HC Deb 29 October 1984 vol 65 cc1123-33

Lords amendment: No. 1, in page 4, line 6, leave out Nothing in the substitution effected by this section and insert

This section has effect subject to any provision of the commencement order under section 7(1)(b) below with respect to any description of financial assistance dependent on the designation of areas under the said section 1 and, without prejudice to the generality of the foregoing words, nothing in the substitution effected by this section".

12.30 am
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Mr. Norman Lamont)

I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.

This is the first of four small technical amend-ments——

Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West)

Substantive.

Mr. Lamont

Clause 4 removes the power to designate the assisted areas by reference to employment office areas, the main basis upon which the present map of assisted areas is drawn up. That is because travel-to-work areas, which are customarily used for assisted area purposes, are no longer built up of employment office areas; as those who served on the Standing Committee will know, they are based on local authority wards instead. A consequence of the change is that the present map, which is based on employment office areas, cannot be preserved for any purposes after the appointed day, except where specifically provided for. Before this Government amendment the Bill made two such provisions: the first is in clause 4, which preserves orders under the Derelict Land Act 1982; and the second is in clause 7, which preserves the present map in respect of regional development grants for a transitional period.

The Government have decided that the Bill should make another specific provision in respect of regional selective assistance offers. An offer for regional selective assistance under section 7 of the Industrial Development Act 1982 must reflect the status of the area in which the project is to be carried out on the day on which the offer is made. If an application is made when the area is an intermediate area, and negotiations are based on the assistance available in that area, but during the negotiations the area is downgraded, the changed status of the area would make it impossible for the Government to proceed with an offer of selective assistance.

Should that occur, the companies concerned would—I hope the House will agree—have reason to believe that the Government had broken faith with them. Consequently, to avoid the summary cutting off of negotiations and the uncertainty which such a possibility would cause to a firm, the Government have decided that it is desirable to preserve, for the purposes of section 7, the existing map for a period of four months following the announcement of the changes, to enable offers to be made in respect of applications received before the announcement.

The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) might have been right to say that this cannot be described only as a technical amendment, but the others are certainly technical amendments. It is a small, simple amendment that will benefit the companies concerned to their advantage. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will welcome the amendment, and that he believes it to be sensible and uncontroversial.

Mr. Alan Williams

I agree with the Minister that this amendment and the others could have been taken at the same time, for the convenience of the House. They are probably acceptable, but I disagree with the Minister's implication that there was no need for discussion. It is well known that they will have an especially severe impact on Dunfermline, and several of my hon. Friends will wish to explain the relevance of the amendments in that context.

Unlike the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill, and thinking of the comments by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) at the Dispatch Box, this Bill started bad and has ended no better. Tragically, it was devised to be applied in one context, but it will be applied, with all its penal sanctions on the assisted areas, in a deteriorating context. Therefore, its irrelevance is even greater.

Finally, I ask the Minister to answer three questions when he replies. First, what global sum does he now envisage will be deducted from the regional budget? Secondly, when shall the we have the debate that he promised us in Committee on the Government's new proposals that they hope to implement by means of this enabling measure? Thirdly, on what date does he hope that the orders will be brought forward?

Mr. Gordon Brown (Dunfermline, East)

The Minister has described the amendment as a minor and uncontroversial change. He suggested that it is merely a tidying-up measure that will benefit the depressed areas. However, the amendment involves a new and disturbing decision, the long-term effect of which will be to harm the areas that the Minister claims he is assisting. Having already decided that many areas will lose regional development grants, the Government have now decided that many areas will lose selective financial assistance. There are areas and industries that can receive only selective financial assistance, and they are now to lose that, even though in many such areas one in every six persons is out of work — twice as many as when the measures were first introduced.

The Government say that the amendment must be introduced so that industries and areas will not suffer in the short term, but its introduction proves beyond doubt that industries and areas will suffer in the long term by the loss of selective financial assistance. They are to be given extra help in the short term for four months, because they are to lose out in the long term—at least for the next four years. The decision has been announced in the way that we have come to expect of the Government. Introducing a new measure by announcing four months' delay in its implementation is a cynical manoeuvre that is rather like telling a man he is to be condemned to death by informing him that he has been granted a stay of execution.

The amendment, when taken with the rest of the Bill, means that the best regional policy measures, which began when unemployment was less than 5 per cent., are to be discarded when unemployment is three times as high. The amendment means that many areas are to lose selective financial assistance and the possibility of obtaining European regional development grants and loans for which assisted area status is a precondition and passport. The new and disturbing decision that is contained in the amendment —an amendment that we have to support—appears in stark contrast to Ministers' statements that selective financial assistance will increase significantly and substantially. The amendment makes it clear by implication that industrialists in certain areas who now receive selective financial assistance will not in future be entitled to it. As I have said, the Government promised that substantial and extra expenditure on selective financial assistance would be given. What comfort is that for areas that are now to lose the opportunity of any assistance?

The truth is that the Government are tearing up, instead of tidying up, the regional aid map. The amendment gains extra significance because I have been informed by those who care about the future of Scottish industry that the scale of the changes that the Bill foreshadows is major and that areas of Fife, the Central region, Lothian and Tayside are to lose their existing development status. Even the few areas in the east of Scotland that will retain aid will receive grants of a lower level. The cost-per-job ceiling for new investment is to be extremely low.

There is little comfort to be gained from knowing that the amendment is to recreate for four months the old employment office areas as a basis for securing regional assistance. Until last month no one could have been aware how large a difference there was to be between the old assisted areas and the new areas that are being proposed.

As a result of excluding areas in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas) and areas such as Cardenden in my constituency, which have some of the worst unemployment rates, and including areas, such as Kinross, outside the county of Fife, which has one of the lowest unemployment rates, the Dunfermline travel-to-work unemployment rate has fallen overnight. Despite that, nothing has improved for more than 4,000 unemployed in my constituency, and much has got worse. Although unemployment is rising in the Dunfermline district—by 1,000 in the past year—and will continue to rise to nearly 20 per cent., although the future of Rosyth dockyard in my constituency and the mining industry in the whole of Fife now hang in the balance, and although unemployment in the biggest part of my constituency—the Cowdenbeath jobcentre area—is already higher than the highest rate in the travel-to-work areas mentioned in the employment statistics, the Government have now cynically redefined what is clearly a depressed area into what they call a relatively prosperous area.

At a stroke of the pen, by a twist of the statistics, 38 companies in my constituency and in Dunfermline, West, which have received regional development grants and selective financial assistance, could lose the possibility of receiving them again. Six high technology companies in my constituency which planned to spend £50 million over the next five years could be attracted elsewhere to English enterprise zones, to Ireland or to Europe. The future petrochemical development at Moss Morran, which is the one lasting benefit on land from North sea oil, and which should be the springboard for a new petrochemical and plastics industry, will not only be temporarily postponed but permanently cancelled if regional development fund grants and selective financial assistance are lost.

The amendment is characteristic of the Government's approach to the Bill. This is an enabling Bill in which the specific consequences for my area, or for any area, have been undisclosed. Worse than that, we now know that industrialists in my constituency and in other constituencies will have to apply for help, such as selective financial assistance or regional development grants, by the date that the new regional aid map, referred to in the amendment, is announced. Despite that, we have not been told that date, although I have it on some authority that it is to be 28 November. Is it not the height of cynicism to appear to offer help, but then to say that applications must be received by an unknown date for unspecified areas about which no information regarding their future can be given?

The Bill demonstates beyond doubt that the Secretary of State for Scotland has so far lost the battle for regional aid and industrial support. It shows that the Government have little intention of dealing with the consequences of their economic failure. The Secretary of State for Scotland told us five years ago that we could not have a Scottish assembly, but we could have a Scottish economic recovery. Over those five years, we have seen 1,236 closures in all and an unemployment rate that has doubled and then risen again, while the Secretary of State for Scotland has made a virtue of losing almost every industrial battle on the ground that he is winning the economic war. These amendments, and what we fear is in the regional aid map that will be released for November, show that the Secretary of State has only four weeks to win the fight that is vital for both the funds and what remains of the morale of Scottish industry. If he does not win, having lost innumerable battles for jobs over the past five years, we shall finally have lost the entire war.

Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth (Stockton, South)

The Minister has sought, during the course of the debates on the Bill, to reassure the House that aid to the regions would not be cut, and the accusations that some of us in Opposition have levelled at the Government, of cutting back on regional aid, were not true. However, here we are in the final stages of the Bill, with the promise having been given that the regional map will be published in the autumn, and we still do not know what the provision for regional aid will be, just as we do not know how, where and at what levels it will be applied. In the circumstances it is inadequate for the Minister to come to the House tonight without having published that information.

12.45 am

In recent weeks, with the publication of the latest set of unemployment figures there has been the confirmation, which many feared, that unemployment in Britain, far from getting better, is getting worse and will continue to get worse. Ghettoes are being created in the northern region, in Scotland, Wales and other parts of the country. They are ghettoes of people, young and old, who have been unemployed for long periods and who stand a chance of being unemployed for the foreseeable future. That "us and them" situation which has existed for too long now is being reinforced by the Government's current economic policies. Unless regional aid is sustained at its current levels and, indeed, increased, it will be reinforced even further.

Those inequalities that have existed in the regions with high unemployment will be reinforced if the Government cut back on the aid that they have been giving in the past. Therefore, we should have had before us tonight, as we consider the final amendments to the Bill, exact details of what provision is to be made and how it is to be applied under this enabling legislation.

I hope that the Minister will respond to the questions that have been put to him by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) and tell the House tonight how much Government funding there will be for regional development under the new provisions. If he cannot tell us tonight what the new map will be, can he tell us when the announcement will be made? The amendment should be welcome because it clarifies the situation. However, that clarification needs to go much further because there are many people in regions such as my own in many parts of the country who have been wondering for a long time about their future investments and how they would be affected by the Government's new policy. Vast companies in Britain have been waiting for the Government's announcement before making investment commitments because they simply do not know what Government aid will be forthcoming under the Bill.

I urge the Minister to make it clear this evening when the new maps will be published and when the new levels of grant will be made clear. We shall then have the clarity we require, we shall have an end to the uncertainty and we might be able to get ahead with some of the schemes that have been waiting in the regions for the announcements that the Government should have made before now. I hope that when that announcement comes there will be a clear commitment from the Government that they will not cut back on the level of aid but rather increase the aid which the regions now desperately need.

Mr. Dick Douglas (Dunfermline, West)

In the long passage of the Bill, which is really two Bills, one has sought to try to unravel what the Government had in mind on regional policy. I have been reminded of a phrase used by Churchill when he was trying to unravel what was in Russia's mind when he spoke of

a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma. The puzzle about the Government's regional policy is in trying to determine exactly whether they have such a policy.

I should be called to order if I were to go over all the debates on Second Reading, but one significant feature of the Bill was the clear sign that the Government's intention was to reduce the level of regional aid.

The clause relates to the definition of development areas. We know that the Government's intention is to seek new building blocks for development areas. We are told in the Department of Employment's Gazette that Travel-to-work areas generally form the building blocks for defining the regional industrial policy assisted areas, though the travel-to-work area boundaries are not always followed in defining every Assisted Area. The Department of Employment's publication includes an elaborate statistical analysis and talks in scientific terms of algorithms used in five stages. I do not know what strange algorithm puts together as an assisted area the whole district of Clackmannan with the district of Kincardine and Culross in my constituency. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) has pointed out that the whole of Dunfermline has as an appendage the wards of west Kinross and east Kinross.

There may be an elaborate scientific, statistical explanation for that, but there is no commonsense explanation. The real reason, certainly in the case of Dunfermline, appears to be to try to reduce the unemployment statistics so that the area falls out of assisted area status.

I hope that the Under-Secretary, who has some knowledge of Scotland and of the problem that we loosely refer to as peripherality, will, recognise that unemployment statistics alone should not be the touchstone of whether an area is assisted.

In the west of Fife, we have a high concentration of mining employment, and the census statistics of 1981, on which the travel-to-work areas are based, could not reflect the plight of the Bogside mine where we lost 800 jobs at a stroke. My hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) and I have had many meetings with the Coal Board, but we have had no adequate explanation. The coal industry in the area hangs in the balance for many reasons, some connected with the dispute and some that have nothing to do with it.

The mystery of the Government's policy is that they say that they are to have a regional policy, yet they are dismantling all the apparatus of regional policy and what we used to call the carrot and the stick. There is no sign that the Government consider the social cost of having a high concentration of employment and people in the south east and the midlands. No attempt is made to evaluate the "external diseconomies".

The enigma of the Government's policy is their claim that they represent the whole nation. If they are really interested in the whole nation, they should examine where the fingers of growth should be concentrated for the benefit of the nation. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East referred to Moss Morran and Braefoot Bay. In a few weeks' time, the Secretary of State will open Moss Morran — a plant which might not have been located in that area if capital development grants, which are in danger of being abolished, had not been in place. Downstream development is essential for gaining the full benefit of the petrochemical complex. The Government must preserve some form of capital development grant, at least by selective financial assistance. We have no assurance on that.

We are afraid that the pull of the south-east and midlands votes for the Government will throw the whole of Scotland on the scrap heap. We have had no assurance that that will not happen. We are not confident of the Secretary of State for Scotland —the man of the Star Chamber. Imagine picking a Secretary of State for Scotland to preside over a Star Chamber to cut public expenditure. What a joke. What a laugh. The Secretary of State is supposed to correct regional imbalances and to defend Scotland's corner. In Scotland we have survived, particularly in the last 20 years, because Governments of all colours have tilted the balance towards regions such as Scotland, the north, Wales and Northern Ireland.

The enigma is that the Government are ostensibly trying to look after the whole nation, but they are willing to forget that because of the votes that they can buy in the south and the midlands. Such votes will be bought dearly. We in Scotland will resist.

Mr. David Harris (St. Ives)

I disagree with the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Wrigglesworth) about the timing of the operation. I was suspicious of the Government's plans for announcing the assisted area map. I thought when the House adjourned for the summer that it might be sneaked in when the House was not sitting. I should have deplored that so I welcome the lack of announcement describing the location of new assisted areas. However, I agree with Opposition Members that the Government should clear the uncertainty about what should constitute future assisted areas and their status. I urge the Minister to give tonight the date that the Government expect to announce the new assisted area map. I look forward to that with some hope and some trepidation.

Mr. John Home Robertson (East Lothian)

The Minister received some of his education in my constituency, but he has demonstrated today that his education is sadly lacking because he tried to sell the idea that we are discussing a technical amendment. The amendment has considerable significance because it has a bearing on the designation of areas that will receive regional development grants.

That is of little more than academic interest in my constituency because the Secretary of State for Scotland has already sold out my part of Scotland. East Lothian is no longer an assisted area and that has had damaging effects on my constituents.

The Government's strategy on industrial development and promoting the economy in various areas has been shown to have failed. My constituency and other such areas have lost the development incentives. There is mounting unemployment with factories and workshops standing empty as employers move to areas with incentives. Such discrimination cannot be right.

1 am

People involved in business and industry tell us that in the present economic climate development and investment incentives make all the difference. Business men are closing their businesses and moving to areas with incentives. There is a general need for incentives throughout the country, but especially in areas of high unemployment. I do not want the experience of my constituency to be repeated in Fife or the other areas mentioned that stand to lose because of the Government's strategy.

The Government's whole strategy is wrong and misconceived. I deplore what they are doing. The details of the areas that will be harmed are leaking piecemeal. I hope that the Minister will say more about that later, but past experience gives us little ground for confidence. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas) said, everyone in Scotland must be alarmed that someone as patently inadequate as the Secretary of State is standing up for our rights in the Cabinet. Heaven help us all.

Mr. Martin J. O'Neill (Clackmannan)

The debate, although brief, has encapsulated the whole problem of regional development. The speeches have been of a predominately Scottish character, but that is not inappropriate because Scotland has been the largest single recipient of regional assistance. The four constituencies represented on the Opposition Benches cover both sides of the estuary of the Forth.

My hon. Friends the Members for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) and for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas) and I represent the tranches of land on the northern shore of the Forth which, in many respects, are similar. The only difference is the marginal changes in unemployment. The latest statistics for travel-to-work areas are different from those for local authority areas. The massaging of the statistics is all the easier because of the artificial creation of adding areas such as Kinross, which has given a wholly distorted picture for the area represented by my hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East and shows my area as being similar to what it was previously. We have levels of unemployment that are sufficiently intolerable to require fairly substantial assistance.

In the central belt of Scotland unemployment is about 16.2 per cent. on one calculation. In my constituency—I give this only as an example—unemployment in the Alloa travel-to-work area is 19.7 per cent. In Falkirk it is 17.9 per cent. and in Stirling 11 per cent. That means that some of the villages in my area will be assaulted by the proposals which this enabling legislation will doubtless produce. Those areas will be denied assistance. Some people who live in areas of considerable deprivation, who have little prospect of alternative employment, will be denied alternative resources because of the way in which the map has been drawn as a result of the Minister's legerdemain.

Other parts of the area will find that they will continue to be entitled to receive assistance but that the local authorities' capability to give it will have been reduced because of the way in which the boundaries have been established. Two-thirds of the Central region—I argue this in the context of my constituency because it usefully fits the bill—will probably be denied the kind of aid that it is at present enjoying while the other third will continue to receive it. The local authority will be required to continue its attempts to attract industrial development.

Under the amendment we shall find that considerable confusion will be caused not just for the four-month interim period, but for much longer for the normal agencies involved in the bids made by firms for assistance. The firms will be not chasing larger sums of money, but scrambling to obtain the few crumbs that the Minister and others have decided are enough for those parts of the country which over the years have shown themselves to be in need of regional assistance.

There is no doubt on either side of the House that regional assistance policies have been of considerable help to Scotland, the north-east and the north-west. The Government's proposals are designed not to improve the economic climate, but to reduce the amount of money available to those parts of the country which need assistance.

The amendment, if the Minister is to be believed, is purely a tinkering, technical one. That is the attitude that we had throughout the Committee stage. There is no meat, as has been said in the American presidential election. Everything has been of an enabling nature, according to the Minister. At some stage in the future—and perhaps 28 November will be the magic day when all will be revealed — out of the hat of the Department of Trade and Industry will come the sorry representation of what was once regional policy. We shall see a few prizes for those areas which in the past have been foolish enough to vote Conservative. For the rest of the country which has put its money where its mouth is and voted for the benefit of Keynesian regional policies, which have been the hallmark of consensus in regional policy since the mid-1950s, the Minister and the Government have sought to crack the idea that the less advantaged areas of the country would be given the support and assistance that the people and industries felt were necessary to prolong their activities and help them. Those policies have been cast aside on the basis of simplistic criteria; they have been based on the fudging and distortion of statistics.

If the same kind of gerrymandering had been attempted with our constituency boundaries as has been attempted for the areas which will be entitled to the kind of assistance on which they have depended for their economic survival, there would have been a constitutional uproar in the House. Because it is larded with the regional and economic jargon of the Department of Trade and Industry and of the Scottish Office industry department, somehow it is lost in the mists of the spells of economic magic that the Government are trying to create.

The Opposition cannot oppose the clause because it has within it a four-month transitional period. It is little consolation that we merely get a stay of execution for another four months, but we are grateful for it. However, we recognise that at the end of the four-month period the prospects for areas which hitherto have depended upon regional assistance and the opportunities that it has provided for confident expansion of their industries are extremely bleak. Their hopes will be dashed. The economic miracle which we are annually given to believe is just around the corner will remain remote. Even the London Business School's forecasts of opportunities suggest that we shall see no reduction in unemployment. At the end of the day, the test of regional policy will be the level of unemployment across the country.

Areas of high unemployment will be cheated out of much-needed aid by the gerrymandering of a Government who are concerned not with assisting areas which are in difficulty but with cheese-paring and giving money and assistance to those areas which have been their short-term electoral allies. They will not support this tawdry regime for very much longer.

Mr. Norman Lamont

With the leave of the House, perhaps I may be allowed to reply to the debate.

The speech of the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) was itself a pretty large sandwich without much meat in it. I read that when Senator Hart was making some of his long speeches, people in the audience used to hold up pieces of bread. If the hon. Gentleman had gone on much longer, he might have had the same reaction.

We had a number of remarks in the debate which were very much of a Second Reading nature. I intend to address my remarks to the amendment, which means that I can be extremely brief, because very little about the amendment has been said by Opposition Members.

The right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) raised a legitimate question about the timing of announcements. We hope to make the announcements on the map within a few weeks. The orders will be made at the same time. I cannot comment on the public expenditure considerations.

I may have made a mistake in describing this as a relatively small amendment, but certainly it should have been welcomed by the Opposition. It has not been welcomed, partly because the Opposition wanted to make their Second Reading speeches and partly because—no doubt the fault is mine for not explaining it adequately —they have completely misunderstood the purpose of the amendment. It was to allow transitional arrangements to operate for selective assistance. That should be welcomed — in the assisted areas industrialists will continue to get selective assistance for a longer period. We have put in transitional arrangements for selective assistance that are analagous to those for regional development grants. That is a plus point, not a minus point. All the frothing from the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) has no basis.

1.15 am
Mr. Williams

The Minister should bear in mind that I welcomed the amendment on behalf of the Opposition. However, his point to my hon. Friends about what he called Second Reading speeches highlights a question that I asked him, which he has not yet answered. When shall we have a debate? One of the reasons why there have been Second Reading speeches is that as yet we have not had an opportunity of a proper debate on the basis of the policy that the Government intend to bring forward——

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker)

Order. It is true that the debate has ranged rather wider than the terms of the amendment on the Order Paper. I hope that the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) is not now trying to widen it still further. We should keep to the amendment.

Mr. Lamont

As the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) well knows, a debate on the announcement and the principles of the Government's regional policy is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. We have said again and again that we are well aware of the intense interest in this subject. When important announcements are to be made, my right hon. Friend will give careful consideration to the strong feelings that have been expressed again and again about having a full-scale debate on the proposals.

The hon. Member for Dunfermline, East described this as a new and disturbing amendment. There is nothing new or disturbing about it. It enables selective assistance to be paid for a transitional period—that is, to be paid for a longer period. The hon. Gentleman made many remarks about the travel-to-work areas, but there is nothing new about the composition of the travel-to-work areas in the amendment and the reference to employment office areas. All that we are doing is making sure that the arrangements that apply to RDGs will apply also to selective assistance. That is to say that the old map for a transitional period cart continue for selective as well as for automatic assistance.

If the hon. Gentleman thinks that there was anything new about the idea the map where assistance is paid being re-examined and altered, all that I can say is that I do not know where he has been far the past few months. Everyone in the House knows that the map is being revised. That includes the areas that get selective assistance as well as those that get RDGs, but by the amendment we are making the transition easier. The hon. Gentleman has no basis to make the great speech that he did about Dunfermline being downgraded, because he simply does not know.

Mr. Gordon Brown

Does the Minister agree that the amendment is necessary only because some areas will lose selective financial assistance entirely? Will he comment on the position of Dunfermline district, which he has already mentioned, and say whether he will look again at the travel-to-work areas that the Government have designated in the recent Employment Gazette?

Mr. Lamont

The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that I cannot comment on Dunfermline or any other travel-to-work area. He knows the answer to that question. He will know that the travel-to-work areas are designated by the Department of Employment on the basis of objective criteria — that is the building block of the assisted area map. We have to use them, but the hon. Gentleman cannot come to the conclusions that he reached about what will happen to Dunfermline because those map decisions are being made, and an announcement will be made in due course. The hon. Gentleman has no basis for what he said about that. He also has no basis for saying that we were compelling industrialists to make decisions on unknown areas. That is the opposite of what the amendment does. It enables people to carry on making decisions on the basis of the existing map. The hon. Gentleman got it precisely wrong.

The hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Wrigglesworth) referred to the uncertainty of the review, and I appreciate his feeling. We all want to get this matter settled as quickly as possible, but I could not possibly come along and announce the map today. We have to get the Bill through Parliament, get Royal Assent and the commencement order and make all these related decisions. I am sure that, on reflection, the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge that that is so.

Mr. O'Neill

That is a feeble argument.

Mr. Lamont

There is nothing feeble about it. The point raised was feeble and called for an obvious answer.

I cannot go through all the arguments about the Government's regional policy. They were fully debated on Second Reading and in Committee. I assure the House, however, that the amendment should be seen as benefiting people rather than disadvantaging them. In that sense, I commend it to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

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