HC Deb 20 July 1978 vol 954 cc1002-10

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Stallard.]

2.25 a.m.

Mr. John Watkinson (Gloucestershire, West)

I am grateful for this opportunity to raise the issue of the proposed move of work from Royal Air Force station, Innsworth, which is in my constituency, to Glasgow. I should like to say how pleased I am to see my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary on the Front Bench. The hour is late and we have had a heavy week in Parliament. But I know, and so does this Parliament, of the assiduous attention that my hon. Friend pays to all aspects of the RAF. Therefore, I am pleased that he will be replying to the debate.

In one sense, the broad base of the case that I am about to deploy has already been made in the streets of London today, when hundreds of civil servants demonstrated in Whitehall, outside the Ministry of Defence. They came from many parts of this country, objecting to the proposed centralisation in Glasgow of service computer operations. It is right that my hon. Friend should know that there was great intensity of feeling at the demonstration today. He should also know that two coachloads of civil servants came up from RAF Innsworth, which is in the unfortunate position of being the base which has the greatest numbers of personnel involved in this proposed move to Glasgow.

I should like to make my own position clear. I am opposed to this scheme. In my view, this move is undesirable, it is unnecessarily complex and it is totally unwanted in Gloucestershire. I suspect that these views would be echoed by colleagues in the House whose constituencies are being affected in the same way as mine. This view is certainly backed by the unions involved—namely, the Civil and Public Services Association—whose representative I see present in the Chamber tonight, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornaby (Mr. Wriggles-worth), to whom I pay tribute for the work that he has put in on our side of this case—and the Society of Civil and Public Servants.

I must indicate to the House that the strongest exception to this move has been taken by the local authorities in my area, particularly the Gloucestershire County Council, the Tewkesbury Borough Council, the Forest of Dean District Council and all the other district and parish authorities which are affected. I have been lobbied on many occasions in my surgeries by people who are concerned and directly involved in this proposed move. Indeed, I have been lobbied here in Parliament by groups who have come up from my local authorities, so concerned are they about the possible effects of this move upon my area.

Those of us who are deeply involved in the move have been told that the scheme is not part of what have become known as the Hardman proposals. As I understand it, these proposals were designed to disperse jobs from London to other parts of the country. It would, in fact, be possible to justify the move of work from RAF Innsworth in these terms, for in a real sense RAF Innsworth is already a dispersed centre.

It would appear, therefore, that this scheme is a Government commitment to take jobs from England and give them to Glasgow. Frankly, my constituents at Innsworth do not see why they should be pawns in this game.

In this context, it is interesting to note what Sir Henry Hardman said about long-distance dispersal to Glasgow. After recommending a particular dispersal move to Glasgow, Sir Henry stated: I recommend it as a solution only with serious misgivings and only because otherwise there is no work from London which could go to Scotland at all. Indeed, Ministers may feel that that is the right solution, given that Glasgow has done well out of dispersal so far (having received the largest dispersal of the previous exercise, the National Savings Bank, which will total some 7,000 posts). Yet though Hardman, in his report, himself advises against long-distance dispersal, the Government have decided that there should be dispersal of over 5,500 jobs within the Ministry of Defence to Glasgow.

I turn directly to RAF Innsworth. In total, over 1,400 people are involved at RAF Innsworth. This figure includes 850 Ministry of Defence civilians and over 560 RAF personnel. From what I can gather, the RAF personnel have no great liking for this proposed move, although it must be said that under the terms of their service they must be ready to accept postings elsewhere within the kingdom. But it is clear that there is great opposition to the move from the Ministry of Defence civilians. If carried through, this scheme could have very serious repercussions on the northern part of my constituency. For the senior staff, it would mean the choice between going to Glasgow and resigning. For other grades, it would mean early retirement, redundancy, or possibly some other Government job.

Naturally there is great concern about the social and economic implications of the move. Indeed, there is concern that if there is a large scale exodus from the area it will have a serious impact on the housing market as many houses suddenly come on the market in the Gloucestershire area, and unless the Government provide new jobs and actively instal new units at RAF Innsworth there could, over the years, be a serious and lasting impact on the local economy in terms of the diminished spending power available to the area.

But there is a strong fear, too, that if the Government let RAF Innsworth gradually run down, relying on redundancy and retirement, there will also over the years be a serious loss of job opportunities for youngsters in our area, and we do not have the sort of unemployment rates that can easily bear any major increase.

I expect that my hon. Friend can understand that my constituents are saying "Why uproot us from an area we like and have accepted, and which has accepted us, and then probably or possibly bring in new RAF installations? Why go in for this dispersal programme?"

I want to put four points to the Minister. First, I hope that no decision on that matter will be taken in the recess. I hope he will agree that it would involve what would amount to a substantial breach of parliamentary convention if a decision of this magnitude were to be announced in the absence of a large number of Members directly involved at constituency level with this move to Glasgow.

Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth (Thornaby)

Does my hon. Friend know that it would cause bitter resentment among the trade unionists involved—a bitterness that has already been shown today by the number of people who have demonstrated outside the Ministry of Defence about this move? Will he press the Minister on this point to ensure that the sort of demonstration that we have had today is not repeated if this announcement is made during the recess?

Mr. Watkinson

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He underlines one of the first points made to me when I attended the demonstration. It was impressed upon me by these people that they could not envisage a decision being announced in the recess, being slipped through, as it were, when it was so well known that there was such strong opposition within Parliament. My hon. Friend will know, because he has led delegations to several Ministers, that a number of our colleagues in this House are directly and specifically involved in the issue. So I hope that the Miniser will take note of what has been said on this point.

Secondly, in a letter to me on 5th June the Minister indicated that the ADP base solution is only one of a number of possibilities which apparently are under examination. Can he say whether these other options are still being examined?

Thirdly, will the proposed move have any significant employment effects in Glasgow? I know that this is one of the prime motivations behind the move. Is it not the case that service jobs will inevitably be filled by service men who will be taken from England to Glasgow and that many civilian jobs, because of the nature of this computer-oriented work programme, will be filled by people transferred from England to Scotland? Will not even the other posts have to be advertised nationally, rather than locally, under the rules of the Civil Service? Are the Government simply hoping that the proposed move to Glasgow will just have a spin-off effect on the economy, in terms of multiplying the amount of money spent in the locality rather than creating any major employment opportunities in the area?

Fourthly, there are reliable estimates that the whole dispersal programme will cost more than £200 million. My constituents are asking why it is not possible to hand over such a sum—perhaps not as large as £200 million—to Glasgow so that it can develop home-based industries instead of having communities broken up in England. There is in Innsworth a community associated with RAF Inns-worth which has been there for a number of years. The move involves the break-up of a local community.

There is no doubt, from the conversations I have had with constituents at RAF Innsworth and from listening to the objections presented at parliamentary lobbies from areas all over the country that are concerned, that there is a deep-seated hostility and bitterness towards this scheme. It has few friends in Parliament and even fewer in my county of Gloucestershire. I hope that the Minister will be able to persuade his colleagues to think again.

2.37 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Defence for the Royal Air Force (Mr. James Wellbeloved)

The whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West (Mr. Watkinson) has presented his case to Parliament. He has pursued relentlessly what he sees to be the interests of the area and the people he represents. I can assure him that whatever may be the final outcome of this matter, every conceivable aspect involved in the operation of RAF Innsworth will have been considered and my hon. Friend and his constituents can be sure that his activities have played a significant part in ensuring that a thorough examination and reexamination has taken place.

In July last year, the Government reaffirmed their intention to go ahead with the overall programme for dispersing Civil Service jobs. This means that the Ministry of Defence is committed to finding between 4,000 and 5,000 jobs for Cardiff and up to 5,500 jobs for Glasgow in the period up to the late 1980s. Tonight we are concerned solely with the Glasgow commitment.

Ministers also agreed last year that the MOD could look to its establishments outside London in order to meet the Glasgow commitment. This took account of the Cardiff dispersal plans, the rundown in headquarters numbers as a result of defence reviews, the decision to exclude quality assurance staffs from the dispersal package and certain MOD decentralisation plans, for example the setting up of Army logistics executive at Andover. As a result, the MOD carried out various feasibility studies into the possibility of meeting the Glasgow dispersal commitment by colocating in Glasgow a number of computer-based functions embodying civilian pay and records work at Bath and Cheadle Hulme together with the three single-service pay, manning and personnel records systems at Gosport, the RAPC computer centre/United Kingdom land forces command pay office at Worthy Down near Winchester and the RAF personnel management centre, at RAF Innsworth, near Gloucester, in my hon. Friend's constituency. The feasibility studies into the computer-based package have indicated that there are problems that appear to be real enough to suggest that it would be unwise to take the final decision on the whole of the Glasgow package until we have carefully examined other posible ways of meeting the Glasgow commitment. That is the first answer to my hon. Friend—that we are pursuing the possibility of other packages being put together.

If a decision were taken to include RAF personnel management centre at RAF Innsworth in the Glasgow dispersal package, it is most unlikely that any move of staff or equipment could take place before 1985–86 at the earliest. This gives us adequate time to consider what alternative use could be made of the existing facilities at Innsworth and what alternative employment might be found for the staff, but I must emphasise that no final decisions have yet been taken about the Glasgow dispersal package as a whole.

Dispersal is an extremely emotive subject. Its supporters make their case just as forcefully as the protesters. But I want to assure my Scottish colleagues that the MOD is on target as regards the dispersal programme which the Lord Privy Seal announced last year and, in conjunction with the other Government Departments concerned, we have been going ahead with our detailed planning for the first batch of about 1,500 posts which are due to go to the Anderston site in central Glasgow by 1983–84.

The costs of the Government dispersal programme are high, in the initial stages, due to staff transfer costs and the provision of office accommodation in the receiving locations. In the later stages of the dispersal programme there are considerable savings to be gained from, for example, rents, rates and allowances and from rationalisation. In addition there are important social and economic benefits that will flow to the receiving locations, and the Government have taken the view that regional considerations are paramount. In announcing the revised dispersal timetable in July last, the Lord Privy Seal said that it was estimated that net Exchequer savings for the whole programme were expected to reach some £20 million by 1991 to 1992.

In view of the representations which I know many hon. Members have received from local staff side representatives and constituents about MOD dispersal, I should perhaps say a word about the attitude of the MOD departmental staff side to dispersal to Glasgow. In short, they are opposed in principle to the dispersal of any MOD posts to Glasgow and to the proposed computer-based solution in particular. As recently as Tuesday of this week, my hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence discussed with MOD staff side representatives the latest developments on the MOD dispersal commitment for Glasgow, and I very much hope that it will be possible to continue to negotiate with the departmental staff side on all the many aspects of MOD dispersal through the aegis of the MOD Whitley Council.

As I have said, dispersal is an emotive subject and for this reason we are giving a good deal of thought to the human aspects of the dispersal programme. The Lord President of the Council, in first announcing the dispersal decisions, gave an undertaking that there would be no redundancy among non-mobile grades as a result of the programme. So far as the mobile grades are concerned, the intention is that dispersal will be implemented on a voluntary basis to the maximum possible extent.

We are under no illusions about the problems and difficulties which are bound to arise in implementing the MOD dispersal programme but, given the length of time before any actual moves take place, we would hope to overcome most of the problems which I know are worrying hon. Members, like my hon. Friend, who have been taking a detailed interest in this whole matter.

I can confirm that the question of dispersal was discussed at some length this afternoon at a meeting of the Defence Council under the chairmanship of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence. The discussion brought out clearly the difficulty of the issues involved here. The Defence Council took note of the written representations made to them by representatives of the Civil and Public Services Association and the Society of Civil and Public Servants.

The House will not expect me to go into details about the conclusions reached, but I can say that further work has been commissioned. I can also confirm that the Government's position on dispersal in general and dispersal of the Ministry of Defence in particular, remains unchanged. However, the composition of the packages of work for dispersal to Glasgow has still to be finally decided. The decision will be taken with as much dispatch as the difficulty of the issues allows.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire, West and my hon. Friend the Member for Thornaby (Mr. Wrigglesworth) pressed me very hard for an undertaking that no announcement would be made while the House was in recess. I can assure them that I shall convey to my right hon. Friend their strong and urgent representations and ask him to communicate with them if there should be any difficulty in that respect.

I hope that I have covered all the matters raised in this short debate. This is a difficult problem, and I assure my hon. Friends that it is causing us in the Ministry of Defence to think carefully again and again, because of the many human issues involved. But, above all, we have this commitment to bring about a dispersal to assist the regions in Wales and Scotland which need this additional work, and I know that my hon. Friends will sympathise with us in the dilemma that we face, knowing the dilemma that they themselves face in their constituencies.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at fourteen minutes to Three o'clock. a.m.