Commons Sitting of 20 May 1986

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

  ROYAL ASSENT
  Mr. Speaker: I have to notify the House, in accordance with the Royal Assent Act 1967, that the Queen has signified her Royal Assent to the following Acts:

  1. Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986.

  2. Industrial Training Act 1986.

  3. Marriage (Prohibited Degrees of Relationship) Act 1986.

  4. Ullapool Harbour Order Confirmation Act 1986.

  5. Gull Island Protection Act 1986.

  6. Isle of Wight Act 1986.

Oral Answers to Questions
  EMPLOYMENT

    Labour Statistics
    1. Mr. Barnettasked the Paymaster General what is the total number of persons unemployed at the latest available date; and what rate of unemployment this figure represents.
    10. Mr. Flanneryasked the Paymaster General what is the present number of people unemployed.
    The Paymaster General and Minister for Employment (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): On 10 April 1986 the number of unemployed claimants in the United Kingdom was 3,325,058, which corresponds to an unemployment rate of 13·7 per cent.
    Mr. Barnett: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will be all too aware of the acutely damaging situation that those figures imply and that they have already been added to by the 1,000 or so redundancies made by British Caledonian Airways. Is he aware that this is the tip of an iceberg and that the whole tourist industry is likely to be seriously affected—an industry which contains some of the lowest-paid workers in Britain? What will the right hon. and learned Gentleman's Department do to protect those workers from some of the consequences of the Government's actions and policies?
    Mr. Clarke: The British Tourist Authority has been estimating that about 50,000 jobs a year will be generated by tourism. We are all worried about the implications of a quite unmerited response in America to recent incidents in Europe. A great deal of effort and money are now being put into reassuring Americans and informing them that they are much safer in British cities than in most American ones.
    Mr. Flannery: Are not these horrifying figures becoming more horrifying daily? Redundancies at British Rail Engineering Ltd. workshops are now coming, following close on the heels of redundancies at British Shipbuilders. There seems to be nothing that the Government can do. They boast that inflation has come down, but if they remove nearly 4 million people and their families from the purchasing area, inflation is bound to come down. The Government can envisage no means of reducing unemployment without pouring some money into the economy. I venture to guess that that is what the Prime Minister is about to do.
    Mr. Clarke: We are all desperately disappointed that there are continuing redundancies in some of our older, heavier industries. That is why we have to keep up our excellent record of creating new jobs. The hon. Gentleman will know that nearly 1 million new jobs have been created in the British economy since the spring of 1983.
    Mr. Hill: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that one major factor is the trade union movement's failure to realise what a scourge it would be in world competitive terms if it did not get its act in order in time to he able to compete with some of the emerging nations in shipbuilding, television assembly and many other industries?
    Mr. Clarke: There is certainly a need to keep down the level of pay settlements, which I hope more trade union leaders realise. We must also carry on improving job flexibility and flexibility of trades to keep up our excellent record of improved productivity, which has been beaten only by Japan since the Government came to office. The great reduction in the number of industrial disputes is undoubtedly helping Britain's industrial competitiveness.
    Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: Although I regret the national unemployment figures, is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that, in my constituency, many people have benefited from the enterprise allowance scheme, which helps to bridge the gap between complete dependence on benefit and self sufficiency once the business is under way?
    Mr. Clarke: Not only in my hon. Friend's constituency, where I am delighted to hear that things are going well, but all over the country, the enterprise allowance scheme is giving very useful support to many people who would otherwise be unemployed to go into business on their own.
    Mr. Donald Stewart: Do the Government also intend to maintain their excellent record on finding ways to massage the figures, which they have done six times since they came to power? If so, does it mean that they will wipe out unemployment by the general election, apart from the 4 million plus who will be looking for jobs?
    Mr. Clarke: That is rather a stale argument. The right hon. Gentleman knows that some of the changes to the figures have increased the total and that some have decreased it. They have all been attempts to make the figures reflect more accurately the position and to measure the number of claimants. He will know that if we take the labour force survey definition of the unemployed seeking work it is difficult to demonstrate that the figure ever rose as high as 3 million. It never appears to have done so.
    Mr. Forman: Is it not likely that in the longer term one of the main contributions to alleviating and, perhaps,

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    solving unemployment will be made by much more vigorous efforts at training and retraining? Does my right hon. and learned Friend accept the recent warning of the chairman of the Manpower Services Commission that during the next five years between half and three quarters of the total labour force will require some measure of training and retraining? Should not the Government he giving an even higher priority to that?
    Mr. Clarke: I certainly accept that the need for increased training is one of the key imperatives in improving the British economy and creating jobs. We have put a great deal of effort into the technical and vocational content of education in schools, and obviously we have an extremely successful youth training scheme in operation. Anything that we can do to improve the amount of adult training and retraining will be valuable.
    Mr. Evans: Will the Paymaster General confirm that the obscene figures he has given do not include the thousands of redundancies announced last week at British Shipbuilders, British Caledonian and Kodak, nor the thousands of redundancies that are to be announced today by British Rail? Will he also confirm that those figures include about 1,400,000 people who have not had employment for over 12 months? Will he take this opportunity to denounce last week's story in The Daily Telegraph that the nine pilot schemes that he announced are being backed by the Department's fraud squad, and that the exercise is aimed more at getting people off the unemployment register than at assisting them?
    Mr. Clarke: Obviously, the figures do not show the number of those who have become unemployed since the figures last appeared, nor do they show the number of people who have found jobs. The reality behind the figures is that each month a little under 500,000 people become unemployed and a little under 500,000 people find jobs. Half those who become unemployed find new jobs within three months. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the number of long-term unemployed is worrying and seems to exceed 1 million. That is why the initiative to which he refers involves interviewing each and every one of the long-term unemployed and offering them personal help. It happens as a result of that that a certain number of the long-term unemployed cease to claim benefit. I assume that the hon. Gentleman is not objecting to that.

    Tourism
    2. Mr. Chapmanasked the Paymaster General what is the latest estimate of the number of foreign tourists coming to Britain in the current year; and how this compares with the actual number in 1985.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. David Trippier): The British Tourist Authority has forecast that 15·1 million overseas visits will be made to the United Kingdom this year—4 per cent. more than last year's record figure of 14·5 million.
    Mr. Chapman: As American visitors are important to the success of the British tourist industry and there is talk that this year fewer may come to the United Kingdom because of recent events, will my hon. Friend encourage an initiative for American television personalities who are respected in this country and work here to go on television services in the United States to point out the virtues of coming here, not least of which is the statistical fact that
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    it is safer for anyone to walk the streets of any town or city in the United Kingdom, than it is to do so in any town or city in the United States?
    Mr. Trippier: My hon. Friend makes a good point. He will be pleased to hear that the British Tourist Authority is planning a major marketing drive in the United States using the slogan, "Britain speaks your language." It will feature well-known American personalities from entertainment and other spheres, as well as Americans living in or visiting the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: Does the Minister appreciate that any reduction in the number of American tourists coming here is a direct consequence of the Government's agreement to allow those American aeroplanes to bomb Libya? That is the reason for the reduction in the number of American tourists. Will he also concede that although the Government boast that this industry is growing, it represents the most underpaid and grossly exploited workers in Britain today?
    Mr. Trippier: I could not disagree more with the hon. Gentleman's first point, because terrorism was running rife before the support that the Government gave to the American Federal Government over the bombing of Libya. There has not been a reaction as he is suggesting. As to his latter point, it is pretty clear to all hon. Members who closely analyse the facts that the 50,000 net increase in jobs in tourism represents real jobs. It is no good the hon. Gentleman seeking to rubbish the industry as he does.
    Mr. Butterfill: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the decline in the number of American tourists has been grossly exaggerated by the media? It now appears that rather more people will be coming than was previously anticipated, and we hope that the royal wedding will attract even greater numbers.
    Mr. Trippier: My hon. Friend is right—the figures are grossly exaggerated. It is important to get the matter in perspective. There are suggestions of a 15 per cent. downturn in visitors from America, but this will have an effect of only 3 per cent. on spending in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Wainwright: Will the Minister investigate the likelihood that one major deterrent to trans-Atlantic visits this year is the persistent and depressing reports of the vile English weather? [Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I am not sure that there is Government responsibility for that.
    Mr. Wainwright: Therefore, will he invite the various tourist boards to cease fostering the illusion of continuous British sunshine and instead emphasise this country's unrivalled facilities for indoor entertainment?
    Mr. Trippier: The hon. Gentleman has an important point, although it would be stretching credulity to breaking point to think that anybody is attracted to this country because of the climate. I accept that point. However, the weather did not have a deterrent effect on those who came here last year and experienced what was a poor, or non-existent, summer, because figures for the first three months of this year are up on the figures for the same period last year, and we still expect an increase in inward tourism across the board, although I accept that there will be a downturn in the number of American tourists.
    Mr. Harris: I accept my hon. Friend's remarks. Is he aware that in certain areas of the country, particularly the south-west, there has been a decline in bookings from America and a number of cancellations? In no way do I associate myself with remarks made by Opposition Members, but is my hon. Friend aware that some people feel a little disappointed that this country having stood by America, some American tourists are not standing by this country and their plans to visit it?
    Mr. Trippier: My hon. Friend's first point is valid and is a fact, not a hypothesis, and I am prepared to accept that there have been the cancellations to which I referred. As to what the Government can do about it, I still think that my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman) made the most useful and constructive suggestion. What matters is not what Ministers and the Government say to Americans over there, but what Americans living here, such as the ambassador, say to their fellow countrymen to impress on them that the United Kingdom is a safe destination.
    Mr. Prescott: The House will be aware that in the past two Question Times for the Department of Employment, great play has been made of how the tourist industry has created jobs. Has the Minister seen the report this week in The Economist by Mr. Victor Middleton of Sussex university, who says that the boom conditions claimed for the tourist industry are little higher than they were in 1979, or his conclusion that the prediction of the creation of 100,000 jobs in the next four years is not only unrealistic but shown to be unfounded by the available evidence? Is this not a further example of the Government following their policy of massaging the unemployment figures downwards by talking jobs up?
    Mr. Trippier: I do not know how the Government can be accused of massaging the figures when the article contains only predictions by a journalist, who I believe is a university academic. The figure we have used, and which was quoted earlier in Question Time by my right hon. and learned Friend the Paymaster General was 50,000 jobs. I do not know how the hon. Gentleman arrives at the figure of 100,000 jobs over the next four years. The figure to which the Government constantly refer is 50,000 jobs. There is clear evidence that that is the number of jobs that have been created, year on year, for the last three years.

    Health and Safety (Small Firms)
    3. Mr Sternasked the Paymaster General if he will institute a review of the impact of health and safety legislation on small businesses.
    The Parliamentary-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Ian Lang): In January this year my right hon. and noble Friend announced that he was setting up a study of employer attitudes towards health and safety legislation and the way in which it is enforced. The study team has now completed its report and my right hon. and noble Friend has asked the Health and Safety Commission for its advice.
    Mr. Stern: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's reply. Given this Government's correct emphasis upon the removal of barriers to employment, will he confirm that with his right hon. and noble Friend he will continue to search for ways in which, while health and safety,
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    particularly in small businesses, can be preserved, bureaucratic barriers to employment can be eliminated wherever possible?
    Mr. Lang: I assure my hon. Friend that the thrust of the Government's intention to lift the burdens on small business will be reflected in the forthcoming White Paper. At the same time, the Government have no intention of downgrading the health and safety standards.
    Mr. Litherland: Why was no provision made in the survey for consultation with the work force? In my trade union, SOGAT 82, which has 200,000 members, there are four to five fatalities each year. Does that not emphasise that this is an uncaring Government?
    Mr. Lang: On the contrary, the purpose of the report demonstrates care on the part of the Government. I am glad to say that a strong commitment among small firms to health and safety at work was found by the study team. The Health and Safety Commission will have an opportunity to comment on the report, and Ministers will meet the commission to discuss it.
    Mr. John Browne: Does my hon. Friend accept that the greatest disincentive to the start-up of new businesses is not the lack of capital, high interest rates or high taxation, but the bureaucracy that has been created by excessive legislation? Will he reassure the House, even more than when he replied to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern), that he will not only continue to stop excessive legislation in his Department, but that he will impress the need for such action upon other Government Departments?
    Mr. Lang: I am happy to give that assurance to my hon. Friend. I hope that he will be further reassured by the publication of the White Paper.
    Ms. Clare Short: Does the Minister understand that we are getting a little tired of the fact that the argument that small businesses might find the regulations to be burdensome is being used as an excuse constantly to reduce safety standards in British industry? The protection against unfair dismissal has been reduced. The same applies to maternity leave. The Wages Bill was introduced on the excuse that it was in the interests of small businesses, and it is now suggested that we should riot have proper health and safety standards. Good, small businesses do not want all of that. They want proper regulations imposed on all businesses so that good businesses are not undermined by the bad.
    Mr. Lang: The hon. Lady is quite wrong. Small firms welcome the simplification that will be proposed in the report. I think the hon. Lady will be pleased to hear that the report commends the Government's decision to repeal restrictive legislation on the working hours of women.

    Youth Training Scheme
    6. Mr. Campbell-Savoursasked the Paymaster General what recent representations he has received on the operation of the two year YTS programme.
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: I regularly receive correspondence which indicates widespread support for the extension of YTS to a two-year programme from April of this year.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: Is the Paymaster General aware that a number of companies in Cumbria and

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    elsewhere in the country are abandoning the two-year scheme because of the cost? They have also cut the number of places on the scheme because of their second year obligations. In so far as there is cross-party support in the House for an effective two-year scheme, what does the Paymaster General intend to do if the numbers drop?
    Mr. Clarke: I am glad to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that nine out of 10 of the places required for this year have already been secured. That is much better than at the equivalent stage when YTS was introduced about three years ago. Obviously I regret it when some employers drop out, but we think that it is right that employers should make an increased contribution, given that in the second year the trainees usually are of considerable value to the company. That policy is widely supported, not least by the TUC and its representatives on the Manpower Services Commission.
    Mr. Rowe: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that the widespread support for the two-year YTS scheme is growing in my part of the world? The particularly commendable aspect is the way in which it is intended to mesh it with the national qualifications system. Can my right hon. and learned Friend say when the review will be completed?
    Mr. Clarke: The results of the review are in the hands of Ministers, and we hope very early to announce decisions. This is an important issue, as it is very necessary to sort out the state of vocational qualifications. I am glad to say that we are well advanced with the process of providing certification for YTS trainees at the end of the two years. We intend that every trainee should receive good quality training, which will at least put them on the way to a recognised vocational qualification.
    Mr. Meadowcroft: Is the Paymaster General aware of the long series of exchanges between the Minister of State and me on the question of YTS and the voluntary sector? Can he give us hope that there will be a high number of premium places for those in the voluntary sector who are going on B1 schemes, which will otherwise be badly hit as they will be unable to cope with the administrative costs involved?
    Mr. Clarke: There are already many premium places. Obviously it is important that we should provide those places when there is no alternative provision for more difficult-to-place youngsters with private employers. The changes made this year have largely resulted from the fact that we are now funding schemes on the basis of the amount of training that they deliver, and we are no longer funding for unfilled places. Things are now bedding down quite well, and I think that we will have the number of places, of all kinds, that we require.
    Mr. Dorrell: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the overwhelming weight of evidence shows that by far the most efficient way of training to meet manpower needs in companies is for those companies to be actively involved in training? Is it not one of the most welcome parts of the new YTS that my right hon. and learned Friend's policy encourages firms to invest in their own training needs instead of expecting the state to do it all for them?
    Mr. Clarke: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. I think that we must carry on trying to get the message through to those parts of British industry that do not train that the same principle must apply to adult training.
    Ms. Clare Short: If the schemes are so popular, why is the Paymaster General taking powers under the Social Security Bill to cut the benefits available to those unemployed people who refuse places or leave for 13 weeks instead of six? Does that not represent yet another move towards forcing the unemployed on to schemes that they do not find acceptable?
    Mr. Clarke: The rule for social benefit entitlement is long standing. First, people must be genuinely available for work. Secondly, they must not lose jobs through indiscipline or refusal. The hon. Lady knows full well that the reasons for the recent changes have been explained by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Social Services. They are not particularly out of line with the policy that has been adopted ever since the beginning of the welfare state.

    Departmental Leaflets
    7. Mr. Thurnhamasked the Paymaster General if he will take steps to simplify the leaflets coming out of his Department.
    Mr. Trippier: The first elements of the Department of Employment's simplification campaign were announced on 22 April. These consisted of a simple guide to employment legislation and an employment form.
    Mr. Thurnham: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Can he do more to help potential employers, who are deterred by over-complicated leaflets that make them feel that taking on employees just means taking on many heavy legal responsibilities?
    Mr. Trippier: It is because I accept that employers believe that by taking on more employees they are taking on heavy legal responsibilities and that the forms issued by the Department are too complicated that I announced the simplification drive. A pilot scheme is in operation in the Thames Valley area and in the north-west region. If we are successful in simplifying the message that we are trying to convey, the exercise will be replicated nationwide.
    Mr. Wainwright: Will the Minister make some of his leaflets more meaningful and helpful to the growing army of long-term unemployed, by including in them new policies that offer retraining? Many of those people find that their job skills erode very quickly.
    Mr. Trippier: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to say that we only recently issued a new booklet entitled, "Action for Jobs", which has met with widespread approval, I understand, on both sides of the House. There is now increased awareness about what training schemes are available. Perhaps all that was long overdue, but it was held up as a result of the new responsibilities that the Department assumed in September 1985.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Will my hon. Friend arrange for his Department to produce a simple leaflet to explain to one of my constituents, a talented young lady who has been accepted at Harper Adams on a sandwich course,

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    how she might obtain employment on a farm where she needs to fulfil at least two years of the four-year course, bearing in mind that farmers are more inclined to employ young people on youth training schemes than the more qualified young people who are undertaking a course at Harper Adams agricultural college?
    Mr. Trippier: I have every sympathy with the point raised by my hon. Friend. I should like to look in some detail at the point that he has drawn to my attention. I am sure he will forgive me if I say that I do not intend to produce a new leaflet. My task, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) suggested, is to cut the number down.
    Mr. Skinner: Is the Minister aware that they would not need any leaflets, simplifed or otherwise, if they used all their time and energy to create jobs and get down the mass unemployment total, which is well over 4 million? Why does the Minister not do that?
    Mr. Trippier: It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman should use the term "they", when he has not made it clear whether he means the Government or the employers. The difference between the hon. Gentleman and myself is that he thinks that the Government create jobs, whereas all my hon. Friends know that employers create jobs. The purpose of producing simplified material is to make it easier for them to create wealth and work.
    Mr. Adley: As leaflets help to create jobs and provide information, can my hon. Friend, who has responsibility for tourism, produce a leflet which shows that the number of American citizens killed in Europe this year is five, and that the number of American citizens killed in New York city so far this year is 464? Will he then send large quantities to the American embassy? If that does not work, will he concentrate, not on the United States, but on markets in the far east, whose tourists seem to be less fickle in their habits?
    Mr. Trippier: I am glad that my hon. Friend had the opportunity to make that valid point. Again, I am sure that he will forgive me if I resist his suggestion that we should produce yet another leaflet.
    Mr. Evans: Will the Minister instruct his Department to produce a simple and straightforward leaflet making it clear that Employment Ministers are totally opposed to the monstrous proposition that the unemployed should have their mortgage relief reduced by 50 per cent.?
    Mr. Trippier: As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Security. I am sure that the Minister in that Department will look at what he has said with interest. However, I would have thought that there is already widespread awareness of the point that the hon. Gentleman is seeking to make.

    Rotherham
    8. Mr Hardyasked the Paymaster General what is the proportion of the population of the Rotherham metropolitan district which is in full-time employment; and what is the comparable national proportion.
    Mr. Lang: The 1981 census of population showed that 55·3 per cent. of the population of working age resident
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    in Rotherham were in full-time employment in April 1981. The corresponding proportion for Great Britain as a whole was 58·1 per cent.
    Mr. Hardy: The situation has changed dramatically since 1981. Would not the updated figures show quite startlingly, not only the appaling scale of need in the Rotherham metropolitan area, but the almost criminal misrepresentation of the official employment statistics published by the Government, which disguise the sheer scale of the waste of human resources and the enormous and rapidly growing economic need in south Yorkshire and many other industrial areas in England?
    Mr. Lang: The Government recognise that Rotherham has special problems. That is why we are applying special measures to the area. The hon. Gentleman may like to know that the Rotherham and Mexborough travel-to-work area has had almost £17 million worth of regional assistance since 1979, which has helped to create 3,000 jobs and save another 1,900. It also has an enterprise zone which, over two years, has helped 58 new and established companies employing around 1,500 people.
    Mr. Barron: Does the Minister not realise that the help given to the Rotherham area has done nothing to alleviate unemployment? We have had six years during which the main employers in south Yorkshire, steel and coal, have been massively run down under direction from the Government. The aid that has gone to the area has done nothing to stop the masses of young people going straight from school on to the dole. Rotherham needs a more caring attitude from the Government. It does not just need money. The Government should do something in real terms.
    Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman is right to mention steel and coal as problem areas where jobs have been lost. However, the Government have invested some £55 million in the new company being established by BSC and GKN in the engineering steel sector. There is also considerable encouragement for NCB (Enterprise) Ltd., with the establishment of new funds. to encourage ex-miners to develop new industries. The adult training facilities have been substantially increased over the past year, and 6,500 people are on youth training schemes in the Rotherham and Doncaster areas.
    Mr. Phillip Oppenheim: Are not Opposition Members unconsciously admitting that Government spending does not create jobs?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend asks a broad philosophical question. The measures for which my Department is responsible are carefully prepared and costed, and are increasingly effective. I commend to my hon. Friend the booklet "Action for Jobs", which sets them all out in detail.
    Mr. Crowther: Does the Minister accept from me, in reply to what his hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) has just said, that what Opposition Members are saying is that until there is a dramatic change in the Government's economic policies, all the so-called assistance that is going into Rotherham and other areas with high unemployment will not solve the problem? Merely to produce artificial, cosmetic schemes is not getting at the root of the trouble. We need a complete change in the Government's total economic policy before we see a real cut in the level of unemployment.
    Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman underrates the success in job generation of the Government's policies. Over the past three years we have generated around 1 million additional new jobs. Although the problems at Rotherham remain substantial, the hon. Gentleman might like to know that job placings there have risen by 16 per cent. over the past year.

    Basildon
    9. Mr. Amessasked the Paymaster General if he will make a statement on his visit to Basildon on Tuesday 6 May.
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: I visited Basildon at the invitation of my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess), and was very glad to have the opportunity to see some of the encouraging employment and training initiatives that are taking place in the area. I visited St. Martin's community care trust, which is a community programme agency, a youth training scheme at GEC Avionics, and Basildon skillcentre. I also addressed Abilities '86, a presentation organised by the Manpower Services Commission to encourage employers in south-east Essex to think positively about employing disabled people.
    Mr. Amess: Following the visit of my right hon. and learned Friend to my constituency, for which I thank him, is he aware that unemployment in Basildon fell by 5·8 per cent. over the past year, and fell again this month? Does he agree that that is due to the hard work of local businesses, the success of the development corporation and the Commission for the New Towns, and the success of the various Government-sponsored and funded employment initiatives?
    Mr. Clarke: I was encouraged by everything that I saw and heard in Basildon. The number of people placed in jobs by our jobcentre went up by 16 per cent. over the past year. There are still a greater number of unfilled vacancies than there were a year ago. It is obvious that everything is well on the way to recovery in Basildon. I am glad to say that employment prospects are continually improving.

    Disabled People
    12. Mr. Ashleyasked the Paymaster General what is the current rate of unemployment for registered disabled people.
    Mr. Lang: There were 26,396 unemployed registered disabled people registered for employment at jobcentres and careers offices on 4 April 1986. It is not possible to convert that figure into an unemployment percentage rate because the number of registered disabled people in employment is not available.
    Mr. Ashley: Does the Minister agree that a figure of over 26,000 is very disturbing and damaging to disabled people? Will he ensure that the current Manpower Services Commission study on our quota system takes full account of the successful West German quota and levy system, which has been warmly welcomed by the EEC Commissioners?
    Mr. Lang: We look forward to receiving the MSC research proposals following the working group's inquiry into the operation of the quota scheme. My Department takes seriously its responsibilities for helping disabled
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    people into employment. The right hon. Gentleman might like to know that disabled participants on the community programme represent 6 per cent. of that programme. We have special eligibility criteria to help them into the programme.
    Mr. Watts: Does my hon. Friend share my disappointment at the fact that thus far only one contract has been placed under the MSC pilot employment initiative for disabled people? Will he undertake to have a close look at the proposal from the Chalvey trust in my constituency, on which matter I have written to his right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State?
    Mr. Lang: I shall look forward to consulting my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State on that letter and the reply to it.
    Mr. Pavitt: With regard to the figure of over 26,000 unemployed disabled people, will the Minister look at the anomaly between the physically disabled and the blind? Whereas disabled people can go back to sheltered workshops, once the blind leave, they go straight to the unemployment queue. Will the Minister ask the Select Committee on Legislation to consider amending the Act?
    Mr. Lang: I shall take full note of that point. We have expanded the sheltered employment programme. The number of severely disabled people on the programme increased from 14,900 in 1983–84 to 16,300 last year.

    Self-employment
    13. Mr. Kenneth Carlisleasked the Paymaster General by how much the number of people in self-employment has increased since 1980.
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: Between December 1980 and December 1985, the latest date for which figures are available, the number of self-employed in Great Britain increased by 600,000, or 29·9 per cent.
    Mr. Carlisle: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, in understanding unemployment, one must analyse the employment figures in great detail? Do the figures not show that our efforts to encourage self-employment have been successful? On the other hand, the analyses show also that there are considerable skill shortages. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that if all those involved in industry increased their skill training substantially more jobs would be created?
    Mr. Clarke: I readily agree with my hon. Friend. At a time when many new jobs are being created in the economy, it is frustrating to find that vacancies cannot be filled because of skill shortages. I hope that more will be done to improve that. We are combining the two programmes. In our adult training programme for next year we are including 60,000 places under a training for enterprise programme. The programme actually trains people so that they are able to go into businesses of their own.
    Mr. Hickmet: I welcome the figures that my right hon. and learned Friend has given the House. Does he accept that there is still a need for a balanced regional aid policy as well as for the establishment of enterprise zones in various parts of the country? Is there not a lesson to be learnt from such schemes in the number of jobs created in the areas that have them?
    Mr. Clarke: I agree. I am delighted to be able to say to my hon. Friend that, between April 1984 and April 1986, the absolute fall in the number of unemployed in Glanford and Scunthorpe, at 568, was the greatest in any constituency.
    Mr. Hardy: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that, although we should commend all those who are starting small businesses for their aspiration and courage, we should recognise that the growth is an illustration of hope triumphing over experience?
    Mr. Clarke: I do not agree. The vast majority of small businesses are successful and many of them provide employment for other people. That so many people can now thrive in their own businesses shows how rapidly the economy is expanding and what room there is for successful entrepreneurship.
    Mr. Yeo: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that among the many reasons for welcoming the increase in self-employment is the fact that it is usually one of the most satisfying ways of being occupied from the point of view of the person concerned, leaving him free to pursue his own initiatives, rather than being bossed about by other people?
    Mr. Clarke: I agree. Many people nurse the ambition to be their own boss and run their own business.
    Mr. Prescott: Does the Paymaster General accept that the figure of 600,000 self-employed is based on a 2 per cent. survey by his Department? Does he recognise that there is a substantial difference, of a quarter of a million, between the estimates of the number of self-employed in the census and those of his Department? Have not the self-employed figure been inflated to introduce them into the full labour force employment survey so that the Paymaster General can reduce the figure by I per cent. when he next announces the unemployment figures? That represents just another fiddle on the unemployment figures.
    Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman is foolish to try to reject the accuracy of figures that were compiled by our statisticians on the same basis as they have always been compiled. The hon. Gentleman is extremely reckless in wishing to use the census as the absolute bench-mark. Of course the census will give the most precise figure, but it is as likely to show that we have underestimated the number of self-employed as overestimated it.

    Enterprise Agencies
    14. Mr. Dickensasked the Paymaster General how many local enterprise agencies have applied for grants since October 1985.
    Mr. Trippier: Sixty one applications have been received from local enterprise agencies for funding under the new local enterprise agency grant scheme, which came into operation on 1 April this year. Prior to this date, and during the financial year 1985–86, 55 local enterprise agencies were given modest financial support under a pump-priming scheme run by my Department.
    Mr. Dickens: I very much welcome that news. Will my hon. Friend be more specific about Rochdale and Oldham in my constituency?
    Mr. Trippier: I can be specific. The local enterprise agencies that are operating in the Rochdale and Oldham
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    area would certainly qualify for the new local enterprise agency grant scheme. I shall be happy to receive the applications when they are put together in the form of a business plan.

    Unemployment (Demographic Factors)
    15. Mr. Teddy Taylorasked the Paymaster General when he expects that demographic factors will have a favourable impact on the level of unemployment; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: Our policies have contributed to the creation of nearly a million additional jobs between March 1983 and December 1985. This success has yet to be translated into a fall in unemployment, largely because of the rapid increase in the population of working age. The population of working age is projected to continue increasing, although at a slower rate, until 1989. Between 1989 and 1994 it should fall slightly.
    Mr. Taylor: Has not the substantial increase in the number of school leavers and the small number of retirals contributed several hundred thousand unemployed to the additional unemployment? What net improvement will there be next year compared with the position three years ago, which was worse?
    Mr. Clarke: It is always notoriously difficult to predict these changes. The best measure of where we are going is provided by the 985,000 net additional jobs created since March 1983. As the answer to my hon. Friend's question reveals, if we continue expanding the economy at that rate, we shall certainly get on top of the unemployment problem between now and the end of the decade.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Q1. Mr. Strangasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 20 May.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House I shall be having further meetings later today. This evening I hope to have an Audience of Her Majesty The Queen.
    Mr. Strang: Will the Prime Minister take time today to read the record in the Official Report of statements made last year by the Secretaries of State for Energy and for Scotland, urging those miners who were dismissed during the strike to take their case to the industrial tribunals? Is the right hon. Lady aware that today, in the House of Commons, there are 40 miners who took that advice and whom the tribunals recommended should be re-engaged, yet the National Coal Board is refusing to re-engage them? Is that not unjust? As a minimum, will the right hon. Lady give an undertaking that she or the Secretary of State for Energy will take an early opportunity to discuss the matter with the new chairman of the National Coal Board?
    The Prime Minister: No. As the hon. Gentleman is well aware, management of the NCB's activites resides not in the Government but, by Act of Parliament, in the board of the NCB.
    Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: Although I welcome my right hon. Friend's visit to Israel and her interest in trying

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    to get some sort of international peace process going, will she confirm that she will not visit the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza? What arrangements is she making to meet the leaders of the Palestinians, bearing in mind that their future is the core issue in the middle east?
    The Prime Minister: I expect to be meeting leaders of the Palestinians via an arrangement which has already been made. As at present advised, I do not expect to go into the occupied territories.
    Mr. Kinnock: I am sure that the Prime Minister will want to join me and many other hon. Members in condemning the South African attack on Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana—three Commonwealth countries — in an act of state terrorism which was clearly designed to damage the Commonwealth initiative. In view of that outrage, will the right hon. Lady give us an undertaking, first, that Britain will not use its veto in the event of mandatory sanctions being sought at the United Nations Security Council, and, secondly, that she will either initiate or support additional sanctions by the Commonwealth against South Africa?
    The Prime Minister: I totally and utterly condemn the raid by South Africa into the three countries to which the hon. Gentleman referred in detail. As he is aware, we have called in the chargé d'affaires from the South African embassy and expressed our views and how strongly we feel about the raids. After the raids and in the knowledge of them, the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group had a meeting with eight South African Ministers and discussed the way ahead. The group left its proposals with those South African Ministers. As the right hon. Gentleman is aware, the group has now left South Africa because the members of the group thought that that stage of their proceedings was over. It is just possible that they may continue their work. Even in view of what has happened, and in view of the violence on both sides, it is worth making every effort to stop South Africa dissolving into a cauldron of violence.
    Mr. Kinnock: I sincerely hope that persistence by the Eminent Persons Group will be rewarded by significant change within South Africa. Does the Prime Minister not accept that ticking off the South African chargé does not constitute effective action? The efforts of the Eminent Persons Group would be immensely strengthened, as would the efforts of the Commonwealth in general, if the Prime Minister demonstrated here and now that she is prepared to initiate and develop effective sanctions against South Africa.
    The Prime Minister: I do not believe that sanctions and the isolation of South Africa are any more likely to achieve the desired negotiations after the raid than they were before. The group of Heads of Government of the Commonwealth charged with duties in relation to the Eminent Persons Group will meet again in London at the beginning of August under the chairmanship of Sir Lynden Pindling. No doubt the stage reached by the Eminent Persons Group will be discussed then. I repeat, it is our great desire to prevent the terrible violence that could take place in South Africa and to do everything possible to assist the Eminent Persons Group in carrying out its role.
    Mr. Kinnock: With that earnest desire by the Prime Minister in mind, may I ask whether she will accept that the isolation of South Africa is the only plausible means
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    remaining to pursue the possibility of a non-violent resolution and a non-violent removal of apartheid? If she accepts that, does she not recognise the significance of the British Government, even in anticipation of the findings of the Eminent Persons Group, taking a firm stand in line with the original propositions of the Nassau agreement in order to demonstrate to South Africa that we will not appease apartheid nor tolerate its warfare against other African states and, consequently we will implement effective sanctions against South Africa?
    The Prime Minister: No, because sanctions would not help to achieve the objective that we seek. They did not do that in Rhodesia. It is right to do as we have done, to deny South Africa defence weapons. That is done under a mandatory Security Council resolution. We must keep in mind the objectives of discussion and dialogue and the prevention of violence on both sides.
    Mr. John Carlisle: Will my right hon. Friend accept that since the African National Congress declared an escalation of violence at the weekend, in the interests of self-defence the South African Government had no alternative but to prevent further bloodshed by the attack? Will the Prime Minister accept, as the former Australian Prime Minister Mr. Malcolm Fraser who is a member of the Eminent Persons Group accepted on today's lunchtime news, that all is not lost and that now is the time to redouble the efforts of the EPG to find a peaceful solution?
    The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend heard me say earlier, we totally and utterly condemn the raids conducted by South Africa on the three countries. Together with the Commonwealth we still believe that it is right—and I shall quote from the Commonwealth communiqué—to
    "Initiate, in the context of a suspension of violence on all sides, a process of dialogue across lines of colour, politics and religion, with a view to establishing a non-racial and representive government."
    For that purpose it is vital to secure the ending of violence on all sides. That was and will remain our objective. If we had given up on Rhodesia every time there was a terrible raid across the border or violence within that country, we should never have reached the settlement that we ultimately obtained.
    Mr. Steel: Has the British ambassador in Pretoria yet met the South African Foreign Minister, and, if so, what was the outcome? Will the right hon. Lady give the House an undertaking that once the Commonwealth Heads of Government have heard the report from the Eminent Persons Group she will not leave Britain isolated in the Commonwealth as being willing to utter words against apartheid but to take no action?
    The Prime Minister: I have told the right hon. Gentleman of the action that the Commonwealth countries together took with the formation of the Eminent Persons Group. I have said that the morning after the raids the group met eight Ministers, still determined to carry on with its task, if it possibly could, of achieving discussion and dialogue, because that is the most important thing. I am not aware whether our ambassador in South Africa has seen the President, but we are continuing our efforts to try to secure dialogue and discussion.
    Mr. Amery: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the South African raids in themselves are not so very different from those undertaken by Israel or, more recently, by the United States, with my right hon. Friend's co-operation?

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    Does she further agree that the cause of anxiety is the timing of those raids, when the eminent persons were in Cape Town? Had we not better wait for clarification of why the South Africans reacted as they did, and how the eminent persons have reacted, before we decide on any course of action?
    The Prime Minister: I hope my right hon. Friend will agree that the South African case is different from any other. Different, different, different in its apartheid; different in the degree of violence on all sides. It is our objective to end that violence and to secure dialogue and discussion. The Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group has undoubtedly suffered a setback as a result of what has happened, but I hope that it will continue its work as long as there is a possibility of its coming to a successful conclusion.
    Q2. Mr. Bruceasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 20 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Bruce: Will the Prime Minister today acknowledge that the British people want the Government to give top priority to finding alternative energy sources to nuclear power, and will she recognise that to do so would be much more beneficial to Britain's trade than importing unwanted pressurised water reactors from the United States?
    The Prime Minister: We must be realistic. Alternative energy sources such as harnessing the wind and the tides could meet only a tiny proportion of the great demand for power to keep the wheels of industry turning. There is a future for nuclear power in Britain and our record shows that we can go on and build nuclear power stations in the future, subject to the necessary planning permission.
    Mr. Michael McNair-Wilson: In view of the statements by the Secretary of State for Employment about the need for continuing wage restraint, does my right hon. Friend agree that any recommendations coming from the Top Salaries Review Body should be implemented in such a way that those earning most in the public sector are seen to be giving a lead to the country in terms of that restraint?
    The Prime Minister: I hear my hon. Friend's message. The reports of all the review bodies are now with the Government. We are considering them and hope to be in a position to make an early statement.
    Q3. Mr. Garrettasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 20 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Garrett: The Prime Minister may not have time today, but will she, perhaps in the next day or two, look at the redundancy plan that British Shipbuilders has imposed on the shipbuilding industry? Will she recognise that most Members of the House are deeply concerned about the decline in the British maritime fleet, in shipbuilding and in marine engineering? We recognise that there is a world surplus of shipping and that ships are being laid up, but it is the Government's overall responsibility to ensure that during the next three years the fleet is maintained and that shipbuilding and marine engineering are maintained at a level to ensure survival. I recognise that that will mean Government intervention at an early stage.
    The Prime Minister: I appreciate the realistic but concerned way in which the hon. Gentleman approaches the problem. As he knows, the size of the industry depends ultimately on the ability of the industry to sell its product in world markets and on the orders that we can achieve. I am afraid that the industry is much too large at the moment for the orders that could possibly be achieved. Even after the closures, we still have five British merchant shipbuilding yards, Harland and Wolff and sever, private yards, and he is right to say that the race is on to secure the orders that are available in world markets. There are not many public orders to be brought forward, apart from the naval shipyard orders that are coming forward. There is one protection vessel for fisheries and some ferry boats, but these are small compared with what is needed, so we have managed to arrange a line of soft credit to try to secure such orders as are available.
    4. Mr. Butterfillasked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 20 May.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Butterfill: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it remains the policy of her Government to replace the Polaris system with the Trident missile submarine system? Does she agree with me that any political party that had a policy of refusing to replace Polaris would be playing Russian roulette with the defence of the nation and would he unfit to put itself forward as ready to participate in any future Government?
    The Prime Minister: Yes. A deterrent, to be effective, cannot be allowed to become obsolete. It must be modernised and kept up to date, and that is why we are going for the Trident deterrent. I would also point out that Trident will, of course, keep going 6,000 jobs in British shipyards.

University Funding
3.31 pm
The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Sir Keith Joseph): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about university funding.
The University Grants Committee is today writing to the universities to inform them of their grants for the 1986–87 academic year in the context of their planning to the end of the decade. This announcement represents the allocation between individual universities of the recurrent grant for 1986–87 that I announced on 12 November last. The committee will also inform the universities next week of the detailed outcome of the important initiative it has taken to encourage and reward excellence in university departments by selective reallocation of the funds available.
The detailed results of this exercise will be conveyed to the universities by the UGC. In plain language, they mean the following more funds for the better research departments and less for the less good; a greater incentive to all universities and departments to improve both their academic standards and their management and use of resources.
This is a landmark in university funding which the Government strongly support. I am particularly grateful the UGC for the commitment, skill and energy it has shown in pressing forward in the interests of excellence this initiative directed towards greater effectiveness and value for money at a time when all budgets are under pressure.
If we are to continue to improve the quality and effectiveness of our universities, we must provide positive incentives to individual institutions for better management and better teaching and research. This is what the new selective arrangements for grant allocation are designed to achieve. Instead of basing future funding simply on the accumulation of decisions of the past, the UGC has started afresh and devised a method of distributing grant based on positive judgments about the needs of teaching, the quality of research in all disciplines, and the rewarding of institutional enterprise. In this task the UGC and its subcommittees have been helped by advice from the research councils, the Royal Society and other bodies.
The Government are under no illusions about the difficulties of restructuring and rationalisation involved. As some departments gain, others may have to be reduced and even closed. Universities will have to grasp every opportunity for greater efficiency and effectiveness in using the resources available to them. Decisions about future levels of funding are normally considered in the public expenditure survey. Precise amounts are for consideration then. But, in these exceptional circumstances, and in order to give the universities a reasonable chance to adapt to the changes needed in the national interest, I am telling the UGC today that the Government will be ready to consider with it some further financial provision in 1987–88 and the following financial years.
The Government's willingness to make such additional provision will, however, depend crucially on evidence of real progress in implementing and building upon the changes that are needed. They will include, as well as the development of the policy of selectivity and the rationalisation and where appropriate closure of small departments, better financial management and improved
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standards of teaching. If there is to be a new structure for academic pay, Ministers will need to be satisfied that it will provide the necessary flexibility to enable institutions to recruit and retain staff of the required quality.
I shall be discussing the way forward with the UGC and with the Committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals.
The general letter of guidance that the chairman of the UGC is sending to all universities will be placed in the Library of the House tomorrow, and the grants to individual universities for 1986–87 will be published in the Official Report of tomorrow's proceedings. The chairman's letter will be followed in about a week's time by institutional annexes relating to the student numbers and research funding of each university, which will also be placed in the Library.
Mr. Giles Radice: Is the Secretary of State aware, particularly after all the weekend publicity, that his statement today will be a bitter disappointment to all who are concerned about the state of higher education? Will he confirm that, coming on top of the £23 million cuts in 1987–88 announced by the National Advisory Body, today's UGC letter, of which I have a copy, shows that the universities' recurrent grant was cut by 5 per cent. in real terms in 1985–86, and is being cut by over 2 per cent. in the coming year? We did not hear anything about that.
Is it not the case that 18 universities, including Aston, Durham, Hull, Keele, Newcastle, Cardiff, and Aberdeen, face actual cash cuts? Is it not the case that many departments will close and that the UGC is planning for cuts in student numbers in physical sciences, mathematics and statistics and biological sciences, all of which the Secretary of State has said are vital to the nation?
Is not today's statement, with its support for cuts and half-hearted promises of talks some time in the future, a savage indictment of the Secretary of State's period in office? It is bad news for universities, bad news for students, and bad news for industry. We are the only major country in western Europe cutting back on higher education. and it is a shame for the country.
Sir Keith Joseph: The reaction of the hon. Gentleman. as the representative of the official Opposition, will not be the reaction of the world of universities, nor of the world of science. It is a landmark for the country that the UGC, with the Government's encouragement, is for the first time providing tangible evidence of the encouragement of excellence in universities in terms of the research quality of all departments, be they in the arts and humanities or in the sciences.
The hon. Gentleman's comments about the National Advisory Body were to misunderstand totally the pure mischief-making which that unjustified prediction represented and are, anyway, irrelevant to this afternoon's statement about universities. The allocation of the already announced money that will be distributed by the UGC today, tomorrow and next week will recognise for the first time the differential quality of departments in universities so as to encourage excellence. That is a landmark which the House would be wise to recognise.
Mr. J. F. Pawsey: Does my right hon. Friend accept that the proposals will be widely regarded as a watershed in the funding of universities? Does he further accept that the idea of funding those

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departments which are demonstrably better is to be encouraged and in itself will do much to improve standards throughout higher education?
Sir Keith Joseph: My hon. Friend has precisely the right reaction. In an attempt to assist universities, especially those that might otherwise be hard hit by the changes, the Government have expressed themselves ready, subject to the compliance of the universities with the conditions laid down, to consider allocating more money for 1987–88 and subsequent years.
Mr. Stephen Dorrell: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is fundamental to the idea of a university that each department of the institution should combine research and teaching functions? Although it is necessary to be discriminating in the allocation of grant between departments and universities, and although it may be necessary to encourage structural change, will my right hon. Friend assure the House that each department emerging from the changes will continue to combine teaching and research functions?
Sir Keith Joseph: My hon. Friend has touched on a point which is generally recognised to be true, but it is subject to some disagreement among academics. The decision will be for the UGC, the university and the department. I cannot give the guarantee which my hon. Friend requests.
Mr. A. J. Beith: Is it not an insult to the UGC and universities to suggest that they have never before sought selectively to promote excellence in their activities? In plain figures, is not the truth that the universities have been cut by 10 per cent. during the past five years, will he cut by 2 per cent. next year and that the promises which the Secretary of state is making now relate to a time when he will not be the Secretary of State and even to a time when the Government will not be in power any more?
Sir Keith Joseph: The hon. Gentleman fails to recognise that, although it is true that universities and departments have striven to improve excellence, this is the first time that the UGC has sought, in distributing taxpayers' money, to recognise the differences of quality.
As for the reductions in expenditure by the taxpayer, the universities have contributed to constraints on public spending. This year, for which I am making the announcement, that is also true, but the universities have said—the Government have listened carefully—that it will be necessary to change the prospects for future years if the consequences of redistribution and rationalisation are not to endanger the existence of some universities. In recognition of the reallocation to recognise the qualities of different departments and the warnings that we have received from universities, the Government have undertaken to consider the provision of more money for 1987—88 and future years, provided that the universities comply with the conditions laid down.
Mr. Martin J. O'Neill: Does the Secretary of State appreciate that there is little confidence in British universities in the capability of the UGC to carry out the exercise in pursuit of excellence that he has suggested? If he had confidence in the UGC, would he not have been more specific about the impact on many institutions that have had to put up with repeated attacks on their funding during the past five or six years? Would
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he be specific about Stirling university and say to what extent its funding will be affected by the consequences of his statement?
Sir Keith Joseph: I cannot go into the individual circumstances of universities. That is for them to learn from the UGC. I am not at all surprised by the hon. Gentleman's expression of doubt about the confidence of anybody to make the judgments, but the UGC has about 100 academics on its sub-committees. They have contributed their judgment, as have the research councils, the Royal Society and some people who are eminent in their fields. The UGC has taken great trouble to gather peer voices which will be respected in their areas.
Mr. Patrick Cormack: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a little difficult to follow and evaluate a statement without the figures and the details? Will he give some thought to that for the future? Can he tell us whether the UGC has expressed complete satisfaction with what it has done?
Sir Keith Joseph: The UGC has taken a bold and pioneering step. No doubt there will be some discussion between it and the universities. It is for the UGC to announce the figures. They will be placed in the Library and in the hands of universities later today, if the universities catch them, or tomorrow, with a supplementary letter from the UGC next week.
Dr. John Marek: The Secretary of State must accept that he has made a dismal statement today. Scholarship, research and education will suffer far more than they already have under the Government.
As for the UGC letter, can the right hon. Gentleman tell me why universities mainly in the leafy south-east such as Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Kent, Loughborough. Southampton, Sussex and Warwick have been protected the most and have had cash increases during the past year whereas nearly every university and college in Scotland and Wales and most universities in the north of England are experiencing cash cuts in 1986–87? This is a disgraceful statement, and the Secretary of State ought to resign.
Sir Keith Joseph: As I tried to explain in my statement, the UGC has attempted to rectify the overfunding and underfunding that has occurred during the past few years as the basis for allocation between universities and to build into that redistribution a recognition of quality of research, which includes, as I understand it, in brief, scholarship that breaks new ground in knowledge and understanding, between different departments of different universities.
Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it will be the Government's policy to prevent the brain drain and to ensure that the best scientists are glad to work in British universities?
Sir Keith Joseph: My hon. Friend is on to a most important subject. As part of the remedy for the brain drain, it is crucial that salary structures in higher education should give some discretion and flexibility to the institutions concerned and not have as little flexibility as now.
Mr. George Park: When the Secretary of State recently required the universities to

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reduce the number of staff, the UGC felt unable, because it did not have sufficient expertise, to guide the universities on how the job reductions should be done. How has the UGC suddenly acquired the expertise necessary to advise on degrees of excellence?
Sir Keith Joseph: I believe that the UGC has respected the autonomous decision-making processes of universities. The problem about staff changes under the constraints of the early 1980s was that the time available for universities was relatively brief.
Mr. W. Benyon: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement. Does it have any implications for the Open University which, although not funded through the UGC, still has a substantial research element?
Sir Keith Joseph: No, Sir. The Open University is one of three related institutions which are directly funded by the Department of Education and Science.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill), did I understand the Secretary of State to say that, in the mechanism of shrinkage of universities, the Royal Society, sub-committees of the UGC and other bodies such as research councils agreed to take part? Has Sir George Porter, for example, the President of the Royal Society, been consulted? Who is to make these positive judgments about the needs of teaching, the quality of research and rewarding institutional enterprise because, on the basis of those criteria, the first place to go is All Souls college, Oxford?
Sir Keith Joseph: The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood. The exercise that I explained in my statement is connected not with the shrinkage of universities but with the redistribution of taxpayers' money to recognise more or less excellence in research. The effectiveness of teaching cannot be identified from the outside while, to some extent, the quality of research can be recognised. The quality and effectiveness of teaching remain overwhelmingly the responsibility of the individual university and department. The committee of Vice-Chancellors and Principals has assured us that it proposes to set up staff training functions, and will do whatever it can in every way to improve the effectiveness of teaching.
On Sir George Porter, I said that in exercising its judgment on research the UGC has turned not only to its sub-committees, but to experts from the Royal Society, from related bodies, from the research councils and from eminent recognised authorities in the peer groups.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have to take account of the fact that following this statement there is a further statement, three applications under Standing Order No. 10, a ten-minute Bill and the Social Security Bill under the guillotine. Therefore, I shall allow questions on this statement to continue until 4 pm. Then we must move on.
Mr. Harry Greenway: Can my right hon. Friend be more forthcoming about how better teaching will be rewarded? Will there be appraisal systems; and, if so, who will conduct them? Is the implication of his statement, which is welcome in so many ways, that no university is destined for closure?
Sir Keith Joseph: Stories in the press about possible closures are not remotely justified by the picture that I have presented this afternoon. As for the encouragement of teaching, I understand that the universities and, indeed, the Association of University Teachers, recognise that appraisal might be relevant in universities. For the first time the UGC has recognised the needs of certain subjects for a larger allocation of public money for teaching. That will emerge from the statement.
Mr. Derek Fatchett: Will the Secretary of State confirm that this, his final statement in the House as Secretary of State, will lead during the next four years to a planned reduction in the number of undergraduate places at British universities, thereby making it more difficult for highly qualified young people to find places at universities? Will he take this opportunity to answer an earlier question about why the Government intend to cut the physical sciences, the biological sciences and mathematics—the very subjects that are supposed to be at the heart of future economic development?
Sir Keith Joseph: The answer to the first question is no, Sir. The answer to the second is that the hon. Gentleman must not confuse reduction with redistribution. Redistribution is what is involved.
Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Does my hon. Friend accept that universities such as Lancaster which have demonstrated their ability to attract outside funding and are led by a dynamic vice-chancellor will welcome the challenge put to them by my right hon. Friend and the UGC, and will continue to play a full part in the national and international scene of higher education?
Sir Keith Joseph: I would have expected my hon. Friend and Lancaster university to respond as robustly as she has. I should like to emphasise that the scope of those departments which have not been identified as excellent in this particular survey will remain for improvement, if it is so decided.
Mr. Michael Hancock: Will the Secretary of State say how many places will be created or saved by these proposals, and whether the sum matches the £30 million that the UGC has said is needed to protect university places now? Will next year's allocation exceed the £60 million which it estimates will be needed to protect the ongoing commitment to university education?
Sir Keith Joseph: There is no implication in my statement for student numbers this year, either up or down. The Government take pride in the fact that students in higher education are a record proportion of a record age vintage.
As for the financial figures to which the hon. Gentleman referred, any financial improvement agreed by the Government will be considered against the performance of the university's compliance with the conditions that I am laying down at the normal time of the public expenditure survey, in the autumn. I invite the House to recognise, as the Government do, that universities and polytechinics have moved substantially nearer to industry, business and commerce in recent years, and we recognise and are grateful for this.
Mr. Alan Howarth: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government's initiatives to encourage charitable giving open up the possibility of

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worthwhile additional funding from industry and grant-giving charities for academic institutions, of demonstrable value? Does he accept that the limitations on what can be afforded from taxation are not necessarily the ultimate constraint on academic funding?
Sir Keith Joseph: I agree with my hon. Friend, and would emphasise that universities need to follow up the initiative of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Budget to get the benefits that my hon. Friend rightly says might be available.
Mr. Ernie Ross: Does the Secretary of State accept that, whether or not it is in the leaked letter, what he is really saying is that there will be fewer teachers, courses and students as a direct result of the statement?
Sir Keith Joseph: No, Sir. That is not remotely justified.
Mr. Nicholas Lyell (Mid-Bedfordshire): Does not the courageous and proper decision by the UGC reflect a widespread feeling among universities, particularly the scientific ones, that it is essential to concentrate resources on excellence and phase out the weaker elements? Are not certain of the figures bandied about this afternoon put into perspective when one remembers that one small university adjacent to my constituency, Cranfield, raises no less than £35 million a year from industry and private contract sources?
Sir Keith Joseph: Yes, Sir, subject only to remembering that there is scope for departments that need to improve themselves in quality.
Mr. John Maxton: Is the Secretary of State aware that the statement confirms the view of Scottish people that the universities of Scotland are not safe in the hands of the Department of Education and Science and the UGC? Therefore, will the right hon. Gentleman consult the Secretary of State for Scotland to implement immediately the view of the Scottish Tertiary Education Advisory Council that there should be a separate UGC to take account of the separate nature of Scottish universities?
Sir Keith Joseph: Successive Governments have relied on the UGC to make decisions about the allocation of public money, and the Government have no intention of departing from that practice.
Mr. Michael Forsyth: My right hon. Friend's statement has not been welcomed by the Opposition, but it will be welcomed on the campus of Stirling university if it means that resources will be allocated to the departments according to performance and success. Will my right hon. Friend go further and consider allocating resources according to student preference as the measure of a department's success, and accept congratulations on ending the horse trading that has gone on within the UGC to allocate resources?
Sir Keith Joseph: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and agree with much of what he has said. To some extent, the fact that public money follows student choice already recognises that student choices have a large contribution to make. Nevertheless, we want to ensure, as I am sure my hon. Friend does, that the quality of teaching and research in the chosen universities is excellent.
Mr. Kevin McNamara: Is it not true that the universities need at least a 5 per cent.
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increase this year to maintain their present capacity, so that the 0·3 per cent. that the Secretary of State is knocking off the allocation to Hull university amounts to a cut in real terms of 5·3 per cent? Hull has suffered more than any university under this Secretary of State. Why does he have it in especially for Hull and Humberside? Last week he announced that a further 500 places were to go at the college of higher education. What have we done wrong to be treated in this way?
Sir Keith Joseph: There is bound to be some satisfaction and some dissatisfaction in different departments, resulting from the judgment of the UGC in what I repeat is a landmark set of decisions.
Mr. Martin M. Brandon-Bravo: Notwithstanding proper allowance being made for the different types of course on offer at universities, is it not true that there is a substantial difference in the cost per student as between one institution and another and that therefore past spending is a measure neither of need nor of excellence? Is the Secretary of State saying that nuclear magnetic resonance and other medical research at Nottingham is precisely the kind of excellence to which public funds should be directed?
Sir Keith Joseph: I cannot go into individual judgments, because that is the province of the UGC. However, I think that my hon. Friend has the right end of the stick.
Mr. D. E. Thomas: How can the Secretary of State describe these changes as being in the national interest when his policies cannot result in a substantial increase in the number of graduates and undergraduates at levels equivalent to those in Europe or North America? Will he specify exactly how many' redundancies in both teaching and non-teaching staff will be created throughout the system by his statement?
Sir Keith Joseph: No change in student numbers or employment in universities is, in aggregate, presaged by today's statement. A redistribution may result. One of the main contributions to excellence is quality of research and effectiveness of teaching. That is precisely what the UGC' with the Government's encouragement, has now pioneered.
Mr. Nigel Forman: Was there not a key phrase in my right hon. Friend's welcome statement, namely, that further financial provision would be conditional upon selectivity? In the light of that, does he pay due regard in his discussions with the Treasury and other Government Ministers to the figures in, I believe, volume 2 of the public expenditure White Paper which make it clear that the social rate of return on higher education in this country is between 5 and 8 per cent., which is much better than the return on almost any other category of public spending?
Sir Keith Joseph: I must say yes to my hon. Friend. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the House will read the details of what I have announced today. We are offering to the university system the possibility of further funding, depending upon the negotiations on the public expenditure survey this year, if it builds on the announcements that have been made today.
Mr. Max Madden: Will the Secretary of State give a clear undertaking that the

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university of Bradford, which, with Aston and Salford, suffered savage cuts in 1981 and which recently announced the closure of its physics department, is to receive under his proposals a net real increase in resources, or the reverse?
Sir Keith Joseph: The hon. Gentleman will have to look at the details in the letters, but the former chairman of the UGC who presided over the allocations in 1981 recently wrote to The Times to say that, in his view, thanks to the presence of two very vigorous vice-chancellors, Salford and Aston are both better universities now than they were in 1981.
Mr. Peter Bruinvels: I welcome the announcement and I bear in mind that Leicester university will benefit from today's announcement, but will my right hon. Friend confirm that no blank cheque is available, that university results must be improved, and that the unnecessary courses in some universities should be done away with and excellence maintained?
Sir Keith Joseph: Yes, Sir.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Will the Secretary of State explain why he has not put the UGC letter before the House today so that right hon. and hon. Members could see for themselves the extent of the real term cuts both in resources for the universities and in student numbers? Will he also tell us why the Government believe that higher education should be cut? Does he not agree that this is only one of three attacks on higher education — the universities, the public sector, and student grants? Does he not agree also that his statement is blackmailing the universities: that if they go along with this reallocation of smaller levels of resources and allow major cuts in research at places like Aston, Hull, Keele, Newcastle, Aberystwyth, Bangor, Swansea, Aberdeen, Dundee and Stirling they might get a few extra resources? Does he not agree that rather than being a landmark his statement puts a landmine under higher education in this country?
Sir Keith Joseph: Categorically, no. This is not an attack on universities but a stimulus to excellence.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry that I am unable to call everyone today, but I remind those right hon. and hon. Members whom I have not called that there will be education questions on 10 June. I shall keep a careful list of those who were not called today.

British Rail Engineering
4.4 pm
The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the announcement British Rail is making to its trades unions at the Rail Council today about its future arrangements for the manufacture and maintenance of rolling stock.
We have set British Rail the objective of modernising the railway. To that end, we have agreed a massive investment programme. Over £400 million of new rolling stock has been approved over the last two years, and some £700 million is planned to come forward over the next five years.
As the House must realise, new modern designs of rolling stock require less maintenance and repair. For example, on average, two of the new Sprinter vehicles are able to replace three of the old DMUs, and each one requires 30 to 40 per cent. less maintenance than its predecessor. So overall there is a reduction of 50 to 60 per cent. in the British Rail Engineering Ltd. maintenance work load for that service.
Similarly the new class 87 electric locomotives have much higher availability than the designs of the 1960s which they will replace. Again, two new vehicles will replace three old ones, each requiring less maintenance, so again there is a dramatic fall in work load.
As a result, capacity reductions within BREL have been occurring for a number of years. I regret to have to tell the House that the same factors of work load reduction are the major reason for BR's announcement to its unions this morning that it expects further job losses over the next three years. These are the subject of the normal processes of consultation with the unions.
British Rail announced in January that a new build and heavy repair group would be set up and separated from maintenance and repair and that the latter would be brought closer to the operation of the railway.
The main elements of the new build and repair group are Crewe, York and the two works at Derby. Here the numbers employed will to some extent vary with the orders obtained—and some export orders are coming through — but there is expected to be some decline in employment as lighter maintenance work is transferred elsewhere.
In the maintenance group of works, BR's proposals are as follows. At Eastleigh BR believes that productivity can be improved and overheads reduced sufficiently to enable the works to continue with its present job of refurbishment and heavy overhaul of Southern region third rail electric stock, but over the next three years up to 500 jobs may go.
Doncaster will continue to carry out wagon manufacture and wagon overhauls, and will also become a major maintenance depot for locomotives and other rolling stock. Doncaster will also become the site for BR's new national store for supplying spare parts to BR depots. Together, these proposals mean lower levels of employment at Doncaster—down over the next three years from the present level of 3,100 to between 1,430 and 1,690.
Wolverton will become a major maintenance depot for a wide range of coaching stock, and as an interim measure

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will complete its programme of electric train refurbishment. But over the next three years employment there will decline from the present level of 1,900 to between 650 and 850.
Glasgow Springburn will become a regional maintenance depot for ScotRail with jobs for about 200 people.
Job losses in regional depots will amount to about 300 a year, as was envisaged in BR's 1985 plan.
Thus, BR's new estimate of manpower requirements points to reductions of between 4,200 and 5,000 jobs in BREL over the next three years, together with the 1,750 previously notified to the trade unions.
Both the Government and British Rail are deeply conscious of the consequences of these changes for a large number of staff and their families. The board intends to appoint a senior director to co-ordinate measures to help those affected by the changes. He will work with BREL in redoubling its efforts to find alternative employment both within and outside the industry for those displaced, and to develop retraining programmes. British Rail will be recruiting some 20,000 people over the next three years to jobs in all departments of the railway. BR will also be approaching the local authorities with a view to setting up, or supporting, in each area a suitable development agency on the lines that BREL has done with considerable success at Shildon, Horwich and Swindon. They will provide financial and other support through these agencies for job creation schemes.
Mr. Robert Hughes: The Secretary of State's announcement makes yet another savage cut in BREL's manning levels and represents a further betrayal of the work force, which has been promised time and again that each round of cuts was the last and would provide job security and stability. Given last May's announcement, this means that there will be cuts of between 6,000 and 7,000 in the work force over the next three years. Moreover, the total cuts package in BREL since 1979 amounts to over 19,000.
Despite the Secretary of State's protestation that less maintenance is now needed, the fact is that cancellations and problems still seem to be the order of the day, and the promised better rail service simply does not materialise. Southern region contains the largest passenger sector, yet maintenance is down by 33 per cent. despite the fact that the vast majority of its stock is more than 25 years old.
The workshops most savagely hit are at Springburn, where the number of jobs is to be reduced from 1,000 to 150 to 200; at Wolverton, where the number of jobs is to be reduced from 1,850 to 650 or 800; at Doncaster, where the number is to be reduced from 1,912 to 780 or 1,040, and at Eastleigh where the number of jobs will fall from 2,122 to either 1,650 or 1,850.
No workshop or depot escapes. It would have been far better to invest more in new rolling stock—passenger and freight—and to ensure that British Rail builds in-house. There is, of course, an element of truth in the claim that maintenance needs have fallen. But maintenance engineers could be switched to new build. We know, for example, that the freightliner wagon fleet needs completely rebuilding. We also know that British Rail is losing freight because locomotives are unavailable. Indeed, British Rail should go further, and should invest in making BREL the showcase of British engineering
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internationally. There should be a sustained export drive, especially as currently BR obtains only 13 per cent. of the orders that it goes for.
Last year, BREL struck out a £25 million profit, because it had set £102 million aside for redundancies and closures. That is absolute nonsense. The statement said that BREL is to appoint a senior director to help those seeking redeployment. Presumably he is to compete with the senior personnel of British Shipbuilders, who will be looking for jobs for their staff. Last week my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) said that the Government were investing in sticking plaster for British shipbuilding. Now they are investing in splints to try to bind the shattered limbs.
The Secretary of State has totally failed to address himself to dealing with the problems of BREL, British Rail and our nation's transport needs. There is no point in the Prime Minister speaking at Perth last week about slaying the dragon of unemployment, when the Secretary of State, through his short-sighted rail policies, is feeding that same dragon. We demand a categorical assurance from him that there will he a debate on this issue, so that alternatives can be put forward and so that his paucity of thought can be totally exposed.
Mr. Ridley: The hon. Gentleman almost accepted something that he must accept, which is that the modern rolling stock being built for BR requires far less repair: and maintenance than before. If he does not believe me, he should ask the chairman of British Rail whether it is true. He will have to accept the answer from BR's management, even if he will not accept it from me. He himself said that the maintenance requirement of Southern region was clown 33 per cent. What does he expect British Rail to do to keep its work force, especially when the hon. Gentleman himself admits that some of the workshops are suffering a 33 per cent. drop in repair and maintenance work?
I think that the hon. Gentleman misunderstood the difference between repair and maintenance, and the new build activities at the four core works. I believe that the future for the four core works is much better than that for the repair works. A major export drive is going on. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman will have seen that an order has been won for the international coach to be sold to China. If I may say so, that was achieved with my help. Every effort is being made to ensure the greatest number of export orders for the new build part of BREL. But the hon. Gentleman must also recognise that that can be of no help to the repair and maintenance part of BREL, which is in business only to repair and maintain BR's stock.
The hon. Gentleman seemed to question the efficacy of the job creation efforts of BR. He should know that Shildon was closed in 1984, but that 710 new jobs have already been found, with the potential for that number to rise to 1,900 during the next two or three years. At Horwich, 374 jobs have been found, with the potential for that number to rise to 500 during the next two or three years. Those are no mean achievements, and the hon. Gentleman should not belittle the great effort BR has made to find replacement work for those whom it so unfortunately has had to displace.
Mr. Terence Higgins: Given the present controversy over whether there should be tax cuts or more expenditure on the infrastructure, does not my right hon. Friend's reference to a massive increase in investment in

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British Rail show that we are achieving both? I tried to follow closely the figures that my right hon. Friend gave, including those for increased recruitment in British Rail. Am I right to think that, at the end of the three-year period, he expects total employment in British Rail to increase?
Mr. Ridley: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that question. Investment in British Rail is on an upward path, and it is forecast that that will continue. The Opposition have frequently pressed us to increase investment, and we have willingly done so whenever BR has brought forward projects that it considers viable.
The massive increase in the amount of rolling stock ordered will, I think, lead to improved standards of service and to greater punctuality. In addition, approval was given for electrification of the east coast main line, which has produced many jobs in other industries. Moreover, it has produced orders for the new class 91 locomotive. That massive order is going jointly to Crewe and GEC.
As a result of normal wastage, BR expects that it will have to recruit a further 20,000 people. That does not mean that the total will be increased by that number at the end of the period. They will be recruited for new jobs as BR takes on people to replace those who leave.
Mr. Stephen Ross: Does the Secretary of State agree that this is yet another very sad day for a loyal work force? Does he further agree that Glasgow Springburn has come off particularly badly? In his second paragraph, the right hon. Gentleman spoke about £700 million extra being available to British Rail. Does that include the £800 million to which he referred when answering questions yesterday in relation to the Channel tunnel project? I thank him for the fact that Eastleigh will remain a main repair depot. That is at least one consolation. But when those 20,000 extra jobs come up, will first refusal be given to those who will lose their jobs as a result of today's announcement? I do not know whether they will be qualified for those jobs, but they should at least have the chance to take them, if they so wish.
Mr. Ridley: I could not agree more that this is a very sad day indeed for many people who have been loyal, hard-working and highly skilled operatives. But the change in industrial technology has made this announcement necessary, and that is a matter of great sadness to all hon. Members, including the hon. Gentleman and me.
I entirely agree with what the hon. Gentleman said about Springburn——
Mr. Michael J. Martin: We do not want the Secretary of State's sympathy.
Mr. Ridley: I also entirely agree with the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) that it is good that Eastleigh can remain a workshop. Indeed I have not announced the closure of any workshops, and I wish Eastleigh a prosperous future. The extra orders which might derive from the Channel tunnel, through the order for the shuttle trains placed by Eurotunnel and by the extra stock and investment required by British Rail to run through train services, are not included in these calculations because the orders will not come through during the three-year period that this covers. Of course, if those orders do not come through because the Channel tunnel does not proceed, it
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will put many jobs in BREL under threat in the late 1980s and early 1990s. I am sure that the House will recognise the importance of that.
Sir David Price: Will my right hon. Friend accept that any job loss today is a personal tragedy? Do I gather from what my right hon. Friend said about Eastleigh that the 500 jobs we shall lose over three years include the 200 that we knew we would lose in asbestos stripping or are they additional? I and my colleagues from the works made representations to my hon. Friend the Minister of State and the board of British Rail that Eastleigh is a special works dedicated to Southern region with its separate third rail propulsion. Have those arguments been accepted? What would have been the redundancies if those arguments had not been taken on board and put into the strategy of British Rail for future maintenance workshop deployment?
Mr. Ridley: I entirely agree about the individual tragedy which every man made unemployed represents. I share my hon. Friend's sadness at the unfortunate news that I have had to announce to the House today. The delegation he brought to see my hon. Friend was very helpful, and its arguments did prevail, as the statement shows. The number employed at Eastleigh at the end of this year is likely to be 2,122 and by the end of 1989 it is likely to be between 1,650 and 1,850. I am sure that the chairman of British Rail will write with more detailed information for the benefit of my hon. Friend.
Mr. Martin: The Minister is misleading the House. When he talks about a work force of 150 at Springburn, he is really talking about a complete closure. The Minister is instructing British Rail to create a tidy little package for privatisation to sell off to his pals who gave him aid at the general election. It is legalised graft, and it is time that the Minister faced his responsibilities and learnt a bit about engineering. If he knew anything about engineering, he would know that a maintenance workshop of the nature of Springburn could easily switch to new build. He is not prepared to help Springburn, and, once again, we are being punished because we did not support the Tory party.
Mr. Ridley: I have every sympathy for the hon. Gentleman's constituents. Springburn is going into British Rail and will not be a part of Core & BREL. Therefore, in no sense is it being packaged ready for privatisation. It is being hived into British Rail instead and there is no plan to privatise Core & BREL. The chairman of British Rail has not reported to me on what he sees to be the future for the heavy repair and new build section of British Rail. The hon. Gentleman's suggestions are quite wrong.
I think that I am one of the few qualified engineers in the House, and I fully understand that any works can be altered to almost any type of manufacturing business. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that it must be for British Rail to decide where to put its orders and how to organise its own business. He will know that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) has been the main beneficiary of the large engine orders.
Mr. Conal Gregory: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that there has been no shortage of investment for British Rail and that the Labour party is shedding crocodile tears today on an almost unbelievable scale? Furthermore, under the new scheme announced today there will be greater design potential, not only for the export market in

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the way that has been shown for China but, with a privatised bus company, there will be the opportunity for bus and coach maintenance on the engineering side of BREL rather than keeping it exclusively as a rail company. Finally, what effect will the announcement have on York, where there is a marvellous work force?
Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend will be glad to know that he is one of the lucky ones and that there is to be a marginal increase in employment in York. We are talking about new build to a large extent. However, when we concentrate on the much more difficult question of repair and maintenance, it is totally wrong for any hon. Member to believe that, when the work load for the repair work shops has fallen, as it has, due to much greater investment, British Rail should continue to employ people when there is no work for them. It is wrong to think that this is the action of the Government. Indeed, in some measure it may be due to the Government's action because, in sanctioning so much investment for British Rail there is a much lower repair load in the workshops. It is in response to that that the unfortunate redundancies have had to be declared.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have already mentioned the business before the House today. May I ask for brief questions because that will lead to briefer answers? I shall try to call everybody, but we must stop questions on this statement at 20 minutes to five.
Mr. Michael Welsh: Is the Minister aware of what he is doing to Doncaster? The jobs of 1,600 people will go. The pits are closing, the workshops are closing, and the plants are now being attacked and will close. One in four is unemployed, and 90 per cent. of the kiddies who left school could not find a job. What will be done for Doncaster and what investment is going into the area? When will the Government invest in order to find jobs for our lads and lasses?
Mr. Ridley: The hon. Gentleman knows that general employment is not a matter to which I can respond on this statement. This is a statement of what British Rail, in its managerial capacity, has decided to do. The hon. Gentleman will know that massive investment is going into British Rail, including the electrification of the line through Doncaster. The unfortunate consequences of the very thing that he has asked me for, investment, are what we are discussing today.
Mrs. Edwina Currie: Am I right in thinking that in the past two years the Government have approved more than £600 million worth of new contracts for railway stock and works, many of which have been won by my constituents working at BREL in Derby? Does that not carry with it the inevitability of the changes announced today? As new rolling stock which is lightweight in construction and deliberately designed for low maintenance is brought on stream, will there not have to be less spent on maintenance? Does not every railwayman in the country know that?
Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend is right. As she said, I believe that the railwaymen know that that is the case. It is always sad to have to discuss the results of industrial change, but a nation which cannot face up to the results of industrial change will earn industrial stagnation.
Mr. Donald Stewart: Is the Secretary of State aware that, as a result of the abolition of the Springburn works, there will be great resentment that the heavy diesel locomotive maintenance and even the refurbishment of rolling stock from the Scottish region will not be carried out in that workshop or even in Scotland? That resentment will be fuelled by the announcement that the four core works are all to be placed in England.
Mr. Ridley: All the repair and maintenance work of ScotRail will be done at Springburn. It is possible that the number employed will be between 150 and 200, which is more than the right hon. Gentleman said. Due to the concentration of repairs and maintenance in ScotRail, maintenance work in Scotland will therefore find its way into Springburn.
Mr. Michael Hirst: I welcome my right hon. Friend's announcement of new investment in British Rail, but is he aware that his announcement of job losses at Springburn will be greeted with profound dismay by my constituents who work there? Can he tell me what it was that prompted BREL to designate Springburn as a maintenance works rather than a core works, in view of the decades of experience of heavy engineering there? Will he give me an assurance on the enterprise package? Will it be sufficient to produce jobs for those who will lose their jobs at Springburn? Will British Rail give priority in its new job creation to those who lose their jobs at Springburn?
Mr. Ridley: As I said to the right hon. Member for Western Isles (Mr. Stewart), the repair and maintenance works for ScotRail will be concentrated on Springburn. The heavy maintenance will go to one of the heavy maintenance works, which will be suitably equipped—one of the four core works that I mentioned. That makes for much more efficient working, which is why the move has been made. I ask my hon. Friend to get further reasons from British Rail on why it has chosen various works in its allocation of orders.
My hon. Friend referred to the new enterprise company or authority that will be set up. I shall take into account my hon. Friend's remarks about making sure that the needs of Springburn and district are well looked after. I can make it clear that British Rail has allocated a first tranche of money—£3 million. If further money is required, I have no doubt that it will be forthcoming, if it is available, to provide jobs for those who, unfortunately, have lost their jobs today.
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: Is the Secretary of State aware that his stewardship of BREL, through British Rail, has demonstrated a long history of hypocrisy and cant, and that his statement today will be met with disbelief and anger? Those of us with workshops in our constituencies, which we are told are safe, have only one thing to say to him. The long history of his control has meant a loss of 150 jobs today and tomorrow will mean a complete break of faith and no employment. The privatisation package is unacceptable, and the electorate will make that very clear.
Mr. Ridley: It ill behoves the hon. Lady to say that when, on present plans, her constituency of Crewe will have 3,624 employees in 1989 and has been the main beneficiary of the very large locomotive orders that have

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been placed by British Rail. She is one of the few who have railway workshops in their constituency who might, on this occasion, have kept quiet.
Mr. Eric Cockeram: Does my right hon. Friend accept that it is no more necessary or, indeed, desirable for British Rail to build its own trains than it is for British Airways to build its own planes or any other nationalised industry to build its own plant and equipment? Does he further accept that the size of British Rail Engineering is a product of history and that, by contrast, modern railways abroad rely on competitive tendering? Will he note that, for example, the Hong Kong railway relied on competitive tendering, and the contracts came to Britain to private enterprise, and not to British Rail?
Mr. Ridley: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right that we should go to competitive tendering for the supply of railway stock to British Rail. That has been the policy for some time. I congratulate British Rail Engineering—that is the manufacturing new build part of it—on the orders that it has obtained. Since 1983, it has obtained orders for 270 Sprinter DMUs, 178 railbus DMUs, 530 EMUs, including 184 for the Snow hill tunnel scheme, and 120 for Bournemouth-Weymouth, 25 class 87 electric locos and 31 class 91 electric locos, the last two with the help of GEC. That is a massive number of rolling stock orders, which have all been won in open competition by BREL. That is why the new build part of BREL is looking very much rosier than it might have done otherwise.
Mr. Martin Redmond: When will the Secretary of State and the Government stop behaving like Pontius Pilate? They can do something. Some 1,570 jobs are to be lost under the latest cut. Will the Secretary of State issue a directive to British Rail to stop the proposed closures and reductions? The right hon. Gentleman mentioned the ability of the new agency to promote jobs. How much cash will it have in its pocket, because the announcement about that was conspicuous by its absence from the statement?
Mr. Ridley: With regard to his final point, the hon. Gentleman cannot have heard me say that the agency would have an initial funding of £3 million, and more would be available if demand so required. Let me point out to the hon. Gentleman how absurd his request is that I should issue a directive to the railways not to release people from work, for whom there is no work, and when there is not likely to be work for them in the next three years. Does he wish them to be sitting in the railway workshops with nothing to do, or would he rather that they were allowed to at least seek more lucrative opportunities by looking for other jobs? His failure to face up to the reality of this tragic situation does no service to his constituents.
Mr. W. Benyon: Does my right hon. Friend accept that this is a sad day for Wolverton, which has a long and successful record in the development of British rolling stock, including building the Royal train? Can he give me an assurance that there will be adequate funding, first, for retraining, and, secondly, for the alternative employment package? Will he assure me that we shall have no nonsense about Wolverton being part of the dynamic south-east?
Mr. Ridley: I entirely share my hon. Friend's deep concern about the jobs lost at Wolverton. I add my tribute to the skill, loyalty, perseverance and hard work that the workers have shown over the years. That is why I am particularly sad. I assure my hon. Friend that British Rail will take all steps possible to provide the retraining facilities, as well as seeking extra jobs in his area through the new agency that it proposes to set up.
Mrs. Margaret Beckett: Will the Secretary of State confirm that, despite his passing remarks about Derby being a new build works, almost 1,000 jobs are to go from the two workshops in my constituency? Does he understand that, unlike his hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie), the people of Derby will be outraged by the proposal, which is further evidence of the Government creating an industrial wasteland where there was once prosperity?
Mr. Ridley: Sadly, I confirm what the hon. Lady says, that about one quarter of the jobs in the two works at Derby will be lost, but those are the works to which most of the export orders will go. If we can get a much better export performance, there is an opportunity for expansion, which is more than can be said for the repair and maintenance workshops, where the real problem lies.
Mr. Gary Waller: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if they are to survive and prosper, public sector industries must operate in as similar a way as possible to those in the private sector, and respond to changing situations? If many of the private sector companies had not made difficult decisions to contract their work force in the past, many of them would have gone to the wall and fewer jobs would be available today. Does not the same apply to British Rail? Should we not welcome the fact that both British Rail and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State are willing to grasp the nettle in this situation, which bodes well for the future?
Mr. Ridley: There is a great deal in what my hon. Friend says, but I should like to make a further point. The redundancies are expected to take place over the next three years. The fact that they are lumped together and presented in that global fashion dramatises them much more. British Rail and I have sought to be totally frank with the House. Many private sector companies might have dribbled the redundancies over those three years, and they would not have looked so dramatic, but in order to be totally frank and honest with the House, I have no objection whatsoever to giving all the information from Britsh Rail that is known.
Mr. Donald Anderson: Was No. 10 consulted? Does the Minister recall that, as a direct result of bus deregulation, there have been major cuts in our domestic bus manufacturing industry? In preparation for privatisation, much of our rail manufacturing industry has been destroyed. Were those job losses foreseen and intended when the Government embarked on their deregulation and privatisation policy?
Mr. Ridley: I do not think that there is any connection between the statement I made today and the deregulation of buses. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, who always welcomes good news, would like to know that there are now 3,000 mini-buses on our roads as a result of the Transport Act, which would not have been there before. However, that is another subject.
Mr. Greg Knight: Although the loss of jobs is a matter of regret, will my right hon. Friend take time today to re-emphasise that, over the years, under both Conservative and Labour Governments, maintenance work has been continually in decline due to advances in technology? Despite my hon. Friend's announcement today about the future, is it not the case that the new build currently taking place, and especially the international coach, is good news not only for BREL but for Derby?
Mr. Ridley: It is absolutely true that increased investment, much of which was started by our predecessors, has caused reductions in repair and maintenance work on an increasing scale over the years, irrespective of which party formed the Government. That is an inevitable consequence of new design, knowledge and skills in building stock. My hon. Friend is quite right; the international coach has attracted a great deal of attention and interest. We know that one order has come through, and several others are possible. All hon. Gentlemen should concentrate on helping to sell the products of British industry whenever they go abroad. There is a real market for BREL overseas. I hope that BREL secures an ever greater proportion of it.
Mr. Gavin Strang: Is there no limit to the destruction of skilled engineering jobs in the public sector by the Government? Surely the Government recognise that there is not only a social case but an economic case, against the background of mass unemployment, for maintaining employment in such work places, albeit with some public subsidy.
Mr. Ridley: If the Government were to accept the hon. Gentleman's advice, they would be paying money to keep people in BREL repair and maintenance shops for whom there was no work and never could be work. He must accept that that is not an activity where exporting is possible. No foreign railway would send its rolling stock here for us to repair, with all the transport difficulties that that would involve. The hon. Gentleman suggests that prosperous enterprises, employing people and creating jobs, should be taxed so that they can shed labour, so that others with no work to do can be kept in the BREL workshops. If that is the Labour party's policy, it will only lead to further unemployment.
Mr. Robert Adley: If everything was black and white, some of my hon. Friends would soon be advocating that we should privatise the armed forces. I turn my right hon. Friend's mind to the nation's infrastructure, of which the railways form a part, and ask him to contemplate the difference between roads and railways. The taxpayer funds all expenditure on roads, including the driver and vehicle licensing centre at Swansea. The railways are expected to provide all their own investment as part of the nation's infrastructure.
Will my right hon. Friend look at the new American diesels imported by Foster Yeoman, because no manufacturer in this country, such as GEC, is willing to provide British Rail prototypes? Would it not be a suitable proposition for the Government to fund the cost of prototypes for BREL or GEC to produce to see whether in future the vehicles can be manufactured in this country?
Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend knows that, since I have been the Secretary of State for Transport, of all the many investment applications that the railways have made, they
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have been refused only one. That was for a small piece of electrification in Cambridgeshire, which we judged to be completely unviable. My hon. Friend cannot say that the railways have been starved of opportunities to invest.
The railways have never ordered foreign engines. A great deal of work is being done by BREL and GEC to develop the new class 91 engine, which will stay in this country and which will, I believe, be a great success. What my hon. Friend requested has been done. I cannot say what a private firm, such as Foster Yeoman, will decide to buy for its power car.
Mr. Ian Wrigglesworth: Is the Secretary of State aware that his depressing announcement this afternoon of threatened and announced closures means that 20,000 jobs will be lost? Will he be more precise about the 20,000 job opportunities which will be available in British Rail? How many of those jobs will be available to those who will be made redundant as a result of this afternoon's announcement? Will the Secretary of State he more precise about the support that the Government will give to British Rail Engineering in making overseas export sales? Will soft loans be available? What other assistance will be given to get further orders?
Mr. Ridley: The figures for expected recruiting and manpower are in the latest report of the British Railways Board. I have said nothing new. If the hon. Gentleman studies the report, he will find all the facts and the figures. The board believes that, over the next three years, a further 20,000 people must be recruited for a varied number of activities on the railway. I am sure that preference will be given to BREL employees if they wish to take up jobs on the railway. I shall ensure, through the chairman of the board, that that is done.
I took the chairman of BREL on a long trip around the far east. There was an encouraging response and there were many chances to tender for work. The Chinese order came as a result of that visit. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have a large soft credit facility from China. If any export potentials arise in other countries, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is always willing to try to switch resources to assist our exports. Indeed, there is a lot of business which we might win in south-east Asia.
Mr. Peter Snape: Will the Secretary of State accept that his announcement this afternoon was due entirely to his Department's philosophy of tight resourcing so far as the railway industry is concerned, which guarantees that the industry cannot plan for any expansion that might take place? The policy has given us the present appalling inter-city punctuality record that condemns commuters every day to a journey of misery. It means that freight trains, on many railway lines, are but a bitter memory. During the period that the Secretary of State has held the transport portfolio, investment has been paid for out of BR's internal sources, and financed entirely by redundancies among other railway men. The arbitrary split between new build and maintenance has condemned skilled men at Doncaster and Glasgow, to name but two areas that are capable of making locomotives and railway wagons for the future, to a maintenance function that is being deliberately run down as a forerunner to privatisation. Over the past few weeks the Secretary of State has announced redundancies in our railways, a rundown of our bus network and further

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redundancies in the airline industry. Does he accept that, as Secretary of State, he has been an unmitigated disaster and he ought to do a courtesy to the House by tendering his resignation sooner rather than later?
Mr. Ridley: It is extraordinary that an NUR-sponsored Member of the House should use such strident and critical words of his colleagues on the railways who are trying to run the best railway they can. If that is his view of those he represents in the unions, he will not be thanked the next time he attends a union branch meeting. I have never heard such a disgraceful criticism of union workers.
Mr. Snape: You are an old Etonian twerp——
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Ridley: The hon. Gentleman should keep his temper. He is in real trouble in trying to get his facts right.
Mr. Snape: You are a hypocrite.
Mr. Speaker: Order. We do not want such anger in a statement like this. Will the hon. Member withdraw the word "hypocrite"?
Mr. Snape: Mr. Speaker, when we are talking about further redundancies in an industry in which both myself and my father worked, I shall not be sneered at by an old Etonian twerp like the right hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Speaker: I ask the hon. Member to withdraw the word "hypocrite".
Mr. Snape: Purely out of deference to you, Mr. Speaker, I will withdraw.
Mr. Ridley: I have never known such an extraordinary demonstration. The hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) has got it wrong. The reduction in employment which we are discussing will occur in maintenance and repair which are to be re-integrated into the railways, in my opinion, correctly. The suggestion that the railways are being slimmed down for privatisation is misleading and I make it entirely clear that that is not the case.

NATO (Chemical Weapons)
4.50 pm
Mrs. Ann Clwyd: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"NATO's controversial plan to modernise American chemical weapons."
The matter is specific because today or tomorrow a Defence Minister representing the Government will leave for Brussels for a meeting of NATO Defence Ministers. That meeting is likely to give approval to NATO's controversial plan to modernise NATO's chemical weapons.
The matter is important because production of these weapons has been delayed by the United States Congress until at least 1 October. One of the conditions is that NATO should formally ask for those weapons by making modernisation and production of them part of NATO's strategy. We still have an opportunity to influence and reject such a proposal. Today, more than 100 Labour and Liberal Members of Parliament have written to the Washington Post, the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune and to senators and congressmen to voice their opposition to the production, possession and use of chemical weapons.
Conflicting statements have been made on this issue by United Kingdom Ministers. On 28 April, in the House the Minister of State for the Armed Forces said that there would be no deployment of the new chemical weapons in the United Kingdom in peacetime. But, speaking on "Weekend World", the same Minister said that he did not rule out the possibility of the United Kingdom agreeing to the deployment of United States chemical weapons in peacetime. What is the Government's precise position? We have a right to know.
The issue requires urgent consideration because, unlike the Parliaments of other European countries and the United States Congress, which has debated this issue at great length, we at Westminster have had no such debate. I believe that the issue meets all the criteria laid down in Standing Order No. 10 and that such a debate should take place immediately.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Lady asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that she believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the forthcoming discussions between the NATO Defence Ministers of the proposal to give approval to the modernisation of chemical weapons held by the United States Government."
As the hon. Lady knows, the only decision I have to take is whether to give this matter precedence over the Orders set down for consideration today or tomorrow. I regret that I do not consider that the matter she has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 10 and, therefore, I cannot submit her application to the House.
Mr. Robert N. Wareing: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker, arising from your decision. I am not dissenting——
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry, but no point can arise from my decision.

British Rail Engineering Ltd., Springburn
4.53 pm
Mr. Michael J. Martin: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the severe rundown of the BREL works at Springburn."
Two years ago, that workshop employed 3,000 people. The Secretary of State for Transport told us that the best we can expect is between 150 and 200 people employed there. They include—I mean no disrespect to them— canteen workers, cleaners, security men and the like. That means that, if we are lucky, there will be about 100 skilled jobs in a community which used to have 10,000 railway engineering workers. That is a scandal. It is a blow to my community where one in four people are out of work. I ask that consideration be given to this matter.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that he thinks should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the redundancies at Springburn railworks."
I have listened carefully to the exchanges and I fully appreciate the impact of the redundancies on the hon. Member's constituents. I regret that I do not consider that the matter the hon. Member has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 10. I cannot, therefore, submit his application to the House. However, I hope that he will find other ways of raising the matter in the Chamber.

Pilkington Insulation Ltd., Stirling
4.55 pm
Mr. Michael Forsyth: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 10, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the proposed closure by Pilkington Insulation Ltd. of the Cape works in Stirling, with the resultant loss of 257 jobs."
The factory was acquired by Pilkington only last year and considerable improvements in performance and cost reduction have been achieved by the work force. As Pilkington is the major industrial employer, located in the heart of the town, the proposed closure represent, a devastating blow and a cruel rebuke to the employees and their trade union representatives who have done everything possible to avoid it.
A debate would give the House the opportunity to raise the wider question of the responsibilities of large private employers to their work forces and the communities in which they operate. Although the chief executive of Pilkington has stated that the company will commit resources to job creation in Stirling, no indication of the sums involved has been given. They will have to be substantial. A debate would give the Minister the opportunity to reassure the House and my constituents that his Department and the Scottish Development Agency will contact the company with a view to ensuring that every help and assistance are given in relocating and retraining employees and in getting on with a job creation and development programme on that site. The factory occupies an important location in the town. If Pilkington decides to give the site to an enterprise trust, as I hope it will. it would be helpful to know the Minister's view on how his Department could assist.
I make no apology for raising this matter this afternoon. It is vital to my constituency. A debate on the wider implications would help to focus the attentions of the private and public sectors alike on their responsibilities in managing the effects of change.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matte' that he believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the proposed closure by Pilkington Insulation Ltd. of the Cape works in Stirling, with the resultant loss of 257 jobs."
Again, I must say that I have listened carefully to what the hon. Member has said. I realise the impact that the closure is likely to have on his constituency. However, I have to say that I do not consider that the matter he has raised is appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 10, and, therefore, I cannot submit his application to the House.

Written Answers
Mr. Alfred Dubs: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I know that you place great emphasis on protecting hon. Members on both sides of the House from the Executive, and that you are less than enthusiastic about the Government's use of procedures that have the effect of devaluing the House. Today, the Government have been at it again. The Home Secretary has shown his contempt for the House by using a written answer to make

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a major statement on police resources and numbers—a statement at variance with the policy expressed only last year by the Prime Minister. The House has a right to question the Home Secretary on such major statements.
The Government keep acting in this fashion. What they have done today is significant. I appreciate that, technically, the Government can argue that there is a Standing Order that allows them to do it, but the effect of the Government's actions is to bring the House into contempt, to devalue it and to make your task, Mr. Speaker, more difficult. Will you stop the Government acting like this and make them face the House on major statements of policy?
Mr. Speaker: Question 105 was a written question on today's Order Paper and it was answered. This is frequently done, and it is not a matter of order for me.

Co-ownership of Flats
Sir Brandon Rhys Williams: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable residents in flats in privately-owned mansion blocks and substantial conversions to form companies with powers in stated circumstances to acquire and manage the properties in common ownership; to make provision for the residents in such a property in stated circumstances to apply to the courts for the appointment of a receiver and manager for it; to confer other rights on residents and to make further provision as to the management of such properties; and for related purposes.
In 1978 with support from both sides of the House I first sought leave, successfully I may say, to introduce a Bill on the co-ownership of flats. Since the last time I introduced such a Bill in June last year, we have received the report of the committee of inquiry on the management of privately owned blocks of flats. That was welcomed in all parts of the House. I should like to quote briefly from the press notice that was issued by the Nugee committee in November 1985, because it is an excellent summary of the position.
"Clear evidence of widespread dissatisfaction with the management of privately owned blocks of flats is described in a Report published today.
The Report produced by a Committee chaired by Mr. Edward Nugee QC, says that the criticisms are not confined to particular locations or types or age of block; and that there are serious problems, which call for action.
The Committee, set up to examine the problems of management in privately owned blocks of flats, proposes measures to redress the balance for tenants who find that their landlord or managing agent is persistently unresponsive or unhelpful."
This matter affects not only many thousands of my constituents in Kensington but many other people living in privately owned mansion blocks or substantial conversions in inner London and in many other parts of the country. I should like to repeat the main features of my earlier Bills and also to adopt the main Nugee recommendations. However, in some respects I should like to go further than the Nugee recommendations and to explore the possibility that in certain circumstances tenants may have the right not only to apply to the courts for the appointment of a receiver, but also, in stated circumstances, should have the right to acquire the full ownership rights in the property.
The right of pre-emption when the block is on the market is not very controversial, but great care must be taken if the owner is not a willing seller. The circumstances must be clearly defined and the procedure for valuation must be clearly laid down. All the signatories to my Bill insist that the valuation must be fair and that there must be no element of confiscation.
It is relatively easy to legislate for properties that are held entirely on long leases, but it is more difficult to deal with mixed regimes or with properties that are wholly occupied by residents with short tenancies. I should like to try to find a formula which overcomes these difficulties for consideration by the House.
The House should also consider the risk that residents who acquire their properties may not always have the funds or the management know-how to run them properly and to maintain them in good order. My recommendation is that, in order to qualify for the court's approval, the residents should be required to form themselves into a

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company with an appropriate memorandum and articles. I aim to provide a model form as a schedule to the Bill as I have done on previous occasions.
I believe it would be useful for the House to look at concrete proposals on this matter in the form of a parliamentary Bill. I hope that such a Bill will attract the attention of proprietors and residents and their advisers, and I hope that the fact that I once again have all-party support will prove that the House has welcomed the Nugee report, is determined to act on it, and in some respects will be willing to go further than its recommendations. I therefore trust that the House will permit me once again to introduce my Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Sir Brandon Rhys Williams, Mr. Alfred Dubs. Mr. Hugh Dykes, Sir Geoffrey Finsberg, Mr. Reg Freeson, Mr. Stephen Ross, Sir Hugh Rossi, and Mr. John Wheeler.

Co-ownership of Flats
  CO-OWNERSHIP OF FLATS
  Sir Brandon Rhys Williams accordingly presented a Bill to enable residents in flats in privately-owned mansion blocks and substantial conversions to form companies with powers in stated circumstances to acquire and manage the properties in common ownership; to make provision for the residents in such a property in stated circumstances to apply to the courts for the appointment of a receiver and manager for it; to confer other rights on residents and to make further provision as to the management of such properties; and for related purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 23 May and to be printed. [Bill 164.]
Orders of the Day

  Social Security Bill
  [2ND ALLOTTED DAY]
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), further considered.
  Mr. Michael Meacher: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Just before midnight last night the Secretary of State for Social Services said that he was prepared to reconsider the mechanism for the payment of family credit. The Government resisted that change in Committee so this is a major change of direction and a major victory against the Government forced on them at the last moment by the unanimous opposition of women's organisations and employers and a full-scale Back-Bench revolt. The Secretary of State made the statement just a few minutes before the guillotine fell and there was no chance for the House to question him about his intention, especially about the terms of reference of the new consultative exercise. Have the Government unequivocally abandoned their universally rejected plans to pay family credit through the pay packet, and, if so, why are the CBI and the National Federation of Self Employed and Small Businesses included in the organisations consulted?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Harold Walker): I thought that the hon. Gentleman was addressing me on a point of order and not the Minister on matters arising from the Bill.
  Mr. Meacher: I apologise, Mr. Deputy Speaker. In view of the uncertainties, I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to use your good offices to ensure that the Secretary of State makes a further statement to the House at the earliest opportunity in order to clarify his intentions and to answer questions about a matter that significantly affects the standard of living of millions of women.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order or something that I should deal with. The Secretary of State and the Minister are both present, and I see that they are nodding to show that they take account of what the hon. Gentleman has said. In the course of the day's proceedings there may be an opportunity for the Minister to comment. We ought to deal with the matters before us.

  Social Security Bill
    Clause 28

      ARRANGEMENTS FOR HOUSING BENEFIT
      Mr. Meacher: I beg to move amendment No. 209, in page 35, line 26, at end insert
      'in the case of benefit payable to an owner-occupier is to be in the form of an owner-occupier allowance covering prescribed housing costs including mortgage interest and the full amount which he is liable to pay by way of rates, and in any other case. '
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider amendment No. 152 in page 35, line 27, after 'Rebate', insert
      'of 100 per cent. of the total rates bill payable if the recipient is also in receipt of income support.'.
      Mr. Meacher: I turn first to the Government's proposal announced last weekend to cut by half the

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      mortgage interest payments of the unemployed during the first six months on supplementary benefit. We object to the way in which the announcement was made, sneaked out by written answer at the last minute after a Green Paper, after a six-month consultation period, after the White Paper and after the three-month Committee stage on the Bill without reference to this matter. We object even more to the content of the statement. It will sentence thousands of people to eviction and homelessness as a penalty for being unemployed. Government policy has already robbed thousands of people of jobs and now they will begin to rob those people of their homes as well. It will be the last straw that finally ditches thousands of people who exercise their right to buy.
      We know that the Tory party has made great play of people's rights to be able to buy their homes. Apparently that applies to everyone except the jobless and the poor. It seems that the Prime Minister is quite willing to accept £35 a week in mortgage interest tax relief on her new £500,000 Dulwich home while at the same time denying much smaller sums for people who cannot keep a roof over their heads without mortgage interest cover.
      The justification given by the Government for this proposal is that in some cases the help given is so generous that people are better off out of work. That assertion is based on figures so absurd that it is surprising that even this Government takes them seriously. A table in the note supplied to the SSAC compares in-work and out-of-work incomes for married men with earnings between £80 and £150 a week and with a £16,000 mortgage. We are told that that is the average mortgage for a two-child family. The table shows that where earnings are between £80 and £120 a week the man is better off out of work. That is the Government's justification. The table does not show how many people with £16,000 mortgages have earnings as low as this. I submit that the answer is virtually nobody. Irrespective of that, is it not typical of the Government that, when faced with a situation where the low paid in work receive little or no more help with housing costs than the unemployed because low income prevents them getting much mortgage interest tax relief, the Government prefer to put the knife further in to the unemployed rather than to take the other option of extending housing benefit to owner-occupiers on low incomes?
      A report in The Guardian on Saturday said:
      "Senior ministers knew that the proposals were in the wind, but they knew nothing about the timing of the announcement. It was seen as especially inept and insensitive that the news should have been given immediately after the unemployment figures showing a further increase, after 3,500 job losses in the shipyards and cuts of 1,000 jobs at British Caledonian. The announcement had originally been scheduled a few weeks ago, but was postponed on the grounds that it would be inopportune in the run-up to last week's local elections."
      The documents relating to this were finally released, but without the promised copies of the inspectorate's report. However, they have been subsequently placed in the Library.
      The reasons for not distributing the report more widely are plain enough. It simply does not support the Government's case. For example, it shows that in the Government's sample of over 300 claimants, the average mortgage payment was £72 a month but one in four were paying between £100 and £250 a month. The implications of the Government's proposal for those at the upper end
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      of that range are appalling. Eighty-seven of those claimants had approached the lender for a reduction in their mortgage payments. Only 69 per cent. of them had been able to negotiate a reduction, usually for only three months at a time. All that they were asking for was to be allowed to pay their mortgage interest only, not the principal. One wonders what the lenders would have said if they had wanted to pay only half the interest. Even under the present rules, in the inspectorate's sample that the Government have produced, one claimant had been forced to put his home up for sale and two others were under pressure to do so.
      The Government's proposal is that only half the interest should be paid for the first six months, but that means the first six months on supplementary benefit. In many cases, those concerned will already have been living on a low income for many months before they claim supplementary benefit. Worse still, some people will be caught in what will no doubt be known as the mortgage trap. Because only half their mortgage interest will be taken into account, they will not qualify for supplementary benefit at all. Therefore, they will be unable to clock up the six months on benefit necessary to qualify for having the whole of their mortgage interest met.
      Take, for example, a family with two children when the father is on invalidity benefit. His total income will be £99·40 a week. If he has to pay mortgage interest of £20 a week, under the present rules he will qualify for supplementary benefit after 12 months of sickness. But if only half his mortgage interest is taken into account he will not qualify and he will go on not qualifying indefinitely. Such a family will find themselves in the deepest trouble.
      Mr. Eric Forth (Mid-Worcestershire)rose——
      5.15 pm
      Mr. Meacher: I would rather that the hon. Gentleman made his speech. There is great pressure on time because of earlier statements and I intend to be as brief as I can.
      The SSAC's words are worth quoting in full. It said:
      "If mortgage interest is not met in full for an initial period on benefit, but instead an arrangement is made to reschedule the loan at a higher amount once the period is over, an owner-occupier claimant could well have less incentive to return to work."
      That is important because the Government's argument is that people should have a greater incentive to return to work. The committee went on:
      "After a given period, income support would begin to pick up the bill, but if a claimant got a job (or recovered from sickness) after any lengthy break, the rescheduled payments could have risen to a level difficult to manage on low wages. In such circumstances there would be a strong temptation to remain on income support until a better-paid job came along."
      For those reasons we unequivocally reject this last nasty, vicious kick at the unemployed, right at the end of the Committee and Report stage of the Social Security Bill.
      Let me now deal briefly with amendment No. 152. The Bill seeks to take general powers to vary housing benefit levels by means of regulations, powers which potentially embrace the 20 per cent. cut, and, indeed, a lot more. It would be possible for the Government to use those powers to render an even larger proportion of rates ineligible for benefit and it would be helpful today if we could be told that the Government will not do that. I ask explicitly that, in replying, the Minister gives a guarantee that the Government will not make a larger proportion even than

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      20 per cent. ineligible for benefit. They manifestly intend to extend the thinking behind this sort of cut to the proposed community charge.
      The Government would not only have powers to increase the proportion of rates or community charge which is ineligible for benefit, but the community charge would be levied upon a range of low income non-householders, who currently do not pay rates. They will be victims of the clause.
      The extent of hardship which will be brought about on present figures alone is considerable. There will be some 7 million losers on the housing benefit side as the result of the clause and some three quarters of the £450 million which will be taken from claimants is accounted for by the cut in eligible rates.
      Even if an average amount were to be incorporated into the income support rates as compensation, as some have suggested, for the loss of rate rebate from the measure, hardship would still be inflicted because of the wide variations in rate levels in different parts of the country. It is incredible that the Government have refused to compensate income support claimants even to that extent. There is to be no compensation in income support and that means that money which at present is given for food, clothing and fuel will now have to be used to pay for rates. Hardship will not be confined to the purely financial. Rate arrears will undoubtedly rise as a result of the proposal and increasing numbers of poor people will find the bailiff knocking at the door and find themselves in court.
      The Government justify this measure on grounds of local accountability. That excuse is incredible. First, it suggests that those who currently receive part of their income by way of full rate rebate are therefore lesser citizens—a sort of local tier of voter—than those who are better off financially. That may well appeal to those Conservative Members who hanker nostalgically for the days when people on low incomes did not have the vote at all. But to the rest of us it is another depressing manifestation of the neo-19th century outlook which informs so much of the Bill.
      Secondly, it is clear that the proposal has nothing whatever to do with the principles of social security. The idea is that the financial hardship inflicted on claimants will cause pressure to be exerted on local councils. In other words, families on some of the lowest incomes in the land are being used by the Government as cannon fodder in their obsessional quarrel with those local authorities whose standards of service are too high for the Government's liking.
      One of the supposed advantages of the current housing benefits scheme, as it was introduced in 1982, is that in large numbers of cases the local authority does not need to operate any collection procedures in respect of council tenants or direct ratepayers. The proposed cut in eligible rates would require the collection of some payment in virtually all cases, thus wiping out the administrative advantages which are supposed up to now to have been one of the main attractions.
      Collection will have to be recommenced in respect of over 4 million ratepayers and often the amount to be collected, while a significant loss for a claimant on a low income, will cost more to collect than the amount recovered. As I say, there will be an inevitable growth in rate and rent arrears resulting from other aspects of
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      housing benefit cuts and at the same time the Government are proposing to cut local authorities' administrative costs subsidy in relation to housing benefit.
      The proposal to make the cut in rates which are eligible for rebate flies in the face of the advice clearly and explicitly given by the housing benefit review team, of the overwhelming majority of submissions to the review, of the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Select Committee on Social Services. It is a combination of a desire to extract savings from some of the poorest households and a desire to wage a political offensive against local authorities using claimants as ammunition. Both amendments reflect some of the nastiest and most distateful measures in the Bill, and I ask hon. Members on both sides of the House to accept them.
      Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I endorse much of the sentiment expressed by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), if not the way in which it was presented. On mortgage interest for the unemployed, I should be interested to hear the results of the consultations that were promised in Committee and which have led to the decision. The Minister said that he would consider the matter carefully and that a decision would be made in due course. A decision has been made, but we do not know much about the consultations. It is staggering that those who were consulted consented willingly to the proposal announced by the Minister last week. I cannot support the way in which it was done or the results that it will produce.
      Conservative Members should consider carefully what is proposed in amendment No. 152. Like the family credit proposal which we discussed last night, the 20 per cent. rates contribution has little if anything to do with the Bill. If it was excised from the Bill, the social security reform that the Government propose would proceed almost unaltered, and they need not face the severe test at the next election of defending the proposals, which will necessarily involve people in receipt of supplementary pensions and benefits making contributions of at least 20 per cent. to their rates bills. That will inevitably, as night follows day, push people below the subsistence level. We struggled to force the Government to define the true level of subsistence, but, whatever it is, the proposal will push those people well below it.
      As the hon. Member for Oldham, West said, although we have heard that the 20 per cent. contribution will be introduced, in Committee the Government said that the matter was still under consideration. In addition, we were told that the proposal should be seen in the context of the Green Paper on the financing of local government. That paper has been published, but it gives me no cause for consolation on the 20 per cent. rate contribution. It is silent on the subject. Recently, the Scottish Grand Committee debated the rates reform that will be visited on Scotland a year before it will be visited on England. When the Secretary of State for Scotland was asked about the 20 per cent. rate contribution, he said, "It has nothing to do with me. My Department has nothing to do with this." The Government cannot hide behind the fact that some solace and consolation will be found in the introduction of the new system of local government finance.
      In Committee, I accepted—I still accept it—that an argument exists for accountability in local government. offer the Government a way round that difficulty. If they wish to enhance accountability in local government, the

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      way forward is staring them in the face. It is to introduce proportional representation into local government, which will enhance the quality of votes so that the electorate will decide what sort of local administration they have. Their local votes will be of a much higher quality, and we would not need so many central Government powers to clobber local authorities. That is how the alliance would enhance local accountability. The Minister of State frowns. That is by far the best way to get accountability back into local government.
      The Government's proposals will inevitably hurt pensioners, especially those in my part of the world. I do not know how at the general election the Government and Conservative Back-Bench Members will defend the proposals in the context of the Social Security Bill, in which they have no place.
      If the Government are looking for more savings—they should drop the fallacious argument about accountability because the only argument they could use is one of cost—the £450 million that they are taking out of housing benefit in other parts of the Bill should be enough. They cannot justify imposing further financial agony on the elderly and claimants by making them pay 20 per cent. towards their rates for the spurious reason of increasing local democracy. It is a ridiculous proposal, and I hope that the Government, even at the 11th hour, will reconsider it.
      Mr. Robert McCrindle: This is the first opportunity that the House has had to reflect upon and consider last week's announcement, which caused a considerable furore at the weekend. I do not support the solution proposed in either amendment. I should tell the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) that his remarks on amendment No. 209 went far beyond legitimate comment even among those of us who are worried about the content of last week's announcement. I tell him well in advance that I shall not go into the Division Lobby with him should he press the amendment to a vote. However, I must tell my hon. Friend the Minister that the proposal to cut by half the mortgage interest payment assistance for the first six months of unemployment has come at a signally unfortunate moment. To make the announcement in the same week as the announcement of a further increase in unemployment and the fact that long-term unemployment shows no sign of being alleviated was, to say the least, unfortunate.
      There is an underlying assumption in what the Government appear to propose that jobs are lost voluntarily and that there must be a continuing incentive for people to go back to work. That may be the case in the prosperous south-east and some other areas, but it is certainly not so in those areas where jobs are not only difficult but almost impossible to obtain. To that extent, there is an element of insensitivity in making the recommendation now.
      It is said that there is a disincentive to work. Sometimes we are told that there is an incentive towards industrial action for as long as the present assistance with mortgage payments should continue. I still await proof that that is the case. In areas of high unemployment, it simply does not apply.
      I have one overriding objection to last week's proposal. It seems to discriminate in a way which the Minister and
      212
      I would not wish to discriminate against the owner-occupier and in favour of the person in rented accommodation. If we are talking about disincentives to find work, I cannot understand why we should reduce the assistance that we give to owner-occupiers but continue the assistance that we give to those in rented accommodation. If there is a disincentive, it must apply irrespective of the accommodation that one occupies. At a time when the Government and the Conservative party are recommending the movement into owner-occupation of people who have not considered it previously, and when we have argued strongly for the purchase of council houses and encouraged their occupants to move over to owner-occupation, the proposal will be seen as discriminating against those who have believed our suggestion that owner-occupation is a good thing.
      I say to the Minister, as gently as I can, that the timing of the announcement was wrong and that its direction, to say the least, is not proven. I think it was a wise move to refer it to the SSAC for its recommendations and its reaction. We have, of course, already been treated to an indication of what the SSAC will say.
      All I will say at this stage is that, strictly as a personal opinion, I believe that we should all be mindful of the need to cut the very substantial bill that social security runs up for the taxpayer, but I am not as yet persuaded that this is the right way to do it. Neither am I persuaded that the amendment and proposal to which I am speaking is the right way to solve the problem.
      I therefore hope that my hon. Friend the Minister in replying to the debate will give further consideration to this. I know that in the Department officials have long been mulling over whether this is the only way to go, and whether, it it were to proceed, we might be doing what we have all along tried to resist, that is, providing a disincentive to ordinary people owning their own homes. Because I genuinely believe that those who have purchased council houses could arguably be most adversely affected by the measure announced last week, I hope that my hon. Friend will reconsider his intention.
      5.30
      Mr. Hugh Brown: I wish to begin with a complaint that I think is a matter for you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is most unfortunate that the two important subjects of mortgate payments and the 20 per cent. rate charge have been allotted less than an hour for discussion. These matters by some chance—I do not say that it was engineered — seem not to have been adequately discussed in Committee. Perhaps you can consider this, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in the interests of some of our Back Benchers who have been trying to speak. There was a change in business last night, and we are now confronted with this situation in which it is impossible to do justice to some of the points that I wish to raise.
      While my party is responsible for tabling the amendment dealing with owner-occupation, which amendment I support, I am in the curious position of wanting to support the Liberal amendment. I have no choice in this—it is the only one that is open to me because of the way this place works.
      As to the whole issue of a 20 per cent. rates charge on every single adult, I think that this is one of the worst things that the Government have produced — and they have produced many. The Minister will recollect that some of my hon. Friends raised this in Committee. It was a most

      213
      disappointing debate. The Minister was expected to cover about 20 amendments, which he obviously could not do. May I remind him what he said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Michie) and, indeed, to my hon. Friends the Members for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) and for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett):
      "bearing in mind the great uncertainties that surround the issue of rates in relation to the consultative proposals on rates reform which have been submitted".
      I repeat what the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) stated, that Ministers with responsibility for social security say, "It is nothing to do with us because the Government are in the middle of consultations about changes in rates proposals." The Minister emphasised this again when he said:
      "It is foolish for any of us to try to draw final conclusions from any of those matters in relation to rates and the 20 per cent. proposal at the moment." — [Official Report, Standing Committee B, 4 March 1986; c. 632–44.]
      I do not know that there is anything foolish about it. It is high time that the Government gave some indication of their intentions.
      I am one of those irritating practical people who like to be able to say to constituents, "I'm sorry, you're getting £40 at the moment, but after all this comes into being either you will get only £38 or you will get £42, as the case may be". In regard to income support, I know that the Government cannot give the levels of support, but the Minister is an able Minister, he has been in the job a long while and he must know what we are driving at. We are accusing him of being a little vague in this respect.
      Although my next point is not a Scottish Office point, I observe that there is no Minister from the Scottish Office present, and there should be, because it is rates that we are discussing. The Secretary of State for Scotland, if nothing else, is a slick debater, but that does not win votes in Scotland — we are a hit too long in the tooth and politically crude for that. Let me tell the Minister what he said about this in the Scottish Grand Committee. In reply to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown), he said:
      "First of all, the hon. Gentleman knows that the 20 per cent. proposal is nothing to do with the Green Paper. We can have a debate on other matters if the hon. Gentleman wishes, but he knows that certain proposals are irrespective of whether we keep domestic rates or have a community charge. I am speaking today on the proposals in the Green Paper".
      He went on to repeat that in reply to the same question asked by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. Wilson):
      "The suggestion arises out of the social security proposals. I shall not deal with them now, because they do not arise out of the Green Paper."—[Official Report, Scottish Grand Comittee, 28 April 1986; c. 2–9.]
      This is not good enough. I hope that the Minister will recognise that, and give some more specific information than we have had up to now.
      How does the timetable fit into this? In the Green Paper on rates it is made clear at paragraph 8.48 that there could be a change in the domestic rate system, but with effect from April, 1989. This is not a Scottish point just because circumstances have compelled the Government to do something in Scotland sooner than they might otherwise have liked.
      I suggest that the Government have not even thought about the rates proposals. It is still not clear to us in Scotland who will be ahead of the field in the so-called
      214
      reform of rates and how the 20 per cent. social security imposition will work. It is not good enough to say, as the Scottish Office has said in its official reply,
      "Who will be eligible for rebates? Assistance will be given through Social Security to those on low incomes, but all will have to pay a contribution to their local tax, as the Government has already proposed in the White Paper on Social Security reform."
      Is this a tax on the poor? I do not want to embarrass the Secretary of State for social services.
      Mr. David Winnick: He is beyond embarrassment.
      Mr. Brown: I appeal to my hon. Friend — the Secretary of State made a significant concession last night, and I am a reasonable man. I have been in Parliament long enough to recognise that there is a great deal of argument going on currently in the Conservative party; its members do not know what is wrong and I have some sympathy with them. When a party does now know where it is going, it can hardly come up with solutions.
      I do not know where the Secretary of State stands in this. May I refer the Minister to what his right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) said as chairman of the Conservative party as reported in The Guardian. The headline reads:
      "Tebbit blames the poor for anti-Tory slant".
      That was before the local elections. He was challenged about the accountability argument to which the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire referred. What did the chairman of the Conservative party say? The Guardian report says:
      "He said they would be fair to the extent that everyone had the opportunity to vote. 'But the result will be slanted in that some people vote secure in the knowledge that they won't have to pay for what they will vote for,' he said."
      Unfortunately that is true, but his great eloquence of phrase suggests that he wants to put the boot into the poor. There is no other justification for what he said.
      How can it be justifiable to say to people who, through no fault of their own, are on supplementary benefit, "We will clobber you. The only section guaranteed to come out of the social security review worse will be you, the poorest section of the community"? I probably have more of those people in my constituency than anyone else in the country. How can it be right for the Government to make this imposition on them?
      I echo what the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire said, apart from his comments on proportional representation, the bad part of his speech. There is a genuine problem. In areas of deprivation people are full of hopelessness. They will not be encouraged to have dignity and to take a responsible attitude to the cost of running local government unless there are signs of improvement for their future.
      I have not got time to go into all the evils of poverty caused by unemployment, but we will not make people more responsible by attacking them in this way. Even at this late stage, I hope that the Minister will co-operate and will consider the matter again in the interests of all hon. Members who are concerned about looking after their constituents.
      Mr. Ralph Howell: It will not surprise anyone in the House when I say that I do not intend to support the amendment, although the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) has raised a most important question about the proposals which were suddenly sprung upon us last week. My hon. Friend the

      215
      Minister for Social Security should tell us whether the proposed cut will apply to the first six months of social security payments rather than the first six months of unemployment. That would be a different proposition.
      It is a pity that there was not more discussion before the announcement was made so suddenly. I agree very much with my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. McCrindle), although there is no satisfactory time to make such an announcement. It might have been sensible for the Government to have taken note of the new clause which I tabled, proposing to limit the amount of mortgage interest relief to, say, £30,000. Huge amounts of money are being squandered on payments to wealthy people when things go wrong. A case which has come to my notice was reported in the Daily Mail of 27 March; the state was paying £1,200 a month in mortgage interest relief for a person whose business had failed and whose house was mortgaged for £100,000. That is unacceptable and totally wrong. It would have been much more sensible for the Secretary of State to have discussed the matter and to have put a limit on the amount of mortgage interest relief which would be paid.
      I also take the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar that we have been persuading people to buy council houses and have been issuing leaflets saying that in the event of unemployment their mortgage interest relief would be paid. Therefore, we ought not to spring such a change suddenly on them. The matter should be thought through carefully. There is scope for great savings to be made. There should not be an open-ended commitment. In due course, there should be a cut-off point when a house would have to be sold if the person was unable to fulfil his commitments. I urge my right hon. Friend to think more carefully about how such announcements are made.
      5.45 pm
      Mr. Winnick: Time is brief, but I want to make some comments because I represent a constituency in a borough with high unemployment, as the Secretary of State knows full well. The official rate of unemployment locally is 17·5 per cent. A large number of people of working age are on supplementary benefit. It is no credit to the Government, as I said yesterday, that people should be forced to live on sums of money that are totally inadequate, with the prospect of finding another job being very remote indeed.
      It is difficult to imagine any measure more determined to penalise the poorest in the community than the proposal to ensure the payment of at least 20 per cent. of rates. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) has rightly said, it will mean that much less money will be available for the basic essentials of life. We are dealing with people for whom every single penny counts. If this sum of money has to be paid in rates, there will obviously be less money for food and other essentials. Therefore, this measure penalises the poorest. There can be no justification for it.
      Even in the present Parliament it is beyond my understanding that any Back-Bench Conservative Member can bring himself to support such a measure. Any Conservative Member who votes for a measure which penalises the poorest cannot complain if such action is well publicised in his or her constituency. It is a vindictive proposal that clearly comes from No. 10 Downing street.
      216
      I do not blame the Secretary of State for it. I do not think that he dreamed up the proposal. Whatever differences I have with the right hon. Gentleman, I do not think that he would bring forward such a measure on his own initiative. I think that it has come from the Prime Minister. I also believe that the Secretary of State humiliates himself by introducing the measure. The same applies to the Minister for Social Security who always likes to present himself as a reasonable person. There is nothing reasonable in what he is about to try to justify to the House today.
      As for reducing the amount payable for mortgage interest relief, how can this be justified? Does it not to a large extent explain the current unpopularity of the Government? If the Government are worried, as they obviously are, about losing by-elections, about all the reverses in the local elections, and about why their standing is so poor in the opinion polls, it should not be difficult for them to understand the reason. It is because of the cuts in housing, education and so on which have been mentioned many times during the past week. It is also because of such measures as this, for example, to reduce assistance for payment of mortgage interest relief in the first six months for those who are unemployed.
      What is that supposed to prove? What is the rationale behind the move? Are the Government saying that those who are unemployed for less than six months are not genuinely seeking work? Do they want to spread the poisonous lie that many of our fellow citizens who are unemployed, and who have been unable to find another job in the first six months of unemployment, do not want to work? Is that the kind of lie that the Government want to demonstrate to justify the present level of unemployment? My constituents dread being made redundant and the Secretary of State must be aware of the position as his constituency is in the west midlands. My constituents who are in their forties and fifties especially dread being made jobless because their chances of finding another job are so remote.
      Many of my constituents, and this is perfectly understandable in view of the position that prevails in the west midlands, have a daily fear that they will lose their jobs. If my constituents are made jobless and so suffer all the difficulties that will accompany that, why should they be further penalised by these proposals? It is strange and hypocritical that these proposals should come from a Government who say that they are in favour of home ownership. That is a strange way of demonstrating that belief in home ownership. The Government are taking measures to penalise people who are made jobless.
      I said that I would keep my remarks brief. I believe that the two measures that we are debating are contemptible and are worthy of a contemptible Administration.
      The Minister for Social Security (Mr. Tony Newton): The amendments raise two major subjects and in the relatively short time available to me I will try to make some comment on these. I would like to start by considering some of the points that have been raised about the mortgage interest proposals which were sent for consultation to the Social Security Advisory Committee last week.
      I would like to take this opportunity to inform the House that the proposal was clearly contained as a possibility in the social security Green Paper published almost a year ago. The proposal can be found in paragraph 2.92 of that Green Paper, which concluded

      217
      "The Government intend to discuss with building societies and other interested bodies arrangements whereby less of the burden—particularly for people on benefit for a short time— falls immediately and directly on the social security system."
      I must also emphasise that that was echoed in the White Paper published last December. Paragraph 3.41 of that White Paper states:
      "The Government will continue to discuss with the building societies and other major lenders what changes might be appropriate, including the possibility of a limit on the proportion of mortgage interest which would be met during an initial period in receipt of benefit."
      While I acknowledge the points that my hon. Friends have made, it is fair for me to make clear that, far from suddenly emerging last week, this proposal had been clearly signalled for some time.
      Mrs. Margaret Beckett rose——
      Mr. Newton: I will give way when I have finished my next point.
      Two of my hon. Friends referred to the leaflets which dealt with the right to buy. I must stress that, in an issue published in September of last year, the proposal was specifically signalled to anyone reading the leaflets. In parenthesis, page 8 of the leaflet published in September, after describing the current position, states:
      "However, current proposals may mean that help is not generally available during the first six months of eligibility for supplementary benefit."
      That was revealed in September in a leaflet specifically published for that purpose. In an addendum in January, a passage referred to, and quoted from, the same extract that I quoted from the White Paper. Whatever else I may be told, it is wrong to suggest that these proposals were unexpected, unheralded and unheard of. That is manifestly not the case.
      Mrs. Beckett: Would the Minister accept that perhaps many people did not believe that the Government meant what they were proposing? How can the Minister square what he has just told the House with the Prime Minister's comments the other day?
      Mr. Newton: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister did not suggest that the proposal had not been in the Green Paper or the White Paper. The facts are stated clearly in the documents to which I have referred.
      There is no mystery about the fact that the Government believed that the matter needed consideration and it is obvious from the documents that I have quoted that we were considering the matter. The proposals that we put forward last week represent the view that we have had formed on what should be put to the Social Security Advisory Committee for full consultation in the normal way for which social security legislation provides.
      The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) referred to the figures in a document sent to the Social Security Advisory Committee about the position of those in and out of work in specific circumstances. The figures were based on a family with two children and a £16,000 mortgage. Although I note that the hon. Gentleman suggests that there are very few people in that position, it is unarguable that, on figures that relate to a net income of £120 a week and a £16,000 mortgage, the income after meeting housing costs for a family in work would be £68·50 and for someone out of work, in receipt of supplementary benefit, the income would be £74. I would
      218
      have thought my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell) would have attached some importance to that point.
      Some hon. Members questioned whether that position is fair, especially when one compares the position of those in work with those on benefits but not on supplementary benefits who have relatively low incomes. Those people do not receive comparable help. There is an obvious issue in relation to incentives and that is clearly a factor in what is known as the unemployment trap. There is widespread agreement in the House that we need to tackle that and many of the Bill's proposals, including the family credit proposals. are designed to tackle that problem by helping families in work.
      Besides those problems, which must be considered and which cannot be dismissed, there is the wider issue whether it is correct that, even for short periods of difficulty that cause someone to be on supplementary benefit, it is right to expect the taxpayer immediately to pick up the bill. Part of that bill will be met by people who are meeting their own mortgages out of relatively modest incomes derived from some other source rather than supplementary benefit.
      It is well known, and is a credit to the building societies, that building societies try to help those who find themselves in short-term difficulty. Such difficulties can occur for a variety of reasons and these by no means affect only those who may be in receipt of supplementary benefit. The notion that the building societies will rush into foreclosure is wide of the mark. In its formal response to the Green Paper, the Building Societies Association assured us that it would handle any change in arrangements sympathetically and would continue with its basic aim to help as many people as possible to achieve home ownership.
      Having weighed all the issues, we brought forward the proposals that were published in detail last week. The first of those states that the amount of mortgage interest payable with supplementary benefit should be limited to half for the first six months on benefit for all claimants aged under 60.
      The second proposal is that those remaining on benefit after that period would, as now, have their mortgage interest payments met in full.
      The third major proposal, which is also highly relevant to the balance of the consideration of these proposals, is that we would allow interest on arrears which have accumulated in those cases where the six-month limitation to qualify for benefit causes such arrears to attract specific assistance and give encouragement to lending organisations to re-schedule loans in appropriate cases where the interruption of earnings turned out to be longer term.
      The fourth proposal is a smaller point but is one which the House should consider. We propose a further change in the regulations to enable home owners who take out mortgage protection policies to benefit from them through a special supplementary benefit disregard of the income from such policies. In other words, we are trying to encourage and assist the provision of insurance against the risks that a home owner may sometimes incur.
      We estimate that about 90,000 people might be affected by these proposals, whereas there are 6 million borrowers from building societies. We also estimate that the average benefit involved for people on benefit for six months or more would be about £200. That helps to put the matter into perspective.

      219
      This is a reasonable and fair way in which to strike a balance between the taxpayer, the borrower and the lender. The regime in Britain is known to be more generous than that in any other country in the world. The Government are trying to ensure through the Bill and other social security ——
      It being Six o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the Order [15 April] and the Resolution [19 May], to put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.
      Question put, That the amendment be made:–
      The House divided: Ayes 193, Noes 321.

      Division No. 186]

      [6.00 pm

      AYES

      Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

      Fatchett, Derek

      Anderson, Donald

      Faulds, Andrew

      Archer, Rt Hon Peter

      Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)

      Ashdown, Paddy

      Fisher, Mark

      Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

      Flannery, Martin

      Ashton, Joe

      Foot, Rt Hon Michael

      Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

      Forrester, John

      Bagier, Gordon A. T.

      Foster, Derek

      Barnett, Guy

      Foulkes, George

      Barron, Kevin

      Fraser, J. (Norwood)

      Beckett, Mrs Margaret

      Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

      Beith, A. J.

      Freud, Clement

      Bell, Stuart

      Garrett, W. E.

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

      George, Bruce

      Bidwell, Sydney

      Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

      Blair, Anthony

      Godman, Dr Norman

      Boothroyd, Miss Betty

      Gould, Bryan

      Boyes, Roland

      Gourlay, Harry

      Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

      Hamilton, James (M'well N)

      Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

      Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)

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

      Hancock, Michael

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

      Hardy, Peter

      Caborn, Richard

      Healey, Rt Hon Denis

      Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

      Heffer, Eric S.

      Campbell, Ian

      Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

      Campbell-Savours, Dale

      Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)

      Canavan, Dennis

      Home Robertson, John

      Cartwright, John

      Howells, Geraint

      Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

      Hoyle, Douglas

      Clarke, Thomas

      Hughes, Dr Mark (Durham)

      Clay, Robert

      Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

      Clelland, David Gordon

      Hughes, Roy (Newport East)

      Clwyd, Mrs Ann

      Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

      Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)

      Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

      Cohen, Harry

      Hume, John

      Coleman, Donald

      Janner, Hon Greville

      Conlan, Bernard

      John, Brynmor

      Cook, Frank (Stockton North)

      Johnston, Sir Russell

      Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

      Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

      Corbett, Robin

      Kennedy, Charles

      Corbyn, Jeremy

      Kilroy-Silk, Robert

      Craigen, J. M.

      Kirkwood, Archy

      Crowther, Stan

      Lambie, David

      Cunliffe, Lawrence

      Leadbitter, Ted

      Cunningham, Dr John

      Leighton, Ronald

      Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

      Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

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

      Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

      Deakins, Eric

      Litherland, Robert

      Dewar, Donald

      Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

      Dixon, Donald

      Lofthouse, Geoffrey

      Dobson, Frank

      McCartney, Hugh

      Dormand, Jack

      McDonald, Dr Oonagh

      Douglas, Dick

      McGuire, Michael

      Dubs, Alfred

      McKay, Allen (Penistone)

      Duffy, A. E. P.

      McKelvey, William

      Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

      MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

      Eadie, Alex

      McNamara, Kevin

      Eastham, Ken

      McTaggart, Robert

      Edwards, Bob (W'h'mpt'n SE)

      McWilliam, John

      Evans, John (St. Helens N)

      Madden, Max

      220

      Mallon, Seamus

      Shore, Rt Hon Peter

      Marek, Dr John

      Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)

      Marshall, David (Shettleston)

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

      Mason, Rt Hon Roy

      Silkin, Rt Hon J.

      Maxton, John

      Skinner, Dennis

      Meacher, Michael

      Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

      Meadowcroft, Michael

      Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)

      Michie, William

      Spearing, Nigel

      Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

      Steel, Rt Hon David

      Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

      Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)

      Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

      Stott, Roger

      Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

      Strang, Gavin

      Nellist, David

      Straw, Jack

      Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

      Taylor, Rt Hon John David

      O'Brien, William

      Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

      O'Neill, Martin

      Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)

      Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

      Thorne, Stan (Preston)

      Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

      Tinn, James

      Park, George

      Torney, Tom

      Parry, Robert

      Wainwright, R.

      Patchett, Terry

      Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)

      Pavitt, Laurie

      Wallace, James

      Pendry, Tom

      Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

      Pike, Peter

      Wareing, Robert

      Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

      Weetch, Ken

      Radice, Giles

      Welsh, Michael

      Randall, Stuart

      White, James

      Raynsford, Nick

      Wigley, Dafydd

      Redmond, Martin

      Williams, Rt Hon A.

      Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)

      Wilson, Gordon

      Richardson, Ms Jo

      Winnick, David

      Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

      Woodall, Alec

      Robertson, George

      Wrigglesworth, Ian

      Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

      Young, David (Bolton SE)

      Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)

      Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

      Tellers for the Ayes:

      Sedgemore, Brian

      Mr. Chris Smith and Mr. Frank Haynes.

      Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

      Shields, Mrs Elizabeth

      NOES

      Adley, Robert

      Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.

      Alexander, Richard

      Buck, Sir Antony

      Alison, Rt Hon Michael

      Budgen, Nick

      Amess, David

      Bulmer, Esmond

      Ancram, Michael

      Burt, Alistair

      Arnold, Tom

      Butcher, John

      Ashby, David

      Butler, Rt Hon Sir Adam

      Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.

      Butterfill, John

      Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

      Carlisle, John (Luton N)

      Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)

      Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

      Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

      Carttiss, Michael

      Baldry, Tony

      Cash, William

      Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

      Channon, Rt Hon Paul

      Batiste, Spencer

      Chapman, Sydney

      Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

      Chope, Christopher

      Bendall, Vivian

      Churchill, W. S.

      Bennett, Rt Hon Sir Frederic

      Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

      Benyon, William

      Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

      Best, Keith

      Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

      Bevan, David Gilroy

      Clegg, Sir Walter

      Biffen, Rt Hon John

      Cockeram, Eric

      Biggs-Davison, Sir John

      Coombs, Simon

      Blackburn, John

      Cope, John

      Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

      Cormack, Patrick

      Body, Sir Richard

      Corrie, John

      Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

      Couchman, James

      Boscawen, Hon Robert

      Cranborne, Viscount

      Bottomley, Peter

      Crouch, David

      Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

      Currie, Mrs Edwina

      Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

      Dickens, Geoffrey

      Boyson, Dr Rhodes

      Dorrell, Stephen

      Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

      Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

      Brandon-Bravo, Martin

      Dover, Den

      Brinton, Tim

      du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward

      Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

      Durant, Tony

      Brooke, Hon Peter

      Dykes, Hugh

      Browne, John

      Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

      Bruinvels, Peter

      Eggar, Tim

      Bryan, Sir Paul

      Emery, Sir Peter

      221

      Evennett, David

      Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

      Eyre, Sir Reginald

      Knowles, Michael

      Fairbairn, Nicholas

      Knox, David

      Fallon, Michael

      Lamont, Norman

      Farr, Sir John

      Lang, Ian

      Favell, Anthony

      Latham, Michael

      Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

      Lawler, Geoffrey

      Fletcher, Alexander

      Lawrence, Ivan

      Fookes, Miss Janet

      Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

      Forman, Nigel

      Lee, John (Pendle)

      Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

      Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

      Forth, Eric

      Lester, Jim

      Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

      Lightbown, David

      Fox, Marcus

      Lilley, Peter

      Franks, Cecil

      Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

      Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

      Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

      Freeman, Roger

      Lord, Michael

      Fry, Peter

      Lyell, Nicholas

      Galley, Roy

      McCrindle, Robert

      Gardiner, George (Reigate)

      McCurley, Mrs Anna

      Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)

      Macfarlane, Neil

      Garel-Jones, Tristan

      MacGregor, Rt Hon John

      Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

      MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

      Glyn, Dr Alan

      Maclean, David John

      Goodhart, Sir Philip

      McLoughlin, Patrick

      Goodlad, Alastair

      McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

      Gorst, John

      McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)

      Gow, Ian

      McQuarrie, Albert

      Gower, Sir Raymond

      Major, John

      Grant, Sir Anthony

      Malins, Humfrey

      Greenway, Harry

      Malone, Gerald

      Gregory, Conal

      Maples, John

      Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

      Marland, Paul

      Grist, Ian

      Marlow, Antony

      Ground, Patrick

      Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

      Grylls, Michael

      Mates, Michael

      Gummer, Rt Hon John S

      Maude, Hon Francis

      Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

      Mawhinney, Dr Brian

      Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

      Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

      Hampson, Dr Keith

      Mayhew, Sir Patrick

      Hanley, Jeremy

      Mellor, David

      Hannam, John

      Merchant, Piers

      Hargreaves, Kenneth

      Miller, Hal (B'grove)

      Harris, David

      Mills, lain (Meriden)

      Harvey, Robert

      Miscampbell, Norman

      Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

      Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

      Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

      Moate, Roger

      Hawkins, Sir Paul (N'folk SW)

      Monro, Sir Hector

      Hawksley, Warren

      Montgomery, Sir Fergus

      Hayes, J.

      Moore, Rt Hon John

      Heathcoat-Amory, David

      Morris, M. (N'hampton S)

      Heddle, John

      Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

      Hickmet, Richard

      Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

      Hicks, Robert

      Moynihan, Hon C.

      Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

      Murphy, Christopher

      Hill, James

      Neale, Gerrard

      Hind, Kenneth

      Nelson, Anthony

      Hirst, Michael

      Neubert, Michael

      Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

      Newton, Tony

      Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)

      Nicholls, Patrick

      Holt, Richard

      Norris, Steven

      Hordern, Sir Peter

      Onslow, Cranley

      Howard, Michael

      Oppenheim, Phillip

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

      Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

      Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N)

      Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

      Hubbard-Miles, Peter

      Page, Richard (Herts SW)

      Hunt, David (Wirral W)

      Patten, J. (Oxf W & Abgdn)

      Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

      Pattie, Geoffrey

      Hunter, Andrew

      Pawsey, James

      Jackson, Robert

      Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

      Jessel, Toby

      Pollock, Alexander

      Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

      Porter, Barry

      Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

      Portillo, Michael

      Jones, Robert (Herts W)

      Powell, William (Corby)

      Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

      Powley, John

      Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

      Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

      Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

      Proctor, K. Harvey

      Kershaw, Sir Anthony

      Raffan, Keith

      Key, Robert

      Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

      Knight, Greg (Derby N)

      Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

      222

      Rhodes James, Robert

      Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

      Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

      Thomas, Rt Hon Peter

      Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

      Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

      Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

      Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)

      Roe, Mrs Marion

      Thornton, Malcolm

      Rossi, Sir Hugh

      Thurnham, Peter

      Rost, Peter

      Townend, John (Bridlington)

      Rowe, Andrew

      Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

      Rumbold, Mrs Angela

      Tracey, Richard

      Ryder, Richard

      Trippier, David

      Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

      Trotter, Neville

      Sayeed, Jonathan

      Twinn, Dr Ian

      Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

      van Straubenzee, Sir W.

      Shelton, William (Streatham)

      Vaughan, Sir Gerard

      Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

      Viggers, Peter

      Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

      Waddington, David

      Silvester, Fred

      Wakeham, Rt Hon John

      Sims, Roger

      Waldegrave, Hon William

      Skeet, Sir Trevor

      Walden, George

      Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

      Wall, Sir Patrick

      Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

      Waller, Gary

      Soames, Hon Nicholas

      Walters, Dennis

      Speed, Keith

      Ward, John

      Speller, Tony

      Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

      Spencer, Derek

      Warren, Kenneth

      Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)

      Watson, John

      Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

      Watts, John

      Squire, Robin

      Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

      Stanbrook, Ivor

      Wheeler, John

      Stanley, Rt Hon John

      Whitfield, John

      Steen, Anthony

      Wiggin, Jerry

      Stern, Michael

      Winterton, Mrs Ann

      Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

      Winterton, Nicholas

      Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

      Wolfson, Mark

      Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

      Wood, Timothy

      Stewart, Ian (Hertf'dshire N)

      Woodcock, Michael

      Stokes, John

      Yeo, Tim

      Stradling Thomas, Sir John

      Young, Sir George (Acton)

      Sumberg, David

      Younger, Rt Hon George

      Tapsell, Sir Peter

      Taylor, John (Solihull)

      Tellers for the Noes:

      Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

      Mr. Carol Mather and Mr. Donald Thompson.

      Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

      Temple-Morris, Peter

      Question accordingly negatived.
      MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER then proceeded to put forthwith the Question on amendments moved by a member of the Government up to the end of clause 33.

    Clause 32

      THE SOCIAL FUND AND SOCIAL FUND OFFICERS
      Amendment made: No. 72, in page 40, line 21, at end insert—
      '(3A) The Secretary of State may allocate an amount, or allocate different amounts for different purposes, for awards by a particular social fund officer or group of officers in a financial year.'.—[Mr. Newton.]

    Clause 33

      AWARDS ETC.
      Amendments made: No. 73, in page 41, line 1, leave out subsection (3).
      No. 74, in page 41, line, 4, at end insert—
      '(3A) A social fund officer may direct that an award shall be payable in specified instalments at specified times.'
      No. 75, in page 41, line 9, leave out subsection (6) and insert—
      '(6) If a social fund officer directs that an award under section 32(1)(b) above is to be repayable, it may be recovered out of the estate of the deceased, and by no other means.'.
      No. 77, in page 41, line 28, leave out 'applicant's'.
      No. 78, in page 41, line 29, leave out from first 'the' to 'may' in line 30 and insert
      'existence of resources from which the need'.
      No. 79, in page 41, line 35, leave out 'subsection (3)' and insert 'section 32(3A)'.
      No. 162, in page 42, line 1, leave out subsection (12).
      No. 81, in page 42, line 3, at end insert—
      '(13) In this section "married couple" and "unmarried couple" are to be construed in accordance with Part II of this Act and regulations made under it.'.—[Mr. Newton.]

    Schedule 3

      INDUSTRIAL INJURIES AND DISEASES
      Mrs. Beckett: I beg to move amendment No. 82, in page 93, leave out lines 20 to 23 and insert—
      '3.—(1) After subsection (1) of section 57 (disablement benefit) the following subsection shall be inserted—'.
      The amendment seeks to do what we were unable to do in Committee because of the lateness of the hour at which the Government's proposals on industrial injuries were tabled. It seeks to remove the provision that the cut-off point for entitlement to industrial injury benefit should be at a 14 per cent. degree of disability.
      It is a remarkably unfortunate coincidence that, as the Government confirmed in Committee, a cut-off point at that level will mean that about 90 per cent. of people who now gain awards under the industrial injury scheme will no longer receive a reward of any kind. Hon. Members who have experience of working in manufacturing industry or other industries where work may incur the possibility of an accident or hon. Members with constituency experience of the damage that is done to people who spend their working lives in heavy manufacturing or heavy engineeering will be alarmed at these proposals.
      6.15 pm
      Both in my constituency and outside it I have an extensive acquaintance with people who earn their living in heavy engineering. I cannot recall a single person of my acquaintance who has worked most of his or her life in such an industry and in jobs where there is a risk of physical injury who is not in some way damaged. Some have lost small joints and many suffer from debilitating back injuries which attract less sympathy because they are invisible but which are extremely painful. There are many ways in which people are damaged by such work. Those of us who number such individuals among our friends and acquaintances have seen them dragging themselves about because their bodies have been damaged by heavy work.
      When we discussed this matter in Committee the Minister said that there might be a problem of resources. He argued, as the Government have so often argued during the Bill's passage, that they wished to simplify the schemes that are being put forward. It is unfortunate that, whenever the Government propose simplification, it always removes a more beneficial scheme and rarely gives an advantage to others which has been enjoyed only by a few.
      My union, the Transport and General Workers Union, has sent me examples of the types of people who will lose out under these proposals unless our amendment is passed. This year a person was awarded £2,700 in compensation for the amputation of his third finger, but under these proposals he would not receive a penny. This year a person
      224
      who lost his ring finger was awarded more than £1,500, but under the proposals he would not receive a penny. This year a person lost four toes on one foot—a disabling and painful injury—and was awarded £2,075, but under these proposals he would not receive a penny.
      Injuries not involving amputation will also be affected. A person who had scaffolding fall on his neck and spinal column and who suffered injuries to his neck, shoulders and back received an award of a 4 per cent. payment for life and more than £1,000. Again, under these proposals he would not receive a penny. A conductress who was thrown against a hand rail when a bus braked sharply and suffered chest and neck injuries—the type of injuries which are likely to lead to increased pain and suffering later in life — received an award of £1,600, but she would not receive a penny under these proposals. A further case, which may appeal particularly to Conservative Members, is of a security express driver who was shot in the leg. He will suffer permanently from the effects of this wound and he received an award of a 7 per cent. payment for life and £1,660. Again, he would not receive a penny under the provisions of the Bill.
      In Committee the Minister explained that the total savings expected under the proposals would be between £46 million and £56 million, and that net of any improvements it would be between £40 million and £50 million. This is a particularly unfortunate example of the way in which the Government seek to remove at the stroke of a pen arrangements for which people have contributed, and which have been negotiated, fought for and won with considerable difficulty.
      It is not only those with injuries who will lose, but 200 to 300 widows are likely to lose their pension entitlement, and there will be other corresponding losses under the proposals. The Government have made some small amendments in the light of comments made in Committee, but they are insufficient to persuade us that the amendment should not be pressed to a vote. Ninety per cent. who receive benefit under the existing system will lose out under this provision. The Government's proposals are wholly indefensible.
      Mr. William Cash: I shall deal with widows and their allowances and payments. The National Associaton of Widows has written to me, and my hon. Friend the Minister was good enough to have a meeting with the director of the association, Mrs. June Hemer, a few weeks ago. My hon. Friend kindly wrote to the association giving some details of individual calculations, with which I shall not weary the House today. In reply, the association has sent me a series of comments on those calculations which show that, for widows without dependent children at various ages of 40, 45, 50 and 60 plus, whereas on the Ministry's calculations there would be certain small effects, on the association's calculations there would appear to be significant losses.
      Therefore, as chairman of the all-party group on widows, I should be extremely glad if my hon. Friend the Minister would look into the matter and check the figures against those supplied by the association, which has done a marvellous job over many years in fighting for the rights of widows. Would he be good enough to look into the matter and let me have his comments, if he is unable to give me detailed replies now to the calculations that I know that his Department has already received?
      Mr. Charles Kennedy: I support the amendment. I shall be brief in the hope that we shall reach amendment No. 210, on the abolition of reduced rate benefits.
      The omens for Government flexibility are not high, judging by yesterday afternoon and evening, despite the high-mindedness displayed by the Secretary of State at the close of play last night, who said that he would look again at one item that concerned many hon. Members on both sides of the House. The Minister, perhaps uncharacteristically, was rather more hard-faced. To be fair to the Minister, he usually is fairly reasonable, but yesterday there was a certain smack of Tebbitry in the way in which he would not countenance the introduction of a special allowance for the severely disabled, who will lose as a result of the Bill, nor look at specific community care additions for them. I hope that a night's sleep has made him feel more reasonable.
      We have heard that the savings to be made by this measure are in the region of £40 million to £50 million. Set in the context of the social security budget and of the scale of undertaking that will remain as long as we have any system of social security, and as long as the Government's policies persist, it is not a significant sum of money. However, the Government's arguments will no doubt be similar to those that they made against the case for the severely disabled last night—that even if the sums are not significant, the money goes to significant numbers of people. The categories who will lose as a result of this provision should be exempted, and that should be done by the Government thinking again. I hope that the Minister will show a little more compassion than he was able to show yesterday and will heed the pleas from both sides of the House. I hope that he will say that, even if he will not accept this amendment, he will give an undertaking to redress the injustices that are likely to result.
      Mr. Andy Stewart: During my lifetime I have had numerous accidents at work and have the scars to prove it. However, being self-employed, I knew that no disablement benefit was due to me, and that was acceptable. What is not acceptable is the proposal that no benefit should be paid for disablement below 14 per cent., whether temporary or permanent. If it is accepted, many quite serious injuries will go uncompensated. For example, a middle finger is rated at 12 per cent. For those who work in my constituency's largest industry, coal mining, such a loss is commonplace. Many other injuries, involving the eyes, back and knees and resulting in permanent disability, attract assessments of less than 14 per cent. Taking away a benefit that has become part and parcel of the accepted service conditions of coal mining would be highly contentious and unacceptable to my constituents.
      I can give my hon. Friend the Minister some information that might induce him to reconsider his decision. At Sherwood's 10 collieries it is normal to have five serious accidents a week per pit, making 50 in all, ranging from 1 per cent. upwards, with 80 per cent. of those accidents under 14 per cent. If my hon. Friend insists on this course of action, those who have suffered such injuries will receive no industrial benefit. I further remind him that, with 25 per cent. of my electorate working in an industry that suffers from a high incidence of industrial
      226
      injuries, all permanent disabilities resulting from industrial accidents should attract basic disablement benefit. I shall vote accordingly.
      Mr. Frank Haynes: This in one of the wicked moves that the Government have made in the Bill. They are taking benefits away from people who have already paid for such benefits. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Stewart) mentioned the mining industry, although he comes from the farming industry. The accidents that will be affected by this move occur in mining, farming and heavy industries such as engineering, shipbuilding and the like. People will not like this move, and I hope that they wake up to what the Government are doing.
      While they work in these industries, people are contributing to the social security fund in the hope that, if something happens to them and they have certain disabilities, they will receive a payment in lieu of the disabilities. That payment for what has happened to them has been made since the welfare state was introduced. It is right and proper for me to point out that this is yet another Government move to do away gradually with the welfare state. This is a shocking state of affairs.
      I sat for three months on the Committee considering the Bill, and I know that the issue is broader than just the disablement benefit. The Government are having a go at many things. As my hon. Friends have said in ether debates, money is being taken away from other benefits besides this one. That is why I felt that I had to say something this afternoon. I should have loved to contribute yesterday, but I could not because the guillotine meant that there was a lack of time. It will be on us again at seven o'clock, but I wanted to make my point.
      Mr. David Ashby: I share the concern expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) and by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) about this provision.. In areas such as mine, where there is not only heavy engineering, but the coalfield and other industries, it is a comfort to those who work in these injury-prone industries that there is some fall back.
      We have good safety records in our part of the world. and it has won many awards for the prevention of injury. However, with the best will in the world, injuries happen and it is some comfort to the workers to know that they have a contract of insurance so that if they are disabled —for example, if they lose a finger—they will at least get some compensation.
      I hope that the Minister persuades the Government to change direction, although I doubt that they will. At least we are trying to persuade them. We shall vote for the amendment, in the hope that we can carry many Conservative Members with us and win the vote to defeat the Government in their wicked move. Suddenly, out of the blue, people's contract, for which they have paid over the years, is ripped up. It is an industrial contract, but they are told that they will receive compensation only if the injury is over 14 per cent. If it is under 14 per cent. they will receive nothing.
      I understand the desire to provide help where it is needed and I realise that there will be a higher level of payment for minor injuries. However, I ask my hon. Friend to think again about this. The fact that there will

      227
      be compensation for these kinds of injuries is a great comfort to these people. Therefore, I have my doubts about this part of the Bill.
      6.30 pm
      Mr. Bill Michie: I spent the whole of my working life outside Parliament in industry. It is a sad day when this Parliament discusses taking away so many of the advantages that were gained over many years by people who were dedicated to helping those who work in dangerous environments and to getting society in general to recognise that there are dangers. People should be able to take comfort from the knowledge that at least they will be provided with some compensation if they find that they are in difficulties.
      Shop stewards spent many years fighting to ensure that proper compensation was provided for those who were injured. This helped not just those who were injured physically or psychologically. It prompted industrialists to create better working conditions that helped to avoid many of the accidents that would otherwise have occurred. It was a two-pronged effort. It provided a stimulus to co-operation between management and work force in order to create an environment that prevents as many accidents as possible. There are bound to be industrial accidents. However small an injury may be, there ought to be compensation for it.
      Many of the problems relate not just to physical injury but to the psychological effect of the injury on the injured. The character of the person will determine the amount of psychological damage that is done. We cannot close our eyes to that problem. Members of Parliament cannot say, "Oh, it's only a finger, so it does not matter very much." It matters a great deal to many people. I should not volunteer to have a finger chopped off just to prove the point that it really does not matter. It is important to provide as much protection as possible for those who work in dangerous occupations. We do not want to return to the dark ages when it did not matter whether a worker was injured, or even killed. However, that is the aim of this part of the Bill.
      Mr. Newton: I understand, as I understood in Committee, the reservations that have been expressed by hon. Members on both sides of the House about these proposals. However, the Government gave this matter very careful consideration before deciding to introduce them, and I am unable to accept the amendment. We believe that it is right to seek to concentrate the industrial injuries scheme more closely upon the more severely disabled and to provide compensation for loss of earnings as distinct from the more limited degrees of disablement. They are defined in the Bill as 14 per cent.
      Mr. Tony Favell: In my professional experience as a solicitor I found that the administrative procedure involved in making claims for these smaller, albeit important, accidents was extremely cumbersome. If the amendment is not passed, there will be savings, but will the savings be given to those who are more severely disabled?
      Mr. Newton: My hon. Friend is right. That is one of the factors that the Government have in mind. Many of the claims that we suggest should no longer be met in the way
      228
      that they were met in the past cost more to decide than the amount of benefit that is paid. That can best be illustrated by saying that compensation for disablement that is found to be less than 14 per cent., much of which is temporary rather than permanent, is about £400. I accept that that is an average and that, as with all averages, it disguises variations. However, it helps to put the matter in perspective.
      It is important that the House should understand that we are trying to ensure that compensation continues to be paid for loss of earnings as distinct from disablement at every level of disablement. I accept that there is a net saving, along the lines mentioned by the hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), but for the severely disabled the proposals contain a significant improvement that can best be illustrated by saying that 3,700 severely disabled people in this scheme will gain up to £25 a week extra, provided that they have lost earnings.
      The present rules mean that the severely disabled receive compensation for disability but that they are debarred from receiving compensation for loss of earnings. By making it possible for them to receive compensation for loss of earnings on top of the maximum amount of disablement pension, the most hard hit will receive an extra sum of up to £25 a week.
      Another group of people who are more severely disabled than those to whom I have referred will also be assisted to a significant extent. About 3,500 people whose disablement is between 14 and 19 per cent. will have their disablement pensions rounded up to the 20 per cent. rate. They, too, will gain from the proposals. In both cases, they are more significanly disabled than those for whom we propose to cease paying compensation for disablement, but I emphasise that we shall continue to pay compensation for loss of earnings.
      Mr. Kennedy: The Minister for Social Security advances a very clear argument, with which I do not take issue. However, I take issue with the principle that those who hitherto would have received compensation because of industrial injury will not now do so. The Minister is not addressing that argument of principle which is a cause of concern to both sides of the House. How can that be right or just?
      Mr. Newton: I am slightly puzzled by the way in which the hon. Gentleman phrases his intervention. He is attracted to some parts of what I said but not to others. Inescapably, we feel that it is right to look at these proposals as a package, in terms of a balance within the industrial injuries scheme, and to focus more closely on the severely disabled. I made no secret in Committee or in the documents that we have published on the subject that we place this in the context of the help that we are able to give to the sick and disabled as a whole.
      I do not want to go too far down the track that the hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) opened up for me a few moments ago in relation to community care, but one of the aims of our income support proposals is to provide a significant increase in the amount of support that is given to those who are classified as long term sick and disabled who are currently in receipt of supplementary benefit, and who under our proposals will receive income support. For that substantial group of people, for whom nothing like the industrial injuries scheme exists if they have been injured at home or

      229
      elsewhere, we are seeking to provide assistance through the income support scheme, amounting to about £50 million.
      I do not run away from the fact that we have sought to look at the needs of sick and disabled people as a whole, and to try to strike a balance between different groups of people whose disabilities may have arisen in different ways. Indeed. I see my right hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Prentice) in the Chamber. In the past, he has had responsibilities like mine, and he will know some of the problems.
      Mr. Reg Prentice: My hon. Friend has tempted me to intervene. I speak not only as one of his predecessors, but as someone who, for about six years, specialised some time ago as a trade union official in the problem of industrial injuries. Repayment of the debt that society owes, particularly to those who are severely disabled, together with a concentration of help on those people is long overdue. When I was doing my hon. Friend's job, I put out a consultative paper. I am delighted with the provision, as it will help the most severely disabled people in the most practical way.
      Mr. Newton: I did myself and the House a favour by referring to my right hon. Friend. He is right, in that significant aspects of the proposals in the Bill were contained in the White Paper which, if I remember rightly, was published in 1981. I do not recall the exact date, but my right hon. Friend may well have been the Minister responsible. We are seeking to focus help in that way.
      Mr. Andy Stewart: Does my hon. Friend recall that that report also said that 10 per cent., and not 14 per cent., would be the starting figure?
      Mr. Newton: I recognise that the proposals are not exactly the same as those in the White Paper. We have modified them to take account of developments and of other considerations, including the proposals for disabled people in other parts of the Bill.
      My hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) also raised a point about multiple accidents. It is a sad fact that many miners suffer several accidents over a period, and they also suffer from chest diseases such as pneumoconiosis. I hope that it is clear to my hon. Friend that we shall add together the effects of all industrial injuries and pay benefit if the total disablement is 14 per cent. or more. There are specific proposals in the Bill for bringing together successive disabling or damaging accidents in the way that I have described.
      We have given this issue careful consideration. We recognise the points made, but we have been concerned to look at the needs of the most severely disabled to ensure that the industrial injuries scheme is as effectively focused as possible on that group, and to take a small but useful step towards fairer treatment as between sick and disabled people — whatever the causes of their sickness or disability—and the other proposals in the Bill.
      Question put, That the amendment be made:—
      The House divided: Ayes 195, Noes 296.

      Division No. 187]

      [6.42 pm

      AYES

      Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

      Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

      Alton, David

      Bagier, Gordon A. T.

      Anderson, Donald

      Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

      Archer, Rt Hon Peter

      Barnett, Guy

      Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

      Barron, Kevin

      Ashton, Joe

      Beckett, Mrs Margaret

      230

      Beith, A. J.

      Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

      Bell, Stuart

      Hughes, Roy (Newport East)

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

      Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

      Bermingham, Gerald

      Hume, John

      Bidwell, Sydney

      Janner, Hon Greville

      Blair, Anthony

      Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)

      Boothroyd, Miss Betty

      John, Brynmor

      Boyes, Roland

      Johnston, Sir Russell

      Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

      Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

      Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

      Kennedy, Charles

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

      Kilroy-Silk, Robert

      Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

      Kirkwood, Archy

      Bruce, Malcolm

      Lambie, David

      Caborn, Richard

      Leadbitter, Ted

      Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

      Leighton, Ronald

      Campbell, Ian

      Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

      Campbell-Savours, Dale

      Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

      Canavan, Dennis

      Litherland, Robert

      Cartwright, John

      Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

      Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

      Lofthouse, Geoffrey

      Clarke, Thomas

      McCartney, Hugh

      Clay, Robert

      McDonald, Dr Oonagh

      Clelland, David Gordon

      McGuire, Michael

      Clwyd, Mrs Ann

      McKay, Allen (Penistone)

      Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)

      McKelvey, William

      Cohen, Harry

      MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

      Coleman, Donald

      McNamara, Kevin

      Conlan, Bernard

      McTaggart, Robert

      Cook, Frank (Stockton North)

      Madden, Max

      Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

      Mallon, Seamus

      Corbett, Robin

      Marshall, David (Shettleston)

      Corbyn, Jeremy

      Martin, Michael

      Craigen, J. M.

      Mason, Rt Hon Roy

      Crowther, Stan

      Maxton, John

      Cunliffe, Lawrence

      Meacher, Michael

      Cunningham, Dr John

      Meadowcroft, Michael

      Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

      Michie, William

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

      Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

      Deakins, Eric

      Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

      Dewar, Donald

      Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'snawe)

      Dixon, Donald

      Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

      Dobson, Frank

      Nellist, David

      Dormand, Jack

      Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

      Douglas, Dick

      O'Brien, William

      Dubs, Alfred

      O'Neill, Martin

      Duffy, A. E. P.

      Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

      Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

      Park, George

      Eadie, Alex

      Patchett, Terry

      Eastham, Ken

      Pendry, Tom

      Edwards, Bob (W'h'mpt'n SE)

      Pike, Peter

      Evans, John (St. Helens N)

      Powell, Rt Hon J. E.

      Fatchett, Derek

      Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

      Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)

      Prescott, John

      Fisher, Mark

      Radice, Giles

      Flannery, Martin

      Randall, Stuart

      Foot, Rt Hon Michael

      Raynsford, Nick

      Foster, Derek

      Redmond, Martin

      Foulkes, George

      Richardson, Ms Jo

      Fraser, J. (Norwood)

      Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

      Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

      Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

      Freud, Clement

      Rogers, Allan

      Garrett, W. E.

      Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)

      George, Bruce

      Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

      Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

      Sedgemore, Brian

      Godman, Dr Norman

      Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

      Gould, Bryan

      Shields, Mrs Elizabeth

      Gourlay, Harry

      Shore, Rt Hon Peter

      Hamilton, James (M'well N)

      Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)

      Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)

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

      Hancock, Michael

      Silkin, Rt Hon J.

      Hardy, Peter

      Skinner, Dennis

      Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

      Smith, C.(lsl'ton S & Fbury)

      Haynes, Frank

      Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

      Healey, Rt Hon Denis

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

      Heffer, Eric S.

      Smyth, Rev W. M. (Belfast S)

      Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

      Snape, Peter

      Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)

      Spearing, Nigel

      Home Robertson, John

      Steel, Rt Hon David

      Howells, Geraint

      Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

      Hughes, Dr Mark (Durham)

      Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)

      231

      Stott, Roger

      Weetch, Ken

      Strang, Gavin

      Welsh, Michael

      Taylor, Rt Hon John David

      White, James

      Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

      Wigley, Dafydd

      Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)

      Williams, Rt Hon A.

      Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)

      Wilson, Gordon

      Thorne, Stan (Preston)

      Winnick, David

      Tinn, James

      Woodall, Alec

      Torney, Tom

      Young, David (Bolton SE)

      Wainwright, R.

      Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)

      Tellers for the Ayes:

      Wallace, James

      Mr. John McWilliam and Mr. Sean Hughes.

      Warden, Gareth (Gower)

      Wareing, Robert

      NOES

      Adley, Robert

      Dykes, Hugh

      Alexander, Richard

      Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

      Alison, Rt Hon Michael

      Eggar, Tim

      Amess, David

      Emery, Sir Peter

      Ashby, David

      Evennett, David

      Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.

      Eyre, Sir Reginald

      Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

      Fairbairn, Nicholas

      Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)

      Fallon, Michael

      Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

      Farr, Sir John

      Baldry, Tony

      Favell, Anthony

      Batiste, Spencer

      Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

      Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

      Fletcher, Alexander

      Bendall, Vivian

      Fookes, Miss Janet

      Bennett, Rt Hon Sir Frederic

      Forman, Nigel

      Best, Keith

      Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

      Bevan, David Gilroy

      Forth, Eric

      Biffen, Rt Hon John

      Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

      Biggs-Davison, Sir John

      Fox, Marcus

      Blackburn, John

      Franks, Cecil

      Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

      Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

      Body, Sir Richard

      Freeman, Roger

      Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

      Fry, Peter

      Boscawen, Hon Robert

      Galley, Roy

      Bottomley, Peter

      Gardiner, George (Reigate)

      Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

      Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)

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

      Garel-Jones, Tristan

      Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

      Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

      Boyson, Dr Rhodes

      Glyn, Dr Alan

      Brandon-Bravo, Martin

      Goodhart, Sir Philip

      Brinton, Tim

      Goodlad, Alastair

      Brooke, Hon Peter

      Gow, Ian

      Browne, John

      Gower, Sir Raymond

      Bruinvels, Peter

      Grant, Sir Anthony

      Bryan, Sir Paul

      Greenway, Harry

      Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.

      Gregory, Conal

      Buck, Sir Antony

      Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

      Budgen, Nick

      Grist, Ian

      Bulmer, Esmond

      Ground, Patrick

      Burt, Alistair

      Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

      Butcher, John

      Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

      Carlisle, John (Luton N)

      Hanley, Jeremy

      Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

      Hannam, John

      Carttiss, Michael

      Hargreaves, Kenneth

      Cash, William

      Harris, David

      Channon, Rt Hon Paul

      Harvey, Robert

      Chapman, Sydney

      Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

      Chope, Christopher

      Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

      Churchill, W. S.

      Hawksley, Warren

      Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

      Hayes, J.

      Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

      Heathcoat-Amory, David

      Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

      Heddle, John

      Clegg, Sir Walter

      Hickmet, Richard

      Cockeram, Eric

      Hicks, Robert

      Cope, John

      Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

      Corrie, John

      Hill, James

      Couchman, James

      Hind, Kenneth

      Critchley, Julian

      Hirst, Michael

      Crouch, David

      Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

      Currie, Mrs Edwina

      Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)

      Dickens, Geoffrey

      Holt, Richard

      Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

      Hordern, Sir Peter

      Dover, Den

      Howard, Michael

      du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward

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

      Durant, Tony

      Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)

      232

      Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N)

      Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

      Hubbard-Miles, Peter

      Pollock, Alexander

      Hunt, David (Wirral W)

      Porter, Barry

      Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

      Portillo, Michael

      Hunter, Andrew

      Powell, William (Corby)

      Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

      Powley, John

      Jessel, Toby

      Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

      Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

      Price, Sir David

      Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

      Proctor, K. Harvey

      Jones, Robert (Herts W)

      Raffan, Keith

      Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

      Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

      Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

      Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

      Kershaw, Sir Anthony

      Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

      Key, Robert

      Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

      Knight, Greg (Derby N)

      Roe, Mrs Marion

      Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

      Rossi, Sir Hugh

      Knowles, Michael

      Rost, Peter

      Knox, David

      Rowe, Andrew

      Lamont, Norman

      Rumbold, Mrs Angela

      Lang, Ian

      Ryder, Richard

      Latham, Michael

      Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

      Lawler, Geoffrey

      Sayeed, Jonathan

      Lawrence, Ivan

      Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

      Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

      Shelton, William (Streatham)

      Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

      Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

      Lester, Jim

      Shields, Mrs Elizabeth

      Lightbown, David

      Silvester, Fred

      Lilley, Peter

      Sims, Roger

      Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

      Skeet, Sir Trevor

      Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

      Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

      Lord, Michael

      Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

      Luce, Rt Hon Richard

      Soames, Hon Nicholas

      McCrindle, Robert

      Speed, Keith

      McCurley, Mrs Anna

      Speller, Tony

      Macfarlane, Neil

      Spencer, Derek

      MacGregor, Rt Hon John

      Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)

      MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

      Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

      Maclean, David John

      Squire, Robin

      McLoughlin, Patrick

      Stanbrook, Ivor

      McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

      Steen, Anthony

      McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)

      Stern, Michael

      McQuarrie, Albert

      Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

      Major, John

      Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

      Malins, Humfrey

      Stewart, Ian (Hertf'dshire N)

      Marland, Paul

      Stokes, John

      Marlow, Antony

      Stradling Thomas, Sir John

      Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

      Sumberg, David

      Mates, Michael

      Tapsell, Sir Peter

      Maude, Hon Francis

      Taylor, John (Solihull)

      Mawhinney, Dr Brian

      Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

      Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

      Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

      Mayhew, Sir Patrick

      Temple-Morris, Peter

      Mellor, David

      Thomas, Rt Hon Peter

      Merchant, Piers

      Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

      Mills, lain (Meriden)

      Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

      Miscampbell, Norman

      Thornton, Malcolm

      Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

      Thurnham, Peter

      Moate, Roger

      Townend, John (Bridlington)

      Monro, Sir Hector

      Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

      Montgomery, Sir Fergus

      Tracey, Richard

      Moore, Rt Hon John

      Trippier, David

      Morris, M. (N'hampton S)

      Trotter, Neville

      Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

      Twinn, Dr Ian

      Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

      van Straubenzee, Sir W.

      Moynihan, Hon C.

      Vaughan, Sir Gerard

      Murphy, Christopher

      Viggers, Peter

      Neale, Gerrard

      Waddington, David

      Neubert, Michael

      Wakeham, Rt Hon John

      Newton, Tony

      Waldegrave, Hon William

      Nicholls, Patrick

      Walden, George

      Norris, Steven

      Wall, Sir Patrick

      Onslow, Cranley

      Waller, Gary

      Oppenheim, Phillip

      Walters, Dennis

      Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

      Ward, John

      Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

      Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

      Page, Richard (Herts SW)

      Warren, Kenneth

      Patten, J. (Oxf W & Abgdn)

      Watson, John

      Pattie, Geoffrey

      Watts, John

      Pawsey, James

      Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

      Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

      Wheeler, John

      233

      Whitfield, John

      Yeo, Tim

      Wiggin, Jerry

      Young, Sir George (Acton)

      Winterton, Mrs Ann

      Winterton, Nicholas

      Tellers for the Noes:

      Wolfson, Mark

      Mr. Carol Mather and Mr. Gerald Malone

      Wood, Timothy

      Woodcock, Michael

      Question accordingly negatived.
      Mr. Newton: I beg to move amendment No. 207, in page 96, line 3, at end insert—
      '(11) A person who—

      (a) attains pensionable age after this section comes into force; and

      (b) has retired from regular employment before that day; and

      (c) was entitled to reduce earnings allowance on the day immediately before he retired from regular employment,

      shall be treated as entitled as from the day on which he retires from regular employment to reduced earnings allowance at a rate not higher at any time than that at which the allowance was payable to him immediately before he retired from regular employment.'
      Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): With this it will be convenient to take Government amendment No. 208.
      Mr. Newton: I understand that it is the wish of the Opposition and to their convenience that the amendments be moved formally. I should make it clear that the amendments are of some importance. When we discussed clause 36 and schedule 3 in Committee I said that we would be bringing forward proposals to offset additional earnings-related pension and the invalidity addition against reduced earnings allowance, currently known as special hardship allowance. These amendments are directed to that aim.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 208, in page 96, line 5, at end insert—
      '(3) A person who—

      (a) is over pensionable age on the day on which this paragraph comes into force; and

      (b) has retired from regular employment before that day; and

      (c) was entitled on the day immediately before that day to an increase under section 60,

      shall be treated as entitled as from the day on which this paragraph comes into force to reduced earnings allowance at a rate not higher at any time than that at which the increase was payable to him immediately before that day.
      (4) Where for any period commencing before 6th April 1987 a person is entitled both to reduced earnings allowance under section 59A and to an additional pension of a long-term benefit or, if the long-term benefit is invalidity pension, to either an invalidity allowance or an additional pension, or both, his reduced earnings allowance shall be reduced in respect of any part of the period falling on or after 6th April 1987 by the amount of any increase in the additional pension or invalidity allowance as the result of an order under section 60 above taking effect on or after that date.
      (5) Where for any period commencing on or after 6th April 1987 a person is entitled as mentioned in sub-paragraph (4) above, his reduced earnings allowance shall be reduced by the amount of any additional pension or invalidity allowance to which he is entitled.
      (6) Where a reduction falls to be made under sub-paragraph (4) or (5) above, the person to whom it falls to be made shall be entitled to reduced earnings allowance only if there is a balance after the reduction and, if there is such a balance, of an amount equal to it.
      (7) Where the weekly rate of a benefit is reduced under section 29 of the Social Security Pensions Act 1975, there shall
      234
      be subtracted from the amount which would otherwise fall to be deducted under sub-paragraph (4) or (5) above equal to the reduction under that section.
      (8) In the preceding sub-paragraphs references to an additional pension are references to that pension after any increase under section 9(3) of the Social Security Pension Act 1975 but without any increase under Schedule 1, paragraphs 1 and 2, to that Act.'
      No. 164, in page 96, line 34, leave out from 'treated' to end of line 35 and insert
      'as satisfying the conditions of entitlement to a widow's allowance specified in subsection (1) of section 24 and her entitlement to the allowance under that section shall, subject to the proviso to subsection (2) of that section, continue for so long as she would have been entitled to a pension under section 67 at the initial rate.'.
      No. 165, in page 96, line 41, leave out from 'treated' to end of line 42 and insert
      'as satisfying the conditions of entitlement to a widowed mother's allowance under section 25 and her entitlement to the allowance shall, subject to the proviso to subsection (3) of that section, continue for so long as she satisfies either of the conditions specified in paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (1) of that section.'.
      No. 166, in page 97, line 4, leave out from 'treated' to end of line 5 and insert
      'as satisfying the conditions of entitlements to a widow's pension under section 26 and the pension shall be payable for any period during which she satisfies the provisions of subsection (3) of that section.'.
      No. 167, in page 97, line 7, leave out from 'shall' to end of line 10 and insert
      'be—

      (a) in the case of a widow who was entitled to an allowance under section 70 after her husband died, but has ceased to be so entitled, the rate for a widow of the age she was when she so ceased;

      (b) in the case of a widow who was so entitled, the rate for a widow of the age she was when her late husband died,

      and for the purposes of this subsection a woman who was under the age of 40 at the relevant time shall be treated as having been of the age of 40 at that time.'.
      No. 168, in page 97, line 14, at end insert
      'and shall be that rate notwithstanding anything in subsection (3) of that section.'.
      No. 169, in page 97, line 15, leave out sub-paragraph (7).
      No. 170, in page 97, line 25, leave out
      'but does not fall within any of sub-paragraphs (2) to (7) above'.
      No. 171, in page 97, line 28, leave out
      'the deceased was at his death entitled to child benefit'
      and insert
      'the widow is entitled to child benefit if one of the conditions specified in section 43(1) of this Act is for the time being satisfied with respect to the child and the child is either—

      (a) a son or daughter of the widow and her late husband; or

      (b) a child in respect of whom her late husband was immediately before his death entitled to child benefit; or

      (c) if the widow and her late husband were residing together immediately before his death, a child in respect of whom she was then entitled tc child benefit.'.

      No. 172, in page 97, line 35, after 'not', insert 'wholly'.
      No. 173, in page 97, line 42, leave out 'A retirement pension' and insert
      'B retirement pension at the same weekly rate as her widow's pension.'.
      No. 174, in page 98, line 28, after '1948', insert
      'and in respect of which a disablement gratuity was not paid to him under this Act after a final assessment of his disablement'.
      No. 175, in page 98, line 36, at end insert
      'and in respect of which a disablement gratuity was not paid to him under this Act after a final assessment of his disablement.'.
      No. 176, in page 98, leave out lines 43 and 44 and insert—
      '14. In section 108 (disablement questions)—
      (a) in subsection (1) the following words shall be added at the end, but not as part of paragraph (b)—
      "but questions relating to the aggregation of percentages of disablement resulting from different accidents are not disablement questions."; and
      (b) the following subsection shall be inserted after subsection (4)—'.
      No. 177, in page 99, line 2, at end insert—
      ' 14A. In Schedule 8 (assessment of extent of disablement)—
      (a) paragraph 4 shall be renumbered as sub-paragraph (1) of that paragraph; and
      (b) the following sub-paragraph shall be inserted after that sub-paragraph—
      "(2) where—
      (a) the assessed extent of a claimant's disablement amounts to 13 per cent. or less;
      (b) it seems likely that the assessed extent of a claimant's disablement will be aggregated with the assessed extent of any present disablement of his and the likely aggregate amounts to 13 per cent. or less,
      the period to be taken into account by the assessment of the disablement shall not end earlier than any date by which it seems likely that the extent of the disablement or the aggregate will be at least 1 per cent.".'.
      No. 83, in page 99, line 5, at end insert—
      'Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979 (c. 41)
      16.—(1) Section 2 of the Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979 (conditions of entitlement to lump sum payments) shall be amended as follows.
      (2) At the end of subsection (1)(a) there shall be added the words "or, subject to subsection (3A) below, would be payable to him in respect of it but for his disablement amounting to less than the appropriate percentage".
      (3) At the end of subsection (2)(b) there shall be added the words "or, subject to subsection (3A) below, would have been so payable to him—

      (i) but for his disablement amounting to less than the appropriate percentage; or

      (ii) but for his not having claimed the benefit: or

      (iii) but for his having died before he had suffered from the disease for the appropriate period".

      (4) In subsection (3) the following definitions shall be inserted before the definition of "death benefit"—
      "'the appropriate percentage' means, in the case of any disease, the percentage specified in subsection (1) of section 57 of the Social Security Act 1975 or, if regulations have been made under section 77 of that Act specifying a different percentage in relation to that disease, the percentage specified in the regulations;
      'the appropriate period' means, in the case of any disease, the period specified in subsection (4) of the said section 57 or, if regulations have been made under the said section 77 specifying a different period in relation to that disease, the period specified in the regulations;".
      (5) The following subsection shall be inserted after that subsection—
      "(3A) No amount is payable under this Act in respect of disablement amounting to less than 1 per cent.".'.—[Mr. Newton.]

    Clause 39

      ABOLITION OF REDUCED RATE OF SHORT-TERM BENEFITS
      Mr. Alfred Morris: I beg to move amendment No. 210, in page 43, line 31, leave out Clause 39.
      236
      Time is again at a premium and I shall move the amendment in the briefest of terms. Its purpose is to help some of the most needful people with claims on the attention of this House. The Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation said:
      "The abolition of reduced rate benefits will have a significant effect on … people who will cease to be entitled to a contributory benefit during permanent incapacity."
      The Minister estimated that 6,500 people who are entitled to receive invalidity benefit will be affected. Of those, 4,500 will receive supplementary benefit. The change proposed by the Government is thus consistent with much of the philosophy of the Bill, namely, that state benefits should be based on means tests. That is objectionable and degrading. Contributory benefits may discriminate against many disabled people but the correct solution is that initiated by successive Governments in the 1970s, notably the Labour Government of 1974–79, of introducing non-contributory and non-means tested benefits.
      In Committee the Minister questioned whether people who had paid only modest contributions deserved to receive invalidity benefit for life. In fact, many of the people affected will have paid contributions for several years but will have a gap in their record as a result, for example, of giving up work to care for children.
      In 1984 when discussing the severe disablement allowance the Minister sought to allay fears by stressing how easy it was to obtain contributory benefits. The people under discussion were those aged 20-plus, who would be likely to qualify for starting credits. Therefore, the main issue was passing the first contribution test, not the second, which is the relevant test for reduced rate unemployment benefit and supplementary benefit. No suggestion has been made that starting credits will be abolished, although the logic of the Minister's argument would lead in that direction. Therefore, at the moment this group would continue to be protected.
      On the basis of what he said in 1984, the Minister can now fairly be accused of inconsistency. When it suited him then, he praised the easy access to invalidity benefit. He now seeks to make it more difficult.
      The amendment is a serious one which I hope will be given due consideration in another place. There is no time now to press the amendment here. I hope that the Government will reconsider their position and explain, more fully than they have so far, what they intend to do in another place to help the people I am concerned with.
      Mr. Newton: As I think the right hon. Member for Manchester Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) knows, we have explained the Government's thinking behind the change in reduced rates generally, to which the amendment is directed, and in particular we commented in Committee on the position of those whose entitlement to invalidity benefit may be affected by the proposal to abolish the reduced rates, including the reduced rates of sickness benefit——
      7 pm
      It being Seven o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the Order [15 April] and the Resolution [19 May], to put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.
      Amendment negatived.

    Schedule 4

      STATUTORY MATERNITY PAY ETC.
      The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security (Mr. John Major): I beg to move amendment No. 185, in page 99, line 27, leave out from 'contributions' to end of line 33 and insert
      'paid in respect of statutory maternity pay; or

      (ii) by reference to secondary Class 1 contributions paid in respect of statutory sick pay; or

      (iii) by reference to the aggregate of secondary Class 1 contributions paid in respect of statutory maternity pay and secondary Class I contributions paid in respect of statutory sick pay'.

      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient also to take Government amendment No. 184.
      Mr. Major: This is a technical amendment to correct a drafting defect in the provision that enables employers to be compensated for their secondary national insurance contribution liability on payments of statutory maternity pay. It is analogous to amendment No. 184.
      The intention of amendment No. 184 is to make more flexible the power through regulations to compensate employers for their secondary national insurance contributions liability on payments of statutory sick pay. In the interests of administrative simplicity for employers and the Department, that provision was intended to make it possible for employers to be compensated at the same percentage rate for their secondary national insurance contribution liability on statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay. This drafting amendment ensures that that will be possible.
      Amendment agreed to.

    Clause 48

      REGULATIONS ABOUT CLAIMS FOR AND PAYMENTS OF BENEFIT
      Mr. Major: I beg to move amendment No. 85, in page 53, line 5, at end insert—
      '(4) Subsections (1)(g), (k), (n), (r) and (s) above shall have effect as if statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay were benefits to which this section applies.'
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take Government amendments Nos. 86 to 89.
      Mr. Major: This is essentially a tidying-up amendment to include statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay within the general powers for making regulations applying to other benefits in the clause, rather than relying on the separate powers currently contained in section 8 of the Social Security and Housing Benefits Act 1982 for statutory sick pay. No change in policy in payment of statutory sick pay is intended. I offer that unqualified assurance. As explained in Committee, the arrangements for the payment of statutory maternity pay will be fully spelt out in regulations. They are generally accepted to follow those for statutory sick pay.
      The amendment refers only to the specific sections listed, which relate to payment aspects. The other provisions, which deal largely with claiming benefits, are inappropriate for statutory sick pay and statutory maternity pay as, unlike social security benefits, an employee does not need to make a formal claim to be entitled. If he or she satisfies the conditions, the employer is liable to pay.
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      Before leaving the amendment, I shall refer to one other matter that we discussed in Committee. The hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) will recall that my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security undertook to look again at when an employer fails to pay statutory maternity pay or statutory sick pay even though the DHSS adjudication officer has ruled that he is liable to pay it. As the hon. Lady knows, in the present statutory sick pay scheme, the last resort is for the employee to take action in the civil courts to obtain payment of statutory sick pay. That happens very rarely—we know of only four cases. Nevertheless, I accept that it is not a wholly satisfactory state of affairs.
      I am pleased to tell the hon. Lady that, having given further consideration to the situation, we have decided to use the powers conveyed by the amendment to provide in regulations that the Secretary of State will, in certain circumstances, take over the payment of statutory sick pay or statutory maternity pay. The employee will therefore no longer be faced with the prospect of having to take the employer to court if he fails to comply with the adjudication officer's or a social security appeal tribunal's decision. In those circumstances, the employer will be liable to prosecution by the Department for failure to pay. I hope that the intention of the amendment will be generally welcomed by the House.
      Amendment No. 86 and the consequential amendments seek to bring statutory maternity pay within the new unified adjudication provisions. The amendments match those made for statutory sick pay in Committee. It was not possible to cover statutory maternity pay at that time as the Committee had yet to debate the new clauses on statutory maternity pay.
      The amendments are riot controversial, and follow precisely what has already been agreed for statutory sick pay. The right of both the employee and employer to use and be notified of decisions taken in connection with statutory maternity pay is preserved, and similar rights of appeal to a commissioner are given both to trade unions and employers' organisations.
      The final amendment, No. 89, specifies questions that are for determination by the Secretary of State.
      Amendment agreed to.

    Clause 49

      ADJUDICATION
      Amendments made: No. 86, in page 53, line 38 at end insert—
      '(bb) Statutory maternity pay;' .
      No. 87, in page 54, line 1, after 'pay', insert 'and statutory maternity pay'.
      No. 88, in page 54, line 7, after 'pay', insert 'or statutory maternity pay'.—[Mr. Major]

    Schedule 5

      AMENDMENT OF ENACTMENTS
      Amendment made: No. 89, in page 111, line 37, at end insert—
      (d) any question arising under Part V of this Act;including Schedule 4 to this Act) or regulations under it as to—

      (i) whether a person is, or was, an employee or employer of another;

      239

      (ii) whether an employer is entitled to make any deduction from his contributions payments in accordance with regulations under Part I of Schedule 4;

      (iii) whether a payment falls to be made to an employer in accordance with the regulations;

      (iv) the amount that falls to be so deducted or paid;

      (v) whether two or more employers or two or more contracts of service are, by virtue of regulations made under section 47(2) above to be treated as one,

      any question arising under regulations under section 43(8) above.'.—[Mr. Major.]

    Clause 50

      OVER-PAYMENTS
      Mr. Robert Kilroy-Silk: I beg to move amendment No. 198, in page 55, line 8, leave out from 'that' to end of line 11 and insert
      'any person has failed to use due care and diligence throughout to avoid overpayment of benefit and in consequence of such failure to use due care and diligence'.
      Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to take the following amendments: No. 199, in page 55, line 19, leave out
      'the misrepresentation or failure to disclose'
      and insert
      'the failure to use due care and diligence'.
      No. 200, in page 55, line 22, leave out
      'who misrepresented the fact or failed to disclose it'
      and insert
      'who failed to use due care and diligence.'.
      No. 202, in clause 52, page 57, line 30, at end insert 'dishonestly'.
      No. 203, in page 57, line 33, leave out paragraph (b).
      No. 204, in page 57, line 39, leave out paragraph (d).
      Mr. Kilroy-Silk: The first three of these six amendments deal with the criteria that have to be established in the test for recovery of overpayments, and the final three deal with the criteria that have to be proved so that a prosecution for social security fraud can succeed. They are the first of several amendments suggested by the working party on the endorsement of social security offences which was recently established by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, under the chairmanship of Sir Norman Price who, until recently, was chairman of the Board of the Inland Revenue. The amendments are concerned both with prosecution for social security fraud and with recovering overpayments made to claimants.
      At this stage, I should make it clear that the amendments are tabled as probing amendments, designed to elicit the Government's response to the suggestions that they contain, which are also contained in the working party report. They have the support in principle of the parliamentary all-party penal affairs group, of which I have the honour to be chairman. We hope that the Minister will, even in a preliminary way, be able to make a positive and constructive response as a prelude to their being dealt with more effectively and permanently in another place, when they will be tabled by members of the parliamentary group there.
      The first three amendments, Nos. 198, 199 and 200, provide that the test for the recovery of overpayments from
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      claimants should be whether the claimant exercised "due care and diligence" in making the claim. Legislation currently applies several different tests for the recovery of overpayments. First, there is the Social Security Act 1975, which provides that where contributory benefits have been paid under a decision that is rescinded on review, or in later proceedings, repayment must be required unless the claimant can show that he or she acted with due care and diligence to avoid incorrect payment.
      That is no more than the concept that I am trying to apply across the board in this legislation. That criterion imposes a duty to be careful, not just honest. The same rules apply to the recovery of child benefit and mobility allowance. Not only is that one of the many different tests that are applied for the recovery of state benefit, but it is considered acceptable and reasonable in the circumstances that I have described. It might help my argument on why it should be applied in the Bill.
      The second test for recovery of state benefit is that applied to supplementary benefit under section 20 of the Supplementary Benefits Act 1976. It provides for the recovery of any expenditure from a person who
      "fraudulently or otherwise"
      —I emphasise the words "or otherwise"—
      "misrepresents, or fails to disclose, any material fact".
      The claimant who exercises due care and diligence in that case is not exempted. The cost of recovery can be recovered, in addition to the overpaid benefit.
      The third test for the recovery of benefits, which is even stricter in this case, applies to family income supplement. Overpayments may be recovered if it can be established that the payments were not the claimant's fault and if it can be established that the claimant has not disclosed all the material facts. As the House realises, that is a far stricter provision than the previous two, as the burden of disclosure is placed clearly and firmly on the shoulders of the claimant.
      A fourth test applies in respect of housing benefit. Any overpayment is recoverable, even if it is caused by official error, except in the case of certificated benefit paid, for example, to recipients of supplementary benefit.
      There would appear to be a need, at least prima facie, for standardisation in respect of the four test which can be applied in different categories of social security payments or state benefits. Clause 50 tackles that by applying the currrent test for recovery of supplementary benefit, where, fraudulently or otherwise, a person has misrepresented, or failed to disclose, any material facts under the Social Security Act 1975.
      In my view and that of the NACRO working party, it would be preferable to apply to all benefits the test of due care and diligence, which previously applied to Social Security Act benefits. The three amendments are specifically designed to do that. Clearly, we would be less likely to penalise careful claimants who are overpaid through no fault of their own but through administrative error or confusion. It is important for the Bill to take care over that specific point because, as my right hon. and hon. Friends have made clear in previous debates, both this evening and yesterday, hardship can be imposed by a decision to recover overpayment from a claimant, who is usually one of the most highly disadvantaged and poorest members of our community, especially if the overpayment was not the claimant's fault and the money has been spent. Those people are living at a meagre poverty level and such an event could have a devastating and catastrophic effect

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      on them, their families and their finances. For that reason alone, it would be sensible to make the test for recovery of overpayments that which relies upon the claimant having at least maintained due care and diligence in making his claim.
      I turn to amendments Nos. 202, 203, and 204 which deal with the test that has to be established for a prosecution for social security fraud to succeed. Amendment No. 202 would require a dishonest intent to be proved on the part of a claimant in a prosecution for social security fraud. Amendments Nos. 203 and 204—I stress that they are alternatives—provide, instead, that recklessly making a false statement should not in itself be sufficient to constitute social security fraud.
      Under the present law, a person who, for the purposes of obtaining benefit, makes a statement which he knows to be false or produces a document which he knows to be false is guilty of an offence. A maximum penalty of three months' imprisonment applies. Provisions to that effect are contained in legislation relating to supplementary benefit, family income supplement, child benefit and benefits under the Social Security Act 1975.
      The false statement that a claimant makes may be either a positive statement or an omission—for example, a failure to list all his resources, which does not necessarily show that the claimant has received benefit as a result of that false statement. Case law in 1981 — I refer to the case of Clear v. Smith and that of Barras v. Reeve—has shown that, to secure conviction in such circumstances, it is not necessary to show that the false statement was made with the intention of obtaining benefit or that there was any intention to defraud. The only mental element, as it were, that is required is knowledge on behalf of the claimant that the statement he made. or the statement he omitted to make, amounted to false information. It is unsatisfactory to mount a case, prosecute, and prove a case simply on the basis that someone did not disclose information, or did disclose information, without receiving any benefit as a result, or even having the intention fraudulently to receive benefit.
      7.15 pm
      As the Minister appreciates, most proceedings for social security fraud are brought under such provisions. In serious cases, proceedings can and are brought under section 15 of the Theft Act 1968. Section 15 provides:
      "A person who by any deception dishonestly obtains property belonging to another, with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it, shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years."
      In prosecutions under that provision, it must be shown that there was an intention on the part of a claimant to obtain property as a result of deception and that the deception resulted in obtaining property. The NACRO working party on the enforcement of social security offences expressed great concern about the weakness of the mental element required at present for a conviction for social security fraud, which is much weaker than that which is necessary to obtain a conviction under the Theft Act.
      Clause 52 would make matters worse rather than better, and more confused rather than clearer. The clause provides that someone who recklessly
      "produces or furnishes … any document or information which he knows to be false in a material particular … shall be guilty of an offence."
      The notion of recklessness is worrying. It is one of the most confusing concepts in the criminal law. In essence,
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      it can be summarised as not intending to make a false statement but taking an unjustifiable risk that the statement might be false where the claimant either knew of the risk or had not considered whether there was such a risk, but would have realised, if he had stopped to think about it, that such a risk existed.
      The change will cause a great deal of confusion in the courts for magistrates and judges who may have to determine what recklessness constitutes in practice. Clearly, it would pose great difficulty for claimants who are not used to dealing with the more arcane aspects of the law, and definitions would be required in that instance. As far as I am aware, the proposed change was not discussed in either the Green Paper or the White Paper which preceded the Bill. I stand to be corrected on that if I am wrong. It may be intended to bring the social security fraud offence into line with the Theft Act offence under which a reckless deception will suffice for a conviction, but only if there is also a requirement of dishonesty, which is not the case in respect of a social security fraud offence We seem to be getting the worst of all possible worlds. We are introducing a new concept, which has been taken from the Theft Act, but we do not have the restraining qualifications that the Theft Act imposes and by which it requires the courts to abide.
      As we have been given an opportunity to have a slightly longer debate on these amendments than was foreshadowed even a couple of hours ago, it seems eminently sensible to eliminate the confusion and clarify the mental element that is required for social security fraud by requiring that a false statement should be made dishonestly, as the first amendment provides. It is wrong that social security recipients, who are otherwise decent, law—abiding citizens, should be exposed to the stigma of a criminal allegation, of being hauled before the courts, cross-examined and vilified, and perhaps convicted of a criminal offence, and of having that stand against their record unless dishonesty can be proved. We are not concerned with getting money back from people and are certainly not concerned with hauling people before the courts and turning them into criminals simply because they are incompetent, confused, stupid or badly advised. Clearly, we want to bring people before the courts when they have committed a fraud against the social security system. I have no time for those who engage in fraud to bring the system into disrepute to the detriment of serious and needy claimants. But we do not want to convict and criminalise people unless they clearly have an intent to defraud and to get something to which they are not entitled.
      Therefore, and especially because we have provisions to recover moneys overpaid from future benefit claimants without the need to have recourse to criminal prosecution, it is incumbent on us to take the opportunity to put this right in the Bill. If we do not make the change now, at least the situation should not be worsened by extending the definition of the offence to include "recklessness".
      I have been open and honest with the Under-Secretary of State in saying that I do not propose to push any of the amendments to a Division. 'They are new elements to the Bill and we are seeking a sympathetic and positive response from the Minister. I hope that he can accept at least amendment No. 202, hut, if that is not possible—I understand why it may not be—there is no real reason why we cannot at least deal with the concept of recklessness.
      Mr. Andrew Bowden: My point concerns official errors. I am sure that, over the years, all hon. Members have faced a number of distressing cases in which official error has occurred and the individual has been told that he has to repay the sum —admittedly, sometimes over a long period—causing genuine financial difficulties, but the error has in no way been the recipient's responsibility or fault. This causes distress particularly to the elderly.
      Retired people hate having any form of debt hanging over their heads. When they have been overpaid because of an error, they regard that as a debt. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will consider that point carefully. There is a strong case for saying that, if the overpayment has been the fault of officials and there has been a breakdown in the system, no further claim should be made on the recipient.
      Mr. Favell: I shall take up the second point made by the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk). As a lawyer, I am unhappy with the word "recklessly" in clause 52. If a person is to be stigmatised as a criminal, it is important that dishonest intent is proved. I do not think that "recklessly" is sufficient to justify bringing a conviction.
      I do not agree with the hon. Member for Knowsley, North on amendment No. 198. I should like to ask my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State what happens when a computer goes bonkers. One hears of computers putting a couple of extra noughts on the cheque. What happens then?
      Mr. Michael Stern: I join the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) in welcoming the work done by Sir Norman Price and NACRO. The association's report has proved of great value. Until this debate took place, one might have said that it was of value in clarifying the issues, although I suspect that a person reading a debate dealing with the gradations of what might or might not be fraud might think that the issue had been muddied rather than clarified.
      I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell) and the hon. Member for Knowsley, North on one point. Although I accept that the use of the word "recklessly" is somewhat reckless, I hope that part of the concept behind the word is retained in the legislation if only because it is not necessarily wrong for a considerable duty of care to be laid on a claimant in terms of statements made in making the claim. Although, like my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Knowsley, North, I feel that because of its legal connotations the word "recklessly" may be unsuitable, I join all hon. Members who have spoken in hoping that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will reconsider clauses 50 and 52 with a view to introducing amendments in the other place.
      I apologise for again using Inland Revenue practice as a comparison. However, there is a schedule of amounts below which the Inland Revenue accepts some responsibility for an overpayment by official error and it writes off at least part of the overpayment. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will consider that point.
      Mr. Kennedy: I support the spirit of the amendment moved by the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk). I do not want to go into legalistic
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      technicalities on the most preferable form of wording. The hon. Gentleman's arguments on the use of the expression "due care and diligence" were persuasive.
      I should like to raise a point more in line with that highlighted by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden). Since the last election, hon. Members have spent several late nights in the Chamber approving various changes to the housing benefits system. I do not know whether it is computer madness or computer meltdown, but Ministers—I think particularly of the time when we had a succession of late night debates on housing benefit and of the then Minister, the hon. Member for Brent, North (Dr. Boyson), who has now moved to the Northern Ireland Office—had no clearer impression than many of the claimants who visit Members' surgeries at the weekend of the complexity of the piecemeal alterations and changes to housing benefit.
      I endorse the statement of the hon. Member for Kemptown that it is particularly harsh on pensioners when an overpayment has been made and the local authority seeks recovery of the money. It is particularly harsh because, without doubt, pensioners who have never been in debt in their lives would be morally appalled at discovering that, through no fault of their own, they were in debt and, in many cases, suffering additional agony because proceedings might be instituted against them by the local authorities. The amendments will go some way towards dealing with that intolerable situation and will be welcome. I hope that in another place they will get a fair wind and be given a favourable reception.
      Mrs. Beckett: I applaud my hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) both for raising the issue and for the manner in which he did so. His points were extremely interesting and well put. We support all the amendments he has tabled, but I believe that his case against the use of the word "recklessly" was overwhelming. I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will take it on board.
      7.30 pm
      Mr. Major: Sometimes one of the unexpected delights at Report stage is that debates one might have expected to be brief occasionally take off and prove to be of greater interest than one might have imagined. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk), first, for his assurance that these are probing amendments, secondly, for the manner in which he moved them, and, thirdly, for the important issues he raised in doing so. As he rightly said, in this group of amendments there are two quite separate but related matters. First, he seeks to rescue the due care and diligence test when considering the recovery of overpayments rather than moving to the misrepresentation or failure to disclose test which is our present intention. Secondly, he turns to the concept of reckless behaviour and I shall respond to him on that point in my speech.
      I should like to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) about overpayments. Social security overpayments caused by official error are not recovered. That is our policy and will continue to be our policy. I can offer a qualified assurance to my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell) who spoke, in a vivid phrase, about a computer going bonkers. It is certainly a concept that all of us understand and the general proposition there is that

      245
      recovery would be sought for a computer error, provided that computer error was likely to have been obvious to the claimant. If it was not likely to have been obvious to the claimant, we would probably regard it as an official error and would not seek to reclaim the overpayment.
      Mr. Andrew Bowden: I am delighted to hear what my hon. Friend has said. However, I have a number of cases on my files covering the last 16 years in which people who were subjected to official errors had a difficult task because some repayment of overpayment was enforced. If I bring those cases to my hon. Friend, will he have the money refunded?
      Mr. Major: If my hon. Friend brings those cases to me, I will certainly have a look at them. I can give no assurance whatever without having the details of each case and I suspect that my hon. Friend would be rather surprised if I were to do so. I reiterate the general position that I set out a few moments ago.
      I now turn to amendments Nos. 198, 199 and 200. Some time ago we looked at the prospect of a common recovery test. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Knowsley, North for confirming that there is a logic about having a single test. When we looked at a common recovery test, we considered the option of adopting the due care and diligence test. We explored that at some length.
      As the hon. Gentleman accurately said, the main difference between the two tests is that where beneficiaries fail to provide correct details of their circumstances under the Social Security or Child Benefit Acts they may not be liable to repay overpayments if they can show that they used due care and diligence. The adjudicating authorities can then take mitigating circumstances into account when reaching their decision. The effect of the due care and diligence test is that the person who failed to provide full facts may be permitted to retain benefit to which he is not entitled and which, had he disclosed those facts, he would not have received. By comparison, the misrepresentation or failure to disclose test provides that overpayments due to a person's failure to provide full facts relevant to his claim are recoverable. However, the Secretary of State has the discretion to take into account mitigating circumstances in deciding whether to seek repayment of overpayments which he is statutorily entitled to recover.
      The Secretary of State has a duty to protect public funds and it has been considered by successive Governments that any discretion in whether repayment should be sought should more properly rest with him than with the adjudicating authorities. It must be remembered that the benefit in question will have been overpaid through no fault of the Department. Even then there are safeguards for the individual. If the person from whom the overpayment is recoverable does not agree that he has been overpaid, does not agree the amount overpaid or, in particular, does not agree that he misrepresented or failed to disclose the relevant facts, he may exercise his right of appeal.
      The other main consideration we had in mind in deciding to abolish the due care and diligence test was its complexity. It is a subjective test which is more difficult to administer and to understand for claimants and adjudicators and administrators in the Department of Health and Social Security. Its adoption would lead to an additional cost of over £4 million. That is clearly a relevant, though not the most relevant, fact. By contrast, the misrepresentation or failure to disclose test is easier to
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      operate and to understand, partly because it is a factual rather than a subjective test. It is worth noting that there are eight times as many supplementary benefit overpayments in local offices as Social Security Act overpayments. The effect of that is that in terns of experience the misrepresentation or failure to disclose test is most commonly practised in the Department's local offices. Although the hon. Gentleman's persuasion was most eloquent, I fear that there is little I can offer him to suggest that we are likely to change the present policy.
      Perhaps I could now turn to amendments Nos. 203 and 204 and to the specific provisions about recklessness. The hon. Gentleman attracted the support of the hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) who spoke on precisely the same matter in Committee. He would have attracted the support also of the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Michie) because I recollect that he also raised this point in Committee. The hon. Gentleman also attracted support from the Government Benches in the form of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) with reservations. He also attracted the support of the hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy).
      The effect of amendments Nos. 203 and 204 would be to remove from the Bill all references to criminal recklessness in relation to the provision of false information by claimants and others. This clause is a common provison and the present recklessness offence in the Social Security and Housing Benefits Act 1982 would also be lost. When this was raised in Committee we discussed — and as I recall they were central to the discussion—reservations of the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders. Those reservations were reiterated in the debate by the hon. Gentleman and by Sir Norman Price. As we explained at that time, the concept of recklessness is not new, either to social security law or to the criminal law generally.
      The Social Security and Housing Benefits Act 1982 makes it an offence for an employer recklessly to produce or furnish any documents or information which is false in any material particular. There are more recent precedents for recklessness in the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985. Nevertheless, I am sufficiently impressed both by the arguments advanced in this debate and in Committee upon which we have been reflecting and by NACRO to say, not that I can accept the hon. Gentleman's probing amendments, but that, in the light of what has been said, I am prepared to reflect again upon the concept of recklessness with the possibility of making an amendment in the other place if it seems to us that the arguments presented by the hon. Gentleman have the substance that at first sight they appear to have. I cannot give him a firm assurance upon that point, but I can give him the reassurance that I shall certainly reconsider the point. If upon reconsideration we find it compelling, we will contemplate, if it is appropriate, making a suitable amendment in another place.
      Mr. Kilroy-Silk: I am grateful to the Minister for the sensitive and comprehensive way in which he has dealt with the series of amendments. I do not agree with him in his refusal to accept the suggestion of a common recovery test and to resist the idea that that should be the establishment of the notion of due care and diligence.
      However, I am grateful for what the Minister said about the amendments and in dealing with the concept of

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      recklessness in obtaining social security benefits. I am grateful for the support that has been put on record tonight, as it has been on other occasions, of my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) and of the hon. Members for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy), for Stockport (Mr. Favell) and for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) and I hope that that kind of support will be demonstrated in another place.
      In the light of the Minister's comments that he will look at this and that there may be an amendment tabled in another place, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
      Mr. Kilroy-Silk: I beg to move amendment No. 201, in page 57, line 9, at end insert—
      '(e) housing benefit.'.
      Amendment No. 201 would apply the new standard criteria for recovering overpayment of benefits from claimants to housing benefit. As the Bill stands, it provides a standard test for recovering the overpayment of contributory benefits, supplementary benefits and family income supplement. However, it would not apply the same test to housing benefit where, as I have already said, except in the case of certificated benefit, any overpayment is recoverable, even if it has been caused by official error.
      It is true that, in its guidance to local authorities, the DHSS has tried to discourage the recovery of overpayment of housing benefit where that is due to official error, and the Minister, in his remarks on the earlier series of amendments, reiterated that that was his view and was the guidance that was being issued. The code of guidance issued to local authorities states that, in deciding whether to recover an overpayment of housing benefit, the authority should have regard to why the overpayment occurred and that where there had been an official error the authority should consider whether the recipient could reasonably have been expected to know that he was receiving too much benefit and, if not, not to seek to recover the overpayment.
      That is all very well so far as it goes. The Minister, even in an aside, tended to create an impression that there was no problem in that area, the guidance has been issued, the view was reiterated by him tonight, and it is assumed that local authorities do not go looking for overpayments of housing benefit when it can clearly be demonstrated that overpayment was due to an error on their behalf.
      However, I know from my experience in my constituency, and I have been told by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders' working party on the enforcement of social security offences, that the practice in many areas is that the right of recovery appears to be exploited in full by most, if not all, local authorities. Indeed, the practice seems to be that if a local authority discovers that overpayment has been made, it issues a bill for the amount of that overpayment with no further investigation — that has certainly happened in my area—leaving all inquiries about that overpayment until the time, if it arises, when the claimant objects to the demand for the repayment of the benefit.
      Given the well-documented inability of many local authorities to cope with the housing benefit system, it seems clearly unjust that some authorities should attempt to make the claimant pay for their shortcomings in this
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      area. Indeed, as with other claims for the overpayment of benefit, when a claim is enforced, particularly if the benefit has been overpaid over a long period in small amounts, it is in total a large amount and that could have a devastating, catastrophic effect upon the individual and the family—an individual and a family, who, again it must be stressed, are already poverty-stricken.
      Therefore, the same test for the recovery for overpayment should apply to housing benefit as to other benefits. In that spirit I hope that the Minister will feel able to accept the amendment.
      7.45 pm
      Mr. Newton: The hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Kilroy-Silk) will be aware that there was some discussion on this matter in Committee when I said that I had a good deal of sympathy with the view that we should be looking to extend commonality of provisions into the area on which he has touched. He will know—it was implicit in his speech—that there is separate provision in clause 29 to deal with the recovery of overpaid housing benefit. That provides for the arrangements to be set out in regulations which could include the circumstances in which an overpayment can be recovered.
      As I said in Committee when we discussed clause 29, we have not yet defined the categories of overpayments which it will be possible to recover in the primary legislation, because that is something which we need to discuss with the local authorities. I agreed in principle that it was right for the main grounds for recovering overpaid housing benefit to be the same as those applying to other benefits, in the same way that I also acknowledge the arguments that were then put for aligning some other aspects of housing benefit with other social security benefits, including the application of the social security benefits adjudication procedure. In particular, I recognised the point that the hon. Gentleman has made the subject of the amendment, about recovery being possible only where the claimant has misrepresented or failed to disclose a material fact.
      Both in respect of the common provision in respect of overpayments and the ideas that have been put forward for aligning the adjudication systems for housing benefit and other benefits, I hope that I made it as clear as I could that housing benefit is administered by the local authorities.
      Therefore, we felt that it would be appropriate to discuss these matters with the local authorities because there are some difficult problems—more particularly in relation to adjudication than in respect of points made by the hon. Gentleman—before seeking to come to a firm conclusion about what we should do.
      I should like to repeat tonight, although I am afraid that I cannot go any further, the undertaking that I gave in Committee to discuss this matter with local authority associations. In the time between the Committee and Report stages, I regret that it has not been possible for us to take forward all the discussions that we need to have with them on various aspects of the new scheme, including this one. It would clearly be wrong and against the spirit of consultation to enter into consultation if we had made up our minds and announced a decision beforehand.
      The House will have the opportunity to debate the relevant regulations once the discussions have been completed. Having repeated the spirit in which we shall

      249
      approach those discussions and my understanding of the reasons for the hon. Gentleman moving the amendment, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will agree to withdraw it.
      Mr. Kilroy-Silk: It has been a long time since I faced the Minister across the Floor of the House, or indeed in Committee, but when I have done I have always found him to be eminently reasonable, sensible, sympathetic and helpful. Together, just before the election, we extensively re-wrote the law relating to child care, and he was then, as he has demonstrated again tonight, always prepared to listen to a case rather than to reiterate the brief that has been set out for him in that glossy red folder.
      Clearly, it would be churlish of me to wish to press the amendment to a Division in the light of what the Minister has said. It is important that the consultations that are under way should proceed. Let us hope that they will come to the conclusion that is enshrined in the amendment. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

    Clause 56

      DISCLOSURE OF INFORMATION
      Mr. Major: I beg to move amendment No. 90, in page 62, line 9, at end insert—
      '(A) In relation to persons who are carrying on or have carried on a trade, profession or vocation income from which is chargeable to tax under Case I or II of Schedule D, disclosure under subsection (1) above relating to that trade, profession or vocation shall be limited to information about the commencement or cessation of the trade, profession or vocation, but sufficient information may also be given to identify the persons concerned.'.
      The amendment restricts the information which the Inland Revenue is authorised to disclose to the Department about a self-employed person. It may disclose information only about the commencement or cessation of self-employment, but may also give sufficient information to identify such a person. In Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) mentioned this matter. I accepted the principle of his argument, but I declined to accept the amendment, as it was technically deficient. This amendment is not technically deficient and it meets the commitment that I gave in Committee.
      Mr. Stern: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for tabling this amendment, which exactly meets the substance of our discussions in Committee. I congratulate him on achieving a record, in that this is the first time in any social security legislation that the powers given to officers of the Inland Revenue to breach their oaths have been discussed on the Floor of the House. It is a notable occasion, and I encourage my hon. Friend and his ministerial colleagues to mention such matters much more frequently.
      I also congratulate my hon. Friend because I am sure that the sigh of relief which will go up from the self-employed and from people involved in trades, businesses and professions because of the amendment will be heartfelt and long-standing.
      Amendment agreed to.

    Clause 60

      ANNUAL UP-RATING OF BENEFITS
      Amendment made: No. 149, in page 65, line 31, leave out from 'are' to end of line 33 and insert—

      '(i) payable by virtue of section 35(6) of that Act to a person who is also entitled to a Category A or Category B retirement pension (including sums payable by virtue of section 36(3)); or

      (ii) payable to such a person as part of his Category A or Category B retirement pension by virtue of an order made under this section by virtue of this paragraph or made under section 126A of the Social Security Act 1975;'.—[Mr. Major.]

      Mr. Newton: I beg to move amendment No. 91, in page 65, line 37, at end insert—
      '(ff) specified in regulations under section 45(3) above;'.
      The amendment is necessary to bring statutory maternity pay within the uprating provisions contained in clause 60. It is intended that the flat rate element of statutory maternity pay will be subject to annual review and uprating each April on the same basis as statutory sick pay and other social security benefits.
      Amendment agreed to.
      Amendments made: No. 150, in page 66, line 23, leave out from '(b) to end of line 27 and insert ',(c) or (d) above'.
      No. 151, in page 66, line 40, at end insert—
      '(6A) An increase in a sum such as is specified in subsection (1)(d) above shall form part of the Category A or Category B retirement pension of the person to whom it is paid.'.—[Mr. Newton.]

    Clause 64

      RATES OF PAYMENTS OF STATUTORY SICK PAY AND PROVISIONS AS TO RECOVERY
      No. 184, in page 70, line 22, leave out from 'contributions' to end of line 28 and insert
      'paid in respect of statutory sick pay; or
      (ii) by reference to the aggregate of secondary Class 1 contributions so paid and secondary Class 1 contributions paid in respect of statutory maternity pay'.—[Mr. Newton.]

    Clause 66

      CHILD BENEFIT IN RESPECT OF CHILDREN EDUCATED OTHERWISE THAN AT EDUCATIONAL ESTABLISHMENTS
      Mr. Phillip Oppenheim: I beg to move amendment No. 142, in page 71, line 8, at end insert—
      '(1A) Regulations may provide for substituting for the words "Secretary of State", in paragraph (b) of section 2(1) of the Child Benefit Act 1975, the words "local education authority" and for section 2(1A) of that Act to cease to have effect.'.
      The amendment would allow the parents of children who begin to be educated at home after the age of 16 to claim benefit. The present position on allowing children over the age of 16 who are being educated at home to be eligible for benefit is unclear. I have never seen clear guidelines from the Department as to the exact position. I understand that approval of parents educating their children at home is in the hands of the local education authority.
      The Bill proposes to put that decision in the hands of the DHSS. The local education authority must be better equipped to make that decision, but, whoever makes the

      251
      decision, it must accord with our principles of parental choice and responsibility and not penalise parents who decide to educate their children at home by withholding benefit. After all, parents who decide to educate their children at home save the taxpayer and the ratepayer a great deal of money.
      It is argued that allowing children over the age of 16 to be liable to benefit would give scope for parents who are not educating their older children properly falsely to claim benefit. Why not allow the local education authority to decide, as it does now, whether parents are giving their older children a proper education? After all, that is what the local education authorities are doing, successfully and with no complaints. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to reconsider a policy that must go against all our principles of freedom of choice, of parental choice and of individual responsibility.
      Mr. Stern: Very briefly, Mr. Deputy Speaker — [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh no!"] Very briefly. Since we discussed the matter in Committee, has my hon. Friend had time to reflect upon the invidious decision that he proposes to take upon himself under the clause? As a social security Minister, he is being asked to decide educational matters.
      Mr. Major: I understand the intriguing and interesting point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern). It was well worth making.
      Important though it is, I shall deal with the matter briefly because I appreciate that the official Opposition are anxious to move to the next amendment before the guillotine falls. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) will permit me to give him a fuller answer after the debate than the answer that I can give him between now and eight o'clock.
      Notwithstanding my hon. Friend's advocacy, he proposed a regulation-making power which I am inclined to resist and which. even if it were granted, the Government would be disinclined to use. As my hon. Friends know from the Committee stage, clause 66 is a beneficial measure introduced by the Government to extend the payment of child benefit to people who educate their children at home. As such, it has been widely welcomed, not least by my hon. Friend. Child benefit is payable for all children up to the age of 16 wherever and however they are educated, but heretofore it has not been payable when a child who was educated at home before the age of 16 continued that education after the age of 16. It could not be paid because the Child Benefit Act 1975 would not allow a home to be regarded as "an educational establishment".
      The Government recognised the difficulty, and clause 66 resolves it by amending the Act. I stress that the link to education at home before the age of 16 is important. This is because local education authorities have a duty placed upon them by the Education Act 1944 and its Scottish equivalent to ensure that a child educated at home receives sufficient full-time education which is suitable for his age and his aptitudes.
      My hon. Friend's amendment attempts to go further. It aims to provide regulation-making powers to local education authorities to recognise the education being provided at home, for the first time after the age of 16, where no approval or supervision has been sought or
      252
      provided previously. Such a regulation would place a new, onerous and, I strongly suspect, unwelcome duty on education authorities which they do not shoulder now and which they have shown no inclination to accept. The objective of placing this additional burden is to ensure the payment of a social security benefit. We cannot assume that authorities, whose concern is with the standard of compulsory education, would welcome that extra responsibility.
      I am aware that this brief and hurried response will not placate my hon. Friend or other hon. Members, but I hope that they appreciate the reasons behind my decision and that my hon. Friend will withdraw his amendment.
      Mr. Oppenheim: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
      Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

    Clause 70

      REFRESHMENTS FOR SCHOOL PUPILS
      Mrs. Beckett: I beg to move amendment No. 93, in page 72, line 22, leave out subsection (2).
      Without this amendment, half a million children will lose their entitlement to free school meals. All free school milk will be lost because authorities will have to charge for it, and 150,000 children from the poorest families—those on less than £100 a week — will receive compensation of only 44p a week for that loss. We are worried about the effect on families. We are worried, as are the local authorities, about the fact that the Government appear to wish to deny them the right to make differential charges between primary and secondary schools. We are worried about the jobs of those who work in the school meals service, which are undoubtedly at risk.
      We are concerned most of all because the Government say that the savings that will be made will be offset by the compensation given to families. There are, therefore, no advantages to the Government on their figures and there are disadvantages to the workers, to the children in those families and, indeed, to the country.
      Mr. Newton: On our reckoning more than 60,000 children will be better off under these arrangements.
      Question put, That the amendment be made:-
      The House divided: Ayes 181, Noes 311.

      Division No. 188]

      [8.00 pm

      AYES

      Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

      Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

      Alton, David

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

      Anderson, Donald

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

      Archer, Rt Hon Peter

      Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

      Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

      Bruce, Malcolm

      Ashton, Joe

      Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

      Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

      Campbell, Ian

      Bagier, Gordon A. T.

      Campbell-Savours, Dale

      Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

      Canavan, Dennis

      Barnett, Guy

      Cartwright, John

      Beckett, Mrs Margaret

      Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

      Beith, A. J.

      Clarke, Thomas

      Bell, Stuart

      Clay, Robert

      Benn, Rt Hon Tony

      Clwyd, Mrs Ann

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

      Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)

      Bermingham, Gerald

      Cohen, Harry

      Bidwell, Sydney

      Coleman, Donald

      Blair, Anthony

      Cook, Frank (Stockton North)

      Boothroyd, Miss Betty

      Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

      Boyes, Roland

      Corbett, Robin

      Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

      Corbyn, Jeremy

      253

      Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

      Maxton, John

      Craigen, J. M.

      Meacher, Michael

      Crowther, Stan

      Meadowcroft, Michael

      Cunliffe, Lawrence

      Michie, William

      Cunningham, Dr John

      Mikardo, Ian

      Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

      Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

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

      Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

      Deakins, Eric

      Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

      Dewar, Donald

      Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

      Dixon, Donald

      Nellist, David

      Dobson, Frank

      Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

      Dormand, Jack

      O'Brien, William

      Douglas, Dick

      O'Neill, Martin

      Dubs, Alfred

      Parry, Robert

      Duffy, A. E. P.

      Patchett, Terry

      Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

      Pavitt, Laurie

      Eadie, Alex

      Pendry, Tom

      Edwards, Bob (W'h'mpt'n SE)

      Pike, Peter

      Fatchett, Derek

      Powell, Rt Hon J. E.

      Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)

      Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

      Fisher, Mark

      Prescott, John

      Flannery, Martin

      Randall, Stuart

      Forrester, John

      Raynsford, Nick

      Foster, Derek

      Redmond, Martin

      Foulkes, George

      Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)

      Fraser, J. (Norwood)

      Richardson, Ms Jo

      George, Bruce

      Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

      Godman, Dr Norman

      Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

      Gould, Bryan

      Robertson, George

      Gourlay, Harry

      Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

      Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)

      Rogers, Allan

      Hancock, Michael

      Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)

      Hardy, Peter

      Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

      Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

      Shields, Mrs Elizabeth

      Haynes, Frank

      Shore, Rt Hon Peter

      Heffer, Eric S.

      Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)

      Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

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

      Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)

      Silkin, Rt Hon J.

      Home Robertson, John

      Skinner, Dennis

      Howells, Geraint

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

      Hoyle, Douglas

      Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

      Hughes, Dr Mark (Durham)

      Snape, Peter

      Hughes, Roy (Newport East)

      Spearing, Nigel

      Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

      Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)

      Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

      Stott, Roger

      Hume, John

      Strang, Gavin

      Janner, Hon Greville

      Straw, Jack

      John, Brynmor

      Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

      Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

      Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)

      Kennedy, Charles

      Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)

      Kilroy-Silk, Robert

      Thome, Stan (Preston)

      Kirkwood, Archy

      Tinn, James

      Lambie, David

      Torney, Tom

      Leadbitter, Ted

      Wainwright, R.

      Leighton, Ronald

      Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)

      Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

      Wallace, James

      Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

      Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

      Litherland, Robert

      Wareing, Robert

      Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

      Weetch, Ken

      Lofthouse, Geoffrey

      Welsh, Michael

      McCartney, Hugh

      White, James

      McDonald, Dr Oonagh

      Wigley, Dafydd

      McGuire, Michael

      Williams, Rt Hon A.

      McKelvey, William

      Wilson, Gordon

      MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

      Winnick, David

      McNamara, Kevin

      Woodall, Alec

      McTaggart, Robert

      Wrigglesworth, Ian

      Madden, Max

      Young, David (Bolton SE)

      Mallon, Seamus

      Marek, Dr John

      Tellers for the Ayes:

      Marshall, David (Shettleston)

      Mr. Allen McKay and Mr. John McWilliam.

      Martin, Michael

      Mason, Rt Hon Roy

      NOES

      Adley, Robert

      Ancram, Michael

      Aitken, Jonathan

      Ashby, David

      Alexander, Richard

      Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.

      Alison, Rt Hon Michael

      Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

      Amess, David

      Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)

      254

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

      Freeman, Roger

      Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

      Fry, Peter

      Baldry, Tony

      Galley, Roy

      Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

      Gardiner, George (Reigate)

      Batiste, Spencer

      Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)

      Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

      Garel-Jones, Tristan

      Bendall, Vivian

      Glyn, Dr Alan

      Bennett, Rt Hon Sir Frederic

      Goodhart, Sir Philip

      Benyon, William

      Goodlad, Alastair

      Best, Keith

      Gorst, John

      Bevan, David Gilroy

      Gower, Sir Raymond

      Biffen, Rt Hon John

      Grant, Sir Anthony

      Biggs-Davison, Sir John

      Greenway, Harry

      Blackburn, John

      Gregory, Conal

      Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

      Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

      Body, Sir Richard

      Grist, Ian

      Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

      Ground, Patrick

      Boscawen, Hon Robert

      Grylls, Michael

      Bottomley, Peter

      Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

      Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

      Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

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

      Hanley, Jeremy

      Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

      Hannam, John

      Boyson, Dr Rhodes

      Hargreaves, Kenneth

      Brandon-Bravo, Martin

      Harris, David

      Brinton, Tim

      Harvey, Robert

      Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

      Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

      Brooke, Hon Peter

      Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

      Browne, John

      Hawkins, Sir Paul (N'folk SW)

      Bruinvels, Peter

      Hawksley, Warren

      Bryan, Sir Paul

      Hayes, J.

      Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.

      Heathcoat-Amory, David

      Buck, Sir Antony

      Heddle, John

      Budgen, Nick

      Hickmet, Richard

      Bulmer, Esmond

      Hill, James

      Burt, Alistair

      Hind, Kenneth

      Butcher, John

      Hirst, Michael

      Butler, Rt Hon Sir Adam

      Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

      Butterfill, John

      Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)

      Carlisle, John (Luton N)

      Holt, Richard

      Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

      Hordern, Sir Peter

      Carttiss, Michael

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

      Chapman, Sydney

      Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)

      Chope, Christopher

      Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N)

      Churchill, W. S.

      Hubbard-Miles, Peter

      Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

      Hunt, David (Wirral W)

      Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

      Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

      Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

      Hunter, Andrew

      Clegg, Sir Walter

      Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

      Cockeram, Eric

      Jackson, Robert

      Coombs, Simon

      Jessel, Toby

      Cormack, Patrick

      Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

      Corrie, John

      Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

      Couchman, James

      Jones, Robert (Herts W)

      Cranborne, Viscount

      Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

      Critchley, Julian

      Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

      Currie, Mrs Edwina

      Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

      Dickens, Geoffrey

      Kershaw, Sir Anthony

      Dorrell, Stephen

      Key, Robert

      Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

      Knight, Greg (Derby N)

      Dover, Den

      Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

      du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward

      Knowles, Michael

      Durant, Tony

      Knox, David

      Dykes, Hugh

      Lamont, Norman

      Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

      Lang, Ian

      Emery, Sir Peter

      Latham, Michael

      Evennett, David

      Lawler, Geoffrey

      Fairbairn, Nicholas

      Lawrence, Ivan

      Fallon, Michael

      Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

      Farr, Sir John

      Lee, John (Pendle)

      Favell, Anthony

      Lester, Jim

      Fenner, Mrs Peggy

      Lightbown, David

      Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

      Lilley, Peter

      Fookes, Miss Janet

      Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

      Forman, Nigel

      Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

      Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

      Lord, Michael

      Forth, Eric

      Luce, Rt Hon Richard

      Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

      McCrindle, Robert

      Fox, Marcus

      McCurley, Mrs Anna

      Franks, Cecil

      Macfarlane, Neil

      Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

      MacGregor, Rt Hon John

      255

      MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

      Shelton, William (Streatham)

      Maclean, David John

      Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

      McLoughlin, Patrick

      Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

      McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

      Silvester, Fred

      McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)

      Sims, Roger

      McQuarrie, Albert

      Skeet, Sir Trevor

      Major, John

      Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

      Malins, Humfrey

      Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

      Malone, Gerald

      Soames, Hon Nicholas

      Maples, John

      Speed, Keith

      Marland, Paul

      Speller, Tony

      Marlow, Antony

      Spencer, Derek

      Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

      Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)

      Maude, Hon Francis

      Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

      Mawhinney, Dr Brian

      Squire, Robin

      Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

      Stanbrook, Ivor

      Mayhew, Sir Patrick

      Stanley, Rt Hon John

      Mellor, David

      Steen, Anthony

      Merchant, Piers

      Stern, Michael

      Miller, Hal (B'grove)

      Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

      Mills, lain (Meriden)

      Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

      Miscampbell, Norman

      Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

      Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

      Stewart, Ian (Hertf'dshire N)

      Monro, Sir Hector

      Stokes, John

      Montgomery, Sir Fergus

      Stradling Thomas, Sir John

      Moore, Rt Hon John

      Sumberg, David

      Morris, M. (N'hampton S)

      Tapsell, Sir Peter

      Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

      Taylor, John (Solihull)

      Morrison, Hon P. (Chester)

      Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

      Moynihan, Hon C.

      Temple-Morris, Peter

      Murphy, Christopher

      Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

      Neale, Gerrard

      Thomas, Rt Hon Peter

      Nelson, Anthony

      Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

      Neubert, Michael

      Thorne, Neil (Word S)

      Newton, Tony

      Thornton, Malcolm

      Nicholls, Patrick

      Thurnham, Peter

      Norris, Steven

      Townend, John (Bridlington)

      Onslow, Cranley

      Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

      Oppenheim, Phillip

      Tracey, Richard

      Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

      Trippier, David

      Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

      Trotter, Neville

      Page, Richard (Herts SW)

      Twinn, Dr Ian

      Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

      van Straubenzee, Sir W.

      Pattie, Geoffrey

      Vaughan, Sir Gerard

      Pawsey, James

      Viggers, Peter

      Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

      Waddington, David

      Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

      Wakeham, Rt Hon John

      Pollock, Alexander

      Waldegrave, Hon William

      Porter, Barry

      Walden, George

      Portillo, Michael

      Wall, Sir Patrick

      Powley, John

      Waller, Gary

      Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

      Walters, Dennis

      Price, Sir David

      Ward, John

      Prior, Rt Hon James

      Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

      Proctor, K. Harvey

      Warren, Kenneth

      Pym, Rt Hon Francis

      Watson, John

      Raffan, Keith

      Watts, John

      Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

      Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

      Rhodes James, Robert

      Wheeler, John

      Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

      Whitfield, John

      Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

      Wiggin, Jerry

      Roe, Mrs Marion

      Winterton, Mrs Ann

      Rossi, Sir Hugh

      Winterton, Nicholas

      Rost, Peter

      Wolfson, Mark

      Rowe, Andrew

      Wood, Timothy

      Rumbold, Mrs Angela

      Woodcock, Michael

      Ryder, Richard

      Yeo, Tim

      Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

      Young, Sir George (Acton)

      St. John-Stevas, Rt Hon N.

      Sayeed, Jonathan

      Tellers for the Noes:

      Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

      Mr. Donald Thompson and Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd.

      Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

      Question accordingly negatived.
      It being after Eight o'clock, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the Order [15 April] and the Resolution [19 May], to put forthwith the Question on the remaining amendments and on a new schedule moved by a member of the Government.

    Clause 75

      GENERAL INTERPRETATION
      Amendments made: No 94, in page 74, line 5, at end insert—
      "average salary benefits" means benefits the rate or amount of which is calculated by reference to the average salary of a member of a pension scheme over the period of service on which the benefits are based;'.
      No. 95, in page 74, line 17, at end insert—
      '"employed earner" has the same meaning as in the Social Security Act 1975;'.
      No 96, in page 75, line 23, at end insert
      'and which are not average salary benefits' .—[Mr. Fowler.]

    Clause 76

      FINANCIAL PROVISION
      Amendments made: No. 97, in page 78, line 4, after 'above', insert—
      '(bb) sums falling to be paid by or on behalf of the Secretary of State under regulations made by virtue of paragraph 1(b) or (e) of Schedule 4 to this Act;'.
      No. 98, in page 78, line 13, after 'Treasury)', insert—
      '(a) to be the amount of the administrative expenses incurred by the Secretary of State under Part V of this Act, excluding any category of expenses which the Treasury may direct, or any enactment may require, to be excluded from the Secretary of State's estimate under this subsection; and (b)'.
      No. 191, in page 78, line 23, at end insert
      'sums recovered under section 1(4A) or (4B) or 7(7) or (8) above.' .
      No. 99, in page 78, line 29, after 'made', insert
      'out of the National Insurance Fund into the Consolidated Fund, or'.
      No. 100, in page 78, line 34, at end insert
      ', statutory sick pay or statutory maternity pay'. — [Mr. Fowler.]

    Schedule 9

      MINOR AND CONSEQUENTIAL AMENDMENTS
      Amendments made: No. 101, in page 121, line 45 at end insert—
      '1A. In section 58(2) (linked qualifying service)—
      (a) the following paragraph shall be substituted for paragraph (a)—
      "(a) under the rules of a scheme applying to him in the earlier period of service—
      (i) there was made a transfer of his accrued rights under that scheme to another scheme applying to him in the later period of service; or
      (ii) those rights were secured by a policy of insurance or an annuity contract and were subsequently transferred to another scheme applying to him in the later period of service;"; and
      (b) in paragraph (b), for the words "that transfer" there shall be subsituted the words "the transfer of his accrued rights to the second scheme".'—
      No. 194, in page 123, line 9, at end insert—
      'Social Security Act 1975 (c.14)
      (7A) In paragraph 6(1)(h) of Schedule 1 to the Social Security Act 1975 (regulations about return of contributions) after the word "of', in the first place where it occurs, there shall be inserted the words "the whole or any prescribed part of any". '.
      No. 102, in page 124, line 28, at end insert—
      ' 18A. In section 43(2A) (linked qualifying service) —
      (a) the following paragraph shall be substituted for
      paragraph (a)—
      "(a) under the rules of a scheme applying to him in the earlier period of service—

      257

      (i) there was made a transfer of his accrued rights under that scheme to another scheme applying to him in the later period of service; or

      (ii) those rights were secured by a policy of insurance or an annuity contract and were subsequently transferred to another scheme applying to him in the later period of service;"; and

      (b) in paragraph (b), for the words "that transfer" there shall be substituted the words "the transfer of his accrued rights to the second scheme".'.
      No. 103, in page 124, line 45, at end insert—
      '(2A) In subsection (2)(a) of that section, after the word "under" in the second place where it occurs, there shall be inserted the words "section 52C of or".'.
      No. 104, in page 126, line 3, at end insert—
      '22A. At the end of paragraph 5(1) of Part I of Schedule 1A (revaluation of pensions) there shall be added the words "and which is not an average salary benefit": .
      No. 105, in page 126, line 20, leave out paragraph (b) and insert—
      '(b) paragraph 12(4) and the reference to it in paragraph 12(3) shall he omitted and shall be deemed never to have been included;'.
      No. 106, in page 126, line 42, after 'equivalents";', insert—
      '(1A) at the end of sub-paragraph (2), there shall be added (but not as part of paragraph (c)) the words "and power 'equivalents".'.to provide that they shall be calculated and verified in accordance with guidance prepared by a prescribed body".'.
      No. 107, in page 129, leave out lines 24 to 29.
      No. 178, in page 130, line 8, at end insert—
      '40A. The following entry shall he inserted in section 167(1)(a) of that Act (regulation subject to affirmative Parliamentary procedure) immediately after the entry relating to section 20(3) —
      "section 61(3) (constant attendance allowance);".
      No. 179, in page 130, line 28, at end insert—
      '41A. The words following "pension rate" shall be omitted from sections 2(6)(b) and 7(2)(c) (weekly rates of benefit) of the Industrial Injuries and Diseases (Old Cases) Act 1975.'.
      No. 180, in page 130, line 29, leave out 'the Industrial Injuries and Diseases (Old Cases) Act 1975' and insert 'that Act'.
      No. 108, in page 131, line 32, at end insert—
      'PART IIIA
      STATUTORY MATERNITY PAY, STATUTORY SICK PAY ETC.
      Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970 (c.10)
      44A. At the end of section 219A of the Income and Corporation Taxes Act 1970 (which charges certain payments to income tax under Schedule E) there shall be added "and
      (d) payments of statutory maternity pay under Part V of the Social Security Act 1986 or, in Northern Ireland, any corresponding provision contained in an Order in Council under the Northern Ireland Act 1974".
      Social Security Act 1975 (c.14)
      44B. The words "(other than maternity allowance)" shall be inserted—

      (a) after the words "that subsection", in subsection (2) of section 13 of the Social Security Act 1975, and

      (b) after the words "for benefit", in subsection (8) of that section.

      44C. In section 122(4) of that Act for the words "either or both those Funds" there shall be substituted the words "that Fund".
      Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 (c.44)
      44D. In section 33 of the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 (right to return to work) in subsection (3) and (4) for the word "rights" there shall be substituted the word "right" and in subsection (5) for the words "either of the rights" there shall be substituted the words "the right".
      Social Security and Housing Benefits Act 1982 (c.24)
      44E. The following subsection shall be substituted for section
      258
      3(9) of the Social Security and Housing Benefits Act 1982 (definitions relatin to period of entitlement to statutory sick pay)—
      "(9) In this. section—
      'confinement' is to be construed in accordance with section 47 of the Social Security Act 1986; and 'disqualifying period' means—

      (a) in relation to a woman entitled to statutory maternity pay, the maternity pay period, and

      (b) in relation to a woman entitled to maternity allowance, the maternity allowance period;

      "maternity allowance period" has the meaning assigned to it by section 22(2) of the principal Act; and
      "maternity pay period" has the meaning assigned to it by section 44(1) of the Social Security Act 1986".
      44F. The following paragraph shall be inserted before paragraph (a) of section 45(2) of that Act (Parliamentary control of subordinate legislation)—
      "(za) regulations under section 7 of this Act;".
      Insolvency Act 1985 (c.65)
      44G. In paragraph 3(2)(d) of Part II of Schedule 4 to the Insolvency Act 1985 (preferential debts) the words from the beginning to "1982" shall cease to have effect.
      Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 1985 (c.66)
      44H. Paragraph 9(2)(d) of Schedule 3 to the Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 1985 (preferential debts) shall cease to have effect .' .
      No. 109, in page 131, line 45, at end insert—
      '46A. In subsection (1) of section 28 of that Act (Category A retirement pension) the words from "(subject" to "rule))" shall be omitted.'.
      No. 110, in page 135, line 19, at end insert—
      'Supplementary Benefits Act 1976 (c. 71.)
      65A. In section 8 of the Supplementary Benefits Act 1976 (persons affected by trade disputes) —

      (a) in subsection (1), the following words shall he substituted for the words from the beginning to "period", in the second place where it occurs, "So long as this section applies to a person, his requirements"; and

      (b) the following subsection shall be substituted for subsection (2) —

      "(2) This section applies to a person—

      (a) who is disqualified under section 19 of the Social Security Act 1975 for receiving unemployment benefit; or

      (b) would be so disqualified if he were otherwise entitled to that benefit,

      except during any period shown by him to be a period of incapacity for work by reason of disease or bodily or mental disablement.".'. —[Mr. Fowler.]

    Schedule 10

      REPEALS
      Amendments made: No. 111, in page 136, line 15, column 3, at end insert—

      'In section 219A(1)(b), the word "and".'

      No. 112, in page 136, line 44, column 3, at beginning insert—

      'In section 1(l.)(b), the words "and the Maternity Pay Fund".'.

      No. 144, in page 136, column 3, leave out lines 49 to 51 and insert—

      'In section 13,:n subsection (1), the entries relating to widow's allowance and death grant, subsection (5)(a) and subsection (5A).'

      No. 113, in page 137, line 3, column 3, at end insert—

      'In section 28(1), the words from "(subject" to "rule))".'.

      No. 187, in page 137, line 7, at end insert 'and (7)'.
      No. 181, in page 137, line 8, column 3, at end insert—

      'Section 50(2) and (5).

      Section 57(5).

      Sections 58 to 60.

      Section 62.

      Section 64.

      Sections 66 to 75.'

      No. 114, in page 137, line 35, column 3, at end insert—

      'In section 122(4) the words "or the Maternity Pay Fund".'.

      No. 115, in page 137, line 36, column 3, at end insert—

      'In section 134(5)(b) the words from "and the Maternity Pay Fund" to "determine".'.

      No. 116, in page 138, line 6, column 3, leave out from 'allowance",' to end of line 9 and insert—

      'in paragraph 8(3), the words "or a maternity allowance," in paragraphs 9 and 10, the words "(other than a widow's allowance)" and paragraph 12.'.

      No. 182, in page 138, line 11, leave out from 'II', to end of line 12 and insert—

      'in Part IV paragraph 4 and in Part V, paragraphs 2, 4 to 6 and 10 to 15.

      In Schedule 8, paragraph (b) of the proviso to paragraph 5 and the word "and" immediately preceding it.

      Schedule 9.'.

      No. 145, in page 138, column 3, leave out lines 27 and 28 and insert—

      'In section 6, in subsection (2), the words from "or" to the end, in subsection (5), the words "Subject to subsection (5A) below," and subsection (5A).'

      No. 146, in page 138, line 28, column 3, at end insert—

      'In section 19(2), the words "and (3)(b)".'

      No. 188, in page 138, line 29, column 3, after '22', insert '(3) and'.
      No. 117, in page 138, line 51, column 3, at end insert—

      'Section 46.'

      No. 118, in page 138, line 58, column 3, at end insert—

      'In Schedule 1A, in paragraph 12, in sub paragraph (3), the words "Subject to sub-paragraph (4) below," and sub-paragraph (4).'

      No. 119, in page 139, line 22, at end insert—

      '1975 c. 71.

      Employment Act 1975

      Protection In section 40 subsections

      No. 120, in page 139, line 24, column 3, leave out from l' to 'to' in line 25.
      No. 121, in page 139, line 28, column 3, at end insert—

      'In Schedule 5. in paragraph 1(2), the words from the beginning to "and" in the first place where it occurs.'

      No. 122, in page 139, line 29, leave out '(a)'.
      No. 123, in page 139, column 3, leave out lines 32 to 34.
      No. 124, in page 139, column 3, leave out lines 45 and 46 and insert—

      'In section 33, subsection (1)(a) and the word "and" immediately following it, in subsection (3) paragraph (c) and in paragraph (d) the words "in the case of the right to return" and in subsection (4) the words "to return".

      Sections 33 to 44.'.

      No. 125, in page 139, line 51, column 3, at end insert—

      'In section 132, in subsection (1)(b)", III" and in subsection (6) the definition of "supplementary benefit".

      In section 138, in subsection (1) the words "(except section 44", and in subsection (5) the words "(except section 44(3) and (4))".

      In section 139(1), the words "(except section 44)".

      In section 153(1) the definitions of "maternity pay", "Maternity Pay Fund" and "maternity pay rebate".

      Section 156(1).

      Section 157(2)(a) and the word "and" immediately following it.

      In Schedule 14, paragraph 7(1)(d).

      In Schedule 15, paragraph 7 and the heading immediately preceding it.'.

      No. 126, in page 139, line 58, at end insert—

      '1979 c.41

      Pneumoconiosis etc. (Workers' Compensation) Act 1979

      In section 2(3), the words "industrial death benefit under section 76 of the Social Security Act 1975, or".'.

      No 127, in page 140, line 57, column 3, at end insert— 'Section 8. ' .
      No. 128, in page 141, column 3, leave out lines 2 to 4 and insert—

      'Sections 11 to 16.'.

      No. 129, in page 141, line 8, leave out '(1)'.
      No. 183, in page 141, line 39, column 3, at end insert—

      'In Schedule 5, paragraphs 4 to 6'.

      No. 130, in page 141, leave out line 40.
      No. 131, in page 141, line 47, column 3 at end insert—

      'In Schedule 4, paragraph 2.'

      No. 147, in page 141, line 48, after 'paragraphs ', insert '6'.
      No. 132, in page 141, line 48 after 'paragraphs' insert '7'.
      No. 148, in page 141, line 48, at end insert '16,'.
      No. 133, in page 141, line 49, after '19', insert '28'.
      No. 134, in page 141, line 49, column 3, at end add—

      '1985 c. 65.

      Insolvency Act 1985.

      In Part II of Schedule 4, the words in paragraph 3(2)(d) from the beginning to "1982".

      1985 c. 66.

      Bankruptcy (Scotland) Act 1985

      In Schedule 3, paragraph 9(2)(d).'

      No. 135, in page 141, line 49, at end add—

      '1986 c. 9.

      Law Reform (Parent and Child) (Scotland) Act 1986.

      1986. In Schedule 1, paragraph 16

      In Schedule 2, the entry relating to the Supplementary Benefits Act 1976.'. —[Mr. Fowler.]

    Clause 78
      EXTENT
      Amendment made: No. 136, in page 79, line 40, leave out 'Section' and insert 'Sections 24 and'. —[Mr. Fowler.]
    Clause 79

      COMMENCEMENT
      Amendment made: No. 163, in page 80, line 19, at end insert—
      '(3A) If an order under subsection (1) above brings paragraph 8 of Schedule 3 to this Act into force on the same day as section 34 above, the former shall be deemed to have come into force immediately before the latter.'.
      No. 186, in page 80, line 26, at end insert
      'section [Entitlement to mobility allowance—general];'
      No. 138, in page 80, line 31, leave out '23(c)(iii)' and insert '23(b) and (c)(iii)'.
      No. 139, page 80, line 32, at end insert
      'section 77(2) so far as relating to paragraph 12 of Schedule lA to the Social Security Act 1975 and section 29 of the Social Security and Housing Benefits Act 1982;'—[Mr. Fowler.]
      Amendment made: No. 143, New Schedule—
      Earning Factors—
      Social Security Act 1975 (c. 14)
      1. The Social Security Act 1975 shall be amended as follows.
      2. —(1) In subsection (2) of section 13 (contribution conditions and the earnings factor) for the words from "his" to "above" there shall be substituted the words "those of his earnings upon which a liability to pay Class 1 contributions arises and from his Class 2 and Class 3 contributions".
      (2). In subsection (3) of that section, for the words from "primary" to the end there shall be substituted the words "earnings upon which primary Class 1 contributions are paid at the reduced rate".
      (3) In subsection (4), for the words "contributions of any class" there shall be substituted the words "earnings or Class 2 or Class 3 contributions".
      (4) In subsection (5) —

      (a) for the word "contributions", in the first place where it occurs, there shall be substituted the words "earnings or Class 2 or Class 3 contributions;

      (b) paragraph (a) shall be omitted; and

      (c) for the words from "shall be derived" to the end of the subsection there shall be substituted the words "may be derived—

      262

      (i). from earnings upon which Class 1 contributions have been paid;

      (ii). from earnings which have been credited;

      (iii). from contributions in different classes paid or credited in the same tax year;

      (iv). by any combination of the methods mentioned in paragraphs (i) to (iii) above."

      (5) In subsection (6)(c)—

      (a). for the words "person's contribution of any class or classes" there shall be substituted the word "person";

      (b). for the words "those contributions" there shall be substituted the words "his earnings upon which a liability to pay Class 1 contributions arose and from his Class 2 and Class 3 contributions".

      3. — (1) The following paragraph shall be substituted for sub-paragraph (2)(b) of paragraph 1 (unemployment and sickness benefit) of Schedule 3 (contribution conditions) —
      "(b) the earnings factor derived—

      (i). in the case of unemployment benefit, from earnings upon which a liability to pay Class 1 contributions arose; and

      (ii) in the case of sickness benefit, from such earnings or from Class 2 contributions,

      must be not less than that year's lower earnings limit multiplied by 25".
      (2) In sub-paragraph (3)(a) of that paragraph, after the word "class" there shall be inserted the words "or been credited with earnings".
      (3) The following paragraph shall be substituted for subparagraph (3)(b)—
      "(b) the earnings factor derived—

      (i). in the case of unemployment benefit, from earnings upon which a liability to pay Class 1 contributions arose or from earnings credited arose: and

      (ii) in the case of sickness benefit, from such earnings or from Class 2 contributions,

      must be not less than that year's lower earnings limit multiplied by 50".
      (4) In sub-paragraph (1)(b) of paragraph 4 of that Schedule for the words "those contributions" there shall be substituted the words "earnings upon which a liability to pay Class 1 contributions arose and from Class 2 and Class 3 contributions".
      (5) In sub-paragraph (2)(b) of paragraph 5 of that Schedule (widowed mother's allowance, widow's pension and retirement pensions) for the words "those contributions" there shall be substituted the words "earnings upon which such of those contributions as are Class 1 contributions were paid and any Class 2 or Class 3 contributions".
      (6) The following paragraph shall be substituted for sub-paragraph (3)(b) of that paragraph—
      "(b) in the case of each of those years, the earnings factor derived from—

      (i) any earnings upon which such of those contributions as are Class 1 contributions were paid or earnings credited; and

      (ii) any Class 2 or Class 3 contributions for the year," must not be less than the qualifying earnings factor for the year."

      (7) In paragraph 8(3) (satisfaction of certain contribution conditions in early years of contribution) for the words from "his contributions of a relevant class" there shall be substituted the words "the aggregate of his earnings upon which Class 1 contributions were actually paid and from Class 2 contributions".
      Social Security Pensions Act 1975 (c. 60.)
      4. The Social Security Pensions Act 1975 shall be amended as follows.
      5. —(1) In section 6 (rate of Categoory A retirement pension) —
      (a) In section (5), for the words "contributions actually paid by him in respect of that year" there shall be substituted the words "earnings upon which Class 1 contributions were actually paid by him in respect of that year and earnings factors derived from Class 2 and Class 3 contributions actually paid in respect of it"; and (b) subsection (5A) shall be omitted.
      6. —(1) In subsection (2) of section 35 (earner's guaranteed minimum) for the words "contributions paid in respec7. of such earnings as are mentioned in subsection (1) above" there shall be

      263
      substituted the word "earnings such as are mentioned in subsection (1) above upon which liability to pay Class 1 contributions arose".
      (7). Section 43(1A) and section 47(2A) shall not apply to any period after the end of the tax year 1986–87.
      (8). In subsection (3)(b) of section 45 (premium where guaranteed minimum pension excluded from full revaluation) for the word "contributions", in the first place where it occurs, there shall be substituted the words "earnings upon which Class 1 contributions are payable".
      Social Security (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1977 (c. 5.)
      9. In subsection (1)(b) of section 21 of the Social Security (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1977 (calculation of guaranteed minimum pensions preserved under proposed arrangements) after the word "contributions", in the first place where it occurs. there shall be insert the words "or earnings".'. —[Mr. Fowler.]

    Title
    Amendment made: No. 141, in title, line 4, after 'pupils', insert
    'to abolish maternity pay under the Employment Protection (Consolidation) Act 1978 and provide for the winding-up of the Maternity Pay Fund'. —[Mr. Fowler.]
    Order for Third Reading read. —[Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified]
    8.12 pm
    The Secretary of State for Social Services (Mr. Norman Fowler): I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
    I shall be brief since the Third Reading debate is itself a short one. The Third Reading marks another significant landmark for the Bill. The Bill gives effect to the proposals which were set out in the White Paper on social security published at the end of 1985. That White Paper followed the most extensive examination of the social security system since the war. It started in the autumn of 1983 with the inquiry into retirement. That was followed by an examination of family support, housing benefit, and supplementary benefit.
    The Bill itself has been subject to the longest scrutiny by a Standing Committee of any social security legislation since the original Beveridge proposals just after the war. I should like to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for their work on the Bill. I believe, too, that the standard of debate throughout the proceedings has been very high, both from the Government Benches and from the Opposition.
    The Bill has three major objectives. The first is to ensure that many more people should have a pension of their own. We want to achieve a major extension of occupational and personal pensions. Over the past 20 years occupational pension cover has remained static. That was so not just in the so-called years of pension blight in the 1960s and the early 1970s, but it has continued to he the case since. The result is that we have basically two nations in pensions, one with its own occupational scheme and the other with no scheme of its own. All the evidence is that people without additional pensions of their own would welcome the opportunity to have them. The Bill makes it easier for both employers and employees to set up new pension arrangements while at the same time preserving the basic pension unchanged and a modified second tier state earnings-related scheme.
    The Bill gives for the first time in this country the right to a personal pension. That means in practice that anyone,
    264
    whether a member of the additional state scheme or of an occupational scheme, can choose instead to have a personal pension. In other words, the pension will be personal to the individual and will be fully portable from job to job.
    Personal pensions will be accumulated on a money purchase basis with contributions qualifying for tax relief. Each person will be able to choose the kind of pension savings scheme that he wants and the kind of body which he wants to run his savings scheme. The significance of the last measure is that under the provisions of the Bill we are opening up the provision of pensions not just to life assurance companies, but to building societies, banks and unit trusts. That will not only give the public a wider choice and a greater say in how their pension savings are invested, but it will increase competition between providers of pensions to the benefit of the consumer.
    We are concerned to encourage not only personal pensions but the spread of occupational pension schemes. Here again, there is substantial scope for expansion. Up to now there is little doubt that employers, particularly small employers, have been discouraged from starting new schemes by the fact that only schemes promising a benefit related to salary could contract out of the state earnings-related scheme. That is an open-ended commitment which not all employers could reasonably be expected to take on. The Bill provides an alternative route to an occupational pension. In brief, we will see an expansion of occupational schemes and an expansion of industrywide pension schemes.
    The changes that we are making come on top of the important changes that we have already made in the 1985 legislation on early leavers and on transfer rights. Taken together, the legislation that is now going through the House and the legislation that was passed in 1985 amount to a major extension of occupational pensions and personal pensions, and a major extension of rights for members of schemes.
    The second aim of the legislation is to seek to concentrate help in areas where that help is needed. The evidence of the social security review was that the present system fails to do that in a number of ways. The position has changed over the past 20 years. Any diagnosis of need shows that some of the most difficult problems are today faced by low income families with children. Families with children—unemployed families, but also low income families in work—now make up more than half the people living on the lowest incomes. At the same time, there is the totally indefensible position where families can be worse off in work than out of work, and where they can lose income as their gross wages rise. Through the family credit proposals and the family provision of income support the Bill will enable us to direct more help to these areas. It will help us to tackle both the unemployment and the poverty traps.
    I made clear yesterday our commitment to the object and aim of family credit. I believe that there is widespread agreement with the Government's central proposition that we should direct more help to low income families with children.
    The Green Paper proposals that have been adopted in the Bill achieve that in a number of ways. For example, fiat rate child benefit as a universal basis of help for all children, which will be paid, of course, directly to the mother, will continue. A new family premium in the income support scheme and a new expanded and improved

    265
    family credit have been designed specifically to target help more accurately and more generously on low-income families with children.
    That will enable us to direct more help to low-income families. As I have already made clear, we estimate that family credit will reach twice as many families as the family income supplement. There is widespread agreement that the present family income supplement scheme is not working and should be replaced. The family credit scheme is a good and worthy successor to that scheme.
    The third objective of the Bill is to ensure a simpler system of social security. One of the most, common complaints from the public is that the system is, at times, one of bewildering complexity. That is not in the interests of the claimants or of the staff who have to administer the system. The Bill will simplify benefits and put income support, housing benefit, and family credit on a similar basis. The Bill will go further than that. It will introduce common rules for the different benefits and simplify the present complexities of the contracting out rules for the state pension scheme.
    The changes have been made because over the next 10 to 15 years we will introduce a new computer strategy for social security. That will be the biggest computer operation of its kind ever undertaken in this country and it will cost up to £2 billion. That strategy will radically improve the service that we give to the public.
    The reforms set out in the Bill are fundamental. They follow the most comprehensive review of social security since the last war and the most detailed consultation with the public.
    The reforms propose a new framework of social security that will serve the public better in future. The debate on social security has changed. The question is not now whether social security should be reformed, but how it should be reformed.
    We are still waiting to hear the proposals from the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher). He launched those proposals in a tentative way some 13 months ago. I have no wish to intrude into the hon. Gentleman's private grief, but we have been promised his proposals for some time. The time has come for him to make clear where the Opposition stand on these matters.
    For years hon. Members on both sides of the House have spoken eloquently of the need for reform. The Government must do more than simply recognise the problems in social security. They must put forward solutions and set out a programme for action based on clear principles and objectives. The Bill achieves that. We have a programme which will confer new rights in pensions. We will set the pensions of the future on a sound basis and give millions of people new opportunities for planning for their future and an independence which the public will appreciate and understand.
    The Bill contains a programme that cuts through the unnecessary complexities of much of social security and concentrates on what should be its central aim of directing help to those who need it most. It contains a programme that will tackle the most notorious aspects of the unemployment and poverty traps. It will give more support to some disabled people as well as to those low income families who face special difficulties.
    That is a programme for reform which deserves the support of the House. The House cannot turn its back on the problems in social security which undeniably exist and
    266
    which have not been denied, throughout the debate. The House and the Government have a responsibility to act. I ask the House to support the Bill tonight so that we may take the action that is needed.
    8.24 pm
    Mr. Meacher: I want to pay a well-earned tribute to my hon. Friends who served on the Standing Committee and to my Opposition Front Bench colleagues for their discipline, eloquence, persistence, and effectiveness. Rarely can there have been a Committee where the argument was won more often and more convincingly by the Opposition than the Committee on this Bill. Yet, a stern-faced Government were able to vote us down through the brute force of whipped votes. The Opposition's sole prize in Committee and on Report came last night. We forced the Government to back-track on their universally derided plans to pay family credit through the wage packet. That is a major prize of enormous importance for millions of women. I specially thank all those who forced the Government to rethink that especially ill-advised proposal.
    This Bill ends grants as of right for essential household needs for the poorest people on supplementary benefit. It substitutes a so-called social fund with no independent right of appeal and with repayable loans which will drive many families deeper into poverty and debt.
    This Bill will, for the first time, cash-limit the relief of poverty. It forces everyone, even the very poorest, to pay 20 per cent. of their rates. That will eat into the basic subsistence minimum designed for food, clothing, and fuel. The Bill will emasculate the state earnings-related pension scheme by which otherwise all pensioners would have been lifted above the supplementary benefit poverty line. Poverty in retirement would finally have been ended had that scheme matured.
    This Bill will end the best 20 years rule which alone protected women, the long-term unemployed and the long-term sick and disabled who were unable to earn a full pension from a normal 40 years' working life. As a result of that, they will be exposed again to means-tested poverty in retirement.
    This Bill will cut £450 million from housing benefits in addition to the £200 million which was knocked off last year. That will specifically hit pensioners and unemployed families. The Bill ends local authority discretion to provide free school meals for hundreds of thousands of children who will now be put at risk of not having at least one proper nutritious meal a day.
    This Bill will punish single childless young people under the age of 25. Under this Bill, 25 becomes the new age of majority for the poor. Below that age, they will get £6·60 a week less income support and significantly less housing benefit than persons in identical circumstances who are older. Altogether, nearly one third of a million young people under 25 will lose out.
    I could continue with such descriptions of the Bill. This is not a Bill about social justice or about welfare state reform. It is not a Bill concerned with attacking poverty. Rather, it attacks the poor. It is about redistribution but under this anti—Robin Hood Government that involves redistribution from the poor to the rich. In addition to the £9 billion to £10 billion that has already been taken from the poor in social security cuts since 1979, and in addition to the £4 billion to £5 billion—and that is the Treasury figure—that has already been transferred from the poor

    267
    in Tory budget after Tory budget, this Bill makes other redistributions. The Secretary of State said that the Bill represented a rationalisation of the welfare state. The welfare state does need to be reformed. It is too bureaucratic, too riddled with means testing and too complex, but this is not a reform package—it is a cuts package. SERPS is being cut by £12 billion into the next century, housing benefit is being cut by £450 million, child benefit was cut by £175 million last year and supplementary benefit, or income support as it is now euphemistically called, is probably to be cut by an estimated £180 million. It is a cuts package worth about £1 billion which affects 3·8 million people, 2·25 million of whom are pensioners and 500,000 of whom will lose more than £5 a week.
    The Government's own figures, given in their technical annex, show that one third of a million pensioners aged over 80 will lose, that nearly 2 million pensioners under the age of 80 will lose——
    Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman: There were no pensions for the over-80s under the old Labour Government. We brought them in in 1971.
    Mr. Meacher: I shall repeat that if the hon. Lady would like me to. Nearly 2 million pensioners under 80 will lose, 250,000 lone parents will lose——
    Mrs. Kellett-Bowman rose——
    Mr. Meacher: —100,000 low-paid families with children will lose——
    Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Meacher: The hon. Lady will be able to make her own speech in due course.
    Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: The hon. Gentleman referred to me, so would he be good enough to give way?
    Mr. Meacher: I referred to the hon. Lady only to ask her to keep quiet and listen.
    Mrs. Kellett-Bowman rose——
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. We cannot have two hon. Members on their feet at the same time.
    Mr. Meacher: One hundred——
    Mrs. Kellett-Bowman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) to make a deliberately misleading statement and to prevent me from correcting him?
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order. I remind the House that this is a very short debate.
    Mr. Meacher: Nearly 2·5 million pensioners will lose, 250,000 lone parents will lose, 100,000 low-paid families with children will lose, 60,000 sick and disabled persons will lose and 1·75 million other persons in different categories of need will lose.
    Those are the Government's own figures. They exclude losses from the ending of single payments, which cost more than £300 million last year. Nor do they include the package full of nasties that the Government served up
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    without notice and without consultation in the last week of the three-month Committee stage and afterwards. The Government tacked on to the Bill a savage new penalty for people who have been unemployed for more than six weeks after leaving a job for reasons that do not satisfy a DHSS official. The only intelligible justification which the Minister was able to offer the Standing Committee for that was that it was a means of saving another £30 million.
    People on income support are now to be required to pay more of their mortgage interest, as half will no longer be covered by supplementary benefit as has always previously been the case. They will have to pay it out of money intended for basic needs. The Government have also cut out all of those people who previously qualified for industrial injury benefit but had an assessment of less than 15 per cent. disability. That still involves a serious accident. Another 180,000 people will lose, saving £155 million.
    The Government have always said—the Secretary of State repeated it today—that there are three basic aims behind the Bill. I should like to explore them. The first is better targeting of resources on the poor. I refer the Secretary of State and others to the answer given to the hon. Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) in a parliamentary reply of 13 February. On the figures which the Government provided, it appears that two-parent families with two children, with £100 a week gross earnings or less, will lose. The highest losses are on earnings between £60 and £80 a week—they range from just under £8 a week to just over £9 a week. The picture is similar for three-children families on £110 gross or less. There are approaching 250,000 two-parent families on such low wages.
    The losses faced by lone parents earning £100 a week or less are even greater, according to the answer received by the hon. Member for Kensington. They are as high as £11 on gross earnings of £60 a week or more. I do not see how those figures can possibly be considered compatible with concentrating resources on those in greatest need. It is the reverse.
    The only people whom the Government have successfully targeted on are the rich—the top 5 per cent. who have received £3·5 billion in the past seven years in income tax concessions, to say nothing of capital tax concessions through weakening capital transfer tax, capital gains tax and abolition of the investment income surcharge, which benefits only those with more than £100,000 stashed away on the stock exchange.
    Secondly, the Secretary of State said that the Bill would reduce complexity. I suggest that he has severely increased it, partly through the social fund, which will be an extremely complex mechanism, instead of the basically much simpler and fairer grants as of right, and through a manifold increase in means testing — abolition of universal benefits such as death grant and maternity grant.
    Thirdly, the Secretary of State said that his aim was to ease the poverty trap. I put it to him that the Bill will substantially extend the poverty trap. The number of families or individuals who will lose more than 70p out of each extra £1 that they earn will double to 500,000. The number who will lose more than 60p in every £1, which is a higher marginal rate than is imposed on Britain's richest business men, will quadruple. So much for easing the poverty trap.
    I should like to give a few examples of the Bill's effects. I shall limit myself to three. Miss F is a lone parent

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    with an epileptic child for whom she receives a diet allowance of £35. Her current supplementary benefit entitlement before rent is £82·60 a week. Under income support, she would get only £49·90, as her child will not, it seems, qualify for the double family premium. She will lose £32·70 a week.
    Mrs. T is a widow with severe disabilities. She suffers from arthritis, diverticular disease in the large bowel, incontinence and a suspected hiatus hernia. She is mostly bedridden and receives an attendance allowance. Her current supplementary benefit entitlement before rent is £52·10 a week, £15·60 of which is to meet her additional requirements. On the illustrative support rate which the Government have provided her entitlement would be £42·85—a loss of £9·25.
    Mrs. W is a 74-year-old widow with Parkinson's disease. She receives the higher rate of attendance allowance and has a resident help as she would be unable to live on her own without care. She receives £42·90 towards the cost of that help and her supplementary benefit entitlement before rent is £79·40 a week. Under income support she would receive £42·85—a loss of £36·55 a week. In case anybody believes that that is an exceptional case, I draw attention to the fact that the Minister for Social Security admitted in Committee that 2,500 very severely disabled persons will lose between £50 and £60 a week under the Bill.
    Mr. Newton: I most certainly did not.
    Mr. Meacher: The hon. Gentleman can deny that but if he wishes me to, I shall look up the quotation.
    Mr. Newton: I should like to make it absolutely clear that I simply accepted that there were 2,400, to be precise, people who, in our latest data, receive additional requirements for domestic assistance. As I said again last night, our latest data show that the average of those payments is less than £4 a week. On that basis, it is inconceivable that that number of people are losing those sums of money.
    Mr. Meacher: The Minister is wrong. If he looks at the figures for those in receipt of domestic assistance addition, which is paid on average at £47·20 a week, he will see that the number who will lose is as I have said.
    The only proper response of those who do these things to some of the most vulnerable and poorest in society should be shame and remorse. If the Government and their Ministers are incapable of such feelings of understanding and compassion, I give notice that we shall do what they will not do. We shall prevent the Bill from coming into force if a Labour Government come to power, as we expect. before the implementation date. If we do not, I give an unequivocal guarantee that we shall eventually repeal the legislation in full.
    8.40 pm
    Mr. Andrew Bowden: It is with deep regret that I must say to my Front Bench colleagues that I do not believe that the Bill will stand the test of time. That is clear from the Opposition's statements, not least because a general election will take place before the Bill is fully implemented.
    At the same time, I want to pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his colleagues. The Secretary of State is a dedicated and diligent Minister, but he has faced an impossible task. He was asked to reform
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    the social security system—few hon. Members would deny that reforms are urgently needed—but he was not given the means with which to carry it out. Therefore, his brief could not possibly be effectively fulfilled. For that, one cannot blame him. My right hon. Friend will be remembered not as a great reformer but as a Secretary of State who had an impossible task and tragically was unable to fulfil it.
    I cannot support a Bill which will create real hardship, and which will reduce the incomes of many elderly people. Therefore, I shall have no hesitation in voting against the Third Reading. It is utterly wrong to force pensioners on extremely low incomes to pay 20 per cent. of their rates without compensatory increases in their income and without any guarantee that the rating system will be basically altered and reformed. It is wrong substantially to reduce heating allowances for 1 million pensioner households, and to cut the housing benefit of up to 4 million pensioners.
    I wish to refer to the standard housing benefit high rents scheme, and to tell the House of a specific case in Brighton. A retired couple live on a total income of £107 a week, and at present they receive £5·45 rent allowance. If the high rents scheme is abolished—I am not talking about the other proposed reductions in housing benefit—they will immediately lose £1·45 in benefit, and a large part of the balance will go with other reductions in housing benefit.
    Social fund officers and inspectors will face an incredibly difficult task. I have little doubt that the operation of the fund will inevitably lead to a mass of anomalies. During the severe weather of the past two winters we saw the anomalies that arose in severe weather heating allowances. During the past winter officers responsible for deciding whether that allowance should be paid made different decisions at different branch offices no more than 10 miles apart. In future I can see such anomalies arising on these issues. Yet, despite all the responsibilities and difficulties faced by social fund officers, and despite the inevitable errors and anomalies that will occur, there will not be a right of appeal to an independent tribunal. I accept that the Government have made some concessions on appeals, but I deeply regret that there will not be the right of access to a completely independent tribunal.
    A great opportunity has been missed. The Government will rue the day when they introduced the Bill.
    8.45 pm
    Mr. Kirkwood: We have been privileged to listen to a brave speech by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) who is renowned for his work as the joint chairman of the all-party pensioners committee. He would have been doing less than justice to his past work if he had not made the speech that he has just made. I am delighted to follow him.
    I have just finished my first Standing Committee on social security, and I wish to pay tribute to the Government Front Bench, especially the Minister of State. Although we may not have agreed with his explanations. he presented them lucidly. I also wish to pay tribute to the hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett). The burden of the Committee's work fell on their shoulders. It might be stretching the point a bit far to say that I

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    enjoyed the Committee proceedings, but I certainly never found that my time was wasted, and we all learnt a great deal from our discussions.
    The Government, in my submission, have made a number of mistakes. They made the first one early on. When the guillotine was imposed in Committee the guts fell out of the proceedings, and that has certainly been true on Report where we have not done justice to the work done during the early stages of the Committee. My conclusion from that is that the Government were mistaken in trying to put three separate Bills into one. The Secretary of State stipulated clearly the three major aims of the measure: a major reform of pensions, a major reform of the income support system, and a major clarification and alteration to the common provisions of the appeal machinery. The Bill has suffered because the Government included all three, and I regret that. The Government should learn that lesson for the future.
    I regret that there was no real and objective attempt during the review to assess needs. There was a consultation procedure, but many Opposition Members believed that it was a bit of a charade. The Government would have done themselves more credit if they had assessed the level of need. We would all have had a fright if they had done that and presented the figures because the need is, perhaps, much greater than even we on the Opposition Benches imagine it is. But that omission made our discussions much more difficult.
    The Government were wrong to rely so heavily on the need for regulations. I fully understand the need to introduce subordinate social security legislation by statutory instruments but the extent to which the Bill is founded on regulations that will come as a consequence of the primary legislation is a mistake and is to be regretted.
    Throughout our discussions during the various stages our work has been made more difficult by the tentative nature of the Government's indicative figures. It is difficult for them to do much about that when the Bill is being discussed so far in advance of it being implemented. However, it would have been better had they been able to have the discussions nearer the time when the Bill was being brought into force, when we would be able to discuss real figures and not the estimates of potential losers and gainers.
    The Government have not taken proper account of the fact that the Bill breaks the consensus that has been reached between both sides of the House in social security legislation, and particularly pensions legislation, over the past 15 or 20 years. The Government have underestimated the uncertainty, administrative chaos and financial difficulties that will flow from the fact that, as of this evening, all bets are off and the social security system and the machinery for delivering it are back in the party political cauldron. That is not in anybody's interest.
    I listened carefully to the Secretary of State, who said that he had two aims. The first was that he wanted to concentrate on those in need, and the second was that he wanted a more simple system. I understand both of those aims, but, on a nil-cost basis, it is impossible to make the system more simple and get fairer and better targeting because they are in direct conflict. Better targeting needs to take account of individual need and to be done well needs extra resources, especially if the system is at the same time to become more simple.
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    The Bill is a missed opportunity and the alliance view is that we should embrace the technical difficulties of moving towards the integration of the taxation and benefit systems and attempt to unify them. I am confident that, in my political lifetime, I shall see such a reform introduced.
    I have doubts about some of the detailed aspects of the Bill and the alliance will be looking carefully at them. As the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) said, we may put the Bill on the statute book and then find ourselves facing an election. The first doubt concerns the position of single people under the age of 25. I understand that the Government have to strike a balance on how support is delivered to young people, but the age of 25 as a cut-off point is unjustified, arbitrary, unnecessary and unfair. That proposal is unacceptable and I shall do everything in my power to persuade my party to change it. The long-term unemployed without children or dependants will still be in a dire position after the introduction of the Bill, and that is unacceptable, as is the 20 per cent. contribution towards the rates for those on income support. The hon. Member for Kemptown rightly referred to that point.
    I hope that the commitment that the Secretary of State gave us on the stroke of midnight last night—I thought that he was about to turn into Cinderella—of further consultations and the delivery of family credit by girocheque to the caring parent is fulfilled. It would be unacceptable to leave the Bill as it stands in this regard. A means-tested death grant is unacceptable, and I tried to amend this proposal in Committee. The Government should have accepted my compromise.
    The social fund, even with the new clause that the Government introduced yesterday, is unacceptable and we could not countenance the introduction of anything like a social fund in its present form, because of the difficulty of single payments. I am still not satisfied with the regional disparities, as the incidence of the cuts will fall heavily on places such as Northern Ireland, Scotland and some of the other deprived regions. I should change a number of the Bill's significant aspects if I had any influence on such matters in the future.
    The Government must not be tempted, between now and bringing the Bill into effect, to chip away with piecemeal cuts just to try to discount the financial agony that will come about if and when the Bill is eventually introduced. That would be unfair and unjustified. When the Secretary of State introduces the regulations that will flow from the Bill, we shall scrutinise them line by line to try to make the improvements that the Bill still needs.
    8.56 pm
    Mr. Roy Galley: It was with surprise that I heard the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) say that he did not enjoy every moment of the Committee. Surely even in the early hours of the morning it was an experience of unalloyed enjoyment. Although there was a great divide of opinion on many matters, it was a remarkably good-tempered Committee. I pay tribute to the flexibility and skill of my hon. Friends the Minister and the Under-Secretary in the way that they handled the Committee, and to the competence displayed on both sides of the Committee during the debate.
    Reform of social security was much needed and will be welcomed. The Bill makes many significant changes and I predict that a distantly future Left-wing Government, be

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    it Labour or alliance, will retain many of its features. The net income assessment system and the common criteria between benefits are two of the significant improvements that will result. The more simple and coherent income support scheme will probably also endure and other measures will successfully curtail a number of discrepancies in the system.
    I have three points to make, and it would be helpful if my hon. Friend the Minister would indicate a little of his thinking on these issues on which we touched in Committee. The first is that of the age of retirement. Most people wish for and are prepared to seek greater flexibility in retirement. When he introduced his Green Paper, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State put forward the concept of a decade of retirement. That is a strategic objective, and there is little flesh on the bones of that idea. It is a matter of regret that we did not progress it further in Committee.
    There is growing pressure for equalisation in the treatment of men and women, and it is only a matter of time before that issue becomes the subject of the legal process. Pressure for change will come from both men and women. Conflicting choices will mean that a considerable margin of flexibility will be the only solution. A common retirement age higher than 60 would not be a politically feasible option. For this reason, the central recommendation of the report by the Select Committee on Social Services on the age of retirement would be a non-starter.
    The costs of reducing the male retirement age would be considerable. Whatever cost calculations one makes will depend on assumptions about job replacement. To take the best estimates available, at 1982 levels, the net cost of early retirement—assuming two thirds of men retiring between 60 and 65 being replaced in employment by younger people- would be £2·5 billion. Even if one assumes full job replacement, it would be nearly £2 billion. For financial reasons, that proposal is a nonstarter. No Government, even if they decided that a reduction in the retirement age was the No. 1 priority, would readily be able to find such money.
    Another important factor in matters relating to retirement is that only about two-thirds of men aged between 60 and 64 are active in the labour market. About 10 to 15 per cent. retire on occupational pensions, while others effectively retire on sickness or invalidity benefit or unemployment benefit. It would be helpful if we were able to give those people the dignity of retirement status as part of the changes in our retirement law.
    Because of the financial and political problems of compulsory retirement at a new common age, or simply an earlier age for men, we need to consider some proposals for abated pensions. A number of variations have been discussed over the years. The difficulty so often is that they can be expensive. The other major flaw is the possibility of topping up an abated pension with other forms of social security benefit. Unless the basic level of pension, with any additional state pension, is far enough above the income level for the new income support, those on abated pensions would merely rely on other benefits to boost their income.
    I sought to introduce yesterday new clause 12 to overcome this problem by allowing the payment of abated pensions, with the intention that other topping up benefits would not be payable. The formula for the abatement is the reverse of the current incremental formula. It is now possible to defer receipt of a pension until after retirement
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    age and to earn increments to the basic rate. Those increments accrue at the rate of one-seventh per cent per week. That results in a 7·5 per cent. annual increase. If an incremental system of that kind can be operated, I believe that an abated system could also be operated.
    There would continue to be considerable problems. The abated system may be attractive only to small numbers of people, and they would need to accumulate a considerable amount of additional pension entitlement if there were to be no other benefit top up. Such a scheme would be a useful adjunct to the personal pension provisions in the Bill. Its impact would not be extensive or immediate, but it is worthy of further consideration.
    The second issue that I wish to raise is relatively small—the impact of the Bill on unemployed people who undertake voluntary work. There is concern that the income support provisions will curtail the repayment of expenses incurred by unemployed people during their volunteering activities. I am sure that that is not the intention of my hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security. It would be helpful if assurances could be given that expenses reimbursed for volunteering will not count as income in this case. It is very important, because a large number of unemployed people in my constituency are active volunteers. They play a useful and important role in the community. It would be a great shame if this role were jeopardised by the Bill.
    I wish to refer to the need for a growing awareness about the problems of the terminally ill. Many terminally ill people, usually cancer sufferers, have a short prognosis of three to six months, during which time their condition may deteriorate rapidly, and their circumstances may change considerably. They do not qualify for attendance allowance, invalid care allowance or for other benefits because of the 26-week rule. Many of them are not now eligible for single payments. Even if they were, the system might not be flexible enough to respond with sufficient speed. Sufferers and their families obviously experience considerable stress at these times. The sufferers wish to die with dignity, often in their own homes. Many of them cannot do so because at present our benefit system is inadequately flexible. Many die in hospital, where the weekly cost of treatment could be as much as £1,000.
    The social fund offers an opportunity to cope with the terminally ill in the community. It could provide a quick response to their needs. It would mean social fund officers being involved with general practitioners and social workers. That is a new possibility under the new system. I hope that the needs of the terminally ill will be fully recognised within the community care element of the social fund.
    9.3 pm
    Dr. Norman A. Godman: The hon. Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) said that this is a bad Bill and that as an Act it will be unworkable. I agree with those sentiments.
    Throughout the progress of the Bill I have sought to assess its impact upon the thousands of my constituents who are in receipt of social security incomes. My assessment is gloomy. They face a bleak future. For many people who live in my constituency in Strathclyde and for many other people in Scotland and Great Britain as a whole this is a dreadful Bill. I have said that on a number

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    of occasions, and I shall continue to say it. It will have a harmful effect on hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens.
    I do not believe that the Government are attempting to focus help on those who are most in need. On the contrary, their aim is to adopt a money-saving approach that will damage the interests of those in our communities who are in need. Throughout the Bill's passage the Government have obscured its full impact from both the House and the country. The figures in the technical annex to the White Paper have confused and misled people. They are now three years out of date and are somewhat misleading. In some cases, the Government's figures are based on a one in 250 sample, and in others they are based on a one in 200 sample. But where data have become available, based on a 100 per cent. or near 100 per cent. count, the Government's figures have been shown up as being inaccurate by between 10 and 40 per cent.
    If the Government were genuinely interested in social security reform, they would have carried out a more comprehensive survey of the effects of their proposals. Even if the Government's figures were to be believed, the impact on the elderly, the handicapped, single parents, unemployed people and many others would still be devastating. People in Scotland will suffer badly. I say that because social security benefits are more important north of the border than in many areas south of the border. Partly as a result of this Government's economic policies, more people have to depend on such benefits. In my constituency there has been an 85 per cent. increase in the number of those claiming supplementary benefit since the Conservative party came into office. In November 1979, the number of single supplementary benefit claimants in Greenock and Part Glasgow was about 8,800. By July 1985, that figure had increased to more than 16,000. That 85 per cent. increase compares with a figure of 81 per cent. for Scotland and Great Britain as a whole. As a region, Strathclyde has suffered even more. It has suffered a 94 per cent. increase during that period.
    In Scotland, 21 per cent. of the population lives at or below supplementary benefit level. In Strathclyde the figure is fully 26·8 per cent. In Glasgow, the number of those living on social security income and their dependants amounts to a massive 39·5 per cent. of the population. In my constituency, the number of those living at or below supplementary benefit level is a staggering 33,660, or 42·9 per cent. of the population.
    I have constantly challenged the Government over the replacement of single payments by that dreadful concept, the social fund. Many people in Scotland manage to survive only because of the assistance that they receive through the single payments regulations. The scale of those payments shows just how much people have to rely on them. Before considering the scale of them, it is important to consider why they are so necessary for Scottish claimants. Factors such as the higher cost of living, higher fuel costs because of the cold climate, long-term structural unemployment and so on are all well documented. Indeed, only yesterday I received an answer about the number of exceptionally severe weather payments made in Scotland. So far 57,000 single payments have been made under regulation 26(1)(b) and (c).
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    It is obvious that to abolish single payments, payable as of right by regulation, and to replace them with an almost wholly discretionary social fund system will badly affect claimants in Scotland and, in particular, in Strathclyde. They will be much worse off than many claimants in other parts of Great Britain. The decision to limit the budget for the social fund is also likely seriously to affect claims in Scotland, depending on the formula used for establishing that budget.
    The importance of single payments to enable claimants to survive on supplementary benefit cannot be underestimated. From 1983 to 1985 there was a 64 per cent. increase in expenditure on single payments in Scotland. In one office in Glasgow in the 12 months up to November 1985 £4·6 million was paid out by way of single payments. The office is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Brown). The increase in Strathclyde was even higher, at 74 per cent. Expenditure on single payments for the year ended April 1985 was more than £36 million for Strathclyde and more than £54 million for Scotland. That shows the importance of the single payment system in my country. The average single payment in my constituency during the past year was £74.
    In addition to the absurd and harsh social fund, the Government are to remove the right of appeal from claimants against decisions made in local offices. The right to an independent hearing has been with us for over 50 years. Given the huge increase in the number of people in Scotland living on, or existing on, social security incomes, it comes as no surprise to find that Scotland is to receive 804 of the additional 5,000 jobs to be created at Department of Health and Social Security local offices. That is about 16 per cent. of the total.
    I think that the Minister said that Scotland would receive a generous proportion of the additional jobs. Strathclyde will receive just under 10 per cent. That is not a generous provision. Those staff are needed to deal with the increase in work brought about by the Government's disastrous economic policies. I sincerely hope that the Bill undergoes major surgery in the other place.
    9.12 pm
    Mr. Ralph Howell: I shall support the Bill, but with considerable reluctance, because the Government have made a genuine effort to limit the ever increasing cost of the welfare system—I believe that that has to be done—and because the Opposition have shown no concept of responsibility and are constantly asking for more to be spent in every direction. It is no exaggeration to say that the cost of their programme would put VAT up to 41 per cent.
    I believe that we have missed a great opportunity to reform the entire welfare, taxation and employment system. We held the various reviews but, unfortunately, the advice given was ignored. I believe that we will very much regret that we did not heed those who called for a unified system. It is ridiculous to go on taxing the lower paid and giving benefit at the same time.
    I have much sympathy with my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden). This Bill will not be remembered. It will not be the great new Beveridge that we might have had and should have had 40 years on. In fact, if we had implemented the Beveridge report as it was first written we could have achieved a great deal.

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    One of my chief criticisms is that we are saying that we shall give income support and family credit on after-tax income. That makes nonsense of the whole thing. How can it make sense to tax the low paid to such an extent that they need Government support to bring their income back to a reasonable level? We should find a way of raising tax thresholds considerably, so that no one who pays income tax needs extra help from the Government. Government support should be concentrated on the very low paid. There should never be any question of taxing such low incomes.
    This Bill will not eliminate the poverty trap or the unemployment trap. It may stop people losing more than 100 per cent. of their extra earnings, but that is not much help if they lose 99 per cent., 90 per cent., 80 per cent., or even 70 per cent. A great many people will lose unacceptably high levels of extra earnings.
    Another of my chief criticisms is that the opportunity to offer training to all between 16 and 18 should have been taken, and benefit should be withdrawn. It is wrong to continue to give young people the choice of accepting benefit and doing nothing, or going in for YTS or other training. We should be firm, and withdraw benefit. In other countries, that is acceptable. In Switzerland no benefit is paid until the person is 20, or, if he is in further education, until he is 25. The situation in Sweden is similar.
    We shall also still pay benefit to anybody who happens to be in this country and without money. There is no reciprocal——
    Mrs. Renée Short: "Reciprocity" is the word.
    Mr. Howell: That is right. There is no reciprocity in the rest of Europe or anywhere else in the world. It is unacceptable to say that we have to have that arrangement merely because that is what we do for our own people.
    We must recognise that many people in this country are refusing work at £160 a week or more because they can be better off doing nothing. It is principally because of the unlimited nature of the interest relief on mortgages that we continue to pay, and would still continue to pay even if the new proposals were brought into operation. It is unacceptable that interest relief should be given on mortgages to the extent of £1,200 a month. We need a simplified system, which could be thoroughly understood by all.
    I should like to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Minister to the fact that there is an easy way out. He has heard me say this several times before and I shall say it again. We cannot ignore the experience of the Americans in their workfare schemes. That experience is limited. If the Beveridge plan had ever been put fully into operation, if we had operated the workfare scheme after six or three months, and if we had offered work at a workcentre at a reasonable wage, as Beveridge suggested, we could have solved the problem. I beg my hon. Friend to think about a universal workfare scheme, which should be introduced, and I hope will be introduced, before the Bill is put into operation.
    We need a new vision. We need a unified system. We could find such a system and make considerable savings. All of us, including the low paid, could enjoy large tax cuts if such a system were put into operation. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to give serious thought to it
    9.20 pm
    Mr. Seamus Mallon: I shall repeat the remarks I made last night. I hope that I shall not bore hon. Members by doing so, but unless I present the Northern Ireland context I shall completely miss the point. If I miss the point, I cannot blame the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security for doing the same. In Northern Ireland, at present, 26 per cent. of all household incomes are derived from social security payments, as opposed to 13 per cent. overall in England, Scotland and Wales. A total of 62,000 people are on the electoral register in my constituency. Of that number, 21,000 draw either supplementary benefit or unemployment benefit. I speak of an area where one quarter of the spending power is derived from social security payments.
    It is against that background that I repeat my remarks tonight. I voice my opposition to the Bill on two counts. The first is on purely factual grounds, which I hope are quantifiable; and I hope that I have quantified them properly. We must realise that about £40 million will come out of the social security payments to Northern Ireland. That is a stark figure, especially when it applies to an area which is so dependent on social security payments.
    Let us consider some of the factors in the breakdown of that £40 million. The unemployed on supplementary benefit will lose £14·4 million. Single-parent families on supplementary benefit will lose £1·9 million. Pensioners will lose £13·6 million. The sick and disabled on supplementary benefit will gain £500,000. Families not on supplementary benefit will lose £3·3 million. The family as such will lose £10·4 million. Low-income families as such will lose £4·9 million. We must add to that overall wage losses, in terms of Civil Service jobs, amounting to about £10·6 million. That presents a dismal picture. It is as though what I regard as the degrading social fund does not apply to Northern Ireland. That is the net effect of the loss to those on social security. The new social fund will not apply in net terms to the most deprived part of the United Kingdom.
    We have had interesting and long debates on how best to implement the social fund. However, when the stark figures are before us, they are rather frightening. Statistics may vary. However, the figures which have emerged are enough to encourage me and anyone from the north of Ireland, who has the interests of Northern Ireland at heart, to vote against the Bill, and to make people aware of its implications. We must try to persuade as many hon. Members as possible to vote against it.
    I am opposed to the Bill for other reasons, some of which are more tonal than statistical. I regard the social fund as having a degrading element to it. I regard it as the Oliver Twist syndrome, except in this case people will ask, "Please, Sir, can I have some?" instead of, "Please, can I have some more?" The Bill introduces an element of discretion into what should be a statutory entitlement. That of itself is degrading and offensive.
    I am glad that consideration was given to the implementation of a family credit scheme. In Northern Ireland—I suspect that it is also the case in Scotland and Wales—many small farmers are dependent on family income supplement. We must look further at that element of the measure and decide on a new means by which to implement a family credit scheme.
    Anyone who has ever been in receipt of social security will realise the condescension and arrogance that underlies

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    the part of the Bill that deals with budget advice. I know what it is to be on the dole and to have to live on social security. One's pride is not helped when a slip of a girl just out of school comes in to give advice on how to budget the little that one is receiving. It is an offence to a person's pride. For God's sake remove that provision while there is an opportunity to do so, because everyone under this Parliament's jurisdiction can well do without such arrogance.
    I hope that you will allow me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to be specific on one point because I did not have a chance to raise it earlier. Clause 40 extends the period of disentitlement from six to 13 weeks. That is a dangerous provision and a dangerous addition for everyone but, in the Northern Ireland context, it is much more dangerous.
    Almost daily I deal with people who have been intimidated and forced from their jobs and workplace. Under the Social Security Act 1975 such people have left of their own volition and therefore have not been entitled to unemployment benefit for six weeks. Under this legislation, they will not be entitled to unemployment benefit for 13 weeks. Those men and women want to work and have worked all their lives. If someone puts a bit of lead at the back of a man's head, threatens his family or comes forward with a mask over his face, that man has to leave his job. Will we penalise him? Will we take his unemployment benefit from him?
    One of the "in" expressions, which is fast becoming a cliché, is "the caring society". The Under-Secretary of State should take a close look at clause 40 and ensure that the loophole is closed, especially in relation to Northern Ireland.
    My last and fundamental objection to the Bill is that, instead of bringing more people who need benefit into benefit, it drives them out. At a time when benefit is needed most, that will be the Bill's net result. For those reasons, both tonal and statistical, I shall oppose the Bill. My main reason for opposing it is that I have seen many people who did not have enough bread on the table, who could not put a coal on the fire and who could not put a proper shirt on their backs—and this is 1986.
    9.28 pm
    Sir Brandon Rhys Williams: I am glad to have the opportunity to explain why I shall vote against the Bill. I shall speak as briefly as I can in this unnecessarily truncated debate.
    As I said on Second Reading, the Bill is really two Bills. The first part, which deals with pensions, could have been introduced as separate legislation, and it might have been better if it had been. The Government have made a mistake in not pursuing their policy of ending the state earnings-related pension scheme and simultaneously increasing the minimum rates of contribution. That would have been the right, clear-cut approach to reform.
    The Bill as it now stands presents in part I an unstable compromise. Some of its provisions are good. I welcome the moves to widen the options for employers and employees; and I welcome the emphasis on money purchase. However, insufficient emphasis has been placed on the protection of post-retirement benefits and not enough has yet been done to ensure transferability of pension rights on terms that are fair to long-service employees. Minimum employers' contributions are still
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    not high enough because they are being drained off in national insurance contributions which are not then applied to their proper purposes.
    In particular, I am convinced that the concept of the 2 per cent. subsidy in clause 7 is an improper use of taxpayers' money that will serve only to distort the market for pensions, temporarily but, seriously. That part of the Bill should be dropped. We must hope that it will be thrown out in the Upper House.
    The strategy for the reform of the various systems for the redistribution of income constitute the other parts of the Bill. The Government had the choice of providing for citizens' benefits on the basis of citizenship by means of universal benefits such as the Health Service and public education. In cash terms, the clearest example is the payment of child benefit. The Government are obviously trying to edge away from the universal services. I believe that is a mistake. They could have gone for contributory entitlement, but, as I have said, the contributory systems are not getting enough money, especially national insurance and the private pension and savings schemes.
    The Government could have chosen to place their main weight on income-related benefits — that is to say, means-tested benefits. That is what they have done in the Bill, but they have made the wrong choice. Having made the wrong choice, everything that follows in the Bill is wrongly slanted and the Bill is a blunder which the public will not in the end accept. The emphasis has been placed on the reform of the means-tested systems, and even there it has not been done in a way that the public will accept.
    On 14 February I asked in a written question about the combined effects of the reforms on the disposable income of all those receiving income-related benefits, together with an assumption of a 20 per cent. minimum rates contribution. We have to remember that this is not the only reform that the Government have in mind. Fewer than 500,000 people will gain from the Bill. One million recipients will be in about the same position as they are now, but 5 million people will be down, some of them substantially down, as a result of this Bill. Some 400,000 people will be down by more than £5 per week. I am afraid that the Bill will be seen as a millstone round the neck of every Conservative candidate at the coming general election.
    Quite apart from the effects of the Bill in terms of cash, I deplore the inevitable results of relying on the means test to provide a minimum income for every citizen. On 14 April I received another parliamentary answer. It seems that we now have 14 million people living in families receiving supplementary benefit, housing benefit or family income supplement. That is altogether too many people dependent on proof of need in order to obtain the minimum subsistence income that we think that they should have.
    Of course we know that some people receive benefits that they do not strictly need, but this is the wrong way to go about correcting that. If there is to be reform, we should not do it by adding, as the Bill will do, to the number of people who will have to apply for benefit on the basis of proof of need. There will be disastrous consequences in the long run for the unity of the nation if we have a large number of people living in a supplementary benefit subculture; and the systems of public administration which are already on the verge of collapse in many areas will find themselves with an even heavier burden.
    I admit that we need to reform the systems for giving help to people on proof of need, and the Bill contains some

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    ideas which may prove workable and useful; but the Government are entirely misjudging the mood of the nation in producing this Bill. It will prove largely unworkable in practice if the Government are so unwise as to seek to implement it in full as it stands. The Bill is not, as we had hoped, a new Beveridge, but merely a regurgitated Neville Chamberlain. I suspect that it has been forced on the Department by the Treasury in its enthusiasm for reducing the standard rate of tax.
    The right approach would have been to increase the level of contributions in real terms to the national insurance fund—and to set it up again as a real fund, not just an accounting mystery—and and to the approved private systems of provision, so that the contributory systems could genuinely take over their appropriate share of the job of income support.
    At the same time, the Government should have proceeded to the amalgamation of the negative tax allowances with the positive public outlays for income support to produce a simple, comprehensible system for a partial basic income guarantee, balancing the citizen's obligations and entitlements on a basis which could be seen to be morally and administratively sound.
    The Government's U-turn in abandoning their commitment to the tax credit scheme, an established commitment in 1974, repeated in the election manifesto of 1979, has proved to be a blunder. They should now proceed to implement it as quickly as possible on a revenue-neutral basis. That would not give a generous basic income guarantee, but it would give a partial basic income guarantee, which would be the right way to begin.
    The cheapest way of providing our citizens with an adequate level of income is not to appoint hundreds more officers to ensure that millions of people remain in idleness. We should instead be hastening to set them free to provide for themselves.
    9.35 pm
    Mr. Nick Raynsford: As time is running out, I want to focus a few brief comments on the housing implications of the Bill. That is the area in which the expenditure cuts are most heavily targeted and it illustrates most perfectly the truth of the point, put very ably by the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) at the beginning of the debate, that the Government's attempt to reform the scheme has been doomed by the inadequate resources that they have allocated for the task.
    The truth was voiced by Professor David Donnison a decade ago when he was chairman of the Supplementary Benefits Commission. He warned that the reform that was needed of the method for giving assistance with housing costs could be achieved only with some modest increase in expenditure. The Government ignored that warning in their first reform of housing benefit in 1982–83, to their cost. We all know the sad consequences of that botched and failed reform. The sad thing is that, having failed to learn the lesson last time, they are doing exactly the same again, cutting £450 million from a scheme which is already known to be inadequately funded.
    I wish to highlight the areas in which the cuts will bite most severely. We have focused on a number of occasions in the past two days on the implications of the Bill for mortgage assistance. I say only that it is clearly inappropriate, at a time of increasing mortgage default, when building societies are reporting record numbers of
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    people in arrears with their mortgages, for the safety net provided by supplementary benefit to be cut away in any respect.
    I want to highlight the extraordinary disincentive effect that the Government's proposal will have. If, during the first six months, a claimant will not qualify for full assistance, how many who, after they have gone through that six months and are thinking about returning to work, will be deterred if there is no prospect of that job being secure, for fear that if they were to lose the job they would once again have to try to cope without proper assistance from the DHSS? That would be a disincentive to work.
    There will be difficulties for single parents who often, in the period after a marriage breakdown, need immediate assistance to ensure a remortgage which will keep them in the matrimonial home and avoid foreclosure, homeless-ness, and all the traumas that go with that. If the assistance which has been available in the past is no longer there, we shall undoubtedly see more insecurity, more homelessness, and more families forced out of the matrimonial home after a marriage breakdown. That is sad, but it is the direct consequence of the Government's proposals.
    There is no basis in logic for the proposal that people should pay 20 per cent. of their rates. It is founded solely in ideology. It was rejected by the Government's own review team that looked at the scheme. It is riddled with anomalies, not least of which is that, in many areas, the cost of collecting 20 per cent. of rates will be greater than the amount yielded. It will also lead to a great deal of hardship for people who cannot afford to meet that extra amount and it raises the hideous prospect of people being imprisoned for debt if they are unable to cope.
    The third area where the cuts will bite is the assessment of housing benefit. This will cause enormous hardship to a large number of tenants. The rate at which the benefit is withdrawn as incomes rise above the income support level has been increased by remarkable proportions. There has been a progressive increase in the rate of withdrawal in the last three years. The proposal in the White Paper of a 60 per cent. rate of withdrawal of benefit was not even considered by the review. It is 10 per cent. above the rate of withdrawal considered at the time. That in itself was far higher than the rate of withdrawal that applied earlier, and very much higher than that which applied in 1973 when the rent rebate allowance scheme was introduced for the first time by the Secretary of State for Energy who represented possibly a form of Toryism which is remarkably absent from the thinking that prompted the current social security review.
    The proposals intensify the poverty trap. People should be aware of that. We are talking about 87 per cent. withdrawal of benefit for people paying tax and national insurance and receiving rent and rate assistance — far higher than for the highest paid person in Britain. It is grossly unfair and will have tragic consequences; it will intensify debt and contribute towards homelesness.
    How can that be justified? The Government talk about the increased cost of housing benefit. I should like to give two sets of comparative figures. Housing benefit expenditure has increased from £1·2 billion in 1979–80 to £4·6 billion in 1985–86. It is significant that in that same period expenditure on mortgage interest tax relief has gone up by an identical amount — from £1·45 billion in 1979–80 to £4·75 billion now. Mortgage tax relief is enjoyed by people who are substantially wealthier than those who receive housing benefit. Are the Government

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    proposing that that should be cut? They are not. They are talking about cutting benefit to poorer people. That shows the Government's values in seeking to cut money for poorer people while leaving unaffected benefits for richer people. That is the comment on this social security review and this Bill, which will be swept away by the next Labour Government.
    9.41 pm
    Mr. Dafydd Wigley: As one who served on the Committee, I take this opportunity to thank those organisations that worked hard to brief us. I think of the Child Poverty Action Group, the Spastics Society, a number of others and some individuals. It would be churlish not to mention the help we received from Tony Lynes, Chris Davies and others who did tremendous work in Committee.
    I oppose the Third Reading of the Bill for three reasons. One is the characteristics of my constituency. My constituency has unemployment running at 23 per cent., an aging population, a high dependency on supplementary benefits, seasonal unemployment arising from the tourist industry, with low wages and the need for family income supplement. The background is one of industrial disease, about which we have heard so much in debates on the Bill. In consequence of that and other factors, there is a high level of disablement. All these features highlight the bad aspects of the Bill and how people will suffer as a result of this measure.
    Wales, it has been estimated, will lose between £50 million and £100 million a year as a result of this legislation. That must therefore be resisted. There is grave concern among disablement organisations about the way in which those who are most severely disabled will suffer and how some of the general changes will impact on the standard of living of the disabled. For all those reasons, I have grave misgivings about the Bill.
    Young people will lose income. Consideration must be given to how the change in housing benefits will hit students, pensioners having to pay 20 per cent. of their rates, the inequities of the social fund, the cash limitation and the lack of an appeal system. There is also the way that school meals are being phased out so that disabled children who go to special schools in my area will no longer be able to have free school meals as a direct result of the legislation. The Government have come up with nothing at all.
    The death grant has also been badly handled.
    A few crumbs have come out of the debate. I am grateful that the Government have decided to consider the problem of seasonal unemployment. We still have not heard the outcome of their investigations, but I hope that some help will be provided.
    Last night the Minister was cut off in mid-sentence in a truncated debate when he was replying about the mobility allowance. He said:
    "The issues that have been raised are extremely important and complicated, and there is much anxiety outside the House".—[Official Report, 19 May 1986; Vol. 98, c. 74]
    Those were the Minister's words on the mobility allowance and they were chopped. We hope that in the other place the Government will come forward with a response on the points that were made last night.
    In the end, we must decide what priorities we have as a House and as a community. We must decide whether
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    these priorities lie with the needy, the unemployed, the sick and the disabled, or whether the priority is to reduce taxation. I believe that the original objective of the Bill was to reduce public expenditure. It has led to a reduction in the costs for those who most need to be sustained.
    The words of the hon. Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) will ring in the ears of the Government and their supporters. This Bill will be a millstone around the Government's neck as they go into the next general election.
    9.45 pm
    Mr. Robert Harvey: I would like to make several brief points in the short time that is left. I believe that there are two glaring omissions from the Bill. The first is the failure to make special provision for carers. All hon. Members will recognise that carers are a badly overlooked and deserving section of the community who are in desperate need of support. I understand and welcome the fact that in Committee the Government pledged to look at the problem at a later stage.
    The second omission is the failure to recognise the special needs of a new category of the needy—the long-term unemployed. It is now widely accepted that long-term unemployment is the greatest cause of poverty in this country. It is a new problem as only 250,000 people could be classified as long-term unemployed during the 1950s and 1960s but there are well over 1 million people now who have been unemployed for more than a year.
    Obviously some of these people are abusing the system but the great majority are not. They desperately want jobs, have lost them in declining industries, lack the skills for new jobs and are sinking deeper and deeper into frustration because they cannot find work.
    When I advocated special help for the long-term unemployed in Committee, I was told, surprisingly, that there was no evidence that the long-term unemployed had special problems. I was told that the short-term unemployed are more likely to be in debt than the long-term unemployed. That is obvious, because the short-term unemployed are adjusting to a new and reduced living standard. However, the greater needs of those on a low standard of living for a long time must be clear to all hon. Members and are clear to me every time I visit the depressed parts of my constituency. I urge my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to allow his sound common sense to override the patchy conclusions of selective research into the matter.
    Another argument against provision for the long-term unemployed was that we lack the resources. The introduction of a special premium after a year's unemployment would cost some £500 million. I accept that that is a lot of money but it is well short of the £1 billion expenditure that was irresponsibly urged by the Opposition. I urge the Government to consider the possibility of introducing the principle of a premium, even at a lower rate, which is affordable.
    Another omission from the Bill is its failure to address the issue of early retirement, and reference has already been made to that point. I believe that the greatest cause of unemployment today is the shake-up that has been caused by the necessary introduction of new technology. That technology means that, while there is more wealth created, there is less work to go round. One of the most obvious ways of dealing with that problem is to lower the age for qualification for the job release scheme to 60. That

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    interim measure would create 100,000 new jobs at a cost of less than £500 million. The long-term solution must be a reduction in the retirement age, for all those who want it, to 60 and for certain manual workers to 55. I call upon the Government to implement that, as it is essential to tackle unemployment which has become the number one issue in this country.
    9.49 pm
    Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: I shall take only one minute.
    One million words were spoken during the three months of the Committee stage of the Bill; there were 42 sittings, more than 100 Divisions and more than 450 amendments. At every stage, the Government showed that they were determined to cut the living standards of the poorest people by the removal of more than £700 million in benefit payments. It is incredible that, throughout all the stages of the Bill, the Government talked about cash-limiting, efficiencies and savings, but more people will be poorer, more people will have to go cap in hand to the social security, the power of benefit officers will be greater than ever and the power of the individual against the state and the DHSS will be significantly reduced as a result of the Bill. The same Government are prepared to write an open cheque for the purchase of nuclear weapons because they believe that to be more important than providing for the poor.
    The Bill will probably receive its Third Reading tonight, because Conservative Members will wander through the Lobby and vote for it. But the Government will be removed at the general election. A new Social Security Bill will be introduced, which will have the sole objective of removing poverty in Britain. This Bill has increased poverty. The Committee stage of the Bill was interesting. I look forward to the defeat of the Government and all the Conservative Members who so happily supported the Bill.
    9.50 pm
    Mrs. Beckett: As we came to debate the Bill in Committee, the Opposition realised that it was worse than we had believed at first. We did not fully realise when we went into Committee that the Government knew that the biggest losers under the Bill would be the severely disabled, let alone that the only answer they could give would be to say that the disabled might receive some help from charities. We did not realise that the Government knew that they would weaken all pension protection, not just the state earnings-related scheme. We did not fully realise that in the proposals for the state earnings-related scheme they would halve pension entitlement for someone who starts work the year after the Bill becomes law, if it ever does, and would reduce his total pension at the end of his working life to below that of the basic pension today, even if he did not have a day's sickness or unemployment in his life. If he had a substantial period of unemployment or sickness, his pension would be more than halved.
    We did not realise that, although the unemployed would be worse off than they are now, purely because of the interaction between income support and the social fund, they would not be sufficiently worse off for the Government, who at the last minute and in the later stages of the Bill would rush in measures to increase the penalties on the unemployed.
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    Tributes have been paid to the conduct of those who took part in the Committee stage, and I am grateful to those hon. Members who were kind enough to mention me in their remarks. It was a good, constructive Committee in the way in which arguments were conducted. But I hope that our efforts to maintain personal courtesy between hon. Members did not disguise for a second from hon. Members or from anyone in the country the fact that the Opposition feel not just distaste but deep and abiding anger at the proposals in the Bill. Sometimes in Committee, when feelings spilled over, Conservative Members would express incredulity and even amusement, and would say that we did not really mean it and were whipping up false emotion. The fact that they can imagine that we did not mean it is a testimony to the gulf of experience and understanding that exists across the Floor of the House — a gulf which the Bill will widen out of all recognition.
    The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden), in a brave speech, and the hon. Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell) said that the Bill will net be remembered. They are mistaken. It will be remembered as the Bill that undermined a key principle of the welfare state—that it should help people before they sink into utter destitution—and it will be remembered as the Bill that makes people ask for charity in place of the rights that existed before it was passed. It will be remembered most of all as the Bill that reintroduced the notion of choosing between the deserving and the underserving poor.
    The Opposition have fought the Bill—I pay tribute to all hon. Members who participated in our debates—line by line in Committee, and we shall fight it in the country. We know that we shall not win the Division tonight, but we also know that, when people realise the impact of the Bill, their votes will sweep away the Bill and with it the Government.
    9.55 pm
    Mr. Newton: I, too, pay tribute to all members of the Committee for the part that they played there and for the part that many of them have played in our proceedings in the House during the past two days. I should also like to thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, who played a significant part in our proceedings in Committee, for their work on the Bill
    It is impossible to deal in the few moments that remain to me with all of the issues that have been raised, but I should like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir B. Rhys Williams) for his welcome for the pensions proposals, which owe a good deal to his work over the years. I should also like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell) for some at least of what I understand he said.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr. Bowden) talked about housing benefit and the high rent scheme. The new scheme, because it provides 100 per cent. help with eligible rents for those with incomes equivalent to those of people on income support, does away with the need for high rent schemes. There might be some misunderstanding in what my hon. Friend laic about that.
    I do not want to prolong the disagreement that the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and I had during his speech, but I reaffirm that our latest information, contrary to what he said, is that domestic

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    assistance payments went to some 2,400 people in 1983 at an average value of less than £4. On that basis, the numbers of severely disabled people and the sums of money to which he referred cannot be true.
    The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) talked about disqualification from benefit. On the face of it, we would expect the cases to which he referred to be counted as just cause for leaving employment and not subject to disqualification, but I shall draw the hon. Gentleman's remarks to the attention of my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Northern Ireland Office.
    The most striking thing about this debate and our debates in Committee has been the relentless absence of any constructive approach from the Opposition. That was reflected most strongly tonight in that the one serious argument which the hon. Member for Oldham, West made did not concern what policies the Opposition would pursue, but simply reiterated that they do not like the Bill. He went so far, as I understood him, to say that the Opposition intend to scrap every part of it. Does he mean that he intends to scrap family credit, involving £200 million of additional resources for low-paid families with children? Does he mean that he will scrap the family premium income support, which will help some of the long-term unemployed claimants about which my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South-West (Mr. Harvey) was rightly concerned? Will he repeal the disability premium and therefore the help that it will bring to 200,000 long-term sick and disabled people? Will he repeal the funeral payments, which will, for the first time, mean that large numbers of people who really need help up to the full costs of a funeral will be able to get it?
    We hear constantly from the hon. Gentleman about the bits that he does not like. Let us hear something about the reforms which will help the sick and disabled, low-paid families with children and many of those who are most in need. It will always be possible to spend more on social security. The hon. Gentleman is never short of ideas about that until his colleagues tell him that he cannot go on like that or until, as in his previous incarnation, the International Monetary Fund comes in and puts a stop to it. The hon. Gentleman is short on proposals for creating a sensible and rational structure of social security which makes it possible to spend whatever resources are available better than they are spent at the moment.
    There is no one in the country who does not believe that our social security system is not in need of review. The hon. Members for Oldham, West and for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett) accept that, but, clearly, they have absolutely no idea how to achieve it. The Government have had the ideas, have introduced the proposals, and will create a sensible, rational system of social security. I urge the House to pass the Bill.
    It being Ten o'clock, Mr. Speaker proceeded, pursuant to the Order [15 April] and the Resolution [20 May], to put forthwith the Question already proposed from the Chair.
    Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time:—
    The House divided: Ayes 331, Noes 208.

    Division No. 189]

    [10 pm

    AYES

    Adley, Robert

    Alexander, Richard

    Aitken, Jonathan

    Alison, Rt Hon Michael

    288

    Amess, David

    Fallon, Michael

    Ancram, Michael

    Farr, Sir John

    Arnold, Tom

    Favell, Anthony

    Ashby, David

    Fenner, Mrs Peggy

    Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H.

    Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

    Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

    Fletcher, Alexander

    Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)

    Fookes, Miss Janet

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

    Forman, Nigel

    Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

    Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

    Baldry, Tony

    Forth, Eric

    Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

    Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

    Batiste, Spencer

    Fox, Marcus

    Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

    Franks, Cecil

    Bellingham, Henry

    Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

    Bendall, Vivian

    Freeman, Roger

    Bennett, Rt Hon Sir Frederic

    Fry, Peter

    Benyon, William

    Galley, Roy

    Best, Keith

    Gardiner, George (Reigate)

    Bevan, David Gilroy

    Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)

    Biffen, Rt Hon John

    Garel-Jones, Tristan

    Biggs-Davison, Sir John

    Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

    Blackburn, John

    Glyn, Dr Alan

    Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

    Goodhart, Sir Philip

    Body, Sir Richard

    Goodlad, Alastair

    Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

    Gorst, John

    Bottomley, Peter

    Gow, Ian

    Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

    Gower, Sir Raymond

    Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

    Grant, Sir Anthony

    Boyson, Dr Rhodes

    Greenway, Harry

    Brandon-Bravo, Martin

    Gregory, Conal

    Brinton, Tim

    Griffiths, Peter (Portsm'th N)

    Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

    Grist, Ian

    Brooke, Hon Peter

    Ground, Patrick

    Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

    Grylls, Michael

    Browne, John

    Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

    Bruinvels, Peter

    Hanley, Jeremy

    Bryan, Sir Paul

    Hannam, John

    Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.

    Hargreaves, Kenneth

    Buck, Sir Antony

    Harris, David

    Budgen, Nick

    Harvey, Robert

    Bulmer, Esmond

    Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

    Burt, Alistair

    Hawkins, C. (High Peak)

    Butcher, John

    Hawkins, Sir Paul (N'folk SW)

    Butler, Rt Hon Sir Adam

    Hawksley, Warren

    Butterfill, John

    Hayes, J.

    Carlisle, John (Luton N)

    Heathcoat-Amory, David

    Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

    Heddle, John

    Carttiss, Michael

    Hickmet, Richard

    Cash, William

    Hicks, Robert

    Channon, Rt Hon Paul

    Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

    Chapman, Sydney

    Hill, James

    Chope, Christopher

    Hind, Kenneth

    Churchill, W. S.

    Hirst, Michael

    Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

    Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

    Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

    Holland, Sir Philip (Gedling)

    Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

    Holt, Richard

    Clegg, Sir Walter

    Hordern, Sir Peter

    Cockeram, Eric

    Howard, Michael

    Coombs, Simon

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

    Cope, John

    Howell, Rt Hon D. (G'ldford)

    Cormack, Patrick

    Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N)

    Corrie, John

    Hubbard-Miles, Peter

    Couchman, James

    Hunt, David (Wirral W)

    Cranborne, Viscount

    Hunt, John (Ravensboume)

    Critchley, Julian

    Hunter, Andrew

    Crouch, David

    Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

    Currie, Mrs Edwina

    Jackson, Robert

    Dickens, Geoffrey

    Jessel, Toby

    Dicks, Terry

    Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

    Dorrell, Stephen

    Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

    Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

    Jones, Robert (Herts W)

    Dover, Den

    Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

    du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward

    Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

    Durant, Tony

    Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

    Dykes, Hugh

    Kershaw, Sir Anthony

    Edwards, Rt Hon N. (P'broke)

    Key, Robert

    Eggar, Tim

    Knight, Greg (Derby N)

    Emery, Sir Peter

    Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

    Evennett, David

    Knowles, Michael

    Eyre, Sir Reginald

    Knox, David

    289

    Lamont, Norman

    Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

    Lang, Ian

    Rees, Rt Hon Peter (Dover)

    Latham, Michael

    Rhodes James, Robert

    Lawler, Geoffrey

    Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

    Lawrence, Ivan

    Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

    Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

    Robinson, Mark (N'port W)

    Lee, John (Pendle)

    Roe, Mrs Marion

    Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

    Rossi, Sir Hugh

    Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

    Rost, Peter

    Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)

    Rowe, Andrew

    Lightbown, David

    Rumbold, Mrs Angela

    Lilley, Peter

    Ryder, Richard

    Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

    Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

    Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

    Sayeed, Jonathan

    Lord, Michael

    Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

    Luce, Rt Hon Richard

    Shelton, William (Streatham)

    McCrindle, Robert

    Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

    McCurley, Mrs Anna

    Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

    Macfarlane, Neil

    Silvester, Fred

    MacGregor, Rt Hon John

    Sims, Roger

    MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)

    Skeet, Sir Trevor

    MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

    Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

    Maclean, David John

    Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

    McLoughlin, Patrick

    Soames, Hon Nicholas

    McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

    Speed, Keith

    McNair-Wilson, P. (New F'st)

    Speller, Tony

    McQuarrie, Albert

    Spencer, Derek

    Major, John

    Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)

    Malins, Humfrey

    Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

    Malone, Gerald

    Squire, Robin

    Maples, John

    Stanbrook, Ivor

    Marland, Paul

    Stanley, Rt Hon John

    Marlow, Antony

    Steen, Anthony

    Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

    Stern, Michael

    Mates, Michael

    Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)

    Maude, Hon Francis

    Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

    Mawhinney, Dr Brian

    Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

    Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

    Stewart, Ian (Hertf'dshire N)

    Mayhew, Sir Patrick

    Stokes, John

    Mellor, David

    Stradling Thomas, Sir John

    Merchant, Piers

    Sumberg, David

    Miller, Hal (B'grove)

    Tapsell, Sir Peter

    Mills, lain (Meriden)

    Taylor, John (Solihull)

    Miscampbell, Norman

    Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

    Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

    Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

    Monro, Sir Hector

    Temple-Morris, Peter

    Montgomery, Sir Fergus

    Terlezki, Stefan

    Moore, Rt Hon John

    Thomas, Rt Hon Peter

    Morris, M. (N'hampton S)

    Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

    Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

    Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)

    Morrison, Hon P, (Chester)

    Thorne, Neil (Ilford S)

    Moynihan, Hon C.

    Thornton, Malcolm

    Murphy, Christopher

    Thurnham, Peter

    Neale, Gerrard

    Townend, John (Bridlington)

    Nelson, Anthony

    Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

    Neubert, Michael

    Tracey, Richard

    Newton, Tony

    Trippier, David

    Nicholls, Patrick

    Trotter, Neville

    Norris, Steven

    Twinn, Dr Ian

    Onslow, Cranley

    van Straubenzee, Sir W.

    Oppenheim, Phillip

    Vaughan, Sir Gerard

    Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

    Viggers, Peter

    Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

    Waddington, David

    Page, Richard (Herts SW)

    Wakeham, Rt Hon John

    Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

    Waldegrave, Hon William

    Patten, J. (Oxf W & Abgdn)

    Walden, George

    Pattie, Geoffrey

    Wall, Sir Patrick

    Pawsey, James

    Waller, Gary

    Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

    Walters, Dennis

    Pollock, Alexander

    Ward, John

    Porter, Barry

    Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

    Portillo, Michael

    Warren, Kenneth

    Powell, William (Corby)

    Watson, John

    Powley, John

    Watts, John

    Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

    Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

    Price, Sir David

    Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)

    Prior, Rt Hon James

    Wheeler, John

    Proctor, K. Harvey

    Whitfield, John

    Pym, Rt Hon Francis

    Wiggin, Jerry

    Raffan, Keith

    Winterton, Mrs Ann

    290

    Winterton, Nicholas

    Younger, Rt Hon George

    Wolfson, Mark

    Wood, Timothy

    Tellers for the Ayes:

    Woodcock, Michael

    Mr. Archie Hamilton and Mr. Robert Boscawen.

    Yeo, Tim

    Young, Sir George (Acton)

    NOES

    Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

    Foster, Derek

    Alton, David

    Foulkes, George

    Anderson, Donald

    Fraser, J. (Norwood)

    Archer, Rt Hon Peter

    Freud, Clement

    Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

    Garrett, W. E.

    Ashton, Joe

    George, Bruce

    Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)

    Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

    Bagier, Gordon A. T.

    Godman, Dr Norman

    Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

    Gould, Bryan

    Barnett, Guy

    Gourlay, Harry

    Barron, Kevin

    Hamilton, James (M'well N)

    Beckett, Mrs Margaret

    Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)

    Beith, A. J.

    Hancock, Michael

    Bell, Stuart

    Hardy, Peter

    Benn, Rt Hon Tony

    Harrison, Rt Hon Walter

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

    Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

    Bermingham, Gerald

    Haynes, Frank

    Bidwell, Sydney

    Heffer, Eric S.

    Blair, Anthony

    Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

    Boothroyd, Miss Betty

    Holland, Stuart (Vauxnall)

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

    Home Robertson, John

    Boyes, Roland

    Howells, Geraint

    Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

    Hoyle, Douglas

    Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

    Hughes, Dr Mark (Durham)

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

    Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

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

    Hughes, Roy (Newport East)

    Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

    Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

    Bruce, Malcolm

    Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

    Caborn, Richard

    Hume, John

    Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

    Janner, Hon Greville

    Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

    John, Brynmor

    Campbell, Ian

    Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

    Campbell-Savours, Dale

    Kennedy, Charles

    Canavan, Dennis

    Kilroy-Silk, Robert

    Cartwright, John

    Kirkwood, Archy

    Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

    Lambie, David

    Clarke, Thomas

    Leadbitter, Ted

    Clay, Robert

    Leighton, Ronald

    Clelland, David Gordon

    Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

    Clwyd, Mrs Ann

    Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

    Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)

    Litherland, Robert

    Cohen, Harry

    Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

    Coleman, Donald

    Lofthouse, Geoffrey

    Conlan, Bernard

    McCartney, Hugh

    Cook, Frank (Stockton North)

    McDonald, Dr Oonagh

    Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

    McGuire, Michael

    Corbett, Robin

    McKay, Allen (Penistone)

    Corbyn, Jeremy

    McKelvey, William

    Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

    MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

    Craigen, J. M.

    Maclennan, Robert

    Crowther, Stan

    McNamara, Kevin

    Cunningham, Dr John

    McTaggart, Robert

    Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (L'lli)

    Madden, Max

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

    Mallon, Seamus

    Deakins, Eric

    Marek, Dr John

    Dewar, Donald

    Marshall, David (Shettleston)

    Dixon, Donald

    Martin, Michael

    Dobson, Frank

    Mason, Rt Hon Roy

    Dormand, Jack

    Maxton, John

    Dubs, Alfred

    Maynard, Miss Joan

    Duffy, A. E. P.

    Meacher, Michael

    Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.

    Meadowcroft, Michael

    Eadie, Alex

    Michie, William

    Eastham, Ken

    Mikardo, Ian

    Edwards, Bob (Wh'mpt'n SE)

    Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

    Evans, John (St. Helens N)

    Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

    Fatchett, Derek

    Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

    Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)

    Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

    Fisher, Mark

    Nellist, David

    Flannery, Martin

    Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

    Foot, Rt Hon Michael

    O'Brien, William

    Forrester, John

    O'Neill, Martin

    291

    Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

    Robertson, George

    Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

    Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

    Park, George

    Rogers, Allan

    Parry, Robert

    Ross, Ernest (Dundee W)

    Patchett, Terry

    Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

    Pavitt, Laurie

    Sedgemore, Brian

    Pendry, Tom

    Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

    Penhaligon, David

    Shields, Mrs Elizabeth

    Pike, Peter

    Shore, Rt Hon Peter

    Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)

    Short, Ms Clare (Ladywood)

    Prescott, John

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

    Randall, Stuart

    Silkin, Rt Hon J.

    Raynsford, Nick

    Skinner, Dennis

    Redmond, Martin

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

    Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)

    Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

    Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

    Snape, Peter

    Richardson, Ms Jo

    Spearing, Nigel

    Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

    Steel, Rt Hon David

    Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)

    Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)

    292

    Stott, Roger

    Weetch, Ken

    Strang, Gavin

    Welsh, Michael

    Straw, Jack

    White, James

    Taylor, Rt Hon John David

    Wigley, Dafydd

    Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

    Williams, Rt Hon A.

    Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)

    Wilson, Gordon

    Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)

    Winnick, David

    Thome, Stan (Preston)

    Woodall, Alec

    Tinn, James

    Wrigglesworth, Ian

    Torney, Tom

    Young, David (Bolton SE)

    Wainwright, R.

    Walker, Cecil (Belfast N)

    Tellers for the Noes:

    Wallace, James

    Mr. John McWilliam and Mr. Lawrence Cunliffe.

    Warden, Gareth (Gower)

    Wareing, Robert

    Question accordingly agreed to.
    Bill read the Third time, and passed.

  Privileges
  10.15 pm
  The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Biffen): I beg to move,
  That this House agrees with the recommendations of the Committee of Privileges in its First Report (House of Commons Paper No. 376).
  Mr. Speaker: I should announce to the House that I have selected the following amendments: (a), leave out from 'House' to end and add
  'takes note of the First Report of the Committee of Privileges (House of Commons Paper No. 376); believes that it would be proper to punish an honourable Member who disclosed the draft report of a Select Committee before it had been reported to the House; but considers that it would be wrong to punish a journalist merely for doing his job.'.
  (g), at end add
  'provided that the duration of the penalties to be imposed pursuant to paragraphs 25 and 26 shall be reduced to five days from the passing of this motion.'.
  (i), at end add
  'provided that the duration of the penalties to be imposed pursuant to paragraphs 25 and 26 shall be reduced to six weeks from the passing of this motion.'.
  (j), at end add
  'with the exception of paragraph 25.'.
  I suggest that it would be for the convenience of the House if the formal moving of the amendments was deferred until the end of the debate. Under the terms of the order passed last Friday, I am required to put them successively to the House. It will be in order to refer in the debate to amendments that have not been selected as well as to those that have been selected. I must tell the House that no fewer than 24 right hon. and hon. Members will seek to catch my eye, and more may also try to do so. Six of the 24 are Privy Councillors. I therefore appeal for speeches to be brief.
  Mr. Biffen: It may help the House if I outline the general background to this matter and the basis on which the Privileges Committee has made this report. But first I should make it clear that this matter is for the House of Commons and the House of Commons alone to decide in the same spirit of free voting as the debate on televising our proceedings last November—[Interruption.]
  Secondly, I think that it would assist the House if I made a relatively compact speech in view of the general interest in the topic and of the desire of many to speak. Thirdly, I propose to centre my speech around a narrative of the events which culminated in the report that we are now debating; and to comment briefly on the alternatives that have been proposed to the Privileges Committee recommendations.
  Through the ages the House of Commons has asserted its right to be able to determine the manner of its own proceedings; to choose, for example, when these shall be private and when they shall be public. So far as proceedings on the Floor of the House are concerned they are almost invariably public, and what is said is freely and immediately available to all.
  But so far as Select Committees are concerned, the procedural position is that whilst a Committee may take evidence in public, its deliberative sessions and the consideration of any report must be private and confidential, and shall remain so until published. This is of long standing.
  294
  This distinction between proceedings on the Floor and proceedings in Select Committees reflects, therefore, a very long-standing judgment of the House as to how Select Committees can best perform their work on its behalf. Both my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Greed (Sir H. Rossi) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) as well as other right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, in evidence to the Privileges Committee have emphasised the importance that Select Committees attach to the effective maintenance of this distinction. This is because, in their view, Select Committee reports are measurably more influential if they are unanimous or cut across party lines. If draft reports or reports of proceedings of the Committee appear in the press before its deliberations are complete, it is argued that it inevitably becomes more difficult for the Committee to achieve a unanimous view. This should not be a modest factor in our calculations.
  The report before the House concerns a departmental Select Committee. These Select Committees were established in 1979. They still have to develop to the role that was originally foreseen in relation to the Executive. This evening, it is their future development that the House must judge, and judge alike the claim of chairmen of the departmental Select Committees that they need this protection of privilege for the deliberative stages of their work.
  Against this background, I should now like briefly to recount the facts of this particular case. The Environment Committee, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green, reported to the House in its second special report that an article published in The Times on 16 December 1985 had resulted from a leaked copy of the Chairman's draft report on radioactive waste. Since the Committee also reported that, in its view, this leak had caused serious interference with the work of the Committee, this special report stood automatically referred to the Committee of Privileges under the new procedure subsequently approved by the House on 18 March.
  The source of the leak has not been indentified. despite searching inquiries of all its members by the Environment Committee — [Interruption.] — although we all look forward to the debate this evening. This, of course, is one of the most highly unsatisfactory aspects of this case. The witnesses from The Times have refused to disclose their source. They have also refused to rule out any category of person — such as the staff of the Committee — from whom the information might have been obtained. Clearly no useful purpose would be served by instituting any further investigation.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green has given evidence about the damage he believes was done to his Committee's work and asserted that substantial interference had taken place. It was on the evidence so forcefully presented by my hon. Friend that the Privileges Committee came to formulate its recommendations.
  The Times has acknowledged that it was fully aware that in publishing its leak it was committing a breach of privilege. It justified this as being "in the public interest". For the reasons detailed in paragraphs 18 to 21 of the report, the Committee of Privileges cannot accept this. Otherwise the implication is that The Times, and not the House, is the unquestioned judge of what constitutes the "public interest" in the matter.

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  The world of politics and public affairs lives by a relationship with the press that is necessarily intimate and should be based on mutual and sustained respect. The House will not wish to act capriciously, and these matters proceed in the baleful circumstances where the Select Committee has been unable to indentify the perpetrator of the leak.
  Even so, this challenge poses an inescapable and disagreeable choice before the House. It can either allow the right of Select Committees to confidentiality in their deliberations to disintegrate or it can defend that right by some form of punishment. As I have already said, in considering this choice, the House will recall that the whole problem of the premature disclosure of the proceedings of Select Committees, and its handling by the House, has only recently been the subject of exhaustive consideration in the second report last Session of the Privileges Committee. Its recommendations were approved by the House on 18 March last by a large majority.
  This is the first case under the new procedure and what we decide this evening is bound to colour the future. The Select Committee on the Environment has concluded that its work has been substantially impeded and the Privileges Committee agrees. It is not disputed that a breach of privilege has occurred. The central issue is what is an appropriate, effective and equitable response by the House.
  This takes me to the amendments, selected by you, Mr. Speaker, for debate.
  The first is amendment (a) in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg). It urges that the House should take no action against Mr. Evans or The Times generally. I do not believe that a course of no action at all would be appropriate in these circumstances since it would put the whole basis of confidentiality of the deliberations of Select Committees at risk. There would also be little point in the Privileges Committee addressing such matters again if the House felt unable to support its judgment in this instance.
  Two amendments propose that the recommendations of the Committee should be implemented only for limited periods. Amendment (g) in the name of the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) proposes five days; and amendment (i), in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris), six weeks. The Chairman of the Select Committee on the Environment was persuasive in arguing that his Committee had been seriously harmed by the leak. In this context I am reluctant to commend a penalty so substantially less than that recommended by the Privileges Committee.
  The fourth is amendment (j) tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green. This would stop any penalty being imposed upon Mr. Evans.
  I admire the way in which my hon. Friend has recognised the very real feeling in the House that a journalist should not suffer, but unlike the 1975 case, Mr. Evans has refused to apologise to the House or to exonerate the staff of the House from being involved in the leak. Indeed, on the second point, it has been stressed that that is his own decision, not his editor's. My judgment, therefore, is that the Privileges Committee's recommendation in respect of Mr. Evans for his actions should stand.
  296
  I now address the recommendations of the Committee, which are contained in the motion before the House. The motion proposes that the lobby reporter concerned in this leak, Mr. Richard Evans, should be suspended from the lobby for six months and excluded from the precincts for that purpose and for that period. That is in line with the recommendation made by the Privileges Committee in The Economist case in 1975 and in its second report last Session. The motion also proposes that the number of lobby passes issued to The Times should be reduced by one, also for a period of six months.
  Mr. Nicholas Fairbairn: Does not my right hon. Friend think that, if the matter was leaked by a Member of the House who took it as such a strong principle that he should leak it, he should have the courage to say who he is?
  Mr. Biffen: I am sure that it would be a happy issue to most of our afflictions if any hon. Member who had leaked the document were now to make that evident— [HON. MEMBERS: "Come on."] The debate might help to that end. I should like to say to my hon. and learned Friend that we still do not know that it is a Member of Parliament, because the information which might have been disclosed by Mr. Evans has been withheld.
  It is noteworthy that none of the amendments selected has questioned the judgment of the Privileges Committee that The Times has breached the privilege of the House. The argument—and it will be echoed in the debate—centres around the extent of the penalties to be imposed.
  The Privileges Committee gave the question of penalties measured consideration. Inevitably, the suggested penalties reflect a high degree of value judgment with very little precedent as a guide. The House must judge. Even so, I believe that the recommendations set an appropriate judgment between a token punishment and a penal sanction inappropriate to modern circumstances.
  Mr. John McWilliam: Is the Leader of the House prepared to invite members of the Select Committee who are present in the House tonight to intervene and assure the House that they did not leak the document?
  Mr. Biffen: I shall try to accommodate the point that the hon. Gentleman fairly makes and also keep in reasonable order. I am certain that this would be to the benefit of the entire House. If there is any member of that Select Committee here who can now resolve the matter by saying that he was responsible for the leak, he should inform the House accordingly.
  The House should not lightly set aside the recommendations. The issue is essentially very simple: given that a breach of privilege has occurred, what is the appropriate penalty?
  Mr. Peter Bruinvels rose——
  Mr. Biffen: My view is that the Privileges Committee has adjudged aright. Given the fact that no apology has been forthcoming from The Times in these circumstances, unlike the The Economist case in 1975, I urge the House to support the motion and reject the various amendments before it.
  10.28 pm
  Mr. Peter Shore: As the Leader of the House said, this is a House of Commons matter. In all political parties, there are widely different

  297
  views about privilege in general, and, as the amendments on the Order Paper demonstrate, about its enforcement in this case.
  I speak as a member of the Select Committee on Privileges, and the report carries the approval of that all-party Committee, with one dissenting voice. Its recommendations, which I support, follow directly from the recommendations of the second report of the Privileges Committee, which was debated as recently as 11 March this year, and subsequently approved by 104 votes to 22 on 18 March. That report did not focus on a particular case, but, following a growing number of leaks from Select Committees, it was directed
  "to examine further the laws of privilege and the rules of the House relating to the proceedings of select committees meeting in private".
  The Select Committee concluded that if there had been substantial interference, or the likelihood of such, in the work of the Select Committee, then, provided the Priviliges Committee agreed, it might recommend that appropriate penalties be imposed on Members or other persons, including the press, especially if no apology had been offered.
  Moreover, the Committee of Privileges gave a clear indication of the nature of the penalties that it had in mind. Paragraph 10 of the report states:
  "If a Member of the House is found to be responsible for a leak in one of the above categories, he should be punished. The appropriate penalty in many such cases would be removal from the committee concerned. If an editor or a journalist (or any other person who enjoys the facilities of the Lobby or Press Gallery) has been found responsible for publishing such a leak, he too should be liable to an appropriate penalty. Such penalty might be the suspension, for a specified period, of the Lobby and Press Gallery passes of journalists employed by that organ of the press."
  The case before us tonight exactly fits the criteria laid down in the Privileges Committee report. Mr. Richard Evans, a lobby correspondent from The Times, obtained and published the Chairman's draft report of the inquiry of the Select Committee on the Environment into radioactive waste. The Environment Committee itself summarised the effect of the leak as constituting:
  "a serious interference with the work of the committee."
  That assessment was strongly reaffirmed by the Chairman, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi), in his evidence to the Privileges Committee.
  The Times report gave a seriously misleading impression of the Select Committee's conclusions. It made it more difficult for Members to approach the evidence impartially, it damaged trust between members of the Committee, and it delayed for some weeks the completion of its report. Both the journalist and the editor insisted—as the Leader of the House has reminded us—that they were acting in the public interest, and it was made plain that it was the settled policy of The Times newspaper to seek such information from Select Committees and to publish it.
  When asked:
  "If you say it is in the public interest to publish it when you did, why is it less in the public interest to let it wait a fortnight until it has been properly discussed and publish it then?",
  Mr. Richard Evans replied:
  "Perhaps I could take up one point. If we waited two weeks another newspaper might get hold of it."
  I do not automatically equate the commercial interest of The Times with the public interest, and nor should the House.
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  As to the proposed penalties—six months suspension and the reduction of the number of The Times lobby, passes by one for the same period—I have read the letter, as have other right hon. and hon. Members, that was sent to us by members of the Parliamentary lobby and which states:
  "the person who leaked the report, who committed the breach of trust and privilege remains undetected and unpunished."
  That is true. I regret it, as I am sure all hon. Members do. But in all leaks there are three culprits. There is the source, the editor and the journalist. The absence of one is not a reason for inaction against the others.
  Mr. John Gorst: Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House whether, had the identity of the person who leaked the document been available to the Privileges Committee or were it to be available to the House now, before the matter is disposed of, that would in any way mitigate or change the decision of the Privileges Committee to recommend the penalty which the House is now considering?
  Mr. Shore: I do not believe that it would. Obviously a penalty would be imposed on the Member.
  I now turn to the underlying argument. The one thing that should united the press and Select Committees is the wish to penetrate more deeply into important matters of policy and to prise open the secrecy which Government Departments and Ministers are always prone to. After all, that was a major motivation in the decision of the House in 1979 to establish 14 departmental Select Committees to maintain an on-going scrutiny of departmental affairs.
  Few subjects are of greater importance than the nuclear power industry, as the Chernobyl disaster has so vividly demonstrated, and the unsolved problem of long-term disposal of nuclear waste is one of the great questions involved. Far from seeking to cover up the industry and Government policy in relation to it, the Select Committee has, apart from its own 100-page report, obtained 800 pages of written and oral evidence from bodies as diverse as Friends of the Earth, the Town and Country Planning Association, the Trades Union Congress, the Central Electricity Generating Board, the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority, the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Secretaries of State for Transport and for the Environment. All that material is now before the public, and the Committee's proceedings, when witnesses were called and interrogated, were held in public and the minutes published.
  Although I acknowledge the investigative skills of the press, the Select Committee's investigation was an exercise in open government that far outstripped in depth, penetration and authority anything that could be otherwise achieved—except perhaps by a Royal Commission or a full-scale planning inquiry with especially wide terms of reference.
  To present the issue tonight as one between the advocates of open government and those of closed government would therefore be ludicrous. What is at issue is the confidentiality of the closing and deliberative stage of the Select Committee's work, when it considers the evidence it has received and tries to reach its conclusions. Not only is that report then published but so, too, are the specific dissents and alternative drafts and recorded votes of members of the Select Committee. The deliberative session and the Chairman's draft report which is prepared with the purpose of focusing discussion are all that are at

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  issue. Why protect that draft report? Why should it be a contempt to disclose this part of the Select Committee's proceedings?
  The answer is simple. Many powerful and interested parties seek to influence Members in their conclusions. None has a greater interest than the Government, since it is Government policy, active or inactive, that the Committee is ultimately investigating. If, at this stage, external influences and pressures, including the Whips, are brought to bear, there is a risk that the judgment of Members will be affected and the difficulties in reaching agreement increased.
  If the facts of the Committee study justify it, of course there is great advantage in a unanimous report. No Government can shrug off the findings of a Select Committee whose members always reflect the composition of the House and have, therefore, a built-in Government majority, if that report is unanimous.
  The leaked publication of a draft report at the closing, deliberative stage of the Select Committee's work therefore operates against the very purpose for which the Select Committee has been established — to probe sensitive questions, to obtain information from within and outside Government, and then to put the full force of the Select Committee's unfettered judgment behind its recommendations.
  No analogy exactly fits but, in trial by jury procedures, the court is open to the press and the public. The witnesses appear and are examined and cross-examined in public. The jury's verdict is then delivered in public. But when the jury retires to consider the evidence and its verdict, the press is excluded. Having heard all the relevant facts, it is for the jury to make up its mind, and for all other influences to be excluded.
  It is for those reasons — quite apart from the commercial motivation of stealing a march on other competing newspapers—that I reject the claim of Mr. Richard Evans, the editor of The Times and the letter sent to Members by the parliamentary lobby and journalists that this leak was "in the public interest".
  No one can be certain of the effects of sustained and major leaks of the proceedings of Select Committees but if, as seems probable, they are weakened and divided by premature disclosures, the major losers will be the public, the House and the cause of open Government that the Select Committees seek to serve. I believe, therefore, that the Select Committee's report deserves the support of the House.
  10.39 pm
  Sir Ian Gilmour: The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore) who is the shadow Leader of the House, made a delightfully reactionary speech. He produced one of the most far-fetched analogies that has ever been put before the House, that a Select Committee bears any relation at all to a jury. I hope that the House will reject this motion. I hope that I may be forgiven for an extremely mixed metaphor: the Committee of Privileges is making a mountain out of a molehill and is barking up the wrong tree.
  We all know that Select Committees do valuable and important work. We also know that their members are Members of the House and do not become different beings
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  when they sit on Select Committees. They are well aware of political pressures, they know the importance of publicity and they live the whole time in the political world. The idea that once they get on to a Select Committee and start deliberating they should be pampered and protected from publicity and that that protection should be reinforced by penal sanctions against the press is quite absurd.
  Why do they suddenly become so naive that they can hardly deliberate because there has been some publicity and they do not know how to get on with their Select Committee work? This surely does a great disservice to the members of Select Committees. They are grown-up people and if they are not able to withstand these pressures, they should not be Members of this House.
  Sir Peter Emery: Will my right hon. Friend please tell the House which departmental Select Committees he has served on?
  Sir Ian Gilmour: As my hon. Friend knows, I have served on none. If serving on a Select Committee made me change my mind I would know that I was wrong. I am strongly in favour of consensus, but the idea that Select Committees should be immunised from publicity when no other organ of government is so immunised is wrong. Why should this unique protection be given to Select Committees? The whole idea is bizarre and ridiculous.
  So much for the molehill: I will now proceed to the wrong tree. We all know that the leaks are extremely embarrassing and irritating, especially when we all know that they almost invariably come from an hon. Member. The fact that we are unable to find out who did it does not mean that out of frustration we should punish the wrong person. There used to be doctrine a long time ago, I think in the law courts, that the fact that a man had committed adultery with a woman did not necessarily mean that the woman had committed adultery with the man. That is so in this case.
  Mr. Fairbairn: Perhaps my right hon. Friend would not like to leak it, but one has to be married to commit adultery. He may not know that.
  Mr. John Evans: You know.
  Mr. Fairbairn: Yes, I do know. Breach of trust that is given can never be forgiven for any reason.
  Sir Ian Gilmour: I entirely agree about breach of trust, but I am not entirely clear about the relevance of that interruption. We are discussing whether or not there has been a breach of trust by an hon. Member. Whoever leaked this report did wrong. The Times and Mr. Evans did not leak and did not do wrong. They published, as it was their right and duty to do. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] The idea that there should be censorship because of the sacred deliberations of the Select Committees is absurd.
  The right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney and the other members of the Privileges Committee seemed to be surprised that The Times was not prepared to wait until the official report was published. They said that The Times should have acted in the public interest, and the right hon. Gentleman thought he knew exactly what the public interest was. All that he was saying was that The Times should behave like an advertising man and sit back and allow its columns to be used for advertising.
  The correct definition of news was given by William Randolph Hearst—and he should know—as something

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  that someone does not want published; everything else is advertising. The right hon. Gentleman suggests that newspapers should sit back and say, "We cannot publish this. We must wait until we get the full report." That is not how newspapers should behave. It is not the way in which they behave in any other sphere of government. Why should they behave in that way with the deliberations of Select Committees?
  Mr. Peter Bruinvels: Publish and be damned.
  Sir Ian Gilmour: That is right. It is not for the Select Committee on the Environment or the Privileges Committee to decide what it is in the public interest to publish. If any of us knew what it was in the public interest to publish, we would not need a free press and we would not deserve one. It is nonsense to talk about the public interest.
  If the motion is passed, the House will be the only loser. Mr. Richard Evans will not lose; he will be respected everywhere except in the House. The Times will not lose. Although it will lose one Lobby pass, it can employ an extra journalist to report sport or something else that will improve its circulation. The House will have once more made a fool of itself on a matter of privilege and will have forgotten that the point of Parliament is to preserve free speech, not to prevent it.
  10.46 pm
  Mr. Michael Foot: When the House of Commons sets up an important Committee — no Committee is more important than the Privileges Committee—to examine a matter of major significance, as it has done on this occasion, and when the report is presented to the House and so many eminent names are attached to the proposition before us, the House must pay careful attention to what is proposed. I greatly respect the opinion of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore)—no Member of the House is more truly honourable in every possible sense—so I am usually eager to agree with him.
  I would pay a similar compliment, although not quite so glowing, to the Leader of the House if I did not think that it would interfere with his young career at an inopportune time. None the less, they have joined many others to present the proposition to the House, and it must be carefully considered.
  However, I am bound to consider it as a journalist for many years. I have seen the conflicts between the House and Fleet street in its different forms. I do not say that, in all those conflicts, Fleet street was right and the House of Commons was wrong, but anyone who examines the history of the House will see that, on many important occasions, journalists have been proved right and the House has been proved wrong. On several occasions in recent times—I am not talking about the 18th century—the House of Commons has clambered upon its privileges hobby horse and fallen flat on its face. I do not want that to happen this time, although it is possible if the recommendations are accepted.
  Not all the evidence given by journalists to the Privileges Committee was equally valuable. Many of their answers, although not incriminating, weaken their case, but one argument in the replies that they gave to the highly skilful cross-examination by the Attorney-General and others is difficult to meet. If it is all right for members of
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  the Lobby and other journalists working in the House of Commons or its environs to try to search out what is happening in the Cabinet and to publish that, why should it be wrong for them to try to search out what is happening in Select Committees and to publish that?
  If we are told—this is the case put by the Chairman of the Committee and to some degree accepted by the members of the Committee—that it interferes with the process of discussion in the Select Committee, then we must accept that there is a whole range of Cabinet committees, including the Cabinet itself, which could make exactly the same claim. A whole range of discussions and reports—leakages, call them what you will—come from the Cabinet or Cabinet committees which may deal with subjects even more important than those assigned for consideration by this Select Committee.
  It is impossible for the House to draw the line in that way and say that different restrictions should be imposed on journalists working here when they are trying to report what is happening in a Select Committee than when they are trying to report what is happening within the Government machine itself.
  Despite the prevarication of some of the replies given in cross-examination, the journalists were saying, "We believed that we were doing the same job in trying to report what was happening in some of these Committees as we do as a matter of course when trying to report what is happening in the Government."
  Mr. Ian Mikardo: In the light of what my right hon. Friend has said, may I ask him to say why he did not oppose the report of the Privileges Committee, which was carried by a 5:1 majority—
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: They were whipped. I know, because I called the Division.
  Mr. Mikardo: I guarantee to my hon. Friend that nobody whipped me—not on a free vote. It was carried by a 5:1 majority without dissent from my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), and I am sure that he was not whipped. Why did he not oppose that, when that report said precisely that the proceedings of Select Committees should be treated differently from the proceedings of other bodies?
  Mr. Foot: I give the assurance that I was not whipped in that case, as I was not in many others. If somebody had tried to whip me, I might have paid more careful attention to the proceedings on that occasion. I do not propose to make the same mistake again.
  I have been considering the matter carefully. Whatever may have been decided by a previous Committee—and we can take a lesson in terms of the diligence that we should show in attending to the proceedings of the House — I do not believe that one can draw a proper distinction between the two.
  It has been argued that there must be special virtue in ensuring that Select Committees should be able to reach unanimous judgments. In my view, that has nothing to do with it. The procedures should not be so arranged to encourage or discourage that result. I have been somewhat sceptical about Select Committees and their role, because there may be disadvantages in forcing a consensual agreement on matters where I believe party arguments should still prevail.
  Mr. Nigel Spearing: My right hon. Friend challenges us to make a distinction between a

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  Cabinet committee and a Select Committee of the House. Would he not agree that a Cabinet committee or the Cabinet itself deliberates on Executive action to be taken, which may pre-empt the views or policies of the House, whereas a Select Committee can only make a report to the House, and that is its only shot?
  Mr. Foot: It is a continuous process, and indeed it becomes enlarged. The departmental Select Committees have certainly become enlarged since they were established. I do not say this against them. In some ways they have shown much greater vitality than many expected they would, and good luck to them in that sense.
  It is not a fair distinction, however, to say that they should have a special kind of protection which is not necessary for the Cabinet and Cabinet committees. I do not believe that that distinction can be made to work for the future operations of the House. If the House of Commons tries to draw such a distinction, my prophecy is that it will fail, which is one reason why I am against the proposal before the House.
  It is unfair that the journalists should be punished and the real culprits should not; that is so manifestly unfair that the House of Commons will make a fool of itself if it tries to proceed on those lines.
  But what is the remedy for the situation? I know there is a problem. I am not trying to dodge it. I understand that the Select Committee cross-examined the journalists on these questions of confidentiality, which are very important.
  I am not saying that the House of Commons should not have the right to establish Select Committees or other Committees which would have the right to insist upon confidentiality. It is absolutely necessary. It is necessary for the Cabinet, and for some of these committees. But members of those committees are responsible for protecting their confidentiality. If some members of those committees cause breaches of confidentiality, they cannot put the blame on somebody else who may have a different kind of job.
  I know that an other remedy has been proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), and it is also in the report presented to the House. I understand his argument, but I disagree with it. He says that the solution to the problem is to make all the Committees open and not to insist on confidentiality.
  Just as I disagree with my right hon. Friend on that matter, so I disagree when the argument is applied to the Cabinet itself. The trouble about having so many leaks from the Cabinet—this is the leakiest Cabinet in British history — [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] Oh yes, it is the leakiest Cabinet in history. The trouble is that when there is a Cabinet of that nature, the decisions are taken more and more by a sort of inner Cabinet, which thinks that it can preserve secrecy. We also know from our experience over recent weeks and months that the way in which that Cabinet has operated has been highly dangerous to the British people.
  Moreover, there is in addition much more of an organised system of leaks although I am not saying that there were not signs of it in years gone by. [Interruption.] Day by day and week by week, we have an organised system of communicating to the press the decisions of the
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  Government and the decisions of many Government and Cabinet Committees, and that system continues. [HON. MEMBERS: "NO."]
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Foot: I say that it is utterly hypocritical for the House of Commons to say that we will have that system of tolerated and organised leaks, but that, when it comes to a particular form of operation in the House of Commons, we will impose these penalties and methods of operation.
  So I say that the House of Commons should try to discover a remedy for the disease, one which really works. That will be achieved only if the House insists on the proposition that Members of the House must show the trust and power of maintaining that confidentiality. It is their business to do it. If they cannot do it, they cannot find scapegoats on whom to thrust their mistakes.
  10.59 pm
  Sir Hugh Rossi: I commend to the House my amendment (j) in line 2, at end add
  'with the exception of paragraph 25.'.
  I wish at the outset to thank my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and the Committee of Privileges for the trouble they have taken to investigate the complaints of my Committee arising out of the premature publication of parts of a draft report even before the Committee as a whole had had time to meet to consider it.
  Reading the proceedings of the Committee of Privileges I was immediately struck by the cavalier, truculent and almost contemptuous attitude of the newspapermen in question towards the House. They admit that they acted deliberately in breach of the privileges of the House, make no apology for doing so and assert firmly that they are the sole arbiters of which rules of the House they choose to obey and which they do not. I find that rather rich coming from those to whom the House has granted privileges given to few others, whether it be a licence to come and go at will and to record the proceedings of the House, or to occupy precious accommodation given to no other newspaper.
  It is little wonder that the Committee of Privileges was very angry and proposed extremely severe sanctions. I trust, therefore, that my right hon. Friend and his colleagues, having done their best to protect my Committee, will not take it amiss if I suggest that perhaps the Committee of Privileges has allowed itself to be provoked by these very unsatisfactory witnesses into going beyond what is perhaps just and reasonable. Therefore, I tabled an amendment in the names of myself, the members of my Committee and a former chairman of my Committee, to the effect that Mr. Richard Evans be not suspended from the Lobby for six months. That is very much for the reasons expressed in amendment (a) in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg).
  It goes against the inherent sense of fair play of the House that a young, well-liked journalist should be punished while the real villain, possibly a Member of the House, escapes censure. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name him."] I must tell the House that, having investigated the matter, I do not know who it is and that I cannot name anybody,

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  nor am I prepared to name anybody. It would be wrong for hon. Members to throw stones at other people in the House without evidence.
  I accept, all the same, that if there were no receivers of stolen property there would be fewer thieves; if there were no publishers, there would be no leakers. However, the journalist in question was doing very little more than his duty in reporting to his employer information which had fallen into his hands. I trust that my amendment will be accepted.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: May I ask the chairman of the Select Committee on the Environment a simple question? Is it true that a member of the Select Committee admitted to breaching privilege on this matter, that he referred the document in question to Mr. John H. Large of Large and Associates, consulting engineers to Greenpeace, and that Mr. John H. Large wrote a letter to the chairman of the Committee on 23 December in which he said:
  "On 12 December"——
  that is, five days before the leak was published—
  "a copy of the draft report was delivered to this office by motor cycle courier".
  Does the Chairman of the Select Committee know that that statement by Mr. Large is not true? If it is untrue, do we necessarily have to accept the balance of his statement? Finally, is it not also true that the hon. Member who leaked the document has apologised to the Select Committee and that his apology was accepted by the Committee?
  Sir Hugh Rossi: The hon. Gentleman has clearly read my report to the House and to the Committee of Privileges. It is clear that there was a secondary breach of privilege by a member of my Committee who consulted a firm of professional experts because he wanted advice on some of the technical matters contained in the draft report. That is perfectly true. I leave it to the hon. Gentleman in question to identify himself if he so wishes. He has apologised fully to the Committee for that secondary breach of privilege.
  We are concerned with a different matter altogether. We are concerned with how the report was leaked to the Press.
  Mr. James Wallace: Does the hon. Gentleman know whether the company which has been mentioned was being remunerated by Greenpeace for acting in an advisory capacity? The company must have had a commercial interest in this document. Is it not true that, after receiving the document, amendments were suggested to various members of the Committee? Was that not an application of pressure? What is the qualitative difference between that and the case in point this evening?
  Sir Hugh Rossi: It is true that that firm of engineers has given evidence and had advised Greenpeace on occasions. We established that; that is clear in our reports. If the hon. Gentleman would like further information as to the extent to which this leak or series of leaks has progressed, I can tell the House tht only two weeks ago I was given a photostat copy of parts of my draft report. This was handed to me by a member of the Central Electricity Generating Board who told me that he had received it from the United States of America before the report was approved and published. I have also been told by the producers of "Newsnight", which produced a programme before the embargo was raised on our report, that they paid for a copy of the draft report.
  These leaks are distasteful.
  Mr. Michael Grylls: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Sir Hugh Rossi: I will not give way because this is a time-limited debate and I have already been extremely generous in giving way. We are extending the debate beyond the issues before the House.
  Having suggested how my Committee feels about the journalist in question, I would now like to consider the responsibilities of the editor and proprietor of The Times. This is entirely another matter, because they have the responsibility for publication. If they publish a libel, they risk damages. If they publish in contempt of court, they risk imprisonment. If they publish in contempt of the House, they should risk withdrawal of privileges which the House has been pleased to give them. Their justification is that they have acted in the public interest. In their defence, they have raised a great shout in Fleet street about freedom of the press, which has been reflected in some of the speeches that we have heard already today.
  I should like to examine for a moment the proposition that it was in the public interest to reveal what the editor and proprietor revealed. Were we dealing with a Cabinet committee matter, some great hidden scandal of state, some great concealment from the public of vital information, some departmental conspiracy to mislead, I might have some sympathy, but what do we have here? This is the publication of a preliminary draft of a document intended for publication and produced to stimulate public debate. How can it be against the public interest to wait until that document is no longer in its crude form, but good and ready for publication?
  Would it be acceptable in Fleet street for the world to see a journalist's copy before his editor cuts or spikes it? Can we look at draft editorials to see whether there is true journalistic independence? Do we review manuscripts of books before the author is ready to send them to his publisher? Examined in this way, the demand to be free to publish the Chairman's report when his Committee has yet to decide whether it reflects its collective view is absurd and untenable. What can be in the public interest in publishing an unapproved draft, which is subject to change and revision, some two or three weeks before it is due to be published in any case in its final approved form? We have already heard — Mr. Evans was asked the question and he replied with refreshing honesty—that, if he had waited another two weeks, another newspaper would have got it. There it is. We are concerned with a newspaper scoop, a desire to keep up circulation to make a profit.
  Mr. Grylls: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Sir Hugh Rossi: No.
  There is nothing wrong with those objectives in themselves. Running a newspaper is running a business but I ask that they spare us the cant and humbug of "pro bono publico."
  Mr. Wilson's justification was that publication of the draft report widened the debate at an earlier date. He slides over the fact that the deceit so threw the Committee that the final report was delayed three months. He also conveniently ignores the fact that publication of the Craft report misled the public and raised false expectations because our recommendations, or some of them, were substantially amended. Expectations were raised about a report of a Committee dominated by Conservative

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  Members attacking Government policy, demanding the shut-down of THORP, no new foreign contracts for reprocessing and one-off dumping at sea and then finishing with it. It was no such thing, but the story was picked up in that form by commentator after commentator and relied upon even after the Committee report appeared. I should have thought that the spreading of misinformation is against the public interest and that that is exactly what happened.
  The problem caused by the leak has already been fully recorded. However, the present rules under which Select Committees are required to operate are unworkable if no sanctions are to exist for a breach of them. It is bizarre that I must produce a draft report which I cannot discuss with anyone outside my Committee, refuse constant demands for interviews, and rigorously honour an embargo intended to give equal opportunity to every interested journalist, only to find that my draft report is published behind my Committee's back as the result of some clandestine deal.
  I would prefer it if the House adopted one of two methods. When draft reports are sent to members of Committees, they should be deposited in the Library and in the Press Gallery. The status of the document would be clear — that it reflected only the Chairman's personal views, for whatever they may be worth, and that it may be accepted or rejected by the Committee as a whole. The danger of that is that individual Members may be asked to comment, which would make it even more difficult to reach a unanimous consensus view. The advantage would be that the document would join all the other official press releases as an unleakable document. Another course would be to enable the House to enter into exclusive publication rights and recoup some of the Committees' expenses.[Interruption.]
  I am worried that indecision tonight could well damage the growth of Select Committees. They are an exciting development, still in their infancy, through which Parliament is seeking to re-establish its traditional role as a check on the Executive. During the past 100 years that role has been eroded by the party and whipping systems. Question Time has become a ritualistic game, and apart from occasions such as this, setpiece debates in the Chamber are poorly attended.[Interruption.]
  On the other hand, Select Committees summon Ministers and, equally important, their officials, and cross-examine them persistently and in depth in a way which is impossible under any other procedures. Having heard all the evidence in open court, as it were.[Interruption.]
  Mr. Andrew Faulds: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Some hon. Members would like to hear this debate.
  Mr. Speaker: I too should like to hear it.
  Sir Hugh Rossi: I realise that some hon. Members are rather impatient with me, but as I do not speak often and this is an important matter on which I have some experience, the House might listen to my remarks, which may be of assistance, particularly as I have heard speeches such as that of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) who has not served on a Select Committee and cannot know what happens in one.
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  Having heard and cross-examined Ministers and witnesses in open court, as it were, we retire like a jury to consider our verdict. The Committee can chew over the draft report, consider the evidence, evaluate it, and compare impressions. We do so in the absence of political rancour or bias. When we have reached our verdict, we do not hide it; we publish it. That is our function. Intrusion into our private discussions would put pressure on Committees from the outset, and that would diminish the value of our reports.
  The departmental Select Committee is a new, delicate constitutional plant which must be protected and nurtured if it is to flourish. It is more in the public interest that the House protects its Committees than that it enables newspapers to scoop one another.
  11.20 pm
  Mr. John Cartwright: I do not intend to follow the length of the speech made by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi). In the early part of his speech, as the Chairman of the Select Committee, he opened up a veritable Pandora's box of apparent leaks from the Committee. If I understood him aright, copies of the draft report have been freely available on both sides of the Atlantic. If that is the case, I wonder why we do not have a longer list of people arraigned rather than just one journalist from The Times. My understanding is that that the leak to John H. Large and Associates resulted in that firm circulating members of the Select Committee with suggested draft amendments to the report that they were urged to move in Committee. That is a much more serious interference in the work of the Committee than any journalist reporting the draft report. I wonder why we are not debating that as well.
  In no way do I condone the business of leaks. It is an acutely damaging procedure and one which, over the past few days, I have had good reason to be reminded is extremely dangerous and damaging to trust between one colleague and another. [Interruption.] I think that I have made the point. There is only a narrow gap between the leak and the unattributable quote, and the whole business of the lobby system, from which the House has been suffering for so long.
  Mr. John Gorst: Is there no qualitative difference between leaking proceedings of a Select Committee to the press, and leaking them to a member of the Whips' Office of one's party? Whips of either party might, for their own interests, leak them to the press.
  Mr. Cartwright: That is a fair point. The existence of research assistants and such people makes it difficult to keep a document 100 per cent. secret.
  Tonight we are considering whether the punishment recommended by the Select Committee on Privileges is a reasonable one for us to approve. I cannot accept that it is. I hear what is said about the position of journalists, but it is unreasonable to expect a journalist to refuse the opportunity of publishing a document such as this, which is on an issue of major public concern. To recall what the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) said during the Fulham by-election, we are all of us consenting adults in this business of politics. We are not naive. We know what journalists are about, and if we are stupid enough to

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  give them the opportunity to exploit a situation, we are to blame, not the journalists. We should not be punishing a journalist for doing his job effectively.
  There is something ironic about Select Committees, which were specifically set up to blow the whistle on Government Departments, to find out where the bodies are buried and to shed light in dark corners of Whitehall, hiding behind the same sort of secrecy that has cloaked Whitehall for so long. When we last had a debate on such matters, we were debating a leak from the Select Committee on the wealth tax, a Committee on which I served. The then Member for Cornwall, North, Mr. John Pardoe, said:
  "There is absolutely no value to be attached to secrecy in the deliberations of a Select Committee. The party dimension would flourish more behind closed doors than in the open. The more the Press and the broadcasting media were there to cover the deliberations of the Select Committee, the less would party play its part.—[Official Report, 16 December 1975; Vol. 902, c. 1318.]
  I endorse very strongly that approach.
  Also I endorse the view of those who have already said in this debate that many other bodies suffer from leaks. The Cabinet, Ministers, Government Departments, even political parties suffer leaks from leaks. If Mr. Richard Evans had published a leak that came from any of those sources, he would not be punished. Only the House of Commons gives itself this extraordinary right to punish people for publishing leaks. The question is whether that power is justified. I cannot believe that it is. The House is in danger of making itself look incredibly foolish and pompous and of filling itself with self-importance. That is the House of Commons at its worst. I want no part of it. I shall vote against these recommendations.
  11.25 pm
  Mr. Terence Higgins: There are comparatively few occasions in the House when it is possible that the debate will persuade hon. Members to change their vote. I believe that this is such an occasion and that the speech of the Opposition Front Bench spokesman, the right hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore), was highly persuasive.
  If right hon. and hon. Members look through the reports on this issue which have been published recently it will be very difficult indeed for them not to be persuaded, as I most certainly am, that we should support the recommendations of the Select Committee on Privileges. It is common ground that the departmental Select Committees that were set up in 1979 have been very effective in removing much of the previous secrecy, in subjecting Ministers and officials to scrutiny and in publishing the results.
  The other outstanding feature, which perhaps could not have been clearly foreseen, is the extent to which hon. Members who, on the Floor of the House, are frequently divided along party lines, are able to come together in a Select Committee to examine a particular issue in great depth on the basis of the evidence and then to form a common view that they then report to the House. It means that our proceedings on the Floor of the House are better informed than they would otherwise be.
  Hon. Members may have received a few days ago a letter from the parliamentary lobby that referred throughout to the leak of a Select Committee report. It is important to stress that this evening we are not concerned with the leak of a Select Committee report. Such a leak
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  may be deplorable and it may be to the disadvantage of other members of the press, but the damage that is likely to arise in that case will not be great. What is the case—and it is important to distinguish it—is that the leak of a draft report is, as the report of the Select Committee on the Environment makes absolutely clear, likely to make the deliberations and conclusions of the Select Committee very much more difficult.
  Here I take up the point that was made by the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), the former leader of the Labour party. All the way through his argument he sought to draw a comparison between discussion in Cabinet and discussion in a Select Committee. There is a clear and crucial difference. As soon as the Select Committee's report is published, so are its proceedings. That does not apply to Cabinet discussions. If a member of a Select Committee points out that he wishes to dissent from the report, it is clearly recorded that that is his considered view. What is wrong, I believe, is to publish a Chairman's draft, or the deliberations of a Select Committee on the proceedings, when hon. Members are still in the course of making up their minds on the issue.
  It is important to distinguish this evening between what is and what is not important. What is most certainly not important is the contents of a Chairman's draft report. That is something that the Chairman, having gone through the evidence, cooks up, perhaps together with the Committee Clerk, and then puts forward as the basis for discussion. He may include in it a few points to stimulate discussion in the privacy of the Select Committee's deliberations. The draft report may be quite misleading and have no particular validity. A draft report certainly does not have the kind of importance that those in The Times sought to suggest that this one had when they published it on the front page. It is merely something which particular Committee Chairmen happen to have taken up. The problem is that it inevitably inhibits free discussion of the issues and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) pointed out, it appears in an incomplete and garbled form, frequently with the objective of influencing the eventual conclusion of the Committee, apart from what it has received in evidence.
  That being so, I am sad that The Times reporter and The Times itself have broken with the tradition which the lobby has recognised over the years. Indeed, I think that it is clear from the lobby's own rules that draft reports are not something which should be leaked because they have the disadvantages I have clearly set out.
  The content of the draft report is not important However, the leak is a matter of great importance because we need to deter that from happening if we are to do our job properly. I am sorry that the press, which on this occasion has broken previous conventions, does not understand that the press, the House and the Committees should all be on the same side, encouraging open government. It is sad that that is not the case. The press should understand the damage that is being done to the work of the Select Committees in trying to carry out their duties towards the House.
  Having said that, I stress that there is no question of secrecy being involved, only timing. What the Committee eventually deliberated in its considered view is clearly recorded, so that there is no question of Select Committees engaging in dreadful secrecy. On the contrary, their

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  intention is to look into matters in depth—not to have decisions released half-baked, but to reach firm conclusions which are then published.
  I believe that the argument that the rules are out of date is ill founded. Paradoxically, if we had debated this matter 10 years ago it might well have been felt that the rules were out of date and not relevant. The advent of the departmentally-related Select Committees has given the old rules fresh relevance because they are now doing a job which was not done previously. However, I still profoundly believe that the privilege we are asking for is not unreasonable. It is a privilege which enables us to do our job properly and is therefore something which should be supported on the Floor of the House.
  It is argued by the Opposition that the publication of a draft report stimulates debate. The fact is that, taking the case we are considering, the debate was already in full swing. The effect of leaking the draft report was not to stimulate the debate but to inhibit and delay the publication of that report.
  That being so, there is another point I should like to make and a question of secrecy is involved. If we do not support the Privileges Committee this evening, we are effectively saying that this is not an important matter and that leaks do not really matter. That is very dangerous. Once that happens those outside the House and in Government will say that if one gives anything to a Select Committee it may leak.
  Some Committees, such as Defence, Foreign Affairs and perhaps Trade and Industry, receive information which is commercially sensitive or Government classified which is then sidelined. That enables the members of the Committee to report to the House taking into account information which is not generally available. According to the evidence of the editor of The Times, it is he who will decide, he asserts, whether something should be leaked. I do not think that he will necessarily be a very good judge of that. It is clear that information which is of assistance to Committees has to be leaked only once, or perhaps twice, for the supply of information to the Committee to dry up. Therefore, there is a serious issue which we must consider.
  This is a timed debate and I want only to make one other point about penalties. It has been suggested that the penalties which are proposed by the Privileges Committee are severe. It seems to me that they could not be more appropriate. One should say, in parenthesis, that an assumption has been made that the source of the leaks might be a Member of the House, or an official. The way in which The Times has said, "We shall not reveal our sources—it may even be an official," is discreditable. The fact is that it is not absolutely clear that there has been a leak. It may have been procured in some other way—from the United States, as someone suggested.
  Mr. McWilliam: Given what the right hon. Gentleman has just said, why did he see it as coming within his remit as Chairman of the Liaison Committee and incumbent on him to write to the Chairmen of the Select Committees suggesting that it was their duty to support the Privileges Committee report?
  Mr. Higgins: If the hon. Gentleman looks at our earlier discussions and the evidence, he will see that the Liaison Committee has recognised the importance of the issue.
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  Obviously, members of it will have to make up their own mind individually. There is no question of that. But I believe that it is right that the issue should be debated. It is a matter of great concern to the Select Committees and their Chairmen. That is not seriously in dispute.
  We on the Select Committees are trying to do a job. Leaks of Chairmen's draft reports inhibit and damage that work. There is no reason why we should facilitate the work of those who want to leak information. Therefore, there could not be a penalty more appropriate than that which is suggested by the Privileges Committee — that we should not continue to permit those responsible for this damaging exercise to continue to operate in the House in the way that they have done. The penalty is absolutely right. For the reasons that I have mentioned, it is profoundly important that the work of the Committees should not be damaged, as it has been in the case of the Environment Committee. I hope very much that the House will support the recommendations put to it by the Privileges Committee.
  11.37 pm
  Mr. Tony Benn: The issue for the House is straightforward—do we now wish to reaffirm and uphold the secrecy of Select Committee papers and punish anyone who breaches the rule? We are in one sense fortunate that the Member who did it, if it was a Member, is not known, but it follows from what the Leader of the House and the right hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) have said, that if we knew who the Member was, we would tonight be suspending a Member of Parliament for six months, thus depriving his or her constituents of the right of representation for that period.
  Mr. Robert Rhodes James: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Benn: I do not want to give way because I want to put a point that has not been made to the House so far.
  The Leader of the House properly presented his report, from which I dissented, with impeccable logic. These are the rules; they have recently been reaffirmed; the leak and the publication were breaches of the rules; therefore we have a duty to identify the culprits, and, where possible, punish them.
  You have been generous in selecting four amendments, Mr. Speaker. All agree on the principle of punishment. Amendment (a) says punish the Member of Parliament, but not the journalist. Amendment (g) says reduce the sentence to five days. That would cover the Whitsun recess. Amendment (i) says reduce the sentence to six weeks. That would bring the journalist back at the beginning of August. Amendment (j) says punish the editor, but not the journalist.
  I shall vote against all the amendments, and against the report, as I did in Committee, because I do not believe that it is right for Parliament to punish Members of Parliament who publish what they learn by virtue of their election to the House of Commons. I shall not go over my reasons in detail, but I should like to quote from the amendment that I moved in Committee, which only I supported, saying:
  "There were no grounds on which the Environment Committee could justify its decision to protect the confidentiality of its original draft report."
  When I heard the Chairman of the Committee explain that copies had gone to the group of engineers so that they could give advice, my first thought was, if engineers are

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  allowed to give advice, why cannot the public read the draft report and send in their advice to influence the Committee'? It would be better if Select Committees were to meet and deliberate in public, as the House does. If they wished to go into secret session they would ask the House for permission to do so, just as we have to vote to go into secret session if we wish to do so.
  The debate is not about defending parliamentary privilege. Let nobody be under any illusion about that. Parliamentary privilege is an essential privilege to maintain. It is a privilege to liberate Members to speak their minds. Above all, the voters have a right to know what is happening. No hon. Member who has spoken tonight, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), has ever argued about the right of the people to know what is going on. My right hon. Friend spoke as a former journalist—a man who thinks that to write a diary is obscene. Yet he supports the rights of journalists. The issue is not about journalists or about protecting Members of Parliament; it is about the right of voters to know what is happening.
  The issue is not about the freedom of the press. Members of the lobby are the most secretive lot of all. The lobby system is wholly secretive. I do not accept that the proprietor of The Times represents the little man against an oppressive Parliament. Parliament is here to represent the little man against the people such as the proprietor of The Times. Let us not be confused about the issue. It is not about Parliament and the press; it is about the right of the electors in Britain to know what is proposed, what are the arguments, and to bring pressure to bear before a decision is made. That is the only way in which Members of Parliament can be held accountable.
  Let us suppose that the Shops Bill had been discussed in secret. Does any hon. Member imagine that the outcome would have been the same? The right of the electors to bring pressure to bear is what democracy is all about. If we meet in a tight little circle and say, "We do not want anyone to know until we have reached our conclusions," we are denying the electors their right. The electors cannot exercise that right if they do not know what happened. I shall deal with the argument about consensus in moment.
  What I believe the Committee of Privileges, on which I am proud to serve, has done in making its recommendation is to misuse the idea of parliamentary privilege to suppress knowledge which the voters are entitled to have. That is my argument. Misuse by the lobby of the knowledge that it has to deny the electors their right to know is equally serious. As everyone knows, every morning the lobby goes to No. 10 and is briefed by the Prime Minister's press officer. It never puts in the newspapers, "We were told by Bernard Ingham at noon that the Prime Minister is angry with the Leader of the House." It publishes as if it has some special knowledge such as, "It is understood that in high official circles there is some anxiety about this or that development." The Lobby system leads to a conscious deception of the electors. For the lobby to appear tonight as the advocate of the public interest does not stand examination.
  When I heard what the lobby journalists said about the report of the Committee of Privileges, I was reminded of two old dinosaurs locked in combat. The misuse of privileges and the lobby system are both designed to deny the public the information it should have.
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  Those who have been Members of the House for some time know that the place works by official secrecy being breached, on a daily basis, by unofficial briefings. Everybody knows that 99 per cent. of the leaks from the Cabinet come from the Prime Minister of the day. I once angered Harold Wilson by telling him, when he criticised me, that the difference between a leak and a memoir is a matter of timing. That is absolutely correct. Ministers, officials, press officers, Members of Parliament and lobby journalists like the system. Whether one is the Prime Minister, a Back-Bench Member or an official, it is a form of news management which allows rumour, speculation, malice, information and misinformation to be fed out to the public in the guise of the marvellous lobby system under the marvellous privilege which we preserve. But it is not good for Parliament, the press or the public. If the debate justifies itself—I hope it will by rejecting the report—it may force the Committee of Privileges to do what it should have done and consider rules that people will obey, because they are sensible. I hope that it will bust the lobby system, which is equally pernicious.
  I supported the idea of Select Committees because when they were set up I thought that they would use the power of Parliament to prise information from Ministers and officials. When we pass a motion giving a departmental Select Committee the power to summon persons, papers and records, we are giving them a powerful weapon. The right hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) says, "If the information comes out, they will not tell us anything." I have never heard a more craven admission of the weakness of the right hon. Gentleman's attitude to Whitehall than the implication that, if the evidence is public, he will not get the information that he wants. I fear — I do not want to give offence — that departmental Select Committees, which were designed to prise out information, have become cosy little clubs with permanent secretaries, Ministers and the lobby knowing all about what is happening. That is the problem.
  I must confess that I was much struck by the comments of my old friend, Fred Mulley, when we were discussing leaks in the national executive, which, like Cabinet, spends most of its time discussing leaks. He said, "I have discovered a leak-proof document." We all leaned forward, and he said, "It is my weekend press release." That was typical of Fred Mulley. I do not believe in leaks. I am in favour of publication, especially on matters concerning nuclear waste. Only a week or two ago, we were being told how open we were compared with the Russians. Yet the Chairman of the Select Committee himself delayed publication for three months, because his nose was put out of joint by what appeared in The Times. He could have published that report quickly.
  Something else greatly annoys the House of Commons, and I point it out because it is time we learned some elementary truths. The House objects to the manifest truth that the law has been changed historically by people breaking it. On 18 June 1985, I put some questions to the late editor of The Times, Charles Douglas-Home. I said:
  "I think you accept that privilege, which is the law of Parliament at the moment, prohibits disclosure?"
  He replied:
  "Yes."
  Then, I said:
  "You conceive it to be your duty to assess whether such prohibition is in the public interest and if you decide to publish that is to say you think it right to break the law you take the

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  consequences and hope public opinion will support you or that Parliament will not enforce the law. Is that a correct representation of your analysis of the functions you perform?"
  He said:
  "Certainly, yes."
  Hon. Members are annoyed that so many laws have been changed because the old ones have been broken. We would not have the freedom of worship if Catholics and Protestants had not broken the various Acts of uniformity; sheep stealing would still attract capital punishment if juries had not refused to convict; atheists would never have been allowed in the House if Charles Bradlaugh had not refused to take the oath; the suffragettes would never have won votes for women if they had not broken the law. I was on the Select Committee in 1958 when the BBC was not allowed for 14 days to discuss any matter likely to come before the House of Commons. The BBC broke the law, the law was changed and the 14-day rule disappeared.
  If the House rejects the report, it will lead to new practices that are enforceable. I greatly fear that, if the House accepts the report; it will bring itself and privilege into disrepute. Privilege is necessary. I have always remembered Duncan Sandys, a Territorial officer and Member of the House who in 1938–39 got information from a fellow Territorial officer about the failure to defend London. His fellow Territorial officer was to be court-martialled. Duncan Sandys came to the House and said, "He told me this so that I could put down a question." The House upheld Duncan Sandys and the court martial against his fellow officer did not occur. That is what privilege is for. If we go ahead and vote to suppress information that should be public, we shall deny what we are here to do.
  Mr. FauldsIt is published.
  Mr. Benn: It should be made public in draft so that other people can contribute. We are here to speak up and the House has no authority whatever to silence an hon. Member or to suppress free publication. Democracy requires free publication and the electors are entitled to it. We deny it at our peril.
  11.51 pm
  Mr. Douglas Hogg: As some hon. Members may know, I have or may have an interest to declare. That interest is that my wife is currently a journalist employed by Times Newspapers Ltd., and I have worked for Times Newspapers Ltd., in the past as a libel lawyer, although I have to concede that in that capacity I was somewhat less respected. It may be that it is because of that background that I hold a passionate belief in the right of newspapers to publish the news. I also have a healthy distrust of those who seek to stop that. It is for that reason that I have put down amendment (a) which has one purpose only: to ensure that no penalty is imposed either on the newspaper or on the journalist.
  We must be clear what we are doing. We are being asked to impose a substantial penalty upon a man who has committed no offence known to statute or to common law. Moreover, we are being asked to censure actions that he performed in the ordinary course of his duties as a journalist. Worse than that, in the name of parliamentary privilege we are claiming a right to distinguish between news that ought to be published and news that ought not to be published. Whatever we do in this place, whether it
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  be in the Chamber or elsewhere in the Palace of Westminster, is of interest to the public and is therefore news.
  Can it really be right for us to try to prevent the publication of material on the grounds that it is not in the public interest to publish what most certainly the public has an interest in knowing? I find that proposition unappealing. It smacks more of the 17th century than of today and is surely not consistent with the concept of an open society in which the actions of the legislature ought to be exposed to constant and public scrutiny. Above all, it is to arrogate to ourselves a right and a privilege which are not accorded to any other political person or institution in Britain. If we are to arrogate to ourselves such a privilege, it must be justified only in terms of the most obvious and urgent public requirement.
  Unlike the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), I think there is a vital distinction between the role of a Member of Parliament and the function of a journalist. I have served on a Select Committee and I agree that it is important for members of a Select Committee to feel that they can trust their colleagues. It is important that members of a Select Committee can exchange confidences without the fear that those confidences will be disclosed to the press. A Member who breaks that confidence and leaks a document or a draft report is guilty of a profoundly dishonourable act and deserves the condemnation of the House.
  But what of the journalist who receives the confidence or is sent the draft report? Why should he be bound by the same obligations by which the Member is bound? Having failed to identify the principal offender, can it be right for us to turn around and kick the cat? A journalist does not owe a special obligation to a Select Committee, and a journalist does not owe a special obligation to any member of that Committee. His duty is different. It is to his editor, his newspaper and perhaps to his readers. I should tell my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General that a journalist's function is to publish the news, not a censored version of the news.
  I must tell my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that, for me at least, this is a matter of high importance——
  Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Hogg: The House is impatient with long speeches, and I am coming to the end. This is a matter of high importance and a principle that we should defend.
  I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey (Sir H. Rossi) that the publication of a draft report may be profoundly inconvenient—
  Sir Hugh Rossi: Misleading.
  Mr. Hogg: It may even be misleading. It may have all the consequences that are set out on pages 4 and 5 of the report, but none of those reasons is a good reason, or even the start of a good reason, for taking to ourselves the right to distinguish between news that we want to publish and news that others wish to have published. If mine is the right approach — I believe profoundly that it is — we should reject the recommendation of the Privileges Committee. I ask the House to support the amendment that I tabled, which is the only one that would ensure that no penalty was imposed on either the journalist or the newspaper.
  11.57 pm
  Mr. Ian Mikardo: I cannot recall any matter of importance coming before the House on which there has been so much ill-informed and misleading comment in the press and from others inside and outside the House as there has been on this occasion. One would think from some of the things that have been said and written that the Committee of Privileges said, "Whoopee, we have caught someone. Let us do something about it." It is as though we decided that we would examine the matter. We did not decide that. We had no option. The decision taken by the House only a few months ago required us to do this. If the House does not want this sort of thing to happen, it must go back on the decision that it made three or four months ago.
  There is a logical case for watering down or even getting rid of privilege. I agree to a large extent with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), who believes that the privilege that matters most is not our privilege, but the privilege of our constituents, to whom we are accountable. If the House turned its mind to consideration of that proposition and to altering our arrangements to fit in with that proposition, I would take an active part in that discussion. But the House has not done that. The House has laid down rules, and until it changes the rules we are all under an obligation to conform with them. They were confirmed only a short time ago by a substantial majority of the House.
  Mr. Robert Sheldon: The House should know exactly what the House passed. It is found in paragraph 14 of the second report of the Committee of Privileges in 1984–85, which states:
  "If the Committee of Privileges found that a serious breach of privilege or a contempt had been committed … the Committee might recommend that appropriate penalties be imposed."
  It says no more than that. That is why so many of us took a fairly relaxed view of it.
  Mr. Mikardo: My right hon. Friend cannot have it both ways. The House should not lay down a regimen and then, when it is deliberately breached, ignore or condone the breach. Some hon. Members have said that we are in danger of makeing asses of ourselves. We shall do that if we decide the law and then say that if it is broken, we shall ignore or condone it. That will only encourage further breaches of the law. We must decide the position one way or the other. Either we get rid of privilege or retain it, and if we do the latter we must make sure that it is not breached.
  It might be thought from some of what has been written and some of what has been said tonight—indeed, from what Mr. Evans and his editor said in their evidence to the Select Committee—that if the document had not been leaked, the report of the Committee would never have been published. It might be thought that only the leak enabled publication to take place.
  I have served on three Select Committees and been Chairman of one, and I assure the House that the members of those Committees were anxious to get the widest publication of their fundings. I do not spend, as I do now, 10 to 12 hours a week attending meetings and annotating the papers of the Foreign Affairs Committee simply to finish up with a document that is not published.
  The report of the Select Committee with which we are concerned tonight would have been published in any
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  event. The damage that occurred was the result of misinformation. A great deal of the discussion that took place after the leak was about the Chairman's dray report rather than the report of the Select Committee.
  Journalists feed on one another. Many of them write about Select Committee reports without havine, read those reports. They read what other journalists write about them, so much of the discussion in the newspapers occurs as the result of leaks.
  Even after the publication of the Select Committee report, there were articles in newspapers about what were called the contents of the report but which included items that had been in the Chairman's draft that was leaked, but which were not concluded in the final report.
  The leak did not increase public interest in the matter. As we know, if one newspaper gets a scoop the others will not touch the story with a barge pole. There is publicity in only one newspaper, whereas if the matter is dealt with properly, with a press conference when the report is pubished, there is publicity in all the newspapers. Such publicity as we got was on the basis of misinformation, with the suggestion that the report contained matters that were not, in fact, in it.
  I join those who attach great importance to the work of Select Committees. The right hon. Member for C'hesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) is strongly in favour of them—so long as somebody else does the work, and he is not alone in that sentiment.
  Reference has been made to the letter sent to hon. Members by Lobby journalists. They are opposed to the report. They would be. They are interested parties. They are fat turkeys voting for the abolition of Christmas. They are motorists who park inconsiderately voting for the abolition of traffic wardens. They scarcely exercise disinterested judgment. I have already commented on the suggestion that the early publication of the leak was of value in discussing the report. It was not. It diluted the discussion of the report.
  Then the journalists go on to make the point that has been made by right hon. and hon. Members — that, because we do not know who the major culprit is and therefore cannot punish him, we should let the other culprit go free. I wonder what the hon. Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) would think if it were suggested in a court that there were two blokes who had committed a burglary but the police had copped only one of them and therefore no charge should be entered against the other. That is a strange bit of legal philosophy.
  The next thing that our lobby journalists tell us is that the leak did not damage the work of the Committee. I wonder how they know that. They did not take part in the meetings of the Committee, did they? How do they know, without taking part in the Committee, what effect the leak had on its members? I tell you who does know: the Chairman of the Committee came and told the Committee of Privileges that the work of the Committee had Seen damaged.
  The hon. Gentleman was pressed very hard on the matter, and he will recall that nobody pressed him harder than I did. I said to him, "Look, I do not care whether you are irritated or annoyed, or your members are. What I really want to know is, did it do damage?" He was absolutely clear and specific that it did. He not only quoted that as his own view, but he also quoted to the Committee

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  of Privileges the view of another member of his Committee, who spoke in very strong terms in the way in which the work of the committee had been damaged.
  The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) is a long-standing Member of the House, and a former Minister. He is not at all an irresponsible chap. I am prepared to take his word for what happened in the Committee rather than the word of a bunch of journalists, none of whom sat in at meetings of the Committee.
  I select one other point from this letter from the lobby correspondents. They say that it was the unanimous view of the lobby, et cetera. I have had a letter from a member of the lobby, the correspondent of one of the Sunday newspapers. I will not mention his name.
  Mr. Brian Sedgemore: It sounds like Adam Raphael.
  Mr. Mikardo: I do not know how my hon. Friend reckons to know that. I will lay a shade of odds that he gets it wrong.
  I have had the letter for only a short time. In that time I have not had time to ask the writer of it for his permission to give his name, and for that reason I will not give it, although I can say that he is the lobby correspondent for one of our Sunday newspapers. He says:
  "I understand that all Members of Parliament have been sent a letter from the Parliamentary lobby journalists stating that it is the unanimous view of the lobby that it is absurd to employ punishment of the nature recommended by the Privileges Committee in the case of The Times. For what it is worth, I have never expressed a view on the matter, so it can hardly be unanimous. Nor have I ever been present at a meeting when a view was sought. Further, my personal view for what it is worth is that the law is the law is the law and that even bad laws are not changed best by breaking them."
  Bad laws can be changed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield said and have been changed, by breaking them; but that is a method of last resort, and we ought not to condone as standard practice things that should be methods of last resort. I support the view of the Committee.
  12.9 am
  Mr. David Harris: I am particularly happy to follow the hon. Member for Bow and Poplar (Mr. Mikardo) because I agree with much of what he said. As perhaps the only former chairman of the lobby ever to become a Member of the House, which some might think a dubious distinction, I am tempted to follow the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) into various culs-de-sac, particularly on the standing, etiquette and practice of the lobby. However, I shall resist that.
  The House is not debating, as I understand it, whether we should change the rules of privilege. If we pass the amendment in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg), I suspect that that is exactly what we shall do because, as had already been said, if we impose no penalty, it will be open house and we can forget the rules of privilege. That might be a good thing. I am not entirely convinced by some of the arguments used by my right hon. and hon. Friends in defence of the rules of privilege on the relationships of Select Committees with the press. I speak not only as a journalist but as a member of a Select Committee. I think that too much has been made of the need for privilege to safeguard the good workings of Select Committees.
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  However, that is not the real issue before us. As the hon. Member for Bow and Poplar rightly said, we have the rule of privilege. The question is whether we should now uphold it.
  Therefore, I turn my attention to some of the views of The Times and the justification advanced by the editor of The Times and of one of his political correspondents in challenging the rule of privilege of the House. I was not impressed by their evidence. I do not regard this as a great battle for press freedom; I do not see it like that. As has been said by many people, the truth was that The Times saw a good story and wanted to publish it before anybody else had it. That sums it up. There might be nothing wrong with that so long as The Times was prepared to face up to the consequences of breaking the rules of this place at the same time as it wanted its privileges.
  A newspaper cannot have it both ways. In my former life as a lobby correspondent for a national newspaper I was frequently telephoned by the night news desk saying that another newspaper had broken the rules. I always refused to break the rules myself. I said to my newspaper, "If you want to do it, do it, but withdraw me from the lobby because it is dishonest to try to have it both ways."
  We come to the question of penalties. For the reasons which I have given, I believe that a penalty should be imposed. However, the penalty of six months' suspension is too severe. Is it too late for the hon. Member who leaked the report—because I think it was an hon. Member—to stand up and admit it? If the culprit had been identified, would the House have suspended him or her for six months? I doubt it, for the reasons given by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield. I think that the House would have taken the view that that would be too long to deprive that Member's constituents of his services, unless the Member chose to resign, which might be the honourable thing to do. I do not know; I pass no judgment.
  I think that a suspension of six months would have been considered too great a penalty to impose on the prime culprit. Therefore, it is wrong to impose such a penalty on the other person who is just as guilty in many ways but who is not the prime culprit. I tabled amendment (i) because I thought that a suspension of six weeks was probably the right length of time. I do not claim any special merit for six weeks, but it would show that, so long as we have the rule of privilege, the House treats it seriously and that we are not prepared to let the people run amok and cock a snook at the House. That was what The Times set out to do. I believe that the penalty of six weeks is about right, and I commend my amendment to the House.
  12.14 am
  Mr. Michael Cocks: I sense that hon. Members would like to reach a conclusion on this matter, so I will be brief. It is most agreeable to be able to share the reservations of my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) about the Committee's report, although unusually I would not walk hand in hand with him all the way on the matter.
  I find it objectionable that we are tonight intending to punish a journalist and a newspaper for a breach of trust by an hon. Member. Until recently I had the honour and the privilege to serve my party in the House in what are known as the usual channels for a long time and I know that the whole process depends on trust. I believe that the present position is very regrettable. The penalties that have

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  been proposed do not meet the case because they are far too heavy. However, I think that there must be penalties. They are necessary to protect the privileges of the House which have been built up so elaborately. It is very easy to destroy traditions and values, but it is extremely hard to establish them.
  I am unhappy with the behaviour of the staff of The Times involved in this matter, as they have refused to exonerate the staff of the House from any complicity in the leak. The Times staff are in a favoured position in this place and the staff of the House have a great responsibility and a unique role to play. Unlike hon. Members, they cannot defend or look after themselves in the cut and thrust of debate. The staff of The Times have been irresponsible and their behaviour is regrettable.
  We should think very seriously about the penalties. We are dealing with a system of Select Committees that has been set up only very recently. Some people had misgivings about their structure and, although great tributes have been paid to them, there are still some deficiencies. Some Committees work better than others. It is a new system and the problem we are discussing now will crop up again and the House should reflect on how best to deal with it.
  The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend—and I say that in a personal capacity — the Member for Monmouth (Sir J. Stradling Thomas) and myself would reduce the loss of privileges to five days. That seems to strike a balance between the needs of the House to do something and to avoid a disproportionate penalty which would not serve the interests of the House, the press or the people. We have not so far in the debate referred to the nature of the issue involved with the leak, which was the disposal of radioactive waste. In the light of what has happened since the leak occurred, the Chernobyl disaster, the public would misunderstand if we were to impose swingeing penalties tonight. I would commend my amendment to the House as a compromise between inertia and showing the House's displeasure but not in such a way as to be punitive.
  12.18 am
  Mr. Cranley Onslow: It is always a pleasure to listen to the right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) and I hope that he will not take it amiss if I say that this has, in some ways, been an unsatisfactory debate. I say that not because I found his speech unsatisfactory, but I believe that this debate is rather like Hamlet without the prince. The debate has been difficult to focus because of the absence of the really guilty party.
  Mr. Geoffrey Dickens: He is here.
  Mr. Onslow: Whether here he is absent or silent, the debate has been difficult because of our inability to turn our attention on the hon. Member or other person who is responsible in the first place for the leak and the breach of privilege that flows from that.
  I cannot go along the lines advocated by my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) that we should not punish a journalist merely for doing his job simply because the real guilty party cannot be identified. I do not know how my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham defines a journalist's job. Although there is nothing heroic about
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  that job, and although it is undesirable that we should make martyrs of them, we should not necessarily take them on their own estimation.
  In this case, there seem to be factors which journalists who have given evidence to the Select Committee on Privileges do not see in the same light as the House and others outside. The question that has been begged throughout is what is meant by the words, "public interest"? In answer to question 12, Mr. Wilson said:
  "My main reason for publishing it was its public interest. I felt that public interest in this subject was paramount".
  In other words, he felt that his readers wanted to know. He did not think in terms which most of us think in when we use the words, "the public interest", meaning that there is a broad national matter of policy which has to be addressed. The editor of The Times thought in terms of his paper, his proprietor, perhaps, and his readers. That is confirmed by his answer to question 18. When the second special report of the Select Committee came into his hands through another leak, the story was written by Mr. Evans who said:
  "the decision was taken not to use it, probably quite rightly, because that was not in the public interest."
  When the editor answered the same question, he explained himself in these terms:
  "I read the story and said, 'I see no public interest in this.' I felt there was no point in flouting or waving a red flag at an albeit dormant bull for an item that was not of sufficient public interest or for which there was no other reason for publication."
  Mr. Wilson is quite clearly using the words, "public interest" in terms of what people want to see in The Times. I do not take the view that that is the only, the right or the broad definition of the phrase, "the public interest".
  There has been some misunderstanding and ambivalence which I find most unfortunate and which seems to shed some light on the standards of the editor and one lobby journalist of The Times. They define everything in terms of whether it is in the interests of The Times. That being so, we must take some action, but what action is appropriate depends on the gravity of the offence and its effects. The leak did not damage the taking of evidence by the Select Committee, as that had been done. If the leak had had some effect which prevented the Committee from making a proper and thorough inquiry which Parliament had charged it with, that would have been a most serious matter. If the leak had brought into the public domain evidence which had been given in confidence in private, that would have been a serious matter.
  The leak has had some effect, which we cannot quantify, on the report. The Select Committee would have produced it anyway, but in a form which, according to its Chairman—we have to accept his word for this—would probably have been different. It is impossible to say what differences there would have been, but there was an interference of some kind. The Times was evidently reckless of the possibility that the leak would cause such an interference. That cannot go wholly without remark. There must be a penalty. We must ask whether the recommendation of the Privileges Select Committee is appropriate or whether something lesser would more nearly meet the case.
  Without being disrespectful to the members of the Privileges Select Committee, I think that something lesser would meet the case, although I would not go quite as far as the right hon. Member for Bristol, South. I side with my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris).

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  There is here something of which the House must take notice. The evidence that Select Committee reports are prone to leak is now overwhelming. This sort of occurrence is likely to happen again, and the evidence to that effect is overwhelming, so we had better do something about it. The Select Committee on Procedure had better look at the matter, and decide what changes need to be made in the format of the preparatory work on the Chairman's report, whether in all cases it should be kept so secret as it has been in the past, whether the Committee should be allowed some discretion in the matter or whatever is appropriate. I do not believe that we can in all conscience continue as we are, knowing that leaks are likely to happen, and how much damage they can do if they recur.
  12.25 am
  Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The House finds itself obliged tonight to come to a decision which will be momentous in the future for the effectiveness of its proceedings, for it relies and always has relied to a considerable extent on the information and advice which is tendered to it as a result of the work of the Select Committees which it establishes. In turn, that work is essentially dependent on the confidentiality of deliberation which those Committees enjoy.
  The right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Sir I. Gilmour) said, in one sense correctly, that hon. Members are the same people when they sit in this House and when they serve on a Select Committee, but in another and important sense they are different people on a Select Committee. They gain a certain personality and perform a function which cannot be performed in the open House. A Select Committee by its very behaviour provides for the House the composite result of the candid deliberation of hon. Members of different experience and points of view who have listened to the evidence and have, so to speak, lived together, studying the evidence and comparing their respective opinions on it. It is that with which Select Committees serve the House. They cannot do so if members of those Committees are, in effect, in public offering their advice to colleagues, particularly if the basic material of their work, which is and is bound to be the draft report of the Chairman, has become a public document.
  It simply is not fair or reasonable to expect hon. Members to pool their opinions and to risk the expression of candid views, as they need to do in a Select Committee, if they cannot be sure that their confidentiality is protected. For that reason it has been the rule of the House that, whatever may be the case with the evidence taken, Select Committees have a right to confidentiality and privacy of debate and deliberation among themselves. I was greatly reinforced in that opinion by the view to that effect expressed firmly tonight by the right hon. Member for Blaenau, Gwent (Mr. Foot). Our only difference is that he believes that confidentiality can exist without protection and I believe that it is a fiction, unless the House defends confidentiality, which its Select Committees need to possess. It cannot defend that confidentiality unless a breach of it is published, and unless it is known that it will be punished.
  There are several forms of breach of that confidentiality. There is the breach that can be committed by an hon. Member who sits on a Select Committee, but there is the
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  more essential breach which is committed by the publication of what has passed or been placed before a Select Committee. Therefore, despite the fact that we are not aware whether or by whom on the Committee the information was disclosed, we are not entitled to address our attention to the publication of the information put before the Select Committee. Unless the House proceeds to protect confidentiality by punishing publication, in effect we are deciding tonight that we shall deprive our Select Committees of the opportunity of confidential debate and consultation.
  It would be better—this was usefully brought out by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn)—and fairer for all concerned to say that, in future, all proceedings of all Select Committees are to be public. The public and the press can come in and hear what every member of the Committee says. That will be the effect, only arrived at by an unfair and fortuitous process, if tonight we do not accept the recommendation of the Select Committee on Privileges.
  We need what our Select Committees can give us by using the confidentiality and the privacy of consultation and discussion. The House can have the benefit of that service, on which it has so long depended, only if we defend that confidentiality. We can only do that by punishing, and by being seen to be ready severely to punish, breach of confidentiality in the form of publications.
  12.30 am
  Sir Philip Goodhart: I do not always agree with every word that the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) says. but on this occasion I do.
  There can be no doubt that Richard Evans is a first-class reporter, and there can also be no doubt that his expertise in getting leaks from Select Committees led directly to the prolonged study of the issue by the Select Committee on Privileges. The Committee, after hearing evidence from editors and lobby correspondants and from Chairmen of Select Committees, decided by 12 votes to one—the majority included the Leader of the Liberal party—that the rules of privilege should be maintained, and that the procedures should be strengthened in certain cases.
  Without any doubt, this decision by the Committee, which was then endorsed by the House, put The Times in a difficult position. It could give up the task of trying to extract information from the Select Committees. I do not think that it would be reasonable to expect that The Times should behave in such a manner. The Times also had the option of presenting the information that it had obtained in a more circumspect manner than hitherto.
  The story that has caused all this trouble was published on Monday 16 December, with the single most important item being the suggestion that the thermal oxide reprocessing plant at Sellafield was defective, and would be scrapped unless the financial and employment consequences were too enormous. It is arguable that this was information that should rapidly be put in the public domain, and it could be done without compromising the Select Committee on the Environment.
  The third option that was available to The Times was to take the recommendations of the Select Committee head on and try to smash them. To my mind, there is no doubt that this is what The Times tried to do. On 16 March, Mr. Richard Evans said that a copy of the confidential report had been obtained by The Times. Nothing could be more

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  flagrant or more open than that. He is putting on a banner the fact that he has chosen effectively to breach the rules of privilege. Therefore, the question is whether or not the House of Commons should respond and what should be done about Mr. Richard Evans. Should action be taken against this individual?
  I note that, among Mr. Evans' many talents, he is a first-class golfer. On occasion he has turned out for the Lords and Commons golf side. I hope that in the months to come he will do so again. I do not understand all the rules of golf, but I know that one of the rules is that one is allowed to have only 14 clubs in one's bag. If Mr. Evans went along to one of the parliamentary matches and said, "Look, I have 17 clubs in my bag", he would expect to incur some penalty. That is what he has done to the House.
  Whether or not we should stick to the six months' suspension is doubtful. Personally, as an old Telegraph man, I am inclined to side with the amendment of another old Telegraph man, my hon. Friend the Member for St. Ives (Mr. Harris), and would suggest that six weeks is long enough. However, I have absolutely no doubt that, if we take no action at all, we shall be treated with contempt and that we shall deserve to be treated with contempt.
  12.41 am
  Mr. Robert Sheldon: One of the interesting aspects of the speeches of the hon. Members for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi) and for Woolwich (Mr. Cartwright) is that they have highlighted the fact that there are leaks all over the place. This is the House of Commons that we know. We have to learn to deal with it as we know it rather than try to pretend that it is something different.
  I have been a member of three Select Committees, the Chairman of a couple of Sub-Committees and the Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee. My experience is quite different from that of the right hon. Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) and of the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green. The difficulty is to establish the identity of the person who leaks. That is the most important question.
  Again and again I have witnessed the ritual condemnation by the Chairman of a leaker. Everybody is hushed when they listen to it and everybody condemns it; and the second person to condemn it is usually the person who made the leak. We live side by side with each other in a Select Committee and usually we have a pretty good idea of who the leaker is. I should be surprised if that did not apply to the Select Committee on the Environment.
  The question is why information is divulged. It is not because of a bribe, which used to be the problem in the 1940s. The political career of the person concerned may be improved by having friendly relations with certain lobby journalists. Some members of a Select Committee may be anxious to brush aside secrecy and to have a more open debate, a matter to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) referred. Certain members of Select Committees may also hope to achieve certain political aims.
  One of the problems is that, although the fingerprints of the leaker are well known, what does one do when he does not own up? Because a person has to have his or her name attached to a story in the press, that makes it easy for the leaker; and as we have a House of Commons of
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  right hon. and hon. Members, we assume that they are still honourable even when they do not divulge the matters that they have leaked.
  Mr. David Winnick: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if in this case an hon. Member has leaked he will not own up, because he has aggravated the offence by saying to the Select Committee on the Environment that he did not leak? Every member of that Committee, as I understand it, has written to the Chairman to say that he did not leak, so there is no possibility in this case of the person concerned owning up.
  Mr. Sheldon: No, of course there is not. That is the world in which we have to live. To put the journalist in a special category because his name has to go on the article that he writes when the major culprit goes unpunished make us look extremely hypocritical. That worries me more than anything.
  It is not as if we are looking at really secret matters. In my experience, the really secret matters are not leaked. In my Committee we deal with confidential and secret matters and I have known that in a number of other Committees, but those documents are not leaked. It is always those which have no secret connotations, no commercial confidentialities or anything of that kind.
  Therefore, we need to look at this matter with a little more restraint. Members used to cultivate the press and, of course, the press cultivates Members. That will continue whatever we say or do here. As long as we can say, as we are able to say, that the Committees operate in an atmosphere where there is no leakage of really important matters concerning our country and industry, perhaps we should calm down and take things a little more easily.
  How does the Committee prepare its report? If it is really impeded, this would be serious. My experience is that there is always a great deal of give and take. Everyone realises the advantages of unanimity on a report because if it is unanimous it is more likely to be heeded—not very much more likely but a little. Therefore, Members do not expect too much from their report but think cf it as a service to the House. As a result, they act together and decide what they can agree.
  I would have been astonished if I was Chairman of a Committee and felt myself seriously inconvenienced. Of course, I respect the views of the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green, but I must give my experience. I would have been able to ride it out without feeling that my report would be gravely damaged.
  How will we get hold of the person who leaked the report — bring in the special branch or use spurious devices? All of these matters are an inconvenience. We rely a great deal on trust. However, we know full well that for one reason or another we cannot always claim that trust and confidence. I believe that it is sensible that we should calm down. The work of the Select Committees will continue and it will be to our advantage. Let us leave it at that.
  12.43 am
  Mrs. Sally Oppenheim: During the debate a number of right hon. and hon. Members have, by inference, represented the Privileges Committee as some kind of pompous hanging and flogging body which is paranoid about secrecy. At this stage in the debate we

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  should ask ourselves whether there is a certain amount of pompousity in an editor of a newspaper who decides that it is in the "public interest" or, as the journalist and editor in this case said, in the interest of obtaining changes and influencing the industry, to publish leaked material on the basis of a draft document when they have not heard any of the evidence or attended any of the meetings.
  Are there not double standards about the person who maintains that he or she can purvey the leak but must be provided with absolute secrecy by the journalist because suddenly confidentiality and secrecy become very important?
  The hon. Member for Bow and Poplar (Mr. Mikardo) provided a tour de force in the debate. However, I have one little dispute with his analogy of two burglars being caught. I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham (Mr. Hogg) that a more correct analogy would be the difference between the punishment of the receiver of stolen goods and the burglar. I believe that the receiver of stolen goods is punished to a greater extent than the burglar if he is caught and brought before the courts.
  Mr. Michael Meadowcroft: Is there not a strange paradox, in that there is a third burglar, in a sense—Large and Associates, which received the draft and used it to promote amendments to the Committee? As I understand it, the Chairman of the Select Committee argues that one of the key reasons why he wanted the matter to be dealt with was that it affected the deliberations of the Select Committee. Surely those amendments did so. We know that culprit. Why is that culprit not before the Privileges Committee as well?
  Mrs. Oppenheim: The Privileges Committee has considered every aspect, including that point. It has been said several times by right hon. and hon. Members that it is the confidentiality of evidence given that is of importance to the Select Committees, and that there will be a lack of confidence among those providing evidence to the Select Committees. In fact, that lack of confidence already exists and is already damaging the Select Committee system.
  I have never been an aficionado of the Select Committee system, but we have it, and, if we have it, we should protect it. If the House votes tonight to take away the little protection that our Select Committees have, it will be voting to open the doors as wide as possible. It will be inviting people to leak; it will be inviting journalists to receive those stolen goods; and it will be a bad day for the House of Commons and the country.
  12.46 am
  Mr. Gerald Bermingham: I speak as a member of a Select Committee which has been known for its leaks in the past, but it is also a Select Committee that I do not think will wither and die simply because people are not banned from the House of Commons because of what they have done in the course of their employment.
  That Select Committee is not always unanimous. We tend to argue among ourselves. I believe that if Select Committees develop and grow to fruition in the years ahead, it will be simply because they argue among themselves and produce one, two or three reports at the end of the day.
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  Let us be realistic about what we are talking about. For example, when Tisdall or Ponting leaked documents, it was not the newspaper that was prosecuted, but them. In the Select Committee, apparently we have two leakers. One was honourable and said to the Chairman. "I wrote off for advice." The other was dishonourable and hid wherever he or she—perhaps it is not a member of the Committee—wished to hide. Yet we seek to ban the journalist. It is not the knife that we should prosecute, but the hand that held it.
  I respect the journalist, and make no bones about it. I have known Richard Evans since I first came here. and like him very much. I respect him for not disclosing his source. Time and again, journalists have risked going to prison for not disclosing their source. That is a matter of honour. It is a tragedy that whoever told Richard Evans does not have the same honour.
  I have great respect for my right hon. Friend the Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Mr. Shore), as I have great respect for the Leader of the House, but the analogy of this whole business to a jury trial makes a farce of the issue. If this is a jury trial of one Richard Evans, two things are absent. One is the words of Richard Evans. Do we condemn, do we cast a man out of his job, without giving him a right to reply here? The other point is that it is the first time in history that the prosecution and its witnesses have formed part of the jury.
  So let us put the matter aside. Perhaps hon. Members will learn one lesson from tonight, that if one wants to make a point, if one wants to give a document, at least one should have the courage to put one's mame to it. It gives some respectability to what one does. The House must accept that, no matter what happens tonight, the Select Committee system will continue. It will grow, if hon. Members want it to do so. I commend amendment (a) to the House. I hope that the House will support it.
  12.50 am
  Sir Edward Gardner: I agree with the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) that this is a momentous debate and that it will probably have a profound effect on the future and efficacy of Select Committees. The report which the House has been asked to approve tonight deals with two closely related but very different aspects of parliamentary privilege. One aspect is that of parliamentary privilege itself. There has been no dispute or debate tonight that what has been done by The Times was a breach of parliamentary privilege.
  It is the second aspect that gives one cause for disquiet—namely, what penalty is regarded by the House as the proper one to be imposed? It would be easy to be dogmatic and to accept what the Committee of Privileges has recommended. There is no disrespect to any party in questioning the propriety and the justice of the penalty, any more than it is disrespectful and improper to question, after a conviction has been found in a court, what the penalty should be.
  The most disquieting aspect of the debate is the absence of any readiness by the member of the Committee—if it was a member of the Committee—to own up to what occurred. That is particularly offensive, when one bears in mind the fact that the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Environment took the trouble, as he was required to do by the new rules, to insist on a formal written assurance by the Member that he was not responsible for

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  any leak. One must bear in mind that that was the person who handed to the journalist the document which was ultimately published.
  We are entitled to ask: who is to blame—the tempter or the tempted? I think that both are to blame. If we had the information, which we do not have, about who leaked the report, we might take a different view about the punishment that should be apportioned between the journalist and the original leaker.
  My anxiety about the severity of the punishment is shared by many right hon. and hon. Members. It was certainly shared by the Chairman of the Environment Committee because he, with others put down an amendment which would allow us to select a less severe punishment. I do not suggest that that could be done. However, I say in all earnestness that we must beware that we do not remove the protection that Select Committees must have if they are to carry out their duties.
  I did not like—and I do not think the House would have liked — the evidence that was given by the journalist and the editor of The Times to the Committee of Privileges, because it seemed to me—I do not think that I am misreading it—that there was an implicit threat to do again what has been done in the past. It is right that the House should take all the steps available to it to prevent that.
  12.54 am
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I have two minutes in which to speak. I believe that the House will commit a grave error of judgment if it takes any action against Mr. Richard Evans. I have been present in the Chamber during the two previous debates on this matter in the past two months. They were poorly attended. They dealt with the report of the Select Committee of Privileges which was published in July last year. It made two recommendations — first, that a Liaison Committee should be set up between the complaining Select Committee and the Privileges Committee to filter references about Members' actions and, secondly, that action should be taken against journalists.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and I divided the House. On the first occasion, we failed, as did the Government. Few Members were in the House that night. On the second occasion, the Government won, but only because Government Members were whipped. The effect was to introduce into our rules a recommendation which we knew in advance would end up in this debate. We make a mockery of Parliament.
  I voted against the motion because of my long-standing interest in the confidentiality of Select Committees. I have spent the past 15 months in the Public Accounts Committee behind closed doors, arguing about these matters in the belief that it is wrong for Select Committees, particularly the Public Accounts Committee, to retain documents which are not reported to the House and not allow members of the public and the press access to them. We intend to press on with the campaign. I believe that journalists have a right of access. But it only goes so far. Too much paper work is held in select Committees as unreported evidence and it should be made available. But it is wrong that a draft report should be leaked. The document has no status and Members have not had time to amend it formally. If a Member in his or her stupidity decides to leak that document, the journalist who receives
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  it is free to do what he wishes with it and his editor is free to publish. The sin is the sin of the Member. It is not the sin of the journalist.
  12.57 am
  Mr. Biffen: I have not trespassed on the time of the House, but it may be appropriate if I use the closing few minutes to bring our proceedings to a relatively orderly close.
  My right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Mr. Higgins) believed that the character of the debate was such that individual contributions could affect its outcome. Undoubtedly, that is true. It has been in every sense a House of Commons evening. The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) believed that we were on the threshold of a momentous decision. I do not know whether I would elevate the occasion to quite that extent, but there is no doubt that this matter concerns the future working of the House and of its Select Committees.
  I should like to make four brief points. First, as the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has reminded us, we have only recently set down the ground rules of privilege affecting Select Committees. We are not., therefore, dealing with some encrusted inheritance from the last century. It is a matter of the Privileges Committee operating within the requirements of the House of the most recent vintage.
  Secondly, the House must address itself to the fundamental problem of whether or not conventions should exist which would encourage a consensual approach to the work of Select Committees. Thirdly, there could be no more dramatic and opposite views than those expressed by the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Sir H. Rossi). Fourthly, if we believe that penalties are appropriate I hope that we will not take refuge in believing that token penalties will have an influence upon the subsequent course of events. Either the decision is worth taking or else it is worth ignoring.
  In all parts of the House there is a great desire that we should have had the occasion to identify the person responsible for this leak. To that end we have not been aided by the refusal of The Times newspaper. That is in contrast to what happened with The Economist where it was made quite clear that the leak came from a member of the Committee. The debate has illumined the nature of our choice. Let the House now decide.
  It being One o'clock, MR. SPEAKER proceeded, pursuant to the Order [16 May], to put the Questions necessary to dispose of the motion relating to privileges.
  Amendment (a) proposed, to leave out from 'House' to end and add
  'takes note of the First Report of the Committee of Privileges (House of Commons Paper No. 376); believes that it would be proper to punish an honourable Member who disclosed the draft report of a Select Committee before it had been reported to the House: but considers that it would be wrong to punish a journalist merely for doing his job.'.—[Mr. Douglas Hogg.]
  Question put, That the amendment be made:—
  The House divided: Ayes 158, Noes 124.

  Division No. 190]

  [1 am

  AYES

  Aitken, Jonathan

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

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Batiste, Spencer

  Ancram, Michael

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Arnold, Tom

  Beckett, Mrs Margaret

  Ashdown, Paddy

  Beith, A. J.

  331

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

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Lester, Jim

  Blair, Anthony

  Lilley, Peter

  Boothroyd, Miss Betty

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Loyden, Edward

  Bottomley, Peter

  McDonald, Dr Oonagh

  Boyes, Roland

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Brinton, Tim

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  MacKay, John (Argyll & Bute)

  Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)

  Maclean, David John

  Brown, M. (Brigg & Cl'thpes)

  McLoughlin, Patrick

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

  McNamara, Kevin

  Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

  McWilliam, John

  Bruce, Malcolm

  Madden, Max

  Bruinvels, Peter

  Malone, Gerald

  Burt, Alistair

  Marek, Dr John

  Caborn, Richard

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Campbell-Savours, Dale

  Mather, Carol

  Cartwright, John

  Maude, Hon Francis

  Cash, William

  Maxton, John

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Meacher, Michael

  Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

  Mellor, David

  Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)

  Merchant, Piers

  Crouch, David

  Miller, Hal (B'grove)

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

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

  Moynihan, Hon C.

  Dewar, Donald

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  O'Neill, Martin

  Dobson, Frank

  Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

  Douglas, Dick

  Parry, Robert

  Dubs, Alfred

  Patten, Christopher (Bath)

  Durant, Tony

  Patten, J. (Oxf W & Abgdn)

  Eggar, Tim

  Raffan, Keith

  Evans, John (St. Helens N)

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Fallon, Michael

  Raynsford, Nick

  Fatchett, Derek

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Favell, Anthony

  Robertson, George

  Fisher, Mark

  Robinson, G. (Coventry NW)

  Fletcher, Alexander

  Rooker, J. W.

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

  Forth, Eric

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Foulkes, George

  Silkin, Rt Hon J.

  Fraser, Peter (Angus East)

  Smith, Cyril (Rochdale)

  Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald

  Spencer, Derek

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Stern, Michael

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)

  Gorst, John

  Strang, Gavin

  Gow, Ian

  Straw, Jack

  Greenway, Harry

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Grist, Ian

  Terlezki, Stefan

  Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

  Thatcher, Rt Hon Mrs M.

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

  Hancock, Michael

  Thompson, Donald (Calder V)

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)

  Harvey, Robert

  Tracey, Richard

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Trippier, David

  Hayes, J.

  Trotter, Neville

  Haynes, Frank

  van Straubenzee, Sir W.

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Wainwright, R.

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Hordern, Sir Peter

  Waller, Gary

  Howard, Michael

  Wareing, Robert

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

  Warren, Kenneth

  Howells, Geraint

  Wheeler, John

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Hunt, David (Wirral W)

  Wilson, Gordon

  Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Hillh'd)

  Winnick, David

  Johnston, Sir Russell

  Wrigglesworth, Ian

  Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

  Yeo, Tim

  Key, Robert

  Knox, David

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Latham, Michael

  Mr. Gerald Bermingham and Mr. George Gardiner.

  Lawler, Geoffrey

  332

  NOES

  Alexander, Richard

  Knowles, Michael

  Alton, David

  Lewis, Terence (Worsley)

  Ashby, David

  Lightbown, David

  Atkins, Rt Hon Sir H,

  Lloyd, Ian (Havant)

  Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Bagier, Gordon A. T.

  Lord, Michael

  Baldry, Tony

  McCurley, Mrs Anna

  Bell, Stuart

  McGuire, Michael

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  MacKenzie, Rt Hon Gregor

  Benyon, William

  McNair-Wilson, M. (N'bury)

  Best, Keith

  Martin, Michael

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Mates, Michael

  Body, Sir Richard

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Brown, Ron (E'burgh, Leith)

  Meadowcroft, Michael

  Browne, John

  Michie, William

  Bryan, Sir Paul

  Mikardo, Ian

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Callaghan, Rt Hon J.

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Callaghan, Jim (Heyw'd & M)

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Nellist, David

  Chapman, Sydney

  Neubert, Michael

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Norris, Steven

  Clarke, Thomas

  Onslow, Cranley

  Clay, Robert

  Oppenheim, Rt Hon Mrs S.

  Clegg, Sir Walter

  Page, Sir John (Harrow W)

  Clelland, David Gordon

  Page, Richard (Herts SW)

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Patchett, Terry

  Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)

  Penhaligon, David

  Conlan, Bernard

  Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Cope, John

  Pike, Peter

  Corbett, Robin

  Pollock, Alexander

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Portillo, Michael

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.

  Powell, Rt Hon J. E.

  Dover, Den

  Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)

  du Cann, Rt Hon Sir Edward

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Eadie, Alex

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Eastham, Ken

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Sainsbury, Hon Timothy

  Eyre, Sir Reginald

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Fairbairn, Nicholas

  Sheldon, Rt Hon R.

  Faulds, Andrew

  Shields, Mrs Elizabeth

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Foster, Derek

  Silvester, Fred

  Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)

  Sims, Roger

  Godman, Dr Norman

  Speed, Keith

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Ground, Patrick

  Stott, Roger

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Stradling Thomas, Sir John

  Harris, David

  Taylor, Rt Hon John David

  Havers, Rt Hon Sir Michael

  Taylor, John (Solihull)

  Heddle, John

  Thomas, Rt Hon Peter

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

  Hind, Kenneth

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N)

  Wallace, James

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Jackson, Robert

  Watts, John

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Wells, Bowen (Hertford)

  Jones, Robert (Herts W)

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Williams, Rt Hon A.

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Woodall, Alec

  Kennedy, Charles

  Kershaw, Sir Anthony

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Mr. Ivan Lawrence and Mr. Nigel Spearing.

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Main Question, as amended, agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That this House takes note of the First Report of the Committee of Privileges (House of Commons Paper No. 376); believes that it would be proper to punish an honourable Member who disclosed the draft report of a Select Committee before it had been reported to the House; but considers that it would be wrong to punish a journalist merely for doing his job.

  PETITION

    Plessey (Takeover)
    1.12 am
    Mr. Jim Lester: I beg to ask leave to present a petition on behalf of the employees of the Plessey factory in my constituency. This is the first of a series of petitions from the employees of Plessey factories throughout the United Kingdom. The petitioners object to the takeover by General Electric plc of the company. They fear for their jobs, for research and for the creation of a monopoly. The prayer of the petition states;
    "We, your Petitioners, ask your honourable House to urge the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to take all such steps as are open to him to prevent"
    the said takeover.
    To lie upon the Table.

  Cyprus
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Malone.]
  1.13 am
  Mr. John David Taylor: We have had an excellent day of debates and, though the hour is late, it is nevertheless, important for us to address our minds to the question of the island of Cyprus, and I use the term "island of Cyprus" advisedly.
  Cyprus is once again in the news. We have recently had the new recommendations of the Secretary-General of the United Nations for a settlement in the island between the Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot communities.
  This is an island that I know well, and I immediately declare my interest in it. I first went there in 1972 when, on the advice of a Greek Cypriot friend, I purchased a small cottage near Kyrenia, which at that time was governed by the Greek Cypriot Government. I have been there every year for the last 14 years and have seen government under the Greek Cypriots and, as is now the case in northern Cyprus, under the Turkish Cypriot Administration.
  Cyprus is important to us in the United Kingdom for many reasons. First, because we are a guarantor power under the treaty of independence for the Republic of Cyprus. Together with Turkey and Greece, we in the United Kingdom share that responsibility. Secondly, of course, we have two sovereign bases on the island of Cyprus, one entirely surrounded by Greek Cypriot territory and the other, Dhekelia, mainly surrounded by Turkish Cypriot territory.
  Cyprus is, of course, a member of the British commonwealth of nations — the Commonwealth as we now call it. It is significant that at the time of the wedding of the Prince of Wales and Princess Diana, both the Greek and Turkish Cypriot Administrations, within the Commonwealth state of Cyprus, produced their own special postage stamps to commemorate that event.
  There is a large British permanent resident community in southern and northern Cyprus. The British resident community in northern Cyprus has been increasing during the past few years. The subject is now of international interest, and of special interest to the United Kingdom.
  The past 23 years, since 1963, have been sad years for that island, and 1963 saw attacks upon the Turkish Cypriot minority. In 1974, we saw the Greek inspired coup against the legitimate president of the Republic of Cyprus, Archbishop Makarios, followed by the intervention of one of the guarantor powers, Turkey, without the co-operation of the United Kingdom.
  Since then there have been many well-meaning efforts to bring about peace between the two communities in that island. Perhaps, coming from Ireland, I have greater experience and knowledge of the obvious difficulties in bringing together two communities in an island to work for the betterment of their entire community.
  In 1974, there was a coup against the Government of Cyprus. Following the division of the island at that time, there was in 1977 a meeting between Archbishop Makarios and the leader of the Turkish Cyoriot community, Mr. Rauf Denktas. At that time there was progress. The leadership of the Greek Cypriot community accepted that Turkish Cypriots were another community

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  that had to be respected as equal citizens on that island, and that a bi-zonal arrangement was probably the best way forward for the islanders.
  Subsequently, as we know, Archbishop Makarios died and there followed various initiatives from the United Nations. First, there were the 1981 Waldheim evaluations, which were not successful. Then in 1983 there were the first Perez de Cuellar indicators, which were not successful. Most significant of all, in 1985, the first draft agreement was proposed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Pérez de Cuellar. The broad guidelines were accepted by the Turkish Cypriot community, but unfortunately they were rejected by President Kyprianou, the leader of the Greek Cypriot community.
  Once again the United Nations, with the encouragement of those in the West, decided to look again at these proposals to see whether there was any room for movement, to bring about further compromise in Cyprus between the two bitterly divided communities in that island.
  Just recently a draft framework agreement, which is really an amendment to last year's proposals from the Secretary-General, has been produced. It is an overall package; it is not possible to accept part of it and reject the other part. Although there are some aspects of the agreement that are unpleasant for the Turkish Cypriots, they have accepted the broad package. Unfortunately, the Greek Cypriots have raised four problems and have invited the Secretary-General to arrange an international conference involving the main nations such as Russia and the United States to decide upon the factors, or a meeting between the heads of the different communities in Cyprus to discuss the issue.
  Understandably, it is difficult for the Turkish Cypriots to entertain the idea of an international conference because in such a setting they would merely be sitting on the back benches while the Greek Cypriots, being recognised as the international representatives of the island, would be at the main table along with the United Kingdom, Greece, Turkey, Russia and any other nations that were involved in the conference. Therefore, the Turkish Cypriot community would not have equal status at such a meeting. One can see why they are not prepared to accept that proposal.
  If this agreement does not succeed — and it seems that it may not—time will be running out in Cyprus for an agreement that will bring the two parts of the island together. Since 1974 the Turkish Cypriots have waited for an agreement that would bring about an independent sovereign and bi-zonal federal state in Cyprus. At the same time they have suffered because the Greek Cypriots have been recognised internationally as the official representatives of the island. The danger is that the Turkish Cypriots will soon move towards an independent northern Cyprus, which would mean that the partition of the island, which is already de facto, would quickly become a longterm reality, with de jure recognition.
  I want to point out how this has been happening over the past few years and is beginning to increase in momentum. In Strasbourg, for instance, in recent months the assembly of the Council of Europe has for the first time challenged the credentials of the Greek Cypriot Members of Parliament. Recently that assembly, by 68 votes to 53, decided to suspend the credentials of the Greek Cypriot
  336
  Members of Parliament as representatives of Cyprus. So, for the first time, an international body is beginning to question the legitimacy of representation by Greek Cypriots only for the island of Cyprus in international affairs.
  The second factor which is assisting the division of Cyprus is European economic aid. The European Community has an association agreement with all of Cyprus because it was negotiated before the coup against the Cyprus Government and the subsequent arrival of the Turkish troops. Clause 5 of that agreement states specifically that both communities must benefit from European Economic Community aid. However, because we recognise only the Greek Cypriots as the official Government for all Cyprus, all the EEC aid is going to the Greek Cypriot part of Cyprus. The Turkish Cypriot part is not benefiting from European Community economic aid under the association agreement.
  There is a problem within the EEC, not simply about recognition, but because the Commissioner, Claude Cheysson, has a bias against Turkey. That is reflected in his attitudes towards the Turkish Cypriots. The clause in the agreement says that both communities should benefit and we should ensure in the United Kingdom, through our representations in the EEC, that clause 5 is operated fairly and that projects submitted from northern Cyprus benefit in the same way as projects from southern Cyprus.
  There is also the problem of international aid, that is, aid other than EEC aid. All international aid goes to southern Cyprus because we do not recognise northern Cyprus as a state. The more one pours financial aid into southern Cyprus the more that creates a disparity between the living standards in the two parts of the island and the more one perpetuates the division there. That is the tragedy. By recognising only one part of the island, we are actually assisting the long-term division in the island.
  Another problem has arisen over flights. Flights go smoothly from every international airport to southern Cyprus. Until recently, there were very few flights to northern Cyprus because that part of Cyprus is not recognised. One can see that there is a creeping acceptance of northern Cyprus as a separate independent state, because charter flights have recently started to northern Cyprus from Germany. We know that regular flights are made via Turkey from the United Kingdom to northern Cyprus and before long there will be charter flights to northern Cyprus as well. In terms of flights and communications, recognition of northern Cyprus is becoming a reality as the political problems of the island remain unresolved.
  Today, throughout the whole of western Europe, the postage stamps issued by the northern Cyprus authorities are recognised on packages coming from northern Cyprus to western Europe, including the United Kingdom.
  Recently, and this is a further development that emphasises how the existence of northern Cyprus is becoming more acceptable, passports which have the imprimatur of the Turkish Cypriot authorities in northern Cyprus are not only acceptable in western Europe but last month became acceptable in Greece. Until last, month, Greece had refused to accept such passports.
  Finally, there is the growing interest of the Moslem world in the independence of northern Cyprus. The Moslem authorities in Arab countries are becoming more willing to recognise the independence of northern Cyprus.

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  We must try to avoid the permanency of the division in Cyprus. We must seek to bring about an agreement on the island. The division can be avoided only if the United Kingdom, which has a main interest in the island, and the other western nations, advise Greece through our allies in the EEC and NATO, and the Greek Cypriots who are in the Commonwealth, that the United Nations Secretary-General's proposals must be given a more positive response. If that is denied, the Turkish Cypriots will not stand waiting for recognition much longer. The de facto recognition that is already taking place as I have described will become de jure recognition by some Arab countries, and that will put pressure on other countries to follow their example.
  That would be a sad solution for Cyprus, and I hope that those in the United Kingdom who can bring influence to bear will do so. It is not good enough for us to stand quietly aside and say that we are supporting the good offices of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. In another place recently, 10 questions on Cyprus drew but one answer — that we support the good offices of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. That is likely to lead us nowhere unless we take the initiative—we have a greater interest in Cyprus than most other countries—to encourage both communities to make a go of the United Nation's proposals.
  Tourism is vital to the northern side of Cyprus. Following the problems of terrorism in the middle east, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advised that it might be dangerous to visit certain countries. Northern Cyprus has not seen a bomb or a bullet for 14 years. I do not believe that any European country could claim such peace and stability. I know that the Greek Cypriots rightly objected to the Government advising people that it would be dangerous to visit Cyprus. I hope that, if it has not already done so, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office will pretty soon correct that advice and make it clear that it is quite safe for United Kingdom residents to visit Cyprus.
  My final point concerns British citizens' interest in northern Cyprus. At the time of the coup and the arrival of Turkish troops—we should not forget that there are Greek national troops there—there were properties that British citizens had bought jointly with Greek citizens. That created a problem in northern Cyprus when it became a part of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. There were also properties that had been bought by British citizens on their own, but for which, during the coup, they did not get title deeds. When the new authorities took over, therefore, they had no title.
  I know that the Turkish Cypriot authorities have considered these problems through their assembly, but many British citizens still do not have their title deeds and are waiting on a decision by the Turkish Cypriot assembly. I should like an assurance that the British Government, through the high commission, are making every effort to ensure a speedy resolution to the problem.
  1.33 am
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Tim Eggar): I congratulate the right hon. Member for Strangford (Mr. Taylor) on his success in the ballot and on his choice of subject for debate, although not on the hour of it.
  Cyprus is of special interest to many hon. Members on both sides of the House, and I know that the right hon.
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  Gentleman has made tireless efforts on its behalf. I recognise his interest in and connections with the Turkish Cypriot community. I am particularly pleased that the right hon. Gentleman has initiated the debate because this House must be the forum for discussions of matters of major national and international importance.
  First, I shall deal with the right hon. Gentleman's two final points. Following representations and consideration within the Foreign Office, the advice to tourists on travel to Cyprus is exactly the same as that relating to other parts of the Mediterranean. I assure the right hon. Gentleman that we have been pressing the Turkish authorities to try to remove the difficulties over claims. We have made it clear to them that the problems have been continuing for far too long, and that we look to them for a resolution of those outstanding claims.
  Obviously, our interests in Cyprus go back over a number of years. As the right hon. Gentleman said, we are one of the guarantors of Cyprus independence under the 1960 arrangements. We have had a long connection, have governed Cyprus, and still retain our bases on the island. We have played an active part in what can loosely be described as the Cyprus problem over the past 26 years. As an example of this—the right hon. Gentleman did not mention this—I draw the attention of the House to our role in the United Nations' peacekeeping force, UNFICYP. Our contribution amounts to 760 men of the total of 2,350 who are deployed on the island, and it costs us more than £21 million a year, which is about one third of the total cost. The right hon. Gentleman will agree that that is a significant commitment, and shows the importance that we attach to a resolution of the Cyprus problem.
  For many years now our policy on the Cyprus problem has been dominated by two overriding objectives. The first is to do what we can to contribute towards finding a peaceful, just and lasting settlement to the Cyprus problem. The second is to try to ensure that nothing happens that will make such a settlement more difficult to find, or that leads to a deterioration of the situation in Cyprus. Perhaps I can characterise these policy themes as the "negative" and "positive" aspects of our policy.
  I should like to begin with the negative aspect. It was the desire to avoid a deterioration in the situation that led us to state strongly over a number of years the undesirability of the Turkish Cypriots declaring independence, and to refuse to recognise the so-called "Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus". Apart from the legal anti constitutional arguments, it was clear to us then and it is clear to us now that recognition of the so-called TRNC would in no way contribute to the search for a settlement. I know that the right hon. Gentleman accepts that. Indeed., it would make such a settlement more difficult to find. We continue to urge all parties to avoid anything which will make things more difficult.
  I should like to turn now to the positive aspects of our policy, and to explain rather more fully some developments in recent months. We continue to believe that the Secretary-General's initiative offers by far the best prospect of a settlement. That is not to say that a settlement will be easy. It will require courage and statesmanship on both sides to overcome years of mutual distrust. I cart understand the frustration that has led some to argue for a separate initiative from Britain, or indeed from other

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  quarters, but we firmly believe that the efforts of Senor Perez de Cuellar must be supported firmly and unequivocally.
  Let me sketch where the Secretary-General's initiative now stands. He has made three sets of proposals, all with similar basic provisions on two of the key issues, territory and the constitution. The Turkish Cypriots accepted the first version in January 1985. The Greek Cypriots accepted the second version in April of that year. The Secretary-General put forward his latest proposals at the end of March. Obviously, they do not meet all the concerns of all the parties. But they seem to us fair and reasonable and we support them and the Secretary-General's role.
  The Secretary-General has yet to receive substantive replies from both sides. He will no doubt wish to await them before deciding his way forward. But I stress that the crucial moment has now arrived. Now, if ever, political courage is needed. We fully recognise that difficult issues remain — for example, troop withdrawals, guarantees and the "three freedoms". It is important to understand that what the Secretary-General is proposing is an integrated whole. He wants agreement on his present constitutional proposals as the way into an overall settlement. He wants positive responses from both sides to his current framework proposals to pave the way for progess on outstanding issues. If I have one message to get across tonight it is to urge all the parties to seize what we regard as unique opportunity. It may not be repeated for a long time, if at all.
  The right hon. Member spoke about the Council of Europe Assembly. Naturally, we hope that a settlement of this problem would allow both sides to be represented there.
  The right hon. Member has talked about the interests of the Turkish Cypriot community. We trade normally with it. We have supported its right to be consulted on negotiations for the EC—Cyprus customs union. It also
  340
  benefits from aid we give to Cyprus. This includes a small ODA — financed technical co-operation programme, support for students' fees, worth almost £1 million, and the Foreign Office scholarship and awards scheme provision of £20,000. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, we keep in close contact with Mr. Denktash and other Turkish Cypriot leaders over the Cyprus problem and on other issues affecting British interests.
  Mr. John David Taylor: I fully accept that, as the Minister has said, British aid is being given to both Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, but will he comment on the problem that the European Community, in which we have a role to play, is contributing to only one community?
  Mr. Eggar: That is a lengthy and complex problem, and I should be happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman on it, but time is short, and I would not want to go into the details at this point.
  An agreement is close. Let us all concentrate on getting that agreement so that issues of troop withdrawals, guarantees and the "three freedoms" can be properly addressed. We are often asked to put more pressure on the parties in support of the Secretary-General. Throughout his initiative, we have taken all opportunities to urge parties towards settlement. The Secretary-General has expressed gratitude on a number of occasions for our particular role. Most recently my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister met Prime Minister Ozal of Turkey here on 18 February and President Kyprianou here on 7 April. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary met Mr. Papandreou on 21 March.
  The situation in Cyprus is tragic and wasteful, and is an unnatural division that complicates the balance in the eastern Mediterranean and adds to the conflicts between Greece and Turkey. The Secretary-General is working hard to secure a settlement, and it is my belief that the House should support his efforts.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at seventeen minutes to Two o'clock.