Commons Sitting of 2 March 1989

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

  PRIVATE BUSINESS
  ASSOCIATED BRITISH PORTS HULL BILL (By Order)
  BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL (No. 2) BILL (By Order)
  BRITISH RAILWAYS BILL (By Order)
  HYTHE, KENT, MARINA BILL (By Order)
  HYTHE MARINA VILLAGE (SOUTHAMPTON)WAVESCREEN BILL (By Order)
  INTERNATIONAL WESTMINSTER BANK BILL (By Order)
  ISLE OF WIGHT BILL (By Order)
  LONDON UNDERGROUND (VICTORIA) BILL (By Order)
  WENTWORTH ESTATE BILL (By Order)
  BRITISH FILM INSTITUTE SOUTHBANK BILL (By Order)
  BROMLEY LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL(CRYSTAL PALACE) BILL (By Order)
  CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL (By Order)
  REDBRIDGE LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL BILL(By Order)
  Orders. for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time on Thursday 9 March.

Oral Answers to Questions
  HOME DEPARTMENT

    Crime (Greater Manchester)
    Mr. Burt: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on the figures for reported crime in Greater Manchester for 1988.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. John Patten): We hope to publish the final crime figures for 1988 shortly. Current indications are that the figures for Greater Manchester are likely to show a drop of about 8 per cent. compared with 1987.
    Mr. Burt: May I thank my hon. Friend for that encouraging reply? Will he confirm that it seems that within those statistics, there will be a pleasing drop in robberies and burglaries, for which all those involved in neighbourhood watch should be thanked? Will he also note my constituents' concern about the continuing unwelcome growth in violent crime? What reassurance does he have for us in Greater Manchester that we shall see more bobbies on the beat?
    Mr. Patten: My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has recently ensured just that by allocating Greater Manchester an extra 45 police in his recent announcement, which is the second highest number given to any police authority. I also believe that the fact that burglary rates and property crime are declining so fast will continue to free more time for the police to concentrate on violent crime. The Greater Manchester police are already concentrating on various initiatives concerned with public disorder and I am sure that they will continue to have the desired effect.
    Mr. James Lamond: Does the Minister realise that his rather complacent attitude will not go down well with the many thousands of pensioners who were represented in the House recently with a petition calling for more police in the Greater Manchester area? Although the Minister may boast that the Home Secretary has been able to allocate an additional 45 police men, that does not measure up well to the request by the Greater Manchester police authority for 258 extra police men, whom it needs to carry out its duties correctly. He gave less than one fifth of the number requested.
    Mr. Patten: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not set greater store by first, the increased numbers of police my right hon. Friend has made available to the Greater Manchester force and secondly, the increased amount of time that that will make available for the investigation of serious crimes against elderly people. Thirdly, burglary rates and property crime are coming down so fast that the Greater Manchester police will have considerably increased time for the investigation of crimes against the elderly. Fourthly, I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has not welcomed the recent excellent initiative financed by the local gas, water and electricity boards in a specific crime prevention campaign aimed at helping the elderly in the Greater Manchester area.

    Television Companies
    Mr. McCrindle: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received concerning the participation by non-European Economic Community nationals in the ownership and operation of United Kingdom television companies.
    The Minister of State, Home Office (Mr. Tim Renton): We have received over 2,200 responses to our broadcasting White Paper, many of which touch on ownership questions. We propose to continue the prohibition on control of television and radio franchises by non-EC companies, except that we are considering further whether that restriction should apply to local delivery franchises.
    Mr. McCrindle: Does my hon. Friend share my concern about the concentration in ownership of the media and, in particular, about the fact that, to a considerable extent, the printed media are in the same ownership? With the arrival of satellite broadcasting, should we not be considering the introduction of new safeguards to keep the matter under some control?
    Mr. Renton: I understand very well my hon. Friend's point. In the White Paper we propose extensive and effective ownership rules against the excessive concentration of ownership. The White Paper sought comments on a set of principles on which such rules might be based and, as my hon. Friend knows, the Director-General of Fair Trading is currently considering the changes that have taken place in newspaper publishing in the past few years and the growing involvement in other media of leading newspaper groups.
    Mr. Worthington: Given the wholly regrettable concentration of power in the newspaper industry, is it not clear that there should be no cross-ownership between the newspaper industry and television industries and no ownership of television companies by individuals or companies outside the EEC?
    Mr. Renton: I understand the hon. Gentleman's point. We are considering carefully the suggestions that have been made to us by those who say that newspaper interests in, for example, the ownership of regional Channel 3 licences, should be strictly controlled.
    Mr. Harry Greenway: Can my hon. Friend assure the people of Britain that proper standards, in terms of the non-exploitation of violence and sex, will apply to the non-English channels as they come into this country?
    Mr. Renton: Yes, Sir. We are, we hope, within sight of agreeing a convention in the Council of Europe and that is likely to be followed by an EC directive. The convention and the directive will set minimum standards of taste and decency and provide mechanisms for enforcing them. That will give some control over trans-frontier satellite channels not uplinked in this country.
    Mr. Hattersley: Does the Minister recall that during our debate on broadcasting there was support on both sides of the House for the idea of the Government making a general reference to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on the subject of television ownership—particularly by newspapers and foreign companies? Are the Government prepared to make such a general reference?
    Mr. Renton: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, those matters are more within the remit of my right hon. and noble Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. The right hon. Gentleman should take on board the fact that the Director-General of Fair Trading is reviewing the matter, taking into account the White Paper on broadcasting and the concentration of ownership of titles, as well as recent developments in newspaper wholesaling. Clearly, that is potentially a wide-ranging review.

    Prisoners (Medical Treatment)
    Mr. Corbyn: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what medical treatment is being given to Paul Hill, Paddy Armstrong, Gerard Conlan and Carole Richardson, currently in Her Majesty's prisons.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hogg): Specific clinical information relating to individual prisoners is confidential and is not normally disclosed. Appropriate medical treatment under the care of prison medical staff is available to all prisoners.
    Mr. Corbyn: Is the Minister aware that there is considerable concern among the families of the four prisoners convicted of the Guildford pub bombings about their medical condition? Paul Hill, who is in Albany prison, had to wait two years to have a saliva gland removed, and even then, the operation was only half done. Paul Hill is at least 3 stone underweight. The other three prisoners are all receiving various forms of medical and psychiatric attention. Is not that a condemnation of the prison service in which they have been held for the past 14 years?
    In the light of that, will the Minister make arrangements to ensure that the four receive all the medical treatment that they require, that their mothers are allowed to visit them on Mothers' day next Sunday and that they are moved to London prisons, where it is easier to get medical support and where it would be easier for their legal representatives to visit them in the run up to the reference to the Appeal Court, which I assume is expected some time later this year?
    Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman and I corresponded about this matter last year and I looked into a number of the points that he raised then. I concluded that there was no ground for anxiety—indeed, two of his suggestions proved to be incorrect.
    I agree with the hon. Gentleman, however, that every prisoner has a right to proper medical treatment. I shall examine the specific criticisms that he has made today to see whether I can satisfy myself on them and, if he would care to expand his criticisms in writing, I shall, naturally, give him a full reply.

    Police Efficiency
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what progress is being made to improve the efficiency of police forces in England and Wales and to obtain value for money.
    The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Douglas Hurd): The Home Office works with chief officers of police and local police authorities to secure value for

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    money in the police service. Significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness have been achieved, with the encouragement and support or my Department and Her Majesty's inspectors of constabulary. Through the civilianisation of police posts some 3,900 police officers have been released for operational duty in the past five years. Procedures have been streamlined and unnecessary paperwork eliminated. Support services have been contracted out. Efficiency scrutinies have been carried through and much has been achieved through local initiatives. Still further improvements in value for money in the police service will remain a high priority.
    Mr. Bennett: Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Dyfed Powys police force which covers Pembrokeshire and which, yet again, has the highest clear-up rate in England and Wales and has been especially vigilant in catching a number of drugs-smuggling gangs in recent years? Does he share my concern that the clear-up record of a number of police forces is pretty poor? When does he intend to introduce performance indicators so that the police and the public may judge the records of individual police forces?
    Mr. Hurd: I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Dyfed Powys on the achievements that he mentioned and on securing better value for money by bringing in divisional operational support units which release officers for operational work and provide a better service. One cannot be too mechanical about performance indicators as it is not easy to measure the value of police work, but Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary is working on it as an aid, but not a total answer, to the crucial job of ensuring value for money from the police service. It is worth noting that it now costs £2,000 to provide cover for any particular place by one uniformed police officer for one week. That is the measure of the cost and the reason why we have to emphasise value for money.
    Mr. Duffy: Does the Home Secretary agree that two important steps that he could take to improve the efficiency of the police would be to adopt the recommendations of the Select Committee on Home Affairs to end the disturbing under-funding of forensic services and to harness genetic fingerprinting?
    Mr. Hurd: I need to study very carefully the Select Committee recommendations on forensic services. Forensic services have been through a turbulent and unsettled time with many inquiries, the reasons for which were analysed by the Select Committee. I hope that, under new leadership and with extra resources and staff, they are now emerging from that and will continue to provide a service of a quality which the Select Committee recommended and proclaimed. I also agree with the hon. Gentleman's second point.
    Mrs. Maureen Hicks: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in spite of local Labour opposition, one of the greatest aids to police efficiency in Wolverhampton has been the introduction of video cameras? Wolverhampton is the first town in the United Kingdom to introduce video cameras and in a very short time there has been a dramatic reduction in criminality, which is now at an all-time low. In paying tribute to the police will my right hon. Friend consider recommending that other police authorities
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    follow suit, particularly in inner-city areas that need a considerable police force to man the streets and town centres?
    Mr. Hurd: The west midlands police force, which serves my hon. Friend's constituency, is certainly a pioneer in working out new techniques and methods of effectively using police officers. Her point about video cameras in public places aroused a certain amount of apprehension at first, but if they are properly placed and organised, the public regard them not as a menace to individual liberty, but as part of the protection of the citizen which they expect the police to provide.
    Mr. Wigley: Is the Home Secretary aware that in the north Wales police force there has been a civilianisation of some 54 per cent. compared with an average of only 22 per cent. for all forces during the past 10 years, yet despite that the North Wales police force is still 120 men on the beat short of the figure that was established in 1972? Is he aware that that was the only force out of the 36 that applied for more policemen on the beat to be refused? Given the serious problems in north Wales, of which he is well aware, will he reconsider that decision?
    Mr. Hurd: There has been a particular problem in north Wales which I shall not describe in detail today, in regard to the allocation of people for the new probationer training. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman on the specific point that he raised.
    Mr. Rathbone: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the shortage of police in Sussex as well as in Wales. In an attempt to ease their burden, will he encourage greater recruitment and the use of special constables, who can perform a useful function particularly in rural areas?
    Mr. Hurd: I agree with my hon. Friend. One of our aims has been to encourage police forces throughout England and Wales to step up the recruitment of special constables. We held a conference on that matter in London not long ago. After a period of decline, I hope that people will come forward and that police forces will step up their efforts to recruit. A key element is sensibly to work out the exact tasks which special constables can do, and I hope that substantial progress is being made on that.

    Police Manpower (Leicestershire)
    Mr. Janner: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a further statement on the level of police manpower in Leicestershire.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: My right hon. Friend has approved an increase of 27 police posts in the establishment of the Leicestershire constabulary with effect from 1 April 1989, bringing it to 1,760 officers. Fifty four extra posts have now been approved for the force since May 1979. In addition, the chief constable has been successful in recent years in returning about 130 police officers to operational duties through civilianisation and other efficiency measures.
    Mr. Janner: Is the Minister aware that in 1985, chief constable Goodson asked for an increase of 256 officers and got none? The following year, his successor, chief constable Hurst, asked for a total of 136 additional officers by this year. He got none in 1986, 1987 or 1988. The allocation of a total of 18 officers plus nine probationers

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    this year is ridiculous, inadequate and ludicrous, when violent crime has doubled since the Government came to power, and all types of crime are still increasing throughout Leicestershire.
    Mr. Hogg: I have increasingly noticed that the hon. and learned Gentleman is so excitable that he has a tendency to leave his judgment at home. That being so, I shall tell him a few facts which, if he cares to reflect on them, he will find rather comforting.
    For example, in 1978–79, £15·65 million was spent on his constabulary police force. Today, the figure is £52·77 million. The police and civilian strength of the force has been increased by 222. The chief constable has managed to bring 130 more officers on to operational duties by way of civilianisation, and he has identified a further 63. That is a considerable expansion in the number of policemen on operational duties.
    Mr. Latham: Does my hon. Friend recall replying to an Adjournment debate which I introduced on this matter and which was supported by most, if not all, Leicestershire Members? Is he aware that Conservative Leicestershire Members do not speak in the dismissive way in which the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) speaks? We are glad that there has been an increase in manpower, but we look for further increases in years to come.
    Mr. Hogg: I do, indeed, remember the Adjournment debate which was moved by my hon. Friend. He put the case infinitely more persuasively than the excitable question that hon. Members have just heard from the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner).
    Mr. Vaz: Is the Minister aware that his Department has just approved the establishment of a divisional headquarters in my constituency, at a cost to the taxpayer of £2·3 million, as a result of a campaign by local residents? Bearing in mind the figures that have been correctly put by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner), in real terms there are only a couple of officers available per subdivision. Sickness, training and other matters must be taken into consideration. How on earth will the Government assure my constituents that they take law and order seriously? Does the Minister suggest that the chief constable should order cardboard cut-outs of police officers and stick them in the windows of Hambleton police station? Would he be minded to have a cardboard cut-out of the Home Secretary, to enable him to go around the country, lecturing and frightening the Asian community?
    Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman might have spent some of the time on his feet doing some homework. I have a bit of good news for him. The clear-up rate for his force, at 44·7 per cent.—I am using the 1987 figures—is much better than the rest of England and Wales, and there are 37 other forces with poorer records than his.

    Violent Crime
    Mr. Jack: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what action his Department is taking to combat violent crime.
    Mr. Hurd: Police manpower has been increased substantially, and we will add a further 1,100 officers in
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    1989–90. We have increased maximum sentences and tightened up the law on the possession of knives and other offensive weapons as well as on under-age drinking. Last month, there came into force a prohibition on the private ownership of certain of the more lethal types of firearms such as the Kalashnikov rifle. Stricter controls on the issue of shotgun certificates and on the safekeeping of licensed firearms will follow later this year. We also introduced last month the new right of reference to the Court of Appeal by the Attorney-General of an over-lenient sentence.
    Mr. Jack: Encouraging though that information is, my right hon. Friend would receive a different response from the members of the women's institute in my constituency in particular and from the women of Lancashire in general, who have vigorously campaigned to express their concern about the repugnant and violent crime of rape. What message does he have for them about the strong stand being taken by the Government on this crime? Can he reassure them that he will look again at the figure of eight extra officers in Lancashire next year and perhaps give us some more?
    Mr. Hurd: I share the concern of my hon. Friend's constituents about rape. I hope that they will have noticed that in the last three years the sentences passed by the courts on convicted rapists have increased by 63 per cent., so that the average sentence is over six years. My hon. Friend will be aware that the clear-up rate for rape is relatively high at 71 per cent. As for police strength, Lancashire police force has 264 more officers than it had in May 1979, and we shall continue to consider the claims of Lancashire, as of other forces, as part of the substantial programme of further increases on which we are working.
    Mr. Heffer: The Government say that we are now doing well, that people are better off than they ever were and that the country is doing better economically. Will the right hon. Gentleman explain why, if that is the case, there is an increase in violent crime? Is it perhaps because of the nature of the society that has been created by Conservative Administrations in the last 10 years?
    Mr. Hurd: There has been a decrease in some quarters in the total of recorded crime, and that decrease applies in Merseyside as well as in the country as a whole. But the hon. Gentleman is right to say that there continues to be an increase in the one in 20 crimes which are violent and which cause the most anxiety and anger. In the old days the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends attributed that—which of course has gone on for 30 years—to unemployment and poverty. Now he is attributing it to affluence and irresponsibility. I do not think that either explanation is right. But whatever is the right explanation, I am perfectly clear that given the drop in the total of recorded crime, we should concentrate increasingly—as the police will be able to do—on violent crime.
    Mr. Wheeler: Does my right hon. Friend agree that one reason why recorded crime is increasing is that we are much better at recording it and more welcoming to women who wish to report rapes? When my right hon. Friend next writes to the 'women's institute, will he explain that women are more at risk within the family, or between known parties, and not so much at risk from strangers outside their own homes?
    Mr. Hurd: Both of those points are correct. The police have altered the way in which they handle allegations of rape. They have followed a much more welcoming approach to the rape victim and that, as my hon. Friend says, has probably increased the number of recorded rapes and reduced the number which tragically happened but were not in the past recorded. My hon. Friend is right in the second part of his supplementary question, and the figures we published last week bear that out.
    Mr. Randall: Is the Minister aware that while the Home Office has invited my city of Kingston upon Hull to participate in the safer cities initiative, which I support in principle, the Department of the Environment has slashed our inner-city money, which helps to reduce crime, by one third of a million pounds this year? How do the Government justify this Home Office initiative being undermined by the actions of another Government Department?
    Mr. Hurd: I do not believe that it will be undermined. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman's city has accepted my invitation to join the safer cities scheme. The whole point is that the schemes are inter-agency and involve different Government Departments, local government and voluntary agencies so that we can identify a local specific profile of crime and then a local specific answer to it.

    National Identity Card
    Mr. Bellingham: T: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received on the proposal for a national identity card; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Hurd: In addition to the advice of the Association of Chief Police Officers and the recommendations of the Home Affairs Committee, I have received some 380 letters on the subject of a national identity card from hon. Members and from the general public; most have expressed support for some form of identity card system.
    Mr. Bellingham: Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that before we get too carried away with the idea of a national ID card scheme, we should listen very carefully to the advice of bodies such as ACPO, which urge caution? Does he also agree that there are strong arguments for a voluntary scheme and does he have any ideas and proposals in that direction?
    Mr. Hurd: I am certainly not carried away by the idea of a compulsory identity card scheme. But with regard to advice, my hon. Friend is right. When I asked the chief police officers and chief constables to update the traditional police view on this matter, they wrote back saying that there were pros and cons, advantages and disadvantages; but they did not establish that there was a clear advantage as regards crime prevention in having an identity card scheme.
    There would be some clear advantages in a voluntary scheme from the viewpoint of easy travel across Europe. There would be other advantages, too. We are considering whether a sensible scheme could be devised and put to the public and to Parliament.
    Mr. Marlow: Would my right hon. Friend agree that without a compulsory national identity card scheme, it would be impossible to have a system of free movement
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    between European countries and the United Kingdom for personnel, and that as there is not going to be a compulsory national identity scheme, we must continue to have frontier controls between the United Kingdom and other European countries?
    Mr. Hurd: That is a wider question. Within the European Community, we are considering very closely what kind of checks would be sensible to carry out the declaration annexed to the Single European Act, which says that nothing in the Act should weaken our defences against the drug traffickers, terrorists and organised criminals.

    Public Transport (Safety)
    Mr. Graham: T: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what steps he is taking to ensure the safety of citizens travelling on public transport.
    Mr. John Patten: The security of passengers and staff on public transport is central to the responsibilities of Government, public licensing authorities, operators and the police. I understand that London Underground Limited is implementing a range of passenger security measures financed by a £15 million grant from the Department of Transport. The complement of the British Transport police on the Underground has been increased) twice since 1986. Good progress has been made in investigating recent serious incidents on the Underground and British Rail.
    Mr. Graham: Is the Minister aware that a posse of American vigilantes is educating and training a group of young men and women called the Guardian Angels to protect the interests of the travelling public on the Underground? Is he further aware that the security of mind among the travelling public, especially the elderly, has been disturbed, as they are terrified at the Government's lack of action and commitment to ensure that law and order are restored to transport in Britain? Will the Minister ensure that the public do not need to rely on vigilantes to ensure their safety on the Underground in London?
    Mr. Patten: It is for that reason that the establishment of the British Transport police is to be increased from 350 to 400. That is exactly why the Government are encouraging the British Transport Police Authority to consider changing its statutory authority so as to allow British Transport police to recruit special constables. We do not want individual private citizens to take up the policing of this country. We wish them to join the special constables, to get a proper training and uniform, and to do a proper job.
    Sir Anthony Grant: Has my hon. Friend seen an article in today's Daily Mail referring to an internal report and inquiry by British Rail showing a great and disturbing worry about crime by riff-raff on the line between Cambridgeshire and Liverpool street? Will he urge British Rail to publish the report so that all the facts can be known? Will he have discussions with his colleagues in the Department of Transport to see what can be done to help British Rail to stamp out those pests?
    Mr. Patten: I have not read or seen the report by British Rail, although I have seen the report in the Daily Mail. I

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    shall pass on my hon. Friend's concern to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport. I am sure that British Rail is well aware that customers—as it increasingly refers to them, rather than passengers—need to feel safe and that if it wants to increase rather than decrease the number of its customers, it will need to address the issues firmly.
    Mr. Darling: The Minister does not seem happy with his lot. As robberies on the London Underground doubled in the last three years, and the clear-up rate has fallen from 20 per cent. to 12 per cent., and bearing in mind the British Rail survey that showed that many women travel in fear on trains, will the Home Secretary lend more police to the British Transport police, or will his shoddy and short-sighted attitude towards spending public money where it is needed mean that more people will continue to travel in fear on the railways when, with a sensible allocation of resources, they would not need to do so?
    Mr. Patten: The hon. Gentleman is ignoring the facts. An additional 50 police are going to the British Transport police. Before the establishment reaches the new level of 400, both the Metropolitan police and the City police are making available 80 of their own police forces to help. In addition, the considerable sum of £15 million for security measures in Underground stations, initially in some 13 stations on the Northern and Central lines, plus Oxford Circus, has been made available by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport.

    Metropolitan Police (Recruitment)
    Mr. Jessel: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will make a statement on Metropolitan police recruitment.
    Mr. Douglas Hogg: A total of 2,160 officers were recruited to the Metropolitan police force during 1988, an increase of about 100 on the figure for 1987. On 31 January 1989 the strength of the force was 27,932, the highest ever and some 5,680 higher than in May 1979. The present establishment is 28,115 which could be reached by the end of March this year.
    Mr. Jessel: Is my hon. Friend aware that those figures show an encouraging and welcome trend which is a considerable achievement both for the Metropolitan police and for the Home Office, considering all the other employment opportunities in the south-east? Does he agree that, as part of the fight against crime, the commissioner should aim to increase the number of police officers on the streets and on the beat in areas of outer London such as Twickenham?
    Mr. Hogg: May I deal first with my hon. Friend's constituency of Twickenham? At the end of last year there were 349 police officers policing the Twickenham division, which was 18 more than in the previous year. I am aware that on 1 January the arrangements were changed and that my hon. Friend's constituency is now being largely policed from Richmond-upon-Thames station. Consequently, precise figures and comparisons are not possible. On the more general question, my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that at the end of 1987 the number of days worked on street duty had increased by 13 per cent. compared with
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    the end of 1986, and that during 1988 there was a further improvement of 7·5 per cent. in hours spent on street duty. That will continue.
    Mr. Maclennan: Does the Minister believe that the Metropolitan police are satisfied with their resources to deal with white collar crime?
    Mr. Hogg: I very much hope so, because when the hon. Gentleman's party, as it then was, was in power in 1978–79 it was spending £295 million on the Metropolitan force and today we are spending over £1 billion.

    Police (Manning Levels)
    Mr. Gow: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what representations he has received as to whether the police manning levels which he has announced for 1989–90 are adequate to combat present and prospective rates of crime.
    Mr. Hurd: I have received several representations from hon. Friends and hon. Members concerned about this announcement. Many of them have asked for more. The 1,100 extra police officers allocated this year will be followed by a further substantial programme of increases. Along with the other measures which we are taking, increases for 1989–90 will help to build on the recent welcome falls in total recorded crime so that we can concentrate more effectively on dealing with crimes of violence.
    Mr. Gow: Despite greater police manpower and efficiency and better value for money than ever before, the reality is that crime in almost every part of the country is still increasing. Was my right hon. Friend's failure to meet the request from the chief constable and the police authority for a larger police establishment in Sussex due to the fact that he believed that more police men would fail to protect the innocent, or was it because he could not get any more money from the Chancellor?
    Mr. Hurd: Although my hon. Friend's statement would have been true for almost all the past 30 years, it is not true now. The latest figures show a decline, year on year, across the nation of 3·7 per cent. in recorded crime. In my hon. Friend's own county of Sussex, where the crime level is well below the average, there has also been a very slight fall of about 1 per cent. Obviously, increasing the number of police officers is not in itself the whole answer to crime, but, nevertheless, I hope that my hon. Friend will recognise that the 1,100 additional policemen that I have announced for the coming year is on top of a record series of increases which have increased total expenditure on the police by 52 per cent. in real terms. That is a bigger proportion than for any other major public service, and it will be followed by a further substantial programme of increases in which any further claims from Sussex will be considered.
    Mr. Alton: Does the Home Secretary agree that in inner city areas, especially those such as Liverpool, a powerful pressure for crime is the low street value of hard drugs such as crack and heroin? Does he agree that, when considering the establishments for local police forces next year, he should reconsider the size of drug squads to ensure that their activities are better co-ordinated and that the powerful drug barons are apprehended?
    Mr. Hurd: Yes, indeed, I entirely agree with that. The building up of the drugs rings of regional crime squads has been a priority in policing. I am glad to say that they are increasingly effective and are gaining more and more accurate and timely intelligence from overseas. They will remain a priority.
    Mr. Alexander: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the special constabulary has an important role in reducing crime? What reassurance can he give the House that its role will be expanded and recruitment to it increased?
    Mr. Hurd: As my hon. Friend knows, we are certainly pressing for that. I hope that, alter the conference on the subject that we organised in London and after the lead given by many chief officers of police, we shall see a steady build-up of special constables, not just in quantity but in the quality and importance of their work.
    Mr. Corbett: Will the Home Secretary confirm that West Midlands police have received an increase of only 70 uniformed officers since 1981, despite a crime rise that has been faster than the national average and ever-rising levels of crime against the person? Will the Home Secretary further confirm that those 70 extra officers came in response to a plea for 350 extra places, and that for 1989–90 there will be only 62 extra officers although the police authority asked for 1,500 over the next five years? Why does the Home Secretary insist on denying the west midlands the police officers that it needs to prevent and combat crime more effectively?
    Mr. Hurd: That is ripe coming from the hon. Gentleman sitting on the Opposition Front Bench, repersenting the party which left the police in such a state in 1978. The west midlands has shared fully in both the main developments in this field in the past two or three years: a steady increase in the size of the police force and a welcome fall in the total of recorded crime.

    Radio
    Mr. Greg Knight: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department what he is doing in advance of any future broadcasting Bill to increase the choice available to radio listeners.
    Mr. Renton: We have endorsed IBA proposals to award 20 incremental contracts for community radio and a further contract for a station covering Heathrow and Gatwick. In addition, we have authorised BBC and independent local radio stations to provide separate programmes if they wish on each of their current frequencies.
    Mr. Knight: My hon. Friend mentioned the setting up of 20 community radio stations. Will he confirm that that is not the final figure, and that there is ultimately a good case for allowing a few hundred such stations to be set up? Will he tell us whether independent local radio stations will be allowed to apply for franchises, and will he confirm that in no circumstances will pirate radio stations still broadcasting be eligible?
    Mr. Renton: I can confirm that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary announced in January that anyone convicted of an illegal broadcasting offence committed after 1 January 1989 would be debarred from applying for a Radio Authority licence for five years.
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    In answer to my hon. Friend's first question, he is quite right: in due course, as more frequencies become available—particularly on VHF—the new Radio Authority will be able to license up to several hundred community radio stations if the demand exists.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Fearn: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 2 March.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Fearn: Does the Prime Minister accept that her statement on BBC2's "Nature" programme yesterday that new fridges need new solvents and chemicals conflicts considerably with what was said by her Environment Minister, who earlier in the day ruled out such an observation?
    The Prime Minister: The programme is being broadcast tonight.
    New chemicals are of course required for refrigerators, and it is only on the assumption that those new chemicals can be found that we can dream of an 80 per cent. cut in the use of CFCs.
    Mr. William Powell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that tomorrow will see the 10th anniversary of British Steel's announcement that it proposed to close the Corby steelworks, in which no fewer than 73 per cent. of those living in the town were then employed? Is she aware that in the past 10 years Corby has experienced the most dramatic industrial recovery, and may I pass on to her the thanks of my constituents for the massive help that the Government have given in the past 10 years?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend. The steelworks had to be closed. It is greatly to the credit of both the British Steel Corporation and the people of Corby that they rose to the challenge of enterprise, have created many new jobs and are now flourishing. I am grateful for what my hon. Friend said about Government help.
    Mr. Kinnock: What is the Prime Minister's excuse for the appalling trade deficit?
    The Prime Minister: The trade deficit is being financed by people who are prepared to invest in Britain and who have full confidence in the country's economy, which has never produced a higher standard of living for our people than it does now.
    Mr. Kinnock: It is obvious from that answer that the Prime Minister has no excuse. Will she therefore give the country an apology, as one is certainly due?
    The Prime Minister: An apology for the fact that we have a higher standard of living, more jobs than ever before in history and a higher standard of social services than ever before? If the Labour Government had had such a record they would have been shouting it from the house tops.
    Sir Fergus Montgomery: Would my right hon. Friend care to comment on the "Environment in Trust" leaflets that the Government published yesterday, which show the Government's commitment to improving the environment and rivers? Does she consider that a good deal more useful than being photographed in a white coat testing the waters of the Regent's park canal?
    The Prime Minister: The booklets to which my hon. Friend referred, in a folder called "Environment in Trust", are excellent and give the full, the accurate and the very good record of this Government on the countryside, the environment, water, getting down pollution and reducing the difficulties which we have had previously with our bathing beaches. It is a better record than any previous Government in this country.
    Mr. Ashley: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 2 March.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the right hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Ashley: Before the Prime Minister boasts too much about the Government's record on the environment and before she makes this famous broadcast, will she recognise that the consumer and environment problems now swamping her Government are a direct result of her personal philosophy of non-intervention? She is reaping her own whirlwind and people will be protected from the ravages of industry only by a Government who are committed to positive intervention. That applies whether the problem is eggs, the ozone layer or anything else.
    The Prime Minister: I point out to the right hon. Gentleman that this Government have positively intervened to spend far higher capital on water than ever the last Government did, to spend far higher capital on the National Health Service, and to spend far higher capital on roads. That is because we have had far bigger prosperity under this Government than any previous Government and, in fact, we have been able to spend money on those things. I also point out to the right hon. Gentleman that, with regard to water matters and the state of the beaches, the bathing water directive was agreed in 1975 and the Labour Government did nothing about it for four years.
    Mr. Ashby: When meeting Environment Ministers next week, will my right hon. Friend please take time to explain to them the most excellent Water Bill that is now before the House? Will my right hon. Friend explain to them that in relation to the environment the Bill takes measures to improve the waterways, the rivers and the beaches? Will she suggest that perhaps they should emulate us and produce a similar sort of Bill in their countries, specifically in Europe, to clean up the Rhine?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend is correct. The most polluted rivers coming into the North sea are those which discharge into the German bight, which are the Rhine, the Weser and the Elbe, and they are responsible for most of the pollution in the North sea. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that the water privatisation Bill will do two things. First, it will set up a separate National Rivers Authority and, secondly, it will make certain that the provision of water is very much more efficient than it has been in the past. I also point out that, although the Opposition talk a lot about water, they cut the capital
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    expenditure on water by 20 per cent. We have put up the capital expenditure on water by 30 per cent.—[Interruption.] Have the hon. Gentlemen got the figures? Labour cut it by 20 per cent; we have put it up by 30 per cent.
    Mr. Canavan: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 2 March.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Canavan: As yesterday was the 10th anniversary of the last Scottish referendum, did the Prime Minister attend any of last night's anniversary beanfeasts, where the Scottish representation appeared to be confined to Tory placemen, such as Lord Goold and the Duke of Buccleuch, and Tory rejects, such as lain Sproat and Michael Hirst, whose opposition to a Scottish Parliament helped to lose them their seats in this Parliament? If the Prime Minister is that confident that Scottish opinion is truly and adequately expressed and reflected by such a parcel of rogues, can I call her bluff and dare her to hold another referendum now—or is she too scared?
    The Prime Minister: I noted that it was the 10th anniversary yesterday. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is very glad that the referendum was rejected by the Scottish people, because otherwise he would not be here now, and he does, in fact, add greatly to the entertainment of the place.
    Mr. Barry Porter: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 2 March.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Porter: Is my right hon. Friend aware—I know that she is—of the plight of the pre-1973 war widows? Is she equally aware that a large number of hon. Members from all quarters of the House believe that the case made by those ladies deserves early, sympathetic and positive consideration?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, but we have tried and, I think, have succeeded in giving both sympathetic and positive consideration to the case of war widows. There are two distinct pensions. One is that administered by the Department of Social Security and the other is the occupational pension, which differs according to whether service continued beyond 1973. The changes made in the occupational pension, coming under the Ministry of Defence, were not retrospective. Most occupational pension improvements are not retrospective. All war widows receive a tax-free pension under the war pensions scheme administered by the DSS, regardless of their husband's date of death or period of service. Those pensions are at preferential rates, some 30 per cent. higher than the national insurance widows' pensions, with age allowances ranging from £5·75 a week at 65 to £14·45 a week at 80. We have done a great deal for the war widows' pension which, as my hon. Friend knows, is tax-free.
    Mr. Flannery: Has the Prime Minister taken note of Her Majesty's inspectorate's report on the alarming situation in our schools? Does she realise that virtually all the press, with the possible exception of Murdoch and company, are saying such things as The Independent said yesterday, when it described the situation as "a creeping

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    educational disaster"? Does she realise that the shortage of teachers, the imposition on teachers of the national curriculum and all the other difficulties that we are experiencing, are of such a nature that the Prime Minister and her Government are creating a situation in education that we have not hitherto witnessed in our lifetime?
    The Prime Minister: Let me just quote from that particular report. It said:
    "In the majority of schools and colleges standards of teaching and learning are satisfactory or better; initial teacher training and in-service training are in much better shape than a few years ago, and the introduction of the GCSE has shown that a combination of central direction and grass-roots professional development and commitment can bring about worthwhile change and improved standards … In many ways, then, the education service is well placed to face the future with some confidence."
    Mr. Malins: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 2 March.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Malins: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation to house some of our homeless families is expensive and, in terms of quality, damaging to families and young children? Does she further agree that we should try to move towards the abolition of bed-and-breakfast accommodation, but meanwhile we should encourage local authorities to use some of their empty stock and to insist that landlords should provide better conditions for the homeless?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend. Some local authorities in London have very little occasion to use bed-and-breakfast accommodation because they use their council properties very well indeed and they do not keep them vacant. It is absurd that inner London should have about 10,500 empty properties while Labour councils keep some 2,300 families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
    Mr. Tony Banks: What about Westminster council?
    Mr. Speaker: Order.
    The Prime Minister: If they used their vacant properties better they would have very much less need for the adverse bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
    Mr. Sillars: Let me take the Prime Minister back to the ground where she was weakest this afternoon, the balance of payments deficit, which is cumulative. Is not the manifestation of that due to two factors? One was the destruction of manufacturing capacity during her first period of dictatorship, which was obscured from people by the fact that year after year she managed to filch billions of pounds in oil wealth from Scotland. Has she any plans for the future when we are not here to steal from?
    The Prime Minister: Manufacturing output is at an all-time record. In Scotland people have done very well. Manufacturing productivity has increased by 5·6 per cent. per annum since 1979 and, as the hon. Gentleman knows, the amount spent per head in Scotland vastly exceeds that spent in England and Wales.
    Mr. Couchman: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 2 March.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Couchman: Does my right hon. Friend agree that 1992 offers a unique opportunity for British industry and commerce to take advantage of our membership of the European Community? Does she agree that the director-general of the Institute of Directors would do better to exhort his members exploit that opportunity rather than make unconstructive and foolish criticisms of the EC's structure and personnel?
    The Prime Minister: I have not read the speech but, as my hon. Friend knows, we are fervent believers in the: single market. We believe in free and fair competition between all members of the Community. We agree that when we get that free and fair competition we shall have an excellent chance to do extremely well out of it, in both visible and invisible trade, and we are working to ensure that 1992 completes the single market because it will be to the benefit of our people here. I hope that all industry and financial and other services are taking maximum advantage of the time between now and then to prepare for it very well indeed.

Business of the House
3.31 pm
Mr. Frank Dobson: Will the Leader of the House tell us the business for next week?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John Wakeham): The business for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 6 MARCH—Second Reading of the Self-Governing Schools Etc. (Scotland) Bill.
Motions relating to Scottish community charge regulations. Details will be given in the Official Report.
Motion on the Access to Personal Files (Housing) Regulations.
TUESDAY 7 MARCH—Estimates day (1st Allotted Day). Debate on class IV, vote 3, so far as it relates to assistance to the egg industry. Details of the relevant Agriculture Committee report will be given in the Official Report.
Debate on funding of overseas students on a motion for the Adjournment of the House. Details of the relevant Foreign Affairs Committee report and the Government's observations will be given in the Official Report.
At Ten o'clock the Question will be put on all outstanding Supplementary Estimates and votes.
WEDNESDAY 8 MARCH—Motions on the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Acts 1978 and 1987 (Continuance) Order and the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) (Amendment) Regulations.
Motion on the Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order.
Debate on a motion to take note of EC document relating to derogations in respect of weights and dimensions of heavy lorries. Details will be given in the Official Report.
THURSDAY 9 MARCH—Debate on the Royal Air Force on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
FRIDAY 10 MARCH—Private Members' motions.
MONDAY 13 MARCH—Motion for the Easter Adjournment.
Proceedings on the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill.
The House will wish to know, Mr. Speaker, that subject to the progress of business it will be proposed that the House should rise for the Easter Adjournment on Thursday 23 March until Tuesday 4 April.
Relevant documents.
[Monday 6 March
Personal Community Charge (Students) (Scotland)
Regulations (SI 1989 No. 32)
Personal Community Charge (Exemptions) (Scotland)
Regulations (SI 1989 No. 63)
Abolition of Domestic Rates (Domestic and Part Residential Subjects) (Scotland) Regulations (SI 1989 No. 241)
Tuesday 7 March
Estimates Day, class IV, vote 3 (Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food: agricultural support, animal health, arterial drainage, flood and coast protection) so far as it relates to assistance to the egg industry.
First Report of the Agriculture Committee Session 1988–89
"Salmonella in Eggs" (HC 108)
Overseas Student Grants:
Fourth Report of the Foreign Affairs Committee Session 1987–88 FCO/ODA Expenditure 1988–89
Observations by the Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth affairs on the fourth report from the Foreign Affairs Committee Session 1987–88 on FCO/ODA Expenditure 1988–89 (Cm. 518)
Minutes of Evidence taken on 1 March 1989 on the Funding of Overseas Students (HC 242)
Wednesday 8 March

Relevant European Community Document

4311/89

Weights and dimensions of commercial vehicles

Relevant Report of European Legislation Committee HC 15-xii (1988–89) para 4]
Mr. Dobson: I thank the Leader of the House for his statement.
Who will be replying to Tuesday's debate on eggs? Will it be a Minister from the Ministry of Health, or will it be a Minister from the Ministry of Agriculture—or will we be getting one of each?
Will the Secretary of State for Transport himself be introducing or replying to Wednesday's debate on heavy lorries?
When are we to get the long-promised debate on the Fennell report into the King's Cross fire? The report was published in November and, in view of the business that we have had this week and the business that he has announced for next week, it is getting a little bit difficult for the Leader of the House to argue that he cannot find time for that promised debate.
When will the Leader of the House be able to find time for the promised debate on the substitution of student loans for student grants? If he can get the Secretary of State for Education and Science into the House, rather than for a few photo-opportunities outside, could he get him to take part in a debate on Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools' report on the current state of our schools and, in particular, a debate on the shocking and growing shortage of teachers of mathematics and science?
When are we to have the promised debate on what the Government say is an all-important review of the National Health Service?
Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman asked me five questions about next week's business. In particular, he asked me which Ministers were to reply to certain debates. It is not usual for the names of Ministers responding to debates to be announced at this time, but I shall try to be helpful to the hon. Gentleman. Tuesday's debate on assistance to the egg industry will be answered by my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Government have only just received the report of the Select Committee and will be responding to the report in due course, in accordance with normal practice. The question of any other debate will have to wait until the response arrives.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport has some very strong views on the subject of heavy lorries. As I said, it is not usual to announce who will speak in a debate, but I shall be extremely surprised if he does not take part in the debate next week.
I regret to tell the hon. Gentleman that I have nothing more to add to what I have said before about the Fennell report. There is to be a debate, but I cannot announce the date for it at the moment.

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Again, I have nothing further to add to what I have said previously about student loans. The White Paper asked for a response to a number of points and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science is considering them. I know that he would delight in taking part in a debate, but I cannot arrange one at the moment.
I agree that the National Health Service is a subject for debate, but I am not at present in a position to announce a date.
Mr. Bob Dunn: Will my right hon. Friend take steps today to ensure that the Government and British Rail have brought to their attention the proposals by a group of individuals who support a scheme called TALIS, which seeks to replace the four options proposed by British Rail for a high-speed rail link through the county of Kent? Is he aware of the total opposition in Kent and south London to British Rail's current proposals? Will he tell the House why he thinks that the Garden of England should be destroyed by British Rail for the sake of saving quarter of an hour on the journey time from Paris to London?
Mr. Wakeham: My hon. Friend tempts me to answer questions which go rather wider than the business for next week. The right procedure is for British Rail to consider all the options and to make its proposals known. Those proposals will require, as I understand it, legislation and the matter will, therefore, come before the House.
Mr. James Wallace: Is there to be any opportunity for a debate on remand prisoners and the proposals that the Home Secretary announced yesterday?
Given that the Secretary of State for the Environment yesterday ruled out legislation banning chemicals that damage the ozone layer, and as it is widely reported that the Prime Minister will tonight announce such legislation, will the Leader of the House clarify the position?
Mr. Wakeham: This is neither the time nor the occasion for me to announce legislative proposals of the Government. There is a proper procedure for that, and it is not for me to do so at the Dispatch Box today.
As for the statement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Home Department, he indicated the further work that was being considered, and I have no proposals for a debate on this subject.
Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: Can my right hon. Friend say when there will be a debate on the Anglo-Irish Agreement, in view of the fact that the period for the review which is taking place at present is not open-ended?
Mr. Wakeham: I realise that a number of my right hon. and hon. Friends would like a debate on this subject, and I recognise the need for one, but there are no immediate plans for a debate. It is a question of judgment as to what is the right time. On Wednesday there will be debates on a number of Northern Ireland matters, and it seems to me that, with a bit of ingenuity, my hon. Friend might then be able to make some of the points that he wants to make.
Mrs. Ann Clwyd: May I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 498 concerning the report produced by three London boroughs on airline food safety?
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[That this House is appalled that nearly a quarter of all airline meals tested at Heathrow Airport contained excessive levels of potentially dangerous bacteria; notes that the survey was conducted by Hillingdon, Hounslow and Spelthorne Boroughs which cover the airport; further notes that most of the foods were prepared by the cook-chill method which has been implicated in many of the cases of listeria food poisoning, but notes that the foods were not tested for listeria and therefore calls for a further test by environmental health officers; is further concerned that an excessive level of E.coli, the bacteria associated with, faecal contamination, was found in 209 separate dishes; and calls on the Government to take urgent action to ensure the safety of food eaten by airline passengers and to consult with all national and international agencies involved in food hygiene in air transport.]
One quarter of all meals tested at Heathrow were found to contain potentially dangerous bacteria. Should not the Government initiate their own debate on food safety in the light of this report? Does the right hon. Gentleman advise airline passengers to take their own sandwiches?
Mr. Wakeham: As the hon. Lady will know, the report of the survey of airline meals undertaken between June 1984 and December 1986 is a useful document and is being drawn to the attention of national and international agencies involved in food hygiene in relation to air transport. When the survey was being conducted listeria was not regarded as a problem. In any case, there have been no reports of such problems with airline meals. The overall standard of airline catering is well controlled, and reported instances of food poisoning are relatively rare. However, the House may well discuss these matters whether or not I initiate a debate.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: My right hon. Friend will be aware that it is some time since the White Paper on planning and structure plans was published. In view of the deep interest that has been shown in this important matter—on both sides of the House, but especially amongst my hon. Friends representing constituencies in the south-east—can my right hon. Friend say that there will be an early debate on it?
Mr. Wakeham: I agree that it is an important matter, but since, at the moment, many other matters demand time, I cannot promise that there will be an early debate. However, I will certainly bear in mind my hon. Friend's point.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: Does the Leader of the House recall that a few weeks ago I called for a public inquiry into the methane explosion in Arkwright Town, in my constituency? Is he aware that Ministers are still at sixes and sevens over this proposal, that 40 families had to be evacuated, that these people lost substantial sums of money, that their houses have been devalued as a result of the explosion, and that there is continuing worry concerning the village? Will the right hon. Gentleman call upon the heads of the two Departments concerned—Energy and Employment—to try to ensure that there will be a public inquiry into the explosion so that my constituents may be assured that something is being done?
Mr. Wakeham: I will certainly refer the matter to my right hon. Friends. I cannot accept the premise of the hon.

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Gentleman's question, though it is perfectly proper that he should put it on behalf of his constituents. He deserves an answer, and I shall get him one.
Mr. Peter Thurnham: It is nearly 12 months since the Griffiths report was published. I wonder whether my right hon. Friend could find time for a debate on the recommendations in that report and on care in the community generally.
Mr. Wakeham: I cannot add anything to what I said last week. Active consideration is being given to the Griffiths report, and we hope to be in a position in the near future to bring forward our own proposals.
Mr. James Lamond: Can the Leader of the House tell us whether any consideration has been given to the possibility of inviting President Gorbachev, during his visit this country next month, to address both Houses of Parliament, perhaps from the Royal Gallery?
Mr. Wakeham: I know of no proposal to do so, though the suggestion certainly has its attractions.
Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: Now that January 1989 has passed, can my right hon. Friend tell the House whether it will have an opportunity to take decisions on the crucially important report of the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure in time for its decisions to be implemented before the next tranche of private Bills is introduced in November?
Mr. Wakeham: I agree with the first part of my hon. Friend's question, but I can add nothing more to the second part other than to repeat the answer that I gave a week ago—that I recognise the need for a debate. Much consideration had to be given to that very important report, and I have undertaken to have a debate shortly after Easter.
Rev. Martin Smyth: The Leader of the House will remember that I have asked before about the possibility of clarification of press speculation concerning the British-Irish parliamentary tier. The right hon. Gentleman was not able to help me on that occasion. Since then announcements have been made. Is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to give the House some data about the matter? Will it be in a position, for example, to summon Ministers before it?
Mr. Wakeham: There have been some discussions, and some progress has been made, on the setting up of a parliamentary body that would seek to encourage contacts between the Westminster Parliament and the Parliament in Dublin, and I welcome closer contacts on it. There is considerable work still to be done before final arrangements are achieved. Of course I will see to it that discussions take place through the usual channels with all parties in the House before any announcement is made.
Mr. Roger Moate: With regard to next week's debate on the proposal by the Community to impose heavier lorries on this country, can my right hon. Friend confirm that, in the Government's view, that matter is subject to the unanimity rule, and therefore is
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subject to a British veto? Does he agree that it is unsatisfactory that the House will be allowed simply to take note of that matter rather than express a view?
Mr. Wakeham: I agree that it is an important matter. I do not feel that it is appropriate at this time for me to go into the substance of the subject that the House will debate later next week, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport will take part in it, and no doubt he will be able to give my hon. Friend satisfactory answers to his questions.
Mr. Geoffrey Lofthouse: Is the Leader of the House aware of the statement by Sir Robert Haslam on "Newsnight" last night, confirming a forecast made by myself and other hon. Members some time ago, that, arising out of the privatisation of electricity, he may find it necessary to close profitable pits? Is he also aware that, during this week, the closure of another two Yorkshire pits has been announced? Given that the average age of a miner is only 34, a man who will receive no weekly protection payments, and who is at present having great difficulty because of high mortgage interest rates, lives in fear of what may happen if he is thrown out of work. Will the Leader of the House arrange for an early debate to enable the Government to tell the House and miners what policies they have to provide alternative employment in mining communities which have already been savaged?
Mr. Wakeham: I recognise the hon. Gentleman's interest and concern in matters relating to mining. I suspect that many of the questions that he put to me are matters for the management of British Coal. Nevertheless, I shall refer his points to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy. I do not see an early opportunity for a debate on the coal industry, but we have debates from time to time, and I shall certainly bear in mind the hon. Gentleman's suggestions.
Sir Richard Body: Further to the question concerning next week's debate on heavier lorries, is it not the case that the House will not be able to take a decision on that matter? Therefore, if the matter is out of our hands what is the point of having a debate?
Mr. Wakeham: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport wishes to hear the views of the House, and he will be reporting to the House. If I were to try not to have a debate, more of my right hon. and and hon. Friends might complain than the number of those who are welcoming the debate. On balance, I have probably done the right thing. If my hon. Friend does not wish to take part, I do not think that he need worry.
Mr. Jeff Rooker: Will the Leader of the House arrange for the appropriate Minister to make a statement next week on the way in which the Government have operated in the past decade the Croham directive of 1977 on the provision of Government background factual and analytical material in arriving at decisions? To assist the House, does the Leader of the House consider it appropriate for all background factual and analytical material and the briefings relating to the British Antarctic Survey, and the alleged discovery by the Prime Minister of the gap in the ozone layer, to be placed in the Library? Without that information, she will not be believed.
Mr. Wakeham: The last part of the hon. Gentleman's question is not worthy of him. On the more general point, this Government have been very forthcoming in giving background information on many matters that are for the House to decide. They have been rather better in doing so than their predecessors. I know that there are difficulties, and that a number of Select Committees seem to be pressing the Government to make available the advice that officials give to Ministers. The Government are right to say that such information should not be made public.
Mr. Ian Gow: Did my right hon. Friend really tell the House a few moments ago that we are to have a debate next Tuesday on the report of the Select Committee on Agriculture? Has he read that report? If he has, does he not think that, instead of having a debate next Tuesday, it would be better for the Select Committee to take its report away, rewrite it and get rid of all the muddled thinking and for us to have a debate on it after the revised report has been laid before the House?
Mr. Wakeham: The question whether we have a debate on the report is not primarily a matter for me. The Liaison Committee believed that the report should be discussed in relation to the Estimates day and I was happy to oblige. I have not read every word of the report, but I have read a number of parts of it. Perhaps my hon. Friend was referring to paragraph 101. If he was, I have some sympathy with his view.
Mr. Eric S. Hefter: In view of the fact that I have asked the Leader of the House for many weeks about safety in the construction industry—I think that I gave him a rest in the past two weeks—and that he will have noted that the early-day motion tabled by myself and other hon. Members had more than 220 signatures from hon. Members of all parties, will he assure me that we shall have a debate on that subject before the Easter recess? We may not be able to do anything about heavy lorries, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body), but we can do something about safety in the construction industry. Is it not time that we had a proper debate and took some action to improve safety for workers in that industry?
Mr. Wakeham: I share the hon. Gentleman's concern about safety, as do the Government. The Government have a record that stands up to good inspection, while the industry itself has a record that, although it is improving, is not as good as it should be. I wish that I could meet his request for a debate in Government time, but I cannot do so. However, the Consolidated Fund debate and the Easter Adjournment debate would present opportunities for him to raise matters of concern, and it would be proper for him to do so.
Mr. David Evans: May I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to early-day motion 494?
[That this House notes the statement of the honourable Member for Lewisham East, published in the Birmingham Evening Mail on Friday 17th February 1989, to the effect that he was present at the football match Millwall versus Newcastle when, he is reported as saying 'I was at the Millwall versus Newcastle game when the club rooms, the directors and their guests were attacked'; further notes that the Chairman of Millwall Football Club, supported by senior officers of the police who were present, has repeatedly made it clear that this was- a minor incident when two windows
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were cracked by visiting supporters who were under police escort at the time and that at no time were any directors of either club or their guests attacked or threatened, and that the Minister for Sport was unaware of this incident until his attention was drawn to it some time later; and, in these circumstances, has no hesitation in accepting the account of the Chairman of Millwall Football Club.]
It is headed:
"Comments of the Minister for Sport"
and is thoroughly misleading. The motion states that my hon. Friend said:
"I was at the Millwall versus Newcastle game when the club rooms, the directors and their guests were attacked."
My hon. Friend actually said:
"In November, I was at the Millwall versus Newcastle game where the club rooms the directors and their guests were in were attacked."
Those who tabled the early-day motion should be brought to the House and made to withdraw it or resign from the Opposition Front Bench.
Mr. Wakeham: I have many responsibilities but, thank goodness, having to vouch for the accuracy of early-day motions is not among them. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have copies of both the Birmingham Evening Mail and of early-day motion 494. Either the hon. Members who tabled the motion were incompetent in their copying of the newspaper article, or they were misleading. I leave it to my hon. Friend to judge which it was.
Mr. Max Madden: Is it not astonishing that the House has not been given an opportunity—and is apparently not to have the opportunity next week—to discuss issues arising from the publication of the book "The Satanic Verses"? As a committee of national British Muslim organisations first warned the Prime Minister last October of the grave offence caused by the book and the threat to public order posed by its publication, will the Leader of the House urge the Prime Minister to call upon the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary to see what fresh initiatives can be taken to defuse this dangerous and difficult situation? Will he also draw her attention to early-day motion 510, which some believe may offer the key to peace in this very difficult matter?
[That this House urges Salman Rushdie to instruct his publishers in the United Kingdom and overseas to stop producing more or new editions of The Satanic Verses; and believes such action would persuade Muslims in Britain and overseas to end their protests against the book thereby stopping more death, injury and disorder, compel Ayatollah Khomeini to withdraw his odious death threat against Mr. Rushdie and enable Mr. Rushdie to live in peace and safety.]
Mr. Wakeham: The hon. Gentleman is being grossly unfair. My right hon. and learned Friend the Foreign Secretary came to the House and explained the position on all the events of the past weeks. We made it abundantly clear that death threats against our citizens are totally unacceptable and quite incompatible with any kind of normal relations. Britain has the fullest respect for Islam and for Moslem communities here and abroad, and we fully understand the deep offence that the content of the book has given to Moslems, but that does not justify the statements that were made, which we think are totally unacceptable. The Government have made themselves very clear on this matter, and I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman phrased his question as he did.
Mr. Robert McCrindle: Should we not have an early debate on the worrying and growing problem of personal debt? Among other things, we might focus on the seeming ease with which some people can gain access to credit cards and other forms of credit. Any citizens advice bureau will tell my right hon. Friend that the problem is growing throughout the country.
Mr. Wakeham: My hon. Friend, like me, represents part of the county of Essex, and I do not hear many of my constituents talking about the ease with which they get credit. Instead, I hear a number of complaints about the difficulty that they have in meeting interest charges on their existing borrowing. They all recognise, however, that this is a fundamental part of the process of controlling inflation. As my hon. Friend knows, there will be an opportunity after 14 March, extending to several days, to discuss such matters. It seems to me that his point would be highly relevant to the Budget debate.
Mr. Greville Janner: In view of the characteristically offensive response given to me by a junior Home Office Minister at Question Time in reply to my question about inadequate policing in Leicestershire, and as the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Latham) fairly said that this is not a matter of controversy between hon. Members on either side of the House who represent that county, may we please have a debate on the matter? The Minister of State, Home Office could then be called to account and would have to show some understanding of the concern of people who cannot go out at night without fear because there are not enough police men on the beat and because violent crime in our county has doubled since the Government came to power.
Mr. Wakeham: I was not present at Question Time and I therefore cannot accept the hon. and learned Gentleman's description of my hon. Friend's reply. I find my hon. Friend to be a most courteous and gentle person who usually gives good and clear answers. There is a solution available to the hon. and learned Gentleman. He could put in for a debate during our proceedings on the Consolidated Fund Bill. If it fell in the middle of the night, both the hon. and learned Gentleman and my hon. Friend would get their just deserts.
Mr. Michael Latham: Will my right hon. Friend arrange next week, or certainly before the beginning of April, for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science to explain to the House how the abolition of charging for expeditions during school hours will work? Is he aware that there is considerable concern in rural schools about those proposals which I have raised with Ministers, but I cannot pretend that I have received satisfactory replies?
Mr. Wakeham: I recall that my hon. Friend raised the matter with me during a recent Adjournment debate. As the Easter Adjournment debate is coming up fairly soon, I shall get in touch with my hon. Friend before then so that I do not have to answer him again on that subject, but I regret that I cannot promise him an early debate.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: May I have a frank reply? Is the Leader of the House ever consulted by, or does he consult, members of the security services on
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matters relating to security? Before he replies, will he remember what happened during the Ronan Bennett affair? May I refer him to his reply to me last week?
"I am not prepared to answer questions on security."—[Official Report, 23 February 1989; Vol. 147, c. 1159.]
May I have a frank reply?
Mr. Wakeham: I have a very frank reply. I have nothing to add to the answer that I gave last week, except to say that I have not the remotest idea how the hon. Gentleman's question relates to next week's business.
Mr. Kenneth Hind: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the disinformation currently being circulated by the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) about the White Paper, "Working for Patients". Will he give an undertaking that the House will have an early opportunity to debate the matter so that we can underline the fact that the Health Service will continue to be free, funded by taxation, and that my constituents will not have their hospital removed into the private sector, as the Opposition seem to suggest?
Mr. Wakeham: In regard to a debate, I have nothing to add to what I have said already. I do not know whether my hon. Friend refers to misinformation supplied by the hon. Lady before or after the White Paper was published.
Ms. Joyce Quin: Has the Leader of the House seen early-day motion 256?
[That this House welcomes the opportunity to consider the Public Safety Information Bill, which comes up for its Second Reading on 24th February, and joins with the all-party group of honourable Members as well as such organisations as the British Safety Council, the Consumers' Association and the Scottish Consumers' Council, and also such local authorities as Slough Borough Council, Middlesbrough Borough Council, Harrogate District Council, Shrewsbury and Atcham Borough Council, Wansbeck District Council and Bedfordshire County Council, in supporting the Bill; and further calls upon the Government to support the Bill and assist it in its passage through the House, thus ensuring that the Bill becomes law.] It relates to public safety information and it has been signed by more than half the number of right hon. and hon. Members. Does he accept that such widespread support fully justifies an early debate on the subject? Does he further agree that the Government should respond to the majority wishes of hon. Members and support the proposed legislation as soon as possible?
Mr. Wakeham: The Government have seen the proposals in the Bill and Ministers have asked the Health and Safety Commission to examine the Bill and let us have its views on the ideas behind it. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 provides a comprehensive framework for public safety and should not be altered without proper consideration.
Mr. Richard Holt: My right hon. Friend will be aware of the rally taking place in the House today of war widows and hon. Members from both sides of the House who support them in their quest for proper and equable treatment by the Government. Is it not time that we had a full debate on the matter? If there is difficulty in finding speakers to occupy all the time allocated to the RAF debate next week, perhaps we could use the time to debate the situation of the war widows who, after 40 years

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or more in many cases, do not receive the same treatment as the widows and wives of those who were our enemies and are now our partners in Europe.
Mr. Wakeham: I cannot add to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on the substance of the matter. Whether my hon. Friend's views would be in order in the debate on the Royal Air Force next week is a matter not for me but for Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Harry Barnes: The Leader of the House will be aware that within five days of the storm damage to the south of England on 16 October 1987, the Secretary of State for the Environment rushed to the Dispatch Box, at the first available opportunity after the recess, to say that the Bellwin scheme would assist local authorities. The Bellwin scheme allows county councils, after spending the penny rate, to get 75 per cent. grant assistance. It is 17 days since there was storm damage in Scotland. In an answer to me yesterday, the Secretary of State for Scotland said that it is too soon to decide whether the Bellwin scheme should be used for Scotland.
What is the difference between Scotland and the south of England? Has it anything to do with the coming poll tax legislation? There is to be a debate on Monday on the poll tax regulations. Is it right to say that the Bellwin scheme has not been worked out in terms of the poll tax?
Mr. Wakeham: I have no idea of the answer to that question, but I can find it out. However, the hon. Gentleman's suggestions do not sound plausible. It seems to me that it was fairly clear whether the Bellwin scheme applied. I have no reason to believe that the proper procedures have not been followed in this case as in the previous case.
Mr. Harry Greenway: Will my right hon. Friend arrange a debate next week on the environment so that we may take note of the Government's latest views and examine the suggestions of the Opposition and their alleged keenness to preserve the environment? That is what they claim in their report, but in practice the Labour council in Ealing is determined to destroy 17 beautiful acres of children's playing fields at Cayton road, Greenford, surrounded by very fine trees, and to build on allotments and other nice, environmentally clean areas. Once more the House must take account of the Labour party's actions, which belie its words.
Mr. Wakeham: My hon. Friend raises an important matter which it is right that the House should discuss. My hon. Friend's best chance of discussing the matter is in the Easter Adjournment debate or in the debate on the Consolidated Fund.
Ms. Marjorie Mowlam: Will the Leader of the House find time in the near future to ask the Secretary of
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State for Social Services to explain to the House why there is many months' delay in the printing and delivery of leaflets explaining mobility and disability allowances? I am sure that he is aware that those leaflets have not been available in libraries in Cleveland for many weeks. I hope that the Secretary of State for Social services does not tell the House about the lack of take-up. If people do not know about those allowances, the Secretary of State's figures must be questionable.
Mr. Wakeham: I do not have at my fingertips details of why leaflets are not available in Cleveland. However, I shall certainly refer the matter to my right hon. Friend and get the hon. Lady an answer to her question.
Mr. Tony Banks: May I again draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 498 on airline food and ask for an early debate on the matter? Is he aware that about 209 separate dishes were identified as having been contaminated with faecal remains and that eight Members of Parliament, of whom I am one, will be going to the United States next week? I am sure that he would not want eight by-elections on his hands. I am a very nervous passenger. It is bad enough having the thought that one 'will be hitting the ground without realising that one will be having the galloping runs at the same time.
Mr. Wakeham: This place would be poorer without the hon. Gentleman. I hope that he has a safe journey.
Sir Peter Emery: Although this may be the last question, I do not think that it is the least important. Will my right hon. Friend raise with the Secretary of State for Defence a problem faced by many people who served in the forces in Crete? An award granted by the Greek Government which was promised during the battle to the men who fought in it is being blocked by the British Government? Those men are extremely concerned, and it seems awfully petty that our Government should be willing to block the award. Will my right hon. Friend arrange for that matter to be dealt with next week and properly cleared up?
Mr. Wakeham: I cannot promise my hon. Friend a debate on the matter, and I cannot confirm the analysis that he gave it, but I will certainly see that my right hon. Friend knows of his concern and writes to him.
Mr. Ray Powell: The Children Bill has now had its Third Reading in the other place. When can this House expect it?
Mr. Wakeham: I am pleased to hear the news from the hon. Gentleman. The Bill will come to this House fairly soon, and I will be arranging a debate. Obviously, I have to discuss the date through the usual channels. I have no fixed date in mind at the moment, but it will be fairly soon.

Adjournment (Easter)
Mr. Speaker: I have a short statement to make about arrangements for the debate on the motion for the Adjournment which will follow the passing of the Consolidated Fund (No. 2) Bill on Monday 13 March 1989.
Members should submit their subjects to my office not later than 9 am on Thursday 9 March. A list showing the subjects and times will be published later that day. Normally the time allotted will not exceed one and half hours, but I propose to exercise a discretion to allow one or two debates to continue for rather longer, up to a maximum of three hours.
Where identical or similar subjects have been entered by different Members whose names are drawn in the ballot, only the first name will be shown on the list. As some debates may not last the full time allotted to them, it is the responsibility of Members to keep in touch with developments if they are not to miss their turn.

Adjournment (Easter)
  BILL PRESENTED
    HOUSING THE HOMELESS
    Mr. Clive Soley presented a Bill to amend the Housing Act 1985 and the Housing Act 1988 to make better provision for housing homeless people; to limit the period of time during which homeless people may be accommodated in bed and breakfast hotels; to regulate the charges which may be made for such accommodation; to provide for the regular inspection of bed and breakfast hotels used to accommodate homeless people and to prohibit the use of accommodation which does not satisfy prescribed health, fire, safety and space standards; to extend protection from eviction to homeless people accommodated for a period of time in such hotels; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 7 April and to be printed. [Bill 91.]

    Early-Day Motion 494
    4.11 pm
    Mr. James Pawsey: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It may not strictly be a matter for you, but I know how jealous you are about the Order Paper. I draw your attention to early-day motion 494, which is headed "Comments of the Minister for Sport".
    [That this House notes the statement of the honourable Member for Lewisham East, published in the Birmingham Evening Mail on Friday 17th February 1989, to the effect that he was present at the football match Millwall versus Newcastle when, he is reported as saying 'I was at the Millwall versus Newcastle game when the club rooms, the directors and their guests were attacked'; further notes that the Chairman of Millwall Football Club, supported by senior officers of the police who were present, has repeatedly made it clear that this was a minor incident when two windows were cracked by visiting supporters who were under police escort at the time and that at no time were any directors of either club or their guests attacked or threatened, and that the Minister of Sport was unaware of this incident until his attention was drawn to it some time later; and, in these circumstances, has no hesitation in accepting the account of the Chairman of Millwall Football Club.]
    It appears that the motion contains certain inaccuracies. It quotes my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Mr. Moynihan), the Minister with responsibility for sport. The quotations in the motion are grossly inaccurate. As the Order Paper is the official organ of the House and this might bring the House into disrepute, I wonder whether you will join with me in calling for the sponsors to withdraw the motion.
    Mr. Speaker: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was here a few moments ago, but the matter was raised by the hon. Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Mr. Evans), and dealt with by the Leader of the House. It is not a matter for me.

    Housing
    Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Chapman.]
    4.14 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. David Trippier): The House has been patient for the last few weeks in waiting for this debate on housing. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) and we, too, have been patient in waiting for it. Now that the moment has arrived, I welcome the opportunity of emphasising the Government's strategy on this important subject.
    The Government's aim in housing is no different from that of any post-war Government. We want decent, affordable and suitable housing to be within the reach of all families. We differ from other Governments, and certainly the Opposition, on the best way of achieving that aim.
    Immediately after the war, there were three main policies to restore a decent standard of housing in Britain: first, a huge public sector programme of housebuilding; secondly, restrictions on private house-building to give priority to the public sector programme; and, thirdly, controls to keep rents down in the private rented sector. With about 2 million fewer houses than households, that crash programme approach was fairly understandable. As a direct comparison, today we have more houses than households—in fact, 300,000 more—so circumstances are very different.
    The post-war approach to housing worked by putting bureaucratic controls in place of market forces. One can do that for a while, but, in the end, market forces will have their revenge. If market forces and the resources of the private sector are suppressed, we will produce less, we will produce goods that people do not want, and it is certain that we will produce the wrong amount in the wrong places. Sadly, the post-war housing policies of big public sector building programmes and controls of private sector rents trundled on unchanged through the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, long after the crisis of housing shortage everywhere had given way to a much more varied pattern of local needs that could not be solved by that blanket approach.
    As a result, we now have the largest state-owned or public housing sector in western Europe and the smallest private rented sector. Other countries have been far more successful in maintaining investment in the private rented sector by encouraging private investment, and by using public money to supplement private money rather than to replace it.
    For example, despite the war's devastation and massive immigration from East Germany, Germany managed to bring demand and supply for rented accommodation back into balance more quickly and effectively that we did. It did that by encouraging private investment. Today, 60 per cent. of German housing is rented, over 40 per cent. of the total is provided by private landlords, 13 per cent. by bodies similar to housing associations, and only 3 per cent. by municipalities. But here in this country, by insisting that subsidised housing had to be built for the public sector, be public sector-owned and have public sector landlords, we also helped to create the major economic problems that were fuelled by the excessive public expenditure which characterised the 1960s and 1970s.
    Mr. David Winnick: A Conservative Government introduced the Rent Act 1957, which was meant to encourage private residential dwellings. As a result of that Act, by the time the Labour Government came to power in 1964, far from there being any increase in private dwellings, there had been a substantial reduction, as well as the scandal of Rachmanism and abuse.
    People are desperate for accommodation. They come to our surgeries or write to us day in and day out. They cannot afford to become owner-occupiers because they cannot afford a mortgage. How can they afford the new rents which will not be regulated? They cannot afford market rents.
    Mr. Trippier: If the hon. Gentleman had listened a little more carefully, he would have gathered that I made a clear distinction between the policy of this Government and that of past Governments. I included Conservative Governments, too. If the hon. Gentleman follows me a little more carefully and opens his ears instead of his mouth, he will hear my explanation of why the Rent Acts are disastrous.
    I was referring to the inflation which characterised the 1960s and 1970s. There must be a limit on public expenditure. I accept that Opposition Members do not believe that there should be, but there must be, and I will develop that theme later. If the Government absorb too high a proportion of the national output, they will fuel inflation. That was why we saw the record level of inflation of about 27 per cent. under the last Labour Administration. That was why we had the IMF crisis, and why the last Labour Government were forced to cut public housing investment by one third in their last two years in office. Perhaps this is an opportunity for the hon. Member for Hammersmith to intervene.
    Mr. Tony Banks: I will.
    Mr. Trippier: In doing so, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will explain why the last Labour Government cut public expenditure in public housing.
    Mr. Banks: I realise that the hon. Gentleman is not an economist and does not know a great deal about housing, either, but he is part of the Government. How can he say that the number of homeless has actually doubled since 1979? Surely that deserves an explanation as well?
    Mr. Trippier: I will give the hon. Gentleman that explanation. Like Opposition Members, I do not believe that the problem of homelessness is a matter for housing policy in the round. I shall develop that theme throughout my speech. I noticed that the hon. Gentleman ducked the opportunity that I put to him, and which I now put to the hon. Member for Hammersmith, to intervene now or at some later stage and explain why the Labour Government cut public housing in their last two years.
    Mr. Clive Soley: I shall deal with it now. I shall not let the Government duck the issue. In their last year, the Labour Government produced over 70,000 houses. It was not one of our best years, not least because of oil price rises. The Minister is saying that he wants to cut public expenditure because it must be limited. Will he limit the public expenditure outlay on mortgage income tax relief, which is now up to nearly £6 billion, one quarter of which goes to those who earn over £25,000 a year?
    Mr. Trippier: It could possibly be the greatest understatement we have heard in the House that the last year of the last Labour Government was not one of their best.
    We can assume that that is correct because it led to the general election at which they were defeated. The hon. Gentleman, however, did not answer my question.
    Mr. Eric S. Heffer: The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we were building more houses than have been built since, but he asked a fair question. Why did the Labour Government cut back on housing? He should know—I do not think that he was here at the time—that many of us on the Back Benches fought strenuously against the housing cuts that were being made by the Labour Administration. They unfortunately had to make those cuts because they were asked to do so by the IMF, which adopted not the Socialist policies for which some of us were arguing but the capitalist Tory policies to which we objected.
    Mr. Trippier: The hon. Gentleman knows that I have some respect for him, not least in the matter of his honesty, and that was an honest comment which I believe to be true. The only correction I would make is that, prior to the IMF coming on the scene, the Financial Secretary to the Treasury of the day, now Lord Barnett, had already cut that budget, and in the noble Lord's book "Inside the Treasury" he explains in clear detail what happened during the period to which the right hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) referred.
    Mr. Dennis Skinner: We know all about that.
    Mr. Trippier: I appreciate that the hon. Gentleman may know, but some may not. The noble Lord says on page 91 of his book:
    "My main difficulties were with Peter Shore, who as Secretary of State for the Environment, controlled very large budgets in the local authority field. I felt some of them were eminently 'cuttable', especially in expenditure on roads and housing."
    The hon. Member for Walton will agree with that, in view of what he said in his intervention. The Labour party still does not seem to realise that the old approach carried the seeds of its failure and of that Government's destruction.
    In private renting, the fixing of rents at levels that could barely cover the cost of repairs has led to a catastrophic decline. Private renting provided 50 per cent. of the total stock of dwellings in the country immediately after the war. The figure is now only 8 per cent. That is in stark contrast to 30 per cent. in France and 40 per cent. in Germany.
    That 42 per cent. of the private rented stock is in poor condition is a direct consequence of the interference in the market that prevented good landlords from making a modest return and encouraged disreputable landlords—[Interruption.] I thought that the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) would come in at that remark. I referred to the disreputable landord, the type to whom the hon. Gentleman keeps referring; he dreams or has nightmares about Rachman and has already mentioned him in this debate.
    Mr. Winnick: I have indeed.
    Mr. Trippier: If anyone deserves to have nightmares, it is the hon. Member for Walsall, North. I admit that
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    disreputable landlords were encouraged to get rid of their tenants to cash in on the price gap between tenanted properties with controlled rents and empty properties for sale. Some people, such as the hon. Member for Walsall, North, find it difficult to believe that the Rent Acts, which were designed to protect tenants, should, in the long run, have done so much harm, but they did. In fact, they were absolutely disastrous.
    The council sector, like all centrally directed programmes, gradually lost touch with what people wanted and eventually produced the concrete mazes that we see in many of our inner cities today——
    Mr. John Battle rose——
    Mr. Trippier: —including the city which the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) represents.
    Mr. Battle: Despite that remark by the Minister about my city, I am not sure that he knows that the Government of which he is a member did not give much assistance in sorting out the concrete jungle built by Shephards, but that is another story.
    Why was public housing built in the first place? Was it not because conditions in the private rented sector, which predominated in cities such as mine, with 172,000 back-to-back properties, were so bad that public health legislation had to be passed? That led the Government to decide that the only way to provide housing with inside lavatories, bathrooms, and so on, was to build them through the public sector, supported from the common treasury. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that that is not the history of public housing?
    Mr. Trippier: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should have listened more carefully to my remarks about what happened immediately after the war. I have no doubt that there was all-party support for that crash building programme. That is no excuse for the decline in the private rented sector from 50 per cent. to 8 per cent. today, in contrast with the position in other developed western countries.
    Mr. Harry Greenway: My hon. Friend is right in what he says about concrete jungles. I lived in east London and saw how that area was reduced to a concrete jungle by Labour housing policy. Is my hon. Friend aware that Ealing council will do the same to Ealing unless it is prevented from doing so?
    When the Labour council took over in 1986 there were 30 families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation waiting to be rehoused. People were sucked on to that list from all over the nation and from all over the world, so that the list now comprises 1,300 families and the cost has risen from £300,000 to £16 million per annum. The only way to rehouse all those people in Ealing would be to build on every blade of grass and turn the borough into another concrete jungle, but that must not be allowed to happen.
    Mr. Trippier: I understand the problem outlined by my hon. Friend and, if anything, he understates the case. Because of the dramatic development of public housing, the housing stocks in each borough were too great for people to manage efficiently.
    I do not want to tar all councils with the same brush, but monopoly suppliers in any market tend to see their tenants as dependants instead of as consumers. The modern-day municipal paternalists and their defenders on

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    the Opposition Benches are genuinely confused—none so much as the hon. Member for Walsall, North—as to why their brand of paternalism does not work. They do not see that the root cause of the problem is the assumption that they know what is best for the tenants. In direct contrast, this Government's approach is that those tenants should be free to make their own choices.
    Mr. Skinner rose——
    Mr. Trippier: This is a short debate and I have already allowed perhaps half a dozen interventions. I have tried to be fair to the House, but I now must press on.
    The first of our policies is to put the consumer first. We believe that people can, should and want to take personal responsibility for their housing. State resources should be concentrated on those people who are genuinely in need and who are not able to compete in the market. But they, too, should have far more choice than they have had in the past, including the right to change their landlords if they do not get a decent service.
    The lack of response by the state-directed system of housing supply has meant that, although countryr j 3–8wide there are enough houses for everybody, there are severe local shortages in some areas. In areas of shortage, the most vulnerable households could suffer severely if Government support were cut off. So we intend to maintain a major programme of subsidised housing, but we cannot do that unless we make every penny of public money count.
    The second part of our policy is good housekeeping in the use of that public money. Because public expenditure must be limited, choices have to be made. The old approach, with its insistence on the exclusive use of public sector resources, while rents were often kept low for local political reasons, entailed a huge amount of waste and inefficiency.
    If we can get private investment to add to investment by the public sector in housing, why not do so and build more houses? If better-off people can afford to pay higher rents, why hold their rents down and so reduce the money available to support poorer people? Why should taxpayers, many of whom are not well off, pay subsidies to people who do not need them? Why should we use public investment where private investment will do the job?
    We should focus public resources on those who need them most—the poor, the elderly, the chronically sick and the handicapped. That approach of consumer choice, good housekeeping and focusing support on those with the greatest needs, has shaped the Government's housing policy since 1979. We started with the expansion of home ownership, but the Labour party attacked our right-to-buy policy.
    Mr. Tony Favell: I have been waiting patiently for my hon. Friend to refer to private housing. The Minister has spoken of local authorities and the way in which they have restricted the supply of rented property. Would he like to say something about tight planning controls and their effect on the price of building land? Is he aware that during the 1960s agricultural land was being released at almost three times the rate it is today and during the 1970s at almost twice the rate, and that the price of building land is going through the roof? In the north-west prices increased by 90 per cent. in 1987 and are likely to have more than doubled in 1988. There will be a
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    great effect on the price of housing. Figures issued only last week show that the price of housing in Southampton went up by 50 per cent. last year.
    Mr. Trippier: I have sympathy with my hon. Friend's remarks. That is precisely why my hon. and learned Friend the Minister for Water and Planning recently announced measures that will help to ease the position.
    I was saying that the Labour party viciously attacked the right-to-buy policy. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) said that it would not work. But it has worked well; in fact, it has been an astonishing success.
    Well over a million council tenants have bought their own homes since 1979, which is bringing in billions of pounds of private resources to ease the strain on the public purse. They are taking the management of their housing into their own hands. There have been 4 million first-time buyers since we came to power in 1979. Two out of three households in England own their own homes. Now we are tackling the rented sector.
    First, in the rented sector, new tenancies at market rents will encourage existing landlords to continue renting. The tax incentives in the business expansion scheme will accelerate that process. Secondly, in the housing association sector, a 70 per cent. increase in public resources will be supplemented by extra private money to give it new impetus. Thirdly, the financial system for councils' housing will be changed so that they cannot hide poor performance by subsidies from the rates. If they do not operate efficiently, the results will be only too visible to their tenants.
    When authorities like Southwark can allow properties to remain vacant between relets for an average of 24 weeks, or nearly half a year, it cannot be denied that better management is badly needed. Just nine Labour-controlled inner London boroughs, and Liverpool, account for 38 per cent. of the national total of rent arrears, at £86 million between them. Large amounts of arrears, sometimes running into four figures, are owed by individual Labour councillors. It cannot be denied that better accountability is vital.
    Mr. Heffer: I am sorry to interrupt the Minister once again. On the question of rent arrears in Liverpool, is he aware that, in Liverpool more than 15,000 people have been out of work for longer than five years? If the Minister wants to know about rent arrears and the problems of the unemployed, perhaps he should come to some of the estates in my area and see how the people survive on that basis.
    Mr. Trippier: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am well aware of his estates. He knows that because of my frequent visits to Liverpool.
    My interview on Radio Merseyside this morning with Keva Coombes resulted in the leader of Liverpool city council admitting that it was totally unacceptable to have arrears at the level they are in Liverpool and that it adversely affected those who were paying their rents as well as the ratepayers, because the council has been taking money from the general rate fund to subsidise the housing revenue account.
    Council tenants who feel unhappy with the service that they are getting from their landlords will be able to opt out and accept a new landlord, often a housing association. Whether they go or stay, their freedom to choose will act

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    as a stimulus to efficiency and service. Indeed, it is already doing so. There are plenty of examples of deathbed repentance by councils who are trying to win back the affections of their tenants.
    In addition, a new system for allocating resources for investment by councils would ensure that resources for renovation are much better focused on the areas of real need, rather than on areas that have the most receipts. Opposition Members should welcome such a change, if only they understood it, for many of the areas that they represent will benefit. In the recent Second Reading debate, the hon. Member for Hammersmith seemed to understand so little that he appeared to be quite scandalised by a reform that would help the poorer areas.
    Alongside these policies, we are also introducing new arrangements for improvement grants, so that they are concentrated on those people who most need support, while maintaining a level of expenditure that in real terms is almost double the level of that it reached under the Labour Administration. Twice as much money will be available, and it will be better targeted on the less well off. I should have thought that Opposition Members would welcome that; but they would not recognise good news if it jumped up and hit them in the face.
    When combined, these new policies will have a much more effective impact on the most severe forms of housing need, including homelessness. Housing provided with the help of public sector funds will correspond much more closely with what the tenants themselves want. That is why they will no longer be entirely dependent on their local councils. That is why the Opposition are so agitated.
    Homelessness is one of the most bitter legacies of the old approach to housing that is still espoused by the Opposition. It really. is amazing that with 300,000 more houses than households there should still be more than 30,000 homeless families in temporary accommodation. There can be no clearer demonstration of the misallocation of resources that always results from a State-directed approach to housing.
    As the Audit Commission's report on homelessness pointed out, if the average period taken to re-let a vacant local authority property could be reduced by three weeks outside London and six weeks in London, the number of vacant properties could be reduced to such an extent that an extra 17,700 relets would become available.
    I know that the Housing Act 1988 has been debated exhaustively but there is one topic that needs to be dealt with now—the Opposition's misleading and irresponsible propaganda. All over the country, material is being produced and circulated to tenants on tenants' choice and housing action trusts, which is full of untruths. I am naturally constrained, Madam Deputy Speaker, to use parliamentary language. But it is full of untruths and half-truths and economical half-truths and terminological inexactitudes. Elderly tenants are terrified by leaflets suggesting that their properties are to be handed over to the reincarnation of Rachman. What deceit.
    The hon. Member for Hammersmith is party to that deceit. He undertook to condemn misleading propaganda about tenants' choice. He will recall giving me and the House that undertaking when we were considering the Housing Bill last November. The hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten that promise. I wrote to him on 19
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    December, enclosing a leaflet produced by Nottinghamshire county council, which is full of complete distortions of the truth. I shall give just one example. It says that rents will go up to market levels under tenants' choice. There was no mention of the fact that the only landlords allowed in tenants' choice will have specifically signed up to charge rents that those on low incomes can afford. There was no mention of the fact that rent levels and arrangements for reviewing them will be one of the matters on which tenants vote.
    Mr. Soley: I must correct the Minister before he gets deeper into the hole. The leaflet was not issued by Nottinghamshire county council. I checked that, and I was going to tell the Minister later. The Minister is doing exactly what he has accused the Opposition of doing. The leaflet was issued at a much earlier stage in the Bill's consideration by a housing group that was not related to the council.
    Mr. Trippier: The hon. Gentleman at least acknowledges that the material exists. I hope that he will denounce it publicly. It never is anything to do with the Labour party. I shall come back to that point in a few moments.
    Mr. Martin M. Brandon-Bravo: I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way, as Nottinghamshire has been mentioned. That material might not be technically or legally issued by county or city, but the House must know, and the Minister will confirm, that the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Allen)—I am sad that he is not in his place—has been the greatest peddler of the terminological inexactitudes to which the Minister has just referred.
    Mr. Heffer: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I distinctly heard the Minister say that it was Nottinghamshire county council that put out the leaflet. Now he says that it may not have been. He had better withdraw, because it is wrong for a Minister to come to the House and accuse Nottinghamshire county council and then not admit that he is wrong. I ask the Minister to withdraw that now.
    Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): I am sure that the Minister will make his position clear on the matter.
    Mr. Trippier: I shall, Madam Deputy Speaker. I assure the hon. Gentleman that if I am wrong and if Nottinghamshire county council never played any part in producing the leaflet, I shall be the first to apologise for that mistake, as I always do. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Hammersmith should not open his mouth at this precise time because I am about to refer to other things that he said he would do but has not done. Having sent two letters to me within one week prior to Christmas, he has not yet replied to my latest letter. It was probably lost in the Christmas post. When he challenged me to debate these issues in public—I cannot think of a more public place than this—in the media or on television, I was happy to accept. I repeat that acceptance now. I am happy to debate the issue with him or with any of his colleagues anywhere, at any time.
    I think that the hon. Gentleman has realised his mistake. I call on him seriously to condemn unreservedly the literature which is going round. If he does not wish to be associated with it—he clearly does not—let him

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    condemn it, say what is wrong in it, and spell out to the House what he does not agree with so that the House and the country may know.
    The hon. Member for Hammersmith does not accept that some tenants may vote to pay slightly higher rents in return for better management and repairs. A recent survey by Glasgow university showed that almost 40 per cent. of tenants would be prepared to pay higher rents for a better service. Some may not, but it is their choice. It is not the Official Opposition's choice. It is not the Labour council's choice. It is not the choice of the wider Labour party or any one of its many divisions, and it has many divisions. It is not even the choice of the National and Local Government Officers Association. It is the tenants' choice. They, and they alone, should decide.
    But when fantasy, imagination, and deception fail him, the hon. Member for Hammersmith has recourse to amateur theatricals. It would be laughable were it not clearly intended to prevent legitimate debate. The way that he and his hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) tried to sabotage the wind-up speech in the recent Second Reading debate of my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) was a disgrace. I fear that it was all too typical of the way some Opposition Members are bringing on to the Floor of the House the deceitful scaremongering tactics used by their Left-wing activists against tenants. But in truth they resort to those tactics because they have nothing else to say, and because they are desperate to appease the bully boys who are no doubt crucial to their own reselection.
    Behind the Labour party's banner stand those who want to scare tenants into believing that only the council can provide for them; those whose power is threatened by tenants' freedom; and those whose inefficiency will be exposed by tenants' choice.
    The Labour party protests so much, as it has throughout my speech, because it is frightened at the prospect of competition for its municipal fiefdoms—
    Mr. Battle rose——
    Mr. Trippier: I will not give way. I have given way many times. I have just referred to the tactics deployed by Opposition Members, to which the hon. Gentleman is very much a party. He should sit down and listen.
    Mr. Battle: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I think it ought to be on the record that if the Minister casts slurs and calls that a speech, and if he makes statements that are not true, hon. Members should have the opportunity to interrogate those statements. It is part of our duty——
    Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order for the Chair. The Minister will deploy his argument as he sees fit, provided it is within parliamentary conventions.
    Mr. Trippier: We have just had a first-class example of the type of tactics that I was talking about. The hon. Member for Leeds, West simply does not listen. That is the tactic with which we are all too familiar in the House and outside in matters concerning housing, and particularly housing association trusts, which the hon. Gentleman does not know much about, but which exist in his city. That tactic is deployed there. The reason why it is deployed by him, and by the hon. Members for Hammersmith and for Copeland is that they are frightened of giving tenants a
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    choice. They are frightened of competition for their municipal fiefdoms. They are frightened because it is the last bastion of the Labour party—[Interruption.]
    The Government are proud to be the champion of greater freedom, of consumer choice, of more competition and of greater efficiency. Our response to the challenge of today is to trust in people's judgment and their self-reliance, and to let the consumer rule.
    Mr. Robert B. Jones: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Towards the end of the excellent opening speech by my hon. Friend the Minister, the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), twice in my hearing, accused my hon. Friend of lying. He should not use remarks like that in the House simply because he does not like what is being said. He should withdraw.
    Madam Deputy Speaker: Within my hearing no hon. Member accused anyone of lying. They used other words but they certainly did not accuse the Minister of lying. I have very good hearing. That is not a point of order.
    Mr. Robert B. Jones: Further to the point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sitting nearer to the hon. Gentleman. I accept that you may not have heard it, but I am sure that the hon. Member for Leeds, West will he honest enough to admit to the House that that was precisely what he said.
    Madam Deputy Speaker: Had he done that, I am sure the Minister, who is very much alive to what has been going on, would have taken up the matter himself. We must proceed with the debate.
    4.46 pm
    Mr. Clive Soley: Anyone listening to the Minister's speech who had a housing problem would be appalled at what he had to say. One would think from his speech that there was not a housing problem. I wish to deal with various matters, including some raised by the Minister, but first I will make two other points. First, I want to be as tight with time as I can because it is a short debate. Secondly, I apologise to the House because I will have to leave half an hour early for a meeting on the poll tax at which the Secretary of State for the Environment and I are speaking. I would not like him to be without the advantage of the guidance and the assistance that I may be able to give him from time to time.
    The point that we are making strongly, and with increasing support from across the political spectrum, is that there is a growing housing crisis. Every time the Government try to duck it by referring to the past or to individual local authorities or councillors, they bring shame on themselves because they cannot face up to the problem. What is it? It is a crisis of mortgage rates and market rents. It is a catastrophe of escalating homelessness. It is a lack of low-cost accommodation for rent or sale.
    The Chancellor of the Exchequer's disastrous reliance on interest rates has clobbered home owners with a vengeance. We should never let anyone say that the Conservative party is the party of the home owner. [Interruption.] Yes. The Labour party did far more with start-up schemes and with mortgage relief for first-time buyers than the Conservative party. Let us hear the facts.
    Mr. David Sumberg rose——
    Mr. Soley: Let the hon. Gentleman hear the facts first; then he may intervene if he wishes. I want to limit interventions.
    From January 1988 to January 1989 is just 12 short months. Someone on the average mortgage in Britain is now paying £81 per month more than in January 1988. In the south-east the payment is £112·44 per month more; in inner London it is £135·06 per month more.
    Mr. Sumberg: The hon. Gentleman said that the Labour party is the friend of those who wish to buy their homes. Will he tell the House exactly what the Labour party did for council house tenants who wished to buy their homes?
    Mr. Soley: It is a point that we have been making over and over again. I will repeat it for the hon. Gentleman, who missed it. There is nothing wrong with the right to buy, but it has to be matched by a duty to replace property in housing stress areas. If people are merely given a right to buy, with no duty to replace, the best houses go first. People become trapped in high-rise, grotty, rundown houses from which they cannot be transferred. Waiting lists and homelessness go up.
    Mr. Trippier: If the hon. Gentleman is going to make a comparison with the one particular year on which he has focused, will he compare it with what people paid during the last year or two of the last Labour administration, when inflation was running at 27 per cent?
    Mr. Soley: Significantly less in both percentage and an absolute figure.
    Mr. Trippier: Will the hon. Gentleman give the figures?
    Mr. Soley: I cannot supply them off the top of my head, but I shall supply them. I assure the Minister that he will be able to get them from my own source, the Building Societies Association. If the Minister looked at the figures and other evidence held by the BSA and other organisations, they would tell him something that he should already know.
    When house prices begin to stabilise after house price inflation as a result of interest rates remaining high over a sustained period, homelessness goes up owing to mortgage repossessions. The fastest growing area of homelessness is now due to mortgage repossessions. One in every 10 families is going to the local authority and asking for housing under the Housing (Homeless Persons) Act 1977. They have been made homeless because they cannot pay their mortgages. [Interruption.]
    The Minister makes the mistake, as he shouts from his sedentary position, of supposing that the problem relates only to individual mortgage companies such as the Nationwide Anglias of this world. However, it does not, because it affects many other lenders, including banks and other organisations. Many people have mortgages on which their payments are more than six months in arrears.
    I shall give the Minister the figures. In 1979, the number of mortgages that were more than six months in arrears—the Minister is fond of talking about arrears, and I shall return to that point—was 8,420. In 1986, the figure was 66,930. In 1979, the number of repossessions was 2,530 and in 1986 it was 20,020——
    Mr. Trippier rose——
    Mr. Soley: I shall give way on this occasion, but I shall not do so many more times because if I do it will be at the expense of Back Benchers on both sides of the House.
    Mr. Trippier: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. He must have heard me give a statement at Question Time last week when I said that the Building Societies Association had made it clear that mortgage repossessions had actually dropped, and that Mr. Boleat had made it clear that there was no direct correlation between higher interest rates and mortgage repossessions.
    Mr. Soley: Why does the Minister not listen before he intervenes? I said to him—to be correct, to a Conservative Back Bencher—that it was no good looking at just the building society figures, because building societies are not the only lenders. He must look at the figures of banks and other organisations that lend money.
    It is not an accident or imagination that one in 10 families has been made homeless as a result of mortgage repossessions. Most of the building societies and a significant number of banks are quite good on this matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunfermline, East (Mr. Brown) and I conducted a survey which showed that almost all banks and building societies were worried about their customers' ability to pay and were trying to find ways of making it easier for them. A common theme that came out of the survey was the need to ensure that people sought advice as early as possible. Otherwise, they would inevitably run into trouble.
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
    Mr. Soley: I shall give way once more, but the hon. Gentleman is biting into his own time.
    Mr. Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman tell us how the homeless, the residents and the ratepayers in his own borough of Hammersmith and Fulham will be helped by the Labour-controlled council's gambling in the City, in which it lost £50 million?
    Mr. Soley: That intervention is an absolute gift and I shall tell him right now. If, as suggested, it is ultra vires, and the council has to freeze its position, it will walk away with £13 million profit. There will be no loss to the council—the figure in The Independent is wrong. The council would gain £13 million. But it pales into insignificance in the face of the problem that the Secretary of State has created for the Labour and Tory boroughs that have carried out such activities, by his refusal to introduce a proper system of local government finance. He tells local authorities to use business practices. Hammersmith and Fulham used them successfully and made £13 million profit. [Interruption.] It is questionable whether it is illegal.
    We know one thing for sure: if a private company had acted in the same way, everybody would pat it on the back and say how well it had done. It would have been strictly legal in the private sector; it is only local authorities who must not trade in that way.
    I must stick to the point about which the Government are increasingly worried. The Government are blind to the problem being caused by those seeking to buy. A couple of weeks ago the Economic Secretary to the Treasury said:
    "Mortgage rates show no correlation with difficulties over arrears or repossessions".—[Official Report, 26 January 1989; Vol. 145, c. 117.]

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    Let him tell that to the people who are being made homeless, or those 20,000 people whose payments are in arrears.
    Do the Government think that money grows on trees for those people? The dream of home ownership is turning into a nightmare of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for increasing numbers of people, and the Government know that.
    The other day, The Daily Mirror presented the case of Mr. Soussa—one of the many growing examples of the Rachmanite and Hoogstraten-type experiences about which we have warned the Government. The Daily Mirror said that a family of three—two adults and a child—paid rent of £161 per week for one room and a shower which they shared with 10 other families. Their meal times were limited to half an hour a day in the dining room and there was no fire escape.
    When that story appeared in The Daily Mirror, Mr. Soussa gave the family two hours notice to quit and put them in the street. The council—which was not Labour—had to use other bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Other local authorities—including Conservative-controlled Southend—told the Minister that they could do nothing other than resort to bed-and-breakfast accommodation for such people because of the Government's housing cuts.
    Mr. Trippier: The hon. Gentleman has made a silly mistake that he could have avoided if he had done a little more homework. He would then have found that the family to which he referred was the responsibility of Slough—[Interruption.] Oh, the hon. Gentleman knows that Slough is a Labour-controlled council.
    Mr. Soley: The incident occurred in Windsor. The Minister does not understand that the accommodation is in Windsor and other local authorities use it. The argument is not about which councils place such families in bed-and-breakfast accommodation. Is the Minister really saying that Conservative councils do not use bed-and-breakfast accommodation? The argument is quite simply that local authorities—whether Labour, Tory or Liberal—are forced to use inadequate and inappropriate bed-and-breakfast accommodation because of the Government's policies.
    The leader of the Conservative group in Hammersmith, Councillor Peter Prince, has some interesting suggestions. He says that there is nothing wrong with paying £100 rent per week for a two-bedroomed flat—and that it is all right. Can hon. Members say how ordinary people on average incomes are supposed to pay £100 per week rent for a two-roomed flat? He said something far worse, which I should like the Minister to think about.
    In Hammersmith and Fulham, 19 people from Belfast who were threatened by the Provisional IRA have suddenly turned up. Two of the children had been kneecapped, one in both knees, with similar treatment to elbows and ankles. Quite rightly, Hammersmith and Fulham council put those people into bed-and-breakfast accommodation. It had experience of other cases, knew the dangers of sending them back and realised that it must help them.
    However, Conservative Councillor Peter Prince said they should he sent hack to Belfast. That was not only inhumane but also seems effectively to be saying to the
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    Provisional IRA that it can carry on policing Northern Ireland because it is doing a good job. That is what the Conservative party is saying.
    I have encountered people in Hammersmith who are not in council accommodation but are running from both the Provisional IRA and the Unionist paramilitaries. What do I get from the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office? He says:
    "Hence, while I have every sympathy for the problems faced by local councils"
    in cases of this kind, he cannot help. As a result of the crisis in Northern Ireland, local authorities in Britain must either provide bed-and-breakfast accommodation, send the people back or provide housing out of their own stock. What will the Minister do about that?
    I have argued for many years that the Northern Ireland Office needs a policy to deal with people who are driven out in that way. I have every sympathy with Southend council, which has the same problems as Windsor, Slough and others. Indeed, Southend and the Conservative-controlled London Boroughs Association and Association of District Councils say that they cannot cope without using bed-and-breakfast accommodation—because of the Government's policy.
    How does the Minister think that a family copes with education, health and family stress when they have to live in bed-and-breakfast accommodation and when the Government have no policy on homelessness? In 1978, a total of 53,110 homeless families were accepted. In 1987, the figure was 118,710. The sharp end of the problem is something that I never dreamt I would live to see in this country: men, women and children sleeping in cardboard boxes in the streets and parks of our towns, in both Tory and Labour areas. If the Minister and his hon. Friends really believe that that is the Labour party's fault, let me tell them that no one else believes it. Other people know that the housing crisis has been caused by the present Government. The Minister should not try to dodge that by blaming local authorities for the existence of empty properties.
    Let us get the figures nice and clear. At present 2·5 per cent. of local authority properties are empty, compared with 3·1 per cent. of housing association properties. Both those figures are pretty good, and should be treated with a degree of flexibility. The figure for the private sector is 4·2 per cent. And who is the worst offender of all? The Minister. Nearly 6 per cent. of properties owned by the Government are empty. Houses and flats with three, four and five bedrooms, valued at £150,000 to £200,000, have been empty for up to nine years. The Government, who have known about it for years, are to knock them down to make way for car parking and landscaping around Wormwood Scrubs prison.
    One in five police houses is empty, as are prison houses, defence houses and houses owned by London Regional Transport and other regional organisations. What the Minister likes to do is blame local authorities—to starve them of cash, undermine their morale and erode local democracy and to try to pretend that that solves the problem. He knows very well, however, that the problem lies at the Government's door.
    Horsham council actually gave an empty council house to none other than the Horsham constituency Conservative party to use as an office. I understand that it

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    had to offer something because this was part of an improvement area—but an empty council house as an office? Are we joking?
    Mr. Robert G. Hughes rose——
    Mr. Soley: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman. Perhaps he would like to explain.
    Mr. Hughes: I agree entirely with what the hon. Gentleman has said about empty properties owned by the Government, and I think that the Departments responsible need to clean up their act. As he says, it is a scandal.
    Would the hon. Gentleman comment on another scandal? According to figures produced by the London borough of Hackney, some 300 housing units have been empty for more than three years so that minor repairs can be carried out. How can that be justified in an area of such stress?
    Mr. Soley: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being the first Conservative Member to acknowledge that it is the Government who should be blamed.
    Mr. Hughes: I did not say that.
    Mr. Soley: I do not want the hon. Gentleman to suggest that it is the Department's fault. It is the Home Office Minister's fault. I took the Wormwood Scrubs case to him about a year ago, but the properties are still not being used. Admittedly the junior Minister said that we could use four of them on a short-life basis, and a housing association is trying to do that, although it will be difficult to use four properties on such a basis. The other properties are not going to be used at all.
    Unfortunately, the examples that we give—including some that I have given about the Government—are irrelevant to the main cause, which is a drastic drying-up of the supply of low-cost accommodation for rent or sale. When the Minister opened the debate he revealed his naivety and inadequate grasp of the problem by saying that the country now contained more houses than people. In a technical sense, what he said was true, but it nevertheless showed a complete misunderstanding of the mismatch of properties to people.
    Having said that he recognised the problem of linking people and properties, the Minister did not go on to say how he would deal with it other than through the private market. The Government are saying that the private sector will provide, whereas local authorities cannot. What they are doing constitutes one of the nastiest forms of bullying that I have seen for many a long year. I attend meetings up and down the country which are packed out, with up to 400 people present. Many are very elderly—in their sixties, seventies and eighties. They go to the meetings because they are scared. [Interruption.] If they are scared, it is not because of me. I attended meetings organised by people from the Minister's own council.
    Rochester upon Medway council in Kent has put out a leaflet. People who went to a meeting in the area wanted to know what would happen to them, as the leaflet mentioned no agreement other than one that might result at the end of the day. They were worried because they were being told to vote for an arrangement under which they would have no contract. I beg the Minister to recognize
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    that many elderly people do not understand that housing associations are not just like any old private landlord. When a leaflet about a housing association takeover drops through their letterboxes, they see a return to the 1930s.
    Dame Peggy Fenner: The hon. Gentleman has already referred to what is happening in my constituency, where tenants are to be given a choice. I consider it, to say the least, slightly less than ethical for an Opposition Front Bencher to try to frighten the lives out of tenants when they have not even held the contract in their hands yet. Perhaps he would like to mention the scheme that my city council hopes to introduce. When the scheme is completed and the tenants know the details, they will have a choice.
    Mr. Soley: Let me tell the hon. Lady what I told the people at the meeting. I told them what I always tell them: "There may be cases in which you want to transfer to a different landlord, but first you must know the facts." What scared people about the leaflet was that it said that an assured tenancy was the same as a secure tenancy, which it is not. When I read it, my knowledge of such matters led me to believe that what the organisers meant—and I suspect that their intentions are quite good—was that they would try to make it the same by drawing up a legal contract, but there is no legal contract here. If the hon. Lady took the leaflet along to a solicitor and asked "Should I buy this?" would he advise her to sign? Of course he would not. What is so wrong with her approach is that bullying and frightening people is unnecessary.
    The Minister talked about Nottinghamshire. I eventually got hold of a leaflet published by the Notts Housing Bill Campaign—not by the Labour party. Why did it take so long to find? Because it was published about a year ago, when the Bill first arrived. Much of it is accurate. [Interruption.] It is difficult to see that it is inaccurate. There are some points which are incomplete. [Interruption.] It is not a new word. It is relevant to the case, because the Government's Bill had only just been published. As we all know, that legislation—with constant changes to it—went through on the hoof with a vengeance.
    Of course, the Minister dodged the real challenge that I put to him. My challenge was not for him not just to debate it publicly but for him or me, if we came across any misleading information—which we could not agree on as being misleading and therefore have it put right—to put it to an independent organisation. The two organisations I suggested were the National Consumer Council and the Institute of Housing. However, the Minister has refused——
    Mr. Trippier: No, I have not. I am quite happy——
    Mr. Soley: The Minister has not done that and he has refused——
    Mr. Brandon-Bravo: The hon. Gentleman is talking about my constituency.
    Mr. Soley: Can I have a clear statement from the Minister? I pointed out 10 or 11 serious inaccuracies in the leaflets put out by the Minister's Department. I said that the leaflet entitled "Tenants' Choice" should go to the National Consumer Council or the Institute of Housing for an independent view. He has refused to do that.
    Mr. Trippier rose——
    Mr. Soley: I want only one answer from the Minister. Will he put the leaflet to either of those organisations in exactly the way I suggested in the debate some months ago?
    Mr. Trippier: I know that one has to tell the hon. Gentleman something about 13 times before he is on to it in a flash, but I must make it clear to him again that I am prepared to debate that isue, and the contents of any leaflet in front of anybody in the public or the media. I am prepared to appear on any occasion—even for no money.
    Mr. Soley: I am not talking about appearing or debating. I am saying that where we cannot agree on what is misleading. we should put it to an independent organisation, which is what the Minister is refusing to do. [HON. MEMBERS: "He did not"] Of course he refused.
    Mr. Brandon-Bravo: The leaflet that has been mentioned affects my constituency. I must ask the hon. Gentleman to accept that that leaflet may be a year old, but we have suffered such literature—press releases and public statements—in our city ad nauseum, month after month, and the majority of it is the most spurious nonsense and disgraceful literature I have ever read. In my constituency there is an estate of 9,000 homes and many old people have written to me saying, "The Labour party locally are saying that our houses will be sold to private landlords; is that true?" That is what is happening in our cities, and it is time that the hon. Gentleman repudiated it.
    Mr. Soley: I will not do it now, for the sake of Back Benchers who want to contribute, but I would be happy afterwards to go through this leaflet with the hon. Gentleman to pick out any inaccuracies. I would say to him that at the time it was written it was basically accurate.—[Interruption.] Since then, the Bill has gone through Committee and has been changed thanks to our amendments.
    We want to know also from the Government whether they intend to change the rigged voting system that has so frightened people that they know that their only solution is to group together as tenants and community groups to fight the Bill. One good thing, however, about that wretched Housing Act is that it has managed to create a sense of community in those areas, because they are so appalled by what is happening.
    I ask the Minister whether the Government will spend the money that they promised on the housing action trust areas now that they know that they have lost the argument there, too. Effectively, all the tenants have said no to their proposals since they rumbled the Government's other dishonesty. They discovered that the real aim of housing action trusts, according to the report prepared for the Government, was
    "to successfully transfer the properties to the private sector."
    That was something that the Government never told the tenants. That is the dishonesty and the deceit which causes the tenants to be fearful and makes me say that the Government are guilty of bullying tenants.
    What will the Government do about the new towns? The new towns will not even get a proper vote until in some cases they have waited two years to see how the new system works. Terrific: we will have a new government now; see how it works and then we will have a vote on it.
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    How about that? Wht sort of democracy is that? Even some cheap dictator would riot accept that as a form of democracy.
    The housing statistics tell the grim story. In 1987 there were 30,000 fewer completions in all sectors compared to 1980. I warn the Minister of that, because that is what he was talking about when referring to public sector investment. Throughout the 1970s, housing investment was high when compared to European standards. Even investment in our worst year, which was 1979, was good compared to other European countries. What is significantly different now is that we are at the bottom of the heap—as we are with the National Health Service. Next year there will be a decline in the private building sector again, because of interest rates. The Government know that. In 1975, local authority completions were 103,000, in 1988 they are estimated to be 15,000 and in 1992 they will be 6,000.
    The Government have suddenly turned to housing assocations as the way out, but housing association completions are only about 2,000 above what they were in 1975. Somehow the housing associations are supposed to swallow local authority housing and build more at the same time. The management implications of that are appalling.
    In addition, there is the disaster of market rents in the private sector. We must remember that the rented sector has declined by 1·2 million houses, more than half of which are from the private rented sector. That decline has been caused by the Government's public expenditure. The Minister dodged my question about mortgage income tax relief. If he is prepared to accept someone on £7,000 per year getting a subsidy of about £300, but someone on £25,000 per year getting about £760, he had better work out where his priorities lie with Government expenditure. That is now up to nearly £6 billion.
    The nightmare about market rents is that they will approximate to what people pay to buy, which is why the private rented sector is declining. Mr. Rachman, Mr. Soussa—not really Mr. Soussa—and Mr. Hoogstraten are not really bad landlords; they are bad property developers. They want to sell with vacant possession, which means getting tenants out, and that is what the 1988 Bill is designed to make much easier.
    Mr. Barry Porter rose——
    Mr. Soley: I cannot give way again, because there is the problem of time.
    The Government refuse to say what a fair rent is, yet many people are spending up to 40 per cent. of their net income on rent. In some cases nurses are spending 39 per cent. of their net income, even taking account of their recent pay rise.
    Rural housing has been hit, too. In the villages of England people are living in the holiday accommodation during the winter and are having to move out when the holiday period begins. They then move to the towns, present themselves as homeless or drift around.
    Mr. Richard Holt: Give us one example.
    Mr. Soley: I shall give lots of examples. I shall give the example of Dorset—[Interruption.] I am giving areas. The hon. Gentleman has not got ears.
    Mr. Holt: The hon. Gentleman cannot back that up with known facts. It is just hot air.
    Mr. Soley: The hon. Gentleman should listen. What I said was that in the villages of England——
    Mr. Holt: Name one.
    Mr. Soley: In Dorset right now——
    Mr. Holt: That is a county; name a village.
    Mr. Soley: I know that is a county. In Dorset right now people are using holiday accommodation lets and moving into the—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) does not believe me——
    Mr. Holt: I do not.
    Mr. Soley: The hon. Gentleman does not have to take my word for it. He can get the facts from the Association of District Councils, which is Conservative-controlled.
    What else do people do when they leave their holiday lets? They move in with relatives or wherever they can find accommodation in towns. Of course, in many areas they cannot find accommodation, and they end up sleeping rough.
    We are moving towards having ghettoes in our city areas where there will be the sort of crime and vandalism which the Government try to pin on local authorities. People have died behind their cast iron doors, which prevented the fire brigade from gaining access. The House should remember that those people installed such doors out of fear. People have to take such measures because the Government will not give local authorities the money needed to provide a good 24-hour concierge system. They starved my council of money for the Edward Woods estate almost long enough to push out of the annual programme the system that was designed to come into effect, but the council managed to keep it in. If the Government really cared, they would make sure that they helped good management.
    The Government's problem is that they do not understand that housing is about supply and management. If there is bad management, whether in the private or public sectors, something must be done about it. It is no good picking one or two councillors one does not like and putting the boot in. A housing problem must first be acknowledged and then the solution sought. That means more building, renovating and repairing. It also means that something must be done about bad management.
    The Minister said that he thought that people should have a choice of landlord, but he does not believe that. He believes that local authority tenants should be able to vote once only to change their landlord. But a tenant of Mr. Hoogstraten, Mr. Sonssa or Mr. Rachman would not have that choice. Let me give the House a commitment. The next Labour Government will give tenants of non-resident landlords the right to change their landlord, and, by God, we shall see some landlords changing then. We shall do what the Audit Commission and the internal report of the Department of the Environment said and we shall see people returning to the public sector because, as the report said, local authority housing management is better than that of housing associations and as good as the best.
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker.
    Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Before I take any points of order let me remind the House that the debate
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    has to finish at 7 o'clock and we should deploy that time sensibly so that I can call as many hon. Members as possible. Therefore, may we have brief speeches, please?
    Mr. Nicholas Bennett: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. You will recall that the debate was originally due to take place on 1 February on an Opposition Supply day. Will you investigate the distribution of today's Order Paper, because, with only six Labour Back Benchers present, it is clear that not all Labour Members are aware that the debate is taking place?
    Madam Deputy Speaker: I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there are sufficient hon. Members in the Chamber to keep the debate going well after 10 o'clock.
    5.21 pm
    Sir Jim Spicer: I shall abide by your ruling to be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker.
    The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) referred to holiday accommodation in Dorset. I hope that in the near future as a result of Government legislation much of that will cease to be holiday accommodation and become permanent accommodation. Landlords have holiday accommodation not because there is more money in it but because in the past they could not get the right sort of tenancy agreement to ensure repossession. I want to see more people living permanently in west Dorset rather than have the place flooded with holiday accommodation which is empty in the winter months; that is bad news.
    It is right that the debate should focus primarily on housing problems in the urban areas, but, as the hon. Member for Hammersmith said, there are problems in the rural areas, too. The scale is different, but there are unhappy people in rural areas just as there are in the towns. It is in that context that I welcome the statement made by my noble Friend the Minister for Housing, Environment and Countryside the other day that there would be an increase in the rural allocation for rented accommodation in 1990–91 and 1991–92. No one would deny that that increase is a drop in the ocean. A figure of 900 extra houses in 1990–91 is small. That figure goes up to 1,100 in 1991–92. That is nothing in the rural areas unless it is supported and enhanced by the activities of housing associations.
    Just a few months ago in my constituency a debate was organised by the Dorset county council which set out clearly our involvement with housing associations. I have set a personal target for west Dorset of 500 new housing association houses to rent or buy by the end of 1990. That target is achievable, but only under two conditions. The first and most important is that land should be given to housing associations, or at the very worst, provided at low cost.
    One may ask where that land will come from, but I can tell the House that in Dorset and Somerset many landlords who are members of the Country Landowners Association and the National Farmers Union, are perfectly prepared to give half an acre or an acre of land towards that end. They want to see local housing for local people at reasonable rents. That will come about, but not unless one particular area of mistrust is cleared up, and that is whether land given to a housing association for that purpose might be deemed at increased value for capital gains. This worry has not yet been cleared up.

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    Everybody says that the point is being addressed, but why on earth does it need to he addressed? If people of their own volition are prepared to make a gift of land or to let it go at one tenth of the sum that such land would make on the open market for housing, why cannot the Treasury say that that is in the interests of the community and those who need houses and give a categorical assurance that there will be no such tax?
    Secondly, there is the matter of planning. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment was right to make it clear the other day that he hoped that local authorities would look more sympathetically at planning approval for housing association schemes for local people at low cost and to rent. I pay tribute to West Dorset district council which is implementing that policy. It is a dangerous policy, because a few starter homes may be included in the hope that approval will be given for a larger scheme. That is not what this is about. I hope that planners will significantly bend the rules for housing association schemes to help small villages. We are not talking about an estate of 200 or 300 houses but about a block of six or eight houses at the most for small villages in my constituency. If such housing does not come about, we shall see the continuing depopulation of our rural areas, along with the closure of sub-post offices and pubs, which is the last thing that I want to see.
    My plea to the Government is: please obtain that assurance from the Treasury. If we get that, we shall be able to get on with our building.
    5.27 pm
    Mr. George Howarth: After 10 years in office the Government have managed to land themselves in one enormous mess on their housing policy. The Minister laughs, but if he looks at what is going on sector by sector, the evidence is plain for anybody to see. One principal cause of that is the Government's market philosophy, which has been demonstrated not to work in housing matters. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) has given some examples of that and I shall give some further examples.
    The truth of the matter is that housing policy does not lend itself to a non-interventionist policy. The Government should recognise that they must continue to engage with local authorities, housing associations and others in order to do something about housing. The more one disengages, the greater the problems are.
    The truth of what I say becomes more and more apparent when the situation is looked at sector by sector. For example, the owner-occupied sector, for which there is all-party support—[Interruption.] There may be the odd exception but, broadly speaking, all parties' official policy is to support owner-occupation.
    High interest rates are now putting property, particularly for first-time buyers, out of their range. People simply cannot afford to get into the owner-occupier market—[Interruption.] That might happen in the long term but it has not happened across the board yet. We find that people cannot enter the market. Indeed, some people are having to leave that sector because of the problems of high interest rates.
    The hon. Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) seems to think that there is something wonderful about high interest rates and mortgage costs. Perhaps I could summon up in
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    support of my argument no less an authority than the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit), who writes in today's Evening Standard as follows:
    "High mortgage rates are very unpopular but it is mortgage rates in the year before an election, not the second year after one which affect the general election result."
    That tells us a great deal about the cynicism of the right hon. Gentleman.
    Mr. Holt: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman needs a basic lesson in the economics of housing. The mortgage is one thing; the price of the houses is another. Where houses cannot be sold because the mortgages are difficult to repay that stabilises and brings down the prices, which is what my right hon. Friend was saying in the article.
    Mr. Howarth: I do not entirely accept that, because the point I am making is that all sorts of other factors are brought to bear. The burden of my argument is that, as a direct result of high interest rates, there are people who are being prevented from entering the market and, equally, there are people who are being forced to leave the market because they cannot sustain their mortgage repayments. That is a simple fact of life at present. Whatever the long-term effects on that of macroeconomic policy, as matters stand that is what is happening.
    The other problem, which I have mentioned before in the House but which bears repetition, is that we have consistently falling standards of construction, space arid materials. I make it a practice to go on a fairly regular basis and look at new properties that are being built, some of them co-operative—in which I am heavily involved En my constituency—and some in the private sector. We are seeing properties which in 20 years time will be slums which are either put on the market or rented. That is because of the great pressure on people to get into the market at almost any cost. People do not have the kinds of choice that the Government would have us believe exist and consequently are forced either to rent—or in some cases, tragically, to purchase—properties of an appalling standard which will be real problem properties in 20 years' time.
    Mr. Trippier: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman's argument very carefully. He has not addressed the point that I touched on in my opening remarks when I talked about the fact that we have the highest percentage of public sector housing stock anywhere in the western world. In his constituency and that of the hon. Member for Knowsley, South (Mr. Hughes) there is a very high number of council houses. One of the biggest problems that they face is the management of that stock. I do not want to make a political point. but that stock was not built during the period that this Government have been in office. He and I are trying to do something about it together, and I am with his local authority.
    Mr. Howarth: I will cover that later in my speech. While there is disagreement between the Minister and me, he will accept that I understand the sort of problem that he is talking about.
    Another part of the problem in connection with owner-occupation currently is the whole mess of subsidy. My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith mentioned that mortgage income tax relief costs about £6 billion. No one is against the idea that people who need help to get into the market should be given it through tax relief or by some other means. But what we have now is a totally

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    unselective subsidy that does not serve any housing policy of which I know. Furthermore, for a Government that seem so obsessed with targeting other benefits, it is very strange that this very general policy should be sustained. I suspect that that reflects a little of the cynicism of the right hon. Member for Chingford because there is a definite electoral sweetie or bribe in that housing policy. That has to be sorted out if something is to be done about housing.
    I do not intend to go into the question of the private rented sector at any length. The Minister deplores the fact that only about 8 per cent. of the current stock in this country is private landlord stock. He might try and look at some of the causes of that. The Government have been in power for 10 years and that figure has not dramatically increased, but has declined, in that period. There are very real barriers to that market developing and one is that people do not trust it. Many of my constituents are familiar with the history of the Rachman era and are very cautious indeed about seeing that as a means of finding satisfactory housing. Other barriers have to do with the economics of housing in general, and the House will be familiar with the arguments which my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith adduced.
    The 1988 Act, which was supposed to deal with that, will not change the situation at all, because it did not deal with the root causes of the problem; it dealt with a series of rather fancy measures that will not change the situation at all. I suspect that the Minister already knows that it has failed to reinvigorate the private rented sector as they had hoped. That being the case, that policy has failed even on the Government's own terms.
    The Minister referred with some accuracy to some of the problems that exist in the borough of Knowsley, part of which I represent. I accept, and the Minister knows that my local authority accepts, that some of the problems connected with council housing in Knowsley stem from the difficulty of managing and maintaining a very large council stock. Originally, in 1974, there were, I think, 39,000 council houses in Knowsley, but with a combination of right to buy and some demolition and so on, the figure is now down to some 24,000. My local authority accepts that there is a problem in managing and maintaining a stock of council housing on that scale, so the policy of the borough of Knowsley is not to build any more properties. It feels that the policy for the foreseeable future should be concentrated on correcting the problems with the stock it already has and that any new housing needs should be met through housing co-operatives and associations, which it supports very well and vigorously.
    I accept that it is not necessarily always the case that local authority housing is the only way forward. On the other hand, even in the borough of Knowsley—the Minister is aware of these figures—and even with that policy, we currently need, to put the 24,000 properties with which we are left into some sort of reasonable order, £20 million a year. I use this as an example to illustrate the problems of local authorities.
    The housing investment programme allocation, even though it has recently gone up slightly, is still only about £4 million. With the use of capital receipts and other devices, perhaps that can be raised to £10 million, but that means that £10 million which needs to be spent on those properties every year is not being spent. Therefore, there
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    will be an even further deterioration in the quality of life of the people who live in council houses, brought about not by the mismanagement of the local authority but by the scarcity of resources.
    The Government's solution to that is to introduce market conditions through the provisions in part IV of the 1988 Act. I will not go through all the arguments that my hon. Friends make, but I know, the House knows and anybody who takes an interest in housing knows, that those provisions will not work. What they have done is spread fear and concern among council tenants.
    What is quite staggering about this is that in many areas people who did not rate the council very highly as a landlord before this Act was put on the statute book are now saying that their local authority is wonderful. The Government hoped that they had denigrated local authorities, but they have succeeded in some areas in making the tenants appreciate the local authorities.
    In the housing association and housing co-operatives sector, in which I take a great interest, with the changes in mixed funding, in areas where the cost-value relationship is wrong—and that includes London and the whole of Merseyside—the very device that the Government said would increase the supply of money to housing associations and co-operatives will simply mean that the schemes will not get off the ground. The financial institutions will not engage in that kind of arrangement where the cost-value relationship is wrong, as it is in many parts of the country. I suspect that, once we reach the end of the first year of this new mixed funding arrangement there will be a massive underspend because the scheme cannot be applied in many parts of the country. That is something of which the Government have also made a mess.
    So after 10 years, in every sector imaginable, the Government have made an absolute hash of housing policy. They have done nothing to deal with the needs of people, nothing to create new housing for people in need. They have just let the market rip, and the market simply is not working.
    5.40 pm
    Mrs. Edwina Currie: Before I came to the House, I had the privilege of being housing chairman in the city of Birmingham. I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Mr. Trippier) on his excellent speech and his grasp of the subject.
    I wish to broaden the debate a little. It is worth pointing out that we have a record number of homes in this country. The housing stock now stands at 23 million dwellings, an increase of about a third since 1961, and as a result we have a lot more property of all kinds. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) mentioned that there were about 20,000 families in difficulties. What he forgot to do was to put that in the context of 14·5 million owner-occupiers, some 9 million of them with mortgages; 25 per cent. of those people own their properties outright.
    In council housing, the subject of some of the speeches from the Opposition Benches, we have now about 6 million properties. If we compare that with 1961, we find that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in charge of a hell of a lot more council housing than her Conservative predecessors. I looked at the number of council house lettings and was surprised to find that the

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    figure is still running at some 450,000 a year. That is also a very high level. I do not know whether my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is aware that she has one of the best records in charge of council housing of any Conservative Prime Minister since the war. I am not sure that that was her objective, but it is true.
    The accusation by the Opposition that fewer houses are being built will not stick either. I listened with the greatest care to the hon. Member for Hammersmith. He talked about some of these little leaflets being incomplete. I hesitate to suggest that he is a bit incomplete, Madam Deputy Speaker, because you might rule that that was a little unparliamentary, but he certainly picked some incomplete statistics. His figures, for example, for the number of houses being built started at 1980. If we start at 1979, when we took power, we find that the number of public starts was 81,000 and the number of private starts was 144,000, giving us a total of 225,000 starts.
    In 1987, the number of public starts was 32,000 and the number of private starts 191,000, giving virtually the same total, 223,000.
    Mr. Soley indicated dissent.
    Mrs. Currie: The hon. Member for Hammersmith may shake his head, but I got these figures not from the Government but from the House of Commons Library. My hon. Friend who will answer the debate may have more up-to-date information, as the figures in the Library are for only the first nine months of 1988, but if we gross up those figures for the whole year, we arrive not at 225,000—the figure for 1979—and not 223,000—the figure for 1987—but 240,000 in a full year for 1988. The simple fact is that we are not building fewer houses. Taking the two together, public and private, we are building roughly the same number.
    It is certainly true to say that public sector new build has fallen. It has been falling for years—and a jolly good thing too. In 1979, there were 81,000 public sector starts; in 1987, there were only 31,000. But if we go back to the first year of the Labour Government of which I believe the hon. Member for Hammersmith was a very proud member, 1974, the figure was 146,000, an enormously larger number than they finished with in 1979. We all had the pleasure tonight of watching him standing there wriggling, a little embarrassed, a little ashamed, at the Dispatch Box, saying that he was not too proud of the housing record of the last Labour Government—and absolutely right.
    There are three reasons why the Labour Government did not build council houses—whatever their policy was, they did not do it. First, they could not afford it. Secondly, it was not needed. The slum clearance programmes of the post-war period were coming to an end. We had shifted 1·5 million households and it was no longer necessary to do that kind of clearance. Thirdly, it was not wanted. People do not want council housing. They want their own houses, and the Labour party now belatedly recognises this.
    Nobody has mentioned tonight the quality of the housing stock. There is a lot more of it, and it is a lot sounder than it has ever been in the nation's history. I am told that there are five basic amenities—an inside loo, a fixed bath in the bathroom, a wash basin, a sink and hot and cold water at three points. If we take the number of properties in England and Wales that lack those amenities, we find that over the past 20 years, despite a widening of
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    the definition of these basic amenities, the proportion of the dwelling stock lacking one or more such facilities has fallen from 25 per cent. to under 3 per cent.—that is, fewer than three homes in 100. I would like to bet that most of them are in the areas covered by Labour councils.
    Renovation of property is something that I was very keen to do in the city of Birmingham. We had enveloping schemes and we did our best to ensure that people could live where they wanted, in the homes that they wanted to live in, and that those homes were in good order. In the live years under Labour, 1974 to 1979—these are not incomplete statistics, and I have taken them again from the Library—over 160,000 houses a year on average were improved. In the past five years, an average of over 440,000 have been improved every year. Our homes are i n better nick than they have ever been and that is because people want to stay in their own homes and they want advice and assistance and support to improve them. That is what we have been doing.
    Of course, the hon. Members on the Opposition Benches used to build their council houses. They are welcome to them. The fact is that they built dismal, damp dumps—they have already been called "concrete jungles" twice—more tatty tenements, more miserable places, more tower blocks named after the Labour chairmen of the housing committees—and people do not want them. They did not want them then and they do not want them now. Nobody wants to live in those grotty estates that were built in those years. People want to live in modern, private houses, put up by private builders who have an eye to the: market, an eye to the customers and what the customers want. When people had no choice, Labour built them junk. They expected them to be grateful. Now people have some choice and they do not want to live in those houses any more.
    Mr. Heffer: The hon. Lady must be aware that it was a Labour Government that first brought in the idea of housing action areas and assistance to modernise houses. We were also responsible for bringing in enveloping. Perhaps she does not know that. Some of us do know it because we were here at the time when we were getting it through the House.
    Mrs. Currie: It is a classic case, because I was on Birmingham council all those years——
    Mr. Heffer: The hon. Lady was not here, doing the legislation.
    Mrs. Currie: The hon. Gentleman is quite right. They passed lots of legislation, lots of it. They did not have the money to implement most of it and the resulting council property is still a slur on the face of the Labour party and the Labour councils.
    Mr. Heffer: Get your facts right, luv.
    Mrs. Currie: I merely say to the House that, as far as I and most of my constituents are concerned, the Labour party is welcome to its claims that it built council housing in the 1960s and 1970s. I look forward to the day when more councils will do what Solihull has just done and pull those properties down. That is what the tenants really want.
    I want to make two more points, the first of which concerns mortgage rates. Again, I went to the Library and looked up the figures. Incidentally, as has been mentioned,

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    this is something of a re-run debate. The first one was supposed to be held in Opposition time. I happened to see the original motion in the Table Office—it just happened to be lying there when I went in one day. The people who worded it cannot spell "mortgage"; the Table Office had to put it right. Anyway, I looked up the interest rates at the time the Labour party was in government and hon. Members opposite were Housing Ministers. In only one year, very briefly in 1978—what about this for cynicism?—was the mortgage rate in single figures. Almost the whole time the Labour party was in power the mortgage rate was over 11 per cent. Indeed, it stood at 12 per cent. in May 1979, just before the election. In those days it was a fixed rate; there was no shopping around. The banks were not giving loans to ordinary people, and borrowers did not have the opportunity that now exists to shop around for the best bargain or for whatever suited them.
    I give the Chancellor my full support in his efforts to stabilise the housing market. The rapid house price inflation that we saw last year was unhelpful to everyone. No one could support or argue in favour of it. And it was aggravated by lower interest rates. Heaven only knows why, the moment interest rates go into single figures, everybody in this country thinks that it is a green light. Nobody in West Germany thinks that an interest rate of 9 per cent. is low. People there do not behave like that, but we in this country do. Well, so long as we think that as soon as the interest rate reached 9 per cent, we should borrow enormous amounts of money that we cannot afford, interest rates will have to stay where they are.
    The Labour party should come clean about one topic that it has mentioned. The hon. Members for Hammersmith and for Knowsley, North (Mr. Howarth) talked about mortgage interest tax relief, did they not? They talked about how much it costs, did they not? They should tell us whether they are going to abolish mortgage interest tax relief. They should come clean and say, "We do not like mortgage interest tax relief, and we are going to abolish it." They should say that that will be in their manifesto for the next election.
    Mr. George Howarth rose——
    Mrs. Currie: The hon. Gentleman has already had a go; it is my turn now.
    The Labour party should come absolutely clean about mortgage interest tax relief. Hon. Members opposite should say that they do not like it and that they are going to abolish it, and that should be in their manifesto. If, however, they recognise that mortgate interest tax relief helps many people to get on to the housing ladder for the first time, and that it is welcomed by those people, particularly by people in constituencies like mine, they should stop criticising it and admit that it is a good thing.
    My final comment concerns a thought for the future. As my hon. Friend the Minister will have realised by now, I am totally in favour of the Government's housing policies. We in this country are extremely lucky to have a Government who run the economy in such a way that we can all afford to buy our homes, a Government who are organising planning legislation in such a way that land will be released. That is happening in areas such as mine, and we are seeing growth. But I offer my hon. Friend one thought for the next 10 years of Conservative
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    Government, the next 10 years we will be in power. One quarter of all households consist of single people, most of them elderly. Nearly 3 million old ladies live alone. Another third of all households consist of two people, mostly older couples whose children have grown up and gone away. We are talking about a large number of old people.
    When we think ahead and take into account the fact that single person households are expected to increase from the current total of 5·25 million to over 7 million by the year 2001—and that will be nearly one third of all households—I wonder whether it is right that so many builders are continuing to build three, four and five-bedroom houses with double garages and no granny flat. For certain, by the end of another 10 years or so we will find that the crying shortage, unless there is a response to this need, will be in property that is suitable for elderly people, particularly those living alone. We will know that we have made progress on this issue when the price of bungalows is lower than the price of houses, not higher, as at present. However, I shall leave that thought for my hon. Friends. I congratulate the Government on the tremendous improvement that we have seen in the nation's housing, and I look forward to further progress.
    Several Hon. Members rose——
    Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The appeal that I made for brief speeches seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
    5.55 pm
    Mr. Matthew Taylor: I was going to say that the Minister had combined conceit and venom in a way rarely excelled in the House, but the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) has managed to trump it.
    In preparing for this debate, I took the trouble to read not various statistics—we all know how statistics can be juggled—but the debate that took place on 23 May 1988. The comments that were made then have been repeated today, and I am very sad that it should be so. On both occasions, despite the smugness of what the Government had to say, the message that came through—it is a message which must not be lost among the arguments about the Local Government and Housing Bill and about mortgage interest rates—was that the devastating impact of the continued policy of restricting expenditure on the development of public housing in all its forms is having an immediate and sustained effect on those people in most need of help with housing.
    I rang both local authorities in my area—Carrick and Restormel—a few weeks ago, and the message from them was abundantly clear: "Allow us to spend our money to house our homeless." Not only are local authorities not given that freedom; they are now hampered by rising land prices, even in areas that are relatively poor, such as my own. If a district council like Restormel owns very little land, there is no way in which, with current restrictions, it can outbid private investors. In a recent sale of some land in Newquay, a private developer was able not simply to outbid the local authority by a small amount but actually to double what the council could afford to bid. That local authority has very little land of its own and is therefore hamstrung in attempting to meet the needs of its people.
    Another message has started to come through from my county, and it is echoed in many other parts of the country, not only by councils but by people who come to my

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    surgery and, no doubt, people who consult other hon. Members. They are asking what the point is of a housing allocation list. I understand that councillors in Caradon have gone so far as to suggest that their housing allocations sub-committee should be wound up because there is no longer any such thing as an empty property. As soon as a property in council hands is vacated it goes straight to a homeless family because, as a result of the right to buy, the council no longer has properties for families at the top of the housing allocation list.
    The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South said—I think that I quote her exactly—"People do not want council housing.- I think it is fair to say that people's ultimate ambition is probably to own their homes, but in the case of very many who come to see me, it is not a question of their "not" wanting council housing but of their desperate need for any kind of roof over their heads. When they are told that they will have to live for years in caravans that are damp, smelly. small, unclean and unhygienic, and where, when they are in the bathroom, they can see the land outside, between the floor and the walls, it is no surprise that they are unable to understand why the Government will not put money into providing houses for them.
    Mrs. Alice Mahon: In my constituency there are 6,000 people on the housing waiting list. I am sure that those people, like the hon. Gentleman's constituents, will be highly insulted by some of the remarks that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) made about council housing and about their expectations.
    Mr. Taylor: The hon. Lady is absolutely right. I allowed her to intervene, because she has not done so before, but I shall have to rein in other right hon. and hon. Members, because time is short.
    The Conservative-controlled London Boroughs Association says that the Government should relax current restrictions on the spending of local authority capital receipts. It comments:
    "the fundamental requirement is to increase the supply of permanent housing."
    Seen in that context, the fact that the Secretary of State presides over a housing budget that is the only departmental budget to contribute to the Treasury is one of bitter irony for the homeless. All that profit has been made possible by council house sales and at the expense of the homeless.
    People are making their beds out on the streets tonight, as they did last night, and will do again tomorrow night, and the night after that. People are out on the streets because they have no housing. For the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South to say that people do not want council housing is painful for them, and shows no understanding of the conditions that people must endure. It speaks volumes about middle class, suburban ambitions, but nothing about the reality of the very many people who cannot hope to realise those ambitions.
    The recent report of the Audit Commission, "Housing the homeless: The local authority role", made many recommendations, and one point that comes through loud and clear is the continuing need for local authorities to play a role. I hope that Ministers accept the report's argument that there is a strong case for taking greater account of homelessness in the allocation by the Government of resources to local authorities.
    Many of the areas hardest hit by homelessness are not in inner cities but in rural areas. One reason for that is that
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    wealthier, luckier people are fulfilling their ambition to own property and to retire to what, to them, is a lovely part of the country—but to others it is their home and was their parents' home, but can no longer offer them work and, as a result, they cannot afford to buy houses. I refer also to areas where people are buying second homes in beautiful and lovely countryside. It is a pity that people wishing to move to them do not see the poverty of the families living next door, because families who have lived in those villages for years cannot now afford homes there.
    I give as evidence of that the almost ideal example of a young couple in Cornwall, wishing to make a start on the housing ladder. If they both work, both receive the county's average wage for their sex, and have no children—one can hardly imagine a better scenario for first-time buyers—they can, according to local building societies, afford just 2 per cent. of the housing stock that is for sale at any one time. Needless to say, that stock is not in the areas where they want to buy, even if they are lucky enough to track it down before it is sold. That 2 per cent. of the housing stock is to be found in the larger conurbations, in the more rundown areas of high unemployment. Young couples living in villages scattered throughout my constituency and others have no chance of buying a home in their birthplace or workplace.
    A prime example of the Government's response has been the transfer of council stock. For us, one of the most glaring examples is Torbay. Giving council tenants a greater say in what happens has potential, but when the Government exploit that situation, and cloak it in a rigged electoral system of secrecy and misinformation, council tenants naturally grow suspicious and do not feel that they have been made a genuine offer. The only convincing argument for the negative voting system is that under it the constituency of the Secretary of State for the Environment—Cirencester and Tewkesbury—would have fallen to the Liberals at the last election. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman would not think that such a system would be appropriate if it were to have that result for him.
    When that rigged electoral system for Torbay was overthrown by the Secretary of State under pressure from local Democrat councillors—who collected a petition showing that most people were against the transfer, despite the negative voting claim to the contrary—it was not just an attack on the Tory councillors who attempted to implement that system but, above all, a clear and visible attack on the negative voting system itself. Basically, the Secretary of State told the Tory councillors in Torbay that they had run the system as he had told them to do, but that the system was not right. It is only a shame that the right hon. Gentleman does not recognise the value of extending his decision more generally.
    Council tenants throughout the country are concerned about who will manage their homes. There is great anxiety among tenants of the Commission for the New Towns about the future ownership and management of their homes. I cite Basildon as one example. Can the Minister give an assurance that there will be a ballot for CNT tenants on the future ownership and management of their homes before any changes occur? That is what tenants are pressing for.
    Mr. David Amess: I am staggered by the hon. Gentleman's reference to property transfers in Basildon, because the alliance of the Socialists that he

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    represents and the Labour party has gone out of its way deliberately to frighten tenants. It is disgraceful that the hon. Gentleman makes a debating point of it.
    Mr. Taylor: I reject absolutely the hon. Gentleman's remarks. Our councillors and supporters have tried only to inform, and to argue that tenants should have a genuine say in the transfer of their housing stock. I may add that they have not supported the Labour party in seeking ballot after ballot, because they would like to see matters properly and independently conducted.
    Will the Minister consider giving CNT tenants wishing to buy their own homes the same level of grant and subsidy that he intends giving any housing associations that are interested in CNT stock? If so, that might provide a fair balance and proper choice.
    The young are among those most affected by Tory housing policy. In April 1988, the Government introduced income support regulations that created different levels of income support for 16 and 17-year-olds, for 18 to 24-year-olds, and for 25-year-olds. Household levels of income support were abolished, with the consequence that benefit levels no longer reflect the additional costs involved when a young person has no choice but to live away from his or her parents' home.
    Earlier, I spoke of middle-class suburban values. Another is the assumption that parents can always be relied upon to support their children. For too many young people, that is not the case. Due to the alignment of income support allowances and housing benefit allowances, young people not only receive less help in meeting their personal costs but, if they are on a YTS or are unemployed, receive less help than older people with paying their rent and rates. I have never heard a convincing argument for why that should be, other than that which the Government does not like to articulate, which is that parents are always there, ready and willing to pick up the tab. That is not the case.
    Since April 1988, income support has been payable two weeks in arrears, and the Department of Social Security no longer provides deposits to help people to secure accommodation. People needing money in an emergency must now apply for a discretionary loan, which young people in particular are not guaranteed to obtain. Linked with those changes was a Government promise of a YTS place for every young person who wanted one. The Government have been unable to keep that promise. On 9 November last year, the Government admitted that more than 13,000 young people looking for a YTS place had not been found one. As the Government should be aware, that means that those young people are ineligible for any form of benefit support. They increasingly face homelessness and the risk of destitution. They do not even appear in the figures of the homeless, but go unwanted and unrecognised.
    Recently, I received a letter from a Methodist minister who picked up on those changes, and who wrote asking how such a thing could be. He wrote:
    "Whilst my wife was in St. Austell this morning, she came across a young woman begging outside Tesco, displaying a sign reading, 'I have no work and no money—please can you spare 10p?' This young woman—she is around 18 to 20—had left a catering course after two years and had come to this area seeking work. She has accommodation in a `bed-sit', but is caught in some sort of 'waiting period' until she becomes
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    eligible to draw benefit. She is actively seeking work but, meantime, has no means of support—hence her begging. No doubt this will concern you as it does me, the more so with the temptations which may well come the way of a young woman in this situation. If the present Social Security regulations really are causing such a situation, then they urgently need amending."
    They are causing such situations, especially for those who are not even offered a YTS place or who are without a family to turn to.
    The smug, complacent attitude of the Minister and the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South shocked me. It showed no recognition not only of the political propaganda that the Minister has to face in the House, but of the political reality of young people who have no hope of a house of their own or the Minister who wrote to me describing the young lady begging in the street in St. Austell. That attitude does not recognise the people who cannot afford to pay the mortgage on the houses for which they have scraped together the money to buy on the Government's recommendation. It does not recognise the people in pleasant towns and villages who see the devastating impact that neglect is having on those who have always lived there.
    If the Minister had said that the Government were trying to do what they could, but that they recognised the failings and that more needed to be done, that would be one thing. But the Minister gives the impression that he honestly believes that there is nothing wrong, that no more needs doing, that everything about the Government's policy is right, that there is no omission and no improvement possible. That makes me angry because it shows a fundamental unwillingness to face up to the realities for people today. I hope that as the Minister reads the reports of this debate and the reports from many different organisations, he will reflect that he was wrong after all to take the attitude he has shown today.
    Several Hon. Members rose——
    Mr. Speaker: Order. It may be for the convenience of the House if I say that the Front-Bench Members will seek to catch the eye of the Chair at 6.40 pm. I hope that hon. Members will bear that in mind, given that a large number wish to participate in the debate.
    6.12 pm
    Mr. John Bowis: I must say to the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. M. Taylor) that my hon. Friends do not think that everything is right, but he is wrong when he says that everything is wrong. My hon. Friends are more realistic about their record of achievement. However, they have achieved a tremendous amount in comparatively few years. No doubt that achievement will continue.
    I want to return to the subject of inner cities and the area that I represent in inner London, and to comment on some of the achievements and some of the problems waiting to be resolved. This Government of all Governments have accepted the major challenge to provide a better quality of life for people living in urban areas. The problems in accepting that challenge are considerable. Areas such as Wandsworth face the major problem of dealing with the designers and planners of the past and with vast numbers of high-rise dwellings. The high-rise dwellings of former Socialist administrations in

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    Wandsworth have resulted, 10 or 20 years later, in the crime, deprivation and isolation that we see today and there are mammoth problems to be overcome.
    Such problems affect families and communities because we have areas in which people feel that they do not know each other and in which they feel that they can no longer send their children out to play with other families and know that they are safe. They have either to keep their children indoors or let them go out, where they pick up bad habits from their role models who are, of course, older children. Sadly, we cannot pull down those tower blocks because that would be too expensive a solution, but we can remedy the problem. If we had been able to pull down the tower blocks, we would have been able to house the same number of people on the same area of land in terraced houses with gardens and we should have kept the communities that we have lost.
    That is a major problem, and in trying to solve it we have other problems. In my area, there is a paucity of land available for development. That is not true of all areas, but it is true of my part of inner London. In some areas the Land Registry can help in identifying and releasing land for development, but not in mine. We also have the continuing problem of social change. We have higher rates of divorce, young people leave home earlier, there are more single parents and more people coming out of institutions and looking for accommodation in society.
    I salute the Government's achievements, which have been many. An enormous amount has been achieved through the Estate Action programme, for example. Hon. Members need not take my word for it. They can come to Wandsworth and see what a Conservative Government and a Conservative council have done together to rejuvenate an area of high-rise council estates.
    Mr. John Fraser: Why has Wandsworth borough council kept Park Court on the Doddington estate in Battersea, with 86 houses, empty for two years when there is a large queue of people for homes?
    Mr. Bowis: Park Court is one of the blocks on the Doddington estate which is being completely refurbished so that it can be offered back to the tenants who resided there. It can also he offered to people on the waiting list. Some homes will be for rent and some for purchase. In refurbishing those homes, the council will bring new life into the estate. Alongside that redevelopment is low-rise development with landscaping and all the other amenities that enable one to achieve a more popular and habitable living area in a high-rise estate. I do not apologise for that.
    There has been an enormous achievements, in crime prevention. Hon. Members need not take my word for it. They can come and see the partnership in Wandsworth between the Government, the Department of the Environment and the Home Office and the crime prevention measures that have led to new areas of lighting, locks, ground floor gardens and the moving of walkways. We know what needs to be done in Wandsworth, and we have a good example of partnership there. Tremendous strides have been made on sheltered accommodation and home improvements throughout the borough.
    We have seen the enormous achievement of home ownership. Three million more families nationally own their homes than in 1979. Locally, 12,500 council dwellings
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    have moved into private ownership, including 3,500 council flats. Half have gone to sitting tenants and half to people on the waiting list.
    That is an enormous list of achievements, of which the Government can be proud, although I believe that there is a long way to go on home ownership. We still have more nationalised housing than anywhere else in Europe, but the Government are freeing people from being locked into dependency on tenancy, whereas Labour Governments have sought to perpetuate that.
    We still have particular problems in inner London. We have the problem of empty properties, and other hon. Members have referred to the problem of empty council properties. I shall not dwell on that except to say that the Government are moving to rectify that. There are still problems in the private sector, and we should not under-estimate them. If private sector properties are empty for a period of years, perhaps we should consider trusts taking them over and letting them.
    We should consider the question of squatting. Squatters jump the queue over more deserving people on the waiting list. The definition of homelessness needs to be considered. There are far too many cases in my constituency of people who suffer overcrowding, such as five people living in one-bedroomed accommodation, people in accommodation that needs repair, and disabled people who live upstairs and cannot get out. They are being jumped over by people who are defined as homeless and who, for one reason or another, seem to be able to reach the top of the list ahead of others. Sometimes that may be justified, but too often it is not.
    The other day I received a letter from a constituent which asked the following question:
    "18 months ago, my sister got pregnant—she then moved (almost straightaway) into a three bedroomed council flat … Shall I get pregnant and do things the wrong way round? Will that help my chances?"
    That is not the message that we should give young people in need of housing. Such an attitude is true of too many housing associations.
    I received a letter from a couple in which the young man was training for the ministry. They have been told that they must wait until either they are married or living together. They said that they did not want to live together. The Peabody Trust said:
    "The criterion the Trust has recently adopted in this respect is that couples approaching us must either be married or must show a commitment to the relationship in the form of being already living together."
    That is not the answer that we should be giving to young people who wish to "do it the right way".
    There is one injustice that the Government have not yet put right. Housing associations are central to the Government's housing plans. When they are good, they are excellent but when they are poor they can be tyrannical. We must try not to set a new trap that will prevent people from owning their own homes. My mailbag is full of letters from constituents saying, "The Government have given the option of home ownership to council tenants. Why cannot I have it? I have lived in a housing association property for the past 20 years. My family have grown up in it and I have spent thousands on improving it, yet I am not allowed the right to buy it." Others write and say, "The council has just moved me into a housing association property for its own convenience, and nobody told me that I would lose the right to buy." That behaviour is unjustified. As we bring in more housing

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    association properties to help solve problems of housing and homelessness, more and more people will fall into that trap unless we give them the right to buy their housing association property.
    I hope that no hon. Member will try to tell me about tenants transfer discounts of Home Ownership for Tenants of Charitable Housing Associations. HOTCHA was not so hot, and TIS—the tenants' incentive scheme—is a 'tisn't in London, given that the average price of a council flat after discount is £15,000 while the average after a TIS is between £50,000 and £70,000. For Londoners TIS ain't on.
    I beg my right hon. and hon. Friends to reconsider this matter. Increasingly, housing associations are funded by the taxpayer and the ratepayer, and we therefore have a right to tell them how that money should be spent. It should be spent on providing rented accommodation, from which people can eventually step on to the home ownership ladder by exercising the right to buy. We need also to consider the possibility of allocating a quarter or a third of housing association funds with specific strings attached, insisting that properties should be provided for equity sharing schemes so that the sons and daughters of those who exercise the right to buy can climb up a stage on the home ownership ladder. It is time to right an injustice that has stayed with thousands of London families, and families throughout the country, for far too long.
    6.22 pm
    Mr. Eric S. Heffer: One of the saddest things about this debate has been the repudiation, not only by the Minister but by Conservative Back Benchers, of the previous policies of the Conservative party. Public housing did not begin with a Labour Government—not even with John Wheatley, whose Housing Act 1924 led to the building of about 500,000 houses. Public housing began before that, and was determined by the needs of the people. Let us consider the history of Parliament from 1915 onwards. Perhaps the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Boscawen) is related to Griffith-Boscawen who said, "If it is right to have public education and public roads, why should it be wrong to have housing built by the state and by local authorities on behalf of people in need?" He was absolutely right to argue that case.
    Some hon. Members who have appeared on the Conservative Benches during the last couple of Parliaments do not seem to understand their own history. Some of them have never heard of Joseph Chamberlain or of others in their ranks who argued consistently over the years that local authorities and the state should play a positive role in meeting the needs of the people. They seem not to know that, and that is a great pity. Perhaps they should look into their own history.
    I was born and bred in a very small town. I was not born in Liverpool; I went there later, during the war years, and settled there after the war. I was born in Hertford, which is 20 miles north of London and had a population of 12,000. Even in that small community, we had council houses and council estates. I can name some of them. There was Gallows Hill estate—admittedly not a very good name—and there was the Bengeo estate, through
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    which I passed on my two-mile walk to the church school. My mother insisted that I went to the church school. There were other estates in that small town.
    I sometimes compare the lot of those who lived in council houses with the circumstances in which we lived. Our accommodation was damp, and my brother got TB and died at the age of 21. Others like us lived in dreadful conditions with mould on the walls, and the private landlords did nothing for people. The council houses were wonderful in comparison.
    I then went to the great city of Liverpool. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie) is not here. She knows what I mean when I call her "luv", because it is a Liverpool expression. In some parts of the country it would be "duck" and in Cornwall, for example, it would be "dear". My remark was not a sexist remark but a Liverpool remark, and I want to put that on record in case people write to me and say, "My God, what a sexist thing to say."
    The hon. Lady and I both come from the city of Liverpool. I have lived there since the end of the war and my wife was born and bred there, on the Norris Green estate, a working-class housing estate. People used to pray that they would get to live in such a place. When my mother-in-law moved from rooms into a house—the house in which she still lives and in which she brought up her family—she took with her a handcart with the few odds and ends that she had; she did not have any furniture.
    Conservative Members say that people do not want council housing. It is all right for the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South. She was born round the corner from where I now live. She would not know what living in council housing meant to people. I do, although I have never lived in one. As it happens, I have been an owner-occupier since the end of the war. First I lived in rooms and then I saved up to get a mortgage. I know that millions of people in this country have benefited from living in council housing and that they have been able to live a decent life because of it.
    People are worried sick about the Government's new housing proposals. They do not know what will happen to them or whether their house will be handed over to some other landlord. I do not know what the leaflets say, but I know that my constituents write to me expressing concern, not because they have received leaflets but because all their lives they have lived happily in those houses.
    Of course people want decent houses. They want their repairs done and they want their houses properly looked after and modernised—as many of them have been looked after and modernised by local authorities. I urge hon. Members to visit my mother-in-law's street. It is easy to tell the council houses from the ones that have been bought: the ones that have been bought are running down because people cannot afford to keep them in proper order. That is what is happening. The hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Mr. Brandon-Bravo) may laugh, but I challenge him to come to Liverpool and look at all the houses that people have bought but are being repossessed because they cannot afford to meet the mortgage repayments. It may be different in other parts of the country.
    Mr. Brandon-Bravo: It is.
    Mr. Heffer: The hon. Member may say that, but he should remember——
    Mr. Brandon-Bravo rose——
    Mr. Heffer: I shall not give way. After all, the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) spoke for 10 minutes. If we are to discuss these matters, we should be really concerned about them.
    I shall conclude by quoting some figures. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, South also used figures. According to the Department of Environment housing and construction statistics published in October 1988, a total of 81,099 local authority houses were started in 1977. In 1979 the figure was 47,465, but by 1988 the figure had fallen to 15,204. Those are not my figures; they are the Department's figures.
    I can also quote other figures, such as those relating to the homeless. A recent written reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) shows that, at the end of June 1979, only seven local authorities had over 20 and up to 50 homeless households requiring bed-and-breakfast accommodation. By the end of March 1988, a total of 26 towns and cities had more than 20 homeless households. The position is becoming worse.
    I do not have time to quote all the facts and figures, but the housing crisis still exists. It is worse than it has ever been for ordinary working people, especially in London. Where do ordinary working people in London live? From where can they get housing? There are not even the rooms that used to exist. That is why there is such a rise in the number of homeless. We have to do something about it. The only solution is to get rid of the Government's policies. I hope that when a Labour Government are elected, we shall tackle the housing crisis for the first time. I believe passionately that no Government have really dealt with it properly. Like many workers among the Opposition, I know about living in lousy, rotten conditions and it is about time that it was stopped once and for all.
    6.32 pm
    Sir George Young: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heffer) for curtailing his remarks. I would not contradict what he said about his constituency, but in Ealing the position is reversed. The council houses that have been bought are well maintained, and the houses owned by the council are vandalised, squatted in and left empty for too long.
    I shall address my brief remarks to the housing pressures in London and the south-east. Many of the symptoms have already been referred to—house prices increasing two and a half times in the past 10 years, rising faster than incomes; sadly more families accepted as homeless; young people sleeping on the streets; and problems in recruiting professionals such as teachers and nurses in London. There are also many concealed households, as young people stay with their parents because home ownership or renting is not available.
    I very much welcome all that the Government have done to improve the position, and I congratulate my hon. Friend on what he is doing to reduce voids in local authority stock, to reclaim and use derelict land, to get the urban development corporations to provide affordable housing and to turn round difficult-to-let estates through Estate Action. More power to his elbow, but even if all that is done, there will still be a housing shortage in London and the south-east that can be met only by building more houses. Even SERPLAN, which is
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    notoriously conservative, has now agreed that by 2001 100,000 to 120,000 dwellings will be needed in addition o those already planned.
    I want to rebut the view that the answer to our problems in the south-east is to adhere to a strict planning regime and simply hope that development will take place elsewhere. I welcome the economic revival of the north, and the confident statements from the business community and its civic leaders are music to our ears—our strategy must be to build on that—but it is important not to dismantle or destabilise the economic base of the south-east and, crucially, not to enforce the relocation of residents from the overcrowded south to the north.
    Some of my hon. Friends wish to hang up a "house full" sign on the door of the south-east, tightly to restrict further development and let the market do the rest. I find such a solution unacceptable. It is certainly unacceptable to the DTI. In its evidence to the public inquiry into proposalls for a new country town at Foxley Wood, the DTI was provoked into saying:
    "Past policies of discouraging development in relatively prosperous locations, or even steering that development to other parts of the country, have not met with success. It would therefore be a mistake to interfere with market forces by putting protective barriers around the south-east and other desirable areas in the hope that this would open up opportunities elsewhere."
    We are a party that responds to market forces. We believe in reading the signals given by the market, and the policy of freezing development in the south-east is the very negation of what we stand for. The transformation of the country's economy has been achieved through acting on the supply side, finding out where the bottlenecks are, and removing restrictive practices by trade unions, anti-competitive agreements and the rest. The housing market cannot be expected to work with one hand tied behind its back.
    What happens to the nurses, the teachers and the postmen who live and work in the south-east? As we have heard, local authorities are increasingly committed to rehousing the homeless, and those people often cannot afford to buy at the moment, let alone if the restrictive policies advocated by some people are pursued. The communities that would result from such policies would be unbalanced, polarised and unstable. The social cement that binds us together would not exist. We would have only the prosperous and the poor, and the children of people in the south-east would have real problems in finding somewhere to live.
    Our strategic objective should be to manage and exploit the economic strengths of the south-east for the benefit of its residents and the rest of the United Kingdom. We need more houses. The rapid rise in land prices in England and Wales has increased fivefold in the past 10 years. Much of the land that has become available has not gone to the groups that most need housing, so there has been a mismatch between the type and location of new housing and the reasonable expectations and aspirations of local people. That is an understandable reason why planning committees can turn down development applications because they do not consider them relevant to local needs.
    No one can argue that the land does not exist. Between now and the end of the century, 20 per cent. of agricultural land will become redundant—much of it in the areas of housing shortage. Farmers have already applied for 150,000 acres to go into the set-aside scheme. My right

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    hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has made it clear that change of use is needed. At the Conservative party conference in 1987, he said:
    "We must accept that more land will have to come out of agricultural production. So we must facilitate this change, to the benefit of our rural areas, and not obstruct it."
    I see no reason for us to turn our backs on the one form of development that is most urgently needed—homes.
    At the moment, the planning system cannot cope. Farmers and landowners have to play rustic roulette. They either get planning permission and their land is worth £1 million an acre, or they do not and it is worth £1,000 an acre. If they get consent, the developer will maximise his profit by building high-value units often beyond the reach of local pockets. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer) that we need a halfway stage—to give planning permission if the land is sold at a realistic price, which means that properties can be bought or rented by people on average incomes, and if the properties are offered in the first instance to local people doing key work or to the children of those already living in the community.
    Many reasons for opposing development are based on sheer selfishness. The secretary of the village conservation society is often the chap who bought the last Wimpey house on the site of the old village school. He is often advocating restrictive development policies which, had they been adopted a few years back, would have meant that the house in which he now lives would never have been built. Other motives are more defensible, but one can overcome the understandable unhappiness of local people by insisting on a higher quality of design and on planning gain, so that there is real advantage to local communities if development goes ahead.
    Many of the issues that I have raised fall outside my hon. Friend's brief, although they fall within his Department. I hope that, as a party, we can approach the subject in the spirit that I have outlined and come up with solutions in keeping with our party's broad sympathy to respond to and harness the forces of the market—solutions made more urgent by a humane desire to see our people adequately housed.
    6.40 pm
    Mr. Paul Murphy: The debate has been wide, but I shall confine my remarks to housing in Wales. When we look, as we must, at the result of the Government's housing policy in Wales, we see that there is no doubt that the problems that have been highlighted by my right hon. and hon. Friends are even worse in the Principality. Wales has the oldest housing stock in Britain. Of all its houses, 40 per cent. were built before the first world war. Despite the fact that the Government have done some work to improve the condition of those houses, their own house condition survey admitted that about £500 million is still necessary to put right the houses in the Principality.
    Welsh district councils have said that they need more money for environmental schemes and more grants for low-paid owner-occupiers to carry out urgent repairs. Low-cost houses are important in the valleys and elsewhere in Wales. The staggering rise in private house prices during the past year is more obvious in Wales than elsewhere. There was a 52 per cent. rise in private house
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    prices in Wales in the past year. That is more than in any other region. It is more than in London, where prices rose by about 15 per cent., and in the country as a whole, where prices have risen by about 31 per cent.
    We have seen widespread gazumping in the Principality. The Prime Minister tells us that private industry and estate agents should work out their own solutions to gazumping. That is not the answer to a major problem in England and Wales. High interest rates and low salaries in Wales mean that young people cannot afford new houses. The only people in Wales who can afford new houses are those who come in from elsewhere and are second, third, or even fourth-time buyers. That fact must be contrasted with the lack of local authority housing.
    One of the most staggering remarks in the debate came from the hon. Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie). She said that no one actually wants council houses any more. I wish that she would say that to the 70,000 people who are on waiting lists in Wales or to the other people throughout Britain who badly require housing.
    In the years of this Government, 60,000 council houses in Wales have been sold, and 30,000 more are planned to be sold. The rate in Cardiff is 73 sales a week. The housing supply is effectively drying up. In 1975, a total of 8,000 houses were built in the Principality. Last year, 900 were built, and they were mainly specialist housing. In some district council areas in Wales it takes up to 10 years before people can get the council house which the hon. Lady said they do not actually want. In the past 10 years, there has been a 174 per cent. increase in rents in Wales.
    The traditional supplier of houses in Wales is the local authority, but people cannot now look to their local authorities for housing. If the hon. Lady has her way, they will never be able to. It is wrong to talk of councils in Wales and the rest of Britain building only bad, decrepit housing. That is by no means the case. Local authorities stuck stringently to the Parker Morris standards. This Government relaxed those standards. Council houses were often better built than private houses.
    Housing associations are now seen as the panacea for housing problems in Wales and Britain. The public expenditure White Paper states that they are the main providers of social housing. The organisation Housing in Wales has been created for that purpose. It is elected by nobody and is accountable to no one, save the Secretary of State himself. Its very creation is a slap in the face for local authorities in Wales, with all the experience that they have gained over the years in providing houses for our people. The £72 million that that body has been given should have been given to councils to put right their stock and to build houses, as they have been doing over the decades.
    Housing associations will not provide the answer to social housing problems. Rents will rise through decontrol or the replacement of secure or assured tenancies, and the need for market rents. Those who are just above the housing benefit eligibility level will be caught in a poverty trap.
    Housing associations in Wales provide houses for people. A recent survey undertaken by the associations showed that one in five families in housing associations earn less than £40 a week and that only a handful earn over £100 a week. How will the associations deal with the problem of single, young people in Wales and elsewhere who cannot afford mortgages?

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    There has been a rise in homelessness, the extent of which is more staggering than we have seen for many years. There has been a 100 per cent. rise in 10 years. Six thousand people in the Principality are now homeless, and that is not counting those who are regarded as homeless but are not in the official figures. Matters have been made worse by a rise in rent arrears and mortgage defaults. It is no wonder that the Audit Commission said that some councils will be unable to meet their legal requirements.
    What of the future? The Secretary of State for Wales has provided an answer. He wants to give away council houses altogether. That is a dotty idea. It is as absurd as it is impractical. It has been universally condemned by every Welsh housing association and other housing bodies. The impartial South Wales Argus called it political engineering of the most sinister kind. Public housing stock in Wales and Britain as a whole would be destroyed at a stroke if the Goverment's proposals were put into operation. The Secretary of State's statement has more to do with internal Tory party politics than with the proper provision of housing in Britain.
    There is no doubt that housing in Wales is at a crisis point. First-time buyers cannot afford to buy. There are fewer and fewer houses to rent. Housing association rents will rise dramatically. The financial future for housing is bleak, with housing revenue accounts not to be helped any more by rates. That will fall heavily on pensioner schemes. There has been an effective cut in housing figures over the past 10 years. Wales has lost £1·25 billion in housing money which should have come to it over the last decade.
    Housing in Wales is a time bomb which the Government must defuse. Ministers should plan for a balanced provision between rented and private housing. Instead, all that we are offered is the jungle of the free market which will no more solve Wales's housing needs than Britain's housing needs.
    6.50 pm
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Christopher Chope): I will not be able to reply to all the points made by the hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy) and I hope he will forgive me for not entering into the details of Welsh housing. There was a full debate on Welsh issues yesterday.
    The hon. Gentleman did not make proper reference to the Welsh house condition survey. The latest survey shows that significantly fewer houses in Wales are now unfit. The proportion of houses without basic amenities has almost halved since 1981 and many fewer houses are now in a state of disrepair. These improvements have been particularly marked in areas such as Gwent, where unfitness has more than halved since 1981 and is now well below the Welsh average. I suspect—without having detailed knowledge of circumstances in Wales—that much of what the hon. Member for Torfaen said exaggerated the problems in Wales.
    We have had a lively debate with some excellent contributions, especially from my hon. Friends. We particularly welcome the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie). She commanded the attention of the House, she spoke with knowledge and experience as a former chairman of Birmingham city housing committee and she made some
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    well-researched and telling points which caused confusion among the Opposition. I hope that she continues to speak out on the important subject of housing.
    We also had important contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer), for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) and for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young), and I hope that I shall have time to respond at least to some of the points that they made.
    A common strand that has run through all speeches has been that more houses must be made available either through better management or through new building In the pressure spots, be they in London, the south-east or elsewhere. But before we can have more houses, we must have the land on which to put them, and that is where the planning system comes in.
    That issue was addressed by my hon. Friends the Members for Dorset, West and for Ealing, Acton and, in an intervention, by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Mr. Favell), who said that restricting housing land led to a consequential increase in the cost of that land and, therefore, house prices.
    The latest household projection clearly shows that more housing will be needed in the next decade, not so much because of any population increase as because of the increased rate at which the existing population forms new households. The reasons for that are many. The fact that elderly people are living longer, the increasing divorce rate, the growth of one-parent families and the fact that young people are leaving home earlier are all contributory factors.
    Some say that the new demand for housing should be accommodated within the existing urban areas, as a means of taking pressure off the countryside, especially green field sites, and to encourage urban regeneration. They are right. That should happen as far as possible, but it is impractical to expect all new demand to be absorbed by our older urban areas.
    We are doing as much as we can to encourage the process. Urban development corporations, enterprise zones, simplified planning zones and the financial incentives offered by city grant and derelict land grant are already doing much to rehabilitate urban areas by encouraging new enterprises, new homes and new jobs.
    But cities need their open spaces, too. It is not the business of the planning system to direct people where they should live—to cram them into towns when that is not where they want to live—which is not only immoral but self-defeating. We need more housing in areas outside the. major conurbations. Too often, development plans propose new enterprises and new jobs because of the prosperity they bring, but shun the new homes that are vital to go with them, or hope that neighbouring areas will accommodate them.
    That is often referred to as the "not in my back yard" philosophy. People who support that philosophy fail to realise that increasingly they will be unable to recruit the skilled labour that their businesses need because the price of housing will be beyond the reach of many of the candidates and because the available housing is likely to be snapped up by the more affluent, thereby excluding from the housing market the local people whose interests they are trying to protect.
    We appreciate the feelings of those who see the character of their neighbourhoods changing and their communities being dominated by outsiders, be they commuters, second-home owners, retired people or people

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    who have come from other countries. The answer cannot be to pull up the drawbridge; on that, the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West were important because he drew attention to the possibility of more housing land being brought forward on a voluntary basis by people being prepared effectively to give it as a gift for use by housing associations.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West referred to a potential fiscal problem in that connection, especially for capital gains tax. I shall draw his remarks to the attention of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Government are well aware of the anomaly and are looking closely to see whether there are any practical means of distinguishing these cases in a way that would enable us to deal with that problem.
    Another initiative that we have taken in recent weeks has been to announce a new deal which will bring considerable comfort to those who live in rural areas, particularly in rural villages, and who resent the fact that their sons and daughters cannot afford accommodation in the place where they were brought up and wish to remain.
    We have said that exceptionally—and only exceptionally—local authorities may, where there is a demonstrable local need, grant planning permission, on sites where it would not normally be granted, specially for low-cost housing for local needs. They should also make arrangements to ensure that housing remains within the low-cost, local needs sector. It is crucial that these sites should be additional to, and not instead of, the provision for general market housing as set out in the development plan. The scheme should be used not as a means of keeping out outsiders but for bringing more land into the market place and making it available for local people. I hope that some of these initiatives will be welcome in west Dorset.
    I must emphasise that I am not advocating random development. Development must be properly planned, and it is important to remember, when considering household projections, that the need for development is absolute. So far as possible, we shall reduce existing under-used and derelict sites in the conurbations. We shall also maintain the green belt and other specially protected areas.
    But we shall still need fresh land for housing, and I look forward to the unanimous support of the House in willing not only the end but the means to ensure that enough houses can be built in the years ahead. I hope that hon. Members listened with interest and respect to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Acton, who dealt with this issue with considerable knowledge.
    The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr. Soley) raised a number of points, but in the time available to me I shall deal only with his wrong assertion that the biggest cause of homelessness was mortgage repossessions. In the third quarter of 1988, a total of 7 per cent. of homelessness was attributable to mortgage repossessions. That was down
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    from 10 per cent. in the previous year, so the trend is going in the opposite direction to that which the hon. Gentleman alleged.
    That demonstrates the scaremongering attitude that Opposition Members often adopt. They pay lip service to the idea of a property-owning democracy, but seem to seize any and every opportunity to try to frighten people away from home ownership. The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heifer) did not miss that opportunity. He made assertions about the consequences for people who purchase houses in his area.
    An independent report found that, on average, right-to-buy purchasers were less heavily committed than other first-time buyers. The report stated:
    "Most buyers have found the problem of purchase and the experience of home ownership to be entirely unproblematical."
    Some people have taken on larger mortgages than perhaps they would have done had they known the extent to which interest rates would go up. I was disappointed that no Opposition Member pointed out that there is often scope for people in that situation to let one or more rooms in their homes, so helping to deal with the problem of homelessness.
    An initiative in that connection, on which the Opposition poured cold water, was brought in by the Housing Act 1988. It will make it easier for resident landlords to remove difficult tenants, an inhibition which has caused many people to be reluctant to let parts of their homes.
    The Opposition have been in one of their doom and gloom moods. They speak of a housing crisis which is really a crisis of their own. They lack a housing policy. Government successes have that effect on the Opposition. The more successful the Government are, the more gloomy the Opposition are. The more successful our housing initiatives are, the more gloomy the Opposition are.
    Socialists have good reason to be gloomy about housing. On national policies, they can hope that the public have short memories and have forgotten what Socialist policies were like in practice, but the Opposition are confronted daily by local examples of their policies in practice.
    We have seen already this year harrowing pictures of estates in Lambeth where tenants live like prisoners behind barricades. One would think that that might have shaken the Opposition from their complacency. The hon. Member for Hammersmith suggested that it was because of a lack of Government funding, but in the past year Lambeth has refused to collect from its tenants rents amounting to £5 million. Those rents could have been spent on improving property. Those estates represent Socialist housing policy in practice. The political views of a housing officer are more important than his management responsibilities. Rents may be low, but the standards of maintenance and repair are even lower——
    It being Seven o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put, pursuant to Order [24 February].

    Court of Auditors
    7 pm
    The Paymaster General (Mr. Peter Brooke): I beg to move,
    That this House takes note of European Community Documents Nos. 9908/88 on the Annual report of the Court of Auditors of the European Communities for 1987, 8502/88 on the management and control of public storage of agricultural products and 9945/88 on the accounting and financial management of the European Coal and Steel Community; and approves the Government's efforts to press for value for money in Community expenditure.
    Mr. Speaker: I have selected the amendment in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.
    Mr. Brooke: The debate is an important and timely opportunity to consider in some detail a range of questions relating to the control and management of the Community's finances. In its annual and special reports, the Court of Auditors has performed an indispensable service by analysing and publicising such questions. The House would not expect me to agree with everything that the Court of Auditors says, but I am in no doubt about the value of its work. The same goes for the work of the Select Committee on European Legislation: as always, when we debate the work of the court we have the benefit of a clear and thoughtful report by the Committee.
    It might be helpful to begin by reminding the House of the role played by the court in the Community's decision-making process. Under the treaty of Rome, the court is required to examine
    "whether all revenue has been received and all expenditure incurred in a lawful and regular manner and whether the financial management has been sound."
    The Council and the European Parliament are required in turn to consider the court's annual report as part of the discharge procedure for the budget. The Council proposes to the Parliament a recommendation for the discharge and the Parliament decides whether and on what terms to grant the discharge. ECOFIN will discuss the court's report on 13 March. Tonight's debate will influence the Government's position for that Council, at which I shall represent the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Tony Marlow: I am grateful to the Minister. There are not many hon. Members in the Chamber, and it is helpful if my right hon. Friend gives way from time to time. I wonder whether at this stage my right hon. Friend would let the House know whether he intends to accept what seems to be a fundamentally sensible amendment tabled by the Opposition.
    Mr. Brooke: I proposed to deal with the amendment at the end of my speech, but if it would be helpful to my hon. Friend I am happy to comment on the Opposition amendment now.
    I have great sympathy with the sentiments that lie behind the amendment, but I believe that in all the circumstances it would not be appropriate for the Government to withhold their approval of the recommendation to the European Parliament on the discharge of the accounts for 1987.
    The recommendation is subject to qualified majority voting. A vote against it by the United Kingdom would amount to little more than a gesture. The fight against
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    fraud and mismanagement requires rather more than gestures. But in any case, on the substance of the issue, such a gesture would be misplaced, for two main reasons.
    First, by formally withholding approval of the discharge, we would be admonishing the Commission, because the Commission alone is responsible for implementing the budget and drawing up the accounts. If our motive for withholding the approval was to make a broader point about fraud and mismanagement, the impression therefore would be that we were holding the Commission to be largely responsible for such problems. In fact, the responsibility goes much wider.
    The second reason has to do with the nature of the discharge procedure. The discharge relates to a specific set of accounts for a single financial year. Strictly, discharge should be withheld only if these accounts are in some way improper. It has nowhere been alleged that that is the case in respect of the 1987 budget
    The Court of Auditors report draws attention to accounting procedures and devices that the Community was forced to resort to in 1987 and to which I would expect some of my hon. Friends might animadvert. Those procedures, notably the delayed payments for agricultural market support, were agreed by the Council. They were not unilateral actions by the Commission. It would therefore be inappropriate for the United Kingdom to censure the Commission in the way that the amendment suggests.
    Mr. William Cash: My right hon. Friend knows that there was a period of two months within which the national authorities subsumed some responsibility for the discharge of certain moneys in the Community. If it was proved that there had been fraud—I believe that there is some evidence that that is capable of proof—would it not be right for, say, the Public Accounts Committee, or indeed the Government, to pursue the matter on their own account, let alone pursuing the Commission? The Commission has received a heavily qualified audit from the Court of Auditors.
    Mr. Brooke: The point that I was making before my hon. Friend intervened was that the Council had supported and sustained the procedures that we adopted at the close of 1987.
    Mr. Nigel Spearing: Will the Minister give way on the question of the amendment?
    Mr. Brooke: There are few hon. Members present and the hon. Gentleman will have plenty of opportunity to make points hereafter. However, I will give way.
    Mr. Spearing: I thank the Paymaster General for graciously giving way. It might be convenient to intervene now because the Minister animadverted, rightly or wrongly, to the amendment.
    Surely the Minister is being slightly inaccurate. The amendment does not say that we should vote against any recommendation by the Council; it says that we should withhold approval, not on principle for ever, but only until we have received the report of the working party, which the Commission itself thought it advisable and necessary to establish. Surely that is rather different from what the Paymaster General said.
    Mr. Brooke: I alluded to the amendment only because I was asked a question about it by my hon. Friend the

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    Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow). We can return to the substance of the Opposition's case and their amendment.
    I propose to concentrate tonight on the key issues and themes arising from the three documents referred to in the motion. The most important of them relates to fraud and mismanagement involving Community resources. The focus here is on export refunds for beef, to which the court devotes a section of its annual report; and intervention storage, which is the subject of a special report. I am sure that hon. Members would expect me to devote a significant part of my speech to these matters.
    But I also want to touch on the implementation of the 1987 budget and the question of getting better value for money from Community resources. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if, as a result, I pass rather lightly over some other aspects of these very lengthy reports, but I shall do my best to deal with any specific points in my winding-up speech, if the House will allow me one.
    Fraud is a crime against Community taxpayers which tarnishes the Community's policies and institutions. There can be no excuse for member states treating it any less seriously than fraud involving national finances. The Government have consistently made clear that we are ready to support any practical and cost-effective measures to combat it. Lest there be any misunderstanding, let me reiterate what has been said by three of my Ministerial colleagues from the Dispatch Box in the past week about a recent allegation made in another place that the United Kingdom vetoed a Commission proposal on fraud. That was simply not the case. All member states voted against the measure in question. The United Kingdom did so because we did not believe that the proposal as drafted would have improved the situation.
    By its very nature, the scale of fraud is impossible to quantify.
    Mr. Marlow: I think that I heard my right hon. Friend aright when he said that he would support any proposals against fraud. If there was a proposal that the Commission itself should have outposts in Community countries to supervise the expenditure of its money, would my right hon. Friend support that? It is manifestly obvious that until that happens there will be a great incentive in many European countries, perhaps in the United Kingdom, to maximise the amount of Community money that is being expended, perhaps without proper supervision.
    Mr. Brooke: In preparing for the debate, I read earlier debates and I recall that my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North raised the idea of a supranational authority. It was the more striking because those sentiments are not those I would have expected from my hon. Friend's lips. I shall be listening with great care to the debate in case there is a general view in the House that such a supranational authority should be encouraged.
    The court's work on export refunds, which related to beef, scrutinised the effectiveness of controls in the four member states—including the United Kingdom—which account for over 80 per cent. of the expenditure in this sector. The court uncovered evidence of serious deficiencies concerning inspection, verification and other procedures. It concluded that the scope and quality of
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    national controls did not give reasonable assurance that the expenditure concerned was legally and regularly incurred.
    As regards intervention storage, the court's special report is hardly less disturbing, although strictly it has to do with mismanagement rather than fraud. The report is highly critical of Commission guidelines and their national implementation, citing in particular the lack of clear central rules, inadequate physical controls by member states and unsatisfactory accounting and audit procedures.
    I shall come in a moment to the steps which are being taken in the light of these reports, but, first, it is worth noting—as does the court—that a number of the abuses which have been so tellingly catalogued spring from the very character of the Community's policies and regimes. That is why direct attempts to detect and deter fraud must go hand in hand with firm control of total spending, notably on the CAP. The court rightly points out that the differential between Community and world agricultural prices entails a significant risk of fraud. That problem is being tackled. The agricultural stabilisers agreed last year have already been triggered for a wide range of arable crops. For the key cereals crop, there will be a price cut of 3 per cent. from 1989 onwards.
    The position on intervention stocks is also improving. The butter and milk powder mountains all but disappeared last year, and beef stocks fell by over a third.
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: Is it not outrageous for a Minister once again to say in the House that the food mountains have gone down because of reform? Does he not agree with the Agriculture Minister? If he looks up the figures, which have been published time and time again, he will see that they show that the reason for the butter mountain going down was that last year, at a massive cost, we sold 877,000 tonnes of butter, at prices as low as 2¾p per pound, instead of the usual 400,000 tonnes. Does not he accept that it is grotesque, when faced with massive fraud and abuse, for any Minister to try to pretend that the food mountains have gone down because of reform? Does he not accept that there is clear and precise evidence that we had a fire clearance sale, no more and no less?
    Mr. Brooke: I would be the first to acknowledge some of the basic facts that my hon. Friend has stated. It is also the case that butter was not being taken into storage because the procedure triggered a moment when that process ceased. While I would be the first to acknowledge that some of the stocks were disposed of by the process that my hon. Friend mentioned, he would be uncharacteristically unfair if he did not acknowledge that the procedures of the Community also played some part.
    Mr. Taylor: They played no part, and my right hon. Friend knows that.
    Mr. Tim Boswell: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, having emptied the bath at some considerable cost, the most important thing is to ensure that the tap is shut and remains firmly shut?
    Mr. Brooke: That is the policy that the Council has adopted in its report.
    Mr. Teddy Taylor rose——
    Mr. Brooke: If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will make a little more progress. From experience of past occasions, I know that he will not hesitate to intervene again.
    None of this diminishes the need to tackle fraud and waste directly. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture emphasised the importance of firm action on export refunds and intervention storage at the Agriculture Council last month. I shall do all that I can to ensure that such action is taken at the meeting of ECOFIN on 13 March. In particular, I shall be pressing for new proposals from the Commission in two areas: first, the control and monitoring of export refunds, reflecting the recommendations in paragraph 4.56 of the court's report; secondly, the management of intervention stocks, on which an ad hoc group has already been set up to study the court's recommendations. I believe that deadlines should be set for the presentation of these proposals and for the adoption of the necessary measures.
    Agricultural fraud gets the headlines, but the problem goes wider. The greatly expanded structural funds give rise to obvious difficulties of financial control and management. The new regulations governing the operation of the funds are commendably robust and straightforward. They show what can be done if the need to prevent fraud is explicitly considered when new legislation is being drafted. But much existing Community legislation is too complicated and open to fraud: "leaky and sprawling" was how a recent press story described it. Ways must be found of simplifying it wherever possible.
    Simplification and fraud-proofing of regulations is one of the areas where I hope the Commission's recently established anti-fraud unit will get involved. I and my officials have had detailed discussions with the head of the unit about his objectives and priorities. I have encouraged him to focus, essentially, on practical measures. I emphasise the word "practical". Amidst the welter of recent publicity about fraud it is all too easy to be misled by righteous indignation into believing that there is some quick-fix solution. There is not. Nor can there be in a Community of 12 member states with a great variety of legal and administrative systems. It would be interesting to hear hon. Members' views on the desirability of harmonised systems, or, as I said in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North, of some sort of supranational authority to combat fraud.
    The fact of national diversity cannot, however, be allowed to become an excuse for inertia. I am therefore much encouraged that the Spanish presidency has organised a discussion of fraud at this month's ECOFIN, going beyond the specific issues arising from the court's reports. That discussion will be an opportunity to identify the areas in which action is needed, and to define the procedural steps which should be taken to create the necessary momentum for change. We can operate only by persuading the Commission and other member states that fraud must be taken seriously. That will be a protracted campaign; some member states have a much more relaxed attitude to fraud than we have in the United Kingdom.
    The Government are carefully reviewing all aspects of the problem, but the objectives are reasonably clear. First, we need to strike a judicious balance between carrot and stick to ensure that member states take all necessary measures to prevent, detect and punish fraud against the Community budget. Secondly, we need more and better information on the nature and incidence of fraud in
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    member states. Existing reporting arrangements are failing to provide the Commission with the facts that it needs in order to analyse the position and to design effective counter-measures.
    Mr. Marlow: In view of the Government's quite proper desire to assist in overcoming fraud, and the possibility of loose and inadequate accounting within the United Kingdom itself, will my right hon. Friend make it clear that any agencies in this country will provide full and total assistance to anybody from the Commission or from the Audit Commission seeking advice and or information?
    Mr. Brooke: Within the proper proprieties that the House would wish any agency in this country to observe, I give my hon. Friend that assurance.
    Mr. Cash: If there was any real reason why the court needed to acquire information, sought it and could not acquire it as a result of an obdurate refusal by the agency to provide the information, does my right hon. Friend agree that that is the moment at which Her Majesty's Government should say, "This will not do; we must get to the bottom of this, because it is in our interests to do so"?
    Mr. Brooke: I am not clear whether my hon. Friend is speaking to a hypothetical case or to a particular case. The tenor and spirit of my answer follow the answer I gave a moment ago.
    Thirdly, we need to consider how far an enhanced role for the Commission in the detection or investigation of fraud could be expected to help reduce the scale of the problem. Fourthly, we need to be satisfied that enforcement standards in all member states reflect the seriousness of the problem. Finally, we need to establish procedures which will enable all new Community legislation to be fraud-proofed, and which will help to root out existing regulations and regimes which are, to coin a phrase, fraudster-friendly.
    Let there be no mistaking the Government's determination to cut through the rhetoric about fraud and to pursue workable and effective measures to tackle it. Our determination has been underlined by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister who has made clear that she will, if necessary, raise the issue of fraud at the Madrid European Council in June.
    Mr. Ian Taylor: In that context, will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the civil service in the Brussels Commission, particularly taking note that its secretary-general is a former senior official of the Cabinet Office of this country? Therefore, its standards should be at the level that we would expect in this country and not of the kind that Sir John Hoskyns tried to imply earlier this week.
    Mr. BrookeI am happy to endorse what my hon. Friend correctly said.
    I turn now to the court's criticisms concerning the implementation of the 1987 budget. There are three main ones: that almost 20 per cent. of the final budget for 1987 was not charged to the 1987 accounts; that published figures for the growth of agricultural expenditure in 1987—as in 1986 and 1985—significantly understated the actual rate of increase; and that the budget was balanced only by successively adjusting the duration of the agricultural year.
    The court goes on to argue that these factors call into question the value of the political objectives set out at the

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    1984 Fontainebleau European Council, and the budget discipline decisions of the 1988 Brussels European Council.
    I would not quarrel with the court's criticisms, but I believe that its conclusion is rather wide of the mark. The accountancy practices to which the court draws attention were the products of a collision between the apparently inexorable increase in agricultural expenditure and the Community's own resources ceiling. It was precisely in order to avoid future collisions of this nature that the United Kingdom insisted during the negotiations on the Community's financing, which culminated last year, that we would not accept an increase in the own resources ceiling until agricultural expenditure had been brought under firm control—until, that is, the Community had adopted rules and procedures to ensure that it could live within its means without recourse to the practices that the court identifies.
    The 1987 budget, to which the report relates, was the last to be drawn up and implemented entirely under the ancien regime for budget discipline. The new regime put in place after the February 1988 European Council is altogether more rigorous and watertight. I must therefore take issue with the court's dismissive reference to the
    "superficially more binding objectives regarding budgetary discipline"
    agreed at that Council. The future financing package does not consist of mere objectives. It consists of a panoply of firm controls which have given the Community a solid basis for financial stability.
    In the case of agricultural expenditure—which is, rightly, the court's main preoccupation—there are three elements of the new system which go well beyond earlier arrangements. First, the agriculture guideline is legally binding; secondly, it constrains the growth of agricultural spending to a maximum of 74 per cent. of the rate of growth of Community GNP; thirdly, there is no open-ended let-out for exceptional circumstances of the sort that bedevilled the Community's finances in the past. In future, there will be a cash-limited monetary reserve, capable of being drawn upon only in tightly circumscribed situations. These controls are buttressed by the reforms to which I have already referred—systematic depreciation arrangements and automatic stabilisers for all the main agricultural commodities.
    I said earlier that the 1987 budget was the final offspring of the old regime. I look forward to the court's report on the 1989 budget, which is the first complete product of the new one. The provision for agricultural spending in that budget is about £1·3 billion below the guideline, and the budget as a whole is over £2·5 billion within the own resources sub-ceiling for 1989.
    The third document mentioned in the motion is the court's annual report on the accounting and financial management of the European Coal and Steel Community. The report is intended to give the European Parliament and the Council an insight into the Commission's management of ECSC resources, most of which come from a levy on coal and steel producers, from borrowing on the capital markets and from bank loans.
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: Will my right hon. Friend answer a question that I have asked several times and to which I should like an answer? In view of what he has said about
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    his co-operation with the court so that the accounts are properly managed, why did the Council of Finance Ministers, at which he was present, refuse to discuss a report, submitted by the court, which said that the Council's decision to transfer the responsibility for butter dumping from the EEC to member states was unlawful? That refusal meant that nothing could happen.
    Mr. Brooke: It is wrong to say that the Council refused to discuss it. It was as a result of the United Kingdom's interventions that the report is now discussed at ECOFIN. That was the basis which we are expanding further at the meeting on 13 March. However, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East that there was disagreement between the Council and the court over that particular measure.
    I shall confine my remarks to an aspect of the report that touches on an issue currently before the Council. The court notes that the ECSC's reserves increased in 1987, and calculates that the ratio of total reserves to total assets is higher than recommended by independent consultants. This is relevant to decisions on the current and future funding of the ECSC's programme of social measures for redundant steel workers. The Government have consistently argued that those should be financed, at least in part, by drawing on the ECSC's reserves. The court's report confirms that the reserves are adequate for this purpose.
    The Commission, however, considers that there are insufficient resources within the ECSC budget to finance a programme of social measures at the proposed level. It has sought to remedy the alleged shortfall by proposing a transfer to the ECSC budget from the general European Community budget. The Government have resisted this, while making it clear that we are not opposed to the social measures in principle. The matter is to be discussed at the Council of Industry Ministers next Monday.
    In my speech on this same occasion last year, I mentioned that I had recently visited the Court of Auditors and had emphasised the contribution that it could make on the subject of value for money in the Community budget. The Community's traditional approach to auditing has tended to concentrate on the regularity and propriety of expenditure by reference to legislative instruments and procedures. That is a necessary function, of course, but I am encouraged by the indications in the latest annual report of the court, moving beyond the traditional approach and towards the concept of value-for-money auditing with which we in the United Kingdom are familiar, but which has yet to take a firm hold in the Community. This shift of emphasis is particularly noticeable in the court's remarks on research and development and the structural funds.
    As regards R and D, the court offers a cautious welcome for the programme of evaluation adopted by the Commission in 1983 and extended in 1987, but it urges the Commission to pay more attention to improving its assessment of the implementation and current validity of the R and D framework programme for 1987–91. A mid-term review of this programme is due to take place later this year, and will no doubt lead to proposals by the Commission for new projects and activities in areas which the programme does not at present cover.
    I would not wish to prejudge the outcome of the review—some difficult negotiations lie ahead—but it would make neither financial nor industrial sense simply to graft new

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    activities on to the existing programme. It would be a mistake to assume that newly identified research priorities must necessarily be pursued at Community level. Even where this is appropriate, new activities should take the place of existing ones which have outlived their usefulness, which are not producing the intended results or which have been overtaken by other developments. Rigorous evaluation is needed in order to identify candidates for weeding out, just as detailed industrial and scientific assessment is needed to identify potentially worthwhile new projects. The criteria and procedures suggested by the court will be an especially useful input to the negotiations on the review.
    As regards the structural funds, the court has some interesting things to say about measuring the impact on regional development of infrastructure investments subsidised by the Community. The precise methodology adopted by the court would not necessarily commend itself to all experts in this sphere, but the expansion of the structural funds which was agreed last year will involve a significant transfer of resources from the richer areas of the Community to the poorer. The greater convergence of member states' economic performance that that transfer is intended to bring about will not happen unless the resources are carefully targeted and the projects to which they apply are scientifically evaluated.
    Sir Russell Johnston: Will the Minister take this opportunity to clarify whether he agrees with the remark recently made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that all regional policy in the Community was a waste of time?
    Mr. Brooke: Since I share departmental responsibility with my right hon. Friend, I should verify precisely what he said. However, I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for drawing my attention to the remark.
    I referred earlier to the new machinery for controlling Community expenditure. With that machinery firmly in place, the Government are now taking the debate one step further by focusing on the quality of Community expenditure, not just the quantity. To that end we have formally tabled a detailed series of amendments to the financial regulation, which governs the implementation of the budget. The amendments are designed to provide a legal framework for improving the value for money of Community expenditure, clarifying its objectives and developing measures to indicate how far those objectives are achieved in practice. Those concepts have become an established part of the landscape in our own public sector, but are not yet embedded in the Community's culture. We aim to try to change that.
    I believe that many of the court's anxieties about the implementation of the Community budget have been addressed in the future financing package agreed last year. I hope that that will allow the court to develop its work on value for money and cost-effectiveness. Finally, I encourage the court to continue in its role as the scourge of fraud, waste and mismanagement. In that it has the Government's full support.
    I accordingly commend to the House the reports mentioned in the motion, and look forward to hearing the views of hon. Members.
    7.30 pm
    Mr. Stuart Holland: I beg to move, as an amendment to the Question, at end to add:
    "and to this end calls on Her Majesty's Government to withhold their approval of any recommendation by the Council of Ministers of the European Economic Community to the European Parliament to discharge the annual accounts of the Community for the year 1987, in accordance with the procedures specified in Article 206B of the Treaty of Rome, until the Council has received and discussed the report of the working party established by the Commission of the European Communities to consider the recommendations of the Special Report No. 5/88 of the Court of Auditors (8502/88) dated 13 September 1988 on the management and control of public storage of agricultural products."
    It seems to Opposition Members—and, I suspect, to Conservative Members—that: the Minister's unconcern about some of the fundamental implications raised by the auditor's report is simply staggering. The position is highlighted by an excellent report in today's edition of The Guardian, which states:
    "Massive fraud involving an estimated £17·25 billion over the past eight years is causing the EEC to fear that the entire Common Agricultural Policy is being discredited."
    It is all very well for the Minister to say that that was the ancien regime and that things are changing. He does not face the implications of the report, which in our view falls into two categories, one long-term and one short-term. The short-term category may be the more dramatic, but the long-term one is also important.
    One of the reasons why there is so much scope for fraud in the European Community is the price support system that it operates, rather than the deficiency payments system that it should be operating. The system should both enable the consumer to benefit and allow operations to be more transparent in supporting producers. That was the basis of the deficiency payments system. Commodities came in, by and large, at world prices—therefore low prices—and the subsidies went to the producers, that is, the farmers, in a manner that could be effectively scrutinised by the Ministry of Agriculture.
    The argument at the time of the debate on the common agricultural policy throughout the early and mid-1960s was that the share of the working population in agriculture in the Community was too high for a deficiency payments system to operate. One out of four workers in the original six countries was employed in agriculture in 1957, but, as I have told the House before and as many hon. Members. present tonight are well aware, the working population in agriculture—at least in the Community of 10, for which figures are readily available—is down to less than 7 per cent.
    I will not elaborate on the point unduly, but none the less I think that it should be made. What this means in practice is that production quotas can be set within guidelines for specific farms, concerning head of cattle, grain production, or whatever. If world market prices are then prevailing on the import side, the whole range of fraudulent operations—for example on the export and re-import of beef products highlighted in the auditors' report simply would not be happening, as there would not be subsidies for the export and re-import of beef.
    Those long-term structural factors must be addressed. If the Government are not addressing them, whatever they do at an ECOFIN meeting in a few weeks' time will not begin to resolve the fundamental problems.
    Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman is trying to wrap up the argument in terms of deficiency payments. Wearing their other hat in the Ministry of Agriculture, the Government are trying to deal specifically with how to mitigate surpluses. Those policies, which would be combined with such measures as reducing pollution and the quantity of nitrates—I shall not go into them in detail now—would in aggregate reduce the amount of money required. Clearly that would be the best course to take, and if other countries would adopt the policies that we have been pursuing a good deal of progress might be made.
    Mr. Holland: That is probably so. Certainly it is important for us to see agricultural policy as related to other kinds of priority policy, such as the environment and regional development. One of the ways in which reduced expenditure on agriculture could well be reallocated is via the social and regional fund. In the environmental context, for example, the argument is well established that keeping some land under cultivation, which may not in itself be economically viable, is environmentally desirable. It also avoids the grotesque depopulation of the countryside and the "Deserted Village" syndrome that has afflicted various parts of Europe.
    Let me return to the short-term implications of what the Government are doing, and the extent to which they are responsible for what has happened. The Minister flipped over that rather easily, saying that responsibility for the monitoring of intervention funds was shared between the Commission and member states. The guidelines are there for the Commission, and some of the auditing and supervision must be done by the Commission, but the responsibility is that of the individual member states. In this instance, it would be the responsibility of member states to establish whether suitable controls are in operation, whether they are accurate on a monthly or annual basis, controls on quantities and quality, the nature of declarations, the source data and accounting arrangements generally—the main items in the auditors' report.
    In this context, a letter dated 13 September 1988 is important. It was written by Mr. Marcel Mart, the president of the Court of Auditors, to Karolos Papoulias, at the time president of the Council. It poses questions to be raised with Ministers about what the Government have been, and are doing, in this regard. For example, there is the notorious case, widely reported in the press and mentioned on page 21 of Mr. Mart's letter in its English translation, of the overcrowding of space in storage, preventing any reasonable access or checks. Is the Minister satisfied that that is not occurring in the United Kingdom? What proportion of storage facilities are investigated by the Government each year to ensure that it does not happen?
    Page 22 of the letter states:
    "There is only one country"—
    that is, Denmark—
    "in which volumetric assessment of the quantities of cereals kept in flat storage is feasible."
    Why is it not feasible for the United Kingdom? Page 25 states that there is a great variety of surveillance and technical differences between various states. In monitoring humidity and knowing how to watch for the presence of insects or to prevent the access of other animals, only Denmark appears to have effective mechanisms for
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    scrutiny. As that factor relates to health, the Government should be rather sensitive to the health quality of food products.
    Mr. Marlow: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman understands that measuring the volume of a commodity such as grain does not define the value. The value of that volume of grain varies according to the amount of moisture and impurities in it, and the type of grain that is stored. It is essential that, if any heap of grain, for example, is being measured, the other qualities pertaining to it are examined, otherwise it is impossible to have any idea of the value. That is one reason why so much fraud is apparent at present. I agree with the hon. Gentleman. My point is that Mr. Mart's letter highlight that the Danish have a range of inspection procedures which are relevant, such as temperature probes, monitoring humidity, and under which conditions to ventilate. Of course, it is not simply quantity but quality. Notoriously in the beef case, it is alleged that there are so many different quality specifications that it is impossible to monitor effectively. It has been alleged that there are up to 1,000 different regulations for beef products in the Community. Is that so?
    Mr. Boswell: Following the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) and speaking as a practical farmer, I must say that one of our problems with volumetric measurement is that, unless one has a good standardised measurement of the actual density of the grain, it is difficult to know the tonnage involved. That may vary within the heap, even if one has a standardised volume.
    The other point that has concerned me is that the hon. Gentleman has several times referred to the practice in Denmark. As I read the report, I believe that Denmark was not one of the countries considered in the detailed study. In fact, the "D" stands for Deutschland, namely the Federal Republic of Germany. I wonder whether I am right about that, and, if so, will the hon. Gentleman correct his assertion?
    Mr. Holland: The hon. Gentleman may be correct and I am most grateful to him. It is certainly confusing if Denmark is expressed by an initial—(D)—which represents Deutschland.
    The letter says on page 27 that there is
    "only one case known (France, cereals) where examples are found of storekeepers being financially sanctioned for excessive quality differences."
    What kind of sanctions are being employed by the United Kingdom Government? Are all our storekeepers angels? Can we assume that they are? How many prosecutions have the Government undertaken concerning any breach of the storage of food regulations?
    On page 29, the letter says:
    "since under current arrangements there exists no stable valuation basis for the recording of stock movements and their consequences for the Community budget in the financial accounts".
    Why is there not such a stable valuation basis for the recording of stock movements in the United Kingdom? Will the Minister answer that question, because for that the Government and not the Commission are responsible?
    Another consequence is reported on page 30:
    "profits and losses cannot be attributed to individual transactions."

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    In effect, that amounts to transfer payments and prices being charged by firms in their operations. Why do we not have that transparency? What are the Government doing in that respect?
    Sir Russell Johnston: I am not sure about the hon. Gentleman's page references. The page which the hon. Gentlman gave as page 30 is page 67 in my copy of the report.
    Mr. Holland: I shall be glad to clarify that. I did say that what we are talking about is a letter from the president of the Court of Auditors of the European Communities, Mr.Marcel Mart, of 13 September 1988 to Karolos Papoulias, then President of the Council of Ministers. That document is available in the Vote Office, and perhaps the hon. Gentleman has it.
    Page 31 of this letter—which after all was written by the president of the Court of Auditors to the then president of the Council of Ministers—concerns the timing of submissions on expenditure and expenditure claims. Mr. Mart said:
    "the Member States have an interest in the earliest possible declarations of expenditure because the declaration has to have been submitted before funds can be withdrawn from the EAGGF Treasury account. It was established that the great majority of the intervention agencies draw up their second category declarations in the first week of the month following the month in which the physical operations took place … It will be clear that as such an early moment in time, it is hardly likely that the centrally recorded data in respect of intervention transactions can be complete."
    What does the Minister say about that, because those who are making those claims should be responsible to him, as the Government are responsible for the operation of our intervention agency?
    The cost figures involved in the misallocation relates partly to what have been called Mafiosi-type swindling, but also partly to the inefficiency with which the intervention process is being managed.
    Page 43 of Mr. Mart's letter says:
    "no audit is performed by any of the internal audit departments, of the monthly declarations nor of the annual accounts of public storage expenditure, submitted to EAGGF."
    Why should they not be in the United Kingdom? In fact, what we have heard is that the Government are appalled by what is happening. They say that the problem will be reduced because we will have stabilisers. The fact that cereal prices may fall by 3 per cent. in 1990 is hardly encouraging for rapid progress in that respect. However, no doubt a fall will be more welcome than an increase. What is the Minister doing in the United Kingdom? When will he put his own house in order? When will he report to the House and respond specifically to the allegations that have been made?
    Mr. Marlow: I put it to the hon. Gentleman that, as the system is at the moment, my hon. Friend is unlikely to do anything about it at all. The Community funds—especially in the common agricultural policy—are being ripped off right left and centre by every other country in the Community. If my hon. Friend were to do the decent thing—which I am sure he would like to do—it would mean that the United Kingdom would not get its fair share of funds. There is no incentive for my hon. Friend, on his own, to stand up and do the proper thing.
    Mr. Holland: I think that the hon. Gentleman, allegedly the hon. Friend of the Minister, has put his finger on it.
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    There is little incentive, as such, for the Government to seek to reduce the transfers which come to the United Kingdom under the guidance and guarantee fund.
    However, another argument involves the accountability of Ministers to the House. For example, the Minister gave two main reasons for rejecting the terms of our amendment. First, he said that to accept the amendment would admonish the Commission. Secondly, he said that the discharge relates to specific accounts and whether or not they are improper. In this case, the admonition is not so much of the Commission as of the individual member states and their failure to pursue adequate audit and scrutiny procedures. It is in the sense that this is the appropriate Chamber in which the Minister should be held responsible for the range of issues that I have raised—where either the United Kingdom is not achieving the best practice available in other Community countries or it is failing to ensure that the quality of food or the manner in which claims are made are adequately transparent and supervised.
    Moreover, the Minister's argument on the amendment is bizarre in view of a statement made in this House by the Secretary of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. He said:
    "As I have said, the Commission draws attention in its proposals to the need to tackle the problem of CAP fraud … What we now need is action … The Scrutiny Committee draws the House's attention to the importance of the European Court of Auditors report on intervention. I welcome the Commission's initiative in setting up a working party to study the recommendations of this report."—[Official Report, 27 February 1989; Vol 148, c. 29–30.]
    If there is no sanction at any level, there is no guarantee that the auditors' recommendations will be implemented.
    Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman is trying to pin blame on the Government. No doubt he regards that as his job. However, at the back of the Court of Auditors report in the Official Journal are the Commission's replies. This is an intricate matter but, when presented with the overwhelming evidence of its failures, the Commission's replies are, to say the least, inadequate.
    Mr. Holland: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Whether the Commission's replies start on page 257 or 265, which I read, they are anodyne in relation to the scale of the crisis that has emerged and the solutions that are needed.
    One reason why the Opposition have tabled their amendment is to create a sense of urgency among those concerned in addressing the issues. If, at the 11th hour and 59th minute, one were to withdraw one's objections to the approval of the budget without a fuller implementation of the recommendations of the Court of Auditors, it might not be surprising. The Council is well known for stopping, the clock on many matters.
    What is surprising is not simply that the Minister is not prepared to fight, but that he is not even prepared to appear to fight. All we are likely to get is talk, talk and talk again rather than real progress.
    We do not agree with Sir John Hoskyns's assertion that Brussels bureaucrats are not answerable to any Parliament. I have some sympathy with Lord Plumb when he says that he is outraged by Sir John's ignorance and asks:
    "Has Sir John been asleep these last 10 years while the directly elected Parliament has been at work?"

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    What I am concerned about is whether the British Government have been asleep for the past 10 years since they have failed to fulfil their responsibility to adequately scrutinise those public funds which are being expended by Britain's intervention agency which is located in Reading. That scrutiny has been inadequate and the Government should show far more urgency in addressing the problems.
    7.52 pm
    Mr. Michael Knowles: I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General on not taking the cop-out route of blaming the Commission, which Ministers have taken on previous occasions. That is the easy way out for any Minister responding to his national Parliament. Everybody enjoys having a go at the Commission, especially as it is not represented in Parliaments.
    However, there is a real problem about the Council. In the end, the Council is responsible. It has to act and approve in many cases. The Commission can make suggestions to it. It makes many, the majority of which are not approved. If the Council is a cabinet the doctrine of collegiate responsibility applies and my right hon. Friend is its representative here tonight. But if it is a legislative chamber, as it is in many respects, it is unacceptable that it should meet in secret. No one knows what happens.
    The problem is that the Council is a hybrid, but I suspect that the balance is changing. We are getting to the stage when something must be done about the Council. Indeed, something must be done about an awful lot of the Community's structure. Everybody knows that it is nonsense to have such a large Commission, yet every nation state wants to be represented. Every language has to be translated and enormous bills result. A great deal of money goes on translating every document. As everyone in the Community knows, the two working languages are English and French and everybody uses them, but, as a matter of national pride, no one will give up their language. Therefore, there is a problem with the Council.
    The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Holland) made a point about deficiency payments. There is an argument for switching to deficiency payments once the agricultural population reaches a fairly low figure. That is not politically realistic; I cannot see other member states switching. Many good questions arose from the president's letter which he quoted, dealing with storage and technical differences between countries, with which I will deal later.
    Mr. Holland: Why should deficiency payments be unfeasible as a longer-term objective? From another document before the House, on the European Coal and Steel Community, we see that
    "urgent action should be taken to decide the future of the ECSC after July 2002."
    If plans can be made for that far ahead for coal and steel can we not plan that far ahead to change the system for agriculture?
    Mr. Knowles: One knows the speed at which change comes about within the Community. However sensible or rational, on matters such as this, which require a unanimous decision, someone somewhere will use the veto; in some cases just so that they can be brought off. That is not completely unknown within the Council.
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    The great difficulty with the system, as emerged from an earlier exchange, is that every member state has an interest in fraud. It is in their interests to grab as much as they can, for fear that other people will grab more. That is a recipe for financial disaster. To be fair, the Court of Auditors has said that time and again. It was reinforced when the European Parliament discharged its report. The Commission has produced plans which go to the Council and then we come to next year's auditors' report. The problem is that the Court of Auditors is a stand-alone institution and has no power in its own right. Nor has any other institution at a level where it could have an effect.
    In places, the report makes nasty reading. Chapter 1 in particular is fairly horrible. The way in which the Commission presented the accounts is its responsibility, but, to put it mildly, the Council shares responsibility for that. Amounts of almost 7 billion ecu were not charged to the account. Two months were paid for by member states resources, not by the Community as they should have been, so that people could say that there was only a small increase—under 4 per cent.—in the budget that year. That is true if one runs a 10-month year—it is always easy to make the figures balance in that way—but taking the year as a whole, there was an increase of around 25 per cent. in agricultural spending. The figures were massaged and disguised, and we all know that that was for political reasons.
    On butter, other sums were lost—about 1·5 billion ecu. That is being amortised over the next four years. Members were owed almost 700 million ecu and that was postponed until this financial year. Chapter 1 is a real horror story for anyone who believes in accounting. I suspect that if that happened in this country, Treasury Ministers would have a very hard time from the House and especially from the Public Accounts Committee. Indeed, if any director of a company or any council did that to their figures they would find themselves inside a court very rapidly. Yet nothing happens here. We have here the problem, to which the court has drawn attention time and again, of the Commission over-budgeting. It happens every time because people are padding the figures. It gives them maneouvrability during the year to switch them about—and they do.
    Mr. Cash: Does my hon. Friend think, however—this is a thought that has been occurring to me since we were recently together in Luxembourg—that when one considers and compares the situation of countries that build up a national debt and then get into a bit of a jam,one sees a certain similarity of approach? The real problem that arises here is not necessarily that they have got into a bit of a jam and there is a budget deficit but that there is quite clearly severe fraud which is not being pursued as vigorously as we would like, and that it is the accounting procedures which must be put right.
    Mr. Knowles: If my hon. Friend will bear with me, I will come to the fraud question. I have some sympathy with the point he makes.
    We have set up a system in which every member state has a vested interest in fraud. That is a recipe for disaster, and it is the implication of the system of shared management over agricultural funds especially. There are no common Community controls. It is all in the hands of the member states. The Commission pays out the money on the members' declaration and later there will be an

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    examination and a justification. That is a nightmare. Again, as the court has pointed out, the Commission has not put enough resources into this area, and it should.
    Agriculture affects the northern states more and co-financing affects the southern states more. There is just not sufficient audit of the regional and social funds. I think I am quoting accurately from the report when I say that they cannot trace the effect of Community expenditure. Admittedly, Commissioner Christophersen is getting more of a grip on the situation, but frankly he needs to get a stranglehold on it the way things are now.
    Chapter 4 of the report, in particular, is a horror story. Paragraph 4.68 on page 76 reads:
    "Two Member States (IRL, UK) refused to allow the Court access to scrutiny reports notwithstanding that these checks are required to be carried out under Community law."
    Then there are paragraphs 4.73 and 4.74. And so it goes on.
    On page 193, "Reports and opinions adopted by the Court of Auditors during the last five years", we get a constant repetition. Some of us have read those reports over the years and the same things keep coming up, because the system itself is deficient. We have built a nightmare. People are responding to the problems in a human way, so we have to change the system to work with the grain of human nature and not against it.
    My right hon. Friend said that the problem was the regime—I think that was the expression he used. I do not believe that it is. I think that it is more a matter of constitutional balance. The Court of Auditors stands alone as an institution. The European Parliament then discharges with recommendations, and so on round the circle again. We have to look at changes across the range of the institutions of the Community, including the size of the Commission and the whole argument over languages. Indeed, a debate to this effect took place in the European Parliament recently, of which, of course, no notice whatsoever was taken.
    Mr. Marlow: While my hon. Friend is considering institutional change, I wonder if he would like to address himself to the question put by our right hon. Friend? Does he believe that Community institutions ought to have more powers of intervention in how the system operates for the expenditure of Community funds and how it is audited and controlled within Community countries, because without this I do not think that we shall get anywhere?
    Mr. Knowles: I think that my hon. Friend is right, but I am well aware of the implications of the question he is asking and of why my right hon. Friend did not answer it directly. Without that, I am at a loss to suggest another answer. The system does not work when Community funds are, in a sense, accessed through national Governments. That is the problem. Therefore, the only way is to have the Community's own institutions being able to oversee that function. If someone can suggest an alternative——
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: Would not the best alternative be for the Community not to have any funds at all and to concentrate on free trade? Would that not be the best answer for everyone and solve all the problems?
    Mr. Knowles: The difficulty here—my hon. Friend knows the problem—is that the Community is much more than a free trade area. It was so designed in its very nature;
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    it is written into the treaties. We tried a free trade area on precisely that basis and in the end we still had, or we decided—history can be written either way—to join the Community. That had massive political implications; one cannot gainsay that. The Commission has a curious hybrid function, part political, part civil service. In a sense, nothing like it has been seen before.
    Mr. Cash: My hon. Friend is now getting very close, I suspect, to the centre of his argument. As a result of the previous intervention, he is conceding a point which I know he holds quite strongly, which is that some form of supranationality is required. But will he not accept that the treaty of Rome in no way, in 1957, in 1972 or indeed in 1986 with the Single European Act, prescribes, empowers or creates a political union? When we deal with the central question of finance and control over finance and concede that as a central point with reference to the control of public finance, we are effectively saying that we will have a political union.
    Mr. Knowles: We have signed many documents saying that we are in favour of union, and it is not true. The preamble to the treaty referred to producing an ever closer union among peoples of Europe. The implications were clear, they were spelt out, and one has to follow through on the argument. We have a system designed to produce fraud on a massive scale. On the argument of sovereignty—here my hon. Friend and I disagree—we say that we will not accept those controls because that infringes sovereignty; therefore, we have to accept that we go along with the fraud. It is one or the other.
    Mr. Marlow: If this is Community money, where is the infringement of sovereignty if Community officials are allowed to supervise it?
    Mr. Knowles: I am with my hon. Friend; that is precisely my view, but it is not one that is shared by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash).
    Mr. Cash: Does my hon. Friend accept that one can have common standards by which the accounting procedures are administered through the national authorities, and have the bun and the ha'penny, too?
    Mr. Knowles: I should live so long, is the answer to that. We have only to look at the report on common standards of looking after food or common standards across the professions—or even in the Court of Auditors itself, and there we are dealing with a professional body. To amalgamate the traditions of British public finance and the public finance of France, Germany and all the others has proved very difficult indeed, and there we have men working very closely in a similar field. They have found it difficult, so how one is going to do that across the 12 member states right through the professions I am not at all certain.
    There was reference earlier to the Select Committee's recent visit to the institutions. It is interesting that in the run-up to 1992, the regulations covering public procurement will be enforced by the Commission. There will not this time be dependence on national good will and the hope that people will do it right, because they have learned the lesson; they know what has happened before when they have depended on member states to carry out a

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    common policy. The truth is that the states do not do it, so the Commission has to do it for the Community as a whole.
    The same argument applies to paying out Commisssion money. The same argument applies also to the Community's own resources; they are dependent on the member states. For instance, customs duties now all go to the Community, not to the nation states—they merely get a 10 per cent. collection fee. So what has happened? Are the nation states who control the customs officers rigorously collecting customs duties as they used to do when the money went into national treasuries? I suspect not. Customs officers have been diverted to other duties. They are looking more for drugs—we have heard the statements in the House. It applies across the board in the other countries. So the Community as a whole loses both ways. The member states will not collect the money for it properly yet the member states will spend that money like water. And we are surprised when we end up in financial difficulties. One could not have devised a system more likely to produce that result.
    The answer is to look at all the institutions, their powers and their relationships to each other. We must think again. We must start talking both to the other member states and to the institutions. There is no point in throwing up our hands and merely saying that we are against fraud as we are against sin, but not following the implications of that argument right the way through. I suspect that the implications are much greater than merely making a saving of some millions or billions of ecu.
    8.11 pm
    Mr. Nigel Spearing: I should like to begin on neutral ground by thanking the Paymaster General for his remarks about the reports of the Select Committee on European Legislation. We have three before the House tonight, one on the Court of Auditors' report which is to the fore, that is, HC 15-viii, one on the special storage report, 8502/88, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Holland) referred, that of Mr. Mart and his colleagues, HC 15-ii, and the report on steel matters, HC 15-xi
    We would all agree, although it was not mentioned by the Paymaster General, that we would like to see proper recruitment, adequate qualifications and good collection of the common Community tariff, also emphasised in the report by the Court of Auditors. One cannot expect a Court of Auditors, with which we all agree and which we praise, to work without proper recruitment of people with proper qualifications. If they are to be a "scourge"—I disagree with that word, for reasons that I shall give in a moment—they must have the tools of their trade, and it is the quality of the human tool that we all agree must be present in this case.
    I speak now not as Chairman of the Select Committee on European Legislation, which produced the reports, which are there for the guidance of the House and the public, but in an individual capacity, although I do not do so in a controversial way. It is clear to us all that there are no inbuilt national incentives to detect fraud in the structure of these finances, particularly in respect of food. As the Paymaster General himself has admitted, there is an
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    inbuilt incentive to defraud, both individually and on a national scale. He actually coined the phrase "fraudster-friendly".
    Are we becoming a community fit for Arthur Daley to operate in, with its "little earners"? They are not little earners; they are big ones. I understand that some transactions in intervention stores go up to 5 billion a throw. That is not small money. Even a 5 per cent. fraud on such a sum involves a lot of money. So the Paymaster General has more or less given the game away—and he is an accountant. I was very surprised——
    Mr. Brooke: I have been called many things in my time, but I have never been called an accountant, and I am not one.
    Mr. Spearing: I must apologise to the Paymaster General. Perhaps I was misled by his official title. At least he is an experienced man of business. That would perhaps be a more adequate and accurate title.
    The right hon. Gentleman is glad to hear, he says, of the introduction of value for money. Not many of us would disagree with that, but how can we have proper value for money before we have honesty and probity? Surely the best guarantee of value for money is to ensure that we have probity and honesty to start with. That is the normal auditing procedure for firms and organisations in Britain. If one gets a qualified report from an auditor, things begin to happen—unless, of course, it is the Court of Auditors of the European Economic Community.
    This is where I disagree with the Paymaster General when he talks about the court being a scourge. He says that we should let the court remain the scourge of the fraudster. What has happened is that the Court of Auditors has blown the whistle, not just once but every year for the past 14 years, and play goes on. It is not the role of the Court of Auditors to chase fraud; it is there to show where fraud exists. Is that not the function of an auditor? So the promotion of a fraud squad inside the Commission, while it may, on the face of it, seem praiseworthy, will work only if that fraud squad, and the auditors, have sufficient evidence on which to work.
    I suggest that the court reports show not just that things have gone wrong and that there is fraud but that there is no structure for the prevention and detection of fraud. That must be our major criticism of the food intervention and export structure of the common agricultural policy.
    On the European investment bank, paragraph 1.46 of the court's report says:
    "With regard to operations financed from Community resources in which the EIB is involved to varying extents, the Court is justified in fearing that, due to a lack of watchful action on the part of the Commission, its task as a higher external audit authority will gradually become meaningless, if not impossible."
    The Paymaster General said a little while ago that he would not blame the Commission. That is what he said when I intervened at the beginning of the debate. If for nothing else, surely the Commission could be held responsible for that. It is an extraordinary statement. It is obviously true. The Council must do something about it, and so must the Commission.
    Turning to the question of food, which is exercising the mind of the public and the media at the moment, nearly everyone agrees that the CAP needs reform in principle, and all pay lip service to the elimination of fraud, but nothing seems to happen. Why? The answer lies in two distinct but overlapping dimensions: the system, or lack of

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    it, of book-keeping, and its management and supervision by both national and Community authorities. If fraud is to be discouraged, let alone eliminated, there must be both an adequate built-in system, matched to the nature of the transactions and the markets, and effective audit, together with an overlap or junction between the national and Community auditing authorities.
    The evidence, however, suggests that neither of those conditions exists. No doubt the Commission would say that it is the fault of the Council and the Council that it is the fault of the Commission. The concept of a joint committee and national management lies at the heart of the issue. It has been referred to by Government Members. If, like me, one is keen on the retention of national competence, how far can one go in ceding authority to the Court of Auditors of the EEC in respect of these matters? Quite rightly, the Paymaster General himself has put that question.
    Even if one agrees, as I do, that the nature of joint management must gain the assent of national Governments, surely that right cannot go as far as denying the installation of joint effective management procedures that would provide and control audit quality no less than that expected by any nation in respect of its national institutions or companies. Surely that is self-evident, yet I am afraid that such procedures are what we have not got. Surely, provided that satisfactory controls and systems are in place within a nation, its central Government need not know everything about what is going on and all the individual transactions. But where those controls and systems are not in place, can such information be denied to appropriate bodies? I will come back to that point at a later stage.
    Why is fraud rampant in food storage and in the export activities of the EEC? It is because, within the complex transactions, there are no inbuilt dials and gauges to tell us what is going on. Unlike our own firms and organisations, the EEC did not have them built in from the start. When one looks at company accounts, or makes checks in any organisation with which one is familiar—even a tennis club—one finds them. But an audit is only as good as the evidence available to the auditor. If the evidence is inadequate, the opinion is also inadequate. Time and again the Court of Auditors tells us that it does not have enough evidence, so it has no opinion. The accounts are not just qualified; they are found to be unacceptable—except, of course, to the Council of Ministers and the Commission, which merrily discharge them year by year.
    This would be totally unacceptable in the case of any social club, shop, works or store in this country, where committees and managers know all about the inbuilt principles of auditing and checking. There is the visible reconciliation of evidence of purchase and the cost of storage in appropriate conditions, including temperature and protection against misuse, moisture and insects. Then there are such factors as access, visibility for checking, elimination of the risk of adulteration—for example watering beer; sale in checkable quantities—for example pints by the glass; and assured quality, as in the case of proof spirits. This has to be backed by matching book-keeping, complemented by schedules of quantities and locations—all subject to regular and, on occasions, irregular audit. Every working men's club in the country, and, no doubt, Tory clubs and golf clubs, too, will know what I am talking about, as does every restaurant and cafe. It is something that most people understand.
    Mr. Christopher Gill: Of course, we are not talking about working men's clubs or Tory clubs, or clubs of any other sort. Will the hon. Gentleman take it from me that, because of the very nature of the commodity, it is probably a practical impossibility, even with hundreds or thousands of inspectors, or auditors, or whatever other form of system of control might be installed, to control it? Its control has defied very many people over very many years. I submit that, where there is no personal interest in controlling such commodities, the sort of fraud that is being experienced now will always be with us. The fault lies in the system, not in its control.
    Mr. Spearing: I think that the hon. Gentleman is partly right, but food is particularly difficult to store and to sell because it varies in quality and in quantity—for all the reasons about which he and I would agree. I go with him to that extent, but I disagree with him in that safeguards were not built into the system at the start. The Mart report refers to this. That is where it has gone wrong. Unless and until such safeguards are inserted, fraud will not be detected and there will be every incentive to commit it. That is the essential fact that this House, and, moreover, the Council of Ministers and the Commission must grasp. At the moment they have shown no sign of doing so. Of course, no system is perfect, and there are difficulties in respect of food. But there is an obligation on public bodies to use public money in a responsible way, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman agrees. That is not being done.
    It is clear from the evidence that safeguards such as I describe, visible in tens of thousands of enterprises—I will not say clubs—in this country, do not exist within this system. It is even more complicated than the transactions in a restuarant. Instead of the customer paying for his food or drink and consuming it on or off the premises, he makes a bid for surpluses advertised for tender. The person submitting the lowest tender takes away the food, claims to have exported it, in certain quantities and of certain quality, to particular destinations, and, having done so, goes back to the shop with bits of paper and gets up to five times what he paid for the goods.
    That, I believe, is a crude, but not an unfair, description of the principles of export restitution as operated in the EEC. Each nation has its own food shop, checked by its own Government. The net expenditure for purchase, storage and export subsidy comes on repayment from the EEC, but not necessarily in the exact amount. However, the Court of Auditors, in its annual and special reports, tells us that the system is wide open to abuse. More regulations on top of the system that we have will be about as effective as corking a leaking boat with paper, since we are told that sufficient evidence is not available. We have to refashion that craft before we can stop the leaks.
    Hon. Members may think that I am exaggerating, so I shall turn to the words of evidence from the reports themselves. Special report 8502/88, which for the purposes of the debate I shall call the Mart report, referring to food storage, says:
    "The conclusion that inevitably results from these findings is that it is technically impossible to arrive at any audit opinion whatever, on the view presented by the EAGGF budget accounts, of public storage expenditure."
    One cannot get anything more blunt than that. The report, in paragraphs 6.13 and 6.14, goes on to show why the system is basically defective. I will save the time of the House by saying simply that the report points out that the system was introduced in 1960 as a temporary measure

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    and that it was unsatisfactory but that nobody wanted to change it and that it is now ingrained. That is clear from the reports of the Court of Auditors.
    Paragraph 7 on page 64 of the report says:
    "The charge borne by Member States in respect of technical and financial costs of public storage for the financial year 1986 can be conservatively estimated at about 450 Mio ECU. The result in terms of published financial information is that the official Community accounts do not reflect any more the full costs of the Community's intervention storage policy."
    That can only mean that nobody knows how much officially, it is costing. Although we may know how much is charged to EEC institutions, we do not know how much each national Government is having to tip in as well. What a situation we are in.
    Let me go on to the court's report itself and out of intervention into export restitution. Some of the problems have already been mentioned. Paragraph 4.21 says that the nomenclature for export refunds contains more than
    "1,200 separate classifications for agricultural produce, including almost 400 for milk products and about 80 for beef."
    We have to repay, for that little chit that I talked about, no fewer than 80 varieties of beef. It is open to enormous fraud. It is exported to 11 zones throughout the world, so for beef alone there are probably about 800 schedules. The Paymaster General will tell me if I am wrong, but that is what the paragraph says. No wonder, if there are 800 scales of repayment, that there are incentives for fraud. The Paymaster General has the cheek to say that future regulations must be simplified. That is no use, for we must first deal with the existing regulations that provide such a structure.
    Paragraph 4.33(b) complains about the lack of spot checking, stating:
    "even where arbitrary national scales of examination have been set, they are not always adhered to by the customs services. Some customs stations had recorded examination rates as low as 1% without an apparent justification".
    The Commission, to its credit, had a go at persuading countries to adopt a minimum 5 per cent. check rate, which is still not very high. We read on page 258, presenting the Commission's replies—and I have some sympathy for it, and do not wish to be unfair——
    "At the beginning of 1987 it sent the Council a proposal for a regulation on the monitoring of the payment of amounts granted on export of agricultural products (COM(87)9 final)."
    I looked up that document, and it says, "Let's have 5 per cent. checks," but the nations will not agree.
    Mr. Marlow: On another and related point, can the hon. Gentleman tell the House—I think he knows more about Community affairs than anyone else—what action is taken to mark and identify a consignment that leaves the Community so that it cannot come back into the Community in the dead of night and be re-exported again?
    Mr. Spearing: My knowledge does not extend that far, but the hon. Gentleman puts his finger on a flaw in the structure. I read somewhere that several thousand lorries are running all over the place—and we all know what happens to containers.
    Mr. Dennis Skinner: My hon. Friend is well versed in matters concerning the Common Market, which has been an unmitigated disaster for the British working
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    people from start to finish. As to lorries crossing borders, it is true that they go back and forth, and that, each time they do so, the amount of money that can be made through fraud is increased. In Ireland that fraud is perpetrated on a slightly different scale. Not only do lorries cross the border, but cattle are being driven back and forth. Every time that the cattle cross the border, their owners get extra money. They are doing it that often that the cattle are finding the way by themselves.
    Mr. Spearing: My hon. Friend is right, and I recall that practice being mentioned in a previous report of the Court of Auditors.
    Mr. Skinner: Yes, the court admitted it.
    Mr. Spearing: The Paymaster General should consider also the situation in this country. If we are to make any fuss in the Council, as we ought to do, we must first ensure that we are behaving properly. I am not sure that we are. Intervention buying in the United Kingdom is not the biggest in the Community. HC 137 of 1988–89—"Intervention Buying: Accounts"—shows that in 1987 we had £376 million of butter in stock, and £122 million of beef. I do not know whether those quantities were physically checked on 31 December 1987, and later I shall ask the Paymaster General a question about physical checks.
    However, intervention board report CM404 for 1987 reports:
    "The Board's external trade verification and scrutiny team visited 208 traders during the year to check declarations against company records. As a result financial adjustments were recommended in 74 cases, involving recovery for the Board of £434,713."
    The report refers to "company records", but not to any check against actual stores. I am not sure that such checks are made. When the Paymaster General replies, I hope that he will say whether continual physical checks are made by the intervention board, or whether it relies on its contractors to do so.
    Mr. Cash rose——
    Mr. Spearing: I am sorry, but I must move on, because I wish to present several more items of evidence. No doubt the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to speak later.
    I turn to the 30th report of the Public Accounts Committee for 1987–88, where reference is made to Customs and Excise. If the system is to operate properly, there must be proper inspection at ports. However, paragraph 2(iv) states:
    "We consider that the absence of inspection facilities at some ports is unacceptable."
    How can one run such a system without any certification at ports? Paragraph 2(vi) of the Committee's report adds:
    "We are surprised that, in the absence of satisfactory C&E records for CAP examination, IBAP"—
    the Intervention Board for Agricultural Produce——
    "can be satisfied with the evidence about the level of examination."
    In other words, the Committee spotlights a weakness in Customs and Excise.
    I have some surprising statistics for the House. The United Kingdom comes fourth of the Community countries that benefit from export refunds. At the top of the list is France, with refunds totalling 3,074 mecu. The Netherlands come next, with 1,777 mecu, and Germany third with 1,445 mecu. The United Kingdom ranks fourth,

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    with refunds of 880 mecu. When one considers that the French market is worth £2,000 million per year, those amounts fall into perspective.
    It is also significant that the three countries that top the list have a total of 25 votes in the Council. As right hon. and hon. Members well acquainted with the EEC will know but others outside the House may not, 23 votes can produce a blocking third. Any amendments to the rules of the kind that we want to see will have to achieve a two-thirds majority, which could be blocked by the top three countries if they so wish: I am not claiming that they do, but they have that capability.
    I have three questions for the Minister. First, does he think that physical checks take place at stores, and that there is a sufficient number of them and that there are physical checks at ports? The evidence of both the Court of Auditors' annual report and the special report suggests that the Paymaster General cannot answer yes to those questions. Secondly, while I understand the right hon. Gentleman's reticence in respect of an earlier request for information, if the Community's audit authority wants information from a national authority, is there not, by contract as it were, an obligation to assure the court that there is an adequate domestic audit procedure or, in the absence of such a procedure, an obligation to provide any necessary facts? It is clear that, alas, we do not have a satisfactory domestic audit procedure.
    Thirdly, does the Paymaster General accept the amendment that is on the Order Paper? He cannot say that it is a criticism of the Commission. It is not. It could be interpreted as backing it up. Whatever may be the failures of the Commission—and some of its replies are pretty pathetic—at least it has set up a working party to consult national Governments. Would it not be wise to await the results of that working party, and to discuss those findings—I am not saying that we should accept them—before recommending a discharge of the accounts to the European Parliament, as the treaty provides? That would not only be sensible and wise but would be an action of probity and honesty, and would at least satisfy the people of this country, who are growing increasingly worried at the situation.
    The power of this House was founded on, and can only be sustained by, the power to vote money and to scrutinise expenditure. The Paymaster General and the Government should do nothing less at the next meeting of the Council of Ministers on this subject.
    8.39 pm
    Sir Richard Body: I hope that the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) realises that the House is much in his debt for all he is doing as Chairman of the Select Committee on European Legislation and for his diligence on this and other EC matters.
    Having struggled through most of the 300 pages of the auditors' report, I was left with the desire that Sir John Hoskyns, a fair-minded man, might be persuaded to give enough time to read this report and especially to read that horror story, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Knowles) described it, in which 18 per cent. of the Commission's expenditure in 1987, the year with which we are concerned, was unaccounted for. I should like to think that, if Sir John read the report, the
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    next time he had any comments about the Commission, they would be less charitable and generous than they were when he spoke at the Albert hall the other day.
    My right hon. Friend the Paymaster General has invited the House to give its opinion on whether there should be a supranational authority to police the expenditure under the common agricultural policy. It seems that logic is driving us in that direction. I have never been a friend of the common agricultural policy. To me, it seems that it was devised by the devil when he was inebriated, but I am in favour—as I hope all of us are—of international co-operation on a number of agricultural issues.
    I wish that my right hon. Friend would realise the tremendous potential we have towards that end in Europe through the Economic Commission for Europe. I find it sad that the Foreign Office had turned its back on that institution, which, after all, has the support of almost every country in Europe and certainly every country that is a member of the United Nations. It is uniquely qualified to do some of the tasks that all hon. Members would wish to see done in international co-operation on certain agricultural issues.
    The common agricultural policy is, of course, supranational. That is why it is inherently wrong and why it has a number of built-in mechanisms that are unmanageable. I cannot see how we shall ever manage it. If we wish to have a common agricultural policy and if the House is willing to surrender its powers over agricultural policy, we must recognise the inevitable consequence that there will be endless fraud because billions of pounds are sloshing around in the funds. As all the mechanisms are so complex, it is extremely difficult for anyone to understand.
    For some time I have, for a particular reason, been studying some of the agricultural reports. I have been a farmer, and have had the advantage of practising at the criminal Bar for 20 years and taking on many fraud cases. But even with those qualifications, I found it difficult to comprehend the frauds. We cannot expect our own police force, overworked as it is, especially the fraud squad, to embark on that work and it would not have the will to do it. Our own Government, recognising that we are one of the main beneficiaries of the refund system, would have to be willing to give the police the necessary resources.
    Given the great complexity of the frauds, I am driven to the view that if we want to do something—which will only scratch the surface—it will be necessary to have a team of supranational officials based in Brussels. I hope that it would work under the auspices of the Court of Auditors, the one institution over there in which one can have faith. The force would have to be drawn from all the countries and would have to have the right to come here and look at the books, to pursue matters and to act as a supranational police force.
    Mr. Cash: Does my hon. Friend agree that what he is describing is similar to the operations of Interpol? However, the co-ordination required in following fraud, especially in an area such as the Community, presents certain complications. Under the present system, the ultimate prosecution is left to the national authorities.
    Sir Richard Body: I agree. I am wholly in favour of Interpol. As an international framework, it is wholly desirable, but it is made up of individual police forces co-operating with each other when their interests

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    converge. That is admirable, but it is not the same as the issue here, when we are dealing with a supranational policy, where supranational funds are involved, where far too much money is available for the purposes and where, inevitably, sticky fingers are trying to get hold of it.
    That is why I said that if we want to deal with the problem—and we shall never truly deal with it, because it is too vast—and if we want to try to do something, I am driven to the view that we must have a team based on Brussels under the control, I would hope, of the Court of Auditors, recruiting detectives and accountants internationally and with the power to go throughout the Community. It would need to have powers to match those of our own police force and it might be necessary to go further and to have supranational courts. That seems to be the logic if we decide to go along the supranational road.
    Mr. Alan Meale: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are also plans to lessen the customs procedures across the boundaries of member states? Does he not think that it is madness to proceed with such a stupid measure at a time when such vast amounts of fraud are being perpetrated on the Governments of member states?
    Sir Richard Body: Indeed, I am at one with the hon. Gentleman on that. The House and our Government must make up their minds about which way they want to go. They have the power, as I have said on numerous occasions, to disengage from the common agricultural policy.
    Were they to take that step, they would undoubtedly succeed in causing reforms for other countries, which would be to the advantage of the whole Community. This country, more than any. has it in its power to do something about the common agricultural policy. It is uniquely able to do that. Sad to say, the Government do not have that will at present. I wish that they had the resolution to disentangle this country from the common agricultural policy. As long as we go along with the common agricultural policy, which is essentially supranational, and if we want to work supranationally, we must have a supranational police force to check the frauds to some extent. However, given the complexities, I do not believe that we shall ever see the end of the great frauds that have been committed over the past few years. They will continue despite the assurances that my right hon. Friend sought to give us.
    8.48 pm
    Sir Russell Johnston: In one respect, this debate represents an improvement on our last debate on the Court of Auditors' report, which also took place on 2 March. The Minister may recall rising to his feet at 1 o'clock in the morning on that occasion, and the degree of liveliness that hon. Members exhibited was perhaps slightly affected by the lateness of the hour. This time, we are conducting our debate at a more civilised time.
    Nineteen eighty-seven was an exceptional year in terms of the Community's finances. I hope that it will have been the last year in which the Council was late in agreeing the budget, with the result that the previous year's budget had to be extended temporarily, a month at a time. We very
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    much hope that that measure will not need to be used again. The second half of 1987 also saw the implementation of the Single European Act which, among other things, greatly improved the decision-making procedures.
    As hon. Members have already said, it is right that we should congratulate the Court of Auditors on an extremely detailed, thorough and forthright report. Some hon. Members remain highly suspicious of all things European, but it is clear that the Court of Auditors is a very effective institution. The Community does not consist of a closed conspiracy of empire-building Eurocrats. It has open institutions that are capable of self-criticism which, on occasions, they conduct extremely well.
    I, too, propose to criticise the Commission during my short speech, but I hope that my criticism will be constructive. With respect to the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body), I thought that Sir John Hoskyns made an extraordinarily loose speech, designed simply to bring the Community into some disrepute—for what reason, I am not very clear. He also took a long time to make such a statement—but I shall not be diverted into talking about him.
    It is unsatisfactory that we should be debating the report so long after the year with which it deals, but the debate will at least concentrate our minds on the need to respond—and to respond more effectively than the Government have so far seemed to be responding.
    In our debate on the European Community last Thursday, I said that I felt that only the European Parliament could undertake such activities, and I continue to hold that view. The concentration on fraud in the Community is largely due to the constructive, diligent, patient and repetitive work of the European Parliament.
    The myth persists that the British taxpayer single-handedly supports the European Community. Page 219 of the auditors' report carries a colourful table from which one can establish that, in fact, we were the second biggest recipient of funds from the structural fund in 1987—receiving 1·2 billion ecu. The United Kingdom's total receipts from the Community were 3,121 mecu. Our contribution—even before taking into account the abatement—was 5,305 mecu—only 55 per cent. of the contribution made by the Federal Republic of Germany. I do not think that we shall hear the Germans complaining in quite the same way about what they pay into the Community, because they feel more than compensated for their contribution by the huge benefits to their industry.
    Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman may or may not have taken part in the debate on the structural fund directive the other day. It is clear that of the 14 billion ecu to be made available by 1992, 9·2 billion will go to Greece, Portugal, Italy, Nothern Ireland and Ireland, as well as the French overseas departments. The proportion that will go elsewhere—to countries other than the United Kingdom—is therefore somewhat different from the proportion in the picture that he painted.
    Sir Russell Johnston: I can only say that I have been citing figures in the report, which referred to 1987. Perhaps we are talking about two different periods, although the hon. Gentleman is right to say that in the most recent round the majority of money went to the Mediterranean countries, particularly Greece and Portugal.

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    While on the subject of the structural fund, let me point out that the Minister did not respond when I referred to the Chancellor's Chatham house speech. I do not have the cutting on me, but I remember accurately a report of that speech and the questions that the Chancellor answered after it in The Guardian. He was asked about regional policy and the diverting of resources to less favoured areas and replied that he thought it was "positively damaging". It is evident that the Chancellor does not believe in regional policy, although that is not a new thing for him. In 1962 or 1963, before I was elected to the House, I read an article in The Financial Times by the right hon. Gentleman—then a journalist—in which he referred to the "liberal illusion of regionalism". I remember that clearly. At least the Chancellor has been consistent, although he has not been consistent with the Brussels agreement, which increased structural funds and which the Government supported.
    Before dealing with fraud itself, I must express my view that for us not to apply the additionality rule to the regional structural funds is a form of fraud. The whole idea of having regional funds at all is to give extra money to deprived areas, but all we have done is to use them as a method of substituting expenditure rather than adding to it.
    As we work out the cost of Europe—and I am not talking about fraud here—we should remember that there is also a cost of non-Europe, to be found, for example, in the waste that has resulted from not having a single European market. That cost is difficult to estimate, but some have suggested that it might be nearly five times the Community's present budget—perhaps £126 billion.
    The question of fraud has rightly dominated the debate. Many hon. Members already said that the report contains some terrifying passages. Paragraph 4.15 on page 67 of the report, which deals with member states' declarations of expenditure, says that they
    "bear only a tenuous relationship to the actual level of the underlying expenditure. Its analyses, showed, for example, that the average error rate of quantities declared as having left public storage, which determine the losses on sales from intervention to be made good by the Community, was as high as 45 per cent."
    Paragraph 4.17 concluded:
    "In the absence, taken overall, of adequate independent physical stocktaking and quality control arrangements in the Member States, in the Court's opinion no reliance can be placed on published figures for the quantities and values of products held in intervention storage at the end of the financial year nor on the related expenditure in the year."
    It could not he much more devastating than that. Inevitably much of our discussion has related to whether we can do anything about it, and if we can do anything about it, what is the best mechanism. The hon. Member for Holland with Boston reluctantly said that we may well have to have a supranational body to deal with the matter as effectively as possible. I agree with what the hon. Gentleman said, and although I know that it is not his natural position, it seems inevitable.
    Despite what the Minister said, I am puzzled about what Lord Cockfield said in another place. The Minister made a short statement on the matter, but I was not much clearer about it when he had finished his statement than before he started it. As I understand it, he said that Britain did not veto the anti-fraud proposals from the Commission, but everyone voted against it, suary Lord
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    Cockfield was wrong. On 14 February, Lord Cockfield said exactly that: that not only Britain but all the member countries have voted against it.
    I am not clear why that was done. Lord Cockfield obviously considered that it was a good proposition that would enable the Commission to conduct investigations In a way that is not available to it at present. I should like to know why it was opposed. The Minister said that it was an inappropriate measure—a dreadful Civil Service expression that one hears from time to time. When they do not want to tell you why something was done, they tell you that it was inappropriate and that does not mean anything.
    Since that was done in 1986, about two and a half years ago, why has there been no follow-up? Why did the Commission just give up? I do not understand that, nor do I understand what the Commission wants in addition to the existing fraud squad established in 1987, the strength of which was doubled as recently as January this year. What did the Commission want to do which the member states unanimously prevented? That is extremely relevant, particularly since fraud on such a scale has been uncovered and, as has been said, the Court of Auditors has pointed out evidence of fraud for many years but no action was taken.
    The popular press has given the impression that the United Kingdom is on the march. The Times said:
    "The Prime Minister is spearheading a drive against fraud".
    It seems to me that the Prime Minister has not been spearheading any drive against fraud and that the United Kingdom, along with the other member countries has not been doing anything about it.
    To return to the European Parliament, one of the British members of the Court of Auditors explained the action of the Commission as follows:
    "The Commission was feeling harassed by the European Parliament on the subject of fraud, and were looking for a buffer to protect themselves from the sniping."
    That reading of the situation was supported by Robert Cotterill in The Independent on 9 February, when he wrote:
    "The emergence of fraud as a significant issue at ministerial level of the European Community brings to a climax a year of patient groundwork by the budget control committee of the European Parliament."
    In other words, the drive seems to come from the European Parliament rather than from within the Council.
    It may be, as the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) pointed out, that the top three recipients of intervention were not liable to take the lead in controlling this matter. We were fourth in the league, so perhaps we were under similar pressures.
    Mr. Skinner: We just got pushed out of a medal place.
    Sir Russell Johnston: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman's remark was too subtle for me.
    Mr. Skinner: The hon. Gentleman is a bit before or lately. He does not know whether he is coming or going.
    Sir Russell Johnston: At the moment, I am standing still.
    In one of the many sections of the report, paragraph 10.102, there is criticism by the Court of Auditors of the Commission's involvement in subsidising a television channel. It was an extraordinary exercise on the part of the Commission. In October 1986, it agreed to grant a subsidy of £1 million ecu to a television channel. It failed, and the Commission is still trying to get back the money. The

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    auditors say that the Commission did not verify as it should that the recipient's financial basis was sound. In many respects it appeared to behave like a babe in the wood. I question the basis on which the Commission subsidised a television channel. There are many points that one could make. It appears that the Commission took the wrong course. It would be interesting to know what the position is now and whether it has been successful in recovering our money.
    The report is chastening. There has been widespread fraud and incompetence. The Court of Auditors deserves to be congratulated on the way that it has focused our attention on the problem. The Government are beholden to work vigorously with other member states to do their best to prevent further serious abuses.
    9.6 pm
    Mr. Tim Boswell: I am grateful for the opportunity to make a brief contribution from a long-standing pro-European viewpoint. As hon. Members have said, the European Community of 12 is an imperfect vessel. Any body with such a large membership must have some diffusion of decision-making and accountability, but, at the hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R Johnston) said, there are compensating benefits. I often regard myself as being in the position of Galileo who, after sore torment, reflected on his views on the earth rotating around the sun, is reputed to have muttered, "But yet it does so." It still works in that sense.
    In much the same vein, even though it does not do a perfect job, the Court of Auditors' report adequately delves into some of the murkier parts of the Community budget, and the common agricultural policy in particular. We must still get total European expenditure into some context. It represents only a tiny fraction of the total public spending of member states. Even if the whole lot were to be defrauded or wasted, it would still represent only about one year's increment in national Government expenditure. At the same time, all hon. Members must admit that we still do not know how big is the incidence of fraud, yet we can say the same about domestic crime. We would be able also to say that, just as an increase in reported crime may reflect an increase in reporting, an increase in fraud may reflect improvements in auditing systems. It is difficult to tell which is which.
    I counsel the House against one possible blind alley. From my experience of the workings of the CAP, I know that there must be a strong temptation for auditors to opt for soft targets. Paradoxically, by that I mean those member states which tend to have the best developed administrative systems and the highest traditional levels of compliance. The House will realise that I am hinting at the countries of the northern tier in the Community, including ourselves. Of course, things can and do go wrong with public money in Britain, Germany and France, but but there is some hope for putting them right.
    The position is no longer hopeless south of the Alps. It is possible, for example, to use satellite imaging to count the number of olive trees which evidently grow in such remarkable and heavily subsidised profusion in countries such as Greece and Italy. Hon. Members will appreciate
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    from the experience of milk quotas in the latter—which, after five years, are still not in full operation—that some Community members are more equal than others.
    To put it bluntly, if the European auditors were to nose about in the accounts of cereal intervention stores in the United Kingdom, the worst that they might encounter—and I do not think they would encounter obstruction—would be MAFF, but if they did it in Italy they would be running up against the Mafia.
    There are three levels at which our common objective of achieving a cut in fraud under the common agricultural policy could be achieved. The first is simply to cut off some of the excess public funds going into the agricultural sector and the CAP. That would be a matter of policy changes, and some hon. Members who have spoken have not given sufficient weight to what has happened so far.
    There is a considerable way further to go yet, and I readily admit that in the current year the savings, of about 2 billion ecu, have had a great deal more to do with the American drought than with the measures that have been taken. Those measures have been worth while, but they have not solved the problem.
    It is remarkable this year that, because of the drought, we have got back to the budget as well as to the guidelines. It would be wrong not to acknowledge the efforts that have been made to empty the intervention stores, even if we had to knock out the excess stocks to do it. They are now empty, or much more empty than they were, and it is in the interests of everyone to keep them that way. Intervention must revert to the original concept of a case of last resort and not the regular way of doing business.
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: My hon. Friend does not believe that, does he?
    Mr. Boswell: Yes, I do.
    That is the first line of defence: the auditors' and the Select Committee's strictures. Next, fraud can be diminished if the distinctions between the agricultural regimes applying between member states can be reduced. The point of much that was said about the beef regime in the auditors' report is that people profited from the wide disparities between the internal price of beef and the export price, and therefore the refunds.
    In the same way, traders profit from the large distinctions that exist between the effective prices in member states. Naturally, this is largely connected with the issue of monetary compensatory amounts and border taxes arising from the different rates of the green currencies.
    To some extent the same has applied to special arrangements such as the beef variable premium in the United Kingdom, with the consequential clawback on exports. It has also applied to certain animal health matters. Although there will have to be exceptions in, for example, animal health, I welcome 1992 as a move towards removing further internal occasions for fraud, because it will reduce the differences between member states and the prices farmers in them receive.
    At the same time, a quid pro quo is to have an effective Community action squad in place, and the debate has been interesting in taking that concept further than simply the Commission's internal procedures. It may have to be a police force. I was interested in the exchanges about customs forces because, if 1992 is to mean a withdrawal of

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    Community frontier controls, the logic must be Community spot checks at any point within the area of its responsibilities.
    I commend the efforts of Her Majesty's Government to put some of those controls in place, although I acknowledge the view held by many people—I have some sympathy with it—that they do not go far enough. I am always concerned, when we are considering regulations, that there should be adequate resources for policing. I would add to that adequate resources within the Intervention Board for Agricultural Produce, to account and monitor and to check its own activities. There have been some signs that it has been inadequately staffed.
    The fraud that has been clearly set out in the reports is an extra tax paid by legitimate Community taxpayers such as ourselves to persons unknown. None of us should want to rest in our efforts to remove the occasion for fraud and to provide adequate resources that would make it no longer worth while.
    9.15 pm
    Mr. Dennis Skinner: I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) who I believe could be described as a pro-marketeer, even after all these disastrous years since we had that fateful vote in this place on 28 October 1971. Then we heard the cries of the people like Roy Jenkins, now in the other place, who talked about what would happen when we got into this wonderful market, how we would get economies of scale, how unemployment would fall and everything in the garden would be rosy. He was followed by people like Shirley Poppins and Dr. Death. They were all in the same bed then. They marched into the Lobbies behind the last Tory Prime Minister, taking us into the great nirvana. Everything would be all right for everybody.
    Every so often we have a debate in the House which tells us the bald unvarnished truth. There are a few hon. Members on both sides of the House who refuse to give in on the Common Market. When we read the Court of Auditors report, we see the Common Market with all the veneer stripped off. What do we see? We see fraud on a scale that would not be countenanced in this country. If anything of the kind perpetrated in the Common Market was done here, people would be in gaol.
    From what I have heard today from hon. Members who reckon to be in the know, including the hon. Member for Daventry who is a fanatical pro-marketeer, this thing started when Roy Jenkins was the head of the show. He came back with a big fat pension. What did he do about fraud? All we can gather is that it has grown almost every year, imperceptibly, until, according to the Prime Minister the other day, about £2 billion is being paid by the British taxpayer, to fill the claret glasses of those in the Common Market.
    It is not to feed the Third world, as they said it would he when we went in to the Common Market. It was a grand great strategy to fill the bellies of the spindle-legged kids in Ethiopia, who we saw on our television screens. They do not have two halfpennies to rub together. These great strategists who are now members of the SDP and the SLD and the Liberals and all those in the party that dare not speak its name, told us that the Common Market would solve all those problems. That is why it is in my guts.
    The Common Market has been one of the biggest confidence tricks ever perpetrated in this country in my
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    lifetime. I hear about the £6 billion of fraud. In one newspaper it says £17 billion. They cannot even calculate it. It is like having a train robbery every week. But nobody is getting 30 years inside. Nobody is told, "Hey, just a minute. You cannot run away with money on a scale like that." Just imagine.
    Then we pick up the paper and read about some old-age pensioner in Britain who does not know which way to turn and is caught in Marks and Spencer pinching a tin of pilchards and put inside. A disabled woman in my constituency was chucked in gaol because she could not pay her television licence. Then we hear hon. Members saying that the Common Market is grand and lovely, but turning a blind eye to the fraud on a massive scale.
    Then a Tory has the gall to say, "Oh yes, I have discovered it as well." Sir Henry Plumb rips up his director's card, and God knows what else, because somebody in the higher echelons of the Tory ranks is prepared to open his gills about it. Some of us have been prepared to do that for a long time. The television companies should do something about it. Let us have one television documentary a week on fraud in the Common Market. Why are the television companies not delving into things to find out who the guilty people are?
    I have been told by someone who has been on the continent about £2·5 million-worth of goods being on a ship and, when a crate of beef was opened, chicken offal was found underneath. That is one of the tricks. Some people are making money hand over fist. The Mafia are moving in on a big scale. I am told that there are olive trees that exist only on paper. The authorities have been searching for 3,000 olive trees in Italy for the past three years. We are paying money out on those olive trees day after day. What a scandal. Then the Government have the cheek to talk about surcharging Labour councils, not for fraud but because they are providing goods and services for the elderly and disabled. In their efforts to provide services, councils are going to great lengths, but not fraud, so that the people can have a decent existence.
    The whole thing is ready made for Del Boy and George Cole. All the ingredients for fraud are there. It seems that people who go across to the Common Market cannot fail to make money on the side. So we have not got the jobs or the money for the regions. The other day my hon. Friends told the Prime Minister about the massive pit closures in Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Wales. The Common Market was supposed to resolve all that, but we cannot even get money for the regional policy. Why? If there is £17,000 million of fraud, we are not likely to get money for Wales, for shipbuilding in the north-east or to keep pits open. It is a sad commentary on what has taken place in the 18 years since the vote in 1971.
    Other hon. Members want to speak. We shall come back to this. In the meantime some of us have a job to do—to make it clear to the nation that there will be a body of people here, representing large sections of the population, who believe that it is our duty to expose the fraud, always in the knowledge that the Common Market has been an unmitigated disaster for Britain. Some of us will work night and day until we get out of the mess. We will never surrender the belief that the Common Market has been a complete and utter waste of time and money. On we go, with councils here being attacked because they are providing services. Lambeth, Liverpool and other local

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    authorities are being surcharged, yet the posh bureaucrats can get away with fraud in countries throughout the Common Market.
    I do not know what the chairman of the Tory party will say in reply to the debate. Will he answer one question? Can he give me a guarantee that some of that £17,000 million of fraud has not gone into the Tory party coffers?
    9.23 pm
    Mr. Christopher Gill: While I shall speak less volubly than the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) I do not want the Paymaster General to think that I speak any less passionately about the matters that we are considering.
    My right hon. Friend was nothing if not realistic. He said that the scale of fraud was impossible to quantify. I understood him to mean that not just in respect of beef export refunds or intervention storage costs, but equally in respect of the structural funds.
    The House should not be surprised because, when that amount of money is sloshing around, there will be sharks in its wake who will find some way of getting their teeth into it. The fault must be with the system—and perhaps with us in that we allow it to continue. While I do not have any blind trust in auditors generally, equally I do not share the confidence of Opposition Members who place so much trust in the ability of inspectors to prevent some of the fraud and abuse so apparent in matters such as the food mountains.
    Mr Meale: If, as the hon. Gentleman says, he does not have much trust in inspectors, will he explain how the many cases that have been discovered—such as the tens of thousands of lorries that have crossed boundaries and never even been weighed and the tens of thousands of boxes of so-called beef that when opened were found to contain chicken offal—could have been discovered other than by inspectors' examinations?
    Mr. Gill: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman asked that question. Before I answer it, I should like to say how heartened I was to hear the Paymaster General say that we must put greater emphasis on practical matters. The hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale) has raised a practical point, and I hope that when he listens to my reply he will realise that it comes from a practical person.
    I have spent a lifetime in a very practical industry—the meat industry—which is at the heart of the problems on which the hon. Gentleman questions me. As a result of my experience after a lifetime in the meat industry, I believe that no number of inspectors will ever obviate the fraud and abuse that we are criticising. I wish it were so, but to believe that that would ever be the case would be a triumph of hope over experience.
    Mr. Meale: Will the hon. Gentleman accept that the lesson to be learned from the auditors' report is not to concentrate on the quantity of fraud—which is hard to determine—but to reduce the incidence of it in the future?
    Mr. Gill: I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) said about this matter. At one point he invited the House to comment on whether it thought he was exaggerating. In reply to the intervention
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    of the hon. Member for Mansfield I can say that I did not consider that the hon. Member for Newham, South was exaggerating.
    I was convinced that if the hon. Gentleman had his way and we were able to employ more and better auditors, we would discover more fraud. What we are considering is purely and simply the tip of the iceberg, which is why, inevitably, I have come to the conclusion that it is the system that is at fault—and we are at fault for allowing it to continue.
    I hope that my right hon. Friend is listening and will tell other Ministers that they must concentrate harder to reform or abandon this system which appears to be beyond all reasonable control.
    Why do we have structural funds? I believe that we can create a Europe that will achieve the objectives that we Conservatives believe to be important without the structural funds. I was interested to hear the comments of the hon. Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body), who suggested that we could perhaps do better by repatriating agricultural support to the individual nation. Certainly if we did that, agricultural support would be more intelligible, which would benefit those employed in the industry. As hon. Members will have heard me say in the House before, one of the faults of the present system is that it is completely unintelligible to those who earn their living in the industries that are affected. I also believe that, if it were repatriated, agricultural support would be more closely targeted towards the people whom it is intended to help and who, indeed, need that help. Last but not least—I hope that this is of interest to the hon. Member for Newham, South—it would be easier to account for the funds.
    I fear greatly that the common agricultural policy could be the rock on which the European Community founders. I do not want to see that: I have a vision of a Europe in which we have removed the fiscal, technical and political barriers and have created a bigger, freer market from which we will all derive greater prosperity. I see the structural funds as an entirely unnecessary extravagance, and I urge my right hon. Friend to serve notice that the House cannot and will not tolerate the position described in the report.
    9.35 pm
    Mr. Teddy Taylor: I hope that everyone who has read the report feels physically sick. We see here not only shameful abuse of public funds but grotesque mismanagement and blind inefficiency. Anyone who feels complacent about the report should be shot. It is disgraceful, when we think of the use that could be made of money that is being frauded away.
    What worries me are the attitudes that have been conveyed. My right hon. Friend the Minister said that the reason for the overspend of some 20 per cent. was the "ancien regime", the old system of cash. That system was not exactly ancient; it started in 1984 at Fontainebleau. When my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister returned from Fontainebleau she said, "Do not worry about the extra cash: we have spending controls which are binding on the Council."
    Does my right hon. Friend the Minister remember that? I sat here—we all sat here—and heard: "Forget about the overspending. It is sorted out now because we have binding controls." Sadly, we can forget about that,

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    because the controls have proved utterly hopeless, fraudulent and wrong. The Government simply stood back and watched the Commission using the accountancy device of a 10-month year.
    The Minister, too, has a case to answer, and I hope that some day he will do so. He knows that another device used by the Council and the Commission to get over spending controls was to do something illegal. We transferred spending for butter dumping from the Commission to member states, and the Court of Auditors put in a report saying that that was illegal. The Council did not even discuss that, which was shameful.
    We are kidding ourselves if we try to pretend that the CAP is being reformed. Every time we debate these reports we hear that reform is current. We hear about a fall in the value and size of the mountains. We have simply had a fire clearance sale. It is ludicrous to say that the Commission can do things. The report is full of specific criticisms of the Commission and of what can be done.
    What on earth can we do? When we receive these reports year after year—when the fraud continues and increases, as does the mismanagement—we must admit that nothing can be done within the existing rules. Euro-police are a joke. We know what is going on: it is identified. I have asked the Government time and again about the specific case of the Mafia obtaining funds for the delivery of non-existent fruit juice to NATO headquarters in Palermo. Everyone knows about it, but what is being done? The answer is nothing, apart—we are told—from inquiries.
    There is only one thing that we can do, and that is to decide that our next chance to act is when the Common Market is next bust. It was bust in February 1988, and the Prime Minister gave it another pile of cash. That is when we have a veto—and here again we are told that we have legally binding controls. There were binding controls last time. They did not work then and they will not work now. We must say that the common agricultural policy, by its nature, creates all that nonsense. It is evil spending, because the people who really suffer are the people of the Third world, whom few people care about. If we look at the food aid reports, we can see that they are suffering. It is shameful. Money is allegedly being spent on food to feed the poor, but instead it is going on fraud and mismanagement. We know, too, that we are killing those countries by dumping food at knockdown prices.
    The Government should say that the only answer is to repatriate agriculture to member states. The only way we can do that is by saying no when the EEC is next bust and looking for more resources. The same happened when King Charles had no money. He came to Parliament and asked for cash. We said that he could only have it on certain conditions. If we do not receive that message from the report, but instead we have more inquiries, more meetings and more councils, we all know that it will lead to nothing. We will be kidding ourselves. It is a dreadful report. We should admit the simple fact that the position is a disaster, it is shameful and it is horrible. Our only answer is to commit ourselves to asking for repatriation and the end of the CAP the next time the EEC is bankrupt.
    9.35 pm
    Mr. William Cash: We have heard a catalogue of cases which are quite appalling in their extent and degree. I would like to read out one such example,
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    because there has not been a specific example given which I regard as being quite as bad as this one. At page 74 the report says:
    "the Court notes with concern that one trader, already under investigation for export refund fraud in 1985 in one Member State, was paid some 12 mio ecu in 1986 in another Member State, without any special attention being paid to individual claims, without an investigation of his export refund activities and without a Directive … control. The question thus arises of establishing whether the Commission has at present any system providing it with information on cases of this kind arid allowing it to monitor the Member States' mutual information-supplying activities and react promptly where necessary."
    That is only one example of the kind of thing that is happening.
    The fact is that there have not been sufficient prosecutions. We have actual knowledge in this report of cases of forgery and the like, and—just as, for example, in the area of financial services and the recent attacks on city frauds—there is no way of dealing with the problem.
    I do not believe, however, that we need to do this by a supranational authority. The Paymaster General asked us whether we thought this should be done by supranationality or otherwise. It is my belief—which I believe may also be the view of the Court of Auditors—that what are required are common standards applied throughout the Member States, but with each of the national authorities preserving to themselves the right of prosecution. The question is not whether we have evidence of fraud—I believe that evidence has already been made available—hut I am concerned about the prosecutions which need to be made in order to give effect to the requirement which happens to be associated with proper accounting procedures.
    In a sense, nothing more than that needs to be said on that subject. However, there have been criticisms of the Community about the manner in which the agricultural system operates. I would like to put one other thought to the House. On a recent visit to Brussels, we heard much about the social dimension. I understand that there must be something in the form of a dimension of that kind. However, when in practice the whole of the agricultural policy, or much of it, in relation to certain member states is effectively run as a vehicle for social engineering and is, in fact, a social policy by any other means, then I ask a question of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). Does he agree that it is not right that people—for example, in his mining constituency or in mine—should have difficulties under the existing social fund arrangements on a domestic level, because of the way in which the Community functions?
    Inefficiency, incompetence and an inability to see the wood for the trees lie at the heart of the auditors' report. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) said, people in the Third world are suffering grievously as a result of the problems that drought and the like have visited on them. We have evidence to enable us to remedy most of those problems. I believe that the Government have every intention of doing everything that they can to sort the matter out, and I look to my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General to work as hard as possible to make sure that the matter is remedied forthwith.
    9.40 pm
    Mr. Tony Marlow: There are many horror stories in the auditors' report, but today we have been concentrating on £6 billion of public money which is being expended casually, carelessly and without proper control on the storage of agricultural products and on export refunds for agricultural products. That, as a proportion of the EC budget, is a greater slice than the United Kingdom social security budget. It is without control and out of control. It is maladministered.
    As hon. Members have said, there is no proper measurement of the quantities or qualities of commodities in store. There is no proper means by which to access the volume or nature of goods being transported out of the Community. Somebody may look over the back of a lorry or open the occasional box, but less than 1 per cent. of cargoes is inspected and probably less than one tenth of cargoes are analysed in any proper way.
    It is open season for fraud. No wonder the EC is ripped off by the Mafia and the IRA. No wonder it is ripped off with three different operatives in Italy to register the number of olive trees. Those trees are registered three times over because the co-operatives want to retain their custom. As my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General said, this is a fraudster-friendly rip-off. It is a £6,000 million slush fund which is completely maladministered.
    Why should Britain do something about the problem? In a world of car thieves, the man who does not steal one himself must walk. If everyone else is doing it, we must do it, or we shall be left outside. No individual country will take action.
    If we are to take this matter to the EC and the Council of Ministers, we must realise that some countries are doing well out of such frauds. The chap who drives round in a Rolls-Royce, like my hon. Friend the Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris), will not, if it is stolen—I am not saying that my hon. Friend's is stolen—want to increase the number of CID members looking for those driving round in stolen cars. Human nature being what it is, there is no incentive for any nation state to do anything about the problem.
    If we look at the matter properly and open up what has been happening in the past it will turn out to be a Pandora's box. Governments throughout the EC will be falling like ninepins as all the fraud comes to light and all the horror stories see the light of day.
    My right hon. Friend the Paymaster General has asked for suggestions and solutions. I am sure that he would suggest that we should tighten up procedures and have new guidelines. There is common procedure throughout the EC but it is still operated by the individual countries. The slacker they operate the procedures the more benefits they obtain for their country and we shall not get anywhere.
    We have to render unto Brussels that which belongs to Brussels. I would not want a great deal to belong to Brussels, but it is Community money, these are Community systems and we must allow Community institutions to supervise them. If we leave it to member countries, we shall get nowhere.
    I have one other plea to put to my right hon. Friend. The Audit Commission is universally supported in the House. It is the one non-controversial institution within the European Common Market. It does a good job and we all support it. Let us give it more support, give it the
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    resources, give it the finance, give it the power, so that it can do its job. The House traditionally is concerned with money and with voting supply. Let us see that that money is properly co-ordinated and controlled and let us give the Audit Commission all the support it needs.
    9.46 pm
    Mr. Holland: It is clearly appreciated by hon. Members on both sides of the House that seldom in the history of public expenditure can so much have been taken from so many by so few so fraudulently.
    It is the transparent fraud which scandalises the House. The abuse, however—and many hon. Members seemed to have missed this—has to be dealt with by the intervention agencies of national member states. It is fine for Commission-shooting season to be open—the Commission is to blame for this and for that—but it is the Governments who are responsible for the national intervention agencies. We should not be saying that there is nothing we can do about it. We have a Minister here who is responsible for that national intervention agency. It is there that we need the action; it is from this Minister that we need the action, to get transparency of accounts.
    When will a report on these accounts and what the Government are doing be made to the House? I put several specific questions to the Minister earlier about what the Government are or are not doing to follow up the recommendations in the report. I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House have a right to an answer from the Minister now.
    9.47 pm
    Mr. Brooke: I elicit a degree of hollow laughter on the occasion of these debates, which I have been attending for some years, when I say that we have had an excellent debate, but I repeat those words again tonight. It has been an excellent debate with a series of admirable and valuable contributions.
    The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Mr. Holland) raised a number of matters in his earlier speech and he has come back in his final remarks and quite properly said that it is not simply a matter for the Commission; it is a matter for member states as well. I hope that I showed that I was in accord with that in my earlier remarks and I certainly say that I am now.
    There was an agreeable paradox in the utterances with which the hon. Gentleman opened his speech at about 7.30. He indicated—as the Opposition have done on more than one occasion—the urgency of the need for corrective action against fraud in the Community. He then proposed what was essentially a long-term solution relating to a change in the basis of agricultural policy. He cited the year 2002 in the context of the Coal and Steel Community and said that if we were ready to think about that year in the context of coal and steel we should be thinking about agriculture too. I am perfectly prepared to think into the next century on the subject of agriculture, but it does not seem to me to march entirely with the degree of urgency which the hon. Member expressed.
    Mr. Holland: The Minister is surely aware that I am talking about long-term structural change in the common agricultural policy back to a deficiency payments system which allows food to come in at world prices. If that happens, we do not have this cross-border nonsense that

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    we have seen under the beef regime. The short-term issue is what action the Government will take to investigate this fraud in this country through its own agencies.
    Mr. Brooke: I freely acknowledge that I was to a degree pulling the hon. Member's leg, but there is a difference between the two time frames. However, I take the point that he was making.
    The hon. Member asked me a series of questions about the intervention agency. He would be the first to acknowledge that those questions were dense and detailed. If he will excuse me, I will deal with them in correspondence with him after the event. They were reasonable questions to ask. I made the point earlier—there is reference to it in the amendment, and both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Newham, South, (Mr. Spearing) referred to it—about the working party that is engaged on these matters. It has already met on a number of occasions and, I understand, is due to complete its work in April. We are concerned to put on pressure for a deadline for the conclusion of that work when we come to the ECOFIN meeting on 13 March.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East (Mr. Knowles) mentioned resources and, in particular, resources of people. The Government have always made it clear that they would be prepared to see greater resources of people put to work by the Commission and would not stand in its way, although the Commission has a habit of asking for large groups of people without specifying what it wants them for.
    As to the court, I should be delighted if proposals were put to us—and I totally share with a number of my hon. Friends and other hon. Members their admiration for the Court of Auditors. If proposals were put before the Government they would be looked at reasonably and rationally. In fact, we recently agreed to the appointment of what is known in the Community as an A1, essentially a second permanent secretary on the administrative side, for the Court of Auditors.
    I detected in what my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, East said a feeling that original sin had something to do with the problems with which we are faced—that is something in which all on the Conservative side would have no difficulty in joining him. He referred to the criticism by the court of the United Kingdom and Ireland for not making scrutiny reports available to the Court of Auditors. In this area we certainly welcome the court's findings.
    On the specific criticisms of the United Kingdom, I note that we have met the requirements of the directive and that our instructions for carrying out scrutinies are praised in paragraph 4.67 of the report. We maintain records of scrutinies and are disappointed that the court should draw conclusions on our coverage of scrutinies, based on a small sample. We are considering positively the court's suggestions for improving the quality of scrutinies.
    The hon. Member for Newham, South also mentioned the quality of personnel. I am delighted to say, at least with regard to customs and excise, that nearly half the people in customs and excise engaged on this work in the United Kingdom have received or are receiving in the current year special training in what to look for in this area.
    The hon. Gentleman spoke of safeguards—I had earlier spoken of simplification. There is not much between us there. He also asked about the built-in controls over intervention storage. He was perhaps blurring the line
    496
    between fraud and mismanagement, but I would not dispute his point about inadequacy of those controls. It is possibly in recognition of this point, that, as I saidearlier, a working group is now urgently considering the position.
    Examination rates for export refunds are as low as 1 per cent. in some cases, and we fully support the Commission's 1987 proposal which would provide for a 5 per cent. physical inspection target. The United Kingdom's current target is 7 per cent., and at ECOFIN I shall press the Commission to adopt the 1987 proposal in the light of the court's recommendations.
    The hon. Gentleman also raised the subject of the Intervention Board for Agricultural Produce and physical checks. The IBAP has recently introduced a rolling programme of stocktaking for beef and butter in intervention stocks. Cereal stocks are inspected annually, or more frequently if trouble is suspected, for both quantity and quality. There is also an independent programme of physical checks carried out by the National Audit Office. In addition, the IBAP's contractual arrangements with cold store operators have recently been revised to ensure that the operators shoulder a greater share of the responsibility for loss or deterioration. It is worth noting that the IBAP's arrangements for controlling cereals intervention were complimented by the Commission in its report last year.
    If the hon. Member for Newham, South has in mind a particular case of denial of information to the Court of Auditors and would care to write to me about it, I should, of course, investigate and reply as soon as possible.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Holland with Boston (Sir R. Body) referred to the Serious Fraud Office and to Interpol. I am delighted to report that the director of the Serious Fraud Office, Mr. John Wood, was very well received when he spoke at the European Parliament's budgetary control committee hearings in Brussels in January. There was also an intervention from Interpol.
    As to the intervention in that speech by the hon. Member for Mansfield (Mr. Meale) on the subject of frontiers and the Single European Act, it is the very possibilities of fraud within the clearing-house mechanism that make the Government so determined that that mechanism should not be brought in.
    The hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn and Lochaber (Sir R. Johnston) vividly remembers the debate in the middle of the night last year, as I do because the second of the two days—the day into which we moved—was my birthday. The hon. Gentleman referred to what he described as so-called additionality. It is an extraordinary claim that the way in which the United Kingdom treats structural fund receipts is a form of fraud. That is what I understood the hon. Gentleman to be saying. I am afraid that it is a terminological inexactitude of the highest order, and it needs correction. There is no question of the United Kingdom structural fund receipts being used for anything, other than their intended purpose. The hon. Gentleman referred to the Chancellor. I think I detected some exegesis of what the Chancellor had said. However, we shall have a word about it afterwards because I think that there may have been a misunderstanding.
    As for why the United Kingdom did not vote for the proposal put forward by my noble Friend Lord Cockfield, the United Kingdom and all other member states took the view that it would not be help, in the pursuit of fraud, to permit Commission officials to conduct investigations, in their own right, in member states. The practical difficulties

    497
    would be considerable, and it would be necessary for the officials involved to understand, and to comply with, national criminal law. In addition, there is the possibility that member states' own investigations could be jeopardised.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell) made a balanced speech and brought in, for the first time, the subject of olive oil, which then returned to the debate. I am glad to say that the account on olive oil—paragraphs 4.107 to 4.114—is a great deal more favourable than those in previous reports were, and I have some sense of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) recycling his material. He did, however, do the House a service in injecting some passion into the debate, from which it gained, even if some of his material had been recycled.
    The hon. Gentleman raised the subject of the £17 billion that had been mentioned in The Guardian. As the hon. Member for Vauxhall rightly pointed out, that sum was over eight years. It is an interesting question where the figure comes from. My own calculation is that it is probably 20 per cent. of the FEOGA expenditure over the last eight years. Then one asks where the 20 per cent. comes from. I think it comes from an analysis by Professor Tiedemenn, of Freiburg university, for the European Parliament budget committee in 1987, based on Swedish-Finnish frontier fraud and a previous study. It is a demonstration that in this unquantified area the figures are uncertain.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Mr. Gill) asked for reform of the system. I refer again to what I said about simplification. What he said about the CAP marches entirely with the Government's views in terms of what they were seeking to do about the future financing proposals.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) referred to 1984. I did not arrive in my present position until November 1985, but I would be the first to admit that my hon. Friend drew my attention to some of the failings of the Fontainebleau arrangements as soon as I arrived. It is not simply that we had a fire clearance sale. I hope that he will be fair enough to acknowledge that the reduction in intervention stocks is due not just to sales of existing stocks but is the result of policies that have reduced surpluses and, therefore, the quantities that are brought into intervention.
    My hon. Friend came back to the 10-month issue—one of which we have had exchanges before. The issue of NATO commodities in Palermo, which has not actually been the subject of a Court of Auditors report—it goes back to a press report in February 1987—has been somewhat difficult to pursue, but I hope to write to my hon. Friend very shortly giving the outcome of my researches.
    My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) asked that there should be prosecutions. The whole House will join him in wishing to see that happen and that example served. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, North (Mr. Marlow) praised the Court of Auditors. I look forward to sending the report of this debate to Mr. Mart, president of the court.
    We have debated for three hours before 10 o'clock rather than having three hours of debate after 10 o'clock. A number of people have asked why we should do
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    something about these matters. The answer is, because of the corrosive effect that fraud has on all our institutions. The whole House has demonstrated that it is against fraud, and I shall carry that message to ECOFIN.
    Question put, That the amendment be made:
    The House divided: Ayes 18, Noes 97.

    Division No. 115]

    [10 pm

    AYES

    Bell, Stuart

    Meale, Alan

    Buckley, George J.

    Mowlam, Marjorie

    Cunliffe, Lawrence

    Nellist, Dave

    Dixon, Don

    Pike, Peter L.

    Foster, Derek

    Skinner, Dennis

    Haynes, Frank

    Spearing, Nigel

    Hinchliffe, David

    Wray, Jimmy

    Holland, Stuart

    Lofthouse, Geoffrey

    Tellers for the Ayes:

    McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

    Mr. Ray Powell and

    Mahon, Mrs Alice

    Mr. Harry Barnes.

    NOES

    Alexander, Richard

    Knapman, Roger

    Amess, David

    Knowles, Michael

    Amos, Alan

    Lang, Ian

    Arbuthnot, James

    Latham, Michael

    Arnold, Jacques (Gravesham)

    Lawrence, Ivan

    Ashby, David

    Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

    Atkinson, David

    Lightbown, David

    Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

    Lyell, Sir Nicholas

    Boswell, Tim

    MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

    Bottomley, Peter

    Mans, Keith

    Bowis, John

    Mawhinney, Dr Brian

    Brazier, Julian

    Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

    Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

    Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

    Browne, John (Winchester)

    Miller, Sir Hal

    Burt, Alistair

    Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

    Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

    Mitchell, Sir David

    Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

    Moynihan, Hon Colin

    Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

    Neubert, Michael

    Cash, William

    Nicholson, David (Taunton)

    Chapman, Sydney

    Norris, Steve

    Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

    Patnick, Irvine

    Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

    Portillo, Michael

    Currie, Mrs Edwina

    Rhodes James, Robert

    Durant, Tony

    Rowe, Andrew

    Fallon, Michael

    Sackville, Hon Tom

    Fishburn, John Dudley

    Shaw, David (Dover)

    Fookes, Dame Janet

    Sims, Roger

    Forman, Nigel

    Steel, Rt Hon David

    Forth, Eric

    Stern, Michael

    Franks, Cecil

    Stevens, Lewis

    Freeman, Roger

    Stradling Thomas, Sir John

    French, Douglas

    Summerson, Hugo

    Garel-Jones, Tristan

    Taylor, Ian (Esher)

    Gill, Christopher

    Taylor, John M (Solihull)

    Glyn, Dr Alan

    Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

    Gorst, John

    Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

    Ground, Patrick

    Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

    Harris, David

    Thurnham, Peter

    Heathcoat-Amory, David

    Waddington, Rt Hon David

    Heddle, John

    Wallace, James

    Hind, Kenneth

    Waller, Gary

    Holt, Richard

    Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

    Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

    Wheeler, John

    Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

    Widdecombe, Ann

    Hunt, David (Wirral W)

    Wilkinson, John

    Hunt, John (Ravensbourne)

    Wilshire, David

    Irvine, Michael

    Jack, Michael

    Tellers for the Noes:

    Janman, Tim

    Mr. Alan Howarth and

    Johnston, Sir Russell

    Mr. David Maclean.

    Jopling, Rt Hon Michael

    Question accordingly negatived.
    Main Question put and agreed to.
    Resolved,

    499
    That this House takes note of European Community Documents Nos. 9908/88 on the Annual report of the Court of Auditors of the European Communities for 1987, 8502/88 on the management and control of public storage of agricultural products and 9945/88 on the accounting and financial management of the European Coal and Steel Community; and approves the Government's efforts to press for value for money in Community expenditure.

    Court of Auditors

      CIVIL AVIATION (AIR NAVIGATION CHARGES) BILL [Lords]
      Order for Second Reading read.
      Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 90 (Second Reading Committees), That the Bill be now read a Second time.
      Question agreed to.
      Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committtal of Bills).

      NATIONAL MARITIME MUSEUM BILL [Lords]
      Order for Second Reading read.
      Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 90 (Second Reading Committees), That the Bill be now read a Second time.
      Question agreed to.
      Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).

      PESTICIDES (FEES AND ENFORCEMENT) BILL
      Order for Second Reading read.
      Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 90 (Second Reading Committees), That the Bill be now read a Second time.
      Question agreed to.
      Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).

    WAYS AND MEANS

      PESTICIDES (FEES AND ENFORCEMENT) BILL
      Resolved,
      That in the Pesticides (Fees and Enforcement) Bill it is expedient to include provision—
      (1) authorising either of the Ministers to require payments by such persons has he considers appropriate in respect—

      (a) of the balance not covered by fees of the cost of handling and evaluating applications for approval of pesticides under Part III of the 1985 Act;

      (b) of the collection of information under section 16(11) of that Act and the processing of information supplied under subsection; and

      (c) of monitoring the effect of the use of pesticides in the United Kingdom; and

      (2) authorising the payment into the Consolidated Fund of any increase attributable to the provision of the Bill substituting a new section for section 18 of the 1985 Act in the sums falling to be paid into that Fund under section 23(3) of that Act; and in this Resolution—
      "the 1985 Act" means the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985;
      "fees" means fees paid by applicants for the approval of pesticides under Part III of the 1985 Act on making their applications, as a contribution to the cost of handling and evaluating them; and
      500
      "the Ministers" and "pesticides" have the same meanings as in the 1985 Act.—[Mr. John M. Taylor.].

    BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
    Ordered.
    That, at the next sitting of the House at which a day may be allotted pursuant to Standing Order No. 52 (Consideration of estimates), paragraphs (1) and (3) of Standing Order No 53 (Questions on voting of estimates, &c.) shall apply to the Motion in the name of Mr. Secretary Younger relating to Estimates, 1988–89 (Army), Vote A as if the words `for the coming financial year' in lines 5 and 21 were omitted.—[Mr. Johm M. Taylor.]

    PROCEDURE
    Ordered,
    That Mr. Harry Ewing be discharged from the Select Committee on Procedure and Mr. David Winnick be added to the Committee.—[Mr. David Hunt.]

  PETITION

    Sewage Disposal (Ulverston)
    10.12 pm
    Mr. Michael Jopling: I have the proud honour to present a petition to the House, which has been signed by no fewer than 3,930 residents of the Cartmel peninsula living in the Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency. I should like to tell the House what it says:
    To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled. The humble petition of residents of Westmorland and Lonsdale constituency, sheweth that the undersigned are concerned that the following schemes proposed by the North West Authority … to discharge raw sewage from Blackpool and surrounding areas to a new long sea outfall to the Lune Deep at the entrance of Morecambe Bay, and … to reroute Ulverston's sewage to a new sea outfall, will adversely affect the health and recreational enjoyment of both residents and tourist, the region's ecology and the livelihood of the Bay's fishermen.
    Wherefore, your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House do safeguard the above areas of concern by causing a public inquiry to be held, at which the matter would be fully investigated and all options, including full inland treatment, considered.
    And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray.
    The petition runs in conjunction with the petition currently in the hands of my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Mr. Franks) signed by no fewer than 3,370 residents of Ulverston and the surrounding area in the constituency of Barrow and Furness.
    As an amendment to the petition, may I say, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that in respect of the Ulverston outlet my hon. Friend and I—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman cannot say that on this occasion, although he can present his own petition.
    Mr. Jopling: I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I think that my remarks are unnecessary because most of our constituents know that we strongly support a public inquiry in respect of the Ulverston outlets.
    To lie upon the Table.

  National Health Service (Consultants)
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Maclean.]
  10.14 pm
  Mr. Stuart Bell: This is the first occasion that the Cleveland child abuse crisis has been brought to the Floor of the House other than through parliamentary statements and questions. I have taken the opportunity of raising the matter on an Adjournment debate because of the deep concern that my constituents feel at the turn of events following the publication of the consultants' statement in The Guardian. It is a matter of regret to me and to my constituents that once again the consultants should feel that they ought to prove their innocence on matters which have been through the courts. The motion arises out of the action of 11 paediatricians, who submitted a statement to The Guardian newspaper, among others, in which they stated:
  "In our opinion, the majority (quite possibly 90 per cent.) of the children were abused, and the paediatricians' diagnoses were accurate to a far higher degree than the public realise."
  The sequence of events that led to the submission of that statement will not be time-consuming in relation to the role of the consultants within the NHS. Towards the end of last year, at a specialists' sub-committee of the Northern regional health authority, the future of Dr. Marietta Higgs was discussed. It was decided that a recommendation should be made to the regional health authority that Dr. Higgs be reinstated in Cleveland. Some of the consultant paediatricians at that meeting had come from as far away as Carlisle, let alone Cleveland. Some of the Tyneside consultants also formed part of a support group organised in the new year under the guidance of Dr. David Scott and his wife Anne. It transpired later that Dr. David Scott had worked with Dr. Higgs on a study of cot deaths, and that his wife Anne had been a former secretary to Dr. Higgs in that study.
  That support group met early in February and a draft letter of support for Dr. Higgs was prepared and submitted by Dr. Nigel Speight, a consultant paediatrician at Dryburn hospital in Durham. Dr. Speight has long been an avowed supporter of Dr. Higgs. He telephoned me in her support when the crisis began, and invited himself to a television broadcast on the extent of the crisis. However, he did not give evidence to the Butler-Sloss inquiry.
  In Cleveland in January, the Communist party got into the support act when it called a meeting in Middlesbrough to discuss the Cleveland child abuse crisis, although the crisis was now fading from public memory. After that meeting, addressed by another ardent supporter of Dr. Higgs, Ms. Bea Campbell, who subscribes to the view that one in four of the population are abused as children, it was decided to set up a support group similar to the one in Newcastle, again with the avowed purpose of reinstating Dr. Higgs in her old neonatological job at Middlesbrough general hospital.
  The draft letter of Dr. Speight found its way to Middlesbrough and was discussed at a meeting of consultant paediatricians on 15 February. Dr. Geoffrey Wyatt, who was banned from child sexual abuse cases by the regional health authority following his involvement in the Cleveland child abuse crisis, and who accepted that ban as well as a reprimand and warning as to his future conduct, presented on an overhead projector facts and
  502
  figures which seemed to justify the diagnoses that he and Dr. Higgs had made at Middlesbrough general hospital. Apparently, Dr. Wyatt proposes to publish those facts and figures in an article in The Lancet. The meeting discussed the statement of Dr. Speight, made some deletions, principally in reference to police surgeons, and agreed its onward submission to the press. The purpose of the letter was contained in its last paragraph:
  "Following the crisis in Cleveland, Doctor Higgs has been seconded to look after babies at the Princess Mary hospital, a university teaching hospital in Newcastle. We strongly support and would welcome the return of Doctor Higgs to her former post in Cleveland where she was employed with special skills for the care of sick newborn babies."
  Pressure on the Northern region health authority, as the employer of Dr. Higgs, has become urgent, in view of the allegation that her secondment to the Princess Mary hospital in Newcastle was about to end, and the fact that a paediatric post was about to be advertised for Cleveland by way of an advance appointment to cover the future retirement of Dr. Hilary Grant, the senior consultant paediatrician.
  In any event, Dr. Higgs is still on the books as a consultant paediatrician at Middlesbrough, and her work has been carried on by locums. There were also court proceedings which I do not intend to cover tonight.
  The statement was supposed to be a letter signed by all 11 consultants from Tyneside and Cleveland, but such was the haste to get it out that signatures could not be gathered. The author of the statement had already left for Khartoum. The statement was sent out by Val Hall, who turned out to be Mrs. Dr. Geoffrey Wyatt, although Dr. Hall has since said that she was merely the secretary. In fact, her role has been greater than that. Dr. Hall is also a member of the Cleveland support group, and she has been in touch with several members of Parliament, seeking their support for Dr. Higgs.
  There is nothing reprehensible in any of those activities, except the deceit and dissimulation that has accompanied them in the failure to declare an interest. There was, of course, an anguished reaction by parents and children who were innocently caught up in the crisis.
  It might be convenient to state the number of children who were involved. About 121 children were diagnosed as allegedly having been sexually abused. Of those 121 children, 98 were returned home by the courts. There were eight arrests but only four successful prosecutions. Two men hanged themselves in Durham gaol, and in two other cases in which the only evidence was the diagnostic technique of reflex anal dilatation, the charges were dropped. It is against that tide of the court decision that the paediatricians, in their statement to The Guardian and elsewhere, seek to swim.
  Hardly surprisingly, parents and children alike, settling down about 18 months after the crisis, were traumatised by the sudden appearance of the consultants' statement which was promptly picked up and relayed throughout the media. Some children immediately asked their parents whether it meant that they had to go back to Cleveland hospitals. Mothers and children, too, had nightmares. Children were afraid to return to school on the Monday morning after the mid-term holiday, because they feared that someone would take them away. There was dread and horror that the cycle of repeated physical examinations and disclosure work was back again.
  There is no new evidence available to the consultant paediatricians that was not in the hands of the Butler Sloss

  503
  inquiry, to the medical assessor appointed to that inquiry, or to the courts that dealt with the cases. When I called him on this specific point, the author of the letter, Dr. Nigel Speight, accepted that he had seen no medical records. The evidence that was available to the courts in relation to the 98 children was weighed carefully by High Court judges, magistrates and registrars alike, who preferred the alternative available medical evidence which concluded that the children had not been abused.
  The consultant paediatricians were not entitled to bring new grief and anguish to the innocent families of Cleveland. The question for the Minister to weigh is this: how can they justify their conduct, ethically and professionally? Several of the Cleveland consultants who agreed the statements under their name are still in charge of children who were caught up in the crisis. After publication of the statement in The Guardian, many parents were encouraged to go to those consultants, and everyone who did so was assured that they were not included in the 90 per cent.
  The most appropriate statement of the so-called evidence was given by Dr. Douglas Hague, the regional general manager of the health authority. On local television, he said:
  "The precise figure will never be known partly because of the weakness of the medically recorded evidence."
  That weakness was revealed even by the signatories to the statement that appeared in The Guardian. Thus, Dr. Peter Morrell and Dr. Marietta Higgs examined a seven-year-old girl at Middlesbrough general hospital on 5 May 1987. They diagnosed vaginal and anal abuse, but the minutes of a case review meeting held on Friday 5 June 1987 show that Dr. Peter Morrell pointed out that there was no conclusive medical evidence of sexual abuse. It is to the credit of Dr. Peter Morrell that he changed his mind.
  Dr. Nyint Oo, another signatory to the statement, along with his co-signatory, Dr. Diaz, examined three children aged five, seven and 10 who had been diagnosed by Dr. Higgs as having been sexually abused. This examination took place at 10 o'clock on the evening of Wednesday 24 June. According to the parents of the children, they were roused from their hospital beds for examination. Both Dr. Oo and Dr. Diaz disagreed with the diagnosis of Dr. Higgs, and all three children were allowed home.
  Another signatory, Dr. Caroline McCowen, could not agree with Dr. Higgs' diagnoses after an examination which she made on 10 July 1987 on three children, all girls, aged 10, eight and two, and those three children were subsequently reunited by the courts with their parents.
  Are these now the children whom the consultants say were being abused all along? To their credit, those consultants, along with three others in Cleveland, have since offered their apologies to the families for the distress that they had caused. It is a pity that they did not go further and retract their 90 per cent. statement, leaving that task to the regional general manager of the northern regional health authority and the Minister of State, Department of Health.
  The families, however, cannot leave matters as they stand. They cannot leave their future in the hands of irresponsible statements. They have waited to hear what the Paediatric Association might have said about the letter. There has been a deafening silence. Sadly, the paediatricians—the consultants in this matter of the letter—exercised power without responsibility. Fortunately, I
  504
  have 21 letters in support of the parents and the children from other doctors and consultants throughout the country which rectify the balance, but the parents have seen the destruction of childhood innocence in their children by repeated medical examinations and disclosure sessions. Now they are seeing the steady destruction of what is left of their children's childhood.
  Inquiries are now being made about what legal action can be taken against the consultants. I have therefore spoken on behalf of the families with a firm of solicitors, and submissions will now be prepared by the families with a view to bringing that legal action.
  Thirteen families with 25 children have also begun, or are about to begin, legal proceedings for negligence and assault against those whom they hold responsible for depriving them of their children and their children of their innocence. The consultant paediatricians may feel that they can express their opinions through the press. The families will express theirs through the courts.
  I have a series of questions for the Minister. As he may know, appointments to the rank of consultant are made pursuant to Statutory Instrument 1982 No. 276. Is he satisfied that the procedures for these appointments remain adequate? Equally, under present service contracts, once a consultant has a job description, it may change radically without the knowledge of the health authority as employer. Is that sensible?
  A procedure has been adopted by the northern region by which all new consultants are told six months after commencing duty to ask whether their provisional timetable has changed in practice. Should that procedure be adopted throughout the country? Consultants may also, in accordance with a Government circular, be considered in a disciplinary framework by their employing authority where there is concern about them in any of four main areas—professional competence, professional conduct, personal conduct and contractual commitments. Were the consultants, in signing their statement to The Guardian, in breach of discipline in relation to their contract of service?
  The Government circular to which I refer is HM(61)(112), which sets out the formal disciplinary action open to an employing authority when allegations have been made which involve professional incompetence or professional misconduct. Has the chairman of the Northern regional health authority looked at the statement in the press as a breach of discipline?
  The evidence of Mr. Liam Donaldson, the regional medical officer to the Northern region at the Butler-Sloss inquiry was:
  "There is currently considerable dissatisfaction on the part of the many employing authorities that this is the only formal mechanism in existence for serious disciplinary action against consultant medical staff in respect of professional incompetence or misconduct. It is lengthy, extremely expensive, highly legalistic, the burden of proof required is much higher than with disciplinary procedures involving other grades of staff and as a result it is seldom used."
  Can the Minister state whether he believes that this is satisfactory for a disciplinary procedure within the Health Service dealing with consultants?
  Mr. Donaldson also said that the lack of a formal procedure for matters which, although serious, are not serious enough to result in dismissal, has led to national discussions between the profession, the DSS and the NHS to try to resolve this matter. Where are these discussions? What stage have they reached? What progresss has been

  505
  made in making consultants more accountable to their employers? Do they have an automatic right of appeal to the Secretary of State upon dismissal? If so, is it right?
  Am Ito understand that a warning that was given to the consultants who signed the statement by Sir Bernard Tomlinson, the chairman of the regional health authority, falls within the disciplinary framework?
  Mr. Richard Holt: My constituents, who live in the south of Middlesbrough, wish to be entirely associated with the remarks of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell). When investigating the conditions of consultants, I was amazed to find that they have an automatic right of appeal, and that thereafter no action is taken against any consultant until he reaches retirement age. I was given to understand that the longest period that anyone has been in that position is 17 years.
  Mr. Bell: I am grateful for the hon. Member's intervention. He and I have our political differences, but both of us have accepted that it was not a political problem that divided us. This has united our constituents. Throughout the crisis in Cleveland the hon. Gentleman has been a steadfast supporter. It should be placed on record that he has steadfastly looked after those constituents who came to him with their problems.
  My other question for the Minister concerns the Northern regional health authority, among others, being the employer of the consultants. What was clear in the Cleveland child abuse crisis was the distance between the consultants who were employed by the region and the district authority. It appears that the district authority had no control over the consultants, other than to provide hospital accommodation and facilities, and patients through the local health service. It seemed to me, and to others, that a great gulf was created because of that lack of accountability and remoteness from the health authority where they worked. It seemed appropriate to me that it might be better if they were employed in future within the local service and be responsive to the health district.
  It has struck all concerned in the matter that we render homage, in a sense, to consultants within the Health Service for their work, and we respect the norms within which they work, and their efforts, but there must be accountability, as there is for the rest of us. The statement to The Guardian went far beyond what consultants ought to have said. At least five of those consultants had no knowledge of events in Cleveland. One of them who signed the statement had come to the area only a year before, and had no personal knowledge of the situation. The other six had personal knowledge from their files, and were going far beyond their duty as consultants in revealing what was in those files.
  I shall be most grateful to the Minister for any response that he can give me.
  10.34 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Roger Freeman): I congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) on being successful in the selection for the Adjournment debate and on the clarity and forcefulness with which he has presented his case to the House. I will try to answer all his questions in the time
  506
  available. If I do not cover them all, I assure him that I and officials in the Department of Health will study the record of the debate and, if necessary, I will write to him.
  I also welcome the intervention of my hon. Friend the Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt). I know of his deep concern on behalf of his constituents in the case being debated. I also welcome my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, South (Mrs. Currie). I know of her lasting and great concern about the events that happened in Cleveland. Her presence is clear evidence of her continuing interest.
  I agree with the hon. Member for Middlesbrough that the whole business is a sorry, depressing and tragic tale, not least for the children. In a sense it is a tragedy that there should still be uncertainty and concern in the north-east about the events that occurred some time ago.
  Since the subject of our debate is the role of consultants in the National Health Service, it may be helpful if I say a little about their rights and their responsibilities; rights and responsibilities are, of course, closely linked.
  Consultants are the main senior medical staff of the hospital service, and they have individually a very considerable degree of clinical autonomy. Each consultant who sees patients is responsible for the clinical care of those people, adults or children. Consultants alone are responsible for their clinical decisions. But as members of the medical profession they are guided by the standards set by their profession. They do, of course, work within a contract with their employing authority, which may include a job description.
  Consultants are responsible for the resources they use, and the Government are taking steps, such as the resources management initiative, to ensure they have the information they need. One such experiment is taking place at the Freeman hospital in Newcastle. The medical profession has taken its own initiatives in developing medical audit, that is the systematic, critical analysis of the quality of medical care. In the recent White Paper on the National Health Service we have welcomed these initiatives and set out our proposal to extend medical audit throughout the Health Service.
  In answer to the hon. Gentleman's first question, let me say that consultants are entitled, under the nationally agreed terms and conditions of hospital medical staff, to publish books and articles and write letters to the press and to deliver lectures and speeches without the prior consent of their employing authority. As always, however, the right to speak out must be balanced by responsibility for the consequences of what is said.
  I hope that the 11 consultant paediatricians in Cleveland gave adequate consideration to that responsibility before deciding to write to The Guardian as they did. The events of the crisis in Cleveland, so well documented by Lord Justice Butler-Sloss, seriously damaged public confidence in the paediatric and child protection services in Cleveland. Much good work has been done since to re-establish faith in the quality and sensitivity of those services, and I can only regret anything which might serve to undermine that.
  There are, of course, limits to the freedom of action of consultants. Naturally, I cannot make specific comment on the particular consultants mentioned by the hon. Gentleman. He will realise and understand that the whole question of disciplinary action in individual cases is a matter for the employing authority. The Department of Health does not employ consultants it is regional health

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  authorities, designated teaching district health authorities and special health authorities who are the employers. It is for them to determine what course of action to follow, taking account of published depart-mental guidance and the prescribed terms and conditions of service of senior hospital medical and dental staff.
  In broad terms, disciplinary proceedings may be initiated for reasons of personal misconduct, professional misconduct or professional incompetence. Under the terms and conditions of service of senior hospital medical and dental staff, there is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Langhaurgh indicated, a right of appeal to the Secretary of State against a decision of the employing authority to dismiss.
  Any proceedings relating to the subject of this debate are the responsibility of the Northern regional health authority. However, I can tell the House that the chairman of the NRHA deplored the intervention by the 11 consultants when he issued a statement on 23 February. Further, I understand that the regional general manager and regional medical officer have between them spoken to most of the consultants individually and reminded them of their wider responsibilities not to undermine public confidence in paediatric services.
  In 1987, a working party was set up with representatives of the Health Departments, the NHS and the professions to recommend possible improvements in disciplinary procedures. The White Paper "Working for Patients" and the subsequent working paper on consultants indicated our intention to open negotiations with the profession on the basis of proposals contained in the report of the joint working party. The changes should result in improved procedures which will, for example, enable cases to be dealt with more quickly, benefiting both the health authority and the doctor concerned.
  The hon. Member for Middlesbrough raised questions about how contracts were held and about the relative roles of districts and regions. As he knows, the contracts for most of the consultants who signed the letter to The Guardian are, I understand, held by the regions—as are most consultants' contracts, even though the consultants are employed by, and work in, individual health districts.
  As is evident from the White Paper, we do not propose that contracts should be held other than by the regions. However, we propose two important reforms. First, the district health authority will play a far greater role in deciding who is appointed and which job is to be filled.
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  Secondly, we intend that the consultants' job description should be prepared with the full co-operation and involvement of the district health authority and should be regularly reviewed.
  Therefore, the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friends will appreciate that we propose a fundamental change in the way that consultants work in the Health Service. Although their contracts will still be legally held in the region, they will be managed by the district health authorities.
  The hon. Gentleman referred to the claim by some consultant paediatricians in the north-east that "in their opinion" a majority, possibly over 90 per cent., of the children were abused. I re-read parts of her report this afternoon, and Lord Justice Butler-Sloss, after a thorough and detailed inquiry, did not reach conclusions on this matter, I think for good reasons.
  Child sexual abuse presents great difficulties in identification and diagnosis. Particularly when it takes place within families—and unpalatable though it is, we have to recognise that it does happen within families—it is surrounded by secrecy and deception. Often the physical signs are ambiguous or non-existent. Cases where the investigating agencies are confident abuse has occurred may not be taken to court, because the perpetrator cannot be identified, or because the uncorroborated evidence of child witnesses is unlikely to secure a conviction in criminal proceedings.
  It was always unlikely that a definitive verdict on each of the Cleveland cases could ever be reached, and it is clearly impossible now. Continual debate over numbers is likely to prove fruitless. May I further comment on the consultants' statement that they believed, to quote from The Guardian
  "that some genuinely abused children have been wrongly returned home by the Courts".
  I regret this criticism of matters appropriately dealt with by the courts.
  I share with Lord Justice Butler-Sloss the hope that the troubles of 1987 will recede for all those concerned with the protection of children in Cleveland, and that they will work together to tackle the exacting task of helping children who are subject to sexual abuse to the lasting benefit of the children, the families and their community.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Adjourned accordingly at seventeen minutes to Eleven o'clock.