Commons Sitting of 6 July 1987

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

  Member Sworn
  The following Member took and subscribed the oath:
  Austin Vernon Mitchell, esquire, Great Grimsby

  Member Sworn
    PRIVATE BUSINESS
      YORK CITY COUNCIL BILL [Lords]
      To be a read a second time upon Thursday
Oral Answers to Questions

  WALES
  Mr. Speaker:Question No, 1, Mr. Davies
  Mr.D.E. Thomas: On a point of order. Mr. Speaker
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We do not take points of order at this stage. I shall take them after Question Time.
  Mr.D.E. Thomas rose—
  Mr. Wigley rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I have said to both hon. Gentlemen that I do not take points of order until the right place for them. They take time out of questions. Question No. 1, Mr. Ron Davies
  Mr. Wigley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I say again that I am not prepared to take points of order at this stage. It takes time out of questions, and the hon. Gentleman has a question on the Order Paper.
  Mr. Wigley: On a point or order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must resume his seat. I am on my feet. Mr. Ron Davies.
  Mr. Wigley: I beg to move, That Strangers do withdraw.
  Notice being taken that Strangers were present, MR. SPEAKER, pursuant to Standing Order No. 143 ( Withdrawal of Strangers from the House), put forthwith the Question, That strangers do withdraw:—
  The House divided: Ayes 2, Noes 94.
  Question accordingly negatived.

  Water Supplies
  Mr. Ron Daviesasked the Secretary of State for Wales what research his Department is sponsoring into the quality of Welsh domestic water supplies.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Ian Grist): Research into the quality of United Kingdom domestic water supplies is sponsored by the Department of the Environment. This Department does participate in the formulation of the water research programme. In the current year, £1·1 million of the research programme relates to domestic water supplies.
  Mr. Davies: May I first congratulate the hon. Member for Cardiff, Central (Mr. Grist) on his new appointment? Does he accept the latest medical evidence that there can be no safe level of lead in domestic water supplies? Will he accept that in Wales, where the water is becoming increasingly acidic and where one in four households have lead pipes, the problem is particularly severe? Will he press the EEC to lower its acceptable levels, and will he undertake to sponsor in his Department an immediate programme of public education so that people who are receiving contaminated water will be aware of the fact, of its causes and of its possible remedies?
  Mr. Grist: First, I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind words at the outset of his remarks. Secondly, I hope that he is not trying to promote public panic and concern over this matter. It is a serious issue, but the Welsh water authority has a programme in hand whereby originally it identified some 600,000 persons who were affected. Some 350,000 persons have already been cleared. Currently, 125,000 are being cleared, and it hopes that it will finish the programme in the next 18 months. That should put people's minds at rest.
  Mr. Dickens: Does my hon. Friend accept that something stronger than Welsh water must have been drunk by two Welsh Members to have wasted so much parliamentary time earlier?
  Mr. Livsey: I congratulate the Minister on his appointment. What will he do to guarantee the quality of
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  water in Wales, should the Welsh water authority be privatised? Does he not think that with the leanings of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to wetness this is a totally inappropriate matter for privatisation?
  Mr. Grist: No, I do not. What is more, the standard of safety will be maintained under the privatised system. The national rivers authority will be taking over the responsibility for research in the area from the water authorities.

  Water Supplies

    Labour Statistics
    Mr. Roy Hughesasked the Secretary of State for Wales what are the latest unadjusted figures for unemployment in (a) Newport, (b) Gwent and (c) Wales; and if he will give the equivalent figures for 1979 on the most nearly comparable basis.
    The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Walker): On 14 May 1987, 9,118, 26,084 and 157,779 persons were unemployed in Newport district, Gwent and Wales respectively. Unadjusted figures for 1979 are not available on a basis that enables a valid comparison to be made.
    Mr. Hughes: Does the Secretary of State appreciate that he has inherited an appalling legacy from his predecessor, which cannot be camouflaged by restart schemes or by fiddling the unemployment statistics? Will he investigate the situation at Alpha Steel in Newport, which has sacked just about all its employees? Will he also seek an early meeting with the chairman of British Rail about the proposed closure of the Severn tunnel junction, which I believe will be a monumental blunder?
    Mr. Walker: I hope to see the chairman of British Rail in the future and will discuss the matter with him. On this first occasion, I should like to pay tribute to my predecessor for the marvellous work that he did for the Principality. To have inherited a situation where regional selective assistance applications so far this year are 38 per cent. up on last year, where regional development grant applications so far this year are up 52 per cent. on the same period last year, and where the CBI industrial survey shows the most bullish and optimistic results in years for the Principality, is a great tribute to all the work that my predecessor carried out.
    Mr. Raffan: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment. I assure him that the vast majority of the people of Wales are far more impressed by the wide experience that he brings to the job, than concerned about where he comes from. Will he reassure the House that he will continue the highly successful economic and industrial policies of his predecessor — policies that have led to unemployment falling faster in Wales than in any other part of the country, which have attracted 25 per cent. of overseas investment in the United Kingdom to Wales and 70 per cent. of Japanese investment, and which have encouraged so many people to set up in business on their own?
    Mr. Walker: I very much agree that the trends in new businesses in inward investment and the speed at which unemployment is falling are very encouraging. I know that both my predecessor and my hon. Friend agree that there is still a great deal to be done and that with the policies that we are pursuing we can achieve great things.
    Mr. Geraint Howells: Perhaps the Secretary of State is not aware that unemployment in Fishguard is the highest

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    in Wales, at 24·1 per cent. 1 urge the right hon. Gentleman to look at the situation and to report to me in due course on what can be done to try to resolve this problem.
    Mr. Walker: Obviously, I would like to look at all the areas in the Principality that have particular problems. I realise that Fishguard does, and I will certainly look at it.
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his appointment as Secretary of State. I am sure that he will bring to Wales the same determination and energy as he has displayed in previous appointments. Is he aware that in my constituency we have the highest numerical unemployment in Wales and that it is not being helped by Dyfed county council's new traffic scheme in Tenby, which came in on 1 July this week? A survey this morning shows a 40 per cent. drop in takings in those businesses already, which will do nothing for jobs in my constituency.
    Mr. Walker: I understand my hon. Friend's concern and I know that businesses in his constituency are being hit at what should be the peak season for the tourist trade. However, it is a matter for the local highway authority. It said that it was carrying out the scheme on an experimental basis, and I hope that it will rapidly learn the lessons of the experiment.
    Mr. John Morris: As unemployment in Wales in May 1979 was under 6 per cent. and in June 1983 it was over 13 per cent. and has now gone down by 0·4 per cent.—I congratulate Her Majesty's Government—would it be unreasonable for me to believe that if the existing trend of improvement is continued it will take 70 years to bring Welsh unemployment down to the level when Labour left office?
    Mr. Walker: That would not be the case. In fact, the drop in unemployment over the past 12 months has been encouraging. I am glad to say that there has been a bigger drop than in any other region of the country.

    Roads
    Mr. Knoxasked the Secretary of State for Wales what has been the total spending by central Government on roads in Wales since 1979; and how many miles of motorway and trunk road have been laid since that year.
    The Minister of State, Welsh Office (Mr. Wyn Roberts): Expenditure on the improvement and maintenance of trunk roads and motorways in the period 1979–80 to 1986–87 was over £860 million. Twenty two miles of motorway and 95 miles of trunk road have been provided.
    Mr. KnoxI congratulate my hon. Friend and his colleagues on their considerable achievements since 1979 in building roads in Wales. Will my hon. Friend say what his plans are to build more roads there?
    Mr. Roberts: Our record on road building is almost as good as the record attendance here this afternoon. We have 27 miles of trunk road currently under construction, at an estimated cost of around £300 million. A further five projects are planned to start this financial year, at a total estimated cost of £55 million, and between January of next year and December 1990 a further programme of 28 schemes is planned, providing over 60 miles of trunk road and motorway improvements.

    Rechem International
    Mr. Murphyasked the Secretary of State for Wales whether he will meet the management of Rechem International to discuss the implications for the local environment of the operation of its plant at Pontypool.
    Mr. Grist: The plant is closely monitored by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Pollution and no useful purpose would be served by such a meeting.
    Mr. Murphy: I thank the Minister for his useful reply. However, will he investigate reports that large shipments of hazardous waste are being transported secretly from Australia and New Zealand to that plant, causing much anxiety to my constituents? Does he agree that Torfaen is fast becoming the dumping ground for the world's poisons?
    Mr. Grist: Clearly, the hon. Gentleman has taken up where his predecessor left off, which, in some respects, I regret to say, is to continue to alarm some of his constituents unduly. The practice and rules under which waste products from abroad are treated are exactly the same as those for treating home-produced waste.

    Labour Statistics
    Sir Anthony Meyerasked the Secretary of State for Wales what is the total number of registered unemployed in Wales at the latest available date; what was the number 12 months previously; and what are the corresponding figures for notified vacancies.
    Mr. Peter Walker: Unemployed claimants in Wales totalled 157,779 in May 1987 and 179,200 in May 1986. The corresponding figures for vacancies notified to jobcentres and careers offices were 13,353 and 12,054.
    Sir Anthony Meyer: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, despite the routine demonstration that we have just had to endure from Plaid Cymru, there is a general welcome in Wales for his appointment and a feeling of great optimism that the successful policies of the Government, tempered by his individual approach in these matters, promise a great future for Wales, with jobs coming into Wales as a result of inward investment and jobs generated in Wales as a result of development and individual initiative?
    Mr. Walker: The support that has been given by the Government and local government in Wales for inward investment has been encouraging. In 1986 there was a new inward investment project every six working days, and so far this year there has been a new project every three and a half working days. Total inward investment last year amounted to £150,000 per working day, and so far this year it has amounted to some £850,000 per working clay.
    Mr. Anderson: What estimate has the Welsh Office made of the likely job losses when certain local government functions, such as school dinners, refuse collection and street cleaning are put out to tender? Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on the remarks made yesterday by his right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), who said that had he been offered the Welsh Office it would have been an insult to Wales?
    Mr. Walker: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) is quite

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    capable of speaking for himself on these matters. I can only say that it is a great privilege to be given this task and I hope that I can make some positive contribution.
    As regards job losses due to work being put out to competitive tendering, I believe that any of us who are interested in seeing improved services, be they in health, education or anything else, want those tasks to be tackled as efficiently and as well as possible.
    Mr. Gwilym Jones: In contrast to the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, North-West (Sir A. Meyer) does my right hon. Friend agree that the regularly negative approach to jobs and opportunities displayed by the Opposition is the prime reason why, last month, the people of Wales gave the Labour party its second worst election result since the war?
    Mr. Walker: I can only say that on those matters, although there are many differences between the political parties, the task of attracting inward investment and getting new businesses under way is, I hope, supported by both sides of the House. I look forward to the collaboration of Socialist-controlled local authorities as well as Conservative local authorities in achieving those objectives.
    Mr. Barry Jones: It falls to me to welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his office. It is one of the most important offices of state. It is an office of great and immense patronage and has major powers over our communities. The right hon. Gentleman is the seventh Secretary of State, albeit an Englishman.
    We will always encourage the right hon. Gentleman to make efforts to find real jobs and to invest in our communities. The question is whether the right hon. Gentleman will make major changes in the Government's policy as it affects the Principality, because, at the general election, our people signalled their passionate desire to reverse the Prime Minister's policies. Indeed, there are now only eight Conservative Members representing Welsh constituencies. Does the right hon. Gentleman understand that we want real jobs for the army of Welsh unemployed? We want a much improved regional policy. We want a boost for the Welsh Development Agency and an urgent review of and fight against the great housing crisis that we now face. I warn the right hon. Gentleman that nothing less will do and that public opinion demands those changes in policy.
    Mr. Walker: May I first express my gratitude to the hon. Gentleman for welcoming me to my new position and for his good wishes. Obviously, we shall have major differences. As regards the areas that he has just mentioned, I have studied with keen interest the relative expenditure on house improvements during the period of this Conservative Government and their predecessor. I have discovered that substantial progress has been made in this area, and I am glad that further progress will be made in the future.
    As to the analysis of the election results, I obviously deeply regret losing a number of colleagues from the Welsh seats—they were very fine colleagues at that. Our share of the vote was not all that dissimilar from the 1983 election, whereas I might say that the vote for those who demonstrated earlier — there was no reason for the demonstration — the vote for Plaid Cymru, as a proportion of the Welsh electorate, has gone down at every election since 1970.
    Sir John Stradling Thomas: Will my right hon. Friend be kind enough to convey the main thrust of his answers regarding inward investment to Mr. Arthur Scargill at Rothesay?
    Mr. Walker: Yes, Sir. I certainly hope that some of the major investment that will take place will not be handicapped by the actions of that gentleman.

    House Building
    Mr. Thomasasked the Secretary of State for Wales how many housing starts were made in the public sector in Wales in the last year for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Grist: In the year up to March 1987, 1,227 dwellings were started in the public sector.
    Mr. Thomas: First, may I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his ministerial office. It is a great privilege to see a Member representing a Welsh constituency promoted to the Welsh Office. May I also commiserate with the hon. Member for Conwy (Mr. Roberts). At a later date I would be extremely interested to ascertain whether the hon. Gentleman is still of the view that he held before the appointment of his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, that the Secretary of State for Wales should represent a Welsh constituency. Will the Minister tell us what the proposals will be to bring back housing starts in the public sector in Wales to the levels that they were pre-1979?
    Mr. Grist: I think that the hon. Gentleman has slightly misunderstood the situation. One of the first things that the Government decided to do, largely with the agreement of the loccal authorities, was to safeguard the housing stock that we already had. To that end, we have enormously increased expenditure on house renovations and repairs. Indeed, the increase under the Government has been about 430 per cent., which has been mainly in the private sector, but also in the public sector, an area that was largely neglected by the Labour party.
    Mr. Raffan: I, too, welcome my hon. Friend to his new appointment. Does he agree, as is widely accepted in my constituency, as in many others in Wales, that there is a surplus of housing? The Government are absolutely right to concentrate their emphasis on the improvement of the quality of existing housing rather than on building new housing. Does my hon. Friend accept that that is the core of our housing policy and that it is correctly directed within the Principality?
    Mr. Grist: Indeed, I do, because of the age of our housing stock, which has made that a requisite.
    Mr. Rowlands: Is the Miniser aware that in many of our communities people now wait for repair and improvement grants — the very improvements that the Government boast about — for three to four years? Irrespective of what happened previously, when will the hon. Gentleman be able to assist the large numbers of people who are now waiting, not for one or two years, but for three or four years for those vital repairs and improvements?
    Mr. Grist: To put it into perspective, the repair grants on private housing under the Government have come to over £400 million as opposed to some £57 million under

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    the Labour party, and £328 million in the public sector compared with just £86 million under the Labour party. That is bringing help to the people in a true fashion.
    Mr. John: Does the Minister accept that the measure of need is the waiting list for public housing in each local authority? If he does, does he further accept that in my local authority 3,000 are waiting and, at the rate of 1,200 per year being housed in the whole of Wales, it will take a very long time for that need to be satisfied?
    Mr. Grist: The hon. Gentleman always shows up what his party seems to think about the citizenry of the country. He always thinks in terms of council housing. I remind the Labour party that the Welsh Office was largely responsible for introducing private money into housing association schemes, and that on the basis of such schemes submitted so far to the Housing Corporation, another 800 homes for rent may be achieved next year, through partnership schemes such as at St. Mellons in Cardiff.
    Mr. Gwilym Jones: Will my hon. Friend reject the notion that the only way forward in housing is with local councils when a substantial volume of accommodation is grossly under-used because of excessive rent and tenancy legislation?
    Mr. Grist: I do, indeed. That is precisely why we put forward the various proposals in the Gracious Speech.
    Mr. Roy Hughes: I also welcome the hon. Gentleman to his position. To me, he is the living embodiment of life after death. When will he recognise the severe housing crisis from which Wales suffers? Does he appreciate that the Government's record, particularly in the public sector, is appalling? When will we get the housing drive that would make so much social and economic sense for Wales?
    Mr. Grist: Housing association completions do not satisfy the hon. Gentleman. Enveloping schemes do not satisfy him. Is that not a drive? We are involving private money in housing associations. Does that not not satisfy him? For the fifth year running there has been an increase in private house building in Wales. Does that not satisfy him? There is a record spend on renovating and saving our housing stock. Does that not satisfy him? If it does not, nothing will.

    Labour Statistics
    Mr. Ray Powellasked the Secretary of State for Wales what numbers of persons were registered as employed and unemployed in 1979 and in 1987 in Wales.
    Mr. Peter Walker: In June 1979 the number of employees in employment in Wales was estimated to be 1,033,000, and the number of self-employed 124,000. Corresponding figures for June 1986 — the latest available— were up 861,000 and 154,000 respectively. Figures for adult unemployed claimants for the same dates were 70,000 and 175,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis.
    Mr. Ray Powell: Some of us viewed with trepidation the appointment of the Secretary of State for Wales, but we accepted the fact that, like my parents, who came from Worcester, he would, perhaps, bring something good into Wales.
    However, he started by praising his predecessor. It is appalling to think, given the legacy left to the Secretary of State by his predecessor, that he can stand at the Dispatch
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    Box and praise him. Is he aware that in Ogmore, when his predecessor was appointed in 1979, the unemployment rate was 3·7 per cent. in the Port Talbot travel-to-work area? It is now 18·7 per cent. What will the right hon. Gentleman do, and what aid will he give us to try to resolve that appalling unemployment in Wales?
    Mr. Walker: May I first say how delighted I am to hear of the hon. Gentleman's association with Worcester. I welcome that.
    Yes, unemployment in the hon. Gentleman's constituency is very high. I wish to see it reduced. In fairness to my predecessor, I can only say again that he had to act in my present capacity during what was the worst world recession in manufacturing this century. I am delighted that, as a result of many of the actions that he took, Wales has had a fast-improving trend over the past year, and a great deal of inward investment and new commercial and economic activity are taking place there.

  CHURCH COMMISSIONERS

    Revenue
    Mr. Chapmanasked the hon. Member for Selby, as representing the Church Commissioners, what proportion of the Church Commissioners' revenue comes from income on their assets; and what proportion of their expenditure goes to meet the clergy's salaries and pensions.
    The Second Church Estates Commissioner, representing Church Commissioners (Mr. Michael Alison): Sixty-six per cent., the rest coming mainly from parish giving. Eighty-one per cent. of total expenditure was spent on clergy pay and pensions.
    Mr. Chapman: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his spiritual elevation after the more turbulent, temporal post that he held in the last Parliament. Does he agree that those figures underline a simple point: that if we are to improve the clergy's stipends and pensions it is absolutely vital that the Church maximises the interest on its assets; and that it is important for the Church to have assets in land and property as well as in industry and elsewhere?
    Mr. Alison: I agree with what my hon. Friend suggested in his supplementary question. In fact, the Church Commissioners' assets are judiciously and diversely spread. My hon. Friend will be glad to know that the main equity investment of the Church Commissioners yielded an income that rose, in 1986, by no less than 12½ per cent. Anyone who managed his personal portfolio of shares so effectively would have reason to be pleased with himself.
    Mr. Frank Field: I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position and say that his appointment was probably the only acceptable consequence of the general election that Opposition Members welcomed.
    Does he accept that the level of clergy pay is acceptable? If not, what sort of levels should we be aiming at, and what part should the laity play in meeting that target?
    Mr. Alison: I am obliged to the hon. Member for his kind and rather sweeping commendation of my own preferment.
    One should always aim for the highest possible figure. I feel that the minimum of £8,000 a year could be improved. It would be a pity if clergy and their families. had to have regular recourse to family income supplement.

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    We have to take into account, too, that there are benefits in kind — housing benefit particularly — that make the level of income perhaps not quite as low as it might appear from the bare figures.

    Ordained Clergy
    Mr. Harry Greenwayasked the hon. Member for Selby, as representing the Church Commissioners, how many ordained clergy were in possession of a parson's freehold on 1 January 1987; how many were priests in charge of churches; how many were in charge of churches in another capacity; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Alison: Six thousand, nine hundred and eight. In addition, 731 clergy were priests or curates in charge of churches and 568 were team vicars.
    Mr. Greenway: I, too, congratulate my right hon. Friend on his elevation to higher things. Do not the figures that he has given show a discernible movement away from vicars and rectors being granted parsons' freeholds? Does that not mean a weakening of tenure for vicars and rectors?
    Mr. Alison: In statistical terms there is a marginal change. The figure last year was 6,968, so there has been a change of only 60. My hon. Friend can rest assured that the granting of benefices and incumbencies continues apace and sustains the traditional pattern of the Church of England without any grave threat of a fundamental change.

  WALES

    Bridgend
    Mr. Win Griffithsasked the Secretary of State for Wales when next he intends to visit the Bridgend constituency.
    The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Walker): I have no immediate plans to visit the Bridgend constituency, but I hope to find a suitable opportunity to visit Bridgend before very long.
    Mr. Griffiths: Does the right hon. Gentleman realise that there are many good reasons to visit Bridgend? May I ask him about only one of our pressing problems? Is he aware that in January this year the Welsh Office reduced the capital allocation of the Mid Glamorgan health authority by over £9 million, as a result of which the authority will have to put back by about a decade the start of phase II of the Princess Diana hospital in Bridgend? Will the right hon. Gentleman make an urgent visit to Bridgend to meet senior hospital staff, Mid Glamorgan health authority administrators and the community health council, with a view of putting that money back into the budget?
    Mr. Walker: I am examining the distribution of expenditure on health services throughout Wales. I note what the hon. Gentleman has said and I shall contact him about it.
    Mr. Butler: When my right hon. Friend travels along the M4 towards Bridgend will he note the expansion of high technology industry along that corridor, particularly in the Bridgend constituency—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that it would be appropriate if I drew to the attention of the House the fact
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    that questions 8, 9 and 14 are basically open questions. The Chair usually declines to call supplementary questions to an open question. I shall not follow that practice today, but I give notice that I shall have to do so in future. That supplementary question was not really appropriate.

    North Wales
    Dr. Marekasked the Secretary of State for Wales if he will pay a visit to north Wales.
    Mr. Peter Walker: Yes. I shall make many visits.
    Dr. Marek: I hope that the new Secretary of State will not follow the practice of his predecessor in giving selective, or statistically insignificant, simplistic figures, showing that black is white or white is black. When the right hon. Gentleman comes to north Wales, will he give me two hours of his time so that I can show him what is wrong with the Wrexham area and what local people expect him to pay attention to?
    Mr. Walker: Yes.
    Sir Anthony Meyer: When my right hon. Friend comes to north Wales, as he has done on a number of occasions—notably during the general election campaign—he will also perceive a number of things that are going right with the area and the new atmosphere of confidence and optimism that is beginning to burgeon.
    Mr. Walker: Some recent developments in the area are encouraging. There has been a great deal of inward investment and new activity and a great deal of optimism. I shall listen carefully to what the hon. Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) tells me, but I think he will agree that some exciting things have also happened in Wrexham in the past few years.
    Mr. Barry Jones: When the right hon. Gentleman visits north Wales, will he bear in mind the 25 per cent. male unemployment rate in Holyhead and the 11,000 unemployed in the Shotton travel-to-work area? Will he also bear in mind the slashing of regional policy assistance from £137 million in 1979 to a proposed paltry £33 million next year? Will he remember the real-terms cut of 54 per cent. in our housing expenditure since 1979 and the loss of £672 million in rate support grant? I am asking the Minister on behalf of the people of Wales for a major change in policies. We expect him to fight in Cabinet for more resources to tackle our urgent problems.
    Mr. Walker: We could swap figures for most of the afternoon. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear in mind the very encouraging figures that I gave earlier about regional selective assistance applications. The jobs forecast in connection with those figures is up 70 per cent., while regional development grants in terms of jobs are up 61 per cent. so far this year. Those are remarkable figures.
    Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones: When the Secretary of State visits north Wales, will he make sure that he visits the Ynys Môn constituency, the loss of which is at least one reason why his Government have no mandate in Wales? Will he commit the Government to investment in the A5 and particularly in bypasses for the villages, bearing in mind the very high unemployment rate in Holyhead? Will he make his visit to Ynys Môn at an early date?
    Mr. Walker: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on being elected for that constituency in spite of my efforts

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    to see that he was not. The hon. Gentleman talks about mandates. He is a member of a party that obtained 7·3 per cent. of the votes in Wales and should not lecture a party that obtained 30 per cent. The hon. Gentleman should reconsider his view.

  HOUSE OF COMMONS

    South Africa
    Mr. Bernie Grantasked the Lord Privy Seal whether any items of South African origin are purchased for the House; and if he will make a statement.
    The Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Wakeham): I am advised that none of the items in regular supply to the House of Commons is of South African origin.
    Mr. Grant: I am pleased with the Lord Privy Seal's statement. May I seek an assurance from him that he will investigate the source of all items, because it is now becoming clear that South Africa is using other countries to process its produce? May I have an assurance that he will investigate this and that if I am able to find any country processing South African produce he will strike out that country as well?
    Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman's question was a factual one and I gave him a factual answer. If he wishes to press the matter further, he should take it up with the Services Committee.
    Mr. Cormack: Will my right hon. Friend further reassure the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) by telling him that when the North Atlantic Assembly was held in Westminster Hall in 1982 the elegant chairs on which we all sat and which had been hired specially for the occasion were all made east of the iron curtain?
    Mr. Wakeham: My hon. Friend makes his own point.
    Mr. Simon Hughes: Will the Leader of the House confirm that, although the general position is as he says and that no regular supplies come from South Africa, there are no supplies from South Africa? If he cannot tell us that today, will he inquire, and if he finds that there are, or may be, supplies purchased from South Africa, will he let the House decide whether that is an appropriate way for the House to deal with its contracts
    Mr. Wakeham: I can only repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant). If the hon. Member wishes to pursue the matter further, he should take it up with the Services Committee.
    Mr. Forth: Is my right hon. Friend aware that many of us are very disappointed that there are no South African goods available? If he intends to go down the road suggested by some Opposition Members, will he give us the chance to draw up a list of countries of which we disapprove and from none of which we will accept products for this place? Will he assure us that he will not single out any one country for such ridiculous treatment?
    Mr. Wakeham: I should perhaps make it clear that my answer covers not only the Refreshment Department but the purchasing agencies such as Her Majesty's Stationery Office and the Crown Suppliers, which supply the House of Commons and for which I have no direct ministerial
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    responsibility. Naturally, these agencies seek their supphes from United Kingdom sources where possible. I am sure that the House supports that approach.
    Mr. Alan Williams: Is it not the truth that the Minister cannot give the assurance that is asked for by the Opposition and will not be able to in future, nor will the Committees be able to make the judgments that he has stated? That is because of changes made to consumer legislation immediately prior to the election affecting the Trade Descriptions Act 1972. As a result of that there will no way in which any hon. Member will know whether he is using South African goods.
    Mr. Wakeham: I gave the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) a factual answer. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to pursue the matter further, he should take it up with the Services Committee.

    Self-seal Envelopes
    Mr. Harry Greenwayasked the Lord Privy Seal what steps he is taking to issue self-seal House envelopes to hon. Members; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Wakeham: I am aware of my hon. Friend's interest in this matter and he will know that three types of white self-seal post-paid envelopes approved by the Accommodation and Administration Sub-Committee have been issued to right hon. and hon. Members through the Serjeant at Arms stores since July last year. In addition, a stronger self-seal brown envelope is being tried and the results of the experiment will be reported to the Sub-Committee as soon as practicable.
    Mr. Greenway: Will my right hon. Friend see whether we can move over completely to self-seal envelopes? While we may need a mix, as some colleagues obviously want this, could we consider the opinions of secretaries, who find the present gum on envelopes so obnoxious? Could we not change the taste to peppermint or something more pleasant?
    Mr. Wakeham: The Services Committee takes a keen interest in these matters, and I am sure that the Accommodation and Administration Sub-Committee will look into any points that my hon. Friend has in mind.
    Mr. Faulds: As the right hon. Gentleman probably knows, the Services Committee has dealt with this matter. Most of us have enough spit to seal our own envelopes, and the self-seal envelopes that were somehow or other got together by the Services Committee do not stick.
    Mr. Wakeham: I am aware that there has been a fault, with which Her Majesty's Stationery Office is dealing. I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply given on 6 April.
    Mr. Gow: Why is it that we do not have second-class self-seal envelopes? Why do we have only first-class envelopes?
    Mr. Wakeham: If my hon. Friend feels strongly about this matter, I am sure that he will take it up with the Committee direct.
    Mr. John Mark Taylor: Does my right hon. Friend know whether any of these envelopes come from South Africa? If they do not, why is he discriminating against black workers in South Africa in this way?
    Mr. Wakeham: Further to my previous answer, they do not come from South Africa.
    Mr. Madden: Will the Lord Privy Seal write to the Services Committee, using any envelope of his choice, to protest about any South African goods being made available in the House, as the vast majority of Members find such economic support for the evil regime of apartheid totally repugnant? Will he—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's supplementary does not relate to this question.
    Mr. Wakeham: The answer to the hon. Gentleman is no, Sir.

  WALES

    Agriculture Industry
    Mr. Geraint Howellsasked the Secretary of State for Wales if he is satisfied with the state of the agriculture industry in Wales; and if he will make a statement.
    The Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Peter Walker): The Government continue to give substantial financial support to the industry: grants and subsidies paid directly to Welsh farmers amounted to an estimated £108 million in 1986–87. I welcome the recovery in farming incomes in Wales in 1986. The changes made in the monetary compensatory amounts agreed last week will also benefit Welsh agriculture.
    Mr. Howells: Will the Secretary of State give an assurance to Welsh farmers that he will go to Brussels on their behalf to negotiate for an extra allocation of milk quotas for those young farmers in Wales who would like to start dairy farming on their own?
    Mr. Walker: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have many years' experience of negotiating in Brussels. I will certainly collaborate with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food in any way possible to assist our negotiations.

    Hospital Waiting Lists
    Mr. Gwilym Jonesasked the Secretary of State for Wales if he is satisfied with the progress in reducing hospital waiting lists in Wales.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Wales (Mr. Ian Grist): The National Health Service in Wales is treating an increasing number of patients, so that inpatient lists fell in 1986 by 2·6 per cent. and out-patient lists by 5·6 per cent. This is welcome progress. To maintain the momentum I have recently allocated a further £1
    16
    million to health authorities to help them tackle their worst waiting lists in 1987–88, and the Welsh Office is continuing its collaboration in health authorities' efforts to manage lists more effectively.
    Mr. Jones: I am pleased to hear my hon. Friend's answer. However, is there not still considerable room for increased efficiency? In the interests of putting patients first, could not much be achieved by computer-based schemes offering patients the opportunity to join the shortest waiting lists, rather than using the nearest hospital, which is the more usual practice?
    Mr. Grist: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. At present, general practitioners in Wales are made aware, through a bulletin published every six months by my Department, of waiting lists in Welsh health local authorities. From the list, the GP could advise the patient as to the relevant time that he or she might have to wait for treatment. However, like my hon. Friend, I would wish to see the system made more rapid and more easily and widely accessible. I shall draw the attention of the Welsh Office waiting list team to what my hon. Friend has said.
    Mr. Morgan: Does the Minister agree that waiting lists for the regional specialty of cardiology in Wales have now reached a disastrous level? The waiting list for cardiac arterial surgery in the south Glamorgan area—which serves a wide area of Wales — has now reached 18 months, compared to three months in Southampton. Effectively, all the non-acute cases are never on a waiting list because the 18-month waiting list means that new emergency cases continually take the place of non-emergency cases, so people never reach the operating table.
    Mr. Grist: That is precisely why there are plans to enhance the facilities for cardiac surgery in Cardiff. I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman in that respect. It would be useful if I were to mention to hon. Members that the health authorities in Wales have been set a target to ensure that by March next year no patient should have to wait more than one month for urgent in-patient treatment; one year for non-urgent in-patient treatment and three months for a first-time out-patient appointment.

    Hospital Waiting Lists

      STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS &c.
      Ordered,
      That the draft European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (International Convention on the Harmonised Commodity Description and Coding System) Order 1987 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Durant.]

"Today" Newspaper
3.31 pm
Mr. Speaker: We now come to the motion on the future of the Today newspaper, and I should announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
Mr. D. E. Thomas: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am on my feet at the moment. However, I shall take the point of order before I call the Minister to move the motion.
Mr. Thomas: My point of order arises out of today's Question Time. In the past, at Welsh Question Time there have been present hon. Members who do not represent Welsh constituencies, and they have often been called to contribute to our proceedings. It will not have escaped your notice, Mr. Speaker, and that of others observing the proceedings of the House, that a large number of hon. Members representing constituencies outside Wales were present for Welsh Questions today, including, of course, the Secretary of State for Wales.
A question of constitutional propriety is raised upon which I should like you to rule, Mr. Speaker. Is it to be the practice of the House that the will of the Welsh people, as expressed at the general election, will not be reflected in the balance of hon. Members called during Welsh Question Time? This is an important democratic principle, to which I ask you to address yourself.
Mr. Eric Forth (Mid-Worcestershire): Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not think that I really need a great deal of help on this, but I call the hon. Member.
Mr. Forth: When considering the representations made by the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Thomas), will you hear in mind, Mr. Speaker, what English hon. Members might feel about Welsh or Scottish Members intervening in strictly English matters, and weigh up the propriety of English Members taking a healthy and, I hope, welcome, interest in matters Welsh, Scottish or, indeed, Northern Irish?
Mr. Allan Rogers: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Will you also bear in mind, when considering whom you call at Question Time, the fact that I had 11 times as many votes as the Plaid Cymru candidate in the Rhondda? I received about 35,000 votes, whereas the Nationalist received about 3,000. Does that mean that I will be called 10 or 11 times more often than the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Mr. Thomas)?
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Mid-Kent): Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have been watching with interest the various manoeuvres of parties trying to receive privileges and the masterful way in which you have handled them. I would very much appreciate your guidance, Mr. Speaker. If the 49 Conservative hon. Members for Kent, Surrey and Hampshire, who enjoy majorities of a totality and depth that makes the Scottish representation of the Labour party look as fragile as blown glass, were to join together and call themselves by some suitable title, such as "the well managed alliance", or something of that nature, would we be able to claim the sort of privileges claimed by these other splinter groups?
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that I can deal with this matter now.
Mr. John Morris: On a serious point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: I shall hear the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) first.
Mr. Morris: As this is the only opportunity for questioning Welsh Office Ministers until late October, and as 30 per cent. of our valuable time today was wasted by the activities of Nationalist Members — and the Nationalists make up the only party that has succeeded in cutting down Welsh parliamentary time, especially when hon. Members wanted to ask questions about hospital waiting lists — is there any procedure for extending Welsh Question Time, or, if those hon. Members repeat their antics, for the matter to be referred to the Select Committee on Procedure?
Mr. Speaker: I shall deal with the matter now. I think the House accepts that this is the United Kingdom Parliament and that every hon. Member should have a right to put questions to departmental Ministers, even though they may be Scottish Ministers or Welsh Ministers. However, I think the House accepts also that the Chair should give substantial precedence to Welsh Ministers at Welsh Question Time, and I have done exactly that today. The interesting suggestion of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Rogers) is unlikely to be achieved!
3.35 pm
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Minister
of Trade and Industry (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): I beg to move,
That this House welcomes the decision of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to give his consent to the transfer of the ownership of the Today newspaper from Lonrho plc to News International plc; notes that Today was seriously loss making and manifestly uneconomic as a going concern; further notes that unless the transfer had taken place Today would probably have ceased publication immediately with he attendant loss of over 500 jobs; and congratulates the Secretary of State on ensuring the continuation of Today as a separate newspaper.
Mr. Speaker: I have already announced to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
Mr. Clarke: I am sure that there is quite a wide measure of agreement among right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House about the ownership of newspapers and the sort of newspaper industry that we would like to have. I am sure, also, that the majority of right hon. and hon. Members, and of the public, would like to see a wide diversity of titles and choice of reading matter. We want to see newspapers and the media open to a variety of arguments and we would like to see many owners of newspapers. We do not wish newspapers to fall into too few hands.
In recent years there have been more hopes and encouraging signs about the future of Fleet street and of the British newspaper industry than the reverse. I look back to the start of the Today newspaper, which was one of the most encouraging events to occur in Fleet street. Eddie Shah introduced new technology into Fleet street and he was a new proprietor, opening the first new national title since the establishment of the Daily Star some time before. Following the opening of Today,there

19
were disputes at Wapping and elsewhere that gave hopes of bringing to an end the restrictive practices, overmanning and excessively high costs that had been the worst problems for Fleet street and the greatest inhibitions to a wide range of ownership over former years.
The Daily Star began to be printed in 1978, and Today opened in March 1986. Since then, Sunday Sport, The Independent and News on Sunday have been attempting to enter the newspaper market. The current state of Fleet street suggests that there is more prospect of more titles coming along and more prospect of diversity of ownership than most would have thought possible a few years ago.
Mr. Tony Lloyd: There is a tendency to assume that consideration of the newspaper industry involves London, and London only. A concentration of ownership has been taking place, and one example of that is Mr. Murdoch's takeover of Today In addition, the origination of the Daily Express and the Sunday Express was lost to Manchester this very weekend. The flight from Manchester is something that the Minister should be acutely conscious of and worried about.
Mr. Clarke: I agree that my remarks about the need for as many titles as possible, as wide a diversity of opinion as possible and as wide a diversity of ownership as possible apply as much to the provincial press as to the Fleet street daily press. I believe that the principles that I have been underlining reflect the underlying purpose of the Fair Trading Act 1973. The purpose of that Act, which followed on previous pieces of legislation, was to try to guard against an over-concentration of ownership in Fleet street. I remind the House that the basic requirement of the Act is that the consent of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is required for all newspaper mergers which either cause a newspaper proprietor's total circulation to rise to 500,000 or more average paid-for copies per issue or add further to a circulation of this size.
The Act envisages that, generally speaking, this consent will not be given until the Secretary of State has received a report on the matter from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. It follows that Parliament in 1973 accepted, and the Government now accept, that the provisions of the 1973 Act recognise the significance of newspaper mergers. The Act requires any report of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on.such a merger to say
"whether the transfer in question may be expected to operate against the public interest, taking into account all matters which appear in the circumstances to be relevant, and, in particular, the need for accurate presentation of news and free expression of opinion."
Again, I am sure that those objectives would be endorsed by all of us. However, we all know that, over the years, particular problems have always arisen when a stage of crisis is reached for a loss-making newspaper—and Fleet street has had more than its fair share of those.
There is usually no doubt about the need to refer to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission a question that arises over the future of a title when the newspaper is reasonably viable and plainly has a long-term future, and when there is time for a considered view to be taken in the public interest — over weeks if not months—about whether over-concentration of ownership will result. However, the legislation of 1973, and the policy that has followed it, have not been able to suspend or disregard
20
basic economic common sense in the newspaper industry. Troubles occur, although sometimes with more force than others, when a newspaper gets itself into serious economic difficulty.
I spoke earlier about titles coming on to the market, but there is still a somewhat worrying decline in the total extent of newspaper readership in the country, and it is a difficult market to get into to achieve economic viability. Profitability is really the best guarantee that a newspaper has of its independence, and the best basis that a Secretary of State has for referring to the MMC any possible mergers or changes of ownership. There is no doubt that, in dealing with a newspaper that is making serious losses, the Secretary of State needs wider powers. lie cannot rely on a stark policy of saying that everything must be referred in all circumstances.
The legislation upon which all this is based recognised that at the time. It was anticipated in 1973, and also in the preceding legislation. The legislation had to recognise that circumstances might arise in which an MMC inquiry, lasting up to three months—that is the period that the Act allows, and it can be extended for a further three months—would be undesirable because of the pressures of the case. The 1973 Act therefore contains specific exceptions to the usual requirement that the Secretary of State should have a report from the MMC before he makes his decision.
The exception that is relevant to the transfer of Today is set out in section 58(3) of the Act, which provides that consent may be given without a report from the Commission being required if the Secretary of State is satisfied on two matters. First, he must be satisfied that the newspaper being transferred
"is not economic as a going concern and as a separate newspaper".
Secondly, he must be satisfied that
"if the newpaper is to continue as a separate newspaper, the case is one of urgency."
If the Secretary of State is satisfied on both those points, he may give consent without a report from the commission. Parliament had to allow that, and in some circumstances it is plainly necessary.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: Was the Secretary of State provided on this occasion with convincing evidence that the urgency of the matter was such that he had to act within a matter of hours, and did Ministers find that evidence convincing?
Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman has moved to the next logical step in the case. I have set out the two grounds that the Secretary of State must have before he is able to consent to a transfer without reference to the commission. The House must then quite properly consider the basis on which the Secretary of State was satisfied that both those conditions existed. If the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) will allow me, I shall begin by dealing with what I consider to be the simplest and least contentious aspect on which the Secretary of State was satisfied when he had to consider whether the newspaper was a going concern.
Unfortunately, because Today was launched with considerable good will behind it—the paper has been heavily loss-making since its inception. I do not believe that it achieved anything like the circulation figures for which it hoped and which were necessary for its viability. That led to its rapid transfer from its original owners, to

21
News UK, a subsidiary of Lonrho, in 1986. Since then the losses have continued. My right hon. and noble Friend was provided with evidence that satisfied him that Today was not economic as a going concern and as a separate newspaper. When I was questioned in the House last week, on the day of the decision, it seemed to be common knowledge among a large number of hon. Members that Today was incurring losses of over £30 million a year or over £500,000 a week. It was losing money hand over fist.
The second point, which has just been raised by the hon. Member for Linlithgow was whether there was urgency if the newspaper was to continue as a separate title, and on what basis would my right hon. and noble Friend be able to come to that conclusion. The losses that I have just described are at the heart of the matter. Lonrho had concluded that these losses could no longer be allowed to continue. When he took his decision, my right hon. and noble Friend had before him a resolution of the Lonrho board to the effect that, in the absence of his consent by midnight on I July, no further financial support would be given to the subsidiary company, that redundancy notices would be issued forthwith and that Today would forthwith be closed. A resolution by a public company is the only way in which one can communicate. It is its only authoritative statement of policy.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Clarke: I shall give way in a moment. First, I want to conclude my arguments on this point.
The resolution and the application that were before my right hon. and noble Friend do not mean that we accepted that it was midnight or nothing. No deadline was imposed on Ministers. The Secretary of State had to decide whether this was an urgent case. The resolution of the Lonrho board was only one piece of evidence, though a rather crucial piece of evidence, in deciding that question. We had to ask whether there was a serious risk of that paper folding if a reference was made. That involved asking questions about the resolution, although we had no reason to doubt it. Also, we had to ask whether Lonrho would just accept the losses while waiting the necessary weeks or even months while the reference was made. Furthermore, was there a risk of News International going away and of the deal folding while it waited for a decision? In merger and takeover decisions that is not unknown.
The evidence was the history of the newspaper, which had been loss-making from the start, the scale of the losses being incurred and the fact that the proprietors had closed Today on Sunday a short time before. To have said on that evidence that there was no urgency in the case would have been a mere gamble. Hon. Members who lightly say that the company's resolution ought to have been ignored and that its bluff should have been called ought to remember that the independence of the title and a large number of jobs were at risk.
Mr. Joseph Ashton: There were two potential buyers, Maxwell and Murdoch. If the paper had folded, it would have been worth nothing. While it was in being it was worth £40 million. It is nonsense to say that Lonrho would have shut down Today unless the deal was done that day.
Mr. Clarke: Mr. Maxwell had already publicly declared that he had withdrawn from the attempt to purchase Today, but more arises from the hon. Gentleman's
22
question than that. I ask the hon. Gentleman and the House to look at the position of the Secretary of State when faced with this application. The paper was undoubtedly losing money hand over fist and the proprietors had decided to close it. They had already closed the sister title. It is not the Government's duty to look for other buyers. The Government cannot act as a marriage broker in such cases. The hon. Gentleman should think through the implications of his question. If he is saying that the duty of the Government is actively to look for buyers, to weigh up one buyer against another and to encourage buyers, it would lead to the danger of far greater political patronage and politicisation than would otherwise occur.
On the other hand, had there been other applications—and we have received none, other than the one that came in last week — there was nothing to stop the Secretary of State from granting each application. Therefore, had a series of alternative buyers wanted to acquire the newspaper, several applications might have come to the Secretary of State, he might have decided that the terms of the Act were satisfied in all cases and he might have given his consent to them all. But so far as we are aware today, and so far as anyone was aware at the time the Secretary of State made his decision, only one application satisfied the terms of the Act, and there was a clear indication of urgency that the title was about to close.
Mr. John Smith: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that solicitors acting for one of the other potential purchasers contacted the Secretary of State before he made his decision to inform him that they were still interested in purchasing the newspaper?
Mr. Clarke: A variety of representations reached the Secretary of State, but there was certainly no other application. I do not recall that the solicitors said in terms that their clients were still interested in buying the newspapers. The right hon. and learned Gentleman should bear in mind that in circumstances of this kind a variety of other people, including competitors of one or other of the proprietors concerned, are inclined to come rushing in with representations of one kind or another. There were some newspaper stories of one alternative purchaser who wished to buy the title at an earlier stage—although he, too, pulled out—in order to close the paper down and to use the presses for his own title. As of now, my belief is that Mr. Maxwell has publicly withdrawn. There was one application before the Secretary of State, and urgency arose.
Mr. Brian Wilson: Surely the crux of the matter is that, to test the credibility of Lonrho's position, the Minister was obliged to make a relative calculation of what Lonrho stood to lose by selling and by closing down that night. If the Minister is not prepared to make that relative calculation, what he has said today amounts to a charter totally to ignore the terms of the legislation, and any two multinational companies, irrespective of how rich and powerful they are, can come forward with an ultimatum and everything on the statute book, can be swept aside.
Mr. Clarke: The Secretary of State must decide these matters on the evidence before him and on the best

23
evidence that he can get. There is no one method of testing the credibility of evidence. The Secretary of State must ask whether this is a case of urgency. I have no reason to doubt the credibility of Lonrho, but Lonrho's resolution, although extremely compelling, did not settle the matter. It did, however, make sense in all the circumstances. It had been known for months that Lonrho had been losing interest in the ownership of the title and was losing a great deal of money. The risk of a reference would have given rise to further weeks and months of uncertainty, during which a prospective purchaser might go away or the losses incurred might become unsupportable. It was looking at the circumstances as a whole that led the Secretary of State to say, "There is urgency here. A reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission would probably do more harm than good and would run the serious risk of closing down the title altogether." That is the basis upon which he decided that he had discretion under the Act not to refer.
Mr. Michael Fallon: Had Mr. Maxwell been successful in his bid, and had it been accepted by Lonrho, would not Opposition Members now be begging my right hon. and learned Friend not to refer this matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission?
Mr. Clarke: I entirely agree. After the exchanges last week, I have tried to keep the temperature down, and I hope that I shall succeed in doing so. Last week we saw quite nakedly that the Opposition's objections arose because they disapproved of the politics of the person who had acquired the title. The history of other references and non-references under the Act shows that that is the principal concern.
Considerations of that kind played no part in this. I have shown how, looking at the two considerations that he was obliged to look at under the Act, there was absolutely no doubt that the Secretary of State was justified in deciding that Parliament had given him a discretion not to refer in this case. It is only a discretion. He could still have decided to refer or not to refer—and I am in no doubt that he was legally entitled to refer.
When one looks at the wider considerations and whether the risk of the title closing was worth carrying in this case, one sees that there are other relevant considerations. Today is a comparatively new title. There was no such newspaper 15 months ago, so it is a desirable newcomer on the scene that is threatened with extinction, and not a long-standing one about to go. It had already nearly folded once. It got into immediate financial crisis and had to be transferred to Lonrho very shortly after it opened. So far as I can recall, nobody demanded that any reference be made at all—and I have looked through the Official Report.Under the terms of the Act, with The Observer already owned by Tiny Rowlands, it could well have been referred, but to the best of my recollection nobody asked me to refer it.
I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) that, for some reason best known to themselves, Opposition Members were less worried about Tiny Rowlands than they were about Rupert Murdoch. This was a new title, it had already nearly folded and it had only achieved a comparatively small circulation. The trouble is that at the moment it commands about only 2·5 per cent. of newspaper circulation. That is a relevant
24
consideration when one looks at the impact that this has on the possible monopolistic concentration of ownership. It is also relevant that one looks at whereabouts this newspaper is in the market, because it is not correct to look at all newspapers as though they are all the same, as though they are all read by the same people and as though they are are all aiming at the same market. Mr. Murdoch owns The Times and The Sun, which are not exactly in the same part of the market. This newspaper is in the middle of the market, where News International does not at the moment have a newspaper.
Mr. Michael Foot: The right hon. and learned Member mentioned this last week. If the question of the part of the market to which the paper applies, in which it deals, or in which it is placed was a relevant factor in whether the Secretary of State was to make the decision that he did, may we be told whether question was put to Mr. Murdoch about whether he intended to keep the paper in that sphere of the market or, if it was put to him, whether anyone on the face of the planet would believe what Mr. Murdoch said in reply?
Mr. Clarke: At the moment, there is no doubt that it is in that part of the market where it is in competition with the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, which are owned by different companies and different proprietors. We did not question Mr. Murdoch about that or about News International. If News International, in its commercial judgment, decided to move into a different part of the market and to go into competition with one of its own titles, I suppose that is a matter for it to decide. I would have thought it unlikely that it would do that, but that is not a matter for me.
What was being acquired was a newspaper with a comparatively small circulation that is plainly seen by all those who look at journalistic affairs to be in competition with other peoples' newspapers other than with News International's. That was relevant when deciding whether the discretion should be taken advantage of by the Secretary of State, coupled with the very real risk that if he stepped in and made a reference, the paper, in the course of the next few weeks, if not at midnight as stated by the owners—and I have no reason to doubt what they said in their resolution—was likely to close and 500 jobs lost. That result would have done nothing for the freedom of the press, diversity of ownership or anything else. The Today newspaper would merely have closed, there would have been one title less and the readers' choice and the position of Fleet Street would have been further weakened.
Mr. Neil Hamilton rose—
Mr. Clarke: I shall give way one last time, as I intend to speak only very briefly.
Mr. Hamilton: Is it not difficult to understand the argument coming from Opposition Members that competition in newspapers would have been enhanced if Mr. Maxwell had been able to acquire the title? I understand that his group already controls more than a quarter of the British press, by circulation, whereas News International, although it has a larger share, controls about one third. I cannot see how competition would be enhanced by allowing Mr. Maxwell to have 28·5 per cent. rather than 26 per cent., even if that is what he wanted, and there is no evidence that he did.
Mr. Clarke: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. There is more than a streak of hypocrisy in those who claim that somehow it is desirable that Today is owned by Mr. Maxwell rather than by Mr. Murdoch if they are pretending that it will be in the public interest rather than their own narrow political interests—[Interruption.] If the Opposition are not saying that, I would be interested to know who the other purchaser might be. I think that Mr. Maxwell is the preferred choice of the Opposition.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: The right hon. and learned Gentleman made the same point the other day about the 500 jobs that were at stake. I pointed out then that on that very day 750 jobs were to be lost at News International on Merseyside. If he was keen on saving jobs on Today, why was his Department not equally keen to save the 750 jobs in my constituency when representations had been made to the Government about the matter? We are talking about the same employer. Why were the Government not concerned about those jobs and our people in Liverpool, when they are now arguing that they were concerned about the 500 jobs on Today?
Mr. Clarke: I do not criticise the hon. Gentleman for persistently making representations about his constituency. However, he knows full well that the Government cannot intervene in commercial decisions such as that on Merseyside. It would do his constituents no good and would be of no consolation to them to find that 500 jobs had been lost somewhere else as a result of a totally separate decision. If the hon. Gentleman will listen carefully, he will realise that I am pointing out that had the Secretary of State taken the decision that the Labour party is pressing on him, his act would have brought about the loss of those 500 jobs because the newspaper would probably have folded during the course of the reference. Therefore, in all the circumstances, I believe that the outrage felt by the Opposition last week, and the apparently mild discontent felt by them this week, is not shared by the employees of Today, who do not seem to oppose what has happened in any way. I note also that Mr. Bill Jordan of the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers is quoted as being pleased that Today has been saved as an independent voice. Indeed, I am sure that all fair-minded people will have recognised that my right hon. and noble Friend took the right decision and has made possible the continuation of Today as a separate, independent newspaper.
As I have said, it is certainly the desire of all of us that we have a competitive newspaper industry, open to a variety of owners with a variety of opinions, with freedom of expression and accuracy of reporting. The prospects for that are steadily getting better than they have been for many years. Access to the media is opening up to many more people, not least when one looks at television and radio, which are outside my sphere. The coming of new technology, such as satellite television, and so on, means that it is getting steadily more difficult for anybody to have a monopoly of reporting, news potential and opinion. Thanks to the end of restrictive practices, it is getting easier to open newspapers with the use of new technology. However, it is still difficult to open newspapers and win a place in the market. Difficulties can arise when one gets into trouble.
As far as I can see, the Opposition's interest in the press appeared to be to back up vigorously the opposition to
26
new technology and support those trade unions that were doing damage to Fleet street and inhibiting the readers' choice a short time ago. Outrage is expressed by them when they feel that the political opinions of a newspaper are not to their liking or they have taken a particular dislike to a proprietor. The Government cannot be influenced by considerations of that sort, and we are not. My right hon. and noble Friend has been guided by the public interest and I invite the House to agree that he has protected the public interest by his decision.
4.4 pm
Mr. John Smith: I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
"deplores the decision of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to permit the further concentration of newspaper ownership without any reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and his acceptance of the arrogant deadline on his decision imposed by News International plc; and profoundly regrets that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry so readily abandoned his responsibility to secure the public interest.".
It is most unsatisfactory that the Secretary of State who took the decision is not accounting for it to the House. That is one of the unfortunate features of having a senior Secretary of State in another place. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster did his best, but he is a sorcerer's apprentice on this matter. He took the line, I suppose quite predictably, that the Secretary of State took a quite reasonable decision and that only unusual people on the Opposition Benches, motivated by synthetic outrage, would find something to cavil at in the decision.
I shall quote from today's Financial Times which is hardly a newspaper unversed in the ways of the industry or notably sympathetic to the Opposition. It said:
"Lord Young's haste to comply with an artificial deadline conjured up by a couple of entrepreneurs was both naive and undignified. He should have called their bluff and mocked the acumen of businessmen who value an asset at £38 million today and nothing tomorrow. A reference to the monopolies commission was necessary and almost certainly would not have led to the closure of Today."
That judgment might be prayed in aid when one is considering the evaluations.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will no doubt have read or had drawn to his attention the editorial of 2 July, the day following the decision, in The Independent. It said:
"On Tuesday evening, Tiny Rowland, chief executive of Lonrho, and Rupert Murdoch, US citizen, proprietor of national newspapers accounting for a substantial proportion of the British market, arrived at a deal under which Mr. Murdoch would acquire the ailing Today newspaper. As a term of the agreement they had the effrontery to give Her Majesty's Ministers just one day to declare that the transaction need not be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, as is normally the case … Yesterday afternoon, less than 24 hours later, Lord Young, Secretary of State, duly obliged. Thus a Government freshly elected to office with a large majority is bent to the will of two formidable entrepreneurs."
That is not some judgment emerging from the spite that is assumed to exist on the Opposition Benches.
If that was not enough, perhaps the Secretary of State should have paid some attention to the views of the Press Council, set up to consider these very matters. The chairman of the Press Council, Sir Zelman Cowen, said:
"There could hardly be a more obvious increase in concentration than acquisition of a fifth national newspaper by a group which already owns four.

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Newspapers which are for sale will often be vulnerable newspapers. To accept a tight timetable set by the owner and the potential buyer if that precludes proper examination by the Commission makes a mockery of the Fair Trading Act.
The decision on Today following the similar one when The Times and The Sunday Times changed hands six years ago signals that newspaper buyers and sellers need not have a Monopoly Commission inquiry if they do not want one."
That is not the view of some synthetically induced sense of outrage. I am correct in thinking that the chairman was appointed by the present Government.
The UK Press Gazette, a specialist magazine dealing with the newspaper industry, said:
"Right up until the moment of sale Lonrho executives were insisting that Today was shaping up nicely, that they were prepared to invest to continue the improving trend and that they believed it had a bright future.
Unless this was the sales pitch of the used car salesman trying to talk up the price of an old banger then we must believe that there was no likelihood of Today being closed. Lonrho chief executive Tiny Rowland's sudden conversion to the gloom scenario seems born of little else but a need to offer Lord Young some reason not to refer the sale to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission."
So much for the notion that somehow we have dreamed up unreasonable objections to the Secretary of State's decision.
Let us look at the facts. The Secretary of State drew our attention to the provisions of the Fair Trading Act 1973 and correctly said that two conditions had to be satisfied before the Secretary of State could clothe himself with a discretion not to refer. One condition was whether it was economic as a goingconcern, a matter of acutecontroversy in relation to the takeover of The Times and The Sunday Times six years ago. I think that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster will accept that he has to be satisfied on both counts, namely that he believes also that the case is one of urgency before he acquires the discretion not to refer. That is where the heart of the matter lies. In the circumstances was it a question of urgency or not?
We know—the Secretary of State must have known before he took his decision—that there were a number of other potential purchasers. Indeed, if I read The Sunday Times of yesterday correctly — I am sure that Mr. Murdoch's activities would not be misreported by one of the newspapers that he owns—Mr. Murdoch came on the scene only on Monday of last week when a deal had almost been fixed between Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Rowland. The deal at issue was only effected the day before the Secretary of State announced his decision not to refer, Tuesday 30 June. Again I am relying, I hope accurately, on the report in The Sunday Times that gave us a blow-by-blow account designed to show how Mr. Murdoch had outsmarted Mr. Maxwell.
Attached to the application for the Secretary of State's consent was, I believe, one of the most imperious and arrogant deadlines ever offered to one of Her Majesty's Ministers. If I had been the Secretary of State in question and someone had come to me asking me to take a decision by four o'clock on the following day I would have replied, "Do you know you are speaking to a Minister of the Crown? I might give you deadlines but you certainly will not give me deadlines about a matter of public responsibility." I believe that is the view that the vast majority of people who hold high office in this country
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would take about such an imperious, arrogant and impertinent deadline that was sought to be put upon a Minister.
Mr. William Cash: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that it was well known for a long time in press circles that this problem was coming up? Indeed, way back on 22 January Lonrho had written to the directors of News UK stating that the would give it support only until 30 June. Therefore, what the right hon. and learned Gentleman has said is a load of rubbish.
Mr. Smith: It has been borne out by the facts, and if the hon. Gentleman reads yesterday's Sunday Times he will learn about the accurate sequence of events. However, that is not the main point with which we are concerned today. The question is whether it was or was not a matter of urgency. What did the Secretary of State appear to do about that?
The Secretary of State appeared to rely heavily on the resolution of the board of Lonrho plc— I assume that is the company to which the Secretary of State referred. The Secretary of State did not tell us when that resolution was made, but let us assume it was fairly near to the time, perhaps right on the heels of or immediately prior to the application.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was careful to say that the Secretary of State did not rely entirely on that resolution. I hope that that is the case, because if one accepted everything people said one would not make the independent, objective analysis that the Fair Trading Act 1973 requires of the Secretary of State.
Let us consider the other evidence. Apart from the fact that it was well known that there were other purchasers in the offing—[HON. MEMBERS: "Who?"]—and that to turn down this particular application would not necessarily have led to the closure of the newspaper, there is other evidence about the view taken by Lonrho itself. I refer the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to an interesting interview in the London Daily News, which appeared on Tuesday 30 June. I remind the House that this interview was reported the day before the Secretary of State took the decision not to refer the application.
The article was written by Mr. James Levi, the city editor of London Daily News. He reported:
"Rowland"—
that is, the chairman of Lonrho plc—
"called me from a holiday resort near Split on Yugoslavia's Dalmatian coast last night to say he would carry on with the publication of Today."
Since he says, "last night", presumably that was 29 June. I shall quote this article at length because it contains evidence that can be drawn both ways and I believe that, in fairness, it should be quoted in full. The article contains a direct quote from Tiny Rowland, which states:
"'We probably have to reach sales of 500,000 to break even. We have already raised the figure to 340,000 and we are confident that if we spend another £25 million to £30 million we should do it'. He likened the paper to a mine shaft which had not reached the ore-bearing rocks."
[Interruption.] I am giving this quote in full, and if hon. Gentlemen do not think that it is in favour I trust that they will give this as much credence as they think suitable.
The article continued:
"'We are a mining company which has sunk a mine 1,000 feet and we know the ore is at 1,600 feet so we'll keep digging.' Lonrho is rumoured to be losing nearly £30 million a year at Today."

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I do not know whether that is correct, but in the interests ot. accuracy I ought to give everything that is said in this interview.
"Expressing some surprise that the Mirror publisher had broken off his talks, Rowland added: 'I have been out of touch with my office for just eighteen hours. I am 70 years old this year. If I can't take a few hours off there has to be something wrong.'"
The article continues:
"There have been suggestions that Rupert Murdoch, Publisher of The Sun, News of the World, The Times and The Sunday Times was in the bidding. Rowland admits he now has three options"—
this is the crucial point and was reported on 29 June—
" 'We could re-open negotiations with Maxwell, talk to Murdoch or carry on running it ourselves. We think the losses on the paper can be soon be minimised.'"
That was said two days before the reference was made. There was not a word of closing the newspaper, indeed the very opposite. It was Lonrho's intention to carry on with the publication.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke rose—
Mr. Smith: I shall certainly give way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman in a moment.
I think it is reasonable to assume — it would be amazing if it was not the case— that that article was read by the Secretary of State before he reached his decision. I know that it was specifically drawn to the Secretary of State's attention before he reached his decision. On the face of that, how could the Secretary of State assume that it was so certain that Lonrho had reached its decision?
Mr. Clarke: We certainly read that article before the Secretary of State made his decision. My recollection is that it was drawn to our attention that it was a report written in a newspaper owned by Mr. Maxwell. The right hon. and learned Gentleman should tell me what he believes is the best evidence of a publicly quoted company—
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Is it true?
Mr. Clarke: I have no idea whether it is true. What is the best evidence—the resolution of the board or a reported interview with the chairman of the board who was, no doubt, taking a well-earned rest in Split, by a city news editor, reported in an evening newspaper? Even if the remarks, as reported, are true — I have no means of knowing one way or the other; I do not regard them as highly relevant — they are presumably the words of someone trying to sell as a going concern a newspaper which is actually on the verge of extinction. The right hon. and learned Gentleman talks about evidence, but such evidence is no means of judging the position of a newspaper. The right hon. and learned Gentleman is seeking to rely on a report made on a radio-telephone from Split and on the strength of that to dismiss a resolution made by the board of the company.
Mr. Smith: What is fascinating about that intervention is that it is crystal clear that the Secretary of State, although he knew those words had been expressed by Mr. Rowland, did not put the matter to Mr. Rowland. On the one hand, I am asked to believe that when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster finds a piece of evidence he does not like, he dismisses it by saying that Mr. Rowland was merely talking up the price of the newspaper. Does it not occur to him that the resolution of the board might have
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been seeking to talk the Secretary of State into a particular course of action? It seems to me one can make a deduction one way or the other.
At the very best the Secretary of State was presented with a conflict of evidence at the crucial time at which he made his decision. When the Secretary of State acceded to the imperious deadline we are aware that he was anxious to accommodate the person making the application. That was obvious from the way in which it was done so speedily and from the scant information produced by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster for the Secretary of State's decision.
There appeared to be no inquiry into the accounts of the newspaper to establish whether what had been said was true.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke: There was an inquiry.
Mr. Smith: Why on earth did the right hon. and learned Gentleman not tell us that when he sought to justify the Secretary of State's decision? We know that in the case of The Times and The Sunday Times the officials crawled over the accounts for a week before a decision was made.
Mr. Clarke indicated dissent.
Mr. Smith: The Sunday Times transfer was allowed only on the basis that it was not economic as a going concern. I remind the right hon. and learned Gentleman of that.
Mr. Clarke rose—
Mr. Smith: I will willingly give way because I believe that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is rather uninstructed on the 1981 case.
Mr. Clarke: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is trying to move off the point. I mentioned the loss making of the Today newspaper, although I did say it did not seem to be the most controversial topic in this case. Of course inquiries were made into the financial position of the Today newspaper and it confirmed the belief that at least £30 million a year was being lost by that newspaper. If anybody in the House doubts that, he should know that so much as is compatible with commercial confidentiality could be given for the inquiries that were made. However, adequate inquiries were made to confirm the view that the newspaper was hopelessly loss-making, losing substantial sums.
Mr. Smith: If I need lessons in moving off the point, I shall take them from the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He knows perfectly well that I am attacking the conclusion that it was a matter of urgency. A financial inquiry is relevant to that as well as to whether the newspaper was economic as a going concern. We know that The Sunday Times was permitted not to be referred on the basis that it was not economic as a going concern. It seems to be doing pretty well now after a momentary blip in its history when it was not economic as a going concern.
No full and proper inquiries appear to have been made by the Secretary of State before he accepted the company's resolution. The company is not exactly objective on the matter. It is the suitor to the Secretary of State. Of course, it will buttress its application—as the Financial Times, The Independent and the Press Council are all hinting—by dressing it up in a way that the Secretary of State will find suitable and acceptable.
Mr. Ian Bruce: Having recently joined the House and having been in the business world, I know well the confidence that one needs within a company. The right hon. and learned Gentleman read out a quotation — when a chairman is challenged about whether his newspaper can keep going, he will come out with all sorts of reasons why it will keep going. Once the decision has been made and minuted at a board, saying that it is no longer economic and that it must be sold, the matter of business confidence and whether one holds the 2·5 per cent. readership evaporates overnight. Surely that is the urgency that is necessary.
Mr. Smith: If there was a change of decision on the part of Mr. Rowland, it was remarkably quick. It appears to have been closely related to the application that he made to the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. One cannot say, "Don't believe Rowland," when it does not suit one, and, "You must believe Rowland," when it does. It is as simple as that. The quotation shows clearly that the Government were willing, indeed anxious, to be persuaded that this was a case on which there should be no reference.
However, even if the Secretary of State were satisfied that it was a matter of urgency, which I hotly dispute, the matter does not end there. He still has to decide whether he should refer it. His powers are unlimited in that respect. He still has a discretion whether to refer. What possible basis was there for not referring this case? Four newspapers were already owned and a fifth was to be acquired. Mr. Murdoch had 32 per cent. of all the daily newspaper circulation in this country before the acquisition of Today. He has over 35 per cent. of all the Sunday circulation. It is the largest concentration.
Mr. Neil Hamilton: What about Maxwell?
Mr. Smith: I say to the hon. Gentleman who intervenes from a sedentary position that we have made it clear throughout that if Mr. Maxwell had made the application, that should have been referred, too. I do not know where he got the ludicrous notion that he peddled earlier in the debate.
Mr. Tony Marlow: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Smith: I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman. Furthermore, in taking into account the application to the Secretary of State, which is substantially on Mr. Murdoch's behalf, some account might have been taken of his conduct since the last time the matter was considered by a Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen). I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman has temporarily left the Chamber.
On that occasion it was accepted that The Sunday Times was not economic as a going concern, but a great deal of fuss was made about conditions that were attached to the Government's decision. I ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster: if the jobs were so important and if the maintenance of a separate newspaper was so important, why was there no condition that it should be kept going as an independent newspaper or that the jobs should he preserved? That is not an idle question because many people believe that one of the purposes behind the acquisition of Today might be the acquisition of the colour printing presses, not the newspaper itself. The presses would be available to provide a back-up for Mr. Murdoch's other four newspapers.
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On that previous occasion we were told that we need not be worried about Mr. Murdoch because important conditions were entrenched in the permission that was given by the then Secretary of State. The then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North, quoted them at length and said that they were sanctions backed by the force of law.
On 27 January 1981, the hon. Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones) who unfortunately is not here, got so carried away with enthusiasm for those conditions that he interrupted the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), who was speaking at the time, and said:
"One of the things that reassure many of us is the legal status of those conditions. If an agreement with conditions is made by the Minister the breaking of those conditions would be a criminal offence."
When the then Secretary of State wound up the debate, he stressed the great importance of the sanctions and said that it was not just a set of assurances. He said:
"The sanctions that are implicit in the conditions that I attach under section 58 of the Fair Trading Act … are formidable sanctions."
The right hon. Gentleman told us that we should pay attention to Mr. Harold Evans, at that stage editor of the Sunday Times. It was an effective riposte in the debate. The right hon. Gentleman quoted Mr. Evans, who said:
"No Editor or Journalist could ask for wider guarantees of editorial independence on news and policy than those Mr. Murdoch has accepted and which are now entrenched by the Secretary of State." —[Official Report, 27 January 1981; Vol. 997, c. 795–822.]
That is a formidable point.
I now refer to the biography of Mr. Harold Evans, entitled "Good Times, Bad Times". On page 401 he tells us what happened in The Times. He said that Mr. Murdoch
"guaranteed that the editors would have control of the political policy of their newspapers; that they would have freedom within fixed annual budgets; that the editors would not be subject to instruction from either the proprietor or management on the selection and balance of news and opinion; that instructions to journalists would be given only by their editor; and that any future sale of the titles would require the agreement of a majority of the independent national directors."
It was a matter of controversy in the House that one of the things that Mr. Murdoch did speedily was to transfer the titles to News International, but let that pass for the moment.
Mr. Evans concludes:
"In my year as editor of The Times, Murdoch broke all these guarantees. He put his point of view very simply to the home editor of The Times, Fred Emery, when he summoned him from holiday on 4 March to his office shortly before asking for my resignation: 'I give instructions to my editors all round the world, why shouldn't I in London?' He was reminded of the undertakings to the Secretary of State. 'They're not worth the paper they're written on,' Murdoch replied."
That is the man who, on his next application to the Secretary of State, was given the roll-over permission that he sought and had arranged would happen by setting up the application in the way in which it was done.
Now we know that the Secretary of State chose not to exercise his discretion in respect of such a person. Any reasonable Secretary of State would have said, "Should I give way when there has been an imperious deadline and give discretion to a person who broke all the guarantees which my predecessor talked about, and which Parliament supported?" I do not know whether the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster or the Secretary of State knew

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anything about those affairs. They should have been instructed. I am sure that the civil servants who advised them know only too well what happened. It was embarrassing for the Government that one of the first things that Mr. Murdoch did was to remove the titles. Because there was a fuss in the House, he had to put them back to where they were. It was an instructive insight into his point of view.
Of course, the one thing that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said with which we could all agree is that there is a serious question about the concentration of newspaper power in this country. Clearly, Parliament will have to consider the whole matter a little further. One thing, however, is crystal clear. The Act is too weak, especially when it is accompanied by weak Ministers and a weak Government who have no intention of bringing even its minimal provisions into play. We have a serious problem—
Mr. Cash: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Smith: I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman.
There is a serious problem to do with the ownership of the media in this country. It concerns not only the newspaper that we are discussing today. For example, as is noted in early-day motion 43, there is great concern about The Scotsman and the dispute taking place there at the moment. Hon. Members on all sides of the House have expressed their concern that one of Scotland's most important national newspapers should be preserved as an independent voice, facing, as it does, a commercial requirement that it should merge all its editorial and reporting functions with other parts of the group of which it happens to be a member. One of the issues at stake is the proper reporting of Parliament by correspondents who are employed by that newspaper directly, so that it does not have to take the copy that is fed through the evening newspaper chain with which it is associated.
I wish that we had a Government who would take seriously the public concern in these matters. A Secretary of State should intervene in disputes such as that to bring about some resolution of the matter. I speak for more hon. Members than those who sit only on my side of the House when I say that there is serious concern, and that the sooner negotiations start in that case, the better.
This concentration of power is at the heart of public concern. Since we know that the present provisions are insufficient, Parliament will, sooner or later, have to consider stronger provisions. Most probably, we should have some upper limit on the amount of newspaper power that one individual or company can own in this country. I hope that more referrals will be made, so that there can be a proper consideration of the public interest and notice can be served on newspaper proprietors that they cannot bully Secretaries of State by threatening that the titles will cease publication. On the other hand, I say that there might be some justification in the view that the inquiries take too long.
Mr. Neil Hamilton: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give way?
Mr. Smith: In a moment.
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If the inquiries take too long, let us find a way of doing things more speedily. It is not beyond the wit of Parliament, or of a Government who wanted to have an effective method, to devise a way of doing that.
We should also take account of the serious concentrations of power that span the various types of media. Above all, there is the case of Mr. Murdoch, who owns 75 per cent. of all the print in Australia. He also owns satellites, other communications and broadcasting networks in Australia and the United States, as well as the highly profitable newspapers that he has here.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman tell us what he would prefer to the present powers? Will he endorse the policy views of the Labour finance and industry group about the Office of Fair Trading references on mergers as expressed in The Independent of January 1987? I quote from The Independent of 20 January:
"the Office of Fair Trading, which would in turn be enlarged by recruiting staff who have 'a political and ideological understanding' of Labour's aims. 'Selection, vetting and monitoring for competence, experience and political inclination will be essential for Labour', says a paper published yesterday by the Labour Finance and Industry Group."
Is it still the Labour party's intention to put people into the OFT on a political and ideological basis?
Mr. Smith: That reinforces my previous view that if I want to be taken off the point there is no better guide than the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. What I am suggesting—a serious Minister would listen to it—is that it is high time we concentrated on how to obtain an effective method of stopping the concentration of newspaper power. That is a highly serious point, which exercises people throughout the House and country. Since I foolishly agreed to give way to the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton), I shall stand by my promise.
Mr. Neil Hamilton: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is wise and learned, as we know, and no less so for having given way to me. We have all enjoyed the right hon. and learned Gentleman's vacuous theorising about concentration in the media. However, he has failed entirely to explain how that concentration could be reduced by the closure of the newspaper under discussion this afternoon. Will he apply himself to the factual case that we—and Ministers—must examine as to what are the alternatives to the takeover by Murdoch? The only other interest that has been shown in the newspaper came from Mr. Maxwell, who already controls a quarter of circulation of the press. Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman saying that he would not have approved of a takeover by Maxwell or Murdoch—in which case, closure would have been certain?
Mr. Smith: The hon. Gentleman should listen to what I say. I made it clear, today and last week, that in the event of Mr. Maxwell making an application we would have taken the same view, as exactly the same issue of concentration of power would have arisen. I do not accept — as the Government willingly did — that it was inevitable that the newspaper would close. The threat to close it was a bluff that worked on Ministers. As happened with The Times and the Sunday Times, that is the way to roll over Ministers — by putting forward the right statements that allow them to get out of the provisions.
Mr. David Steel: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that there is a further safeguard to be examined, in addition to those that he has listed? In the United States, there is a requirement of citizenship for ownership of more than a certain percentage of the press. That is why Mr. Murdoch is now an American citizen, rather than an Australian one. Should we not require major slices of the media to be owned by people who are loyal to this country?
Mr. Smith: That is well worth considering, if for no other reason than that we have such a requirement in the Broadcasting Act 1981, covering another section of the media. However, let us not be fooled into thinking that that would deter Murdoch. He gave up his citizenship to advance his interests in the United States. Some of us would never think of giving up our citizenship to advance our commercial interest. However, that is what Murdoch did in that case.
The issue at the heart of today's debate is that this spineless and complacent Government gave way once again, with the result that we have passed another milestone on the road to the heavy concentration of the ownership of the media in this country in hands that do not hesitate to use them for their own benefit and to advance their own purposes. That must be a matter for great regret.
4.37 pm
Mr. Jonathan Aitken: The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) made a skilful speech and, not for the first time in newspaper debates, I find myself in some, but not total, agreement with him. I cannot follow him in some of the moral and legal indignation that permeated his speech. I suspect that we are talking about a smaller issue than the one that he has developed this afternoon, although I agree that one of the fundamental points at stake is the weakness of the Act. That weakness is manifested in the fact that the Today horse has already bolted, so that our proceedings today will already be seen as a somewhat academic exercise—an arguing about whether the stable door should have been guarded more vigilantly by the Secretary of State. We should have had the debate before the decision was taken, not after.
To the world outside, the academic nature of the exercise is reinforced by the near-certainty that, had the Secretary of State referred the sale of Today to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, that referral would not have been likely to make any difference to the end result, beyond causing an expensive, although perhaps legally necessary, delay.
Let us remember that the Today newspaper had less than 2·5 per cent. of the national daily circulation, and to argue that Mr. Murdoch's acquisition of that loss-making burden somehow represents a significant monopolistic shift in the power structure of Britain's newspaper industry is pure moonshine. We should remind ourselves that the great British public have shown a considerable lack of interest in, or affection for, Today. They have refused to buy or read it in great numbers, and they refused to take its advice to vote for the alliance at the last election. As far as I can tell from testing public opinion in the, admittedly limited, world of pubs in Ramsgate in my constituency at the weekend, most people do not care two hoots whether or not Murdoch owns Today. In short, the debate is about
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one of those esoteric issues that are exclusively reserved for the chattering classes of journalists, politicians and lawyers.
Mr. Norman Buchan: The hon. Gentleman complains that there has been all this fuss about a newspaper that had the comparatively minor share of 2·5 per cent. of circulation. Does that mean that he is quite happy that one third of the control of our popular press should be in the hands of one man, who, incidentally, is not even British?
Mr. Aitken: I do not think that it would have made any great difference if Today had gone to Mr. Maxwell, who also has a large slice of daily newspaper circulation. We are dealing with a rather narrow issue, which is of interest, above all, to the chattering classes, rather than to the great British public. However, if we are to put on a little light parliamentary operetta for the benefit of those chattering classes, let us at least enjoy it and reflect on the irony of the situation.
I wish to begin with a little dirge of sympathy for my noble Friend Lord Young. He came into his office with the reputation of being the great deregulator, the scourge of red tape and the breaker of "Barriers to Business" as his famous and successful White Paper was called. What did Lord Young find on his desk on his first week of office? Why, he found this little excrescence of a problem of a failed colour tabloid newspaper, with no readers or advertisers to speak of and with a mangy journalistic reputation about as significant as that of the Ballarat Echo on an off day.
I am sure that Lord Young, with his natural instincts, could not wait to shovel that excrescence into the wastepaper basket. I feel that he wanted to deregulate it into the dustbin immediately, but perhaps he found himself surrounded by a chorus of wailing Sir Humphreys and m'learned friends from the legal division of his Department, all saying to him words to the effect of, "Hold on a minute, Secretary of State. You have some very important responsibilities here; you have some solemn duties under the Fair Trading Act. You must study this great problem, call in great and good men, consult the Director General of Fair Trading and refer the matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission."
So poor old Lord Young had to curb his natural instincts as the Lord High Deregulator for a few moments, in order to consider vital questions such as how imminent the threat of the closure of Today really was, and, above all, whether Today was, in the words of the Act, "a going concern".
Although the Today newspaper was losing a great deal of money, it was clearly a going concern in the eyes of at least three proprietors. Mr. Tiny Rowland has kept it going for many months, partly, one suspects, to wage his private warfare against the Thatcher family, as he did up to and during the general election campaign. It seems from at least one of his interviews with the London Daily News that he was willing to keep it going for even longer.
Then we had Mr. Robert Maxwell, who wanted to keep Today going so badly that he was prepared to offer £30 million for it. Apparently, his only problem—in these internecine rivalries between proprietors—was that he could not stand negotiating with Mr. Tiny Rowland. It must have been a little difficult on a yacht on the Adriatic,

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and that seemed to be the great issue of principle on which he broke off negotiations. The problem was not the price or wanting the newspaper.
Then we had Mr. Murdoch himself, who was the keenest of them all to keep Today going. Indeed, he was so keen that he was prepared to fly across the Atlantic by Concorde twice in one day to put on the table a mere £38 million.
I think that the activities of these three dinosaurs of iron whim show only too clearly that a paper that was worth £38 million to three tycoons is a going concern. It would not have been closed and made worthless just because a reference was made to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. It was not, in the Australian vernacular, Sydney or the Bush. Mr. Murdoch, who is well experienced in setting menacing artificial deadlines in stand-and-deliver Ned Kelly fashion knew that, but he said that it was Sydney or the Bush. But then Mr. Murdoch is quite used to not playing the game—and winning it as a result. I think that if his bluff had been called, all that would have happened is that there would have been a delay of several weeks — perhaps three months— which would have knocked £3 million or £4 million off the price of Today. It is as simple as that, and every objective, neutral observer of the newspaper industry that I know shares that view.
There is little doubt in terms of pure law that, under the terms of the Fair Trading Act, Lord Young was under a duty to refer the matter to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission— unless he could he objectively convinced that it was not "a going concern".
Mr. Matthew Taylor: Has the hon. Gentleman considered that Mr. Murdoch would hardly have pushed the Government to make such a speedy decision if he would save several million pounds from a delay? Perhaps Mr. Murdoch thought that the newspaper was reaching the point where it would be a viable concern and that Mr. Rowland would have kept it going.
Mr. Aitken: I am not as expert as the hon. Gentleman in reading Mr. Murdoch's mind, but we know that Mr. Murdoch knows a quick deal when he sees one. He knew that he could get Today quickly by putting a pistol to the head of the Secretary of State, and that is what he did.
I think that there was a prima facie case for a referral to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, so how did the Houdini-like Secretary of State escape from his obvious responsibilities? I suspect that he was able to find the only justifiable loophole by going back and studying the precedents set by previous incumbents of his office. And where better to look for helpful precedents than that set by the new keeper of the Conservative party's conscience—the voice crying in the wilderness and in the Sunday Telegraph—Saint John of Oswestry?
My right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) has always moved in a mysterious way, and he was never more baffling than when, in January 1981, as Secretary of State for Trade, he declared himself convinced that the highly profitable Sunday Times could he taken over by Mr. Rupert Murdoch without reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. There is no point in going over all that old ground again, but the sorry episode of the Sunday Times demonstrated that, if there ever was a "Stalinist regime" at No. 10 Downing street, my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North was, at that time, its most servile apparatchik.
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After all, my right hon. Friend was the Secretary of State who demonstrated that a coach and horses could be driven through the Fair Trading Act's provisions on newspaper mergers, and he was the originator of Biffen's law, which may be stated as, "A newspaper is a going concern, until Mr. Murdoch says that it is not a going concern."
Biffen's law and its legacy have allowed three successive Murdoch acquisitions to avoid a reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
Mr. Dalyell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Aitken: No. I am just finishing.
Until the sections of the Fair Trading Act on newspaper mergers are reformed and strengthened, the Act will remain a law in disrepute. That is why I have said, only slightly tongue in cheek, that the only logical way to deal with the problem is to give Rupert Murdoch a free pass and have done with it.
4.47 pm
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: We were all taken by surprise by the abrupt conclusion of the extraordinary speech by the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), which seemed to be directed at everybody in general, but at nobody in particular.
The hon. Gentleman freely hurled abuse at the editorial and journalistic quality of Today and at its general performance, but it is worth recording that in the past three months the newspaper has achieved the biggest percentage increase in circulation of any national newspaper, and has put on nearly 50,000 circulation. That is no mean achievement. It was moving in a positive direction.
It is a matter of regret to us to see the passing of the only newspaper that consistently supported the alliance during the past few months and during the general election campaign. Conservative Members do their party no credit when they sneer at a newspaper that represents a cause different from their own. Indeed, they reveal the corruption that is creeping into the Tory party, which wants to silence all opposition and alternative viewpoints. It is important to note that that attitude is creeping through the Conservative party.
Mr. Buchan: May I remind the hon. Gentleman about the complaints of the Tory party in Scotland, which was weeping because it believed that the press in Scotland was not sufficiently pro-Tory?
Mr. Bruce: That is so, and perhaps it is just a small contribution to the dispute that is now wracking The Scotsman. It is the kind of pressure that the Government are putting on that newspaper.
I regret the passing of Today and I do not agree with the hon. Member for Thanet, South in attacking its journalistic standards. I regret its passing, not just in terms of the implications for trade and industry practices, but as a journalist. I have not seen a newspaper vandalised as quickly as that newspaper has been vandalised in the few days since it was taken over. I took the time and trouble to read it and can tell the House that by no stretch of the imagination is it the paper that it was a week ago. It is certainly not a middle-market paper, and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster claimed that as one of the reasons why it was OK for the go-ahead to be given. It is

39
already a down-market paper and going fast into the gutter, and that is clearly the objective of the new owners. The Chancellor's argument is spurious.
The independence of Today is simply a joke, and the degradation started immediately that the takeover took effect. On the day of the takeover, the first pre-midnight edition, which was produced before midnight by the outgoing editor, carried a report of the statement in the House on the takeover proposals. That report showed that there had been considerable opposition to the Government's non-referral by the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), by other hon. Members, and by me. The second and third editions that night showed a paean of praise for the Murdoch takeover and gave the impression that the entire universe was cheering the event. That was a quite remarkable turn around and a revelation of how independent Today is under its new owners.
The Government motion talks carefully and guardedly about the loss of jobs and about the implications for closure if the Government had not accepted the Murdoch deadline. The first thing that the House should know is that wholesale sackings are already taking place. Many jobs have already gone since Wednesday. What kind of assurances have the Government sought about jobs, and what kind of satisfaction do they expect? I am afraid that the commitment to jobs is very hollow.
The millions of pounds that will be poured into the newspaper from now on will probably preserve the title, but the suggestion that the 500 jobs are really secure is not regarded by most of the staff on the newspaper with equanimity or conviction. I said last week that the Government were guilty of a disgraceful negation of responsibility and that their excuses were lame. I stand by that and I shall embellish it. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said last week, and said again today, that Today represented only 2·5 per cent. of the market and, therefore, its takeover represented no significant further consolidation or concentration of ownership. Will he say the same thing when The Independent newspaper is being added to the the Murdoch stable, because it has just about the same share of the market? Will he tell us at what point concentration of the press under one owner is unacceptably high?
It is certainly clear by now that Murdoch's share of the market is enough to constitute a restraint on trade. I hear reports that the advertising agencies are being bullied, and that if bullying will not work they are being threatened, intimidated or even bribed by Murdoch in an effort to seduce advertising away from newspapers. That applies particularly to The Independent so that its position in the market will be weakened and in future he can add it to the number in his stable. There is no end to the man's ambition to concentrate ownership of the press.
I shall now turn to the argument put forward by, I think, every hon. Member who has spoken about the implications of the threat of blackmail. It has been said that if the Government had not accepted the deadline, Today would have folded. The obvious point has already been made that if Today was worth £38 million last Wednesday, it is inconceivable that if the Government had not acceded it would have been worth nothing on Thursday. The other point is the situation that Lonhro was in. It took over Today when the paper was losing
40
money. Eddie Shah had incompetently tried to launch a newspaper, thinking that new technology was all that newspapers were about. He had no record, and no understanding of how expensive it is to launch a new title and of how much marketing and promotion were necessary.
When Lonhro took over Today, it knew that it was a loss-maker and that Lonhro would have to build up the paper. Lonhro recognised that that would take some time. The problem for Today, which caused the newspaper to suffer a misfortune, was that Lonhro's other trading interests turned sour during the same period. As a result of that the shares were dipping on the market and Lonhro needed to improve its cash position fast in advance of the annual report. Only last month it sold its gambling interests for £126 million. The further £38 million last week gives Lonhro £164 million to dress up the national report. That was the real motive.
If a referral had been made, folding Today rather than waiting for the outcome would have been stupid business practice because, clearly, there would have been an immediate requirement to write off the £30 million of accumulated losses. In those circumstances, the figures that Lonhro would have had to present for the annual report would have been infinitely worse than if it had waited for the outcome of a referral and had then sought to find a bidder. The indications are that the three options outlined by the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East would have crystallised. Either Maxwell or Murdoch would have firmed up, or possibly, as my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) said, Today would have reached a level of circulation that would have made Tiny Rowlands and Lonhro decide that it was worth hanging in there to reach profitability.
The paper was making rapid progress in a positive direction. That is the main reason why nobody can seriously believe the Government's claim that if they had not acceded to the request Today would have folded. There is no conceivable or sensible business reason for folding that newspaper. The fact that it is incredible makes me conclude that the Government's decision was not, as the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East described it, spineless and complacent. It was corrupt.
The telephone call that Lord Young made to Murdoch during the election campaign to complain that the Sun was not giving enough commitment at that stage to the Tory party produced the desired response of another scurrilous outburst of Sun-style support for the Conservative party. The pay-off came when, unfortunately for Lord Young, Rupert Murdoch came to him shortly after he had been made Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, and chairman- designate of the Tory party, and asked for support for this takeover. One need not look far from that to conclude that the Government's decision was too close to the interests of the Tory party to believe the lame arguments put forward by the Government to defend their decision.
The Government's excuses are lame in the extreme, and I do not think that I have seen the Chancellor of the Duchy so uncomfortable at the Dispatch Box during the time that I have been a Member of the House. I wonder whether in four years' time Lord Young or his successor as chairman of the Tory party will ring the editor of Today to complain that he is not getting the support that he expects. That is certainly the way that thinking is going on the Tory Benches.

41
Finally, I should like to take up a point made by the hon. Member for Thanet, South. It is worth recalling that since 1965, of 91 applications for press mergers and takeovers, only 18 have been referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and that no national newspaper deal has been turned down. Clearly, the refusal to use the commission in the present situation is untenable and unacceptable.
The 1962 Royal Commission on the press said that the scrutiny of press takeovers
"should be kept entirely free of government responsibility or political association."
One would have thought that the embarrassment felt by Ministers over the last few days on this issue would have encouraged them to adopt that recommendation. They should have tried to find a method of ensuring that there was an automatic referral that could be dealt with in a speedier time of, say, six weeks, and could possibly be handled by a judge accustomed to commercial law. I think that that suggestion would find a lot of favour in the press.
If that were the practice and the law, the kinds of shotgun marriages that we have expected and suffered from Murdoch could not happen in future. Everybody should he keen to ensure that that were so and that blackmail could be eliminated. We have seen the Government accede to blackmail, but in this instance they did not mind too much because the outcome was to their political advantage. This is a sad and regrettable period in the development of the British press.
The independence of the British press is now under severe attack. Such concentration of ownership is a matter of considerable concern. The lack of concern of, and response from, Conservative Members is a sign of the corruption of power, of complacency and of their desire to ensure that the organs of the media express only the views that they wish to see expressed. I would have more faith and trust in the Conservative party's commitment to freedom if I saw action to support plurality and diversity. The Government have failed to justify their behaviour and stand indicted for their accession to blackmail.
5 pm
Mr. David Sumberg: There is no doubt that a respectable case could be made out against the decision taken by my noble Friend Lord Young not to refer this transaction to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. I would not agree with that case, but it is legitimate. However, it is not legitimate for the Labour party and its trade union friends to pretend that they are defenders of choice and diversity in the free British press. On every conceivable opportunity given to them, they have been found supporting, and giving succour to, those who want to bring the printing presses to a halt.
It is somewhat ironic that the newspaper about which we are talking is the Today newspaper. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has said, the newspaper was not founded by a great press baron such as Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Murdoch or even Tiny Rowland. It was founded by a small business man from the north-west of England, which is where my constituency lies. My right hon. and learned Friend touched on the history of the case and it might be as well for the House to be reminded of that history.
Eddie Shah, who founded the Today newspaper, first came to national attention after the 1983 general election, when he was attempting to expand choice and diversity in
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local newspapers in the north-west of England. He was tired of the restrictive practices of the trade unions, which had seen the death, not merely the loss of independence, of national and local newspapers. He resolved to try a different way.
The reaction of the trade unions — a reaction supported by the Labour party—was simple. They tried to close down Mr. Shah's newspapers. Nothing was allowed to impede that aim, whether it was personal violence, intimidation or blockading the printing works. Thank goodness, that campaign failed, but it was no thanks to the latter-day defenders of a free press on the Labour Benches.
Mr. John Smith: What has this to do with the debate?
Mr. Sumberg: It is important because the credentials of the Labour party, as it criticises the Government position, need to be examined.
Mr. Shah went on to found the Today newspaper. Pie started a revolution in the printing industry and he attempted to break the power of the printing unions, which had hitherto thought—often correctly—that every newspaper employer was a soft touch. Mr. Shah failed, but the newspaper survived. The Opposition do not like the fact that his legacy was that the power of the printing trade unions was broken for ever. They are finished.
If the Labour party genuinely wanted to see a flowering of opinion, newspapers being created and more opinions being seen, they would have welcomed that development. Not a bit of it. Hon. Members have already criticised the conduct of Rupert Murdoch. When he tried to bring some sense into the printing industry, and to bring it into the 1980s, the Left resolved that he should not succeed. If the Grunwick picket line was the first Ascot of the Left, the Wapping barricade was undoubtedly the second. Less than a year ago, we saw the yobbish tendency of the Labour party fighting on the streets while the so-called refined or respectable tendency was ostentatiously shunning any contact with the Murdoch press while having the gall to complain that their views were misrepresented in his newspapers.
My speech will not be long because I wish only to remind the House of the history. Those who now work themselves into a pious rage over one newspaper, with only 2·5 per cent. of the national circulation, losing its independence, did not give a tuppenny damn about the threat to major national circulation newspapers and local newspapers when they were in danger of losing not merely their independence and freedom but their very existence.
The Labour party has shown in this debate hypocrisy and something worse. I deplore its constant references to the nationality of Mr. Murdoch.
Mr. Ron Leighton: What is it?
Mr. Sumberg: Whatever it is, such jibes come ill from a party that is constantly telling us that it is fighting racism and discrimination. It is wrong to put such an attitude to the House. Labour Members have no right to come to the House to bemoan the fate of the British press. They are responsible for a large measure of this. I think that it was Stanley Baldwin who described the press barons in the 1930s as having power without responsibility. Times have changed. The last election showed that the Labour party has no power, and never will have. This debate has shown that it has no responsibility either.
5.8 pm
Mr. Martin J. O'Neill: I am sponsored by the National Graphical Association. My position is well known, and I shall not go down that road today. However, I shall indulge in some schadenfreude at the expense of Mr. Shah. In many respects, the difficulties that he encountered were ones that the NGA helped to correct, as they were difficulties in the production of the Today newspaper following the debacle of its launching. These problems were corrected by the employment of union members at his plants. In the past few months, an increasing number of people on the production side of Today have taken out union membership. While there is by no means a closed shop there, a substantial number of the work force is engaged in producing what, technically, is now regarded as an attractive product.
The issues that we have to confront today are the role of the Secretary of State and the application of the criteria on the bid, and the nature of the purchase and its significance for newspaper printing and production. There has been much talk about circulation and the importance of the jobs, but there has not been much mention of the interaction between the production facilities and the future of other sections of the British press. That is the most glaring omission from the criteria behind which the Minister has sought to hide.
In comparison to the News International bid, Sunday Sport, at what has modestly been called the bottom end of the market, talked in terms of a sum of money substantial enough to make Mr. Rowland, if he were in the financial difficulties described by the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce), seize that bid in advance of his consideration of the Murdoch one. Anything up for sale in Britain strictly requires the interest of Mr. Maxwell. He is like the ladies who attend jumble sales organised by the Labour party who come along and look at every bargain and try to haggle for a price. When they find that there is another jumble sale down the street next week, they say, "We'll go down there and have a go."
Mr. Maxwell's interest is well founded and well established. That is one reason why Opposition Members would have demanded Maxwell's reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission had his bid been successful. Although in many respects he is sympathetic to the Labour party, there are times when we have to watch him very closely. As they say in Scotland, "When you sit down with the devil, you've got to use a lang spoon."
No matter who owned the paper, we would have to be careful. We are not clear whether the interest shown by Associated Newspapers was simply superficial or whether the company, in a predatory fashion, wanted to move into that area of the market in which News International and Today are presently competing.
Many people have suggested that a circulation of 500,000 would have been the break-even point although at one time there was talk that that circulation figure could have been as low as 35,000 if any of the companies involved wanted to make a go of the newspaper. The signs are that circulation had been creeping up and that advertising revenues had been improving. It is probably true to claim that the status of the Today element in the Lonrho accounts is not nearly as red as has been suggested.
We have been down this road before with Mr. Rowland. It is not that long since Mr. Rowland closed
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another new and exciting paper. The only difference between Today and the paper I have in mind is that people in the locality were prepared in great numbers to be identified with the paper and they strongly supported the quality and standards that the paper was seeking to uphold. Of course, I am referring to the Glasgow-produced Sunday Standard. That paper was closed abruptly for failing to meet fully, in a relatively short period, the targets set at its launch. Its closure was, once again, the result of the whimsical approach of Mr. Rowland to what was becoming a very significant newspaper institution.
Thankfully, the days are long past when the press barons continued to throw good money after bad to support their opinions and prejudices. Perhaps Mr. Rowland became bored. However, perhaps he did not want to be another contract printer. There may be aspects of the face of capitalism that even he finds unacceptable and perhaps he does not want to be involved in printing for other people. At the end of the day, his new presses were doing that. Indeed, the Today operation was running on a better financial footing than at any time since its launch because the London Daily News was being printed at Heathrow and because deals had been struck, following the closure of Today on Sunday, with the News of the World to print the colour sections of that paper.
The acquisition by News International follows logically into the scheme of things as Mr. Murdoch would want them. We have seen the appointment of a new editor to the News of the World whose aim is to increase the circulation of that paper even more. The weapon to be used in that circulation battle will be the colour presses now owned by News International. Those presses will be used until the next phase of Wapping is completed some time within the next 20 or 24 months.
It may be argued that Mr. Murdoch wishes to start up a new paper. However, the truth is that he has no record of starting papers in Britain; he merely acquires them, reduces them to the lowest common denominator of what passes as popular appeal and then sells them in ever greater numbers. That may be a testament to his commercial judgment or his assessment of humankind. I am not sure which. However, Murdoch will acquire and unload assets as and when that suits his purpose. I can well imagine that in two years' time we may be debating the sale of Today's printing presses. Those presses might well be sold to Mr. Maxwell and he would then have the colour paper that he wants to sell in great numbers, in the kind of numbers that he is achieving in Scotland with the Daily Record.
In the antics and moves of the newspaper proprietors we see the quite callous appreciation of the need to secure various means of production in different parts of the country. While we all welcome the retention of the jobs, few of us believe that the deal that has been struck will necessarily resolve anxiety. As I have said, I can imagine us facing the same problems in two years' time because of the nature of the newspaper industry. News International might well have been deterred by the bid being referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. We cannot be certain about that, but the argument is clear. The paper was a going concern and an attractive proposition.
The Secretary of State seems to have stood idly by. He does not realise that market share is not the only criterion that should have been taken into account. The statistics of the demand or the circulation of the newspaper are not the only important factors. Consideration should have been

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given to the control of the means of producing the newspaper. In many respects that is just as important in the longer term for the public interest.
A proper examination of those circumstances would have shown that the owners of newspapers today now produce one another's papers. In days gone by, the critics of monopoly capitalism might have identified the interlocking directorships as one of the mechanisms whereby ownership was concentrated. Today, power is exercised by small groups of men and their satraps by affording one another the opportunity to produce journals in different parts of the country and to do that in a way that has resulted in the ending of the origination by Express Newspapers Ltd in Manchester and a considerable loss of jobs in that area.
The lesson of this non-referral is clear. Whenever the Government are challenged by a large newspaper proprietor, they always hide behind the criteria because the criteria do not take account of present circumstances. The Fair Trading Act 1973 is not relevant to today's circumstances. No matter who brings in new technology or who assists in that, new technology requires new systems of control. This non-referral has shown that the Government, and the Secretary of State, are unfit to hold office because they do not appreciate that in trade and industry the needs of readers in the newspaper industry and of the producers and journalists are intermingled in such a way that we must have new controls over publication and ownership of papers and so break the interlocking relationship between the various strands.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Corporate and Consumer Affairs (Mr. Francis Maude): Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will tell us what sort of new controls and regulations he wants to introduce.
Mr. O'Neill: Time prevents me responding to the Minister's intervention at great length.
We must find a means of adequately separating the production of newspapers from the control of them if the owners of newspapers are using productive powers to interfere with the freedom of the press, or to ensure that the concentration of ownership increases to an exent that means that the Secretary of State is incapable of interfering with it. It is clear that he is incapable of doing so when we consider the episode that we are now discussing.
This may not have been the most successful exercise that the Opposition have waged to secure a referral, but it will alert the public to the fact that much more is required in the ownership and control of newspapers than the fig-leaf-like protection that is afforded to everyone by the 1973 Act.
5.20 pm
Mr. Michael Fallon: I am sorry that the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) did not have more time to develop his thinking on how the free press might be made a little less free. He made a significant contribution to the debate, however, and at the same time weakened the Opposition's case. He was the first Opposition Member to express some concern about jobs being at risk. He knows that jobs have been lost in recent years in the Scottish newspaper industry, and he expressed concern about the real risks of jobs being lost at Today. He knows that jobs were under threat, but that concern
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was not expressed by the Opposition spokesman, the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith).
Secondly, and more significantly, the hon. Gentleman reminded us that Mr. Rowland, as with Mr. Murdoch, has had no hesitation in closing newspapers that have made significant losses. No time was wasted in closing the Sunday Standard.
The Opposition have failed to make their case, and that is not because their anger is entirely synthetic. I imagine that it was occasioned by one telephone call from Mr. Maxwell last week. Their failure to make their case is not merely because their anger is conditioned by their perennial anti-Murdoch prejudice, which runs through their entire approach to the newspaper industry. They have failed because they have been unable to advance their case on the central test in the Fair Trading Act 1973 of competition in the newspaper industry.
The first test is whether a newspaper is or is not economic as a going concern. There is ample evidence—this evidence was before Ministers — that Today was losing considerable sums. There were two previous owners, and its sister newspaper, Today on Sunday, had already been closed. That fact was completely ignored by the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East. There was no alternative bidder making a firm offer to Mr. Rowland and Lonrho, and it is evident from all that we have seen and read that the business was on the brink of collapse. It seems that the first test of the 1973 Act is clearly satisfied.
Mr. Tony Lloyd: The hon. Gentleman mentioned he closure of Today on Sunday and also Mr. Rowland's ability to close newspapers. Does he regard the present legal framework as adequate when newspaper proprietors can close titles without any reference to the Government? We are talking about a massive concentration of ownership in an industry that provides sources of information for the public. Furthermore, is the hon. Gentleman happy that the provincial press is being devastated by the proprietors? Instead of criticising the Opposition's attempt to get some sanity into the newspaper business, will he urge the Government Front Bench to think seriously about the dangerous concentration within the industry?
Mr. Fallon: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point about closures and whether they should he notified. I shall come at the end of my speech to the general principles that we should examine in the operation of the 1973 Act.
The second test under the 1973 Act is whether the matter was urgent, and it seems that there is ample evidence that it was. Today was losing about £500.000 a week, which means that private business and private interests were losing that money. However, the Opposition have made far too much of the deadline that they feel was imposed on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. If a business is losing money week after week, there must be a point at which any sensible management will draw the line and say, "We will not allow our losses to continue after a certain point." The Opposition have presented their case in a way that suggests that Mr. Rowland had some sort of public duty to continue subsidising the newspaper to the extent of about £500,000 a week, and to do so week after week.
The matter was urgent because jobs had already been lost and more jobs were at immediate risk. I should have

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liked to hear more from the Opposition Front Bench about the extent to which they believe that the 500 jobs would have been secured if my noble Friend had not taken the action that he did. My noble Friend the Secretary of State had a difficult decision to take under the terms of the Act, and if Mr. Murdoch closes Today a year from now, the Opposition will crow. They do not care about Murdoch jobs in any event, but they will crow if it appears that my noble Friend took the wrong decision. On the other hand, if Mr. Murdoch makes a success of Today and turns it round so that it starts to make money, as he did with The Sunday Times, they will argue in a year or two's time that it must have been a going concern all along. It is only management, change of management, and the application of better management, business and marketing techniques that will turn the newspaper round.
My noble Friend the Secretary of State did not have an easy decision to take, but it seems that he took the right one, given that the conditions set out in the 1973 Act were satisfied. That suggests that the Government were fully entitled to agree that the transfer should take place without a report from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. If that is so, there is only one remaining and separate consideration to which we should address ourselves. Given that the Government were entitled to agree to the transfer, were they right to agree that the title should be transferred to News International? It seems that the tests to be applied are whether News International already has a significant stake in the middle market of newspapers, which plainly it has not, and whether the addition of the Today title will increase its share of the total newspaper market to the extent that it will have a dominant position.
It is necessary only to state the reverse of the first test to realise that it cannot be implied that News International's ownership of Today reduces competition in the middle market between the Daily Mail and the Daily Express. Did Lonrho's ownership of Today, or its ownership by Eddie Shah reduce competition between the Daily Mail and the Daily Express? It would seem that the presence of a third player in the middle market enhances competition, and I find it rather odd that the Labour party of all parties should seek to preserve an aging middle-class duopoly.
Will the addition of Today to the Murdoch stable significantly affect his share of the total market? Will the numerical increase in the number of his titles have that effect? It does not seem to me that that test is met either. He still does not have even one third of the total newspaper market in this country. I do not think that this decision makes any significant change in the concentration of the newspaper industry.
It is especially important that the Today title should survive, because this newspaper ushered in the era of new technology and the new industrial relations climate that those of us who support and believe in free newspapers should do everything possible to encourage. When I say "free newspapers," I mean not simply newspapers that are free to compete against other newspapers, but newspapers that are free to compete as businesses—free from the archaic working practices and anti-business methods of the past, and free as businesses to make profits and to be
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successful. We in this House owe a special debt to Today and Eddie Shah for opening the way to wider and freer competition in the newspaper market.
Finally, I turn to the point made by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd). Surely, however cumbersome they may seem, the real test of the workings of the Fair Trading Act 1973—and I accept that there is concern in Scotland and the north at the closure of titles — is whether newspapers are becoming more, or less, plural. Over the past two years or so we have seen a growing diversity in our newspaper industry. That growing diversity and plurality are quite separate from the question of how many newspapers Murdoch, Maxwell, Beaverbrook or Stevens owns, and all hon. Members should be ready and willing to support it.
I welcome the decision taken by my noble Friend. He has preserved the title of Today, he has preserved it as a going concern and he has secured the jobs that go with it. Of course, if Mr. Maxwell is seriously interested in buying the newspaper it will be open to him to make an application in the future, but it was my noble Friend's action last week that ensured the newspaper's survival, either to prosper on its own, or to be ready to let others try.
5.32 pm
Mr. Robin Corbett: The Minister and his hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) have made much of the fact that 500 jobs would have been at risk if the sale of Today had been referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. Indeed, the Minister—I am sorry that he is not in his place—claimed that the decision not to refer had
"preserved a substantial number of jobs." — [Official Report, 1 July 1987; Vol. 118, c. 504.]
I must say to the Minister's third representative on the Front Bench—the hon. Member for South Ribble (Mr. Atkins)—that he was in no position last week to claim credit for those jobs. Let me ask him—although I shall not get an answer, because he has left the bone here; even the dog has gone home — what assurances about jobs the Secretary of State sought from Mr. Murdoch, and what assurances were given.
There is bound to be no reply to that question; however, I have the answer. My information is that no such assurances were sought. The Minister and his hon. Friends have no basis for taking the credit, from the day on which the sale and the decision not to refer were announced, for 500 jobs being preserved, as the Minister stupidly claimed. Indeed, on the basis of the reasons given by the Minister for not referring the sale, it is logical to assume that no reference would have been made if Today had been sold to someone else, as precisely the same factors would have surrounded that transfer. Those factors remain the same whether Tom, Dick, Harry or Harriet is trying to buy.
If that is the case, the Minister knows—he said so in part this afternoon at the Dispatch Box— that at one stage Lord Rothermere of the Daily Mail was interested in acquiring the title. The hon. Member for Darlington had better remember one fact about that when he prates on about saving jobs. Lord Rothermere made it perfectly clear that his sole purpose in trying to acquire the Today title was to shut it down, the better to safeguard the flanks of the Daily Mail. That is another reason why

49
Conservative Members should be careful in boasting about jobs being saved and preserved. I believe that time will quickly demonstrate that what they say is not true.
Was it a taste of Murdoch style to come that, on the very day Today trumpeted the news of its purchase, it was under the headline
"Big welcome for £38m Today deal"?
The report began:
"Politicians and union leaders last night welcomed the purchase of TODAY by Rupert Murdoch's News International group."
Nowhere in that report was there one word of the criticism voiced by Opposition Members and supported by the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken). All that had evaporated. Judging by the new Murdoch-style Today, it never happened. I wonder whether that is what was meant by what I suppose passed for a leader, although it was not labelled as such, which modestly claimed that the newspaper under Murdoch would be "aggressively independent". The only thing that is aggressively independent about other Murdoch titles, such as the sewer Sun, is their independence from truth and facts.
Again, nowhere did that leader, or that news story, make it clear that what the leader modestly called
"Britain's most energetic newspaper group"
includes four other titles—that is, three newspapers and The Sun—or detail Mr. Murdoch's control of a television satellite, or his extensive media interests in the United States, Australia or anywhere else.
My main complaint is that under the present Government—while they prattle on about freedom and freedom of the press—monopoly ownership, and with it a strengthening of uncritical support for the Conservative party, has worsened in the current decade. Ten of the 17 "Fleet street" nationals have changed hands since 1981. The Government's view, which they also apply to radio and television, is that all that counts is the depth of a pocket or purse. Newspapers, television and radio stations — they are all for sale. They are simply other commodities that can be bought by and sold to the highest bidder. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"] Conservative Members make the point graphically when they say, "Why not?". Let me try to persuade them. I shall simply say to what is left of the Government Front Bench that, if that is their view, the Government should have the courage to repeal the Fair Trading Act 1973 and wrap up the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. I do not want that to happen, but it would be much better than the present deceit.
If the present law is to be retained, it needs toughening. Perhaps a Select Committee could consider the matter, and the Government could undertake tonight to respond positively to its suggestions. Better that than the present position, in which a decision not to refer looks to many, both inside and outside the House, like a belated thank-you present to Mr. Murdoch for his unswerving support for the Conservative party and its leader.
If the law is not changed—this is the worrying aspect — Mr. Murdoch, or anyone else with the cash, can and will buy his way further into our media, and then use that power to assault the commercial position of the few newspapers that criticise the Government, argue for an alternative and represent views that are excluded from any of the titles under Mr. Murdoch's control.
There is a legitimate public interest beyond profitability in all this. In a democracy, the public have the right to a
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range of titles that reflect differing opinions. The fact that views are held by a minority does not mean that they should not be heard. Competition is about much more than just competition in the market place. It is about the competition of ideas and about arguments for alternative policies within our democracy.
The new technology was said to be the dawn of greater diversity in our press. Three owners and three editors later, Today—the first national child of the new technology—has been swallowed by a media conglomerate owner who makes Citizen Kane look like a democrat. On all three continents where Mr. Murdoch rules, his titles support business men's Governments and their ambitions. It is an awesome power, and it threatens our democracy.
Mr. Cash: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Corbett: Not at the moment.
That is not simply because Mr. Murdoch interferes with the editorial content of his newspapers but because his staff know from the moment that they are appointed what is expected of them. They know what to write and how to write it. They know also that if they do not do so they will be out of the front door, before they can pick up their hats and coats.
Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman says that the Murdoch newspaper empire is riddled with lies, yet it seems that the hon. Gentleman, his right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) and all his colleagues have been relying heavily on extracts from The Sunday Times to support their case. Could he explain that?
Mr. Corbett: The hon. Gentleman's question is too facetious to bother with.
A month ago, Today decided to support the Liberal party and the Social Democrat party in the forthcoming election. Does anyone doubt for a single moment that its advice to voters at the next election will be precisely the same as that given in this election by The Times, The Sunday Times, the News of the World and The Sun—vote Tory? If that does not happen at the next election, I shall give £100 to charity. I shall look to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to remind me of that promise.
I congratulate David Montgomery, the new editor of Today, on his return to journalism. I hope he likes the experience, learns from it and determines to stay with it.
5.41 pm
Mr. William Cash: The Opposition have said a great deal this afternoon about the inadequacies of the Fair Trading Act 1973. Scurrilous and perfectly unsustainable attacks have been made on Mr. Rupert Murdoch. A variety of accusations have been levelled against him with not a shred of evidence to sustain them, other than from the book that Mr. Harold Evans published a few years ago in a fit of pique.
Mr. John Smith: In the speech to which the hon. Gentleman is, I believe, referring, I drew attention to the fact that the editor of The Times, who was appointed by Mr. Murdoch, correctly stated in his account of the events that Mr. Murdoch broke all the assurances and guarantees that were offered to Parliament so that the reference would not take place. What is scurrilous about that? That evidence exactly fits the case.
Mr. Cash: The right hon. and learned Gentleman is relying on hearsay from that book. His allegation is based on second-hand information. He has no evidence whatsoever to substantiate it.
Another point that has been completely ignored by the Opposition in their call for changes to the Fair Trading Act 1973 is that section 58(3) of that Act is based on section 8 of the Monopolies and Mergers Act 1965. Who, I ask the right hon. and learned Gentleman and his colleagues, passed that legislation? It was the right hon. and learned Gentleman's colleagues in the Labour party who passed section 8 of the Monopolies and Mergers Act 1965. Furthermore, all the essential ingredients of section 58(3) repeat section 8 of the 1965 Act. The facts speak for themselves. If the law needs to be changed, the Opposition were guilty of enacting the legislation that they now criticise.
During the Second Reading of the Monopolies and Mergers Bill on 29 March 1965, the President of the Board of Trade of the then Labour Government said:
"what neither a Government, nor even Parliament, can do is to compel the Press to be free, nor even, by Parliamentary decision, make a newspaper pay if the public is not willing to buy it. We have, indeed, allowed for this latter eventuality in the Bill by enabling the Board of Trade to give consent in the case of newspaper mergers if the paper in question has no chance of carrying on successfully with its existing resources."
He went through the various alternatives, which had been agreed by the then Conservative Opposition and Labour Government, that could have formed the basis for a different approach to the law and said:
"There are really, I think, only three practical alternatives here if we decide to do anything at all, and none of the three alternatives is very attractive. The first is judgment by some sort of judicial procedure; the second is decision purely by a Minister, who inevitably, or at any rate probably, has political loyalties of some sort; and the third is an inquiry and recommendation to the Government by some sort of administrative tribunal."—[Official Report, 29 March 1965; Vol. 709, c. 1218.]
All these matters were looked into carefully in 1965, and they formed a perfectly balanced set of alternative proposals. The decision that was taken by the then Labour Government and agreed to by the then Conservative Opposition, that was incorporated into the Fair Trading Act 1973 and that forms the legislative basis for these proposals, has already been thoroughly and exhaustively considered. The basis on which the Government have made this decision lies four square within the provisions of that legislation.
Much has been made of the political complexion of Mr. Rupert Murdoch and his newspapers. It may have escaped the attention of the Opposition that in 1974 there were two separate campaigns. The Sun, which at that stage had already been acquired by Mr. Rupert Murdoch, placed itself firmly under the Labour banner. It is absurd for the Opposition to pretend that there is a substantial case for levelling the charge of political partiality against Mr.
Rupert Murdoch when The Sun supported the Labour party in 1974. [Laughter.]
Mr. Neil Hamilton: Does my hon. Friend agree that the mirth on the Opposition Benches comes ill in respect of Mr. Murdoch, as he is one of the principal supporters and bankers of Mr. Hawke, the Prime Minister of Australia?
Mr. Cash: My hon. Friend makes an important point. When the Opposition start to collapse with mirth it is the
52
best indication that they have no reply to make to the suggestions that are being made on the Government Benches.
Mr. Wilson: Would the hon. Gentleman join me in condemning the scurrilous and vile campaign by The Sun in attempting to demonstrate that the heir to the throne is unbalanced because he visits islands and cares about poverty? Does he agree that any political party that prostitutes itself to a publisher who is prepared to peddle such treachery in the interests of circulation should be deeply ashamed of itself and should be branded as deeply unpatriotic?
Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman makes a series of futile allegations that have absolutely nothing whatever to do with the substance of the debate, so I shall treat them with the contempt that they deserve.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) made clear, Today has played a very significant role in the preservation of the freedom of the press. Furthermore, when faced with a mixture of financial crisis and urgency, the need to sustain that newspaper was self-evident. Therefore, the criteria in the Fair Trading Act 1973 have been subscribed to and complied with, and the basis upon which my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State arrived at his decision was entirely reliable and entirely justified.
The hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) suggested that in some way the decision was corrupt. If, under the basis of the legislation as it now stands, the Secretary of State, when arriving at a decision on a discretion, failed to be properly satisfied in law as to the basis upon which he made that decision—in other words, that there was a corrupt basis upon which he had arrived at the decision —that decision would be capable of being impugned at law. In reality there is no such basis, and we look in vain to the Opposition, including the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher), who no doubt will be replying to the debate, to produce evidence of such corruption and evidence of anything that can justify the impugning of the decision that has already been taken.
This decision was taken in line with other decisions that have been taken in the past — for good and sound reasons. Indeed, over recent years there have been a number of references to the MMC involving national newspapers. There was the one in 1966 when The Times was acquired. There was the 1978 reference in connection with Lonrho's acquisition of Outrams, the publishers of the Glasgow Herald. In 1981 there was the acquisition of The Observer by Lonrho. Therefore, it is not true, as the Opposition have said, that there have been no references in relation to national newspapers that are worth considering, because I have given three examples.
Furthermore, a number of non-references have occurred, including the Evening Standard and Evening News in 1980 and the acquisition of Times Newspapers Ltd. by News International in 1981. Reference has been made to the basis upon which that decision was made then. It was a perfectly proper decision at the time and in the then prevailing circumstances. Indeed, anyone who looks at the consent and the conditions imposed would know that it was a perfectly proper decision that was not capable of being impugned.
There is another aspect of the hypocrisy of the Opposition Benches on this subject. We need only look

53
back to what occurred in July 1969, when Mr. Cudlipp had announced that The Sun would be wound up in January of the following year. At that time The Sun was losing money. The Labour Cabinet considered whether the IPC-Reed merger should go to the MMC. I understand that at the time one of the Secretaries of State, now Mrs. Barbara Castle, went through the motions, weakly supported, so it is said, by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). It was said that there was not one supporter for the reference to the MMC by the Cabinet. For those who wish to look it up, they will find that this occurs in the Crossman diaries of 10 February 1970. These matters were looked into at that time.
According to those diaries, the Prime Minister of the day described the attempt to go through the motions of a reference to the MMC— which was not backed up by any decision to do so as there was not one supporter in favour of it—as "political suicide".
When Labour Members say that reference should have been made on this occasion, it would do them no harm to look at the history of the way in which similar references were dealt with by their own Government when in power. I should also add that the former right hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead, Mr. Roy Jenkins, also agreed with the then Prime Minister on the basis that together they had said that the Daily Mirror was the only paper that was loyal to the Labour party.
Labour Members should not be throwing stones, because Mr. Crossman made a very accurate assessment of the position in his diaries, and no one subsequently suggested that it was not an accurate representation of what happened.
Mr. Leighton rose—
Mr. Cash: Does the hon. Gentleman wish to intervene?
Mr. Leighton: No. I hoped that the hon. Gentleman had finished.
Mr. Cash: This decision was properly taken against the background of the legislation that was originally passed by the Labour party. The decision was fully supported by all the criteria set out in the Act, and there is no basis whatever for the Opposition to continue to criticise the decision, which was entirely justified.
5.55 pm
Mr. Ron Leighton: One way of approaching this matter—perhaps the only realistic way in view of' the circumstances—is with a massive dose of cynicism. Many people ask whether it matters, as so many of our tabloids are so bad that they live in the gutter, are debased and degraded, are a disreputable part of the entertainments industry, purveying titillation and sensation, and at election times are merely Conservative leaflets. Therefore, many wonder whether it matters at all, as they regard the tabloid press as a lost cause.
Secondly, many people think that this is a political decision— that Murdoch was so helpful in the election that this is his quid pro quo, his reward for services rendered. We all remember what Murdoch's News of the World did to Deirdre Wood at Greenwich and the lies told in The Sun about Labour councils banning nursery rhymes and so on. People think that the last thing this Government would want to do is to stand in his way.
Before anyone says that that has nothing to do with it, we should remember that this is not the first time that this
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Government have helped Murdoch. The Secretary of State and the Monopolies and Mergers Commission were the dogs that did not bark, let alone bite, when this happened in 1981 when Murdoch wanted The Times and The Sunday Times. One loophole in the legislation was whether the papers were making losses. The Secretary of State then said that they were uneconomic. but Harold Evans in his book "Good Times, Bad Times" claimed, and provided evidence, that they were not. We should recall what Murdoch said about Harold Evans in the statement that he issued on the day on which he took over The Times. He said:
"I hope that Harold Evans, whom I regard as one of the world's great editors, will continue to serve for a long time".
That was before Mr. Evans was pushed out. But Harold Evans said:
"It was Mrs. Thatcher's will which prevailed in the Government discussions on the take-over in 1981".
He added:
"I heard on 22 January 1981 that she had insisted there would be no monopolies inquiry. Murdoch had stood by her in the dark days and she was going to stand by him. The new Secretary of State for Trade, John Biffen, put it differently when he rose in the Commons five days later, but it added up to approval for Murdoch on condition that he gave various undertakings of editorial independence, which he readily did."
We all know that in his book Harold Evans said that Murdoch broke all those guarantees.
As a member of Sogat 82, I would not believe a word that Murdoch says about anything. I remember what he said to the staff of the News of the World recently. He strung them along and told them that they were going into Wapping. They formed an agreement that they had initialled and were willing to sign. but he broke those undertakings and wanted to sack 5,500 workers without any compensation or redundancy pay.
We should not be so cynical. What sort of newspapers we have does matter. They arc run as businesses, but they are different from most other businesses. It does matter whether they have standards. Why else do we have a Press Council? It may be a toothless tiger, but it is there. Why set up a Monopolies and Mergers Commission? Why else have a framework of accountability for the electronic media that sets standards and requires political balance? It is because we recognise that access to accurate information and news is vital to the working of our democracy. That is why newspapers should not be bought and sold like packets of tea over the counter if it results in monopoly, because monopoly of news is bad for democracy.
Parliament set up three Royal Commissions on the press, in 1949, 1962 and 1977. They all warned against monopoly and recommended action to maintain and create diversity. The second Royal Commission quoted the first when it said:
"the monopolist, by its selection of the news and the manner in which it reports it, and by its commentary on public affairs, is in a position to determine what people shall read about the events and issues of the day, and to exert a strong influence on their opinions."
It went on to say:
"In addition, the monopoly publisher is in a position to determine who and what shall be investigated and criticised in the area covered by his papers since there he is the principal source of news and comment. Furthermore, a journalist whose writings or investigations clash with the monopolist's policies and purposes may either have to move out of the

55
region of the monopoly, if he is to stay in his profession, or perhaps compromise or suppress his views and the results of his investigations."
How are we to tackle monopolies, and how are we to create diversity? Other countries have approached it in what we might call the positive way. They have done it by giving subsidies, because they believe that each strand of political thought should have its own newspaper. They give start-up aid and subsidies to newsprint. We have not done that in Britain. We have approached it in what we might call the negative way—that is, to forbid mergers and takeovers.
The 1977 Royal Commission said:
"On a reference, the Commission are required to report whether the transfer may be expected to operate against the public interest, taking into account all relevant matters and in particular 'the need for accurate presentation of news and free expression of opinion'."
This approach has proved farcical and totally ineffective. It is impossible to point to any occasion when it has proved effective. The Act contains fatal flaws and loopholes that enable the Murdochs of the world to drive a coach and horses through it. Under the Act, the Secretary of State need not refer if the paper is not economic, if the paper is to continue as a separate newspaper or if the case is one of urgency. That is fatal. It completely subverts and undermines the legislation. It only needs someone like Murdoch or Lonrho to say the magic words "This is urgent" or to give a 4 o'clock ultimatum for the Secretary of State immediately to roll on his back like a spaniel and led someone like Murdoch play with his Fair Trading Act. It is all very neat, the legislation is so weak. Experience shows that it is useless and that it is no real barrier to monopoly.
No one can say that Murdoch taking over Today is not a big step towards monopoly. If monopoly is bad, we ought to do something about it. The Chancellor of the Duchy said that it saved the title and saved 500 jobs. He deserved a horse laugh. Last week at Bemrose, Murdoch sacked 750 workers who printed the colour supplement for the News of the World all through the Wapping dispute. Murdoch is to saving jobs what Sweeney Todd was to health care.
Mr. Tony Marlow: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Leighton: No, there is not time.
Murdoch gives absolutely no guarantees at all in respect of the title. One of the attractive things to Mr. Murdoch is the machinery. It gives him facilities to print colour. With all the talk about new technology at Wapping, what a lot of people do not understand is that there is no new technology in the machinery room at Wapping. Those machines are all 17 years old and have been in store. He cannot print colour unless he gets his hands on this colour printing machinery.
If Today's title is to be kept, I am certain that it will bear little relationship to the present paper. I remind the House that The Sun was the original Daily Herald and that Reed International — the Daily Mirror —made the Daily Herald into a tabloid. It did not want two tabloids, so it gave the paper to Murdoch, and we know what he did with it. Today supported the alliance at the last election. If there
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is an alliance and if there is a Today at the next election —I know they are two big "ifs"—I will wager anyone in the House that Today will not support the alliance.
Some people thought that new technology would radically change the newspaper industry. They said it would mean lower costs and cheap newspapers, that anybody would be able to start their own newspaper and that it would lead to diversity. I did not believe that. They said that it would lead to many new Left-wing newspapers. I looked for this in the United States as the new technology originated there. I could not find any new Left-wing newspapers that had arisen there as a result of new technology.
The argument was that it would greatly reduce labour costs, but the last Royal Commission found that labour costs are only 21 per cent. of a newspaper's costs. The new technology had no effect on the other costs for newsprint and such things. The experience of the Daily Telegraph going over to new technology was that it was so expensive that the paper lost control of it. It is now owned by a Canadian precisely because it went over to the new technology. When Eddie Shah came along with the new technology, we were told that he would run rings around the big boys and break down monopoly. But even his new "cheap" technology newspaper cost £22 million to start up. All that money was lost and many tens of millions of pounds have since gone into it. There have been three changes of ownership and three changes of editorship, and to what end?— to end up being swallowed by Murdoch, the arch-monopolist. So new technology is no solution to the problem of monopoly.
If the slight reduction in costs brought about by the new technology is applied equally to all newspapers, it will not improve the relative position of weaker publications. It will not alter the relative position of competing titles. The proposition now before us is that the first new technology paper be taken over by an arch-monopolist. If we are against monopoly and if it is against public policy and against the spirit of the legislation, why do we allow it? If the Government do allow it, let them abandon the pretence that they are opposed to monopoly.
Murdoch is building a huge monopoly empire across the world of radio, television, cable and newspaper interests—as much as he can get in Australia, as much as he can get in the United States and as much as he can get in Britain. He is willing to sell out his nationality and his soul. He is willing to do anything. He does not like this country. He does not like British people or British institutions. He only uses us to make profits in his newspapers here. He makes more profit from his four British newspapers than he makes from any other par of his empire around the world and he uses those profits to finance further acquisitions in the United States and elsewhere. The Government propose that he be allowed to behave in that way. That must give us pause for thought.
My last point is that market forces in the press will not guarantee diversity. The ineffective monopoly legislation will not guarantee diversity. We must have something else. We have to work towards a new approach. My own party will have to give new thought to this. We need to do two things. First, there ought to be a publicly owned body responsible to Parliament which would acquire and own printing facilities and lease them to any body or group which could show that it could provide a readership and a demand. Secondly, there should be a body to distribute advertising. The old Daily Herald and the old News

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Chronicle collapsed when they had circulations of 2 million because they did not get advertising revenue. Anyone who says that a paper with a circulation of 2 million ought to go under is not a true believer in democracy. Inadequate advertising is preventing newspapers being viable. We need a body to distribute advertising fairly among the various papers.
6.7 pm
Mrs. Teresa Gorman: We have spent the afternoon in the House apparently hacking over the near corpse of a relatively small and relatively insignificant ailing business, deciding in our great wisdom whether we think that it should be allowed to die quietly or whether it should be given the kiss of life by Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Murdoch or someone else, as if we somehow or other have power in these matters. Opposition Members have several times demonstrated their xenophobia towards Mr. Murdoch, neglecting to note, as some of my hon. Friends have pointed out, that the majority of our newspaper groups, of which there are at least four prominent ones, rely heavily on the talents and capital of people from abroad, whether they come from Czechoslovakia, Canada or wherever.
I wonder whether that xenophobia on the part of Opposition Members extends to Japanese or American business men who bring business to the hard-pressed parts of the country where some Opposition Members have their constituencies. I am sure that their electors would be interested to know how they feel about foreigners coming here and investing money. I think that it is a jolly good thing.
Several times during the debate the subject of the Fair Trading Act 1973, which subsumes all that we are talking about, and its offshoot, the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, has been raised. It was suggested earlier by the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) that the Act was a weak piece of legislation. It was also pointed out that weak legislation of that sort brings the law into disrepute. I would go further and say that the legislation, which is the point of the whole exercise this afternoon, is silly. The fact that the House should he deluded into believing that its role is to interfere in what is a perfectly free business decision between two consenting adults, two newspaper proprietors, as to whether the newspaper has a viable future is nonsense. Legislation on the statute book that allows the House to intervene in this way brings the proceedings of the House into disrepute. We should be considering whether we need that legislation on the statute book at all.
A great deal has been said about monopoly and about Mr. Murdoch building up some great monopoly by which he will influence all our decisions. I am not entirely averse to the idea that the owner of a business should have a strong say in the ethos of that business. If the Today newspaper had had a political stance, it would probably not be in its present position. In fact, it muddled about not having any political market and eventually ended up as a soft Left alliance newspaper, where we know there was not much market to be had. If it has now ended up in the gutter. It is a Left-wing gutter, and not a Right-wing gutter on this occasion.
To suggest that Mr. Murdoch could create a monopoly of newspapers by buying up one here or there is nonsense. In addition to newspapers, we have any number of
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political and quasi-political magazines that people of Left-wing persuasion can read. There are magazines such as the New Statesman. I believe that the Tribune Group has a magazine, and there is a publication called Labour Weekly. There are dozens of journals and dozens of television and radio programmes where the Left can express its opinion. Best of all, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has said on more than one occasion, if the Left feels that it is necessary to have a national newspaper, it can set up and run its own. The hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill), representing the National Graphical Association, has pointed out that his interests lie in that direction
We have a piece of legislation that we should he reconsidering. Fair trade is brought about by an open, competitive market. The fact that we are debating this issue now suggests that the House is attempting to constrain open competiton. We do not want legislation to restrict that in any way.
Mr. Andrew Faulds: Let us have more massive monopolies.
Mrs. Gorman: The hon. Gentleman ought to know that a monopoly can be effective only if it is backed up by the power of Government legislation. As long as there is no method of force for keeping out competition, one cannot have a monopoly. A monopoly is something that Governments can have, but they cannot be created by the private sector. The more open the market is allowed to be, the less chance there is of the sort of restriction about which Opposition Members are complaining.
We want less of the Fair Trading Act. I suggest that we should reconsider the whole thing if it leads us to spend the entire afternoon debating nonsense such as the future of a relatively insignificant newspaper. We should adopt the attitude that the best possible way in which Opposition Members as well as my hon. Friends can get their points of view across is to keep the market as open as possible. It is competition that brings variety to the customer, not the sort of restrictive or semi-restrictive legislation that the Fair Trading Act represents.
Mr. Wilson: Would the hon. Lady extend her argument to television? Would she say that the people who pay for advertising on television should have the power and the right to dictate what television programmes and channels exist, and what the political complexion of the programmes should be? If she does not say that the power of advertising money should dictate the complexion of television, what is her logical argument for saying that the same market forces should have absolute power over newspapers?
Mrs. Gorman: Advertisers would be interested to hear the hon. Gentleman say that they dictate the nature of the programmes around which their advertisements are placed. I am sure that they would like to have that power. The important thing is that that does not happen.
Mr. Wilson: I asked whether the hon. Lady thought it should happen.
Mrs. Gorman: Television is not nearly open enough. We need more competition on television and radio, and I hope that we will move in that direction. Rupert Murdoch, as the financial proprietor of the newspaper, is not wrong in wishing to have some say in the way in which the newspaper goes. It is perfectly logical. If Eddie Shah had

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newspaper had a political position, it might not have been dying on its feet today. Because the public could not identify its position, they did not buy it. It deteriorated gradually from a mixed bag of opinions into a soft-Left newspaper, and then lost its readership. It is now lucky to be rescued by Mr. Murdoch so that at least the machinery may be used to provide jobs and so on.
One cannot expect someone who owns a business not to have a say in the way in which it moves, the type of product it produces, and the general tone and direction of it. Legislation that allows us to believe that we have some say in a straight commercial market decision is nonsense and wastes the time of the House.
6.17 pm
Mr. Norman Buchan: After those closing remarks I am not sure why the hon. Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) wanted to come here in the first place, if she believes that we have no power and does not want us to examine—
Mrs. Gorman rose—
Mr. Buchan: I will not give way. With respect, we have heard quite enough. I find that comment extraordinary, as I found her other comments. She said that monopoly cannot occur unless the Government cause it. At present, three people, Maxwell, Murdoch and Stevens, control about 80 per cent. of the dissemination of popular printed information in this country. If that is not technically a monopoly, it is bloody near. They are three people with a particular point of view. There are about five people who have a basic monopoly over the whole of western Europe in the popular dissemination of news. For example, there is Berlusconi in Italy and France.
During the entire debate Conservative Members, certainly the hon. Member for Billericay, have not understood the offensive nature of discussing newspapers as if they were commodities to be bought and sold at some sort of auction. At least Beaverbrook was honest when he said that he retained his newspapers in order to create propaganda. Conservative Members— the hon. Member for Billericay and the Minister — think that the first criterion for the preservation of a newspaper is profitability.
Throughout history there have been battles for freedom and for freedom for expression in order to achieve that freedom. There was the fight against the Stamp Acts, the fight against censorship, and now the fight against monopoly by cash. That is the position we are facing. It is nonsense to think that the individual outside has as much power in terms of the dissemination of views, as much freedom in terms of expression and, therefore, as much freedom, as Mr. Murdoch. He has 11 million times more chance of expressing his view than an individual voice outside.
I am told by the Minister that the Government could not interfere in the sense of making a judgment on the case. They could decide only whether it should be referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. One of the weaknesses of the argument may be that they would not have an opportunity to listen to the views of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
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My God, only a year ago in this House two Cabinet Ministers lost their jobs because they were busy interfering in an industry, Westland. Then, there was plenty of interference over a straightforward commercial transaction. Therefore, the Minister cannot come to this House and give us the hypocrisy that this Government are not interested in commercial decisions. They are interested, and there are two ex-Cabinet Ministers on the Back Benches to prove that.
The second reason why we are upset is the result of the comments made by the hon. Member for Billericay during her speech. The hon. Lady accused us of xenophobia, but let me tell the hon. Lady that I spent the entire afternoon trying to prevent the xenophobia of her Government keeping out someone from Pakistan who should be coming here.
Today, I received two letters. One was from my brother-in-law in Canada, who is white, to tell me that he will be coming over here for a month this summer. His letter was not a request for me to make representations so that he may obtain a visa. He can come over— he is white. My brother will arrive on the date that he told me. The other letter was about Mohammed Shafri, who is in Pakistan. He has done the 40-mile trip to Islamabad twice in an attempt to process an application to appear in Britain at the wedding of his widowed sister's daughter so that he may give her away at the ceremony. That application has been refused because of the xenophobia of the Government.
Therefore, we are offended for two reasons, first because of the hypocrisy of Conservative Members in relation to such problems and secondly, because of the Government's failure to understand that we are not dealing with simple commodities. We do not believe that we should leave freedom of expression to the vagaries of the market place or allow the freedom of the big and powerful to dictate and determine.
The hon. Member for Billericay knows perfectly well how Mr. Murdoch uses his papers. He certainly uses his papers to make points, but above all he uses them to make profit. In the process he is prepared to let the precious written word degenerate into the gutter, as he has helped the degeneration of the entire popular press of the country.
I am against monoply, whether on the part of Murdoch or Maxwell. I certainly believe that it is valuable that those men took opposing views during the election. I agreed with the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce), who spoke for the alliance— if I may still call it an alliance. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman said that it was a small voice, but that at least it spoke on behalf of the alliance.
I believe that it is a crime for us to pretend that there is freedom, liberty and democracy when there is a virtual monopoly of the printed word in Britain. It does not stop there. We have seen the Peacock report and the Green Paper on television and radio. Both those documents endorse exactly what the hon. Member for Billericay wants. They want to get rid of restrictive legislation and make it a free-for-all so that the hon. Lady and myself can own a radio station. She nods. Can the hon. Lady afford to open a television station tomorrow? She cannot and I cannot, but Maxwell and Murdoch can. The hon. Lady does not share the same freedom of equality as Mr. Maxwell and Mr. Murdoch.
This so-called freedom is the freedom of two, three or five people to express their point of view and not the freedom of the many. If we want freedom for the many we

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must understand the nature of freedom in our society. If we want freedom for the many we cannot give power to Maxwell, Murdoch, or to Berlusconi. The power of freedom must be exercised by the social will of the community.
Mr. Marlow: The hon. Gentleman, in common with so many of his hon. Friends, is obsessed with the monopoly aspect in this affair. The hon. Gentleman says that he could not afford to open up a radio station, but the Labour party could. The Labour party could also open a newspaper. However, the problem may be that if the Labour party opened a radio station or launched a newspaper nobody would listen to it or read it. Is that what the hon. Gentleman is concerned about?
Mr. Buchan: It is extremely interesting that the hon. Gentleman should make the rights of one man, Murdoch, the equivalent of the rights of some 11 million trade unionists or members of the Labour party. Thus we arrive at the equation that 10 million equals one, whether it is Murdoch or Maxwell. There is no equality of freedom unless the 11 million have the same power that Maxwell and Murdoch exercise.
I wish to discuss the effect of this decision on another current case, that of The Scotsman. The Scotsman was first acquired by Roy Thompson, almost in the same month as the Manchester Guardian changed its name to The Guardian. Indeed, Mr. Roy Thompson had to be prevented from seeking to change The Scotsman to "The Man." The Scotsman is one of the two quality newspapers in Scotland. Indeed, there are other good newspapers in Scotland, above all the one published by my hon. Friend the Member for Cunningham, North (Mr. Wilson), "The West Highlands Free Press." That is a welcome addition, though it does not have quite such a large circulation as The Sun.
At present, The Scotsman is at the centre of an honourable strike. The journalists want to retain the freedom to be able to report this place to the readers of The Scotsman and not to be restricted to reporting this place only from the viewpoint and in the interest of the entire regions of Great Britain — largely, incidentally, for evening papers. In other words, if the group that controls The Scotsman has its way, the voice of that paper will be chopped by those who control that newspaper, Thompson Regional Newspapers. That is what is happening within the Maxwell and Murdoch groups. Those groups, by acquiring another paper, or another group, prevent the wider dissemination of news and prevent diversity of opinion.
The tool they use for that end is the new technology. Peacock and the Tory party have argued that new technology opens up freedom of expression, but it has had the exactly opposite effect. Eddie Shah has been praised today for ensuring greater ease of publication and ease of presentation by using new technology. However, the effect of new technology has been to act as an instrument to reduce the variety of the press rather than increase it. It has been used not to allow greater diversity of ownership, but to reduce ownership. The end point of competition is monopoly. For that reason there become fewer people with ownership and less diversity of views. Such is the problem we face.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) spoke powerfully on behalf of the print
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unions and said that there were solutions. The hon. Member for Billericay thought that the best solution was to scrap everything and let the powerful have their way. History has shown that when the powerful have their way, millions have suffered. The solution to this issue of crucial and social importance is to exercise some social responsibility for it. There was a laugh when my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East said that printing presses could be established by the Government and groups should be allowed to hire them and pay for their use to enable them to publish. That practice is followed in the extremely good democracy of Sweden. There is no reason why it should not happen here. In addition to such liberating methods we can use restrictive methods and say that no man should own more than X number of titles.
I should have thought that one newspaper is enough for any one man. Apparently, Murdoch thought on similar lines earlier on this year when he said:
"We all slow down as we get older. I and my colleagues have put together a very important group of newspapers, magazines and television properties. Now we should move into a mature phase where we improve them all, and just vvork at them. We have enough."
That was in January. However, he did not have enough, because he has now bought Today. Either Mr. 'Murdoch was telling the truth or he was telling a lie. If he was telling a lie that is all the more reason why we should deplore the Government's decision to let him have his way. If he was speaking the truth when he said, "We have enough," it means that he has, no doubt, bought Today to acquire the machinery in the interests of competition rather than to run that newspaper.
Among other things, this gross interference affects the liberty of the readership.
Mrs. Gorman indicated dissent.
Mr. Buchan: The hon. Lady shakes her head. She wants freedom to control the 300,000 newspapers that are printed each day, but what about the freedom of those 300,000 people who wanted to read that particular newspaper which is now changing hands?
The central argument that is facing us in this debate is not the technicalities of sending a bid to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission or the technicalities of the Government's stupid decision. It is a question of freedom, liberty and democracy. The sooner we come to understand that, the better. The Government's actions, the Peacock report and their decision of last week have stood freedom on its head. They are saying that they seek to give freedom to the rich and powerful at the expense of the many. 'The people had better face up to that because freedom and democracy will be the critical linchpin at the next election.
6.30 pm
Mr. Matthew Carrington: After that speech by the hon. Member for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan), we should get back to some of the commercial realities.
Today was questionably viable. Its readership was too low to sustain it. If readership is too low, the inevitable consequence is that the advertising also becomes low. One can be sure of one thing about advertisers: they are impartial about which newspapers they advertise in. If advertising is leaving a newspaper, it will not survive.
The newspaper was about to close for perfectly good commercial reasons, that it was losing about £500,000 a

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week. That is an unsustainable financial position for any newspaper. Investors were needed to make up the amount of money per week that was necessary to keep the newspaper going.
Few investors are prepared to put about £38 million into a newspaper. If the Government's policies have time to continue, there will be many more investors with that sort of money, but at the moment the number of people who can invest that sort of money in such a loss-making venture with the prospect of turning it round is not large. It is worth considering who the potential investors in the newspaper were.
First—we have heard it from Labour Members—we have the desire for an owner of a newspaper to come forward who is politically uncommitted, does not own any other newspapers and would allow editorial freedom—in other words, a man who is rare on the newspaper publishing scene and on the commercial scene in general. Perhaps Labour Members would consider such a man to be Mr. Robert Maxwell. For all his many undoubted virtues as a newspaper proprietor, when it came to it, he was not prepared to put the money up front to rescue that newspaper.
As I am sure many other hon. Members did, I read in The Sunday Times the description of the negotiations before the takeover. It was apparent that Mr. Maxwell's offer, if such it was, was a nebulous, "Cash tomorrow or some time in the future." It was not a real rescue of that newspaper—
Mr. Marlow: It was a political stunt.
Mr. Carrington: As my hon. Friend says, perhaps it can be described kindly as a political stunt.
The second option which has been suggested is that certain hon. Members or their friends outside the House could have had a whip round and bought the newspaper. That is not such an outrageous suggestion as we might think because something similar happened with News on Sunday. Highly politically committed local councils, finding themselves in control of certain funds on a trustee basis, mainly pension funds of their employees in the town hall, felt it appropriate to invest those funds in a highly speculative newspaper venture, News on Sunday,which would have a particular political leaning. At the moment. in its final death throes, it is losing the pension funds of those councils large amounts of money. We must be extremely grateful that hon. Members' friends outside the House did not feel it appropriate to dip into the money that was in trust yet again to rescue yet another paper. The pensioners will be more grateful than anybody else that it has not happened. If it had, they would have been left with relatively little in their pension fund.
The third option was Mr. Murdoch. He is no saint. I do not suppose that any of my hon. Friends would consider that any of us have a brief to support him, but in the past he has proved himself a saviour of newspapers. He also has the commercial ability to put a newspaper back in order when it is losing money. I am sure that hon. Members and many people outside the House would rather have a viable Today than pie in the sky tomorrow.
6.35 pm
Mr. Mark Fisher: In this debate, the Government had the task to convince the
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House and the public that they acted correctly in instantly approving the takeover and not referring it to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster surprised the House by the feebleness of his attempt to make that case, but at least he attempted to do so. His case was that Today was uneconomic, that there was acute urgency and that the Secretary of State did everything that he could to fulfil his responsibilities under the Fair Trading Act.
Because virtually nobody else on the Conservative Benches made a case, apart from repeating the fact that there was no alternative, it is worth looking at what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said. He said that the economic case was the simple and least controversial part. The reports and facts that he gave the House were mixed. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) referred to reports in the UK Press Gazette that Lonrho executives said that Today was shaping up nicely. Indeed, for several weeks the UK Press Gazette has reported that senior executives of Lonrho such as Mr. Nick Morell said that they were optimistic about Today's chances. But those are reports. We should look at the facts. The facts, which no Conservative Member has recognised, or stated, are that Today's circulation has been going up every single month for the past six months. Yesterday the figure was 337,000. Is that failure to increase circulation every month for the past six months?
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East also told us that Mr. Rowland, speaking while on holiday in Split, said:
"We think the losses on the paper can soon be minimised … we know the ore is at 1.600 feet so we'll keep digging."
Perhaps Conservative Members do not like reports and would prefer facts. The facts are before us. As the hon. Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken) said, Mr. Murdoch was prepared to put in his cash—£38 million — because he believed that it was economic. In that mixture of reports and facts, all that we heard from the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was that there was a resolution of the board and that there was evidence. But we never heard what that evidence was. It was unspecified.
Why was the matter urgent? Lonrho bought the newspaper when it was loss-making. It knew what the problems were. It must have been confident of solving them. It knew the investment that would have to be made. The Chancellor just said that there was a resolution of the board and that he had evidence, but again he failed to tell the House what the evidence was. If he is to reach the core of the debate, which is whether the Secretary of State acted responsibily, he and the Government owe it to the House to put that evidence in front of us. Where is it? We must see it.
I ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster to place a memorandum of material in the Library of the House immediately after the debate, showing all the detailed working papers that he had, and the evidence that was put in front of him and the Secretary of State, so that we can see it and so that we and the public can make our own judgment on the facts which were before the Secretary of State.
There was a good precedent for that in 1981. The then Secretary of State put a memorandum of material in the Library. I have it here. I ask the Secretary of State, or the

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Chancellor, on his behalf', to place a similar, I hope more detailed, memorandum in the Library of the House immediately after the debate.
It is not just a matter of having those facts. The House needs to know what questions the Secretary of State asked those gentlemen when they came to see him. What questions did he ask about the financial position of Today? What questions about the assets, the printing works, the property or the good will were asked? What questions about the losses; what questions about the overheads, debts or interest charges? How did he separate the losses attributable to Today on Sunday from those of Today? How did he seek to separate the figures in Lonrho's audited accounts for Today from the rest of Lonrho's accounts figures that were set before him'? I presume that they were put in front of' the Secretary of State. The House needs an answer about how he approached those figures.
Mr. Kenneth Clarke: Will the hon. Gentleman accept that what is required is that the Secretary of State should be satisfied that the newspaper is not a going concern, economically, as a separate paper? The Secretary of State needs adequate information for that. There is no point in compiling information upon information once there is sufficient information to satisfy him on that point. There is no point in proving something six times over. Does the hon. Gentleman seriously doubt that this was a heavily loss-making newspaper that was viable only with a circulation of about 700,000?
Mr. Fisher: On the contrary, what the House and the public need to know is that the facts were there and that the Secretary of State saw them. The public need to see those facts, too. The Secretary of State should recognise that the facts were given before, and we need to know them now. I trust that he will put them before the House. Without them, it is impossible for the House to decide whether the Secretary of State acted properly and wisely.
What questions did he put on the future prospects of the paper? Did he ask for an independent valuation, or did he—as with so much else in the case—simply take the word of Lonrho executives? Did they say, "These are the facts." Did he say, take your word for it entirely. I do not need any independent valuation of my own."? That seems surprising and, if true, it shows a cavalier attitude to the facts.
There is the issue of the timing of events, too. The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, on behalf of the Secretary of State, made great play of the urgency of the situation. Let us examine that urgency. Will he tell the House—if not, I will ask him a written question, and he can answer in writing — when he first met the representatives of Lonrho and of News International? Was it on Tuesday, or Wednesday morning? Did he, by any chance, meet Mr. Robinson or Mr. Nick Morell on Wednesday morning? Was it on that occasion that these facts and this evidence were put to the Government? If that was the occasion, was it done in writing or verbally?
If it was in writing, and I am right in thinking that it was done on Wednesday morning, the House will know that that was four, five or at most six hours before the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster came before the House to make a statement that the Secretary of State had been totally satisfied by all the evidence. So, the Secretary of State is asking us to believe that, in six hours, the
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accountants in the DTI went through the evidence and saw that the paper was wholly uneconomic and that there was an overwhelming urgency about the case. Six hours of scrutiny!
The Government should be ashamed of themselves. At least in the 1981 case the Secretary of State will recall that it took a whole week for the Department of Trade and Industry to conclude that the case was well-founded. In this case, unless the Government care to tell me that I am wrong, we have been told that the paper's fate was decided and that the Government were satisfied within a maximum of five or six hours.
Mr. Maude: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the break-even point in circulation for the newspaper was 700,000, and that its actual circulation was 300,000? Does he further accept that it had been making serious losses from the moment that it had been set up and that no one has seriously questioned for an instant that it was making serious losses at the time?
Mr. Fisher: No one is in a position to analyse in detail or to question the figures, because no one apart from the Secretary of State and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster has seen them. If the public—[Interruption.] The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster now says that everybody knows about them. What does everyone know? Not a single fact has been put before the House that everyone knows. The Chancellor should understand that the figures are rather more difficult than he says they are. It will be a matter of considerable accountancy skill to withdraw the relevant figures from Lonrho's audited accounts. If the right hon. Gentleman does not understand that, he should re-examine them.
The Government have made a decision on virtually no evidence. That brings no credit to the Government or the legislation. The Government have simply rolled over and said, "We take your word for it. We don't need the figures. Even if you give us the figures a mere four or five hours beforehand, we will be satisfied and not ask questions about their accuracy." That is the case that is so overwhelming that it does not need to comply with the legislation and go to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster started with some sweet words about the public interest and about how our national press needs diversity and independence. In general, we no longer have that. Three companies own 71·5 per cent. of our national dailies. Three companies own 81·7 per cent. of our Sunday circulation. In this case, News International, with five titles, owns 32 per cent. of our dailies, and 33 per cent. of the total. That represents 10·8 million papers sold every week, out of a total of only 32 million sold in this country.
Mr. Rupert Murdoch, on "Panorama" in January. said:
"We have enough in this country. We are now going to improve our product."
Hon. Members on both sides of the House will have seen from recent editions of The Sun how improved that product has been. Mr. Murdoch, however, should not be taken lightly. He is a ruthless and ambitious man who—[Interruption.] If hon. Members doubt that, they Mould, perhaps, look at his interests in radio, television cable, satellite, film and broadcasting. If they believe that he has satisfied his desire for media control in this country, they should know that he now owns 75 per cent. of Australian

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print media. It is that cross-media ownership that is so dangerous. All hon. Members should be aware of the situation. It is possible that, in the next 10 years, we shall turn around and discover that Mr. Murdoch and people like him own our cultural media. That is not a light matter.
Every other country recognises that that is a problem. Almost all have specific legislation to protect themselves from it. In Italy, there is specific anti-trust legislation, with a 20 per cent. maximum. In France, there is a 30 per cent. maximum. In Sweden and Norway, there is specific, positive legislation to encourage pluralism. Even the United States has legislation preventing cross-media ownership whereby no paper and television station in the same city may have the same owner. We should have the same concern here.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Monklands, East referred to the Broadcasting Act 1981, which forbids ownership of ITV companies except by British and EEC nationals, and which affects the concentration of ownership. That is because we recognise that television and broadcasting are powerful media. The same is true of the newspaper industry. We badly need to protect ourselves from a concentration of ownership by specific legislation.
The lack of scrutiny by the Government shows that, whereas they have a duty to safeguard the public interest, they have been stampeded by Mr. Murdoch, who has put a pistol to their heads. They have not even bothered to acquaint themselves with the facts. I hope they will now do so, and put those facts before the House and the public. They have reached completely the wrong decision. The Conservative Government are now not only pawns of the City and the friends of deregulation but, effectively, the party of private monopoly. I invite the House to join the Opposition and vote for our amendment and against this appalling abnegation of responsibility by the Government.
6.49 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Corporate and Consumer Affairs (Mr. Francis Maude): The debate has taken place in a calmer atmosphere than that which prevailed on Wednesday. I had hoped that a period of calm would have enouraged some Opposition Members to realise that their rejection of the decision made by my right hon. Friend the Seceretary of State was misguided.
The Fair Trading Act, like its predecessor, does not require a Monopolies and Mergers Commission examination in every case. It sensibly recognises that there may be circumstances when time will not permit such an examination. In such cases, if the newspaper is to continue as a separate newspaper—as was the case with Today—and it is uneconomic as a going concern, the Secretary of State may give his consent without an examination.
It astounds me that some Opposition Members should have suggested that Today is still economic as a going concern. No rational person could sustain such an argument. The paper has made losses since its inception. It has already had to be rescued once and further losses lie ahead. Losses of up to £30 million a year have been widely quoted and are not far wrong.
The owners of the paper had concluded that enough was enough and that if the paper could not be sold quickly it would have to be closed. It has been suggested that Lonrho was bluffing and that my right hon. Friend should
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have called that bluff. That would have been wholly irresponsible. He had in front of him a resolution from Lonrho's board saying that it would close Today at midnight if a reference was made. It had apparently decided some time previously that in view of the substantial and continuing losses being made by Today, it would not fund the paper, in any event, beyond 30 June.
My right hon. Friend did not even have to rely on that evidence alone. No more than three weeks previously, Lonrho had closed Today on Sunday. The hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill) reminded us that the Sunday Standard, based in Glasgow, had been closed by Lonrho — "whimsically", according to the hon. Gentleman. With that evidence before us. it is not surprising that my right hon. Friend decided that he could not take the risk with the newspaper and with people's jobs.
Against that hard evidence, the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) seriously suggests that the Secretary of State should have taken a different view, on the basis of a report in a Maxwell paper of a telephone conversation with Mr. Tiny Rowland on holiday in Split.
I recollect from the time when I practised at the Bar that there is a rule called the best evidence rule. I do not know whether it applies in Scottish law.
Mr. John Smith: Of course it does. If the hon. Gentleman was in practice he would know that.
Mr. Maude: I am an English lawyer. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman had been called upon to choose between those two forms of evidence, as he might have been in the long-gone days when he was Secretary of State for Trade, he could have made no other decision than that made by my right hon. Friend.
Mr. Fisher: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he accept that the only best evidence is the facts? Will he undertake to place in the Library the facts that were in front of the Secretary of State?
Mr. Maude: There is no serious dispute about the facts. Today was an uneconomic paper. The hon. Gentleman seemed to argue that it was difficult to disentangle the figures for News (UK) Ltd. from those for the rest of Lonrho. But News (UK) Ltd. is a separate company—a 90 per cent. subsidiary of Lonrho. It was not difficult to extract the figures because there was a continuing subsidy from Lonrho. There is no confusion. It was a clear, straightforward case. Today was uneconomic and was heading for the rocks. It would have been wholly irresponsible to take a risk with it.
My right hon. Friend did not even need to be satisfied that there would be an immediate closure. There needed only to be a serious risk that the paper would not survive for the time taken by an MMC reference. I remind the House that the last transfer of a newspaper referred to the MMC—Fleet Holdings to United Newspapers—took five months to be cleared. Does anyone seriously suggest that Lonrho would have been prepared to keep the paper going for five months with such losses?
In the face of that evidence it would have been a foolhardly gamble to assume that Lonrho was bluffing. The 500 people whose jobs depend on the survival of Today are heartily relieved that my right hon. Friend did not take that reckless gamble.

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It has been suggested that my right hon. Friend should have imposed conditions on the transfer. There could be only two reasons for doing that: either to ensure that Today continued as a separate newspaper—no one has seriously suggested that that is not Mr. Murdoch's intention; all the commercial logic points in that direction—or to guarantee editorial freedom. There was clearly a case for imposing such conditions in the transfers of The Times, The Sunday Times and The Observer—
Mr. Leighton: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Maude: No. I must get on. I have a lot of points to deal with.
The Times, The Sunday Times and The Observer were well established and substantial newspapers of considerable national importance. Today is of recent origin and has only a tiny market share—no more than 2·5 per cent. of the market even for popular dailies. It could not have been justifiable to impose conditions in such a case.
Listening to some Opposition Members one would think that choice and diversity in our newspaper market were declining. The reverse is true, as my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) pointed out in his powerful speech. There are now 11 companies with national newspaper interests, compared with only nine 10 years ago. There are two additional companies with national newspaper interests. If that is regarded as a reduction of choice and diversity, that is an odd definition.
In the past 10 years no fewer than six new national newspapers have come into existence, some free-standing and some from within existing groups. The implied suggestion by Opposition Members that there is a wicked capitalist conspiracy to freeze out newspapers is manifestly absurd. That contention was demonstrated ad absurdum by the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) in a contribution of advanced paranoia, couched in the most insulting and offensive terms. I think that when he reflects on it in the morning he will be somewhat ashamed of that speech.
It has never been easier to establish a new newspaper. New technologies and the increasing practice of subcontracting the printing mean that start-up costs are comparatively modest. There is nothing to prevent anyone of any political stance from setting up a new paper, as the recent establishment of The Independent and News on Sunday demonstrate. However, once a newspaper is established, its success and the maintenance of the jobs involved depend on customers buying copies of the paper. No one can compel them to do so.
There is a wide range and variety of newspapers within a comparatively narrow price band and I found somewhat disquieting various suggestions made by Opposition Members, including the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) who has referred contemptuously to the gutter press and on Wednesday referred to the "degrading standard of journalism". The right hon. Gentleman ought to remember that no fewer than 8 million people buy the Daily Mirror, The Sun and the Daily Star and many more people see those papers. It is offensively arrogant for the right hon. Gentleman to assume that he is right and all those people are wrong. That attitude may go some way to explain the convincing and shattering electoral defeat of the Labour party.
Much of the debate has been about the nature of the proprietors involved. Mr. Murdoch has been accused of
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being a foreigner, of inhibiting editorial freedom and of supporting the Conservative party. We may have all sorts of opinions about the proprietors. The fact that a paper is technically foreign owned may be of slight interest, but I doubt whether it makes much difference in reality. I doubt whether it makes a substantial difference to the Daily Mirror that it is owned by a Liechtenstein-based company.
We should not have to decide between the relative merits of newspaper proprietors and about whether Mr. Murdoch is better than Mr. Maxwell or Mr. Tiny Rowland and which has the better record of defending editorial independence. That would be wrong. and the legislation does not allow the Secretary of State to make such decisions.
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, South (Mr. Aitken), I come from a newspaper family. There are some differences. His family owned newspapers and mine worked for newspapers, but I mind about newspapers and about the survival of Today. It would not have been tolerable for the Government to take a callous gamble with the survival of that newspaper and the 500 jobs that go with it.
This debate has been shot through with rancour and hatred from the Opposition. Their rancour arises from the wounding rejection that they received from the electorate and because they are so desperate to find a scapegoat for their disaster. We always hear the same cry, that it was the people who were wrong and that they were misled by the wicked capitalist press. The people were not misled and saw through the Labour party.
The Opposition showed a hatred of Mr. Murdoch and that was exemplified in the speeches by the hon. Members for Birmingham, Erdington (Mr. Corbett), for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) and for Paisley, South (Mr. Buchan). That hatred of Mr. Murdoch made nonsense of the contention that they have some high-minded conviction and that the nature of a proprietor does not matter. The Opposition hate Murdoch and that is why they are so agitated about this whole business. Does anyone suggest that if Mr. Maxwell had come forward with an application the Opposition would have made all this fuss? Of course they would not, and they did not make any fuss about it before. The Government's decision is right and I strongly commend it to the House.
Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The House divided: Ayes 220, Noes 291.

Division No. 6]

[7 pm

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Boateng, Paul

Allen, Graham

Boothroyd, Miss Betty

Anderson, Donald

Boyes, Roland

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Bradley, Keith

Armstrong, Ms Hilary

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

Ashton, Joe

Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

Buchan, Norman

Barron, Kevin

Buckley, George

Battle, John

Caborn, Richard

Beckett, Margaret

Callaghan, Jim

Beith, A. J.

Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Campbell-Savours, D. N

Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

Canavan, Dennis

Bermingham, Gerald

Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

Bidwell, Sydney

Cartwright, John

Blair, Tony

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

71

Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

Clay, Bob

Lambie, David

Clelland, David

Lamond, James

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Leadbitter, Ted

Cohen, Harry

Leighton, Ron

Coleman, Donald

Lestor, Miss Joan (Eccles)

Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

Lewis, Terry

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Litherland, Robert

Corbett, Robin

Livingstone, Ken

Corbyn, Jeremy

Livsey, Richard

Cousins, Jim

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Cox, Tom

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

Crowther, Stan

Loyden, Eddie

Cryer, Bob

McAllion, John

Cunliffe, Lawrence

McAvoy, Tom

Cunningham, Dr John

McCartney, Ian

Dalyell, Tam

McFall, John

Darling, Alastair

McKelvey, William

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

McLeish, Henry

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

McTaggart, Bob

Dewar, Donald

McWilliam, John

Dixon, Don

Madden, Max

Dobson, Frank

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Dunnachie, James

Marek, Dr John

Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

Eastham, Ken

Martin, Michael (Springburn)

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Martlew, Eric

Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

Maxton, John

Fatchett, Derek

Meacher, Michael

Faulds, Andrew

Meale, Alan

Fearn, Ronald

Michael, Alun

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

Fisher, Mark

Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

Flannery, Martin

Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

Flynn, Paul

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Morgan, Rhodri

Foster, Derek

Morley, Elliott

Foulkes, George

Morris, Rt Hon A (W'shawe)

Fraser, John

Morris, Rt Hon J (Aberavon)

Fyfe, Mrs Maria

Mowlam, Mrs Marjorie

Galbraith, Samuel

Mullin, Chris

Garrett, John (Norwich South)

Murphy, Paul

Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

Nellist, Dave

George, Bruce

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

O'Brien, William

Godman, Dr Norman A.

O'Neill, Martin

Golding, Mrs Llin

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Gordon, Ms Mildred

Pendry, Tom

Gould, Bryan

Pike, Peter

Graham, Thomas

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Prescott, John

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Primarolo, Ms Dawn

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Quin, Ms Joyce

Grocott, Bruce

Radice, Giles

Harman, Ms Harriet

Randall, Stuart

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Redmond, Martin

Haynes, Frank

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Reid, John

Heffer, Eric S.

Richardson, Ms Jo

Henderson, Douglas

Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

Robertson, George

Holland, Stuart

Robinson, Geoffrey

Home Robertson, John

Rogers, Allan

Hood, James

Rooker, Jeff

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

Rowlands, Ted

Howells, Geraint

Ruddock, Ms Joan

Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

Sedgemore, Brian

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Sheerman, Barry

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

Shore, Rt Hon Peter

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Short, Clare

Ingram, Adam

Skinner, Dennis

Janner, Greville

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

John, Brynmor

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

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

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

Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)

Snape, Peter

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

Soley, Clive

Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

Spearing, Nigel

72

Steel, Rt Hon David

Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

Steinberg, Gerald

Wigley, Dafydd

Stott, Roger

Williams, Rt Hon A. J.

Straw, Jack

Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

Wilson, Brian

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Winnick, David

Thomas, Dafydd Elis

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Turner, Dennis

Worthington, Anthony

Wall, Pat

Wray, James

Wallace, James

Walley, Ms Joan

Tellers for the Ayes:

Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

Mr. Ron Davies and

Wareing, Robert N.

Mr. Allen McKay.

NOES

Adley, Robert

Dykes, Hugh

Aitken, Jonathan

Emery, Sir Peter

Alexander, Richard

Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Fallon, Michael

Allason, Rupert

Favell, Tony

Amess, David

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Amos, Alan

Fookes, Miss Janet

Arbuthnot, James

Forman, Nigel

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

French, Douglas

Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

Gale, Roger

Ashby, David

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Aspinwall, Jack

Goodhart, Sir Philip

Atkins, Robert

Gorman, Mrs Teresa

Atkinson, David

Gorst, John

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Gow, Ian

Baldry, Tony

Gower, Sir Raymond

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Bellingham, Henry

Greenway, John (Rydale)

Bendall, Vivian

Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

Benyon, W.

Grist, Ian

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Ground, Patrick

Biggs-Davison, Sir John

Grylls, Michael

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Body, Sir Richard

Hampson, Dr Keith

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Hanley, Jeremy

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Hannam, John

Boswell, Tim

Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

Harris, David

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Haselhurst, Alan

Bowis, John

Hawkins, Christopher

Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

Hayes, Jerry

Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

Brandon-Bravo, Martin

Hayward, Robert

Brazier, Julian

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Bright, Graham

Heddle, John

Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Brooke, Hon Peter

Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

Browne, John (Winchester)

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

Hind, Kenneth

Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

Buck, Sir Antony

Holt, Richard

Burns, Simon

Hordern, Sir Peter

Burt, Alistair

Howard, Michael

Butcher, John

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

Butler, Chris

Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

Carrington, Matthew

Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

Carttiss, Michael

Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

Cash, William

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Chapman, Sydney

Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

Chope, Christopher

Hunter, Andrew

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Irvine, Michael

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Irving, Charles

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Jack, Michael

Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)

Janner, Greville

Day, Stephen

Jessel, Toby

Devlin, Tim

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Dorrell, Stephen

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

73

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Moss, Malcolm

Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

Moynihan, Hon C.

Key, Robert

Mudd, David

King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

Needham, Richard

Kirkhope, Timothy

Nelson, Anthony

Knapman, Roger

Neubert, Michael

Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

Newton, Tony

Knowles, Michael

Nicholls, Patrick

Knox, David

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Nicholson, Miss E. (Devon W)

Lang, Ian

Onslow, Cranley

Latham, Michael

Oppenheim, Phillip

Lawrence, Ivan

Page, Richard

Lee, John (Pendle)

Paice, James

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Lightbown, David

Pawsey, James

Lilley, Peter

Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

Porter, David (Waveney)

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Portillo, Michael

Lord, Michael

Powell, William (Corby)

Luce, Rt Hon Richard

Price, Sir David

Lyell, Sir Nicholas

Raffan, Keith

McCrindle, Robert

Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

Macfarlane, Neil

Rathbone, Tim

MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

Redwood, John

Maclean, David

Renton, Tim

McLoughlin, Patrick

Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

Riddick, Graham

McNair-Wilson. P. (New Forest)

Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

Madel, David

Ridsdale, Sir Julian

Major, Rt Hon John

Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

Malins, Humfrey

Roe, Mrs Marion

Mans, Keith

Rost, Peter

Maples, John

Rowe, Andrew

Marland, Paul

Ryder, Richard

Marlow, Tony

Sackville, Hon Tom

Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

Sainsbury, Hon Tim

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Sayeed, Jonathan

Mates, Michael

Scott, Nicholas

Maude, Hon Francis

Shaw, David (Dover)

Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Miller, Hal

Shelton, William (Streatham)

Miscampbell, Norman

Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

Shersby, Michael

Moate, Roger

Sims, Roger

Morris, M (N'hampton S)

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

Morrison, Hon P (Chester)

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

74

Soames, Hon Nicholas

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Speed, Keith

Waddington, Rt Hon David

Speller, Tony

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)

Waldegrave, Hon William

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Walden, George

Squire, Robin

Walker, Bill (T'side North)

Stanbrook, Ivor

Waller, Gary

Steen, Anthony

Walters, Dennis

Stern, Michael

Ward, John

Stevens, Lewis

Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

Warren, Kenneth

Stewart, Ian (Hertfordshire N)

Watts, John

Stradling Thomas, Sir John

Wells, Bowen

Sumberg, David

Wheeler, John

Summerson, Hugo

Whitney, Ray

Tapsell, Sir Peter

Widdecombe, Miss Ann

Taylor, Ian (Esher)

Wiggin, Jerry

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Wilkinson, John

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Wilshire, David

Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

Winterton, Mrs Ann

Temple-Morris, Peter

Winterton, Nicholas

Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Wolfson, Mark

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Wood, Timothy

Thorne, Neil

Woodcock, Mike

Thornton, Malcolm

Yeo, Tim

Thurnham, Peter

Young, Sir George (Acton)

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Younger, Rt Hon George

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Tredinnick, David

Tellers for the Noes:

Trippier, David

Mr. Tony Durant and

Trotter, Neville

Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd.

Twinn, Dr Ian

Question accordingly negatived.
It being after seven o'clock, MR. SPEAKER put the main Question, pursuant to the order of the House [3 July].
Question agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House welcomes the decision of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to give his consent to the transfer of the ownership of the Today newspaper from Lonrho plc to News International plc; notes that Today was seriously loss making and manifestly uneconomic as a going concern; further notes that unless the transfer had taken place Today would probably have ceased publication immediately with the attendant loss of over 500 jobs; and congratulates the Secretary of State on ensuring the continuation of Today as a separate newspaper.

Orders of the Day

  Local Government Bill
  Order for Second Reading read.
  7.13 pm
  Mr. Donald Dewar: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We are about to start a very important debate on the Local Government Bill. As you will appreciate, it is a United Kingdom Bill that foreshadows the privatisation of local authority services and threatens the jobs of thousands of workers in Scotland as well in other parts of the United Kingdom. The essence of the problem that I wish to draw to your attention is that this is a United Kingdom Bill. As you will be aware, there has been a different tradition in Scottish local government. We have our own structure, legislative system and financial base. Our concern is that what should be a Scottish Bill is being buried in United Kingdom legislation, at least partly, I believe to save Ministers the embarrassment of wrestling with separate Scottish Bills.
  The Bill is liberally scattered, as you will know, Mr. Speaker, with references to Scottish statutes as the draftsmen struggle to make sense of two systems that are different north and south of the border. It is an abdication of responsibility when Scottish Ministers sit tight and let the Secretary of State for the Environment conduct Scottish business for them.
  I ask you, Mr. Speaker, about possible protection for hon. Members on both sides of the House who represent Scottish interests. It is unsatisfactory, in terms of the proper scrutiny of Scottish legislation, that this should happen. What options are open to us? I recognise that you are not responsible for the way in which the Government present their business, and I would not try to put an unreasonable burden on you, but how do we ensure that there is some form of expanded Committee, that there is proper representation for Scotland on that Committee, that the Scottish Office does not duck out, and that there is a Scottish Minister in Committee? Would it be possible to have a Committee of the whole House, which will at least ensure that all Scottish Members have a fair chance to take part?
  I ask for your guidance, Mr. Speaker, on these matters. Through you, I express our alarm and concern at the cavalier approach of the Scottish Office to Scottish business as instanced by this legislation.
  Mr. Bill Walker: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for a United Kingdom Parliament to deal with Scottish legislation in an English Bill or Bills that are substantially for England? If that is so, we who are Members on the unionist side of the House believe that this is the correct way to deal with matters in the circumstances in which the House now finds itself.
  Dr. Norman A. Godman: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is there not now a pressing need to examine the basis for the treatment of Scottish business? Will you give serious consideration to the setting up of a Speaker's Conference with the specific remit of the careful scrutiny of Scottish business and how it is processed in the House?
  Mr. Speaker: I call Mr. Willie Ross.
  Mr. Ernie Ross: Do you mean me, Mr. Speaker?
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I apologise. It was just a slip of the mind.
  Mr. Ross: He looks much younger than I do.
  Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Labour Members are concerned about the fact that the Secretary of State, who is likely to lead for the Government on this Bill, does not know where Scotland is. Given that the Bill will have a major effect on Scotland, it is strange that the Secretary of State for Scotland is not here to defend Scottish rights. We look to you, Mr. Speaker, to ensure that the separate Scottish identity is protected. We hope that you will ensure that our voice is represented both tonight, which is essential and important, and in Committee.
  Mr. Tom Clarke: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. This is a Local Government Bill. As an ex-president of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, I remind the House that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said, there is a big difference between Scottish and English local government. That is why we had the Redcliffe-Maud report on English reorganisation and the Wheatley report on Scottish reorganisation. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that the Wheatley report recommended specifically that there should be one association in Scotland speaking for Scottish local government, strengthened by regular communication with the Scottish Office.
  To present the Bill in this way, especially if it is to be seen as a precedent, means that local government in Scotland, which is already gravely under-resourced, is being unacceptably exploited. As Parliament has always felt that its relationship with local government is important, is it not in the interests of the House and its proceedings to ensure a good relationship between Parliament and Scottish local authorities? Therefore, is it not wrong for the Government to pursue the Bill in the way that they are attempting to pursue it?
  Mr. James Wallace: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I endorse much of what the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said. It is not a new venture for the Government to tag on Scottish legislation to a United Kingdom Bill. It happened in the last Session, on the Public Order Bill. Only one Scottish Member of Parliament served on the Committee. It was felt that, apart from the fact that it was a terrible burden to put on one Member, the resulting legislation did not reflect the best interests of Scots law, which is a distinctive system. Here we are faced with a distinctive system of local government and there will be general concern unless, Mr. Speaker, you consider some of the suggestions that have been put to you by the hon. Member for Garscadden. Scotland will be lumbered with a poor system of local government if the legislation goes through without proper Scottish scrutiny.
  Mr. William McKelvey: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you know, I am just a simple Back Bencher and I certainly do not have a suspicious mind. I ask for your guidance and assistance, as you always give such help to Back Benchers. Is this a new practice? If so, is it not an extremely

  77
  dangerous precedent for Scottish business to be slipped in almost covertly in this way so that we may not have appropriate discussion in the House? Furthermore, if we have to seek meetings with Ministers on Scottish business, must we now seek meetings with United Kingdom Ministers on Scottish business, rather than with Scottish Ministers?
  Mr. John Home Robertson: It appears that the Government will try to adopt a whole series of shenanigans to inflict their legislation on Scotland, where they have no mandate. I am sure that all Scottish Members would be grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, if you would keep a particularly wary eye on the Government's conduct with regard to Scottish business. The Local Government Bill is a dramatic example of legislation that would normally have been two distinct Bills — an English Bill and a Scottish Bill, or even an English Bill and a Welsh Bill. I wonder how much expense the Government have incurred in using Civil Service time to produce this composite Bill, which is an English Bill and a Scottish Bill rolled into one. This is an abuse of the Civil Service and is about to become an abuse of Parliament unless you, Mr. Speaker, can find some way of protecting Scottish interests.
  Mr. Nicholas Bennett: I am the hon. Member for a Welsh constituency with 70,000 electors. If you, Mr. Speaker, take into account the point of order about a Speaker's Conference, would you also bear in mind the artificially high level of Scottish representation and the low number of voters in some constituencies, and reduce the level of Scottish representation to the level permitted to English and Welsh Members?
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members should allow me to deal with this matter. I believe the House knows that the hon. Member introducing a Bill is perfectly entitled to draft the Bill so that it applies to all or any part of the United Kingdom. It is for the hon. Member in charge—in this case the Secretary of State for the Environment — to defend the provisions of his Bill. None of the matters that have been raised are for me. They are matters of tactics. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) has correctly described the number of options that could be operated. With regard to the precedent, I must tell the House and the hon. Members for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) and for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) that there are plenty of precedents.
  Mr. George Foulkes: I want to raise a separate point of order arising from your ruling, Mr. Speaker, and from the precedent set by the Government in introducing legislation in relation to local government that covers England and Scotland. As I understand that in about six months' time the Public Bill Office will be accepting amendments for the English Bill dealing with the abolition of rates and the introduction of the community charge — otherwise known as the poll tax. Will you confirm, Mr. Speaker, that it will be in order for hon. Members to table amendments for the repeal of the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987, thus removing the poll tax that was rejected by the people of Scotland?
  Mr. Speaker: That is a hypothetical question.
  Mr. Foulkes: No it is not.
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Dewar rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. We should get on.
  Mr. Dewar: I shall not delay the House for very long. You said something very important, Mr. Speaker. You referred to the Minister in charge of the Bill. In every instance that appears, in essence, to be the Secretary of State for the Environment in England and Wales. The essence of our objection is that there should be a separate Scottish Bill under the control of the Scottish Office. That should be scrutinised properly in a Scottish Committee. That is the principle upon which we will continue to fight during the remainder of this Session.
  Dr. Godman rose—
  Mr. John Maxton rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I have already taken a point of order from the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman). I call Mr. Maxton.
  Mr. Maxton: I want to pursue the question that was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman) about a Speaker's Conference. We are reaching crisis point in the way in which Scotland will be legislated for in this Session. The simple fact is that the Government suffered a crushing defeat in Scotland. They are left with 10 Members of Parliament and they simply cannot pass legislation for Scotland. That is why we have this Bill —which we could almost describe as hybrid — before us today. If this kind of legislation is brought before us, and Scottish hon. Members and, more importantly, the Scottish public, our voters in Scotland, are, I am afraid to say, to be insulted in this way by the House of Commons, a constitutional crisis will be created in Scotland.
  I know that you, Mr. Speaker, more than anyone else, would want to defend the union, and all Opposition Members, with very few exceptions, would want that also. However, there are limits to the strains that can be placed upon that union by the House of Commons. The contempt with which the Government are treating Scottish parliamentary time is the way in which that strain can be taken to breaking point.
  Mr. Speaker: I call the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh). Please be brief.
  Mr. Andrew Welsh: Mr. Speaker, you said that this is a matter for the Minister. How can we assure accountability in the House through you when places for Scots Members on the Committee and in this debate are restricted? How can we ensure accountability when the Government are not accountable to the Scottish people and were not elected by them? How can Opposition Members ensure accountability, as that is what we were elected for?
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. Hon. Members must allow me to deal with this matter now. I do not need any further help. I can tell the House that the House has a responsibility, scrutinise legislation. That can be done in the ??? described by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Cathcart (Mr. Dewar). The Bill might possibly be committed to a Committee of the whole House, or to an expanded Committee upstairs. That is not a matter for the Chair.

  79
  Indeed, it is not up to the Chair to select those Members for the Committee. That is a matter for the Chairman and the Committee of Selection. There are plenty of opportunities for this matter to be discussed widely, as no doubt it will be.
  Mr. Harry Ewing: I know that you are anxious to proceed, Mr. Speaker. However, this is a very serious matter at the beginning of a new Parliament. It is better that the House should spend some time now to understand that feelings are running high about the way in which the people of Scotland and the decision that they made at the recent general election appear to be disregarded. It is bad enough if that opinion is disregarded by the House, but it would be even worse if it was disregarded by Mr. Speaker or anyone else in the House —although I know that that is not the case. However, that impression may be given because of the Government's attitude, and if that is the case the people of Scotland could react to it.
  This is very serious. The Bill has legal implications following what was said in the Widdicombe report. There is a different legal system in Scotland. The Scottish courts could easily rule what is legal in terms of expenditure differently from rulings given in English courts. A ridiculous situation exists at present. No Law Officer from Scotland is present. If and when the Committee to consider the Bill is set up, and if Scottish Members on that Committee call for a legal opinion, there is no Lord Advocate or Solicitor-General for Scotland who can be called to give a legal opinion to the Committee members.
  My second fear is that, because of the Government's attitude, a practice might develop whereby United Kingdom Ministers start a Bill in its Committee procedure, and halfway through the Bill, because the English and Welsh clauses have been disposed of, the Government Whips arrange for the United Kingdom Ministers to be taken off the Bill and we may be landed with Scottish Office Ministers who have heard nothing of the debate in Committee. That would be a most unsatisfactory way to proceed. I ask you to make it clear, Mr. Speaker, that you will deprecate such practices in any Committees of this place. As I have said, this is an extremely serious matter.
  Mr. Speaker: I understand fully the points that have been raised with me, but the plain matter of fact is that we legislate in this House for the United Kingsdom. I am aware that there is a different legal system in Scotland.
  Hon. Members: What about Northern Ireland?
  Mr. Speaker: Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. It is not for me to decide which hon. Members will consider the Bill in Committee; nor is it for me to decide whether a Scottish Minister should be a member of it. I think that we should proceed.
  Mr. Max Madden rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Mr. Nicholas Ridley.
  7.33 pm
  The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): I beg to move, That the Bill be read a Second time.
  The Bill represents a further significant step in two of the Government's major objectives—introducing greater
  80
  competition and securing greater value for money. The first steps in this direction were taken in the Local Government, Planning and Land (No. 2) Act 1980, which included the direct labour organisation provisions in part III and which, incidentally, applied to Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. The Bill introduces other changes in local government law that are aimed at improving the way in which local authorities operate.
  The free operation of the market is the best way of delivering greater choice, higher productivity and better quality services at lower prices. The Government have increased competition since 1979 in such things as air services, conveyancing, opticians' services and bus services, to name but four, with dramatic results.
  Mr. Maxton: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Ridley: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I shall not give way to every hon. Member who seeks to intervene because I have much to say and I do not want to delay the House too long.
  Mr. Maxton: I want to ask the Secretary of State only one simple question. The Bill covers Scotland, and I do not see the Secretary of State for Scotland on the Treasury Bench. I assume that a Scottish junior Minister with responsibility for local government will reply so that Scottish Members will have the chance of hearing something to do with Scotland.
  Mr. Ridley: Hon. Members who represent Scottish constituencies can listen to what I have to say and to what my hon. Friend the Minister of State has to say when he replies.
  For many years we have been trying to persuade local authorities to follow our example and to try competition to help them deliver good quality services at lower cost.
  Mr. Maxton: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We have spent some time discussing whether there should be a separate Scottish Bill and I have very recently raised an important question with the Secretary of State. Surely it would be common courtesy for the Government to ensure that a Scottish Minister replies so that there can be some response to the Scottish part of the Bill.
  Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of this place and he knows that the issue that he has raised is not a matter for the Chair.
  Mr. Ridley: Judging from what the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said on 24 October 1986, he shares the view that there should be competition in the provision of local authority services. He said:
  "We know that some part"—
  Dr. John Cunningham: Will the Secretary of State give way?
  Mr. Ridley: Perhaps it would help the House if I read the quote first. I believe that the House should have the privilege of hearing it. The hon. Gentleman said:
  "We know that some part of the Tory electoral success in 1979, repeated in 1983"—
  and now in 1987—
  "had to do with a recognition of popular disenchantment with public services—a disenchantment not necessarily with the principle, but with the practice."
  Now if that is the hon. Gentleman's view—
  Dr. Cunningham: Will the Secretary of State give way?
  Mr. Ridley: Very well.
  Dr. Cunningham: I think that I am grateful that the Secretary of State has given way grudgingly but I am not grateful that he should misquote and misrepresent what I had to say in the way that he has done. He has quoted me accurately by reading from the speech that I made at the Association of Metropolitan Authorities' annual conference at Newcastle upon Tyne in October 1986, but the complexion that he has put on my remarks is wholly dishonest.
  Mr. Ridley: I must ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw. I quoted the hon. Gentleman's words that were uttered in a speech and set out in a press handout and I am entirely entitled to do so. I did not interrupt the sentence halfway through or anything of the sort. I hope that he will apologise for what he said to me. If he does not like what he said in the past and if he feels ashamed of it when it is brought to the attention of his Left-wing colleagues who sit behind him, he should be more careful and not say such things.
  We issued a consultation paper over two years ago warning local authorities that we might have to force them to expose their activities to competition if they did not choose to do that themselves. A few authorities responded but the vast majority continued to increase the burdens that they were imposing on their ratepayers and, in many instances, provided poor quality services. We therefore decided to introduce legislation to implement the main proposals set out in the consultation paper. Part I will compel local authorities, and other public bodies with a similar role, to open up a range of their activities to competition. The initial list set out in clause 2 covers the services proposed in the consultation paper — refuse collection, building cleaning, street cleansing, catering, ground maintenance and vehicle maintenance. We shall be issuing a further consultation paper shortly on the possibility of adding sport and leisure management to that list.
  Clause 2 also provides a power to add further activities to the list. This power is necessary so that we may add further services later once authorities have coped with the initial list. We shall certainly not use the power to add core services such as teaching, policing, planning control and the like. Use of the power will be subject to affirmative resolution of both Houses.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Ridley: No, I shall not give way now.
  The way that the public sector unions and many Labour local authorities have reacted to the threat of competition is highly significant. In their endless teach-ins, seminars, training courses and the like the emphasis again and again has been on the need for direct labour organisations to improve their own efficiency. Despite the ritual attacks on the private sector, it is clear from the literature produced by DLO pressure groups that their real fear is simply of competition itself and not necessarily of unfair competition.
  The fear of those pressure groups is local residents' hope—hope for the savings the competition can and will deliver. Wandsworth's total saving over five years from competition tendering amounts to about £25 million. This represents 26 per cent. of the cost of the services and includes the cost of the generous staff severance scheme. Now that most severances are over, the annual saving is running at almost £6 million a year. Another example of
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  such savings is the savings from the National Health Service tendering exercise, which are now running at over £90 million a year. From contracting out there comes £26 million and the rest comes from in-house efficiency improvements. The activities listed in clause 2 cost something approaching £3 billion a year. Competitive savings are typically between 20 per cent. and 30 per cent. If we hit a modest target of 10 per cent. savings, it would save about £300 million a year. That is worth saving.
  Mr. Dafydd Wigley: Will the Secretary of State give an undertaking that he will discuss the matters that he has outlined in respect of DLOs and competitive tendering with local government authorities in Wales? There is great difficulty in applying such developments in rural areas where, whatever the circumstances may be in urban areas, they are particularly unsuited.
  Mr. Ridley: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of-State for Wales will respond to the hon. Gentleman's question. As he knows, I am not responsible for implementing the Bill in Wales, and neither am I responsible for so doing in Scotland. This is a United Kingdom Bill, but my right hon. Friend's attention will be drawn to what the hon. Gentleman has said.
  The Bill requires compulsory competitive tendering, not compulsory contracting out or compulsory privatisation. Those who fear contracting out frequently say that it will lead to poorer services. This is utter nonsense. The Bill requires local authorities to specify the standard of service that they require, whether that service is provided in-house or by contractors. For some authorities even that process will be a new departure. Up till now few have attempted the essential management task of saying precisely what outputs they are aiming for.
  "Instead of concentrating almost exclusively on arguing about who should be producing health and social services or education, we should be asking how best to make sure that the appropriate kind of service, whether public or private is being produced, to the right specifications of quality, at the right price and in the right place for the right people."
  That was a quotation from an article about the future of the welfare state published two weeks ago in New Society, and I entirely agree with it.
  Dr. Cunningham: If the Secretary of State is so convinced of the effectiveness of contracting out services, and the ability to rely on the quality of service thus provided, why has the maintenance of police vehicles been specifically excluded from the provisions?
  Mr. Ridley: Because, as the hon. Gentleman would realise if he thought about it for a moment, there are considerable security implications. Incidentally, I wish that the hon. Gentleman would get a new buttonhole. His red rose is becoming a bit tarnished. Perhaps he would also pay me the courtesy of intervening a little less frequently. I know that I am keeping many of his hon. Friends, particularly those from Scotland, who may wish to contribute from doing so.
  As anyone who has contracted out services knows, it is easy to develop sophisticated systems to ensure that the specification is delivered. Occasionally, contracts go wrong. The trade unions ensure, of course, that these receive the maximum publicity. But in the vast majority of cases these problems are quickly sorted out, and, where they cannot be, the contract can be terminated and a new contractor appointed. Compare that with the problem of improving an inefficient direct labour organisation.

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  I turn to some more detailed aspects of part I of the Bill. Competition for cases where DLOs carry out work for their own authority will be phased in by regulations under clause 6, at a pace with which local authorities and contractors can cope. The phasing-in period is likely to take no more than three years. Clauses 7 to 12 require authorities to publish full specifications. They will then have to invite tenders, and their DLOs can prepare formal bids, too. Tenders received will have to be compared fairly with the DLO bid. If, following that, the work is awarded to the DLO, clause 9 requires authorities to keep separate accounts for the work to ensure that the DLO delivers its price. Clause 10 allows me to set financial targets for work subject to competition. In most cases, targets will be set in the form of rates of return on capital. Clause 11 requires authorities to publish annual reports on each of their activities.
  In order to enforce compliance, the sanction against authorities which insist on sheltering their DLOs from fair competition is to order the closure of the DLO. In the six years of the original DLO legislation, two closure orders have in fact been made. Authorities will not find themselves automatically subject to those sanctions if they fail to accept lowest tenders, despite much scaremongering to the contrary. Proper tender appraisal is not a simple matter of whose bid is lowest. Authorities will have a full chance to explain their decisions. If they can justify rejection of a lower tender in favour of their DLO, they will not face any sanction. The sanction will be available for both anti-competitive behaviour and financial failure.
  Part II of the Bill deals with local and other public authority contracts. Political discrimination in the award of contracts is an offensive and growing practice; increasing numbers of councils subjugate the interests of their ratepayers and business men to futile political gesturing. All that is required of local authorities is to provide good local services at minimum cost to their ratepayers. People want good street lighting, regular and clean refuse collection, level pavements to walk on, roads without potholes, high standards of schooling and a well-maintained housing stock. They do not want the councils' political views and posturing on national policy issues to be a surcharge on the rates, through the imposition of conditions in contracts for the provision of services.
  Mr. Paul Boateng: I am much obliged to the Secretary of State for giving way. Will he give a categorical assurance that nothing in part II of the Bill will in any way limit or otherwise affect the powers and duties of local authorities under section 71 of the Race Relations Act 1976 to promote good race relations in the United Kingdom?
  Mr. Ridley: The clause to which the hon. Gentleman refers in fact concerns two sections in the Race Relations Act. The point can be debated at length in Committee, but the Bill is perfectly explicit about what he means.
  What is it to do with Leicester city council, Peterborough city council or the London borough of Greenwich whether contractors have any links with the nuclear missile programme? What is it to do with the London borough of Newham whether any of the directors are freemasons? What is it to do with St. Helens council whether contractors on its tender list contribute to funds
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  for a hospital in North Vietnam? What is it to do with the London borough of Brent whether companies are involved in the construction of United States bases?
  Those and other authorities of that ilk discriminate against contractors on such grounds in placing firms on approved lists and awarding contracts. Actions of that kind bring local government as a whole into disrepute. Although as yet only a minority of councils go in for such political posturing, the disease is spreading. Already, more than 40 local authorities impose contract conditions relating to links with South Africa. Too many councillors seem to find it more fun to play at national politics at their ratepayers' expense than to deal with the real local challenges and problems.
  Many of the practices that I have mentioned could probably already be challenged under the existing law. Local authorities have to act reasonably, and cannot take account of irrelevant considerations in reaching their decisions. While the provisions in part II of the Bill will strengthen the law by making it absolutely clear that such practices are illegal, this type of blackmail will be stopped only if it is challenged. Firms must use the new provisions to stand up to authorities which continue to abuse the contractual process. Otherwise, they will eventually find themselves being told how much to pay their staff, how many gays and lesbians to employ, and for which employers and which countries they can work.
  Mr. Simon Hughes: Does not the Secretary of State accept that the fallacy in his criticism of local government in relation to contract compliance is the same as the fallacy in his criticism in relation to tendering? Does he not accept that local authorities comprise people who are perfectly able, whatever their party, to debate the issues and to make an appropriate local decision, and that, occasionally, moral considerations might be as relevant to local government—or more so—than they are to central Government? Local councillors, including Conservatives, are elected to make decisions. Does not the Secretary of State respect local government's right to make decisions any more?
  Mr. Ridley: I do not think that it would be right to impart such political considerations to the provision of services for which the ratepayers are asked to pay the excess costs. As the hon. Gentleman knows very well, the ratepayers do not elect the councils; in his and many other areas, a very small minority of the electorate pays full rates.
  Mr. Tony Marlow: A particularly pernicious habit has been developed by many extreme Left-wing local authorities over the past few years. Many Conservative Members received a great many complaints about it during the election campaign, and we are delighted that my right hon. Friend is bringing the Bill forward. Will he tell the House how it will work? Suppose that someone who has been contracting and working with United States bases comes up with a tender that is better and cheaper than any other, and the council turns it down? How will they be able to take action, and will my right hon. Friend reassure us that such action will be successful?
  Mr. Ridley: It would be a breach of the civil law. The contractor, an association of contractors or anyone else—for instance, a ratepayer—will be able to bring a case against the local authority on the basis of the provisions

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  of the Bill, if they become law. If the case were as blatant as my hon. Friend suggests, there is no doubt that the aggrieved person would have a case which would prevail.
  Mr. Maxton: Will the Secretary of State give way?
  Mr. Ridley: I have given way to the hon. Gentleman once, and I do not intend to give way to him again.
  When I announced in October last year that the Government would bring forward this legislation, I hoped that it would be possible to include a special provision to allow authorities to use the contractual process to promote the employment prospects of inner-city residents.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Ridley: Hon. Members will note—
  Mr. Maxton: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): It is clear to the whole House that the Secretary of State does not intend to give way, so hon. Members must not persist.
  Mr. Maxton: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. With the Secretary of State opening the debate and the Minister for Local Government closing it, it is clear that the only way in which Scottish Members of Parliament will be able to make any point at all or obtain any information about Scotland is by questioning the Secretary of State.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am hoping that the House will hear some Scottish Members of Parliament, but if there are constant points of order their chances are that much less.
  Mr. Ridley: Hon. Members will note that part II of the Bill does not contain such a provision relating to inner-city residents. That is because it has subsequently become clear that European Community rules designed to ensure equal conditions of competition for public works and supply contracts, rules which the Government fully support, do not permit the introduction of that type of measure into the contractual process. The absence of this provision from the Bill should not be interpreted in any way as weakening this Government's resolve to ensure that inner-city residents share fully in the benefits flowing from new investment and new initiatives in the inner-cities.
  Our research has shown that employment growth in inner-city firms assisted through the urban programme has been well targeted on inner-city residents. The jobs did not require especially high skills. The majority needed only on-the-job training. On average, 84 per cent. of new employees lived locally, and the proportion from ethnic minorities was equal to or greater than the proportion of such residents in the district.
  But certain jobs—in construction, for example—need particular skills. To require that a quota of jobs must be given to local residents, with the rise in costs and the fall in standards which that entails, is clearly impractical as well as unlawful. Proper training is an essential component of many inner-city projects. The Manpower Services Commission is reshaping its efforts in favour of the unskilled and unemployed in the inner cities. It is working with my Department, for example, to provide community programme places for the long-term unemployed in refurbishment schemes on rundown estates.
  Within the inner-cities initiative of my right hon. and learned Friend the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, the Government's task forces are working to encourage firms to recruit more inner-city residents, to ensure that training is well matched to employers' needs and to
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  develop the capacity of small local firms to win contracts. Our aim is to raise skill levels so that local people are better equipped to compete for jobs and employers find that it makes sound sense to hire them. We have made very encouraging progress in a number of schemes sponsored by our task forces. These examples demonstrate our commitment. I and my colleagues charged with the responsibility for regenerating our inner-city areas will continue to make sure that our programmes are designed to encourage firms to recruit local labour, and to ensure that that labour is better trained and motivated to grasp the opportunities thus created.
  I must emphasise to hon. Members that the provisions in part II of the Bill are designed to ban abuses of the contractual process. They will not stop public authorities from taking reasonable action—for example, over health and safety, or under the race relations legislation. In the latter case, there is special provision in the Bill to allow authorities to ask reasonable questions, and take account of the answers, in pursuance of their specific duty to carry out their functions with regard to the need to eliminate unlawful racial discrimination. It is the unreasonable use of their contractual muscle by certain authorities that these provisions are intended to stamp out.
  I shall mention very briefly the other measures that he Bill contains. Part III of the Bill and clause 28 bring back the measures on local authority assistance for private rented housing and on land registers which were contained in last Session's Bill but lost when the election was called. Clause 26 honours the commitment we made during the passage of the Local Government Act to reverse the effects of amendments made in another place to the publicity provisions. Clause 27 provides for various changes to the powers of the local ombudsmen, most of which result from representations made by the ombudsmen themselves.
  Clause 30 regularises the basis on which the Manpower Services Commission and the Department of Employment can enter into training agreements with the Inner London education authority and the joint boards created when the Greater London council and the metropolitan counties were abolished. Clause 31 is a purely Scottish provision, which extends the Scottish Accounts Commission's remit to enable it, like the Audit Commission in England and Wales, to carry out value for money studies of local authorities.
  Dr. Godman: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Ridley: I shall give way, but it will be for the last time.
  Dr. Godman: On the Scottish elements of this English Bill, what representations did the right hon. Gentleman's Department receive from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities? Will he list those in Scotland who are in favour of the Bill?
  Mr. Ridley: This provision will be welcomed in Scotland. [HON. MEMBERS: "By whom?"] It was included at the special request of a large number of Scottish interests.
  Clause 32 abolishes the dog licensing system—
  Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Ridley: No. I said that I would not give way again.
  Clause 32 abolishes the dog licensing system, an anachronism which at present costs about four times as

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  much to operate as it collects in fees. As I announced last year, following consultations, we concluded that abolition is the right course to follow.
  My announcement last February that we had to postpone legislation on competition, contracts and publicity caused some dismay among my hon. Friends. I promised then that it would be brought forward at the first opportunity. I am pleased to be able to deliver my promise after a delay of only four months. This Bill will bring major benefits to ratepayers and local residents alike, and I commend it to the House.
  7.56 pm
  Dr. John Cunningham: The Bill's unpleasant nature was, unfortunately, thoroughly matched by the nastiness of much of the speech of the Secretary of State for the Environment.
  It is significant that the first Bill to be produced for a Second Reading debate by the Government demonstrates the enduring determination of Ministers, and especially of this Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, to go on diminishing the role of democratically elected local government. The Bill continues the sustained attack on local government of the past eight years. It is the 44th piece of local government legislation to have been proposed since 1979. There is no parallel for that in Britain in any other policy area, nor is there any parallel for it in any other democratic country.
  What the Bill contains does not seem to be so important as that there should be a local government Bill. It is said that the Department of the Environment office where Bills are drafted has been nicknamed The Windmill because, rather like that entertainment establishment, the officers are drafting so much legislation that they never have a chance to close the office. The Prime Minister continues to keep these local government issues in front of the electors bcause it is convenient for her and for the Secretary of State for the Environment to have a political whipping post. They need to blame all the ills and failures of central Government policy on democratically elected local councils.
  As the Secretary of State ploughs on through the rhetoric, the dogma and the new powers, I wonder whether he ever stops to think about their impact? The claim is that, after eight years of Thatcherism, 43 Acts of Parliament, numerous see-saw changes in local government finance, a massive loss of freedom and unprecedented ministerial powers and interference, local government is inefficient. Given the burdens that have been placed upon it in the past eight years, it is hardly surprising if some aspects of local government are less efficient than they otherwise might be.
  In any event, efficiency is not the Secretary of State for the Environment's real objective. That was made obvious during the recent general election campaign in connection with the proposed sell-off of the nation's water assets. When the right hon. Gentleman on 18 May 1987 wrote to the chairman of the Water Authorities Association, he made this abundantly clear, because he said that the Government were
  "committed to extending share ownership and narrowing the public sector…we have been led to conclude that these aims must have priority."
  In other words, it is the Government's philosophy that has priority, not the efficient management of services, whether
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  the water industry or any other public service. That is what the right hon. Gentleman said then. I have no doubt that he stands by it. However, his statement today about efficiency being the Government's overriding objective flies in the face of what he knows to be the most efficient management of the water industry.
  Of course, we should not be surprised. These views are the price of survival in what the writings and interviews of the right hon. Member for Oswestry describe as a "Stalinist regime". Dogma always takes precedence in such organisations, and the Secretary of State is the epitome of it doing so again.
  Mr. William Cash: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Should not the hon. Gentleman refer to the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) as that is the proper name of his constituency?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Constituency names have changed and we all have problems with that fact.
  Dr. Cunningham: I apologise to the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), but in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday he said of the Tory party:
  "so that we do not have a sort of Stalinist regime any longer".
  It is important to have that on record, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) because I would not want anyone to think that his right hon. Friend's words had been misquoted.
  Just a few days ago in the debate on the Loyal Address, the Secretary of State said that more controls over local government were necessary to control public expenditure—another of the shibboleths that are always paraded on these occasions. It is as if somehow local government expenditure is rising too rapidly.
  Any comparison between the rise in central Government expenditure and local government expenditure shows where the real problem is. Central Government's expenditure on its own account has risen since 1979 by 127 per cent. In the same period, and on the same basis, local government expenditure has risen by 103 per cent. The rise in central Government expenditure on its own account is therefore at least 25 per cent. higher than that of local government. Which is out of control? Would the Secretary of State like to comment?
  Central to this legislation, as with all such Conservative legislation, is the Government taking more and more powers to themselves. For example, they are taking more powers over the city of Birmingham which has a budget in excess of £500 million, or Leeds, where the budget is more than £300 million, or Manchester, where it is almost £300 million, or Newcastle upon Tyne, where it is about £155 million. Who in this House really has the knowledge, understanding and detailed information to be taking more and more powers and control over businesses of this size?
  We can imagine the reaction if private enterprise was being interferred with in this way. We can imagine the reaction if Governments in other countries were doing so. We can imagine the reaction of the Mayors of Hamburg, Milan, Toronto or Los Angeles to all this centralist nonsense. We can imagine what would have happened had President Mitterrand said something like that when Mr. Chirac was the Mayor of Paris. His response, if repeatable at all, would have been something like "Va t'en!"
  Mr. Nicholas Soames: Merde!
  Dr. Cunningham: Indeed. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, even though as a PPS he is supposed to be silent, for directing that comment to his right hon. Friend.
  Ministers are asking the House and their own civil servants to continue second-guessing the decisions of thousands of elected councillors of all the political parties and of thousands of local government administrators who have the information, knowledge and understanding of the problems and sensitivities of delivering effective local services.
  This Bill is also about controlling publicity as well as about enforced competitive tendering and undermining good employment. I suggest that it should more aptly be called the Shutting up of Opposition, Undermining of Good Employment and Enforcement of Unfair Competition Bill, because that is how we judge its principal provisions.
  Part IV attempts further to gag local government before much of the national debate on major aspects of the Government's legislative programme has even really begun. Who has argued that the 1986 legislation on these aspects of publicity and local government is not working? Where is the evidence to support that contention? What is to become of the right hon. Gentleman's own draft code of practice on these matters, which is currently undergoing discussion and debate? The latest draft of that code of practice states:
  "The principles set out below recognise the political nature of local government. They have taken account of the fact that some local authority publicity will deal with issues that are controversial because of particular local circumstances, or because of a difference of view between political parties locally or nationally. The principles do not prohibit the publication of information on politically sensitive or controversial issues, nor stifle public debate."
  That is in the right hon. Gentleman's own draft code of practice. What will happen to that draft code? Is it to be agreed or abandoned'? Will he continue discussing it on that basis with the local authorities? Will he say what he intends to do? Of course he will not, because he is already preparing to rat on that promise, just as he has ratted on so many other promises to local government over the years.
  Local government, to be genuinely local, needs freedom to voice the concerns of the community it is elected to serve and, where necessary, to voice its criticisms of central Government policies that adversely affect its area, its communities and its population. That is what local government should have the right to do in any plural democratic society. The Labour Opposition stand by that right, but apparently Conservative Members no longer do so. The legislation contains a contemptible set of proposals and we denounce them.
  Mr. Ridley: The hon. Gentleman is mixing up the right to express political opinion, which of course remains for councillors on all occasions, and the denial of the use of ratepayers' money for overt political purposes, which is what the Bill seeks to achieve.
  Dr. Cunningham: The right hon. Gentleman knows full well that the Government have already legislated on the overt use of local authority money for party political purposes. For my part, I support his view on that absolutely and unequivocally. But he now knows that this Bill contains clauses that go much further. That is what we object to, and that is what we shall go on objecting to.
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  Clause 26 is aimed at restoring the two clauses of the Local Government Act 1986 that were removed by the House of Lords. Those clauses dealt with the definition of party political publicity and the legal status of the recommended code of practice on local authority publicity by which local authorities are supposed to abide. That is the point now at issue and that is the point that the Secretary of State singularly failed to respond to in his intervention and about which we object most strenuously.
  In connection with the powers set out in clause 26(2) on page 26, I ask him who will censor the performance of local authorities in the matter. Who will be the judge? How will those powers be enforced? Will local authorities and individual councillors have the right of reply to some of the torrent of personal abuse and vilification heaped on them dishonestly by the Tory Government's friends in the mass media? Will they have the right to reply to some of the garbage we see in The Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express so regularly in support of the right hon. Gentleman and the Conservative party? It does not seem so.
  The Secretary of State has called again today on local authorities to go for greater efficiency. In the past he has called for them to abandon national wage agreements—the practice established more than 50 years ago —although he is very reticent to say much about it in public. The Secretary of State for Education introduced a Bill not just to abolish the Burnham procedures but to eliminate the ability of local education authorities to negotiate at all with teachers about pay and conditions. The fair wages legislation has been abolished. This centralist authoritarian tendency of the Government continues to erode people's democratic freedoms and rights and to undermine good employment practices. That, too, is one of the aims that are at the heart of what the right hon. Gentleman is proposing to the House today. The Labour party will strenuously oppose such proposals.
  Mr. Marlow: The hon Gentleman is obsessed about centralism and the fact that central Government is taking over powers from local government. Could he tell the House, by number, which clauses are transferring power from local government to central Government rather than from local government to the people who work and operate with the local area?
  Dr. Cunningham: I say to the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) that, even with his renowned lack of ability and understanding, he is quite capable of working that out for himself.
  Labour Governments created the Commission for Racial Equality, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Health and Safety Executive. [Interruption.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
  Hon. Members: Name him.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is very unseemly behaviour, and the hon. Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) knows it. Dr. Cunningham.
  Mr. Marlow rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member for Northampton, North has been here for a good many years. I expect him to help the Chair by setting a good example to new hon. Members of the House. Dr. Cunningham.
  Dr. Cunningham: Labour Governments created the Commission for Racial Equality, the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Health and Safety Executive. We believe that it is time to take the next logical step and legislate for contract compliance. Such legislation should be central to any Government's policies to reduce unemployment, to regenerate the inner cities, to attack the scandalous housing crisis we face, to promote racial equality, to strengthen the impact of equal opportunities legislation, to improve employment prospects for people with disabilities, to improve Britain's abysmal lack of effective training, to achieve better conditions of employment, to produce better value for money in public spending and to improve health and safety, especially in building and construction.
  Those are 10 powerful and positive arguments for contract compliance, and there are others. Apparently Tories, some people in the CBI and the private sector generally, present the issue as damaging to British business, as some awful Left-wing radical idea which can only harm our economy. It is a typical Conservative, even reactionary, response to the challenge of necessary, indeed long overdue, change. But Ministers ought to know, as we know, that in the United States of America—the home of the market economy and free enterprise—80 per cent. of all jobs in manufacturing and 83 per cent. of all jobs in transportation, public utilities and communications are now governed by contract compliance legislation. It is because of that legislation and because of the force of law that progress has been made in ending the inequalities between people in black and ethnic communities and women and white males in a whole range of employment issues across the nation.
  The United States Congress and successive Presidents have long recognised the fundamental, social and economic force of such proposals, and Britain must do so too. There is nothing new in the principle of contractual conditions in Britain. They have existed for a long time in many forms. Craft guilds and professional bodies apply them to individuals. For several centuries Governments have applied conditions to contracts specifying broad matters of policy not directly related to the cost of goods or services.
  More recently, observance of the Race Relations Act 1976 has been a required contractual condition, although no one ever seems, so far as I can tell, to have lost a contract because of that required compliance. However, I suspect that is because' of lack of monitoring of the compliance, not because of the conduct of employment practices. We could even say that the fiasco that went on over weeks in Australia about Mr. Wright was a form of contract compliance. At least that is what the Government were trying to enforce in his case.
  Local government is the target of much abuse, but contract compliance is a positive and innovative development in the best traditions of British local government, again in the forefront of social and economic progress and, I remind Government Members, of companies such as Marks and Spencer. That is the reality staring hon. and right hon. Gentlemen in the face. They will not face up to the facts at home or abroad.
  Within the public sector, it is commonplace to find routine systems for checking the bona fides of companies that want to sell things. In the past those systems have generally concerned themselves only with a firm's financial good standing or technical competence to perform a
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  particular contract, although if one's firm got involved with defence contracts, the security services might make extremely searching inquiries into the more personal aspects of the lives of the firm's senior executives and of the lives of other employees in the company. The same is true in the civil nuclear power industry. The Government are no different from any other Government in that it might also intervene to specify in some detail the precise quality control systems that firms must follow in respect of defence contracts as well as a variety of other matters that could affect the final quality of the end product.
  We say in support of contract compliance simply that questions of equal opportunities for women, for ethnic minorities and for people with disabilities, issues affecting health and safety, the elimination of lump labour and various other matters connected with the construction industry, better training, trade union rights and low pay, rank at least equal in importance to a firm's financial good standing or its technical competence or its acceptability to the security services. It is madness for a national Government to claim, as the Government do, that they are upholding the law when it effectively subverts the law by providing substantial financial resources to companies and organisations that they know perfectly well are breaking those laws.
  It is hypocritical for the Government to say that they are taking major new initiatives for the inner cities and then setting aside any attempt to legislate effective contract compliance. It is no longer acceptable for the Government to fund the Health and Safety Executive, the Campaign for Racial Equality, the Equal Opportunities Commission and a range of inner-city and other initiatives aimed at eliminating discrimination and promoting equality of opportunity while channelling vastly greater sums of money to companies and organisations that are perpetuating and possibly exacerbating the very problems that those other programmes are supposed to be tackling.
  I have a few questions for the Minister who is to reply. On 29 October last year the Home Secretary wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw):
  "we are not contemplating legislation which would prevent a local authority from taking action in accordance with this duty so as to encourage the provision of equal opportunity for ethnic minorities in employment."
  The "duty" referred to was that contained in section 71 of the Race Relations Act 1976. More recently the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in an interview in a programme called "Witness: On the Margin" on Thames Television on 1 July said:
  "Mr. Ridley and I are totally committed to the policy of using local labour and getting development to generate more local employment."
  However, the Minister for Local Government spoke at a press briefing which was reported in The Independent on 27 June 1987. It said:
  "Outlining the conditions on contract compliance and private tendering yesterday, Mr. Howard promised that no legislation to enforce local quotas of workers would be introduced."
  Which is right? Who is in charge of the policy and the initiatives?
  The Minister for Local Government (Mr. Michael Howard): They are both right.
  Dr. Cunningham: Who is telling the truth? I invite the Minister to answer, because they cannot both be right. The Minister is saying that no such legislation will be enacted

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  but other members of the Cabinet are saying something very different. The hon. and learned Gentleman ought to be candid with the House and tell us exactly what the Government's intentions are. I will willingly give way to him.
  Mr. Howard: Both are correct. There will be no legislation to enforce quotas in the way suggested by the hon. Gentleman, but that does not mean that steps cannot be taken to encourage the use of local labour. If the hon. Gentleman had done my right hon. and learned Friend the courtesy of listening to his speech he would have known that on the urban programme 84 per cent. of those employed were local to the inner city.
  Dr. Cunningham: The Minister, in the same way as some of his right hon. and hon. Friends, wants to will the end but he will not provide the means. All the lessons—[Interruption.] Without legislation, the objectives cannot possibly be achieved. Legislation is a prerequisite and anybody who has looked at the propositions knows that that is the case.
  No one would defend inefficiency, poor services or the waste of precious public resources. However, enforced privatisation and enforced competitive tendering do not deal with that. That causes unemployment. It exploits low-paid people, often from ethnic communities. It exploits women, lowers standards and generates public squalor, as we have seen not only in some local authority areas but in the Health Service. Low-paid workers know what happens to them and their standard of living when there is competitive tendering. They are in no doubt about the value of Labour's power at local level. It is Labour control of the local authority employers' side that has ensured that people on low wages have had some fairness of treatment that the Government seek to deny them.
  Why do the Government not publish the responses to their Green Paper on competitive tendering? Why cannot the evidence be put before the House? It is interesting to reflect that all local authority associations, regardless of political control, remain totally opposed to it. Where is the evidence for the savings that the Government claim? What is the basis of comparison? There is no valid comparison of costs and efficiency between, for example, the private sector in the building and construction industry and local authority direct labour organisations. What is the rate of return required in the private sector? I would be grateful to know if the Minister can tell us that in his reply. The profits quoted by the private sector are based on turnover rather than on capital employed, which is the basis he is enforcing on local government.
  In spite of what the Secretary of State had to say, the Government are interested in cheapness for its own sake. The effects of tendering were considered by the Select Committee on Social Services in its report of 1985. That report questioned the value of tendering even in the Government's own terms. It said:
  "This whole exercise, which has now been under way for around four years, has involved a considerable amount of management time and effort; has caused disruption and discontent, not exclusively among NHS staff directly employed in these services; and to date has not brought home the bacon."
  Invariably it is the case that cost cutting is done at the expense of wages and conditions. It is not done by cutting out waste or by being more efficient.
  On the matter of competition, the market is dominated by two major multinational holding companies, BET and
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  the Hawley group. In many respects there is no competition at all. That is the reality. In the most recent edition of the Local Government Chronicle it said:
  "More than two thirds of the number of councils reporting privatisation said they had done the opposite and brought services previously contracted out back in house. Of these 27, there were 13 Labour controlled, seven Conservative and two Alliance."
  Local authorities themselves are coming to recognise the fallacy that is at the heart of what the Government have to say on these matters. The road to greater and necessary efficiency in local government is by strengthening democratically elected local authorities, not by undermining them, by giving local communities more rights and information and not denying it to them, by improving quality tests, and by requiring councils to publish a report on the performance of their statutory duties. The reality in this Bill, as in almost every other piece of local government legislation introduced by the Government, is that more ministerial control is the Government's principal concern. There is more nit-picking bureaucracy, which is inefficient in the extreme. We have nothing but contempt for this legislation and the manner of its introduction and we shall certainly oppose it at every stage.
  8.29 pm
  Miss Janet Fookes: So far there has been the barest mention of one aspect of the Bill that I want to discuss in more detail. I refer to clause 32, which aims to abolish the dog licence.
  I believe that that decision is wrong, and I deeply regret the decision of the Government to go ahead with it, despite all the efforts that have been made by a vast number of organisations to persuade them that they should not do so. I accept that the present amount of 374½p is ludicrous. We are all aware that that sum does not even cover the cost of collection and therefore the amount available to local authorities is minute. However, I believe that the Government have drawn the wrong conclusion by believing that the dog licence should be phased out altogether.
  In this country we face many problems with dogs. The problems have been with us for many years, and I believe that the situation is likely to get worse rather than better. Animal welfare organisations spend a great deal of time seeking to deal with strays, as, of course, do the police. Thousands of dogs are destroyed each year, and before that unfortunate event occurs many attempts are made to find a new home for the dogs. In some cases those attempts are successful, but in many cases it proves impossible. In addition, uncontrolled dogs cause endless trouble. I am sure that most Members have received complaints from constituents about dog fouling. It can be an extremely serious matter for many people, but is just one aspect of the problem. Another extremely serious problem is that of animals, especially dogs, causing road accidents. Goodness knows how many people are injured, or even killed, in accidents in which a dog is in part responsible.
  There is also the problem of livestock worrying. The National Farmers Union calculated that, last year, no fewer than 10,000 animals, probably mostly sheep, were either killed or maimed. Such attacks cause untold suffering to the animals, quite apart from the appalling financial effects for the farmers.

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  All in all, it is a great mistake that the Government have not used the opportunity to put the dog licence fee up to a realistic level so that it could be used to fund schemes for dog wardens and generally to improve the control of dogs.
  I have a particular love for dogs and it saddens me when I go round, as I often do, to animal homes and see countless animals being brought in off the streets, unwanted, unloved and probably with an extremely short life in front of them. Furthermore, we know that there is the possibility of rabies coming across the Channel at some stage. I am well aware that drastic emergency measures exist, but how much better it would be if we had dogs under control. That would lessen the need for emergency measures. Such measures would probably include the wholesale slaughter of animals and widespread panic if rabies entered the country, as it seems likely to do at some stage.
  We are also aware that many animals are bred by irresponsible people and by dog breeders, if one can call them that. If one used the licence on a differential basis so that dogs that had been neutered or spayed would be liable to a much lower licence fee, that would go a long way to reducing the number of dogs that are bred, but unwanted. If we do away with the licence, there is no way in which that could happen.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: I am sure the hon. Lady is aware that during the previous Parliament, the Select Committee on the Environment studied the question of dog licences. We recommended to the Government —they have not responded, but perhaps the general election intervened — that, although the national licence should be abolished, powers should be given to local authorities to levy their own licences and fund such services as the hon. Lady has described. The hon. Lady is quite right when she says that there is a terrible problem. In my constituency people come to me and say that when they go out of their garden gate it is quite often like entering a safari park.
  Miss Fookes: I am not in the least surprised that no substantive answer has been given to the report of the Environment Committee—election or no election. Over the past 12 years I have been seeking to obtain proper answers from Governments of both complexions. Both have failed dismally to give any answer until now, and in my view the Government have given the wrong answer, so we are no better off than we were before.
  I urge my hon. Friends on the Front Bench to think again about this matter. If they are unwilling to have the cost of dog licences borne nationally, perhaps there is a case, as suggested by the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts), for licences to be issued on a local basis. Personally, I would much prefer a uniform national system, which at least has the merit of familiarity.
  I believe that many people would agree to an increased licence in return for the various benefits that could he adduced. There is no reason why there should not he exemptions for working animals or block licences for those who go in for breeding in a big way, or even for packs of hounds, much though I dislike packs of hounds when used for their primary purpose.
  I believe that the Government's policy is short-sighted and that we shall pay dearly for it because of an increase in the number of dogs that are out of control. It is ironic
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  that the Conservative Government introduced a scheme in Northern Ireland very much along the lines that I have suggested. After a few years of operation, that scheme appears to be working extremely well. Sheep worrying was a great problem in Northern Ireland, but it has been considerably reduced. I had hoped that such a scheme in Northern Ireland would act as a forerunner for a more general scheme for the rest of the United Kingdom.
  With all the power at my command I urge the Ministers to look again at the laws relating to the control of dogs. It cannot be right that we have about 24 different Acts that seek to control dogs, yet we are doing nothing about dog licences. Unless I have some assurance from my hon. Friend the Minister when he winds up the debate tonight, I shall reluctantly be compelled to cast my vote against the Bill on that one issue alone.
  8.37 pm
  Mr. Bernie Grant: I am pleased to be here representing the constituency of Tottenham and I am also pleased to follow my predecessor, Norman Atkinson, as Member of Parliament. Norman served the constituency well for more than 20 years and I shall be pleased if I am able to equal his fine record of service to Tottenham's citizens. I wish to add my voice to the thousands of constituents in thanking Norman for his work on behalf of the people of Tottenham. We wish him well in the future.
  For myself, as for Norman, local government and the needs of inner cities are of prime importance when representing a constituency such as Tottenham. Tottenham has almost 20 per cent. unemployment and almost half our citizens are from the black and minority ethnic communities. Such are the major characteristics of life in Britain today. Therefore, I was pleased to see that this Government, somewhat belatedly, had come to recognise the need for the inner cities and for their regeneration. What a wonderful opportunity this first Local Government Bill of the new Parliament would have been to address those problems. However, once again, they have got it wrong, I believe deliberately.
  The Bill before us, in common with the 14 previous Bills on local government introduced since 1979, provides the wrong answers to the wrong questions about local government, its priorities and needs. The solutions the Bill provides are privatisation of local government services, an end to contract compliance and a reduced role for local government publicity. That is a recipe for more local government domination by lawyers and the courts and less by those professional officers who provide the necessary services for our people. Last week, The Guardian showed that even among Tory local authorities privatisation was unpopular. It reported that, these days, more councils are cancelling contracts to outside firms rather than extending them.
  Ask the residents of London's east end what the Government's solution to inner-city needs means to them. It means the yuppification of docklands, putting two-bedroomed flats at £250,000, beyond the wildest dreams of local people. Yet living cheek by jowl with that is the unrestrained Thatcherite land of Spitalfields, with sweatshops, atrocious housing and dire poverty, so graphically brought to life last week by Prince Charles' visit. Nestling beside both is Rupert Murdoch's Wapping, the subject of our previous debate, and that other face of Thatcherism— Murdoch's press—which simultaneously

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  welcomes yuppies and condemns Prince Charles for drawing attention to the poverty. No wonder the Government back Murdoch's bid to take over the British press without restriction or inquiry.
  To this Government, the solution to local government and inner-city problems is to increase freedom, but their definition of freedom is freedom of choice for those who have the money to opt out, and the freedom of the private sector employers to exploit low-paid workers. That is not the answer. We with experience in inner-city local government see no merit whatsoever in worsening services and driving down the wages and working conditions of ordinary people so that they become a new servant class to an influx of yuppies. Public services in our inner cities need to be improved under democratic control, not impoverished and handed over to outside profiteers and carpet-baggers, as the Bill proposes.
  The improvement that is necessary costs money, and the Government must find it. We in the Labour party do not want the freedom that the Government propose for local authorities and inner cities because it is a licence for the few to exploit and impoverish. We are interested in real freedom for everybody, a type of freedom that liberates people from the yoke of poverty and the chains of racism that infect our inner cities. The fight against institutionalised and personal racism in this country must be at the top of the agenda for anyone who seeks to address inner-city problems.
  However, in the Bill the issue of racism is an afterthought. The fact that the Bill allows section 71 of the Race Relations Act 1976 to be included in contract compliance proposals is a feeble gesture in the fight against racism because the Race Relations Act itself is feeble and in need of major reform.
  Furthermore, in the same Bill, the Government propose to withdraw the power of local authorities to refuse to give contracts to firms that have trading links with South Africa. That gives the lie to any pretence by the Government that they are concerned about eliminating racism. It is further evidence of the Government's intention to prop up the racist regime in South Africa.
  Let us return to the United Kingdom, where black unemployment runs at two or three times the rate of white unemployment in inner-city areas such as Tottenham. Such discrimination cannot be allowed to continue. It should be the role of Government to stop it by taking strong and positive action to combat racism in employment and other areas. The proposals in the Bill are inadequate, and we shall oppose them vigorously in the later stages of its passage.
  It is clear that the Bill represents a continuation of the neglect that the Government have shown towards the disadvantaged, which has resulted in urban violence. That is a tragedy, because unless the political system can offer some prospects, particularly to our young people and our young black people, they will find other means of expressing their frustration. As an alternative approach, let me refer to one estate in my constituency, Broadwater Farm. It is an example of what local government can do in an inner-city estate.
  What has Haringey council done? We have embarked on skill surveys and on the economic regeneration of the estate through our economic development unit. We have provided jobs in an estate where there is 40 per cent. unemployment and where up to 80 per cent. of the black youth are unemployed. We have gone out of our way to
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  recruit local people to work on projects and in running essential council services. We have done that by inserting a clause into contracts for work on the estate, which states that local people must be employed wherever possible.
  The architecture on the estate has major drawbacks, so we have employed architects to work with the community, taking on board the people's aspirations for how the estate should be developed. We have improved the provision of public and community facilities by encouraging the participation of all concerned, including the police, in an open forum rather than imposing the ideas of so-called experts on that community.
  What has been the outcome? There have been no more disturbances. The community spirit is high and people are confident. There is no graffiti on the estate. The local police chiefs publicly praise the co-operation that they get from the local community in improving relations.
  Despite the chronic levels of economic deprivation, crime levels on the estate are at an all-time low and the police tell us that they are the lowest in Tottenham. Even the Department of the Environment uses the estate as a model of what community development can mean in practice, by bringing in visitors to the estate from home and abroad on a weekly basis. That approach is light years away from the cheapskate. mean-minded and corner-cutting solutions that the Bill offers the inner cities. That approach meets the needs of the inhabitants, not the needs of the fly-by-night profiteers.
  In contrast to the measures proposed in the Bill, our approach in Haringey involves the community in controlling developments in the area and having the power of veto over those developments. By working with the community, we have been able to develop together in partnership and in confidence. The alternative suggested in the Bill and in the Government's other proposal for the inner cities is to take power away from the people, to put it in the hands of faceless Whitehall bureaucrats and Tory politicians who have to pick up a map to find where inner-city areas are.
  I believe that we are sitting on a powder keg in the inner cities. The Bill and future Government legislation could be the spark that ignites it. I do not want to come back to the House in a year's time and say, "I told you so." If that happens—I am trying to ensure that it does not—it will be the responsibility of this Government.
  8.47 pm
  Mr. Barry Field: I compliment the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) on his confident speech and knowledge of local government.
  I believe that few, if any, hon. Members have had the pleasure and honour of addressing it and knowing that their constituency has remained unchanged in name and in boundary since the election of our first Member of Parliament in 1293. There was a gap in the sending of Members to the House from 1295 to 1583, when the boroughs decided that they could not afford the cost of a Member of Parliament. In 1584, however, they made up that gap by electing no fewer than six Members to the House. I am delighted to be able to say, as the hon. Member in this Parliament who represents the largest constituency in the country, with just under 100,000 electors, that that is the sort of productivity that we in the Conservative party like to see, although we are usually looking for a much shorter time scale.

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  In 1690 one of my predecessors occupied your Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in a rather inglorious way. He had the unique distinction of moving a vote of confidence in himself and was absent when the vote was taken—an absence subsequently explained in his letter of resignation as having been brought on by a severe attack of the colic. The reason why he moved a vote of confidence in himself was that he was accused of taking a bribe. I am sure that, in the usual charitable fashion of the House, when the matter of an hon. Member who had fallen from grace came before it, the attack of colic was referred to the Catering Committee.
  A number of distinguished hon. Members have represented the Isle of Wight — Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards the Duke of Wellington; Lord Palmerston; the right hon. George Canning; and William Lamb, afterwards Lord Melbourne. No fewer than four Prime Ministers started their political careers on the Isle of Wight. I am not for a moment suggesting that that position will be vacant in this House. Unlike some hon. Members, I am certain that it is adequately filled for this Parliament and for many Parliaments to come.
  I noticed that Sir Peter Macdonald, my predecessor but two, mentioned in his maiden speech that he came from a dockyard constituency. I was delighted this morning to visit one of the shipyards of which he spoke and to see the completion of £1 million-worth of orders going to Korea, no less. I noticed that my predecessor but one, Mark Woodnutt, reminded the House in his maiden speech of the reputation for natural beauty that the island possesses, known as it is as the garden isle. I also see that he reminded the House of our county council's motto, which is that all this beauty is of God. I am happy to report to the House that, in a changing and shifting world, 27 years on, the island seems even more beautiful today.
  So to my predecessor, Stephen Ross. He enjoyed that rare compliment in politics, the respect of both sides of the House. He had an undeniable reputation for hard work in the constituency and in the House and, as we never tire of telling people, the Isle of Wight is a slightly different place. I am pleased to be able to tell the House that I paid him that tribute in the constituency during the course of the election as well.
  Of course, we have our problems as a constituency. As far as I can discover, we are the only reasonably heavily populated island in the United Kingdom that receives no assistance with our ferry costs or with locating industry and commerce on the island. Despite that, we have an enviable and undoubted reputation for innovation and invention. We have companies selling laser technology to West Germany, and we have Westland Aerospace and Plessey, both of which produce outstanding products. It has been estimated that, including ferry time and waiting time, a round trip for a commercial vehicle to London — 178 miles from the island — is equivalent to a mainland journey of 448 miles. That shows the difficulty of the increased costs of operating on an island.
  Typically, and topically, we have a lot of innovation, and in view of the news of Richard Branson's weekend attempt with a balloon, I am delighted to tell the House that we are currently in the process of completing the manufacture of a gondola for delivery to Australia for a
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  high altitude balloon attempt to travel round the world in 12 days. The mould of the gondola comes from a mould for a septic tank.
  In 1956 my family company was asked by the local authority to become involved in the provision of a crematorium service. That was long before the days of privatisation. Since then we have been involved on no fewer than three occasions in winning a tender for the privatisation of that service in local government. With the small exception of indexation, which no commercial company can afford to provide outside of the public purse, in every case the staff that we took over received a pay rise, better pay and conditions and better pension rights than they had had in local government service. It is time that we nailed the nonsense that private enterprise is not responsible enough to empty our dustbins, clean our streets, service our vehicles and cut the grass. It is about time that we had this legislation, and a great deal more, to allow those services to be provided at a cost that the nation can afford.
  8.56 pm
  Mr. Simon Hughes: First, I wish to congratulate one hon. Member from either side on their maiden speeches. The hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) was right to pay tribute to his predecessor. I know, and he knows that I know, that constituencies such as his need a lot of representing. The inner cities of Britain have not done well in recent years and have done worse in the past eight years. I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will fight as hard as any to ensure that all the people of Tottenham get a better deal —if that is possible under this Government—and they will be able to see that he puts them first. I welcome him to the House.
  I am slightly less able to welcome the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field), for obvious reasons—he took back the seat from Liberal hands. That is no personal criticism. He, too, was right to pay tribute to his predecessor, who was a friend of mine and of local government. If Stephen Ross had been here, he would not have been supporting the Bill. He would have been saying that local government should be left to get on with its own business without Government interference. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will represent that island conscientiously and assiduously, and I have no doubt that he will try to do so.
  As the hon. Member for Isle of Wight said, the island has the largest electorate of any constituency in the United Kingdom and its representative probably receives more letters from prisoners than that of any other constituency. If one is in prison one certainly writes many letters if one can, because there is not much else one can do. The hon. Gentleman will no doubt make sure that the island is not forgotten and, unlike other outlying parts of the country, receives a better deal from the Government. It has not fared well, either, under his party's hierarchy.
  Mr. Tony Banks: As the hon. Gentleman is obviously in a nostalgic mood, will he tell us what Michael Meadowcroft would have said if he had been here? Has the hon. Member retaken his local government portfolio?
  Mr. Hughes: I am always grateful for the hon. Gentleman's interest. Yes, I have retaken the portfolio on

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  local government matters and I am happy to have done so. I am sure that the hon. Member will agree that the more people that we can get into the army opposing the Government in the battle of the inner cities and against local government, the better it will be. I look forward to a sturdy alliance with the hon. Gentleman on this matter, as we have had previously on many such matters.
  My last welcome is to the hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), the new Minister for Local Government. We are glad to see him. He has a reputation as a doughty fighter and I hope that by the time he ends his term of office, he will have successfully fought to correct some of the Department's failings. It certainly needs enlightenment and correction.
  There were rightly many points of order earlier. We should not he legislating for Scotland, England and Wales in one Bill. It is improper, unsuitable and inappropriate. The Bill does not pay due respect to the differences between countries and until we devolve power to local government and to Wales and Scotland, the people of those countries will not be properly governed centrally, nationally or locally.
  As the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said, it is typical that the first Bill of a new Parliament should be an attack on democracy. The Bill is yet another attack on local government. I have been reflecting on the difference between the Government's biased view of local government and their view of the private sector. They put out a White Paper about the private sector entitled "Lifting the Burden", but they put more obligations on local government and undermine the theory and practice that local people elect councillors to act for them locally, untrammelled, where possible, by central control.
  Some of us believe in local government, even when it makes mistakes and gets things wrong. We shall fight for local government and the sooner that the Government realise that they are undermining people in their own party as well as others and are discouraging people from going into local government by taking away its powers, the sooner they will begin to get things right.
  The evidence is so clear. Not only Opposition parties oppose the Bill. The Association of District Councils, which is led by a Conservative majority, opposes the legislation and there is all-party opposition among people who know to the removal of yet more local government powers.
  If the Government applied their own criterion of quality control—they say that they are intervening to achieve a better quality of service in local government—we would not have had the poor quality of argument and the pathetic quality of presentation that we had from the Secretary of State when he opened the debate. That combination is demeaning to local government. When the right hon. Gentleman mentioned clause 26, which deals with local authority publicity, only in passing, without reference to the fact that it is a major attack on local councils, he did not do his office any service.
  Part I of the Bill contains the long-expected proposals to compel local authorities to put a number of services out to tender. The Secretary of State made it clear that his argument was fallacious when he said that, following the consultative paper of 1985, the majority of councils had not done what the Government are now to compel them to do. The reason is that those councils had chosen not to do that. Many of those are Conservative councils and yet
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  the hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) said. "We don't believe in coercion." This Government are the most coercive ever to wear the Conservative tag.
  Mr. Roger Gale: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Hughes: No. The Government coerce people all the time and they have no national mandate to do so.
  Mr. Gale: The hon. Gentleman referred to me. Will he give way?
  Mr. Hughes: No. I will not give way.
  It is about time that the Government realised that local authorities should be free to decide for themselves how they can provide services most effectively and efficiently. As a Liberal, I reject blinkered, ideological commitment to provision either by the municipalist establishment or by the private sector for profit. Local authorities are democratically accountable, though imperfectly so, and if private sector provisions were substantially more effective and less expensive for local authorities—and, therefore, for local voters—many of the councils that have no ideological opposition to private sector provision would have found that to be the case. Local voters would also be crying out for it. That has not happened. All the local authority associations, including the Tory-controlled Association of District Councils, are clearly opposed to this centralist, authoritarian anti-local government set of provisions. The Association of District Councils says that these measures
  "will mean increased central bureaucracy and a reduced, rather than increased, likelihood of achieving greater efficiency and value for money."
  The Government question the accountability of local authorities and the efficiency and effectiveness of the services that they provide. It is right to ask questions about those things, but the Government respond by imposing from the centre methods of working that increase the accountability of local authorities, not to their local electors and communities, but to the Secretary of State. When the Government say accountability they mean accountability to the Conservative party in Whitehall. That is not acceptable to many local councils.
  The Government know that there is an easy solution, but year after year they run away from it. They could introduce local proportional representation. They need not even think of it nationally, but if they introduced it locally there would be none of the partisan solutions that the Government complain about so much.
  I have a final point about the substantive part of the Bill. Although the Government say that it is not intended to bring about the privatisation of local authority services but only to increase competition, no one has any doubt that the motivation of many Conservative Members is to privatise. That is in the mistaken belief that the services for the profit of private employers are inherently better than the services provided by local authorities directly employing people.
  As the hon. Member for Copeland said, the proposals in the Bill will not bring competition. They will not bring competition between a large number of firms in a fairly free market for contracts. They will provide opportunities for a small number of huge multinationals to extend their activities into further areas, making redundant in the process many highly trained and proficient local council

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  employees. There are, substantially, two companies that get all the work and that is not sharing the responsibilities and the rewards.
  Part II of the Bill deals with contract compliance. Not only does it go entirely in the wrong direction, but it also breaks the word of the Secretary of State. In his press release of 21 October he said:
  "A special provision will be made to allow the promotion of employment prospects of local labour in the inner cities."
  If the Government were interested in employment in inner-city communities such as mine, they would allow local people to have first option on inner city jobs and homes. There is no point in the Government putting in money that is then creamed off by outside developers, often against the interests of the people who most need Government initiatives.
  Part IV of the Bill deals, among other things, with publicity. The hon. Member for Copeland understated how bad part IV is, because the Government have not just reinserted what in the last Parliament the House of Lords removed, but have gone further and said that anything that is a matter for political controversy and which might have the effect of influencing a party's political position will be outlawed. Presumably that means that my local authority of Southwark, for example, which is of a different political colour from mine and from that of the Government, cannot print anything to influence me to argue or vote against the Bill. That is entirely unacceptable and does not stand up to any objective assessment. We could do good things in this Bill.
  Dr. Cunningham: I accept what the hon. Gentleman says, because, if anything, I understated the provisions in clause 4. Does he recognise, as we do, that not only local authorities also but the national associations of local authorities will be impeded? Over many decades, under Governments of all political persuasions, those associations have had the right to draw to the attention of Parliament and the country matters of political controversy. They would be inhibited in that activity by this legislation.
  Mr. Hughes: The hon. Gentleman is right. The sort of submissions that he and I received before today's debate from the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, the Association of District Councils and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities and others may well not be permitted. That means that the representative groupings of authorities will be subject to a Government veto and a Government gag. That is centralist, silencing Toryism. It is totally unacceptable and contrary to all that local government means. As my hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) has just said to me, it is the sort of Stalinism that drove one member of the Cabinet to the Back Benches.
  We could have had provisions that enforced reports by local administration commissioners. We could have had provisions that allowed public land to be held for local use at a lower than market price. As the hon. Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes) said, we could have had provisions to allow local authorities to charge for dog licences and that would have enabled them to do something about the pests that dogs often are. But instead, the Government have just steamrollered on in the fashion to which we are all so sadly accustomed.
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  If the Government think that they will win votes by provisions such as this, they are wrong, and the evidence confirms that. I hope that if they do not learn the lessons of recent history, the other place will, yet again, take them to task. This central Conservative Government are showing, within two weeks of the new Parliament, that they are no friends of local government, of whatever colour, anywhere in Britain. That is the surest sign of an undemocratic central Government.
  9.10 pm
  Mr. John Heddle (Mid-Staffordshire): I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field), who spoke eloquently. He referred, rightly and generously, to the record of service of his predecessor, Mr. Stephen Ross. We shall miss him. In his stead, we will gain. My hon. Friend's modesty forbade his mentioning that he has considerable local government experience. We await with pleasure his contribution to local government debates. He also omitted to mention the he won his Isle of Wight county council seat from a Liberal in 1986. For reasons that one quite understands, he did not say that the Medina borough council in his constituency, heretofore controlled by the Liberal party, is now Conservative-controlled. The general election eclipsed the local elections, but that fact should be placed on record.
  We have heard much about local accountability. The Bill's provisions will enhance and strengthen local accountability, not diminish it. How can Labour Members shed crocodile tears about local accountability when only 25 or 30 per cent. of the electorate vote in local elections, and when the majority of the money provided for local authorities comes from industry and commerce, which has no voice, and no vote or sanction over the way in which the local authority spends its money? Some of the Bill's provisions will enhance the strength of that voice.
  In a glossy publication costing 75p, produced by the Labour party some six or nine months ago and entitled "Investing in People", the first paragraph read thus:
  "Britain's most precious resource is its people. Given the right skills, the right equipment and the right opportunities, they will transform Britain into a country which is efficient and competitive."
  The Bill will help to ensure that local government becomes more efficient, competitive and responsive to the needs and wishes of the local community, the ratepayers, their customers and the local work force.
  The hon. Member for Brent, East (Mr. Livingstone) has left the Chamber, but he intervened in the speech of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State with a reference to section 71 of the Race Relations Act 1976. I am opposed in principle to the use of contract compliance by local authorities to promote equal opportunity polices. Hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber are, I am sure, fully committed to equal opportunities for employment, irrespective of sex, race, colour and creed. However, contract compliance should not become accepted as the appropriate instrument for the promotion of equality, for two reasons. First, local authorities have a duty to their ratepayers to obtain value for money and should not award contracts on anything other than fair competitive considerations. Purely and simply, they should be awarded on commercial criteria. The enforcement of the law on equal opportunities has been entrusted by the House to the Commission for Racial Equality.
  Mr. McKelvey: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Heddle: I shall finish my point and then give way.
  The responsibility for the enforcement of the law on equal opportunities has been devolved by the House to the Equal Opportunities Commission. It is not a matter to be interfered with or usurped by local authorities for purely partisan and party political purposes.
  Mr. McKelvey: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Equal Opportunities Commission has been in operation for about 12 years, yet in that time it has succeeded in increasing equality in women's wages from 72 per cent. to 74 per cent.—only 2 percentage points in 12 years?
  Mr. Heddle: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention, but it adds nothing to the quality of the debate. It did not answer my point about which I thought he was intervening — that the House has devolved powers to the Equal Opportunities Commission and the Commission for Racial Equality to ensure that the will of the House and the people is carried out.
  Mr. Tony Banks: That is what local authorities are doing.
  Mr. Heddle: As I have said, local authorities have a duty to carry out the wishes of the ratepayers and their electors. They do not have a duty to interpret under their own terms the will and power of the House.
  Contract compliance places an unacceptable administrative burden on employers. When it existed, the Greater London council's form for contractors contained 10 pages of questions on equal opportunities. The Inner London education authority, which has taken over the GLC's mantle on contract compliance, is proposing to issue a set of guidance notes nearly 60 pages long, concerned solely with equal opportunities for use in conjunction with its contract compliance activities. How can any responsible and prudent employer bother to wade through a plethora of red tape to comply with irrelevent questions when he has better things to do creating wealth and jobs in the private sector?
  Mr. Tony Banks: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the GLC's contract compliance models were based almost entirely on the American example?
  Mr. Heddle: I am aware of that, but that adds nothing to the quality of the debate. We are talking about United Kingdom legislation devolving certain responsibilities and powers to local authorities to provide services for ratepayers. As a former chairman of the GLC, the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) knows that the relationship between the state, senate and local administration in the United States is completely different from the procedure here.
  Such non-commercial considerations, produced entirely for overtly political reasons, are a bar to jobs and to creating local employment. Many hon. Members will be aware of councils refusing to employ contractors because they have worked on cruise missile sites or in connection with South Africa, or because directors of those companies happened to be freemasons and other wholly irrelevant considerations to do with the composition of a contractor's work force or the terms upon which it is employed. At best, non-commercial considerations increase bureaucracy and red tape and hamper economic growth. They also increase contractor's costs, and especially employment costs. As such, they destroy jobs. That trend is particularly acute in low-paid jobs, or where
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  there is a high turnover of labour, because the cost of contract compliance is disproportionately high. At worst, some councils seek to subvert the national policy properly passed by the House.
  When I introduced a ten-minute Bill before the dissolution of Parliament, entitled the Local Government (Supply of Goods and Services) Bill, I cited the examples of Peterborough and Greenwich, which banned firms for working at cruise missiles sites. Other councils have acted similarly in London, and these include Brent, Haringey, Islington and Southwark. The electorate has already pronounced on what it thinks of such posturing and on the non-nuclear policies of those local authorities. It is not local government's place to seek to determine foreign or defence policies. It is elected to provide services for the people. I am glad that the Bill makes that clear. It comes not a moment too soon and will be a source of great relief to ratepayers and business men, who are faced with horrendous rate rises of the sort that have been introduced in Ealing and Waltham Forest. These increases have been imposed by lethal Left Labour-controlled local authorities.
  Many of my constituents work in the construction industry and they have been especially hard hit. I know that they are grateful for the speed with which the Bill has been introduced. I wish it godspeed in this place and in another to be sure that it appears on the statute book before too long.
  9.20 pm
  Mr. Alastair Darling: I am obliged to you, Mr. Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make my maiden speech. Before I address the subject matter of the debate, I wish to pay tribute to my immediate predecessor, Sir Alex Fletcher, who represented the constituency for four years after the redrawing of the boundaries in 1983. Before that he had represented Edinburgh, North for some years. When I had dealings with him he was entirely courteous and during the election campaign there was no rancour. I am happy to tell the House that the campaign was conducted entirely on the issues, which is perhaps why I have the pleasure of being able to address the House this evening.
  Before I address myself to the Bill I take the opportunity of paying tribute to George Willis, who represented Edinburgh, North and who sadly died during the general election campaign.
  It is appropriate that in my first speech in this place I should talk about a local government Bill that affects Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom. I shall allude briefly to the position of Scotland and of those of my right hon. and hon. Friends who are not separatists, who form the majority of Scottish Opposition Members. If we are to be part of the United Kingdom, the position of those of us in Scotland must be considered and recognised. I consider that it is bad practice to attempt to legislate by what are essentially English provisions and to foist those on Scotland without giving them separate consideration, which they so richly deserve, from a Scottish point of view.
  There is a feeling abroad in Scotland that the Government do not care. That feeling will be exacerbated or will be fired if we are to see more legislation that applies to Scotland tacked onto the back of English legislation. The powers of the Secretary of State for Scotland are perhaps greater than those of any other Secretary of State

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  and that makes the case all the more for giving Scotland and Scottish legislation separate consideration. If the Government are so proud of their record, let us hear those who speak for it. Let them proclaim the advantages that they say have come to Scotland. There is a junior Scottish Minister on the Treasury Front Bench and perhaps we shall have the opportunity during the debate of hearing what he has to say about the Bill.
  This is an unusual local government Bill, because it deals with Scotland and other parts of the United Kingdom. Scotland normally has separate legislation and Scottish legislation usually follows in about a year after the legislation has been introduced for the rest of the United Kingdom. That was the position until the introduction of the community charge legislation, or the legislation that imposes a poll tax on Scotland. In that instance Scotland was treated, for once, as an experiment. The poll tax has been tried out in Scotland as an experiment to see whether it will work and to see what the response is before it is tried in the rest of the United Kingdom.
  In a perverse sort of way it is possible that some good may come from Scotland being used in this way. Conservative Members know how greatly their forces were diminished north of the border and I believe that the poll tax contributed possibly more than anything else to their rejection at the ballot box just one month ago. The much criticised and much talked about yuppies, if there be such creatures, turned out overwhelmingly to support Labour Members.
  In Edinburgh, Central, as in the rest of the country, we have a sense of fairness and decency and of what is right and what is wrong. We believe that if a local authority is elected it should be left to get on with the job without interference from central Government. The hallmark of this Government is that they have interfered more than any other Administration in the way in which local authorities conduct their business. More than that, we value local services and we are willing to pay for a job well done. We do not want cheap and shoddy services. Instead, we want repairs that last and services that people take a pride in delivering and that others appreciate when they receive them. Cost cutting does not make for greater efficiency, and privatisation leads to cost cutting, which means in the long term that local authorities and the public sector must pick up the pieces.
  Part I of the Bill is clearly designed to squeeze direct labour organisations, although in many parts of the country they are extremely efficient and win a large share of the work that has to be put out to tender. Local authority services can be efficient, because the people who provide those services take pride in doing so. They know that they are providing a service on which local people rely.
  The Transport Act 1985 did more than anything else to undermine the provision of one local authority service-buses—by putting transport affairs into private hands. In the Lothian region, we had one of the best bus services in the country; now the ratepayers are paying £2 million more to subsidise a less efficient bus service. The hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) will no doubt have some sympathy with that. When I was chairman of Lothian region transportation
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  committee, he wrote to me again and again, more than any other Member of Parliament, asking whether I could do anything to restore services in his constituency.
  We must maintain and enhance DLOs, because they have to deal with emergencies and pick up the pieces when the private sector cannot meet the need. If the legislation is passed, DLOs will be weakened, jobs will be lost and it will cost us, the ratepayers and those who live locally more in the long term.
  Part II of the Bill is what I might term the morality part. It seeks to strike at those local authorities that choose not to do business with certain firms. I cannot see what is wrong with deciding that we do not want to do business with a firm that conducts itself in a way that we find reprehensible. I cannot see what is wrong in deciding that I do not wish to trade with a firm that mistreats its work force by not paying them properly, or by discriminating against certain sections on grounds of race, creed or colour. I should have thought that such an attitude would be lauded by all hon. Members. However, it appears that the Government intend to strike against it.
  I consider this a matter of decency. Where is the local authorities' right to choose? Coming from a Government who support the right to choose and freedom of choice, this part of the Bill is ill founded. It strikes at the very right of local authorities to make choices, not just on cost but on matters of straightforward decency.
  I find part III of the Bill particularly difficult to understand. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) paid tribute to the magnificent vistas that can apparently be seen in his constituency by anyone who visits it. I invite any Conservative Member who wishes to come to Edinburgh. Indeed, I will invite the Scottish Front Bench, and will gladly pay for the two taxis that will be required to take them round the city. The Georgian facades and the historic and beautiful royal mile belie the fact that 20 per cent. of the constituents are unemployed, many of them young people. We have young bands of nomads with nowhere to live and nowhere to go. Instead of paying money to private landlords to build accommodation, we need controls over the sort of accommodation that is provided, proper supervision and proper funding. When we consider that the public purse pays private landlords some £9 million a year in Edinburgh, we realise that the money would be better spent by local authorities to provide properly supervised accommodation to suit the needs of young people—to give them a sense of pride in their accommodation, and a chance to make something of their unfortunate lives.
  Much has been said about the part of the Bill that strikes at publicity. I will say only that it seems very bad practice that the Government intend to suppress dissent to the extent of saying that communications from local authorities, perhaps to Members of Parliament, are to be struck at if they are critical of the Government. Part IV demonstrates that no one can attack the Government without fear of retribution through the courts. This Government have spent a large amount of money, both directly and indirectly, on privatisation and advertisements. We were told that businesses that had been created by the state were shackled by the state, but when they were to be privatised they became, suddenly, a model of efficiency, and we were told that they ought to be purchased when the opportunity arose. Who paid for that? The taxpayers paid for it. If the Government can spend

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  public money on advancing what they believe to be right, democratically elected local authorities ought to have the freedom to do exactly the same.
  The Bill is one of the worst examples of local authority repression. Scotland will oppose it, just as it will be opposed throughout the country. Scotland will not be pushed beyond the pale. The legislation is bad for Scotland, just as it is bad for all parts of the United Kingdom. Opposition Members who represent Scotland will not pull down the shutters. We shall advance our arguments for fairness, justice and decency.
  The Government say that the economic recovery is taking a long time to come north. Similarly, Labour's argument for fairness, justice and decency is taking longer than I should like, but in the end I believe that our view will prevail. One can trample on decency and scorn consensus only for so long. This Bill illustrates what a heavy-handed, centralist approach this Government have adopted. That is why the Opposition will oppose it root and branch.
  9.31 pm
  Mr. David Evans: I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my maiden speech in this important debate.
  I congratulate the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) on his eloquence. I do not agree with his views, but he made an impressive maiden speech. I have to declare an interest. I am a non-executive director of a company in the service sector. I thank the previous member of Parliament for Welwyn Hatfield, Mr. Christopher Murphy, who served the constituency so well. He was a first-class constituency member. All the people in Welwyn Hatfield thank him for his efforts on their behalf. He contributed to making Welwyn Hatfield a constituency of which we can all be proud.
  Welwyn is a garden city which began life 50 years ago, and 95 per cent. of its people are in work. Recently, BAe won from TNT an order for 72 jets. The air weapons division of BAe is also in my constituency. During the last year 150 one-man businesses have been started up. That demonstrates the entrepreneurial flair of the people of Welwyn Hatfield. Pharmaceutical industries, the Crown paint company and many other industries have come to Welwyn Hatfield. Those industries, and the fact that the people of Welwyn Hatfield were determined to make the city into something of which they could be proud, have led to high employment and high investment. With 3,000 sq ft of business space now under construction, there will soon be 100 per cent. employment in Hatfield.
  There is both private housing and local government development in Welwyn Hatfield. A third of our council housing is now owner-occupied. We can be proud of that record. We have had problems over our schools, and we are discussing with the Minister the proposed closure of two schools, the Bishops Hatfield girls' school and the Wheathampstead secondary school. We have also had problems with our main hospital, the Queen Elizabeth II hospital, but by making savings and by competitiveness we have produced the money that is necessary to keep the hospital fully open. We have not gone back to the Government, or to the regional health authority or to the district health authority and asked for money. That is not the style of the people of Welwyn Hatfield.
  The Local Government Bill deals with local government services. The work force benefits from privatisation,
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  because it results in new equipment and investment in the utensils used by the work force—the clothes, the dustcarts, the lorries and the canteens, not to mention the pensions and the wages. All are improved under privatisation.
  Privatisation is the answer to the problems of the work force. Through that competitiveness and freedom the work force responds, and when it does, the customers—in this case the ratepayers—receive a far better service because the work force has won back its pride. Consequently, it does the job better. When given the tools, the work force will do its job better and the ratepayers appreciate the improved services. They then appreciate what the work force is doing. As a result of such improvement, those who live in the areas that have been privatised look to the work force and the local companies to increase the services, thereby increasing jobs.
  The local authority can do as it will with savings. It can improve other services and attract new investment and jobs. The failure to achieve savings is at the root of our problem. For too long the work force has been dominated by half a dozen shop stewards and bureaucratic officers who will not look at tenders fairly or release the work force. The more privatisation, the more jobs and savings there will be.
  I warn the Government and the House that the administrators and bureaucracy will try to stop privatisation. We should free the work force so that it can do its job properly. Under privatisation, the work force becomes the most important part of the organisation—not the least important part, as it has been for years. The poor old dustman is suddenly the most important person. That is the answer. If we give the work force the opportunity, it will give us the service. Of that I am convinced.
  I, along with all other new Conservative Members, will endeavour to maintain the traditions, protocol, honour and distinction of the House. When I leave the House, I hope that those traditions will be safeguarded by the hon. Members who remain.
  9.38 pm
  Mr. Roy Hughes: In his maiden speech, the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (M r. Evans) pointed out that he represents a garden city in a prosperous part of southern England. We in Wales are always jealous of it. I was particularly jealous of all the new industries about which the hon. Gentleman spoke, and only wish that some of them would come to us.
  There was also the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling). He represents the capital city of Scotland, and in that sense has an important responsibility. He demonstrated his extensive local government experience, which is always useful in this place. My hon. Friend was certainly fluent and forthright, and I feel sure that we shall hear a good deal more from him.
  Numerous Welsh Members complained that the proposals in the Queen's Speech were irrelevant to the needs of Wales. The Local Government Bill is positively detrimental to the best interests of Wales. Part I will give the Secretary of State powers to compel our local authorities to invite tenders from private contractors to carry out defined activities—refuse collection, street cleansing, cleaning buildings, catering services, school meals and meals on wheels, vehicle repair, maintenance

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  and ground maintenance. As has been said, too, the list can be extended by order and at the discretion of the Minister.
  In recent years, Wales has experienced a rundown of its traditional industries—coal and steel. Thousands of jobs have been lost in the process and we are now suffering from chronic unemployment. Alongside this, Wales has developed a strong dependence on the public sector. Our Welsh authorities have been under severe pressure from central Government, with all manner of financial restraint. They have had great difficulty in maintaining local services up to anything like the standards that they know to be necessary. Despite all those difficulties and all those pressures, they have acted responsibly throughout. When they read and digest the proposals contained in the Bill their reaction must be: "What have we done to deserve this?"
  No Welsh councils, including Tory-controlled councils, have opted for privatisation of services. They had a choice and they made their decision. So why should it now be made compulsory and their own considered judgment be trampled upon? If such proposals were of benefit to the people of Wales, they would have been implemented long ago. The Ridley-Walker jackboot that is an essential feature of the Bill is completely unnecessary in Wales. It should be a basic, elementary, democratic condition that local authorities should be free to make the final decision on how their services are provided. They should be made accountable to their local electorates for the extent, quality and cost of those services.
  Judging by the record to date, privatisation will lead to worse standards of service together with a decline in jobs, pay and conditions, and compensation. The track record of private companies in local government and in the National Health Service is a catalogue of disasters. There are several hundred well publicised examples, and I will quote just one or two. ISS Service Systems failed to meet the cleaning contract for the Birmingham school and had to pay Birmingham £150,000 compensation in September 1984. The five-year contract to Initial Service Cleaners Ltd. for pest control awarded by Shepway district council had to be terminated after only a few months. Henley magistrates fined Pritchards for overloading offences in a south Oxfordshire refuse contract. Gloucester returned the cattle market cleaning contract to direct labour after failure of Initial Cleansing Services in 1982.
  I could go on, but it would be merely a recital of the declining standards. There can be little doubt that if those proposals become law, the cowboys will move in and the power of local authorities to do anything about it will be severely reduced. Low tenders will be merely a sprat to catch a mackerel because once the market has been cornered, the price goes up. Profit, not service, will be the principal standard of judgment and local authorities will have to bear the redundancy costs of reducing the size of their direct labour force. In addition, there will be the start-up costs for setting up new departments to deal with tendering, overseeing contractors and drawing up specifications. Such developments could be costly, with only the possibility of a cheaper, let alone better, service.
  Aneurin Bevan once asked why we should look into the crystal ball when we can read the book. Experience tells us that privatisation invariably ends with the ratepayer paying more for poorer services. Privatisation has a
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  chequered history in local government. Early in the century private contractors for services to the public were plentiful and standards of service were poor and corrupt practices were a legendary feature. Eventually, decisions were taken to make those services a part of municipal government. Therefore, we have been through it all before.
  In the private sector of industry, despite all the marketing drives, the majority of United Kingdom companies continue to use directly employed staff for cleaning, catering and maintenance. That tendency is most marked among larger companies which are more comparable in size to the average local authority.
  The Government claim that competition in the market place will ensure higher standards and services that are cheaper to run. They turn a blind eye to the monopolistic trends that are already developing. Following mergers, the council services market, as my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) pointed out, is being effectively divided between two contractors, Hawley and BET. So much for competition. Councils will lose democratic control over local services and service standards are bound to decline. Matters such as equal opportunities, training and health and safety will take a back seat. Councils will be banned from imposing noncommercial conditions; by that I mean decent pay and conditions for working people. They will not be able to crack down on labour-only sub-contractors or ban companies with South African links. All those are important social considerations about which local authorities should be able to hold a view.
  I have dealt essentially with part I of the Bill but I feel equally critical of clause 26, which is yet another Government attempt to suppress local authority publicity on matters of public controversy. It is a thoroughly undemocratic proposal and will be a means of suppressing sincerely held opinions that should be vented.
  The Government have the audacity to say that local people should look after the interests of the local community but they are putting forward proposals that could spell the end of local democracy. Overall, the Government's proposals mean that central Government will control about 80 per cent. of local government income. Those moves towards centralisation are essentially a Stalinist concept. That is the way in which the Government function as was movingly revealed over the weekend by the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen). The centralisation tendency is to be deprecated in every way. Democracy thrives on diversification of decision making.
  In the recent general election, Conservative candidates in Wales managed to survive in only eight out of 38 constituencies. A decade ago, many leading figures in local government in Wales were opposed to devolution, but the same people are now calling for a Welsh Assembly. The proposals in the Bill are completely unnecessary for Wales. We do not want them and we do not need them. Why should they be forced upon us?
  9.50 pm
  Mr. David Atkinson: I am delighted to be the first on the Conservative Benches to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans) and to congratulate him on his maiden speech, which lived up to the expectations of those of us who have known him for some time. My hon. Friend could not have selected a better debate in which to make his

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  speech, as he represents one of the best examples of enterprise and experience of which this Bill is all about. We all join in my hon. Friend's tribute to Christopher Murphy, who in addition to being such an active Member of this House was also an active representative for this country at the Council of Europe.
  Unfortunately, no proper tribute has been paid from the Conservative Benches to the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) on his maiden speech. I am sorry that he is not present in the Chamber just now, but I am pleased to congratulate him on his speech.
  I shared in the tribute that the hon. Member for Tottenham paid to his predecessor, who was my namesake. He was also the Labour party treasurer. Indeed. I once received in my post the paying-in book of the Labour party. The stubs made extremely interesting reading until I realised it was meant for Norman and not for me. I promised that I would not divulge anything that I had read.
  I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on bringing forward this Bill. I know that he accepts that it is long overdue. Indeed, hon. Friends and I have long campaigned for it. I believe that if we had introduced this Bill, together with the community charge, during our first term in office, we would have avoided all the time-wasting in this place and all the aggravation with local authorities over rate capping, holdbacks, penalties, limitations, surcharges, clawbacks and all the other contortions in the rate support grant system in the attempts to control excessive local government expenditure.
  If such legislation had been introduced earlier I believe that we could have avoided some of the problems now faced in our inner cities. Indeed, the Labour party might wish to speculate on whether the winter of discontent would have taken place if local services had been contracted out.
  I am amazed that there should be any opposition to this Bill and its proposals. The sheer common sense—
  Mr. Maxton: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Atkinson: No; plenty of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues wish to speak tonight and I would not wish his intervention to be at their expense.
  The sheer common sense of the proposals— putting public and municipal services to the test of competition just as a check that both ratepayers and consumers are getting value for money—must be evident to anyone. When one considers the record of those councils, all Conservative, that have had the guts to pioneer this policy, the case becomes overwhelming. We have seen that competitive tendering works. It saves, and it benefits not only the consumer but those who carry out those services when taken into the private sector.
  We could have no better proof than the experience of Southend which, in 1981, was the first local authority to put refuse collection, together with street cleaning and public lavatory maintenance, out to private tender. That policy saved £500,000 a year, which is about a 2p in the pound rate. The winning tender purchased most of the waste disposal vehicles, employed most of the collectors, gave a good deal to those who opted to leave and left the council with a profit on the deal. The service is better and more efficient than it was before, with a happier and more contented work force. My hon. Friend the Member for
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  Welwyn Hatfield was able to tell the House that, because it is his work force. As a former resident of Southend and a former member of the county borough council there, I can bear out exactly what my hon. Friend told the House.
  Others have followed Southend's lead. At least 140 councils have contracted out nearly 60 different services, saving over £22 million a year, but that is nothing compared with the potential savings, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said. As the Audit Commission has estimated, over £500 million could be saved if all the councils followed the privatising practices of the best. With such savings, we could all enjoy better services, lower rates and probably both. It is a scandal that the majority of local authorities, including, regrettably, Conservative authorities, continue to ignore the benefits and refuse to apply the competitive test.
  The reasons of all four of the local authority associations for opposing the Bill do not stand up to analysis. They complain about the compulsion element. That is pathetic. They are "compelled" to do what is obviously common sense, which is just to check whether they are getting value for money. They still have doubts about whether it will work. That is pathetic. They just need to look at the record of the Conservative-controlled councils that have had the guts to do it, and at the report of the Audit Commission.
  The associations complain about the limitations of the market. Of course there will be limitations. They have been maintaining a monopoly of services for so long that there will be few companies in some of those services with that experience, but, given time, private enterprise will deliver. The real reason for the opposition is, of course, that the test of competition strikes at the heart of local empire-building and bureaucracy, and the vested interest of the trade unions, which regard local councils—
  Mr. Tony Banks: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Maxton: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Atkinson: —more as a provider of jobs than as a provider of services to the public—
  Mr. Allan Rogers: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Atkinson: Some of those councils will do their best—
  Mr. Rogers rose—
  Mr. Speaker: Order.
  Mr. Atkinson: Those councils will do their best to ensure that the Bill will not be effectively implemented. That is the reason why clause 7 is so necessary, to prevent the methods that have already been used to sabotage the privatisation of direct labour organisations and the privatisation of some of the non-medical services of local health authorities, such as putting out tenders all at once so that the private market cannot cope—
  Mr. Rogers: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Atkinson: —such as producing tender documents full of unnecessary conditions, breaking down jobs into small units to escape putting them out to tender and ignoring the advice of the district auditors and the ombudsman.
  Mr. Rogers: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: I hope that it is a point of order, not an intervention.
  Mr. Rogers: No, Mr. Speaker. Some days ago my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) drew to your attention the fact that if hon. Members were involved in debates in which they might have a pecuniary interest, they should declare that interest over and above what is contained in the Register of Members' Interests. I notice that the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) states in "Dod's Parliamentary Companion" that he has a special interest in NHS and local government privatisation. The Register of Members' Interests says that he is parliamentary adviser for Good Relations Ltd. and Grayling Ltd. I understand that those companies are specifically interested in these matters. In view of what is contained in those different books, I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman would like to explain to the House his interest in privatisation.
  Mr. Atkinson: I have no special interest to declare, and I am no longer retained by the two companies to which the hon. Gentleman refers.
  My disappointment with the Bill is that it restricts the services to go out to tender to six manual services, which are listed in the Bill. Other services are already available on the free market, such as architectural services, refuse disposal, printing, local authority transport, public relations, and, especially today, computer services, where there should be no problem of definition for the purposes of legislation. They could be included in the Bill.
  I appreciate that the Bill provides for additional services to be included by order. All these are services that can be put to the competitive test today and I hope that my hon. Friend will consider including them in the Bill Committee. I hope, too, that he will not ignore the scope that exists for some of the larger services for which local authorities are responsible, and to which my right hon. Friend has referred—the fire fighting services, libraries and aspects of social services such as community care—to be put out to tender as happens in other countries. I look forward to some confirmation that we are studying the experience of other countries in these areas.
  I welcome clause 32, which abolishes dog licences. They have been a nonsense for too long. A choice had to be made: either the licence was to be a source of revenue—a tax on dogs, which would outrage practically every other person in the country—or it was to finance an effective means of controlling dog nuisance, which the licence scheme was never meant to do; or it could be abolished, which was exactly right. However, my right hon. Friend cannot ignore the problems of dog control that exist, not least in areas such as my constituency.
  There is nothing so off-putting for visitors as parks, recreational areas and beaches which are littered with dog dirt. That is what my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Employment had in mind during the last Friday's debate on tourism, when he spoke of seeking a spotless Britain. Responsibility for the control of dogs must be that of the owners. Now that the licensing system has been abolished, I hope that my right hon. Friend, together with the Home Office, will continue to give sympathetic consideration to those local authorities that will now undoubtedly come forward with their own byelaws, powers and orders to control dogs. I look forward to
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  hearing what my hon. and learned Friend the Minister has to say about local authorities introducing their own licensing schemes for that purpose.
  10.2 pm
  Mr. John Battle: I begin with a word of tribute to all those who worked so hard in recent months and weeks to return a Labour Member of Parliament for Leeds, West. As is customary, I acknowledge the work of my predecessors, Charles Pannell, Joe Dean and, most recently, the Liberal Member Michael Meadowcroft. Michael Meadowcroft was well known for his local activism and used every opportunity to have a go at the Labour party. In his own maiden speech he cited Rebecca West's comment that
  "to be wiped out by the Liberal party is a more inglorious end than to be run over by a hearse".
  In the light of the recent result in Leeds, West and the current national debate, perhaps the remark that immediately preceded that statement seems uncannily apposite:
  "At its best the Liberal party is a jelly fish. Sometimes the milk of human kindness which flows through it (instead of blood), gets heated and then it flops about and tries to do good. This warm—milk—enthusiasm soon evaporates and it lies inert."
  On a more personal note, Michael Meadowcroft, as some hon. Members will know, played the jazz clarinet and rather fancied himself as the Benny Goodman of the House in the tea shop across the road. I wish him well in his life outside the House.
  My earlier predecessor, Joe Dean, had a reputation for addressing himself in the House to the problems of the large northern cities and local government issues, and had a particular concern for providing decent homes for everyone, regardless of their ability to pay. Those concerns are still central to the agenda of the people of Leeds, West and I intend to try to match his dilligence in pursuing them in the House.
  Last week I called in at the Bramley jobcentre in the heart of Leeds, West to see what was on offer. In the window there were six jobs on offer. All were part-time or temporary, and all were low-paid. There were two posts for part-time cleaners, one offering the derisory sum of £2·20 per hour, the other an office cleaning job-offering £2 an hour. A temporary cleaner's job offered £2·28 an hour and there was a vacancy for bar staff and one for a part-time canvasser, which offered commission only.
  Therefore, it is not that there are no jobs available. Inside the centre there were cards for cleaners, bar staff, counter and sales assistants and even a few in the traditional manufacturing and industrial sectors —engineering and textiles — which in the past have provided the majority of work opportunities in my constituency. However, the only jobs on offer are low-paid — £2·80 an hour for an experienced lathe setter and £2·95 for an experienced trained miller. The only jobs advertised in the clothing industry are piecework jobs.
  The Bramley jobcentre provides a microcosm of what is going on in our economy. The structural shift is not simply from employment to unemployment or from manufacturing to the service sector. It is in the direction of the development of a part-time, temporary and low-paid economy as the only alternative to work in the traditional manufacturing industries.
  Conservative Members have the nerve to talk about freeing the workers. In my constituency it seems that the

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  workers are being freed into poverty, and that is the sort of freedom that sets language on its head. The intentional creation of a low-wage economy, fuelled by the undermining of the social security system and the suppression of the public service sector, is breeding hopelessness and resentment among the potential work force that I represent.
  I respectfully invite the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who referred in a speech to the CBI during the general election campaign to "the exhilarating 80s," to speak at the Bramley jobcentre about the booming economy. His words will return with a hollow ring.
  During the debate on the Loyal Address the righ hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Brittan) said that the economy was hitting a
  "glorious summer in the home counties"—[Official Report, 25 June 1987; Vol. 118, c. 68.]
  and developing into a "long-delayed spring" in the midlands. The myth of a creeping economic boom, moving up the country, cuts no ice in northern cities and towns.
  One of the most disturbing passages in the Queen's Speech refers to legislation being introduced to enable benefits to be withheld from those who refuse a place on the youth training scheme. There are 35 YTS vacancies for young people in Bramley, with well over 2,000 youngsters chasing them. Nearly half the teenagers in the north cannot find a job after YTS. The Government have accepted that taking up benefits is the worst start in life that a youngster can have, but after a brief spell on the YTS that is all that our young people have to return to, with a consequent further reduction in their income.
  Penalising the young for not taking up places, forcing them to leave their families, but not allowing them to stay where they are forced to go, and the new poll tax proposals form a compound that will breed pessimism and resentment within families. Young people should be encouraged to develop as the future of our society and not he kept down and treated as though they were a burden and a problem to us. Our young people are not alone in feeling rejected. More than 200,000 people in Leeds are effectively locked into the inner city, prevented by poverty from moving out. The majority of the unemployed, the elderly living alone and people from ethnic minority groups live in inner cities and in the worst housing, both public and private. They face a vicious downward spiral of poverty and feel increasingly marginalised and written off by Government policies. They will not warm to the Secretary of State for the Environment's efforts to undermine the potential for employment in the service sector of local authorities.
  The Social Security Act 1986, which was passed by the House on the day of the royal wedding, reduced housing benefits. When compounded with the introduction of the poll tax, it will bite hard in the inner cities, yet the Government seem determined to press on with the poll tax, regardless of critical opposition. Indeed, if clause 26 goes through, local authorities will be prevented from spelling out the impact of the poll tax on the areas that they represent. I emphasise that even according to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy calculations the domestic ratepayers of Leeds city council would face an increase of approximately £20 million a year as a result of the community charge.
  We have yet to hear about the administration of the community charge. Last week The Daily Telegraph carried the headline:
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  "Big brother checks will trap poll tax dodgers."
  The story said:
  "Those who use any local service from education to taking out a library hook will be cross-checked automatically against the Town Hall's list of poll tax payers. So will those who ask for help with council housing or apply for any locally administered grant aid schemes. It will apply to 18 year olds signing on for evening classes and pensioners attending council run day centres. Poll tax evasion will carry penalties including fines, property confiscation and in extremes imprisonment."
  What is this but the pricing of people out of their right to vote? In future only those who can pay will be able to afford to register their vote. It is hard not to draw the inference that the true purpose of the proposal is narrowly political. It is a measure targeted at the Labour vote. Is this what the Prime Minister really means when she says that she has to get into the inner cities, and when she declares that she wants them the next time? Is she really out to get us? Is the real future role proposed for local government simply a punitive one?
  Already we have seen the shift to local government of the administration of housing benefit, hut councils not been given adequate back-up facilities. We have seen a reduction in the tax contribution for the rate support grant from 60 to 40 per cent. and an insistence on an increased rate contribution of exactly that proportion.
  What we are witnessing is the inability of local authorities adequately to respond to local needs in employment, housing and resources. Teaspoonfuls of urban aid to local authorities are being offered as palliatives, while the Treasury has imposed for the last eight years a tight grip on the windpipe of the main programme of spending on housing, social services and education. Leeds alone needs about £70 million to improve and repair housing in both the public and the private sector and to tackle the backlog of defects in system-built homes in which many people are now trapped because they are blighted by the mortgage lenders, yet the city council's housing investment programme has had imposed on it incredible reductions over eight years.
  Local authorities are now to be reduced to adopting a punitive role of poll tax collection, and that is coupled with the determination to dismantle local authorities by way of an obsessive privatisation drive. Although the Secretary of State spoke of increasing efficiency, in practice the proposals in the Bill will push forward a low-wage economy. Contrary to the view of the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans), it will mean wage cuts for already low-paid workers. It will mean a deterioration in conditions of employment and the weakening of statutory employment rights. It will mean that there will be no provision for equal opportunities policies and no provision to ensure that contractors in inner city areas employ local labour.
  On Thames Television on 1 July the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said that he and his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment were totally committed to the policy of using local labour and of getting development to generate more local employment. The 1986 Treasury report said:
  "Most of the savings from contracting out arise because contractors offer poorer conditions of employment."
  As Lord Stockton, then Mr. Harold Macmillan, said in 1946:

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  "It was the Treasury … who were always scraping to see whether they could obtain some small advantage by placing their contracts at some slightly lower price with second or third rate contractors."
  Have the Government learnt nothing in the past 40 years? The Widdicombe report said that John Stuart Mill saw the principal value of local self-government as raising the political capabilities of the people. We on this side of the House believe that there is a real danger in the proposals of the Bill that locally elected government will be reduced to local administration directed from the centre. That will mean that people are even further cut off from political engagement. The only outcome will be deepening political cyncism and a further unacceptable build-up of power at the centre.
  Restrictions on the publicity functions of local councils strike at the heart of the founding intentions of local government. If clause 26 were enacted, it would be an instrument of most serious attack on our democratic system. The definition of political controversy opens the door to widespread suppression. A proper prohibition of party political publicity would be supportable, and section 2 of the Local Government Act 1986 already sets this out. But are the Government seriously proposing that local authority publicity designed to promote racial equality is to be curtailed because it could be identified as opposed to the policies of the National Front?
  In Leeds, even Conservative councillors argue that people should be encouraged to take up their full welfare benefit entitlement, but under clause 26 such publicity would be outlawed. The Government have already gone much further in their plans to restrict local government publicity than was proposed, even in the recommendations of the inquiry conducted by David Widdicombe.
  Surely local councils must be left to exercise their own judgment about the information and publicity that they issue for the benefit of the communities that they serve, without unnecessary and democratic restraints being imposed by the Government. All that we are asking is that the same rules apply to local government as apply to central Government.
  One of the first letters that I received as a Member of Parliament was from a major advertising company based in my constituency. It did not criticise the rate level of the local council as a great burden but urged me to do all that I could to argue against the unified business rate, on the ground that it would have to pay three times as much and would end up going out of business. It is not only the domestic ratepayers who oppose the poll tax. Criticism is building up from all quarters. I urge the Government to heed that criticism and not force through legislation on this, as they forced through legislation on social security, without spelling out in detail who will pay the price or taking into account the most universal criticisms.
  In the heart of my constituency is the ruin of a monastery, Kirkstall abbey, one of the earliest communities in west Leeds. That community lived according to the rule of St. Benedict, the first word of which is, "Listen". The message from my constituency, as from other inner city constituencies, from many in the north, from many areas represented by democratically elected Labour councils and from those communities that now make up "Poor Britain" is the strongest possible plea to the Government to listen attentively to what we have to
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  say inside and outside the House before proceeding. The Government must allow themselves to be persuaded by the evidence and the arguments and to act for justice for all the people in Britain. We appeal to the Government not to tread roughshod over the people with legislation that will breed resentment. Outside the House, like elsewhere in the world among downtrodden communities, the Opposition have a moral duty to join popular campaigns for the defiance of unjust laws when Governments choose to use their large majorities to push through Parliament such measures regardless.
  10.18 pm
  Mr. David Wilshire: I congratulate the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) on coping so admirably with the ordeal that now faces me.
  I start my maiden speech with the customary words of thanks to my predecessor, not because tradition demands that I do so but because it is richly deserved. Sir Humphrey Atkins was a Member of this place for 30 years, during which time he represented two separate constituencies. Over the past year I have seen at first hand how hard he worked for all local people. Sir Humphrey Atkins also served his party with great distinction, particularly as Chief Whip. He also served the nation with much skill and great integrity inside and outside Cabinet.
  Rather than recite career details that we all know well, may I just single out one part of Sir Humphrey's distinguished career—his period as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland? I single that part of his career out not just for the work that he performed but for the personal sacrifice that such service demands. As I have discovered in the year that I spent as a prospective candidate, all Secretaries of State for Northern Ireland pay a terrible price for the rest of their lives for serving the nation and this place so well. Sir Humphrey Atkins had a distinguished career in this place. His many friends from all political parties wish him and his wife well and hope that he can have a new career in another place.
  I am glad that tradition goes on to say that I must talk about my constituency because Spelthorne is not a name on everyone's lips. As this is only the fourth maiden speech from the hon. Member for Spelthorne in 60 years, the whereabouts of Spelthorne is not widely known in this House. To say that it is in Surrey does not help much, as most of us prefer to believe that it is still in Middlesex. However, it includes part of Heathrow airport and all of Stanwell, Staines, Ashford, Laleham, Shepperton and Sunbury on Thames. Everyone will therefore have a mental picture of the constituency, complete with sound effects.
  However, that is as far as I want to take tradition tonight. Instead of enthusing about Spelthorne's many attractions, I want to draw the attention of the House to some of Spelthorne's less attractive aspects, such as the Perry Oakes sewerage works. That is not a pleasant place, but we want to keep it, because its replacement would be Heathrow's terminal five, which none of us wants. Another of the less attractive parts covers the gravel pits with their heavy lorries. They are not particularly photogenic, but they are preferable to the houses that would swallow up the last of the open spaces that are left. The remand centre at Ashford is not a pretty place, but it is far better than the proposed new prison that the powers that be want to foist upon us, which I believe should be sited somewhere else.

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  It is not a coincidence that I make this maiden speech during a debate on local government. I have spent the past 11 years involved in local affairs. My experience in local government has taught me that the Bill deserves the wholehearted support of us all. If it has a fault, it is that the schedule listing those services for competitive tendering confines those services to a list of six. Will the Secretary of State tell us why not 16? Why not 26, or indeed all the services?
  I welcome the Secretary of State's reference to the possibility of extra services being added to the list. When the time comes, I urge him to give special thought and priority to the administrative and financial services at the heart of local government, such as the payment of salaries and wages, internal audit and legal and estate management services. The direct services to the public and the manual workers in local government have been the subject of review after review. I contend that it is now high time that that bureaucracy was sorted out. If that is sorted out, dramatic improvements will follow. The local authority that I represented until last May tackled that central problem and in doing so managed to switch 10 per cent. of the general rate fund expenditure away from paper-pushing to real services to local people at no extra cost to anyone.
  Predictably, this Bill has come under fierce attack from vested interests, empire-builders and the inefficient. The same old claims are being trotted out. Some claim that it is undemocratic, others claim that services will be worse. Those and all the other claims are utter nonsense. The Bill
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  is not an attack upon local democracy. Councillors will still decide what services they need. The Bill will simply insist that those services are provided efficiently. The Bill is not an attack upon the level of services. Surely council staff can write detailed tender documents if they turn their minds to it. If they cannot, it is the councils that are to blame for the services that are suffered by the electorate and not the Government. I am not the least impressed by those who trot out lists of private enterprise failures, because they are seeking to suggest that the public sector never makes a mistake, which is nonsense.
  Above all else, the Bill is not about privatisation. It is directed to competitive tendering, and provided that the in-house work force is efficient and enthusiastic, its knowledge and ability could mean that it wins every contract. If it does not, it does not deserve the work.
  If this were not my maiden speech, I would wish to say a great deal more about local government but tonight I shall content myself with congratulating the Government on their past achievements and on the progress that they have made in sorting out local government. I give my support to all parts of the Bill and encourage the Government to make the earliest possible progress with the community charge and the other proposals that they have further to sort out local government.
  I count it as a great privilege to be here. I am honoured to succeed Sir Humphrey Atkins and I look forward to doing my best for many years to come to repay the trust placed in me by the electors of Spelthorne.
  10.27 pm
  Mr. Tony Banks: First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) on his first speech in this place. He started by showing that he intends to be an independent minded Member, and that is always welcomed by Opposition Members. However, I watched the face of the Government Chief Whip visibly draw when he realised that as well. Eventually the all-pervading influence of the Government Whips spread its way backwards from the Government Front Bench and the hon. Gentleman became orthodox, which means that we know the sort of contributions that we shall be hearing from him in future.
  In an impressive first speech my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) demonstrated that he knows his constituency extremely well. I know that Leeds, West will be well served by its new Member. My hon. Friend mentioned his predecessor, Mr. Michael Meadowcroft. It must be said by Opposition Members that he was an amiable Member. He had many talents, some of which were far more controversial and newsworthy than others. I am naturally more than delighted to see Michael Meadowcroft replaced by my hon. Friend, but I am sure that all of us would wish our former colleague well. We know that he probably will do well because if all else fails he can do some busking outside Leeds town hall to earn an honest copper.
  Before turning to the Bill, I wish to add my congratulations to the many that will be coming to my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) on what was a superb maiden speech. I say in all sincerity that my hon. Friend will make many distinctive and distinguished speeches in this place. He is the authentic and authoritative voice that we knew he would be. I welcome him to the House as warmly as I welcome any of my hon. Friends.
  There were many vital reasons why we wanted to defeat the Tory party at the general election. We wished to heal the social divisions and deal with economic injustices. Another factor is that had we won the general election we would not have had to endure the almost weekly local government Bills that we have come to know, but not love, since 1979.
  Environment Ministers come and go and the present Secretary of State comes quickly and goes quickly. It is fair to say that he has now returned to the Chamber. I have been told that he leaves the Chamber for a quick drag of his fag. He must be the only one of us who smokes 16 ft fags. He has been out of the Chamber for a long time and consequently has missed speeches that might have taught him a little. As I have said, Environment Ministers come and go rather like presidents of banana republics, but central Government have become obsessed with local government matters.
  I listened carefully to the Gracious Speech. It was, as ever, graciously delivered; but the legislative programme enunciated in it was full of bile and venom, mostly directed at local government. As you can imagine Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am no imperialist. However, I understand that there was a time when the speech at the opening of Parliament actually meant something, not only to the country but to the rest of the world. That is clearly no longer the case. Under this Conservative Government,
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  Britain is steadily being reduced to the status of a street-corner shop, and the content of the Gracious Speech has become as relevant to the rest of the world as the menu in the Members' Dining Room.
  Of all the economic and social problems facing the country that we could be discussing tonight, what do the Government give us? They give us another Local Government Bill. There is no doubt about it: Opposition Members are now convinced that the Government are deliberately bent on destroying local democracy. That obsession with local democracy and local government originates in the paranoia of the Prime Minister. To her, all opposition, whether inside or outside her party, amounts to treachery and must be eliminated. In her fevered mind, as she sits in her bunker in No. 10 Downing street, the right hon. Lady manages to lump Labour councils and trade unions together with international terrorism. It is clear to us that the Government do not believe in local democracy, in civil rights or in free speech if any of those are used to express opposition to their increasingly Fascist leanings.
  I was proud to be a member of a local authority—the Greater London Council—for 17 years, until the Government ungraciously abolished it. Local councils, under the most difficult circumstances, have done their best to defend services, and in return for their efforts they are being taken apart piece by piece.
  What, today, is the point of being an elected councillor in this totalitarian country—attacked by central Government, vilified by the right-wing press, abused by much of the electorate and dictated to by civil servants? What a dismal prospect faces a newly-elected local councillor. We shall probably reach a point at which many of my local government colleagues will contemplate mass withdrawal from local office, so that the people can see who is really to blame for the ever-accumulating problems in local government.
  This morning two of my hon. Friends from Newham and I had our usual weekly meeting with Newham's council leaders and senior officers. Our meeting was about cuts: cuts in education, cuts in building, cuts in maintenance and cuts in repairs. We talked about homelessness, which is growing faster in Newham than in any other part of the country. We now have 420 families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, much of which is not even located in the borough; we have 650 people in temporary accommodation; 33,000 people are on supplementary benefit; and 47,000 of our houses in the borough are in urgent need of repair. We are now selling more council homes than we are able to build.
  I ask Ministers and other Conservative Members to come to boroughs such as Newham, Hackney and Tower Hamlets, and see the scale of the problems—problems that are being exacerbated by central Government policies.
  Mr. Andrew Hunter rose—
  Mr. Banks: If the hon. Gentleman had been in the House a little longer, I might have sat down at that point. But if he prefers dinners to speeches, he should sit there with a little more patience and burp his way through a few more speeches before he tries to intervene.
  We need homes in the inner cities, we need jobs and we need hope. But all that we get from the Government are divisive Local Government Bills, cheap gimmicks and common abuse from Ministers. What will this Bill do to

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  solve any of the problems of the London borough of Newham, or any of the problems of the inner cities in London or elsewhere?
  Conservative Members talk of putting services out to tender. We have heard many wild and exaggerated claims from the Front and Back Benches about efficiency and cost savings, yet figures cannot be produced to substantiate those claims. We know what privatisation and putting services out to tender will mean. It will mean that some of the lowest-paid workers in council activity will find their wages and conditions squeezed even more as rapacious contractors come in many of whom give money to the Conservative party and are advised by Conservative Members. That is a form of political corruption that the Government have brought to the House. Privatisation is about ideology. It is nothing to do with efficiency. If people think that it is to do with efficiency, they should look at the recent survey of people's views about the service provided by British Telecom after privatisation. The great majority say that services are now less efficient.
  The last part of the Bill concerns amendment of the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980. It is a continuation of the Government's relentless attack on direct labour organisations. Has the Secretary of State any idea how many times direct labour organisations have had to step in when private contractors have gone bust or because the standard of service were not high enough? Local authorities have had to bale out hundreds of firms which have proved incapable of dealing with the problems that they were prepared to take on when they made their first tender.
  In the southern part of the borough of Newham, Ronan Point and the Taylor Woodrow Anglian tower blocks are now being taken down, thus adding to the borough's already great housing problems. They were built by a private company which gave generously to the Conservative party. Jerry-built tower blocks, that is what we got from a private contractor, yet the Secretary of State could in a mumbling shambles of a speech, before he cleared off for an early fag, suggest that we will get more efficient building from private contractors. That is nonsense. Only on the most narrow definition is it economically efficient.
  The Bill has nothing to do with local government efficiency and need. It is all about the Government's pernicious ideology. It is about dismantling local democracy and handing responsibility for local services over to appointed business men and friends of the Conservative party, who are unelected by the local community and unaccountable to it. It is about commercial favours to spivs and racketeers such as dominate today's Conservative party. It is cheap and nasty. It is thoroughly typical of the Government and their Ministers.
  10.37 pm
  Mr. Roger Gale: I shall return to that shadow cabinet election speech in a moment.
  It gives me great pleasure to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) and to be the first on this side of the House to congratulate him on his maiden speech. He paid a generous tribute to his predecessor, Sir Humphrey Atkins, and I wish him as illustrious a career in the House. He referred to some of the less attractive parts of his constituency— a sewage
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  works, gravel pits and a remand home—and made it plain that he has his own views about the future of them and his constituency.
  I am sure that my hon. Friend's experience as leader of a west country local authority will be of great value to the House. I have personal reasons for saying how genuinely pleased I am to see him here at last. I know how hard he has fought to be here and how much he has sacrificed on the way, but I hope that he will be happy here for many years.
  I wished to speak only to clause 32, but having heard the hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) and the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), who declined to give way to me, mention me, I feel compelled to comment on the substantive part of the Bill. The hon. Members for Copeland and for Southwark and Bermondsey have failed to grasp the difference between genuine coercion and the coercion that they claim this Bill embodies. Equal rights, good race relations and equality for homosexuals will be brought about not by coercion but by education. The hon. Members are unable to grasp the difference between coercion and a legislative framework that is designed to promote free enterprise and genuine competitive tendering.
  I have an interest to declare. When I lived in London I lived in the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. When I stay in London, I still live in Fulham. When I lived in London, Hammersmith and Fulham were under Conservative control and the rates were modest. Under Socialist control the rates in that borough have gone through the roof. That is probably why the Opposition lost the seat that they had taken at the by-election and why the Conservative party represents Fulham again. It is highly likely that the seat of Brent, East—won by such a narrow margin—and the Newham seats will soon go the same way.
  Clause 32 was referred to earlier in the debate by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes). It seems almost churlish to refer to what some may consider to be a trivial item in a Bill that otherwise deserves support. However, for many people dog licences are not a trivial matter. I am privileged to have been reelected to represent the people of Thanet, North. It is a pleasant seaside constituency, with many miles of beaches and seaside lawns. It is a source of genuine concern to my constituents and to the many holidaymakers who are attracted to Thanet that those beaches and lawns are fouled by dog dirt.
  I also have in my constituency a fair amount of agricultural land. Opposition Members may make light of this, but one only has to speak to shepherds whose flocks have been savaged by wild dogs to realise that they take it very seriously. [Interruption.] There is a shepherd in my constituency to whom that has happened fairly recently. The man was distraught. Those on both sides of the House who seek to make light of this ought to think of the misery that is caused to families, particularly to children, when an animal is lost.
  A registration scheme is needed. In this throw-away clause at the end of the Bill, we are missing an opportunity for reform. Instead of abolishing the dog licence fee we should increase it. We should introduce not a local government regulation—yet another quango mish-mash—but a national, computerised dogs register, to be paid for by an increase in the dog licence fee. A national dog

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  warden scheme would also prevent the kind of abuse and misuse of animals that my hon. Friend the Member for Drake and I wish to be terminated.
  I shall not vote against the Bill; there is far too much in it that is good for me—[Interruption]—but I urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to look again in Committee at this clause and to seize the opportunity that it presents for reform.
  10.45 pm
  Ms. Joan Walley: The discretion referred to by the hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale), is a discretion that we on the Labour Benches would like to see given to all local authorities.
  In my first speech to the House, I must express my pride at representing the constituency of Stoke-on-Trent, North. I am proud because it is the area that I come from, and because it has consistently returned Labour MPs.
  I pay tribute to my predecessor, John Forrester, who worked in the House for 21 years. I and my constituents wish him well. I also pay tribute to the previous Member, Harriet Slater, who was one of the first women Labour Whips. She was concerned about many issues that are dear to my heart and which I shall be taking up in this Parliament.
  The people of Stoke-on-Trent, North are the finest in the country. Furthermore, they make the finest pottery in the world. They deserve the best local government. That is why it gives me particular pleasure to speak on this Bill.
  I invite hon. Members to look at what has happened to people in my constituency over the past eight years. Thousands of jobs in the pottery industry have been lost. Only last week I heard that more than 2,000 jobs had been reported to the Staffordshire Development Association as having gone. My constituency needs investment, yet that is precisely what it is not getting from this Government. My constituents want jobs. In parts of Stoke-on-Trent, North as many as 70 per cent. of the people are unemployed. As well as jobs and investment, people there want a healthy, safe and clean environment. They are looking to Staffordshire county council, Stoke-on-Trent city council and Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council to provide that environment and the staff to do that work and to monitor the way in which the work is done.
  They are looking to local government workers to do a good job, but I submit that the provisions in this Bill will not provide that. Competitive tendering will mean more low-paid workers, more workers who are not concerned about the job they do, and more workers who are unable to do a good job. That is not what we want.
  The constituency has many housing problems. Money is needed so that many older terraced dwellings can be properly modernised, yet that money has not been made available by central Government to the local authority. Endless numbers of elderly people want to move into bungalows, but again the necessary money has been denied to local councils by the Government.
  In the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme, the coal board promised elderly miners that they would he looked after, yet their homes have either been sold off or starved of the money needed to bring them up to standard. In other homes in which people have become the victims of absentee landlords, much-needed repairs are not being done.
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  The North Staffordshire district health authority is one of the most under-funded in one of the most under-funded regions of the country—the West Midlands regional health authority. Even according to the Government's own statistics we need more money.
  Furthermore, inside the Health Service I have seen at first hand the results of competitive tendering. I have seen nurses taking over shifts in the moring unable to sort out who should have done the previous night's work. The reason is simply that so much stress and strain is put on the low-paid workers in the Health Service. I certainly do not want to see that kind of system applied in local authorities on refuse collection and street cleaning. I am afraid that if the Bill goes through, that is what is in store for us.
  The most important thing is that this legislation, concerned as it is with local government, is just one more example of how local democracy is being undermined. Local councillors are elected by local people to do the job that local people know needs doing, and local councillors can do it best. The Government should enable those local councils' elected members to go ahead and do that job. They must he given the resources with which to do it. If they are not allowed to function I shall be unable to do my job properly in the House. So many people need proper services, and my fear is that the local councils will be unable to provide them. People want a say in what services will he provided. This legislation will not give it to them. With all the other local government legislation, the Bill will constitute one more step backwards.
  Health and safety should be given priority. I want to see that people arc able to live in a healthy, safe and clean environment. I only wish that in my first speech I was taking part in a debate on a Bill which was to provide that kind of service for local people. However, we are not.
  Mr. Bob Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Your attention will no doubt have been drawn to the fact that the Bill involves a good deal of privatisation proposals. Clause 2 of the Bill refers to and defines a number of activities. You are probably aware that a number of Tory members have been lining their pockets in the past through parliamentary adviserships to various companies which undertake the sort of defined activities set out in clause 2 of the Bill.
  Erskine May on page 436 says:
  "So far as voting in the House or a committee is concerned, and for this purpose only, the recording of an interest in the Register of Members' interests is by itself regarded as sufficient disclosure since the House on 12 June 1975 resolved:
  'That, for the purposes of the Resolution of the House of 22 May 1974 in relation to disclosures of interests in any proceeding of the House or its Committees, any interests disclosed in the copy of the Register of Members' interests shall he regarded as sufficient disclosure for the purpose of taking part in any division in the House or in any of its Committees'."
  You will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that that Register of Members' interests is not compiled and that, therefore, the resolution cannot be adhered to. There are members who have been on the earlier Register who have been taking money from agencies involved in the sort of activities that have been provided by private organisations under clause 2 of the Bill. Therefore, as Erskine May cannot possibly be followed, I ask you to make it clear to those greedy Tories who are lining their pockets and who have no doubt fixed up various parliamentary adviserships

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  —some are continuing their old parliamentary adviserships, their parliamentary salaries not, apparently, being sufficient for them to live on—that if they have got any of those parliamentary adviserships they should not vote because, if they do vote in the Division, they will be in breach of the rules of the House.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Until the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) came to his last point he accurately described the position. There will, of course, be a Register of Members' Interests, which will be produced in due course—I should imagine very soon—but the hon. Gentleman also made the point that it is customary for any hon. Member who has an interest to declare to do so when he addresses the House. So there are, as it were, the two safeguards there. The hon. Gentleman dealt with the point about voting early on in his point of order. There is no bar to an hon. Member exercising his vote in the House.
  Mr. Rogers: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You were not in the Chair earlier when the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) was mentioned. The Register of Members' Interests showed that he was a parliamentary representative for a company called Grayling Ltd. and another called Good Relations Ltd. His description in Dads, Parliamentary Companion which I assume is the one he submitted, says that he had a special interest in NHS and local government privatisation. We have reached a point in the debate where it is obvious, since my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) raised the matter, that there are some Tory Members speaking who have obvious pecuniary interests in the legislation. We ought to have a ruling as to whether the Conservative Members who are directors of companies such as office cleaning services and others involved in privatisation have a moral obligation to declare their interests and perhaps whether they have the right to vote at all.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Every hon. Member is entitled to exercise his vote in the way in which he thinks appropriate. However, I repeat that it is customary for hon. Members who have an interest to declare it when they speak. That is a well-established convention in the House which I think is well known on both sides of the House.
  Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I will listen to the hon. Gentleman, but I remind him that time is moving on. Many hon. Members still wish to speak, including some who wish to make their maiden speeches. I sense that the House does not want to be too long before it comes to a conclusion.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You said that it was custom and practice for hon. Members to declare to the House prior to speaking that they have an interest. During the course of the debate how many hon. Members have made such a declaration? If they have spoken and have not declared their interest, would you say that they should not vote insofar as they are in default of what you described as "practice".
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That must be for the discretion of the hon. Members concerned.
  Mr. Cryer: Further to my point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I emphasised the question of voting. The
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  resolution of the House makes it clear that for the purpose of voting, an entry into the Register of business interests is sufficient. The point, which no doubt you were about to answer, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is that since there is no Register, there can be no adequacy of declaration to satisfy the resolution of 22 May 1974, a resolution duly passed and accepted by hon. Members. Therefore, it falls upon you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to declare that those who have any pecuniary interest in this, since they cannot declare their interest in the Register, and have not spoken—as my hon. Friend the member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) said, nobody has made a declaration tonight, anyway—cannot vote.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is certainly not correct. We are all honourable Members in the House and any hon. Member who is called to speak should declare any interest during the course of his speech. In due course there will be a Register of Members' Interests which will be on public display. It has never been the practice in the House that an hon. Member who has a interest to declare is barred from voting. Every hon. Member is perfectly entitled to vote at the conclusion of the debate. That is the long arid well-established practice in the House.
  Mr. Jack Straw: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you could reconsider your ruling, because it is in the recollection of this House that, in 1981, when we were debating the Lloyd's Bill, Mr. Speaker advised right hon. and hon. Members who were members of Lloyd's—approximately 50— that it would be inadvisable for them to vote on the passage of the Bill because they had a direct and pecuniary interest in the matter of Lloyd's.
  I imagine that the Clerk is saying that the Lloyd's Bill was a private Bill. However, if it is true that the interests of non-underwriting members of Lloyd's was sufficient to disbar them from voting in the Lloyd's Bill, is it not equally true, because of the direct and pecuniary interests of Members of this House who are paid consultants and advisers to firms such as BET, Pritchards or Hawley, which plainly stand to gain—as do the hon. Members involved— from the passage of the Bill, that they too must be advised that they should not vote, in accordance with the rules of the House?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: The distinction to which the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention is between a private Bill and a public Bill. The Lloyd's Bill was a private Bill. There are different rules and customs with regard to private Bills. What we are dealing with this evening is a public Bill and I merely repeat that the well-established practice of this House is that every hon. Member is entitled to exercise his vote on a public Bill.
  Mr. David Winnick: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is not the integrity of the House in question tonight? If hon. Members on the Conservative Benches vote later tonight on a measure from which they will gain financially, is that not unacceptable both to the standards of this House and public opinion outside?
  Arising from the point of order raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) in the absence of a Register—it has yet to come about, but we have all been asked to supply details—I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to reconsider what you have just said. I

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  strongly believe that it is the integrity of Parliament that is at stake and in a new Parliament I believe that it is most unacceptable that hon. Members should vote for a measure from which they will clearly gain financially.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: If we were to follow the logic of the argument of the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) I do not believe that there would be many hon. Members voting on anything in this place. I merely repeat the ruling that I have given and which is well-established in this House. We are now getting repetitive and I am anxious that we get on with the debate.
  Mr. Campbell-Savours: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that you would be most interested to read the paragraph that has been quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer). That paragraph implies that the House has been at fault in failing to produce a Register at the beginning of this Parliament. It is not necessarily the case that hon. Members involved, who may wish to vote and who have interests to declare, have made any error. It may be that they have complied with our rules in every way. It may be that the Select Committee on Members' Interests in failing to meet and in failing to approve a Register has inadvertently prevented hon. Members who wish to vote from having the right to vote tonight.
  This is a matter that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, should look into. It may be that our rules are wrong and not that hon. Members are wrong. Hon. Members may well be correct. Perhaps you should suspend the House for 15 minutes to examine this important matter. It is an important matter because the ruling that you are making is an important one insofar as you are overriding a resolution of the House — the resolution that was identified by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South on page 437 of "Erskine May".
  Mr. Rogers: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am sure that you will accept. We are extremely confused as to how we can proceed, especially when we are faced with the evidence of the previous Register of Members' Interests. For example, in the Register of Members' Interests, the list of directorships under the name of the hon. Member for Shipley (Sir M. Fox) is as follows:

  "Westminster (Communications) Ltd.

  Care Services Group

  Rigidized Metals Ltd.

  Harvard Securities Group P.L.C.

  Harvard Securities P.L.C.

  Ceema Group and companies

  Tele-Stage Associates Ltd."

  Under the heading "Employment or Office" are listed:

  "Consultant:

  3M (UK) Ltd.

  Shepherd (Construction) Ltd.

  McCarthy & Stone Ltd.

  Alcrafield Ltd.

  Marples International Ltd."

  Almost every one of those companies has a direct interest in local government privatisation. If we then go to the hon. Member for Surrey, North-West (Mr. Grylls) and his directorships—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. What is the hon. Gentleman's point of order? I do not want to have the Register of Members' Interests read out.
  Mr. Rogers: I am saying that even when a Register of Members' Interests is not extant, on the previous declaration of Members' interests there are hon. Members who will vote who are contravening the rules of the House. They have a direct financial interest in local government privatisation. That is not only immoral but we suggest that it is illegal and improper according to the rules of the House.
  Mr. Alan Williams: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. To facilitate progress, may I make a suggestion that I hope will be acceptable to the Chair? We have a genuine problem, that when the Register was created, the House inadvertently created a vacuum for the period during which the Register does not exist. I accept that the matter has not been addressed properly before. We all recognise that we want to make progress in the debate, and hon. Members want to make their maiden speeches. Rather than getting involved in the current circular discussion, will you or Mr. Speaker give us a ruling in, say, half an hour on how to deal with the situation in the interim because there is a gap in our procedures?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his helpful comments. I will, of course, discuss the matter with Mr. Speaker, particularly the point that he made that there is not at the moment a Register of Members' Interests. In the practical nature of things, it takes some time for it to be compiled. But I remind the right hon. Gentleman and the House that the convention about declaring interests and voting is long established. It existed long before the Register of Members' Interests. This evening we are following normal practice and customs in the House.
  I am not prepared to accede to the right hon. Gentleman's request to ask Mr. Speaker to come and give a ruling in half an hour, but I am prepared to say to him and the House that I shall discuss with Mr. Speaker the proceedings that have been taking place during the past quarter of an hour or so.
  Mr. Williams: I am grateful, and I hope that my hon. Friends will allow a little time for consideration. The basic question is whether the resolution of the House superseded or supplemented the original procedures of the House. It is on that that we need a ruling. We should be grateful if we could have it before the crucial vote at midnight.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: All that I need to do is repeat the ruling that I have given on several occasions. Every hon. Member is entitled to vote on a public Bill. Tonight we are dealing with a public Bill.
  11.8 pm
  Mr. Michael Brown: In spite of that interlude, the House should not lose sight of the excellent maiden speech by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms. Walley). It is hard to believe that I am following a maiden speech, because the hon. Lady spoke with such fluency, knowledge and understanding of the problems in her constituency that I felt that she had been in the House for a long time. I wish her all the best in the House. She is a worthy successor to her predecessor.
  I very much welcome the Bill. It has been a long time coming, but it is the better for finally arriving in the House. I have an interest to declare — the interest of my constituents as ratepayers. My constituents, as ratepayers,

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  have paid unnecessarily high rates because, in the absence of legislation, services that could have been put out to competitive tender by local authorities have not been so dealt with. It is this legislation that will enable my constituents and those of every hon. Member to have, in the future, services provided at a lower cost.
  I speak with a certain amount of knowledge on this matter because my mother is the leader of the Arun district council. She has been able successfully to privatise not only street cleaning but refuse collection in her area, thus saving ratepayers and the Arun district council an annual sum of more than £300,000. When she and her colleagues submitted themselves for re-election a few weeks ago at the district council elections, 51 members of a council of some 56 members were Conservatives and the rest were opposition members. That is living proof that competitive tendering can deliver value for money to the ratepayer, who benefits and votes Conservative as a result.
  The Bill will offer every prospect of improvements to all ratepayers in the United Kingdom. They will, as a result of it, receive services at much lower cost. There are enough examples of district councils voluntarily introducing an element of competitive tendering into their services over the past few years. Nearly every local authority that has done that has been able to deliver to its ratepayers and the residents of its boroughs services at a lower cost, but of the same, or higher, standards than existed before. I welcome every aspect of the Bill.
  11.12 pm
  Mr. Andrew Welsh: It is normally the custom to mention one's predecessor. Unfortunately, in view of the repercussions from the general election, I shall not in the meantime follow that custom tonight.
  The Bill advances various buzz words among its objectives which betray its purely political intentions. It seeks to introduce what it calls "competitive tendering". It seeks to stop what the Government call
  "party politics on the rates."
  The Bill wants to make direct labour organisations, in its own words, "competitive" and to
  "improve the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of local authorities".
  I can agree with some of those objectives, but they are not necessarily delivered by the Bill. They are sought by the Government in a manner that will diminish local government powers and reduce the standing, status and staff of local authorities. Whatever these short-term measures may mean, the long-term proposals are quite obvious—a reduction in staff, status and standing of local government in Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom.
  The great irony for the Scots is that, in trying to protect our institutions, we find that this measure for Scotland is being tacked on to the end of an English piece of legislation. We know why. It is because there are too few Tories properly to man the Scottish Committees.
  The Government have no mandate for these measures. Indeed, the opposite is true. They were specifically rejected by the Scottish electorate. I hope, therefore, that this is not the start of a trend in Scottish legislation, because it is not good enough. I hope that the powers that be in the House will take on board the strength of feeling in Scotland about the practice of tacking on Scottish legislation to English Bills, rather than properly considering them in the context of Scotland.
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  We have Scottish local government institutions, we have a separate judicial system and now, apparently, we have a separate political system. Scottish legislation needs to be given proper scrutiny by Scots Members. in its proper context.
  The Bill contains massive problems in its details. Competitive tendering is in it, not because of "efficiency", but as part of a general attack on local authorities. This is another step along the Government's path to reducing the power of local government. Central Government already control capital spending. The Government have taken on extra powers over revenue, to which they are now adding extra powers that are steps down the road to centralisation.
  The accusation of inefficiency in local government, which is implied throughout the Bill, is an insult to local government and to local authority professionalism and its traditions of public service and accountability. It is a great cheek for the Government to tell others that they should increase their efficiency. The system at Westminister separates budgets from spending, passes Bills that are not linked with the Government's overall income and has no way of monitoring its current spending.
  Parliament must be one of the most inefficient organisations known to mankind. How can an organisation that cannot even register its own Members without something resembling a rugby scrum and provides those Members with working conditions that would be regarded as a disgrace by junior management in any self-respecting company accuse local authorities of being inefficient arid force on them tendering arrangements that they would not otherwise introduce'?
  The COSLA critique points out that local government produces good value for money and that local authority budgeting gets within plus or minus 1 per cent. of its targets. No Government have ever achieved that. Conservative Governments looking for efficiency have regularly produced budget overshoots of tens of billions of pounds. It is not local government, but central Government that is financially inefficient.
  After 11 years of constant cuts in revenue, local authorities have had to be more efficient. They cannot afford to miss tendering opportunities. Therefore, I disagree strongly with the assumption that local government cannot put its own house in order and must be forced to follow the supposed improvements in the Bill.
  I am opposed to institutionalised graffiti. I have never seen sense in one political grouping putting up signs at public expense, merely to find that, in the normality of politics, it is replaced by another group that puts up different signs which people find equally offensive. However, decisions on such matters should be made locally by locally elected councillors and the local electorate, not by central Government sledgehammer methods such as those proposed in the Bill. What difference is there between local government slogans and taxpayers' money being spent on partisan party politics such as council house sales, privatisation or other issues? The local electorate, and not a politically biased Secretary of State, should decide such matters.
  The measures in the Bill against direct labour organisations show the Government's true intent. Of course, there are examples of grossly inefficient DLOs, but there are many other examples of the effective use of permanent local authority staff in providing continuity of work and quality of standards. In their desire to reduce the

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  local government work force the Government are unnecessarily throwing away the dependability of a local government system, merely to satisfy a political theory. That is entirely wrong, and will be seen to be wrong.
  By abolishing the dog licence the Government have abdicated their responsibility in a matter that is a serious problem for local authorities in terms of health and the environment. Only a long-term system involving dog wardens and dog pounds, allied to a properly priced licence, with safeguards for owners of guide dogs and for pensioners and the unemployed, will solve the problem. Someone has to take responsibility, but instead of grasping the nettle or instead of lumbering local authorities, the Government merely abdicate all responsibility.
  It is equally typical of central Government consistently to starve local authorities of housing support grant and financial assistance for housing. They then ask local authorities to spread what little they have left even further into the private sector. Central Government again appear to be giving new powers, but not the new money that is required to meet the new responsibilities. That is one of the banes of local authority work that I have had to face for the past three years in my own local authority. If the Government wish local authorities to do extra work, they should give them the resources to do it.
  On the plus side, I welcome the extension of the powers of the ombudsman. It is a small part of the jigsaw that will eventually lead us to give our omnbudsman the same kind of powers as ombudsmen expect and use in Scandanavia, New Zealand and even in Quebec. It is a small step in the right direction, and I hope that it will be on the road to a proper system of administrative justice in Britain. However, I am afraid that that is a long way off.
  Alarmingly, the Bill contains a clause that gives open-ended powers to the Secretary of State, and those powers presage further encroachment on the local government system. Parliament dictates local authority powers, and this Government are forever eroding what little autonomy remains with local authorities. I should like to see a different approach, one that gives maximum self-determination to local authorities. It should be an approach that clearly defines their powers and adequately funds them, allowing them to provide adequate services for their ratepayers.
  Local authorities are a crucial part of our democratic system, and that is especially true in what is becoming a faceless age of centralisation. The Bill does not help at all. It contains some good elements, but, on balance, I have no hesitation in saying that I shall vote against it. I shall be joined in my opposition by my hon. Members in Plaid Cymru, who are equally concerned about the implications of this measure for Wales.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Mr. James Marshall.
  Hon. Members: Hear, hear.
  11.23 pm
  Mr. James Marshall: I gather from those cheers that hon. Members are getting restless about coming to a decision. I can assure the House that I shall not detain it too long. After an absence of four years I am again pleased to represent the constituents of Leicester, South. As the House will remember, I have in the past extolled the virtures of Leicester, South, which is a
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  microcosm of Britain. In the city of Leicester we have the social, economic and political divisions that are to be found throughout the country.
  In my constituency there is a large inner city area with massive social and economic deprivation, while in the suburbs there is private affluence. I assure the House and warn the Government that throughout the life of this Parliament I shall judge the Government's policies and actions in terms of how they will affect my constituents. Before moving on, I should like to comment on my predecessor, Mr. Derek Spencer. I understand that he was diligent in handling constituents' problems and was held in some esteem by his hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches. I can only say that I wish him well in the career that he will pursue.
  Unfortunately, one of the legacies that Mr. Spencer has left in the House and in the city of Leicester is the pernicious image that he and Mr. Peter Bruinvels, the former Member for Leicester, East, fostered—that Leicester city council is extremely silly. He has done a great disservice to the city of Leicester, and all the people who live there. It is a curious distortion of the political process that a city council that seeks to protect its services, enhance both its private and public housing and encourage local enterprise should be labelled extremist. Both those individuals were assisted on many occasions by glib comments and remarks from Ministers. I hope that we do not have a recurrence of such behaviour.
  I know that The Sun, the Daily Mirror and The Mail would love to see Mr. Bruinvels return here, but as the electorate of Leicester, East showed in the election that they had had enough of him, I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Mr. Vaz) now represents that constituency. Mr. Bruinvels may be back, but he will not be back to represent the city of Leicester.
  Unfortunately, local authorities like Leicester have to face every day the human consequences of the Government's social and economic policies. I find it abhorrent that in clause 26, the Government seek to gag local authorities by denying them the right to criticise the central Government actions and policies that bring about human disasters and miseries.
  The Bill represents a further attack on the independence of local government. I have said before that there is a difficult relationship between central and local government. There will always be tensions in such a relationship, but one does not resolve the problem or remove the tension by gagging one of the parties to the debate, as clause 26 seeks to do. It will reduce the rights of local authorities to voice opposition and put forward the views of those whom they represent.
  Increasingly, in their contacts with local authorities the Government appear to be telling them that they must accept Government policy or lose the right to dissent. Clause 26 imposes restrictions on local authorities that are not placed on other public or private bodies. They will continue to have the right to comment on controversial issues while the new legislation will deny that right to local authorities or to national associations of local authorities. It represents a unique repression of local councils.
  I ask the Minister three specific questions, on which I should like answers. Clause 26 includes subjective judgments. My first question is, who is to decide what is the likely effect of publicity? Secondly, who is to determine what is a question of political controversy? Thirdly, who

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  will define a campaign? We already have strict controls against party political publicity, so why do we need those extra restrictions?
  It appears to me that the Government are seeking to repress democratic debate by preventing local authorities from acting as the local voice of the people and denying them the right to express local issues and views in opposition to those views put forward by central Government. That represents a further step down the road towards the tyranny of the centre over local democracy. I for one shall vote vigorously in opposition to the Bill.
  11.30 pm
  Mr. Elliot Morley: I thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak as the new hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe. I believe that it is customary in maiden speeches to mention one's predecessor. My predecessor was Richard Hickmet. Although we had fundamental differences in policy, he carried out his duties as an hon. Member conscientiously, and I wish him well in his continuing career as a barrister.
  The constituency of Glanford and Scunthorpe has been through traumatic changes in recent years with the reduction of its original base of steel workers. There has been a reduction from 20,000 steel workers eight years ago to about 7,500 today. The fact that I am standing here at all is a tribute to all those who campaigned so hard in the Labour party and to our success in attracting support from the voters who are reasonably well off home owners with high aspirations for themselves and their families. They rejected the appeal to narrow self-interest and instead voted for decency, justice, caring for our community, the quality of life and good local services. That is why I am particularly grateful to speak in a debate on local government and the services that it provides.
  I have a local government background. I believe that local government is the very grassroots of democracy and local accountability. I serve two councils in my constituency — the Labour-controlled council of Scunthorpe and the Conservative-controlled council of Glanford. I may have differences with those councils, but I support their right to make decisions on the basis of local democracy and choice; decisions that affect their people, based on the priorities as the councils consider them and how they will affect their people.
  My constituents want efficiency and value for money from their services. However, there is nothing efficient about undercutting council services and simply sacking the work force, re-employing fewer of them on lower wages and under poorer conditions and using the whip hand of high unemployment to force those workers down.
  Already a very good refuse collection in the borough has been undermined because it has had to be reformed to get it ready to compete. That has led to complaints and a deterioration in service. Scunthorpe has traditionally always provided a high level of services, community and leisure centres, and has one of the highest percentages of urban areas of parklands and playing fields. That must be paid for. We do not get anything for nothing. However, it is significant that Scunthorpe has had a higher success rate in attracting new industry to the borough than has its neighbouring Conservative-controlled council, even though they both have the same kind of grants and facilities to attract industry. It is also significant that local
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  councils are seen as more important in many ways than central Government in helping industries to set up and in providing the services that industries need.
  The Bill goes farther than simply attacking the jobs and conditions of those working in local government. In clause 26 it attacks the basic freedoms of local councils to campaign on behalf of their people. An example would be Humberside county council which led the campaign against the dumping of low and intermediate-level nuclear waste at South Killingholme. That campaign could well have been ruled illegal under clause 26.
  In terms of local accountability, Scunthorpe holds elections every year and puts its policies to the test. What tests has local authority privatisation have? There had been spectacular failures, and industries such as British Telecom have been shown in a report published today to have reduced the quality of services. Service to people has deteriorated since privatisation.
  As a former teacher, I know only too well the excellent work of council employees such as school cleaners and dinner staff, most of whom are women and are on low pay. Such jobs are particularly at risk, and it is women who will suffer especially if the jobs are contracted out.
  I am glad that the Secretary of State said that core services such as teaching will not be contracted out, but it seems that some schools will be allowed to contract themselves out. Education was an issue at the general election, because parents want stability and an end to unrest. The Government's interference with local authorities has already threatened teachers' jobs in my constituency through their insistence on using falling rolls as a way of saving money rather than reducing class sizes. The Government have talked of improving education standards and seeking co-operation with teachers. Overruling local authority agreements with teachers and denying their basic human rights in negotiations will be as successful in obtaining their co-operation as soaking someone's house in petrol and then asking him to pass the matches.
  Another example of privatisation is bus deregulation. I am sorry that the Secretary of State is not in his place, but he may remember, if and when he reads the report of my speech, that I met him some years ago to argue about deregulation. I did not think much of his ideas then, and I do not think much of them now. Time has demonstrated that everything that we warned about deregulation was right. In my constituency, Lincolnshire Road Car has been placed in an impossible position. Jobs are being lost and wages are being cut. Fares have not been cut and services have not been improved.
  I am glad that the privatisation of steel did not feature in the Gracious Speech. Scunthorpe's steel workers have already suffered from back-door privatisation. There has been contracting out of many production and maintenance jobs and this has threatened job security, conditions and pensions. Scunthorpe's steel workers have broken all production, quality and productivity records and they deserve a better reward than the insecurity of privatisation.
  Steel influences the local council in my consituency to such an extent that even the reflection of the furnaces on the night clouds is incorporated in the council's moto, which is
  "The heavens reflect our labours."
  I want that glow in the sky to continue to raise my spirits as I travel home to Scunthorpe. I want the glow to remain,

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  as I want the steel jobs to remain. I want the steel workers and their families, along with every other constituent, to enjoy the excellent local services that are provided by Scunthorpe. I do not want to see services slashed and the jobs and wages of those who serve in their communities slashed with them.
  11.37 pm
  Mr. Jack Straw: In this debate we have heard maiden speeches from 10 hon. Members; one from the Scottish Nationalist party, three from the Conservative party and six from the official Opposition. I congratulate the hon. Members for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field), for Welwyn, Hatfield (Mr. Evans) and for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) on their maiden speeches. I can do that with a spirit of more than usual generosity, as in each instance the seat was not taken from the Labour party. I congratulate the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh) on his maiden speech, in which he spoke with some eloquence about the inability of the Government and the House to organise their own affairs. That led the hon. Gentleman to wonder why the Government are so willing to lecture others on their organisations.
  We heard an eloquent and powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant), in which he explained his experience as a councillor and a good leader of the London borough of Haringey. My hon. Friend is concerned that the Government's inner city policies, which have a great deal more tinsel than reality about them, are leading to more deprivation of the people who live in the inner cities, and will continue to do so.
  We heard an articulate, witty and forensic speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), in which he explained his opposition to having an omnibus Bill that seeks to foist on the Scottish system of local government provisions that are wholly alien to its traditions.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) paid an eloquent tribute to the former Labour Member, Joe Dean as he was then, and to the former Liberal Member, Michael Meadowcroft. He showed great generosity in paying tribute to Michael Meadowcroft, whom we all remember, and to the work that he did in this place. Labour Members have a special pleasure in welcoming my hon. Friend, because his was the only victory in England where we took a seat from the Liberal party.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms Walley) made a powerful speech about the importance of local government in the provision of jobs in Stoke-on-Trent, and about the central importance of local government in the operation of democracy.
  Opposition Members welcome back to the House my good and hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall), whose presence was as sorely missed in the last Parliament as the absence of Mr. Peter Bruinvels will be celebrated in this one, on both sides of the House. [Hon. Members: "Oh."]— I think that hon. Members doth protest too much.
  We heard a fine maiden speech—all the finer for its brevity—from my hon. Friend the Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who as someone else remarked to me, made a not only generous but very charitable reference to his predecessor, Mr. Richard
  140
  Hickmet, whom many of us remember. However, he also spoke powerfully in support of the right of councils of both persuasions to make their own decisions about how their own local communities should be run.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) said in his opening speech, there is always a Local Government Bill under the present Administration. The last Local Government Bill 1987 only completed its passage through the House on the last day of the last Parliament. This Bill was published within a day of the opening of the new Parliament, and has its Second Reading today, the first available day in this Parliament. For those of us on both Front and Back Benches who have been dealing with local government legislation these last four years, the norm is to be stuck upstairs in Committee with Environment Ministers; the exception is to be able to devote some time to one's constituents and the world outside local Government.
  I see the Parliamentary Under-Secretary smiling. The only consolation for my hon. Friends and myself is that in four years we have seen off two Secretaries of State, two Ministers of State and innumerable Parliamentary Under-Secretaries. We congratulate the new Minister for Local Government on his elevation and appointment. He is, it has been said, the only man reckless enough to wager his ambition upon the passage of the poll tax legislation. The Secretary of State should beware the smile on the face of his Minister: it was, after all, the last Minister of State but one—the right hon. Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker)—who ended up with his master's job.
  This is the 44th Local Government Bill from a Government who, in ancient times—I speak of 1970 or thereabouts—were committed to such dangerous, not to say revolutionary, propositions as trust in the people, rolling back the frontiers of the state and transferring power from Whitehall and Westminster to local communities and their town and county halls. But, in each of those 44 Bills, the Government have removed themselves from what were once key tenets of Conservative philosophy. In their place is not a philosophy, but a collection of crude, short-sighted prejudices by which it is asserted that Parliament is sovereign in the country, the Conservative party is dominant in Parliament and No. 10 and the Whips control the Conservative party, and that therefore No. 10 and the Whips should control the country. Nowhere is that attitude more obvious—as my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central pointed out — than in the Government's approach to dissent.
  Dissent is at the core of democracy: it is about the right to do and say things differently from those who hold power. Yet the Government's approach and reaction to dissent is to see it not as an occasion for celebration but as a threat, and then to seek to crush it. Even from within the Cabinet — as my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland reminded us—we are now told by the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) that the Prime Minister's approach is to run a Stalinist regime. What, above all, characterised Joseph Stalin's approach was the crushing of dissent and the centralisation of power, which is a necessary consequence of that approach.
  Mr. David Ashby: This is over the top.
  Mr. Straw: The hon. Gentleman had better direct that remark to the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North,

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  who said that he looks forward to the time when we no longer have a Stalinist regime. That was in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday, so it must be true.
  The Bill is all of a piece with the Stalinism of which the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North spoke yesterday. It tries to say that there is only one way—the Prime Minister's way—in which the efficient delivery of local government services can be achieved. That is by what is laughingly called competition, but which is in practice the forced transfer of public services to just two multinational corporations which happen to have a number of Conservative Members in tow and which have made substantial contributions to the Conservative party or its front organisations.
  We are told that the Government are about the restoration of Victorian values. These, however, are not the values of Conservatives such as Disraeli, Lord Shaftesbury or even Lord Salisbury. They are the Benthamite values of the Gradgrind of "Hard Times" and those early Victorians who believed that any regulation of factory organisation or any imposition of statutory improvement of conditions of labour were bound to damage enterprise and undermine the moral fibre of the nation.
  In part II, we see the Government taking extraordinary powers at the request, this time, of their paymasters in the building and construction industry, to exclude from contractual conditions anything which is euphemistically described as non-commercial. It was in 1891, under the Government formed by Lord Salisbury, when the Conservative party — the old, traditional Conservative party—first decided that it should lay down regulations concerning fair wages among contractors who contracted with the public sector. What was the argument advanced at that time? I shall quote the Treasury Bench of Lord Salisbury's Government, which said
  "It is the duty of the Government in all Government contracts to make provision against the evils recently disclosed before the Sweating Committee, to insert such conditions as may prevent the abuse arising from subletting"—
  subcontracting today—
  "and to make every effort to secure the payment of such wages as are generally accepted as current in each trade for competent workmen."
  That is the stance that the Conservative party took 96 years ago. In 1945, the Conservative party joined hands with the Labour Government in strengthening the fair wages resolution to ensure that fair wages and trade union rights were recognised wherever public sector contracts were let. Now we have, in clause 17, a Government who sweep aside the respective histories of the Labour party and the Conservative party.
  The lump—the abuse of labour only subcontracting—to which even the Heath Government of the early 1970's took exception, is now protected by subsection 5(b). Most astonishing of all, local authorities are now to be expressly prohibited by law from providing minimum conditions of employment and the fair wages that, 96 years ago, the Government formed by a hardly revolutionary Lord Salisbury tried to provide through their fair wages resolution.
  Local authorities are prohibited even from laying down provisos about the training of people employed by private firms. Because of part I, such firms will take increasing responsibility for providing local authority services. Local authorities will be unable to insist on minimum levels of
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  training for the staff of private firms who are providing a catering service, when knowledge of and adherence to the public health regulations is critical.
  There was extensive discussion in Committee of the contract compliance provisions in the Bill that was passed at the end of the last Parliament. I spelt out the Labour party's approach, and the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) accepted that there was some common ground between us. He referred to the Race Relations Act 1976 and also said:
  "Health and safety legislation is also part of the law of the land, as is equal opportunities legislation. That legislation is applicable throughout the country and it is expected that local authorities will enforce it." —[Official Report, Standing Committee B, 2 April 1987, c. 242.]
  I ask his successor, the new Minister for Local Government, to say where provision is made in this Bill for the enforcement by local authorities of the health and safety legislation. And where is provision made for the enforcement of the equal opportunities legislation? Is it not a fact that since the departure of the right hon. Member for Brent, North the Government have watered down even further their adherence to even the minimum level of contract compliance?
  I press the Minister again on the well publicised difference of opinion between the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and the Secretary of State. In his elegant fashion, the Minister suggested that there was no disagreement between the Department of Employment and the Department of the Environment. Why is it, then, that the press officers of the Department of Employment have been briefing us so heavily against the Secretary of State for the Environment, and vice versa?
  In a television programme on 1 July, Mr. Jonathan Dimbleby said that if firms came to the inner cities the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster should guarantee that a certain proportion of the jobs went to the people who live in the inner cities. The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that he was very keen upon doing that. In his own inimitable fashion, he was saying, yes. If the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster is very keen that firms coming into the inner cities should both provide jobs for those who live there and give a guarantee that jobs will be provided for them, how will the Minister of State achieve that if, according to the Bill, it is not possible for a local authority to insist that the guarantee should be written into the contract between a local authority and an outside firm? I offer to the Minister yet another opportunity to explain how this Bill can be squared with what was said by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. He does not take the opportunity that I offer to him, so we know now that he has had second thoughts and that what the Secretary of State for the Environment says and what the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster says is not a seamless robe.
  How on earth can the Minister justify this Government's opposition to contract compliance when even the Reagan Government in the United States has used contract compliance to ensure equal opportunities in race relations and equal opportunities for women? The Republican federal contract compliance programme applies to 300,000 companies and 41 million employees. So unacceptable is all this that the Government have been unable to find support for their actions, even among Conservative local government. That is apparent from the words of the Conservative-dominated Association of

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  District Councils. Indeed, the latest survey in the Local Government Chronicle shows that Conservative authorities are voting with their feet when it comes to privatisation, with a sharp fall in the number of authorities contracting out services and a rise in the number of authorities that have abandoned that practice.
  We do not deny that local authorities may be able to achieve some savings by privatisation, but we object to the means by which they will do so. The only way in which to do so is by cutting the wages of those who are already very poorly paid indeed.
  It was the Conservative Gillingham borough council which in the latest edition of the Local Government Chronicle set its face against any further privatisation and said that it would not consider any further privatisation
  "unless the Government so dictates".
  Dictate is indeed the word. No longer are this Government even willing to trust the experience of their own supporters in local government and to accept their dissenting voice that there are better ways of delivering efficiency than through enforced privatisation.
  Eighteen months and two Ministers of State ago we went through in great detail the restrictions then proposed on local authority publicity. The Government went too far on that occasion and were defeated in the Lords. Even so, that Bill as enacted contained far reaching restrictions on local government publicity—ones that local government has observed. Not once to the best of my recollection since the enactment of that Bill has any Minister been able to point to what he would describe as an abuse of that legislation. The Secretary of State certainly failed to do so.
  All hon. Members should weigh the words of clause 26, which states:
  "In determining whether material falls within the prohibition regard shall be had to … whether the material … promotes or opposes a point of view on a question of political controversy which is identifiable as the view of one political party and not of another".
  I venture to suggest that there is not another Western nation—unless by definition we include Pinochet's Chile or the current regime in South Korea—that would even contemplate such a provision, let alone put it into law.
  But there is a bigger question of the goose and gander variety. As dissent has been closed down in local government, there has been a vast expansion of central Government expenditure on publicity. Just before the election scarcely a day went past before there was yet another publication of another "glossy" on education, defence, "Action for Jobs", or the reform of social security. There was one aspect of Conservative propaganda after another, all of which was paid for by the British taxpayer. There were leaflets, posters and carefully timed advertisements, and all were on questions of political controversy that was identifiable as a view of one political party and not of another.
  I therefore ask the Minister two questions. Does he remotely suggest that the Government's expenditure on all that publicity is consistent with the prohibition in clause 26, and is he willing to practise what he preaches? Will he accept amendments to ensure that these provisions have the same force on Ministers as they have on local authorities?
  This Bill is not about competition, the efficient delivery of services or the encouragement of enterprise. It is about the arrogance of power. So lacking in the art of persuasion
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  are these Ministers that they cannot even persuade their own colleagues in local government of the wisdom of what they propose. Instead of appreciating the moral in this rejection—that perhaps the propositions they make are so wrong-headed that even their own supporters cannot subscribe to them—they blithely believe that the whole world is out of step but themselves. To comfort themselves in that belief, to ensure that the world is only as they think it is, in true Stalinist fashion they seek to silence all dissent about their proposals. this is a bad Bill from a bad Government. We shall oppose it in the Lobby tonight.
  12 midnight
  The Minister for Local Government (Mr. Michael Howard): It is a privilege to wind up in the first debate on the Second Reading of a Bill that we have debated in the Parliament. We have heard a notable number of maiden speeches, and I congratulate the hon. Members for Tottenham (Mr. Grant), for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling), for Stoke-on-Trent, North (Ms. Walley), and for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley) and the hon. Gentleman the retread for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall), all of whom made distinguished speeches and all of whom paid tribute to their predecessors. As for the speech of the other retread, the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh), all that was notable about his speech was the fact that he was unable to bring himself to say a word about his predecessor. I relish the opportunity to make good that omission. Peter Fraser was a Member of the House who was regarded with a great deal of affection on both sides of the House. We miss him greatly.
  Mr. Andrew Welsh rose—
  Mr. Howard: The hon. Gentleman had his chance to say what he should have said and he conspicuously failed to use it at the appropriate time.
  Mr. Welsh rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Member must not persist if the Minister is not giving way.
  Mr. Howard: I turn to the speeches of my hon. Friends—
  Mr. Welsh: Mr. Deputy Speaker, on a point of order. I would be happy to explain to the Minister why I did not do that. There is no personal animosity whatsoever, nor should there be. He will find in due course what the repercussions were from that election campaign—it was through the courts of law.
  Mr. Howard: It is a bit late now, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  I turn to the maiden speeches of my hon. Friends. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) made a distinguished maiden speech in which he drew on the experiences in his past which are relevant to the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans), in a mature, powerful speech, similarly drew on the knowledge which he has of those matters which are at the heart of the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Mr. Wilshire) tellingly drew on his experience in local government to give the House the benefit of the wisdom and knowledge that he brings to our deliberations on those matters.
  This has been a debate which has told us a great deal about the attitudes of the two sides of the House to some very fundamental questions about the nature of local

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  government. Not surprisingly, the debate has concentrated on parts I and II of the Bill. From this side of the House we have had a series of speeches supporting some very simple propositions. The first was that local government exists not to serve the interests of sectional trade unionists, but to serve the interests of the people for whom it provides services. The second was that these services, in common with other services in other areas of economic life, will be provided more efficiently if they are subjected to competition. The third was that the people who will benefit from the more efficient provision of those services are the very people whose interests local government exists to serve.
  Those propositions should not be controversial. Indeed, I have deliberately, in setting out the first and most fundamental, used the identical language used by Councillor Margaret Hodge, the Leader of Islington borough council, as reported in the Local Government Chronicle of 3 July. She is reported as saying:
  "A clear message has got to go out from us, which is—the reason we are there is not to service the interests of sectional trade unionists, but to serve the interests of the people for whom we provide services."
  It is a message that has yet to reach the Opposition Benches. Speaker after speaker from those benches has risen to defend sectional interests, vested interests. For all we heard of them from the Opposition Benches, the people for whom the services are provided might as well not exist.
  It should come as no surprise that the words of councillor Hodge have not reached her colleagues on the Opposition Benches. She can hardly be said to practice what she preaches. Islington council's spending record is so appalling that its rate has had to be capped each year since the Rates Act 1984 came into force.
  Mr. Straw: Since the Minister is talking about sectional interests, does he defend the interests of a number of Conservative Members in BET and the Hawley group, and the fact that those two groups, sectional interests if ever there were any, are to dominate the privatisation of cleaning and other services?
  Mr. Howard: Generalised slurs of that sort deserve to be treated with the utmost contempt. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to make specific allegations against specific hon. Members, he should do that in the proper way and those specific Members will respond. To engage in that sort of blanket character assassination, although it is the sort of behaviour we have come to expect from the Opposition Members, deserves to be treated with the utmost contempt.
  I want to return to the subject of the debate; the record of the councillors whose conduct will be controlled by the legislation currently before the House.
  Islington, like so many Socialist-controlled councils, has used creative accounting devices to put off the evil day when its ratepayers have to bear the costs of its profligacy. Mrs. Hodge fully understood the risk that she was taking. She was reported last year as having written to her Labour colleagues
  "This is a high risk strategy, because not only does it depend on a change of Government, but it also depends on a commitment by the Labour Front Bench to bail us out when they return to power".
  She now knows how high that risk was.
  Her council had rent arrears of £6·2 million and rate arrears of £11·4 million. Both figures are well above the average for its class. In November last year it owned 227
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  vacant dwellings—5·8 per cent. of its total stock. In those circumstances it invested £250,000 from its employees' pension fund in the ill-fated News on Sunday. Once again, ratepayers will have to pick up the costs of that investment.
  The council has also made sure that its building maintenance direct labour organisation is protected from fair competition. In 1984–85 it put all its housing maintenance work out to tender as a single contract with conditions which were so onerous that no private contractors bothered to tender. Since then it has introduced a ban on contracts with companies with South African links. Both those practices will be stopped by this Bill.
  Councillor Hodge may have belatedly recognised in her words this weekend the truth about the essential purpose of local government. However, the actions of Islington council fall a very long way short of matching her words. However, it is precisely her message, that local authorities are there to serve the interests of the people for whom they provied services, that lies at the heart of the Bill. It is the people for whom the services are provided who will benefit if those services are provided efficiently and economically. It is the people for whom the services are provided who will lose and suffer if they are not.
  We have had many examples during the course of the debate of savings which have been achieved from the competitive tendering process. In opening the debate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred to Wandsworth's savings now running at £6 million each year. There are many other examples. The London borough of Merton has reported annual savings approaching £2·5 million on the services that it has contracted out. Independent bodies are in no doubt of the savings available. The Institute for Fiscal Studies and the London Business School said in an article last year that where local authorities had exposed their refuse collection operations to competition, costs had been reduced by between 17 and 22 per cent. The authors said that applying this to those authorities which had not so far done this would mean savings of a further £80 million in England and Wales as a whole.
  The Audit Commission in its recent paper on competitiveness and contracting out concluded that lack of sufficient effective competition was costing authorities some £510 million in forgone value improvements on just three services—house maintenance, refuse collection and vehicle maintenance. It even went so far as to say:
  "On average DLOs are more expensive to ratepayers than private suppliers. That is, most DLOs are not cost-competitive."
  It is the people who gain from such savings. It is the people who are able to take advantage of the extra services that those savings can be used to provide or the lowering of rates to which such savings can lead.
  In this debate my right hon. and hon. Friends have once again shown themselves to be the champions of the people; the Labour party has once again shown itself to be the champion of narrow, sectional interests.
  Mr. Maxton: I cannot see how the Minister can possibly talk for the people of Scotland. At local government level, regional and district level and at national level the people of Scotland have clearly rejected the Minister and his Government. Therefore nothing in this Bill should have anything to do with Scotland because the Scottish people do not want it.
  Mr. Howard: The people of Scotland will benefit from the provisions of this Bill in exactly the same way as the rest of the people of the United Kingdom. We shall not allow the actions of Opposition Members to prevent us from bringing the benefits of our policies to the people of Scotland in this legislation as in so many other respects.
  I shall now deal with some points that were raised by right hon. and hon. Members during the course of the debate. The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) asked about the draft code of practice on publicity arrangements and asked what the Government's intentions were on the code of practice. There is nothing sinister about it. The period of consultation in relation to that code of practice expired on 3 July. We shall consider the responses to that code of practice. On the face of it we see no reason to change the draft simply because of its change of status as proposed in the Bill. The hon. Gentleman also asked, as did the hon. Member for Leicester, South who would be the judge of those provisions and how they will be enforced. They will be enforced in the way in which we believe all provisions of this nature should be enforced, through the courts. The judges will be the courts and the courts will determine what interpretation should be applied to those provisions.
  I must deal with one particular matter which, although it was not mentioned by any of the Opposition, was mentioned by three of my hon. Friends. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Foulkes) expressed her reservations about the abolition of the dog licence. She was joined in that by my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale). It is an important matter about which many people feel strongly and it is something with which I must deal.
  I hope that I can at least go some way towards allaying the reservations of my hon. Friends. I assure them that the abolition of the licence will not, in any way, affect the legislation to control dogs. There are powers available to local authorities to deal with the problem of dog fouling, to ban dogs from certain beaches or parks or to require dogs to be kept on a lead. Local authorities are also able to employ dog wardens. The local authorities in Scotland and some in England and Wales have powers similar to those of the police to deal with strays.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Drake, raised the particular problem of livestock worrying. That is of great concern to farmers and I assure my hon. Friend that the legislation to deal with that problem will remain. Powers to deal with dogs that are not under control or which attack people are also unchanged. I hope that those assurances will go some way to allay the concerns expressed by my hon. Friends.
  We have heard a good deal during the debate about the relationship between central Government and local government. In his speech, the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) went back to 1891, to put some thoughts to us. I should like to remind the House of some much more recent observations by the hon. Member himself. In one of the last debates on these matters in the previous Parliament—the debate on the Second Reading of the Bills's predecessor on 3 March — the hon. Gentleman, with his customary ingenuity, put forward a novel constitutional doctrine, the doctrine of the most recent mandate. He reminded the House that
  "all the local councils in this country have a mandate that is far more recent than that of the Government."
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  The hon. Gentleman went on to talk about the accountability that was available through the ballot box, adding rather boldly:
  "The Labour party is not afraid of that test, although the Government may be." —[Official Report, 3 March 1987; Vol. 111, c. 781.]
  Mr. D. E. Thomas: As a fellow countryman from Llanelli, may I ask the Minister to address himself to whether, in view of the election result, the Government have a mandate to impose policies on the nations of Scotland and Wales?
  Mr. Howard: The Government have a mandate for their policies for the United Kingdom as a whole. We shall carry out that mandate with relish because we know of the benefits that it will bring to the people of the United Kingdom as a whole.
  I return to the constitutional doctrines of the hon. Member for Blackburn. It is characteristic of his ingenuity that no sooner does he invent those novel doctrines than he abandons them. We have not heard anything this evening from the hon. Gentleman about the doctrine of the most recent mandate. I wonder why.
  It is a fact that the passages in the Bill that have been the subject of the most vociferous attack from the Opposition were spelled out clearly in our manifesto for the general election. They were placed fairly and squarely before the people, and we shall do what we told the people we would do.
  I must admit that I came to the House today with a certain amount of anticipation. Over the weekend the world was led to believe by the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould), with whom I had so many enjoyable tussles during the Committee stage of the Financial Services Bill, that the Labour party was to be dragged kicking and screaming into the first half of the 20th century. In future, he said, the Labour party would make the popular appeal of policy a prime consideration, not an afterthought. Indeed, we understand that the Leader of the Opposition himself has been giving vent to similar thoughts today. I had expected to see signs of that during today's debate. After all, if the Labour party was minded to take the hon. Gentleman's advice, what better occasion could there be than the Bill?
  We know about the popularity of the policies enshrined in the Bill not only from the result of the general election but from a more precisely targeted source, some opinion poll research carried out by the National and Local Government Officers Association. To the great discomfort of NALGO, as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in the debate on the Address last Wednesday, its research showed that:
  "Researchers find such strong feelings that privatisation is an extremely good idea that they advised that, though it is an issue of great importance to NALGO, it should probably be avoided in the campaign to defend public services." —[Official Report, 1 July 1987; Vol. 118, c. 539.]
  Sadly, the advice of the hon. Member for Dagenham has fallen on stony ground. His party has learnt nothing from its defeat. The debate has shown that it is the same old Labour party with the same old shibboleths and the same old Socialism. I warn Opposition Members that the way they are going, at the next election it will be the same old result.
  It is perfectly clear that Labour will continue to oppose the popular policies that the Government will bring forward. It will continue to defend sectional vested

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  interests while we promote the interests of the people. The Bill does nothing for the sectional interests to whom councillor Margaret Hodge referred in her weekend statement. It does much for the people whom local authorities exist to serve. It is in that spirit that I commend it to the House.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time—
  The House divided: Ayes 286, Noes 212.

  Division No. 7]

  [12.20 am

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Forman, Nigel

  Alexander, Richard

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Gale, Roger

  Allason, Rupert

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Amess, David

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Amos, Alan

  Gorst, John

  Arbuthnot, James

  Gow, Ian

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Gower, Sir Raymond

  Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

  Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

  Ashby, David

  Greenway, John (Rydale)

  Atkins, Robert

  Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

  Atkinson, David

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Grist, Ian

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Ground, Patrick

  Baldry, Tony

  Grylls, Michael

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

  Bellingham, Henry

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Bendall, Vivian

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Benyon, W.

  Hannam, John

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Harris, David

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Hayes, Jerry

  Body, Sir Richard

  Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Hayward, Robert

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Boswell, Tim

  Heddle, John

  Bottomley, Peter

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

  Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

  Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Hill, James

  Bowis, John

  Hind, Kenneth

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

  Holt, Richard

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Hordern, Sir Peter

  Brazier, Julian

  Howard, Michael

  Bright, Graham

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

  Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

  Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

  Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

  Hunt, David (Wirral W)

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Hunter, Andrew

  Burns, Simon

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Burt, Alistair

  Irvine, Michael

  Butcher, John

  Irving, Charles

  Butler, Chris

  Jack, Michael

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Janman, Timothy

  Carrington, Matthew

  Jessel, Toby

  Carttiss, Michael

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Cash, William

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Chope, Christopher

  Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

  Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Conway, Derek

  Kellett-Bowman, Mrs Elaine

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Key, Robert

  Day, Stephen

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Devlin, Tim

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Knapman, Roger

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Durant, Tony

  Knowles, Michael

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Knox, David

  150

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Rost, Peter

  Lang, Ian

  Rowe, Andrew

  Latham, Michael

  Sackville, Hon Tom

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Sainsbury, Hon Tim

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Scott, Nicholas

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Lilley, Peter

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

  Lord, Michael

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Luce, Rt Hon Richard

  Shersby, Michael

  Lyell, Sir Nicholas

  Sims, Roger

  McCrindle, Robert

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Macfarlane, Neil

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Maclean, David

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Speed, Keith

  McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

  Speller, Tony

  McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

  Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)

  Madel, David

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Major, Rt Hon John

  Squire, Robin

  Malins, Humfrey

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Mans, Keith

  Steen, Anthony

  Maples, John

  Stern, Michael

  Marland, Paul

  Stevens, Lewis

  Marlow, Tony

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Stewart, Ian (Hertfordshire N)

  Mates, Michael

  Stradling Thomas, Sir John

  Maude, Hon Francis

  Sumberg, David

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Summerson, Hugo

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Mellor, David

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Taylor, John M (Solihull)

  Miller, Hal

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

  Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Moate, Roger

  Thorne, Neil

  Morris, M (N'hampton S)

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

  Thurnham, Peter

  Morrison, Hon P (Chester)

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Moss, Malcolm

  Tracey, Richard

  Moynihan, Hon C.

  Tredinnick, David

  Mudd, David

  Trippier, David

  Neale, Gerrard

  Trotter, Neville

  Needham, Richard

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Nelson, Anthony

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Neubert, Michael

  Waddington, Rt Hon David

  Newton, Tony

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Walden, George

  Nicholson, Miss E. (Devon W)

  Walker, Bill (T'side North)

  Onslow, Cranley

  Waller, Gary

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Ward, John

  Page, Richard

  Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

  Paice, James

  Warren, Kenneth

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Watts, John

  Patten, Chris (Bath)

  Wells, Bowen

  Patten, John (Oxford W)

  Wheeler, John

  Pawsey, James

  Whitney, Ray

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Widdecombe, Miss Ann

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Portillo, Michael

  Wilkinson, John

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Wilshire, David

  Price, Sir David

  Winterton, Mrs Ann

  Raffan, Keith

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Wolfson, Mark

  Rathbone, Tim

  Wood, Timothy

  Redwood, John

  Woodcock, Mike

  Renton, Tim

  Yeo, Tim

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Riddick, Graham

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Mr. David Lightbown and Mr. Richard Ryder.

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  151

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Allen, Graham

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Anderson, Donald

  Gordon, Ms Mildred

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Gould, Bryan

  Armstrong, Ms Hilary

  Graham, Thomas

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Ashton, Joe

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Grocott, Bruce

  Barron, Kevin

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Battle, John

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Beckett, Margaret

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Beith, A. J.

  Henderson, Douglas

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

  Holland, Stuart

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Home Robertson, John

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Hood, James

  Blair, Tony

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Boateng, Paul

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Boothroyd, Miss Betty

  Howells, Geraint

  Boyes, Roland

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Bradley, Keith

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

  Ingram, Adam

  Buchan, Norman

  Janner, Greville

  Buckley, George

  John, Brynmor

  Caborn, Richard

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Callaghan, Jim

  Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Canavan, Dennis

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

  Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

  Lambie, David

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Lamond, James

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Clay, Bob

  Leighton, Ron

  Clelland, David

  Lestor, Miss Joan (Eccles)

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Lewis, Terry

  Cohen, Harry

  Litherland, Robert

  Coleman, Donald

  Livingstone, Ken

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Livsey, Richard

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Corbett, Robin

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Loyden, Eddie

  Cousins, Jim

  McAllion, John

  Cox, Tom

  McAvoy, Tom

  Crowther, Stan

  McCartney, Ian

  Cryer, Bob

  Macdonald, Calum

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  McFall, John

  Dalyell, Tam

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Darling, Alastair

  McLeish, Henry

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  McTaggart, Bob

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  McWilliam, John

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

  Madden, Max

  Dewar, Donald

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Dixon, Don

  Marek, Dr John

  Dobson, Frank

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Dunnachie, James

  Martin, Michael (Springburn)

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  Martlew, Eric

  Eastham, Ken

  Maxton, John

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Meacher, Michael

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  Meale, Alan

  Fatchett, Derek

  Michael, Alun

  Fearn, Ronald

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

  Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  Fisher, Mark

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

  Flannery, Martin

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Flynn, Paul

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Morley, Elliott

  Foster, Derek

  Morris, Rt Hon A (W'shawe)

  Fraser, John

  Morris, Rt Hon J (Aberavon)

  Fyfe, Mrs Maria

  Mowlam, Mrs Marjorie

  Galbraith, Samuel

  Mullin, Chris

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Murphy, Paul

  Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

  Nellist, Dave

  George, Bruce

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  O'Brien, William

  152

  O'Neill, Martin

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

  Parry, Robert

  Snape, Peter

  Pendry, Tom

  Soley, Clive

  Pike, Peter

  Spearing, Nigel

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Steinberg, Gerald

  Prescott, John

  Stott, Roger

  Primarolo, Ms Dawn

  Straw, Jack

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Radice, Giles

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Randall, Stuart

  Thomas, Dafydd Elis

  Redmond, Martin

  Turner, Dennis

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  Wall, Pat

  Reid, John

  Wallace, James

  Richardson, Ms Jo

  Walley, Ms Joan

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Robertson, George

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

  Rogers, Allan

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Rooker, Jeff

  Williams, Rt Hon A. J.

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

  Rowlands, Ted

  Wilson, Brian

  Ruddock, Ms Joan

  Winnick, David

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Sheerman, Barry

  Worthington, Anthony

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Wray, James

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Short, Clare

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Skinner, Dennis

  Mr. Chris Smith and Mr. Frank Haynes.

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mr. Dewar.]
  Question put:—
  The House divided: Ayes 209, Noes 243.

  Division No. 8]

  [12.30 am

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Coleman, Donald

  Allen, Graham

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Anderson, Donald

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Corbett, Robin

  Armstrong, Ms Hilary

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Cousins, Jim

  Ashton, Joe

  Cox, Tom

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Crowther, Stan

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Cryer, Bob

  Barron, Kevin

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Battle, John

  Dalyell, Tam

  Beckett, Margaret

  Darling, Alastair

  Beith, A. J.

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

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

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Dewar, Donald

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Dixon, Don

  Blair, Tony

  Dobson, Frank

  Boateng, Paul

  Dunnachie, James

  Boyes, Roland

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  Bradley, Keith

  Eastham, Ken

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Fatchett, Derek

  Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

  Fearn, Ronald

  Buchan, Norman

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Buckley, George

  Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

  Caborn, Richard

  Fisher, Mark

  Callaghan, Jim

  Flannery, Martin

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Flynn, Paul

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Foster, Derek

  Canavan, Dennis

  Fraser, John

  Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

  Fyfe, Mrs Maria

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Galbraith, Samuel

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Clay, Bob

  George, Bruce

  Clelland, David

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Cohen, Harry

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  153

  Gordon, Ms Mildred

  Morley, Elliott

  Gould, Bryan

  Morris, Rt Hon A (W'shawe)

  Graham, Thomas

  Morris, Rt Hon J (Aberavon)

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Mowlam, Mrs Marjorie

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Mullin, Chris

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Murphy, Paul

  Grocott, Bruce

  Nellist, Dave

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  O'Brien, William

  Heffer, Eric S.

  O'Neill, Martin

  Henderson, Douglas

  Parry, Robert

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Pendry, Tom

  Holland, Stuart

  Pike, Peter

  Home Robertson, John

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Hood, James

  Prescott, John

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Primarolo, Ms Dawn

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Howells, Geraint

  Radice, Giles

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Randall, Stuart

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Redmond, Martin

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

  Reid, John

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Richardson, Ms Jo

  Ingram, Adam

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  Janner, Greville

  Robertson, George

  John, Brynmor

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Rogers, Allan

  Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)

  Rooker, Jeff

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

  Rowlands, Ted

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

  Ruddock, Ms Joan

  Lambie, David

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Lamond, James

  Sheerman, Barry

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Leighton, Ron

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Lestor, Miss Joan (Eccles)

  Short, Clare

  Lewis, Terry

  Skinner, Dennis

  Litherland, Robert

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Livingstone, Ken

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

  Livsey, Richard

  Snape, Peter

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Soley, Clive

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Spearing, Nigel

  Loyden, Eddie

  Steinberg, Gerald

  McAllion, John

  Stott, Roger

  McAvoy, Tom

  Straw, Jack

  McCartney, Ian

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Macdonald, Calum

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  McFall, John

  Thomas, Dafydd Elis

  McKay, Allen (Penistone)

  Turner, Dennis

  McLeish, Henry

  Wall, Pat

  McTaggart, Bob

  Wallace, James

  McWilliam, John

  Walley, Ms Joan

  Madden, Max

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Marek, Dr John

  Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Martin, Michael (Springburn)

  Williams, Rt Hon A. J.

  Martlew, Eric

  Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

  Maxton, John

  Wilson, Brian

  Meacher, Michael

  Winnick, David

  Meale, Alan

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Michael, Alun

  Worthington, Anthony

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Wray, James

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

  Mr. Chris Smith and Mr. Frank Haynes.

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Morgan, Rhodri

  NOES

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Atkinson, David

  Alexander, Richard

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Allason, Rupert

  Baldry, Tony

  Amess, David

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Amos, Alan

  Bellingham, Henry

  Arbuthnot, James

  Bendall, Vivian

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

  Benyon, W.

  Ashby, David

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  154

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Jack, Michael

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Janman, Timothy

  Body, Sir Richard

  Jessel, Toby

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Boswell, Tim

  Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

  Bottomley, Peter

  Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

  Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Knapman, Roger

  Bowis, John

  Knowles, Michael

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  Knox, David

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Brazier, Julian

  Lang, Ian

  Bright, Graham

  Latham, Michael

  Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Brooke, Hon Peter

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

  Lilley, Peter

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Burns, Simon

  Lord, Michael

  Burt, Alistair

  Luce, Rt Hon Richard

  Butcher, John

  Lyell, Sir Nicholas

  Butler, Chris

  McCrindle, Robert

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Carrington, Matthew

  Maclean, David

  Cash, William

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Chope, Christopher

  McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

  Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

  Madel, David

  Conway, Derek

  Major, Rt Hon John

  Day, Stephen

  Malins, Humfrey

  Devlin, Tim

  Mans, Keith

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Maples, John

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Marland, Paul

  Durant, Tony

  Marlow, Tony

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Forman, Nigel

  Mates, Michael

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Maude, Hon Francis

  Gale, Roger

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Mellor, David

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Gorst, John

  Miller, Hal

  Gow, Ian

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Gower, Sir Raymond

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Greenway, John (Rydale)

  Moate, Roger

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Morris, M (N'hampton S)

  Grist, Ian

  Morrison, Hon C. (Devizes)

  Ground, Patrick

  Morrison, Hon P (Chester)

  Grylls, Michael

  Moss, Malcolm

  Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)

  Moynihan, Hon C.

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Mudd, David

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Neale, Gerrard

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Needham, Richard

  Hannam, John

  Nelson, Anthony

  Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

  Neubert, Michael

  Harris, David

  Newton, Tony

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Hayes, Jerry

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Hayward, Robert

  Nicholson, Miss E. (Devon W)

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Onslow, Cranley

  Heddle, John

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Page, Richard

  Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

  Paice, James

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Hill, James

  Patten, Chris (Bath)

  Hind, Kenneth

  Patten, John (Oxford W)

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Pawsey, James

  Holt, Richard

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Howard, Michael

  Portillo, Michael

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

  Raffan, Keith

  Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Rathbone, Tim

  Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

  Redwood, John

  Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Renton, Tim

  Hunt, David (Wirral W)

  Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Riddick, Graham

  Hunter, Andrew

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Irvine, Michael

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

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  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Rost, Peter

  Thurnham, Peter

  Rowe, Andrew

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Sainsbury, Hon Tim

  Tracey, Richard

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Tredinnick, David

  Scott, Nicholas

  Trippier, David

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Trotter, Neville

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarf)

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Waddington, Rt Hon David

  Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Shersby, Michael

  Walker, Bill (T'side North)

  Sims, Roger

  Waller, Gary

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Ward, John

  Smith, Sir Dudley (Warwick)

  Wardle, C. (Bexhill)

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Watts, John

  Speller, Tony

  Wells, Bowen

  Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)

  Wheeler, John

  Squire, Robin

  Whitney, Ray

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Widdecombe, Miss Ann

  Steen, Anthony

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Stern, Michael

  Wilkinson, John

  Stevens, Lewis

  Wilshire, David

  Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)

  Wolfson, Mark

  Stewart, Ian (Hertfordshire N)

  Wood, Timothy

  Sumberg, David

  Yeo, Tim

  Summerson, Hugo

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

  Mr. David Lightbown and Mr. Richard Ryder.

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Thome, Neil

  Question accordingly negatived.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills)

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

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

  (b) any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other enactment,—[Mr. Lennox-Boyd.]

  12.42 am
  Mr. Donald Dewar: There was a brief exchange at the beginning of the Second Reading debate which I am sure that the Minister witnessed, during which a number of points were raised about the handling of this legislation as far as it related to Scotland. It would be improper for me to rehearse those arguments now and I refer to them only in passing. However, there is undoubtedly a strong feeling in the House—as I am sure that you are aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker—that this is an unsatisfactory way of dealing with the different local traditions that we have in Scotland with its different local government structure.
  I will not spend any time discussing the difficulties involved in our picking our way through this legislation. That will be a matter for the Committee. I hope that there will be a strong Scottish input on that Committee and I look forward to the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton) leading his no doubt small task force in that stage of the Bill's proceedings.
  I have for the Minister one or two questions, although I realise that a number of other hon. Members wish to take part in this debate. First, the Money Resolution refers to
  "any expenses of the Secretary of State incurred in consequence of that Act".
  Perhaps my question reveals my inexperience in this kind of debate. However, does the "Secretary of State" referred to in the resolution include other Secretaries of State, including the Secretaries of States for Scotland and for Wales? I cannot see any definition of Secretary of State in the Bill. Such a definition may not be necessary. However, no doubt the Minister will deal with that question— I would normally have said with his courteous manner, but perhaps tonight that description is strained—when he replies.
  Secondly, I want to ask about the financial implications of part I for Scotland. The Minister knows that there is a reference in the financial effects of the Bill to the fact that the Government expect some increase in costs largely because of redundancy payments. Clearly the Government will have split those between Scotland and England and will have some idea of the likely redundancy impact in Scotland and the financial impact that will flow from that. I want the Minister to say a word or two more about that especially as, in the introductory memoranda dealing with the effect on public service manpower, there is a reference to the fact that the provision of services is to be transferred leading to substantial reductions in public service manpower.
  Presumably the advice of Scottish Office Ministers has been taken on how the substantial reduction that is anticipated—that is the number of people who will be sacked as a result of the Bill reaching the statute book —will be split between England and Scotland. The Government will remember that, despite the best efforts of

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  the Government in Scotland, very little privatisation took place in the Health Service because the health boards revolted against the proposition. I suspect that there will be stern resistance in Scotland to the provisions that are set out in the Bill, but I want to know what the Government's financial calculations are in Scottish terms.
  Clause 23 refers to privately let housing accommodation. I ask the Minister to tell us what that accommodation is likely to be in Scotland. It is something that will have an effect on the financial implications of the Bill. The financial memorandum states:
  "The costs a financial support under Clause 23 are expected to be offset by a reduced call on expenditure on local authority housing."
  There is a different local authority housing structure in Scotland from that in England, there being a substantial public sector. I should like to know how the Minister calculates the effects of clause 23 in Scottish terms, bearing in mind that housing accommodation and leases, for example, which are defined in subsection (6) for England, are not defined in Scottish terms. It seems that the financial implications are difficult to calculate in Scotland. I hope that we shall hear something about that.
  Public service manpower implications are interesting, as are the comments in part III, where there is a reference to local authorities using their power under clause 23, which may result in a small increase in their manpower. It seems that this may lead to a small increase also in the manpower of the Department of the Environment and that of the Welsh Office. There is an interesting exclusion which I presume is not an accident. The implication is that there will be no increase in Scottish Office manpower, and I take it that the Government do not expect clause 23 to have much impact in Scotland. Perhaps the Minister will comment on the fact that there is no reference to the Scottish Office in the relevant section of the financial and explanatory memorandum and explain why it has been omitted. I should like to know whether I am right in assuming that the clause will not have much impact in Scotland. This is a matter of importance.
  The memorandum states that the effect of clause 27
  "may be to increase expenditure".
  Clause 27 refers to schedule 3 and only paragraphs 11 to 17 of the schedule apply to Scotland. Perhaps the Minister will say something about the implications for Scotland. Is an increase in expenditure expected in Scotland as well?
  Clause 29 refers to schedule 5, and only paragraph 12 refers to Scotland. That paragraph refers in turn to schedule 3 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975. Will the Minister give an assurance that that covers the Scottish position, is parallel to the English provision and that the financial implications that are referred to in the financial memorandum can be taken to apply to Scotland as well as England? As this part of the Bill is dealing with the United Kingdom structure, presumably the Minister has considered the Scottish position in some detail and will be able to help on the issue that that I have raised.
  I move on to clause 32, and in passing I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Drake (Miss Fookes), who took her opposition to the logical extreme of joining the Opposition in the Division. She did so because of her objection to the clause. The Minister may be aware that there was a spirited debate not so long ago during the passage of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 when dog licences were debated seriously. At that stage the Government — I think that the Minister, the hon.
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  Member for Edinburgh, West was a member of the Committee — resisted strongly the abolition of dog licences and the increase of the licence fee and re-enacted the status quo. It is clear that minds have been altered as a result of the pressure that has been brought to bear by the Department of the Environment.
  May I ask him about the financial savings that are expected in Scotland? I start by referring him again to the section in the explanatory and financial memorandum on the Bill's effect on public service manpower, which states:
  "Clause 32 will yield small manpower savings for London borough, district and island councils, as they will no longer be required to keep registers of licence holders."
  Is it anticipated that that will apply in Scotland? It is slightly ambiguous. It might refer to London boroughs, and then to district and island councils in other parts of the country, including Scotland. But it is not clear to me, and, as it has finance implications, perhaps the Minister will clear up the ambiguity.
  I think that that point is particularly important, because at the top of that page of the explanatory and financial memorandum there is another reference to the abolition of dog licences and its likely reduction of central Government expenditure. The last, triumphant sentence of that section—on the financial effects of the Bill—states:
  "In England and Wales, London borough and district councils will cease to receive the duty on dog licences."
  That is a specific reference to what is happening in England and Wales, and, in particular, to London borough and district councils in England and Wales. As Scotland has been specifically excluded from that reference, presumably at the behest of the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West—and presumably the exclusion is intended to have some significance— I assume that we can infer that the same financial effect will not apply in Scotland.
  It is important that we clear the matter up and know exactly why Scotland has been omitted, and whether I am right in my deduction. If I am right, it is very puzzling, and needs an explanation in the terms of the Act; if I am wrong, it seems careless and—if I may say so—slighting to exclude Scotland from the calculations. I hope that the Minister will deal with my question adequately and in some detail.
  There are many other points to be made. However, I am very conscious of the pressure of time. The debate can last for only 45 minutes, and many of my hon. Friends wish to speak. I am also conscious of the fact that we must give the Minister time to reply, and to deal with specific Scottish points. I hope that he will not think them nitpicking—[HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I am glad to have the approbation and support of Conservative Members. It gives me some consolation, because I do not always receive such a service.
  All I can say in my plea in mitigation is that a debate of this kind is very narrow in its terms, and that I have tried rigorously to keep within the rules of the House. That has inevitably meant picking up fairly detailed points from the explanatory and financial memorandum, and from the related manpower implication statement in the preamble to the Bill. It seems to me, however, that at least the two omissions of any reference to Scotland must have some significance. I feel that the other detailed points that I have raised about clauses 23, 27 and 29 should certainly be tidied up by the Minister, and I hope that he will do exactly that when his hon. Friend comes back with the answer.
  12.52 am
  Mr. Eric Martlew: I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech this morning—although I did not realise that I would be making it this morning.
  I understand that we are now on the money resolution debate following the Second Reading of the Local Government Bill. Forgive me if I am wrong, but the procedures are rather different from those that I am used to. It has already been mentioned in the House that many of the new Members of Parliament had an apprenticeship in local government, and I am no exception to that rule, having served 15 years as a councillor. I was a member of Cumbria county council for 13 years, and had the privilege of being its chairman for two years.
  Serving in local government before coming to the House is nothing new. My predecessor Ron Lewis, to whom I should now like to pay tribute, had a very distinguished career in local government in Derbyshire before being elected as Member of Parliament for Carlisle in 1964. From the outset, Ron Lewis had one ambition: to serve the people of Carlisle well. In that, he excelled — so much so that the constituency, which had a reputation for being marginal, returned him on no fewer than seven separate occasions. On the last occasion, in 1983, there is no doubt that it was only through the personal vote for Ron Lewis that Labour held the seat. That was a personal tribute to him, and he will deservedly enter the record books as the longest-serving Member for Carlisle.
  Ron Lewis was much more than a fine constituency Member of Parliament. He is always a gentleman in the finest sense of the word. His sincerity, Socialism and trade union beliefs come from his deep and sincere belief in Christianity. When he spoke in the House, he was listened to. When he took up a cause on behalf of his constituents, he did so with tremendous vigour and skill. I remember him in the early 1970s and the effort that he made to save the State Brewery in Carlisle—ironically the first of the privatisations — despite the fact that he was a strict teetotaller and a leading member of the temperance movement, a cause for which I do not seem to have met many supporters in the House. I am sure that the House will miss him and join me in wishing him a long and happy retirement.
  I should like to express my appreciation of the help and advice that Ron Lewis gave me during the recent election campaign. Mine was a tough election, because Carlisle was the most marginal Labour-held seat in the country. It was the number one target Tory seat. Despite that, we came out with a 1,200 per cent. increase in our majority. I mention that to remind Conservative Members that they did worse than in 1983—in some areas they did a great deal worse.
  I should like to get my constituency's geographical position correct. It is a fine city in the north of England, nine miles south of the Scottish border. I say that as there may be some confusion among hon. Members about the appointment of the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Mr. Maclean), my neighbour, as a Scottish Whip. I am assured that that is to do with the Government's poor showing in Scotland and nothing to do with a plan to move the border south. I should like to take this opportunity to congratulate the hon. Member on his appointment.
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  I am filled with pride at Carlisle and its people, because they are friendly, hard working and compassionate, and I am privileged to serve them. I am proud of the effort being made by councils, especially the Labour-controlled city council, to improve Carlisle. I get angry at the Bill, because there is nothing in it which will encourage and strengthen local government and local democracy. It also is designed to reduce even further the influence of local people over their own lives.
  The Government should be complimenting Carlisle city council which, in the past decade, has transformed the city. It is now the most improved city in Britain. One has only to see the international award-winning Lane's shopping centre, the much acclaimed Sands centre and the many improvements in leisure facilities, of which the new running track is only the latest example, to appreciate the improvement.
  Last week, the city council passed a resolution announcing plans for a major new museum complex to rival that in York. It will show the colourful heritage of Carlisle to its full advantage. We have done much else. We have improved our old council estates and still have the second lowest rents in the country. We have a peace garden and are a nuclear-free zone—and proud of it. Rates bear comparison with those found anywhere else. For six years, we held the rate in the city and reduced it by 2p last year. All this has been achieved in spite of the Government, not because of them. I am proud to pay tribute to local government as I know it.
  The Bill would massively increase contracting out. Do the Government intend to do to our good refuse collection services what they have already done to domestic services in our hospitals? Staff morale there has been reduced. Cleaning standards have been lowered to such an extent that there has been a 120 per cent. labour turnover, and absence due to sickness accounts for 20 per cent. of the staff. That is what privatisation of the hospital services has done. Any fool can reduce costs by cutting wages, but it takes a clever man to improve productivity and still look after his employees.
  Instead of pushing through this worthless Bill the Government should help councils such as mine to rid the cities of the despair of unemployment, which stands at 14 per cent. in Carlisle. Many of the young people of Carlisle have not worked since they left school three or four years ago, and they are unlikely ever to get work. There is despair over the decline of once great industries—for example, over Cavans and Sheldons, once the greatest crane manufacturers in the world. It was recently closed by NEI so that it could sell the land, probably for use as yet another superstore.
  There is despair in my constituency over the railways. Only 10 years ago that industry employed over 4,000 in my city. Today it employs only 1,000, and there are more redundancies to come. That is without the possible closure of the Carlisle to Settle railway line. We hope that there will soon be a favourable announcement by the Minister about the Carlisle to Settle railway line, but I have my doubts.
  I despair about the decline of the health and education services and about the ever-increasing levels of crime in Cumbria, including Carlisle. Recently the chief constable called Carlisle the crime capital of the county. Old people are still struggling to exist on meagre pensions. There is despair about the poll tax. A recent independent survey

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  suggests that the people in my constituency will pay 41 per cent. more than they are paying now. Many of them will be unable to pay.
  The Bill will only make matters worse. I do not plead for compassion from the Government Benches. Even after so short a time as a Member of Parliament, I realise that that is in short supply. Carlisle will survive, and even prosper, despite the Tory Government, but would it not be better if they helped councils to tackle the regeneration of our cities instead of hindering them?
  1.2 pm
  Mr. Tam Dalyell: In normal circumstances the House should not be kept up until 1 o'clock, but these are not normal circumstances. We are discussing the mechanics of the poll tax. The Minister has been landed with a brief that cannot be implemented. I refer to clause 26, which relates to what local authorities can and cannot do.
  On 28 June the ad hoc chairman of the Scottish finance directors, David Chynowith, was interviewed for the BBC's "World at One" programme. He was asked about the mechanics of the poll tax and he said:
  "Well, the main difficulties at the moment are trying to analyse the various systems which we'll need to set up before 1989 … we've only got until April 1989 to get everything up and running, and the first major job of course is that the assessor has to set up the community charge register and once he's done that, we've then got to sort out the means of collection from the very many more people that we'll have to collect from as compared to the domestic charge rate."
  Clough then asked:
  "Now what about this business of setting up the community charge register because…that isn't exactly the same"—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman can help me by pointing to that part of clause 26 to which he is addressing himself. I see nothing in clause 26 that remotely relates to what he is saying to the House.
  Mr. Dalyell: I am giving an example of clause 26 that raises the question whether material that relates, or can be construed as relating, to the benefit of a political party and an opposite point of view can be put. I am asking the question in some detail about whether an interview of the kind that took place last Sunday is or is not in order. With respect, Mr. Deputy Speaker, on this occasion I am bang in order and am giving a concrete, specific example.
  Clough said:
  "Now what about this business of setting up the community charge register because that isn't exactly the same as…the electoral register,"
  to which the director of finance replied:
  "No indeed it isn't and it's a running register as compared with the electoral register which is set on one day in the year. It has to be kept up-to-date continuously and must at all times record all the people who are aged over 18 who are staying in this area".
  Clough said:
  "Well that's to say that it's got to be updated pretty well monthly, has it, because you have to collect in 12 monthly instalments".
  The director of finance replied:
  "That's correct. It has to be updated continuously, yes and so each month it must be correct for…each of the residents in the area".
  Will local authorities be allowed to say precisely what the costs of collection are?
  Mr. Neil Hamilton: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The Bill's financial and explanatory memorandum does not mention clause 26. As this is a debate on a money resolution, is the hon. Gentleman riot out of order by confining his speech to a clause that is riot in it?
  Mr. Dalyell rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Let me deal with the point of order before the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) continues. In the light of the firm way in which the hon. Gentleman said that he was on good ground, I was looking carefully to see how his remarks related to the money resolution, and I found great difficulty in doing so.
  Mr. Jeremy Hanley: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have just dealt with it.
  Mr. Hanley: On a further point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it not normal courtesy in the House, when following a maiden speech, to pay at least some form of tribute to the hon. Member who made it?
  Mr. Dalyell: The one thing that I would not like to do is to trespass on the time of the House and fail to congratulate my hon. Friend—indeed my personal friend — the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew), for whom I have spoken in Carlisle. It was a great pleasure, and I know the high regard in which he is held by his constituency party and the people who elected him.
  I do not want to trespass on time, but Ministers had better take cognisance of what the directors of finance—who have the immediacy of the problem—are doing. Does the House realise that there are 90 separate issues on which there could be statutory instruments for the implementation of the poll tax? The Minister may shake his head, but that is the view of the careful accountant who has to do the work. We Scots have the immediacy of the problem.
  As I discovered when speaking in marginal constituencies in England, it is a remote problem here, because it has not yet arrived, but it has come to us, and our officials know what it is all about. Already they have had to grapple with the problem. In fact, in a relatively small region, 70 or 80 people will have to be full-time canvassers. Who will pay for them?
  Mr. Bill Walker: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I followed closely what the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said about the money resolution, and I clearly understood everything that he said. He explained clearly the relationship between the Bill and the financial arrangements as they affect Scotland. I thought that his questions required answering. I am having great difficulty in the context of the Bill, in understanding or following what the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) is saying. I ask for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because it is important, on money matters, that we get it right.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I share the anxieties of the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Dalyell: I shall—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman knows that he ought not to be on his feet when I am on

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  mine. I hope that he will either address his remarks to the financial effects of the Bill or resume his seat. Can he do so?
  Mr. Dalyell: Very briefly, there is not much point taking part in the debate other than to warn the Government of the mire that they are getting into. It is easy to be frivolous about it, but we will see who is in difficulty in nine months' time—the Government or us.
  1.11 am
  Mr. Tom Clarke: I join my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) in congratulating my hon. Friend for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew), who made an excellent maiden speech. He spoke with conviction as well as knowledge and experience of local government. I trust that those Conservative Members who, rightly, are so keen to join us in our congratulations will also join us in listening to what my hon. Friend had to say, because he spoke for local government and, like the rest of us, he is deeply worried about the trends that are indicated in the Bill, and is deeply worried, as are we who speak for Scotland. Ron Lewis would have been extremely proud to have heard my hon. Friend's maiden speech. We recall Ron Lewis's charm and commitment and sheer honesty with great affection and we wish him and my hon. Friend well in the future.
  Earlier on this evening a number of us raised points of order on the importance of the Bill to Scotland and about the absurd way it has been presented to the House in the hope that it will be acceptable to Parliament. notwithstanding that there has not even been minimal consultation with local authorities in Scotland. So far as I am aware there has been none. It is an insult to the House that, as we discuss this money resolution, which has considerable implications for local government, including the regions, districts and the islands in Scotland, we have not even heard from the Secretary of State for Scotland.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), honoured us with his presence, but so far as I know he has not said a word this evening. The other Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Stirling (Mr. Forsyth), joined us towards the end. I do not think that anybody on the Labour side is complaining that he has not said anything, either. Nevertheless, it is a totally unsatisfactory way to conduct Scottish affairs. It is a completely unsatisfactory way to approach Scottish local government. It does not represent the wishes of the people of Scotland and it indicates that, if the Government are attempting to work with and negotiate with COSLA—for the benefit of the Minister, that is the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities—they will find that what they and the Secretary of State, who has disappeared, have done tonight, is to do a great deal of harm to the relationship between the House and local government, especially between the House and Scottish local authorities.
  Dr. Norman A. Godman: I point out to my hon. Friend that not all Government Members would appear to be hostile to what he is saying. The right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) had this to say the other day:
  "It would be no bad thing, just a gesture…to ask the Procedure Committee when it is established to take a
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  comprehensive view of how we manage Scottish affairs in the House both in terms of general business and of legislation."—[Official Report, 30 June 1987; Vol. 118, c. 398.]
  Would my hon. Friend agree that that is a sensible statement coming from the Government side of the House?
  Mr. Clarke: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend and I am glad that he made that point.
  We are being asked to accept the Government's ill-thought out proposals, which, as I have said, show no evidence of consultation, which are certainly not before us at the request of the local authorities, or the electors or ratepayers that they represent and will not be in the interests of our people. The Government are telling us that their views on compulsory tendering will be helpful to local government but they have not produced the evidence. The people that I know in local government would utterly oppose any suggestion that it will be helpful in the provision of services.
  The Government have prattled on about information. They use all the machinery available to them, whether it be in the Ministry of Defence or the Scottish Office, to promote their views. It is appalling that they should try to restrict elected local authorities as they attempt to explain to their own ratepayers the policies that they are attempting to pursue.
  We are told in the measure about the restrictions on direct labour. In the recent elections I heard absolutely nothing from anybody about compulsory tendering or the provision of information or about the end of contract compliance. I certainly heard a great deal of criticism of direct labour authorities and in most cases that was not the fault of those departments of the councils. It arose because those departments are being starved of resources.
  Mr. John Redwood: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. What does this have to do with the money resolution? I cannot see that it is in order.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is just about in order.
  Mr. Clarke: I would not have expected the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) to have understood anything about local government, far less Scottish issues. Therefore, I am not surprised at his bewilderment. I understand that his predecessor, Sir William van Straubenzee was banished to the Scottish Grand Committee because his name rhymed with Mackenzie. If the hon. Gentleman is not careful he might meet the same fate. However, it will not stop me from speaking for the people of Monklands, West and the people of Scotland. I had no request from electors for the sort of policies that the money resolution would allow the Government to pursue were it introduced. Because of that I am opposed to it.
  I say to the Minister and the House that as the Bill is debated it will become more and more clear that it is an absolute irrelevance in terms of the services that people want to see. I have concentrated on Scotland, but I know perfectly well that my hon. Friends from other parts of the United Kingdom feel just as strongly. I worry about Scotland because already the Secretary of State and his very small band of Members are showing a disgraceful arrogance about the views of the Scottish people.
  I know that the Secretary of State for Scotland is not going to be very helpful to us in explaining his views. He does not meet hon. Members when there are major

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  closures in their constituencies. If he takes part in a debate he does not really address himself, as I do, to the real issues and to matters of order. Therefore, for an indication of what he really thinks I had to refer to the famous election diarist, Mr. Brian Meek who, writing in the Glasgow Herald, told us something of the Secretary of State's real thinking during those dreadful moments in the campaign when opinion polls after opinion poll showed that the Conservative party was not going to do too well in Scotland. After another opinion poll had appeared and the Secretary of State was quite distressed Mr. Meek wrote:
  "The full implication is now sinking in"—
  I must point out that memories are rather short.
  "I try to be cheerful and mouth all the right things about how this hardly tallies with the sort of reception we have been receiving."
  As we reach his home he replies a little wearily
  "You are a professional. You know there is something wrong."
  Of course, Mr. Meek is a professional. Those who advise local government in Scotland on financial and other matters are also professionals and not one of them would agree with the Government's approach. I hope that even this Government, dominated as they are by the arrogance of intellect and the brutality of power, will think again because this Bill is not in the interests of local government and not in the interests of the people of this country.
  1.20 am
  Mr. Bill Walker: I welcome the opportunity to speak on this money resolution. I believe that it is right and proper in this United Kingdom Parliament that we should have Bills that cover England, Wales and Scotland and those Bills should be linked together because it is efficient to do so and it is best use of the resources that we have available. [Interruption.] It is, and I make no apology for that. The Opposition may well find that amusing, but the Opposition may find it difficult to man all the Committees on English business. There is no question but that when it comes to matters affecting the greater London area they may also find themselves in some difficulty.
  Bills should be linked because it is a sensible and efficient use of our resources. We are setting an example to local government by showing clearly that we are making the best use of the resources and time that we have in this House. It shows that issues will be debated properly and that there will be Scots voices heard. Scots will deal with money matters as they are affected by the Bill.
  It is clear that the financial aspects of the Bill will be studied carefully as will all the clauses that will be affected by the financial implications of the Bill. We shall see that we get value both in the way we run things in this House and in our use of taxpayers' funds. We shall also ensure that the funds of local authorities will be used wisely and sensibly.
  There are other advantages for Scotland in the money resolution in that we shall be able to link the way we do things in Scotland more closely with the way things are done in England. That must be good for both England and for Scotland. We Scots are often happy to tell everyone how well we do things and how efficient we are. Therefore, there must be considerable value to Scotland from the money resolution. The same can be said of other Bills which have had similar money resolutions — for example, the Trade Union Bills. In the Committees discussing those Bills there has always been a statutory
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  Scot and I have been the statutory Scot on most of them. I was present because of the way that such matters affected Scotland. It is only right that, with regard to the Local Government Bill, there should be a Scottish voice speaking on financial matters.
  I listened to the voices on the Opposition Benches, some of which I could not follow very clearly because I could not see how they related to the various clauses in the Bill. Although I enjoyed the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) who spoke extremely well, and who had a lot of interesting and worthwhile things to say about his constituency, I found it difficult to relate it to the money resolution. Nevertheless, the hon. Member for Carlisle made a valuable contribution. Now, I shall sit down to give the Front Bench the opportunity to reply.
  1.23 am
  The Minister for Local Government (Mr. Michael Howard): I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Carlisle (Mr Martlew) on his unusual—
  Mr. John Home Robertson: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I refrained from rising in the hope that I might be able to hear a maiden speech from the Treasury Bench from my constituent, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton), but if we are to hear another English Minister I am not particularly interested.
  Mr. Howard: I congratulate the hon. Member for Carlisle on his unusual achievement of making his maiden speech on the money resolution of this important Bill. We listened to him with great care and interest. We remember his predecessor with affection and we wish the hon. Gentleman well in the House.
  The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) went through the large number of detailed points that he raised in his characteristically languid fashion. Therefore, it may be that I did not quite make an adequate note of absolutely all of them as he went through them. However, I shall do my best to reply to them. in the time that is now available.
  The hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members approach the matter on the basis of a fundamental misapprehension. They seem to be suggesting that the approach that we have adopted on the Bill as it affects Scotland is in some way novel, but nothing could be further from the truth. There is the most direct precedent in point—the Local Government, Planning and Land Act 1980, which applied competition to local authority building and maintenance direct labour organisations. It is in a real sense the precursor of the Bill, and it applied to all three countries of England, Scotland and Wales. Of course, we accept now, as we did then, that the system of law differs between Scotland on the one hand and England and Wales on the other, but the principles on which the Bill is based, just as the principles on which the 1980 Act was based, apply equally in each country, so to suggest that there is anything remotely novel about the approach that we have adopted in this legislation—
  It being three quarters of an hour after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted Business).
  Question agreed to.
  Resolved,

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  That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Local Government Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

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

  (b) any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other enactment.

  Ministerial Accountability
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Ryder.]
  1.28 am
  Mr. Graham Allen: In my speech, I hope to illustrate much that is inadequate in our parliamentary system. I could not have wished for a more appropriate example than this Adjournment debate. This debate on reforming Parliament to make it more effective in holding Ministers to account begins at the ridiculous hour of 1.30 in the morning, with what is now a handful of insomniac Members of Parliament staying on, while at the other end of the day hon. Members wishing to start work before 9 in the morning cannot even get a cup of coffee.
  I thank the Minister for being here this evening. I do not necessarily believe that it is the best preparation for a day's work in a busy Government Department to be here at 1.30 am. Nor is it a good thing for any hon. Member—myself included—to discuss matters of this sort with a heavy day coming tomorrow. Key decisions will be made tomorrow, and the public would be perfectly justified in asking whether we are all the better for having been up at this hour discussing this, or any other business.
  In addition, several hon. Members will start their work tomorrow, without even the comfort and privilege of an office in the House, almost a month after the election. In my experience, no trade unionist would put up with such conditions; no local authority or councillor would put up with making decisions in such a framework; and certainly no constituency organisation of either party would be prepared to make decisions in such conditions and under such constraints. It is no way to run a business, and no way to run a country or to hold to account those who run it.
  I make no apology for trading on my naivety as a parliamentary new boy—or, perhaps, my objectivity as an outsider—and say that, if we have a parliamentary democracy, parliament is not pulling its weight. Ordinary people in my constituency are staggered when I tell them about the way in which Parliament operates. They expect and deserve better. Even as a rubber stamp, Parliament is stamping so lightly as to be almost illegible. If we care for the ideal of Parliamentary democracy, the Government—this one or the next—one must at some point do the unthinkable in politics and repatriate some power and authority to Parliament. The only alternative—an even wilder flight of fancy—is that hon. Members themselves should wrench back the ability effectively to hold Government to account.
  If I cannot secure the Government's consent to change tonight, at the very least I hope that my parliamentary party will commit itself to a package of reforms that it will enact before the seduction of Government overpowers its will to rebuild our democracy. Philosophically, that is crucial to my party. Crudely, if we are not revolutionary socialists, we must be parliamentary socialists. Hence the need to ensure that Parliament—our chosen means of social transition—is capable of performing the tasks that we wish to set it. By almost any practical test, the Government escape effective scrutiny by our elected representatives. If that is to be remedied, four key areas must be dramatically reshaped as a priority. They are:

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  hon. Member's facilities; Parliament's procedures; public expenditure accountability; and investigative Committees. I shall touch briefly on—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, but the question of the services provided by the House for hon. Members is not a matter for the Minister to answer tonight, nor is it the subject of the hon. Gentleman's debate. I suggest that the last two points that he mentioned might be more appropriate to the debate.
  Mr. Allen: Thank you for your guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall only refer to hon. Members' facilities as they affect their ability to hold Ministers to account. As a new hon. Member, I am staggered by the inadequacy of the facilities and resources that are available to enable them to carry out that task. At the best of times, the scrutiny of Government is a David and Goliath job—yet it is only one of the tasks that we are expected to perform.
  In my experience in local government and trade unions, facilities and staffing were never lavish, but they always measured up to the job that the public or members expected to be done. Congressional casts of thousands are not necessary, but hon. Members should feel no embarrassment at continuing to demand adequate facilities and staffing, both in Parliament and in their constituencies, as of right rather than as half-baked gentlemen's allowances. We should turn the shame back on the Government and their machine which, despite holding all the high cards of secrecy and delay, still exposes its lack of confidence by seeking to debilitate the hon. Members who take their job seriously enough to do it full time.
  Parliamentary procedures are even more of a self-inflicted wound. The fear that has gripped the majority of the electorate in this decade—we might not have much, but it is all that we have—afflicts hon. Members, too. They prefer to retain individual perks and practices rather than risk a strong Parliament.
  Government goes on while the democratically elected Members are safe in the parliamentary playpen, with early-day motions that are never debated, potential laws that are safe from timetabled examination, a daily agenda which is neither discussed by a party caucus nor understandable to the layman, and parliamentary bingo, with questions to Ministers and hon. Member's rights to promote laws as the prizes. Sublime and ridiculous are the hours of work and the holidays which deny the freedom to speak to those whose very duty is to speak up for others.
  My hope is that either the hardened cons—if I may use that word — will organise a breakout from the parliamentary pen, or that hon. Members, fed on a diet of frustration and perhaps a new party discipline, will outgrow the current procedural toys. Nowhere is that more necessary than in the control of public expenditure. Parliament's analysis of the £160 billion of Government spending that is carried out in its name is obscure, complicated and ineffective—a watchdog that yelps at its own flea bites as the burglar passes by with, some might say, the family silver. Essentially, the reporting and debating cycle needs to be unified, the points of parliamentary decision and intervention clarified, and the objectives of any given expenditure formulated and subjected to performance review. To do that, with or
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  without the prompting of the National Audit Office, is surely as essential for parties, in framing their priorities, as it is for hon. Members in keeping their self-respect.
  Once, financial accountability was an unfashionable subject, certainly in my party, but we have learnt that without an understanding of where the money comes from and where it goes our political objectives disconnect from implementation and become mere slogans. The priorities of parliamentary Socialism will be met only by a Parliament and Government that examine, free and redirect finance. In real terms, that means more hospitals or teachers, more homes and carers. I was fortunate as a local government officer to be involved in pioneering the execution of that principle at the Greater London council and, in a more limited sense, within the trade union movement.
  Improved financial scrutiny would be an aid to Parliament and, just as significantly, to the elected part of government— the hon. Members who form the Government but who often lack a working grip on the spending programmes of their Departments. Ninety per cent. of those Department's programmes roll on untouched by, and unknown to, Ministers. The more motivated radical and experienced the Government, the higher is the degree of real financial control exercised, but even this Government, who have lessons to teach my party on all three counts, still rate only as a minority shareholder in the control of departmental expenditure. By de-blinkering MPs and enabling them to examine spending, Ministers would be next for liberation. Parliamentary scrutiny would rightly extend to the unaccountable and the unelected, the ultimate quarry being the senior civil servants who really run the spending machines. That target is a long way down the road, but only at that point will real political control over spending be achieved.
  The final key weakness that I wish to highlight relates to the investigatory Committees of the House. The Select Committees could be the engines for change in the struggle for accountable government. Cynics might say that that is why the Committees are unlikely to be allowed to meet for another three or four months. To be effective, they must be free of Government and shadow Government influence and interference. They need to have a life of their own, an independence that can he guaranteed only by their direct election by hon. Members. They need to be empowered to order the attendance of Ministers and civil servants and to have a review or cooling-off period during which Government Bills could be examined for perhaps one month before they went to a Committee of the whole House.
  Clearly, many other areas could be mentioned and, while I and my party remain committed to the abolition of the House of Lords, it needs to be made clear that our key priority for review must be the effective working of the Commons. A reconstructed and effective Commons would render irrelevant the question of the abolition of the Lords. I have had to skate quickly over some of the issues of Government accountability to Parliament. However, I hope that more considered representations from new Members, Back Benchers and the Procedure Committee will be treated in such a way that the tenure of the Leader of the House will be seen as a period of reform rather than containment.
  The electorate currently regard parliamentary democracy with such apathy that 25 percent. do not register or do not vote. Most of the rest view Parliament with a large

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  degree of cynicism, reinforced by the low-fibre diet of Prime Minister's Question Time. Disillusioned individuals ineffectually represented in a Parliament inadequate to challenge Government, will lead to people pursuing their challenge and finding their voice elsewhere. There is much of which to be proud in our representative democracy, but its continued ossification at parliamentary level may exact a terrible price. With care, we could build a bridge between parliamentary practice and constitutional theory that could reinvigorate our democracy, make for a stronger Parliament and better Government and, in my view and, I hope, in the view of my hon. Friends, lay the foundations for a democratic Socialist society.
  1.43 am
  The Minister of State, Privy Council Office (Mr. Richard Luce): I congratulate the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen) on his success in securing an Adjournment debate so early in his parliamentary career. I suppose I ought to congratulate him too on holding the debate so late at night. I am not sure whether this constitutes a record, but it is certainly an impressive and bold achievement on the part of the hon. Gentleman. He has expressed some very clear views even though he has been in the House only two or three weeks. That does not mean that they should not be treated seriously. However, I should be interested to meet the hon. Gentleman again in a year. I shall not invite him to have another Adjournment debate in the middle of the night, but perhaps we could meet and compare notes and see whether he still retains the strong views that he has expressed.
  I also congratulate the hon. Gentleman on the choice of subject. No one can deny that ministerial accountability to the House is a singularly important issue and that it is healthy that it should be debated regularly. I should tell the House that in the dying months of the last Parliament much parliamentary time was given to this issue. I welcome that. The hon. Gentleman identified a number of facets of this topic and they formed the main thrust of his contribution. I shall reply to some of his points, but if he feels that I have not done justice to all of them I shall write him a letter, with a more extensive reply. He will appreciate that some of the points cover the responsibilities of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, and I can give brief answers on his behalf.
  The principle that Ministers are accountable to Parliament is fundamental to our system of parliamentary democracy and I am happy to have this opportunity to restate, in the early weeks of the new Parliament, the Government's unambiguous commitment to upholding this principle.
  This is a matter on which our policy is plain. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) explained to the House during a debate on 29 October last year, two basic principles govern the relationship between the Executive and Parliament:
  "The first of these is that each Minister is responsible to Parliament for the conduct of his Department and for the actions carried out by his Department in pursuit of Government policies or in the discharge of responsibilities laid upon him as a Minister. He has the duty to explain in Parliament the extent of his powers and duties and to give an account to Parliament of what is done by him in his capacity as a Minister … The second principle is that civil servants,
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  in turn, are responsible to their Ministers for their actions and conduct."—[Official Report, 29 October 1986; Vol. 103, c. 410–11.]
  As I am sure the hon. Gentleman will know, these key principles of the relationship between Ministers and Parliament and the duties and responsibilities of civil servants to Ministers then became the subject of several Select Committee inquiries. These culminated in the reports by the Treasury and Civil Service Committee and the Liaison Committee in December last year. The Government's response to these reports was published in February this year. This dialogue centred on the accountability and answerability of Ministers and civil servants in relation to Select Committees, but in the process of considering this relationship it was necessary to clarify the basic principles of accountability which underpin our Select Committee system.
  The Government's reply, Cm. 78 to which I have just referred, opened by saying:
  "the Government recognises and welcomes the common ground which exists between it and the Committees on the basic principles underlying accountability…With these basic principles agreed, the Government is confident that understandings can be established which will enable the work of Select Committees to be carried on in a way which conforms with those principles and meets the needs both of Parliament and of Government".
  This has been the subject of considerable exchanges between the Government and Parliament over the past few months, and the opening of the new Parliament is a good opportunity to restate that position.
  The hon. Gentleman spoke about public expenditure, which is a singularly important aspect of accountability. This is a matter primarily for my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Treasury, but I am sure hon. Members will agree that there have been several developments in this sector in recent years which have helped improve Parliament's ability to scrutinise and examine public expenditure more effectively. For example, the preamble to the National Audit Act 1983 makes it clear that the purpose of establishing the National Audit Office and changing the status of the Comptroller and Auditor General to make him an Officer of the House was expressly to strengthen parliamentary control and supervision of expenditure of public money. The work of those bodies in support of the Public Accounts Committee has certainly enabled the House to perform this function more effectively.
  Other changes which I believe have strengthened parliamentary accountability in this sector include the improvements to the public expenditure White Paper and the Supply Estimates. These have improved the read-across from the plans set out in the White Paper to the detailed request for supply in the Estimates. Public expenditure is now presented in terms of who plans it, what it is spent on, and by whom.
  We should not forget, too, that Select Committees are able to examine departmental expenditure and many take advantage of this opportunity to a greater or lesser extent. It is, of course, for the Liaison Committee to recommend any specific Estimates to the House for debate following the deliberations of the Departmental Select Committees, and three days are set aside in each Session for this purpose. In addition, Government Departments make much more financial information available now, both to Select Committees, and more generally. All of this enables the House to examine Government expenditure much more rigorously than in the past.
  Mr. Allen: As a newcomer to the House, it appears to me that the Government are not exactly drawn kicking and screaming to change, but they express reluctance and must be heavily pressed on the Procedure Committee or through some other organ of the House. Would it not be helpful for the Government to take the initiative, particularly on the public expenditure reviews and the various documents that come before the House, so that the process could he clarified before the House begins to scream, rather than after?
  Mr. Luce: That is a matter for continuous dialogue between the Government and the Parliament of the day. The hon. Member may recall that after the general election in 1979 the Government were very responsive to the recommendations of the Select Committee on Procedure about the establishment of full blown Departmental Select Committees—if I may describe them as "full blown". I was a member of the Select Committee on Procedure then and I held very strong views about the role of Select Committees. I shall come to that point and respond to his other points about Select Committees.
  This system has now been in operation for eight years and we must now, I think, cease to call it the "new" Select Committee system. I recall what an earlier Leader of the House, Mr. Norman St. John-Stevas, said in the 1979 debate on the motion to set up our current Select Committee system:
  "It has been increasingly felt that the twentieth century Parliament is not effectively supervising the Executive, and that while the power and effectiveness of Whitehall has grown, that of Westminster has diminished.
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  The proposals that the Government are placing before the House are intended to redress the balance of power to enable the House of Commons to do more effectively the job it has been elected to do."—[Official Report, 25 June 1979; Vol. 967, c. 36.]
  I believe that that has indeed been the case. That is a clear sign of the Government's willingness to make changes where that is the clear desire of the House and where that has been clearly and constructively expressed. The quotation from the former Leader of the House is the best possible example of that and shows that the Government have a very open mind on the issue and that we attach great importance to it.
  Both civil servants and Ministers now see appearance before a Select Committee as a basic part of their duties. Select Committees in their turn have proved effective in discharging the role that Parliament has assigned to them of inquiry into the expenditure by the Administration and the policies of Government Departments. Of course, as I have already said, there are opportunities from time to time to debate the Select Committee reports.
  I have tried to answer at least the main points raised by the hon. Member for Nottingham, North in his important speech. I share his concern that we should ensure that the House of Commons is able to fulfil its role as effectively as possible. I am sure that the House will continue to listen with interest to the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps he will change his mind on some of these issues as time passes. If I have not replied fully to all his points, I shall answer more fully by letter.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes to Two o'clock.