Commons Sitting of 23 December 1982

Preamble
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
Oral Answers to Questions
  NORTHERN IRELAND

    Assembly
    Sir John Biggs-Davisonasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what progress has been made with the full implementation of the Northern Ireland Act 1982.
    Mr. Arnoldasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether he will make a statement about constitutional developments in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Michael McNair-Wilsonasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement about developments at the Northern Ireland Assembly.
    The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. James Prior): Since I last answered questions the Assembly has approved its own Standing Orders and a number of debates have taken place, two of which have been attended by Ministers. After the Christmas Recess the Assembly will have the opportunity to get down to the important task of scrutinising direct rule.
    Sir John Biggs-Davison: I wish my right hon. Friend a very happy Christmas, which we are delighted that he is to spend in Northern Ireland, as is entirely right and proper. Are not the Presiding Officer's appointments of Chairmen and Deputy Chairmen of Committees of the Northern Ireland Assembly invalid under the Northern Ireland Act? If they are not, do they not make nonsense of the 70 per cent. provision for devolution proposals?
    Mr. Prior: I do not think that they have any reference to the 70 per cent. proposals for devolution. If there is controversy about whether the Presiding Officer was in a proper relationship to the law in making the appointments, that is for the Assembly to discuss. I regret that there has been disagreement among the parties, but I believe that it is for the Assembly to work this out for itself. I hope that it will do so quickly.
    Mr. Arnold: Will civil servants from Northern Ireland Departments be encouraged to appear before Committees of the Assembly?
    Mr. Prior: Yes, very much so, and we hope that they will.
    Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: As the chairmanship of Committees is supposed to reflect the balance of parties
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    in the Assembly, but at least two of the parties elected are not present at the Assembly, what guidance will my right hon. Friend give to the Presiding Officer to ensure that that balance, or whatever balance is possible, can be achieved?
    Mr. Prior: I do not think that it is for me to give guidance to the Presiding Officer. It is important that this House should not interfere in the workings of the Assembly. In so far as two parties are not yet taking part in the Assembly and therefore the balance cannot be absolutely sustained, I understand that the Presiding Officer has said that he will make necessary dispositions as regards Committees as represented by the parties at present in the Assembly, but there would have to be changes in the dispositions if the other parties at any time took their seats.
    Mr. McCusker: Does the Secretary of State recall that in the White Paper published before the Bill specific reference was made to the fact that the Presiding Officer should have consultations with the parties before appointing Chairmen? Exactly what procedures did the Secretary of State have in mind?
    Mr. Prior: I should have thought that they would be the normal consultations that would take place on these occasions.
    Mr. McCusker: Here?
    Mr. Prior: Not here, but with the Assembly. I should hope very much that the parties in the Assembly and the Presiding Officer will have such consultations.
    Mr. R. C. Mitchell: Will the Secretary of State continue his efforts to try to persuade the SDLP to take part in the Assembly?
    Mr. Prior: Yes, but I believe that those most likely to persuade the SDLP to take part are the Unionist Members of the Assembly. I urge them to do all that they can, in the interests of peace in Northern Ireland, to recognise that there are two traditions and identities and that unless both are properly represented in the Assembly there will not be peace or political stability.
    Mr. Peter Robinson: Will the Secretary of State take it from me that considerable progress has been made in the Assembly not only in agreeing the Standing Orders and in having three ministerial appearances—not two, as the Secretary of State said—but in setting up the Committees and in the fact that public hearings have already been arranged? As the Assembly will be turning its mind in the new year to the second stage of the 1982 Act—the possibility of further devolved powers—will the Secretary of State expand on the statement that he made in this House on Friday 10 December when he said that it was possible to have devolution without power sharing at Cabinet level?
    Mr. Prior: I cannot do during Question Time what the hon. Gentleman suggested in the latter part of his question, but there will be other opportunities to do so. There are other methods by which we can achieve a measure of devolution without it necessarily being a power sharing or Executive formula.
    The Assembly has made some progress. It is proving of great use and interest to the people of Northern Ireland, and that was evident yesterday when my hon. Friend the Minister of State attended the Assembly. I urge those who are sceptical about the Assembly to give it a chance. I do

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    not believe that the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) and some of his hon. Friends are doing a service to Northern Ireland by continuing to seek to undermine what most of the people of Northern Ireland desperately deserve and desire.
    Mr. Concannon: I should like to see the SDLP and others participate in the Assembly and make use of it on behalf of the people they represent. That would ensure that it received the cross-community support that we all seek. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that had he accepted our amendments when the Bill was going through the House there would have been a better chance of these people accepting their seats in the Assembly?
    Mr. Prior: We argued about that at the time. I believe that I met in spirit and in law the need to ensure that there is widespread acceptance throughout the community before there can be any move towards devolved Government. In the interests of peace and political stability, I hope that we can now start to make some progress.

    Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1978
    Mr. Marlowasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he is satisfied with the workings of section 8 of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1978 in so far as they relate to evidence.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. John Patten): All the provisions of the Act are to be examined during the forthcoming independent review.
    Mr. Marlow: I wish my hon. Friend a very happy Christmas. Will he say whether in Northern Ireland a large number of criminals and murderers have yet to be taken to court because of the probable difficulties, as a result of intimidation, of taking a case against them? If that is so, will he look at the matter carefully in the next year because of the terrible effect that it has had on the population over the last 10 years or so?
    Mr. Patten: I thank my hon. Friend for his good wishes. The police and the security forces are doing everything that they can to ensure that there is no intimidation of witnesses who come forward with valuable evidence that could lead to a successful criminal prosecution. They have been successful so far this year, despite one or two well-publicised acts of intimidation that have resulted in witnesses withdrawing their evidence. In 1983 the security forces will do everything they possibly can to ensure that witnesses are not intimidated and that successful prosecutions are brought.
    Mr. Molyneaux: In view of the crucial importance of information, will the Minister encourage the security forces to adopt more effective methods of questioning and interrogation, similar to those employed by police forces in the rest of the United Kingdom?
    Mr. Patten: To the best of my knowledge, the Chief Constable instructs the officers under him to use every proper form of interrogation of those brought into custody. That evidence is then laid before the courts, which can properly interpret it according to the statutory rules on the admissibility of evidence and the discretion that the courts have.
    Mr. Concannon: The Minister referred to the inquiry into the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act.
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    When is that likely to start? Since I said in September-Octover that I would be quite happy with the terms of reference, is he yet able to say what the terms of reference will be?
    Mr. Patten: I can add nothing to what I said during the debate on the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act. My right hon. Friend hopes to announce the person who will conduct the review and its terms of reference as soon as possible.

    Terrorists (Refuge)
    Mr. Adleyasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people, wanted for trial on terrorist offences in Northern Ireland, are believed to have sought refuge in the United States of America in the past 10 years; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Prior: Where there is sufficient evidence to justify extradition proceedings against any individual found to have fled to the United States, the Government have instituted such proceedings. We have received every assistance from the United States authorities in doing so. In the past 10 years, one application has been made in respect of a person wanted for criminal offences of a terrorist nature committed in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Adley: Is my right hon. Friend aware that a constituent of mine has been extradicted to the United States for a motoring office, but there appears to be ample evidence that, in spite of the assistance of the United States authorities, the United States courts are interpreting the extradition treaty in a very partial manner and in a way that does not comply with the European convention on the suppression of terrorism? Is my right hon. Friend doing anything to secure an equal and even-handed appliction of the extradition treaty by courts on both sides of the Atlantic?
    Mr. Prior: I know that a constituent of my hon. Friend has been treated in the way described. We have no evidence that the United States Administration do not wish to co-operate fully in extradition proceedings. Two draft Bills on extradition are currently under consideration in the United States. Neither would remove the consideration of political offence claims from the courts, but each would define what does not constitute a political offence. I believe that that would be an improvement on the present situation.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that extradition cannot be a one-way street? When a terrorist wanted for crimes in Israel can be extradited immediately, why cannot the same be done for terrorists wanted for crimes in the United Kingdom?
    Mr. Prior: The difficulty is caused by interpretations placed on the law. Above all else, we have always been careful about our attitude towards so-called political cases, but I agree that there is a need for the whole world to look at this matter again.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: Would not extradition and our case against the IRA be considerably helped were the Government to take prime time on American television in certain states to put our case on Irish affairs?
    Mr. Prior: I am not certain whether prime time in television commercials would help, but a great deal more

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    can be done, needs to be done and, I hope, is now being done, to make certain that we put forward our case in the United States. The people who could do that best are the people of Ulster themselves, particularly the Churches, politicians and business men. I hope that in the new year we can make another concerted effort to put Ulster's case across.

    Irish Government (Discussions)
    Mr. Winnickasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he intends to have discussions with the Irish Government regarding Northern Ireland matters.
    Mr. McNallyasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he next plans a meeting with representatives of the Government of the Irish Republic.
    Mr. Allan Robertsasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will meet the new Prime Minister of the Irish Republic in order to revive the proposal for an Anglo-Irish Council.
    Mr. Prior: I have no immediate plans to meet members of the Irish Government, but I look forward to meetings in due course.
    Mr. Winnick: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept the need for talks to take place with the new Irish Government in the near future? There is undoubtedly urgency about the matter. Is it intended that the two Prime Ministers should meet in the near future?
    Mr. Prior: It is important that there should be talks between the two Governments. It is equally important that such talks be carried out in a frank manner. There should be no question of any behind-the-stairs talking, such as the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) has unjustly accused us of on previous occasions—
    Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Well, why mention it?
    Mr. Prior: The latter part of the hon. Gentleman's question is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, but we had better see how we get on with other talks before we reach that stage.
    Mr. McNally: As one of the representatives of a town that has contributed in blood and young men who have gone to their graves long before their time, I wish the right hon. Gentleman well in his efforts in the new year. I hope that he will have talks with the new Irish Government. Will he look at the prospects of economic co-operation? Surely it is not sensible for Northern Ireland and the Republic to have a beggar-my-neighbour policy on economic development. Would not economic talks be worth while?
    Mr. Prior: I fully understand what the hon. Gentleman said in the first part of his supplementary question, and I agree with what he said about the recent loss of life of members of the Cheshire Regiment in particular at Ballykelly.
    With regard to the second part of his question, I think that economic talks are important. There is no reason why they should not continue. They have been going on in the past few months. They will continue, and I hope that in the new year we shall be able to move forward on several economic fronts which will be helpful to North and South.
    Rev. Martin Smyth: Will the Minister, recognising that Northern Ireland provides the best market for the
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    Republic, consider discussing a British-Irish Council rather than an Anglo-Irish Council, and perhaps encourage the Republic to come back into the fold?
    Mr. Prior: I should always like to encourage anyone to join the fold, but it might be slightly unrealistic to expect early results. I agree that it should be a British-Irish Council, because it must include Scotland and Wales as well as England.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Will the right hon. Gentleman assure the House that when he has talks with the new Irish Government he will put extradition on the agenda as a top priority? He will be aware that the recent McGlinchey case in Dublin gave some favourable pointers towards a change of attitude on that very vexed question.
    Mr. Prior: The McGlinchey case is an encouraging development, but it is not for me to speculate on how it might affect other requests for extradition from the Republic. Meanwhile, we shall put extradition at the top of any agenda for discussions with the Republic, because we believe that it is vital.
    Mr. Soley: Will the Secretary of State accept that many people, irrespective of their view of the future constitutional position of Northern Ireland, regard the talks as extremely important? We welcome the view that the talks should be open and frank. Can the Secretary of State give some indication that there will be talks in the fairly near future not only between Ministers but also perhaps at civil servant level?
    Mr. Prior: Yes, there can be talks at Civil Service level and at ministerial level. I hope that over the next few weeks and months we can have talks at all levels and gradually make some progress. That is the intention of Her Majesty's Government.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The question by the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) has been answered, but he was not present to hear the answer, so I presume he does not want to ask a supplementary question.

    Lear Fan Project
    Mr. Cryerasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when, pursuant to his answer of 8 December, Official Report, c. 536–37, he expects the target of 2,800 jobs to be reached on the Lear Fan-jet project.
    The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Adam Butler): The financial assistance agreement signed on 14 September 1982 between Her Majesty's Government and Lear Fan Ltd. envisages a target of 2,826 jobs in Northern Ireland by 31 December 1987. This agreement was an important step forward in the history of the project. The provision of about two-thirds of the funding needed to take the aircraft to certification and beyond represents an expression of considerable confidence by the private sector interests concerned.
    Nevertheless, despite the progress being made, there continues to be a substantial element of risk involved, and the build-up to the employment target over the next five years may be influenced by a range of factors, including the need to make the most effective use of resources and the commercial prospects for executive aircraft.
    Mr. Cryer: Every effort to obtain jobs in Northern Ireland—or anywhere else in the United Kingdom—is

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    very welcome, but will the Minister explain why the taxpayer has now lost control of the project after contributing significant sums to it? Is not one of the lessons from the De Lorean project that the taxpayer, having been a significant contributor—indeed, the major contributor—should keep control to ensure that the project comes to fruition, as everyone wants it to do?
    Mr. Butler: The best prospects for a company are when the private sector is prepared to put in its funds, preferably to the extent of meeting most of the funds required, and that is the situation in this case. Nevertheless, there is very strict financial and technical monitoring of the project on behalf of the taxpayer, and there are two directors on the taxpayers' behalf on the boards of Lear Fan Ltd. and Fan Holdings Incorporated.
    Mr. Molyneaux: Will the Minister of State do his best to remove the confusion caused by a recent Sunday Times article, which was absolutely bewildering in its conclusion, particularly when it asserted that the project was doomed to failure because it was likely to be successful?
    Mr. Butler: I share the hon. Gentleman's concern that anxiety should have been caused by the article. One had to read almost to the end of it on an inside page to find words to the effect that the prospects for the project were now improving. I echo those words and not the headline which caused the anxiety in the first place.
    Mr. Colvin: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the prospects for the Lear Fan—a revolutionary aircraft—are extremely bright as seen through civil aviation eyes? will he comment on the Sunday Times article and say whether he feels that, in spite of his hopes for private investment in the project, the British taxpayer will get any return on the investment already made in the project?
    Mr. Butler: I welcome my hon. Friend's remarks, made with his particular experience of the industry. The return to the taxpayer will be represented by fairly substantial royalty payments, which will accrue against aircraft and spare parts sold to a maximum of $33·75 million, plus whatever dividend accrues from the 5 per cent. shareholding. One also has to include the benefit to the taxpayer in the sense that the jobs that are being provided by the project, which we hope will increase over the coming years, represent the best that can be done for the people of Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Soley: Does the strict financial monitoring to which the Minister referred apply only to the Government money that is put in, or does it cover the overall financial position of the company? If he can give us an assurance that there will be very strict financial monitoring of the total position of the company, that will allay some of the rumours.
    Mr. Butler: I can give the hon. Gentleman the categoric assurance that the monitoring applies to the full accounts of the company.

    United States of America (Diplomatic Representation)
    Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland whether he will review the role
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    of representatives of the Northern Ireland Office posted to Her Majesty's embassy and Her Majesty's consulates in the United States of America.
    Mr. Adam Butler: Several members of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, nearly all from the Industrial Development Board, are attached to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and are presently serving in certain of Her Majesty's diplomatic posts in the United States. There are no plans to change these arrangements.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: What guarantee can the Government give that Industrial Development Board officers, funded out of the Northern Ireland Vote and charged with responsibility for promoting all the British regions and not exclusively the Northern Ireland region, are carrying out their functions properly? Will he give us an assurance that my region in the north of England is being promoted within their brief as vigorously as they are promoting Northern Ireland?
    Mr. Butler: I have had the advantage of meeting all officers concerned, both in Northern Ireland when they return for annual conferences, and in post in North America. My impression is that they very fairly represent the interests of the United Kingdom as a whole. They work along with the "Invest in Britain" bureau and they report not direct to the Industrial Development Board but through the consular machine.
    Mr. Adley: In that the tasks of these people and the question relate to promoting Her Majesty's Government's case concerning Northern Ireland, is my hon. Friend really satisfied that they are using the language and putting the case across in a way that the ordinary American citizen understands? Does my hon. Friend agree that it might be helpful to point out to the Americans that the people of Northern Ireland are as entitled to their identity separate from that of Southern Ireland as are the people of Canada from that of the United States, and that the people of Northern Ireland are as entitled to choose their relationship with the rest of the United Kingdom as are the people of Puerto Rico to choose their relationship with the rest of the United States?
    Mr. Butler: I think my hon. Friend will find that all those who promote industrial investment in Northern Ireland have to be proficient in promoting Northern Ireland as a whole and to be fully informed on the political, security and other aspects, in order to meet the queries and expressions of concern that frequently arise from those who may be interested in investing.
    Mr. Fitt: Have officials at the British embassy in Washington or anywhere else in the United States had their attention drawn to a document written by two Irish priests who paint a wholly inaccurate picture of what is happening in Northern Ireland? Does he know that those two priests are not speaking for the majority of Catholics or for the Catholic Church? Will he make representations to the leaders of the Catholic Church in Ireland and ask whether they agree that the views put forward in the document do not represent the views of the Catholic Church?
    Mr. Butler: I do not know whether the industrial development officers have had their attention drawn to the document. When misleading propaganda is circulated it is our practice to counter it to the best of our ability. The latter part of the hon. Gentleman's question falls outside

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    the scope of the question on the Order Paper, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have heard what the hon. Gentleman has said and we shall follow it up.

    Assembly (Sinn Fein Members)
    Mr. Dubsasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland on how many occasions (a) Ministers in his Department and (b) civil servants have had meetings with elected Sinn Fein Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly; and what issues were discussed.
    Mr. Prior: Since the recent Assembly elections there has been one meeting between an Under-Secretary of State and a delegation of elected representatives which included, among others, a Sinn Fein Assembly Member. The meeting was arranged to discuss housing matters in an area of Belfast. All the elected Sinn Fein representatives have had contact with Government officials at a local level on a range of constituency matters. I have made it clear that I am not prepared to talk to Sinn Fein Assembly Members about general issues until that party unequivocally repudiates violence.
    Mr. Dubs: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that his answer puts into a different context some of the arguments that took place about the proposed visit of Sinn Fein members to London a couple of weeks ago and that it is preferable to involve those people in political discussions, because that is the best way of persuading them that democratic political processes are preferable to violence?
    Mr. Prior: The great mistake made by Mr. Livingstone two weeks ago was to invite Sinn Fein representatives for general discussions. If he had said "If you want to come, repudiate violence before you come", that would have been a very great step forward. The Sinn Fein Members of the Assembly were elected and there are constituency matters in which they are involved. We are following the long-established pattern that on constituency matters we allow the local elected people to have access to Ministers and officials. But that does not alter one iota the view that we all hold that we must repudiate violence of every sort from wherever it comes.
    Mr. McCusker: Does not the Secretary of State's reply throw into sharp relief the hypocrisy that was displayed two weeks ago? Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us what it feels like, and what his Ministers and civil servants feel like, to have discussions with men who are described as terrorists and as having been involved in the planning and implementation of terrorist offences? Does not the right hon. Gentleman realise that it is offensive to the people of Northern Ireland to have their whole country turned into an interment camp to save the rest of the United Kingdom? The Secretary of State cannot hide behind the legislation. If people are considered terrorists and a danger in London, they should be regarded as terrorists and a danger in Belfast, and the Government should act accordingly.
    Mr. Prior: The hon. Gentleman does not do his case any good and does not help to create peace in Northern Ireland by seeking to stir it up in that manner. However, of course I sympathise with, and understand, the point that the hon. Gentleman makes. The difficulty is that the people of whom we are speaking are resident in Northern Ireland and there is no way in which one can ban them from their own country.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that at a convention in Dublin a few days after the Assembly elections the elected representatives of Sinn Fein pledged themselves unequivocally to back the armed struggle and the campaign of murder in Northern Ireland? Does he not feel that the people of Northern Ireland are justifiably stirred up by the two attitudes that are adopted—one in London and another in Northern Ireland?
    Mr. Prior: I understand the views of the people of Northern Ireland. I have had them expressed to me in no uncertain terms. The point is that evidence used by the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis to advise the Home Secretary not to admit people to Britain may not be sufficient to bring about a conviction in a court in Northern Ireland. If we can get the necessary evidence against these people, charges will be brought.

    Security
    Mr. J. Enoch Powellasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will institute special security precautions during the Christmas season.
    Mr. Proctorasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the security situation in Northern Ireland.
    Rev. Ian Paisleyasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the security situation in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Prior: I regret to report that since 25 November, 22 people have died in incidents arising from the security situation in the Province. Seventeen of these, 11 soldiers and six civilians, died as a result of the explosion at Ballykelly on 6 December. Three other members or ex-members of the security forces were shot down. A man has already been charged in respect of one of these shootings. Two men, claimed as members of the Irish National Liberation Army, were shot dead by the police.
    So far this year 684 persons have been charged with terrorist type offences, including 50 with murder and 95 with attempted murder, and 319 weapons, 40,797 rounds of ammunition together with 5,064 lb of explosives have been recovered.
    As for the introduction of special security precautions during the Christmas season, this is of course a matter for the judgment of the Chief Constable and the GOC, but I understand they have stepped up the already high level of their operations in the past few days.
    Mr. Powell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this Christmas and all Christmases to come will be haunted by the memory of those who have lost their lives or been bereaved needlessly because he despised and rejected the advice and warnings of those who know better than he?
    Mr. Prior: The right hon. Gentleman is making serious charges, which I believe he has absolutely no justification for making. Everyone, except, apparently, the right hon. Gentleman, knows that terrorists do not need the excuse of an Assembly to carry out their activities. What is more, they have been carrying out those activities for the past 12 years. Surely the right hon. Gentleman must realise that whatever view he takes about the Assembly, it has not been the cause of increased violence or, regrettably, less violence.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Will the right hon. Gentleman convey to Her Majesty's Forces, the RUC, the RUC

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    Reserve, and the UDR the deep gratitude of the Ulster people for the service that they are giving in Northern Ireland?
    Is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to ensure that the special units of the RUC, which have been so effective in countering terrorist operations in the county of Armagh, will be usd right across the Province and that the war against the IRA will go on until the IRA is defeated?
    Mr. Prior: I am grateful for what the hon. Gentleman said in the first part of his question. The whole House will agree with his sentiments.
    On the second part of the question, special units of the RUC are available in any part of Northern Ireland, but I must make it clear that they must act strictly within the law, that no fresh instructions have been given to the RUC over the past few weeks or months and that those units and all the police must act within the law, and they are doing so. Even in the heightened, tightened situation in South Armagh that remains the position.
    Mr. William Ross: What special precautions were taken at places used by soldiers before the Ballykelly bombing? In the light of the McGlinchey case, has the RUC prepared a long list of applications for extraditions from the Irish Republic?
    Mr. Prior: The hon. Gentleman's questions are matters for the GOC and the Chief Constable respectively. I have no doubt that the GOC has taken, and will take, all the measures that he thinks right to protect soldiers and others when they are out of barracks. I also have no doubt that, following the McGlinchey case, the Chief Constable is making what preparations he thinks right with regard to extraditions.
    Sir John Biggs-Davison: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the whole nation will share the gratitude, expressed on behalf of the Ulster people by the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley), to the security forces? Does my right hon. Friend not think it extraordinary that, in such a protracted emergency, court sentences and remission policy mean that unreformed terrorists are set free to rejoin the terrorist ranks while hostilities continue? Can something be done about this?
    Mr. Prior: We must obey the rulings of the courts. If we fail to do so, we are playing into the hands of the terrorists. I assure my hon. Friend that the rules for those committed to life sentences are different and that careful consideration is given before any release is contemplated.
    The whole House will join in my right hon. Friend's praise for the security forces. This was admirably borne out during the tour yesterday by the Prime Minister and the reception that she received. I am certain that all the people of Northern Ireland are grateful for the time that she spent in the Province.
    Mr. Concannon: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the Opposition also wish to express thanks to all members of the security forces who will be busy at work on our behalf over Christmas? I include the Minister who has drawn the short straw as the duty Minister over Christmas. It is the Opposition's firm belief that if progress is to be made over security the best way forward is by political means. The right hon. Gentleman can be assured of our support for any steps towards political progress that are taken on both sides of the community.
    Mr. Prior: I am grateful for what the right hon. Gentleman has said. I make one last Christmas appeal to Members of the Unionist Party who are present to give the Assembly a chance. I ask them to recognise that a devolved Assembly in Northern Ireland with powers available and exercised by the people of Northern Ireland acting in community is the most likely way to achieve political stability and, in the long run, the peace that is available in Northern Ireland.
    Rev. Martin Smyth: Will the Minister accept that the practicability point is difficult, following his earlier answer to the hon. Member for Belfast, East (Mr. Robinson), when he said that it would take the presence of the SDLP to restore those powers? If we are paying tribute to the security forces, will the right hon. Gentleman take the practical step of honouring them through the award of medals? Will he further acknowledge that within the law it is a travesty that 50 per cent. remission, instead of the parole system, is applicable to terrorists in Northern Ireland?
    Mr. Prior: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have promised the hon. Member for Armagh (Mr. McCusker) to consider the last point. If we are to achieve peace, all sections of society in Northern Ireland have to be prepared to give up some of their most cherished views. That is what we are looking for. If the hon. Gentleman is asking whether I can put forward, within the context of the Assembly, any further suggestions that might help to get devolved government back to Northern Ireland, I can tell him that this is something that I am prepared to do in consultation with the parties as soon as they wish to come and talk to me about it.

    Illegal Organisations (Membership)
    Mr. Peter Robinsonasked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many persons found guilty of membership of an illegal organisation received non-custodial sentences in the past five years; and what percentage of the total this represents.
    Mr. John Patten: Where a charge of membership is combined with another charge, the available statistics record only the most serious offence or that for which the offender received the heaviest sentence. A substantial number of convictions for membership of a proscribed organisation are therefore excluded. On this basis, however, a total of 174 people convicted of membership of a proscribed organisation since 1 January 1978 have received non-custodial sentences. This represents 75 per cent. of the total number of such convictions.
    Mr. Robinson: Is it not preposterous and outrageous that three-quarters of those found guilty of membership of an organisation that carries out the most heinous crimes in our society should receive non-custodial sentences? Do not those figures in themselves state the case for a minimum mandatory sentence?
    Mr. Patten: That is not for us to determine. The courts have a wide range of penalties available to them, up to the 10 years' maximum custodial sentence allowed by the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1978. A substantial number of people receive custodial sentences.

    Less Favoured Areas
    Mr. William Rossasked the Secretary of State of Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the possibility of the extension of the less favoured areas in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Adam Butler: As my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food informed the House on 13 December 1982, the case for the extension of the less favoured areas in the United Kingdom has now been formally submitted to the European Commission.
    Mr. Ross: Has the Minister studied the line that was drawn to define the new less favoured areas in Northern Ireland? Does not that line expose the nonsense of the whole system? Is he aware that many areas of land that can be clearly classified as less favoured are excluded?
    Mr. Butler: The line which, if it takes effect, will bring 75 per cent. or so of Norther Ireland within the less favoured areas was drawn up according to the criteria laid down in the directive. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware of those critria. They are not as straightforward as some people believe.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Adleyasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 23 December.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher):In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having meetings with ministerial colleagues and others.
    Mr. Adley: In wishing my right hon. Friend a deserved and very happy and peaceful Christmas, may I ask her over the Christmas holiday to spare a thought, and also encourage everyone to spare a thought, for the millions of people around the world who are not free to travel, to speak and write what they wish, to congregate or to choose their Government? Will she in the new year try to encourage people like Mr. Bruce Kent to recognise that his inability to differentiate between the East and West blocs must seem deeply offensive to people like Archbishop Glemp, for whom words such as "peace" and "freedom" have real meaning?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend that freedom and justice are very precious. We should not take them for granted. There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who would wish to have the freedoms that we have in this country. They must be defended. Otherwise, those who are so free to exercise freedom of speech will no longer be able to do so. The best defence is the Western Alliance and the nuclear deterrent.
    Mr. Foot: Is the right hon. Lady aware that we are all concerned to try to get the best defence we can without blowing the world to pieces? Has the right hon. Lady had a chance to reconsider the reply that she made to the House on Tuesday about Mr. Andropov's proposals? The right hon. Lady said, I think, that she had not had time to read the full proposals. She made the most peremptory and slapdash reply on a matter of major importance. Has she had now chance to consult the Foreign Office, which seems to take a very different view from hers on the way that negotiations should be proceeded with?
    The Prime Minister: The Foreign Office takes precisely the view that the Foreign Secretary and I take. It is perfectly straightforward and simple. The Soviet Union has been offered the zero option of no intermediate range nuclear missiles. That is by far the best answer for the Soviet Union and for us. For all those who hate nuclear weapons and who wish for peace everywhere, that is the option that we should go for. I am utterly mystified that certain Members of the Opposition prefer to go for an option where we have none and the Soviet Union still has very many.
    Mr. Foot: The right hon. Lady has not followed these matters. Nor has she attempted to reply to the specific questions that I have put. What she has just stated does not accord with what the Foreign Secretary told the House yesterday. The right hon. Gentleman attempted, at any rate, to treat the matter seriously. There are many others in Europe who have responded seriously—for example, the Foreign Minister of West Germany. Is the right hon. Lady aware that we are asking her to catch up with the Foreign Office on this issue? Will she recognise that 1983 could be the most dangerous year in the history of the nuclear arms race and that we want a British Government who will act constructively to try to end that race?
    The Prime Minister: The danger will be reduced, not by Mr. Andropov's proposals, but by haling no intermediate-range nuclear weapons. The right hon. Gentleman is prepared to have some on the Soviet side. I do not want any. I want a zero option on both sides. If he wants the official Foreign Office briefing, let me give it to him. It is that
    "a continuing Soviet monopoly of longer-range INF missiles in Europe, with NATO alone implementing the zero option, would be unacceptable."
    Mr. Foot: Did not the Foreign Secretary say yesterday that these porposals would be examined seriously? Which is the Government's policy—the right hon. Lady's explosions, or the Foreign Secretary's considered replies?
    The Prime Minister: The policy of Her Majesty's Government is the zero option. It is, perhaps, because some of us have stood so firmly by it and said that the cruise missiles will be deployed unless we get satisfactory conclusions from the Soviet Union that the Soviet Union is now for the first time beginning to consider reducing armaments. It has a long way to go yet for the zero option. The right hon. Gentleman is content for it to have some and for us to have none. I repeat, for the Soviet Union to have a monopoly of those weapons, and for us to have none, is totally unacceptable to the Government.
    Mr. Foot: The right hon. Lady should sort out these matters. When she talks about these negotiations, in fact it was pressure from the Opposition and the peace movement throughout Europe that got the Geneva discussions going.
    Sir Peter Emery: Rubbish.
    Mr. Foot: The Government did not say a word in favour of those Geneva talks before President Reagan was eventually persuaded to come forward in favour of them. We were in favour of those talks all along.
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is talking nonsense. An extensive list of proposals for reducing strategic weapons, for a zero option of intermediate-range nuclear forces and substantial

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    reductions in conventional weapons was put forward in a well-known speech by President Reagan. It was an excellent package of disarmament proposals on a multilateral basis. Is the right hon. Gentleman for the zero option, or is he prepared to have a monopoly of those intermediate-range weapons on the Soviet side and none on ours? He must answer that question. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."]
    Mr. Colvinasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 23 December.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Colvin: I echo the good wishes already expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley). Will my right hon. Friend find time today to read the copy of the document that I have sent to her entitled "Avon Peace Education Project: A Programme for Schools"? Does she feel that there is a danger that the so-called peace studies are being used by CND as a means of indoctrinating our schoolchildren? Does she agree that peace, good will and disarmament are all part of the Christmas message, are two-sided if not multi-sided matters, and that the unilateralists, by definition, are more likely to put those aims at risk than to secure them?
    The Prime Minister: Thanks to my hon. Friend, I am aware of that syllabus, which was produced not by the Avon education authority, but by a group of people funded, I believe, by the Rowntree Trust. I am as anxious about those matters as my hon. Friend. I agree with him completely that unilateralism would put peace, freedom and justice at risk. I should think that many of us who lived through the 1930s are well aware of that. It leads to weakness and puts freedom and justice at risk. There cannot be both unilateralism and multilateralism. One has to have multilateralism. It is for both governors and parents to consider the matter carefully and make their views known to education authorities and head teachers.
    Mr. David Steel: I also wish the Prime Minister a happy, relaxed, family Christmas. During the holidays will she reflect on the English housing condition survey, just published by the Department of the Environment, which designates 1 million houses as unfit? As there are 400,000 building workers on the dole, will she make a new year's resolution to start a sustained programme of home improvement and thus bring seasonal cheer to such people as the 76-year-old man in Liverpool, reportedly sleeping on the floor, and let them know that something will be done to clear these unfit houses in the coming year?
    The Prime Minister: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks, which I reciprocate warmly. My hon. Friend the Minister of State for Housing and Construction at the Department of the Environment issued a statement which came out at the same time as the housing survey. It pointed out that the Government had taken a number of steps to increase improvement grant activity. There has been a significant rise in the number of improvement grants paid. In the third quarter of this year they were the highest since 1974. The Minister listed a further five major steps which the Government have taken which will, I hope, deal with many of the matters mentioned in the housing report. The five steps are detailed in the answer that he gave a few days ago.
    Mr. Neil Thorne: In view of the important relationship between the sale of British goods and the protection of British jobs, will my right hon. Friend find time during a busy day to consider recommending to Her Majesty the Queen the institution of an award system for retailers of wholly British goods along similar lines to the award system for British industry, with an award of a special emblem going to the top 10 firms who sell most British goods in each year?
    The Prime Minister: I shall of course look at that suggestion. There are a number of items that are not made in this country. We have to remember also that we depend on exports for many jobs. It is very important to urge people to remember that jobs and prosperity depend upon customer satisfaction and purchase. It will help if people will buy British goods that are of excellent value and design rather than foreign goods. I hope that people will take that step.
    Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Will the right hon. Lady, who in 1982 has done so much to revive the national spirit of this country and to prove that sovereignty is no longer a dirty word, recognise that in 1983 in those two principles will lie the solution to her problems and ours in maintaining the Union of the United Kingdom and in making new relations between Great Britain and our continental neighbours?
    The Prime Minister: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for what he said in the earlier part of his question. It is right that we defend our legal sovereignty and uphold international law in so doing. Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. I believe and hope that it will remain part of the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Hal Millerasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 23 December.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Miller: Is my right hon. Friend aware that people and firms in the West Midlands, the region with the highest rising and absolute rate of unemployment, agree that Labour's policy of increased spending, borrowing and taxation, leading to increasing inflation and ever higher unemployment, offers no answer to their growing anxiety over the continuing decline in the industrial base as they struggle to regain competitiveness and customers? They expect—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must be fair. If he asks a quick question, other hon. Members can be called.
    Mr. Miller: —to be able to compete on fair and equal terms with other regions in this country and other countries, whether Spain, the political economies, or our partners in the EC.
    The Prime Minister: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend's economic analysis. We must have sound financial policies, get down inflation and try to keep down interest rates if those industries in the West Midlands are to have a real chance in a highly competitive world. I am well aware of the difficulties that the West Midlands has with imports, especially from Spain and Japan. We are in touch with the European Community about this matter,

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    especially about Spain and Japan. We have said that we really must have some action about both and that, if not, we shall have to consider taking action ourselves.
    Mr. Dormand: Will the Prime Minister say what principles are being applied in the Government's review of their regional policies? Whatever they are, will she assure the House that more and not fewer resources are needed in areas such as the North, and will she say when the review is likely to be completed?
    The Prime Minister: The principle of the review of regional policies is to see how we can best help effectively and in the longer run to build industries that will have a future. We are all very much aware that some of those who went to the regions—I suppose that Linwood is a classic example—did not have a future. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have concentrated our help on the special development areas. We shall continue to do that.
    Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the considered and grave charges that I made against the Prime Minister personally on Tuesday, has there been any request to answer substantive Question No. Q8?
    Mr. Speaker: No.
    Sir John Biggs-Davison: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Normally I take points of order after the Business Question. Officially, we are still in Question Time.
    Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Some of us tabled questions of substance to the Prime Minister today. Will you give us general guidance? Do those hon. Members who table questions of substance thereby disadvantage themselves in that they have little chance of being called?
    Mr. Speaker: Not at all. The hon. Gentleman's question was No. 8 and that was his disadvantage. If it had been No. 1, it would have been called.

Business of the House
10.30 am
Mr. Michael Foot: May I ask the Leader of the House to state the business for the week that we return?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): Yes, Sir. The business for the first week after the recess will be as follows:
MONDAY 17 JANUARY—Consideration of a timetable motion on the Transport Bill.
Motions on the Rate Support Grant (Scotland) (No. 2) Order, and on the Housing Support Grant (Scotland) Orders.
TUESDAY 18 JANuARY—Opposition Day (4th Allotted Day): Subject for debate to be announced later.
WEDNESDAY 19 JANUARY—Remaining stages of the Water Bill.
THURSDAY 20 JANUARY—Motions on the Rate Support Grant Supplementary Report (England) 1982–83, and on the Rate Support Grant Report (England) 1983–84.
Motions on the Welsh Rate Support Grant Report 1980 (Supplementary) (No. 2) Report 1982, on the Welsh Rate Support Grant Report 1982 (Supplementary) Report 1982, and on the Welsh Rate Support Grant Report 1983–84.
FRIDAY 21 JANUARY—Private Members' Bills.
Mr. Foot: I have a number of questions to put to the right hon. Gentleman arising from various misdemeanours by the Government.
The right hon. Gentleman proposes a timetable motion on the Transport Bill. The Opposition naturally will oppose that with great strength.
The right hon. Gentleman adds a further offence to the business which he has announced for the Monday of our return. He proposes that the House takes the Scottish rate support grant order at 7 o'clock. I cannot understand why he wants to do that. Normally we have a full day for such a debate on Scottish affairs. Is this just part of the Government's "couldn't care less about Scotland" attitude to so many different Scottish matters?
There is a further matter which affects the Secretary of State for Transport. Published today in The Guardian is what appears to be an authentic leak about the Serpell report on transport, which is of major importance for the future of British Railways and a matter to which a great deal of substance was attached by the chairman of British Rail, who was looking to the report to provide a basis for the railways to have a prospect for the future. I understand that undertakings were given by the Secretary of State for Transport that a proper statement would be made when he received the report. Will the Leader of the House now say how that matter is to be dealt with?
A number of questions were raised a little earlier about defence and disarmament and the Government's proposals for or attitudes to these matters. The Opposition strongly urge that on the earliest possible occasion after the House returns there should be a full day's debate on disarmament in time provided by the Government. The Opposition are eager to have such a debate, especially in the light of the claims made by the Prime Minister today and on some previous occasions. She claims to be a great supporter of multilateral disarmament. However, in the past few weeks
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her Government have consistently put Britain's vote in the United Nations against proposals for multilateral action. In the light of that—
Sir Peter Emery: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I realise that it is the Leader of the Opposition who is at the Dispatch Box. However, the right hon. Gentleman appears to be making a speech rather than putting a question to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. It is an abuse of our procedures, I suggest.
Mr. Speaker: I think that the Leader of the Opposition is about to come to his question.
Mr. Foot: I had already asked two or three questions. I submit, Mr. Speaker, that you will see from past records that Leaders of the Opposition have often had occasion to ask lengthy questions at such times as this. It would be a denial of the rights of the Opposition if we did not continue to have them, especially when the House is rising for a few weeks and a range of matters have accumulated.
The answers given by the Prime Minister today reinforce the case for an early debate on disarmament. The Opposition are extremely eager to have it and, especially in the light of the representations that I have just made, we hope that the Leader of the House will agree to that proposition.
Then we have the Charter Consolidated and Anderson Strathclyde affair, and the Opposition want to know the Government's proposals for dealing with that. Very serious matters have been raised affecting the Government's conduct. The replies made by the Government so far are quite unsatisfactory. Yesterday in the House the Opposition demanded an early debate. There is no doubt that if the House were not about to rise for the Christmas Recess there would be an immediate debate on the subject. I hope that the Leader of the House will guarantee a debate on those matters.
I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has now agreed to the Opposition's proposals for a debate on fisheries. I hope that he will also say that he proposes to accept our proposals made over a number of weeks for a debate on training colleges.
I ask the Leader of the House to say that he is prepared to look again at the business that he proposes for the week or two after our return and make sure that we have the full debate on disarmament which we are demanding as well as a full debate on the Anderson Strathclyde disaster.
Mr. Biffen: No Government supporter wishes to crib or cramp the style or time of the Leader of the Opposition every Tuesday and Thursday, because those occasions provide more reassurance even than the MORI polls.
I shall deal with the seven questions put to me by the right hon. Gentleman. He asked for a debate on training colleges. This has been the subject of some preliminary discussions through the usual channels. I cannot be too forthcoming about it, but I realise that it is a matter of some interest throughout the House.
I am happy to confirm that a debate on fisheries should take place very shortly. In the light of the recent developments in the Council of Ministers, it is a matter which will concern the House very much once we reassemble.
On the Charter Consolidated bid for the Anderson group of companies, my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Trade made a statement yesterday, which I

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believe dealt authoritatively with, first, the Secretary of State's shareholding, secondly, his competence in passing the decision to another Minister, and thirdly, the decision itself. Those who believe that there was anything about which my hon. and learned Friend should be defensive should mark the reactions of the Liberals in another place, who in my view showed a more valued detachment on the matter. It was said from the Opposition Front Bench yesterday that my hon. and learned Friend had been
"got at by City interests".—[Official Report, 22 December 1982; Vol. 34, c. 958.]
That is not the basis on which we reasonably conduct debates in this Chamber, and it does not excite me to offer Government time for a debate on the matter. It is a matter for the Leader of the Opposition to decide how he wishes to pursue the matter as a debate.
I come to what is perhaps the most major issue, and that is a debate on disarmament. As the right hon. Gentleman rightly perceives, the matter that will dominate the run-up to a general election is whether this country is a loyal member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and it will reveal those who have neutralist anxieties and ambitions. I am sure that time will be found for all these matters in either Opposition or Government time. All I can say is that no debate has been planned for the week when we return.
The Serpell report on the railways was touched on by me in response to a speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and Lymington (Mr. Adley) earlier in the week. The conclusions of that report will be published, and in due course the Government will announce their response, and that of course will be the occasion for a statement in the House.
On the Scottish rate support grant order, there are many precedents for devoting a half-day to the subject. I appreciate that it is an issue of the utmost importance, but I hope that in all the circumstances, and given the extent to which the debate can run, it will be thought to be a reasonable judgment.
I conclude by referring to the first point that the right hon. Gentleman raised, the timetable motion on the Transport Bill. I understand the relish with which he returns to this topic. The last time we had a timetable motion he sat it out. That was the timetable motion on the Northern Ireland Bill. Now he has come back to the fray, and as an old hand in these matters he has welcomed the timetable that has been allocated. It is one which takes account of the fact that after 80 hours of debate we are still only on clause 2. There are plenty of precedents, although I announced the motion with no great enthusiasm and in the resigned manner in which Leaders of the House have announced such matters for decades past.
Mr. Foot: We certainly do not regard the proposal to have the Scottish rate support grant debate at 7 o'clock as "reasonable"—to use the word that he used a few moments ago. We think that it is most unreasonable, especially at a time when it will cause further and fresh difficulties for local authorities in Scotland. We hope that he will reconsider the matter.
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for what he says about a debate on disarmament. We want to have it as soon as possible.
We do not accept what the right hon. Gentleman says about the Charter Consolidated and Anderson Strathclyde issue. The matter should be debated in the House. We
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believe that there is no possibility of the Government escaping such a debate. If the Government study the expressions of opinion that have been made in Scotland on the subject, they will understand that they must have the debate, and that it would be best for their grace and reputation to give way to our demand and have a debate at an early date.
In the Christmas spirit in which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the public opinion polls, may I say to him that I am not always an enthusiastic supporter of those polls. Occasionally, however, they serve a useful purpose in showing the way in which opinion is moving. If we continue to gain on one of these polls as we have done over the past month, we shall be about 7 per cent. ahead of the Government when the general election comes. So I give that offer and good wishes to the Leader of the House.
Mr. Biffen: I note with all the generosity of the season the advantages that the right hon. Gentleman draws from the opinion polls in his last two remarks. The recovery, I believe, has been at the expense of the Social Democratic Party, and merely means that wandering Socialists are finding another temporary abode.
On the more substantial point, the Scottish rate support grant debate can continue for quite a while, starting at 7 pm. I do not want to encourage hon. Members, but it can go on until 2.30 in the morning. In view of all the precedents that there are in the matter, I do not think that I have been unduly Scrooge-like about the supposed allocation of time.
I note what the right hon. Gentleman says about the importance of the Government's decision on the Charter Consolidated bid for the Anderson group. Naturally, it is a matter of great interest in Scotland. The position was explained by my hon. and learned Friend yesterday. In respect both of the decision itself and, above all, of the propriety of the decision, the Government's case rests with that statement.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am mindful that nine private Members have Adjournment debates. I shall not allow the usual time for business questions today, out of fairness to those hon. Members. So I shall bring these questions to a close at 11 o'clock, and I shall take a quarter of an hour off each of the first two Adjournment debates.
Mr. David Steel: As the Leader of the House is indulging in this Christmas spirit of generosity, may I ask him a question in which I have a personal interest—along with, I suspect, more than half of all hon. Members? When does he intend to lay before the House the report of the Boundary Commission?
Mr. Biffen: Alas, I cannot give as specific and direct an answer as I would wish. However, I promise the right hon. Gentleman, as this is very much a House of Commons matter, that I shall ensure that it is debated at the earliest possible opportunity.
Mr. Tim Eggar: Has my right hon. Friend noticed the decision by the Electricity Council to announce that in future standing charges will be no more than half of a total electricity bill? Is it not disappointing that British Gas has not followed suit and has not paid attention to the spirit of Christmas? If no announcement

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has been made by the time we reassemble, will he ensure that we have a debate on the future management of British Gas?
Mr. Biffen: I cannot be generous about the allocation of time for a debate, but I shall draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy my hon. Friend's comments, and I know that my right hon. Friend will be anxious to endorse what he says.
Mr. John Roper: Will the right hon. Gentleman accept that, whatever the general case for allocation of time orders—I thank him for having tabled the order for the Transport Bill so that we can see it today—many Opposition Members feel that it is quite inadequate to leave only one week for the rest of the Committee stage of the Bill and only one day for Report and Third Reading? In the spirit to which he has already referred, will he contemplate during the next three weeks whether he could amend the order when he puts it before the House on our return?
Mr. Biffen: It is most generous that I should be asked to contemplate. That is the easiest part of the hon. Gentleman's suggestion. However much I contemplate the suggestion, I do not think that there is any prospect of changing the terms of the order, although I appreciate that from time to time disquiet has been expressed about the way in which we manage timetabling arrangements, and I confess that I have some sympathy with that.
Mr. James Lamond: I greatly welcome the fact that the Leader of the House has announced that there will be plenty of time in the coming year for discussions about disarmament, because he believes that it will be an important matter to be debated during the general election campaign. Can I take it that we may also look forward to having regular reports of the discussions on disarmament that are going on in various parts of the world, so that we may all be educated in these matters, not least the Prime Minister, who either has not read Mr. Andropov's speech, or has deliberately distorted it beyond recognition when she answered questions today?
Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman is very much a star performer at Foreign Office questions in directing attention to those matters. I have no doubt that he will have the same success in 1983 as he has had in the recent past.
Mr. Richard Alexander: Will my right hon. Friend consider an early debate on the Middle East? Will he bear in mind that King Hussein of Jordan is visiting the President of America this week and that while he is there and we are having our Christmas many thousands of refugees and their families are living in squalid conditions in tents in Lebanon? Can the House have an early opportunity to add its voice to discussion of that problem?
Mr. Biffen: My hon. Friend is right. For generations the House has taken a keen interest in Middle East affairs, even when our material influence and power in that part of the world was strictly limited. However, that said, I must confess that I cannot offer the prospect of a debate on the Middle East in the early part of the new year.
Mr. Joseph Dean: In answer to the Leader of the Opposition, the Leader of the House referred to yesterday's statement and questions on the Anderson
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Strathclyde incident. I want to correct a matter which was referred to in that debate. I asked a question relating to a question that I asked on 8 April on the general policy of appointing Members of the House of Lords to the position of Secretary of State. In the Minister's reply to my question there was an imputation that I was challenging the honesty and integrity of the Secretary of State for Trade. I was not. My question in April and my question yesterday were about the policy of appointing senior Ministers from the House of Lords, who are not answerable to this House. I want any such imputation to be struck from the record because no such imputation was intended.
Mr. Biffen: I was objecting to the words of the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Craigton (Mr. Milian) when he said:
"Is it not a fact that the Minister made that decision because he has been got at by City interests"—[Official Report, 22 December 1982; Vol. 34, c. 958.]
The hon. Gentleman's point about the desirability of having senior Ministers sitting in the House of Lords is completely different. It is valuable that senior Ministers do sit in the House of Lords and I do not think that anyone who knows my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade could for one moment question his integrity.
Sir John Biggs-Davison: In the first week after the recess, will my right hon. Friend make a statement about the matter which I drew to his attention on Monday: the anticipation—or, worse, substitution—of statements which ought to be made by Ministers in this House by statements made in the Northern Ireland Assembly of which there was another example yesterday? Will my right hon. Friend take serious note of the tendency of the Northern Ireland Assembly by its behaviour and nomenclature to make itself into a parallel Parliament? May we have a serious statement on that after he has taken what advice he thinks necessary?
Mr. Biffen: My hon. Friend raises an important point. I cannot promise that I shall make a statement in quite the terms that he has requested, but I shall look at the matter and be in touch with him.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Has the Leader of the House taken time off to reconsider the decision that he took the other day when he would not allow hon. Members a debate on the international recession and the measures that need to be taken by this and other Governments in the Western world to end it, particularly in the light of today's OECD report which shows that the simultaneous pursuit of monetarist policies by members of the OECD is in itself responsible for that recession? May we have that debate, which everyone in Britain must surely want?
Mr. Biffen: I can offer no prospect of a debate on the international recession in Government time during the first week after our return from the recess. I should have thought that there were plenty of opportunities for Back Benchers to pursue that issue, using their initiative to secure an opportunity.
Mr. Tony Marlow: In the light of yesterday's suggestion that we do away with the dog licence, can the House have an early debate on the subject of dogs, particularly as people appear anxious to prevent our pavements from becoming obstacle courses and to do something about the disgusting state of some of our parks?
Mr. Biffen: I would hope that all those great reforms could be achieved without the necessity of using parliamentary time.
Mr. Bob Cryer: May I help the Leader of the House? I know that he is short of time and wants an early debate on disarmament when we reconvene. May I suggest that he remove the guillotine on the Transport Bill to stop trampling that legislation through the House, since it will result in increased bus and rail fares for many millions of people, and substitute a debate on disarmament so that we can explain to the Prime Minister that the acceptance of Mr. Andropov's proposals will still leave both Britain and Russia with 161 missiles and a massive degree of overkill?
Mr. Biffen: Alas, I have become so cynical since holding this office that I know that if I did exactly what the hon. Gentleman suggests he would complain that the time allowed for the guillotine motion would be wholly inadequate for a debate of the magnitude of one on disarmament.
Mr. Robert Adley: Lest there by any doubt about it, will my right hon. Friend take note that Conservative Members are just as keen to discuss disarmament and the appeasement campaign being run by the CND as are Labour Members? Such a debate would give us a chance to examine in detail the links between the so-called peace movement and the Soviet Union.
Will my right hon. Friend read the Serpell report over Christmas? When he has done so, will he not be more likely to agree with me that we need not a statement on that important report, but a full day's debate in Government time?
Mr. Biffen: My hon. Friend is much less generous than the hon. Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper). I know that my hon. Friend feels that he has a good case to argue—I am sure that he has—with the Leader of the Opposition about the balance of nuclear force and world peace.
It must be a wise course first to have the Government's reactions to the Serpell report and a statement and then to consider the matter in that light.
Mr. Michael English: When will the Government reply to the Treasury and Civil Service Committee's report "Acceptance of outside appointments by Crown servants" of 9 March 1981? It is unlike the right hon. Lady the Prime Minister, whose personal responsibility it is, to dither for nearly two years. Is it because she is yielding to the pressure of the tiny but powerful trade union which includes all her top civil servants, or is it because we propose that there should be legislation similar to the American ethics in government Act?
Mr. Biffen: The hon. Gentleman fairly states that this is the personal responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I shall certainly see that she become acquainted with his anxieties.
Mr. Bill Walker: Will my right hon. Friend reconsider his answer on the Anderson Strathclyde matter? Does not he believe that there would be considerable merit in having a debate in which it would be possible to review the shareholdings of members of previous Administrations in public companies which supplied goods and services paid for by the public purse?
Mr. Biffen: I know that there is a veneer of attraction in what my hon. Friend says, but I seriously do not think that the House does itself any good whatever by implying or suggesting that the high motives of Britain's public servants are in any way vitiated by material concern. Yesterday's arguments on the Scottish aspect were much better than those on propriety.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: Has the Leader of the House noticed that the business statement for the European Community's Council of Ministers meetings at c. 947 of yesterday's Official Report includes a reference to a meeting of the Economic and Finance Council on 17 January, for which the agenda has not yet been fixed? Can he assure the House that the matter of the Assembly veto will be discussed and that a Minister will report the results of that meeting to the House?
Mr. Biffen: I am all for the Leader of the House having wider-ranging powers, but even in my most ambitious moments I cannot authorise what may or may not be discussed at the Council of Ministers. The point made about the relationship between the Council of Ministers, the Assembly and the national Parliaments is extremely relevant, together with the sums of money involved.
Mr. Nicholas Baker: Does my right hon. Friend consider it appropriate for us to remember the anniversary this holiday of the unjustified invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union? If he cannot find time to discuss that subject after the recess perhaps he could find time for a debate on disarmament so that the House can use that debate to consider the appalling suffering of the Afghan people.
Mr. Biffen: That is a very important point. From what I have said, it is evident that no provision for that matter has been made during the first week after the recess. However, any of the wider foreign policy issues that come before the House would certainly embrace those considerations.
Later—
Mr. Harry Greenway: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: I should remind the hon. Gentleman that points of order will lessen the time available for the next Adjournment debate.
Mr. Greenway: I shall be brief, Mr. Speaker. What is the general length of time allowed for business questions?
Mr. Speaker: I am usually more generous than I was today, but I have an overriding obligation to the House. In the knowledge of the House, I promised hon. Members that they would have Adjournment debates.

Business of the House
  BILL PRESENTED
    PIG INDUSTRY LEVY
    Mr. Peter Walker, supported by Mr. Secretary Younger, Mr. Secretary Edwards, Mr. Leon Brittan, Mr. Alick Buchanan-Smith and Mrs. Peggy Fenner, presented a Bill to authorise the Meat and Livestock Commission to impose a levy for the purpose of meeting costs incurred by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in consequence of exercising any of his powers under the Animal Health Act 1981 in relation to the disease of pigs known as Aujeszky's disease or in relation to pigs which are affected or suspected of being affected with, or have been exposed to the infection of, that disease and for the purpose of making certain additional compensation payments to the owners of such pigs in respect of losses incurred by them in consequence of action taken by the Minister in relation to those pigs under that Act; and to provide for the application of the proceeds of the levy for those and connected purposes and otherwise for the benefit of the pig industry or the pig products industry; And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Monday 17 January and to be printed. [Bill 53].

International Monetary Reform
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lang.]
11.1 am
Mr. Geoffrey Rippon: We can now have at least a short debate on the important matter raised during questions on the business statement by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). Although his intervention curtailed this discussion, he has curiously now chosen to leave the Chamber just as he had the chance of a short debate on international monetary reform.
The world depression, which has intensified in the second half of this year and which, according to the OECD report today, is likely to become worse next year, has at last set alarm bells ringing. But even as late as September, at the IMF conference in Toronto, Governments did not seem too deeply disturbed by the situation or aware of the danger ahead. It is true that at the end of the conference, Mr. Sprinkel, representing the United States of America, expressed his Government's desire to put a "burr under the saddle" of other countries to speed up the process of strengthening the monetary system against the danger of collapse. All the member countries of the IMF have now peered over the abyss and they realise that something must be done if we are not all to fall into the pit. However, they must still agree on exactly what is to be done and how soon it is to be done.
I have raised this topic on the Adjournment largely because the Secretary of State for Trade made a statement of frightening complacency in reply to the important debate initiated by Lord Lever in the other place on 15 December. It would appear that the Secretary of State believes that the position should cause concern, but not alarm. He has given the impression—at least to me—that the Government think that everything will be all right, that international institutional reforms are not needed and that, as the institutions have coped before, they will cope in future. I hope that my hon. Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury will be more forthcoming today and will convince me—as I would like to be convinced—that I have misinterpreted the Secretary of State.
Mr. Volcker, the United States Federal Reserve chairman, was right to say in Boston on 17 November that the current strains on the financial system were essentially without precedent in the post-war world. We are today reaping the whirlwind created by the folly of equating tight monetary policy with high interest rates and compounding that folly by using unreliable monetary aggregates, such as M3, which we have now happily largely abandoned.
Governments and central bankers are now recanting with all the fervour of heretics about to be burnt at the stake. We are now wisely pursuing more flexible monetary policies. We have seen a change in the attitude of the United States of America in particular. Indeed, I welcome what the chief economic adviser to Mr. Reagan has described as "the eclipse" of the extremists and what the Financial Times described yesterday as "the ascendancy" of the traditional conservative monetarists, such as Mr. George Shultz. His return to the international scene will be a matter for great rejoicing.
About a decade ago, Mr. Shultz was one of the two principal architects of the Committee of Twenty's proposals for a "reformed system" to follow the breakdown of Bretton Woods. Unfortunately, we are still

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awaiting that reform. The situation is now so grave that no nation—not even the United States—can ensure a general economic recovery simply by changing its monetary policies. In the immediate future only concerted action to bring about a fundamental restructuring and refinancing of the IMF and the World Bank will suffice.
We have shovelled vast quantities of petro-dollars through commercial banks into Third world projects and have then sat back and watched them being shattered by crippling interest rates, coupled with falling commodity prices. It is estimated that the oil-importing developing countries alone are expected to find about $38,000 million this year to fund foreign debt interest. That is about $21,000 million more than in 1979. Of course, they are going to the wall. Many of them cannot even repay the interest, let alone the principal sum, which now amounts to about $500,000 million of debt in Third world countries.
The Secretary of State for Trade was again rather complacent when he said that in real terms that was only about two and a half times more than the debt a decade ago. It is a formidable problem. If the ultimate objective is to secure an increase in international trade, we cannot just wait for that to happen. The arrangements that the IMF is making with Mexico, Brazil and other debtor countries are holding the position, but only temporarily.
The IMF manifestly has insufficient resources to act as a lender of last resort. I was glad that the Chancellor of the Exchequer played a notable part at the Toronto conference, in seeking to buttress the ability of the IMF to contain the crisis. He recommended then, and is still urging, a minimum of a 50 per cent. increase in IMF quotas. He said "minimum". However, 50 per cent. may not be enough. Are the Government also seeking to increase the resources available to the World Bank and to strengthen the Bank of International Settlements? perhaps the Economic Secretary can tell us how much the United Kingdom may provide.
I should like to express what I am sure is the general satisfaction of the House on the appointment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer as chairman of the IMF's policy-making interim committee. He has announced that he is committed to campaigning to obtain an agreed package on IMF quotas by mid-1984, instead of the target date of January 1986. That is good news, but a lot can happen before 1984. It may be many months before there is agreement not only on the quotas, but on the necessary redistribution between the member nations.
Meanwhile, the United States of America has called for an emergency fund to finance large debtors such as Mexico and Brazil. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend will tell us what contribution the United Kingdom will make to that fund, because at present both its size and its working rules are ill defined.
What role do the Government see the commercial banks playing? It has been suggested that they must make more substantial loans to the Third world. How will that be done? The commercial banks already have outstanding debts of hundreds of billions of dollars. They are already under attack for lending too much money too readily and carelessly. What security can they have now that it can no longer be assumed that sovereign nations will never default? Many of the world's lending commercial banks, including those in the United Kingdom, have substantial reserves, but I doubt whether those reserves are strong
1080
enough to withstand the shocks that lie ahead. Nothing less than the restructuring and the refinancing of the IMF and the World Bank will suffice. That gives urgency to the actions of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor during the next few months.
What is the Government's response to Mr. Reagan's important initiative at Frankfurt in calling for a new Bretton Woods conference to improve the working of the world's financial systems and to ensure greater monetary stability? More than a year has passed since the Governor of the Bank of England—who has consistently given wise advice to successive Governments and who has always been on the side of the good monetarists—called for more stable exchange rates to restore business confidence. What are the Government doing to achieve that?
Pegging the exchange rates within relatively narrow limits may have distorted the position. On the other hand, floating exchange rates that were so much welcomed by academic economists a decade ago have not fulfilled their expectations. The rate movements have been increasingly erratic and frequently irrational. Competitive devaluations are proving as great a threat to industry and to economic recovery as competitive interest rates. It is not an easy problem, but I hope that the Government are thinking about how we can achieve a system of managing floating currencies to ensure some stability.
My hon. Friend will agree that international monetary stability is linked to the provision of international monetary reserves. Since the breakdown of Bretton Woods in 1971, and President Nixon's suspension of dollar convertibility, we have had neither a gold exchange standard nor a dollar standard. Today we have a multiple reserve asset standard, the disadvantages of which are becoming increasingly manifest.
That raises the question of whether we should return to a single reserve asset, either the special drawing right or gold, or a combination of both. My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer told the IMF in September 1981 that the special drawing right cannot be a strong unit unless those responsible for the component currencies ensure that those currencies retain their value. That raises the question not only how we can ensure exchange rate stability, but what role gold can play in achieving more confidence. I wish to know the Government's views on the matter.
Do the Government agree that the issue of monetary reserves that can be used for intervention purposes is a problem that must be solved? In that respect, gold might have a useful and important role to play. One thing is certain. We shall never achieve a secure and stable global monetary system without a great act of imaginative statesmanship. I hope that the Government can provide that.
11.14 am
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Jock Bruce-Gardyne): I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) on raising a matter that is of considerable importance to the House and to the country. He did so in a way that gives me time to respond to the points that he made and to try to answer some of his questions.
Before I try to answer some questions, which I accept are significant, I shall say something about the general background to this problem. As I see it, the world is undergoing a transition from a period of high and

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accelerating inflation into a period of much more stable prices. That is a profoundly healthy and desirable transformation, because I have always regarded inflation as remarkably similar to a hard drug. Its first applications are enjoyable, but repetition reduces its effectiveness and increases dependence until it is essential for the addict to break the habit.
The gravest danger of the inflation drug is the threat that it poses to the coherence of democracy. In Latin America, where inflation has been endemic, it has tended to lead to military dictatorship. We may console ourselves with the thought that we are light years removed from such dangers in Western Europe, but we must take note of the tendency, even in Britain, in the mid-1970s to seek refuge in corporatist rather than parliamentary alleviations of the symptoms—alleviations which, when they predictably failed, led to the cry that the nation was ungovernable. I am relieved that we have not heard much of that during the past two or three years.
I concede that the transition to more stable prices—what one might call the drying out process, if that is not a dangerously double-edged simile—is delicate and risky. There are dangers of a relapse into protectionism and of cumulative default in the banking system, to which my right hon. and learned Friend referred, leading to a secondary collapse of the international trading system. But, equally, there is the danger that techniques invoked to avoid those hazards may simply lead to a recrudescence of the inflationary scourge from which we are trying to escape. We must try to manage the transition, which is essential to the process of management to which my right hon. and learned Friend addressed his remarks.
There is no division between my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham and my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Government in his chosen objective. We share his rejection of the follies of protectionism, most of all for a country that depends as heavily as we do on international policies. I was delighted that my right hon. and learned Friend welcomed the appointment of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor as chairman of the interim committee last weekend. As my right hon. and learned Friend said, the Chancellor has made it clear that he attaches great importance to this new role and responsibilities and he is approaching them with considerable urgency.
However, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham complained that my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade, in answering a recent debate in another place, showed what he described as "frightening complacency". He took exception to my right hon. and noble Friend's expression of concern, but not alarm, about the international banking environment. It is a fine judgment as to how far concern goes and when alarm begins. There are anxieties in all our minds and it would be ludicrous to deny that. However, since last summer the international institutions have made significant progress in dealing with the problems of sovereign borrowing.
How do we envisage the role of the International Monetary Fund evolving? My right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer advocated an increase in IMF quotas of at least 50 per cent. at the Toronto meeting. Events since then have suggested a need
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to put an increase in quotas in place as quickly as possible. My right hon. and learned Friend is much engaged at the moment in trying to accelerate the negotiation and ratification of the review. We shall have to see how the negotiations proceed and the allocations turn out before arriving at the precise contribution that Her Majesty's Government will be called upon to make to the increased quotas. I cannot give my right hon. and learned Friend a specific answer this morning because it would be premature to do so.
My right hon. and learned Friend referred also to the American Government's proposals to build on the general arrangements to borrow with a special and substantial line of credit to be available to the fund in times of major strains upon the financial system. If enhanced borrowing arrangements were to play a role in enlarging the resources of the fund, this might be the quickest and most effective way forward—in other words, using the general arrangements to make resources available to the fund for more general use if the stability of the international financial system appeared to be at immediate risk.
The issues are complex and the interests of many member countries are involved. However, now that my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been elected chairman of the interim committee, he intends to play a full part in ensuring that the fund plays its role effectively. He also means to ensure that the fund remains the major international institution that can examine the economies of both industrial and developing countries, and help them formulate adjustment policies and provide the finance while they carry them out. We must ensure that countries are not driven into or encouraged into default. On the other hand, it cannot make sense to provide unlimited additional credit in circumstances where there is every reason to suspect that it will not be used to underpin the necessary adjustment in the financial performance of the borrowing countries. There is a need for additionality and we cannot leave that entirely out of account.
Mr. Robert Sheldon: That is just what the hon. Gentleman is doing. By increasing the debt of borrowing countries by whatever means, we are making it harder and harder for them to repay the interest let alone the capital. Unless increased lending is tied up with an arrangement that gives borrowing countries greater opportunities to export their own goods or raw materials, they will never be able to repay the increasing debt that it seems the hon. Gentleman is prepared to give them.
Mr. Bruce-Gardyne: I agree with the right hon. Gentleman to the extent that it must be illogical at one and the same time for advanced industrial countries to participate in schemes for the provision of additional credit for the developing countries and to think in terms of erecting protectionist barriers for their trade and exports. I hope that that is a point that he will drive into the minds of some of his right hon. Friends who occupy places on the Opposition Front Bench. There is a dangerous tendency for them to believe that the provison of additional credit to assist developing countries is compatible with the erection of barriers to their trade. That must be wrong and I agree with the right hon. Gentleman to that extent.
My right hon. and learned Friend asked also about the commercial banking scene. He suggested that perhaps the international institutions and Governments had been

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somewhat dilatory about erecting proper supervisory and underpinning arrangements for the commercial banking system. I remind him that in 1974 the central bank governors from the major industrialised countries made it clear that means must be available and would be available to provide temporary liquidity to the Euromarkets and that they would be used if and when necessary. In 1975 the banking supervisors of the major countries agreed to a set of guidelines on prudential supervision which have become known as the Basle concordat. Regulation of the international banking market, like the regulation by individual countries of their domestic banking markets, is not perfect, and I do not pretend that it is. However, a framework of regulation is well-established and it is both wrong and unhelpful to suggest that it does not exist.
In today's markets there are strong reasons for both lenders and borrowers to avoid outright default. In recent years all major problem countries have made considerable efforts, usually successful, to keep paying interest on outstanding loans. Rescheduling is something that we all try hard to avoid, but if it does happen it is not a complete disaster. The effect on the lending banks is not to make them insolvent but to reduce their liquidity and, to some extent, the quality of their assets. Banks are right to worry about their exposure in some cases and to be reluctant to increase it. Nevertheless, there is both justification and need for lending to continue in cases where countries have adopted appropriate adjustment policies but may still require time and accommodation to carry them out. It is there that the need for co-operation between the international institutions and the commercial banks is perhaps most crucial.
My right hon. and learned Friend also talked about the stability of exchange rates. I rather share his scepticism. At the beginning of the 1970s there was the notion that floating exchange rates would provide a panacea. I did not believe that at the time. I thought that they could have dangerous consequences, many of which I believe have materialised. Once this genie has been let out of the bottle it is very difficult to put it back in again. The Bretton Woods system of fixed but adjustable rates was based, in a sense, on what Ibsen called a lifeline. It was based on
1084
the willingness to pretend that rates were fixed although, in fact, they were not. As I have said, once that pretence is abandoned it is difficult to re-establish it.
My right hon. and learned Friend has asked what the Government are doing to achieve greater stability in exchange rates. The most important contribution that we can make in current circumstances to the achievement of this objective is the pursuit and fulfilment of coherent monetary and fiscal policies that are designed to lower the pressure that is created by inflation. The enormous fluctuations that we have seen in exchange rates over the past 10 years are an inescapable reflection of a period of high and accelerating inflation. I doubt whether we can at this stage look to the restoration of a single reserve asset such as SDRs or gold as being the bedrock of a new international system.
As my right hon. and learned Friend recalled my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer saying, the most significant contribution that the currencies participating in the SDR system can make is to restore the responsibility of their domestic, fiscal, monetary and budgetary policies. Crucial in that area is that we continue the progress towards a more modest level of domestic borrowing by Governments in the advanced industrial countries. There is no doubt that the sheer size and prospect of the budgetary deficit in the United States, for example, has played a part in lifting interest rates not only there but in other countries, thereby prolonging and deepening the extent of the recession. Therefore, we believe that progress towards a more modest level of budget deficits is part of the role that Governments must play in resolving the pressures on the international monetary system and preparing the road for a move to recovery in international trade and activity.
I see that my time is up. The Government are grateful to my right hon. and learned Friend for raising this subject. We shall take careful note of what he has said. I have no doubt that he will accuse me of complacency, but I assure him that we take these problems seriously and have every intention of collaborating with our partners in moving towards solutions to them.

National Health Service (Scotland)
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Before I call the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton), I should tell the House that Mr. Speaker has said that the next debate will take 30 minutes.
11.32 am
Mr. William Hamilton: On 29 November 1982 there was an article in the New Statesman headed:
"Profits in Scottish Ill Health"
That article outlines some of the problems that I shall raise. It described "the unseemly scramble" to build private profit-making hospitals in Scotland with the active connivance and encouragement of the present Government. Side by side with that development, the Government have relaxed controls on full-time National Health Service consultants doing private work. The consequence of that has been that increasing numbers of those consultants throughout Scotland have applied to use National Health Service facilities for their private patients. There appears to be an alarming increase in the evidence suggesting that a minority of consultants are systematically misusing National Health Service facilities for their private patients and their own selfish personal gain.
Some cases and names were specifically mentioned in the New Statesman article. For example, it quoted a case, in which I was involved, of how last year Mr. Alec Spence, an orthopaedic consultant in Fife, was reprimanded by the Fife health board for allowing a private fee-paying patient to jump the queue for beds at the Victoria hospital in Kirkcaldy. It was fortuitous that that was found out, by methods that I need not go into now.
Another consultant was identified as Dr. J. A. Kennedy, a consultant cardiologist at the Glasgow Western infirmary. He had been sending his private paying patients to the hospital's exercise testing unit for free tests, although when he was charged with that he said that that was not happening now. However, it is believed that private patients have had access to that facility for at least two years, although the number of patients involved is not yet known. I have been advised that that case is now subject to a criminal investigation, but that Dr. Kennedy is still working. I should like to ask without prejudice to the case why Dr. Kennedy was not suspended on full pay. Any other employee in that position would have been dealt with in that manner.
The next example comes from the Scottish Daily Record, a popular newspaper in Scotland, of 10 September 1982. The article concerns Dr. William Irvine, an immunologist of world renown at Edinburgh Royal infirmary. Apparently that consultant was carrying out work, using facilities provided by the British taxpayer, for a hospital in Indianapolis in the United States. The Daily Record article describes how Dr. Irvine entered into an
"agreement for a 2 year series of tests to be carried out in Edinburgh on deep-frozen serum from 500 American patients using pancreas tissues taken from Scots' kidney donors."
The allegation has been made that Dr. Irvine could have earned as much as £60,000 from that source in 1981–82. Other irregularities have been discovered in the conduct of that gentleman, so much so that, according to the Daily Record article, Dr. Irvine is now the subject of a Crown Office probe. Will the Minister tell me what progress has been made in that case and in the case that I mentioned earlier? Is Dr. Irvine still engaged in that work?
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Another example concerns an arrangement with Flow Laboratories of Irvine, and to a lesser extent with Gibco Europe Ltd., by which the biochemistry department of the Glasgow Royal hospital for sick children was being used to do quality control tests for those two private companies. The fee charged to the companies was most recently £12·10 per test. Over 300 of those tests were carried out per year, which was half the total work load of a four-person laboratory.
The income from those tests was therefore only about £4,000 to £5,000 a year. However, the running costs of the laboratory, paid by the taxpayer, were approximately £50,000 a year, so those two private profit-making companies were getting for less than £5,000 what was costing the taxpayer £25,000. If those tests had been done in a private laboratory, they would have cost £50 to £85 each, not £12·10, which was being charged in the public laboratory.
Worse than that, it is significant that none of the money collected was given to the health board, but was diverted to Glasgow university. The health board seemed to be completely unaware of that massive involvement, which presumably has now stopped. There is a strong suspicion that more than £12·10 per test was being paid, although to whom I am not sure.
I have a considerable file of correspondence on that scandal. The last copy letter in my possession was written by the district administrator of the western district of the Greater Glasgow health board, dated 2 June 1982, stating that investigations were continuing and that a further report would be made, firstly to the board. Has that investigation been completed? Has a report been made to the board? If so, what action has been taken, or will be taken?
I turn now to one or two queries concerning the Fife health board. Following certain allegations made to me of suspected irregularities, I wrote to the treasurer of the Fife health board on 9 December 1982 about possible abuses in the payment of fees in certain parts of the service in Fife. In that letter I asked a number of questions about certain activities in, for instance, the family planning service and in post-mortem examinations. The names of two consultants were mentioned but I will not identify them here for reasons which might be well understood, but I will give the facts as I understand them to be.
It is known that at a health board meeting on 3 February 1981 a figure in excess of £14,000 was specifically mentioned. It was apparently paid to one of those consultants. The validity of the claim for that payment was challenged, and in a letter from the board to my informant dated 31 August 1982 it was said:
"I would, however, confirm that the investigations referred to in the Minute"—
the minute of the meeting of 3 February—
"were carried out and the entire matter has been concluded"—
I emphasise these words—
"to the satisfaction of both the Board and the Scottish Home and Health Department".
What was it in that particular case that satisfied the Home and Health Department? Did it involve the repayment in whole or in part of any of the moneys obtained by that particular consultant? Was he reprimanded or disciplined in any way for his conduct? Will the Minister confirm that where a case of fraud or theft is suspected by a health board it has no legal option but to refer such a matter to the procurator fiscal? Has it

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no right to take it to the Home and Health Department of the Scottish Office, and has the Home and Health Department no right to take a decision one way or the other on the matter? I want an answer from the Minister.
There are two other cases which concern Fife and I put them on the record. In the family planning unit in Fife vasectomy operations take place from time to time. Normally, I gather, a vasectomy is a fairly simple operation that can be done in a matter of minutes with the aid of a local anaesthetic. I believe that over Scotland as a whole that is the normal method of operation. I would be glad if the Minister could confirm that one way or the other and give us some figures to show what overall proportion of vasectomies in Scotland is done by local anaesthetic and how many by general anaesthetic.
Can the Minister also confirm that where an operation is done by local anaesthetic two fees are involved and the total cost is about £30 but if it is done by general anaesthetic no less than four fees are concerned, namely, to the surgeon, to the anaesthetist, to the histopathologist and to a haematologist—it is amazing—at a total cost of £50 to £60 per operation? I pose those questions. I am trying to get the figures from the health board in Fife. I am told, although I cannot confirm this, that the number of vasectomy operations done by general anaesthetic is, for some strange reason, increasing in Fife as against the number done by local anaesthetic. The presumption is that that happens because the extra fees are there for the doctors.
Lastly, I come to the question of the figures relating to post-mortems in the Fife region. According to figures supplied to me, between 1969 and 1981—a period of 12 years—the number of post-mortems done in hospitals went down from 281 to 154. In the same period fiscal post-mortems went up from 70 to 167. There was a startling jump in the number of fiscal post-mortems from 58 in 1972 to 141 in 1973, rising to a peak of 184 in 1977.
There may be a simple explanation for that phenomenon, but it is worth remarking, and my informant so remarked, that when a post-mortem takes place in hospital no fees are involved but when it is a fiscal post-mortem there is a fee of £35 or more. If 100 post-mortems can be transferred from hospital to fiscal post-mortems, £3,500 is involved. Assuming that the cost is about £35 for a post-mortem, the figure of 167 in 1981 would give an income of £5,845.
I could quote other cases but I shall not do so in view of the time. I hope that the Government will take these facts and these allegations seriously. It is felt that in the interests of safeguarding public money—I hope that we are agreed on this—all misuses of public money, whether by individuals or organisations, must be eliminated. I may say that as a member of the Public Accounts Committee of this House I am considering whether I should send all this information to the Comptroller and Auditor General so that he and his staff may take all measures to eradicate as far as possible, and certainly expose, the abuses that I believe that are there at the moment. Failing the Comptroller and Auditor General, then I think by one means or another I would seek to direct the matter to the attention of the National Health Service Ombudsman.
It is an extremely serious matter that I am raising. There is no doubt in my mind—here I speak unapologetically as a party politician—that the present Government have done everything to encourage the growth of private medicine and the intrusion of private profit-making into the public
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Health Service. That is destroying morale and also reducing codes of conduct that have hiterto existed in the National Health Service. I for one am determined to do everything that I can to stamp out this gross abuse of the Health Service and its facilities. I cannot give an undertaking for my party, but I think that it is well known that my party is committed politically and generally to get rid of the private element from the National Health Service. We cannot get rid of it altogether but we will separate it completely from anything to do with the taxpayers' money which is sunk in large amounts in a wonderful Health Service of which we should all be proud.
11.47 am
The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. John MacKay): The hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. Hamilton) was kind enough to give me notice of some of the points that he intended to raise, and for that I thank him. I am not sure whether I congratulate him on or thank him for having the Adjournment debate today. Perhaps I shall tell him that tomorrow when I find out how easily I get home due to the rather snowy conditions which may be prevalent in the west of Scotland today.
I know that it is Christmas and I shall attempt to be charitable in what I say. However, despite that, I think that the hon. Gentleman is attempting to whip up a storm of scandal and alarm, giving an impression that we have considerable financial abuse in the Health Service and that members of an honourable profession are concerned only to exploit the NHS in order to line their own pockets. I do not think that the kind of language we have heard, which I believe is extravagant and misleading, properly represents the position in the Health Service.
More than 9,000 doctors work in the NHS in Scotland. The number of cases to which the hon. Gentleman referred, even if one adds the number at which he merely hinted, is insignificant by comparison. Certainly his allegations are insufficient to serve as a foundation for claims of widespread exploitation of the Health Service or singling out the medical profession to blacken its name.
The hon. Gentleman said that he was considering sending his accumulated evidence to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The House should not be misled into supposing that the audit of public expenditure into the Health Service in Scotland is neglected. Financial administration by health boards is subject to regular scrutiny by statutory auditors and to the attention of officials of the Exchequer and Audit Department. If the hon. Gentleman's evidence about financial mismanagement is well founded, of course it should be referred to the Comptroller and Auditor General. I should point out, however, that the Comptroller and Auditor General has not neglected the Health Service over the past few years.
As the hon. Gentleman is a member of the Public Accounts Committee which receives the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General, he knows that the Comptroller and Auditor General has reported to that Committee on the management of money voted by the House in support of the NHS. Nor has the Committee been slow to summon the accounting officers of the health departments to question them on all aspects of the financial management of the service. The reports placed before the Committee are the outcome of extensive and searching inquiries by the officials of the Exchequer and Audit Department and in the past few years have covered such important matters as accountability and control of

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manpower, control of stores and linen, working practices, especially productivity schemes and emergency duty payments, and the fees paid to building consultants.
The hon. Gentleman referred to a number of specific cases and named two doctors. I cannot respond to questions about the cases of Dr. Kennedy and Dr. Irvine as the papers that he mentioned are with the Crown Office, so I am debarred from commenting on them. In any case, however, as the hon. Gentleman well knows, the local management of the Health Service is in the hands of the health boards. Although overall responsibility clearly rests with Ministers, it is to the boards that hon. Members should turn in the first instance when seeking information about the boards' decisions on personnel. If consultants are involved and there is any possibility of disciplinary action, the Secretary of State has an appellate function which must rule out premature comments such as the hon. Gentleman asks me to make on the rights and wrongs of health board reactions.
On the subject of the two firms sending specimens to the laboratory at the Royal hospital for sick children, the payments were going to the university. As the honorary senior lecturer in charge was an employee of the university, the firms may have thought that the fees were supposed to go there. The boards' attention having been drawn to the matter, however, the work is no longer undertaken in that laboratory.
Some of the hon. Gentleman's allegations relate to the Fife health board. He said that he had written to the board on 9 December asking a serious series of questions about the cases that interest him. He might have done the board the courtesy of waiting for its reply and thus perhaps saved the time of the House today. The board promised an early reply and I believe that it is now on its way, although I appreciate that the Christmas post may delay it. I believe that it is going today, so it may be a couple of days before the hon. Gentleman receives it.
The hon. Gentleman referred to abuses in connection with fees for post-mortems carried out by the procurator fiscal service. Pathologists employed by the Health Service are free to undertake such post-mortems provided that in the opinion of the health board such work does not interfere with their other activities or with the proper discharge of their contractual duties. They are paid for such work. I understand that the fee currently paid by the procurator fiscal is £28 per post-mortem and not £35 as the hon. Gentleman suggested. Under a long-standing rule, in the case of routine post-mortems no charge is made for the use of NHS facilities, but where special laboratory examinations are required in addition appropriate fees are paid and one-third of the fee is paid to the health board.
The hon. Gentleman's question about why there has been an increase in fiscal post-mortems would be better directed to the procurator fiscal service in Fife which instigates post-mortems in cases that it believes require further investigation.
On family planning fees, the hon. Gentleman mentioned a case that he said involved about £14,000 worth of fees. In answering his question about the outcome of that case, I assume that I am thinking of the same case when I say that all the claims were submitted in accordance with NHS circular 1975/PCS/1979 covering the payment of fees for family planning services carried out by medical staff in accordance with their employment in the hospital
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services. This was reported to the board's general purposes committee on 3 February 1981. On the basis of further advice received from the central legal office, it was agreed that all the claims had been made in accordance with current regulations.
The hon. Gentleman asked about the board referring cases to the procurator fiscal and suggested that that had to be done automatically. I will explain the circumstances in which certain matters require to be referred to the procurator fiscal. They are set out in NHS circular 1976/GEN/1978, paragraph 3 of which states:
"the Secretary and the Treasurer will of course make such preliminary inquiries in strict confidence as are necessary to eliminate the possibility that the circumstances merely indicate a misunderstanding arising in good faith."
If those inquiries suggest that further action is warranted, paragraph 5 of the circular states:
"In more serious cases and especially cases involving persons of standing full particulars (including all original documents) should be forwarded to the Department for submission to Crown Office."
It is therefore clear that each case must be considered on its own merits before any decision is taken to refer the matter to the procurator fiscal.
When the free family planning service was introduced in 1975, a special arrangement had to be made with the medical profession due to the additional work entailed for it. Under that agreement, all hospital doctors involved in family planning work, whether surgeons, anaesthetists or laboratory specialists, are entitled to the payment of NHS fees. This is one of the few elements in a hospital doctor's work that is paid on an item of service basis rather than by salary. A haematologist responsible for laboratory testing of specimens in connection with family planning cases is entitled to a fee per specimen. Anaesthetists are entitled to a fee for each family planning case in which they are involved.
The hon. Gentleman alleged that patients undergoing vasectomy operations received general anaesthetics purely to increase the anaesthetists' income. Whether a local or a general anaesthetic is given is a clinical decision for the medical people on the spot and one on which I cannot offer any authoritative view. If the hon. Gentleman is implying that there is a conspiracy on the part of anaesthetists in general to gain fees by using general rather than local anaesthetics, he should seek the comments of the Royal College of Anaesthetists as that is a very serious accusation.
In referring to a handful of cases, the hon. Gentleman has sought to paint an alarming picture of financial laxity and abuse in the Health Service. I am at a certain disadvantage in that I cannot complete the picture of all the cases that he mentioned due to the constraints imposed by the fact that some are sub judice and all may involve my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in an appellate role. I assure the House, however, that the picture suggested by the hon. Gentleman is exaggerated. The ASTMS is not the only watchdog of taxpayers' interests in ensuring that money voted for the Health Service and its care of patients is used in accordance with the wishes of Parliament and to the maximum advantage of patients. As is right and proper, the way in which the health boards discharge their role of financial management is regularly examined by statutory auditors and is closely watched by the Exchequer and Audit Department and by the accounting officer of my Department. Such controls are essential in all areas of the Health Service.

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At a time when we all hope that any strain in personal relationships in the service due to the Health Service dispute can be mended as quickly as possible, it is unfortunate that such generalised accusations are bandied about. Nothing is more likely to damage personal relationships inside the Health Service than the suggestions that have emerged in the debate and in the dossier to which the hon. Gentleman referred that ASTMS moles are spying on their colleagues and reporting back to their boss in order to compose such files and dossiers. That sounds as if there is a kind of latter-day McCarthyism in the Health Service. It does nothing for personal relationships inside the Health Service if medical people feel that they are being spied on by colleagues.

Children of Mrs. Al Ali
12 noon
Mr. Robert Rhodes James: In the course of his duties every hon. Member who takes a personal concern for his constituents as individuals can give testimony to his experience of human unkindness and even cruelty. Thankfully, there are other and happier experiences, but the case that I raise today is one of the saddest and most difficult that I have undertaken in my six years as hon. Member for Cambridge.
It concerns the virtual abduction last December of three small children who are United Kingdom citizens—two girls, Alya and Aisha, and a boy, Yasim, then aged 6, 4 and 2 respectively—by their father, Colonel Mohammed Al Ali, a senior officer in the Dubai armed forces. They were taken from their mother, Lynne, from Cambridge to Dubai.
Mrs. Al Ali is a United Kingdom citizen who married Colonel Al Ali in Qatar in 1971, followed subsequently by a civil ceremony in Britain. I shall give only a brief outline of this complicated case and I shall not go into the legal details.
The family subsequently lived in Dubai and Cambridge, where Mrs. Al Ali's parents live. In the summer of 1981, the marriage experienced such severe difficulties that Mrs. Al Ali brought the children to Cambridge, having agreed that they would continue to be brought up in the Muslim faith. It was intended that the separation would end in divorce, and Mrs. Al Ali hoped that, given the circumstances, that would be as amicable as possible.
Last December, in line with her desire to make the separation and divorce amicable, Mrs. Al Ali agreed to the three children visiting Dubai to see their father, on the understanding that they would be returned to her in Cambridge on 2 January this year. However, on 3 January Colonel Al Ali obtained a unilateral divorce under Islamic law in Dubai, and on 23 February the Shar'iah court in Dubai gave custody of the children to his mother.
That was the problem brought to me by Mrs. Al Ali. I subsequently had consultations with Foreign Office Ministers, who advised me as far as possible to pursue the legal route both in this country and Dubai. I consulted my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Runcorn (Mr. Carlisle) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South Fylde (Mr. Gardner), and the solicitors Few and Kester of Cambridge, who advised me to consult Mr. Anthony Hollis QC, who is now a judge.
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As a result of Mr. Hollis's endeavours, on 14 June the Family Division of the High Court of Justice ordered that the children be returned to their mother in Cambridge, the father to be given full access. However, the Shar'iah court in Dubai ruled that Colonel Al Ali could not transfer custody of the children and said:
"It is the paternal grandmother's responsibility to safeguard the children. She is prohibited from delivering them to any person or to have them travel outside the State … The father is prohibited from transporting the children to Britain or taking them out of United Arab Emirates without the agreement of this court."
Certain aspects of that ruling are controversial. There is a straightforward and serious inaccuracy, in that the court claimed that the children are citizens of the United Arab Emirates. They are not. They are citizens of the United Kingdom and have United Kingdom passports.
Colonel Al Ali is in defiance of the court in Dubai as the children are living with him and not with his mother. In its ruling the Shar'iah court said:
"this does not prohibit the mother from having the right to see her children and to visit them in Dubai according to agreed arrangements with their custodian."
The difficulty is obvious. The air fare to Dubai is expensive and there is no possibility of Mrs. Al Ali obtaining employment in Dubai to be close to her children. On one occasion when she made use of the access order to see her children, Colonel Al Ali was present throughout the meeting. Therefore, the access order is singularly hollow.
Throughout this side episode, Foreign Office Ministers have been helpful with their advice and assistance. I, Mrs. Al Ali and her legal advisers are sincerely grateful to them. Unhappily, this is by no means a unique case, as the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer), who hopes to intervene, knows only too well.
In 1978 I dealt with the case of an American Service man who abducted his son from Cambridge and took him to the Philippines where he was outside the jurisdiction of both the British and American courts. Through the kindness of the then American ambassador, Mr. Kingman Brewster, the then British ambassador, Mr. Peter Jay, and Mr. Harold Brown, the then United States Secretary for Defence, I was able to apply moral pressure on that senior officer in the United States Air Force to return the son to the mother. That was successful. It was one of the happier episodes in my experience as a Member of Parliament:
The situation that we now face does not simply relate to the tragedy that has befallen my constituents. The following is reported in Hansard:
"Mr. Temple-Morrisasked the Lord Privy Seal what help his Department can provide in recovering children removed abroad by a parent.
Mr. Luce: The only help we can offer is to try to obtain a welfare report on the child from the local authorities in the area concerned. Any question of the custody of such a child is a matter which can only be decided by the courts of the country where the child is present. The return of the child to a parent in this country can be pursued only through legal channels."—[Official Report, 27 March 1980; Vol. 981, c. 680–1.]
Is that really enough? We are talking about the abduction of minors, citizens of this country, to another country where they are outside the jurisdiction of the British courts. Yet, short of obtaining redress through the courts of the country concerned, there is very little that can be done.
I do not want in any way to be critical of the Foreign Office and I appreciate fully the difficulties involved, but it would seem to be an extraordinary and deplorable

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position in international law, and in terms of the arrangements between friendly countries, that episodes of this sort can occur and cause such genuine grief and distress to a parent and to the children involved.
I would not expect the Government to announce today any major change in their policy. However, I ask the Minister to consider very carefully with his colleagues whether it might be conceivable in future that, through international law, diplomatic pressure or discussions with other countries, this glaring loophole in international law and relations might be closed. I do not claim or believe that the solution will be easy or swift, but we should not tolerate a situation in which it is so easy to abduct small children, against the laws of this country and the ruling of the High Court, and to remove them to another country, so that we are then powerless in the matter. That is the dominant theme that I wish to place before the House.
I hope very much that the sad case of my constituent will end happily, but after the experience of the past 12 months the omens are not particularly good. Above all, I hope that in this House we shall be able to address ourselves seriously to the problem as a whole so that the experience of Mrs. Al Ali will not be shared by others in the future.
12.12 pm
Mr. Bob Cryer: I express my gratitude to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) for initiating this debate on a very important subject, and I express my sympathy for Mrs. Al Ali in the circumstances in which she finds herself.
On 24 November there was a meeting in the House of the members of the children abroad self-help group, including Mrs. Al Ali. The 11 other parents present all outlined cases of a similar gravity. They spoke of the heart-rending circumstances in which the children of whom they had been granted custody had been abducted and taken overseas. The parents had then faced tremendous difficulties in the courts. In some cases they had had to finance action in the courts, legal aid being extremely variable in its application.
Although, clearly, the Minister has been extremely helpful in the case of Mrs. Al Ali, the parents at the meeting of the group—at which hon. Members from both sides of the House were present—expressed the view that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office was not assisting in all the cases to the best of its abilities. I shall give one example by way of illustration. The group was initiated by my constituent, Mrs. Jean Burt. Her child was taken to Kuwait. She has fought for her child, of whom she has custody, through the British and Kuwaiti courts, but she has been refused permission, for example, to meet her son on embassy premises. She feels—and I share her view—that that is a very unhelpful attitude.
Together with the hon. Member for Cambridge and other hon. Members, I hope to bring a delegation to see the Minister, who has helpfully agreed in principle to meet it and to discuss the matter. It came through clearly that there were instances when the Foreign Office was either unhelpful or slow to authenticate the position in this country when authentication was needed abroad.
The cases raise wider considerations, such as the need to tighten up the procedure for passport applications. I appreciate that that does not come within the jurisdiction
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of the Foreign Office, but it is suggested that, when children are made wards of court or when custody is granted to one parent, both parents should have to sign an application for the child's passport.
We cannot deal with such issues now, but I am grateful for the opportunity to point out that many anxious parents hope that the Minister will give a positive and helpful reply so that the tragedies that cause such considerable suffering do not last any longer than is necessary.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hurd): I am glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Mr. Rhodes James) has raised the case of Mrs. Al Ali and that he broadened the discussion. He and the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Cryer) accurately pointed out that there is a considerable number of such cases.
My hon. Friend outlined sympathetically, but forcefully, the circumstances of the Ali case, but I hope that he will forgive me if I start with a general statement of matters that are almost certainly obvious to my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Keighley, but which the Foreign Office's postbag shows are not obvious to a number of people who have been in difficulties as a result of their involvement with other countries.
The general statement arises from the fact that the story that my hon. Friend told goes to the heart of one of the most difficult problems that the Foreign Office faces when we deal with the misfortunes of the many British people who live, travel, work or marry abroad. The great majority of that large number of people pursue their lives abroad without difficulty or trouble. The cases that come to us are those of people who have faced difficulties as a result of another country's customs and laws, which inevitably differ from our own.
In the cases referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge and the hon. Member for Keighley we are dealing with countries which, although friendly, have laws and customs that are different from our own and derive from a different civilisation. They do not always provide the same protection or rights that we expect from our laws and which British citizens who have not given thorough thought to the matter before a difficulty arises might expect to apply to them. That is in the nature of the world of nation States in which we live. It means that there is no automatic redress under our laws and standards for British people who find themselves in difficulty abroad.
We cannot assume, though it is sometimes expected of us, any automatic or imperial authority to force foreign Governments to apply British rules or standards, or even our court judgments, to British subjects under their jurisdiction.
This means that there is no automatic way in which Her Majesty's Government can necessarily right a wrong or redress a problem simply because a British subject is involved. Sometimes we have a legal standing. I shall come in a moment to the possibilities under international law of dealing with this problem. If there is a clear legal standing, this may well provide us with a firm basis to intervene. If we have no legal standing, that does not mean that there is nothing that we can do to help. If we have no legal standing, we have to consider what actions are practicable and what is helpful within the framework of another country's laws and customs and of our relations with it.

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I accept entirely that we have a general responsibility in this kind of case to do what we can to help. The extent to which we can help usefully will vary. In some countries, with some problems, we can do more, and in some countries less. What is useful and practical will certainly vary. Sometimes, where we have a legal basis for intervention, it may be a matter of formal representation. Sometimes, it may be a matter of putting in a quiet word where this could be helpful. Sometimes, it may be a matter of public protest or drawing attention publicly to what is going on, as my hon. Friend, in reasonable terms, has done today.
The specific help that is possible and helpful in each circumstance is a matter of judgment on which hon. Members are entitled to their views. We have to make up our own minds, in the light of the advice that we receive from our representatives abroad, how each case can best be handled. I accept that within the framework of the limits caused by the world of sovereign States in which we live we have a responsibility to do what we can to help.
My hon. Friend has been in touch with us about the case he has raised since the time when the difficulty began. I should like to express my strong sympathy with his constituent in the distress that she has understandably suffered. My hon. Friend dealt with the legal case and in particular with the court rulings in Dubai. He has given the House useful information on the details. I am asking our consul-general in Dubai to let me have a full report on the present position of the local court proceedings. It is clear from what my hon. Friend has stated and from our communications within recent hours with the consul-general that the situation is complicated. It is not straightforward in terms of the Dubai court and its different rulings. I should like to have a full report from the consul-general about the legal position together with information on any other aspects of the matter that he considers relevant.
Once I have this information, I shall be able to judge what actions it would be useful or proper, or might be useful or proper, for us to take with the Dubai authorities if I judge that such action would be helpful. I should like at that stage to get in touch with my hon. Friend before we send further instructions to our post. Any action we feel able to take has to be judged carefully in the light of up-to-date knowledge and assessment of the facts. We do not wish to make the situation worse, as can sometimes happen through ill-timed or abrupt intervention.
I should like my hon. Friend to assure his constituent that I am looking into the case closely with a sympathetic desire to help.
The hon. Member for Keighley has, in a reasonable manner, broadened the issue. I look forward to having a talk with him and any colleagues whom he would like to bring along, together with members of the group that he mentioned. I accept that this is a very real problem. There may be things that we can do in the light of the experiences that he mentioned. Sometimes quite minor actions are helpful in these cases. I should like to look carefully at the hon. Gentleman's suggestions within the framework that I have described.
I want to deal with the future of the problem. We work within the limitations of national laws which in all cases differ from ours. In theory, the only way in which one can solve the problem satisfactorily is to have international agreements to which Governments will give priority over
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national law, so that if there is a conflict there is a way of resolving it and the court order of one country can in some way be applied in another.
Two forthcoming international conventions could be helpful. One relates to child custody and the other to child abduction. As in all such cases, much will depend on whether most countries sign and ratify the conventions. When we talk about entering into international agreements on the subject, we must understand that the problems are not all one-sided. We might have questions or Adjournment debates arising because British parents have brought children to this country although there were judgments or court orders in another country giving possession or custody to another parent. When judging possibilities of international agreement, we must recognise that it is a two-way business and that not all the cases are of the kind described by my hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman.
One of the conventions is the European convention on recognition and enforcement of decisions concerning custody of children and on restoration of custody of children 1980. We have already signed the convention and we are considering ratification in conjunction with the question whether we should sign and ratify the second convention that I shall mention shortly.
The European convention provides for the return of children improperly removed to another country. The other convention with possible world-wide potential is The Hague convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction 1980. The purpose of that convention is to combat the practice of international child abduction by providing procedures that will ensure that the right of custody and of access under the law of one contracting State are respected effectively in another contracting State.
The Government joined actively in working out the draft Hague convention. The Lord Chancellor's Department will issue shortly a consultative document on it. My right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor plainly felt that it was right, in such a complex matter—I have illustrated one of the problems—to draw upon the widest possible range of opinion before deciding whether this country should sign and eventually ratify The Hague convention.
I understand that the consultative document is almost ready and is likely to appear in the new year. So far only France has signed and ratified The Hague convention. I understand that a number of other countries—Belgium, Canada, Greece, Switzerland, the United States of America and Portugal—have signed but not yet ratified the convention.
It is a long process. Even if it is decided that the United Kingdom should sign after discussion on the consultative document, enabling legislation would be required, and the House will have an opportunity to go through the whole matter carefully before the convention could come into effect in the United Kingdom.
For the forseeable future we shall have to wrestle with individual cases on the basis that I have described. I am very anxious that the practices of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and our overseas posts should be as helpful as possible in particular cases. At the end of the day we have to judge what form of intervention and help is most likely to improve the position and least likely to aggravate it by appearing to intervene in the affairs of other countries. Subject to that, we shall do our best to help.

Health Services (Greenwich)
12.30 pm
Mr. John Cartwright: I welcome this opportunity to draw attention to the future of health services in the London borough of Greenwich. This is not the first time that the matter has been raised in the House, and I suspect that it wil not be the last.
Almost from the day of its birth in 1974 the former Greenwich and Bexley area health authority seemed to lurch from crisis to crisis. There were continual reports of overspending, threats of closure or major reductions were made to almost every hospital in Greenwich, and relations with the community went from bad to worse.
In December 1975, the area health authority put forward its first tentative proposals for cutting services and closing hospitals. Over the succeeding months, these were changed more than once as the authority's members tried to bridge the gap between what the public wanted and what their resources could fund. This led to a long, bruising and at times bitter confrontation which finally had to be settled by the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Ennals), in May 1978.
The wounds of that conflict took some time to heal, and some of the changes have still not been implemented. Yet the people of Greenwich are now threatened by ever more savage cuts to local services proposed in a draft strategic plan put forward by the new district health authority which seems determined to follow the example of its predecessor, the area health authority.
There is also the long-running saga of the cardiac unit at the Brook hospital. That was first threatened as long ago as 1976 and, once the long-drawn-out processes of examination, evaluation and consultation had finally been exhausted, the South-East Thames regional health authority proceeded to dither about the proposals for a further six months. This long delay had an unsettling effect on the hospital staff. It made planning decisions difficult for the district health authority, and it had a major impact on local people who began to wonder how much of their health services would survive these constant reexaminations.
I pay tribute to the Minister for Health, who made it clear that he disapproved totally of this continued delay and wasted no time in rejecting the closure proposal when the plans finally reached his desk.
Hardly had we finished congratulating ourselves on a successful community campaign to defend an essential and popular local facility, when we found ourselves back in the fight with the publication of this latest draft strategic plan.
For some years, Greenwich community health council and many local people have urged the need for a far-reaching strategic examination of the health needs of the borough. They have now been given a programme for major cuts in services not supported by any compensating fall in the health needs of the area. The reason given by the Greenwich health authority for putting forward a document, which it acknowledges "makes sombre reading", is the district's continuing financial problems. Greenwich is claimed currently to be 22 per cent. above its spending target, although very few of my constituents accept that they are over-provided with health services. As a result, the South-East Thames region is seeking an average reduction of 0·9 per cent. or £420,000 in real terms every year. That means a total cut of £3·8 million
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a year by 1991–92. To that must be added Government-applied efficiency cuts of £500,000 a year and the impact of cash planning which does not compensate for inflation and wage settlements.
The Greenwich health authority reckons that it must budget for a drop in its revenue resources of at least £4·3 million a year by 1992. Therefore, it has put forward a package of cuts planned to yield savings of £3·73 million a year. However, the report makes it clear that these will involve a substantial reduction in the standards of services. The number of acute beds, for example, will be cut by one-sixth from 964 to 806. The authority's report makes no attempt to forecast what that will mean for waiting lists in the borough.
The number of beds for the elderly is to be cut from 345 to 228. Admittedly, it is hoped to reduce provision for the citizens of Deptford and Bexley by transferring 66 beds to the appropriate health authorities, but the number of beds for Greenwich citizens is planned to rise by only nine from 247 to 256. With an ageing population in various parts of the borough, there must be considerable doubt about the adequacy of that provision. My constituency casework has revealed a number of occasions when elderly people, judged by consultants to need a hospital bed, have to wait for weeks or months because vacancies simply do not exist. If Bexley and the Lewisham and North Southwark authorities cannot provide for their own citizens, the pressure on geriatric beds in Greenwich will be even greater.
There is also considerable public concern about the future of maternity services in the borough, on which the authority is proposing a cut from 155 beds to only 111 beds. In his decision of May 1978, the former Secretary of State accepted the case for closing the British hospital for mothers and babies at Woolwich, and transferring the service to Greenwich district hospital and Queen Mary's hospital in Sidcup. However, he left the implementation of his decision until alternative facilities had been provided. The Greenwich health authority is now proposing that the British hospital for mothers and babies should close in 1985, when the extension to maternity provision at Greenwich district has become operational.
However, the authority points out that that will leave a shortfall of about 34 beds. Its solution in the short term is to provide an extra nine beds at Greenwhich by adapting what it calls "non-bed areas" and to claim some additional beds provided by the Bexley authority at Queen Mary's, Sidcup. However, the authority's document recognises that
"difficulties may exist on the closure of the British Hospital for Mothers and Babies."
It therefore proposes a further increase of 20 maternity beds at Greenwich district hospital to a total of 100 beds, but says:
"It may not be possible to enlarge the Greenwich unit and it could be prohibitively expensive."
Even by the past standards of the health authority, the thinking behind this section of the document seems extremely confused. On the one hand, the authority is determined to close the British hospital for mothers and babies; on the other hand, it recognises that that will cause major problems to which there may well not be an acceptable solution. Most people would regard it as totally irresponsible to close a popular, well-established and

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central unit like the British hospital without cast-iron guarantees that sufficient replacement maternity beds will be available.
However, a more fundamental issue is at stake. Even if enough beds could be provided at Greenwich, expectant mothers would be denied any choice about where their babies were to be born. It could be only in a large unit in a large district general hospital, and in a district general hospital which is extremely inaccessible for many of my constituents living in Plumstead, Abbey Wood and Thamesmead.
This problem was recently underlined by the experience of one of my constituents, whose wife was transferred from the British hospital for mothers and babies to Greenwich district hospital just before the birth of her baby. The child was born underweight and was expected to stay in a special care unit at Greenwich for about six weeks. My constituent wrote:
"Neither of us had anything but praise for the staff at Greenwich Hospital and the care provided there, but in the meantime my wife has to travel from Plumstead Common to Greenwich every time that she feeds the baby. We have learned that help with transport is not normally provided by the local Social Services or by Greenwich Hospital, and public transport is in this case neither adequate nor suitable over such a distance for a woman discharged ten days after a Caesarean birth, as my wife was."
My constituent goes on:
"The threatened closure of the BHMB would make this a common and unavoidable situation for mothers living in Woolwich whose babies are kept in hospital. Surely such a situation would be unworkable unless wider, and no doubt expensive, provision could be made to bring mothers to and from Greenwich".
That illustrates that the Greenwich hospital is at one end of the area it serves, while the British hospital is extremely central. There is also no doubt that the standards of care provided and the individual attention given at the British hospital has made it extremely popular with local expectant mothers. To close such a well-run and well-supported unit would be an act of total insensitivity. It would also inevitably reduce the quality of services provided to local people.
St. Nicholas' hospital at Plumstead is another institute whose future affects my constituency. When he had to consider the former area health authority's plans to close St. Nicholas' the former Secretary of State for Social Services made a clear and inequivocal statement on 14 December 1977. He said:
"St. Nicholas is a valued hospital, well situated to service a community whose population is growing. It is in Plumstead where social conditions are poor and there are many old people living in bad housing. It is also central for Thamesmead, a locality of industrial development. I do not believe it would be right to close it."
After further consultation and detailed consideration, the Secretary of State made a more detailed statement on 5 May 1978 about his proposals for St. Nicholas'. He said:
"I have agreed that St. Nicholas Hospital should become a Community Hospital providing out-patient and minor casualty facilities; theatre and supporting services for minor surgery with about 20 beds; 20–25 general practitioner medical beds; and the present 41 geriatric beds with perhaps the addition of some further geriatric beds. Consideration should also be given to the establishment of a psycho-geriatric day centre."
I am bound to say that I was cynical about the prospect of leaving St. Nicholas to the tender mercies of an area health authority which all along had wanted to close it. That seemed to me to offer a poor guarantee for a lasting future. The Secretary of State sought to reassure me. He wrote me a personal letter on 10 July 1978, saying:
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"I really do not think it is right to contend that the change of use of St. Nicholas means its eventual closure. I told the health authorities that I am not willing to agree to closure and I know that they will make every effort to develop practicable arrangements which will enable the hospital to continue. I cannot believe that the inevitable transitional problems cannot be solved and I am sure that St. Nicholas can become a viable community hospital which will complement the District General Hospitals in the Area and give valuable service to the people of Plumstead and Thamesmead."
It gives me very little pleasure to record that my suspicions appear to have been borne out. St. Nicholas' has never been allowed to develop as a proper community hospital. It has been starved of investment and has never achieved the level of provision laid down by the Secretary of State in May 1978. Nevertheless, its record of service to the local community has been impressive against all the odds. During 1981 the minor casualty department dealt with 7,561 cases and its 1982 record is at a similar level. The 16 out-patient clinics handled 29,719 appointments during 1981 and those figures have been well maintained during the current year. The physiotherapy department treated 1,602 new cases in a total work load of 15,369 last year. Again, those figures have been well maintained during the current year. Nevertheless, the Greenwich health authority has apparently rejected suggestions from the regional health authority for the redevelopment of St. Nicholas to provide a package of facilities, including a geriatric day hospital, a day surgery, X-ray facilities, a minor casualty department, a comprehensive range of outpatient clinics, physiotherapy and occupational therapy services. All those services would have been well received in the area.
The area health authority argues that continuing services at St. Nicholas would mean closures elsewhere. Indeed, it suggests, without producing a shred of evidence in support, that it could mean the loss of up to 180 acute beds at the Brook hospital with the consequent threat to the neurological and cardiothoracic units and the eventual rundown of that hospital.
As a result, the authority proposes the total closure of St. Nicholas' hospital, including both inpatient and outpatient services and the sale of the site on the open market. Its document makes it clear that it would
"make no provision for a local service and depend on other hospitals absorbing the total workload."
I regard that as a cynical abandonment of my constituents who will be forced to depend on two general hospitals which are difficult to reach by public transport and where they would be competing with others for outpatient appointments and beds.
It is significant that the proposal will remove services from the only part of the borough in which the population is rising—a point which was recognised by the former area health authority as long ago as 1976 when it commented that St. Nicholas' was
"sited within a densely populated area and with direct access to Thamesmead. It is, from a geographical viewpoint, in an excellent location."
That proposal for St. Nicholas' hospital makes nonsense of the elaborate and long-drawn-out consultation process which was gone through between 1975 and 1978. If it is accepted, the public in my constituency will have no faith that decisions by Secretaries of State on such matters provide any effective and lasting safeguards.
Three points arise from this unhappy situation on which I should like very much to hear the Minister's comments. First, the hon. and learned Gentleman will no doubt point

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out that the document before us is only a draft and may be altered. That is underlined by the authority, which suggests that final decisions may not be taken on the outline strategy until March 1984. However, it points out that the closure proposals might well be considered not on a strategic basis but on the annual planning basis, which would involve decisions being reached during 1983. In such a situation short closure decisions made for short-term financial reasons will clearly dictate the strategy, instead of the strategy deciding the short-term policies.
Secondly, does the Minister accept that such a major closure programme is needed in Greenwich? Is he confirming that Greenwich is over-provided with health services, or does he believe that the more efficient operation of the health authority would enable it to operate within its budget, without closing essential facilities? There is some local scepticism about the competence of the health authority, but the financial cuts it faces are very substantial. It would be helpful if the Government told us how they are to be met without further reducing the standard of service available to my constituents.
Finally, and most importantly, will the Minister accept that another long-drawn-out, bitter argument about cuts and closures is the last thing the health services in Greenwich want or need? They have been battered from pillar to post for the past seven years. They are surely now entitled to a period of consolidation and to a respite from further damaging uncertainty and controversy.
I urge the Minister to offer some much needed reassurance both to the Health Service staff and to the long-suffering patients in the borough of Greenwich.
12.46 pm
The Minister for Health (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): I congratulate the hon. Member for Woolwich, East (Mr. Cartwright) on securing this Adjournment debate on the future of health services in Greenwich. Over the years he has frequently battled on behalf of his constituents and he has made many representations to me during the comparatively short time that I have held my present post.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned that it was recently decided to keep open the cardiac unit at Brook hospital. That was done largely in response to pressures from the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members who represent the area. Of course, that does not mean that the borough's health services are in any way free from problems and controversy. Once more, the district health authority is having to look carefully at its overall strategy for hospital services in the district. It is often difficult for constituents in a place such as Greenwich to understand why there is a history of continued controversy about the provision of health services in their borough when there is increased spending in the National Health Service and it is being steadily developed.
Of course, we always have to ensure that there is a fair distribution of resources in the NHS and a provision of services that matches need and demand throughout the country. It must be the aim of any Government—and it is certainly our aim—to ensure that there is broadly equal access to patient care and treatment in every part of the country. Greenwich's first difficulty is that it is in the South-East Thames health region, which is well provided for compared with other parts of the country. I am constantly being pressed by Members of Parliament for
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constituencies outside London to reduce what they regard as the over-provision of resources in London. Those who represent London constituencies put the countervailing argument that they face great problems. Even within a comparatively well-provided region, such as the South-East Thames health region, there are considerable differences in the allocation of resources between particular districts. With our support and approval, the South-East Thames region is committed to a policy of revenue redistribution between the 15 districts, so that something can be done, for example, to improve the services in the Medway, where there are serious deficiencies in the service. That involves considering a distribution of revenue away from some of the better provided districts, including Greenwich.
As the hon. Gentleman acknowledged, Greenwich is regarded as having 22 per cent. above its target for resources on the long-established resource allocation working party formula that we use. Therefore, it is being asked to make the second greatest contribution to the revenue needs of the more deprived districts within the region.
When one describes the over-provision of resources in a borough, one must identify that over-provision. In answer to one of the hon. Gentleman's specific queries, it has been judged during the years that Greenwich is over-provided with acute beds. That does not mean that it is free from health problems, many of which arise from the difficult social circumstances that he described in Plumstead and elsewhere. However, an objective appraisal of Greenwich shows that it has too many acute beds. That underlying problem is the background to the recurring debates and controversies that the hon. Gentleman described carefully and that have continued for the past six to seven years.
Why is Greenwich considered to be over-provided? I shall set out the historical reasons. As in similar areas of London, a range of hospitals was built there at different times for different purposes, and they do not altogether match the present distribution of population. For example, St. Nicholas' hospital and St. Alphege's hospital, which is the forerunner of the present Greenwich district hospital, were both original workhouse infirmaries—one in the former borough of Woolwich and the other in Greenwich. The Brook general hospital on Shooter's Hill was built as an infectious diseases hospital and its role did not change until after the Second World War. The result of the provision of hospitals in the area was that, by the early 1970s, Greenwich district had three fairly large acute hospitals to serve a declining population.
The two other acute hospitals in the district were not designed primarily to care for NHS patients. They are the Dreadnought seamen's hospital that provides an international service to British and foreign merchant seamen, but also provides some beds for local patients. The Queen Elizabeth military hospital, which was opened in 1977, provides a burns service to the civilian population and also accepts referrals and acute specialities from local general practitioners when military requirements allow.
That total pattern gives rise to an over-provision of acute beds. Attempts to rationalise the acute services go back to 1975, when the present district formed half of the then Greenwich and Bexley area health authority.
I shall not go over the long period of consultation and the agonies described by the hon. Gentleman that were suffered between 1975 and 1978 when the area health

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authority closed several old hospitals in Bexley. They were replaced by the new Queen Mary's hospital at Sidcup. The Miller general hospital was also closed and its services were absorbed into the new Greenwich district hospital. The authority also proposed the closure of St. Nicholas' hospital, which aroused considerable opposition. In 1978, the then Secretary of State for Social Services visited St. Nicholas' hospital, reprieved it and made alternative suggestions. He proposed that it should become a community hospital with outpatient and minor casualty facilities, theatre and supporting services for minor surgery, day surgery, general practitioner and geriatric beds. The result was that, between 1978 and 1979, most of the acute and maternity beds were closed, the number of geriatric beds increased and GP beds opened.
The former Secretary of State also decided that the British hospital for mothers and babies at Woolwich should close when the new maternity provision at Queen Mary's hospital in Bexley was opened. He also decided that inpatient and outpatient services at Eltham and Mottingham hospital should be closed. Those decisions have not yet been implemented, as the hon. Gentleman said, but it seems likely that the British hospital for mothers and babies will close when alternative provision is available. Eltham and Mottingham hospital is temporarily closed, although no ministerial approval for permament closure has been given. The previous Secretary of State responded to the hon. Gentleman and his constituents in 1978. With respect to the decisions taken, it is obvious in the light of subsequent events that the problems were not solved. The underlying problem of the over-provision of acute services, as well as serious management problems in the old area health authority, gave rise to further unhappy events.
In September 1981, the area health authority issued yet another strategic plan. Since its days as an authority were numbered, it presented the plan not as a consultative document but as a review of the position to be used by the new district authority when it took over and began its initial planning. The area health authority's proposals were that surgical inpatient services at St. Nicholas' hospital should cease and that day surgery should be reduced from the 20 beds agreed by the former Secretary of State, because it had never been possible to fill the 20 beds that he said should be provided.
The authority proposed that the Eltham and Mottingham hospital should either reopen for inpatients if the general practitioner medicine beds at St. Nicholas' hospital closed, or be made available to a voluntary consortium for use as a residential day centre for the physically disabled. It also proposed that the number of acute beds should be reduced at the Greenwich general hospital, that acute beds at the Dreadnought seamen's hospital should be reduced from 123 to 85 by 1992, that the regional neuro-science unit should stay at the Brook general hospital, that all in-patient beds for geriatric patients should be closed at the Memorial hospital and that the outpatients' department should stay.
There was considerable reaction to those suggestions locally. The hon. Gentleman was in the forefront in putting forward his constituents' views. Earlier this year the problem was made even worse when considerable anxiety arose about the financial position of the Greenwich and Bexley area health authority, which was considerably overspent. The hon. Gentleman and myself have had
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exchanges about some of the background to that on the Floor of the House. I am happy to say that the problems have now been resolved with the help of the region and through the efforts of the district's own treasurer.
Having resolved the immediate overspending problems, the new district produced an outline strategy—it was issued in October—in response to the need to try to arrive at a final resolution of the continuing unhappy problems of providing the right service for the population of Greenwich. Among the proposals is the complete closure of St. Nicholas' hospital. The document that has been issued is a draft. It will be reconsidered in the light of all the comments that have been received on it. That will happen when two months have passed. After amending its draft, if that is necessary, the authority will issue an outline strategy for the next 10 years. I am expecting to receive a copy of that strategy. It will then begin work on a full strategic plan within the bounds of the outline, which will cover every aspect of the authority's services.
I know that the authority is consulting on its draft and considering it finally. I must allow it considerable leeway in discussing matters locally and in drawing up its own policies. It is charged with a difficult responsibility in sorting out health provision for the borough. I am keeping in close touch with what is happening and at, this stage I do not think that a direct ministerial involvement that overrules its planning process is called for. If the authority finally proposes closures or major changes in the use of Health Service premises and these are opposed by the local community health council, the decision must, under the closure procedures, come to Ministers for a final decision. I shall carefully consider any proposals of that sort if any eventually come forward.
In the meanwhile the problems will not go away. The authority has to continue to reassess the use of acute beds at St. Nicholas' hospital and elsewhere. I have already said that it was proposed in 1978 that 20 day-surgery beds should be retained at St. Nicholas' hospital. That proved to be an overestimate of the demand and it was reduced following the proposal of the former AHA. It submitted a formal proposal to my predecessor to reduce the number to five, which was all that demand had ever justified. I am told that no more than five beds have ever been in use.
When the formal proposal was put to my predecessor, he met the chairmen of the AHA and the South-East Thames regional health authority in January. He told it that he was unwilling to accept the proposal in isolation. He told it that he wanted it to produce a hospital strategy for the whole of Greenwich, so that a sensible, overall view could be taken of the problems. That is the approach that the hon. Gentleman advocated.
My predecessor met the hon. Gentleman to discuss the future of St. Nicholas' hospital and put forward various proposals for consideration. He thought that consideration might be given to retaining the hospital for community use, day surgery, as a geriatric day hospital, for occupational therapy, physiotherapy, x-rays, minor casualty treatment and for a comprehensive range of outpatient clinics. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that that proposal has been considered by my Department and the regional health authority. A great deal of work has been done in looking at the cost and service provision at St. Nicholas' hospital.
The strategic plan came out in October for consultation, following the re-examination. The draft discusses in detail the possible options for St. Nicholas'. It concludes that day

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surgery and a geriatric day hospital on the site cannot be justified because there is already more than enough such provision in the district. It also recommends that the minor casualty department should be closed on the grounds of economy and that the outpatients department should close also. That would mean that the site, apart from the small portion giving access to Plumstead health centre, could be sold and the proceeds released for reinvestment in health services.
I have already described the status of the document. It is a draft document and is being consulted on locally at the moment. The authority has to decide whether it wants to amend it. It will reach its final conclusion early in the new year.
I shall follow the events closely, just as I have listened closely to the arguments of the hon. Gentleman. I agree with one point that he made at the end of his speech, that continued uncertainty, debate and controversy can be seriously demoralising for all those who are trying to improve the health services of the borough and who make a proper contribution to the health care of the population. Therefore, I hope that eventually the debate will be concluded, that we have a clear strategy to look at, and that firm decisions will be taken, about which everyone can be confident for the future. In reaching those decisions, insofar as anything comes to me such as closure proposals or a major change of use, I shall pay particular attention to the opinions of those who live in the district and the arguments of the hon. Gentleman who represents them. At this stage the consultations must go ahead. The district is entitled to consider its strategy. It must find a solution to the underlying problem that, for historical reasons, there is an over-provision of acute services in hospitals in the Greenwich area.

Hospitals (Teddington and Twickenham)
1.1 pm
Mr. Toby Jessel: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this matter and I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Health for attending the debate personally to reply to me on a matter of deep concern to an exceptionally large number of my constituents. In the space of four weeks 54,000 people signed petitions organised by two hospital leagues of friends to retain two local community hospitals—St. John's, Twickenham, and Teddington Memorial hospital. Those must be the two biggest petitions ever produced in Twickenham. They reflect how enormously the public value and cherish these two community hospitals. There is nothing in the world that I want to see more than that those two hospitals should stay open in their present form.
No formal proposals will yet have reached my hon. and learned Friend. Some people might say that I should defer raising this matter until later. But I am not prepared to do so. I want to get my oar in early. That is why I asked my hon. and learned Friend to see me, as he was kind enough to do, on 27 October, soon after rumours began to circulate. Following that, my hon. and learned Friend wrote to me on 17 November and said:
"I will look at any proposal entirely on its merits from the point of view of whether it provides the best service to patients in the area affected, regardless of administrative boundaries."
The vice-chairman of the district health authority, Mr. Alan Sweetman, was quoted last week as saying that
"Teddington Memorial hospital should be closed because it was providing a superior service and could clear waiting lists with greater speed than other hospitals".
He said that it was unfair to provide a service that was what
"those who live in Hounslow and other areas would consider a luxury service".
That attitude is terrible. Mr. Sweetman, a leading member of the district health authority concerned, wants to close Teddington Memorial hospital and, by analogy, also St. John's hospital, Twickenham, because they are good and not everyone can have the service that they provide. The service that they provide is not luxurious. I have been frequently to both hospitals. I was in Teddington Memorial hospital yesterday. It is not a luxury service, but it is a caring service and it is intimate compared to the service in some other hospitals. It is efficient in the medical care that it provides.
I would like to tell my hon. and learned Friend some more of what these hospitals do and quote from the excellent summaries given in the Richmond and Twickenham Times:
"Teddington Memorial Hospital has … 49 beds and one operating theatre where 654 operations were carried out last year, ranging from ear, nose and throat surgery, to hysterectomies.
A wide range of out-patient clinics are held at the hospital, including orthopaedics, pathology, dermatology, general medicine, and eyes."
The casualty department had 15,000 patients this year, up to the end of November,
"including follow-ups, and the equally busy physiotherapy unit treated 18,626 people last year.
The X-ray department, with a patient load of 5,372 … has open access for the GP's, who can refer their patients direct. This is impossible at West Middlesex hospital, because of the pressure there, and they have indicated that they could not possibly absorb the Teddington Memorial work-load, should it close.
Total running costs: £770,000."
St. Johns hospital, Twickenham, has

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"outpatient facilities for general surgery, gynaecology, antenatal care, ear, nose and throat conditions, medical and psychiatric problems".
The psychiatric clinic run by Dr. Low-Beer is particularly well known. There are about 4,500 attendances each year, of which about 400 involve operations.
"The hospital's X-ray department, described as 'frantically busy', copes with 3,000 cases a year, including screening procedure. Pathological tests are carried out, physiotherapy treatment given"—
involving about 1,000 cases a year—
"and minor casualties and minor operations dealt with by local GP's.
The hospital has ten official geriatric beds as well as other beds for GP's own patients, including geriatric, terminal care cases and holiday care facilities for bed-ridden home cases."
That is a very important service which enables elderly patients who cannot get full-time care to go into hospital for a short time to enable their families to take a holiday. It gives much needed relief to the families. The families then can look after the patients at other times of the year.
I should like to quote what Dr. Shearman, the president of the League of Friends of St. John's, said:
"Places like St. John's and Teddington help to reduce the stress factor of going into hospital. And they cater for the patient who doesn't necessarily need the sophisticated technology provided by larger hospitals. If these two hospitals close the problems facing West Middlesex will become even more serious."
Although these two hospitals are not identical, I make no apology for bracketing them together, because to a large extent they both provide for the same kind of need in the separate districts of Twickenham and Teddington. I have had a very large number of letters both from organisations and individuals which I shall be sending to my hon. and learned Friend. I ask him to give me an assurance that he will scrutinise the contents very carefully. Most of the services that I have described are under threat. The district health authority has threatened to close all inpatient services at Teddington and to turn St. John's, Twickenham, basically into a geriatric hospital.
Therefore, I want to ask my hon. and learned Friend, next, if I set out in a letter to him in the near future the services that I have just described, will he, in turn, set out in a letter to me, against a list of each and all of these services, if they were cut, how and where they would be replaced and what the effect would be upon waiting lists for patients needing treatment, patients both from the Twickenham and Teddington areas and from other areas with whom the Twickenham and Teddington patients might find themselves in competition? The Hounslow and district health authority, when I went to see it to present a petition with 54,000 names, was quite unable to say how those services would be replaced.
The chairman, Mrs. Golding, admitted that it would mean a real and basic cut in patient services. I ask my hon. and learned Friend the Minister to assess this for himself. If he will reply to me in the way that I have suggested, his reply will be most carefully and critically scrutinised not only by me but by my constituents.
I also asked Mrs. Golding how much notice she and her health authority would take of the 54,000 signatures. I regret to say that I received no clear answer on that from Mrs. Golding or, indeed, from the North-West Thames district health authority. I therefore ask my hon. Friend the same question. Will he assure me that he will take notice of those signatures? After all, it is not a matter of 500 or even 5,000 but of 54,000, which is a colossal number of people.
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My hon. and learned Friend said in his letter of 17 November that he would call in the decision if there were objections from the community health council. That condition has been doubly met. Two community health councils—that covering Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton, and that covering Hounslow and Spelthorne—have objected. Therefore, although complete closure is no longer proposed, but rather a drastic curtailment and a change in the basis of use, I take it that the decision will be called in.
The Hounslow and Spelthorne district health authority voted for the change by the very narrow majority of nine votes to seven. There is a constitutional argument for asking my hon. and learned Friend to reverse that decision. Both Teddington Memorial and St. John's hospitals are extra-territorial. They are outside the boundaries of that district health authority and, indeed, outside the North-West Thames regional health authority. In that sense, the Hounslow and Spelthorne district health authority is not fully representative. Of the four members who represent local authorities, none is from Twickenham, and most of the remaining 12 members are not from Twickenham either. One who is from Twickenham, Mr. Clive Thomson, who is on the general list, spoke up for Teddington Memorial and St. John's hospitals with great force, but was heavily outnumbered.
There is a strong feeling in my constituency that to ensure a properly democratic decision my hon. and learned Friend should decide the matter rather than allow the health authorities to do so, because the hospitals are extra-territorial and, with the best will in the world, that is bound to colour the attitudes of the health authorities towards them.
My hon. and learned Friend and the Secretary of State have repeatedly reminded us that the finances of the Health Service as a whole have not been cut. The total for 1978–79 was £7¾ billion and for 1982–83 it is £14½ billion, so the amount has increased faster than inflation and NHS expenditure in real terms is increasing.
Hounslow and Spelthorne district health authority, however, says that it is underfunded compared with other districts in the North-West Thames region. Can my hon. and learned Friend say whether that claim is justified? Will he also explain how annual funding is assigned by the region to the districts and how this works out in the case of Hounslow and Spelthorne, allowing for patients who cross boundaries from Twickenham to the West Middlesex hospital or to extra-territorial hospitals such as Teddington Memorial and St. John's?
The £1·3 million annual cost of running the two hospitals is only one-five-hundredth of the North-West Thames region's budget of £650 million. I cannot believe that with "efficiency savings" such as my hon. and learned Friend has advocated it is impossible to save one-five-hundredth of that budget in other ways, such as savings on heat, light and drugs. It also seems that the accumulated debts on West Middlesex hospital by past authorities such as the former Ealing, Hounslow and Hammersmith authority could have been paid off if the will had been there, and that that is a further reason why Teddington Memorial and St. John's are now at risk. Will my hon. Friend comment on that?
He said in his letter of 17 November that there might be a possible transfer of these two hospitals from Hounslow and Spelthorne to the Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton district health authority. Can he throw

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any further light on that proposal? If Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton were to take over those two hospitals, would the budget of north-west Thames, and, consequently, Hounslow and Spelthome be modified to allow for an increase in the budget of south-west Thames and, consequently, Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton? The answer could affect a possible reconsideration by Hounslow and Spelthome.
Will my hon. and learned Friend take soundings from the authorities concerned to see whether, if the hospitals were taken over by Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton, they would become geriatric units, or remain community hospitals as at present, which I should like to see, or become part of each, like St. Mary's hospital, Hampton?
There is tremendous concern in my constituency about these two community hospitals. I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will attach the greatest weight to the petition that has been signed by 54,000 people who profoundly hope that it will be possible to keep both hospitals open broadly in their present form.
1.16 pm
The Minister for Health (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) for raising this important subject. As he said when referring to the enormous petition that he received, these proposals have aroused considerable controversy, and he has approached me from the moment that the rumours first began. I am not at all surprised that he has felt it necessary to raise the matter on the Floor of the House at this comparatively early stage in the process of considering changes in the service.
As well as the problems of the hospitals, my hon. Friend also referred to the problems of the district health authority which feels that it has not been well treated in relation to funds. There is a contrast between the national position, where we are substantially increasing expenditure on the NHS, and the problems that are sometimes experienced in particular districts.
The problem is that in some districts in and around London there has historically been an overprovision of medical services and, consequently, an unfair distribution in national resources between London and the rest of the country. Successive Governments have tried to even out the expenditure between different regions and different districts within regions. The background to that, which I shall refer to later, is at the root of the problems facing the Hounslow district health authority.
As well as having a fair distribution of resources to ensure that citizens have fairly equal access to medical facilities, we must also insist on a system of cash limits so that overexpenditure does not take place in some districts at the expense of others.
The background to the immediate problem of this district health authority is that, earlier this year, it faced a large potential overspend beyond the cash limit allowed. At one point, it anticipated that it would be anything between £750,000 and £1 million overspent in 1983–84 unless it could identify specific areas of saving. The Government encouraged the district health authority, as they must, to find some method of meeting that overspend, otherwise £1 million would be abstracted from the budgets of other authorities.
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However, since the district looked at the potential problem earlier this year, it has become somewhat less serious because of the success of its own housekeeping and also because of the Government's success in reducing inflation. That has given the district an unexpected extra spending power and has eased its problems for the coming years.
At its meeting on 18 October, when it faced up to the full-scale problems, the district agreed to seek comments on 12 options, each involving substantial alterations to the services provided, including the closures of wards, the school of physiotherapy, theatres, and the closure of either St. John's hospital or Teddington Memorial hospital or both. At the same time, it took steps to reduce expenditure on non-patient services, administration, works and maintenance, and so on.
Because of the improved climate and because of the success in reducing unnecessary costs, the district now proposes to go to formal consultations on only three specific proposals: the closure of inpatient services at Teddington Memorial hospital—although the busy outpatient clinics and the radiology and physiotherapy departments there would continue; the closure of outpatient facilities at St. John's hospital, and the change of use of its acute beds to geriatric services; and the closure of a health clinic which currently provides only four sessions a week.
The district health authority has calculated that these measures would save rather more than £500,000. Although that might not be sufficient entirely to cover the projected deficit, it proposes to make representations to the region and to Ministers that part of the overspend should be met from outside its allocation. Obviously, I do not want to comment at the moment on any such application, although in considering any bids of that kind it is necessary for us to consider where else in the Health Service we might find the money to enable a district health authority to overspend. Meanwhile, the DHA is going to formal consultations on those three proposals only.
The proposals mean that neither of the two hospitals with which my hon. Friend is concerned would be completely closed, and an opportunity would remain for some reinstatement of services if the district's financial climate were to improve in the future. Meanwhile, I know that my hon. Friend and his constituents regard the quite drastic proposals put forward for the two hospitals as very serious. There is considerable opposition to them, and the consultation process will undoubtedly throw up a good deal of opposition.
Mr. Jessel: With regard to the consultation process, if the district health authority took so little notice of a petition containing 54,000 signatures, how can anyone expect it to take a blind bit of notice of the result of the consultation process?
Mr. Clarke: I do not know how much notice it took of the petition. I shall take serious notice of the petition and of all the other representations that my hon. Friend and his constituents put forward. I am sure that the district has had regard to them as well, but it now has to go through a formal consultation process, and it is obvious that it will have very strong representations put to it by the inhabitants of Twickenham.
If the community health councils are unable to agree to the main substance of the proposals, the health authority

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cannot implement them. Under the rules, the proposals would then have to be referred first to the regional health authority, which would consider whether the district health authority's case was sound. Then, if the community health councils still objected, Ministers would have to take the final decisions, so that the matter would, in effect, have to be called in. We would expect the community health council to submit constructive and detailed counterproposals, which Ministers could then judge against the proposals of the district health authority.
My hon. Friend said that the community health councils had already objected to the proposals. As I understand the position, the CHCs have objected to the previous package of proposals—that is part of the 12 options being considered by the district—and the process now requires that they must be given the opportunity to consider their reaction to the present proposals which have been put to them, and to consider what detailed counter-proposals they might wish to make.
I can confirm that there are two CHCs involved in the proposals—Hounslow and Spelthorne CHC and Richmond, Twickenham and Roehampton CHC—and I confirm to my hon. Friend, as I did when I met him earlier this year, that if either of those CHCs objects and the regional health authority, in the face of the objection, still endorses the DHA's proposals, the Ministers will call in the decision and take it themselves, having considered all the views and comments put forward by the interested parties.
Matters are at present at a fairly early stage, because the consultation process is going ahead, and the full weight of public opinion is being sounded out by the district health authority. The time has not therefore yet arisen for Ministers to call in the proposals and come to their own conclusions. My hon. Friend has warned me of what to expect if the proposals go ahead and he asked me a number of questions about the system of resource allocation that makes it necessary for the district to find a method of elminating its potential overspending.
We have both commented on the fact that money for the NHS has increased quickly since the Government came to power. In the past three years it has increased by 20 per cent. more than the rate of inflation as measured by the retail price index. The NHS has never had more money, doctors or nurses or such modern equipment and such up-to-date facilities.
Resources for London have traditionally been greater than those for the rest of the country. For some years, under formulae used by the resource allocation working party, there has been a reallocation of resources and a fairer distribution, based on the needs of populations in different parts of the country.
All the evidence confirms that spending on the NHS in London and the South-East compares favourably with that in other parts of the country, particularly Yorkshire and the North Midlands, where the health services are relatively worse off.
Our system allocates resources according to assessments of the size and needs of the population in each locality. There is an adjustment and weighting to take account of such important factors as the relative number of elderly and very young people, because they tend to make greater than average demands on the NHS. We also take account of variations in the mortality rates in different parts of the country.
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That process provides targets which we use in allocating resources to the regions. Within regions, including some of the better off, such as the North-West Thames region, there are considerable discrepancies in allocations to districts. My hon. Friend made the valid point that Hounslow and Spelthorne is relatively deprived compared with other districts in the region. He was correct to say that only four of the 15 districts in the region are worse off than Hounslow and Spelthorne.
However, the problem remains that the region is so far above its target that only two of those four districts are below the RAWP targets which are calculated on a national basis. If we disregarded the regional boundaries and if all district authorities received resources on the basis of their needs, nearly all the districts in my hon. Friend's region would lose money, and Hounslow and Spelthorne would at best receive only a few thousand pounds more each year.
With the Government's support and approval, the North-West Thames region is following a policy of allocating resources fairly between its districts, so that the position of Hounslow and Spelthorne is protected. However, because of the relative position of the region we cannot allow overspending and we must ask for solutions to be found.
There is also the difficulty, of which my hon. Friend reminded me, that the two hospitals about which he is so worried are outside Hounslow and Spelthorne's territory and there are, therefore, doubts about whether the interests of Twickenham are adequately represented on the health authority.
It is a basic principle of health authority membership that members do not represent particular interest groups. They should serve as individuals who represent professional, lay or local government interests. They should reach conclusions as individuals, in the best interests of the authority and the population that it serves.
Because of the difficulties that arose with the two hospitals when reorganisation took place, the Government asked the region to reserve one general place on the health authority for a nominee who would take a particular interest in the service provided by the district to Twickenham. I have met Mr. Clive Thomson, the member appointed for that purpose, and he has forcefully argued the case to his colleagues on the authority and to me when he and my hon. Friend visited me in October.
Mr. Jessel: He is heavily outnumbered.
Mr. Clarke: I appreciate that. In trying to assess the public interest of the area and how best Ministers should evaluate any proposals that come forward from the authority, I will have regard to the fact that there is this curious geographical imbalance in the membership of the authority and try to make sure that the interests of Twickenham are not overlooked in relation to the rest of the district because of the extra-territorial position of these two hospitals.
I have not time to develop my remarks further. My hon. Friend has raised this issue at an early stage in the decision process. We do not yet know what will be the reaction of the district health authority to the comments that it receives on consultation. We do not know what will be the final decision of the community health council. We do not know if either will oppose the proposals. If there is opposition, we do not know what the regional health

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authority will say. It is only following the consultation process that must take place before the issue can come to Ministers. When that happens, I know that my hon. Friend will continue to press his case. I assure him that I will give it serious consideration and that I will not neglect any of the valuable points that he has made.

Unemployment (Walsall)
1.30 pm
Mr. David Winnick: This will be a bleak Christmas for many families in Walsall and the Black Country area of the West Midlands. Hardly a day goes by without further news of redundancies and planned closures. Today, there is the tragedy of the closure of Round Oak and all those who will now find themselves in the dole queue. The closure comes on top of the massive redundancies and closures that the Minister knows have occurred in the past two or three years in the Black Country. In a reply that I received from the Prime Minister earlier this month, I was informed that since May 1979 unemployment in the Black Country has increased by 75,498. In the West Midlands as a whole, unemployment has jumped by 241,000. This represents a rise of 216 per cent. in unemployment on the basis of the new calculations.
The Minister should already know—the reply came from his Department—that when the Government took office there were 222 travel-to-work areas in the United Kingdom where the percentage rate of unemployment was higher than that of Walsall. In October this year, the figure was 70. My concern is shared by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, South (Mr. George), who also hopes to contribute to the debate. The question arises of what conditions will be like in six months' or 12 months' time. It certainly gives my hon. Friend and I no pride that we should be so near the top of the unemployment league.
According to Department of Employment figures, the highest percentage rate of unemployment known in the Walsall travel-to-work area prior to 1979 was 7·3 per cent. When the Government took office, it was 5·1 per cent. That same percentage of 5·1 per cent. operated in the West Midlands as a whole. Now, on the basis of the new calculations, the Walsall unemployment rate is 17·9 per cent. In October, it was 18·9 per cent. Even on the old calculations, the figure for the Walsall travel-to-work area, which does not include Darlaston, is likely to have been under-estimated. A truer unemployment figure for Walsall is 22 per cent. to 25 per cent. Over 30,000 people are officially unemployed in the Walsall travel-to-work area. In the West Midlands as a whole, the number of jobless amounts to 353,000.
I spoke a moment ago about the highest total of unemployment known in the Walsall travel-to-work area before the Government took office. The highest unemployment percentage known in the West Midlands before the Government took office was 6·7 per cent. It is now 16 per cent. and probably more. Those are the figures, let the House be under no illusion, behind which are the individuals and families whose lives have been shattered by the devastation and tragedy that have swept through the West Midlands, the Black Country and the Walsall travel-to-work area during the past two or three years. I have raised the matter with the Minister before, and he knows that there are school leavers in the Black Country who have no opportunity of finding work and that there are far fewer apprentices than there were before May 1979.
The Minister should bear in mind also the people in their forties and fifties, who have sometimes been made redundant after working for the same firm for 25 or 30 years. It is not just that they have become unemployed,

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which is bad enough, but they have to ask the inevitable question whether they will ever be able to work again, whether they will have an opportunity to earn a living or do they just look forward to receiving the old-age pension in due course.
Those were not the kind of promises made by the Government when they were campaigning for office in May 1979. It is not the sort of Britain that we want and for which so many of the people to whom I have just referred fought in the last war.
If the Minister gives an optimistic gloss to the future, I have a number of points from the West Midlands CBI which offer little hope for the West Midlands in 1983. The CBI says that further redundancies are expected before the end of the year, although it says that the extent of the redundancies is likely to be lower than in the recent past. What causes us anxiety is not just the present level of unemployment but the fact that there seems to be little hope that the number of jobless will be reduced in 1983. The evidence seems to point to the contrary.
My right hon. and hon. Friends are worried by the way in which those people who have been made jobless are penalised. There was a cut of 5 per cent. in unemployment benefit in lieu of taxation. Those benefits are now taxed, but the 5 per cent. has not been restored. There are a number of other measures that irritate and aggravate the position of those who are denied the opportunity to earn a living.
I do not think that there is any doubt that the fault lies in the lack of demand in the economy and the deflation that has operated during the past two or three years. Some of the other factors are well known, for example, the high interest rates that have operated during much of the Government's time in office, a much overvalued pound, which has undoubtedly made it more difficult for exporters to sell their goods abroad, and the continued import penetration, which has done so much harm to the West Midlands and the Black Country. We can, of course, have theoretical debates about whether import controls should be applied. The Minister should be in no doubt that the import penetration, which is continuing in the West Midlands, puts many firms at risk that might otherwise be able to survive. Those are disturbing matters.
I am not in any way suggesting a general ban on imports, but I believe that some form of selective import controls is necessary. They were applied to the textile industry, although rather late in the day. If they had been applied earlier we would have a much healthier textile industry. How much of our engineering, metal-based and manufacturing industries must be undermined by import penetration and other factors before the Government recognise that there is a need for some control on imports?
The abolition of exchange controls—which may seem to be a rather technical matter—was almost a direct incentive for the exporting of capital that should have been invested at home. We want desperately to see investment in our constituencies, but instead the capital is going abroad. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Stepney and Poplar (Mr. Shore), who speaks for the Opposition on Treasury matters, said recently that one of the first steps that a Labour Government would take would be the restoration of exchange controls. Such controls should never have been abolished in the first place.
Many people in the Walsall area are unemployed because there has been such a low amount of activity in the construction industry. In my borough, thousands of
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people are desperately in need of accommodation. Since shortly after the present Government took office, there have been no new contracts for public sector house building. Any council house building in the West Midlands is now a unique sight. There is no such construction going on in Walsall. If it were restarted, it would supply the accommodation that is needed so urgently and at the same time it would take construction workers from the dole queue and thereby save money that at present is going in unemployment and supplementary benefits. Moreover, housing construction in both the public and private sectors would help many small firms to survive and generate a need for all the ancillaries, including furniture and fittings, that go with housing construction. Activity of that sort is essential for the revival of the economy.
In the Black Country, a great many skills have been developed and passed from generation to generation. It can be said without exaggeration that the work force of the Black Country played a very distinguished part in making Britain renowned for its engineering manufacturing and the rest. Over the past 100 years, great pride has been taken in the skills that have been developed. The position today—hence my reason for speaking with such force—is that those skills are going to waste. Instead of applying them in the revival of industry, and instead of ensuring that those skills are used constructively, those with them are denied the opportunity to earn a living. They exist on the most limited incomes.
I do not believe that this is the way that the country should be run. I do not accept that there is no alternative to mass unemployment, with all the poverty, squalor and deprivation for families arising from it. I do not have much hope that my speech will change the Government's views, but I believe, however, that Members of the House of Commons owe to their constituents the duty to draw attention to their plight, and I shall continue to do so.
I hope that the time will come in 1983 when we shall have a new Government with new policies who are determined to reverse the tide of mass unemployment and give our constituents the opportunity to earn their living.
1.43 pm
Mr. Bruce George: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) for allowing me a few minutes in which to endorse his forceful speech.
While Ministers are enjoying their Christmas lunches, smoking their Havana cigars, and knocking hack their port—probably in warmer climates than those of the West Midlands or the United Kingdom—perhaps they should think about the responsibility that they share for helping to create a disaster area in the Midlands and areas that have enjoyed high employment, and even greater disasters in areas where industry has been less successful in the past.
Recent figures produced by the Library show that in an area such as mine the word "unemployment" was rarely in its vocabulary until recently. As my hon. Friend said, Walsall, South is now 64th in the list of shame, one ahead of Walsall, North, although it is an area that historically has had high employment. Although no one can put all the blame on the Government, a large percentage of the blame must be attributed to the Government and their appalling policy.
If one reads the OECD reports, clearly the lessons that should be learnt are not being learnt. The unemployment

1117
figures, which are already too high, are likely to get even worse. As my hon. Friend said, the unemployment figures are artificially low. If we extrapolate from the OECD recommendations what is likely to happen, perhaps one in four of the work force in our constituencies will join the legion of the hopeless. The last few years have been an unqualified disaster for my constituency and that of my hon. Friend, and there is little hope that the situation will change under this Government.
I hope that my party will get its act together in the next few months so that it can present the image of a party that is prepared to take on the responsibility of office and present itself as a real Opposition party. That is the task that we face in the months ahead. I hope that when the cataclysm eventually comes and we realise that unemployment will not be brought down under this Government, this Government will reap the whirlwind, and deservedly so.
1.46 pm
The Minister of State, Department of Employment (Mr. Michael Alison): I listened carefully to what was said by the hon. Members for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) and Walsall, South (Mr. George), and I welcome the opportunity to reply at least to some of their comments.
Both hon. Gentlemen were understandably concerned about the high unemployment in Walsall and throughout the West Midlands. I assure them that the Government share their concern. Unemployment is not only a waste of vital human resources, but it has a deeply harmful effect on the people who cannot find a job and the community as a whole.
First, I shall take a bird's eye view of the problem of unemployment, and perhaps I shall have time to take the worm's eye view towards the end of my short speech. Briefly, I want to place the figures in a historical and international perspective, the historical perspective being perhaps slightly longer than the three years that the hon. Member for Walsall, South mentioned. Unemployment in this country has risen persistently over the past 20 years. We kid ourselves if we think that there is anything novel or new about that. I was elected to this House in 1964, which was roughly around the time of the first incarnation here of the hon. Member for Walsall, North. My first election was fought on a national United Kingdom unemployment figure of 390,000. Unemployment in Walsall at that time, 1964–65, was about 0·3 per cent. The figure had doubled in Walsall by 1970, at the end of the first Wilson Government. It remained more or less static during the Heath Administration. It then more nearly tripled than doubled during the next Wilson Administration, and has about tripled again, as both hon. Gentlemen fairly said, since 1979. What has been true for Walsall broadly reflects the trend for the United Kingdom as a whole during that period.
The evolution of unemployment in the United Kingdom has been subject to several influences, many of which are not under the Government's control. For a small, open economy like that of the United Kingdom, probably the most important influence is the state of the world economy. The current recession has produced a rapid rise in unemployment in all the industrialised countries. For example, unemployment has doubled in West Germany,
1118
since 1980 and during this year unemployment in Canada, West Germany and the Netherlands has been increasing at a substantially faster rate than in the United Kingdom.
Another important influence is the level of wage settlements. These have been too high in the United Kingdom during recent years, given our relatively low levels of productivity, and employment has suffered as a result. The average increase of over 18 per cent. a year under the last Labour Government, for example, was not remotely matched by increases in output and in consequence we priced ourselves dramatically out of world markets in that period. The hon. Member for Walsall, North wondered whether there was sufficient demand in the economy at present. I believe that there is. Demand in Britain rose by 3 per cent. in the last full year, whereas output rose by only 1 per cent. That means that two-thirds of the increase in demand went to overseas products because they were more competitive.
Employment is also affected by the rate at which changes in technology, markets, and so on, require changes in economic structure. The world economy has seen an acceleration in the rate of such changes in recent years and the United Kingdom also has the particular need to adjust to the build-up in North Sea oil production. The Government are pursuing policies—assistance for high technology, assistance to small firms, privatisation, enterprise zones, and so on—to increase the rate at which the United Kingdom economy adapts. We believe that a vigorous free market remains the most potent means to achieve that end. Inflation, particularly wage inflation, affects employment. It distorts the pattern of earnings and depresses profits, which is likely to reduce investment. Rapid inflation, because it leads to unpredictable variation in relative wages and prices, increases uncertainty and damages confidence.
There is no doubt that the Government's policies have succeeded in bringing about a marked reduction in the rate of inflation. For example, it is down to 6·3 per cent. at present—its lowest level for 12 years—and it is expected to fall to 5 per cent. in 1983. For the first time in a generation the Government will bring inflation over the life of a Parliament below the level experienced under the previous Labour Government. We are on the path to price stability and predictability. That in turn makes lower interest rates possible, which is probably industry's greatest need.
Productivity in Britain rose last year at Japanese rates and our competitiveness has improved by about 20 per cent. since the first quarter of 1981. We are developing new products and new attitudes to work, and we are succeeding in export markets. There is evidence that many more new businesses are being formed than are closing, despite the severity of the recession.
Mr. Richard Shepherd: As a representative of the borough of Walsall, this matter causes me great concern. Will my right hon. Friend say something about rates? One of the factors that seems to bear heavily on unemployment in Aldridge-Brownhills, which does not have the same intense levels of unemployment as are experienced in those parts of the borough represented by Labour Members, is the extraordinary increase in the borough's rates since the incorporation of Aldridge-Brownhills into the borough as

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a result of reorganisation. We are now rated higher than the city of Birmingham, and are, I think, the highest rated authority in the West Midlands.
Mr. Alison: The figures that I have seen from surveys carried out by chambers of commerce in different parts of the country undoubtedly show that firms either cut the number of employees or, in many cases, close down or move out of the area entirely if rates go up much more quickly than the level of inflation. That is undoubtedly an important factor.
There are many reasons why the West Midlands has been hit harder than any other region and I am genuinely sympathetic to the tone of depression and indignation of both the hon. Members for Walsall, North and Walsall, South, which reflects the fundamental change that the Black Country seems to be undergoing. Undoubtedly, the most important difficulty is the overdependence of the locality on three industries: cars, engineering and metalworking. As a nation, we have done worst in those industries in recent years. The decline in the car industry has been particularly severe in its effects. Therefore, there is a major structural reason for the decline.
We need to make the traditional staple industries more competitivenes so that customers, including industrial customers such as the component firms, will want to buy their products again in great number. From 1975 onwards, at least, the failure of the region's prime industries began to be reflected in the unemployment rate, which rose sharply, and persisted at a historically high level until the end of the decade. We now see that the region is suffering the effects of that cumulative decline, which is particularly exacerbated by the world-wide recession, with unemployment rising rapidly.
The task facing the West Midlands—the uphill climb to its former level of relative prosperity—is considerable. The industrial base of the region must broaden away from such extensive reliance on a few troubled sectors. However, the restructuring of the West Midlands' economy must be seen not only in terms of improvements to technology and new products in existing firms, but in the introduction of new industries.
The region already benefits from an array of measures, but it could benefit more from them if there were a greater awareness of the possibilities. Firms in the West Midlands are eligible for assistance under section 8 of the Industry Act 1972. Such assistance provides a substantial contribution to new investment throughout the West Midlands. Funds are also available to meet the needs of industries either producing or needing to employ new and advanced technology, particularly that based on microelectronics. The Government also support British Leyland and have loosened constraints on development by the suspension of industrial development certificates.
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Much has been done to improve the climate for small businesses. The Government have now introduced nearly 100 measures to encourage enterprise and risk-taking. They cover a wide spectrum—stimulating investment, encouraging the provision of premises, and reducing administrative and legislative burdens. Those measures, and the Government's economic policy generally, have as one of their principal aims the encouragement of new activities to replace industries in long-term decline or suffering from over-production. The small firms sector is showing signs of resilience. VAT statistics show that in 1981 there were 2,300 more births than deaths of businesses in the West Midlands—an encouraging and significant surplus. Under the Department of industry's loan guarantee scheme, 696 guarantees have been issued in the West Midlands region covering loans totalling £22·8 million.
Despite the difficult circumstances, some people in Walsall are finding jobs. In the past 12 months, nearly 7,000 people in the area have been placed in employment by the Manpower Services Commission's employment service and many more will have found jobs by other means.
Mr. Winnick rose—
Mr. Alison: I shall not give way as there are only two minutes left in which to speak.
Expansions are taking place in the area and new jobs are being created, although not at as fast a rate as we should like. Of course, we still have a long way to go. In the meantime, we are protecting those hardest hit, particularly young people, with our special employment and training measures. Some 1,260 people in Walsall are currently benefiting from the temporary short-time working compensation scheme, the job release scheme and the community programme. More than 3,200 young people have entered the youth opportunities programme since 1 April this year and our new young workers scheme has got off to a good start with over 1,400 applications for the scheme having been approved so far in the Walsall area.
Young people have, of course, been hardest hit by the high levels of unemployment. Walsall has been no exception to that rule, but there are some encouraging signs. The latest comparative unemployment figures available, for October 1982, for young people aged under 18 show that there were 1,036 in that group compared with 1,189 in October 1981. That represents a decrease of 12·9 per cent.
I do not dispute the fact that unemployment in Walsall is high, nor the fact that some people wish earnestly for an upturn in the new year. We all share that hope and expectation, and I believe that the Government's policies will help to bring them about.

Buying British
1.59 pm
Mr. Neil Thorne: I am delighted to have the opportunity to address the House on the very' important issue of measures to encourage the buying of British goods by domestic consumers.
One of the most outstanding British enterprises has just launched a campaign under the banner
"Buying British Goods Means Supporting British Jobs"
This is not the first time that the philosophy of Marks and Spencer has been enunciated in the House or in the corridors of government. The leading article of the St.Michael News tells us about Mrs. M, an average housewife who has a good husband, healthy children and a nice home in a reasonable street. Her kitchen has all the usual labour-saving equipment, such as a German dishwasher, food mixer and the like. However, as she puts the dirty clothing, much of it made in the Far East, into her Italian washing machine and then drives in her French car to the shops, she is worried, because her eldest boy is still without a job six months after leaving school and her husband's firm is laying off staff.
If Mrs. M thought about it, she would have much to worry about. Department of Trade statistics show that, between 1970 and 1982, the percentage of penetration by overseas manufacturers in the chemical industry rose from 18 per cent. to 33 per cent. In the metal manufacturing industry it rose from 19 per cent. to 32 per cent., in mechanical engineering from 19 per cent. to 36 per cent., in the instrument engineering industry from 34 per cent. to 63 per cent., in electrical engineering from 18 per cent. to 46 per cent., in the vehicle industry from 12 per cent. to 46 per cent., in metal goods from 6 per cent. to 17 per cent., in textiles from 14 per cent. to 41 per cent., in leather goods from 21 per cent. to 45 per cent., in clothing and footwear from 12 per cent. to 37 per cent. and in paper and printing from 19 per cent. to 23 per cent. Those random examples are extremely worrying from a national point of view.
In view of the close relationship between buying British and preserving British jobs, the board of Marks and Spencer has instituted a management policy that, provided that quality and value are competitive, its managers must be committed to goods produced in the United Kingdom and made with British equipment and British raw materials so that jobs at home will be secure and additional employment created. As a result, although 50 per cent. of all men's woven shirts sold in the United Kingdom this year were made abroad, no less than 99 per cent. of Marks and Spencer shirts—it is probably the largest single shirt seller in the country—are produced at home. Only 40 to 45 per cent. of footwear is made at home, but Marks and Spencer purchases between 80 and 85 per cent. from United Kingdom manufacturers, with a policy of buying abroad only when it is impossible to find high quality and good value at home.
Marks and Spencer's foreign suppliers, especially of food, have been encouraged to set up new process factories here. The chairman of the company, Lord Sieff, said:
"Today we face grave problems with increasing long-term unemployment and the inability of school leavers to find work. But by implementing good human relations at work, practical involvement in the community, and the determination to encourage United Kingdom production before seeking to import will help to ensure a better future."
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Why is it necessary to draw attention to the need to buy British? It was not very many years ago that that was considered the natural thing to do. British always stood for best—best design, best made and best value for money. What went wrong? First, of course, through indifferent management and unco-operative trade unions, our enterprise and efficiency began to flag. This, coupled with poor selling techniques, gave our competitors the opportunity for which they were waiting. Our products were at a severe disadvantage in overseas markets and, as a result of the economies of scale, these same foreign companies were able to beat us in our markets at home.
We are still the largest per capita exporting nation in the world and we must expect and accept free and fair competition. Unfortunately, many of our competitors do not believe that the scales of fairness should be held in a just way and have not been against a little tilting, in some instances a great deal. In some instances our goods were completely excluded on the pretext of helping struggling infant industry but, like the Japanese motor cycle industry, the restrictions were not removed until the baby had become a giant capable of completely squashing the competition. This has been followed by the motor industry and a number of other industries, including optics and television.
I tried to purchase a British made television at the nearest retailer to the House of Commons. I found that it had not one set available that had been made in Britain. This is a sign of what is to be found throughout the country. If there is not a complete ban, we are all familiar with the petty regulations such as those practised by France and again Japan. These practices lead to disputes about the size of the lettering on our goods that they import. It is said to be minutely too large or too small.
In Spain we meet another type of special restriction. Our exports of cars are subject to a 36 per cent. tariff, whereas imports of cars from Spain suffer only a 4 per cent. charge. Faced with this type of barrier, it is no wonder that our manufacturers are unable to compete in quality, availability and value.
Until relatively recently these restrictions and controls on commercial life appeared hidden or lost in the fog of an expanding economy, but the world recession has exposed the hard facts of international commerce. In the circumstances, we cannot afford to carry any passengers, whether management or staff. The trade unions must realise, as the German unions realised a long time ago, that they must help their companies to lead the milch cow to the best pasture before they can expect to draw their members' share of the milk. How on earth the steel workers allowed themselves to be led into a disastrous strike in 1980 against all advice we shall never understand, but there is no doubt that if large users of steel, including the nationalised industries, cannot trust their suppliers when they themselves adopt the modern industrial practice of keeping minimum stocks to save interest payments, they have to buy some of their supplies abroad to ensure that they will never be brought to their knees by militant trade union action. This is of course done at the cost of jobs in the steel industry at home.
Neither shoddy nor unsafe goods can be tolerated and it seems that we should be much more aggressive in our approach to imported products. So many of the cheap fancy goods flooding the market seem entirely unsuitable and unsafe. The importers of these goods should be required to place a bond with the Department of Trade to

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guarantee the safety of their goods. I believe that our manufacturers are now realising the importance of ascertaining first what the customers want and then setting about satisfying the demand rather than telling the public what they are prepared to sell.
There are still excellent opportunities for the enterprising and in a world intent on labour saving to cut costs and the introduction of robots in large companies we must look to small businesses to help reduce unemployment. My constituency is fortunate to have firms such as Lelliots the high quality builders and Croydon Display the shopfitters, which are making substantial and successful efforts to expand their operations. A small business man wrote to me yesterday to thank me for my Christmas card. He wrote:
"I hope that the New Year will see our Government go from strength to strength and with it the economy of Great Britain. I should like to take this opportunity to defy the Socialist doomsday forecast by the fact that I proved to myself that the economy has never been healthier. I managed last year to start my own business on borrowed capital and I am now running a flourishing business with a very pleasant turnover which I have achieved by a lot of hard work."
That man has started a jewellery manufacturing business in the way he describes.
Whichever way we look at the issue, we come back to the fact that British goods mean British jobs. Therefore, I believe we should do much more to make the public aware exactly which goods are British. It is my view that the origin marking order earlier this year is confusing and inadequate. Some people tell stories of goods being described as British-made when only some trifling final operation is carried out in Britain. Incredibly, the whole item is described as British. One firm of crystal manufacturers has recently started describing its goods as "wholly made in Britain" to distinguish itself from its competitors. Surely in this day and age of computers it would be possible accurately to assess the contents by value of any product that was partly made here and for that percentage to be displayed as the portion attributable to British manufacture.
As we are so restricted in what action we can take against imported goods, not only because of our need to survive as the leading exporting nation of the world but because of the rules of the EC, can we not ask Her Majesty the Queen to institute an award for the top 10 companies each year that retail the largest value of wholly-made British goods on a similar basis to the Queen's award to industry? That would enable those firms to display a sign over their doors to their customers showing that they are selling substantial quantities of goods that provide real and worthwhile jobs for British workers.
It is only in that way that we can show the British consumer exactly what is available and what is not available to him in the shops. Of course, it must rest with the consumer whether he is prepared to accept the quality and value for money that are provided. However, it is the Government's responsibility to ensure that it is clear to the consumer what is being produced at home.
At the moment the system is too confusing. The man in the street who is determined to buy British cannot do so. Another constituent who wrote to me recently said that he tried various shops in my constituency with the sole intention of buying British, but had the utmost difficulty in doing so.
Therefore, it is up to us, while accepting that free and fair international trade is a requirement of a modern
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civilised society, to make it absolutely clear to the man in the street precisely what he is buying in the shops and to give him every opportunity to choose from the various alternatives those that create jobs at home.
2.13 pm
The Minister for Consumer Affairs (Dr. Gerard Vaughan): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) on raising this subject. I am grateful to him for reminding us of the link between supporting our manufacturers and reducing unemployment. I listened carefully to his constructive speech. I was particularly interested when he gave his idea of a special award and when he talked of his anxieties about origin markings on various products. I am considering that matter to see if we can do more about it.
My hon. Friend was right to remind us that we are a trading nation. We export more of our gross national product than any other industrial country. It is in our interests to take down and not to put up international barriers. It is very much in our interests to have free international trade, but free and fair trade between countries. We must support our own trade more. As one overseas buyer said to me the other day, we cannot expect others to buy our products if we do not buy them ourselves.
We should all be worried when the Confederation of British Industry says that the recent 10 per cent increase in imports has lost us 800,000 jobs. We cannot complain about high unemployment if we are not prepared to buy our goods ourselves, and if our manufacturers are riot prepared to make the goods that we want to buy. I was looking the other day, for example, at the manufacturing of video recorders. We have the highest proportion of video recorders per home in the world but we still do not manufacture a single video recorder ourselves. Ai a nation we talk so much about what is wrong with what we produce but take for granted so much that is right.
Leaving oil on one side, every month Britain sells overseas goods and services worth £3,500 million. An awful lot of people must think that those goods are worth the price and are worth buying. We really must stop talking down our British products and talking up goods from overseas. We produce a great deal in this country of high quality and very good value. One of the crucial themes of Government policy is to improve still more the competitiveness and the quality of British industry and commerce—to improve value.
I, too, read the St. Michael News. I, too, was filled with enthusiasm about what I read there and about what this great firm is doing for our British economy—so much so that a few days ago I wrote to Lord Sieff to congratulate the firm on what it is doing and to ask why, if it could do it, other sections of our trade could not do the same. Perhaps Marks and Spencer and the St. Michael News will tell them how to do it.
The main responsibility must be industry's to produce goods at the price and of the quality, style and availability that we want. My hon. Friend might ask what the Government are doing to help. I should like to refer to one kind of help that we are giving. In July this year my noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade presented a White Paper to Parliament, "Standards, Quality and International Competitiveness". This all sounds rather dry and formal but I can assure the House that the implications of that paper are of tremendous significance to our economy.

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We intend, by developing—in the way that West Germany and Japan have developed—widely used and widely accepted standards, to make it easier for customers both at home and overseas to be confident that our products will be a good buy and that "Made in Britain" will mean made well. We are asking Government Departments and major companies to use these standards rather than always to produce standards of their own.
I am talking not necessarily about higher standards which would price us out of markets and reduce competitiveness but of more general and widely known standards. We are working at the moment with the British Standards Institution to develop this commercial tool—that is what it really is—as fast as we can. At the same time we are producing a register of firms whose goods match good standards. We will be extending that list steadily through the coming months.
At my end, I am looking at our safety standard—at our safety checks. Despite all our legislation, too many shoddy, unsafe goods come into this country and I am afraid are sometimes still being made in this country. Surely when one buys something one has a right to assume that it will be safe if it is used in a sensible way. Once goods are on our shop shelves it is often too late to stop them. So I am looking first to see whether importers and distributors can be held more responsible than at present for the safety of what they bring in and distribute. Then I am also looking to see whether we can more quickly get suspect goods off the shelves so that we can act as soon as we begin to suspect that a particular kind of goods may not be safe.
All this links closely with the work on safety standards. We are examining both the quality and safety of goods sold in this country. More than that, however, we expect manufacturers to give far closer consideration to the kind of goods that customers wish to buy. It is clear from St. Michael News how much effort that company has made to discover exactly what the market wants.
I still hear chairmen complaining that too few people buy their goods and people complaining that the goods that they wish to buy are not available. There is still a huge gap between what manufacturers think the market will stand and what the customer actually wants. I do not understand why so many companies watch with amazement while their sales fall and customers go overseas to buy similar goods. The problem is not price, but the quality and style of the goods and their suitability to people's needs. Flexibility is too often lacking.
Listening to my hon. Friend, I wondered how many companies make it easy for the great sleeping army of customers to tell them what they want the company to manufacture. How easy is it for messages to get through? I tried phoning a number of company chairmen through the companies' general switchboards, as though I were an ordinary customer wishing to make a complaint. I assure the House that it is extremely difficult for an ordinary person to register his needs with those who set the policy of manufacturing companies. Companies should do far more to encourage customers to tell them what is needed. They might also give more status to the often underestimated experts in sales promotion.
In the second part of my letter to the chairman of Marks and Spencer, I said:
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"My job is to see that customers can buy safe goods at the right price and of good quality. Many of the goods are made in this country. If they are not, customers must ask why not and must be able to say what it is that they want to buy. I am concerned that too often it is difficult for a customer to make his needs known to the trader and the manufacturer. Perhaps again you can show others the way."
Mr. Neil Thorne: I was interested to hear of my hon. Friend's concern for safety in the manufacture of fancy goods and toys. I hope that he will give special consideration to the manufacture of toys which may cause much needless harm to young children. Producers in the Far East who are trying to cash in on this area are turning out a great deal of shoddy work. We have heard recently how dangerous Christmas lights may be if they do not comply with safety standards. I hope that we shall use our ability to stop such rubbish coming into the country in the first place.
I should be glad to hear my hon. Friend's comments about delivery times. British manufacturers are often taken to task for their poor delivery times, although I understand that there has been a considerable improvement in recent years and that that is now much less of a worry than it used to be. Perhaps my hon. Friend will comment briefly on my suggestion that products should carry details as to the percentage by value that is British. Here one thinks particularly of cars, for which the tyres may be made in France, the spark plugs in Belgium, and so on. Anyone who buys a Ford car, for example, needs to look very closely to discover the origin of the bulk of the product. Information of that kind would be helpful. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend would comment on my suggestion of an award to retailers for selling wholly British goods.
Dr. Vaughan: As I said earlier, my hon. Friend has raised a number of interesting and constructive suggestions. I gladly undertake to look at the possibility of identifying which part of an article is of British origin and which is not. However, there could be difficulties in doing so. I shall also look at the possibility of an award.
On delivery times, I am glad to say that my hon. Friend is talking about the past. Those problems, which at one time received much publicity, are largely non-existent today. Our delivery times are quite as good as, and in many cases a good deal better than, those of many of our competitors.
I share my hon. Friend's anxiety about some of the products now coming into the United Kingdom. I am worried about some of the toys that fall apart and leave sharp and dangerous spikes exposed. I am also worried about the paint used on some imported articles which has high levels of lead or cadmium.
I am most worried by some of the electrical goods now coming into the country, which are extremely dangerous. The recent report on the home accident survey system showed that, apart from cuts and various other accidents caused by loose rugs and other articles in the home, there was a high incidence of accidents occurring as a result of electrical faults. Of the 5,000 deaths in the home in 1980, quite a proportion were due to electrical accidents. We are very concerned about this, and I agree that a greater legal responsibility must be placed on people distributing such goods, either by importing them or by manufacturing them and distributing them through our warehouses.
It is too late to take action once such goods are on shop shelves. Once a rumour circulates that such articles may

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be unsafe, a shopkeeper who is worried about his cash flow or who is not a scrupulous trader can rapidly unload those goods on to the general market, often at a cut price. I am looking at the possibility of shortening the gap between suspecting that an article is unsafe or dangerous and the issuing of a prohibition order.
This has been a useful debate, which follows on well from the previous debate on high levels of unemployment. To paraphrase the St. Michael slogan, "Yes, there are jobs to be found in housewives' shopping bags." I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising the subject.

Remand Prisoners (Custody)
2.28 pm
Mr. Alfred Dubs: The overcrowding in our prison system has been the subject of many speeches and has been raised in many debates. Last week, just under 44,000 people were in the prison system in England and Wales, compared with a certified normal accommodation of 38,621. As not all cells are suitable for accommodation at all times, it effectively means that at present there are places for about 37,000 prisoners. Those figures adequately demonstrate the nature of the overcrowding.
The figures for London prisons show similar overcrowding. That is certainly true for Brixton, Wormwood Scrubs and Pentonville, although at Wandsworth the overcrowding is less. Possibly that is because the prison officers, owing to a dispute, are preventing prisoners from being taken in above a certain number.
Prisoners—I believe that this is a problem only in the London area, although the Minister may disagree—are being held in police cells, and in cells under courts, as a result of the knock-on effect of the overcrowding. I understand that the authority for holding them in those conditions is section 6 of the Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act 1980.
Earlier this year, I was approached about the matter by a number of probation officers, and as a result I received from the Home Office a copy of a letter which said:
"Police cells are used only as a last resort, and each prisoner is usually moved to a prison after a very short period, generally one night only, or two or three nights at weekends."
The letter went on to say that
"every effort is being made, with some signs of success, to reduce the extent to which we have to depend on police cell accommodation".
That letter was sent last June.
Some weeks ago a constituent, a woman with four children, became concerned that her husband, who was being held on remand in custody, had been moved, following his court appearance, from Brixton prison to cells underneath Horseferry Road magistrates' court. Her concern was that she was unable to visit him.
I made representations to the Home Office by telephone. After several conversations the prisoner was moved to Brixton prison, although in one of the conversations a Home Office official said to me "What do we do?" I replied that that was not my concern; I was concerned with the right of my constituent to be visited by his wife. Eventually, the prisoner was moved back to Brixton. He then went to the Crown court, ended up again in magistrates' court cells, and eventually, after further representations, went back to Brixton. Although I happened to achieve some slight success on behalf of one individual, the only result was that somebody else was not in Brixton but was held in police or court cells.
Last Monday, the all-party penal affairs group visited Lambeth police garage and the cells under Camberwell court. Lambeth police garage is the central holding point where prisoners who have put in court appearances are held while it is decided where they are to go. Some of them stay for some days at the cells in Lambeth police garage; others are moved to other police stations or other cells under courts in London.

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On the day of our visit, we were told that 49 prisoners had been transferred to prisons that day, there were still 101 being held in prison and court cells, and it was expected that a further 70 would arrive that evening from the various courts in London. We were also told that in September the figure had reached 293, and that on average about one-third of the prisoners held in those conditions are convicted, presumably mainly awaiting sentence, but that the bulk of them are prisoners who have not been convicted and are therefore innocent. That is what makes even more appalling the conditions under which they are being held.
A drop in the prison population is usually expected at this time of the year, lasting until about the second week in January. However, this year the drop has not taken place, certainly not in the South-East.
On the day that we visited the cells, we were told that prisoners were being held at 14 different locations in London, and it was expected that when the further numbers arrived from court 17 different locations would have to be used. The conditions in those locations obviously vary depending on the particular circumstances of the police station or the court, but from what I know and what I saw they vary from being unsatisfactory to positively degrading.
The police officers who have the main responsibility for looking after prisoners are doing their best. From our conversations with them it appears that they are cheerful, but pretty fed up at having to do a job for which they did not join the police service. The sample figures given to us show that, on a day when 176 prisoners are held in the conditions that I have described, 21 police sergeants and 121 constables are required to act as gaolers. They would be better employed on ordinary police work and preventing crime than in acting as surrogate prison officers.
The prison rules do not apply to prisoners who are held in such conditions, although the Metropolitan Police have the advice and assistance of an official of governor grade who helps to resolve some of the problems regarding how prisoners are held.
In contrast to the letter from the Home Office that I quoted, although some prisoners are being held in police cells for only a few days, others are kept there for considerably longer. The worst case quoted to us was that of a prisoner who had been held since 19 November, but we spoke to prisoners who had been there for one or two weeks.
The cells under courts are normally designed for a three-hour stay and not for holding prisoners for a fortnight or longer. Police cells usually have facilities for looking after prisoners overnight, because that happens in police stations anyway.
The policy is that prisoners who are likely to be least trouble are kept in these cells and the more difficult prisoners are found places in Brixton, Wandsworth or other prisons. On our visit we spoke to a prisoner who had attempted to commit suicide. By the time that we left a place had been found for him in Brixton, so our visit had at least one beneficial result.
A number of problems face prisoners held in such conditions. Facilities for exercise are inadequate or non-existent. At Camberwell there is a small room with a table tennis table and a card table and we were told that, if
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possible, prisoners were given 20 or 30 minutes there each day. We were told that at Lambeth police garage there were no exercise facilities, but that exercise space could be provided if the 19 police vehicles in the car park could be moved.
The second complaint relates to washing and showering facilities. There are showers that prisoners can use at Lambeth police garage, but there are none at Camberwell, although a piece of plastic hosing is attached to a wash basin and prisoners can use that for showering. Some prisoners complained that they had no showering facilities, but we were told that there were plans to install a shower, which suggests that someone at the Home Office assumes that the arrangement for holding prisoners at Camberwell will be longer lasting than we were led to believe earlier this year.
The main complaint is about visiting arrangements. Solicitors can make visits and there is normally an interview room set aside in police cells, but conditions are less satisfactory in cells under magistrates courts.
Family visiting is either impossible or difficult. Often conversations have to take place through a window or grid, measuring 12in by 6in, in the cell door. Even some solicitors have to conduct conversations in that way. It is hardly satisfactory. Visiting hours are limited, visits may last for only 10 to 30 minutes and children under 14 are generally not allowed to visit the cells.
Cells vary in size and at Camberwell are particularly small for two people. They have no windows and only electric lighting. In one cell there was a bunk on which one prisoner could lie. The other prisoner had a mattress on the floor and could lie down only if he pushed his feet under the bunk. The cells were extremely small and cramped.
Prisoners held in custody on remand are given a small sum of money, certainly when they are in prison, either for work or for being available for work whether or not work is available. There are no facilities for making money available for most prisoners held in police or court cells. They have to rely on the generosity of the police for cigarettes or other items. This is hard for non-smokers who are unable to buy soft drinks or anything else.
There is also a difficulty about providing medicine and drugs. These are available because of occasional visits made to the cells by doctors. I understand, however, that it is a regulation that drugs should not be given except under medical supervision. This is a regulation that cannot be adhered to because it is impossible for a doctor to attend every time that a prisoner has to take a prescribed drug.
Another difficulty arises for solicitors and families trying to find out where prisoners are. It is a sudden move to go from Brixton to court and then to end up in an entirely different part of London. I have received complaints from solicitors and families that it takes some time to discover the location of prisoners. A great deal of telephoning is involved. The police stated earlier this week that they were installing a computer, part of the purpose of which would be to locate prisoners. That is an obvious benefit in helping solicitors and families to get access to prisoners. It does not augur well for those who hope that exisiting conditions are only temporary. My main fear is that the installation of the computer, together with showers and so on, will lead people to become reconciled to the situation as permanent.
With the approach of Christmas, the problem is doubly urgent. There are a number of solutions that the Home Office could adopt. It would be possible for some

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prisoners to be moved out of prisons in the London area so that those held in the conditions that I have described could take their place. There is a knock-on effect. If Wormwood Scrubs is full, prisoners cannot be transferred there from Brixton. This means that people who should be in Brixton have to be held in court cells. Conditions in Brixton are by no means ideal. To set that as a model to be aimed at shows how appalling is the situation.
Another possible solution would be for the Home Office to use its powers of executive release for non-violent prisoners. If 150 prisoners held in such conditions were released from prison in the London area one day early, vacant places would be provided in cells. It has been suggested frequently that the parole provisions should be extended. I suppose, however, that this would require further legislation as the Government refused to adopt this suggestion during proceedings on what became the Criminal Justice Act 1982.
More space would be provided if we avoided having mentally ill people and alcoholics in prison. Shorter sentencing would also result in a lower prison population.
I wish to read a series of items given to me by one of the prisoners in the cells we visited setting out what is inadequate. The list states: No baths or showers, no sheets, no pot, no welfare officer, no medics, no probation officer, no preacher or vicar, no place of worship, no governor, no open visits, no children on visits, no open exercise, no fresh air, no beer or half-bottle of wine, no outside food, no canteen and no legal aid officer. At the end, he says that there is good food and that the police officers are helpful, although not trained in man-management.
The problem is urgent. If the Home Office was to show political will and imagination, it could be solved quickly.
2.43 pm
The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Patrick Mayhew): The hon. Member for Battersea, South (Mr. Dubs) has done well, if I may respectfully say so, to raise the difficult and extremely disquieting problem presented by the detention of prisoners in police cells in London and the South-East. The hon. Gentleman has taken the opportunity this week and a little earlier to see for himself the conditions under which these prisoners are currently having to he held.
I should like to say at once that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary shares all the anxiety that the hon. Gentleman and others have expressed about the undesirability of this practice. We acknowledge that the detention of prisoners in cells that are not intended for prolonged periods of occupation is highly unsatisfactory. It is adverse to the interests of prisoners, the greater proportion of whom, as the hon. Gentleman said, are unconvicted and are remanded pending trial. It is not a proper use of police manpower.
I was grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the tribute that he paid to the police for the way in which they have discharged this unwelcome duty and I should like to associate myself with his tribute. This practice takes a large number of police officers away from operational duties when the police service as a whole, and the Metropolitan Police in particular, are under great pressure.
I shall begin by explaining how the present position has occurred. In the first place, we have lost a substantial amount of prison accommodation as a result of the reconstruction of Brixton and Wormwood Scrubs prisons.
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Some 350 cells, many of them previously in multiple occupation, have had to be taken out of use. The reason for that, as the hon. Gentleman with his close interest in these matters knows, is that repair and refurbishment were essential if more prison places were not to be lost.
Secondly, for much of this year we have been faced with industrial action by staff at Wandsworth, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, who have imposed varying restrictions on the number of prisoners that it was prepared to accept at that prison. Although the immediate dispute has been resolved, we have had to agree to an effective population ceiling at that prison which, while 120 higher than that pertaining immediately before, is about 150 below earlier levels. The acute shortage of prison officers at Wandsworth and elsewhere is a serious constraint to admitting higher numbers.
Thirdly, over the past few months there has been a surge in the number of unconvicted prisoners, despite a generally stable overall prison population, and the position has been exacerbated in recent weeks by the seasonal increase in the prison population. Remand prisoners must be held reasonably near to the courts at which they are to appear, and the accommodation available for them leaves us with little room to manoeuvre even at the best of times.
The total prison population is now about 44,000, and in recent weeks the prison population in London and the South-East has reached its highest-ever recorded level. The hon. Gentleman is right in pointing to the fact that the overcrowding of prisons is the primary cause of the need to use police cells for this purpose. The effect of these developments has been that, for some time now, prisoners have had to be held overnight in police custody when there is no available prison accommodation to which they can be sent.
Between July 1981 and October 1982 an average of about 45 prisoners have been held each night in police and court cells—the great majority in the Metropolitan Police area. The highest figure recorded was 293 on the night of 8 September this year, although it is fair to add that on a number of occasions there has been none. Since the beginning of November the figures have fluctuated between 25 and 202. This week we began with about 150 prisoners in police custody. That number is steadily falling. Last night, there were 47, and we are fairly confident that by tonight and over Christmas no prisoners will remain in police cells.
We have been keeping the position under the most anxious and continuing review and have taken all the steps open to us to make the best use of staff and accommodation to ensure that the use of police cells is kept as low as possible.
I shall list some of the steps that have been taken. All training prisons are being maintained at operational level, such prisons taking drafts of prisoners more frequently than usual, and in some cases taking shorter-term prisoners, in order to free places that would otherwise be taken up in local establishments receiving prisoners direct from the courts. Transfers now take place regularly at the end of the week in order to ensure that, following discharges earlier in the week, accommodation does not remain unoccupied over the weekend when the numbers in police cells tend to build up. All London prisons are being maintained at their agreed capacities with frequent transfers between prisons and from police custody to ensure that this is so. All 72 places for remands at Coldingley training prison are being fully utilised by

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providing daily escorts. Wandsworth is no longer used for overnight accommodation for prisoners being transferred between establishments. We brought some new accommodation at the young offender establishment at Warren Hill in Suffolk into use in the summer earlier than planned with the intention of making adult places available elsewhere in the system as a consequence. Recently, we decided to replace the young prisoner working party at Ashford remand centre with a group of selected adult prisoners from Wormwood Scrubs so as to provide a further measure of relief for the London prisons.
We are continuing to examine the scope for other minor adjustments that can be made to ensure that available accommodation is used to full effect.
The improvement in the Wandsworth situation, coupled with the other measures I have mentioned, has gone some way to reduce our dependence on police cells, but I regret that we have not yet found a complete answer. We expect some relief over the Christmas and new year period as a result of the seasonal drop in the population that occurs normally then, and we hope that it will be possible to ensure that no prisoner needs to spend Christmas in police custody. We are pretty confident that that will be the case. The police have, however, made contingency arrangements should the need to house prisoners over Christmas arise.
Looking further ahead as we all must, we expect to see a further seasonal rise in the prison population in the spring, by which time we hope to be able to bring into use new accommodation at Highpoint in Suffolk, a category C prison, where a 200-place extension is nearing completion. This accommodation was to have been used as a detention centre, but in the circumstances we thought it right to commission it instead for adult use. This should provide a measure of relief for the system as a whole, although not directly providing places for the remand population. It is impossible to guarantee that there will be no demand for police cells even then, but we hope that the scale of the problem will be substantially reduced by then. In the longer term, we shall have the refurbished wing at Brixton back in operation in due course.
I turn now to the circumstances under which prisoners are at present being held in police and court cells, and to pick up one or two matters which the hon. Member rightly raised. The legal basis for such a situation is contained in the Imprisonment (Temporary Provisions) Act 1980, which made clear that where, for any reason, it was not practicable to secure the admission of a prisoner to a prison department establishment, he could lawfully be held in the custody of a constable until such time as he could be admitted there or was required to appear before a court. In practice, remand prisoners generally spend not more than two or three nights at any one time in police or court cells before places in prison establishments become available, although, because of the weekly cycle of remand hearings, it is possible that the process will be repeated on more than one occasion. I noted with concern the instances spoken of by the hon. Gentleman, but he will recognise—as no doubt was explained to him at the time—that they were wholly exceptional and that the norm is two to three nights. That is what we aim to make the norm. The period may also be slightly longer if a weekend is involved. The normal practice is for a prisoner in police custody to be received into a prison before his next court
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appearance, so that in accordance with the committal warrant the prison governor can produce him again at the court. Convicted prisoners may on occasions spend longer than this in police custody, but everything possible is done to move such prisoners into prison accommodation at the earliest opportunity.
If one has to make a choice, it is obviously right that the convicted prisoner should be preferred for that unsatisfactory accommodation in preference to the unconvicted remand prisoner.
We recognise that facilities for observation and medical treatment available to the police are inadequate to enable them to cope with prisoners with particular problems or special needs. Every effort is therefore made to identify such prisoners at an early stage and to ensure that a prison place is found for them as soon as possible. We have also done our best to try to ensure that young men under 21 and women and girls are not detained in police custody overnight following their court appearances, but are transferred straight to prison accommodation. In general, we have been successful in this, and on the one or two occasions when, despite our efforts, police accommodation has had to be used, as a result, for example, of an abnormally high number of remands or of a breakdown of transport at night, the prisoners in question have normally been moved out of police custody the following day.
The Metropolitan Police have a number of centres which they can use for accommodating prisoners. Although none of them is intended for long-term detention, they vary to some extent in the facilities that they offer, for example for washing, visits and recreation. I note what the hon. Gentleman said about those important matters. Although while in police cells prisoners committed into custody from the magistrates' courts are legally in police custody and not therefore subject to the prison rules, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, the police have been given advice and guidance by the Home Office on the conditions in which prisoners should so far as possible be kept. Arrangements have also been made for a member of the prison governor grades to visit each day all the locations where prisoners are detained overnight, to ensure that prisoners' general welfare and medical and legal requirements are properly looked after, to provide such assistance as may be required, and to act as a general point of liaison between the police and the prison services.
My right hon. Friend is satisfied that the police do their best, with limited resources, to provide all reasonable facilities in difficult circumstances. It is, however, hard for them to ensure that untried remand prisoners in their custody receive all the privileges which, as remand prisoners, they might expect in prison, and I am afraid that providing facilities for visits has proved to be a particular difficulty. Police stations and court buildings have only a limited secure area, around the cells, and space within that area is at a premium. To allow visits to take place outside the secure area would necessitate a considerable additional commitment of manpower. The police are already heavily stretched by the additional duty of accommodating remand prisoners, and I am afraid that they simply could not meet the required commitment. However, within the secure area they have been doing all that they can to alleviate the problem including, I understand, establishing an appointment system in some cases.
However, provision is always made for prisoners to see their legal advisers. I acknowledge that there have been difficulties. We have taken on board the Law Society's

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concern. For other types of visit, the police try to be as flexible as they can, but unfortunately some locations simply do not lend themselves to the possibility of family visiting. I would, however, stress that this obtains only for the limited period for which prisoners are detained in police custody; as soon as they are moved to prison establisments visits can take place in the normal way. We have done our best to provide access to a telephone in cases of particular difficulty.
One source of difficulty for relatives, friends and legal advisers has been to find out the precise whereabouts of certain prisoners while in police custody. We hope that the computer to which the hon. Gentleman referred will help in that regard.
The hon. Gentleman raised one or two other matters which time forbids me to answer now in detail, but I hope that he will allow me to do so by letter.
I pay tribute to the efforts that the police at all levels have made to discharge these additional and unwelcome responsibilities. For all the justified criticism of some of the conditions under which prisoners have been held, there has been nothing but praise for the attitude of the police in these difficult and trying circumstances. We have managed to meet the present difficulties only through the really admirable co-operation that they have given.
Police cells are used to accommodate prisoners only where it is essential. We have no intention that that should become a permanent feature of remand in London and the South-East, let alone that the practice should spread to other parts of the country. As I have explained, we have already put in hand several measures to avoid the use of police cells for that purpose. In the longer term we have embarked on the biggest prison building programme of this century. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will welcome what I have been able to say today about the position over Christmas. I am grateful to him for drawing attention to the pressing and extremely disquieting problems. We are doing our best to meet them and I hope that the position will improve before long.

War Widows
2.59 pm
Mr. Tom Benyon: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise what I regard as an important topic on this last Adjournment debate in this Session of Parliament before Christmas. It is especially appropriate that I am addressing the House on the fact that war widows over the age of 80 do not qualify to receive the State old person's pension. That is a considerable injustice. That injustice arises out of the complications and anomalies that currently abound in the social security system.
The Ten Commandments had the virtue of clarity and simplicity. If we do not obey them, we cannot pretend that we did not understand what Moses meant. If Moses had reappeared carrying the Ten Commandments amendment legislation, many of us would have had the excuse of incomprehension in mitigation for our failures on the day of judgment. Since 1945, the social security system has been amended and reamended piecemeal so that the original simplicity of the concept has now been lost. Claimants are faced with a maze of benefits, directions, limitations and qualifications which even the experts find confusing. Frequent injustices appear where claimants in great need do not receive what Parliament must have intended them to receive because of some loophole that creates inequity in the system. Until Parliament finds the energy and political will to overhaul the entire system, and remould it to complement the taxation system, those anomalies must be created, as has become apparent.
The most glaring example of what I regard as great injustices is that war widows do not receive the old person's pension because of the overlapping benefit regulations. The essence of those regulations is that there should be no duplicate payment for the same broad purpose. On the face of it, that would not seem to be unreasonable, but is the application of the regulation always reasonable and fair? As I say, there is one instance in which it most certainly is not because it denies war widows the old person's pension.
A war widow is awarded a war widow's pension if her husband's death is attributable to a disability which, in turn, is attributable to his service to the Crown. Under the overlapping benefit regulation a war widow cannot receive the national insurance widow's pension since both pensions are regarded as being for the same broad purpose—the death of her husband. However, the regulation does not specifically prohibit receipt of the widow's pension. It does not state that a war widow cannot receive that pension but that it will be abated by the war widow's pension. As the latter is always at a higher rate, it follows that duplication can never occur.
However, although a war widow is unable also to receive the national insurance widow's pension, she can receive the retirement pension provided that it is based solely upon her contributions and is in no way dependent on those of her husband. Obviously, the use of any of her husband's contributions would invoke the application of the overlapping benefit regulation since the portion of the pension based on such contributions would be regarded as a beneficiary provision, thus duplicating the war widow's pension. At September 1981 it was estimated that about 75 per cent. of all war widows over 60 were in receipt of a retirement pension based solely on their contributions.

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In 1971 the Government of the day introduced the old person's pension, better known as the over-80s pension. Although it may well have been the original intention for that payment to have been confined to those who were too old to contribute to the national insurance scheme on its inception, in the event, the Act is not so limiting, the only criteria of eligibility being the attainment of the age of 80 and certain conditions in respect of residence. It is not a beneficiary award, but is received by each individual in his or her own right, provided the necessary conditions of eligibility are satisfied. Thus, even if the husband is in receipt of this pension, on his death his widow will receive it, not automatically but only when and if she satisfies the qualifying conditions. In that respect it is, therefore, similar to the retirement pension which can also be received by a man or woman only if he or she satisfies the conditions of eligibility.
Furthermore, if a reduced retirement pension is in payment, and its rate, when the recipient qualifies for the over-80s pension, is below the rate of that pension, the over-80s pension is paid in lieu. There is, however, one vital difference in the treatment of those two pensions. While a war widow can receive a retirement pension in full, provided that she has earned it solely in her own right—in other words, it is not abated—the over-80s pension does suffer abatement. Thus, the latter pension is denied to any war widow, even if she is otherwise eligible to receive it.
Why is there that differentiation in the treatment of the two pensions? Since the over-80s pension can be received only by an individual in his or her own right, it cannot possibly be classified as a beneficiary provision. It is not, therefore, for the "same broad purpose" as a war widow's pension and there is thus no question of its being a "duplicate payment." On the other hand, as the Act makes pension provision for those outside the normal national insurance scheme, or for those who have an inadequate contribution record in which case the over-80s pension replaces the retirement pension, it clearly takes the place of that pension for such individuals.
In the face of such arguments, how can the Government logically persist in denying the over-80s pension to that very small group of elderly war widows? The application of the regulation in this instance is not only wholly wrong and unreasonable but utterly irrational. The Government, of course, put forward various arguments which even in my most charitable frame of mind—as my hon. Friend the Minister knows, that is my usual frame of mind—I must regard as excuses to support their refusal to end the discrimination against those very elderly war widows.
For example, the Government point to certain advantages that are accorded to war widows. I am sure that my hon. Friend will do that again this afternoon. For example, the Government refer to the age allowance at 65 and 70. I have even had the £10 Christmas bonus thrown at me, as if it somehow makes up for the fact that they are denied the old person's pension. However, such arguments have nothing whatever to do with the point and are a complete red herring.
The issue is purely a matter of principle. It is whether the over-80s pension is, in effect and practice, an extension of, adjunct to, or replacement or alternative for the retirement pension and should, therefore, be treated in
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precisely the same way. To my mind, there is no doubt about the matter and I do not believe that any right-minded person would think otherwise.
As is only to be expected, the Government also use the objection of cost. I accept that cost is important, particularly in the present economic climate. However, it should not, in principle, be the governing criterion for upholding the blatant misuse of a regulation. Let us see what the cost would be if the over-80s pension were paid to those widows. In September 1981 it was estimated that about 18,000 war widows over the age of 60 were not in receipt of a retirement pension and that 5,300 of them were then over the age of 80. At November 1982 rates, the cost of paying the over-80s pension to those widows would be £5·4 million.
There are, however, only about 13,000 potentially eligible war widows within the 60 to 80 age bracket, while the total number of all war widows under 60 is only about 51,000. Therefore, payment of this pension is a diminishing commitment. The sum of £5·4 million is very small when compared with expenditure on pensions, let alone overall public expenditure.
However, the initial impact could be confined to introducing the payment of this pension in two stages. In the first stage, the overlapping benefit regulation would initially be amended to abate the over-80s pension by only the amount of the age allowance payable with a war widow's pension. That would reduce the immediate cost to about £3·1 million. The second stage would be to amend the regulation to permit the over-80s pension to be paid in full.
To the elderly person on £42 a week, an extra £2·80 is a substantial sum sufficient to pay for the extra warmth, food and clothing that old age requires. War widows aged over 80 are not constituents who are likely to lobby their Members of Parliament. Their lobbying days are well over. The mark of a civilised society is whether we as politicians are prepared to advocate their case, although they cannot advocate their case to us. Our urgent priority is to ensure that the needs of that non-vocal group are satisfied.
If for some reason it is impossible to amend the regulation, the over-80s pension could at least be abated in the form of an increased age allowance at 75 and 80. It is estimated that if the £5·4 million were used in that way, it would provide an extra allowance of £280 a year for ladies aged 80 years and over. That small group of elderly widows deserves better and fairer treatment than has hitherto been meted out by the House and by successive Governments for a long time. The discrimination that they suffer is unjustifiable and should be ended. If the Government have any sense of justice, they should end it within a specific period, not just when the economic position permits. I have grown accustomed to hearing that phrase from the Government, but what it means is that they cannot do anything about the matter. I hope that the Government can do something about it, and will give those ladies a much-needed Christmas present in the form of a financial provision so that they can look forward to 1983 with optimism.
I hope that I have not put my hon. Friend in too difficult a position, because obviously he cannot announce this afternoon that the Government will do what I suggest. However, I hope that he will make representations to my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to build the matter into his plans for March. I

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hope that my hon. Friend will show that he and his Department will support the cause that I have attempted to advocate this afternoon. I shall listen to my hon. Friend's words with considerable interest.
3.12 pm
The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Hugh Rossi): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Abingdon (Mr. Benyon) for initiating a debate about elderly war widows. It almost goes without saying that we are greatly concerned about war widows, especially those who are elderly. Indeed, the provision that we make for them compares very favourably with what we do for other elderly people under our benefit arrangements.
Hon. Members will wish to know just what elderly war widows receive. First, there is the basic war widow's pension, which is currently set at a rate of £42·70 a week. That is the rate for the widow of a private soldier, but other widows receive rank additions as well. When the war widow reaches the age of 65 she receives a further age allowance of £4·15. When she reaches the age of 70, that allowance is doubled to £8·30. So by age 70, the war widow has at least £51 a week. As hon. Members will know, one of the first acts of the Government was to free completely those war widows' pensions from income tax.
We must compare that with what other elderly widows get. Under the national insurance scheme, a widow receives a basic £32·85 a week. On top of this, she gets 25p at age 80, but so does the war widow of that age. Those who do not qualify for a national insurance widow's pension must wait until they are 80 before they can receive a non-contributory retirement pension. That is set at a rate of £19·70 a week, plus the small age addition of 25p. So the elderly war widow has a lead already of more than £18 a week over the national insurance widow, and she gets more than twice as much as those who must rely on the non-contributory over-80s pension.
I think that it will be helpful, especially in view of what my hon. Friend has said, if I briefly outline the grounds for the introduction of the non-contributory over-80s pensions and their place within the framework of our social security scheme. Having done so, I think that my hon. Friend will realise that he has based his argument, although persuasive and heart-rending at this time of the year, on a false premise.
The first element, known as a category C pension, was introduced by the National Insurance Act 1970, which provided for a non-contributory retirement pension to be payable to some 250,000 very elderly people—at that time the minimum age for an eligible man was 87 and for a woman 82—who were excluded from the pre-1948 pension schemes and who, because of their age at the time when the 1948 national insurance scheme was introduced, were excluded from that too. These "left out pensioners" were very elderly. They were mostly living on fixed incomes and had seen the national insurance pensions, which they lacked through no fault of their own, grow steadily in real value and importance. The 1970 Act provided some very belated arrangements for those "left out" of the 1948 scheme.
There were really three groups covered: those who were both excluded from the pre-1948 scheme and, because they were over retirement age when the 1948 scheme was introduced, were excluded from that legislation also; those who under the 1948 scheme did have the chance to pay contributions but did not take that
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chance; and, thirdly a very small group who were covered by pre-1948 Act pension schemes but who for one reason or another, due mainly to deficiency of contributions, were entitled to less than the standard rate of contributory retirement pension, whose reduced pensions would be topped up by these provisions.
The category C pensions first became payable in November 1970. They were fixed at a lower rate than the contributory retirement pension and the level equated with the 60 per cent. level payable to a dependent wife. The condition for receipt of a category C pension is that the person must have been over pension age on 5 April 1948 and have been resident, and ordinarily resident, in Great Britain for at least 10 years since that date. A woman married to a man in receipt of this pension is also entitled to it provided that she is over pension age and has retired.
The second kind of non-contributory pension scheme is known as the category D pension and was introduced by the National Insurance Act 1971. This extended the scope of non-contributory pensions to all persons over 80 irrespective of the reason for their exclusion from the 1948 scheme. The pension is payable, subject to a 10-year residence test, to any person over 80 who either has no contributory retirement pension or a deficient one.
The category D pension benefits any elderly person with a deficient contribution record irrespective of cause and is of particular benefit both to immigrants and to British citizens returning from abroad who have not been obliged to pay contributions during their working life.
As one would expect, the number of elderly people receiving these pensions has declined steadily over the years. At December 1971 there were about 132,000 category C and D pensioners of whom 112,000 were women, while in May of this year this had fallen to 45,000, of whom 40,000 were women. The numbers receiving these pensions have therefore declined by almost two-thirds, and this is not to be wondered at since the intention behind the pension was to give something to those who had no State pension at all because, for instance, they were too old to enter the national insurance scheme as long ago as 1948.
I hope that it will be clear that the over-80s pension was introduced to meet a particularly well-defined contingency, that is that the beneficiary had no other pension on which to live.
Social security arrangements provide for many and varied contingencies, such as sickness, unemployment, retirement, widowhood and so on. It is, of course, perfectly possible for someone to satisfy the conditions for two or more sets of benefits. To prevent the award of benefits becoming something of a lottery, there have always been rules that prevent the duplicate payments of benefit provided for the same broad purpose, usually the maintenance of the beneficiary. The over-80s pension is provided not as some sort of recognition that a person has reached four score years but as a contribution towards that person's needs where no other pension is available.
Clearly, a war widow is already provided for through the war pensions scheme, and, as I have said, the preferential rights at which a pension is paid to her already gives her a substantial lead over other groups of widows. I can well understand that the validity of comparisons between different groups is often open to question, but some comparisons must be made if we are to achieve a degree of even-handedness in the way resources are distributed.

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I do not wish to quarrel in any way with my hon. Friend's assessment of the cost of extending over-80s pensions to war widows. Like him, I think that the cost would be about £6 million, though there would be a small reduction from this because we would save on supplementary benefit. That would not be much, however—no more than £¼ million—because the vast majority of these elderly war widows have an income under the war pensions scheme that lifts them above supplementary benefits scales, unless they have exceptionally high rents or something of that sort. Though this £6 million would have to be found from somewhere, I do not wish to base any argument on grounds of cost.
To concede the over-80s pension to war widows would offend against the rationale of the scheme. For example, we would find it difficult to resist demands from national insurance widows that they, too, should receive the over-80s pension when they reached that age or, for that matter, that war widows should receive national insurance pensions on their husbands' contributions. We allow a war widow to supplement her widow's pension with any retirement pension for which she has contributed herself, and we feel that we cannot go beyond that.
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As I have said, the over-80s pension was introduced to meet a particular contingency, that is, to provide a State maintenance pension to those people who had no pension at all. Neither war widows nor national insurance widows meet that criterion and the Government take the view that the best use of any extra resources becoming available for war pensioners would be to improve the war pension provision generally.
Therefore, I am sorry that I must disappoint my hon. Friend, but I think that he will realise, on reflection, that there is a sound basis to the reason for my having reluctantly to refuse his earnest request on virtually the eve of Christmas.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bernard Weatherill): Before I adjourn the House, may I wish the hon. Member for Abingdon (Mr. Benyon), the Minister of State, the Whip and the staff of the House a happy Christmas.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes past Three o'clock till Monday 17 January 1983, at half-past Two o'clock, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 20 December.