Commons Sitting of 17 January 1984

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRIVATE BUSINESS

  CONTINGENCIES FUND 1982–83
  Ordered, That there be laid before the House Accounts of the Contingencies Fund, 1982–83, showing:

  (1) the Receipts and Payments in connection with the Fund in the year ended the 31st day of March 1983;

  (2) the Distribution of the Capital of the Fund at the commencement and close of the year; with the Report of the Comptroller and Auditor General thereon. — [Mr. Donald Thompson.]

Oral Answers to Questions
  DEFENCE

    Radar Equipment
    Mr. Jannerasked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he will take steps to increase research and development in the United Kingdom on radar equipment for naval vessels.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. John Lee): Our overall investment in naval radars in the United Kingdom, including production as well as research and development, has been increasing in real terms and will continue to do so. I am glad to say that naval radars manufactured in the United Kingdom are as good as any in the world.
    However, it is the Government's policy, wherever practicable, to meet our requirements for naval radars—and, indeed, other major equipments—by competition between commercial products rather than from Ministry of Defence-funded special developments. The Ministry of Defence therefore expects to be spending less on such developments in future. However, we will continue to maintain a substantial intramural and extramural research programme in the field of naval radars.
    Mr. Janner: In view of the recent success of the Sea Wolf naval points defence missile system in destroying an Exocet sea-skimming missile of the type that caused such destruction during the Falkland Islands campaign, can the Minister say whether he has any further plans for equipping the Navy with these missiles? Will he recognise the need for such orders in the Marconi plants in my constituency, which have done such marvellous work in this connection in the past and which were caused such anxiety when the naval Estimates were cut a short time ago?
    Mr. Lee: The hon. and learned Gentleman is a consistent advocate of Marconi's cause, and I acknowledge that. We were delighted with the success of Sea
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    Wolf in intercepting at maximum range an Exocet missile, which I announced in the Navy debate at the end of November. That confirms Sea Wolf's position as the best all-round point defence missile system in the world. I congratulate all the contractors involved, including British Aerospace and Marconi, on this achievement. It was announced yesterday that the Ministry of Defence had placed a second production order for Sea Wolf with radars, to be made by Marconi Radar Systems Ltd. It is a valuable order for the company. We shall continue to fit Sea Wolf to type 22 frigates on build and to the future type 23 frigates. In addition, we are examining options for improving the air defence capability of a number of in-service vessels, but no decisions have yet been taken.
    Mr. Michael Marshall: Does my hon. Friend agree that, in reaching decisions on the future of naval radar, it is also important to have an early decision on surface-to-surface guided weapons? On that score, does he hold out any hope for an early decision on SSGWs and an all-British solution to that problem?
    Mr. Lee: I know of my hon. Friend's continued interest in the SSGW, but he must not attempt to draw me and have me prejudge the decision. All I can say is that the decision will be taken as soon as is practicable and possible.
    Mr. Conlan: In view of the ever-increasing cost of this class of work and the further need for commonality, certainly within NATO, is there not a case for collaborative agreements between ourselves and our European NATO allies?
    Mr. Lee: That is a matter that we always have in mind.
    Sir Antony Buck: Does not my hon. Friend's answer amount to the fact that Sea Wolf is a great success, but that it would never have come about if there had been any element of nationalisation in the firms concerned? I have in mind particularly the future of Marconi. Is it not important that the company should not have a sword of Damocles in the form of possible nationalisation hanging over it?
    Mr. Lee: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for his question. We seek maximum competition in MOD procurement.

    Cruise Missiles
    Mr. Dubsasked the Secretary of State for Defence what representations he has received about cruise missiles at Greenham common.
    Mr. Teddy Taylorasked the Secretary of State for Defence how many letters he has received in his official capacity on the issue of cruise over the past year.
    The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. Michael Heseltine): I received 2,102 letters from Members of Parliament and from members of the public during 1983.
    Mr. Dubs: Is the Secretary of State aware that Members of Parliament are grateful that he has acknowledged our representations that we should be allowed to visit Greenham common, a visit which I believe has been arranged for next Tuesday? Will he confirm that it is his intention that the visit should take place by helicopter? What is the reason for this appalling waste of public money, if that is what is to happen? Is it because

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    the Secretary of State is afraid that some of us might talk to the women of Greenham common before entering the base?
    Mr. Heseltine: From my knowledge of events, Labour Members who wish to talk to the Greenham common women have already taken the opportunity to do so.
    Mr. Taylor: In view of the massive propaganda drive being conducted by the CND and other organisations, will my right hon. Friend take every opportunity to get across the basic fact that we could very quickly get rid of cruise missiles if only the Russians would agree to remove their comparable weapons? Secondly, will my right hon. Friend point out that we are trying to defend ourselves against a regime which sends protesters against nuclear weapons to prison or psychiatric hospitals?
    Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend goes to the heart of the matter. We in the NATO Alliance have spent four years trying to avoid the need to deploy cruise missiles, and it is only because the Soviet Union refused to conclude satisfactorily the arms control negotiations with us that we took the inevitable steps, in policy terms, that we did.
    Mr. Strang: Is the Secretary of State aware that I delivered to his office this morning a large chunk of concrete which the Greenham common women believe was thrown over the perimeter fence on to one of their tents in the middle of the night just before Christmas by a British soldier? Has he noticed the recent reports in the press of the harassment of the Greenham common women by British soldiers? Will he take this opportunity to make it clear that he is opposed to any such harassment and that if any Member of Parliament provides him with precise details of any such incident it will be investigated?
    Mr. Heseltine: I think that I can help the hon. Gentleman. I am against members of the armed forces throwing concrete at people.
    Mr. Soames: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the deployment of cruise represents a significant setback for Soviet foreign policy and that the women of Greenham common are in no way representative of public opinion?
    Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend is right, and the reason why the ladies of Greenham common have to go to such lengths to get publicity for their cause is that they cannot be elected and voice their views in a democratic forum.
    Mr. Denzil Davies: Will the right hon. Gentleman answer the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs)? Is it a fact that the Ministry of Defence is making arrangements to fly Members of Parliament into Greenham common? If that is so, why is it being done in this way? Of what is the Secretary of State afraid?
    Mr. Heseltine: We shall make arrangements to fly those hon. Members who wish to see Greenham common to the base by fixed-wing aircraft. The reason for that is clear. We think that it will enable Members of Parliament to go about their legitimate functions of representing and inquiring into these matters without the need to face organised demonstrations—
    Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: Now we know.
    Mr. Heseltine: —by people who are seeking media coverage for a cause and whom right hon. and hon. Gentlemen would be free to consult if it were in their interest to do so.
    Mr. Denzil Davies rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. There are other questions on this matter.

    Information Services
    Mr. Greenwayasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the information services of his Department.
    The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. John Stanley): Seventy-one service men and 268 civil servants are engaged in the information services of the Department and of the individual armed services. They are concerned primarily with informing the public about the Government's defence policy and of the activities of the armed forces.
    Mr. Greenway: Will my hon. Friend ensure that his Department makes available suitable material to schools and educational and other institutions setting out the NATO and Western defence case, to ensure that there is a proper balance in peace studies and allied subjects?
    Mr. Stanley: I assure my hon. Friend that publications from my Department to inform the public about various aspects of defence policy are freely available to teachers and those in the academic world who want to have the Government's view.
    Mr. McNamara: Will the Minister take care to advise regular officers taking part in presentation schemes and teams that when speaking to the public they should not indulge in what might appear to be political polemics either about Governments or parties in this country or about the rulers of states abroad?
    Mr. Stanley: As the hon. Gentleman is aware, the armed services have a strict tradition of party political neutrality. The presentations whereby the armed services seek to explain their respective roles that are carried on under this Government have been carried on under successive Governments.

    Lebanon (British Troops)
    Mr. Proctorasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will estimate the costs of British troops in the Lebanon during 1984; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Stanley: If the British contingent of the multinational force were to remain in Beirut throughout 1984, the additional cost of having our men there rather than at their normal location would be in the region of £800,000. The British contingent continues to patrol in Beirut and to provide the security force for the ceasefire committee, both of which roles are highly valued.
    Mr. Proctor: Will my hon. Friend take this opportunity to pay a tribute to the British officers and men who carry out their work with such distinction, especially in protecting the ceasefire committee?
    Mr. Stanley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that question. I readily pay a warm tribute to the outstanding contribution that has been made by our small contingent to the multinational force, which has exercised influence to the good out of all proportion to its size.
    Mr. Russell Johnston: Is the Minister able to develop the Prime Minister's implication of her wish for an orderly transfer from a British force to a United Nations'

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    peacekeeping force, a view which the Liberal/Social Democratic alliance supports'? Has he any thought of giving such a force a more effective mandate than UNIFIL had in the south of Lebanon?
    Mr. Stanley: For some time we have felt that the development of the United Nations existing role in the Lebanon would be a practical way of providing an alternative to the multinational force, and we are continuing to discuss that possibility with all interested parties.
    Mr. Stokes: Is my hon. Friend aware that everyone realises the magnificent part which our small number of troops have played in Beirut? Is their sole purpose there merely to guard a building in which from time to time peace discussions are held? What is the long-term future of these troops? Are they not every day being exposed to unnecessary dangers?
    Mr. Stanley: The function of the troops in Beirut is to provide physical evidence of the presence of the multinational force by patrolling in Beirut. It is also to provide the all-important security force for the ceasefire committee. It is unlikely that the ceasefire committee would be meeting if its various members were not satisfied with the adequacy of the security arrangements, as they certainly currently are with the British presence.
    Mr. Tom Clarke: In view of President Reagan's statement yesterday, does the Minister accept that we in Britain have a responsibility to ease world tension, that the Lebanon is a part of the world where that can occur if we involve the United Nations and that a large number of people who are extremely well informed doubt the wisdom of the presence of British troops?
    Mr. Stanley: There is little doubt that if the four components the MNF were withdrawn the violence and bloodshed in Beirut would be far greater than it is at present.
    Mr. Budgen: If it is necessary to withdraw British troops from the Lebanon, why is it thought that United Nations troops would do a better or different job?
    Mr. Stanley: The United Nations, by its nature, tends to have a more permanent existence—for example, as in Cyprus—than the multinational force, which has always been envisaged as a temporary response to the particular serious situation that has arisen in Beirut.
    Mr. Denzil Davies: Is the Minister aware that we all agree that the British troops have done a marvellous job in the impossible, dangerous situation in which the Government have irresponsibly put them? Is it not a fact that the British troops went in on the coat tails of President Reagan and the Government are now totally out of control of the situation? The troops will come out if President Reagan wants them to come out, and they will stay there if he does not. Why can we not show some independence in British foreign policy?
    Mr. Stanley: The right hon. Gentleman appears to have forgotten that when the British component first went into Beirut it did so with the support of the Opposition. He can be certain that the Government continue to take an independent view of the problem. Our view is that it is in the interests of stability in Beirut that the four component members of the MNF act together and that we should stay in Beirut.

    Royal Ordnance Factory, Alsager
    Mrs. Dunwoodyasked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he has any plans for the sale of Alsager royal ordnance factory.
    The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. Geoffrey Pattie): We have at present no plans for the sale of ROF Radway Green, Alsager. As I said in the House yesterday, we shall be considering carefully the best means of privatising the royal ordnance factories either as a group or in parts.
    Mrs. Dunwoody: As that particular ordnance factory has contributed more than £194 million in sales for the taxpayer in the past 10 years. will the Minister tell the House what safeguards are to be built in to ensure that if the factory is sold he will know who holds the shares, as it is painfully obvious that no safeguards are envisaged by the Government and that any foreign national whatever could hold controlling shares through a second or third company?
    Mr. Pattie: The safeguards will be the same as those adopted for other forms of privatisation carried out by the Government and will no doubt be enshrined in the articles of association of the new company.

    Experimental Aircraft Project
    Mr. Robert Atkinsasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement about the current status of the experimental aircraft project.
    Mr. Pattie: I refer my hon. Friend to the answer that I gave him on 1 November 1983.
    Mr. Atkins: Is my hon. Friend aware of the continued and increasing concern of my constituents working in the British aerospace industry and of others throughout the country about this project? In view of the imminent decline in Tornado production, will he say something about the agreements made by the air staffs on the future European fighter aircraft and about the industrial cooperation that must follow if the project is to go ahead? Will he also give us some idea of the time scale?
    Mr. Pattie: I am sure that the House will welcome the outline joint staff target signed on 16 December by the chiefs of air staff of the five participating countries. The importance of this is that it represents further progress than has ever been achieved before, in the sense that all the air forces have now agreed a common requirement. It is now time for all the industries concerned to play their part. I do not suggest that the process will be easy, but we believe that there are great advantages in a joint programme and we are working hard to that end.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that in any aircraft purchasing the important thing is to ensure that the aircraft purchased is the most suitable to do the job for the Royal Air Force? Does he further agree that in considering this project it is important to ensure that the requirements of the RAF are not subjected to or negated by other requirements?
    Mr. Pattie: I agree with my hon. Friend, but I remind him that one of the five signatories was the chief of air staff of the Royal Air Force, who recognised that the future requirements of the RAF were catered for in the outline staff target.

    Cruise Missiles
    Dr. Marekasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he has had any representations from other Governments about the targeting of cruise missiles to be deployed in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Heseltine: Her Majesty's Government have discussed NATO's twin track decision on INF deployment and arms control with a wide range of foreign Governments. I do not, however, propose to disclose the contents of the discussions.
    Dr. Marek: Will the Secretary of State give an assurance that none of the cruise missiles deployed in this country will be targeted on inhabited areas such as the Ruhr which are within the perimeters of our NATO allies? Will he reconsider his policy of not commenting on the targeting of missiles? If, after reconsidering the policy, he still declines to comment, will he urge the controlling power to consider the matter and to make a statement on it?
    Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman has already raised this with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I cannot and would not wish to add to her reply. He will be fully aware, however, that the purpose of NATO is that of a defensive alliance. Targeting policy is therefore bound to be designed with that object in mind.
    Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: Is my right hon. Friend satisfied with Ministry of Defence arrangements for informing the Soviet Union of the nuclear-free zones in the United Kingdom so that that country's targeting can be kept continually up to date?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. I must be frank and admit that he has spotted a lacuna in our organisation which I shall immediately seek to rectify.
    Mr. Boyes: I would not be as sure as the hon. Member for Bexleyheath (Mr. Townsend).
    Is the Secretary of State aware—and if so has he discussed this with his NATO allies — that an announcement by the joint cruise missile project office stated that on 19 November this year a cruise missile identical to those that have been installed in Britain failed on a test trial after a very short journey and that only 84 out of 130 missiles had been successful? I am certain that our NATO allies are not so confident about the safety of the cruise missiles that we have in Britain.
    Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that there is a nuclear safety committee which advises the Government and which has satisfied itself about the safety of these weapon systems. He will also be aware that it is the same procedure as that which existed under the previous Labour Government.
    Mr. Rathbone: Can my right hon. Friend give us some idea not so much about the targeting of cruise as about the briefing that he may have given to his right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary prior to the talks in Stockholm, with regard to cruise particularly?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am very grateful to my hon. Friend, who I know has taken a great deal of interest in these matters. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary and myself, as members of the Government, have a very clear joint objective for the Stockholm talks,
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    and that is to persuade the Soviet Union to take them seriously and seek meaningful arrangements, which are readily available from the Western Alliance.
    Mr. Denzil Davies: The Secretary of State may be reluctant to talk about targeting, but is it not clear from literature published in the United States and in Europe that the cruise missile is targeted on military targets which would be considered significant if a war were to break out in Europe? Is it not a fact that, rather than be obsessed with cruise missiles, he should try to move—[Interruption.] The right hon. Gentleman is as obsessed with cruise missiles as other people are. That is one of our condemnations of his defence policy. Should he not move away from his obsession and realise that cruise missiles, like battlefield nuclear weapons, are a product of NATO's out-of-date concept of fighting a limited nuclear war? If we could move NATO away from the first use of nuclear weapons, is it not the case that cruise weapons, like battlefield nuclear weapons, would not be necessary?
    Mr. Heseltine: I think that on reflection the right hon. Gentleman might feel that the obsession is his. The trouble With his obsession is that he talks only about the NATO cruise deployment. He seems to be completely oblivious to the fact that over the last decade the Soviet Union has developed a range of cruise missiles capable of being launched from ground, sea or air. He never seems to have any complaints about that.
    Mr. Ron Daviesasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he is satisfied with the present arrangements for the dispersal of cruise missiles from Greenham common for training purposes.
    Mr. Heseltine: As I have already made clear, the arrangements will be adequate to enable the personnel to train fully for their operational role. I am not prepared to discuss details.
    Mr. Davies: Will the Secretary of State confirm that to enable cruise missiles to be maintained at a state of operational readiness they will have to be dispersed throughout the countryside? Will he say whether, in the event of peaceful demonstrations which will undoubtedly accompany the dispersal of those missiles, the security of those missiles and the policing of those demonstrations will be the responsibility of unarmed British policemen or of armed American service men?
    Mr. Heseltine: On the first question that the hon. Gentleman puts to me about the need to deploy off base, the weapons systems could be fired from within the base, but, as the last White Paper made clear, the system is designed to be widely deployed off base.
    Mr. Boyes: That is why the right hon. Gentleman has no control over them.
    Mr. Heseltine: If training exercises take place, the position is that they will not be training exercises using live weapons systems. I imagine that the proper answer to the hon. Gentleman in that context is that there will not be a need for the guards accompanying those deployments to be armed with live weapons.

    Greenham Common
    Mr. Andrew MacKayasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on security at the Greenham common base.
    Mr. Stanley: Security at the base is under constant review. A number of further security measures have been implemented in recent months and others are under consideration.
    Mr. MacKay: Does my hon. Friend agree that we should keep in perspective the security threat posed by the so-called peace women? We should not over-react by spending too high a percentage of the defence budget on guarding the Greenham common base and playing straight into the hands of CND and its supporters, who would like the money spent on defence to be spent elsewhere.
    Mr. Stanley: I agree with my hon. Friend. Clearly, a balance must be struck between the security needs of the base and, as he rightly points out, not creating an unnecessary and unjustified diversion of both finance and manpower into protecting the outer perimeter fence.
    Mr. Flannery: Is it not a fact that the women who have got into Greenham common have proved that there is no real security there, and is the hon. Gentleman aware that his hon. Friend who represents the area, the hon. Member for Newbury (Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson), has actually said that? Is it not also a fact that to get in — one wonders whether this is how the missiles will be got out—Members of Parliament and delegations will have to go over the women's heads in helicopters? Is that the sort of security the exists at that base, not to mention the obscenities perpetrated by American troops against the women outside the base—[Interruption.]—which some of us have witnessed, including concrete blocks being thrown at the women by American troops. [HON. MEMBERS: "Rubbish."] We have seen that happen.
    Mr. Stanley: I assure the hon. Gentleman and the House that the Greenham women have not proved that there is no security at the base. There has been no penetration of the highest security areas.
    Dr. Mawhinney: I acknowledge the need for a balance, but does my hon. Friend accept that the repeated illegal excursions of these women on to the base is a matter of growing national concern? Does he further accept that it is equally a matter of concern that appropriately severe measures do not appear to be taken against those who break the law in this fashion?
    Mr. Stanley: I agree with my hon. Friend that the penetration even of the outer perimeter fence must be a matter of concern. That is why, as I said in my main answer, we have taken a number of measures to improve security, and further measures are under consideration. The question of sanctions is a matter for the Home Secretary.
    Mr. Denzil Davies: In regard to breaking the law and sanctions in this case, is it not a fact that two different laws apply to the security forces at Greenham common? If a British soldier breaks the law, he is subject to the common law of Great Britain. If an American soldier breaks the law, he is subject only to American military law. If the Government desire acceptance of their cruise missiles programme, why do they not make sure that American soldiers are also subject to British law?
    Mr. Stanley: The view which the right hon. Gentleman has expressed is completely incorrect. The Visiting Forces Act is on the statute book on the same basis as it has been for successive Governments. I urge him to
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    read in detail the excellent speech by the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department when answering one of the Christmas Adjournment debates, in which he set out the legal position extremely fully and succinctly.

    Warsaw Pact (Meetings)
    Mr. Adleyasked the Secretary of State for Defence when he next expects to meet any of his Warsaw pact counterparts; and what matters he expects to discuss.
    Mr. Pattie: Neither I nor any of my ministerial colleagues in the Ministry of Defence have any current plans to do so.
    Mr. Adley: In the eventuality that meetings at Stockholm may take place between representatives of NATO Governments and Warsaw pact Governments, will my hon. Friend and his colleagues make it abundantly clear to those members of the Warsaw pact that appeasement and pacifism are alien doctrines, certainly to the 13 million people who voted Conservative at the last general election and, presumably, to members of the Social Democratic party, and that we in this country will continue to defend the right to choose our own Government and defence policy unless and until there is at least some evidence that the Soviet Union is prepared to withdraw its missiles from the eastern European countries?
    Mr. Pattie: I am sure that the ruling authorities in the Soviet Union are aware of that position. The confidence-building measures that are being discussed in Stockholm today will relate to various matters, including the notification of manoeuvres and other matters on which we have taken the initiative in recent years.
    Mr. Douglas: How many observers do we have at Warsaw pact manoeuvres and how many observers does the pact have at ours?
    Mr. Pattie: Without prior notice, I could not answer that question. However, we have gone beyond what might be called the statutory requirement. We have taken the initiative to inform the Warsaw pact of manoeuvres, when it was not strictly necessary for us to do so under the agreement, and we have offered it facilities for observers. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman on the subject.
    Mr. Wilkinson: Could my hon. Friend suggest to the Secretary of State that, at the next NATO ministerial meeting, he should discuss seriously with his NATO counterparts a response to the suggestions of First Secretary Andropov about reductions in chemical weapons by the Warsaw pact?
    Mr. Pattie: I am sure that my right hon. Friend has heard my hon. Friend's important suggestion, but a realistic and worthwhile response from the Soviet Union to the initiative taken by the Government late last year is still awaited.
    Mr. Fisher: When the Minister and the Secretary of State get around to meeting their Warsaw pact counterparts, will they discuss with them the 18 practical steps suggested by the former United States Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara, for reducing the risk of nuclear war?
    Mr. Pattie: The steps to which the hon. Gentleman refers will, I hope, be among the subjects considered at the discussions in Stockholm, which will begin today and will last for some time.
    Mr. Johnston: In what respect, if any, will the position of Her Majesty's Government in Stockholm differ from that of the American Administration?
    Mr. Pattie: The position of Her Majesty's Government on the confidence-building measures is the same as that of other members of the NATO Alliance, in that we wish to see an improvement in those measures, if the Soviet Union will reciprocate.

    SS20 Missiles
    Mr. Chapmanasked the Secretary of State for Defence what is his latest estimate of the number of SS20 missiles targeted on western Europe.
    Mr. Stanley: There are currently 243 SS20 missiles targeted on western Europe, which means 729 SS20 warheads.
    Mr. Chapman: Is it not the case that if, at any time over the past four years, Russia had agreed to dismantle its SS20s, cruise need not have been deployed? Far from doing so, the Russians tripled the number targeted on western Europe. Is it not still Government policy, nevertheless, that we would withdraw cruise if the Russians agreed to dismantle all of their SS20s?
    Mr. Stanley: I can confirm that NATO's clear policy is to withdraw both its cruise and Pershing II missiles if the Soviet Union removes its SS20s, and its SS4s and SS5s.
    Mr. Kirkwood: While I recognise that there has been an increase in the number of SS20s, may I ask the Minister to turn his attention to newspaper reports last week to the effect that the United States is at present turning out eight nuclear warheads each day? What will that do for the confidence-building measures in Stockholm?
    Mr. Stanley: The hon. Gentleman must consider the historical perspective. It was the Soviet Union which took the initiative in producing a new type of longer-range intermediate ballistic missile. It began to deploy them in 1977 and the numbers have increased remorselessly ever since. When NATO took its dual track decision in 1979, there were 81 missiles facing west. By November 1981 there were 171, and there are now 243. The escalation has been wholly on the Soviet side.
    Mr. Cormack: How many so-called peace camps are there outside the SS20 bases?
    Mr. Stanley: As my hon. Friend knows, the answer is zero. That is symptomatic of the profound differences between our two societies.

    MINIS
    Mr. Eggarasked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the introduction of the Management Information System for Ministers into his Department.
    Mr. Heseltine: The Management Information System for Ministers—MINIS—is now firmly established in the
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    Ministry for Defence and is the focus for work aimed at improving the management of resources and increasing efficiency. In the initial MINIS round, some quarter of a million service men and civilians and the resources they manage have been encompassed by the system. The information has provided the basis for Ministers and senior officials to review organisational structures in the Department and the responsibilities and objectives of managers in different areas. MINIS has already led to management improvements, particularly through clarification of responsibilities, and has identified a range of areas for work directed towards improving efficiency and reducing the costs of defence overheads. This will be a continuing process.
    Mr. Eggar: Can my right hon. Friend yet say what savings he expects as a direct result of the introduction of MINIS?
    Mr. Heseltine: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's continuing interest in this matter. However, I cannot answer that question because substantial economies have been pursued and achieved in the Ministry of Defence over a number of years and the recent initiatives are a continuation of that process.
    Mr. Skinner: If the Secretary of State is so anxious to cut the cost of information services, and is so worried about the public relations image of the Ministry of Defence, why is it that when a young girl in his Department decides to take part in a bit of information servicing and sends some news to the newspapers, at no cost to the Ministry of Defence, he takes her to court?
    Mr. Heseltine: I did not.

    Cruise Missiles
    Mr. Cartwrightasked the Secretary of State for Defence when he anticipates further deployment of cruise missiles at Greenham common.
    Mr. Heseltine: NATO deployments of cruise and Pershing II missiles are due to be completed over a five-year period. The programme for the deployment of 96 ground-launched cruise missiles at Greenham common will be completed well within that period, but I am not prepared to discuss specific details of further deliveries. As we have made clear, NATO's plans can be halted, modified or revised if results in negotiations in Geneva warrant it.
    Mr. Cartwright: Now that NATO has demonstrated its resolve by making the initial deployment of cruise and Pershings, will Her Majesty's Government press strongly for a limited, deliberate suspension of further deployments to encourage the Soviets to return to meaningful negotiations in Geneva?
    Mr. Heseltine: No, we would not be prepared to do that. What we would do, which I think achieves the purpose that the hon. Gentleman has in mind, would be to make it clear to the Soviet Union that any weapon systems that have been already deployed can be removed if the Soviet Union will reach meaningful arms control arrangements with us.
    Mr. Nicholls: If my right hon. Friend accepts that what we have heard from the Labour Benches today shows, as always, how unfitted they are to be entrusted with the

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    defence of the realm, what does he make of the fact that, while the alliance still has pretensions of grandeur about Government, during the past 48 hours we have seen that the position of the SDP on Polaris and the deployment of cruise is at variance with that of its Liberal partners? Does he think that that will appeal to the electorate and show that the alliance is fitted for office?
    Mr. Heseltine: I suppose that if one has two policies, they could, arguably, be better than one, if the one is no good.
    Mr. Hal Millerasked the Secretary of State for Defence if the initial programme of installation of cruise missiles in the United Kingdom has now been completed.
    Mr. Heseltine: The first ground-launched cruise missiles at RAF Greenham common became operational at the end of 1983, in accordance with NATO's December 1979 decision.
    Mr. Miller: While congratulating my right hon. Friend on the successful completion of that much-needed initial programme, may I ask what is happening on the ground now in the Soviet Union since the breakdown of the talks? Has there been any further deployment of SS20s in eastern Europe?
    Mr. Heseltine: All the indications and information available to us show that the Soviet Union is continuing with the arms build-up in all categories of weapons systems, including the SS20s, which has characterised its recent defence policy.
    Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: As cruise missiles are increasingly deployed, will there not be an increased risk of confrontation between American military personnel and British civilians? In such circumstances, will not those American personnel come under the purview and discipline of the American military? All the evidence of recent years shows that the penalties imposed in such circumstances by the American military authorities are derisory. Will the Secretary of State review the operation of the Visiting Forces Act in the light of the new ball game?
    Mr. Heseltine: The hon. Gentleman raises a serious question. We have considered the Visiting Forces Act to see whether the satisfaction expressed in it by the previous Labour Government justifies our continued confidence. In the main, it certainly does. I would accept the significance of the hon. Gentleman's point of view to this extent—the Government have a clear mandate for the deployment of the cruise weapon system. It is necessary for us to take the appropriate steps to carry out that mandate. There is no way in which we shall seek, or encourage, the frustration of that mandate by people who were unable to prevent the Government's election.
    Mr. Denzil Davies: Will the Secretary of State clarify the confusion created by his Minister of State and confirm that if an American soldier engaged in security duties at Greenham common commits a prima facie criminal act he is subject in the first place not to English law but American military law? Will he confirm that that is the position?
    Mr. Heseltine: My hon. Friend answered the question perfectly accurately. Visiting forces are governed in this country by the Visiting Forces Act 1952. In one way or the other, anyone found guilty of a crime is covered by the law of the land, with the option of the process of law being
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    pursued either in the country itself or in the home country of the forces themselves. That position was set out clearly in the recent debate to which my hon. Friend drew attention, and that is the position which was found be perfectly satisfactory by the previous Labour Government.
    Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: No.
    Later—
    Mr. Boyes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I am not convinced that the Secretary of State for Defence gave the House a correct interpretation of the Visiting Forces Act 1952. Might I ask the Home Secretary to read carefully what the Secretary of State for Defence said, and if what he said is not correct to publish a correction in the Official Report?
    Mr. Speaker: What the hon. Gentleman has said will have been heard.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Adleyasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 17 January.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Adley: While I welcome the progress of the negotiations about the future of Hong Kong and the recent statements from the Chinese Government, may I ask my right hon. Friend whether she agrees that once an agreement has been reached between Her Majesty's Government and the Chinese Government the people of Hong Kong would have to accept responsibility if they were to seek in any way to reject the agreement reached between the two Governments?
    The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend knows, our aim is to agree with China, through negotiations, and to reach an arrangement which will maintain the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong in a way acceptable to the people of Hong Kong, to this Parliament and to the people of China. Yesterday I saw the Governor of Hong Kong together with all the unofficial members of EXCO, and repeated our commitment to Hong Kong.
    Dr. Owen: As the Prime Minister justifies her decision to go ahead with the rate-capping Bill, which has been criticised extensively, on the basis that she pledged to do so to the electorate, how does she square that with a similar pledge that she gave to the electorate to abolish rates in October 1974, which she gave again to the electorate in 1979, and with her statement in the House in July 1983 that she would maintain rates?
    The Prime Minister: I seem to remember that the Labour party, of which the right hon. Gentleman was a member, won the 1974 election, and that the Liberal party eventually kept the Labour Government in power for a longer period than it would otherwise have held office
    Sir Paul Bryan: Now that 1983 is behind us, would this be a good time for the Prime Minister to remind the country that during the election the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer forecast a double figure inflation rate by the end of the year should the Tories win?
    The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The success of the Government in getting down inflation and in holding it down is quite outstanding. When we returned to power, a 5 per cent. rate of inflation was thought almost impossible. We now regard 5 per cent. as high and we must get it down further.
    Mr. Winnick: Will the right hon. Lady inform the House of the going rate that a company must donate to the Tory party so that its chairman stands a reasonably good chance of receiving a knighthood? Is it a coincidence that, since 1979, 60 per cent. of the industrialists who have received knighthoods have been associated with companies which have donated to her party?
    The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman knows, any recommendations that I make go to the Political Honours Scrutiny Committee, whose powers I have strengthened.
    Mr. Greenwayasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 17 January.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Greenway: Is my right hon. Friend aware that no Labour or Lib/Lab Government ever guaranteed pensioners travel passes in London, and that the Greater London council is currently raising pensioners' rates by millions of pounds to fund its spurious campaign to save their travel passes after its abolition? Will my right hon. Friend underwrite the promises of Conservative London boroughs to continue pensioners' travel passes?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is right. It has been the policy of successive Governments that local authorities are in the best position to judge the needs in this respect—[Interruption.]—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. This sort of interruption takes time out of Question Time.
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is correct in saying that the GLC has been running a scurrilous campaign and frightening many elderly people by causing them to think that their passes will not continue. The London Boroughs Association has recommended that the London boroughs take over the responsibility for this. The Government stand ready to discuss with the London boroughs any financial effect upon them—including any equalisation effect—of this or any other service that is similarly transferred.
    Mr. Barron: Will the Prime Minister make a statement to the House about her involvement in the contract that was negotiated between Oman and Cementation International Ltd. and the involvement of members of her family?
    Hon. Members: Cheap.
    The Prime Minister: I am answerable in the House for my actions as Prime Minister and I do so answer. As part of my public duty, I make strenuous efforts to secure contracts for this country. I do not decide upon those contracts. The decisions are made by the Governments who award those contracts. I do not distinguish between companies in Britain. My job is to ensure that we get the contracts and the business here. As a result of the middle east tour, hundreds of millions of pounds worth of contracts came to this country.
    Sir Michael Shaw: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, had she taken the opposite course and not sought to assist the British company to gain an important contract with the middle east, she would have heard criticism from the Opposition and from the whole of the country, and such criticism would have been justified and genuine?
    The Prime Minister: I speak up for Britain and I am pleased that I do so successfully. I am pleased that, as a result, much business comes here.
    Mr. Hume: Will the Prime Minister explain to the House why she chose to visit the Drummadd barracks of the Ulster Defence Regiment when she visited Northern Ireland before Christmas? Is she aware of the deep feelings of outrage within the Catholic community that arose from that visit? Does she agree that she could have visited any barracks anywhere in Northern Ireland. and that in choosing to visit the Drummadd barracks in the same week in which eight members of the regiment were charged with sectarian murders of Catholics in Northern Ireland she thereby gave an unfortunate Christmas present to the forces of violence in Northern Ireland?
    The Prime Minister: I visited the barracks, which are the headquarters of the resident unit of the Grenadier Guards. I am entitled to do that. There were some members of the Ulster Defence Regiment there. The UDR does a superlative job. I visited it because it was the headquarters of the Grenadier Guards. I hope that no one is criticising me for that. May I make it quite clear that I am the first to condemn violence or terrorism anywhere, and especially in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Simon Hughesasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 17 January.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Hughes: Will the Prime Minister announce a new year resolution to the House today, giving her commitment not only to support the campaign for freedom of information in 1984 but to allow local authorities the freedom which she has always proclaimed is the right of everybody in the land?
    The Prime Minister: No, Sir. With regard to local authorities the House has, I believe, the overriding right to have taxation within its decision. Everyone has a vote for a Member of the House; not everyone has a vote for local authorities. Many who have to contribute to the rates of local authorities do not have a vote. It is fully in keeping with democracy and with the Chancellor of the Exchequer's duty of controlling public expenditure that we should have the right here to cap rates.
    Mr. Kinnock: On the subject of information and, indeed, taxation, yesterday the Treasury published figures showing that £2·2 billion more will be taken out of wage packets this year than in 1979, despite the fact that there are 2 million fewer wage packets. How much of the higher stoppages by the Government, who are committed to reducing taxation, was due to the need to pay for much higher unemployment?
    The Prime Minister: The total cost of unemployment is of the order of £5 billion. I have given the figure many times to the right hon. Gentleman. Unemployment under the national insurance scheme costs something like £1·6

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    billion and the rest is for social security. That is the amount that is paid out. Although there is an increasing amount of tax coming in, may I point out that that is more than accounted for by the increase in average earnings, because on the whole the standard of living of those who have been in work has gone up, after they have paid tax.
    Mr. Kinnock: Is the Prime Minister aware that her figure of £5 billion is utterly implausible, even on the basis of straightforward multiplication? It would not be enough even to pay the benefits that have to go to the extra unemployed who have been created by the Government. Can she explain in real terms why, under her Government, £7 billion more is being paid in expenditure taxes and over £3 billion more in national insurance? How can she conclude, as she did on Sunday, that somehow this is not taxation.
    The Prime Minister: The one main reason why a great deal more is being paid both in income tax and expenditure taxes is that wages, earnings and the standard of living have gone up under this Government.
    Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the total burden of national insurance surcharge and corporation tax on businesses is less than the amount paid in rates by commerce? Is she aware that this is why business and industry want the legislation that we will be considering today? Can she assure them that the legislation will go through both Houses with the utmost dispatch?
    The Prime Minister: I share my hon. Friend's view. The heaviest tax paid by all those in business and commerce is what they pay in rates, which is in the order of £6 billion. They pay that tax regardless of whether or not they make any profits. Of course, that comes off the tax that they pay to Her Majesty's Government. They and the overwhelming majority of the people want legislation to restrain the increase in rates.
    Mr. Cartwrightasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 17 January.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Cartwright: Does the Prime Minister recall advising the Conservative party conference in 1965 against removing the power of local councils to levy rates on the grounds that that would undermine the entire basis of local government? Is that not just what the Rates Bill will do?
    The Prime Minister: The Bill leaves enormous powers to levy rates. If some authorities had not overspent so much, last year's rate burden would have almost stood still. No, authorities still have considerable powers to levy rates but they do not have unlimited power to do so.
    Mr. Yeo: Does my right hon. Friend agree that as a substantial part of the rates are paid by businesses, which have no vote—
    Mr. Boyes: Rubbish.
    Mr. Yeo: —the argument that the rate-capping Bill is a threat to local democracy amounts to no more than a pool of crocodile tears which have been shed by people whose real attitude to democracy can be seen by their resistance to the Trade Union Bill?
    The Prime Minister: Yes. Some 60 per cent. of rates are paid by business and commerce. The overwhelming majority of rates are paid by people who do not necessarily have a vote in the election of the authority that imposes those rates.
    Mr. Ryman: Is the Prime Minister aware of the failure of an important building society in London a few days ago? Is she further aware that thousands of investors have been jeopardised in that they have been unable to withdraw their savings? Will she introduce legislation to reform building societies to afford real and effective protection for investors?
    The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the building society in question has been taken over by the Woolwich. I believe that all investors will be paid. The takeover was arranged extremely well and has protected the interests of investors in what was the New Cross building society.

Theft from Shops
3.31 pm
Mr. Greville Janner: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require that all prosecutions for shop theft shall be brought by the police; and for related purposes.
The Bill has two purposes. The first is to end the tragic, inefficient and awful system under which in Greater London and a few other areas the police will not take prosecutions for what they choose to call petty theft. That leaves private people, especially those who run shops, to decide whether or not to prosecute, and to bring prosecutions when they have neither the resources nor the ability to make such decisions in the interests of justice or in a way that is fair to the people involved.
The Bill's second purpose is to ensure that once the power provided by the Bill is used by the police, and only by the police, they shall take steps which are already in operation in several forces, including Leicestershire and Essex. They should seek to ensure that elderly and, especially, ill people and sometimes young people—and those who have not previously committed offences—are not prosecuted when a caution or hospital treatment is society's best response to the commission of an offence which, notably when committed by elderly women, is often a minor form of suicide. Indeed, such cases often lead to suicide.
People in Leicestershire suffered the tragic death of Lady Isabel Barnett. She was a friend of many right hon. and hon. Members. Her case should never have been brought to trial. Instead, she should have received hospital treatment. I am pleased that, since then, the Leicestershire police force has changed its system and now uses its resources properly in an attempt to ensure that people such as her are not prosecuted. I have a list of some 33 people who have recently committed suicide as a result of shoplifting prosecutions. Their names were given to me by Mr. Ken Norman, the organiser of the Portia Trust. I pay tribute to him, to Regina Dollar of Crisis Counselling for Alleged Shoplifters, and to the Samaritans for their work.
We are attempting to take the burden of prosecution away from the shops, which are not in a position to bear it. I am pleased to say that, with reservations, those who represent the retailers, the shops and their associations, support at least part of the Bill. They do not want the burden of prosecution.
I have received a host of replies to my questions from retailers, who say that they wish that the police would take it over. The British Retailers' Association, which represents multiple retailers and department stores, says that the police should take the burden of prosecution for theft and shoplifting. Woolworth's, Sainsbury's, and the Association for the Prevention of Theft in Shops all declare that prosecutions for theft should be instituted by the police, not by shopkeepers.
All those groups and companies have expressed one reservation. They say, with amazing unanimity, that the police have the duty and resources to decide whether to prosecute. If the police decide not to do so, and if the private citizen says that the police have got it wrong, they claim that they should retain the right themselves to prosecute. They would like to hold their stock and to retail it. It is not possible for the burden to be imposed on the police, as it should be, and then for shopkeepers to retain
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for themselves a residual right of prosecution. The Bill's sponsors, who are in an all-party group, believe that it is the duty of the police to decide whether to prosecute and that they should exercise it properly.
I am pleased to inform the House that the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis has written to me:
"in principle we are prepared to accept responsibility for all prosecutions of shoplifters".
He adds, quite understandably:
"there are severe resource and other financial implications arising from this policy."
Indeed there are. It is right that the police should be equipped to carry out such duties properly, but surely it is better for the public that the police should have the resources to do the job properly than to have people wrongly brought before the courts. Legal proceedings involve massive expense.
The present system is unjust to traders, and it does not bring people to trial any more frequently than the other system—when they should be brought to trial. It causes tragedy for some of the guilty—and it is not in the interests of justice, especially for those accused who are elderly and infirm. It creates pain, hardship and suffering to innocent people caught up in the extraordinarily difficult world of the self-service store. In a moment of forgetfulness, their lives may be ruined. People are stopped by store detectives, whose spokesmen have said over and again that it is for the courts to decide whether or not an accused is guilty. It is not a matter for the courts to decide at that stage. The question is: should the case go to court?
The accused may have to wait for more than a year before the case comes to court, particularly if he elects for trial by jury. Although awaiting the perils of trial is an occupational hazard for professional criminals, for whom none of us has any brief, awaiting trial is a misery for honest people. They may be found innocent, but only after having faced and endured the trials of coming to trial. Even an acquittal has its miseries. Thousands of them suffer mental hardship and breakdowns, long before their cases are heard. Happily, only a minority of people—a tragic and wretched one none the less—decide that they wish to live no longer as a result of their experience.
This is a modest Bill. It would set aright a peculiarly unhappy and characteristic misery of the modern world of shopping. It has a certain degree of support from shops and traders who, rightly or wrongly, bear the blame, as Woolworth did recently. It has the support of the police, provided that they have the resources, who wish to do well by the community and who recognise that that is part of their job.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Greville Janner, Mr. David Alton, Mr. Tony Blair, Miss Betty Boothroyd, Sir Bernard Braine, Mr. Tom Cox, Mr. David Knox, Mr. Michael Latham, Mr. Roy Mason, Mr. David Mudd and Mr. Alec Woodall.

Theft from Shops
  THEFT FROM SHOPS
  Mr. Greville Janner accordingly presented a Bill to require that all prosecutions for shop theft shall be brought by the police; and for related purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 23 March and to be printed. [Bill 83.]
Orders of the Day

  Rates Bill
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Mr. Speaker: Before we proceed with the Bill, I should like to say that I have received more than 76 applications from hon. Members to speak in the debate. As the defender of the interests of Back Benchers, I make a special appeal for very short contributions from Privy Councillors, even from the Front Benches, and from Back Benchers too.
  3.42 pm
  The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Patrick Jenkin): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  The Government were elected in 1979 on a policy to restore the ability of this country to earn its living and to sustain and improve the standard of living and the quality of our public services. At the heart of that policy has been the need to curb the demands made both on individuals and on businesses by the public sector by reducing the burden of public spending and taxation. As a consequence of the measures taken so far, which were endorsed in the general election in June, inflation has come down and is set to fall still further, competitiveness is now improving, business confidence is now reviving, we are climbing out of the recession ahead of many of our competitors, and although much remains to be done the prospects for the British economy look better than they have looked for many years. If we are to achieve our goals, we must continue to urge restraint in public spending and work to reduce the taxes that people and businesses have to pay.
  The Bill is about local public spending and local taxation. Although some have sought to deny it—I think that the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) did so—successive Governments have always regarded local government expenditure as part of public spending. Rates are certainly part of taxation. I do not need to remind the House of how my Labour predecessors, in the years up to 1979, called on local authorities again and again to make substantial cuts in spending in order to strengthen the economy and defeat inflation. In 1976 the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) demanded of local authorities a 7 per cent. volume cut over four years, chiefly from capital spending. A year earlier the late Tony Crosland warned local government, speaking in the town hall in Manchester, "The party's over."
  In the past local government has, by and large, responded. The local authority associations, then and now, accept without question that it is the responsibility of the Government, accountable as they are to the House, to set the total of public spending and that it is the responsibility of local government to abide broadly by the guideliness that have been set.
  When the Conservative Government came into office in 1979 the volume of local authority current spending was set to rise by about 6 per cent. over the four years to 1982–83. Clearly that was inconsistent with the Government's policy objectives. Accordingly, in the 1980 rate support grant settlement, my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) called on local
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  authorities as a whole to cut the volume of their current spending in 1981–82 to a level around 5½ per cent. below the outturn for 1978–79.
  What happened then is a matter of history. Instead of reducing current spending, local authorities as a whole increased it and this year, 1983–84, local authority budgets are running 4 per cent. above the 1978–79 spending in volume terms. In cost terms, taking account of general inflation, the increase is 9 per cent. That is the measure of the increasing burden local authorities are putting on the rest of the economy. In cash terms, spending is now £2½ billion higher than had been intended, equivalent to some £140 for each and every household in the country.
  As we all know, however, that pattern is not even across the country. A few local authorities — and the Government are very grateful to them—have succeeded in reducing their spending. A much larger number have managed to hold their spending pretty well level in volume terms. But a minority have allowed their spending to rise very sharply indeed. The result has been that year after year, after figures for current local authority spending have been approved by the House in the public expenditure debate, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has had to add back hundreds of millions of pounds to reflect the overspending; and year after year, in spite of thus raising the base line, local authorities as a whole have continued to overspend still further. In this year,1983–84, local authorities have budgeted to exceed their targets by no less than £750 million.
  The crucial fact is that 75 per cent. of this overspend can be laid at the door of just 16 conspicuously extravagant councils.
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours rose—
  Mr. Jenkin: Perhaps I can get further on and then I will certainly give way.
  I should like to give the House a few figures because they tell the story very clearly. Since 1978–79 the average increase in councils' current spending in cash terms has been 86 per cent. But what is one to say about Islington or Greater Manchester, where the spending has gone up 105 per cent. in the same period?
  Mr. Reg Freeson: What about grants?
  Mr. Jenkin: This is spending. This has nothing to do with grants. I should have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would have understood the difference. I am sorry, the right hon. Gentleman's question was not clear.
  What is one to think of Greenwich, where it has gone up 114 per cent., or Leicester or Camden?
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Jenkin: Let me get a little further on because it is important that the House should hear the case. What is one to think of Hackney, whose expenditure has increased by no less than 154 per cent.? And of course top of the league, unrivalled for profligacy, is the GLC, whose spending has gone up no less than 185 per cent. Central Government have had to pay the cost of that.
  There is another way to measure overspending and that is to compare it with grant-related expenditure, the assessment of the amount needed to provide a standard level of service. Any authority with a reasonable expenditure policy may be spending at or below GRE but will not be substantially above it. Yet 25 authorities this year budgeted to spend more than 25 per cent. above the

  167
  GRE level. They include Sheffield at 26 per cent. above and Newcastle—I am not surprised that hon. Members express astonishment—at 31 per cent. above.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Jenkin: Haringey budgeted at 37 per cent. above GRE, Lewisham at 51 per cent. above GRE, and of course south Yorkshire budgeted at over 76 per cent. above its GRE. The majority of councils which budget close to or, as some do, below their GRE are entitled to feel deeply indignant that this minority—
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Jenkin: Here they come, defending the high spenders.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: If the electors of those local authorities want their authorities to hire more teachers, more social workers, more lollipop women and more social service people, surely it is the entitlement and right of those authorities to provide their electors with those people. Is it not wrong for the Government to interfere and say "No"?
  Mr. Jenkin: The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. As I said before, all the local authority associations accept that it is the duty of local authorities— [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Yes, it is—as a whole to abide by the broad general guidelines in spending that are laid down by the House. That was the policy of our predecessors and it is our policy now.
  Dr. Oonagh McDonald rose—
  Mr. Jenkin: No, I shall not give way.
  Of course, with profligate spending on such a scale, it is the ratepayers who suffer. In the four years between 1979 and 1983, while the RPI rose 55 per cent. and earnings rose 65 per cent., domestic rates went up on average no less than 91 per cent. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] In 10 authorities, rates have increased by more than 145 per cent. since 1979–80. The GLC rate went up by 118 per cent. in just two years. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Freeson) was a member of my Department when the Labour Government reduced the rate support grant from 66 per cent. to 61 per cent., and of course this Government have continued the same policy, as the right hon. Gentleman knows, of seeking to increase the accountability of local authorities to their electors.
  Mr. Freeson: Whatever the bandying about between one decade and another on rate support grant levels, can the right hon. Gentleman tell us when, before the advent of this Government, there has been such a major and sharp reduction in central Government assistance to local authorities within such a short period as four to five years? Secondly, will he answer the question that was put to him in the intervention? He complains about the rate increases that he has just listed, but he does not speak about the equivalent cuts in Government assistance to the very authorities about which he complains. Let us have both sides of the story.
  Mr. Jenkin: The right hon. Gentleman is singularly unconvincing, bearing in mind that he was a member of
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  the Department of the Environment when it reduced the percentage of rate support grant from 66 per cent. to 61 per cent. [HON. MEMBERS: "Answer."] Yes, I shall answer. If local authorities had budgeted in line with the targets that were approved by the House, their rates would have gone up, on average, by less than the cost of living. I can justify those figures, and no doubt in Committee we shall be pressed on that matter.
  Let us consider the level of rates. Of course, inner London boroughs are not responsible for education, but the average borough rate in inner London is 52·5p in the pound. In Camden, it is 78p, in Islington 94p, and in Greenwich 99p. In Southwark, it is now the staggering figure of 116p. In the metropolitan districts, which are education authorities, the average district rate is 142p. In Sheffield, it is 199p, having risen no less than 29 per cent. in two years, and in Newcastle it is now 216p.
  Mr. Keith Speed: Am I correct in assuming that if the rate support grant had stayed at 60 per cent. the rates, on average, instead of going up by 95 per cent. between 1979 and 1983, would have gone up by only 62 per cent.?
  Mr. Jenkin: My hon. Friend is experienced in these matters. He will know that it is difficult to gauge what might have happened. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] It is not simple arithmetic. [Interruption.] If Labour Members will allow me, I shall answer the point, although it is not a simple question. If reducing the proportion of rate support grant, as the previous Government did, increases the accountability of local authorities to their local ratepayers, which it does, one cannot say what the spending might have been if the reduction had not been made. That is a simple fact. One can do the arithmetical calculation, and I am sure that my hon. Friend has got that right, but that does not say what would have happened if the reduction in the proportion of rate support grant had not taken place.
  I am sometimes asked whether the purpose of the Bill is primarily to cut spending or primarily to protect ratepayers. The answer is that it is both, because extravagant spending produces intolerable rate demands.
  Mr. Allan Roberts rose—
  Mr. Jenkin: Nearly 60 per cent. of rates in England are paid by non-domestic ratepayers, over—
  Mr. Dave Nellist rose—
  Mr. Jenkin: —two thirds of that share being paid by industrial and commercial firms.
  Mr. Nellist: The right hon. Gentleman is misleading the House.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not say that.
  Mr. Nellist rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman is able to catch my eye later, he will be able to make his own speech.
  Mr. Jenkin: I am not misleading the House. If the hon. Gentleman had listened, he would have heard me say "non-domestic ratepayers". Two thirds of that share is paid by industrial and commercial firms. In these high-spending, high-rating areas, industry has suffered grievously from the burden of rates. In Sheffield, the chamber of trade's survey shows that rates per employee, which in 1979–80 were £255 per employee, have risen in

  169
  1983–84 to £787. Industry knows that rates cost jobs and that rates are a larger burden than national insurance surcharge and corporation tax combined. Excessive rates have added to unemployment difficulties in some areas and are certainly one of the reasons for the exodus of small firms from the inner cities.
  I can illustrate that with one or two examples. The firm of Sykes Pumps in Charlton said:
  "One of the main reasons we decided to close our Charlton factory and move to Gloucestershire was the very high rate increases in Greenwich in recent years. This has meant the loss of about 100 to 150 jobs in Greenwich."
  Let us take the case of Cedar Transport, also in Greenwich, which said:
  "The 150 per cent. increase in rates over four years has forced us to increase our charges and we have lost many customers. Our company used to run 39 vehicles, it now runs 6. It employed 50 people and now employs 10".
  There is the plant hire company in Southwark, which said:
  "Next year's increase on top of the 220 per cent. increase over the last five years will take virtually all our profits. We would like to stay in Southwark but we will be forced out. We currently employ 50 people. Most of these jobs will be lost in Southwark".
  Every one of my hon. Friends who represent an inner city constituency will have heard that said over and over again.
  The Government have sought to increase accountability to local electors. The block grant made high spending more expensive at the margin. Local spending targets, with the holdback of grant for those who went above them, put even greater pressure on the high spenders. Supplementary rates have been banned. The Audit Commission has been set up and has started its work. Authorities must publish manpower numbers. Despite all those measures, the overspending has continued. The huge bulk of it is attributable to relatively few high-spending authorities that have made it clear that they do not regard themselves as being under any obligation to pay heed to the Government's guidelines, as endorsed each year by the House. That is the nub of the problem.
  Dr. McDonald: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Jenkin: No, I shall not.
  The question for the House is whether we do something about that problem or whether we just continue to let it rip. The Government, after deep consideration of the alternatives, concluded that we had to take action, and the Bill embodies our proposals.
  What would be the alternatives? One alternative, which many hon. Members on both sides of the House hoped might provide a solution, would lie in finding some alternative system of taxation to rates. In the 1981 Green Paper we set out the arguments for and against various forms of local government revenue—raising that might replace the rates. Each of the possible options—a sales tax, a local income tax, a poll tax or a local share of central Government revenues—was examined minutely. Each solution had its admirers, but each suffered from fatal defects. In the event, none could be proved to be a suitable replacement for rates. None could be introduced quickly. There was no evidence that any would have had any impact on local authority overspending.
  There has always been that dilemma. The more buoyant and more painless a local tax might be, the less would be the incentive for councils to economise. If councils were determined to overspend, in the way that I have been describing, the Government would face exactly the same problem, whichever system of taxation applied.
  Mr. Nellist rose—
  Mr. Jenkin: Another alternative would be to transfer a major service such as education to central Government, but surely central financing of education would inevitably lead to centralised control of education. I have never detected much enthusiasm for that solution.
  Many have called for increased accountability, and there are a number of provisions in part III of the Bill that help in that direction. Clause 13 marks an important change in the relationship between local authorities and business ratepayers. In future, there is to be a statutory duty on rating and major precepting authorities to consult representatives of industrial and commercial ratepayers on their budget and rating proposals each year. Many do so already, and where such arrangements are working well we do not seek to interfere. Regulations will specify the information that must be made available to the representatives of business, and we envisage a code of practice that will allow the duty to be implemented flexibly.
  Mr. Nellist: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
  Mr. Jenkin: No.
  Mr. Nellist: While the Minister is having a drink, will he give way?
  Mr. Jenkin: While on the subject of business rates, mention two further changes. Schedule 1 will from 1985–86 give all non-domestic ratepayers the right to pay rates by instalments—domestic ratepayers already have this facility. For next year I have made an order to raise the limits for rateable value to £10,000 in London and £5,000 elsewhere. In the following year, the option will be available to all non-domestic ratepayers. I shall make regulations exempting empty industrial properties from rates.
  The Bill includes also an important provision to increase accountability of councils to domestic ratepayers. Many domestic occupiers of council properties — we have heard this complaint over the years—do not pay their rates direct but have them included in their rents. Such occupiers will, from 1985, receive clear notice of their rating liability and a copy of the information about their council's budget which councils send out. We propose also to issue new rate demand rules for 1985–86.
  I do not pretend—I make this absolutely clear—that those measures, useful as they will be, will have more than a small impact on accountability. The real problem is that the link between local spending, local rates and voting in local elections has become very tenuous. More than half of local authority net spending is met by Exchequer grant. Of the remainder raised from rates, nearly 60 per cent. comes from non-domestic ratepayers — industrial and commercial firms, public authorities, health authorities, universities, nationalised industries and a huge range of other bodies. None of those ratepayers has votes, and together they account for nearly 60 per cent. of the half of the money raised locally. Only 22 per cent. of local expenditure is met by the domestic ratepayer.
  The difficulties do not stop there.
  Mr. Eric S. Heffer: What is the next step?
  Mr. Jenkin: Only about 35 per cent. of local electors on average are householders who pay full rates.
  Mr. John Cartwright: Change the system.
  Mr. Jenkin: That is what we are doing. In some areas, the figures are even lower. The proportion of electors who are full ratepayers in Tower Hamlets may be as small as 28 per cent.; in Sheffield it is 26 per cent.; and in Newcastle it is 24 per cent.
  Mr. Robin Squire: Many of us agree with my right hon. Friend's assessment that the present accountability is unacceptably low and should be improved. Will my right hon. Friend explain carefully how this Bill will improve the accountability of councils to their local electors?
  Mr. Jenkin: The House has a duty to step in to protect the ratepayers in those areas with inadequate accountability. Even those who pay full rates in those areas know that on average for every £5 of spending they support they need to contribute only £1. When people talk about elective dictatorships, perhaps that is what they mean. Those who call for greater accountability owe it to the House to explain what they mean. Presumably no one is proposing votes for companies. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] It would be difficult to achieve. Conversely, are people arguing for the end of rate rebates and supplementary benefits for those on low incomes?
  Mr. A. J. Beith: Is the Secretary of State implying that someone who is assessed by the state as being in need of assistance with the payment of rates is less entitled to the full value of his vote?
  Mr. Jenkin: I am not saying that.
  Mr. Heffer: Yes, you are.
  Mr. Jenkin: I am not saying that. I am arguing that, where the nexus between rates and the votes has become as slender as it has in some areas, the system does not work very well.
  Mr. Nellist: Will the Minister give way on that point?
  Mr. Jenkin: I am talking about accountability. Where lies the accountability of local councillors when those who pay most of the rates have no votes while many of those entitled to vote pay no rates? It is hardly surprising that in such areas councillors feel free to spend money like water. [Interruption.] I have said that for most of local government the system works reasonably well, although I am sure that more councils could run their services more economically and efficiently. The real problem lies in the small minority where the system has broken down.
  Mr. Guy Barnett: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Jenkin: No, I shall not.
  Alternative taxes would not solve the problem.
  Mr. Guy Barnett: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Jenkin: With respect, I shall not give way as I understand that more than 76 hon. Members wish to speak.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I said at the beginning of the debate that I was anxious to call as many Back Benchers as possible. The more interruptions there are, the more difficult that will be.
  Mr. Jenkin: Alternative taxes would not solve the problem, and if we do not contemplate giving votes to
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  companies or abolishing rate rebates, what is left? That is the question to which the House must address itself. Part I of the Bill provides the Government's answer. We have to put an upper limit on the spending and rating activities of the few authorities which have proved impervious to all other pressures. That provision will be backed up by the general reserve scheme which I shall now describe.
  Clause 1 contains the power to prescribe a maximum for the rate or precept of a selected authority. As we have frequently said, we envisage that between 12 and 20 of the highest spending authorities will be selected. Clause 2 provides for selecting authorities whose expenditure appears to the Secretary of State to be excessive having regard to general economic conditions, but the clause also sets out two very important exemptions. Councils spending less than £10 million per year and councils spending below their GRE will be exempt from part I of the Bill. Furthermore, as many local authorities now recognise, because the Government intend to confine selection to only a very few of the highest spenders the mere fact, for instance, that a council may spend a point or two above its target certainly does not mean that it will automatically be selected.
  What, then, will be the criteria? The kind of question that we shall ask is whether a council's spending is exceptionally high compared with that of similar authorities and how its spending compares with its GRE. Under the selective scheme we are going for only between 12 and 20 councils, so obviously we shall be looking only at councils which are spending very substantially in excess of their GRE. The great majority of councils thus have nothing whatever to fear from the selective scheme.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: Will the Minister give way.
  Mr. Jenkin: No.
  There is, however, a second criterion that we shall have in mind. There would be no purpose in applying part I of the Bill to any council which was showing itself ready to cut its expenditure satisfactorily without the need for selection. Here we shall look at the council's performance against its spending targets. If there are councils which, although historically high spenders, are making significant efforts to economise, we should, of course, wish to take full account of that. The 1984–85 budgets which will be settled in the next few weeks will provide the initial basis for rate limitation, so it is not too late even now for some of those high-spending councils to decide to take action.
  One further point should be made. We are, of course, well aware of the devices for manipulating accounts to an authority's advantage—the so-called "creative accounting." In determining which councils to select for rate limitation we shall look at genuine spending levels and genuine spending reductions.
  Mr. Nellist: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Hal Miller: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Jenkin: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Mr. Miller).
  Mr. Nellist: What about the Opposition?
  Mr. Miller: On the important subject of the exemption from rate-capping of authorities whose expenditure does not exceed GRE, will my right hon. Friend deal with the position of authorities whose targets are set below their GRE but which are subject to penalty in other respects?
  Mr. Jenkin: I entirely understand my hon. Friend's point.
  Mr. Guy Barnett: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Jenkin: No, I am answering my hon. Friend's point. I fully understand the point and shall refer to it, if I may so put it, obliquely later in my speech.
  Mr. Martin Flannery: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: Before taking the point of order, I appeal once again to the House to let the Secretary of State finish his speech. That will enable more Back Benchers to be called. Interruptions take up a great deal of time.
  Mr. Flannery: My point of order is this, Mr. Speaker. The Minister seems to reserve special venom for Sheffield, which he has mentioned no fewer than five times. Would it not be reasonable for him to give way to the Opposition just once on this as he is prepared to give way whenever a Conservative Member seeks to intervene?
  Mr. Speaker: The Minister gives way to whomever he wishes, but I hope that he will not give way too often as it takes time from the debate.
  Mr. Jenkin: I have given way to more Opposition Members than Conservative Members. Perhaps I may now continue my description of the system under part I of the Bill.
  Having selected the authority, we shall then fix the level of spending under clause 3. If an authority feels that it has special problems in cutting spending, it can ask for that level to be raised. If the level can be agreed, well and good—under clause 4 the appropriate maximum rate would follow. If no agreement is reached, however, it will be for the Government to put their proposals for rate limits to the House and for the House to give its approval before the limit takes effect. Once a rate limit is set, the authority cannot go above it. It will be a legal maximum and if the authority tries to set a higher rate its ratepayers will not have to pay it.
  To deal with an aspect raised in the press and elsewhere, there can be no doubt whatever that the proposals in part I of the Bill will result in a significant reduction in the level of local spending. Perhaps I may describe what would have happened if this selective capping power had been on the statute book in time for 1983–84. Eighteen authorities increased their current spending between 1982–83 and 1983–84 by 12 per cent. Assuming inflation at about 5 per cent., that is a volume growth of an average of 7 per cent. in one year. If our rate-capping proposals had restricted the expenditure of those authorities so that they reduced the volume of their expenditure by, say, only 3 per cent., spending would have been £300 million less than it is now likely to be—in just one year. Over a run of years, and taking into account the response of other authorities to the Bill, I have no doubt that the savings will be very substantial indeed.
  Part I of the Bill therefore does precisely what we said in our election manifesto we should do, that is,
  "legislate to curb excessive and irresponsible rate increases by high-spending councils".
  Mr. Roland Boyes: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Jenkin: I come now to the second leg of this policy—part II of the Bill—which provides for the
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  reserve scheme. I fully understand the anxieties which have been expressed about this, but perhaps I may set them in context.
  First, the Government hope that this part of the Bill will never have to be invoked. We hope that the powers in part I, coupled with the existing system of block grant, expenditure targets and the other measures in the Bill, will bring local government spending into line with the Government's guidelines. Accordingly, the Bill provides firm safeguards. Part II can be brought into force only after consultations with the local authority associations and then with the approval of each House of Parliament by means of an order subject to the affirmative procedure.
  In clause 10(2) there is also a power to exempt authorities from part II in any year by reference to spending levels. I am sure that Parliament would wish to be satisfied about any proposed exemption before approving the main order. I attach great importance to those safeguards. They ensure that the authority to introduce the general scheme rests firmly with both Houses of Parliament and that Parliament cannot act without the views of the local authority associations first being ascertained.
  I know that many of my right hon. and hon. Friends are concerned about the circumstances in which it might be necessary for the Government to put to Parliament a proposal to introduce the general rate limitation scheme. Under part I, the selective scheme will catch the highest spending authorities. There is, however, a second tier of overspenders, less serious perhaps, whose spending and rating is certainly contributing to the overall problem, but who will, I believe, respond not only to the pressures of the grant system but also to a very real desire to avoid rate limitation under either the selective or the general scheme. There are as well, of course, the 80 per cent. of responsible authorities which are at present budgeting at or close to their targets.
  What I would say to the House, therefore, is this. Any decision about whether there should be a move to general limitation must depend on the future spending decisions of not just a few authorities but of a significant number of authorities. If it becomes apparent that, for whatever reason, a substantial block of authorities are spending irresponsibly and so are pursuing a course calculated to overturn the Government's expenditure plans, we should have to consider asking the House to implement the general scheme. But I repeat that we do not want to have to do that. Only if the spending decisions of a substantial number of authorities cause us to act would we contemplate asking the House to activate the power.
  Mr. Nellist rose—
  Mr. Jenkin: I said at the outset of my speech that I understand the fears of those who dislike this legislation, not least those felt by local government itself, but it is not only on this side of the House that the excesses of some of the councils whose spending and rating behaviour are the root cause of this legislation have aroused disgust. I know that there are many in local government and many hon. Members of all parties on the Opposition Benches who deplore the way that some councils have been conducting their affairs. Some of the most responsible low-spending councils have in a sense had to pay the penalty for the excesses of the few. Because we have been

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  unable to put a curb on those excesses, I and my predecessors have had to fix targets and hold back regimes that have made life extremely difficult for the many.
  In addition, because of the overspending on current account, we have had to look for savings on capital account, something that I am sure none of us would have wished to see. If the House gives us the power in the Bill to curb the excesses of the few extravagant, irresponsible high spenders, I believe that we can look forward to restoring that traditional relationship with the vast majority of local authorities that have served this country well in the past.
  In the meantime, when one has councils whose spending has risen nearly twice as fast as the average, councils whose spending exceeds GRE by as much as 20, 30 or even 50 per cent., councils whose rates have risen three or four times as fast as the cost of living, councils where the small proportion of domestic ratepayers who pay full rates are powerless to curb that headlong rush to profligacy, I say that it is the duty of the House to act. We have a duty to protect ratepayers from blatant exploitation. We have a duty to ensure that all parts of the public sector work within national economic policies. Other efforts to make these few authorities see reason have failed. That is why we seek the powers in the Bill, and I commend it to the House.
  4.24 pm
  Dr. John Cunningham: It is widely believed that the Bill being discussed today is one of the most fundamentally important measures to come before Paliament for a very long time. It is appropriate and fitting that there is such a high attendance for the debate because, if enacted, this measure will give the Government and Whitehall control over a wide range of aspects affecting the everyday lives of millions of people. That would be a very serious and fundamental change, and Parliament should pause and deeply consider whether such change is justified or necessary. Hasty and ill-considered constitutional upheaval could have very serious consequences.
  We have just heard a rather pathetic speech by the Secretary of State.
  Mr. Nellist: Not rather pathetic; very pathetic.
  Dr. Cunningham: It is the culmination of a lamentable performance over several months by the Secretary of State to persuade the House that the Bill has any vestige of merit. He was devoid of conviction, which is not surprising because his case lacks any sound principle and intellectual foundation.
  No one in the House interested in democratic freedoms, local choice or local decision-taking, no one interested in the decentralisation of power, no one who opposes bureaucratic central control—Whitehall domination—could espouse the case embodied in this most sinister measure to control freedom proposed by any British Government this century.
  Mr. John Heddle (Mid-Staffordshire)rose—
  Dr. Cunningham: It is safe to conclude from his performance that, when these proposals came before the Tory Cabinet during the last Parliament, the Secretary of State was in the majority which decisively rejected them
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  on no fewer than four occasions. The Bill will do nothing to redress the manifest failure of the Government to resolve the major difficulties of local government finance, which are largely of the Government's making. Nor will the Bill do anything to reform the rates, as is claimed.
  The Bill is not about rates reform, and it is quite deliberately and misleadingly named. The Bill should more accurately be called the "Abolition of Local Democracy Bill". Its central purpose is to eliminate the right of local communities to elect councils that will provide the level of community services that people desire.
  The Secretary of State said that there was a tenuous link between local voting and rates. The tenuous link is between local voting and the Conservative party. That is what the right hon. Gentleman is really concerned about. The Bill aims to prevent locally elected councillors from deciding what priorities to choose for the people who vote them into office.
  Mr. Heddle rose—
  Dr. Cunningham: The Bill seeks to allow Ministers and civil servants to negate local democratic elections and to give bureaucrats more power over the budgets and services of towns, cities and counties than their elected councillors. Little wonder, then, that the Bill has been so comprehensively "rubbished" by all local authority associations, the professions, the press and the academic world. It is to the credit of Tory leaders in the Association of County Councils and the Association of District Councils that they have clearly and concisely denounced their own Government's policy. The Bill is a complete rejection of the Conservative party's long tradition of local government independence and has aroused more opposition from the grass roots of a party in government than any Bill in memory.
  In this House, too, serious doubts and fundamental objections have been expressed in ever-growing numbers. We shall see this evening the true nature of the Conservative party displayed. If the Bill is given a Second Reading, the Conservative party will have totally forfeited any claim to be the party of individual freedom, local domocracy or democratic choice. What price now the 1976 Dimbleby lecture by Lord Hailsham—still a member of the Cabinet—that he entitled "The threat of an elective dictatorship"?
  The reality is that this measure is a giant stride—the most serious and sinister yet — along the pathway to central control of all aspects of life in this country. The Government have consistently followed that pathway in all their legislation. In industrial policy, police powers, the Water Act 1983, health and social security proposals and in their general approach to information, always present, there have been more powers to Ministers and less openness and less public information. In the local government sphere it is a pathway littered with a trail of broken and castaway Tory promises.
  The Government have espoused the cause of elective dictatorship with a vengeance, not just in legislation but in public appointments—in Whitehall, in the nationalised industries, in the Health Service and throughout public administration—and it has been the "one of us" syndrome. The time for this House to call a halt to these dangerous, unhealthy and unnecessary accretions of power to the centre of British Government is now. They will not produce better accountability or

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  better government or improve public administration. Perhaps the present Government can best be described in the words of Sir William Rees-Mogg, a former Tory parliamentary candidate, who said that the Conservatives had
  "ceased to be gentlemen without becoming democrats."
  The Government's case for the Bill rests on a ramshackle framework of dubious assertions, unsubstantiated political claims and wholly dishonest financial and economic arguments. Conversely, the major constitutional change envisaged was given scant regard by the Secretary of State.
  Ministers claim that the Bill is necessary because local government expenditure is out of control, that the medium-term financial strategy is threatened—we thought that had disappeared without trace some time ago—that the rates increases of the last five years have been solely the fault of local councils, that councils are no longer accountable to ratepayers, that only about 35 per cent. of local electors pay rates, that business has no vote, that rates are a tax on jobs and an important part of business costs and that local authorities have broken the consensus and defied the will of Parliament.
  Those points have emerged in speeches by Ministers who have been forced to make such public utterances in an attempt to staunch the melting away of support. It is important to examine this ragbag of half truths, fabrications and deceptions in some detail and, in so doing, to expose the absolute dishonesty of the Government's case. I shall do that now.
  In the fiscal year 1983–84, local government "overspending"—a pejorative claim in any event—is £771 million — 0·6 per cent. of the planning total for public expenditure. Total local government spending has in fact fallen in real terms. While central Government's current spending has risen as a share of national income—from 27 per cent. to 29 per cent. in the last five years—local government's share has fallen from 10·5 per cent. to 10·2 per cent.
  Overall, local government current expenditure in cash terms has, it is true, increased by 90 per cent. in the same period, but central Government's similar expenditure has gone up by 93 per cent. Which is out of control? Who is profligate?
  The major cause of rising rates in the last few years has been the reduction of rate support grant by the Conservatives. This support has been reduced by £2,800 million between 1978–79 and 1984–85. In addition, over that period, an accumulated loss to local government of about £9 billion has occurred. Without those reductions, and with decline in the economy, tax increases of at least 3p in the pound would have been necessary. Instead, the burden was shifted to the rates.
  Much has been made of the impact of rates on industry and jobs. In 1979, when the Conservatives came to office, rates represented 0·6 per cent. of gross output, 1·6 per cent. of value added and 3 per cent. of wages and salaries. If those figures have increased, who has been responsible? All available evidence suggests that rates form a very small proportion of the cost structure of industry. Moreover, industry's share of the rate burden has been falling. In 1975–76 it was 13·4 per cent. of total rates in England and Wales, and by last year it had fallen to 11 per cent.
  The Secretary of State frequently referred to Sheffield, and he mentioned Manchester and Newcastle as
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  overspenders. If we take the increases in net current expenditure since 1978–79—the right hon. Gentleman's own figures, which he placed in the Library in answer to a parliamentary question from me — we find that Sheffield's expenditure has increased by the average increase for all local authority spending; that Newcastle's, at 70·1 per cent., is less than the retail price index; and that Manchester's, at 68 per cent., is lower than that. That is the reality of the situation in those three cities.
  Between 1975 and 1981, rates on business fell by 20 per cent. in real terms. Since then they have risen as the Government have deliberately switched the burden of expenditure from the Exchequer to the rates, and it is no use Conservative Members denying that. The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, who is to reply to this debate, wrote to Surrey county council in July 1983 admitting it. He wrote:
  "Such reductions inevitably put more of the burden of financial expenditure on to local ratepayers."
  He went on:
  "I recognise that this has marked effects on the share of grant"—
  referring to the reduction of grant—
  "and on percentage increases in rates for authorities like Surrey."
  There we had a Minister from the Department sponsoring the Bill admitting the reality of that fact. That fact has also been made clear in leading articles in The Times and in the Financial Times, most recently today.
  The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour), speaking on "The World at One" today, said:
  "The reason the rates go up every year is because the rate support grant is cut."
  Sir Robin Day then said:
  "But that is what the Labour party says."
  The right hon. Gentleman replied:
  "It is not a matter of what the Labour party says. it is the truth."
  Compared with VAT, the national insurance surcharge, energy costs, interest rates and the monetarist blizzard that has caused record bankruptcies and closures, rates are relatively unimportant.
  The London chamber of commerce, in a survey of manufacturing and service industries, asked a number of questions about rates and businesses, and a similar exercise was conducted in the south-east. The results, which have been published, show that business men regard rates as of lesser significance than labour costs, payroll taxes, bank charges, other taxes, rent and transport costs. There is not much evidence there to support the Government's assertions.
  Sir Kenneth Lewis: I have a business in the London borough of Camden where there are many small and medium-sized businesses. Rates have become so high in the past year or two years that we have had to cut staff numbers in order to pay for the increases.
  Dr. Cunningham: Presumably that is why the CBI decided to locate its headquarters there.
  As the Financial Times and many economists have pointed out, there are no persuasive macro-economic arguments for the Bill either. Changes in local authority rates expenditure have no significant effect on either central Government expenditure or the public sector borrowing requirement. Councils contribute to the PSBR only through that part of their expenditure already under Whitehall control and supported through the rate support

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  grant. Changes in rateborne expenditure do not affect the rate of monetary growth—for what that is worth—and it is not certain that lower rates would solve any business problems. According to the Department of the Environment's own survey of enterprise zones, a substantial proportion of the rate relief given within zones is immediately offset by increases in rents charged by property companies. The rates are, and always have been, a tax on property. They are not a tax on jobs.
  The Chancellor of the Exchequer recently said that since 1979 local authority current expenditure had risen by 9 per cent. more than prices in general. That is true, but the equivalent figure for central Government expenditure in the same period is over 13 per cent. The Chancellor also said that the yield of non-domestic rates had doubled in that period. That also may be true, but the yield of central Government taxation has also doubled in that period—from £43·1 billion to £87·8 billion. What was the Chancellor trying to prove?
  There is another misconception in the Government's case—that the public sector is unproductive and crowds out private investment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Local authority expenditure provides massive business opportunities for private enterprise. Hence the drive to privatise what local authorities are doing.
  The Secretary of State has said many times—he has said it again today — that only a small number of councils need fear the proposals. Many of those councils — the so-called hit-list authorities—are recognised by the Government as having special problems. They are partnership councils. Rates control in such areas renders nonsensical that most important aspect of inner city policy. More than £400 million is pushed by the Secretary of State and his colleagues into special projects in the very councils where he now hopes to save hundreds of millions of pounds. In reality, the Secretary of State would have to act against several dozen councils to achieve worthwhile savings, unless he intends to decimate services and jobs in the conurbations and cities. That is the real reason why the general power to control any local authority budget in the land is required by the Secretary of State; and that is why that power is in the Bill.
  The bureaucratic nightmare inherent in the application of such powers is clear. One envisages civil servants deciding budgets on South Tyneside, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Hackney, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, Buckinghamshire or Surrey. One envisages civil servants deciding which services can continue and which must be cut, how many teachers and home helps there should be, and what the level of bus fares should be. If it were not so stupid, it would be funny.
  There is a massive inconsistency between the Minister's statement that he is concerned only to control a few authorities and his insistence on the inclusion in the Bill of such general powers. The general powers have to be there because the Government's real policy objectives are concerned far more with the overall approach of authorities than with the handful of councils that the Minister talks about. The Government know that although they argue that three quarters of the alleged overspending is done by a handful of authorities, a specific power could yield only comparatively small reductions in expenditure in any one year.
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  We must also remember that the so-called specific or selective powers could be generally applied. There are no restrictions in the Bill on the Secretary of State's use of the specific powers. The Secretary of State will exercise his powers to discipline authorities in accordance with principles that he will determine. Those principles do not appear in the Bill, and no restriction is placed upon the Secretary of State's freedom to use them.
  The timetable envisaged is also a bureaucratic nightmare—
  Mr. Patrick Jenkin: Purely as a matter of accuracy, I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises that the statement of principles has to be laid before the House and that, unless the spending limit is agreed, it is only with the authority of the House that the capping process can take effect. It is not true that it is a matter for the Secretary of State alone.
  Dr. Cunningham: We shall examine the matter in some detail in Committee. The Secretary of State's interpretation of the Bill is different from my own.
  There will be many months of negotiations between the officials of the Secretary of State and the local authorities before anything comes before the House. Until those discussions and negotiations have been concluded, Parliament will have no say in the matter.
  Does anyone who has seriously considered the implications of this fundamental constitutional change really believe Ministers who say that the powers will be used only in a limited way? That would belie the experience of the House and of local government over the past five years. I challenge the Government to clarify their intentions by inserting a limit on the number of local authorities to be controlled under the Bill. That would prove that they do not intend to undermine services and to reduce expenditure across the board.
  In the past few days there has been a slow march of Cabinet Ministers to the lectern to send messages to their constituents in support of the Bill. Perhaps most pathetic of all was the performance of the Secretary of State for Education and Science. Within a week of being told by his own inspectors of the threat to standards in the education service caused by the shortage of resources and announcing an initiative to improve standards, he made a speech in support of the Bill and called on education authorities to cut their expenditure further. What a denial of his obligations and responsibilities that was.
  Since their election, the Government have made seven major changes in the system of financing local government. The resulting instability, confusion, hostility and distrust are plain and all too predictable. At each new attempt to gain compliance, Secretaries of State gave assurances that were subsequently ratted on.
  Clause 2 of the Bill clearly states that grant-related expenditure is now to be used as a test of overspending. The present Secretaries of State for Defence and for Employment assured the House and the local government associations that grant-related expenditure assessments would specifically not be used in that way.
  On 17 May 1982, in answer to a parliamentary question, the Secretary of State for Defence said:
  "I have not at any time proposed grant-related expenditure assessments as the targets for individual authorities." —[Official Report, 17 May, 1982; Vol. 24, c. 5.]
  Earlier, on 8 July 1980, the Secretary of State for Employment said:

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  "Some people have suggested imposing individual cash limits on every authority. That would be a very serious step indeed. … When the public funds have been distributed, it is then a matter for individual local authorities and their councillors as to what their expenditure decisions are. It is their choice between services, their choice as to the volume of expenditure on those services, and their choice as to the rate levels that they decide to impose."
  On the same day the Secretary of State said that grant-related poundage and grant-related expenditure
  "is in no sense a prescriptive definition by central Government of what the local authorities should spend".—[Official Report, 8 July 1980; Vol. 988, c. 304–313.]
  The Conservative-controlled Association of District Councils says of grant-related expenditure assessments:
  "They are grossly unsuitable as individual targets because of the numerous and significant anomalies they contain."
  The Secretary of State now proposes to go back on those commitments.
  To underline those points, it is worth considering a few examples. Grant-related expenditure in Hackney is £59·25 million. Its budget is £81·34 million. Is it supposed that a cut of over £21 million can be enforced upon the London borough of Hackney? Similar arguments apply in Newcastle, south Yorkshire, Sheffield and the Tory-controlled shire counties. The differences between GREs and budgets are often colossal. If cuts of such magnitude are envisaged, some services would cease and areas of local administration would collapse with misery, deprivation, neglect and massive job losses.
  In any case, between 1979 and 1983 Newcastle—on the hit list apparently—and Thamesdown—at the top of it apparently—and Middlesbrough raised expenditure by less than was needed even to keep pace with inflation. Why are those authorities under attack now?
  Local authorities were also promised that the hold-back and penalty system would affect only a few councils. This year, dozens are to be penalised including 23 out of 37 members of the Association of County Councils. Next year, according to the Conservative chairman of the ACC, John Lovill, all members of the Association of County Councils will be affected by the penalty system.
  As Mr. Noel Hepworth, the director of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, demonstrated in an excellent article in The Times yesterday, the argument about which authorities should be controlled and what tests should be used is exceedingly confused. He also shares the view that these proposals are unlikely to produce immediately, or in the foreseeable future, reductions in spending to the level that the Government apparently require. We understand that the Secretary of State was so embarrassed about the predicament of Reigate that the Department of Employment computer became so overworked that it disappeared up its own VDU in an attempt to find a solution. The list of broken assurances and promises cast aside is one of the principal reasons why all local authority associations have said, "Enough is enough."
  I challenge the Secretary of State to tell the House how much expenditure he expects to save in the first year of its operation if the Bill becomes law. If the Tory manifesto hit list is used and those authorities apparently marked out for abolition are discounted, an overspend of barely £82 million remains. Does the House believe that a major constitutional change is required to tackle that problem, or is the Government's secret intention to control many more council budgets and to slash services to millions of people?
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  It is pathetic and frightening to listen to the arguments that we have had from Ministers in favour of overriding the will of local voters. Apparently, the only manifesto that now matters is the Tory one in general elections, which in 1983 was supported by 31 per cent. of the electorate. We are told that the elderly, disabled, unemployed and disadvantaged should not have as much say as business men about the services upon which they depend. That is a naked attack on local democracy and universal franchise. We are told that business has no vote. That means that Ministers want business people to have two votes.
  Ministers have argued that one person only in a household pays the rates. That demonstrates—
  Mr. Patrick Jenkin: I understand, of course, that the hon. Gentleman —[Interruption.] —wrote those words before he heard what I said. I specifically reject those suggestions.
  Dr. Cunningham: In that case, why have successive Ministers been deploying the argument for so long? Ministers have argued that only one person in a household pays rates, and that demonstrates how little they understand family income and expenditure in ordinary family homes, where everyone who can contributes to the family budget.
  It is also explained that only 35 per cent. of local electors pay full rates and that therefore accountability is diminished. By the same token, only 45 per cent. of national electors pay tax. What are we arguing about? These arguments are spurious excuses for the Government to run roughshod over the local democratic process. No one disputes that Parliament's will is paramount, but the Government have broken the consensus with local government, not the reverse.
  It is untrue that there was ever any agreement between central and local government about aggregate expenditure. The Government's claim that an agreement existed that local authorities' aggregated expenditure should not exceed planning totals determined by Government is a fabrication. Nor is it practicable to suggest that Parliament will decide the detail of individual council budgets and services. That will be done by civil servants — the codification of "Yes, Minister".
  This fundamental constitutional change will not enhance local democracy; it will diminish it. The reasons for the Bill are political and not economic. First, it is an attack upon the public sector—on the public provision of decent services for the community by the community. Secondly, a political response to the appeal to curb local government to make it accountable to more central control will make local government less accountable to local ratepayers. Local authorities make an essential and vital contribution to the well-being of the communities that they serve. They provide crucial services on which the stability and well-being of our society depends — education, housing, public health, the environment, social services and the police.
  The Bill seeks to remove from local authorities the right of control over those services and concentrate power within Government to an extent unparalleled since local councils were created.
  The Bill aims to remove the bulwark of local rights used by councils of all political persuasions to prevent the worst excesses of the failure of the Government's economic

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  policies damaging the interests of those least able to defend themselves. It is a further attempt to redistribute resources away from those who need them most and a further step towards the compassionless society that the Prime Minister seems so determined to establish.
  Coming on top of the disgraceful rate support grant statement in December, the Bill can leave no one in any doubt about the Prime Minister's intentions to subjugate the democratic process as a subterfuge for that unmentionable political reason for this measure and to disguise the fact that the Prime Minister herself has ratted on perhaps the greatest vote-catching promise of all—to abolish rates altogether. In the Bill, rates are to be enshrined in central Government policy — a canon of Tory policy — which is the absolute reverse of that promise.
  The Secretary of State has even threatened to resign if the Bill is not carried. It is worth while remembering that the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), the previous Secretary of State for the Environment who is now the Secretary of State for Defence, published and then withdrew two local government Bills in the previous Parliament. He neither threatened nor offered to resign. He did, however, threaten to resign, we are told, if rates control was imposed upon him by the Prime Minister and the Treasury—quite a comparison between him and the present Secretary of State for the Environment. The time to stop the Bill is now. The House of Commons should ensure that it is withdrawn.
  What we require are Government discussions with local authority associations, involving all political parties, on the restructuring of local government finance. Such talks should begin immediately to prevent further absurdities from occurring.
  Could the Secretary of State for the Environment, who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, be the same person who, at a Conservative party summer school, said:
  "It is essential that local authority spending programmes should be subject to the democratic control of local councils. Grants can be fixed at such a level that local authorities' expenditure could be made within an acceptable increase in the rates. If any particular authority wishes to spend more than this then that excess must come wholly from the rates. The resistance of local ratepayers could usually be relied upon to prevent extravagance".
  Can the Prime Minister, who has foisted the Bill on her Cabinet, be the same person who said:
  "One must always keep sufficient expenditure with the local authorities; otherwise the whole basis of local government is undermined for good and all. The task of a local councillor who was not responsible for rating would be absolutely marvellous. He could demand everything, the sky would be the limit and he could blame the Government always if he did not get it. It would cease to be local government. It would cease to have any semblance of responsibility whatever. In these circumstances I think I should very much like to be a local councillor. One would get the best of all worlds."
  It would be tempting to say, if only to frighten some Conservative Members, that two can play the game of controlling council budgets. But on behalf of my right hon. and hon. Friends I give Parliament this assurance, and I also give it to local electors—
  Mr. Harry Greenway: A solemn pledge, no doubt.
  Dr. Cunningham: You are such a fathead that you would not know anything about this matter.
  Mr. Greenway: That is an insult to Mr. Speaker.
  Dr. Cunningham: We in the Labour party want none of this Bill. We refute the arguments for it. We denounce the philosophy behind it. It is economically, democratically and morally indefensible. We shall fight it, and I invite all hon. Members who value and support local freedom to join us.
  5.5 pm
  Mr. Edward Heath: The Bill raises for me a matter of principle of the deepest importance. I believe this to be the case with many Conservatives, both inside and outside the House. It goes to the very root of Conservative philosophy, which has endured for centuries. It has always been Conservative philosophy that one of our main purposes in politics is to balance the power existing in our society. In particular, we have been opposed to the centralisation of power because we have throughout realised the intense dangers to freedom that that holds for everyone. The Bill deals with the balance of power betwen central and local government, and weighs it now heavily on the side of central Government.
  My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in answer to a question this afternoon that it had long been accepted that the local authorities knew best. With that I agree entirely. If they know best how they wish to carry on their services, they should be enabled to raise the resources needed for those purposes. One cannot say that they know best and then deny them the means by which they may carry out their judgment. Nor can I accept the view expressed by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister later that, because the House is responsible for financial matters and national taxation, it should therefore take over the responsibility for the rate taxation of local authorities. The logical conclusion of that view is that all local government finance should be taken over by central Government. Of course, some people wish to do that and have so argued for a considerable time. They have said, "Very well, take over the entire education expenditure and the police and all other services and finance them from central Government, and then there would not be a rate burden". That policy has been rejected by successive Conservative Governments for the reasons that I have given.
  I entered the House in 1950 having fought an election on Mr. Churchill's theme that we were to set the people free. The theme was not to set the people free to do what we tell them but to set the people free. With it went a companion theme, that local government should be local. I have fought every election since 1950 on that theme.
  Mr. Nicholas Budgen rose—
  Mr. Heath: The Bill does not accord with either of the two themes set out by Mr. Churchill at that time and to which I, for one, have always adhered.
  Mr. Budgen: My right hon. Friend may remember clause 13 of the Counter-Inflation Bill 1973. When he introduced the White Paper, he said:
  "We also have had to strike a balance between the improvement of local authority services and the impact of rates on the lower-paid. For these reasons we have accordingly increased the rate support grant to local authorities"—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that this will not be a speech.
  Mr. Budgen: My right hon. Friend continued:
  "and we are asking for powers to monitor the rates position with them to see that the changeover to revaluation is not in any way abused."—[Official Report, 24 January 1973; Vol. 849, c. 472.]
  How does that square with my right hon. Friend's assertions on rate principles?
  Mr. Heath: It squares perfectly well. It was designed to help local authorities in their difficulties. Any Government are entitled to ask for statistics to ascertain how they should help, how much help should be given and whether current help is being used. I am sorry that my hon. Friend should have lowered himself to such a level.
  Secondly, the Bill confers enormous powers on the Secretary of State. It is in his discretion to determine what the criteria are for the action that he takes. The extent to which he applies the criteria lies also within his discretion. Further, it is within his discretion to exempt certain authorities from the criteria without anyone knowing his reasons for doing so. Those are draconian powers in both the selective section of the Bill and in the general powers section. They are powers such as we have never taken before, even in two world wars. This is why I regard the conferment of the powers as a matter of principle of the utmost importance.
  The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) deployed the pragmatic arguments in postulating whether the operation is worth while. As I am dealing with the issue as a matter of principle, those to me are arguments of a different calibre. However, I agree that it is necessary to ask my right hon. Friend, "But what are you getting in return for taking these draconian powers and for bitter fighting in the House, with Conservative councillors who are our supporters, and with many of those who really care about the constitutional basis of this country?" I deeply resent the accusation that has been made against Conservative councillors who are opposed to the Bill to the effect that they are opposing it purely on account of their vested interests and because they want to feather their own nests. No suggestion could be more unworthy. No councillor has an easy job today, and we should reject that argument completely.
  I have been worried by the difference in emphasis in the White Paper on the purpose of the general powers when compared with what has been said by my right hon. Friends from the Government Front Bench since the Bill was published and the adverse criticism of it arose. In the White Paper it appears to be taken for granted that it will be a simple and straightforward business to take over the general powers if that is what the Government decide to do in the interest of their monetary or financial policies. Since the White Paper's publication, Minister after Minister has said, "That would be done only in the most extreme case." The Secretary of State has emphasised that again today. If my right hon. Friend thinks that that would be done in only the most extreme case, much the best thing would be not to take the necessary power. Let him come to the House and ask for the necessary power if an extreme case arises. The House would then be able to judge whether extreme powers were necessary.
  That is not the entire answer because there is nothing to prevent my right hon. Friend doing everything that he can under the general powers and the selective powers, except for the £10 million limit. That is the only inhibiting factor and that applies only to the smallest of local authorities. My right hon. Friend may say in Committee,
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  "I give up that part of the Bill", but that will not prevent abuse by a Minister of the whole of local government finance except for the smallest entities. As there is no provision for the indexation of the £10 million, the number of authorities that will come under the general powers will steadily increase. An offer from a Minister to abandon the general powers provisions would not alter the argument of principle on this issue.
  I am fully aware of the problems that surround rates. I recognise that there is a difference between this period and that which prevailed 10 years ago. At that time the pressure was for changes in domestic rating. That was understandable because there was a feeling of injustice on the part of pensioners who were single ratepayers who lived next door to a house that was occupied by several wage earners. They felt it unjust that they should have to pay the same rates. In dealing with that feeling of injustice, we extended the rate rebate system extensively in the 1970–74 Parliament.
  Industry remains in a state of depression and obviously feels the burden of rates considerably. It is felt especially by small businesses. We know that from our own constituency experience. That does not alter the fact that when rates are set against the total production of industry and its manpower and other costs, they are seen to be a comparatively small ingredient. Nevertheless, every ingredient matters. But that does not justify the argument that has been constantly advanced that the proposed changes should be made because business men do not have votes. Under our electoral system, there are those who have votes on matters with which they are not concerned and those who do not have votes on some matters with which they are concerned. That is accepted as part of the electoral system. However, we know from constituency experience that many business men live in the constituency in which their business is located, live in the borough and live in the rate-levying authority, and can influence it. Perhaps it would be a good thing if many of them took a more active part in local government.
  My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State says that: in some areas the public are not responsive to what a local authority does or to its rates. Surely the answer is to persuade the people to be more responsive, and as a party we have that responsibility. From time to time the party has had amazing success in some of the Labour-controlled; authorities that have been damned this afternoon.
  One of the many requirements is for local business men, members of chambers of commerce and others to take their part in local government. I welcome the provisions in the Bill for consultation between industrial organisations, commercial organisations and local authorities before the spending programme is set. That shows a movement towards consensus that I feared had been lost some time ago. That is to be welcomed but it is not the same thing as taking part in local government.
  I ask myself how many members of the Institute of Directors are local councillors or do any work for the election of local councillors. How many members of the CBI are so engaged? I recognise that there are notable exceptions, including notable firms that require their members to take part in this work. However, to the great majority, local government is something to be left en one side. We are seeing one of the consequences of that.
  Sir Nicholas Bonsor: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will appreciate that most business men,

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  especially at a time of deep recession, have only a limited amount of time at their disposal. It is wholly unrealistic to expect them to be able to give the enormous amount of time that is now necessary to devote to local government business. How would my right hon. Friend represent, or have represented, the interests of domestic ratepayers who live in areas where the majority of the voters do not themselves pay rates? How are they and the business ratepayers to be protected if the Government take no action?
  Mr. Heath: Those in that position can take part in local activity in the area in which their businesses are based. I appreciate my hon. Friend's argument about the amount of work that business men have to do, but that applies to all sections of society. It applies to professional men and to all others except those who have retired. If retired business men want to take part, I suggest that they should do so. The attitude of putting it on one side is not acceptable.
  In regard to the relationship between local authorities and voters we have made a mistake in the past, with the Greater London council and other authorities, in having a gap of four years between elections. Of course, this was done for a good reason, which was to cut down expenditure on elections and, as some said, to give continuity. But it has prevented the electorate reacting speedily, as is desirable, to the work of a local authority. It has also meant that in the GLC there has been a swing every four years from one side to the other. Therefore, as a practical proposal, it would be useful to move to a system of more frequent elections.
  I do not wish to go into all the statistics that have already been mentioned—
  Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: A brief speech.
  Mr. Heath: It would be briefer if I was not interrupted by my hon. Friend muttering behind me.
  The general conclusion of those who have examined the statistics is that no major macro-economic benefit will accrue to the Chancellor of the Exchequer or" to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State by the action which he is taking. If one is judging this purely on the benefits as against the costs, which will be political and much more dangerous, my right hon. Friend will not get any great benefit out of it.
  I wish my right hon. Friend had given more details and an overall balanced assessment of what the burdens of local authorities have been, because they have been much more considerable than he indicated. In my constituency of Bexley there has been a Conservative council for many years. It is now over 22 per cent. above the assessment and some 2 per cent. over the target. Other councils, which have struggled hard to keep down their expenditure, are in a similar position. Councils such as Barnet, which includes Finchley, are all over the target. Local authorities must be given a fairer assessment of their expenditure.
  I want to conclude by referring to the action that I think should be taken. The Government have turned down all alternatives. They turned down first the re-rating of agriculture, which would be a means of getting back some of the money spent on the common agricultural policy. I can understand that the advice may have been that there
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  are political objections to this. With modern technology there could be a local income tax combined with national income tax but its great weakness would be that it would not bring home to the local voter or the local resident what expenditure was being incurred through the activities of his local council. That must be a major disadvantage.
  We have had inquiries on functions and on the structure of local government — Redcliffe-Maud. We have had inquiries on the finance of local government. We have never had a proper inquiry into the relationship between the functions and the finance of local government.
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Why did my right hon. Friend not institute one?
  Mr. Heath: It has been said that a further inquiry, or discussions between parties on finance, is required. It is necessary to examine finance and functions to get the balance right so that there can be a decision as to whether some functions individually should be taken over by other authorities or by central Government or whether funds should be increased for local government to deal with the burdens that it has.
  I do not want to see the Bill carried through. I ask my right hon. Friend what we would have been saying about centralisation and control from Whitehall if the Labour party, as the Government, had introduced such a Bill. The complexity of the Bill will lead to an enormous growth of bureaucracy. Ministers themselves will not have the time to go into the details of each local authority and it will have to be left to civil servants. Those who are so strongly supporting the Bill but, at the same time in leaders in the press, are damning bureaucracy ought to think about that aspect of it. I do not believe that these powers should be given to the Minister. The Bill should not be kept on the Floor of the House.
  My right hon. Friend has offered to resign. That is the last thing I want him to do. I have great respect and affection for him. I am grateful to him for what he did in the Parliament of 1970 to 1974 and what he has done in the Government since. All I am asking him to do is to recognise that to deal with these few authorities and an amount which is a minute part of either Government expenditure or the public borrowing requirement is not worth a breach of a major Conservative principle. He will gain respect if he takes the Bill away and lets us have a proper analysis of the functions and finances of local government. Let him come back with the answer for that. Then he will get the praise of both sides of the House and of the country.
  5.26 pm
  Mr. Brian Sedgemore: In opposing the Bill I am conscious that no words of mine would be capable of expressing its devastating constitutional consequences or its chilling social concomitants. When the Secretary of State goes to bed at night and shuts his eyes, whatever else he does I am sure that he does not think of Hackney and the poorest people in the poorest borough in the country, according to the 'Z' indices of his Department.
  We have asked the Secretary of State, as a reasonable man, to come to Hackney and see the kind of burdens faced by a society where there is barely social cohesion in the struggle for survival. As an unreasonable man, the Secretary of State has refused to come to Hackney because

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  he is not prepared to face his duties, obligations and moral and political responsibilities. Therefore, the borough of Hackney is doing the only thing it can—it is taking the Secretary of State for the Environment to court, and proceedings are about to start. I suspect that when he appears in the dock he will be found guilty of robbing pensioners, children and the sick.
  The borough of Hackney will ask the High Court of Justice to undertake a judicial review of the operation of the Minister's function under section 59 of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980 and section 8 of the Local Government Finance Act 1982 on the grounds that the Secretary of State's actions have been unreasonable, capricious, unfair and unlawful.
  There are four strands in the thinking behind the impending High Court action. First, the Secretary of State has not paid attention to whether his targets are attainable. Secondly, he has had no regard to the effects of his targets on Hackney's statutory duties and responsibilities. Thirdly, in the targets that he has set for this year, he has maliciously and unlawfully intended to penalise Hackney for expenditure undertaken in previous years. Fourthly, he is in error in assuming that the grant-related expenditure targets that he has set are an expression of the real social needs of Hackney.
  I invite the House to agree that it is arrogant and constitutionally dangerous for the Secretary of State to maintain that he and his civil servants alone know the proper way in which to solve the problems faced by Hackney.
  According to the 1981 census, 17 per cent. of Hackney's population is of pensionable age, 22 per cent. is under 15 years of age. the current rate of male adult unemployment is 26·8 per cent. and 10 per cent. of households have to share a bath. Moreover, two out of three households do not own a car. Hackney has the highest proportion of single parent families of any borough in the country and suffers the worst overcrowding in London. Wages there are 7 per cent. below the national average and more than 20 per cent. below the London average. Babies born in Hackney are 2 lb. lighter than those born in Hampstead because of nutritional deficiency, and 27 per cent. of Hackney's residents were born overseas.
  As councillors in Hackney are struggling to deal with more widespread and intense problems than those encountered in any other part of the country, how dare the Secretary of State, the almighty and omnipotent, tell them how to deal with their problems? That simply does not make sense.
  My plea is that the Secretary of State should have some regard for local democracy in Hackney. He should also have some regard for his being Secretary of State for the Environment. This morning I spoke to officers of Hackney council. They told me that, acting independently of councillors, they conducted an inquiry to assess what cuts can be made. They said that, irrespective of what councillors want to do, even if they were to make millions of pounds worth of cuts in public expenditure, they would still end up £10 million over target if they carried out their statutory duties and basic obligations to meet social needs in the borough. They maintain that the Secretary of State is asking them to do the impossible. They know that that is the truth and are prepared to swear to that effect in the
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  High Court. Is the Secretary of State ordering Hackney to behave unreasonably, capriciously, unfairly and unlawfully? That seems to be the effect of the Bill.
  We have reached present circumstances through two routes. Their cause is not through massive overspending by Hackney but through a series of changed definitions which have operated from 1980–81. As we have changed those definitions from the transitional arrangements to the barest definitions of targets and bases, we have slowly screwed down boroughs, such as Hackney, so that they are now told that they are overspending massively. That is not true.
  On a national level, we already have government by the corporate state. That is not democratic. The Bill will result in the corporate state eliding with and then becoming part of the authoritarian state as state power increases massively. I cannot believe that the British people, least of all the people of Hackney, are prepared to put up with that burden. I hope that the House will oppose the Bill.
  5.34 pm
  Sir Hugh Rossi: My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) has expressed the greatest reservations about the Bill. He echoed reservations similar to those that others of my right hon. and hon. Friends have expressed elsewhere in recent days. I have no doubt that they all represent areas that are well administered. I can understand that where local councillors are struggling to set the rates at a level which ratepayers can bear, they will feel some resentment that the Government should now find it necessary to reserve for themselves general powers to interfere in their hard work. However, not all local authorities are of that calibre.
  I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends who feel in the way that I have described—for the best reasons and as a result of high principle—not to do or say anything that would mean the loss of the selective powers which are proposed in the Bill.
  My constituency falls within the London borough of Haringey. That borough has the unenviable distinction of being the highest rated in Greater London. The non-domestic rate is now 261p in the pound. Moreover, we have suffered an increase in rates of 127 per cent. in the past five years. The effect of that is devastating.
  Mr. Jack Straw: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Sir Hugh Rossi: No. Mr. Speaker has asked us to proceed quickly, and I am trying to do that.
  People are leaving the borough in droves. They tell me that they cannot afford to live in the area. They move across the borough border — sometimes a matter of hundreds of yards — to Enfield and Barnet where rates levied on identical properties are about one third less than those levied in Haringey.
  Mr. Straw: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Sir Hugh Rossi: No, I shall not.
  Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Tell us about the Tories' rate support grant.
  Sir Hugh Rossi: There are reasons for what I have described.
  In the last 12 years, over which the Labour party has been in control in Haringey, the authority's staff has

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  increased by 30 per month. At the same time there has been a dramatic decrease in population. Schools have closed down because of falling school rolls, but the number of teaching and non-teaching staff has increased substantially. A direct labour force, which is losing money hand over fist, is kept on for doctrinaire reasons in spite of its being uncompetitive. Private property has been bought wholesale and kept empty. I calculate the loss in rates, rents and interest charges from those properties to be about £4 million a year. I could explain why the rates are so high in Haringey compared with other London boroughs. At the root of the problem, however, is bad administration.
  Accountability is another consideration. As I have said before — it is now almost a cliché—the relationship between local government and its electorate is now one of taxation without representation and representation without taxation. When that exists, it is not possible to rely on the ballot box to control the budget as councillors know that they can appeal successfully to elements in the community that they represent which are more interested in expenditure being increased than in rates being under control. That is what appertains in my constituency.
  In such circumstances, it is right — my constituents are asking for it—that the Government should intervene to protect ratepayers by putting a ceiling on rates. That ceiling should be reasonable and responsible, and below it councillors should be free to order their priorities in any way that they wish. There must be such protection, and, under the present system, the ballot box does not provide it. That is my short plea. I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will bear it in mind.
  5.39 pm
  Mr. Stan Crowther: The theme of the speech of the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) appears to be that if democratically elected authorities do not exercise the powers which the House has given them as he wants those powers should be taken away. That is the heart of the Bill. That is why it is so utterly foreign to the the traditions of the country and the House.
  This is a most extraordinary Bill not simply because of the very serious constitutional consequences but because it comes from a party that is supposed to be philosophically dedicated to freedom and against centralisation. That is what makes it such a strange Bill.
  Today is a very black day for anyone who has any feeling for local government. I know that the many hon. Members on both sides of the House who have spent many years on local authorities, as elected representatives, as I have, will be able to do nothing but shed tears for our democracy if the Bill is given a Second Reading tonight. Democracy began at local level in this country. The local government traditions in England go back far beyond the origins of Parliament itself. The anti-local government campaign that has been the prelude to the introduction of the Bill is one of the most disgraceful episodes in our political history. A propaganda campaign, orchestrated by Ministers and supported by some sections of the press, has completely changed the meanings of some words.
  The word "overspending" has come to mean something quite different from what it meant last year or the year before. Overspending by a local authority means the
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  authority spending more than it intended. According to Ministers, it means authorities spending more than the Ministers intended them to spend. There has been a complete change in the meaning of that word.
  Ministers pretend that the Bill is necessary because some local authorities have broken a sort of gentleman's agreement and are in breach of a convention that the total of local authority expenditure has always been controlled by Ministers. The fiction has been put around that authorities, because they are controlled by nasty, irresponsible people, are in breach of that convention. There never was such a convention. The figures that the Government used to publish on the total of local authority expenditure were never targets but merely estimates. To suggest that local government officers have broken an agreement is an absurd distortion of the truth.
  That point was made by the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath). I thought that he put his finger on the point very well. I only wish that he had understood the need to get local government finance right before altering the structure of local government in 1971–72. However, I am pleased to note that he has learnt it now.
  There has never been a need for Ministers even to influence, much less control, the total of local government expenditure. There is no economic case for that. The level of rates has no bearing whatever on the national economy, except to the very limited extent that they can affect a company's competitiveness. [HON. MEMBERS: "That is right."] I am glad to hear that Conservative Members agree with me. That extent is vary marginal. I do not want to cover the same ground as my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham). He made an outstandingly good speech from the Opposition Front Bench. However, I must say something on this point. Rates are a very small element in production costs. I do not know why the Government should feel it right to control that tiny bit while apparently not taking any steps to bring down energy costs, which are a much more significant factor.
  Mr. Barry Porter: What about labour costs?
  Mr. Crowther: Is the hon. Gentleman saying that he wants a statutory wages policy? Let him tell us.
  Mr. Porter indicated dissent.
  Mr. Crowther: That would be the logical outcome of the Government's philosophy.
  If Ministers are concerned about the rate burden on industry, let them tell the House and industry why they have deliberately increased that burden over the past four years by drastic reductions in the rate support grant. My hon. Friend the Member for Copeland made that point, and I hope that it will not be overlooked. I get rather cross when people such as those in the Confederation of British Industry and the chambers of commerce constantly criticise local authorities for increasing rates and do not place the blame where it belongs.
  In my constituency in south Yorkshire, the county council is on the hit list. The Minister regards it as an authority that overspends. Much of its expenditure is on the extremely popular fares policy, which is almost unanimously supported throughout the county. That expenditure is reflected in the precept in the rates paid in my constituency.

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  The rate imposed on industry in Rotherham in the current financial year, despite the heavy precept from the county council, is 132·90p in the pound. In 1979–80 it was 77·53p in the pound. If the 1979 level of rate support grant had been maintained, the commercial rate needed to meet the current year's expenditure would have been only 96·85p in the pound — 36p less. It can be said, quite properly, that if the rate support grant had been maintained perhaps the council would have decided to increase total expenditure. That is fair, but it is speculation. What is an absolutely incontrovertible fact is that almost two thirds of the increase in rates imposed on industry in Rotherham in the past four years is directly attributable to cuts in the Government grant. No one can escape that fact.
  Therefore, the Government's case on industrial rates is totally false. All that is left is the argument about domestic rates. My hon. Friend rightly said that members of households contribute to the rates. It is nonsense to say that only X per cent. of people pay rates. Indirectly, everyone who lives in a house helps to pay the rates. Those are the people who have the right, through the ballot box, to change the membership of the local authority. Surely that is what should happen in a democratic society.
  If the Bill is enacted, the Department of the Environment will become the majority party on every local authority in Britain. That will make a hollow farce of our elections. The Secretary of State should tell the House when he proposes to introduce a Bill to abolish elected local authorities. That is what the path that we are now on is leading to.
  I welcome the fact that some Conservative Members have expressed their opposition to the Bill. I was particularly pleased to hear the comments of the right hon. Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell), who in the debates on the Transport Bill spent a long time expressing the opposite view to the one that he now holds. I am pleased to hear about his conversion. We are assured on biblical authority that
  "joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over ninety and nine just persons."
  Those Conservative Members will gain nothing but honour and respect from the public if they vote with us against this appalling Bill.
  5.48 pm
  Mr. Geoffrey Rippon: I am sorry to have to say that I believe that this is one of the most deplorable Bills that has been brought before the House in all the time that I have been a Member.
  The Prime Minister said just before Christmas that the proposal to cap rates was overwhelmingly popular among ratepayers. That may be true, but, if so, it is because the public profoundly misunderstands the nature, purpose and effect of the Bill. Its nature is undemocratic and contrary to the spirit of our unwritten constitution. Its purpose is to create the illusion of rate reform and rate reduction while avoiding the fundamental changes in the structure of local government finance that are needed. The effect will be damaging to local democracy but minimal in its consequences for the national economy or, for that matter, for rates or rating reform. On the Secretary of State's own figures, if this Bill were in operation today some £300 million might have been saved by capping. That is out of a total of over £12 billion of rate expenditure and in
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  relation to a total national expenditure of £126 billion. This is why I say that it is a sledgehammer Bill just to crack a few nuts.
  Before Christmas I told my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that I thought that this was
  "a classic example of elective dictatorship."—[Official Report, 22 December 1983; Vol. 51, c. 570.]
  and that phrase has been taken up. It is, of course, a phrase taken from the Lord Chancellor's notable book ''The Dilemma of Democracy", in which he argued powerfully that in this country we are halfway between two inconsistent theories about the nature of democracy, indeed about the whole nature and function of government. The first theory is that of centralised bureaucracy, which the Lord Chancellor describes as "elective dictatorship" and the second is that of limited government which is, in the Lord Chancellor's language, the doctrine of freedom under the law. The Lord Chancellor is right when he says that there is ultimately no possibility of compromise between those two theories.
  One of the specific consequences of an elective dictatorship, according to the Lord Chancellor, would be the destruction of local authonomy. "The Dilemma of Democracy" — I think that the Secretary of State for Education rather likes these reading lists — should be compulsory reading for every member of the Cabinet except, of course, the Lord Chancellor, who should simply be reminded that he wrote it.
  In the White Paper the Secretary of State has proclaimed that
  "we live in a unitary and not a federal state".
  That rather over-simplistic view raises the question of what state we live in or what sort of state we want. We are only a unitary state in the sense that Parliament is supreme. We can pass whatever legislation we like, pass this Bill, extend our life, censor the press. The only limitations are moral and unwritten and are based on the acceptance of the need for certain checks and balances, including the maintenance of the historic relationship between central and local government.
  In an article on 5 January, the New York Times pointed out that the rule of law in British society has become very limited by American standards and it commented,
  "talk of Parliamentary supremacy really amounts to giving the executive a free hand."
  Of course, it does not have to be so. If the House has the will, then it has the power to curb the executive. This is the real issue before the House today.
  There may, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) said earlier, be a case for rate-capping selected authorities where it can be shown that they have abused their powers and functions, but each case ought to be examined on its merits and approved by Parliament, because when we rate-cap a local authority we are, as it were, putting it into commission. The criterion for such action should be clearly defined and should be in the legislation.
  The observations that the Secretary of State made today are of no help to us at all. He says that he might do it "on this basis" or "on that basis". This is a totally unfettered discretion that he seeks and that I do not think he ought to be allowed to have. There can be no case at ail to my mind for the sweeping general power sought by the Government.
  It is not sufficient, as the Secretary of State says, for it to be a reserve power which he does not expect to use.

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  If that is the case, why have it? There is no merit at all in the argument that clause 9 provides that this great sweeping general power can be approved only by an order passed by both Houses of Parliament. We know what that means—an hour and a half's debate at ten o'clock with no possibility of amendment. No one can describe that as bringing this sweeping general power back under the control of Parliament.
  A Conservative Government may believe that they will always exercise their power wisely, but that is not a good reason for increased central control. It has never been a principle of Conservative Government, wet or dry, Right or Left, that the gentleman in Whitehall knows best. In fact, we used to go about proclaiming "Town hall, not Whitehall", and how foolish Mr. Douglas Jay was to say that the gentleman in Whitehall really does know best. Legislation should not rely on the good intentions of present Ministers; on the contrary, it should provide restraints on a bad Minister who may exercise power unwisely in the future. My right hon. and hon. Friends are very happy that power should be in the hands of the Secretary of State at present, but suppose that Secretary of State were Mr. Ken Livingstone, who might take the view that it would be right to rate-cap rural authorities that were spending too much so that more money could go into inner city areas.
  Since 1601 every local authority has had the right to levy the rate that it considers necessary to fulfil its statutory functions. That does not mean that it can spend anything it likes. It is bound by the doctrine of ultra vires. Its capital expenditure has always been controlled. For the rest, it must justify expenditure by relation to a statutory function. The only freedom that it has is the so-called tuppenny rate, and there has been criticism because that has been abused. However, even if that were abolished altogether, there could be no more than the saving of the tuppenny rate.
  The truth about this Bill is that, quite apart from it being a major constitutional measure, it is as if the Government are trying to disguise the realities of the rating situation by showing that they are just doing something. In my view, the constitutional issue is so important that, as we have had no debate on the White Paper, the minimum of intervals between First Reading and the debate today and no opportunity, because of the recess, to discuss it in committee, the Government ought to agree to take the Committee stage on the Floor of the House. If they are not prepared to do that on an issue of this kind, I shall certainly vote against the Second Reading of the Bill today. If the Government think so well of the Bill and if it is so popular, they will be only too glad to have its merits proclaimed as widely as possible.
  The truth is that the Bill does nothing to deal with the real problems of rates, rating reform and the distribution of rates. I accept that industry and commerce have a grievance. They pay something like 57 per cent. of the total rate. That is because successive Governments have deliberately moved the burden of rates away from voters to non-voters. We should redress that. We should consider a measure of industrial de-rating. That would create real jobs and real growth. I would certainly be willing to see a measure of that kind go through the House. However, as we have shifted the burden from voters to non-voters, so we have shifted the burden of expenditure from central
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  Government to local government. We say that the rates are a bad tax, yet we have loaded the rates with more and more of the public expenditure. So, in spite of the fact that local authorities have reduced their expenditure while central Government have increased it, in real terms the rate burden has gone up.
  I shall illustrate this by reference to Northumberland. Had the central grant been the same this year as in 1977–78 the rate would have been 103p in the pound instead of 158p. However, I do not think that many of the ratepayers really understand how this has been done. It may be right for the Government to reduce general Government expenditure and the general contributions to rates, but the Government should not then pretend that this has no effect on the rate bill that is presented. No one suggests that local authorities should have complete autonomy when central Government provide so much of the expenditure, but the powers of this Bill are totally unnecessary and will lead to greater confusion.
  We have been told that there have already been seven grant systems and four Bills, two withdrawn. We could make this another. As a result of what the Government have already done, the local government finance system is in utter chaos. It is a complex, unscientific, muddled mess and whether the authority is extravagant or prudent, Socialist or Conservative, it does not know from year to year, even month to month, what grant conditions are to be imposed. The Bill does nothing to improve that situation. The Government have come to the conclusion: "Something must be done. This is something. Let's do it." Once again, we shall find that they have produced a measure that will make a badly handled situation worse. Once again, we shall find that the parliamentary convenience of today will become the parliamentary embarrassment of tomorrow.
  I must say in conclusion, having been involved in local government for much of my political life, that I feel a sense of despair that a Conservative Government are bringing to the House a measure that is so basically bad, so potentially dangerous and, in the final analysis, so pathetically inadequate.
  6 pm
  Mrs. Renée Short: The Secretary of State made a puny and unconvincing speech when he introduced his Bill this afternoon. The Bill has been condemned by every Conservative Member who has spoken in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), speaking from the Opposition Front Bench, dealt with the Bill very powerfully. The strength of the arguments that he advanced should have convinced the whole House that we should not vote for the Second Reading tonight and that the Bill should be thrown out.
  The Secretary of State said that the Bill was about local tax. He also said that it was about local spending. He should have said, if he wished to describe the Bill adequately, that it is about local coercion—coercion of local authorities to do what the Government intend them to do—which will have a devastating effect on the local services that are provided by local authorities.
  The Government intend, in the Bill, to take direct control over rating, and thus over the expenditure decisions of local authorities, taking away the right of local authorities to make their own decisions. That will deny local electorates the right to decide for themselves the

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  expenditure policies that they wish to pursue. Thus, central Government will be a dictator, telling local authorities what expenditure decision they may make. Councillors will become puppets of the Government, carrying out only policies approved by this Government, and having the freedom merely to do what the Government
  Hitherto local government has had the power to make decisions to spend money on policies and programmes presented to its electors. I speak as one who for many years before I came to this place was a member of a county council, and a rural district council. Those policies and programmes are approved by a majority of voters at elections and are then carried out by the council after the election. That is democracy, is it not?
  I shall quote the words of the Minister then responsible for local government in 1980, in the Standing Committee considering the Local Government Planning and Land Bill:
  "My Department will not be in the business of saying how much each authority should spend, where it should or should not make cuts or on what it should spend money … We have said that our concern is the distribution of public money … the ultimate decision on rating and on the volume of expenditure on local authorities is a matter for the councillors themselves."—[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 27 March 1980; c. 840–41.]
  That is what the Secretary of State is now denying to local authorities. It was as described in 1980, and so it should continue to be. If electors do not care for the way in which councillors spend ratepayers' money, they always have a remedy: they have the opportunity, at elections, to vote the councillors out of office.
  The concentration of more and more power in the hands of this Government poses a threat to democracy. To sweep away the budgetary freedom of local authorities, merely because their ideas about the use of that freedom are different from those of this Government, is both dangerous and scandalous. In a unitary state such as we have, local government has considerable responsibility—far greater than in a federal state — because it is only the democratic, elected check on the concentration of all Government power in one central dictatorship. I hope that local electors will make sure that all Tory councillors and candidates who support this Bill are defeated when those electors next have the opportunity to vote. I hope that they will bear in mind, when the next election comes around, that those Conservative Members have had the nerve to go into the Lobby and support the Bill tonight.
  I remind the House that if we had a Secretary of State who believed in subsidising urban public transport, for example, many of our so-called overspending local authorities could become underspending local authorities overnight. This measure means that henceforth the Secretary of State will be involved in the detailed budgetary process of every local authority, interfering in business that is not his business. He will have to have regard to their balances and their levels of spending. Will he then tell local authorities where specific cuts have to be made? Will he dictate to them how to carry out their duties? Will he tell them what to spend or not spend on particular services? Perhaps the Minister will reply to these questions.
  The Bill represents an unprecedented increase in the dictatorial powers of this Government. As a consequence of this Government's majority, Parliament will be quite
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  unable to help any local authority that appeals against the dictatorial powers of the Secretary of State. Arbitrary power will replace local budgetary processes.
  My own local authority has managed—frequently by reducing expenditure—to contain the net budget roughly in line with the Government target. However, it is becoming more and more difficult, and the latest projections of our target, GREA and expenditure levels indicate severe problems for subsequent years So although Wolverhampton is complying with targets, the position could change dramatically in a year or two.
  My local authority provides a first-rate service for its ratepayers. It has an excellent school meals service, providing good and well-balanced meals, with a good choice. I understand that the education committee of the Herts county council — an overwhelmingly Tory county council — has just decided to cut out school meals altogether to save £1·5 million. My local authority would never dream of doing that. I hope that the Hertfordshire ratepayers will remember what they did.
  My local authority provides community services for the handicapped, elderly people and small children. There are also services for minority groups, maintaining good relations in a multicultural society. It provides a rich pattern of activities — probably better than those provided by most other local authorities in areas with similar problems. We give a great deal of help to deprived families, whose children are deprived as a result of this Government's policies which have put 3·5 million people out of work and created 18 per cent. unemployment in Wolverhampton. The community services for young people in the area are varied and rich. Those young people are denied the opportunity of getting jobs when they leave school, and instead do a year's activity on some of the Manpower Services Commission schemes, on which the Government are spending money instead of providing proper jobs. My authority believes that we should help young people after that year, thus avoiding the problems that would arise if they were left without help. Many services are provided in my local authority, giving a rich and varied pattern to the community.
  Our GREA in Wolverhampton, at £99·887 million recently notified for 1984–85, is now lower than the Government's target of £100·248 million. So we shall probably spend more than the GREA next year, even if we avoid grant penalties which, of course, are calculated in relation to targets and GREAs.
  It is no argument to say that the Government, for economic reasons, must control expenditure by local authorities if that expenditure is financed by rates. As long as local authorities finance their increased spending out of their local rates and balance their budgets without borrowing to cover any deficit, their expenditure poses no problems for the public sector borrowing requirement and the money supply. So why on earth do the Government not leave local authorities to manage their own affairs as they see fit, as they have been given the support and confidence of their local electorate to carry out the policies presented to their electorate at the time of the local elections?
  I hope that Tory Members will join us in the Lobby tonight to ensure that this pernicious Bill is thrown out of the House.
  6.10 pm
  Mr. Fred Silvester: My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham

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  (Mr. Rippon) said at the beginning of his speech that this proposal has the support of ratepayers, and went on to imply that that was because they were either too stupid or too ignorant to understand the implications. The House responds to talk about large-scale economic policies and principles of the constitution. However, the kernel of this Bill is about ratepayers, people smarting under bills going up by £100 or £200 a year, who see no respite. I shall say something about both economic and constitutional issues before returning to the ratepayer.
  The Government have helped to obscure the issue by justifying the Bill on the ground that Governments must control the total amount of local government expenditure. They say that local authorities account for one quarter of expenditure and therefore must be controlled. However, the Government already do that — they control grants and borrowing and have many statutory and other methods of bringing persuasion to bear on local authorities. As has been made clear in the debate, they have succeeded to a great measure. Local authority total expenditure has fallen. Local authorities take a smaller share of public expenditure now, and a roughly similar proportion of gross domestic product. Without Government pressure, that would not have happened, and without continued Government pressure it will not continue. However, the Bill is not needed for that purpose.
  Nobody believes, in this debate at any rate, that overspending on arbitrary targets by £770 million, or less than 0·6 per cent. of public expenditure, will shatter the economy. We should not look at the Bill from that point of view. That is trying to give a veneer of scientific respectability to the old business of horse trading and political bargaining and negotiation that has been the basis of local and national government for as long as we can remember.
  From the Opposition to the Government, critics hail the Bill as the end of local government as we know it. That is completely untrue. Such people have a romantic view of the independence of local government. Councils never have been, are not and should not be, independent. Parliament lays down their functions, funds many of their services and even lays down rules for their staff. Governments override local policies on schools or council houses and the Government pick up the pieces and pay the bill when things go wrong. For example, what happens to all the costs that arise when the policies of a council contribute to the decline of business activities in the city centres?
  We should be careful how we alter the balance between local and national government, but we must not pretend that we should never do it. The truth is that the case for part II is weak, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has not advanced it very strongly today. This may lead to the demise of part II during the passage of the Bill, but the case for part I is overwhelming. The case starts and finishes with the ratepayer, just as it did when the Government made their original promise.
  I remind the Government of that original promise to abolish the domestic rate. We have reneged on that promise. When the 1981 Green Paper was published we stated again that it was our aim to
  "remedy as fully as possible the shortcomings of the existing system".
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  We have failed in that aim. Nothing has changed. People still perceive rates as unfair and arbitrary, which they are.
  There are some wise people who knowingly say, "I told you so." They will list for one, at the drop of the hat, all the complications, the need for revenue, the lack of agreement about an alternative. They parade the excuses for failure and they exhibit that age-old error of those on the inside looking out—they forget the customer. They forget the poor old ratepayer. The customers have long since made their decision. They want public services paid for in a fairer way than rates, if not entirely then at least in good measure. We gave the original promise for good reasons and the good reasons still exist.
  Instead of switching from the unfair to the fairer we have loaded costs on to the rates. In 1979–80, 8·56 per cent. of general government revenue was raised on the rates. The forecasts for 1983–84 put the proportion at 10·41 per cent. We have raised £2·3 billion more on the rates than if we had kept to the old percentage. The proportion of local government expenditure borne by fairer taxes has fallen from 61 per cent. to 52·8 per cent. My right hon. Friend proposes to switch rate support grant next year towards 51·9 per cent, and I shall have great difficulty in supporting him in that move.
  The Government justify the switch from fairer central taxes to unfair rates by saying that if the ratepayers pay more of the total they will take more interest and bring the councils to account. That is sheer humbug. The White Paper admits, and much has been made of this today, the facts about the sluggish relationship between voting and paying. Practice and theory are widely different. The link is at best sluggish and in some cases non-existent.
  As a result, we have councils of which the composition does not change and in which councillors and officials hardly ever feel under threat. The absence of periodic spring cleaning produces bad, fat and sloppy administration, in which vested interests bed down undisturbed. It would happen to national Governments if we did not throw them out from time to time. The cost of these circumstances is not borne by those who live in the leafy lanes of Conservative shires but by the ratepayers of the long-entrenched big-spending authorities. They need part I, and it ill becomes any of my hon. Friends who have already broken a promise about reforming rates to deny ratepayers this much chance of relief.
  Part I has a limited objective, which is to tackle the profligate. Some local authorities are profligate and some are not. We shall have to make a stab at the worst offenders, and the Bill provides Parliament with the means to oversee that choice. It would be absurd to imagine that a detailed examination of all authorities is expected and in part I the Bill excludes three quarters of them. The Bill provides for a rigorous examination, forcing local authorities into public justification in front of people who have the resources and muscle to be taken seriously. If the high spenders are right, that will soon become apparent. If not, it is time that they were brought down to size.
  I hope that the Government will keep their eye on this simple objective. I am not greatly interested in whether Manchester hits the Government target. Nor am I hoodwinked if Manchester expenditure increases less than the others in percentage terms. As the highest spender outside London, it has room to change. A small increase on too much is worse than a big increase on too little. However, I want to know why it costs Manchester twice as much to empty the dustbins as it costs Birmingham,

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  Newcastle or Bradford, or why it costs 20 per cent. more to educate children in Manchester than in Sheffield, and more than 50 per cent. more than it costs in Leeds. Our dustbins are no cleaner and our children are no better educated. Why is it that if we merely come down to the average for metropolitan districts Manchester could knock £100 off the average rate bill?
  "Individuals and ratepayers' groups tended to favour abolition, while representatives of local government and the professions thought on the whole that domestic rates should be kept."
  Well, they would, wouldn't they? However, local government is for the customer and not for the councillors or professions. We go through a great pretence of independence which gives the councils a nice feeling and the ratepayers a pain in the neck.
  Teachers' salaries are negotiated centrally. The Government in the past have taken charge — they will again — if they do not like the results of the negotiations. About 83 per cent. of police costs are salary costs and, within that, the pay of the police is settled centrally and the establishment approved by the Home Secretary. Higher education outside the universities is paid for out of a national fund and redistributed according to the siting of the institutions. It is a national fund paid out of unfair rates rather than fairer taxes. Those are examples of items better paid centrally.
  We are breaking our promise and imposing real hardship on many ratepayers and unnecessary complications on the local government system in the pursuit of an illusion about council independence. Part I may not be much compared with what we promised, but at least let us use it to give some relief to the hard pressed.
  6.22 pm
  Mr. John Cartwright: I regard the Bill as a logical step along the road of centralisation down which the Government started in 1979, but it is worth remembering that it is a step that the Government implied on a number of occasions that they would not take. Among the many well-thumbed statements made by the Secretary of State for Employment, when Minister for Local Government and Environmental Services, during the passage of the Local Government, Planning and Land (No. 2) Bill is his statement on 27 March 1980:
  "My Department will not be in the business of saying how much each local authority should spend, where it should or should not make cuts or on what it should spend money."
  The right hon. Gentleman continued:
  "the ultimate decision on rating and on the volume of expenditure of local authorities is a matter for the councillors themselves." —[Official Report, Standing Committee D, 27 March 1980; c. 840–41.]
  It will not be a matter for the councillors themselves if this Bill gets on the statute book.
  A number of speakers, including the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Silvester), have made it clear that the Government's economic argument does not stand up to any scrutiny. Even taking the Government's arbitrary decisions on targets, the total overspending is only 0·6 per cent. of total public expenditure. Surely no one is really trying to persuade us that the great economic recovery through which we are supposed to be going will be jeopardised by that type of overspending, especially when it is set against the margin of error of the public sector borrowing requirement or the fact that local government has been far more successful than central Government in controlling its expenditure.
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  A good deal has been made in the debate so far about the burden of rates on industry and commerce. We ought to recognise that rates can be a problem, especially for small firms, when there are sudden, steep rises in rate levels. We cannot disguise the fact that rates are an element in overall industrial and commercial costs. lf the Government are really bothered about the problem, there are far better ways of tackling it. They could take a measure of industrial derating if they felt that that was a way forward. They could take a much better step to transfer the non-domestic rate to central Government. That rate could be replaced by a local income tax as part of a general reform of local government finance.
  The difficulty, as successive speakers have pointed out, is that the Government have been forced to bring in the Bill because they raised expectations that they could not meet. They raised expectations in 1974 about the abolition of the domestic rate. All the talk about the reform of local government finance during the past couple of years raised expectations again. The Government are unwilling or unable to deliver a proper, thoroughgoing reform of local government finance, so they introduced this shoddy Bill as a sign that they were doing something to protect ratepayers.
  The central part of the Secretary of State's speech was about the protection of ratepayers. He made the case that central Government power must be invoked to protect ratepayers against extravagant overspending local authorities. I declare an interest, because I noticed that the London borough of Greenwich figured prominently on the target or hit list — whatever it is called. I have lived in that borough for more than 20 years. I represented the borough on its local authority for nine years, and have represented it in Parliament for another nine years. I am a former leader of that local authority.
  I do not accept that council's spending priorities, many of which are out of sympathy with the average Greenwich ratepayer and voter. But if I were to remove all the things that I dislike in that council's spending — the police advisers, women's advisers, magazines, campaign organisers and the rest of the trendy Left-wing froth—I do not believe that the London borough of Greenwich could get its spending down to the levels that the Government are setting for it without cutting into the services that are vital in a borough that has more than its fair share of social deprivation, which has suffered deindustrialisation very rapidly and very high levels of unemployment.
  To find some impartial support for that statement, I looked up the figures produced by the Audit Commission for Local Authorities in England and Wales, which is a creature of this Government. It was established by the Local Government Finance Act 1982. The Audit Commission has produced a profile of Greenwich in which it compares Greenwich spending with a number of similar London boroughs. Those similar London boroughs were Ealing, Enfield, Hounslow, Lewisham, Merton, Redbridge and Waltham Forest. The majority are outer London boroughs and Tory-controlled. I looked with great interest to see how Greenwich compared with those paragons of virtue. Spending per head of population in Greenwich is £231·50; the lowest figure for that clutch of authorities is £205·10 and the highest is £395·70. The average figure is £310. Greenwich —the focal point of

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  this tremendous ministerial criticism as a wicked overspender—is well below the average of that group of authorities.
  Mr. Patrick Jenkin: The hon. Gentleman is comparing an inner London authority, which is not an education authority, with outer London authorities which are such authorities. I may have misunderstood what he is trying to say. He must compare authorities in the same class.
  Mr. Cartwright: Surely the right hon. Gentleman is not suggesting that the Audit Commission had not noticed that. The services that I am citing are the same for all the authorities in the group. I did not want to delay the House by going through each of the services, but naturally they do not include education because as the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, Greenwich is not an education authority. I was comparing like with like. The Audit Commission also compared like with like. I am not a friend of the political leadership of the London borough of Greenwich, but I say in fairness that those figures do not support the idea that Greenwich is way out of line in its spending levels. Even if it were, I believe that local spending priorities are a matter for local debate and argument.
  I shall back my chances and those of other political opponents of the present town hall regime, and we shall battle this matter out in the right place — the London borough of Greenwich. We have already had some success in parliamentary elections. I should not be a Member of Parliament if we had not. We will fight our own battle. We do not need big brother or interfering auntie from Whitehall to help us in that argument.
  Mr. Peter Bottomley: Surely one of the major points is that if domestic and industrial ratepayers face a rate increase of 59 per cent. in one year, which may be followed by similar increases for another two years before there are local elections when the political bounds of the council may change, it may be too late to improve employment, the standard of living and ratepayers' interests in the borough.
  Mr. Cartwright: I would put my trust in the political ingenuity of my supporters and those of the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) in ensuring that our case is put before the people of Greenwich and they have a chance for voting for it.
  To misquote the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon), the Government are taking a sledgehammer to crack a few Left-wing nuts and, in so doing, are putting at risk the whole system of democratic local self-government built up over generations in this country.
  There are far better ways to tackle the problem. If we had a fair voting system for local elections, it would be impossible for unrepresentative small groups to take power in town halls on the basis of a very small percentage of the electorate. As the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) implied, a local income tax would create a far more direct link between those who pay for local services and those who make the spending decisions. That would do wonders in raising interest in local government and increasing the turnout at local elections.
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  I believe that if local people are given the essential tools to do the job, they will be far better at controlling local authority expenditure than all the bureaucrats in their Whitehall offices.
  The suggestion that there will be a genuine safeguard in parliamentary scrutiny cannot be taken seriously. Clause 2 makes it clear that an authority will be designated for rate capping by an order laid before but not approved by Parliament. Only when the whole process of negotiation is complete will parliamentary approval be involved. Even then, clause 4 provides that the order
  "may relate to two or more authorities."
  How many authorities will be involved? Will there be a mass production line and a conveyor belt system for trundling rate-capped authorities through the House? In any case, how effective will the scrutiny be? None of us is naive enough to suppose that we shall be considering the merits of the case. The Whips will be applied and what the Secretary of State wants the Secretary of State will get. Parliamentary approval is thus a complete charade.
  In any case, I was not elected to Parliament to usurp the functions of the policy and resources committee of a local authority or to go through the budgets of individual local councils. Local councillors are elected to do that job, and they should be told to get on with it. I certainly wish them to be made accountable, but not to a bunch of mandarins in Marsham street. They should be accountable downwards to the people whom they are elected to serve. The Bill confuses responsibility and will give inefficient councils a perfect alibi. After the rate-capping performance, they will be able to say that central Government have interfered and mucked everything up so it is not the councillors' fault that services are bad and rates are high.
  Social Democrats and Liberals reject the whole basic approach of the Bill and the idea that central Government have a right and a duty to control local authority spending. We want alternative independent sources of power and decision making. We reject the dead, cold hand of Whitehall uniformity. We wish to encourage the diversity, the initiative and the sensitivity that are the life blood of genuine local self-government. The Bill threatens that, and we look forward to playing our part in fighting it every inch of the way.
  6.34 pm
  Mr. Reg Prentice: I begin by referring to a figure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State used in his speech and that has subsequently been mentioned in the debate. He implied that if the powers had been available for use in the current financial year he might have used them against 18 high-spending authorities, with a saving of about £300 million. I draw two conclusions from that.
  First, the relief for the hard-pressed ratepayers of Islington, Sheffield or wherever will be far more modest than they have been led to expect from Government statements and media treatment of the measure and certainly does not justify a Bill of this consequence.
  Secondly, savings of that order are utterly irrelevant to the Government's macroeconomic problems, so I hope that we shall hear no more about the need for the Treasury to have powers of this kind because local authority spending is about 25 per cent. of total public expenditure. Since 1979, the Government have been more successful than any post-war Government in bringing public spending

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  under control, and they should not be too modest about that. They successfully brought down inflation. They did not need these powers for that purpose then and they do not need them for it now. Moreover, Britain competes in world markets with many federal countries in which the Government have far less power over total public expenditure than the British Government have had for many years. I hope, therefore, that we shall hear no more claims from Ministers about a macroeconomic case for the Bill.
  The Bill will provide no substantial relief for ratepayers so long as the Government intend to use the specific powers only in respect of 12 to 20 authorities.
  Mr. Tony Marlow: My right hon. Friend dismisses the economic case, but since 1979 real expenditure by local authorities has increased by about 4 per cent., which amounts to considerably more than £300 million. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State did not say that he would have applied the powers as my right hon. Friend suggests. He was merely giving an example. The overall effect would be to prevent local authority expenditure from growing so that the 4 per cent. increase in the past four years could not be repeated in the next four years. The saving would therefore be not £300 million but 4 per cent. over the next four years, which is a far greater sum with a far greater impact on the economy.
  Mr. Prentice: I shall not give way again as we have all been asked to be brief, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North, (Mr. Marlow) as he has helped me to lead on to my next point.
  The Bill could certainly have a far greater effect if the powers were used more widely than in specific counteraction against high-spending authorities. Even if the general power were never brought into use, there is no limit to the number of local authorities which could be tackled and the extent to which this could be done through the specific powers in part I. Only if it were intended to increase the use of the powers over the years would it be worth while for the Government to introduce a measure of such constitutional importance. We all know from experience that when Governments have powers of this kind they tend to use them more and more as the years go by and there will be pressure every year from the CBI, the Treasury, hard-pressed ratepayers and many other sources, including Members of Parliament, for the Government to use the powers more drastically.
  Against that background, there is clearly a constitutional argument, and I resent the attitude of some people in the House and in the media who suggest that that is not so. If the Bill is to have any real impact, it will alter the balance between national and local government in Britain. If we embark upon such a move at all, we should do so with very great care. The fact that the United Kingdom in a unitary and not a federal state makes local government more important, not less important. In a democracy of this kind, it is vital to have a certain disperal of power among various elected bodies which will sometimes conflict with one another. Parliament, of course, is sovereign, but over many generations Parliament in its wisdom has delegated to local authorities important powers over important aspects of people's lives. Local government in Britain thus fulfils at least part of the function which in a federal country would be fulfilled by the individual states.
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  Local government has been a tremendous success story. I wish sometimes that its spokesmen were not so apologetic and that people in the media who have never served on a local authority would not sneer at it in the way that they do. The fact is that over the last century or more in this country local government has built up a system of public education, a system of municipal housing, many elements in the Health Service, the police force and many other vital public and social services that make up the quality of life in Britain. These have been achievements of local government. To take an example with which I was intimately concerned when I was the Minister responsible for the disabled, in the past 13 or 14 years there has been a great expansion by local authorities of personal social services to chronically sick and disabled people, bringing more dignity into their lives.
  All these achievements are achievements of local government. It might be argued that all this could have been done by some sort of national Government machinery. I suppose that one could imagine a concept whereby every director of education was the county officer of DES or every director of social services was the county officer of DHSS. If that had been the case in the past 100 years, I believe that our public services would have been of lower quality and, incidentally, probably would have cost much more. They would certainly have had to bear the burden of a vast regional and national bureaucracy in order that decisions could be made. For goodness sake, let us not slip towards that position by accident, as we might do if the Bill were fully implemented.
  I preface my other criticism by saying that I condemn as strongly as anyone some of the extreme Left-wing Socialist authorities in the country. The advent of people like Mr. Livingstone and Mr. Blunkett has produced a new ball game. We are looking at local authorities concerned primarily not with serving their communities but with fighting a class war, and that produces a new situation of which the Government have to take note. [Interruption.] My advice to hon. Gentlemen is that they should not keep interrupting. I am on the same side as them, so they ought to listen and, if they care about the future of the Labour party, some of them ought to be condemning the Livingstones and Blunketts of this world.
  What my right hon. Friends on the Front bench propose in this measure would help the tactics of the hard Left in local government because the last vestiges of responsibility will now be taken away. Every budgeting exercise by a Left-wing controlled authority will lose all touch with reality. It may be said that some of them are out of touch with reality now, but they will no longer be under a compulsion to stay in touch with reality. All they need do every year will be to draw up a manifesto.
  Mr. Wareing: Whose side is the hon. Gentleman on?
  Mr. Prentice: I am sorry to prolong my speech, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I am bound to put in this comment. If one thing would persuade me to vote with the Government tonight, it is the conduct of some Opposition Members. Fortunately, I am immune to that.
  I want to go on to repeat the point that I think has been made insufficiently in the debate. The real decisions every year on the selected authorities will be made by the Secretary of State or, as other hon. Members have said, by civil servants in his Department. All that the councillors need do is to draw up a manifesto. They will then give

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  every pressure group in the locality everything it wants in every department, and they can blame the Secretary of State when the targets are not reached.
  There will be the further consequence, I think, that it will become a kind of virility symbol for the hard Left to be in that category. I want the House to imagine the situation of a Labour-controlled authority in which the controlling Labour group is in what is now called the soft Left category but it has a hard Left element in its ranks and a strong hard Left element in its general management committee. What would they say? They would say: "Why are our comrades in the next town being rate-capped and we are not? Why are we not on the Tory Government's check list? Why are we cosily co-operating with a reactionary Tory Government to keep spending down?" [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] When hon. Members cheer, they give strength to the argument. I repeat: it will become a virility symbol of the hard Left to be on the hit list. The Secretary of State will find that, unwittingly, he is encouraging those forces that he is trying to oppose.
  If I may say so, I see some parallel here with the history of the Conservative Government in the past 15 years on the subject of industrial relations. In 1971, for the best of all motives, the Industrial Relations Act was brought in, and it was a practical failure, I think, because of fundamental misunderstandings by Ministers of the time of what made trade union militants tick.
  The trade union legislation passed since 1980 has been very much more successful in dealing with the problems of industrial relations. In the understanding of local government Ministers seem to have reached approximately the same point that they reached in the early 1970s in the understanding of industrial relations. If the Government are trying to fight the hard Left, I wish they would listen to people who know something about it. I believe that they are heading, without intending to do so, for making a bad situation worse.
  Those of us who care about the failure of local democracy will recognise that many changes are needed. One of the basic changes needed is a change in the rating system, or at least the identification and the implementation of some other source of finance to go alongside local authority rates. Ministers ought not to give up the search for achieving that objective. I know the difficulties. I do not want to say this in a critical way, but I think that people throughout the country will expect Ministers to go on looking for an alternative to the rates. The Government could also have some sort of rate capping for non-domestic rates. I think that there is strength in the argument on behalf of the business community.
  Above all, the Government should sit down in genuine consultation with the representatives of local authorities to try to strengthen the accountability of local government. I do not have time to go into my own ideas on that, but I suggest that the questions to be asked are the following. How can we encourage men and women of ability to continue to make the sacrifices that are needed to serve their communities as councillors? Secondly, how can we encourage professional men and women and administrators to continue to seek a career in local government when they might make more money outside? Thirdly, how can we encourage more citizens to take a
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  continuing critical and constructive interest in the affairs of local government so that local government elections become more of a reality?
  These are difficult challenges, and I think they should not be dodged. We shall not encourage any of those objectives if local government is to be clobbered by central Government year after year by some new technique with the Government saying every year, "We were trying something last year, and now we are going to try something else," because people in local government are becoming very discouraged, and their morale is suffering as a result of that process.
  Therefore, I urge my right hon. Friends to think again.
  6.49 pm
  Mr. Ken Eastham: First, I think it is fair to comment on some of the remarks made by the Secretary of State. I felt that it was a very jaundiced presentation. On numerous occasions prior to today's debate we have witnessed the right hon. Gentleman in broadcasts and interviews and statements to the newspapers giving some very distorted views about the real position.
  I represent an inner city, and it is the inner cities that are often at the receiving end of the venom that is regularly pumped out by the Secretary of State. I am sure that every hon. Member with local authority interests has been snowed under by protests about the concept of the Bill. Those protests have come not just from Labour authorities and organisations; dozens of Tory organisations have written to Labour Members, just as, I am sure, they have written to Conservative Members. They have come from voluntary organisations of all kinds, including housing and youth organisations. I shall not delay the House by giving examples. They all state that the Bill would be detrimental to the quality of life.
  The Secretary of State frequently talks about making savings, but we must get the matter in perspective and realise that he is really talking about cuts; and there is a big difference between making legitimate savings and imposing cuts that will be detrimental to the needs of the community.
  The hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Silvester) still does not seem to understand the facts of life when he speaks, for example, about education in Manchester. Why does education cost about 20 per cent. more in Manchester than in other cities? That is the kind of question the hon. Gentleman poses, and I will answer him, though he could easily obtain the facts from the local education authorities.
  The inner cities, including Manchester, spend more on education because of the higher percentage of ethnic minority groups who require special education assistance. We also have a higher incidence of poverty in our schools, with more parents appealing for necessary clothing for their children, and many more free school meals are given. We also have the problem of population movement. All those factors increase the cost of education.
  It is wrong for the general public to think that money is being wasted in strict educational terms in the classroom. The environment and the needs of the community in the inner city areas cause the problem. I am sure that the hon. Member for Withington has had that explained to him on numerous occasions. I appreciate,

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  however, that it is more attractive if statements appear in local Tory newspapers to the effect that money is being wasted on education, when that is far from the truth.
  The Secretary of State often blatantly distorts the position when he refers to local authorities being "overspenders", and "waste" is another favourite word of his.
  Dr. John Marek: An example of distortion appears in paragraph 1.22 of the White Paper, where it is stated that during the period April 1979 to April 1983 rates went up by 91 per cent. while the retail price index went up by only 55 per cent. If, in that White Paper, the base point had been taken correctly and if account had been taken of the loss of rate support grant and of the fact that domestic rate relief had stayed still, then instead of the difference being 36 per cent. one way, it would have been 2 per cent. the other way. Does it not lower the authority of this House and of the Government when, although the statements may be right in themselves, together they give the wrong impression?
  Mr. Eastham: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making the very point to which I was coming next. I tabled a parliamentary question on the subject of rate support grant and received a reply on 21 December confessing that the Government's aggregate Exchequer support had fallen by 10 per cent. in cost terms. Although the Secretary of State keeps telling local authorities that their rates are going up, even a blind man can see some of the consequences of reducing the rate support grant.
  It is dishonest of the right hon. Gentleman to sit with a look of innocence on his face when he does not understand the basic economics of local authorities. I urge him to start afresh and spend a few years in local authority service. Then he may comprehend what the problem is all about.
  Not long ago the Minister for Housing and Construction. accompanied by the hon. Member for Withington and local Conservative councillors, came to Manchester to see some of the housing stock. The Minister spoke of the standards that were demanded and of the need for more maintenance work to be carried out on council houses. Did it not dawn on him that the local authority would be only too delighted to spend more on maintaining its housing stock if only the Government would allow that expenditure? That is an example of the contradictions that occur. In that case the Minister and local newspapers condemned the town hall for not spending more on maintaining council houses, but they did not refer to the consequences of the cuts being made by central Government.
  A few organisations, such as the CBI—in my view, they have been put up to it—have written in support of rate capping. They are on their own in supporting the Bill. After all, in many inner city areas industry has much to answer for. After industrialising areas, its chemical and other spoil heaps have been left for local authorities to clean up. Rivers and canals have had to be cleaned. Industry has left it to local ratepayers to clean up and pick up the bill.
  The Minister quoted two letters to show, he said, that industry had moved to areas where rates were cheaper. He was, of course, making a case for Conservative authorities when he spoke about cheaper rates and the need to protect jobs. I have news for the right hon. Gentleman. Adjacent
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  to Manchester was the largest industrial estate in Britain — Trafford Park. At one time up to 80,000 workers were employed there. Today there are probably no more than 15,000. That is a Conservative authority where the rates are lower than in the other 10 local districts. How does that square with the letters from which the right hon. Gentleman quoted? How can rates be driving industry away and causing the loss of jobs?
  The inner cities have many problems. In the inner city of Manchester—the core of 10 districts—there are three teaching hospitals and the Christie's hospital, which is a specialist cancer hospital. No less than 93 per cent. of the patients at the Christie hospital are not residents of Manchester. However, the Manchester social services department has to pay the social workers who see to the day-to-day needs of those patients. The bill for paying those social workers to support those patients amounts to £1·5 million a year. Does the Minister expect the city to stop supporting and supplying the social workers in those hospitals in order to save money? Does he consider that we are wasting money there? How does the Minister suggest that we should offset some of the financial liabilities that are not strictly the responsibility of the inner city?
  On the other side of the coin, fanning enjoys the highest subsidies of all and pays no rates whatsoever. Nothing is done or said about that. No-one suggests that the fanners should chip in more money towards the costs of the local authorities.
  Before the Government talk about overspending, they might find it useful on occasions to look at their own management. The Public Accounts Committee considers Government overspending. For example, there was the sale of Hamilton house. That building, which was sold for £700,000, was discovered to be worth £15 million. Was that not a waste of public money? We could also consider the Crown Agents. Their speculations may have cost the Government, the nation and the taxpayers hundreds of millions of pounds, but very little was said about that.
  The Government cannot even control their own tax system, yet they have the hard-faced cheek to talk about the inefficiency and overspending of local authorities. From experience, I can say that local authorities are far more efficient about expenditure and accountability than the present Government.
  I agree with the Government that nobody likes paying rates. By the same rule, nobody likes paying taxes. However, people need and demand services, and they legitimately criticise the Government for making handouts to their frends through legislation, for stripping national assets, for privatisation and for the sale of lucrative interests on the cheap. The Conservatives do not criticise such activities, yet they take away the resources that should provide for the day-to-day needs of the less well off in the inner cities.
  The Bill will not improve local government. It will increase the misery of the old, the poor, children and minority groups, and it will affect housing and health. The Minister clearly wants dictatorial powers. I hope that the Bill will be rejected tonight.
  7.5 pm
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: The hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham) made one comment with which I agree. lie said that we have all been inundated with letters about the Bill.

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  So we have. They have mostly been duplicated, stereotyped letters, all containing the same parrot phrases originating in Transport House. We have received precious few genuine letters. I can tell those of my right hon. Friends and hon. Friends who are unhappy about the Bill that the majority of the genuine letters that I have received have come from the ratepayers who have to foot the bill. They are not interested in neat, constitutional, university debating speeches.
  I fully support the Bill. However, I am not wholly uncritical of it. It is three years too late. Those of us who had served in local government knew three years ago that the Blunketts, the Livingstones and the Hodges would laugh and raise two fingers if we withdrew the rate support grant and expected the voters to put them out. In the rotten boroughs of Sheffield, Islington and the like, there was no way in which that could happen.
  Dr. Cunningham: Disgraceful.
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: Yes, it is disgraceful that the ratepayers have to suffer in that way.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) has said that he came to the House in 1950 when the slogan was "Set the people free". I was in local government at that time. I had just defeated Anthony Greenwood and Baroness Serota, taking their council seats. I was also an active Young Conservative. My right hon. Friend failed to remind the House of the other half of the phrase. Sir Winston also said "Trust the people".
  Mr. Frank Dobson: Except in Sheffield.
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: What the people are saying now is, "For goodness sake, protect the ratepayers." One trusts the people, but in places such as Sheffield and Camden few of those who pay full rates can command a majority of the votes.
  Let nobody pretend that the legislation is unconstitutional. Under the framework of law and custom connecting central and local government, local government has always spent within national guidelines. Until about 1970, nobody argued against that. I am talking about the facts of life, not about constitutional theories. I led Camden borough council during the one period when the Conservatives controlled it.
  Mr. Dobson: Only in part.
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: I led the Conservatives there in opposition and in power. In terms of rateable value, it was the fourth wealthiest local authority in the country. In 1968, there was a Tory council and a Labour Government. The Labour Government asked for restraint in local government expenditure. That Government were so unpopular that I could have defied them. I could have said that we would spend as much as we considered necessary. However, I and my colleagues knew that we were not an alternative parliament. We would spend money in accordance with what the Government, of whatever party, said that the nation could afford. If that pattern still prevailed, there would be no need for the legislation.
  I was also at that time not vice-president but deputy chairman of the Associaton of Municipal Corporations, which was Tory-controlled. The chairman was my noble
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  Friend Lord Marshall. We all honourably observed the request of the Labour Government that we should restrain expenditure. There was no need for legislation.
  It is the Left wing of the Labour party that has made the legislation necessary. My right hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Prentice) knows a great deal about the hard Left. He knows that the hard Left is deliberately stirring up the Government in order to try to harm local government. As most of us know, the situation suits the book of the hard Left.
  Let us consider the rate burden of Mr. Average Citizen in Camden. There is an ILEA precept and a GLC precept on his residential property, with a rateable value of £500 —less than the rateable value of many properties in Camden. In 1965–66, that ratepayer would have paid £233. In 1971–72 he would have paid £385. In the current year, he will pay £2,537. That is a 1,000 per cent. increase. Part of the cause, of course, is the loss of the Government grant, but that was courted deliberately by ILEA and the GLC. They spend their money on glossy publications, most of whose contents are untrue. They set up committees for which there is no statutory requirement. They spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on political assistants for their elected councillors, none of whom is necessary. There is no requirement by statute for the GLC and the London boroughs to have anti-police committees, women's committees or employment committees. If they were to cut much of this expenditure, life would be much easier. It is, however, even worse—
  Mr. Tony Banks rose—
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: I shall not give way. If the hon. Gentleman catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he can make his own speech.
  What I resent even more are the despicable tactics being practised by the authorities in Greater London. They are printing cards at the ratepayers' expense for pensioners to fill in. The pensioners are told that their bus passes are at risk, although the Labour party knows that that is a deliberate fabrication. There is a poster campaign throughout London on matters for which they have no statutory responsibility—Ken Livingstone's nuclear-free zones and his anti-racist year. If he understood market research, he would know that he is having exactly the opposite effect to what he wants.
  Worse than that, however, is the fear which is being instilled into ordinary people. I have a letter from a teacher who runs literacy classes. It contains four letters from students, and they all end by saying:
  "Please vote against the ILEA cuts so that our class can carry on."
  Each one uses the same words. That is the type of propaganda that has been put into people's minds. [Interruption.] The trouble with the Labour party is that it hates the truth.
  I have a letter from someone who says:
  "I come from Vietnam. I live in Camden and go to adult classes."
  It finishes:
  "I hope that you will do everything to stop the proposed cuts. I ask you demand the restoration of £150 million rate support grant."
  Who put such words into people's minds for them to send to Members of Parliament? That is the type of spontaneous nonsense that we are receiving. I believe that the people who indulge in such tactics know before they start that the battle is lost and that Parliament will pass the legislation.

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  The Secretary of State spoke about the problems of the business community. Hon. Members will know that not merely the CBI but the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the London Chamber of Commerce and the Chemical Industries Association all provide jobs for people. They say, as we know, that high rates are driving them out of business, and that is why unemployment is increasing.
  I believe that local government should be allowed to spend only if Parliament has specifically authorised the expenditure in general terms. Let me remind one or two of my right hon. and hon. Friends of certain facts. We all fought the last general election on a manifesto which promised the abolition of the metropolitan counties and rate capping. No one was in ignorance of the Government's determination to put those measures through.
  Mr. Boyes rose—
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: If any of my right hon. and hon. Friends said to their electors specifically, "I dissociate myself from that," fine. I acquit my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes (Mr. Benyon), who did the same about the right-to-buy provisions and most of the central legislation that we tried to pass. He and I remain good friends. Anyone who failed to dissociate himself is repudiating his voters, and, more importantly, his workers, because I should not be here and nor would my right hon. and hon. Friends without the hard work of the sloggers who go from door to door, and who raise the 50 pences and the voters who voted for us. They are being let down by any of my right hon. and hon. Friends—
  Mr. Dobson rose—
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: —who are not prepared to keep to the manifesto promises which they backed. If they did not dissociate themselves from the manifesto, of course they backed it.
  I am sorry that my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup is not here, but I know that he will not mind my saying that he will recall our commitment to the Common Market in the 1970 manifesto. He will remember the great pressure that there was on certain hon. Members who did not support that legislation. It was said that the voters expected us to do our duty because they had voted for us. I suggest that there is little difference between that manifesto commitment and the recent one.
  I say to the hon. Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore), who has just returned to the Chamber, that when I was a Minister in the Department of the Environment I was a partnership chairman and went to Hackney. I told Hackney some of the ways in which it could reduce its expenditure to spend more money on sensible things. Hackney chose not to do so. It threw out its moderate leader and its second semi-moderate leader and it now has the hard Left. It is among the most extravagant local authorities in London. One sympathises with the poor, long-suffering voters and residents of Hackney. Somehow they have to bring themselves to throw out that mob or rely upon the Government to protect them. The Government will protect them by passing this legislation.
  I hope that there is no truth in the belief that there are those, particularly in the media, who are fostering the idea that perhaps the other place might decide not to pass the
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  Bill. The other place also has a convention that if something was a general election manifesto commitment it does not try to block it. I do not believe that it will, but I do not want any of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are unhappy about the Bill to try to build up the other place into thinking that it might be able to do something about it.
  I agree with only one thing that the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said. It was his criticism about the Bill's title. The Rates Bill is an innocuous title. I believe that in Committee it could well be amended to something like Relief for Domestic Ratepayers Bill. They are the people who put Conservative Members into power on the clear and specific pledge that they would cap the rates. I am not prepared to let them down, and I hope that my right hon. and hon. Friends will not either.
  7.18 pm
  Mr. Dafydd Wigley: We have heard a speech that has had one characteristic. It is the first speech that has wholeheartedly supported the Government. If that is the tone of the people who support the measure, the House and the country know much more having heard the speech. The speech had an element of, "Trust some of the people some of the time, but do not trust them if they live in Sheffield or Camden." That is the sort of democracy to which we are coming. We have heard about a democratic means test. Conservative Members who have better fundamentals than the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) should think seriously about the Bill. The answer in Camden and elsewhere is to convince the people that the policies are wrong. If the hon. Gentleman cannot do that, he should not hide behind Parliament in forcing through measures that the local people do not want.
  The Bill is cheap, brassy and opportunist, and is before the House because we are debating the failure of successive Governments to respond to the Layfield report and the failure of other Government measures since 1979 to deal with the rate problem.
  I oppose the Bill for three reasons. First, I am opposed in principle to the centralisation that is contained within the Bill, and the constitutional implications of centralisation. Secondly, I oppose the Bill for the practical reasons that it is unfair, discriminating and impractical. Thirdly, the Bill is irrelevant in dealing with the real problems facing Wales.
  We are witnessing the inevitable danger implicit in a unitary state. The saying is that power devolved is power retained. The Bill means that, ultimately, the powers of local authorities will be overriden by the Government. It is not devolution that we need, but a proper framework of local democracy as the only tong-term defence against the centralist command politics that lie behind the Bill is basic constitutional change that will give the nations, regions, counties and districts of these islands formal constitutional safeguards against a centralist enemy.
  As to principle, we are attacking the fundamentals of local democracy. Powers are being removed from properly elected councillors who also fought their elections on manifestos and gave commitments to their electorates. By taking away such power, we are reducing local responsibility. We shall have to live with the consequences of such action in the fullness of time. For every failure of

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  local councils in the future, the tendency will be to blame central Government rather than the local authorities that are carrying the responsibility where it properly lies.
  The Prime Minister said earlier today that democratic answerability exists because Parliament has been directly elected. The reality is that in the areas that the Bill attacks, such as Sheffield and elsewhere, the voters did not elect the Government and did not vote for the programme that the Government put forward at the general election. In other words, the Bill is political, aimed at narrow political purposes. That is a dangerous precedent.
  The Bill is also discriminatory. If two companies in different district council areas are making identical products, one in a council area with an expenditure of less than £10 million and the other in a council area with an expenditure of slightly more than £10 million, the rates may be fiddled by central Government in one area and not in the other. The Bill thus discriminates between the interests of private individuals and companies. Should the Bill be treated as a hybrid Bill, affecting different interests in different ways? That is a constitutional question to which the House should address itself later. It is significant that so early in 1984 we are moving towards central control by Whitehall bureaucrats.
  I am making a practical criticism and not a theoretical one. The idea seems to be that Whitehall knows best what is good for people in various areas of these islands. Inevitably, Whitehall will get involved in the amount of education, social service, housing and road provision in every nook and cranny of these islands. That is a crazy way to move forward. We shall not have better decisions or cheaper services on that basis.
  The objectives described in the consultative document will not be reached in this Bill. The size of the public sector borrowing requirement, which is referred to in the consultation paper, will not be affected. As to protection for the non-domestic ratepayers, in Wales the non-domestic sector paid only 13 per cent. of revenue expenditure in 1982–83. Rates represent only 2 per cent. of manufacturing wages in England and Wales and they are allowable against profits for tax. The real effect of rates is not on businesses but on the purchaser and the taxpayer. If the Government are concerned about the effect on the business ratepayer, why did they reduce the grants to local government, which led inevitably to higher rates?
  Rates have increased from 1974–75 to 1982–83 in the county of Gwynedd by 159 per cent. but the RPI has increased by 210 per cent. Rates have increased considerably less than the RPI.
  The level of grant aid in England has dropped from 66 per cent. in 1976 to 51 per cent. in 1984–85. The reduction is generally accepted to equal a saving of 4p in the standard rate of income tax. The grant was increased initially from 61·5 per cent to 66 per cent. specifically to finance the Houghton pay award to teachers, which is still being paid, together with its successor, the Clegg award. The grant subsequently has been reduced to 51 per cent. and the ratepayer must meet the difference as a result of a calculated and deliberate act of central Government policy.
  The Secretary of State's criticisms about increases in local authority spending are misleading. First, in criticising the percentage increase, he presupposes that the base was correct at the beginning of the period, which is
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  not necessarily correct in many areas. Secondly, he presupposes that there is no possibility of a disproportionate change in need in those areas throughout the period. Thirdly, he used the term "spending irresponsibly", which is an entirely subjective measuring rod and cannot be defined by the Bill or by any of its subsequent regulations.
  The £10 million cut-off for applicability is not subject to indexation and erosion will take place. At present few authorities will be included, but in the fullness of time the limit could affect the vast majority of local authorities, should the Government choose to allow it to do so. Even if the Government do not operate in that way, that does not mean that a successor Conservative Government will not choose to do so.
  The Government claim that business does not have a business vote. I do not like the implication of that. The implication seems to be that because some people have more money than others—I see that some Conservative Members nodding—they should have a larger influence in democracy. If we are going in that direction—I note that some Conservative Members seem to be concurring with that view — the people of these islands should be aware of the fact.
  The Bill applies to Wales, although it is not needed or called for in that country. It does not extend to Northern Ireland or Scotland. I appreciate that the circumstances are different in those countries and that they have different legislation.
  The Association of District Councils in Wales — reference had been made to it supporting the Bill in other areas — does not support this measure. Clwyd and Gwynedd, which comprise 11 district councils, have sent a telemessage saying that they are unanimously resolved to reaffirm total opposition to the Bill. In that area, five of the nine seats are held by Conservative Members in Westminster. Opposition exists in the form of those who represent the Conservative party in the local authorities as well as within other parties. Wales has no need for the Bill because the structure of local government finance in Wales is different. The Secretary of State for Wales, who is on the Government Front Bench, will shortly be introducing orders into the House and we shall have a debate on the RSG distribution in Wales next week or the week after. As I have said, the distribution formula in Wales is different. There is a different treatment of joint funding in Wales when assessing overspending and Wales has different patterns of need in housing and in the old industrial areas. The level of resources is different in Wales. Average per capita personal wealth is only 70 per cent. of that in the United Kingdom. The structure of public bodies in Wales is different, especially the health authorities, as is their interface with the local authorities and the water authorities. People in Wales are demanding better control of the level of water rates but the Bill does nothing about that.
  Few Welsh districts will come over the £10 million threshold and if the Welsh counties are guilty of anything, it is of under-provision in specific areas. The details of Welsh county overspending in 1983–84 shows that it is £20 million on an aggregate target value of £1,034 million, which is less than 2 per cent. The Secretary of State has said that the level will most likely fall to 1 per cent., allowing for budget drift in the future.

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  Wales has no need for the Bill. I hope that if it is not defeated tonight — I will be voting against it— we shall have an opportunity in Committee or on Report to move an amendment to exclude Wales from its provisions.
  7.30 pm
  Mr. David Amess: I rise to address the House for the first time, mindful of the fact that anything I say as long as I am a Member of this place will probably have been said by someone else before me and put more eloquently.
  I am greatly honoured to have the privilege of representing the people of Basildon. The burden of responsibiliy is made all the more heavy by my following no fewer than five extremely able predecessors, all of whom remain Members of this place. I refer to my hon. Friend the hon. and learned Member for Fylde (Sir E. Gardner) and my hon. Friends the Members for Castle Point (Sir B. Braine), for Holland with Boston (Mr. Body), for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. McCrindle) and for Billericay (Mr. Proctor), all of whom served the House with distinction and diligence. I hope that they will long continue to be Members of this place. I do not wish to forget Eric Moonman, who is no longer a Member of this place but who used to sit on the Labour Benches. He was one of the most hardworking and conscientious Back Bench constituency Members of his time and he is still regarded with great affection by many of my constituents.
  As an East-Ender, I am especially pleased that so many of my constituents were my former neighbours from that most warmhearted part of London. I tried for a number of years to persuade those good people to cast their vote for me but I never persuaded enough of them to do so to enable me to win an election.
  When the electors of Basildon returned me to this place, they created, I believe, a unique circumstance. As far as I am aware, I am the only Conservative Member in this Parliament who does not have within his constituency a county or district Conservative councillor. I hope that I shall prove to be the forerunner of many successful Conservative candidates in Basildon at all tiers of government, and I shall work towards that end. Although there may be an uneasy relationship occasionally between the local Member and the district council in the meantime, I shall not be deflected from the course set when I was elected. I have always accepted the maxim that creative tension is beneficial, and I hope that it will prove to be so in Basildon.
  Basildon was designated as a new town in January 1949. The town has blossomed and grown and has finally matured into one of the most exciting places in Britain. The town can be conveniently divided into Fryerns, Langdon Hills, Vange, Pitsea, Nethermayne and Lee Chapel, all nestling in the heart of the beautiful Essex countryside. There can be few places in the country where the effects of this Government's policies can be so beneficially seen as in Basildon. It is a town which has imaginatively, through the help of the development corporation, grasped its opportunities. The opening of the M25 has further enhanced its attractiveness as a centre for commerce and industry. We have probably the finest shopping centre in the country, if not in Europe.
  We have our problems in the town, but those with open minds are working together to try to solve them. It is self-evident that the future success of Basildon is linked inextricably to a growing and expanding economy with
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  minimal inflation, and it is for these reasons that I welcome the introduction by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment of the Rates Bill. The Bill is a vital ingredient to the success of the Government's economic policies. It is absurd to have a national economic policy that is at odds with a local economic policy.
  Rate reform is long overdue and the Bill will go some little way to meeting that need. I welcome the Bill but there are some aspects of it that I regret. I am still convinced that there is a practical alternative to the present rates system and I am disappointed that the Government feel unable, after great deliberation, to recommend one. The poll tax still has an irresistable attraction for me, if only because of the intellectual exercise of seeing which sectors of our society would be happy to disfranchise themselves.
  Before commenting on the core of the Bill, I shall draw the attention of the House to two clauses that have great merit. I know that clause 13 will be warmly welcomed by representatives of industry and commerce in Basildon, as indeed throughout the country. At long last we have some element of democracy, with the requirement of consultation, remembering that non-domestic ratepayers provide over 50 per cent. of local authorities' income. I hoped that businesses would be given the vote and am a little concerned about the form of consultation and the notice that will be taken of it. I am concerned also about the recommendations that will be made. Schedule I, paragraph 19, widens the circumstances in which rate relief is available to institutions for the disabled. It represents a much-needed change.
  As we have already heard from my right hon. Friend, it is most unfortunate that some parts of the Bill have had to be introduced. In a perfect world where all local councils were under Conservative control, I am sure that such legislation would be unnecessary. The Government have made a genuine attempt not to resort to this type of legislation, but continued non-compliance by certain councils has made this action necessary. It is ridiculous to suggest that the Bill threatens local democracy. Anyone would think that local government was self-financing. It is conveniently forgotten that 52 per cent. of rate fund revenue in 1982–83 in England and Wales came from the national Exchequer.
  Some local authorities have made magnificent efforts to control expenditure and maintain a high calibre of services. The first that I wish to mention is the London borough of Redbridge, where I still serve as a councillor and which includes part of the constituency that is represented by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. The authority has kept within the guidelines, yet continues to serve the community well.
  Essex county council also runs a tight ship and still manages to maintain services. Oh, that I could wax lyrical about Basildon district council! We have heard earlier how the selective scheme for rate limitation will be applied to relatively few of the high-spending councils, but unfortunately Basildon district council may be among that number. This is an example of an authority that has gone out of its way to thwart the Government's economic policies. Far from merely maintaining services, the council has set about expanding them in the most cavalier and irresponsible fashion.
  I shall give some examples of Basildon district council's wastefulness of ratepayers' money. First, the

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  costs of administration of council houses is five times higher than that of the development corporation. It is about £4 a house instead of 75p. Secondly, there is the cost of unnecessary area rent offices. The office at Laindon, for example, was opened at a cost of £90,000. Thirdly, there is the nuclear-free zone nonsense. The council has given grants to local CND groups and has spent £6,000 on a peace festival. I look forward to the district auditor's remarks on such expenditure.
  Oh, and then there is the "Caring Friend" strategy. The council's theme is that of the caring council, and speaker systems blast out the caring council theme tune all over the town. The council spent £26,000 purchasing a "caring friend" caravan and after a month the wheels dropped off. A sex advice centre for young people called Grapevine has been set up at a cost of £52,000. Golf courses and bowling alleys run by the district authority made a loss last year of £41,800, at least. A legal advisory service has been set up, despite the perfectly adequate citizens' advice bureau, at a cost of £68,000. Wat Tyler park is being built at a cost of £150,000 on a munitions dump in an area where deposits of asbestos have been discovered.
  An officer has now been appointed to advise the adminstration, which amounts to him being a Labour political adviser. A publicity officer has been appointed to the administration; this is really to help the Labour party promote its views through the monthly distribution of the so-called council information sheet "Link"—a platform for the distortion and misrepresentation of Government policy. In Basildon approximately 70 per cent. of rates, representing £8·4 million, goes on salaries and other associated staff costs.
  Despite all this, many companies have been attracted to the area—the Ford tractor plant, Marconi Avionics, Rothmans, Yardleys, the Distillers group and Gordon's gin, to name but a few. Should any business man or entrepreneur wish to find an area in the United Kingdom in which to set up a business there is no finer place than Basildon where there is a willing, enthusiastic and skilled work force available.
  We are fighting hard to attract new business to the area. However, last year Littlewoods, a major retail outlet, pulled out of the area, blaming the high level of rates. Just recently we have had the devastating news that Carreras Rothmans may leave Basildon in April. Whilst I would not single out the level of rates as the main reason, it cannot help when decisions such as this have to be made when there is a rates bill of £0·5 million, particularly when contrasted with the rates paid by other Carreras factories in Spennymoor and Darlington.
  Charity has been described as that amiable quality that moves us to condone in others the sins and vices to which we ourselves are addicted. Full of amiable qualities as right hon. and hon. Members of the Opposition are, and addicted as they may be to using public money to buy trinkets and ideological toys, their vigorous defence of prodigality and inefficiency sterns more from a desire to preserve some corner of a field from reselection than any real commitment to the wasting of money as such.
  I hope that by taking control of the taxpayers' money that is going to local councils, we shall eventually be able to reduce the amounts being taken from the taxpayer. By making local government more efficient we shall ease the burden on businesses. Last June the Conservative party
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  placed before the British people a manifesto part of which contained proposals for the introduction of this Bill. Although the Opposition have never accepted the fact, the Conservative party gained an emphatic victory at the polls and an endorsement of those proposals. We have the full support of the people on this matter and we are determined that the Bill will become law.
  7.43 pm
  Mr. Nicholas Brown (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East): At the risk of inciting dissent from those behind me, I congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) on his maiden speech. I do not agree with what he said, but it was no worse than the speech of the Minister. I wish the hon. Member well in what time he has in Parliament.
  The Bill is appalling. The only good thing I could find in it was schedule 1, paragraph 19, which gives a small measure of rate relief to disabled people's organisations.
  The Bill is born of dogma, not necessity, and of the argument about the nature of wealth in our society. It is the child of those who believe that all wealth is generated in the private sector and that a good education or a high standard of health care is not wealth but a luxury. This measure is not necessary for the Government's management of the economy. Local rates do not affect the public sector borrowing requirement or the money supply except in the area of capital schemes and borrowing. The Executive already have power to control these. Even what the Conservative party would regard as the most excessive local government expenditure is covered by revenue so it does not affect the borrowing requirement. If inflation is the issue in the management of the economy, the Government must explain the inconsistency in their approach which leads them to see rises in rates as an evil but to insist on rises in fuel costs.
  The real reasons for the Bill are to be found in the parliamentary brief circulated by the Confederation of British Industry and also in the prejudices of the Conservative party. The CBI tells us about the burden of the rates, yet, as we have heard in the debate, nationally rates amount to less than 1 per cent. of industry's costs. The CBI brief states this key fact in a different way; it says that rates yield more than mainstream corporation tax. Quite so. All that proves is that, no matter how agile the accountant is, he cannot find a way for a business to avoid paying the rates.
  We were told that enterprise zones, with their nil rate burden, would help enterprising business men. They helped some enterprising business men but not those they were supposed to help. While the rates have gone altogether, site owners have been able to put the rents up. That is enterprising, but it does not create wealth for anybody except the owners of the sites. I am sure that that is not what was intended.
  The Minister told us of companies whose owners allege that rates have driven them out of business or forced them to reduce the size of their businesses. He has told us that he wants only to curb a few naughty councils and that the rest will be all right if they are good. The Minister is a good Conservative and I am sure that he believes in market forces and leaving business free to respond to market forces. If that is the case, why does he not leave it to market forces, let businesses choose which area they will be based in and let them move from high-rated to low-rated authorities if they wish? Why legislate on the rates?
  Mr. Richard Holt rose—
  Mr. Brown: I have been asked not to give way so as to allow other Back Bench Members to speak.
  The answer is that every business man moans about his rates. He cannot get out of paying them and he cannot reduce them. He would much rather not pay them, but rates do not relate to ability to pay. That is an argument for reform of the rates system and not for decreasing the taxation. If the rates, or their successor tax if one was introduced, related to ability to pay, there would be no income from industrial or commercial sources. Indeed, we might owe them money. Businesses would rather have almost any commercial debt than waste money on paying taxes. Rates are a highly visible form of taxation and therefore are unpopular.
  Closing schools is unpopular too. A petition containing 20,000 signatures was presented at the last meeting of Newcastle city council protesting about the removal of a tier in the tertiary system in the west end of Newcastle. The petition was presented by Labour members, Conservative members and even by a representative of the Liberal party. All were opposed to the cut.
  On the question of housing in Newcastle, the deterioration of the Rochester estate in Walker has reached the proportions of a local scandal. Reports to the city council say that it will cost £8,000 per dwelling to bring the property up to a minimum acceptable standard. That means spending £3 million on the estate. Newcastle has a capital programme that will take 20 years to fulfil at the present rate of progress. It will build 60 homes next year; the waiting list contains 16,000 names.
  The Minister tells us that the city's rates are too high. They are too high, but they cannot be reduced without hurting people. On Tyneside—this is the case not just in Newcastle but in other conurbations — many of the prosperous suburbs are outside the catchment area of the inner city and its rate base, so rates cannot be levied on them. In general, those who have less income have to contribute More to the rate base. How odd it is for the Government to say on the one hand that they will give extra money to help cope with inner city problems through the partnership programme and on the other hand that if we try to deal with structural problems in inner cities through our own moneys they will penalise us. That is a schizophrenic approach; we are given money and then have it taken away. The Bill will simply make matters worse and households which rely on low incomes will be hurt most. Many of my constituents take home £60 or £70 for a 40-hour week, that being the average pay for shipyard labourers whose greed is sometimes referred to during industrial disputes. I much prefer to refer to the facts.
  Other right hon. and hon. Members have spoken extremely well and movingly about the constitutional issue which is involved. They have dealt with the price that the country must pay for the Bill. It strikes a fundamental blow at our current system of Government. I accept that we are not a federal state, but many decisions in Britain are taken locally by locally elected representatives. That will no longer happen. Key spending decisions will be taken away from such representatives, and, in practice, because Ministers cannot scrutinise everything personally, be made by the Civil Service. All effective power to prevent that is now put in the hands of the Executive. The element of local decision making, discussion and votes has been taken away.
  Local councillors will no longer be able to fight an election on whether to increase rates to build a new
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  swimming pool. That is quite a lively issue in the east end of Newcastle. There is no longer any point in fighting an election on such issues as the Government are taking the power to decide whether such spending will be allowed. Therefore, candidates will only be able to say whether they would be advocates of such a scheme if they had the power to implement it. That is precisely the type of decision which should be made locally and it is precisely the type of decision which will no longer be made locally.
  There must be good reasons for making such a fundamental change. The only sound reason that has been advanced is that the Bill was a pledge in the Conservative party's manifesto in the June general election campaign. I accept that there was such a pledge but it took up just one paragraph of a manifesto which previously contained a pledge completely to reform the rating system. How was the electorate to know which pledge would be reneged on?
  What has happened to the party that once fought an election on the slogan "Set the people free"? Why is it now attempting to do the reverse? The Bill is wrong because it undermines our country's constitution, because it penalises those who can least bear it, because it centralises power in the hands of the Executive, because it erodes the accountability of councillors to their electorate and because it fails to meet the points of the very arguments that are used to justify it. It is an intellectually contemptible measure, and I am not in the least surprised that large sections of the Conservative party find it extremely hard to stomach.
  7.52 pm
  Mr. Richard Alexander: It is my great pleasure to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) on a refreshing and generous speech. What counts is not how often an hon. Member speaks in the House but what he says and what he does on behalf of his constituents. To judge by my hon. Friend's performance today — he acquitted himself well — the House looks forward to hearing him again and to seeing him being active on behalf of his constituents in the next Parliament as well as this.
  I have been surprised and not a little saddened by the hostility of some of my right hon. and hon. Friends to the Bill. It is easier, when one lives under some councils, to say that everything is going quite well and to forget the excesses elsewhere. However, living in areas of high taxing authorities, such as Nottinghamshire and South Yorkshire, one finds things are different. We joke about the people's republic of South Yorkshire, but it is no joke when trying to run a business there. I understand that the hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) is the only representative of South Yorkshire to have spoken so far. I was interested in his assertion that almost everyone in South Yorkshire supports the bus scheme. I must tell him that that is not so. Many people there bitterly resent having to pay for that bus scheme and regard it as an expensive nonsense.
  Until May 1981, Nottinghamshire was the lowest-rated county council in the country. Since then rates have increased by 67 per cent., and it is proposed that they should increase still more. Such councils say that the Government's reduction of grants is to blame. My reply is that 67 per cent. or 100 per cent. increases cannot be entirely the result of the Government reducing grants. The answer lies substantially in the hands of the councils. I refer to their profligate spending, hugely subsidised public

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  transport and support for every lunatic fringe organisation, such as is the case in London. I refer also to hospitality for all types of marches and causes which happen to pass through centres of population. Those are the excesses that my right hon. Friend is trying to curb. Only a minority of authorities need to be curbed, but my right hon. Friend must have the relevant powers in case they should prove necessary.
  The tragedy is that authorities such as those I have mentioned are the cause of savings having to be found in other authorities, the spending of which is quite reasonable. That has involved a cut in capital allocations, because, if we spend too much on revenue, there must be cuts, and it is capital spending which must be reduced. Parliament has a duty to manage the economy. We cannot ignore that duty. If we do, we might as well go home. If some authorities insist on going over the top, the Government cannot stand idly by. That is why I support the Bill.
  Like many of my hon. Friends — and, I venture to suggest, hon. Gentlemen opposite — I receive letters almost daily from constituents who are groaning under the burden of excessive rate demands.
  Mr. Nellist: I have not received one.
  Mr. Alexander: Their message is, "Do something." I have passed that message on to my right hon. Friend. Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends have urged for years that something should be done. Many of them did so at the recent general election, but they are now unwilling to face the consequences of the legislation that we promised and are now presenting.
  Mr. Tony Banks: What about the promise to reduce taxes?
  Mr. Alexander: Nobody wants this legislation. I am sure that my right hon. Friend hopes that it will never have to be implemented. There are no easy answers in politics and we should not expect any. If there were, they would all have been tried before, the millenium would have arrived and we should all have gone home. Life is not like that. Right hon. and hon. Members know that unpalatable decision must sometimes be taken. I speak on behalf of hundreds of thousands of ratepayers in Nottinghamshire when I say that I support my right hon. Friend's proposals.
  It is argued that the Bill is a constitutional monstrosity. However, Parliament has a duty to manage the economy. All the powers of local authorities, including those to raise money by taxation, derive from the House. Local authorities have no powers but those granted to them by Parliament. That has been so for well over a century. Never before in that time have local authorities taxed their ratepayers without mercy and without regard to ability to pay, but they are doing so now. That is what the Bill is about and that is why something must be done.
  Only about 22 per cent. of local authorities' net expenditure is paid for by domestic ratepayers, so there is little democratic accountability. The Bill is an attack not on democracy but on the ability to levy swingeing rate increases without restraint on those who often have no power, through the ballot box, to do anything about it. Of those who do pay domestic rates and thus have a vote, 16
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  per cent., quite properly, get a rate rebate and a further 12 per cent. have their rates taken into account in supplementary benefit payments.
  The present system is a licence to tax without hindrance, in the knowledge that the majority of those who have a vote have little interest in the amount levied and that the tab will be picked up by those who have no vote. Those electors with no vote look to this place for relief. This is an attack not on local democracy but on entrenched local excesses.
  We should not be agonising over whether the local authority associations are against the proposal. They do not pay the rates. We should ask the ratepayers whether the Bill is necessary. That is the main test. Do the ratepayers want their local authorities to have the power of unrestrained taxation? The vast majority of ratepayers would say that they do not. For all their high-sounding titles and propaganda, the local authority associations have one inbuilt deficiency: they do not speak for the ratepayers.
  Forty-one companies took part in a CBI survey on rates in Nottinghamshire last month. They said that they had declared 3,500 redundancies since January 1982, and that high rates were a significant cause of 46 per cent. of those redundancies. They said that rates averaged £240 a year for each employee. That is the extent of the rates burden which Opposition Members try to minimise. Those surveyed said that a rates increase of 5 to 10 per cent. would affect future employment prospects in their companies.
  If we accept what those companies have said — I am sure that Labour Members have no reason to doubt it—
  Mr. Tony Banks: We have many reasons to doubt it, because it is misleading.
  Mr. Alexander: —Opposition Members should be arguing for the Bill because it would protect jobs if we could curb authorities such as Nottinghamshire. Rates have affected the level of business activity in my county. They have contributed to unemployment, which is already high.
  I started by saying that I was astonished that some of my hon. Friends opposed the Bill. I conclude my saying that if it is not passed, some electors will suffer dire consequences. Ratepayers in many areas need the Bill. They were promised it at the general election. I believe that they should have it, and I support it.
  8.5 pm
  Mrs. M. Beckett: Not only the local authority associations to which some hon. Members referred, but most of the authorities in the county of Derbyshire oppose the Bill. The authorities of west Derbyshire, High Peak and south Derbyshire all oppose it, as does the council in the city of Derby.
  There are two major reasons for the opposition voiced by those councils. First, there is no point in having local government that cannot make local decisions in the light of local circumstances. That is what local government is about and what it is for. That is what the Bill seeks to remove.
  Mr. Holt: Will the hon. Lady give way?
  Mrs. Beckett: Of course not.

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  The second major reason why the councils are opposed to the Bill is that they rebel against the phoney case that the Government and their supporters have sought to make in proposing the Bill.
  There have been several major causes for rate increases up and down the country in recent years. The first is the fall in the rate support grant—the money that the Government make available to assist local councils to meet their expenditure needs. The second is the increase in the burdens that the Government have imposed on local authorities — to which I was happy to hear some Conservative Members refer—such as the transfer of the administration of housing benefits and yet other burdens that will come in future as the Government seek to bring down their expenditure and pass the buck to someone else. The third cause for rate increases, to which there has been little reference, has come about through previous direct action by the Government with regard to local government. I refer to the penalties, under the Government's previous legislation, which have contributed to an increase in the rate burden.
  The Derbyshire county council has been castigated both by local Conservative Members of Parliament and by the Government as an overspending authority. Yet, without the Government-imposed penalties, the rates would be 35p in the pound less than they are, and the rate increase in recent years would be at or even slightly below the rate of inflation, although the services in Derbyshire have improved, as promised in the county council's manifesto, on which it was elected.
  However, Derbyshire is only one of many authorities—some Conservative-controlled—the spending needs of which, as assessed by the Government in their figures for grant-related expenditure, are above the target set for the rates that they should charge. In the coming year alone, the Government's assessment of Derbyshire's spending needs will rise by £16 million, but the target given will rise by only £5·4 million. The grant-related expenditure figure will be £12 million higher than the target for spending. Therefore, who is overspending and who is to judge by what amount or in what way the overspending is taking place?
  Most important of all, in the past week the Government's newly created quango, the Audit Commission, produced its survey of a family of 18 comparable authorities, of which Derbyshire is one. The Government's own body's survey shows that in Derbyshire current expenditure is below the average for that family of comparable authorities. It appears that in this case, as in so many others across the country, the criteria for overspending will be merely at the whim of the Secretary of State, not according to related financial facts.
  Apart from the county of Derbyshire, the Derby city council, on an all-party basis, has asked its Members of Parliament to oppose the Bill. The council's budget is in accordance with the Government's targets. Between 1978–79 and 1983–84 the city rate rose by only 29 per cent., whereas the retail price index rose by 73 per cent., and the Government's own spending—they are happy to criticise everyone else—rose by 78 per cent. However, because its rate-borne expenditure is more than £10 million, Derby, like many other councils, will fall within the scope of the Bill.
  How can the Secretary of State have the impertinence to claim that he and his civil servants can manage Derby better than its elected representatives? Their record meets
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  with no party criticism in the city. They are admirable and prudent, yet the Secretary of State will have the power to take the decisions out of their hands. I do not doubt that the Minister will claim that councils such as Derby wil1 not be affected, but the Derby city council does not believe that and neither do I. The council has written to say that it is united in opposing this legislation as an unwarranted interference in the constitutional relationship between the two levels of government.
  There seem to be two basic reasons why we cannot believe that councils such as Derby will not be affected in future. First, it is quite clear—as far as I can judge, no one in local government disagrees—that the selective scheme, if brought in for 1985–86, is bound to fail to meet its targets, because there is no way in which even a few authorities can be brought back to the Government's targets within their time scale. Therefore, the Government are bound to turn to their general powers.
  Secondly, we believe that those general powers will be used to reduce expenditure across the board in local councils throughout the country, whether they are managing their electorates' affairs well or otherwise. The explanatory and financial memorandum says that clause 2 will be used
  "having regard to general economic conditions",
  not the needs of local areas.
  There is no point in having local government if its assessment of local need is not allowed to differ from that of central Government. We might as well leave everything in the hands of central Government and abolish the structure of local government altogether. I fear that the Bill will be yet another weapon in the Government's war to destroy the welfare services that have been built up in this country, wherever they may be found, including at local level.
  For those reasons, I have no hesitation in following the wishes of local representatives of all parties in opposing the Bill.
  8.11 pm
  Mr. John Heddle (Mid-Staffordshire): At this stage of a debate it is incumbent on all hon. Members to endeavour to introduce original aspects. So many foxes have been shot, so many arguments deployed that it is important not simply to re-run those already put forward. I will not pursue all the points made by the hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) but she referred to the fact that local authorities have had greater obligations imposed upon them by central Government. I could give the House a catalogue of duties lifted from the shoulders of local authorities — industrial development certificates and office development permits, to name but two. She failed to mention that under this Government local authorities now have a bounden duty to pursue the real policies of setting the people free by following a vigorous policy of sale of council houses and other surplus assets, thereby creating capital with which to provide for the programmes that the electorate and the ratepayers want.
  A debate of this nature would be enhanced if hon. Members of the Opposition, just some, actually admitted that some local authorities abuse the system, that some local authorities take the ratepayers to the cleaners and that some check, balance and control might in some circumstances be necessary. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown), who spoke before the hon. Lady, referred to the fact that rates

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  comprise just 1 per cent. of manufacturing industry's costs. He chose to ignore the fact, as have other hon. Members of the Opposition, that the rates element paid by manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom amounts to one eighth of the gross trading profits before tax—12·5 per cent.
  The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) opened the debate for the Opposition. I sought to intervene twice at that point in his speech where he deplored the fact that central Government, by means of this Bill, were to impose their will on local authorities. Where was the hon. Member—where were other hon. Members—on the night of 4 February 1976 when enthusiastic support was given in the Aye Lobby to the Second Reading of the Education Bill, which compelled local education authorities to respond to the dictates of central Government in ensuring that every single school became comprehensive, notwithstanding the fact that the parents, the teachers, the friends, the governors and the pupils of those schools did not want this to happen? This is a complete U-turn in the philosophy of the party in opposition.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) advocated increasing the frequency of local government elections—one third every year in three or one quarter every year in four. I wholeheartedly agree with that. It is perhaps a pity that when his Government enacted the Local Government Act of 1972 he did not seek to incorporate such provision. He also said that, as far as he was aware, the Secretary of State had no power under the special powers provisions of the Bill to raise the threshold above £10 million. My reading of the Bill suggests to me that clause 2 gives my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that power. That I believe to be absolutely right.
  I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup when he says, as I have said on a number of occasions, that it is possibly not realised by some Members of this House—and certainly not by others outside—that there is a direct relationship and also a direct contradiction in the way local government raises its money and the way in which the money is spent. Neither side of that particular balance sheet can be dealt with in isolation. They must be dealt with together. I welcome my right hon. Friend's suggestion that there should be, as part of the continuing grant/rate debate, at least some appreciation of the interface between these two things.
  I will support this Bill in the Division Lobby tonight. I have my reservations because in many ways it is a sad Bill because of the failure of all political parties, local authority organisations, professional institutions and trade bodies to reach a consensus on what to do about the rates. We have all sought to make political capital out of expressing sympathy for the poor hard-pressed ratepayer. Have we acted responsibly as a House in coming forward with a view that would command respect and cease to tempt the abuse of local government? What we are seeing now is a product of the lack of consensus on an alternative to the present system. No uniform view exists about the perceptibility of local income tax, the equity of a poll tax or the reliability of a local sales tax. It is the product of a desire on the part of all political parties when in government to fudge the short-term issue in the hope that
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  it will go away. I deplore the behaviour of both the last Labour Government, and so far of my own party in government, in fudging the issue of a rate revaluation.
  I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, in his wind-up speech tonight, will give me some assurance that at least the Government intend during the lifetime of this Parliament to embark first on a commercial rating revaluation and then on a residential revaluation to eliminate the anomalies and distortions in the present system.
  As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) said in a very thoughtful speech—though I did not agree with his conclusions—for years there was a consensus and a convention that local authorities in general followed the wishes of central Government as regards the total level of expenditure. However, that convention has been broken in a number of well publicised instances, and I believe that it is the Government's bounden duty to respond to the changed situation and circumstances and to protect the ratepayer.
  As local government has become more political—some of us would perhaps prefer it not to be so—some councils have abused the trust that central Government placed in them and have levied rates of such iniquitious and horrendous proportions, particularly on industry and commerce, that companies have gone bankrupt and their employees have joined the dole queue.
  Local government is big business. It accounts for 25 per cent. of all public expenditure, and it employs one person in 10 throughout the country. Like all businesses, it has a threefold duty: first, to spend the money that its bankers invest in it wisely; secondly, to produce goods or services that reflect value for money; and thirdly, to produce a reasonable return for the shareholder. When any of those three criteria is not met, I believe that the banker, the customer or the shareholder has a right to be heard. In the context of local government and rates, the voice of the shareholder — the ratepayer — goes unheard, by and large. The turnout at local elections is pathetically low. As we heard, it is 20 per cent. or 30 per cent. and historically the voter will vote not on the behaviour or prudence of his or her local authority but on the behaviour at the time and the popularity of the Government in power in this place.
  This Bill provides a measure of protection—some say a crude measure of protection, but it is at least a measure of protection—for the banker and shareholder, in the form of specific and general powers. I hope that the specific powers can be seen to work, but I have deep reservations about the desirability and practicability of the general powers. However, I fail to see how the Bill can be attacked in the name of democracy. Is it not a strengthening of democracy that councils should be forced to be more accountable? Is it not a strengthening of democracy that greater rights be conferred on the payer of the piper? However, I fear that the right of consultation for industry and commerce in clause 13 is no more than a paper tiger, and will not do much to enhance the rights of the industrial and commercial ratepayer when being consulted by a potentially hostile local authority.
  How strong, in fact, is the constitutional argument, when the reality is that with so many of the functions devolved upon it, local government acts merely as a convenient agent of central Government? How strong, in fact, is the constitutional argument when more than half the money that councils spend comes from Whitehall or elsewhere, and over 60 per cent. of the remainder comes

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  from the industrial and commercial ratepayer who has no voice, no vote, no say and no sanction in the way that the money is spent?
  In February of this year, I committed an act of parliamentary vandalism by helping to strip the roof off a factory in Wolverhampton to enable the owners of the factory to avoid paying empty rates. After all, those owners were doing their best. They employed local labour in the construction industry, and let the factory to a company to provide employment in Wolverhampton which had to pay £26,000 for services that it was not receiving. I am glad that the Bill provides protection for the industrial and commercial ratepayer against the payment of void rates.
  I end with a plea to my right hon. Friend that he extends the void rating exemption beyond industrial property—I understand that his Department is consulting interested organisations and bodies—and across the commercial sector. How many owners of office blocks are told by local authorities that they must let those office blocks to firms within the borough? They have no right so to do, if the owners of the premises wish to let them to provide employment from outside the borough. I hope, therefore, that my right hon. Friend will consider carefully the whole subject of void rating, and look at it from the point of view of the ratepayer, who is being taxed for property that he is not occupying and being made to pay for services that he is not receiving.
  With those reservations, I welcome the Bill, at least as an attempt to ensure that the quiet voice of the ratepayer is heard the more effectively.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Paul Dean): Order. Before I call the next hon. Member it might be helpful if I inform the House that the wind-up speeches are expected to begin at 9 o'clock. There are still many hon. Members on both sides wishing to speak. Short speeches will mean fewer hon. Members being disappointed.
  8.25 pm
  Mr. Frank Dobson: My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney, South and Shoreditch (Mr. Sedgemore) referred to the problems that this Bill, if passed and implemented, will impose on people who live in Hackney; and similar problems will arise for other people living in most of the deprived areas of Greater London. If one looks at the hit list of authorities—those that the Government intend to attack in this measure—one sees that a large proportion of them are in London. The most spectacular example is the Inner London Education Authority. I propose to confine my remarks this evening to the problems of that authority.
  I take as my text a speech that was made by the Secretary of State for Education and Science in Sheffield on Friday, 6 January of this year, when he said:
  "I am myself ready to acknowledge that I underestimated the task which we face in raising standards in schools when I took up my office in 1981. In particular, I did not at that time fully appreciate, for example, the problems of teaching low attainers and the special difficulties faced by teachers in many inner city schools."
  The Inner London Education Authority is responsible for providing the education service for the inner city part of London. The problems that the authority faces are far greater than the problems faced by any other education authority in the country. Some areas of the country may have a higher proportion of people who are unemployed,
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  but not many. Some areas of the country may have a higher proportion of children whose mother tongue is not English—but not many. There are no fewer than 50,000 children in ILEA schools—50,000 out of 300,000—whose mother tongue is not English. At heart, they are not a problem. Indeed, it would be useful to our country to have 50,000 fluent in other languages, provided that those children in the meantime became fluent in English as well. So ILEA has a large task in turning that characteristic into an asset to the country.
  Some other areas may have a higher proportion of children in single parent families — but not many. Indeed, ILEA has 14 per cent. of its children come from single parent families. Some areas may have a higher proportion of people who live in abject poverty, although I doubt it. However, none has the same combination of problems of multiple deprivation affecting the population, and consequently the education service, of inner London.
  The combination of stresses is quite unique. It is reflected in the Government's own figures, calculated by the Department of the Environment. It came up with what were called "Z" scores of multiple deprivation in local authority areas. Out of the 10 authorities with the highest "Z" scores, no fewer than seven are inner London borough areas, and all 10 are from Greater London. Indeed, the inner London average deprivation, according to the DoE's figures, is considerably worse than that of any authority outside London. Hackney has the highest score with 6·69. The inner London average is 4·36. The next worst authority, outside London, is Manchester, with 4·19. Liverpool—goodness knows Liverpool's problems are legion and known to everyone—comes out at 3·51, which is much lower than the inner London average.
  In the face of this, ILEA is trying to do a job of work. For this purpose it gets not a penny from the Government towards its day-to-day running costs. All its running costs are met by inner London ratepayers, yet what is its record compared with other authorities in the rest of the country? Her Majesty's inspectors of schools, still, under this centralising Government, independent, have in the past three years produced annual reports on the standards of educational provision in the whole country. There are 96 education authorities and never in the past three years have more than five or six authorities been satisfactory in every aspect that Her Majesty's inspectors look into, but ILEA has been among that five or six on every occasion.
  ILEA is not perfect. As a parent of children who go to ILEA schools, I know as well as many other parents that considerable improvements need to be made. One of our objections to everything that is going on, and the continuing attack by the Government on the education authority, is the extent to which the good will, effort, expertise and energy of countless people in inner London, instead of being devoted, as most parents, teachers and education authority administrators would want, to improving education standards in inner London schools, have been diverted into trying to protect the education authority from the depradations of the Government year in, year out. That is a great loss.
  The Government say that it costs a lot to provide an education service in inner London, and it does, but it was ever thus. It has always cost much more to provide an education service in London than in any other part of the country. As long ago as 1878, when Matthew Arnold, better known as a poet, was Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools, it cost 50 per cent. more to educate a child

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  under the London school board than the national average school board cost. Why does it cost more? It is because the cost of everything in London is higher and because ILEA is trying harder than any other authority to cope with the problems that it faces and to give all the children a good start in life.
  The ILEA scheme for the use of computers in all schools was so well approved by the Department of Education and Science that it was adopted nationally and the eclair French teaching scheme and the Smile mathematics scheme have been taken up by legions of authorities in other parts of the country. It pioneered bringing in parent governors, now apparently so dear to the hearts of Tory Ministers. It pioneered graded testing, which the Secretary of State was lauding and proposing for every other authority in the speech that I quoted earlier. All these services, improvements and attempted improvements cost money. Everything in London costs more than it costs elsewhere. If the House were to be removed to Yorkshire or Northumberland, the cost of providing its services would be substantially reduced.
  There is another local service in London. It has more than 20,000 staff and its cost per member of staff is 40 per cent. more than the average cost in the rest of the country, and on the standard of performance set by the Government Department responsible for it, it is twice as inefficient as the next most inefficient equivalent organisation. There might be a case for rate capping that organisation or bringing it under the control of the Secretary of State for the Environment, but if he tried to do so he might be in trouble because the Home Secretary is responsible for it—it is called the Metropolitan police. I use that as just one example. The disparity between the cost of the Metropolitan police and the police service in the rest of the country is roughly the same as the disparity between the cost of ILEA and of the education service in other parts of the country.
  I do not suppose that the Secretary of State will do anything about that, but he proposes to do something about the costs of ILEA. If he does, the additional facilities that ILEA tries to provide in all its schools will disappear, the extra teachers will be reduced, the 35p school meals will probably be doubled in price, and the generous clothing allowance for the poorest children will disappear, as it has disappeared in skinflint Tory authorities all over the land. The provision for poor children to go on school trips and holidays and journeys will go. As seen by mandarins in Whitehall and the Treasury Bench, these are trivia. The combined salaries of the Ministers on the Government Front Bench earlier would have paid a decent rate support grant for a number of authorities.
  The nursery services in ILEA, which are more extensive than any other, will be threatened. Some parts of the country, under the Government's present loony system, get grants for a nursery education system that they do not provide, but ILEA, which provides the largest system, gets no contribution from the Government. There is more adult education provision in London than anywhere else. It is so successful that Members representing the outer London Tory boroughs, if they were here, would have to confirm that legions of their inhabitants are ever eager to come into adult education classes provided by ILEA because the skinflint Tories will not do it. Such people do not all come for flower
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  arranging. Adult education has a vital role to play in combating illiteracy and ignorance. I shall read a letter that will be more eloquent than anything that I can say. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) should keep quiet, and at least pay some respect to the person who wrote me this letter, even if he holds me in no respect. The letter is written by Mr. James Doyle of 6 Hazle house, Maitland Park road, NW3, in my constituency. This is not a form letter, whatever anyone may say. It says:
  "Dear Sir, I have come to school for 4 years to Camden Institute. I come to the classes because I wanted to learn to read and write. I feel that I'm learning well and don't want the classes to end. So, as my M. P., I would like you to make sure that there will be not cuts in I.L.E.A. and classes will not be affected or teachers' jobs lost."
  The Secretary of State seems to wish to speak. I challenge him now, and I shall give way, to give a promise that Mr. Doyle's classes will continue after this Bill has gone through, and if the Secretary of State will not promise that, will he keep his stupid mouth shut?
  Mr. Marlow rose—
  Mr. Nellist: We want the organ grinder not the monkey.
  Mr. Dobson: The Bill proposes catastrophic reductions in the level of expenditure by ILEA. Government members are in a curious position on this matter because most of them do not send their children to schools in the state system anyway. They make no contribution to ILEA's costs. I do not know what status the Government have in a debate about ILEA's future. I believe that my children are precious, and most people believe that their children are precious. We should have a decent society in which we all hold everyone's children precious. All the children in inner London, whatever their ethnic background, however poor their families may be, whether they are in Hampstead, Highgate, Blackheath or Hackney, should have as good an opportunity in life and as good a basic education as those children in the schools to which rich members of this Cabinet send their children because they do not think that inner London schools are good enough. If they do not think that inner London schools are good enough for their children why are they trying to reduce the money spent on the schools and so make them worse?
  I give the Government this warning: the people of inner London treasure their education service which they have had for well over 100 years, and they will not give it up. They will fight like the devil at every stage during the passage of this legislation and afterwards. They will wreak a terrible vengence on any party that destroys their children's educational opportunities.
  In the age of videos we should always remember that there is no action replay of childhood. We get only one childhood. If we do not provide a decent education during the childhood of our children there will be no second chance. They will not see themselves as part of our society. I warn the Government that the people of inner London will not accept sweeping, smashing reductions in the expenditure of the ILEA. The Government have no mandate from the people of inner London to do so. The Government contribute nothing towards the education service in inner London. The people of inner London pay for that service. It is not in the Government's hands to destroy that for which they do not pay.
  8.41 pm
  Mr. W. Benyon: My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Silvester) will probably say that I take too romantic a view of local government, but I make no secret of my strong opposition to this measure. This is a sad day for those of us who feel strongly about the independence and importance of local government.
  I accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) said about Camden council. As a ratepayer in the London borough of Hackney, I am equally worried. If we are to have local government, we must take it warts and all. We cannot just have cosy Tory councils and get rid of or control the rest. We might just as well carry the logic of the argument to its proper conclusion, get rid of local government entirely and put in a commissioner. That is the role that all authoritarian regimes have taken.
  There is an inevitable progression in this matter which started in the 1960s and 1970s when the Labour party tried to force comprehensive education on local authorities. It would he invidious to quote the passionate speeches made by Conservative Members during the debates on those measures. They were followed by the Housing Finance Act 1972, during the Administration of my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath). The only significance of that was the Clay Cross incident when a very Left-wing Labour council broke the law. I believe that that incident had an effect out of all proportion on my colleagues in the Conservative party. They came to the conclusion that we would never achieve co-operation on a matter of important official policy, and, therefore, the basis of mutual trust and respect which had governed relations between central and local government was gravely undermined.
  When the present Administration came to power and wanted to sell council houses, they made certain that the legislation forced local authorities to adopt that policy even though their electorates, apparently, did not want it. Therefore, the slope towards centralisation became steeper and more slippery. That process culminated at the end of the last Parliament in the Local Authorities (Expenditure Powers) Act 1983. Hon. Members will remember that that legislation originally sought to limit the rate-raising powers of local authorities. Eventually, the Government changed their view and that part of the Bill was removed.
  The Secretary of State at the time was very specific in his assurances. I thought then that the argument had been won, but, out of the blue, we had this particular proposal in the Conservative party's election manifesto. As far as I know, that proposal had not received detailed and careful discussion—certainly not in the parliamentary party. We now find ourselves putting into law a measure to implement that promise. I do not believe that we should do so. I take the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate that manifestos are dangerous documents, as the Labour party discovered when dealing with devolution.
  Disraeli wrote:
  "I cannot force from my mind the conviction that a House of Commons concentrating in itself the whole power of the State might establish in this country despotism of the most formidable and dangerous character".
  Disraeli was talking about the checks and balances in the constitution. What would he think today when the monarch and the House of Lords exercise less power than
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  they did in those days? Lord Salisbury was Prime Minister when the Local Government Act 1888 was passed. At the moment, that legislation governs the relationship between central and local government. It enshrined the principle that went back to the 1600s. I shall not quote what he said because the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) quoted him in his article in the Daily Telegraph. Lord Salisbury referred to the excessive and exaggerated powers which have been heaped on the central authorities in London. What would he think today? If the powers were excessive and exaggerated then, what are they now?
  I leave it to others to argue whether the Bill will or will not control local government expenditure. For me, the Bill essentially means a measure of centralisation. The Conservative party in particular must ask itself where the legislation will lead us. First, the Bill gives substantial power to the Secretary of State, and that power does not stop at fixing the rates. It goes into the details of the local authorities concerned because that will be debated on the Floor of the House. The Bill sets a precedent that would be dangerous if the Secretary of State came from a Government of a different persuasion.
  Secondly, the Bill leads inexorably to further erosion of the status of local government. Electors will not seek their remedies locally, but will petition central Government where the power patently lies.
  Thirdly, the Bill will encourage irresponsibility. There will be no need to take the onus of difficult, dangerous and unpleasant decisions. The villain will be there for all to see.
  It used to be fashionable for Tory speakers to quote Burke. Recently he has been out of favour, and one can understand why. When he was talking about the French monarchy, he described its leading vice as
  "a restless desire of governing too much."
  He went on to say:
  "as always happens in this kind of officious universal interference, what began in odious power, ended always, I may say without exception, in contemptible imbecility."
  Hitherto, the Conservative party has been the implacable opponent of centralised state power, and it should stay that way.
  8.47 pm
  Mr. William O'Brien: After listening to Government Members I find that the Government's argument for the Bill is that it is a necessary economic measure. The truth is that this year's overspend—as interpreted by Government speakers — by local government amounts to a meagre 0·6 per cent. of total public expenditure, and that is measured against a unilateral target set by the Government.
  This kind of local spending, which is providing local services, can hardly be jeopardising our economic recovery. In real terms, local government spending has grown less than that in the rest of the e conomy and less than central Government spending. There is no sound economic justification for rate capping. The truth is that this Government—the most reactionary one in history for their actions towards local government — are covering up their increased spending on defence and the dole; they are shifting the cost onto rates by withdrawing rate support grant from councils. The rating system is out of date, and we should be introducing other ways of financing local government.
  This afternoon, we have heard a great deal of comment about keeping election promises. In 1974, the present

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  Prime Minister promised to abolish domestic rates. Domestic rates take a higher proportion of income from poorer households than from richer households. I am a firm supporter not of total abolition of rates but of supplementary help. When the Tories came to power in 1979 they again said that they intended to reform the rating system, but again they went back on their promises to the ratepayers of this country. Because they cannot carry out their manifesto promises, they have decided to make unwarranted and vicious attacks on local government.
  The Tory-controlled Association of County Councils—the Government's own supporters and front-line troops—says in its report on rates:
  "The Association understands the Government's concern about a handful of local Authorities which have not operated within national economic and social policies, but nevertheless, even if there were no other way of tackling the problem of those few authorities, the implementation of the Government's proposals appears to be based on expediency and would result in an unacceptable centralisation of power in practice in the hands of the Executive, rather than of Parliament and a further weakening of local democratic control.
  The price to be paid is too high, for a problem which is overstated and can be reduced by further improvements to the system of local taxation to make Local Authorities more accountable to their electorate and taxpayers".
  That appeal from the Government's own supporters is echoed by the great majority of people who serve in local government. The Secretary of State is seeking executive powers to act against authorities whose expenditure is considered excessive but he will give no indication of how he defines "excessive".
  The Bill as presented is not about rates. It is designed to give the Secretary of State more and more power over local government. It should be called the Direct Rule Bill — direct rule over communities and councils and democratically elected councillors not by Parliament but from No. 2 Marsham street. Clause 1 gives the Secretary of State power to prescribe a maximum rate to be levied and clause 2 allows him to designate the authorities for which he will prescribe a maximum. Even the £10 million maximum put into the Bill to appease the Tory district councils is not secure. Conservative Members who represent smaller district council areas should be aware of the dangers in the powers sought by the Secretary of State. The £10 million maximum can be changed and non-metropolitan districts are included in the classes for which the Secretary of State seeks power to set a maximum.
  Clause 3 enables the Secretary of State to determine the total expenditure of an authority without regard to the needs of the authority. Clauses 4 to 7 and the rest of the Bill also seek to introduce direct rule by central Government. The essence of the Bill is a threat to the basis of democracy in this country. The Secretary of State and his officials say that they should set expenditure levels for local government but they do not explain how the levels will be decided. The problems of defining reasonable and appropriate levels of expenditure for individual authorities have bedevilled local government finance in recent years and the Department of the Environment has had substantial experience of those problems but has been unable to find equitable solutions. The difficulty of defining appropriate spending levels for block grant determination highlights the problems involved. Under the Bill, the Secretary of State will be able to determine expenditure levels for individual authorities, to make judgments on appeals
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  against his own decisions and to lay down undefined conditions for a temporary relaxation of any decision. In other words, he will be both judge and jury for local government.
  The Government are pressing for the Bill to become law to provide greater control over local government when what is really required is reform of local government finance. The Government's real failure in respect of local government accountability is their failure to implement the proposals in the Layfield report in relation to some form of local income tax or to accept the consequences outlined in that report. The Government's conclusions on the responses to their Green Paper on the reform of domestic rates represent another lost opportunity. Every hon. Member is aware of the problems and difficulties facing local government due to the outdated system of local government finance and this Parliament should be working to reform local government finance.
  I appeal to the Secretary of State and to the House to reject the Bill because it is a direct and vicious attack on local government.
  8.56 pm
  Mr. Richard Needham: I have four minutes before the latter-day Lord Salisbury addresses the House.
  As part-owner and founder of a small factory, I know that rates are a crucially important part although not the most important part of a small business's costs. Rental costs in a factory such as mine are £2 per sq ft and the rates are equivalent to 60p per sq ft. It is therefore vital that anything that can be done to reduce the rate burden should be done. I am lucky in that my factory is an area in which the local authority is reasonable and I do not for a moment mind paying the rates, but my views are borne out by the experience of others in other areas.
  In 1978 rents and rates in London were double those in East Anglia. Between 1965 and 1979 East Anglia increased its share of manufacturing employment from 6·9 per cent. to 8·8 percent., with an increase of 140,000 jobs. Inner London, however, lost 240,000 manufacturing jobs between 1966 and 1976. Moreover, between 1966 and 1971 there was an exodus of 301 companies and only 17 moved into inner London. Rates, of course, are not everything, but they must have been a significant factor in those figures. To argue, therefore, that the Government should not take powers to stop an excess of rate spending—and I have listened to a great number of speeches today by those who are spenders rather than earners—seems to me to be ridiculous.
  The final point I make to the House is this. For a community to survive, it has to have diversity. That diversity can exist only if there are rich people, not so rich people, small businesses, big businesses—
  Mr. Nellist: Rubbish.
  Mr. Needham: That is right, and if I am rich, then I have earned it myself and not off the backs of others. If that is the case, it is crucial that the people who have to pay taxes are not so exorbitantly taxed that they have to move out.
  It is for that reason if no other, to maintain the importance of communities, that the Government are right to make sure now that they have power to do something because one cannot constantly wait for new ideas, new

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  reforms, many of which have been discussed at length, to come forward on to the statute book. That is why the Government have to ensure that the rates where they are in excess are properly controlled.
  Mr. Ioan Evans: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. A number of hon. Members on both sides of the House have sought to get into the debate to express the anxieties of their constituents and of the local authorities, both the county councils and the district councils. I put it to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker that, because this is a change in the constitutional relationship between local and central government, the Bill must be taken on the Floor of the House and not upstairs in Committee.
  The Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian. He knows that that decision can be made later, after the Second Reading of the Bill.
  9 pm
  Mr. Jack Straw: In winding up for the Opposition tonight, I first congratulate the hon. Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) on a spirited, if a slightly controversial, maiden speech, and I am sure that the electors of Basildon will look forward to further details of the proposals for a poll tax that he has put forward.
  The debate has been remarkable in two respects. It has been remarkable for the strength of opposition to the measure on both sides of the House. So far as the Conservative Party is concerned, that opposition, as we have heard from speeches today—and as we would have heard from many speeches that have not been given because hon. Gentlemen such as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark) were not able to catch your eye, Mr. Speaker—is not confined to one wing of that party, but is spread across it. The debate has been remarkable also for the way in which some of the supporters of the measure have let their masks slip, and they have produced crude, anti-democratic arguments, as the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Mr. Finsberg) did, in which the voters of Camden, Sheffield and Islington were abused for no other crime than that they have consistently voted in Labour councillors. Indeed, in that speech the very right to vote of those people who do not have to pay rates was challenged.
  Central to the argument for the Bill is the Government's concern to hold down the overall level of public spending. As my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) made clear in his commanding speech, the claim that local authorities have overspent is a most staggering impertinence by the Government for, on almost any measure, local government's record of efficiency, expenditure and service is better than that of central Government and the Prime Minister.
  As we heard, since 1978–79 central Government expenditure has risen as a share of national income while local government's share has fallen. So arbitrary and unjust has the Government's selection of overspenders been that of the top 40 whose budgets this year are already above their targets for next year, 26 of those alleged overspenders have increased their spending by less than the Prime Minister has increased that of central Government. Twelve of these authorities have increased their spending by less than the average of local authorities. Rochdale, Tameside, Walsall, Lewisham, Tower Hamlets, Haringey, Avon, Cheshire, Cleveland,
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  Derbyshire, Humberside and Lancashire, all on the hit list, have increased their spending by less than the average. Fourteen of these authorities have increased their spending by less than the rise in pay and prices which means that they are being hit despite the fact that they have had to make real cuts in their spending over the past four years—Liverpool, St. Helens, Gateshead, north Tyneside, south Tyneside, Hounslow, Cumbria, Durham, Northumberland, Newcastle upon Tyne, Salford, Manchester and Richmond-upon-Thames. The example of Newcastle upon Tyne which was quoted by the Secretary of State speaks eloquently of the humbug of the Government on the issue of rate increases. It is, indeed, true, that Newcastle's rates have increased by 130 per cent. over the last four years, but Newcastle's spending has increased by only 70 per cent. The reason why Newcastle's rates have gone up so much is not because of the ratepayers or the electors of Newcastle but because of central Government. The Government are principally responsible for the mass rise in rates that has taken place in almost every area of the country.
  However visible they may be, and despite the increases that have taken place, rates are but a small burden compared with the burden of central taxation imposed on the British people by the present Government. Rate bills for the average family have risen from £3·07 to £6·50 a week since 1978–79, but the same family has seen its centrally imposed taxation bill rise from £38 to £75, 13 times the size of its rate bills. We should tonight be talking not about rate capping but about tax capping, for no local authority of whatever political hue has broken its promises on spending and taxation as abjectly as the Conservatives. They promised to reduce taxation in 1979 and again in 1983. Instead, they have increased the overall burden of taxation by 14p in the pound, and today we learn that the increases in taxation last year were the highest of any western country.
  As for business rates, the Government have had to resort to the wildest exaggerations to justify the Bill. As the Under-Secretary told me, rates form just one hundredth, 1 per cent., of business costs, a figure that has barely moved in the past.
  Moreover, unlike domestic ratepayers—this point has not been mentioned in the debate—business ratepayers obtain tax relief on their rate bills of 52p in the pound. No wonder corporation tax has gone down as rate bills have gone up. For all the false propaganda from the Secretary of State and his lickspittles in the CBI, the burden of business taxation including rates in the United Kingdom is low, to quote from the latest report of the influential and respected Institute for Fiscal Studies.
  International comparison can also show what nonsense is the Government's argument that the whole of their economic strategy could be knocked off course by the spending decisions of local authorities. No western country controls its local authority spending in the way in which this Government are proposing. Indeed, the only parallels for this measure are to be found in the Soviet bloc, and I ask Conservative Members whether that is the example they wish to follow. In most other western countries, including those whose record of economic success is better than ours, the totals of local authority spending are not even included, let alone controlled, in their public expenditure plans.
  Additional expenditure by local authorities that is borne on the rates cannot in any significant way affect the level

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  of borrowing, the level of interest rates or the level of the money supply. If the Government do not already know that the alleged overspending cannot and will not affect their overall economic strategy, they will soon find out, for what takes the Bill into the stratosphere of absurdity is the fact that it cannot in any event work to produce the savings that the Secretary of State claims for it.
  The argument today has been about £770 million—0·5 per cent. of public spending, 0·25 per cent. of national income—and as the director of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy pointed out yesterday, there is no way in the world that the Government can get back that sum or anything like it through the Bill. To do so would, for example, from the point of view of the GLC, require a London Transport fares increase in real terms of 40 per cent. But the Secretary of State for Transport, who is now assuming responsibility for London Transport fares, has said that fares will not rise above the level of inflation. If so, the Treasury will not get its cut. To claw back this £770 million would require the hit list authorities— for example Islington, but it is true of all the others—to close nearly all their libraries, old people's homes, day care centres and baths and cancel their home helps, which would be impossible.
  Dr. McDonald: Essex county council — a Tory-controlled authority—is bound either to overspend in the next financial year by £6·5 million or to cut essential services such as the police and the fire service, in spite of traditional Tory promises. Most of the Essex Tory Members signed a letter of protest to the Secretary of State, yet hardly any of them have been present tonight and no doubt none of them will have the courage to vote in the Lobby against the Bill.
  Mr. Straw: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The Bill will certainly hit Conservative as well as Labour authorities.
  On 3 January, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Mr. Beaumont-Dark) told The Birmingham Post:
  "The pressure on backbenchers"—
  to vote for the Bill—
  "is quite extraordinary. If all those offered the prospect of office in the near future were to receive it, there would be no backbenchers left."
  The hon. Member for Aldershot (Mr. Critchley) has said:
  "Dark-brown voices"—
  of the Whips—
  "have been busy,"
  on the telephone, directing Conservative Members into the Aye Lobby.
  While the Secretary of State has been threatening petulantly, or promising, to resign if the Bill is rejected, he has already been preparing for defeat. Under the headline
  "Rate Bill may cost Treasury £500m",
  the Financial Times tells us that the Secretary of State is already preparing to go to the Cabinet and ask them to legitimise at least £500 million of the alleged £770 million overspend, because he knows that it is impossible under his present measures, or future measures, to claw back that sum.
  Apart from the sheer size of the cuts required from individual local authorities, there is another reason why the Bill will not work and will simply result in the most monumental bungle that the House has ever seen. In place
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  of local democracy and the collective judgment of 24,000 councillors and 400 local councils, it sets the judgment of the Secretary of State for the Environment. In practice, as the Conservative-controlled Association of County Councils has told us, effective control will be by the civil servants. The civil servants will be controlled in turn by the computer at the Department of the Environment and the calculation of each authority's grant-related expenditure assessment.
  Mr. Marlow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Straw: No, I will not.
  GREAs are horrendously complicated and it is not surprising that many hon. Members and Ministers should have found better things to do than grasp the details. However, the report presented to the House by the Secretary of State on 14 December shows that GREAs are based upon 54 different sets of compound mathematical factors which, added together, determine an authority's level of spending.
  Mr. Marlow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Straw: I will give way in a moment.
  With the events in Liverpool in mind, we are all concerned about how social service departments treat children — particularly young children — at risk. At present—in Redbridge, in Bristol and across the country—individual councillors use their skill and judgment to assess the level of services to be provided to children under five who are at risk. Under the Bill—I have to tell Conservative Members that I mean part I as well as part II — the judgment of those councillors will be subordinated to the calculations of the grant-related expenditure assessment factor XI.
  The computer will determine how much will be spent on children at risk not by making a careful study in each area but by multiplying the number who live in households lacking the exclusive use of a bath or inside WC by 0·04761 and adding the number who live in households containing a lone parent family, multiplied by 0·54864, and the number who live in households with an immigrant head, multiplied by 0·029293. Can that be the right way to make judgments about children at risk and the services with which they should be provided? That is exactly what the House is being invited to do tonight.
  What makes the measure even worse is that by seeking to use GREAs to control the overall level of spending by local authorities, the Secretary of State is breaking solemn undertakings given to the House by his predecessor, that the GREAs would never be used in that way. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, North-East (Mrs. Short) reminded the House of that this afternoon.
  Mr. William Ross: Before the hon. Gentleman moves too far from councillors' judgment, will he recall that one hon. Member called the Bill an introduction of direct rule? Is the hon. Gentleman aware that we have lived under direct rule for many years in Northern Ireland where the Government are directly responsible for most local government functions, and that under that system there is great frustration? [Interruption.]
  Mr. Straw: I take the hon. Gentleman's point, and although the circumstances are different, we should all be aware of where the taking of central powers can lead and what has already happened in Northern Ireland.
  Mr. Marlow: The hon. Gentleman is one of the more sensible souls on the Opposition Benches. He will realise that many ratepayers are being devastated by the massive rate increases that they are having to pay as a result of some of his more loony friends. Will he tell the House whether he believes that a local authority should have an unlimited discretion about the level of rates that it charges?
  Mr. Straw: I would ask the hon. Gentleman to avoid flattering me, because it can do my future no end of harm. Yes, I do. I believe, as his hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes (Mr. Benyon) said, that we should accept local government, warts and all. I also believe—he happens to live in Lambeth, as I do—that the level of rates is not significantly high and that we receive good services for them. He and I may disagree over that and make different decisions when we vote, as can the electors.
  Since GREAs were established, the system has been so manipulated by the Secretary of State that inner urban areas, particularly Labour-controlled ones, have been hit exceptionally hard. Whatever criteria are chosen have to be applied to all authorities in a particular class. Therefore the system has had a random and capricious effect upon Conservative-controlled local authorities as well. That is one reason why ratepayers in Hove, Portsmouth, Gillingham, Wandsworth, Kensington and Chelsea, and Essex face rate rises of 40 per cent. or more, or major cuts in their services, if they are to keep to the Government targets. It is why the Conservative leaders of the local authority associations remain wholly unconvinced by the reassurances that the Secretary of State has sought to give. They know that the system is unfair and unworkable from their experience the past four years.
  In 1979, the present Leader of the House said:
  "Once you centralise power, a bad decision is disastrous".
  Nothing so eloquently proves the wisdom of his advice than the chaos of the system of grants and penalties on whose crumbling foundation the Bill is based.
  Some hon. Members have sought reassurance from the fact that the Government say that they will only use reserve powers if the selective powers fail. The Conservative leaders of the local authority associations have not been taken in by those so-called reassurances, and neither should Conservative Members. Mr. John Lovill, the chairman of the Association of County Councils, has said that the selective powers were in any event pretty pernicious because even to exercise the selective powers the Department of the Environment and the Secretary of State have to make a judgment about every authority.
  It may not be realised by Conservative Members who support the selective powers that if they work and reduce the rates of the so-called overspending authorities, they will then qualify for the extra rate support grant which they are presently denied. As the total rate support grant is fixed as a cash limit, it will mean that if rate capping works there will be less rate support grant for those authorities that have not been selected for rate capping and their rates will rise faster than they would otherwise have done.
  To add to the insanity, Mr. Noel Hepworth, the director of CIPFA—the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy—said yesterday:
  "Given a relatively continuous list of levels of overspending, all overspending authorities may need to be capped to avoid uncapped authorities being allowed to overspend more than capped ones."
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  It is all very well saying that 20 authorities must be capped, but if those authorities are capped and another 10 are behind them, the 10 uncapped authorities will have higher rates than the 20 capped authorities. Therefore, the uncapped authorities will have to be capped. In those circumstances, 30 local authorities will be capped and another 10 authorities will be behind them. Their rates will be higher than those of the 30 capped local authorities and so the following 10 local authorities will have to be capped, and that state of affairs will continue. No Conservative Members should take reassurance from the syrupy words of the Secretary of State for he will be down the neck of every local authority in the land.
  To all of this, the Secretary of State has but one refrain—the Government have a mandate. Of course, what appears in party manifestos should be taken seriously. but while Governments may propose, it is for the House to dispose. A claimed mandate is no excuse for Members suspending their judgment on what is put before them. We know, not least from the words of the right hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Prentice), that this manifesto commitment was never properly considered by the Government. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes said that it came out of the blue. We know that proposals of this type were considered four times by the Cabinet during the previous Parliament and rejected on each occasion. Above all, we know that this measure was forced into the Conservative manifesto as a cover for the Prime Minister's personal failure to fulfil her personal pledge to abolish domestic rates and was not incorporated in it on its merits.
  The Conservative party has traditionally seen itself as the party most in favour of the maximum diffusion of economic and political power, and of the weakest possible state. Lord Salisbury, in laying the foundations of the present system of local democracy, told the Conservative national union:
  "the purpose of local government is to diminish central government."
  Other Members of the Conservative party have followed that advice throughout the decades.
  The Secretary of State for the Environment told the Conservative party conference in 1980:
  "I also believe that a massive shift of power from local government to central Government would be wholly incompatible with our wish to entrust people personally and directly with the maximum responsibility for their lives."
  More recently, we have been told by the Prime Minister that less government is better government, and that the purpose of the Conservatives is to
  "roll back the frontiers of the Slate."
  The debate is particularly poignant occasion because 100 years of Conservative traditions, customs and principles are to be torn up in pursuit of this sordid measure, which will not work in practice but will accord to the Secretary of State for the Environment unbelievable powers centrally to control rates, and therefore the services of every local authority in the land.
  We know from the defensive speech of the Secretary of State and his colleagues, and what he himself has declared in the past, that he knows that he is departing from Conservative principles. When talking at a dinner of county treasurers in 1973, he said of local authorities:
  "As autonomous bodies, they cannot be coerced. nor have we any wish to coerce them."
  Earlier in 1973, at a meeting of the Association of Municipal Corporations, he said:

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  "I would very much rather see local authorities have a fair degree of discretion and prepared to take on their own shoulders the full responsibility for their decisions rather than that they should merely become glorified agents for Whitehall."
  The Secretary of State, in justifying his actions, has invented the novel constitutional notion that Britain is a unitary state. Albania and the Dominican Republic are also unitary states but they are not democracies.
  The extent to which power is spread makes a country democratic. That applies, most of all, to the extent to which those who do not support the Government of the day are themselves accorded power to express their view, and above all, power to act in a way that is contrary to the Government's wishes.
  In the celebrated Dimbleby lecture in 1976 Lord Hailsham warned that over-centralisation, of exactly the sort that we are discussing tonight, would lead, in his words, to an "elective dictatorship" and to Government riding roughshod over all those who fail wholeheartedly to agree with them.
  The Secretary of State is unquestionably taking the House and the country down a road that will destroy local democracy. He will do so by controlling the services of local authorities and, more sinister, by challenging the legitimacy of those who vote in local elections. For the Secretary of State to argue that in the past there has been a form of consensus between local authorities and central Government over economic policy, which some allegedly overspending authorities have broken, is nonsense. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr. Crowther) has said, there has never been such a consensus, There has been discussion between local authorities and the national Government; sometimes authorities have spent more than central Government would have wished and sometimes they have spent less. That has been the experience of Governments of both major parties.
  In 1972, the present Secretary of State for Education and Science sent a circular to every local authority in the land advising it to plan for an increase in its spending of 10 per cent. per annum in real terms for each of the following 10 years. That Conservative underspending Secretary of State advised every authority to increase its spending by over 100 per cent. in real terms in the following 10 years. No authority in the land was able to match his profligacy. It was only the autonomy of local authorities and local democracy that prevented one man's brainstorm from becoming the nation's disaster.
  There will always be room for argument about exactly where the balance should lie between a uniform national policy and local autonomy. The Labour party has tended to favour greater intervention in education while the Conservative party has favoured greater intervention in housing. Wherever the balance between national policy and local autonomy has been struck, both sides of the House have always been agreed on one major and central principle. Each side has been agreed that in pursuing statutory duties each local authority and each community should have the right in the final analysis itself to determine how much to spend on a service and how much to raise in rates. Common sense has told us to leave it to local councillors to balance what their areas need against what their areas can afford. It is that central principle of local democracy, which has been accepted on an all-party basis for more than a century, that the Bill will destroy.
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  The Bill is the most important single measure that will come before the House this Session. As it is a constitutional measure of great importance, it merits consideration by a Committee of the whole House. In terms of the powers that it transfers, it is at least as significant constitutionally as the devolution Bills and the European Communities legislation, all of which were considered in Committee on the Floor of the House. The Bill is certainly of greater significance than the Conservative Government's London Government Bill of 1963, the major clause and schedule of which were considered in Committee on the Floor of the House.
  The Bill involves the greatest single act of centralisation ever seen in this century in peace time or in war. Those were the words of the former Conservative Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath). The Bill takes us down the road of the bureaucratic and authoritarian state. It is justified by economic arguments that are hollow and by constitutional arguments that are undemocratic and entirely inconsistent with the traditions and principles of the Conservative party. It is a measure without friends. It is opposed, moreover, by all parties outside the House. It cannot work and it is without justification. We shall fight it with all the means at our disposal. We shall vote against it this evening, and I hope that in so doing we shall be joined by many Conservative Members who have the courage of their own convictions and not of ours.
  9.30 pm
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. William Waldegrave): The case for the Bill rests on two main arguments. One is to do with the need for the House to be able to exercise in reality the rights and duties it pretends to have in setting the level of total public expenditure and setting the priorities within public expenditure. The second is to do with ratepayers and the protection of the ratepayer against a system which no longer gives him a fair deal.
  The arguments against the Bill seem to fall broadly within the same headings. On the one hand, it is said that the burden of the ratepayer is exaggerated or it is claimed that the remedy lies in his own hand. On the other hand, some hon. Members seek to say that the House either has no right to control public spending or should not seek to do so.
  I start with the non-domestic ratepayers because the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) put some weight on this matter. He has been refuted by my hon. Friends the Members for Stamford and Spalding (Sir K. Lewis) and for Wiltshire, North (Mr. Needham) who have the advantage over him that they run businesses, and also by my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander). If they were not enough to refute him, as they should be, there are other authorities urging support for the Bill—the Confederation of British Industry, the Association of British Chambers of Commerce, the Institute of Directors and the Chemical Industries Association. All this must count for something with my hon. Friends. A survey of London companies showed that 92 per cent. of the companies surveyed said that high rates led to job losses. A recent opinion poll showed that a majority of Labour voters agreed with them.
  Mr. Nellist rose—
  Mr. Waldegrave: Small businesses of different kinds support the Bill. I shall quote one that I came across recently whose rates went up from £90,000 to over £160,000 in a year and which had to lay off people: it is a small, indeed declining, business called the Labour party at 150 Walworth road. There can be no question but that the additional fixed costs represented by rates will be passed on either in higher prices or in the fiercely competitive atmosphere of recent recession.
  Mr. Nellist rose—
  Mr. Waldegrave: If this is not possible, firms will be forced to pay lower wages or, if unions prevent that, to diminish their labour forces. If hon. Members want a clear, professional, economic analysis of that truism, I refer them to Christopher Foster's great book on the subject.
  Mr. Nellist rose—
  Mr. Waldegrave: I know that the hon. Member is frustrated, but it is not for me to give him the opportunity to make his speech.
  Mr. Foster's book further deploys an interesting argument about fairness and high business rates, that in so far as high business rates are passed on in higher prices the effect is that
  "local authorities can provide benefits to their local community at the expense of people elsewhere who have no say in the matter."
  The hon. Member for Blackburn has brewed up a storm in a teacup to which he did not refer in his speech. I want to give him the opportunity to refer to it; I think he is a little ashamed of it now. He has talked about the difference between a figure I gave him on the subject of rates as a proportion of profits and a CBI estimate. The CBI estimate was 50 per cent. or more. The Department of the Environment estimate was one eighth. There is a simple answer, as the hon. Member now knows. It was made explicit in my answer that I was talking about profits before allowance for depreciation and the CBI was talking about profits after depreciation. The difference is almost wholly explained by this simple point. Perhaps the hon. Member for Blackburn, as a former economics spokesman for the Labour party, would like to learn about definitions of profits.
  Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Unfortunately, because the Minister is speaking so fast and looking straight down at the Dispatch Box, we cannot hear a word he is saying.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the House can hear, but if there were less chat on the Back Benches it might be easier.
  Mr. Nellist rose—
  Mr. Waldegrave: I wanted to give the hon. Member for Blackburn, who is a decent and fair-minded person, the opportunity to apologise to my right hon. Friend because he said in the national press in so many words that my right hon. Friend was lying. He knows that that is not so. Therefore, I give him the opportunity to apologise.
  Mr. Nellist: Will the Minister give way now?
  Mr. Straw: I am delighted not to apologise but to take this opportunity to repeat once again that the Secretary of State has wildly exaggerated the impact of rates on the profits of business. The Secretary of State says that the
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  figures are those produced by the CBI, but the Under-Secretary of State forgot to say that the letter which the Secretary of State wrote to me admitted that the figure was not 50 per cent. but 40 per cent. The CBI tells me that the figure for this year is 30 per cent. In selecting the figure which was tendentious—the Secretary of State knew that—he was trying wildly to exaggerate the impact of rates and his hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State who quoted a figure which was one quarter of that given by the Secretary of State was giving the correct figure.
  Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman might have disappointed the House by not exhibiting his normal fair-mindedness. I trust that in future he will read the questions that he has tabled as well as the answers to them.
  There can be no question of the importance of the Bill for industry and commerce. No serious person denies that. Nor can there be any doubt about the impact on domestic ratepayers. That is not a serious argument.
  Accountability is an argument which has exercised the minds of many of my right hon. and hon. Friends who have their doubts. That is a serious argument and we must address it.
  Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark rose—
  Mr. Waldegrave: Many people say that it is not that high rates do not matter but that the remedy lies in the hands of ratepayers. That argument was made by the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), by my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Silvester). My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has given the essence of the answer to that argument. Only 22 per cent. of local expenditure is met by the domestic ratepayer. As my right hon. Friend says, the weakness does not stop there. Only 35 per cent. of local electors are householders who pay rates directly. We all know, and any psephologist can prove, that local elections are reflections of satisfaction or otherwise with the national Government.
  I am not suggesting that financial accountability mechanisms do not work at all. They work in many places where sensible and responsible people run local government. Such people make the accountability system work almost voluntarily, but the system is far too weak to protect ratepayers in such classic circumstances when the Government are right to take powers to prevent ratepayers suffering from institutions which are not working as intended.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup said that he opposes the centralisation of power. In a fierce, formidable and short speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes (Mr. Benyon) said the same. That is quite right, but the only aternative if we are serious about the maintenance of control over public spending is so to diminish local athorities that their spending would not matter to the management of the central economy. That would be a real centralisation of power. Great services would have to be taken from local authorities. Surely that would be far worse for those such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup who are anxious about the diffusion of power. That argument was also made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Prentice) and by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon). I urge them

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  to bear it in mind that if we are serious about the control of public spending and the annual votes on the level of public spending, what I have outlined is the only alternative.
  With all due respect to my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, he must remember when arguing about centralisation the far greater experiment that we made—I was a junior soldier in his army when we made it—in centralisation through the statutory incomes and prices policy. Surely that was a far greater exercise in centralisation than anything in the Bill. I believed in it at that time but learnt from experience that it could not work. The power to set priorities locally must remain with local authorities—even those whose levels of rates have been capped.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Waldegrave: I have the duty to try to respond to the many formidable speeches that have been made.
  The other principal reason for the Bill lies at the heart of the Government's mandate — the struggle to hold down the growth of public spending. I suspect that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are doubtful about the Bill are also doubtful about the need to control public spending.
  The argument of principle was settled long ago when local spending was defined as public spending and included in the public expenditure White Papers approved by the House every year. Professor Alan Day said years ago in his brilliant essay in the minority report to the Layfield committee that local spending has long been the Achilles heel of this House's control over public spending.
  Year after year, we pretended to vote for levels of spending and an order of priorities within spending that were, in reality, mythical. Whenever, every year, spending was drifting up, the dissonance between reality and the myth was not too great. However, when the majority in the House votes for overall control and for a shift in the order of priorities, the self-contradiction begins to matter. Surely no one on the Conservative side pretends to doubt the right of the House, indeed the duty, not to shirk the control of spending. In an excellent maiden speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) made that clear.
  Mr. Patrick Cormack: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Waldegrave: I shall quote from the best modern writer on Conservatism:
  "Where local spending and tax-raising cut across central macro-economic policy, Whitehall must have the right to call the tune."
  That was said by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten), the Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
  Mr. Cormack: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Waldegrave: I honestly believe that it would serve the House better if I tried to answer the points that were made in the debate.
  My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham and the hon. Members for Copeland and Blackburn and others commented on the fact that we cut the rate support grant. Of course we cut the rate support grant. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Cormack: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he accept that many of us are deeply disturbed that we have yet to hear a single word to justify the taking of these general powers? He now has 20 minutes to justify that part of the Bill. Will he please seek to do so?
  Mr. Waldegrave: I now have 19 minutes left after that intervention.
  Of course we cut the rate support grant. That was not an exercise in the transfer of spending from one tax to another, but an exercise in showing local authorities that we needed to cut spending. That is what they should have done in response. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) said, that is what they would have done in the old days. Of course Government spending went up faster, in total, than local spending. That is what the House voted for in all the White Papers. The House endorsed the Government's priorities, which included spending on defence, unemployment and the Health Service—on things that, by the accident of history, fall on the central government programmes.
  Some say that although we have the right, it is all de minimis. They say, "What does a few hundred million a year matter?" The hon. Member for Copeland and my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup said that, as did my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Hexham, my right hon. Friend the Member for Daventry and the hon. Member for Blackburn. Like all Labour spokesmen, he said "What does a few hundred million matter?" It matters intensely. I remind my hon. Friends that the whole argument about the Health Service last year was about finding an additional £110 million—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Wareing: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Would it not be better for the House and the conduct of the debate if the Minister looked at the Opposition Benches when he spoke and opened his mouth so that we could hear what he was saying? I am sure that he is ashamed of what he is saying, but let us hear what it is.
  Mr. Speaker: I must say in defence of the Minister that it is not his fault. There is so much noise in the Chamber that it is difficult to hear. I appeal to the House to hear the Minister in silence.
  Mr. Waldegrave: I shall fix my eyes on my colleague the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) and hope that that will meet the wishes of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing).
  Mr. Tony Banks: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Some of us are trying to listen. However, I believe that the Minister is determined that we shall not hear him. He is mumbling and speaking too fast because he does not want us to hear what he is saying. I do not think that he believes what he is saying.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Let me answer that point of order. I think that it would be fair to the Minister if he had a hearing, which would enable him to explain what his policy is.
  Mr. Waldegrave: I did not hear a word of the hon. Member's intervention.
  This £100 million matters intensely. Let me remind my hon. Friends that the whole argument in the Health Service last year was about the finding of £110 million. The local government overspend last year alone was seven times that

  249
  figure. I notice, sadly, that some of my hon. Friends who were most concerned about the situation in the Health Service are those who are most concerned today about our taking powers to try to control that kind of overspend. If we cannot ultimately control current expenditure overspends — and we cannot effectively do so without this Bill—we can do nothing but continue to slash the capital spend, a process that started under the late Mr. Crosland, continued under the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) and has gone on ever since. Again I notice among my hon. Friends who are our critics today some of those who were most vociferous — and justifiably so — in calling upon us to protect capital spending.
  The figures that my right hon. Friend gave about how local authority spending has increased in spite of all the efforts of my right hon. Friends in the last four years should be ingrained in the mind of every Member on the Government's side of this House by now. The volume increase is 4 per cent. The increase in cost terms is 9 per cent. The manpower figures went down a little by 4·5 per cent. but they have started to rise again and there are still about a million people more in local government than in 1963.
  These figures are not de minimis. This Bill is needed to help restore the balance in local government, which has been undermined by the conjunction of weakness in institutions and a determined attack on them by those who have seen that weakness. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) agreed with this point. With respect to some of my right hon. Friends from some of the more sensible counties and those who run local government in those areas, they simply do not know what problems are faced by their colleagues elsewhere. Long may their innocence last.
  Let me try to spell out some of those problems. My right hon. Friend has already reminded us how weak direct accountability has become in many local authorities. One votes to spend £5 and if one contributes at all it is probably only £1 and the chances that one contributes at all are about three to one against. Nevertheless, in areas where traditional standards of public service still reign, councillors of all parties, albeit almost involuntarily, behave as if they should pretend that financial accountability works. Elsewhere new groups of those whose direct interests rest in the expansion of local government dominate councils and run them on quite different principles.
  Let me give some examples. According to David Walker of The Times, 39 Labour councillors in Camden work in taxpayer or ratepayer-financed jobs or in unions, 45 in Islington, 30 in Lambeth, 48 in Southwark and so on. These people are, it is said by some hon. Friends—by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes and other right hon. Friends who doubt the necessity for this Bill—to be entrusted, without any safeguard, with the task of cutting jobs and costs in the public sector, with negotiating with public sector unions and with constraining the expansion of the very empire of which they are the functionaries. If hon. Members believe that they will do that, they will believe anything. My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate put this case very well.
  I suppose that it is possible that we could pretend to believe that they hold, high-mindedly, to a Victorian ideology of disinterested public service, that the Victorian
  250
  political philosopher beginning with "M", of whom they are devotees, is after all John Stuart Mill, but they tell us different. It is asking rather a lot of my hon. Friends to read much of this thing, but they should have a look at the London Labour Briefing to find out what these people believe. I have read every word of it. There is a new breed of Labour councillors who are no more reticent on paper than on the soap box or the television screen. There are plenty of quotations that I could read to the House tonight if it were not for the affront to good sense. Let me quote from one of the many articles:
  "Labour councils should appoint teams of economic planners; and should be prepared to campaign vigorously against critic isms from capitalist lobbies about unfair competition, feather bedding etc."—
  and so on. I hear their supporters helping me along by saying, "Hear, hear", in the background.
  As The Guardian recounted of Ms. Valerie Wise, creator of the GLC's new women's committee:
  "She laughs, engagingly declines to conceal the sheer heady pleasure of sitting at this amazing, lifesize Monopoly board that is London".
  That is no exaggeration. These people are not given to exaggeration.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Will the Minister answer the question to which I tried to get an answer from him earlier? If local government elections are only a reflection of national Government popularity, why do not the Government introduce legislation to abolish elections to local authorities and simply appoint councillors?
  Mr. Waldegrave: Because in most of the country the system works perfectly well, with the good will of all concerned. We are dealing with a minority of places and areas where the system has been corrupted, and quite deliberately corrupted.
  As I was saying, this new breed of Labour councillors is not much given to exaggeration. Hear Mrs. Hodge, the leader of Islington, modestly describe herself and her people in the ratepayer-funded propaganda sheet "Focus" as
  "the most able, the most representative, the most united and the most committed group ever to have been returned to the town hall".
  We do not have wholly to share Mrs. Hodge's estimation of herself to recognise that these are people who know what they want to do and that they will do it unless the House stops them.
  To fail to see how firmly the ideology of Labour councils such as these is based on the expansion of local spending, paid for by the capitalism that they hate and the Westminster Government whom they despise, is to underestimate how formidable an enemy they are to local government as we have known it in this country.
  Ms. Clare Short: The Minister quoted John Stuart Mill. If I remember it correctly, he said that a democratic and free society was one where all opinion could flourish and we could debate openly and decide what was right. Nevertheless, the Minister tries to tell us that because some representatives in local authorities have views that he does not like, he will take away their power to represent the people who voted for them at the ballot box. Is that in John Stuart Mill?
  Mr. Waldegrave: The Government are proposing to provide reserve powers to protect the citizen and the ratepayer where the system is not protected properly by its own self-righting mechanisms.
  The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) asked how much would be saved, and the hon. Member for Blackburn discussed Mr. Hepworth's article. Undoubtedly, we shall have a prolonged opportunity to discuss these matters in Committee. However, let us say that we were to save £300 million—that is probably the order of magnitude, as my right hon. Friend said—in the first year. It will depend entirely on the criteria that we finally agree. Let us say that the figure is £300 million or £400 million. That would be a major contribution to keeping Government finances on an even keel. I have already mentioned the scale of savings that we could make in this connection alongside the kind of savings—
  Mr. Straw rose—
  Mr. Waldegrave: The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that until we have discussed and agreed the criteria it would be foolish to say exactly how much, and what is more, we do not yet know what the effect on local councils' budgeting for next year will be. Of course, many local councils are budgeting sensibly in advance of this Bill.
  Mr. Frank Cook: May I seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker, from your wealth of experience in this Chamber? Will you offer advice to some of the younger Members here? Would you say, from your experience, that the honourable spokesman for the Government has to make an effort, or whether it comes to him naturally, to prove himself so patently inept as a Government apologist?
  Mr. Speaker: I do not think that that requires any comment.
  Mr. Waldegrave: My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Heddle) asked about rating revaluation. The Government are already committed to the case for non-domestic revaluation, and that is now being discussed. On domestic revaluation, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has already announced that we shall be issuing a consultation paper.
  There is one matter that lay behind many of the complaints from my right hon. and hon. Friends, which derives from the pressures put on them by their counties, very often low-spending counties — Essex was mentioned, but there are many others. They have come to fear this Bill and have doubts about it because they see the predicament in which low-spending councils find themselves. Even in the lowest-spending councils, as the Audit Commission shows, there is much more to be saved by greater efficiency. I know of no organisation spending £300 million or £400 million a year that cannot make efficiency gains. It is at the heart of the Bill that if we can bring high spenders under control, it should be possible, perhaps slowly at first, to move towards a fairer deal for low spenders. It is our overriding duty
  252
  to the House, the Government and the national economy to make the books balance. If we cannot stop the runaway spenders we have to bring pressure to bear on everybody.
  The Bill brings help for those of my hon. Friends whose doubts about this rate support grant system as a whole derive from what they see in their counties. The Bill is essential to them in allowing the pressure to come off them in due course.
  Sir Kenneth Lewis: Will my hon. Friend recognise that many of us on the Government Benches who want to cap the rogue elephant in local government because they have got away with it for far too long nevertheless have grave reservations about part II, about which neither he nor the Secretary of State have said very much? We believe that the Committee should look at a compromise on this, such as putting on a time limit. My hon. Friend must not think that because many of us vote tonight with the Government in favour of rate capping we necessarily support him on part II.
  Mr. Waldegrave: I take my hon. Friend's point.
  I have supplied the arguments as to why the House needs a countervailing power to protect those who pay and to protect the concept of disinterested public service, which is under threat. What we propose will work—let no-one doubt that — and the very shrillness of the opposition to it proves it. No one doubts that it will work. To quote Peter Kellner of New Statesman, who is by far the best Labour political commentator:
  "The Government will say that its new law means lower rate rises. And it will be right."
  I point out to my right hn. Friend the Member for Daventry and others that the Bill will work. It has already worked in Scotland. Modern populism is the most acute problem that we face and any Government committed to responsibility in public finance will have to deal with it. There is also the deeper problem of the momentum for growth in programmes administered by local government. After all the conflicts of the past years, that growth goes on. As David Walker writes, the party is not over—it is somewhat subdued.
  I remind my right hon. and hon. Friends of the figures once more. Local authority spending has increased 9 per cent. faster than prices and there has been a 4 per cent. increase in real volume. After all that my right hon. Friend has said and after all the votes in the House, manpower numbers are creeping up again. That is why we need the warning inherent in the general powers in the Bill. It is almost certain that the continuation of the present tough financial regime with the selective scheme will hold the line, but the primary financial duty of the House is to maintain overall financial order. If we are wrong about the effectiveness of the selective financial scheme we could not possibly afford what might be two years' delay and a further round of legislation.
  If the House tonight endorses both the selective and the general powers, not only will a signal have been given so that those general powers will be less likely to be needed, but across the economy as a whole we shall have reaffirmed our commitment to the control of costs and the pressure on public spending that is at the heart of the

  253
  legitimacy of our mandate. That is why I urge those whose doubts I respect but cannot share to join us in the Lobby tonight.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
  The House divided: Ayes 346, Noes 247.

  Division No. 123]

  [10 pm

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Crouch, David

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Alexander, Richard

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Dicks, T.

  Amess, David

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Ancram, Michael

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

  Arnold, Tom

  Dover, Denshore

  Ashby, David

  du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Dunn, Robert

  Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.

  Durant, Tony

  Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

  Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

  Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)

  Eggar, Tim

  Baker, Kenneth (Mole Valley)

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

  Evennett, David

  Baldry, Anthony

  Eyre, Reginald

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Fallon, Michael

  Batiste, Spencer

  Farr, John

  Bellingham, Henry

  Favell, Anthony

  Bendall, Vivian

  Fenner, Mrs Peggy

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)

  Finsberg, Geoffrey

  Berry, Sir Anthony

  Fletcher, Alexander

  Best, Keith

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Forman, Nigel

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Forth, Eric

  Body, Richard

  Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Franks, Cecil

  Bottomley, Peter

  Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh

  Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)

  Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Fry, Peter

  Boyson, Dr Rhodes

  Gale, Roger

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Galley, Roy

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Gardiner, George (Reigate)

  Bright, Graham

  Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)

  Brinton, Tim

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Browne, John

  Gorst, John

  Bruinvels, Peter

  Gow, Ian

  Bryan, Sir Paul

  Gower, Sir Raymond

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.

  Grant, Sir Anthony

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Greenway, Harry

  Budgen, Nick

  Gregory, Conal

  Bulmer, Esmond

  Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)

  Burt, Alistair

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

  Butcher, John

  Grist, Ian

  Butler, Hon Adam

  Ground, Patrick

  Butterfill, John

  Grylls, Michael

  Carlisle, John (N Luton)

  Gummer, John Selwyn

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

  Carttiss, Michael

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Chalker, Mrs Lynda

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hannam, John

  Chope, Christopher

  Hargreaves, Kenneth

  Churchill, W. S.

  Harvey, Robert

  Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

  Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

  Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

  Clarke Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)

  Clegg, Sir Walter

  Hawksley, Warren

  Cockeram, Eric

  Hayes, J.

  Colvin, Michael

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Conway, Derek

  Hayward, Robert

  Coombs, Simon

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Cope, John

  Heddle, John

  Corrie, John

  Henderson, Barry

  Couchman, James

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Hickmet. Richard

  254

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

  Hill, James

  Moynihan, Hon C.

  Hind, Kenneth

  Mudd, David

  Hirst, Michael

  Murphy, Christopher

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Neale, Gerrard

  Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)

  Needham, Richard

  Holt, Richard

  Nelson, Anthony

  Hooson, Tom

  Neubert, Michael

  Hordern, Peter

  Newton, Tony

  Howard, Michael

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)

  Normanton, Tom

  Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)

  Norris, Steven

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Onslow, Cranley

  Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Oppenheim, Philip

  Hubbard-Miles, Peter

  Osborn, Sir John

  Hunt, David (Wirral)

  Ottaway, Richard

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Page, John (Harrow W)

  Hunter, Andrew

  Page, Richard (Herts SW)

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Irving, Charles

  Parris, Matthew

  Jackson, Robert

  Patten, Christopher (Bath)

  Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

  Patten, John (Oxford)

  Jessel, Toby

  Pattie, Geoffrey

  Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Pawsey, James

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Jones, Robert (W Herts)

  Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Pollock, Alexander

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Porter, Barry

  Key, Robert

  Powell, William (Corby)

  King, Roger (B'ham N'field)

  Powley, John

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Prior, Rt Hon James

  Knight, Gregory (Derby N)

  Proctor, K. Harvey

  Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)

  Raffan, Keith

  Knowles, Michael

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Lamont, Norman

  Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

  Lang, Ian

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Lawler, Geoffrey

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Rifkind, Malcolm

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Lilley, Peter

  Rost, Peter

  Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

  Rowe, Andrew

  Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)

  Rumbold, Mrs Angela

  Lord, Michael

  Ryder, Richard

  Luce, Richard

  Sackville, Hon Thomas

  Lyell, Nicholas

  Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

  McCurley, Mrs Anna

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Scott, Nicholas

  MacGregor, John

  Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

  MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb)

  MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Maclean, David John.

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  McQuarrie, Albert

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Madel, David

  Shersby, Michael

  Major, John

  Silvester, Fred

  Malone, Gerald

  Sims, Roger

  Maples, John

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Marland, Paul

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Marlow, Antony

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  Mates, Michael

  Speller, Tony

  Maude, Francis

  Spence, John

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Spencer, D.

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)

  Mayhew, Sir Patrick

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Mellor, David

  Squire, Robin

  Merchant, Piers

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Miller, Hal (B'grove)

  Stanley, John

  Mills, Iain (Meriden)

  Stern, Michael

  Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)

  Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Stevens, Martin (Fulham)

  Mitchell, David (NW Hants)

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Moate, Roger

  Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Stokes, John

  Moore, John

  Stradling Thomas, J.

  255

  Sumberg, David

  Walker, Bill (T'side N)

  Tapsell, Peter

  Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)

  Taylor, John (Solihull)

  Waller, Gary

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Walters, Dennis

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Ward, John

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

  Terlezki, Stefan

  Warren, Kenneth

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

  Watson, John

  Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

  Watts, John

  Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)

  Wheeler, John

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Whitfield, John

  Thurnham, Peter

  Whitney, Raymond

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

  Wilkinson, John

  Tracey, Richard

  Wolfson, Mark

  Trippier, David

  Wood, Timothy

  Trotter, Neville

  Woodcock, Michael

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Yeo, Tim

  van Straubenzee, Sir W.

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Vaughan, Dr Gerard

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Viggers, Peter

  Waddington, David

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Mr. Carol Mather and

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Mr. Robert Boscawen.

  Walden, George

  NOES

  Abse, Leo

  Cowans, Harry

  Alton, David

  Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

  Anderson, Donald

  Craigen, J. M.

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Critchley, Julian

  Ashdown, Paddy

  Crowther, Stan

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Ashton, Joe

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)

  Barnett, Guy

  Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'I)

  Barron, Kevin

  Deakins, Eric

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Dewar, Donald

  Beckett, Mrs Margaret

  Dixon, Donald

  Beggs, Roy

  Dobson, Frank

  Beith, A. J.

  Dormand, Jack

  Bell, Stuart

  Douglas, Dick

  Bennett, A. (Dent'n & Red'sh)

  Dubs, Alfred

  Benyon, William

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Dykes, Hugh

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Eadie, Alex

  Blair, Anthony

  Eastham, Ken

  Boothroyd, Miss Betty

  Edwards, R. (W'hampt'n SE)

  Boyes, Roland

  Ellis, Raymond

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Evans, Ioan (Cynon Valley)

  Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

  Evans, John (St. Helens N)

  Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

  Ewing, Harry

  Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)

  Fatchett, Derek

  Brown, R. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne N)

  Faulds, Andrew

  Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Bruce, Malcolm

  Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)

  Buchan, Norman

  Fisher, Mark

  Caborn, Richard

  Flannery, Martin

  Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

  Forrester, John

  Campbell, Ian

  Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

  Campbell-Savours, Dale

  Foster, Derek

  Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)

  Foulkes, George

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Fraser, J. (Norwood)

  Cartwright, John

  Freeman, Roger

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

  Clarke, Thomas

  Freud, Clement

  Clay, Robert

  Garrett, W. E.

  Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)

  George, Bruce

  Cohen, Harry

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Coleman, Donald

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.

  Godman, Dr Norman

  Conlan, Bernard

  Golding, John

  Cook, Frank (Stockton North)

  Gould, Bryan

  Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

  Gourlay, Harry

  Corbett, Robin

  Hamilton, James (M'well N)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)

  256

  Hardy, Peter

  O'Neill, Martin

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

  Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

  Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith

  Park, George

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Parry, Robert

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Patchett, Terry

  Heath, Rt Hon Edward

  Pavitt, Laurie

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Pendry, Tom

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Penhaligon, David

  Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)

  Pike, Peter

  Home Robertson, John

  Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

  Howells, Geraint

  Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

  Hoyle, Douglas

  Prescott, John

  Hughes, Mark (Durham)

  Radice, Giles

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Randall, Stuart

  Hughes, Roy (Newport East)

  Redmond, M.

  Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

  Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Richardson, Ms Jo

  Janner, Hon Greville

  Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

  Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  John, Brynmor

  Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

  Johnston, Russell

  Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Rogers, Allan

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Rooker, J. W.

  Kennedy, Charles

  Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)

  Kilfedder, James A.

  Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

  Kilroy-Silk, Robert

  Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

  Rowlands, Ted

  Kirkwood, Archibald

  Ryman, John

  Lambie, David

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Lamond, James

  Sheerman, Barry

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

  Leighton, Ronald

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)

  Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

  Short, Mrs R. (W'hampt'n NE)

  Litherland, Robert

  Silkin, Rt Hon J.

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Smith, C.(Isl'ton S & F'bury)

  Loyden, Edward

  Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

  McCartney, Hugh

  Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)

  McCusker, Harold

  Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Snape, Peter

  McGuire, Michael

  Soley, Clive

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Speed, Keith

  McKelvey, William

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  Mackenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

  Stott, Roger

  Maclennan, Robert

  Strang, Gavin

  Macmillan, Rt Hon M.

  Straw, Jack

  McNamara, Kevin

  Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

  McTaggart, Robert

  Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)

  Madden, Max

  Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)

  Maginnis, Ken

  Thorne, Stan (Preston)

  Marek, Dr John

  Tinn, James

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Torney, Tom

  Martin, Michael

  Wainwright, R.

  Mason, Rt Hon Roy

  Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)

  Maxton, John

  Wallace, James

  Maynard, Miss Joan

  Warden, Gareth (Gower)

  Meacher, Michael

  Wareing, Robert

  Meadowcroft, Michael

  Weetch, Ken

  Michie, William

  White, James

  Mikardo, Ian

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  Williams, Rt Hon A.

  Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

  Winnick, David

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

  Woodall, Alec

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

  Nellist, David

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Mr. John McWilliam and

  O'Brien, William

  Mr. Frank Haynes.

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Rippon.]
  Question put:—
  The House divided: Ayes 255, Noes 346.

  Division No. 124]

  [10.15 pm

  AYES

  Abse, Leo

  Edwards, R. (Whampt'n SE)

  Alton, David

  Ellis, Raymond

  Anderson, Donald

  Evans, Ioan (Cynon Valley)

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Evans, John (St. Helens N)

  Ashdown, Paddy

  Ewing, Harry

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Fatchett, Derek

  Ashton, Joe

  Faulds, Andrew

  Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Fisher, Mark

  Barnett, Guy

  Flannery, Martin

  Barron, Kevin

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Forrester, John

  Beckett, Mrs Margaret

  Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

  Beggs, Roy

  Foster, Derek

  Beith, A. J.

  Foulkes, George

  Bell, Stuart

  Fraser, J. (Norwood)

  Bennett, A. (Dent'n & Red'sh)

  Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

  Benyon, William

  Freud, Clement

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Garrett, W. E.

  Bidwell, Sydney

  George, Bruce

  Blair, Anthony

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Boothroyd, Miss Betty

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Boyes, Roland

  Godman, Dr Norman

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Golding, John

  Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

  Gould, Bryan

  Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

  Gourlay, Harry

  Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)

  Hamilton, James (M'well N)

  Brown, R. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne N)

  Hamilton, W. W. (Central Fife)

  Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

  Hardy, Peter

  Bruce, Malcolm

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Buchan, Norman

  Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

  Caborn, Richard

  Hart, Rt Hon Dame Judith

  Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

  Haynes, Frank

  Campbell, Ian

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Campbell-Savours, Dale

  Heath, Rt Hon Edward

  Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Carter-Jones, Lewis

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Cartwright, John

  Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Clarke, Thomas

  Howells, Geraint

  Clay, Robert

  Hoyle, Douglas

  Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)

  Hughes, Mark (Durham)

  Cohen. Harry

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Coleman, Donald

  Hughes, Roy (Newport East)

  Concannon, Rt Hon J. D.

  Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

  Conlan, Bernard

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Cook, Frank (Stockton North)

  Janner, Hon Greville

  Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

  Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)

  Corbett, Robin

  John, Brynmor

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Johnston, Russell

  Cormack, Patrick

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Cowans, Harry

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

  Kennedy, Charles

  Craigen, J. M.

  Kilfedder, James A.

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Kilroy-Silk, Robert

  Critchley, Julian

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

  Crowther, Stan

  Kirkwood, Archibald

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Lambie, David

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Lamond, James

  Dalyell, Tam

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

  Leighton, Ronald

  Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)

  Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)

  Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'I)

  Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

  Deakins, Eric

  Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

  Dewar, Donald

  Lightbown, David

  Dixon, Donald

  Litherland, Robert

  Dobson, Frank

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Dormand, Jack

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Douglas, Dick

  Loyden, Edward

  Dubs, Alfred

  McCartney, Hugh

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

  McCusker, Harold

  Dykes, Hugh

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Eadie, Alex

  McGuire, Michael

  Eastham, Ken

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  258

  McKelvey, William

  Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

  Mackenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

  Rogers, Allan

  Maclennan, Robert

  Rooker, J. W.

  Macmillan, Rt Hon M.

  Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)

  McNamara, Kevin

  Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

  McTaggart, Robert

  Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)

  Madden, Max

  Rowlands, Ted

  Maginnis, Ken

  Ryman, John

  Marek, Dr John

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Sheerman, Barry

  Martin, Michael

  Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

  Mason, Rt Hon Roy

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Maxton, John

  Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Short, Mrs R.(W'hampt'n NE)

  Maynard, Miss Joan

  Silkin, Rt Hon J.

  Meacher, Michael

  Skinner, Dennis

  Meadowcroft, Michael

  Smith, C.(Isl'ton S & F'bury)

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

  Michie, William

  Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)

  Mikardo, Ian

  Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  Snape, Peter

  Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

  Soley, Clive

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Speed, Keith

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

  Stott, Roger

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Strang, Gavin

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Straw, Jack

  Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

  Tapsell, Peter

  Nellist, David

  Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)

  O'Brien, William

  Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)

  O'Neill, Martin

  Thorne, Stan (Preston)

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Tinn, James

  Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

  Torney, Tom

  Park, George

  Wainwright, R.

  Parry, Robert

  Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)

  Patchett, Terry

  Wallace, James

  Pavitt, Laurie

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Pendry, Tom

  Wareing, Robert

  Penhaligon, David

  Weetch, Ken

  Pike, Peter

  White, James

  Powell, Rt Hon J. E. (S Down)

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

  Williams, Rt Hon A.

  Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

  Winnick, David

  Prescott, John

  Winterton, Mrs Ann

  Radice, Giles

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Randall, Stuart

  Woodall, Alec

  Rathbone, Tim

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Redmond, M.

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)

  Richardson, Ms Jo

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

  Mr. John McWilliam and

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  Mr. John Home Robertson.

  Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Body, Richard

  Alexander, Richard

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Bottomley, Peter

  Amess, David

  Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)

  Ancram, Michael

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Arnold, Tom

  Boyson, Dr Rhodes

  Ashby, David

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.

  Bright, Graham

  Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

  Brinton, Tim

  Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)

  Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

  Baker, Kenneth (Mole Valley)

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

  Baldry, Anthony

  Browne, John

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Bruinvels, Peter

  Batiste, Spencer

  Bryan, Sir Paul

  Bellingham, Henry

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.

  Bendall, Vivian

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)

  Budgen, Nick

  Berry, Sir Anthony

  Bulmer, Esmond

  Best, Keith

  Burt, Alistair

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Butcher, John

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Butler, Hon Adam

  259

  Butterfill, John

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Carlisle, John (N Luton)

  Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

  Carttiss, Michael

  Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)

  Chalker, Mrs Lynda

  Hawksley, Warren

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Hayes, J.

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Chope, Christopher

  Hayward, Robert

  Churchill, W. S.

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)

  Heddle, John

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Henderson, Barry

  Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Clarke Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Hickmet, Richard

  Clegg, Sir Walter

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Cockeram, Eric

  Hill, James

  Colvin, Michael

  Hind, Kenneth

  Conway, Derek

  Hirst, Michael

  Coombs, Simon

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Cope, John

  Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)

  Corrie, John

  Holt, Richard

  Couchman, James

  Hooson, Tom

  Crouch, David

  Hordern, Peter

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Howard, Michael

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)

  Dicks, T.

  Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

  Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Dover, Denshore

  Hubbard-Miles, Peter

  du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

  Hunt, David (Wirral)

  Dunn, Robert

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Durant, Tony

  Hunter, Andrew

  Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Eggar, Tim

  Irving, Charles

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Jackson, Robert

  Evennett, David

  Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

  Eyre, Reginald

  Jessel, Toby

  Fallon, Michael

  Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Farr, John

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Favell, Anthony

  Jones, Robert (W Herts)

  Fenner, Mrs Peggy

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Finsberg, Geoffrey

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Fletcher, Alexander

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Key, Robert

  Forman, Nigel

  King, Roger (B'ham N'field)

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Forth, Eric

  Knight, Gregory (Derby N)

  Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

  Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)

  Franks, Cecil

  Knowles, Michael

  Fraser, Rt Hon Sir Hugh

  Lamont, Norman

  Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

  Lang, Ian

  Freeman, Roger

  Latham, Michael

  Fry, Peter

  Lawler, Geoffrey

  Gale, Roger

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Galley, Roy

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Gardiner, George (Reigate)

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Lilley, Peter

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)

  Gorst, John

  Lord, Michael

  Gow, Ian

  Luce, Richard

  Gower, Sir Raymond

  Lyell, Nicholas

  Grant, Sir Anthony

  McCrindle, Robert

  Greenway, Harry

  McCurley, Mrs Anna

  Gregory, Conal

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)

  MacGregor, John

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

  MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)

  Grist, Ian

  MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

  Ground, Patrick

  Maclean, David John.

  Grylls, Michael

  McQuarrie, Albert

  Gummer, John Selwyn

  Madel, David

  Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

  Major, John

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Malone, Gerald

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Maples, John

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Marland, Paul

  Hannam, John

  Marlow, Antony

  Hargreaves, Kenneth

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Harris, David

  Mates, Michael

  Harvey, Robert

  Maude, Francis

  260

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Sims, Roger

  Mayhew, Sir Patrick

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  Mellor, David

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Merchant, Piers

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Miller, Hal (B'grove)

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  Mills, Iain (Meriden)

  Speller, Tony

  Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)

  Spence, John

  Mitchell, David (NW Hants)

  Spencer, D.

  Moate, Roger

  Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Squire, Robin

  Moore, John

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

  Stanley, John

  Moynihan, Hon C.

  Stern, Michael

  Mudd, David

  Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

  Murphy, Christopher

  Stevens, Martin (Fulham)

  Neale, Gerrard

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Needham, Richard

  Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

  Nelson, Anthony

  Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)

  Neubert, Michael

  Stokes, John

  Newton, Tony

  Stradling Thomas, J.

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Sumberg, David

  Normanton, Tom

  Taylor, John (Solihull)

  Norris, Steven

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Onslow, Cranley

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Oppenheim, Philip

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Osborn, Sir John

  Terlezki, Stefan

  Ottaway, Richard

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

  Page, John (Harrow W)

  Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

  Page, Richard (Herts SW)

  Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)

  Parris, Matthew

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Patten, Christopher (Bath)

  Thurnham, Peter

  Patten, John (Oxford)

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Pattie, Geoffrey

  Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

  Pawsey, James

  Tracey, Richard

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Trippier, David

  Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Trotter, Neville

  Pink, R. Bonner

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Pollock, Alexander

  van Straubenzee, Sir W.

  Porter, Barry

  Vaughan, Dr Gerard

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Viggers, Peter

  Powley, John

  Waddington, David

  Prior, Rt Hon James

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Proctor, K. Harvey

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Raffan, Keith

  Walden, George

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Walker, Bill (T'side N)

  Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

  Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Waller, Gary

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Walters, Dennis

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Ward, John

  Rifkind, Malcolm

  Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Warren, Kenneth

  Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

  Watson, John

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Watts, John

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Rost, Peter

  Wheeler, John

  Rowe, Andrew

  Whitfield, John

  Rumbold, Mrs Angela

  Whitney, Raymond

  Ryder, Richard

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Sackville, Hon Thomas

  Wilkinson, John

  Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

  Wolfson, Mark

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Wood, Timothy

  Scott, Nicholas

  Woodcock, Michael

  Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

  Yeo, Tim

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Shersby, Michael

  Mr. Carol Mather and

  Silvester, Fred

  Mr. Robert Boscawen.

  Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 42 (Committal of Bills).
  Sir Paul Bryan (Boothferry): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I beg to move,
  That the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) be appointed a member of the Standing Committee.
  Mr. Rippon: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. There is a danger that I might accept.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that the right hon. and learned Gentleman would be a great asset, but I am not on the Committee of Selection.

  Rates Bill [Money]
  10.27 pm
  Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
  Motion made, and Question proposed,
  That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Rates Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

  (a) any administrative expenses incurred by the Secretary of State in consequence of that Act; and

  (b) any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable out of such moneys under any other Act.—[Mr. Moore.]

  10.28 pm
  Mr. Ioan Evans: It is important that we should take every opportunity to express our opposition to this measure. I sat through the whole of the debate and, together with many hon. Members on both sides of the House, sought to speak to express the anxieties felt by our constituents and the county and district councils in our areas. It is regrettable that the House has not allowed time for this constitutional measure to be debated properly on the Floor of the House.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. To debate the money resolution is perfectly legitimate.
  Mr. Evans: I speak on the money resolution because I believe that we have today created a constitutional precedent, which Parliament will regret in the years ahead. It is regrettable, when we change the constitutional relationship between central and local government not only on finance but on other matters, that the issue is not debated on the Floor of the House.
  The legislation will be known as the Rate Act 1984, and the emphasis will be on "1984". The prediction made by George Orwell about 1984 is coming with this measure. Time and again Conservative Members have said that they believe in local democracy and that Whitehall is not the best judge. Big Brother, or Big Sister, will now be able to tell local authorities how much they can spend. The Bill has been foisted on Parliament by the Prime Minister herself who, in the discussion with Brian Walden on Sunday, had to admit to the nation that her Government have failed to curb public expenditure and taxation. Such an iniquitous measure, having been brought before the House, will be dealt with in Committee and rushed through the House, thereby changing a relationship that has existed and evolved between local authorities and Parliament since 1601. Local government as we know it will not be the same in the future.
  We must examine public expenditure. Local government has been far more successful than central Government in curbing public expenditure. The Prime Minister at Question Time today said that the cost of unemployment was about £5 billion. Estimates suggest that the loss to the Exchequer is nearer £17 billion. During the next three years, the Government are committed to spending £2 billion on the Falklands, which is far in excess of what the local authorities will spend throughout England and Wales if the Bill is not enacted. The Government have failed to reach their financial targets. The Bill restricts the rights of county and local councils.
  The Association of County Councils, which represents 37 of the 39 non-metropolitan counties in England and the eight Welsh county councils—which provide major
  264
  services to more than 30 million people — asks the House to consider rejecting the present proposal by refusing to give the Bill a Second Reading.
  That motion was put to the Association of County Councils, which comprises a majority of Conservative county councillors, and its verdict was 95 votes against the Bill, with only two county councillors, throughout the entire association, voting for the motion.
  It is interesting to note that those hon. Members who spoke against the Bill voted against it. Those hon. Members who entered the Lobby to vote for the Bill were hardly present throughout the debate.
  Mr. Richard Holt: The hon. Gentleman has referred to my hon. Friends who wished to speak and support the Government. It is not our fault that we did not catch Mr. Speaker's eye. New Members are not big enough to catch his eye.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must not say things like that.
  Mr. Evans: I say, as one who was not called in the debate, that you have been subjected to an unfair attack, Mr. Speaker. There were 75–100 Members who asked Mr. Speaker to call them during the debate, and that is another reason why the Bill should be considered in Committee on the Floor of the House. I understand the frustration of the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) at not being called during the debate on Second Reading. He will have to explain to the district councillors in his constituency and to his constituents that if he is not a member of the Committee he will have no say in the passing of a major constitutional measure. If he is frustrated in not being called, it is to the Government Front Bench that he should address his remarks and not to you, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: That is right. Parliamentary democracy is being ruined.
  Mr. Evans: The Association of Metropolitan Authorities stated:
  "This Bill should not be given a Second Reading. The Environment Committee of the Royal Commission should examine the issue. Failing that, this Bill should be remitted to a Select Committee so that evidence can be taken from those outside central and local government. The enormity of the Bill should not be underestimated."
  The association concluded:
  "A tax-raising power that has existed since 1601 should not be discarded in the space of a few months."
  That is why we should take advantage of the three quarters of an hour that is available to us for this debate.
  Mr. Skinner: That is right. We must use every second of it.
  Mr. Evans: The association represents six metropolitan counties, 36 metropolitan districts, 31 London boroughs and the GLC. I believe that the people of London will wish to see the continuation of the GLC when they read the reports of this debate. They will not support the Government's proposals to abolish it. Four of every 10 persons in England live in areas that are represented by the association.
  The district council in my constituency is represented by the Association of District Councils. The association is entirely opposed in principle to the provisions in parts I and II of the Bill, which contain both collective and general powers to limit the rates levied by local authorities. These provisions are, in some respects, more

  265
  alarming than the proposals in the White Paper on rates. They constitute a fundamental attack on the basis of local government.
  Labour, Liberal, SDP and Conservative councillors unanimously condemn the Bill. That condemnation extends throughout the Association of District Councils. The county councils, the district councils and the metropolitan councils are unanimous in their opposition to the Bill.
  The previous Secretary of State for the Environment, who is now the Secretary of State for Employment, had no doubt about the serious constitutional implications of rate-capping. On 8 July 1980, when he was a Minister in the previous Conservative Administration, he said:
  "There are things that one could do in local government and ways in which local government finance could be approached … which would substantially undermine the autonomy and freedom of action of local authorities. Some people have suggested imposing individual cash limits on every authority. That would be a very serious step indeed."—[Official Report, 8 July 1980, Vol. 988, c. 313.]
  Shortly after that, the right hon. Gentleman was shifted to another Department, and he now finds himself in the Department of Employment.
  The Bill relates to England and Wales, but on Second Reading only one Member representing a Welsh constituency was fortunate enough to catch the eye of the Chair. I express on behalf of all the local authorities in Wales—
  Mr. Stefan Terlezki: The hon. Gentleman does not.
  Mr. Evans: With the exception of the hon. Gentleman, who is a bit of a maverick in Wales, I speak on behalf of councillors of all political persuasions, who are all opposed to the measure. That is why I am speaking on the money resolution. The Government have in a ham-handed way forced the measure to be taken upstairs in Committee—
  Mr. Peter Hubbard-Miles: On the constitutional question, will the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mr. Evans) acknowledge that his constituency is situated in a county which refused to carry out its statutory duties under the civil defence legislation, ordered a civil defence headquarters to be demolished at considerable expense to the ratepayers and had to follow it up by reintroducing that headquarters? Was this refusal to carry out the statutory duties of local authorities not the original breach of the constitution?
  Mr. Evans: The Bill has nothing to do with that question. It does not affect the rates because civil defence comes under the Home Office.
  If we have local authorities, they should be allowed to make decisions. The people in Mid-Glamorgan will be answerable to the electors in Mid-Glamorgan when elections take place. That issue can be put before them. The hon. Member knows, and I know, that Wales has declared itself a nuclear-free zone, although there may be argument against it. Local authorities are disturbed about having to take home helps from elderly people, about having to close nursery schools and about having to sack teachers. It is nonsense to talk about building deep bunkers for a nuclear war that nobody will survive. That is irrelevant. It shows how much the Tory party is scraping the barrel in Wales to try to justify this interference with democracy.
  266
  If the Bill is going into Committee, I hope that the many Conservatives who have spoken, the majority of whom are opposed to the Bill, will be put on the Committee and will seek to minimise the damage that will be wrought by the Bill. When it gets to another place it may be thrown out.
  Mr. Holt: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wish to apologise to you, Sir, if I have been wrong in my statement. Many of us are frustrated at having sat here for hours. I was pricked by the remark that none of us wished to speak. Many of us did. I apologise to you, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: I thank the hon. Gentleman. if he now wishes to make a contribution I will call him.
  10.42 pm
  Mr. Simon Hughes: Nobody is as frustrated as those on these Benches who have also sat through seven hours of debate and have only this last opportunity today to resist a preposterous, populist and unprincipled manoeuvre by the Government against the great bulk of elected representatives of not only their party but all parties. There are 2,000 Liberal councillors, some in control of authorities such as Richmond and the Isle of Wight, who know that nothing has been intended so fiercely to strike at the heart of the job they are elected to do as the manoeuvres of the Government in introducing a Bill which effectively begins to undermine local democracy up and down the land.
  Not only that, but what we have heard from the Government Front Bench today obscures truth, ignores reality and confuses the electorate. We must take this opportunity to ensure that we do not give the Government the money they claim they need to do something that they allege will save money but will probably do the opposite.
  One hundred years ago, Herbert Spencer said:
  "The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of Kings. The function of true Liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the powers of Parliaments."
  It is clear that the power of Parliament, and especially of the Executive, is growing daily and in a way that does not befit a Government who pretend that they are about devolving power and handing freedom back to the people.
  When, 80 years ago, there was a constitutional battle in Wales when the then Board of Education tried to interfere in the powers of local authorities over education, Lloyd George said:
  "It is a new idea in this country that a great Corporation or a County Council is just like a constable, whose business is to carry out orders from above, and liable to be cashiered for breach of discipline if he exercises any discretion."
  The resistance of those who believe that they are more in touch with the needs of local people on day-to-day issues will continue, partly because we realise how unprincipled the Government's stance is and how quickly they have completely changed sides.
  In 1974 the present Prime Minister moved a motion from the Opposition Benches and stressed the need for a fundamental reform of the rating system. She said that local authorities carried out their tasks better than Whitehall could perform them. In 1973, the present Secretary of State for the Environment said:
  "I would very much rather see Local Authorities have a fair degree of discretion and be prepared to take on their shoulders the full responsibility for their decisions rather than that they should become simply glorified agents for Whitehall."
  Why, with no justification, with paltry arguments and thinly veiled reasons for this about-turn, have the

  267
  Government found it so difficult to win the loyalty and respect of their Back Benchers, let alone the rest of the country? Perhaps the reasons are as follows. Although the Government want to make a step that will save money, the predictions in, for example, the Financial Times of last week suggest that the Government's plans to limit rate increases, far from curbing expenditure, will mean that the Treasury will be asked to find another £500 million in the first years of the new scheme.
  Moreover, it is surprising that the Government, like the Labour Government before them, were happy to continue to subsidise a large part of local government expenditure. My colleagues and I do not believe that that should be the case. We believe that money should be raised locally and spent locally. In that way there is accountability in local authorities' expenditure on behalf of local people. It is not possible to do what the Government have done —suddenly to reduce grants that have traditionally been provided by the Government and then to penalise those councils which are forced to increase rates or to increase their funds by turning to their electorates if they want to maintain services.
  In Bradford, for example, the cost to the ratepayer of the council continuing to spend £9 million is £15 million because of the Government's grant penalty. To the £9 million is added £6 million, simply because of an arbitrary formula that is so ineffective and badly thought out that it has had to be adjusted regularly by people in Whitehall who do nothing other than play with figures and have no occasion to deal with what is really happening throughout the country.
  Another example is Avon, a Tory-controlled authority that has made strong representations—[HON. MEMBERS: "What?"] It is a Labour-controlled authority. I am sorry. It has made strong representations to Tories in the area saying that between 1974–75 and 1983–84 total spending in terms of real service provision rose by only 6 per cent., but it reached its highest level when the Tories were in control. Since then, less than 10 per cent. of its budget being discretionary and the rest being imposed on it by the Government by way of legislative direction, it has been forced to increase the amount that it has to charge the citizens fivefold in 10 years. It is being penalised for spending money on services such as nursery schools and educational classes. At the same time one of the Tory Members of Parliament is urging the local authority to spend more money on things such as computer education. If Avon had received the same level of rate support grant as the Tory administration did in 1979–80, it could have reduced its county rate by 8 per cent.
  Cheshire has no overall majority of any party. Cuts in grant have raised rates by 26·7 per cent., without an increase in services. Information about increases that the local authority has had to make shows that since 1979 £2 million has been obligatorily spent by it because of Government directives. It has incurred penalties because of that.
  Essex, the Isle of Wight and many other authorities have a grant-related expenditure figure that is considerably adrift from the target figure, both imposed by the Government and both showing the ridiculous way in which arbitrary figures determine the effect of local government expenditure. The same pattern is repeated up and down the land.
  268
  The Bill that brings this muddle to a head is a miserable effort. We have only to look at some of the provisions to see how badly drafted and how ill thought out it is and how difficult it will be to implement. For example, clause 2(2) (b) states that the Secretary of State can penalise authorities if their expenditure appears
  "excessive having regard to general economic conditions."
  That is even if the figure is less than £10 million or the GREA. The Secretary of State has the power under clause 3(4) to seek information in the event of an appeal by an authority against the Government's assessment. We do not know what sort of information it will be, how long it will take to acquire, what the work load is likely to be—
  Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The speech of the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) seems to be related singularly little to the money resolution.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) is straying a little wide of the money resolution. I hope that he will bear it in mind that other hon. Members wish to take part in the debate.
  Mr. Hughes: The whole point of my examples, such as the clause with which I am dealing, is that the Government are asking permission of the House to have money expended when the provisions of the Bill do not specify in any way what the financial implications will be, not only for the Government but for the local authorities, the work loads of which could be considerably increased, in a way that they cannot begin to contemplate. They have had no guidance either in the White Paper or in the Bill.
  This is another directly financial matter. Under clause 4 the Secretary of State may take into account any reserves held by an authority. Does that include housing account balances? Does it include other reserves that the authority has been directed to accumulate? Again, clause 8 involves totally unspecific additional powers with financial implications that are also totally unspecified.
  In effect, the Government are asking for a complete power—not just the general and specific powers that we have been debating, but an open cheque—to interfere, in a way that is not at all clear to hon. Members, during the next three or four years of their terms of office in the affairs of every local authority in the land.
  There is another problem, and it involves timetabling. An enormous number of steps will need to be taken by local authorities before Parliament is called on—if it is called on—to exercise its decisions by affirmative resolution—and no more—on the specific additional powers that are sought. That could take months, if not years. It is difficult enough for responsible members of all parties in local authorities who are trying to do their best, with reduced powers and facilities, to do the work that they are already doing voluntarily and in their spare time, without the timetabling that will inevitably mean spending considerably more time in dealing with the mandarins and bureaucrats of Marsham street.
  The fundamental problem is that the finance that the Government seek for this monstrous new proposal is based on the uncertainty of the GREA and the uncertainty of assessments as a basis for setting targets. The distortion to which that is susceptible has been apparent over the years. My party realises that the Government are taking this step only because they have refused to face the need for fundamental reform. The sterility of ideas, recognised by both sides—
  Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would care to read the money resolution, because what he is saying does not relate to it at all.
  Mr. Speaker: I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. I say to him again—he heard me earlier—that about 76 hon. Members wish to take part in this debate, and he has had a fair share of it.
  Mr. Hughes: I was on the last point, which I hope hon. Members will accept is directly relevant to the financing of the Bill.
  If the Government had come to the House with a measure to reform local government finance we should have known what the figures would have been, and perhaps we should have been happy to give them the authority to go ahead without controversy and opposition. However, that has not happened. I have read the money resolution several times, and it is as open-ended as any that I have seen in the time that I have been in the House. We are faced with something that does nothing more than confuse the financing of both local government and the public sector generally and is liable to lead the country to spend an enormous amount of wasted money on a muddled scheme which the Government will regret from the moment they introduce it—if it gets through.
  We intend—together, I believe, with members of all other parties—to make sure at every stage of the Bill's progress that the Government's proposals are shown to be the shallow, ill-conceived and anti-democratic proposals that they are generally accepted outside the House to be. Populism is not enough. The Government should be responsible not only for their finances but for ours. They have failed in their duty, and we shall remind them of that until they have to change course.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I must remind the House that this debate comes to an end at 14 minutes past 11, and the Minister would like five minutes in which to wind up.
  10.59 pm
  Mr. Richard Holt: We have had a long day's debate on the subject of local government and rates. My experience is almost unique in the House. I served an apprenticeship of 10 years on the council of the London borough of Brent, and then served on a county council that has been put to us today as a pillar of Toryism—Buckinghamshire. In those 20 years, I have had sufficient experience to make a small contribution to the debate.
  The point that is often made about local democracy is bogus, because in a county such as Buckinghamshire there is nothing very local if one represents a ward in the south which is 70 miles away from a ward in the north about which one has no knowledge. It is as bogus to suggest that the people locally know what it is for which they are voting as it is to say that the Government do not have an overall responsibility—they do. I am delighted that in the debate on the money element of the Bill it has been clearly identified by all Opposition Members, irrespective of their party, that they are not in favour of assisting the ratepayers but are happy for them to be bled and bled again.
  In the constituency of Langbaurgh, which I have the honour to represent, we have high unemployment. I recently carried out an exercise to compare it with the area that I used to represent at the local level. An industrialist in Langbaurgh pays nine times as much in rates as does
  270
  an industrialist in Wyckham. Such a rate burden is why it is necessary for the Government to step in. What is the council spending the money on in Langbaurgh? Something worthy and good—an aviary costing £55,000 in revenue costs alone. That is the sort of spendthrift nonsense that we have had to put up with.
  I am not proud of the local so-called Tory leadership in Buckinghamshire. The chairman and leader of that county council is far removed from the reality of Conservatism. He does not follow it much, but that county council has been used today as an example of Tories against rate-capping. It is suggested that the county council knows better because it is local. In Wyckham, which is not local when one gets up to the district level, we wished to alter the charges for car parking. Who knew best? Buckinghamshire county council, Big Brother. It is just as much guilty—
  Mr. Stephen Ross: What does this have to do with the money resolution, Mr. Speaker?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Imagine that this is a preliminary. The debate has been fairly wide-ranging, and the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) will accept that that has been true of an hon. Member from his party.
  Mr. Holt: What I am saying has about as much relevance to the money resolution as what the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) had to say.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should not follow that line too far.
  Mr. Holt: Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for your advice.
  I did not anticipate being called this evening and have left my notes behind, and am therefore speaking from memory. One or two things that stick in my mind concern money, and that is the real thing for the ratepayers. In Langbaurgh, it costs £1 million more of real money to collect the rents than it does in Wyckham. Such administrative mayhem must be stopped. We need to have the money that we shall be voting this evening to ensure that Parliament saves the wasting of ratepayers' money by counties such as Cleveland, Langbaurgh and Buckinghamshire, so that the people will remember when it comes to elections that only the Conservative party was prepared to do anything to stop the waste of ratepayers' money.
  11.4 pm
  Mr. Dave Nellist: In referring to the money resolution and opposing the authorisation of expenditure of administrative moneys in the Bill, I shall bring the House back to the real world. I spend an inordinate amount of time at surgeries when families knock on my door. People write to me and phone me about damp houses and the fact that they cannot find somewhere decent in which to live in Coventry or have been 10 or 12 years on a waiting list for a new council house. I must explain to them that since 1976, and especially since 1979, because of the salami tactics of the Government's slicing of local authority finance, any housing for them is extremely limited.
  The city council has backed up this point by writing to me explaining that for the past two years it has built no houses and that for the next three years it cannot budget to build any houses. The council has added that to modernise public housing in Coventry to an acceptable

  271
  safe and healthy standard would take at least 30 years on the present grants. When the council applies to the Government for money, it receives a third of its application. That is the real world of local authority spending.
  It may be convenient for Ministers and those hon. Members who talk among themselves during debate to concentrate on the fringe activities among one or two councils. But this measure and the previous cuts by this Government have exacerbated the problems of ordinary working people when social services, housing and education are failing. It is a fallacy for the Minister to sum up in a speech that was as exciting as watching wood warp and to try to con people that the Government are taking control of local authority spending. This measure is simply a book transfer. Money is taken from the hands of working people at a local level to fund 5 million people who are on the dole because of the Tory Government's policies.
  A figure of £10,000 million has been mentioned by several hon. Members today. Since 1976, I have always opposed my local authority raising rates to compensate for the cuts in money from central Government. There is a battle between local and central Government because of the Government's cuts.
  This Bill, in which we are asked to authorise expenditure through a money resolution, is a much wider attack. The Secretary of State, who would not answer interventions eight hours ago and managed to absent himself from the debate, was heard on the radio during the past four weeks complaining that a large number of councils raise most of their money from industrial and commercial ratepayers. He complains that those people have no votes. What rubbish! That action shows that the Secretary of State and the rest of the Cabinet never allow facts to conflict with their prejudices.
  Business men and bosses have votes as individuals in the areas in which they live. Workers who create the wealth in the factories and workplaces that the business men and bosses lord over have votes where they live. The Secretary of State is asking us to set the stage to give more than one vote to those who contribute industrial and commercial rates. It would be laughable for him to suggest that business is under-represented. We can add up all the company directorships of Tory Members on the Register of Members' Interests to see how many business men are represented in the House.
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment wrote me a letter after I had asked about the councils for which the majority of the money raised came from disfranchised industrial and commercial ratepayers. In Scotland there are three, two of which are Shetland and Orkney which have special relationships because of oil. That is 5 per cent. of local authorities in Scotland. In Wales there are five, or 14 per cent. In England there are 29, or 8 per cent. That adds up to 37 councils out of more than 400—less than 8 per cent.—in which most of the rating funds come from the mythical disfranchised majority of industrial and commercial ratepayers. The best example—fortunately this arrived just before 7 o'clock this evening—is Northern Ireland. Ministers make great play of the poverty and penury of businesses, in which jobs are at risk due to high rates bills. They say that high rates cause unemployment and jobs go out of the window. Industrial premises in Northern Ireland are 100 per cent.
  272
  derated, so the area which most closely conforms with the logic of the Bill has the highest unemployment in the country.
  Ministers talk about cutting rates for people in this country and camouflage their true intentions by talking about the accountability of local authorities. If they really want to cut the rates, there is a very simple way to do so. Local authorities now owe £36,000 million to banks and other financial institutions in Britain and abroad in loans and debt charges. That figure has increased by £6,000 million in the past four years—a sum far greater than the so-called overspending of which Ministers have complained today. Coventry owes £200 million to the banks. That has increased every year since the early 1900s when the debt was first launched and there is no way in which Coventry can repay it. The Tories managed to wipe out billions of pounds in debt for British Steel and the rest when they wanted to re-rig the books. If they want to save ratepayers money, let them cancel Coventry's outstanding debt. We could then halve the domestic rate and still have £12 million to £15 million extra per year to spend on the damp houses which I referred to earlier. If the Government would do that throughout the country, it would be a real deal for ratepayers, domestic and otherwise, and for the working people whom we represent.
  11.12 pm
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. William Waldegrave): I wish briefly to address the money resolution itself.
  The first part deals with the administrative costs for central Government in implementing the rate limitation proposals. We expect there to be savings overall in central Government manpower, principally because the new rating procedures outlined in paragraphs 9 to 16 of schedule 1 will provide staff savings in the valuation office. We estimate, however, that there will be additional administrative costs overall arising from the Bill because of the higher grades of staff required for implementation of rate limitation. Under the selective scheme we estimate those overall additional costs to be about £250,000 per year net. If a move to general rate limitation ever became necessary, the costs would no doubt be higher, given the greater number of local authorities involved, but at present this is an unquantifiable cost and would be much less than the general reduction in local authorities' spending.
  The second part of the resolution is designed principally to deal with the cost of additional Exchequer grants to local government for rating relief for properties partly used for the disabled. The extension of eligibility for rate relief to institutions used predominantly but not wholly for the purposes of the Rating (Disabled Persons) Act 1978 is a proposal which I am sure that the House will readily endorse. It is likely to increase the amounts paid out under that Act as 90 per cent. of the cost of the relief given will be reimbursed to local authorities by the Exchequer. It is not possible to say how much is likely to be spent through this increased eligibility since much will depend on the number of institutions successfully claiming relief under the new provisions.
  I invite the House to support the resolution.
  It being three quarters of an hour after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, MR. SPEAKER put the Question pursuant to Standing Order No. 3 (Exempted business).
  The House divided: Ayes 333, Noes 98.

  Division No. 125]

  [11.15 pm

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Evennett, David

  Alexander, Richard

  Eyre, Reginald

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Fallon, Michael

  Amess, David

  Farr, John

  Ancram, Michael

  Favell, Anthony

  Arnold, Tom

  Fenner, Mrs Peggy

  Ashby, David

  Finsberg, Geoffrey

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.

  Forman, Nigel

  Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)

  Forth, Eric

  Baker, Kenneth (Mole Valley)

  Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

  Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

  Franks, Cecil

  Baldry, Anthony

  Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Freeman, Roger

  Batiste, Spencer

  Fry, Peter

  Bellingham, Henry

  Gale, Roger

  Bendall, Vivian

  Galley, Roy

  Bennett, Sir Frederic (T'bay)

  Gardiner, George (Reigate)

  Berry, Sir Anthony

  Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)

  Best, Keith

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Gorst, John

  Bottomley, Peter

  Gow, Ian

  Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)

  Gower, Sir Raymond

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Grant, Sir Anthony

  Boyson, Dr Rhodes

  Greenway, Harry

  Braine, Sir Bernard

  Gregory, Conal

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Griffiths, E. (B'y St Edm'ds)

  Bright, Graham

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

  Brinton, Tim

  Grist, Ian

  Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

  Ground, Patrick

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Grylls, Michael

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

  Gummer, John Selwyn

  Bruinvels, Peter

  Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

  Bryan, Sir Paul

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Budgen, Nick

  Hannam, John

  Bulmer, Esmond

  Hargreaves, Kenneth

  Burt, Alistair

  Harris, David

  Butcher, John

  Harvey, Robert

  Butler, Hon Adam

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Butterfill, John

  Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

  Carlisle, John (N Luton)

  Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hawkins, Sir Paul (SW N'folk)

  Carttiss, Michael

  Hawksley, Warren

  Chalker, Mrs Lynda

  Hayes, J.

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Hayhoe, Barney

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hayward, Robert

  Chope, Christopher

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Clark, Hon A. (Plym'th S'n)

  Heddle, John

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Henderson, Barry

  Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Clarke Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

  Hickmet, Richard

  Clegg, Sir Walter

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Cockeram, Eric

  Hill, James

  Colvin, Michael

  Hind, Kenneth

  Conway, Derek

  Hirst, Michael

  Coombs, Simon

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Cope, John

  Holt, Richard

  Corrie, John

  Hooson, Tom

  Couchman, James

  Hordern, Peter

  Cranborne, Viscount

  Howard, Michael

  Crouch, David

  Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Dicks, T.

  Howell, Ralph (N Norfolk)

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Hubbard-Miles, Peter

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

  Hunt, David (Wirral)

  Dover, Denshore

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Dunn, Robert

  Hunter, Andrew

  Durant, Tony

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

  Irving, Charles

  Eggar, Tim

  Jackson, Robert

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Jenkin, Rt Hon Patrick

  NOES

  Alton, David

  Dixon, Donald

  Ashdown, Paddy

  Dormand, Jack

  Barnett, Guy

  Dubs, Alfred

  Barron, Kevin

  Eastham, Ken

  Beggs, Roy

  Evans, Ioan (Cynon Valley)

  Bennett, A. (Dent'n & Red'sh)

  Evans, John (St. Helens N)

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Fatchett, Derek

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)

  Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

  Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

  Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)

  Foster, Derek

  Bruce, Malcolm

  Foulkes, George

  Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

  Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

  Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)

  Freud, Clement

  Clarke, Thomas

  Godman, Dr Norman

  Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S.)

  Golding, John

  Cohen, Harry

  Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

  Cook, Frank (Stockton North)

  Haynes, Frank

  Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Home Robertson, John

  Cowans, Harry

  Howells, Geraint

  Craigen, J. M.

  Hoyle, Douglas

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Johnston, Russell

  Davies, Ronald (Caerphilly)

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Jessel, Toby

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Johnson-Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Pollock, Alexander

  Jones, Robert (W Herts)

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Powley, John

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Prior, Rt Hon James

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Raffan, Keith

  Key, Robert

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  King, Roger (B'ham N'field)

  Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

  King, Rt Hon Tom

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Knight, Gregory (Derby N)

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Knight, Mrs Jill (Edgbaston)

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Knowles, Michael

  Rifkind, Malcolm

  Lamont, Norman

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Lang, Ian

  Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

  Lawler, Geoffrey

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Rowe, Andrew

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Rumbold, Mrs Angela

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Ryder, Richard

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Sackville, Hon Thomas

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

  Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Lilley, Peter

  Scott, Nicholas

  Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

  Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

  Lloyd, Peter, (Fareham)

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Lord, Michael

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Luce, Richard

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Lyell, Nicholas

  Shersby, Michael

  McCrindle, Robert

  Silvester, Fred

  McCurley, Mrs Anna

  Sims, Roger

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Skeet, T. H. H.

  MacGregor, John

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  Maclean, David John.

  Speller, Tony

  Madel, David

  Spence, John

  Major, John

  Spencer, D.

  Maples, John

  Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)

  Marland, Paul

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Marlow, Antony

  Squire, Robin

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Mates, Michael

  Stanley, John

  Maude, Francis

  Stern, Michael

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

  Mayhew, Sir Patrick

  Stevens, Martin (Fulham)

  Mellor, David

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Merchant, Piers

  Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

  Miller, Hal (B'grove)

  Stewart, Ian (N Hertf'dshire)

  Mills, Iain (Meriden)

  Stokes, John

  Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)

  Stradling Thomas, J.

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Sumberg, David

  Mitchell, David (NW Hants)

  Tapsell, Peter

  Moate, Roger

  Taylor, John (Solihull)

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Montgomery, Fergus

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Moore, John

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

  Terlezki, Stefan

  Moynihan, Hon C.

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

  Mudd, David

  Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

  Murphy, Christopher

  Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

  Neale, Gerrard

  Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)

  Needham, Richard

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Nelson, Anthony

  Thurnham, Peter

  Neubert, Michael

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Newton, Tony

  Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Tracey, Richard

  Normanton, Tom

  Trippier, David

  Norris, Steven

  Trotter, Neville

  Onslow, Cranley

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Oppenheim, Philip

  van Straubenzee, Sir W.

  Osborn, Sir John

  Vaughan, Dr Gerard

  Ottaway, Richard

  Viggers, Peter

  Page, John (Harrow W)

  Waddington, David

  Page, Richard (Herts SW)

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Parris, Matthew

  Walden, George

  Patten, Christopher (Bath)

  Walker, Bill (T'side N)

  Patten, John (Oxford)

  Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)

  Pattie, Geoffrey

  Waller, Gary

  Pawsey, James

  Ward, John

  Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

  Wolfson, Mark

  Warren, Kenneth

  Wood, Timothy

  Watson, John

  Woodcock, Michael

  Watts, John

  Yeo, Tim

  Wells, John (Maidstone)

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Wheeler, John

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Whitfield, John

  Whitney, Raymond

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Mr. Carol Mather and

  Wilkinson, John

  Mr. Robert Boscawen.

  Winterton, Mrs Ann

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Rogers, Allan

  Kennedy, Charles

  Rooker, J. W.

  Kirkwood, Archibald

  Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

  Lambie, David

  Ross, Wm. (Londonderry)

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Skinner, Dennis

  Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

  Smith, C.(Isl'ton S & F'bury)

  Litherland, Robert

  Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'kl'ds E)

  Loyden, Edward

  Speed, Keith

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Stott, Roger

  McTaggart, Robert

  Straw, Jack

  McWilliam, John

  Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

  Madden, Max

  Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)

  Maginnis, Ken

  Torney, Tom

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Wallace, James

  Maxton, John

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Michie, William

  Wareing, Robert

  Nellist, David

  Wigley, Dafydd

  O'Neill, Martin

  Winnick, David

  Parry, Robert

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Penhaligon, David

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Pike, Peter

  Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Prescott, John

  Mr. A. J. Beith and

  Redmond, M.

  Mr. Michael Meadowcroft.

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Rates Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of moneys provided by Parliament of—

  (a) any administrative expenses incurred by the Secretary of State in consequence of that Act; and

  (b) any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable out of such moneys under any other Act.

  New Towns (Borrowing)
  11.27 pm
  The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Sir George Young): I beg to move,
  That the New Towns (Limit on Borrowing) Order 1983, dated 12th December 1983, a copy of which was laid before this House on 20th December, be approved.
  The House will recall that in early 1982 Parliament debated and passed the New Towns Act 1982. That allowed new town corporations in England, Scotland and Wales to continue borrowing from the national loans fund to finance their programmes, up to an aggregate figure of principal outstanding of £4,500 million or such larger sum, not exceeding £5,000 million, as the House of Commons should by order specify.
  The towns are now collectively approaching the £4,500 million limit, and without this order they would probably reach the limit in March. The order is therefore necessary now to allow them to complete their development programme without interruption. As has been the practice on previous occasions, it will take up the whole of the extra £500 million available under the 1982 Act. We expect this further £500 million to last until early 1986.
  When the borrowing powers were extended in 1982 we expected that the whole £1,000 million would last only a couple of years. In fact, as we see, the first £500 million has itself lasted two years—and the second £500 million will probably last another two. This is because of the towns' excellent performance in achieving industrial, commercial and housing receipts. Since 1979 the English towns alone have sold £600 million worth. The Government have also succeeded in reducing interest rates substantially, which means that towns have had to borrow less than expected to roll over existing debt.
  The House will wish to know how the further £500 million will be spent. The new towns programme is, of course, moving towards its conclusion. But there still remains important work to be done, to round off the towns and ensure that they are complete and viable communities. So the money will go, for example, on completing the infrastructure for Milton Keynes' city centre, on essential road schemes such as central Lancashire's western primary road, on shared ownership and other low-cost home ownership initiatives on which the new towns have led the way, and on the basic infrastructure needed to encourage the private sector to continue with the factories, offices and houses necessary for a successful new town. In addition, under the present new town financial regime, some will be used to finance the interim revenue deficits of the development corporations.
  I should like to take this opportunity to say a little bit more about what we are achieving under each of these heads.
  First, on housing, I think that hon. Members on both sides will agree that the achievements by new towns on shared ownership, starter homes and similar low cost initiatives have been outstanding. They have developed excellent relationships with private developers, to produce the houses people want, at prices they can afford. By 31 March 1984 the new towns in England will have promoted over 4,000 sales on a shared ownership basis; and over 5,000 houses a year are being built by private developers under licence on new town land, many for starter homes.
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  Nor must we overlook the biggest single element in our home ownership drive—sales to sitting tenants. Again, new towns have set the pace. By 30 September they had sold more than 15,000 houses to their tenants, so almost one in five new town tenants now own their homes. A further 3,000 sales are in the pipeline. This has had a dramatic effect, for the better, in all towns.
  In the past, new town development has relied too much on rented housing, but the demand for home ownership was there. As recent surveys have shown, for most people their ambition is to own their home. This demand was not being met. Now, prompted by the Government and implemented efficiently by the new towns, it is. My visits to new towns have shown me the new interest in the area which has been generated by the spread of home ownership.
  Opposition Members may try to argue that that has been at the expense of rented housing and that there is a need for such accommodation. The answer is that there remains, even after sales, a substantial stock of rented property available to meet all those needs. What corporations are doing now, through sales, development and provision of sites to the private sector, is what is necessary to achieve and maintain the right balance of private and publicly owned property in the new towns.
  I should like to move on from that to transfer of housing and of community-related assets. First, we have sorted out the problems associated with defects in the housing transferred last time round: appropriate grants are now being made to the local authorities concerned, although one authority is still challenging the position. Secondly, we are making good progress with further transfers. Corporations are doing all that they can to ensure that the housing stock is in good condition and ready for transfer.
  We have produced financial arrangements which, broadly speaking, allow the local authority concerned to inherit the subsidy that the new town corporation would have received had it retained the houses. This ensures that transfers will not put a financial burden upon the recipient authority. Indeed, the prospects of raising further capital receipts from the transferred stock should make transfer a good bargain. Directions have now been issued at Redditch and Skelmersdale, and I hope that they will soon be issued at Basildon, Northampton and Washington, with a view to transfer on 1 April 1985.
  We have reached agreed arrangements for the transfer to the district council of community-related assets in four new towns. Discussions are now under way at a further 10 new towns on such a transfer. Again, we have been able to agree financial terms which are broadly neutral in their effect. As with housing transfer, this is an important milestone in the life of a new town, marking the point at which the local authority can appropriately inherit these assets and the associated responsibilities.
  I will return shortly to other matters relating to the winding up of new towns, but I should like to pay tribute to the continuing achievement of the new towns in creating employment. Over the past few years they have sustained the remarkable performance of creating 20,000 or so new jobs a year—a vital contribution to the welfare of their own communities and, indeed, to their regions. Examples that come to mind are the Hitachi-Maxell, Ricoh and Unimation developments at Telford—generating over 500 jobs—and the Motorola expansion at East Kilbride—a £60 million investment generating 800 jobs. As with housing, this is being achieved through a fruitful

  279
  partnership between corporations and the private sector. Typically, the corporation provides the basic infrastructure, including the actual site; and the private firm which will occupy it then puts up its own building and fits it out, or the corporation works in partnership with a financial institution, through a lease and lease-back arrangement.
  A good example is Basildon's £50 million town centre development, mentioned earlier today in a significant maiden speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess). That development is being done in partnership with Norwich Union. In these ways we achieve so much more, for a given input of public money, than we could if, as Opposition Members sometimes suggest, corporations had to build everything with public money.
  I should like to turn now to a specifically financial matter, which I know is of interest to hon. Members on both sides. Hon. Members will recall that, we have been reviewing the method by which the English new towns finance their programmes, in the light of the large deficits now being run by the second and third generation towns. That problem built up in England throughout the 1970s, and a wide range of factors were responsible.
  Among those factors were high levels of interest rates in the 1970s, the new financial system for building roads following the introduction of the transport supplementary grant in 1975, the system of undue burden payments introduced in 1976, the change in the property market that resulted in developers retaining a smaller surplus, and the less favourable location of many of the second and third generation new towns.
  We decided that the best approach was, first, to stabilise the position. That we have done by suspending £1,185 million of outstanding national loans fund debt. The power to do that was contained in section 45 of the Finance Act 1983. The order, detailing the individual loans to be suspended, was made on 12 September 1983. Though suspended, the loans continue to count against the borrowing limit, so they are included within the £4,500 million total.
  That suspension lasts until 1 October 1986, so it gives us the necessary breathing space. But we are not, of course, letting matters rest there. As we have indicated to the House, we intend to produce a permanent solution as part of the measures we will need to take to deal with the final winding up of towns. We will keep the House fully informed of the progress we make on that.
  That leads back to the important issue of winding up. I have already referred to the progress we are making both on housing and on the transfer of community-related assets. The new towns have reduced their staff by 30 per cent. since 1979—an excellent achievement. We have taken an important step forward in our decision, which I announced last July in reply to a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Murphy), to wind up the eight development corporations with target dates in 1984 and 1985, using the Commission for the New Towns.
  That has given all those towns a degree of certainty about their future, enabling them, and the local authorities concerned, to plan their winding up smoothly and efficiently. That is obviously in everyone's interest. The actual date for dissolution cannot, of course, be settled
  280
  until the statutory processes have been gone through. However, I hope that it will be possible broadly to adhere to the target dates we have announced.
  Certainly I can assure hon. Members that we have no intention of keeping development corporations in existence any longer than they are necessary. We have now started the formal processes in the cases of Redditch and Skelmersdale, and I expect soon to see the same step taken elsewhere.
  I should mention a matter that I know is of concern to the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand) and to other hon. Members representing the north-east—the question of the future of the north-east new towns. When we last debated that matter I promised the hon. Member for Easington that we would review the position of those towns. I can confirm tonight that the review is under way. We will, of course, take full account of what all three towns have achieved in the way of creating new jobs, their role as serving as regional growth points, and what their future role—or that of the commission, as legal successor—should be.
  My hon. Friends will no doubt ask me about the future of the commission itself. Under existing legislation, the commission is a permanent body—there are no powers to wind it up. We are currently considering the future of the commission, along with the matters that arise from the winding up of the existing corporations. Our conclusions will be reflected in the measures we will put before the House, to deal both with winding up and the revisions to the financial regime that I mentioned earlier. I cannot say today exactly when those measures will be—hon. Members will be aware of the pressures on legislative time—but it will be as soon as we can manage. Meanwhile the commission, under the leadership of Sir Neil Shields, has plenty to do consolidating its achievements at Corby, continuing its highly successful programme of disengagement—more than £150 million of commercial and industrial assets sales since 1979—and now, of course, preparing to take over the eight towns with target dates in 1984 and 1985.
  This is a short debate and, with the leave of the House, I would like to speak again at the end to deal with any points raised. I shall, therefore, not take up any more time now, except to say, on behalf of hon. Members on both sides, how much we all appreciate the efforts and dedication of the boards and staff of the new towns as they take their towns towards completion. This extra £500 million of borrowing approval is a crucial element in achieving that task.
  11.40 pm
  Mr. Jack Straw: The order proposes an increase in the borrowing level for the new towns of £500 million for essential services. The Opposition will not divide the House against the order.
  New towns are of great concern and interest to all hon. Members, especially to the Opposition as the Labour party —[Interruption.] The alliance is showing its customary interest in all matters in the House, and on that we can always agree.
  The 1945–51 Labour Government established the new towns, and the Labour party has always looked upon them benignly as would any parents on their successful children. I have always had a special interest in the new towns from the time that I was associated with and worked for my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney

  281
  (Mr. Shore) as an adviser at the Department of the Environment on the review that took place on the new towns, which led to changes in their population targets because of changes in the overall population growth. Although some of the decisions made by my right hon. Friend were regarded as controversial, and especially the decisions about the central Lancashire new town, those that he made about their overall growth and structure have well stood the test of time.
  The new towns were a uniquely successful experiment and involved unique co-operation between public and private enterprise. The Town and Country Planning Association's evidence to the Nuffield Foundation inquiry on the planning system, said:
  "The new towns have unbeaten records in innovative economic development, imaginative social development, and cultural animation. The special government agencies that created them have succeeded in attracting and harnessing the talent of their time, and demonstrated that public investment in such projects was not only worthwhile in itself, but a genuine investment even if measured in simple economic terms."
  Given the current Conservative party obsession about selling off anything marked "public", it is important for Conservative Members to consider the record of the new towns and to bear in mind that public agencies can frequently help and stimulate jobs in the private sector. The Under-Secretary said that 20,000 new jobs have been generated by the new towns in recent times.
  Given the importance of the new towns and the development corporations as agencies for job creation, I hope that the Government will not show any undue haste in winding up the existing development corporations. We all understand that they are bound to have a finite life. No one is arguing that they should go on for ever and a day. I detected a suggestion by the Under-Secretary that an arbitrary target has once again been imposed. This is yet another way of removing civil and public servants from the books. I hope that he resists that approach. I am aware of his concern for the new towns.
  Sir George Young: If the hon. Member looks further into history, he will realise that the dates that the Government suggested are those proposed by a Labour Administration.
  Mr. Jack Dormand: The Minister knows that they were realistic.
  Mr. Straw: Indeed. I thought that the Minister was suggesting that he would bring forward the dates. I am relieved to hear that that is not the Government's intention.
  11.45 pm
  Mr. Michael Fallon: It appears that the order is as timely as it is generous. It gives us an opportunity to consider the progress of Government policy towards the development corporations.
  I hope that the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand) will allow me to join a cause and campaign that he has made very much his own. Many of my constituents work at Aycliffe and many of them have jobs only because of the success of the corporation in attracting inward investment. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will accept that there is some concern among the Conservative northern Members' group about the future of the corporations in the north. The concern is twofold. First, the corporations in the north would appear to be different animals from those in the south. They are now
  282
  essentially job-seeking organisations, having divested themselves of other functions. Secondly, if they disappear at the end of next year, they should not do so without Ministers giving further thought to the gap that will be created in attracting fresh investment to the north-east.
  It is appropriate that the consideration that is now being given to the review letter, to which my hon. Friend referred, follows shortly after publication of the regional policy White Paper. I hope that he will consult closely his colleagues in the Department of Trade and Industry. Abolition is easy to accomplish, but in an area of high unemployment we should be careful to ensure that what we end up with is at least as good as, if not better than, that which existed hitherto.
  11.47 pm
  Mr. Jack Dormand: We have had a complacent speech from the Under-Secretary of State, which was rather untypical of him. I have always regarded him as being very much a realist, and to that extent I have enjoyed listening to him. But one would have thought that everything was well in the new towns after hearing him. He knows that some of the current problems are greater than those that preceded them. I understood him to say that there is adequate housing for rent. What area was he talking about? He certainly was not talking about the area that, in part, I represent.
  Mr. Norman Hogg: Nor Scotland.
  Mr. Dormand: The Minister made a rather peculiar statement. He then referred to the reduction in new town staff as if there was some intrinsic merit in that. I ask him to accept that that is not so. I almost regret that I promised to make a short speech, because I could have made an entire speech in response to the Minister's contribution.
  The Minister properly mentioned the sort of projects that are necessary and for which we are voting moneys. But we know that the assets will be sold off at the earliest possible moment by the Government. That which is happening in the new towns is yet another demonstration of the Government's dogmatism on privatisation. The new towns are a success in spite of the many difficulties that they have had to face. There has been no greater problem than the uncertainty caused to the development corporations by the Government. That uncertainty will be shown in my short contribution.
  The Minister knows that I could justifiably repeat the case for more money to meet the massive bill for repairs to houses in Peterlee in my constituency. He was realistic enough to visit Peterlee last year, and he saw for himself the terrible state of some of the houses, affecting many thousands of my constituents. I have raised the matter on many occasions and I hope that what he has said tonight, and previously, will not be his last word. It has a tremendous effect on the people of my constituency. He admitted perhaps two years ago that the state of the housing in Peterlee new town was the worst of any housing in the country.
  I make no apology for returning yet again to the winding up of Peterlee development corporation. The hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) referred to it and to Aycliffe. He will be aware that although legally they are two separate bodies they are composed of the same people. The proposal is that the corporation be abolished on 31

  283
  December 1985, so, in effect, we are talking about a period of considerably less than two years because the corporation's work will obviously have to be run down some months before that date.
  It is impossible to follow the Government's thinking in this matter. My constituency, with Durham county and the northern region, has the highest unemployment rate in the country outside Northern Ireland. That is one side of the coin. The other side shows, without argument or doubt, that Peterlee development corporation is one of the most successful job-finding agencies not only in the north but in the country.
  There is a simple question to be asked: in such circumstances, will there be a need for such an agency after December 1985? The answer is self-evident to everybody except the Government. Everyone in my area, including the local authority of my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster), is at a loss to understand why such a proposal should even be contemplated.
  I shall not go into detail on the successes achieved by the corporation although I am sorely tempted to do so, particularly as the Under-Secretary did not refer to the achievements of Peterlee when he was talking about some of the other new town corporations. I have all the figures here. Suffice it to mention, wanting to be as up to date as possible, that in the three months from September to November 1983 Peterlee reduced unemployment in percentage terms more successfully than any other new town apart from Redditch. Given the state of the economy, considering the competition, and given the obstinacy of the Government in economic policies, that is no mean achievement.
  In a letter to me dated 28 July 1982 the Under-Secretary said:
  "The new towns' success at industrial promotion will be a major factor to be considered when we come to review their target dissolution dates, and we do not rule out the possibility of a further extension of the Corporations' life at that stage."
  The record of Peterlee development corporation in industrial promotion has always been first class, but it so happens that in the period since the letter was written outstanding successes have been achieved by the corporation. The Minister is aware of the names of some international firms that have been attracted to the area. In spite of what the Under-Secretary said tonight, I am sure no other corporation has a better record.
  In answer to a parliamentary question from me on 23 November last year, the Minister stated that he had begun a review of the target dates for the winding up of the corporation and that he would aim to issue a consultation paper shortly. He said:
  "Our intention is to complete the review by 31 March 1984 at the latest."—[Official Report, 23 November 1983; Vol. 49, c. 221.]
  Of course, he had some comment on that in his remarks tonight. I am concerned about how much time will be allowed for the consultation he mentioned in his answer. He has said that he will speak again if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Perhaps he will say when he replies what stage the review has reached. We all know from experience how long it takes to go through the normal machinery before it finally reaches the corporation and the local authorities. There is a suspicion, which I share, that precious little time will be given for consultation. If it turns
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  out to be short period, many of us will feel that the consultation is a sham, that the Government's mind was already made up and that they are merely going through the motions of consultation. If I see the Minister shaking his head, I can only say that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. Perhaps we shall be able to return to the subject nearer 31 March.
  Easington district council has recently decided to initiate talks with Peterlee development corporation and Sedgefield district council, which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland, as the Aycliffe development corporation is in the Sedgefield area and will be similarly affected. They are as worried as I am. It would only be common justice for every authority to be given the maximum time for consultations.
  The Minister knows that I have raised this matter many times. In my 13½ years as a Member of Parliament there has been no issue of greater importance to my area. That shows my strength of feeling on the matter. In the desperate circumstances of today, the expertise and dedication of the corporation are the lifeblood of my constituency and the sub-region that the new town serves.
  It would be little short of criminal to implement the Government's proposal. I remind the Minister that we are discussing the future of thousands of people, many of them young, who depend, and will continue to depend, fully on what the corporation can do. The need for a job-finding agency will remain for a long time after 31 December 1985. I fervently ask the Government to think again on this matter.
  11.56 pm
  Mr. Den Dover: I shall not continue the line of argument pursued by the hon. Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand). I should like the central Lancashire development corporation to be well and truly wound up at the end of 1985. I have no hestitation in recommending that my hon. Friend the Minister gives me that assurance today or in writing soon. He mentioned the reduction in staff since 1979. However, central Lancashire is still increasing its staff when it should be cutting down and preparing for the winding up.
  I was disappointed that my hon. Friend did not mention the transfer of housing ownership to local authorities or to a housing association. Perhaps he could say how far the discussions have progressed, as there seems to be a massive split of opinion between local authorities and other local interested parties.
  The purpose of the development corporation in central Lancashire has been fulfilled. I am delighted that the statement by the then Secretary of State for the Environment on 4 February 1981 has been closely followed by the Government in the past three years. I refer to the complete switch to private ownership of housing rather than a continuation of the earlier too massive rented housing programme, the fact that private developers have been allowed in to open up new areas for industrial development, the fact that the sale of new town houses has been allowed and the fact that the private sector has been able to buy assets.
  I have nothing but admiration for the determined way in which Ministers in the Department of the Environment have continued the task in the past three years. I ask them only to ensure that central Lancashire winds up at the end of next year as local people are anxious for that to happen.
  11.58 pm
  Mr. Derek Foster: My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Mr. Dormand) mentioned the Opposition's greater affection for the new town movement. For many of us it represents an excellent example of Socialist planning. It is an excellent example of how public expenditure can encourage and even underpin private investment. Indeed, without the initial public expenditure the private investment would not have taken place.
  For those reasons we welcome the new town developments and very strongly urge that the Government take a new look at their new town policy. I live in, although I do not represent it, the new town of Washington. I represent the new town of Aycliffe. Washington broke new ground in the design of factories and taught the north-east that it was perfectly possible for factories to exist cheek by jowl with residential development without there being any inconvenience or amenity detriment to the people who lived close by the factory. That was something new for the north-east, after our bad experience with heavy industry, which is often dirty and dangerous.
  Secondly, Washington broke new ground in landscaping, which was important for the whole of the north-east. We were taught salutary lessons about how people could be attracted to the north-east because the quality of our inner urban environment was as good as the quality of our rural environment, which is second to none, as you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will be only too ready to recognise, with your constituency.
  Thirdly, Washington broke new ground in social development. I am proud to have been associated with that. Most local authorities have learned healthy lessons on those three counts. However, I shall dwell on the job-hunting function of the north-east new towns.
  It is arguable that the need for the job-hunting function to be retained is greater now than when the new towns were first instituted in the north-east. Our suffering under the present recession has been horrific. As my hon. Friend the Member for Easington reminded the House, there is a great need for further investment in the north-east so that we have a chance of prosperity. There are huge numbers of young people leaving school for whom there is no hope. The Government believe that new jobs will come in three major areas—small business development, service sector industries and advanced technology. It is arguable that my region is unfavourably placed for all three of those developments. If we are to leave it to market forces, the north-east will be in an even worse position in 10 years' time vis-à-vis the other regions than it is now. Therefore, it is even more important that a successful job-hunting agency should be retained. If one wishes to replace it, one had better be absolutely sure that what one replaces it with, as the hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) said, is at least as successful as the new towns.
  The new towns have taught a lesson to most of the local authorities in the north-east and the rest of the country. Most of them are in the job-hunting business, largely as a result of the Government's devastating policies. The whole country is being made into a development area and needs to win new jobs. Most of the lessons originated in the new towns. The nursery factory development was pioneered in the new towns.
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  I dearly want to say to the Minister, "Before you replace the successful agency in Aycliffe—I am certain that Washington and Peterlee would make the same argument—you must be convinced that you will replace it with something just as successful and streamlined, in which the expertise is as professional and the marketing can be deployed with the same effect." Although I am a passionate local government man, I am deeply suspicious that the local authorities are unable to take over the role with the same effectiveness. I wish that I could say otherwise, but my long experience as an ex-chairman of the North of England Development Council and of the economic development committee in a metropolitan county council, trying to win new jobs for the north-east, has taught me that it is difficult for a local authority to be as effective as the new towns. I am worried that if we lose the Aycliffe and Peterlee development corporation, nothing as effective will be put in its place. If that happens, this Government, irrespective of who made the first decision or when the first date was suggested, will bear a heavy responsibility. We see no new jobs coming from any of the policies that have been suggested. We therefore need to retain the effective job agencies that we have.
  12.5 am
  Mr. Derek Conway: I shall begin my short speech tonight by paying tribute to the Washington development corporation. I was privileged to serve on the board of that corporation before I was elected to this House. I joined the corporation as a cynic, but I became a convert as a result of my experience there. My political opinions were very different from those of some of the members of the board, but there was a concerted effort by all those involved to improve the lot of the people who lived in the area, and certainly to improve job generation, which I shall come to later.
  Despite that fact, and despite the great affection that I have for the work of the Washington development corporation, I am of the opinion that development corporations are the products of a different time, that in the main they have now outlived their usefulness, and that the winding-up dates should be met as soon as possible by the Government—and, better still, in the case of some development corporations, accelerated.
  I refer, in particular, to the development corporation that adjoins my constituency of Shrewsbury and Atcham in Shropshire—the Telford development corporation. At present, it has a longer life expectancy than that of the Washington development corporation and some others, and I hope that its winding-up date will be accelerated. In saying that, I appreciate that winding-up dates have a bad effect on development corporations — not only on the board members, in terms of their impetus and enthusiasm for leadership, but particularly on the morale of the staff. I tend to come down on the side that believes in pulling people out of their misery.
  The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) and my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) made valid points about the regional job generation side of development corporations. I share their concern that the Government should not rush in there too quickly, and that any liaison with the Department of Trade and Industry must be a proper liaison and not produced under pressure. However, I urge them to consider why the development corporations have been so successful. In my

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  opinion, it is because they have not been subject to the pressures that there are on local government, where so many people have fingers in the pie.
  The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland was a distinguished chairman of the North of England Development Council, of which I, too, was a member. There is a suggestion that bodies such as the Washington development corporation and Peterlee and Aycliffe should come within the auspices of that organisation. If that happened, it would be a disaster. The impetus and the time for reaction that those development corporations have given to industrial inquiries and to promoting the job generation aspect of their responsibilities would be hampered by substantial local government involvement. The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland and I have sat too many times at lengthy meetings of the North of England Development Council, with members going on and on and never reaching decisions. That is not the way ahead, once development corporations are wound up.
  We should look closely at the role of the regional promotional bodies, not least that of the Investment in Britain Bureau within the Department of Trade and Industry, an organisation about which we in this House know far too little. The time is long overdue, especially because of the pressure of such bodies as the Scottish Development Agency and, bordering on my constituency, the Welsh Development Agency, for an English national agency. That would give wider support not only to such development corporations as Telford but to those of us who represent seats that are not within the promotional aegis of development corporations or the Department of Trade and Industry. Jobs are now needed all over the country, and not in any particular area, as the old policy had it. The proposals for the revision of job generation responsibilities within development corporations are not looking too good. I hope that all the signs that are coming from the two Departments concerned are misleading and that the proposals that will be put before us will be more effective than those being suggested at the moment.
  12.10 am
  Mr. Christopher Murphy: In supporting the order, I do so in the belief that it will help ensure that the cry, "The end is nigh" at last becomes a reality for the new towns programme. It is essential that an end date is provided for every new town development corporation, so that a limit on public financing is clear to all taxpayers. It is also essential that an end date is provided for the Commission for the New Towns and for its withdrawal from each town, such as Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City, so that a limit on this Government-funded quango is evident to all concerned.
  There can be no doubt that since 1979 the present Administration have taken a far more responsible view of new town development and have rightly sought to restrict its continuation and bring about a realistic completion. It should also be emphasised that the Government, by switching attention away from the development of green field sites to the inner cities, have been correctly attempting to redress an imbalance that threatens realistic conservation.
  The order, applying as it does to the respective new town administrations, will restrain but not impede them in completing their tasks. It is far better that the Government
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  concentrate their support on the urban needs of our community to promote economic and physical regeneration of inner city derelict land.
  The order, by virtue of its limiting powers on finance, shows to the corporations and the commission the need to finalise their activities and to ensure a rapid transfer of public assets to the private sector. On the former point, it is to be hoped that this will be done with the maximum use of non-governmental investment, and on the latter that this will be achieved with minimum delay and with particular advantage given to local tenants.
  It must be correct that where public financing is employed — that should always be a matter for circumspection—it should be used to the best advantage of our citizens, who, after all, provide the finance in the first instance. That is why to concentrate action on urban development grants, enterprise zones, urban development bodies and land registers is likely to yield more favourable results by revitalising the inner cities after years of neglect.
  No doubt there will be a continuation of the cries of, "Woe is me" and similar lamentations from those who seek to perpetrate the bureaucracy of new town development and who have sought to use the new towns as an extension of the corporate state. The real woe will come for the residents of the new towns if the winding up of the commission and of the corporations is long delayed. The real woe will also come for the taxpayers without such a winding up because of a failure to ensure the completion of the new town programme.
  12.14 am
  Mr. Kenneth Hind: I welcome the comments of my hon. Friend the Minister on the transfer of the assets of Skelmersdale to the west Lancashire district council. I also welcome the increase of £500 million in the borrowing order before the House. I welcome the winding up of the development corporations. Perhaps it is significant that the number of people who today have been arguing forcefully about local authority councillors having the right to determine their funding have gone home by the time we talk about transferring housing and community assets to district councils and giving those representatives control over their towns. It must be remembered that the local democratic representatives in areas with development corporations have little say in the running of their towns. The Government, by supporting the return of those towns to local councils, are returning local democratic accountability to the people who live in those towns. For that reason, I welcome that development, especially in Skelmersdale, as I am sure do the people of that town.
  Mr. Norman Hogg: On the question of the relationship of democracy in new towns and the democracy of local authorities, will the hon. Gentleman join me in a campaign which I have pursued since becoming a Member of Parliament to allow the press and public to attend meetings of development corporations so that, just like local authorities, the population of those towns are aware of what is going on in their name?
  Mr. Hind: I support the hon. Gentleman in that respect. One of the disadvantages faced by those in development corporation officialdom is that they have not had behind them an elected representative who is answerable to his constituents. That will be altered when the development corporations are wound up.

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  The people who have worked hard to create new towns must be congratulated, but their time is now over. Their era has ended and the towns must be returned to the district councils. There are those of us who will not be quite as congratulatory as the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) about the planning of the new towns. I echo the words of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) that they are a fine example of Socialist planning. I hope that the 5,000 people living in Skelmersdale who do not have a job feel the same way about that wonderful Socialist planning, but I do not believe that they will feel quite as happy about it. Perhaps the Opposition have much to answer for in the problems of Skelmersdale.
  I hope that the Under-Secretary will look carefully at the future industrial development of the new towns. I echo some of the thoughts of other hon. Members who have said that when the development corporations disappear on the industrial side something must be put in their place, particularly in Skelmersdale, with its high level of unemployment. Encouragement must be dynamic. It must bring in new firms and jobs. We must bear in mind especially that some of these towns are special development areas; they need assistance. We must continue to increase industrial development and provide new jobs.
  Contrary to what has been said by the Opposition, the 108 schemes for small firms now in operation will help to produce new jobs. They are often laughed at by the Opposition, and their importance is underestimated. This policy is followed dynamically by the Government, and I am sure that it will provide jobs in the new towns. We must bear in mind that we cannot take—as we have done in Lancashire—some green field of England and plant on it a new town. We need to hand the area back to the people, as the Government are doing. A chamber of trade, Rotary club or local council—the dynamic elements of any society — must develop. By continuing with the corporations, the position is simple: we are holding back the development of the new towns as a community. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary and hope that he will continue with his efforts.
  12.19 am
  Sir George Young: As always when we discuss the new towns, we have had a stimulating and wide-ranging debate on a matter in which I know that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, have an interest.
  The hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) indulged in a bit of philosophy and a bit of history. Perhaps I may indulge in a debating point with him. He described the new town corporations as great public agencies—Socialism in action. Had he been here this time yesterday when we were defending our decision to put more money into the dockland development corporations, which are in effect new town corporations except that they happen to be in the inner cities, he would have heard a barrage of criticism from his right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) to the effect that, far from putting more money into the corporations, we should be giving all the responsibility back to local government. At some point the Labour party will have to decide whether these are sinister capitalist plots or Socialism in action but implemented by the Conservative party.
  Mr. Straw: That is a silly point.
  Sir George Young: It is not silly at all. It is an example of the hypocrisy in which the Labour party occasionally indulges. However, it is just a debating point and I shall not tease the hon. Gentleman with it any further.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) made a valid point, echoed by several other hon. Members, about employment in the north-east. The hon. Members for Easington (Mr. Dormand) and for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) also took this up, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Mr. Conway), who served with distinction on the Washington corporation.
  With regard to the new towns in the north-east, we are engaged in a genuine review about the winding-up date. It is an open-minded review with no preconceived decisions on the part of the Government. We wish genuinely to consult the local authorities. The Act indeed requires us to consult the county and district councils directly concerned before reaching a decision, and we hope to be in a position to do so in the near future. The aim will be to give the local authorities two months in which to reply to the consultation document. The questions that we pose are not novel. The local authorities know exactly what the issues are and will be well aware of the arguments that they wish to deploy.
  The hon. Member for Easington accused me of complacency. I take pride in what the new towns have achieved, as I am sure he does. There is nothing complacent in outlining the achievements of the corporations in the past few years with the resources voted to them by Parliament.
  With regard to housing, the special problems of Easington and Sedgefield were recognised by giving them a 50 per cent. rather than a 40 per cent. grant. I understand that the local authority has now accepted that as a satisfactory solution to the problem described by the hon. Gentleman.
  As for a promotional agency for the north-east, the theme that emerged was that it was not so much the development role of the corporation that was needed as the promotion and job-finding role. That raises the slightly different question whether this should be confined to the narrow areas covered by the new towns or whether it should be a broader role of promoting the north-east in general. Again, I have an open mind about how to carry forward the valuable work done by the corporations in generating new jobs for the north-east.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Dover) asked about housing. We are awaiting the formal views of the three district councils. We had an informal meeting with them on 20 December last year and we are now awaiting their formal reaction. I confirm that the target date for the transfer of housing is 1 April 1985 and the target date for winding-up is 31 December 1985.
  The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland made a very sensible speech. I do not dissent from any of the views that he expressed, which were endorsed to some extent by my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham. The winding-up date for Telford is currently the late 1980s but we shall, of course, liaise with the Department of Trade and Industry, which clearly has an interest in the role of promotion and industrial recruitment in that area.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Murphy) asked about the winding-up of the commission.

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  It is our proposal to take powers to wind up the commission the moment a legislative window appears in a rather congested programme. I take note of what he said.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) made the very good point that there is no reason to perpetuate an unusually large public sector presence in the new towns simply because they happened to be new towns at the beginning. The aspects that make the new towns attractive to industry and commerce — their location, their communications, the facilities and the environmental quality — all remain after the corporation is wound up. There is a strong argument, which my hon. Friend deployed, for handing over to local people the assets that have been generated by the new town corporations.
  The debate last night demonstrated the Government's commitment to the inner cities and the debate tonight demonstrates our commitment to the new towns. For the inner cities the task is regeneration after years of neglect, to be carried out in partnership with the private sector. For the new towns, again in partnership with the private sector, it is the completion of their development so that they can take their place among the ranks of the successful thriving old towns. The money we are putting into both tasks is needed to achieve those aims. The private sector is already responding to that task, and I know that it will continue to do so.
  I mentioned earlier how much we appreciate the work put in by the boards and the staff of the new towns who have over the past 37 years risen to all the challenges of initial planning and the development of growth, with excellent results that hon. Members on both sides have mentioned, results that have made the British new towns world leaders in town planning and development. We have supported the new towns in their development and will continue to do so as they move towards completion. I know that the boards and the staff will rise to this challenge of completing the towns, just as they have to all the earlier tasks.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That the New Towns (Limit on Borrowing) Order 1983, dated 12th December 1983, a copy of which was laid before this House on 20th December, be approved.

  Health (Wales)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lang.]
  12.27 am
  Mr. Gareth Wardell: I am pleased that I have been successful in the ballot so as to be able to draw attention to the very important problem of inequalities in health within Wales.
  In Wales in 1981 453 infants under the age of one year died. The report of the committee on child health services stated:
  "In contemporary terms, infant mortality is a holocaust equal to all the deaths of the succeeding twenty-four years of life".
  The infant mortality rate has long been regarded as a useful indicator of the state of health and health services in a country. If we compare the situation in Wales with that in France, Finland, Sweden and Japan for the years 1964 to 1980 on a two-year basis, the infant mortality rate is worse in Wales than in every one of those countries and for every year except for France in 1966 and 1968.
  In 1980 the infant mortality rate in Sweden was 6·9, and in Wales it was 11. Considerable as the differences are between Wales and other countries in the infant mortality rate, the differences within Wales are very much greater. No doubt that is partly why doctors in west Glamorgan, for very good reason, have been conducting confidential inquiries into perinatal deaths since January 1981. It is the same fact that has prompted the setting up of the catalyst team and survey group that will prepare the Wales perinatal mortality survey. I welcome the aim of this initiative as a stimulation for improvement in maternity and neonatal care in the Principality. A clear need for such improvements is indicated by the large disparity in the infant mortality rate by socio-economic groups.
  For example, in west Glamorgan—part of the county that I represent—the latest figures available show that the infant mortality rate is 7 per 1,000 live births for socio-economic group 1, while it stands at 19 per 1,000 for socio-economic group 5. If the perinatal rate is examined, the gap is far wider: 7 per 1,000 total births for socioeconomic group 1 and 27 per 1,000 for socio-economic group 5.
  On 12 December 1983, the Minister gave me an assurance that the new system of capital expenditure allocation to health authorities in Wales would in no way delay the implementation of the planned new paediatric and obstetric unit at Singleton hospital, Swansea. That was a most welcome assurance.
  But the fundamental need, clearly demonstrated in the DHSS working party report of 1980, is a comprehensive anti-poverty strategy, and, as the Black report stated, pride of place in that strategy must be a massive redistribution of income and wealth. I wish that the Government would pursue that goal and fully realise the grim reality portrayed by Dylan Thomas, one of the greatest Anglo-Welsh poets, in his little-known poem,
  "A Refusal to mourn the death, by fire, of a child in London",
  in which he said:
  "Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,
  Robed in the long friends,
  The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,
  Secret by the unmourning water
  Of the riding Thames.
  After the first death, there is no other."

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  The disadvantages of birth and early life cast long shadows forward. It is at that time that Government can most usefully and productively contribute to a vast improvement in the health of the British people.
  I come to the services provided within the NHS for the care of the mentally ill and mentally handicapped. While the Welsh Office initiative to promote, so far as possible, the rehabilitation of the mentally ill and mentally handicapped into the community is welcome, at least one major aspect of it is extremely worrying. That is the problem of those elderly mentally handicapped and disturbed mentally handicapped who are of necessity being maintained in hospitals and for whom there is no provision in the new initiative.
  It would seem inappropriate, therefore, not to plan to improve our existing services to accommodate these people; but the same money cannot be spent in two areas, in health and social services. Within our existing hospital units—for example, Cefn Coed hospital, Swansea — which are overcrowded, old, and in need of refurbishing, the amount of money that we can expect to spend is limited. Yet the problem of accommodating the frail elderly mentally handicapped will be with us for some time.
  The future pattern of psychiatric service development provides the main thrust between acute and psycho-geriatric services. There is a small, important and ever-present body of long-stay patients who may be left behind in the main thrust of initiative but whose presence in the community is a continuing problem. This problem was courageously and expertly examined by Marjorie Wallace in an article in The Sunday Times of 20 November 1983. The article examines the failure of community care to cope with the mentally sick. While the article focuses on Southampton, it also states:
  "the scandal of the mentally sick is a national one. I found similar patterns in London, Oxford, Birmingham, Newcastle and Swansea."
  The community care policy throws the onus on to the local authorities, but they are not legally obliged to act. In the United Kingdom as a whole, only 1·1 per cent. of the total social services budgets is spent on community health for the mentally ill. One quarter of local councils provide no day care whatever for the mentally ill. One fifth offer no council residential accommodation.
  John Wilder, director of the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association, has said that
  "People who need to be in hospital are walking the streets, often dangerous to themselves and others. They are the new vagrants".
  I question the accuracy and validity of the method by which National Health Service funds are distributed among the regions. That is a crucial consideration in assessing the extent to which Wales receives its equitable share of available allocations. It is questionable whether the four present formulae used perform a useful function. If they do, I hope that the Minister will explain the rationale underlying their use and will also explain the Government's opposition towards a single national formula. If the Minister chooses not to do so, it would be helpful for the people of Wales to know at least whether a move towards the use of the resource allocation working party formula would increase Wales' allocation of National Health Service funds. Research published in The Lancet on 12 December 1980, referring to 1977–78, showed that if the RAWP formula was applied to the health care budget Wales would have benefited
  294
  substantially. If that is still the case, perhaps the Minister can tell us what steps he is taking to remedy the under-funding.
  It is crucial to remind the Minister of a statement in the Court report of 1976, which was recently reprinted:
  "Despite recent efforts to bring about more equality, the variations in regional provision of service are still much the same as they were in 1948 when the National Health Service began."
  12.38 am
  The Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Wyn Roberts): I am delighted to have an opportunity to discuss the subject of inequalities in health in Wales. I begin with the last point made by the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell). A great deal has been said about this subject in recent months by those who should know better. It is opportune that I should be able to make an unequivocal statement on the issues and the facts.
  When the major reorganisation of the NHS took place in 1973, one of the first problems to which everyone concerned addressed his mind was the generally accepted fact that health resources were not distributed in a way which necessarily reflected health needs. The ideal way to tackle the problem was to measure health need, then to measure the amount of health care available and finally to bring the two into line.
  The trouble was that neither health need nor care proved to be directly measurable. Eventually, it was concluded that need and supply could be measured indirectly. The major determinant of need was seen to be population and the principal determinant of supply was revenue funding. Inequalities could be identified by taking a particular area's share of the total population and comparing it with that area's share of the total revenue funding. But the population of a particular area need not necessarily be directly comparable, head for head, with that of another area. In particular, it was a well-established fact that the age and sex structure of a population significantly affects the likely need for health care. It also accepted that even when the age and sex structure of the population is taken into account, there can still be differences between otherwise similar populations in the amount of illness occurring. Although this latter point has occasionally caused some controversy because of the extreme difficulty of measurement in this field, a consensus has been reached that the best available way to measure this uneven incidence of sickness is to use the death rate for particular population groups — that is, standardised mortality ratios.
  The conclusion reached, therefore, was that, to identify inequalities in the distribution of health resources, weighted populations would be calculated for health authorities and their weighted proportion of total population compared with their weighted proportion of health resources. That has been the basis on which in Wales, Scotland and England inequalities have been identified for the past eight years.
  Two major areas of concern need to be dealt with. The first is a point that has been raised repeatedly lately, and to which the hon. Gentleman referred. It concerns claims that Wales is seriously underprovided relative to the other parts of the United Kingdom. Those making these claims have referred to work done by Professor Maynard of York university. He calculated the shares of population of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom and compared them with actual revenue expenditure by health

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  authorities in those countries in 1977–1978. His figures appeared to show that Wales was at that time 7·5 per cent. underprovided.
  I do not wish to weary the House with an explanation of the way in which public expenditure levels on particular programmes are set in Wales these days. Suffice it to say that for the past four years my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales, like his colleague in Scotland, has had discretion within a total block of expenditure to distribute the money between the individual programmes in the light of his assessment of Welsh needs. Programmes are not, therefore, directly linked with their English counterparts, but can be developed on lines dictated principally by the needs of Wales.
  For that reason, therefore, we do not set the level of spending on health in Wales by some mechanistic link with what is being done in the NHS in England. We do the best we can in the overall public expenditure environment to make appropriate provision for the development of all services, including the NHS, in the Principality.
  We do not, therefore, undertake the sort of exercise which Professor Maynard did to compare ourselves with the rest of the United Kingdom.
  It is worth saying that if we were to take the proportions between the countries which Professor Maynard suggested as the right ones in 1977–78 and applied them to the provision for revenue expenditure by health authorities made in the Supply Estimates for the four countries in the current financial year, 1983–84, it should give us a broad indication as to whether things have changed. The result of doing so is to show that, on the basis described, Wales in 1983–84 was only 0·3 per cent.—that is one third of 1 per cent. — below the share which Professor Maynard's figure suggested was the right one compared with 7·5 per cent. in 1977–78. I would not for one moment claim that such a calculation — any more than the original one on which it is based—was totally reliable and accurate. In so far as it shows anything, it indicates that if there was a gap in 1977–78 the Government have virtually eliminated it.
  When I tell the House that these figures do not take into account the fact that my right hon. Friend has already announced that growth in revenue spending by health authorities next year will be a further 2 per cent. over this year's levels, and that that is significantly greater than the level announced for England and Scotland, I think that it can be seen in terms of our share of United Kingdom funding that Wales under this Government has certainly not been disadvantaged.
  The second area in which inequalities exist is that of the differences between health authorities in Wales. On that point I need detain the House no longer than to say that my right hon. Friend is committed to removing major inequalities within a three-year period, of which 1984–85 is the second year. Those problems exist and the Government have not only given a firm commitment to deal with them but have set themselves a very testing timetable within which to meet that commitment.
  I understand fully the almost limitless extent of demand for health services. We are all aware that there remain bottlenecks in the provision of services and that each new expansion and development of health care appears as much to generate new demands as to satisfy old ones. The
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  Government's commitment to finding extra resources for the Health Service cannot be questioned in the light of our record, but for the foreseeable future we will always be faced with a total potential and actual demand that exceeds our ability to meet it. There is no point in being unrealistic about that — every Government, even a Labour Government, must recognise that fact of life.
  It is because of that that equal realism is needed to ensure that we get the maximum possible amount of health care—direct care for patients—out of every penny that we spend on the Health Service. We can equalise the distribution of resources, but it is as important, if not more important, to ensure the proper management of those resources in the interests of patients. All the Government's policies for the NHS are designed to ensure that the most efficient practices are employed everywhere and that every action undertaken by every member of the staff of the NHS aims to secure the best possible treatment for the maximum number of patients within the resources available. When we speak of inequalities in resources, it is important to recognise that there are also inequalities in the use of those resources, and we should be equally concerned about eliminating those.
  The financial expansion provided has been accompanied by a significant growth in manpower. Since 1979 there has been an increase of 13 per cent. in the number of nurses and midwives, 15 per cent. in the professional and technical staff providing scientific services for doctors and nurses, and a provisional increase of 16 per cent. in medical staff.
  Most importantly—returning to my theme of getting value for money and the maximum possible services from the record resources made available—all that has led to more people being treated. In 1982, the latest year for which figures are available, the Health Service in Wales treated 5·9 per cent. more in-patients than in 1979, 12·3 per cent more day cases and 8·6 per cent. more out-patient attendances.
  Central to the drive for increased efficiency and effectiveness are the annual reviews of district health authorities that the Government introduced last year. Under those we require authorities to secure annually minimum efficiency savings amounting to 0·5 per cent. of their recurring revenue budgets. Those must be genuine improvements in efficiency and not involve any reduction in the volume or quality of existing services. I am glad that the response of the authorities has been extremely encouraging, such that we are hopeful that improvements in efficiency will yield savings significantly greater than the minimum required. That will mean improvements in services over and above the further growth incomes we have made available for next year and over and above the redeployment of the 0·5 per cent. required.
  That leads me to the second and equally important aim of the reviews under which we require authorities to redeploy the first 0·5 per cent. of their efficiency savings on continuing care services for mentally ill, mentally handicapped and the elderly, precisely those mentioned by the hon. Member. These are the services which by common consent need special attention if both the quantum and the balance of services is to be got right. The requirement will lead to about £2·75 million of additional investment in these services in 1984–85. Individual projects for this reinvestment include, I am glad to say,

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  west Glamorgan health authority's intention to finance part of the costs of its assuming responsibility for mental illness services for the Neath and Port Talbot areas.
  This is just part — although a vital part — of our concerted effort to redress the historic inequality of provision for these groups, both relative to the acute sector and as between authorities. Unlike the previous Labour Government, we have displaced rhetoric with achievement. Under our all-Wales mental handicap strategy, for example, additional spending will build up over 10 years to £26 million. It will be a fourfold increase on present levels of financial provision.
  Through our "Care in the Community" initiative we have removed obstacles to the development of more appropriate care for people outside NHS institutions and provided greater flexibility in the operation of jointly financed schemes. These received a record level of Welsh Office support this year, as did central funding for special NHS psychiatric developments.
  Taken together, these initiatives represent an unprecedented response to the needs of mentally handicapped, mentally ill and the elderly. Of course, there are local difficulties—if there were not, we would not be giving priority to the expansion of community care and support—and any system must rely on the good sense of health and social services authorities working together to ensure that people get the care that they need. In general, they show this good sense.
  In the sphere of regional health services we have vigorously sought out where inadequacies exist and we are bringing forward plans to meet problems before they become entrenched. Our announced plan for expanding renal dialysis may well put Wales at the head of the European nations league table by 1985, and the provision of beds for the burns and plastic surgery specialty is the highest rate of any region in the United Kingdom. Nor do we overlook new medical technologies. A decision on a regional bone marrow transplant service will be made very soon, and the genetics centre will be housed in its own purpose-designed building. And in heart surgery, where
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  we inherited a shortfall, the number of operations are planned to rise to 600 by the end of this year—nearly two and a half times as many as in 1979. Notwithstanding the Government's achievements for the NHS — the record funding and the growth in the numbers of men and women providing direct patient care—we recognise that there remain in Wales inequalities between areas and by comparison with England in the incidence of disease.
  It is nothing new to be told that the toll of death in Wales from heart disease, especially among middle-aged men, has been a cause of real concern for many years. What is new is the determination to tackle the problem. As I have already said, in the short term the number of heart operations to be performed annually in Wales will be increased to the full limit of present facilities. Within the next few years, there will be major investment to double the size of those facilities.
  The hon. Member for Gower drew attention to deaths among the newly born and among very young children. He had a right to do so because this is an important issue which, for the families involved, is a deep human tragedy.
  Having acknowledged that, I suggest that the hon. Gentleman underestimates the real progress which has been achieved, especially in the past three or four years. For many years Wales has had a rate of perinatal mortality consistently above those for England and Scotland. However, this hides the fact that the numbers and rate of perinatal deaths have dropped by half over the past 10 years. Moreover, the fall has been most dramatic in the past few years. In 1980 and 1982 the rate for Wales was actually below that for both Scotland and England.
  Historically, Wales has done relatively better in respect of infant mortality. In six of the past eight years, the Welsh rate has been below—
  The Question having been proposed after Ten o'clock and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
  Adjourned at three minutes to One o'clock.