Commons Sitting of 1 February 1989

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

NEW WRITS
Motion made and Question proposed,
That Mr. Speaker do issue his warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the county constituency of Richmond, Yorks in the room of the right hon. Sir Leon Brittan, Knight, QC, who, since his election for the said county constituency hath accepted the Office of Steward or Bailiff of Her Majesty's Manor of Northstead in the county of York.—[Mr. Waddington.]
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I beg to give notice that at the proper time I hope to oppose the writ for the Richmond constituency.
Mr. Speaker: Objection taken. The proceedings will stand postponed until the commencement of public business.
Motion made and Question proposed,
That Mr. Speaker do issue his warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the Pontypridd constituency in the room of Brynmor John Esquire, deceased. —[Mr. Foster.]
Dr. Dafydd Elis Thomas: Object.
Mr. Speaker: Objection taken. That business will also stand postponed until the commencement of public business.

PRIVATE BUSINESS
  BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE SOUTHBANK BILL
    BROMLEY LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL (CRYSTAL PALACE) BILL

      CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL
      Orders for Second Reading read.
      To be read a Second time tomorrow.

  MIDLAND METRO BILL
  Read a Second time, and committed.

  REDBRIDGE LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL BILL
  Orders for Second Reading Read
  To be read a Second time tomorrow.

  WESLEYAN ASSURANCE SOCIETY BILL
  Read a Second time, and referred to the Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills.
Oral Answer to Questions
  SCOTLAND

    Rating Reform
    Mr. Allen Adams: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has any plans to meet the depute community charge registration officer in Paisley to discuss progress in compiling a comprehensive register.
    The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Malcolm Rifkind): I have no plans to do so.
    Mr. Adams: Given that the community charge registration officer in Paisley has designated me as the responsible person in my house, and has said in a letter that my wife is not a responsible person, why is it important that my wife should divulge her age on the registration form? If she refuses to tell me her age, can the Secretary of State advise me how to extort that information from her?
    Mr. Rifkind: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the requirement for dates of birth was introduced following representations from local authority practitioners that it would be necessary. I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman may have some difficulty in establishing his wife's precise date of birth, but as I understand that he has already given that information to the press he should have no difficulty in giving it to the responsible officer.
    Mr. Douglas: What advice has the Secretary of Stale given to registration officers in the Highland region who have registered numerous people, particularly females, as having a date of birth of 1 January 1800?
    Mr. Rifkind: I am not familiar with the reasons which might have led to that date being inserted, but the hon. Gentleman will be aware that we received representations on the desirability of giving the date of birth because there could be circumstances in which more than one person with the same name resided in a house. The recommendation was made to enable a distinction to be drawn between such individuals.
    Mr. Buchan: When will the Secretary of State begin to realise the unpopularity of this legislation in Scotland? Today a petition containing the signatures of many hundreds of thousands of people was presented to the Prime Minister at No. 10. Is the Secretary of State aware that one person, Terry O'Donnell who is here today, single-handedly on Paisley piazza collected no fewer than 48,000 signatures against the tax? When individuals do such things, and when the mass do such things, the Secretary of State must surely have some sense and shift his attitude.
    Mr. Rifkind: The allegations made by the hon. Gentleman and his right hon. and hon. Friends about the community charge have turned out to be of little substance. For instance, the Opposition told us that registration would be a complete fiasco, and Labour and. the nationalists campaigned against it, but registration is complete to the extent of more than 99 per cent. throughout Scotland.
    Mr. John Marshall: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is wrong for certain individuals to cheat on society by using the services provided by local government and seeking to avoid paying for them? Does he agree that right hon. and hon. Members should take a lead in adhering to the law, rather than making promises to break the law?
    Mr. Rifkind: Those who were not liable to pay rates under the old rating system cannot be accused of cheating on society because no one volunteers to pay a tax that Parliament does not require them to pay, but certainly those who are liable under the new legislation and for various political reasons threaten to avoid payment will be sponging on the rest of society—if they get away with it.
    Mr. McAllion: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he has taken steps to ensure that the community charge register for Scotland is compiled without reference to the electoral register.
    The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Mr. Ian Lang): No, Sir. The electoral register is a public document, and section 17(2) of the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987 makes it clear that community charges registration officers—who are, of course, also the electoral registration officers—can have access to and the use of any information that is held for electoral registration purposes in their areas.
    Mr. McAllion: Throughout Scotland, tens of thousands of registration forms have been returned bearing the imprint, "Not known at this address". Will the Minister confirm that registration officers will use electoral registers as one means of trying to locate missing persons liable to pay the poll tax? Does he understand that the poll tax, by taxing the vote, far from strengthening accountability within the democratic process, is driving out of the democratic process those who are poor and cannot afford to pay the poll tax?
    Mr. Lang: As I have said, the electoral register is one source of information available to registration officers. It is significant that despite the Opposition'campaign to frustrate compilation of the register an average 99 per cent. completion has been achieved, so the "Stop It" campaign did not stop it. Only by spreading the tax burden evenly over the whole adult population will it be fairly borne by that population.
    Mr. Worthington: Even at this late stage, will the Government show some common humanity and exclude from the register all those people suffering from degenerative diseases? All normal, decent people are offended that those suffering from Alzheimer's disease, for example, have to be included in the register. Will the Minister agree, even at this late stage, that that is offensive?
    Mr. Lang: There are a number of exemptions from community charge liability, and there will be an opportunity to answer the hon. Gentleman's point when the appropriate question is reached.
    Sir Hector Monro: Does my hon. Friend agree that in view of his statement that 99 per cent. of the electorate has registered, the problem is surely that local authorities have increased expenditure by far more than inflation, despite the fact that they have received greatly increased grants, so their community charges are much higher than they needed to be?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend is right, and it is undoubtedly the case that, perhaps under cover of the turbulence produced by the changeover to the new system, certain local authorities have sought to increase their spending substantially and blame the system for it. In due course, accountability will bring home to them the importance of taking account of the ability of all adults resident in their areas to pay the community charge.
    Mr. Dewar: Is not the fact that the electoral register is at the heart of the registration process, illustrated by the fact that the Strathclyde registration officer issued forms already completed with names taken from the electoral register? Does the Minister think that that is desirable? Also, does he accept that a married couple living in a house of average rateable value will together have to pay substantially more under the poll tax if they live in Glasgow, Edinburgh or almost any other part of Scotland than they pay under the present system? Given the shift in the balance of taxation against areas already disadvan-taged that is built into the poll tax, and the strength of feeling that exists in Scotland, is not the Government's thrawn determination to proceed with the tax a negation of democracy?
    Mr. Lang: The main source of information for the electoral registration officer will continue to be the use of inquiry forms and the annual canvass. Clearly, the procedure adopted by the registration officer in Strathclyde has been successful in view of the very high percentage registered. As to the hon. Gentleman's example, if the burden on residents in that area is rising it is because the local authorities are increasing their expenditure. The local authorities will be answerable to the electorate at the next election.
    Mr. Salmond: Will the Minister of State confirm that there are 39,000 fewer people on the electoral register for this year than the Government forecast in 1985? Does he think that this is due to the disincentive effect of the poll tax, or is it because Tory economic policy is causing mass emigration from Scotland?
    Mr. Lang: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman's figure, but we shall have to await the publication of the electoral register later this month. If there is misunderstanding as to the importance of the electoral register in the context of the community charge, it is probably because Opposition parties have described the charge as a poll tax, deliberately seeking to mislead residents in local authority areas.
    Mr. Harris: Will my hon. Friend accept from me and from many other Conservative Members that the Government's stance on this issue has the overwhelming backing of all fair-minded people not just in Scotland but throughout the United Kingdom? Does he understand the attitude of Opposition Members who seem to think that those who want the right to vote for local councils should escape their obligation to pay for the cost of those councils? My hon. Friend's attitude is right and the attitude of certain Opposition Members, including the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion), is completely fraudulent.
    Mr. Lang: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's reassurance. I also understand the envy of some English colleagues because we in Scotland will be getting rid of the domestic rates a year before the English.
    Dr. Moonie: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what discussions he has had regarding the exemption of people with chronic degenerative brain disorders from payment of the poll tax.
    Mr. Lang: My right hon. and learned Friend has received a number of representations from Members of Parliament, interested organisations and individuals about the liability for the community charge of people with degenerative brain disorders.
    Dr. Moonie: As the stated aim of introducing a poll tax was to improve local accountability, how does the Minister propose that people with chronic degenerative disorders should exercise that accountability when they are incapable of voting? Should he not therefore consider exempting them from payment of the community charge?
    Mr. Lang: We took careful medical advice. The balance of medical advice is that it is impossible to establish a method of assessment which would enable a precise and accurate moment to be discerned when an individual should be exempted from the community charge without creating more anomalies than it would remove. Anyone in that condition in a long-term care hospital will be exempt from the community charge.
    Mrs. Ray Michie: Is it not an unfair burden on doctors to have to decide whether a person should pay the poll tax, and should not the registration officer also be medically qualified if, following receipt of a doctor's certificate, he has the right to determine whether or not to grant exemption?
    Mr. Lang: The whole point of requiring medical advice is so that professional expertise may be available to the community charge registration officer. Doctors have to take difficult decisions on a wide range of matters affecting the health of patients. Our decision on this difficult and sensitive issue was based on clear medical advice.
    Mr. Galbraith: Surely the issue is whether or not the patient is severely mentally impaired, not the way in which he comes to be so mentally impaired. Why should the 91,000 patients with Alzheimer's disease be discriminated against? They live for an average of 10 years after diagnosis. Why should they alone of the severely mentally impaired have to pay the poll tax?
    Mr. Lang: The provisions in the Act exempt from liability those with severe mental impairment from birth or as a result of an accident. Degenerative diseases are often of a fluctuating nature.
    Hon. Members: Rubbish!
    Mr. Speaker: Order.
    Mr. Lang: These are often of a fluctuating nature. There will be periods of lucidity. The best medical advice open to us has convinced us that there is no way of assessing the right moment at which exemption should apply without creating more anomalies that it would solve.

    Forestry
    Mr. Wood: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many jobs are associated with the forestry industry in (a) the United Kingdom as a whole and (b) Scotland.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton): At 31 March 1988 there were about 41,000 jobs associated directly with the forestry industry in the United Kingdom, of which 11,500 were in Scotland.
    Mr. Wood: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Does he agree that properly managed woodland can be both attractive environmentally and provide valuable jobs? Can my hon. Friend tell me more about the woodland, initiative for central Scotland and how that will help to improve the environment?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: My hon. Friend is right to say that many more jobs can be created by this means. We expect that several hundred jobs will be created by the central Scotland woodlands initiative and that this will bring more environmental and recreational opportunities. We envisage that in the next 20 years up to £50 million will be committed. The whole purpose is to improve the environment in areas where there are many derelict sites and scars on the landscape, and this will be of assistance to the local communities concerned.
    Mr. Nigel Griffiths: Does the Minister realise that the headquarters of the Forestry Commission in Scotland is situated in Edinburgh, and that the workers there will have to pay £393 in poll tax, whereas if the Government gave poll tax payers in Edinburgh the same subsidy as in Glasgow, they would have to pay only £151?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: That supplementary question could not spring directly from the main question, which is about jobs in the forestry industry. We expect that the number of jobs in Scotland, and in Britain generally, will increase greatly. I am delighted that the Forestry Commission's headquarters is in my constituency, and I shall give every possible support to my constituents in this matter.
    Mr. Andy Stewart: May I take this opportunity to congratulate the Scottish Office on its initiative in creating the new central lowlands forest? My hon. Friend will be aware that I am hoping that the English national forest will be in Sherwood. Will he send me the papers and tell me what job opportunities I can expect from the forest there?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I certainly will, and I will bring my hon. Friend's remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment as I think that my hon. Friend is referring to the forest of the legendary Robin Hood.

    Rating Reform
    Mr. McTaggart: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has had from organisations on behalf of disabled persons concerning exemptions from the community charge.
    Mr. Lang: My right hon. and learned Friend has received representations from a number of organisations which act on behalf of people with various forms of disability.
    Mr. McTaggart: Given the tremendous depth of feeling that exists on this issue, may I ask the Minister to agree that it is an absolute disgrace to differentiate between the severely mentally handicapped, the mentally handicapped and the handicapped to establish who should be exempt from this tax? It is also a disgrace that many of his well-heeled, greedy friends should gain enormously financially from the poll tax. Even at this late stage, will he abolish the tax or at least exempt this disadvantaged group?
    Mr. Lang: No. The distinctions have been made on the basis of medical advice and I believe that they are right. A great many of the physically handicapped would resent the implication that they were somehow incapable of playing their full part in public life, including participation in local government matters.
    Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: Will the Minister note that under the previous rating system none of the categories mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. McTaggart) was exempt and that our system is infinitely more humane than the Labour Government's callous attitude ever was?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. and learned Friend is right. We are now spending about £7·3 billion in help for the long-term sick and disabled. That represents a 90 per cent. increase over what was being spent in 1979.
    Mr. Andrew Welsh: Will the Minister agree that warrant sales are a barbaric and inhuman procedure? Will he commend Angus district council for issuing a standing instruction banning their use? Given that one poll tax registration officer tried to pursue a warrant sale against an 82-year-old pensioner, will the Minister issue an instruction banning their use against the disabled, the handicapped and anyone else?
    Mr. Lang: Nobody welcomes the excessive use of warrant sales, but everyone acknowledges that a need for them exists. I believe that the modification that has taken place as a result of the Debtors (Scotland) Act 1988 has improved the situation considerably. I commend Angus district council for its support for the implementation of the community charge.
    Mr. Maxton: Will the Minister tell the House which medical advisers have told him that Alzheimer's disease is a fluctuating condition? Is it not morally repugnant that this tax is being imposed on those who are suffering from that disease, those who are mildly mentally handicapped and those who are severely physically handicapped, bed-ridden and in wheelchairs, while at the same time, on 1 April, the Minister and all his friends will receive a large fat increase in the money that they have, because their tax bills will be cut?
    Mr. Lang: Many degenerative diseases fluctuate considerably, with periods of lucidity. Alzheimer's disease involves the problem that I described earlier—the difficulty of deciding exactly when it would be appropriate to exempt a particular individual from the provisions of the legislation. The vast majority of the disabled, if on rebate,
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    would be eligible for a considerably enhanced entitlement to rebate in consideration of the disability premiums and allowances to which they are entitled.
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received regarding the impact of the standard community charge on the tourist industry in rural areas and on agriculture; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Macdonald: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received concerning the effects of the poll tax in rural areas.
    Mr. Rifkind: I have received a number of such representations. In response to these, my hon. Friend the Minister of State has today issued a consultation paper proposing that empty farm cottages should remain in rating and hence not become subject to the standard community charge. I am confident that this will be widely welcomed. Copies of the paper have been placed in the Library of the House.
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: While I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for responding to the representations that I and others have made, and without being in any way ungrateful—I believe that he has done the right thing— may I ask him to extend that sensitivity to houses which are let for holiday purposes? In parts of my constituency, certainly the community charge would hit the development of the tourist trade.
    Mr. Rifkind: I thank my right hon. Friend for the earlier part of his question. With regard to holiday homes, part of the problem has been caused because most local authorities have insisted on a multiplier of two, when the Act freely enables them to have a multiplier of one. If those authorities were to allow a multiplier of one, as they have a discretion to do, the consequential tax would be halved.
    Mr. Macdonald: Will the Secretary of State go one step further and restore the rating concession for crofters? Will he give an update on his 1986 estimate that the loss of the rating concession would cost crofters £500,000? Does he agree that this kind of financial blow to the crofting counties is senseless at a time when of the biggest economic problems facing Britain is the imbalance between regions.
    Mr. Rifkind: We gave careful consideration to the position of crofters. The hon. Gentleman, who is an honest man, will be the first to appreciate that it is difficult to suggest that a crofter should be given an advantage over another member of the public who might have the same income. A crofter on low income—[Interruption.] It is not only crofters who sometimes suffer deficiencies in services. A crofter on low income will be entitled to rebate. There is no reason in equity why a crofter with a specific income should be in a different position from any member of the public with the same income.
    Mr. Bill Walker: I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his helpful reply about empty farm cottages, but will he continue to bear in mind that in areas of Scotland where tourism is a vital and essential part of the local economy it is important that cottages, chalets, and so on, that are let on an ad hoc basis should be recognised as being part of a business and treated in the same way?
    Mr. Rifkind: It was for precisely that reason that we gave local authorities the discretion to determine the

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    multiplier to be used. With the exception of Western Isles district council, I believe that all other local authorities have chosen the higher multiplier. If authorities are concerned about the tourist implications in their area, it is open to them to halve the tax liability by using the discretion that Parliament has given to them.
    Mr. Canavan: Does the Secretary of State accept that it is blatantly unjust to impose a £50 fine for failure to register on an old-age pensioner suffering from senility, whether that person lives in a rural or urban area, and then to threaten such a person with a warrant sale for failing to pay that fine? Is it not absolutely draconian that sheriff officers——
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The question is about tourist cottages.
    Mr. Canavan: —that sheriff officers in urban or rural areas are allowed to use Tory Government legislation to subject old-age pensioners to such Gestapo-type harassment?
    Mr. Rifkind: The hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that no old-age pensioner living in a rural or urban area is liable to face any fine through failure to register through genuine confusion, misunderstanding or anything other than deliberate intent.
    Mr. Wilson: Will the Minister confirm his views on what I regard as his astonishingly dishonest comment on the second home multiplier?
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Not "dishonest" in respect of the Minister.
    Mr. Wilson: I will withdraw that word. Will he comment on his astonishingly flexible use of the truth in relation to second homes?
    Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that the Scottish Office's calculations of poll tax for each area were based on the assumption of a multiplier of two? Will he confirm that the absurdity of that aspect of the poll tax is highlighted by the fact that the consequence of introducing a multiplier of one on local authorities would have been even more massive savings for those who own the most expensive and palatial second homes in a given area? Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman confirm that it is now possible for a traveller from Muckle Flugga to Machrihanish to pass through Scotland without encountering one single inch of Scottish territory held by a Tory Member of Parliament? Will he name one local authority in the Scottish rural areas, of any political persuasion, which regards the poll tax as anything but a further disincentive to live in rural areas and a further blow to fragile communities?
    Mr. Rifkind: I am bound to say that the hon. Gentleman is getting into a lather with little substance. If rural local authorities believe that the community charge is an imposition on their local communities it is rather surprising that, in almost every case, they are proposing to increase their expenditure substantially and, as a consequence, are fixing community charges that are considerably higher than they would otherwise need to be.
    Mr. Maclennan: Does the Secretary of State realise that many people in rural areas with cottages let them for a few weeks in the year? They include not only farmers, who might be covered by the review that he has in mind, but
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    others who will be unable to let their cottages. Such people are having to seek expensive change of use approvals to take the cottages out of taxation. That is a disincentive to tourism and a positive burden on people who, in many cases, are on a low income. Will he extend his consideration of this problem beyond farmers to cover such people?
    Mr. Rifkind: I note what the hon. Gentleman has said, but in the shorter term his best course would be to make representations to the Highland regional council, as it is within its power to reduce substantially the level of tax on such properties. I shall, however, consider what the hon. Gentleman said about the wider issues.

    Competitive Tendering
    Mr. Jack: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what progress is being made towards competitive tendering for local government services in Scotland.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Local authorities are now fully engaged in implementing the competition provisions of the Local Government Act 1988. Detailed implementation regulations were made in August 1988 and the first round of contracts have to be let by 1 August 1989.
    Mr. Jack: Does my hon. Friend agree that negative attitudes to the benefits of competitive tendering are still being displayed by Opposition Members? Does he agree that such an attitude denies the Scottish people local services at lower prices? Does my hon. Friend have any evidence that the benefits of such tendering have penetrated the closed minds of Opposition Members?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I believe that there has been a change of attitude, as evidenced by the remarks of the president of COSLA, reported in The Scotsman of 5 January, who suggested:
    "the best answer councils could give in response to that threat would be to win compulsory competitive tenders so that services would remain in-house."
    The president is quoted as saying:
    "If that happens it will inject fresh confidence and life into local authorities and simultaneously disarm our critics."
    I believe that more and more hon. Members are coming round to that view.
    Mr. Michael J. Martin: I put it to the Minister that Strathclyde region has an excellent lighting department, but because he has forced competitive tenders— [Interruption.] It is not funny. Because he forced the local authority to accept competitive tenders the night shift was taken off—in a week when a young girl in my constituency was raped and brutally beaten up. The lighting in the city of Glasgow can be out for as long as two days, particularly over a weekend. Does the Minister care more about competitive tenders than the safety of our women and children on the streets?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The hon. Gentleman must be quite clear that local authorities remain responsible for deciding the level of service they wish to deliver. It is for them to write into the tender specification the precise level of service that they wish to have implemented. The activities listed in the Act cost £300

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    million, so it is quite clear that the modest target of 10 per cent. savings would lead to savings of some £30 million a year which are well worth making.

    Employment Training
    Mr. Hind: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the current situation regarding the implementation of employment training in Scotland.
    Mr. Lang: I am glad to say that employment training is now progressing well. There is no shortage of employers willing to participate and the latest figures show that almost 16,000 people have entered the new programme.
    Mr. Hind: No doubt my hon. Friend will have noted that since January 1987 unemployment in Scotland has fallen by 80,000. Does he agree that local authorities in Scotland and the Scottish TUC, in turning their backs on the unemployed and not participating in the employment training programme, are ensuring that many of them will not have the opportunity to fill the 20,000 vacancies that currently exist in Scotland?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The failure of the STUC and COSLA actively to support the employment training scheme has led to a widening of the differential in unemployment figures between Scotland and England. Although COSLA is modifying its attitude to some extent, if the STUC persists in its view it will become increasingly uninfluential and irrelevant to the economic scene in Scotland.
    Dr. Godman: In regard to the fusion of employment training and enterprise creation under the umbrella of Scottish Enterprise, I remind the Minister of the dreadfully high unemployment figures in Greenock and Port Glasgow. The present situation at the Ferguson yard in Port Glasgow is causing very deep concern. Will he urge on his ministerial colleagues at the Department of Trade and Industry the urgent necessity to welcome further offers for the acquisition of the yard? Does he agree that the offer from Ailsa Perth of Troon was pitifully inadequate and therefore was understandably rejected by the entire work force?
    Mr. Lang: I am glad that unemployment is falling in Greenock and Port Glasgow and has done so in the past two years, as it has elsewhere in Scotland. However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the figures remain far too high. The area has particular economic difficulties and that is why we are setting up an enterprise zone in that area. I believe that the fusion of the Training Agency with the activities of the Scottish Development Agency will lead to an improvement in the way in which we are able to respond to such matters. As to his reference to the bid for the Ferguson yard, while negotiations are taking place it would be inappropriate for me to comment on them.
    Mr. McLeish: Is the Minister aware that out of a planned provision of 41,000 places in Scotland, his Government have managed to fill only 12,000 places? Does he regard the shortfall of 30,000 places as a success or, as we would describe it, as a classic failure? Will the Minister acknowledge that the responsibility lies fairly and squarely with the Government? Will he give the House an assurance that he will arrange an early meeting with the STUC, COSLA and the voluntary sector to put together a
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    package to help the 100,000 unemployed, instead of displaying complacency at the Dispatch Box on every occasion?
    Mr. Lang: I had a meeting with the STUC general council only last Friday at which it did not seek to raise that matter. As for the hon. Gentleman's figures, there is high demand for places on the employment training scheme which has been doing well since it started. Like all new schemes, of course it will take time to get going, but almost 16,000 people have entered the new programme since its inception—hat is not the figure that the hon. Gentleman gave the House. If the STUC would co-operate and support the scheme, which is of crucial importance in preparing people for the 20,000 job vacancies mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancashire, West (Mr. Hind) and for the fact that some 700,000 jobs turn over in the Scottish economy every year, the scheme would work much more successfully.
    Mr. Neil Hamilton: Does my hon. Friend agree that the protestations of Opposition Members about unemployment ring rather hollow, considering that they will at no stage assist in valuable measures such as the employment training programme which are designed to put people back into work and to remove the unemployment problems about which those Members claim to be so concerned?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is very encouraging that unemployment has been falling steadily in Scotland over the past two years. That, of course, is a phenomenon with which no Labour Government have ever been familiar.

    Rating Reform
    Mrs. Fyfe: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he has any plans to publicise the effects of the poll tax on women in Scotland.
    Mr. Lang: No, Sir.
    Mrs. Fyfe: That was a commendably brief answer. Will the Minister nevertheless explain to the women of Scotland why they will have to pay the same amount of poll tax as men when, on average, their earnings are only three quarters as much? How does the Minister justify the joint and several liability provision in the legislation, whereby if a marriage breaks up and the man leaves the home—as commonly happens—the poll tax officers will demand the unpaid poll tax from the woman, regardless of how low her income may be? How does he justify all the other injustices perpetrated on Scottish women by the poll tax?
    Mr. Lang: The income of a man or woman becomes relevant in the context of an application for a rebate. The vast majority of specific groups such as single pensioners, most of whom are women, or single parent families, most of whom are led by women, will benefit from the community charge.
    Joint and several liability provisions have been inserted to protect the woman in a marriage or other partnership who, in many cases has no income, and might otherwise be unable to pay the charge if her partner declined to do so.
    Mr. Sillars: Will the Minister return to the point that he has just made and answer the question that the Secretary of State for Defence so conspicuously failed to answer on

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    the BBC's "Scottish Question Time"? What happens to a woman whose husband has been responsible for her poll tax, because she has no income, when he leaves her and cannot be found, and she is left with the legal responsibility of joint and several liability?
    Mr. Lang: If, as is implied, the woman has no income she will be eligible for income support, and on income support she will be eligible for an 80 per cent. rebate. The level of income support has been raised to take account of the remaining 20 per cent.
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Has my hon. Friend read the reported comments of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) about the community charge in the Communist paper the Morning Star on 17 September last year? She said that if voting did not get people what they wanted they must resist the Government by any means available to them. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is not a democratic way of opposing Government policy?
    Mr. Lang: I think that it was James Thurber who said that a woman's place was in the wrong. In the case of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe) he was clearly quite right.
    Mr. Ernie Ross: I am sure that the women of Scotland will take note of the acid comments of the Minister who is supposed to be responsible for the poll tax in Scotland and for ensuring fairness and justice. It might serve the Conservative party better if he tried to deal honestly with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Maryhill (Mrs. Fyfe).
    Women are generally exploited and less well off, and it does not help the Minister to be supported by comments such as those of his hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) on such a serious issue. Women are looking for a response from the Government, but all they are told is that they may not be responsible. What is the Minister doing to help women, who generally do not earn as much as men, to offset the damage inflicted on them by the poll tax?
    Mr. Lang: As I have said, there is a rebate scheme from which more than 1 million people in Scotland should be eligible to benefit. That is about 30 per cent, of Scotland's adult population. I have cited specific groups in which women predominate and will benefit. In so far as women's interests are a specific feature of the impact of the community charge, we have tried to make provisions for them. For instance, there is provision for women's refuges, and women are entitled to register anonymously if they are in fear of physical violence.
    Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: Does my hon. Friend understand my confusion that women should suddenly be resurrected by the Socialist party as an identifiable group? I understood that, under all the legislation introduced by the Labour Government, we were supposed to regard each other as persons and that women were not identifiable as a group. As the Lord Provost of Glasgow is a woman, what on earth are we talking about?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. Essentially, there is no difference, but, as I am sure he will agree with me, "Vive la différence".
    Mr. Dewar: I fear that we now have evidence that the Minister of State lives in an unreal world.
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    Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, because of longevity, Alzheimer's disease is a particular hazard for women and that many Members have sad family and constituency experience of that disease? Does he recognise that those struggling to help people suffering from Alzheimer's disease will be appalled by the insensitivity of the Government's response? Does he also accept that we are genuinely astonished by the continued exclusion of those suffering from Alzheimer's disease and from other degenerative brain disorders and even more astonished that the ground given is that the disease fluctuates? Will he call for a report on that aspect of the matter and the medical situation from his new chief medical officer, Mr. Kenneth Caiman, and publish that report so that the House can see the basis on which the Government have acted in a mean and mistaken way?
    Mr. Lang: These matters were fully debated when the Abolition of Domestic Rates etc. (Scotland) Act 1987 and the Local Government Act 1988 went through Parliament.
    I readily acknowledge, as I did in my earlier answers, that the subject of degenerative diseases is a sensitive and difficult issue, but, on the best medical advice available to us, we decided that to seek to establish a specific exemption would create more anomalies than leaving the situation as it is, where, in the vast majority of cases, people will either be on rebate, and thus be eligible for a small proportion of the community charge, or in long-stay homes or hospitals.

    Tree Planting
    Mr. Stern: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if there are any Government initiatives to encourage tree planting down the hill.
    Mr. Rifkind: There are a number of Government initiatives in place to encourage tree planting down the hill. Both the woodland grant scheme and the farm woodland scheme which we introduced last year have added incentives for planting carried out on arable and improved grassland. They also offer much higher grants for the planting of broadleaved species, which do well on lower ground of better quality.
    Mr. Stern: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the schemes that have been introduced are necessary to maintain rural economies and communities, and would have been much more difficult to implement without the fiscal initiatives introduced in the last Budget?
    Mr. Rifkind: That is so, and they are much more environmentally attractive and consistent with what the public expect from a woodland policy?
    Mr. Foulkes: The hill referred to is clearly in Cumnock and Doon Valley. The Secretary of State will recall the excellent visit that he paid to Cumnock and Doon Valley. I am sure that he is as sorry as I am to know that the employment situation in Cumnock and Doon Valley, in textile and other industries, has not improved since his visit. Will he consider carefully the representations that I have now made to him on behalf of Cumnock and Doon Valley district council and have an urgent follow-up meeting to consider carefully the measures—including tree planting—that might improve the chronic unemployment: situation which is causing great distress in Cumnock and Doon Valley?
    Mr. Rifkind: With the best will in the world, I cannot claim to remember tree planting as one of the suggestions raised at the time, but I am happy to consider the hon. Gentleman's point and look carefully at any representations that might be made.

    Zircon Film
    Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what consideration he is giving to charges following the raid by special branch on Queen Margaret drive, Glasgow, in relation to the Zircon film.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Consideration of criminal charges was, of course, a matter for the Lord Advocate, not my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State. As I informed the hon. Gentleman in the House on 9 December 1987, the then Lord Advocate announced on 27 November 1987 that no criminal proceedings would be instituted in Scotland.
    Mr. Dalyell: On Tuesday 27 January 1987, what indications were available to the Secretary of State personally that special branch might visit Queen Margaret drive?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The short answer is none. The Secretary of State became aware that there was likely to be a police operation at the BBC's premises when, quite coincidentally, he visited them with the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) on the evening of Friday 30 January to participate in the recording of a BBC Scotland television programme. That was after the decision had been made and warrants issued by the sheriff court in Scotland. There are no grounds for the allegation that the Government were involved in that decision.
    Mr. Galloway: BBC Scotland's headquarters are in my constituency. Brian Barr, who was witch-hunted as a result of that raid, is one of my most distinguished constituents. The incredible gymnastics of the Minister's answer, supplemented by a brief quickly whispered to him by the Secretary of State, do not disguise the simple question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell). Did the Secretary of State for Scotland know on 30 January that there was to be a police raid on BBC Scotland? Yes or no? The truth please.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I made it quite clear that the decision was made when the warrant was submitted to the court. My right hon. and learned Friend was informally informed of the decision that evening by a police officer at the BBC Scotland premises. He was not consulted about the decision before it was made and was not in any way involved in it. The decision was the responsibility of the Law Officers and the procurator fiscal.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that there was nothing unusual about this incident? The police entered the premises to look for evidence, having obtained a warrant from a sheriff. That is not an unusual occurrence. The next question is whether the evidence found is sufficient to bring charges. That is how the police and courts normally operate.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The Lord Advocate was certain that the proper procedures for obtaining the search warrant were followed, and that the involvement of the procurator fiscal and the sheriff was in accordance with
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    the established law in Scotland. On 27 November the Lord Advocate announced that, having considered reports from the fiscal, having consulted the Attorney-General and having regard to the public interest, he had issued instructions not to institute criminal proceedings in respect of any disclosure.
    Mr. Galloway: Apologise then.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: There is no need for me to apologise. The police were investigating a potentially serious criminal offence. The fact that, at the end of the day, no criminal proceedings were instituted, does not mean that the police action was wrong.

    Revenue Support Grant
    Mr. Ingrain: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how he arrived at the safety-netting levels applicable to individual authorities in the revenue support grant settlement for 1989–90.
    Mr. Rifkind: The Government decided to end the excessive grant entitlements of high-spending authorities. Rather than eliminate them immediately, they decided, as with many other reforms, to phase the changes, and that will be achieved over a three to five-year period. The arrangements for 1989–90 were arrived at having regard to the effect of these grant changes on community charge payers. Details of the calculations are explained in the report on the Revenue Support Grant (Scotland) Order 1988, copies of which have been placed in the Library.
    Mr. Ingram: Does the Secretary of State accept that the arrangements have worked harshly against East Kilbride district council? They have taken it from the third-lowest rated council to the highest poll-taxed council in Scotland. Will the Secretary of State assure us that the revenue support grant settlement will be reviewed in the light of the outturn on poll tax yields, rate products and other relevant factors?
    Mr. Rifkind: I shall consider all relevant factors. The hon. Gentleman is correct; the district council did not benefit from the changes. However, East Kilbride taxpayers did. The combined effect on the regional and district councils has given East Kilbride taxpayers a net benefit of £6 per adult.
    Mr. Doran: Apart from the efforts of the Secretary of State to reduce the income of local authorities, all Scottish hon. Members will be aware of the principled stand taken by Councillor Roy Munn of Grampian regional council to reduce the income of his own authority. What the House may be less aware of is that last year, in Grampian regional council there were 28 warrant sales, which were authorised by the finance convenor. Twenty-two of those were domestic warrant sales. We know that the finance convenor at that time was Roy Munn, the very same individual involved in the principled stand. Is such a principled stand by the Scottish National party one of which the Government approve?
    Mr. Rifkind: We are all familiar with nationalist rhetoric and nationalist actions having nothing in common.
    Mr. Redwood: When considering the overall revenue support grant for local authorities, did my right hon. and

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    learned Friend take into account that it is one of the benefits of the Union to Scotland? Is it for that reason that some Opposition parties are not joining the SNP and are walking out of the constitutional convention?
    Mr. Rifkind: My hon. Friend is right to point to the
    substantial level of support that Scottish community charge payers receive from revenue support grant. Wales has a higher level of revenue support grant and England has a lower level.
    Mr. Steel: Each elected local authority in Scotland, of
    whatever political persuasion, considers that its expenditure needs are higher than the Secretary of State considers and, therefore, has produced a higher poll tax than he forecast. How long does the Secretary of State intend to maintain the fiction that they are all wrong and he is right?
    Mr. Rifkind: I should be more inclined to accept what the right hon. Gentleman said if his own regional council in the Borders had not received a revenue support grant of 13–5 per cent. To use that as a basis for increasing expenditure in the way that it has done shows a strong commitment to high spending and, perhaps, insufficient consideration for the interests of community charge payers.

    Primary Schools
    Mr. Ian Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what steps he is taking to monitor the performance of primary schools in Scotland.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Michael Forsyth): My right hon. and learned Friend has decided to intensify the assessment of achievement programme to cover English, science and mathematics in a three-yearly cycle, instead of five-yearly as hitherto. An assessment of English will be undertaken this year. Regular reports are also received from Her Majesty's inspectors of schools.
    Mr. Bruce: Does my hon. Friend agree that parents in Scotland are keen to see such assessment coming on to the scene? They are keen to see that their children are keeping up to the standards throughout the nation. Can my hon. Friend also tell us what discussions he has with colleagues such as our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science about feeding back the good experience in Scottish schools and transferring some of the excellence in Scottish primary schools to English and Welsh schools?
    Mr. Forsyth: My hon. Friend is right about the interest that parents have in the achievements of their children at school, and our proposals to introduce testing in English and mathematics in primary 4 and primary 7 will provide for that. The "Home from School" report provided clear evidence of parental interest in the matter. I shall quote one parent who put the matter succinctly, saying:
    "It is all very well to say he is competing against himself. Great. But he is not competing against himself when it comes to getting a job and then he has got to wake up to the rude discovery that he is only pretty good in his own terms but not by anyone else's standards."
    My hon. Friend is right. Parents want testing in schools so that they know how their children are getting on in those basic subjects.
    Mr. Tom Clarke: Will the Minister accept that educational provision in primary schools in Scotland is considerably hampered by the incredible lack of provision hitherto for under-fives? We have some of the most disgraceful circumstances in the whole of Europe. When will the Minister do something about that?
    Mr. Forsyth: The provision of education for under-fives is a matter for local authorities, and the hon. Gentleman's own party is in control of a number of those authorities, so it is in a position to do something about it. The results from the assessment of achievement programme in Scotland show clearly that there has been a decline in performance in mathematics and English over the past five years. When I read data that show that in primary 7, a total of 22 per cent, of children cannot divide 630 by 10, I am convinced that our proposals to bring testing into the curriculum and to introduce testing have the support of parents, if not of Opposition Members.

    Trunk Roads
    Mr. Kirkwood: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the Government's review of future development of trunk road routes south of Edinburgh.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: There has been a slight delay in preparation of the report of the "Routes South of Edinburgh" study which was due to have been submitted by the end of January.
    Mr. Kirkwood: Why has there been that delay? It is vital to the whole Borders region that the Al, A68 and A7 are improved and developed. Will the Minister assure us that the report will be published before the summer and that there is no suggestion that detrunking will play any part in action implemented by the Government?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Some delays ensued from technical difficulties, but the more important fact is the increasingly evident need for interchange between the M74 studies and the "Routes South of Edinburgh" study.
    The hon. Gentleman asked whether the report would be published. The document is technical and it is not usual to publish such documents, but we plan to publish a summary of the recommendations and then state what action we intend to take as a result. We shall do that as soon as possible. There was also the problem that the study area proved larger than the usual computer programme could handle, so that had to be rewritten to cope with the amount of data involved.
    I note also the hon. Gentleman's comment about detrunking, but at this stage I cannot give him the commitment that he seeks.
    Mr. Strang: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In the exchanges between my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) and the Minister on question No. 2, you will have noted that the decision of yourself and your staff to allow the poll tax to be called the poll tax on the Order Paper, and not to give way to the Government in calling it the community charge, was completely vindicated. I hope that when the broadcasting organisations in Scotland report today—when representatives from all walks of life in Scotland present a petition with a third of a million signatures against the poll tax

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    —and say that the only concession that we achieved was for empty farm cottages, they will recognise that we are talking about a poll tax and not a community charge.
    Mr. Speaker: That is hypothetical at the moment.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. When a statutory body such as a local authority is established by the House by statute and operates under the statute for collecting local taxation, is the local authority allowed to call that local taxation by a term other than that which this House has passed?
    Mr. Speaker: The correct term is what is in the Act.
    Mr. Home Robertson: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. As the Secretary of State for Scotland announced a major concession to farmers in empty farm cottages, have you had any indication from him that he intends to make any statement of any relief for the 11,000 farm workers in tied cottages who will be worse hit than those farmers?
    Mr. Speaker: I have had no indication of that.

New Writ (Richmond, Yorks)
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the county constituency of Richmond, Yorks in the room of the right hon. Sir Leon Brittan, QC, who, since his election for the said county constituency, hath accepted the Office of Steward or Bailiff of Her Majesty's Manor of Northstead in the County of York.—[Mr. Waddington.]
3.33 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I rise to oppose the issuing of the writ for the Richmond, Yorks constituency, under the rules set out in "Erskine May", pages 326 and 327, and on the precedent of 19 April 1983.
The crux of the argument for opposing the writ is that, before the electors of the Richmond, Yorks constituency go to the polls, they are entitled to the truth about exactly what happened in January 1986. Before the writ is issued a tribunal should he set up under the Tribunals of Inquiry (Evidence) Act 1921, which should report to the House about what occurred before the by-election takes place.
As things stand at present, the purpose behind the writ, to allow one of our former colleagues—we must now call him Sir Leon Brittan—to become Vice-President of the European Commission, seems improper. To many of the electors of Richmond, it looks like the reward for silence.
In normal circumstances perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman would have been a highly qualified candidate on grounds of intellectual and academic attainment and of experience of great offices of state. But as things stand at present the circumstances are far from usual; in fact, they are exceedingly unusual and abnormal. The electors of Richmond need to know the real reasons for the departure of Sir Leon Brittan before they are required to make an electoral judgment.
Mr. Tony Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand that this is Opposition time. Would it be in order, if the hon. Gentleman is to make a speech about the writ, for hon. Members on this side of the House to make speeches of similar, if not greater, length? If so, it might be rather tragic for the Opposition motion this afternoon.
Mr. Speaker: As the House knows, the motion is debatable; but it must be debated in order.
Mr. Dalyell: Whether hon. Members like it or not, the fact is that the former right hon. and learned Member for Richmond remains the scapegoat, the fall guy, the man who has taken, and continues to take, the blame for one of the most shoddy misunderstandings that this House has seen.
There are colleagues who say that the Westland affair occurred three years ago, but it continues to be the case that the electors of Richmond need to know whether the House of Commons is simply going to shrug its collective shoulders when it knows that matters have not been cleared up. Are we doucely to allow a by-election to facilitate the then Member who, we are required to believe, caused misunderstandings in the stratosphere of British politics? The electors of Richmond are entitled to know, because it is an issue of the collective self-respect of the House and, in my opinion, the self-respect of the honourable profession of being a politician.
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Remember the consternation of the present Attorney-General, formerly the Solicitor-General, the author of the Law Officer's letter which was so abused without his knowledge. Remember how the then Attorney-General, Sir Michael Havers, came back from his sick bed and was so angry that he said that if an inquiry were not set up he would have the police at the door of No. 10 Downing street. That is why an inquiry was set up—because of the Attorney-General's threat to have the constabulary at the door of No. 10 if an inquiry were riot agreed to.
Before we agree to the issuing of a writ, the electors of Richmond should have an explanation about how that inquiry never came to any conclusions about the timing and the state of knowledge of senior Ministers as to how that leak occurred. The electors of Richmond will want to know, before they choose a new Member, how it was that their last Member appeared before the Select Committee on Defence, chaired by a Conservative Privy Councillor subsequently sent to the House of Lords, and solemnly refused to answer questions properly put by his colleagues and mine.
Never has a Minister treated a Select Committee of the House in that manner. Members of the Committee and others present, as I was, will not forget the contemptuous attitude displayed upstairs that day by our former colleague Leon Brittan, stonewalling a Committee that was set up by the House to do a job.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I also took the trouble to attend that Committee meeting. I could see no sign of contempt on the part of our colleague.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Lady can make that point if she catches the eye of the Chair.
Mr. Dalyell: One thing will alter our attitude towards the by-election and allow us to send our former colleague on his way to Brussels with our good will, and that is if it were explained to the electors of Richmond that the right hon. and learned Gentleman was not to blame for the Westland affair and that he was simply carrying the can for the misbehaviour of someone else.
In order to accept the Prime Minister's version of events in January 1986, the House has been required to believe that, for 14 days or more, Leon Brittan, the cause of this by-election, kept his senior civil servants, such as Sir Brian Hayes, his Cabinet colleagues and his Prime Minister in the dark about his role relating to the Law Officer's letter. If Leon Brittan really did that, should the House be creating a by-election to send him as our country's nominee to a highly prestigious job in the EEC? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman's behaviour is by no means the whole story, should not the electorate of Richmond——
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Gentleman keeps referring to 1986. There has been a general election since 1986 at which Leon Brittan had an overwhelming majority. The people of Richmond must have been highly satisfied with their representative.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman might make that point if he is called to speak.
Mr. Dalyell: The electors of Richmond will want to know about the Prime Minister's answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who has often put pertinent questions to her. She said to my hon. Friend that she did not know about the role of the then Trade Secretary until the inquiry had reported. Before a writ is issued, a tribunal should be satisfied on that point.
Mr. Ian Bruce: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder whether I could have your guidance. Clearly this is a narrow debate on whether the writ should be moved. We all know that the former Member for Richmond has already left. Surely we must be talking about the candidates who are to be put forward. Clearly Sir Leon Brittan is not to be one of those candidates, so what we are hearing must be out of order.
Mr. Speaker: I am listening with great care, as I listened on Friday nearly two weeks ago when this writ was first moved. Nothing that the hon. Gentleman has said today and nothing that was said then was out of order.
Mr. Dalyell: Before the House agrees to the issuing of a writ for the Richmond constituency, for the sake of the good name and reputation of the former Member, should not the Prime Minister give the electors of Richmond an explanation of her own role——
Mr. Barry Field: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Is it a point of order? I have heard nothing out of order from the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell).
Mr. Field: Representing the Isle of Wight, I cannot take too much excitement. I have heard this argument once or twice before. I wonder whether it would be in order to move a writ this afternoon for a by-election in the constituency of the hon. Member for Linlithgow.
Mr. Dalyell: Before the House agrees to the issuing of a writ, for the sake of the good name of Leon Brittan, should not the Prime Minister give an explanation to the electors of Richmond of her own role in the Westland affair? The House heard her answer yesterday to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. All this could have been avoided had she explained her role. After all, at the end of the day the Prime Minister is accountable not to President Bush, Mr. Gorbachev or any other world politician; she is accountable to the British electorate through the House of Commons, and particularly to the electors of Richmond.
The House has not yet had an explanation of the unique resignation correspondence between the Prime Minister and the then right hon. and learned Member for Richmond, Yorks, which ended:
"I hope that it will not be long before you return to high office to continue your Ministerial career."
The Prime Minister did not say that to the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) or to anybody else. That is unique. How could any Prime Minister have expressed such a hope if her Secretary of State for Trade and Industry had really misled her? The electors of Richmond will want to know.
They will want to know that it was a negotiated correspondence. As things turned out, the Prime Minister found it hard to deliver her side of the bargain. What we have before us today, with the Government asking for the
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writ to be issued, is the shoddy compromise of being made a Vice-President of the European Commission. Should the House of Commons go along with allowing the by-election to oblige the Prime Minister and Sir Leon Brittan?
Is it not in the interests of the electors of Richmond that we should have an inquiry which might ask Colette Bowe and John Mogg why they found it necessary to put their accounts of these events in a bank vault? Civil servants whose accounts of events tally with that of their political masters do not normally find it necessary to put their accounts in bank vaults.
The inquiry might also ask Mr. Ingham and Mr. Powell why they did not tell the Prime Minister what the Select Committee—chaired, I repeat, by a Conservative Privy Councillor, sent subsequently to the other place—knew about Leon Brittan's role: paragraph 187 of the report of the Select Committee on Defence.
The Prime Minister should also be asked by the inquiry for the benefit of the electors of Richmond why, if Mr. Ingham and Mr. Powell failed to tell her what they knew about the Law Officer's letter, they still remain in two of the most important offices in Britain. Why are they still in Downing street, basking in unprecedented favour, if that was the case?
The tribunal might also ask why this most inquisitive of Prime Ministers—no Conservative Member would deny that—requires us to believe that she never had the curiosity to ask her Secretary of State for Trade and Industry——
Mr. Derek Conway: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The hon. Gentleman's comments are interesting, and we have cantered round this course before, but how far are you prepared to let the debate widen? For some while the hon. Gentleman has been talking about circumstances in which Sir Leon Brittan left the Government, not the House of Commons. Therefore, I suggest that he is going wide of the point.
Mr. Speaker: I was present for much of what went on a fortnight ago when the motion was first debated. Nothing was out of order then, and nothing that I have heard today has been out of order. However, I hope that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) will not take too much time of the House.
Mr. Dalyell: I am curious to know how it was that, according to the Select Committee, Mr. Powell and Mr. Ingham knew all about its former member's role on 7 January, and yet a Prime Minister who saw them five times a day never sought to ask about a matter that was threatening her Government, or at least her personal position, day after day. That was an exceedingly uncharacteristic lack of curiosity.
There is something more that the Prime Minister and Sir Leon Brittan ought to tell the electorate.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has given the House his views on that matter. Perhaps he will return to explaining why he believes that the writ should not be issued.
Mr. Dalyell: Before any writ is issued, and before any by-election takes place, there ought to be an explanation as to why, on 27 January, the Prime Minister could murmur, "I may not be Prime Minister at six o'clock tonight."—[Interruption.] She herself confirmed that to David Frost.

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He asked her four times, and on the fourth time of asking she replied to Mr. Frost, "Well, it is just one of the things that one says."
Mr. Speaker: Order. That has nothing to do with the issuing of the writ. I ask the hon. Gentleman to return to that matter.
Mr. Dalyell: The British electorate may wonder why, after seven years in Downing street, and wanting to be re-elected for a third term, the Prime Minister would say such a thing. She said it for one reason only—because she did not know whether Sir Leon Brittan, sitting on the Back Benches, would spill the beans on her. That is why she said, quite uncharacteristically, that she might not be Prime Minister by six o'clock on that night.
I do not wish to try the patience of the House, but for some right hon. and hon. Members these are not frivolous issues but issues of deep importance concerning the integrity and probity of public life. That is why—for the first, and I suspect only, time—I oppose the writ.
3.52 pm
Mr. Ian Gow: The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) seems not to have understood that our former right hon. and learned Friend took up his appointment as commissioner in Brussels at the beginning of last month. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman's attempt to deny the people of Richmond the opportunity to have a Member of Parliament, if its purpose is to prevent Sir Leon Brittan from becoming our commissioner, is futile. The hon. Gentleman told the House today nothing that he has not told it on many previous occasions. I have no doubt that the electors of Richmond will pay precisely the same avid interest to his remarks this afternoon as they paid to his remarks on all the previous occasions.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin) pointed out, since the events to which the hon. Member for Linlithgow referred took place in January 1986, there has been a general election, when Sir Leon Brittan was Conservative candidate for Richmond. Between January 1986 and June 1987, the hon. Member for Linlithgow made many speeches almost identical to that which he made this afternoon. Therefore, if the people of Richmond were to be influenced by his words, they had the opportunity to do something about the matter in the months that elapsed between January 1986 and June 1987. The people of Richmond gave their verdict on our former right hon. and learned Friend when, at the last general election, the Conservative majority in Richmond increased from 18,000 to 19,500. That was in marked contrast to the Labour majority in Linlithgow, which fell from 11,000 to 10,000.
We are entitled to inquire about the real motive behind the hon. Gentleman's speech. At the last general election, the Labour candidate for Richmond received even fewer votes than the alliance candidate. This time the Labour party, characteristically, has chosen a dud candidate in Richmond.
The reason why the hon. Gentleman seeks to defer the writ——
Mr. Frank Dobson: Does the hon. Gentleman regard as a dud a man who parachuted at 2 in the morning of D-day to capture the bridges behind the beaches? Is that man a dud? He is our candidate at Richmond.
Mr. Gow: The courage of the Labour candidate is not in doubt; but, almost by definition, if one is a candidate for the Labour party in present circumstances, one is a dud. Indeed, it is a mark of the courage of the Labour candidate at Richmond that he has put himself forward as a candidate.
We may mark the contrast between the courage of the Labour candidate at Richmond and the courage of the Labour delegation which has made a journey to Moscow to seek advice about what defence policy should be put before the electorate. Indeed, that is one factor behind the wish of the hon. Member for Linlithgow to defer the by-election, for it may take many months—some might think many years—for the Labour party to fashion a defence policy suitable to be put before the electorate of Richmond, or anywhere else.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is in his place. He is anxious to expound the virtues of the Government's housing policy, but my right hon. Friend will expect, as I do, that those on the Opposition Front Bench will seek to prolong the life of this Parliament so that they may try to get together a defence policy to submit to the electorate.
There is another aspect of the Richmond by-election. You will recall, Mr. Speaker, because you follow these things closely, that at the general election there was but a single candidate for what was then called the alliance. Since then the alliance has split asunder and we are told that there will be two candidates for the single grouping which at the general election formed the alliance. l could well understand it if the representatives of the Liberal party and of the Social and Liberal Democratic party had sought to postpone the by-election because they need more time to get their act together.
I have a keen affection, as does the hon. Member for Linlithgow, for another former Member of the House, Dick Crossman. I had the good fortune to be the Conservative candidate in Coventry, East nearly 25 years ago. I have to say, because I am a fair man, that as a result of my efforts, Dick Crossman's majority rose from 6,000 to 16,000—but we shall let that pass. I have been re-reading the diaries which are so beloved by the hon. Member for Linlithgow. On page 49 of volume 1 these words appear:
"Tam Dalyell himself makes it very difficult. He is as awkward, stubborn and lovable as ever."
I agree with Dick Crossman's verdict.
4 pm
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Wakeham): The House has considered at some length the question of the issuing of the writ for the Richmond by-election. On a previous occasion I said that I preferred to rely on the judgment of the Patronage Secretary as to when the writ should be moved, although I signified that he would, of course, follow the convention of moving it before three months had elapsed from the time the seat became vacant.
My right hon. and learned Friend is now keen to give the voters of Richmond the opportunity, as is their wont, to return a Conservative Member of Parliament. A wide variety of issues concerning this motion have already been debated, from the likely weather on polling day to the rigours of Catterick camp.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has made his predictable speech and he will know by heart my

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response to it. We have an important Opposition day debate this afternoon, and I do not think the hon. Gentleman's colleagues would thank him if their Supply Day were truncated by yet another debate on the Richmond writ.
I hope that the House will now approve the motion.
4.2 pm
Mr. Matthew Taylor: I support the Leader of the House in calling for the House to move ahead with the writ. The people of Richmond have been deprived of representation for a considerable time by silly party political bickering between Labour and Conservative Members over the timing of this by-election.
The real scandal is the delay on the part of the Conservative party over this by-election, which could have been over before Christmas and the people of the constituency would have had proper representation. The delays that are now occurring are preventing important matters being debated, including housing.
4.3 pm
Mr. Neil Hamilton: We should be told why the Labour party is so undesirous of having this by-election held. This is the second occasion on which the Government have attempted to move the writ. Two weeks ago the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) frustrated the evident desire of the people of Richmond to have a Member of Parliament to represent them. Today the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) seeks to delay the moving of the writ yet again.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow is sticking as tenaciously as ever to his obsession with the Belgrano, with Westland and with various other issues in which the country long ago lost any interest. Just as the Belgrano has gone to the bottom of the Atlantic, so the Labour party will go to the bottom of the poll when this by-election is held. Although the hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) sits on the Labour Front Bench and appears to be desirous of having this by-election, Labour Members are running scared and do not want it to take place under any circumstances.
We could resolve this matter today and the hon. Member for Linlithgow could bring his views to the attention of the country if he would apply to the Patronage Secretary for the Stewardship of the Manor of Northstead, resign his seat and then become the Labour candidate in the by-election in Richmond. In those circumstances, the hon. Gentleman, who is a member of the county aristocracy in his part of the world, would greatly appeal to the up-market members of the community in Richmond. So he could do a great deal to improve the Labour party's potential in the by-election.
But if the hon. Gentleman were to take that course, it might not appeal to the occupants of the Labour Front Bench. I do not think they would be happy to have a by-election in Scotland at this time. It is not long since there was a by-election in the Glasgow, Govan constituency, and just as Queen Mary of England went to her grave with "Calais" written on her heart, so I believe the Leader of the Opposition will go to his political grave
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at the next election with the word "Govan" tattooed on his fingers. Therefore, the Labour party would not be keen on having an election in Scotland, or anywhere else, just now.
The Labour candidate in Richmond is performing the same sort of function as the Light Brigade performed for this country in the Crimean war. He knows that he is going into the jaws of death and the mouth of hell, and we admire his courage.[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. Will hon. Members who appear to be having a committee meeting on the Bench below the Gangway please desist or leave the Chamber?
Mr. Hamilton: I know what it must be like to be the Labour candidate in Richmond. On the first occasion that I put myself forward as a parliamentary candidate I stood for Abertillery. I duly turned in 9 per cent. of the vote, which I doubt the Labour condidate in Richmond will achieve. A least I had the satisfaction, when we were able to bring the boundary changes into force after the election, of seeing that constituency abolished and divided between Islwyn and Blaenau Gwent. I thought, "Serve them right" in the Abertillery constituency for rejecting me.
I appreciate the sensitivity of Labour Members to having by-elections at this time. That is surprising because at the mid-point of a Parliament Oppositions normally do well. At present, we seem to be in the extraordinary situation—perhaps not so extraordinary when one considers the huge success of the Government—that today the Conservatives are doing better in the opinion polls than they were at the time of the last general election. So we shall be looking to increasing the majority of the Conservative candidate in the Richmond by-election, and that will be the most eloquent testimony to the interest of the people of this country in the points that the hon. Member for Linlithgow has made today and in the policies of the Labour party.
While I, as a kind and compassionate individual, should be happy not to cause more hurt and harm to the Labour party—because we should always look upon the political down-and-outs with the same compassion as we should look to those who have difficulty in running their own lives—the interests of the people of Richmond, and of Britain generally, depend on moving the writ, not only for this by-election but for Pontypridd as well. I look forward to seeing another two representatives of the Conservative party on these Benches after those by-elections have taken place.
4.7 pm
Mr. David Curry: There is a melancholy ruin in Linlithgow. I recall that the Palace of Linlithgow is a red sandstone building. Queen Margaret, shortly after the battle of Flodden, took to one of the upper rooms and gazed across the horizon for her husband to return, and he did not. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) reminds me of Queen Margaret gazing forlornly, hoping for something to turn up.
My constituency of Skipton and Ripon borders that of Richmond. I worked with Sir Leon Brittan when he was the Member for Richmond—one of those happy parts of the country which could be described as a Labour-free zone—and I am in a position to testify to the esteem in which he was held by his constituents.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow kept referring to what the people of Richmond were entitled to have and needed.

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I can tell him about both of those. They are entitled to a Member of Parliament, and that we are now trying to give them. They are concerned with issues about which I could speak for some time, but I assure him that they are not concerned about the events of several years ago to which the hon. Gentleman frequently refers.
Mr. Dalyell: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves the subject of Queen Margaret, may I ask him to agree that we should receive an explanation of the Westland affair?
Mr. Curry: The Secretary of State for Education and Science has said that more British history should be taught in our schools. If it were, perhaps more people, including the hon. Gentleman, would be aware that the battle of Flodden pre-dates the Westland affair, having taken place in 1513.
The matters which concern the people of Richmond and which need the attention of a Member of Parliament are, for example, the future of the national parks, which was referred to in the recent planning document published by the Secretary of State for the Environment, farm incomes, matters affecting the uplands and less favoured areas and the whole question of planning permission. We are speaking of one of those happy areas where there is rapid growth and where unemployment is rarely over 4 per cent., thanks to the success of the Government's policies. While they are concerned about low-flying aircraft, they welcome the presence of our defence forces in the constituency which testify to the success of the policy of deterrence.
They wish Sir Leon well in his new responsibilities. They saw him go with regret because he was such a good Member. They know that he will have great enthusiasm in Brussels and that he will do an outstanding job for Britain, and I could easily enumerate his responsibilities there and their great importance.
Mr. Robert Adley: As Sir Leon Brittan's old constituency borders my hon. Friend's constituency, I presume that my hon. Friend will be including in his peroration comments about the Settle to Carlisle railway line.
Mr. Curry: My hon. Friend is right. I have received some letters about that matter from Richmond constituents, and I am dealing with that correspondence. They are most anxious to ensure that the line is maintained. My hon. Friend will recall that a report on the tourist implications of the closure of that line said that there could be a serious tourist loss. We support, therefore, the continued existence of a railway which is unique in the United Kingdom and which touches the Richmond constituency, mine and many other constituencies. We could go into the details of this matter this afternoon.
There are two essential points. First, the people of Richmond are concerned about their Member of Parliament getting their matters dealt with and supporting the Government in the House. For that they need a Member of Parliament—a Conservative Member of Parliament. The dismal battle for fifth place between the ecologists and the Labour party is of very little concern to the people in that constituency. Secondly, they wish Sir Leon the greatest luck in his important responsibility. They saw him go with regret and they wish him well. They applaud his excellent work, and they are confident that the next Conservative Member will do just as well.
4.21 pm
Mr. Tony Marlow: When I looked at my Order Paper this morning, I noticed that today was an important day, because it was an Opposition day. I noticed that the Opposition have set out two important—I presume they are to them—motions. The first was to have been on housing, and the second on wages councils. I said "was", but they still may be debated. I then asked myself why, when the Opposition have what they consider to be important motions on the Order Paper and have a few of their troops here—there are many Conservative Members here. but not many Opposition Members, which is the usual position—they have decided to initiate a debate about the Richmond by-election. They have initiated it, and they shall have it.
I believe that there are many points to be made about the Opposition's reasons for initiating this debate. I confess that I am not capable of making all the points myself. The Opposition may be having a debate on the moving of the writ for the by-election because they are concerned about their motions on the Order Paper. The Opposition may have had second thoughts. They may be deeply worried about the implications of those motions. They have a motion on housing. Why should they he worried about that one? Perhaps it is because they do not have a housing policy.
Mrs. Ann Clwyd: If the hon. Gentleman would sit down, he would find out.
Mr. Marlow: Does the hon. Lady wish to intervene?
Mrs. Clwyd: If the hon. Gentleman sat down, he would find out the answer to that question very rapidly.
Mr. Marlow: I will indeed, when I have addressed myself to this important debate, which her hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow initiated, I presume, with the full support of the Opposition. I shall sit down when I have dealt with this matter, but, of course, some of my hon. Friends may then have something to say.
Mr. Eric S. Heffer: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. On three occasions the hon. Gentleman has said that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has made this point about the writ with the agreement of the official Opposition. The hon. Gentleman and the House know that that is untrue. Any individual Back Bencher can raise any subject he likes. I have done it many times, and certainly without the agreement of my Front Bench. Hon. Members must not say that the Opposition are doing something officially when, in fact, it is a Back Bencher using his rights in this House.
Mr. Speaker: It is an absolute right of an hon. Member. All Members are equal in this House.
Mr. Marlow: If I have made a wrong statement, I crave the indulgence of the House. However, I and my hon. Friends have a great deal of difficulty with this, because there are so many splits and crevices in the Opposition that it is difficult to know whether a motion or a measure such as this is proposed with the whole-hearted support of the entire Opposition Front Bench, part of the Opposition Front Bench, the Chief Whip on the Opposition Front Bench, the leader of the party or anybody else.
Mr. Adley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is a kind and compassionate man. In view of what the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller) has said, I am concerned that it may be argued that the Opposition Chief Whip is not in control of the troops on his own Benches. That has serious implications for this House and the parliamentary procedures which we all follow. I wonder if my hon. Friend would like to turn his mind to that point.
Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that he will not do that. The hon. Member should get back to the reason why we should pass this motion. Is not that what the hon. Member is arguing?
Mr. Marlow: You are right, of course, Mr. Speaker. I am afraid that my hon. Friend was being a little uncharitable. I am sure that the Opposition Chief Whip has total control over his party. The difficulty is knowing what proportion and what part of the Labour party he has control over.
The hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) said that, if I were to sit down—my hon. Friends having made their points and Opposition Members having spoken on this important writ, because I am sure that many other Opposition Members wish to make a contribution——
Mr. Heffer: Sit down, you idiot.
Mr. Marlow: I am not sure that I heard that, but I am told that it takes one to know one.
Mr.Tony Fayell: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Marlow: Will my hon. Friend be patient? I shall give way in a moment.
The hon. Member for Cynon Valley said that she wanted me to sit down so that the Opposition could tell us about housing policy. We have now embarked upon an important debate, and it may take a significant amount of time. What will not take a significant amount of time is telling the House about the Labour party's housing policy.
Mr. Favell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, which I believe he has just done. Has it escaped his notice that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), who is opposing this motion, is a Member of the Scottish Labour party? Does he welcome his intervention, as I do, in what is essentially English business, just as English Members try to participate in Scottish business?
Mr. Marlow: That is an important point. As you remind us—often quite rightly—Mr. Speaker, we all stand or sit here as Members of Parliament for the United Kingdom, and we are proud to do so. It is important that Members of Parliament for the United Kingdom are involved in debates on all subjects concerning the whole of the United Kingdom. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing that point to my attention.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) stated in his all-too-brief intervention that the Labour party was concerned because of its defence policy. It was concerned about the date of the writ being moved, and the by-election coming forward, because the Labour party had not quite worked out its defence policy. Members of the Labour party have gone to Russia to sort out the party's defence policy; the party has received its orders from Russia; but it has not yet put its defence policy together.
Mr. Speaker: Order. the hon. Gentleman's comments must be related to the Richmond by-election.
Mr. Marlow: I am sure you will acknowledge, Mr. Speaker, that Catterick camp, one of the foremost military camps, is located right in the centre of the Richmond constituency. Defence, therefore, will be on everybody's tongue throughout the by-election campaign. It is an issue which is of the essence. I am sure that it will feature strongly and prominently throughout the whole campaign. If the writ is moved today to the date which my right hon. Friend the Patronage Secretary has suggested, it will be a relatively short campaign. One might almost say that defence is such an important issue in that constituency that one should be concerned that it is such a short campaign. Labour party's policy on defence is so obscure, convoluted and changing by the day that not only would it take a long time for the Labour party to sort out its approach to that policy, but it would take even longer to explain it.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: As defence is so important to the electorate of Richmond, I wonder whether they listened to the Labour spokesman on Sunday, who outlined a policy that bore no resemblance to Labour party policy. Which is the official policy?
Mr. Marlow: Normally my hon. Friend is extremely charitable—we all try to be charitable about people in difficulties and we particularly try to be charitable about the Labour party. This is an opportunity for the Labour party to clarify its policy on defence before the by-election takes place. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne cogently said earlier on, the time afforded for such clarification is not long enough.
Defence is one of the many policies which will be debated and discussed during the forthcoming by-election, if the motion is carried today. The constituents of Richmond will also need to know about education policy.
Mr. Alan Meale: Does the hon. Gentleman also agree that one of the issues that must be discussed before the by-election is our attitude to Europe, particularly prior to 1992? Bearing in mind the history of the ex-Member of Parliament for Richmond, Yorks who is now the Commissioner in Europe, does he believe that Europe will come to the fore during the by-election? The hon. Gentleman and I are members of the Select Committee on European Legislation, a sitting of which started 21 minutes ago. Does he not believe that he should wind up his contribution to get this matter out of the way so that we may both go upstairs to fulfil our duties?
Mr. Marlow: I second the hon. Gentleman about the importance of Europe and later in my speech I intend to develop my thoughts on that at greater length than I have done thus far. I understand that the hon. Gentleman is concerned about the sitting of the Select Committee on European Legislation, which was supposed to start 21 minutes ago. The hon. Gentleman would like to be there, as would many of us. It has been suggested that—[Interruption.] What is going on on the Opposition Benches, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not think it matters what is going on on the Opposition Benches. The hon. Gentleman should keep to the question about the Richmond writ being moved; that is what should be going on.
Mr. Marlow: Yes, but messages have been passed. I suppose that those messages were not from you, Mr. Speaker, but originated from some other power within the House. That is fine. There is a problem.
Mr. Richard Holtrose——
Mr. Marlow: I shall give way in a moment, if my hon. Friend would be patient.
Someone has suggested that it may be possible to suspend the sitting of the European Select Committee until such time as this particular issue has been debated. I do not know whether there is a procedure to do so. Is that possible, Mr. Speaker?
Mr. Speaker: I am not responsible for the sittings of Select Committees.
Mr. Marlow: I am grateful for your ruling.
Mr. Holt: I am grateful to my hon. Friend giving way, as the discussion of European elections gives me the opportunity to discuss the attitude of the Labour party in the neighbouring constituency to mine, which has a Conservative Member of Parliament. What will be the Labour party candidate's attitude at the forthcoming by-election given that in the north-east we fought the two previous general elections on the Labour party's desire to come out of Europe?
Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not believe that that is relevant to the Richmond by-election, to which we must return. There is a further writ to move before we get on to the business of the day.
Mr. Marlow: May I gently and mildly reprimand my hon. Friend for trying to lead me down a path other than that of righteousness? What he raised is certainly something to which I should not refer at this stage in the debate.
I have already told the House about the problems inherent in the Richmond by-election and in conducting it within a short period of time. One policy of particular importance to Richmond, as it is to my constituency, is education. The Labour party has no defence policy to put before the people of Richmond and I believe that it has no education policy to put before them. Perhaps that is why the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) was called upon to move the writ, so as possibly to delay the holding of the by-election. We do not know, but perhaps we should be told. If the Labour party has no proper policy on education, how can it face the electorate of Richmond?
I will take another example out of the hat. Yesterday, we had an extremely important statement from my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Health. He set out a brilliant, new, exciting, stimulating and revolutionary policy for improving the Health Service of this country and, among the health services of this country, obviously the health service of Richmond figured prominently in his mind. He wants to improve the health services available to the people of Richmond. Various questions were put by Opposition Members, we had leaks by the Opposition, smothering tactics and misleading statements by the Opposition, but we have had no policy from the Opposition. That is the problem. Probably that is another reason why the hon. Member for Linlithgow was called upon to make his speech—because the Labour party does not want the by-election to take place until it
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has a positive policy on health, education and defence. On that basis, it will he an extremely long time before it is ready to take a by-election in Richmond.
4.25 pm
Mr. Robert Adley: I was constrained to join briefly in this debate only by the confirmation by my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Mr. Curry) that the Settle-Carlisle railway line runs along the boundary of the constituency.
Mr. Derek Foster rose——
Mr. Speaker: Order. I shall accept the closure when the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) has completed his speech.
Mr. Adley: This is a serious matter, because the people of Richmond may believe that the Government's decision on whether to keep open the Settle-Carlisle railway line is determined by the timing of the by-election. Therefore, this is an appropriate opportunity to say a few words. I am sure that the hon. Members for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) and for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) recognise the relevance of that issue to the by-election and will join me in hoping that, somehow, the holding of the by-election will help to convince the Government of the absolute necessity of retaining that railway line. I am confident that my right hon. and learned Friend the Patronage Secretary, who never speaks, will be silently nodding his head as the River Ribble rises in his constituency.
Mr. Neil Hamilton rose——
Mr. Marlow rose——
Mr. Adley: I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton).
Mr. Marlow: My hon. Friend cannot give way during an intervention.
Mr. Speaker: Order. There is some confusion. I called the hon. Member for Christchurch. He has started his speech and I hope that he can get on with it.
Mr. Adley: My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) feels constrained to intervene in my speech, which he thought was an intervention in his speech, but which Mr. Speaker believes is a speech on its own account. I shall give way later to my hon. Friend the Member for Tatton, on the assumption that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North does not wish to make an intervention in what he thought was an intervention in his speech.
I am waiting to decide how to vote on this motion by determinig whether it is better for the people of Richmond, who want to see the Settle-Carlisle line retained, to have a by-election or whether to allow the Government a pregnant pause for thought before that by-election. Perhaps we should restrain our enthusiasm for this by-election. The Government must reach a decision on the future of that railway line by May, and they might be further and better pressurised by not having the by-election and by not moving the writ today.
Mr. Neil Hamilton: I am sure that the House will have great sympathy with my hon. Friend about the possible closure of the Settle-Carlisle railway line. On the question of closures, did my hon. Friend note, a moment ago, that

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the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) shortly intends to move the closure of the debate? Considering that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) instigated the debate in the first place because he believes that the Government have gagged discussion of Westland and so on, does my hon. Friend agree that it is rather extraordinary that his colleague, the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland, is pursuing the same tactics of which he falsely accuses the Government?
Mr. Adley: I agree with my hon. Friend. It shows, first, that Labour Members have a contempt for democracy, and, secondly, that they have no real interest in the outcome of the Richmond by-election. Perhaps that answers the point that my hon. Friend made so eloquently.
Mr. Conway: I am sure that my hon. Friend will accept that some hon. Members may believe that some off-the-wire filibuster has begun. That is not the case, because some of us have prepared speeches for the housing debate which we hope will follow, and if you, Mr. Speaker, were gracious enough to call me, I would wish to make that speech. Some of us did want, if an early closure motion was not moved, to contribute to the debate. Those of us who have a personal knowledge of Richmond, where my wife went to school and where I did some military training, wished to talk about the excellent constituents who live there. The filibuster was begun by Labour Members who spoke about everything but Richmond and has been continued by the Conservative Members who want to let the electors of Richmond know how concerned and aware we are of their life styles and their interests.
Mr. Adley: I share my hon. Friend's concern. I agree with everything he said except his split infinitive which I am sure Hansard will adjust properly.
Mr. Holt: I want to remind my hon. Friend about a recent occasion when an Opposition Member spoke on this writ for about three hours. One of the subjects that was vital to that debate was the weather in the area. As I represent the next-door constituency, and live there, I would be able to make a considerable contribution about the weather if the debate were allowed to continue. I remind the House that at that time Mr. Deputy Speaker ruled that, as long as sufficient hon. Members wanted to speak and stood up, the debate would not be curtailed except by the Chair. Therefore, I hope that, when my hon. Friend has sat down, I will have the opportunity to speak at great length on the weather in the area at the moment and the likely weather pattern over the next few weeks leading up to the by-election.
Mr. Adley: My hon. Friend will excuse me, but if I were to agree with him it would be taken as critical of Mr. Speaker of how long he allows the debate to continue.
Mr. Favell: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Adley: In a moment. I should like to comment on an eloquent and eminently acceptable speech made by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). I am sorry that the hon. Member for Bolsover is hiding his head in his hands at the thought of receiving compliments from me, but he is also a supporter of the Settle-Carlisle railway line, so I hope that he will not mind my mentioning his eloquent speech.
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As I have a meeting with my hon. Friend the Minister for Public Transport at 5 o'clock to discuss the future of the Settle-Carlisle railway line, you, Mr. Speaker, my hon. Friends and Opposition Members will be pleased to know that I shall not continue my speech for much longer.
Mr. Favell: I understand my hon. Friend to be suggesting either that the writ should not be moved until he has received from the Government a decision satisfactory to him about the Settle-Carlisle railway line, or alternatively he intends to continue speaking until such a decision has been taken. Is he really suggesting what is now known in Labour party annals in Yorkshire as doing a Humber bridge?
Mr. Adley: Before I comment on the Humber bridge, my hon. Friend has in his constituency the famous Stockport viaduct which has been restored——
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman should address his remarks to the motion. That viaduct is not in Richmond.
Mr. Adley: I was going to go straight from the Stockport viaduct to the Ribblehead viaduct, which is the main physical feature of the Settle-Carlisle railway line. Many people in the Richmond parliamentary constituency hope that the railway line stays open and are extremely concerned about that great listed structure immediately adjoining their constituency. I hope that the candidates in the by-election, when it is declared, will turn their minds to the importance of the retention of that line.
At the moment, British Rail is seeking permission to close the line, but the Government have put British Rail in charge of co-ordinating efforts to keep the line open. To my mind, that is rather like inviting Genghis Khan to become the general manager of a refugee camp. Therefore, I very much hope that candidates in the Richmond by-election will give the future of the Settle-Carlisle railway line their absolute priority. By a quirk of legislative fate, the Manpower Services Commission is unable to provide assistance to British Rail, as it is a nationalised industry.
One reason why the future of the Settle-Carlisle railway line is in jeopardy is the state of the Ribblehead viaduct. Over the years, British Rail has exaggerated the cost of repairing the viaduct and is unable to take advantage of the Manpower Services Commission funds because British Rail is a nationalised industry.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Is my hon. Friend aware that one of my constituents has been instrumental in trying to preserve one of the arches of that viaduct in which the people of Richmond have a legal interest?
Mr. Speaker: Order. These comments are interesting. I know about the railway line, but could the debate be related to why the writ should or should not be moved?
Mr. Adley: I entirely agree with you, Mr. Speaker; therefore, I shall conclude after my hon. Friend has intervened again.
Mr. Holt: I appreciate my hon. Friend's great interest in the railway line. He mentioned the Humber bridge. One of the matters which will be germane——
Mr. Speaker: Order. But that bridge is not in Richmond.
Mr. Holt: I was saying that one of the matters which will be germane in Richmond will be whether the A1 road which goes right through the constituency should be made into a motorway. That is of vital importance for the people of Richmond. My hon. Friend would do well to balance his remarks about the railway by considering the needs of road traffic, as the two matters are very much complementary.
Mr. Adley: I shall be brief, as I do not wish to abuse the House, and I do not wish to be late for my meeting with my hon. Friend the Minister for Public Transport.
My hon. Friend may have heard my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister respond to my question yesterday. I asked her to instruct the Department of Transport to reconsider the comparative criteria which that Department uses in assessing the costs of and benefits to the nation of road versus rail transport. I certainly hope that the candidates in the Richmond by-election will take my point. I do not know the budget of the north Yorkshire constabulary in whose area the Richmond constituency lies. The budget of the Dorset constabulary is £40 million a year. The chief constable does not know, because he has never been invited to find out, what proportion of his budget has to be spent on costs involving roads and road traffic offences.
An enormous proportion of any chief constable's budget involves not only policing accidents but dealing with offences, attending court and administration. I am quite sure that the situation in north Yorkshire is exactly the same as that in Dorset. How can any Government accurately assess road versus rail costs unless items such as the policing costs of road traffic and road transport are taken into account?
Mr. Marlow rose——
Mr. Roger King rose——
Mr. Adley: While I welcome my hon. Friends' views, in view of my appointment at the Department of Transport, I shall not give way. I would be abusing my position if I were to give way. You, Mr. Speaker, asked me to come to the point about the timing of the by-election.
I am not certain whether the future of the Settle-Carlisle railway line is best preserved by an early by-election or a later by-election. In view of the timing of the decision by the Department of Transport in May as to the future of the railway line, it may be better if the by-election is postponed and left hanging over the Government's head until they have made that decision. That is the purpose of my brief intervention in the debate.
Mr. Foster rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
Question put, That the Question be now put:—
The House divided: Ayes 344, Noes 6.

Division No. 69]

[4.39 pm

AYES

Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Adley, Robert

Ashby, David

Alexander, Richard

Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Ashton, Joe

Allen, Graham

Aspinwall, Jack

Alton, David

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

Anderson, Donald

Baldry, Tony

Arbuthnot, James

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Armstrong, Hilary

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

314

Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

Barron, Kevin

Durant, Tony

Batiste,Spencer

Dykes, Hugh

Beckett, Margaret

Eadie, Alexander

Beith, A. J.

Eastham, Ken

Benyon, W.

Emery, Sir Peter

Bermingham, Gerald

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Bevan, David Gilroy

Fallon, Michael

Bidwell, Sydney

Fatchett, Derek

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Favell, Tony

Blair, Tony

Fearn, Ronald

Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

Blunkett, David

Flannery, Martin

Boateng, Paul

Flynn, Paul

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Fookes, Dame Janet

Boswell, Tim

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Bottomley, Peter

Forman, Nigel

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

Forth, Eric

Boyes, Roland

Foster, Derek

Bradley, Keith

Fox, Sir Marcus

Brazier, Julian

Franks, Cecil

Browne, John (Winchester)

Fraser, John

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Freeman, Roger

Buchan, Norman

Fry, Peter

Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

Fyfe, Maria

Buck, Sir Antony

Galbraith, Sam

Buckley, George J.

Galloway, George

Budgen, Nicholas

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Burns, Simon

Garrett, John (Norwich South)

Burt, Alistair

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

Butler, Chris

Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

Butterfill, John

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Caborn, Richard

Goodhart, Sir Philip

Callaghan, Jim

Gould, Bryan

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Gow, Ian

Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

Gower, Sir Raymond

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Graham, Thomas

Canavan, Dennis

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Carrington, Matthew

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Cash, William

Gregory, Conal

Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Chapman, Sydney

Grist, Ian

Chope, Christopher

Grocott, Bruce

Clark, Hon Alan (Plym'th S'n)

Ground, Patrick

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Hampson, Dr Keith

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

Harris, David

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Haselhurst, Alan

Clay, Bob

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Clelland, David

Hayes, Jerry

Cohen, Harry

Haynes, Frank

Colvin, Michael

Hayward, Robert

Conway, Derek

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Heddle, John

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

Heffer, Eric S.

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

Cope, Rt Hon John

Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

Corbett, Robin

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Corbyn, Jeremy

Home Robertson, John

Cousins, Jim

Hood, Jimmy

Crowther, Stan

Howard, Michael

Cryer, Bob

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

Cummings, John

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Cunningham, Dr John

Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

Curry, David

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Dalyell, Tam

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Darling, Alistair

Hunter, Andrew

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

Irvine, Michael

Day, Stephen

Irving, Charles

Dewar, Donald

Jack, Michael

Dicks, Terry

Janman, Tim

Dixon, Don

Janner, Greville

Dobson, Frank

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Doran, Frank

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

Dorrell, Stephen

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Dover, Den

Kennedy, Charles

Duffy, A. E. P.

Key, Robert

Dunnachie, Jimmy

King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

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Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

Powell, William (Corby)

Kirkhope, Timothy

Prescott, John

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

Price, Sir David

Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

Primarolo, Dawn

Knowles, Michael

Quin, Ms Joyce

Knox, David

Radice, Giles

Lamond, James

Raffan, Keith

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

Lawrence, Ivan

Redwood, John

Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Reid, Dr John

Leighton, Ron

Rhodes James, Robert

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

Lightbown, David

Robertson, George

Livingstone, Ken

Robinson, Geoffrey

Livsey, Richard

Roe, Mrs Marion

Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

Rooker, Jeff

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

Rossi, Sir Hugh

Luce, Rt Hon Richard

Ryder, Richard

Lyell, Sir Nicholas

Sackville, Hon Tom

McAllion, John

Salmond, Alex

McAvoy, Thomas

Scott, Nicholas

McCrindle, Robert

Sedgemore, Brian

Macfarlane, Sir Neil

Shaw, David (Dover)

McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Maclean, David

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

Maclennan, Robert

Sheerman, Barry

McLoughlin, Patrick

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

McTaggart, Bob

Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

Madden, Max

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

Madel, David

Shersby, Michael

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Short, Clare

Marek, Dr John

Skinner, Dennis

Marland, Paul

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

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

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

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

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Maude, Hon Francis

Smyth, Rev Martin (Belfast S)

Maxton, John

Soley, Clive

Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Spearing, Nigel

Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

Speller, Tony

Meale, Alan

Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

Meyer, Sir Anthony

Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

Michael, Alun

Squire, Robin

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Stanbrook, Ivor

Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

Miller, Sir Hal

Steel, Rt Hon David

Mills, Iain

Steinberg, Gerry

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Stern, Michael

Monro, Sir Hector

Stevens, Lewis

Moore, Rt Hon John

Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

Morgan, Rhodri

Stradling Thomas, Sir John

Morley, Elliott

Sumberg, David

Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Morrison, Sir Charles

Temple-Morris, Peter

Mudd, David

Thurnham, Peter

Mullin, Chris

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Murphy, Paul

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Neale, Gerrard

Trippier, David

Neubert, Michael

Turner, Dennis

Newton, Rt Hon Tony

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

Nicholls, Patrick

Vaz, Keith

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Waddington, Rt Hon David

Norris, Steve

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

Walker, Bill (T'side North)

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Wall, Pat

Paice, James

Walters, Sir Dennis

Patchett, Terry

Ward, John

Pawsey, James

Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

Pike, Peter L.

Wareing, Robert N.

Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

Warren, Kenneth

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

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Wheeler, John

Wood, Timothy

Widdecombe, Ann

Woodcock, Mike

Wiggin, Jerry

Worthington, Tony

Williams, Rt Hon Alan

Wray, Jimmy

Winnick, David

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Winterton, Mrs Ann

Winterton, Nicholas

Tellers for the Ayes:

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Mrs. Ann Clwyd and

Wolfson, Mark

Mr. Ted Rowlands.

NOES

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

Carttiss, Michael

Tellers for the Noes:

Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

Mr. Neil Hamilton and

Marlow, Tony

Mr. Michael Brown.

Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new Writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the county constituency of Richmond, Yorks in the room of the right hon. Sir Leon Brittan, QC, who, since his election for the said county constituency, hath accepted the Office of Steward or Bailiff of Her Majesty's Manor of Northstead in the County of York.
4.52 pm
Mr. Nicholas Bennett: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The closure of the previous debate was moved after one hour and nine minutes which is an extremely short period after which a closure motion is accepted. May I take it that, in accepting the closure, you were taking into account our five-hour debate on this subject the Friday before last? If that is so, may I take it that, when we debate the Pontypridd writ, which has not previously been debated, you will bear in mind the wishes of hon. Members who want to speak on the subject?
Mr. Speaker: I take account of all kinds of matters in accepting a closure motion to be put to the House. Thereafter, I am bound to abide by the House's decision.
Mr. Holt: With respect, Mr. Speaker, I must draw your attention to Madam Deputy Speaker's ruling on this subject a week last Friday. She said—I believe that I quote her almost exactly—that she would not allow a closure motion to be put until there were fewer Members rising in their places to speak. I made a challenge on a point of order at that time and she told me that, in her opinion, as too many Members were still rising to speak, a closure motion could not be allowed. In other words, the Chair's decision was based on the number of Members rising to speak.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is correct to say that it is the Chair's decision whether to accept the closure, but it is then up to the House to decide whether it wishes the debate to continue.
Mr. Holt: With respect, I must point out that we were not allowed to vote on whether the House wanted a closure on that occasion. Surely that precedent could have been followed today.
Mr. Speaker: No. No occupant of the Chair gives his reasons for accepting the closure.

New Writ (Pontypridd)
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new Writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the county constituency of Pontypridd in the room of Brynmor Thomas John, Esquire, deceased.—[Mr. Foster.]
4.55 pm
Dr. Dafydd Elis Thomas: I wish to speak not as a procedural way of delaying a debate or to refer to the impeccable tradition and service of Brynmor John, whom we still mourn in this House, but to refer to the technical issue of the nature of the electorate and the rights of potential electors to be registered and able to vote. I have made this technical objection to raise the issue and to request the official Opposition Chief Whip to delay the moving of the writ so that all the potential voters will have an opportunity to register and vote.
At the beginning of this year, it became clear to the electoral registration officers of the Taff Ely borough council which is the district authority for the parliamentary constituency of Pontypridd, that there were at that time some 4,000 houses in the Pontypridd constituency without an entry in the electoral register. Under the legislation, those who are not registered are of course entitled to be placed on supplementary lists, but, because of the changes in electoral law passed by the House last year, many electors are not yet aware of the way in which the registration rules operate. The Taff Ely borough council officers have contacted those electors and we understand that the rate of response is improving, but, if the election is to be held on 23 February, many electors—hundreds, possibly thousands—including a high proportion of younger people, may not by then have registered their right to vote.
The names of those wishing to vote in any election held before 28 February will have to have been received by electoral registration officers before 19 January because supplementary lists normally come into effect on the first day of the month. By calling the election one or two weeks later, in March, there would be a greater opportunity for unregistered electors to have their names entered on supplementary lists and, therefore, to be able to vote.
I raise this issue because I am anxious that all electors entitled to vote should be registered to do so. We in Wales and elsewhere in the United Kingdom do not want to slip into American-style electoral practices where non-registration can have as much effect on election results as the votes cast. For those reasons, I object technically to the moving of the writ and request the Labour Opposition to defer moving the writ in the interests of democracy.
4.57 pm
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Wakeham): I should first like to pay tribute to Brynmor John, who died so sadly on 13 December. He had been a Member of this House for more than 18 years and was extremely well liked and respected on both sides of the Chamber. He will be greatly missed. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."]
It is the convention not only that the writ should be moved within three months of the vacancy occurring but also that it should he moved by the party whose Member formerly occupied the seat, and that party should have priority in choosing the day for the by-election. That is
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what the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) is now seeking to do, and I do not think that there can be much objection to it.
The comments of the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas) about the electoral register will have been heard in the appropriate quarters. The new register comes into force on 16 February, in time for the by-election, as he said. Any possible omissions are a matter for the local registration officer. About 4,000 homes were missing from the first draft roll, but the local registration officer recanvassed and the 1989 register now has about 1,250 more electors than the 1988 register. The claims of the Plaid Cymru candidate do not bear much inspection. The House should support the motion.
4.59 pm
Mr. Frank Dobson: I join the Leader of the House in paying tribute to the late Brynmor John, who was popular not only in the House but with the electors of Pontypridd—rightly so, because he represented them well for many years. They will miss him, and so shall we.
I also join the Leader of the House in responding to the point raised by the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas). The electoral registration officer for the district council of Taff Ely said that during the preparation of the 1989 register of electors it became apparent that there would be a parliamentary by-election in 1989. At that time, 89 per cent. of the householders in the constituency had responded to the original canvass. A further canvass was undertaken and 4,000 householders were identified as not having responded. They were then re-canvassed. One thousand six hundred people immediately responded, increasing the percentage response to 94·5 per cent. However, the remainder of those who had not responded but were on the 1988 register have been carried forward to be included in the 1989 register, which will therefore include 1,260 more electors than appeared on last year's register.
Any concern that the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy may have felt is rendered irrelevant by the electoral registration officer's information. The hon. Gentleman may be more concerned about the limited number who will register votes for his candidate than about those who will register for the election.
5.2 pm
Mr. Nicholas Bennett: I should like to link my name to the remarks already made by other hon. Members about the late Brynmor John. I recall his last speech in the Welsh Grand Committee. We crossed swords there, but generally he had a gentle and polite way of treating his political opponents.
The Pontypridd by-election should go ahead as soon as possible, if only to spare the Opposition the trauma of deciding where they stand on Welsh devolution. That will be a major issue in the by-election—so major that the Leader of the Opposition was reported in last Friday's Western Mail, the national newspaper of Wales, as having come "off the fence on devolution". The Western Mail said that the Leader of the Opposition
"gave his clearest commitment so far to the principle of establishing an elected assembly in Cardiff…he told a press conference at Westminster, 'I am in favour of devolution throughout Britain'".
It said that the conversion came

319
"only weeks before the 10th anniversary of the ill-fated devolution referendum, which the then left-wing back bencher"—
I think that is a reference to the Leader of the Opposition—
"did much to sink as a leader of the `No' campaign."
By Saturday, 28 January, a Western Mail headline read:
"Off-the-fence report gets short shrift".
The article said:
"Labour leader Mr. Neil Kinnock yesterday waded into the Western Mail report saying that he had come off the fence over devolution.
He said it was a 'mischievous misrepresentation or gross ignorance of what I have said and stood for over the last 15 years'.
The Western Mail report he referred to as 'palpable nonsense'. He told a Cardiff press conference, 'Wales will get devolution (under a Labour Government), but what is not yet determined is the form of devolution.'"
The article continued:
"While Mr. Kinnock said he supported devolution, he refused to say what form it should take, and whether Wales would remain one unit or be divided into two or three."
Presumably the Leader of the Opposition is working on the basis that, if Wales and the United Kingdom are divided into small enough bits, one bit will eventually return a Labour majority. I do not know how small those bits would have to be.
It will be of great importance to the people of Pontypridd when they vote to know that the Western Mail continued:
"After the press conference, Mr. Jones"—the Welsh chairman of the Labour party—
"admitted he personally had not seen any replies from the 2,500 organisations approached in Wales which favoured the possible division of Wales spoken of by Mr. Kinnock."
The article said that the deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), as chairman of the central review group, took
"a stronger line on a Welsh assembly than Mr. Kinnock. In late December, he published his own views involving a Welsh assembly possessing powers to make its own laws and to raise the necessary revenue.
The article quoted the Opposition Leader as saying: 'In the North-East, the predominant demand is for an economic planning council'."
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) has heard much demand from people in the north-east for an economic planning council. I am sure that is all they talk about.
The article quoted the Labour leader as saying that in London the demand was for a strategic authority, and
"'in Wales the demand is for a different form to Scotland'"—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear in mind that it is in order to quote from an article, but not to read at length.
Mr. Bennett: I am trying to be fair to the Leader of the Opposition. It is important for the electors in the Pontypridd by-election to be aware of what the Leader of the Opposition said and that he should not be misrepresented.
Mr. Gwilym Jones: I know that my hon. Friend is trying to be fair to the Leader of the Opposition. He is right to raise the Opposition Leader's
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conflicting and confusing stance on devolution during our debate on the writ for the Pontypridd by-election. However, perhaps this is not merely the Leader of the Opposition shooting himself in the foot again, but a desperate tactic on the part of the Labour party to talk up the Plaid Cymru campaign, which until last week was a nonentity, because it is afraid of the rapid advance of the Conservative candidate, Mr. Nigel Evans.
Mr. Bennett: My hon. Friend makes a telling point. There may be a second reason why the Opposition want the by-election to take place quickly. Perhaps they have an attack of Govanitis. They saw what happened in that Scottish constituency, where there was a larger Labour majority than the Labour candidate enjoyed at the last Pontypridd election and were worried that, if the debate was allowed to continue, and Plaid Cymru and other candidates were allowed to question the stance of the Leader of the Opposition from day to day, they might find themselves in even more of a mess on devolution.
Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: Perhaps the Opposition wish to move the by-election writ as quickly as possible because, during the past 10 years, they have changed their view on defence—an important issue for everyone in this country—and no doubt there is concern that they may change their mind on devolution.
Mr. Bennett: That is a good point. As we discovered when we discussed Richmond, the Labour party would not like the electors to consider a range of issues, including education and defence. We can add Welsh devolution to that list, and before polling day arrives, I am sure that several other isues—for example, rates—will arise which the Labour party will not wish to discuss.
Mr. Greg Knight: My hon. Friend was good enough to say that he had reached the conclusion that the by-election should be held straight away. Will he consider another matter, which may lead him to a different conclusion? There have been reports in the press that the Labour candidate for Pontypridd is a Communist or has Communist sympathies. My hon. Friend talked about setting up democratic institutions for Wales. Perhaps the Labour candidate does not believe in democracy.
Mr. Bennett: My hon. Friend is right. The Labour candidate for Pontypridd, according to the Leader of the Opposition, was a member of the Communist party for a short time. The Western Mail of 27 January said that the Opposition Leader said that
"it was a Euro-communist party at the time he was in it, and the issue has never had particular resonance in the South Wales Valleys".
When the Labour candidate fell out with the leader of the National Union of Mineworkers during the 1984-85 strike, he resigned from the Communist party.
Mr. Tony Marlow: I know that my hon. Friend is in a hurry to finish his contribution, but lest he be in too much of a hurry, I wonder if he could take note of the fact that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), who is very concerned about not moving writs for by-elections, is not here—perhaps it is a call of nature or he is having a cup of tea—so can my hon. Friend go slowly through his notes? Of course, he will want to accelerate afterwards. If the hon. Gentleman is detained longer,

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perhaps my hon. Friend, being a kind gentleman, will send him a copy of Hansard so that he can get the full benefit of my hon. Friend's remarks.
Mr. Bennett: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's contribution. I am sure that it will be noted by my secretary, who will send a copy of Hansard to the hon. Gentleman.
The views of the Leader of the Opposition are of great interest. In the Western Mail, the Leader of the Opposition reportedly came off the fence on Friday and back-tracked a bit on Saturday. When we look at his record—because the Leader of the Opposition has challenged the Western Mail as being inaccurate—we find that when he was a Back Bencher, he said on Second Reading of the Wales Bill on 15 November 1977, which was introduced by a Labour Government:
"I certainly hope and confidently believe"
that the referendum will
"crush this nonsense once and for all and, with it, the architects of it and the profiteers from it, the Welsh nationalists … But we shall have some difficulty in explaining to the people of Wales the incredible waste of time and the incredible insensitivity of the Government to what they must surely know—because members of the Government are people who represent seats which are no different in any important respect from ours, in a country beset by the most enormous social and economic difficulties—is the most nominal support among the people for this constitutional change."—[Official Report, 15 November 1977; Vol. 939, c. 465-6.]
So the Leader of the Opposition was attacking his own Government in 1977 and opposing in principle the whole concept of devolution.
That was not the first time that the Leader of the Opposition had changed his mind. In 1974, in an election address for the constituency of Bedwellty, as the Labour candidate he put in a line saying that he was in favour of meaningful devolution and an assembly. By 1977, he was against it; he had changed his mind again—and now he has back-tracked yet again. Is it any wonder that on Monday the Western Mail was moved to write in an editorial on the subject that there was a
"whiff of déjà vu around. It is better known as devolution, although some would have us believe it is the slippery slope to Home Rule. Many of the players are the same as in the great debate which preceded the 1979 referendum. Only the costumes have changed. Remember Neil Kinnock, the voluble backbencher, and Leo Abse, the flamboyant member for Pontypool, whose cut and threat despatched the then proposed devolution package (with its Welsh Assembly) into a political black hole? Ten years later Mr. Kinnock leads a Labour Party struggling to escape from its own black hole."
Mr. Speaker: Order. Remarks must be related to why the writ should or should not be moved, but not to the views and opinions of the leader of the Labour party.
Mr. Bennett: One of the major issues in the by-election will be where the Government and the Opposition parties stand on the crucial issues of Welsh devolution and separatism. We thought we knew where the Leader of the Opposition stood in 1974 and 1977, and where he stood until last Friday. We are not sure where he stood on Saturday, and even less sure where he stood on Monday or today. it is clearly important for the electors of Pontypridd to know that, but it is clearly also important for the Labour party that a by-election should take place as quickly as possible before it changes its policies and its mind again.
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On 23 February, the electors will at least have the opportunity to make a decision on what they believe to he the policies of the various parties. They will find a Conservative candidate, Nigel Evans, who will stand clearly and firmly against Welsh separatism, devolution and a Mickey Mouse assembly in Cardiff, for retaining the unity of the United Kingdom and for the people of Wales having a proper voice in the House.
5.16 pm
Mr. Richard Livsey: I should first like to pay tribute to the late Member for Pontypridd, Brynmor John. He was a sincere and kindly man and expressed the character of the valley from which he came. He was the epitome of the people whence he came, and it is with great regret that we have lost that Member of Parliament.
It is not for us in the House to be lectured by Nicholas-come-latelys to the Welsh political scene. I have been fighting on the issue of devolution for many years and, like many of my fellow countrymen, I have been forced to leave the country to find work.
Mr. Keith Raffan: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Livsey: I shall not give way.
Since I have compaigned consistently on the issue of devolution for Wales, the House knows exactly where stand on that issue. [HON. MEMBERS: "What about Scotland?"] If the writ is moved, the by-election in Pontypridd will be held on 23 February. It is regrettable that many electors in Pontypridd have not been registered at an earlier stage, but we have heard sufficient here this afternoon to know that many more people are now on the register and it is important that the people of Pontypridd have the earliest opportunity to go to the poll. They are greatly afflicted by problems of' housing and employment, in particular, and are in great need. I do not see any reason why the people of Pontypridd should have to wait any longer to be represented here, and I trust that the writ will be approved by the House this afternoon so that democracy can prevail.
5.18 pm
Mr. Roger King: I rise in something of a quandary. On the one hand, I should be pleased to see the electorate of Pontypridd return a Member of Parliament—and a Conservative one—as soon as possible. On the other hand, I am concerned about the effect that that might have on my constituency and my region. At this very important time in our industrial redevelopment, there arises for the people of Pontypridd the unique opportunity to place their achievements on the map of the world's industrial achievements.
Much of what has happened in south Wales has been a transformation industrially, especially with the arrival of the Ford engine plant at Bridgend with an enormous investment in jobs and money, which the electorate of Pontypridd will fully appreciate and realise to be a direct consequence of this country—I mean the United Kingdom—embracing the disciplines of a Conservative economic policy which has encouraged enormous investment in this country. There has, especially, been enormous investment in Japanese factories here and Japanese job opportunities.

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The electorate of Pontypridd can put something over on the electorate in Birmingham and elsewhere by presenting themselves as an electorate ready to embrace those economic achievements and new disciplines in the workplace and the new productivity and jobs available and by advocating that theirs is the place for the Japanese Toyota company to come to invest in this country.
That places me in an embarrassing position. I know that the Conservative candidate in Pontypridd will advocate such a policy and point out the new economic vitality of the province, the new opportunities that have arisen and the economic growth and achievements that are taking place and that is the area where companies such as Toyota should come to invest. I shall read about that and see it on television and I shall be saying that I should like those jobs in the midlands as well. But we do not have a by-election, so we do not have that unique opportunity.
Mr. McLoughlin: Is my hon. Friend aware that, the other day, the Leader of the Opposition said that 1992 would steal 1 million jobs? Is that not strange bearing in mind that that was the very week that Toyota said that it wanted to come to this country to take advantage of the Community? Does my hon. Friend agree that the only way that 1992 will lead to the loss of 1 million jobs is if a Labour Government are elected?
Mr. King: My hon. Friend is right. I must point out that Toyota has not committed itself to this country just yet, but I have absolute confidence that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales will leave no stone unturned to ensure that Toyota comes to this country—and, in particular, to the province of south Wales, which would be a highly acceptable place for Toyota to set up business.
My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, West (Mr. McLoughlin) is absolutely right. On the one hand, the Labour leader and the Labour party advocate decline, dereliction and no hope, while on the other hand the Conservative Government are bringing jobs to the province. I hope that they will continue to bring jobs, especially to Pontypridd. However, there is a price or a cost for the electorate of Pontypridd—to endorse wholly the philosophies that the Government hold so dear.
Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Will my hon. Friend recognise the great work done by people who move around Wales to help the Welsh economy and Welsh political life, and pay a special tribute to "Richard Move-around-the countryside", who represents Brecon and Radnor, who went to Reading university and Bedales school in Hampshire, was a farm manager in Scotland, fought the seats of Perth and East Perthshire in 1970 and of Pembroke in 1979, before ending up with Brecon and Radnor?
Mr. King: As my hon. Friend knows, each and every member of that party has a global responsibility, so it is necessary that they adopt the maxim, "Have bag, will travel", and that is what they have done.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke said, many people have come to Wales and helped the Welsh economy. It is because they have come, and because it is an area that has turned its attention to restructuring and redeveloping itself satisfactorily, that jobs and investments come to that area not only from the United Kingdom and
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Europe, but from the rest of the world. I am sure that the electorate of Pontypridd cannot wait to get the election over, to prove to everybody that they are determined to continue to attract inward investment, but I am also sure that they will recognise that, for people like me, trying to attract that inward investment to our areas, the election comes as something of a setback. May the best constituency and the province win, for the sake of all those new jobs.
5.22 pm
Mr. Keith Raffan: I should like to join the tributes that have been paid to the late hon. Member for Pontypridd, Mr. Brynmor John. He commanded great affection among hon. Members of all parties and great respect from all hon. Members representing Welsh constituencies. He was a marvellous constituency Member and everybody is right to pay tribute to him.
Before turning to the writ, I should like to comment on the speech made by the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnor (Mr. Livsey), who told the House that he had supported devolution for many years. Perhaps that is why his majority fell so dramatically between his by-election victory and the last election and why, with his slender majority of 56, we shall win the seat from him at the next election. I advise the hon. Gentleman to keep up the fight for devolution because then he will disappear from this place.
I turn now to the reasons for moving the writ for Pontypridd today. My hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) was absolutely right about the extraordinary conversion of the Leader of the Opposition on devolution. He was the man who played such a significant and major role in bringing down the last Labour Government. He was the Labour leader of the "Wales say No" campaign in Wales, and, apart from Conservative Members, he did more than anybody else to bring down his party and defeat his own Government in 1979.
However, in his accurate remarks about devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke missed one nuance, one slight contradiction in Labour's argument. Although the Labour party proposes devolution for the people of Wales, it chose its Pontrypridd candidate in London. At the very moment that it is saying that the people of Wales should have far greater say, in Cardiff, in debating their own political future, the Labour party is saying that the Welsh Labour party is not fit to choose its own candidate for Pontypridd and that that candidate must be approved by the London-based national executive, and chosen, not because of his ability to represent constituents in this place, but because of his televisual ability to try to avoid another Govan.
That is what is at the heart of the Labour party's sudden and dramatic conversion on devolution and why, with every day that passes, the promises become more committed and more detailed. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) is now going into great detail, promising that there will be a Welsh assembly—this is even before his party's official policy review and before his party has agreed to it. Conservative Members had been under the distinct impression that such things had to be approved by the Labour party conference but, to avoid another Govan, that has gone out of the

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window and the Labour party is making policy on its feet. It will do anything, however desperate, to try to hold on to this seat.
The political antecedents of the Labour candidate are important. No doubt we shall be able to judge him on the hustings and that is why I am also in favour of the writ being moved as soon as possible. The Labour candidate has been a member of another political party in the relatively recent past—as recent as 1981. The Leader of the Opposition told us that the candidate was a Eurocommunist. That is fair enough and, in a sense, it is fairly flattering because a Eurocommunist is probably greatly to the Right of the Labour party in this House. I realise that that is a helpful point to make on behalf of Dr. Howells.
However, I wonder what would happen if we in the Conservative party put up a candidate in a by-election who had National Front antecedents. Think of the howls we would hear from the Labour party and how Labour Members would lambast us in press conferences day after day. I have been a candidate's aide in by-elections. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sir H. Miller), a former vice-chairman of our party, in his place. He joined me in those by-elections and we know what happens at those press conferences. Each day as the by-election continued the Labour party would concentrate on hammering home the political antecedents of our candidate, so Labour Members should realise that we are justified in inquiring into, and making points about, the recent political antecedents of the Labour candidate at Pontypridd.
The campaign will also revolve around the tremendous achievements of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales since he took office after the last general election. That is what the Labour party cannot stand. Last summer my right hon. Friend introduced the valleys initiative. He has done more for the Opposition's safe Labour seats than they ever did. What they cannot stand is that they had the opportunity, when they were in government, to act for the valleys—the hard core of their party support—their safest seats in the entire country and seats that they have consistently represented for many years. The Opposition had the opportunity to bring jobs to those valleys and to improve the housing there, but they did not do so. It is this Government, with the valleys initiative, who are doing that.
I am glad that the former shadow Secretary of State for Wales, the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams), is in his place. We in Wales get rather dizzy because the Opposition change their chief shadow spokesmen so frequently. When I was with the Daily Express and someone asked me at lunch who the editor was, I used to say, "I'll check when I get back to the office and give you a ring." The position is the same with the Opposition—they change their shadow Secretaries of State for Wales with the same frequency. The right hon. Gentleman criticised the valleys initiative when my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales announced it in the House, while at the same time the leaders of Labour-controlled local authorities in the valleys were welcoming it sincerely, and with open arms, knowing that they would never have had it from their own party.
In the by-election we shall see a campaign that is not only about devolution but about the economic good fortune, industrial regeneration and the housing improvements that this Conservative Government have brought to
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the valleys—not because we had a vested interest in doing so, and not because we shall necessarily benefit politically or electorally from them, but because we thought them right. The fact that the Opposition never introduced such an initiative will be one of the main planks of our campaign, and that is why I believe that we shall see a significant improvement in the fortunes of our party in that constituency, with our young, able, energetic and eloquent candidate, Nigel Evans.
Unemployment is falling faster in Wales, in the valleys, than almost anywhere else. In my constituency it has fallen by 46 per cent. in two years—because of the Government's policies. Under the previous and the present Secretaries of State, housing in Pontypridd that had never been improved has now been improved. The Opposition did not do it when in government—we did. It is for those reasons—the decrease in unemployment, the improved housing, the creation of jobs the clearance of derelict land, the improvement of the environment—that the Conservative party stands such a good chance of achieving a good result in this by-election. Let us get to it. Let us move the writ now so that we can begin the campaign. We have nothing to fear.
5.29 pm
Mr. Richard Holt: The House is a little ambivalent about whether the writ should be moved, hut there is no division between us in our sincere remarks about the late Brynmor John. I am sure that the people of Pontypridd will find it extremely difficult to find a candidate, from any party, who could command so much respect in the House.
When we had a debate in the House just 10 days ago on moving another writ, one of the subjects that came very much to the fore was the weather. It was said by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—and he was supported by many of his colleagues—that there should not be a motion for a writ which would force a by-election at a time when the weather was so likely to be intemperate. This was said by people who had never ever been to north Yorkshire.
Mr. Ian Gow: Would my hon. Friend care to reflect on the decision by his right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) to have a general election—my hon. Friend will remember it—on 28 February 1974? My right hon. Friend—no, his right hon. Friend—is not, alas, in his place. Would we not be wise to proceed with a vote on this matter without listening to the advice of his right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup?
Mr. Holt: I have to say to my hon. Friend that that was a most timely interjection—timely because he draws out of me the fact that on that bitter, cold February day I celebrated my 24th wedding anniversary with one of the biggest hidings of my life when I lost in Brent, South. and it is impressed on me that the right hon. Member for Old "somewhere or other"—I would not wish to be described as other than a candidate colleague of his in 1974—suffered from the bitter extremes.
I know that my hon. Friend followed my campaign in Brent, South very closely, but Ile probably was not fully aware that the paid-up membership of the Conservative party in that region was not overwhelming. But I did have a supporter. He was a coalman, and we used to go out day

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after day on a flat lorry after he had delivered his coal. We stood on the back of the lorry doing our campaigning, finishing up at the end of the day covered in snow and coal dust. It was most atrocious, but I remember it well. Perhaps everyone ought to remember that that was the sort of weather that was enjoyed in the London borough of Brent, whereas at present people up in the north-east of England, and perhaps in Pontypridd, are enjoying a magnificant sunny period.
Dr. Thomas: I can give the hon. Member a weather report for Pontypridd as of yesterday. It was fair and dry, and I expect that it will be the same tomorrow and from now until polling day.
Mr. Holt: I am very grateful for that up-to-date information. That is exactly what I was seeking to do in comparing the weather of 10 days ago, which played such a vital and germane part, with what it might be likely to be in Pontypridd. As I recall from my schoolboy knowledge of Wales, it is very wet down there in the month of February.
Mr. Gow: My hon. Friend talks about wetness. Does he recall that when we had a general election in February 1974 my—no, his—right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup was Prime Minister? Does he recall that that Government had asked the approval of Parliament to a measure that asserted that by passing an Act of Parliament the evil of inflation could be abated, and that we had a compulsory prices and incomes policy? Will my hon. Friend address his attention to that matter?
Mr. Speaker: Order. Only if it is relevant to the by-election.
Mr. Holt: Would I ever stray from the path of righteousness, Mr. Speaker?
I recall very well what my hon. Friend says because, as I have just said, it was my wedding anniversary. I think that I might have misled the House over the number of years, but I will work it out, or my wife will tell me when I get home.
The important thing, in relating that to the people of Pontypridd, is that many young people in Pontypridd may be casting their vote for the first time when this election comes round.
Mr. Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. This is a very important motion that we are debating. It is about moving a writ for a constituency in Wales. It is obviously a matter of great importance for the Labour party. I believe that at the moment, for some reason or other, there is no Labour Back Bencher from Wales in the House. I wonder if it would be possible to adjourn the debate.
Mr. Speaker: Patently that is not a matter of order.
Mr. Holt: As I was saying, these young people will be casting their votes for the first time, and they will be paying for the same possible faults of inflation and the runaway loss of their savings, and wondering how they are going to bring up their children.
I was always taught that if the Jesuits got you they had you for ever. I feel the same about Communists, and I find it very difficult to refer to anybody who has ever been a member of the Communist party as being a member of any
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other party. So if I slip up it will not be with any malice; it is just that it is a habit of mine always to work in that way.
I was talking about the weather in Pontypridd, and I was brought up to date on that matter. The hon. Gentleman who did so may well have checked on the weather at the moment, but has he done as my hon. Friends have and checked on the weather in Pontypridd during that crucial week in February over the last 20 years, and is he satisfied that the weather would be satisfactory and would allow all the elderly and all the other people that we heard about from the hon. Member for Bolsover to vote? One of his hon. Friends kept saying, "and the women".Might he reflect on that and say that the weather may not be right?
Mr. Robert Hayward: When debating current issues in respect of Pontypridd, will my hon. Friend please recall also that trade and industry will be major subjects? No doubt the sacking by the leader of the Labour party within the last two hours of the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) as trade and industry spokesman will be an issue in the Pontypridd election. If they have to sack a spokesman no doubt there is uncertainty about their policy.
Mr. Holt: I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, but I believe that it is possible that one of my other hon. Friends will be making that point during the speech that I know he wishes desperately to make. But perhaps I will be excused from talking about that very embarrassing matter at this moment because I think I have enough to keep me going for the next five or six minutes.
I want to refer briefly to the question of Toyota. Everyone has seen what a magnificent success Nissan has been under a Conservative Government in going to the Labour heartlands where the Conservative Members supported the project all the way, as did all Conservatives in that area. Only today, at lunch time, I was at the launch of a new Wearside campaign led by Tyne-Tees Television, the industrialists and the people of the area. We are encouraging Toyota to go there to stand side by side with the Nissan factory.
We are not going to adopt a dog in the manger attitude just because this is not exactly a Conservative constituency at the moment. It is only a matter of time. As the people in the north of England see the benefits of this Government, gradually more and more Conservatives at all levels are being returned. And that will happen in Wales. So I imagine that there is a certain ambiguity among Welsh Members as to whether they want Toyota to go there. The last thing that the Labour party ever wants is success. Our policy is never to have poor people; we want to have only rich people. We want everyone to be in a job; we do not want to keep the people subjugated.
Mr. Gwilym Jones: I shall try to correct my hon. Friend. He is using the generic term "Welsh Members" as though Welsh Members resisted Nissan or Toyota. That is certainly not the case with Welsh Conservative Members, who are steadily increasing in number. It was inexplicable that Nissan did not go to south Wales. I am sure that Toyota will go to south Wales. The green light for Toyota to go to south Wales would be for Nigel Evans, the Conservative candidate, to be elected to Pontypridd.
Mr. Holt: I bow to my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right. One thing that would guarantee Toyota going to south Wales is the return of Nigel Evans at the by-election.
I do not wish to tax the House unnecessarily, but I shall raise another matter before I resume my seat. It is of vital interest not only to the people of Pontypridd but to my constituents in the north-east of England.
We can never get a clear-cut policy statement from any Opposition Member. The House has heard a brilliant speech about the somersaulting methods of the leader of the Labour party. I am concerned about the deputy leader of the Labour party. I wonder what he will say in Pontypridd. He has stated publicly in the north-east of England that he would have regional councils with their own tax-raising rights. Never before has that been the case.
Mr. Marlow: My hon. Friend has asked what the right hon. Gentleman the Lunchtime O'Sparkbrook would have to say if he went to the constituency of Pontypridd. I ask my hon. Friend if he knows whether there are any decent restaurants there. [Laughter.]
Mr. Holt: I confess that, because of the laughter of other hon. Members, I did not hear my hon. Friend, but I take it that it was a germane point, and perhaps almost as relevant—[Interruption.] I must defer to my hon. Friend. He would know better than I whether there are any decent restaurants there.
Dr. Thomas: I assure the hon. Gentleman that there is an excellent Italian restaurant there called John and Maria's. I am sure that he will want to dine there, because he will have nothing else to do if he is to canvass for the Conservative candidate.
Mr. Holt: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps we can share a celebration lunch after Nigel Evans is elected.
It is important for the people of Pontypridd to have a clear statement on the Labour party's policies. Although hon. Members are discussing a writ for one constituency, we all know that, by their definition, by-elections tend to have an impact on the rest of the country. Therefore, the rest of the country will focus on how the Labour party's policies would reflect on the rest of the country, and my constituents would be frightened.
We shall have a resounding victory in Richmond. There is no doubt about that. It will shake the Opposition even more when two new Conservative Members are elected to the House.
5.42 pm
Mr. Gwilym Jones: I start by associating myself with all that has been said about the late Brynmor John, and I do so as a neighbouring Member of Parliament, because my constituency abuts the Pontypridd constituency. Hon. Members know that I do not demur from anything that has been said about Brynmor John—a man of great kindness and gentleness, who would listen to all arguments and would steadfastly put forward his own point of view in an entirely reasonable manner. I cannot but feel that it must be at least a contradiction or, worse, an insult for the Labour party to advance its present candidate for the Pontypridd constituency. Surely all hon. Members will recollect——
Mr. Marlow: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Jones: I shall develop my point and then I will give way to my hon. Friend.
All hon. Members will recollect that Brynmor John stood for all that was best in the traditions of the Labour party—a fast-disappearing animal in the party today. Instead, the Labour party has adopted a Communist candidate for the Pontypridd constituency. Surely he is still a Communist candidate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Derby, North (Mr. Knight) mentioned, we have certainly not heard of any recantation or that there has been a blinding light conversion on the road to Damascus by the Labour candidate in Pontypridd. He is merely a Communist who has changed label.
Mr. Marlow: My hon. Friend will remember that, during an earlier intervention. I drew the attention of our hon. Friend the Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) to the situation of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), about whom we are all deeply concerned. My hon. Friend said that he would see that he got a copy of his speech. I understand that the hon. Gentleman is now fast asleep in the Tea Room. Perhaps my hon. Friend could also undertake——
Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not think that that has anything to do with this writ.
Mr. Jones: I will not digress down that road or raise my voice so that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) can hear me.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) is temporarily absent from his place. I suggest that the Labour candidate in Pontypridd does not look like a dud candidate, or at least not in the obvious definitions of the word. He might instead be defined as a sleeper or some form of time bomb.
Mr. David Winnick: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Jones: I shall finish this point and then I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.
The Labour candidate for Pontypridd might be some form of time bomb. His true colours will later be revealed for all to see, whatever protestations I am now to get from Opposition Members.
Mr. Winnick: The hon. Gentleman referred to the past background—I emphasise the word "past"—of a certain person who will be a Member of this House in the near future. Will the hon. Gentleman be good enough to tell us about his own background?
Mr. Jones: If I did that, you would rather quickly rule me out of order, Mr. Speaker, for speaking about something that was not necessarily relevant to the writ for the Pontypridd by-election. The hon. Gentleman referred to the past. I recall that, as recently as the last general election—we know how far past that was—the Labour candidate for Pontypridd admitted that he had recently joined the Labour party. He admitted also that he had so recently left the Communist party that, by the Labour party's own rules, he was not allowed to stand for Parliament. Presumably that short period has elapsed and he can stand.
I offer these comments as they are entirely relevant to the Pontypridd by-election, particularly in view of the character of the former incumbent for that constituency

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—a man who was greatly liked throughout the House. Indeed, I should think he was greatly liked by Opposition Members.
Mr. Neil Hamilton: Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the most pressing reasons why the writ should be successfully moved this afternoon is that with the forthcoming by-election in Pontypridd we will have an opportunity to debate the outbreak of authoritarianism in the Labour party? My hon. Friend will be aware that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) recently went into partnership with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit).
Mr. Speaker: Order. In what way is that relevant to the by-election?
Mr. Hamilton: It will be relevant to the by-election because it is an issue that will certainly loom large in the minds of the constituents of Pontypridd. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby is going to work for Mr. Rupert Murdoch on Sky television. As a result, the Leader of the Opposition has sacked the hon. Gentleman for Great Grimsby. That is a most appalling denial of free speech, restraint of trade, and so on. The hon. Member——
Mr. Speaker: This is supposed to be an intervention, not a speech.
Mr. Hamilton: It is an intervention and I am trying to make my point as succinctly as possible. The hon. Member for Great Grimsby is held in great affection by us all. Conservative Members are frequently accused——
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is an abuse. The hon. Gentleman is intervening in the speech of another hon. Member. He has made his point.
Mr. Jones: I accept my hon. Friend's point, that there is yet another example of the rise of authoritarianism. It was said that the rise of authoritarianism was noticeable in the recent decison of the Labour party's national executive committee conveniently to be able to ignore party conference decisions whenever it suited it to do so.
Mr. John Redwood: Does my hon. Friend consider that a crucial issue in the timing of this writ is the possibility of the return of the Labour group from Russia? Maybe it is planning to bring multilateralism in our time—from Russia with love. Perhaps the idea is to leave the SLDP cruelly exposed as the only party without some kind of a defence policy and the only party with a totally idiotic policy of unilateral disarmament, or whatever it was when it last stated it. Does my hon. Friend think that that is the key to Labour's strategy in moving the writ today?
Mr. Jones: My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. It is highly questionable whether there is enough time between now and 23 February for the Labour party's representatives to return from Russia and make sense of a policy which they can package up in a cohesive form. Perhaps the Labour party's Chief Whip has made a great mistake.
During the deliberations of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs this morning I learnt why the writ was to be
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moved today. Some hon. Members might find it difficult to appreciate how supremely important and crucial that Committee is. It has a vacancy for a Labour Member. Far from the massed ranks of Labour Members eager to fill that place, the Labour party is so desperate to find somebody to fill it that it is hoping that its candidate for the Pontypridd constituency will be successful because, on the basis of Buggin's turn and the last in principle, he will have to do duty on that Committee.
Mr. Robert Adley: The late Brynmor John was my first pair when I entered the House, and I want to put it on record that he was held in deep affection by hon. Members on both sides of the House. He was also helpful when I occasionally raised with him railway matters that were relevant to his constituency. My hon. Friend will know that the Wales Railway Centre in Cardiff, which was my brainchild, is connected by rail through the Pontypridd constituency with Big Pit at Blaenavon. Does my hon. Friend agree that all the candidates in the by-election should do everything that they can to keep open all the railway lines that presently pass through the Pontypridd constituency?
Mr. Jones: I go along with my hon. Friend's sentiments. He touches on some aspects that are important to the people of south Wales. The Wales Railway Centre in Cardiff will be important. I was pleased to hear of his support for Big Pit. When British Rail last appeared before the Select Committee, I asked it to reconsider improving and expanding rail links in south Wales, particularly the rail link for the new garden festival in Ebbw Vale. I am glad that it has recently announced that it hopes to have some service running up to Ebbw Vale for that festival.
My hon. Friend may also know that the Wales Railway Centre is linked with my constituency and the neighbouring constituency of Pontypridd by the old Taff Vale railway line. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend on the importance of our local railway lines, which the former Secretary of State for Wales, Lord Crickhowell, and the present Secretary of State for Wales have done so much to encourage.
On this occasion it would not be inappropriate for me to pay tribute to Mid Glamorgan and South Glamorgan county councils. They do not get much right, but they have followed the urgings and advice of my right hon. Friend and his predecessor in the exciting plans for south Wales railways.
Mr. Nicholas Bennett: My hon. Friend mentioned the defence issue, which is so important to the people of Pontypridd. My hon. Friend will know that the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms. Ruddock) is a native of the Pontypridd area. No doubt, as a newly appointed junior Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Lady will be making a visit to Pontypridd to discuss defence. Does my hon. Friend think that when she does so she might explain what she means by reciprocal unilateralism?
Mr. Jones: I hesitate to mention it, but I think that my hon. Friend means Pontypool, not Pontypridd. It is close to Pontypridd in geographical terms. However, I suggest that that question is not best answered now, certainly not at the time of the Pontypridd by-election, because the last thing that the Labour party wants to do in the interests of

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hanging on to the marginal seat of Pontypridd is to allow the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms. Ruddock) to run riot there.
Mr. Marlow: The writ was moved in good spirit and good heart by the Labour party at a time of peace in its ranks. But since the writ has been moved, an unholy row has broken out. An Opposition Front-Bench spokesman has been sacked, and sacked by a Welsh Member of Parliament—the Leader of the Opposition. The Opposition might want to change their mind about the writ, and one reason for that is that the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) is in such a fury with the Leader of the Opposition that he may well wish to resign his seat and fight that of Pontypridd instead. If my hon. Friend were to allow the Opposition a little more time, they might be able to come to a mature decision about whether to move the writ.
Mr. Jones: My hon. Friend returns to a significant point. My hon. Friend seems to be having a destructive effect on the Opposition Front Bench, as he always does. He will have noticed that his previous point of order had the effect of physically forcing the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) to move from the Opposition Front Bench to the Back Benches just when she was thinking that she had served her penance and might now be brought back to the Front Bench. My hon. Friend's point of order seems to have downed her for another two years or so.
The writ for the Pontypridd by-election should be moved today. That by-election needs to be fought on most important issues, not least the need to reduce the number of people unemployed. The fall in unemployment in Wales began earlier, and has continued longer, than the fall in unemployment in the rest of the United Kingdom. Wales has been successful in developing new industries and in helping new employment and attracting investment. For a number of years now Wales has been able to attract one fifth of all investment coming into the United Kingdom. The massive investment in the engine plant at Bridgend has been mentioned, as have Nissan and Toyota. I stand by what I said about Toyota's excellent prospects of coming to south Wales. I look forward to that.
There has also been significant growth in indigenous industries. I mention just one. AB Electronics in my constituency, which also fortunately happens to be in practically every valley constituency in south Wales, is going from strengh to strength.
Mrs. Ann Clwyd rose——
Mr. Jones: I give way to the hon. Lady because I know that AB Electronics' headquarters are in her constituency.
Mr. Derek Foster rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
Question put, That the Question be now put:—
The House divided: Ayes 365, Noes 3.

Division No. 70]

[5.58 pm

AYES

Abbott, Ms Diane

Archer, Rt Hon Peter

Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

Armstrong, Hilary

Adley, Robert

Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

Alexander, Richard

Ashby, David

Alison, Rt Hon Michael

Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

Allen, Graham

Ashton, Joe

Alton, David

Aspinwall, Jack

Anderson, Donald

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Arbuthnot, James

Baldry, Tony

334

Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

Doran, Frank

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Dorrell, Stephen

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Dover, Den

Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

Duffy, A. E. P.

Barron, Kevin

Dunn, Bob

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Beckett, Margaret

Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

Beggs, Roy

Durant, Tony

Beith, A. J.

Dykes, Hugh

Bellingham, Henry

Eadie, Alexander

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Eastham, Ken

Bermingham, Gerald

Emery, Sir Peter

Bevan, David Gilroy

Evans, John (St Helens N)

Bidwell, Sydney

Fallon, Michael

Biffen, Rt Hon John

Fearn, Ronald

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Fishburn, John Dudley

Blair, Tony

Fisher, Mark

Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

Flannery, Martin

Blunkett, David

Flynn, Paul

Boateng, Paul

Fookes, Dame Janet

Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Foster, Derek

Boswell, Tim

Franks, Cecil

Bottomley, Peter

Freeman, Roger

Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

French, Douglas

Boyes, Roland

Fry, Peter

Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

Fyfe, Maria

Bradley, Keith

Galloway, George

Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Garrett, John (Norwich South)

Brazier, Julian

Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

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

Gill, Christopher

Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Buck, Sir Antony

Goodhart, Sir Philip

Buckley, George J.

Goodlad, Alastair

Burns, Simon

Gould, Bryan

Burt, Alistair

Gow, Ian

Butler, Chris

Gower, Sir Raymond

Caborn, Richard

Graham, Thomas

Callaghan, Jim

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Greenway, Harry (Eating N)

Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

Greenway, John (Ftyedale)

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Gregory, Conal

Canavan, Dennis

Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

Carrington, Matthew

Grist, Ian

Cash, William

Grocott, Bruce

Channon, Rt Hon Paul

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Chapman, Sydney

Hanley, Jeremy

Chope, Christopher

Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Harris, David

Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

Haselhurst, Alan

Clay, Bob

Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Hayes, Jerry

Cohen, Harry

Hayward, Robert

Colvin, Michael

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Conway, Derek

Heathcoat-Amory, David

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Heddle, John

Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

Heffer, Eric S.

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Henderson, Doug

Cope, Rt Hon John

Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

Corbett, Robin

Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

Corbyn, Jeremy

Hind, Kenneth

Cormack, Patrick

Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

Cousins, Jim

Holt, Richard

Cran, James

Home Robertson, John

Crowther, Stan

Hood, Jimmy

Cryer, Bob

Howard, Michael

Cunningham, Dr John

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

Curry, David

Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

Dalyell, Tam

Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

Darling, Alistair

Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

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

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Devlin, Tim

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Dewar, Donald

Hunter, Andrew

Dicks, Terry

Illsley, Eric

Dixon, Don

Ingram, Adam

Dobson, Frank

Irvine, Michael

335

Irving, Charles

Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

Jack, Michael

Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

Janman, Tim

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Janner, Greville

Paice, James

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Patchett, Terry

Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

Pawsey, James

Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

Pendry, Tom

Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)

Pike, Peter L.

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Key, Robert

Powell, William (Corby)

King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

Primarolo, Dawn

Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

Quin, Ms Joyce

Knapman, Roger

Radice, Giles

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

Raffan, Keith

Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

Redwood, John

Knox, David

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

Lamond, James

Reid, Dr John

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Rhodes James, Robert

Lawrence, Ivan

Richardson, Jo

Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

Roberts, Allan (Bootle)

Leighton, Ron

Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

Robertson, George

Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

Robinson, Geoffrey

Lightbown, David

Roe, Mrs Marion

Livingstone, Ken

Rooker, Jeff

Livsey, Richard

Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

Rossi, Sir Hugh

Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

Rost, Peter

Lofthouse, Geoffrey

Rowlands, Ted

Loyden, Eddie

Ruddock, Joan

Lyell, Sir Nicholas

Sackville, Hon Tom

McAllion, John

Salmond, Alex

McAvoy, Thomas

Scott, Nicholas

McCrindle, Robert

Sedgemore, Brian

Macdonald, Calum A.

Shaw, David (Dover)

Macfarlane, Sir Neil

Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

Sheerman, Barry

McKelvey, William

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

Maclean, David

Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

Maclennan, Robert

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

McLoughlin, Patrick

Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

Shersby, Michael

Madden, Max

Short, Clare

Mahon, Mrs Alice

Sillars, Jim

Malins, Humfrey

Sims, Roger

Marek, Dr John

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Marshall, David (Shettleston)

Skinner, Dennis

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

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

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

Soames, Hon Nicholas

Maxton, John

Soley, Clive

Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Spearing, Nigel

Meacher, Michael

Speller, Tony

Meale, Alan

Squire, Robin

Meyer, Sir Anthony

Stanbrook, Ivor

Michael, Alun

Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

Steel, Rt Hon David

Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

Steinberg, Gerry

Miller, Sir Hal

Stern, Michael

Mills, Iain

Stevens, Lewis

Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

Stradling Thomas, Sir John

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Strang, Gavin

Montgomery, Sir Fergus

Straw, Jack

Moonie, Dr Lewis

Sumberg, David

Morgan, Rhodri

Summerson, Hugo

Morley, Elliott

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

Morrison, Sir Charles

Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

Moss, Malcolm

Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

Mudd, David

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Mullin, Chris

Townend, John (Bridlington)

Murphy, Paul

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Neale, Gerrard

Tredinnick, David

Newton, Rt Hon Tony

Trippier, David

Nicholls, Patrick

Turner, Dennis

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Twinn, Dr Ian

Norris, Steve

Vaughan, Sir Gerard

336

Vaz, Keith

Wiggin, Jerry

Waddington, Rt Hon David

Williams, Rt Hon Alan

Wakeham, Rt Hon John

Winnick, David

Wall, Pat

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Wallace, James

Wolfson, Mark

Waller, Gary

Wood, Timothy

Walley, Joan

Woodcock, Mike

Walters, Sir Dennis

Worthington, Tony

Ward, John

Wray, Jimmy

Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

Yeo, Tim

Wareing, Robert N.

Young, David (Bolton SE)

Warren, Kenneth

Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

Tellers for the Ayes:

Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

Mr. Frank Haynes and

Wheeler, John

Mr. Frank Cook.

Whitney, Ray

NOES

Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

Tellers for the Noes:

Carttiss, Michael

Mr. Nicholas Bennett and

Porter, David (Waveney)

Mr. Tony Marlow.

Question agreed to.
Question put accordingly and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new Writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the county constituency of Pontypridd in the room of Brynmor Thomas John, Esquire, deceased.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The House will have noted that you accepted a closure motion of a debate on a by-election writ within 60 minutes. I am sure that you will understand that that has implications for proceedings on other legislation that comes before the House.
Mr. Speaker: As I said earlier in answer to a point of order, the Chair does not give reasons at the moment a closure is taken.
Mr. Neil Hamilton: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. As you will recall, when the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Mr. Foster) moved the closure, the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) was on her feet. As the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) has pointed out, grave constitutional questions are raised by what has just happened. The action of the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland could be regarded as sexist. As the hon. Lady is from Wales, it could also be regarded as racist. I believe that those are two of the greatest crimes in the statute book of the Labour party. Most important, the authoritarianism shown by the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland in cutting off the debate after such a short time should be noted for the future and censured.
Mr. Speaker: The House will take a charitable view. It is possible that the Opposition Chief Whip did not see what was happening behind him.
Mr. Marlow: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It is proper, if one makes a mistake in the House, to apologise. I may have to crave the indulgence of the House. I suggested earlier that the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), who had taken a great interest earlier in our proceedings on writs for by-elections, might be asleep in the Tea Room. That has certain implications. I understand that it is possible that on his way to the Tea Room he was gathered into the torture chamber on the right hand side——
Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order.

BILL PRESENTED
  LOCAL GOVERNMENT AND HOUSING
  Mr. Secretary Ridley, supported by Mr. Secretary Walker, Mr. Secretary Baker, Mr. Secretary Rifkind, Mr. Secretary Clarke, Mr. John Major, Mr. Richard Luce, Mr. John Gummer, Mr. David Trippier and Mrs. Virginia Bottomley, presented a Bill to make provision with respect to the members, officers and other staff and the procedure of local authorities; to amend Part III of the Local Government Act 1974 and Part II of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1975 and to provide for a national code of local government conduct; to make further provision about the finances and expenditure of local authorities (including provision with respect to housing subsidies) and about companies in which local authorities have interests; to make provision for and in connection with renewal areas, grants towards the cost of improvement and repair of housing accommodation and the carrying out of works of maintenance, repair and improvement; to amend the Housing Act 1985 and Part III of the Local Government Finance Act 1982; to amend the Local Government Finance Act 1988 and the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987 and certain enactments relating, as respects Scotland, to rating and valuation, and to provide for the making of grants in respect of certain expenditure incurred before 1st April 1990; to make provision with respect to the imposition of charges by local authorities; to make further provision about certain existing grants and about financial assistance to local authorities in respect of emergencies; to enable local authorities in Wales to be known solely by Welsh language names; to provide for the transfer of new town housing stock; to amend section 47 of the Race Relations Act 1976; to make provision about security of tenure for certain tenants under long tenancies; to provide for the making of grants and giving of guarantees in respect of certain activities carried on in relation to the construction industry; to provide for the repeal of certain enactments relating to improvement notices, town development and education support grants; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 58.]

Planning (Notification of Development Proposals)
6.14 pm
Mrs. Gillian Shephard: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to secure fuller, more effective and more consistent public involvement in the development control process.
Hon. Members on both sides of the House will agree that there is mounting concern about all aspects of planning and development control, whether it is about the green belt, so-called bad neighbour development, including dumping, misunderstandings about private property owners' rights, perceived inconsistencies in . planning decisions and the appeal process. In the words of the District Planning Officers Society:
"Third party interest is here to stay and understandably so."
The third party interest and concern are shared by those responsible for taking planning decisions. Planners feel besieged by critics, including the ombudsman, described by one planning officer as having
"crucified every small fault and failing of the authorities, who set out with best of intentions."
There is no lack of legislation to guide planning authorities in England and Wales on consultation and notification in certain spheres. Their duties to consult and notify are clearly defined for certain kinds of development, with certain public bodies and in certain kinds of location. Developments defined as bad neighbours include scrapyards, refuse dumps, mineral workings and cemeteries. In such cases the applicant is required to advertise his proposal, usually by site notice, and the planning authority has to advertise by press or site notice, or both, under section 26 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1971. The same Act, in section 25, lists public bodies such as highway authorities and the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England, which have to be consulted in certain circumstances.
Planning authorities also have to advertise applications for developments in conservation areas for listed buildings, and in other prescribed areas set out in the Act. They must notify parish councils if those councils so wish. In all these areas, therefore, planning authorities—in the main, district councils—know what is required of them by law and the public are protected, by recourse either to the law or to the ombudsman.
But there is another area where the public of England and Wales are not protected by planning law, although their Scottish and Irish counterparts are. Moreover, it is precisely in this area that there is the greatest public concern, according to the ombudsman and the District Planning Officers Society, which says:
"Next-door neighbour complaints are easily the largest planning postbag of the Ombudsman. Most complaints look to the planning authority to inform them of neighbour proposals to build, say, an extension."
It is the issue of neighbour notice, already grasped by Government action for the people of Scotland and Northern Ireland, that I wish to address in the Bill by proposing that planning authorities are required by law to have a code of practice for neighbour notification, drawn up by themselves in accordance with local needs.
Many people are astonished to find that, in England and Wales, planning authorities are not required to notify

339
or inform neighbours of proposed developments affecting their properties. In practice, many district councils have a code of practice for neighbour notification, which may be a site notice, a letter, an advertisement in the local press or simply a list of proposed plans in the local free sheet. Others, because of difficulties with the ombudsman, have no code of practice on the ground that, as one of them put it, he would expect them to observe it. Either way, there is no consistency of practice. Such practice as there is may not be understood by the public; indeed, they may be unaware of its existence. All hon. Members will be familiar with complaints from constituents that the first they knew of a neighbouring development was when the bulldozers arrived next door.
The Government have clearly accepted in principle that there is a problem, since they have acted in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, the principle of neighbour notification was first introduced under the General Development Order 1981, amended by the General Development Order 1984.
The applicant is required to notify owners, occupiers and lessees on neighbouring land, which is defined in guidelines, and to accompany his application with a certificate listing the names and addresses of those parties having a notifiable interest. The list is scrutinised by the authority, and if the applicant has been unable to identify all the neighbours, the authority must advertise the proposal in a local newspaper, the applicant paying the cost.
In Northern Ireland, the same principle of neighbour notification is being applied, although on a non-statutory trial basis. The Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland has laid upon itself the task of notifying in writing occupiers of buildings on land adjoining the application site. Surveys in Scotland and Northern Ireland reveal support for neighbour notification in principle, which planners consider has increased the public's awareness of the planning system; but the systems in force in those parts of the British Isles are costly in personnel and time, and because the public believe that the purpose of planning is to protect individual property interests, they do not always give satisfaction.
In England and Wales, the Association of District Councils, which has discussed this issue many times, is opposed to an extension, for example, of the Scottish system to England and Wales. Some of its members oppose entirely the direct notification of neighbours by any means on grounds of cost and raising false hopes. Others favour some notification, to be undertaken by the applicant, on a non-statutory basis.
This diversity of approach is confusing for the public, as within one county or even one constituency, such as mine, adjoining councils may have widely differing practices. The borough council of Kings Lynn and West
340
Norfolk has a good code of practice, clearly expressed, while Breckland district council prefers to consult only at the discretion of the officer involved.
The District Planning Officers Society is rightly concerned on two counts—because of the volume of complaints received by the ombudsman on neighbour notification, and because it feels that such complaints damage its relationship with the public. It has identified the best practice, while emphasising that local circumstances must be taken into account. It stresses also that renotification of material amendments to submitted plans is an important issue which must be addressed.
The view of the Department of the Environment as expressed in a letter from the then Under-Secretary of State, in May 1987, is:
"There is no substitute for a properly thought out strategy by each local planning authority in accordance with local needs."
I agree, but unless this strategy is made a statutory requirement, it will remain meaningless.
We must remember that public interest in planning matters can only increase, that members of the public have no right of appeal against planning conditions which may intimately affect them and their families and that the least people in England and Wales can expect is a consistently applied code of practice which will give them protection, wherever they live, even if not so elaborate and costly as Government legislation has already provided for people in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The Bill seeks to require planning authorities to have a code of practice for neighbour notification, to be drawn up by themselves in accordance with local circumstances, widely publicised and subject to scrutiny by the Secretary of State. It is a modest measure designed to be consonant with Government aims of local autonomy and containing public expenditure. It would be a step towards bringing the same rights of information to people in England and Wales as are already enjoyed by their Scottish and Northern Irish counterparts, and I hope that it will gain the support of the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mrs. Gillian Shephard, Sir Rhodes Boyson, Mr. Peter Thurnham, Mr. Tim Boswell, Mr. Robert G. Hughes, Miss Ann Widdecombe, Mr. Malcolm Moss, Mr. David Evans, Mr. Simon Burns, Mr. Timothy Kirkhope, Mr. Ian Taylor and Sir Geoffrey Finsberg.

Planning (Notification of Development Proposals)
  PLANNING (NOTIFICATION OF DEVELOPMENT PROPOSALS)
  Mrs. Gillian Shephard accordingly presented a Bill to secure fuller, more effective and more consistent public involvement in the development control process: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 17 February and to be printed. [Bill 59.]
  Orders of the Day

    Opposition Day
    [3RD ALLOTTED DAY]
    Mr. Speaker: I understand that the first Opposition Day motion is not to be moved. We move to the second motion.

    Low Pay
    6.25 pm
    Mr. Michael Meacher: I beg to move,
    That this House, noting that the number of low-paid workers paid below the European decency threshold has increased by two million since 1979 and that the lowest paid are now relatively poorer than at any time for a century, strongly condemns the Government's proposal to abolish the Wages Councils, which will depress the living standards of millions of families and will encourage employers to compete by wage cutting rather than by improved efficiency.
    Mr. Speaker: I must announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister.
    Mr. Meacher: In two days' time the consultation period ends for the Government's consultative document on wages councils. Since the Government have made clear their intention to abolish wages councils, whatever the facade of consultation concludes, the Secretary of State for Employment will leave Britain alone in Europe and almost alone in the world in having no legally enforceable minimum wage provisions.
    The right hon. Gentleman will be acting in defiance of the CBI, the employers and other management organisations; he will be breaking a number of international agreements; he will be disregarding the almost unanimous view of the Tory-dominated Select Committee on Employment: and, worst of all, he will be the architect of the wrong economic policy for Britain, encouraging inefficient employers who cut wages at the expense of good employers who compete by innovation, new investment and new technologies.
    One can appreciate the right hon. Gentleman's embarrassment at the consultative document. It is as thin in substance—it is three and half pages if one excludes the appendices—as it is vapid in fact and in argument. Much of the document, I understand, was written in Downing street rather than in the Department of Employment, no doubt by the same young Turks who wrote the National Health Service review. It was sneaked out separately from the White Paper—and several hours later—on 5 December, although it is not clear whether that was because of its economic illiteracy or so as not to harm too much the right hon. Gentleman's reputation in the coming Cabinet reshuffle.
    The document refers to
    "evidence that Council minima continue to be above the levels required to fill jobs."
    In other words, the objective of abolition is wage cuts. Yet a few paragraphs later the document states that since the abolition of wages councils' protection for young people,
    "their earnings continued to rise."
    342
    Given the Government's belief that the main cause of rising unemployment is high wages, one would expect the rise in earnings of young people to be followed by job losses, but, on the contrary, the document tells us that "the rate of youth unemployment has declined dramatically." The Secretary of State cannot have his cake and eat it. At one and the same time he wants to argue that wages councils are holding wages too high and thereby destroying jobs, but also that abolition of the wages councils will not lead to wage reductions which might cause hardship. Or perhaps the right hon. Gentleman wishes to dissociate himself from the document because it is riddled with internal inconsistencies.
    As hon. Members in all parts of the House know, the truth is that the Government want to lower minimum wages but do not want to be seen doing it because they judge it would be unpopular. The document says, without a shred of evidence:
    "the facts do not suggest that cases of extremely low wages, imposed against workers' wishes, will become endemic or widespread."
    Yet the document reports that current minimum rates of pay for adult workers range from as little as £76 a week to £92 for a full week's work, before tax and other deductions.
    We want to know from the right hon. Gentleman—with his £1,000 a week salary and his £100,000 minimum fee membership of Lloyd's—whether he regards those levels as extremely low wages. The right hon. Gentleman is obviously embarrassed when the facts are revealed. Would a member of Lloyd's regard those as extremely low wages? If the right hon. Gentleman does not, perhaps he will tell the House what he does regard as extremely low wages. If he does regard them as extremely low wages, how could he not accept that the abolition of the wages councils will increase the number of workers paid at these, or even lower, levels?
    Mrs. Ann Clwyd: Will my hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. Meacher: I shall be glad to give way to my hon. Friend, but the right hon. Gentleman keeps murmuring and I am sure the House would like an answer to those questions from him.
    Mrs. Clwyd: Does my hon. Friend agree that the major issues in the Pontypridd by-election are not the extravagant claims which have been made by Conservative Members during the last hour and a half, but those of high unemployment in areas such as Pontypridd, and, especially, low pay? Is my hon. Friend aware that 40 per cent, of the people working in the Pontypridd constituency earn £4,000 a year or less? Is that not disgraceful?
    Mr. Meacher: My hon. Friend makes a significant point, which undoubtedly will feature strongly in the by-election. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones) will comment in more detail on that matter when he replies.
    As my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) said, more than 40 per cent, of people in Wales—that certainly includes Pontypridd—are now earning less than the European decency threshold. That figure is nearly 10 per cent, higher than it was 10 years ago. That fact is far more important than all the ridiculous filibustering on the by-election which has occurred in the past one and a half hours.

    343
    We are entitled to know the Secretary of State's attitude to low pay, because his Parliamentary Private Secretary, the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham), was the sole member of the all-party Select Committee on Employment to vote last time round for the abolition of the wages councils. At that time he said:
    "People have said they do not want to go back to Victorian sweatshops. Would we not be better off if the country was one sweatshop, hard at work instead of having 3 million unemployed?"
    We should like to know whether the right hon. Gentleman also holds those views, or whether he repudiates his own Parliamentary Private Secretary? I notice that the right hon. Gentleman is keeping extremely quiet.
    In one sense we already know the right hon. Gentleman's attitude to low pay—he is in favour of it. He has pursued criminal underpayment of wages below minimum rates with all the enthusiasm of the Prime Minister canvassing at election time for the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath). Out of 88,000 establishments caught paying illegally low wages in the past 10 years, he has prosecuted only 56—less than one in 1,000.
    The right hon. Gentleman has doubled the number of his fraud investigators, while at the same time he has halved the number of his wages inspectors. The low paid might be excused for thinking that the right hon. Gentleman will certainly use the law against them when they are unemployed, but he will refuse to use it to assist them when they are in work.
    Ministers like to refer to the Government as a law and order Government, but it is law and order in a kid glove when it comes to tracking down employers who break the law. The consultation document even admits that, to cope with the reduced inspectorate, routine visits to small firms have now been replaced by postal questionnaires asking the employer whether he is committing the criminal offence of illegal underpayment of his workers. I suppose, on that precedent, the Government might as well abolish the police force, and send regular letters to known criminals asking them whether they have committed any crimes recently. In this case, the right hon. Gentleman is abolishing the wages police force, and he is abandoning any follow up, even letters.
    Not one reputable organisation is in favour of the Government's destruction of the wages councils. Just as the Botha Government in South Africa is much more hardline Right than the business community, so the Thatcher Government are much more rigid and intransigent than all the employer organisations. I shall not mention, of course, the Low Pay Unit, the TUC and the Labour party, because their views are well known, but the Confederation of British Industry has made it clear that it sees no reason to change its policy from that which emerged from its consultation in 1985 which showed overwhelming support in the CBI for the retention of reformed wages councils.
    In a letter of 17 June last year, the director-general of the CBI reported to the right hon. Gentleman—I hope that he will refer to it later:
    "it would be wrong to suggest that abolition of Wages Councils is as yet favoured by employers in every sector covered."
    344
    A stronger view is taken by the British Institute of Management. Its director-general wrote to the right hon. Gentleman on 19 January. He said:
    "We remain unconvinced that the time is right for the abolition of Wages Councils. We do not see the structures as being inflationary, nor harming job creation to a significant extent, and they continue to provide some necessary protection for low-paid workers."
    I do not believe that the right hon. Gentleman could expect a more majestic put down.
    Not even the right hon. Gentleman's favourite, the Institute of Directors, is a lot of help to him. It may come out later in the debate, but the Institute of Directors claimed that its call for abolition was supported by three quarters of its members. However, on closer examination it emerged that the survey on which that conclusion was based had a non-response rate of 93·5 per cent. The Institute of Directors admitted, too, that most of its membership had no direct experience of wages councils. Of course, that did not stop Sir John Hoskyns, the director-general—never one to be put off by lack of knowledge or facts—saying two days later that anyone whose pay dropped because of abolition could rely on family credit. What he did not say, or perhaps he did not know, was that there are 2·5 million workers covered by wages councils, of which 400,000 are entitled to family credit, but only half that number claim it.
    Mr. Dave Nellist: Is my hon. Friend aware that, in a previous incarnation, John Hoskyns worked for the No. 10 policy unit, where he wrote the paper which set up the YTS scheme in 1983? In that paper he said that the aim of the YTS should be to bring in
    "a scheme that increases the differential between youth and adult wages."
    John Hoskyns' experience is all about driving down wages, especially those of young people.
    Mr. Meacher: That is why John Hoskyns has always been a great favourite of this Government, whose aim has always been to drive the maximum wedge between all sections of the population, whether it be between the north and the south, manual and non-manual workers, young and elderly people or ethnic minorities. It would be helpful if we could have that point answered by the curiously quiet and subdued Secretary of State.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Meacher: No, I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman, but I will give way to the Secretary of State.
    Mr. Bruce rose——
    Mr. Meacher: No, I shall not give way. The right hon. Gentleman can look after himself.
    A large part of low pay is in retailing, and significantly the Retail Consortium—which employs a large number of low-paid workers—has reported to Ministers:
    "the overwhelming majority of the retail trade favour the continuation of the wages council system, subject to reforms."
    Even among small firms—they must always be the Government's last hope—the Government's fanaticism for abolition is not shared. This is the second time in three years that they have come back with exactly the same proposals. In a Department of Trade and Industry survey of 200 small firms, only 4 per cent, agreed—in answer to a prompted question-that wages councils were a

    345
    "burden" on their business. Only 1 per cent, mentioned wages councils in any context and of the 19 listed so-called burdens, wages councils ranked third from the bottom. If the right hon. Gentleman is really interested in lifting the burden on businesses he should concentrate on what is crippling them now—the soaring interest rates.
    Mr. Chris Mullin: Has my hon. Friend noticed that only five Conservative Back Benchers—four if one omits the Minister's bag carrier—are present? Does he agree that that no doubt will be widely remarked upon in our free press tomorrow?
    Mr. Meacher: I certainly hope that my hon. Friend's observation will be carried in the papers where we hope to read about it tomorrow. From a quick glance at our Benches, I would say that about 60 of my hon. Friends are present, which is 10 times greater than the attendance on the Tory Benches.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: I am grateful that the hon. Gentleman has given way and is at last demonstrating that he is willing to take part in a debate.
    I am having some difficulty following his argument because he has said clearly—I thought that he was trying to recant what he had said in previous debates—that we had taken young people out of wages councils and that their wages had gone up. I have always argued that wages councils keep wages down. If the hon. Gentleman has admitted that, how can he continue with his argument that people's wages will go down if the protection of the wages councils is removed? Surely logic and experience tell us that their wages will go up in a free market.
    Mr. Meacher: The hon. Gentleman is a little too eager. He is the victim of Government propaganda because it is the Government's document that states that the wages of young people have gone up. I do not believe that that document is worth the paper it is written on. There is not a shred of evidence behind it and I am sure that every allegation it makes is completely unsupported by evidence.
    The Secretary of State has no support in this country or abroad. He is ditching Britain's international obligations. One of the articles of the treaty of Rome—we hear a lot about that treaty when it is convenient to the Government —aims:
    "To promote improved working conditions and an improved standard of living for workers".
    Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will tell us how the abolition of wages councils will achieve that. Article 4 of the European social charter—it would never surprise me if the Government disavowed that charter—enshrines the right of people to receive
    "fair remuneration sufficient for a decent standard of living".
    How does paying people less than one third of the national average wage do anything but prohibit a decent standard of living? The International Labour Organisation has stated:
    "almost all countries in the world have some form of minimum wage protection".
    All European Community countries, without exception, either have a statutory minimum wage or national agreements reached within individual industries, which are binding at law and provide a statutory minimum rate.
    National minimum wages also exist in the United States. That is rather surprising, as the Government are anxious to emulate the capitalist leaders of the western world—Canada, Australia and Japan. When top-rate
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    taxes were much higher in Britain, the Tories insisted that for market reasons they must be brought into line with our competitors. Now when it comes to minimum wage rates, about which the rest of Europe is in step, the Tories say that for market reasons we must move out of line with our competitors. There is not a shred of logic behind that argument; it is just Tory self-interest.
    Ms. Clare Short: At the time of the removal of wages councils' protection of young people, Ministers, time and again, gave undertakings that the remaining wages council system would be in place indefinitely. A couple of years later they are now breaking their promises. Those Ministers are dishonourable and their word is worth nothing.
    Mr. Meacher: I am sure that my hon. Friend is not one of those people who still believe that there is any credibility in Government promises. I doubt whether there are many people left in the country who still believe that. The abolition of the wages councils is not in the Tory manifesto, but, of course, they have done so many things that were not in that manifesto. Their abolition is not supported, of course, by the low paid, but nor is it supported by the overwhelming majority of our people. The right hon. Gentleman is not only going back on his promises, but is acting in the teeth of the views of the great majority of people.
    The Government may not realise that their strategy may be blocked by the EEC. There is clear evidence that other member states will not be prepared to tolerate Britain using low wages as a form of hidden subsidy or tariff to give British firms an unfair competitive advantage. I know that the Germans in particular are strongly opposed to what they call "social dumping" by firms illegally paying low wages.
    The Government in the lead-up to 1992 are trying to have it both ways. Of course they are behind the single market initiative because they believe passionately in removing obstacles to competition in the international market place. They have not faced up to the fact that, although in some areas that requires the removal of regulations, tariffs, protection and import restrictions, in other areas it requires a standardisation of such things as product standards, health and safety and environmental regulations. That is why the harmonisation of employment rights throughout Europe is also necessary to ensure fair competition. It is extraordinarily myopic for the Government, alone in Europe, to be so fanatical about competitive markets and yet to be so blind to the logic of their own position, which will undermine them.
    Not for the first time, what is good for the Thatcherites is bad for Britain. If the Government ideologues succeed in deregulating the labour market, they will be launching diametrically the wrong economic policy for Britain.
    Mr. Julian Brazier: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Meacher: In a moment. I am glad to welcome the hon. Gentleman to the debate. The Government Benches are beginning to fill up—there must be six Conservative Members present out of 350. That shows their interest in this issue.
    An unregulated market is based not on efficiency, productivity, quality or design—all the things that the Government talk about—but on wage cutting. In such a

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    market no individual firm dare risk investing in training or re-equipment for fear that a competitor will steal a march by offering a lower price base on low wages. The Government's policy is a recipe for stagnation, low morale, low productivity and technological backwardness. That is precisely what the Government's and the Chancellor's low-tech no-tech economy is headed for. Forcing down wage rates is not improving efficiency, but escaping from it. On that point I shall quote the words of a former Minister with responsibility for labour affairs who said in this Chamber:
    "It was formerly supposed that the working of the laws of supply and demand would naturally regulate or eliminate that evil…
    payment below a living wage—
    "But where…you have no organisation, no parity of bargaining, the good employer is undercut by the bad and the bad employer is undercut by the worst"—[Official Report, 28 April 1909; Vol. IV, c. 388.]
    Those are not the words of my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) nor the words of Frank Cousins or Ernie Bevin; they are the words of the Prime Minister's exemplar, Winston Churchill. I might say that there are many people who would welcome him back in exchange for the Government.
    Mr. Brazier: I am glad that there is one more hon. Member on our Back Benches than there were on the Opposition Back Benches when we were debating cold weather payments. However, the hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. He asks what is the logic of the Government's policy of deregulation in regard to the economy as a whole. Surely the logic of deregulation is that it has led to unemployment in this country falling over the past five years, while it is still rising in other parts of the EEC, when our average wages are rising rapidly.
    Mr. Meacher: The trouble with Government Back Benchers is that they are victims of the Government's propaganda. They do not seem to realise that unemployment is still twice as high as it was on the last day of the Labour Government. The Government's low-pay policy is completely inconsistent with the objectives that they like to profess. The Secretary of State continually talks about getting people off benefit, but a policy of wage cutting pushes more people into dependence on benefit, whether it is housing benefit or family credit.
    This year, according to the public expenditure White Paper, the Government are proposing to budget £409 million for family credit. That is a substantial subsidy, by any standards, at the taxpayers' expense for the lowest-paying firms. I hope that the Secretary of State will touch on some of those matters when he replies to the debate. Is he not ashamed that the Government are subsidising inefficiency in that way?
    The Secretary of State is always preening himself on reducing unemployment. That is what misled the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). However he is increasing unemployment by actively encouraging wage cutting. Workers are also customers. By cutting their pay and their capacity to buy goods and services, he is undermining employment. It is time that the Government and the Secretary of State took it on board that one man's pay cut is another man's job loss.
    The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Norman Fowler): Now that the hon. Gentleman is talking about employment which is a central part of the debate, will he confirm that the work force—people in employment in this country—is at an all-time record high and is far in excess of anything achieved in 1979 by the last Labour Government?
    Mr. Meacher: The right hon. Gentleman is saying that the numbers of people in work as a proportion of the total number who want work is higher than it was in 1979. That is a most extraordinarily illiterate statement. The percentage in work is still substantially lower than it was in 1979. If the right hon. Gentleman is also a victim of his own propaganda, God help this country.
    Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman clearly does not understand the point, or if he understands the point, in his typical way he is evading it. There are more people—almost 26 million people—in jobs in this country. Does he accept that that is an all-time record in this country? For once let the hon. Gentleman be frank.
    Mr. Meacher: The right hon. Gentleman is ignoring the real issue which is the proportion of people who want work who are able to get it. That is what counts. If the number of people in the country grows, it is not surprising that the number of people in work grows. The question is whether it is as high as it was in 1979 in proportion to the total number of people wanting work. It is not. It is substantially lower. As several of my hon. Friends have said, a very high proportion of the extra 1 million jobs that have been created, about which we hear so much, are part-time, low-paid and insecure jobs. In the coming recession later this year those will be the jobs that go first.
    Mr. Thomas Graham: Is my hon. Friend aware that Strathclyde in Scotland has lost 40 per cent.—146,000—of its manufacturing jobs since 1979? What a record for the Government to be proud of.
    Mr. Meacher: My hon. Friend is quite right. It is extraordinary that the Secretary of State should seek to defend his position when the Government are so vulnerable on this matter.
    The Chancellor likes to tell the House that people need incentives and that is why he gives tax breaks to the affluent and the well-heeled. Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House why the rich need to be paid more to work harder while the poor need a pay cut to make them work harder? I shall be happy to give way to him.
    The latest news is that the Government are targeting the low paid for the Budget. One might have been forgiven for thinking that they had been targeting them for the past 10 years. There are now 9·9 million adult workers in Britain paid below the European decency threshold—an increase of 2 million under the Tories. Pay rises for the highest paid one fifth of men in the work force have been 50 per cent, greater than those for the lowest paid one fifth. The poorest paid one fifth of male manual workers now earns less, relative to the average, than in 1886 when the figures were first collected. Relatively, they have never been poorer than they are today. Things have not improved since Lord Gowrie resigned as Minister of State four years ago because his £33,000 a year salary could not provide a decent civilised existence against the cost of living in London. Presumably he is the most celebrated victim yet of the Government' pay policy

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    At least Ministers are now conceding that the Tory trickle-down theory of economic growth is not working. That reminds me of the line of the Beatitudes which says: "It's the rich that get the prunes and the poor that get the shits."
    Mrs. Teresa Gorman: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I take offence at the language being used by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and I should like you to bring him to order for using such language in the Chamber.
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): There is so much background noise in the Chamber that it is very difficult for the Chair to hear hon. Members' comments.
    Mr. Meacher: I know that the hon. Lady is a very sensitive and dainty person. Therefore, I shall make the same point about the Tory theory of trickle-down economic growth by saying that it is the rich that get the prunes and the poor that get the runs.
    It is hypocritical for the Secretary of State and the Chancellor to talk about raising tax allowances as a Budget for the low paid when at the same time the Government have frozen child benefit for the second year running and are now proposing further cuts for the low paid by threatening wages councils. Nor does the Chancellor, whose concern for the low paid has been about as touching as Marie Antoinette's for the starving masses, seem to be aware that tax cuts will do almost nothing for the low paid because they trigger an automatic reduction of family credit and housing benefit leaving them no better off. I am sure that the Secretary of State does not know about that, because it is a social security matter and he has very little interest in social security.
    The Prime Minister stated in memorable words on the steps of Downing street in 1979,
    "Where there is discord, may we bring harmony. Where there is error may we bring truth"—
    although in the event that turned out to be written by Bernard Ingham—
    "Where there is doubt, may we bring faith, where there is despair, may we bring hope."
    With the exception of the unemployed, there must be few sections of the population for whom discord, doubt and despair has been doubled and redoubled more than for Britain's army of low-paid workers. Privatisation, endless social security cuts, market-rigging subsidies for lower wages, the abolition of the fair wages resolution, renunciation of international treaty obligations underpinning minimum wages and now the abolition of the wages councils have all been used ruthlessly by the Government to drive low wages even lower. It is a one-sided meanness and vindictiveness in our increasingly two nations country and that is why we shall be repudiating it strongly in the Lobby.
    6.59 pm
    The Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Norman Fowler): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and add instead thereof:
    'noting that since this Government came to power personal disposable income has increased at every level in society and that the lowest paid have had proportionately higher increases than many other groups, considers that the best way in which the Government can help the low paid is by creating the conditions for more jobs by breaking down the barriers to
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    employment and encouraging labour market flexibility; and welcomes the Government's decision to consult about the abolition of Wages Councils.'.
    As the debate is about low pay, I shall be dealing with the issue of wages councils, but first let me pick up two points made by the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher).
    The hon. Gentleman mentioned international comparisons of minimum wages. It is, of course, true that a number of other countries have minimum pay arrangements; it is equally true that minimum rates in countries such as the Netherlands have not been raised since 1983. In the United States they have not been raised since 1981. Various Common Market and OECD reports have drawn attention to the need for Government to consider the impact of minimum wages on jobs.
    The number of prosecutions carried out by the wages council inspectors has seldom reached double figures in any year under any Government. For the record, however, the ratio of prosecutions to establishments underpaying has been higher since 1979 than during the last Labour Government. That is another fact that the hon. Gentleman got wrong.
    If the hon. Gentleman wishes to quote Winston Churchill, the best and most revealing quotation that he could give is Churchill's observation that the false doctrines of Socialism, if ever seriously put into practice here, would reduce this island to chaos and starvation.
    I draw little comfort from the hon. Gentleman's speech, but its most extraordinary feature was not what it contained but what it almost omitted but then glossed over. The hon. Gentleman rambled on about the Council of Europe measure on low pay, which has one distinction: it is not accepted by any European Government that I know of. As my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) pointed out, the hon. Gentleman paid no serious attention to the reduction in unemployment in this country; yet the most effective contribution that any Government can make to improving incomes is surely the creation of conditions for more jobs.
    If a Government are serious about tackling low income, they must be serious about creating jobs. Achieving more jobs means removing the barriers and obstacles to employment. That has led the present Government to tackle, for example, the industrial relations problem left by the Labour Government of which the hon. Member for Oldham, West was a member, who exported British job after British job overseas and left the country in chaos.
    Mr. Win Griffiths: Does the Minister realise that, according to figures provided by the Library, by the end of last year in Wales, Scotland, the north-west, the north and the west midlands there were more than 800,000 fewer jobs than in 1979, and that the extra jobs created in Britain are mainly part-time jobs in the south-east?
    Mr. Fowler: I do not accept that, but I was about to deal with precisely that point.
    If the hon. Member for Oldham, West wants European comparisons, surely European comparisons on employment are the most relevant. If he was serious about low incomes, he would welcome the reduction in unemployment. He would welcome the fact that the unemployment rate has fallen faster here in the past two years than in any other major industrialised country. According to standardised figures, it is below both the European Community average and the rate in countries such as

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    France, Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain—and that in, for instance, Canada. He would also welcome the fact that as many new jobs have been created in this country over the past four years as have been created in the rest of the European Community countries combined, and the fact that more people are now in employment in this country than at any time in history. That includes 1979, and takes no account of those undergoing training. The work force now totals nearly 26 million.
    Anyone who is seriously concerned about low incomes will see the importance of those dramatic improvements. Unemployment is clearly the chief factor in low incomes, and more employment is the best and surest path out of lower incomes. Our number one aim must surely be to produce the pay cheque rather than the dole slip.
    Mr. Tony Banks: It is difficult to believe what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, given that since 1979 there have been 19 or 20 changes in the way in which unemployment figures are calculated. [HON. MEMBERS: "24."] I am told that there have been 24. It is going up all the time.
    Despite that, the right hon. Gentleman must accept that unemployment is still twice as high now as it was in 1979 when his Government were elected. So that we can proceed objectively and rationally, is the right hon. Gentleman prepared to allow the International Labour Organisation to conduct an independent inquiry into the various changes so that we know once and for all whether the Government are telling the truth or giving us a pack of lies?
    Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman knows that there are two ways of counting unemployment. The first is to count those drawing unemployment benefit, which is the way in which not only the present Government but their Labour predecessor did it. Another way is by means of the labour force survey, in which 60,000 households are surveyed.
    The latest labour force survey will, I hope, be published in a month or two, and I ask the House to wait for its publication. Past labour force surveys, certainly the one last year, have shown that the figures that we have published as the unemployment count, far from overstating the improvement, have, if anything, understated it. It would be wise for the House to wait for the survey's publication before jumping to any conclusions and to see whether it confirms a real and dramatic fall in unemployment, as has been the case in previous years.
    The hon. Gentleman and his party lose a good deal of credibility up and down the country when they try to challenge what everyone else recognises as a real improvement. It is entirely legitimate for the hon. Gentleman to argue that the improvement should be greater and should continue, and I shall come to that point, but to deny that there has been an improvement at all is simply to make his position untenable.
    Mr. Meacher: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that he is directly misleading the House? The facts are completely contrary to what he has said. The labour force survey for the latest year for which information is available—1986–87—shows a fall of 80,000 in unemployment, while the fall in the unemployment benefit count for exactly the same period, given monthly by the Government, was 240,000. In other words, the Government's unemployment
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    benefit count exaggerates three times the much better and, indeed, standardised international definition of the fall in unemployment. Rather than a fall of 1 million over the past two and a half years, there has been a fall of about 300,000.
    Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman, in his hysterical way, has got it wrong again. We have tried to point this out to him, but he never listens. The unemployment total in the labour force survey is below that in the count of unemployed claimants.
    I urge the hon. Gentleman, in his own interests, to wait until the new labour force survey is published and then to come back if he believes that the figures that we are publishing exaggerate the position. I do not believe that they do or that any serious commentator or politician in this country will consider that to be the position.
    Ms. Short rose——
    Mr. Fowler: That is why it is of such fundamental importance that the unemployment rate in this country is now down to just over 7 per cent—a fall of almost 2 per cent, over the past 12 months—that the reduction has benefited all regions and that the steepest falls have been in areas where the problem has hitherto been worst, such as the west midlands, the north-west and Wales.
    Mr. Allen McKay rose——
    Mr. Graham rose——
    Mr. Fowler: If Opposition Members are concerned about low pay and poor people, surely they are concerned about the position of unemployed people, particularly the long-term unemployed. Do they have no conscience? Are they not concerned? [Interruption.]
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. I am finding it exceedingly difficult to hear what the Minister is saying.
    Ms. Short: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You will know that Opposition days are precious to us. We put down a motion to debate low pay. The Secretary of State is filibustering and making all sorts of pretentious claims about the unemployment figures, but he is not talking about low pay. Is he in order?
    Mr. Deputy Speaker: This is a very short debate, and I know that the hon. Lady is hoping to catch my eye. Bogus points of order only waste time.
    Mr. Fowler: The reaction of some Opposition Members reveals their stance on unemployment and their embarrassment that unemployment is coming down. That is what I find so disturbing.
    Mrs. Alice Mahon rose——
    Mr. Fowler: The number of long-term unemployed has come down by about 450,000. That must be good news for anyone who is concerned about people on low incomes, and there is every reason to believe that unemployment can come down further. There are 700,000 vacancies, so the opportunity exists for a further fall in unemployment. It was precisely for that reason that we introduced the employment training programme to train long-term unemployed people so that they could take the jobs which, fortunately, are now available. In spite of opposition,

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    employment training has got off to a good start and, after 20 weeks, there are now 125,000 people under training on the scheme.
    The hon. Member for Oldham, West did not support the programme for long-term unemployed people. He did not even support the position of the leader of his party on a programme for the long-term unemployed. If he has to choose between party politics and the position of the poor and unemployed, he chooses party politics every time.
    Mr. Nellist rose——
    Mr. Fowler: The hon. Member for Oldham, West is not only a weak man; he is a weak politician.
    Great progress is being made both in reducing unemployment and in training unemployed people.
    Mr. Nellist rose——
    Mr. Fowler: There is no evidence that the standard of living of people in this country has dropped over the past 10 years; quite the contrary. The evidence is that it has increased at an appreciably faster rate than was achieved by the last Labour Government.
    The hon. Member for Oldham, West has quoted some surveys. Let me take two surveys which have infinitely more weight than anything that he put forward. The first in an analysis of households with below average incomes carried out by the Government's statistical service and published last summer. It shows that households of all income levels have had increased living standards under this Government. It shows that there was a 6·4 per cent, increase in the real net income of the average household between 1981 and 1985 and that, for the poorest 10 per cent., the increase was 8·3 per cent.; in other words, it was above the average. The survey goes up only to 1985, but it is clear that, as unemployment has fallen, so the position has improved.
    The evidence of the new earnings survey is even more significant. Between 1979 and 1988, the real earnings of male workers increased by an average of 2·6 per cent, a year. That compares with an increase of only 1 per cent, a year under the last Labour Government up to 1979. There was a 32·9 per cent, increase in female earnings between 1979 and 1988 compared with only 16 per cent, between 1974 and 1979. Again, that is a higher annual average.
    In addition, a survey carried out by my Department and published in the Employment Gazette shows that, between 1973 and 1979, a third of all male occupations in this country had not a rise but a fall in real earnings. That is the record of the Labour Government of which the hon. Gentleman was a member. Since 1979, the real earnings in almost every male occupation have increased. I am not, therefore, inclined to take lectures from the hon. Gentleman on ways to improve the position of lower paid workers.
    When the hon. Gentleman was in government, he served in an Administration that made many of the lower paid even more lower paid. That is the record. In opposition, he has tried to sabotage a training programme whose aim is to find solutions for thousands of people living on what we would all agree are low incomes.
    Ms. Short: I am sure that the Secretary of State knows the difference between an average and a distribution of that average and that he is capable of disaggregating the figures. He will know that we have had some economic growth in Britain every year since 1945, so to claim an
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    annual rise in living standards is not significant. However, if he disaggregates the growth in average earnings, he will see that the lowest paid 20 per cent, are relatively worse off and that there is a growing divide in our country. That is the issue that we wish to discuss tonight.
    Mr. Fowler: The figures that I have quoted show that the position has improved unquestionably over the past nine or 10 years and has improved much faster than under the last Labour Government. The hon. Lady may not like that evidence. She was not a member of that Government and no doubt does not take a great deal of responsibility for their actions, but that is the position.
    Mr. Nellist: Will the Minister give way?
    Mr. Fowler: I must make progress.
    I am not prepared to take lectures on wages councils from the hon. Member for Oldham, West. The House will understand that we are in the final stages of consulting about the future of the wages councils. Opposition Members might have rather more to complain about if, before the consultation period was over, I came to the House and announced a decision. Let me explain why we believe that consultation was necessary.
    By any analysis, the wages council system has changed fundamentally since its inception in 1909. Two thirds of the workers whom it now covers are paid above the minimum rate. Wages councils cover only one tenth of the work force. It is essentially a system for retailing, catering and, to a lesser extent, clothing manufacturing. Retailing and catering together account for about 90 per cent, of the workers who are covered.
    The system is not comprehensive and it is also-by common consent—full of anomalies. It covers laundries but not laundrettes, the selling of cooked meat, but not that of raw meat. Not only have circumstances changed since 1909, but there have been developments since legislation was introduced in 1986 to exclude young people under the age of 21.
    There is no evidence that the removal of the right of those under 21 to take their cases to wages councils has led to lower pay for them. There is every reason to believe that it has encouraged their employment. [Interruption.] I shall give the hon. Member for Oldham, West evidence on employment in a minute. Since young people were excluded from wages councils regulation in 1986, employers have been more willing to employ them. They have also enjoyed greater freedom to fix pay levels and that has contributed to the dramatic decrease in youth unemployment. Unemployment among those aged under 20 has fallen during the past two years from 21 per cent, to just above 12 per cent. Some young people have enjoyed opportunities which would not have existed had regulation continued, and their earnings in general have not fallen away.
    In hotels and catering the weekly earnings of full-time male workers under 21 have risen from £96 in 1986 to £105 in 1988—an increase of 9 per cent. Females in the same industry aged under 21 have enjoyed a pay rise during the same period from £87 to £97—an increase of 15 per cent.
    In retailing, the earnings of full-time sales assistants have risen from £90 to £107—an increase of 19 per cent. There is no evidence of a reduction in the earnings of under-21s since the wages council system was introduced.
    Economic and social conditions have been transformed since the wages council system was introduced. Average

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    pay is higher and average hours worked each week have fallen by between 10 and 15 hours. The great majority of people who are covered by the wages councils work part time and many contribute a second income to the family.
    The greatest difference since the introduction of wages councils is that there is now a comprehensive framework of social security benefits—not only out-of-work benefits, but in-work benefits. The system of in-work benefits provides direct help for people on low incomes. Family credit——
    Mr. Nellist: Will the Secretary of State give way?
    Mr. Fowler: No, I shall not give way again.
    Family credit is a generous replacement of the old family income supplement. It is a viable and worthwhile benefit that makes a substantial difference to the income of working families. Expenditure on family credit in its first year of operation is estimated at £420 million. That compares—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing) waits, he will hear some answers. That compares with an expenditure of £180 million in the final year in which the family income supplement system was in operation.
    The amount of money devoted to low income families who are in work has more than doubled since the family credit system was introduced. A quarter of a million families now receive family credit—25 per cent, more than received family income supplement.
    Mr. Nellist: Will the Secretary of State give way?
    Mr. Fowler: No, I shall not.
    The average weekly award under the family credit system is more than £25—nearly double the £13 of the average family income supplement award. That is evidence that families most in need are claiming benefit.
    We continue to encourage the take-up of this new benefit. It has been in operation for only 12 months. Last summer I issued a leaflet which was distributed amongst jobcentres to explain family credit and other in-work benefits. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Oldham, West wants to argue against in-work benefits—it will be a new stance for his party—will he explain why the last Labour Government did nothing about them? Family income supplement continued throughout that Government's period in office.
    Circumstances have changed not only since the inception of the wages councils system but since the last consultation period in 1985. For those reasons, it is right to review the role of the councils and to consult on the proposal that they should be abolished. Decisions will be taken after the consultation period.
    The Opposition's attempts to link the proposed abolition of the wages councils with an increase in poverty founder on the facts. Most employees covered by wages councils are part-time workers, and about two thirds contribute a second income to the home. The size of that second income affects the standard of living of the household, but such families are not normally defined as living in poverty. Families without opportunity of employment encounter the greatest difficulty in achieving an acceptable standard of living. That is why the
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    Government are concentrating on creating conditions in which employment can grow and unemployment be reduced.
    Mr. Nellist: Will the Secretary of State give way?
    Mr. Fowler: I shall not. I have given way on many occasions.
    Mr. Nellist: Not to me.
    Mr. Fowler: The hon. Gentleman may be right.
    The Government can best help by creating conditions in which more jobs are generated and removing unnecessary barriers to employment. One that is still to be overcome is the shortage of skills in the labour market. Those goals form the background to our training proposals.
    The Government have tackled income barriers that stand in the way of people taking jobs in the first place. The Government have made a serious start on raising the tax threshold by increasing personal allowances by more than 25 per cent. They have restructured national insurance contributions to make lower paid jobs more attractive to employers and employees. Since 1985, national insurance contributions have been levied at the two lower rates of 5 per cent, and 7 per cent. By raising income tax allowances and by cutting the standard rate of income tax the Government have ensured that the average liability to income tax and national insurance of the bottom 10 per cent, of taxpayers has fallen by 19 per cent, in real terms during the 1980s.
    Another effect of having to finance Government expenditure by high taxes was that, after paying tax, people became better off when claiming social security than they were when employed. That is why the Government are determined to control spending and cut taxes. We are determined to ensure that people are better off in work, and that is why we have introduced family credit.
    Mr. Nellist: Will the Secretary of State give way?
    Mr. Fowler: I am close to finishing.
    Opposition Members have expressed concern about a widening of the distribution of income. They should remember that the standard of living of every part of the income distribution has increased absolutely. Real personal disposable income, both in total and per head, is higher than at any time under the last Labour Government. The test is whether the incomes of the poorest have increased. They have. That is more important than changes in relative distribution of income. The Labour party's lurid caricatures do not square with the facts. The truth is that the majority of families are better off than they were in 1979. The incomes of couples with children have increased in real terms and the incomes of single parents have also increased. A strong growth in real earnings is important because it represents real and quantifiable increases in the material welfare of people.
    Over the past 29 months or so, unemployment in this country has come down month by month. We have seen the biggest reduction in unemployment since the war. We have also seen the creation of a record number of new jobs. That is the Government's record, and it is a record that brings undoubted benefit to everyone in this country.
    7.31 pm
    Mr. Martyn Jones: Despite the protestations of the Secretary of State, in the past 10 years, the divide between rich and poor has widened hugely. Methinks the Secretary of State doth protest too much. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) has told us that, since 1979, the number of adult workers falling below the Council of Europe's decency threshold as specified by the European social charter has increased from just under 8 million to 9·9 million. Over the same period, pay rises for the highest paid fifth of men have been 50 per cent. greater than those for the poorest fifth. The poorest fifth of manual workers earned only 64 per cent. of the average in 1987, compared to 69 per cent. of the average in 1886. Meanwhile, the highest paid now earn more, relative to the average, than at any time since 1906. I do not remember the Secretary of State challenging those figures. Perhaps he will when he winds up, but I doubt it.
    The problem of low pay has worsened, and progress towards equal pay for women has stopped. The average earnings of women full-time workers is two thirds that of men, and the gap between the earnings of young people and adults has continued to widen. People between 18 and 20 years of age earned just 60 per cent. of average adult pay in 1979. There is also growing regional inequality, which the Secretary of State did not tackle. Even in the south-east, nearly one in four adults earn low wages despite working full time. In the rest of Britain, the figure is about one in three and that applies to regions such as Wales.
    We can blame deliberate Government policy, including the 1983 abolition of the fair wages resolution and the 1986 weakening of the wages councils' minimum wages system. As a result, some groups of workers have experienced actual cuts in weekly wages. The Secretary of State says that unemployment is the key to low pay. I would say that the Government have created the conditions for unemployment precisely for that reason. The number of people claiming benefit—to use a euphemism—may have come down, but there are still large numbers of people chasing jobs, which is good for low wages and profits, but bad for Britain in the long term. The Government seek to justify the encouragement of low-wage employment as a means of creating jobs, but the increase of 1·6 million in the number of people affected by low pay since 1979 is exactly matched by an increase in the numbers who are unemployed.
    My reason for speaking today is to give one example of an area that is neglected entirely by Government policy. I shall describe an effect slightly different from that of the abolition of the wages councils. My point is that we have a shortage of many skills, such as those of hospital technicians. I apologise for giving a list, but it is necessary. Areas affected by a shortage of skills are microbiologists—of which I am one—haematologists, health physicists, audiology and radiology technicians, pharmacy technicians, pharmacists and ECG technicians. All those workers are low-paid, yet they are desperately needed. Senior pharmacy technicians' pay starts at £5,500—one third of the average wage in this country. Pharmacy technicians at the top of the scale receive £8,500. That is a pittance in anybody's book. How can one recruit people to those highly technical jobs with such pay? Their responsibilities are increasing. Microbiologists have been
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    much in the news with salmonella, listeria and legionnaire's disease and without such technicians we should not be able to run the National Health Service—be it private or public.
    I shall give one more example of the specific problem of recruitment. In the hospital that serves my area, ECG technicians are impossible to recruit. There should be five staff in the department, but there is only one full-time technician. She cannot even take a holiday because of low pay. People have come off the dole who are unable to survive on that pay. If pay is forced down in a professional sector such as that, how can we as a nation hope to compete in an increasingly technical world?
    Mr. Barry Jones: She works at Ysbyty Maelor Wrescam
    Mr. Jones: Yes, that is the hospital. Employment training is hardly the answer to that problem; genuine pay scales are. That is the blight of low pay in one specific area.
    7.36 pm
    Mr. Tim Janman: At the heart of the speech of the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) was the Opposition's desire to eradicate differentials completely from the labour market and to have us all start the race at the same point in life and to end up at the same point. That is at the heart of their philosophy. If it is not their objective to achieve complete equality of income across the labour market, it is certainly their desire, through bureaucratic intervention and regulation, to prevent the correct differentials occurring between different sections of the labour market. Those differentials are, of course, directly proportional to the different skills, abilities and experiences that different individuals have to offer.
    It is ridiculous for the hon. Gentleman to start making comparisons between the income of a Secretary of State and somebody on low pay. It is a ridiculous, emotive and nonsensical point to make.
    Ms. Short: Why?
    Mr. Janman: If the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) thinks that in the real world a person doing an unskilled job should be paid the same as a carpenter or a fitter, or somebody in the professions, she is clearly living in a world of her own.
    Ms. Short: We hear so many speeches from Conservative Members in which they talk about people's wages as though those people were not real human beings. It is important to ask Conservative Members whether they could live on £100 a week. Could they keep their families on that money? Imagine what it would be like, and just think what they spend. They should think about the pay of many people working in public services in our country; that is the point to try to make Conservative Members understand. We are talking about real family budgets and family needs, not some abstract economic theory.
    Mr. Janman: I do not need any lectures from the likes of the hon. Lady about what it is like to live on a low income, given my own family background. I come from a low-paid, one-parent family, and I can assure the hon. Lady that I continually visit constituents who have to live on low incomes.
    Ms. Short: Do something about it, then.
    Mr. Janman: The hon. Lady is taking a flight into fantasy, as her party continually does, if she thinks that there is a broad-brush, simplistic answer to the problems that people on low incomes face in coping day by day.
    If the hon. Lady considers the track record, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, of the results of this Government's policies and compares them with those of the previous Socialist Administration—and with all the previous Socialist Administrations in this country—she will see that this Government have a much better record of increasing the real living standards of people on low pay, people on average earnings and those with above-average earnings. The hon. Member for Ladywood and her hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West can make up the facts if they wish, but what I am saying is the truth.
    We must ask what we mean by "low pay" and "poverty" because they are moving targets and always relative. If one raises the purchasing power of people on the bottom rung, the people on the next rung will want theirs raised to maintain the differential, and that mechanism will continue throughout the labour market.
    As I said a moment ago to the hon. Member for Ladywood, I regularly visit many of my constituents. I operate a mobile surgery and take myself to my constituents instead of expecting them to come to see me. Because, inevitably, most of the people I visit tend to have problems—often derived from low incomes—I see what is happening at grass-roots level in my constituency. However, my observation, which proves that poverty is relative, is that sometimes when I go into a household which, on paper, has a low income, and look around, I see items that five or 10 years ago would have been considered luxuries.
    Although I am not denying that there are genuinely people on low incomes in my constituency, as there are in many, if not all, constituencies in this country, there are cases in which people who are supposedly on low incomes or who are "poor" according to the figures of the Low Pay Unit have television sets, videos and hi-fis. That proves that the definition of poverty given by the Low Pay Unit is ridiculous.
    Two centuries ago Adam Smith was much more accurate when he stated:
    "By necessaries I understand, not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but whatever the custom of the country renders it indecent for creditable people even of the lowest order to be without."
    In other words, people always want to keep up with the Joneses. As people of a certain level in society have their income and standard of living raised, so everybody below that level will want to keep up with them.
    Our record of expenditure on the social and welfare system is far better than that of the previous Labour Administration, but due to the definition of low pay, each successive expansion of the benefit system results in more people being defined as "poor" if one takes the ridiculous definition that the Low Pay Unit and other bodies want us to accept. On that definition, it is argued that 15·4 million people now live in or on the margins of poverty in this country. I am confident that, if the vast majority of our people were told that on those figures 29 per cent. of the population were living in or near poverty, their reaction would be that the figures were utter tripe—and utter tripe is exactly what they are.
    The Low Pay Unit, the Labour party and other professional do-gooders, few of whom contribute to the
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    wealth creation process in this country, do the genuinely needy a great disservice by blurring the real problems that exist and by carping on in their naive and unrealistic way about the genuine problems of poverty that have always existed under Labour, Conservative and Liberal Governments. It is ridiculous and naive to suggest that with one simplistic policy decision one could remove at a stroke the problems that will inevitably continue to exist in any economy and in any society. Indeed, around the world, far more people are living on the breadline in collectivist, totalitarian, Socialist societies than in fluid, free-market capitalist societies such as ours.
    It is worth considering the change in purchasing power in this country. Although my figures relate to average earnings, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, as average earnings rise the real incomes of people on low wages also increase. I shall compare 1971 with 1987 in terms of how many minutes or hours somebody would have to work to buy certain key items that are important to ordinary family life.
    In 1971, to buy one large loaf of bread one had to work for nine minutes; by 1987 it had fallen to six minutes. The 55 minutes worked in 1971 to buy 1 lb of rump steak had fallen to 41 minutes by 1987. Although there was perhaps a slightly different attitude to buying eggs in 1971, to buy 12 eggs in 1971 a male on average earnings would have had to work for 22 minutes; but by 1987 that had fallen to 15 minutes. It took 40 hours 30 minutes of labour to buy a car licence in 1971; which had fallen by 1987 to 23 hours 35 minutes. It would have taken 19 hours 55 minutes to earn the money to buy a colour television licence in 1971 but only 13 hours 41 minutes in 1987. The relevant figure for an average telephone bill fell from 50 minutes in 1971 to 35 minutes in 1987. That is clear evidence of a real increase in the standard of living of our people, both for people on average earnings and for those on lower pay.
    There has been some talk about different countries and about people's relative incomes across the world. A couple of weeks ago, I was lucky enough to visit the Socialist shangri-la of Sweden—a country that is often held up as a model of Socialist perfection and as able to deliver higher living standards and good incomes on, from the Opposition's point of view, an impressive egalitarian stance. However, the wages in Sweden are so low that it is impossible——
    Ms. Short: The hon. Gentleman must be joking.
    Mr. Janman: Well, I am sorry to have to tell the hon. Lady that, on the figures quoted to me when I visited two Saab locations in Sweden, I was surprised, given Sweden's reputation, at just how low the wages of people working in the motor industry are. Given that taxation is so high, a husband has to have his wife going out to work in almost every instance in Sweden for the family unit to be able to have any income on which to live.
    Mr. Ken Eastham: Only a few weeks ago the Select Committee on Employment visited Sweden for informative in-depth discussions. The hon. Gentleman talked about so-called poverty pay and drew inferences about Sweden, but I advise him that average wages there were quoted as £1,000 per month in our terms.
    Mr. Janman: I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are not talking about average wages, but about low pay. The example that I was giving was for manual——
    Mr. Harry Barnes rose——
    Mr. Janman: I have already given way to the hon. Member for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham); perhaps I may be allowed to answer his point.
    The example that I was quoting was related not to average earnings but to the earnings of people in the lower income bracket doing unskilled assembly work in the motor industry. As I understand it, this debate is about low pay. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that the gross income of those people was no more, in terms of purchasing value and taking into account exchange rates, than that of workers in a similar industry in this country.
    When the punitive taxation, the high marginal rates of tax, that Swedish workers have to pay in order to provide for the over-bureaucratic Socialist system that Sweden has to support is taken into account, I can say to the hon. Gentleman that, from what I saw, the standard of living of a person doing an ordinary manual job there is far worse than in this country—and it is far worse because of the punitive taxation and excessive employment protection legislation that effectively leads to fuller employment than is commensurate with labour market conditions at the time and that works through to very high prices.
    So in Sweden, at the lower end of the labour market, wages are no more, in real terms, than they are here, yet the person is paying much higher taxation and much higher prices in the shops. When the hon. Member for Blackley goes back to Sweden he may like to take a look at the difficulties that employers have in paying any considerable differential between skilled and unskilled workers where there is very little difference at all. If they provide for any differential, because of the very high marginal rates of taxation it is all taken by the state, and the net income of the skilled worker is no more than that of the unskilled worker. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the skilled worker in Sweden is hit very hard by that punitive taxation system.
    The best protection for the low-paid, and the best way of providing maximum employment opportunity, is not regulation, intervention and wage councils; it is low taxation. I should like to take this opportunity to ask my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer to look hard at the possibility, in the next Budget, of making huge increases in the tax threshold. Already, 1·7 million fewer people pay tax than would be the case if there were still the same tax regime that we inherited from the Socialists in 1979. There is much more scope for reducing the tax burden on the low-paid in this country by making changes that would take millions more out of the tax system.
    The other main matter of importance to the low-paid is also a matter for the Treasury, and that is a firm monetary policy to protect the low-paid from inflation. Inevitably, when we have high inflation rates—and from 1974 to 1979 they averaged 15·5 per cent.—it is the low-paid on fixed incomes who are worst hit, not the rich.
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Does the hon. Member not agree that, until we tackle the level at which people start to pay national insurance stamps, we will not actually lift them out of the low-pay group? We need to look at that in conjunction with the income tax system.
    Mr. Janman: I am very grateful for that point. It supports the general direction of my argument, and
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    would certainly include national insurance in the definition of "tax". National insurance, which is there for a specific purpose, is, of course, an element of taxation.
    Let me mention now the need to abolish wages councils. This topic was one of the core parts of the speech of the hon. Member for Oldham, West. Before drawing some conclusions, I should like to quote from a letter I received from a small business woman, a constituent of mine, on this matter. I am afraid that this constituent was a victim of the Waffen SS wing of the Department of Employment, the wages councils inspectorate.
    She writes:
    "Dear Mr. Janman,
    We are a small retail shop selling all types of fabrics and trimmings.
    We recently had a visit from 'The Wages Council' and unfortunately we're not paying quite the full amount per hour to the part-time workers. The ladies who work here were quite happy with the arrangements we had with them, but that didn't count, because according to the inspector, 'We were breaking the law'. Whose law? In the end I felt like a criminal and that I didn't like."
    [Laughter.] Hon. Members opposite may laugh, but the fact of the matter is that the existence of this legislation and the existence of these wages councils is jeopardizing not only that business and the employment that my constituent is providing, but similar small businesses up and down the country. I do not know exactly how many there are, but I am sure it must be tens of thousands.
    The hon. Member for Oldham, West may like to quote the CBI, but the CBI is essentially the representative of large corporate concerns, or big business, and I do not believe that it is going to be totally in tune with the sort of problems that many small businesses, particularly in the retail sector, are going to have. It is that type of business which, I am afraid, has to bear the brunt of the totalitarian instrument of the wages councils. My constituent's only crime was to pay a wage that her business could afford and that her employees found acceptable, and the alternative is no business for her and no work for the people she currently employs.
    Mrs. Maria Fyfe: Could the hon. Member tell us how much this constituent of his was paying herself and exactly how much she was giving her under-paid workers, who, for all I know, may also have been constituents of his?
    Mr. Janman: The hon. Lady misses the point completely. My constituent's exact payment to herself, which I suspect was not that large, and her exact payment to the people working for her, is not the point. The point is whether wages councils destroy job opportunities or enhance them. The fact of the matter, so ably illustrated by my constituent, is that they destroy jobs very successfully. The abolition of wages councils could free the labour market of this totalitarian and egalitarian distortion, and create up to 300,000 new jobs. I hope that this Government, who believe in the free market, will act and abolish these out-dated institutions.
    Finally, I want to come to some conclusions on what the real issue in this debate is. The real issue, on which this Government have such a good record, is how, within the benefit system, we can genuinely make sure that people in this country, given their circumstances, are provided with a minimum income. The correct way of doing that is not to put a burden on businesses by way of wages councils, distort the labour market and destroy jobs; the correct way

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    of doing it—as we have been doing through family credit, which is now much more extensive, and far more generous, than anything we have seen from any Socialist Administration—is to target benefits on those on the lowest incomes and to take as many people as possible out of the tax net altogether, allowing them to keep their earnings and spend them as they wish, instead of people on low incomes still having to pay some of the highest marginal tax rates in the world. Those are the real issues, and I hope that on wages councils my right hon. Friend will act soon.
    7.59 pm
    Mr. James Wallace: The point that grieved me most about the speech of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Janman) was the patronising way in which he treated people in relative poverty who—surprise, surprise—have a television set. It comes ill from a party that tries to preach choice to say that some people should have no choice in life, that they must make do with the basic necessities and that they cannot try to get something better or at least try to ensure that such small mechanisms as are available through the state to help them get something better should not be made available.
    To some extent, I agree with the Secretary of State—Labour Front Bench Members would probably agree, too —that those in poverty from low pay are not all the people who are in poverty, although there is undoubtedly a strong correlation and a large overlap.
    In his evidence to the Royal Commission on the distribution of income and wealth Professor Layard noted that:
    "Of workers in the lowest 10 per cent. of wages, only one in five was in the lowest 10 per cent. of relative incomes."
    There are undoubtedly some reasons for that. As has been said, many of the lowest paid are in second jobs, and their earnings help to raise a family income above the poverty line.
    Ms Short: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Wallace: I shall not give way. I wish to deal with this point.
    On the other side of the coin, there are many families in poverty, particularly large families in which a working parent is on a reasonable wage, yet it is insufficient to meet family needs. However, that should not blind the House to the fact that the most recent figures of the Low Pay Unit demonstrate that about 4 million people live in poverty or on its margins as a result of low wages.
    Poverty may exist for reasons other than low pay, and in the long term, measures such as the integration of the tax and benefit system can do more than a national minimum wage to tackle the problem of poverty. I am becoming increasingly sceptical about the national minimum wage. Research in the United States, where there is a national minimum wage, suggests that it is not as helpful as it might seem on the surface in trying to take people out of poverty. A study by Carolyn Shaw Bell concludes:
    "no money sum of wages can be calculated to be a minimum wage that will provide an income above poverty."
    Other surveys tend to suggest that job losses, which undoubtedly push more people into poverty, can result from the introduction of a national minimum wage. But it
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    does not follow that such negative effects would flow from a targeted minimum wage of the type being administered by the wages councils. Pending the implementation of an integrated tax and benefit system, my colleagues and I believe that a reformed wages council system would be and should be an effective tool in tackling low pay while minimising any negative effects of a full-blown minimum wage policy.
    My party opposed the 1986 reforms and queried how it could make sense, for example, to set a single overtime rate regardless of whether overtime was worked for an extra half hour at the end of a working day or for six hours on a Saturday. We were highly sceptical of the job creation potential arising from young people being excluded from the scope of wages council legislation. There is claim in the consultative document that
    "the rate of youth unemployment has declined dramatically"
    since 1986. No evidence was presented to show that that decline has anything to do with sectors covered by wages councils. Also, there is no claim that the rate of youth employment has gone up. That might have been a far more relevant claim if taking young people out of the scope of wages councils had the effect that the Government are claiming. That is the hallmark of the consultative document. It is full of bold and bald statements. For example, the very first paragraph refers to the White Paper "Employment for the 1990s." It states:
    "Job growth in the 1990s will depend on pay arrangements which reflect a great deal of responsiveness to local labour market conditions; changes in product markets and technology; differences in performance, merit, and skills; the continuing profitability of the enterprise; and international competitiveness."
    The White Paper suggests that wages councils are incompatible with such concepts and practices.
    Speaking on the subject of low pay in a debate on 15 February 1984, the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) drew attention to conclusions that had been arrived at by a group of Cambridge economists who had been asked by the Government to look at the effects of wages councils on the economy. That group of economists found
    "no evidence of direct benefit from the abolition of wages councils. We found no evidence of any increase in economic efficiency, of any increase in total numbers of jobs in the industry and yet, at the same time, there was significant evidence of an extension of low pay".
    Such quantitative research is more significant in a debate such as this—I do not doubt that one of his constituents went to the hon. Member for Thurrock—but it is more likely that there will be no real impact on job creation by the abolition of wages councils.
    Mr. Janman rose——
    Mr. Wallace: The hon. Gentleman spoke for well over 20 minutes.
    There is some evidence that the volume of trade is far more important than pay in determining employment levels. Eighty six per cent. of workers in sectors that operate under wages councils are in markets in which there is no international competition. That is significant. It means that, therefore, all companies are operating within the same rules. It is not as though they have been disadvantaged by foreign competition.
    It is difficult for me to try to find 10 or 15 minutes to have a haircut. I do not believe, therefore, that, after 1992, and the completion of the Channel tunnel, hairdressers or barbers in London or in Cornwall or Shetland will be in

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    competition with barbers in Calais, or even barbers in Seville. The argument that companies affected by wages councils would be competitively disadvantaged does not stand up.
    Hon. Members must examine the Government's own admissions in the consultative document. They tell us that the 1986 legislation required councils determining minimum rates to consider the employment effects of their decisions in areas where workers are generally paid below the national average for their trade or occupation. In other words, since that became law, wages councils have been obliged to consider the employment effects. Yet the same consultative document complained that the 1986 changes had not had the desired effect because in the first year the average increase in wages council settlements was 8·6 per cent. and in the second year it was 6·3 per cent. The Government are not complaining because the figures are too low. Surely, having given regard to employment effects, the wages councils have decided that they have no effect on unemployment; or the wages councils have not been fulfilling their statutory duty. If that is the Government's allegation, they should have the guts to make it in a more forthright manner.
    The Government have a blinkered approach, in spite of everything that has been set up to keep up the charade of consultation. The whole document has one conclusion—that the Government are intent on abolishing wages councils. Paragraph 16 refers to anomalies. There are anomalies in respect of people who work in laundries. They are covered if washing is done manually, but not if it is done by machine. The Government's attitude is to abolish the wages councils to resolve the anomaly. No Conservative Member has thought to say, "There is something wrong with the pay of those who work in launderettes. Should not the argument be to extend the scope of wages councils?"
    The one statement with which I agree is that:
    "The world of the 1990s will be very different from that of 1909."
    Although I agree with that statement, I draw some different conclusions.
    The hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) has already quoted Winston Churchill on the introduction of wages councils. The Secretary of State's response was pretty feeble. He could at least have tried to explain that away by saying that at that time Churchill was a Liberal. Nevertheless, ever since then, Conservative Administrations have followed the policies that the 1909 Bill introduced.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: Can the hon. Gentleman name a single wages council whose minimum wage is generous or even average? Surely all wages councils have helped to ensure that low wages are perpetuated and institutionalised.
    Mr. WallaceThe hon. Gentleman misses the point. Obviously one would wish to see even higher wages, but if we abolish wages councils the chances are that wages will be driven even lower. Even the CBI, responding to the 1985 proposals, expressed fears about the abolition of wages councils because it foresaw companies undercutting companies and small businesses undercutting small businesses, leading to job losses rather than job creation, and implicit in that was the driving down of wages.
    In 1909 Churchill saw wages councils as being a means of protecting those whom we believe to be the most vulnerable and most likely to receive low pay. The work
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    patterns of the 1990s will undoubtedly produce employees who fall into that category, not least the young, those in part-time employment, home-based workers and the new army of low-paid cleaners employed by private companies to clean our hospitals and local authority premises. Rather than considering the abolition of wages councils, we should be considering their strengthening and extension.
    Any hon. Member, particularly any Conservative Member, who doubts whether we still have vulnerable and low-paid people as we approach 1990 should read an article in the Financial Times on 14 October 1988 by Mr. Jimmy Burns. It describes the plight of a woman whom he cannot even name for fear that her employer would find out. That woman works at home in Birmingham as a seamstress for about 56 hours per week and receives £20 to £25. She was unsure of her employment rights and even who her employer was.
    Mrs. Mahon: I can top that example. I am involved with a group of home workers who have been receiving as little as 24p an hour for packing Christmas cards for Woolworths. To date, Woolworths is refusing to see them, even though those workers have been trying to arrange a meeting for three months.
    Mr. Wallace: The hon. Lady underlines the point that we still have in our midst vulnerable people who, because of their position, can be exploited by means of low pay.
    Just before the passage quoted by the hon. Member for Oldham, West, Winston Churchill said:
    "It is a serious national evil that any class of His Majesty's subjects should receive less than a living wage in return for their utmost exertions." —[Official Report, 28 April 1909; Vol. 1V, c. 388]
    All Opposition Members would endorse that sentiment.
    If one were to ask, as I think the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Bruce) tried to do, whether the abolition of wages councils would help improve the circumstances of those people to whom I and the hon. Member for Halifax (Mrs. Mahon) referred, I could not agree that they would be helped in any way. The economic case for abolition has been asserted by the Government, but as a Scots lawyer I would not even be generous enough to give them the verdict of not proven. They have come nowhere near to backing up their assertions with any well-argued economic case.
    The existence, even in 1989, of vulnerable low-paid workers is argument enough not only for the retention of reformed wages councils but for their extension, backed up by a well-resourced inspectorate so that their orders can be guaranteed. In that way we can try, albeit in a small way, to raise the level of expectations of pay of many people in Britain who are still paid a ridiculously low amount and who, if the economy is succeeding as well as the Government claim, deserve to share that much more in the benefits of it.
    8.14 pm
    Mr. John Redwood: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State rightly concentrated on the progress that has been made thanks to the economy's vitality under the Government's enterprise policy. The 30 per cent. real increase in earnings at the lower level is in stark contrast to the 1 per cent. or 2 per cent. real decline recorded in the Labour years in the 1970s. But what matters most is whether people believe their take-home pay is fair and, most especially, whether they believe the

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    stoppages out of their gross pay are fair, taking into account the need for public services and relative income levels within society.
    One reason why there has been such progress in improving the take-home pay of people in the lower pay bands is that the Government have been prepared to cut taxes across the board and, in certain Budgets, to concentrate on cutting them in ways which help those at the lowest end of the income scale.
    Ms. Short: We all know that the hon. Gentleman prides himself on being a great intellectual. Therefore, I am sure that he will confirm that the Government's tax take since they came to power in 1979 has increased. It has simply moved from income tax to VAT and national insurance. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that that is true and will confirm it.
    Mr. Redwood: The hon. Lady is missing the point. I am talking about incentives to work and the level of stoppages from pay. I am about to illustrate that there has been substantial progress, as she should know. The standard rate of income tax has been cut from 33p in the pound to 25p in the pound. A new level of national insurance contribution has been brought in at only 5 per cent. on lower earnings—a big improvement on the position when the Labour Government left office. There has also been a substantial increase in the real value of thresholds before people start to have to pay income tax.
    Those three elements create incentives to work. They create more jobs and enterprise in the economy. That is why there is so much growth in the economy which has enlarged the prosperity of everyone and has produced startling increases in real take-home pay after allowing for all kinds of taxation in the economy and its impact upon purchasing patterns.
    I want to urge the Government to continue in two directions. First, I agree that we should not give up on deregulation. That is an important part of the enterprise policy. It is the way to create jobs or to avoid the destruction of more jobs—jobs that were destroyed by the policies pursued by the Labour Government.
    Secondly, I want to see the Government pursue the policy, between the Department of Employment, the Department of Social Security and the Treasury, of cutting taxation, especially for those on lower pay, in the next Budget.
    I want to illustrate my point by showing the current system and then sketching out some ideas for improving it still further. I preface my statement about the current position with the overriding comment that at every level of income, especially those affecting the lower paid, the position is so much better today than it was in 1979.
    Mrs. Mahon: May I challenge the hon. Gentleman on that by citing an example of one group of 250 workers in my constituency who, because of the Government's privatisation policies in the NHS, lost one quarter of their pay when they were taken over by a private company and they also lost out on holiday pay, pension rights and sickness benefit. They had a reduction in pay of 25 per cent. and the work force was halved. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that they are not better off than they were in 1979?
    Mr. Redwood: I would need more information on their rates of pay in 1979, their agreements, the nature of the incentive and bonus arrangements, and so on. However, the hon. Lady is straying from my point. I am talking about the tax system and the marginal rates of tax that hit people with different levels of income.
    Under today's system, people earning up to £43 a week are not taxed. At £43 a week people start to pay a 5 per cent. national insurance contribution over the full range of their earnings. At £53.37 a week a single person starts to pay 30 per cent.—25 per cent. income tax and 5 per cent. national insurance. At £75 per week, the national insurance rate increases by two points, producing a new overall rate of 32 per cent. At £115 per week, one reaches the full rate, before reaching the higher rate of tax, of 34 per cent.
    While those rates reflect an improvement on 1979, this year's Budget will give scope for more progress along the road of reducing the level of stoppages for the lowest paid. The best way of doing that, targeted most accurately at the lowest paid, is to raise the threshold at which national insurance is payable. The answer I received from the Treasury is most illuminating. I asked what would be the revenue costs of raising class 1 contributions from £43 to £55 per week. I was told that, given the way in which the rebate system worked, there would be no loss to the Treasury.
    Another way of helping the lower paid that is often urged upon the House is raising thresholds and the level at which one begins paying income tax. That approach is not as well targeted because increasing the threshold helps people on high salaries more as they benefit from a reduction linked to the 40 per cent. tax rate rather than the 25 per cent. rate.
    Another way of helping everyone, including the low paid, is to reduce the standard rate of tax. My own estimates and Treasury costings indicate that, this year, we could have £4,000 million to give back to taxpayers and still run a very prudent budget—by which I mean repaying more than £10,000 million of public debt, which is what we ought to do for other economic reasons.
    Such an approach would give us scope to raise thresholds by between 7 and 10 per cent. If we raised tax thresholds by 10 per cent., it would cost only £2,000 million in 1989–90. It would enable us to cut the standard rate of tax by another 1p on the road to a rate of 20p in the pound, which I hope we shall reach in 1991. It would also leave us free to make a substantial increase in the national insurance threshold. Why not increase it to £70 or £75 per week? We could certainly raise it to £55 or £60 without creating any great revenue problems.
    As for income tax, it is important to continue stressing that lower income tax is good for the economy as a whole, is good for incentives, and means that people at all but the lowest income levels can keep more of the money that they earn. Lower tax rates affect the pattern of part-time employment, and attitudes towards bonuses, promotion, and seeking better job opportunities. We wish to continue fostering an enterprising and prosperous economy in which people will take the opportunities that are now so visible across the width and breadth of the country, in the north as well as the south, the east as well as the west.
    The type of scheme I have outlined would mean that people earning up to £50 or £60 per week would pay no tax or national insurance. Above that level, they would begin falling into the income tax net at a rate of 24p in the

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    pound. At a higher level still, they would begin paying national insurance at the rate of 5 per cent.—a combined rate of 29 per cent. The maximum rate, until they achieve the highest income levels, would be 33p in the pound—but that point would not be hit until they were earning well over £100 per week.
    Such an arrangement would give people more incentive and have an impact on the labour market. It would encourage more people to enter part-time work. That is particularly relevant at a time when many women wish to return to work. They do not necessarily wish to be employed full time, particularly if their children are still at school, but are deterred from working for as many hours as they would like, or from working at all, by the impact of national insurance contributions and taxation on their take-home pay.
    The changes I suggest would have pleasant consequences for the problems of the National Health Service. As many right hon. and hon. Members know, over the next 10 to 15 years, the Health Service will have to confront the problem of an insufficient number of male and female school leavers to enter nursing. Recent figures show that the Health Service will have to attract an unrealistically high proportion of school or college leavers. The nursing work force will have to expand by drawing on part-time labour among married women wishing to return to the profession, or who may wish to train for it for the first time. They should be welcomed, and that necessary process of adjustment could be helped by suitable changes in the tax regime.
    The message is: so far, very good. There has been progress for the lower paid of a kind not seen in the 1970s. There has been progress for the enterprise economy as a result of our sticking to our guns and going for deregulation, freeing of the labour market, and lower taxation. Now that the economy has such enormous strength, as measured by the large public sector surplus, let us by all means have a prudent Budget—but one that serves the lower paid by taking more of them out of the tax net altogether and continues the progress made towards a still lower rate of taxation.
    8.25 pm
    Mr. Ron Leighton: The House must be struck by the growing disparity and the widening extremes between wealth and poverty that disfigure our society, and by the growing divide between those at the top who have too much and cannot possibly justify what they take out of society, and those at the bottom, who suffer deprivation to an extent that disgraces a modern economy.
    I approach this matter not just in economic terms but as a question of morality. There is no economic justification for such contrasts of income, which do not reflect how hard a person works. I shall give an example that might appeal to the Secretary of State. Ex-Cabinet Minister Sir John Nott received—I shall not say earned—more than £870,000 in 1987. Presumably, this year the figure will be about £1 million. What contribution has he made to society to deserve that income? Are we to assume that he worked 20 times as hard as a Cabinet Minister? Does Sir John work 20 times as hard as the Secretary of State? If not, why is he paid 20 times as much?
    It seems that what people take out of society bears little relation to what they put into it. Nowhere is that more glaringly obvious than in the case of the low paid. They
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    live in poverty, yet often they are among the hardest working of all. They are fellow citizens who earn their poverty, and it is wicked that deliberate divisions of society are being deliberately exacerbated.
    We have already seen the abolition of the fair wages resolution and of schedule 11 to the Employment Protection Act 1975. We have seen the low level of YTS allowances and the young workers' scheme, which actually subsidises employers to pay low wages—putting the young generation in a straitjacket of low pay. To all of that is added the attack on wages councils. The Government's official policy is to force down wages, to price the poor into jobs. It is no wonder that social divisions are growing wider. The poorest one fifth of wage earners earn less, relative to the average wage, than they did 100 years ago, whereas the better off enjoy a continued improvement.
    Since 1979, income increases for the highest paid fifth of men have been 50 per cent. higher than those for the lowest fifth. The better off—and this will appeal to the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood)—have seen tax cuts lavished on them. Last year saw tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the poor. Last year also, Hay Management Consultants, which is a division of Saatchi and Saatchi, reported that, on average, executives earning an average of £87,000 per year saw their salaries increase by more than 31 per cent. These ugly divisions disfigure our society. They create poverty amidst plenty.
    The rewards of society are increasingly being unequally divided—and that has been particularly true since 1979. The low-paid need large increases if they are to return to the relative standing, in relation to the better off, that they had when the Government took office. But what will they get? The abolition of wages councils, which is bound to depress the wage levels of the low paid even more. That is a scandal and a disgrace. I suppose that the people who dream up such ideas go to church on Sunday.
    The Opposition have had to give up their Supply day and valuable debating time to defend the weak and vulnerable at the bottom of the pile, who at present are afforded a measure of protection by wages councils.
    From the consultative document, it is clear that the Government propose scrapping wages councils. We have been round this course before. The Government did exactly the same in 1985. Because of opposition from the Select Committee which examined the matter, from many employers, from many Conservative Members and from others, the Government backed off. They made changes instead. In the Wages Act 1986 they excluded young people and they restricted the wages councils to setting a single minimum rate and a single overtime rate.
    Now, three years later, they are back with a second attempt to abolish wages councils. Why? It is for the express purpose of forcing down some of the lowest wages. What are these rates? They are set out in the consultative document. The lowest rate is £1.88 an hour, which I worked out as £75·20 for a 40-hour week; the top rate is £2·38 an hour. Is it not nauseating for Cabinet Ministers earning £1,000 a week to suggest that these poverty wages are too high? Yet the only purpose of abolition is to make it legal to push these pitiful rates down further. The consultation paper makes it clear in paragraph 14:
    "Moreover, a substantial proportion of workers covered by the councils—probably as many as one third—continue to be paid on the minimum rate. Such clustering of pay levels around a particular figure is evidence that council minima continue to be above the levels required to fill jobs."

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    That is the reproach and criticism of the consultative document. That is the Government's reason for scrapping wages councils. It is deliberate Government policy to depress these pitiful poverty wages even further. It is wicked and immoral.
    The crude, loony Right, ideological argument against wages councils is that they are an institutional intervention in the labour market, raising wages above the clearing rate. But nearly all pay is determined by institutional intervention setting minimum rates. For most people it is called collective bargaining. Why should only the lowest paid, those in wages council industries, be singled out for such treatment? For example, the pay of admirals, generals and judges is set not by the law of supply and demand but by institutional intervention, no doubt with regard to fairness and equity. What of Members of Parliament? There is a huge supply queuing up which greatly exceeds the demand for 650 jobs. What would be the market clearing rate? It would probably be nil. Instead, the pay of hon. Members, like that of most other people, is decided by institutional intervention. How hypocritical it would be to single out only the lowest paid for this grotesque ideological extremism.
    In 1985 a Select Committee investigated the matter thoroughly and recommended against abolition. There is no evidence that wages councils have caused unemployment or inflation. No one can say that the pay of workers in the wages council sector has risen relative to the pay of others. The reverse is true. I am sure the Secretary of State knows that the CBI said, in its recent review of the working of the Wages Act 1986:
    "For the most part, the minimum rates set by wages councils and wages boards rose no faster, and in many cases slower, than average basic earnings…across the economy as a whole…statutory minimum rates declined from 58·9 per cent. to 57·5 per cent. of the average basic earnings for manual men across the economy as a whole between 1980·81 and 1987·88."
    When the Select Committee examined the position, it could not find any clear or unambiguous evidence that scrapping wages councils would create more jobs. Wages are lowest in those parts of the United Kingdom where unemployment is highest, and vice versa. Wages are higher in successful industries. If low wage rates create jobs and economic success, why do our most successful competitors pay higher wages than we do? I studied all the evidence in 1985 and it is clear that there is no intellectual case for abolition. It would be a triumph of dogma and ideology over evidence, facts and common sense.
    All this has to be seen as part of a package of measures to depress the pay of the poorest, including a requirement on local government to put contracts for services out to tender to private firms. The abolition of the fair wages resolution, schedule 11 and now wages councils will prevent local authorities from insisting that firms observe fair wages and decent employment practices. This will permit a spiral of wage cutting, with firms competing to see which can pay the lowest wages. We want competition right across the economy but on efficiency and levels of service, not on which firms can pay the lowest wages.
    What happens if wages are forced down so low that workers feel that they can no longer tolerate their jobs? The Government have legislated for that. If a worker leaves, it will be considered as a voluntary action and he ·or more probably she·wll be disqualified from
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    unemployment benefit for long periods. Therefore, the less-scrupulous employer can force down wages, knowing that many workers dare not leave. All the cards are being stacked against the poor, the low paid and those at the bottom of the pile. Instead of giving them a helping hand, the Government will push them down even lower.
    Those on low pay are not the people who are causing problems for the economy. Instead, they need and deserve the protection of Parliament. In pre-Thatcherite times Parliament sought to give protection to those who could not protect themselves, such as people in wages council trades. Those people are overwhelmingly women, so this is a major women's issue. Often they are part-time workers; often they are from ethnic minorities; often they are in scattered small units, weak and vulnerable, with no union or collective agreements.
    For a long time, under legislation brought in by Winston Churchill, Parliament sought a level beyond which the poor would not be exploited. The object was to safeguard weak employees, and equally important responsible employers who sought to maintain decent business standards from unfair competition based on wage undercutting. Everyone who works for a living has the right to a wage which safeguards health and human dignity. To carry out the destruction of wages councils the Government have had to denounce convention 26 of the International Labour Organisation. We are now virtually alone in the industrialised world. We are the only country in Europe without minimum wage protection.
    It is sometimes said that wages councils are old fashioned and an anachronism, established to deal with the sweated trades, and that they are unnecessary in modern times. Alas, that is not so. The sweatshops of the east end of London employed successive flows of immigrants, at one time Jewish. We have had immigration more recently. Coming from the east end of London, I can assure the House that there are sweatshops there now. We are not talking about distant history.
    Recently, we had the report of the Auld committee which was set up by the Government to study shops legislation. It strongly recommended the retention of protection for shop workers because
    "of the strong likelihood of exploitation of some shop workers in the form of lower wages, particularly for unsocial hours, and possibly in the longer working week."
    Although it was not asked to look at wages councils, the Committee volunteered some information. I remind the House that this was recently, and not when Winston Churchill brought in the legislation. The Auld committee, appointed by the Government,
    "set great store by the preservation of the role of wages councils in fixing…holidays and holiday pay for the retail trade."
    So there can be no doubt about the need for wages councils in modern Thatcherite Britain, especially for women, for part-timers, for home workers, or for those working in hotels, catering, retailing, clothing or hairdressing.
    When we last considered the matter, the hon. Member for Banbury (Mr. Baldry), who is not in the Chamber, produced a pamphlet for the Bow Group which made a recommendation against the abolition of wages councils. He argued, among other things, that if the Government abolished wages councils, that would be construed as an excuse for the next Labour Government to introduce a statutory minimum wage. He made a good point, for one of the main duties of a new Labour Government will be to

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    bring in a proper statutory minimum wage and employment protection for this badly exploited section of the work force.
    8.40
    Mr. Ian Bruce: I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) say that Labour Members were passionately interested in the problems of the low paid and were willing to give up their time to debate the subject. It is nice to see eight Members on the Labour Back Benches. At least they feel the need to be in the Chamber to debate a subject chosen by their party for debate today.
    Ms. Short: There are more of us than there are on the Government Benches.
    Mr. Bruce: I have always believed—even when I thought I was a Socialist—in a high wage, high productivity economy. [Interruption.] When I thought I was a Socialist I was very young; some of us grow out of such feelings. As a lad of 12 or 13 years working in the sweat shops, I thought that possibly the way forward would be via the wonderful mechanisms to which the unreformed Socialists on the Opposition Benches still cling, as though, like children playing with baubles, such mechanisms will achieve their aims. We are told by Labour Members that the present state of affairs facing the low paid has been in existence for years. Not one Labour Member is able to say that a wages council negotiated rate of pay is even an average rate of pay. They are all low rates of pay.
    Ms. Short: Very low.
    Mr. Bruce: Very well, very low rates of pay. I have to agree with Labour Members, and that is why, when I believe in a free enterprise, high wage, high productivity economy, I must consider what sort of mechanisms work and how we should go forward. How do businesses in a free enterprise economy start and develop?
    Mr. Wallace: The hon. Gentleman will have heard the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) quote from paragraph 14 of the consultative document,which said:
    "Such clustering of pay levels around a particular figure is evidence that council minima continue to be above the levels required to fill jobs."
    That means that, without wages councils, wages would be even lower. Is that the outcome the hon. Gentleman wishes to see?
    Mr. Bruce: I speak as a wet-behind-the-ears new Member. But for a dozen years I ran an employment agency and dealt with staff, some of whom had the so-called protection of wages councils and some of whom had not, and I can best answer the hon. Gentleman's question by considering which of those groups was better off.
    Hopefully, all hon. Members believe that people in receipt of low pay need to be helped— [Interruption.] I dare say that many Labour Members believe that passionately, even if at present they are in the Tea Room.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) spoke about helping the low paid, and we must consider how to improve their situation. I am surprised that Opposition Members do not spring to their feet to declare that the 30 per cent. real increase in the wages of
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    the low paid is good but that we need to do better. I could go down that road with them. But they constantly criticise a Government who, while they may not have done brilliantly for low-paid people., have achieved 30 per cent. more for them than the policies of the unreformed Socialists were able to achieve. Having achieved a 30 per cent. improvement, let us consider how we can further improve matters for this group of workers.
    Hon. Members have quoted from documents prepared by employers' organisations. Who will now say, "We don't worry too much about the existence of wages councils because they do not make much of a problem for the wages market or artificially inflate wages"? I agree that they do not artificially inflate wages; one need only look at the rates of pay that they achieve.
    Mr. Robert N. Wareing: The wages are depressed.
    Mr. Bruce: Yes, they depress them. I have got through to the hon. Gentleman, who is occupying a position on the Labour Front Bench. He agrees that wages councils depress wages.
    Mr. Wareing: Not at all.
    Mr. Bruce: I apologise to the hon. Gentleman. I thought he was agreeing with me.
    We must consider what wages councils have achieved and why employers think that they are not worth doing away with by the Government. The Government have not announced that they are abolishing wages councils, despite many of my hon. Friends and I urging them to do so. They have decided not to do away with them at this stage because they do not believe, from a philosophical point of view, that there is much to be gained from taking that step. They do not feel that the actions of wages councils are distorting the economy enormously.
    I believe that wages councils are depressing wages and are institutionalising people in low-paid groups. That must be true because of the way in which wages are low under wages councils. [Interruption.] Labour Members have been saying all day that wages are low under wages councils, and then they defend wages councils for defending the low paid.
    I had the good fortune of running an employment agency in Yorkshire for 12 years during a time when many people were being put out of work. Many of those with whom I was dealing worked in the aerated water industry—fizzy pop to us—and they were "protected" by wages councils. I know from practical experience about the way in which wages were negotiated for the temporary staff I was putting into those companies compared with temporary and permanent staff who were going into other companies.
    Unfortunately, employers sometimes wear blinkers. They consider negotiations for a minimum wage that go on year after year knowing that all such negotiations tend to work on the basis of seeing what can be paid by an employer who is not making much profit. People get together in wages councils and say, "We cannot go too high because this company is not doing too well, so it cannot afford this or that." Accordingly, they allow a small increase, perhaps just ahead of inflation—but never much ahead of it—to reward and keep the work force.
    An employer would come to me, aware of young workers' terms and conditions, and say, "We would like

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    you to recruit people of a lower age because we can pay them a lower rate and you can quote a lower rate to us." That was an employer talking to an agency, negotiating freely on the basis of an institutionalised form of wage negotiation.
    I contrast that state of affairs with one of my other large groups of workers, secretarial staff who worked for me in Huddersfield. When I first opened my employment agency in that town I had to pay my staff unacceptably low rates of pay; to be competitive, I had to go against others in the same town, though I was able to pay my staff perhaps 10p an hour more than my rivals down the road. By slashing my margins and being efficient and working hard, I was able to put these people out into the market place at approximately the same rates that employers were paying previously. I was successful in putting my rivals out of business.
    What did I do then? Did I screw down the wages of my staff? No, I could go to my staff and say, "We can increase your wages that much more this year." As an agency, over two or three years, we increased our rates every three or six months. We moved the market place upwards. We could go to employers and tell them the going rates. We made more profit and our employees received more money. Those companies did not have as a reference point the rate specified by that nice wages council. They could not say, "Hang on a minute, the wages council says you should give them £1·50 an hour. How dare you give them £1·70?"
    Mrs. Fyfe: While the hon. Gentleman was overwhelming his secretarial staff with a whole 10p an hour more than their low-paid colleagues, what was he paying himself?
    Mr. Bruce: In my first year of self-employment, I paid myself nothing and my company lost £9,000. That figure comes from audited accounts. Although after 10 to 12 years I made a reasonable return, in the first year—which is what the hon. Lady was asking about—I lost money.
    Mrs. Fyfe: On the assumption that the hon. Gentleman is not a philanthropist and had calculated that he would make a good profit eventually, what did he earn in the remaining years?
    Mr. Bruce: In the remaining years, I made a substantial profit and sold out at an extremely good price to somebody who continued the business. I was, therefore, able to come to this place and manage on a modest salary for which I work extremely hard. I enjoy doing my job, however, and enjoy debating with the hon. Lady.
    As a young person, I remember one of my first full-time jobs was working in the laundry industry. I also recall harshly having to negotiate my wages with my father, who was the manager of that business but not the owner. I was told that the rate that I was receiving was the right rate for a young person and that I should look at the rates published by the wages council. However, there were other people doing not such a good job as me. I was more productive than they were, but I was constantly being told, "Look, there is the rate on the wall. That is what you will get. Although you may be worth a great deal more, we are not going to deviate from the rates of the wages council." I do not believe that the wages council does anything other than institutionalise and give a lower norm for wages.
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    I believe that it is important how businesses start and how they go on. Again, I shall speak from my experience, because that is perhaps more valuable than all the theoretical arguments that we have heard.
    Ms. Short: Other hon. Members wish to speak.
    Mr. Bruce: I know that the hon. Lady wants to speak. I certainly do not want to detain the House for too long.
    I remember starting my business and having only a small amount of money. I was made redundant under the Labour party.
    Mr. Nellist: We got something right then, did we?
    Mr. Bruce: Absolutely.
    I started my own business and I needed to recruit people. I had a limited amount of money with which I could recruit people and found that the best people available who were willing to work for the low wages I was able to offer tended to be graduate women who had been pushed by history into secretarial jobs and were interested in achieving a more executive role.
    I do not believe that an employer, working with his employees and doing the best for his business, puts on blinkers—which the Socialists tell us they do—and tries to force down wages. As my company succeeded, so did my staff. I took people on at low wages—if there was a wages council for executive or secretarial recruitment staff, possibly they would have been illegally low wages—but within two years, when the company became profitable, the wages of those staff were doubled.
    After five years the salaries which I was paying my people in Huddersfield were second to none, as were the incentives. We could recruit the best people for the job. I am glad to say that the vast majority of the people we recruited were still graduate women who had never had the opportunity of working and developing their abilities in a good business.
    If we want to ensure that everybody has the chance of a job, it is essential that companies should be able to pay what they can afford and thereby develop their businesses. When one looks at the way wages have developed, one sees that, when low pay becomes institutionalised and formulated, as it is by the wages councils, that is the time when people get stuck with low wages, and there is not a high wage and high productivity economy.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) has the amazing knack of getting Opposition Members to listen to his speeches. He made an excellent speech. He gave hon. Members a carefully researched list of how we can help precisely—through our taxation system and especially our national insurance system—to improve the lot of low-paid people. The threshold of national insurance contributions can be an effective method of helping the low paid without improving enormously the lot of those people who are on higher rates of taxation. I believe that his speech should be wrapped in glossy paper and sent immediately to the Chancellor for his consideration.
    When the Labour Government put a national insurance surcharge on employers, that was a tax on jobs. It has been reduced slowly but surely during the Conservative Government. We have demonstrated that employers can create additional jobs. I believe firmly that to allow people to get back into employment and to help

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    them by way of low taxation and national insurance is an excellent way forward. I commend the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham to the House.
    I have heard nothing from Opposition Members that could possibly help low-paid people. I believe that Opposition Members should stop talking rhetoric and consider the practicalities behind their suggestions. The Government have already improved low-paid people's take-home pay by more than 30 per cent. during their period of office and we have demonstrated the way forward. I am confident that the Government will introduce further measures and will tackle the problems of wages councils, which will ensure that in future low-paid people will have an improvement in their standard of living.
    8.58 pm
    Ms. Clare Short: It was extremely generous and tolerant of you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to allow the hon. Member for Dorset, South (Mr. Bruce) to tell us the story of his working life. I am sure that we all found it of interest, but whether it was relevant to the debate is another question.
    I am sure that everyone would agree that the speech we witnessed tonight from the Secretary of State was remarkable. It was full of bluster, and it avoided the issue of low pay and the statistics that demonstrate, unequivocally and unquestionably, that there has been a massive growth in the number of people working for poverty wages since the Government came to power. The right hon. Gentleman made some extremely misleading claims about the levels of income and unemployment in our country. Before I talk in detail about low pay I want to put some facts on record.
    We should have political differences in this Chamber and we should debate them honestly, but it distresses me greatly that Conservative Members deliberately fabricate facts and they know that they do it. They distort statistics and go from the handouts they get from Central Office. They know that the Government have followed a strategy of encouraging low pay. Those Conservative Members who have spoken may pretend that that is not so—some of them might be stupid, but others are dissembling. They know the Government's strategy and not to admit it openly is to be dishonest with the House and with people.
    Reference has been made to the effects of tax and benefit changes since the present Government came to power. John Hills of the London School of Economics recently provided us with an analysis of the combined effects of changes in tax and social security during the past 10 years. His analysis, as quoted in The Observer, found:
    "'the cuts in direct taxes have been entirely paid for by cuts in the generosity of benefits.' There has thus been 'a major redistribution from those on low incomes to the better off', with the bottom 50 per cent. of families losing an average of £8·50 a week, while the top 10 per cent. have gained nearly £40 a week per family. By comparison with what would have happened if the 1978–79 tax and benefit levels had been uprated in line with the growth of national income, Mr. Hills states. "the bottom half of the population has lost £6·6 billion, of which £5·6 billion has gone to the top 10 per cent. Indeed,£4·8 billion has gone to the top 5 per cent.'"
    Such are the statistics when we talk about tax and benefit changes.
    The other misleading statistics given at great length by the Secretary of State concerned levels of unemployment. We all know that during the famous general election of
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    1979 when we had those Saatchi and Saatchi posters saying "Labour Isn't Working", unemployment was 1·2 million—as calculated on the old method. At that time the Tory party said that unemployment was too high, and we agreed. The Government then took power and induced a recession in our country and the destruction of our manufacturing capacity from which we are only now beginning to recover in terms of investment levels. Because of the Government's ideological commitment to monetarism they destroyed, virtually overnight, 2 million jobs. Those jobs were largely held by males and represented relatively well-paid work in manufacturing.
    Mr. Ian Bruce rose——
    Ms. Short: We have had the story of the hon. Gentleman's life, thank you very much.
    We have still not returned to the 1979 level of employment. The Government have suddenly ceased to talk about 1979, and 1983 has become the bench-mark. We have been told over and over again about the 1 million new jobs that have been created.
    There is no doubt that since 1983 there has been some job creation, but there is also no doubt that there has also been an enormous distortion of the unemployment figures. The new jobs that have been created or generated since 1983 have been overwhelmingly low paid, part time and for women. Women want jobs and want more employment, but they do not want low paid, insecure employment. We are faced with a continuing decline in full-time, reasonably paid jobs for men and some growth since 1983—it does not take us back to 1979 employment levels—of low paid and largely part-time work for women. That is what the statistics tell us about the national economy.
    Mrs. Mahon: My town is a typical example of what has happened since 1979. We have lost thousands and thousands of well-paid, skilled jobs in manufacturing. What we got in return was demonstrated by a survey last year of the jobcentres—jobs offering £1·20 an hour for cleaners and £1·75 an hour for looking after the elderly. A lot of the jobs on offer are temporary and are extremely low paid. That is what we have had in exchange for the jobs lost. I also saw the Secretary of State's nose grow by at least six inches when he was talking about the unemployment statistics.
    Ms. Short: My hon. Friend paints a picture of what is happening across the country, including the so-called prosperous south-east. The south-west has some of the worst low pay in the country in agriculture, tourism, and so on. I am putting those facts on record because we hear so many falsities and distortions from Conservative Members.
    I do not know how the Secretary of State has the brazen cheek to make claims about comparative unemployment statistics. The labour force survey shows that more than 5 million people in our country would like a job if they could get one. Of course they are not all included in the unemployment figures. That has never been the case. The International Labour Organisation recommends a statistic to give us a comparison across the OECD. That shows that the last published unemployment figure was more than 3 million. The other statistics are the fiddled figures that the Government put forward.

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    Although a great many jobs have been restored, we are still not back to 1979 levels of employment. There has been an enormous shift from the poorest to the richest through tax and benefit changes.
    Since 1979, 2 million more people have become low paid in Britain. To our shame, 9·8 million workers in Britain or 47 per cent. of those who are in work are low paid according to the Council of Europe decency threshold, which is the enormously generous figure of £3·80 an hour or £144 a week.
    Tory Members do not understand that poverty is relative. Obviously the minimum levels of pay for the poorest people would not be the same in a poorer part of the world. Britain is the 15th richest country in the world, but we should have some decency between the top and the bottom so that all our citizens can participate in the dignity of belonging to society in the way in which they live and care for their families.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: Will the hon. Lady give way?
    Ms. Short: No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.
    The Government have been enormously successful. They set out to encourage low pay and they have succeeded by 2 million extra workers. Many people live on benefits, and the benefits are much less generous than they used to be. Many unemployed people wish that they were employed and millions of people work for their poverty in Britain today.
    Is it just nastiness? Are the Government just vile? Do they simply believe in inequality for its own sake? Do they want to help their rich friends and trample on the others? Is that why they do it? Some of that is true. The Government have all those instincts, but that is not all. The Government have an economic strategy. It was called monetarism and it was about creating more economic efficiency, the supply-side miracle that we have not experienced but were told would create more incentives through those who are well off retaining more, earning more and becoming better entrepreneurs, with those who are less well off having less and having to work harder.
    The Government deliberately took a whole series of measures to cut the wages of the poorest. They abolished schedule 11 to the Employment Act 1982 and got rid of the fair wages resolution and deliberately used the youth training scheme to lower the expectations of young people. There is no question about it. Had the YTS allowance been uprated by the old YOP levels, it would now be £57 a week. The Government provided subsidies to employers who took on workers on condition that they paid low wages. It was a subsidy not to increase wages but to force them down.
    The Government attacked the wages councils and diminished their protection. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) and I served on the Committee which considered the Wages Bill and heard the Government time and again promising to reform the wages councils and retain them. But now we have a consultative paper about getting rid of the wages councils. It is all a strategy to encourage low pay. It has been an enormously successful strategy and the Government have succeeded in increasing the number of low-paid workers by no fewer than 2 million.
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    I think that that is a nasty strategy, and that people are entitled to say whether they think it desirable. It is an outrage, a disgrace and a hypocrisy for Ministers who are part of that strategy and understand it well to pretend that they are not doing what they are doing. They have taken a series of deliberate and enormously successful steps to encourage low pay.
    It is my view and that of most decent people, backed up by all the polling evidence, that an increasing proportion—an overwhelming proportion, indeed—of British people think that our country is too divided and unequal, and like the idea of a minimum wage. The present position is unjust and unpopular. The Government say, "Never mind that so many people are low paid. They can receive family credit and thus will not suffer poverty." But the take-up of family credit at present is about one third—it may be creeping a little higher—so two thirds of those entitled to it are not receiving it.
    What is this subsidy? It is a subsidy from the state to inefficient employers. Employers who pay low wages tend not to train or invest, and experience a high turnover of labour. Of course Opposition Members support some such system until there is a decent minimum wage and there is no longer any need to subsidise low wages, but we do not consider it desirable in itself. Does the Secretary of State consider it desirable to subsidise the most inefficient employers in our land?
    Beneath all the hoo-ha about the approach of 1992, we find that industrialists in Europe speak of one in three work places on the continent closing down as a consequence. We hear Britain's top industrialists saying that because Britain is less efficient and trains and invests less, as many as one in two work places may close down in 1992. The Government's low-pay strategy means not only inequality and injustice but enormous economic inefficiency.
    The Secretary of State keeps pointing out—as though he were terribly clever and understood the position in a way that no one else does—that there has been an increase in participation in the labour force since his Government came to power. That increase has come about because over a long period there has been a growth in female participation, in this as in other countries. A high participation rate, however, is not a measure of high economic development. Some of the poorest countries in the world have even higher participation rates. In the more efficient countries far more people tend to be in education for far longer than in the less efficient. The Secretary of State is unwise, indeed foolish, to keep boasting about our high participation rate. It is a reflection of the low proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds in full-time education, and of the low levels of training and retraining in the course of working lives. I wish that the Secretary of State would understand that.
    Mrs. Audrey Wise: My hon. Friend has interestingly and correctly challenged many of the statistics that have been given. Would she care to comment on the misleading impression given in the consultative document that very few employers actually underpay—that is, pay rates even lower than wages council rates? The Government claim that, according to the inspectors, only about 3 per cent. of workers are underpaid. If they read their own new earnings survey, they would see that 10 per cent. of female shop assistants are paid less than £2·10 per hour, against a wages council minimum of £2·33 per hour.

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    Those shop assistants are being robbed in every hour that they work. Why is the Conservative party so uninterested in such disobedience of the law?
    Ms. Short: My hon. Friend is right. Conservative Members are hypocritical about law and order. They do not give a damn about breaches of the law in respect of health and safety at work or the wage councils. They do not enforce the law although they know the statistics. Conservative Back Benchers have criticised the Government, even making a Nazi parallel, because a wages inspector dared to call on an employee in Thurrock. Conservative Members are hypocritical about law and order and decent standards of employment.
    The country is becoming increasingly aware that the options are low-paid work, short-term schemes or unemployment. In addition, the Social Security Bill demands that people must prove on a weekly basis that they are actively seeking work, regardless of the number of jobs available in their locality. A new provision states that people cannot in future demand the rate of pay that would be offered by a decent employer in their area. The Social Security Bill is another ratchet in the process of encouraging low pay. If we do not get rid of the Government in the meantime, no doubt we shall come back in a year or two's time to say that there are another I million low-paid people in this country and that more than half the work force are low paid.
    Mr. Bob Clay: My hon. Friend will be interested to know that a phenomenon that has not been seen for many years in Sunderland is now returning. As the shipyards are running down towards closure, 40 people are now sent by the jobcentre to stand in the road at 5 o'clock in the morning, allegedly to go to Teesside to the ship repair yards, where there is no negotiation with trade unions and the skilled rate is £133 a week. A bus arrives and a chargehand gets off and says, "We want five burners this morning. The rest of you, go home." If the other 35 learn the lesson and do not turn up the next day, they are technically not available for work. That is the position in today's Britain.
    Ms. Short: My hon. Friend describes a situation that we increasingly recognise. There has been a tremendous growth of casual and temporary work with a decline in the standard of employment protection that people can expect. The Government think that that is clever, but it is not, because we cannot have efficient organisations unless we have a stable work force with decent employment conditions, democratic work practices and high training and investment levels. That is the only healthy future for the British economy. This short-term, nasty strategy of encouraging low pay is unjust, bad for the low paid and damaging to the future of our economy. People will pay the price in the future and the Government will live to regret their strategy.
    9.17 pm
    Mr. James Paice: Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] Anyone who has been in the Chamber for the whole of this debate will know that I slipped out earlier only for a few minutes. I have been in the Chamber considerably longer than most Opposition Members.
    Mr. Martin Flannery: That is a Tory untruth. Everyone knows that it is untrue.
    Mr. Paice: If that is an untruth, I should be interested to know what is a truth.
    In this debate, Opposition Members have shown again that they do not understand the relationship between pay, jobs and standards of living. They have shown that they know nothing about running a business or about the relationship between costs and sales. If sales go down because costs and prices have gone up, jobs go down. Ultimately, that means fewer people in work and less prosperity. There is a fundamental point that it is sometimes difficult to get across. I often wish that I could speak in block capitals so that the Opposition could understand. Every job has a value that is reflected in the price of its end product. If there is no sale because the price is too high, the job will disappear.
    Lord Wilson—often reviled by the Labour party, but at least he won four general elections, which is better than its last three leaders—said that one man's pay increase was another man's price increase. We must understand that.
    As my hon. Friend said——
    Mr. Nellist: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Paice: Yes. I am not as rude as some Opposition Members.
    Mr. Nellist: Given that statement by Lord Wilson, what are the consequences of the wage increases awarded last year to Lord Hanson of 167 per cent. and to Lord King, chairman of British Airways, of 270 per cent.?
    Mr. Paice: Those salary increases would have been approved by the boards of those companies. They would have taken the decisions on the basis of the effect they would have on the price of their companies, end products, such as flight tickets. It is the responsibility of each business to take such decisions, not the Government's.
    Mr. Patrick McLoughlin: What would the consequences have been if those companies had gone bankrupt through bad management?
    Mr. Paice: The result would have been not just one or two, but hundreds, probably thousands, of lost jobs.
    We have heard about the importance not just of gross pay but of take-home pay. Conservative Members have referred to the need to improve the latter, and to the great strides that have already been made.
    The decency threshold has been mentioned. It is a European concept that has not been approved by Europe, let alone this country. The decency threshold is 68 per cent. of the national average wage, which rings close to what the Low Pay Unit describes as poverty—an income 40 per cent. above the benefit level. Both statistics suffer from the same fault—they are self-perpetuating.
    Mrs. Gorman: Will my hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. Paice: I shall not, because I must wind up.
    Both statistics are self-perpetuating. If the benefit rate or the average wage increases, so does the percentage. By the very nature of averages, there will always be people below them, so the Low Pay Unit is also self-perpetuating.
    I am sometimes worried that the Opposition pretend to be an alternative Government. This evening they have

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    shown that they fail to understand the meaning of running a business. I hope that the House will throw out this absurd motion.
    9.23 pm
    Mr. Barry Jones: The Secretary of State was nettled by the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) and lost his temper to my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-East (Mr. Turner). He forgot to explain that it was his Government who despatched more than 2 million jobs after 1979, before they began fiddling the falling rates of unemployment, of which they attempted to make much this evening. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, South-West (Mr. Jones) countered with effective European figures. My hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Leighton) spoke with the authority of a distinguished Select Committee Chairman. He described the debate in moral terms, and rightly used the word "wicked". My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short) put the facts on record.
    This debate was preceded by desperate Government filibustering that was flagged by my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) and her concern for the scandalously low pay rates in parts of the Pontypridd constituency. The proportion of women in Mid Glamorgan who earn less than £100 a week is 17·5 per cent. The proportion of men earning less than £130 in Mid Glamorgan is 15·7 per cent., which may be one reason why there is no Minister from the Welsh Office to answer the debate tonight.
    The Government claim that there have been a number of requests for the abolition of particular wages councils. But in the non-food wages council, for example, several members of the employers' side have expressed a wish that they should continue, including the booksellers, the Drapers Chamber of Trade, the National Association of Retail Furnishers, the Footwear Distributors Federation, the Radio Electrical and Television Retailers' Association and the Menswear Association. Even the threshold, as it is made out to be in Europe, is problematic.
    In my constituency, a man earns £157 a week but receives only £133 per week net. He pays £10 a week for a lift to work, £27 weekly rent, £2 weekly car insurance and £5·63 weekly for a bag of coal. He tells me that he feeds the slot meter about £14 a week. His wife turns off the immersion heater at weekends, when a coal fire heats the back boiler. That family has much less than £100 per week before it pays for food, leisure and holidays. My constituent's wife buys stewing beef at £1·63 a pound. white loaves at 47p, pasteurised milk at 27p per pint and eggs at £1·07 a dozen. All of that mounts up quickly. My constituent's pint of beer now costs 91p. Holidays, new clothes and nights out rarely happen.
    In my constituency, female cleaners earn the equivalent of £71 a week for 40 hours. It is little wonder that recently there was a one-day strike as they earn £1·78 an hour. In Clwyd enterprise zone, there are companies that pay £70 to £80 a week to grown men and the female cleaners are employed by a contract cleaning company that undercut
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    its rivals to gain the contract and cannot afford to pay the girls. That is what privatisation is about, as a distinguished trade union official told me.
    In that context, what a shabby speech the Secretary of State made. It was a miserable spectacle to observe a British Cabinet Minister who earns a small fortune arguing for what is, in effect, the depression of wages that are already low. His speech had the true whiff of Thatcherism. We know that some Ministers can jet off to Barbados with a first-class British Airways ticket costing £2,316 and, if they wish, can hire a private plane to islands such as Mustique. But those on low wages groan under the weight of higher rents, higher rates, higher water rates and higher electricity and gas bills. None of the speeches made by Conservative Members showed any comprehension of the problems faced by ordinary people on low wages.
    I want to give some facts about low pay in the Principality. First, average earnings for men are lower in Wales than in any other region of Great Britain. The incidence of low pay among men is more severe in Wales than in any other region. One in four men in Wales earns less than the decency threshold of £150 per week set by the Council of Europe. Dyfed and Powys counties are at the bottom of the league of male earnings for all the counties of Great Britain. Low pay is a massive problem for women. More than 80 per cent. of women in Wales in manual jobs are low paid and one in five women working full-time in Wales earns less than £100 a week, including one third of those in manual jobs. In my own county of Clwyd, two out of three women working full-time are low paid and one third of those working full-time still earn less than £100 per week.
    The problems of low pay in Wales have deteriorated, and the disparity between Wales and the south-east has widened. The proportion of men earning less than £130 per week in Wales is 15·8 per cent., which puts Wales at the bottom of the league—nobody would be surprised if I said the south-east was at the top. I imagine that that is another reason why no Minister from the Welsh Office will answer tonight's debate.
    The proportion of women earning less than £100 per week in Wales is 19·8 per cent. I know that the county of Powys shares bottom place with Cornwall in the league table of male earnings in all the counties of Great Britain. According to the 1988 new earnings survey, Dyfed has the lowest level of male manual earnings of any county in Great Britain.
    Mr. Redwood: Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House why he and his hon. Friends voted against the tax reductions which have been of great benefit to the lower paid as well as others?
    Mr. Jones: The speech made by the hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr. Redwood) was delivered with all the passion of a tired funeral director. It was the sort of speech that I would expect of somebody who formerly worked for Rothschild, who was a fellow of All Souls college and who worked in the policy unit at No. 10 Downing street. None of us was impressed by the hon. Gentleman's over-long speech.
    Women in Wales are particularly disadvantaged in the labour market. Six out of 10 women in Wales are low-paid and half work full-time for less than £130 per week. One

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    in five still work full-time for under £100 per week. Average earnings for women are lowest in Clwyd, at £137 per week, which is £13 less than the decency threshold.
    Mr. Janman: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Jones: No, I have no more time.
    Mr. Janman: I have a genuine question.
    Mr. Jones: I wish that the hon. Gentleman had made a genuine speech. I am not giving way to him; time is running out because of the length of his speech.
    Over two thirds of women working full-time in Clwyd are low-paid and nearly one in three still earns less than £100 for a full week's work.
    The Wages Act 1986 severely weakened the powers of the wages councils to set legal minimum rates of pay for over 100,000 workers in Wales. Over 20,000 young people aged under 21 have been removed from the protection of the wages councils. It is a sad fact that, in 1987, the only office of the wages inspectorate in Wales was closed and the responsibility was transferred to offices in Bristol and Manchester. I imagine that that is another reason why there will not be a Welsh Office Minister at the Dispatch Box tonight.
    With the Government planning to abolish wages councils 80 years after they were first introduced to protect workers in sweated trades, about one in eight employees in Wales—over 100,000 workers—are covered by legal minimum rates of pay set by the wages councils. Those people work in 18,000 establishments across the country, in shops, bars, restaurants, cafes, hotels, hairdressers and clothing manufacturers.
    The 1987–88 hourly rates of pay set by the wages councils are modest. In the case of clothing the rate is £1·99 per hour; hairdressing, £2·05 per hour; hotels and restaurants, £2 per hour; pubs and clubs, £2·16 an hour; and retailing, the princely hourly sum of £2·33—another reason, I guess, why no Welsh Minister will be coming to the Dispatch Box tonight to reply to this debate.
    So, abolishing wages councils and the wages inspectorate, which attempts to enforce the minimum rates, will mean workers at the very bottom of the earnings league having no redress against unscrupulous employers who pay poverty wages. A wise and prudent Secretary of State, a wise and prudent Government, would consider retaining the wages councils system, restoring the powers and coverage lost as a result of the Wages Act 1986, establishing new wages councils in areas that have grown up in recent times—for example, the contract cleaning business—and increasing the numbers employed in the wages inspectorate to ensure effective enforcement of the law. Then they should tighten the rules governing prosecution.
    Mrs. Gorman rose——
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member is not giving way.
    Mr. Jones: They should set penalties high enough to be an adequate deterrent to employers considering underpaying. In addition, a wise and prudent Government would consider publicising in the media the industries covered by the wages councils and their current minimum rates and conditions.
    My right hon. and hon. Friends from Wales are deeply concerned that tens of thousands of our fellow citizens do
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    not share, and have no present hope of sharing, in the prosperity of our society. When billions of pounds have been given in tax relief to the richest of British society, and when the North sea still yields billions of pounds to the national Treasury in oil revenues, it is not unreasonable to urge Her Majesty's Government to think again in the interests of the lowest paid and most vulnerable of our communities.
    We believe that our case has moral force. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Ladywood was right to emphasise again and again in her speech that one of the biggest issues facing our nation is the growing divide between those on low wages, who are under-privileged, and the many millions who are getting quite a lot of the best things available in our modern society. In his speech tonight the Secretary of State made no attempt to address this very real issue. His speech was evasive. It was the speech of a Cabinet Minister who lacked the imagination to understand the predicament of ordinary people trapped on low wages. From no Tory Members did we hear any sympathy for, or understanding of, the families on low wages who are attempting to bring up young children, realising that they are not benefiting from the many good things in life that are now available.
    This debate touches as much upon the quality of life as upon the standard of living of the low paid. The family on low wages does not receive the perks of subsidies or expenses. It is really what we might call basement living. It is the harsh world of making ends meet, and this is a Government who do not care about those who are getting a raw deal.
    At the heart of this debate is proof of a greatly divided society of debt and of the temptation of petty crime. The Government appear to be interested only in the south-east of England, northern Europe, and the consequences of :he Channel tunnel for the south-east of Britain. Hon. Members know that the Opposition speak for the common people and that the Government are only about the comfortably off. We are asking for social justice for the low paid. We say to the Government, for pity's sake, desist. We demand that these unjust policies are abandoned.
    9.40 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Patrick Nicholls): Obviously, I will deal as best I can with the points that have been made by the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mr. Jones). My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales is presently engaged abroad, promoting the interests of the Principality. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Wales has been with me for almost the entire debate and has also worked closely with me. I understand the pressures that the Pontypridd by-election places on the hon. Gentleman, but I must make that explanation in response to his somewhat uncharacteristically ungenerous remarks about my hon. Friend.
    Many hon. Members have made important contributions to the debate. In the time available, I shall answer as many points as I can.
    Certainly, this argument cannot be won solely by bandying around a stream of statistics. Far more important are the positive things that we have done to help those who actually are in need

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    At least two points are crucial to the debate. First, by any definition, there will always be those in society who are lower paid than others, or those who have lower household incomes than other people. Attempts to change that are doomed to failure, and for a good reason: it is impossible to do so. In a society of millionaires, anybody on £500,000 a year would be counted poor. Secondly, it must surely be true that, as a rule, a job is better than no job, and low pay is better than no pay. That is what the Opposition have conveniently chosen to ignore, and that is what the Government are putting right.
    Our record in encouraging the creation of more jobs, helping more people back into work, and laying the foundations for a successful and growing economy cannot simply be pushed aside as irrelevant. Furthermore, despite everything that Opposition Members have said, the Government do not ignore the lower paid, the less well off or those households that live on the margins of economic viability. All the evidence bears out that proposition to the hilt. Since the Government took office, employment opportunities have increased by leaps and bounds. Jobs are increasingly available, and so is the training that helps people to get them.
    The real blight is not the blight of low pay; it is the blight of no pay at all and the depression and despondency that can go with it. For all their protestations, Opposition Members do no service to the people of this country by crying out for measures that would ultimately deprive many people of the pay that they now have.
    Mr. Win Griffiths: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Nicholls: I shall not give way. I have been here for the whole debate. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I want to press on.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Janman) referred to wages councils, and so did the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) and other hon. Members. Some points must be reiterated. The first should be self-evidently true, but it is apparently not so to the Opposition. It is that the situation in 1909 was vastly different from what it was in 1986, and from the present position.
    To listen to Opposition Members, one would think that the wages council structure as we now have it has achieved precisely what they want. But everything that we have heard from Opposition Members has demonstrated that the present system does not work. Therefore, the idea that the structure of the wages councils in some way deals with low pay simply does not wash. Even Opposition Members would have to concede that.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: Will my hon. Friend give way?
    Mr. Nicholls: If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will not give way. I shall certainly give him due credit. My hon. Friend also made the point that the present system simply does not work.
    My right hon. Friend has made it clear that there is a consultation period and we cannot know what the result of that will be. Some of the consequences of the present system really should be looked at by anyone who has a genuine interest in the fate of the low paid.
    On average, since 1986, the yearly increase in the rates awarded by wages councils has been about 8·6 per cent. I
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    urge Opposition Members to imagine what it must be like to be running a business and to be told that the least skilled in that business must be paid an increase of, for the sake of argument, 8·6 per cent. It does not stop there. Differentials are completely eroded because that figure must be paid throughout the business. Therefore, the idea that simply paying percentage rates to the lowest paid has no knock-on effect is simply wrong.
    Several hon. Members, typically including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Ms. Short), have said that there is widespread evidence that employers are underpaying.
    Mr. Ronnie Campbell: Of course they are.
    Mr. Nicholls: The hon. Gentleman bawls out from a sedentary position, "Of course they are", but the facts do not bear that out. It is clear from visits made by wages inspectors£the numbers of which have been constant under both Labour and Conservative Governments—that about 97 per cent. of workers covered by wages councils are paid the correct rate. Opposition Members seem to be completely prosecution-minded and say that that is not enough and they want to see more prosecutions. I should have thought that the Opposition would be more concerned about doing something to ensure that the present structure of wages councils was abided by.
    If an inspector finds that due to a genuine misunderstanding—[Laughter.] Hon. Members may laugh, but we are talking about the real world, not the world of their fevered imaginations. If the inspectors find that an employer has underpaid because of some misunderstanding about his duties, and he makes it clear that he wants to comply with the law, what would be the point in saying that there should automatically be a prosecution?
    As 97 per cent. of people who are covered by wages councils are being paid the correct amount, for the Opposition to maintain that the law is being widely flouted simply will not work. That shows that the system does not work in improving low pay, but that is another matter.
    The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland made several points about wages councils and he referred to the debate on 28 April 1909 on the Trade Boards Bill. As Liberals are wont to do, he sought his inspiration from events that took place the best part of a century ago. He was apparently harking back to the golden days of 1909 when the system worked correctly. However, if he looks at the speech which followed that of Sir Winston Churchill, he will not find great approbation being given to the system. A Mr. T. F. Richards says:
    "we regret exceedingly that we are not in the schedules. I certainly should have liked to see the boot and shoe industry in the schedule".—[Official Report, 28 April 1909; Vol. IV, c. 394.]
    If the hon. Gentleman thinks that people in 1909 were satisfied with the structure of wages councils, he is not correct.
    Ms. Short: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Nicholls: No, I shall not give way. Time does not permit.
    Wages councils simply do not have the effect that Opposition Members would have us believe.
    Let me deal now with something that we have not heard much about. The hon. Members for Newham, North-East

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    (Mr. Leighton) and for Ladywood rather let the cat out of the bag. The cat that they released was the Labour party's policy. If I am wrong I shall give way immediately to the hon. Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher), but I do not think that he said one word about the Labour party's policy on the low paid. They cannot intend to maintain the wages councils in their present form, because they do not work. Labour party policy is for a national minimum wage. I do not know whether the hon. Member for Oldham, West dissociates himself from that policy. One knows that, at times, he has trouble with particular aspects of Labour party policy. However, he is on record as saying as recently as 5 October 1988 that:
    "a top priority for the next Labour Government must be a national minimum wage."
    I do not know why the hon. Gentleman did not mention that, because it goes down well with his right hon. and hon. Friends. Perhaps he forgot that it was in the Labour party manifesto. I remind him—and one must hand it to Labour for their optimism—of what it said:
    "We will implement a comprehensive strategy for ending low pay, notably by the introduction of a national statutory minimum wage."
    Apparently, that is the policy which a Labour Government would operate. The hon. Gentleman told the House nothing about that. If he wonders how it goes down with some of his right hon. and hon. Friends, a number of them have shown already that they go along with it. However, there is a problem for the Labour party when it comes to a national minimum wage. I will intrude for a moment or two on some of the Labour party's private griefs. Presumably the hon. Member for Oldham, West will take account of comments by his right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley)—that great economist—who writing as recently as 1987 in his book "Choose Socialism" observed:
    "If the law requires employers to pay a statutory minimum rate, and if workers in more highly paid industries negotiate to preserve their relative position, there can only be one possible outcome. The low paid remain low paid at a higher rate of inflation."
    Just in case the message has not sunk in, the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook added:
    "The real danger comes from the pretence that a national minimum wage could be introduced cheaply or easily."
    Other Opposition Members could have told the hon. Member for Oldham, West about the fallacies in his thinking. He might have discussed them with his hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), who could have explained the problems that a national minimum wage can cause. I refer to an article by the hon. Member for Birkenhead in The Times, in which he wrote:
    "The higher statutory minimum wage has the drawback that it increases employers' costs. If implemented … it will lead to significant increases in unemployment and a big jump in the rate of inflation."
    Even if we do not agree with the analysis of the hon. Member for Birkenhead, at least he speaks in debates with great authority. His article went on:
    "I calculate that the higher minimum wage target could result in a loss of more than 400,000 women's jobs, a 4·4 per cent. rise in the total wage bill, together with a 2 to 2·5 per cent. rise in prices."
    In case the hon. Member for Oldham, West is still not convinced about the efficiency or otherwise of a national minimum wage, he can do no better than talk to a former Minister of State for the Department of Employment who, when rejecting such policies, commented:
    "blanket provision across the board, by its failure to discriminate, will not tackle the pockets of poverty which
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    undeniably exist. It is better to have a discriminatory approach in the provision of social security benefits, perhaps supplemented by fiscal policies."—[Official Report, 1 March 1977; Vol. 927, c. 164.]
    If the hon. Member for Oldham, West is wondering which Minister of State that was, I can tell him that it was none other than his right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Mr. Walker), speaking from this Dispatch Box in 1977.
    We can well understand why the Labour party's preferred policies, set out in their manifesto and endorsed by the hon. Member for Oldham, West, received not one single word of praise from the Front Bench today but had to be let out of the bag by other Opposition Members.
    What would be the effect of a national minimum wage? It would destroy jobs by increasing wages without increasing output. Employers' costs would increase, competitiveness would lessen, the total number employed would drop, and differentials would be artificially compressed—causing pressure to restore them, which would add to wage costs and erode competitiveness.
    Ms. Short: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Nicholls: Out of misguided gallantry, I give way to the hon. Lady.
    Ms. Short: Can the Minister explain why every other country in western Europe can afford a national minimum wage and Britain cannot? Has he seen the study by Cambridge Econometrics which examined every sector of the economy where there is low pay and showed in detail that a national minimum wage is not only affordable but creates greater efficiency?
    Mr. Nicholls: The reason why other countries can get along with a national minimum wage is simply by ignoring it and refusing to uprate it. That is how they cover that side of the argument.
    There was also reference to the European decency threshold. Listening to Opposition Members, one would think that it was a law or a policy adopted by every other country in the European Community and that only this country failed to abide by it. Let us look for a moment at what the so-called decency threshold is. It was suggested by a committee of independent experts in the Council of Europe which thought that it should be 68 per cent. of the national average wage, but it has never been endorsed by any member state, nor does it appear in the European social charter. It has not been endorsed by the governmental committee on the European social charter, and the charter does not refer to a percentage of average earnings regarded as an acceptable minimum. In other words, the idea that Europe has set a decency threshold is complete and utter nonsense.
    Again it illustrates the fallacy which Opposition Members have shown throughout the debate in believing that what matters in the interests of the poor is the gap between rich and poor. Of course, the poor cannot live off the gap. The poor are not interested in the distance between themselves and those who are earning a great deal more; they need to know what is in it for them. They need to know the relative strength of their position.
    If the hon. Member for Newham, North-East wants to know what has happened to the lower paid in recent years, may I tell him that for a single person earning 50 per cent. of average male earnings, the real take-home pay has increased by 27·9 per cent. during the lifetime of the

    391
    Government. For a married couple with one earner and two children, earning 50 per cent. of average male earnings, take-home pay has increased by 22·7 per cent. Those are the figures which matter. Those are the figures which the working poor can rely on. To say that it is the gap which matters shows a total lack of understanding.
    The debate was supposed to be about the blight of low pay, but for too many of our citizens the legacy of the Socialism of the 1960s and the 1970s was the blight of no job in the 1980s. Through the policies and efforts of the Government that blight has steadily receded. The debate has served to remind us that even now there is waiting in the wings a party which has learnt nothing from the past and which promises for the future merely the fruits of its own blinding ignorance. For the sake of the low paid and of those who are still without a job, Labour's miserable inadequacy has to be exposed. With their customary incompetence the Opposition have given us that opportunity. It was said of the French kings that they had learnt nothing and that they had forgotten nothing. The Opposition have gone one better. They have shown us that they have learnt nothing and forgotten everything. That is what the Opposition offer us today.
    One appreciates the demands that the Pontypridd by-election have imposed on the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside, but let me remind him of the facts. If he had cared to tell us about the position in his constituency, he could have said that in just the last year the rate of unemployment has fallen by no less than 30 per cent. The hon. Gentleman failed to tell us that. If he is so concerned about average real earnings in Wales, why did he not tell us that during the period of the Labour Government the average earnings of male employees in Wales rose by a miserable 4·6 per cent. and that under this Government they have gone up by 15·9 per cent? Surprisingly the hon. Gentleman did not mention that. Again, if he looks at some of the other figures, he will see that they show a massive increase in expenditure in Wales. Why did the hon. Gentleman not remind us that the Welsh Development Agency's budget for 1989–90 is £130 million, 15 per cent. higher than in the previous year?
    Mr. Robert N. Wareing rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put.
    Question, That the Question be now put, put and agreed to.
    Question put accordingly, That the original words stand part of the Question:—
    The House divided: Ayes 201, Noes 275.

    Division No. 71]

    10.00 pm

    AYES

    Abbott, Ms Diane

    Beith, A. J.

    Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

    Benn, Rt Hon Tony

    Allen, Graham

    Bermingham, Gerald

    Alton, David

    Bidwell, Sydney

    Anderson, Donald

    Blair, Tony

    Archer, Rt Hon Peter

    Blunkett, David

    Armstrong, Hilary

    Boateng, Paul

    Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

    Boyes, Roland

    Ashton, Joe

    Bradley, Keith

    Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

    Bray, Dr Jeremy

    Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

    Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

    Barron, Kevin

    Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

    Beckett, Margaret

    Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

    Beggs, Roy

    Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

    392

    Buchan, Norman

    Kennedy, Charles

    Buckley, George J.

    Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

    Caborn, Richard

    Lamond, James

    Callaghan, Jim

    Leadbitter, Ted

    Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

    Leighton, Ron

    Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

    Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

    Campbell-Savours, D. N.

    Lewis, Terry

    Canavan, Dennis

    Livingstone, Ken

    Carl Me, Alex (Mont'g)

    Livsey, Richard

    Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

    Lofthouse, Geoffrey

    Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

    Loyden, Eddie

    Clay, Bob

    McAllion, John

    Clelland, David

    McAvoy, Thomas

    Clwyd, Mrs Ann

    Macdonald, Calum A.

    Cohen, Harry

    McKelvey, William

    Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

    McLeish, Henry

    Corbett, Robin

    McTaggart, Bob

    Corbyn, Jeremy

    Madden, Max

    Cousins, Jim

    Mahon, Mrs Alice

    Crowther, Stan

    Marek, Dr John

    Cryer, Bob

    Marshall, David (Shettleston)

    Cummings, John

    Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

    Dalyell, Tam

    Martlew, Eric

    Darling, Alistair

    Maxton, John

    Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

    Meacher, Michael

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

    Meale, Alan

    Dewar, Donald

    Michael, Alun

    Dixon, Don

    Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

    Dobson, Frank

    Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

    Doran, Frank

    Mitchell, Austin (G'f Grimsby)

    Duffy, A. E. P.

    Moonie, Dr Lewis

    Dunnachie, Jimmy

    Morgan, Rhodri

    Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

    Morley, Elliott

    Eadie, Alexander

    Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

    Eastham, Ken

    Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

    Evans, John (St Helens N)

    Mullin, Chris

    Fatchett, Derek

    Murphy, Paul

    Fearn, Ronald

    Nellist, Dave

    Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

    Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

    Fisher, Mark

    Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

    Flannery, Martin

    Patchett, Terry

    Flynn, Paul

    Pendry, Tom

    Foot, Rt Hon Michael

    Pike, Peter L.

    Foster, Derek

    Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

    Foulkes, George

    Prescott, John

    Fraser, John

    Primarolo, Dawn

    Fyfe, Maria

    Quin, Ms Joyce

    Galbraith, Sam

    Radice, Giles

    Galloway, George

    Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

    Garrett, John (Norwich South)

    Reid, Dr John

    Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

    Richardson, Jo

    Godman, Dr Norman A.

    Robertson, George

    Gould, Bryan

    Robinson, Geoffrey

    Graham, Thomas

    Rooker, Jeff

    Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

    Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

    Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

    Rowlands, Ted

    Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

    Ruddock, Joan

    Grocott, Bruce

    Salmond, Alex

    Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

    Sedgemore, Brian

    Healey, Rt Hon Denis

    Sheerman, Barry

    Heffer, Eric S.

    Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

    Henderson, Doug

    Shore, Rt Hon Peter

    Hinchliffe, David

    Short, Clare

    Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

    Sillars, Jim

    Holland, Stuart

    Skinner, Dennis

    Home Robertson, John

    Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

    Hood, Jimmy

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

    Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

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

    Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

    Snape, Peter

    Hoyle, Doug

    Spearing, Nigel

    Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

    Steel, Rt Hon David

    Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

    Steinberg, Gerry

    Hughes, Roy (Newport E)

    Strang, Gavin

    Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

    Straw, Jack

    Illsley, Eric

    Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

    Ingram, Adam

    Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

    Janner, Greville

    Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

    Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

    Turner, Dennis

    Jones, leuan (Ynys MÔn)

    Vaz, Keith

    Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

    Wall, Pat

    393

    Wallace, James

    Wise, Mrs Audrey

    Walley, Joan

    Worthington, Tony

    Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

    Wray, Jimmy

    Wareing, Robert N.

    Young, David (Bolton SE)

    Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

    Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

    Tellers for the Ayes:

    Williams, Rt Hon Alan

    Mr. Frank Haynes and

    Wilson, Brian

    Mr. Men McKay.

    Winnick, David

    NOES

    Adley, Robert

    Dicks, Terry

    Aitken, Jonathan

    Dorrell, Stephen

    Alexander, Richard

    Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

    Alison, Rt Hon Michael

    Dover, Den

    Allason, Rupert

    Dunn, Bob

    Amess, David

    Durant, Tony

    Amos, Alan

    Dykes, Hugh

    Arbuthnot, James

    Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

    Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

    Fallon, Michael

    Arnold, Tom (Hazel Grove)

    Favell, Tony

    Ashby, David

    Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

    Aspinwall, Jack

    Fookes, Dame Janet

    Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

    Forman, Nigel

    Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

    Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

    Baldry, Tony

    Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

    Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

    Fox, Sir Marcus

    Batiste, Spencer

    Freeman, Roger

    Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

    French, Douglas

    Bellingham, Henry

    Gardiner, George

    Bendall, Vivian

    Garel-Jones, Tristan

    Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

    Gill, Christopher

    Benyon, W.

    Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

    Bevan, David Gilroy

    Glyn, Dr Alan

    Biffen, Rt Hon John

    Gorman, Mrs Teresa

    Blackburn, Dr John G.

    Gower, Sir Raymond

    Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

    Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

    Body, Sir Richard

    Gregory, Conal

    Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

    Grist, Ian

    Boscawen, Hon Robert

    Grylls, Michael

    Boswell, Tim

    Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

    Bottomley, Peter

    Hampson, Dr Keith

    Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

    Hanley, Jeremy

    Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

    Hannam, John

    Brandon-Bravo, Martin

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

    Brazier, Julian

    Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

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

    Harris, David

    Browne, John (Winchester)

    Haselhurst, Alan

    Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

    Hayes, Jerry

    Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

    Hayward, Robert

    Buck, Sir Antony

    Heathcoat-Amory, David

    Budgen, Nicholas

    Heddle, John

    Burns, Simon

    Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

    Burt, Alistair

    Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

    Butler, Chris

    Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

    Butterfill, John

    Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

    Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

    Hind, Kenneth

    Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

    Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

    Carrington, Matthew

    Holt, Richard

    Carttiss, Michael

    Hordern, Sir Peter

    Cash, William

    Howard, Michael

    Channon, Rt Hon Paul

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

    Chapman, Sydney

    Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

    Chope, Christopher

    Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

    Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

    Howell, Rt Hon David (G'dtord)

    Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

    Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

    Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

    Hunt, David (Wirral W)

    Colvin, Michael

    Hunter, Andrew

    Conway, Derek

    Irvine, Michael

    Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

    Irving, Charles

    Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

    Jack, Michael

    Cormack, Patrick

    Jackson, Robert

    Couchman, James

    Janman, Tim

    Critchley, Julian

    Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

    Currie, Mrs Edwina

    Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

    Curry, David

    Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

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

    Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

    Davis, David (Boothferry)

    Key, Robert

    Day, Stephen

    King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

    Devlin, Tim

    Kirkhope, Timothy

    394

    Knapman, Roger

    Rost, Peter

    Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

    Rowe, Andrew

    Knowles, Michael

    Ryder, Richard

    Knox, David

    Sainsbury, Hon Tim

    Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

    Scott, Nicholas

    Lang, Ian

    Shaw, David (Dover)

    Latham, Michael

    Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

    Lawrence, Ivan

    Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

    Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

    Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

    Lee, John (Pendle)

    Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

    Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

    Shersby, Michael

    Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

    Sims, Roger

    Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

    Skeet, Sir Trevor

    Lightbown, David

    Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

    Lilley, Peter

    Soames, Hon Nicholas

    Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

    Speller, Tony

    Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

    Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

    McCrindle, Robert

    Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

    Macfarlane, Sir Neil

    Squire, Robin

    McLoughlin, Patrick

    Stanbrook, Ivor

    McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

    Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

    McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

    Steen, Anthony

    Madel, David

    Stern, Michael

    Major, Rt Hon John

    Stevens, Lewis

    Malins, Humfrey

    Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

    Marland, Paul

    Stradling Thomas, Sir John

    Marlow, Tony

    Sumberg, David

    Marshall, John (Hendon S)

    Summerson, Hugo

    Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

    Tapsell, Sir Peter

    Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

    Taylor, Ian (Esher)

    Maude, Hon Francis

    Taylor, John M (Solihull)

    Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

    Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

    Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

    Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

    Meyer, Sir Anthony

    Temple-Morris, Peter

    Miller, Sir Hal

    Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

    Mills, Iain

    Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

    Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

    Thurnham, Peter

    Mitchell, Sir David

    Townend, John (Bridlington)

    Monro, Sir Hector

    Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

    Montgomery, Sir Fergus

    Tracey, Richard

    Moore, Rt Hon John

    Tredinnick, David

    Morrison, Sir Charles

    Trippier, David

    Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)

    Twinn, Dr Ian

    Moss, Malcolm

    Vaughan, Sir Gerard

    Mudd, David

    Viggers, Peter

    Neale, Gerrard

    Waddington, Rt Hon David

    Needham, Richard

    Wakeham, Rt Hon John

    Nelson, Anthony

    Walden, George

    Nicholls, Patrick

    Walker, Bill (T'side North)

    Nicholson, David (Taunton)

    Waller, Gary

    Norris, Steve

    Ward, John

    Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

    Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

    Oppenheim, Phillip

    Warren, Kenneth

    Paice, James

    Watts, John

    Patnick, Irvine

    Wells, Bowen

    Patten, John (Oxford W)

    Wheeler, John

    Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

    Whitney, Ray

    Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

    Widdecombe, Ann

    Porter, David (Waveney)

    Wiggin, Jerry

    Powell, William (Corby)

    Winterton, Mrs Ann

    Price, Sir David

    Winterton, Nicholas

    Raffan, Keith

    Wolfson, Mark

    Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

    Wood, Timothy

    Redwood, John

    Woodcock, Mike

    Rhodes James, Robert

    Yeo, Tim

    Riddick, Graham

    Young, Sir George (Acton)

    Ridsdale, Sir Julian

    Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

    Tellers for the Noes:

    Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

    Mr. David Maclean and

    Roe, Mrs Marion

    Mr. Tom Sackville.

    Rossi. Sir Hugh

    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 246, Noes 181.

    Division No. 72]

    [10.15 pm

    AYES

    Adley, Robert

    Glyn, Dr Alan

    Aitken, Jonathan

    Gorman, Mrs Teresa

    Alexander, Richard

    Gower, Sir Raymond

    Alison, Rt Hon Michael

    Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

    Amess, David

    Gregory, Conal

    Amos, Alan

    Grist, Ian

    Arbuthnot, James

    Grylls, Michael

    Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

    Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

    Ashby, David

    Hampson, Dr Keith

    Aspinwall, Jack

    Hanley, Jeremy

    Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

    Hannam, John

    Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

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

    Baldry, Tony

    Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

    Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

    Harris, David

    Batiste, Spencer

    Haselhurst, Alan

    Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

    Hayes, Jerry

    Bendall, Vivian

    Hayward, Robert

    Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

    Heathcoat-Amory, David

    Benyon, W.

    Heddle, John

    Bevan, David Gilroy

    Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

    Biffen, Rt Hon John

    Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

    Blackburn, Dr John G.

    Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

    Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

    Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

    Body, Sir Richard

    Hind, Kenneth

    Boscawen, Hon Robert

    Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

    Boswell, Tim

    Holt, Richard

    Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

    Hordern, Sir Peter

    Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

    Howard, Michael

    Brandon-Bravo, Martin

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

    Brazier, Julian

    Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

    Browne, John (Winchester)

    Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

    Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon Alick

    Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

    Buck, Sir Antony

    Hunt, David (Wirral W)

    Burns, Simon

    Hunter, Andrew

    Burt, Alistair

    Irvine, Michael

    Butler, Chris

    Irving, Charles

    Butterfill, John

    Jack, Michael

    Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

    Jackson, Robert

    Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

    Janman, Tim

    Carrington, Matthew

    Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

    Cash, William

    Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

    Channon, Rt Hon Paul

    Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

    Chapman, Sydney

    King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

    Chope, Christopher

    Knapman, Roger

    Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)

    Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

    Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

    Knowles, Michael

    Colvin, Michael

    Knox, David

    Conway, Derek

    Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

    Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

    Lang, Ian

    Cormack, Patrick

    Latham, Michael

    Couchman, James

    Lawrence, Ivan

    Currie, Mrs Edwina

    Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

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

    Lee, John (Pendle)

    Davis, David (Boothferry)

    Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

    Day, Stephen

    Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

    Devlin, Tim

    Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

    Dicks, Terry

    Lightbown, David

    Dorrell, Stephen

    Lilley, Peter

    Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

    Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

    Dover, Den

    Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

    Dunn, Bob

    McCrindle, Robert

    Durant, Tony

    Macfarlane, Sir Neil

    Dykes, Hugh

    McLoughlin, Patrick

    Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

    McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

    Fallon, Michael

    McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

    Favell, Tony

    Madel, David

    Field, Barry (Isle of Wight)

    Major, Rt Hon John

    Fookes, Dame Janet

    Malins, Humfrey

    Forman, Nigel

    Marland, Paul

    Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

    Marshall, John (Hendon S)

    Fowler, Rt Hon Norman

    Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

    Fox, Sir Marcus

    Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

    Freeman, Roger

    Maude, Hon Francis

    French, Douglas

    Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

    Gardiner, George

    Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

    Garel-Jones, Tristan

    Meyer, Sir Anthony

    Gill, Christopher

    Miller, Sir Hal

    396

    Mills, Iain

    Spicer, Michael (S Worcs)

    Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

    Squire, Robin

    Mitchell, Sir David

    Stanbrook, Ivor

    Monro, Sir Hector

    Steen, Anthony

    Montgomery, Sir Fergus

    Stern, Michael

    Moore, Rt Hon John

    Stevens, Lewis

    Morrison, Sir Charles

    Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

    Morrison, Rt Hon P (Chester)

    Stradling Thomas, Sir John

    Moss, Malcolm

    Sumberg, David

    Neale, Gerrard

    Summerson, Hugo

    Needham, Richard

    Tapsell, Sir Peter

    Nelson, Anthony

    Taylor, Ian (Esher)

    Nicholls, Patrick

    Taylor, John M (Solihull)

    Nicholson, David (Taunton)

    Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

    Norris, Steve

    Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

    Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

    Temple-Morris, Peter

    Oppenheim, Phillip

    Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

    Paice, James

    Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

    Patnick, Irvine

    Thurnham, Peter

    Patten, John (Oxford W)

    Townend, John (Bridlington)

    Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

    Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

    Porter, David (Waveney)

    Tredinnick, David

    Powell, William (Corby)

    Trippier, David

    Price, Sir David

    Twinn, Dr Ian

    Raffan, Keith

    Vaughan, Sir Gerard

    Raison, Rt Hon Timothy

    Viggers, Peter

    Redwood, John

    Waddington, Rt Hon David

    Rhodes James, Robert

    Wakeham, Rt Hon John

    Riddick, Graham

    Walden, George

    Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

    Walker, Bill (T'side North)

    Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)

    Waller, Gary

    Rossi, Sir Hugh

    Ward, John

    Rowe, Andrew

    Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

    Ryder, Richard

    Wells, Bowen

    Sainsbury, Hon Tim

    Wheeler, John

    Scott, Nicholas

    Whitney, Ray

    Shaw, David (Dover)

    Widdecombe, Ann

    Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

    Wiggin, Jerry

    Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

    Winterton, Mrs Ann

    Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

    Winterton, Nicholas

    Shepherd, Richard (Aldridge)

    Wolfson, Mark

    Shersby, Michael

    Wood, Timothy

    Sims, Roger

    Yeo, Tim

    Skeet, Sir Trevor

    Young, Sir George (Acton)

    Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

    Soames, Hon Nicholas

    Tellers for the Ayes:

    Speller, Tony

    Mr. David Maclean and

    Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

    Mr. Tom Sackville.

    NOES

    Abbott, Ms Diane

    Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

    Adams, Allen (Paisley N)

    Campbell-Savours, D. N.

    Alton, David

    Carlile, Alex (Monf'g)

    Anderson, Donald

    Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

    Archer, Rt Hon Peter

    Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

    Armstrong, Hilary

    Clay, Bob

    Ashton, Joe

    Clelland, David

    Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

    Clwyd, Mrs Ann

    Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

    Cohen, Harry

    Barron, Kevin

    Corbett, Robin

    Beckett, Margaret

    Corbyn, Jeremy

    Beggs, Roy

    Cousins, Jim

    Beith, A. J.

    Crowther, Stan

    Benn, Rt Hon Tony

    Cryer, Bob

    Bermingham, Gerald

    Cummings, John

    Bidwell, Sydney

    Dalyell, Tarn

    Blair, Tony

    Darling, Alistair

    Blunkett, David

    Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

    Boateng, Paul

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

    Boyes, Roland

    Dewar, Donald

    Bradley, Keith

    Dixon, Don

    Bray, Dr Jeremy

    Dobson, Frank

    Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

    Doran, Frank

    Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

    Duffy, A. E. P.

    Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

    Dunnachie, Jimmy

    Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

    Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

    Buchan, Norman

    Eadie, Alexander

    Buckley, George J.

    Eastham, Ken

    Caborn, Richard

    Evans, John (St Helens N)

    Callaghan, Jim

    Fatchett, Derek

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    Fearn, Ronald

    Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

    Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

    Moonie, Dr Lewis

    Fisher, Mark

    Morgan, Rhodri

    Flannery, Martin

    Morley, Elliott

    Flynn, Paul

    Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

    Foot, Rt Hon Michael

    Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

    Foster, Derek

    Murphy, Paul

    Foulkes, George

    Nellist, Dave

    Fraser, John

    Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

    Fyfe, Maria

    Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

    Galbraith, Sam

    Patchett, Terry

    Galloway, George

    Pendry, Tom

    Garrett, John (Norwich South)

    Pike, Peter L.

    Godman, Dr Norman A.

    Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

    Graham, Thomas

    Prescott, John

    Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

    Primarolo, Dawn

    Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

    Quin, Ms Joyce

    Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

    Rachce, Giles

    Grocott, Bruce

    Reid, Dr John

    Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

    Richardson, Jo

    Heller, Eric S.

    Robertson, George

    Henderson, Doug

    Rooker, Jeff

    Hinchliffe, David

    Rowlands, Ted

    Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

    Ruddock, Joan

    Holland, Stuart

    Salmond, Alex

    Home Robertson, John

    Sedgemore, Brian

    Hood, Jimmy

    Sheerman, Barry

    Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

    Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

    Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

    Shore, Rt Hon Peter

    Hoyle, Doug

    Short, Clare

    Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

    Sillars, Jim

    Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

    Skinner, Dennis

    Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

    Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

    Illsley, Eric

    Smith, C. (Islton & F'bury)

    Ingram, Adam

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

    Janner, Greville

    Snape, Peter

    Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

    Spearing, Nigel

    Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

    Steel, Rt Hon David

    Kennedy, Charles

    Steinberg, Gerry

    Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

    Strang, Gavin

    Lamond, James

    Straw, Jack

    Leadbitter, Ted

    Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

    Leighton, Ron

    Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

    Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

    Turner, Dennis

    Lewis, Terry

    Vaz, Keith

    Livsey, Richard

    Wall, Pat

    Lofthouse, Geoffrey

    Wallace, James

    Loyden, Eddie

    Walley, Joan

    McAvoy, Thomas

    Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

    Macdonald, Calum A.

    Wareing, Robert N.

    Mcleish, Henry

    Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

    McTaggart, Bob

    Welsh, Michael (Doncaster N)

    Madden, Max

    Williams, Rt Hon Alan

    Mahon, Mrs Alice

    Wilson, Brian

    Marek, Dr John

    Winnick, David

    Marshall, David (Shottlesion)

    Wise, Mrs Audrey

    Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

    Worthington, Tony

    Martlew, Eric

    Wray, Jimmy

    Maxton, John

    Meacher, Michael

    Tellers for the Noes:

    Meale, Alan

    Mr. Frank Haynes and

    Michael, Alun

    Mr. Allen Mckay

    Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

    Question accordingly agreed to.
    MR. SPEAKER forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
    Resolved,
    'That this House, noting that since this Government came to power personal disposable income has increased at every level in society and that the lowest paid have had proportionately higher increases than many other groups, considers that the best way in which the Government can help the low paid is by creating the conditions for more jobs by breaking down the barriers to employment and encouraging labour market flexibility; and welcomes the Government's decision to consult about the abolition of Wages Councils.'.

    European Community Documents
    10.27 pm
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it in order for the motion that we are about to consider to be considered under Standing Order No. 102(5) when the Standing Committee which met to consider the document did so only yesterday and the Hansard report of its proceedings reached the Vote Office only this morning?
    As Standing Order No. 102(5) provides that you can select for debate any amendment tabled by any hon. Member, does it not undermine the rights of Members if they do not have, until the day in question, the report of the Committee's proceedings? That might appear to be rather a niggling point, but it is an important one which I hope you will consider.
    The Euro instruments on machine safety were unanimously recommended for debate by the Select Committee in its November report on the basis that this was one of the most ambitious plans for the internal market and that it could increase substantially the costs of industrial firms. In its January report, it explained that it would automatically require the amendment of two major Acts of Parliament.
    We know that the Council of Ministers effectively settled these matters in December 1988, but the Committee did not even consider them until yesterday, when there was no debate, apart from a two-minute speech by the Minister, who apologised for their having already been settled in Brussels.
    If, Mr. Speaker, you do not agree that the motion is out of order, can you not declare it null and void under Standing Order No. 41, which deals with irrelevance? Why should the time of the House be wasted on silly motions to approve or disapprove when sovereignty has gone and the decision was made in Brussels in December? This makes nonsense of our consideration of European legislation. May we have a decision on the motion, or else do away with it entirely, instead of wasting the time of the House, the Clerks and yourself?
    Mr. Nigel Spearing: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I want to put to you additional factors for the consideration that I hope you will give this matter.
    Unlike the hon. Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor), I do not think that the fact that this was decided in Brussels before debate is strictly relevant to the central point. If on the Order Paper there appears a motion on a document that was sent to Committee by resolution of the House under the appropriate Standing Order, surely there should be at least an interval of a day between the appearance of the Official Report of the Committee's proceedings and of a motion in the House. That would enable hon. Members to table amendments to it for discussion the following day.
    I do not dissent from what the hon. Member for Southend, East said about the importance and unusual nature of this matter, but, whatever the content of the Committee's resolution, my point stands.
    Mr. William Cash: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. A resolution of the House of 1980 declares that in all possible circumstances there should be a debate before the adoption of a common position on a

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    matter of this sort. If that is not strictly adhered to, our difficulties when considering matters vital to the future of industry in this country will increase. I should be grateful if this could be given further consideration in the appropriate quarters.
    Mr. Hugh Dykes: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) for missing his first few remarks after the Division. Although our views about membership of the Community may vary, I echo my hon. Friend's remarks—he may look surprised—and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) and of the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), the Chairman of the Select Committee on European Legislation.
    Whatever our views, procedures must be correctly followed. The House needs the essential elements of a scrutiny procedure to be effective. Recently, and for all sorts of reasons, there has been a disturbing increase in the number of decisions taken by the collective institutions of the Community before matters have been properly considered by the House. That must be put right. It behoves us all to get it right. Hon. Members are worried, and we seek your guidance, Mr. Speaker.
    The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Wakeham): I have not had much time to consider this matter, hut, in view of the remarks made by hon. Members on both sides of the House, it would perhaps be better if the Government did not move the motion tonight so that I can look into it.

    Mentally Ill People (Community Care)
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Durant.]
    10.34 pm
    Mrs. Gillian Shephard: I am grateful for the chance to raise this subject. I hope that the heat and light engendered by the publication of the NHS review yesterday will not deflect attention for too long from Government action on community care following the Griffiths report.
    What is community care? My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary may be interested to know that a seminar of 80 hon. Members held in the House last July gave at least 80 answers. The evidence of the Department of Health and Social Security to the Select Committee on Social Services in 1984–85 gave a catch-all definition:
    "Its objective is to enable an individual to remain in his own home wherever possible rather than be cared for in a hospital or a residential home."
    That definition, whose blandness is due, no doubt, to the fact that it has to encompass a wide variety of patient and client groups, is almost meaningless for mental illness and especially for schizophrenia, which fills more hospital beds than any other illness and to which I intend to devote this debate.
    We know the facts about the incidence of mental illness, but they will stand repetition. Even if one knows academically that one in six people will need professional help for a mental health problem during a lifetime or that one person in 100 suffers from schizophrenia, one does not realise it until it hits one's friend or family or oneself.
    Community care for the mentally ill is not new. Since 1962, there has been active encouragement of the development of local alternatives within the community to the large Victorian hospitals. The anti-psychotic drugs, introduced in the mid-1950s, helped many patients to live almost normal lives in the community. Proof of that is that in the mid-1950s the psychiatric hospital population stood at about 150,000 and it is now about 60,000. A more significant figure is that there are 200,000 admissions and discharges to and from psychiatric hospitals each year.
    Mr. Patrick Thompson: I wonder whether my hon. Friend is aware that nine out of 10 hospital admissions for people suffering from schizophrenia are readmissions. Does she agree that districts should, therefore, review, slow down or even stop the closure of mental hospitals until at least adequate alternatives have been found? I should be interested in my hon. Friend's comments on that.
    Mrs. Shephard: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know that he takes a keen interest in the subject. I shall be dealing with the question that he has raised. The point about readmissions for schizophrenic patients is that it is the nature of their illness that causes them to relapse. I hope to deal with that matter later.
    Mental illness is costly. The Government spend about £1·4 billion on it every year and to that we must add social security payments, the cost of social services provision and a huge drugs bill. The psychiatric drugs bill amounts to about a quarter of the national total. Can we be sure that we are obtaining real value and the best care for patients

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    and their families from such a substantial sum? Is the 10 per cent. of it that is devoted to community care enough if we mean what we say about its importance?
    In its report last April, the Public Accounts Committee asked some searching questions about community care. It pointed out the need to ensure in any review of the policy that not only should there he adequate provision for individuals, but that care should give value for money. It said that, although community care had been an official policy for years, there had been no systematic monitoring of the way in which it was working. It said that the operation of joint planning and its financing was still not satisfactory. I have often said, in the House and elsewhere, that in joint financing every pound is handled 12 times by a combination of committees and procedures, and one has to assume that that reduces its value to the individual patient. One of the Committee's most significant points was that, while improvements in planning and efficiency were being required of health authorities, they were not and could not be of local authorities and that sometimes resulted in an uneven match between the closure of large hospitals and appropriate systems of local authority care.
    The overall picture in the report was not of a service lacking in resources, but of a service in which resources have to be used in a way that is difficult to manage because of budgetary conventions and without clear policy guidelines and information about the effectiveness of the policy in the first place. I hope that when the Government issue their response to the Griffiths report those questions will be considered, and in no area more urgently than schizophrenia.
    We know that some areas of the country have developed effective services in the community for the mentally ill. In my constituency, the West Norfolk and Wisbech health authority has a substantial budget of £3·5 million with which to help its mentally ill patients. There are 60 acute beds with 26 for long-stay patients, a further 88 beds for the elderly mentally ill and 140 day places, some of which are run successfully with the voluntary sector. Future plans involve drop-in centres and a sensible use of section 117 with the social services.
    Monitoring the effectiveness of the services is being carried out in another part of my constituency by the Norwich health authority, with a research project, mounted with the university of East Anglia. I know that the Department of Health is conscious of the lack of information with which to evaluate community care and mental illness services in general. As the Minister's predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) said to MIND in her speech in November:
    "we need a clearer picture of what is going on at a local level. During this year and next we will be looking closely at what we have on the ground. Particularly from the point of view of the patient."
    I am delighted that that question is being vigorously tackled in the Department and feel sure that much good practice will be discovered to help areas where provision and practice are not so good.
    However, I believe that in all areas there is one group of patients which the system is at present failing. They are either avoided or they are not offered adequate support when not resident in hospital. The problems that they and their families encounter have been given useful publicity by the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and the campaigning group SANE, which stands for
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    Schizophrenia: A National Emergency, which rightly recognises that much public education as well as better organised services are desperately needed.
    The problem of who should treat small groups of severely ill patients who, as part of their illness, do not recognise the need for medication and who, if they do riot take that medication outside hospital, present severe problems for themselves can be tackled. I shall propose a number of solutions—I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister is relieved to hear that.
    However, I should first like to give some examples of such patients and their families. They illustrate that for those patients, no matter how good the community care network, discharge from hospital can lead—and all too often does—to relapse due to lack of medication, to breakdown, often in harrowing circumstances, and to their eventual readmission to hospital.
    One mother wrote to me about her schizophrenic son:
    "Like most schizophrenics he will not go voluntarily to hospital. So when his social worker finally decides that he is 'a danger to himself' his removal to hospital involves his GP, his psychiatrist, his social worker, and at least one police officer. At this stage his home has deteriorated into almost unbelievable squalor … What is needed are section orders that can run for much longer than 6 months and/or community treatment orders whereby those who need continuing treatment to keep them stable can he compulsorily treated at home."
    Another letter states:
    "I wholeheartedly support … efforts to put into place a Community Treatment Order. When our daughter gets treatment early in the episode it can last as little as 3 weeks. When neglected she gets into all manner of troubles and can be as long as 8 months in the recovery."
    Those two examples, from many hundreds that I could have chosen, illustrate that the problem for that group is agonising and that it is at least as agonising for the families, who have to live with the notion of their relative becoming a hostile stranger and with the gnawing uncertainty of what will happen when he or she leaves hospital. The scale and nature of the problem faced by those people has been highlighted by an excellent series of articles in The Times and The Sunday Times by Marjorie Wallace and in a number of programmes on television.
    What can be done? I have three groups of suggestions. The first is non-controversial; the second is financial so my hon. Friend will make up his own mind about whether it is controversial; and the third is very controversial as it involves changes in mental health law and has implications for the patients' civil liberty.
    First, there should be increased public awareness of the problem. MIND, the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and SANE have done invaluable work in giving publicity to schizophrenia. The public needs to be educated about the fact that the illness can strike suddenly, without warning and in any family. A public that is educated will also be educated about ways to help. There should also be a code of practice to be used in conjunction with the Mental Health Act. I hope and believe that this is in course of preparation in the Department of Health, and it is eagerly awaited.
    There is no excuse for any group of patients ever to be disadvantaged because of faulty co-operation between agencies or professionals, yet this is precisely what can happen to people with schizophrenic breakdown in the

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    community. We need clear guidelines, personal accountability by professionals, and monitoring standards, and I hope that the code, when it appears, will provide all of these.
    There needs, too, to be much more information about what actually happens to individual patients on discharge. I have said already that, although everyone pays lip service to the concept of community care, we have no idea if different forms of it are effective.
    I understand that SANE is hoping to launch a survey, to be conducted by Professor Jones of York university, which is to follow 1,000 patients discharged from seven hospitals. The survey will trace where and when breakdown occurs, if it does, and will be able to offer thoughts on what has been good practice. SANE is raising a sum of money to offer towards this research. I believe that it hopes to meet my hon. Friend or his colleagues in the near future, and I hope that its request that that sum be matched will be considered favourably.
    Those who plan services must recognise that both sufferers and their families want asylum and hospital admission to be part of the range of services to which they can have speedy and hassle-free access at times of breakdown. Support for the families might even prevent breakdown in a certain number of cases.
    My second set of solutions concerns finance. The Government are spending huge sums of money on the treatment of mental illness and on community care. The cost of keeping large, old-fashioned hospitals open is a heavy burden on any budget, while the funds that would be released by closure could help in both revenue and capital terms. I am not arguing that these large, old hospitals should be closed before the alternatives, including asylum, are in place, but the peculiarities of health and local government year-on-year budgeting make the co-ordination of closure and replacement provision almost impossible to achieve.
    I have great hopes of the review in that it itself suggested a number of flexible ways in which health authorities might look at their budgeting, and that that flexibility, which perhaps could involve mortgaging against assets, or borrowing against assets, could be applied to this area where it is much needed. The arrangements for bridging and for dowries for patients that were introduced in 1983 were of great help, but they were hardly the mechanism one would choose if one were setting up the system from scratch. I think the funds are there but are locked up, and they need to be unlocked for the benefit of patients.
    Finally, there is the more controversial suggestion, which enters the difficult moral sphere of civil liberty. It seems clear to me that what is needed, now that much care of the mentally ill and, therefore, of schizophrenic patients will take place in the community, is a recognition of that fact in mental health law. It is true that a sensible application of sections 2 and 3 of the Act, which could be made clear in the code, would help matters without a change in the law.
    It is also true that more extensive use of section 7 guardianship, which as yet has hardly been tried by the local authorities, would also give help without a change in the law. But many schizophrenic patients and their families argue for something stronger, some form of
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    amendment to the Act that will allow for compulsory treatment within the community. Indeed, amendment will be needed in any case since, under the Act, compulsory treatment is allowed only in hospitals, and in future many patients will be in hostels or other residential facilities.
    The Royal College of Psychiatrists has, I believe, considered community treatment orders. So has NAHA. The advantages of a community treatment order include the fact that community treatment is available as an alternative to detention in hospital, and the order can provide a legal framework to encourage compliance in the matter of medication and thus prevent breakdown and readmission. There can be no doubt that such an order would do an enormous amount to increase the confidence of families having to care for schizophrenic patients, in that they would know that at least breakdown due to a lack of medication would be avoided. On the other hand, many would argue that such an order goes against the very idea of civil liberty.
    The Mental Health Act Commission makes two further suggestions for amendment of the Act, both of which I hope my hon. Friend will consider carefully. They concern the power of guardianship.
    In section 7 the power to require the patient to attend at places and times specified for the purposes of medical treatment is not accompanied by a specific authority to convey. The disadvantages of that are obvious and need not be illustrated. Clearly, if guardianship is to be regarded as a serious alternative, the patient must be conveyed to the place, but as the law stands there is still an omission. The power to convey could get the patient to the place —as a horse can be led to water—but unless a power were added to require him to take the medical treatment as prescribed by his responsible medical officer it would be of little use conveying him anywhere.
    In any eventual legal solution—I am confident that there will have to be such a solution to reflect the change in practice which is being encouraged—I hope that the interest of the patient and his family will be paramount, and not those of warring professional groups. That sentiment, indeed, goes for the whole debate. The plight of schizophrenic patients and their families through the nature of their illness is too acute to be ignored, and I hope that the Government's eventual consideration of the Griffiths report will include specific solutions for them. They should not be forgotten.
    10.50 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mrs. Shephard) for raising this important subject. I consider it one of the most important with which I have to deal at the Department, and my view is clearly shared by many hon. Members on both sides of the House.
    My hon. Friend has spoken with authority, based on what must be a unique combination of experience as a member of a local authority social services committee, chairman of a health authority and a Mental Health Act commissioner. She has made several very pertinent observations, and some practical suggestions, to which I shall respond as positively as I can.
    With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall take a few seconds—as this is the first opportunity for me to do so—to pay tribute to the former Member for Kettering, Mr.

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    William Homewood, who has recently died. He lived in Market Harborough, worked in Corby and represented Kettering between 1979 and 1983. I am sure that many other hon. Members on both sides of the House will wish to send best wishes and condolences to his widow. His work in the House will be long remembered.
    Ever since the early 1970s it has been common ground that, as resources allow, health services for those suffering from schizophrenia and other forms of mental illness should be locally based rather than focused on the traditional, old-style mental hospitals with which we are all familiar. The aim is for a comprehensive range of local hospital and community services, associated with appropriate social services provision and voluntary sector facilities, to meet local needs. I think that all hon. Members agree with those principles.
    As those local services are developing, the number of beds in the older hospitals are being reduced, and some of the hospitals are closing. Locally based services have been developing. For example, in the 10 years to 1986, the number of day hospital places in England increased from 11,000 to nearly 19,000, and day centre places from nearly 5,000 to over 9,000. I emphasise, however, that hospital closures should be occurring only as a consequence of the development of better alternative forms of provision. The closure of hospitals per se is in no sense a primary aim of Government policy.
    While, I believe, virtually everyone supports this policy in principle, there are genuine concerns about how it is being implemented in practice. For example, the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, an organisation that we much respect, believes that there is a danger that the total number of hospital beds has already fallen—or soon will fall—below the level required for patients needing full-time care. In the last year or so, two new organizations—Schizophrenia: A National Emergency, or SANE, and Concern—have been established to express broadly similar worries.
    As my predecessor made clear in her speech to last year's MIND annual conference, there is no going back to the old days of hospitals with 2,000 or more beds and wards of 60 patients. Equally, we are determined that the move to locally based services should be properly planned and implemented, so that those needing treatment can receive it in the setting appropriate to their circumstances, whether as out-patients or in-patients.
    We take the concerns expressed by the National Schizophrenia Fellowship, SANE and Concern very seriously. My officials maintain close contact with all three, and I hope to meet representatives of all three very shortly.
    During the current year we shall be examining the position in each of the 14 English health authority regions, and I hope to visit as many as possible to discuss the point that my hon. Friend has raised—the transfer of patients from the old mental illness hospitals into the community, and how our policies are working out locally.
    We shall be talking to the regional health authorities, seeking a social services perspective from the social services inspectorate, and linking directly with voluntary organisations who represent sufferers and their relatives. Our aim is to gain a fuller understanding of how national policy is being implemented.
    My hon. Friend referred to relevant research on the follow-up of patients being sponsored by SANE and undertaken by Professor Kathleen Jones of York
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    university. We know of that research, and next week my officials will be meeting SANE and Professor Jones to discuss the research proposed. I can assure my hon. Friend that I shall be following that meeting with great interest and care. I know of the request for funding under section 64, and I shall certainly give it sympathetic consideration. The House may wish to know that the Medical Research Council spends about £4 million per annum and the Department of Health about £1 million per annum directly on research into mental health matters.
    My hon. Friend referred to finance. That is, of course, important in order to develop new services before older hospitals close, but there is considerable scope for using more effectively the massive sums already tied up in services, particularly the capital value of the older mental hospitals, which often occupy 100 to 200 acres of land. The obvious problem with such disposals is that local services must be built before a closure is effected.
    My hon. Friend suggests bridging finance to release capital from old mental hospital sites destined for closure, so that adequate provision can be made for care facilities in the community now. I am sympathetic to that plea and I can give my hon. Friend an assurance that the Government will be exploring actively how that can be achieved better, possibly with the co-operation of the private sector.
    I draw the attention of my hon. Friend, and others interested in the matter, to the White Paper on the NHS review. It contains an interesting section about our approach to working with the private sector in order to release the capital value of sites, such as those of larger mental hospitals, that are in due course to close, and trying to release them earlier so that we can accelerate the construction of facilities in the community. My hon. Friend already knows that each region can use bridging finance for closures. For example, the East Anglia regional health authority has long been practising that policy.
    My hon. Friend has also drawn attention to the possible contribution of legislation. Before I respond on the possibility of orders for compulsory treatment in the community, which would require new legislation, I want briefly to refer to the position in respect of a relevant piece of legislation already on the statute book, but not yet activated—section 7 of the Disabled Persons (Services, Consultation and Representation) Act 1986.
    My hon. Friend will be aware of the importance of that Act in strengthening and extending legal provisions for disabled people and reinforcing their rights in society. That, of course, includes mentally ill people. Section 7 will require health and local authorities to assess the needs of people discharged from hospital after treatment for a mental disorder of six months or more, and officials from the Department are currently involved in a series of meetings with representatives of both health and local authorities, identifying the processes, procedures and costs that will make up the requirements under this important section of the Act.
    I am taking a personal interest in those discussions, and I can assure my hon. Friend that we treat the matter seriously. Section 7 is not far from the forefront of my mind. I appreciate the significance of the notification to local authorities and the need to ensure that ca re is followed through and given to those discharged from mental hospitals.
    Despite all efforts, it may be that some mentally ill people will refuse further treatment after they leave

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    hospital, even if that is considered essential by the treatment team responsible for their care. Legal measures to enable compulsory treatment to be given in the community have been suggested as one way forward with a small group of patients, and there have been discussions within such organisations as the Mental Health Act Commission, of which my hon. Friend will know, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and MIND. This is a complex area. Important civil liberty issues arise and there are strongly-held views on all sides about the applicability of compulsory treatment orders once a patient has been discharged from mental hospitals into the community and the extent to which an individual can be compelled to undergo treatment.
    Officials from my Department are listening to the debate with close attention, but to date no firm proposals have been put to us and little research is available from this country as yet. No changes in this difficult area would be considered without full consultations with all those concerned with mental health. This debate has assisted that consultation in no small measure.
    My hon. Friend also drew attention to an extension of the powers of guardianship contained in the Mental Health Act 1984. I concur with my hon. Friend that there is no legal authority under the Act's guardianship provisions to convey a person anywhere, and nor is there a power requiring a person received into guardianship to take medication. The introduction of such a power is one of the options put forward by the Mental Health Act Commission in the debate on whether there would be a power compulsorily to treat people in the community. That is a suggestion worthy of serious consideration, and I shall certainly reflect on my hon. Friend's remarks. I know that my Department's officials will pay particular attention to her comments on that subject.
    My hon. Friend referred to the code of practice. We are working on the code of practice required under the Mental Health Act 1984 and I intend saying something definite on that subject very shortly. My hon. Friend may press me as to what "very shortly" really means. As far as I am concerned, it means within the coming months. It is most important to get the code of practice right, and I would much prefer to take an extra week or month doing that rather than rush into publication.
    Even more important than treating those who fall ill is seeking to prevent illness. Much action on prevention must await scientific advances and a better understanding of the origins of the major mental illnesses. However, enough is known already for it to be realistic and urgent to place greater emphasis on services promoting good emotional and psychological health among children and adolescents,
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    and on ways of reducing the risk of relapses for those who have suffered from the major disabling conditions such as schizophrenia. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Mr. Thompson) referred to that aspect in his intervention. He is right to draw attention to the fact that, sadly, those who are readmitted for the second or third time are those who have, by definition, suffered in the past.
    This is not the moment for me to elaborate on our plans for that area, but I simply register the fact that, henceforth, prevention will be a key element of Government mental health policy. My predecessor played a valuable role in highlighting the importance of health promotion and the prevention of ill health in respect of physical disabilities. I see it as my task to extend her work into the field of mental illness, and to deal with its prevention.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West raised the question of the need for increased public awareness, and the House will be interested to know that the Health Education Authority has submitted proposals for the coming year that include the development of a mental health programme. One of its aims is to raise public awareness.
    Before concluding, I must make reference to the deep interest that there is in all parts of the House in community care issues in general and in Sir Roy Griffiths' report in particular. Community care is a subject to which the Government attach great importance. It is of vital concern to the many thousands of people throughout the country who themselves need care, or who help provide it to their friends and relatives. We are fully committed to playing our part in ensuring that their needs are met. That is why we have taken time fully to explore the various options before us, and to take careful account of the numerous representations that we have received.
    We have not as yet reached a final conclusion, but we are actively engaged in working out our plans for the future of community care. I assure the House that the Government are mindful of concern that action should not be unduly delayed—we share that concern. For that reason, and as my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Health told the House last week, and repeated earlier this week, we hope to be in a position to bring forward our own proposals in the near future.
    In conclusion, I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the issue of services for those with a mental illness, and for her balanced and practical approach. I hope that the House will, in turn, welcome what I have said in response.
    The motion having been made after Ten o'clock, and the debate having continued for half an hour, MR SPEAKER adjourned the House without Question put, pursuant to the Standing Order.
    Adjourned accordingly at three minutes past Eleven o'clock.