Commons Sitting of 22 June 1988

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRAYERS
  NEW WRIT
  For Kensington, in the room of Sir Brandon Meredith Rhys Williams, Baronet, deceased.—[Mr. Waddington.]
Oral Answers to Questions
  ENVIRONMENT

    Development (South-East)
    Mr. McCrindle: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what new steps he is taking to control over-development in the south-east.
    Mr. Chapman: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will issue a new planning circular to give clearer guidance to local planning authorities about applications affecting scale and density in existing residential areas and other associated matters.
    Mr. Dykes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will examine possible reinforcements to the existing planned legislation to reflect over-development of land and buildings in the south-east.
    The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): I issued new planning policy guidance in draft on 15 June, for consultation. It urges authorities to extend the coverage of local plans, particularly in the pressure areas, and gives advice on the use of phasing and density policies for residential development.
    Realistic local plans can introduce much greater certainty into development control. The new guidance stresses that where there is an up-to-date plan, both I and my inspectors will be guided by it in dealing with planning appeals.
    Mr. McCrindle: As no more than token development around most of the towns and cities of the south-east can he tolerated, may I ask whether my right hon. Friend has considered the possibility of revising the idea, prevalent in the 1930s, of developing garden cities, thereby concerntrating development in specific areas of the south-east? In conjunction with the encouragement of further development in areas away from the south-east, would that not, at least in some small way, help to prevent the onset of the concrete jungle?
    Mr. Ridley: I hope soon to agree with SERPLAN future housing need in the south-east. SERPLAN accepts that some extra housing will he needed to house the population of the south-east. My hon. Friend may know that, in response to an appeal about a new town, I made
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    it clear that I saw no objection to new settlements in any part of the country, provided, of course, that they were not in the green belt and were suitable and in accordance with structure plans and other guidance, so I have some sympathy with my hon. Friend.
    Mr. Chapman: I appreciate my right hon. Friend's reply, but does he appreciate that there is a feeling, not confined to local planning authorities, that since circular 22/80 was issued there is a need for clearer guidance, particularly about out-of-scale developments in existing residential areas? Does he further appreciate that if he were to issue a new circular, with clearer guidance, his Department would benefit, because fewer applications would come to him on appeal?
    Mr. Ridley: As I said on 15 June, I have issued a new circular which includes, where appropriate, policy guidance on residential densities in rural villages and suburban areas. I think that that is the answer that my hon. Friend wanted to hear.
    Mr. Simon Hughes: In an effort to reduce overdevelopment in the south-east, will the Secretary of State consider a separate use class for second homes? Does he agree that one of the pressures in London, rural areas and towns is for second homes, which leads to excessive development and therefore the problems of which he is well aware? Moreover, does he further agree that it reduces the number of affordable homes for rent and sale available to local people.
    Mr. Ridley: I agree that there is a growing number of second homes, but many of them are well away from the south-east and in the more attractive holiday regions. I do not think that it would be possible to make a rigid distinction between what is and what is not a second home, because sometimes it involves two homes for a couple who may have split. It would be very difficult to make such a definition, but, as usual, I shall consider the hon. Gentleman's suggestion.
    Mr. Blunkett: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, in the light of the considerable pressure which understandably now exists to protect living standards and the quality of life for people who live in the desirable areas of the south-east, it would be sensible to revise his policies towards investing in, and allowing municipal enterprise to react to, the needs of people in the north of England, so that people are encouraged to move to the north to take advantage of lower-cost housing and increased employment there, including that in the public services?
    Mr. Ridley: It is important to put the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question into perspective. In 1981, 12·6 per cent. of the south-east of England outside Greater London was built up. Even if our projections for future needs are fulfilled by the year 2001, that figure will have risen to only 13·7 per cent., which is a very small percentage of the land area.
    As for the second part of the hon. Gentleman's question, I am sure that he will welcome the establishment of an urban development corporation in Sheffield, which will do just what he seeks. He might like to know that the current rate of investment in the north, in derelict areas and inner cities, is about £3 billion a year.
    Mr. Wiggin: Does my right hon. Friend agree that this storm is blowing not just in the south-east but around

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    many of our big cities and that the complaints arise as much from the rate of development and the lack of infrastructure as from sheer housing numbers? Will he consult his colleagues, particularly those in the Department of Transport, to see whether anything can be done to maintain the quality of life, which is what the argument is really about?
    Mr. Ridley: I agree that there is anxiety about how to find the land needed for the houses which the social changes we are going through require us to find throughout the country, particularly in rural areas in the north and the south. The population has to come to terms with the fact that this is an expansion, not of population, but of the requirements for homes of any set number of people. I also agree that there is anxiety about the infrastructure and road system necessary to support a fast-growing economy which is going through a period of great success. As always, I am happy to talk to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, who, I am sure, shares my view and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin).
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: What guidelines will the Secretary of State be giving to planning authorities in regard to land adjacent to cemeteries owned by Westminster city council, sold for £1 and now worth between £5 million and £10 million? Is that affair not the scandal of the decade? Will the right hon. Gentleman give me an assurance that no deals on planning permission will be done with the current owners of the land that will allow Westminster city council off the hook, when it has clearly been negligent?
    Mr. Ridley: The main point of the hon. Gentleman's question does not arise on this matter, but he knows perfectly well that Westminster city council has carried out an internal review and that the police and fraud squad are involved. It would be quite wrong for me to comment. No planning application in relation to this matter has come anywhere near me.
    Sir Peter Blaker: Does not the shortage of housing in the south of England and the high prices that we are seeing as a result make the problem of controlling inflation, which is relevant to the whole country, more difficult?
    Mr. Ridley: I differ from my right hon. Friend, because I think that the way to control inflation is to keep control of the monetary aggregates. If one price goes up—the price of houses in the south of England is most certainly going up—that does not mean that there is inflation across a whole range of goods and services.
    Mr. Soley: The Secretary of State may like to know that we welcome his willingness to beat a strategic retreat on this matter, but, before he simply caves in to those Conservative Members who are worried about the impact on their boundaries, will he consider the question implied in the comments of his hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Mr. Wiggin), that the real problem in the south-east is the lack of low-cost housing for rent or purchase by local people? What will happen to those local people? When will the Secretary of State come to the House with proposals that will increase the supply of good quality low-cost housing for rent or purchase by people who want to stay in the areas in which they were born and brought up?
    Mr. Ridley: I do not know what the hon. Gentleman means by beating a retreat, but I shall be bringing forward proposals of the sort that he requests before we rise for the summer recess. I shall refer to that at 3.30 pm, or whenever I happen to catch Mr. Speaker's eye in the debate this afternoon.
    Mr. Squire: Regardless of any incentives that may be offered for more investment in the north, is it not a fact that there is a need now for planning for a greater number of households in the south-east? Will my right hon. Friend avoid being stampeded by colleagues who refuse to recognise that self-evident fact?
    Mr. Ridley: I have not changed the basic policy, that in the south-east, as in every other region, we should make provision for as many homes as the best forecasts and estimates that we can obtain suggest will be needed. If those forecasts are wrong, we can adjust as we go along. My hon. Friend is right to say that those forecasts suggest that there will be a need for more house building, including a great deal in London and on the eastern outskirts of London, and some in each of the home counties.

    Council House Sales
    Mr. Haynes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment whether he has any plans to assist council tenants who cannot afford to buy their property under the present discount system to do so.
    Mr. Ridley: I have no such plans at present, but I am always interested in ways of encouraging the spread of home-ownership.
    Mr. Haynes: I shall help the Secretary of State. If he sells all the council houses that are left, where will future generations find houses at prices that they can afford? Why does he not bring forward proposals to help first-time home-buyers to buy their own homes, instead of playing Bingo with people's homes?
    Mr. Ridley: I found the thrusts of that question working almost in opposite directions, but I should tell the hon. Gentleman that there are still 4·5 million council and half a million housing association homes to rent. The more of those that are bought by their owners, the happier I shall be. The hon. Gentleman knows full well that we have major plans for expanding the housing association movement and providing a new social rented class of house for the very people whom he has in mind.
    Mr. Heddle: Instead of playing Housey-Housey with the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes), does my right hon. Friend agree that, beneath the skin of every ardent Marxist, there is someone who would rather own his own home than be a serf of the local authority? Will he therefore continue to pursue his policies to expand home ownership and so enrich the lives and environment of those 1 million council house tenants who have already bought under the right to buy?
    Mr. Ridley: I agree with my hon. Friend. He will know that the Housing Bill includes proposals to limit the effect of the cost floor rule on tenants' discount entitlements, measures to enable tenants to counteract delays by landlords and to speed up sales, and amendments to clarify local authorities' powers to assist tenants to move out of

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    their council houses and to buy homes elsewhere. In addition, the £35,000 cash limit on discount is being reviewed.
    Mr. Madden: Is the Secretary of State aware of the difficulties in Bradford and elsewhere involved in buying or selling Dennis-Wild type houses? Will he intensify his efforts to persuade building societies to give mortgages on this type of property, and will he urgently revise the home improvement grant rules so that money is made available to local authorities and others to carry out the necessary repairs on these homes?
    Mr. Ridley: I prefer to write to the hon. Gentleman about the first matter, about which I cannot be expected to know, not having had notice of it.
    On the second matter, however, I can inform the hon. Gentleman that we intend to reform the home improvement grants legislation in a Bill to be introduced at the first possible opportunity—I hope next Session. It has already been announced that extra money will be made available and that it will be targeted on those who need it most.

    Undeveloped Land (Northern Region)
    Mr. Fallon: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many acres of undeveloped land are registered as being publicly owned by local authorities in the northern region.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. David Trippier): Some 7,450 acres are currently registered.
    Mr. Fallon: There is no point in councils in the north-east sitting on this land and not developing it. Equally, there is no point in my hon. Friend sitting on powers that were taken in 1980 to order councils to dispose of land. How many acres have been disposed of by order of my hon. Friend, and why have not more been disposed of in this way?
    Mr. Trippier: The answer to the latter question is that 2,470 acres have been removed from the register. In Darlington, as a result of action that we have taken using section 99 notices, the local authority has been minded to respond positively, by selling land that would otherwise not come into the private market. The first notice to be served in the whole of the country was served in Darlington, so clearly the system works. I am prepared to accept that we have not gone far enough, and that is why, on 7 March, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced new initiatives in this regard under the "Action for Cities" banner.
    Mr. Frank Cook: Is not part of the answer to the question that the Department will not allow local authorities to make use of moneys that have resulted from the sales of council houses and other properties? Is not any condemnation by Conservative Members simply a move to mislead the electorate on this point?
    Mr. Trippier: The hon. Gentleman is not correct, because local authorities are allowed to spend up to 20 per cent. of their assets on a cumulative basis. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Mr. Fallon) was referring to
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    the problem of local authorities which are becoming known as land hoarders. We are determined to stop that practice.
    Mr. Holt: Would my hon. Friend care to support the campaign for the building of a motorway to the north from the south on the eastern side of the country, to enable sites to be opened? For example, he has announced that one such site, in my constituency, Hemlington Hall farm, is to be disposed of after being held by Middlesbrough council for many years.
    Mr. Trippier: My hon. Friend will understand if I do not join him in a campaign that obviously concerns the responsibilities of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. The notice to which my hon. Friend has referred, which I signed and sent to him, has proved that the system works. However, because there are development problems with some of the land that is under-used or unused, the Teesside development corporation, which operates near to his constituency, will bring back into use a tremendous amount of land that had been under-used.
    Ms. Mowlam: The Minister's statement that local authorities are land hoarders could be substantiated if he would tell the House how many appeals against local authority planning refusals he has received. Will he do so?
    Mr. Trippier: We are talking about ownership of land, not planning. It is a proven fact that local authorities, public bodies and, in certain cases, Government Departments, have been holding on to under-used land. We are talking about bringing that land back into use. Planning is a different matter.

    Graffiti
    Mr. Favell: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what plans Her Majesty's Government have to combat the incidence of graffiti; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Trippier: Under the urban programme, over £500,000 will be spent this year on anti-graffiti and anti-vandalism projects. A further £18 million will be spent on cleaning up buildings in town centres and improving council estates, including graffiti removal. The estate action programme is also helping to combat graffiti on run-down council estates. UK 2000 will be launching a number of anti-graffiti initiatives this year.
    Mr. Favell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend's Department for the work that it is doing to combat a scourge that is sweeping the country. With graffiti on London's tubes and buses costing £2·5 million per annum on Birmingham's buses £2 million per annum, and at an estimated cost to the country of £1·5 billion, which is £23 for every man, woman and child, is it not time that the criminal law took the gloves off to deal with those who spread graffiti? What about banning the sale of aerosol sprays to anyone under the age of 16 years?
    Mr. Trippier: I share my hon. Friend's disgust at those who perpetrate such uncivilised behaviour. I shall draw his suggestion to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. It is essential that I should remind the

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    House that under the Criminal Damage Act 1971 penalties for vandalism include up to 10 years' imprisonment, or an unlimited fine, on conviction on indictment.
    Mr. Ashton: Is the Minister aware that there used to be a rule that, when people bought weed killer, the chemist had to take their names and addresses, and that that drastically reduced the number of poisoners? Will he introduce a similar rule that when people buy a can of spray paint they must give their names and addresses to the auto-parts shop, for example, from which they buy it, so that the police can swiftly chase those in the neighbourhood who have used it for unlawful purposes?
    Mr. Trippier: The hon. Gentleman knows that that is not my responsibility, but I shall happily draw the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary to what he has said.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Will my hon. Friend take more seriously the views that have been expressed by hon. Members on both sides of the House during this short exchange? Does he agree that it is unacceptable that retail outlets are not asked to accept any responsibility for the sale of aerosol sprays? My hon. Friend's Department, with other Government Departments, must seek to obtain the co-operation of the retail sector. Names of purchasers of aerosol sprays should be taken. If any are found guilty of acts of vandalism we should impose a bit of hard labour and get them to remove what they have done to desecrate the community.
    Mr. Trippier: I assure my hon. Friend that the matter is being taken seriously. It is clear from my substantive answer to the question that the Department is doing a great deal. The issues that have been rasied in supplementary questions must be directed to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. I know that there is concern that legislation should act as a deterrent. In my answer to the supplementary question of my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell) I referred to the legislative provisions that are to be found on the statute book. I cannot interfere with sentencing, and I would not wish to do so, but there are legislative provisions that could act as a deterrent.
    Mr. Rees: Despite the amount of money that is spent on eradicating graffiti, the fact is that graffiti is still with us. Will the Minister undertake to go with one of his civil servants to the underpasses at the Elephant and Castle to inspect the graffiti there and then ask himself whether the money that is being spent on the eradication of graffiti could be used in a better way? The underpasses at the Elephant and Castle are indescribable. They are smothered in graffiti, yet nothing is done.
    Mr. Trippier: I have every sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman's argument. It is clear that we must tackle the problem on a number of fronts. I have dealt at some length with one of the cures. We must tackle more carefully the task of carrying the local community with us. A number of the programmes for which we are responsible actively involve local residents in anti-graffiti campaigns. That may be appropriate in this particular instance.

    Central Berkshire Structure Plan
    Mr. Andrew MacKay: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment how many representations he has received relating to his proposed modifications to the central Berkshire structure plan.
    Mr. Trippier: I assume that my hon. Friend intends to refer to the countywide replacement structure plan for Berkshire. My right hon. Friend has received approximately 2,500 representations to his proposed modifications to that plan, together with petitions totalling about 30,000 signatures.
    Mr. MacKay: Has my hon. Friend noted in those representations that every Member representing a Berkshire constituency, every local authority, every parish council and, I suspect, virtually every member of the public, is opposed to the proposed modifications to the structure plan? This is not because they are against any further development in the area, but because they have already experienced the building of many extra houses. Equally, they are not suffering from the NIMBY factor. They wish to protect their environment and to encourage development in the hard-pressed regions.
    Mr. Trippier: My hon. Friend has made those representations before. I assure him that his views and those of all parties will be considered before a final decision is made. It is important that I should emphasise that Berkshire county council's proposals for 41,000 dwellings are not that far removed from the figure of 43,500 dwellings suggested by my right hon. Friend in his proposed modifications.
    Mr. Rooker: Given the fact that the Minister is answering for the Secretary of State for the Environment, I wonder whether he realises that the extra few thousand houses over and above the number already agreed by the county and district councils will be at the bottom of someone else's garden? As the Minister is replying on behalf of the Secretary of State, will he reaffirm that it is still his right hon. Friend's view, as expressed by him at the Dispatch Box, that people should be able to live where they want?
    Mr. Trippier: The House will forgive me if I take some offence, as my right hon. Friend probably takes offence, at the implication of that question, which was less than worthy of the hon. Gentleman. We are aware of the point that he makes.

    Lead-free Petrol
    Mr. Sackville: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what steps are being taken to ensure that motorists are getting enough information about the use of lead-free petrol.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Colin Moynihan): The Department has produced an information pack listing cars that can run on unleaded petrol and the location of petrol stations selling it. I am sending copies to all hon. Members to enable them to respond to inquiries from their constituents. We have grant-aided CLEAR, the Campaign for Lead-Free Air, to increase public awareness and provide a public

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    information service. Many other organisations have a vital role to play, and their work is co-ordinated at regular meetings of the unleaded petrol group, which I chair.
    Mr. Sackville: While welcoming my hon. Friend's statement, may I ask whether he agrees that, given what we now know about the harmful effects of leaded petrol on children's health in particular, the extent to which motorists in the United Kingdom have fallen behind those in other countries in switching to unleaded fuel is as shocking as it is shameful? Much of the blame must also be laid at the door of the oil companies for failing in their responsibilities to the community.
    Mr. Moynihan: My hon. Friend will be aware that, since the price differential announced as a result of the Budget, a major step forward has been taken in terms of consumption. He will be pleased to know that we expect that there will be about 2,000 petrol stations—an additional 900—stocking unleaded petrol by the end of this year. I endorse my hon. Friend's point about the importance of oil companies playing a major part in promoting the use of unleaded petrol. I congratulate in particular Shell and Esso on advertising on television, and all the other companies on taking a very active lead both in the national press and locally.
    Mrs. Ray Michie: Does the Minister agree that there is a classic chicken and egg situation in regard to the sale of unleaded petrol, because petrol companies face increased distribution costs for low sales returns, which are not offset by the lower rate of duty? The Minister has welcomed the action that Shell and other companies have taken, but does he agree that the Government should take an exciting new initiative by mounting a joint campaign with the petrol companies to highlight the benefits of unleaded petrol?
    Mr. Moynihan: As a result of our involvement in CLEAR, we are participating in the information campaign, and I have been travelling around the country promoting the use of unleaded petrol, which I believe is significant in environmental terms. As to consumption patterns, the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) is right to draw attention to the importance of making people aware of the price differential. Of equal importance is referring to one's dealer, to ensure that one's car can either run on leaded petrol without modification or can do so with a minor modification, or whether it is a model that cannot run on unleaded petrol.
    Mr. Ashby: Does my hon. Friend agree that those petrol companies which are making vast profits from having motorway franchises should be made to install more than one unleaded pump at each of their stations —not next month or next year, but tomorrow? They could afford to take that action, and they should be made to do so.
    Mr. Moynihan: There is no doubt that oil companies have an important role to play in ensuring that unleaded petrol is widely available. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that from 1990 all new cars must be manufactured to run on unleaded petrol. That, in turn, will have a major impact on the oil companies' attitudes.
    Ms. Walley: Does the Minister accept that if the Labour party had won the last election we would have had a Ministry for Environmental Protection, which would have meant a comprehensive approach to the problem?
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    Why cannot the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders ensure that car manufacturers make cars that run on lead-free petrol? Why is it not possible to buy a British made and assembled estate car that runs on lead-free petrol? Does the Minister agree that a full programme is needed, that 1,200 outlets are not sufficient, and that more needs to be done by way of public education and information and by manufacturing cars that are environmentally sensitive?
    Mr. Moynihan: A lot more is being done by the Government than was done by any Labour Administration when it comes to the problems associated with vehicle emissions and unleaded petrol, and we shall continue to work energetically towards ensuring that cars can run on unleaded petrol and that every hon. Member can promote the use of unleaded petrol in his constituency. However, I regret that too few are promoting unleaded petrol through their constituency organisations and the local press. I hope that the letter that I have written to every hon. Member will assist in that direction.
    Mr. John Browne: Does my hon. Friend accept that, in addition to advertising the availability of unleaded petrol, his Department could contribute a great deal by emphasising to people, particularly through television, the ease and cheapness of converting some 7 million of the 18 million cars on the road to unleaded petrol?
    Mr. Moynihan: I agree that we should continue with the active promotion of that sort of information, in which we are already fully engaged.
    Mr. Allan Roberts: The only acceptable thing that the Minister has said is that he has been going up and down the country. That is true. But the Government's response to the problem is woefully inadequate. The Government are responsible for the fact that unleaded petrol is not readily available in Britain, unlike in other Western European countries. Is the Minister aware that the Motor Agents Association accurately estimates that any motorist converting his car to take lead free petrol at a low cost of £20 would take over 18 months to recoup that with the 5p a gallon concession that was introduced in the Budget? Is the Minister further aware that there would be no need to design new engines or adjust existing ones if the oil industry were to provide unleaded petrol of the quality needed by most cars—four star, premium grade, 97 octane? That has been available in the United States for years, but not a drop has been sold in the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Moynihan: It is clear that the hon. Gentleman has not been going up and down the country, because many garages are offering free conversion to motorists. The cost of converting many vehicles is well under £20 and, in some cases, is free.
    Mr. Rowe: Since my part of the country is rapidly becoming a rally circuit for lorries, can my hon. Friend give us any encouragement about pollution from diesel lorries?
    Mr. Moynihan: Pollutants from diesels are already low. Nevertheless, it is important for further work to be done on diesel particulate traps as well as looking at advanced diesel engine design. I hope that my hon. Friend will share

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    with me the belief that there are many exciting new possibilities in this technology which will lower the incidence of pollutants from diesel engines.

    Freeholds
    Mr. Pike: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he has any plans to facilitate the purchase by leaseholders of flats of the freehold of their property.
    Mr. Ridley: The Government have no plans to give leaseholders of flats a right individually to buy the freehold. The Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 gives most leaseholders of flats rights of collective purchase in certain circumstances.
    Mr. Pike: Since the Labour Government gave householders the right to buy their freeholds many years ago, is it not now time that the right was extended to people who live in flats to buy the freeholds of their properties in exactly the same way?
    Mr. Ridley: The Labour Government at that time did not give the right to leaseholders to buy flats, partly, I think, because they did not think it was desirable, but, secondly, because the freehold of the individual flat is not a satisfactory form of tenure under English property law as it now stands. The Law Commission has produced a report on commonhold, which proposes a statutory framework within which it would be satisfactory to own individual flats freehold. The report made no recommendation about compulsory conversion, but the Lord Chancellor has asked the Law Commission to prepare legislation to bring in a system of commonhold.
    Sir George Young: What information has my right hon. Friend about the rights that were given to leaseholders under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 to buy their property when it changed hands? Are those rights being used?
    Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend is of course right to say that the 1987 Act gives leaseholders the right to collective rather than individual purchase in certain circumstances. I have no information on the extent to which it is being used so soon after the passage of the Act.

    Water Pollution
    Mr. John Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make it his policy to review existing arrangements for the monitoring of water pollution; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Moynihan: Arrangements for the monitoring of water pollution will be improved through the Water Privatisation Bill, which will allow for the establishment of a National Rivers Authority
    Mr. Evans: In the light of recent studies suggesting a link between Alzheimer's disease and aluminium in drinking water, is the Minister not concerned that nine of the North West water authority regions are still supplying drinking water with limits in excess of those prescribed by the EC, when three years ago his predecessor informed the House that action was being taken to reduce the aluminium content? Why has nothing changed?
    Mr. Moynihan: The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that we are taking seriously the specific study that
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    has recently been published, and that we shall evaluate it in full when the report is available, probably later this year. I hope that I can allay the hon. Gentleman's concern about aluminium by pointing out that over 90 per cent. of the daily intake of aluminium comes from food, even when the water contains the maximum concentration allowed by the EC water directive.
    Mr. Jack: In drawing up his future legislative thoughts, will my hon. Friend take into accout the delays in the implementation of the EC directive on bathing water quality, and the considerable scepticism felt by my constituents in the Ribble area about the North West water authority's proposals to reduce pollution levels in the Ribble estuary?
    Mr. Moynihan: The majority of bathing waters in the United Kingdom already meet the requirements of the European Community directive on bathing waters, and some £70 million a year is being spent on improving the rest. spent on improving the rest. I assure my hon. Friend that we are assessing the implications of bringing all the remaining waters up to standard by 1995, and we have written to all the water authorities requesting detailed plans for each and every bathing water area.
    Mr. Hardy: Is the Minister assuring the House that after privatisation and the establishment of the National Rivers Authority adequate priority will be given, not merely to the monitoring of river and other water pollution, but to action by means of investment to ensure that those of our industrial area rivers that are open sewers will be improved, and that the rapidly deteriorating rivers of rural Britain, poisoned as they are by farms, will be brought back to health?
    Mr. Moynihan: Yes, Sir.
    Sir Anthony Grant: Is it not a fact that the standard of water in this country is among the highest in the world? Will my hon. Friend and his colleagues make it clear that some of the hysteria put out by various groups merely to worry hypochondriacs is sheer nonsense and should be countered?
    Mr. Moynihan: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Ninety per cent. of the rivers and estuaries in England and Wales are of good to fair quality, compared with 75 per cent. of the rivers and 85 per cent. of the estuaries in the European Community as a whole. There are now more than 100 species of fish in the Thames, which is the cleanest metropolitan estuary in the world.
    Mr. O'Brien: Is the Minister aware that the minutes of the meeting held by the Water Authorities Association on 18 May record growing concern over the link between aluminium in water and Alzheimer's disease? Does he not share our view that something should be done now, in accordance with the wishes of the association, to reduce the amount of aluminium in water? Will he take action and make available to the House as soon as is practicable the report from the University of Southampton, which is dealing with this issue? We ask for immediate action, not delay until the privatisation of water.
    Mr. Moynihan: I have made it clear to the House that when the full report on the study is available it will be assessed by medical experts. In the meantime, we have consulted our medical advisers, who consider that too

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    much weight should not be placed on the results of any single study. One should bear in mind that the European water directive, setting the maximum permissible concentration of aluminium at 200 microgrammes per litre, was based on the appearance of water, not on health grounds.

    National Rivers Authority
    Mr. Wolfson:To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what further progress has been made in setting up a National Rivers Authority.
    Mr. Ridley: I welcome the appointment of my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Crickhowell as chairman of the National Rivers Authority advisory committee. This committee will advise on the outline schemes of organisation that have now been submitted by all water authorities for the restructuring needed to form a separate NRA unit in their areas.
    Mr. Wolfson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the argument between the water authorities and the Government over the establishment of a national authority centres on river basin management? How does he plan to overcome that difficulty?
    Mr. Ridley: I had not realised that that discussion was continuing, although there was such a concern when I first announced the establishment of the NRA as part of the Government's plans. It is clear that the NRA will be able to control the flow and management of the River basin, and it will be given sufficient powers and money to do that work.
    Mr. Janner: Will the right hon. Gentleman refer to the committee the constant complaints that are made about the state of the River Soar, which passes through my constituency and which gets clogged up with weeds? Complaints emanate from fishermen and rowers. I am the vice-president of the Leicester rowing club,. Will the Secretary of State ensure that action is now taken?
    Mr. Ridley: As vice-president of the Leicester rowing club, the hon. and learned Gentleman obviously has a sore point here. When the National Rivers Authority is in being, following the passing of the relevant Act, I shall make sure that the hon. and learned Gentleman's remarks are drawn immediately to the attention of the chairman, who, I am sure, will wish to make it a top priority to clean up his river.
    Mr. John M. Taylor: Although good progress has been made with cleaning up our rivers, will my right hon. Friend commend to the NRA the important need to improve the Rivers Cole and Blythe in the Severn Trent region?
    Mr. Ridley: Three rivers that need improvement have now been mentioned to me. I agree with hon. Members who have expressed the view that we should be doing more to improve the quality of our rivers. The new NRA, which will be responsible for the water environment and will have the necessary powers and resources to carry out those duties, will lead to an improvement.
    Mr. Boyes: Why is the Minister for Environment, Countryside and Water in the other place, writing on behalf of the Department of the Environment to the water industry trade unions, refusing to meet those unions at a
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    time when the Government are making expensive appointments and arrangements for the NRA? How can the Secretary of State justify that offhand treatment of trade unions? Would it not be eminently more sensible for future good working relationships to keep the trade unions informed and consulted at all stages?
    Mr. Ridley: I shall make sure that the unions are consulted, when it is appropriate, on matters that are appropriate to consult them about. I imagine that the instance to which the hon. Gentleman refers may not be in that category.

    Green Belt (Planning Appeals)
    Mr. Cryer: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement on the criteria applied in appeals for planning consent for building in green belt areas.
    Mr. Ridley: Planning policy on development in green belts is set out in planning policy guidance note No. 2, copies of which are in the Library. Inside a green belt planning permission should not be given, except in very special circumstances, for the construction of new buildings or for the change of use of existing building other than for agriculture and forestry, outdoor sport, cemeteries, institutions standing in extensive grounds, and other uses appropriate to a rural area.
    Mr. Cryer: Will the Secretary of State assure the House that he will apply those criteria to the area around his own house? Will he also apply them to land owned by such bodies as area health authorities, which frequently own the land around hospitals for the mentally handicapped? Will he use those criteria to make sure that hospitals, such as Westwood hospital in my constituency, are retained for the benefit of the people who live there in rolling acres, so that the land is not sold off for profitable development, but is retained for people who need as much help as they can get?
    Mr. Ridley: I have anticipated the hon. Gentleman, because a circular issued deals precisely with the point of redundant National Health Service hospitals in the green belt and more or less follows the same advice as the main circular. Of course, I cannot comment on any specific planning application as the hon. Gentleman suggested I should.
    Mr. Steen: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the draft circular confirms that the green belt should not be eaten into? Will he also confirm that it is a draft circular and that green fields should not be built on if there is vacant derelict land in public ownership that could be built on first? Once the housing allocation in the local plan has been used up for the five-year period, will he confirm that planning inspectors will be told to refuse applications if the number of houses proposed is greater than the number scheduled in the local plan?
    Mr. Ridley: The circular about which I spoke in response to the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) deals with the green belt. It is not a draft circular and has not been changed for many decades. My hon. Friend asks about the draft circular on local plans. As I said earlier, I confirm that where a local plan is up to date and formal my inspectors and I would be very likely to

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    adhere to what is in that plan on appeal, even if the plan had no further room for development because all space had been used up.
    Mr. Rooker: Does the Secretary of State notice how the interchange of green belt and green fields comes from his hon. Friends? Not every green field is green belt, and that point must be continually reinforced. If we had never built on a green field, no one would ever have had a home.
    Mr. Ridley: I strongly agree with the hon. Gentleman. It is imperative for people to understand the difference between any green field and land that is in the statutory green belt. It is the latter that causes people great concern, and I have solidly adhered to the view that it should never be built on except for the reasons that I gave in answer to the hon. Member for Bradford, South.

    Disabled People (Sport)
    Mrs. Virginia Bottomley: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment when he expects to conclude his review of sport for the disabled; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Moynihan: My review of sport for people with disabilities was launched in February and should be completed early in 1989. We shall be looking at how best to enhance the opportunities for those with disabilities to participate in sport from local to international level. With the paralympics taking place in Seoul in the autumn, it is time that newspapers began to report the achievements of our disabled athletes on the sports pages, not the news pages.
    Mrs. Bottomley: I welcome my hon. Friend's answer. Is he aware that there is great respect for his commitment to promoting sports for the disabled? We have many disabled sportsmen and sportswomen of great distinction and their interests are best served by focusing on their sporting ability rather than on their physical disability.
    Mr. Moynihan: I entirely endorse my hon. Friend's point.
    Mr. Menzies Campbell: In the light of the Minister's justified recognition of the value to disabled sportsmen of international competition, may we take it that in any proposals to hold international competition for the disabled in the United Kingdom the Minister will do his best to ensure that adequate funds are available?
    Mr. Moynihan: The hon. and learned Member knows well that the Sports Council decides on its priorities, irrespective of Government comment. He will also know that the intention of this review is to highlight the importance of such international events. I hope that that will encourage the Sports Council to look more favourably upon providing adequate financial support for these very important international meetings about which the hon. and learned Gentleman speaks.
    Mr. Colvin: Is the Minister aware that one sport in which this country excels is rifle shooting? Will he have words with our right hon. Friend the Home Secretary about the retention of the self-loading rifle with integral magazine—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The question is about disabled people.
    Mr. Colvin: Yes, Mr. Speaker. The self-loading rifle with integral magazine for five rounds is the rifle most frequently used by disabled people.
    Mr. Moynihan: My hon. Friend has asked me to refer the matter to the Home Secretary and I shall, of course, do so.
    Mr. Denis Howell: The Minister made a statement yesterday to the Central Council of Physical Recreation that he intends to privatise the management services of local authority sports centres and swimming baths, but he quite rightly expects provision to be made for the disabled and unemployed. How does he expect local authorities to do that when most of them are already rate capped or cash limited and he intends to impose upon them responsibility for meeting all the loan charges, maintenance costs and central services for sports facilities which they no longer control and which are being run by private enterprise for profit?
    Mr. Moynihan: I have made this point four or five times in the right hon. Gentleman's presence. The Government did not announce yesterday that they intend to privatise management services. I made it very clear that the Government are considering whether to put out to competitive tendering the management contracts for local authority sports and recreation facilities.
    Mr. Bowis: Will my hon. Friend discuss with local education authorities how the welcome practice of making facilities in schools—especially swimming pools—available to the public can be extended to provide access for the disabled so that they, too may benefit from that increasing dual use?
    Mr. Moynihan: I shall, and that issue has already been given full consideration by the review group.

    Homelessness
    Mr. Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what are the latest figures for homelessness in England and Wales.
    Mr. Roy Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what action he proposes to take to reduce the level of homelessness.
    Mr. Ridley: In the first quarter of 1988 local authorities in England secured accommodation for 31,070 households accepted as homeless under part III of the Housing Act 1985.
    The primary responsibility for accommodating the homeless rests with local authorities. Our first concern is to encourage them to make the best use of their existing stock by getting the large number of empty council properties back into use to reduce the social and financial burden of bed-and-breakfast accommodation. To that end we have allocated over £74 million additional resources since last December, targeted on authorities with the greatest homelessness pressures. The measures in the current Housing Bill should also widen the choice and supply of accommodation for those with lower incomes, by providing a more flexible social rented sector.
    I am not responsible for Wales.
    Mr. Cohen: Is not the allocation that the Minister has announced a pathetic pittance when set against the extent

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    of homelessness, which the Housing Bill will make worse? Does not that allocation come from the £141 million underspend of local authorities last year? What is the Minister doing with the rest of that underspend? Is he giving it to the rich to help them with their mansions, or to the Prime Minister to leave her property in Dulwich empty?
    Mr. Ridley: I am surprised to hear that the hon. Gentleman thinks that £74 million is a pathetic pittance. I think that he has got his adjectives wrong. He may like to know that the London borough of Waltham Forest at the moment has 83 houses available for letting and 308 houses empty and being repaired, while the number of homeless households is only 235. The number of available houses is almost double the number of homeless households. That is the problem; it is not to do with more money.
    Mr. Roy Hughes: I remind the Secretary of State that 1987 was the United Nations international year of shelter for the homeless. Does he realise that the Government's contribution was in inverse proportion to that effort to the extent that homelessness in this country has simply
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    rocketed, not least in my constituency of Newport, East? Even at this late stage, will the Secretary of State give top priority to this great social evil, by releasing the moneys that are held after the sale of council houses?
    Mr. Ridley: Yes, the hon. Gentleman is right. Last year was the international year of shelter for the homeless. However, figures relating to his own town might interest him. I understand that in his town of Newport 130 houses are available for letting but are empty, and that the number of households accepted as homeless is 68—so there is no problem.
    Mr. Latham: Is my right hon. Friend aware that absolutely nothing is done for the homeless or for the Housing Bill, which he mentioned a moment ago, if the deplorable practice of gazumping continues? Will he please call in the builders' leaders forthwith and tell them that it must stop?
    Mr. Ridley: All hon. Members dislike gazumping, wherever it takes place. However, no schemes have found widespread support as methods of bringing gazumping to an end.

KP Foods
3.30 pm
Mrs. Alice Mahon: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House, under Standing Order No. 20, for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the refusal by KP Foods to sell its Halifax factory as a going concern to the only buyer, leading to the loss of 1,000 jobs."
The matter is urgent and specific because yesterday KP Foods, the owner of the Halifax factory, which is to close with the loss of 950 jobs, refused to sell the factory to the only buyer who has made an offer that can save the jobs. The buyer is a man of great experience in biscuit making and has more than enough capital to purchase the factory. His proposals for production on the site are for different markets from the products of United Biscuits (Holdings) plc. KP Foods has refused to sell on the basis that it, and only it, understands the biscuit industry. Although the factory is profitable, KP Foods claims that it is not profitable enough for its purposes. It further claims that nothing other than closure is practical. The truth is that KP Foods does not want to face any competition.
I ask the Government why, in their enterprise culture, only some entrepreneurs are allowed to take risks. If a genuine business man, who has the backing of the unions and the work force, is prepared to take risks, why will KP Foods not sell and allow the factory to be saved? Is the truth that Sir Hector Laing is afraid of competition, and that he does not really give a damn about the job losses and the hardship that his commercial decision will cause to thousands of my constituents? The factory is in an area of high unemployment and some deprivation.
Last year Sir Hector Laing was instrumental in using his position as a leading supporter of the Government and in donating £100,000 to the Tory party. I suggest that he should make not only that money, but a great proportion of the £36 million profit that he made last year available to the work force, from whom he has removed the last shred of hope. I repeat my earlier call for his resignation as chairman of Business in the Community. Halifax expects and deserves a more honourable person to head that project. I urge that this issue be debated.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) asks leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a specific and important matter that she believes should have urgent consideration, namely,
"the refusal by KP Foods to sell its Halifax factory as a going concern to the only buyer, leading to the loss of 1,000 jobs."
I have listened with concern to what the hon. Lady has said, but I regret that I do not consider the matter that she has raised as appropriate for discussion under Standing Order No. 20 and I cannot, therefore, submit her application to the House. However, I hope that she will find other ways of raising the matter in the Chamber.

Questions to Ministers
3.33 pm
Mr. Clive Soley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. My point arises from the admissibility of questions. Today there are on the Order Paper questions to the Secretary of State for the Environment about empty
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properties in the private sector. In the past there have been questions about the empty properties of housing associations and local authorities. To my certain knowledge, two questions about the number of Government-owned empty properties—the Government have a far greater percentage of empty properties than has any other sector, including local authorities, which have the lowest percentage—were transferred to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. There must be a way of getting the Secretary of State for the Environment to answer questions about those empty properties, particularly when the Government are responsible for a far higher percentage of them than anybody else.
Mr. Speaker: I have no knowledge of that. As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am not responsible for the transfer of questions, but I am sure that what he has said has been noted by the Government Front Bench.

VAT (European Court Decision)
3.34 pm
Mr. Bob Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You will recall that yesterday the Minister made a statement on the European court decision on VAT, during which he said that several hon. Members, including myself, had voted in favour of the sixth VAT directive when it was brought before the House in 1976. Under Standing Order No. 127 the Select Committee on European Legislation has a duty to report to the House on matters which, in its opinion, need to be debated. It did so on that occasion and, as is usual in the House, a "take note" motion was tabled. That was not, and has never been, regarded as a motion in favour of any issue before the House. It was a motion.
During that debate several hon. Members, including the then Select Committee Chairman, Sir John Eden, called for further debate because the House was considering a draft directive and many changes were to be made at the appropriate Council of Ministers' meeting. Subsequently, there were calls for further debates because of the massive changes, but the matter was never subsequently debated in the House. Therefore, no Minister can possibly claim that hon. Members voted at any time in favour of that draft directive.
Mr. Speaker: We cannot continue this debate, which arises from questions yesterday. I have listened to what the hon. Gentleman said, and he has made his point.
Mr. Nigel Spearing rose—
Mr. Speaker: No. The matter does not arise today. We dealt with it yesterday.
Mr. Spearing: Further to that point of order—
Mr. Speaker: Is it a point of order for me?
Mr. Spearing: Yes, Sir. I give you notice that, arising from the Minister's statement yesterday on the decision of the House on the sixth VAT directive, I am looking into the records relating to the decision—when it took place and during which debate. Later I may be able to raise on a point of order the definitive decision of the House.
Mr. Speaker: I note what the hon. Member said.
Mr. Tony Marlow: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order. We dealt with this matter yesterday and the hon. Member must not seek to continue what went on then. These matters are not for me.

Citizens' Compensation Rights
3.37 pm
Mr. Jack Ashley: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to enable all citizens harmed by the actions and products of others to be entitled to fair and prompt compensation at reasonable cost.
The Bill will revolutionise compensation for personal injury and will help to prevent discrimination against injured individuals. It will provide fair and reasonable guidelines, ensure speedier settlements and guarantee equitable and realistic payments. As an added bonus, it will reduce legal wrangling and cut lawyers' bills.
The natural parent of the Bill is the Opren saga. Any change in the law cannot now help people damaged by Opren, but the least the House can do is to avert similar legal disasters occurring—even if it cannot prevent medical disasters.
In August 1982 Opren was withdrawn from the British market. It had been on sale in Britain for just over two years, and there had been a record 3,963 adverse reaction reports, including 83 deaths. The manufacturers, Eli Lilly, stubbornly rejected calls for a reasonable compensation scheme for those who were severely injured by their defective product. It took a five-year legal battle and a rescue operation by Mr. Geoffrey Bradman before a settlement was announced.
It was a miserly settlement, which was widely resented and accepted only under duress of fear of the consequences of refusal. The settlement gave less to 1,350 British Opren sufferers together than the company paid to one American victim. Elderly British men and women who had become refugees from sunlight and prisoners in their own homes after taking Opren were offered an average of just £2,000, compared with a jury award of $6 million to one American.
The imposed settlement made no sense compared with the American outcome. In our country, as an award for crippling injury, it compared grotesquely with libel awards of hundreds of thousands for injured reputations. The settlement shamed the wealthy, multinational company, but it also discredited the British legal system, which lent itself readily to exploitation.
Some people believe that these derisory awards resulted from a legal miscalculation. It is worth noting that a second legal opinion recommended far higher awards. Others believe that the reason for the small settlement was the British habit of relying on precedent. When a case is decided on the basis of an earlier unjust one, it perpetuates gross injustice. Whatever the cause, Parliament should take remedial action. If it does, never again will a foreign company be able to exploit British law so avidly, denying our people even a fraction of the huge payments it gave so readily to its own people.
A major failing of our compensation system is the legal under-estimation of pain, suffering and a restricted life. The Opren offers were derisory, partly because they were for elderly retired people who did not require large payments for loss of earnings. With most Opren damage, no large payments were necessary for additional costs, such as nursing care. But that did not mean that there was no suffering. A serious omission was that there was no fair

1129
payment, as there should have been, for the loss of freedom to walk and sit in the sun or for the loss of comfort and freedom from pain.
My Bill would establish a compensation advisory board which would propose a new basis for personal injury compensation. The Bill is an important part of the Citizens Action Campaign, presided over by Lord Scarman. It seeks to overcome all the unjustified obstacles facing an unfortunate victim suffering from personal injury. The members of the compensation board would be appointed by the Lord Chancellor and would include people with a wide range of specified experience. It would have two years to prepare recommendations for compensation levels appropriate to different kinds of injury and suffering. From time to time it would review its recommendations, and revise them where appropriate. It would make annual reports to the Lord Chancellor. The board would be an advisory one, but it would become an authoritative and influential body and its views would be respected and acted upon. It would replace precedent and the views of a single judge with the views of a balanced and representative body looking carefully at compensation problems. I believe that it would be welcomed by judges and the legal profession generally.
The Bill backs the small guy against the big. It seeks to take account of suffering and to help people when they are most vulnerable. It will bring about a much needed reassessment of our legal values. It is very badly needed.
In conclusion, the triumph of the thalidomide children brought high hopes for justice for the future. That was more than a decade ago. The Pearson commission was appointed, and eventually reported in a blaze of publicity, but successive Governments have been indifferent to its recommendations. The arguments and even the issues highlighted in that report have been neglected. One of the tragic results of that has been the Opren scandal. It is time now for the House to ensure progress towards fairness and justice, and the Bill is a major step in that direction. I commend it to the House.

CITIZENS' COMPENSATION RIGHTS
Mr. Jack Ashley, supported by Dr. Michael Clark, Mr. Frank Cook, Mr. Frank Haynes, Mr. Simon Hughes, Mr. Alfred Morris and Mr. Roger Sims, presented a Bill to enable all citizens harmed by the actions and products of others to be entitled to fair and prompt compensation at reasonable cost: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 8 July, and to be printed. [Bill 181.]

ESTIMATES
Resolved,
That this House agrees with the Report [16th June] of the Liaison Committee.—[Mr. Peter Lloyd.]

Opposition Day
[I4TH ALLOTTED DAY]
Opposition Day

  Housing and Planning Policies
  3.47 pm
  Mr. Clive Soley: I beg to move,
  That this House deplores the failure of the Government to develop regional economic and planning policies, which would give adequate support to local authorities trying to contain unrestrained development in the South East and to deal with the effects of under-investment in the social and economic infrastructure throughout the country, and which would address the growing crisis of house price inflation and the shortage of low cost housing for rent or sale.
  Mr. Speaker: I must announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister. I must also tell hon. Members that no fewer than 15 hon. Members have indicated that they wish to take part in the debate. It is only a half-day debate, so I appeal for brevity from both the Front and Back Benches.
  Mr. Soley: From time to time Governments get into difficulties in the timetabling of their affairs and with aspects of their policy. It is a long time since a Government have been in such a mess on the timetabling of their Bills and on their policies, particularly as they affect the south-east of Britain. The motion addresses the Government's failure in that respect.
  The Government have tabled an amendment to the motion which is complacent and naive, but at least they have suddenly discovered the word, "homelessness", a word that did not appear in the Government's White Paper when it was issued last year. Now they have suddenly realised that it is a problem, and it has been growing at a dramatic rate since the Government took office.
  When I was first elected in 1979, in my local authority 4,000 people were on the council waiting list, mainly waiting to move from the private sector, or waiting to change housing within the public sector. I thought that that figure was poor then. There are now 10,000 people on that waiting list, about 700 in bed and breakfast or emergency accommodation. That has been true under successive Conservative and Labour Administrations.
  The same is true of local Conservative, Labour and Liberal authorities throughout the country—so much so that when the Minister went to Southend some months ago and told its Conservative-controlled council that it ought to do more to get people out of bed-and-breakfast accommodation, the council told her that it was already doing everything possible. It was using all the initiatives that the Government had brought forward, but still it could not cope with the growing problem of homelessness in its area.
  The finger points directly and dramatically at the Government for increasing homelessness, for house price inflation and for the collapse of the supply of low-cost rented accommodation. All that is compounded by the Government's blindness towards economic policies, which are distorting the economy, particularly as between the north and the south, but also within regions. We see it happening in parts of London. In addition, planning policies have been devastated.

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  We have seen today a headline in the Evening Standard which says that the Minister intends to introduce a new planning Bill, and we heard from the Secretary of State during Question Time that he is to review planning. That would be encouraging if we forgot for a moment that the previous Secretary of State for the Environment—the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine)—and the present Secretary of State set about devastating the structure of local government and the morale of local authority officers, not least planning officers.
  We all remember the phrases which the Government and the Secretary of State used after being returned to office in 1979—there was to be a bonfire of planning controls. They had that bonfire. They now have the ashes in the south-east. That is why so many Conservative Members are angry about what is happening in their areas.
  The Government have ignored the close but complicated link between economic development, infrastructure, planning and housing. Any attempt to separate them and to have individual policies which ignore their effect on other sectors is doomed to failure. Perhaps the biggest failure is the Government's failure on the economy. They chose to pull the plug on the industrial base in the north of Britain when we were awash with North sea oil. Instead of using that new-found wealth to create the new industries that we needed in the north, they simply let the old ones die. They pumped North sea oil wealth into the south, where it created a great deal of wealth, and left the north to pick up the pieces.
  In those circumstances, there will necessarily be acute overheating in the economy in the south-east and a problem in the north. Despite complacent Government statements from time to time about wealth filtering up to the north, it is still having only a marginal effect. We remember the former Secretary of State for Employment —the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit)— telling people to get "on yer bike." That was a surefire way of saying, "If you cannot find jobs in the north, go south."
  We now have what is called the Tebbit express. It is the train that runs from Liverpool to London, bringing people to work in the capital. They have to return home in the evening. Building workers may, with the permission of the developer, stay in Portakabins on the building site. That is increasingly common, and it is the only way in which employees can find temporary accommodation and the employer can find employees. When people look for accommodation, they cannot find any at prices that they can afford. There is an acute problem with low-cost rented accommodation in both the private and the public sector.
  Mr. Edward Leith: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Soley: I shall, but I am bearing in mind Mr. Speaker's comments on the need for brevity.
  Mr. Leigh: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point about the difficulties of unemployed people from the north in coming south and finding jobs because of the cost of housing in the south. Does he accept that one of the best ways to rectify the situation would be to make more rented accommodation available in the south, and that one of the easiest ways of doing that is to free the private rented sector and release future tenancies from rent control?
  Mr. Soley: The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong in his last point, with which I intended to deal later.
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  However, I shall pre-empt my remarks by pointing out that, in a Department of the Environment survey, only 2·5 per cent. of landlords with empty properties said that they kept those properties empty because of the Rent Acts. The vast majority of people who own private property keep it empty either because it is not fit for letting or, more commonly, because it is much more financially beneficial to sell it.
  If the hon. Gentleman studies the history of this matter, he will see that when the Rent Acts were last relaxed, in 1957, there was a dramatic loss of private rented accommodation. When the Government reduced controls in 1980, there was another dramatic decrease in the supply of private rented accommodation. At present, in London, well over half the properties available for rent in the private sector are already outside the Rent Acts. yet the supply of privately owned rented accommodation is drying up more rapidly than ever before. The hon. Gentleman must ask himself how much longer his party will continue to believe the myth that if one takes away rent controls and security of tenure millions of landlords will come on the scene and offer properties for rent. They will not do that.
  One simply needs to work out the economics of the matter. If a house is valued at £100,000, the owner can sell it, put the money in a building society and earn £200 a week in interest without any of the hassle of being a landlord. What sort of rent would that person charge under market rents? One does not need to be too bright to work that one out. The hon. Gentleman must think more carefully before he becomes involved in that rather simplistic argument.
  I wish to deal now with the question of infrastructure. Although the Government have allowed the economy in the south-east to overheat, they have also constrained investment in the economic infrastructure, particularly by the public sector, not only in the south-east, but throughout the country. The right hon. Member for Henley, who is going around the country complaining about the new developments, must accept some of the blame, because he approved many of those developments; for example, the 8,000 homes in Berkshire and his own area.
  While that building is taking place, rail, road and other facilities are not being put in place to enable the economy of the south-east to respond to the development. The absurd traffic jams on the M25 therefore develop and the British Rail network, which should carry more goods and passengers, is unable to do so because the Government deliberately chose not to invest in the modernisation of British Rail to the degree that they should have done. Similarly, they chose not to invest in London Underground and London Transport, believing that people could get into their little metal boxes on four wheels and drive around the south-east without any environmental consequences whatsoever. Of course, that is simplistic and dangerous nonsense.
  In addition, we have the bonfire of controls in development. Successive Secretaries of State have allowed office development along the London-Bristol corridor and have not thought through the consequences both for housing in those areas and for the strain on the economic infrastructure.
  The right hon. Member for Henley says that the Government should be doing more to push employment up north by diverting some Government Departments up

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  north, but he conveniently forgets that he cancelled one of the last acts of the last Labour Government to move the Property Services Agency to Middlesbrough. It is still down here. Such action damages the economy of the north and, in the long run, undermines the economy of the south because it overheats in the way that I have described.
  Perhaps the most damaging act of all is the subtle one of the constant attacks by the Government on local government officers. It is almost as though someone who works as a planner—an honourable and proper profession supported by the Royal Town Planning Institute—is in some way a parasite on the economy. Public officers are regarded as a burden on the economy, instead of being part of the economy, as part of what is necessary to run a modern, effective, efficient and technological economy. If we do not recognise that the public sector has an important role to play and we undermine it, we cannot be anything other than surprised if we find public officers demoralised and on the offensive when the Government let the juggernaut of the free market run over them and everyone else.
  At Question Time today we heard the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment say that local authorities should use all the derelict land that they have, but no less than 62 per cent. of derelict land is in the private sector. We do not hear the Government attacking the private sector and undermining its morale in the way that they attack local authorities. We hear only the attacks on the public sector, as though it can be dispensed with because it is not necessary.
  In recent months, something interesting has happened. Back-Bench Conservatives have become worried about these nice rural new towns that will be set up around their constituencies. That worry was beautifully exemplified by the hon. and learned Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) when he wrote a letter, released to the press, which said in effect, "You cannot allow all these new houses here. If you do that Mid-Staffordshire will become a Labour council in perpetuity and my majority might be at risk".
  Why is the right hon. Member for Henley worried? It is because if 8,000 new homes are built in his constituency and that figure is multiplied by two because of household membership, the Boundary Commission will suddenly take an interest. Although some of those new developments may benefit the Conservative party, Conservative Members had better bear in mind that some of them, plus some of the things that the Government are doing in the south-east, are threatening the Conservative party. That is why some Conservative Members, led by the hon. and learned Member for Burton—
  Mr. Andrew MacKay: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Soley: I shall let the hon. Gentleman in in a moment, but he must bear in mind the time. These Conservative Members, led by the hon. and learned Member for Burton, know that there are considerable dangers for the Conservative party in these developments.
  Mr. MacKay: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that my constituency is probably under the threat of receiving more new houses than any other. The new estates in my consituency and that of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) have houses that go
  1134
  at a considerable price, and the owners are solidly Conservative. Therefore, such developments will increase my 22,000 majority to 30,000, so our protests have nothing to do with political gain. If I and my hon. and learned Friend were looking merely for political gain, we would say to my right hon. Friend, "Build as many houses as possible, because that will increase our majorities". The hon. Gentleman is way out.
  Mr. Soley: The hon. Gentleman is forgetting one reason why Conservative Back Benchers are under pressure. He is right to say that houses in these developments will be sold to high-income families, but local people who want places where their sons and daughters can live, and who want to stay in their areas, are being denied that. The long-term implications of that for the Conservative party are far more serious than the hon. Gentleman has suggested. However, I am prepared to wait for that. I have no need to rush the matter. I am prepared to go along with this one and see how it emerges at the end of the day. I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall look forward to it, and I suspect that in the long run he will regret it. We shall wait and see who is right.
  The worry about the Boundary Commission intervening is clear in the Tory party. There is also a need, and at last the Secretary of State has realised it if reports in the press are right, to give a greater say to local comment in planning applications. I welcome that, but why was it taken away in the first place? The system has to be more flexible and responsive, and there has to be a more positive approach to planning. At the moment we tend to have a negative approach, in that the local people say what they do not want, rather than looking at the matter more positively and saying what they do want.
  There will always be times when local interests need to be overridden. However, what has gone wrong is that the Government have ended up overriding decisions whenever they feel that it is appropriate to do so in the interests of the Secretary of State and the Conservative party, and ignoring the regional interests. By abolishing the metropolitan county councils and the GLC, and other tiers of local government, they have made the problem worse.
  I can give a classic example of the Secretary of State using such powers. In my constituency of Hammersmith, a major development was planned for Hammersmith broadway. An inquiry was set up, at the end of which everyone accepted, either publicly or privately, that the scheme could not go ahead in its proposed form. In other words, the local community, the council and I were opposed to the scheme. London Regional Transport and the developers accepted that the scheme was not good enough and needed to be changed, and the inspector of the inquiry, which had been set up by the Secretary of State, agreed that it was a bad scheme that needed to be rethought.
  The Secretary of State overrode the inspector and said that the scheme would go ahead. We were left with the absurd situation that the developer, the owner, the local authority and the community were all agreed that it was a bad scheme, they were backed up by the inspector, but were overridden by the Secretary of State. I find myself doing a job that I had not expected I would do when I was elected, although I knew that a Member of Parliament's job is varied. I have the job of trying to work out with all the groups involved some way of getting round the blockage imposed by the Secretary of State. I am getting

  1135
  support from everyone in my efforts, but why do I have to do it? If the inquiry is set up so that the inspector can make recommendations, why does the Secretary of State so readily and easily override such decisions? If the Secretary of State goes on using his powers like a blunderbuss, he will continue to hit half a dozen targets at which he is not aiming.
  The other matter in the press today—if the report is right I should welcome such a move—is that developers should have to pay some—in many cases I would suggest all—of the costs of appeals. It is absurd to impose on local people, through the rates or whatever system, the costs of an appeal when the developer is appealing against the decision of a democratically elected body that a scheme is not good. It is absurd to ask the public sector to pick up the bill for the private sector. If the press report is right and the Government are moving on this issue, they will get our support.
  The final part of this complicated pattern is the Housing Bill. We have been over this issue a number of times recently and we shall be debating it again next week. The housing component of this pattern is all important because, as the hon. Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay) said, the problem in the south-east is that less and less low-cost accommodation is available for rent or purchase. The developments on the edges of villages and other such sites are of houses that often cost about £150,000. I have given the example of a number of places such as Basingstoke and Dorset, where two and three-bedroomed houses can cost as much as £200,000. If houses are selling for that sum, what does the ordinary employee—for example, in Dorset the average manual wage is £90 a week—do about housing? Such people cannot buy.
  The Government have now come along with the Housing Bill and said, "Do not worry folks, we will take off all rent controls and let rents find their market level." That touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Gainsborough and Horncastle (Mr. Leigh). When housing costs so much to buy, the cost of renting will be £100 to £200 a week and the Government are faced with the appalling prospect of either increasing housing benefit so dramatically that it begins to approach the amount of subsidy given to the house purchaser through mortgage income tax relief—about £5 billion—or doing nothing about it. The Government have already cut housing benefit eight times since 1979, although they say that they will increase it.
  The other trap that they are in is that no matter how much they increase housing benefit, unless they do something about the tapers in it, they will not target it effectively on those who need it. We have the absurdity of the economy overheating in the south, but not expanding in the north. Planning controls have been devastated and local authorities are not allowed to initiate and develop progressive policies that are designed to help both the local economy and the local community. At the same time, we have a Government who have been smashing up the supply of housing. They claim to be a Government of sensible economics, but they have cut the housing supply so dramatically that the supply of public housing has been reduced from about 90,000 in 1979 to under 30,000 now. Housing associations have more or less stood still, and the private sector has increased its supply by only about 20,000.
  1136
  One of the first lessons of economics is that if supply is cut drastically, prices will increase. With the present house price inflation, rents will increase for all the reasons that I have outlined. If all controls are removed, there is a crisis. As the number of rented properties available for rent declines, house prices increase at an even faster rate. That will be accompanied by an even faster increase in market rents. If that happens, the Government must dramatically increase public sector finance to act as a subsidy. or they must let the homeless figures rise and allow more and more people to be trapped in bad housing, which means that they are unable to transfer to the sort of properties that they would like. That is the fatal flaw in the Government's housing policy.
  Mr. Ian Gow: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that it is the Labour party's policy to continue with tax relief on mortgage interest?
  Mr. Soley: The hon. Gentleman will know what I have said before about that. I have said to the Government ever since I took on the job of shadow Minister of Housing and Planning that we shall examine with them—we are on our own at the moment because the Government are not willing to move on the issue—a reform of housing finance that makes the present system fairer both within and between the rented and purchase sectors. We acknowledge that any changes or reforms must be of a sort that do not throw either rent payer or mortgage payer into acute economic distress.
  That is why I am saying that mortgage interest relief will not be abolished. However, we shall have to reform it. One quarter of the £5 billion subsidy of mortgage relief goes to those who earn over £20,000 per annum. I am not saying that they do not need a subsidy, but if the Government are prepared to issue a White Paper which states that they will not subsidise the rented sector because subsidy pushes people into dependence, why are they prepared to subsidise those earning £20,000 a year or more without the fear that they will be pushed into dependence?
  Mr. Martin M. Brandon-Bravo: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Soley: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman, but it will be the last time that I shall allow an intervention in my speech. I am aware of the time constraint.
  Mr. Brandon-Bravo: Will the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the totality of mortgage interest relief is about equal to the housing benefit that is paid? Even now, there is almost equity.
  Mr. Soley: No. That is wrong.
  Mr. Brandon-Bravo: It is true.
  Mr. Soley: No, it is wrong. There are gross distortions. It is true that a relatively small number of those who rent receive a large subsidy, but many others who rent receive virtually nothing. Many council tenants, especially those in Conservative-controlled areas, are paying rents that are used, in part, to subsidise the rates. They are paying rents that are then transferred to the rate fund to ensure that the rates are maintained at a low level. That is happening in Merton under a Conservative-controlled council. It is wicked. It is the same as saying that someone who is buying his own house should give money to the taxpayer.

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  We would not say that, but that, in effect, is what is being done to council tenants in Conservative-controlled local authorities throughout the country. It is grossly unfair.
  How can we expect those who rent to pay between a quarter and a third—sometimes even a half—of their net salary or wage in rent? That, however, is what we are asking of many people. The outcry when the Government cut housing benefit in April was precisely about that. In my constituency, a 65-year-old diabetic lady found that she was losing£10·41 per week in housing benefit, which reduced her income to about£30 a week after she had paid her rent. I do not understand how anyone can be supposed to live on that. The Government seek to justify their position by saying, "We cannot do anything about this. We shall leave it as it is, or reduce housing benefit again." The problem must be tackled if it is not to result in a crisis.
  When I responded to the intervention of the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow), I said that any reform of housing finance must make the system fairer for the two sectors. In some areas the majority of those in bed-and-breakfast accommodation are there because they could not pay their mortgages. They have been placed in that accommodation by local authorities. If there is a 1 per cent. rise in interest rates, many of those who have entered into a new mortgage agreement will not be able to continue to pay their mortgage instalments. They will find themselves going to the local authority and saying, "We are homeless. Please take us in."
  Mr. Brandon-Bravo: That is not right.
  Mr. Soley: If the hon. Gentleman wants evidence, let him go to Telford, where the majority of those who are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation find themselves in that position because they were unable to pay their mortgages. We all know that the number of those who have foreclosed on their mortgages has increased about 10 times. We know also that the problem will worsen. That will be the pattern until the Government reform housing finance so that the system gives more assistance to first-time buyers and to those who have managed to get their feet on the first rung of the ladder and bought accommodation that is only just large enough for themselves, and find that they want children and wish to trade up. In the south of Britain, and in other areas where there has been house price inflation, it is not possible to trade up to a two or three-bedroom house unless an individual enjoys a salary rise of£10,000 or£15,000. That is because the price of an extra bedroom or two bedrooms is so great.
  The Government have made an appalling mess of housing finance, but there are a number of short-term measures that could be introduced that would help to deal with homelessness. For example, capital receipts that are available from council house sales could be used to house the homeless and to repair and renovate. At present, only a percentage of receipts is available for those purposes. If the Government adopted that approach they would instantly release large sums that are currently sitting in the banks doing nothing. At the same time, more people than ever before are sleeping rough and living in cardboard boxes, and more and more families are living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
  What are we doing for families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation? Some of them live in it for two years.
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  Their children are supposed to be doing well at school. How can a child do well at school when he or she is in bed-and-breakfast accommodation? How is that achieved? What are local education authorities supposed to do? Some Conservative Members smile. I can only say that they should try living in that accommodation for a while. Let them try living in a cardboard box for a while and then tell me that there is not a housing crisis. We did not have this problem prior to 1979. We did not even have it under the Harold Macmillan Government. We have had it only under the present Government, and that is what makes them such a failure.
  There must be a reform of housing finance in the way that I have outlined. An increasing number of people are aware of that. We are aware of the report of the Duke of Edinburgh and that of the Church. I and others have been advancing this argument for a long time, which leads me to ask why the Government cannot acknowledge that their Housing Bill is at best irrelevant, and at worst grossly damaging to the private rented sector as well as the public sector. They must get their act together and come forward with policies that are designed to address the imbalance in the economy, the infrastructure problem, the housing issue and the planning issue. On that basis, I recommend the House to vote for the motion.
  4.18 pm
  The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
  "congratulates the Government on its housing and planning policies which have helped more people than ever before to own their own homes and, while protecting the extending the approved Green Belts, have created the conditions for a return of prosperity across the whole country; welcomes the proposals in the Housing Bill to widen the choice of housing available for rent; notes with satisfaction the planned increases in the Housing Corporation's programme and the additional resources being allocated to local authorities to tackle immediate problems of homelessness, bringing to£74 million the additional resources made available over the last six months; and urges local authorities to use these and other resources to end the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for families as quickly as possible."
  The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) started with a strange description of the Government's economic policy. It was new to me and I did not recognise it. He then made some spirited attacks upon my right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), who I wish were in his place to defend himself. I shall justify many of my right hon. Friend's actions during his period of office, when the relevant points are reached in this debate.
  One point I should like to clear up immediately concerns the hon. Gentleman's reference to a report in today's Evening Standard, that swingeing penalties will be imposed on those who appeal in the green belt. I do not know the source of that information, but from my reading of the article, my guess is that the report refers to the fact that already costs can be awarded against those who appeal vexatiously or frivolously, especially in the green belt. We have frequently given warnings that we will award costs when we believe that such action is justified in relation to the circular. We have nothing further in mind at the present time.
  By linking housing and planning policies in today's motion, the Opposition enable me to make an important point, and it is one with which I hope that the hon.

  1139
  Member for Hammersmith agrees. Our ability to ensure that everyone has access to a decent home, particularly in distressed parts of the country, depends to a large extent on our willingness to release at least some land for house building through the planning process. That is a factor affecting house prices too. I agree that there is a link between the restrictive planning policies we have been pursuing and homelessness, higher house prices, and the land shortage that causes those increased prices and shortages—affecting in particular local people in rural areas as well as those in the cities.
  Many have questioned that link, pointing out—as did the hon. Member for Hammersmith—that new private sector houses are seldom within the reach of the low-income families. However, there is a cascade effect. The more houses we build as people move up the housing ladder, the more houses become available and affordable to households at the bottom of that ladder, whether they be owner-occupiers or tenants. That is the way more housing becomes available.
  Mr. Tony Banks: Housing seems to be one of those areas where the normal laws of supply and demand do not apply. For example, in London there is an excess of units of accommodation over the number of people who need to be accommodated. There are in London 94,000 empty privately owned properties, but the price of property there is going up and up. Will the Secretary of State for the Environment explain why he believes that building more homes will push down house prices?
  Mr. Ridley: Many of those properties are confined by the Rent Acts. If a house is in a state of disrepair, I see no point in holding on to it; one can always sell it for someone else to repair, or one can improve it. However, people do not wish to sell or let houses, because they prefer to enjoy their capital appreciation—but they dare not risk the Rent Acts.
  Mr. Leigh rose—
  Mr. Ridley: I have a little more to say, and I do not wish to detain the House too long. I will allow my hon. Friend to intervene, but after that I must get on with my speech.
  Mr. Leigh: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, after 70 years of political manipulation of the housing market, there is not so much a shortage of housing stock as a shortage of potentially available rented accommodation? Does he agree with the philosophical point that, contrary to the claim of the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley), if we were to reform the Rent Acts and to deal with the tax laws which give such an advantage to those who buy rather than rent, more privately rented accommodation could be made available?
  Mr. Ridley: Yes, I agree with both points. Nominally, there are about 700,000 more houses than there are households in the country as a whole. I agree also that a large number of empty and surplus houses could be released through proper arrangements for encouraging landlords to let, and we are dealing with that aspect in the Housing Bill.
  This is a free country, where people are free to settle and live where they can, if they can find a house that they can afford. Many are concerned at the phenomenon of people selling up in London and moving out, so putting pressure
  1140
  on house prices and pricing out local people. The hon. Member for Hammersmith made that point. In a free country, that cannot and should not be prevented; there is no way in which it can be stopped. It would surety make matters worse to bring down the shutters on further development. It would not be the richer, incoming people who would lose as a result, because they could afford to buy more expensive houses.
  If we wish to preserve our heritage of mixed communities in towns and villages—having mixed tenures, mixed incomes, and different ways of life—we must allow houses to be provided to meet the expected demand from less well-off, new households. Housing association houses to rent, increasingly in the changing circumstances of today, have much going for them in serving that purpose.
  Much land can be found from within the urban areas. It is vital that redundant land in our towns and cities is fully used. We have encouraged house builders to look at opportunities in those areas and, where necessary. we provide funding through city grant and derelict land grant. The urban development corporations, including the London Docklands development corporation, play an important part in bringing back disused or derelict land into use. Those policies have been very successful, and more than half the land developed for housing in London and the south-east is recycled or vacant land in built-up areas.
  The rate at which agricultural land is taken for development is now running at less than one third of the level seen in the 1960s and 1970s. Despite all that, some land will be needed on new sites outside existing urban areas. In some cases, as I said during Question Time, that might most appropriately be land around existing settlements. In others, it may be appropriate in a few cases to think of new settlements. Whatever housing is built, and however it is built, it cannot come without planning permission. It is for local councils to decide where development should take place. The extent to which planning is a local function is often overlooked. Ninety-eight per cent. of planning consents are given by local authorities, and only 2 per cent. on appeal.
  Mr. James Couchman -rose—
  Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend will forgive me if I continue, because I wish to make a little more progress.
  The area where housing and planning policies arouse the most controversy is in the south-east; that is the price we pay for economic success in that area. As the House knows, in the south-east we work with local authorities through SERPLAN and the London Planning Advisory Committee to forecast future housing requirements in general and to agree figures for each London borough and shire county. I am glad to report that in conjunction with SERPLAN we are expecting a lower rate of new house building in the south-east over previous years in the projections for 1991 to 2001.
  Several factors are at work. First, we are providing wider opportunities for renting in the Housing Bill, and we expect to see better use made of the existing stock, as private landlords in particular will once again have an incentive to let their property. That will bring many vacant houses and flats into use and reduce the need for new build.
  Secondly, partly as a result of the huge disparity in house prices and costs between the south-east and other

  1141
  regions, but also thanks to the action we are taking in the inner cities, other regions of the country are becoming more attractive as places to which both people and businesses may move. Unemployment is falling rapidly in all regions, and fastest of all in the west midlands, the north-west and the north. House-building levels are rising in most regions outside London. The only area where they are not doing so is the west midlands. Land prices are rising fast.
  We have a£3 billion per year programme of improvement to the older industrial areas and cities to attract private investment, and to improve infrastructure and skills in inner cities. We have seven urban development corporations up and running, and four more are in the process of being established.
  Mr. Rhodri Morgan rose—
  Mr. Ridley: No, I will not give way.
  Those factors are beginning to take the pressure off the south. Firms are beginning to follow economic logic and to move away from the skills shortages and high prices of the south-east. All that is helping to reverse what has been a net flow of population out of the old industrial areas to the prosperous south. I am glad to tell the House that there is now a small but growing net migration away from the south-east and we expect that to continue and accelerate.
  The provision previously agreed with SERPLAN was for 460,000 extra homes in the period 1991–2001, but the household projections released earlier this year suggest that provision might need to rise by a further 150,000 in that period. However, I am glad to repeat that new evidence produced by SERPLAN last week now suggests that a further 30,000 to 50,000 dwellings will become available by 1991. Therefore, the extra provision needed after 1991 will be only 100,000 to 120,000, which means that we shall need between 560,000 and 580,000 new homes altogether in that period rather than 610,000 which we had earlier calculated.
  It is now up to SERPLAN and the local authorities concerned to propose where those houses should be built through regional guidance, the county structure plans and the district plans. That development must be well planned and locally planned. We expect, first, that in drawing up those plans local authorities should ensure that there is no unsuitable development in the green belt. I have made it perfectly plain over and over again that the green belt must be preserved.
  Mr. Couchman: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, because I know that he wants to make progress. There is dismay in Kent at his refusal to give permission on the Dartford and Crayford marshes—1,000 acres of derelict land that should never have been scheduled as green belt—because it will put extreme pressure on urban constituencies such as my own, where his Department, through the Property Services Agency, is seeking to build houses on the only green land in the Medway towns.
  Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend intervened at the precise moment when I was saying that we have made it plain that green belt must be preserved. It would have been a complete contradiction of that policy if we had agreed to the development to which my hon. Friend refers.
  1142
  However, if the precise area of the green belt and its location is not thought by the local people to be correct, they can perfectly well propose an alteration of the green belt boundaries and have that approved through the normal processes. That is the way to achieve what my hon. Friend seeks, rather than to ask me to break the very guidelines about the green belt that I have made clear.
  I sum up by saying that, in 1981, only 12·6 per cent. of the south-east outside London was built up. If the extra demand that I have described is met by 2001, it is unlikely that that figure will rise beyond 13·7 per cent. That means that 86·3 per cent of the home counties would still not be built up, which is hardly concreting over the whole of the south-east.
  The role of district councils here is crucial. I mentioned local plans. Last week we issued a new draft circular on district plans. Only about 10 per cent. of local authorities have fully up-to-date approved local plans covering the whole of their area. They are the vital missing ingredient in the planning system. The lack of them is one reason why planning authorities sometimes find themselves losing an appeal and why, for example, people are unclear where green belt borders are and where local development is likely to occur.
  The hon. Member for Hammersmith welcomed the emphasis on local people planning where development should take place, but he asked why that right had been taken away. It was never taken away. The fact of the matter is that 90 per cent. of district councils in the south-east do not have up-to-date local plans and I am urging them to do so. That is the way for them to take control of where developments should take place.
  Mr. Simon Hughes: Does the Secretary of State accept that the other concern of local people and their elected representatives, with which he has not yet dealt, is that the housing that is built needs to be affordable? That is the crucial issue about development in London, the south-east or elsewhere. It is no good building homes if nobody can afford to rent or buy them.
  Mr. Ridley: The only way that I could bring down the price of houses in the south-east would be to allow planning restrictions to be stripped away so that the price of land fell dramatically. However, if he will only bear with me, I can tell the hon. Gentleman of some further plans. I should not have given way to him. Everybody tries to intervene just as I am about to answer their question.
  Mr. Morgan: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Ridley: No.
  It is clear to me in the discussions that I have had with local authorities in the south-east that we all realise that a balance has to be struck. High house prices in the south are contributing to the pressures on businesses and people to move away. But there is still tremendous demand for housing in the south-east, even at those high prices, which also causes those high prices.
  Demand is rising chiefly due to social factors. There are more single-person households. People are not getting married or are living alone longer before marriage and can often afford to buy at the prices prevailing. More people are getting divorced. Old people are living longer in their own homes. It is those phenomena, not primarily the increase in population, coupled with the difficulty of

  1143
  finding new sites for housing, which are causing tremendous problems for the people at the bottom of the ladder and increasing the pressures which eventually cause homelessness.
  I should just point out that the people described as "homeless" in our statistics, which Opposition Members are always quoting at us, as they did at Question Time today, are those with a priority right to be housed by councils under the homelessness provisions in the Housing Act 1985. Therefore, it is a misleading term, as those "homeless" households listed in the statistics are all found accommodation, many going straight into permanent homes.
  I said at the beginning of my speech that the ability to ensure that everyone has access to a decent home depends partly on our willingness to release land for new house building through the planning process. But that is only part of the solution. There will always be people who cannot afford the economic cost of housing, and we accept that the Government must ensure that there are mechanisms to provide subsidised housing for those who need it—social housing. That we are doing in a number of ways.
  Mr. John Battle: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way.
  Mr. Ridley: No, I will not.
  First, the Housing Bill will bring a large number of existing empty privately owned properties on to the market. There are about half a million empty private properties, and there will he greater incentives for people to let rooms in their homes and for landlords to build or convert for rent.
  The hon. Member for Hammersmith referred to a figure, which I do not confirm, of only 2·5 per cent. being frustrated by the Rent Acts. Even that figure would result in 13,750 extra properties coming on to the rented market. I believe that the figure would be much higher, and so does SERPLAN. That would make a great contribution to ending the housing shortage in the areas concerned.
  Secondly, we are providing for local authorities to be able to offer transferable discounts to people in council accommodation in areas of housing shortage who want to move out and buy, thus making available their accommodation for letting to new tenants.
  Thirdly, we are considering ways in which the 112,000 empty council houses can be brought into use. It is a scandal that the number of empties in London exceeds the numbers in bed and breakfast. There is clearly a consensus in the House for early action to get empties back into use. We have had to consider statutory measures to achieve this. We will be putting forward proposals for legislation in the next Session to make best use of local authority stock and reduce their dependence on temporary accommodation.
  In the meantime, I intend to use existing powers to ask all authorities to give me details of all their empty property. We need up-to-date information. Authorities which manage their stock efficiently will already have such data readily available. I will also be asking authorities in future HIP rounds to include with their submissions statements of their policy to minimise the number of empty dwellings. We will be consulting the local authority associations about these proposals in the near future.
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  Fourthly, we have made available a further£74 million in allocations in the stress areas over the last six months, much of it to tackle the immediate problem of homelessness.
  Mr. Soley: When the Secretary of State brings those new powers to bear on local authorities, will he also ensure that the law is drafted in a way that makes it apply to Government-owned empty properties, because 6·9 per cent. of the Government's housing stock is empty, compared with 2·5 per cent. of local authorities' housing stock, which is the lowest of all? Secondly, why was that not a problem before 1979?
  Mr. Ridley: The answer to the second question is that economic recovery has completely changed the demand for housing. Under the policies of frustration and despair employed by the Labour party, the trouble was that half the people could not afford to leave home and buy their own houses.
  Fifthly, the Bill will result in more new housing being provided for rent. Deregulation, coupled with the welcome Budget tax changes affecting landlords, will once again make rented housing a worthwhile proposition for the reputable private investor. It will also open the door to genuine private investment in new development by housing associations. That will enable the Housing Corporation's programme of support for housing associations to stretch further, and the grant element of that support, together with the corporation's supervisory effort—backed up with the new tenants' guarantee—will ensure that housing association accommodation remains within the reach of those on low incomes.
  The corporation's grant programme is set to grow from£737 million in the current year to£850 million by 1990–91, and to that can be added any money attracted from the private sector. All those measures will bring additional dwellings into use, although I cannot estimate the numbers precisely.
  I have resisted the temptation to catalogue the real chaos in housing management in some town halls run by the Labour party: uncollected rents, properties lying empty while families are housed in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, bad management, neglect and decay. I would be the first to admit that local authorities cannot be blamed for all of that.The Economist—not a paper from which I normally quote—last week described the mess into which misguided policies of rent control and mass provision of council houses had plunged our rented housing policy:
  "The obvious solvent for this mess is a flourishing competitive rental market at all levels of housing"
  That is what we are trying to create, and what the Labour party seems to be trying to frustrate. I ask the House to reject the motion with disdain.
  4.42 pm
  Mr. George Howarth: I should like briefly to cover three important aspects of housing policy connected with the motion.
  The first aspect is the whole issue of the housing finance system, irrespective of the type of tenure involved. The hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) asked my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) what would be the Labour party's likely attitude to mortgage tax relief. I cannot answer that question, but I will say one thing that may be of help to the hon. Gentleman and

  1145
  others. I find it rather strange that at a time when mortgage interest tax relief is going up and up—the current level is£5 billion—the Government seem to have set no upper limit at which in the future it will be capped and stopped. At the same time housing benefit has been clawed back substantially. The move was so unpopular that the Government had to introduce a transitional arrangement, but even that has not bridged the gap and solved the difficulties.
  Mr. Gow: The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that the level at which mortgage interest tax relief is paid is demand-led. It will, however, be of some consolation to him to know that, following the reductions in the top income tax rate from 60 to 40 per cent. and in the basic rate from 27 to 25 per cent., the cost of tax relief on mortgage interest has gone down.
  Mr. Howarth: That is an inevitable consequence of such changes. I still contend that the basic principles by which mortgage interest tax relief operates means that technically it can continue to rise irrespective of the changes that the tax system may impose in other areas. Mortgage interest tax relief contributes little or nothing to the development of sound housing policies. Most serious studies have concluded that its net effect has simply been to put up house prices. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith is quite right. At some stage either the party in power or a collection of parties must discuss the consequences of a policy which, while it may be superficially popular with the electorate, contributes nothing to housing policy and certainly does nothing to create more acceptable housing.
  The Secretary of State, in his closing remarks, talked as though the Housing Bill heralded a new dawn of private rented housing that would act as a yardstick against which all other types of tenure could be judged. He and the Minister of State have yet to demonstrate, despite the Bill's three and a half months in Committee, how that is to happen. The diagnosis of the difficulties suffered by the private rented sector in the past 30 years or so has little to do with the Rent Acts and other landlord-and-tenant legislation; it has everyting to do with the economics of property ownership and what can be obtained by simply selling the property or by hanging on and getting the capital appreciation. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith hammers that point home every time he gets the chance.
  It does not matter whether the legislation creates economic rents, or a whole new series of types of tenancies. The truth is that any kind of tenant living in a property whose value is constantly growing—in central London that is happening at an alarming rate—will be an interference with the accumulation of capital which any sensible person would avoid. I do not believe—perhaps the Secretary of State does, but I do not think that many of his colleagues do, certainly not the civil servants—that all those new private tenancies will be created. It simply will not happen.
  Mr. Tony Banks: If my hon. Friend visits the east end of London and looks at the London Docklands development corporation area he will see that, although a number of properties are available for rent, the rents range from£300 or£350 a week to about£750. Who would
  1146
  spend that amount on rent when he could get mortgage interest tax relief? People in the east end could not possibly do so.
  Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend is perfectly right. It is obvious that with those rent levels the homeless certainly will not be encouraged to rent; indeed, it will be impossible for them to do so, just as it will be impossible for all those in serious housing need categories to pay such rents. The net effect is that some people will be housed, but not those in the most need. The present housing finance system does not make sense. It does not serve housing policy at all. It simply suits certain populist ideas with which the Government wish to be associated.
  The Minister of State and others have said many complimentary things about housing associations. One of my concerns is housing co-operatives. I believe that the Government sincerely want housing co-operatives and associations to continue to provide for people in housing need, using their high levels of housing management expertise.
  There is a difficulty about introducing private finance, and although the Minister knows of it we must hammer it home at every opportunity. If one introduces a combination of private finance and housing association grant into the equation, for an investor—in the form of a building society or other financial institution such as a bank—to get the guarantees that he needs on a property, difficulties will arise in many areas in which there are low values and high costs, of which Knowsley is an example. The net effect in my area would be that the cost of building a house would have to be reduced by about£10,000. I accept that the Minister of State supports the continued existence of housing associations and has made supportive statements about co-operatives, but the introduction of private finance into these areas may result in a fall in the standards of housing provided by housing associations and co-operatives. I hope that that will not happen and that steps will be taken in the Department of the Environment's current review to ensure that it will not.
  Finally, I mention some of my worries about local authority housing. I, like my hon. Friends—[Horn. MEMBERS: "Where are they?"]. Conservative Members are making great play of where my hon. Friends are, but perhaps we should stick to the subject—[Interruption.] It is interesting that a signal went round the Conservative Benches to create that interruption, and Conservative Members thought they would take the chance to make sedentary interventions. I shall continue with the subject in hand.
  Some of the difficulties with council housing have been caused by the Government since 1979. To be honest, some of them relate to the way in which council housing has been managed and maintained at local level. So it is not always a question of what the Government have done. However, the Government have consistently withdrawn the capital investment that is needed for housing stock since 1979, and that is a major factor in the growing problem of disrepair. The Minister should be aware that my borough needs more than£20 millon a year for its housing investment programme to keep its stock at something approaching a reasonable level. At present it receives£4·5 million from central Government. It manages by means of a series of devices—leaseback and other schemes that local authorities have to use—to get that up to£11 million. There will be a gap of about£10 million a

  1147
  year in the money needed merely to keep the stock in a decent state of repair. Therefore, there will be a continuing problem of disrepair because there is not enough money in the system to deal with it.
  Whatever Conservative Members may believe ideologically about council housing, it is becoming worse and more starved of resources. In support of my point, I wish to quote from an article by an objective commentator in last week's New Statesman—[Interruption.] The article is by Anne Power, who has been a director of the Government-sponsored priority estates project, which intensively tackles the problems of Britain's worst council estates. Conservative Members may laugh at the publication for which she writes, but they should at least take her seriously because the Government have been footing the bill for her work for the past nine years.
  Mr. Bob Cryer: Conservative Members are laughing at the New Statesman, but my hon. Friend will recall that the Secretary of State quoted The Economist as though it were a lofty, objective, politically neutral publication, whereas it is a Right-wing Tory rag. It is hardly surprising that the right hon. Gentleman quoted it in his own support.
  Mr. Howarth: I should imagine that any journal that agreed with the Secretary of State would be almost unpublishable by definition.
  Speaking about council housing and Government legislation, Anne Power says:
  "But the context of the current changes is entirely negative. Demoralised staff working in the housing departments of local authorities face an uncertain future. There is intense competition for access to housing in areas of shortage; and council housing is becoming increasingly ghettoised."
  That is the effect of Government policies on local authority housing, whatever the inherent problems. The Secretary of State spoke as though the problems of council housing were the result of Labour-controlled authorities' policies. The Government have been in power long enough to have done something about the problem if they believe that, yet they have done nothing.
  Conservative Members know that the Government's housing policies have failed over the past nine years. The Government are on a fast track to even greater failure in future.
  4.57 pm
  Mr. Ian Gow: I want to refer to two elements in my right hon. Friend's amendment and to two elements in the Opposition motion.
  I commend the words in the amendment that commit the Government to ending
  "the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for families as quickly as possible."
  My right hon. Friend was right to remind the House that 28,000 houses and flats owned by local authorities have been empty for more than 12 months. Part of the tragedy of empty council houses and flats is that the authorities with the largest number of empty houses and flats that have been empty for the longest periods are often precisely those with the greatest number of homeless people.
  I warmly welcome the initiative of my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning in allocating extra resources to the local authorities with problems of homelessness and of empty accommodation. It is by no means always the case that the reason for those 28,000 houses and flats being empty for more than 12 months is
  1148
  that the local authorities concerned have not had enough money to put them in order. The overwhelming majority of people who have the misfortune to live in unsatisfactory bed-and-breakfast accommodation would prefer to live in a house or flat, even though it is not ideal.
  Secondly, I refer to the part of the amendment that testifies to the truth that since 1979 the Government's housing policies have
  "helped more people than ever before to own their own homes"
  That dramatic escalation of home ownership in the past nine years—an escalation more rapid than at any time in our history—has not been welcomed with total enthusiasm by the Opposition—
  Mr. Tony Banks: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Gow: I give way, of course, to my hon. Friend.
  Mr. Banks: I do not know what that says about the hon. Gentleman or about me, but I shall accept it.
  Why, if the Government have such a wonderful record, has homelessness doubled since 1979?
  Mr. Gow: Part of the reason for the increase in homelessness is that we have never had as many as 28.000 council-owned houses and flats empty for more than 12 months. Part of the reason for the extra nominally homeless people and genuinely homeless people is the tragedy of empty houses. I shall presently deal with empty houses in the private sector.
  Mr. Simon Hughes rose—
  Mr. Cryer rose—
  Mr. Gow: I give way to the solitary representative of the Liberal party.
  Mr. Simon Hughes: I am honoured to be that. The hon. Gentleman's analysis is wrong. If he looks at the figures given to me yesterday by the Under-Secretary of State about the percentage of new lets that go to the homeless, he will see that over the last eight years Tory, Labour and Liberal-controlled local authorities have substantially increased the number of properties let to the homeless. In Bromley the increase was 100 per cent. and in Birmingham and Manchester it was over 400 per cent.—as in my borough. The problem is not that properties are empty and not let by local authorities, but that the number of homeless people is greater because there are no homes for them.
  Mr. Gow: One cannot escape the truth that if the empty houses and flats owned by local authorities and those owned by the private sector were occupied there would be a complete and immediate solution to the problem of homelessness.
  I note that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) did not bring himself to criticise the Government's record of nearly 3 million more properties in owner-occupation in 1988 than in 1979. The hon. Gentleman nods in agreement. I think that by his silent approval and possibly he speaks for his party—he welcomes that impressive increase in home ownership. There is an important political consequence of the dramatic increase in home ownership. The more that the ownership of homes, of capital, increases, the greater will he the reluctance of the people to support the hon. Member for Newham, North-West and his hon. Friends.
  Mr. Cryer rose—
  Mr. Gow: I give way to the hon. Gentleman who no longer represents Keighley, but who is a Member of the European Parliament.
  Mr. Cryer: The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that I call it the Common Market Assembly, because that more accurately reflects what it is. It has no powers of legislation. The hon. Gentleman is eulogising home ownership. What attempt will he make to convert his Government to giving people in private rented accommodation the right to buy in the way that they have foisted on local authorities legislation to force them to give that opportunity to tenants?
  Mr. Gow: There is a great distinction, which is not appreciated either by the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts), who is the sole occupant of the Opposition Front Bench, or by his hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer). The hon. Member for Bradford, South has tempted me into giving him an analogy. It is open to the hon. Gentleman to take his hon. Friends the Members for Bootle and for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and give them a sumptuous dinner at Le Gavroche and pay for it out of his own pocket. That is legitimate, but it would be illegitimate for the hon. Member for Bradford, South to take his two hon. Friends to Le Gavroche and pay for the dinner out of public funds. That is the distinction. The Government were entitled to grant the right to buy to public sector tenants because every house and flat owned by local authorities was financed by public money. Therefore, it is open to the Government to lay down the terms for their tenants in the same way as it is open to the private landlord to lay down terms for his tenants.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: The hon. Gentleman is saying that it is legitimate for the Government to force local authorities to give big discounts and to spend public money on giving people the right to buy. That has nothing to do with increasing owner-occupation or with the rights or freedoms of council tenants. It is an attack on the public rented sector. If the Government and Conservative Members really believe in increasing owner-occupation and in freedom of choice for tenants, they would grant the same privileges to the tenants of the private landlord. They are interested only in making profit out of housing.
  Mr. Gow: When the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) returns to the Opposition Front Bench and finds out what has happened in his absence, he will not be pleased that he left the Chamber. The hon. Member for Bootle gave the impression to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), who has a greater knowledge and experience of these matters than any hon. Member now in the Chamber, that he was opposed, not only to the right to buy, but to the discounts presently offered by the Government. That impression was given not only to my hon. Friend but to many other hon. Members who were listening carefully to the hon. Member for Bootle.
  Mr. Allan Roberts rose—
  Mr. Gow: I give way to the hon. Gentleman even though his hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith is not beside him to correct him as he speaks.
  Mr. Roberts: The whole House knows that nine years ago, when the Conservative Government started the policy of forcing councils to sell houses at large discounts, the Labour party opposed it. We said that the best of the houses would be sold and that the councils would be left with the rest. That has happened. The best of the houses have been sold. One can no longer oppose the sale of what has already been sold. Conservative Members find that amusing, but if the best of the houses have been sold there is no point in opposing the sale. We have never advocated the taking back of any council houses that have been sold. That was a lie put about by Conservative Members on doorsteps during the general election. We can no longer oppose the selling of council houses, because they have been sold
  Mr. Gow: I have exciting news for the hon. Gentleman. The process of giving tenants the right to buy their houses or flats is continuing. There are still hundreds of thousands of actual and prospective tenants who will wish to take advantage of the choice given to them by the Government. We thought that the hon. Gentleman had been converted to supporting that choice, but henceforward there will be great doubt in the House and outside about whether the Opposition are still in favour of choice.
  Mr. Brandon-Bravo: Does my hon. Friend agree that the comments by the Opposition show that they are completely adrift? They say that only the best sell. But because the cost-floor provisions have prevented the sale at massive discounts of brand new houses—the better end, if one likes, of the housing stock—the bulk of the sales have been of pre-war houses and of houses built in the 1950s and early 1960s. That is where maximum discounts have been of the greatest benefit to council tenants.
  Mr. Gow: My hon. Friend is perfectly correct. Houses and flats that range from the not-so-good to the very good have been sold as a result of choice. Alas, the percentage of flats has been much lower than the percentage of houses.
  Mr. Allan Roberts: What percentage?
  Mr. Gow: I have given way many times, and I am mindful of what Mr. Speaker said at the start of the debate.
  I should now like to turn to the motion in the names of the hon. Member for Hammersmith and his hon. Friends. The motion speaks about
  "the shortage of low cost housing for rent or sale."
  The Housing Bill will bring into use some of the empty accommodation presently in the private sector. Following the enactment of the Bill, the owners of those houses will be encouraged to let them. I say that because since 1915 rent legislation designed to assist the prospective tenant has actually injured the real or prospective tenant.
  By our Rent Act policy we have injured the very people whom we were trying to help. Twin evils have flowed from that legislation—security of tenure and rent control. As the Opposition will discover, under the Housing Bill, unused or under-used accommodation will be brought into use and we shall attract significant new investment for the conversion of existing property to let and the construction of new property to let—something that we have not been able to do since the war. That is most welcome and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on the Bill.

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  I now come to my final and most controversial point, which deals with the part of the Opposition motion that refers to the
  "growing crisis of house price inflation."
  As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, the only way in which we shall be able to arrest, and later diminish, the rise in house prices is to build more houses, and to build them in those parts of the country where they are most needed. I agree that sites available in urban areas must be developed, but we must also recognise another long-term feature of the supply of land. In the coming years, land that is used at present for agricultural purposes will no longer be required for those purposes. If agricultural land that is not particularly good is to be put to better use, if the owner of that land wishes to sell, if a builder wishes to buy it, if the builder, having built on the land that the farmer or owner wished to sell can find a purchaser for the house or flat, there is a presumption in favour of granting planning permission. I am not saying that that presumption is not rebuttable.
  I say to my hon. Friends who, like me, represent constituencies in the south-east that in the coming years we shall be unable simply to say to the Minister for Housing and Planning, or the district councils, that there must be no more building on green sites in the south of England. It is the duty of those who are responsible for planning to ensure that the available land is put to the best use. If today there is no longer the same need for the agricultural use of land, the best use for some of it is most emphatically for housing. Only in that way will we be able to solve a problem that is familiar to my hon. Friends the Members for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay) and for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood), both of whom realise that people from the north and the midlands are seeking, and may have found, employment in the south-east, but cannot bring their families here. They will not be able to bring their families here unless we can increase the supply of land in the south-east.
  The Opposition motion shows a scant recognition of the truth that, after nine years of Conservative Government, the overwhelming majority of our people are better housed than ever before. I commend to the House the policies of my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning and the terms of the amendment to the motion.
  5.13 pm
  Mr. Simon Hughes: The Opposition motion as originally tabled referred to the chaos in the Government's housing and planning policies, but the Table Office said that that infringed the rules in some way, so it had to be changed.
  We have an opportunity to reflect on the stage that the Government's housing and planning policies have reached a year into their third term of office, and when for the first time for many years the Department of the Environment has one Minister of State who is responsible for both housing and planning. I reflect too, in passing, that at times those policies seem to have been best symbolised by the recent state of the Department of the Environment. Its telephone system has just been changed. Nobody could get through from the outside to the inside, and it certainly looks as if nobody could get through from the inside to the inside. If the left hand has not seemed to know what the right hand was doing—or if one of the two right hands has not known what the other was doing—perhaps that is the
  1152
  explanation, although when the same Minister is responsible for two areas of departmental policy it is usual to expect him to talk to himself enough to get policy agreed.
  Last month we had a debate on a private Member's motion tabled by the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Mr. Chapman), which gave the Government an opportunity to comment on their planning policies. They gave estimates of the amount of land needed, the number of houses needed and so on. I made two fairly uncontroversial points. I am not in the habit of quoting or even referring to my own recent contributions, but one of the points I then made was that the Government should bring empty property into use. That is vital, and if the Government did that we could proceed incrementally to deal with the shortage of housing.
  The second was that we should assess how much provision was already made for new housing in structure plans and so on, and that if we did that accurately, we would find that there was quite a lot of provision. During that debate, the Government gave specific estimates for housing need in the south-east, after assessing the figures for each county. Yet last Friday the Financial Times carried the headline
  "South East Homes Need Scaled Down".
  We read that the Secretary of State for the Environment had
  "scaled down by up to a third the number of extra new houses expected to be needed to cope with demand in London and the South-East."
  I was pleased to read that the first two of the three reasons given by the Secretary of State were precisely the points that I made in my speech. The first was:
  "Between 30,000 and 50,000 units are likely to become available in the form of empty residences coming onto the market."
  The second was:
  "More land is available and more houses are under construction or are more likely to be built by 1990 than had been expected."
  It seems to me that those in the Department who deal with forecasts of the number of homes needed had not consulted adequately those in charge of monitoring county structure plans, who deal with the land supply and the number of homes that counties think will be needed. The figures did not add up. The fact that the figures have been scaled down is welcome, and I hope that we shall get even more accurate figures in future. However, there appears to have been substantial confusion about the real need and demand for housing, and it is about time that that confusion was sorted out.
  There is one other relevant statistic on planning. The London Planning Advisory Committee, a body established by the Government, reported on 23 May. It had surveyed land in London and found enough for between 225,000 and 300,000 new homes in Greater London by the year 2000—enough for London to cope with its own growth. I was therefore interested to read an article by the Secretary of State in today's edition of The Daily Telegraph. That gave the old figures, whereas this afternoon he gave us the new figures, which presumably means that he was working on last week's brief in the article and the figures were not corrected. The article said that it was expected that only 150,000 to 200,000 of the 600,000 new homes needed could be supplied in London. However, according to the LPAC figure it now appears that 250,000 will be available in London, and the total

  1153
  figure for the south-east has been scaled down so that it is now as low as 500,000. I am sure that hon. Members who represent the home counties would like to know whether the LPAC assessment is accurate and what the implications are for green field development in the south east.
  There is a postscript to what the LPAC said. The Secretary of State ducked this issue completely in his speech. It recommended that 100,000 of the new homes for London should be affordable. The Secretary of State went through his list of measures, but one cannot legislate to deregulate the housing sector and take away rent controls without reducing the chance of providing homes at a cost that people can afford.
  I welcome the fact that planning authorities are to be given more power. Of course there should be district plans, and decentralisation is vital. There should be decentralisation to the regions, too, but the Government have not helped that by abolishing the strategic planning powers in Greater London and the metropolitan areas. The sooner we get back to strategic regional planning, the better.
  We should also include in the evaluation of development the quality of life. It is vital that planning and development are seen to be qualitatively acceptable. People in villages, towns and cities all over Britain want to live in pleasant environments. It was ironic to wake up this morning to hear, as colleagues must also have done, the Prime Minister speaking from Toronto, saying that what was wonderful about Toronto was the quality of life there and how clean it was—as I understood it, that was even without her picking up the litter.
  If the market is the arbiter of planning policy, quality of life considerations are not allowed to determine policy. That is a fundamental flaw. Indeed, it is not even a free and perfect market because it will be distorted by those with the money—the developers—who will be unfairly competing against those with a need for housing and who want most an environmentally acceptable environment. As the argument about the market is flawed, the Government should no longer adhere to it. We must re-evaluate these criteria seriously and urgently.
  By contrast, I do not think that there has been any dispute about the Government's objectives for housing policy. They are clear: first, to permit the market for private rented housing to operate freely; secondly, to reduce the amount of housing owned by councils by diversification of rented social housing; and, thirdly, to bring in private money. The Minister for Housing and Planning made clear the Government's primary motivation in the Committee debate on the Housing Bill in February when he stated:
  "at this stage the primary purpose is to introduce greater plurality to the near monopoly holders, the municipal sector."
  —[Official Report, Standing Committee G, 25 February 1988; c. 1166.]
  Tenants' choice is a mechanism—it is not an objective. That is clearly reflected in the fact that the voting system has now been changed and that it is so biased in favour of transfers and not in favour of people having a democratic choice—
  Mr. Nigel Spearing: It is not voting.
  Mr. Hughes: No, it is not voting, but the Government would have us believe that it is a system like voting. Also it is principally the landlords' choice, not the tenants'. No doubt we shall debate that issue again next week.
  Given the Government's objectives, the chaos in their housing policies has been amazing. First, in the general election campaign the Government were all over the place with their housing policies, just as they were with their education policies. The Prime Minister had to back-track, clarify and modify.
  The Minister for Housing and Planning (Mr. William Waldegrave): On that occasion, "all over the place" was also first place.
  Mr. Hughes: The Government always argue that one. The Minister knows that since 1979 his party has gone to the country three times and that every time its share of the vote has decreased. One political distortion that people outside the House may never understand is that in our general elections fewer people can vote for the Conservative party, but more Conservative Members may arrive in this place. It is a pretty funny system when seen from outside, let alone from inside. I do not accept the Minister's proposition. The Conservative party may be in first place, but that is under an equally perverted voting system.
  The second cause of chaos and confusion was that, having forecast a year of massive legislation for the Department of the Environment, the Department was short of civil servants and had to recruit staff from the private sector. Then it rushed out the Housing Bill, got it wrong, and had to reprint it. Then the Government did not make their housing policy clear until they were in Committee. The Minister had to perform an exercise that looked a little like trying to discern the shape of Dover castle as one crosses the Channel on a cloudy day—as one gets nearer, one sees a bit more, until eventually one can see what shape the castle is—or the legislation. The Government's housing policy was clearly being made, in the now famous phrase, "on the hoof".
  Mr. Battle: It is now a fallen monument.
  Mr. Hughes: The hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) adds from a sedentary position that the Government's housing policy is now a fallen monument.
  The Government then said that there would be a social landlords' charter before Report stage. Not only has one not materialised, but what was pretended to be it was not one. Next, we were promised more support for tenants' co-operatives and a quick and speedy review. However, it has just been announced that that will not be completed until December, when presumably the Housing Bill will be law.
  Two Ministers gave answers to my hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mrs. Michie) and to myself about homelessness legislation saying that the Government had no plans to change the laws—
  Mr. Anthony Coombs rose—
  Mr. Hughes: No, I shall not give way, because I do not have the time—
  Mr. Coombs: It is on that specific point.
  Mr. Hughes: No, I shall not give way. The Government said that they did not have any plans to change the law on homelessness or the Housing Act 1985, but last week the Secretary of State said that they did.
  Lastly, the Secretary of State for Wales then came up with a further idea for giving away council houses. Interestingly, that idea was nearly approved by the Wilson Labour Government and I can produce evidence of that. The idea now appears to be going before the Cabinet.
  The Government's housing policy has changed fundamentally during the past year, and even now the Government still do not seem to have caught up with themselves.
  We have identified homelessness as an issue. I must advise the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) that he was not right—all local authorities have catered in their properties for many people who are homeless. The reality is that, for various reasons, there are now more homeless people. Housing them should be the Government's first priority.
  We must deal with the cost of housing, both for rent and for sale. House price inflation has now been taken out of the retail price index and is thus not reflected in the normal inflation figures. If it were, the inflation figures would be much higher. House price inflation is enhanced by policies for housing which must be reformed. I noticed with interest that the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden)—a Conservative Member—argued in The Daily Telegraph of Tuesday 7 June 1988, first that mortgage interest tax relief should be abolished, and secondly:
  "mortgage relief conflicts head-on with every tenet of modern Tory philosophy."
  He effectively argued that it is inconsistent with the self-help, non-dependency culture. On the same day, the editorial of The Daily Telegraph made a similar point, stating:
  "The time has surely come when the Government should think again, as Mr. Walden argues, about the sense of subsidising house purchase regardless of the circumstances of the purchaser."
  When it comes to the crunch, the Government avoid the issue or do not honour their promises. That has happened in relation to the green belt, and over planning. The Secretary of State voted for the Okehampton Bypass (Confirmation of Orders) Bill and for the Hampshire (Lyndhurst Bypass) Bill, breaching respectively a national park and the New Forest. When it comes to housing policy and price rises in the rented sector—
  Mr. Irvine Patnick rose—
  Mr. Hughes: No, I shall not give way.
  When it comes to housing policy and price rises in the rented sector and when an opportunity to deal with that is offered by legislating for affordable rents, the Secretary of State rejects it. When it comes to price rises in the private sector of owner-occupation, and when an opportunity to curb that through reducing mortgage interest tax relief is offered to the Secretary of State he rejects it, even when that opportunity is put forward from within his own party.
  The Government's policies on housing and planning have been in amazing chaos for the past 12 months. I only hope that the Government now sort themselves out, deal with the real problems and honour the obligations that they, as a Government, have to the British people.
  5.28 pm
  Mr. Andrew MacKay: The most pressing problem in my constituency, and elsewhere in the county of Berkshire, is massive development. It has spawned a slightly offensive new phrase—that we are all Nimbys—we are all Not-in-My-Back-Yard followers. We find that offensive, for reasons that I shall outline briefly to the House.
  Successive hon. Members of all parties have made it clear that the major problem is high house prices, especially in the south-east. We can take as an example Bracknell district council, which is the authority covering the area where most of the extra houses will be built and where many extra houses have already been built. That district council has been forward-looking in its house building policy. It has a certain amount of land that it has owned for several years, which it has sold to developers at historic land cost price on the clear understanding that that price will be reflected in the house prices to enable first-time buyers to purchase those houses. More to the point, it has insisted that the purchasers be nominated by the district council and that those nominated should be either existing tenants or people on the council house waiting lists.
  For those who cannot afford to purchase outright with the help of a mortgage, even at those relatively modest house purchase prices—for the Thames valley—the district council has agreed to retain various chunks of the houses—50 per cent., 40 per cent. or 30 per cent.—with rent to be paid on that percentage. As the owners of those houses prosper, they can purchase the extra sections from the district council. That shows the progressive and imaginative polices of our district council. We are still prepared to build houses—not council houses, which are not in the interests of the community, but low-cost houses for purchase.
  In the past 15 years, we have agreed to a large number of houses, but enough is enough. We have some responsibility to future generations to keep some green fields in Berkshire. I readily acknowledge what my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) said: agricultural production will reduce and some agricultural land must be brought under development, but that should be in rural areas, not areas such as central Berkshire. If we build on the remaining few green-field sites, we shall have a long urban sprawl from London, through Slough and Reading, to Bristol, with no decent environment whatever.
  It is all very well for developers to build houses, but there is no infrastructure to go with them. We have overcrowded roads and terrific pressure on social services, hospitals and schools which make life extremely difficult. It is in the national interest not to continue developing Berkshire at a fast rate.
  Unusually, I fall out with my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne when he says that we have many successful companies, particularly high-tech companies, in the south-east, so unemployed men and women in a region of high unemployment should get on their bikes and move to the south-east, and we should build extra houses for them. If we take that to its logical conclusion, we shall have an environmental wasteland in the south-east and an industrial desert in the north. That is not the sort of country where I want to live; nor do I believe it is the sort of country where the great majority of people wish to live.

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  I believe in market forces and democracy. Locally elected people should decide where they want extra companies or houses to be built. It is more than likely that, in an area of negative unemployment, such as Bracknell and the royal borough of Windsor, the planning authority will not encourage extra development of houses, factories and offices. Conversely, a local councillor in a region of high unemployment will bend over backwards to grant planning permission for housing, factory and office developments.
  It must be in the national interest to encourage more firms to move to areas of high unemployment. That does not mean following the old path of bribes and regional grants, which barely worked. It means allowing market forces to work. We in Bracknell do not want any more factories or offices. We have negative unemployment, rising house prices and an overstrained infrastrucure.
  Recently a multinational company chairman told me, "The district council will not give us planning permission to build new headquarters. I must warn you, Mr. MacKay, that if you do not pressurise it into giving planning permission, there will be 260 job losses in Bracknell and we shall move elsewhere." I said that we would be delighted for the company to move elsewhere, because we had a large number of companies which found it difficult to recruit staff, so if my constituents were made unemployed they would get a nice redundancy package—it would be like winning the pools—and the following week they would find new jobs in Bracknell and there would be less pressure on our infrastructure. He turned white and said, "This has been a waste of a rather expensive lunch," and it had been.
  We must allow market forces to operate. If the Thames valley discourages the building of more offices and factories, and if house prices rise so that employers cannot find skilled workers and managers, companies will increasingly move to other regions which will improve employment opportunities elsewhere. I am glad to say that several companies in my constituency have expanded into other parts where there is high unemployment. That reduces unit labour costs and makes the enterprise more efficient.
  Mr. Anthony Coombs: Why will it reduce unit labour costs?
  Mr. MacKay: I will tell my hon. Friend. Companies are having to bribe people to come to the south-east with extortionately high salaries, which are out of all proportion to the work, and that makes them uneconomic in world markets. It is much wiser to pay the going market rate in another part where there are lower house prices and less pressure on mortgages. That makes evident sense.
  Mr. Richard Holt: Can my hon. Friend explain how he takes his philosophy into the future for young people in the Bracknell area? Does he say that, becuse there are no houses and no new jobs, they must migrate, or will he forcibly retire their parents to enable them to take their parents' jobs? I find his whole philosophy amazing.
  Mr. MacKay: There is a great shortage of people at all levels to work in Bracknell, and any youngster leaving school, college or university can readily find a job on a high salary. We have no shortage of employment—
  Mr. Holt: My hon. Friend could supply those jobs to my youngsters in the north.
  Mr. MacKay: My hon. Friend surprises me. I thought I had made it abundantly clear that I am encouraging companies to move to the north and employ his constituents. If he does not want his constituents to be employed, it is hardly my fault. Perhaps they should go to Bury instead. With the greatest respect to my hon. Friend, he has missed the point.
  Mr. Soley: Let me help the hon. Gentleman, who is getting into difficulties. He is basically right, and he is making the point that I made earlier, but he is trying to pretend that the intervention of local authorities, Members of Parliament or the Government makes for a free market. The whole essence of what we are saying is that the crisis in the south-east is caused by the Government letting loose an unrestrained free-market juggernaut. That is why the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) is worried. He is right to say that this has gone too far and that the Government must intervene and abandon their philosophy.
  Mr. MacKay: The hon. Gentleman grossly exaggerates when he says that there is a crisis in the south-east. If we allow local authorities to decide planning permission without intervention by the Secretary of State on appeal, a large number of companies will inevitably move to areas of high unemployment and that will be to the nation's benefit. I believe that in the months ahead that will happen increasingly.
  We must take into account a further national factor. The Government, rightly, are a strong supporter of inner-city rejuvenation, and that is applauded by hon. Members on both sides of the House. If developers have a choice between a green-field site in Berkshire and reclaiming land in the inner city, they will inevitably choose a green-field site in Berkshire.
  Mr. Patnick: At one stage in my career I was a builder—
  Mr. Tony Banks: A jerry-builder.
  Mr. Patnick: Far from it, dear boy.
  A contractor is drawn to an area by the price of land and communications. From London, it takes one hour 38 minutes to Doncaster, two and a half hours to Sheffield, and how many years to Langbaurgh I do not know. So communications is one of the things which determine where people go. We have beautiful green fields around Sheffield. It is a lovely place to live, but it is difficult to get to Sheffield from here. Sadly, London appears to be the centre of the commercial universe.
  Mr. MacKay: My hon. Friend has made a valid point about communications. I am not so sure that London is any longer the centre of the universe, as he suggests. The congestion on our roads is considerable, and the environment in the south-east is no longer so attractive.
  We are told at times by Ministers and by developers that it is essential for the headquarters of many companies to be in the golden triangle formed by London, the M3 and

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  the M4 motorways and to be within easy distance of Heathrow. We are told that, if companies are not allowed to develop there, they will move not to other parts of the United Kingdom but abroad. I do not believe that is so.
  Mr. Holt rose—
  Mr. MacKay: No, I will not give way; I am answering the valid intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Patnick ).
  Because of the economic policies of the Government, multinational and indigenous companies decide to invest in and to stay in this country because there is an enterprise culture, a healthy tax regime and good industrial relations. Therefore, if companies cannot develop and expand in the south-east, I do not believe that they will go to Europe instead. They will go to other parts of the United Kingdom, to the obvious benefit of those areas.
  Modern high-tech communications are another important factor. No longer is it necessary to have everyone on one site. Therefore, the Government should move more civil servants away from their high cost offices in Whitehall. There is no longer a need to have a large number of civil servants in London. With high technology, it would be possible for civil servants in different parts of the country to communicate with one another. Therefore, there could be more diversification of companies in the private sector too.
  Mr. Anthony Coombs: If it is so logical, according to my hon. Friend's argument, for people not to pay £10 per square foot for high technology space in his constituency and not to face the staff shortages which he has described, and if equally it is easy to develop a business with its headquarters in the south but with all the production units in the north where it is more profitable, why did not the business man with whom he was having lunch say, "I am very sorry, but I am going to leave your constituency and go to the more profitable climate in the north"?
  Mr. MacKay: Education has to be done. There are two factors. First, time moves on and only now are employers realising just what high unit labour costs they are experiencing and how difficult it is to attract staff. Secondly, they are realising what high rental costs they have to pay. My hon. Friends who represent northern constituencies will confirm that there is also a psychological factor in that too many people who are running major companies in the south-east rarely head north and have a false idea about the enterprise culture in the north and in the regions. There is a job to be done by local authorities, by Ministers and by hon. Members on both sides to persuade the people who can influence commercial moves to look round the regions.
  I was speaking about inner-city rejuvenation when my hon. Friend the Member for Hallam intervened. I believe that the Government's inner-city policy, which I wish well, will be only partially successful until we discourage building on green-field sites. Far more can be done in the inner cities. I remind the Minister that we are not Luddite in Berkshire, but we do not want any more development. We are building for first-time buyers because we acknowledge the house cost problem, but for environmental, local and national reasons we believe that excessive development in Berkshire has to stop quickly before further damage is done.
  5.44 pm
  Mr. John Battle: It is essential to root housing policies on a careful assessment of the real needs of the people for decent and appropriate housing at a price they can afford, to buy or to rent. That policy should also take careful consideration of the present condition of the housing stock in both the public and private sectors. All that the Government seem to be offering is a housing marketing and sales programme based on the worship of the idol of the free market. It is surprising that this afternoon devotees of that very idol on the Conservative Benches are at last beginning to challenge the policy.
  The policy was given its social face by the Minister. The Minister brought us the idea of the social landlord, but when the Secretary of State spoke it was clear that he was underlining the word "market" in the phrase "the social market" and insisting that market policies be forced upon his Minister. So we never saw the social landlords charter that was promised in Committee.
  Local authorities, in co-operation with the Department of the Environment, are drawing up their bids on the basis of the latest available research into the condition of the housing stock and the needs of the people for decent housing. I hope that the Minister will take the local research seriously and not suggest, as the Department, the Secretary of State and he himself have done recently, that the homeless figures are bogus and have not been drawn up properly. That is not the case.
  Let us take a simple example of conditions in Leeds, part of which I represent, which has a population of 750,000. The Secretary of State said that in the next Session the Government would bring forward proposals to deal with empty properties in the public sector. I hope that he will bring forward measures to deal with all empty properties. I refer him to the fact that in Leeds there are 20,400 unfit private sector properties and 56,500 private sector properties in need of repair. The cost of repairing those houses is assessed at over £5,000 per house. There are also many houses in multiple occupation, of which 9,000 require works costing approximately £12,000 each to bring them to an acceptable standard.
  One problem in the public sector is no longer referred to in Government policy. I am referring to the system-built or non-traditional dwellings that were built through a tied-aid programme after the war. The Government told local authorities that because of the shortage of the basic materials of bricks and timber they could have their housing investment programmes enhanced if they provided system-built housing. Many local authorities of different political persuasions have been left with a legacy of houses that need repair. When will the Government deal with that problem?
  In Leeds there are 28,000 non-traditional properties awaiting repair or replacement. Major investment is needed for the repairs. The expenditure on individual properties is beyond the means of individuals, whether owners or tenants. If repairs are needed to owner-occupied houses—for example substantial repairs to the roof., or major improvements—usually this expenditure takes place after the house has been sold. It is carried on the mortgage; it is not paid by the individual at one time.
  The need for a proper housing investment programme has been developing since 1979, but the response to that need has been far from adequate to tackle the backlog. Even now we urge the Government to consider restoring

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  the improvement grants for public and private sector housing that they have cut from housing investment allocations. Why not consider allowing renovation programmes, public and private, to get moving? They have been held back by the Government. Why not provide a realistic housing investment programme settlement to enable national resources to be channelled through local authorities, which seem to be rediscovered by Conservative Members when we discuss planning issues, and allow them to put resources into public and private housing stock?
  Mr. Dennis Turner: My hon. Friend has raised a very important matter. I want to reinforce the case that my hon. Friend makes for Leeds, and to add to the catalogue of crisis the plight of the west midlands. The housing forum of the west midlands is not made up of Lefty Labour authorities. It is represented by the county councils of Hereford and Worcester, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and the metropolitan districts of Birmingham, Coventry, Dudley, Sandwell, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton. It is unreal to sit in this Chamber listening to speeches about the positiveness of the Government's policy on housing when in a document recently published—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. Interventions must be brief, and that is enough.
  Mr. Battle: My hon. Friend was making the point that everyone seems to accept that there is need for investment in the housing stock to provide for the needs of the people, whether it is the Duke of Edinburgh's report, the "Faith in the City" report or the analyses of local authorities throughout the country.
  It is not just a question of numbers. I can refer the House to a particular family who live in a system-built home. They live in a Myton house, which has been classified by the Department of the Environment in its survey as defectively built. It is a council house. They cannot afford to buy it because of their circumstances, because the wage-earners in that family are unemployed.
  Mr. Morgan: On a point of law, I think my hon. Friend meant that the houses were defectively designed, not defectively built. There is no compensation for houses such as there are in my constituency, which were not defectively designed, but were defectively built.
  Mr. Battle: I shall not delay the House by discussing defective properties, but I meant that the houses were defectively built. Some were defectively designed and some were defectively built.
  Mr. Patnick: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Tony Banks: He built them.
  Mr. Battle: I shall give way in a moment.
  If that family could afford to buy the house, they would not be able to get a mortgage precisely because those homes have been classified as defective by the Department of the Environment. If they had bought a defective house they would not be able to sell it to someone else. Therefore, they would not be able to move and would be trapped, because the house was classified as defective. If the local authority or others cannot carry out substantial repairs to
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  those defective properties—and the backlog is massive—people will be condemned to live in defective properties until the end of the century. People will have to live in houses that are bad for their health because of the lack of heating systems. They will have no hope of living in a decent and appropriate home.
  That applies to some 18,000 people in Leeds who are on the waiting list for a decent and appropriate home. Elderly people cannot get up and down stairs in blocks of flats and need ground floor accommodation. That right should be met and not written off as a statistic. There are 14,500 people on transfer lists waiting to be transferred to housing that suits their needs, as family needs change as people have families, as families grow up and as people become elderly. The figures that I have quoted for Leeds do not take account of the rising tide of homelessness in our society.
  Mr. Patnick: I thank the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) for his courteous remarks. As a senior Member, he sets a bad example. I ask the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) to tell us who supervised the building of those council houses that were badly built? Who paid for them? Who wrote the cheque? The fact remains that they were supervised by councils and by their employees who were satisfied when they were built. Suddenly, we decide that they were not up to standard. It is a bit late in the day.
  Mr. Battle: It may be worth tabling a motion to discuss defective housing with the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Patnick) and other hon. Members. I seem to recall that the Building Research Establishment gave certificates stating that those houses were in decent order when they were built. The defects were detected after some years of wear and tear. I suggest simply that the defects were not known, or the building was badly supervised. I am not going into a full account of defective housing.
  Most people feel that the prospect of having a decent home that is appropriate to their family and personal needs is disappearing before the end of the century in city areas such as my constituency. The Government amendment to our motion refers to
  "a return of prosperity across the whole country".
  That prosperity does not apply to everyone.
  Mr. Tony Banks: Look at the Embankment.
  Mr. Battle: As my hon. Friend says, hon. Members should try asking those who have to sleep out whether they feel that they are participating in that return of prosperity across the country.
  Mr. Holt: Does the hon. Gentleman agree, or disagree, with the Labour-dominated northern regional council report this year, which says that the north of England is improving under the economic policies of the Government?
  Mr. Battle: I am glad that the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) put it in those terms. The situation is improving, but we are slightly tired of hearing remarks about prosperity across the country. The Prime Minister says that everyone is participating in the increased wealth in Britain. Clearly, everyone is not participating in that wealth. It is unfair to make an inclusive statement that

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  suggests that everyone is sharing in it when some people have been excluded from the wealth that Conservative Members claim exists.
  Finally, I must address the issue of homelessness. In the late 1960s and the early 1970s I spent some time working with organisations such as the Cyrenians which tried to deal with homelessness on our streets. Homeless people used to be elderly single men who were alcoholics or who had been broken by the wars. Now, homeless people are predominantly young people and people with families. I never imagined that that would happen in my lifetime.
  I believe that the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) has already asked this question, but will the Minister tell the House whether the Government intend to change the law on statutory provision for the homeless in our society and to weaken it to reduce the number of homeless people by the statistical exercises that were used in the unemployment debate? Just as the millions of unemployed do not have jobs, and still exist in areas such as my constituency, so the homeless will still be sleeping out on the streets, to the shame of all hon. Members, who at least return to their beds after our debates. Will the Minister confirm that he does not intend to repeal the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act and to limit local authority provision of temporary shelter? It is not just a bed for the night that is required. Surely human beings have a basic right to decent and appropriate housing which they can afford to rent or buy.
  I ask the Minister to make it absolutely clear to the homeless and those who work with them that the Government are prepared to honour their responsibilities and will not renege on them.
  6 pm
  Mr. Robert G. Hughes: It has become clear during our debates on housing that the Opposition have not bothered to understand the Housing Bill. The performance which some of us sat through, hour after hour, last Tuesday going through into Wednesday, made it clear that the Labour party does not have a serious strategy in this important area of policy to put right the serious problems which we all know exist in our inner cities, especially London. What the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) said shows that, far from having anything like a serious strategy, the Labour party has not tried in policy terms to deal with this important area.
  We have heard the trivial remark that the word "homelessness" does not appear in the Housing Bill. That is insulting to the homeless because it suggests that the Bill does not deal with the problems that lead to homelessness. If Opposition Members had bothered to listen to what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said today, they would know that many of the Bill's provisions will help homeless people. No doubt we shall return to those arguments when we debate the Housing Bill next week.
  We must examine Labour's record on this subject. I refer to its record not when in government, or indeed what it has promised it will do, but right now. In London, the Labour party controls many councils, and some of the worst slum landlords in London are Labour-controlled councils. They suffer from bad management and a work force which does not work.
  The London borough of Lambeth is plagued by strikes. When people in the housing department moved to new
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  refurbished offices the alarm system was still being worked on, so they came out on strike, on and off, for two months. Never mind negotiating and getting on with the job of serving people who need help in Lambeth, they just went on strike. When they are not on strike, they have an unparalleled sickness record. The housing department has gone through three directors in as many years.
  Worse, a system designed to help people in sheltered units and the elderly living alone in flats was delayed for years. Now, after five years, that Piper system has been installed in only a small number of sheltered units. Because of political interference—it is difficult sometimes to tell the difference between officers and councillors in Lambeth—the council refused to offer the system to surrounding blocks of flats where old people live by themselves because it was thought that that would somehow be helping the private sector and people who own their own homes. Labour's record is shameful.
  There is political interference. For example, Councillor Hazel Smith, when chairman of the housing committee, destroyed officials' confidence by giving instructions to officials at all levels in the housing department. She destroyed their confidence to get on with the job, which is why I say it is difficult to tell the difference between councillors and officers.
  When Councillor Fred Taggart was chairman of the housing committee, he said that Vietnamese refugees, whom we all want to help, were fleeing a perfectly reasonable regime and that they were therfore not political refugees. Because of his refusal to help and his instructions to housing officials, 80 and 90-year-old women from Vietnam are living in bed-and-breakfast accommodation to this day. He is also a senior officer in the London borough of Hackney.
  Mr. Tony Banks: Bearing in mind old Pol Pot in No. 10, perhaps the hon. Gentleman has got a point. The hon. Gentleman has given us a lot of anecdotes. Will he tell us the source of this illuminating material?
  Mr. Hughes: Anybody who knows how Labour councils hound and harass their staff if they are not members of the Labour party would think me mad if I revealed my source. It is interesting, however, that the hon. Gentleman should challenge my source rather than the veracity of what I am saying. He must be patient as there is lots more where that comes from. If the hon. Member for Bootle (Mr. Roberts) thinks that my information is not correct, he should find other facts and tell us that what I am saying is not true.
  Lambeth council cannot use its housing stock effectively. Joe Hunte court in Knights hill is a sheltered unit reserved exclusively for Afro-Caribbean use. Some hon. Members may say that that is the wrong way in which to use sheltered housing stock, but we should put that argument aside and assume that it is done for the best of motives. The council could not find enough Afro-Caribbean people who qualified for places, so it left at least six units empty. It preferred to leave units empty than to give them to people who desperately needed them. For all I know, some are still empty.
  We all know how much it costs to convert a flat for use by a disabled person, but Lambeth does not have a central record of where its disabled units are, so, when somebody moves out, the council cannot put another disabled person in. The result is often that units are squatted and

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  vandalised. Expensive units, paid for by ratepayers or the Government, are therfore no longer available to disabled people, but the council says that it wants more money.
  About a year ago, councillors, including the mayor, and council officers went around the Tulse hill estate to see how tenants were getting on. They found that most of the people who lived there were not on the council's roll of tenants, and that there were tenants of whom they had never heard in flats that they expected to be empty. They discovered that rent books were changing hands for money. In short, on that estate, as with many others, Lambeth has lost control of its housing stock.
  Mr. George Howarth: The hon. Gentleman mentioned Lambeth's record on adaptations for the disabled. Was he arguing that more, or less, money should be spent on such adaptations?
  Mr. Hughes: That is a silly point. Of course, we want money to be spent on the disabled. What I am saying is that when we spend it, we should not spend it on people such as those who run Lambeth council who plainly do not know how to use it.
  Inner London is littered with empty blocks of flats in areas of highest stress. That blows out of the water, as does my example of disabled units, the claim that we need more Government money. The examples of empty flats go back further than that. For instance, in Turner road in east London, late 19th-century properties owned by Tower Hamlets council have been empty for 15 years, although I do not blame the Liberals, who control it, for that. When housing associations and charities have sought control of those properties, at least temporarily, to use them for homeless people, Tower Hamlets council has refused.
  In case some hon. Members think that that is only a short period, let me give an example involving a longer period. During the past 24 years, the people of King George street, London, SE10, have seen Governments come and go, they have seen policies come and go, but they have seen two properties, owned by the Inner London education authority, stand empty. To suggest, as Opposition Members do, that those properties would be brought back into use if only the Government would provide more money is nonsense and insulting to homeless people in London. If Opposition Members would get off their butts and make sure that those properties were brought back into use, they would be able to talk about this subject, but, until they do, they have no status at all to do so.
  There is an absence of Labour strategy. The Leader of the Opposition, in his speech—presumably made on the hoof—at the Institute of Housing last week, referred to the crux of everything that we have heard from the Labour party today and in the Housing Bill Committee. All that we have heard is that councils must invest massive amounts of money in council housing, which would be a return to the sort of management that is doing so well in the London borough of Lambeth. That is an insult to those people who need genuine help. The Leader of the Opposition has understood what is needed, but it is a pity that his hon. Friends who speak on housing have not. He said:
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  "Those policies for housing must include the sensitivity to calculate whether forms of provision that might meet simple demands for accommodation also meet the more complex need for homes."
  That is absolutely right. The crux of the Housing Bill is that is provides variety. We are seeking to provide social landlords of various sorts, expand housing associations, bring back private renting and protect private tenants from being harassed. We are seeking to expand the provision of housing in London to help the homeless. It is Opposition Members, with no imagination, policies or strategy, who would keep people away from any solution to the problems of housing and homelessness.
  6.12 pm
  Mr. Dafydd Wigley: I shall not follow the comments of the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes). One speech by a Conservative Member which rang a bell and deserves study is that by the hon. Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay), who raised a number of important points of which I hope the Government will take note.
  The motion combines the housing problems of south-east England and of other parts of these islands. The problem came home to me graphically the other day when a taxi driver mentioned that, some time ago, he had sold for £80,000 the council house that he had bought for £10,000. He then moved in with his mother-in-law, whom he and his wife clearly expected to die fairly soon, helped her to buy the flat in which they were living, and expected to have about £150,000 at his disposal before long. He then hoped to move from London to either Cornwall or Wales, buying a property for £50,000, having £100,000 in the bank and living on the interest.
  That brings home the problem that is hitting my part of the world at present and is affecting other areas, including Cornwall, the Lake District, East Anglia and other parts of Wales. The real crisis in rural Wales is the cheque-book invasion—by people who are selling out, particularly in south-east England, and buying up housing stock, as a result of which the prices are shooting up. In the past three months, house prices have gone up by about 20 per cent. One of my constituents has been gazumped three times in six months in trying to buy a property in the constituency, and he can no longer compete. That is the problem facing young married people in my area, where incomes are very low.
  The problem is exacerbated by the amalgamation of estate agents. Large companies are now moving in so that, as soon as a house becomes available in some of the rural areas, it is immediately advertised in conurbations such as Manchester, Cardiff, Birmingham and London. The cheque-book invasion starts before local people have a chance to compete in the market place. That is having a massive effect on the community in my area and a greater effect in such places as the Lake District, East Anglia and Cornwall. It has an even greater effect in areas where there is a linguistic difference. Hon. Members can well imagine the effect that that can have on a community.
  We have heard about the way in which wealth is apparently sweeping across these islands. A press report last February stated that Wales had slumped in the national wages league. According to a report last month in a newspaper covering north Wales, family incomes are less than £80 a week. On average, wages in Wales are £183 per week, according to the new earnings survey last year,

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  compared with £246 per week in south-east England, but many areas of Wales have substantially lower wage levels. In the Arfon area, in my constituency, 43 per cent. of families have less than £80 a week, as the press report states.
  There is high unemployment in that area. In the adjoining area of Dwyfor, the unemployment figure last winter was 24·7 per cent., yet that area has the longest waiting list for houses in Pwllheli and Dwyfor that I can remember, as people turn to the public sector to obtain rented accommodation because they cannot compete with people moving in to buy private housing stock. It is a classic example of uneven development and of the core-periphery relationship. We are very much on the periphery.
  The situation in my area is exacerbated by the problem of second homes, although that problem is not restricted to my area. In Dwyfor, 17·5 per cent. of the housing stock consists of second homes and, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas), the figure is 16·8 per cent. More than 50 per cent. of some villages consist of second homes. That means that the services disappear in winter and the population then wants to move from the villages to the towns because the basic services are not available, which worsens the situation.
  A package of policies could be implemented to reduce the impact of this problem. First, we must consider planning control when a house changes from being a first home to a second home, just as we do when a house becomes a shop or office. Secondly, there should be greater resources for local authorities to intervene to buy up houses to let them in areas where local people could not otherwise compete. That has already started. Some £200,000 has been allocated in the Dwyfor area by the Welsh Office for that purpose, but we need more resources to make an impact. Thirdly, the use of section 52 powers needs to be clarified. The Lake District tries to use those powers considerably to ensure that local authorities can help local people to have a first option on new housing stock in that area.
  In Wales, we have a severe problem with unfit houses. A recent house condition survey in Wales showed that 70,000 houses were unfit, out of a total housing stock of about 1 million. The cost of putting those right would be £1·25 billion, which is an enormous sum. That sum reflects a backlog over a number of years. Once again, the Dwfor area in my constituency has the worst figures. A quarter of all the housing units were deemed to be unfit. We expect the valley industrial areas to be the worst, yet a scattered rural area such as Dwyfor came out worst in that survey.
  Mr. Morgan: May I draw to the House's attention an item in yesterday's Western Mail which shows that a house in Aberaman in the Cynon valley is on sale for £2,550? It is a partially improved miner's cottage. That sum probably represents the weekly increase in house prices in parts of the home counties. The reason why one can buy such a property for that sum is that local people do not have the incomes to undertake the major repairs required. As a result, we in Wales do not wish to be patronised, as we were at the Conservative party Welsh conference last weekend, when the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster said:
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  "If you are going to spread prosperity more widely in the North, in Wales, in Scotland, you need the South-East to be prosperous…Its wealth helps pay for the policies to make the rest of the country more wealthy."
  Mr. Wigley: I accept that. There is a problem in that buying these houses involves the cost of renovation, not simply the cost of buying. Many in the valleys of industrial south Wales are worried that people will move in because they have the resources to buy up these houses cheaply and renovate them, so that local people are priced out because they do not have enough combined resources both to buy and to renovate. This is also a worry in the Swansea valleys, in Glamorgan and in other areas of Wales from which I have had representations.
  Some bodies are trying to overcome these problems —for example, the housing associations. Some of them are doing excellent work in buying up, renovating and letting property, but there is a great danger that, if housing associations have to go to the market to get capital and therefore have to pay the going rate for that capital, the inevitable rents will be out of the reach of many of the people who need such housing. A housing association in my constituency has done a survey of the income level of its tenants, and the average is £60 a week. Such an income will not fund the loans that have to be paid at commercial levels.
  Dr. Dafydd Elis Thomas: I am aware that there is not a Welsh Office Minister on the Government Front Bench, but I hope that the Minister for Housing and Planning, or a Welsh Minister, will look into this problem. There is a need for the Housing Corporation, as it has been restructured in Wales, to be a broker between commercial funds and housing associations to enable adequate additional funds to be both made available from the commercial sector and distributed evenly among the housing associations in Wales.
  Mr. Wigley: We need that mechanism, but we also need to make sure that the interest rates do not lead to a rent set at a level above the means of those who need the housing stock prepared by housing associations.
  There is also worry in my area about the implications of the wholesale disposal of council estates that is implicit in the Housing Bill. There is a worry that, some five or six years after some of the more attractive rural council estates have been bought up, commercial companies will sell out to the cheque-book invasion and there will be even less rented housing stock available for local people. The answer in such areas does not come from rented private houses, because those who have private rented stock want to retain it for the holiday home market in summer, when they can get a higher rent.
  All these problems come together, but planning can overcome them. First, we need primarily to build to meet the local need, and the hon. Member for Berkshire, East made the same point in different circumstances. Planning decisions need to be taken locally, as has been stressed by a number of hon. Members, and the Secretary of State must not overrule planning refusals unless there is an overwhelming case for doing so.
  Mr. Ian McCartney: In relation to planning matters in north Wales as in my constituency, is not another restraint on new development the incursion of British Coal's Opencast Executive, which blatantly affects planning applications on green belt land and land next to

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  urban and semi-urban development by the use of large-scale opencast developments, which has a major effect on the environment and the community in the development of new housing and the retention of old housing?
  Mr. Wigley: That is a worry in Clwyd and other parts of south Wales. It is important that the interests of the community are taken into account.
  I warn the Government of the tensions that are building up because of the cheque-book invasion. People are calling for protection against that invasion in the same way as the people in the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands called for the protection of their housing stocks. We realise that there are impracticalities. However, tensions and feelings are building up, and the Government must realise that they need to make sure that local communities, whether in rural Wales, Cornwall, East Anglia or the Lake District, have enough protection to ensure that their people have a roof over their heads.
  Mr. Tony Banks: Something else is happening. Because of the prices in the south-east, people can make a computation between the cost of moving right out of London—often into south Wales—and commuting back to London, and still be in profit. That has put another pressure on prices of housing in places such as south Wales.
  Mr. Wigley: There are great pressures on local people on lower income levels. One realises that income levels are higher in the south-east because of the higher costs, but when such people come in to our areas, it is difficult for our young people and young families to buy. The Government's policy to maximise owner-occupation will not be achieved in such circumstances. There will be tension unless there is action.
  Local authorities need resources to buy in, renovate and either rent or sell to people on the waiting list, as happens in Berkshire. There must be lower interest finance to enable local people to compete in buying houses against people from outside the area with higher incomes and we need, overwhelmingly, greater economic growth so that we can have natural competition and do not need to rely on artificial barriers. If our people are forced into a future in which they have neither work to sustain them nor homes which they can afford, there will be a highly explosive cocktail, which the Government will ignore at their peril.
  6.25 pm
  Mr. Alistair Burt: Any debate on housing policy shows the divide between the two sides of the House in both practicalities and philosophy. In terms of practicalities, it is necessary to look at what the Labour party did when it had the opportunity to do something, as the Labour Government's failures in housing gave this Government the opportunity to do what they have been doing. They were no saints. Their failure to keep to their bargain on house building and their severe cuts in home improvement grants were due to their failure to get their sums right and to live up to their promises.
  In housing philosophy, the failure was even more marked. Labour's post-war housing philosophy is marked not so much by its professed desire to supply appropriate housing to all households, but more by its determination
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  to use council housing as the sole vehicle for this, whatever the cost and whatever the failures. Secondly, it was marked by a gut desire to restrict the private landlord and the private rented sector, which was to have profound consequences for homelessness today. The loss of 400,000 private dwellings from the rented sector between 1974 and 1979 has cost us dear in the changing nature of homelessness in the past 15 to 20 years.
  In this atmosphere of failure of both philosophy and practical policies, the Conservative Government came to office in 1979. The interesting changes of both philosophy and practice have helped to give the Conservative Government's housing policy the large measure of popular support that it now enjoys. First, it has increased involvement of tenants in the management and running of their estates. Not many hon. Members have mentioned the success of the Government's Estates Action programme. In my constituency that programme has been at work in one of the poorest estates, where there is now a growing difference in attitude and environment. Smaller scale management has been encouraged, and there is no doubt that the closer the relationship between those who are tenants and those who manage them is bound to lead to an improvement in relationships and the general environment for those who live on the housing estate.
  There has also been a boost in owner-occupation and home ownership. I do not want to make too much of that, because it is possible to over-egg that pudding. The Government's desire to reverse the antipathy that the Labour Government felt towards owner-occupation meant that they may have missed the necessity to concentrate also on the need for low-cost rented housing. However, there has been a marked improvement on that in the past couple of years. The proposals outlined in the Housing Bill to encourage further development in the rented sector, both public and private, will have profoundly beneficial consequences for those who, up to now, have been homeless. It has been necessary for the Government to adopt a two-pronged strategy of both owner-occupation and a greater mix in housing.
  The major complaint that my constituents would have of Opposition Members is their rigid adherence to the old solutions to housing problems. There are many areas in this country which have been under Labour local control for about 50 years irrespective of changes in central Government, many of which are still in the same state of decay from which they suffered 30 years ago. The failure of traditional council house management policies since the war has caused the problems that now face us.
  The Government have reacted by a change in thinking. They have tried new measures and varied ownership by supporting co-operatives. We welcome the fact that the hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) is a great supporter of co-operatives. A few years ago, Liverpool city council—Liverpool being only just down the road from Knowsley—operated a direct policy against co-operatives because it decided that the only way through for rented accommodation was to be found with municipal housing. That is a dead policy.
  The dead policies are being pursued by Opposition Members. Improvements in housing in owner-occupation and the rented sector lie only with the Government, where there is variety, choice and freedom.
  6.30 pm
  Mr. Allan Roberts: I accept that, following the elections of 1964 and 1966, the housing policy of the Conservative party became generally a vote winner for it. In 1964 and 1966 the Labour party's policy was definitely a vote winner. Unfortunately, we lost the initiative. That was partly because of the Government's successful sale-of-council-houses policy. The selling of council property to sitting tenants at large discounts proved to be extremely popular.
  Mr. Tony Banks: Giving away money is always popular.
  Mr. Roberts: Exactly.
  Housing policy has once again become a vote winner for the Labour party. That will be become increasingly clear as the Housing Bill is understood and the Government's record dawns on people the length and breadth of the country; when people on council estates realise that their homes will be sold to the private sector over their heads. Labour is back in harness and winning votes on account of its housing policy. The Tories are losing votes by wanting to hand over housing to the private market, with all that that means.
  I listened with care to the Secretary of State for the Environment. With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan, I have produced an ode to the right hon. Gentleman. It is as follows:
  I am the very model of a modern Housing Minister; my policies are Conservative, free market, very sinister.
  I seek acclaim for all the acts of mine which I deem suitable. But blame all local councils when my mistakes are irrefutable. I baffle all in Parliament with a lengthy documentary,
  Ensuring that every syllable gives rise to great controversy. And then if southern Tories are still the victims of perplexity I blame the right hon. Member for Henley, the only thing that makes sense to me."
  That was the sum total of the right hon. Gentleman's speech. He blamed local authorities for the housing crisis that has been created by the Government's policies. He chose to blame the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) for the disastrous planning policies that the Government have pursued in the south of England.
  The Government's record needs careful examination, and the British people understand that. There has been a doubling of homelessness and the creation of the transient homeless youngster because of the Government's changes in social security benefit. There are 2 million who are living in homes that are unfit for human habitation. There are 390,000 concealed households—homeless households who are dependent on relatives and friends. These are the "front-room" families. There has been a 30 per cent. increase in the number of families on local authority waiting lists since 1979. That is not surprising when there has been a 75 per cent. cut in Government money to local authorities to house these people. Local authorities are prevented by the Government from building to replace the dwindling supply of attractive modern council homes. The massive backlog of essential repairs to local authority housing follows in the wake of Government cuts. The Audit Commission estimates that the cost of these repairs is growing at the rate of £900 million a year.
  The plight of the public sector pales into insignificance when we consider the state of the private housing sector, where 77 per cent. of unfit dwellings are to be found. Shelter estimates that at the present rate of progress it will take 167 years to eliminate overcrowding for the 1 million
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  who are currently living in multi-occupied housing. It is worth noting that if the pace of house building that prevailed until 1979 had been continued we would have at least 330,000 more homes for 330,000 more families.
  We are faced with what amounts to a Government created housing crisis. There is a housing shortage of massive proportions, with an especial shortage of housing to rent. If there is a shortage of a commodity as vital as housing, there must be rationing. If council housing committees, or housing associations, are not controlling the rationing, the market is. Control is inflicted by price. Because the availability of housing to rent and to buy at prices that ordinary people can afford has diminished, families in many parts of the country are stretching themselves to financial breaking point to get on to the ownership ladder. Household debt has consequently increased from slightly less than £51 billion in 1978 to over £204 billion in 1986. Of that sum, £173 billion is accounted for by mortgages. In its wake, repossessions by building societies have increased tenfold between 1979 and 1987. According to the Association of District Councils, 53 per cent. of households in the east of England could not afford to buy their own homes, compared with 15 per cent. only four years ago.Yet the Tories have the audacity to claim to support and assist owner-occupation.
  Mr. Tony Banks: My hon. Friend has referred to repossessions by building societies. When repossessions take place and families are thrown out of their homes, local authorities have to put them in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. I dealt with such a case at my surgery last Friday. The local authority is having to spend more money keeping the couple in bed-and-breakfast accommodation than the couple were having to pay in mortgage payment instalments.
  Mr. Roberts: That is happening the length and breadth of the country.
  The Tories claim that they are the party of freedom as well as the party that supports owner-occupation. Why do they not implement the Labour party's policy and give tenants of private landlords the right to buy? Why not give the private tenant the right to opt for another landlord, such as the council, a housing association or a co-operative? Why not do that if they want alternative forms of tenure? Why do the Tories not adopt the Labour party's policy of a real right to rent? We would define categories of housing need, and if families came within them they would be entitled by law to accommodation to rent in the local authority sector. If local authorities did not have sufficient housing, the resources that would be provided by a Labour Government would be used to acquire property from the private sector to rent to those in housing need.
  That is the reverse of what the Government intend. It seems that they now intend to destroy the homeless persons legislation. They seek to destroy the limited rights to rehousing that homeless families now have in law. Yet the Conservative party claims to be the party of freedom. There is no freedom in a housing crisis of scarcity and price.
  The Government's proposals as set out in the Housing Bill—it is still before Parliament, thanks to the Labour party—will make the position even worse. Where is the choice for the council tenant who cannot get a transfer or exchange, who wants to move and who cannot afford to

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  buy? Where is the choice for the tenant who is railroaded into a housing action trust and into the hands of an unknown housing association, with no vote or right to consultation? The Institute of Housing assessed HATs and stated:
  "The danger of a housing centred approach based upon changing tenures is that regeneration may come about through changing the nature of the population living in the area, rather than through improving the economic circumstances and life chances of those already there."
  It is social engineering of the worst sort. That is why the majority of tenants in potential HAT areas are opposed to the proposals.
  Where is the choice for tenants under the Government's pick-a-landlord scheme; tenants who do not want to opt out but who see the decision-making system rigged and the voting system fixed to make nonsense of the idea of choice? We read today in The Guardian that the people who, in the pick-a-landlord scheme, opt to remain with the local authority will pay the same high rents as those who choose to go to a private landlord. It will be chaos. The Minister has said that the local authority can subsidise the rent of the person who has opted to stay with the council and who has to pay the same rent as those who chose to be with a private landlord. We have the local authority, with diminished resources, having to subsidise the private landlord. That is what the Minister's remarks mean.
  Where is the choice for the family who are in bed-and-breakfast accommodation? Where is the choice for those who cannot afford the Tory's new market rents? Where is the choice for the elderly who cannot get into sheltered housing or an old person's bungalow? Where is the choice for the elderly who have to sell their house after a lifetime of paying for it to provide an income to supplement their benefit, which has been so cruelly cut by the Government? The Government believe in housing choice—choice for the rich to be well housed, choice for the private landlord and not for the tenant, and choice for the poor and those on low incomes to be badly housed. That is the kind of choice offered by the Government's housing policies and Housing Bill.
  This debate is also about planning, and something needs to be said about the Government's record in that respect. The Tories see planning as a fetter on the free market, and since 1979 successive Secretaries of State have been doing their best to destroy Britain's proud planning system. The present Secretary of State may be the worst and the ultimate arch free market man, but the right hon. Member for Henley was not much better. He began and inspired the whole process in the first place. As the party that founded the planning system with the Town and Country Planning Act 1947, Labour has been watching with dismay as the planning system has progressively weakened, especially at a strategic level.
  The Government have produced a number of special measures which they claim are designed to revive urban areas, enterprise zones, urban development corporations and now simplified planning zones—to say nothing of garden festivals. Such measures may have revived a few areas of urban land, but that has been done at the price of local democracy. Local urban development corporations have imposed policies that are at complete variance with those of the local authorities. Urban development corporations, and particularly the LDDC, behave as if
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  they are dealing with green-field sites rather than with places where people already live and work. Elsewhere, dereliction has been created. Research commissioned by the Government themselves shows that, in many cases, enterprise zones and urban development corporations have merely sucked in development from the surrounding area, so dereliction has only been moved, not reduced.
  At the same time, the Government have been dismantling strategic planning. The abolition of the metropolitan authorities and the GLC has left a gap that district and borough council joint committees cannot fill. The Government now propose to replace county structure plans with weaker "county statements". The power of counties to intervene when districts are faced with plans that go against structure plans has already been removed. Planners are being asked by the Government to facilitate development, not to judge it. That is the basis of the difficulties in which the Secretary of State finds himself with his own supporters in the south of England.
  The Government claim, under pressure from their own supporters, to be protecting green belts and the countryside from piecemeal development, yet their public investment programmes direct development towards the countryside. New motorways such as the M25 and M40, and the concentration of defence establishments along the London to Bristol access, are two huge examples. Individual decisions by the Secretary of State on housing, out-of-town superstores, second homes, mining or forestry for national parks breach the plans for areas under pressure and create more "hope value" and development pressure around them.
  The recent change in opencast coal mining policy announced by the Department of the Environment is a prime example of the environment being sacrificed to facilitate development and of the Department's decisions being investment-led. rather than environment-led, which is wrong.
  What is Labour's alternative? We believe that there should be a strategic overview. A strategic authority should be established to provide planning guidance and set the context for local planning. As part of a general commitment to a better environment, land use planning should incorporate an environmental dimension. Noise, air and water pollution and the protection of natural areas all need to be considered when planning applications and local plans are discussed. Our proposed environmental protection service, which a Labour Government would establish, would be locally run and be provided with the necessary back-up.
  At present, people have only limited powers within the planning system to control the shaping of their environment. Labour is committed to changing that. Our charter for the environment sets out proposals for public action zones, which we shall empower and encourage local authorities to declare. As with urban development corporations, public action zones will have Government support, strong compulsory purchase powers, and considerable public funding to tackle key areas of decline. Unlike urban development corporations, they will be based on the needs and wishes of local communities; they will not override them.
  The Labour party seeks a balance between city and country and to revive urban areas, making them pleasant and attractive places in which to live. If further urban expansion is needed, it should be planned, with properly serviced and properly centred development, rather than an

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  unplanned sprawl. Both existing and new urban areas should be affordable to all. Unlike the Government, we seek to enhance and protect the countryside, but as an open recreational resource accessible to all. Planning should not he considered in isolation. It is the means of creating healthier, livelier and more pleasant communities for all. The Tories see planning as an impediment to the operation of the free market. If the Secretary of State has his way, planning as we know it will be destroyed, as the free market takes over. As the planning system is destroyed, so too will be the environment.
  6.44 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mrs. Marion Roe): Hon. Members have made a number of points, to which I shall respond, but first I remind the House of two comments made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State at the beginning of this debate. Opposition Members have charged that we do not have any regional housing and planning policies. It is true that we do not believe that all house building should be centrally planned and directed. As the last Labour Government proved, the centralist approach neither aids growth nor helps the poorer regions. Instead, it delays change, inhibits growth, and depresses living standards.
  By contrast, the Government's approach has been proved to work. In housing, we first set out to encourage owner-occupation. The number of home owners has increased by 3 million and private house building is at its highest level since 1973. We are now tackling the rented sector, encouraging investment and creating the conditions that will allow a more diverse and responsive rented sector to be created. Again, we aim to put consumer choice in place of state imposed choices. By doing so, we believe that we will both increase investment and give the people the housing that they want.
  We need to bear in mind the link between housing and planning policies. Turning first to the planning side, the Government have strenuously sought to update the apparatus of planning and to keep policies for the development and use of land in tune with current needs. The planning system that we inherited had to be adapted to cope with the realities of the 1980s, and successive Secretaries of State have faced the need to make the many —sometimes controversial—changes that were required. We have increased permitted development rights by changes to the General Development Order, recast the Use Classes Order, and introduced provisions for simplified planning zones.
  At the same time, we have not hesitated to increase control where that has been needed to protect and enhance the environment. For example, we have increased controls over farm and forestry buildings and roads in national parks, and in revising the General Development Order we shall be introducing controls over intensive livestock units, loft conversions, and stone-cladding in conservation areas.
  Many people have expressed concern about the green belts and the Government's stewardship of them. Those fears have proved unfounded, as all Members must now concede. Despite frequent challenges and planning applications and appeals, local planning authorities and the Secretary of State have consistently upheld the integrity of the green belts.
  Concern has been expressed today that too much unrestrained development is taking place in the south-east.
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  The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) asked whether the estimates of future housing provision by SERPLAN and LPAC, covering the period from 1991 to 2001, are correct. We would all like a definite answer, but there are a number of variables. They include the estimated number of extra households, the number of existing dwellings, and the number of properties that will be built between now and 1991. SERPLAN provided new evidence last week and LPAC is still working on its advice to the Secretary of State. We shall he resolving that matter and issuing strategic guidance for London and the south-east in due course.
  We would like to encourage development in other areas where it will be welcome; hence our inner-city policies. The uniform business rate will make locations outside the south more attractive. High land and house prices will also tend to encourage development elsewhere, where prices are lower and skilled labour is more readily available. As my right hon. Friend commented, there are already signs that the growing prosperity, which first became evident in the south-east, is spreading to other parts of the country. Opposition Members should be wary of discounting those market mechanisms too quickly and committing themselves to the bureaucracy and inefficiency of centralised planning.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Berkshire, East (Mr. MacKay) mentioned the problem of coping with extra housing provision in Berkshire. The modifications to the structure plan proposed by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State were to ensure that provision met the requirements arising from the local population.
  It is necessary to be realistic about what the planning system alone can achieve. It cannot stimulate development that does not meet demand. Restraint in one area will not automatically steer development to another. As 1992 approaches, we also need to be cautious about driving development out of the country altogether. We do not want to force people to live where they are unwilling to go. The household projections show that the growth in households in the south-east comes largely from indigenous growth. All of us should think very carefully before committing ourselves to a policy which might, in effect, force sons and daughters to seek homes and work away from the areas in which they were brought up.
  Mr. Tony Banks: The hon. Lady mentioned the unified business rate. Why are the CBI and the chambers of commerce in the south strongly critical of that?
  Mrs. Roe: They have obviously not read the proposals in detail and are unaware of the benefits that that will bring to other parts of the country.
  There is already restraint in the south-east. The debate is about whether it would be wise to make that even tighter, with all the consequences for house prices and the availability of housing for the less well off that that would entail. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) made a cogent statement of the arguments and of the need to provide more housing where people want to live.
  The pressure for development and the increasing resort to the appeals machinery have put increasing strain on the planning system. It is important to stress that 98 per cent. of planning permissions are given by local authorities.

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  That is as it should be, and Conservative Members have no wish to resort to the "Whitehall knows best" approach that underlies the Opposition's motion.
  More frequent resort to appeals can also create uncertainty. But in many places that is compounded by the absence of any local plan. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State mentioned, last week we issued for consultation a draft planning policy guidance note on the preparation of local plans. The message to district planning authorities is to prepare plans as quickly as possible, particularly for areas where there is a conflict between the need for development and the interests of the local environment. Proper consultation on local plans will provide the best way of allowing local communities to resolve these conflicts themselves in a sensible and realistic way. We believe this message will be widely welcomed and we hope that districts will act quickly to extend their coverage of detailed plans.
  Mr. Roger Gale rose—
  Mrs. Roe: By this means local amenity can be safeguarded—
  Mr. Gale rose—
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. The hon. Lady is on her feet.
  Mrs. Roe: By this means local amenity can be safeguarded and provision made for necessary development, including additional house building. More importantly, this approach will help to ensure that, wherever possible, the conflicts between development and amenity are solved at local level.
  Mr. Gale: If my hon. Friend is saying that the Department of the Environment will heed the wishes of the county and district councils, will she convey that to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, who has overridden Dartford and Thanet councils in two Parliaments?
  Mrs. Roe: I hope that the local plans will be brought up to date. Many councils do not have up-to-date local plans. Unfortunately, that means that there is no basis for a planning decision, and action has to be taken through the inspector appeals system.
  On housing, our policies are clear. The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey tried to argue that they were not, but we have always had two clear policy aims. Our first aim is to ensure that as many people as possible can own their own homes. That is why we are committed to mortgage interest tax relief and have pursued the right-to-buy policy and diversified the rented sector. The hon. Member for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) suggested that mortgage interest tax relief served no housing policy aim. Helping 3 million more people to own their own homes is a worthy aim.
  Mr. Simon Hughes rose—
  Mrs. Roe: In order to create greater choice for those who do not want or cannot afford to buy their own homes, we want to reduce tenants' dependency on the local authority sector and the restrictions that have squeezed out private investment in housing for rent. The provisions
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  in the Housing Bill to deregulate private-sector rents and give tenants the opportunity to change their landlord represent the first step in encouraging a greater variety of landlords.
  We have not avoided debate on those issues and we have been willing to bring forward amendments to the Bill. We are, after all, believers in democracy.
  The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) talked about the effect of market rents. He quoted figures over £100 per week. The hon. Member for Knowsley, North made a thoughtful contribution, in which he pointed out that the supply of rented accommodation depended upon the economics of property ownership. He, too, felt that private rented housing would be out of people's reach. The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey also stressed the need for new rented housing to be affordable. I agree with the hon. Member for Knowsley, North that it all depends on the economics, but Opposition Members have forgotten the extent of the measures taken to encourage private investment.
  We will ensure that public subsidy is available where it is necessary to provide accommodation to let at below market levels. Housing association grant will be available from the Housing Corporation and local authorities will be able to provide subsidies to private and housing association landlords. We have just announced that, as with housing association grant, such subsidies can be up to 50 per cent. to 75 per cent. of total scheme costs, depending on the area.
  On top of the direct subsidies available to the private rented sector, the business expansion scheme is to be extended to private renting, and that will give favourable tax treatment to investment in private renting over the next five years. The tax concessions, combined with subsidies from local authorities, will provide a powerful stimulus to private investment in rented housing, enabling us to get more houses from the public resources available for housing investment. The generous tax relief available and the subsidies available from the Housing Corporation and local authorities demonstrate that we are committed to putting Government support where it is needed most.
  Mr. Battle rose—
  Mrs. Roe: My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne was near the mark when he talked about rented accommodation at reasonable rents. The measures will provide a powerful incentive to bring private rented properties back into use and to build more for rent.
  To answer the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), the measures will also help to stimulate investment in the repair and improvement of private rented dwellings. The hon. Gentleman asked us to restore expenditure on improvement grants to home owners. Spending on improvement grants is still nearly double in real terms what it was when the Labour Government were in power, and since 1979 we have spent £3·5 billion on grants to home owners.
  Several hon. Members referred to the state of the local authority stock and the availability of resources for repair. Local authorities are spending nearly £3 billion a year on repair and maintenance, and a number of authorities, including Labour authorities, which complain of lack of resources, fail to use to the full their power to spend up to 100 per cent. of receipts for capital repairs.

  1179
  That represents a coherent strategy to end the local authority monopoly in rented housing, to increase investment, to widen consumer choice and improve standards of management. We may not believe in direct public sector provision, but more public sector resources are being made available.
  The Opposition appear still to hanker after the failed dirigiste attempts at planning of the 1960s, to want to impose the dead hand of control and regulation, and to exhume the bodies of the Department of Economic Affairs and the national plan. The Government's policies have created a boom in private house building and in owner-occupation; and we are now intent on reviving the rented sector. We want to create the conditions in which the private sector can thrive and where even those who need help with their housing costs have a choice. We aim to give people the housing that they want.
  Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
  The House divided: Ayes 229, Noes 326

  Division No. 374]

  [6.59 pm

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Dalyell, Tam

  Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Allen, Graham

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

  Alton, David

  Dewar, Donald

  Anderson, Donald

  Dixon, Don

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Dobson, Frank

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Doran, Frank

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Douglas, Dick

  Ashton, Joe

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  Barron, Kevin

  Eadie, Alexander

  Battle, John

  Eastham, Ken

  Beckett, Margaret

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Bell, Stuart

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Fatchett, Derek

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Fearn, Ronald

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Blair, Tony

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

  Blunkett, David

  Fisher, Mark

  Boateng, Paul

  Flannery, Martin

  Boyes, Roland

  Flynn, Paul

  Bradley, Keith

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Foster, Derek

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Foulkes, George

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Fraser, John

  Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

  Fyfe, Maria

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Galbraith, Sam

  Buchan, Norman

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Buckley, George J.

  Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

  Caborn, Richard

  George, Bruce

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Canavan, Dennis

  Gordon, Mildred

  Cartwright, John

  Gould, Bryan

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Graham, Thomas

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Clay, Bob

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Clelland, David

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Grocott, Bruce

  Cohen, Harry

  Hardy, Peter

  Coleman, Donald

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Corbett, Robin

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Cousins, Jim

  Hinchliffe, David

  Cox, Tom

  Hogg, N.(Cnauld & Kilsyth)

  Crowther, Stan

  Holland, Stuart

  Cryer, Bob

  Home Robertson, John

  Cummings, John

  Hood, Jimmy

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  1180

  Howell, Rt Hon D.(S'heath)

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Howells, Geraint

  Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

  Hoyle, Doug

  Parry, Robert

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Patchett, Terry

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Pendry, Tom

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Pike, Peter L.

  Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Prescott, John

  lllsley, Eric

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Ingram, Adam

  Radice, Giles

  Janner, Greville

  Randall, Stuart

  John, Brynmor

  Redmond, Martin

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)

  Reid, Dr John

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

  Richardson, Jo

  Kennedy, Charles

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Rogers, Allan

  Lambie, David

  Rooker, Jeff

  Lamond, James

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Rowlands, Ted

  Leighton, Ron

  Ruddock, Joan

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Salmond, Alex

  Lewis, Terry

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Litherland, Robert

  Sheerman, Barry

  Livingstone, Ken

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Livsey, Richard

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Short, Clare

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Skinner, Dennis

  McAllion, John

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  McAvoy, Thomas

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

  McCartney, Ian

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

  Macdonald, Calum A.

  Snape, Peter

  McFall, John

  Soley, Clive

  McLeish, Henry

  Spearing, Nigel

  Maclennan, Robert

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  McTaggart, Bob

  Stott, Roger

  McWilliam, John

  Strang, Gavin

  Madden, Max

  Straw, Jack

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Marek, Dr John

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Martin, Michael J.(Springburn)

  Turner, Dennis

  Martlew, Eric

  Wall, Pat

  Maxton, John

  Wallace, James

  Meacher, Michael

  Walley, Joan

  Meale, Alan

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Michael, Alun

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

  Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Williams, Alan W.(Carm'then)

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Wilson, Brian

  Morley, Elliott

  Winnick, David

  Morris, Rt Hon A.(W'shawe)

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Morris, Rt Hon J.(Aberavon)

  Worthington, Tony

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Wray, Jimmy

  Mullin, Chris

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Murphy, Paul

  Nellist, Dave

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Mr. Frank Haynes and

  O'Brien, William

  Mr. Frank Cook.

  O'Neill, Martin

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Atkinson, David

  Alexander, Richard

  Baker, Rt Hon K.(Mole Valley)

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Allason, Rupert

  Baldry, Tony

  Amery, Rt Hon Julian

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Amess, David

  Batiste, Spencer

  Amos, Alan

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Arbuthnot, James

  Bellingham, Henry

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Bendall, Vivian

  Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

  Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Ashby, David

  Benyon, W.

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Atkins, Robert

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  1181

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Body, Sir Richard

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Boswell, Tim

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Bottomley, Peter

  Gorst, John

  Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

  Gow, Ian

  Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

  Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Bowis, John

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  Gregory, Conal

  Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

  Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Brazier, Julian

  Grist, lan

  Bright, Graham

  Ground, Patrick

  Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

  Grylls, Michael

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

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

  Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Hannam, John

  Budgen, Nicholas

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

  Burns, Simon

  Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

  Burt, Alistair

  Harris, David

  Butcher, John

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Butler, Chris

  Hawkins, Christopher

  Butterfill, John

  Hayes, Jerry

  Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

  Hayward, Robert

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Carrington, Matthew

  Heddle, John

  Carttiss, Michael

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Cash, William

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hill, James

  Chope, Christopher

  Hind, Kenneth

  Churchill, Mr

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochtord)

  Holt, Richard

  Clark, Sir W.(Croydon S)

  Hordern, Sir Peter

  Clarke, Rt Hon K.(Rushcliffe)

  Howard, Michael

  Colvin, Michael

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

  Conway, Derek

  Howarth, G.(Cannock & B'wd)

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Cope, Rt Hon John

  Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

  Couchman, James

  Hughes, Robert G.(Harrow W)

  Cran, James

  Hunt, David (Wirral W)

  Critchley, Julian

  Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Hunter, Andrew

  Curry, David

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

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

  Irvine, Michael

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Irving, Charles

  Day, Stephen

  Jack, Michael

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Jackson, Robert

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Janman, Tim

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Jessel, Toby

  Dover, Den

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Dunn, Bob

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Durant, Tony

  Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

  Dykes, Hugh

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Key, Robert

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Kilfedder, James

  Evennett, David

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Fallon, Michael

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Farr, Sir John

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Favell, Tony

  Knapman, Roger

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Knight, Greg (Derby North)

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

  Knowles, Michael

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Knox, David

  Forman, Nigel

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirllng)

  Lang, Ian

  Forth, Eric

  Latham, Michael

  Fox, Sir Marcus

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Franks, Cecil

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Freeman, Roger

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  French, Douglas

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Fry, Peter

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Gardiner, George

  Lightbown, David

  Garel-Jones, Tristan

  Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Lord, Michael

  1182

  Lyell, Sir Nicholas

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  McCrindle, Robert

  Scott, Nicholas

  Macfarlane, Sir Neil

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

  Shephard, Mrs G.(Norfolk SW)

  McNair-Wilson, P.(New Forest)

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Madel, David

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Malins, Humfrey

  Shersby, Michael

  Mans, Keith

  Sims, Roger

  Maples, John

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  Marlow, Tony

  Speller, Tony

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Squire, Robin

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Stanley, Rt Hon John

  Miller, Sir Hal

  Steen, Anthony

  Mills, lain

  Stern, Michael

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Stevens, Lewis

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Mitchell, David (Hants NW)

  Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

  Moate, Roger

  Stradling Thomas, Sir John

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Sumberg, David

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Summerson, Hugo

  Moore, Rt Hon John

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Morrison, Sir Charles

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)

  Taylor, John M (Solihull)

  Moss, Malcolm

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Moynihan, Hon Colin

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Mudd, David

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Neale, Gerrard

  Thompson, D.(Calder Valley)

  Needham, Richard

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Nelson, Anthony

  Thorne, Neil

  Neubert, Michael

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Townsend, Cyril D.(B'heath)

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Tracey, Richard

  Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

  Tredinnick, David

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Trippier, David

  Page, Richard

  Trotter, Neville

  Paice, James

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Patnick, Irvine

  Viggers, Peter

  Patten, Chris (Bath)

  Waddington, Rt Hon David

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Pawsey, James

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Walden, George

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Walker, Rt Hon P.(W'cester)

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Waller, Gary

  Portillo, Michael

  Walters, Sir Dennis

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Price, Sir David

  Warren, Kenneth

  Raffan, Keith

  Watts, John

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Wells, Bowen

  Rathbone, Tim

  Whitney, Ray

  Redwood, John

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Renton, Tim

  Wilshire, David

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Winterton, Mrs Ann

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Wolfson, Mark

  Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

  Wood, Timothy

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Woodcock, Mike

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Yeo, Tim

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Rost, Peter

  Rumbold, Mrs Angela

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Ryder, Richard

  Mr. Robert Boscawen and

  Sackville, Hon Tom

  Mr. David Maclean.

  Sainsbury, Hon Tim

  Question accordingly negatived.
  Question, That the proposed words be there added, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 30 (Questions on amendments):—
  The House divided: Ayes 328, Noes 223.

  Division No. 375]

  [7.14 pm

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Day, Stephen

  Alexander, Richard

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Allason, Rupert

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Amery, Rt Hon Julian

  Dover, Den

  Amess, David

  Dunn, Bob

  Amos, Alan

  Dykes, Hugh

  Arbuthnot, James

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

  Evennett, David

  Ashby, David

  Fallon, Michael

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Farr, Sir John

  Atkins, Robert

  Favell, Tony

  Atkinson, David

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Baker, Rt Hon K.(Mole Valley)

  Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Fmsberg, Sir Geoffrey

  Baldry, Tony

  Fookes, Miss Janet

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Forman, Nigel

  Batiste. Spencer

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Forth, Eric

  Bellingham, Henry

  Fox, Sir Marcus

  Bendall, Vivian

  Franks, Cecil

  Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Freeman, Roger

  Benyon, W.

  French, Douglas

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Fry, Peter

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Gardiner, George

  Biggs-Davison, Sir John

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir lan

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Glyn, Dr Alan

  Body, Sir Richard

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Boswell, Tim

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Bottomley, Peter

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

  Gorst, John

  Bowden, A (Brighton K'pto'n)

  Gow, Ian

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

  Bowis, John

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

  Gregory, Conal

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

  Brazier, Julian

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Bright, Graham

  Grist, Ian

  Brittan, Rt Hon Leon

  Ground, Patrick

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Grylls, Michael

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

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Browne, John (Winchester)

  Hamilton, Hon Archie (Epsom)

  Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Budgen, Nicholas

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Burns, Simon

  Hannam, John

  Burt, Alistair

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

  Butcher, John

  Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

  Butler, Chris

  Harris, David

  Butterfill, John

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

  Hawkins, Christopher

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hayes, Jerry

  Carrington, Matthew

  Hayward, Robert

  Carttiss, Michael

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Cash, William

  Heddle, John

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Chope, Christopher

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Churchill, Mr

  Hill, James

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Hind, Kenneth

  Clark, Sir W.(Croydon S)

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Clarke, Rt Hon K.(Rushcliffe)

  Holt, Richard

  Colvin, Michael

  Hordern, Sir Peter

  Conway, Derek

  Howard, Michael

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

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

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Howarth, G.(Cannock & B'wd)

  Cope, Rt Hon John

  Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dford)

  Couchman, James

  Howell, Ralph (North Norfolk)

  Cran, James

  Hughes, Robert G.(Harrow W)

  Critchley, Julian

  Hunt, David (Wirral W)

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Hunt, John (Ravensboume)

  Curry, David

  Hunter, Andrew

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

  Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Irvine, Michael

  1184

  Irving, Charles

  Pawsey, James

  Jack, Michael

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Jackson, Robert

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Janman, Tim

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Jessel, Toby

  Portillo, Michael

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Price, Sir David

  Jones, Robert B (Herts W)

  Raffan, Keith

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

  Key, Robert

  Rathbone, Tim

  Kilfedder, James

  Redwood, John

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Renton, Tim

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Rhodes James, Robert

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Knapman, Roger

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Knight, Greg (Derby North)

  Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

  Knowles, Michael

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Knox, David

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Rost, Peter

  Lang, lan

  Rowe, Andrew

  Latham, Michael

  Rumbold, Mrs Angela

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Ryder, Richard

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Sackville, Hon Tom

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Sainsbury, Hon Tim

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Scott, Nicholas

  Lightbown, David

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Lilley, Peter

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Lloyd, Sir lan (Havant)

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Shelton, William (Streatham)

  Lord, Michael

  Shephard, Mrs G.(Norfolk SW)

  Lyell, Sir Nicholas

  Shepherd, Colin (Heretord)

  McCrindle, Robert

  Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

  Macfarlane, Sir Neil

  Shersby, Michael

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Sims, Roger

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Maclean, David

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Speller, Tony

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

  Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

  McNair-Wilson, P.(New Forest)

  Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

  Madel, David

  Squire, Robin

  Malins, Humfrey

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Mans, Keith

  Stanley, Rt Hon John

  Maples, John

  Steen, Anthony

  Marlow, Tony

  Stern, Michael

  Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

  Stevens, Lewis

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Stradling Thomas, Sir John

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Sumberg, David

  Miller, Sir Hal

  Summerson, Hugo

  Mills, lain

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Taylor, lan (Esher)

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Taylor, John M (Solihull)

  Mitchell, David (Hanfs NW)

  Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

  Moate, Roger

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Thompson, D.(Calder Valley)

  Moore, Rt Hon John

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Morrison, Sir Charles

  Thorne, Neil

  Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)

  Thornton, Malcolm

  Moss, Malcofm

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Moynihan, Hon Colin

  Townsend, Cyril D.(B'heath)

  Mudd, David

  Tracey, Richard

  Neale, Gerrard

  Tredinnick, David

  Needham, Richard

  Trippier, David

  Nelson, Anthony

  Trotter, Neville

  Neubert, Michael

  Twinn, Dr lan

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Viggers, Peter

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Waddington, Rt Hon Davld

  Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Waldegrave, Hon William

  Page, Richard

  Walden, George

  Paice, James

  Walker, Rt Hon P.(W'cester)

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Waller, Gary

  Patnick, Irvine

  Walters, Sir Dennis

  Patten, Chris (Bath)

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Warren, Kenneth

  1185

  Watts, John

  Wolfson, Mark

  Wells, Bowen

  Wood, Timothy

  Wheeler, John

  Woodcock, Mike

  Whitney, Ray

  Yeo, Tim

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Wilshire, David

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Winterton, Mrs Ann

  Mr. Tristan Garel-Jones and

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Mr. Tony Durant.

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Duffy, A. E. P.

  Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Allen, Graham

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  Alton, David

  Eadie, Alexander

  Anderson, Donald

  Eastham, Ken

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  Ashby, David

  Fatchett, Derek

  Ashton, Joe

  Fearn, Ronald

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

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

  Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

  Fisher, Mark

  Barron, Kevin

  Flannery, Martin

  Battle, John

  Flynn, Paul

  Beckett, Margaret

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Beil, Stuart

  Foster, Derek

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Foulkes, George

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Fraser, John

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Fyfe, Maria

  Blair, Tony

  Galbraith, Sam

  Blunkett, David

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Boateng, Paul

  Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

  Boyes, Roland

  George, Bruce

  Bradley, Keith

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Gordon, Mildred

  Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

  Graham, Thomas

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Buchan, Norman

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Buckley, George J.

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Caborn, Richard

  Grocott, Bruce

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Hardy, Peter

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Canavan, Dennis

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

  Heffer, Eric S.

  Cartwright, John

  Hinchliffe, David

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Hogg, N.(C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Holland, Stuart

  Clay, Bob

  Home Robertson, John

  Clelland, David

  Hood, Jimmy

  Clwyd, Mrs Ann

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Cohen, Harry

  Howell, Rt Hon D.(S'heath)

  Coleman, Donald

  Howells, Geraint

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Hoyle, Doug

  Corbett, Robin

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Cousins, Jim

  Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

  Cox, Tom

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Crowther, Stan

  lllsley, Eric

  Cryer, Bob

  Ingram, Adam

  Cummings, John

  Janner, Greville

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  John, Brynmor

  Dalyell, Tam

  Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

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

  Kennedy, Charles

  Dewar, Donald

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

  Dixon, Don

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Dobson, Frank

  Lamond, James

  Doran, Frank

  Leadbitter, Ted

  Douglas, Dick

  Leighton, Ron

  1186

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  Lewis, Terry

  Reid, Dr John

  Litherland, Robert

  Richardson, Jo

  Livingstone, Ken

  Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

  Livsey, Richard

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Rogers, Allan

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Rooker, Jeff

  McAllion, John

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Rowlands, Ted

  McCartney, lan

  Ruddock, Joan

  Macdonald, Calum A.

  Salmond, Alex

  McFall, John

  Sedgemore, Brian

  McLeish, Henry

  Sheerman, Barry

  Maclennan, Robert

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  McWilliam, John

  Shore, Rt Hon Peter

  Madden, Max

  Short, Clare

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Skinner, Dennis

  Marek, Dr John

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

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

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

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

  Martin, Michael J.(Springburn)

  Snape, Peter

  Martlew, Eric

  Soley, Clive

  Maxton, John

  Spearing, Nigel

  Meacher, Michael

  Steel, Rt Hon David

  Meale, Alan

  Stott, Roger

  Michael, Alun

  Strang, Gavin

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Straw, Jack

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Millan, Rt Hon Bruce

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

  Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Turner, Dennis

  Morley, Elliott

  Wall, Pat

  Morris, Rt Hon A.(W'shawe)

  Wallace, James

  Morris, Rt Hon J.(Aberavon)

  Walley, Joan

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Mullin, Chris

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Murphy, Paul

  Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

  Nellist, Dave

  Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Wigley, Dafydd

  Brien, William

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Williams, Alan W.(Carm'then)

  Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

  Wilson, Brian

  Parry, Robert

  Winnick, David

  Patchett, Terry

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Pendry, Tom

  Wray, Jimmy

  Pike, Peter L.

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Radice, Giles

  Mr. Frank Haynes and

  Randall, Stuart

  Mr. Frank Cook.

  Redmond, Martin

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Madam Deputy Speaker forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That this House congratulates the Government on its housing and planning policies which have helped more people than ever before to own their own homes and, while protecting and extending the approved Green Belts, have created the conditions for a return of prosperity across the whole country; welcomes the proposals in the Housing Bill to widen the choice of housing available for rent; notes with satisfaction the planned increases in the Housing Corporation's programme and the additional resources being allocated to local authorities to tackle immediate problems of homelessness, bringing to £74 million the additional resources made available over the last six months; and urges local authorities to use these and other resources to end the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for families as quickly as possible.

  North Killingholme Cargo Terminal Bill (By Order)
  Order for Second Reading read.
  7.27 pm
  Mr. Michael Brown: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  7.28 pm
  Mr. Kevin Barron: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You will recall that on 11 May we had a Second Reading debate on a private Bill not dissimilar to the one that is before the House. During that debate I asked the Under-Secretary of State if at any time there had been a meeting between anyone in his ministerial chambers and the outside promoters of the Bill. He said that he did not recall any such meeting. The following Monday, in answer to a parliamentary question, the Under-Secretary of State said in effect that the chairman of Associated British Ports had met the Secretary of State for Transport about the very matter that was up for debate. I raised this on a point of order with Mr. Speaker on Tuesday 17 May, the day after I had received a written answer from the Under-Secretary of State. He rightly said that he was obliged that the Minister, having said something about which he was not sure, had put the record straight by having a meeting.
  I raise this point of order simply because this is a similar Bill, although it is not promoted by the same outside body. There is a close connection between that Bill and this, and the Secretary of State for Transport has a direct involvement with this Bill. It occurs to me to question whether this is a private Bill if such a meeting has taken place on this Bill, as it did on the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill. I would like you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to give a ruling. Perhaps you could suspend the sitting for a few minutes so that you can consider whether this is a private Bill, in view of its close connections with the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill, and whether we should therefore be considering it in the time that you have generously allotted for the discussion of private Bills this evening.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. The Bill before the House must satisfy and has satisfied all the criteria for a private Bill, otherwise it would not be before the House. Discussions that may have taken place outside the House are not a matter for the Chair.
  The Minister for Public Transport (Mr. David Mitchell): Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As the contacts that my ministerial colleagues and I may or may not have had with the promoters could be a matter of interest to the House, I have caused inquiries to be made. I am informed that there have been no such contacts with relation to the Bill.
  Mr. Martin Redmond: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. When I visited the Examiner and asked him about the Bill, he assured me that it was of a localised nature and not a hybrid Bill. It is my submission that it is a hybrid Bill, and as such should not be debated this evening in the guise of a private Bill—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman has gone far enough. He said that the authorities of the House had satisfied him that this is not a hybrid Bill. I cannot, therefore, proceed on the assumption that the hon. Gentleman is correct. Like him, I accept the advice that is offered to me by the authorities of the House and accept their assurance that this is not a hybrid Bill.
  Mr. Redmond: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I submit that the Bill has grave implications that go far beyond Killingholme. Bearing in mind the Government's Whip, we are asking you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, under the Standing Orders governing private business, to suspend the sitting pending an investigation by you and questions to the Minister and the Government. That is in accordance with Standing Order No. 85. I would ask you, Sir, to rule that this is a hybrid Bill, irrespective of what the Examiner said, because of the information that is coming to light.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I know of no grounds on which to give consideration to the hybridity question, and I can see no reason why we should not proceed.
  Mr. Michael Welsh: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. According to the Bill, the company involved was Central Oil Refining Co. Ltd. a subsidiary of Chemical and Oil Storage Management Ltd.. In essence, my point of order is that no trace could be found of that firm. We finally went to the Private Bill Office and were told that Chemical and Oil Storage Management Ltd. is now Simon Engineering plc. We are therefore discussing a Bill that was not submitted by the people who are now in charge of it. Can one company put in an application for a private Bill and then sell to another company and most probably charge it money for the application, thus making a profit out of the workings of the House?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think that that point is a matter for the debate. Clearly, the Bill has been scrutinised by the Examiners and it had to satisfy the Examiners before it came before the House. It has satisfied the Examiners.
  Several Hon. Members: Further to the point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have made it clear that it is not a point of order.
  Mr. Gerald Bermingham: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. If it becomes clear that there is a challenge to the ruling of the Examiner, am I to understand that hon. Members who have had no opportunity of questioning the Examiner are not permitted to challenge his certification on the Floor of the House?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. When the hon. Gentleman talks about the rulings of the House, he is referring to the rulings of the Chair. I very much hope that the hon. Gentleman is not, uncharacteristically, challenging my ruling on the matter. Of course, it is for the House to exercise its judgment on these matters and I hope that that is what we shall do in the remaining two and a half hours or so. I hope that we shall reflect the decision of the House at the end of the debate.
  Mr. Graham Allen: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Surely such projects are normally within the ambit of local authorities, through their normal planning procedures. Those normal planning procedures give room for lengthy inquiries and scope for witnesses to be examined and evidence to be taken. As I understand it, we shall have only an hour or an hour and a half and not all Members interested will be able—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The Bill before the House satisfied the Standing Orders and the criteria laid down by the Examiners. The hon. Gentleman may have doubts and reservations about our procedures, but I remind him that a Joint Committee of both Houses is considering all those matters at the moment. If he has any reservations about the way in which we proceed, he may care to submit evidence to that Committee. In the meantime, we shall continue to operate within the framework of the existing Standing Orders.
  Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You may recall that, in a previous debate on the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill, the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) made it clear in answer to direct questions that he had no financial or other interest in the Bill. He referred the House to the Register of Members' Interests. It may be of benefit to him to recall that on 8 June, when the Select Committee discussed ports and he questioned Sir Robert Haslam, he declared an interest. He later said that he did not have an interest then but that he hoped to have one later. I do not know whether the Register of Members' Interests requires people to register if they hope to have an interest. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman was joking but, considering his extensive travels to South Africa—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Neither the House nor I should be considering the hon. Gentleman's future itinerary, nor can we make a decision on the basis of a hypothesis. If hon. Members who wish to take part in the debate have a direct pecuniary interest, no doubt they will make it clear at the appropriate time. Perhaps the hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Mr. Lofthouse) will soon allow the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) to make his speech.
  Several Hon. Members: Further to the point of order—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It is not a point of order.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I visited the Private Bill Office today to inspect the papers in connection with the Bill, as I am sure all hon. Members have done. Among the papers are six petitions. They are from the Coalfield Communities Campaign, the National Union of Mineworkers, the Union of Democratic Mineworkers, Wakefield and Doncaster councils and North-East Derbyshire council, in the area that I am proud to represent. There were 11 submissions in relation to the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill. In addition, extra papers are available for inspection, and an Ordnance Survey map—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. What is the point of order for me?
  Mr. Barnes: —and plans and sections. In connection with the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. It is the North Killingholme Cargo Terminal Bill that is before the House. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will address his point of order to that.
  Mr. Barnes: In connection with the North Killingholme Cargo Terminal Bill and the two Acts to which it refers, the North Killingholme (Admiralty Pier) Act 1912, chapter clx, and the North Killingholme (Admiralty Pier) Act 1931, chapter lxiv, reference is made, as with the Associated Ports (No. 2) Bill, to a book of reference being available for our inspection. However, no book of reference is available —
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not a matter for me. It is a matter for debate.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. One problem that you and people in your position continually face is the fact that without any doubt there has been a change in the practice relating to private Bills since you were elected in 1964. Hon. Members are expected to serve on private Bill Committees—and can incur penalties if they do not—if they have no involvement whatsoever in the matter before the Committee. Geographically restricted private Bills are, on occasion, bound not to affect many hon. Members. However, in this Bill, and in the one that we discussed earlier—but which we are not here to discuss today—such geographical restrictions do not exist because it is inconceivable that any hon. Member could not be affected by the importation of South African coal. No hon. Member could be found to serve on that Committee who could say that he or she would not in some way be affected by the decision.
  Therefore, the whole private Bill procedure is faulty in that context. There is bound to come a time when some of us—those in the Chair and those in authority—must take the decision whether we can allow this private Bill procedure to continue when the Committee has to order hon. Members to appear before it, with penalties, if they are not in any way involved. When one remembers that about 70 Tory Members have connections with companies in South Africa, one begins to realise that many hon. Members do have interests. If one also remembers that, to a man and a woman, Opposition Members are against the Bill, one realises that one is bound to run into difficulties in finding people who are not tainted in some way.
  I suggest that reference should now be made to the appropriate authorities and the Examiners to see whether this kind of private Bill procedure can continue on the basis of not being able to get appropriate Members of Parliament on the Committee.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Let me deal with one point at a time. What the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) has said has no bearing whatsoever on the propriety of proceeding with our Second Reading debate this evening.
  Mr. Bruce Grocott: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance and protection. When a private Bill affects public policy, as this Bill clearly does, how are we to be protected in terms of the

  1191
  amount of time available to hon. Members to debate the issue? As you know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I do not represent a coalfield community, but I am assured by those of my hon. Friends who do represent such communities that, although the Bill clearly and specifically relates on paper to the North Killingholme cargo terminal, it could affect the relationship between this country and the development of our policies towards South Africa.
  I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will tell me —quite correctly—that this matter has been considered by the appropriate Committees, which have looked at all the matters, and that your role now is simply to interpret what has been done before. However, I am concerned because the relationship between this country and South Africa has been consistently developing, changing and worsening. It has certainly worsened dramatically in the last few weeks, especially in relation to impending court decisions in South Africa, which affect not only our relationship with South Africa, but the whole of Britain's international standing—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. These are matters for debate, rather than ones on which the Chair can give a ruling.
  Mr. Grocott: Just to complete what I am putting to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, if a public Bill is being considered by the House, in the normal course of events, and allowing for statements, private notice questions and the rest, that Bill will have a minimum of five or five and a half hours for debate between 3.30 pm and 9 pm or 9.30 pm. That is not long enough, in my view. For several major and important Bills, it is considered necessary to have two days for Second Reading. If a Bill has major national if not international implications, and if all my hon. Friends and Conservative Members—who I know are also concerned about our relationships with South Africa, but from a different point of view—are concerned that such a Bill has a full, final—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have the gist of the hon. Gentleman's point. I repeat again that much of what he is saying is a matter for debate and one which hon. Members will take into account when reaching their conclusion at the end of the debate. Hon. Members may well argue that matters arising from the Bill are of such wide importance that they deserve further time. I must advise the House that, when I set down private business for the period between 7 pm and 10 pm, it is always open to me to ask the Government whether they will table a motion to suspend the 10 o'clock rule to enable the debate to continue beyond 10 o'clock. I have to be mindful of the demands on hon. Members' time and health and seek not to impose unreasonable obligations and duties on them. For that reason, I would be most reluctant to seek to extend any debate on private Bills beyond 10 o'clock, except where absolutely necessary.
  I shall, of course, listen carefully to what is said in the debate and, when the House reaches its conclusion this evening, if it is necessary to do so, I shall reflect on what the hon. Gentleman has said. However, he has raised matters that should be taken into account in the debate and no doubt they will be weighed by hon. Members when they reach their conclusion at the end of the debate.
  Mr. Grocott rose—
  Mr. Redmond rose—
  Mr. Bermingham rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Grocott.
  Mr. Grocott: I am simply seeking your protection on this, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Hon. Members may well have looked at the Order Paper today without appreciating, from a glimpse of it, the major national and international significance of this Bill which masquerades as a private Bill, and many hon. Members who would have wished to contribute may not be able to do so. Indeed, it may well be—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman needs my protection. When hon. Members say that they are seeking my protection, I look at them and wonder who needs to be protected from whom. I do not think that the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friends have been left in any doubt during the past week or two about the importance and significance of this Bill.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Redmond.
  Mr. Redmond: I asked earlier whether the Bill was a hybrid Bill. You gave guidance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that you were satisfied that the Examiner had examined and that he was satisfied that the Bill satisfied the criteria of a private Bill. May I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, how an hon. Member can have discussions with the Examiner to satisfy himself that the Examiner's decision was correct? When I and a colleague went to discuss this private Bill with the Examiners, the Examiner was helpful but unfortunately could not take into consideration the views that we expressed, because the Examiner who had passed the Bill to your good self, Mr. Deputy Speaker, had left the Examiners' office. Because hon. Members could not ask the Examiner who had passed the Bill directly whether he was satisfied with the decision, will you suspend the sitting under Standing Order No. 85 in order to satisfy yourself that it is not a hybrid Bill?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I share the general feeling that we have every confidence in the professionalism of those who serve us. Irrespective of the circumstances that the hon.Gentleman has just described, I doubt whether the Bill would have proceeded to this stage if there were any question about its bona fides and vires. I am confident that it satisfies all the criteria, and I hope that we can get on. We have spent more than 20 minutes on points of order, some of which would be more relevant to the debate.
  Mr. Eric Illsley: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Could it not be the case that the Examiner, having left the Private Bill Office, is not aware that the promoters of the Bill—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. We cannot have a debate and inquiry into these hypothetical matters.H on. Members are not only calling into question the competence of those who serve us, but are getting dangerously near challenging my ruling. I must remind the House that rulings from the Chair are not a matter for debate.
  Mr. Jack Thompson rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I hope that this will be the last point of order, and that we can proceed.
  Mr. Thompson: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My point is different from the others, and I hope that it will help to clear up the matter. Normally, when we receive notice of a private Bill, we also receive from the petitioners a statement which explains the details of the Bill. Would it not be appropriate to receive a statement? I certainly have not seen one.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a matter within my responsibility. I understand that it is by way of information and a courtesy. I call Mr. Michael Brown.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. William O'Brien: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance on the business before us tonight. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) referred to the book of reference. How can we go about obtaining that so that we can have the information for the debate while an hon. Member is speaking—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I have dealt with that matter. I said to the House that that was a matter not for me, but for debate. I call Mr. Michael Brown.
  Mr. Michael Brown: The Bill will empower the promoters to carry out works—
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Many of the points of order have not been bona fide points. The Chair deprecates business being delayed by procrastinating, bogus points of order. I hope that the House will be allowed to proceed with its business. I shall allow the Labour Front Bench spokesman to raise a matter and then I hope to get on with the debate. I intend to take no further points of order after this.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Hon. Gentlemen have just heard my ruling, and I hope that they will not challenge it.
  Mr. Grocott: On a new point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As you were in the Chair during long stretches of the night when we discussed the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Bill, I am sure that you will understand the natural anxiety about the conduct of debate on a private Bill. We all know that during its consideration it came to the attention of many of my right hon. and hon. Friends —and, to be fair, it disquieted many Tory Members—that the judgment of many hon. Members was being affected by the expensive hospitality offered by the Bill's sponsors.
  This is an extremely serious point of order. On any outside reckoning, any neutral individual would take the objective view that wine, champagne and other drink, and hospitality for Members' wives—film shows were in operation and were being circularised by the Bill's sponsors—must affect the judgment, willingness to stay and stamina of hon. Members. Hon. Members and others need to be reassured whether, as we come to consider another private Bill—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. One private Bill at a time. Is the hon. Gentleman making allegations that hon. Members have been influenced improperly?
  Mr. Grocott: My problem, which I am sure is shared by everyone outside and the newspapers which will want to report this, is that I do not know. But this is extremely important, and you will understand—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not persist with an attempt to make me rule on some hypothetical hearsay. I cannot get involved in these matters, nor can I rule on them. I call Mr. Michael Brown.
  Mr. Michael Brown: —to carry out works required to reconstruct the jetty in the tidal part of the estuary.
  Several Hon. Members: On a point of order—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I made it clear that I would not take any further points of order at this stage. I call Mr. Michael Brown.
  Mr. Michael Brown: The jetty is already capable of handling vessels up to 30,000 tonnes deadweight and the jetty is now in need of strengthening and organisation. I can assure the House that the Bill is absolutely necessary because of the reconstruction of the jetty, which will interfere with the public rights of navigation.[Interruption.] Planning consent could not override those rights and would not enable the jetty to be reconstructed.[Interruption.] Associated with the jetty will be a cargo terminal, which will be located within an adjacent area already designated for industrial use and set aside for activities requiring access to the deep water channel in the Humber.[Interruption.] The local authorities, the county councils, Glanford borough council and the local authorities immediately around the—
  Mr. Redmond: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. May I ask you to ask the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) to read slowly so that we can catch what he is saying? He is deliberately speaking fast —he was guilty of that when he moved the Second Reading of the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill—so that we cannot hear what he is saying.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is not a point of order for me, but doubtless the hon. Gentleman will bear it in mind.
  Mr. BrownYes, of course, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Because of the location of the terminal, it is most unlikely that there will be any adverse effect on the environment in the area, and consultations with the local authorities have resolved any problems of that sort. The area around North Killingholme has been in decline for many years. It was blighted by the proposal, which was thankfully withdrawn, to dispose of nuclear waste in the area, so we are delighted at this proposal, which will provide a large number of jobs for my constituents. In so far as I have an interest in this Bill, it is confined to the fact that I stand to benefit, as do my constituents, from the enrichment of the area by a large increase in the number of jobs.
  The estuary is strategically located for the European Economic Community and is favourably placed for accessibility from industrial locations within the United Kingdom. A study undertaken for Humberside county council by Coopers and Lybrand as far as back as 1982 shows that Humberside's importance in terms of cargo moving through the area is tremendous; there has been a 5·5 per cent. increase in the amount of tonnage through the

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  ports on Humberside as a whole. That is two and half times more than the rate for the United Kingdom, so it shows that there is tremendous potential for the port development, which the country requires anyway. As a result of their own market studies, the promoters are confident that they will capture a share of the existing import and export traffic.
  Mr. Redmond: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I asked, through you, that the hon. Member should speak more slowly so that we might fully understand and appreciate what he is saying. While he continues to gabble—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I think the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) has got the point.
  Mr. Brown: My rate of speaking is about 110 words a minute, which is very slow compared to the average rate in a public debate.
  More significantly, the new cargo terminal is intended to divert other traffic away from Rotterdam, where it is going at the moment. Traffic is going to Rotterdam, where large cargoes are split up to be sent to the United Kingdom. So we stand to gain through the revenue which will come to our ports initially.
  Mr. Barron: The hon. Gentleman has talked about cargo going to Rotterdam. Could it be coal from South Africa? My hon. Friends and I have not failed to notice, not only that the cargo is coal but that the Minister responsible for coal has come to listen to the debate on this so-called private Bill because he wants' to privatise electricity. Will the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) be more forthcoming about what the cargo is likely to be?
  Mr. Brown: The import and export traffic will be in bulk commodities, which include grain, coal, coke, aggregates, fertilisers and minerals. If Opposition Members think that by defeating the Bill they will in some way prevent commodities coming direct to this country which do not do so now, they are wrong. All that will happen if the Bill goes through is that cargoes which get to this country by means of small vessels, with the revenue going to the port of Rotterdam, will come to Humberside instead, with the revenue also coming to Humberside. That is the point of the Bill
  Mr. Redmond rose—
  Mr. Brown: I have been very generous. The hon. Gentleman has raised several points of order. I should like to press on.
  Opposition Members have expressed concern that the new port facilities capable of handling bulk cargoes could have an adverse effect on the coal industry. I should like to draw the attention of Opposition Members to two points. First, the CEGB has an 800-acre site immediately adjacent to the proposed cargo terminal. The site has planning permission for the development of a power station. When constructed, the power station will be served by its own jetty. Therefore, the promoters do not expect the CEGB to use the North Killingholme cargo terminal for coal movements.
  Secondly, notwithstanding the Channel tunnel, United Kingdom industry as a whole relies, and must continue to rely, on an efficient modern port facility to serve its import and export needs.
  Mr. Lofthouse rose—
  Mr. Brown: I hope the hon. Gentleman will catch your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  The Bill is particularly relevant as 1992 approaches. If protection were to be sought for one sector of Britain's industry, it should surely not be at the expense of other sectors whose costs would increase if our port facilities are not as up to date as those of our rivals on the continent. Creating adequate competition in the provision of port services is surely vital to the health of our economy. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Before I call anyone to speak, may I remind hon. Members that it is fundamental to the nature of the House that we give others an opportunity to address the House, no matter how disagreeable we may find the views expressed. I hope that hon. Members will not upset that tradition too much.
  8.3 pm
  Mr. Peter Hardy: Mr. Deputy Speaker, I expect that your forecast that our speeches will be disagreeable will be fulfilled. I hope that my speech will be viewed as most disagreeable by the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown). It has been a difficult time for you in the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because the occasion amply illustrates, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) pointed out, that we have reached a point in parliamentary history when the private Bill is used for purposes that are not appropriate for private Bills. This Bill may be ostensibly about one small part of the Humber estuary, but it goes to the very heart of Britain's trading, political and social problems. Because of that, my hon. Friends and I are implacably opposed to it, as we are to its sister Bill, which will be considered tomorrow.
  We will spell out in considerable detail on Second Reading, and even more so if, unfortunately, the Bill reaches the Report stage, our total resolve to contest the Bill now and at any time word by word, line by line and stage by stage.
  Mr. William Cash: The hon. Member has iust said that he thinks the private Bill procedure is inappropriate for such a measure. Does he accept that it is impossible for the legislation to be introduced in any way other than as a private Bill? Furthermore, there is an absolute stack of precedents, going back at least 200 years, for matters of this kind being dealt with by the private Bill procedure. The hon. Gentleman must look at the precedents and accept what I have said.
  Mr. Hardy: The hon. Gentleman should understand that some of us may never pose as experts in constitutional politics and practice, but he might care to refresh his memory about the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Act 1988, to which reference has already been made. He will understand that many people suspect—the suspicion is not restricted to this party or to these Benches—that there are now many occasions when the private Bill procedure is used to circumvent alternative procedures.
  Mr. Lofthouse: Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be to the advantage of the House, and not least to that of the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr.

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  Brown) himself, if he had given an assurance that he had no hope in future of being involved financially in any of the companies? It might have helped the House if he had told us whether, on a recent visit to South Africa, with all expenses paid, he discussed the landing of South African coal at these ports. Furthermore, did he discuss with the South African coal company representatives who were in London the landing of coal at these docks?
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend will forgive me if I do not deal with the point now. Later I shall refer specifically to the South African link. It might have been appropriate if the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes had said a little more to explain the nature of the trade in South African coal. He did not do so. We shall shortly do it for him. I trust that he and his hon. Friends will remain in the Chamber so that we may ensure that ignorance will be no excuse in the House's consideration of the Bill at later stages.
  I want to deal specifically with our implacable resolve to oppose the Bill. We are totally opposed to the Bill because it is a foolish duplication of existing port capacity. We had arguments about Felixstowe. My hon. Friends who attended that debate know that a vast sum of money is to be spent on a port at Felixstowe when other ports are underused. After protracted consideration, the House, in my view foolishly, approved the Felixstowe development. So we have even more port capacity than we had a year ago. There is no evidence that the volume of exports is increasing. If it were, that would justify additional port capacity.
  That is the first argument. If and when the Minister for Public Transport chooses to contribute to the debate, I hope that he will tell us whether the Government consider that we have any great inadequacy in port capacity. If we have not, there is no justification for spending vast sums of money in the pursuit of duplication.
  Mr. Barron: My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Does he consider that the reason for setting up these ports on Humberside is one of geography, rather than one of capacity? They will be within 50 miles of some of the biggest coal users in electricity generation in the country. They are designed to penetrate that market, and no other market that the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) mentioned. There is over-production in the grain market.
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend is right. There is over-production in Europe of cereal and other agricultural products.
  The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes said that the CEGB owned land adjacent to the port. He suggested, or sought to mislead the House by suggesting, that the CEGB owned a nearby site and had the capacity to provide its own jetty to operate a power station nearby. The hon. Gentleman knows full well that the facility is not designed to serve a power station in the immediate vicinity of the port. The facility is designed to replace British coal in power stations such as West Burton, which is not very far away, or in other power stations in central England. That is one reason why we are implacably opposed to the duplication of port facilities, but there is a variety of other reasons for our view.
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  People are increasingly paying detailed attention to the case that is at the heart of our argument, because such a development is very much against the national strategic interest. We believe that developing an energy reliance on imported materials is foolish and that the promoters of the Bill are contributing to that folly. The strategic interest of the country is being ignored and the most shortsighted decisions are being taken.
  The hon. Gentleman may consider that his constituents unanimously support his very doubtful position, but we have an obligation to our constituents, whose jobs will go where jobs have already gone. The economic heart of our communities will be further damaged, when damage enough has been caused in the last few years. The hon. Gentleman might be prepared to disregard morality and the strategic interests of the country to serve his constituents, but I wonder how many people in Brigg and Cleethorpes are also supporters and upholders of the apartheid regime in South Africa.
  Mr. Pat Wall: My hon. Friend referred to the capacity of British docks. If I remember rightly, the total capacity of British docks is about 47 million tonnes per year. At the height of the use of the docks industry, no more than 42 million tonnes of capacity have ever been used. That shows that there is over-capacity in Britain's docks. The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) said that ships coming to Britain with bulk cargoes go first to Rotterdam, the cargoes are broken down and transhipped to Britain. That is because of Government policy. The Government do not direct the ships into port. They allow a laissez faire system in which owners bargain for individual cargoes. That leads to chaos. Not only the jobs of miners and power workers threatened, but dockers' jobs throughout Britain are threatened.
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend illustrates the position that was argued when points of order of some doubtfulness were raised and the Bill was described as having the widest possible implications which do involve not merely a small part of the south Humberside coast or the nearby mining communities, but the nation's energy policy. I shall refer to that in a moment.
  The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes scarcely mentioned South Africa. All the documents that I have received from the promoters of the Bill contain not a word about South Africa, Colombia or anywhere else. They contain no reference to coal. The hon. Gentleman confirmed our suspicions by mentioning coal and coke in his introductory remarks. We believe that it is a sordid link, and it is a pity that any hon. Member should be involved or have sympathy with such a sordid link. The promoters of the Bill appear to have a tolerance of deceitful practice. One would hope that the House would deplore deceitful practice. Coal is being imported into this country which is labelled as, and known to be, South African coal, but a greater tonnage is coming from South Africa in disguise. It is being landed at Rotterdam, and it is then described as Dutch or Netherlands coal being brought to Britain. The fact is that the Netherlands produces not one cobble of coal.
  Some years ago I visited an establishment in the east of the Netherlands. As we drove to the establishment, which was an important base for the Western alliance, I said to the chap who was sitting with me on the bus, "This looks

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  like a coal mining community and the building that we are approaching looks like a coal mine." It was perhaps the last coal mine in the Netherlands. It is used for European security purposes, and is certainly not used to produce coal. I know of no Dutch politician who would dream of claiming that the Netherlands produces any coal. Therefore, it is quite reasonable for hon. Members to question the import of Dutch coal, when we know that no coal comes from the Netherlands.
  Some of the coal is described as Luxembourg coal. Luxembourg produces no coal at all. Some is described as Belgian coal. One or two Conservative Members may know a little about the coal industry, and they will know that the Belgian coal industry has been contracting rather faster than ours during the past decade and is now of a negligible size. It is certainly not capable of exporting substantial quantities of coal.
  The coal that is blended in Rotterdam is, to a substantial extent, from South Africa. The people who are bringing it in know that people in this country, perhaps not in the hon. Gentleman's constituency, but in many others, are rather more critical of South Africa than are Treasury Ministers. Therefore, they are disguising the trade by their description of the coal. That is deceitful and sordid and is another reason for our hostility to the Bill.
  Mr. Redmond: The promoter of the Bill does not care where the coal comes from or whether blood is on that coal, so long as he and his friends make a profit from the blood, the sweat and the death. He would import coal from Bolivia and Colombia, which to a large extent is produced by women and children.
  Mr. Hardy: The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes lays himself wide open to that accusation. Although he was able to measure his speech in the number of words per minute, he offered not one word of justification for his political or moral position. It may be that the hon. Gentleman and some of his hon. Friends met Rand Mines, Anglo-American, Glencor and Johannesburg Consolidated which visited Britain on 22 April. I believe that I know why they came to Britain. They came because they believed that the climate was ripe, and that people in power in Britain were receptive to the idea of more coal being imported. Such imports have been stopped in Denmark, and, I think, in Germany. The Swedes and Norwegians will not touch this coal. Even the French have banned it. South Africa thinks, therefore, that it can send more to Britain.
  We once had a decent tradition here, but it has to a large extent been sacrificed by Conservative Members. The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes may have met the companies in April. Another reason they came is that they believe that they can get in on the ground floor of electricity privatisation and that by establishing, directly or indirectly, more port facilities they can influence not merely the export of coal from South Africa but its consumption here. That is another pretty shoddy pass that we have reached.
  Such an approach is sad and foolish for Britain, because it ignores the facts as we approach the 1990s. I do not like reading speeches, but I must make a brief quotation:
  "Increased United Kingdom imports would inevitably force up world prices. The amount of steam coal traded internationally is not much more than the size of the United Kingdom market."
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  We are not a huge part of the total energy consuming world, but large-scale imports would have a major effect on prices. They would narrow the gap between the price of British coal and the price of world coal.
  Hon. Members who think that we can defy the laws of economics and develop a huge dependency on imported coal without suffering any economic consequences are labouring under a serious delusion, because as soon as we increase the demand for coal on world markets the price will inevitably increase substantially. That fact goes to the heart of our argument, and it presents serious dangers for Britain.
  The Bill is shortsighted and foolish in economic and energy terms. It is time that we began to understand the realities of energy. We have 0·8 per cent. of the world's proven oil resources, but we are producing almost 4·5 per cent. of the world's oil. We are therefore producing at a rate five times faster than is sensible. As each year passes, the Treasury will have to make more and more concessions to oil producers to invest and increase the rate of extraction from British fields, the bulk of the best parts of which may already have gone.
  We have about 0·6 per cent. of the world's gas, but we are producing more than 2·5 per cent. of the world's current output, and have done so for some years. That means that we—a supposedly intelligent nation—are rushing to embrace energy dependency again. As our oil and gas resources are depleted at an astonishing rate of blind prodigal folly, we shall develop dependency on imported coal, because it is cheap at the moment, and wipe out viability in the British coal mining industry.
  That lies at the root of the matter and it is why my right hon. and hon. Friends are here tonight, hoping that some Conservative Members will have some sense. A few moments ago, I said that I was quoting. I had hoped that a Conservative Member would ask who I was quoting, as I was quoting what the Secretary of State for Energy said at the Institution of Mining Engineers conference last month.
  Mr. Michael Welsh: When the Secretary of State said that imported coal would hurt British pits, but that if the price of coal went up we would have a chance to compete, he made an important statement, but is that not an example of economic madness? Does my hon. Friend agree that, once a pit has been closed, output cannot be increased just to suit demand? Once a shaft is closed, no more coal can be brought out. The critical path of a pit is 15 years. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Secretary of State was talking economic nonsense to the engineers, and they must have known it?
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend is right. It is a pity that there are no Ministers from the Department of Energy to hear our balanced and justified critique. The Secretary of State's comments on prices were recognised as important at the conference, and not all of those who attended are Socialist or Labour supporters. Indeed, some of them may still be clinging to the coattails of the Conservative party. Nobody with expertise in mining of energy, however, would dream of endorsing the shortsightedness that the Bill represents.
  The Secretary of State acknowledged that Britain has huge and rich coal reserves. He said:
  "You all know that, and I know it."
  He acknowledged that the mining engineers know it and claimed to know it himself, but he has not had a word with

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  the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes to say that his Bill and that which, unfortunately, the House is to consider tomorrow night contradict what the Secretary of State said at the Blackpool conference on 13 May. He said:
  "We have discovered a resource which if allowed to could compete with the world for as far ahead as we can see."
  How far ahead do the Government look? How far ahead does the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes look? He does not have to look far to see such turmoil, stress, strain and bloodshed in South Africa that would imperil the source on which he wants Britain to depend.
  The Secretary of State went further than recognition of the facts. During his speech to the Institution of Mining Engineers he confirmed the enormous investment that the Government have put into mining. We all recognise that vast investment has been made. There are not many Conservative Members present, but some of them might pause for just a while and consider whether it is wise for a Conservative Back Bencher to present a Bill to the House which destroys investment on that scale and about which the Secretary of State boasted.
  This is madness economics. It is the financial practice of lunatics. The hon. Gentleman is sabotaging public policy. If we were at war and the hon. Gentleman decided to destroy the armaments on which the country depended, he would probably be shot in the Tower as a traitor, even though we do not currently have capital punishment. If he carries on in this way, he will no doubt appear in an honours list before long. We have spent £9 billion on the coal industry, and the hon. Gentleman and some of his hon. Friends are cheered for introducing a Bill that will ensure that that investment proves worthless.
  I cannot say that I am always an enthusiastic adulator of British Coal, but it regularly keeps hon. Members informed. Indeed, I suspect that some Conservative Members may have been informed more quickly than Labour Members. I received a press release from British Coal which stated:
  "The national productivity record has been broken at Britain's collieries for the fifth time in the last 12 weeks. Miners last week achieved a new peak performance of 4·42 tonnes output per man shift."
  That is a significant achievement and has been made because of the very real change in the industry. There are now 260 heavy duty coal faces, whereas three or four years ago there were over 500. Three years ago there were five collieries in my constituency; now there is only one. We have made a bitter contribution to the colliery output records achieved by British Coal. The consequences to areas such as mine have been enormous, yet those changes, sacrifices and burdens are mocked by the Bill.
  In the Bill, the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes is saying that we shall have to do even better to compete with South African coal. The British mining communities will not be made the coolies of western Europe. They have made an enormous contribution to the history of this country, and we do not intend to see ever-increasing demands, hardship and deceit.
  Mr. Redmond: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) said that the installations would create some jobs. They may well create a few jobs, but when one considers the devastation that will take place in the remaining mining communities, one feels that the hon. Gentleman
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  should broaden his horizons, see what is happening on the other side of the hill, meet the people and understand what is happening in those industries that are suffering as a consequence of the policies of the Government and of people such as the hon. Gentleman who seek to import further blood coal into this country.
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend is right. His constituency is next to mine and, in the past three years, the number of collieries there has fallen from five to one. In the past three years the number of collieries in my constituency has also fallen from five to one. As other hon. Friends in the House this evening could testify from experiences in their constituencies, the effect on the social and economic structure in areas such as mine has been brutal and cruel and is now mocked by the Bill.
  The one remaining colliery in my constituency, Silverwood, is a profitable colliery, as many of my hon. Friends know. It has made enormous profits since it was sunk in 1912, both for the owners before nationalisation, and since it has been owned by the state. It provides coal for Drax and West Burton. The port that the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes wishes to develop will bring in South African coal to replace that of Silverwood. I am not prepared to sit by and let that happen.
  Mr. Lofthouse: Does my hon. Friend agree that the threat of electricity privatisation and of the proposal in respect of this port is estimated, in a recent report by the Coalfield Communities Campaign, which, to some extent, Sir Robert Haslam endorsed in the Select Committee recently, to mean the loss of another 50,000 jobs? The greatest tragedy is that the average age of miners is now 34, so we are talking about 50,000 jobs involving men of 34 and under, without any compensation in the form of weekly payments.
  Mr. Hardy: I hope that my hon. Friend will be able to develop that point, either tonight or in the relevant debate tomorrow, by referring to an aspect of the matter that causes me serious concern.
  The House will be aware that, in addition to representing a mining constituency that has seen its mining interests dramatically reduced, I am sponsored by the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers, which is holding its conference this week. I shall speak at that conference on Friday, and I hope that I can convey to the members the information that the House is not completely daft and that it has some compassion for, understanding of and obligation to all parts of the country, instead of only to the affluent parts of the country that Conservative Members may know better than I do.
  As the hon. Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin) might remember, that association has a fundamental obligation, not merely to supervise production, but to ensure that the laws and regulations of this land are observed to ensure that the mining industry is operated as safely as possible.
  I want to draw the House's attention to the question of safety. We are concerned about South Africa, not only because of the political injustice or the racial obscenity, but because South African workers are largely abused and do not enjoy the structures of legal protection that any civilised society would think it right to afford. It is appropriate for me, as a Member sponsored by NACODS, to make those points.

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  One of the South African firms that came to this country in April to discuss opportunities for electricity privatisation, Glencor, is known as the butcher in South Africa because of the fatalities in the underground colliery operations for which it is responsible. There were 177 dead at the Kinross gold mine.
  Mining has been practised in my constituency for over 300 years, and it has taken a Conservative Government to bring about the prospect of having no mines at all. I did a great deal of research in local history when I was younger. We could easily travel round and see where 100 people, 50 people or 180 people were destroyed by explosions and by practices which may well have been slightly more tolerable because technology was not as advanced in the 19th century as it is today. There is now no need for scores of men to be killed underground.
  A colliery deputy in Britain must be at least 25 years old and have worked underground for five years and on the face for two. Those are very much the minimum requirements. It would be most unusual, as any of my hon. Friends with a great deal of underground experience can confirm, for an official to have those legal responsibilities with only those qualifications. In addition, the official must pass the appropriate examinations.
  In South Africa, the requirements are that the person must be 20 years old, and have worked 75 shifts at the face and 400 shifts underground. I am glad that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, West smiles. His smile cheers me up, because it is sad that we should face this situation without an ounce of sympathy from the Conservative Benches. South African coal is not cheaply won. The wages are low, but the price is high, because people like those who came to meet the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes employ people responsible for safety who have worked only 75 shifts underground. That is why 68 men died in a fire in Hlobane mine.
  Mr. Alexander Eadie: My hon. Friend is making a powerful case about safety and fatalities in the mining industries. Is he aware that, in speaking about the representatives of South Africa, he is speaking about the apostles of private enterprise? Is he further aware that if the Government win the next general election, they intend to privatise the coal industry? Is he also aware that in this century nearly 58,000 miners have been killed, my father among them, and most of those deaths occurred in the days of private enterprise?
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend is right. Some people make mock of colliery nationalisation, but as a little lad I was with my father, outside Manvers colliery in 1947, to see the vesting of that pit into public ownership. My father, all his work mates and their families knew that one of the blessings of that act was that priority would be given to safety, a priority which was not given before, and which we suspect will not be given again if the Government are returned after the next general election. It is no good Conservative Members shaking their heads. The profit motive will dominate all other responsibilities and it will be short-sighted—
  Mr. Illsley: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Hardy: Yes, I will in a minute, because I know that my hon. Friend will have an important point to make.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I suspect that the debate might be turning into one about the privatisation or otherwise of the coal mining industry. We had better turn our eyes to North Killingholme.
  Mr. Hardy: I accept that point because we ought not to stray too far, but this port is being developed in response to the opportunities that privatisation will create. so privatisation is partly related to the Bill. I accept that we should not range too widely, although we do not need to range too widely, because the material in the Bill gives us sufficient scope to debate it for many a long day, week, month or year. It is no good the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes smiling, because if ever this Bill gets to Report, he will not be smiling after the hours that we are prepared to devote to it.
  I have been looking at the Bill, and I consider that it will be necessary, if it reaches Report, to table many amendments. I hope that the promoters will decide to cut their losses, because losses there will be. It is not an inexpensive matter to promote a private Bill, and if a large part of the House resents that Bill and deplores the motives behind it and feels it necessary in the interests of the country to issue a challenge, then the promoters must understand that the Bill will be an expensive undertaking.
  Some of us devoted a great deal of time, quite properly, to the cause of the red grouse and the little ringed plover when we debated the Felixstowe Dock and Railway Act. I will not mention all the species that were mentioned, although I would be in order to do so. In this Bill, our concerns go a good deal further than the avian. There are concerns about our areas, about our people and our country and about this fact above all. Conservative Members, like Nero in ancient Rome, ignore the reality of the economic evidence that is looking increasingly large. The trade deficit, approaching or exceeding £10 billion in 1988, cannot be brused aside by even the most irresponsible politician.
  At the moment, the Government know that the trade deficit of £12 billion can just about be borne because of invisible earnings and the £4 billion or more of oil revenues. There will be problems the moment they go, and we have much less than 1 per cent.—little more than 0·5 per cent.—of the world's oil resources. We have been producing at nearly 5 per cent. of world oil production, so the Government, despite their disdain of economic reality, are merely ensuring that we approach energy dependency as fast as possible. They do not consider the consequences. They have seen the economic devastation of many parts of England and the eradication of large sectors of our manufacturing industry. When the oil income diminishes, the trade deficit will press hard.
  It may be that, by that time, the pound's value in the world's exchanges will be diminished, and the price of coal, which will rise in any case, will in real terms be a burden that the country cannot afford. The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes and his friends are seeking to wipe out large sections of the British coal industry, and to develop a dependence on imported energy. If that happened in very few years, we would not have the economic capacity to go into the world markets and buy the energy on which we depend. That is at the heart of the matter. I do not know what brief or advice the Minister has been given for his inevitable contribution to the

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  debate, but it will be interesting to see whether he is prepared to offer some modest comment about the economic implications of the Bill.
  Mr. Illsley: My hon. Friend has spoken about the conference that he will attend this week and about the regulations that govern deputies in mines. Is my hon. Friend aware that already the Government are dismantling the Mines and Quarries Act 1954 and have published 15 sets of new codes of regulations which will decrease the safety standards applicable to deputies in the British coal industry?
  Mr. Hardy: I am aware of the matter, and it will be figuring quite largely in the discussions that I shall have in Glasgow over the next two days. It is a matter that causes NACODS real anxiety. I only hope that no Minister, although he may believe it, will have the gall to say that we have to dismantle the safety structures so that British coal can compete against South African coal. I hope that Ministers will not argue that we have to put at risk life and limb in Britain to compete with Colombia. I know that Colombian coal is selling at $28·20 a tonne on world markets, but it is being sold at well below the production cost, which on average is $33·90. I was interested to see in the documents that I have studied that the companies that own Colombian coal, which are rather more intelligent than some Conservative Members, have said that they are prepared to subsidise Colombian coal until such time as world markets recover and profits are within their grasp. That will happen when the port to which the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes is dedicated is constructed.
  Mr. Bob Cryer: The proposals to substitute the provisions of the Mines and Quarries Act 1954 by codes of practice, not by regulations, are designed to enable British Coal to increase its profitable element. That Act contains absolute safety provisions, which are statutory provisions. On the other hand, a code of practice is not a statutory provision, and breach of it is not even an offence; it is taken to the courts only when the court case is considered. In other words, the dismantling of that Act represents a massive reduction in safety standards precisely to compete with cheap coal coming through ports such as the one suggested here.
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend is an authority on employment law and health and safety matters, on which he has a distinguished record. The Government cannot deny opportunity to the House to consider the serious matter on which he has touched, which concerns me.
  Before I proceed with my speech, I wish to apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes). I remember that I promised to allow him to intervene. I shall be glad now to remedy my failure to do so.
  Mr. Frank Haynes: A short while ago my hon. Friend referred to the Minister and asked rhetorically whether he had been briefed. My hon. Friend and I know what is going on and the Minister is aware of the Government's policy. The Government favour the Bill because it fits their policy on the privatisation of electricity. The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) —that little lad on the Front Bench below the Gangway who knows nothing about mining—is having an education this evening. He now knows what the Bill involves.
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  I received some visitors today, and when I was with them I saw the Secretary of State for Energy, who was also with some visitors. I asked him whether he would be in the House this evening, and he said he would. Why would the Secretary of State be in the precincts of the House this evening when a private Bill is being discussed? It is a fact that the Government have fixed the vote to secure the Bill's passage. This is a serious matter and I ask the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes to remove the grin from his face. As I have said, the hon. Gentleman has received an education this evening.
  There are 19 pits in Nottinghamshire. If the Bill is enacted, coal imported from South Africa, for example, through the proposed port would close nine of them. There are nine pits in Nottinghamshire which supply coal for the power stations on the Trent.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. Interventions should be brief.
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend's intervention may have been lengthy but it was relevant and important. My assessment suggests that he may have understated the position. I hope that no Conservative Members will deny my claim that it is by no means an overstatement.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield referred to Nottinghamshire. I talked earlier about the astonishing achievement of the county in establishing the highest productivity record for British coal nationally. The productivity record established in Nottinghamshire in the recent measured period shows output per man shift exceeding 5 tonnes for the first time in British history. The attitude of the lackeys on the Government Benches, with the connivance of the Government, unless the Minister can make an extremeley convincing speech, means that Nottinghamshire pits are under threat. What a reward for all those in Nottinghamshire who have been praised and congratulted by Conservative Members in the past.
  Mr. Martin M. Brandon-Bravo: The intervention of the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) was not relevant to the debate. Indeed, it was entirely false. I put it to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) that the Government are not involved in the Bill. If they were, all Opposition Members would be aware of the fact. If that were the position, the payroll vote, as it is affectionately known, would be expected to support the unofficial policy of the Government. Some Parliamentary Private Secretaries have been told that there will be a free vote this evening and that they may speak against the Bill. Indeed, some will try to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, so that they may do so, and vote against the Bill.
  Mr. Hardy: The hon. Gentleman has touching faith in the Government's objectivity. I thought he said that a certain section of the House is known "affectionately" as the payroll vote. I realised immediately afterwards that I had misheard him and that he said that it was effectively known as that.
  Mr. Brandon-Bravo: I said "affectionately" and I meant "affectionately." Those of us who are part of the payroll vote resent the term because we do not get paid.
  Mr. Hardy: In a better world and at a better time I was part of the payroll vote when the Labour Government were in office, and in a position similar to that which is held by the hon. Gentleman. There were many occasions when

  1207
  I and others in the same position, whether we were regarded affectionately or not, were not given advice on Bills of this sort. We were never given advice on private Bills. Our Whips recognised that it was not for them to contemplate any interference by the Government. I shall need a great deal more convincing than has been offered in the hon. Gentleman's reassurances.
  I know that the Minister will not speak at length in this debate. Ministers never do on these occasions. However, I want him to tell us three things when he gives us advice on the Government's position. I want him to tell us whether the Government are prepared to adopt the same attitude towards South African coal as other member states of the Western Alliance and the European Economic Community. I want the Government to advise the House whether it would be sensible to enact a Bill that would nullify public investment in the British coal industry. I want the Government to advise the House whether it would be intelligent for the Government or the country to allow a port to be established, in massive duplication of other facilities, which would ensure that strategic interests were not served. That is not much to ask.
  I have been involved in a number of private Bills in the past 12 or 18 months and I have been appalled by the attitude that has been displayed by various Ministers. We had a classic example. A Minister assured the House that the Government were neutral. Having heard that, I voted and went quickly to stand outside the Aye Lobby. I saw Government Whips and Ministers flocking out of it. That happened immediately after a Minister had told us that there was neutrality. According to that Minister, the Secretary of State for the Environment was neutral. He voted in favour of the Bill when the two public agencies which reported to him were petitioning against it.
  Mr. Barron: My hon. Friend may recall that the very same Minister, who is on the Government Front Bench tonight, when speaking about the Associated British Ports Bill a few weeks ago, said that the Government had no position on the Bill but he hoped that hon. Members would vote with him to give it a Second Reading. I suspect that the Minister will say very much the same tonight.
  Mr. Hardy: The Minister is developing a reputation for frankness and integrity, which may mean that he has reconsidered his position. Only last Monday, I asked a question of him—I recognise that this is not strictly relevant, so I shall be brief—concerning red seats on railway platforms. At Grantham station the seats are blue, and when I commented that that was inevitably because of the Prime Minister's connections, and suggested that the right hon. Lady's attachment to railways is meagre and wretched, the Minister said that that was not the case because his right hon. Friend had told him that she had enjoyed a railway journey. That was frank of him; he could at least have avoided the singular. He did not do so. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's reputation rose in my estimation.
  It may be that he has decided that the course of integrity and responsibility is such, even with demanding masters, that when he stands at the Dispatch Box he will recognise the merit of our argument. If he does, his reputation will be improved beyond that of the tawdry level of so many of his right hon. and hon. Friends who occupy the Government Front Bench.
  The Government have divided Britain in an astonishing
  1208
  way. I mentioned the plight of my hon. Friend's area and mine, which is relevant to the Bill. In each of our constituencies, we have one colliery remaining that could be threatened by a dependence upon imports. Our constituents are angry—as are those of my hon. Friend the Member for Pontefract and Castleford (Mr. Lofthouse), who has had a similar experience—and we are angry al the way in which we are treated by the Government and by Ministers. About four years ago, I wrote to the Prime Minister about what would happen in my constituency. A few weeks later she replied saying that I had overstated my case and that only 2,800 mining jobs would be lost.
  On several occasions since I have raised the matter again. Four weeks ago, I wrote to the Prime Minister, saying that the position was worse than when I had written to her a month previously. Last week, she replied, and it is disgraceful that a Prime Minister should put her name to a letter designed to be grossly misleading. For example, the right hon. Lady insisted that unemployment in my area is falling when it is not. She claimed that my area is receiving special priority under the urban programme when it is not. There are still a few Government supporters north of the Trent, and there may be present Conservative Members from areas that I could name, where unemployment is half the level it is in my own constituency and that of my hon. Friend, but which—despite the fact that their average population is one third of that in my metropolitan area—are receiving larger sums in urban area support. Some special priority!
  An even more unacceptable development, which would be aggravated if the Bill is passed, is that the Government have changed the rules for derelict land grant. The House knows that I am committed to the cause of conservation. One hon. Member mentioned that I embraced it long before many other hon. Members did, and sometimes I am cynical about their support. Nevertheless, I am committed to seeing the Dearne valley, where I live, made green again. We have lost the pits and we are now losing hope. The remaining jobs there are under threat, yet the Prime Minister informed me that the area was being greatly helped by the derelict land grant, when in fact the Government have changed the regulations and made it virtually impossible for any public moneys to be devoted to reclaiming colliery spoil heaps or the area within the curtilage of any colliery. In my own constituency there are in one colliery complex 675 acres that cannot be improved and which will remain desolate, despairing and disgraceful because of the Government's insensitivity—an insensitivity that is compounded by the Prime Minister's great deceit. I am waiting for the right hon. Lady's explanation of the various points that were made in the letter.
  That area, with the adjoining constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) to the east and for Barnsley, East (Mr. Patchett) to the west, has seen the most colossal job losses.
  It may be that the Minister will tell the House that he can offer all sorts of assurances that this is a reputable private company which can give guarantees, but I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that after my experiences in my constituency over the past 12 months I am cynical about taking the word of private sector businesses, unless I know them very well indeed.
  Mr. Redmond: Does my hon. Friend agree that what is important is jobs for the youngsters? In its prime, prior to the strike, the coal board employed approximately 650

  1209
  apprentices each year. After the strike, in 1985, in 1986
  and in 1987 there were no more apprentices. How many apprenticeships will replace that loss?
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend is right to ask the question, but I cannot answer it. However, I doubt whether the commitment to training and education in the private sector generally is anything like adequate. It is most unlikely that the training being given by the public sector to young people in the steel and coal industries and other sectors of the economy will be replaced once privatisation has been completed.
  Mr. Illsley: Before my hon. Friend leaves the point that he was making about private companies and the assurances that he would take from them, will he comment on the matters raised at the beginning of the debate when we seemed to have some difficulty in identifying the promoter of the Bill? He might recall that my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Welsh) had elicited that Chemical and Oil Storage Management Ltd. did not seem to exist and that it may have been taken over by a company called Simon Storage. Does that not emphasise my hon. Friend's point that we should be wary of who we are dealing with in this matter?
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend makes an important point. It is one of the modern tragedies of Britain that the captains of industry should have allowed within their ranks men whose word cannot be believed. I am not suggesting that the company is dishonourable, nor that the people within it are dishonourable, but the fact remains that we have had such experiences over the past few years as to make us extremely suspicious of the word of big business men.
  It would be wrong to detain the House for long, but my experience of the Guinness company, which cost us 500 jobs, after promises were made, caused me both anger and contempt. When the company, having twice offered me written assurances, then told the local newspapers that it had not given me any assurances at all, we really had reached a pretty pass. It is a pass which means that, in the interests of our constituents, as the Bill proceeds, if it does proceed, we must subject the companies involved in the Bill— the Central Oil Refining Company Ltd., a subsidiary of Simon Engineering plc, and another subsidiary of Simon Engineering plc, Immingham Storage Company Ltd.—to careful scrutiny.
  That scrutiny will be a great deal more careful as a consequence of the experience that my hon. Friends will have had in their constituencies—an experience that I certainly had when Guinness became involved in misleading and cheating the ratepayers, the community and the representatives at national and local level in my constituency, creating a situation in which 500 jobs were lost directly and an additional number of jobs are still being lost as a consequence. That came at a time when Kilnhurst and Manvers collieries were closed and unemployment became even worse.
  For the Prime Minister to say that unemployment is still falling in my area is in plain and stark defiance of the facts, even though the Minister and I and every Conservative Member know that the Government's unemployment figures are fiddled anyway. Even on their fiddled figures, the situation in the coalfield areas is
  1210
  disgraceful. What made me even more angry was that the Prime Minister said to me, "We can demonstrate our commitment to your area: 17,500 young people there are on youth training schemes." That is true; but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) knows full well, last year only 9·8 per cent. of them obtained jobs.
  We shall need an awful lot of convincing from the Minister, and I do not think that he will allow himself sufficient time or energy to present a detailed and convincing case. However, if he does, I hope that he will address the relevant questions that I put to him.
  We recognise that the matter may be the responsibility of the Department of Transport, but it is nevertheless of fundamental importance to the Department of Energy. I cannot expect the Minister to refer in detail to energy, but, as it is fundamental to the Bill, we are surely entitled to ask Conservative Members to comment on my quotations from the speech that the Secretary of State made at Blackpool to the annual conference of the Institution of Mining Engineers. We are also entitled to suggest that a Minister from the Department of Energy should have been here. It is absurd that a matter of such enormous importance to the economy—the making of energy policy and the mining industry, a matter of enormous relevance to the hundreds of millions of pounds invested by successive Governments on behalf of the taxpayer—is to be put at risk without a single Energy Minister being present.
  I wonder where they are. Are they interested in their responsibilities? Do they not approve of the words of the Secretary of State for Energy being quoted with approval by Opposition Members, including myself? Do they not notice that we believe that the Secretary of State was absolutely right in referring to the prospects of British Coal—provided, of course, that it operates on a basis of common sense?
  We are entitled to ask the Government to take a long-term view, but they must understand that we shall need a good deal of persuasion. After the Secretary of State for the Environment had been given the official advice of the Nature Conservancy Council and the Countryside Commission, which strongly opposed the Bill, the Minister came to the Dispatch Box and pledged the Government's neutrality. The Secretary of State, the Chief Whip and all the other minions led the troops, happy and laughing, through the Lobby in support of the Bill when their duties and responsibilities should have persuaded them at least to abstain.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: We understand the Government's position. We understand that there is no neutrality—in fact, there is an unofficial Whip in support of the Bill. But, given the case that my hon. Friend has made about the effect on our communities, should not the Government be organising their troops to vote against this private Bill?
  Mr. Hardy: That is right.
  I do not want to detain the House for long this evening. I must make progress because I still have four or five small points to make.
  I referred a few moments ago to safety in South Africa, but omitted to inform the House that the death rate in South African coal mines is well in excess of six times the rate per thousand men employed in the British mining industry. Life and limb should be regarded as important

  1211
  by all hon. Members. We accept that Conservative Members may give them a slightly lower priority than we do, but they will give them some—
  Mr. Martin Flannery: My hon. Friend said earlier that the miners of western Europe could become the coolies of western Europe—a fundamental point. The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown), with his connections with South Africa, never conveys that point. The Tories can never be neutral about the miners. Anyone who remembers the miners' strike knows full well that the Conservatives' aim is to weaken the mining industry in this country. They hate the miners, and have no consideration for South African miners, either. Nelson Mandela has been in gaol all these years. The Sharpeville six will be executed shortly. Are the Tories bothered about British miners? They will have the South African miners, with blood on their coal, competing with our miners to lower the standards of our mining safety and to close our pits.
  Mr. Hardy: My hon. Friend is right. We suspect—the Minister had better note this—that one reason for the port is to provide another lever for the Government's attempts to dismantle the structure of safety in the British mining industry.
  Mr. Jimmy Hood: As a former miner, like my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes), who worked in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, I should like to take this opportunity to mention our real fears. Before we close the debate I want to clear up a misunderstanding about our worries. I ask my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy), when he goes to the conference of the National Association of Colliery Overmen, Deputies and Shotfirers, to give its members our assurance that we shall fully support their defence against the attacks on safety standards in the mining industry that have been made by the Government in preparation for privatisation.
  Even the present legislation is inadequate. We should be strengthening, not weakening, it. I speak as a former union secretary in the Nottinghamshire coalfield, and I had the unpleasant duty of attending six inquests during my period of office. On each of those occasions the legislation proved inadequate to save the lives that were lost. Hon. Members will appreciate what it is like to have to go to a home in a mining community and tell a family that its daddy is not coming home. That explains our real worries about safety standards.
  I think, too, of safety standards in, and blood coal from, South Africa. I can well understand what happens there when—
  Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman is patient, he may be called.
  Mr. Hardy: I believe that my association recognises that Opposition Members remain committed to giving safety a high priority. We are worried about the attitude of Ministers and Conservative Members.
  Mr. John Cummings: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for having given way, lest people think that the debate revolves solely around Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire. I represent a constituency in the north-east that contains four of the remaining six collieries in the old Durham area. I am sure my hon.
  1212
  Friend recalls the Prime Minister's remarks during the miners' strike to the effect that we were the enemy within. We have broken productivity records. Productivity has never been higher; nor has morale. Perhaps the enemy within sits on the Conservative Benches. Conservative Members are selling the country short by introducing this Bill, which will place the coal reserves of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the hands of international coal cartels. Does my hon. Friend agree?
  Mr. Hardy: That is right. Unfortunately, the gentleman who held the trust and support of the Government was certainly taking Britain along the road of Mr. MacGregor's basic interest, which was to see Britain developing as a major international coal factor rather than a major international coal producer. I was pleased that he did not get his hands on British Gas after having dealt with British Steel and British Coal.
  Some Conservative Members and Ministers may be so busy pursuing other interests that have attracted their attention that they have overlooked the reality of British electricity generation. Given that disregard, which has been made patently obvious in the debate, it is useful to remind the House of the coal generation market in the United Kingdom.
  Conservative Members seem to believe that the Government have forced the CEGB to buy British coal, and that there are some printed rules and regulations requiring the CEGB to do that. That is not the case. There is a joint understanding. The trouble is that, whilst a joint understanding can properly be applied to public sector industry, private sector businesses do not operate on understandings. They cannot trust each other and they have to have laws.
  Above all, I want the House to understand my next point. Over three quarters of British coal is used for power station generation and 55 per cent. of the CEGB's operating costs are devoted to coal. Conservative Members think that that is a lie and that that coal cart be replaced by cheap foreign coal. They do not understand that 12 million tonnes of coal are purchased by the CEGB at world prices. There is no possibility of a £750 million bonanza waiting round the corner. That is why the Bill is misguided in its potential social effects and in its financial aspirations. That is why I and my hon. Friends will maintain what I said was an absolutely implacable resolve to contest the Bill in every detail. We will contest every word, every line and every paragraph at every stage of the Bill's consideration.
  9.23 pm
  The Minister for Public Transport (Mr. David Mitchell): It may be helpful to the House if I intervene briefly to give the Government's view on the Bill. It is conventional on a private Bill for the Government to take a neutral stance, but in doing so to advise the House that the Bill should be allowed a Second Reading. This does not imply that the Government support the Bill. It is for the promoters to persuade Parliament that the powers they are seeking are necessary and justified.
  The hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) asked for the Government's view about whether the Bill involves the provision of excess capacity in the ports industry. We think that matching capacity with demand is best handled by those who put their money at risk on whether their judgment is right. Their judgment is at least as likely to be

  1213
  right as the judgment of politicians, and probably more so. The Government have no objection in principle to the proposals in the Bill. My Department has a minor point outstanding which it is discussing with the promoters, and it is expected that it will be satisfactorily resolved.
  Mr. Barron: What is the minor point?
  Mr. Mitchell: It is a minor technical point about lighthouses and Trinity House. As I have said, we anticipate that it will be satisfactorily resolved.
  A number of petitioners are against the Bill, and they will have the opportunity to present their objections to the Select Committee. The Committee will be in a much better position than we are in this debate to examine in detail the issues involved, and they will have the added advantage of expert advice.
  A number of hon. Members referred to the coal industry. It has never been the Government's policy to restrict the import of coal. The best protection for the United Kingdom coal industry is to produce secure supplies of coal that are competitive on the world market. The success of British Coal in competition with world coal suppliers depends on its ability to continue to get costs down and to maximise productivity. The purchase of coal, whether imported or indigenous, is a matter for the commercial judgment of individual consumers.
  The hon. Member for Wentworth asked me two further questions. He asked about South African coal. I have no reason to assume that the pattern of sources of imports will be altered by the Bill. That pattern shows that the largest overseas supplier to this country is Australia and that the second largest is the United States of America.
  Mr. Hardy: In order not to delay the House, I did not mention Australia. Australian coal capacity is under severe limit because, at the prevailing level of prices, not enough can be recouped to pay for investment, with the result that the collieries and coalfields in Australia are not operating at full production. That is a relevant point to make when we are considering the Bill.
  Mr. Mitchell: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for agreeing that Australia still has surplus capacity that is not being mined. Australia is already the leading overseas supplier to this country. It is not, as the hon. Gentleman and some of his hon. Friends implied, South Africa. The second largest supplier is the United States of America. There is no reason to believe that the building of a new terminal will alter the pattern of imports and lead to South Africa, which is very low on the list of overseas suppliers, moving to the top of the list, as has been implied.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Mitchell: Let me deal with the point that the hon. Member for Wentworth raised. He questioned whether the development of the terminal would nullify British investment in the coal industry. I have already explained what the Government consider to be the most effective way for the British coal industry to ensure its future. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to draw attention to the need for investment in the British coal industry to enable it to continue to compete successfully in the United
  1214
  Kingdom and world markets. I am sure that he will welcome the fact that the Government are investing about £650 million a year in the British coal industry.
  We believe that we should not use limitations of port capacity as a form of non-tariff barrier to imports in order artificially to protect the United Kingdom industry. That industry is now becoming so efficient, competitive and effective that it does not need such artificial discrimination to ensure that it can sell in the United Kingdom market.
  Mr. Barron: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Mitchell: I have tried to answer the points that have been raised in the debate so far. I know that a large number of hon Members want to participate and it would be unfair to them if I were to continue at any length.
  I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading so that it may proceed in the usual way to Committee for detailed consideration of the many issues that hon Members have made clear are likely to arise then.
  9.29 pm
  Mr. Tony Lloyd: It is an unusual exhortation to the House that a Second Reading should be given on the nod and that we should dispense with the entire Second Reading debate because the Government feel that the Bill should be given a chance to prove itself in Committee. In not so many years' time, when we have a Labour Government introducing their own legislation, and if the present Minister survives that general election, will he be prepared to accept Labour Ministers inviting Conservative Members to give a Bill a Second Reading on the nod so that detailed examination can be given to it in Committee? The Minister knows that that is nonsense on a private Bill or a Government Bill, because the whole reason for Second Reading is to seek answers to detailed questions.
  Tonight's debate has been a contempt of the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) made an excellent speech, if a little brief, and he is certainly absolved from that charge, because he took the debate seriously. The promoter of the Bill, the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown), spoke in total for five minutes at, he told us, the rate of 110 words per minute. In 550 words, he made the case for the Bill having a Second Reading, but totally failed to answer many of the important questions that had already been raised, or to anticipate those that might be raised.
  Mr. Michael Brown rose—
  Mr. Lloyd: I will give way in a moment.
  The Minister is responsible not only for the Government's ports policy, but for representing the Government on the many issues that have been raised tonight. He gave us almost no reason for believing that the Government have any view whatsoever of the important issues which have been raised. I warn hon. Gentlemen that during my speech I shall invite them from time to time to respond to specific points that I raise because it is in the interests of the House that they be addressed tonight by the promoter and the Government, and that we should not have to wait until the Bill is in Committee.
  Mr. Brown: Although you were not in the Chair at the time, Mr. Speaker, I commenced my speech at 7.30 pm and ended it at either five minutes past or 10 minutes past 8 o'clock. The only reason why I was unable to do justice to

  1215
  that amount of time and to develop my argument was that many of the points of order were raised in the middle of my speech.
  Mr. Lloyd: In fairness to the hon. Gentleman, I should say that he does not do justice to his speech even when he is not assailed by points of order.
  Perhaps I can help the hon. Gentleman's attitude to the House if I quote from a letter which he sent his hon Friends, a copy of which has fallen into my hands. If I may beg your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, it is important that you take account of what is in the letter which the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes sent to all Conservative Members—
  Mr. Michael Brown: No, not to all.
  Mr. Lloyd: Well, possibly not to all. [HON. MEMBERS:"HOW many?"] Well, the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes certainly sent it to one of his hon. Friends, who has let it fall into my hands—that is unless he made the mistake of sending it to one of my hon. Friends.
  The letter states that this Bill is similar to the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill. It says that both Bills are "very controversial"—he is right about that—and that Labour Members are "totally opposed" to the Bills. My hon. Friends have already made that point clear, and I reinforce it.
  The letter continued:
  "A filibuster prevented me from obtaining a closure on the first bill and there is a risk that this could re-occur on Wednesday."
  I know that you, Mr. Speaker, would not accept that any filibuster took place, because you were in the Chair that night. The hon. Gentleman then stated:
  "Nevertheless, I cannot take any chances and I wonder if I can impose on your goodwill by asking you to be present to support a closure which I shall request at 10 pm."
  That is an unusual device. Indeed, it is unusual that I announce to you, Mr. Speaker, from the Opposition Front Bench, that the hon. Gentleman will seek to move a closure at 10 pm. I hope that you will take into account when you take your decision the total paucity of the debate and the speeches that have been made by both the promoter and the Minister. I urge that because the Bill is tremendously important in many different ways.
  Mr. David Mitchell: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will recognise that a long speech does not necessarily contain more facts, figures or information for the House than the short, concise replies that I gave to the questions asked earlier by the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy).
  Mr. Lloyd: That might be sound as a principle, but I assure the Minister that when brevity consists of emptiness, it is irrelevant in a speech from a Minister or a promoter of a Bill. I shall make points which, because the Minister will not speak again, he will presumably allow to go unaddressed.
  Important transport issues have not been addressed, and I intend to turn my attention to them. There are also important issues about the coal industry itself, some of which were raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth and by our hon. Friends in their interventions. There are also important international dimensions, such as the role of South Africa and the apartheid regime.
  Mr. Richard Caborn: Conservative Members are apologists for the apartheid regime.
  Mr. Lloyd: My hon. Friend makes a valid point.
  Some of the real issues concern how far we allow the apartheid regime to penetrate the British economy. My hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth pointed out that the South African economic regime is looking greedily at the CEGB. By purchasing those who use the coal, the South African coal industry can guarantee a ready market for its coal supplies in this country.
  Mr. Barron: I tried to intervene in the Minister's speech when he made the specific point that both this Bill and its sister Bill had no direct implications for South African coal. Does my hon. Friend accept that the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) not only went to South Africa this year on a visit paid for by the South African coal industry to look at plants there, but at the same time publicly called on the South African Government to lift restrictions to improve exports from South Africa to Europe?
  Mr. Lloyd: I am always happy to allow my hon. Friend to intervene. The hon. Gentleman visited South Africa to demand that all bans on coal from South Africa be lifted. On 6 April 1988, in the Daily Mail—an apologist for the apartheid regime and the Right-wing Conservative party —its industrial correspondent, David Norris, wrote:
  "It is understood they"—
  that is, the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes and some colleagues, including the hon. Member for Havant (Sir I. Lloyd), who is the Chairman of the Energy Select Committee—
  "told the business leaders that the best way to go about"
  getting the ban on coal lifted
  "was to take out a stake in the planned privatised set-up."
  The hon. Gentleman may wish to deny or confirm that report, but it seems that those hon. Gentlemen were inviting the South African mining industry to take a stake in the CEGB, knowing that they would support the Government's privatisation of it next year.[Interruption.] Yes, Botha's friends will be voting to allow Botha's friends to buy a stake in this country's assets. The hon. Gentleman should make some statement about that. Although he tells the House that he has no personal interest, it is obvious that he has a strong one.
  Mr. Lofthouse: Does my hon. Friend think that it would be for the benefit of the House if the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes (Mr. Brown) staled categorically whether he discussed with the South African coal owners the possibility of buying British electricity and possibly the coal industry?
  Mr. Lloyd: I am happy to repeat my offer to the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes: if he wants to confirm or deny the report in the Daily Mail, I shall certainly give way. Was he one of those who told South African business leaders that the best way to get rid of the ban on coal imports into Britain was to take a stake in the planned privatised industry? That is a serious allegation. Not only does the hon. Gentleman want to serve the apartheid regime, but he wants to subvert United Nations resolutions and the whole climate of world opinion in order to prop up that disgraceful regime, which lives on an industry based on slave labour. He wants South Africans to reap the benefit of that slave labour through British industry.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Lloyd: If the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene, I shall give way to him before my hon. Friends. Since he does not, I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, North (Mr. Wall).
  Mr. Wall: Does my hon. Friend not think it significant that the issue of South African coal has been avoided? Is he aware that Britain is a signatory to the EC code of conduct in relation to South Africa? That says that, as a minimum, there should be total opposition to the use of migrant labour, which is widely used in the South African mining industry, and that British firms which have interests in South Africa should pay wages at least 50 per cent. above the minimum level. Under this Government, they have been reduced to 28 per cent. above the minimum in South Africa. Surely the Government have a duty to be bound by the European code of conduct. Therefore, we should ask whether proper wages are being paid and whether the Government are meeting the conditions laid down by the EC. If not, it is a disgrace that the Bill is being sneaked through.
  Mr. Lloyd: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to that. I am not surprised by the Government's hypocrisy. I draw his attention to the recorded vote in the United Nations in November last year on resolution 42/23B when Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany, also an importer of South African coal, and the United States, with its dubious record on South Africa, were the only three countries which voted against the resolution asking members to prohibit the import of South African coal.
  The Government are schizophrenic about South Africa. The Minister of State, Foreign Office is clearly embarrassed by her own Prime Minister. Obviously the Minister of State wants to do something serious about the apartheid regime, but the Prime Minister gives way to the apologists in her party and to the Right-wing hawks who would have us deal with South Africa as if it were governed by civilised, fit and decent people. Inevitably the Prime Minister will win the argument. That means that any code of conduct which the Government have entered into is as nothing when they are determined to prop up that awful regime.
  Mr. Jack Thompson: Should we not consider another point on South Africa? If the Dutch Government follow the line of the Dutch people and decide to ban the import of South African coal to Rotterdam and Amsterdam, is it not likely that the South African coal will come to Britain to be exported to western Europe?
  Mr. Lloyd: My hon. Friend raises an important point. I invite the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes, who did not address the issue in his speech, to tell the House what he knows of Van Ommeren, the Dutch transportation company. Earlier this year the Financial Times, in relation to the North Killingholme cargo terminal, said:
  "Dutch transport group Van Ommeren and UK industrialists Simon Engineering plan to open a deepwater mixed bulk cargo port on the Humber in summer 1989".
  I have heard no denial by the proposers of the private Bill that they are in business with Van Ommeren. I have heard no denial of the suggestion that Van Ommeren and Simon Engineering are working together on this. It would help the House if the hon. Gentleman would tell us what the role of Van Ommeren is. Is the Financial Times right when it says that Van Ommeren is involved? The hon. Gentleman says that he does not know.
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  My hon. Friends may want to know what Van Ommeren is. It is one of the largest Dutch transportation companies, responsible for taking a considerable amount of coal from South African mines, at the behest of Shell and BP, to the Dutch market in Rotterdam where it is mixed with coal from other sources such as China. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wentworth has already said, the coal is sold in Britain and in other areas as Dutch coal. As any hon. Member with the slightest inkling of the geography of the Netherlands or the history of the coal industry in Europe will know, the Dutch coal industry was expended a considerable time ago. The concept of Dutch coal is nonsense, unless it is coal which the present-day Dutch inherited from the Dutch who went to South Africa many years ago as Voortrekkers and which they are reimporting from that former Dutch colony.
  I invite the hon. Gentleman to tell us what the role of Van Ommeren is. Van Ommeren already has a dubious record as a trader in apartheid and all its works, prepared to do the dirty business in Rotterdam by laundering the coal that comes from the Shells and BPs. If it is involved in North Killingholme, can the hon. Gentleman seriously tell the House that the company will not see this as a perfect opportunity to cut out the middle market and bring South African coal straight into the heart of Britain, into the midlands and the northern coalfields to destroy jobs in those areas, while at the same time creating profits for the South African coal industry?
  Perhaps the Minister of State can tell us a simple fact. There is a very old quote about a nation built on coal. We are still a nation built on coal, and the House is testimony to that. Many of my hon. Friends come from that tradition, which is deeply respected in the Labour movement, but unfortunately it is despised in the Conservative party. The Government were prepared to pretend to miners in the UDM during the NUM strike that the Government were backing the UDM, but the UDM miners and the NUM miners will now find that their jobs will be sold to the apartheid regime.
  Can the Minister of State explain to me, to the House and to the world how a nation with all those coal reserves could contemplate importing through the North Killingholme terminal and through its sister terminal at Immingham 10 million tonnes of coal a year? The Minister shakes his head. Perhaps he can give the House some information that he was not prepared to give a few moments ago. Perhaps the Minister will tell the House what those ports are all about. If he knows more than I do, I invite him to ask me to give way; I shall be delighted to do so.
  The information we have is that the capacity of the two ports will approach 10 million tonnes a year. That will be equivalent to a balance of payments deficit of £250 million to £350 million each year. We are worsening our already parlous balance of payments policy when the coal could be produced in Britain, creating and maintaining employment in the British coalfields. Instead of wanting to maintain that employment and to improve our balance of payments, the Secretary of State for Energy wants competition. He says that the Government do not believe in trade barriers or artificial devices to restrict competition.
  The Secretary of State for Energy told the Institution of Mining Engineers:
  "We believe that competition makes industries stronger, not weaker. That is why we will not put up trade barriers to coal imports. Not only would this run against our

  1219
  international treaty obligations. It would also, in the long term, result in a weaker mining industry at home. British Coal will be a fitter, more confident and secure employer if it wins its business on its merits."
  Tonight, the Minister of State echoed that point. Will he tell the House how he seriously expects miners in the Nottingham and Yorkshire coalfields to compete with slave labour in South Africa? How does he seriously expect the British coal industry to compete with an industry which has blood on its hands because it does not even have the basic safety levels that were taken for granted in British pits before nationalisation? A safety regime would not be tolerated in South Africa.
  Mr. David Mitchell: The hon. Gentleman asks how the United Kingdom industry can compete. May I remind him that the United Kingdom industry competes very effectively? May I help the hon. Gentleman and the House on the level of throughput which the installation will be capable of' achieving? The hon. Gentleman mentioned 10 million tonnes. That is typical of the exaggeration which we have come to expect from him. I understand that the company hopes to attract various bulk cargoes, including coal, aiming for throughput of 2 million metric tonnes a year. The installation is thought to have a maximum capacity of 4 million metric tonnes a year. It is planning to have a varied cargo and not to be a single commodity terminal.
  Mr. Lloyd: I am always grateful to the Minister for intervening, as he makes my job far simpler. Perhaps I may refer to the Financial Times coal report, which the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes has not wished to challenge. It said that the ABP port at Immingham, which we debated not long ago, will have an annual throughput of 6 million tonnes in three years. As the Minister said, it is proposed that North Killingholme should have a starting capacity of 1 to 2 million tonnes and a final capacity of 4 million tonnes. If the Minister bears with me while I explain that four plus six equals 10, he will understand that my estimate of 10 million tonnes for the two ports is not awfully wide of the mark. I shall leave him to dwell on that.
  The Minister may be absolved of not understanding the arithmetic of coal. He may even be absolved of not understanding the nature of the vicious regime in South Africa. But he cannot be absolved of not understanding the transportation system serving Immingham and North Killingholme. He did not comment on the difficulties that will be created for roads and railways in the area.
  I am led to understand that it is uncertain whether the coal will be carried by road or rail. There is severe doubt whether the roads can carry even 1 million tonnes of coal. The constituency Member, the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes, said that there would be little environmental damage as a result of the Bill. If l million tonnes of coal is put on the roads, that means 800 extra heavy lorries on roads in his constituency each day. The hon. Gentleman might not think that an environmental nuisance, but his constituents might think differently. If I were one of his constituents, I would be severely worried about my Member of Parliament's ability to represent me. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will consider the problems that may arise as a result of there being 800 extra heavy lorries, loaded to 32·5 tonnes, on the roads each day.
  Mr. Michael Brown: We have railways, and we use them.
  Mr. Lloyd: The hon. Gentleman tells me that he has railways—but are they capable of taking up to 10 million tonnes of coal? All the evidence that I have suggests that they are not. If the Minister had said that a detailed analysis of the railways' coal-carrying capacity was made, we might have been reassured about the system. The 800 lorries a day I mentioned would carry only 1 million tonnes. If the railways cannot cope, and the whole 10 million tonnes has to go by road, there will be an extra 8,000 lorries a day in the hon. Gentleman's constituency. Is he aware of the death and accident rate on roads in that area? If he is, I should like him to give the House the figures.
  Mr. Brown: I think that I can help the hon. Gentleman. In about 1982, some 5 million tonnes of British coal was exported through the port of Immingham, and it was taken there by lorries and trains. Whether coal is carried by rail or by road, just as much coal dust is likely to be dropped if the coal is going out of Immingham as when it is coming in through Immingham. Opposition Members would like nothing more than to have their coal exported through Immingham.
  Mr. Lloyd: My hon. Friends would be delighted to have coal from their areas exported. There are, however, a few little difficulties, such as the fact that British coal is put on the market at about £40 a tonne. Coal in Rotterdam from the apartheid regime in South Africa costs $40 per tonne, which is much cheaper. The opportunities for my hon. Friends and their constituents to export coal are nullified because the means of production in South Africa is slave labour.
  The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes may be aware that there have been some significant changes in the rail system. Perhaps he would like to tell the House what has happened to the rail system in that area since the days when Immingham was a major exporting port. The rail connections are now worse than they were at that time, and the capacity to carry by rail has diminished. The capacity to carry coal by road to power stations is not feasible in all circumstances.
  I shall be travelling through the hon. Gentleman's constituency on Friday. He appears to be under the impression that the A180, on which the coal is carried, is of motorway class. He is talking nonsense. It is an A road, not a motorway. He might like to know that there were 16 serious accidents on that road last year.
  Mr. Brown: That shows how little the hon. Gentleman knows about my constituency. I am delighted that he is going up to Brigg and Cleethorpes on Friday, and I wish him a happy visit. I am sorry to hear that he will only he passing through the area, probably on the A 180, which is of motorway standard, has dual carriageway in both directions and is the exact equivalent of a motorway, except that one can turn off at roundabouts.
  Mr. Joseph Ashton: Is my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) aware that 500, and sometimes up to 1,000, lorries pass through rural villages in my constituency each day? Those villages have no street lighting and no pavements and were never built for heavy lorries going to pits with which the existing rail system cannot cope. There will be a new power station at West Burton, where the railway runs through a tunnel on a one-line track. Under the existing system, it can barely

  1221
  cope with the movement of coal. If the development of this port goes ahead, it will be absolute murder for the people living in those villages.
  Mr. Lloyd: My hon. Friend is right, but perhaps he should also say that it would be murder for the constituents of the hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes. The hon. Gentleman thinks that the dual carriageway is of motorway standard, but those people injured on that road and their families might not consider that to be so.
  Mr. Michael Brown rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put, but MR. SPEAKER withheld his assent, and declined then to put that Question.
  Mr. Lloyd: The hon. Member for Brigg and Cleethorpes obviously thinks that there has been enough debate about the traffic system in his constituency, but he has scarcely participated in the debate. Some of the coal that will come through the port will go to Eggborough power station, but I am advised that that power station
  1222
  does not have the capacity to take that coal by rail. It will have to go by road. At present, the power station consumes about 1 million tonnes of coal each year, which would come along roads of various classes. His constituents will complain bitterly about the destruction of those roads, the damage done by those heavy lorries to the roads, the congestion on those roads and the increase in the number of accidents on those roads.
  The hon. Gentleman should take that into account, as should the Minister. The Minister did not tell the House of any plans to upgrade the roads or the railway system, although he has some responsibility for making sure that the House is advised about the possibility of any such plans, about the rights and wrongs of the proposal and about the transport services involved. That is a matter of great regret.
  Mr. Barron: My hon. Friend will know that I represent a coal mining community that has suffered greatly, especially since the end of the strike. The problem of the movement of coal in many of the villages of my constituency is quite substantial.
  It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
  Debate to be resumed tomorrow.

  Liberalisation of Telecommunications
  10 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Industry and Consumer Affairs (Mr. John Butcher): I beg to move,
  That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 4634/88 on the development of the common market for telecommunications services and equipment; and supports the Government's intention to work for the early liberalisation of telecommunications markets in the European Community to the benefit of network operators, service providers, equipment manufacturers and users.
  This Community initiative has stimulated considerable interest worldwide. This consultative process originated in the Commission's Green Paper on telecommunications policy, issued at the end of June 1987, with the aim, as it says, of starting a common thinking process and of satisfying the requirement for a debate within the Community of common objectives and the means to reach them. Naturally, the Commission had its own ideas about what needed to be done in respect of telecommunications in the Community. It also had ideas about how its objectives were to be achieved. Since the guiding principle of these ideas is to increase competition and to open markets in a field hitherto characterised, except in the United Kingdom, by monopoly and protectionism, the debate within the Community has been a lively one in which the Government have taken a leading part.
  The Government have had two main objectives in the course of these discussions: first, to support the Commission in pressing forward rapidly with market-opening and liberalising measures; and, secondly, to guard against the danger of over-regulation, which, instead of stimulating competition, could stultify it. Our objectives reflect the advantageous position which the United Kingdom has won for itself in telecommunications within the Community by being the first member state to adopt a liberalising pro-competitive policy in this sector.
  The market-opening measures adopted in the United Kingdom have resulted in a more competitive and efficient market. They mean that United Kingdom equipment manufacturers and service providers have learnt to live in the bracing environment of open competition at home, hitherto without being able to compete freely in the telecommunications markets of the Community. It follows that we have consistently and enthusiastically supported proposals by the Commission that would have the effect of giving our manufacturers a fair opportunity to sell their goods overseas, especially in Community markets. At the same time, we have been alert to any tendencies towards levelling down, where the United Kingdom has already progressed further than the Community as a whole is prepared to venture. The most obvious example is the introduction of competition into the telecommunications network itself—a policy whose benefits we continue to urge upon our partners in the Community.
  Where, then, has this long and intensive consideration of the Green Paper led? The first conclusion, reached unanimously by member states, is that the Commission put the Green Paper together with a great deal of skill and expertise. The Government wholeheartedly endorse the general view that it is a comprehensive, well-thought-out and well-researched document. No one—least of all the Government—dissents from the Green Paper's guiding principle that an efficient telecommunications sector is an
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  essential factor in the Community's economy. No one questions the Commission's opinion that for the internal market to be fully complete it must include an open market in telecommunications. Nor is there any doubt about the overriding aim, which is to provide European users with a greater variety of telecommunication services, of better quality and at lower cost. But the most important conclusion to flow from the Green Paper debate is the acceptance by all member states of the principle, on which the Government have been conducting the United Kingdom's telecommunications policy, that the route to efficiency in the telecommunications market, as in most other markets, is the freeing of market forces through the introduction of competition.
  Agreement in principle has also been reached on several specific objectives, which would create in the Community as a whole market conditions in telecommunications not dissimilar to those now existing in the United Kingdom.
  It is that broad agreement at the political level throughout the Community, both as regards general economic aims in the telecommunications sector and particular action designed to achieve them, that has made it possible for the Commission to submit the document that we have before us.
  The Commission has recognised that the 12 member states differ widely in the structure of their telecommunications industries, which have been growing up since the 19th century, and that changes need to be introduced step by step and in a manner that takes account of these differences, and it has identified targets for future action. In listing the most important targets I shall refer also to the United Kingdom's position. First, there is separation of the regulatory and operational functions of the telecommunications authorities. We have done that. Secondly, there is the opening of the terminal equipment market to competition. We have done that. Thirdly, there is the opening of the telecommunications value added services market to competition, and subsequently definition of detailed general conditions for open network provision, which are the conditions under which competitive service providers use the basic telecommunications network. We have done that. Fourthly, there is the opening of the market for receive-only satellite antennae, as long as they are not connected to the public network. We announced in February that we shall be implementing that.
  Other areas for immediate action include progressive implementation of the general principle that telecommunications tariffs should follow the trends in costs. We have delivered the effect of that because that is the result that follows from competition. There is then the extension to the telecommunications sector of rules for fair and open public procurement. British Telecom and Mercury are free to procure network and terminal equipment from any source that they think fit.
  To complete a long list, there is the establishment of a European Telecommunications Standards Institute, which is affectionately known as ETSI, and full mutual recognition of type approval for terminal equipment. Those two facilities have our full support. Indeed, the United Kingdom was instrumental in the establishment of a free-standing ETSI.
  Mr. Dave Nellist: The Minister has praised the freedom of BT to procure equipment from any source that it chooses. What effect does he think that

  1225
  freedom has had on thousands of our constituents—his and mine in Coventry—who heard seven weeks ago that their jobs would come to an end because of rationalisations at GEC/Plessey Telecommunications Ltd? One of the factors was the purchase by BT of Ericsson equipment from Sweden.
  Mr. Butcher: For reasons that the hon. Gentleman will understand, I, too, am familiar with the arguments that surrounded the rationalisation programme. He said "one of the factors", and I hope he will agree that trends in the manufacturing of telecommunications equipment, especially switching equipment, worldwide show that there has been demanning across western Europe, North America and Japan. The labour-intensive aspects of that form of production for that sort of profit are being greatly reduced. I know that the trade unions prayed in aid the system Y procurement, but most countries in Europe have the principle of second-sourcing. If the company management were to connive at an argument that everything was down to second-sourcing, I believe that it would not be reflecting the true position. I do not believe that it would make such an assertion, but no doubt the hon. Gentleman will develop his arguments in his contribution later this evening.
  Mr. Phillip Oppenheim: On the logic of the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist), if the main function of an industry is to preserve jobs, one must surely conclude that GPT should still be assembling labour-intensive Strowger exchanges that no one wants to buy. There is surely no future for an industry in just preserving jobs for the sake of those jobs without considering what people want to buy.
  Mr. Butcher: Later, I hope to develop the argument that having a communications policy that places the interests of the users first is a policy for job creation. I seek to demonstrate that telecommunications improvements in the United Kingdom add to our overall efficiency, and in so doing add to our propensity to generate jobs in an internationally competitive market. One of the sources that I shall be quoting is one of our most vehement competitors, who agrees with the statement that I have just made.
  Mr. Nellist: He is probably a Tory, too.
  Mr. Butcher: I doubt it.
  Our already competing network operators, British Telecom and Mercury Communications, will be well placed to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by the internal market. It means also that it is wholly in our interest to assist the Commission and our partners in the Community—especially the Greek, Spanish and French presidencies, which will be in office over the next 18 months—to set the necessary Community legislation in place with the least possible delay.
  A good start has been made. ETSI is in being and will produce at an increasing rate the common European standards that are the prerequisites of a truly open market. The question often asked is whether the British are involved in that process, and whether we fear that others will take advantage of it. I can tell the House that the United Kingdom chairs the institute's technical assembly,
  1226
  which will determine the programme and adopt the standards. I know that the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) is very interested in that point.
  The Commission is on the point of submitting to the Council a directive for open public procurement by the network operators in the hitherto excluded sectors. Draft proposals have already been the subject of intensive work at official level. Another Commission target for 1988 is the submission of a draft directive on the full, mutual recognition of type approval for terminal equipment. That, coupled with the availability of European standards and the introduction of competition, will result in a truly open market for attachments of every kind.
  As to the introduction of competition, action has already been taken by the Commission to implement one of the immediate action lines, through the directive addressed to member states on 19 May under article 90 of the treaty of Rome, to accomplish rapid liberalisation of the Community's terminal equipment market. The Government are wholly in favour of that directive's aim, because it will enable other United Kingdom manufacturers to compete on fair terms in the domestic markets of other member states.
  Direct action by the Commission, using the powers conferred upon it to enforce treaty rules, is a relatively novel procedure that has the advantage, in suitable cases, of avoiding the lengthier procedures involved in Council measures. However, the use of article 90 in that way raises legal and practical issues that call for careful consideration. I shall be interested to hear the views of hon. Members on that point and will take account of them.
  After some initial heart searching, our Community partners are now responding to the need for change. In the beginning, they watched with interest what I am sure was regarded in many quarters as the British experiment. They are now minded to taste and to assimilate what is seen as a British success.
  I promised the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East that I would conclude with a quotation supporting my arguments. It is from M. Gérard Longuet, who has been a vigorous and perceptive French Telecommunications Minister. In his book "Telecoms: La Conquôte de nouveaux espaces"—and I assure the House that this is an accurate translation—he wrote:
  "When Japanese enterprises are contemplating the establishment of a European base it is to London that they turn, certain of being able to benefit there from communications which offer the best performance at the least cost."
  Coming from a French Minister, that is praise indeed. The Japanese know, as a number of colleagues in Europe know, that there has been a transformation of telecommunications in the United Kingdom. A number of users, both domestic and business, now look on Britain's success with a great deal of envy.
  10.14 pm
  Mr. Roger Scott: I want to dwell later on the proposition that the Minister has advanced tonight that Britain's telecommunications industry has had some success. I should at this stage declare my interest. I am sponsored by the National Communications Union, and before I came to the House I was a telecommunications engineer. The Minister and I crossed swords on many occasions for many hours during debates on the Telecommunications Bill, to which I shall return later.

  1227
  The Minister has pointed out that some time ago the Commission drew up a Green Paper on the proposition for a European telecommunications network for 1992. The Commission published its draft policy statement on the development of the common market for telecommunications services and equipment in June last year. Tonight the House is asked to take note of the update of the Commission's intentions and opinions on an open market for telecommunications for 1992.
  I note that in the foreword of that document the Commission stated that its aim was to launch a debate on European telecommunications and to attract comment from a broad spectrum of opinion. In particular, the Commission was seeking views from the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee, the telecommunications administrations—those bodies which are still in public ownership in Europe —the European telecommunications and data processing manufacturing industry, the users of communications services and the trade unions.
  I acknowledge that the Commission has done that because I know that the Postal, Telegraph and Telephone International, the umbrella organisation for all those unions in posts and telecommunications, particularly the European committee, has been actively involved in the discussions and the negotiations with the Commission on its policy.
  I am advised that there have been several meetings with Viscount Davignon, the Commissioner responsible for telecommunications, and, on 5 May this year, a delegation from the PTTI's European committee met Mr. Jacques Delors, the President of the Commission, and reaffirmed its view, which was set out in the document presented to the Commission, that telecommunications in Europe should, wherever possible, remain in public ownership.
  The PTTI committee disagrees with the Commission's fundamental policy on a number of issues. I have no doubt that the Minister has seen the PTTI submission to the Commission in which it outlines some of its fundamental opposition to some of the stances that the Commission has taken.
  I understand that some progress has been made on the PTTI's position. It, like me, was worried by the Green Paper's excessive reliance on competition as the force for the development of telecommunications services, the tendency to project private competition for telecommunications administrations with inadequate regard for the need to protect the financial viability of those administrations, and their right to compete on an equal footing with others in open competition.
  The Minister mentioned competition. The Government's position is to eulogise competition in British Telecom as something that should be adopted in Europe and an example that the rest of the world should follow. If we examine that contention, we find that competition has not worked very well.
  The hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) will have imprinted on his mind for ever those wonderful speeches by John Golding, to name but one—
  Mr. Oppenheim: A lengthy embarrassment.
  Mr. Stott: It is not an embarrassment to me, and I shall make a further reference to Mr. Golding a little later.
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  During those debates on the Telecommunications Bill in the watches of the night, we talked of what would happen if competition was brought about in the way that the Government wanted it to be brought about. I know that the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills was not particularly keen on that idea; he wanted much more competition in the system. What happened—and the Which? report bore this out when evidence was being taken from the consumer last November—was the epitome of all that was wrong with British Telecom. I must say that there has been a considerable improvement since then.
  Last November we told the Minister—not once, not twice, but several times—what would happen. What happened was that British Telecom devoted its resources, not only financial resources, but manpower resources, to trying to fight off the competition of Mercury. That meant that the business community tended to get a better service but the residential customer got a lousy service.
  I am not the only one to say that; everyone who has used British Telecom services understands that is the case. I say that more in sorrow than in anger. Members of my union, who have to face public discontent about a service that they care about, knew that if note was taken of what was said by City analysts about reductions in manpower there would be a problem in the maintenance of public call boxes and the provision of what used to be a public service. The public service ethos of the provision of a telecommunications network would no longer be there if resources, financial and manpower, were diverted to the attempt to fight off competition.
  If the Minister is saying that competition in British Telecom should be adopted throughout Europe, I must counsel grave caution, because it will not work. The residential subscriber—the ordinary punter with a telephone—will get a raw deal.
  Mr. Michael Grylls: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that competition ultimately means choice? We can argue about how efficient British Telecom is at any one time—and that is a perfectly fair argument —but at the end of the day, if the consumer is not satisfied with BT, he can switch to Mercury. That surely is to his advantage.
  Mr. Stott: Mercury is limited to what it can provide, and I did not particularly welcome its being given the opportunity to get into the trunk network. It has not provided that network; it has done nothing over the years to provide investment or infrastructure for it. The resources to develop the trunk network have been provided by the British people: the consumer, the taxpayer, the residential telephone user. But here is Mercury being given an opportunity to do what it wants and to link with the trunk network.
  The hon. Gentleman said that the consumer has the choice. I shall not stand up tonight—I never have, not even during the debates on the Telecommunications Bill—and be an apologist for the old Post Office. Much of what it did was wrong. It was unimaginative. It was wrong to tell the consumer that he could have any telephone so long as it was black. Many improvements were needed, and they took place. There were initiatives which I, the union that supports me and the people I came from originally welcomed.

  1229
  Nevertheless, we seriously question whether it is right to rely too much on competition. In Britain it has resulted in what Which? predicted and what we already knew.
  Mr. Richard Shepherd: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I am sympathetic to some of his criticisms. The whole point is that we never had, and still do not have, competition. We had what was called a duopoly. I hope the hon. Gentleman remembers that the Mercury licence was limited to 3 per cent. of British Telecom's total revenues. The test of an efficient and competitive service was never there. The buying of mass lines and their retailing to the public, which would provide a test of commercial viability for Mercury and British Telecom, and which we could allow even now, would have been in the interests of the consumer, but we lost that opportunity. Indeed, was not the hon. Gentleman opposed to it?
  Mr. Stott: I certainly was. I am always glad to see the hon. Gentleman participate in these debates; he tilts against conventional windmills. I know that he was angry with the Government for the puny way—in his view—in which they dealt with the privatisation of British Telecom. So was I, and so were my hon. Friends.
  I never imagined that European Community economic policy would be preferable to that of the British Government, but that is certainly so in the case of telecommunications. The British Government and British Telecom may eulogise about competition in the network, but the Commission thinks that the aim must be to encourage one network in each country, joined as a European whole. It is prepared to make a concession to Britain, but sees us as the odd man out. Based on my discussions and negotiations with the people concerned, I do not believe the Commission wants anyone else to follow our example. The PTTI has been encouraged on that point during the talks that it has had over the past 12 months. It was pleased with the recent acknowledgement by the Commission that telecoms must provide not only a vital commercial service, but a public service.
  Those of us who were brought up and worked in this industry felt a sense of the public service ethos. The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) shakes his head, but I am proud to have worked in an industry with that ethos. I used to go to work in the morning and return in the evening feeling well satisfied that I had done something for the public good. I must tell the hon. Member for Amber Valley that those of my colleagues who remain in British Telecom do not feel that way any more. The general public has noticed that, too.
  If we are to move to a common market telecommunications system by 1992—it exists in France, Germany and Italy, where there is still a semblance of public service—public service must be one of the fundamental planks in a European policy.
  Mr. Oppenheim: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that unfortunately some of the engineers and old GPO employees were not quite as assiduous as he was in pursuit of their public duties? Much as one may criticise British Telecom—I am the first to criticise it for its shortcomings —it is at least possible to get a telephone installed within a month and to get jack plugs put in fairly quickly.
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  When I put to the hon. Gentleman in Committee the fact that to get a jack plug installed for a fax machine in the early 1980s one had to wait six months, and that some business men had been forced to bribe Telecom engineers to put such jacks in within a month, he threw up his arms in horror and said that that was a terrible accusation. A month later 15 British Telecom engineers were gaoled for accepting bribes.
  Mr. Stott: I will not try to defend members of my union —if they were members—who participated in actions that were clearly illegal. The National Communications Union and the former Post Office Engineering Union would not take that view either. People ought to know their responsibilities. If the people that the hon. Gentleman mentioned did something that they should not have done, it is right that they should have to take the consequences of their actions.
  The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point about the difficulty of getting certain things done. I repeat the point that I made earlier. John Golding and I and my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr. McWilliam) were never apologists for the management structure of the Post Office or British Telecom. There was much wrong with it and there still is. I shall quote one brief example.
  Contrary to common belief, there are many fields in Wigan. There are some near where I live in Wigan and I walk my dog there on most nights. A friend of mine is building a stone farmhouse and I have watched it grow from the footings to the roof. He has designed and built it in such a way that there is no surface wiring—he has gone to a great deal of expense—and I said that it would be a pity if telephone wires were showing. I suggested that he ring British Telecom and ask for the dry wiring to be done before the plasterers came in. He did that, but British Telecom did not want to know and the electrician working at the farmhouse has done it. Even today at certain levels British Telecom management does not have the commitment that such management used to have. That is a problem.
  Earlier I talked about the public service ethos. In my view, and in the view of the PTTI, that means giving a telephone monopoly to the public administrations. The unions within Europe would prefer to see much more retained within the purview of the telecommunications administrations. They believe that that is essential for the massive investment that is required by the European telecommunications industry. In order to be profitable they believe that the industry, the system or network must remain within the purview of the telecommunications administrations.
  Those unions would have preferred the Commission to declare for public ownership, but perhaps that is too much to ask. At least the Commission has remained neutral, and it is certainly not advocating privatisation. That is not surprising, because, if there is to be a massive increase in telecommunications and information, all the countries of Europe will have to join together to compete against the Americans and the Japanese.
  John Golding, the former general secretary of the National Communications Union, to whom I pay full tribute, has worked most of his life in the industry and put a great deal into the NCU. On his suggestion, the Commission is now financing a study into the staffing consequences of the Commission's policies. British Telecom is faced with staff shortages because of daft

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  advice from the City, but it will also face such shortages in future. These will have to be solved if the United Kingdom is to have an efficient service. I hope that the European study of the staffing consequences of the Commission's policies will assist British Telecom in its assessment.
  There are disappointments in the recommendations. We do not believe in reducing business tariffs at the expense of the domestic consumer, and in that context I take the Minister's point. Yet, in the logic of the Community's policy of having prices following costs, those two principles seem irreconcilable.
  In Committee we spoke at length about cross-subsidisation. I know that there is a theoretical and political difference between the Government and the Opposition on cross-subsidisation in telecommunications. If we are to set out on this European experiment, the Commission should examine cross-subsidisation as a means of providing adequate funds for socially desirable services, such as public call offices and emergency services, as well as lower prices for residential users who are financially or otherwise disadvantaged. I urge the Commission to take note of the social impact of the proposed policies and the need for training and retraining personnel. Without those additions, the Commission's recommendations would be incomplete.
  We need a common analysis of the social impact of the conditions for a smooth transition. The Commission must recognise that. In the formulation of telecommunications policies and regulations, account must be taken of the impact on jobs, and measures must be introduced to ensure job security and the creation of new jobs to replace those that disappear. That can be done. There will be job losses because of changes in technology and the very nature of the telecommunications system. However, we can also have job creation. A recent example is to be found in British Telecom. For the first time in about 10 years BT is having to recruit people to meet the needs of residential customers. That may not pay a very good dividend on the share price, but at least BT is satisfying residential consumers by providing a better service to them.
  Training and retraining personnel is an integral part of any comprehensive telecommunications programme. Adequate finance must be provided for those activities as well as for training for trade union representatives to enable them to participate efficiently in local and national discussions on the introduction of new technology, regulatory and structural changes and all the other effects of the huge changes proposed in European telecommunications.
  This is a "take note" debate on a series of documents. I believe that the documents are very important. The Commission has moved a long way towards understanding and accepting some of the proposals put to it by the PTTI, particularly on competition and privatisation. If the Commission understands the problem that the PTTI has underlined in its document and if we get it right, the signs are that with this new and exciting technology Europe could be in a strong position to challenge the Americans and the Japanese, to provide a universal service to all consumers and to have as its priority a fundamental belief in the public service ethos. If we do that, we shall not have wasted our time this evening.
  10.39 pm
  Mr. Kenneth Warren: I declare an interest as the Chairman of the Select Committee on Trade and Industry, which is at present examining the subject of information technology. My remarks tonight will be based on my personal opinion alone.
  First, I warmly endorse the documents of which the Minister proposes we should take note. The liberalisation and privatisation procedures that have been promoted through the House have permitted the telecommunications explosion that we are fortunately now experiencing in this country. There can be no clearer evidence of that than the way in which London has been able to take up the open opportunity of Europe to become the centre of European financial affairs, in line with New York and Tokyo on the world scale. Without that liberalisation of communications and the parallel legislation on Big Bang from the House, London could not have taken that premier position in the European Community.
  I welcome the document put forward by Commissioner Narjes, whom I had the pleasure of meeting recently. I advise my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State that it would be worth considering the time that it has taken us to get that document from Commissioner Narjes on to the Floor of the House. It has taken four months and a few days. I draw attention to that fact because the document itself, entitled "Towards a competitive Community-wide telecommunications market in 1992", gives the impression, on first reading, that there are four years within which the implementation can take place. However, as was pointed out in the 20th report of the Select Committee on European Legislation, and as is stated on page 17 of Commissioner Narjes' statement, things start buzzing on 31 December 1989—next year. In other words, we have taken four months to get on to the Floor of the House something that is only four months away.
  I hope that on future occasions it will be possible for us not to lose that amount of time, because we have lost time here on something for which industry must be revved up. Industry must understand that the House, having taken note of the document, expects industry to respond to the opportunities that are there. I hope that, following those four lost months, we can now accelerate the process and that the Government will give the widest possible publicity to the opportunity. The House often talks about the problems presented by European legislation, but here is an opportunity for job creation.
  I have every sympathy for the hon. Member for Coventry, South-West—
  Mr. Butcher: I think that my hon. Friend means the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist).
  Mr. Warren: Yes, I meant the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist). I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me, because I always have sympathy with him for having to promote such debates in the House.
  I have every sympathy for the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East in the problems faced by his constituents, but I ask him to reflect on the fact that the job opportunities that his constituents have lost resulted, not from the liberalisation process that was passed through the House, but because of the long historic cosy relationship, which became self-destructive, between the British telecommunications industry in the Post Office, as it then was, and certain companies in this country—and more's

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  the pity that that happened. However, that is the reality and I want British industry to respond to it because if there had been sufficient appreciation of what was to happen in industry there would have been no need for such a situation to arise. I am sure that the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East will address himself to that point when he has the opportunity to speak. I want to detain the House for only a few minutes.
  I hope that industry will read what is said in the House tonight and see this as an opportunity and not as a problem. The newspapers of this country often publish all the bad news about the European Community, rather than see the opportunities that arise from this kind of legislation.
  I turn now to three of my concerns about this document and the rival communications on the EEC internal market. The first is the question of equipment and the need of British companies to be able to respond to what is there. I notice that the 20th report from the Select Committee on European Legislation states that the
  "Commission's proposed Directive … would have the effect of opening the market for telecommunications terminal equipment in other Member States of the Community as it is already open in the United Kingdom."
  I trust that that will be a two-way street and that British manufacturers will charge into Europe.
  Two other areas particularly concern me. The first is that the Commission must go further than is intended in the document and endorse the reality of communications, because we are talking not only about equipment, but about networks. Networks must be trans-frontier and European Community networks not limited to within member states. Satellite communications, whether on a receiver basis or a transmit and receive basis, must be across member states to the whole Community, not indigenous national systems.
  Whereas we keep talking about European standards, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will seek to promote world standards that are acceptable across export markets. The biggest market opportunities for British equipment manufacturers lie in world markets rather than in EEC markets. I hope that he will give our compliments to the commissioner and say, "Let there be world standards."
  Much as I enjoyed the salutary quotation by my hon. Friend the Minister of a French Minister, whom I trust has been returned at a recent election—it would be difficult if he had not—I am reminded of the attitude of my dear wife, who was a logical mathematician from Cambridge. If one asked her "Will we get these chances which the Europeans say are presented?", she would say, "If that is so, show me". That is what we should say from the House tonight. I endorse what is proposed.
  10.45 pm
  Mr. Dave Nellist: Tonight's debate follows the issue of the European Green Paper last summer on the telecommunications industry. Those who support the Common Market hope to create a homogenous European market place in electronics and telecommunications. The failure to do so to date or, in the words of the document, the "slow pace" of that progress is said to have led to the weaknesses of Europe's
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  telecommunications industry, particularly compared with its American and Japanese rivals, with their economies of scale.
  This document is about the future deregulation and liberalisation of the telecommunications market. The Minister is one of the most enthusiastic champions of that, but he is strangely mute about the effects of deregulation and liberalisation, particularly when they strike his constituents. Eight weeks ago he was up in arms about 800 job losses at GPT in Coventry and promised all sorts of initiatives in the Coventry Evening Telegraph, but we have had seven weeks of silence.
  Mr. Butcher: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way so early in his speech. It is not my intention to turn this into a constituency debate. If his memory is accurate, he will recall that when GPT made its announcement I said that I wanted to meet representatives, and indeed I did. At that meeting senior executives gave me the clear impression that they have high ambitions for the new company and are bringing new forms of work to Coventry.
  Mr. Nellist: The Minister is right about the new forms of work. My figure of 800 redundancies is net—after the introduction of new work. It gives no satisfaction to the workers at Spon street, Raglan street, Ford street and Stoke that, having met those executives seven weeks ago, the Minister has still to meet the working people's representatives—the trade unions in GPT factories—and pass on those rosy predictions which he seems to have gained from the management.
  The Minister is a prime exponent of the supposed benefits of deregulation. On 23 October he made a speech in Geneva as part of United Kingdom Day at Telecom 87, which is described in his press release as
  "the world's premier international telecommunications exhibition and conference held every four years."
  He said:
  "In the field of telecommunications, Britain has zoomed past virtually all the other European countries. We have two digital trunk networks, expanding to local level; two optical fibre systems; two national cellular radio operators",
  and so the list goes on. Two of everything is probably wasteful duplication. I will believe it when somebody proposes that we should have two Prime Ministers so that we can have proper competition there as well.
  The Minister continued:
  "We have liberalised our regime and ended the former BT monopoly in apparatus supply. We have ensured interconnection for our two competing networks—BT's and Mercury's —…resulting in falling prices, rising quality and more innovative products and services than ever before."
  The key words are rising quality and falling prices. That was said in October 1987.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) said, some four weeks later a survey was being done by Which? of some 600 subscribers to the British Telecom network. It came up with a different picture. In 1983, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry said on Second Reading of the Telecommunications Bill:
  "We offer the millions of BT customers a newly enshrined set of rights and the benefits of competition and new technology."—[Official Report, 18 July 1983; Vol. 46, c. 38.]
  The Which?survey published this month said:
  "Our research shows that so far the company has failed to achieve an overall improvement in its service after privatisation.…BT's record since privatisation has been a big disappointment".

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  My hon. Friend has said that there has been some improvement since November. I will accept that because he has said it, but I am trying to compare like with like. The Minister said in Geneva that everything was perfect. The survey of exactly the same period showed something different.
  Which? found that one in 36 calls did not get through, so there had been no improvement since 1983, that noisy and faint lines, making conversation difficult, were worse since 1983, that the average waiting time for a new line had improved since 1983 but that too many were still waiting a long time for connection, and that 40 per cent. of those surveyed said their phones had been out of order at least once in the previous 18 months; I can confirm that from personal experience. That was also up on 1983.
  The survey also found that the state of repair of BT's call boxes was among the worst in Europe, and that the proportion of customers rating the overall service as efficient had dropped from eight out of 10 in 1983 to seven out of 10 in 1987. Although itemised bills were the most requested improvement, progress in introducing them more widely had been at a snail's pace. One quarter of people querying their bill had difficulty in getting BT to reply; that was nearly double the proportion who had trouble in getting BT to respond in 1983.
  The Consumers Association criticism came less than a month after the Minister was praising competition and also after Oftel announced that the 24,186 complaints received in 1987 were almost double the 13,660 received in 1986. Over one third were about disputed bills.
  In March of this year, the Telecommunications Managers Association, representing 30 per cent. of BT's business income, said:
  "There is little evidence of any improvement since our surveys of 1985 and 1986 and indeed, in some areas, a marked deterioration has occurred."
  Yet after all that, on 9 June, BT announced profits of £2·29 billion, up 11 per cent. on last year, clearly showing that the profits and the dividends for shareholders were more important than the improvement of services for business or domestic consumers.
  Incidentally, the city stockbroker firm, Wood Mackenzie, has estimated that, if BT is to keep its profit at the same level for the next four years, it will have to shed 70,000 jobs. I do not think that the comments from business sources, the stockbrokers or the Consumers Association bear out the remarks of the Minister in October about the "wonderful" benefits of deregulation and liberalisation.
  Mr. Oppenheim: I do not think anyone could objectively claim that British Telecom's service is worse, or not significantly better, than it was in the 1970s, but to the extent that it is still unsatisfactory, which I think most hon. Members would accept, is that not partly due to the under-investment in the 1960s and the 1970s, which in turn was partly due to the cosy, almost incestuous, relationship which British Telecom had with its main suppliers, Plessey and GEC, who are the component parts of GPT, and indeed with STC, which led to overpriced equipment, late equipment, and equipment that was unexportable?
  Does the hon. Member agree that it takes many years to make up for lack of investment? Against a background of many years of under-investment, British Telecom was faced with a massive increase in demand for lines, obviously in areas where the service was deteriorating.
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  Now it is in the private sector, British Telecom is investing far more than in the bad old days when the GPO was in the public sector.
  Mr. Nellist: I confess that I lost track of the hon. Member's question because of its length. However, I agree with him on one point. As a young trade unionist, I opposed the cartel of Plessey, STC and GEC which existed in the 1960s and 1970s in that cosy relationship with the Post Office, and called on my colleagues in the then Labour Government to end it by taking the three companies into public ownership, so that there could be some open planning of the producer systems as well as the user systems.
  Today there is no excuse for lack of money for investment. If British Telecom can report profits of £2·3 billion, there is certainly scope for it to invest that money in ending standing charges for pensioners and those on low incomes, and providing a better service for the public services, hospitals and other domestic and business consumers.
  We have to decide whether deregulation and liberalisation will produce the benefits that the Minister and Lord Young pray for. If they do, will they be for a few advanced capitalist countries in the centre of the Common Market, as opposed to what are called peripheral countries? What attitude do we take to the wild claims that have been made in the press and elsewhere about the supposed benefits to Britain of taking such a step?
  On 8 April, The Times, under the headline, "Britain set for £55 bn communications harvest", stated:
  "Britain is poised to capture the lion's share of Europe's £55 billion a year telecommunications industry if plans to create a European internal market by 1992 go ahead as scheduled, according to leading industry sources."
  Where is the evidence for that? In the 1960s, Britain's share in the world's trade in telecommunications manufactured goods was 20 per cent. It is now under 5 per cent. The balance of trade between the Common Market countries and Britain has gone from bad to worse in recent years. The British experience of liberalisation has given us L. M. Ericsson and system Y, but we have yet to see any major exports of system X from GEC or Plessey.
  In 1984, British exports of telecommunications hardware to the European Community amounted to £156 million. In 1987, four years later, the latest available data show that that figure had climbed to £172 million. Imports from the same source in the same period had gone up from £147 million to £194 million, meaning that the United Kingdom's balance of trade with the Common Market in telecommunications hardware had changed from an £8·5 million positive balance in 1984 to a £21·2 million deficit in 1987. Those figures, rather than illustrating the benefits that will accrue from entering the Nirvana of an expanded, deregulated and liberated market, sound warning bells as to what will happen to the hardware manufacturing industry in Britain if the plan goes ahead.
  Rather than gearing up for the promises of expanded sales and production that the Minister has said are available to British firms, seven weeks ago, GPT, which was formed earlier this year from GEC and Plessey and is the prime manufacturer of telecommunications equipment in Britain, announced 1,800 redundancies. GPT is contracting its work force. Of the 1,800 redundancies, 800 are in my constituency in Coventry, South-East, '700 arise

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  from the complete closure of the Kirkcaldy factory in Scotland and the rest affect Liverpool, Beeston and Aycliffe.
  One of the central arguments of workers in Coventry, many of whom have given their lives to raising GEC's profits to enable Arnold We instock, its chairman, to buy his legendary £500,000-a-time racehorses, is that it is clear that the redundancies in GPT are being done on the cheap. All but a handful of the 1,800 redundancies are at former GEC plants. The old Plessey firm had a redundancy agreement four times better than GEC. Whereas GEC offered one week's pay per year of service, Plessey offered four weeks. The overwhelming majority of redundancies have been at GEC plants.
  As one Transport and General Workers Union convener at Coventry said:
  "the cuts are being made at the cheapest point".
  That is in sharp contrast to yesterday's news in the Evening Standard that Sir John Clark, the chairman of Plessey, had awarded himself a £167,000 a year pay rise. You may have noticed, Madam Deputy Speaker, that 179 Labour Members have signed early-day motion 1135, which I have tabled. It supports the union's campaign of opposition to plant closures and redundancies. If this proposal becomes a reality by 1992, those redundancies will be only the beginning of job cuts in hardware manufacturing in Britain.
  Despite the merger, GPT is a small fish in a big pond. It is unable to compete, especially on research and development, with firms such as Siemens in Europe or AT and T and NTT in America and Japan respectively. In my view, GPT is planning for a short-term future and for maximising its profits before 1992, when it will be exposed to the chiller winds of competition which this liberalisation will bring. GEC, the parent company, makes more profit from its cash assets of £1·5 million in its bank than it does from investing in research and development and jobs, and those profits will be enhanced by the increase in interest rates which was announced today. The future for jobs in GPT is grim for the next couple of years, as stockbrokers who have analysed it say. They predict the same number of redundancies in the next couple of years. In the longer term, the redivision of the world market in telecommunications will probably mean further mergers and rationalisations.
  We have already witnessed the acquisition of ITT's European telecommunications equipment interests by Alcatel of France, the takeover of CGCT of France by Ericsson, and the merger of GEC and Plessey in the United Kingdom. During the next four or five years, if, as many columnists predict, there is a worldwide recession in the next year, the pressure will be on to make major economies of scale, so there will be further mergers and rationalisations, and job cuts will be inevitable.
  My preference is not for deregulation but simply for renationalisation of BT. As I said in reply to the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim), it should not stop at BT. It should include GPT, STC and Thorn-Ericsson so that some rational planning can be brought into the production and use of telecommunications equipment. My preference for control would not be for the MacGregors, the Graham Days or the Edwardeses
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  of the past, but for working people inside and outside those industries having the majority of seats on a board of control.
  It is clear that, whereas BT used to support the research and development of manufacturing companies, which gave some stability, but was involved in what was called "the ring"—that cosy cartel relationship with GEC, Plessey and STC—deregulation will bring about wholesale competition. If BT begins to go for the cheapest tenders, it is inevitable that those who tender will begin to cut longer-term plans such as those for research and development—which often takes five or seven years before it shows any profits because of lead times—and for training and retraining. In the case of GPT, the unions have demanded retraining for those workers threatened with redundancy.
  Over the past 12 months, BT has been looking for a 20 per cent. reduction in its engineering staff. Research and development and engineering staff are likely to be cut further as BT seeks to encourage the private manufacturers to do the installation and servicing of the systems it produces. Deregulation and liberalisation is losing jobs, both in the service and manufacturing industries. After 1992, our experiences in Britain will be translated throughout Europe.
  For me, for the past 15 years, the Common Market has been simply a chimera. We have had over 15 years of promises of benefits and of more jobs, yet the deficit in manufacturing trade with Common Market countries is now £10·2 billion, according to an answer given by a Treasury Minister to my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) in column 277 of Hansard of 16 June. It has been said that we pay the best part of £2 million a day for membership of the Common Market club, yet we have the lowest pensions and supplementary benefits of almost any member state, and we certainly have the lowest unemployment benefit, as a percentage of former earnings, of any member state.
  I well remember, during the 1975 referendum campaign, in which I participated in support of a vote against continued membership of the Common Market, huge posters in Coventry, with Lord Jenkins' face some 10 or 12 ft across on them and the headline "Jobs for the Boys". He might have done all right—
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. The hon. Gentleman is not relating his remarks to the "take note" motion on the Order Paper, and I should be obliged if he would now do so.
  Mr. Nellist: It is not for me to differ, but we are being asked tonight to take note of a document to enhance the development of the Common Market—
  Madam Deputy Speaker: To deal with telecommunications.
  Mr. Nellist: —particularly in telecommunications. The Minister's promise at the Dispatch Box was that that would provide a range of benefits for working people in this country, in which he included jobs. I am trying to show that that has never been true, and I do not believe that it is true this evening. In 1975, promises were made to my constituents in Coventry that, if we remained in the Common Market and looked to a future of deregulation and harmonisation, including the telecommunications market, according to Lord Jenkins there would be jobs for

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  the boys. In the preparations that GPT is making for that harmonisation programme in 1992, my constituents heard seven weeks ago the announcement of 800 redundancies. I believe that it is a perfectly legitimate point to make in the House.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is a perfectly legitimate point to make, but it is not legitimate to go back 10 years. The hon. Gentleman should relate that to what is happening at present.
  Mr. Nellist: We entered the Common Market 16 years ago. Many of the documents that we are discussing tonight had their genesis in the 1970s, particularly those such as the Green Papers which refer to the harmonisation in industrial sectors that is due to take effect over the next 18 or 36 months, or by 1992. I contend that it is perfectly legitimate to talk about the history because, as Aneurin Bevan—the hero of both of us, Madam Deputy Speaker —once said, why should we look in the crystal ball when we can read the book? The book of the history of the Common Market has never given the citizens of Coventry any benefits from its membership, contrary to those offers that Lord Jenkins made during the referendum in 1975.
  People argue that deregulation and harmonisation of the telecommunications market and the creation of a supranational market in telecommunications within Europe will benefit consumers or those who provide either the equipment or the service in Britain, but it will not provide the best service to working people, particularly because as capitalism in Britain, Europe and worldwide moves into the next downward cycle of its development, there will be even more pressure on nation states to protect their home markets and resist cross-border fertilisation, which has been put forward as one of the main benefits of the measures in this document. We have heard of American steel workers complaining about British Steel exports to America. American car workers have smashed Japanese cars, Italian and French farmers have argued about cross-border travel of agricultural products, and we shall see the same in the next three or four years in telecommunications, just as British workers complained when Ericsson Information Systems Ltd. got the contract for systemwide equipment from BT three or four years ago.
  There will not be a united, unified common market in telecommunications or in any other industry. Those who describe the measures in this document as leading to that are not giving the British people the best advice they can get. If the document is noted by the House and adopted by the Common Market, employers and Governments will come together on a 12-country basis to harmonise and deregulate telecommunications, and it is for trade unions to do the same. They must harmonise their organisations across national boundaries and set up Euro shop stewards committees to protect the jobs and living standards of their members, just as those who are in favour of this deregulation—the gaffers and the employers in Europe —want to protect the profits of their shareholders.
  11.11 pm
  Mr. William Cash: The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) has given a whole new meaning to the phrase "sending people to Coventry", and it is not inducing silence.
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  I have risen to speak because I am a member of the Select Committee on European Legislation, and I shall refer specifically to the powers on which my hon. Friend the Minister said he would be interested to hear comments by hon. Members. We are dealing with important prospective legislation on a matter that will have a dramatic and beneficial effect on the prospects for our telecommunications industry. With the liberalisation of terminal equipment in the value added services markets, and the separation of the regulatory and operational functions of posts, telegraphs and telecommunications administrations, the Commission proposes that the form of procedure used will effectively bypass other institutions within the Community, let alone the House. That is a serious matter.
  By coincidence, I have written an article about this that will be appearing in The Times tomorrow. Those of us who are genuinely enthusiastic about the prospects of the EC cannot view with equanimity the use of such powers, which are bound to lead to a sense of remoteness and Byzantine complexity bypassing the elected representatives and against the express wishes of member states, as my hon. Friend could tell us, because the Government made representations to the Commission that the use of article 90(3) should not be allowed.
  The Commission is persisting in this view, for reasons that have not been explained to the Select Committee, nor —I do not criticise my hon. Friend for this—by the Minister tonight. Also, if, as is proposed by the Government and other member states, the Commission proceeds by another procedure, it would be by the use of article 100A.
  It is late at night and we are discussing a matter which is vital to the future of the telecommunications industry and to industry as a whole. We are in the telecommunications age. Some would argue that the future for industry and commerce generally will be increasingly affected by telecommunications, information technology and everything that goes with those developments. At 11.15 pm, in a virtually empty Chamber, we are discussing a critical issue and looking into the black hole, as it were, in considering whether the proposed liberalisation measures should pass through the Commission without any further reference—I refer to the explanatory memorandum from the Department of Trade and Industry—to the Council of Ministers itself
  "or to consideration by the European Parliament or the Economic and Social Committee, but must be implemented by any Member States to which they are addressed "
  There would be no further reference to the House, and that is inconceivable. In my judgment, no right-minded person should allow this procedure to continue without registering the strongest possible protest.
  The problem does not end when article 100A is invoked. The Select Committee on European Legislation, in public session, is cross-examining the Treasury Solicitor in an attempt to elicit information on the misuse of article 100A, which, in simple langage, relates to the harmonisation programme for the whole of the internal market and the Single European Act.
  Grave problems have been arising, and we have had evidence of the misuse of article 100A. I do not want to exaggerate, but increasingly legislation is being imposed upon the House and we are obliged to implement it under the European Communities Act 1972. I am prepared to accept that Act, because I am not an anti-European in the

  1241
  sense in which that term is used by many, but I ask whether it is right that the elected representatives of Britain should be bypassed on matters of direct concern to the industry, to commerce and to the prosperity of their constituents. That must be a matter of concern to us. I am saying not that it has no relevance to the European Parliament but it has a great deal of relevance to us. The issue that is before us will bypass the whole shooting match if what is proposed by the Commission goes ahead.
  Under article 100A the majority procedure is used, and I shall not make a song and dance about the fact that that procedure has been introduced. I made my point when the Single European Act was passing through the House, in the course of which I said that there would be some difficulties. On the other hand, I can see some advantages in the majority procedure.
  There is something called Russian roulette. I suggest that we are moving into a new world in which there is something called European roulette, in which there are 12-chamber guns. As we found in our deliberations this afternoon in the Select Committee on European Legislation, it is becoming increasingly difficult to determine how matters will turn out. With the best will in the world, we must get our scrutiny procedures right. It has been said that we have lost four months and that the scrutiny procedure is not working properly. I wish merely to say that we are moving into accelerated procedures under article 100A. Indeed, we are moving into a new world in which things will move faster than we would like. The Select Committee on European Legislation has received evidence that on occasions—these are somewhat more frequent than in the past—when it recommends that certain matters should be debated, which means that it applies a scrutiny reserve, an explanatory memorandum is issued by the Department which, in effect, states, "We are sorry, but things are moving too fast. We shall have to make the decision to adopt the proposal before the debate has taken place."
  A number of questions seriously affect rulings and agreements as between the Select Committee on European Legislation and the formal channels in this House, which have recently been the subject of correspondence with the Leader of the House. I ask, in no spirit of criticism, that when important matters such as this pass through the House and through the European Community—to which I do not object in principle, because I am not anti-European—we should be fully involved in key decisions affecting our constituents.
  The key word there is "involved", because we cannot leave such matters to the European Parliament alone. It is not designed for, or capable of, properly scrutinising such matters either now or in the indefinite future. The House concerns itself with scrutinising Bills line by line, yet it is prepared to pass legislation at this time of night without so much as a glance at the nuts and bolts of its content. We must consider this matter properly, not just for the sake of tradition but also to safeguard the role of the House. In a nutshell, we must represent our constituents effectively and efficiently to the best of our ability.
  11.21 pm
  Mr. Richard Shepherd: My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) concentrated his remarks on an issue that is dear to the heart of the House in relation to the proposal that is before it. I did not intend to speak, but I want to respond to a number of the issues raised by the hon. Members for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) and for Wigan (Mr. Stott).
  Mention was made of British Telecom's role in Europe. My instinct is to acknowledge the extraordinary role played by Mr. John Golding in ensuring British Telecom's monopoly in the contemporary scene. I do not know a man who has fought more strongly, bravely and courageously for his union in defending—almost in partnership with Sir George Jefferson, whom I consider to be the eminence grise in that lamentable situation—the interests of his members as he perceived them, though I believe wrongly. "Hallelujah!" they should be singing, to the man who struggled and fought for British Telecom's lamentable—I would argue—monopoly. He argued on behalf of his members in a manner which I would acknowledge with statues and monuments, but that must be a judgment for others.
  The House is united in the belief that the provision of a service to consumers is what should guide our interest in telecommunications. It is there that I take issue with some of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East. I ask him to reflect, on behalf of his constituents, on the situation if there were only one shoe shop, one shirtmaker and one food shop in Coventry. One would then be hijacked in terms of prices and the provision of service. If those suppliers decided to provide a service for only four hours daily, and at a price that was not affordable, people would have to go without.
  The essence of the underlying argument is that one achieves the best provision of service by competition. The regret and anxiety in the Government's arguments this evening are that we constructed a system that was not designed to do that, but which institutionalised much of what had gone before, ensuring that the measured pace by which we arrived at its provision would place us ill in the worldwide race to provide a service.
  I shall contrast that with a situation with which I know the hon. Member for Wigan will be very familiar concerning Northern Telecom. It came from nowhere. Its market was nationally limited—the Canadian market—and yet, despite the inhibitions of a small market place, it has grown into an undoubted world leader. The test of being vital and viable in a competitive market has taken it from nothing to something grand. The tragedy of British Telecom is that it started as something grand and is going somewhere that is not so grand. It is not an example that we can hold out to the world.
  The provision of competitive tendering in equipment was essential. It was something about which the Government were anxious. The maintenance and continuity of the service were all arguments that we rehearsed in Committee. At the end of the day the House is about the provision of service. Opposition Members will get nowhere until they believe that unless the service is delivered to the consumer it cannot be argued that to maintain the jobs of three people today is the end of the matter. It is delivering the service to the consumer that leads to the creation of the jobs that the hon. Member for

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  Coventry, South-East desperately and genuinely wants for his constituents. That is the route by which we believe that that can best be tackled.
  I have tried to talk about technological gains. Many things inhibit the Government's objectives. We still have great opportunities ahead of us. The price restraint on BT comes to an end next year, as my hon. Friend the Minister will no doubt confirm. I genuinely do not believe that a monopoly that runs for 25 years is in our interests. We can still break up BT and that will become increasingly imperative in order to serve markets and compete in Europe and so take advantage of any directive that comes from there. If, as we look forward to the year 2000, we want to hold markets, create more jobs and take over the opportunities that Northern Telecom in a curious way pioneered for us all in order to beat the Americans or the Japanese, we must take away those restraints. My hon. Friend the Minister will well recall that in Committee we did not talk about competition. Throughout we referred to a duopoly. That is not consonant with competition.
  11.26 pm
  Mr. Butcher: To a certain extent, the debate has been a reunion of those who debated the competition policy issues in the Telecommunications Bill. I recall the eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd) many years ago. He has shown tonight that his views are unshakeable and that his convictions on competition policy, as it applies to the telecommunications market, are as clear as ever.
  May I share with him and the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) their view of the doughtiness of Mr. John Golding? I cannot agree with my hon. Friend's conclusions that the Golding-Jefferson axis has triumphed. I have tried to demonstrate tonight, and shall continue to do so in future, that competition across the piece is alive and kicking in the telecommunications services in the United Kingdom.
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  My hon. Friend is worried about whether the domestic user has a real choice. When there is competitiveness between the two service providers, I am sure he will agree that the final piece of the jigsaw will be in place.
  I hope that my hon. Friend will be encouraged by the fact that, after making a massive investment, Mercury is now in a position to start advertising for customers from domestic subscribers outside the Greater London area. That surely is confirmation that it is serious about competing with BT in the last area in which BT has enjoyed a quasi-monopoly. Everywhere else, full-blown competition is raging.
  Many points have been raised tonight, and there will not be enough time to respond to all of them. I was asked in a couple of contributions what objective the United Kingdom was seeking to achieve. Let me return to the words of the French Minister when he identified the Japanese propensity, indeed choice, to invest in the United Kingdom—often in London—because of the efficacy of our telecommunications services.
  One of our objectives is to ensure that London becomes one of the three major information exchanges in the world. It is already one of the three major financial exchanges, and I believe that Tokyo, New York and London will be the three major information exchange centres. I hope the House will remember that there are now more than 3,000 value added data service and network service operators in London. Only four years ago, we did not have any that we could count.
  It being half-past Eleven o'clock, MADAM DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted Business).
  Question agreed to.
  Resolved,
  That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 4634/88 on the development of the common market for telecommunications services and equipment., and supports the Government's intention to work for the early liberalisation of telecommunications markets in the European Community to the benefit of network operators, service providers, equipment manufacturers and users.

  Cross-Bradford Rail Link
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Boscawen.]
  11.30 pm
  Mr. Bob Cryer: I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak about a section of the city in which I was born and bred, and for which, as a consequence, I have a great affection. I speak tonight not simply as a constituency representative, but as someone who has always wanted to see railways and the city develop—for railways and transport facilities generally are an important part of a city.
  Bradford's railway circumstances are singularly unfortunate because of a series of historical quirks. Those historical quirks have meant a steady decline in Bradford's position as a city with railway facilities. The ASLEF branch closed recently because it is no longer a signing-on point. Leeds has become the centre. There are no locomotive depots and no freight yards, and there are inadequate freight facilities in the interchange station, which is the subject of continuing complaint by the postmaster general in Bradford. Parcels are taken from a major post office facility in the centre of Bradford as far a field as Preston to join the railway network. That cannot be reasonable or right.
  As a result of those historical quirks, we have two railway stations, both termini: the Interchange, which is modern, bleak and inadequate, approximately seven miles from Leeds, and Forster square, approximately three miles from Shipley—which can be seen to have an air of faded grandeur, when it is possible to burrow behind the buildings and find out where it is. Shipley is the junction for the Leeds-Skipton railway from which there is access to Lancaster, Morecambe, and, further north, Settle and Carlisle.
  The history of railway development in Bradford is essentially one of missed opportunity. If I give the Minister a brief resumé—provided that he has not already got one —it will demonstrate that the House has already in past years given approval for various sorts of railway link to join the two stations, and therefore to provide a regeneration of railway facilities, as I hope will still be possible.
  Let me quote from a small booklet by Alan Whitaker, "Railways of Bradford." He pointed out:
  "A change of mind by Leeds and Bradford Railway Company chairman George Hudson"—
  not the most eminent railway entrepreneur—
  "wrecked Bradford's first chance of a through line as early as 1846 when, after initially supporting a plan to link the Manchester and Leeds and Leeds and Bradford lines to put Bradford on a through route, he decided against it and the chance was lost.
  …Yet another opportunity arose in the early 1880s when reconstruction of Bradford Exchange station was in an advanced state of planning. A leading local architect was hired by a group of prominent Bradford businessmen to prepare plans for a central station on a through line and the cost was put at £300,000. But, after conferring on the scheme, the three railway companies, which already had local interests … sent a sharp rebuff to the promoters saying that the project was unrealistic".
  One of those railways—the Midland—13 years later drew up its own proposals for a Bradford through line, at an estimated cost of £2·1 million; and the scheme was authorised by the Midland Railway (West Riding Lines) Act 1898. The House was so keen to endorse Bradford's
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  view that it gave its consent for the extension of time to promote the scheme to build the railway in 1901, 1904 and 1907. But the local authority rightly suspected that the Midland railway was dragging its feet, and so eventually produced yet another scheme. At that stage, the local authority was so keen to promote the idea that the Bradford corporation offered to deduct £8,000 a year from the Midland railway's rates bill for a period of 20 years.
  The Bradford Through Lines Act received the Royal Assent on 25 July 1911. But before anything could be done, the first world war intervened in 1914, and in the post-war recession the scheme was again put to one side and forgotten.
  In the 1950s, a circular route that would involve joining the stations was considered but thought too ambitious, and so not pursued.
  What is the current position? The InterCity service is pathetic. Bradford is a city of almost 500,000 people. It is a major provincial city, and it deserves better. There is one through service each way each day. British Rail is not prepared to electrify the Leeds-Bradford branch, and is talking of diverting all InterCity trains to Forster square and developing Shipley as a station with a parking facility. That would mean a major development miles from the city centre, taking the heart out of the railway centre in Bradford.
  Bradford local authority considered a cross-Bradford rail link during 1986, in conjunction with a proposed new court house site by the Property Services Agency. The alignment under consideration was a route extending from the interchange, under Bridge street, crossing land formerly occupied by the Exchange station, returning parallel to Vicar lane and swinging so as to cross the subway well at the junction of Hall Ings and Petergate. It would then go along Petergate by a viaduct, whose columns could be accommodated within the central reservation of Petergate. The line would then swing across the former Forster square goods yard to join the track reaching Forster Square station, thus providing a through route for the first time in the city's history.
  Written representations were made to the PSA in February 1987, and a response was received in March of that year from the court house project manager, a Mr. D. Jones. The local authority sent me a letter, dated 6 October, outlining Mr. Jones' objections. He apparently objected to having a railway on the land on which the court house was to be built—the former Exchange station site—on the grounds of security. That is curious. Did he think that court house prisoners were going to leap from their confines on to the roofs of passing trains to make a dramatic escape? He did not like the idea of a railway so close to the court house.
  In a parliamentary answer on 26 May the Minister said that the idea would create
  "unacceptable levels of noise and vibration, …unsurmountable security problems, and would be visually intrusive."—[Official Report, 26 May 1988; Vol. 134, c. 307.]
  I do not believe that the Property Services Agency is so incompetent that it cannot design a secure building that is reasonably insulated against noise. Railways are considerably less noisy than either a busy city centre road or a trunk road. There are ways of insulating railways. For example, rubber pads can be used on the chairs holding the rail to the sleeper. Buildings can also be insulated effectively. I do not therefore support the noise argument.

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  Railways are much less visually intrusive than, say, multistorey car parks which have grown with the increase in car ownership like some sort of cancer across the face of our cityscapes. I cannot think of any multistorey car parks that are exciting and appreciated by architects and citizens everywhere. The car scene is visually much less attractive than railways. In any case, the railway of the cross-Bradford link would be on only a slight gradient, so the argument about engines or diesel motive units working hard and making a great deal of noise would not apply.
  The local authority and the passenger transport authority want the option of a sufficient strip of land across the court house site—round the back of it as it were —so that at some future date there will be the possibility of a cross-Bradford rail link. A man in Whitehall should not have the right to veto the local authority or the local passenger transport authority. They represent people who live and work in Bradford and who can see for themselves that a rail link would not be particularly noisy or intrusive. Certainly it would not be aesthetically jarring to the people of Bradford who would benefit greatly from such a link.
  The passenger transport authority is commissioning an independent review and a technical assessment of the potential for a cross-Bradford rail link in the specification for a study to be commissioned jointly by Bradford local authority, British Rail and the passenger transport authority. That is the general position of the cross-Bradford rail link.
  The Property Services Agency made it clear that if the Bradford local authority did not accede to the view of, presumably, Mr. Jones, the agency would think again about whether a court house should be built on the site. Then the question of the time to build the court house arose. The local authority, anxious to secure jobs, yielded to what some people might see as a crude form of blackmail, but I am sure that that was not intended by the Property Services Agency. However, that might be seen as the implication.
  There would be enormous transport improvements if the option that I have mentioned was available to be taken up at some future date. There could be through trains from Leeds to Bradford, from Bradford to Shipley, to Skipton, Lancaster or Carlisle, or trains could run from Leeds to Bradford and then round to Leeds and on in a southerly direction to London. They could run from Leeds to Shipley and Bradford and through to Halifax and Manchester. In a note to me the passenger transport authority said:
  "The construction of a cross-Bradford rail link would allow routing of train services from Leeds to Lancaster/Carlisle and from Leeds to Manchester/Blackpool via Bradford without reversal. One possible service pattern (fig. 5)"—
  which the authority gives in a diagrammatic form—
  "would result in improved Leeds-Bradford frequencies and links between Airedale and Calderdale without necessarily increasing train operational costs."
  That means that there would be an improved train frequency without additional costs in a way that has never been possible before.
  The Minister should not close his mind to the option. He should say that he recognises the importance to the passenger transport authority and to the local authority of this potential development. He should consider whether further discussions can result in an accommodation for a rail alignment.
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  It is Government policy to regenerate inner cities, and the link would certainly help to regenerate the heart of the city of Bradford. It would help to provide Bradford with a railway service such as it has never been able to achieve because of the wretched, if small, division between the two stations, which, as I have explained to the Minister, has been under discussion off and on for more than 140 years. If the court house project goes ahead willy-nilly, the option will be cut off for 100 years. It will not be available at any rate for the period for which a modern court house can be expected to last, which I suppose may be less than 100 years. Once the building is constructed and in operation, the option will not be open to us.
  The option of the cross-Bradford rail link would place Bradford at a railway crossroads. It would stimulate rail traffic and provide a greatly improved railway service for the people of Bradford. It would not be intrusive, and the short viaduct across Petergate would blend in well with the surroundings and provide a dramatic and unusual journey through the city. Most of all, the link would stimulate rail traffic. Instead of two stations withering away at the end of two short branch lines, Bradford would once again have a railway service to match its status as one of the most important cities in Yorkshire.
  I hope that the Minister will accede to my requests and tell the Property Services Agency to reconsider the matter to see whether the rail link option—which is a very important option to the city and is supported by the passenger transport authority and the local authority—can at least be retained for further examination.
  11.46 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Christopher Chope): We have been entertained to a fascinating history of the development of the railway in Bradford and its environs.
  It is clear from the remarks of the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) that there is much misunderstanding over the role of the Property Services Agency in this matter. I am grateful for this opportunity to set out the respective responsibilities of the Lord Chancellor's Department and the city of Bradford. After the hon. Gentleman has heard what I have to say., I think he will accept that the PSA is not dictating anything, but that the ball is in the court of the local authority, which owns the land and decides the planning issues. It has agreed to the development of the land for an important court house and accepts that it would not be possible to have both a court house and a rail link on the site.
  The Property Services Agency, as its name implies, acts as the agent for the Lord Chancellor's Department in the selection of sites for courts and in their construction. Decisions of where courts are needed, their size and the selection of a specific site in each city are essentially matters for the Lord Chancellor's Department, advised by the PSA. The cost of the court building programme falls on the public expenditure programme of my right hon. and noble Friend the Lord Chancellor, and from 1 April this year the annual expenditure for the courts programme has fallen upon his Vote.
  For this, as for other construction projects, the PSA is bound to obtain the view of the local authority on planning matters under the appropriate circular—in this case circular 18 of 1984. The Government have repeatedly said that they are bound by the spirit of planning

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  legislation and in the case of Crown court development there is rarely occasion to seek to set aside the views of the planning authority. I can assure the House, from my inspection of the relevant documents, that there has been the closest co-operation between the PSA and the officers of Bradford city council over planning matters.
  Against that background of roles and responsibilities, let me deal with the history of this project. Bradford has been without a Crown court building since 1982, when the two court rooms in the city hall, owned by the local authority, were closed because of maintenance problems. Since then cases have been heard at Leeds, and my right hon. and noble Friend the then Lord Chancellor declared in 1983 that the Crown court would not return to Bradford until permanent modern accommodation could be provided.
  Having assessed the case load in Bradford, the Lord Chancellor's Department decided that it needed a court building to house eight Crown and two county court rooms. The PSA identified six potential sites in Bradford, of which two were shortlisted. One of these was the Bradford Exchange site, which was by common consent the best, in that it fulfilled the criteria for accessibility and security, while providing a focal point for a new building of civic significance. Both it and the other shortlisted site at Vickers lane were in the ownership of Bradford city council.
  The PSA and the Lord Chancellor's Department therefore opened negotiations with the city authorities over the use of the Exchange station site for courts, with the aim of purchasing it if the authority was prepared to agree to its use for courts. A deputation of members from the city council met officials of the Lord Chancellor's Department and the PSA in June 1986 to discuss aspects of the scheme, and on 13 November 1986 the PSA submitted a planning application to the council.
  The Council replied on 3 February 1987 saying that, while it was favourably disposed to the development, it was aware that the West Yorkshire passenger transport authority was considering a proposal to provide a cross-Bradford rail link between the Interchange and Forster square stations, across the Exchange station site. It therefore invited the PSA to consider the effect of the PTA's proposals on the court scheme and to let it have comments.
  The PSA carefully examined the proposal from a professional viewpoint. Would it be feasible and physically acceptable to have a court and a rail link on the same site? Writing to the director of planning of the city council on 4 March 1987, the PSA project manager said that the design team had concluded that it would not be possible for the rail link and the court house to share the same site. There would be problems for secure access and egress for custody vehicles, problems of general layout, and a change in the character of the site which would remove the sense of civic importance that the court house development would enhance.
  In those circumstances, the project manager went on to say that it was for the council to make a clear decision to approve either the rail link or the court house development.
  The hon. Gentleman asked why the PSA took the view that it did, and he referred to the answers that I gave to his
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  parliamentary questions on 22 October 1987 and 2 November 1987. The possibility of a rail link being taken into account was not drawn to the PSA's attention until February 1987. It was not, as I said in my reply on 2 November 1987, for the PSA to give reasons for rejecting a rail link. It simply pointed out that a rail link and the court house to the standards required by the Lord Chancellor's Department could not be accommodated on the same site. In answer to the hon. Gentleman's more recent question on 23 May 1988 I explained that the construction of a rail link, close to the court house, would create problems of noise and vibration, add to the security problems and be visually intrusive.
  In effect, the hon. Gentleman has asked me to elaborate on the reasons that I gave him then. First, a court house containing eight Crown and two county courts requires a site of between 2 and 2½ acres. The Exchange station site is slightly under 2½ acres, and of this a little over one quarter would be taken by the proposed railway development. If we sought to realign the agreed site boundaries to take account of the rail link, it would mean encroaching upon adjacent land identified by the local authority for future commercial development and for a civic square. If we did not realign the site boundaries, the railway would pass within 30 ft of the court room walls.
  Secondly, the proposed railway route creates major access problems. It would divorce the court house site from the only realistic road access, which is from Vicar lane. Because of the slope of the ground—the hon. Gentleman will know the details of this better than I do —other roads do not give ready access, and bridges or tunnels would be impractical. A level crossing is unacceptable for security reasons—this is where security is crucial—because vehicles bringing defendants to court must be able to get in and out without impediment. Clearly, a level crossing would be an impediment.
  If the access problems could be resolved and the railway link provided, the noise, vibration and visual intrusion would create problems in planning and building the courts, and impair their value in use. The design of the foundations, building frame and fabric would have to be adapted in a way that would be costly and cause delay; and it would be difficult, if not impossible, to meet the agreed standards for court design, particularly for noise levels and daylight. Even if these problems were overcome, the visual intrusion of a railway line on the same level as the court building is not hard to imagine.
  Those were the PSA's reasons; the decision, though, was for Bradford. On 16 March 1987 the director of development services of Bradford city council wrote to the project manager, conveying outline planning clearance. He said that he had carried out consultations with the leadership of the council and the view had been taken by the council that the court house development should proceed as programmed, because it was appreciated that it was not a feasible proposition to think in terms of physically accommodating the rail link and the court house on the Exchange station site and adhering to the stated programme.
  That is the current position. The site is to be developed for the court building and there has been close consultation with Bradford council over the design of the scheme. A new civic square will be laid out fronting the court house, which will do much to regenerate the

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  important central area of Bradford. Both the PSA and the Lord Chancellor's Department have been happy to co-operate with the local authority in this scheme.
  The programme to which we are working is dictated by the needs of the Lord Chancellor's Department. Advance works, to prepare the square, are due to begin next year. The scope of the work and apportionment of cost are being negotiated as part of the site purchase agreement. The construction of the court house itself, on which there will be further consultations about the exterior appearance, will begin later that year or in 1990. The Lord Chancellor's Department hopes to bring the new building into use in 1992.
  From that brief history the House will see that, far from being bureaucratic or authoritarian, the PSA has fully and properly carried out its responsibilities and observed both the spirit and the letter of the consultation process.
  Mr. Cryer: The local authority said in its letter to me that when it had been engaged in correspondence with the PSA it had been requested to make an urgent decision, as failure to do so could jeopardise the timing of the court house project. That could be interpreted as suggesting that if it did not agree with the PSA view the court house project might be taken from Bradford. Was that the case? That was certainly the implication.
  Mr. Chope: Clearly, if considerable delay was caused by arguments about whether both could be accommodated on the site, or whether the rail link should have priority over the court house, or vice versa, that would have affected whether we could proceed with the site or should look for an alternative. The hon. Gentleman goes too far in suggesting that that was more or less tantamount to blackmail or a threat. All the cards were with the local planning authority and it could have written back and said that it wanted more time, giving reasons for it. It did not do so. It unequivocally accepted the arguments of the PSA.
  The choice between the rail link and the court house, or, indeed, the decision whether the two could co-exist on the one site, was a matter for Bradford city council. That choice was made and communicated in March 1987. I am confident that Bradford will not regret its choice, and that the new court house, when it is built, will prove a worthy addition to the civic architecture of the city.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at three minutes to Twelve o'clock.