Commons Sitting of 20 July 1984

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

    Health and Social Security Bill
    9.34 am
    Mr. George Foulkes: It is a great pleasure for me, Mr. Speaker, as joint chairman of the all-party pensioners' association in the House, to present a petition signed by Mr. George Dunn, the general secretary of the National Federation of Old Age Pensioners' Associations, together with nearly 74,000 signatures of members of the national federation. They are concerned at the threat to the eyesight, health and pockets of pensioners posed by the provisions of the Health and Social Security Bill, under which many old people will for the first time have to pay the full cost of spectacles. Many will have to resort to the old practice of trying to get their spectacles on the counter at Woolworth's. They feel that by the provisions of the Bill we are moving back towards the Victorian age.
    The petition concludes:
    Wherefore your petitioners pray that the Health and Social Security Bill, Clause 1, be amended to prevent a potential deterioration in standards of health care.
    And your Petitioners as in duty bound will ever pray etc.
    To lie upon the Table.

Housing Investment Programme (Birmingham)
9.36 am
Mr. Terry Davis: I wish, Mr. Speaker, to present a petition which has been signed by 380 people. Each person is a householder, and therefore I am presenting a petition on behalf of 380 families.
The people concerned live in three housing action areas which are known as the Berry housing action area, the Chartist housing action area and the Membury housing action area in my constituency.
In their petition, my constituents express their concern about the deterioration in the environment of the housing action areas. They also express their concern about the inability of the city of Birmingham council to provide the funds which are needed for essential work to be done on the homes of people who live in those housing action areas.
The petition concludes:
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that Honourable Members of the House of Commons should ask the Secretary of State for the Environment that he should increase the Housing Investment Programme of the City of Binningham Council to make it possible for this work to be done.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray etc.
To lie upon the Table.

Office, Secretarial and Research Allowance
Mr. Speaker: May I say a brief word to the House about the form of today's debate? Under the business motion agreed by the House last Wednesday, the Questions on items 1, 2 and 3 on today's Order Paper, and

That, in the opinion of this House, the limit on the allowance payable to a Member of this House in respect of the aggregate expenses incurred by him for his Parliamentary duties as general office expenses, on secretarial assistance and on research assistance should be determined as follows—

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(a) for the year ending with 31st March 1985, the limit should be the amount obtained by increasing £12,000 by four-fifths of the relevant percentage,

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(b) for any subsequent year the limit should be the amount obtained by increasing the limit applicable to the immediately preceding year by the relevant.percentage (so that, if the relevant percentage for any year is nil, the limit remains the same for that year), and for the purposes of this paragraph the limit applicable to the year ending with 31st March 1985 shall be taken to be what it would have been if in paragraph (a) above the words 'four-fifths of' had been omitted.

In this Resolution 'year' means a year ending with 31st March, and for the purposes of this Resolution—

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(i) the relevant percentage for any year is the percentage by which the amount of salary (exclusive of allowances and overtime) payable for that year to a person in the Home Civil Service at the maximum point on the scale for Senior Personal Secretaries and in receipt of inner London weighting exceeds the corresponding amount for the immediately preceding year;

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(ii) any fraction of a pound in the amount obtained under paragraph (a) or (b) above for any year shall be treated as whole pound if it is not less than 50 pence, but shall otherwise be disregarded.

As you have said, Mr. Speaker, the following motions are to be debated at the same time:

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That, in the opinion of this House, the following provision should be made with respect to the rates of the car mileage allowance payable to Members travelling on Parliamentary duties and the rates applicable to the car mileage allowances payable in respect of journeys by the spouse of a Member and journeys by persons in respect of whom the 5 secretarial and research allowance of a Member is payable—

(1) The allowance payable in respect of a journey commenced in the period beginning with 1st October 1984 and ending with 31st March 1985 shall be payable—

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(a) subject to the limit specified in paragraph (3) below, at the rate per mile shown in column 2 of the following Table in relation to the engine capacity of the vehicle used for the journey; and

(b) in respect of miles in excess of that limit, at the rate per mile shown in column 3 of that Table in relation to that engine capacity.

TABLE

Engine capacity

Mileage up to Limit

Further mileage

15

1300cc or less

18p

11·3p

More than 1300cc and not more than 2300cc

25·9p

14·7p

More than 2300cc

39p

19·5p

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(2) Paragraph (1) above shall have effect in relation to journeys commenced in the year beginning with 1st April 1985 and each subsequent year with the substitution, for the rates shown in the Table, of rates calculated, on the principles exemplified in Appendix I to the Report of the Independent Inquiry, from the figures in the edition of the Royal Automobile Club's Schedule of Estimated Vehicle Running Costs published in or about the April of the year in question.

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(3) For the purpose of this Resolution the limit on the number of miles in respect of which car mileage allowance may be paid at the rate specified in column 2 of the Table shall be 10,000 miles for the period beginning with 1st October 1984 and ending with 31st March 1985 and 20,000 miles for the year beginning with 1st April 1985 and for each subsequent year.

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(4) Arrangements shall be made for ensuring that claims made for car mileage allowance in respect of miles travelled in excess of 25,000 miles in any year are supported by particulars of the journeys to which the claims relate.

(5) In this Resolution—

on the selected amendments thereto, have to be put after three hours have elapsed. I take it, therefore, that the House will agree to debate all three items together.
I have selected all the amendments on the Order Paper.
9.37 am
The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): I beg to move,

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'the Report of the Independent Inquiry' means the Report of the Independent Inquiry into Motor Mileage Allowance for Members of Parliament to the Leader of the House of Commons (House of Commons Paper No. 469 of Session 1983–84); 'year' means a year beginning with 1st April.

That the draft Lord Chancellor's Salary Order 1984, which was laid before this House on 12th July, be approved.

There are three documents before the House for which I seek approval. They are a draft Order in Council relating to the Lord Chancellor's salary, and two motions seeking to make changes in certain allowances payable to Members of Parliament. The allowances in question are the office, secretarial and research allowance, and the car mileage allowance. The texts of those documents have appeared on the Order Paper for some days. It may assist the House, however, if I outline as briefly as I can the import of each proposed change and explain the reasoning that lies behind them.
The draft Order in Council provides for an increase in the salary payable to the Lord Chancellor with effect from 31 July and 1 November 1984. The Lord Chancellor's position is unlike that of any other member of the Government, in that he is not only a Cabinet Minister but is head of the judiciary. Accordingly, the arrangements for his remuneration differ from those for other Ministers.
The Top Salaries Review Body, taking account of the Lord Chancellor's unique position, recommended that the Lord Chancellor should be entitled to a rather higher level of remuneration than the Lord Chief Justice. The Government accepted that recommendation and gave effect to it. The Order in Council is needed to maintain that position, following the recent increase in the salaries paid to the judiciary. It mentions two separate dates, because the increase is being paid on those dates.
The second proposal for which I seek the approval of the House is a change in the arrangements for the allowances payable in respect of office equipment and secretarial and research assistance. As the House knows, the amount of that allowance has hitherto been adjusted on an ad hoc basis according to what has seemed appropriate at the time. I believe that that has not been wholly satisfactory, not least because it has required constant orders to be confirmed by Parliament. In an attempt to find a more acceptable and enduring basis for that allowance, the Government invited the Top Salaries Review Body to investigate whether an automatic method of uprating might be found. I have placed a copy of the letter from Lord Plowden, setting out the review body's recommendations, in the Library.
The review body recommended that in future the secretarial, research and office expenses allowance should be increased by the same percentage as the salary, plus London weighting, of a civil servant at the maximum point of the senior personal secretary scale. The Government accept that recommendation. The wording of the motion is not entirely straightforward, and it may be helpful if I explain the reason for it being drafted in this way. In the first place, no specific amount of money is mentioned for the amount of this year's increase. That is because the negotiations on Civil Service pay have not been concluded. That settlement will determine the amount by which the allowance will rise this year. The motion was therefore drafted with reference only to the principle of the new system, not its immediate practical effect. Under the Government's offer to the Civil Service, the limit for the
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allowance in the current financial year will increase to £12,437, and that rate will apply until 1 April 1985. That brings me to the second feature of the motion.
Mr. Eric Forth (Mid-Worcestershire): During this process of review, has any account been taken of the work load which secretarial and research assistants might normally be expected to bear for a Member of Parliament? Do the moneys proposed take into account national insurance and other payments required for such assistance? Does my right hon. Friend have a view on whether the amount proposed is adequate for most Members of Parliament?
Mr. Biffen: The review broadly took current scales and was designed to find a formula whereby they could be uprated annually without the necessity to come back for confirmation by the House, but, as I shall explain, there are provisions for the sort of review that my hon. Friend has in mind to take place from time to time so that one can relate those factors to the other considerations.
That brings me to the second feature of the motion, which may not be easy to understand at first or second glance. This year the allowance is to be increased by only four fifths of the relevant percentage. As hon. Members will be aware, the secretarial allowance has traditionally been increased on 13 June, but it is payable, under the relevant resolution of the House, for a financial year. That has involved a cumbersome calculation, and while we propose that the allowance should increase this year on 13 June, it is our intention to bring forward the date of increase in 1985 to 1 April to coincide with the start of the financial year. Thus, the 1984 limit will apply only from 13 June 1984 to 31 March 1985, and the four fifths formula in the motion is necessary to produce the same result over the whole year as would have been achieved under the old system. The motion ensures that no loss is incurred by the approach that we have adopted. I believe that these proposals represent an equitable method of regular alteration to the allowance, without the need for frequent debate and vote.
I come to the valid point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth). No arrangement is immutable, and this one, like others, will be subject to review from time to time. I believe that the House will wish to endorse the motion.
The motion on motor mileage allowance concerns inevitably an area of some difficulty, given the widely differing circumstances of hon. Members. Whatever judgments are struck will involve some rough justice. The House will recall that until last July rates payable to Members of Parliament in respect of that allowance were tied to those applicable in the Civil Service. During the debate on hon. Members' pay and allowances on 19 July 1983 considerable unease was expressed about that link and the changes implicit in its continuance. I undertook to have the matter examined. In the meantime, hon. Members have received the higher of the two Civil Service rates introduced on 10 October 1983.

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In accordance with my undertaking, I established an independent inquiry to determine the most appropriate means whereby hon. Members could be reimbursed the cost of their motor mileage. The inquiry was conducted under the chairmanship of my noble Friend Lord Peyton of Yeovil. I wish to pay tribute to him and the other members of the inquiry team—Lord Barnett and Mr. Richard Wilkes. They discharged a complex task with speed and imagination. I know that the whole House will wish to join me in thanking them for their efforts.
The report of the inquiry team recommends that the long-established link with the rate of allowance payable to civil servants should be severed. It proposes that in future the allowance should be calculated on the basis of the Royal Automobile Club schedules of motoring costs, with an enhanced element for depreciation, subject to an upper limit of 39p per mile for a car of 2600cc. The Government accept those recommendations.
Paragraph 7 of the report makes it clear that the 39p per mile figure is an upper limit and that where hon. Members use a smaller car and therefore incur lower costs they should limit their claim. In the interests of public accountability and of the proprieties being not only observed but seen to be observed, the Government propose to formalise that arrangement. Under the terms of the motion there will therefore be three tiers of allowance, calculated on the same basis as that used by the inquiry team. [Interruption.] I thought that the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) was throwing me a lifeline.
Mr. Jack Straw rose—
Mr. Biffen: It is all right. I can do without it.
The three tiers will apply to cars of up to 1300cc, between 1301 and 2300cc, and 2301cc and above. That makes more specific the principle of an allowance based on engine size put forward by the inquiry team in its report.
Mr. Peter Bruinvels: There must be some concern about the upper limit of 39p per mile for vehicles of 2600cc. Will that not encourage hon. Members to purchase more powerful cars? Will it not be a bad consideration for the public at large? Has the Fees Office been consulted throughout on the new recommendations?
Mr. Biffen: We have worked closely with the Fees Office, because it bears the onerous task of administering the scheme. I would not come to the Dispatch Box were I not tolerably happy that what has been recommended was a manageable arrangement. With regard to whether payments that are adduced by the RAC to cover motoring costs would result in hon. Members trading up, they must make their own judgment, but I should have thought that the major concern was that we should have a system whereby motoring costs were covered. The Peyton inquiry team did not think that possibility would be a significant factor in the arrangements and, I confess, neither did I. However, this is a House of Commons matter and hon. Members must make their own judgment. I notice that no hon. Member has tabled an amendment to reduce the 39p figure.
Mr. Hugh Dykes: Will my right hon. Friend explain how the Government managed to accept,
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apparently with enthusiasm, the independent recommendations for secretarial and mileage allowances when they found it so difficult on 19 July last year to accept independent recommendations on salaries?
Mr. Biffen: The House took the view that it regarded as appropriate on salaries and the Government accepted it. Moreover, I should point out that I stand at the Dispatch Box today with a sense of weary resignation, not enthusiasm. This is an intractable problem. Let there be no mistake about it. When the public monitor this they will not conclude that we have been engaged in a great exercise of self-deprivation. We should be under no illusions about that. The proposals are an attempt to strike a balance in an exceedingly difficult situation. Members have different motoring costs, largely related to the different types of constituency and it is difficult to find a simple, uniform system that is acceptable. The review committee made the recommendations in good faith and they seem to provide as good a basis as any for the House to try to resolve the problem.
Mr. Nicholas Baker: Is not the argument that the higher rate will encourage people to buy larger cars ill founded, in that only the running costs are reimbursed? To buy a large car one needs to have or to borrow more money, which is not reflected in the allowances. [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes, it is."] Depreciation is included but not the cost of the car.
Mr. Biffen: In my judgment, the scales proposed will not lead to a rash of Rolls-Royces cluttering up the Members' Car Park. I am sure the House will agree that it is important that Members of Parliament should be seen to be subjecting themselves to the same disciplines as would apply elsewhere.
Mr. Patrick Thompson: Whatever the arguments about the specific mileage allowances, does my right hon. Friend accept that the previous flat rate system was fairer and easier to explain to the public?
Mr. Biffen: That may be so—it is for the House to take a view on that—but Members were miserable with the flat rate system related to the Civil Service as soon as the formula was changed and they thought it was to their disadvantage. That is why the matter was brought into such sharp focus, to use the most neutral language possible, in last July's debate. Although I respect all the opinions being expressed, I should like to press on. Perhaps we could do a deal to the effect that any Member who interrupts me will not seek to speak later in this limited debate.
The Government's proposals will introduce rates of allowance for up to 20,000 miles per year of 18p per mile for cars up to 1300 cc, 25·9p for cars between 1301 cc and 2300 cc and 39p per mile for cars of 2301 cc and above. For mileage in excess of 20,000 in any one year, lower rates of 11·3p 14·7p and 19·5p per mile will apply.
Sir Anthony Meyer: If there are grounds for differentiating between sizes of car, why is there no differentiation on grounds of distance? Why is no account taken of the fact that some constituencies are 300 miles from London or that some Members have to drive up to 400 miles per weekend to cover their constituencies, whereas for others the entire constituency is within walking distance of a railway station?
Mr. Biffen: There is a distinction in relation to distance. The practice operates in the Civil Service and in a large number of private sector companies. Any system which broadly attempts to relate motoring reimbursement to actual costs should appeal to the sense of equity of hon. Members and make good sound sense to the public outside. The reason for the difference between the rates is that the initial rate based on the RAC schedules reimburses all standing costs and running costs less the deduction for private use. The lower rate reimburses running costs with an enhancement for extra depreciation and repair costs. In both rates, the depreciation element has been enhanced to reflect the fact that Members of Parliament generally travel more than the 10,000 miles on which the RAC schedule is based. The new rates will come into effect on 1 October 1984 and be uprated on 1 April annually with the publication of revised RAC schedules.
More fundamentally, it has been represented to me that an allowance system based on engine size represents a step backwards to the system from which the House moved to a flat rate in 1964. The inquiry, however, found that a wide range of costs related to engine capacity. It seems reasonable that Members with distant or geographically large constituencies should choose to run larger than average cars because of those factors. Therefore, I accept that there are defensible reasons in equity for a multi-tier system. It may be argued that the Government, having taken that decision, should have taken the argument to its logical conclusion and proposed a six-tier system to correspond exactly with the RAC schedule of costs. I see no objection to that in principle, but one must strike a balance between absolute accuracy and ease of administration. I believe that the three-tier system combines fairness in relating allowances to costs, while avoiding unnecessary bureaucracy.
The House will have noted that paragraph 6 of the inquiry report recommends that Members wishing to claim for distances in excess of 25,000 miles a year should furnish particulars of all journeys included in their claim. It may help the House if I outline the way in which we envisage this being applied. The 25,000-mile limit will apply only to journeys undertaken by Members. Use of the vehicle by spouse or secretary qualifying for reimbursement will be treated on a de minimis basis and exempted. Similarly, travel by car in connection with Select Committee work will not count towards the 25,000-mile total.
The limit will apply only to journeys between Westminster and home constituency and within the constituency. Under the existing arrangements, Members routinely detail all journeys between Westminster and home constituency. There will be no change in that requirement. If, however, a Member feels that he is likely to exceed 25,000 miles in any given year, he will be expected to provide fuller particulars than hitherto of journeys within his constituency. The precise form in which such particulars should be provided is being considered by the House authorities.
Mr. A. J. Beith: If a Member has more than one car in more than one band of the proposed scheme, will he have to identify which car was used for which mileage? If a Member travels by taxi, as is often necessary if one arrives by air, the cost will be
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greater than can be claimed through the mileage allowance. Will the Member concerned therefore be allowed to claim at the highest rate of mileage allowance?
Mr. Biffen: The answer to both questions is yes.
I accept at once that 25,000 is a somewhat arbitrary limit and that Members with distant or rural constituencies will reach it more easily and will thus be required to account for their mileage more closely than some of their southern or urban colleagues. Nevertheless, I felt it right to accept the inquiry's recommendation as an important demonstration that no special privilege or undue latitude is sought for Members of Parliament. I urge the House to consider the proposals in that spirit.
In conclusion, I suggest that the secretarial and motor mileage allowances must stand two broad tests. First, they must be equitable in relation to the costs borne. Secondly, they must be defensible to the wider public. I believe that the proposals meet those standards and I commend them to the House.
10 am
Mr. Alfred Dubs: I beg to move amendment (a) to the proposed motion, in line 6, leave out `£12,000' and insert '£17,000'.
The amendment is concerned entirely with the amount of money made available to us for the office, secretarial and research allowance. The purpose of the amendment is to increase the amount from the level set in the motion—£12,000—to£17,000.
My intention is not to claim any privileges for us as Members of Parliament, but solely and simply to enable us to do our job better and to do justice to our secretaries and research assistants, if we have them. If we accept the amendment, the public will not take the view that we are voting perks for ourselves. They will understand that what we are doing is necessary and essential if we are to do our job properly.
An allowance of £17,000 would enable every hon. Member who so wishes to have a staff of two—one full-time secretary and one full-time research assistant. It could, of course, also be divided between two part-time secretaries and two part-time research assistants. It would also provide a minimum sum of money to enable us to buy, repair or update our typewriters and dictating equipment. Those are the minimum services that we need.
At present, the allowance is adequate for one secretary, about 0·2 per cent. of a research assistant, and the occasional purchase of a typewriter. That is not adequate. Hon. Members who have been here longer than I will say, "What are you complaining about? It was worse when I first came here." Every hon. Member will have heard that said by some older hon. Member, regardless of party. I appreciate the fact that this House is a conservative institution as well as, at the moment, alas, a Conservative one. However, we do not have to take conservatism to that extreme.
The second argument against my proposal is seldom stated explicitly, but I often suspect that the two Front Benches are in collusion about it. They reason that if they give Back Benchers more back-up and support, those Back Benchers will be able to make their lives more difficult. They want to keep us beaten down with constituency work in our offices or corridors so that we will not cause them too much trouble. That makes life easier for the Front Benches. Back Benchers are in a majority in this place

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We have the right to make certain demands, regardless of what Front Benchers may say to us. I hope that in that spirit the majority of Back Benchers will support my amendment.
Although I have not done the detailed research, it is difficult to find any Western Parliament where the back-up is less adequate than it is here. Almost every Western Parliament provides at least a staff of two for each Member, and so do some non-Western Parliaments. South Korea — which is hardly a byword for democratic procedures and practice — gives each Member of Parliament a staff of two.
I do not want to be accused of giving us all a pat on the back, and I hope I shall not be misunderstood, but it is my contention, based upon discussions with many Members of Parliaments throughout the world, that we work harder than the Members of any other elected assembly. I cannot prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt, but all the investigations that have been carried out and the discussions that we have had with our opposite numbers abroad tend to confirm that view.
Mr. Dykes: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that a German Member of Parliament gets allowances worth £18,000, a salary of £28,000, free postage throughout the world, free telephone calls throughout the world, first-class rail travel throughout German territory and one free aircraft trip anywhere every month, subject to the approval of the relevant committee? That may seem grandiose in comparison with what we get, but I should also point out that the Bundestag processes fewer Bills per annum than we do, and yet it is a highly effective Parliament.
Mr. Tony Banks: More money for less work.
Mr. Dubs: I do not want to involve myself in an argument about the effectiveness of the Bundestag, but I am aware that we work longer hours and get through more work than our opposite numbers in Germany. In particular, we do more constituency case work. That is one of the key arguments, although not the only argument, in favour of my proposal.
Whether we like it or not, most of us have an ever-increasing burden of welfare or constituency case work, I welcome that fact. It is right that we should do that work. It keeps us in close touch with what is going on. That cannot be said of the many countries where Members tend not to do so much constituency work. However, the corollary is that we are short of time to cope with the wide range of other work for which we are responsible.
The public can be divided into two groups: those who are not aware of the poor facilities and back-up here and are astonished when we explain to them the problems that we face in trying to serve them; and those who know how poor the facilities are, but rightly say that it is entirely our own fault. They say that we need not put up with it, and that if we decide not to put up with it there are plenty of members of the public who would do the job in our place. We cut a poor figure when we moan about a lack of back-up, which is entirely our own fault.
I am not forgetting that there is an excellent Library, with first-class research staff. I pay tribute to the staff for all the work that they do for us. However, they cannot do for us all the work that a research assistant would do. It
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would be unfair of us to take to the Library all the work that we would like to take, because the staff could not cope with the burden. They have to work for all Members of Parliament. It would be helpful to have one's own research assistant, because he, or she, would understand one's approach to the job, one's problems and one's constituency.
Most of us simply do not read the bulk of the documents, circulars, White Papers and Select Committee reports which come our way. We do not have the time. Furthermore, no hon. Member would claim that his speeches or questions, or the letters that he writes to Ministers or to local authorities, are always as well thought out, researched and prepared as they should be. Civil servants must wonder why our parliamentary questions sometimes do not quite hit the mark or why the letters that we write to Ministers are rather sloppy and may not address themselves strictly to the point. The answer is that we do not have time to do such work properly.
We may also have to table a written question because we simply do not have the time to think through and draft a letter which might be more to the point. I do not agree with those who say that if all Members of Parliament have research assistants they will simply spend the time asking more questions. That would not necessarily be the outcome, but we might well ask better and more sensible questions. In any case, one of the reasons why we now ask questions is that we do not have the time to do our own digging and delving.
I hope that the House will support the amendment. It is a modest proposal that will enable us to do a better job of work for our constituents. They will therefore welcome it. It will also enable us to do justice to our secretaries and research assistants. I am sure that, sooner or later, such a change will be made and that we shall have the staff that I have talked about, so why not now?
10.10
Mr. Peter Bottomley: I am sure that we all want to give a fair wind to the third motion on the order paper which concerns the Lord Chancellor's salary. I hope that he enjoys receiving and spending it.
I do not want to follow what the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs) said about secretarial allowances as I do not believe that this is the right day to go into that matter in detail. The first motion merely gives effect to what we have already decided. A major debate of principle in regard to the level of secretarial and research back-up should be dealt with more effectively than in an amendment. If we are examining back-up for Members of Parliament and its cost, we should take account of the cost of written questions and similar matters, as the total back-up for a Member has a cost, and it might be possible, after consideration between Back-Bench party officers, to find a means of limiting total costs of back-up rather than merely the element of those costs which Members manage.
Mr. Chris Smith: The hon. Gentleman said that now is not the appropriate time to examine the base rate for the secretarial and research allowance. Will he bear in mind that the present allowance was fixed as part of an overall package of Members' salaries and allowances at the start of this Parliament? It was voted through in the early hours of the morning, and

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there was little discussion about the allowance element of that package. Surely this morning, with three hours of debate, we have a proper chance to discuss the base rate.
Mr. Bottomley: I take the hon. Gentleman's hint. I shall not continue to make that point. Others can develop the case which I do not think is appropriate for today.
It is important to lay one or two elephant traps on car mileage. I believe that the signals in the proposed scheme will get Members doing things that they would not otherwise do. That might or might not be intended. Members who have a car, the cubic capacity of which is one or two cubic centimetres below one of the limits, will feel aggrieved, and, on changing the car, will go above the limit. That will involve extra cost without giving any advantage to a Member, except assuaging a sense of grievance. There is much to be said for a common system. I do not feel that so strongly that I shall deliberately overturn what the Government are proposing, but the sooner we get back to a system that gives Members the right signals, the better.
We should try to meet Members' costs in the form of standing charges and then provide a marginal amount for petrol and a little wear and tear. The old system did not do that. The basic cost of a motor car is so many hundreds or thousands of pounds a year, and the marginal cost, which is what we should get back for marginal motoring, can be estimated with some rough justice. As I said in last year's debate, I should have been happier if the Government had linked this with Civil Service procedures, so that we had one simple rate and we could then have argued about the number of miles. I regret that the House did not take that view, as it would have been more satisfactory than what we have. Even more satisfactory would be a lump sum and a low marginal reimbursement for the low marginal costs of motoring.
Mr. Forth: Does my hon. Friend agree with our right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that after what happened last year there was some groundswell of opinion among hon. Members against what emerged? Alternatively, does my hon. Friend agree with me that, having done what we did last year, there was broad satisfaction? That is why people do not understand why we have the present proposal.
Mr. Bottomley: The simple answer is that, when a proposal is made, those who object turn out. When the previous proposal emerged, the high mileage Members objected. Now it is probably the others who are objecting.
Mr. Biffen: Perhaps I might clarify what is clearly a misunderstanding. The groundswell of resentment occurred when the House discovered that its attachment to the Civil Service formula meant a move to a system of abating payment for the first 9,000 miles and a reduced payment thereafter. The House has little sympathy for the privilege of the top rate, and I must observe that that privilege is not as secure as it will be under the scrutiny of the Inland Revenue if it continues.
Mr. Bottomley: The House should be prepared to review whatever arrangements we decide on or do not accept today so that, in the near future, we have a system under which a Member might get £1,500 a year and 10p a mile. A Member would then be indifferent about whether he or she travelled by train or by car. We should try to achieve that indifference. At the moment, a Member can
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retrieve most of the standing cost only by doing a high mileage. That probably involves a decision to drive when it might be more convenient and sensible to use public transport. That seems so obvious that it is likely to take the House many years to adopt it, but I have never thought that I should not come to the House and state the obvious.
Mr. Gerald Bermingham: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there are many constituencies, rural and urban, in which there is not an adequate public transport service? Because of the lack of transport, withdrawal of transport grants and other problems that have resulted from the present Government, many Members who represent constituencies in the north-west are forced to use a car to travel around constituencies and to neighbouring areas.
Mr. Bottomley: I entirely accept that point, and I thought that I had allowed for it. I am not suggesting that Members should automatically be badly off if they have to use a car for a high mileage. My point is that the system that we had was better than that which we might adopt and that the system that I am suggesting would meet most cases.
Perhaps I might make a personal point. With a London constituency and the need to use a car to get to it—a journey of about seven miles to the constituency boundary and about 10 miles in the constituency in a normal day—whatever system the House is likely to adopt will not meet my car expenses and having to have an extra car for the purpose. I do not mind that. That is rough justice, and I am one of those who do not gain under any system. Bearing that in mind, it is worth advancing sensible ideas that will lead to most Members getting most of their expenses most of the time, while avoiding the temptation to drive more often just to cover higher standing charges. Moreover, as one who has had a car with an engine capacity of 2·6 litres, another of 1·99 litres and another of 850cc, I can envisage the complications for the Fees Office and for Members of trying to make the right claim. I suspect that a bit of averaging goes on.
10.18 am
Mr. A. J. Beith: I welcome the Government's decision to index the secretarial allowance. Our staff will therefore know that if the salaries of people who do similar work in the Civil Service increase to take account of inflation Members will be able to increase the salaries of their staff. The annual wait to discover whether that will be possible was not satisfactory.
It is right that the overall rate of secretarial allowance should have been mentioned today. I do not think that this is the wrong time or the wrong day. We can quite properly discuss the matter now. I regret that it is still not possible to employ and pay properly a full-time secretary and a full-time research assistant, constituency assistant, political assistant or whichever combination of those functions is found most convenient, out of the secretarial allowance.
The review body recognises that that is the combination of staff needed by hon. Members. It is widely accepted that that is so. Not all hon. Members wish to avail themselves of that level of service, but those who do find it increasingly difficult, for the reasons that have already been given. Some hon. Members are under particularly heavy pressure. A Liberal Member has 120,000 constituents. The amount of correspondence generated by

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such a number of constituents is very great. Clearly he needs staffing support to carry out his duties. Therefore, the basis of the secretarial allowance needs to be expanded to provide a modest staff of two people. That is not an unreasonable demand when we compare our work with that of legislatures that carry less extensive responsibilities than we do.
Many other expenses must be met from the secretarial allowance. An hon. Member may have to meet the increasingly high cost of advertising constituency surgeries. In my area where there are many local papers it costs between £1,600 and £1,700 a year merely to advertise the time and place of the surgery. On top of that there may be rooms to be hired and other support costs to pay. There are stationery and office costs, which are not met from the allowance, especially if an hon. Member bases much of his secretarial work in his constituency. Some hon. Members choose to base their office work in the House and others in their constituencies. There are good reasons for either choice. However, in the latter case hon. Members must meet a higher proportion of the costs. They must pay for all telephone calls and they will not have the photocopying and other facilities that are available in the House. That should be recognised. My hon. Friends and I are therefore inclined to support the amendment moved on that matter.
Many hon. Members must travel a great deal by car to carry out their duties, especially in large constituencies and for hon. Members who must travel to and from distant constituencies where public transport is not ideal. Liberal Members represent some of the largest and most distant constituencies in the United Kingdom, and so we are not strangers to the problems involved. That has not led us to be enthusiastic about the Government's proposed solutions.
The proposition involves a high top mileage rate of 39p. That is much higher than any other rate available for others who undertake public activities, services or duties. I sympathise with the Government in that they are pressed again and again for independent reports on hon. Members' allowances, salaries and facilities and to act upon them. They never do that for our pay, but always reject the independent recommendations. Are we then wrong in chiding them for appearing to accept the recommendations of an outside body? They have not accepted the recommendations of an outside body. The outside body recommended that there should be a maximum reclaimable amount of 39p per mile and that hon. Members should claim within that maximum for the costs which they incur. The Government have proposed a banding system under which hon. Members claim at a specific amount for whatever kind of car they operate. The banding system is extremely limited.
The review body understood its recommendations to mean that hon. Members would claim at the most appropriate level and treat the 39p as a maximum—in many cases a maximum far beyond what would be claimed. The Government's proposals are not expressed as maxima. It is assumed that, whatever an hon. Member's costs are, he will claim at the rate for his particular size of car. He may have a 10-year-old 2·8 litre car whose depreciation is not as great as the sum envisaged in the mileage figures. The review body understood that, which is why it recommended a single maximum and expected
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hon. Members to claim within it, and did not recommend a banding system. Therefore, the Government cannot get away with saying that they are implementing the review body's recommendations.
We are entitled to examine the recommendations on their merits and see what their effects will be. They are way out of line with what people in other parts of the public service can claim, whether in the Civil Service or local government. They are out of line to an extent which cannot be justified by the particular circumstances of an hon. Member's use of a car. There are other problems. There are some differences between an hon. Member and a civil servant, which is why it is defensible to say that an hon. Member should be able to claim the current top Civil Service rate for a higher mileage than can a civil servant. Hon. Members' duties necessitate higher levels of mileage than are normal in most parts of the Civil Service, where civil servants are given a car allowance rather than a car. The public understand that it should be recognised that hon. Members, unless they are Ministers or Leaders of the Opposition, are not provided with official cars, but buy their own.
The trouble with the banding structure is that it becomes a direct incentive to an hon. Member to buy a car with a higher engine capacity. If he does so, he will be entitled to claim several thousand pounds a year more for car mileage allowance.
Mr. Christopher Hawkins: The hon. Gentleman's point that it will pay hon. Members to buy a bigger car cannot be true if the figures used by the independent review body are based, as they are, on the actual costs of running cars of this size as computed by the Royal Automobile Club. Therefore, the size of car will make no difference to hon. Members. The mileage rate will merely cover the running costs. The costs may be higher than those incurred by people in other public jobs, but that is because most hon. Members are doing marginal mileage on top of normal mileage. Provided one's mileage is about average, depreciation is not affected. Hon. Members' mileages massively affect depreciation.
Mr. Beith: That is not so for two reasons. First, the Government have excluded provision for one of the most frequent bands of car engine size—the range between 1,600 cc and 2·5 litres. By excluding that, many hon. Members will find that they can go for greater engine capacity without raising their costs anything like as much as the increase in the allowance they will be able to reclaim. That is why I tabled the amendment, which is designed to create an additional band covering a widespread and common size of family car. Last night I looked around the Car Park and found only two or three cars of the 39p category and about 20 cars in the middle band that I am describing.
Secondly, the higher mileage figure worked out in the RAC scales derives primarily not from higher petrol or running costs but from the higher depreciation of cars with a large engine capacity. It is clear from the RAC tables that the depreciation element makes up the larger part of the cost. An hon. Member can avoid that depreciation element if he buys a large but old car. The rate of depreciation on large old cars is minimal. An hon. Member could move into the higher-rate band at minimal increased cost and automatically become entitled to reclaim a vastly larger sum.
Mr. Bruinvels: Does it mean that there will be no incentive to keep a smaller car?
Mr. Beith: That is exactly my point. I wish to provide hon. Members with an incentive to do what I hope the whole nation will do, which is to run cars that are energy efficient, do not consume unnecessary amounts of petrol and are reasonable for the job to be done, whether to be driven around by a Member of Parliament, to transport the family or for any other purpose.
Mr. Bermingham: When the hon. Gentleman takes into account depreciation and repair costs, perhaps he should also take into account the safety factor. Does he agree that there is a direct correlation between the number of miles driven in any year and the likelihood of becoming involved in an accident? Is he further aware that for some years statistics have shown that those who drive a higher-capacity car tend to have a greater survival rate than do those who drive a lower-capacity car?
Mr. Beith: The hon. Gentleman produces a mine of statistics. I wish to encourage hon. Members not to drive in motor cars any more than they need to. There are several reasons why the Government's proposals will encourage hon. Members to drive more than they need to. If we produce an enormous differential between what can be reclaimed by driving a car and by travelling by public transport, as these proposals would, it becomes likely that hon. Members will increasingly travel in cars, partly to reclaim the greater costs, as the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) said. It is injurious to Members' health to travel excessively in cars. Those of us who are forced, by the distances involved in constituency travel, to drive a great deal from late night meetings know how difficult and dangerous that is and how easily one can become so tired as to drop off to sleep behind the wheel. Hon. Members should be given every available incentive to travel by public transport wherever possible.
The banding system proposed by the Government in an attempt to increase accountability and to maintain simplicity is wrong and will penalise those who make the sensible decision to have a medium-sized car that does not have high petrol consumption. The Government and the House, which in the end will take the decision, should set an example to the nation by saying, "We shall not devise systems that encourage hon. Members to buy bigger, gas-guzzling cars." Hon. Members may have reasons for buying bigger and higher engine capacity cars—that is their business—but it would be a great mistake for us to provide a system which penalises those who do not buy such cars.
An alternative which the Government could have accepted would be to accept the review body's original recommendations, have the 39p as an absolute maximum and hope that hon. Members would not rush to claim the maximum figure. Another advantage of that is that the system being proposed will be expensive to operate. The banding system and the need to submit much more complicated forms will cause much bureaucracy; indeed, it would not be an exaggeration to say that it would require about three more members of staff in the Fees Office, at a cost of about £20,000 a year, to carry out that work. I have some sympathy with the Government's belief that they had to go further to ensure that justice is seen to be done and that there is no possibility of claiming at the wrong rate, but I believe that the banding system is wrong.
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What are the possibilities? We could return to the flat rate, retain the system that we have now and work from the top Civil Service rates and, if the Government believe it right to do so, we could choose a suitable cut-off point to move to a lower rate at which the depreciation arid standing charges are reasonably met. That would be a different rate from the Civil Service rate, because we are talking not about mileage allowance but about a car that is mainly, or even entirely, used for parliamentary activities. In many ways, that is the most attractive possibility, which is why I am tempted to throw out this proposal and to retain the present scheme, which is closer to most of the schemes in other public services, much easier to understand and explain and less expensive to administer.
However, if we must have this scheme — there is some chance that it will be passed by the House today—we must amend it so as to provide a reasonable basis for those who use medium-sized family cars to be able to claim at a reasonable rate and not to be given an incentive to claim at a higher rate. That is the precise purpose of my amendment, which draws upon the same RAC table but takes the next band down in that table. The figure of 29p is drawn by using the same calculation as the Government made to obtain the 39p figure. The Government took two bands and averaged them out to produce a much larger middle band. In doing so, they placed those who use normal family cars at a serious disadvantage.
Were we to pass my amendment, those who believe that it is essential for hon. Members to have larger cars and to be able to claim at the higher rate will not be prevented from doing so; but those hon. Members in the widespread category that I mentioned will retain a reasonable basis on which to run their cars. If the Government rely on the RAC figures, they must accept the evidence of those figures—that it costs about 29p a mile to run a car of that size. If we accept the banding scheme with a rate as high as 39p, we must amend it so as to remove the incentive to move into the higher bracket. That is a reasonable proposal, and the Leader of the House said in his opening speech that he had no objection in principle to the proposal. He believed that an extra band would add a further complication. I believe that the added complication would provide something more like rough justice. The original supposed justice of the scheme is much too rough for my liking.
I would much rather that we abandoned this proposal and returned to the flat-rate scheme which the House has operated for some years and which is more reasonable. But if that does not happen, the House must take the precaution of amending the Government's scheme to ensure that it does not encourage hon. Members to buy cars which consume more petrol and which they otherwise would not buy.
10.35 am
Sir Anthony Meyer: I agree with most of what the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) said, but I wish to address myself to another matter.
For my money, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is the most intelligent as well as the most agreeable member of the Cabinet; and, to do him justice, he looked properly shamefaced when he introduced this nonsensical proposal this morning. I am talking only about the car allowances, and I shall deal briefly with one aspect of

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them, which is the arbitrary limitation, first, to 20,000 miles, after which a reduced allowance becomes payable—I do not object to that—and thereafter to 25,000 miles, after which every hon. Member is expected to account in detail for every mile that he travels on constituency work.
That is the most lunatic proposal that has been put before the House for a long time. What possible justification can there be for taking no account of the distance of an hon. Member's constituency from London, or of the size of his constituency? I am among those who will be fairly hard hit by the proposal, in that my consituency is 250 miles from London. Therefore, just by travelling backwards and forwards to my constituency on at least 40 weekends a year I clock up 20,000 miles before I even start to travel in my constituency.
Mr. Roger Gale: My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will clarify this if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the mileage between London and one's constituency does not count as part of the mileage because it is allowable anyway.
Sir Anthony Meyer: I wish that my hon. Friend was right, but my understanding is that travel between London and one's constituency is included in the 20,000 miles and the 25,000 miles. My case is nowhere near as bad as that of some of my colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Hooson)—who was here earlier but who, presumably, is unable to stay—and my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South-West (Mr. Harvey), who could not cover their constituencies adequately unless they travelled at least 300 or 400 miles every weekend. I am sure that were it not for his ministerial duties my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, who represents Shropshire, North, would make equally frequent visits to his constituency. When he was in opposition he was well known for the assiduity with which he visited and travelled round his constituency. Therefore, he must feel as strongly as I do that the proposition is absurd.
It is suggested that if we travel more than 25,000 miles a year we are somehow under suspicion of fiddling our travel expenses and we are required to account for each mile that we travel. Therefore, we come under pressure to make those journeys by train. It is a good idea to use public transport as much as possible, but again we run into a snag. My wife and I am sure the wives of many other hon. Members work almost as hard in the constituency at weekends as do hon. Members, but wives are limited to 15 trips a year on travel warrants. Last year I fell foul of that system. My wife had made 16 trips to my constituency by train, and I had already covered 28,000 miles by car. Once again, I had to pay for one of my wife's trips.
I do not complain about that, but I think it is absurd that there should be any limitation on the number of trips that a wife can make per year to the constituency as against the nine trips a year which a secretary is apparently allowed to make to the constituency—a privilege of which not many hon. Members will feel obliged to take advantage—so something seems to have gone wrong there.
It seems to me that some account must be taken both of the distance of an hon. Member's constituency from London and of his need to travel within that constituency
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each weekend. The present formula takes no account of that. This is one of the most stupid motions to come before the House for a very long time.
10.40 am
Mr. Clive Soley: I am pleased to intervene in the debate to support the amendment which my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs) moved with great clarity and force.
This is an argument of immense importance. Over the five years that I have been here I have come to the view that this place is in need of fundamental reform in a number of ways, of which Members' allowances are one small but very important part. Unless we undertake some of these reforms we are in danger of being seen as less and less relevant in the eyes of the public.
A political system can be almost anything. It can be good or bad, honest or dishonest, right or wrong, but it cannot afford to be irrelevant. As it is seen to be less and less relevant, so it declines in importance, and so people tend not to take notice of it.
The allowances are important in all this. When I arrived here, like most other hon. Members I spent the first month or so trying to find any desk on which I could squat and put my papers. I was obliged to move them round from time to time, from place to place, until I was given one of the desks in the Cloisters below the House. The Cloisters are quite a nice place to be in terms of being central, but that corridor is totally inadequate as an office. One of the first disadvantages to strike me was that if I wanted to hang up a calendar I had to drill a hole in what I assumed was a 17th century wall. What became much more important was trying to run a sensible office system from there when there were many hon. Members lined up in the corridor, people passing to and fro along the corridor and groups of people having conversations there. I was supposed to run my office and my constituency and other work from that desk. It was utter nonsense.
As I became more involved in the politics of Northern Ireland, in 1980 and 1981, I began to take a more active interest in the prison system. I found, as a former probation officer, that that was relevant to my work. I knew when I came here that the general back-up support for Members of Parliament was bad. I also knew that the support services that I would get were far less and more useless than I had ever experienced in probation work or in a number of other jobs of that nature.
When the hunger strike and the dirty protest were well established in Northern Ireland and I became more and more involved, I found myself having telephone conversations from my desk in this public corridor with groups of people standing around when I was discussing matters with a considerable security content. At one stage when I was planning a visit to Portlaoise prison in Dublin, which was also dealing with a dirty protest at the time and had experienced circumstances similar to those which had led to the hunger strike in the Maze prison, I had a number of conversations with the Irish embassy about my proposed visit. I became more and more concerned about the security aspects of that, and I was aware that literally groups of people were overhearing my conversations. I got to the stage where the embassy was telephoning me and I was telling the caller to ring off so that I could go upstairs to an ordinary telephone box to phone him back.
I put it to the House that that is a disgrace. It is totally unacceptable in any modern democratic political system

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that we behave in that way. At the end of the day, we all know it. Unless we are prepared to provide good services we shall go on appearing to be irrelevant to the majority of people, and that is particularly dangerous.
When my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea proposed the increase to £17,000, he spoke about the wages for two people — a research assistant and a personal assistant. I cannot remeber the full total that I pay my own personal assistant, including national insurance contributions, but it works out at about £8,000 per annum. With her qualifications and experience she could earn more elsewhere. If I am then to use some of the modern equipment that I should like to use and have just invested in in the form of an Apricot computer, I shall have cut out any real chance of having a research assistant at all. I have spent £3,500 on a computer system which makes a lot of sense in terms not only of a limited word processing facility but of a filing system which enables me eventually, when I can afford to buy the other part of the equipment, to call up files when I am in my constituency so that I can deal with the sorts of problems that my hon. Friend described so vividly rather than saying that I shall deal with them when I get back to the House, write a number of letters, and all the other time-consuming and wasteful ways of dealing with these matters.
So what do I do about research? Again, as my hon. Friend pointed out with clarity and force, I rely a great deal on the Library, but the Library cannot be asked to do the detailed work which is required, so I rely on individuals, and again I have been extremely fortunate in that a number of people have volunteered their services. For the past month or two I have had a man who is highly qualified but unemployed, despite his qualifications and an extremely good university reference. Until he gets a job he is working for me for nothing, simply because I cannot afford to pay him. Because I have already almost accounted for my allowance over the full year taking into account the salary of my personal assistant and the computer software costs, there is no chance of my paying him other than his expenses to and from work.
No modern nation of any significant size would tolerate for long a system as daft as this. Why we are bothering about the car allowance — and I have considerable sympathy with the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) — when we have not even got the basic expenses right, I do not know. I suppose that I have an environmental advantage in that I walk nearly everywhere in my constituency, but it is a London constituency, and a small one, so that is a special case. We are concentrating on a minor part of the problem when the essence of it is the lack of resources to do the job properly. We cannot go on like this if we are to be taken seriously by the public. It is no wonder that Members of Parliament lack the effective power and influence that they should have.
In a good parliamentary system the Back Benchers should be a real power house within their parties and their constituencies. Comparing the role of Members of Parliament in this part of the 20th century with that in the last century, we see clearly that they have lost power and influence. One of the reasons is that the resources to do the job properly are no longer available to them. The circumstances have changed in such a significant way that the people who have control of information are in a powerful position. Unless we have similar access to
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information and similar back-up and support, we shall not be able to do our job as we should in any mature and responsible democracy.
I do not believe that the Leader of the House is unsympathetic to what I am saying. I ask him to think again about the figure suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea as the very minimum. There is no reason why a Member of Parliament should be without a proper office, properly equipped, and two employees. That should be the minimum available to Members if they want it. I know that some hon. Members feel that it is not necessary, and I understand that, but they do not have to take it. I shall not insist that they take it, and nor will anyone else, but that is the minimum that should be made available.
One of the problems of the House, especially because it grew up and became so successful in the last century, is that it is still seen as a part-time occupation, with hon. Members coming here in the afternoons and evenings to decide the affairs of state, having performed their normal jobs in the mornings. That is no longer relevant in the second half of the 20th century. The danger is that those who have an office as a result of their solicitor's or business practice feel that they do not have the same need for secretarial and other back-up facilities that full-time Members need. If a Member does not have his own office, that option is not available to him. That is another basic and important fact which the Government need to take into account.
From occasional conversations with new Conservative Members, it appears that a growing number recognise that point. I ask Conservative Members to respond to that over a period. I know that some of them are doing so, and the more who do so the better. We cannot go on with 19th century practices in the second half of the 20th century and expect to continue to be seen as relevant to the needs of Britain.
10.50 am
Mr. Geoff Lawler: I, too, shall address my remarks to the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs). As one of the newer Conservative Members, I am wholeheartedly in favour of it. Not only is the time of night of the previous debate relevant, but so is the fact that some 25 per cent. of hon. Members at that time were so busy trying to find a secretary and an office, and to decide how to use the allowance, that they did not have a great deal of time to decide what size that allowance should be.
Now, with the benefit of a year's experience in this place, I find it appropriate to consider the size of the research and secretarial allowance. It has become apparent over that year that support is extremely limited. I go beyond saying that it is extremely limited, and say that A is absurdly constraining. It makes Parliament and the service given to hon. Members a laughing stock not only in Britain but to anyone from abroad. I would not argue for the sort of support that American Congressmen receive, but there must be a happy medium between the two, and we are a long way off it at the moment.
Out of the four areas of support for a Member, there is the car allowance which we are debating today, the salary — not least the salary — the cost of living allowance, and the secretarial and research allowance. The latter is the one part of the benefits available to hon. Members that gives no direct benefit to the Member. That

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is important because any extra penny that is added to that allowance goes directly to aiding our constituents and the way in which we do our job in our constituencies. We do not benefit from it one iota and it is right that we should not. The recent changes making salaries payable through fees makes sure that does not happen. For that reason, any increase that we can vote in the allowance will be completely acceptable to the public and to our constituents.
There are three constituent parts to the secretarial and research allowance. For me, and I think for the majority of hon. Members, the main part goes to paying for a full-time secretary in London. That point was recognised by Plowden in the top salaries review when he said that Members need the back-up of a quality private secretary. Therefore, we have to have an allowance in order to pay a salary commensurate with that quality.
Hon. Members also need someone in the constituency. If, like myself, an hon. Member has an inner city constituency, the constituency office receives constant demands. Literally hundreds of callers arrive there, and the phone rings continuously. Where, as in my constituency, there are many people from the ethnic minorities who have a greater proportion of problems than others, there is a heavy work load. Therefore, it is important that there is provision for secretarial allowance to provide for adequate back-up in the constituency.
It is not good enough that the service that we give our constituents at constituency level depends on the contributions raised by the voluntary efforts of members of our political parties. They are raising money not for that purpose, but to fight elections and to campaign. They should not have to raise money to provide a service to our constituents. That money should be provided by the secretarial allowance.
Another part of the secretarial and research allowance that has already been touched on by the hon. Member for Battersea is the research element. I decided that my £12,000 should be concentrated on employing a full-time London secretary and to provide help in my constituency office, but it means that I have nothing left towards providing research assistance. The only way for me to obtain research assistance is from the Library and through the voluntary work done mainly by foreign students. I know that the use of foreign students may not be entirely acceptable to some hon. Members, but I have found their work to be of a high standard. I have to rely on their services to provide the research back-up for my work as an hon. Member. They are an important element in our lives. They help us to keep in regular communication with our electorates and in the work that we do in the House in contributing to debates. Many would also like to think that eventually they contribute through that to the quality of legislation passing through the House. Again, it is patently absurd that as legislators we should have to rely on voluntary work by foreign students to enhance our work. We need proper full-time help. Certainly we need some proper qualified research assistance, and an allowance should be available for that.
Another element that has been raised is perhaps a newer dimension in terms of the history of this place, and that is
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the plethora of modern equipment that is now available to assist us with our work. The £12,000 that we currently receive probably allows us to meet two of the three or four aspects of our work. The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Battersea would increase the allowance to £17,000. That is a somewhat arbitrary figure, given that the Plowden report recommended £13,000 plus £1,000 for equipment. However, it would be a helpful step forward in ensuring that hon. Members have quality support in their constituency, in London and in their research. We owe it to our constituents to provide just that support.
10.57 am
Mr. Tony Banks: Although I was elected a year ago at the same time as a number of Conservative Members—rather too many of them—and some Labour Members, I have still not recovered from my initial shock at the appalling working conditions that Members of Parliament have to endure in this place. Visitors, and indeed many hon. Members, may admire the many marble statues that we have around, the wonderful neo-Gothic design of Pugin, Barry's architecture and the majesty of Westminster hall, but behind that elegant facade there lurks a legislative slum.
Downstairs in the Cloisters, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) described, Members work under conditions that defy all the office and factory legislation. The Cloisters is nothing more than a fancy name for a corridor, and hon. Members might care to reflect on the fact that it is a fire trap. In the event of that unhappy eventuality, I suggest that there would probably have to be a mini-general election because of the vacancies that would arise. I hope that, if there is a fire, it is not on our side of the corridor.
The Palace of Westminster is a seedy, rundown and thoroughly useless working environment.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the debate is about the secretarial and research allowance, not about facilities in the Palace.
Mr. Banks: If I may say so, Mr. Speaker, it is about the allowance and about the working conditions that are linked to it.
Mr. Forth: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one way to solve our problems would be for us to take over the GLC building?
Mr. Banks: I have alway suspected that that was one of the main reasons why the Government wanted to abolish the GLC.
Mr. Speaker: Order. We are getting on to a tack which it would be unwise to follow.
Mr. Banks: It was also suggested that county hall should be turned into a hotel for rich American visitors. That proposal was made in 1892 and no doubt—
Mr. Speaker: Order. We must get back to the subject of the debate.
Mr. Banks: I was trying to talk us through to the statement, Mr. Speaker.
It being Eleven o'clock, MR. SPEAKER interrupted the proceedings, pursuant to Standing Order No. 5 (Friday sittings).

Argentina (Talks)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Sir Geoffrey Howe): I will, with permission, Mr. Speaker, make a statement on the talks which took place in Berne on 18 and 19 July between British and Argentine representatives.
As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and I have consistently made clear to the House, we are not prepared to discuss with the Argentine Government the question of sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. But it is plainly in our own interests, as well as those of Argentina and of the Falkland Islanders, that we should move towards more normal relations between Britain and Argentina. We therefore sought, in exchanges through the protecting powers over many months, to establish an agreed basis for talks which would achieve that end.
After careful and detailed discussions, a clear basis was agreed which would enable talks to take place. It was, of course, very clear to us that if the talks were not to founder at the outset on the issue of sovereignty, any such arrangements needed above all to meet the different positions of the two sides on that question. Accordingly, the specifically agreed arrangement on that point was that if the Argentine representatives raised the subject of sovereignty, as they clearly wished to do, the British representatives would make it quite clear in reply that we were not prepared to discuss it. Discussion would then move straight on to practical issues of concern to both sides and would continue on those subjects. This basis was plainly agreed and clearly understood by the Argentine Government. This arrangement was also confirmed by the Swiss Government.
When the talks opened in Berne, the British side complied scrupulously with this arrangement. As foreseen, the Argentines began by raising the question of sovereignty. We replied by making it plain, again as foreseen, that we were not prepared to discuss it. We went on to suggest a number of practical issues—such as the resumption of normal commercial and financial relations, the restoration of the air services agreement between Britain and Argentina and a visit by Argentine next-of-kin to the Falkland Islands—on which there could be some prospect of agreement.
We regarded this as the best way to start restoring confidence between Britain and Argentina, but the Argentine representatives were not prepared to continue the talks on this basis, although it had been agreed in advance. They argued that discussion of any of the practical issues put forward by the British side would have to be linked to discussion of a mechanism to address the question of sovereignty. Unless this new condition was met the Argentines were not prepared to continue the talks. This was totally at variance with the agreed basis and the talks thus came to an end.
Her Majesty's Government continue to take the view that it is in the interests of all concerned to seek the restoration of more normal relations between Britain and Argentina. I am sure that the House will share my sense of regret and frustration that, after many months of careful preparation, the Argentine Government brought the talks to an abrupt and premature end by failing to proceed upon the basis that had been clearly agreed.
Mr. Denis Healey: I strongly support the Foreign Secretary's final words that it is
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"in the interests of all concerned to seek the restoration of more normal relations between Britain and Argentina."
Like the right hon. and learned Gentleman, I deplore the breakdown of the talks and share the sense of regret and frustration that has followed so many of his recent initiatives.
I warned the Foreign Secretary some time ago that the long delay in opening direct talks with the new democratic Government in Argentina might mean that Britain had missed the bus, and so it appears to have proved. Can the Foreign Secretary tell us whether it is really the case, as reported in several British newspapers this morning, that the breaking point was the refusal of the Government to say that they were not yet prepared to discuss sovereignty—that the word "yet" was the breaking point? I hope that the Foreign Secretary will recall that it is unwise ever to use the word "never" in matters of this nature. He may recall the experience of one of his predecessors, Lord Colyton, in using the word "never" in the context of a Cyprus settlement.
Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman not feel that it would have been much wiser to take the advice of his immediate predecessor, the right hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Pym), who told the Select Committee on 11 June:
"It would be wrong to close the door on any option"
and that we must
"get back to a position where"
sovereignty
"could be discussed."
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman seriously consider changing the basis on which the Government have so far sought to open discussions with the Argentines, recognising what everybody in the world knows to be the case — that some time or other the question of sovereignty will have to be discussed between the British Government and the Government of Argentina?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's support for my general statement of the position, although I regret that he succumbed once again to the temptation to couple it with a cheap and unworthy observation.
I repudiate absolutely the suggestion that there was any long delay in these matters on our part. I remind the House: that the Government have, from an early stage, taken a series of steps designed to move towards the restoration of normal relationships. In July 1982 we lifted the exclusion zone and replaced it with a protection zone. In September 1982 I initiated negotiations at the IMF to end financial restrictions. We have supported five European Community Presidency approaches to suggest the normalisation of economic and commercial relations. In May last year we proposed the restoration of the air services agreement. We have made it clear on a number of occasions that we are prepared to accept suitably prepared visits by bona fide relatives under Red Cross auspices.
Following the October elections we welcomed the return of democracy in Argentina, and on 10 December my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister sent a message to President Alfonsin on his inauguration. In January this year we sent the first of a series of messages which initiated the months of subsequent negotiations to establish a mutually acceptable basis for official talks on the normalisation of relations.

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We have always made it clear that we are not prepared to negotiate sovereignty. However regrettable it may seem from many points of view, the Argentines have to live with the consequences of the fact that they used force and invaded, at a time when we were negotiating on that question in good faith. The war and the casualties on both sides changed attitudes in Britain and in the Falkland Islands.
It was for all those reasons that we took such care to approach the business of restoring confidence between the two countries on a basis which could start with modest, practical, useful measures. That is what we thought we had secured and agreed—that is what we had secured and agreed — and I very much regret the fact that these events—
Mr. Tam Dalyell: What about the word "yet"?
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. There is no "injury time" for the previous debate, which must end after three hours. Therefore, I propose to allow questions to go on until 11.20.
Mr. Dalyell: What about the word "yet"?
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Jim Lester: We do not want to descend into mutual recrimination, so is there any way in which the intermediary in organising the talks can express a view on why there has been, to put it no higher, a misunderstanding? Or has there been a deliberate change of policy by President Alfonsin since the talks began? Can my right hon. and learned Friend suggest any other avenues which could be pursued in seeking the desirable objective that he has outlined?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not think that anyone but the Argentine Government could cast light on the reasons for what has happened. There is no doubt that the basis for the talks to commence and to continue was plainly agreed. Equally, there is no doubt that that basis was not, in the event, fulfilled. We can only speculate on why and in what circumstances there appears to have been a change of heart by the Argentines. Obviously, as I have said, we still wish to make progress towards the restoration of normal relations, but we shall need to assess carefully the implications of the attitude displayed yesterday by the Argentines, which caused the breakdown.
Mr. James Molyneaux: Is the Foreign Secretary aware that we on this Bench support the Government's refusal to discuss or negotiate the sovereignty of the Falklands? Does he agree that, whether in the south Atlantic or nearer home, any sort of intrigue will always perish on the question of which nation the citizens wish to belong to?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: In the presence of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, I hesitate to extend the range of my responsibilities. However, I acknowledge that there is certainly some truth in the right hon. Gentleman's point.
Sir John Biggs-Davison: Double talk apart, by "discussing sovereignty" does not Argentina
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mean the transfer of sovereignty? Was my right hon. and learned Friend not quite right, therefore, to take the stand that he did, while wishing — as we all do — for an improvement in relations? Does not the unreasonable attitude of Argentina suggest that even the present Argentine Government have to defer to aggressive elements in Argentina?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Plainly, the word "sovereignty" in this context implies the transfer of sovereignty. That is the point that has been expressed by the Argentines on many occasions. It is also clear that the Argentine Government's attitude and performance must have been influenced by some of the factors that my hon. Friend has in mind.
Mr. Dalyell: Who authorised the wrecking statements by Sir Rex Hunt before the conclusion of the talks? Did the Prime Minister know? Has not President Alfonsin taken great political risks with his infant democracy? Are we not playing into the hands of a better armed Argentine military? Is the article on the front page of The Sunday Times of last week to be believed when it speaks about Argentine missiles being put in position, with the possibility of an attack on our forces?
When the Foreign Secretary says that we should pause and reflect, are we also to pause and reflect on the £3 million a day at least which, according to The Sunday Times, is being spent on the Falklands, and, if so, for how long?
Mr. Speaker: Briefly.
Mr. Dalyell: How can we expect the Argentines to agree to the normalisation of air services and trade if the Government do not make promises on the sovereignty issue? Can we then sensibly expect them to be assured that we speak on sovereignty—
Mr. SpeakerOrder. The hon. Gentleman will have heard what I said about the time available for questions. He has already asked more than three questions.
Mr. Dalyell rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that is enough.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The statements of Sir Rex Hunt were made to explain to the Falkland Islanders that there was no change in the frequently expressed position of Her Majesty's Government about negotiations on sovereignty. That newspaper report about missiles—
Mr. Dalyell: Did the right hon. and learned Gentleman know?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: That newspaper report about missiles had nothing whatever to do with this matter. The talks broke down because the Argentines were not willing to talk about the normalisation of relations without linking that question to the issue of sovereignty.
Mr. Bowen Wells: May I first congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on arranging the talks in Berne? It shows a flexibility on the part of the British Government which we had been led not to expect. Will he reassure the House that he is not being too rigid about the discussions on sovereignty? Clearly, negotiations could take place by simply listening to the Argentine position, while not negotiating sovereignty. Will he reassure us that he is not being rigid in a strict interpretation of those words?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: There is no question of rigidity or intransigence on this issue. As a matter of plain common sense, at this stage—a little more than two years after the unjustified invasion of the Falkland Islands, which took place in the midst of negotiations in good faith on the very question of sovereignty—our position must be as I have stated it, that we are not prepared to negotiate about that. Given that, our position equally—as the House will recognise — must be to try to find a way of identifying other topics on which talks can commence leading towards the restoration of normal relations. It was precisely with those factors in mind that, over months, we negotiated to get a clear framework agreed which would allow talks to commence. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said about the flexibility implied in that approach. I am sure he shares my regret that it did not lead to a more successful outcome.
Mr. A. J. Beith: Does the Foreign Secretary's experience of negotiations not lead him to recognise that they are never likely to succeed if one of the subjects of greatest interest to one side is wholly excluded from the discussions? Has the Prime Minister so little faith in her negotiating team that she cannot rely on it to uphold the essential interests of the Falkland Islanders while the issue of sovereignty is featured in those discussions?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: My experience of negotiations leads me to recognise precisely that point. Indeed, it was for that very reason that we recognised that it would not be fruitful or helpful to see—as the hon. Gentleman puts it — that sovereignty was wholly excluded. We arrived at those arrangements so that the question should be raised, so that our response should be anticipated and understood and so that the parties could then move on to measures designed to begin rebuilding confidence. It was precisely with that point in mind that we reached those arrangements, and that is why I regret the outcome.
Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: May I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend on the formula that was used to get the talks going in Berne, which at that stage seemed to be perfectly sound and sensible? Does he agree that there is far more that unites our two democracies than divides them, and that both countries could gain tremendously from proper co-operation in the south Atlantic? During the summer, will he have a real go to explain to those on the Falkland Islands that the present position is artificial and that they will gain from closer co-operation between Britain and the Argentine?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his opening remarks. As I said in my statement, it was because we believed that progress towards the normalisation of relations was in the interests not only of the United Kingdom and the Argentine but of the Falkland Islanders that we set about the matter in the way that my hon. Friend has commended.
Mr. George Foulkes: May I also welcome the fact that the precedent of direct talks has now been established? Does the Foreign Secretary agree that, although the initial formula for dealing with sovereignty seems to have failed, there are other mechanisms—such as those that I have suggested to his Department — for sidelining the question of sovereignty and so on, which might be considered?
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As President Alfonsin did us the honour of sending a message containing the British proverb
"Where there's a will there's a way",
will the Foreign Secretary bear in mind a good Scottish saying, which Robert the Bruce learnt from the spider,
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again"?
Sir John Biggs-Davison: That is what Neville Chamberlain said.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I fancy that there is a rather larger Welsh than Scottish community in Argentina, but I cannot instantly commend any Welsh proverb to the House. However, I shall certainly bear in mind the approach suggested by the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes). The failure of our approach, after so much effort had been put into it, is bound to influence the way in which we look at the matter in future. We had designed a method which took account of the interests of both sides, but we shall obviously need to assess carefully the implications of the Argentine attitude, which led to the breakdown of the talks.
Sir Anthony Meyer: Will my right hon. and learned Friend continue undiscouraged in his attempt to find the philosopher's stone and a solution which will at the same time safeguard the long-term interests of the Falkland Islanders and take account of the extreme fragility of the democratic Government in Argentina? The Argentine Government are threatened by military hard men who would like to reassert hard-line Argentine policies towards the Falklands.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I accept the encouragement given by my hon. Friend. One of the points that we made in our discussions with the Argentines is that, although the present Argentine Government were not responsible for what happened just over two years ago, they have to live with the consequences of that action. Of course, one recognises the importance of the establishment and maintenance of democratic government in Argentina in the context of the entire history of that country.
Mr. John Evans: Did not the talks really collapse because if they start involving the question of sovereignty the cripplingly expensive Fortress Falklands policy, which exists mainly to bolster the Prime Minister's image, will be shown for the nonsense that it is? Is it not a fact that no agreement with Argentina will ever be reached as long as the Prime Minister continues in office?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: So far as I can detect, the hon. Gentleman made two separate observations, both of which are completely invalid. They have nothing to do with the subject. All questions of sovereignty were deliberately and carefully put to one side in the formula that we designed. This series of talks has come to an end because of the Argentine's failure to follow the agreed formula.
Mr. Hugh Dykes: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, while the Argentine Government are completely to blame for this breakdown after such careful preparations—he has handled this matter with great skill — none the less, this is a tremendous tragedy? This country and democratic Argentina should have well-developed friendly relations. There are 180,000 people of United Kingdom origin in Argentina who want desperately to see a solution to all these problems. There is no question of conceding the idea

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of the transfer of sovereignty if, in due course but not now, the subject of sovereignty is on the agenda if the Argentines wish to raise it.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I fully share my hon. Friend's views about the desirability of restoring more normal relations for human, social, commercial, economic and political reasons with the people and the democratic Government of Argentina. It was for that reason that we took so much care to allow the subject of sovereignty to be raised and to allow our response, as well and frequently advertised, to be made. I am sorry that that formula did not lead us to the other subjects which would have taken us in the direction my hon. Friend has in mind.
Mr. Healey: Is the Foreign Secretary telling the House this morning that Great Britain will never discuss the problem of sovereignty with the democratic Government in Argentina? If not, will he now answer what I put to him in my opening question: why were the Government not prepared to add the word, "yet", or words such as, "now" or "at present", to the statement that they were not prepared to discuss sovereignty?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The Government were seeking, upon the basis of a plainly stated position—that we are not prepared to negotiate sovereignty—to find a basis from which we could move towards more normal relations. The talks which started on Wednesday broke down not because of the absence of any such word in the formula, but because the Argentines, unfortunately, were not prepared to talk about normalisation without a linkage with sovereignty.

Office, Secretarial and Research Allowance
Question again proposed.
11.22 am
Mr. Tony Banks: I shall wait for the task force to disappear before resuming my speech.
I was trying to point out a little earlier that the working environment in this place militates against hon. Members doing an efficient and proper job for their constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith described most graphically the circumstances under which he found himself working in the Cloisters where there is no privacy, and where clearly hon. Members cannot have discussions on the telephone with constituents or others. That leads to the subject of provision for our staff. There are no facilities in the Cloisters, for example, for additional staff. I work in a small room in the Cloisters. I suppose that I should be grateful for the fact that I am in a room rather than in an open corridor, but there are four desks crammed in that room.
The hon. Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) who questioned me about county hall might be interested to know that there are larger lavatories in county hall than there are rooms in the Cloisters in which we work. If the Government turn those lavatories into offices, I can think of a few suitable candidates on the Conservatives Benches to use them.
Members of Parliament do not rate highly in the public sympathy stakes. We did ourselves a grave disservice when we came to the House immediately after the June election and had a full debate on our salaries. We inflicted something of a self-injury when we discussed those salaries without fully discussing resources. We voted ourselves — not all of us but collectively — salary increases at the expense of our staff. That was disgraceful. Of all people, politicians should be aware of the need for good timing, if nothing else.
Mr. Dykes: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the main problem in that debate in July after the independent suggestion made in June before the election was that everyone had agreed that this time round there would be no tampering with the independent recommendation? That was solemnly agreed in writing, as opposed to many occasions recently when frustrating results were produced. Bearing in mind that most other Parliaments have an automatic mechanism for increasing salaries which is outside the control of their Members, does he agree that that is the line along which we should proceed?
Mr. Banks: I believe that we have it partially right now in so far as there will be a linkage with regard to pay. The timing was all wrong. The difficulties in which the Government no doubt felt themselves by accepting the full recommendations were enormous. That could clearly be understood.
We must address ourselves to how we appear to those outside this place. It did not look good, immediately after a general election, whatever the justifications, for us all to be talking about our pay and conditions. It would have been far better timed if that debate had taken place before the election. During the course of the election campaign, we could then have answered the points that would have arisen. It seemed as if Members of Parliament were, first and foremost, looking after their own interests.

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We are not assisted by the press, which is always ready to make snide remarks about Members, some of which are perhaps justified, but many of which are not. Timing is of the essence, and I believe that the timing of our last debate was utterly wrong.
Unfortunately, because of that bad timing, we were unable to give close attention to what I believe to be the equally important matter of resources and facilities necessary to enable hon. Members to do their job properly.
Before my election to the House, I worked for the Association of Broadcasting and Allied Staffs. I should have been appalled if I had gone to that job and been told that I would have £12,000 or whatever, but that I had to find my own secretary, office, office equipment and all the other things necessary to do the job. That is what happens to Members of Parliament. It is a crazy and downright inefficient way to work.
Many people do not know what happens to the £12,000 that we receive currently. Unfortunately, some seem to suggest that it is nothing more than an addition to salary. I should like to give the 1984 budget for my office. You will be relieved to know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that it is relatively short.
My office is based in Newham, North-West because, as one of the Conservative Members said, all problems are in the constituency, I, therefore, want my office in my constituency. I have a full-time assistant working in that office. The salary and national insurance contributions come to £8,360. I pay the rent, rates, telephone and so on, which come to £2,400. I have a photocopier, and, with paper costs, that amounts to £433 a year. A further £1,500 goes on office equipment, secretarial help and helpers' expenses. That brings me to a total of £12,693. It goes well over our present limit. The balance comes from my salary. I am not complaining about that; I am just saying that even for the relatively modest effort I can put into my office in Newham, that £12,000 is woefully inadequate. My office has to deal with hundreds of constituency matters a month because of the problems of an inner city. We cannot cope unless we have more full-time staff.
I believe that it would be dangerous to give Members of Parliament a substantial increase in cash allowances for administrative expenses. It is well known that some Members use those allowances to supplement their own incomes. Perhaps they need to do so but it is wrong and it should not be condoned. Members should be able to select their own personal staff for all the obvious political reasons, but those staff should be on the payroll of the House. All Members should have separate offices. Perhaps we should make this place a museum and build a proper purpose-built legislature somewhere else, perhaps outside London, which would provide conditions that would enable Members to work properly.
I believe that each Member should be entitled to three staff workers, which would be a mixture of researchers and secretaries. All those workers should be on properly negotiated salary scales. There are strong moves within the House to have proper negotiations for individual workers who work with Members. The range of salaries paid varies enormously and I hope that Members will realise that trade union organisation is as relevant in this place to those who work for Members as it is to those outside.
Members should be able to claim separate expenses for a constituency office and full-time staff. The disposition of staff between Westminster and the constituency should be left to the individual Member.
648
All office equipment should be drawn from the House and returned to it when a Member leaves. It should not be paid for from an annual amount. There would be many advantages in operating such a system because the House could negotiate some advantageous prices for equipment and arrange service contracts.
I have done some costings that are based on a Member having three staff and the sort of equipment that I believe would provide an efficient office. That equipment would include a computer, a teleprinter and the most advanced technical equipment. The cost would be about £45,000 per Member. When that is multiplied by 650 the total is about £27 million. I understand that that is not a figure Members would be ready to receive as an amendment to the motion. Although it sounds rather large, I put the figure to the House because I believe it is a reasonable one if we are to enable Members to have the sort of offices that they should be running on behalf of their constituents.
I do not believe in fifth-form conspiracy theories, although there are many fifth formers on the Conservative Benches. There is clearly a breadth of feeling on both sides that one of the reasons for Members not being given adequate resources is that they would become far too troublesome to their own Front Benches. That can probably be said about both parties when in government. There is a constitutional theory that Members are here to control the actions of the Executive. That might be the constitutional theory, but we know it to be constitutional bull. Individual Members do not stand a dog's chance of controlling the Executive. However, efficient and well-supported Members could keep a Government on their toes. That is why successive Governments have denied us the opportunuty to operate effectively.
We claim to know how to run the country. A few more people might believe us if we proved that we knew how to run our own affairs more efficiently. I shall be supporting the amendment and I hope that it will be supported by Conservative Members. I give notice that there will be a great move within the House among Members on both sides to start increasing secretarial and research allowances to a level which will enable us to be effective in a modern legislature.
11.35 am
Mr. Richard Holt: I welcome this opportunity to contribute to the debate, especially as new Members were almost frozen out of the debate that took place early in this Parliament on Members' salaries and allowances.
When I came to this place from industry, it was my wish and desire that my secretary, who had worked with me for many years, should come here. She was a highly paid and very efficient young lady. We could have just about managed to match her salary in industry, but when she saw the terms and conditions under which, and in which, she would have to work I was not able to persuade her that she could look forward to money and a lovely life in Parliament.
I feel sorry for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, because he has drawn a very short short straw. Newly elected Members arrived in this place 12 months ago and they were full of ideas. I remind the House of a well-known novel and film entitled "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". I am sure that all hon. Members will recall the plot; a perfectly sane person is taken into an

649
asylum and he finishes up more mad than the original inmates. I give notice that I have no intention of becoming one of the cuckoos in that context.
It is right that Members should be allowed to express the view that we shall not put up with the terms and conditions which have prevailed historically in this place, especially when the specious argument is advanced that if we are dissatisfied there are thousands of others who want to come here to take our places. If that argument is taken to its illogical conclusion, we would come here without pay, and we would probably pay a premium to do so, as used to be the practice in solicitors' offices and in the theatre many years ago. That would be wrong and it is wrong that we support secretaries or research assistants out of our own pockets. The state should accept that duty and responsibility.
I spent 25 years in industry, not wishing to become a civil servant. I am now a Member of Parliament, and I still do not wish to become a civil servant. I do not wish to be in any way hogtied to the Civil Service's terms and conditions of employment. I do not see why my secretary has to be adjudicated against a secretary in the Civil Service. I know many people in the Civil Service, my son works in Whitehall, and I have not seen many secretaries in Whitehall working at 8 o'clock, 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock at night as many Members' secretaries do so that they can carry out our work more effectively.
Many of us have constituencies which are a long way from London. We have oriented far too much on London. All the thinking is done within London and most civil servants live in or near London. I find that there are few of them in my patch in the north-east of England.
Our role as Members is not that of Members before the war and it is not even that of Members immediately after the war. Our role nowadays is very different. I am asked frequently, now that I have been a Member for more than a year, "How do you find life being a Member? How do you like it? Are you enjoying it?" Various questions are asked, including, "What do you do?" I agree with Lord Peyton that there is no job description for a Member of Parliament. Some Members will do more than others. However, the tendency is to have more full-time Members who are devoted entirely to working for their constituency, constituents and party. If that is to be done properly when a Member represents a constituency that is a long way from London, it is necessary to have a constituency office that is manned properly. There are inconveniences, because it is not possible properly to monitor the local radio station or the local television station if one is domiciled here with a constituency 257 miles away, as mine is. That means that I have to pay someone to monitor for me. If I cannot afford to pay my secretary a proper wage to work with me in London, there is not a great deal of money left at the end of the day to pay someone to work for me in my constituency.
The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) mentioned advertising. We have our printing and stationery supplies. In many instances we have to pay for our postage, because we have to guard against overstepping a narrow line when we send out letters which could be judged politically wrong in the way we address people. Members of Parliament have to buy their own typewriters. I wonder how many civil servants have had to pay £1,000 to buy a typewriter for the secretaries in their
650
offices anywhere around this area. I wonder how many of them have to pay an annual premium of approximately £100 to ensure that the typewriter is maintained and serviced properly. Typewriter ribbons have to be bought and Members must put up with the inconvenience of hiring a typewriter if their own goes wrong. No civil servant does that. Why should we be welded to the Civil Service in that way?
It has been suggested that 12 months ago we had a debate in which Members' salaries and allowances and car mileage were discussed. I believe that we should have had another debate along those lines today, but this debate is about only two elements, and not about Members' salaries. We shall be in an embarrassing position as long as we have to come to the Chamber time and time again to plead to do the job that we are expected to do. Often, members of the public are misled into believing that we have a great operation, with masses of secretaries and electronic back-up. A moment ago I was handed a piece of paper telling me that I had a telephone call to take outside. If I were in industry I would have a little bleeper, and that bleeper would have bleeped. I would have been able to make a telephone call and saved an earnest and nice gentleman from running around the whole place all day with bits of paper trying to find out whether I was here. I believe that the civil servants are against such small electronic aids and therefore do not allow us to have them.
I spent 25 years in industrial relations worried about terms and conditions of employment for all sorts of people. Little did I know that one day I would have to come here and make a special plea on behalf of my colleagues. I am in a slightly advantaged position in that I am the third oldest of the Members who were elected last year for the first time. I had retired before I became a Member of Parliament. That means that I am in an independent position and can say things which some of my younger hon. Friends cannot say without the embarrassment of making special pleadings.
It is wrong that we are debating the secretarial allowances as four fifths of one relevant percentage. Next year it will be five fourths of another relevant percentage, and the year after it may be two fifths of an irrelevant percentage. All the time we have this mumbo-jumbo which defies easy reading so that we can determine what our secretaries and research assistants should be paid and how many we should have. The amount paid should be adequate to enable the job to be done properly. I do not accept the argument put forward by one of my hon. Friends that we should not equate ourselves with the American Congress. Why not? England is the mother of Parliaments, and we should be in a position to give a lead to the American Congress. If it is right for Congress to have proper resources, it is right for us to have them as well.
Historically, wives of Members of Parliament were expected to react and act rather like vicars' wives and doctors' wives or any other lady in a similar position. They had to be working consorts, without individuality. That is wrong. Some Members' wives do many jobs in constituencies for which they are not remunerated or paid in the same way as doctors' wives. That aspect should be examined.
I did not agree with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House when he said that he felt a great swell of feeling on this measure during the debate 12 months ago. What he felt by way of a swell was the Back Benchers saying,

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"We do not want what you are seeking to impose upon us. We did not ask you to go away and find something else to impose upon us. We told you that we did not want what you told us you would do." I believe that the same circumstances apply today, and that is evidenced by the number of hon. Members who have spoken or who wish to speak in this debate. We do not want this scheme, any more than we wanted the last scheme, because all these schemes are specious.
At the moment we have a relatively equitable position. I have not heard too many hon. Members complain about the present system. If there was that groundswell of feeling, then, like all the stories that one reads in the press so frequently, I have missed out. That is unfair to me as an individual. Perhaps my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will tell us his evidence, apart from the groundswell of revulsion against the Government's proposals 12 months ago, from Back-Bench or even Front-Bench Members on both sides of the House that they want a massive change in the way in which the car mileage system operates. I do not believe that there is that feeling. It is true that 12 months ago we rejected those proposals. This is another way of coming back at us and introducing proposals which we do not want.
I shall go into detail with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House about his proposals. I suggest to him that if the House were mindful enough today to be silly and pass these proposals—I know that the "payroll" is here and not listening—we would do the wrong thing.
The motion refers to cars of
"1300 cc or less
More than 1300 cc and not more than 2300 cc
More than 2300 cc".
Mine is a 2·3 litre car, so I am at the top of the limit. The report recognised that fact and talked about 2301 cc or 1999 cc.
Mr. Beith: I hope that the hon. Gentleman checks his car carefully. He may find that it is 2299 cc. A great many cars are expressed in that way and fall just beyond the limits which the Government have proposed.
Mr. Holt: I am grateful for that intervention. I take as honest the figure written on the back of my car, which says 2·3 litres. I am sure that most right hon. and hon. Members would make exactly the same honest appraisal.
Mr. Forth: The real problem is that many British-made cars are expressed in that way. They say 1290 cc, and will come under the 1300 cc level. If one wanted to trade up, many might say that the best way—I do not agree—is to go for a Japanese car of 1400 cc and obtain the advantages of economy. In a sense, that might well be an incentive to buy non-British.
Mr. Holt: I take my hon. Friend's point. The serious element that I wished to point out is that those figures are specious and in many ways irrelevant. Car engines vary. Perhaps it would be better if we did not specify those figures.
My constituency is 257 miles away. It is a fairly large area, and my mileage for my first year as a Member of Parliament has been greater than 50,000 miles. That is not unusual. I identify those details only because I am more aware of the facts of the mileage I have done. Many of my colleagues represent constituencies in the north-east of England. I remind those responsible that beyond London are the north-east, the north-west, Scotland and other areas, and we should take them into consideration.
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Cars depreciate very rapidly, and people doing the mileages to which I have referred need to change their cars frequently. I do not accept the argument that it is better to buy an older second-hand car, because the maintenance charges today are excessive.
We should not have to be involved with "bull rings," mileages and "specials". As I am no longer associated with industry, I do not put myself in the same category as, for example, salesmen working for Crosse and Blackwell or Mars. The most important thing that salesmen do every day is to work out their mileage and car allowances to submit to the sales manager. That is not the way in which I want to do my job as a Member of Parliament.
I cannot believe that it is seriously intended that when I leave my garage at my home in my constituency and drive the 11 miles to my constituency office I must on each occasion write it down, and then say whether I returned home immediately or called in at the Conservative club for a drink on the way back. Who knows whether that is parliamentary business? I might have been meeting some people on quite important business [Interruption.] Always drink and drive within the limit. [Interruption.] If I were drinking and needed to be driven, as I did last night—[Interruption.] Who pays the car allowance for the person who kindly gives one a lift in that context? Does one have to ask that person to lift up the bonnet of the car to find out the cubic capacity so that one can properly fill in the return and keep busy the bureaucrats who sit in the Fees Office working out exactly what hon. Members should or should not be putting in their mileage claims?
There is nothing in the provisions for car mileage allowance that should commend itself to any thinking Member of this House. Those who go into the Lobby to support the motion will not have thought about it; they will merely have gone into the Lobby because that is part and parcel of their job. Today we have a free vote—or so I am told. Let us see some hon. Members exercising their freedom of mind when going into the Lobbies.
I find myself in a very difficult position. I cannot support the amendment tabled by the Liberal party, because I do not think it is the right amendment. We should be opposing all the proposals and telling the Government not to put such proposals before the House. This is not what we want. We want to be treated as honourable Members of Parliament. We want to be given a mileage allowance with the least possible amount of bureaucracy when we submit our claims. We do not want to have to sit down with our diaries, stopwatches and log recorders, and then have to worry about which car had been used and on what day.
Mr. Christopher Hawkins: My hon. Friend argues that we shall have to sit down with our diaries and various other aids to work out our expenses under the proposed system. How does he work out his mileage without consulting his diary? Members have to work out roughly how many miles they travel in their constituencies. I set my trip meter and record the mileage in that way.
Mr. Holt: I am sorry that my hon. Friend does not appear to understand what is involved in the proposals. At present we have a form dealing with what might be called rough mileage. When we first come to this House, we go to the Fees Office and fill in a form to determine our exact mileage, so that in future we have only to say that we have

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made a journey from here to our home or to our constituency. It is the mileage within the constituency that is a matter of dispute or debate.
What will happen on the day when my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Mr. Hawkins) forgets to set his trip meter? I am sure that he will guess the mileage, just as any other hon. Member would. His intervention underlines the fallacy of the proposals.
I hope that hon. Members will not support the motion dealing with the office, secretarial and research allowance. I hope that hon. Members will support the amendment, because at least it goes in the right direction, although not as far as I should like it to go.
I hope that hon. Members will not accept the proposals concerning car mileage allowance, because they are monstrous.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): Order. I remind the House that the debate must finish at 12.38 pm
11.56 am
Mr. Alan Williams: I hope that the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) pays greater attention to detail in assessing his drinking limit when driving than he seems to have done in assessing the cubic capacity of his car. I would hate to find that he faces the same disappointment on the former as I know he will face on the latter when he looks at his log book.
I should like first to make a few comments on the motion concerning the Lord Chancellor's salary. I find it somewhat peculiar that the Leader of the House should be defending the preservation of those very traditional differentials that he, among others, berates trade unionists throughout the country for trying to preserve and observe. The Opposition will not oppose the motion. I only wish that the extra income to be paid to the Lord Chancellor could in some way be reflected by higher efficiency within his Department.
Not many people in this House realise the size of the Lord Chancellor's Department. The legal side of Civil Service activities absorbs twice as many civil servants as the old Department of Industry used to absorb—16,000 as compared with 8,000. If the Lord Chancellor's increase were reflected in efficiency, one would expect that perhaps the reply to the Commission on Legal Services would have emerged from that Department sooner than the four years that it took for the Government to respond to only half of the propositions that were within the commission's report.
We are being asked to vote extra money to a Minister who is not answerable to this House of Commons and is only vicariously answerable to it. The Attorney-General answers questions at the Dispatch Box allegedly on behalf of the Lord Chancellor, although the Attorney-General is not even in the same Department. Often he has to answer questions from hon. Members by saying that he will draw their comments to the attention of his noble and learned Friend.
If we are voting extra money for the Lord Chancellor, we should also try to ensure that there is a greater degree of parliamentary scrutiny. That could be done by the establishment of a Select Committee. That was at one time proposed but the proposition was carefully killed off. It is
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about time—I say this as a non-lawyer and I am sure that it is sacrilegious to lawyers in all parts of the House—that we reviewed the organisation within Parliament for dealing with our control and scrutiny of a critically important sector. I suspect that we have inherited a system that no longer matches the needs of this House in terms of parliamentary accountability.
I congratulate the Leader of the House on enabling us to have a debate on the office, secretarial and research allowance and the car mileage allowance at this time, when a considerable number of hon. Members have been able to take part. We have a tendency to want to discuss such matters sub rosa, and I can understand that. We know how embarrassing it is to have to come to this House continually to moan about our pay and about the expenses available for our secretaries and so on. At some stage, Government—of whichever party—will have to find a system that avoids the ritualistic nonsense that we find so embarrassing and leads to public misunderstanding. Sometimes that misunderstanding is fuelled by broadcasts made by hon. Members who seem to pursue publicity in these matters rather than being concerned with the accuracy of what they say.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), when I first came to the House my total territorial claim on its space was one of the little cupboards in the Corridor between the Members' Lobby and the Library of the House of Commons. My first desk was obtained by my having to squat on one of the tables in the Corridor above the Aye Lobby. Eventually, by established pattern, I was then able to persuade the Serjeant-at-Arms that, since I was there continually with my papers, I should be provided with a filing cabinet so that the cleaners could do their work properly. We have faced such nonsense as we have gradually evolved a more appropriate range of expenses and services for hon. Members.
The hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) referred to the Companies Acts. The hon. Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Bruinvels) says that we are lucky to be here, and that it is an honour. Of course that is true, but it does not justify ignoring for ourselves and those who work for us the factory and office laws that we have passed for the rest of the community. No one is disputing our unique privilege to be here, however transient our stay. I say that as one who has always been in a marginal seat. However, we should not allow that to deflect our attention from the fact that while we are here we should try to do our job as effectively as possible and demand the services and facilities that enable us to do so on behalf of our constituents.
I support the move to link the rate of change of pay of our secretaries to the Civil Service, although I am not sure whether we are doing them a kindness. If they had had that linkage, our secretaries would have been worse off because in the past four years the Civil Service has seen its income rise by 20 per cent. less than the rise in the cost of living, whereas in general our secretaries have managed to keep in line with the rise in the the cost of living.
I support the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs). I congratulate him, my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith and Conservative Members who spoke in support of it. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea said—I am sure that he said it jocularly—that he suspected that there was collusion between the Front Benches to deprive the

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Back Benches of information and to ensure that Back Bench Members were so busy looking for information that they had no time to be mutinous towards the Front Benches. All that I can say is that if there has been such collusion and if that were the objective, it seems to have signally failed on both sides of the House.
As my hon. Friend rightly said, we as a Parliament work longer hours and have a longer parliamentary year than any other Parliament in the Western world. Our case load would not be accepted in many other Parliaments. The requirement of a researcher in addition to a secretary that my hon. Friend specified is not a particularly immodest request. I should have thought that it was almost a basic requirement. I urge hon. Members on both sides of the House to support the amendment not because it is necessarily the right figure, as my hon. Friend said, but because it shows that we as Members are determined to do properly the job for which we were elected and want the resources and facilities to enable us to do so.
If new Members do not stand up now and protest, they will become inured to the system and battle weary, like the Leader of the House and myself. After 20 years' struggling one eventually thinks that this is the norm and the way that things should be done. If one is not careful, one becomes romantically attached to surviving in deprivation when trying to do the work for which one is elected. We are asking not for pay for ourselves but for resources to do the job that we are here to do. It is encouraging to see so many new Members in the Chamber. I hope that while they still remember what civilised conditions in industry and commerce are like, they will strike a blow for not just this generation but future generations of hon. Members.
With regard to the car allowance, some hon. Members have said that the 39p a mile upper limit is high. When I look at the congestion in the Car Park, I think that it might be a better idea to have an extra category of offering hon. Members 50p a mile not to bring their cars here. I should like to canter a hobby horse of mine. Hon. Members should be warned that their passes are not an absolute privilege. Some hon. Members show scant regard for their colleagues by parking their cars so that they prevent others from moving theirs. They also give their passes to their secretaries, so that our floors become blocked up with their cars.
I understand, as the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) said, that there is a dispute about whether we should have a single or a split rate. This is a personal view. It makes sense to try to relate the expenses paid to the cost that we incur. If we look at what is implicit in the scales, we see that the RAC is saying that it costs between 18p and 39p a mile to run a car. If there is such a range, it is unjustified to overpay some hon. Members by about 7p a mile, if we take the middle rate as the standard rate, while underpaying other hon. Members by 14p a mile. That does not make sense if we are trying to establish a logical basis for our costs and expenses.
There must be bands as the scheme has to be administratively workable, as the Leader of the House rightly said. The Fees Office has had to be closely consulted because eventually it will have to administer the system. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) seemed to fall into a logical trap. He felt that there was a temptation to hon. Members to move up market because there were three bands for cars, and his solution was to have four bands. All that does is put more people at the margin of a band. Many more people would find it
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to their advantage to change their car and shift from one band to another. I appreciate the point that the hon. Gentleman was trying to make, but his solution does not meet in any way the requirements that he is setting.
Mr. Beith: My preferred solution is not to proceed with the scheme at all, but, if we do, it would be unjust if it were not banded in something like the way that I suggest.
Mr. Williams: I do not see that the unjustice arises, but that is a personal view. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will take the opportunity to express his concern on the matter in the Lobby.
The ceiling of 20,000 miles in respect of the allowance seems perfectly rational. The figures of 18p, 25·9p and 39p contain an element for depreciation. One reaches a stage where the mileage that one is doing more than covers the depreciation. We as Members of Parliament tend to drive abnormal mileages:in a year, so the RAC's assessment on a 10,000 mile basis would not be relevant to us because I doubt whether many hon. Members do as small a mileage as that.
Like the hon. Member for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer), I have a constituency that is 200 miles away so that means that one often does a round trip of 400 miles in a single day. I do not go along with the argument that we should all be forced into using small cars. If we have to provide a bus service for ferrying our familes up and down the motorway, together with their luggage and the kitchen sink, it is for us to determine what car is appropriate for our work.
Mr. Bermingham: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the fatigue and safety factor should also be taken into account in deciding on the type of car needed for long-distance driving? Is he aware that research shows that the use of a larger capacity engine cuts fatigue and enhances safety in long-distance driving?
Mr. Williams: That is absolutely true. That is the ergonomics of car design. Larger cars are designed for long-distance travel. By driving to Swansea and back, I put in a full day's driving work in addition to my normal day's work. Other hon. Members have to drive even greater distances. If we undertake distances that lorry drivers must, not exceed and then begin a day's work on top of that, it is scarcely self-indulgent to wish to travel in comfort and safety.
My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Dr. McDonald) asked me to draw attention to the amendment in her name, which has not been moved but about which she has written to the Leader of the House. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will comment on that, as some hon Members recently made car purchase decisions before they became aware of the proposed changes in allowances.
In conclusion, there has been virtually unanimous support for the Opposition amendment to increase the secretarial allowance. I hope that we shall take that unanimity to its logical conclusion and walk together into the same Lobby on this non-party, House of Commons matter.
12.11 pm
Mr. Peter Bruinvels: I find myself in some difficulty on this matter. One does not have to be old to be a rebel. It is just as easy when one is young. It is regrettable that every year we have to discuss whether

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sufficient finance is available. I should much prefer a linkage arrangement which could then be dealt with year by year along the lines of the Civil Service system.
I represent a marginal constituency, and I must confess that I find it difficult to cope within the £12,000 allowed for secretarial and research assistance. For some reason, I seem to attract 60 to 80 letters per day, so I need a full-time secretary. I appreciate that some hon. Members share secretaries because they cannot cope on the present allowance. That is very worrying. I should also like secretarial help in my constituency. I have an office there, but I do not have a secretary. I try to run things from here, but that is not satisfactory. The little help that I have in my constituency has to be paid for out of my salary. In passing, it should be made absolutely clear that the £12,000 is not an addition whacked on to our salaries. It has nothing to do with our salaries.
There is thus some attraction for me in the Opposition amendment to increase the secretarial and research allowance to £17,000. The danger about that is that if all that extra research assistance became available the Table Office would be inundated with additional written and oral questions, which is not the result that we seek. Many of us receive offers of research assistance from people at the universities, but the people whom one can really trust are surely those who work in the Library, which provides an excellent research service.
I am most concerned about how we should proceed and how to make ends meet. I understand that this is to be a free vote, but I noticed a fair proportion of the payroll vote outside the Chamber, so one may assume that the Government resolution will be passed and that at least an extra £437 will be available. Nevertheless, I hope that further improvements can be made. I do not think that every hon. Member should be entitled to an allowance of £17,000. It should be subject to full justification. Moreover, I believe that a certain sum should be set aside exclusively for secretarial help and another sum for research. Having been associated with research work in the House 10 years ago, I can confirm that there have been great improvements in research facilities, access to the Library, and so on. I recall that the payment in those days was scarcely rewarding, but that is no criticism of the Members concerned. The money was simply not available. The Opposition frequently accuse Conservative Members of having two jobs, but one can understand the reason, given the inadequacy of the current secretarial and research allowance.
There are major difficulties about the mileage allowance. As I have said many times, the House is the guardian of the public purse and we must not be seen to be taking advantage of a system from which people outside cannot benefit. I appreciate the intention behind the bandings proposed by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, but I am not convinced that the aim will be achieved. The allowance will cover wear and tear on the particular type of car. I believe that this will encourage hon. Members to go for gas-guzzlers—to buy up rather than to buy down. As the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) said, one needs a reliable vehicle for long journeys on motorways. Nevertheless, we should not encourage hon. Members to purchase larger cars. We should encourage the use of the middle-of-the-road type of car. [Interruption.] Hon. Members may laugh, but it is
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clear from the debate that many of them have to look at the back of their cars to discover the engine capacity. That being so, we might do better to retain the present system and have an allowance of 25·9p per mile irrespective of capacity. The mileage, of course, must always be justified, but a standard rate seems the simplest proposition.
If we adopted a linked system, we should avoid the need to come back each year, cap in hand, to see if we can do a little better. Certainly, I do not think that debates of this kind improve our standing outside. The right hon. Member for Swansea, West referred to my comment that it is an honour to be a Member of this House. I genuinely mean that. Reference has been made to hon. Members lacking proper facilities and being given just a little locker. I have such a locker. [Interruption.] I hear someone commenting that I could probably get inside it. Fortunately, however, I also have a desk. We must accept the facilities available and make the best possible use of them. We also need the best possible secretarial and research assistance.
I urge my right hon. Friend, however, to reconsider the mileage allowance. I do not believe that the Liberal spokesman, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), has found the right solution. I understand, too, that the Inland Revenue is waiting in the wings to jump on us if we continue with a standard rate of 25.9p per mile, but I still think that that is the best system. I repeat that it is an honour and a privilege to be here. We need a larger secretarial allowance, but we should retain the present mileage allowance system.
12.20 pm
Mr. Peter Pike: I support the amendment on the secretarial allowance. This is not additional money for Members of Parliament themselves; it is additional money to enable us to do our job properly. Many Members of Parliament feel frustrated because they cannot adequately deal with the problems of their constituencies. They do not have sufficient financial resources to do so.
It should be up to us to determine how the £12,000—or £17,000, as I hope it will be—should be used. The Member should decide whether he needs a secretary in his constituency, a secretary in the House, a research assistant, and so on. I also recognise the fact that the questions of advertising, advice bureaux and what equipment is needed will vary from Member to Member. In my view, however, £12,000, even with the marginal increase proposed by the Leader of the House, is insufficient to allow an hon. Member to do the job properly, as we all wish to do. The package of deals brought in last year did not deal with the problem properly. Unfortunately, a proposal which would have provided more money was not accepted. I hope that we will make amends today.
Hon. Members should be able to offer their staff reasonable pay and conditions. Twelve thousands pounds is not adequate to employ a full-time secretary and a part-time assistant at London rates, when one bears in mind national insurance contributions and other additional expenses. I believe that if an hon. Member is to do his job properly, a full-time secretary and half a research assistant are the minimum that he needs. Even with £17,000, we would not be over-resourced or over-provided. That would be the minimum.

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I have no objection to the proposal that the allowance should be indexed in some way so that in future years we would not need to debate these difficult issues here. Members' pay could be treated in the same way. However, we must be sure that the base is correct before we devise a formula to take account of the need for uprating each year.
The amendment would be a step in the right direction. I intend to be a full-time Member of Parliament. I have no other sources of income. I depend on my allowances to enable me to do my job. At present, I cannot do the job as adequately as I would wish, because I do not have the means to employ a research assistant.
The question of mileage allowance is very complex. Before I heard the debate I was prepared to support the Liberal amendment. That seemed to be a reasonable compromise. Having listened to the debate, I feel inclined to vote against all the proposals before us, because I do not believe that we have found the solution. If the motion and the amendment are defeated today, I hope that the Leader of the House will think again and bring forward a better system.
Mr. Beith: In case the hon. Gentleman does not succeed in finding enough hon. Members to join him to defeat both proposals, should he not take the precaution of voting for the Liberal amendment?
Mr. Pike: I shall bear that suggestion in mind.
It is difficult to find the right formula. I recognise that the situation varies considerably between constituencies, and that the question of the distance between the constituency and London is very important. Hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies are in a far worse position than I am, with my constituency in north-east Lancashire, but London Members are in a different situation again.
Last week I looked at a map of the constituencies when I was considering the mileage limits. I had thought that my constituency was a reasonable size, but some of the constituencies in the south-west and in Scotland and Wales are considerably larger.
When thinking about the distances which hon. Members may have to travel to do their constituency business, I became somewhat concerned that the upper limit of mileage for the higher rate of allowance might be totally wrong in some circumstances.
I am dubious about the higher mileage allowance for cars of over 2300 cc. We are told that matters will balance out and that in theory a Member with a large car will not be in a better financial position than the Member with a car in the middle range. That may be so, but I know that with the higher allowance I could afford to run a car of over 2300 cc. Without that allowance, I could not afford to do so. There is an encouragement for Members, therefore, to upgrade their cars and buy a petrol-guzzler. In a time of energy conservation, it is not sensible to give Members that encouragement. We must think about that more carefully.
I would find it attractive to run a larger car than I need. My car is a 1600 cc Cortina Crusader estate. I can travel down the motorway in comfort, cruising comfortably at around the speed limit. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I chose my words with care. There is no need for me to run a larger car. I hope that the Leader of the House will think again and bring forward a more sensible proposal.
12.27 pm
Mr. Biffen: First, may I say to the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) how much I appreciated the fact that he ensured that the debate did not pass without reference to the resolution concerning the Lord Chancellor. I shall ensure that my noble Friend knows that he has the benediction of the House. I fear that he may not be too excited at the idea of a departmental Select Committee for his office, but I am pleased that the House should have seen the force of the argument in respect of that resolution.
I turn to the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Dubs). In my household, the secretarial allowance is a matter of more than domestic concern. I came here today feeling sympathetic but, alas, no more than that.
The hon. Gentleman and many of my colleagues have essayed a very interesting argument. A case can certainly be mounted for more facilities for hon. Members, although many people will doubt whether the provision of more facilities has a very direct impact upon our effectiveness. The matter has been debated over many years. However, the debate has now widened to include a new idea—that of improved facilities for the Member in his constituency. It might be asked why there should be a London rate for an element of a pay package which relates to help in the constituencies. I make that point only to demonstrate that we are facing a complex series of arguments which will be fiercely contested, and which cannot be resolved this morning. Although—
Mr. Tony Banks: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Biffen: I have less than 10 minutes. The hon. Gentleman is a great addition to the House—I hope that that will help him.
What is being proposed is an increase in allowances of about 40 per cent. That is a rather formidable proposition for a Friday morning. We take comfort from the fact that the Government have said that they accept the Top Salaries Review Body proposal that, every four years, there should be a fundamental review of our allowance structure. Th. s morning we should console ourselves with the modest but nonetheless tangible advantages that the Government's motion offers.
Motor mileage has attracted the most protracted controversy. I understand that the hon. Member for Thurrock (Dr. McDonald) could not be here to move her amendment and I appreciate the chivalry of the right hon. Member for Swansea, West in standing in. The amendment would pay the present rate, which is higher than the proposed rate, for cars under 1·3 litres, to any person who had purchased that car before 20 July. I should be an immediate beneficiary as I do most of my constituency work in a Mini. Hon. Members have exchanged their motoring experiences this morning and I thought that I had better get mine out of the way, especially as they are so unprepossessing as compared with the experiences and styles of others—not least my hon. Friend the Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt). I do not believe that that rabbit will run as it would confer an extraordinary advantage quite fortuitously according to the date of purchase and would establish a principle and precedent that would be an endless fascination to all of those who watch how we handle our affairs, not least in respect of ourselves.

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The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) moved the amendment that provided the core of the debate. His amendment would divide into two the middle rate of the allowance proposed by the Government. One would apply to cars between 1,301 cc and 1,600 cc and another for cars between 1,601 cc and 2,300 cc. I understand the consideration that prompted him to take that view and have given it careful consideration but, on balance, I have concluded that the Government cannot accept it for two reasons. First, there is a balance to be struck between the improved accuracy of a greater number of tiers and the administrative complexity of the new scheme. The complexity would be increased if the hon. Gentleman's amendment were adopted.
Secondly, and more significantly, the amendment proposes that while the rate payable to Members who drive cars between 1,601 cc and 2,300 cc should increase, the rate for the 1,301 cc to 1,600 cc category should remain at 25·9p, as specified in the Government's proposal. That would introduce an inconsistency. The 25·9p was arrived at by applying the formula that was used by the inquiry team to engine sizes across the range from 1,301 cc to 2,300 cc and taking an average. If it is to apply only to cars between 1,301 cc and 1,600 cc it should, on the basis of that formula, be reduced to 22·9p. Failure to make that reduction would mean that Members who drive cars in that category would be reimbursed more than the cost and could therefore find themselves subject to demands for income tax on the profit element. I do not believe that that would be acceptable. That is not merely a pedantic point—it goes to the heart of our dilemma.
We are currently in line with a truncated Civil Service formula. The formula with which we were identified previously moved without difficulty. It then became a two-tier mileage formula and the automatic link was not proceeded with because the House reacted sharply against it. We have remained merely with the top figure of the Civil Service arrangements. There is a real likelihood that it would be considered taxable by the Inland Revenue in those circumstances. It is therefore essential for the House to have a system in which the cost of motoring is more or less matched by the allowance. That is why the variables of engine size and of mileage are central. The proposal is drawn from external evidence supplied by the Royal Automobile Club and is therefore entirely justifiable to the public.
We must always remember that we live in a goldfish bowl and that the arrangements that we strike in regard to our expenses will quite properly be monitored by a world outside. In that context, it is thought appropriate to have a 25,000-mile check. I have heard what the House has said and realise what deep feeling there is. As I am not in the least interested in driving bull-headed through these matters, I can give an undertaking. I should like to examine the matter again with colleagues in the light of what has been said so that we can ensure that administration of the scheme is sensible and does not bear the remotest relationship to the Star Chamber image that a few of my hon. Friends drew. I do not deny their enthusiasm. This place exists only on a sense of decent and honourable relationships. It is not intended that there should be such a scorching monitor. I take account of the strong feelings on the matter and shall examine it again.
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Over the years, we have had a multi-tier system of motor mileage and a single-rate system. I do not feel so confident that what is being advanced today will never be beyond question or recall, but the proposals before the House today are a practical attempt to resolve what could be a difficult problem for us. They have been constructed in the light of evidence that has been proffered by the Peyton report and in the light of where the effective monitoring and evidence falls with the RAC arrangements. On that basis, I think that we can be fair to ourselves and fair to the public.
Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The House divided: Ayes 52, Noes 95.

AYES

Alton, David

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

Holt, Richard

Beith, A. J.

Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)

Bermingham, Gerald

Hughes, Dr. Mark (Durham)

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Janner, Hon Greville

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

King, Roger (B'ham N'field)

Bruce, Malcolm

Knight, Gregory (Derby N)

Bruinvels, Peter

Lawler, Geoffrey

Cartwright, John

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Crowther, Stan

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Dalyell, Tam

McWilliam, John

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

Pavitt, Laurie

Deakins, Eric

Pike, Peter

Dicks, Terry

Shore, Rt Hon Peter

Dobson, Frank

Sims, Roger

Dover, Den

Snape, Peter

Dubs, Alfred

Soley, Clive

Evans, John (St. Helens N)

Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)

Forth, Eric

Straw, Jack

Foulkes, George

Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

Franks, Cecil

Tracey, Richard

Freud, Clement

Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

Gale, Roger

Williams, Rt Hon A.

Galley, Roy

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

Tellers for the Ayes:

Hayes, J.

Mr. Tony Banks and Mr. Chris Smith.

Hind, Kenneth

NOES

Ancram, Michael

Howard, Michael

Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

Kershaw, Sir Anthony

Berry, Sir Anthony

Lang, Ian

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Bottomley, Peter

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Lilley, Peter

Boyson, Dr Rhodes

Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

Macfarlane, Neil

Brooke, Hon Peter

MacGregor, John

Bryan, Sir Paul

MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

Butler, Hon Adam

Marland, Paul

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Mates, Michael

Cash, William

Mather, Carol

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Colvin, Michael

Miller, Hal(B'grove)

Cope, John

Mills, Iain (Meriden)

Couchman, James

Mitchell, David (NW Hants)

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

Moore, John

Durant, Tony

Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

Eggar, Tim

Needham, Richard

Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

Nelson, Anthony

Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

Neubert, Michael

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Newton, Tony

Goodlad, Alastair

Nicholls, Patrick

Gow, Ian

Normanton, Tom

Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

Page, Richard (Herts SW)

Hayhoe, Barney

Patten, Christopher (Bath)

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Patten, John (Oxford)

663

Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

Pollock, Alexander

Stradling Thomas, J.

Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Rhodes James, Robert

Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

Thornton, Malcolm

Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Rumbold, Mrs Angela

Trippier, David

Ryder, Richard

Viggers, Peter

Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

Waddington, David

Scott, Nicholas

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Waller, Gary

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Watts, John

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Wheeler, John

Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)

Whitney, Raymond

Squire, Robin

Wolfson, Mark

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Mr. Douglas Hogg and Mr. John Major.

Tellers for the Noes:

That, in the opinion of this House, the limit on the allowance payable to a Member of this House in respect of the aggregate expenses incurred by him for his Parliamentary duties as general office expenses, on secretarial assistance and on research assistance should be determined as follows—

5

(a) for the year ending with 31st March 1985, the limit should be the amount obtained by increasing £12,000 by four-fifths of the relevant percentage,

10

(b) for any subsequent year the limit should be the amount obtained by increasing the limit applicable to the immediately preceding year by the relevant percentage (so that, if the relevant percentage for any year is nil, the limit remains the same for that year), and for the purposes of this paragraph the limit applicable to the year ending with 31st March 1985 shall be taken to be what it would have been if in paragraph (a) above the words 'four-fifths of had been omitted.

In this Resolution 'year' means a year ending with 31st March, and for the purposes of this Resolution—

15

(i) the relevant percentage for any year is the percentage by which the amount of salary (exclusive of allowances and overtime) payable for that year to a person in the Home Civil Service at the maximum point on the scale for Senior Personal Secretaries and in receipt of inner London weighting exceeds the corresponding amount for the immediately preceding year;

20

(ii) any fraction of a pound in the amount obtained under paragraph (a) or (b) above for any year shall be treated as whole pound if it is not less than 50 pence, but shall otherwise be disregarded.

Mr. Speaker: We now move to motion No. 2, which is to be moved formally.

5

That, in the opinion of this House, the following provision should be made with respect to the rates of the car mileage allowance payable to Members travelling on Parliamentary duties and the rates applicable to the car mileage allowances payable in respect of journeys by the spouse of a Member and journeys by persons in respect of whom the secretarial and research allowance of a Member is payable—

(1) The allowance payable in respect of a journey commenced in the period beginning with 1st October 1984 and ending with 31st March 1985 shall be payable—

10

(a) subject to the limit specified in paragraph (3) below, at the rate per mile shown in column 2 of the following Table in relation to the engine capacity of the vehicle used for the journey; and

(b) in respect of miles in excess of that limit, at the rate per mile shown in column 3 of that Table in relation to that engine capacity.

TABLE

Engine capacity

Mileage up to Limit

Further mileage

15

1300cc or less

18p

11·3p

More than 1300cc and not more than 2300cc

25·9p

14·7p

More than 2300cc

39p

19·5p

20

(2) Paragraph (1) above shall have effect in relation to journeys commenced in the year beginning with 1st April 1985 and each subsequent year with the substitution, for the rates shown in the Table, of rates calculated, on the principles exemplified in Appendix I to the Report of the Independent Inquiry, from the figures in the edition of the Royal Automobile Club's Schedule of Estimated Vehicle Running Costs published in or about the April of the year in question.

25

(3) For the purpose of this Resolution the limit on the number of miles in respect of which car mileage allowance may be paid at the rate specified in column 2 of the

Question accordingly negatived.
It being more than three hours after the first motion had been entered upon MR. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the order [18 July] to put the Questions necessary to dispose of the motion and the motions relating to car mileage allowance and Parliament.
Main Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
Motion made, and Question proposed,

Table shall be 10,000 miles for the period beginning with 1st October 1984 and ending with 31st March 1985 and 20,000 miles for the year beginning with 1st April 1985 and for each subsequent year.

30

(4) Arrangements shall be made for ensuring that claims made for car mileage allowance in respect of miles travelled in excess of 25,000 miles in any year are supported by particulars of the journeys to which the claims relate.

(5) In this Resolution—

35

'the Report of the Independent Inquiry' means the Report of the Independent Inquiry into Motor Mileage Allowance for Members of Parliament to the Leader of the House of Commons (House of Commons Paper No. 469 of Session 1983–84);

'year' means a year beginning with 1st April.—[Mr. Biffen.]

Mr. Clement Freud: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: I would rather put the Question first. Does the hon. Member wish to move the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Dr. McDonald)?
Mr. Freud: No, Sir. On a direct point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will know that when the House considered the Lloyd's Bill, members of Lloyd's were persuaded not to vote on it.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall deal with that matter later. Is it directly involved with this motion?
Mr. Freud: It is directly involved. In the case of the mileage allowance, will you rule whether Ministers who are supplied with cars and have no direct interest in the mileage allowance be instructed whether they are allowed—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I can put the hon. Member right on that. This is a matter of public policy and Ministers have every right to vote
I understand that the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Thurrock is not to be moved. I call the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) to move his amendment.
Amendment (a) proposed to the Question, to leave out lines 16 and 17 and insert—

'More than 1300 cc and not more than 1600 cc

25·9p

14·7p

More than 1600 cc and not more than 2300 cc

29p

14·7p'

Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The House divided: Ayes 15, Noes 95.

Division No. 420]

[12.49 pm

AYES

Alton, David

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Beith, A. J.

Sims, Roger

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Straw, Jack

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

Bruce, Malcolm

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Crowther, Stan

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Tellers for the Ayes:

Hayes, J.

Mr. John Cartwright and Mr. Clement Freud.

Hind, Kenneth

Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)

NOES

Ancram, Michael

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

Boyson, Dr Rhodes

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)

Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

Brooke, Hon Peter

Berry, Sir Anthony

Bryan, Sir Paul

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Butler, Hon Adam

Bottomley, Peter

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

666

Cash, William

Nelson, Anthony

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Neubert, Michael

Colvin, Michael

Newton, Tony

Cope, John

Nicholls, Patrick

Couchman, James

Normanton, Tom

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

Dover, Den

Page, Richard (Herts SW)

Durant, Tony

Patten, Christopher (Bath)

Eggar, Tim

Patten, John (Oxford)

Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

Pollock, Alexander

Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Rhodes James, Robert

Goodlad, Alastair

Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

Gow, Ian

Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

Greenway, Harry

Rumbold, Mrs Angela

Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

Ryder, Richard

Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

Hayhoe, Barney

Scott, Nicholas

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Howard, Michael

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)

Lang, Ian

Squire, Robin

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Stradling Thomas, J.

Lilley, Peter

Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

Thornton, Malcolm

Macfarlane, Neil

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

MacGregor, John

Trippier, David

MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

Viggers, Peter

McWilliam, John

Waddington, David

Marland, Paul

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Mates, Michael

Waller, Gary

Mather, Carol

Watts, John

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Wheeler, John

Mellor, David

Whitney, Raymond

Miller, Hal (B'grove)

Wolfson, Mark

Mills, Iain (Meriden)

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Mitchell, David (NW Hants)

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Tellers for the Noes:

Moore, John

Mr. John Major and Mr. Douglas Hogg.

Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

Needham, Richard

Question accordingly negatived.
Main Question put:—
The House divided: Ayes 100, Noes 30.

Division No. 421]

[12.59 pm

AYES

Ancram, Michael

Cash, William

Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)

Colvin, Michael

Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

Cope, John

Bermingham, Gerald

Couchman, James

Berry, Sir Anthony

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Durant, Tony

Bottomley, Peter

Eggar, Tim

Boyson, Dr Rhodes

Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

Foulkes, George

Brooke, Hon Peter

Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

Bryan, Sir Paul

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Butler, Hon Adam

Goodlad, Alastair

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Gow, Ian

667

Greenway, Harry

Newton, Tony

Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

Nicholls, Patrick

Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

Normanton, Tom

Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

Hayhoe, Barney

Page, Richard (Herts SW)

Howard, Michael

Patten, Christopher (Bath)

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Patten, John (Oxford)

Janner, Hon Greville

Pavitt, Laurie

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Pollock, Alexander

Lang, Ian

Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Rhodes James, Robert

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

Lilley, Peter

Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

Rumbold, Mrs Angela

Macfarlane, Neil

Ryder, Richard

MacGregor, John

Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

Scott, Nicholas

McWilliam, John

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Marland, Paul

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Mates, Michael

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Mather, Carol

Snape, Peter

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)

Mellor, David

Squire, Robin

Miller, Hal (B'grove)

Stevens, Martin (Fulham)

Mills, lain (Meriden)

Stradling Thomas, J.

Mitchell, David (NW Hants)

Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Thornton, Malcolm

Moore, John

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

Trippier, David

Needham, Richard

Viggers, Peter

Nelson, Anthony

Waddington, David

Neubert, Michael

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

That, in the opinion of this House, the following provision should be made with respect to the rates of the car mileage allowance payable to Members travelling on Parliamentary duties and the rates applicable to the car mileage allowances payable in respect of journeys by the spouse of a Member and journeys by persons in respect of whom the secretarial and research allowance of a Member is payable—

(1) The allowance payable in respect of a journey commenced in the period beginning with 1st October 1984 and ending with 31st March 1985 shall be payable—

(a) subject to the limit specified in paragraph (3) below, at the rate per mile shown in column 2 of the following Table in relation to the engine capacity of the vehicle used for the journey; and

(b) in respect of miles in excess of that limit, at the rate per mile shown in column 3 of that Table in relation to that engine capacity.

TABLE

Engine capacity

Mileage up to Limit

Further mileage

1300cc or less

18p

11·3p

More than 1300cc and not more than 2300cc

25·9p

14·7p

More than 2300cc

39p

19·5p

(2) Paragraph (1) above shall have effect in relation to journeys commenced in the year beginning with 1st April 1985 and each subsequent year with the substitution, for the rates shown in the Table, of rates calculated, on the principles exemplified in Appendix I to the Report of the Independent Inquiry, from the figures in the edition of the Royal Automobile Club's Schedule of Estimated Vehicle Running Costs published in or about the April of the year in question.

(3) For the purposes of this Resolution the limit on the number of miles in respect of which car mileage allowance may be paid at the rate specified in column 2 of the Table shall be 10,000 miles for the period beginning with 1st October 1984 and ending with 31st March 1985 and 20,000 miles for the year beginning with 1st April 1985 and for each subsequent year.

(4) Arrangements shall be made for ensuring that claims made for car mileage allowance in respect of miles travelled in excess of 25,000 miles in any year are supported by particulars of the journeys to which the claims relate.

(5)In this Resolution—

'the Report of the Independent Inquiry' means the Report of the Independent Inquiry into Motor Mileage Allowance for Members of Parliament to the Leader of the House of Commons (House of Commons Paper No. 469 of Session 1983–84);

`year' means a year beginning with 1st April.

Question accordingly agreed to.
Resolved,
Motion made, and Question put,
That the draft Lord Chancellor's Salary Order 1984, which was laid before this House on 12th July, be approved.—[Mr. Biffen.]
The House proceeded to a Division:—
Mr. Simon Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It seems that the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) is to be a Teller in a Division on a motion which is exclusively concerned with the salary of his father. That seems inappropriate, to say the least. I could say more. Is it possible for you, Mr. Speaker, to permit that situation to be changed before we vote?
Mr. Speaker: That matter was raised by another hon. The motion relates to a matter of public policy and it is perfectly in order for any Member to cast his vote.
The House having divided: Ayes 108, Noes 14.

Division No. 421]

[12.59 pm

AYES

Ancram, Michael

Cash, William

Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)

Colvin, Michael

Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

Cope, John

Bermingham, Gerald

Couchman, James

Berry, Sir Anthony

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Durant, Tony

Bottomley, Peter

Eggar, Tim

Boyson, Dr Rhodes

Forsythe, Clifford (S Antrim)

Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

Foulkes, George

Brooke, Hon Peter

Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

Bryan, Sir Paul

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Butler, Hon Adam

Goodlad, Alastair

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Gow, Ian

667

Greenway, Harry

Newton, Tony

Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

Nicholls, Patrick

Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

Normanton, Tom

Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

Hayhoe, Barney

Page, Richard (Herts SW)

Howard, Michael

Patten, Christopher (Bath)

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Patten, John (Oxford)

Janner, Hon Greville

Pavitt, Laurie

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Pollock, Alexander

Lang, Ian

Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Rhodes James, Robert

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

Lilley, Peter

Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

Rumbold, Mrs Angela

Macfarlane, Neil

Ryder, Richard

MacGregor, John

Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

Scott, Nicholas

McWilliam, John

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Marland, Paul

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Mates, Michael

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Mather, Carol

Snape, Peter

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)

Mellor, David

Squire, Robin

Miller, Hal (B'grove)

Stevens, Martin (Fulham)

Mills, lain (Meriden)

Stradling Thomas, J.

Mitchell, David (NW Hants)

Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Thornton, Malcolm

Moore, John

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

Trippier, David

Needham, Richard

Viggers, Peter

Nelson, Anthony

Waddington, David

Neubert, Michael

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Waller, Gary

Wolfson, Mark

Watts, John

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

Wheeler, John

Tellers for the Ayes:

Whitney, Raymond

Mr. John Major and Mr. Douglas Hogg.

Williams, Rt Hon A.

NOES

Alton, David

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Marlow, Antony

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

Bruce, Malcolm

Pike, Peter

Bruinvels, Peter

Sims, Roger

Corbyn, Jeremy

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

Dalyell, Tarn

Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

Dicks, Terry

Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Straw, Jack

Forth, Eric

Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

Freud, Clement

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Hayes, J.

Holt, Richard

Tellers for the Noes:

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Mr. A. J. Beith and Mr. John Cartwright.

Knight, Gregory (Derby N)

Lawler. Geoffrey

Division No. 422]

[1.10 pm

AYES

Amess, David

Holt, Richard

Ancram, Michael

Howarth, Gerald (Cannock)

Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Vall'y)

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Baker, Nicholas (N Dorset)

King, Roger (B'ham N'field)

Berry, Sir Anthony

Knight, Gregory (Derby N)

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Lang, Ian

Bottomley, Peter

Lawler, Geoffrey

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Boyson, Dr Rhodes

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

Lilley, Peter

Brooke, Hon Peter

Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

Bruinvels, Peter

Macfarlane, Neil

Bryan, Sir Paul

MacGregor, John

Butler, Hon Adam

MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Marland, Paul

Cash, William

Mates, Michael

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

Mather, Carol

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Mawhinney, Dr Brian

Colvin, Michael

Miller, Hal (B'grove)

Cope, John

Mitchell, David (NW Hants)

Couchman, James

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Moore, John

Dicks, Terry

Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

Needham, Richard

Durant, Tony

Nelson, Anthony

Eggar, Tim

Neubert, Michael

Forth, Eric

Newton, Tony

Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

Nicholls, Patrick

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Normanton, Tom

Goodlad, Alastair

Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

Greenway, Harry

Page, Richard (Herts SW)

Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

Patten, Christopher (Bath)

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Patten, John (Oxford)

Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

Powley, John

Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

Hayes, J.

Rhodes James, Robert

Hayhoe, Barney

Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Rumbold, Mrs Angela

Hind, Kenneth

Ryder, Richard

670

Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Scott, Nicholas

Tracey, Richard

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Trippier, David

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Waddington, David

Sims, Roger

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Waller, Gary

Spicer, Jim (W Dorset)

Watts, John

Squire, Robin

Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

Wheeler, John

Stevens, Martin (Fulham)

Whitney, Raymond

Stradling Thomas, J.

Wolfson, Mark

Sumberg, David

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

Tellers for the Ayes:

Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

Mr. John Major and Mr. Douglas Hogg.

Thornton, Malcolm

NOES

Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Beith, A. J.

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

Bruce, Malcolm

Snape, Peter

Cartwright, John

Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)

Corbyn, Jeremy

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Dalyell, Tam

Foulkes, George

Tellers for the Noes:

Freud, Clement

Mr. Peter Pike and Mr. Tony Banks

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr. Simon Hughes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I just briefly pursue the matter that I raised during the Division? I cast no reflection on the hon. Member for Grantham, who plainly finds himself in a difficult position, as he is the duty Whip. I am sure that when the matter was arranged he did not know that he would be on duty. Hon. Members sometimes find themselves called to vote upon or adjudicate upon the vote—in this case it was someone in the Aye Lobby — on matters which affect them personally, which this clearly does, because under the laws of inheritance the hon. Member will benefit from his father's increased money. It is a matter that can arise in relation to a few Members of the House during this Parliament and I am sure that it arises in other Parliaments as well. There is some anxiety as to whether such Members should vote, and it would be helpful if your guidance could be given now or at a convenient time.
Mr. Speaker: I can give it to the hon. Member now, and I give it in the serious tone in which he raised the matter. On any matter of public policy it is perfectly in order for any hon. Member or Minister to cast his vote. On the previous matter when the hon. Member for Cambridgeshire, North-East (Mr. Freud) raised the subject of the car mileage allowance, I ruled that this was a matter of public policy. That is the answer to the hon. Member. He will find the reasons for it set out fully in "Erskine May".

Greenland (Withdrawal from EEC)
1.20 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Ray Whitney): I beg to move,
That this House, while stressing the importance of maintaining continued close links between Greenland and the Community, recognises that the proposed change in the status of Greenland has wide support; and takes note of European Community Document No. 5064/84 transmitting legal texts providing for a change of the legal status of Greenland and fishery arrangements with regard to Greenland.
In its fifteenth report the Select Committee on European Legislation recommended that the House should consider further the draft legal texts concerning the withdrawal of Greenland from full membership of the European Community and its addition to annex IV of the treaty of Rome, which lists the overseas countries and territories—OCTs—of member states. These texts were deposited with explanatory memorandum 5064 on 10 February 1984. The five draft texts, which are intended to be taken as one package, comprise: (i) the treaty removing Greenland from membership of the EEC and the European Coal and Steel Community and conferring OCT status on Greenland; (ii) the protocol to the treaty granting Greenland duty-free access to the Community market subject to a satisfactory arrangement on fish, and also making provision for any necessary transitional arrangements; (iii) a regulation providing for a framework fisheries agreement establishing the principles governing Community fishing in Greenland waters; (iv) a regulation providing for the introduction of a five year protocol laying down specific conditions for Community fishing in Greenland waters based on the principles set down in the preceding regulation; (v) a regulation laying down procedures under which the Community may act in the event of the overall agreement being disturbed.
Because of negotiating restraints at the time it was not possible to deposit the draft legal texts with the Select Committee sufficiently far ahead for a debate to be held before the texts were adopted by the Council. The Select Committee was most helpful over these difficulties and agreed that its recommendation for a debate need not delay adoption of the texts, which were subsequently adopted by the General Affairs Council in February and formally signed at the next General Affairs Council in March. Nevertheless, it is right and proper that the House should now have the opportunity to consider the wider implications of these arrangements and we are grateful to the Select Committee for its careful scrutiny on behalf of the House.
There are certain differences between the texts as deposited with the Select Committee and as finally adopted by the Council. In the first place, the Community agreed that the treaty amending Greenland's status should be extended to include Euratom as well as the EEC and ECSC.
Secondly, an additional article was added to the fisheries agreement text, which identifies the quotas set in the first implementing protocol and the way in which fish stocks develop, as constituting the reference base for fixing future possibilities.
Thirdly, in the protocol on Community fishing in Greenland waters, the Community eventually agreed to pay Greenland 26.5 million ECU—about £15 million—a
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year in order to maintain the existing Community quotas, an increase on the 18.5 million ECU proposed in the draft as submitted to the Select Committee. I shall have more to say about that later.
It may be helpful to the House if I describe briefly the background to Greenland's desire for a change of status. The population of Greenland is 45,000, of which over 80 per cent. are of Eskimo origin. Greenland has been a Danish colony since 1721, but became an integral part of the kingdom of Denmark only in 1953, with the right to elect two representatives to the Danish Parliament.
The desire of the Greenlanders for greater local autonomy goes back to 1972 when the Greenland Provincial Council first requested self government. At that same time, in the referendum in which Denmark voted to accept membership of the European Community, 70 per cent. of the Greenlanders voted against membership. But as a part of the kingdom of Denmark—unlike the Faroe Islands, which already had home rule and remained outside the Community—Greenland was obliged to join the Community with the rest of Denmark. Later, following a referendum in January 1979 among the Greenlanders in which 70 per cent. voted in favour, a substantial degree of home rule was devolved upon Greenland. Subsequently, in the elections for the Greenlandic Assembly in April 1979, a party opposed to Community membership won a majority and followed this up in June 1979 by winning the single Greenland seat in the European Parliament.
The Greenlanders have objections to the application to Greenland of the Community regime. Apart from their view that fisheries—which account for half their exports—should be under Greenland's control, opposition to Community membership was seen as a logical extension of Greenland's long campaign for home rule.
A second referendum on the membership issue was therefore held in February 1982, when the Greenlanders opted by a small majority — 52 per cent. — for withdrawal and asked to be granted associated status under the Community's OCT arrangements. Under the constitution there can be no withdrawal of Greenland without Danish approval, but the Danish Prime Minister had pledged to negotiate with the Community whatever new status the Greenlanders required. The Danish Government therefore submitted a memorandum to the Council in May 1982 designed to arrange that Greenland should cease to be within the geographical scope of the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community treaties and be added to the overseas countries and territories listed in annex IV to the EEC treaty.
In February 1983, in its opinion to the Council, the Commission confirmed that it favoured arrangements of the kind proposed by Denmark. But, as the treaties contained no provision for the withdrawal either of a member state or a part thereof, such as Greenland, the necessary arrangements had to be negotiated.
The subsequent negotiations continued for almost a year, focusing principally on working out acceptable arrangements for future fishing rights for the Community in Greenland waters.
In December 1983 the Council of Ministers agreed that the Council should work to a deadline which would enable Greenland to leave the Community on 1 January 1985, the date set by the Greenlanders for their change in status to take effect. The Commission therefore embarked on a

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series of bilateral discussions with member states in order to bring the negotiations to a conclusion. As a result of those efforts, the Commission was able to submit draft legal texts to the Council. It is those texts which were laid before the Select Committee. Following the inclusion of certain textual amendments, the most significant of which I have described, the texts were finally agreed at the February Foreign Affairs Council and formally adopted at the March Foreign Affairs Council.
The agreement on fisheries has several interlocking elements which balance the interests of Greenland and those of the Community. Greenland for its part will continue to benefit from duty-free access to the Community market for her fish and fishery products in return for her commitment to a 10-year fisheries agreement with the Community. This does not, however, mean that the Community's fishing rights in Greenland's waters will end at the beginning of 1995. Provision has been made within the framework of the agreement for renewal for successive six-year periods. This approach provides a solid basis upon which both Community and Greenland fishermen can plan for the future.
Mr. George Foulkes: The Under-Secretary of State has described how the agreement on fish is beneficial to the Greenlanders, on the one hand, and the Community as a whole, on the other. I think the hon. Gentleman will agree that the agreement is especially beneficial to German fishermen. How beneficial will it be to British fishermen? Will the hon. Gentleman admit that, in reality, it will be of no great benefit to them?
Mr. Whitney: The reality is that this is a fair agreement for British fishermen and fishermen from all member states of the Community. We believe that it is fair also for the Greenlanders. I shall return to that point in my concluding remarks. As I understand it, there will be no loss or damage to British fishing interests from this agreement, and our wider interests are likely to benefit.
It was considered that a longer period subject to a rigid structure would not allow for the inevitable changes which will occur as a result of biological and management induced variations in fish stocks and those changes in policy arising from economic and social factors within the fisheries sector and wider afield.
The protocol to the fisheries agreement sets the initial quotas for Community fishermen for the first five years. Taking into account catches by Greenland vessels, the basic quotas represent an overall level virtually equivalent to the quotas set by the Council of Fisheries Ministers for 1984 for all the major Greenland fish stocks. The Community is not being asked to alter its current fishing opportunities significantly. These quotas will be allocated between member states, including the United Kingdom, in accordance with the normal procedures and criteria, after deducting any allocations to Norwegian vessels. These last help to establish the balance between the reciprocal fishing possibilities of the Community and Norway which, as the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) knows, is an important element for our own industry
The agreement with Greenland also includes limited quantities for Faroese vessels under the Community's fisheries agreement with the Faroe Islands. All in all, the
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Community's fishing opportunities in west and east Greenland waters, including those quotas which may be allocated to Norwegian and Faroese vessels under the relevant reciprocal fisheries agreements, amount to some 100,000 tonnes of cod equivalent—mainly cod, redfish, Greenland halibut and shrimps.
These opportunities are balanced by the annual payment to Greenland from the Community budget of 26·5 million ECU—about £15 million—to which I referred earlier.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: My hon. Friend has used the word "balanced". What is the value of the fisheries in Greenland waters which will continue to be available to EEC countries? Does my hon. Friend agree that the figure last year was about 60 million ECU? That is not balanced, but is an amount well in excess of the payment received.
Mr. Whitney: We must see how this works in practice. I believe that the balance is struck by taking account not only of the fisheries but of the payment's relevance to the Community budget and the general relationship that Greenland will have with the Community. The Community's annual payment to Greenland during the first five years of the agreement, for which initial quotas have been set, will not vary unless fish stocks increase and the Community takes up any Greenland offer of additional quotas.
Built into the fisheries agreement are consultation procedures concerned with the functioning of the agreement. Should consultations fail to resolve any difficulties in the operation of the agreement, recourse may be made to the internal procedure provided for in the implementing regulations. This "safeguard clause" procedure allows for urgent action to be taken by the Commission in the first instance. Such action may take the form of adjustment or suspension of the trade arrangements for Greenland fish and fish products to protect Community markets from disruption. At the request of one or more member states the Commission's decision may be referred to the Council, which may amend or cancel the decision. This special procedure to safeguard the Community interest is similar to the arrangements that already apply to the bulk of imports into the Community from most third countries.
We naturally regret the Greenlanders' decision but we respect it. We believe that, taken together, the package negotiated between Greenland and the Community is a fair and balanced one, in which the interests of the Community and of the United Kingdom are adequately safeguarded.
1.35 pm
Mr. George Foulkes: Like the Minister, the Opposition welcome the opportunity to debate the withdrawal of Greenland from the European Community. We also welcome the suggestion of the Select Committee that the matter should be debated on the Floor of the House.
I am very pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) is present, because I know that he has taken an interest in the matter. I am also pleased to see the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) who, from his earlier intervention, would seem to be here to represent the interests of the Greenlanders. No doubt he will have the opportunity later of speaking for himself.

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On 1 January 1985, when all the Parliaments of the Community agree to the withdrawal of Greenland, the Community will lose half of its land area. On my way here this morning I was wondering what Oscar Wilde might have put into the mouth of Lady Bracknell about the way in which the Community had neglected its responsibilities by enabling half of the land area of the Community to be lost. Nevertheless, as the Minister said, there are in Greenland only 45,000 people—a very small percentage of the population of the Community. However, I would caution any hon. Member — I suspect that the hon. Member for Southend, East might be one of those needing such a caution — about using the withdrawal of Greenland from the European Community as any kind of precedent for the withdrawal of a member state.
Greenland is not a member state of the Community, but, as the Minister rightly said, is and will remain part of the kingdom of Denmark, which will continue to be a member state of the Community. Greenland, as an autonomous part of the kingdom—and one which, as the Minister said, achieved home rule in 1953, having been a colony since 1721 — would provide a rather awkward precedent if it does provide one, for the hon. Member for Southend, East and my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow if it were to be used. It would not be a precedent for the withdrawal of a whole member state, but it might be used as a precedent for the withdrawal of a small autonomous part of a state if that were granted, or sought and achieved, home rule during the course of the state's membership of the European Community.
As the Minister rightly said, it was a Left-wing home rule movement in Greenland which sought and ultimately achieved Greenland's withdrawal from the European Community. With respect to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow, it would be the kind of argument that might be sustained by some of his opponents in Blackburn, West Lothian, rather than by some of our supporters in Blackburn, Lancashire, if I may use his own argument against him. [Interruption.] Although the Opposition do not consider it to be a precedent, we must face the fact of the withdrawal, but, unlike the Minister, who regretted Greenland's decision, we would not use the word "regret". We accept and respect the decision of Greenland.
We must accept the fact that Greenland's relationship with the European Community has been an uneasy one. As part of the kingdom of Denmark, it has been a member of the European Coal and Steel Community, yet it has neither coal nor steel. Its membership has served merely to provide high steel prices in Greenland. It has been party to the common agricultural policy, yet there is no farming in Greenland. I am sure that even the hon. Member for Southend, East would agree with that. The CAP has served merely to provide Greenlanders with high food prices.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: But the hon. Gentleman will accept that Greenland had a coal industry until recently.
Mr. Foulkes: I accept that. It is not my information, but if the hon. Gentleman assures me of it, I shall accept it. I am sure he will agree that Greenland has no agriculture, so the CAP is not relevant, but merely provides the country with high food prices.
Most difficult and uneasy of all is Greenland's membership of Euratom. As my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow will know, the Greenlanders are passionately anti-nuclear, yet as members of Euratom they have been forced to mine and develop their uranium.
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We respect the decision of the Greenlanders in their referendum and we understand their position particularly because the Faroes, having achieved their independence or autonomy in relation to Denmark, were in different circumstances.
Perhaps unlike what I suspect the hon. Member for Southend, East will say, the Opposition would like to congratulate the Greenlanders on the deal that they have obtained for their withdrawal from the Community. Our Government could learn a thing or two from the way in which the Greenlanders have achieved a great deal in the negotiations. One commentator unfavourably referred to the Greenlanders, in their negotiations with the European Community, as men in oilskins and hairy sweaters negotiating with smooth Eurocrats. On the Opposition's assessment, the men in oilskins and hairy sweaters have done a lot better than those in pinstripe suits from Whitehall as well as the Prime Minister in her stridency.
What the United Kingdom has achieved in the budget negotiations — I am sure that the hon. Member for Southend, East will not disagree with me—is a limited deal of limited duration which will have to be renegotiated after a few years and provides much less than we demanded, without any real reform of the CAP or of the budget, which we demanded. Ultimately we are paying more through our value added tax contributions. That is a pretty poor deal achieved by our diplomacy, yet the men from Godthab and Copenhagen achieved a great deal more — a 10-year deal automatically renewable every six years thereafter.
Perhaps this is the answer which the Minister should have given to his hon. Friend. Greenlanders have free access for the fish that they catch and all other products to all the Community markets, which is a valuable concession. Best of all—I do not think that this is a trivial amount — during the negotiations the Greenlanders upped the amount from 18·5 million to 26·5 million ecu—more than £15 million according to my calculations, but I am open to correction. That is £300 for every man, woman and child in Greenland, which is not a bad deal. In addition, there is £300,000 a year from the European development fund. The Minister and some of his colleagues might like to take a trip to Godthab to find out how the Greenlanders did that, so that the next time round we know how to get a better deal out of the Community.
Perhaps the Minister will take the opportunity of this debate on the contraction of the Community to comment on the prospects for expansion, especially in relation to Portugal, whose prospects of accession may well have deteriorated as a result of the Fontainebleau deal.
In an earlier debate my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) asked about the accession of Spain. Perhaps I could pursue that specifically in relation to Euratom.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. The motion refers to Greenland, not Spain. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will confine his remarks to Greenland's membership of or secession from the Community.
Mr. Foulkes: I accept everything that you say, o f course, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I merely hoped that as Greenland was leaving the Community and Spain was hoping to enter it you might allow me to ask about the difficulty that might arise if Spain becomes part of

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Euratom without having signed the non-proliferation treaty. It would certainly be most helpful if you would allow the Minister to comment on that.
The deal obtained by Greenland from the EEC should be a great lesson to the British Government. Central to the agreement is the deal on fish, which we feel is not good for Britain. The Germans are grumbling, but they still have a substantial fleet of long-range vessels and their quotas will remain roughly the same. The Greenlanders have achieved a very good arrangement. Like the Icelanders, they will have control of their own fishing arrangements, which will no doubt help them as much as it has helped the Icelanders. In addition, they will have access to Community markets, including United Kingdom markets.
Perhaps the Minister will seek advice on this so that when he replies to the debate he can tell us whether there is any way in which the agreement will help the United Kingdom fleet as I understand that our fleet has contracted so much due to the common fisheries policy and to the policies pursued by the Government that we shall be unable to take advantage of the deal with Greenland. In other words, we do not have the resources to fish in their waters, but our markets will be open to them as well as to the Germans and the rest.
We wish the Greenlanders well after 1 January 1985. My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) endorses and approves this view. We wish the Greenlanders well in their new relationship with the Community and we look forward to co-operating with them in their new role and status.
1.48 pm
Mr. Teddy Taylor: It is depressing, to say the least, to note that, although a great many hon. Members were present an hour ago to discuss secretarial and motoring allowances for Members of Parliament, only five of us have remained to debate the withdrawal from the European Community of the second largest island in the world. As the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) rightly said, Greenland also represents half the land mass of the Community, although the number of people involved is small.
I have four specific questions. First, my hon. Friend the Minister will agree that, judging from the papers that he and the Department kindly made available to us, the formula adopted to arrange Greenland's withdrawal from the EEC is a highly complicated one. There is a very good reason for that. There is no clear procedure in the treaty for the withdrawal of a part-member state or indeed a member state. In view of our experience with Greenland, is there not a case for saying that the Common Market should consider its rules and treaties with a view to providing a clear arrangement for the withdrawal of member states which wish to withdraw, if other member states agree?
The Common Market seems to be becoming more controversial, and may face a major crisis towards the end of the year. That being so, is it right that the treaty should treat all member states as if they were in a prison from which there is no way out? The complexity of the formula which we have been obliged to adopt in order to enable Greenland to leave the Common Market shows the need for a clearer procedure.
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I can think of no other international agreement from which withdrawal is so complex and difficult. Indeed, in this case, withdrawal seems to be almost impossible in law. Even bearing in mind the difficulty, within the treaty, of enabling a member state to withdraw, does the Minister feel that overseas territory status is the right answer? Most of the overseas territories are former or current colonial territories which are not yet independent. Greenland is not in that position.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary must be aware that a number of practical problems arise in connection with countries with overseas territory status. I can provide an example from Southend—a long way from Greenland. Under the arrangements for reciprocal medical treatment, if someone breaks a leg in Southend's high street while visiting this country and goes to Southend hospital, the hospital is now obliged to ask him where he comes from. If he is an overseas visitor, the hospital must charge a rate of, I believe, about £90 a day. However, if the answer to the question, "Where do you come from?" is "Guyana" the hospital then has to ask, "Which part of Guyana?". If the man comes from what was British Guyana, he will have to pay £90 a day. If he comes from French Guiana, he will automatically get free treatment because French Guiana is an overseas territory of France and is regarded as part of the EEC. Similar ridiculous situations arise in a number of other instances.
Does the Minister feel that it is wise to create more overseas territories — particularly bogus overseas territories — when to do so creates so many silly anomalies? I have drawn the attention of the Foreign Office to the anomalies connected with Guyana. The situation is an outrage.
There are also problems in connection with the fishing arrangements. We are continuing to pay the Greenlanders every year in recognition of the fish which Europeans—mainly the Germans — are securing. Britain will be paying a substantial part of the sum, but sadly, it is the Germans who will catch the fish.
Is this arrangement really favourable for the Greenlanders? The fish that they are giving up to the Germans are worth about 60 million ECU a year at 1982 prices. That is much more than the amount secured in compensation for them.
What guarantees are the Greenlanders to have? The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley applauded the fact that the Greenlanders had a guaranteed right to get their fish into the Community tariff-free. However, the Government have supplied a statement—the translation of a letter—issued in Brussels on 17 February this year. Page 5 lists factors to be considered.
Among them are:
"on Greenland's side:
—the advantages yielded by preferential access to the market for fishery products. These advantages depend on the potential export volume and on the preferential margin actually granted as compared with the rates accorded competing non-member countries".
It would be helpful if my hon. Friend the Minister could clarify whether Greenland gets completely free access for its fishery products or whether there are reservations, as seems to be suggested in the Common Market paper. I refer to the advantages that depend on preferential access. Even that advantage depends on potential export volume and a preferential margin being granted.
My fourth question is extremely important. We must ask ourselves why the Greenlanders want to leave the

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Community. I have read quite a lot about the arguments during the referendum, and it appears that the major factor was that the Community rules were consistently being broken. For example, the fisheries agreement, which the Greenlanders thought provided some protection, was being driven through by German and other Community fishing vessels which disregarded them. It is understandable that the Greenlanders felt outraged. As my hon. Friend will be aware, in February 1980, two German trawlers that were fishing illegally were captured and their skippers were fined in Nuuk. That is just one example of many complaints that arose during the referendum campaign which elicited the response front the Greenlanders, "Why on earth should we carry on with these agreements when they are not being abided by?" Throughout the campaign, much emphasis was put on examples of abuse by the Community — especially German fishermen — of fishing licences within Greenland's 200-mile economic zone, which was then part of EEC waters.
Is my hon. Friend worried about the serious anxiety that we might cause more and more disagreement in the Community because agreements are not being applied? Britain is well aware of what is happening in the steel industry. Under a Common Market agreement, we have halved the number of people who are employed in the steel industry, yet it appears that other member states have given little more than promises. Indeed, the Italians are increasing their steel capacity, despite an agreement for substantial contraction. I believe that we shall have the same problem with the milk regulations that we debated recently. I know that we shall abide by those agreements but it is becoming clear, as my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food rightly said, that there is a real danger that other member states will not. I wonder whether Greenland's decision to withdraw because agreements were not being observed properly might lead to a major problem which could lead to a further rise of anxiety in Denmark, where there is a substantial movement to withdraw.
There is a lesson to be learnt from the Greenland episode and the fact that membership of the EEC is becoming less popular throughout the Community, as was demonstrated clearly in the recent elections for the European Assembly. The ridiculously low poll in Britain was similar to a turnout for a parish council election on a wet Tuesday. People are fed up and apathetic about the EEC, as they believe that they are being taken for a ride and that the rules are not being implemented. In view of the unfortunate circumstances facing the EEC and Greenland's decision to leave, I wonder whether we should look to Iceland and the Fames for guidance. The European Free Trade Association has enjoyed remarkable success. That organisation is appropriate for Greenland and other comparable countries. Instead of constant disputes such as we have in the EEC which drive countries against each other, the opposite is true of EFTA. Members of EFTA work together peacefully and harmoniously, simply on reducing trade barriers. I believe that the secret of its success is that it does not spend money. There is no EFTA common agricultural policy, social policy or regional policy. It leaves such decisions to member states. That works extremely well. We can learn from the Greenland episode that whereas we have squabbles between the British, the French and the Germans about the distribution of resources — those squabbles will get
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worse as we increase resources — EFTA achieves harmony and friendship by concentrating simply on reducing trade barriers.
There are many complex rules comparable to the ones on fishing which affected Greenland and led to its withdrawal. The other organisation has no intention of trying to create a giant Euro super state, as do some Euro bureaucrats, including British ones. We should try to adjust the EEC to being a non-spending organisation. It should not be an organisation which tempts the Government to become involved in silly Socialist schemes, which the country rightly rejects. We could at least ensure that we shall not have a series of documents such as this one, which will cause other members of the Common Market to seek to withdraw.
We must learn from the Greenlanders' decision to withdraw from the EEC. They withdrew because they were fed up with having agreements broken. We must look to the future of the EEC and see whether we can achieve more than we are achieving to prevent countries such as Greenland from withdrawing. Instead of giving more money to the Common Market, as the Minister will shortly ask us to do, it might be better if we asked ourselves why the Community wants to spend money.
We should also ask ourselves whether it is helpful to friendship and co-operation between European states to go ahead trying to get so-called union in that way. There would be far more harmony at the Community if we had a sensible organisation of countries, which sought to reduce trade barriers and to increase political co-operation, and thereby to increase harmony.
I hope that the Minister will consider the bureaucratic aspect, which also infuriated the Greenlanders. We have more than 12,000 civil servants and about 10 languages in the EEC. In EFTA there are 70 civil servants based in Geneva and they operate in one language.
We wish Greenland well, hope that it will continue to prosper and develop, and that relations between Greenland, the United Kingdom and the EEC will be satisfactory. I hope that we shall learn a lesson from the Greenlanders' decision. They pursued it thoroughly and effectively and they now have an opportunity to get away from the nonsensical bureaucracy and silly businesses of the EEC. We should learn from that and try to adjust and amend the EEC so that countries will not want to leave it.
2.4 pm
Mr. Whitney: I am happy to agree with the final comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) that we should continue to work for the adjustment of the EC so that no country will wish to leave it. That is precisely what we are debating today. This debate is a manifestation of the flexibility which the EC has achieved, and continues to achieve, and which enables it to accommodate the particular circumstances of Greenland.
My hon. Friend will not be surprised to learn that I believe that the flexibility to leave is not one which we should seek to enjoy or employ, because it would be against the interests of the British people. Therefore, the parallel which he sought to draw and which wandered far from the shores of Greenland does not stand up to serious scrutiny.
I shall deal, first, with the precise questions raised by my hon. Friend before I return to the points made by the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley

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(Mr. Foulkes), who covered broader territory. My hon. Friend asked for a set of rules for leaving the Community, but that would be an unnecessary waste of resources and negotiating power. My hon. Friend complained, with some justification, about the number of bureaucrats employed by the Community. I am sure that he would not wish more time to be taken up by amending rules and rewriting the treaties so that member states could leave the Community.
No member state has any intention of leaving the Community, and none of the peoples has any intention of asking their Governments to leave it, as support for the Community makes clear. I agree that the turnout for the European elections was disappointing, but the recognition in Britain and in all member states that it would make no sense to leave is widely and deeply held. My hon. Friend is ploughing a lonely and increasingly narrow furrow.
Mr. Teddy Taylor: Had there been a clearer way for member states to depart, we would have saved much expense, bureaucracy and unnecessary meetings to try to reach a formula to enable them to leave. Does my hon. Friend agree that if the treaty had made the position clear, there would have been a great saving in time, meetings, bureaucracy and negotiations?
Mr. Whitney: Nations are seeking not to leave but to join the Community, which creates understandable problems for us. But they are problems for the future. We must concern ourselves with accession to the Community. There is no demand, except from a small and decreasing minority of British people and from a few people in other member states, to leave the Community. This arrangement for Greenland and its relationship with Denmark has given rise to the need for special provision, and we should congratulate the EC on demonstrating such flexibility. Membership of the OCT was carefully considered, and it was decided that that would be the appropriate mechanism to maintain a link with the Community without maintaining Greenland under the full Community regime. We have found an appropriate balance, taking into account all the factors.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East compared French Guiana with the former British Guyana. As he knows, the constitutional positions are fundamentally different, hence the differences in treatment of French Guianese citizens arriving in hospitals in Southend and of citizens of the independent and sovereign state of Guyana.
The Community has made a good deal on access to fish products. The value will depend upon how much Greenland can export to the Community, which could increase as the fishing industry develops, and on the tariffs applied to other third country exports such as cod and shrimps—the tariffs that Greenland would have to pay if it had no preferential access. Of course, the tariffs will vary according to the products.
My hon. Friend's major point about the observance of Community agreements by member states is not well taken. There have been problems in the observance of steel quotas and other agreements, which my hon. Friend would be only too happy to raise. This is a question of making the Community work better. None of us would claim that it is in a state of Utopian perfection. We recognise that there is a job to do. The turnout for the European elections was disappointing, although I am glad to say that the
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balance of seats was very satisfactory. Some small gains were made by the Labour party, and I understand that, in its present parlous state, Opposition Members had to welcome them as a victory.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have heard about Spain, Guyana, steel, and now the European elections in Britain. It is a long way from Greenland. I hope that the Minister will turn his eyes northwards.
Mr. Whitney: I shall do my best to do so, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley would also like to return to Greenland's pleasant shores or icy mountains.
I was a little confused by the hon. Gentleman's reference to Lady Bracknell, but I was glad that he recognised the rights of Greenland to withdraw. He mentioned his respect for Greenland's position. That is exactly the word that I would use. Her Majesty's Government respect it.
The hon. Gentleman claimed that the Greenlanders had a good deal, and he tried to make play with how much more the Greenlanders had achieved than we had. Let me emphasise that the negotiators from the British side obtained a deal with which we are extremely satisfied and which offers us a very good arrangement with our partners in the Community. It gives us all a chance now to go forward along the lines that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out so that we can complete the common market. It means that we can give our industries the opportunities and the market of which they must take advantage and develop co-operation between member states in new areas, including defence and security.
The example of Greenland is by no means one for us to follow. Our future is in the Community, as are the interests of our people. We recognise the pressures—
Mr. Foulkes: Before the Minister sits down, I hope that he will answer my question about British fishermen. I have asked it twice already. I ask it a third time. What benefit will British fishermen get out of it, or am I right in asserting that they will get no benefit?
Mr. Whitney: I thought that I had answered that question already. The United Kingdom quotas in Greenland waters are preserved. But I should point out that last year our fleet did not manage to catch the fish available to it. It may be that our fishermen have little expertise in this type of fishing. By this arrangement, the balance between member states has not changed. I accept what the hon. Gentleman said about German fishing. But it so happens that the fishing opportunities off Greenland are more important to Germany than to the United Kingdom. This reflects the historic interests of the member states in that fishery. The United Kingdom quotas in Greenland waters agreed under the common fisheries policy have been protected.
The route that Greenland has chosen is not one for the United Kingdom. But we respect the motives which led the Greenlanders to take the decision that they did. We wish them well and hope that the new arrangements which have been settled will work to the advantage of the Greenlanders, of the Community as a whole, and, of course, of the United Kingdom.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House, while stressing the importance of maintaining continued close links between Greenland and the

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Community, recognises that the proposed change in the status of Greenland has wide support; and takes note of European Community Document No. 5064/84 transmitting legal texts providing for a change of the legal status of Greenland and fishery arrangements with regard to Greenland.

Pharmacists
2.15 pm
The Minister for Health (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Community Documents Nos. 4692/81 and 4465/84, draft proposals for Directives and a Decision on the right of establishment for certain activities in the field of pharmacy, and the Explanatory Memorandum from the Department of Health and Social Security dated 16th July 1984; endorses the view that the instruments are necessary; and welcomes the United Kingdom's endeavours to encourage the adoption and implementation of these measures which will give pharmacists the same freedom of movement within the Community already afforded to the other health professions.
This debate was recommended by the Select Committee on European Legislation, which was apparently of the opinion that the draft instruments raised questions of political importance and should be further considered by the House before decisions were taken in the Council of Ministers. There probably is some political importance in the proposals but I hope that I shall discover that they are completely devoid of controversy. We are asking the House to take note of securing freer movement for qualified pharmacists within the EC of the kind that is already afforded to the other health professions.
There have been occasions in the past when proposals for the free movement of pharmacists in the Community were controversial. The House may recall earlier proposals that were published in 1969 and 1972 but they were eventually withdrawn by the Commission. Those proposals covered only self-employed pharmacists. They were wide-ranging in their implications and that is why they gave rise to so much debate.
The proposals now before us are much more modest in scope than their predecessors and are better adapted to the present state of Community integration. They are confined to measures necessary to facilitate the free movement of pharmacists within the Community and to provide for the definition of the standard minimum requirements for the exercise of the profession with regard to the pharmacist's field of activity and to the conditions of his education and training.
There are two directives. The first is known as the co-ordination directive and requires the approximation of national laws in order to give the necessary confidence among member states about the qualifications and competence of professional people engaged in pharmaceutical activities. It defines not only the characteristics which pharmaceutical training must have in all member states but the common core of the pharmacist's field of activity.
The second proposed directive is known as the mutual recognition directive and it has two objectives. First, it draws the logical conclusions from the approximation of the laws of member states — required by the first directive—by ensuring the recognition in all member states of the training courses in each country which meet the minimum criteria that will be laid down. Secondly, apart from the field of training, the proposal in the second directive contains a number of provisions intended to facilitate the exercise in practice of the right of establishment of people who wish to move to countries to practise their profession.
The amendment to the second directive proposed by the Commission in January 1984 — document 4465/84 —

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contains an important safeguard which the House will welcome. It is designed to limit the scope for unbalanced movement between countries by pharmacists suddenly going to practise in one of the member states. That safeguard will permit host member states not to recognise diplomas recognised by other member states so far as they are relied upon for the establishment of new pharmacies open to the public or the takeover of such pharmacies which have been in operation for less than two years. The draft council decision is designed to establish a committee responsible for ensuring a high level of training in pharmacy. Similar committees have already been established for other health professions.
The Government have carefully considered the package that is now beginning to unfold. In our opinion if the proposals are adopted they will present no serious policy or financial implications for the United Kingdom. The provisions in the co-ordination directive preserve the comparability of pharmacy diplomas throughout the United Kingdom. They also ensure that, irrespective of whether those diplomas are awarded by English, Welsh, Scottish or Northern Irish educational establishments, they will be recognised by other member states in precisely the same way as they are recognised in the United Kingdom, as being equivalent one to the other. Therefore, there is no question of any United Kingdom country having to meet the expense of extending or modifying its first degree courses as a result of implementing the proposals.
With the freedom of movement gained under the proposals some pharmacists from other member states might seek to practise in the United Kingdom but they would have to compete with our nationals for situations in pharmacies, whether retail pharmacies or hospital pharmacies.
We do not expect that any substantial flow of people who wish to come to Britain is likely or that they would succeed in coming if they tried. If at any time we should wish to prevent any immigration of self-employed pharmacists or to control the numbers of such pharmacists coming in, that can be done by using the safeguard provisions that I have already mentioned.
We have discussed the matter with the professional and academic organisations and, in general, they do not oppose the proposals. They regard them as an improvement on the earlier proposals and find nothing controversial in the provisions dealing with the mutual recognition of qualifications. The professionals and the academics both welcome the plan to set up the advisory committee on training.
The Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain is the primary representative body of the profession and the statutory registration authority for pharmacists. The society is reasonably satisfied that the proposals reflect the policies that it has evolved in recent years as a result of its involvement with other member states.
Therefore, the Government are satisfied that the United Kingdom's interests are adequately protected and that implementing the changes suggested by the Commission and the Council working party will not have any adverse effects on our NHS pharmaceutical services. Our main anxiety throughout has been to make sure that our very high standards of pharmaceutical service are not damaged or even threatened. It is an important safeguard for patients that they should know that the dispensing or prescribing
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of medicines is carried out by fully qualified professionals who guard to the maximum possible extent against mistakes or errors and against dangerous medicines being wrongly dispensed.
We feel that the proposals meet that test and, having satisfied ourselves of that, we think that it is no more than fair that pharmacists should have the same freedom of movement and right of establishment throughout the Community as is already available to doctors, nurses, midwives, dentists and veterinary surgeons.
2.21 pm
Mr. Frank Dobson: I am grateful for the Minister's lucid explanation of the documents. When I received a note about the debate, it was headed "Established Pharmacists" and I pondered why we were to talk about chi-chi chemist shops in Jermyn street. It was a relief to discover that the proper title was:
"Right of establishment for pharmacists."
The Minister has explained that the professionals and the professional examining body are satisfied with the proposal. However, having browsed through the documents and the related EEC documentation, I am not sure whether a pharmacist who wishes to come here will need to have a grasp of English, which would seem to be a useful qualification for a pharmacist wishing to serve people in this country. I hope that somewhere in the maze of documents there is an obligation on pharmacists to be able to speak and to understand English. We would not want drugs to be dispensed by people who did not understand what was being said to them or could not make themselves understood when dispensing those drugs.
Although pharmacists from this country or any other member state can in theory establish pharmacies in France, Belgium, Holland and Denmark, they will, in practice, find it difficult, because there is strict control on the location of pharmacies in those countries. Many pharmacists in this country regard that system as superior to our freedom-to-go-where-you-like arrangement. If there is a surplus of pharmacists in an EEC country, their opportunites for establishing themselves in France, Belgium, Holland or Denmark will be negligible and their opportunities for establishing themselves here will be greater because we do not put restrictions on where people can set up a pharmacy.
The Minister told me during the Committee stage on the Health and Social Security Bill that in the past year or so there had been an increase in the number of pharmacies in this country, which had previously been declining. However, I think that most people are worried about the areas where there are no pharmacies. I have since been given some detailed statistics showing that in the last six months for which figures are available, well over half of the 237 pharmacies that opened in England were within 400m of an existing pharmacy. Thus, they were not filling a geographical blank but were rather doubling up with facilities that were already in existence. However, of the 108 pharmacies that closed, 81 were within 400m of an existing pharmacy. Therefore, the bulk of new pharmacies in this country have been established close to existing ones and they may be undermining each other's incomes. Very shortly—perhaps incited by the changes that the House is likely to endorse today—we may have to contemplate some restriction on the right of establishment of pharmacies to ensure that there is a good spread of them.

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Having said that, I do not think that we—looking at the Benches behind me, I see that I overstate—I, have any violent objections to the EEC document. I certainly shall not vote against it.
2.25 pm
Mr. Roger Gale: The future of community and rural pharmacies in this country will be the subject of an Adjournment debate on Monday or perhaps a debate in the small hours of Tuesday 31 July. I do not wish to pre-empt that debate, or to go too far down the road of parallel imports or generic prescribing, but I should like to trail it.
I hope that my right hon. and learned Friend will bear in mind that drugs that are prescribed and manufactured in this country, and that are understood by our chemists, are not necessarily the same as those carrying the same name that are imported into Britain. If we are going to allow people from other countries to practise pharmacy here, we must also exercise rigid quality controls over the drugs that they are enabled to prescribe.
2.26 pm
Mr. Kenneth Clarke: I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) for trailing his Adjournment debate. I know that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State is very much looking forward to replying to his main points on rural pharmacies. I accept the force of what he said about drugs that are imported into this country—whether they are parallel imports or otherwise. I know that my hon. Friend has followed the steps that we have recently taken that have satisfied us that we are now importing only drugs that in every way come up to the safety standards that we require, and that are correctly identifiable by those who prescribe and dispense them here. However, we shall, of course, continue to take an interest in that subject.
The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) bears the whole burden of representing the Opposition today. I accept the relevance of the point about proficiency in the English language. There is a maze of subordinate legislation, including Orders in Council and regulations, that will be required if we reach agreement on the directive and have to implement it here. Again, I think that it will all be non-controversial, but it will include
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changes that will enable family practitioner committees to seek satisfactory evidence of proficiency in the English language from pharmacists who want to enter into a contract with them. That will be in line with measures that have already been taken following the adoption of a similar directive relating to doctors. Thus the hon. Gentleman made an entirely valid point.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about the distribution of pharmacies, and I accept that there is a genuine issue at stake, to which we must continue to address ourselves. However, I do not think that any significant number of people will come from Europe to have any effect on that. We take pleasure from the fact that there has been some increase in the number of pharmacies in recent years. However, they tend to be clustered in very popular places, close to each other, and that is not always in anyone's interest. We have a problem in ensuring that there is a satisfactory spread of the service, across rural areas in particular. However, we have the essential small pharmacy scheme at the moment which endeavours to do just that.
At present we are in negotiations with the representatives of the pharmacists—for this purpose, the Pharmaceutical Services Negotiating Committee—about the whole nature of the pharmacists' contract. Coupled with those negotiations are further discussions with them about how far we can ensure in a contract, and in our other dealings with the profession, that we get the spread of service that the patient and public require. I am not altogether satisfied that we have got that at present.
Subject to that, I think that the directive has desirable and not undesirable consequences for all our problems in the pharmaceutical world, and I am glad that those who have spoken in the debate have welcomed it.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House takes note of European Community Documents Nos. 4692/81 and 4465/84, draft proposals for Directives and a Decision on the right of establishment for certain activities in the field of pharmacy, and the Explanatory Memorandum from the Department of Health and Social Security dated 16th July 1984; endorses the view that the instruments are necessary; and welcomes the United Kingdom's endeavours to encourage the adoption and implementation of these measures which will give pharmacists the same freedom of movement within the Community already afforded to the other health professions.

Student Travel Grants
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Lang.]
2.30 pm
Mr. John Powley: I am grateful, Mr. Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in my first Adjournment debate on a subject of importance not just to my constituents but to students in other parts of the country and at universities other than the University of East Anglia. I am also grateful to the Minister for coming to the House on a Friday afternoon to answer the debate.
It is appropriate that I should be moving the Adjournment debate on student travel costs, as we discussed at some length earlier today hon. Members' travel costs. The amounts involved in Members' travel costs substantially exceed those involved in student travel costs.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science announced on 4 April 1984 that there would be changes in the method of paying student travel costs. It quickly became apparent that the change might affect some students and universities. I say "some" to emphasise the point, because not all students and universities will be affected. I shall deal with the effects during the course of my speech.
I applaud the efforts of the Department of Education and Science and local authorities to try to streamline the administration of the system and so concentrate more of the available resources on helping students and using less of the resources on bureaucracy.
Under the old system of reimbursing student travel costs, £50 was included in the annual student grant whether the student lived at home or away. A student claimed from his local authority reimbursement of the necessary additional costs that he was obliged to incur. In reality, that meant claiming a return journey once a term from the student's home to the university or college and daily journeys to and from the college. The system, in which it was difficult accurately to predict the costs, involved some £46 million, with an average travel award in 1982–83 of £63.
The figures that I obtained from Norfolk county council showed that for the academic year 1983–84 there were 4,152 mandatory award holders. The total expenditure to those mandatory award holders for travel costs was £260,000. That is for travel in excess of the £50 which is included in the grant calculation. Under the new scheme introduced for the 1984–85 year, students will receive a flat-rate sum as part of their grant to cover travel costs. Students studying at home will receive £160 and those studying away will receive £100. Provision has been made for those existing students with exceptional and unavoidable high travel expenses more than £150 above what they would normally receive to claim reimbursement of the excess.
At first sight, the idea is commendable and the averaging of costs may seem an economical way to deal with the matter. The Minister said that there was an element of rough justice in the system, which of course there is. However, I suggest that there are other factors to consider, and that is part of the reason why I have raised the matter today.
Until now there has been a uniform system of student travel grants throughout England, Northern Ireland, Wales
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and Scotland. That made sense. It did not matter where one lived or came from, because the system was the same. With the proposed change, there will be a difference between Scotland and the rest of Great Britain. Scotland keeps the existing system, as was announced by the Secretary of State for Scotland on 13 February this year, while everyone else changes. I do not see why or how there can be so much difference between Scotland and the rest of Great Britain to warrant a difference in travel grants.
It cannot be questioned that some colleges and universities are more accessible than others. Some are in more remote areas of the country. Such an area in Norfolk and such a university is the University of East Anglia. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson) and I have explained on several occasions the difficulties that are involved in getting up into Norfolk because of the lack of dual carriageways and the relative inaccessibility of Norwich.
Travel costs to and from such places are much more expensive than those to and from universities in large cities in more central areas. When a student is deciding which college or university is suitable for him, he may use the travel costs that are involved as one of the deciding factors, when the decision should be based on education only. That is something that worries me and many others. It may be said that parents should make a contribution to these costs, but many do not do so, for a wide variety of reasons. Travel costs to and from university and home are a factor, and another factor is the situation of the university and the availability of student accommodation.
I have received about 650 letters, cards and representations of various sorts from students in my constituency. The pile of cards on the bench beside me is well over 6in high. Most of them are from students, but some are from parents of students who realise that extra travel costs will be involved. They have written to tell me how difficult it will be for them to help their children.
What are the extra costs that will be incurred? How many students will be affected? What are the knock-on problems? It must be admitted that some students will be better off. They will be students with less-than-average travel costs, and no doubt they will count themselves lucky. The National Union of Students calculates that the change will mean some form of hardship to one third of all students. It says that the change will affect 47 per cent. of home-based students and 32 per cent. of away-from-home students. It calculates that, over the spectrum of student travel costs which were reimbursed in 1982–83, 39 per cent. had excess costs of more than £100, 26 per cent. had excess costs of more than £150 per annum and 2 per cent. had excess costs of more than £450 per annum.
I have been in touch with students at the University of East Anglia and I am grateful to them for their help. Tim Quint is such a student and he lives at Hook Green, Kent. He has provided me with a breakdown of his travel costs. His British Rail student railcard costs £10. The Norwich citywide bus pass costs £48 per term and £144 annually. His rail travel from home to university costs £16 a term and £48 yearly. The grand total for his travel costs last year was £202. If the £50 that is already included in the grant is deducted, he was entitled to receive £150. I have a copy of his actual grant from Kent county council, which was £144.80. If this pattern of costs is repeated under the new system, my constituent will be about £52 a year worse off.

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Another constituent tells me that his bus and rail costs and his railcard cost him £279 and that after the deduction of the £50 and £100 flat allowance he is £129 worse off.
The knock-on effect is not easy to determine. As in all walks of life, some students are less responsible than others. Some students waste some of their money and then complian that they are broke and cannot afford certain items. Others behave in a responsible fashion and budget as you and I, Mr. Speaker, budget our income and expenditure. Could it be that the money needed for travel costs, which some students will now get, will have to come from moneys allocated to meet normal living expenses? Could it be that the money needed for travel costs will have to come from moneys allocated for the purchase of books and equipment? Will a potential student have to take account of possible travel costs before deciding which university to attend? Could it be that a student will have to pass by a course which his talents dictate he should go to and take a different course which is based at an establishment within his travel allowance?
There is a problem for a large number of students who have to travel long distances between where they live in town while at a university and the university. At the University of East Anglia in my constituency, the residence belonging to the univserity at Fifers lane in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North is four or five miles away and the current costs of travel between the two is more than £120 per year. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North has apologised to me for not being here for this debate, but I assure my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State that he fully supports the arguments that I am putting forward.
The University of East Anglia was deliberately sited away from the major centre of population on the periphery of Norwich, and that will now work to its disadvantage. The position is even more marked in some other parts of the country, and Lancaster and Warwick are good examples. During the past few days colleagues have mentioned examples from their own constituencies. It is possible for universities to be selected for their geographical location rather than their academic qualities. That would put universities such as the University of East Anglia at a disadvantage.
The new system of travel grants will force students to keep their travel costs between their residences and their universities as low as possible. That factor will in turn put pressure on living accommodation in the near vicinity of the university. That will cause problems of overcrowding, sharing and multiple occupation of dwellings. One could say that students should in any case keep their costs down, and one would be right. With claims having to be submitted and scrutinised as they are now, abuses are kept to a minimum. Some universities provide specialised courses which, to make them viable, need to attract students from a wide area. It could be that because of the travel implications those courses could not be offered, and consequently the variety of courses offered could diminish and our overall education standards could drop.
On 15 May 1984, in reply to a question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North, the Under-Secretary of State said:
"However, I am confident that it will be possible on a local basis to find enterprising solutions to the problem that my hon. Friend has described." — [Official Report, 15 May 1984; Vol. 60, c. 136.]
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I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will expand on that statement and say what he had in mind.
I have been in touch with the vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia about the problem. He made a suggestion which I put forward for serious consideration.
He asked:
"Is it possible to classify students either as living on campus with a lower rate of travel grant; or as living off campus whether at home or in lodgings or in University residences and to award this category a higher rate of grant?"
The question that must be faced in the future with travel costs being integrated into the total grant is: what happens when an uprating occurs in future years? Under the present system, if fares are increased by British Rail or a local bus company, the student is no worse or no better off, because he claims the cost of the journeys actually made. In future, if no change is made in the present proposals and the travel costs increase by more than the percentage increase in total grant, somehow those extra costs must be borne. That means that those students who have higher than average costs will be faced with an even greater disadvantage than they are now.
Will my hon. Friend the Secretary of State give an assurance that in future, if no change is forthcoming, the increases in travel costs will be accurately reflected in the uprating of total grant? I hope that my hon. Friend will take my point seriously and consider the wider implications of the changes that have been proposed. I hope that he will seriously reconsider those proposals in the light of the examples that I have quoted and the longer-term effect which these changes in the travel grant could have.
2.44 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Peter Brooke): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Powley) for raising an important issue in such a constructive way. Students at the University of East Anglia are indeed fortunate to be represented by a Member who clearly has their interests so closely at heart and is able to present their case in such a lucid and eloquent manner. He has, if I may say so, been more eloquent than the identical postcards which arrived in profusion from his constituents.
In order to explain why the new arrangements are necessary, I think it might be helpful to describe the present arrangments for travel costs. At the moment, there is an element within the student grant—currently £50—which is intended to cover expenditure on travel. For very many students—in fact, more than half—that allowance more than covers their travel need, but those who spend more than that are entitled to claim reimbursement of any expenditure necessarily incurred over and above that in attending their course. It includes the cost of three return journeys a year between the student's home and his place of study when he is studying away from home, and the cost of daily journeys to and from his place of study from his term-time residence. The essence of the present arrangements is that each student is reimbursed individually any excess travel cost that he incurs on the basis of separate specific travel claims.
That approach has two major drawbacks. First, it is administratively cumbersome, and therefore expensive. In the academic year 1982–83 — the latest for which information is available—local education authorities

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received claims for reimbursement of excess travel expenditure from about 180,000 students, for about 43·5 per cent. of all full-value award holders. Each of those claims has to be processed individually and checked not only for its arithmetic, but, more importantly, for the accuracy of the number and length of journeys claimed, and the bus and rail fares quoted. The process is, therefore, inherently expensive in terms of manpower, and thus of cost. The difficulties are exacerbated by the fact that up to 90 per cent. of the claims handled by a paying local education authority relate to areas for which it is not responsible and with which it may not be familiar.
Secondly, the arrangements effectively represent an uncontrollable and open-ended commitment to public expenditure. The sums paid by local education authorities in respect of excess travel claims will naturally reflect the number of claimants and the size of the claims made, and those cannot be precisely estimated in advance. While I do not believe that students necessarily travel by more expensive modes than they need to, the present arrangements offer little incentive to students to choose the most economical practical means — for example, by using coach rather than rail, or by sharing cars. The new arrangements axe designed to overcome those two major drawbacks by introducing flat rates.
It is surely wrong to continue a system which is administratively expensive to operate and does not ensure that public money is under as close control as it could be. I was encouraged to learn that the vice-chancellor of the university of East Anglia, Professor Michael Thompson, sympathised with the rationale of the proposed changes, even though he expressed concern about the new rates. I shall return later to his suggestion which my hon. Friend mentioned.
Under the new arrangements, as my hon. Friend said, the present allowance within the grant for travel will be increased from £50 to £100 for those studying away from the parental home, and to £160 for those studying from the parental home. A limited number of categories of student will continue to be eligible for reimbursement, but the majority of students will not. Those incurring travel costs in excess of the amount allowed in the grant, because they are required to spend part of their courses abroad—such as those following the American studies course at the university of East Anglia — or away from the main establishment, will continue to have the relevant travel cost in excess of the amount provided in the grant reimbursed in full. Disabled students, who incur excess travel costs in respect of attendance on their course as a result of their disability, will also be entitled to claim reimbursement.
My hon. Friend has discussed in some detail the position of students at the University of East Anglia who will be made worse off as a result of the new arrangements. We have always acknowledged that the new arrangements would inevitably involve a degree of rough justice, and my hon. Friend quoted me in that respect. That is an inevitable consequence of any departure from a system which treats each student individually. But, equally inevitably, many students will gain; indeed, more will gain than lose. In the academic year 1982–83, 56·5 per cent. of all full-value award holders — about 235,000 students — made no
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claims for excess travel, and under the new arrangements all those students will gain £50 or £110, depending on where they study from.
Many students at the University of East Anglia will gain under the new arrangements. I understand that about 1,500—or more than one third of the university's population—live on University Plain. Those students should not normally face day-to-day travel expenses and so are likely to gain under the new approach. The position of those living in the city or at Fifers lane, about whom my hon. Friend spoke so eloquently, is less clear-cut, and will depend on the particular circumstances of the individual. Some who do not face high term-end travel costs, or who are able to benefit from cheap means of daily travel, may still gain, but I readily concur that inevitably some will find themselves worse off.
Students are, by their nature, intelligent and flexible people, and I am confident that "creative solutions" — again, my hon. Friend picked up that quotation—can be found to most of the particular problems that have emerged. It will, of course, be for individual students to decide how best to deploy the resources available to them. Where they consider the cost of public transport to be too high, I am sure that there is scope for private enterprise on the part of students themselves, their student unions, or institutions to act collectively to provide cheaper means of travelling to and from their places of study—to take just one example, by operating car-sharing schemes. Such solutions have not been sought before because the open-endedness of the present arrangements never encouraged them. I believe that it will be a positive bonus of the new arrangements if students are encouraged to think more carefully about how they travel to and from college.
We have also acted to take account of the real and well-founded concern expressed to us during the consultative period about some students already on courses who have exceptionally high travelling costs and little real possibility of changing their circumstances in mid course. We listened sympathetically to those concerns, and in response we announced that provision will be made for existing students whose unavoidable travel costs are more than £150 above what they will receive in grant to claim reimbursement of the excess. That should alleviate the worst of the difficulties that the introduction of the new arrangements would otherwise have created for existing students.
My hon. Friend made several related points to which I should like to respond. He referred to the Scottish situation. The provisions of the students' allowance scheme in Scotland have never been identical in all respects to the awards system in England and Wales. The decision by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland to retain the present travel arrangements for Scottish students took account of the special circumstances that he considered would have made it inappropriate at present to adopt the flat-rate approach. That divergence in approach is an inevitable consequence of the devolution process.
My hon. Friend referred to the suggestion of his vice-chancellor, which I have already mentioned. The vice-chancellor said that those who studied away from home but also had daily journeys from their term-time residence should become a special category. I appreciate the attractions of that suggestion, but I am afraid that it runs wholly counter to one of the main purposes of the change that we are introducing, which is to simplify rather than

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complicate the present arrangements. I understand why the suggestion has been made, but I can hold out no hope that such a scheme will be entertained or implemented in future.
My hon. Friend asked me whether I would consider the matter again and contemplate special arrangements for hardship cases. In the latter instance, I have already referred to the alleviation scheme that we are introducing for existing students, but overall at this stage one can do no more than speculate on what effect, if any, the new arrangements will have on particular institutions and individual students. Should any hard evidence emerge in future years, we would be prepared to consider it. Consequently, we shall follow developments.
The new arrangements represent an important change in practice. Inevitably, a change of this magnitude involves both benefits and costs, but I believe that the benefits, which I have outlined, outweigh the costs. Our proposals involve a degree of rough justice but I do not believe that they imply an unacceptable degree. The
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majority of students will be better off under the new arrangements and we have taken steps to limit the losses for existing students.
The proposals will bring under closer control an important area of public expenditure on which the taxpayer and the ratepayer will probably spend £39 million this year — by no means an insignificant sum — and will significantly simplify local authority administration. No decision has so far been made about the separate uprating of travel grant, but I recognise the force of my hen. Friend's argument.
I am sure my hon. Friend will agree that it is in the interests of everyone — students, local authorities, institutions, taxpayers and ratepayers—to have a cost-effective student award system. I think that our proposals work towards this, but I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to respond to the debate this afternoon.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at four minutes to Three o'clock.