a century. Why, I ask again, was the board reconstituted? We are told that there was a strong political reason. I think that is the key to the whole thing.

A former Member of the Northern Ireland House of Commons, Mr. John Hume, has made a number of fairly savage attacks on the harbour board in Londonderry down the years. These attacks have appeared in the Press, and Mr. Hume raised the matter on one occasion on the Adjournment. On that occasion the then Minister in charge of harbours in Northern Ireland, Mr. Bradford, defended the harbour authorities, pointing out that there were difficulties but that it was still doing a good job, and that he did not see any reason, therefore, for getting rid of it.

The plain truth is that the SDLP set out to destroy every person and every organisation which was controlled by people who supported the Union in Londonderry, and in fact it would like to do it throughout Northern Ireland. It mattered not a whit, and it matters not a whit, that the work which was being done by those people, organisations or bodies, helped the whole community. Indeed, in Londonderry city the entire dock labour force is Roman Catholic. and has been for many years. That did not matter. The SDLP was and is out to destroy the whole concept of the Union, root and branch, and it will use every opportunity that occurs to do it.

I think that what has happened in Londonderry to the harbour commissioners is a clear warning to Belfast because we have also been told that Belfast harbour is next in line. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, North (Mr. Carson) will take note of that. When Belfast's turn comes I trust that the people of Belfast will ask what is the political motive in that respect.

2.14 p.m.

Mr. William Craig (Belfast, East)

We have had a fairly useful debate so far and I do not want unduly to prolong it. The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) raised the debate to a very high level, and if we achieve nothing else, it will have been well worth while. I hope that the Government will ponder every word he said. I shall not try to match his performance. I shall try to look at the question from a rather different point of view.

When money is being spent, there ought to be an evaluation of the projects upon which it is being lavished. Unfortunately, it is an enormously heavy job to find out what is the Government's policy on various aspects. Now and again one gets the impression that they are following the practice of supermarkets. From time to time quite expensive schemes are announced, usually with a flourish of trumpets, in the same way as the supermarkets advertise lavishly their loss leaders in the hope that unwary customers will be coned into accepting something that is totally valueless and worthless.

I hope that I am not being unfair to the Government, but in recent times there have been various little projects which have puzzled me because they did not fit into any overall strategy. The other day there was an announcement concerning £10 million for a face-lift to Londonderry city. There have been similar facelift projects advertised for Belfast. These announcements make good reading for a day, but when we think about them for a bit longer, we wonder where we are going.

Part of the difficulty is that the Government are trying to build on policies worked out with great detail and care some 15 years or more ago. There has been no real policy-making since. Most of those policies have been overtaken by events. Unhappily, in this situation we as Members of Parliament have no policy statements to which we can refer, although many documents are published and in addition to reading them we need to read the Press releases.

The Press release now seems to be the principal method of announcing policy decisions in Northern Ireland. I shall be referring in a moment to one in particular which announced a policy which offended the most cardinal principle of public policy in that it sought to benefit one section of a particular class to the detriment and disadvantage of the other members of that class. This was unequal treatment and unfair competition.

I am referring to the policy declaration which was contained in a Press release issued by the Under-Secretary of State on 29th March 1977, in which he said that the Department would grant-aid shareholdings in Ulster Farmers' Investments Limited up to a maximum of £900,000". Nowadays bureaucrats do not think that sums of that sort amount to very much, but on these Benches we consider that a figure of £900,000 is worth looking into.

The essence of this new policy was that in order to qualify for the grant assistance Ulster Farmers' Investments Limited should consider (a) The establishment of a livestock handling and marketing service. There is something to be said for that. That would benefit all the farming community. The second condition was: Acquisition of a controlling interest in a meat plant. Nothing can be said in favour of that. The third was: Acquisition of an interest in a lairage facility for the shipping of live cattle. I do not think we shall fall out about that.

I am concerned with the second point, the acquisition of an interest in a meat plant. I suppose that the Department would try to argue that the existing meat plant industry in Northern Ireland is not taking sufficient care or cognisance of the farmers' interests, and that maybe the market was being manipulated to the advantage of the plant industry rather than that of the farmer.

If that is the justification, I find it rather difficult to accept. If that is the situation, I believe that there are better and more proper means of dealing with such a price ring than giving public money to a group of people who are competing against other plants which were established with private money and which represent very substantial investment, running into millions of pounds.

The term Acquisition of the controlling interest in a meat plant rather disguises the reality, because at the time that this policy statement was made, Ulster Farmers' Investments had an interest in a meat plant. This does not reflect a great deal of credit on anyone concerned. Very great difficulty was encountered in persuading the farming community to contribute to the capital. Some £300,000 was raised, but it was mostly borrowed from the banks at appallingly high overdraft rates. If some fairy godmother had not come at the right moment with this sort of money, it would have been in difficulty, much to the embarrassment of the Ulster Farmers' Union and the Department of Agriculture.

I strongly object to public money being used in such a discriminatory and unfair way. I have mentioned this subject to the Minister previously. It is not new to him and it will not be the last time that he will hear of it. We cannot allow public moneys to be used in such an unfair and discriminatory way.

I must ask the Minister to have another think about this. If he is to give this sort of support to one element of an important industry in Northern Ireland, he has to be prepared to give the same support to all of the elements in that industry. It is an industry facing great difficulties. As I understand it, because of the United Kingdom Government dithering over the European situation, these meat plants are facing a serious crisis. I understand that the employers and the trade unions met last Wednesday and have decided to close them down unless the Government can do something more to help in the unequal situation that has been created.

I refer the Minister to a Question 1 tabled some time ago on the reconstruction of the Forensic Laboratory in Belfast, destroyed by some mysterious explosion and fire. We have never been told what happened at the laboratory, whether there was any negligence or whatever involved. All I know is that we have a badly damaged forensic laboratory.

In reply to my Question I was assured that everything would be done to restore an effective forensic facility to Northern Ireland. As far as I can ascertain, what has happened is that repair work is being done where it can be done. It is of a rather temporary nature. Additional buildings are being erected to provide the necessary accommodation. It is all very much a patched-up job.

I should like to know what amount of money is involved in this operation and what sort of period is envisaged for the present situation. Clearly, what is being done now cannot be regarded as providing an effective forensic laboratory in the long term. The truth of the matter is that, while patchwork has to be done to keep something going, we need to build a new forensic laboratory in the Belfast area. The laboratory is no longer capable of working effectively. Communication within it has been badly disrupted. The same can be said of the administration. Laboratory staff are having to cover far too much ground in the course of the working day.

I understand from people who have taken a great interest in these things that the planning of an up-to-date forensic laboratory would require two years. The building would probably require another two years. That is a total of four years to deal with a vital service in Northern Ireland, vital not only in combating crime and terrorism, but in assisting the commercial and industrial aspects of our life. It is something we cannot afford to be without. I should like an assurance from the Under-Secretary that thought has been given to this and that a new facility will be provided with expedition.

Temporary buildings frighten me. I remember that when I went back to university at the end of the last war I was astonished to find in Queen's University temporary buildings that were erected at the end of the First World War. I have a feeling that some of these temporary buildings are still there. If the Department thinks that this sort of temporary structure will be adequate for the forensic needs of Northern Ireland, it is wrong. It will not meet with the demands of the people's representatives in this Parliament.

I wish to refer to planning in the broadest sense of the word. Good planning can facilitate the wise expenditure of public money. It can certainly avoid a good deal of waste. We all know that there are places where valuable assets are lying idle simply because of planning stagnation. There needs to be a new and far-reaching look at planning in Northern Ireland. It is questionable whether the present machinery is adequate for the job.

We must also look at the basis on which we plan. Planning always tends to become a little autocratic and authoritarian. That is certainly what is happening in Northern Ireland. I should prefer that planning took a much more liberal and humane approach, guiding people rather than dictating to them. We should operate our planning code with a view to helping people to do things rather than saying that they cannot do them.

I am afraid that in Northern Ireland far too often the planning process involves saying "No". That is greatly resented, particularly when we have the most capricious form of planning appeal that is possible to imagine. There does not seem to be any coherency or logic in the handling of planning appeals in Northern Ireland. I often wonder why people bother to appeal.

I suggest that the Government urgently begin to think anew about our planning code and about its administration, particularly about the appeal machinery. I know that it has great difficulties to contend with and that the current terrorist position has added to the problems of blight arising from normal change. There is a lot at stake here. A lot of public money is being misdirected because the proper planning guidelines are not there.

I do not need to remind the Undersecretary that the Matthews plan has been overtaken by events a long time ago. We do not have the same problem of demagnetising the city of Belfast as we once had. The sooner this is tackled, the sooner a lot of problems will be solved, including that which worries the hon. Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Molyneaux), who spoke about five-lane motorways. The longer this is put off the more frustrated people become and the more expensive the whole operation becomes to the public purse. If the Government had got on with it and tackled the road programme for Belfast, they would have had it completed now at less than half the estimated cost. That is the lesson we need to learn in planning. I plead for new thinking by new people.

2.28 p.m.

Mr. McCusker (Armagh)

I wish to deal with two matters concerning the expenditure of the Department of the Environment. The first issue arises under Class VI Vote 1 concerning expenditure on water, sewerage and public health. I wish to draw the Minister's attention to the situation affecting the water supply in the North Armagh area of the southern division of the water services of the Department of the Environment. In the annual report of the Department covering the period 1st April 1975 to 31st March 1976, when dealing with the southern division, the comment is made, with which we are all too familiar, that the summer of 1975 was extremely dry and many water supply problems arose as a consequence. I would add that the winter and spring of 1976 were not particularly good.

The dry summer of 1976 matched that of 1975, and there was then a period of six or seven months of almost torrential rainfall in Northern Ireland. We were told that the reservoirs were overflowing, and yet during the past few weeks I have had a series of complaints from constituents, ranging from domestic consumers to meat processing factories and manufacturing industry, alleging that they still cannot get adequate supplies of water or supplies at a proper pressure. Following a period of almost unlimited rainfall into our reservoirs, it seems strange that that should occur so early in the summer.

Something that was done in 1975 to alleviate the problem, which was continued into 1976, was to divert the supply of water to Portadown, the town where I live, towards Gilford and the Mid-Down area. Water was diverted from Castors Bay, which takes its supply from Lough Neagh, to Portadown. As someone who was born in Lurgan and brought up on Castors Bay water, I always found the supply wholesome and tasty. It was enriched by the effluent that arrived at Lough Neagh from a variety of sources. The people of Lurgan enjoyed their water. It was almost good enough to eat, quite apart from drinking it.

The people in Portadown do not seem to think the same. I notice that in the report it is stated that, this action having been taken, it has been possible considerably to improve the quality of water being supplied to Gilford and other areas of Mid-Down. The quality of the water has been considerably improved at the expense of Portadown whose people do not appreciate Lurgan's Castors Bay water, although I quite enjoy it.

I raise this matter on behalf of the people of Portadown as they are not as fond of Lough Neagh water as I am. I hope that the Minister will tell us that he may be able to do something to alleviate the complaints that I am receiving from my constituents in Portadown.

The supply problem is extremely serious. I have had complaints stretching from the village of Richhill to Loughgall, Annaghmore and Clomore from domestic consumers who over the past two or three weeks have been turning on their taps at off-peak periods only to receive a trickle that has not been sufficient to fill up the tanks that they were advised to instal by the Department of the Environment so that they might have a supply of water during peak periods.

I refer briefly to food processing factories in Portadown and Moy. These are factories engaged in the production of dog food. They require a substantial volume of water to continue in business. The factory in Moy installed tanks at the request of the Department of the Environment. It claims that there is not sufficient water during the night to fill up the tanks so that it can keep going during the day.

I visited a furniture manufacturer in the village of Richhill who provides essential employment in a rural area. A sprinkler system has been installed that has enabled the manufacturer to reduce his insurance premium. It also provides a much safer working environment. However, having installed the system he found out that there was not sufficient pressure in the mains for the system to operate. Consequently, he is now faced with an insurance premium that will have to be increased by approximately 400 per cent., or else he will have to lay out about £10,000 to instal a booster pump to get the system operational. As he operates in difficult circumstances, those overheads may result in a loss of jobs in an area where we cannot afford a loss of employment.

I believe that there is a possibility that plans are in hand to extend the supply of water from the Castors Bay waterworks across the North Armagh area. There is ample water in Lough Neagh to solve the problem. I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us today that he intends to do something about the problem.

In its report the Department says that it is responsible for maintaining an acceptable flow and quality from the River Bann. It states that 1,639 samples were analysed during the year. Unfortunately, I cannot find anywhere in the report the results of those samples.

The one part of the river with which I am concerned is the last five or six miles where it flows from Portadown into Lough Neagh. At the moment there is a rubbish tip in the area which is 40 ft. to 50 ft. high and an eyesore. It is situated on the banks of the Bann. I live only a few hundred yards from it so I must declare an interest. There must be effluent and seepage from that tip. It must constitute a serious health hazard. I ask the Minister to inquire whether any of the 1,639 samples were taken from below that tip. If they were, what were the results?

I move to Class IV, Item 1, dealing with expenditure on road safety. If a person is killed by terrorism in Northern Ireland—55 people were killed in my constituency last year as a result of terrorism and over 50 the year before that— tremendous anger and heat are generated There is a sense of futility, waste, sorrow, and sadness. They are all the feelings and factors of which the Minister is conscious.

However, at present a person is 2½ times more likely to be killed in Northern Ireland as a consequence of a road accident than he is as a result of terrorist activity. There is remarkably little heat generated when death takes place as a result of a road accident. Although there is a sense of sorrow and loss in the family concerned, as a community we do not appear to be concerned.

In the first four months to 30th April of this year 104 people died as a result of road accidents. In the first five months the number rose to 134. The provisional figure until 30th June is 152. Almost three times as many peole are killed in road accidents in Northern Ireland as are killed by terrorists. The Department of the Environment, whose specific responsibility this is, should bring the community's attention to the problem in exactly the same way as it has been brought to the problem of deaths from terrorism.

The report states that the Department operates an accident investigation road safety unit. Its task is to map and plot each individual injury and fatal accident and to provide an information and statistics service. I do not know whether any of my colleagues are aware of a concerted attempt to tackle the problem, but I am not. I do not know where we shall achieve the best results. Are people killed as a consequence of drunken driving, unroadworthy vehicles, bad road-marking or pedestrian stupidity? What is the principal cause?

We have been told by the Minister responsible for these matters that the situation is much worse in Northern Ireland than in the rest of the United Kingdom. The statistics bear that out. However, where do we need to concentrate our efforts to get the most efficient results? If I had to tackle the problem, I should like to put my efforts where I should get best results. I am not conscious of anything being done in Northern Ireland designed specifically to concentrate our minds.

I hope that the Minister will draw this point to the attention of his colleagues so as to ascertain what can be done. As I have said, every life lost on the roads is just as much wasted, just as unnecessary and causes just as much heartbreak as if someone is gunned down by terrorists.

Some weeks ago when we were having a little inconvenience in Northern Ireland, someone said that he was concerned about lives rather than jobs. I felt like saying at the time "If you are concerned about lives rather than jobs, you would be better concentrating on road safety." There are 60,000 unemployed in Northern Ireland and 152 people have been killed as a consequence of unnecessary road accidents in the first six months of this year. It is to that loss of life and that loss of employment that we should be giving our priority. The Government, and especially hon. Members from Northern Ireland, should be working to improve the lot of both groups.

2.40 p.m.

Mr. James Molyneaux (Antrim, South)

My remarks will be related, to some extent, to the comments of my right hon. Friends the Members for Down, South (Mr. Powell) and Belfast, East (Mr. Craig). They concern finance and the availability of money.

There has been a good deal of speculation about the extent of the cut-back in Government expenditure in Northern Ireland. As a party, we have always supported Government policy in reducing public spending and, unlike others, we have not fallen into the trap of demanding that Northern Ireland should be spared the unpleasant consequences. We have said that we are part of the United Kingdom, and we take the rough with the smooth.

However, it seems that there is a certain amount of confusion over repetitive statements about the amount of cash available. My right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East has referred to the vast number of Press releases. They vary in content and slightly in form and tend to give the impression that each successive statement heralds yet another bonus, whereas when one tots up the amounts and all the sums are done, it begins to look as though the totals are smaller than the many and varied statements would indicate. This appears to relate mainly to the building and civil engineering sector of industry. That impression is confirmed by the low level of activity in that branch of industry.

We have always been more than a little suspicious about the supposed benefits to be derived from various EEC sources. EEC benefits in any case derive from the British contribution, and it would be surprising if Northern Ireland, as part of the United Kingdom, did not get something back considering that we play our part in contributing. There is a suspicion that the benefits simply take the place of sums which would otherwise be provided directly by central Government and would be included normally in the appropriation order. It may be that that is the primary cause of the confusion to which I have referred.

The mention of Aldergrove Airport calls to mind the visit of a former EEC Commissioner who looked round the place and said "Oh yes, you could do with a bit of lolly spent on this place. We shall have to do something about it and give you money for the extension." There were banner headlines and a great deal of fuss, but no one has since heard anything about the promised funds for the extension of the airport. Therefore, I am not sure whether the consultant to whom my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East referred can have an assured source of income in the years ahead unless the necessary money is produced very quickly.

Whatever the cause of the confusion, I hope that steps will be taken to establish a degree of co-ordination and to avoid the making of repetitive and, in some cases, duplicated statements and announcements which tend to mislead, I am sure quite unintentionally, the public and those in clearly defined sectors of industry and commerce.

My right hon. Friends have almost incited me to go in great length into the question of the five-lane motorway, and particularly the white elephant extension at Whitehouse Park. There has been a development in recent days, because it would appear that, contrary to the belief of the Department of the Environment, the owners of the properties in Whitehouse Park made their objections known at an earlier stage. I shall not trouble the Minister with the details, but I ask him to assure the Undersecretary of State who is responsible for environmental matters that the documents in question are on their way to him.

Under Class IV, which deals with expenditure on roads and certain associated services, including parking and road safely, I wish to refer to a matter which has been giving great concern, particularly in South Antrim, but it is not solely a constituency problem. It affects practically everyone in Northern Ireland who has occasion to travel on the network of roads to and from Alder-grove Airport and from north to south of the Province.

In the closing months of last year I conveyed to the Minister responsible in the Department of the Environment the valid objections of bodies and individuals to the establishment of a Sunday market at Nutts Corner. Many of them were motivated by other worthy considerations, but the bulk of them were concerned about the traffic congestion and traffic hazard caused by the operation of the market.

The Minister explained that there was no requirement for the market organisers to seek planning approval until the market had operated for 14 days in any calendar year and apparently they did not cross the dividing line until about April. It would appear that the application was made about April and, I understand that, because of the strength of the opposition expressed to the project, the decision is now likely to be taken at a very high level in the Department of the Environment.

The former Ministry of Development— and I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East was one of those mainly concerned at that time— quite properly spent a great deal of money, because money was more plentiful in those days, on ensuring that there was an adequate network of roads to facilitate traffic from the north to the south of the Province, and vice versa, and to provide easy access to Aldergrove Airport.

The hub of the system was the roundabout at Nutts Corner. It was very well designed. It has generous site lines. Wide verges were provided on the roundabout and on all the access roads. However, on Sundays, when the market is in operation, all these advantages are completely nullified by cars and vehicles parked on the hard shoulders of the roundabout and the access roads.

Further congestion is caused by carloads of people decanting themselves on to the main road at a time when the traffic is vainly endeavouring to get through to the airport. One can understand drivers becoming a little irritable. A further hazard is caused by children scampering between parked cars and dashing across the roadways through the streams of traffic—traffic which is in no way connected with the market but consists of drivers who, understandably, do not wish to be slowed down and prevented from proceeding on their legitimate and lawful journeys.

I have kept a close watch on the situation, not from inside, but from outside the market. Although I pay tribute to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, operating from a comparatively small RUC station in Crumlin, we must face the fact that the magnitude of the job is beyond its capacity and resources. It would be nothing short of a disaster if approval were to be given for the continuation of this congestion at what is possibly the most vital traffic hub in Northern Ireland which undoubtedly, for the whole of Sundays, from morning until early evening, has the effect of choking the traffic system. I hope that due consideration will be given to these considerations before a final decision is made.

My right hon. and hon. Friends have asked many penetrating questions in the course of this debate, probably the most useful and profitable that we have ever had on a Northern Ireland appropriation order. Following the example of my right hon. Friend the Member for Down, South, we have avoided listing individual constituent's complaints and have concentrated on major issues and considerations.

I am confident that the Minister, with his usual courtesy and efficiency, will deal in his reply particularly with those matters of which he has received notice, that he will bring to the attention of his right hon. and hon. Friends other important matters that have been raised, that they will be given weighty consideration, and that full explanations and answers will be provided in due course.

2.50 p.m.

Mr. John Biggs-Davison (Epping Forest)

The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Ross), who is a farmer, spoke eloquently and from experience of the difficulties of the milk and meat industries. Agriculture, the great Ulster occupation, has become concentrated upon cattle. I hope that the Under-Secretary will have some words of comfort and that he will also address himself to the complaint of the hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) of favouritism in the giving of Government support to meat plants.

The hon. Member for Belfast, West also spoke of what he rightly called the scourge of unemployment. Last year there was some improvement. However, there has recently been a sharp rise in unemployment. Part of that is doubtless to be attributed to the UUAC strike. The Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce produced a disturbing report on that strike, telling of the price that has been paid by industry, and disproportionately by smaller business, for a stoppage for which there was so little public support in the Province.

Disorder, whether of that kind or the continuing terrorism, is the enemy of industry and investment. The Minister, in opening the debate, said that the Administration offered Ulster the best incentives but that the Province did not have the best image. At the same time, he rightly urged us not to be too gloomy.

Like all hon. Members, I was glad when the new American Ambassador, Mr. Kingman Brewster, soon after his arrival at the Court of St. James's elected to visit Northern Ireland, where he found qualities in Ulster people which made them, according to George Washington, the flower of the continental army.

His Excellency addressed the Belfast Rotary Club on 20th June, when he said —I paraphrase—that further investment by American industrialists in Northern Ireland would depend on the prospect of political stability and the continuing improvement of the American economy. He said that Northern Ireland had a very good reputation with industrialists, as he had discovered when speaking with directors and managers of some of the firms that were already established in the province.

This was not only because of the ingenious incentives offered to capital investment, to which I have referred, but to Your hospitality, the skill of your work force and the grace and beauty of your countryside and easy access to Britain and"— although this may not be entirely palatable to some right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken— markets in the European Community. All these make Northern Ireland a happy prospect for industrial expansion. Turning to Class V, expenditure by the Department of the Environment on housing services, I find that the sum granted of £48,760,000 is the third largest single item in the draft appropriation order. The hon. Member for Belfast, West described his home as very much a castle. He was unhappy about the construction and maintenance and the policy of the Housing Executive and the Parkin-sonian proliferation of its staff. He said that tenants could not get their repairs done.

I do not think that there is anything unusual in public authorities responsible for housing failing to get repairs done for their tenants. In my constituency we have two GLC housing estates, and constituents often complain to me that they can neither get the roof repaired nor are they allowed to do it themselves. Of course, the remedy is to allow those tenants who want to do so to become freeholders. Ministers should help individuals and housing associations to bring that about. I shall listen with interest to the Under-Secretary's reply to the question put to him by the hon. Gentleman as to whether the Government's new plans to assist home buyers will be applied to Northern Ireland.

The right hon. Member for Belfast, East complained of difficulty in finding out what Government policy was. I wonder whether the reports are correct that radical changes in the Housing Executives are in train, that papers are circulating within the Executive and the Department of the Environment and that there is to be decentralisation of the Executive to six regions based on Belfast, Ballymena, Craigavon, Londonderry, Newtownards and Omagh.

If the structure of the Housing Executive is to be brought closer to democratic local government, that certainly is an attractive prospect, but I wonder when we shall know the results of the discussions which seem to have been taking place on the future of the Executive. Debates in the Northern Ireland Committee and elsewhere have revealed that not all is well with the present highly centralised body. I understand—the Under-Secretary will correct me if I am wrong—that the Housing Executive house can cost one third more than the house built by a local authority in Great Britain.

Doubtless one factor accounting for that is the protection racketeering which makes business in parts of Belfast, for example, a nightmare, and with which the new Fraud Squad will, we hope, get to grips. If it does, it will strike a blow at the very guts of terrorism. I am informed that blackmail can account for as much as £400 a week on a medium-sized building site.

My hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Mrs. Knight) and Petersfield (Mr. Mates) were much criticised from the Government Benches when they alleged that taxpayers were financing the IRA through the good offices of the high-sounding Andersonstown Cooperative. What became of the police inquiries? May we hear a little more about the reference to the Director of Public Prosecutions?

The right hon. Member for Down, South spoke of the saga of Contractor A at Aldergrove. The hon. Member for Down, North (Mr. Kilfedder) lifted the lid on another pot in a Question to which I shall refer in a moment. Alongside the anonymous Contractor A we can now place some named individuals who appear in Written Answers at columns 285 and 286 of Hansard for 19th May.

I just take some at random. I am not casting any aspersions on these gentlemen. There is Ferguson and McIlveen, S. Stevenson and Son. These are architects to whom moneys have been paid for building projects that have since been abandoned. I take two examples. The first is the Peter's Hill Library in Belfast. The architect was S. Stevenson and Son, whom I have already mentioned. Architects' fees were £48,096 and £14,500, £7,000 and £10,000 went to two firms and an individual associated with the company.

Secondly, I take the Belfast College of Technology at Millfield. The architects were Ferguson and McIlveen. Architects' fees were £85,620—that is again a considerable sum of money—and four firms were associated.

The grand total of all these sums of money paid out for projects since abandoned comes to £533,626. According to the Belfast Telegraph on 20th May, a Northern Ireland spokesman said: There are various reasons why these building projects were abandoned. In the case of the library at Peter's Hill, this was due to the financial cutback. In other cases, they have been the result of changes in departmental policy, and in the cases of schools, because there has been a population shift away from the area. Some of them have simply been overtaken by events. I wonder whether planning might have been better. I wonder suspiciously whether there has been some paramilitary pressure in all this. There is a danger of our becoming used to anarchy, distortion and intimidation. There is no acceptable level of any of these things. I hope that the Minister will be able to give some explanation and reassurance.

3.3 p.m.

Mr. Dunn

The debate has been wide-ranging. A number of important issues have been brought to my attention, not least the change of format for future discussion on the appropriate orders. I shall return to that particular point in a moment.

The hon. Member for Abingdon (Mr. Neave) again raised the question of the prospects of the shipbuilding industry. I can assure him that the industry itself has been substantially encouraged by the orders that it has received. We are grateful to hon. Members for the understanding and support which they showed during the difficult period of negotiations when, had something untoward been said or happened, orders might not have been placed in the structured manner that we now enjoy.

Diversification is a matter that takes careful study. I can assure the hon. Member for Abingdon that the industry itself—the management, its industrial advisers and the trade unions—is looking carefully at ways in which diversification can be brought to ease the problem of the shipyard, particularly in Harland and Wolff.

When the Secretary of State visited the yard on 27th April he brought to the attention of the work force and management that it was not always possible to shield Harland and Wolff from the commercial impacts of the shipbuilding industry throughout the world. My right hon. Friend said he would be satisfied if they were to look at other prospects for diversification that might help them in these difficult moments.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the general question of education and suggested that we require a full debate on the subject. I shall convey that request to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to see whether a debate can be arranged. However, the time is running short before the Summer Recess, and in the coming few weeks there are other matters affecting Northern Ireland to be taken in Standing Committee. Therefore, perhaps it will be more convenient to have that debate on education when we return for the new Session.

Reference was made to what was said by my noble Friend, the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, in another place. I do not wish to repeat anything that was said by him, other than to say that I noted what he said about making policy statements. I assure the hon. Gentleman that this matter will be kept in mind in future.

The statement on comprehensive education was made at considerable length and copies were placed in the Library at the same time as the statement was made. Nevertheless, I take the hon. Gentleman's point and I shall convey it to my right hon. Friend and to my noble Friend.

Mr. Neave

The only other point is whether provision has been made in the order for comprehensive schooling as envisaged by the Cowan Report and whether that reflects the state of allocations in Article 8.

Mr. Dunn

It is bound to have some impact, but if the school-building pro- gramme is not used directly for new building in a comprehensive reorganisation, there will be a continuing need to replace, maintain and repair the existing secondary schools. However, in the way the hon. Gentleman put his question, I could not itemise exactly the amounts required.

The hon. Gentleman brought to the notice of the House the fact that within a building programme amounting to £17 million, about £11 million was devoted to secondary education. If that reorganisation of comprehensive education were to take place, some of those resources would be devoted to that objective. However, the hon. Gentleman will know that three working parties are examining the full impact of how comprehensive reorganisation is to proceed. Until the results of those working party reports are known, it is not possible to make decisions of too much significance. Therefore, I suggest that it is more appropriate to raise that subject when we discuss education as a whole. In the meantime, I shall obtain the answers and write in detail to the hon. Gentleman, having made inquiries of my noble Friend.

The other comments made by the hon. Gentleman concerned small firms. He was right to stress the importance of the small undertakings in Northern Ireland and the contribution which they make to the economy. The Department of Commerce carries out a wealth of work and is making great efforts in this respect in trying to attract new investment and to advise existing investors on how small firms can best contribute further to the economy and to stability. The Local Enterprise Development Unit is there to assist and advise and will continue to give that service. We hope that the small firms will take the advice offered to them.

The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) asked about the differences in classification in the way in which the estimates on the appropriation accounts are drawn. I have noted what the right hon. Gentleman said and I hope that it will be possible for me to write to him in greater detail on this matter. However, I must point out that there has recently been a change—as no doubt he is aware—and we are trying to follow this change in order to coordinate both activities in a way that can be easily identified. There are many problems and complexities that must be overcome and different systems of accountability that must be reconciled. I have noted what the hon. Gentleman said and I shall be bringing that to the notice of my colleagues and the Departments concerned.

The right hon. Member for Down, South also referred to the excess Vote which has been occasioned by the non-receipt of the EEC moneys from the Social Fund. I understand that the moneys were expected to be received from Brussels just before 31st March when our accounts closed, but they were not received until just after that date. It seems that the accounts of the EEC, which are kept on a different basis and calendar year, may well need to be looked at again. The EEC's accounts are not kept with that precision or with the same timing that suits our accounts system.

The right hon. Gentleman also asked about the Fishery Harbour Authority. The level of the grants to the Authority has been settled and the Authority has been informed of the position. The accounts for the period since 1973 and the necessary loan agreements are presently being finalised. The criticisms of the Public Accounts Committee have been taken on board and the matter has been drawn to the attention of those concerned.

I can assure the right hon. Member for Down, South that right throughout the service the arrangements for the accounts of the statutory boards and the publication of the accounts are now under active and intensive consideration. Some notification has already been given. For instance, the accounts of the health boards, of the education and library boards and of the Northern Ireland Housing Executive will soon be laid before the House, and ample opportunity will be given for further suggestions and improvements in this matter.

Mr. Powell

No doubt the Northern Ireland Department will draw the attention of the Public Accounts Committee to the fact that these are now available because the Committee clearly wants to bring them within the ambit of its work.

Mr. Dunn

Yes. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that this is one of the matters to which I have turned my mind and the attention of the Department during the last six months. We think that the time is now appropriate to deal with the accounts in the manner suggested by the Public Accounts Committee and according to other suggestions that have been put before the House.

The right hon. Member for Down, South referred to the different ways in which the estimates and appropriation accounts are classified. The right hon. Gentleman produced one or two problems for me, because there are complexities involved in some of the suggestions that he made. If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I shall not attempt to answer now but I shall send him a considered reply after consultation with the Departments concerned. The right hon. Gentleman also dealt with a number of other issues, and I should be grateful if he would show some indulgence and allow me to reply as soon as I obtain the answers from the departments.

The hon. Member for Belfast, West (Mr. Fitt) and other hon. Members put questions about the Housing Executive, new building, maintenance and repairs, historical buildings and a number of other wide-ranging issues connected with the Housing Executive. The Housing Executive's performance in relation to new building was reasonably good last year. There were some 6,500 new dwellings completed in 1976. This showed a significant improvement over previous years, and it appears that 1977 could easily follow the pattern of improved performance. The Executive's new building programme up to 1981–82 envisages the completion of up to 30,000 dwellings. In addition, the Executive has a policy of giving greater attention to rehabilitation and modernisation of the existing housing stock.

Let no one be under any misapprehension that once one moves into the area of rehabilitation and modernisation one often finds that more money and additional work are required—far more than was originally estimated. From time to time also there is a lot of vandalism in the period after indication has been given that the area will be modernised and improved. I hope the House will understand the grave problems confronting the Executive. Northern Ireland Members know that deliberate destruction and delay are often the cause of extra money being spent on these programmes.

The Northern Ireland Housing Executive accepts that its maintenance work is not satisfactory, and the whole matter is being examined at present by the Department itself, with the help of the Department of the Civil Service, as part of an overall review of the structure of the Executive's organisation. Intensive discussions on all these matters are being undertaken at present, and once again I am involved through the Department of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland.

The Under-Secretary of State—the Minister responsible for the environment—announced earlier this week that loans were being made for first-time home buyers on a similar basis to that outlined in the Green Paper published by the Secretary of State for the Environment in Britain. My ministerial colleague made a statement indicating that he is looking closely at the development of proposals for a savings bonus and loans scheme to help first-time buyers. This was announced in advance of what was published in the Green Paper.

In the light of the proposals incorporated in the Green Paper on housing policy in England, Wales and Scotland, my hon. Friend is looking more intently at what can be applied to Northern Ireland which is not already in the pipeline as part of his proposed programme.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

Could the Minister also outline the policy of the Housing Executive on the sale of Housing Executive stock so that tenants can become freeholders?

Mr. Dunn

I do not know. I cannot answer that question off the cuff. I would prefer to write to the hon. Member, because I might not give him the precise answer that the Executive and the Department would wish. I am aware of a declaration made that in areas where there was additional accommodation above the known requirements of those on the housing waiting list, units of building would be available. However, I would much prefer to write to the hon. Member and give him the exact housing policy statement of the Executive.

On the question of compulsory acquisition of property particularly historic buildings, my hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, West referred to an inquiry of 28th June 1977 on proposals tor a redevelopment scheme in the Antrim Road-Lebber Street area of Belfast. I understand that he received an undertaking from the Housing Executive that his house, among others, in the terrace, would not be demolished, because of architectural and historic classification and would probably be rehabilitated in the way in which the hon. Member suggested.

The inspector at the inquiry is charged with the duty of making recommendations to the Department which will be discussed. A decision will be made about whether to refuse or approve the recommendation, possibly subject to certain exclusions that might be suggested by the Minister responsible. It would not be right for me to make any further comment because the inspector is in the process of drawing up his report.

The hon. Member for Londonderry (Mr. Ross) raised a number of issues, including the importance of the Meat Industry Employment Scheme. That subsidy is intended primarily to relieve and to offset any potential unemployment in the meat processing sector. As a byproduct of that subsidy, many other parts of the agriculture and livestock breeding industries benefit. But the subsidy was introduced solely to protect employment.

Other sections of the agriculture industry naturally claim that they should be included in part in some of the benefits that accrue directly from that subsidy. The hon. Member for Londonderry will be aware that over the past 12 months it has not been possible to determine with any degree of certainty what would happen in that industry. First, that is because of the relationship and the adjustment of the green pound rates, not only with our European partners but in particular with the Republic. Secondly, it is because of the difficulty that we might have been in contravention of the European Community regulations. We have to deal with that with great care.

Thirdly, the MCAs were a continual problem for those in cross-border trade. There was a distortion that operated like a carousel. At one moment it was to the advantage of those South of the border and at another it was to the advantage of those in the North. The difficulties were immense.

Against that background the hon. Member will not expect that it was possible to achieve an effective long-term decision which would not need adjustments or a complete restructuring.

As part of the package, there has been an understanding, to which the Commission has agreed, that there would be no further payments of MCAs for cross-the-border trade. On that basis we made an announcement to extend the payment of the Meat Industry Employment Scheme until mid-September. That will give us an opportunity to monitor and to take careful note of the patterns of trade during that period.

It would have been wrong to make a statement which would apply to the long term and which might have caused some disadvantage to the industry. I can assure the hon. Member for London-derry that this matter is under continuous review.

Like his right hon. Friend the Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Craig), the hon. Member for Londonderry has shown an interest in what has been happening in the meat and meat processing trades. I have made arrangements to meet all those concerned next Friday. A joint committee of the traders, processors and trade unions has been formed and I shall listen to its representations.

Mr. Powell

Can the hon. Gentleman say offhand in what kind of instrument this agreement to suspend MCAs across the frontier between the Republic and the United Kingdom was implemented? Was it in a regulation, or how was it arrived at? How was it legalised?

Mr. Dunn

It was put to the Commission through the Council of Agriculture Ministers. There was an agreement at that level. The Commission accepted the proposals made by the Republic, and these were automatically implemented as from 15th June. I cannot, offhand, tell the right hon. Gentleman the exact means of communication throughout the Commission system, but I shall make inquiries to ascertain whether it was done by direct regulation or by common agreement and a registration of the decision at the Council of Ministers.

The hon. Member for Londonderry asked about future prospects for agriculture in Northern Ireland. I can only refer him to previous statements in the House on these matters. I assure him that the Government are well aware of the importance of agriculture to the Northern Ireland economy. We realise that farming and the processing industries associated with agriculture provide about 14 per cent. of the GNP of the Province. The Government are aware of the employment prospects in the industry and what will happen if the balance is severely distorted. We have recognised that we must be prepared to consider special aids should the occasion demand that. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, these special aids have been forthcoming in the past. Indeed, they still operate, not least in the high costing of the Meat Industry Employment Scheme.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the question of harbours.

Mr. Wm. Ross

Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the question of agriculture will he give an indication of the prospects for the milk industry after the ending of the present arrangements?

Mr. Dunn

Yes. I am aware that there is grave anxiety about the ending of the transitional period. I am aware, too, that Northern Ireland milk producers are concerned about what will happen in the event of the Milk Marketing Board being reconstituted, because it does not comply with the regulations under the Common Market. I share the concern of milk producers in Northern Ireland on this matter, and particularly their concern about their levels of income after December this year.

I am happy to say that, as promised by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, a detailed examination of the problem is being made by officials of the Department of Agriculture in conjunction with the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food here in Great Britain, and that in this exercise producers and trade interests in Northern Ireland are being consulted. We hope that further meetings will take place in the coming months between the interested parties, and that we can arrive at some means of dealing with the anxiety and concern that has been expressed and of producing some sort of scheme that will deal with the problems.

The hon. Gentleman will realise that it is against the general policy of the United Kingdom to increase intervention. By the way, I dispute the figures given by the hon. Gentleman. He gave an intervention figure of 50 per cent. in the Republic. That is a selective statistic, because it does not take into account the number of cows already slaughtered and put into intervention. If he takes that statistic into account, his figure is reduced to about 25 per cent. of total slaughterings. I have taken on board the point that the hon. Gentleman made about boned meat being put into intervention. I shall bring this matter also to the attention of my right hon. Friends, with a view to seeing whether there is any way in which further help could be given to those concerned in the Province, without our having to go too far in more intervention than is absolutely necessary.

I turn to the question of harbours, and I assure the hon. Member for Londonderry that there is no discrimination against Londonderry. Indeed, the changes in the constitution of the harbour commissioners were designed to bring the harbour authority more into line with the public trust ports in Great Britain. The previous system had not proved as successful as the hon. Gentleman suggested.

As for the EEC grants to which the hon. Gentleman referred, these were related to the debts of the various ports and not necessarily to what we should consider to be the status of those ports. I believe that this money was generally welcomed.

The hon. Member for Londonderry next discussed the question of moving the harbour and the consultants' report on that matter, suggesting that the report had not been considered in the depth and with the care that it deserved. In fact, the new commissioners are the people who must look into this matter all afresh.

I believe that the ports in the way that they have been reconstituted will, in general, be of greater advantage to the Province and to the people involved on both sides of the industry, both users and those who serve the ports, and that we shall get away from the often restricted base of those who were elected under the previous port users' franchise. I am sure that this will be to the greater advantage of the Province, and I hope that the hon. Member for Londonderry will accept my assurance that there was no discrimination whatever intended or made against the port of Londonderry or Northern Ireland as a whole.

I turn now to the strictures which the right hon. Member for Belfast, East wished me to take into account regarding Ulster Farmers' Investment Limited and meat marketing. I do not share the right hon. Gentleman's view, and I made this plain to him in private conversation on these matters soon after making the statement. I still do not share his view, and I do not share the view of those who have advised him otherwise on the matter.

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman realises that this market is both complicated and fluctuating, and I imagine that his hon. Friend the Member for Londonderry will have brought to his attention how often it works imperfectly and results in price differences and other difficulties which impose considerable hardship from time to time within the industry.

This venture was discussed at length with the Ulster Farmers' Union, and, as regards the investment of Remoteness Scheme moneys, on the union's recommendation—we are bound by statute to consult the Ulster Farmers' Union on this —it was decided that one way to use the special assistance grant was, first, to alleviate the problems of remoteness, and second, to bring some order into the marketing of beef and livestock products. The Ulster Farmers' Union recognised that an important contribution could be made if that investment were so applied.

I am anxious that the marketing arrangements should be strengthened wherever possible. However, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that Ulster Farmers' Investments Limited has not yet launched its major appeal for funds, although I understand that this is likely to be done quite soon. It it, therefore, a little too early for me to be either critical or otherwise of how the subscriptions are gathered, what the level will be and what contributions will be made by the farmers. But this is the farmers' investment, and it has been protected in such a way as to ensure that those who benefit will be the farming community.

Mr. Craig

That is not true.

Mr. Dunn

The right hon. Gentleman will say for ever and a day that that is not true, because he has already fixed in his mind that this is unfair commercial practice. I do not agree with him. I believe in co-operative enterprise. I believe in producer co-operatives. I am sure that he does, but he disagrees with the exact means and methods by which this investment was made, and for ever we shall disagree about it. I am sorry about that, but until the day I die I shall probably take a different view from that of the right hon. Gentleman, and there is no purpose in repeating it, although the right hon. Gentleman has threatened to do so at every possible opportunity in this Chamber.

Concerning the forensic laboratories, the right hon. Gentleman will recall the Answer to his Written Question on 7th March 1977, when assurances were given that the Department of Commerce was searching for further improvements and for new buildings which could be made available to the forensic laboratories. I repeat the assurances that were given in that Written Answer, and I can inform the right hon. Gentleman that we are committed to the long-term use of forensic science in Northern Ireland. It has, for example, many advantages to offer the security forces, and the advantages of forensic science are being made available increasingly to them. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept from me that at the earliest opportunity a programme relating to the forensic laboratories will be announced in detail.

Mr. Biggs-Davison

Surely the Minister does not mean, does he, that at the moment there is no forensic laboratory, whether temporary or otherwise, in use? Surely this work is going on?

Mr. Dunn

The hon. Gentleman may not be aware of the Answer to which I have referred, but the services are being maintained and improved. It was because of an explosion that the services were interrupted. Work is continuing on the improvement of these services.

I mentioned, in particular, the security forces which, I believe, would gain great advantage from new and improved tech- nology and from new forensic science equipment made available to them. This work will be of great advantage to all concerned.

The hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) wrote to me about food processing and I am in the process of replying to his letters. I have transferred them to the water section of the Department of the Environment, so that it may try to find out exactly what went wrong with the water supply. It would seem that there was an unexpected increase in the demand for water and that this was a contributory factor in the diminution of the water supply. I will not tread along the path that the hon. Gentleman laid for me concerning the difference between drinking and eating water, because I feel that that might even involve discharging me into effluent through which I do not wish to flow. I assure him that all his points will be brought to the attention of the appropriate Department, and I shall notify him in detail of the answers provided to me. The letters that he has written to me are, as I have indicated, being investigated at the moment.

Road safety was mentioned, and I share the dismay of hon. Members at the appalling figures of deaths and serious injuries on the road. I am not able to give any precise statement as to the cause of these accidents. There are a number of features that contribute to them. All are probably related to bad driving, drunken or careless driving and to using unfit vehicles.

Steps are being taken to set up road testing services. Ministry of Transport certificates covering a period of 10 years are now available to those who have submitted their vehicles for testing. Very soon this statutory obligation upon people to submit their vehicles for testing will be further reinforced. I hope that the deaths and appalling injuries which take place on the roads will be reduced through more discussion and publicity at all levels so that all may be aware of the dangers.

The hon. Member rightly said that 162 persons had been killed on the roads in one year—

Mr. McCusker

The figure is 162 killed in the first six months of the year. Over 300 were killed last year. It is important to get the figure right.

Mr. Dunn

I am sory. The total is 162 in the first six months of this year. That is an appalling indictment. I assure the hon. Gentleman that what he has said will be brought to the attention of my Department and that I shall write to him telling him what has been proposed as part of the programme to deal with this tragic problem.

The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Biggs-Davison) raised a number of matters with me. He wanted me to answer questions put by other hon. Members and suggested that those questions which I could not answer today ought to be answered in detail later by correspondence. I assure him that I shall do that. I share the hon. Gentleman's sentiment that this has been a good, wide-ranging debate. There are a number of matters requiring further examination and investigation. It may be that future debates of this nature can benefit from having more detailed information made available, including, perhaps, the report of the Public Accounts Committee. This will be drawn to the attention of the right hon. Member for Taunton (Mr. du Cann).

I trust that all of these things will fall into place to the benefit of our debates on Northern Ireland affairs. I thank all hon. Members who have made a contribution to the debate. I thank them, too, for the forbearance they have shown to me in that I have taken rather a long time to reply. However, I have given way on many occasions.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That the Appropriation (No. 2) (Northern Ireland) Order 1977, a draft of which was laid before this House on 11th May, be approved.