Commons Sitting of 19 December 1990

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

  MIDLAND METRO (PENALTY FARES) BILL [Lords]
  Order for consideration read.
  To be considered on Thursday 17 January.
  Dr. Godman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: Before we start?
  Dr. Godman: Before we start. Why is not a single Scottish Minister at the Fisheries Council meeting in Brussels today?
  Mr. Speaker: If we ever get to that question perhaps we can deal with the issue.

Oral Answers to Questions
  SCOTLAND

    Agriculture
    Mr. Andrew Welsh: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he last met the president of the National Farmers Union to discuss the future of the Scottish agricultural industry.
    The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Mr. Michael Forsyth): My right hon. Friend has not yet had an opportunity to meet the president of the National Farmers Union of Scotland, but looks forward to doing so.
    Mr. Welsh: Is the Minister aware of the massive cash flow crisis facing the hill, upland and livestock sectors? The income from cast ewes has fallen by 50 per cent. in the past year, while income from cattle is down by £50 and the income from sheep has fallen by £5 per head. That is happening at a time of massive input cost increases, high inflation and high interest rates. When will the Minister announce the livestock premium and will it be adequate to meet those problems? Will he ensure an immediate and maximum payment of premiums so that enough cash is available to allow the industry to overcome its major cash flow crisis?
    Mr. Forsyth: My noble Friend Lord Strathclyde, who is attending the Fisheries Council meeting in Brussels, is well aware of the problem to which the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we hope to be able to announce the levels of support shortly. The support given to the livestock sector in the
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    hills and uplands of Scotland amounts to £100 million, which is testimony to the importance that the Government attach to those areas of agriculture.
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware from his constituency of the crisis among livestock producers in the hill and upland areas. We are nearly at the end of the year and the new rates of hill livestock compensatory allowance come into effect on 1 January. When will we know those new rates? Can my hon. Friend assure me that they will be substantially increased—I hope to the maximum allowed under the European rules?
    Mr. Forsyth: I assure my right hon. Friend that we shall make an announcement as soon as possible.
    Mr. Wilson: Does the junior Minister share the view of his ministerial colleague, Lord Strathclyde, so crudely expressed on Scottish Television last week, that any Scottish farmers in financial difficulties now are there through their own business incompetence? Is not that an insufferably complacent and offensive statement for a Minister to make? Does he share Lord Strathclyde's other remarkable opinion that Scotland does not need a permanent presence in Brussels because those involved would be more interested in junketing and self-publicity than in job creation, or does the Minister accept the rather more intelligent opinion of the Scottish Development Agency on that matter?
    Mr. Forsyth: I am confident that my noble Friend will do everything possible to support our farmers. The support that the Government have given to those in the uplands areas and to the hill farmers is testimony to the seriousness with which we view the matter.
    The way forward for farming in Scotland involves an intelligent approach to the difficult problems—an approach which my noble Friend is applying. Judging from the tone and tenor of the hon. Gentleman's question, however, he has yet to address himself to those problems. We look forward to hearing about Labour party policy in that regard.

    Local Government Finance
    Mr. Home Robertson: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the Government's review of the poll tax system in Scotland.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the review of the community charge.
    Mr. Harry Ewing: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on the future of the poll tax in Scotland.
    The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Ian Lang): My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has announced the Government's intention to conduct a careful and fundamental review of the community charge arrangements in Scotland, England and Wales.
    Mr. Home Robertson: Unlike the Secretary of State for the Environment, the Secretary of State for Scotland has been absolutely consistent on the poll tax. He voted for it no fewer than 35 times on the Floor of the House and in Committee, despite our warnings that that hated tax would be as unworkable as it is unjust. The right hon.

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    Gentleman has since described it as a remarkable success story. Will he now admit that there can be no compromises on the poll tax, whatever minor parties might say, and that it must go as soon as possible? What is more, people in Scotland should be compensated for the fact that they have had to suffer that tax for one year more than the rest of the United Kingdom.
    Mr. Lang: The people of Scotland had the advantage of getting rid of the extremely unfair domestic rating system a year earlier than people south of the border. It is a pity that the hon. Gentleman has no positive suggestions to make. The community charge has established a greater degree of commitment on the part of residents of local areas, who contribute in far greater numbers to the cost of local services.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: May I respond to the Secretary of State's request for positive suggestions by saying that if he wants a fundamental review, the most positive thing he could do would be to scrap the poll tax altogether?
    Mr. Lang: Again, the hon. Gentleman offers no alternative. He does not seem to recognise that local services must be paid for. I thought that he might recommend the so-called roof tax, but then I recalled that only 10 per cent. of the Scottish people support the roof tax and only about 20 per cent. of the Labour party—which designed it—supports it.
    Mr. Harry Ewing: The Secretary of State had better be careful about criticising the so-called roof tax because, if the Secretary of State for the Environment is anything to go by, that is what we shall finish up with. I look forward to the day when the Secretary of State comes to the Dispatch Box to propose such a tax in legislation.
    Has the Secretary of State for Scotland had any discussions with his pals in the Scottish National party, who refused to join in the constitutional convention to discuss the future of Scotland, but are desperate yet again to save the Tories' face on the poll tax?
    Mr. Lang: I understand that the roof tax was thought up in two minutes; it certainly looks like it. But perhaps we should take the advice of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Hillhead (Mr. Galloway), who said that the roof tax should be confined to the dustbin of experience. With regard to the Scottish National party, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has made it clear that he is interested in hearing the views of any Opposition party that cares to make a constructive contribution to the debate.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my right hon. Friend agree that, whatever nonsense we hear from the Opposition Benches, the Conservative party got rid of the rates—that was welcomed in Scotland—and we have no intention of returning to them? Does he further agree that one of the advantages of the community charge is that it makes councillors and councils accountable and that, whatever modifications we adopt, that aspect must remain?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about greater accountability. It is an important achievement of which we should not lose sight. More than 30 changes have already been made to the community charge since the original legislation was passed. It is in the nature of such new arrangements that they come under regular review and that improvements can he made.
    Sir David Steel: Does the Secretary of State recall that the Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), voted for the poll tax in Scotland a year before he took to the barricades against it in England and Wales? In the light of that, will he extract a promise from him that any legislation to abolish the poll tax or replace it with local income tax will come a year earlier in Scotland than in England and Wales?
    Mr. Lang: That is rather a facile point. If the right hon. Gentleman wishes to take part in the consultations, he will have the opportunity to put such matters to my right hon. Friend.
    Mr. Maxton: Is the Secretary of State aware that there will be considerable consternation and anger among the people of Scotland today as it becomes obvious that the Secretary of State has no intention, if he can get away with it, of abolishing the poll tax but intends only a dragged-out review with a few minor changes at the end of it? Is he aware that the people of Scotland want immediate relief from the tax by abolition of the 20 per cent. rule, backdating of all rebates to 1 April 1989 and legislation within the next three months to abolish the tax completely?
    Mr. Lang: If the hon. Gentleman and his party care to remove any preconditions, they are welcome to take part in consultations on what should replace the existing arrangements.

    Constitutional Convention
    Mr. Maclennan: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on his response to the proposals of the Scottish Constitutional Convention.
    Mr. Lang: My views are well known. The organisation that calls itself the Scottish Constitutional Convention and its proposals are a distraction from the real issues that face the Scottish people.
    Mr. Maclennan: If the Secretary of State believes that the proposals of the Scottish Constitutional Convention are not perfect, will he at least enter into a dialogue with the political parties in Scotland that represent the overwhelming majority of the Scottish people? The Scottish people are persuaded that constitutional change to provide a democratic means of controlling the centralised administration is necessary to achieve the result to which the Government no doubt aspire. Why must we in Scotland, alone in western Europe, remain without proper democratic control over our Government when Spain, formerly the most centralised country in Europe, and France, the next most centralised country, are both moving towards effective provincial government?
    Mr. Lang: If the hon. Gentleman regards those views as important, he has the opportunity to put them forward in a number of places—not least on the Floor of this House, in the mother of parliaments.
    Mr. Norman Hogg: Is the Secretary of State aware that
    "the organisation that calls itself the Scottish Constitutional Convention"
    is representative of the Labour party, which sends 48 Members to the House, of the Liberal Democrats, who have a substantial and meaningful representation in the House of the Major Christian denominations in Scotland,

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    of the trade unions and of the regional and district councils in Scotland? Whom does the Secretary of State think that he represents?
    Mr. Lang: I have the privilege to be the Secretary of State for Scotland and I thus represent Scotland and its people in the United Kingdom Parliament and in the United Kingdom Cabinet. What would happen to the Secretary of State for Scotland and his position in the Cabinet under the proposals of the Scottish Constitutional Convention? That is one of the fundamental questions that the body did not address.
    Mr. Salmond: Now that there are three identifiable positions on the constitutional question in Scottish politics—devolution advocated by the convention parties, no change advocated by the Secretary of State for Scotland and independence in Europe advocated by the Scottish National party, why will not the Secretary of State for Scotland arrange to put the matter to the test and let the Scottish people decide on the three options in a fair referendum?
    Mr. Lang: It is well known that, because the present constitutional arrangements do not work to the SNP's advantage, it seeks to change them. SNP Members may call it independence in Europe; what they actually mean is the separation of Scotland from the rest of the United Kingdom, which would be immensely damaging for the people of Scotland.
    Mr. Andy Stewart: Does my right hon. Friend agree that Scotland does not need another tier of government—and certainly not one with the bureaucratic and interventionist aims put forward by the convention?
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Not only would the Scottish assembly proposed by the Scottish Constitutional Convention add an extra tier of government, it would be an extra source of tax-raising designed to imposed an additional burden on the people of Scotland and to make it the highest-taxed part of the United Kingdom.

    Local Government Finance
    Mrs. Fyfe: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland whether he will bring forward proposals to amend the poll tax legislation so that students will no longer have to pay 20 per cent. regardless of their circumstances.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart): The present arrangements for students will be considered as part of the wider review of the community charge.
    Mrs. Fyfe: It falls to me to welcome the Minister on his reappearance at the Dispatch Box.
    As the Minister and his colleagues will commit themselves today neither to abolishing the poll tax nor to abolishing the 20 per cent. rule, would he mind telling us exactly what they do propose to abolish?
    Mr. Stewart: I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her kind remarks. As my right hon. Friend made clear in relation to the review nothing has been ruled in and nothing has been ruled out.
    Mr. Worthington: I, too, welcome the hon. Gentleman in his impersonation of Lazarus. The Scottish Office
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    instructs regional councils to pursue debtors diligently, and that includes students. The Scottish Office has said that the tuition and maintenance elements of a student's income cannot be reclaimed, so what part of a student's income can be reclaimed? Is not it about time that the regional councils were stopped from wasting their time pursuing unrecoverable debts from people of modest incomes and we got rid of the 20 per cent. rule?
    Mr. Stewart: Students are under the same obligation to pay as anyone else. On the hon. Gentleman's more general point, there are reports in today's press of the strong and well-merited criticisms by the chief auditor for the eastern area of the procedures undertaken by Labour-controlled Central regional council. I hope that the hon. Gentleman who represents the official Opposition will join the chief auditor in condemning the Labour councillors on Central regional council.

    Incinerator, Renfrew
    Mrs. Irene Adams: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make it his policy to take full account of the views of the community when considering whether to license the incinerator plant at Renfrew.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton): I congratulate the hon. Lady on her election as Member for Paisley, North.
    In considering the application from Cleveland Fuels Ltd., account will be taken of all relevant considerations received in response to public consultation.
    Mrs. Adams: Now that the Secretary of State is in his new post, when will he stop shuffling the matter round his desk and come back with an answer for not only the people of Renfrew, but the people of Yoker, Govan, Dumbarton and Paisley, who will all be affected by the emissions into the atmosphere from the plant, which is now burning 1·8 tonnes of toxic waste per hour? When will he come back with a decision on that? Will he assure us that planning permission will not be granted under the present terms for which it has been applied?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The answer is as soon as possible. Her Majesty's industrial pollution inspectorate will be dealing with that matter under the general practice of determining such issues by delegated responsibility. The inspectorate will deal with air pollution, while representa tions on planning matters, such as noise and traffic effects, are for the planning authorities—there is a distinction. There are detailed, complex matters to be resolved. I understand that Glasgow district council has said that there are higher-than-expected levels of sulphur dioxide in the Scotstown district of the city. The causes of that are being investigated and will be taken into account before a decision is made. I can confirm that no decision has yet been made and the issues are being seriously considered.
    Mr. McFall: Does the Minister know that I, too, have a constituency concern in this matter? A local whisky plant, J and B, has a blending plant at Renfrew. The company is extremely concerned at the siting of the incinerator plant. Will the Minister look at the comments of the regional chemist, who is worried about breaches of health and safety regulations because of the dioxins and

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    other acidic materials that are being released? Will he listen to hon. Members and their constituents and hold a public inquiry before the matter goes any further?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I am certainly aware of the dioxin emissions. Apparently, traces of dioxins are formed when organic materials are burnt in the presence of chlorine, but I am informed that the rate of production can be minimised. Any registration granted in respect of a chemical incinerator or a comparable activity would include the condition that the required standards should be achieved. The Environmental Protection Act 1990 will be implemented as soon as possible. Last year, we went into those issues in detail in Committee.

    Local Govermnent Finance
    Mr. Douglas: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will make a statement on his plans to reform local government and local government finance in Scotland.
    Mr. Allan Stewart: The review of the financing of local government to which the Government are committed will be careful and fundamental.
    Mr. Douglas: Why are we having this review at all? Is it because the Secretary of State for Scotland has extreme misgivings about the poll tax, because there has been a capitulation by the Labour party or because the people of Scotland have clearly shown that they do not want the tax? Will the Secretary of State come clean and tell the House whether we are having a review relating to devising a stable and just system in which the poll tax, as presently devised, would be excluded? Is the poll tax dead and are we looking for an indecent way to bury it in 1991?
    Mr. Stewart: All new systems require regular review as they settle down. The community charge is the biggest change in local government finance for more than a century, so it is entirely reasonable at this stage to take a fundamental look at how the regime is working. I should have thought that the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues were becoming seriously worried about the fact that the overwhelming bulk of Scottish public opinion believes that non-payers are a bunch of unprincipled freeloaders.
    Mr. Michael J. Martin: Strathclyde has had to make major cuts in its budget because of the poll tax and because it cannot collect the money. That has repercussions for communities such as mine in which unemployment is severe—[Interruption.] I am sorry that the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas) keeps interrupting. He had a hearing and it would be helpful if others could have one, too. I remember the days when the hon. Gentleman stood as a Labour candidate on a Labour party ticket.
    Because of the cuts in services, many people in our constituencies will be denied employment. What steps will the Minister take to help?
    Mr. Stewart: Almost the entire House will sympathise with the direction in which the hon. Gentleman mainly aimed his criticism—two Benches behind him, not at the Government.
    Of course, if the hon. Gentleman wants to see me about any of his constituency problems that are my direct responsibility, I shall be happy to see him.
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    As for non-payment, more than 90 per cent. of budgeted revenue for 1989–90 has been collected. Excluding Strathclyde and Lothian, the figure rises to 95 per cent.— [Interruption.] I do not know why SNP Members are laughing. This is a serious matter, as the hon. Member for Glasgow, Springburn (Mr. Martin) told the House. It is for the regional councils to ensure that they collect revenue, as most of them are doing very successfully.
    Mr. Douglas: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that it may be a point of frustration, but continue.
    Mr. Douglas: One of the members of your Chairmen's Panel has used a very unparliamentary word—a shipyard term. I am willing to reciprocate and lower the tone to shipyard language. I invite the hon. Gentleman to repeat it.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I am afraid that I know no shipyard language.

    Steel Industry
    Dr. Reid: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he expects to receive the final report of the Scottish Development Agency study into the steel industry in Scotland; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Lang: I expect to receive the final report of the Scottish Development Agency study by the end of March, when I would hope to make public as much as possible of that report, subject only to considerations of commercial confidentiality. [Interruption.] I understand that the SDA steering group has now seen some preliminary findings from the consultants and, although I have not yet seen them, I hope that these, too, can be made public on the same basis.
    Dr. Reid: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It was utterly impossible to hear the Minister's answer because of the antics going on in the Chamber. I could not make out the answer, so I cannot respond. Is it in order to ask the Minister to repeat his answer?
    Mr. Speaker: I think, in the circumstances, that it is. I ask the Scottish Nationalists to behave in a parliamentary fashion.
    Mr. Lang: I am happy to help the hon. Gentleman. I expect to receive the final report of the Scottish Development Agency study by the end of March, when I would hope to make public as much of it as possible, subject only to considerations of commercial confidentiality. I understand that the SDA steering group has now seen some preliminary findings from the consultants and, although I have not yet seen them, I hope that these, too, can be made public on the same basis.
    Dr. Reid: Seven months after the announcement of the closure of Ravenscraig, the answer that we shall have to wait yet another four months is not just pathetic but criminally complacent. When will the organisation that calls itself the Scottish Office do something about steel? Does the Minister accept that if the hot strip mill is dismantled and removed the Motherwell plant will be impossible to sell? As one of the shop stewards said, it will be like an electric kettle without an element. What concrete

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    steps will the Secretary of State take to prohibit such removal? On Clydesdale, what concrete steps has he taken to ascertain whether there are potential purchasers and to facilitate such purchasers for all or part of the plant? If the Minister cannot give concrete answers to those questions it is obvious that he intends to do as little in his new post as he did in his last.
    Mr. Lang: It is a pity that the hon. Gentleman did not listen more carefully to my answer. He certainly had plenty of opportunity to hear it. Had he done so, he would have heard me say that the preliminary findings had been made available to the SDA working study and that I hoped that they would be made public, subject only to considerations of commercial confidentiality. The information will therefore be available in much less than the three or four months to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
    The hon. Gentleman asked about disposal of the hot strip mill. I hope that during the first three months of next year it will be possible for the preliminary findings of the consultants' study to be taken fully into account in debates on this matter and to be considered by British Steel. It should be possible for further action to be decided upon in the light of the emerging information, ahead of closure of the strip mill at the beginning of April.
    Dr. Bray: Is the Secretary of State aware that the Government have got themselves into the position that any future for Ravenscraig has to be in the interests of British Steel itself? Will he seek concrete discussions with British Steel, following the interim report, as to what might be in the interests of British Steel in terms of assistance from the Government for the opening of new markets and the introduction of new technology? Is he aware that already a west German flat products producer is being retained in operation to supply markets previously supplied by obsolete east German plant?
    Mr. Lang: In the past 15 months, my right hon. and learned predecessor and I have had four meetings with British Steel and about five exchanges of correspondence. I do not think that anyone could accuse us of not being in touch with British Steel and we shall continue to keep in touch as apopropriate.
    The hon. Gentleman asked about the consultants' findings. British Steel has co-operated with the consultants in the preparation of their report and has undertaken to consider the findings. There is every opportunity for the matter to be considered further in the proper quarters.
    Mr. Oppenheim: Does not the history of the steel industry show that when politicians override the decisions of business men it costs jobs in industry as a whole in the long term? When politicians talk in terms of the need for commercial decisions to be overridden in the national interest, they are usually talking about their own narrow political interests.
    Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend makes an effective point. From 1975 to 1985, no less than £14 billion of taxpayers' money had to be put into British Steel to support it when it was under nationalised control. It is important for this decision to be taken by British Steel as a commercial decision. Our purpose is to ensure that all possible relevant avenues are explored so that we can ensure that the interests of the Scottish economy are upheld.
    Mr. Dewar: Does the Secretary of State recognise that it is not enough to list his disappointments and disagreements with Sir Robert Scholey to the Select Committee on Trade and Industry and to the press if no action follows? On his own evidence to the Select Committee, there have been expressions of interest about purchasing Ravenscraig as a going concern, but they have been blocked because of British Steel's withholding of vital information. What steps is the right hon. Gentleman taking to allow such interests to be pursued? Is not the withholding of that information a restriction on competition and offensive to the Government and to Scotland? Does it not also reopen the whole question of a possible referral to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission as being a restraint of trade?
    Mr. Lang: We have encouraged British Steel to consider the disposal of those parts of the Scottish industry that are not required for its own purposes and we have encouraged those who have expressed interest in acquiring parts of the industry to approach British Steel with their offers. There are appropriate mechanisms by which competition issues can be pursued.

    Stranraer and Cairnryan Ports
    Mr. John D. Taylor: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the estimated growth of passenger and freight ferry traffic at Stranraer and Cairnryan in the next five years; and what proposals he has to improve road and rail transport systems from these ports.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Estimates of future ferry traffic through Stranraer and Cairnryan are commercial matters for the companies concerned. A number of major road schemes have been completed on the A75 Gretna-Stranraer route and further road improvements are planned. Investment in railways is a matter for British Rail.
    Mr. Taylor: Larne harbour is now the second largest in the United Kingdom for roll-on/roll-off freight traffic and the third largest for passenger-accompanied vehicles. It is handling more than 1·5 million people and last year traffic grew again by 8 per cent. As all that traffic is going either to Stranraer or Cairnryan, will the Minister spend some time during the Christmas recess considering a new traffic plan for the west of Scotland which will benefit the people who live there and those who travel from Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland—increasing numbers of people travelling from the Republic are using that route—and give them greater access to the channel tunnel? That plan could be drawn up in consultation with the transport directors of the European Commission.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Some £70 million has already been spent on the A75. We recognise the importance of this, not just for the convenience of the hon. Gentleman's constituents who will reach their destinations more quickly, but for tourism. Construction of improvements between Carrutherstown and Hetland is underway and five further schemes worth nearly £20 million are in preparation. We take seriously the points that the hon. Gentleman has made and will keep in touch with the Northern Ireland Office on this subject.
    Mr. Foulkes: Is the Minister aware that this is an issue of great importance for all hon. Members representing

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    constituencies in Ayrshire, as well as for hon. Members representing constituencies in Northern Ireland? Is he also aware that in the past few years there has been not an improvement but a deterioration in the transport system, with the removal of the overnight sleeper service from Stranraer to London and deterioration of the roads in Ayrshire? Can the Minister give an assurance that the Maybole and Girvan bypasses will be given priority in his roads programme and that if Strathclyde regional council agrees to remove its postponement of construction of its part of the A77, he will give the necessary finance to enable it to go ahead without any delay?
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: On the last point, it is difficult for the Scottish Office to build a road if it ends in a field. The A77 is essentially a matter for Strathclyde regional council. The council has taken the decision to delay its part of the scheme; the Scottish Office stands ready to put in hand the work from Glasgow city boundary to Malletsheugh, south of Newton Mearns.
    We make decisions in March for the year ahead in relation to specific projects such as the bypasses that the hon. Gentleman mentioned and I will take into account what the hon. Gentleman has said. It will be considered along with many other projects.
    British Rail has shown its commitment to the south-west of Scotland by investing in new class 156 super sprinter trains for use in services between Glasgow, Ayr and Stranraer and between Stranraer and Newcastle, and ScotRail is introducing its most modern rolling stock—the class 158 express units—between Glasgow, Ayr and Stranraer. I hope that those will be of considerable assistance to the hon. Gentleman's constituents.

    Constitutional Reform
    Mr. Bill Walker: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has had about constitutional reform; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. John Marshall: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what representations he has received in favour of a Scottish assembly during the past six months.
    Mr. Allan Stewart: In the past six months, 19 written representations have been received about constitutional issues. A minority of them were in favour of a Scottish assembly.
    Mr. Walker: I thank my hon. Friend for his reply and I welcome him to the Dispatch Box. Does he agree that the representations received from the constitutional convention are flawed in that they do not address the situation affecting the Barnet formula for funding, or the number of Members of Parliament representing Scottish constituencies, and do not deal with the West Lothian question at all? Can he also—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The question will take even longer if we have this sort of noise.
    Mr. Walker: Does my hon. Friend agree that the convention is fraudulent and the fact that it has a front man wearing a dog collar does not change the fact that it is fraudulent because it knows that its proposals will never go through the House?
    Mr. Stewart: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his welcome. As usual, he speaks with great sense and
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    knowledge. I agree with him entirely on the issue that he has raised. I can assure him that the Government will pay full attention to the views of all sensible people such as, for example, members of the North Tayside Conservative Association.
    Mr. John Marshall: First, I congratulate my fellow St. Andrean on his promotion to the Government Front Bench. Does he agree that the majority of Scottish people recognise that the introduction of an assembly with tax-raising powers would result in Scotland having higher taxes than elsewhere in the United Kingdom, would discourage inward investment to Scotland and would result in Scotland being the most over-governed part of the United Kingdom and of the European Community?
    Mr. Stewart: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his congratulations. I agree entirely with what he said in his supplementary question. Although I do not believe that the people of Scotland generally attach a particularly high priority to constitutional change, my hon. Friend is right to criticise the proposals that have come from the self-elected body to which he refers.
    Mr. Ernie Ross: I, too, welcome the hon. Gentleman's return to the Government Front Bench. Of the welcomes that he received from the two hon. Members who sit behind him, the hon. Members for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) and for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker), one seemed to stick in the throat. The Minister can work that out for himself later.
    When will the Minister reject the nonsensical view that Scotland receives a greater share of public expenditure than anywhere else in the United Kingdom? It is clear that the south-east of England still receives the largest share of public expenditure, no matter how the figures are assessed. The Minister should read the minutes of the Select Committee on Employment on the London Docklands development corporation. He will then discover the subsidy enjoyed by the south-east. The people of Scotland have spoken. Unless the present ministerial team can get it together, it will be the last time its members sit together representing Scotland.
    Mr. Stewart: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome. I do not accept what he said in his supplementary question. I will send him the figures, which show without question that identifiable public expenditure per head in Scotland is far higher than in England and higher than in Wales.
    Mr. Dewar: Talking about public attitudes, did the Minister notice that in The Sunday Times—a newspaper which I am sure he reads carefully—there was an article setting out the results of a MORI poll? It showed that the Scottish Constitutional Convention's proposals attracted three times as much support as the hon. Gentleman's preferred option of the status quo and twice as much support as the nationalists' position. The Minister will be aware that he does not represent direct Scottish participation in Brussels. Leaving aside the unfortunate views of Lord Strathclyde, will he clarify the Government's position and explain whether he stands by the recently expressed views of the Secretary of State that there should be direct Government participation in the form of the Scottish Office in Brussels or whether he supports the Treasury view that that is not necessary and should not take place?
    Mr. Stewart: The result of the referendum in 1979, which is probably a painful memory for the hon. Gentleman, showed that, when faced with detailed and specific proposals spelling out the disadvantages of an Assembly as well as the claimed benefits, the electorate appreciates that an extra tier of government with extra taxation and all the problems to which my hon. Friends have referred is not the answer for Scotland.
    The second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question seemed not to arise directly from the main question, although there is a later question on the Order Paper to which it may be relevant. I confirm that the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question was fully and comprehensively spelt out in my letter to him, which naturally had the full agreement of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.

    Self-governing Hospitals
    Mr. Malcolm Bruce: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he expects to announce the Scottish hospitals opting for self-governing trust status.
    Mr. Michael Forsyth: An announcement will be made as and when the procedures laid down for trust applications have been completed.
    Mr. Bruce: Does the Minister accept that there is growing disquiet about the way in which the possibility of self-governing hospitals is being presented in Scotland? There is no evidence that the hospitals, the health service, the patients, the public or the staff want them, but they are being presented almost as a fait accompli.
    Will the Minister assure us that, unlike the practice in England, if any such proposals come forward the public, the patients and the staff in the hospital and the catchment area affected will be consulted and their opinions taken fully into account? The people of Aberdeen and Grampian do not want self-governing hospitals forced upon them against their wishes.
    Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman is mistaken on two counts. First, he is mistaken in his suggestion that proposals are coming from anyone other than the consultants and the management. For example, the proposals for the Foresterhill hospital in Aberdeen have come from the consultants and the management, but they have not yet decided whether to submit them to the Scottish Office.
    Secondly, the hon. Gentleman is mistaken about consultations in England, just as he is mistaken about consultations in Scotland. All proposals for self-governing status are subject to consultation by the health boards. That has been clearly laid down. I commend to the hon. Gentleman the paper that we have published on the procedures for NHS trusts, which spells that out clearly.
    Mr. McKelvey: Is the Minister aware that on 8 December a meeting was held in Kilmarnock city centre at which a poll was taken—it was a proper poll, as advised by MORI—on the opt-out proposals? Some 1,700 people voted, of whom 95·2 per cent. said that they would prefer the hospitals in their areas to remain within the ambit of the Ayrshire and Arran health boards. Only 3·7 per cent. were in favour of opting out, and there were two spoilt papers, representing 0·9 per cent. of the vote. Will the hon. Gentleman take that result into consideration if there are any applications from hospitals in Ayrshire to opt out?
    Mr. Forsyth: I would not take seriously a poll conducted on a proposal that has not yet been made, when people were not aware of the details. If the hon. Gentleman is accurate with regard to the questions asked, I should be even more cynical about the results. Hospitals which apply for self-governing status will not be opting out of the NHS. They will remain part of the NHS and they will remain under contract to the health boards. They will remain subject to scrutiny of their performance by the health boards.
    If the hon. Gentleman were to conduct a poll asking whether people favoured more decisions being taken by local management at local level and whether they favoured resources being determined by those most involved in the provision of services, he might get a different answer.
    Mr. Buchanan-Smith: Whatever the merits or demerits of hospitals opting for their own management within the NHS under trust status, does my hon. Friend acknowledge that the position is very different in areas of high population, where there are a number of separate hospitals, compared with an area such as Aberdeen where there is a highly integrated hospital service based on the Foresterhill site? Does my hon. Friend agree that that creates different circumstances and may I have his undertaking that that aspect will be taken into account if proposals are put forward?
    Mr. Forsyth: My right hon. Friend will be aware that Foresterhill is an example of a hospital which was created and brought into being by the community. It was initiated through the efforts of the community. Self-governing hospitals are about recreating the possibility for communities to be involved in the management and organisation of their hospitals. I am not surprised that Foresterhill has shown great interest in the opportunities that the Government are making available.
    Mr. Galbraith: The Minister's response exacerbates our worries, both about consultation and about links with the local community. The reality is that opted-out, self-governing hospitals will be run from the centre—the Scottish Office will decide the priorities and processes by diktat.
    The Minister's response about consultation in Kilmarnock highlighted the problem. What will be the consultation on opting out? Will it include the community, the trade unions, the churches, the regional councils and the district councils? Whose views will be taken into account and what weight will be given to them? In reality, will not the decision be made by a small clique on the health board and rubber-stamped by the Scottish Office?
    Mr. Forsyth: The hon. Gentleman may go on saying that self-governing hospitals will be run by the Scottish Office, but that simply is not true. They will be independent trusts operating under contract with the health boards and subject to the Secretary of State's direction only if they fail to meet particular standards of patient care. The hon. Gentleman knows full well the position on consultation. Any proposals for self-governing status will be subject to consultation; trade unions, churches, the community and anyone else who wishes to comment will have an opportunity to do so.
    I do not wish to embarrass the hon. Gentleman, but he himself has put forward some interesting ideas for the independent management of out-patient clinics and the

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    devolution of management to local level. Painful though it may be, he should therefore acknowledge that the proposals for self-governing status are very much in line with the thinking that he himself advances, even if he cannot bring himself to congratulate the Government on them. We look forward to the conversion that the Labour party underwent in relation to school boards being repeated with regard to NHS trusts.

    European Regional Development Fund
    Mr. Knox: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what is the total value of grants that Scotland has received from the European regional development fund since its inception.
    Mr. Allan Stewart: As at the end of November 1990, the total commitments secured for Scotland from the European regional development fund for the years 1975 to 1990 stood at £953 million.
    Mr. Knox: Can my hon. Friend say how that compares with other EC countries?
    Mr. Stewart: I can reassure my hon. Friend on that point, because Scotland's share compares extremely favourably with that of other members of the Community. For example, as the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) knows, EC statistics show that Scotland has secured more than six times as much regional fund commitment as Denmark. That shows how well the present arrangements are serving Scotland.
    Mr. Beggs: I congratulate the Minister on his appointment. Will he take the earliest opportunity to visit Lame harbour in my constituency, where European regional development fund grants have helped in the provision of terminal facilities and have enabled us to cope with 322,000 commercial vehicles and 300,000 passenger-accompanied vehicles annually? That large number of ro-ro vehicles is using the Larne-Stranraer corridor. Will he seek further grant aid to provide matching facilities for passengers and freight transport on the Scottish mainland?
    Mr. Stewart: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his welcome, and what he says is interesting. I must admit that I am not fully acquainted with all the details that he has given, but I will acquaint myself with them and be in touch.

    New Town Development Corporations
    Mr. Ingram: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he last met the chairmen of the Scottish new towns development corporations to discuss the timetable for wind-up; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Lang: I last met the chairmen of the Scottish new towns on 14 December 1990. The timetable for wind-up remains as stated in the Government's White Paper, "The Scottish New Towns: The Way Ahead".
    Mr. Ingram: Is the Secretary of State aware that what the 42,000 tenants of the new towns want for Christmas is the right to choose the district council at the time of wind-up? Will he take that into consideration and give them that choice when the time comes?
    Mr. Lang: The choice of many new town tenants in recent years has been to move from tenancy home
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    ownership and that may well continue. What is important is not to foreclose on any options at present. We have not ruled out the possibility of transfer to the district council at a later date, but we think that the matter should be decided nearer the end of wind-up rather than now.

    Pittenweem Harbour
    Mr. Menzies Campbell: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many representations he has received in the last 12 months about the future of Pittenweem harbour.
    Mr. Michael Forsyth: Two people have written to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State about Pittenweem harbour.
    Mr. Campbell: Does the Minister understand the great uncertainty being created in the fishing industry in my constituency as a result of the absence of concrete proposals for the improvement of Pittenweem harbour, particularly with regard to safety and the hygiene requirements that will be imposed after 1992? Will the Secretary of State take a direct interest in the matter and ensure an early resolution of the problem so that the fishing industry in my constituency will have a proper opportunity to continue to provide the service that it provides for the community at large?
    Mr. Forsyth: My right hon. Friend's predecessor as Secretary of State visited Pittenweem in November and met representatives of the fishing industry and my noble Friend the Under-Secretary of State also plans a visit in the near future. As the hon. and learned Gentleman will know, the proposed scheme is ambitious and costly, and the regional council has been asked to review it with a view to presenting rather more viable plans.

    Self-governing Hospitals
    Mr. Canavan: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland how many applications or expressions of interest have been made for hospitals and other national health service units to change to self-governing status.
    Mr. Michael Forsyth: There have been four expressions of interest in NHS trust status.
    Mr. Canavan: How can the Minister possibly justify the proposals of the Royal Scottish National hospital management team, most of whom have no first-hand experience of patient care, especially when those proposals have been resoundingly rejected by 96 per cent. of the staff and by virtually all the patients' relatives who have written to or contacted me to express their concern about the threat to mentally handicapped patients? They surely deserve the security and continuity of funding which can best be guaranteed by keeping the hospital fully integrated with the national health service under the existing arrangements.
    Mr. Forsyth: I do not know how it is possible for people to reject proposals that have yet to be forthcoming. The hon. Gentleman is wrong to seek to cause anxiety about the quality of care for mentally handicapped people in his constituency and to misrepresent the proposals as coming only from management. They have come from management and also from all the consultants concerned, because they believe that by going for NHS trust status they will be

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    able to improve the quality of care. Unlike the hon. Gentleman, I would want to study the proposals in detail before reaching a conclusion on whether they are the right ones.
    Mr. Doran: The Minister seemed to indicate in his reply to the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) that there was a recommendation from staff at the Foresterhill site —one of the four hospitals to which he referred—that that hospital should adopt the course of opting out. The Minister is well aware that the widespread opposition in Aberdeen includes medical staff in the hospital, but it is widely believed that they have changed their opinion because of the carrot dangled by the Scottish Office of extra money or special funding arrangements to meet shortfalls and the pressing need for capital. Will the Minister confirm what special financial or other arrangements have been offered to hospitals opting out?
    Mr. Forsyth: No special arrangements have been offered to anyone, other than those set out in our White Paper and in our working documents on NHS trust status. As more and more people in the health service identify the benefits that will come from being involved in decision making at a local level and from resources being allocated according to their priorities—as opposed to priorities set by the people above them, at health board or Scottish Office level—they are increasingly considering trust status as a way of enabling them to continue the very professional and capable job that they do. I urge the hon. Gentleman to study carefully the proposals presented by Foresterhill. I understand that two parallel proposals have been developed, one involving continued direct management by the health board and the other involving self-governing status. I am sure that they will be evaluated on the basis of which will provide the best deal for patients in Aberdeen, and that is right and proper.

    Rented Housing
    Mr. Graham: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland what assistance he will give to councils in Scotland that wish to build more houses for rent.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: Provisional capital allocations of £415 million for local authority investment in council housing in 1991–92 were announced earlier this month. Authorities wishing to use those resources to build council houses are free to do so.
    Mr. Graham: When right hon. and hon. Members leave the House today, we shall return to nice, comfortable homes, plenty of money and probably a good Christmas turkey, but will the Minister acknowledge that many
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    thousands of homeless people are suffering the consequences of the Government's disastrous housing policy in respect of rented accommodation? When will the Minister stand up and be counted and ensure that the homeless can get a place to stay or a decent home at an affordable rent? It is up to you, Minister, to give them some hope.
    Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: First, some confirmation of the problem was given by the director of housing of Glasgow district council, who is quoted in today's Glasgow Herald as saying that some
    "9,000 council homes are empty in Glasgow district".
    He suggested that the figure could increase to 20,000. I suggest to the House that those houses should be brought back into use. If the council feels that it does not have sufficient resources, it should consider making arrangements with housing associations, or with the private sector, to bring them back into use. I strongly endorse what the director of housing of Glasgow district council has said in that regard.
    No one should be under any obligation to sleep rough. The Salvation Army has confirmed that places are available in hostels in Edinburgh and Glasgow if those concerned wish to take up the offer.

    Local Government Finance
    Mr. McAllion: To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland when he expects the review of the operation of the poll tax in Scotland to be completed.
    Mr. Allan Stewart: The timetable for the review of the community charge is under consideration.
    Mr. McAllion: Did the Minister read the report in Monday's Financial Times, which said that the Government's own civil servants favour a return to the old rating system, with a staged transfer of education from local to central Government? Is that report accurate and, if so, will the Minister support its application in Scotland?
    Mr. Stewart: I do not comment on newspaper reports —[Interruption.]—necessarily. However, I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the hon. Member for Eastwood well remembers rating revaluation in Scotland.
    Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker—
    Mr. Speaker: Later.
    Mr. Dalyell: It arises out of questions.
    Mr. Speaker: That may be so, but I will take points of order arising out of questions, or any other points of order, after the statement.

Horn of Africa (Aid)
3.31 pm
The Minister for Overseas Development (Mrs. Lynda Chalker): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about famine relief for the horn of Africa.
Last week, we received the preliminary findings from missions which the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation mounted to Ethiopia and to Sudan, to assess the 1990 crop situation, and predict the likely food needs in 1991. The reports make it clear that the outlook for the horn in 1991 is of the gravest concern. There have been serious crop failures in both countries, compounded by civil war. The horn is facing a famine at least as bad as the 1984–85 disaster, when upwards of 1 million people died. In 1991, as many as 10 million people could be at risk of starvation.
On our present information, Sudan and Ethiopia are likely to be the worst hit countries, but Somalia could suffer, too. There are similar problems in all three countries, but there are also important differences. Government intransigence in Sudan makes famine relief difficult. Widespread violence and disorder in Somalia makes any relief effort difficult to mount. We will continue to provide humanitarian assistance for both countries where we can find effective ways of doing so, but we must also continue to press these Governments to assume their responsibilities.
In Ethiopia, we have pressed all sides to respond positively to the renewed crisis. The Government and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front have announced their agreement to reopen the port of Massawa to food shipments made under United Nations auspices. This is a major step forward, enabling us to provide relief more efficiently to people in Eritrea, including the Asmara area; and possibly also to Tigray. It was not an easy decision for either side. We should congratulate them. The House knows that the only long-term solution to Ethiopia's problem is to end the war. The peace process is progressing slowly. I hope that, if Massawa reopens, as agreed yesterday, it will signal a new effort by all sides to reach a just and lasting settlement.
However, peace cannot come in time to solve the problems of this year's failed harvest. I know that hon. Members will agree that we must help to avoid a repeat of the catastrophe that we saw in 1984–85. We are certainly better prepared and informed than we were then. My Department has been monitoring the situation closely, and earlier today I held one of my regular meetings with British non-governmental organisations to discuss the crisis.
We have already provided £23 million emergency aid for Ethiopia and Sudan so far this year, and £56 million since the beginning of 1989. The British Government were among the first to respond to early indications of food shortages in the two countries by providing £5 million since October for food aid and transport. The FAO reports indicate a much greater need ahead which will need to be met through a major international relief effort.
I have decided to make a further £5 million available immediately from the Overseas Development Administration's existing reserves for the two countries as the Government's first contribution to this effort. Most of the new emergency relief aid will be channelled through British non-governmental organisations, with which we
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are in close contact. I have been talking to them today about the most effective way of spending the money. It will help to buy food and medical supplies, and vehicles to transport them to the needy. We will also make some funds available for international relief agencies. I stress that this is our immediate response to the emergency. We are ready to provide more help as the relief requirements become clearer. I intend to visit Ethiopia next month to see the situation for myself at first hand, and I shall go prepared to provide more emergency aid.
The British Government have played a leading role in mobilising a new relief effort for the horn, but we cannot possibly hope to tackle all the problems on our own. I have already encouraged my colleagues in the European Community to follow our lead. I hope that, over the coming months, they, the countries themselves and the international community will come together in a partnership which will help the desperate people in this famine-stricken region.
Mrs. Ann Clwyd: On many occasions over the past few months, the Opposition have been extremely critical—and rightly so—of the Government's overseas development policy. On this occasion, however, and not simply because we have entered the season of good will to all humankind, we congratulate the Minister on her rapid response to the serious famine in the horn of Africa.
None of us can forget the horrific pictures shown on television during the 1984–85 famine, when at least 1 million people in the horn starved to death. We never want to see similar scenes again. It is, however, clear from estimates by both the United Nations and the voluntary organisations that a famine on a similar scale is now looming. The Minister's decision to provide £5 million immediately for Ethiopia and the Sudan is, of course, welcome, as is her assurance that it is the first and immediate response to the emergency, and that more help may be in the pipeline.
I am sure that the Minister will join me in hoping that, when the Disasters Emergency Committee launches an appeal in January, the British public will once again demonstrate their tremendous concern and generosity. It is clear, however, that much more will need to be done. In the disastrous year of 1985, the United Kingdom Government gave £28 million to Ethiopia in emergency relief—equivalent to £36 million in today's prices. Does the Minister agree that that effort must be not only matched but exceeded this time?
I share the Minister's view that the Sudanese Government are intransigent; they are also callous and ruthless. But the voluntary agencies can reach the starving people, and donors should therefore do everything possible to support their work. Does the Minister agree that the donors must not withhold emergency aid, however much they wish to change the policies of the Government concerned? Changing those policies will be a long-term process, and the hungry cannot wait.
As for Ethiopia, I welcome today's news that agreement has been reached to reopen the port of Massawa. That is an event for which all of us have waited for many months. As the transporting of food to people in Eritrea and Tigray is particularly difficult and expensive, will the Minister say what aid her Department plans to give towards the cost of transport?
May I remind the Minister that, in addition to the Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, an estimated 4·5 million

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people in Mozambique, Angola and Liberia are also in desperate need of food aid. May we expect a statement on those countries early in the new year?
I agree with the Minister that in the long term only an end to the bitter conflicts that have raged in so much of Africa will enable the people to feed themselves. In the meantime, however, there is so much that donors can and should do. Did we not prove last year, when famine was averted, that the international response can be very effective? Although world attention has been focused on eastern Europe and the Gulf, it is essential that we do not ignore Africa.
This year the challenge is even greater, but, to put it in perspective, the cost of British forces in the Gulf is running at £24 million each week. That is more than Ethiopia and the Sudan have been given in total by the Overseas Development Administration this year. It is less than they will need over the months ahead.
Finally, will the Minister continue to keep us informed about Africa's food needs and about the Government's response, as the need arises, by making further similar statements in the House?
Mrs. Chalker: I begin by thanking the hon. Lady for welcoming my statement. There is absolutely no doubt about the immediate needs or about what we have to do to respond to them. I have already told the Disasters Emergency Committee that it will have my fullest backing when it makes its appeal to the British public on 8 January.
The hon. Lady referred to the position in Ethiopia in 1985. We shall certainly at least match what we did that year. However, we have done a great deal more work between the disaster of 1984–85 and the one that now faces us, as the figure of £56 million that has been spent in the last two years in Ethiopia and Sudan—without taking into account today's announcement—clearly shows. What we have to do is use every diplomatic effort that we can, although the Government of Sudan listen to no one and do not admit the size of the disaster that faces their people.
I agree with the hon. Lady that we should seek to get the food through, but a logistical problem faces the non-governmental organisations. Even with the welcome reopening of the port of Massawa, cross-border help will be needed to get food into Ethiopia. The areas of Sudan that are most badly affected—northern Darfur, northern Kordofan and the Red sea hills area—will also need a great deal of help. The Government of Sudan may prevent the non-governmental organisations from doing what they want to do and what we are prepared to pay for. We have to face that fact.
As for the hon. Lady's questions about Liberia, Mozambique and Angola, we have already given £2 million to Liberia this year, including the money to the Save the Children Fund that was announced yesterday by the fund as special help for the refugees. I took help with me when I went to see Liberian refugees in Ghana. We have given further help to Sierra Leone, which is looking after the Liberian refugees as a result of the war.
In addition to the money that I have announced for Ethiopia and the Sudan, later I shall be making an announcement about £1 million of aid for the Mozambiquan refugees who are in Malawi, a further £500,000 worth of food aid for Mozambique and £700,000 worth of food aid for Angola. Those countries also need our help. I assure the hon. Lady that they are not forgotten. However, the horn of Africa problem is very
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much more serious than the problem in all those other countries—although, of course, every starving person needs our help.
We have been giving help over the years and we shall continue to do what we can, but I would welcome all the help that we can get from our European Community partners and from multilateral donors to ensure that this is a worldwide effort and that it saves the lives of 10 million people.
Mr. Timothy Raison: I strongly support what my right hon. Friend has said and all that she is doing to tackle the threat of this appalling and ghastly tragedy in the horn of Africa. I agree with the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) about how crucial it is not to forget Africa at this time. Is my right hon. Friend fully satisfied that the machinery for co-operation in the Sudan and Ethiopia is satisfactory? She will no doubt recall that in the 1984–85 famine getting effective machinery of co-operation going was of paramount importance, and in due course I think that that was achieved. Is she satisfied that that is already in place, and does she believe that there is anything more that we, the European Community or the international community can do to bring pressure to bear to end these appalling and ceaseless civil wars in the two countries?
Mrs. Chalker: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his welcome for the statement; I know how much he did in 1984–85. We are aware that the machinery for co-operation in Ethiopia has improved this year, because in March we worked together to establish the southern relief line, which has saved some lives in Tigray and southern Eritrea this year. I hope that the Government of Ethiopia and the Eritreans and Tigrayans will work together, but we shall need constantly to work with them to ensure that that does not break down. Whether it be bringing food in through Massawa or a continued use of the southern relief route, both will need working at.
I am afraid that the situation in Sudan is very much worse. Operation Lifeline in Sudan is almost non-workable at present. That is one reason why I am so downhearted about how much we shall be able to do, despite our willingness to help the people of Sudan.
There is more that the Community can do and I shall be in touch with the Commissioner for Development about getting food aid released more quickly from the Community. I shall ask my colleagues in the United Nations and in other countries to bring what diplomatic pressure they can to bear, particularly on the Government of Sudan, to bring this tragedy in their country to an end.
Sir David Steel: The Minister has given the House a most sombre statement. I thank her for her immediate response and for the leadership that she is giving by trying to encourage the European Community to do more and by her visit to the area next month.
What is the Minister's response to the points that I made in Friday's debate—that the public, who responded generously to the Live Aid appeal five years ago, will look with horror at these conditions recurring? What has been done in the long term, first, to take an initiative at the United Nations to stop the supply of arms to Africa, without which these civil wars could not continue, and,

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secondly, to supply technical assistance and personnel to develop irrigation, schemes, particularly in this part of Africa, and drought-resistant crops?
Mrs. Chalker: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. The long term will be possible only when war ceases. I have spoken to United Nations representatives on many occasions about trying to bring peace to the area. Bilaterally, many other Governments of the same view as us are also trying to do that. When I was in Ethiopia in March, I spent quite a long time with the Soviet ambassador and spoke to my American colleague. There is no doubt that everybody who is involved in Ethiopia is trying to achieve an end to the war. The difficulty in Sudan is, first, that we cannot get to people who might make that decision and, secondly, that they are not listening to what the international community or bilateral donors are saying.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the importance of irrigation, and we hope to be able to mount an effort on such projects. Until the war ceases in both those countries, however, I am afraid that we are in a desperate situation.
Mr. Richard Luce: I, too, warmly welcome the prompt action of my right hon. Friend. Is not it a devastating condemnation of the Government's of Ethiopia and Sudan that the aid is coming from the outside world despite the existence of those Governments and despite the obstacles that they have put up? Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important that the outside world should realise that those Governments are doing absolutely nothing to help their people?
Mrs. Chalker: It is certainly true that the Government of Sudan are doing absolutely nothing to help, but some progress has been made in Ethiopia. I do not believe that enough has been done because there is still a military stalemate, but at least there are signs that that Government are prepared to talk.
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his remarks. We have been active in trying to secure peace in Ethiopia, as have the Arab countries. Although Ethiopia is moving away from its former Marxist-Leninist ideology, there has been little real political reform and there is a long way to go. However, at least that Government are seeking to co-operate in this humanitarian effort and, on the back of that, I hope that we shall get the peace process moving once again. The United States has sponsored talks in the past and I hope that we may have another round of talks early in the new year.
Mr. Jack Ashley: Although the Minister's personal efforts are appreciated, how can she equate the statement that 10 million people are facing starvation with her statement that we are giving only a further £5 million? Surely the extent of the action does not match the need and the Treasury should be told that in forthright terms. The Minister spoke of aid increasing when the relief requirements are better known; thus she implied that she does not know those relief requirements now. Surely she already knows those requirements.
Mrs. Chalker: The £5 million is in addition to the £56 million that we have already given to Ethiopia and Sudan in the past two years. I also made it clear that the
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non-governmental organisations will be able to use that amount for transport, drugs and food in the near future. As the situation evolves, we shall be able to assess what else is needed. Today, however, I would be wrong to commit other moneys until we have more information than we have yet been able to receive. However, I thought it wrong that the House should rise for Christmas without at least informing it of the major crop failure in Ethiopia and Sudan and of the first steps that we shall take in 1991 to deal with it.
Sir Dudley Smith: My right hon. Friend mentioned that the European Community countries may help. Surely this is a classic example of where the rich European Community should spearhead the effort.
Mrs. Chalker: We want to encourage the EC to assist. There is absolutely no doubt, however, that those of us who have staff on the ground can help the NGOs, which are likely to be more effective. I hope that the EC will soon reappoint its delegate to Khartoum, who has been absent for more than six months.
Rev. Martin Smyth: The Minister will be aware that the people of Northern Ireland are extremely concerned about overseas development aid and the particular needs of the horn of Africa. Therefore, on their behalf, I welcome the realistic statement and the practical steps that are now being taken. Bearing in mind the fact that getting food to the places of real need poses a problem, has any consideration been given to extending the "days of tranquillity" scheme operated by UNICEF, which prevailed upon people to allow inoculation and immunisation programmes to be carried out? If Governments co-operated in such a way, is it possible that immediate aid could reach those places of real need?
Mrs. Chalker: I thank the hon. Gentleman for welcoming the statement. We have worked with UNICEF, but that is only one way of helping. We need to use every possible channel if we are to avert this disaster. That is why I have worked with the British, as well as the international NGOs to seek to obtain food and medicine and the necessary transport to take them to where people are suffering.
Mr. Robert Banks: May I add my welcome for my right hon. Friend's statement? Does she recall that we have long and historic links with the Sudanese people? She will no doubt agree that the decline of that nation and the continuing civil war in that country is a terrible tragedy for all the people involved. Will she alert United Nations opinion and opinion in countries such as Saudi Arabia to the need to put pressure on the Sudanese Government to facilitate the passage of emergency supplies to southern Sudan and the disposal of those supplies in a reliable manner?
Mrs. Chalker: We shall do all that we can with not only the United Nations but other nations which may have influence over Sudan. However, in Sudan there is a fundamental regime with a poor record on human rights which is deteriorating even further. The fundamentalists seem to be strengthening their position, and the security situation is extremely serious. I could say many other things about Sudan, but for the purpose of my statement

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I shall say only that we shall try to get food to the starving people of that country as well as trying to bring about peace in some way.
Mr. Tom Clarke: Will the Minister assure the House that, if during the recess it is necessary to add to the funding that she announced today, she will do so? Will she clarify whether the extra funds are new money or whether money has been taken from some other aspect of the overseas aid budget? She mentioned Angola. Can she report to the House on whether any progress has been made in the talks with UNITA? Clearly, the war in Angola is no more helpful than war anywhere else.
As, sadly, what the Minister outlined today was both predictable and predicted, can she confirm that the Government will struggle for a long-term solution to the appalling, recurring problems?
Mrs. Chalker: The money comes from my aid budget, from funds specially allowed for disasters such as this. However, if I have to resort to the unallocated reserve for more money, I shall take the decision to do so. With starving people at risk, I did not want to wait for the House to return before making a decision. As a Minister, it is my responsibility to make a decision and inform hon. Members as quickly as possible.
Although Angola is outside the terms of the statement, I can inform the hon. Gentleman that progress has been made. United States and Soviet Foreign Ministers' representatives hope that we may work towards peace in that country before too long.
Mr. Roger Knapman: The agreement to open the port of Massawa is certainly good news. Have British diplomatic initiatives to President Mengistu helped to bring about that and other improvements?
Mrs. Chalker: I spent almost three hours with President Mengistu in March this year. I was at least able to establish some of the essentials of what feeding a starving nation would mean if we were faced with famine, as we now are. A few weeks ago I was in touch with him again specifically to discuss the port of Massawa. Although I in no way claim to have changed his mind, the pressure from British diplomats, myself and other members of the European Community, whom I alerted to the need to take such action, will have helped.
Mr. Dennis Canavan: Will the Minister give us an assurance that the welcome pledge of assistance is not merely a one-off Christmas gesture and that she will do everything possible to ensure the continuity of funding for emergency famine relief and long-term development projects? In Ethiopia alone, over 4 million people depend on emergency relief to supply them for the coming year. It is deplorable that the British Government are still a long way from achieving the United Nations' target of spending 0·7 per cent. of our gross national product on aid and development.
Mrs. Chalker: Funding for humanitarian aid is quite secure and we shall do what is necessary. Long-term development aid to the Sudan will not continue, because we simply cannot operate a system of development aid while that country is at war. We hope that there will soon be peace in Ethiopia and that we shall be able to do something further to help. Rather than simply pouring in humanitarian aid, we hope to do something in the long
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term which may prevent that from being necessary. Throughout a period involving cycles of drought and therefore famine, we must rely on the Governments of he countries concerned to realise that they cannot always be bailed out by the rest of the world. Until they bring peace in their countries, no one—with the best will in the world—can protect all those people from starvation.
Mr. Michael Colvin: To what extent is the human rights record of the countries concerned taken into account in determining humanitarian aid? In that connection, does my right hon. Friend acknowledge the value of strong economies in the region in creating a locomotive effect that helps other countries? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that she will continue her aid programme to Kenya, which has shown a considerable improvement in its human rights record over the past few months?
Mrs. Chalker: Wherever countries pursue a sensible economic reform programme, there is a spin-off for neighbouring countries. That is very welcome and we seek to reward it in our general development programme. That applies to Kenya and to many other countries in Africa —22 in all—which have structural adjustment programmes. We seek to give humanitarian aid irrespective of the behaviour of the Government, and I believe that to be right. We are stopping development aid to Sudan not only because we cannot deliver it but because that country has one of the worst human rights records in the region.
Mr. Paul Flynn: I warmly welcome the announcement today, but will the right hon. Lady direct her attention and that of her fellow Ministers in the Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to early-day motion 252, which appears on the Order Paper for the first time today? Is not it true that developed countries are contributing to the long-term problems in the underdeveloped world by selling arms there? The early-day motion calls for an international crusade to put a stop to the sale of arms to such countries because it distorts their economies and results not only in casualties on the battlefield but in millions of people starving throughout the world. Will the right hon. Lady consider closing the Defence Export Services Organisation, which not only sells arms to those countries but encourages arms sales above the sale of other export materials?
Mrs. Chalker: I know for a fact that the organisation mentioned in the early-day motion does not export arms to either of the two countries to which we are referring today. I note the motion, but I also note, as I have said many times, that until the countries agree to find a way to peace—that means stopping the import of arms—the horrendous problems that they now face will not cease.
Mr. Jim Lester: I thank my right hon. Friend for her prompt action and her statement, and welcome the co-operation which is emerging in Ethiopia. I wish to concentrate on the Sudan. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that, despite the intransigence of the Sudanese Government, many of our non-governmental organisations, which continue to work there under difficult circumstances, have established excellent relationships with regional government, village councils and people on the ground? We need efforts—whether by the international agencies, the United Nations or other Arab and Africanx

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countries—to persuade the Sudanese Government that the well-tried method of feeding people through NGOs is in no way undermining their authority but the best possible way in which we can serve the people whom they, too, are supposed to serve?
Mrs. Chalker: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I sincerely hope that the efforts of the regional Governments in backing the non-governmental organisations to feed the people of Sudan will succeed. It is a matter of persuading the Government of Sudan not to interfere, stop the supplies of food and fuel, or stop transport routes. We must use diplomatic efforts with the Government of Sudan. I was pleased to welcome our ambassador from Khartoum to our briefing meeting today with the NGOs so that he could hear from them at first hand and talk to them. We shall do all that we can, but I think my hon. Friend knows the limitations of the position in Sudan, however hard we and the NGOs try.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I congratulate the Minister on her swift response to the report of the Food and Agriculture Organisation and on the research of her civil servants. But the FAO report refers to 10 million people at risk. Does it refer to a cash estimate of the total amount of aid required to secure the future of the people in the horn of Africa? Does it give no figure at all?
Mrs. Chalker: I do not have the report with me and am unable to give the exact reference at present. There is no specific recommendation—that is not the way the FAO works. The report contains a request to the whole international community and all donor Governments, not simply to the British Government. We shall play our role in providing money and food, and helping the NGOs to deliver them. We shall also play a political role, but other countries must help—it cannot all be left to Britain.
Mr. David Wilshire: It goes without saying that I welcome this afternoon's statement, but will the Minister say something further about distribution? She will be aware that nothing discourages public generosity more than pictures and stories of aid piled up high, not reaching the people whom it is meant to help. Is she able closely to monitor distribution in those countries and what plans does she have to ensure that the British public is aware of how effective the aid is being because that is the best way to encourage them to be even more generous?
Mrs. Chalker: I fully understand what my hon. Friend is saying. We have to rely on the world food programme and the NGO officials to monitor developments and ensure that the food gets to its intended recipients. They have done so successfully in the intervening period since the last famine, and I have every confidence of their being able to do so in the future. We could not achieve that as a Government ourselves, but we shall seek to ensure that there are not only adequate, but reported assessments of the food getting to the people. We must ensure that those reports are made known in this country and to other public donors.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: The Government have a cheek to talk about peace in the horn of Africa when, only a couple of thousand miles away in the middle east,
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they are preparing for war and are going to spend millions of pounds to carry it out. The Government should use all the time, energy and resources that they are spending in the Gulf to help the poor in the horn of Africa and elsewhere. If the conflagration takes place in the Gulf after January, the total spent there will be even higher. Why does not the Minister tell people in the Common Market that, instead of pottering about with single currencies and all the rest, they should carry out the terms of Lomé convention to feed the third world? That would be better than piling up the surpluses and burning them. Why not feed the people instead of using guns?
Mrs. Chalker: There is absolutely no way in which food in the Community that can be used—I emphasise the word "can"—for the people of Ethiopia and Sudan will not be so used. Any Government, like the Government of Sudan, who are prepared to back to the hilt the man, and the Government, who invaded Kuwait need to look at their own countries and people first. We shall do all that we can to achieve peace in the countries under discussion this afternoon and find a peaceful means of withdrawal from Kuwait by the Government of Iraq.
Mr. John Wilkinson: I thank my right hon. Friend for her thoroughly positive statement and her personally constructive role in bringing relief to the hard-pressed countries of the horn of Africa. When she goes to Ethiopia, and if she sees the Soviet ambassador, will she make it clear that it is unacceptable for the Soviet Union to supply arms to the Government of Ethiopia, particularly to maintain the Soviet-equipped Ethiopian air force? There is little point in supplying aid to the miserable people of the Tigray and Eritrea one day if they are to have the life bombed out of them the next by the Soviet-equipped Ethiopian air force.
Mrs. Chalker: I spoke about this matter in March with the Soviet ambassador, but it is not just a question of arms from the Soviet Union. The Ethiopian Government have been purchasing them from other places, and arms have gone to the Eritreans and to the Tigrayans to further their struggle for independence. Until we can proceed with the talks that the United States has started on Ethiopia, I fear that we shall not persuade one nation to stop supplying arms. All nations must stop supplying them.
Mr. Jacques Arnold: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on yet again ensuring that British emergency aid relief gets through as urgently as possible. Is it not true that changing the policies of Ethiopia need not be a long-term process, as suggested by the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd), even if the effects of such a change might be long term? Does my right hon. Friend agree that change by the Governments in this area is necessary, and particularly by the Ethiopian Government whose socialist policies have brought the country's economy to bankruptcy and given it a disgraceful human rights record?
Mrs. Chalker: We have said as much as we can about the need for change by the Government of Ethiopia and the Government of Sudan, not only in their economic management but in the way in which they treat their people. They are about as far away from good government as any Government could be. We shall do what we can. We shall make our views known and we will encourage others who share them to make theirs known, too. The essential

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job before us is to galvanise the whole international community and other bilateral donors into getting their donations and food organised quickly, with the help of the non-governmental organisations, particularly those from this country, so as to save 10 million people from starving.

Arts Funding (England)
4.11 pm
The Minister for the Arts (Mr. Tim Renton): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement on the structure of arts funding in England.
On 13 March my right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce), whom I am delighted to see in his place, announced to the House a series of structural changes in the system of arts funding that had evolved since the foundation of the Arts Council. A cardinal change was a national strategic role for the Arts Council. I shall look to the Arts Council to develop, for the first time, a comprehensive national arts strategy, which will give us clear ideas and goals for the arts throughout the 1990s and into the new century. I expect to receive this by the summer of 1992.
The Arts Council's new role was accompanied by a substantial transfer of responsibility for funding regional clients to a smaller number of new incorporated regional arts boards, with fewer members representing a wider range of interests throughout the region. The new boards would account to the Arts Council through a new system of planning, budgeting and monitoring.
The purpose of the reforms was better co-ordination of overall funding policy and strengthened regional accountability for large and growing sums of public money so as to get the best value for the arts and for the taxpayer who supports them. Their ultimate objective is to help the arts, in all their forms, to flourish throughout the country, and to create a closer relationship between the regional art organisations and the soil from which they spring.
My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor) subsequently proposed and consulted widely on a number of additional changes designed to ensure that the new boards could discharge their enlarged responsibilities effectively and so maintain and enhance high standards of arts provision.
In the light of advice from the Arts Council on these additional changes, and on the transfer of funding responsibilities, and after meeting local authority arid regional representatives, I have now reviewed the overall process of reform and propose to take it forward in the following ways.
I fully support the aims and direction of the reforms, including the principle of significant delegation of responsibility for funding regional clients to the new boards. The general criteria for determining this delegation, agreed by the Arts Council in June, are also a sensible starting point for further work. At the same time, I recognise the force of the concerns of some arts organisations about the transfer of their funding to bodies not yet in place and which will need a proper period to become fully established. It is essential that the reforms have the confidence of all whose interests the funding system exists to serve, consumer, artist and taxpayer alike. I have therefore decided that it would be prudent for delegation to take place in stages.
The initial stage of delegation will go ahead as planned from 1 April 1992, and I have asked the Arts Council to advise me by 1 April 1991 what scale of delegation would then be appropriate. By October 1992, the Arts Council will advise me on the scale and timing of further delegation. An important benefit of staging in this way will be that later decisions can be informed by progress in the

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development of the new national arts strategy. I wish to see the regional arts boards playing the fullest possible part in this development.
No less importantly, it will also enable me to satisfy myself, as I must, that the new boards will have the capacity to take on further responsibilities, that there will be a reduction in the administration costs of the system as a whole, that high standards of arts provision will be maintained, and that the new system will provide a mechanism that will enable ever higher standards to be achieved.
In response to the report of the review team established by the Arts Council, I have taken further decisions as follows. The governing boards of the new RABs should be as small as possible, within a range of 12 to 18 members. In exceptional circumstances, however, I will consider boards of no more than 24 members. I have decided that a maximum of one third of the places should be reserved for local authority nominees. I am content for local authorities to select these as best suits regional circumstances. Other board members will be selected by a panel of regional and Arts Council representatives, and their appointments will require Arts council approval. The chairmen of boards will be selected in a similar way, but these important appointments will also require my consent. Senior executives will sit on boards at regional discretion but within the limits on the size of boards that I have already described. I have also endorsed the idea of more widely representative consultative forums for local authority and other regional interests which may form an integral part of the new RAB company structures.
In all other respects, changes already announced will go ahead. This includes the merger of a number of the existing regional bodies, and I warmly welcome the good progress that they are making in achieving this. The new boards should be in place by no later than 1 October 1991. I have asked the Arts Council and the regional arts authorities to undertake an urgent review of the staffing needs and costs of the new system and to report to me by April 1991. I have today written to the chairman of the Arts Council setting out my decisions in greater detail, and a copy of my letter has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
My overriding objective in making these further changes is to ensure that the new regional boards are balanced and effective for the tasks that they will have to perform, paying due regard to the need for regional backgrounds and involvement, more effective accountability, value for money and, most important, continued high standards of arts provision. The structure and strategy of arts funding play an important part in the enhancement of the creative spirit in all its forms. In deciding these reforms, I have thought of the needs of both artist and the public and of our ultimate goal—encouragement of artistic excellence at every level in every area.
Mr. Mark Fisher: I welcome much of the approach of the Minister's statement and some of its content. In particular, the arts will be reassured that the Minister will not pursue the centralised tendencies of his immediate predecessor but will allow local authorities and regional arts boards considerably more say in regional representation. It was quite wrong for the former Minister to seek personally to appoint the chairmen of regional arts boards, and the Minister has
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been wise to reject that route.
However, I am extremely critical of the Minister's attitude towards the delegation of arts clients. By opting for a phased two stage delegation of clients, the Minister may feel that he is being cautious and pragmatic, but he is wrong. He is creating a two-tier system of clients for the immediate future. Some will be funded centrally and they will be seen as first division clients. Those who are funded regionally will be seen as second-division clients. That will divide and demoralise the arts world, and be extremely counter-productive.
Did the Minister consult on this? If he did, whom did he consult? Why did he ignore the explicit advice of the Arts Council, which recently heard 30 appeals against delegation, and rejected all of them with one exception? He should have taken that advice because the Arts Council, unlike him, understands the dangers of a two-tier system. More crucially, why has he not provided a list of delegated companies to the House? By announcing a two-tier system and not telling hon. Members and the companies they represent who will and who will not be delegated he is stoking up anger and confusion.
Will the Minister place that list of delegated client companies in the Library at once? If he does not do so, hon. Members will not know whether the Belgrade theatre, Coventry, or the West Yorkshire playhouse or the Theatre Royal in York will be delegated. Will they be first or second-tier? Hon. Members on both sides of the House have a right to tell their constituents the implications of the
The Minister has not told the House what the financial implications of his statement will be. He referred to a reduction in administrative cuts, but he should know that the £2 million saving originally envisaged by Mr. Richard Wilding in his report has long since disappeared and everyone in the arts world estimates that it will cost an extra £2 million to implement his reorganisation strategy, and that that money will have to come from top slicing arts clients.
The confidence of those regional clients in the Government's seriousness about devolution and delegation will be dented not only by the Minister's reluctance to say who will and who will not be delegated but by the Art Council's announcement yesterday of grants and the dispersal of the enhancement funds, welcome though those moneys are. Some national companies did well. The Royal Shakespeare Company will be able to close the gap in its deficit, although not eliminate it. Some did badly—the South Bank will have a 5 per cent. cut in real terms. Other organisations did well only at the expense of regional companies.
Some theatres appear to have got nothing at all. They include both theatres in Liverpool, the Theatre Royal in Plymouth, the Lyric theatre, Hammersmith, the Crucible in Sheffield and the Northern Ballet theatre. Some have had cuts, including the Northern Stage Company, with a cut of 20 per cent., and the Scottish Opera touring branch, with a cut of 11 per cent. There is a serious threat to the Welsh National Opera touring company, a point that my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Wales will be pursuing. Others have had cuts in real terms, such as the Theatre Royal in Manchester, and the New Victoria theatre in my constituency.
How can we take the Minister's welcome words about delegation seriously when we see the list? Is this the financial reality of his statement—more money to the centre, less to the regions, and nothing to the community

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arts or to theatre in education? In the regions, the arts policies of local authorities are being butchered by the poll tax and by poll tax capping.
Although the Minister's remarks about recognising local authority importance are welcome, he has failed to pin local authorities financially into his statement. He appears to be penalising those which are already being poll tax capped because they cannot match Arts Council funding. Will he understand at this late stage that what he was reported as saying in The Times the other day was right? Local authorities should have a statutory responsibility for arts funding and therefore attract and be eligible for revenue support grants. If he ensured that, his words on delegation would have some real substance.
We welcome the Minister's attitude against centralisation and we welcome what he said about delegation, but until he gives us the list and improves the financial context in which it is happening, the House will have severe reservations about his statement today.
Mr. Renton: Oh dear, oh dear. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) was so anxious to be indignant about something that I feel he did not listen attentively to my statement. I shall start at the beginning. Let me make it plain: there is no current list of clients of the Arts Council who are to be delegated. I made it abundantly plain that I asked the council to produce a first list for me by April 1991. I repeat: there is no current list.
Of course there was consultation. I consulted the chairman and the secretary general of the Arts Council. I consulted representatives of the regional arts associations and representatives of local authorities. I mentioned that in my statement.
I disagree with the suggestion of the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central that there will be division between those who are on the first list, when that is announced after it is given to me by the Arts Council by April 1991, and those who will be deferred for further consideration on a second list, and that that will lead to demoralisation. Different criteria may apply. My right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce) made it plain when he made his statement earlier in the year that he accepted phased delegation and did not expect delegation to finish before the time scale which I have set.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central was so anxious to wax angry that he did not listen to what I said about costs. I made it abundantly plain that I had asked for a report from the Arts Council to be given to me by 1 April 1991 on the costs of the new integrated system and of the new integrated staffing structure. That report is not yet available. That is one reason why I have decided today to apply the brakes and to proceed in the phased manner that I have described. I think that the entire House takes the view that the new regional arts boards should not be required to take on further responsibilities by delegation until they have ready the structure, staff and expertise to justify them being given that responsibility.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central talked about the enhancement fund. It is all too easy to pick out from the fund the names of the organisations which did not get any money. I could run through the list and give the names of those which did get money. When my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), who is now the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, made it clear that he was establishing the fund—about £7 million for each of the next three years—he made it
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abundantly plain that it would not be available to all the clients of the Arts Council. He said that that could not possibly happen.
It is true that the Welsh National Opera company did not receive anything from the enhancement fund. Nor did the Royal National theatre and the South Bank. On the other hand, the Arts Council has announced an increase of 11 per cent. in 1991 for the WNO's touring expenses. Its grant will increase from £2·8 million to £3·1 million. The Welsh Arts Council announced this morning that from its enhancement fund of £410,000 it will make available £175,000 to the WNO. When those factors are considered together, I do not think that it is realistic to say that the WNO has been treated badly by the Arts Council.
Mr. Barry Jones: Come on.
Mr. Renton: No, not at all. I insist that it is the Arts Council that decides on allocations to individual clients, not myself.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central appeared to be concerned that all the money was going to London. Fifty-one per cent. of enhancement fund moneys will go to Greater London and 49 per cent. to the regions. That is the same split as that which was made of the total Arts Council funding for English revenue clients for 1989–90.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I have to balance the interests of hon. Members who are waiting for the Christmas Adjournment and Consolidated Fund debates against the interests of hon. Members who are hoping to catch my eye now. I shall endeavour to call all hon. Members, but, as it appears that this will be a fairly long process, I must ask for single questions only. We will have to move on at 5 o'clock, irrespective of whether all hon. Members have been called. Whether or not I can call all hon. Members depends on the hon. Members concerned.
Mr. Toby Jessel: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement. Will he invite the Arts Council to accept that symphony orchestras and concerts play a most important part in the cultural and artistic life of this country, and at least as important as opera? That applies to both London and provincial orchestras. Will my right hon. Friend comment on the position of the South Bank and the Royal Festival hall, as the home of symphony concerts in London and the south-east?
Mr. Renton: I thank my hon. Friend for his supportive remarks. South Bank is to get a 5·5 per cent. revenue increase in the year ahead. I realise that that is disappointing for the South Bank management, but the decision' was the Arts Council's not mine. However, there is good management at the South Bank, and it is making good progress in dealing with its deficit. I am told by the Arts Council that it hopes that that 5·5 per cent. increase will be sufficient to enable it to write off its deficit in the year ahead.
Mr. Robert Maclennan: Is the Minister aware that he inherited a confused position, and that he has confounded it further by leaving until the summer of 1992 the point at which the Arts Council must produce its national strategy when it is clear that the Arts Council is having to produce a strategy now, and that it is

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one of cuts, especially in the funding of companies in the regions? The companies that have been dependent on regional arts association funding will be especially heavily hit by the proposals. How is that gap in time to be filled? Will it be filled by further closures of theatres throughout the country?
Mr. Renton: I am disappointed by the hon. Gentleman. I hope that he will not mind my saying that I saw him in Glasgow at the new concert hall two weeks ago. Glasgow has been a magnificent example of successful arts programmes throughout the year. There has been a great revival in that city. A new concert hall has been built, and there have been more than 3,000 artistic performances in Glasgow this year. To talk in such dire and critical terms is unrealistic—[ Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman represents a Scottish constituency, and I thought that he was talking about Scotland.
The Arts Council has received an increase of 13 per cent. in its funding from my Department this year. It will receive an increase of 11·5 per cent. in the year ahead, well above the expected rate of inflation. Because of that, the Arts Council was able yesterday to announce favourable decisions about the enhancement fund.
Mr. Richard Luce: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's decision to pursue the principles of devolution of funding for the arts and a strengthening of accountability. Can he make it clear beyond doubt that the Arts Council will continue to have a singularly important role to play, especially in devising a national strategy for the arts, and that there will be no substantial further devolution until my right hon. Friend is satisfied about the standard and calibre of all the regional arts boards?
Mr. Renton: I thank my right hon. Friend for his support. I am aware that it was he who originally commissioned the Wilding report in 1988, which pointed us in this direction. Indeed, my right hon. Friend announced these reforms earlier this year.
I wholeheartedly agree with my right hon. Friend that the Arts Council should continue to have a central role, not least in developing a national arts strategy, the aim of which will be to set out our medium and long-term objectives for support of the arts, against the charted objectives of the Arts Council itself. That will be an important role for the Arts Council.
One of the reasons for the phasing of the delegation is to give me time to make certain that the new regional arts boards are capable, confident and properly staffed to take on further responsibilities before we ask major clients to move across to them.
Mr. Donald Coleman: Will the Minister confirm that, despite what he has said about the Welsh National Opera company, that part of the company's grant which is applied to touring in England is to be cut? Does not he realise the adverse effect that that will have on audiences so successfully built up in England and on the survival of the company? Will he seek to have the matter reopened by the Arts Council, to reassess the situation and to recognise the value of the Welsh National Opera company not only to Wales but to the whole of the United Kingdom?
Mr. Renton: I am delighted to give the hon. Gentleman the categoric assurance that he is wrong. I repeat, because the hon. Gentleman does not seem to have heard me, that the Arts Council of Great Britain has already announced an increase of 11 per cent. in the grant for 1991–92 to Welsh National Opera for touring in England, taking the total grant from £2·8 million to £3·1 million, an increase well above the rate of inflation and nothing for the Welsh National Opera to complain about.
Mr. Patrick Cormack: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his vigorous and imaginative approach, but will he look again at the position of Welsh National Opera? Is he aware that I was told by my noble Friend Lord Crickhowell, a former Secretary of State for Wales, that this morning the Welsh National Opera company's finance and general purposes committee decided that the company may have to close? Will he, therefore, as a matter of urgency, call in Mr. Peter Palumbo to discuss the matter? I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree with me that the Welsh National Opera is an international asset of priceless worth.
Mr. Renton: It would be wrong for me to pretend that my noble Friend Lord Crickhowell has not been in touch with me as well, because he has. I repeat that the Welsh National Opera's touring grant has been increased by 11 per cent. The Welsh Arts Council announced this morning an enhancement fund of £175,000 for Welsh National Opera, information which may not have reached the finance and general purposes committee when it met. The revenue funding by the Welsh Arts Council is still to be announced, but against that background, Welsh National Opera's management may, on reflection, have second thoughts about its initial reaction. We all recognise the superb quality of the Welsh National Opera's productions, which we have all enjoyed in the past.
Mr. Dafydd Wigley: Two thirds of Welsh National Opera's touring work is in England, and it is the major touring company in England, yet Opera North and English National Opera are receiving £600,000, while Welsh National Opera is receiving no enhancement at all. Notwithstanding any increase in inflation, that is biting into the company's financial plans for this year, so much so that it announced this morning that, unless a decision is made on further funding by 21 January, it will have no choice but to close in July.
As the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor came to an agreement that there would be joint funding of £175,000 from the Welsh Arts Council and £350,000 from the enhancement fund, why has the right hon. Gentleman allowed that agreement to be reneged on and the settlement to go forward with such devastating effect?
Mr. Renton: The hon. Gentleman misunderstands the position. I have checked it with my right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Mr. Luce), the former Minister for the Arts. Arts Ministers do not decide on individual applications, and the reaction of Welsh Members this afternoon makes me glad about that. If they did, we would be constantly pressurised by one hon. Member or another asking why Y had done badly when X had done well.
I repeat that the Welsh Arts Council, out of its total enhancement fund grant of £410,000, is giving £175,000 to Welsh National Opera. The Scottish Arts Council has received an enhancement fund grant of £700,000 or

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£800,000, and doubtless out of that it will give something to Scottish Opera. Scottish Opera has not received anything directly from the enhancement fund either.
I have been told that no immediate decisions to make cuts were taken at this morning's meeting of Welsh National Opera, and I am sure that the whole House will be delighted to hear that. It intends to discuss the position further with the Arts Council of Great Britain—which is quite right, if that is what it wants—and they intend to meet in late January. I fully share the hon. Gentleman's wish to achieve a satisfactory resolution that will enable Welsh National Opera to run a full programme during 1991.
Sir David Price: When all the changes have been implemented, what alteration in the balance of expenditure in the Arts Council vote does my right hon. Friend foresee? What will be spent centrally, and what will be spent regionally? Within a typical regional budget, what percentage will be Arts Council funding, and what percentage will come from the local authority? That is germane to the question of the balance of representation in regional arts.
Mr. Renton: My hon. Friend asks precisely the same questions that I have been asking since I took up the job of Minister for the Arts. The answer to his first question is that the figures are not yet available, and I have postponed moving to delegation until a detailed plan of costs and administrative structure is available to me. My hon. Friend's second question follows from his first. I cannot say now what the balance will be between the money that goes to the performing artist and that which is spent on administration. I do not want to move forward wholeheartedly until I am certain that a lower proportion of the money available will be spent on meeting administrative costs.
Mr. Tony Banks: I want to express my pleasure that the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, which is in my constituency, is to receive £75,000, which is well deserved. I hope that the Minister will come to Newham to see what the borough is doing to support the arts, and that he will have discussions with the Secretary of State for the Environment to establish what additional resources can be made available to local authorities—perhaps recognising their support for the arts through the standard spending assessment. A number of local authorities are under great pressure, because, as we know, the arts are not a compulsory area of expenditure for them. What discussions are the Minister prepared to have with the Secretary of State for the Environment on that important matter?
Mr. Renton: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. It is always nice to receive support, even if it is from an unusual quarter of the House. I was particularly pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman's support for the grant decided upon by the Arts Council for the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. I read in the newspapers this morning that its director was rather surprised at receiving a grant at all, so presumably it made a very good Christmas present for him. I know from that theatre's work that the grant is very well deserved. If an opportunity presents itself, I shall be delighted to visit that theatre with the hon. Gentleman.
During Question Time a few days ago, I told the hon. Gentleman that if there is clear evidence that local
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authorities are unnecessarily or excessively cutting arts spending, I would certainly consider that question and seek to discuss it with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. I have no statutory responsibilities in that regard, but, with the hon. Gentleman's help, I will gladly keep a close eye on the situation.
Dr. John G. Blackburn: Will my right hon. Friend accept my warm and generous personal congratulations on his appointment, and on his infinite wisdom in selecting my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Bowden) as his Parliamentary Private Secretary?
Does my right hon. Friend agree that there is no cultural or artistic desert north of Watford, and that that is particularly true of the west midlands, where the arts are flourishing? The arts world will welcome with acclamation my right hon. Friend's statement, for which I applaud him, that 49 per cent. of the funding will go to the provinces.
Mr. Renton: I thank my hon. Friend for his supportive remarks, and can only endorse his comments on my wisdom in appointing as my Parliamentary Private Secretary my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Mr. Bowden), who is well known for his interest in the arts. I was glad that he accepted.
Mr. Frank Haynes: I get the awful feeling that we have been conned again. I can read this Minister like a book. I want to know what help will be given to the east midlands—never mind the first division that was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher), or even the second division. We are a non-league club, and I want to know what the Minister is going to do about it.
Mr. Renton: If, from my quick reading of the list, I have interpreted the acronyms correctly, I suspect that the Firebird trust is in the east midlands, and I note that it is receiving an enhancement award of £24,000. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity of visiting that trust during the Christmas holidays to establish how it is planning to spend that money.
Mr. John Bowis: Does my right hon. Friend agree that a balance must be struck between the benefits of delegation and those of devolution, and that the companies concerned must have confidence in their funding bodies? Will he take great care not to devolve responsibility for companies having national and international reputations until, and unless, they confirm that they have confidence in the regional body as opposed to the national body?
Mr. Renton: My hon. Friend makes the point extremely well. It is precisely the case that I want the regional arts boards to be known and respected in their areas—as a consequence of their chairmen, staff, and the professional advice available to them—before major delegation takes place.
Mr. Roy Hughes: Is not the Minister being a bit complacent? He is failing to acknowledge the consternation that he has caused to supporters of the Welsh National Opera throughout the country. Will he make whatever representations are necessary to end the confusion and to secure WNO's future?
Mr. Renton: I stress that the decisions in question are taken by the Arts Council, not by the Minister for the Arts. I do not want to repeat the figures, but I acknowledge the proper feeling of caring and love for the Welsh National Opera that is shared by the hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members representing Welsh constituencies. I hope that, when he reconsiders the figures that I mentioned today on the increased touring grant, and the enhancement money and increase in revenue funding from the Arts Council, he and the company will arrive at the conclusion that, in all the circumstances, the Welsh National Opera has done quite well. Naturally it would have liked to receive more—but which arts customer in this country would not like that?
Mr. Richard Alexander: Will my right hon. Friend put some flesh on his comments about local authority representation on the regional boards? Will he ensure wherever possible that each county has a representative on the regional authority? For example, it would be deeply unacceptable if Nottinghamshire were to be represented by someone from Leicestershire or Derbyshire. I refer to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) my right hon. Friend's remarks about the grant to the Firebird trust. Neither the hon. Member for Ashfield nor I have ever heard of its activities in north Nottinghamshire, and that concerns us.
Mr. Renton: Perhaps my hon. Friend will also want toi inform his ignorance during the Christmas holiday, and will tell me the result of his investigations when we meet again in January. To allow more flexible local authority representation on the boards, I moved on from the decisions taken by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor). I decided that, although the membership of the boards should be kept as small as possible, they could be increased to 18 if necessary; and that if local authorities really considered that number unsatisfactory and still too small, they could make representations to the Arts Council and to myself to increase it up to 24 members, of which one third could be local authority representatives.
How the local authorities choose those representatives is up to them. I do not want to impose a rigid arrangement, because the situation will differ from area to area. One way would be for all local authorities to meet together in the consultative forum that I mentioned, and there elect their representatives on the arts boards. It will be better for them to decide for themselves rather than have the selection method imposed by me, from the centre.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: What about money for libraries—and for books in particular? What is the situation in respect of the natural history museum, where, for the sake of £80,000 to £100,000, a very important scientific reference section is in crisis, and of the British library, which cannot even afford subscriptions to some of the scientific periodicals that it most certainly ought to be able to afford?
Mr. Renton: I hope that the hon. Gentleman, whom I have known for many years, will not fall into the trap into which the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Mr. Fisher) falls of always using the word "crisis" whenever he talks about arts or library funding. As to the natural history museum, as the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) knows, precise allocation of funds within the
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museum is a matter for its director and trustees; it is not a matter for me. As the hon. Gentleman also knows, the recent public expenditure settlements gave museums and galleries an average 8·5 per cent. increase in running costs.
I met the chairman of the British library this morning, and we had a long talk about the development of the British library building. I cannot say that he pointed me in the direction of the crisis in running costs that the hon Gentleman has just mentioned.
Mr. John Greenway: Is my right hon. Friend aware that today's news that Opera North is to receive £650,000 from the enhancement fund has been warmly welcomed in Leeds and the north of England? It should also be welcomed in the east midlands, as Opera North tours regularly to Nottingham. Without that extra money Opera North, and not the Welsh National Opera, would have folded. It is already having to cut its current Christmas and new year programme. Does he agree that, if we are to move towards more devolution to the regions—and perhaps if one day Opera North devolves to the Yorkshire region—it is crucial that we have a fair distribution of resources? Despite this welcome news, will my right hon. Friend ignore the special pleading of Welsh National Opera, as it is still the best-funded regional opera company in Great Britain, and we must move towards greater parity of opera funding?
Mr. Renton: My hon. Friend's comments again make me glad that I have the Arts Council as a filter between me and representations made by hon. Members. I am pleased with his comments about Opera North. It is true that it has received a substantial sum from the enhancement fund and that it does not confine its activities to the north of England. In conjunction with the Royal Shakespeare company, it put on the extremely successful performance of "Showboat" in London this year. The only trouble was that it was such a sell-out that many people who wished to see it could not get tickets.
Dr. Kim Howells: I hope that the Minister will not ignore the representations made on behalf of the Welsh National Opera company. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) spoke about the way in which moneys were to be divided up after the reorganisation. I make a plea on behalf of writers, artists and potters and others who should be receiving money that it does not go into the pockets of the professional aesthetes and fat cats who sit on the quangos which so often govern the arts in the regions.
Mr. Renton: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall not ignore the points put to me about Welsh National Opera. In answering a number of serious questions on that subject this afternoon, I have pointed out that the balance of the funding to be made available to Welsh National Opera in the year ahead is rather better than it seemed at first sight. I hope that their initial reaction will be slightly different after they have thought a little more about it.
I fully agree with the hon. Gentleman's second point. Indeed, to make certain that there is no increase in administrative costs, I have asked to receive the report by April 1991. In all fairness, it must be said that there are many people who sit on such quangos, or non-governmental bodies, to help us with advice about the arts—
Mr. Dennis Skinner: The Government were going to get rid of quangos.
Mr. Renton: I suggest that the hon. Gentleman waits a minute. Those people give their service free of charge, and we are grateful that they do so.
Mr. Michael Colvin: If a regional arts board wishes to supplement its income by running a lottery, will it be allowed to do so, or would that cut across any plans that the Government might have for running a national lottery to supplement the arts?
Mr. Renton: My hon. Friend will know that that question should be directed to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary rather than to me. The Home Office has overall responsibility for policy on lotteries. At the moment, if the lottery had a limited prize it would be within the law, but if it were substantial, it would not be. I will certainly bring my hon. Friends remarks about lotteries to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary.
Mr. Robert Banks: Can my right hon. Friend give us an assurance that the granting of public money to the regions will be fairly balanced so that areas such as Yorkshire compare favourably with Wales, Scotland and elsewhere, taking into account the size of their populations?
Mr. Renton: That is an extremely interesting point. At the moment there is a great imbalance between what London receives, in pounds per head of population, and what some of the regions receive. I am sure that, as we develop the national arts strategy, that is one of the aspects which should be considered. If it is in order, Mr. Speaker, may I say that, when I looked at the figures this morning, I realised that my region, South East Arts, gets the lowest grant per head of population in the kingdom?

BILL PRESENTED
  WELFARE OF ANIMALS AT SLAUGHTER
  Sir Richard Body, supported by Sir Nicholas Bonsor, Mr. Andrew Bowden, Mr. Bill Walker, Mr. Christopher Hawkins and Mr. Jerry Wiggin, presented a Bill to make further provision for the welfare of animals at slaughter: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 25 January and to be printed. [Bill 52.]

Elimination of Poverty in Retirement
4.55 pm
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require local authorities and health authorities to monitor the condition of their retired population; to eliminate standing charges on gas, electricity and water; to exempt pensioners from licence charges and telephone rental; to extend pensioners' concessionary fare schemes; to make provision for the calculation of old age pensions by reference to average earnings; and to appoint a Minister with responsibility for retired people.
This Bill is very timely. Throughout the past few weeks, the country has been shivering in the grip of Arctic weather. Yet, as of 9 December, no cold weather payments had been made. For cold weather payments to be made, there have to be seven consecutive days with a temperature below freezing point, and the wind chill factor is not taken into account.
Pensioners are living in greater poverty than in any other country in western Europe, and the situation is deteriorating. The lot of many pensioners is to see local hospitals close, local health services curtailed and social service facilities cut because of local government expenditure cuts. In many of our cities, there is a possible threat to the concessionary fares scheme which, in London, allows free transport for pensioners. Pensioners feel that some of those services are under serious threat.
The value of the pension is the crucial issue and is at the centre of the Bill. In November 1979 the average single state old-age pension was 20·4 per cent. of gross earnings. As of next April, with the increase that the Government have announced, it will be 16 per cent., and 25·6 per cent. for a pensioner couple. Quite simply, the reason is that, in 1980, the Government broke the link between the state old-age pension and average earnings and instead linked it to average prices, which meant that the amount of money taken away from each pensioner is now the astronomical figure of £14 a week for a single pensioner and more than £20 a week for a pensioner couple. That is an awful lot of money—it adds up to more than £6 billion taken away during that period.
Contrast that with the billions of pounds which have been handed out in tax relief to the super-rich, who can use it to buy second cars, third homes and fourth holidays each year. The property boom in London is the beneficiary of those tax cuts, and the pensioners have paid for them.
The Bill seeks to restore the link as soon as possible. We must remember that pensioners lose out because the link with earnings has been broken and pensions are linked to prices instead, and if one considers how the retail prices index affects low-income households—the majority of those on the state old-age pension are low-income households—there are some interesting statistics. In the third quarter of this year, the retail prices index showed a year-on-year increase of 7·4 per cent. For a pensioner household the figure was 8 per cent. The year-on-year figure for the whole year was 10·6 per cent., and 12 per cent. for pensioner households.
Pensioners lose not only because of the break of the link with earnings, but because they are small households. They shop at corner shops, where prices are higher, and they buy smaller quantities. The benefits of going to

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hypermarkets on ring roads and bypasses are not available to them. They have to shop in more expensive places. The state old-age pension should reflect old people's needs.
In 1987, 25 per cent. of pensioners' incomes were less than half the average, and the figure has increased rapidly since: state pensions are in a worse position as a percentage of all pensioner incomes. Pensioners are becoming progressively worse off. The Social Security Act 1986, for example, damaged the state earnings-related pension scheme by removing consideration of the best 20 years and substituting the entire working lifetime. That has made the prospects of many people in work particularly bad. The 1988 social security reforms made 2,090,000 pensioners worse off immediately. It should not be forgotten that the Prime Minister pioneered the introduction of the social fund, ending the system of automatic payments under the single payment scheme and substituting an arrangement allowing loans or grants.
During the last full year in which single payments were made, 12 per cent. of all single payments went to pensioners or pensioner households. In the latest year for which figures are available, only 0·1 per cent. of crisis loans and only 4·5 per cent. of budget loans were made to pensioners. That was not because pensioners did not need such loans; it was because the present culture, and the present evaluation of society, mean that people receive grants if they are entitled to them, but will not take out a loan knowing that in the future it will have to be reclaimed from pensions or benefits. The loan system is one of the most disgraceful aspects of the current social security legislation, and I believe that it should be abolished.
My Bill contains a series of comprehensive measures that would dramatically change society's attitude to elderly people. We should remember, that one day, every Member of Parliament will be a pensioner. One day, everyone will need help from someone else. The idea that everyone can take care of himself is arrant nonsense: everyone requires health facilities and support, and it is about time that we recognised the enormous debt that we owe to the pensioners who have put so much into our society.
First, the Bill provides for the appointment of a Minister responsible for co-ordinating pension policy throughout Government Departments·policy on housing, transport, health education and the environment. All those matters affect pensioners. I do not believe that, for example, education should be available only for those receiving job-related training or attending college or university; education should be available for life, including the adult education classes which have been so drastically cut. The Minister for Pensions would have a wide brief.
Secondly, local authorities would be required to produce an annual report on all their activities as they relate to pensioners. The report would list, for instance, the advice services that authorities provide, the day centres in the area and other facilities that they already offer or for
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which they are campaigning: in other words, it would constitute an audit of what is available to pensioner households throughout the community.
Thirdly, health authorities would be required to produce a statement on the condition of the elderly people in their communities, containing details of, for instance, life expectancy, the health facilities that are available, the effects of local hospital closures and the centring of facilities on remote general hospitals, and the need for specialised services—chiropody, for example—and for health centres for the elderly, on the same principle as well-woman clinics.
Over the past few years, we have witnessed the privatisation of many utilities. Over the past few weeks we have seen the obscenity of the sale of electricity boards, enabling vast profits to be made by those fortunate enough to get hold of a few shares in a service that should never have been sold in the first place. The Bill proposes the abolition of standing charges for gas, electricity and water in pensioner households; the profits made by the companies concerned could easily cover such charges without any increase in unit costs for other consumers. The Bill also seeks to abolish television licence fees for pensioner households, a matter in regard to which my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) has acted decisively in the past. The same applies to telephone rentals; moreover—this was brought forcefully to my attention today—why should pensioner households now be expected to pay for calls to directory inquiries?
The Bill would also introduce a national scheme to restore free travel on public transport and the earnings link. Above all—this is crucial—it seeks to meet the demand by the National Pensioners Convention that the state old-age pension be set at half the amount of average earnings for couples, and at a third of that amount for single people. That would mean a pension of about £75 a week, which is no more than the pensioners of this country deserve.
I hope that the Bill will receive support.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, Mr. Harry Cohen, Mrs. Alice Mahon, Mr. David Winnick, Mr. Dennis Skinner, Mrs. Audrey Wise, Mr. Bob Clay, Mr. Tom Clarke, Ms. Dawn Primarolo, Mr. Bernie Grant, Mr. Chris Smith and Mr. John Hughes.

Elimination of Poverty in Retirement
  ELIMINATION OF POVERTY IN RETIREMENT
  Mr. Jeremy Corbyn accordingly presented a Bill to require local authorities and health authorities to monitor the condition of their retired population; to eliminate standing charges on gas, electricity and water; to exempt pensioners from licence charges and telephone rental; to extend pensioners' concessionary fare schemes; to make provision for the calculation of old age pensions by reference to average earnings; and to appoint a Minister with responsibility for retired people: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 15 February and to be printed. [Bill 53.]

Points of Order
5.6 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. One hour and 36 minutes after Question Time, it is a bit difficult to raise a point of order arising out of questions, but that is what Mr. Speaker asked me to do.
On Scottish questions, we reached question 20. Question 21 concerned provision in Scottish hospitals in relation to casualties who may return from the Gulf. That may be happening in a horrendous way before our next Scottish Question Time. I simply wanted to ask whether the Scottish Office has inquired about the possibility of a statement being made, or of a question being answered orally.
Madam Deputy Speaker: I understand that Mr. Speaker suggested to the hon. Gentleman that he raise his point of order after the statements. I can, however, answer his point by saying that Mr. Speaker has not been informed that a statement is to be made.
Mr. Ray Powell: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Can you advise me? Between now and the rising of the House there will be little time or opportunity for hon. Members to ask about the advice that should be given to traders throughout the country about Sunday opening. Last Thursday, I asked the Leader of the House—who, I am glad to see, is present now—to arrange a debate this week so that the matter could be highlighted and traders might not infringe the law.
In Prime Minister's questions yesterday, the Prime Minister might have been expected to repeat what his predecessor had often said about the law. Can you tell me, Madam Deputy Speaker, what course I should pursue to ensure that a debate is held so that all retailers may be informed of the law and how they should act?
Madam Deputy Speaker: That is barely a point of order. I think that the hon Gentleman is trying to hijack the next debate. I am sure that he is a wise enough parliamentarian to know that he may well have an opportunity to raise his point during the Christmas Adjournment motion debate. As he has pointed out, the Leader of the House is present in the Chamber.
Mr. Frank Haynes: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. On the front page of today's Evening Standard—right on the front page—is a picture of the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), who has apparently moved into new accommodation not far from the House of Commons. We are supposed to believe in security in this place—and out there. But the name of the street where the house is situated and the number on a pillar outside the door are clearly shown in the picture. Can something be done about security? We all have to take responsibility for it. The media must also act responsibly. They have failed the nation.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Both the Chair and the House take very seriously what the hon. Gentleman has said. Though it is not a point of order, I hope that his comments have been noted in all quarters of the House.

Adjournment (Christmas)
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this House at its rising on Thursday 20th December do adjourn until Monday 14th January.—[Mr. Patnick.]
5.9 pm
Mr. John Biffen: It is customary to use the Adjournment debate to reflect upon matters of political immediacy, even though one realises that the Government cannot give an authoritative answer at the conclusion of the debate. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will convey to the Treasury, with Christmas good will, the hope that it will reflect seriously on points that are of considerable and growing moment. I refer to the deepening recession that is evident now throughout the economy and which, in my judgment, has been made that much worse by the inflexibility of a fixed exchange rate system that inhibits an interest rate policy.
A modest roll call of honour accounts for about a dozen Tory Back Benchers who were not seduced by the arguments for membership of the exchange rate mechanism. They represent an unrepentant set of Davids against the Goliaths of the Confederation of British Industry, the City and the occupants of the Treasury Bench, but I do not believe that the Goliaths won the argument in the recent developments.
The debate was conditioned by the belief that membership of the exchange rate mechanism would confer great benefits. With the strength of continental currencies, it was believed that we could go for lower interest rates without prejudicing the parity of sterling, because it would receive support from our neighbours and friends. That view was reinforced by the gesture of British membership, which was accompanied by a 1 per cent. cut in interest rates. Whatever expectations were encouraged during those early hours have not been fulfilled since.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: It is over 15 weeks ago.
Mr. Biffen: I know that I shall have the vocal, and perhaps even further, support of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). He is a very good ally. The very fact that he comes alongside a Tory radical allows me to understand his point.
Mr. Skinner: I remember that, on 28 October 1971, the right hon. Gentleman was one of the 30 or so Tories who went into the Lobby against the Common Market. His leader at that time, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath), the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) and the rag tag and bobtail dragged us into the Common Market without a vote. I remember the 36 Divisions. We might still do the Lobbies together. How many years is it since then? For 19 years, we have carried on the battle. I look forward to a few more in the Tory ranks who ratted at the time getting on board ship against the exchange rate mechanism, the single currency and the central bank, dominated by the Germans.
Mr. Biffen: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Very wisely, he is taking a panoramic view of the issue. I wish, however, to concentrate on the narrow issue of the state of the economy.
There is now a burgeoning recession. I am not sure that that point is really appreciated by the Treasury Bench and the Governor of the Bank of England. There is still talk

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about the recession being short and shallow. I see little evidence, on an anecdotal basis, to persuade me that the recession has that character. I believe that, in many sectors of the economy, we have been in recession for a considerable period. That makes nonsense of the proposition that the recession will be short.
If I need additional evidence, I move away from feelings and sentiments that are shared by almost every hon. Member who comes from an industrial area and turn to that great and respected source of judgment, the Confederation of British Industry, whose judgment is much more likely to weigh with the Goliaths of the Treasury Bench. The latest CBI report says:
"Output expectations … in December represent the largest expected fall since December 1980."
In my view, the case is clearly made out for an early reduction in interest rates.
No one who looks at the general pattern of demand in this country and at monetary control can suppose that we are in a lax monetary position that will not admit of a further reduction in interest rates. The Government's reluctance to cut interest rates is because of their inhibitions on account of our membership of the exchange rate mechanism. In a recent debate, the Chancellor of the Exchequer said:
"There can be no question of a reduction in interest rates that is not fully justified by our position in the ERM. That will be the case however strong is the pressure for lower interest rates based on other indicators."—[Official Report, 12 December 1990; Vol. 182, c. 966.]
Other indicators? The rate of unemployment, the fall in industrial investment, the range of economic experiences that we can now trace within our domestic economy? Are they to be set at naught and are we predominantly to take a view on
"our position in the ERM"?
My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) intervened in the debate to give his benediction to the Government's policy. We could argue about fixed exchange rates and free exchange rates on another occasion. We adhere to two different economic philosophies. Due to the fraternal nature of the Conservative party, which has been so evident over recent weeks, we can cope with that.
There is, however, a narrow issue: whether membership of the exchange rate mechanism was effected at an appropriate parity. If it was not effected at an appropriate parity, a perpetual disadvantage will weigh upon British industry, just as the return to the gold standard at a wholly unrealistic figure cast its shadow over the operation of the economy in the 1920s and 1930s. I do not want the House to be burdened by the oppressive memory of Montagu Norman. Central bankers had a great deal more control over our affairs then than, happily, they do at the moment. I want politicians to be able to form their judgment on what the economy requires and to reach a decision on such intimate matters as the rate of interest.
Mr. Anthony Nelson: I do not want to break the shallow unity that has broken out. Indeed, I was hoping for a more contrite speech from my right hon. Friend, since we had to pay high rates of interest in recent years when we were not members of the exchange rate mechanism.
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My right hon. Friend referred to giving the maximum flexibility to politicians, but to exercise proper responsibility we need a stable medium of exchange. Unless we have a secure and valuable medium of exchange—a currency whose value does not change from one minute to the next—how on earth shall we be able to address the deep-seated problems of our economy? If we prefer instead to deal in funny money—in a currency that readily depreciates from year to year—surely we are perpetrating a fraud on the people we represent and are denying ourselves the proper responsibility of addressing our economic problems?
Mr. Biffen: I am happy to have allowed my hon. Friend to make his speech in an intervention.
Mr. Nelson: I am sorry.
Mr. Biffen: No: it is a technique that I admire.
The inflationary difficulties that we have experienced in recent years derived precisely from when we tried to shadow the deutschmark a few years ago. The lessons that I draw from that are precisely the opposite of those drawn by my hon. Friend.
Of course one would like a degree of relative stability in these matters. It is perfectly possible to have a system of proper and responsible monetary and fiscal policies that will produce that. That is the responsibility of national politicians and Governments answering in this Parliament. Indeed, it can be argued that, since 1979, there has been a period when those policies produced considerable advantageous movements in the exchange rate.
We shall debate that some other time. I want to return to the crucial point of whether we have joined the exchange rate mechanism at a level that will place us at a permanent disadvantage.
Mr. Bowen Wells: The point that I want to make was made by another central banker, Karl Otto Pal, who said that domestic interest rates should be established primarily in relation to the state of the domestic economy and not in accordance with or to sustain an exchange rate that might be selective. A central banker—one of the most powerful—agrees with my right hon. Friend.
Mr. Biffen: If I lose the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) but gain the support of central banker Pal, who am I to complain?
There are voices in continental Europe who take the more open view on how we should conduct our economic arrangements within the wider partnership of Europe, which must include eastern Europe. We must not allow ourselves to be argued into the belief that we are merely representative of one narrow national interest in our desire for looser economic and monetary arrangements for our Community partners and ourselves. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point.
May I be allowed, with tedious repetition, to return to the central point, which we must understand and evaluate—whether we have joined the exchange rate mechanism at a level that will confer a permanent disadvantage on the industrialists and workers of this country, unless and until it is rectified. Gone is the glad morning confidence when the exchange rate mechanism was announced, when there was practically a competition of euphoria between the Treasury Bench and the Opposition Front Bench, then represented by the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) but now elevated in status

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by my neighbour from Shropshire, the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott). That shows that when the two Front Benches—the Goliaths of Parliament—are in absolute unity, it is time for the grubby Davids and Denises to come out and to search their scrips for their pebbles.
I am delighted to see that there is a growing sense of realism about these affairs. An excellent speech was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcestershire, South (Mr. Spicer), who called in question the desirability of the exchange rate mechanism if we are to be in this Lubyanka. [Interruption.] I want to show myself as broad European.
My argument is reinforced by a letter in The Times from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell). I must mention my pair, the hon. Member for Durham, North (Mr. Radice). I had hoped that our close association would have stripped him of any innocence. He is saying, "Can't we renegotiate?" He believes that those with whom we have joined the mechanism on disadvantageous terms will say, "We are terribly sorry, we did not realise that it would be so difficult for you; of course we shall accommodate a new parity."
We need action a bit more robust than that. Let us be clear: there must be a growing volume of protest in this House and elsewhere that the present terms of the exchange rate mechanism are wholly disadvantageous for this country. Those who feel disposed to argue that are not alone, because those opinions are propounded outside, particularly in the quality press. I have in mind the article of Anatole Kaletsky in The Times, which said:
"The conflict between Britain's domestic economic needs and the disciplines of the ERM will grow steadily worse."
That is the analysis of a man—I have not the faintest idea of his politics—who believes that, if a country joins at the wrong parity, it does not naturally resolve itself. If anything, it will be compounded through time.
My simple message to the Treasury Bench is that this nation is enduring a considerable recession in manufacturing industry—a recession that is spreading to most parts of the economy. We do ourselves no credit to talk about it in terms of something that will be short or shallow. Remedial action should come sooner rather than later. One of the most obvious forms of remedial action is to lower interest rates. Inasmuch as that is also an action necessary to rectify some of the imbalance that is implicit in exchange rate mechanism membership, the sooner it is undertaken the better.
5.26 pm
Mr. Jack Ashley: One of the interesting aspects of the House of Commons is the rejuvenation of Members when they leave office. The speech of the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) showed the beneficial effects of throwing off the cares of office. The Leader of the House will be delighted by that speech, because when the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North spoke as a Minister—he was a very good Minister—he did not make stimulating or inspiring speeches because, as Leader of the House, he could not do so. He now has the freedom of the Back Benches and holds the interest of the House.
Another interesting aspect of the House is that, although hon. Members are prepared to listen to such reviews of national issues, they are also prepared to listen to issues that affect small numbers of people. I ask the House not to adjourn until we have discussed four
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separate groups of disabled people who are neglected. The first is a group of severely disabled people who are recipients of the independent living fund. They need the money from that fund to keep out of institutions. The independent living fund enables these people to maintain their independence and their dignity. Without it, they will be forced into long-term residential care, at great cost to the state.
The Government have threatened to wind up the independent living fund in 1993. They say that responsibility for the payment of the fund will pass to local authorities, but that is a sacrilege, because we all know that most local authorities cannot be bothered to help disabled people. Many others have competing claims on their resources.
There are some good local authorities, but there are plenty of very bad ones that are indifferent to the needs of disabled people. Some local authorities will spend money on fancy bypasses and on all kinds of popular projects rather than on helping disabled people. We know that that will happen and that the result will be catastrophic for severely disabled people.
Some severely disabled people receive large amounts from the fund to keep them out of hospital. Mr. J, for example, who lives in Shropshire, is paralysed from the neck down and receives £400 a week from the fund. Before the introduction of the ILF he was cared for by his 82-year-old mother. That man will not be allowed such independence and dignity if that money is withdrawn. If the local authority cannot, or will not, pay, he will be incarcerated in an institution.
The Select Committee on Social Services believes that the ILF should become a statutory body, and nearly all organisations that represent disabled people believe that it should be preserved. The all-party disablement group has insisted that it should be preserved. I hope that the Government will think again and will not abolish it.
The second group of severely disabled people for whom I am concerned are those affected by discrimination. In the past, the House has debated the need for such anti-discrimination legislation, but the Government claim that there is insufficient evidence of discrimination against disabled people—what nonsense. Anyone who is severely disabled could tell Ministers that, every day of their lives, they experience gross and vindictive discrimination. Some of that discrimination is unthinking, but every day severely disabled people are confronted with it.
Some disabled people are not allowed to go into the pubs of their choice. Others are denied access to various buildings. Some cannot go to seaside resorts and some are denied jobs. Every day those people are hit, and hit again, by such discrimination. Although we do not see it in the House, it exists. We should deal with it because it is scandalous if someone is denied a job because he is in a wheelchair, he has an artificial limb or he is deaf or blind.
For the past two years, the Government have reviewed employment opportunities for disabled people. However, they have never discussed that review with those organisations that represent disabled people. The Government should take far more notice of the opinion of disabled people and their organisations. We have legislation to combat discrimination on the grounds of sex and race, and such legislation is badly needed to combat discrimination against disabled people—that is certainly the opinion of disabled people and their representative organisations.

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The Governments of Germany, Belgium, Greece, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Portugal have introduced legislation to combat discrimination against the disabled. If they can find the time and the good will to introduce legislation to outlaw discrimination against disabled people, why cannot we? In the United States, a marvellous new Bill has been passed to give new rights to disabled people covering a range of matters, which states that employers cannot discriminate against disabled people. I wish that we had led the way, but at least we could follow the Americans and the Europeans.
The third group of people to whom I want to draw to the attention of the House are those service men who have been disabled through negligence. The House will recall the campaign that was conducted a few years ago to allow service men to sue when they had been disabled as a result of negligence. Three years ago, no ex-service man or acting service man could sue for negligence, because section 10 of the Crown Proceedings Act 1947 prevented such actions.
I was proud to take part in the campaign on behalf of those service men. We fought the Ministry of Defence, who argued that it could not allow service men to sue the MOD as that would be bad for discipline, it would upset people and, in any case, the negligence could not be proved. For that reason we fought our campaign, and fighting with me were many disabled ex-service men in wheelchairs—I could name them, but I do not want to detain the House.
After two years, the MOD gave way and said that it would repeal section 10 of the 1947 Act so that service men would be allowed to sue for negligence. That was fine. At that time, the hon. Member for Davyhulme (Mr. Churchill) introduced the Crown Proceedings (Armed Forces) Bill, and he helped us wonderfully. As a result, the Government changed their mind and service men can now sue for negligence. When the Bill was enacted, however, the Government said that they were not prepared to allow those people who had campaigned in the past to sue for negligence. They were not prepared to make the Bill retrospective, but that was an anomalous act on the part of the Government. Those men who had campaigned with me were loyal ex-service men who loved the services, but they have been denied the right to sue for negligence.
I have given the MOD example after example of retrospective legislation. For example, there were some in 1532, as well as some in 1987 as a result of the Local Government Act. I believe that the legislation should be retrospective to enable those ex-service men to sue for negligence. If that is not possible—I am trying to be reasonable—why can the Government not give those people an ex gratia payment if they can prove that they were disabled through negligence? That is all I am asking.
I have raised that issue tonight because we have a new Prime Minister. When I put this problem to the former Prime Minister, I included a number of proposals to enable an ex gratia payment to be made—there are not many people involved. The right hon. Lady said that she was not prepared to consider that, because of practical difficulties. In response, I proposed a number of compromises to limit the numbers involved, so that only those who had evidence to prove that they had been maimed through negligence could claim.
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All those suggestions were turned down. I hope that the Leader of the House will ask the new Prime Minister to review the issue—that is all I am asking. Those loyal ex-service men have a powerful case and they deserve to be considered.
I have spoken for too long, but I want to spend just a couple of minutes on a group for whom I have campaigned for the past 25 years—nuclear test veterans. The Government have refused to allow them compensation on the basis of lack of evidence that they have suffered from radiation. The Government's stand is preposterous. They refused to move on haemophiliacs who have been infected by contaminated blood, but they then changed their mind. Similarly, they have refused to act on nuclear test veterans, but, sooner or later, I am sure that they will change their mind.
The essence of my case is this. British ex-service men suffered the effects of radiation in the nuclear tests 40 years ago, and they have been suffering ever since. How can the Government deny that they suffered radiation damage? The United States Government looked into the matter for their ex-service men. They found that radiation damage was proved and they are paying for 13 cancers caused by radiation to their ex-service men suffering from radiation to which they were exposed at the tests.
What is the difference between American soldiers and British soldiers? Their bodies are the same. The nuclear tests were the same. The radiation was the same. What is the difference? The difference is solely in the Governments' attitudes. That is all that I wish to say. It is a simple, strong, powerful and moving case.
I ask the Leader of the House to take on board the issues that I have raised. I do not expect answers or solutions from him tonight. He has a difficult job. However, if he passes my comments on to the Ministers responsible and to the Prime Minister, and if the Prime Minister will review the matter which I raised, perhaps we could start the ball rolling. I have made reasonable points. Severly disabled people should simply be given a fair chance.
5.41 pm
Sir Dudley Smith: The right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) is a well-known champion of disabled people. I have a good deal of sympathy with the points that he made about discrimination against disabled people. Many disabled people live lives of great heroism in their attempts to carry on normally at home and at work. It is up to all of us to give them as much support as possible.
I wish to speak about planning laws and their impact on a country such as ours at this late stage of the 20th century. We sometimes forget that we are basically a small, overcrowded island. I represent the part known as mid-Warwickshire, which is the very heart of England. Yet it is only 100 miles from this Chamber. My comments inevitably sound parochial, but they refer to problems that are replicated in a hundred and one places throughout the United Kingdom.
There are considerable environmental pressures on all of us. Many greedy developers, given the chance, would concrete over the whole of the west midlands or the south of England without any worry, if an enormous profit was to be made out of it. My county of Warwickshire is one of the smallest in the country. The latest structure plan

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decrees that there will be about 37,000 new houses in the county by the turn of the century, of which 9,000 will be in my constituency. That has given rise to a great deal of anxiety among residents. In addition, further industrial development is promised. We already have a surfeit of technology parks—the polite way of referring to industrial sites—and more are apparently planned. Many of my constituents believe that those plans are too expansive. I urge the Secretary of State for the Environment to limit the structure plan and I hope that he will take that on board. I and many of my constituents have been in correspondence with him.
With the advent of the M40—which will come on stream between Birmingham and London as early as next month—my constituency will be between two motorways. On the other side we have the M1. Our communications makes us an extremely desirable area. Like the rest of the country we need housing and jobs. There are constant references to that need in the House. But jobs and houses should not be to the exclusion of everything else. When green areas are finally breached, they have gone for ever. There is no way of getting them back.
The quality of life is not merely the provision of reasonable accommodation for everyone. The environment in which one lives is also of paramount importance. Compared with that of many countries, our environment is still unique. It is green and pleasant and it attracts many people. What is why so many people from abroad wish to retire here.
Another threat to which the Department of the Environment should address itself is that of mineral extraction. It is linked to what I have already said about planning. In Britain we have strong laws which demand that there should be sand and gravel extraction and that counties should maintain their quotas. I submit that the quotas and the law are in urgent need of drastic revision. Wide areas of desirable countryside are being torn up for sand and gravel. Currently there are three sites in my constituency. The landscape will be severely scarred for many years as a result of the operations.
Surveys carried out throughout the county of Warwickshire reveal a veritable "sea" of sand and gravel deposits, the extraction of which will threaten the entire county with environmental hazards for decades to come. The stipulated quotas are unrealistic and need revision. More sand and gravel should be imported into Britain and a better system should be established to move it round the country from extraction sites where the environment is not an issue. We cannot continue despoiling the best parts of the country purely to extract sand and gravel.
My third point about planning is that the Department of the Environment needs to revise its overall planning policies, particularly in crowded and desirable areas such as the one which I am fortunate enough to represent. In a recent local planning dispute, I sided with the residents, but they were overruled by the district council. There are no politics in my point because it is a Conservative council. The chief officer of the council subsequently wrote to me stating:
"Planning committees are faced with the situation that planning legislation has made it clear that there is a presumption in favour of granting planning applications, unless there are planning reasons why applications should not be granted."
That was not terribly well put, but we get the message. In other words, he says that the objectors are guilty until they
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can prove themselves innocent. The assumption is against them right from the start. Unless they have a very good case, they will lose. Many of us have not taken that on board sufficiently. As we are all aware, planning applications arrive at the offices of our councils every day. It is just not good enough.
Every developer has an automatic right of appeal if he is turned down by a local authority, and frequently he has the decision reversed. Over the years, his persistence is often relentless. He comes back time and again, the residents are harassed and eventually the local council gives in. Yet when the decision goes against the local residents, they have no right of appeal. I have believed for a long time that in specific circumstances a right of appeal should be open to the individual, particularly in areas where there may be considerable changes.
Unless we attend to the matters that I have mentioned and seek to obtain a genuine balance, future generations will look upon us as philistines who ruined a uniquely pleasant land and made it into an ugly and dreary one. These matters affect every hon. Member, and we must constantly and vigilantly press them with the Department of the Environment.
5.49 pm
Rev. Martin Smyth: The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir D. Smith) spoke from the centre of the nation. I speak from its periphery, and with some hesitancy. The announcement by the Leader of the House of the dates for the Christmas recess was received with glee because we were to have a prolonged holiday. If I oppose the motion for the Christmas Adjournment, to put on record some of the issues about which I am concerned, I may cause the wrath of the House to fall upon me.
Mr. Roy Hughes: Does not the hon. Gentleman feel that he is giving the country the wrong impression by speaking of a holiday? I am sure that, like me and like many other hon. Members, he spends a lot of time in his constituency and is active there.
Rev. Martin Smyth: Our constituents will be glad to hear that hon. Members agree with them on occasion. If they think that it is a holiday, let them bask in the summertime of Christmas discontent.
The right hon. Members for Shropshire, North (M r. Biffen) and for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) did not give me a great deal of hope that my points will be answered tonight, but I shall press them none the less. The House will well understand that during Advent—the season in which we turn our thoughts to hopes of peace and festivity—the people of Northern Ireland will be focusing their thoughts on the security situation, but it is not to that point that I wish to direct my attention. The Leader of the House will not be at all surprised if I bring before the House the problem of the non-establishment of a Northern Ireland Select Committee.
I recognise that descendents of Herod Agrippa abound in Northern Ireland; in that part of the nation, the slaughter of the innocents tragically continues unabated. While others say that a security situation cannot be found, I claim that a security solution alone cannot be found and that we must have a political solution. If we are to find that

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solution and for the good governance of Northern Ireland, we need a Select Committee, even if that is only one aspect of the political solution.
For 50 years, Northern Ireland had a devolved regional Parliament, given to it and kept at arm's length by this House. We were unaware of what was going on in Northern Ireland. The day-to-day responsibilities of Northern Ireland were not the affairs of this Parliament. In my view, no matter how wisely that Parliament may have governed, that was a mistake. But for the past 18 years, an even greater mistake has been made to the detriment of the people of Northern Ireland. Irrespective of the wisdom, integrity and ability—or otherwise—of Ministers in the Northern Ireland Office, scrutiny of the expenditure policy and administration of the Northern Ireland Office and its associated public bodies has been hopelessly inadequate.
The role of local government has been reduced to a charade. That has encouraged councillors to spend their time on business not strictly pertaining to local government, not to mention their limited role in the supervision of parks, leisure facilities, cemeteries and refuse collection.
I have tried unsuccessfully to find out why successive Governments have failed to abide by the rules of the House which require scrutiny by Select Committees of major Government Departments. Northern Ireland Members are willing to serve and, unlike others, have not objected to Members for English constituencies sitting on a Northern Ireland Select Committee.
In 1978, the Procedure Committee recommended that there should be a Northern Ireland Select Committee and the 1979 Conservative manifesto—the basis of the Government's mandate—contained a pledge to move forward in restoring democracy to Northern Ireland. This year, the Procedure Committee again sought to set up a Select Committee.
I can understand the Northern Ireland Office, or indeed any Government Department, being glad not to have a Select Committee breathing down its neck, but that does not excuse the House for not establishing such a Committee.
The former Leader of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe), and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland rejected the instructions of the Procedure Committee as "inopportune" at a time of sensitive negotiations. Likewise, the hon. Member for Foyle (Mr. Hume), who rarely graces this place with his presence, opposed it. I cannot understand why any negotiations should impede the ability of this House to scrutinise a Department of Government. The clue to such opposition is perhaps to be found in the reported remark of an official to the late Airey Neave to the effect that the Government could not deliver on the 1979 manifesto because of a commitment given to Dublin. What was that commitment, who gave it and with what authority?
As far as I can see, the tardiness in establishing the Committee has nothing to do with the possibility of a devolved Government in Northern Ireland. Unless such a Government were given independent status, there must be a role for the House in scrutinising the affairs of the Northern Ireland Office.
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Moreover, to the best of my knowledge, there has been no suggestion that the Northern Ireland Office will cease to exist in the foreseeable future. That means that unless we are to send Northern Ireland into limbo—as we did in 1921—there must be scrutiny by the House of Commons. At the very least, such scrutiny would still be required in respect of reserved matters, even if transferred matters went back to a devolved Administration in Northern Ireland.
The recent report of the Select Committee on the Environment reinforces the need for such a Committee. It recommended that another quango should be set up to look after environmental issues in Northern Ireland. Who will supervise that quango? Those appointed by a Department whose affairs are not scrutinised by the House.
The establishment of a Select Committee is long overdue. There must be no more hastening slowly by a Government who appear to drift rather than direct on Northern Ireland matters. In my opinion, such a move would be a clear signal to those who practise the politics of violence that they cannot succeed. In a democracy, the Government must hearken to and heed the voice of the ballot box. They dare not continue to dance to the whine of the bullet and the blast of the bomb. Politics must prevail so that semtex cannot succeed.
5.58 pm
Mr. James Paice: I listened with interest to the hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Smyth) who told us of his trepidation in speaking against the motion for the Christmas Adjournment. I am happy to speak in favour of that motion because it will give the Government more time to think about and—it is to be hoped—find a solution to the problem that I am about to lay at their doorstep. It is a problem with a major impact on my constituency and an important relevance for the country—the future of the bloodstock breeding industry. The House will be aware that Newmarket is the centre of British racing. In and around my constituency the stud farms contribute substantially to Britain's economy and balance of payments, but they are facing major problems.
Britain is the world leader in breeding quality bloodstock. Although the New Zealanders, Americans and Irish all produce a number of good-quality horses, Britain is recognised as the leading nation in breeding. Last year, the turnover in British auction rings was about £116 million, of which £96 million was from one well-known company, Tattersall's, which has headquarters at Newmarket. It is estimated that £80 million of the £116 million came from foreign buyers and so attracted foreign resources into this country. There are massive private sales, particularly when horses have finished their racing days and are put out to stud as brood mares or stallions. We all know the telephone number prices for which stallions are often syndicated.
There is an estimated £200 million-worth of overseas earnings from the sale of bloodstock from this country every year—that figure is a few years out of date and the sum may be substantially more. In addition, 13,000 people are employed directly in breeding bloodstock and it is believed that there are another 4,000 jobs in the ancillary industries. The Thoroughbred Breeders Association, which represents the industry, has 2,000 members. It is an

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important industry. Some people will say that it is for the wealthy such as Arabs, but I emphasise, first, that that is not necessarily the case. Many people involved in breeding bloodstock are not in that category; secondly, that argument is irrelevant. I am talking about the industry's future and the economic benefits that it brings to this country which are now under severe threat.
From 1 January 1991, Ireland's exemption under the value added tax rules of the Community's sixth directive disappears and there will be major changes in the VAT rules as they affect bloodstock sales from the Community. That means that from 1 January, the VAT rates in the major bloodstock countries of Europe will be as follows: Italy, 9 per cent.; Germany, 7 per cent.; France, 5·5 per cent.; Ireland, 2·3 per cent.; and in the United Kingdom, 15 per cent. The VAT will be charged at the point of sale.
Tattersall's, which has £96 million-worth of turnover in this country, has already opened a new sale ring and associated facilities in Ireland. It now expects to move all its operations from Newmarket to Ireland during the next year or so unless my plea to the Government is recognised and action taken. It will inevitably mean that the breeders will follow the sale ring, for the simple reason that it is far better to breed the stock close to where it will be sold than to have the massive expense of transporting it from Cambridgeshire and the other important breeding districts in this country across to Ireland for sale.
In addition, the Irish are keen to attract British breeders to go over there. The worst estimates are that about half the jobs in the Newmarket region could be lost if that were to happen. The net effect of that would be that the VAT income to this country would be lost because the industry would have gone to Ireland and the ancillary tax benefits of income tax, corporation tax and other general taxation revenues that the Government receive from the industry would disappear.
The Government's policy is, first and foremost, that they have tried to find a solution. The breeders had a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Ryder) when he was Paymaster General; he recognised their arguments they put and offered his sympathy and help wherever possible. I know that the Government are looking at the problem, but we keep hearing rumours that it will not be easy to solve. My purpose in raising the subject today is to try to add further encouragement and stiffen the backbone of those who might be prepared to give up and say that they cannot find a solution. For many years the Government have offered export concessions so that a horse can be raced in this country for two years before being exported without incurring VAT problems. I understand that that concession would also disappear.
Another aspect of Government policy is their approach to VAT taxation after 1992. It is a totally market-based approach, but I also know that they believe that there should be no extra VAT rates other than the current 15 per cent. and zero rate. I totally support the Government's market-based approach. Imposed harmonisation of tax rates from Brussels would be ludicrous, and we should not move towards that. The market-based approach means the market will respond to VAT disadvantages. That is precisely what we believe will happen in the bloodstock industry. It will move to Ireland because of the VAT disadvantages that we should have in this country—that is simply the market working.
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But the logic of such an argument is that, in response to that, a Government who find rates so uncompetitive should take voluntary action to bring their rates into line so that their industry is not at such a disadvantage and is not decimated. I support that principle, which reflects the principles on which the Government have addressed the problem of tax harmonisation in Europe. I know that my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk, when he was Paymaster General and my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South-West (Mrs. Shephard), the Treasury Minister who has taken over responsibility for the matter, are sympathetic to that.
The proper solution to the problem is to reclassify the horse as an agricultural animal. That may seem a simplistic answer, but it should be properly examined. When the EC and the treaty were originally devised, it was undoubtedly the intention of those involved that the horse should be an agricultural animal. Annexes A and B of the sixth directive, both of which specify farming activities, were intended to include bloodstock. Annex C of the directive, which relates to common methods of calculating VAT for agriculture, specifically includes equines under the heading of agricultural products. Therefore, there is a sound basis in Community and VAT law for classifying the horses as a agricultural animal.
There are possible objections, and it would be a foolish person who did not recognise and counter them. The first is the cost to the Government of reducing VAT from 15 per cent. to zero, but we shall lose that income anyway. It is difficult to be absolutely precise about the actual amount—it is about £10 million to £12 million VAT a year on those sales. We have a precise sales figure, but not a precise VAT figure, because there are concessions and registered people who can reclaim VAT. That money will be lost anyway, so it is not as though the Treasury must forgo it.
The second possible objection to that solution may come from the Department of Environment because it would mean that in future all horse establishments would benefit under the business rate from the same exemptions as apply to agriculture. That is peanuts. Equine establishments' business rates are minuscule when set against all the business rates raised in this country. Set against the massive loss of jobs and the general taxation of industry, their contribution becomes insignificant. There may also be objections in the context of planning by the Department of the Environment, but as agricultural exemptions are reduced in number—the Government propose to reduce them still further—the differentiation bears little close scrutiny.
There will also be implications for the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. As Parliamentary Private Secretary to a Minister in that Department I must not comment on that except to say that in my view none of the problems that would be presented is insuperable.
I ask my right hon. Friend, who I know takes a close interest in these matters, and particularly in this sector of rural activity, to recognise that this is a matter of grave importance to a vital industry. Unless we voluntarily recognise the impact of this country's tax disadvantage we shall lose that industry and its economic benefits and jobs, and we shall lose the prestige that we have gained for the best bloodstock breeding in the world. I hope that, between now and when we reconvene after Christmas, the Government will think again about a solution and preferably adopt the one that I have advocated.
6.11 pm
Mr. Roy Hughes: My purpose is to draw attention to the need for Newport, Gwent, to be granted city status, especially in view of its growing economic, social and cultural importance in Wales.
In March 1991, I will have represented Newport in this House for 25 years—a great honour and privilege. It is a town with a population of about 130,000. It is on the eastern seaboard of Wales, and that favourable geographic position has helped to make it an important centre of commerce, industry and communications. The progress of the town has been helped by an enlightened borough council. Major inward investment has enabled the industrial base to be diversified. Private sector investments in the pipeline now exceed £600 million.
A wide range of local, national and international companies have achieved success in Newport. They include A. B. Electronics, Inmos, Standard Telephones and Cables, Monsanto Chemicals, Marconi, Alcan, IMI Santons, the Avana confectionery group, J. Compton Sons and Webb, an important textile organisation, and Crompton Parkinson, a battery manufacturer. Newport remains a major centre for the steel industry, personified by the great Llanwern works.
Public and commercial confidence in the borough has been further advanced in recent years, with several major inward investments, including the Trustee Savings bank, the Patent Office, Panasonic, Newbridge Networks and Bisley Office Equipment. The town is also the centre for the administration of justice in Gwent; Crown, county and magistrates courts are all there. The business statistics office provides central Government with most of its trade and industry statistics, and the passport office serves about one third of Britain. It is my contention that conferring city status would help maintain the momentum of this considerable progress.
Newport has an enviable position in this country's communications network. The M4 and M5 link Newport with London and the midlands. The town has main rail routes to London, the midlands and north and west Wales. On the InterCity express, London is a mere one and a half hours away. Newport docks can accommodate vessels of up to 40,000 tonnes deadweight and they provide a worldwide import and export facility.
Newport has long been established as the commercial and retail centre for the whole of Gwent and major new developments in this area are under way.
The Newport centre provides one of the finest leisure, entertainment and conference centres in Britain. As part of the town's economic development strategy, £43 million is committed to the regeneration of the Usk river front, with a view to realising commercial, leisure and residential development opportunities.
An unusual feature of the Newport skyline is the giant transporter bridge. It is basically a suspended ferry and there is only one other bridge like it in the whole of Britain. Newport boasts a first-class museum, art gallery and central library. Tredegar house is a magnificent example of a 17th century country mansion. Two years ago it provided the site for the royal national eisteddfod of Wales. That event proved to be one of the most successful examples of this great annual national festival, which has been held for many years.
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Newport has actively fostered international links. It is twinned with Heidenheim in Germany, with the city of Wuzhou in the Peoples Republic of China and with Kutaisi in the Georgian republic of the USSR.
I have tried to give a brief outline of present-day Newport, but it has a long and colourful history which can be traced from the sites of ancient Celtic settlements through the occupation by the Romans, who built the headquarters of their second Augustan legion at Caerleon. Under the Normans, Gwynllwg, the forerunner of Newport, flourished as a port and market town. A major castle was constructed early in the 12th century to defend the crossing point over the River Usk. The castle became the centre of the lordship and traders settled close to its walls for protection, thus founding Novus Burgus, or New Town, which later became Newport.
Unfortunately, during the uprising of Owain Glyndwr in 1402, much damage was done to some of the principal buildings. Nevertheless, the borough's first charter had been granted in 1385 and the title of mayor was adopted in 1476. Newport's cathedral, St Wooles, stands on the site of St. Gwynllyw's church, which was established in 500 AD. It was designated a cathedral in 1921 on the creation of the diocese of Monmouth.
One of the most notable events in Newport's history was the Chartist uprising in 1839. It was led by John Frost, a former mayor of the town, and the Chartists marched down Stow hill fighting for their right to vote and protesting about the desperate economic and social conditions of the time. My predecessor, the late Sir Frank Soskice, a former Home Secretary, was so impressed by the event that when he retired from the House he took the title Lord Stow Hill. Last year the borough celebrated the 150th anniversary of the uprising and the town's central shopping centre has been named John Frost square.
In the 19th century, Newport grew rapidly and its port flourished, exporting millions of tonnes of coal mined in the valleys of Gwent. The town also became a major centre for the steel industry, which it still is, but now its industrial structure has been diversified and it has a much larger industrial base. My case has the full backing of Newport borough council, which, within the last few days, officially communicated its view to the Secretary of State for Wales.
Mr. Paul Flynn: As the other Member who has the honour to represent the town of Newport, I congratulate my hon. Friend on initiating this debate. Does he think that the excuse that has been given in the past for not allowing Newport the status of a city is likely to be repeated? Does he accept the excuse that it must be tied to a certain royal occasion?
Mr. Hughes: I hope that our application will be favourably considered and that our request will be granted. It has not escaped my notice that the Home Secretary has to make the official recommendation to Her Majesty the Queen and that he is a true son of Newport.
I trust that the House will soon authorise the construction of the second Severn crossing at Caldicot, in my constituency. The whole area is to undergo vast development to coincide with the major changes in 1992 in the trading arrangements of the European Community. In that year, Her Majesty the Queen will celebrate the 40th anniversary of her accession to the throne, and on such occasions honours of the kind sought by Newport tend to be conferred.

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Wales has three cities: Cardiff, Swansea and the tiny cathedral city of St. David's. The granting of city status to Newport would give a new dignity and status to Newport and to the whole county of Gwent and it would help to ensure future prosperity. I trust that my request and that of Newport borough council, backed by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn), will be favourably considered and that the Leader of the House will bring the matter to the attention of the Home Secretary and of the Secretary of State for Wales.
6.24 pm
Sir David Price: Before the end of the debate on the Adjournment, I should like to share with the House some of my anxieties. Having listened to the speech by the hon. Member for Newport, East (Mr. Hughes) I have no anxieties about the future of Newport because it is clearly in extremely good hands. My anxieties relate directly to the hospital service, which appears to be in the process of significant reduction, not only over the immediate Christmas period but well into the new year.
I know that many hon. Members have received representations from doctors and nurses in their constituencies, and I should like to share with the House some of the representations that I have had from my part of the world, south Hampshire. I shall start with representations from Southampton and South West Hampshire health authority which is, of course, a teaching authority. The consultant in charge of the intensive care unit at Southampton general hospital states:
"I am writing to express deep concern about the effects that current Government policies are having on health care provision in Southampton. My particular worry is the inadequate provision of intensive care facilities. This has been a longstanding problem locally, but has reached crisis proportions with managers having to balance their books by the 1st April deadline."
A leading geriatric hospital in my constituency has a team of some of the best psycho-geriatricians in the country. In a letter to me it said:
"The staffing levels on our long stay wards cannot now function safely, let alone achieve quality standards, above 75 per cent. occupancy … This places more strain on the community end of the service in which the only elasticity is by consultants and community psychiatric nurses working even longer hours."
Some major work of national and international importance is taking place in our admirable paediatrics department. The director of that service states:
"For the first time in the Children's Service in Southampton's history, waiting lists will rapidly generate, particularly for Paediatric surgery. Disillusionment and anger, at all the levels of staff, are already running at a high level and these manoeuvres will accentuate that."
Representations that I have had from Winchester at the other end of my constituency tell a similar story. Any hon. Member who thinks that we in south Hampshire are particularly unlucky or that the two districts from which I quoted are ill-managed should look at the latest report from the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts which expresses great anxiety. In its report earlier this year the association warned:
"At a probable 8% to 9% this year inflation will wipe out the cash increase received by the hospital and community services."
It is not easy for Back-Benchers to assess fully and fairly the various pressures bearing upon the standard of service in different parts of the national health service. A Select Committee can bring some attention to the problem
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and hon. Members will agree that the old Select Committee on Social Services did that. We monitored the whole question of the financing of the national health service reasonably well and, I hope, to the satisfaction of the House.
A new Committee is to be set up and as a member of that Committee I must express my deep sense of frustration that the new Select Committee has been prevented from functioning by the blocking actions of some Scottish Liberals whose names are on the Order Paper. I understand that they feel strongly about the lack of a Select Committee on Scottish Affairs and that that has been a continuing quarrel between them and the Government. I do not have the temerity to attempt to interfere with a Scotsman, let alone a Scotswoman, who is enjoying a good quarrel, especially with the Government. However, I object strongly when that quarrel leads to the frustration of two other Select Committees, both of which are charged to oversee the weakest and most vulnerable members of our society. I am astonished that Scottish Liberals are being so mean, instead of exhibiting some Christmas spirit.
Rev. Martin Smyth: Is there not a double irony in that the old Select Committee did good work in scrutinising health and social provision in Scotland?
Sir David Price: The hon. Gentleman was a loyal and faithful member of the old Committee and I hope to work with him on the new one. He is right. The conduct of the Scottish Liberals puts me in mind of the words of Rabbie Burns:
"Naebody cares for me
I care for naebody".
They are showing that they do not care for anybody. 1 do care, and that is why I insist that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House tells us what he intends to do to ovecome the obstruction of the Scottish Liberals. If they persist, they will be renamed the Scottish meanies. When will our two Select Committees be allowed to do their duty to the House?
As for the problems in our hospitals which give rise to my anxiety, I hope that they will be discussed during the first of our debates on the Consolidated Fund Bill, which is being initiated by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody). Therefore, I absolve my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House from replying to my points as I would otherwise invite him to do, because I am sure that a Minister from the Department of Health will reply to the hon. Lady. Furthermore, I trust that whoever has the honour to reply to the debate will be able to resolve our anxieties. We need a fairy godmother, not a demon king.
6.31 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes: As a Liberal, I can partly answer for my hon. Friends, but as only partly a Scot, I probably cannot give an adequate response. In any event, the debate is about other things. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) knows that the remedy lies not with us but with the Government. They could set up a Scottish Select Committee but have not done so and they could secure a debate on the subject any time by the arrangement of business.
The motion that we are debating will allow the House to rise from tomorrow until 14 January. If we required ourselves to stay here until the homeless were housed and

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the badly housed were properly housed, we might be here for quite some time. I do not think that we would be here indefinitely, because we would have solved the problem, in that a major factor is that the Government walk away from the problem of the homeless and the badly housed too often. They allow people to go on suffering.
On Saturday this week in my constituency, yet again, for the fourth time in recent years, the charity that used to be called Crisis at Christmas and is now called Crisis will open Christmas shelters and about 1,000 people will come off the streets for several days of warmth, food, general rehabilitation and reclothing. In the past few days, I have invited the Prime Minister and the newly appointed Minister for Housing and Planning to come to meet the homeless at Crisis. The Minister has accepted and will come on Monday. I welcome that. I understand that the Prime Minister would like to come, but so far has been unable to arrange a time to do so. I hope that he can, even if it is on one of the few days after Christmas rather than the few days before Christmas.
If Ministers come, they will realise anew what they know in their minds and in logic, which is that we in Britain have failed thousands of people in respect of housing for far too long. This is the leading sentence in the editorial in The Times today:
"The plight of the homeless is a clear test of John Major's social conscience."
It also quotes Mother Teresa, who
"spoke for many when she said that the sight of people sleeping rough in Europe was, to her, worse than its counterpart in the Third World."
The Government keep on saying that they have a commitment to give everybody a decent home. The former Secretary of State for the Environment, now the chairman of the Tory party, said so only a year ago, but the figures get worse. There are certainly 5,000 people—there may be more—who sleep rough all the time, about half in London and half elsewhere. That is a 50 per cent. increase in two years. There are certainly 43,000 people in bed-and-breakfast accommodation, put there by the 100 local authorities which have accepted liability for housing them.
Acceptances of people as homeless have doubled in the past 10 years. There are 200,000 people homeless and alone, and 300,000 people homeless and in temporary accommodation—possibly as many as 1 million. The figures rise inexorably. By that I imply that a short-term alleviation by providing hostel space for up to 1,000 people will make hardly any significant dent in that trend.
The reasons for homelessness do not change. The Library has provided me with a collection of information which confirms that, since 1979, the reasons why people become homeless have remained much the same. Some 40 per cent. do so because relatives or friends can no longer accommodate them, and 15 per cent. because of a breakdown in relationship with a partner. A growing number do so because of mortgage arrears—this doubled between 1979–89. Some 80 per cent. are accepted because there are dependent children or a pregnant woman in the household.
Over the past 10 years, we have gone on doing things that make the problem worse. We have reduced the number of new homes that we build, we have built for demand and not for need and we have not changed the planning laws as we might have done. The right-to-buy
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policy, which was recently criticised again by the bishops, has taken housing away from the rented sector. We have forced local authorities to hold on to capital receipts that they are willing to spend.
In the Housing Act 1988, we deregulated what were market rents and as Opposition Members, including myself, predicted, we forced rents up and thereby forced many people out of being able to afford them. Now, we do not allow social security to pay for people in expensive rented property or let them have the money that they need to pay a deposit for rented accommodation. Homelessness is rising, and the prediction made by the permanent secretary at the Department of the Environment to the Public Accounts Committee only a few days ago confirmed that it will increase by another 15 per cent. this year.
More homes are being repossessed. More were repossessed in the past six months than in the whole of the previous year. Rent increases are rising and for many people that is added to the poll tax bill. At the same time, 100,000 council properties and 600,000 private properties are empty. The Government recently said that they would prevent private leasing—a remedy that we know is cheaper than bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
I do not doubt that every single one of the 650 Members of Parliament could regale others with tales of people who come to us saying that they are without housing or badly housed. I shall cite only one example. A couple with six children—five boys aged between 5 and 14 and a baby girl —live, as they have done for 11 years, in a council flat in Walworth, a mile and a half from here. They have been trying to get out from that small substandard and damp flat. It may be that, with the last baby, they are statutorily overcrowded. They were recently offered a desquatted property, but that was subsequently resquatted and is therefore no longer available.
Tens of thousands of people are not homeless or on the streets, but are housed in conditions that a civilised society should not permit. There are remedies. It is possible to find solutions and implement them. We could repeal our vagrancy legislation. We could alter the rules that bear on the rented sector. We could prevent the poverty trap from affecting those who find themselves just above housing benefit and benefit levels generally. We could alter planning rules so that local authorities are able to insist that a certain proportion of any housing development is used to provide homes for rents at affordable levels. We could remove mortgage tax relief from those who are higher rate taxpayers and use the money for other purposes.
We could ensure that those who are without homes are able to receive social security payments in advance so that they do not have to survive for weeks without money. We could make it a requirement that empty property is let without affecting its ownership. Notice of intention to let could be served on private and local authority owners alike. We could retain private sector leasing but try to ensure that no abuses took place. We could extend our obligations to ensure that the young are housed by law rather than leaving discretion with the local authority.
Mr. Hugh Dykes: Having recently returned from Germany, I ask the hon. Gentleman to agree that we need not always do what foreigners do. In every locality that I visited, however, Christian Democrat representatives—Conservatives—told me that they still

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insist on having a minimum number of council dwellings constructed every year to contain the various problems with which they are confronted. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that every Member of this place, no matter which constituency he represents, could do with that sort of council house construction, regardless of politics, to contain the problem? If we do not return to council house building on a modest scale, as in Germany, which is the premier capitalist colony of Europe, we are doomed never to be able to solve the problem of homelessness.
Mr. Hughes: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am glad that I gave way to him. He says, in effect, that none of us could dissent from the view that there is a desperate shortage of rented accommodation at affordable prices, whether that is provided directly by local authorities or indirectly through housing associations. The political argument is far less important than the housing shortage. There is a desperate shortage of rented accommodation at affordable prices throughout the country. It is not sufficient to say that the market should be left to meet the need, because it has failed to do so.
There are many European or international problems that cannot be resolved by one Government alone. The problem of housing the homeless in Britain is not one of those, however, and the Government of the United Kingdom have no excuse if they do not solve the problem, however complex the solution may be.
The Leader of the House will have read, I am sure, that young members of the Churches are beginning a vigil today on the streets of London to mark their opposition to the prospect of war in the Gulf and to show that they are in favour of peace. It is linked with the Churches' calls for prayers for peace over Christmas. People in Britain, and the Government especially, have taken a strong view about the attack that has been carried out by the Iraqi Government on the Government and people of Kuwait. It is only right that a strong view should be taken. If we as a people and a Government had at least as strong a view on the attack on the freedoms of people in this country, who we are condemning to poverty, homelessness or bad housing, we would solve the problems to which I have referred.
The young people who are participating in the vigil will voluntarily be joining on the streets many who are not there by choice. Historically, Christmas may be best celebrated by being without a home, but in a civilised and modern society the reality is that we should be able to provide everyone with one. It is about time that Parliament made sure that its Members did not go on holiday to comfortable homes until everyone else in the country had been provided with the opportunity of going safely home as well.
6.45 pm
Mr. James Kilfedder: The plight and the condition of elderly people will worsen as the cold weather becomes colder and prices continue to rise in the shops. I pay tribute to those in my constituency who are collecting items of food, especially at the doors of supermarkets, to use to make Christmas parcels for the elderly. Many young people are involved in that charitable work and their dedication deserves special recognition.
With all the activity of the Christmas season, people are inclined to forget that our senior citizens may be having a difficult time. Some face spending Christmas day alone at
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home. The shops may be piled high with all sorts of delectable food but the pensioner who has only the old age pension on which to live will face the recurring problem of deciding what he or she can afford to spend on meals and other necessities. The shops may be ablaze with electric lighting, with a seemingly wanton disregard for the cost, but in the homes of the elderly there will be a cautious use of an electric fire, for example, which can quickly demand all the money which the pensioner has allocated for heating. Rarely do we hear senior citizens complaining bitterly, but their needs require more consideration than we currently give them.
Television is the only form of entertainment for many people. It provides a window through which they can observe the world at large. It provides companionship for the lonely as well as entertainment. In other words, ii is good for the morale of the elderly and the lonely, and what is good for their morale must be good for their state of health. That is why I repeat once again, and without apology, a passionate plea to the Government to provide free television licenses for pensioners.
It is imperative that pensioners should be encouraged to remain, if at all possible, in their own homes rather than removing themselves to residential homes. So long as they can fend for themselves, with adequate assistance from carers and visiting doctors and nurses, home is the best place for them. Pensioners are less likely to become disorientated if they remain in the house they know, with all their possessions, in an area they know and where they are known. This means providing more carers to look after the elderly, and that provision is vital.
It must be emphasised, however, that numerous pensioners can manage well on their own, without assistance from outside, providing that they receive sufficient money to pay for proper heating and sufficient food, but there must be something extra. They need and deserve to be treated with sympathy and understanding.
I shall refer to one example to highlight the callous way in which the elderly are sometimes treated. Last weekend, a pensioner of 69 years of age appealed to me for help. The lady, who lives alone, was feeling desperate. In my opinion, she had every right to be distraught. She lives in an old cottage where she was born. Her 69 years have been spent in that cottage, her only home. Until her father's death, he had worked on the estate of which the cottage is part. The cottage was provided for him, his wife and his daughter. When he died, about 20 years ago, the agent for the trustees of the estate made an offer to his daughter that she could dispense with paying rent if she accepted responsibility for all repairs to the cottage.
I think that that was a deliberately astute move on the part of the landlord. It was made to avoid the landlord accepting rent and to burden my constituent with the cost of repairs which she could never hope to meet. When the move was made, the cottage was already very old and sub-standard. It was in acute need of extensive renovation work. The lady was unable to pay for major repairs. If the agents had accepted rent, it would have been extremely low in view of the condition of the cottage. If they had accepted rent, the lady should have gone to the trustees to force them to make the cottage satisfy minimum standards.
I shall describe the cottage. It has no kitchen. There is a cooker sitting in the living room. There is no supply of water in the cottage. There is no tap, either inside or outside. There is no bathroom and no lavatory, either

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inside or outside the cottage, other than an old earth closet. No work has been carried out on the cottage since it was built in the last century. Presumably her father would have lost his job on the estate if he had had the temerity to complain about the conditions in the cottage. The only modern convenience is electricity, which the lady's mother had installed at her own expense.
Those matters should have been dealt with by the trustees of the estate many, many years ago. Windows and doors have rotted and need replacing; wooden floors need to be replaced; the plaster both inside and outside the cottage is cracking; and there is rising damp in all the rooms. The agents for the trustees of the estate knew about those conditions, but did nothing. They are now using them as an excuse for turning an elderly woman out of her home. Once she is out, no doubt they will sell the half acre of land in which the cottage sits, and at the cost of her misery they will make a substantial sum of money, because it is in such a beautiful setting. To her credit, the elderly lady has maintained the place to the best of her ability.
The trustees of that large estate are not interested—and, in my opinion, never were interested—in renovating the cottage. They want to get that poor lady out of the home in which she was born and in which she has lived all her life. The cottage could be renovated at a cost of about £9,000. Most of that would be funded by a grant from the Housing Executive. Instead of that, the agents for the trustees of that large estate—which is not short of a pound or two—asked the public health officer for a demolition order on the cottage.
Anyone acquainted with the case will know that the agents wanted an order so that the cottage could be demolished, and the woman would have to go somewhere else to live. They would then be free to make full use of the land. The lady has been offered a tenancy by the Housing Executive, but it is an hour's walk from the church with which she has been associated throughout her life. She has made that church the centre of her life and she is involved in all the church activities. She is an active member of the local women's institute. If she cannot attend those activities, she will feel isolated. That is disgraceful.
Where is there any sign of compassion in these sordid events? The lady has pleaded with the agents for the trustees not to take away her home. I join her in that plea in this House. I urge the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to intervene and rescind the demolition order. The trustees should be persuaded to apply for public money —they do not need to use their own money, even though they have sufficient funds—to put the cottage in order. That will allow that 69-year-old lady to spend the twilight of her years in the cottage in which she was born. Of course, in due course the trustees will be able to sell the property, so they will benefit substantially in the long term.
6.54 pm
Mr. David Winnick: I think that the House listened with a great deal of sympathy to the constituency case outlined by the hon. Member for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder). We hope that there will be a happy outcome and that the Leader of the House will urgently refer the matter to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
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The hon. Member for North Down was correct to raise issues concerning the welfare of the elderly. He may know that earlier today my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) introduced a Bill—
Mr. Kilfedder: I was here.
Mr. Winnick: The hon. Gentleman will have heard the arguments. He mentioned the need for free or concessionary television licences for the elderly. When I came first in the ballot, I introduced a Bill to that effect on 16 January 1987. I was willing to reach a compromise with the Government. If they had said that they would settle on half the licence fee, I would have accepted that as a first step. My Bill was voted down by 21 votes. We all saw on television Cabinet Ministers in their chauffeur-driven cars coming from only a few yards away to vote to deny the elderly free or concessionary television licences. It is argued that two thirds of pensioners—the statistics bear out the argument—live either in poverty or near it, yet the Government were not willing to give me any support. Far from it, they voted down my Bill.
Much needs to be done, including —[Interruption.] —I hope that the Leader of the House will give me his attention for a moment—urgent action on cold weather payments. As I said earlier this week, the arrangements are far too inflexible. Hon. Members should note how warm it is in the Chamber and how we all try to keep our homes warm. It may not be freezing, but it is cold enough to need to keep homes warm. People on low incomes are in an impossible position.
I atteneded a meeting here today called by my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North. One pensioner told us that her total income was £45 a week. That is the income of many of my pensioner constituents. Of course, out of that they have to pay about £10 a week in rent. There is urgent need for a more generous cold weather payment. Even when the payment is triggered, and there are all sorts of conditions associated with that, it is only £5 a week. That is hardly generous. We must bear in mind what the hon. Member for North Down and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North said about the immense suffering of elderly people on limited incomes when the weather turns really cold.
This debate was initiated by the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), a former Leader of the House. He referred to the recession. That recession is hitting the west midlands and the black country very hard. There have been announcements in my constituency of imminent factory closures, and those will involve a great number of redundancies. We suffered a great deal 10 years ago. Many factories in the west midlands were closed, never to be reopened. Indeed, in many cases housing estates and shopping centres have been built on former industrial sites.
A number of people who were made redundant at the time have never been able to work again because of their age. As the right hon. Gentleman said, there is a justified fear that manufacturing industry will be particularly hard hit again. There is little sign that there will be any let-up in 1991. All the signs are that the recession will deepen and we may be in the same position, or close to the position that we were in 10 years ago because of Government policies. The first and most obvious need is for interest rates to be lowered.

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I wish to refer to two other matters. Amnesty International published a report today on the events in Kuwait since the occupation of that country on 2 August. I do not think that anyone would be so silly as to believe that Amnesty International has some sort of bias, other than against those who are indicted in its reports. It comes as no surprise to me to learn that the Iraqi embassy in London has described the report as a fabrication. The report deals with the atrocities of the occupying forces in Kuwait, including gouging out eyes and cutting off ears.
The report says that there is evidence that 300 premature babies were left to die after Iraqi troops looted incubators in hospitals. It also goes into considerable details of other atrocities that have been carried out in the past four months. No one can be surprised about that. They have been carried out by a criminal and terrorist regime which has maintained a state of terror inside Iraq itself for the past 10 to 15 years. No one will be surprised that such atrocities followed the criminal invasion and occupation of Kuwait.
I loathe war as much as anyone else. My hatred of war is second to none. But I am not a pacifist, and the way in which war can be avoided is simple and clear—for Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait by the deadline set by the United Nations Security Council.
When the House was recalled in September I said that sanctions should be given time to work. I also made the point that any partial withdrawal would be completely unacceptable. It must be unacceptable to the United Nations and the international community for Saddam Hussein to withdraw from one part of Kuwait but to remain in the rest. There can be no question of trying to save his face. There was no justification for the invasion in the first place. Only a total withdrawal from Kuwait could satisfy the international community.
The dictator and mass murderer who rules Iraq is making a grave mistake if he believes that the debate occurring in the democracies, including Britain, means that the allies are not firmly resolved. He says that he is frightened of an attack on Iraq. Again, the remedy lies in his own hands. If he withdraws by the deadline set by the United Nations, there can be no attack and no justification for any armed attack. But the withdrawal from Kuwait must take place.
The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) has aired his views, as he has every right to do, and as I am doing now, in the House of Commons and elsewhere. But when I listen to him arguing about whether the borders were correct in the first place and so on, I am rather sickened. The right hon. Gentleman is to give evidence to a Senate sub-committee in the United States. As I say, he is perfectly entitled to his views. They are shared by some people in Britain. But they are not shared by the large majority of the British people who know that what took place on 2 August was unjustified outright criminal aggression.
Mr. Harry Cohen: Much of what my hon. Friend has said would be very much at home on the lips of Conservative Back Benchers. Does he agree that there has been no testing of public opinion on the simple question of whether people want war in the present circumstances? If there was such a test, there is no guarantee that, as he says, a majority would say yes.
Mr. Winnick: All the evidence confirms my point of view. I hope that my hon. Friend will reflect carefully on what he has said. Opposition to fascism and criminal agression is longstanding in the Labour movement, and one of the accusations that we have made against the Tories on numerous occasions is that when they were not instigating criminal aggression, as in Suez in 1956 in collusion with France and Israel, they were appeasing it. Therefore, I do not require any lectures from my hon. Friend.
My second point is one which must concern the House. That is the plight of the homeless and those who are not necessarily homeless but who are in great need of secure accommodation. The hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) intervened during the speech of the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) to say that the crisis will never be dealt with until the Government allow local authorities to start building again; that is correct. The present housing crisis is precisely due to the fact that since 1979 local authorities have not been able to fulfil their basic housing responsibilities.
Yesterday, the Minister for Housing and Planning said that the Government remain of the view that councils should not build family housing—so much for the useful intervention of the hon. Member for Harrow, East. The Government's housing policy remains what it was under the former Prime Minister. The Minister went on to say that housing associations can do the job. I do not believe that housing associations can carry out the same full responsibilities as local authorities. In 1978, there were 20,500 housing association starts. In 1989, there were just 13,700. That shows that there has been a marked decline even in housing association starts. In 1978, there were 76,700 local authority starts and this year, up to October, there were 7,800.
There are people sleeping on our streets and it is scandalous that so many families are forced to live in squalid bed-and-breakfast hostels. There is no justification for that. But there are many other people not in that dire situation, who visit or write to their Members of Parliament—couples who live with their parents or in-laws or people living in multi-storey flats who, even with two children, still have to wait far too long.
The remedy is clear. Local authorities should be able to do the job that they did until the Government took office. I beg the Government to recognise that the problem simply cannot be resolved until local authorities are once again allowed to do what they cannot do now. In my borough, because of Government restrictions, there have been no new local authority housing starts since 1979. If we are really worried about housing, we know where the remedy lies.
7.6 pm
Mr. David Porter: I hope that the House will agree that it would be wrong to adjourn for the Christmas recess without a further mention of sea defence and coastal protection, particularly in the light of the terrifying floods, the tides, the chilling flood warnings, the damage and the road closures that the Suffolk and Norfolk coasts suffered last week. We expect winter to give us a battering, but this winter it came early and with a vengeance that we have not felt for some time.
When Towyn was engulfed by the sea, it was only the direction of the wind that spared east Anglia. Last

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Wednesday's high tides were marked by those who remember the 1953 floods as very nearly as bad. It will be remembered that in England and Holland in 1953 some 2,000 people died.
I pay tribute to the people in Southwold, Easton Bavents, Oulton Broad, Lowestoft, Beccles and elsewhere in my constituency and in other parts of Suffolk and Norfolk who were evacuated, flooded, suffered damage and inconvenience and generally suffered loss of all kinds, save only death on this occasion. I also pay tribute to the officials of Waveney district council, the National Rivers Authority and the emergency services.
If I could give my remarks a title of my own choosing for tomorrow's Hansard, it would be "This Vulnerable Coast"—like the White Paper "This Common Inheritance", but without the glossy paper.
Those of us who live on the coast of east Anglia have always lived with the threat of the sea. Over the years the battle has generally been lost and substantial parts have gone for ever. Dunwich, that infamous rotten borough, sent two Members to the House until 1932, even though most of it had even then been washed into the North sea.
What is most feared is the storm surge. A surge in the North sea is caused when the weather upsets the normal pattern of tides. A northerly gale blowing across the surface of the sea tries to take the water with it, or lower atmospheric pressure in a severe depression draws up the water, and a wind-driven current piles up a massive sea. The curved rotation of the earth curves the current. It is funnelled by the shape and depth of the North sea, and when that continuous wall of angry water hits the coast square on we are in trouble. Most sea defences are built for the higher spring tides and do not usually cater for freak conditions—and the surge is a freak.
Some experts have argued that we can expect devastating surges once every 25 years, but the scientific evidence for that is flimsy. Reports published only last weekend suggest that the North sea is getting rougher, which may be due to global warming. Wave increases of more than 20 per cent. in the past 30 years have been measured in the Atlantic, and the North sea is now being studied. Computers and experts should be able to give us better predictions soon of storm surge dangers.
What do those predictions count for? We still have, in the main, defences that are coming to the end of their useful lives. In fairness, most have held up fairly well so far. My observations have been made many times previously in the House, by other right hon. and hon. Members—and twice this year alone. I have spoken about that worrying matter.
On both occasions, I raised the specific case of the hamlet of Easton Bavents, which is north of Southwold. Waveney district council this year refused planning permission for a scheme that would have secured the cliff, putting forward cost and environmental objections. Neither the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food nor the Department of the Environment could, or would, step in.
The cost argument remained on the table, but the environmental argument was wider. Do we as a nation want part of our coasts to erode naturally? If so, which parts—and how do we draw a line and defend other parts of our coasts? I am sorry to report that, following last
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week's weather, last Friday morning I stood and watched as an end cottage was demolished before it toppled on to the beach below. It was a holiday home, but the next property under sentence of death from the district council, before it meets the cliff edge, is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Liddell, who retired there two years ago. They had been evacuated to a council house in Reydon and are shattered. They had invested all their life savings in their property, having also been told that the house would, with a scheme below it, be good for 40 years. They have agreed to the property being demolished, and I understand that the council began that work this afternoon.
More houses will share the same fate, and if enough of that sand cliff goes, the sea will break right through to lower land behind, outflanking the Southwold sea wall. Southwold would then become an island, Reydon would be exposed to danger, and marshes would be lost under salt water. Will the National Rivers Authority have stepped in by then to lengthen its Southwold sea wall into an area that is the responsibility of Waveney district council—or will I have to report further losses in future debates, at Kessingland, Pakefield and Corton, along my coastline? There are too many questions, and too many maybes.
I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is to respond to the debate, because he once had ministerial responsibility for such matters and, as a neighbouring parliamentary colleague, he is also familiar with the area in question. He will appreciate that the issue is complicated if one adds rivers and land drainage to the picture that I have painted. My right hon. Friend will know also that time is not on our side. I have pressed him before, and will do so again, for an updating of the Coast Protection Act 1949, to introduce four new provisions.
First, let us provide compensation to be built into the structure of sea defence management—as it is in planning, development and industry—so that people living in vulnerable areas and who cannot insure themselves will not lose everything. Secondly, let us provide for a national sea defence strategy for the United Kingdom that draws on local knowledge, history, expertise and authorities in devising a plan of what is economically, socially and environmentally saveable by environmentally efficient means—giving overall responsibility for that to the NRA instead of to the umpteen different bodies that currently each do a bit, or do not. Local authorities in the eastern areas are working towards that end themselves. Let us go one stage further and make such a strategy compulsory.
Thirdly, let us provide for better controls on local authorities, to prevent further developments of any kind within areas that are deemed to be vulnerable, environmentally desirable to erode, or to be defended to a smaller extent—all within the terms of the national strategy that I just mentioned. Fourthly, let us provide for a proper channel of action and response—from people on the ground to police, local authorities, and the NRA—to keep to a minimum any delays in closing roads and evacuating homes when water floods through, as it surely will, even with a national strategy.
Finally, let us examine the question of funding all that sea defence. I will quote in support of my arguments two editorials from the Eastern Daily Press. The first was published last Thursday, the morning after the storm, under the headline
"Put Whitehall on flood alert."
It stated:

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"With East Anglian coastal and riverside communities last night under siege, the issue of the financing and organisation of sea defences assumes a chilling immediacy. A £40 million programme for this part of the coast faces a cutback unless Norfolk and Suffolk county councils commit more than the inflation-linked increase they are thus far prepared to contribute.
The recently-announced doubling in annual support is a further encouraging sign that politicians are at last recognising the enormous, urgent dimensions of the flood threat around our coast. Even so, funding is below the level many experts regard as the minimum to keep existing defences in good repair, let alone develop the extensions necessary to meet new climatic threats."
The second editorial appeared on Monday, after my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food toured stricken areas in my constituency and in his own neighbouring constituency, and defended the 70 per cent. national, 30 per cent. local split of sea defence funding. That editorial reported that my right hon. Friend
"cautioned critics of Britain's sea defence programmes that a balance must be struck between national and local funding. It is not clear why a small island like Britain should regard the protection of its coastline in these them-and-us terms."
My right hon. Friend commented that maritime local authorities gain from sea defence and so have an interest in them. Is the Royal Navy's defence of Britain a 30 per cent. charge on maritime local authorities? Of course not. The article concluded:
"It is unreasonable to equate interest with ability to contribute almost a third to the vast capital costs. Our own preference is for the national comprehensive strategy which Mr. Gummer finds unnecessary. But even if we are to accept the system now in place, more urgency, imagination and, not least, more money are needed if Britain is to hold back the sea."
I wrote to my right hon. Friend the new Secretary of State for the Environment asking him to examine the 70 per cent. to 30 per cent. split when he reviews local government finance.
No one seriously expects the dream of permanent, unbreachable sea and flood protection ever to come true, but our coastal defences can be organised in such a way as to give us more confidence that warnings can save life and keep damage to a minimum—but only if we get on with that task now.
7.16 pm
Mr. Harry Cohen: The House will appreciate why the hon. Member for Waveney (Mr. Porter) raised a matter of constituency interest, but he supports a Government who were one of the slowest in the world to react to the problems of global warming, which have hastened coastal erosion. There is a rumour that the Government will disappoint many children this Christmas by imprisoning Father Christmas for non-payment of his North pole tax. Whatever the truth of that rumour, the House should not adjourn until the Government have made a commitment completely to abolish the poll tax.
I want to raise an even more serious issue—that of murder—but because it is occurring in another part of the world, it is hardly ever discussed in the House. I refer to murder in Sri Lanka, which is a deeply troubled country. In fact, it is the murder capital of the world. Atrocities occur there daily, and bodies are flowing in the rivers. I welcome Amnesty International's campaign to draw attention to the situation in that sad country, which has not been properly debated in this place for a very long time —despite the detentions, disappearances, executions and indiscriminate aerial bombing of villages that have
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occurred there. There have also been human rights violations on a huge scale, and civil liberties have been described as a sick joke.
All sides in the troubles have been party to that, including the Tamil Tigers, JVP, the Indian peacekeeping force and the Sri Lankan Government themselves. Regulation 55FF gave the security forces power to dispose of bodies without notifying the victims' relatives or arranging inquests. That measure has been repealed, but the practices continue.
There have been 30,000 deaths in Sri Lanka over the past seven years and a new wave of violence since the Indian peacekeeping force left at the end of March. In the north-east, about 30,000 people were forced to abandon their homes in June alone, and in August, 140 Muslims were massacred at two mosques in Batticaloa. Now the Muslims are thinking of establishing a paramilitary force in addition to all the others that exist. One Tamil Member of Parliament reports 4,000 deaths since June. We have not found time to discuss that in the House. The truth is that the Sri Lankan Government are involved in a policy of genocide, ostensibly to annihilate the Tamil Tigers. The Government's motivation is the fear that if they do not do so, there will be an army coup and they will be removed from power. In reality, they are killing millions of Tamils—a whole population is under threat.
The Sri Lankan Government were faced with a choice between genocide or a bloody military stalemate, and they have chosen genocide—both are totally unacceptable. The situation is intractable, but efforts must be made to try to get a settlement. Amnesty International is right to demand action from the United Kingdom Government, the Common Market, the United Nations and the international community.
Human rights must be a basic condition of any aid given by this country, or the Common Market, and aid should be monitored by the donor Governments to ensure that that is the case. The Sri Lankan Government should be required to work with the United Nations. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights has demanded that Sri Lanka end its sponsored terror. The army must be brought under control and told that the people responsible for the killings, to which I referred, will be made accountable. There should be fresh elections, internationally guaranteed by the UN, for the purpose of negotiating a settlement, and thereby people elected to represent the Tamils will be viewed as partners, not as enemies. A solution should be along the lines of a federal, decentralised state, but that is for negotiations to decide.
If that happened we could consider aid for development and the rehabilitation of displaced people. We should make it quite clear that there would be lots of aid for a peaceful democracy in Sri Lanka but very little—perhaps none—if the military took over.
The Home Office must also get the message. It is unacceptable for it to send refugees back to their deaths, and it is also unacceptable that it has not provided a single penny to local authorities which take in refugees and try to help them. That costs a lot of money, and it brings me back to the subject of the poll tax. That extra money is added on to the poll tax, and the Government should provide some money.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, outlining the horrors of what is happening in Sri Lanka. Does he agree that, by

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providing arms and military advisers, and indeed by allowing private security companies to operate in Sri Lanka, the British Government have exacerbated the situation, rather than brought us nearer to peace? Does he think that, at the very least, the Government should establish a total embargo on arms trade with Sri Lanka?
Mr. Cohen: I agree with my hon. Friend. The sale of arms in such circumstances is nothing short of a scandal.
I hope that the Leader of the House will take up the issues that I have raised with the Government, so that they will take action to try to end the dreadful killings in a country which used to be known as a paradise.
7.24 pm
Mr. Jacques Arnold: Before we adjourn for the Christmas recess, I ask the House to redress an injustice to community charge payers in the borough of Gravesham. This injustice is contained in the revenue support grant settlement for 1991–92, and has continued for many years—I refer to the allocation of districts to different designations for London and fringe allowances. The revenue support grant is adjusted accordingly.
These allowances have existed for many years. Originally, they were based upon the Metropolitan police district, before the establishment of Greater London in 1965. In 1971, a distinction was made between inner and outer London, and in 1974 a network of neighbouring districts were grouped into inner and outer fringe areas. There have been no changes to those designations since 1974—they have been well and truly set in cement. The definitions are inaccurate and fundamentally unfair simply because of geography.
Gravesend is about 22 miles from Charing Cross, as the crow flies. It is the administrative centre of the borough of Gravesham, which is ruled outside of any allowance area. To clarify the injustice I could show hon. Members the pretty multi-coloured map that I have here but, as that cannot be put in Hansard, I shall try to illustrate the situation with words.
Let us circumnavigate the metropolis in an anticlockwise direction, 22 miles out from Charing Cross. Across the Thames northwards lies Thurrock, which is an outer fringe borough. To the east lies Basildon, which is some 30 miles out, and is also an outer fringe borough. They are both funded accordingly. Further round lies Brentwood, which is an outer fringe borough, Epping Forest, which is an inner fringe borough, and Harlow, which is outer fringe. We then come to the southern reaches of east Hertfordshire, an area which stretches northwards 50 miles from Charing Cross, and is classified as an outer fringe district.
Further round, we find Welwyn-Hatfield, St. Albans, Dacorum and Chiltern, which are all outer fringe districts. Next is south Buckinghamshire, which is not exactly poverty-stricken—it is considered an inner fringe area. Then we go through Surrey. The whole of that county receives fringe allowance funding, and four of its districts are funded as inner fringe areas. Even Waverley, on the borders of Hampshire, which is more than 30 miles from Charing Cross, is considered to be a fringe district. Crawley, in west Sussex, is 30 miles out and is a fringe borough.
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In my county of Kent, Sevenoaks and Dartford are cosily within the fringe—Dartford is classified within the inner fringe. Gravesham, uniquely, is left out.
What effect does that have? Gravesham borough council is a well-run borough. It gives a high standard of service within a tightly controlled budget. Its effectiveness can be judged by the community charge set this year, which was £293 and compares very well with the English average of £357.
Nevertheless, Gravesham council achieves that within one of the most expensive parts of the country for housing and general living costs. The cost of housing in Gravesham is little different from that in the Kentish borough of Dartford, which is funded as an inner fringe district, and the London borough of Bexley, which receives the even better outer London allowance.
To ensure that the quality of staff is maintained, that vacancies can be competitively filled and that current staff are fairly treated, Gravesham borough council has unilaterally resolved to pay its staff the allowance. The cost has been added to community charge payers' bill.
Were Gravesham an outer fringe borough—as would seem right and proper judging by geography alone—our grant would be £300,000 higher. If we were classified as an inner fringe district, as is our neighbour Dartford, we would be £600,000 better off, which translates to £4 or £8 respectively off the community charge bills in Gravesham.
In the meantime, we are saddled with the cost, and local employees of the county council are saddled with the additional injustice of not receiving a territorial allowance in their pay. It is worth noting that teachers and other county council employees in the north-west Kent division who work in Dartford borough—at Swanscombe or Southfleet—get an inner fringe pay allowance, but those who work in education or other county services in the eastern part of the same division, at Gravesend or Northfleet, receive no allowance whatsoever.
The territorial divisions around London which I mentioned a few moments ago were introduced by the Labour Government in 1974. The present Conservative Government have corrected or rejected so much of their complicated inheritance from Labour: I hope very much that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will ensure that yet another step is taken to rid my constituents of this remaining injustice.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): Order. The Front-Bench spokesmen hope to catch my eye at 7.45 pm. Three hon. Members are still rising in the hope of speaking in the current debate. I hope that they will divide the available time between them, which allows them five minutes apiece.
7.29 pm
Mr. Harry Barnes: In fact, four hon. Members are hoping to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I shall therefore be brief.
The hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) amazes me. He has suddenly discovered that the current local government grant system is based on stupid formulae, that the standard spending assessments are idiotic and biased against a host of authorities, and that the revenue support grant—which we were told at one time would provide 50 per cent. of local government expenditure—does nothing

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of the sort: it varies from 3 per cent. in one district to 98 per cent. in another, and my own authority receives only 11 per cent. Those figures were provided in the answer to a parliamentary question that I tabled, but the details were placed in the Library, so they would not be as readily available to hon. Members as they would have been if they had been published in Hansard.
Let me turn to the subject of my own speech. Two of my constituents, Ruth and Bev Smith, have adopted a mentally handicapped child from Romania. They are the only couple to have adopted a mentally handicapped child, which must hold some lessons for us. Why have not more mentally handicapped Romanian children been adopted in this country, given the amount of publicity?
The couple's position is exceptional. They already have experience of dealing with mentally handicapped children: they have a mentally handicapped child of their own, and have adopted two others. Because of that, the social services were able to deliver a first-class report. They have also been able to take advantage of a first-class special school, which is run by Derbyshire county council at Inkersall Green—and will continue to be run in the same way if the available resources are not utterly destroyed by the present Government.
The couple have been incredibly determined. They first found out about the problems in Romania in February. Bev Smith visited Romania four times, and eventually contacted me about the problems that he was experiencing with the Home Office and the Foreign Office. Those problems were then resolved, and, once the two Departments understood the nature of the problems, they provided assistance. The couple also obtained the assistance of Mencap in Chesterfield: that assistance was vastly important, because it enabled Emese—the adopted child—not to be deemed a burden on the taxpayer. The Smiths' finances were limited, and the backing of Chesterfield Mencap was therefore essential.
Given the huge amount of publicity and public concern, why is Emese the only mentally handicapped Romanian child who will spend Christmas in this country? Perhaps we should question the extent to which mentally handicapped children can be found in Romanian institutions. Emese is only five, and has made considerable progress since her arrival with the Smiths. In a letter to me, Bev Smith writes:
"I must confess when I was at the Castle at Brincovevenesti it was the hardest decision that I have ever had to make. The fact that Emese grabbed me was the best thing that could have happened for her".
Masses of other children there needed help, but it was Emese who wanted to join that fine family.
The Government should consider the current arrangements in detail.
7.34 pm
Mr. Douglas French: I doubt that any Christmas Adjournment debate would be complete without a speech about road safety. In the short time available, 1 want to talk about the dangers posed by motorists who drive while simultaneously holding telephones—especially those who charge along the motorway with one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding a car phone, and those who try to guide their cars around roundabouts steering with their knees or elbows because they are using one had to key in a number and the other hand to hold the dialling mechanism.
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I have raised this matter a number of times. Sometimes I have been referred to the highway code, which states:
"Do not use a hand held microphone or telephone handset while your vehicle is moving except in an emergency".
It is obvious to me from what I see every day that that sound advice is being flagrantly ignored—and it is only advice; it has no statutory backing.
When I have mentioned the problem to the Department of Transport, I have been told that it can be dealt with adequately by existing legislation, namely section 3 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, which covers driving without due care and attention and driving without reasonable consideration for other road users. I have also been referred to the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986, which make it an offence not to be in proper control of a vehicle.
It is true that the existing legislation provides a statutory basis for prosecutions, but that is possible only when the danger has already been caused. It tackles the problem of those who drive carelessly, but does not address itself to the reasons for that careless driving. We need measures that will prevent, or curb, the dangerous practice that may cause accidents, before those accidents happen.
All car telephones should be equipped with remote loudspeakers and microphones, so that drivers can hear and be heard without having to hold receivers to their ears. Secondly, all care telephones should have preprogrammed short-call dialling facilities or voice-activated dialling, so that drivers can make calls without having to hold the dialling mechanism in their hands or take their eyes of the road. These are very modest requirements: many car telephones already in use are already so equipped, and I think that they all should be.
It is evident from the response to my representations that the Department of Transport is not persuaded by my arguments; I predict, however, that in time it will change its mind. In the 1990s, up to 5 million car telephones are likely to be in use; if we include portable personal phones which can be used in cars, the figures will be far higher before the decade is out. That means that, for part of almost every journey, the vehicle involved will be driven with only one hand.
Another menace that looms on the horizon is the use of portable photocopiers and fax machines in motor cars. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) seems astonished, but I can inform her that the machines are positioned on the front passenger seat, and plugged into the cigarette lighter. It may be a convenient facility for a salesman or indeed a politician in a hurry, but there is also too great a temptation to operate the photocopier or fax machine while driving.
Before long, we may have television sets in motor cars. At the moment, they are confined to the back seats of luxury motor cars, but the time may come when they take their place alongside radios on the fascia boards of family motor cars. That will pose a massive threat to road safety. The Secretary of State for Transport ought to take that threat extremely seriously. I urge the Leader of the House to pass to the Secretary of State the message that road safety figures will suffer dramatically unless something is done to stamp out this menace.
7.39 pm
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: It would be wrong for the House to adjourn without returning once again to the issue that faces us all. When we return here on 14 January, a war could have begun. There could be shooting in the Gulf, with nuclear weapons on one side and chemical weapons on the other. There is no defence against either form of weapons. If chemical weapons are used, dust clouds will blow a long distance and many will die as a result. If the other side decides that it has been forced into using nuclear weapons, what happened at Chernobyl will be minor compared with the consequences of their use in the Gulf. As my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has pointed out on many occasions, and as he will do so later tonight, the consequences of fighter planes from Saudi Arabia flying into Kuwait and Iraq to bomb their oilfields will be catastrophic and truly horrific.
No hon. Member is an apologist for Iraq. I am not. On many occasions, I have questioned Iraq's treatment of the Kurdish people, its use of chemical weapons at A1 Malkiya in 1988, its oppression of Kurdish rights throughout northern Iraq, the imprisonment of trade unionists and the assassination of those who, over the years, have stood up for human rights in Iraq. In no sense am I an apologist for Iraq, nor do I support anything that the Iraqi regime does.
After Kuwait was invaded on 2 August, the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), who was then Prime Minister, rushed across to the United States and cobbled together an arrangement with President Bush that enabled a multinational peacekeeping force, as they called it, to go into Saudi Arabia to protect the rights of smaller nations and ensure the survival of democracy. When that happened, I thought back to what happened only a year before, when 7,000 people were bombed to death in Panama by American troops.
I remembered also the decision of the International Court of Human Rights at The Hague, which found unaminously and specifically against the United States because of its aggression against Nicaragua. I thought also about the people I had met in Central America who were maimed as a result of United States arms being poured into the region to kill people. I thought also about the United Nations resolutions that had been carried on Namibia, Palestine, Cyprus and many other issues that could not be implemented because of power of veto of the United States, or of any other member of the Security Council.
In the post-cold-war world in which we now live, is the fate of the world to be decided by the dollar power of the United States and by the industrial nations getting together to teach the rest of the world a lesson, or are we serious about searching for lasting solutions to apparently intractable conflicts? I believe strongly in the cause of peace. I believe that peace is possible in the middle east. We live in a world that is bitterly divided between north and south, between rich and poor nations, between the rich and poor within rich nations and between the rich and poor within poor nations. We live in a world where, increasingly, the poor are subsiding the rich. I do not like that. I want a world order that brings about peace.
Those who say that the only solution to the middle east and Gulf conflicts is to let slip the dogs of war on 15 January may be pleased to see United States, British, French and other troops go in and succeed in moving the
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borders and regaining Kuwait, even though 500,000 people may die in the process. Land will be laid waste for decades, if not permanently. However, when the fighing has stopped, the Palestinian and Kurdish problems will still be there, the lack of democracy in Kuwait, the lack of human rights in Iraq and the lack of democracy and respect for human rights in Saudi Arabia will still be there and the oppression of peoples throughout the region will still be there. The only way to achieve a genuine and lasting peace is to put on one side the colonial mentality and to start talking about the rights and self-respect of the peoples in that region.
I hope that there is no war on 15 January, or at any time. Instead of relaxing and doing nothing until we return here on 15 January, I hope that all those who are responsible for getting the troops to the area and building up war fever will, if necessary, go to Iraq, or anywhere else, so that talks can take place with the object of achieving peace in the region instead of the horrors of a chemical-nuclear war, with all its accompanying death and destruction. There is time, but not much.
7.47 pm
Mr. Bruce Grocott: It is almost impossible to respond to a debate that has been as wide-ranging as this. Hon. Members will understand if I am unable to reply to all the speeches. Some hon. Members who have left the Chamber said that they would have to do so.
The first speech was made by my neighbour, the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen). It has become a tradition that he should open Adjournment motion debates and I should make the penultimate speech. He referred to the depths of the recession. His speech will be worth reading tomorrow in Hansard. Some hon. Members referred to constituency issues; others dealt with foreign affairs; and others concentrated on social issues which at this time of the year are perhaps the most relevant.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport, East (Mr. Hughes) made a powerful constituency speech. He said that Newport ought to be awarded city status. His speech will also be worth reading. I hope, as he does, that the Home Secretary will read it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington, North (Mr. Corbyn) dealt with foreign affairs. My hon. Friends the Members for Walsall, North (Winnick) and for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) made powerful speeches about international issues. I was especially moved by the description of conditions in Sri Lanka. If we are unable to spare a thought for such issues at this time of the year, when shall we?
Most hon. Members' speeches concentrated on social issues. The hon. Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) referred to hospitals; the hon. Member for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder) referred to the elderly; the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) referred to the homeless. My right hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) made a powerful contribution on behalf of the disabled. In his wide-ranging speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North also referred to the homeless. My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) concentrated on the rules governing adoption and its associated problems,

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especially those encountered if one wants to adopt mentally handicapped children. They are all relevant social issues.
I intend to deal with three completely different Christmas-new year issues, and I shall do so in ascending order of importance. We have had a momentous couple of months in politics, and we now have a new Prime Minister. Getting rid of the old Prime Minister was the culmination of the Labour party's objectives of the past 11 years. I am delighted to be able to speak on behalf of a clear majority in the House, because 226 Labour Members, the 168 Tories who did not support her and the various other parties are all glad to see the back of her.
The one memorable statement of the new Prime Minister was his commitment to a classless society. That commitment will be tested over the Christmas recess. There is already a bad omen, because one of the characteristics of the Christmas recess is the publication of the new year's honours list. In his commitment to a classless society, he made the bizarre decision of recommending the creation of a hereditary baronetcy—
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will recollect the ruling that Mr. Speaker gave yesterday: generalities, yes, but it is not in order to discuss individual cases.
Mr. Grocott: The ruling gets more puzzling all the time. I thought that it was on questioning the Prime Minister specifically about that matter.
I was present at Prime Minister's Question Time yesterday. I hope that we do not return to the nonsense of hereditary titles, which would be ridiculous in the 20th century, let alone when a commitment has been made to a classless society. I hope that we bring the procedures of the House up to date so that we can question how titles are created, and I further hope that that matter is referred to the Select Committee on Procedure.
Mr. Winnick: I am on it.
Mr. Grocott: I am glad that my hon. Friend is on it.
It is ridiculous that we are unable to question this important part of prime ministerial patronage. That is not a criticism of the monarch, who simply does what is recommended. It is high time that the honours system was subject to more careful scrutiny, particularly as it was abused for political purposes by the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher).
I said that I would deal with issues in ascending order of importance. Baronetcies are not matters of major importance, but the other two subjects that I wish to raise are. We shall undoubtedly encounter bad weather during the Christmas recess. As bad weather dramatically affected the west midlands the weekend before last, I wish to refer to how the public services had to respond. Thousands of people, including many of my constituents, were without heat, power and water. My constituents in Dawley were without water for five days.
As ever, the people who find themselves at the sharp end when things go wrong are those who must go up poles and repair the wires in biting winds. They are employed by the great national utilities, but they did not make the investment decisions that caused the problems in the first place. It is salutary to note how, under this Government, our great national utilities have suffered from a lack of investment.
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It is even more disgraceful that they have been sold off at knock down prices. [Interruption.] I know that Conservative Members do not like this; I would be upset if I were them. In the past week, the electricity industry was sold off at a cut price. According to a parliamentary answer, the Government received £5,182 million from the regional electricity companies, whereas the current value is £6,221 million. That is nothing compared to some of the huge privatisation bonuses under the Government. The National Freight Consortium was sold in 1982 at a benefit to the Exchequer of £5 million, whereas it is now worth £702 million. Associated British Ports was sold for £45 million, whereas it is now valued at £377 million. The Exchequer has received massive income from privatisation, but my constituents can see no benefit.
Since the Government took office, revenue from privatisation amounts to £28·5 billion. Therefore, would not one expect massive improvements in our national corporations? My word, there has been no improvement; but nor has there been any benefit from the revenue of North sea oil.
Mr. Jacques Arnold rose—
Mr. Grocott: I shall not give way; I have only three minutes left.
I tabled a simple question to the Chancellor on 14 December asking him to compare North sea oil revenue under this Government with that under the previous Labour Government. The previous Labour Government received £944 million from North sea oil, but this Government have had £70,200 million. Conservative Members wonder why their Government have survived. They have survived on a raft of North sea oil.
In the three minutes left to me, I wish to mention homelessness; I can see that Conservative Members are upset about that. Perhaps they will turn their attention to it and feel a little shame about what the Government have done for homeless people. We read in the press this morning of the Government's minor attempts to deal with homelessness in London. Ironically, on the same day, the Government announced the housing investment programme for my local authority, the Wrekin, for this year. Last year, we were allowed to borrow £3·3 million, but this year it has been reduced to £3 million. In cash terms, that is reduction of 10 per cent., but in real terms a reduction of 18 per cent.
It is hypocritical for the Government to pretend that they are doing something about homelessness when all the time they are reducing the number of houses being built. It is baffling that the Government, who pride themselves on being able to do simple arithmetic, hold up their hands in horror about the number of people without homes and the number on housing waiting lists, because they know that 500,000 fewer houses were built in the 1980s than in any decade since the war. No wonder the number of homeless people has increased, and no wonder there have been dramatic increases in local authority housing waiting lists.
Let me leave Conservative Members—sometimes they need things to be put in straightforward language—with a simple truth. If the demand for homes is increasing but the Government are reducing the supply, homelessness will result. If there is anything wrong with that logic, I should be delighted if a Conservative Member were to correct it at a later date.

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There is something particularly ironic in dealing with homelessness at Christmas. It was perhaps understandable that in Palestine in the first century there were problems of homelessness, but it is disgraceful that in the United Kingdom in the 20th century such problems remain. I look forward to a Labour Government solving homelessness, and let us hope that this is the last Christmas recess under the Tories.
7.58 pm
The Leader of the House and Lord President of the Council (Mr. John MacGregor): It was appropriate that my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) should open the debate because, as a distinguished predecessor of mine, he was much involved in closing such debates in the past. Having read his responses to those debates I must admit that I shall not replicate his delightful manner and turn of phrase, not least because of the limited amount of time available.
My right hon. Friend spoke about the economy, which was also appropriate as we are both former Chief Secretaries. He will be aware that there are two views about membership of the ERM and the rate at which we entered. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) made an appropriate point about some of the benefits of ERM to British industry and commerce and I share his view.
My right hon. 1rIend's views are well known as he has a longstanding commitment to free floating exchange rates, but that is not the view of Her Majesty's Government nor of most hon. Members. The majority of hon. Members on both sides of the House approved of our entry. Although it was not quite clear in my right hon. Friend's remarks, he will recognise that those of us in favour of membership never regarded it as a panacea or as a painless solution to the need for a strong policy stance against inflation. The ERM is an anti-inflationary club and we are determined to abide by the rules.
As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made clear in last week's debate, we have no intention of putting our position in the ERM at risk. The Chancellor's remarks in the debate were carefully considered and, since they were briefly quoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North, it is right to requote in full the particular passage. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor said:
"There can be no question of a reduction in interest rates that is not fully justified by our position in the ERM. That will be the case however strong is the pressure for lower interest rates based on other indicators. The discipline of the ERM is tough, but, because it increases the certainty of lower inflation, it also means that when interest rate reductions do take place, they are securely based."—[Official Report, 12 December 1990; Vol. 182, c. 966.]
My right hon. Friend's last point is of particular importance.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North also referred to a comment from the governor of the Bundesbank. We take domestic economic conditions into account when considering economic decisions, as do all other countries in the ERM. The governor of the Bundesbank was not saying anything new or different in that context. The ERM provides an over-arching, additional discipline to reinforce anti-inflationary policy. That is one reason why we joined and why we shall stick
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with it. My right hon. Friend suggested that the exchange rate is too high. It is most important to maintain the necessary monetary and fiscal conditions until we can get the inflationary elements out of the economy.
The real danger still ahead of us is that high wage and salary increases run the risk of eroding the gains in productivity and unit costs achieved in the past decade. Those increases will undermine our competitiveness because of high labour costs and will keep our inflation rate at too high a level. As our first priority it is right to aim for a sustained fall in the rate of inflation.
The right hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent, South (Mr. Ashley) referred to a number of matters relating to the disabled. All those matters have been frequently referred to in the House in the past and I shall deal with them briefly, not least because the right hon. Gentleman also informed me that he had to leave before the conclusion of the debate. On the independent living fund, the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the trust deed runs out some months after the introduction of community care arrangements in 1993. The Government would therefore expect that people seeking help after the implementation of those arrangements should be able to look to the local authorities. We shall consult the local authorities on the timetable for any transfer of existing cases and associated resources.
The right hon. Gentleman also referred to service men and the Crown Proceedings Act 1947. That matter was carefully considered by the House at the time of the repeal of section 10 of the 1947 Act. It was concluded that it was not possible to define a scheme that allowed retrospection without creating further injustices or anomalies. I strongly believe that we should not pass retrospective legislation. The right hon. Gentleman will also be aware of our position on nuclear test veterans as he and I have had exchanges on that before.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Sir D. Smith) requested a change in his county's structure plan. I have been sufficiently involved with all the details of redrawing my structure plan, including questions about mineral extraction, to know that it would be unwise of me to comment on my hon. Friend's structure plan given that I am not Secretary of State for the Environment. My hon. Friend's comments had a familiar ring and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will read them. However, I note that my hon. Friend has already been active in making representations on the various issues that he raised.
The hon. Member for Belfast, South (Rev. Martin Smyth) raised the question of a Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs. If I am allowed to get away for the recess—I share the view of the hon. Member for Newport, East (Mr. Hughes) that we shall not spend our entire time on holiday and that we shall do a good deal of work as well—I shall spend part of it considering the history and the arguments that the hon. Gentleman made. He will be aware that the second report of the Select Committee on Procedure on the workings of the Select Committee System concluded in recommendation 51:
"We therefore accept that this would not be a sensible moment to recommend the establishment of a Select Committee on Northern Ireland Affairs."
My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridgeshire, South-East (Mr. Paice) speaks with great knowledge about the racing and bloodstock industry because of his

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constituency and the great interest he takes in it. I agree with him that it is an important industry because of its contribution to the economy, the jobs that it provides and the pleasure it gives. My hon. Friend's point about VAT and the industry is obviously one for my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Treasury and I shall ensure that it is drawn to their attention, as it has been before.
My hon. Friend also spoke about the horse as an agricultural animal. I recall the representations that I received about that when I was Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, not least from my constituents in Norfolk—my hon. Friend referred to a number of hon. Members who represent Norfolk. I considered the case with some care, but one of the problems is that the horse is not always an agricultural animal.
The hon. Member for Newport, East referred to the number of years he has been here, but the tribute he paid to his constituency was so long that I thought that he was making a maiden speech rather than one after 25 years in the House. Perhaps he was rehearsing his reselection speech in time for the next election. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the grant of city status is an honour conferred by the sovereign by letters patent. It is not a right that can be obtained by a town fulfilling certain conditions, irrespective of the points made in favour of Newport. That honour is awarded rarely and, since the war, only three towns have been granted city status—Derby, Southampton and Swansea. Any application must be considered against the background that I have outlined and I can give no suggestions as to the outcome of an application.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) gave me a let-out for not referring to funding for the National Health Service and related matters because of the debate about it that will be held shortly—I was not anxious to have such a let-out. Time prevents me from discussing the matters in detail, but all the issues raised in relation to the National Health Service, social security, cold weather payments and the position of the disabled have been met by the substantial increases in funding—between 50 per cent. and a doubling in funding in real terms—during the Government's term of office. We have increased that funding because we regard those areas as high priorities for public expenditure and because of the successful growth of the economy. Unfortunately, I cannot elaborate on that because of the time left.
My hon. Friend also spoke about the Select Committee on Health and referred to the insular and self-centred approach of the Scottish Liberal Democrats and in so doing he quoted Robbie Burns. That reminded me of another of his quotes:
"O wad some power the giftie gie us,
To see oursels as others see us!"
I share my hon. Friend's attitude to the Liberal Democrats' behaviour. The Government deplore any attempt to prevent the formation of Committees on grounds unrelated to their merits. If it continues to prove impossible to set up Committees and the Chairman of the Committee of Selection seeks time for a debate on the particular Select Committee to which my hon. Friend referred, I shall be happy to provide it at the earliest opportunity. It will be for the Chairman of the Committee to take the initiating step, but I should certainly look for an opportunity to debate the matter at the earliest moment.
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The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) spoke about the homeless, and we all understand the many arguments he made. He will also recognise that a great deal of action and much expenditure has been undertaken by the Government. In view of the time I cannot say much in response except to highlight the statement that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning made yesterday which will extend the special and substantial programme by providing hostel and move-on accommodation worth £96 million.
The hon. Member for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder) raised a particular constituency case that I shall draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. I should like to outline in more detail what is being done for pensioners, but time prevents me.
I do not often agree with the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick), but I am glad that he raised the Amnesty International report, because it draws our attention to a number of issues. It is another reason why the invasion of Kuwait is totally unacceptable and why, therefore, the United Nations resolution must be adhered to.
My hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Mr. Porter) raised a number of issues about sea defences with which, as he knows, I am familiar. When I was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, I attached great priority to increasing the Government's contribution to sea defences. My hon. Friend recognised that increased contribution. I opened one major new sea defence during that period on the north Norfolk coast. The environmental argument, to which my hon. Friend referred, was accepted by the Government for the first time in the case of Aldeburgh when I was Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and I was happy to carry it through. My right hon. Friend the present Minister has continued to support that priority.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) raised a constituency point about the revenue support grant, which I shall draw to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Mr. French) made several points about road safety. He will have several other opportunities to draw the attention of the House to those points. He will be aware of the strong focus on road safety matters in the legislative programme for this Parliament. As he will have other opportunities, I hope that he will agree that the House can now adjourn for the Christmas recess.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House at its rising on Thursday 20th December do adjourn until Monday 14th January.

CONSOLIDATED FUND BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
Question, That the Bill be now read a Second time, put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 54 (Consolidated Fund Bills), and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Question, That the Bill be now read the Third time, put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
Motion made, and Question proposed, pursuant to Standing Order No. 54(1) (Consolidated Fund Bills), That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker]

Hospital Funding
8.10 pm
Mrs. Gwyneth Dunwoody: There is no better time for us to consider some of the exciting events which are now taking place than at Christmas because one of the joys of Christmas is the many myths which are perpetuated at this time. We have our pantos and our theatres. We tell more fairy stories and have more excitement every day. We can almost inevitably expect a little panto from Her Majesty's Government. It usually has about as much relation to reality as Jack and the Beanstalk. They usually tell us how extremely lucky we are to have a national health service funded to a greater and greater degree by a benificent, kind, committed and caring Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I am glad that the chorus is suitably rehearsed, if not very numerous or genuine.
Yesterday we had a couple of examples of the Government's pantomime. The Minister of State, Department of Health—I hope that I am not promoting or demoting him—
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Stephen Dorrell): The hon. Lady is promoting me.
Mrs. Dunwoody: I am promoting the Minister, but it is almost always more tactful to promote people than to mention their correct station in life. We had a statement from the Department yesterday which purported to be about the commitment of new funds to the NHS.
It will not hurt for a few minutes to consider the problem of what is happening in the NHS, not least because it affects every citizen in this country. There have been several major reforms of the health service since 1947, all of them major and carried out by Conservative Governments. They were usually exceedingly ill-thought-out and badly based and they produced some bizarre results. Yet every time that we have a Conservative Government we are told that what is really needed is a means of making the entire service more efficient and to obtain better value for money and better results. Indeed, the previous Prime Minister became famous for saying that the national health service was safe in the hands of the Conservative party. However, the reality of the Government's management of the health service is announcements such as we had yesterday.
The opportunity of Health Question Time in the House was not taken yesterday to announce the new sums of money which were supposedly to be committed to the NHS. Although various written questions in Volume 183 of Hansard for Tuesday 18 December were relevant to the subject, a full statement of what the Department issued as a press notice was not given. For that information, one had to go elsewhere. One soon begins to realise that the Government are in considerable difficulty.
One of the Government's hobby horses is that one obtains better value from health care only when people appreciate its cost—not its value, only its cost. To that end we are told that the establishment of what is called an internal market is necessary. That appears to consist of bringing in large numbers of accountants with no medical training to assess the cost of various services within the NHS. Suffice it to say that that has not been one of the most successful ideas that the Conservative Government have pushed forward, not least because the reforms were
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put in train without any research into either their efficiency or the way in which they will operate when they are introduced next April.
On top of that reform, a new set of hospital organisations—the so-called opted-out independent trusts —has been created. We were told that, of course, the Government would not consider "political" objections to such trusts; they were interested only in facts. The reality of discussing opt-out applications has been that the Government have not discussed the facts at any point. The facts and finance have not been revealed to the national health service. Those of us who subjected the business plans for our areas to close examination were not given any sensible answers to any of the questions that we put to the Department of Health.
The assumptions in the business plan for Crewe are not only wholly unrealistic but unrealisable. Even the population figures on which much of the planning is based cannot be confirmed by any independent source. In the business plan they are described as the result of informal discussion with the chief executive of the local authority. No Government Department would be prepared to produce and bring before the House of Commons a plan based on an informal assessment of population growth.
Coopers and Lybrand, along with other highly expensive firms of accountants, produced several assessments of the so-called business plans. The information in those assessments has not been forthcoming. No hon. Member has been given the opportunity of seeing the assessments of the reality of the figures.
Yesterday we were told that suddenly, halfway through the financial year, the Government had decided to give a lot of new money to the national health service because they were anxious that the people who move to the new system in April should not suggest that they had a shortfall in their budget. Why has the shortfall amounted to £40·5 million in the underlying deficit? Why have the Government decided that that figure is not acceptable? Is it because the number of bed closures, which happen not only week by week but day by day throughout the health service, have given rise to considerable anxiety among Conservative Members? Almost every day the newspapers carry an account of a delegation from a frantic Conservative Member in a marginal seat and his constituents going cap in hand to the Secretary of State for Health. The hon. Member demands that his—inevitably it is his, not her—hospitals should be protected and that other hospitals should be required to become more efficient by being shut down.
Lest we are in any doubt about that, we can examine the average daily available beds in England. The Government do not publish bed closure statistics; we can assess the net changes only on the average number of available beds during the year. An examination of those figures for the years 1979 to 1989–90 reveals some interesting facts. In 1979, there were 149,000 acute beds and 362,000 beds in total. In 1983, there were 142,000 acute sector beds and 343,000 beds in total—a drop on the previous year's figures of 2,000 in the acute sector and 5,000 in the total. In 1985, there were 136,000 beds in the acute sector and 325,000 in total—a drop of 3,000 and 8,000 respectively. In 1989–90, there were 121,000 beds in the acute sector and 270,000 in total. Between 1979 and 1989–90, we have lost 28,000 beds in the acute sector and 92,000 beds in total.

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That means that we have lost 18·8 per cent. of the beds in the acute sector and 25·4 per cent.—one quarter—of the total number of beds.
We are told, "Do not worry. We are always looking for new beds, new hospitals, new input and new investment, all of which will produce a much higher level of patient care." In reality, the intention behind opt-out hospitals is that the market will achieve for the Government what they have not the guts to do while they have to fight elections. They hope that, as soon as a charging procedure is in place and as soon as the district health authorities have to bargain with each other for payment for different sectors, they will find it difficult to balance their books and more and more of them will close more and more beds.
An assessment by the National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts of the finance available for the NHS shows a shortfall in NHS funding since 1980–81 of £806 million. There is no suggestion that yesterday's announcement of RHA allocations, which we are told represent a real increase of 5 per cent. in hospital and community health service revenue spending, will give any benefit to the NHS. To start with, the announcement does not take into account the fact that, as the Minister knows, NHS inflation is very much higher than the normal inflation rate. We must have 1 per cent. real growth for an increasingly elderly population, a further 1 per cent. for new health initiatives. The remaining 3 per cent. is likely to be eaten up by the difference in NHS inflation and inflation in the economy as a whole. The National Association of Health Authorities and Trusts has suggested that that figure is likely to be 8·5 to 9 per cent., which can be contrasted with the 6 per cent. against which the Government calculate their real terms figures.
Let us talk about facts, not fantasy. How is it that the annual shortfall on target funding for the hospital and community health services, in terms of actual spending, cash allocations, inflation, cost improvement programmes —including the amounts that the Government have put in for what they call "funding for improvements in salaries and wages", although they are careful never to give the right amounts—was £17 million in 1981–82, £55 million in 1982–83, £283 million in 1983–84 and so on? The final target is £806 million.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes:: Did the hon. Lady use the same logic when she and her hon. Friends forced through the House a 16 per cent. cut in real terms in capital spending?
Mrs. Dunwoody: The hon. Gentleman parrots the usual central office handout. He does not seem to have understood the position. People know that, waiting lists are getting longer and longer. Conservative Members know that hospital beds in their constituencies are closing at a faster rate this year than they have closed for many years. They know that when the electors register their vote in the next general election they will be only too aware of the realities of NHS funding. That is why they are leaping up and down demanding that their constituencies are protected, but that will not in any way cozen their constituents. They will know that, far from committing new moneys, and far from producing improvements in health care, the Government are seeking to cushion their plans between now and next year because that will give them an opportunity to call a general election. If they genuinely believed that their plans for the NHS would
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produce much better care, they would not have railroaded through the House the damaging changes that have produced independent opted-out trusts.
Mr. Dorrell: The subject of the debate is NHS funding. Will the hon. Lady soon explain to the House why she thinks that, under this Government, total NHS funding has risen by 3 per cent. per annum for nearly 12 years while it rose — by 1·5 per cent. in real terms during the Labour Government's term of office?
Mrs. Dunwoody: Certainly. I shall have no difficulty in doing that because, unlike the Minister, I have spent a great deal of my time dealing with the NHS.
There is one thing that the Government have not been able to do during the past 10 years: they have not been able to control NHS spending in the GP sector. That is why they have pushed through changes in the GP contract. The Minister knows perfectly well that, although the Government have set out to cut funding in the hospital and acute sectors and to transfer much of the work on to community care without offering funding, they have riot been able to control the amount of money that GPs spent.
Mr. Dorrell: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Dunwoody: I am happy to give way, although I thought that the Minister would make his own speech.
Mr. Dorrell: I shall not make a habit of intervening, but, as the subject that the hon. Lady suggested for debate was NHS funding, it seems sensible that I should allow her to answer some of the points that I may make before I make them. She will be able to retaliate in advance.
The hon. Lady correctly alluded to the substantial growth in spending on primary health care under this Government and suggested that that was not an appropriate use of public money. Perhaps she will explain to the House which aspects of expenditure on primary health care she would like to be cut.
Mrs. Dunwoody: My goodness, it is not difficult to see that we are approaching a general election. If I want to say something in the House, I am perfectly capable of using my own words. I merely said that the Government could not control expenditure on primary health care. I did not say that the expansion of primary health care was not a good thing; I said that the Government had sought to pretend that they were committing new moneys when they were not. They are rearranging the figures that they gave in the autumn statement to make a general presentation to the public. The Minister said that he thought that it would be a good idea if many health authorities had public relations spokesmen.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: Will the hon. Lady give way?
Mrs. Dunwoody: The hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to speak. In any case, I thought that this was a serious debate.
The Minister said that he thought that it would be a good idea to appoint some public relations spokesmen. That is presumably because many health authorities are not capable of presenting the figures in the bizarre way in which he has presented them.
When the hon. Member for Buckingham (Mr. Walden) said that a serious situation was developing and spoke of

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the difficulties of a particular hospital in making ends meet before the new regime came in, the Secretary of State said:
"It is understood that some of the London districts will not have to remove their deficits before the beginning of the new system. However, it would be a bad managerial signal to allow those that have overspent their budgets again to pre-empt resources that should be available to the whole of the health service".—[Official Report, 18 December 1990; Vol. 183, c. 148.]
That was at a time when his own Department was announcing that it was deliberately going to attempt to cushion the deficit in order to gain what it saw as a short-term political advantage.
A written answer on 18 December gives a clear view of the number of regional health authorities that will be in deficit. It says that the numbers have
"fallen from 122 in 1989–90 to an end-of-September estimate of 51 in 1990–91."—[Official Report, 18 December 1990; Vol. 183, c. 156.]
The reason for that is that many of those hospitals have been not only cutting services but reducing the number of beds and are increasingly faced with the prospect of having to shut down even more services in the new year. It is not a matter of them simply being able to deal with a budgetary deficit; they know that they will have to remove from the general public services that are most desperately needed.
The list of districts in deficit shows that almost every region has a district that is at least £1·2 million in deficit. Many of those in the London district, which includes the teaching hospitals, are more than £1·7 million in deficit. In West Lambeth, the deficit is £3·1 million and in Camberwell it is £2·3 million. The reality is that the Government suddenly discover just before Christmas that, in the three months immediately after the House reassembles, there will be an accelerating programme of bed reductions and pressure on services that will make it impossible for them to disguise from the electorate what is actually happening as opposed to what they say is happening. Their response was to seek some way of immediately putting a large plaster on top of the haemorrhage.
A business plan was prepared for Leighton hospital, a district general hospital. Many of its assumptions were wrong and the people referred to throughout the document as the agents—I know them as general practitioners—made it clear in the detailed questionnaire that I submitted to them, copies of which have been deposited with the Secretary of State, that they had no intention of changing their referral patterns and saw no future possibility of dealing with any extra patients in that hospital. They asked, if there were to be a means of attracting new patients to the hospital, what would happen to the existing waiting lists, which were lengthening again after considerable difficulties in the past.
The Department of Health has answered none of their questions. Having told me that it would look at the logic, the figures and the business plan, the Department simply issued a straightforward statement saying that the hospital should be allowed to opt out. It never answered the questions or responded to any of the doctors' worries, and there was no consultation procedure to take into account the wishes of my constituents or the health service professionals. They were of no interest to the Government because, fundamentally, they do not believe in the
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provision of free care at the point of use. Their interest is quite different—to set up an extremely complex, unworkable and expensive form of financing which, with any luck, if there is any difficulty with moneys, will result in a lowering of health care standards throughout my constituency. That has been the purpose and clear intent of the reorganisation, which is why the Department of Health has suddenly realised the implications of its actions.
The Department does not want to enter the spring with the NHS facing even more closures and pressures, and with constituents suddenly becoming aware of the real intent of the Government's health policy. The Minister does not want to talk about that and would much rather trot out figures which have no relationship to what we have been talking about. However, the reality of health care under the Conservatives is that it is a declining force and will continue to be so, irrespective of the Will Hay form of mathematics that seems to be practised in Whitehall.
However, for those people who need health care—the young, the old, and the increasing number of men and women in my district who suffer from major coronary problems and need better care—the future is bleak. We can only hope that the next general election will fundamentally change the future for health care in this country.
8.35 pm
Mr. Robert G. Hughes: The speech of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) was an easy speech for a Labour Member to make. A friend of mine in the Labour party explained to me why Labour members speak in such terms. He said that it did not matter what the Labour party did in the NHS —he admitted that Labour had a pretty awful record when in government—because everyone believed that the Labour party cared about the health service. He said that, conversely, it did not matter what a Conservative Government did to the health service, because no one would believe them.
Therefore, it was possible for the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich to make a speech giving the problems—some of them real—and gaps in the health service. It was easy for her to say that some people who need treatment cannot receive it when they want it, and use that as an argument to pretend—that is all she is doing —that the national health service is being reduced in size and having funds taken away from it by the Government. To be fair to the hon. Lady, she knows that her argument is a pretence, and she is simply making it for narrow political reasons.
The reality is that, if the Labour party had this Government's record in the NHS, it would be crowing about it. If a Labour Government had managed to spend more on the health service than they did on defence, they would say that that was fantastic and showed their commitment to the health service. Year after year, the hon. Lady voted for a health service budget smaller than the defence budget, but she shows no shame about that.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: 1 share my hon. Friend's desire not to let this debate descend into a party-political wrangle. In his important intervention during the speech of the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) he spoke about the incontrovertible fact that

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the last Labour Government cut expenditure on the National Health Service, whereas this Government have massively increased it. During his speech, will he press the Opposition spokesmen and women to give an absolute commitment that, in the unlikely event that the Labour party is ever returned to power, it will not repeat its previous appalling record on health?
Mr. Hughes: My hon. Friend makes an important point. I served on a community health council during the last few years of the last Labour Government, and I remember the enormous problems caused in our health district by the antics of that Government. There were cuts in budgets—not in the hoped-for increases but in the actual budgets—and we had to close some of the private beds without any increase in Government funding.
Those private beds brought in about £500,000 a year, which was a lot of money to us in those days, and there was no replacement for that money. Labour Ministers ordered us to get rid of the private beds, but they did not replace the funding. Their record was shameful. The assurance that my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) asks for is important—
Mr. Allen McKay: Spending on the health service has had to increase for a number of reasons that have been forced on the Government—increased numbers of nurses and doctors, for example. The Government did not volunteer that. If their record is so good, why have 3,000 beds already been closed?
Mr. Hughes: I shall come to the point about beds because it is important, as is the number of people being treated in hospital. It is interesting to compare closed beds statistics in our health service with those for health services in other countries. A larger number of cases are being treated in this country.
The Opposition will not like it, but we should look at the facts about NHS activity. In the 10 years to 1988–89, the number of acute in-patients treated rose — by 20 per cent. to 5 million; the number of acute day cases treated doubled to 1·1 million. Acute out-patient attendances rose — by 6 per cent. to 30 million; geriatric in-patients treated rose — by 9 per cent. to 450,000. The number of maternity in-patients rose — by 17 per cent. Courses of dental treatment increased by 18 per cent. to almost 33 million. Of course there are more doctors and nurses—that is an important part of the health service. They did not come from nowhere: they came as a matter of policy. It has been the policy of this Government to spend more and to pay the doctors and nurses better. I hope that the Opposition welcome that.
The number of GPs rose — by 20 per cent. to almost 20,000, and the number of dentists by 25 per cent. to 15,000. The number of hospital doctors rose — by 12 per cent. to 44,000, and the number of nurses and midwives by 3 per cent. to 400,000.
I am proud of this record, as the Labour party would have been proud of it had it been able to achieve it. It is certain, however, that the Labour party would not have spent as much on the national health service in the past 11 years, because we have proof for at least the first three of those years. Spending plans left by the last Labour Government show that, in those three years, they would have spent less than the Conservative Government on the health service. We want no nonsense from the Labour party about this.
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Of course there are gaps, as those of us who invariably use the NHS understand, but that is not an argument for pretending that the Government have tried to cut health services.
The Opposition have been schizophrenic about management in the health service. I have heard the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) speak in the House about the need for new management techniques in the health service. I have heard her arguing for money following patients. I have even heard her argue— although the words could not cross her lips in exactly this form— for a sort of internal market in the health service. To give it credit, the Labour party understands that we need reforms in the hospital services, but Opposition Members have voted against every reform that we have tried to introduce.
Ms. Harriet Harman: I should like to put the record straight. The hon. Gentleman is engaging in a shameful trick when trying to imply that we are somehow in favour of the internal market. I shall make it absolutely clear to him, as I have done every time I have spoken and as my hon. Friend the Member Livingston (Mr. Cook), the shadow Secretary of State, has too, that we are against I he internal market. When we come to government we shall abolish it, for two principal reasons. We have consistently argued that there will be competition on costs, and when costs are cut, corners are cut and lives will be lost. Our object is not to squeeze resources out of the health service—one of the intentions of the internal market. We think it necessary to invest more resources in the health service.
It is not a question of money following the patient: the internal market will mean the patient following the contract. We are against the internal market because we are in favour of patients choosing where they are treated —a choice that they can exercise in discussion with their GPs. Under the internal market they would have to go where the district health authority manager had decided to place the cheapest contract. So I should be grateful for a little integrity in the debate.
Mr. Hughes: That would indeed be useful. The hon. Lady and her colleagues have spent so long shamefully parodying our reforms that they have probably started to believe the parody. They recognise that there are serious problems in the way in which hospitals are managed. Of course some health authorities run out of money; that is inevitable in our system. However much money is provided, it is inevitable, given that authorities must budget for a whole year on the basis of how many patients they may or may not treat, that the money will run out at some stage—sometimes for good reasons and sometimes because of bad planning.
When the hon. Member for Peckham tries to deal with this problem, she knows that she will have to go in the same direction as we have gone. Even if the Opposition had the chance, they would not abandon these reforms, because they know that that would cut patient care.
The Labour party has been dishonest about our performance and reforms, and has also sought to undermine some of the other changes. First, the Opposition complained about the new slimline health boards, which are extremely valuable. The problem with some of the old health authorities and family practitioner committees was that they were more like group therapy sessions than real meetings. I went to meetings of both kinds and found the quality of decision making poor. I do

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not believe that local councillors serving on health boards make them representative of anything, except in so far as those councillors claim to make health authorities representative. We want the best management available. Resources would be finite, as a Labour Government would also find. Given finite resources, they must be properly managed, and the best value for money must be obtained for the patient.
Several health authorities have used capital money—taxpayers' money meant to be used for health care and the building of new health service resources—to build laundries. Those laundries are run at a loss. They seek to compete with the private sector and undercut it, but they cannot possibly truly undercut it. So I accuse some health authorities of wasting capital money on building these laundries and using revenue money to support them, while their accounts show a profit on using their own resources, which cannot be true. Information given to the Department proves that these authorities are wasting a great deal of money.
Mr. Allen McKay: Where have these laundries been built? Most hospitals are designed with internal laundries.
Mr. Hughes: With the greatest respect, the hon. Gentleman is wrong. I have a fair amount of information about this—
Mr. McKay: Where?
Mr. Hughes: I believe there is one in Dyfed— Mr.
McKay: Only one, then.
Mr. Hughes: It is one of many examples. The hon. Gentleman's attitude is ridiculous, but that is not unusual. If he goes to the Library and looks at the questions and answers on this topic he will find that he is absolutely wrong. After that, perhaps he will apologise, but I doubt it.
That laundry cost £4·3 million of public money to build. It is undercutting private local laundries, but the prices that it charges for outside work must mean that the laundry is operating at a loss. That is shameful, and results in money being taken from real patient care.
Health authorities are hanging on to land that they are not using for health care purposes. My health authority in Harrow has had a piece of such land for at least 20 years. It was bought for all sorts of good reasons, but the authority found that it could not get planning permission because it was green belt and Crown land. Instead of disposing of the site and using the money for health care, the council is hanging on to it. I do not think that it will ever be possible to build on that land. That is a shameful waste.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Has the hon. Gentleman not noticed that property prices, even in the absolute nirvana of Harrow, are falling rather than rising?
Mr. Hughes: There might have been an occasional opportunity to sell the land at some time in the past 20 years when land prices were not falling. This might not be the right time to sell the land, but the authority has been hanging on to it for a long time. I hope that the hon. Lady does not disagree with the principle of my point.
Mrs. Dunwoody: The health service is developing and improving and will need new sites. No one could seriously tell an inner London health authority—perhaps I should not call it that, because the name may be rather posher —or a health authority in any conurbation to get rid of land that could be used to provide better facilities for the mentally handicapped, for children or for other highly developed services. Such a suggestion is highly irresponsible and boringly commercial in the narrowest and most unimaginative sense.
Mr. Hughes: I am sure that the mentally handicapped in Harrow will be grateful to know that the empty land at Clamp hill is providing good service for them. I can assure the hon. Lady that it is not. The money realised from the sale of that land could be put to good use. By her intervention, the hon. Lady reveals her empty posturing about the health service. It is nonsense to say that an empty piece of land in Harrow helps the mentally handicapped, and the hon. Lady knows it.
In a muddled and confused part of her speech, the hon. Lady talked about GP spending and seemed to suggest that we should cut spending in that area. When she reads her speech in Hansard she will see why she gave that impression.
Ms. Harman: Rubbish.
Mr. Hughes: I do not think that the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) was in the Chamber at that point in her hon. Friend's speech.
Ms. Harman: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was in the Chamber from the time that my hon. Friend started to speak.
Mr. Hughes: I apologise to the hon. Lady. It is a pity that she was not listening to her hon. Friend's speech.
Nobody who looks at the general practitioner service in any part of the country could say that there has not been a massive increase in funding. There are new GP surgeries with marvellous facilities and many more GPs, and fewer patients are being treated by each general practitioner. Those are the marks of what the Government have done, because they have improved services enormously.
GPs are providing many services that were not provided before. The GP contract has meant that even reluctant general practitioners are now providing services that they would never have thought of providing before. As a result of that contract, the rates of immunisation are impressive. The Labour party opposed that policy point by point, and said that immunisation rates would go down. That shows that Labour is interested only in playing politics, and does not want to look at the facts. The health service has been safe in the hands of the Government and it will continue to be.
8.54 pm
Mr. Gareth Wardell: It is a great pleasure to speak on this non-partisan occasion, when the true spirit of Christmas pervades the House. I should like to speak about some of the health issues affecting the people of Wales, and I am sure that the Minister will deal adequately with my questions. First, I shall deal with elective or cold surgery in the three new regional centres in Wales. They are the centre at Bangor for cataract operations, the centre for hernia operations at Bridgend and the centre for hip replacement operations at Rhydlafar in Cardiff.

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What is the success rate of those three regional centres in terms of the way in which health authorities outside those areas send patients to them? A GP may wish to refer a patient from my constituency to Bangor in north Wales. That is a good five-hour drive, because Wales does not yet have a north-south link. Some people argue that that is not a bad thing, but I take the contrary view.
As a consequence of sending patients that distance, the health authority may not have enough patients in its teaching hospital to train new doctors. Have the three regional centres been a success, or does elective surgery give rise to problems of family support and so on when the hospital is some distance away? If an operation goes wrong and the patient is a long way from home, the familial community system that we have retained in Wales is not available to support him.
My second topic is drug prescribing. Will the Minister identify the problems and name the drugs that are involved? Where do the problems exist, and what is the relationship between hospital consultants and GPs? I shall deal with one drug, but I should like the Minister to tell us the problems that have arisen with others.
The drug I wish to speak about is one used in the treatment of renal patients who are acutely anaemic and is called erythropoietin. I have some information about the limited experience of some consultants in Wales. Until recently, when the unit administrator in the hospital was unwilling to fund the use of this drug, a consultant could persuade a general practitioner to fund the prescription for him. Now, general practitioners are being told, partly because of possible cases of negligence against them and partly because they can be subject to disciplinary proceedings, not to do this unless they are monitoring the patient and are responsible for the administration of the drug.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Is my hon. Friend aware that this is a problem throughout the country, as fewer and fewer renal units are able to give full courses of drugs? They give half the dosage and patients then have to travel, often long distances, to go back for the other half of the treatment.
Mr. Wardell: I am grateful for that helpful intervention. I am aware of some cases in Wales of people travelling long distances for treatment.
I should like the Minister to tell me how many drugs, like this one, have been prescribed over the past few years by general practitioners, which they can no longer prescribe. Is he confident that consultants will be able to continue to prescribe such drugs, to ensure that patients get the treatment they need?
Although I do not want to burden the Minister or his officials so close to Christmas, perhaps he could look at the use of another drug, alpha interferon, which is used for the treatment of leukaemia patients. The same problem arises with this drug in that in some parts of the country, under a similar relationship, when consultant haemotologists have had difficulty with the unit administrator, the general practitioners have been helpful in prescribing the drug. However, that has changed.
As we approach Christmas, I should like the Minister to tell us that we shall not have the kind of situation with which I was faced recently. A consultant in haemotology at the University hospital of Wales, Dr. Whittaker, told me that he was prevented from prescribing alpha interferon.
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The only way that the patient could have the drug was for a charity to pay for two months' treatment in the bone marrow transplant unit.
I am sure that the Minister will agree when I say that I should not like to see a spectre haunting us—that of large numbers of people, perhaps children, appealing on television, on local radio or in the newspapers and saying things such as, "Please, please where is the money for me to have the drug that I need to save my life?" Will that happen, or can we be confident that adequate money will be provided for the prescribing of such drugs? That concerns me, because I know of several similar cases.
My third point concerns the case of urgent open heart surgery in the University hospital of Wales. This is a regional centre, funded as a regional service by the Welsh Office. In the Welsh Office commentary published in March this year on public expenditure in Wales 1990–91 to 1992–93, in paragraph 429 on page 159, the Welsh Office says:
"The cardiac services for adults in South Wales have been the subject of a review by members of the Cardiology Committee of the Royal College of Physicians. The review confirmed Welsh Office planning policies for cardiac services in pointing to the need for about 1,300 open heart operations per year".
Some 1,200 of these are for adults.
The Royal College of Physicians accepts that we need the facility in Wales for carrying out about 1,200 adult open-heart operations a year. The view of the college reiterates the view of the specialist cardio-thoracic team that reported in 1980. In 1984, the then Secretary of State for Wales, now Lord Crickhowell, accepted that there was a need for well over 1,100 open heart operations in Wales a year as a regional service. During the latest year for which figures are available, which is 1988–89, 591 such operations were performed at the University hospital of Wales, Cardiff.
As Wales has one of the highest incidences of heart disease of any developed country in the world, I ask the Minister to tell the House when the 1,200 open heart operations that are needed to be carried out each year within the Principality will be carried out. I am sure that he will give enormous Christmas cheer to the people of Wales if he will give us a target date.
We in Wales are delighted that the Government are putting in place a new paediatric cardiology unit at the University hospital of Wales. In the spirit of Christmas cheer, we are pleased to hear that. It would be additionally beneficial for the people of Wales to know the target date for what the Royal College of Physicians, the previous Secretary of State for Wales and the cardio-thoracic team set as one of the needs of the Principality.
9.7 pm
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: It is a great pleasure briefly to take part in the debate, especially as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health, who is to reply, is a near neighbour of mine in Nottinghamshire. From time to time, in his former incarnation, he used to advise me of the importance of certain debates, some of which took place on a Friday.
It is a great pleasure to be able to take up some of the remarks of the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell). It is unusual to hear someone from the Opposition Benches, but no less welcome for that, paying tribute to the

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Government's work in the national health service. I am sure that the entire House was pleased with the fair way in which he presented his arguments.
We are debating funding within the NHS, and I wish to take the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) gently to task. There is nothing between us when it comes to recognising the need for improving and enhancing the quality of the health service. In our postbags each week and each month, we read of instances where individuals are competing for resources within the service. They are competing for care. We share the frustrations of our constituents and we try to ensure that they receive the care that they deserve.
Those sentiments, which are shared by hon. Members on both sides of the House, are not the same as recognising that there are funding difficulties within the NHS. It would be impossible to fund it to the full extent that all of us wish were possible. It is a truism that the United Kingdom's entire gross domestic product could be spent on the health service without meeting demand. There has to be a sensible mechanism for dealing with funding to ensure that there is an increase year on year—I maintain that that has been made possible by the success of the Government's economic reforms during the 1980s—and that those funds are spent effectively.
Secondly, I gently chide the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich about the myth that Conservative Members do not use the health service. That is nonsense. Most of us use the national health service. We are children of the NHS, we were born in it, we venerate it and we revere the work that it does. We applaud the tremendously hard work of the NHS staff.
It is a myth that Tory Members have private care and do not use the National Health Service. I speak with some feeling, as I have just spent a few days in a hospital not far from here, where my wife was giving birth to our second child. She is a doctor in the National Health Service. It is wrong to suggest that Tory Members are divorced from reality and do not support the National Health Service. The hon. Member for Crewe should not dwell on that too long because it adds no weight to her agrument.
I wish to talk about resources, before coming to the Government's enviable record, which was so admirably outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes). I am a great supporter of the Audit Commission. If I am successful in the ballot for an Adjournment debate, I shall choose as a subject the future direction of the Audit Commission and how its role can be enhanced and increased. It is important to recognise the valuable role that the Audit Commission has already played in the National Health Service, and the fact that it can continue to play, in ensuring that we achieve the best value for money.
The Audit Commission rightly receives the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House. It has already done a great deal of valuable work in the National Health Service. I am thinking especially of its report on the care of the elderly. Of course, that was some time ago, but it has also produced many other reports that have been of great benefit to the health service. It is important that the Audit Commission has full access so that it can carry out a whole range of work and produce the necessary reports.
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My hon. Friend the Minister may remember that, during the passage of the National Health Service and Community Care Bill last year, there was initially some reluctance to accept an expanded role for the Audit Commission in the National Health Service. However, my hon. Friend and members of the Opposition Front-Bench team supported the amendment that I tabled, which is now enshrined in law. I hope that the Audit Commission will be given the scope to carry out in other areas the sort of work that it has done in the National Health Service. That is essential if we are to get the best possible value for money.
The area that I represent is covered by the Nottingham health authority, which has had an annual increase in funding of 8·6 per cent. over the past five years. That is a 13·1 per cent. real increase in resources over that period. In any debate on National Health Service funding, it is important to stress the very large increase in the funds that have been put into the National Health Service. I am especially proud that it has been possible to do that in the area that I represent. We have benefited greatly from the time that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr. Clarke) was Secretary of State for Health. He, like me, has a close relationship with the local health authority.
We should pay tribute to the large increase in funding and the great benefit that has accrued to Nottingham. The City hospital is currently undergoing a multi-million pound expansion, to which my constituents look forward. The Queen's medical centre is arguably the best hospital in Europe. It is enormous, and sometimes we have difficulty finding our way around it. It is a great centre of excellence. We have benefited greatly from all that is being achieved in those two hospitals, as well as from the myriad other excellent health facilities in the city.
It is right to pay tribute to the work of David White, chairman of Nottingham health authority, and David Banks, general manager, day in and day out, on behalf of all those covered by that health authority. Only last Friday, I was at the City hospital visiting a hospice, Haywood house, where so much good and caring work is done by those who work there. At this time of year, it is especially important to say in this place how much we owe to the people who work in the Nottingham health authority and who provide such a caring service to my constituents.
We are all pleased that people live longer, but we must recognise that that inevitably puts pressure on the health service. It is also important to recognise the magnificent advances in medical science, particularly during the past 10 years. Today we can do so much more than we could before, but that too costs more money, and it requires successful economic policies to deliver the sort of growth that the NHS will need if it is to continue to make the sort of progress in the 1990s that it made in the 1980s.
I am particularly pleased, not least because of my wife's work, that the problem of junior hospital doctors now appears to be being tackled. I know from first-hand experience that many junior hospital doctors work well in excess of 100 hours a week, and it is a scandal that that should have been the case for so long. It is important to recognise that it is not the Government who are to blame for that, although inevitably the health administration must take its share of the blame; but the medical authorities, the consultants and the British Medical Association, who have failed to recognise that a solution must be found.

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Within the last few days, we have heard that junior hospital doctors are to have their hours cut to 72 hours over a period, and eventually to much fewer than that. We must recognise the importance of getting the figure below 72 hours, but 72 is a good start. I am delighted that we are to look at shift working, because that is the right way forward, the more flexible use of part-time doctors and cross-cover, which all have a major role to play. Above all, the 200 new consultants and 50 new staff grades are extremely important and will make a big difference.
Finally, I reinforce a point already made so eloquently by my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West. In a debate about NHS funding we should stick to the facts. Let us recognise that total NHS spending in England this year will be a record £23·7 billion, an increase of nearly 45 per cent. in real terms since 1978–79. Let us recognise that the spending plans recently announced for next year bring that figure to £26·2 billion and will mean that the NHS is spending 50 per cent. more in real terms than it did when the Government took office in 1979.
Those are immensely impressive and important statistics; whatever else divides us in the House on the thrust and future of health care, let us at least recognise that we share a common assessment of the aims and objectives of what is required in health care in Britain to make the NHS a better service. But let us also recognise the significant success that has been achieved in terms of increased funding and all that that means for the NHS and for all our constituents who use it.
9.17 pm
Ms. Harriet Harman: I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) for choosing this subject for debate. I welcome the opportunity to debate the funding crisis in the NHS and to press on the Minister the demand that is being made throughout Britain and on both sides of the House for beds that have been closed to be opened and for an end to the cancellation of operations and out-patients' appointments. Special action is also needed to meet the crisis in London.
I could give hundreds of examples. My hon. Friend has given examples from her constituency and my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell) gave examples from his constituency in Wales. I mention King's College hospital in my constituency. The Minister knows about that because I saw him about it in the summer with an all-party delegation of south London Members of Parliament, and I have had occasion to talk to him about it again this week and last week.
I visited the accident and emergency department of King's College hospital last Wednesday. I went there after receiving desperate phone calls from patients, staff and the community health centre. I witnessed a horrifying scene at one of London's greatest and finest teaching hospitals. I found at one of our centres of excellence a situation not unlike that which might be encountered in Romania. Its accident and emergency department was crowded, with 17 patients lying on trolleys, side by side, with not even a gap between them. They had been there all night and although doctors had said that those people needed to be admitted, it could not be done because the financial crisis affecting our entire hospital service meant that in Camberwell
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health authority in the summer more than 100 beds were closed—one in 10, including those in the emergency admission wards.
The Government responded not by providing extra money but by threatening doctors who admit patients other than from accident and emergency departments with disciplinary action. It is not as though the patients in question can simply be transferred to other south London hospitals. We all know that the situation at St. Thomas's and at Guy's is no better. I understand that there are plans to close two more operating theatres at Guy's, so that four of its 11 operating theatres will be closed. I understand that more than half the obstetrics and gynaeocology beds will be closed, and that there will be no more cardiac or gynaecology surgery at that hospital after Christmas, except in emergency cases.
It is not just Labour Members who are expressing concern about the situation—although it is unfortunate that the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) could not make even a passing reference to the concern felt by his constituents, many of whom remain on waiting lists. However, I shall make sure that the hon. Gentleman's local press receives a copy of the Official Report containing his speech, to see whether his constituents feel that they are being properly represented by their Member of Parliament.
The hon. Member for Harlow (Mr. Hayes) warned:
"Things have got so serious now that there has to be a tranche of cash to get us through the winter. I cannot guarantee West Essex…that, in the next few weeks, if we go on as we are, someone is not going to die on the trolley in an emergency."
The same situation exists throughout the country. Last month, Watford general hospital decided that no more emergency operations would be performed there after Christmas. A local general practitioner, Michael Ingrain, reflected the views of many people when he said:
"Highly trained and highly paid surgeons will have nothing to do, theatres will lie empty, and my patients will just have to sit at home in pain, praying that the Government allows the hospital to re-open its wards."
The result of such developments in hospitals across London is the cancellation of out-patient appointments and of non-emergency operations. Those whose operations are cancelled must wait in pain, suffering arid anxiety. Some will suffer irreparable permanent damage to their health. I cite the case of Ivy Stanley, a woman of 78, who needs constant supervision because she suffers from a diabetic eye disease. Her last appointment at Charing Cross hospital with Mr. Knowden was in August. She expected a further appointment yesterday, but received a letter from the district health authority saying that it had been cancelled and that another could not be arranged until 19 April 1991. A laser intervention can make the difference between someone's sight being saved or lost.
The consequence of desperate financial problems is block cancellations, irrespective of whether the outcome is not just pain, suffering and anxiety for the individual concerned but the risk of irreparable damage to his or her health. I hope that the Minister will address those points this evening, and will acknowledge the damage that is done to people's health by the cancellation of out-patient appointments and of operations.
No account is taken of the patient's health, only of the district health authority's bank balance. Everyone in London, perhaps with the exception of the hon. Member for Harrow, West, knows that the situation is desperate.

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The Department of Health knows it, too. Figures issued yesterday by the Department show that, from April 1989 to April this year, the four Thames regions lost 5 per cent. of their beds—4,311 beds lost in one year. Those figures are devastating. They reflect the picture until April this year. Since April, because of the financial crisis and the action taken to divert deficits, the position has got even worse, and the pace of bed closures has accelerated.
A survey undertaken by The Independent Magazine showed that in 25 of the districts of the four Thames regions, since April this year, a further 1,762 beds have been cut. Patients are anxious and in pain and doctors and nurses are in a permanent state of crisis, as managers are pushed to take more and more drastic action. There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel.
I hope that when the Minister responds he can tell us that there is some hope for people whose operations have been cancelled, and for the doctors and nurses who see that beds have been closed. No Minister with even the remotest commitment to the health service could allow this to continue and seek to justify it.
People in London will judge the Government by their experience of what is happening to their health care, rather than by the quantity of press releases issued by the Department of Health. The Secretary of State must take action to end the crisis in London's hospitals. He should undertake an emergency review of the situation there, and make a statement to the House when we return in the new year. His response cannot be to continue to confine the flame to supposed bad management and to announce new money which is not actually there.
In the past decade we have lost 16 per cent. of hospital beds—71,149 beds have been cut from the national health service between 1979 and 1989. Throughout the country the situation is worsening this year.
I refer the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) to the fact that in central Nottinghamshire, since April, 24 beds have been cut, and in Nottingham between April and November a further 70 beds were cut. It is unfortunate that he did not see fit to mention that in his speech.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell rose—
Ms. Harman: I had better get on. The hon. Gentleman has had his chance to speak, and I do not want to take up the Minister's time, because we are all hoping that there might be light at the end of the tunnel.
The examples from Lothian, Wakefield, Christie hospital in Manchester and throughout the country show the same picture—beds closed and operations cancelled.
Last night, the Secretary of State issued a press statement, which was clearly intended to give people the impression that help was on its way. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) mentioned that. Sadly, help is not on its way. It is bad enough for the Government to preside over the closure of beds and wards, and the cancellation of operations, but it adds insult to injury to give people false hope that things will get better. The Secretary of State's press release was entitled, "Cash Increases for All Regions". However, he was merely re-announcing sums already announced in the autumn statement. His statement last night will not reopen one single closed bed.
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Tonight, the Minister has the chance to say which closed beds, in all the areas that I have mentioned throughout the country, will be reopened. Will a single bed be reopened as a result of last night's announcement? Which cancelled operations will be reinstated as a result of the announcement made last night? Will it make any difference to people who have to wait overnight on trolleys in King's College hospital? I fear that it will not.
I welcome the announcement that the Government are slowing the pace towards the introduction of capitation-based funding, but it appears to be a slowdown in the creation of the infrastructure of the internal market. Apparently, they are not ready to recognise, and to take practical steps to redress, the underfunding of the NHS. It is a pity that the slowdown in the introduction of the capitation-based funding does not signal a change of mood in the Department, following the arrival of a new Prime Minister and a new Secretary of State. If there had been such a change of mood, the first act of the new Secretary of State would not have been to opt 56 hospitals out of the national health service, against the wishes of local people.
People are waiting for their hospitals to be restored so that they can obtain the treatment and care that they need, when they need it. They do not want a two-tier system, which forces them to "go private" because that is the only alternative to waiting in pain and suffering; nor do they want the NHS to be commercialised, with hospitals competing to offer the cheapest contract. It is because we listen, and know what people want, that the next Labour Government—despite what was said by the hon. Member for Harrow, West—will abolish the internal market, return the hospitals that have opted out to the local health service and end the underfunding of that service.
Even when fully funded, the NHS is not perfect. It needs to change and to move forward—but the most fundamental change that it needs is a change of Government.
9.30 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Stephen Dorrell): The House is indebted to the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody), who tabled this subject for debate. I am particularly indebted to her for the opportunity to assess the respective NHS funding records of the present Government and their predecessor. Understandably, the hon. Lady did not speak on the subject that she had tabled, except when my hon. Friends and I intervened.
The fact is that, since 1979, the present Government have increased the total funding of the NHS by an average of 3 per cent. per annum in real terms, while the last Labour Government increased it by a real-terms average of 1·5 per cent. We have increased the funding at twice the rate of our predecessor. To talk of a funding crisis, as the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) has done, is to prompt the question: how much worse would the position be if Labour had remained in office, increasing funds at the rate that it was able to achieve?
As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) pointed out, this is the first Government in the history of this country to be able to demonstrate that we fund the NHS more generously than we fund the defence budget. The last Labour Government cut the NHS capital programme by 16 per cent. in real terms, whereas we have

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increased it by 62 per cent. That is our record, and that is why I am so grateful to the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich for giving us the opportunity to debate it.
NHS funding, however, is not the whole story. What matters to patients is not the level of funding, but the level of activity—the number of patients whose conditions are treated by the NHS, and the number of ill people who present themselves for treatment and leave in an improved condition. Since 1979, the NHS has provided its patients with a dramatically improved service: as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West pointed out, we have seen a 20 per cent. increase in the number of in-patients treated, and a virtual doubling of the number of day cases treated. Whether we measure the service in terms of the resources put into it or in terms of the number of patients treated, the present Government's record is one of which we can and should be proud.
Mrs. Dunwoody: Will the Minister tell us whether his waiting lists are going up or down?
Mr. Dorrell: With pleasure. The waiting list for in-patients is now 6 per cent. lower than it was when we came to power in May 1979. Although the total number of in-patients treated has risen by 20 per cent., the number waiting to be treated has fallen. Moreover, half the total number of patients treated by the NHS as in-patients are admitted immediately, without having to go on to a waiting list, while 50 per cent. of the other half are admitted within six weeks. Some patients have to wait a long time for treatment, but the great majority of NHS patients are not the victims of long waiting lists.
The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich suggested that, in his announcement yesterday, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health attempted to fudge his way, as the hon. Lady put it, out of the problems that face a few district health authorities this year. There was some coverage of that issue in this morning's papers. The £81 million that has been set aside to reduce the unacceptably high level of NHS creditors has not been properly reported and is in danger of being misunderstood. That money is to be provided in next year's budget. It will not be provided in the current financial year. The money will be the subject of an accurately targeted programme to ensure that it is used to reduce the number of creditors. They are the residue of inadequate financial control in previous years. The money will not provide us with the opportunity to fudge our way out of some of the undoubted difficulties that face a few district health authorities this year.
Both the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich and the hon. Member for Peckham (Ms. Harman) spoke at length about bed closures. Labour spokesmen find that bed closures are the best means to demonstrate what they believe to be our inadequate provision of NHS beds. Bed closures are, in part, a measure of the improvements in the quality of health care that is offered by the NHS. The majority of treatments now available under the NHS require shorter stays in hospital. There are fewer beds in the NHS, but we treat more patients. Patients do not want to spend time in hospital. If we are ill, we want treatment in hospital and then to be allowed to go home. If we treat more patients in fewer beds, that does not mean tighter
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management but the delivery to patients of a better health service. Advances in modern medicine enable conditions to be treated in a way that is less traumatic for the patient, which means that they have to spend shorter periods in hospital.
Ms. Harman: Would the Minister have us believe that the cuts in NHS beds throughout the country, in response to the financial crisis, are good?
Mr. Dorrell: If by any mischance the hon. Lady ever became a Department of Health Minister, I hope that she would recognise that there is no point in keeping open beds that reflect the health treatment patterns or methods of 10 or 20 years ago. We can treat conditions now that entail shorter stays in hospital because modern medicine is less traumatic for the patient; he or she is able to recover from the operation or treatment in a shorter period. That benefits the patient. There is no need for us to apologise about that. It reflects medical progress, about which I, at least, am proud.
My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West referred to laundries and insisted that it was in the interests of the NHS that they should be the subject of competitive tendering. I agree with him entirely. During the past 10 years competitive tendering has saved the NHS £200 million. That money is now available for better quality health care for NHS patients. That is important progress. My hon. Friend also drew attention to the difficulties caused when health authorities hoard land. I agree that that is an inappropriate use of public resources.
The hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell) asked about prescribing methods, particularly the prescription of a drug that he pronounced in full but which, if he will forgive me, I shall confine myself to describing, as most doctors do, as EPO. The relevant factor in that case is which doctor has clinical responsibility. It is important that a patient who is prescribed a drug is confident that the doctor prescribing it is clinically responsible for managing his condition. That criterion has always determined such matters in England, and I am sure that the same is true in Wales.
I shall draw the hon. Gentleman's questions on he regional elective surgery centres and the future of the open-heart surgery centre to the attention of my hon. Friends in the Welsh Office, who I am sure will reply to him.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) asked about the importance of the Audit Commission. He played a distinguished role in ensuring that it was given the opportunity to comment on conditions in the NHS, and I am glad to join him in welcoming its contribution.
The hon. Member for Peckham asked for an element of integrity in this debate. I entirely agree and should like to conclude by making an offer to her—that in approaching the subject we start by accepting each other's bona fides. If the Government had wanted to dismantle the national health service, they have had 12 years in which to do so. We have not done so, because we believe in its future and want to develop it. Our record shows that we have been able to develop it, and we shall go on developing it because we believe in it.

North Sea (Safety)
9.41 pm
Mr. John Greenway: It is difficult not to reinforce the robust and able defence of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Health of Government policy on the health service. The part of the preceding debate that I heard showed that we are winning the arguments, as usual. I wish him well.
This afternoon, it crossed my mind to raise a point of order but, knowing how pressed we were for time, I refrained from doing so and thought that I would spend the first minute of this debate on the matter. When I moved new clause 1 on capital punishment on Monday, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Mr. Janman) was one of several hon. Members who intervened in my speech. He made a point about miscarriages of justice. I obviously misunderstood what he said, because I said that I did not agree with him. Having had the opportunity of checking Hansard, I should like to put the record straight and say that I agree with him very much. More to the point, are not we very fortunate to have the Hansard writers and printers doing such a splendid job for us, along with all the other staff? I should like to take this opportunity to wish them, and you, Mr. Speaker, a happy Christmas.
I am glad to have the opportunity of raising an issue on the Adjournment under the Consolidated Fund Bill for the first time. Many subjects demand and deserve our attention, and, like many other hon. Members, I never find it easy to decide which should take priority when dropping you, Mr. Speaker, a note before the ballot on what subject I might wish to raise. Pressing local constituency matters may demand too much attention, and sometimes we fail to raise often enough wider and more general issues that are of great importance. I believe this to be one such issue.
Christmas is a time for the family, but many people will be working over the Christmas holiday in our hospitals, in police forces and fire stations or in ensuring the essential supply of energy to cook the Christmas lunch. At the beginning of that energy chain are the men who work on the oil and gas platforms around our coast, particularly in the North sea. In the light of recent developments, I felt that it would be opportune to discuss before the recess safety on North sea installations.
I should declare a personal interest in this subject, as my father-in-law and my brother-in-law have worked for many years on North sea platforms as engineers. My father-in-law was involved in drilling many of the oil wells before production commenced.
Offshore installations present unique safety problems. A production platform is a community in its own right, which encompasses drilling operations, a refinery and nothing less than a hotel. All those functions are squeezed into a space of a few hundred feet each way—even rather less than we enjoy at the Palace of Westminster. There is also a helicopter landing area on each platform. On land, such operations would be spread over tens of acres. An oil platform is not just compact, but must be self-sufficient in an emergency; there is no question of waiting for the fire brigade to arrive. Therefore, the means of surviving an emergency while staying on the platform are crucial and critical. The means of escape and evacuation, if necessary, are equally important.
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Oil and gas platforms represent extremely complex technology that is sited in a uniquely hostile environment. Recent events reminded us just how hostile that environment can be as huge waves and storm force winds took the lives of six men in a fishing vessel, washed over an oil installation and took lifeboats away. When I look out to the North sea from the safe haven of Filey on the north Yorkshire coast, I am struck by a grey sombre sight, particularly at this time of year. When the wind is blowing from the north-east, I find it remarkable that oil and gas operations can be maintained at all.
Tragically, over the years, there have been a number of incidents involving loss of life, of which the Piper Alpha disaster was perhaps the worst. As the House knows, on 6 July 1988 a series of explosions ripped through the Piper Alpha platform, following what Lord Cullen believes was a gas leak caused by night staff in the gas compression module who tried to restart a pump unaware of the fact that a safety valve had been removed.
Following an 80-day inquiry under the chairmanship of Lord Cullen, sweeping changes in North sea safety were recommended. The Government immediately accepted those recommendations when the report was published and brought to the House on 12 November. This debate provides an opportunity for the House to demonstrate its concern that all those recommendations should be implemented without delay and for the Government to report progress and give a more measured and deliberate response.
Some feel that the Piper Alpha tragedy was perhaps the worst in the history of oil exploration and extraction in the world. As a result of that disaster, 160 men lost their lives—it must never, never happen again.
Other tragedies have occurred even since the Piper Alpha tragedy, which underlines the dangers of oil and gas operations in the North sea and the urgent need for improved safety. In the past two and a half years, there have been at least 30 serious incidents and nine deaths on installations off our coasts. Even the day before the Piper Alpha disaster, management on Shell's Brent Alpha platform, east of Shetland, evacuated part of the installation after a gas explosion. Three months later, there was a serious fire on the Ocean Odyssey drilling rig, again after a gas blast, which killed a radio operator—thankfully, 66 workers were rescued. Only last July, six crew and passengers on a Sikorsky S61 helicopter were killed when it hit a crane in the Brent field. In 1988, two other S61s were ditched and 34 men were rescued. In November last year, a rig, Interocean 11, sank in bad weather and the crew was rescued by helicopter. Last January, an accommodation platform in the Brent field, Safe Gothia, was evacuated after winds snapped two anchor cables.
Since oil and gas exploration began in the 1960s, about 500 lives have been lost in the North sea. I am sure that the House wishes to pay every tribute to the bravery of the men who have helped our economy and who put up with such dreadful conditions. At this Christmas time, we should send every sympathy to the families and loved ones of those who have died.
The tragedy of the Piper Alpha disaster is that, as Lord Cullen's report showed, if more had been done beforehand it might have been avoided. Sadly, that is true of many other disasters of recent years. The two dreadful incidents at football grounds in Yorkshire—at Bradford and at Hillsborough, in Sheffield—the Clapham rail crash, the

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sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise all come to mind. In all those cases greater attention to detail would have prevented loss of life.
Following Piper Alpha, many have argued that the implementation of the recommendations of the 1980 Burgoyne committee should have gone further. I expect that there will continue to be disagreement among hon. Members on that point for some time, particularly among those who have a special knowledge of the industry which, I must confess, I have not. However, there are two points on which we should be able to agree.
First, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy told the House on 12 November:
"In 1980, the Government accepted the majority view of the Burgoyne committee, which was set up by the previous Labour Government. It said that, on balance, it believed that the best case for safety in the North sea was to leave the matter with the Department of Energy."—[Official Report, 12 November 1980; Vol. 180, c. 333.]
In 1990, 10 years later, Lord Cullen recommended that, on balance—again, it is a matter of balance, as my right hon. Friend said—the best case is for transferring responsibility to the Health and Safety Commission. The Government have accepted the recommendations of the majority committee in both cases and they are to be commended for that.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State also pointed out that North sea operations have become more complex over the past 10 years and that the Health and Safety Commission has developed its expertise. More importantly, Lord Cullen found no evidence that the Department of Energy put production before safety.
The second point on which we can agree is the role of the owner of Piper Alpha, Occidental. Lord Cullen concluded that there were significant flaws in the way in which safety was managed by Occidental. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) asked the Secretary of State on 12 November whether Occidental would be prosecuted. Hon. Members on both sides of the House, as well as the families and communities of those who were killed, shared the view that Occidental should be prosecuted. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was surely right immediately to send Lord Cullen's report to the Lord Advocate, and there the matter must rest for the time being.
The House must now ensure that, in future, North sea operations are safer then they have been in the past. Safety must be paramount. We all recognise the inherent dangers in working in the North sea, but we must not take unnecessary risks with other men's lives. The Piper Alpha disaster suggests that we may have done so in the past. We must never do so again.
The whole House has rightly given a warm welcome to Lord Cullen's most impressive and penetrating report. The extent of his deliberations is revealed in the fact that the weighty document that I hold in my left hand is only the first of two volumes.
Drawing, no doubt, on the experience of his assessors, Lord Cullen has provided a most comprehensive analysis of the conditions necessary for the safe management of offshore installations. I am sure that the report contains lessons for the safe management of other industrial activities. The report is the most significant landmark in the evolution of offshore safety since the most recent legislation—the Mineral Workings (Offshore Installations) Act 1971.
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Lord Cullen's report rightly concludes that safety in such a demanding environment as the North sea cannot be secured by fixed rules or off-the-peg solutions. We need a flexible approach and the ability to evaluate the best compromise between conflicting safety objectives. Solutions have to take account of the varying circumstances of individual installations. That is why Lord Cullen was right to suggest that every installation must be assessed. He provided a comprehensive list of what a good safety management would incorporate. It would need to cover
"organisational structure, management personnel standards, training, for operations in emergencies, safety assessment, design procedures, procedures for operations, maintenance modifications and emergencies, management of safety by contractors in respect of their work, the involvement of the work force (operators and contractors) in safety, accident and incident reporting, investigation and follow-up, monitoring and auditing of the operation of the system and systematic reappraisal of the system in the light of the experience of the operator and the industry."
I make no apology for listing the important objectives which Lord Cullen identified. I am sure that the House will agree that the recommendations rightly place the responsibility where it belongs—with the owners and operators of the installations.
The oil industry is one of our most dynamic industries. It has shown great inventiveness and resourcefulness, not least in maintaining the economic viability of North sea production when world prices fell sharply in the mid-1980s. I gladly acknowledge, too, that the Government have played their part by keeping an open mind on taxation issues and making adjustments where the case has been made. The industry deserves credit for its adaptability and ingenuity. The oil industry should also have the freedom to apply its drive, adaptability and ingenuity to safety problems. It is tempting to say that there must be definite rules and a clearly prescribed approach, but such an assertion is fallacious. In real life —in the practical world—reasonable safety objectives often conflict with each other, and Lord Cullen recognised that. A better standard of safety depends on achieving the best trade-off between those conflicts, and not in a prescriptive, rule-book approach.
I particularly welcome Lord Cullen's report for its clear recognition that the operators must play a more extensive and fundamental role in choosing the best means in each case to attain the defined standards. A programme of work for the installation of emergency shutdown valves on offshore platforms is also important. With the approach of the 31 December deadline—another reason for having the debate tonight—I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to bring the House up to date on the progress that has already been made.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Colin Moynihan): I may be able to help my hon. Friend on this critical point. Oil companies have generally made good progress with the installation of emergency shutdown valves—to date more than 134 valves have been fitted and a number of others are expected to be completed by the end of the year. However, a number of applications for temporary exemptions have been received and have been rigorously scrutinised in detail by my Department's inspectors. In considering those applications, my inspectors have taken into account the fact that, in all cases, emergency valves exist but are not optimally located.

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Therefore, I have decided that a number of new compulsory measures must be implemented by operators to enhance safety until the new valves are installed in those cases where production is to be permitted to be continued. They include reducing the pipeline operating pressures, switching from live crude oil production to dead crude oil and introducing enhanced operating procedures. We have received applications for 53 valves, of which we have agreed 25 exemptions. Some 24 have been withdrawn after discussions with my inspectors and four have been refused. Rigorous conditions will be attached to all such exemptions in order to enhance safety. In addition, applications in respect of four valves on the Texaco Tartan, Mobil and Beryl Alpha platforms have been rejected on the basis of information received.
Mr. Greenway: I thank my hon. Friend for his important statement, which clearly could not come too early either in this debate or in general terms. I am sure that those involved will welcome his statement for the clear way in which it set out the progress that has been made and what more needs to be done. I am sure that my hon. Friend will have other interesting matters to report to the House when he responds to the debate.
It is also right that, within the North sea, there must be proper controls and monitoring of safety standards. They must be more flexible than in the past, but nevertheless remain defined, understood and enforced. That places substantial demands on the enforcement agency, which must deploy a high level of expertise to be able to evaluate and respond to new approaches brought forward by the industry. That will not be a cheap option, but I am convinced that it is right.
Lord Cullen was correct in feeling that we should be circumspect about legislating safety into an industrial activity. The disadvantages of over-detailed legislation were highlighted by the Robens committee that began its work 20 years ago and published its report on health and safety at work in 1974. Its objections to over-detailed legislation on safety matters still seem to be valid and were in many ways vindicated by what Lord Cullen said in his report. Safety must spring from the initiative and active concern of the company and its own determination to tackle safety problems. It has to find the right system, and the means, and to put them into effect. It must then ensure, by training and monitoring, that they are applied and continue to be applied.
I think that it will be accepted on both sides of the House that it is essential that companies involve all their workers. I am aware that there has been some controversy about union recognition in the North sea installations. That is a quite separate issue from safety. Whether they are members of staff, employees, production workers, sub-contractors, members of unions or not, they must all be properly involved in safety. In a highly critical safety area such as offshore installations, every worker must perceive his proper contribution to safety, and have the knowledge and training to play his part. That must mean better communication than in the past.
I refer for the final time to volume 1 of Lord Cullen's report, which dealt with why the explosions occurred. He made one important statement:
"From the evidence I conclude that this"—
the failure of the system—
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"was due to a failure in the transmission of information under the permit to work system and at shift handover".
So even at the most mundane level of operations, communication between staff—each member of staff understanding the others' roles and the importance of every procedure that he carries out—cannot be given too high a priority.
Safety must not merely be sold as a philosophy or some vague concept to the worker by means of exhortation. Dialogue with the worker and involvement in everything he does is essential to a safe working environment.
Lord Cullen's report was also greatly to be welcomed because it faces up to the difficulties and tackles them squarely. It proposes a framework that is flexible as to solutions but ensures that all the right questions have been asked. It avoids detailed prescriptions for hardware or management systems, but it puts the initiative and responsibility where they belong—with the operators and employers. Equally, it provides a stringent basis for probing examination by the regulatory body.
There will have to be real dialogue, not a rigid imposition of predetermined rules. The regulatory body will need a high degree of expertise and, more importantly, adequate resources. I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made general promises in that direction, but I hope that the Minister will say more this evening about these points. In addition, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Kincardine and Deeside (Mr. Buchanan-Smith) told the House on 12 November during questions on the statement about the publication of the report, the new regulatory body should and must be independent and seen to be so. That view is shared throughout the industry and this House.
I make no apology for returning to the critical importance of monitoring. It is not enough for proper principles to be endorsed by management in the form of manuals of safety left standing on the shelf gathering dust, or in the workplace. The principles must be put into and kept in effect. I referred earlier to the Clapham railway tragedy. The report on that incident showed what a contrast there can be between sound principles and their adequate practical implementation. It is right to emphasise monitoring and the new proposals for systematic audit by the operator and for the audit and inspection of that activity by the regulator.
Lord Cullen does not make the point, although I believe it strongly, that the insurers have a distinct role to play in monitoring and enforcing standards. The Piper Alpha tragedy claim was, I understand, for £1·4 billion. Insurers will surely be asking themselves whether the disaster could have been avoided if Lord Cullen's proposals had been in force before it happened. The claim was for £1·4 billion, but it should not take the loss of the lives of 167 men to reach a proper definition of an adequate safety regime for operations in the North sea. The insurers have continuous contact with and influence over the companies that they insure. Just the other day, an insurance representative told me that a private insurance company would have refused to insure King's Cross underground station as a private place because the fire safety arrangements were clearly inadequate.
The Cullen report is the basis for effective regulation of safety and has been recognised as such. The oil and gas industry is important to our economy. It has made a major contribution in the last decade, and I am sure that it will continue to do so in the next decade and into the next

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century. But it is a dangerous industry, and we must maintain proper standards within a dynamic system that is capable of growing.
I am glad that the Government have been able to accept all the recommendations. They must now ensure prompt and effective implementation of this highly significant report's blueprint for the future. That will require careful planning, a systematic approach and, as Lord Cullen recommends, proper consultation about contractors' interests. It will also mean new staffing and training for the regulatory agency.
A separate offshore safety division at the Department of Industry was set up on 10 December. I first read about it in The Engineer and I understand that it is under the direction of Tony Barrel], who is the current director of technology in the Health and Safety Executive. That is a significant first step and will help to ease the transfer of responsibility for offshore safety from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Commission, as Lord Cullen recommended. The commission has welcomed that transfer, but has again called for more Government resources to do the job properly.
The House should not be under any illusions about the costs involved in assessing every offshore installation. As the Health and Safety Commission chairman, John Culler, has said, those costs will be substantial. Resources must be found so that Lord Cullen's vision for a safer North sea will soon become a reality. The lives of husbands, fathers, sons and brothers working in the North sea this Christmas deserve nothing less.
10.13 pm
Mr. Frank Doran: I thank the hon. Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) for raising this issue, because it is not debated often enough. I hope that, in the new year, we will have an opportunity fully to discuss all the implications of the Cullen report. Not only is this a vital industry employing almost 50,000 people, but it plays a vital part in the country's economy.
The Under-Secretary of State for Energy made a mini-statement on the installation of shutdown valves. It is worth reminding the House of the circumstances in which the issue of shutdown valves was raised. Those valves were a major cause of the scale of the Piper Alpha disaster. There were no shutdown valves in a safe place on the platform and tonnes of gas were released on to the platform when the valves which were in place there were damaged by explosion. The cause of the disaster was the failure to have adequate cut-off mechanisms between the surrounding platforms, the Tartan and MCPO1, and Piper Alpha. As a result, all the gas in the pipeline was released to Piper Alpha.
I wrote to the then Secretary of State for Energy on 14 July 1988, just eight days after the disaster, setting out the case for emergency shutdown valves to be located on the sea bed, a safe place away from the structure, so that, if a similar incident occurred, the valves would be at no risk whatever.
About a month later, I received a letter from the head of safety in the Department, saying that it accepted the argument for sub-sea valves and intended to legislate as quickly as possible in the circumstances. That commitment has been watered down somewhat, although I am aware that many of the companies in the North sea have decided that, without Government regulation, they will install
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sub-sea valves. Occidental and Texaco, the two companies most affected by the Piper Alpha tragedy, made that decision, and many others have followed suit. The Government have yet to introduce the regulations that were promised to me in August 1988. Therefore, I should like the Minister to tell us where we are on that important issue.
The Minister has made a significant and full statement about the requests made by a number of oil companies for exemption from the regulations that require the top-side valves to be relocated before the end of the year. I accept that there has been a thorough investigation, but must ask why it is that these applications were made, and we have had a response from the Minister so late in the day. This is a crucial issue. Location of sub-sea values is a technical issue, and I do not pretend to understand it fully, but I am aware of the problems of location and of the fact that responsibility for location and inspection of location were highlighted by the Burgoyne committee as far back as 1981. There appears to have been no action since. Paragraph 5·64 of the report makes specific reference to the grey area of the pipeline. We saw the predictions in that report unfortunately and tragically fulfilled in what happened to Piper Alpha.
That tragedy happened on the night of 6 July and the early morning of 7 July 1988, and now, at the end of 1990, a large number of oil companies, are still asking for exemptions. It is noticeable that this includes the largest of the oil companies. In particular, Shell has received exemption for 14 of the sub-sea valves in the Brent system. As one of the largest operators, it has one of the largest problems, so it is difficult to understand why so many exemptions have been granted in that field. Shell has had the same amount of time as every other operator in the North sea to install the valves. Is there something about the Brent field that requires that number of exemptions to be granted?
I should like some explanation of what the Minister means by "restrictive conditions". He has described three areas where there will be more restrictions and these seem to be sensible moves when the sub-sea valves are not to be installed immediately. However, we need to know what implication that has for the overall safety of the platform. What consideration has been given to that?
What time scale will apply to the exemptions? When are the sub-sea valves to be finally installed? It is not good enough to leave our work force out there in the North sea, albeit with these new restrictions, without the essential safety of the removal of the valves to a safe location on the platform. This is particularly so when we know that the platforms involved—the Forties, the Brent system, Thistle, Murchison and Balmoral—are among the oldest in the North sea. Consequently, they have the highest risk.
In any debate on North sea safety, the Piper Alpha tragedy overshadows every aspect of our discussions. Many tributes have been paid to Lord Cullen for the clarity of his report, the detail of it and the precision that he applied. I believe that the report will often be referred to by generations to come as a model for the way in which such issues should be addressed. I hope that it will not need to be referred to too often. Lord Cullen brought to his task all the best qualities of the Scottish lawyer. The Scottish legal system is based on principle, not on precise rules. Lord Cullen sought—I believe that he achieved his objective—to apply principles and to explain and set out the principles which should apply to safety in the North

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sea. The report has been welcomed by all. Given the fraught nature of the industry, especially in the context of industrial relations, it is a tribute to Lord Cullen that he was able to produce a report to which everyone was able to agree.
Crucial issues arise from the report, not the least of which is the transfer of responsibility from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive. Lord Cullen was emphatic that there were major difficulties in the Department of Energy, one of which was resourcing. There was a failure to apply the mind—I blame the political mind—to ensure that North sea safety was properly policed. There was a lack of real political direction. It is clear that the safety inspectorate was the Cinderella of the Department. The efforts of the Department rapidly to increase salaries and to appoint a new safety director before the Cullen report were cynical moves.
But enough of that carping criticism. We must look forward. The question of blame lies in the past. Lord Cullen has reported on that and his words are clear. We must ensure that the Piper Alpha tragedy does not recur. There must be an adequate system of supervision. Everyone must know exactly what his or her task is. Responsibility must be allocated fairly.
There is still no precise detail about when the complete transfer of responsibility will take place. Several possible dates have been suggested, the most likely of which seems to be 1 April 1991. There is an urgent need for the Government to define precisely where responsibility for safety lies in the interim period of transfer from the Department of Energy to the Health and Safety Executive. Many of Lord Cullen's recommendations require urgent action by the industry. The representatives of oil companies whom I meet regularly have told me that they wish to proceed quickly to implement the recommendations. I have firm evidence to substantiate that from my contact with them.
The industry requires prompt technical discussions with the regulatory body to define and agree the detailed interpretation of the report and, of course, its consequences. There are specific examples to show that delay would be inexcusable. The first is the preparation of a safety case for each installation. That is the most far-reaching of Lord Cullen's recommendations. It will lead to the provision of a complete dossier to demonstrate that the operator has identified the major hazards of the installation and has provided appropriate controls, that the operator has provided in each installation a temporary safe refuge for personnel in the event of a major emergency and means of evacuation, escape and rescue, and that the operator's safety management system is adequate to ensure the safe design and operation of the installation.
There is an urgent need for the Government to provide expert advice to operators on the detailed scope, format and timetable for the safety case. I hope that the Minister will give us some idea of who will do this and when it will be done.
Another consideration is acceptance standards for risk of death offshore. Lord Cullen's fifth main recommendation concerns setting acceptance standards for overall risk of death or injury to personnel on an installation. Standards are also to be set for the endurance of the
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temporary safe refuge during major emergencies. Initially, these standards are to be set by the regulatory body. They will be the most important standards to be set. They will determine ultimately the risks of accidents or death to offshore workers. They form the cornerstone of any safety case, as all the elements of the safety case, taken together, must satisfy the overall acceptance standards.
Those standards must be determined quickly, because without them work on the safety cases for new and existing installations cannot be taken very far. It is also important that the process for setting those standards be open to discussion and scrutiny by all parties with a legitimate interest, including operators and offshore workers and their representatives. Who is responsible for setting those standards? What process will be followed? What is the timetable for conclusion?
There is also a question about the resources for the Health and Safety Executive. We understand that the executive and the Treasury are discussing the matter. It is determining what its budget is likely to be, and clearly it has a long and uphill struggle with the Treasury to achieve an adequate budget. The system that prevails in the Department of Energy, which led to inadequate supervision and to criticism by Lord Cullen, cannot continue. The HSE must be adequately resourced. I hope that the Treasury's starting point in its discussions with the HSE will not be the miserly payment made to the HSE each year for the Department's expenditure on safety. As was shown in an answer to a parliamentary question of mine just over a year ago, that amounted to £500,000 a year. It is clear that the safety system envisaged by Lord Cullen cannot be provided for that sort of money. It is important that the Department of Energy, and the Secretary of State in particular, put their full weight behind the HSE's arguments.
Recommendation 22 says that the regulatory body should review its procedures for consultation with representatives of employers and of offshore employees in preparing new guidance notes on safety offshore. Lord Cullen made it clear that he fully recognised the value of involving those who work offshore in the new safety regime. We expect that the Health and Safety Commission, as a tripartite body overseeing the HSE, will share that view and ensure that proper mechanisms for consultation are developed. It is not sufficient only to involve the work force through existing installation safety committees. Many of the new guidance notes will affect the design of new installations and will cover complex technical and engineering matters.
The only effective means of representation for offshore workers on such matters is through the trade unions, and I shall say more about that later. They have the resources to commission studies and to present findings to the HSE. All the trade unions involved with the HSE onshore have developed technical departments that can give advice to work forces. Certainly, offshore that advice will be crucial and fundamental. Large sections of the offshore work force wish to be represented by their trade unions in the new safety regime, yet employers have stubbornly resisted that change.
Anyone seriously interested in achieving high safety standards recognises that the genuine and informed participation of the work force is essential. The more enlightened companies offshore recognise that that applies not only to safety, but to overall quality and the success of the whole enterprise. Is it not time that the Government

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took on board that message and encouraged employers to be more co-operative towards trade union representation offshore?
Mr. Tim Devlin: How might that be achieved? Many of my constituents work in the offshore industry, and their experience is that safety officers are often NRB-ed—that is, not required back—when they are sent on leave. Anyone involved in that sort of representation frequently ends up without a job.
Mr. Doran: 1 am surprised to have the hon. Gentleman on my side. We have been hammering away about that issue for years. I am being careful not to criticise the industry too much because I know that progress is being made. I shall be happy to discuss with the hon. Gentleman any examples of discrimination that have been reported to him. I am pleased that he has been able to add to the views that have been expressed to me by my constituents who work offshore, but who are consistently denied representation by the Government and the oil companies. Clearly, the independence of the health and safety representative and the health and safety committee is crucial. Employers onshore have learnt that an independent committee can enhance and improve safety as long as they are prepared to trust their work forces. That clearly is not the position offshore at the moment.
Many oil companies refuse to trust their work forces and to allow them to participate through their trade unions. The companies will pay the price in poor productivity and high operating costs, of which there are many examples in the North sea. The areas with the lowest productivity and the highest operating costs have the worst industrial relations.
The country pays the price in lost oil production. Offshore workers may pay the highest price of all because of poor safety. Oil companies risk their capital; oil workers risk their lives. That is becoming a cliché, but it is true. Piper Alpha, Brent Spar and all the other incidents show that, as well as the many unreported deaths offshore.
There have been significant developments in industrial relations during the past few days. During the past two years there have been some serious offshore disputes, and there is a real threat of industrial problems again next year. At the root is the genuine sense of frustration felt by the work force as a result of its working conditions. The oil companies tend not to trust their employees—at least the majority do not. They tend to operate a system which militates against communication and the development of skills and identification with a particular workplace.
Almost two thirds of employees offshore are employed through the user contracting system. There is no continuity of employment. The expression NRB is common in my office. If a man's card is stamped NRB he is not required back because he is a trouble-maker or a safety representative who asked the wrong questions. That is the history of the North sea and it is a problem which needs to be dealt with. I am pleased that the oil companies seem to be coming round to recognising that, but there is still a long way to go.
It is worth mentioning the offshore industry liaison committee, an unofficial body that has been established in my constituency in Aberdeen and seeks to represent the work force offshore.
Mr. Devlin: I thought that it was in Newcastle.
Mr. Doran: It is in Glasgow, Newcastle, Hull and Great Yarmouth, but its main base is in Aberdeen. It has established other bases round the country because of the migrant work force which moves to Aberdeen from those places.
The people who formed the OLC recognised that the major problems for the work force offshore were not being met by the trade unions. It is appropriate here to recognise that the trade unions have not always represented their members quite as they should have done, mainly because of the difficulties of representing a mobile work force. Men move from rig to rig and from platform to platform at short notice, employed by a company based onshore, but working offshore. They work for a number of different oil companies, many of which employ the same contractors. Therefore, it is difficult to represent the work force and the OLC has filled the vacuum. It has been behind the industrial action during the past two years.
It is significant to record the amount of support from offshore workers that the OLC has enjoyed. Several thousand workers responded by taking industrial action—not by any means the whole work force, but certainly a significant proportion of it, and enough to cause real difficulties during the past two summers. The oil companies have been forced to respond by looking at their working practices, not only because of Lord Cullen's report, which makes extremely important recommendations, but because of the success of the action carried out by the OLC. It is clear, too, that the official trade unions now recognise the difficulties involved, and are working hard to improve the position of their members offshore.
I am pleased at reports today that the employer's body —the Offshore Contractors Council—has offered to enter into discussions with the trade unions. There is not total satisfaction with the offer, because it seems fairly restricted, but at least it is a beginning. Discussions will take place with the unions about a possible agreement covering certain categories of offshore workers.
The trade union movement will certainly be seeking other agreements, to ensure some regulation of offshore employment and worker protection, and that terms and conditions of employment are standardised and improved. The oil companies offer very satisfactory terms and conditions to their own work forces, but they are, in the main, denied to the workers who are employed by contractors—even though they may be doing the same work side by side with oil workers. There is often a huge disparity between them, and that adds to the frustration.
Mr. Devlin: The hon. Gentleman has a wide knowledge of the industry near his constituency, but there are enormous discrepancies between the conditions on some of the older North sea platforms and those on the newer ones. When I visited the Brent field in the summer, I noted that the accommodation ships moored alongside the Brent were used because the accommodation available on the Brent itself is rather poor. Workers prefer the conditions on the more comfortable Swedish and Finnish accommodation ships. All platforms should be brought up to the standards of the best.
I and my constituents welcome the Cullen report's recommendation that responsibility for safety and for safety inspection should be taken out of the hands of the Department, which has not fulfilled its obligations in that respect very well, and be put into the hands of the Health and Safety Executive. Many would like the same

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conditions to prevail in the North sea as prevail on land, where an independent inspectorate is available to conduct surprise visits and to examine conditions on behalf of the work force. That is what we all want, and we should welcome such a development.
Mr. Doran: Again, I welcome the hon. Gentleman's agreement with the position that I have often stated. I am pleased that we are finally having an effect, which is enhanced in the case of the hon. Gentleman because of his experience of offshore workers in his constituency.
Some companies are finally making progress. When I visited the Ninian field last year, I met its safety committee and had discussions with the work force. It was clear that the operating company, Chevron, has made a serious attempt to integrate its work force. It employs contractors, as does everyone else, but when it changes contractors, it tries to ensure that the work force remains stable. Chevron has reduced the barriers between its employees and those of contractors, so that everyone who works on the Ninian platform feels that he works for Chevron, no matter who pays his wages.
The company has sought to ensure also that the benefits of its new contracts with agency companies filter through to the work force. That should be done throughout the North sea. I know that the same practice operates in Conoco fields. Those are two of the better offshore companies.
The larger companies have larger problems. I am aware that both BP and Shell recently introduced new systems that should in the longer term, and perhaps in the medium term, improve the lot of offshore workers. Shell and BP decided to go for longer-term contracts and have sought to ensure that they filter through to the work force, so that there will be some continuity of employment. Of course, they have got to try to do what companies such as Chevron have done, and to break down the barriers, so that there is not the animosity and frustration and the contracting work force becomes part of a team and achieves the highest productivity for the industry and the company. Everyone will benefit from that, and there is an enhanced benefit to safety, which is what everyone wants to achieve.
It has always been my view—it is not a novel idea—that one cannot have bad industrial relations and good safety. Until the problems are dealt with properly by the companies involved, there will continue to be poor safety standards in the North sea. I am pleased to see, and I commend, companies such as BP and Shell, which are finally beginning to deal with this problem.
We have had other good news on the industrial relations scene today. One of the unfortunate consequences of the dispute in the summer was that Shell created a blacklist of employees who they were not prepared to have working on their platforms. Recently, I met the chairman of Shell, and the managing director of Shell Exploration and Production and I am pleased to say that, yesterday, the company announced that it would remove the blacklist with effect from 1 January—as I understand it, without qualification. I like to think that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) had some influence upon Shell's decision—we hope so.
In our discussions with the chairman of Shell and the managing director of the exploration company, we heard about Shell's efforts to resolve the difficulties. There was
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not much disagreement between us, and I hope that they will be able to secure their objectives of removing the barriers in the North sea, breaking down the distinctions between company employees and contracted employees and improving safety.
The removal of the blacklist is a crucial step, and I hope that the trade unions will respond to it and that Shell will discuss properly with the offshore trade unions the way ahead. There is a way ahead, but it involves discussions on all sides.
I was involved with the Piper Alpha families' association, which attempted to convene a conference at which the entire industry would be represented in one way or another. The Minister gave me valuable support in arranging that conference, and we hoped that the oil industry and the contractors would be able to come along and discuss, in private, with the trade unions and other interested parties—including the Health and Safety Executive and the Department of Energy representatives, the trade unions, and the families association—the issues which face the industry, how Lord Cullen's recommendations could be implemented and the problems posed by the industrial dispute.
The oil companies, through the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association, found that they could not attend that conference. I regret that because they missed an opportunity to show the public—who in my part of the world are extremely concerned about the problem of offshore safety—that they care, too. They stuck behind the barriers that they created during the industrial dispute, when they said that the dispute did not have anything to do with them, but was for the contractors, as the legal employers of the men involved. They said that they had no influence, but that is not the case. They pull the strings in the North sea and have influence. It is the oil companies which need to deal with the problems. I bitterly regret that UKOOA and the Offshore Contractors Council did not feel able to join in a discussion, which had no higher objective than to get people into the same room to discuss this crucial issue.
With the removal of the blacklist, and the possible offer of talks with the trade unions, there is room for progress. I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Ryedale said. Before the Piper Alpha tragedy it was unlikely that we would have heard a Conservative Member make the contribution which he made, or the interventions by the hon. Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin).
The worries about safety go across party divides and the divides within the industry. It is incombent on everyone in the industry to deal with the problem and to break down the barriers. That is a message to both sides— the trade unions and the industry—to get together and talk.
In the discussions that I had with the Minister since he took office, I have been impressed by the serious way in which he has dealt with the issues, and how he has already begun to deal with the niggling problems that have beset us. For example, the hon. Member for Ryedale mentioned the need for inspectors to be able to get on to helicopters at short notice and carry out snap inspections. Labour Members have argued for that for a long time, without success, and I was pleased to read recently that the Minister had issued instructions for it to happen.
Such difficulties can be resolved if we address them with an open mind. Lord Cullen has enabled us to do so, and I hope that we can now make progress.
10.45 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Colin Moynihan): Let me begin by replying to a point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South (Mr. Doran) about the conference and the response to it of the United Kingdom Offshore Operators Association. As he knows, I too was sad that a full house was not possible on that occasion. I note that the conference has been postponed: let me say through the hon. Gentleman—given his involvement with the organisers—that I very much hope that this is a postponement and not a cancellation, and that it can be reconvened shortly. I hope that UKOOA will respond positively; certainly I shall, if diaries and the business of the House permit it.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway). We have had occasion to differ on a number of sporting issues in recent years, but I agreed with everything that he said in his speech tonight, which was sensitive and clearly the result of a good deal of detailed analysis and preparation. It was helpful of him to give us our first opportunity to debate the Cullen report in detail.
My hon. Friend rightly paid tribute to all who work in the offshore oil and gas industry. Let me echo those admirable sentiments: I entirely share the esteem in which he holds those people, who often work in very difficult conditions. Let me also place on record my support and respect for our inspectorate, which is composed of men of the highest calibre.
I am glad that mention has been made of Tony Barrell, who has transferred from the Health and Safety Executive. I welcome that move: Tony Barrell has shown tremendous dedication and enthusiasm since the first day. I have had so many meetings with him although he has been in post for only just over a week—that I cannot recall them all in numerical terms, but I can report that he has great expertise, and is willing to learn a good deal about the offshore industry and to steer his team into the 1990s. I know that he will respond positively to any advice and suggestions from hon. Members, whatever their political persuasion. He will proceed with an inspectorate that is professional, well qualified, committed and energetic in the pursuit of safety and excellence.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin)—I am sorry that he is not present; I never like criticising hon. Members, especially Conservative Members, when they are not present to hear that criticism, but he was here for only a short time—will pause to reflect. I deeply regretted his innuendo about criticism of the inspectorate. Certainly Lord Cullen criticised the system in which it was operating, but he never suggested that that same inspectorate should not form the core of the new inspectorate which will look into the safety problems confronting the offshore industry in the 1990s. I wish its members well: they have been under the glare of publicity in recent months, and they deserve our full support.
I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House are at one about the importance of what my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South called surprise visits. Although the inspectorate undertakes many surprise visits, it is always difficult, because places have to be booked on helicopters.
We cannot just walk in, as we do onshore. A classic example of that occurred last weekend. At very short notice, two of my inspectors went out to Cormorant Alpha
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and Brent Charlie to assess a number of concerns about topside valves and derogation. They went out with me on a number of recent visits, again at short notice and on one occasion with only a day's notice. I fully support spot visits; they are important. However, I can give an undertaking that they are already very much in place.
I echo what was said by my hon. Friend about the need for a balance to be struck between prescription and operator responsibility for safety management. It will always be a subject for debate, but I agree that Lord Cullen addressed the point sensitively. The operator must be responsible for safety on every platform. That is critical to future safety inspections. An effective audit system to be set up by each operator is equally important. The inspectorate will assess the type of assessment that will be required for safety management. That was not their prime responsibility under the old system.
I can give an undertaking to my hon. Friend that prompt and effective implementation of Lord Cullen's recommendations remain a priority for my Department. I give an undertaking to the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South that we shall devote all our energies to ensuring that adequate resources are provided. It has often been difficult to emply as many inspectors as we wanted to employ, despite a 23 per cent. increase in pay this year for inspectors. It is often difficult to persuade qualified men at the top of their profession to work for the inspectorate, riot least when some of the operators seek diligently to employ the same people. We must ensure that the inspectorate is both well staffed and well paid.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for providing us with an early opportunity to debate Lord Cullen's report. The praise that has been accorded to it is fully merited. It is a most impressive report. Apart from being painstaking, thorough and conscientious, it is also a most penetrating report. As someone who approaches the subject without specialised knowledge, it seems to me little short of astonishing that so much can be deduced about what happened in the disaster in the absence of nearly all the physical evidence and despite the loss of the personal testimony of so many of those who were there. Lord Cullen marshalled the evidence in a masterly fashion. His conclusions demand corresponding respect.
The report is no less impressive in its shaping of recommendations for the future, a fact that is reflected in its immediate and unqualified acceptance by the Government. Before I deal with a number of specific points that have arisen in the debate, may I deal with my hon. Friend's reference to the Government's consistency of approach towards offshore safety?
Shortly after the Conservative administration came to power 11 years ago, they received the report of a committee set up by the previous Labour Government. It was the first independent review of offshore safety since the tribunal of inquiry into the Sea Gem disaster in 1968. The principal recommendation of the majority of the committee's members was that responsibility for the regulation of offshore safety should be unified in the hands of the Department of Energy. The trade union representatives on the committee, however, disagreed, arid recorded their preference for that responsibility to be given to the Health and Safety Executive.
The Government moved promptly and respnded to the main recommendation. After careful consideration, the action taken, as explained by the then Minister of State, took account of some of the concerns expressed by the

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trade union members in their note of dissent. They had expressed concern that the Health and Safety Commission should not lose its involvement in offshore safety. The solution that was adopted enlarged the commission's involvement. It was enabled to advise the Secretary of State on all his responsibilities for offshore safety. The Government therefore acted promptly, taking full account of the independent advice that was given and, as far as practicable, of other concerns that were raised. Ten years later, we have once again received independent advice on the organisation of safety. Our response has been as prompt and comprehensive as on the earlier occasion.
However, the Government did not wait for the result of the inquiry before taking action. We moved swiftly to ensure that any early lessons that could be drawn from the destruction of Piper Alpha were disseminated as soon as possible. Even before the Department's technical investigation into the cause of the accident was completed, its director of safety wrote to all offshore operators pointing out the safety significance of emergency shut-down valves on oil and gas pipelines and asking for an immediate review by operators of their existing pipelines.
When the technical investigation was complete, the director of safety again wrote to all offshore operators asking them to pay particular attention to several other areas of operator safety systems and procedures when evaluating the technical report. Now that Lord Cullen's report has been published, the Government have wasted no time in putting in hand the necessary arrangements to implement its recommendations.
On the day that the report was published, the Department's director of safety wrote once again to the industry asking it to undertake, without delay, the necessary action to implement those of Lord Cullen's recommendations that were capable of being implemented immediately. The Government are working urgently to progress the detailed work required to implement the rest of the recommendations.
I should like to enlarge a little on the information I gave earlier in an intervention on emergency shut-down valves. I am pleased to say that operators have, in general, made good progress and to date, as I said, more than 134 valves have been successfully fitted. I expect a number of others to be completed by the end of the year—for example, on the far north liquids and gas gathering system—FLAG. It is likely to be January before that system comes back on because of gassing up the system, which is a technical and lengthy procedure. We have urged that work should be done on the fitting of those valves.
I have received a number of applications for temporary exemptions to the regulations to allow a longer period for the necessary work to be completed. These applications have been rigorously scrutinised by my inspectors, and in 25 cases I have agreed to temporary exemptions for the minimum time necessary, subject to additional safety restrictions to maintain acceptably safe operations during the period.
In some cases, I believe that work can safely continue during winter conditions, and the extension is for periods of three to six weeks only. In other cases, I support the view of my inspectors that work involving, for example, over-side working cannot safely be done in winter
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conditions. Where my inspectors have accepted this point as relevant, I have agreed to exemptions of up to three months. In no case have I agreed to an exemption exceeding three months.
I then had to decide whether operations should accordingly cease on 31 December, and the whole Brent system be shut down. Unless a mode of operation could be devised that was at least as safe as that required by the regulations, shut-down would have been the only course. I am glad to tell the House and those who will continue to be in employment in the next three months—the men on the platforms concerned—that my inspectors have established with the company that there is a mode of operation which meets this stringent safety standard. It involves, in particular, operating the system in what is known as dead crude mode—that is, that the natural gas liquids that are normally carried through the system will not be carried.
With the other conditions imposed, that means that operations of the system after 31 December will be at least as safe as they would have been had the valve work been fully completed. Indeed, in some cases it will be more so.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), through the columns of the New Scientist of which I have become an assiduous reader in recent months, kindly paid tribute to the detail and analysis of the Department on safety and, if I recall rightly, on the emergency shut-down valves and the action to be taken to enhance safety. In the past week, an enormous amount has been put in by my inspectors and me. When I was not happy with the proposals they submitted, I asked them to discuss again with Shell at great length, and with particular reference to the Brent system, the new, tough and expensive conditions for the operators. Those conditions must be implemented if a derogation from the regulations passed by the House is to be given.
Five conditions must be met. First, the pipeline shall not be operated unless the true vapour pressure exerted by the substances within the pipeline is less than 2·07 bar absolute. Measurements shall be taken of the substances in the pipeline at intervals, no longer than 24 hours apart, and the measurements shall demonstrate that the TVP of the substances is below the pressure stated—the dead crude mode.
Secondly, the pipeline shall not be operated unless the pressure is less than that percentage of the pipeline maximum allowable operating pressure as declared in accordance with regulation 6(3)(a) of the Submarine Pipelines Safety Regulations (SI 1982) No. 1513. To the layman, that means that the pipelines shall be operated at reduced pressures. The reduced acceptable operating pressure should be at least 15 per cent. and in some cases up to 55 per cent. That will have a significant impact on the balance sheet of the operators. Although every pipeline has a maximum allowable operating pressure, the pipelines should not be operated unless those pressures are less than the percentage of the pipeline operating pressure as declared in accordance with the regulations.
The third condition is that apparatus or equipment for the testing, inspecting or maintaining of the pipeline shall not be introduced or recovered from the pipeline, unless such introduction or recovery is essential to maintain the safe operation of the pipeline. We are talking, in other words, about pigging. The problem with pigging is that

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there is a potential safety hazard in the opening and closing of pipelines and pressure valves. That is why it is important to apply this condition.
Fourthly, work involving the use of naked flames, or the generation of sparks shall not be carried out in the vicinity of the pipeline between the existing emergency shut-down valve and the proposed new location of the ESD valve unless that work is essential to maintain or enhance the safety of the installation to which the pipeline is connected. There are clear restrictions on hot works.
The fifth condition ensures that the pipeline shall not be operated unless the pipeline between the existing ESD valve and the proposed new location of the ESD valve is visually inspected at intervals, no longer than three hours apart, for signs of leakage or damage and for any activities which might present a hazard to the pipeline.
Initially, I was in favour of a shorter interval between inspections, but if there was a visual inspection every hour, it would take the best part of half an hour to get down from one of the large platforms to undertake that inspection. We believe that the three-hour provision—albeit a rigorous condition to be placed on the operators—is the shortest time interval between such visual inspections.
Mr. Doran: We know that the Brent system has had serious problems. I recollect that the expected production from the system was about 200,000 barrels a day. That production level has not been achieved since at least May 1989. The last time I checked, current production was around 1,700 barrels a day. Does Shell anticipate any increase in that production or is that the production level on which the exemption was given?
Mr. Moynihan: I do not have the precise figures for the expected production from all the various platforms in the North sea. If memory serves me a right, there is no anticipated increase in production. However, the reduced levels of production were largely due to maintenance work and down-time work required for safety purposes. Those factors represent a spike on the production graphs, but I shall happily give the hon. Gentleman the proposed production profile for that system.
I have agreed to exemptions only where the operator has satisfied me that he has made all appropriate plans and all necessary efforts to achieve the 31 December deadline and that his inability to achieve it is due to factors beyond his control. In various cases, for example, they include the failure of suppliers to meet deadlines. But where, on the basis of information supplied, I am not satisfied that the conditions have been met. I have refused to grant an exemption. I must report to the House that there are four such cases. There are three valves on the Texaco Tartan platform and a valve on the Beryl Alpha platform operated by Mobil. That is on the basis of information that I have received to date.
I inform the House—in response to an intervention by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South—that the reason why we have come to the House with details at this stage is that we feel that it is right and proper that the House should be informed. However, we emphasise that it was the decision of the House that the exemptions could be applied for until 31 December. Effectively, what I have given the hon. Gentleman is a full progress report. It would be technically possible—although we do not anticipate it—for an operator to come forward with
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further proposals up to the 31 December deadline, as agreed in the regulations. It is possible, for example, that we might receive further information from Texaco. That is why I emphasise that my position tonight is based on information that I have received.
Mr. Doran: What would be the implications if permission for the four valves were refused? Would all operations on the platforms be shut down?
Mr. Moynihan: That is absolutely right. The operations on those platforms will be shut down until that work is undertaken. Equally, for the 18 valves on which work needs to be done—eight on the FLAG system, two on Morecambe, two on Sun Oil on Balmoral, four Shell gas valves on the FLAG system, and two further Morecambe gas valves we have said that production cannot start on any of the platforms until the valves are in place. I hope that the hon. Gentleman realises that that is a tough programme and a tough response by Government to make operators give top priority to safety. It will cost the operators money, but we believe that that money needs to be spent because safety must be first and foremost in the minds of the public, workers in the North sea and—as the hon. Gentleman said from a sedentary position—of everyone involved.
I have not had the opportunity to go as far as I would like on safety, but I shall pick up some of the points made in the last three minutes of the debate. The Government have accepted Lord Cullen's recommendation that sub-sea isolation systems need to be assessed on an individual basis as part of the safety case for each installation. We accept the argument that that need should be assessed in the light of the overall risk assessment, and we accept Lord Cullen's conclusions on that matter.
The regulations for the safety cases will, of course, be brought forward with all proper speed. Until responsibility is moved to the Health and Safety Executive, it lies firmly with the Department of Energy. We shall continue to have ministerial responsibility for offshore safety. An announcement will be made as soon as possible about the date and nature of the move.
Again, I give an undertaking to the House that we shall not hold back in making the change, but it is right and proper that discussions progress between the safety division and the HSE to ensure that a swift and effective move is made without undue haste. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) said, the decision to make the move was taken on balance by Lord Cullen. The move should not reduce the importance of placing safety first and giving it proper consideration. We must assess often detailed divisions of responsibility between my Department and the safety officers who to date have worked within my Department.
Again I welcome the announcement made by Shell. To echo the point made by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, South, we welcome Shell's announcement in the past 48 hours that it intends to lift the bar on approximately 500 contract workers who sat in during the offshore dispute last summer and refused to go ashore when asked to do so by their offshore installation managers during the dispute. I also welcome the fact that Shell has announced plans to protect safety representatives from victimisation. In future, any matter involving an alleged breach of discipline on the part of a safety representative will be dealt with by senior Shell onshore management.

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I hope that, in considering these matters, the House will continue to recognise that Lord Cullen's report should be seen not as the closing of a chapter but rather as the beginning of a new approach which will place safety on a far better footing in every installation in the North Sea. We
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understand the strength of feeling that lies behind many of the concerns that hon. Members have voiced. We are convinced that prompt, comprehensive and effective implementation of Lord Cullen's report will represent real progress towards meeting those concerns and towards showing that they have been met. The Government are committed to securing prompt, comprehensive and effective implementation.

The Gulf
11.10 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell: I have the impression that, so horrendous is the prospect of a protracted or, indeed, any war in the Gulf, the House of Commons has anaesthetised its collective mind about it.
I am one of a dwindling number of hon. Members who have been here since the time of Harold Macmillan, but I have never been more uptight about any issue than I am about a Gulf war—in particular, the ecological consequences of the military option, which are the subject of this debate.
I am plain frightened for my country and for millions in the Arab world and the so-called third world.
I am more concerned about this matter than I have been about anything in my life. The issue could be the survival of humanity. I am not given to flights of fancy or to exaggeration. As the Minister answering the previous debate said, for 24 years, I have been a weekly columnist for New Scientist.
I think that we are in danger, to use the title of John Tusa's programme, of sleepwalking to war. Some extremely alert and effective Members of this House seem to be under the impression that what would happen would be a glorified pub brawl. I fear that the reality would be very different; it could be Passchendaele in the sands.
For 21 months, I wore the emblem of the Desert Rats. I was tank crew. My heart goes out to those who, 40 years later, are tank crew in what used to be the Scots Greys now—the Scots Dragoon Guards—and the other armoured regiments, who are having to deal not only with the sand but with the dust of the desert and what that can do to the instrumentation of tanks.
A number of hon. Members have talked about "liberating Kuwait". I am not sure that it would not be more accurate to say that the option is not liberating Kuwait but "obliterating Kuwait." Any land military attempt to "free" Kuwait could result in the kind of fighting that was experienced at Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands or at Iwo Jima. Iraq's would be a battle-hardened army. The present crisis is totally different from the Falklands and the Argentine conscripts. We are talking about people who have been through a decade of extremely tough war.
I shall be personal for a moment in a way that I am not normally personal, least of all about myself. I was brought up as young child by a grandmother who was broken, and broken-hearted, because my grandfather was one of those lucky enough to come back from Gallipoli, but was never the same again. My grandmother and grandfather made Edward Grey, Asquith's Foreign Secretary, my mother's godfather, so I have been interested in his books. We could be lurching into another war such as the first world war, and I have been re-reading the diaries of Grey who, reflecting on the first world war, said:
"Let us examine the first of our considerations as dominant in my mind in the last week of July 1914. This was that a great European war would be a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale, and that this would be so obvious to all the Great Powers that when on an edge of the abyss they would call a halt and recoil from it."
He continued:
"The first half of this impression unfortunately admits of no qualification now. We know the full tale of the loss of life,
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of the maiming and wounding, but the amount of grief and suffering caused by it is more than human thought or sympathy can measure."
I hope that I may be forgiven for saying that both my mother and my father were Arabic speakers and I was brought up to respect the Semite people, Arab and Jew. I have the feeling that threats and refusing to talk simply will not work with those people. I am distressed at what I can only refer to as a certain kind of Anglo-Saxon self-righteousness.
When I was a young Member of Parliament in January 1964, my wife and I were in Cairo. On our last night there, at his request, I received a message to go and see President Nasser in his private house on the outskirts of Cairo. The hour and a half that he gave me made a lifelong indelible impression on me about the aspirations of the Arab peoples.
I draw from such an experience the view that, if we try to humiliate the Iraqis, whatever we may think, there will simply be a bitter war. I think that the troops on the ground understand that, and I should like to pay tribute to Brigadier Patrick Cordingley. It must have taken courage, and I thought that he was quite ritght, to speak out as he did about possible losses. Some people may think that a field commander should not do that, but in these circumstances he was justified in bringing the possible casualties to the attention of people here.
If my hon. Friend—hon. Friend in more senses than one—the Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) thinks that I am a bit way out, I call in aid Sir Brian Urquhart of the United Nations, in particular his Montagu Burton lecture to the university of Edinburgh. He said:
"The idea of Saddam Hussein as the righteous champion of the underprivileged of the world …ularly hard to take, but it is a distinct possibility. One must understand the extreme frustration and hopelessness of some parts of the world … which could be channelled easily by someone clever. This is Saddam's Robin Hood act, but it is getting quite a lot of takers in the Middle East."
Sir Brian should be listened to.
Having worked itself up to an impressive pitch of martial readiness in the Gulf, the United States may think it needs to achieve every one of its stated aims in full, or be regarded as having failed. Some Americans think that the United States remains a great power only if it deals once and for all with Saddam Hussein. That is a dangerous attitude. Perhaps as politicians we must understand the possible difficulties of loss of face by the President of the United States, but I beg Ministers and some of my colleagues to realise that loss of face is as nothing compared with the alternative of war. That is why I have concentrated on the ecological aspects, although the Minister may not think them important.
Saddam Hussein has the ace of trumps and a good deal more. The right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) and others have told us—it is almost certainly established fact—that Hussein has deep-mined at least 300 of the Kuwaiti oil wells. Even if only 30 were ignited, accepted safety standards would go for the proverbial burton. The effects would linger in the atmosphere. I told the Foreign Office—no doubt it suspected that I would do this—that I intended to quote yet again what the King of Jordan said in his speech on global warming:
"The preliminary calculations of our scientists indicate that if half Kuwait's oil reserves (or about 50 billion barrels) were to go up in flames during a war, the environmental impact would be swift, severe and devastating. Emissions of carbon

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monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide would surpass internationally accepted safety standards by factors of hundreds, and, without factoring in wind effects, would blacken the skies over a radius of at least 750 km from Kuwait —that is, all of Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates and the waters of the Gulf, and most of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Iran. Other than poisonous emissions of carbon monoxide and sulphur dioxide the emission of carbon dioxide will increase by at least a factor of 100 over the current total global emission of 5·5 billion tonnes per year. Lingering in the atmosphere for around a hundred years, this massive carbon dioxide emission would promote the green house effect and contribute to global warming, climatic changes, lower global food production and human and animal health deterioration. The environmental and human toll of such a scenario would be beyond our wildest fears. If oil production facilities suffered long-term damage, which is likely in the event of war, the catastrophe, we warn warn of, would be compounded by the devastating impact of the loss of oil imports for economies and peoples around the world."
The House will have to bear with me while I go over the subsequent parliamentary exchanges. In arguing such a case, I must be extremely careful about ministerial answers and I do not want to truncate them because if I did so I would be accused of distortion. It is certainly no part of my case to distort what Ministers have said. On 13 November, I tabled Question 2 to the Prime Minister. It reads:
"Mr. Dalyell:To ask the Prime Minister if she will make a statement on the discussions in Geneva with King Hussein of Jordan in relation to the ecological consequences of war in the middle east."
The Prime Minister at that time, the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), replied:
"My bilateral discussions with King Hussein did not cover this subject, as I made clear to the hon. Gentleman on 7 November. However, if a tyrant is never to be fought in order that freedomn and justice may be restored, tyranny will triumph with all its brutality and the environment of human rights, which we seek to extend, will have received a fatal blow."
I then asked a supplementary question and said:
"If King Hussein is right and 50,000 million barrels of oil equivalent go up in flames, what will be the result in terms of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide, and what would that do to people and the planet?"
The then Prime Minister replied:
"If the hon. Gentleman wishes to avert such a tragedy, there is one method which would do it easily—that is for Saddam Hussein to withdraw totally from Kuwait and for a legitimate Government to be restored. I do not necessarily accept King Hussein's figures—mine are a little different—but that is not the main point. Saddam Hussein's withdrawal would not put right a wrong because of the brutality that has been perpetrated in his name, but that is the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question."—[Official Report, 13 November 1990; Vol. 180, c. 446.]
I fear that that is not the answer to my question, because it does not deal with the king's statement, awkward and unpleasant though that statement may be. I happen to know that that statement was carefully put forward by the king's not inconsiderable science institute in Amman, which received a good deal of technical help from elsewhere.
On 11 December I was lucky enough to have Question 1 to the new Prime Minister. It reads:
"Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Prime Minister, pursuant to the answer of the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) of 13 November, Official Report, column 446, if he will specify those figures which he possesses relating to oil stocks, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide which differ from those given by King Hussein, showing in each case the comparable figures and the source for those which he uses."
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The Prime Minister replied:
"No, Sir. The calculations rest on assumptions about the consequences of a conflict in the Gulf which, by their nature, are not quantifiable. The best way to avoid any adverse consequences is for Saddam Hussein to comply with the United Nations resolutions in full."
The assertions may not be exactly quantifiable, but simply to say that they are not quantifiable will not do.
I asked the following supplementary:
"Is not the spine-chilling truth that no mining engineer, no scientist and no politician knows for certain what will occur if 300 deep-mined oil wells are detonated? In those circumstances, might not the fires rage for months, if not years, in a fashion quite outside human experience? In view of that, should not the damage to the planet, let alone the human slaughter and the Arab ecological disaster, rule out any talk of a military option?"
The Prime Minister replied:
"As the hon. Gentleman says, no one can be absolutely and precisely certain about the outcome. Insofar as it is possible to make an assessment, we see no reason to agree with any of the views put forward thus far as to what the outcome might be."
This is not adequate, because in my original question I had asked about the figures
"relating to oil stocks, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide which differ from those given by King Hussein, showing in each case the comparable figures and the source for those which he uses."
The Prime Minister might have been a bit more forthcoming about his sources.
After my question, the hon. Member for Rochford (Dr. Clark), a parliamentary colleague whom I respect greatly, also asked a question:
"Is my right hon. Friend aware that last week I visited the Council for Higher Education in Amman, where the calculations were carried out for King Hussein? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the horrors of war, whether human or environmental, should be made abundantly plain to Saddam Hussein in particular?"
The Prime Minister replied:
"I entirely agree with my hon. Friend about that, but on the assumptions that King Hussein used, we believe that some of the difficulties to which he referred would not be precisely as described." —[Official Report, 11 December 1990; Vol. 182, c. 814.]
The Government must be far more forthcoming. I can understand the Prime Minister not going further, given the nature of Prime Minister's Question Time, and his crisp answering, but tonight the Minister has an opportunity to tell us a bit about the sources, and why he does not accept the King of Jordan's figures.
My sources tell a different story. For example, there is Dave Matthews, who is a full-time officer of the Fire Brigades Union. When I made inquiries of him, he asked me whether I remembered the fire at Thorne colliery, in Yorkshire. As you come from near Doncaster, Mr. Deputy Speaker, you may know a good deal about this. It may be within your recollection that the British fire brigade, probably the most efficient in Europe, had to call in the Red Adair team to do something about that fire. As my friends in the Fire Brigades Union said, if they had to do that for what was a comparatively minor fire, who will put out a massive conflagration in Kuwait? That is a good question.
I then went, naturally, to BP, which has known me for a quarter of a century as I represent many of those who work at Grangemouth. I have had excellent relations with the company and it did me the courtesy of sending me a representative at the most senior level. He is a managing director who had been general manager in Kuwait, and was in charge, as an engineer, of the most awkward fire in

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the middle east in the 1970s. He told me that the Red Adair team was not the only one of its type and that there were various ways of extinguishing fires, including the blowing-up method. He said, "Yes, we could cope; but with how many fires would we have to cope at the same time?" I am open to contradiction, but has there been a time when there have been more than two major oil fires raging at the same time? It is extremely difficult to dampen down and extinguish such fires. It would be even more difficult if, dare I say it, a military conflict were taking place on top of an oilfield.
Shell went to great trouble. It consulted the expertise that was available to it, both in this country and in the Netherlands, and said that the general view was, "We simply do not know." No one in the world before has ever detonated oil wells on purpose.
Furthermore, there is the problem of fire fighting in the waters of the Gulf. Much of the previous debate was about the Piper Alpha disaster. What would happen in the shallow waters of the Gulf, where fire is more uncontrollable than in the North sea, if there were to be a major Iraqi effort to set the Gulf ablaze? I am told that that would be only too likely to happen. Some of us remember the Torrey Canyon and all the difficulties that ensued as a result of that episode. The scale of that disaster might be multiplied.
Do not let us imagine that Saddam Hussain would not do it. He has shown before that he is capable of bringing the temple down with him. That may not be the basis of what we call western rationality, but on that basis we might not be having this debate nor facing the circumstances that have led to its taking place. I quote Al-Jumhouriya of 8 November. It stated that Iraq threatened to turn the Arabian peninsula into ashes and the Saudi oilfields into a sea of fire if it was attacked. It said:
"The mother of all battles is nearer today."
It commented that only Medina and Mecca would be spared and added:
"If the fire of aggression is unleashed against Iraq, flames will burn in every direction."
Apparently the Iraqis have sets of sealed orders in case of war.
I do not think that there is much doubt that the Iraqis could do it and would do it. Their history shows that they have not made claims of that sort that they could not put into effect. What are the Government doing to find out?
On 29 November, I asked the Prime Minister
"if he will discuss the ecological consequences of a military option in the Gulf with President Bush."
The Prime Minister replied:
"I have no plans to do so."—[Official Report, 29 November 1990; Vol. 181, c. 466.]
After August, September, October and November, surely the Government should have made some effort to establish a rather more detailed view of the scenario that I and others—others with real expert qualifications--have been painting.
On 16 November, I asked the Foreign Secretary whether
"the United Nations has any plans to assess the safety and security implications for the oilfields in the Gulf area of possible conflagration."
The Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Mr. Lennox-Boyd), replied:
"We are not aware of any United Nations plans to carry out such an assessment. For our part, we are fully aware that hostilities in the Gulf would have serious consequences of
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many kinds. Hence our determination to bring maximum pressure to bear on Saddam Hussein to comply with the Security Council resolutions in order to resolve the crisis." —[Official Report, 16 November 1990; Vol. 180, c. 261.]
I think that the Government might show a little more curiosity. Even if 30 of the 300 oil wells in Kuwait deep mined by Iraq were ignited after detonation, the emissions of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide would pass internationally accepted safety standards by a factor of hundreds. The skies would be blackened all over Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, the Emirates, the waters of the Gulf, and over most of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Iran.
For the past 24 years, I have been a weekly columnist for the New Scientist. Successive editors of that journal would not have countenanced me if I had been given to making fanciful judgments. The truth is that no scientist from a British university, no mining engineer from an oil company, no expert in any professional capacity from the Fire Brigades Union or any of the firms that are involved in fire fighting—Red Adair would not comment to the Library of the House of Commons when he was asked —let alone any politician, could tell what would happen if 300 oil wells were detonated. As has been pointed out, at the very least it would mean that oil would be $120 a barrel in Rotterdam.
War is a disproportionate response to the original outrage of invading Kuwait. We must consider the economic consequences. On 10 December, I asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer
"what assessment he has made of the economic consequences of a military option in the Gulf."
The Chief Secretary replied:
"The Government's firm objective is to resolve the Gulf crisis by peaceful means on the basis of full implementation of the resolutions adopted by the United Nations Security Council. To achieve this, it is essential to establish a credible military option, so that Saddam Hussein is left in no doubt that he is facing a military force which could compel him to leave Kuwait. My right hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Mr. Major) drew attention in his autumn statement to uncertainties in the economic outlook generated by the Gulf crisis."—[Official Report, 10 December 1990; Vol. 182, c. 258.]
It may be that the Government cannot answer the question; the fact is that they have not.
When we talk about the effect on Saudi Arabia, we must comment that military experts do not know how Scud missiles targeted on Saudi targets would be deflected. I am not surprised that tonight we heard that General Calvin Waller, the United States commander, said that he was not ready. The truth is that they are finding it more and more difficult. We delude ourselves if we imagine that we can predict that such wars will be brief, limited to surgical attacks, with relatively light casualties and with predictable consequences for the politics and economies of the countries involved.
The difficulty is something else. If there is not a relatively quick victory, we have to turn to the question that I put to General Colin Powell when he came a fortnight ago to Committee Room 14. It will be within the recollection of some 70 of my colleagues there, mostly Conservative Members, that I asked two questions. The second was whether General Powell contemplated the use of nuclear weapons. I prefaced that by saying that I was one of the minority of Members of Parliament who thought that there was no successful military solution to be had, but that I respected General Powell's sincerity about preferring the peace option to war.

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Within the hearing of many of my colleagues, General Powell said that he did not contemplate the use of nuclear weapons, but he added that he could not rule out any advice that he might give in certain circumstances to the President of the United States. I believe that everybody in that room realised that in certain tragic circumstances the nuclear option was a possibility. The mind boggles at not only, for heaven's sake, the ecological effect, but the human effect and the effect on relations with the Arab world for decades, and possibly longer, to come.
Mr. Dave Nellist: I do not want to distract my hon. Friend from his line of thought, but would it not be appropriate at this point to remember that only a few short years ago the partial explosion of one nuclear power station at Chernobyl had serious long-term consequences in Wales and in Scotland and that one accident in Bhopal had long-term consequences for the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people in India? If the effect of the destruction of a number of oil wells was added to the effects of biological, chemical and nuclear warfare, the region that would be affected would be massive and the number affected would run into millions.
Mr. Dalyell: I am genuinely grateful to my hon. Friend. That is an important part of the argument. It is a serious point, succinctly and well put, and I would like to add it to the argument.
Admiral William Crowe, the former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, expressed the following view:
"If deposing Saddam Hussein would sort out the Middle East and permit the US to turn its attention elsewhere and to concentrate on our very pressing domestic problems, the case for initiating offensive action immediately would be considerably strengthened. But the Middle East is not that simple. I witnessed it at first hand; I lived in the Middle East for a year.
I would submit that posturing ourselves to promote stability for the long-term is our primary national interest in the Middle East. It is not obvious to me that we are currently looking at the crisis in this light. Our dislike for Saddam seems to have crowded out many other considerations. In working through the problems myself, I am persuaded that the US initiating hostilities could well exacerbate many of the tensions I have cited, and perhaps further polarise the Arab world. Certainly, many Arabs would deeply resent a campaign which would necessarily kill large numbers of their Muslim brothers and force them to choose sides between Arab nations and the west …
"We may be, in a certain sense, on the horns of a no-win dilemma. Even if we win, we lose ground in the Arab world and generally injure our ability to deal in the future with the labyrinth of the Middle East.
I firmly believe that Saddam must be pushed out of Kuwait; he must leave Kuwait. At the same time, given the larger context, I judge it highly desirable to achieve this goal in a peaceful fashion, if that is possible. In other words, I would argue that we should give sanctions a fair chance before we discard them."
Some of my hon. Friends might ask, "What about the United Nations?" I was fortunate enough to be chosen by Mr. Speaker to lead the Inter-Parliamentary Union delegation to Zaire. It was a truncated visit because we were recalled for the vote of confidence debate. However, we saw the country's Foreign Minister, who had just held a long meeting with James Baker. We naturally asked him about it.
I do not think that I am distorting matters in any way when I say that it was clear that Zaire lined up with the Americans not because of a judgment on the middle east,
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but because it wanted the lifting of the ban on American aid to Zaire that had been imposed because of that country's human rights violations—an issue totally separate from the merits or demerits of going along with the American position in relation to the United Nations.
Some of us fear that, if there is a conflict, it will be goodbye to King Hussein and the Hashemites, and that it may well be farewell to President Mubarak. Heaven knows what would be the reaction in Tunisia and Algeria. There is considerable hearsay that the Tunisians are providing credits to the Iraqis so that they can circumvent the embargo. I ask for that strong rumour to be investigated. I cannot claim it as fact, but perhaps someone could comment at a convenient point on whether there is any evidence of that happening.
I might be asked what I think the Labour party should do. I am very influenced by my most senior parliamentary colleagues. One was a beachmaster at Anzio, and another is a former Prime Minister with a distinguished war record; and my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) served bravely in the RAF during the second world war. They have all taken a rather distinctive line. I would like my party to follow the idea of my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Ewing), and ask my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) to pay an official visit to Baghdad on behalf of my party.
The alternatives are horrific. I did national service at a time when many of my contemporaries at Catterick went with the 8th Hussars and other units to Korea. A lot of them were shot up. The tanks did not work properly, and the soldiers who had to get out of their tanks to do something about equipment that had gone wrong became the proverbial sitting ducks.
I draw attention also to the hospital aspect, in the event that the worst happens. This afternoon, I asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if he would make a statement on the provision made in Scottish hospitals for the reception of service casualties in the event of the use of the military option in the Gulf. The Under-Secretary replied:
"Plans which provide for the treatment of military casualties in Scottish hospitals in the event of war have been reviewed. If required, beds would be made available in NHS hospitals in Scotland to treat service casualties arising from possible hostilities in the Gulf."
It so happens that there used to be a distinguished burns unit at Bangour hospital, in my constituency. The shortages of skills to cope with burns and similar injuries are a national problem—I will not say a national "crisis". I am not casting blame, but saying that there is a real problem, which is encapsulated by an article in The Universe, the Catholic newspaper, of 16 December 1990 entitled "Wife's horror at Gulf graves plan".
It says:
"A plot of land has already been allocated to bury victims of the Gulf war by the War Graves Commission, claims the wife of an Army officer serving in Saudi Arabia.
The Catholic woman, who didn't wish to be named, is based in Germany and keeps in touch with her husband by mail and forces' radio and television.
She said: 'The most sickening thing my husband told me was that men from the War Graves Commission have been out to Saudi Arabia. They have already measured and acquired a plot of land in preparation for any war dead.
Last week saw the first suicide in the Gulf. A medic shot himself on hearing that his wife had left him.'

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She said Army officials had warned wives not to believe all they heard or saw on television, radio or in the newspapers and that they would be kept reliably informed through military sources.
The woman, mother of two young children, said that according to British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS), the soldiers are not allowed even to mention the word 'Christmas' in Saudi Arabia."
That appeared in print. I do not know whether it is true. However, I gave the Foreign Office notice that I should like it to comment on whether the War Graves Commission has been out there or not.
It is not only a question of British service men. We ought to remember that many Iraqi women and children would certainly be killed in any action. Some people say that they believe that they would be dying for a heroic cause, and refer to Iraqi mothers who believe that their sons will be next to Allah, which is the reward for martyrdom.
When the Iraqi people are attacked, they will react as the citizens of London did in 1940, or like the citizens of Hamburg in 1943. Production in German cities increased after bombing because that is the effect that bomb attacks have on populations.
I believe that we should let sanctions run for a long time. A powerful television programme, produced by George Carey, called the "Case for Peace", showed convincingly that if sanctions ran for at least another year the Iraqi forces would be at least 30 per cent. less effective.
Also, we ought to have an explanation as to why the British—apparently—led the pack of EEC Ministers against the wishes of the Germans and the Italians by cancelling the meeting that was to have taken place with Tariq Aziz in Rome. Unless we talk we shall get nowhere, and we deserve an explanation why we took the initiative against the wishes of two of our major European partners.
Mr. Julian Brazier: I have listened with interest to the case that the hon. Gentleman is making. Indeed, I have a particular interest, as both my father and my grandfather—coincidentally—were wounded fighting in the middle east, my grandfather severely so in Mesopotamia.
The hon. Gentleman has made his point clearly and with great integrity. May I remind him, however, that just over half a century ago these Benches were full of people who had fought in the first world war, and who took the view that the diplomatic solutions that he is talking about now must be tried and pursued at all costs rather than another war taking place? It was because we went on and on—through the abandoning of Czechoslovakia, the Munich crisis and so forth—failing to grasp the nettle that we finally allowed Hitler to become so strong that we very nearly lost the war.
In a year or two, Saddam Hussein may have the very nuclear weapons that the hon. Gentleman so dreads. Surely the worst option of all would be to back away and allow diplomatic talks to go on and on, allowing Saddam Hussein to become more powerful, and to delay action until he has the next move.
Mr. Dalyell: That is certainly a respectable point of view. I can only say, in shorthand—because I am trying the patience of the House with my long speech—that I do not accept the 1939 analogy, and I certainly do not accept any comparison with, for instance, the heroic work of the
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8th Army against Rommel. The weapons available now —leaving aside nuclear weapons—are such that the consequences would be entirely different.
Let me put another argument to the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier). Let us suppose that there was a military victory. What then? We are faced, are we not, with a sullen, resentful and vengeful Arab population, and it would be an Anglo-American army that would be holding them down. It is highly significant that 10 of our partners have not sent any troops to the middle east. Like it or not, this is seen to be becoming more and more an Anglo-American situation.
Let us suppose that blood was spilt. Would King Hussein remain in Jordan? Would President Mubarak retain power in Egypt? What would happen in Syria is anyone's guess.
Mr. Brazier: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I have a particular interest in that part of the world; indeed, I was in the Lebanon in February. The truth is that the boot is on the other foot. If we back away from this, the star of Saddam Hussein will rise still further, and the positions of the very gentlemen whom he has mentioned—certainly that of President Mubarak; I am not especially concerned about President Assad—will be strongly threatened. Mubarak will be seen to have backed the losing side, and his position will be extremely weak.
Mr. Dalyell: What I might describe as a martyred Saddam Hussein would also create problems for the youngest among us. Once blood had been spilt, the circumstances would be horrific. That is why I say to Ministers—to the Prime Minister really, I suppose—that we ought to swallow our pride and talk to the Iraqis. When the Prime Minister—rightly—visits troops, he should also go to Jordan to hear what the Jordanians say. Yemen was the one United Nations country, apart from Cuba, to vote against the consensus in the Security Council; it is also the country nearest to Iraq, with the most to lose. He should go there.
I believe that the heavyweight European leaders—particularly Felipe Gonzalez, and perhaps Chancellor Kohl, although I should like to see our Prime Minister among them—should go to Baghdad themselves, to talk and talk. That is not appeasement. There is great confusion between dialogue and appeasement. The results of failing to have a dialogue would, I believe, be as horrific as I have tried to outline.
12.14 am
Mr. Donald Anderson: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) on his persistence and determination in putting very grave issues before the House. Implicit in his speech was his belief that in no circumstances, even if sanctions were to be imposed for a year and found to be wanting, would the use of force be justified on account of the resulting ecological and financial consequences.
That is not the Labour party's view, and it is certainly not the view taken by the United Nations in a series of resolutions passed by the Security Council. I heard what my hon. Friend said about Zaire, but if one analysed the motives of Security Council members in that way one could rule out almost any United Nations move. The credibility of the United Nations is at stake. If the UN does not emerge from this crisis with an enhanced

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reputation, the prospects for a new world order, envisaged by the founding fathers of the United Nations in 1945, will be strangled at birth.
The new ecological dimension was given great publicity by King Hussein in mid-November and it added to the anxieties of those who were wholly against the use of force in any circumstances. The consequences of an ecological disaster are of great concern. They were set out in detail in The Guardian on 16 November. That newspaper rendered a signal public service by quoting at length King Hussein's speech to the world climate conference in Geneva. One has to treat with respect what King Hussein said, but it is significant that he was not unaware that the message he was broadcasting lent additional weight to a threat which had been made by Iraq. His speech must therefore be considered in that context.
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow has considerable scientific knowledge and has many contacts in the world of science, on which he has drawn so well. He will therefore be the first to admit that there are many scientific uncertainties. He seeks scientific precision from the Government, and he seeks precision about the financial and other effects on the third world, but by their very nature the variations are so great that it would be impossible to respond with precision.
All one can say is that, in the worst scenario, the effects would be substantial indeed. For example, will the wells ignite? What will be the prevailing winds at the relevant time? One need only consider Carl Sagan's article in Foreign Affairs, "Nuclear Winter: Climatic Catastrophe", in the winter of 1983–84 and the United States Administration's eventual response in 1988, to see the differences on a matter of this nature within the scientific community. Indeed, some of the effects may work in opposite directions. Although the emissions of carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide may lead to global warming, by contrast, with the effect of rising dust, the rays of the sun could be reflected back and there could be a cooling effect, as happened with the eruption at Krakatoa at the end of the last century.
So much in the calculations of the greenhouse effect is unpredictable because it depends on the complicated pathways of the relevant gases. Should we take the most extreme or the most realistic scenarios, and with what effect? What would be the possibility and effect of ignition? What do we know of the effect of the bombing of the Abadan refinery during the Iran-Iraq conflict, and of the fact that that refinery it is now back as it was before?
In the speech that my hon. Friend quoted, King Hussein spoke of the preliminary calculations of our scientists and of the effects being felt within a radius of at least 750 km from Kuwait. The effect being spread about 750 km around Kuwait means that Iraq is very much within the care radius of the effect. What do we make of that? Before coming to the debate, I re-read Milton's "Samson Agonistes", who pulled down the same destruction upon himself. Is Saddam Hussein prepared to act like Samson? It is clear that he has been acting against his own interest. Even if Saddam Hussein were to lay Kuwait to waste by fire, the cloud effect could be as devastating in Iraq as in Kuwait.
We must be aware of the worst scenario adumbrated by my hon. Friend, and of the unpredictability, the
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differential effects and the motive of the messenger. The key point is surely the extent to which such considerations should affect our policy in the Gulf. My hon. Friend concluded that, in the worst scenario, the effect could be so devastating that, in effect, war could in no circumstances be contemplated. That, however, could be an equally dangerous conclusion.
One clear effect of allowing ourselves to be blackmailed by the direct or indirect threats of Saddam Hussein would be an effective paralysis of policy, not only in this crisis but in relation to any other aggressor with the capacity to create ecological devastation, through threats to the oil fields and wells of the kind that Saddam Hussein is making, or the capacity of a nuclear reactor, for example. If, as a result of threats and blackmail, Saddam Hussein succeeds in producing a paralysis in policy, what is to stop him using those same threats to advance one step further into Saudi Arabia or one of the Gulf sheikhdoms? That would render the United Nations impotent in the face of aggression and strangle at birth the potential enhanced role for that world organisation.
King Hussein has broadcast one of Saddam Hussein's threats, but in the course of the conflict Saddam has made a multiplicity of threats and he can continue to do so. At the start of the crisis on 2 August, he dispatched what he called volunteers into Kuwait, but nothing further has been heard about them. Could not similar "volunteers" be sent into Jordan in the knowledge that that would trigger an immediate response from Israel? Some of the ballistic missiles available in Saddam Hussein's armoury could be fired at Israel, which would trigger a great conflagration in which Iraq, being at the centre of it, would be the first country to be devastated. Such issues should be considered when seeking to evaluate the threat made by Saddam Hussein and set out by King Hussein in his November speech when he called on the expertise of some of his scientists.
We must take the issues raised in the debate seriously. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow may consider himself, alas, to be the Cassandra of the conflict. Certainly, we must be aware of the worst scenario and its potential consequences. The military option has been underscored by Security Council resolution 678. On 11 December my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) stressed in the House that although we seek, above all, a peaceful solution, if in the end the only way to oust Saddam Hussein from Kuwait is by force, then force will have to be used.
My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow was right to remind us of the possible and awful consequences of war. Above all, we must be firmly behind the United Nations. We must also be aware that if the crisis proceeds further, the responsibility for that will lie squarely at the door of Saddam Hussein as a result of his initial aggression on 2 August.
12.17 am
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg): Before dealing with the speech of the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), I should say that I am in total agreement with what has just been said from the Opposition Front Bench by the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson). I agreed with him about the ecological consequences and the uncertainties that must surround any assessment of them,

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and particularly about the need to support Security Council resolution 678 and all those which proceeded it. On this matter, the Opposition and Government Front Benches are as one.
The purpose of the speech of the hon. Member for Linlithgow was to make the essential point that war is a beastly, bloody and unpredictable business. He went on to say that the damage to life and property would be great. His contention was that in such circumstances the military option should not be pursued. Within that general argument, he made a specific argument—that war in the middle east in the present circumstances gives rise to such a risk of ecological disaster that in no circumstances should the use of force be contemplated.
In response to the hon. Gentleman's argument on the ecological consequences of war, I hope that he will forgive me if I make this observation. If I wished to advance an argument of principle against the use of force, I would choose to rely primarily on the certainty of death and injury to those involved in the conflict rather on the uncertainties which underpin the hon. Gentleman's argument and which, in any event, seem to be of a different and lesser order of magnitude when contrasted with the loss of life and the physical injury that may be the outcome of a war in the Gulf.
Mr. Dalyell: There may be a great chasm between us. The Minister's speaks, no doubt sincerely, with the experience of 20 years as a lawyer. I speak with 20 or more years' experience of spending a great deal of my time working on scientific subjects and producing a column for the New Scientist, with all that that entails. We may have different ways of looking at the world.
Mr. Hogg: I hope not. I am saying that what is of critical importance in a matter such as this is the prospect of death and injury. To my way of thinking, it is odd to argue a case against war in terms of oil spillage, carbon dioxide emissions and global warming. That is not an obvious way to conduct an argument. The argument should focus on such critical issues as human life, the right to freedom, the need to resist armed aggression, and the maintenance of the authority of the United Nations.
Before I go further into detail, I inform the hon. Member for Linlithgow that not only, for the reasons that I mentioned, do I find that he conducts his argument at an inappropriate level but I believe that he is making himself an instrument of Saddam Hussein's policy. The hon. Gentleman concludes from Saddam Hussein's threat to detonate a series of oil wells that there is no practical action that we can take to reverse the act of blackmail and agression that has taken place. To express such a view encourages Saddam Hussein in his truculence and intransigence and thereby diminishes the prospect of peace.
I do not for one moment suggest that that is the intended consequence of the hon. Gentleman's remarks, but I believe that it is the inevitable consequence. At no stage during the hon. Gentleman's extended speech—I make no criticism of the fact that it was long—and at no stage during his speech in our recent debate on the Gulf, which I have read carefully, did he suggest any clear way of ensuring the reversal of the act of aggression. The hon. Gentleman suggested that his right hon. Friend for Leeds, East (Mr. Healey) should go to Baghdad, but that is
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unlikely to achieve the objective that both the Opposition Front Bench and the Government Front Bench agree is our primary objective.
I will comment upon the ecological arguments advanced by the hon. Gentleman, but first I wish to put them into what seems to me to be the proper perspective so that we can judge the weight that we wish to attach to the hon. Gentleman's objections and to the political facts.
We need to be clear about the nature of Saddam Hussein's conduct. Saddam Hussein's conduct is aggression of the most obvious and brutal kind. He invaded Kuwait—his neighbour and a sovereign state with which he had been in negotiations and in respect of which he had given assurances of non-aggression. In the process of that invasion, he killed a large number of people. Once the invasion was complete, he embarked on a systematic policy of murder, pillage and, it now seems, torture. He also seized and held many thousands of non-combatant western hostages. With the release of those hostages, he has complied only with the first of three conditions imposed on him by the Security Council.
We must focus on compliance with the other two conditions—complete and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait by 15 January and the restoration of that country's lawful Government. Resolution 678 empowers the international community, of which we are part, to use all necessary means to secure compliance with the previous resolutions and, most particularly, to ensure that Iraq leaves Kuwait unconditionally and completely by 15 January. The phrase "all necessary means" obviously embraces the use of force, but the resolution is not itself a call to arms or a timetable for military action. It provides an opportunity for Saddam Hussein to go—and go peacefully—and that he must do, for our sakes and his.
Everyone in the House agrees that because war is such a bloody and beastly business, and because its consequences are so unpredictable, we must do all that in conscience we can do to avert a war. Therefore, as people have said elsewhere, it is right to go that extra mile to achieve peace. We are strongly behind the suggestion made by President Bush that he should have the opportunity—himself and through emmissaries—to put the facts clearly to Saddam Hussein and his Foreign Minister. It is absolutely essential that the Iraqi president should know exactly where he stands. There can and will be no concession on the requirements of the Security Council. No partial solution is possible. There is no linkage with other issues. That is the view of the Security Council, of the United States, of the United Kingdom, of the Arab states which have mobilised their forces in the middle east, and of the European Community.
How are we seeking to achieve that political objective? We are doing so by sanctions, and by the deployment of forces—so far, entirely peacefully. The only person who has used force is Saddam Hussein. The only people who have died have been killed by Saddam Hussein. That is the plain fact that the House must recognise. We must ask ourselves, in conscience, whether sanctions are likely to succeed. That they are causing hardship in Iraq is certain, but is it a level of hardship such as to bring about a reversal of policy or, differently put, to cause the destabilisation of Saddam Hussein's regime? My own belief is that it is not. We cannot forget that the people of Iraq suffered eight years of pointless and brutal war, again promoted by Saddam Hussein, yet did not throw that man out

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Therefore, my judgment is that sanctions alone will not bring about a complete and unconditional withdrawal from Kuwait.
Mr. Dalyell: If that was the whole story, how comes it that, with the knowledge of Her Majesty's Government, we exported the most formidable arms consignment to Saddam Hussein? If we thought during all those years that he was so terrible, what on earth were we doing exporting arms to him? The answer is clear. Many people did not want Saddam Hussein to be beaten by the mullahs and ayatollahs. Furthermore, if what the Minister said is all self-evident truth, why are the British Government, with their European partners in Rome, so reluctant to see Tariq Aziz?
Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman is doing less credit than he should to his argument. There has been a long-standing prohibition on arms sales to Iraq.
As for the hon. Gentleman's second question as to why we and other countries in the Community have not sent emissaries to Baghdad, it seems right that there should be a single, clear voice expressing the significance of resolution 678 and the previous resolutions, and it seems right that the country which is to shoulder the greatest part of the military burden should provide that voice.
Mr. Nellist: Is my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) not absolutely right in that, in the 1980s, Iraq was the middle eastern country favoured by the western nations? During the Iran-Iraq war, America provided $2£5 billion of food aid and $5 billion of trade credit. In October 1989, one of the Minister's colleagues —now the Secretary of State for Health—told the House that the Government recognised that Iraq had bombed and killed thousands of Kurdish people. Ten days later, however, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry increased British trade credits to Iraq by £400 million. Finally, during the 1970s and 1980s, France sold $25 billion worth of arms to Iraq.
Mr. Hogg: To what is the hon. Gentleman directing his remarks? The facts speak for themselves. Twice in a decade Iraq has launched a brutal and unprovoked attack on its neighbour. First, it attacked Iran and there was a bloody eight-year war, in which more than a million people died. Secondly, on 2 August, it launched an unprovoked attack on a small country, occupied it and murdered its citizens. Those are the facts with which we have to deal. Exploring history 20 years back does not touch on that issue.
Mr. Nellist: What about two years ago?
Mr. Hogg: To what is the hon. Gentleman referring?
Mr. Nellist: I refer to the statement made by the right hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave) when he was a Foreign Office Minister. He said two years ago that the Government officially condemned the Iraqi bombing of the Kurds, when 10,000 people died in Halabja. Ten days later, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry rewarded the same Saddam Hussein, who we are now told is such a bad bloke, by extending to him £400 million worth of trade credits. My hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and I are merely showing that two years ago this man was a friend of the Government.
Mr. Hogg: The hon. Gentleman makes my point for me. Saddam Hussein is a brutal man. By reminding the House of his attack, using gas, on his own people in Kurdistan, the hon. Gentleman makes that point crystal clear. It can be seen again in Hussein's conduct in Kuwait. Many hon. Members will have read the Amnesty report; all hon. Members will have read the summary of it. We must face the fact that the people of Kuwait are being subjected to a systematic campaign of murder and pillage. Iraq is in the process of eradicating Kuwait as a state, of brutalising its people and of incorporating that country into its own. That is a sin against international order and morality. We cannot stand back idly and say that there is nothing that we can do because of the ecological consequences.
The debate has been long and I must bring it to a close. There is no doubt that war is unpredictable or that grave damage will be caused. Some of that damage will be to property, perhaps to the oil fields. There may be emissions, dark clouds and other horrors of that sort. We do not know their extent because the assumptions are unknowable and the consequences unverifiable. The imponderables are too great. Which way will the wind blow? We do not know.
All we can say is that war is beastly, and that beastliness must be judged against the political requirements of resisting aggression and supporting the collective authority of the United Nations. On this point, I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Swansea, East. We cannot stand back and declare that these things are too beastly, horrible and difficult and so we shall do nothing. If that were our policy we should certainly revert to a form of international anarchy.
Mr. Dalyell: I do not want to be committed to a policy when we do not know where it leads—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. Mr. Brazier.

Volunteer Forces (Pay and Compensation)
12.37 am
Mr. Julian Brazier: I am most grateful for this opportunity to deal with an issue related to that which the House has just debated. The House has been reminded that, as we approach Christmas, we may also be approaching the prospect of war in the middle east. That is an especially sombre prospect for people serving in our armed forces in the middle east, for those on their way there and for their families. But I have every confidence that they will do their duty, if they have to, in the best possible fashion.
My hon. Friend the Minister knows that, in the short time I have been in the House, I have taken an interest in the terms and conditions of service of our regular armed forces. Tonight, however, I should like to focus on our volunteer reservists, of whom I understand up to 1,500 —possibly more—may be required for service in the Gulf. I want to focus more specifically on remuneration and compensation for members of the volunteer reserves who may become casualties as a result of service in the Gulf or of ordinary training. There is an overlap, because some of the people called up for the Gulf may go elsewhere to take the place of Regulars.
The problem is an old injustice that goes back many years and is best illustrated by describing two incidents that occurred during my service in the Territorial Army. Fourteen years ago, the members of my platoon were climbing from the back of a four-tonner in Norfolk. It was a bright, moonlit night and the vehicle was parked on a broad piece of open road and showing lights, as the rules required. A drunk came driving down the road with his car headlights off and drove straight into the men climbing from the vehicle. He knocked three of them over and forced three more into a knot under the back of the vehicle. One man was crushed against the vehicle and suffered multiple injuries to his legs.
As a result of those leg injuries, that soldier was away from his civilian employment for nearly a year. His employer was a responsible company and said that it would like to make up the difference between the money that he received as a private from the Territorial Army and his civilian pay. He was training for a professional job, and there was a substantial difference between the two rates of pay. When we tried to arrange that, we found that the Ministry of Defence policy, which has remained the same under successive Governments, is that, in such cases, any money that a soldier receives from civilian employment is deducted pound for pound from his Ministry of Defence remuneration. Therefore, that man received no money from the Ministry of Defence during the time that he was away from work.
A similar incident occurred three months ago in the home service unit in which I now serve. One of my best and keenest soldiers, a man in his early 40s who had been out of the TA for some 10 years, decided to rejoin, with the rank of private. He fell on an assault course and broke his arm and will be off work for approximately six months. He had reached quite a senior supervisory level in his civilian employment, but for reasons of safety his job required him to have the effective use of both arms. His employer was willing to pay half his normal salary while he was sick, but because that is slightly more than his pay as a private, he receives no money from the Ministry of Defence.
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With the Gulf crisis looming larger and many hundreds of Territorials required in the Gulf, it is essential for this matter to be reviewed. A few days ago, I quoted to my noble Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces a letter which sets out three basic questions summarising the problem. My hon. Friend the Minister has told me that he has seen that letter. My first question is general and asks whether this system could be urgently reviewed so that injustices can be righted. I understand that there are only a few dozen cases each year and if so, it should not be expensive to put the matter right for all time.
Secondly, there is the more immediate question of what will happen in the meantime to Territorials who find themselves in the position that I have described as a result of having volunteered or been called up for service in the Gulf. For example, let us examine the case of one of my constituents who is self-employed, has therefore a high income and mortgage commitments and so on. He fully recognises that, while he is serving in the Gulf, he will have to accept some cut in income. If he returns from the Gulf with severe injuries and is unable to work for nine months, and if one of his regular contractors is willing to help him out with a payment because of a long-term contract, will the money be deducted pound for pound from his Ministry of Defence salary?
Will this unjust system apply to Gulf casualties, or, indeed, to people who suffer training accidents while filling the place of a regular soldier who is in the Gulf?
My third question is: what would be the position of a Territorial soldier who, rather than merely being off work for a while as a result of an injury, becomes disabled, is severely wounded, perhaps has his leg blown off or is made blind? It is important that we should be able to reassure anyone in that position.
I ask my hon. Friend to bear in mind two categories of people when he considers these questions. The first are those who volunteered before the order was signed. It is important, given the terms and conditions that have been extended by the sensible system that my right hon. Friend has introduced—getting the Order in Council signed, but then asking for volunteers and calling them up—that the guarantees given to such people are extended to those who volunteered before the order was signed. The other category are those who may be injured when filling m elsewhere, although they are not casualties in the Gulf.
I do not want to labour this point late at night. This is not a packed House, and I know that my hon. Friend the Minister is sympathetic, as, I am sure, are all hon. Members who are present. However, it is an important issue. First, it is disturbing for Territorials who are considering service in the Gulf not to know where they stand on these matters. As recently as last Saturday, I was approached by a constituent, who is a nurse in the TA, and who is concerned about this. She is anxious to do her duty, she is worried about the possibility of casualties in the Gulf, and she wants to do her bit out there to help them. She wants to know what her position will be should she volunteer to go out there and become a casualty herself. She is happy to face that risk, but she wants to do so on a equitable financial basis.
I hinted at the second reason at the beginning of my speech. It is the longer-term fact that we are anxious, with "Options for Change", to get maximum value for money out of our armed forces, and this must mean a greater burden falling on the TA. One of the triumphs of the

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Ministry of Defence over the past three or four years has been the successful setting up of the National Employer Liaison Committee, and I pay tribute to the work of Tommy MacPherson and his team. It must be obvious that this is exactly the kind of issue that can only cause friction between employers, who see the Minister of Defence as being unreasonable—it is not just this Government, for the anomaly has existed for a long time—when, if they are willing to put money into the pot, the Minister then removes it.
If we want to make a success of the TA, the small sum of money involved is worth expending, to remove this source of friction for both the soldier and his civilian employer. As it happens, the soldier involved in the incident that I described, who is now recovering from his broken arm, is an exceptionally good soldier. Perhaps as a small compensation for his injury, Corporal Chatterton has been picked out for promotion, and he has bent over backwards to say nothing against the Army or the unit. Nevertheless, it is not right that his fellow soldiers should see him suffering considerable financial hardship because of his injury.
I end where I began: with the possible onset of war in the Gulf, it is important that this small but irritating and worrying anomaly should be ironed out. Territorials who go to the Gulf should not feel that they have an enormous advantage over the Regular Army but it is important that, if there is a great difference between their pay in the TA and their pay in civilian life—perhaps because they have a junior position in the TA and a senior in civilian life—and they are willing to go there and their employers are willing to help out, they will not be penalised financially if they become casualties.
I end with my three questions in reverse order. First, what is the position of the TA soldier or his naval or Air Force counterpart, who becomes permanently disabled? Secondly, what is his position if he becomes a casualty and is off work? Finally, will my hon. Friend urgently review this matter for the long term, so that this anomaly can be straightened out?
12.49 am
Dr. John Reid: The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) delivered his speech with admirable brevity and succinctness. He having demonstrated that self-discipline, I would not dream of making a longer speech. I shall not, however, apologise for intervening in the debate because of the lateness of the hour. It may be 12.49 am here and we may be up late, but there are members of our forces in the Gulf who will be up all night tonight and all night tomorrow night. At 4 am, as it is in the Gulf, they would regard it as less than their due if we were to be apologetic for debating such an important issue at this hour.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Canterbury on raising the matter of the pay and compensation of our volunteer forces. His interest in and knowledge of such matters is well known. I heard testimony of that yet again this evening, when I had the privilege to host a dinner for the second battalion of the Parachute Regiment. The name which came up for mention was that of the hon. Gentleman. It was possible to bring together some old comrades in arms before the debate began.
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I recall that the hon. Member for Canterbury participated in a debate on the Armed Forces Bill on 21 November, which was the first debate in which I spoke from the Opposition Dispatch Box. Like us all, the hon. Gentleman gets the occasional fact wrong, but that does not detract from his considerable expertise and knowledge.
The hon. Gentleman said that he was taking up a narrow or small point. That may be true, but only in the sense that the tip of an iceberg is a narrow or small point. It represents a much larger issue that lies beneath the surface, which is the view that we take of those who volunteer to serve in our armed forces. During a week when events have underlined once again the importance to Britain of its volunteer forces, it is fitting and proper that we should be concerned about the conditions in which they operate and the protection they are afforded by the state.
The issue which the hon. Gentleman has raised is a valid one: why, when people volunteer their services to their country, should they face the prospect of physical discomfort and financial disadvantage? The present position, perhaps by anomaly rather than design, is nothing more or less than a penalty on patriotism. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is possible for a volunteer to give up a highly paid position to serve in the forces. If he is subsequently injured or incapacitated, he can—this has happened to many such people—suffer prolonged financial loss and, in some instances, financial hardship. That is the result of an anomaly in the regulations. Surely that cannot be right. I am glad that the hon. Gentleman suggested that he believes that the Government have some sympathy for his argument. I look forward to the Minister's reply.
I urge the Government to give the matter urgent consideration. I hope that the Minister will, if possible, give specific answers to the three specific questions asked by the hon. Member for Canterbury. For the purpose of brevity, I shall speak only in general terms, but I shall advance three reasons to support my argument, unlike the two outlined by the hon. Gentleman.
First, his case stands on its merits. There is an injustice and, as I have said, a penalty on patriotism, when a man or woman is penalised financially in addition to any injury that he or she may sustain as a result of volunteering to serve in the forces of the Crown.
Secondly, the anomaly requires urgent consideration. At this moment, the Government are urging volunteers to enlist in view of the Gulf crisis. Earlier in the week, they attempted to ease the recruitment of specialist volunteers —many of those people, because of the specialist nature of their jobs, are in highly paid positions in civilian life—by guaranteeing job security. Even on the most cynical approach, the question of recruitment requires immediate attention. The existence of such an anomaly can hardly be conducive to volunteer recruitment during the Gulf crisis.
There is a deeper and more worthy consideration. It would surely be unthinkable that in the awful event of, God forbid, hostilities breaking out in the Gulf, some of those who volunteer and who may be injured might face financial penalties in addition to any personal injury.
I believe that a longer-term consideration is also involved. The outcome of "Options for Change" is still unknown, but one thing is certain—whatever happens, there will be a heavier and increasing dependence on reserve forces. Incidentally, that is something that the

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Labour party has advocated for a number of years. It is therefore essential that barriers to volunteer recruitment, such as that anomaly, are finally swept away.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Canterbury. He and I, and, I hope, the Minister, are tonight speaking of volunteers for our reserve forces, who rarely ask what their country can do for them. Indeed, sometimes they do not even ask what they can do for their country. They just know it instinctively, and they do it. It is fitting that, in the present circumstances, we should ask tonight what we can do for them.
12.56 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. Kenneth Carlisle): It is a great pleasure to reply to this short debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr. Brazier) on raising the matter. We all know of his close interest in matters relating to the terms and conditions of service for members of the armed forces. As a member of the Territorial Army, he is exceptionally well qualified to debate this issue, and he did so with knowledge and sincerity.
I welcome the speech of the hon. Member for Motherwell, North (Dr. Reid) who made some excellent points. He also paid tribute to my hon. Friend.
I wish first to make some general points about terms and conditions in the armed forces, because that will help to place the particular points raised by my hon. Friend in a wider context. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State told the House on 17 December, in order to provide job protection, arrangements have been made, and legal powers taken, formally to call out all those who volunteer to serve under the Reserve Forces Act 1980. We very much hope to meet our requirements for reservists with individuals who express willingness to serve, and that makes it essential that all those who volunteer should have their jobs protected.
Members of the reserve forces are, following call-out, paid the same rates of pay as members of the regular forces, including a full X factor. In addition, they will be entitled to appropriate regular allowances such as separation allowance and local overseas allowance where appropriate. As the House is aware, the Government gave an undertaking that service personnel would not stiffer financially as a result of being sent to the Gulf.
It seemed, therefore, only right and proper that action should also be taken to protect the financial position of members of the reserves who are called out as a result of operations in the Gulf. As my hon. Friend said, in some cases, they will be highly qualified people who receive high levels of remuneration for their work in civil life. Members of the reserves will have arranged their financial commitments, such as mortgage repayments, in the not unreasonable expectation that their earnings would be fairly constant. We therefore concluded that it would not be right for them or their families to suffer in consequence of their decision to volunteer to serve alongside the Regulars.
We are therefore making available a supplement of up to 20 per cent. of service pay, and more in special cases, which will he paid to those members of the Reserves who are called up, in order to make up any difference between their civilian earnings and their military pay which their employers do not make up voluntarily.
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The figure of 20 per cent. was designed to protect the great majority of members from any financial loss as a result of being called up, without going so far as to give an entirely open-ended commitment. But, as I have already said, in exceptional cases we are prepared to consider a higher supplement. [Interruption.] I am sure that the hon. Member for Motherwell, North would like to hear my reply, if the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) would allow him. It is difficult for me to reply courteously to my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury.
I hope that the House will agree that this scheme is designed to provide a generous degree of income protection for all members of the reserve forces who are supporting the Regulars during the current crisis in the Gulf.
The service pay of the Territorial Army volunteers embodied in the Regular Army for service in the Gulf would not be prejudiced if they continued to receive money from their civilian employers. In those circumstances, however, they would be ineligible for the special pay supplement, which relates to the loss of civilian pay. That would also be the case for those volunteers who continue to receive full rates of service pay while recuperating from injuries.
My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury has raised a number of issues relating to members of the volunteer forces injured on active service or in training. I shall, in the time available, deal with them as fully as I can.
Members of the reserve forces who are injured in training—as in the case that my hon. Friend mentioned of training in Norfolk—may be paid a disablement allowance at military pay rates during periods of total incapacity when they are unable to pursue their normal civilian employment as a consequence of their injury.
The allowance is paid in respect of loss of earnings, and lasts until the total incapacity ceases, or up to a maximum of 26 weeks from the date of injury. The rate of the allowance is equal to the military salary for the rank held by the member at the time of the injury, abated, as my hon. Friend said, by any sickness benefit received from the Department of Social Security, statutory sick pay received from his civilian employers and sick pay from public funds. Benefits such as company sick pay are also deducted, because otherwise an individual could be better off sick than working.
Should they remain totally incapacitated after six months, or in the event that total incapacity ceases before the expiry of the six-month period but there is a residual disability, they may claim a residual disability award. Arrangements are made for medical examination in order to assess the extent of the disability. An assessment of 20 per cent. disability or greater provides a weekly pension, while an assessment of lower disability leads to a lump sum payment.
If it is necessary for a member to be medically discharged because of an injury which the Ministry of Defence has accepted as attributable to service, the Department of Social Security is asked to take over the case from the date of discharge. If the DSS decides that the disability is of sufficient severity to warrant the award of a war pension, the Ministry of Defence will award an additional pension under the attributable benefits for reservists scheme.
That additional pension will be made at a higher or lower rate depending on whether or not the member loses his civilian job as a result of the injury. If the member loses

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his civilian job, it will be abated, according to a prescribed formula, in respect of pension benefits received from his civilian employer, but no account will be taken of benefits from personal insurance.
The disablement allowance that I described is designed to compensate for loss of earnings, but I accept that there is an element of rough justice in the system. Some individuals will gain, whilst those with larger civilian salaries will lose if their employers do not continue to pay them in full. However, I assure my hon. Friend that I understand his particular concern over abatement, which he expressed with great force, and my noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces, who has particular responsibility for such matters, will review the rules as far as that is concerned.
I am sure that my hon. Friend's views will be welcome to him in that review, but the Ministry of Defence cannot take into account every shade of disparity in civilian incomes or make exact reimbursement of lost earnings.
Mr. Brazier: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. He has fully satisfied me on two points, and kindly said that our noble Friend will review the third. The problem is that, because it is a pound-for-pound abatement, the employer —if he is to help the man at all—must help by more than the amount that the MOD would pay him, in which case the MOD makes no contribution. That is perceived as extremely unfair.
Mr. Carlisle: My noble Friend will take that point into account.
I naturally hope that employers will support the volunteer forces by granting special leave for training, and sick pay, when necessary. By doing so, they will make a significant contribution to the country's defences. Many already help in that way. In return, they can gain considerable benefits from the valuable training that their employees receive.
The position of members of the volunteer forces who are embodied into the regular forces for active service is quite different. If they are injured, they will either be kept on full pay until they are restored to full health, or they will be medically discharged—in which case, they will be eligible for attributable benefits from the Ministry of Defence. In addition, they will be eligible for benefits under the war pension scheme administered by the DSS. In other words, they will be treated in the same way as members of the regular forces of the same rank, and with the same degree of disability. I believe that the provisions made in those circumstances are not ungenerous. My noble Friend the Under-Secretary will write to my hon. Friend as soon as he can.
In conclusion, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend's efforts in this area, and I assure him that we want to make our arrangements as fair as possible. I hope that he will take comfort from the review of the abatement rules by my noble Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Armed Forces. I will draw the attention of my noble Friend to what my hon. Friend has said tonight, with his usual zest and robust clarity, and I hope that any points that I have not dealt with can be covered in correspondence with him.

Intergovernmental Conferences
1.9 am
Mr. William Cash: About five or six years ago, I became increasingly concerned about the momentum towards what I described in an article in The Times as "creeping federalism". Then, I would have regarded our present situation as almost impossible, as far more progress towards federalism has been made in the relatively short time since I began raising these matters on the Floor of the House than even I anticipated.
In Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass", when Alice says, "But you can't believe things which are impossible," the Queen of Hearts replies, "Nonsense. You just haven't had enough practice. I often believe six different impossible things before breakfast." Impossible things are happening, and it is certainly true to say that one of the aspects of the direction that we are taking that I find difficult to understand is the reason for the next step. I have repeatedly said that I voted for the Single European Act. Although I put down an amendment that nothing in the Act should go against the sovereignty of the United Kingdom Parliament, nonetheless I believe that there were, and are, benefits to be derived from that Act as it was enacted.
However, at a number of meetings with people who know a great deal about this issue, I have had great difficulty in extracting from them—or from any recently produced documents—a reason why we should move to the next steps. It is a source of considerable curiosity to me that, whenever one poses that question, one does not get an answer.
There were good reasons for the establishment of the European Community. In 1951, the European Coal and Steel Community pooled steel and coal for the purposes of rationalisation, but also to prevent a repetition of the second world war. There have been thoroughly understandable and well-explained developments in the European Community since then. However, with the ending of the cold war, the picture has changed significantly.
As I have said on a number of occasions, it is fundamental that we consider what is relevant to the 1990s, and not what was thought to be relevant to the 1950s. Also fundamental questions arise out of the developments that are now taking place. I shall summarise those by saying that they turn on the question of consent and accountability. As I have put it on previous occasions, "Who governs?" And it is not just who governs, but how they govern.
For centuries the House has evolved towards democracy. We had sovereignty in the king and crown, and the divine right of kings until the 17th century. Through the centuries we moved towards a greater emphasis upon consent by the people, and accountability went with it. I am worried that the present proposals for the future of the Community mean that we are envolving away from consent and accountability. The other day, the Bank of England released the statutes for the proposed central bank to me. It is quite clear that hon. Members have a different approach towards government, accountability and consent than others in the Community.
I also believe that we may have got ourselves into difficulties as a result of our traditions—for which we should not apologise, because hard experience over many

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centuries has taught us that our practical and pragmatic approach pays off; nevertheless, the view that if we pass an Act in the House of Commons we shall be able to change it is no longer so valid as it was before the passing of the European Communities Act 1972. Policy options closed following the agreement that majority voting should be allowed, particularly since the Single European Act.
The 1971 White Paper—"The United Kingdom and the European Communities"—was really addressing the question of sovereignty, along with the concepts of consent and accountability and the democracy that is tied up with those concepts. Although some may think that we have agreed to proposals over the past 25 years, those proposals were within a clearly defined parameter. Paragraph 29 states:
"We shall have full opportunity to make our views heard and our influence felt in the councils of the Community. The Community is no federation of provinces or counties. It constitutes a Community of great and established nations, each with its own personality and traditions. The practical working of the Community accordingly reflects the reality that sovereign Governments are represented round the table. On a question where a Government considers that vital national interests are involved, it is established that the decision should be unanimous. Like any other treaty, the Treaty of Rome commits its signatories to support agreed aims; but the commitment represents the voluntary undertaking of a sovereign state to observe policies which it has helped to form. There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty; what is proposed is a sharing and an enlargement of individual national sovereignties in the general interest."
Paragraph 30 states:
"All the countries concerned recognise that an attempt to impose"—
I stress the word "impose"
"a majority view in a case where one or more members considered their vital interests to be at stake would imperil the very fabric of the Community."
That could not have been put more clearly.
It could be argued that time has moved on, that we could draw a veil over all that, and that it really does not matter very much any more; I feel, however, that it probably mattes more than ever now, given the proposals that have been emanating from the Commission about economic and monetary union and political union, and the activities of our friends and colleagues in Europe regarding those matters.
The question of consent to the next step—whether or not it is imposed, and whether or not we are asked to agree to it—goes to the heart of the nature of democracy in this country, our system of government and the kind of Parliament that we have here. I understand that the Government suggested some weeks ago that a public statement would be made, perhaps in the form of a White Paper, and that that may still be in the pipeline. I hope that it is. The consent that will allow the House to continue to deliver the democratic accountability that it has delivered for so long is dependent on whether those who are asked to make the decisions are themselves fully informed, and whether the electorate are fully aware of what is being done in their name.
In recent opinion polls on Europe, only a few weeks ago people were asked whether they wanted more powers to be transferred from national Parliaments to European Community institutions. Sixty-nine per cent. said no. They were also asked whether they were in favour of a European central bank. Sixty-nine per cent. said yes. There is enormous confusion about Europe.
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When my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Sir G. Howe) was Leader of the House, I asked for a White Paper. It is no secret that I made the same request to the Foreign Secretary and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher). In a Bow group pamphlet that I published some months ago entitled, "The Democratic Way to European Unity: Arguments against Federalism", I argued that it was essential that there should be full and thorough public debate of these issues, not only in this country but in all the member states of the European Community.
I am particularly glad that, when my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made his statement yesterday, he referred to the fact, as the presidency conclusion showed, that these matters would have to be discussed and considered before any decision could be reached. For that reason, the outcome of the Rome summit was much better. The objective was no longer being pursued on the basis of threats, but on the basis of discussion.
I do not regard the actions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley as having been in any way misconceived. I do not believe that the present Prime Minister or any of those who have played a prominent part in matters relating to Europe during recent months could have agreed to the fixing of a certain date without a programme having been put before them.
We must be properly informed. The European Commission published its proposals for treaty amendment on 21 October. I am disturbed that it took so long for that information to be made available and that I found it necessary to exert such reasonable pressure as I thought necessary to obtain, a week ago last Thursday, the bank statutes from the Bank of England. I now know that a draft treaty on economic and monetary union has been prepared by the Commission. Reference is made to it in the presidency conclusions which, I believe, contain other material that people ought to know about if they are to form a proper view about what is being done.
For many centuries we have entered into treaties and alliances. There is no mystery or magic about the fact that, for more than 400 years, we have entered into treaties and alliances with our colleagues, and sometimes with our adversaries, in Europe. Therefore, I regard the treaties as a perfectly natural development. However, they are being, and have been, rolled into a legal order, which is quite a different thing. As we move on to the next phase, the mixture of politics and law within that legal framework is giving rise to considerable difficulties.
The House has been primarily concerned with the raising of revenues, the disposal of expenditure, grievance, redress of grievance and supply. The proposals for a central bank go to the heart of democracy and consent. The choice by the electorate—the ordinary men and women of this country—of what economic and social priorities they wish is being taken away from them.
For example, the central bank would be created as a matter of primary European law, which would specifically prohibit either the bank or the Bank of England from taking political instructions from any Government. It would sit in secret, would vote by majority voting and would formulate the monetary policy of the Community, including key interest rates and supply and reserves. The board of the bank would be empowered to give instructions to the national central banks, and its council would have the exclusive right to authorise the issuing of notes within the Community—the only notes to have legal

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tender status according to Community legislation. The bank would be endowed with our foreign reserve assets by the national central banks. The whole would be subject to rulings of the European Court of Justice.
Fortunately, the detailed proposals for a central bank are in the Library for anybody to read. It seems extraordinary that something so fundamental—pages and pages of paper, technicalities and paraphernalia, which are of immense importance to the future running of this country—should be sitting in the Library and not getting the widest possible circulation. It is important that people take on board exactly those proposals amount to. They are not just a pile of paper, but power and authority, and they will affect the running of our economy and of other economies within the European Community. Combined with the information that I have been able to glean from other documents issued recently by the Commission on economic and monetary union, they amount to a totally new type of government for this country, for this Parliament, for our electorate and for Europe.
I was interested to read the letter written by Karl Otto Pohl to the president of the Council of the European Communities, which says that the statute—which I have in here, dated 27 November 1990—
"addresses Stage Three of Economic and Monetary Union".
Then he refers to "this final stage" as the stage which would be referred to the intergovernmental conference. Time and again, we have heard that we shall go from stage 1, to stage 2, and then to stage 3. Why does Karl Otto Pohl refer to stage 3? So far as I can make out from the skeleton papers that I have seen on economic and monetary union, at the intergovernmental conference on EMU we are to be asked to agree to stage 3. That is not how the matter has been presented in the past few months to the House and to the people.
The issue is fundamental and raises the vital question of consent. Therefore, I repeat my earnest request that much more public information should be made available through the media, as well by the Government, to ensure that people know what is involved and the timing of it.
It is perfectly possible that my hon. Friend the Minister will say in reply, "Well, we don't have to worry too much, because we are not going to agree to it.". I understand that argument, but I have heard it before. Were it not for the fact that we have democratic accountability in the House and I am able to ask such questions and obtain the appropriate documents, many things would be approved to which we would not want to agree without prior discussion. The French operate by decree, and I should be surprised if members of the French national assembly had the opportunity to raise such matters in the same way as we do. I suspect that the same applies to other countries —for example, Spain.
Another problem with changes associated with EMU is that there are 12 different constitutions in the European Community. To assimilate all those in one homogenous arrangement to deal with questions relating to monetary, economic and fiscal policy is difficult to comprehend. We should be under no doubt that taxation with reference to the single market is included in the proposals—certainly the Commission's proposals to amend the treaty of Rome, which were submitted on 21 October. There are great advantages to be had from our ability to raise such matters
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in the House. I hope that other countries will be able to observe that, because I doubt whether they are able to get access to such information.
The other day, a French politician had lunch with me in the House. He led me to understand that he and his colleagues could not get their message across on radio or television because of the way in which the media operate. It is difficult for them to have the public debate for which I am calling.
Mr. George Robertson: I am listening with great care, but one thought keeps recurring. If the hon. Gentleman is so worried about what he describes as creeping federalism, why did he vote for the Single European Act? The major decisions that we are now considering are a logical result of the process that was started in that Act. The hon. Gentleman had plenty of time to consider that when the Act was first discussed. If he did not vote against it then, why is he suddenly recounting such alarming scenarios now?
Mr. Cash: There is nothing alarming about the scenarios, but it is important that we know what we are doing and that we inform the public properly about what is going on. After all, the issue of consent depends upon proper information.
I have already explained why I voted for the Single European Act. At the time, I tabled an amendment to the effect that nothing in the Act should go against the sovereignty of our Parliament. The question of federalism is separable from that of majority voting on limited areas of competence which do not go to the heart of government, but deal with those issues which relate to commerce, convenience, competition, and so on, all of which I find perfectly acceptable. We want to co-operate in Europe, to be constructive and to be positive. We want a wider Europe but that is different from dealing with the questions which I address to the House this evening about the nature of government. The levers of government, economic power and monetary policy are different in kind. That is my point. To hand them over to a central institution is creeping federalism, not enlarging the opportunities for people to engage in the market place.
Then there is the question of independence. Article 7 of the central bank's statutes makes it crystal clear that
"neither the European Central Bank … nor any member of their bank decision-making bodies may seek or take any instructions from Community institutions, governments of Member States or any other body."
In other words, the bank would have total independence.
I saw the Governor of the Bank of England a few days ago on Channel 4. I did not think much of any of his other remarks, but he rightly said that the Federal Government of Germany had a degree of political control over the Bundesbank. That arose from articles 3 and 12 of the German Banking Act 1962. The bank has responsibility for currency stability, but that subject to the overall economic policy of the Federal Government. On several occasions—most recently on merger with east Germany —there was a difference of view between President Kohl and Mr. Pöhl, and Mr. Pöhl had to back down. When we talk about the general economic policy of the Federal Government we relate it to the policy of the Bundesbank.
Article 2 of the proposals for a central bank says:
"The primary objective of the System shall be to maintain price stability."
which incidentally is undefined. It continues:

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"The System shall support the general economic policy of the Community."
That raises an important question. Whose economic policy? That of the Community. Who determines that economic policy? Which Government will determine it? Will it be a decision taken by the Council of Ministers? In line with the proposals of the European Commission to amend the treaty of 21 October, is it to be construed as the single institutional structure which is advocated, leading towards single Government and a single Parliament? I do not know the answer for certain, but there is an enormous amount of pressure in that direction. Anyone who cares to examine the nature of the single institutional structure that is proposed should be on his guard about where it will lead.
Once we talk about the general economic policy of the Community and draw on the analogy of the Bundesbank, which is under political control, yet another series of fundamental questions arise about the direction in which we are going. I have confidence that there are others who are alert to the questions that I have raised. I trust that we shall receive all the necessary assurances from the Minister that we shall not be drawn down that path. However, I am aware of the political difficulties which arise as soon as one starts to say, "Yes, we shall exercise the veto,"—as I have asked the Government to do. Not only shall we not have the central bank imposed on us—we may not have it at all. We will not agree to it.
There is another gloss that can be put on the matter. Initial consent based upon information is one thing. It is quite another thing to say, "All will be well. Once the treaties made by prerogative have been implemented by way of the signing of a further treaty, we can go to Parliament to ratify it. We shall therefore have obtained the consent to which the hon. Member for Stafford has repeatedly referred. Everything will be fine." To obtain consent in that fashion is not the same as obtaining consent to an ordinary Act of Parliament because it cuts at the heart of the ability of the House, on behalf of the electorate, to decide matters of genuine sovereignty.
The term "sovereignty" is easily misunderstood; sometimes I would prefer us not to use that expression. The real question concerns the allocation of functions, powers and authority in relation to the main levers of government. That is what it is all about. The House might be asked in future to agree to treaties on economic and monetary union and political union that pull the rug from under the feet of the British electorate. Such decisions can be made only on the widest possible basis of public information and following the fullest possible debate. They certainly cannot be made on the basis on which the Single European Act went through the House a few years ago.
Personally, I would reject the whole thing, because I do not believe that it is sensible. I hardly believe that this is the right moment for us to accept all this paraphernalia. The Bundesbank is driving up interest rates. There is the problem of absorbing east Germany. The amount of money available in the Community will not be as great as it has been. There is a recession and it is not confined to Britain. Problems are growing in France. When binding rules are imposed, capping the expenditure of countries running budget deficits, how will those countries find the money to implement the policies that their electorates require? Such countries could well be faced with civil
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disturbance. We must compare our economy with much more primitive economies in countries that are trying to develop a more up-to-date—
Mr. Robertson: Germany?
Mr. Cash: I am talking about southern Mediterranean countries in particular. They have major problems, and I foresee considerable difficulties ahead if the answer to those problems is to provide them with loans, financial assistance and grants involving the massive transfer of regional resources. I do not believe that the money is there, and I think that the paymasters—particularly in Germany and Britain—would have great difficulty in finding the money or, indeed, the will to provide it.
When we consider political union, we are faced with another series of problems. As we have been trying to sort out our economy during the past eight years, should we agree to the majority voting that is being proposed? I believe that the sort of democratic accountability that determines the policies of this country simply cannot be swept away by engaging in the sort of majority voting proposed in the series of measures put before the presidency in the past week.
A vast range of matters have now been raised. I am sure that the Minister will say, and I entirely concede, that they are preliminary issues with which we shall be presented. We shall consider and discuss but probably reject most of them. But there is a tremendous momentum behind the proposals and the other countries are trying to push us along. I look to my hon. Friend the Minister for some assurance that we will be quite clear in our resistance to that pressure.
The issue of accountability and the relationship among the Members of Parliament, the Minister and the Council of Ministers is real in this Parliament. We have Question Time, Prime Minister's Question Time and Select Committees. There is a genuine involvement and a reasonable scrutiny process in both Houses. We have now set up the three new Committees before which Ministers will appear in the fairly near future to answer questions relating to the European Community.
What a contrast between that process and the conference that the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) and I attended in Rome, where 250 votes were taken in three hours without a word of discussion about any of them. That is simply not the way to run a Parliament. I understand that that organisation, however it describes itself, which I do not believe had any legitimacy or authority, has taken upon itself to present the farcical declaration to the intergovernmental conference as if it had some authority. I was present as a Member of Parliament from this House and was certainly not speaking on behalf of other Members. I hope that the declaration is treated with the disdain that it deserves.
Over and over again the issue of subsidiarity is raised. It is regarded as a critical issue that lies at the heart of the Community's development, but the Minister and the Government must give full attention to that principle, which I do not think is necessary. Articles 2 to 7 of the treaty cover
"The approximation of laws to the extent necessary for the proper functioning of the Common Market."
There is no reason to incorporate the principle of subsidiarity in the treaty, as it already contains those provisions.

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Underlying the blancmange of subsidiarity there is an assumption that the upper tier of government—the macro-economic levers of the central bank and all that goes with it—is already regarded as implicit, and thus not subsidiary. So we shall end up with a meaningless expression that already concedes the tiers of government, which we say we shall not accept, but attaches to economic and monetary union. That would be selling the pass, and it would be unwise and unnecessary.
If people want to amend a treaty, let them get down to discussions. That is a matter of political will, not legal definition. We should put in the words that we want and take out those that we do not. If it is suggested that treaty amendments on the central bank be made now but not come into effect until an unspecified future date, that will not do either. We would then be irrevocably bound to those amendments, as part of the momentum to which I have already referred. We should have no way of ever extracting ourselves from them later. If we are to avoid this, let us not engage in a method of dealing with it which concedes the principle in the first place.
Subsidiarity would also be fatal because of the problem of interpretation by the courts. The courts do not want the concept anyway because it would hand over to them political decisions that they do not want and with which they could not cope. That would be manifest nonsense.
Much of what lies at the heart of the central bank proposal and all that flows from it is based on economic defeatism—we cannot sort out our own problems. We would abdicate our political responsibilities if we engaged in that sort of retreat from the freedoms on which the House has insisted for so long. Our democracy would be —it already is—under serious threat. Elections do not in themselves create democracies. The countries of eastern Europe, after an appalling period of neglect and difficulty, have emerged and had to recreate democracy for themselves. It would be ironic if we went in the other direction.
I have confidence in the Government and in the knowledge that this House will not countenance the proposals now being heaped upon us, but there are tremendous pressures on us to adopt them. The best we can hope for is the belief that we shall be well led in the negotiations, and that recession and Germany's experience of absorbing east Germany may cause EMU to be still born, for the simple reason that it cannot work. If that assessment is fair, it follows that we should try to get that message across to the other member states.
I sincerely hope that the difficulties that I have mentioned will prevent us from being led down a path that will render this House incapable of performing the functions that it has carried out for so long on behalf of the electorate of this country. We have reached the stage at which we should make a decision, and the sooner we grasp the nettle and make that decision the better. We must not allow ourselves to drift inexorably towards the proposals that are in the papers to which I have referred. I look to the Government and the House to protect our people from the difficulties that would arise from following such a route.
1.55 am
Mr. George Robertson: The hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) has entered an area of profound importance and all hon. Members, small as the numbers are in the Chamber, recognise that the issues that he raises are well beyond our areas of interest. This is an absurd and unreal time to debate the matters about which the hon. Member for Stafford in his glory speaks endlessly. It is five minutes to 2 o'clock in the morning, and that is not a suitable time for three exhausted Members to attempt to deal with the subject.
Mr. Cash: Four Members.
Mr. Robertson: I did not count the Government Whip.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Harold Walker): Five.
Mr. Robertson: We should also count the Clerk and other people who are not forced to concentrate on the thinking of the hon. Member for Stafford. The way in which the House organises itself is ludicrous. We should not have such debates at such ridiculous times. The important issues raised by the hon. Member for Stafford should be debated at a more appropriate time.
The hon. Gentleman said that more information is needed about the grave constitutional issues that will arise from the intergovernmental conference. At least I agree with him on that, because there is a sad dearth of information about the European Community. More and more decisions are being taken at European level and it is sad that the amount of information and the dissemination of that which was available in the early days of the debate on the Community is not now available.
The Government should take that on board and, as we enter this new and important phase of the intergovernmental conference, they should look carefully to see whether the Central Statistical Office or the information section of the Foreign and Commonwealth office should provide some stimulus to ensure that our people are made aware of how much is done and how much is expected of Ministers at European level. People should know the precise implications for the constitution and the effect on their daily lives of the intergovernmental conference.
The hon. Member for Stafford looks with nostalgia at these issues. As I said in an intervention, much of what is being considered at the intergovernmental conference is not new or fresh. Much of it flows almost directly from a process that was started by the Single European Act. During the many hours of debate on that legislation, Opposition Members warned Conservative Members that we were embarking on a momentous and different process. Therefore, hon. Members voted with their eyes open, and whether they tabled amendments is almost irrelevant. When they voted for Second Reading, on amendments in Committee and on the guillotine for Third Reading, they knew what they were voting for. Therefore, we should all now be aware that, whether we like it or not, we started a process, and the logic of that is coming home to us.
The Labour party warned of what would happen, and we voted against the Single European Act, but we recognised, once it was in place, that it was part of the treaty, and we had to live with it. We have done so, and we have attempted to find a new role and a new policy that embrace the provisions of the Single European Act and we have tried to live with the logic of it and the mood from then on. To look back nostalgically to the grand days of

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the past, when this Parliament ruled supreme and alone, is to look back to a world that will never be reality again. Whatever side of the House we sit, and whatever side of the argument we take, whether the argument is about political or economic or monetary union, we cannot reverse the process and pretend that we can go back to the days when sovereignty and independence meant something.
Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman must concede that my main point was about consent, and the accountability and democracy that go with it. I am sure that he will not throw doubt on the importance of that, which is at the heart of this argument. Should we not be fighting to ensure that we maintain it, because that is important?
Mr. Robertson: That is the kernel of the hon. Gentleman's argument, although it took him a long time to make it. I agree that the question of consent is an important one, and one to which the House will have to return time and time again. The problem for the hon. Gentleman is that many of the powers over which he waxes eloquent have already left the House. Some of these sovereign powers went by the conscious decision of the House, through the European Communities Act 1972 and European Communities (Amendment) Act 1986. Some have gone by policy decision. Decisions on agriculture are taken at a European level because it was felt that that was better than taking decisions on the domestic level.
Other decisions have gone through force of circumstance. We are considering economic and monetary union, and integration on economic and monetary policies because such decisions are not taken by Parliament, the City of London, or financiers, but at a European level. Economic and monetary union is an attempt by the politicians to take back some of the sovereignty that has been lost because of the change in circumstances. It is right and proper that we are concerned about consent, but it has to be seen in the context of the political framework with which we have to live.
This week, we embarked on the process of the intergovernmental conferences. One of the most distressing aspects of our starting on this process is the fact that the Prime Minister announced to the House yesterday that the Government were ready to table their draft amendments to the treaty so as to embrace their idea of the hard ecu. That is a highly commendable proposition, and I hope that the House sees the draft amendments before they are submitted to the intergovernmental conference, because that was the only assurance that the Prime Minister gave.
Perhaps the Minister will tell us whether the House of Commons, for which the hon. Member for Stafford has been standing up so strongly, will get a sight of the alternative treaty that the British Government already have on the desks on Ministers. Will it be made available to the House of Commons before it is tabled in Brussels in the intergovernmental conference? We have been told by ther Prime Minister that the document exists, that it will be tabled and that it will form part of the general debate economic and monetary union IGC.
The political union IGC started on Saturday as well, and so far we have not heard a word about the Government's agenda for that. Given the nature and importance of the issues and the time scale that is being discussed for that IGC, as well as the obvious need for the
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Government to establish a strong negotiating position at the beginning of the process, we should have as early as possible the formal, concrete proposals that the Government will put to the IGC. There is general concern about that as the process starts, and a question that needs to be answered. Perhaps the Minister will seek to respond and to answer it even at this ungodly hour. I concede, however, that it is perhaps unreasonable to ask him to do so, given the lateness of the debate. If he draws the matter to the attention of the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the right hon. Member For Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones), on his return from Rome, perhaps we shall receive a response through the post.
The hon. Member for Stafford mentioned subsidiarity, a concept which has crept into our language. It was mentioned by the Foreign Secretary in the debate which took place on 6 December. I was surprised that it was. He said that subsidiarity would be raised by the British Government in the IGCs. The right hon. Gentleman said:
"We shall have to look for a way of spelling out subsidiarity in the treaty; then we need to find a way of enforcing it. It will not necessarily have to be enforced by the European Court of Justice; There are other ways of enforcing it.—[Official Report, 6 December 1990, Vol. 182, c. 485.]
Today, at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Minister of State, the right hon. Member for Watford, went beyond that and said that there would be a committee of wise men to decide on issues of subsidiarity.
Mr. Cash indicated dissent.
Mr. Robertson: I see that the hon. Member for Stafford shakes his head. Perhaps he does so in dismay, but I am only reciting the views that have been expressed by Ministers who are members of his party.
An interesting Pandora's box has been opened that contains more than the issues about which the hon. Gentleman spoke. It includes, for example, questions about the internal government of the United Kingdom. Although the Government see subsidiarity solely in terms of a division of responsibility between the Community and national Government, the concept of subsidiarity arose from a debate between the German Lander, with their powers being compromised by a dialogue between the Community and the federal Government of Germany. The Lander wanted a specific notion built into the working of the Community relating to their role within the decision-making process.
The Government are embarking upon a path that will embrace a much wider debate about the way in which our over-centralised country will be governed in future. It is a healthy development, but there is a movement in a direction that the Government have not yet taken fully on board.
Mr. Cash: The hon. Gentleman may be interested to know, and so may my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State, that a paper has recently been written by Mr. Andrew Tyrie, who is now a fellow of Nuffield college, Oxford, and who was a special adviser to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, in which he has vigorously attacked the concept of subsidiarity. He was privy to the papers that I sent to my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) when she was Prime Minister, and the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in April, shortly before the Dublin summit. They included an opinion from a most eminent Queen's counsel in matters relating to European

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law, in which he roundly condemned the concept. There is no doubt, and it is on the record, that it is a highly dangerous concept with which to play around.
Mr. Robertson: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman was talking to me, but I am sure that the Minister will have heard what he said. I am simply drawing the attention of the House to the fact that this is an item that the Government have chosen to put on the agenda for the political union intergovernmental conference. If the Government think, as the previous Prime Minister thought, that subsidiarity would be a way to reign back powers from the Community, they should look carefully at the way in which it is constructed. I hope that areas of this country such as Scotland will be able to find, through the debate on subsidiarity, a role within the developing European Community.
I know that the Minister does not keep up with the Scottish press. Indeed, I am sure that he finds it difficult to keep up with the English—the so-called national—press. If he wishes to take the argument further, he should read the Glasgow Herald and The Scotsman of the past two weeks. His colleagues in the Scottish Office, including a former Foreign Office Minister who has just joined the Department of Transport, have been engaged in a fierce debate about how Scotland should be represented within European Community institutions. The new Secretary of State for Scotland has come down strongly on the side of a robust Scottish presence inside the Brussels hierarchy, articulating a view on behalf of the Scottish Office and Scotland. That contrasts with the view of members of the former team. There is a wide open debate, and it is interesting that it should be the foreign Secretary who has identified it as a major issue.
I am going way beyond the time limit that I originally set myself. I wish to make just one more point, which I think is important. The hon. Member for Stafford mentioned consent, and the power of the British Parliament to call to account Ministers who participate in legislating in the European Community and the Council of Ministers. It is a serious issue. The House recently reformed some of its procedures to accommodate the greater amount of European legislation, and I believe that more will have to be done. We floated the idea of a European Grand Committee, based loosely on the model of the Scottish and Welsh Grand Committees. I still think that it is worth considering that idea, so that hon. Members can fairly and properly deal with the amount of legislation and the amount of activity in which Ministers are engaged.
Some of the practical details of how we come to grips with that are also important. I understand that the Government have now agreed that Members of Parliament will be allowed to telephone at public expense to the European Commission in Brussels and the European Parliament in Strasbourg. It is remarkable that it should have taken so long to agree to that. Given the amount of legislation at European level, to have been prevented even from telephoning those institutions clearly went against the interests of hon. Members and the House.
It is a ludicrous constraint on hon. Members that we are unable to travel to Brussels, where so many activities directly impinge upon our constituencies. It is possible to visit Scapa Flow or to fly to Benbecula or Land's End on
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parliamentary business, but it is not possible for Members of Parliament, including those who have Front-Bench responsibilities, to go to Brussels, where laws are being enacted that sometimes intimately affect the welfare of our constituents.
I visited Brussels on Monday with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and two other members of the shadow Cabinet. Following an important and somewhat controversial Commission meeting, we met Mr. Delors. We also met Commissioners Papandreou, Milian, Ripa Di Meana and others during that day, and we learned in some detail of proposals that will be made within the Commission for future legislation by the Council of Ministers.
It is ridiculous and indefensible that we should have had to scrabble around looking for private funds in order to buy airline tickets to go to Brussels to be engaged in activities that are so directly our responsibility as Members of the House representing people in Britain. I put it seriously to the Minister that those procedures must be looked at as a matter of urgency if this Parliament is to do its job.
The hon. Member for Stafford has raised an important series of issues. I do not share his alarm and despondency about the way in which the debate is going because I believe the there is a mood in Europe that is healthy, inevitable and, in many ways, desirable. But he is right to say that British parliamentarians must make their views known and should have a chance to make their views known. I hope that in the coming months, at a more reasonable time of the day, more Members of Parliament will have that chance, and we shall have a healthier democracy as a consequence.
2.16 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Mark Lennox-Boyd): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) on commanding the attention of the House even at this late hour. It is important that these matters are properly scrutinised, and scrutiny late at night is better than no scrutiny at all. I take issue with the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Robertson) because, although there may not be many hon. Members present, I can assure him that these debates are taken seriously in the Foreign Office and full consideration is given to them in the formation of policy.
Both hon. Members spoke of the need for more information to be published by the Government on all these matters. The Government are considering closely the question of a White Paper. In fact, two White Papers on developments in the EC have already been published and the next one is due in February or March. I hope that that will address some of the major questions under debate in the intergovernmental conferences.
The House will recall the full debate on European Community developments on 6 December before the Rome European Council when many of the points made today were raised and dealt with at some length by my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and the Minister of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Mr. Garel-Jones). I shall deal first with the points relating to the intergovernmental conference on political union.

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The task of that conference is to adapt the Community to the changes taking place in Europe. The United Kingdom will play a full and central part in all the debates on the future of the Community.
Mr. Cash: It was during that debate that I decided that if I was lucky enough to be able to initiate a debate on this occasion I would raise these questions, because we were specifically told then that we were not dealing with the question of economic and monetary union and it was only touched on in the debate. It was for precisely that reason that I wanted to draw attention specifically to that aspect, on the lines that I have done today. However, I detect that my hon. Friend is moving swiftly down the path of political union.
Mr. Lennox-Boyd: As a result of my hon. Friend's rather lengthy contribution, I do not have much time left to make my speech, so perhaps I had better get on or my hon. Friend will have no idea what I have to say.
Our objective is to preserve and to promote the national interest, and to build an open, confident, outward-looking European Community with influence in the world. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that that is in our national interest, as well as in the interests of Europe as a whole. For that reason, we shall enter both intergovernmental conferences intending to make them a success, equipped with our own ideas for bringing about that success, and willing to discuss the ideas of others.
The European Council meeting in Rome on 14 and 15 December agreed conclusions setting out a range of issues that the intergovernmental conference should consider. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at the time, that is a menu. The work of the intergovernmental conference is to decide which items on that menu are acceptable to all delegations.
My hon. Friend rightly made much of consent. He knows that any amendments to the treaty of Rome can be agreed only by unanimity, and will require ratification by Parliament—by this House. The conclusions did not commit member states to accept any particular reforms, nor do they prejudice the outcome of the intergovernmental conference.
As to political union, our objective is to maintain an open, liberal and free-market Community with efficient and accountable institutions. It is important that my hon. Friend should acknowledge that we have our own proposals for revising the treaties to make the Community more effective and shall present them in the course of the negotiations. It is acknowledged by all member states that political union is a process and that it is not appropriate to define the ultimate goal.
Fundamental national identities and institutions must, and will, be preserved. The Government remain firmly opposed to the idea of a federal European Government or a centralised European superstate. As my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary said, the Community is not a glacier which moves inexorably in a preordained direction.
I made mention of next year's White Papers, and I remind my hon. Friend that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister promised to report all matters of substance to the House so that it has an opportunity, during the conferences, to consider what is being undertaken on the country's behalf.
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One of the main issues under discussion is the democratic legitimacy of Community institutions. That is not a matter of the superiority of one institution over another, or of transferring sovereignty from one to another. Accountability in the Community rests on twin pillars. Ministers meeting in Council are responsible to their individual national Parliaments, and the Commission—acting on behalf of the Community—is responsible to the European Parliament. We should like to strengthen the partnership of European and national Parliaments so that they can most effectively ensure democratic accountability in Community processes.
The hon. Member for Hamilton raised the subject of travel and of telephone conversations, and I will ensure that his points are communicated to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, when my hon. Friend the Minister of State wound up a debate some weeks ago, he said that he would be holding wide-ranging discussions in the House about ways in which the House could involve itself directly in the Community on behalf of constituents, and in respect of right hon. and hon. Members' other responsibilities.
There will be wide-ranging discussions on that, and I hope that the points that he has made will be taken into those discussions.
We have proposed that the European Parliament's powers of supervision over the Commission, notably on financial questions, be strengthened. We would like to see a recognition of the important role of national parliaments in scrutinising Community legislation and would encourage the establishment of closer links between European and national parliaments. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford attended the assizes in Rome at the end of last month. Perhaps that was an attempt to make a faltering start and was not wholly successful. We certainly recognise that more ideas are needed.
Some ideas and suggestions were made by hon. Members in the debate on 6 December, and the Government will be following those up. However, we are not persuaded that the legislative powers of the European Parliament need to be strengthened. That would certainly upset the existing institutional balance, which it is important to maintain.
Subsidiarity has been mentioned by both contributors to this debate. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford said, it is a difficult question because it is a mixture of politics and the law. We believe that subsidiarity should be considered most carefully, and should apply in all areas of Community life—not just new areas of Community activity, but existing ones.
The Community should act only where, and to the extent that, it is strictly necessary. I must make one matter fundamentally clear—provided that we can get a satisfactory and agreed definition of subsidiarity, which is the important thing, we shall wish to see it incorporated in the treaty so that it can be most effectively enforced.
I know that the House will support another aspect of the Government's policy, which is to seek better implementation and enforcement of Community legislation in all member states. That is essential if a level playing field is to be achieved. We shall be pursuing the case for strengthening the Court of Justice's powers to ensure compliance, and we shall also be pursuing whether or not

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it should have the power to fine member states for persistent failure to comply with Community legal obligations.
However, we have already made it clear that we are not persuaded of the case for extending Community competence or qualified majority voting. Suggestions have been made by other member states which we shall examine on their merits, on a case by case basis, as will apply to all proposals tabled at the intergovernmental conference.
We believe that it is necessary for the Community's voice to be heard more clearly in the world. Therefore, we support closer co-ordination of the Community's foreign and security policies in political co-operation. The Twelve have already discussed certain security questions, and those discussions will be more clearly defined and strengthened. For example, they will cover work carried forward in the conference on security and co-operation in Europe, and might also co-ordinate policies on the export of arms and weapons technology.
I emphasise, however, that none of that will affect the right of a national Government to take individual initiatives on questions of national importance. Moreover, we consider that defence is a distinct and different matter. There is a clear need to build up the European pillar of the North Atlantic alliance, and that has already been discussed in NATO and in the Western European Union. The matter has also been raised in the context of the IGC, but we do not believe that the Twelve are the right basis upon which to build a European pillar.
Time is short, and I shall move on to economic and monetary union. In this area, our policy remains unchanged. That was clear to our colleagues in Rome last weekend. Even Signor de Michelis, the Italian Foreign Minister, noted as much when he said after the Council hearing:
"British positions are basically unchanged: they are legitimate positions. It's not just London which has differing views."
We shall try to deal positively and constructively with those differences. That is the spirit in which we approached the first session of the intergovernmental conference on EMU last weekend; it was also the spirit in which the Governor of the Bank of England participated in the discussions among central bankers on the European system of central banks. My hon. Friend referred to that. Those discussions were subject to the following reservation:
"The Governor of the Bank of England records that the UK authorities do not accept the case for a single currency and monetary policy."
It is important for my hon. Friend to appreciate that fundamental point.
We have all signed up to stage 1, which began in July. We all agree that the overriding objective in regard to monetary policy must be price stability; we all agree that excessive budget deficits and monetary financing must be avoided. It cannot be doubted that there is common ground, or that we are committed to the process. As my
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right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) has said, and as has been said on many occasions, we have often reiterated our commitment to the progressive realisation of economic and monetary union. That is a wonderful phrase, but what are the next steps in the process?
The United Kingdom has produced comprehensive proposals for the next steps, and—as the House has been told—we shall table draft texts to give our proposals treaty form very soon. Their technical viability has not been seriously disputed by our European colleagues. Politically, we believe that an approach along our lines is the only viable way of moving beyond stage 1. Our approach allows the twelve to move ahead together, working with the grain of the market rather than attempting to distort it by imposition, and working with the assent of national opinion rather than against it.
We need only look at the practical proposals advanced by the Spanish, for example—and by a number of other Community member states which are currently talking in rather vague terms of hardening the ecu—to see that our economic reservations are accepted and agreed with by many and that others, too, are looking for a practical way forward.
With regard to the arguments advanced by other member states about a single currency, we do not believe that this is the right way forward. A single currency would have major costs—the cost of losing national control over monetary policy, the cost of jobs lost and localised depression if the transition were anything other than gradual and market-led, and the cost of paying, in effect, compensation to the peripheral states which would demand it to mitigate the disruptive effects on their economies of such a regime. The Government do not believe that the benefits of the proposal for a single currency outweigh those costs and disadvantages.
Without defining any final structure, however, we think that we can still move ahead to the next stage by establishing a European monetary fund to manage the hard ecu. People would start to use the common currency. The market would then decide whether or not the common currency should become the single currency. It certainly could do so, if that is what peoples and Governments so choose.
The key is not to decide now on what the market will tell us soon enough. It is vital not to run ahead of public opinion, as expressed in this House. Clearly we need to think hard about how to gauge that opinion. Recent debates have made it abundantly clear that the democratically elected representatives of the British people would not support the imposition of a single currency. The speed of progress on monetary issues must run with the market, and with market opinion, rather than against it. We must work with the grain of opinion in the House and in the country at large. There is no need now to bind ourselves to a final destination. The Community's interests will be served by setting up new economic and monetary arrangements for the next steps, which will be evolutionary.

Bristol Channel (Pollution)
2.35 am
Mr. Tony Speller: It is not yet dawn, although it may feel like it, but along the coasts of north Devon, north Cornwall and south Wales people are already at work on the water. I should see, were I in Ilfracombe now—and I wish I were—the lights of the vessels going towards the south Wales ports and Avonmouth and also the lights of vessels coming down the Bristol channel the other way. That waterway is a place of business. Many people live and work on either side of the Bristol channel.
Those of us who represent constitutencies in that area have witnessed with apprehension during the last 15 or 20 years the overdevelopment that has taken place, due to the granting of too many planning applications. That has led to far more sewage and industrial effluent than can be dealt with efficiently. It has to be pumped somewhere. It never occurred to us in years gone by that it would be wrong to empty all our debris into streams, rivers and the sea. Now we are paying the penalty.
I congratulate not just Her Majesty's Government, although they like to be congratulated and in this case deserve it, but the water companies and, in particular, the National Rivers Authority on their realistic views. At long last, money needed for far too long to clean up our waterways has been found for that purpose.
A White Paper entitled "This Common Inheritance" was published in September 1990. It is good to have an overall view of our environmental strategy. The problem is that far too many Ministers have contributed individually to the debate. The White Paper was presented to Parliament by the Secretaries of State for the Environment, for Trade and Industry, for Health, for Education and Science, for Scotland, for Transport, for Energy and for Northern Ireland, as well as by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and the Secretaries of State for Employment and for Wales. That accounts for 11 members of the Cabinet. Too many cooks have had to say something about the problems that face this narrow waterway.
This beautiful, busy waterway begins in the east at Bristol and I can clearly see beautiful south Wales from the hills in my constituency as I look over the Bristol channel. On the south side of the Bristol channel we have north Devon, north Somerset and north Cornwall. It has taken me a long time to study and determine which problems can be sorted out, if not during the lifetime of this Parliament certainly during the lifetime of the next.
Britain is not lagging behind in the clean-up race. Our problem is that, being an island, we have proportionately greater problems cleaning up the water, because we have used that water as our dustbin and cesspool for so long. In the old unenlightened days, when we had no thoughts of conservation, we had an effective system for getting rid of refuse into the water. Now, the sheer volume of refuse going into the water has overstretched and overfilled the waters of the Bristol channel.
The Bristol channel is a maritime cul-de-sac. Unlike the English channel, where the water sluices through twice a day on the tide, there is no sluicing effect, although every Minister appears to have heard of the Severn bore. We have a huge rise and fall in tides—up to 36 feet twice a day at Ilfracombe—but it is a huge up and down movement,
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not an in and out movement, as everyone assumes, and thereby hangs our problem. If this huge tidal range whisked everything away, all the theories would be wonderful, but it does not work that way.
I wish that I could play the tape of an elderly gentleman who spoke to me at length and told me that, if a body went into the water off Hartland, he would know where it would appear a day or two later, depending on whether there was a neap or spring tide and on the other variations in the water which only a local person would know. To my abiding sorrow, some people have drowned in the area in the past year or so. Often, that drowning appeared to be the result not of a lack of ability among the people who have the machinery to call for help but because people did not have the local knowledge of where a body or perhaps a boat would float.
It is wrong to assume that, because the tide goes up and down, it goes in and out. It does so on the beach, but not in the Bristol channel. Eddies of filth go round and round for days and although computer forecasts tell us exactly what will happen in the ideal world, they do not allow for the changes in the tidal pattern every day of the year.
The Government have attacked the problem and have accepted it. I am delighted about that, although I feel that too many Ministers are involved for our small waterway.
Statistics in the White Paper show that 96 per cent. of properties in England and Wales are connected to the sewage system—the highest proportion in Europe and that is very good. Eighty-three per cent. of sewage is treated inland. I suppose that that is good, but a lot of the muck from inland makes its way into our coastal waters. According to the White Paper, Britain disposes of 17 per cent. of its sewage by discharging it into the sea, mainly from coastal towns. If 17 per cent. of sewage goes into the sea,it is no surprise that 24 per cent. of our bathing waters do not comply with European Community regulations.
Mr. Donald Anderson: I must give the hon. Gentleman a personal anecdote for his valuable exposition. As a boy, I collected cockles on the beach at Swansea directly opposite Ilfracombe and ate them with my family. No one would dare do that now, as it would have the most awful consequences.
Mr. Speller: The cockles were much better on our side of the water. They were sold to visitors, who said, "They are marvellous." As the hon. Gentleman will know, in the past the more sewage that was discharged into the sea, the bigger the cockles were. The water may have had natural sewage in it then, but now it has a lot of unnatural sewage—effluent and traces of cadmium and of all the chemicals that are used in industrial processes in south Wales arid Avonmouth. As we dispose of more sewage into the water, and as we allow so much planned overdevelopment, so the problem becomes worse.
The shape of the waterway is important. I am the chairman of the all-party alternative energy group and I should love to see a Severn barrage built. However, were it to be built in the next few years, the area between it and Bristol would get in the "Guinness Book of Records" as the biggest cesspit in the world. I believe that a treatment plant is about to be built at Avonmouth. Although some might get indignant and say how wicked it is that it was not done earlier, we have now accepted the problem. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister can tell me about some of the remedial things that will be done by Wessex Water,

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Welsh Water and South West Water. None of the water authorities is the villain of the piece; they are all using old technology to the best of their ability.
Given the intervention from the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), it is right that I should recount some of the complaints that led me to make my speech. In May 1988, I had a debate on a similar subject, which was then answered by the Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. I am happy that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment is answering tonight. Whether one likes it or not, his Department must pull together all the various strings that relate to our waterways.
I have with me a few examples of the large volume of correspondence I have received, which typify the problems encountered by individuals and groups. Such letters have caused me to intensify my crusade to do something positive about our channel.
One letter came from a tourist from Northampton. He complained about the disgusting state of the sea and the lack of signs to warn against swimming in it. I do not look forward to the day when there are warnings against swimming, as that would do the tourist industry no good. Thankfully, we have not reached that stage, but there are dangers and we need no signs to notify people of them.
The gentleman wrote to say that he had contracted middle ear disease from swimming in raw sewage. He said that the sea was too dangerous to swim in and that he would no longer holiday in the area because the water was not fit to swim in. He is not over-egging that pudding: without doubt, a problem arises at certain times when so much sewage seeps into the sea around high tide.
The principle is simple. Sewage is collected in the old-fashioned way, in the old tanks. As the tide rises the non-return valve of the tank opens. The theory is wonderfully simple—the sewage should be sucked out on the ebb tide beyond Lundy to southern Ireland, where it becomes their problem. But it does not happen that way, because, especially on the neap tides, the sewage ends up coating the local sand below the extraction point. That is not a sensible system, although, strangely enough, we did not object to it for many years.
Another complaint came from an excellent modern holiday camp. The management wrote to say that it was not right that tourists should visit the camp and go home with mild symptoms of illness because of the cosmetic light—much of it is cosmetic—of faeces in the water.
The sub-aqua club based in Ilfracombe is worried about plans for long sea outfalls. The club caters for people of all ages and both sexes and it has been operating for many years. I go back to the days when sub-aqua diving meant a face mask and a snorkel, but things are far more developed now. The club secretary wrote to me about the underwater conditions in the Bristol channel and said:
"We have noticed over the last few years that the underwater visibility has been getting progressively worse."
He said that the club had shortened its season of diving from April to November down to June to September and that, even at the height of the season, visibility was never as it had been three to four years ago. Under the water in some parts of the channel, club members pass enormous foul-smelling slicks of apparently untreated effluent; and they can be found in nearly every part of the channel. There is a corollary to that; the letter continues:
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"We have noticed a decrease in the amount and variety of sedentary marine life"
It is noted that, even around Lundy, which was specifically created as a maritime nature reserve some 10 years ago, the amount of sea life has gone down and the amount of pollution has gone up.
The club continues:
"There is a foul smelling, slimy, brown silt covering every underwater surface".
I draw attention to that phrase because half of our problem is that there are two problems. The obvious problem is that of sewage—I am sorry to take the time of the House on such an exciting subject—leaking into the water from the various pipes from towns and villages. The greater problem has nothing to do with raw sewage. It is caused by dumping sewage sludge 11 miles off Ilfracombe, mostly from Wessex Water.
In the House I could not use the language that my fishermen use about the treated effluent that comes from Avonmouth. The rough-treated sewage sludge looks rather like shiny brown sand—for want of a better word. When it is dumped, it sinks and coats the sea bed. That is the major environmental problem. Everyone thinks that the sewage coming out of the pipes is the main problem, but it is only the half of it. This is what causes men, women or children to have tummy upsets. But the problem for maritime life is the dumped sewage sludge which covers the sea bed.
Each year I buy for very special members of my family a little smoked salmon from a particular retailer on the north Devon coast. About eight hours ago, I was speaking to the retailer. She told me that they had sold their fishing boat because there were no bottom fish left, which means fish such as plaice and skate or what we might call flatfish.
The fish are not there any more because the vast amount of dumped sediment has covered their sea bed habitat. We have two halves to our problem—the dumping of large-scale sewage sludge and the oozing in of local sewage, for want of a nastier word. That family has been fishing for three generations off Appledore and Barnstaple bay.
A surfing instructor wrote to me saying:
"I am writing to express my concern about the pollution", and enclosed some photographs.
"These shots show women's sanitary towels etc., etc., in rock pools and gullies where children play.
"I myself am a surfing instructor … I teach young people to surf."
He said that he was worried about their catching infections. And so the sad saga of complaint goes on.
The Ilfracombe angling club took a slightly different line. It said that there is a great deal of marine debris, including old nets and plastic, so that all the debris of mankind is added to the sludge and sewage dumped in the sea. The secretary mentioned that the club's motto is "Conserve, protect and promote". Perhaps Members of Parliament for the area might adopt this.
The last but one of the points made by my constituents was put by a gentleman with a marvellous Devonshire accent who spoke to me on tape. He said that the problem with the authorities was that they knew everything in theory but not a great deal in practice. He was not unkind to them. He said that they were good, well-intentioned, knowledgeable people who sought to help. I stress that we are well served in the south-west by our water companies and the National Rivers Authority. The old gentleman made a point that I made earlier—that the tide does not go

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in and out with a great big whoosh that cleans out all the area. He says that, if one lets a vessel drift in the water, it will not go right out with the tide and come back on another tide: it will go out some way with the waves and eddy around. So, too, does all the mess in the water.
In our part of the world, we like to think that we are green all the way through. Some of my green friends wrote to me about the plastic that holds six-pack beer cans together. They sent pictures of sea birds which had got the non-biodegradable plastic stuck around their necks and been drowned. We are a thoughtless people when it comes to our recreation.
I can now identify the four specific problems: the sewage sludge, the raw sewage which oozes out from the drains, the debris of our plastic civilisation and the danger to wild life, caused by propellers, old fishing nets and lines. It causes a nuisance also by wrapping itself around the propellers of boats. We must consider carefully what people throw into the sea.
It is not against the law for a boat going up the Bristol channel to pump out its tanks. Interestingly, last year the port of Bristol—Avonmouth—had a notice on the docks asking people to discharge their refuse there but stating that a charge would be made. If one charges a chap for the collection of his refuse, he is liable to dump it somewhere in the channel. That is another pollution which has happened.
Having set out the nastier side of our problem, let me deal with what I call the winners and the losers. One of our two major problems is the quality of our bathing beaches and of the water itself. In respect of our bathing beaches, there is an easy set of winners—the blue flag winners. The trouble is that there are only four blue flags along the stretch of coast with which I am concerned, which shows the local gravity of the problem.
Hoteliers and tourist operators throughout the country will be quick to say, "We have a blue flag; come to us," meaning, "They haven't got a blue flag; don't go to them." But the blue flag is not an absolute standard. I doubt whether many hon. Members realise that the blue flag is a snapshot taken at an instant in time—the day when the tests are taken.
My constituents know that the pollution on a beach depends on whether the tide was high or low that day and on weather conditions. People who keep their beaches clean and are awarded a blue flag may be horrified to find that they do not get one next year. They will wonder why, and there may be great upsets on the local council, but, in essence, the blue flag system is a "spot the winner" campaign. It has nothing to do with who will win the league and is more like the FA Cup than the League.
I have a list of the winners, most of which are beaches on the south coast of Devon where the channel does the sluicing job which the Severn estuary and the Bristol channel does not do. On the other side, we have the list of shame. It is not a list of true failures, because many beaches that have failed the blue flag would not have failed had it been taken the next day, while many of those that passed might have failed on the following day.
Let me concentrate on the area that I know best. Fourteen points of discharge around the north Devon coastline are approved and licensed by South West Water. Let me tell the House the amounts of crude sewage that are licensed to go into the water from various locations: 50 cu m; 2,500 cu m; 2,400 cu m; the crude sewage from a hotel—I do not know how much that is; crude sewage
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from a population of 6,000; sewage from a lighthouse and sewage from a cottage. Then we have: 5,000 cu m; 220 cu m; sewage from a holiday park; sewage from another holiday park, 800 cu m; sewage from a Christian holiday park, and 953 cu m from a village. A cubic metre is quite a lot and all that sewage is legally licensed to go into the water along one relatively small stretch of coast. The same applies in the counties adjoining mine and the counties across the water in the Principality.
I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us what it is proposed we should do, but before he does that, let me tell him what I should like him to do. The first and simplest step concerns the dumping of sewage sludge. We have agreed with the EC regulation and law saying that this must stop by 1998. I hope that the Minister will be able to give us a date much sooner than that. My friends in the National Rivers Authority tell me that it could well be ended by 1993. It would be a great step forward if we were two or three years away from ending the dumping of sewage sludge. I hope that we can work along those lines.
Sewage sludge has to go somewhere, however, and that is also our problem. Two days ago, North Devon district council turned down on environmental grounds a planning permission application for a wind generator. It is a bit rich for a council to reject a clean, renewable source of energy on environmental grounds, but it shows that all of us worry what will be built in our own locality. Somewhere along the line, we shall have to deal with sewage sludge. The most logical way is by incineration—the method chosen by South West Water and, I hope and believe, by Wessex Water. The authorities always tell us that 95 per cent. of sewage sludge is made up of water so that if one boils the water off, only 5 per cent. is left.
Let us be not mealy-mouthed but brave when it comes to saying, "When they change the system, they must also will the means and the powers to have treatment on land." No one on land will want to have what used to be called a sewage farm adjacent to his property. As with the wind generators I mentioned, councils and the national Government must give guidelines on where water companies will be permitted and encouraged to dispose of sewage. It is no good saying, "You must stop doing this" if one does not say, "You may do this instead".
When the main dumping of sewage sludge ends, marine life will surge back up the channel. We do not see porpoises—although I believe that two have been seen recently somewhere off Lundy—and whether we still get the odd dolphin, I do not know. In years gone by sea mammals were to be seen everywhere. The lady who sold her fishing boat sold it because there are no bottom fish. There are no sea mammals to be seen any more, but there should be and they will come back. If we can clean up the Thames, we can certainly clean up the Bristol channel.
The other major problem is the leaching of sewage in smallish quantities—penny packets—from so many outlets all along both sides of the coast. I congratulate South West Water, which now, after probably the best privatisation ever, is goaded and rightly looked at by the National Rivers Authority. Of its own free will, the authority is determined to solve the sewage problem in my part of the world, but that is only a small part of the whole.
The logic is simple—the authority will put collector pipes along the back of the coast where, at present, relatively small dribbles go into the sea; it will collect them, treat them and, presumably, incinerate the refuse. There is no problem about doing that, except for the cost. It can be

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done, but it is not the responsibility just of the water company or even of the district and county councils that share responsibility for the disposal of waste and the granting of planning permission. We must encourage and allow disposal sites on land. If we do not treat our sewage on land, we shall sooner or later destroy our marine environment and, rightly, be penalised for disobeying the European Community's codes.
I do not seek villains, because there are none. Everyone means well and seeks to do well. I can speak only for my district. In days gone by, we had a good water authority. Now there is a water company and a rivers authority which work well together—it is a joy to see how well they do so. We, the individual water users, must pay—nothing is cheap in this world, and pay we must.
When it comes to getting our act together, the Department of the Environment is the right Department to look after our side of things. I am delighted that tonight's debate is being answered by a Minister from the Department, rather than by an Agriculture Minister.
Sooner or later, one Department should hold all the powers. At present, the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food gives the licences for dumping, while permission to allow sewage into the sea is granted by the Department of the Environment.
When the sewage outlets are no longer used, how much industrial effluent will there be, because the Severn and the Bristol channel are industrial districts? It is no good saying that it should be blue in the water and green in the environment, if that means that the industries of Avon and south Wales have to close. I am delighted to say on behalf of the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith), who cannot be here this evening, but is part of my cross-party, cross-channel alliance—because this is not a party political matter—that, at Lavernock point, which serves the west of Cardiff, the outfall of raw sewage is to be replaced with a long sea outfall. That is the bad news, because the problem with long sea outfalls is that they point from south Wales towards north Devon. Meanwhile, we also have long sea outfalls which point from north Devon towards Wales. If we are not careful, they will meet in the middle and the centre line of the channel will be the recipient of all the sewage. Everyone will say, "We have cleaned your beach", but will not say that we have mucked up someone else's beach on the other side of the water.
The hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan then gave me the good news—that a secondary treatment works will be put in place. That is the right answer. It is certainly not enough now, and never has been, to treat sewage only once—which means only chopping it up and taking the lumps out. The coastal tourists and residents deserve at the very least a clean sea and environment.
Tourists complain not about sludge on the sea bed that is the fishermen's complaint—but about faeces in the water. Sludge and sewage are equally damaging and both should be treated on shore. Wildlife and the human race both need a clean environment. We build better roads, at great cost, and we subsidise railways to help our countrymen and women to visit the coasts, only to repel them with pollution in the water and a sore throat to take home.
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I warn of the NIMBY factor. I understand people who say that they do not want refuse or sewage incinerators in their areas. It is not enough to stop polluting the sea; we must not pollute the land either. This is where the major problem may arise. We all accept that the Bristol channel must revert to what it used to be: a beautiful place of business and of leisure—a place to which those who, like me, have lived all their lives in Devon, would like to take our children and grandchildren to play in the water in safety and without fear of sickness.
I do not like the fact that beaches are often fouled with dog mess and with the mess of humanity coming back from the sewer on to the beach. We can stop this and I hope that the Minister will reassure me that we will. I do not know when I shall be lucky again in the ballot—whether in 12 or 18 months' time—but I will continue to press on in the right direction.
I have three major wishes for the future of my constituency. One relates to roads and another to the continuation of the family farm, but I shall not bother the House with those two now. The third is that we must clean up our coast, so that in due course we pass on a clean coastline and a pure water supply. That is not an ignoble aim and it is one which I aim to achieve within my parliamentary life.
3.5 am
Mr. Win Griffiths: I congratulate the hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller) on having the perseverance to stay here until the early hours of the morning so that we might have this opportunity to debate the serious pollution in the Bristol channel. I thought that there was an element of contradiction in what he said, however. He congratulated the Government, the water companies and the National Rivers Authority at the same time as pointing out the real problems which still exist despite the Government's having been in power for more than a decade. The water companies and their predecessors, the water authorities, have been in existence since 1974 and the only new element is the recent privatisation of those authorities and the introduction of the NRA. I hope that there will be much more rapid and dramatic improvements now than there have been in the past decade. The hon. Gentlemen's remarks reminded me of a policeman who regularly stops an old car and congratulates its driver on having only two bald tyres whereas a month before he had four.
As the hon. Gentleman said, there is a serious problem. While there have been improvements, the problem shows no signs of being resolved quickly enough. The part of the south Wales coast that can be described as the coast line of the Bristol channel—as far as Port Eynon bay on the Gower, beyond which we move into the wider sea—has 15 designated beaches. In 1986, 12 failed and three passed. In 1987, eight failed and seven passed. In 1988, six failed and nine passed. Last year, five failed and 10 passed. Those figures relate to tests for E. Coli and all coliforms.
The 1989 figures for salmonella show that 11 beaches failed and only four passed. Judged on enterovirus, four failed and 11 passed. Tested for faecal streptococci all 15 designated beaches from Jackson bay in Barry across to Port Eynon bay failed.
The hon. Member for Devon, North spoke about blue-flag beaches, of which Port Eynon is one. In 1989, 19 non-designated beaches interspersed with designated

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beaches were sampled; nine failed and 10 passed. The situation in the Swansea bay area was so serious that in January last year Swansea city council lodged an official complaint with the European Commission asking it to take the Government to the European Court of Justice for failing to comply with the 1976 bathing water quality directive. The Government should have complied with that directive by 1986. This year in the Swansea bay area, bays such as Langlend, Liverslade, Bracelet, and West Pier slip all failed the salmonella and enterovirus tests. Mumbles pier, Mumbles slip and West Pier slip all failed the E. Coli and coliforms tests.
In the west country, untreated sewage is discharged from three short outfalls at Portishead Burnham, Blue Anchor and Watchet. Untreated sewage passes through storm drains and overflow pipes at Pill and Clevedon South beach. Industrial waste is discharged from short outfalls into the Kings Weston Ryhne. There is screened sewage from long sea outfalls at Minehead and Portbury and what is described as settled sewage is discharged from the Avonmouth sewage treatment works. Chopped, cleaned and chlorinated sewage is discharged at the short sea outfall from the Blackrock pumping station which, in effect, is Weston-super-Mare sewage.
More than 100,000 tonnes of sewage sludge per year is dumped further out at sea by Wessex Water. River Avon untreated sewage sludge is pushed into the estuary at short outfalls at Pill and Avonmouth. Storm overflows, which are not measured, add to the problem. Between Cleveland and Blue Anchor bay there are 10 designated beaches. The E. Coli and coliforms tests show signs of improvement, but the results are a little up and down. Four failed in 1987, seven failed in 1988 and six failed in 1989. As the hon. Member for Devon, North said, the results depend on which day the samples are taken. Perhaps because of the day on which samples were taken, none of those beaches failed the E. Coli and coliforms tests. Three of them failed the enterovirus and salmonella tests.
Wessex Water aims to comply with the directive on its side of the Bristol channel; and on the Welsh side, Welsh Water aims to comply by 1995. There seem to be some problems because the Minister told the House on 14 November that present indications are that 1995 may not be a practicable deadline for nine large schemes on which there are major technical difficulties. That was for Wales as a whole, but some of those schemes were along the Bristol channel coast.
The hon. Member for Devon, North referred to industrial waste and said that the Bristol channel was a cesspit for south Wales and the west county. He might like to know that, in 1988, the Welsh water authority published information on inputs into the Severn estuary and the Bristol channel at the end of the 1970s, of heavy metals and other similar contaminates. It showed that, per day, 13.3 kg of mercury, 62,000 kg of iron, 1,150 kg of lead, 2,780 kg of manganese, 464 kg of nickel, 5,160 kg of zinc, 61.6 kg of cadmium, 224 kg of chromium and 621 kg of copper were dumped, although many of them are serious pollutants.
In 1984, a report by Morlais Owens, who at that time was the assistant director of scientific services for the Welsh water authority, was published. It was about the Severn estuary and appraised the water quality there, dealing partly with what would happen if the Severn barrage were built. It pointed out that a great many water-borne pollutants were brought into the Bristol
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channel and the Severn estuary by the rivers, including both industrial and domestic discharges. He also pointed out that atmospheric deposition contributed the greatest proportion of lead and zinc—58 and 42 per cent. respectively, as well as 21 per cent. of the cadmium, 19 per cent. of the copper and 12 per cent. of the nickel.
Mr. Speller: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is bringing in many more points than I thought that. I should have time to make. Does he agree that the discharge of much of the metallic and other industrial pollutants could be cut if the sludge being dumped from the Bristol side and the Welsh side were dumped further out? The hon. Gentleman might take that suggestion to his friends at the Welsh water authority and suggest that they steam a few miles further west. I should be most pleased if they would.
Mr. Griffiths: The further we go from the coastlines, whether on the Welsh or the English side of the channel, the more the pollution in the main body or the channel is minimised. The hon. Gentleman has pointed out that by far the best solution is to end the dumping of sewage sludge as quickly as possible, and I shall return to that point.
While I agree that the pollution is mainly caused by the sewage brought into the Bristol channel, I should mention the report published last week by Friends of the Earth. It was damning about many sewage treatment works in England and Wales, bearing in mind that, on privatisation, almost 20 per cent. of some 6,500 sewage treatment works had already been given relaxations as they were breaking the law. Despite that, there are still hundreds of sewage works in the United Kingdom breaking the discharge regulations. We know that the National Rivers Authority has been sadly hampered by the way in which the law has been constructed. It has to produce a mass of bureaucratic evidence, tied up in the red tape that the Government claim to abhor, which makes it difficult to bring prosecutions. In Wales, 69 of the treatment works were breaking the regulations. When the NRA was created, Lord Crickhowell told us that the Government were creating the strongest environmental agency in Europe. Alas, it has proved to be hamstrung by the Government's legislation.
We know that Welsh Water has a licence to dump up to 55,000 tonnes of sewage sludge and Wessex Water has a licence to dump about 300,000 tonnes. We know, too, that many licensed allowances are being taken up. Some interesting figures were published in a parliamentary answer earlier in the year. In 1979, the total dumped was as high as 358,000 tonnes. It increased to 393,000 tonnes and then started to decline. There was a fall to 328,000. In 1983, it had fallen to 230,000. It then increased to 305,000 before there were falls to 259,000, 257,000 and 238,000. Was it being stopped? The answer was no. In 1988, it was 275,000 and last year it had increased to 306,000. That was the amount of sewage sludge dumped in the central part of the Bristol channel.
There is some controversy about whether the dumping has damaged the aquatic environment. The hon. Member for Devon, North thinks that it has and I tend to agree with him. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, however, says that the balance has not swung that way. Considerable research has been undertaken in the North sea. Both the United Kingdom and Germany have

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published the results of their North sea research for consideration by the Oslo commission. The German bight studies have shown that the bottom fauna, on which fish life often depends, began to be impoverished in 1969. By 1977, the Germans were recording an increased prevalence of fish disease. In 1981, they stopped dumping as a precautionary measure. We know that there is still a difference between the United Kingdom authorities and the Germans on the exact impact of sewage dumping at sea.
Wessex Water is committed to end its dumping by 1993, and all strength to its elbow. One of the ways in which it will deal with the sludge is to have it dried and pasteurised, using methane generated by the sewage treatment process. It will produce a soil additive that will be a peat substitute. That will be environmentally sound in so many ways and valuable peat bogs will be saved as well.
German research on the dumping of sewage sludge shows that is definitely blights the bight, so what deadlines have our Government set themselves? Welsh Water is committed to 1995 while other water companies have a slightly earlier deadline. It seems that 1997 is the latest date. I understand that tomorrow, or later today, the Minister for the Environment and Countryside will be meeting the Vice-President of the Commission, Carlo Ripa di Meana, who is responsible for environmental matters, to persuade him that the Government are doing everything possible to comply as rapidly as possible with the requirements that have been accepted. Yet there is so much evidence to show that they are not.
Only last week there was the scandal of Welsh Water deciding to use £31 million to buy into the South Wales electricity distribution company. Does that show that priority has been given to public health so that there is compliance with the European Community directive on bathing water quality, which was introduced in 1976? It does not. As I stated in a letter to the Vice-President of the Commission, which I hope that he will take into account when he meets the Minister—I faxed it to him today and he will have it for the meeting—Welsh Water has shown that it attaches greater priority to buying electricity shares to boost long-term profitability for its shareholders, at the expense of its customers, than to the 1976 directive. That £31 million is not far short of the total amount that Welsh Water spent in the previous three years trying to deal with the pollution problems of its sewage outfalls. In fact, it spent £41 million, three quarters of that being spent on buying electricity shares. Why could not Welsh Water use that money, or at least a part of it, to speed up compliance with the directive?
The sewage treatment works are breaking even the relaxed standards that they were given on privatisation. Does that show priority? It does not. Another serious problem concerns the National Rivers Authority budget. The NRA's published corporate plan for 1990–91, says that in 1991 it will need grant in aid of £119 million if it is to carry out its work anywhere near effectively. On 14 November, the Government announced that they were increasing their grant in aid to the NRA, but only to £106 million. That was a substantial increase over the previously published figure, but it is still £15 million short of what the NRA felt that it required.
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The corporate plan shows that even that figure is below what the NRA needs. It has warned that considerably more expenditure will be needed if water quality improvements are to be secured at a reasonable pace. It says that significant amounts of investment are needed to reduce pollution levels over and above current estimates of expenditure, along with increased monitoring and regulatory activity by the authority in order to achieve the authority's mission to reduce pollution substantially and improve water quality.
Even the £119 million that the NRA wanted in grant aid was not sufficient to translate those wishes into the necessary figures for the budget. Once again, the Government's grant in aid was short of what the NRA required. Does that show that priority is being given to the problem? It is true that matters are improving and that more money is being spent, but we must ask whether it is sufficient.
One or two other problems have not yet been mentioned. They have nothing to do with sewage, but they could result in bad pollution of the waters of the Bristol channel. Recently my hon. Friend the Member for Newport, West (Mr. Flynn) tabled several questions about the collision of two boats—the Marias AS and the Bell Ranger just off Newport on 24 April. One of the boats contained what was rather whimsically described in the first answer as drums of chemical waste. When my hon. Friend pressed the issue, the Minister admitted that the drums of chemical waste were classified as a toxic substance. As it happens, on this occasion the damage was not serious as the drums did not split open. However, we have only to think about what happens when dangerous chemicals get into our rivers to be able to imagine the sort of impact that that accident might have had on the Bristol channel.
There have been other incidents over the years. Last year, in a storm, a ship had whipped off its decks tanks and drums of various chemicals and contaminated vegetable oil, some of which landed on a beach in my constituency in Sker. I understand that on that occasion even more of the drums ended up on beaches in north Devon. I am told by the Ogwr borough council, which looks after the coastline of my Bridgend constituency roughly from Sker Point to just beyond Southerndown—another magnificent beach, fortunately not badly polluted—that it has from time to time had oil spillages to deal with along that coastline. Fortunately, they have been minor, but the council's technical officer said that he is always conscious of the threat of a major incident.
There nearly was such an incident at Barry dock recently when a Geest banana boat had an oil discharge within the harbour. It was noticed before the boat sailed and the NRA was able to come along and deal with it, but if the boat had left the harbour there could have been serious contamination of the coast. As the hon. Member for Devon, North pointed out, my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Mr. Smith) has been conscious of the pollution incidents and the need to clean up the coastline of the Bristol channel to enhance tourism and related business, which will help to revive the flagging economies on both sides of the channel.
We must also consider river pollution. In the report to which I have already referred on the Severn estuary, it was pointed out that most of the pollution came through the rivers and the sewage outfalls into the sea. Let us consider

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what happened in the rivers on the south Wales side of the coastline. In 1989, 21 km of the Rhymney river were polluted and nearly 20,000 fish were killed.
In 1988, 7 km of the Taff were polluted and 7,000 fish were killed. On the Ebbw, there was a spillage from the Ebbw Vale steelworks. Luckily, the NRA took quick action and neutralised the acids by putting lime in the water and no fish were killed. On the Ely, more than 9,000 fish were killed recently. In the Llwchwr estuary and Swansea bay there has been massive lugworm mortality, probably because of toxic algae. On the Ogmore river, in the constituencies of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) and myself, 30,000 fish were killed a couple of years ago because of the discharge of a chemical into the water. Imagine the impact on the Bristol channel if some of those incidents had taken place much closer to the coast.
The Government are beginning to tackle the problem, but much more needs to be done. More money should be put into anti-pollution measures and dealing better with sewage. Incineration should be a last option, because the use of properly treated sewage on the land, the anaerobic digestion of sewage to produce methane gas and the provision of alternatives to peat should all be explored before incineration is considered. One difficulty with incineration is that it requires critical temperatures in excess of 1200 deg C to be really safe. Even then, there can be dangerously high emissions into the air of substances such as cadmium.
More emphasis should be placed on dealing with pollution. Earlier this year, in proposing some green measures for the Budget, my party suggested a different rate of value added tax for environmentally friendly products. We could stop massive contamination of our rivers by the phosphates in washing powders, and so on, so let us re-examine the corporate tax structure so as to encourage companies not to pollute. The river pollution incidents that I mentioned were the consequence either of poor technology or of carelessness in the way in which technology was applied.
I thank the hon. Member for Devon, North for giving the House an opportunity to debate these issues. Pollution of the Bristol channel is serious and, although the Government are beginning to tackle that problem, there is a considerable way to go. I hope that the Community, through its action in the European Court of Justice, will hasten compliance with the bathing water quality directive, which would have a major impact on overcoming pollution in the Bristol channel.
3.33 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tony Baldry): I am most grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller) for raising this important subject and for his kind comments. He described the situation graphically, sympathetically and clearly, he is a champion of his constituents' interests.
This subject is of concern not only to my hon. Friend's constituents and others living nearby, but to people in all parts of the country who treasure and enjoy our unparalleled coastline and beaches. I welcome this opportunity to tell the House about the substantial improvements in the quality of bathing waters achieved in recent years and of plans for further improvements.
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I shall begin with some key facts about our sewerage system and the quality of our rivers and coastal waters compared with those of other countries. Ninety-six per cent. of the United Kingdom's population are connected to the sewer system and 83 per cent. of our sewage is treated. That stands comparison with any country in Europe or in the Community. In 1987, 95 per cent. of river length in the United Kingdom was of good or fair quality compared with 75 per cent. in the Community. No other member state bettered the United Kingdom position.
As my hon. Friend acknowledged, the problem for us lies with discharges of untreated sewage to coastal waters. As the House knows, for a long time it has been our policy to discharge sewage from coastal towns to the sea and to rely on the action of sunlight and salt water to render it harmless. That policy was based on the best scientific advice available at the time that it was adopted.
Starting with the 1959 Jeger report, successive Governments were advised that untreated sewage could safely be discharged to the sea, after prior screening and comminution, through properly designed and located long sea outfalls.
More recently, in 1984, the Royal Commission on environmental pollution, in its tenth report, endorsed that view. Indeed, it concluded that such disposal to sea was often environmentally preferable to alternative methods of disposal on land.
There is no method of disposing of sewage that does not have some environmental cost and impact. Our approach has been to find the best environmental option to suit the particular local circumstances. As I have already said, most sewage is treated before discharge. But this requires a sewage treatment works—not everyone's most popular neighbour, particularly in attractive seaside resorts—and finding a means of disposing of the resulting sewage sludge, whether to agriculture, in landfill sites or by incineration.
For those coastal towns where discharge to sea is the most satisfactory option. the Government, with the water industry, have pressed ahead with a major programme of investment to build well-sited, long sea outfalls to improve the quality of our bathing waters and beaches. Mainly by this means, the proportion of bathing waters complying with the European Community standard has increased from 51 per cent. in 1986 to 77 per cent. in 1990.
However, we believe that it is now time to take a further step forward to improve our standard of sewage disposal. Last year we commissioned a study by consultants into the benefits and costs of treating sewage before discharge to sea. We received a first draft of the report in February this year and we sent a copy to the Environment Select Committee at the same time, to assist it in its investigation into bathing waters. That report showed that, in most cases, there would, on balance, be environmental gains from introducing treatment for coastal discharges.
Within days of receiving that advice the Government acted, and acted decisively. My right hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) announced on 5 March that, in future, all substantial discharges of sewage would be treated. Most would receive secondary treatment, but primary treatment would be more appropriate for coastal discharges, where there was no adverse effect on the environment. I am glad to say that this change of policy has been welcomed both at home and abroad.
Mr. Speller: Does my hon. Friend not realise that the whole problem is that marvellous word "primary" and whether no adverse effects can be proved? I could take him at any time to observe part-treated sewage, which has an adverse effect. We are overloading, because there is only so much water and so much more is going into it. Whereas 10 or 15 years ago, it might have been possible to allow primary treatment alone, now—it really means just chopping the sewage up—it is not the way forward. We shall gain no credit if we use that as our standard.
Mr. Baldry: I hear what my hon. Friend says and I hope that it will reassure him to learn that we have since moved quickly to implement this new policy—we certainly do not intend to stand still—and the National Rivers Authority is now applying it to all new applications for sewage discharge consents. The physical works needed will be expensive and there are complex issues of engineering and planning ahead. We are actively consulting the sewerage undertakers and the various regulatory bodies, in particular the National Rivers Authority and the Office of Water Services.
The sewerage undertakers are now drawing up investment programmes for sewage treatment works for all substantial coastal discharges, in particular to give priority to discharges in the vicinity of bathing waters that fail to meet the directive's standards.
On 14 November, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bath announced details of the first stages of the investment programme to treat sewage discharges to coastal waters. About £600 million will be spent over the next five years to improve bathing waters. That is in addition to the £1·4 billion 10-year bathing water compliance programme announced in October 1989.
We estimate the cost of improving our bathing waters and treating all coastal and estuarial sewage discharges at around £3·5 billion. Overall, the water companies plan to spend £12 billion on improving waste water systems and treatment over the next 10 years. That is a massive increase in the funds made available in the past and certainly bears comparison with what was spent by the previous Labour Administration, who succeeded in halving investment on water and massively cut spending on sewage treatment. I do not think that it befits any Labour politician, early in the morning or at any other time, to deliver lectures about investment in water or sewage treatment.
The fact that such enormous funds can now be found to improve the quality of our rivers and coastal waters is attributable to the access to adequate private capital that is now available to water companies as a result of the successful privatisation of the water industry in England and Wales.
Mr. Win Griffiths: Surely the Minister knows that, at the time of the debate on the water privatisation Bill, the issue of investment in the industry was discussed many times. It was only by statistical sleight of hand that the Government produced their figures; the real-terms investment figures show that, although there was a cut in the latter period of the Labour Government, our overall record bears comparison with that of the Conservative Government right up to 1989.
Mr. Baldry: There has been no statistical sleight of hand; the straightforward fact is that the last Labour Government cut investment in water and sewage treatment by some 45 per cent.
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The enhanced standards of sewage treatment that we now require are consistent with the proposed directive on municipal waste water treatment, which is under active negotiation in the Council of Ministers. We hope and expect that the directive will be adopted in the next few hours. Our commitment to the directive, and to the early implementation of its requirements, is clear.
The Welsh and Wessex water companies are licensed to dispose of treated sewage sludge in the Bristol channel dumping site about 11 miles north of Ilfracombe, as my hon. Friend has explained. The site is one of the most dispersive in United Kingdom coastal waters and regular monitoring by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food has shown no significant impact on the local marine environment. At the end of last month, however, the water companies submitted their proposed programmes for diverting the sludge to alternative outlets on land, in accordance with our commitment—made at the third North sea conference, in March this year—to cease sea disposal as soon as possible. Those submissions are being considered and, as soon as consultations with the companies are completed, details of the national programme will be published. I assure my hon. Friend that that, too, will take place as soon as possible.
The pollution of beaches was recently addressed by the Select Committee on the Environment in its fourth report. One of the issues considered in its wide-ranging and thorough investigation was the evidence concerning the risks to health posed by bathing in sewage-contaminated water. The Committee concluded:
"it is clear that there have been no major outbreaks of serious disease in the United Kingdom associated with sea bathing: and from this we conclude that the risk of contracting such a disease from sea bathing is minimal".
It recommended the continuation of existing research into the relationship between less serious illnesses and bathing.
The Government endorsed that important conclusion in their response to the Committee on 12 December. It lays to rest the more alarmist claims made by some pressure groups, and sensationalised in media reporting. The Government accept that more research is needed into the risks of minor inflammations of the ear, nose and throat and into certain skin irritations and gastro-enteritis. Further research will be commissioned, jointly funded by the Government and the National Rivers Authority.
A further recommendation of the Committee concerned the provision of information on water quality to bathers. The local authority associations have warmly endorsed a proposal by my hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Mr. Trippier) for posters to display easy-to-understand results of monitoring by the NRA at all identified bathing beaches. With the co-operation of the local authorities, the scheme will be in place for the 1991 bathing season.
The blue flag scheme is awarded to beaches that meet the highest standards of cleanliness and management, at which water quality meets European standards and where information on water quality is displayed. This year we have 29 blue flags, but I should like to see many more. Indeed, I should like to see every beach receiving a blue flag. Water quality is not the limiting factor; 345 of our bathing waters met the directive's standards this year. The next step is for local authorities to bring their beaches up to the necessary high standards and apply for a blue flag. My ambition is to see every beach with a blue flag.

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Rightly, attention is given to those bathing waters that do not meet European standards. We are taking action to ensure that we make progress as fast as possible. However, as the Prince of Wales reminded us in his recent speech to the Institution of Water and Environmental Management:
"Of more than 400 'identified bathing waters' in this country, the majority now do pass the mandatory standards of the European Community directive. This is a real success story and one that deserves more recognition than it has hitherto received."
I very much hope that our success story on bathing water quality will get the recognition it deserves. Let us not forget that over three quarters of our bathing waters already meet European standards. As the House knows, there is a £3 billion investment programme to bring the remainder into compliance. Our commitment to improving water quality is firm and is backed by a record of solid achievement.

Romanian Refugees
3.53 am
Mr. Peter Thurnham: I am delighted to have this opportunity to speak at this hour—just coming up to 4 am. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Minister for bringing him from his bed at such an hour. However, I hope that he feels that the subject of the debate—British consular assistance to Romanian orphans—is worthy of any of us being out of bed at any hour of the night.
The purpose of my debate is threefold. The first purpose is to draw attention to the continued plight of orphans in Romania. It is some 12 months since we first learned of the horrors in Romania and I am disturbed to learn from current reports that the position is even worse than was at first suspected. Sarah Ball of Granada Television, who has just returned to this country after a further visit to Romania, says that she thinks that there could be nearer 400,000 rather than 200,000 orphans in those terrible orphanages. It is a damning indictment that a state of affairs which existed before the revolution continues to exist today.
My second purpose is to encourage further aid for Romania direct from the Government, to some extent from the European Community, and from all the voluntary groups, charities and non-government agencies that have done so much to provide direct humanitarian aid in Romania.
My third purpose is to encourage couples considering adopting Romanian children—not only those who are relatively healthy, but the handicapped children whose plight is the worst of all.
I am pleased that the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) is present for this debate, as he intervened in the Adjournment debate that I introduced on 29 October and he has particular points to make about his own constituents. My hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) also had an Adjournment debate on 15 November on the subject of handicapped children in one of the orphanages.
It is more difficult than it should be to adopt handicapped children in this country, let alone from countries abroad. I recommend that hon. Members read a book by Katherine Macaskill, "Against the Odds", in which she describes the difficulties experienced by couples in this country who wish to adopt handicapped children. They have more success dealing with voluntary agencies than with social services departments of local athorities.
I hope that we shall refer briefly to the plight of children worldwide. The latest report of the United Nations Children's Fund estimates that more than 15 million children die every year. When I was at Harvard university, I had the good fortune to be taught by Professor Roland Christiansen. I remember his stating that, of all the problems that we face, none is worse than the fact that more than 1,000 million people do not get enough to eat every day. Students of Harvard university produce a ranking of their professors twice a year—a practice which we should follow in this country—and Professor Christiansen came top of the rankings year after year. It was a sign of the quality of his teaching that he felt that that was the foremost problem to which we should address ourselves.

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In September, the United Nations produced its convention on the rights of the child, which our then Prime Minister signed on behalf of the United Kingdom. However, there are problems in ratifying the convention—there are plenty of fine words, but I am not sure how much action there is.
I am surprised that the latest report from UNICEF, "The State of the World's Children", makes no mention of Romania. There is a page on the children of eastern and central Europe, but Romania is not mentioned. Given the ghastly situation in Romania, it is extraordinary that the report does not refer to it.
It is one year since the revolution, when we began to discover just how bad things were and found that there was no contraception or abortion available for mothers, who were expected to have five children. I should like to draw the attention of my hon. and learned Friend the Minister to a particularly good article by Judy Dempsey, which appeared in the Financial Times on Thursday 29 November. It states:
"Mr. Bogdan Marinescu, Romania's health Minister, is a tired and weary man. As he attempts to secure support for a new health system, fresh obstacles stand in his way almost every day. The greatest one is the miserable legacy bequeathed to the ministry from the Ceausescu regime.
Under that regime, the health system was systematically run down. Mr. Nicolae Ceausescu's attempts to pay off at breakneck speed the country's hard currency debts during the 1980s led to a corresponding decline in public expenditure and investments in the health service.
But the cutback in health spending went beyond a deterioration in services. It undermined the social fabric.
In the early 1980s, women were obliged to have children after the regime embarked on a public campaign to raise the birth rate. Abortion and contraception was banned.
Despite the campaign to raise the birth rate, there were few incentives to facilitate the programme. Food rationing was introduced in 1981, imports were banned and hospitals were starved of investments. As a result, women were often forced to abandon their children in orphanages, or else resort to illegal abortions and risk infection.
Mr. Ceausescu's obsession with increasing the birth rate coincided with a campaign against the medical profession. Doctors and nurses, always under the watchful eye of the hated Securitate, or secret police, were frequently accused of taking bribes, a common practice in eastern Europe because medical staff were so badly paid. And as its public status deteriorated, it failed to attract the younger generation into the profession.
Child care in nurseries, orphanages and paediatric hospitals bore the brunt of a decline in trained personnel. Mr. Marinescu says that explains why today there are 128,000 children in 'Child Protection units."'—
that is an underestimate according to other reports—
"Of that number, 14,800 children up to the age of three are in orphanages. Another 84,900 children, aged between four and 18 years, and under the supervision of the Ministry of Health and Science, are living in orphanages and educational institutions. The Ministry of Labour is entrusted with looking after 23,000 orphaned and handicapped teenagers.
Recent Western visitors to these institutions have been shocked by the conditions. Children were left unfed, unclothed and uncared for in conditions described by western doctors as medieval.
Mr. Marinescu says such neglect was a result of a combination of factors: inexperienced and poorly-paid staff, public indifference, and society's lack of awareness about the true situation. French and British doctors are more critical.
"Romanians tell us they did not know about the situation" said one British doctor. "If they did, they say they could do nothing to improve conditions. The indifference towards the way orphans and handicapped children were treated, and the
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public stigma attached to handicapped children, was shocking. It seems to me that Romanians were hostile about knowing the truth, he added.
Doctors and health organisations visiting Romania also comment on how medical supplies sometimes find their way into the black market as a result of the continuing shortages; that staff in villages remain suspicious and sometimes obstructive towards outside help. This is hardly surprising. For decades, Romanians were banned from speaking to foreigners.
Mr. Marinescu contends every day with these criticisms. 'The problems are enormous. We have to change the mentality among the population. But to do this, we have to find the resources.'
Helped by the World Health Organisation, the Ministry has started to improve medical services. Progress has been steady but slow, largely due to the bureaucratic inertia, the lack of computers, an untrained medical profession and few resources."
The lack of resources appears to be the most immediate problem. The Health Ministry reckons it requires $1·4 million to repair orphanages; $1·2 million for repairing 10 of the 32 hostels for severely handicapped children (the remainder are not fit for use); another $5·9 million for repairing half of the 49 special education units for deficient children. But a shortage of raw materials delays repairs.
Feeding the children is another problem. In a recent report the Ministry concluded that the state's monthly food budget of $4·6 million for all the childrens' institutions is inadequate. 'The improvement of food would require monthly food imports worth $2 million … we do not have the money.'
As for medicines, the monthly bill is $900,000, of which $700,000 is spent on imports. Clothing and accommodation for the winter months will cost an additional $2·4 million.
The government's long-term programme to improve childrens' institutions will cost $100 million, while "in order to attain the targets for the next six months, we need $27 million." But Mr. Marinescu knows that the government's coffers are empty.
A visit to any of the pharmacies in Bucharest confirms this. It is still impossible to buy soap, tampons, penicillin, aspirin, nappies, diapers, sanitary towels, baby food, antiseptics, bandages and condoms.
A visit to any hospital confirms the shortages of personnel and medical equipment. In the meantime, Romanians with money, connections and access to the black market continue to by-pass the queues.
Hence Mr. Marinescu's plea for concerted international assistance. Without such help, he believes that the health system, or the population's mentality, have little chance of changing for the better."
In addition to newspaper reports, we have had several television reports. I draw my hon. Friend's attention to the most dreadful of all the programmes that I have seen—Sky Television's programme on 12 October. It was an unforgettably harrowing video. It showed the orphanages for the handicapped at their worse. They had a death rate of 40 per cent. There were naked children, many horribly deformed, in steel cages. The institutions were behind barbed wire. They were as bad as Auschwitz, except that the people inside were kept alive rather than gassed.
My daughter has just gone over to Romania. I do not know whether she will be able to give me any first-hand accounts of the orphanages. The reports that I have had from her suggest that the Romanian public are kept in ignorance of much of what is happening, so to imagine that the problems can be solved within Romania is clearly to expect more than is possible.
Several voluntary groups from Britain and other countries have gone to Romania to help. It is invidious to mention only a few of them, but the Scottish Flanders Alliance, British Red Cross, the Romanian Orphanage Trust, Mencap, Blue Peter, the Romanian Angels and Save the Children are well-known organisations which have gone there. Also, many local voluntary efforts have

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been made. From Bolton, and from Lancashire in general, many people have gone over to Romania. Heating engineers from Somerset have gone to put heating equipment into some of the orphanages.
Many Members of Parliament have been involved in voluntary efforts. My hon. Friends the Members for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) and for Torridge and Devon, West have been actively involved. During the Adjournment debate of my hon. Friend the Member for Torridge and Devon, West, the Romanian ambassador was here. When I saw him afterwards, he impressed on me that the country needed help from every possible source. Of course, it has been difficult to provide official aid because the regime is so deficient. I shall be interested to hear what my hon. and learned Friend the Minister has to say about the difficulties of providing aid officially, either directly from the Government or through the European Community, to the official regime in Romania, where there are dangers of corruption, inefficiencies and all the other difficulties of organisation.
Mr. Harry Barnes: As the hon. Gentleman knows, I was present for his Adjournment debate on the problems of adopting children from foreign countries and the debate of the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson). On both occasions, I mentioned that I have constituents who have adopted the only child from Romania from a mental institution who was classified as mentally handicapped. I sent them copies of the debates. Mr. Smith wrote to me and I should like to quote some of the points made, which are relevant to the points that the hon. Gentleman has developed. My constituent said:
"Harry, please try to understand one of the most important tasks any relief organisation has to do first, and that is to find out who is mentally handicapped and who is just socially deprived, or who has been affected by being in an institution and if they are not mentally handicapped.
I am sending you a copy of a letter that the Sheffield Social Services received from the Department of Health with regards to Emese"—
the girl whom the Smiths have adopted. The letter from the Department when into considerable detail about the medical and mental difficulties that she faces and the impairment which results. Mr. Smith went on:
"Emese is now talking a few words of English and putting words together in just 12 weeks. She is bright healthy and very very happy. The point that I am making, Harry, is that the report the Department of Health has written was based on Emese's medical report from Romania by Romanian doctors only six month ago. Miss Nicholson"—
the hon. Members for Torridge and Devon, West—
"also says that the last psychiatrist trained was in 1972. (I can well believe it)".
It now looks as though Emese may not be suffering from all the mental difficulties that she was assumed to have at the time of adoption. My constituent makes a valid point about the direction that the relief organisations should take in solving the problem.
Mr. Thurnham: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. His constituents' case is relevant and I received a copy of their letter from him. I commend his constituents for what they have done in adopting both a handicapped child here and a handicapped child from Romania. Some people say that British couples are adopting in Romania simply because they want healthy children. Most people recognise, however, that many Romanian children are suffering from AIDS, hepatitis and TB as well as being
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handicapped from birth. One of the worst things is that in Romania handicapped children are regarded as criminals. They are looked after dreadfully and need every possible help that can be given to them.
Mr. Harry Barnes: The hon. Gentleman referred to a book called "Against the Odds" and to the difficulty of adopting mentally handicapped children. People who adopt such children do so against the odds. I received a parliamentary answer saying that Emese is the only such child to have been adopted. The Smiths' qualifications and determination and the support that they received were exceptional. Given all the publicity on television and elsewhere, it is hard to believe that the Smiths are the only qualified parents who have been able to adopt a child. There must have been many other appropriate couples who started on the road to adoption but could not overcome the problem of officialdom here and in Romania.
Mr. Thurnham: I mentioned that to Baroness Faithfull, the chairman of the all-party group for children, the other day. She believes that she knows of other cases. The problem is that no one really knows what is going on. A number of children are being brought in without the procedures being followed because of the delays experienced by those trying to observe the procedures who are running into all sorts of red tape and delays. Given the dreadful circumstances of children in Romania, it is a natural humanitarian response for people to wish to adopt them. The National Association for the Childless has received more than 5,000 requests for further information.
The United Nations declaration states that the first objective for every child should be to stay with its parents. If that is not possible, it should be possible to make other arrangements within the country of the child's birth. Inter-country adoption should be looked at only as the last possibility, when the other two have been fully explored. Most people would accept that order of priorities. But given the desperate straits of children in Romania and in other countries where children are dying, it is difficult to say that it is in the interests of the child to follow an enormously lengthy procedure. Some parents say that they have been treated like criminals while trying to follow all the procedures. Fourteen parents came to me with a petition, which I took to Downing street in July, concerning problems that they were facing not only with the local authority social services departments, but with the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Department of Health. I helped that group of parents to set up the Campaign for Inter-Country Adoption, led by Barbara Mostyn, formerly of the Association for the Childless.
I have received numerous letters and shall refer to a few of them. I received a letter dated 10 December from Mr. and Mrs. Parsons, who live in Dorset, referring to difficulties in Romania. It says:
"The point has been made many times, but bears much repeating, that if the British Authorities could have been more helpful, responsive and consistent, all adoptive couples would readily accept 2–4 weeks' delay. It is the indeterminate and uncertain time that causes the distress. The new Vice Consul in Bucharest has arbitrarily and without warning introduced new papers and requirements, which were not in place a few weeks ago. It is both unreasonable to do this without warning, but also demonstrates why there is a well founded perception that the British Authorities are particularly difficult."
I hope that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister will be able to reply to points such as those.

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My hon. and learned Friend will be aware that a case is being brought against the Government by Mr. and Mrs. Luff, who, although approved by their local social services, were turned down by the Department of Health because of a previous heart condition of Mr. Luff, although he claims that he is now perfectly healthy and able to bring up a child. When one considers that couples here can have a child naturally without having to have Department of Health approval, one wonders whether some of these procedures are so necessary when we are dealing with children who would otherwise be likely to die in Romania. One must acknowledge that there are difficulties.
My hon. Friend may be aware of the case of the Stewarts from Chelmsford in Essex. Mrs. Stewart went to Romania and adopted a child according to Romanian law while her husband, who had remained in this country, unfortunately fell ill and died. She is staying in Romania while she endeavours to get entry clearance to come back with the child. Her sister has gone out to Romania to help her and taken her child out there. The family are therefore in considerable confusion, with half of them in Romania and half of them here trying to get permission for Mrs. Stewart to come back with her child.
I received a long letter from Mrs. Marriott, who, with her husband, has been involved with the Campaign for Inter-Country Adoption, and wrote a three-page letter to my hon. Friend the Minister for Health. I shall refer to that letter because it is based on their experience in Romania and their heartfelt feelings. It states:
"My husband Ian and I run a help and advice line for people attempting to do what we have done, and we have produced a factsheet which has been sent to in excess of 500 couples. A lot of these people get no further than reading and binning it. You need to be of tough material to actually achieve Romanian adoption. The process is long and complicated and designed to deter. However, at least one hundred people we have had dealings with either have achieved it or are in the process of doing so. I know I also speak for most of these people.
There are a number of points I wish to make. I understand that you are initiating, or are in the process of initiating, a fact finding tour of Romanian orphanages. I can only hope that the people who undertake this mission go to the more obscure and out of the way orphanages. The chances are your people will be shown around the showcase ones, or possibly the buildings that the Romanian Orphanage Trust are working in. These places are not a true representation. I believe your attention has been drawn to Sky TV's documentary video of the mentally handicapped orphanages. These children are treated the worst because of what they are, or, I should say, because of what they have been forced to become. There are many, many orphanages just like those shown all over Romania. If you really want to know what it's like, may I suggest you speak to the aid workers and convoy drivers who have spent time there. People like Anne Alcock—Lancashire's "Woman of the Year", who has put her finger right on it when she describes these places as "Auschwitz for Children". People such as Sarah Ball, one of Granada TV's "This Morning" production team, who has more horror film footage than can be described and admits that she is now obsessed with trying to help these children. Both these women would like to help keep the children in their own country, but confess that this is not a feasible proposition.
Romania's problems are insurmountable in the near future. They are generations away from getting it right. Romanians' future is at home with their parents. The Orphanages (the Romanians call them "Houses of the Children") contain Romanians' past or their scrapheap— unloved, uncared for, very often tortured children who have no future in their own country. Their only hope is overseas adoption, not all of them of course. The estimate that I have
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is that 400,000 children are in these places throughout Romania. Very few people would want to have a 16 year old physically or mentally handicapped child with Aids, hepatitis B and TB. The actual numbers available for adoption are unknown but what is very apparent is that the healthy children available should be got out while they are still healthy, and certainly before they are three years old, to allow the aid to go where it is most desperately needed, to those who can never escape. This sounds melodramatic I know, but believe me, I am not over-dramatising. The nurses in these places are, for the most part, uneducated peasant women. Cruelty begets cruelty. They have so little themselves, and are expected to raise large families with virtually no money. The pittance that they get for looking after these children does not inspire them to take any care of them. Potty training usually consists of being beaten with a stick. Children are lifted out of their cots by their arms and legs, that's when they are lifted out at all. Babies are changed once a day, with a rag, not a nappy, if they are lucky. I know from first hand experience that even in the better run orphanages, they are only changed when some prospective adopter wants to hold them. One child I saw had 90 per cent. urine burns from shoulder to ankle because she had not been changed for so long. One 16 month old boy (again from first hand experience) was fed twice a day, four ounces of milk at 10 o'clock, four ounces at five o'clock. I could continue giving you these horror stories but that is not the purpose of this letter. This sort of treatment goes on in every orphanage throughout Romania. All the people who we have helped have kept in touch and told us their experiences. It is not an exaggeration to say that these are concentration camp-like conditions and that it is not just Romania's problem, but humanity's.
The orphanage directors themselves estimate that 25 per cent. of the children in hospital will die this winter, and 50 per cent. of the orphanage children. One couple who had waited for months to get entry clearance arrived in Romania last week, with all their completed documents to discover that their child had died of pneumonia three days before. I believe that the Romanian courts will close for Christmas recess from 20 December and will not begin again until mid-January. The Romanian Government have decreed that as from January, the 15 day cooling off period will be extended to 30 days to allow all involved parties even longer to change their minds.
In effect that means that unless prospective parents can get to court by 19 December the earliest they can hope to get their child out is mid-February but probably, in reality, the spring. This has led to a number of near hysterical people phoning me asking what on earth they can do as they cannot risk their child's life in this way. My answer has had to be "nothing". I ask you to think seriously about the fact that a number of respectable law abiding people have been quite simply forced into breaking the law to protect their child. Surely this indicates that the law needs looking at? "The law is an ass" may well apply here. You are a parent and you don't need me to tell you how protective you feel toward your children. If it was a matter of breaking the law to save his or her life, would you even think twice about it?
A number of families will be split this Christmas. The women are making arrangements to spend the next three months in Romania and getting the guardianship of their children rather than risk their not being there next spring. Their husbands of course have to stay in the United Kingdom to finance it, on occasions doing the nappy and milk run as these commodities are not available in Romania …
With very little effort on the Government's part this whole tragic business could end. If Susan Hodgettes in Bucharest could be authorised to give entry certificates to people who have handed over all the necessary documents for clearance, these families could possibly get their court dates before 19 December. One telephone call could result in a number of people getting home before Christmas. These people feel that they are as much hostages as any to be found in Iraq.
Moving on to the whole process of entry clearance, and the home studies required for them, I have heard and read on more occasions than I care to remember the phrase "the best interest of the child is paramount". On the basis of this letter so far, are the child's best interests served by being assessed for mental competence at age three? i.e. are they potty trained, can they walk, talk and feed themselves, when they have never been out of a cot (often shared by so many other children that

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their limbs are deformed) and therefore cannot walk or use a toilet when they have had no stimulation and cannot therefore talk and their food has always been given through a bottle and they cannot therefore feed themselves? Are the children's best interests served by leaving them open to Aids, hepatitis B, TB, pneumonia, malnutrition, hypothermia, etc? This list is endless. People who go through mainly to adopt take with them a home study completed by a qualified and experienced social worker who is possibly a private social worker. Social Services insist and the home office appears to agree that the only competent social workers are employed by Social Service. Many other people disagree. They have police reports and medicals. They have proven themselves perfectly acceptable as adopted parents. Yet because the report has not been done by the Social Services this Government will not allow an entry clearance certificate. Is this really in the best interests of the children. Maybe—and I happen to think that this is remote—there are people who adopt from Romania for all the wrong reasons. In an ideal world, it would be absolutely right that parents are carefully vetted, assessed, and counselled. Romanian children are not living in an ideal world. Better in 30 years for a grown man to say to his adopted parents "You adopted me for all the wrong reasons" but (a) he grew to manhood to be able to say it; and (b) has developed mentally, emotionally and intellectually to be able to articulate it.
If there were cases where children from Romania had to be taken into care, (and if I may say here, that the Social Services who continually point out that they should have a say in the adoption process simply because they have to pick up the pieces when things go wrong, are nit-picking. They have to do that for everyone, it is their job. You don't see social workers doing in-depth reports on couples wanting to have natural families, because they have to pick up the pieces when things go wrong!) I do not believe they would be in care very long. There are approximately 250,000 people wanting to adopt very young children and only about 1,500 babies available each year. Logic says, these children would be snapped up. I have had so many letters from people who ask the cost involved in Romanian adoptions, because even though they have very little money, they could offer a secure, loving home to one of these tragic children. I am paraphrasing, but it is practically word for word from dozens of letters I have received. Let's just take the worst case scenario, maybe a half dozen children would never be placed, and will remain in care for the rest of their childhood … Why should the majority of excellent prospective adopters be penalised because of the possibility (and it is only that, there are no proven cases that I have heard of) of some couples proving unsuitable?
My last point, and quite an important one I feel, is that we in Britain are imposing our 20th century morals, values and standards on to a population who are at best Dickensian, and in my view more a medieval people. Life is very cheap in Romania. The Guardian a few weeks ago (13 November) ran an article which was quite honestly ludicrous, as anyone who has ever been to Romania recognises. When are we going to see not through our own eyes, but through the eyes of the peoples concerned that they don't want these babies? Very few, if any at all, mothers will be distressed in 30 years time. It is possible she will be hard put to remember that she had a child at all. These children are dragging the women down, and when you are at rock bottom, that is an impossible situation. Of course, this isn't true of all the women in Romania, but the fact that 400,000 children have been abandoned in this way speaks volumes for the majority of motherhood.
I have no axe to grind. My two adopted Romanian babies are upstairs asleep in their cots. They are safe, secure, healthy, adored and happy. I am not an hysterical neurotic woman. I am not asking you to relax the immigration regulations for these children, I am begging you. Believe me, the floodgates will not open. There will not be 2 or 3 million people rushing off to bring a child into Britain."
That was the letter from Mrs. Marriott dated 4 December 1990. I have already raised with my hon. and learned Friend the Minister some of the points in that letter. I am pleased to see that one of the voluntary agencies in Britain, Childlink, proposes to set up an international resource centre to provide at least a helpline and information service to couples who wish to adopt. I hope that the
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Government will help to fund that and encourage voluntary donations towards the cost. Childlink has already undertaken to carry out home studies for some local authorities and quoted a cost of £2,500, which is higher than most people had had previously. I hope that most local authorities will feel that they do not always need to pass on those costs, so that couples who are not able to pay such high fees can still consider adopting children from Romania and elsewhere.
My hon. and learned Friend the Minister may be aware of early-day motion 168 on handicapped Romanian orphans. I am pleased to say that there are now 46 signatures to that motion. There was an amendment in he name of the hon. Minister for Eccles (Miss Lestor), in which she states that
"Romania can care for its future rather than having children adopted abroad"
Only one hon. Member has signed the amendment and I do not think that it reflects the feelings of the public or of most hon. Members.
I hope that my hon. and learned Friend the Minister will consider the Hague conference, which is to be held in 1993, on inter-country adoption. I hope that we shall play a full part, although we are the only leading western country not to have an agency or organisation that will help with inter-country adoption. We need to have much better facilities to help people who, for the best of reasons, wish to provide children who would otherwise die with a secure and loving home, in place of those desperate orphanages where the children are denied any human contact.
I am glad that we have been able to have this debate to draw attention to the plight of children in need all round the world as well as in Romania. The wish of the British people to supply humanitarian aid to Romania and to offer adoption is a good response, but the adoption should be done properly. The baby should come into this country through the front rather than the back door. Half the children who have come from Romania have come through the back door, but all should come through the front door. I hope that the Government and as many other people as possible will give resources so that an international resource centre can be set up through the agency of Childlink, so that things can be done properly and help can be provided in the best possible way.
4.31 am
Mr George Foulkes: I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr Thurnham) on obtaining a place in the debate. We know that he is assiduous and sincere in pursuing the issue. I am not so delighted that the debate is taking place at this hour of the morning. My hon. Friend the Member for Hamilton (Mr Robertson) said earlier, and it applies even more now, that to have debates at such an hour is a primitive, unproductive and uncivilised way to conduct the affairs of Parliament. I hope that eventually we shall grasp the nettle of reform and start having all our debates at a civilised hour.
When I say "a civilised hour", I mean an earlier hour, because it is not always a civilised debate. The Minister and I have often clashed across the Chamber. Little did we know that we might be in greater agreement at this early hour of the morning. We shall see.
I think that we all share the concern and the horror of the situation described by the hon. Member for Bolton,

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North-East. We were all appalled at the revelations of the terror and barbarity of the Ceausescu regime, including the aspect that has created the problem to which the hon. Member referred—the use of women as breeding machines, in some case to produce programmed people for the Securitate. We are also concerned about the plight of those who are described as orphans. Many of them, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware, still have live parents. Perhaps more than 80 per cent. of those described as orphans still have parents, although living in poor circumstances. We must take account of that when considering how to deal with the matter.
I know that the plight of these children has touched the hearts of many people, particularly in the United Kingdom, and many have risen to the challenge of trying to help in many ways. The hon. Gentleman mentioned hon. Members on both sides of the House who had taken a particular interest in this, and the media, television and the general public have all taken an interest. I was made aware of the way that "Blue Peter" has got the message across when last Friday I saw five, six and seven-year-olds in Bellsbank primary school in Dolmellington in my constituency. It is one of the poorest areas in what is a relatively poor constituency compared with those of many Conservative Members.
The arrangements had been made by "Blue Peter" and the children had been organised by the school. That shows how far interest in Romanian children has extended. We must all be concerned about the terrible plight of the children—there is no difference between us on that—but we should remember that our first priority must be to help children to be able to remain in their own country. Perhaps that was not stressed strongly by the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East. We should not attempt to whisk them away from their country to a strange one.
The hon. Member for Bolton, North-East may have read an article in The Observer last Sunday that described some of the work being done to enable Romanian children to remain in their own country by raising money for projects in Romania. Part of the article read:
"The idea of flying out to adopt a child and bring it back is not always tempered with the realisation that many of them still have parents who want to keep in touch with their children."
That must be taken into account. The article then describes some of the work that is being done. Greater emphasis should be placed on that by the Romanian Orphanage Trust and the many other organisations to enable them to raise money to keep Romanian children in Romania in better circumstances than the appalling ones described by the hon. Gentleman.
Mr. Thurnham: The hon. Gentleman has rightly drawn attention to the need to do everything possible in Romania. The death rate is high in that country and the risk to the health of the children who do not die immediately is a real one. If a few children are adopted here, it will enable more help to be given to the children who remain. Only relatively few will be adopted here. Obviously the majority will be there. If a few children come to this country, fewer will have to use the limited resources that are available in Romania.
Mr. Foulkes: I appreciate what the hon. Gentleman says.
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The frustration that is felt by the hon. Gentleman and those like him, some of whom he quoted, is understandable. It is the result of impatience and genuine compassion. We appreciate that. It is essential, however, for the long-term good of the children that the proper procedures are followed and accepted. They are designed to protect the interests of the child and that is our top priority.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that the rules for adoption should be no less stringent in Romania than in the United Kingdom. We know that the adoption procedures here can be a lengthy process. Bearing in mind the possible dangers and the long-term implications of uprooting a young child from its country and the culture of its birth, there is extra justification for full and thorough examination of each case. Various procedures must be followed.
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Home Office has to agree to allow the child in. Before entry clearance is granted, various things have to be checked. It has to be clear, for example, that a complete transfer of parental responsibility from the child's parents to the intending adopters has already taken place or is genuinely intended to take place. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that that must be tested, clarified and confirmed. If it is not, difficulties will arise.
Mr. Thurnham: The hon. Gentleman is in danger of slight over-simplification. In this country, so few children are available for adoption that sometimes criteria can be used that I think are not necessary when considering the plight of the children in Romania.
For instance, is it right that the age of 35 should be used as a strict cut-off for couples who wish to adopt? Is it right that if a couple who wish to adopt have a dog, they will not be allowed to adopt? Those criteria are used in this country where few children are available for adoption and many people wish to adopt. The hon. Gentleman is over-simplifying the case by saying that everything should be done according to the procedures.
Mr. Foulkes: I thought that I was over-complicating the case, but I accept that I might have been over-simplifying it. As the hon. Gentleman knows, there is a review of adoption procedures, including inter-country adoption. I presume that he is making those points to the review. I believe that all Departments are involved in it. If it is appropriate to have different criteria—I am not saying more liberal criteria—for inter-country adoption, that point can be made to the review.
There is an argument for scrupulous examination of those who wish to adopt. The children from Romania are bound to face further hurdles as they grow up. We all agree that their interests are paramount and we do not wish to risk harming them with misplaced kindness if we cut corners. What some genuine, well-meaning couples may view as heartless bureaucracy can, in reality, be something put in place to protect the children.
There is a case in my constituency—not related to inter-country adoption, but to adoption within the United Kingdom—of a natural mother who has changed her mind. The adoption procedures have been completed, so it is a fait accompli. People do change their minds, so it is important that the procedures are followed to ensure that there is a genuine desire, acceptance and a concurrence by

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the natural parents that an adoption should take place. If they change their minds, it is only after they have had many opportunities to consider and reconsider.
The hon. Gentleman, rather than reading from so many letters, might have said more about Foreign Office responsibility. Much of what he said related to other Departments, especially the Department of Health and the Home Office. I shall touch on the Foreign Office aspects as I am an Opposition Foreign Office spokesman, and a Foreign Office Minister is to reply to the debate. I do not want unduly to criticise the Foreign Office. I love to do it when there are good reasons for doing so, but I do not want to do it without reason. The embassy in Bucharest must be facing many problems and be very stretched. We must bear in mind all the other matters for which it has responsibility.
We welcome the appointment of a new vice-consul with particular responsibility for adoption. Although we believe that the correct procedure must be fully adhered to, it is equally important that no unnecessary obstacles are placed in the way of those who seek to adopt. It is the role of British diplomats in Romania to help people who wish to give a home to those children and not deliberately to discourage them without good reason.
We recognise that the Foreign Office is not an adoption agency, as one vice-consul was quoted as saying. The need for comprehensive regulations makes all the greater the need for constructive and helpful guidance for couples to find their way through the complicated but necessary paperwork. Patience is needed on both sides. What can be done is to improve co-operation between our officials and the Romanian authorities. We hope that recent parliamentary and governmental delegations to Romania to examine the problem will result in some constructive suggestions.
To strike a cautionary note, on 8 November The Times said:
"Whitehall officials are counting the days before a Romanian mother alleges that her child has been stolen by a British couple".
That is a real and genuine fear among officials. The media have been active in putting one point of view forcefully and effectively and they might sensationalise things in a rather different way if such a situation arose. The Foreign Office and other officials concerned must take that into account.
Mr. Thurnham: Fears of baby trafficking, which have been the cause of Britain not having an inter-country adoption service, should not stand in the way of those couples who genuinely wish to help. There may be isolated cases of such trafficking, but they should not be used as a reason for not doing anything to help the vast majority of couples who wish to help for the best of reasons.
Mr. Foulkes: The hon. Gentleman has been genuinely helpful to me because I am about to come to that point. Before I do, I should say that there is a balance to be struck between those who believe that adoption should be used to assist childless couples whose only hope of parenthood is a baby from overseas—whose case the hon. Gentleman seemed to be arguing strongly—and those whose rigorous professional vetting of couples is seen as a barrier to adoption.
The last thing that we all want is these poor children treated as some commercial commodity, which is what the hon. Gentleman was just referring to. This is not just a
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scare; it is a real danger. Stories of children being sold and traded and brought in illegally are most disturbing. This must not be allowed to happen. It is an undesirable and evil trade.
For some time now my colleagues and I have been concerned about the growing illegal trade in babies and small children—the result of parents living in appalling poverty and manipulated by greedy entrepreneurs who have spotted an expanding market. My hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Miss Lestor) has raised that matter particularly.
Only last month two women from a South American country arrived at a European airport with three small babies, one of whom died en route from dehydration and malnutrition. Those babies were on offer to European would-be parents for adoption. I am told that the going rate for the purchase of such a baby averages £10,000.
That is an evil trade which must be stamped out and the hon. Gentleman must remember that, although, as he said, only a small number of people is involved, and they are in no way representative of the vast majority that he described, it is something about which we must be cautious. It makes it more important that Britain at least plays it by the book. A blind eye must not be turned to illegal entries, which must be stopped if huge problems are not to be stored up for the future. Children abandoned because of poverty in Romania should not become teenagers left in care in Britain because they were illegally adopted by unsuitable parents.
The situation is further complicated by the fact that a large majority of the children are not orphans. Many were abandoned simply because of the great poverty that the hon. Gentleman described. That forces us to recognise the root cause of the problem in Romania and to realise that, just as those children are innocent victims, so are their natural parents. That has implications for the adoption procedures. It is necessary to find parents and to explain the situation to them. It also makes long-term adjustment more difficult for the children, knowing that they were reluctantly surrendered by the real parents. That makes it essential that, if they are adopted, they are with the best possible people.
I emphasise that there is sympathy with would-be adopters, most of whom are obviously well-intentioned, compassionate people. Also, there is sympathy among Opposition Members for the hon. Gentlemen's sentiments. The question is not whether to help the children, but what is the best way to do so. Emotional issues must be put to one side in the long-term interests of the child.
Various Government Departments are examining that issue as part of their review of adoption and the kind of hands-on policy now publicly advocated must continue. We must not allow a laissez-faire approach to develop once the children actually arrive. The problem is riot confined to Romania. There is the much broader issue of inter-country adoption, as the hon. Member for Bolton, North-East said. While we sympathise with his position to the extent that adopting children from other countries may be the best solution in individual cases, one must question what sort of countries are prepared to give up the children who are their future. In reality, it is countries experiencing great poverty which are forced to do that. We should help them to develop their economies and eliminate that poverty, and to ensure that they will be able to offer their children a secure and positive future.
4.50 am
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg): My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, North-East (Mr. Thurnham) deserves congratulations on bringing to the attention of the House a subject to which so many right hon. and hon. Members and their constituents have devoted some time. It is particularly apt that he should have done so this week, almost exactly one year after the dictator Ceausescu was overthrown by an explosion of outrage from the Romanian people, for Ceausescu was in large part to blame for the plight of Romanian children.
Numbers have been discussed. We believe that between 125,000 and 140,000 children aged up to 18 are in children's homes, residential schools, hospitals and other institutions throughout Romania. They are in most cases the innocent victims of Ceausescu's inhuman policies, the effects of which were described by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I shall not repeat what has been said, but it is important to remind oneself of the disastrous results of Ceausescu's attempt at wholesale social engineering. Had he not tried to force all married Romanian women of childbearing age to have five children, regardless of their wishes or circumstances, today there would not perhaps be thousands of children abandoned, or at least temporarily lost, by parents who could not afford to look after them.
When conditions in the Romanian institutions were revealed earlier this year, we were all profoundly shocked by what we saw—undernourished and neglected boys and girls living in filthy, overcrowded buildings, lacking even the basic necessities of heating, sanitation, proper food and decent clothing. I shall describe shortly what has been done to help them.
As my hon. Friend takes a particularly close interest in adoption, I shall first outline what we are doing in that respect. It is understandable that many couples in Britain, where the number of babies available for adoption has fallen sharply in recent years, want to adopt a child from overseas. Their wishes can only have been intensified by knowledge of conditions in Romania. I want to make quite clear at the outset that all British Government Departments concerned—notably the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Home Office, and Department of Health—are committed to helping all suitably qualified couples, provided that they follow the essential requirements of both Romania and the United Kingdom, to adopt from Romania without unnecessary bureaucracy and as quickly as possible, consistent with the overriding obligations upon us to make sure that the best interests of the child are always uppermost.
My hon. Friend will appreciate that the procedures that prospective adopters need to follow exist to protect the children's welfare. Children adopted overseas should be afforded no less protection than children adopted in Britain. It would be entirely wrong if a child could be brought here from abroad for adoption without proper inquiries being made both into the child's circumstances abroad and the background of the prospective adopters in this country. Otherwise, there would clearly be scope for serious abuse. I am sure that the House is with me when I say that we must remain vigilant for the sake of the children's welfare.
The checks that I have spoken of take time. With the best will in the world, they cannot be completed in a few
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days. But we know that conditions can be poor in Romania and we sympathise with couples who wish to adopt. That is why all the Government Departments concerned do their best to operate the process as quickly as possible. Most entry clearance applications in respect of Romanian children have been decided within four to seven weeks—which is far quicker than it usually takes to adopt a child in Britain.
Since last December, the British embassy in Bucharest has been inundated with applications, not just for entry clearance for children for adoption, but for visa work of all sorts. Our staff there have done their best to cope in difficult circumstances. Inevitably, there have been some whose cases have not been dealt with quite as quickly as one would have liked. However, we have sent out more British staff to handle the extra work and we are monitoring progress constantly to check whether more needs to be done.
A team of officials from the Home Office and the Department of Health visited Bucharest in November to discuss with the Romanian authorities how to mesh our two countries' adoption procedures together. The Romanian side confirmed their willingness to approve adoptions by British couples, if it is in the best interests of the children, and where couples are prepared to observe the requirements of both countries. The Ministry of Justice and senior Romanian judges made it clear that they regard our procedures as the best among the countries with which they deal. If a British couple secure entry clearance, the Romanian authorities can be confident that they can be trusted to look after a Romanian child properly, because there will have been a thorough investigation.
As a result of the visit, a revised leaflet will be produced early in the new year setting out up-to-date and comprehensive details of the procedure which needs to be followed. I hope that it will help to clear up some of the difficulties that prospective adopters have had.
We should not confuse adoption with the rather different problem—although they are related—of how conditions for abandoned Romanian children can be improved.
Mr. Thurnham: Before we leave the subject of adoption, I think it right to say that couples who wish to adopt should be given the maximum amount of counselling, advice and help in the early stages, while they are considering whether it is the right course. If time is required, that is when it is most important that the procedures are used as fully as possible. Having got through that stage, the process should move more rapidly, and when the couple have identified a child, delays should be kept to a minimum. It is important that the maximum amount of counselling and advice should be given in the early stages so that the number of people who change their mind—as in the example quoted by the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes)—is kept to a minimum and people know their mind at an early stage. They need as much help as possible at the beginning of the process, so that when they get to Romania, things can go smoothly and they will not be tempted to bypass procedures. We want children to come to this country by following the procedures and we do not want to offer any temptation for people to bypass them.
Mr. Hogg: I am sure that my hon. Friend is right, but I do not think that it is for the Foreign Office to provide any such counselling—whatever else we may be, we are not an adoption agency.
The other problem is how conditions for abandoned children can be improved. As soon as we became aware of Romania's pressing needs a year ago, the British Government acted quickly to send humanitarian aid. We sent emergency medical supplies at once and contributed to two European Community packages of medical aid and food. We funded a family planning programme, helped British charities to aid children's homes and donated £500,000 to the World Health Organisation, which at our request spent most of it on care for newborn babies and children. We donated contraceptives and HIV diagnostic equipment, and in total sent humanitarian aid worth about £6·5 million. However, the needs of children's homes and other institutions caring for abandoned children are particularly pressing, so we are especially pleased to be associated with the major programme that the European Community now has under way to alleviate conditions in Romania.
This programme has been running for several weeks already. The first moves were to send milk and enriched flour for infants and provide food, blankets, medicines, medical equipment and training for the care of handicapped children. The Community then agreed with the Prime Minister of Romania to help fund a crash programme to repair, run and improve heating equipment in the institutions before the onset of winter. The programme is helping to pay for the work of the Save the Children Fund and several other European charities active in Romania.
In the slightly longer term the institutions will be comprehensively repaired and improved and Romanian staff will be trained in how to look after the children in their care. Apart from the funds raised by the sale of EC food aid to Romania earlier this year, which the Community has agreed may be used for this programme, the Community has already committed over £9 million of new money, with the promise of more to come. We strongly support this excellent programme, which will help greatly to improve the quality of life for the children concerned.
The international effort is not restricted to the EC. I understand, for example, that UNICEF will open an office in Bucharest in January to run a special two-year emergency programme for institutionalised children. There will be wide range of activities, starting with essentials such as the supply of vaccines and the meeting of other needs.
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The Romanian Government themselves have pledged to do what they can with the limited resources available to them. The Prime Minister, Mr. Roman, has ordered the Romanian army to help with the urgent task of repairing and improving heating equipment. A state secretariat has been set up—headed by the equivalent of a Minister—to work with the Community, UNICEF and others to look after abandoned children, orphans, the mentally handicapped and others who, for one reason or another, cannot look after themselves.
I must also pay tribute to the host of unofficial efforts to respond to Romania's needs. The response of the British public alone has been magnificent. Scores of charities, large and small, have been created to help Romania or have turned existing efforts in that direction—the Romanian Orphanage Trust and Bristol Mencap are just two of such charities. Scores of British men and women are now in Romania, giving freely of their time and energy to improve conditions there. Thousands of people in Britain are involved in raising money for food, medical care, clothing and other essentials. The Romania information centre at the university of Southampton is playing a valuable role in co-ordinating the activities of aid groups all over Britain.
A development at last week's European Council in Rome, while not aimed exclusively at helping children in Romania, will certainly be of great benefit to them. The council decided on emergency food and medical aid for Romania and Bulgaria totalling about £70 million, and some of that will undoubtedly make its way to institutionalised children.
I am under no illusion that the measures that I have outlined will suffice to solve the problems that Romania has inherited in their entirety. In the long term—as the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) said—Romania needs to create, through economic reform and reconstruction, the wealth to improve the quality of life for her children, and indeed all her citizens. The Romanian Government, under Mr. Roman, have made encouraging progress in that direction, although there is a long way to go.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this subject. I have set out briefly some of the ways in which Britain arid the international community are moving to respond to the humanitarian crisis in Romania; I have also explained what the Government are doing to assist British couples seeking to adopt children from Romania. I hope that, in so doing, I have gone some way towards answering my hon. Friend's concerns.

Electricity Supply (East Midlands)
5.2 am
Mr. Harry Barnes: I find myself caught in rather a cleft stick in these Consolidated Fund debates. I really wanted to speak in the previous debate, about Romanian orphans, but, because of our procedures, I could not do so, and had to be content with intervening, as I have done in similar debates. When I managed to make a speech earlier in the Christmas Adjournment debate, I was "squeezed out" for reasons of time. Perhaps I shall be able to knit the bits and pieces together on some future occasion.
In the current debate, however, I am concerned about the consequences of the severe weather suffered recently by the east midlands and about what is to be done if similar circumstances arise in the future. The severe weather started on the evening of Friday 7 December and there was adequate warning. That did not apply to the gale warnings issued in the south of England in 1987, to which I may refer later. Conditions deteriorated rapidly in my area between 10 o'clock on Friday evening and 3 o'clock on Saturday morning. The results were devastating. Electricity supplies in the east midlands area were disrupted from 3 am onwards. Councillor Betty Long, who lives in the Killamarsh area, informed me about the conditions there. The electricity supplies from the Westhorpe substation were disrupted. Three 33,000 kV cables came down. If one of them had remained intact, electricity supplies could have been maintained.
Supplies were disrupted throughout the entire east midlands area. The results were devastating in north Derbyshire and north Nottinghamshire. Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire and Leicestershire also suffered badly. Water supplies were cut off in many areas because of the failure of electricity supplies at the pumping stations. There were no emergency generators. Action was taken to obtain generators. Eventually help was obtained from the Army. It was difficult at first to reach remote areas where electricity cables had come down.
I first became aware of the extent of the problem when I rose early that morning. I had hoped to hold a constituency surgery in Chesterfield at 10 am, but it had to be cancelled because electricity supplies had failed in the area. Moreover, because of the bad weather conditions, I could not have reached the surgery in time. I switched on the radio and tuned in to Radio Sheffield, as everybody else in the area did. Its community service came very much into its own at that time. That must also be true of the local radio stations elsewhere in Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.
I received a letter from Chris van Schaick, the programme organiser for Radio Sheffield. He explained what conditions were like four days into the crisis. He said:
"Over the weekend and yesterday Radio Sheffield abandoned its normal schedule to provide a special weather service. Our phone-in lines have not stopped ringing since the crisis began. The utilities have been asking people to report their problems on air because their own staff have been listening to us to find out where the worst problems are. The station has broadcast a total of nearly 80 hours of programmes on the crisis since Saturday morning."
People would have been in desperate trouble if that information had not been made available to them. However, it was only available to those who were lucky
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enough to have battery-operated radios. However, information was relayed to communities and people were kept informed of developments.
I was one of those who ventured out that Saturday, although, quite correctly, people were being advised not to do so unless their journeys were absolutely necessary. The opportunity for politicians to appear on television probably makes their journey absolutely necessary. I went to Leeds television studio. I make that point because on my journey I was able to observe the difference in conditions in north Derbyshire and Leeds.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: May I associate myself and agree with the hon. Gentleman's remarks about the magnificent service that was provided by the local broadcasting networks? He mentioned Radio Sheffield. It should be placed on record that Radio Nottingham and Radio Trent, which cover the area represented by the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) and myself, did a first-class job providing the community service that he mentioned.
Mr. Barnes: Given the resources that are available, BBC local radio offers a great service to communities, especially in such emergencies, when people automatically rely on public service provision.
Travelling between north Derbyshire and Leeds, I discovered that north Derbyshire was affected far more than other areas. Sheffield was bad, but was a slight improvement on north Derbyshire. Some areas between Sheffield and Leeds were quite mild. Leeds and the areas surrounding it were in trouble, but they were not as bad as those in Sheffield, and neither of those places experienced conditions as bad those in as north Derbyshire.
The area covered by Yorkshire Electricity was less seriously affected than that covered by East Midlands Electricity. That is not to say that Yorkshire was not badly affected; cables were down and it experienced faults with low voltage provision, but the position was considerably worse in north Derbyshire, north Nottinghamshire and large areas of the midlands. That is borne out by the fact that, as late as 12 December, the Leader of the House, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), pointed out that 43,000 customers were waiting for their service to be reconnected, 39,500 of them in the east midlands area. That shows the scale of the problem. It took longer to deal with, because conditions were often far worse.
Snow and ice were adhering to washing lines, to fences round farms and to cables. Falling trees were bringing down cables and pylons were collapsing. Conditions were so bad that linesmen in the Chatsworth area were unable to get out. Appeals were being made on the radio to notify the electricity authorities of where cables were down. East Midlands Electricity received a bad press because its reconnection times compared unfavourably with those in the Yorkshire area. In some areas, reconnection was made impossible by the conditions.
When I returned from Leeds, I was aware of the scale of the problem and was in regular touch with the electricity board. Over that weeekend, I contacted the Department of Energy about emergency action and Labour energy spokesmen about the devastating situation.
What was required all along was a statement from the Government, issued through the Department of Energy,

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recognising the extent of the emergency and demonstrating to people that they were using all their resources to assist in handling it. That statement was never made.
I also issued a press release that illustrated the strength of my feelings. It appeared in the Yorkshire Post and stated:
"I am very concerned about the delay, particularly by the Department of Energy, in co-ordinating a repair and rescue programme.
It has been largely left to the individual electricity boards to sort out and it should have been a nationally organised operation.
Up to 50 per cent, of North-East Derbyshire is still without electricity and many people will have had supplies cut off for a longer period.
The East Midlands Electricity Authority seems to have a longer backlog than Yorkshire Electricity which is probably because Derbyshire has been worst hit—but this is a good reason for a nationally co-ordinated scheme.
I have got the feeling that if this had been the south of England it would have been regarded as a national disaster, just as it was during the gales.
I appreciate that a lot of people have been working very hard over the weekend, but I find the lack of action by the Department of Energy quite worrying."
The Government's response to the gales in the south demonstrated that they were organised and concerned. Money was made available to local authorities under the Bellwin scheme. That decision was announced as soon as Parliament reassembled—the House will recall that the gales occurred during the recess—five days after the emergency. No such decision was made about the crisis that hit the water and electricity supplies of the east midlands. Many of my constituents were aghast at the Government's lack of action.
The House had an opportunity briefly to consider the problem on 10 December—the Monday after the blizzards—during Energy Question Time. Three of those questions related to electricity and that enabled hon. Members who represent the east midlands to refer to the crisis. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) was lucky enough to ask a supplementary question and he pointed out to the Minister that
"60,000 people were cut off in the Chesterfield district over the weekend due to the storms, 1,000 faults occurred, and 20,000 emergency calls were made." [Official Report, 10 December 1990; Vol. 182, c. 643.]
He also said that people would have been happy to have been able to plug in to what they were buying.
The peculiar thing was that the flotation of electricity shares was taking place that Monday. The flotation influenced the Government's failure to announce a crisis and the failure of East Midlands Electricity to ask the Government to do so. If national headlines had described the extent of the crisis in that company' area, shares in it would have fallen through the floor rather than gone through the roof. There was a conspiracy of silence about the problems faced by East Midlands Electricity.
Following Energy questions, a private notice question on the severe weather was put by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) and was answered by the Home Secretary. It is an illustration of the lack of priority that the Government gave to the matter that they did not make a statement on it. A private notice question had to be tabled by the Opposition. Furthermore, the Home Secretary's answer to the PNQ concentrated on transport problems. Little mention was made of electricity supplies However, he said:
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"At present some 380,000 customers are without an electricity supply. Most reconnections should be achieved today or tomorrow, but it will take longer in some isolated areas. Some 500,000 people are still without piped water."
The myth that the disaster occurred in isolated rural areas needs to be laid to rest. It did not. It occurred in conurbations and, if not in the centres of towns, in areas associated with them. Next to Chesterfield there is a fairly large town called Staveley, which was devastated in the severe weather. Residents of whole areas, not just small parts of the town, had to wait until the weekend for supplies to begin to be permanently re-established. At Woodthorpe the supply went off about seven times after it was reconnected. The Home Office seemed to have no understanding of the problems in the area.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Sparkbrook asked about the Bellwin scheme. The answer of the Home Secretary was:
"The right hon. Gentleman asked about what is known as the Bellwin scheme, under which the Government provide financial assistance towards emergency costs under arrangements that were agreed in 1982. The scheme is activated at Ministers' discretion when weather conditions are clearly exceptional and when, as a result, local authorities are likely to incure expenditure. When the scheme is activated, grant is paid to cover 85 per cent. of expenditure over a threshold that is currently £2 per charge payer."
Those are new arrangements with respect to the poll tax. The Bellwin scheme originally operated with respect to ratepayers. The scheme was fully brought into operation when the gales hit the south of England.
The Home Secretary continued:
"As the House knows, the scheme was activated in 1987 following the hurricane and again earlier this year following the severe winter storms. It is too early to know whether it will be activated this time."—[Official Report, 10 December 1990; Vol. 182, c. 663.]
It was not too early to give an idea of whether the scheme would be activated. The Home Secretary said that activation was at Ministers' discretion when weather conditions are clearly exceptional. Any information collated by the Department of Energy would have shown that we faced severe weather conditions. Perhaps it takes a little time to sort out these things. But surely it should have taken no longer than it took to make a decision in the case of the gales in the south of England in 1987. That was within five days.
Several east midlands Members received a letter from the Secretary of State for Energy. I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) has a copy with him. The letter says:
"Where local authorities are concerned, the Bellwin scheme could be invoked although there are at present no plans to do so as no claims from local authorities have been received."
What claims from local authorities were received in connection with the gales? The letter was written five days after the events—the time that it took Ministers, on earlier occasions, to rush to the House with a statement and say that the Bellwin provisions would be available. That letter was disgraceful.
By now, we should have had a statement to the effect that the Bellwin scheme will operate. A vast number of emergency services had to be provided. People whose electricity supply was cut off moved into community centres. All sorts of provision had to be made for the aged, young children and others at risk. District, parish and county council provision was needed, as well as a massive amount of voluntary provision. Councils such as Derbyshire, which is poll tax-capped, have limited

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resources on which to draw. The provision of extra services is likely to have an impact on their ability to provide services in future and may destroy their social services programme. It put a brake on the provision of other services that were needed at the time. A statement should have been made at the time—we should still have one—to the effect that the Bellwin scheme provisions will operate.
In my frustration at the fact that there was no statement about Bellwin or about the Government's intention to involve themselves in co-ordinating activity, I managed, at the last minute, to obtain a Standing Order No. 20 application on the Monday. I wanted to get the business of the House changed so that we could discuss the crisis. For example, it was being said that my constituents in Barrow Hill, who were trying to use the miners' welfare, would have to wait another four days before their electricity could be reconnected.
In some respects, what happened in the east midlands was worse than what happened in the gales in the south of England in 1987 because of the winter conditions. It is true that a thaw came later, but it is a difficult time of year and people can be at much greater risk, although I grant that there were massive difficulties in the south of England, which certainly deserved the assistance that it received. Things that happen in the south of England tend to elicit a rapid response and much media coverage, whereas areas such as the east midlands and Scotland—which also had problems and which had to wait a long time for Bellwin moneys—sometimes feel that they have almost been forgotten.
I tabled three early-day motions—208, 223 and 246—listing the problems and pointing out that, by 10 December, half a million people were without electricity. The figures given by East Midlands Electricity are customer figures. To establish the number of individuals concerned, we need to multiply those figures. I am talking not just about people's homes; shops were closed, nursing homes and homes for the mentally ill were affected, as were factories and pits such as Markham, Bolsover and Cresswell. High Moor pit in my constituency was able to operate only because it is linked to Kiveton park pit in Yorkshire. The electricity supply was driven in a cable from Kiveton park through to High Moor pit. Early-day motion 246 relates to the problems in retrospect because from last Monday only the rural districts remained cut off.
There has been an appeal to the Minister for a meeting to take place and I have already spoken of some of the problems about that. We have persistently been given underestimates about the size of the problem and there has been a lack of publicity. The Government have failed to make statements to the House to alert the media to the size of the problem that existed, which has been caught up with electricity privatisation.
We can draw lessons from the experience. One such lesson seems to be that when emergencies occur, people expect their Government to announce the problems and assure them that they are using what resources they can to attempt to handle them. There may be a case for setting up national emergency legislation in this country on the same basis as it exists in Canada, Australia and France.
Never again should such problems be faced by people in any region, certainly not in the east midlands, where
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people have already suffered. If there is the prospect of more bad weather this winter, with ice and snow such as we had recently and another collapse of electricity services, will people have to go through again what they have been through, unable to believe that everything possible is being done to assist them?
There are problems associated with East Midlands Electricity. I grant that after the first day it drafted in a host of people and much valuable work was done in an attempt to restore electricity supplies. But there were some problems related to the fabric of the services.
I received a letter from one of my constitutents in Woodthorpe in the Chesterfield district. Mr. Bennett wrote to the electricity board on 8 February 1990 about the problems of electricity supply in that district. He said:
"I know you are experiencing difficult times at the present but I would like you to investigate the reason why the Woodthorpe area of Staveley seems to be prone to regular power cuts or poor power. Since late last year to date we have had 5 power cuts and reduced power on other occasions. For the last 30 years we have always had problems and as we look out of our windows to Staveley town centre we see the lights burning whilst we are on candle power. This happened again last night—7 February 1990 between 7.20 and 10 pm. My sister-in-law lives in Stavely town centre and never seems to experience any of our misfortunes. A year or so ago you re-routed the overhead power cables and we were assured that our troubles were over. NOT SO. I write as a committee member of the Woodthorpe Residents Association and the local neighbourhood watch scheme."
The reply was interesting. It came from Mr. Hitchcock, operations engineer at the Chatsworth district of East Midlands Electricity. He outlines the work being done and the difficulties of the past. He admits the problem and states:
"next year I intend to monitor the situation to determine whether any further work is required on the electricity network."
He certainly learnt something about that after the recent bad weather.
The main lesson to be learnt is that the privatisation of electricity has not helped with handling such crises. The Daily Express headline from that Monday was "Killer Craze Chaos"; by the Tuesday, the headline had become "Share Power for Millions", the article giving details of the sale of electricity shares. The following day the headline ran:
"Electricity surges to £76 profit"—that is, for each 100 shares sold. Huge sums of money were being made.
The only person to get it right and detect humour in all this was Jak, in the Evening Standard. His cartoon showed two old people going up to the attendant outside Nottinghamshire power station—part of East Midlands Electricity—and saying:
"As soon as we bought shares in it we were cut off."
Due to the massive problems caused by the privatisation of electricity, the Government have ducked some of their responsibilities. This was a most unfortunate conjunction of events. We must see to it that these problems never occur again.
5.36 pm
Mr. Frank Haynes: I am here to support my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) because Ashfield, like the whole of north Nottinghamshire and north-east Derbyshire, suffered greatly. The electricity companies and the Government

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were caught with their trousers down by the appalling weather. There was no excuse, as they were tipped off five days before.
We should have made progress since 1947; we are in the 1990s. Yet despite all the technology that we have, the Energy Department could not overcome the severe weather in parts of the country, especially in Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and the whole of Derbyshire. The Government must pull their socks up. If this happens again, God help us. When they feel that they are losing the argument, the Government and the electricity authorities say that the weather was an act of God. That is the defence that they put up. But it will not wash.
The people in my constituency are not pleased with the Department of Energy. I do not blame the Under-Secretary of State, who has only just moved into the Department, but the Secretary of State has been there for quite some time—
Mr. Harry Barnes: It is on his head.
Mr. Haynes: He should have anticipated the problems, given that he was warned.
Perhaps I could relate to the Minister some of the happenings in north Nottinghamshire and in my constituency. I echo the praise of my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East and the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) for the local radio stations for their marvellous work. Obviously, the television people could not send messages because there was no power, but people with battery radios were able to receive messages from Radio Nottingham and Radio Trent.
In our county there are elderly people's homes that are all electric, no gas. The local radio stations appealed to people to provide Calor gas equipment to keep elderly people warm, never mind the provision of hot meals. My constituency, like that of my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East, is semi-rural. In the rural part of the constituency, it was really rough. On Sunday morning my hon. Friend was interviewed for television in a field in Derbyshire. The programme was relayed to Birmingham and there was snow all around as deep as hell. That clearly showed the serious problems in that area.
The Department must pull up its socks and do something in case this happens again. In my constituency people appealed to the local authority for water. The pumping stations could not operate because there was no electricity, and the local authority did its best with water tankers and sent them to as many of its properties as possible to flush toilets with buckets of water. How can such things happen in 1990 when we can send rockets to the moon? It takes some understanding. I am sure that my hon. Friend is right when he says that the Government were more concerned about flogging the electricity industry than about the poor beggars in the rural areas who were really suffering.
Radio Nottingham told people about a shop that was loaded with all kinds of batteries and said that if people could get to it they would be provided. What effort did the Department of Energy make? It was no flipping help at all. Many of my constituents said that all that the Government were worried about was flogging off the electricity industry. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East, I could not get out on the
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Saturday morning to go to my surgery. If I remember rightly what the hon. Member of Gedling whispered in my ear a short time ago, he could not get to his surgery either.
The situation was serious, but fortunately my telephone was still operational. At least people with problems were able to ring and ask for help, but it is difficult to help when a Member of Parliament is not responsible for the distribution of this, that and the other. He is responsible for distribution of information if it is available to him, to help people in such need.
Kids could not go to school, but even if they could everything was electric, so schools were closed. I have heard Ministers in the Department of Energy—not this Minister because he has not been there very long—bragging about the electricity industry and how marvellous nuclear power is. Yet we have one drop of snow, and they are beaten. Many parts of Europe have every year worse winters then we have, but they still get the power through. I do not understand why we have such problems. There must have been a slip-up. The Government have had getting on for 12 years to overcome problems like a lot of snow on the ground, leading to everything damn well stopping. I remember hon. Members talking about being stuck on motorways because the snow could not be moved, about lorries jack-knifing and all the rest. There was a problem, and it took a long while for power to come back to these areas.
Like my hon. Friend and other hon. Members, I congratulate the work force on the way in which it set about its job. Some of them worked right through the night, day after day, to make sure that power got through to those who most needed it. Those turning up to work on public transport found that the towel had been thrown in, and the vehicles had had to go back in the garages because they could not get around. There was no transport system. It was appalling.
I hope that the Department will pull out all the stops if anything similar happens again. Let this be a lesson. It is not 1947 now; it is 1990, and I hope that we shall not have the same problems in 1991. The hon. Member for Gedling seems to have moved on to the Back Benches so that he can make a contribution. If that is the case, I shall sit down and give him the opportunity to do so, as there is not all that much time left.
5.47 am
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: I am grateful for the opportunity to make a short contribution to the debate. It is always a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes). I always want to call him my hon. Friend. He has expressed well the frustrations and difficulties that were felt, particularly in Nottinghamshire, which was so adversely affected by the severe weather conditions that he described.
I shall not touch on the role of the Department of Energy, which had only a peripheral role in what happened in the period that we are discussing. The severe weather conditions did not affect my constituency so badly as they affected that of the hon. Gentleman. Practically all my constituents had power restored relatively quickly. On the Saturday, I managed to get across my constituency, co fulfil an engagement that I had agreed to do some time before. It was at Ernhale court in Arnold, an old people's complex, which the hon. Gentleman may know quite well, where I had the pleasure of joining the residents for sherry

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and mince pies to toast the Christmas season. During that visit, having made my way with great difficulty across Carlton and over into Arnold, I was able to see at first hand the grave difficulties from which my constituents were suffering.
The concern that I felt most strongly was for the difficulties and anxieties caused to elderly people, who were dependent on electricity to provide them with the basic services in life, such as heating. In view of the fact that they might be cut off for a long time, a danger which in too many cases became a reality, that point must be taken on board by the House. Whatever we think about the way in which the electricity boards responded to the severe weather, it is important that there should be perhaps mature reflection on what happened. We should await the reports of the utilities to see what they have to say about their plans for the future and the way in which the difficulties that they faced were handled.
Thousands of men and women employed or brought in by the East Midlands electricity board, which is based in my constituency and is now East Midlands Electricity, worked round the clock to restore power supplies in my constituency and elsewhere in the east midlands. Some came from as far away as southern Ireland, and they worked extremely hard in conditions that I am reliably informed had not been seen in the east midlands for 20 years. They experienced weather damage which many of them had not encountered before. It was the first occasion I can recall when I found English weather threatening and frightening.
As I have said, it is important to wait until we are able to give these matters wider and more mature consideration. We need to reflect on the events that took place and the lessons that need to be learnt. With the privilege of having East Midlands Electricity based in my constituency, I have every confidence that the management there will examine any lessons that are to be learnt, learn them and implement the results in the future in the style and with the vigour that is required and that we have come to expect of them.
5.51 am
Mr. Rhodri Morgan: I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) for securing and initiating the debate. Back-Bench Members and Front-Bench spokesmen have had the opportunity to place on record their reflections on the events that took place a comparatively short time ago in the east midlands.
It is not exactly with unalloyed pleasure that we are in the Chamber at this unearthly hour, but it was at about the same unearthly hour that electricity linesmen were being dragged out of bed on 8 December, eventually in their thousands when East Midlands Electricity realised the magnitude of the disaster. It is not a region that I know especially well. I understand, however, that snow had been falling pretty well throughout Saturday, and that in the early hours of Sunday the temperature had dropped sufficiently for ice accretion to occur. That accretion occurs only when the temperature is within 1 deg. C, plus or minus, of 0 deg. C. Large lumps of ice become attached
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to wires and cables, which weigh 10 times more and five times more than the weight at which they can remain attached to their poles.
This was an uncanny reminder of that ghastly period in the history of the North sea trawler industry about 15 years ago when trawlers were affected in the same way. They became top heavy as ice attached to their superstructure, the centre of gravity would suddenly become affected and they would turn turtle without warning, with substantial loss of life. Ice accretion is rare but not unknown. We in Britain perhaps experience it more than elsewhere because our country is windier and wetter than others where much lower temperatures are recorded. It is something for which we should be prepared, but because it does not happen more than once every 20 years we attempt to muddle through. We then have to face conditions that amounted, recently, to a major catastrophe for the east midlands, and one that perhaps did not receive the attention that it properly deserved for the reasons that my hon. Friends the Members for Derbyshire, North-East and for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) and the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) have set out. East Midlands Electricity said:
"The extent of the damage, with poles and miles of wire on the ground, is similar to that experienced during the 1987 hurricane in the South of England."
I think that we would all agree that it did not get the same attention as the 1987 hurricane in the national press. That hurricane was thought to be a national problem, whereas the damage in the east midlands was viewed as a regional problem affecting those unfortunates living north of Watford gap. It was not the subject of dinner table conversation in Hampstead; it was not the subject of leaders in The Times; it was not thought to be on a par with the hurricane which happened shortly after the general election that brought me and other hon. Members to the House. The Secretary of State for the Environment made a statement about the hurricane on the Monday that the House reassembled after the summer recess. The hurricane remained a major talking point for months because we could all see evidence of it in the trees that had fallen down in Hyde park and elsewhere.
Those of us who are not from the east midlands have not seen the devastation there. However, to get some idea of the measure of it, I can tell the House that 800,000 customers were without power on 8 December. The figure gradually reduced—500,000 by midnight that day; 300,000 by midnight on Sunday; 190,000 by midnight on Monday; 90,000 by midnight on Tuesday; 55,000 by midnight on Wednesday; 30,000 by midnight on Thursday; and 14,500 by midnight on Friday. The figures came down, but six days after the event there were still 14,500 customers without power.
My latest information from East Midlands Electricity is that there are still hundreds of consumers without power in the more remote parts of the east midlands, yet it is now 12 days and a couple hours since the event. It is a major dislocation of electricity supplies. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield said, many people now depend on electricity in all-electric homes and institutions. They no longer have coal fires and supplies of candles and other alternatives. The more dependent we are on electricty, the more essential it is that we are better prepared for the occasional weather disaster.
I am told by East Midlands Electricity that the damage in the telecommunications service is even greater than that

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in the electricity service. The number of telecommunications cables that have come down, and are still down, is greater than the number of electricity cables. They are the non-weatherproof part of our public utilities. Water and gas pipes run underground, but electricity—other than in large cities—and telecommunications cables are above ground. They are prone to exposure to high winds, especially when they combine with snow, sleet and ice, as happened on 8 December in the east midlands.
We are trying to measure how good performance was and what needs to be done to improve it. Reference has rightly been made to the need for mature reflection. East Midlands Electricity will be producing a report, and I hope that we will have access to it in the Library or in another forum here where we can debate it. Hon. Members who represent other parts of the country will want to determine what lessons can be learnt from a weather disaster that resulted in 800,000 customers being left without electricity for some time, and 500,000 customers being left without electricity for 24 hours or more.
Britain is proud of its electricity industry. It is far from being a lame duck. It has an exceptionally good record, comparable with Germany and among the best in the world, on security of supply. It has a record superior to that of the United States, Japan and France on the avoidance of blackouts and brownouts. Therefore, when the supply to a large part of the country is knocked out, it merits close examination to discover what went wrong, whether it could have been avoided and whether it can be avoided in future.
We are also proud of the efforts of the company's management and work force and of the staff who were borrowed from other companies and shipped in from other countries as well. That was done fairly rapidly, but not instantaneously. That would have meant travelling along the M6, M69, M42 and M1, which was not possible on the first day.
When the matter was discussed in the House on a private notice question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley), hon. Members tended to recount their experiences in the snow rather than what happened to the east midlands region. They regaled us with stories about how long they had had to spend in their cars on the M6, almost boasting about their experiences. There was only a limited discussion of the regional electricity and other infrastructure problems. They dealt largely with how inconvenient it was for Members of Parliament, attempting to fulfil engagements, not to be able to travel up the M6 without let or hindrance. That is an important point, but it is not the most important point.
This is the first opportunity that we have had, admittedly before a limited audience, to discuss the regional problems in north Derbyshire and the surrounding areas; looking at the matter not just as the blocking of four motorways by snow, but to see what lessons can be learnt for the electricty supply system and whether we could or should have done better in getting supplies reconnected.
It is true that the blocking of the motorway vitiated early attempts to ship in large numbers of linesmen to reconnect supplies. The company could not even use its helicopter in the early stages. It could not get it airborne. But gradually, by the middle of the week, it was able to assemble something like General Schwarzkopf's task force in Saudi Arabia. The men, materials and supplies had to
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be put together in the right place—it is no good having men without materials, or vice versa—and that took three or four days.
For large numbers of people to be without electricity for three or four days creates a colossal problem. Our ability to make do and mend is not as great as it was. To that extent, society is much less flexible and resourceful than it was. One cannot avoid mentioning the fact that some local market traders and shopkeepers exploited the situation. We are told that on Monday, when people in Mansfield were desperately looking for candles, they were on sale at £2·50 each. I am glad to say that, to counter that boil on the surface of the enterprise culture, the company managed to acquire 50,000 candles which were then distributed free by Age Concern by Wednesday evening.
That was a useful countervailing force. It may have been done four or five days after the start of the disaster, but it prevented gross exploitation of the situation with people trying to make a bomb out of the fact that candle supplies were limited just when people were desperate for any means of lighting their way to bed or finding the toilet in the middle of the night, or for whatever other reason they might have needed candles.
All that illustrates the extent of the crisis, and just how dislocated a society such as ours, which is so dependent on modern conveniences, becomes when the source of power for those modern conveniences is suddenly unavailable.
By an extraordinary coincidence, those events occurred just at the moment when the button was about to be pushed, and the champagne about to be poured, at the celebrations to mark the flotation of the 12 electricity companies. They all arranged champagne parties for 11 December, with the exception of East Midlands Electricity—which was sensible enough to cancel its celebrations. It was successfully floated on the stock exchange, but its management realised that it would have been most inappropriate to hold a champagne party on a day when 100,000 of that company's customers were without electricity.
Incidentally, that coincidence might be viewed by some of a more religious bent as the wrath of God being visited on the Secretary of State for Energy for daring to privatise the industry, but I do not go in for such extremist theories. So I shall not invoke the image of the four horsemen of the apocalypse being glimpsed in the darkness, riding through north Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.
What is the most important aspect of the electricity industry? Is it the same as that of the water companies, a year after their flotation, which is to increase their dividend by the greatest percentage? I am told by people in the financial world that that is the current priority of the 10 water and sewage companies. If the same thing happens over the next year in respect of the 12 electricity companies, they will have thrown away the industry's crown jewels. Its crown jewels were displayed last week when, as part of the public service ethic, people were willing to work through the night in the frozen wastes of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire to restore services and meet the needs of customers for a continuous supply. Will there be a clash in future between the companies' clear fiduciary duty to their shareholders to maximise profits and the need that everyone in Britain has—except those or a hermit-like persuasion—for electricity to flow whenever we throw the switch?
That public utility mentality must be retained even by the privatised companies, or they will be unable to

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persuade staff to turn out at the dead of night, ship in help from other regions, or secure a commitment from another company even if it does not know where the money is to come from. In the past, one board could ring another and ask to borrow 100 of its linesmen, and leave the financial arrangements to be sorted out later. That staff had to be paid for, but there was no haggling over price when they were needed most—in the same way as the benefiting company would not haggle five years later, when Yorkshire or south-west England were affected.
That tradition has been built up during the period that the industry has been in public ownership. It is essential that that remains the overriding ethic of the industry, even if it has been floated in the private sector.
If the linesmen are infected by the gold digger psychology—like the people who were selling candles for £2.50 each in Mansfield that Monday night—they will start to think, "They need us. It is supply and demand. We want treble time and a full lodging allowance, as if we were staying in a five-star hotel." They will say that if Kleinwort Benson has made a fortune out of the privatisation of the industry, they will make a fortune out of it, too.
If we lose the willingness to turn out at dead of night because it is a tradition in the industry, and that is what one is supposed to do because society has become so dependent on continuity of electricity supply, the industry will be on the slippery slope.
When we finally receive a proper report, after mature reflection, when all the facts are known and consumers are finally reconnected, Opposition Ministers will want to know about the degree to which the public service ethic remains fully effective, despite the financial euphoria that was beginning to overcome parts of the industry as the magic day of 11 December approached. We shall want to know what guarantees the Government will be able to offer us that—privatisation, or no privatisation—the public service ethic, the willingness to turn out and to work double shifts until every consumer who has lost supply is reconnected, will remain, regardless of who owns the industry, whether it is private shareholders or the state, through the Secretary of State for Energy.
6.13 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory): We have heard graphic descriptions of the inconvenience and hardship suffered by people in the east midlands due to the severe weather over the weekend of 8 and 9 December. Despite the hour, this morning's debate has seen contributions not only from the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes), who instigated the debate, but from the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes), whose constituency was also affected. On the Conservative Benches, we have had a contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) and I also know that my hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens) was affected personally, as were his constituents, and that my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Mr. Boswell), on the Treasury Bench, also represents a midlands seat and therefore has an interest in the debate.
I should like to join my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling and other hon. Members in extending sympathy to those who were without electricity supplies for many
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days—in some cases for well over a week. People were affected not only in their homes, but also at work. Water supplies were also affected and there were interruptions in the electricity supply to a number of important businesses and industries in the area. I know that a number of British Coal collieries were affected, as were Rolls-Royce at Derby, Courtaulds Acetate, and a number of British Gypsum's mines, and that Severn Trent Water lost supply to 13 of its 15 water treatment plants. So a very wide area was affected. At times, the supply to more than half a million electricity customers was interrupted. The storm was forecast and East Midlands Electricity began to put staff and materials in position at an early stage, before the storm hit. Its 13 emergency centres were manned and engineers and line gangs were on standby. When the storm hit the area, however, they found it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get the men and materials to the stricken areas. Snow cover affected movement, and blizzard conditions made it impossible to repair damage immediately.
The phenomenon known as ice accretion arises from wet snow falling on the line at around freezing point, and then refreezing owing to the cooling effect of the wind. The build-up of ice on one side of the line causes the wire to rotate, opening another area to the wind. Ice up to 12 ins thick was deposited on some of the line connectors, which adds approximately 15 lb a yard to the weight of the line. It is not surprising that, in such conditions, lines fell down or broke and wooden poles collapsed; indeed, even some of the large 132kv steel pylons were damaged. As a result, by the evening of Saturday 8 December about half a million customers were without supplies.
The normal standard of design allows a 132kv system to withstand half an inch of ice in a 50 mph wind, with a safety factor of two. A build-up of ice of up to 12 ins on some of the lines was clearly well beyond the design capability of even the best systems. All the voltage lines were affected in one way or another. Obviously repairs had to start on the high-voltage lines, because only when they were repaired was it possible to identify problems in the lower-voltage systems. Some customers may not have understood that that sequence of events was necessary, and understandably felt frustrated because their local, lower-voltage line was not tackled first.
East Midlands Electricity made every effort to keep customers informed. The hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East paid tribute to that effort, and to the local radio stations which played such an important part in keeping customers and local people informed. In addition, the company worked with local authorities and with voluntary agencies—as was pointed out by the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan).
I stress that no system in the world could have been built to withstand such an onslaught. Weather conditions in the area were the worst for 20 years. The alternative—placing all lines underground—is attractive but expensive; it costs up to 10 times as much to put a line underground as it does to send it overground. A massive capital investment of around £4 billion would be required over about 30 years to complete the "undergrounding" of all lines in the areas, and in view of the infrequency of such severe weather we do not consider that that level of investment could be justified.
Mr. Harry Barnes: If such an incident were to be repeated, the costs would be excessive. Comparisons have

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been made with the original cost of providing cables, either overground or underground. When a system breaks down, emergency expenditure at great cost is involved. People have to be drafted in from Scotland, Northern Ireland and other regions. I hope that the report to be produced by East Midlands Electricity will be debated so that we can investigate the matter fully and decide what the most cost-effective arrangement would be.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: The assessment that I have given will be reconsidered in the light of experience. The east midlands area alone has about 63,000 km of line, about 60 per cent. of which—mostly low-voltage line—is underground. If it were thought appropriate to put underground an even higher percentage of the low-voltage lines and further sections of the high-voltage lines, that would be considered.
I join other hon. Members in paying tribute to the tremendous efforts mounted by the staff and management of East Midlands Electricity and to all who gave assistance in extremely difficult and uncomfortable conditions. In all, help was received from some 1,200 staff from outside the area, in addition to the management, staff, engineers and linesmen in the east midlands area. Help was also received from Northern Ireland and from the Irish Republic, as well as from the Army and specialist contractors. The co-operation between the regional electricity companies was particularly impressive and continued the tradition of mutual assistance within the industry.
There is no evidence of any lack of co-ordination among those concerned. It is certainly completely untrue to suggest that the successful flotation of the regional electricity companies was connected in any way with the response from my Department. The situation was monitored throughout by the Department of Energy and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was kept informed. What was required was not words or declarations of emergency by the Government, but the early restoration of supplies to those affected. That is why the primary responsibility and work fell upon the regional electricity companies and the grid companies, and I am very pleased at the way in which they responded.
Mr. Harry Barnes: Why was no statment made in the House? Did not the seriousness of the disruption to supplies call for a statement from the Department of Energy or the Home Office? Ought not something to have been said about the Bellwin scheme, so that people could know where they stood and could take effective action without having to worry about money?
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Hon. Members were kept informed. As for the Bellwin scheme, Ministers said that in principle the scheme could operate if the criteria were met. So far as I know, no requests for assistance under the Bellwin scheme have been received from the authorities concerned.
Mr. Harry Barnes: We know that appeals for assistance were made after the gales in the south of England. The Minister's letter, from which I quoted, was written five days after the disaster. It made the point that has been made today—that no applications had been received. Yet a statement was made in the House five days after the gales in the south of England, saying that money would be made available. The authorities were asked on that occasion to send in the details. Why was that problem dealt with in one way and this one in another?
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: In the gales, several primary duties fell to local authorities, but it was made known that the Bellwin scheme could operate and applications were made and processed in the normal way. The Government stand ready to consider any requests from local authorities in the areas concerned, but to my knowledge none has been received so far.
The flotation of the regional electricity companies, which proceeded at about the same time as the storm, did not affect the response of the electricity companies or of the Department. I stress that the electricity supply regulations apply equally whether companies are in the private or the public sector. They regulate public safety and the quality of electric supply, and they are blind to whether the operating company is in the public or the private sector. The regulations are enforced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State.
The Director General of Electricity Supply has written to all the regional electricity companies suggesting a review of the lessons to be learnt. The company most directly affected—East Midlands Electricity—is carrying out a review of events, and the Department's engineering inspectors will be keeping closely in touch with it.
It is clear that a storm of almost unprecedented ferocity hit the area on 8 and 9 December. Great damage and disruption was caused, but I was impressed and pleased at the way in which the electricity companies reacted. Of course there may be lessons to be learnt. If it is clear that additional precautionary measures should be put in place, we shall consider them when the information has been received, and we shall take into account the constructive suggestions of hon. Members.
I am pleased that the electricity supply of most customers has been reconnected, but I do not underestimate the hardship suffered by some members of the public. In general, they worked impressively to restore supplies or were patient and understanding in the light of this natural disaster. I do not feel that the Department has been negligent in keeping hon. Members informed or in ensuring that the electricity industry reacts in its traditional way of offering a service to the public of which we can all be proud.

Casualty Facilities (Stockport)
6.28 am
Mr. Tony Favell: This morning, I have the opportunity of drawing the House's attention to an issue which has concerned me since I was elected to represent Stockport in 1983, and on which I have compaigned ever since. I regard it as the single most pressing problem for my constituents. I refer to the split-site nature of acute hospital services.
There are approximately 30,000 in-patient admissions a year in Stockport. That is considerably more than for well-known teaching hospitals nearby such as Withington and Manchester royal infirmary. Yet the medical staff at Stockport face an enormous problem in trying to provide a modern and efficient acute service on sites that are three miles apart.
Three departments are located at Stockport infirmary: the orthopaedic department, the ear, nose and throat department, and the accident and emergency department. All other acute services are dealt with three miles away at Stepping Hill. That situation is intolerable and the patience of the staff is now exhausted. Despite that, excellent service is given at Stockport, and in league tables drawn up by the regional health authority the Stockport infirmary and Stepping Hill often come top. The staff would have caused the Government serious embarrassment long ago but for their dedicated, hard-working nature.
Stockport infirmary is a fine building that has just celebrated its centenary, but it is totally unsuited to be a modern hospital. It is situated in the middle of town opposite the town hall and the parking facilities are suited to the mid-19th century. Ambulances have enormous difficulties even getting to the hospital and an emergency case arriving by car cannot get anywhere near the entrance. Yet the infirmary houses one of the busiest casualty departments in the north-west. Last year almost 60,000 new patients were treated in that department.
I visit the infirmary regularly and I regret to report that, on many occasions, the atmosphere has been little short of pandemonium inside and outside the hospital simply because of the physical nature of the building. The staff are extraordinarily hard working, but they work under Victorian conditions that would have upset Florence Nightingale.
On my first visit to the accident and emergency department, soon after my election in 1983, Mr. Tony Redmond, then the consultant in charge of the department, showed me the conditions in which he and other staff worked. He pointed out to me the dangers created by the acute services being on a split site. I do not exaggerate when I describe the situation as dangerous. It is an extraordinarily busy casualty department and the major accident-receiving centre serving a population of 300,000, but there are no intensive facilities on site—they are three miles down the road at Stepping Hill. The blood bank is also situated there. Unless a seriously ill patient is fortunate enough to have problems requiring an orthopaedic surgeon or a complaint affecting his ear, nose or throat, he must be put back in the ambulance and taken down the A6, the busiest non-dual carriageway in the north, to Stepping Hill. Alternatively, he must wait for a taxi to bring a consultant from Stepping Hill to the infirmary.
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Mr. Alistair Gray, the consultant now in charge of the accident and emergency department, wrote to me last year saying that there was no doubt that patient lives were put at risk each time there was a transfer to Stepping Hill. Lives have been lost, and will continue to be lost until something is done about the situation, which I deplore. It is a disgrace that a patient, having reached the apparently safe haven of the casualty department, should find limited facilities awaiting him.
Since Mr. Redmond first brought the matter to my attention seven years ago, I have bombarded the district and regional health authorities, the then Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Health with demands that something should be done.
Not many Members of Parliament are happy to campaign for a hospital to be closed, but that is what must be done to give a decent service to the people of Stockport. I have brought—probably dragged—two Ministers to the House on the matter: first, my right hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newton) when he was Minister for Health and recently my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Freeman) when he was a Minister at the Department. I asked them to consider the position in Stockport.
There have been delegations to Ministers here in London, including one to the present Chief Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Mellor), when he was at the Department. The proposal to close the infirmary has the support of all the staff and the unions and, indeed, the whole of Stockport, apart from some members of the Labour party who seek some short-term advantage out of campaigning for it to remain open. All the staff support the hospital's closure because those dedicated health workers are determined to provide the best for Stockport and so am I. But we have been thwarted at every turn.
The proposal to move the accident and emergency department to Stepping Hill has been on the books for almost 10 years. During that time there has not been a single major capital project in Stockport. Yet last year Stockport was not included in the region's health capital programme up to 1992–93. I and the district health authority had been led to believe that Stockport had an overwhelming case for inclusion in the region's three-year £166 million capital programme. Its failure to be included in that programme was a devastating blow to the morale of the medical profession in Stockport.
It is clear that with the reform of the health service there is to be greater competition between NHS hospitals. The medical profession in Stockport is ready to accept that. But how can it compete with the nearby Manchester royal infirmary, Wythenshawe hospital and Withington hospital if it has the appalling split-site problem?
Next month Stockport has a further chance to be included in the capital programme. I cannot emphasise how important it is that the bid should be successful. In March this year the north-west regional medical committee pointed out that the Department of Health had accepted the recommendation of the Royal College of Surgeons and the Casualty Surgeons Association that it is unacceptable for major accident and emergency departments to be located away from the full back-up facilities of a main district general hospital. That point was taken by the regional medical officer, who stated that it was a fundamental principle of the region's service and capital planning developments.

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I have been led to believe that some mix-up resulted in Stockport not being included in the capital programme last year. It would be a shattering blow if next month it were not included. I beg my hon. Friend the Minister to do all in his power to ensure that it is included. If he gives me that assurance, I and all of Stockport will wish him a very happy Christmas.
6.38 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. Stephen Dorrell): As my hon. Friend said, he has been a consistent supporter of this project ever since the day he was elected to the House in 1983. He made it clear that he was an early convert to the unacceptability of the present arrangements for the treatment of accident and emergency and other patients on the split-site basis of the Stockport hospital. He has been an effective—I might even say relentless—campaigner for action to resolve the problem since he first arrived in the House. I am conscious that I am the latest of a long line of Ministers, most of whom are now much more distinguished and eminent than I, who have been the recipients of my hon. Friend's representations on behalf of his constituents.
I am sure that they will agree with me that the argument that my hon. Friend has presented to us and to the House is a powerful one and I am confident that it will ultimately succeed, not least because of the power of my hon. Friend's advocacy. The House has witnessed his advocacy on behalf of his constituents twice this week. Today, he has had the opportunity to present the argument at some length. Yesterday, he presented it at Question Time—not at such great length, but perhaps at more length than is usual on such occasions.
It is extraordinary that an argument which is so widely supported in the Stockport area and which has been recognised to be powerful by many in the health service, including Health Ministers, should have elicited such a hostile reception yesterday from the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett). It is odd that an argument based clearly on the principle that the proposals that my hon. Friend supports would produce a major advance in the quality of care provided to patients in that area should be the subject of opposition from a member of a party which prides itself on its espousal of the cause of the national health service. I am sure that my hon. Friend will lose no opportunity to give the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish a chance to explain his point of view more widely in the Stockport area.
My hon. Friend has made it clear to the House that Stockport infirmary is an aging hospital. Although it is distinguished, the building is perhaps better equipped to stand opposite the town hall and perform some distinguished function in the centre of Stockport than to house a hospital. Certainly, the building is widely recognised not to be adequate for the use to which it is currently put.
As my hon. Friend explained, the infirmary has one of the busiest accident and emergency departments in the north-west, treating almost 60,000 new patients each year. It is not the 60,000 new patients, however, who pose a problem in the provision of accident and emergency facilities in Stockport—it is the fact that 2,500 of those patients have to be transferred during their treatment from Stockport infirmary to Stepping Hill hospital, three miles down the A6, which is one of the busiest roads in the
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north-west. I have good reason to know that, because at a point further south in its course it passes through my constituency. My hon. Friend may be interested to know that in Leicestershire we have been able to obtain finance for dualling the A6 and taking it round some villages, precisely because the road is so heavily used.
Mr. Flavell: That is my second most important campaign.
Mr. Dorrell: My hon. Friend will know that, although, for constituency reasons, I may wish to join him in that campaign, I cannot deal with it in detail now.
The transfer of patients during their treatment between two acute hospitals carries with it significant risks, especially as the journey can take 30 minutes or more at times of peak traffic. It is a matter not of speculation but of fact that cardiac arrests have taken place in ambulances between those two hospitals. Not only does the transfer present avoidable and unnecessary risks for patients; it is a waste of resources because every patient transferred between the two hospital sites has to be accompanied by medical and nursing staff. It is an absurd waste of the time of front-line, highly trained, expensive, dedicated staff to have them stewarding patients between two hospital sites, especially when it is in the patients' interests that that transfer should not take place.
It is a powerful case. One does not have to be an expert in every detail of the circumstances of the Stockport area to understand the inadequacies of the present level of provision. As my hon. Friend has said, this is not merely a lay assessment of the position on the two sites. The case that he has espoused has been argued strongly by, among others, Mr. Redmond, and by all the consultants involved in acute medicine in Stockport, by the North Western regional medical committee, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Casualty Surgeons Association, which have all said that it is unacceptable to have accident and emergency provision divorced from general acute provision within a district general hospital. The expert opinion merely reinforces what most of us would regard as common sense. If we are admitted to hospital through an accident and emergency department, our hope would be that our acute condition could be treated by whatever specialist treatment and back-up was necessary within the hospital to which we were admitted.
In Stockport at present there is clearly a wasteful duplication of resources. The infirmary offers less effective medical care to the patient and has been described as unacceptable by those with a lay interest, and general management and professional opinion in the health service. Furthermore, precisely because it is recognised to be unacceptable, no one is surprised that the College of Anaesthetists has temporarily refused to recognise Stockport infirmary as a training centre for junior anaesthetist posts, and the ear, nose and throat hospital recognition committee has demonstrated its concern about the level of provision in the district by granting only temporary recognition for junior ENT posts in the hospital.
All this is profoundly unsatisfactory. However, the situation is a tribute to the dedicated staff of the two hospitals, in this context particularly those at Stockport hospital, who have put so much effort into making an avowedly unsatisfactory state of affairs work in the best

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way possible in the circumstances. The health service relies on a dedicated caring staff, and nowhere more so than in my hon. Friend's constituency.
Mr. Favell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way, as he is talking about the dedicated way in which staff at Stockport infirmary behave. In many parts of the country, there would have been shroud waving by now. It is only because the Stockport staff are decent, hard-working, capable people who have gone on in their quiet way that the situation has been allowed to continue. If the same circumstances had applied in central Birmingham, all hell would have been let loose. The decency, hard work and dedication of the Stockport staff should be recognised.
Mr. Dorrell: I recognise the decency and hard work of the staff in the district. Without that, the system could not have been made to work. It is up to us not to take advantage of that, and my hon. Friend is anxious that we should not do so. The dedication, hard work and quiet getting on with the job by his constituents is matched only by the noise that he generates in trying to change the situation.
One of the arguments against my hon. Friend's proposals—the concentration of accident and emergency care on one site at Stepping Hill—is the implications of that for patients coming from the northern part of the Stockport health district. That concern is entirely misplaced and that argument does not tell, as it is alleged to do, against my hon. Friend's conclusions. The argument is wrong because it devalues and fails to take into account the service offered by the Stockport ambulance service and its ability to take patients in need of acute hospital care quickly and effectively from the northern part of the health district to Stepping Hill hospital.
All the ambulance staff in the Stockport service have either completed modular training courses in paramedic skills in some specialties or have qualified on the full NHS training authority paramedic course and are therefore fully equipped to ensure that patients are taken safely to Stepping Hill hospital if they need emergency care.
Furthermore, every emergency vehicle in the service is already equipped with defibrillators, which should be of some comfort to people in the northern part of the area who may be concerned at the entirely wrong idea that their interests are not served by concentrating accident and emergency services at Stepping Hill. Residents in the northern part of the area need to remember that the Greater Manchester ambulance service has standing instructions to take every accident and emergency case to the nearest accident and emergency department. If provision in Stockport moves to Stepping Hill, more patients will be taken from accident and emergency services in the northern part of the district to hospitals in south and north Manchester. There is nothing new in that; the decisions will just be taken across slightly new boundaries.
It would be absurd to take too seriously the arbitrary boundaries between health districts and not to take account of the fact that what is important is that patients in need of emergency care should be put in well-equipped ambulances with well-qualified staff and taken to the
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nearest emergency department, which may not be within the arbitrary administrative boundaries of the health district.
I wish to draw attention to some of the benefits that would flow from the unified service for which my hon. Friend has argued. It would not only provide better quality accident and emergency care; it would enable the district to achieve an integrated paediatric unit on one site. That would provide a single environment geared for children's needs, including a mother and baby unit, a child isolation unit, an ear, nose and throat department, and ophthalmology—all paediatric care in one unit. That would be a major benefit of the scheme that my hon. Friend supports.
Secondly, the orthopaedic services would be concentrated on two sites instead of three and there would be separate provision for traumatic and elective work, so that the one was less prone to interfere with the other.
Thirdly, this would allow more effective use of operating theatres. The health service attaches greater importance to that than it once did, and rightly so, because fully staffed operating theatres not operating on patients are a crass waste of resources, and the chance to plan their effective use would be a major benefit of a unified system.
The money saved through the greater productivity which would result from implementation of the scheme would amount to £860,000 a year in the single district in my hon. Friend's constituency. Of that, £152,000 would come not from more efficient use of medical manpower but from savings on energy and maintenance. The present set-up cannot be allowed to endure too long, given that so much money is being wasted in that way.
I hope that I have made it clear that the argument espoused by my hon. Friend finds a ready ear in the Department of Health and in the administration of the health service generally.
Mr. Favell: I thank my hon. Friend for the careful and receptive way in which he has heard my argument. On behalf of the people of Stockport, I wish him a happy Christmas.
Mr Dorrell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I hope that what I am about to say will not lead him to withdraw his good wishes. The proposal that my hon. Friend espouses has a ready audience in the Department and, in one form or another, it will be implemented by the NHS in his area in the not too distant future. He will understand, however, that the administration of the health service and decisions on investment proposals are quite properly matters for the management of the NHS. It is not for me but for regions and districts to decide.
As my hon. Friend has said, in the next month or six weeks the North Western regional health authority will decide its three-year capital programme to 1993–94 and no doubt Stockport health authority will argue strongly for the proposal in the context of the capital programme. The decision whether to go ahead with the proposal in that capital programme properly belongs to the regional health authority, which will have to decide in the context of its capital budget-setting process. It would be wrong for me to pre-empt that decision, and I shall not do so.
The clear argument that my hon. Friend has advanced is widely accepted not only by the Department but by the NHS in the north-west. I am confident that my hon.

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Friend's powers of advocacy will ensure that the unacceptable standard of provision for accidents and emergencies in his constituency will soon be improved.

Middle East
6.56 am
Mr. Dave Nellist: At the end of a long parliamentary day, I am grateful to you, Mr. Speaker, for returning to the Chair for what is likely to be the last scheduled debate on the middle east and the Gulf before the expiry of the deadline set by the western powers of midnight, 15 January 1991, for Iraq to leave Kuwait.
I do not claim to speak in the debate on behalf of the parliamentary Labour party. However, 49 Labour Members either voted against or sponsored motions against the Government's support for the possible use of force, and therefore a substantial minority in the parliamentary Labour party is against the use of force. In the Labour party outside we are a bigger factor, and possibly even form a majority.
An opinion poll in The Independent about six days ago showed that 41 per cent. of Labour voters questioned about their attitude to a possible war in the Gulf insisted on the complete withdrawal of Iraq, even if that meant war. However, 49 per cent. opposed war. In the most recent polls conducted by the New York Times and CBS, 45 per cent. were in favour of war and 48 per cent. wanted more time for sanctions. The number of people opposed to war will increase, especially in America where people had the experience of Vietnam. War would result in horrific death and disfigurement. I shall deal with that later.
In the past few days the pendulum has swung between war and peace. Western hostages have been released—we were especially pleased to see the release of British hostages—but on the other hand there have been bellicose statements from leaders in America. It is ironic that on almost the last parliamentary day before Christmas and at this time of the year we should be considering what could be the most serious military conflict since the second world war.
In a number of meetings that I have had since 2 October, opposing the Government's support of possible war, I have begun each of those meetings as I begin my speech this morning, with a condemnation of the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq and the taking of hostages. I should have thought that that would go without question. However, the speeches that I have heard from leaders from all sorts of countries have the stench of hypocrisy. I think that it was Disraeli who said that a Tory Government was organised hypocrisy, so I suppose that I should not be too surprised.
We are now told that Iraq is in a direct line from Hitler. It went into a war in Iran. It invaded part of Iran and during the 1980s it received backing from those powers that today criticise its invasion of Kuwait. There were differences then. Iraq was seen as a moderating influence against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism after the Iranian revolution at the end of the 1970s. Because of that, in the 1970s and 1980s, France supplied $25,000 million worth of weapons to Iraq. America gave free intelligence from satellites, $5 billion worth of food subsidies and $2.5 billon of export guarantees. The Soviet Union provided huge amounts of armaments, as did Germany, Switzerland and others. Latterly, Britain was keen to have trade, including trade in weapons.
Therefore, the arms that allowed Iraq to build itself up to the point at which it could invade Kuwait, threaten to invade Saudi Arabia, and be in a stand-off against the

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army of the greatest military power that the world has ever seen—America—were largely built up by the western powers that today criticise Iraq.
I hope that those of my hon. Friends who are here, or who may read the report of the debate, will consider my next point. One of the tasks of the next Labour Government will be to stem the export of arms throughout the world. The middle east has been the most lucrative market for arms sales in recent decades. Half the oil revenues from all the Arab countries has been spent on battlefields in the past 40 or 50 years. That should stop. The Labour party should be considering closing the defence sales organisation. I speak as a Member of Parliament who represents a city—Coventry—which, with Bristol, has the highest number of factories dependent on arms jobs. My party should be considering public ownership of those firms and changing them to produce socially useful items instead of arms, which will end up on battlefields and, as we shall no doubt find all too soon, can be turned even against our young men and women. In such a big change, jobs must be guaranteed.
No doubt the Minister will repeat the points made earlier in the debate initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell), in which he said that Saddam Hussein is a dictator. I am astonished by the Government's seeming surprise at the Iraqi regime in Kuwait. The savagery of that regime has been known for many years, as has its treatment of its people, particularly the Kurdish minority. On 17 March 1988, Iraq bombed the Kurdish village of Halabja, and 5,000 people were killed. That was not unknown to the Government. When 10,000 died later in the year, in the villages north of Basra, which were bombed with chemical weapons, that was not unknown.
The hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Waldegrave), now the Secretary of State for Health, was then a junior Minister in the Foreign Office. He said that the Government were annoyed and upset and would be taking action. It was on 27 October 1988 that the Minister made a statement in which he said, for example, that the Government were against the use of chemical weapons. Ten days later, on 8 November, doors opened for increased trade with Iraq. A press statement was issued by the Department of Trade and Industry stating that the Government were offering an extra £400 million-worth of credits to British firms to increase trade with a regime that had so recently been condemned by the Foreign Office for the way in which it treated its citizens.
Yesterday, along with many other hon. Members, no doubt, I received material from the Free Kuwait campaign. One of the quotes in the material was from an Iraqi army captain who had deserted. He was interviewed on 14 November in Turkey, and he described the actions of the Iraqi troops in Kuwait. He said:
"It is like a butcher's shop."
I do not doubt that statement from the Iraqi captain or those made by the Free Kuwait campaign. I do not doubt what the Minister may quote when replying to the debate. The Amnesty International report of 19 December states that thousands have been killed or tortured, including over 300 premature babies. The same report tells us that while the brutality of the Iraqi forces has shocked many in Kuwait,
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"such abuses have been the norm for people in Iraq for more than a decade."
We are not dealing with a regime that suddenly changed its spots on 2 August. It is a regime that has treated its citizens brutally within its own borders, and that has been known for many years.
I and several other hon. Friends and hon. Members representing other Opposition parties have tried to do our bit to support the campaign against repression and for democracy in Iraq—CARDI. In May 1989, 91 Members from six political parties tabled a motion that opposed Government financial support for 17 British firms at the Baghdad arms fair. We opposed that support because the firms were engaged in selling arms to a regime with an appalling human rights record. Not one Tory Member signed the motion, yet there is almost unanimity now among Tory Members on the human rights record of the Iraqi regime. The regime is not new; it is not something that has suddenly dropped out of the sky.
I still fear that there will be a war in the early part of the new year. It will not be a war about democracy. It will do the Government no good to refer, as the Minister probably will this morning, to the three main aims of the United Nations. One of the aims—the release of hostages—has been realised in recent days. The second is the complete withdrawal of Iraq from Kuwait, and the third is the restoration of the "legitimate" Government of Kuwait.
I do not regard the as-Sabah dynasty as particularly legitimate. Even before the invasion, there was precious little real democracy in Kuwait. Only 8.5 per cent. of the male population of Kuwait was entitled to a vote. That entitlement was restricted to those who could trace their lineage back to males who lived in Kuwait before 1920. They amounted to only 60,000 of the three quarters of a million Kuwaitis. That is besides the hundreds of thousands who originate from other countries who have lived in Kuwait all their lives. They include up to 1 million from Egypt. There are probably hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. There are many from the Philippines. There are about 75,000 Sri Lankan housemaids. These people had no democratic or civil rights. Women did not have the vote in Kuwait.
Even if 8.5 per cent. of the male Kuwaitis had the vote, that did not do much good. The emir abolished the national assembly in 1986 and it has not met since. Many thousands of people in Kuwait were slaves. The migrant workers had no real rights. Kuwait was one of the richest countries in the world with a notional $13,000 per head of population. There are 41 countries with per capita wealth of less than $300. I speak from memory, but I think that Mozambique is at the bottom of the list with $150. A country with a notional $13,000 per head is enormously rich. It was concentrated in a relatively small number of feudal families, rather than being distributed evenly among the population.
I know that the Minister will not like the repetition, but the crisis is not about democracy; it is about the strategic importance of oil and about the control by western powers—American and British—of the oil supplies. It is not just me saying that. The former American assistant secretary for defence, Lawrence Korb, said:
"What it amounts to is the great powers settling their interests. If Kuwait grew carrots, we wouldn't give a damn!"
That is the truth.
The New York Times says that America is interested in
"cheap oil and stable monarchies."

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I do not doubt that America wants to topple Saddam Hussein, but in favour of what? It is certainly not in favour of a better or fairer society. It is in favour of what The Times editorial described recently as another section of the Baghdad elite. In other words, it is an officers' coup; another secret policeman. As long as he tortures and murders, arrests and imprisons within the boundaries of Iraq, he will be allowed to do what he wants.
What does Iraq want out of this crisis? I do not think that it wants war. I agree that it wants the spoils of its invasion of Kuwait, in particular the part that includes the northern oilfield in Kuwait—the southern part of Iraq. It wants the two islands and it wants access to the waterway so that it can build a new Iraqi port. Anyone who looks at the map and understands the nature of the Gulf and the depth of the water will recognise the importance of that. Iraq wants to control an extra 20 per cent. of the world's oil reserves.
Even more important is the fact that because of the devastating war with Iran, when Iraq ran up huge debts of $300 billion, it wants an external diversion to take the attention of millions of people in Iraq away from the horrors of the future. Our Government complain about having to raise interest rates because inflation is about 10 per cent.; it is 300 per cent. in Iraq. In 1980, Iraq was receiving$26 billion a year in oil revenues. By 1989 that had dropped to $14 billion. It is mainly for those economic and political reasons that Iraq invaded Kuwait.
Iraq grafts on to that an element of justification. I am not here as an appeaser or as an apologist. However, it was not Iraq that decided the boundaries. Most of the boundaries in the Arabian peninsula were carved up by Britain and France following the first world war.
I have read a few biographies of Sir Arnold Wilson, Sir Percy Cox and Lord Curzon. It was the pencil of Sir Percy Cox, drawing what has been described as a wavering line on an inaccurate map in 1922, that created the present-day boundaries of Kuwait. Churchill approved them. It was Lord Curzon who said that he wanted the Persian Gulf to be a British lake. It was Britain and France that put people like Faisal on the throne of Iraq and created the artefacts of Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Jordan and the Emirates after the fall of the Ottoman empire. That exacerbated the divisions between the Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims and the Maronite Christians and between the Druse and the Jews, which later created in Israel what one British commentator described as a loyal little Jewish Ulster.
That drawing of the map has for decades exacerbated the feelings of the Arab people that they were the playthings of the imperialist interests of France and Britain.
On the other side of the coin is the British and American legal justification. In case the Minister quotes from the United Nations resolutions, I can tell him that I have read all of them and the two documents published by the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. The legal justification appears in article 51, in resolution 660 and in subsequent resolutions. It includes self-defence and Operation Desert Shield, being invited in by Saudi Arabia.
But those pale into insignificance in the light of the Turkish invasion and colonisation of Cyprus in 1974; after America went into Grenada, a Commonwealth country, into Libya, interfered in Nicaragua, or bombed and killed 7,000 people in Panama; or the Israeli occupation of Jerusalem and the west bank for the past 23 years. On
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8 October, 21 Palestinians were killed and 150 badly injured in the police action at the Temple Mount, the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem.
There were five days of debate at the United Nations and at the end of that there was a decision to send three secretaries from the Secretary-General's office to carry out an investigation. What an insult. Why has no task force been sent to implement United Nations resolution 242? Could it be the unworthy idea that in growing olives and citrus fruits the Palestinians might not grow many carrots, in Lawrence Korb's words, but nor do they have any oil for America or Britain to worry about?
If the United Nations is such a worthy organisation, why is America $600 million in arrears on its subscriptions? Why do the Government do nothing—other than answer my parliamentary questions on occasions—about the reports and actions of the Israeli Government in the occupied territories?
I have read parts of Amnesty International's report arid I agree that the actions of the Iraqi troops in Kuwait are horrible. I have mentioned some of them already. On 12 December the Minister told me and the House that the Government estimate that, since the outbreak of the intifada in the occupied territories just over three years ago, 858 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli defence forces, 58 deported and about 10,000 held in administrative detention. Figures for the wounded range from an Israeli estimate of about 13,000 to a Palestinian human rights information centre estimate of about 100,000. One quarter of those killed are children under the age of 16.
The Save the Children Fund—not a particularly left-wing organisation—described the composite picture of the average child killed by tear gas. It showed a Gaza refugee infant girl at home in bed when soldiers threw a tear gas canister into her room, causing immediate and extreme respiratory stress, cyanosis and heavy mucus discharge from the mouth and nose leading to death from asphyxia and circulatory failure within 12 hours. Where is the difference between the death of such a child in Gaza and the death of the children in Kuwait? Why do not the Government have the same attitude to the hostilities conducted against the Palestinian people and others such as the Kurds in the middle east as they have shown in the past few weeks towards Iraq?
The Government's policy has had consequences in the middle east and for workers in my constituency. Recently, Matrix Churchill, a company in Coventry, received encouragement to export to Iraq and is now paying the penalty after the United Nations resolutions. Under the sanctions, the company's ownership by the Iraqi secret service has caused many other companies not to deal with it and redundancies are the reward for the people of Coventry.
We appear to be moving in the next couple of weeks towards a Rubicon which we would cross for the first time for 50 years in terms of a war on a world scale. The consequences of that war would be horrific.
Given all that has been said in recent days, one cannot rule out successful negotiations, but still the British and American Governments, and the Iraqi dictator, appear to adopt entrenched positions. It seems unlikely that the substantial forces now in the Gulf will sit there doing nothing and rotting away for many more months.
The situation has developed over the months from an American demand that the Iraqis pull out of Kuwait to an

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insistence not only that Saddam Hussein must go, but that there should be something along the lines of the Nuremberg trials and the dismantling of weapons. That could be achieved only by both a military defeat of Iraq and military occupation of that country for months, if not years, thereafter.
A war would be horrific. Sir Peter de la Billiere talks of a swift war, and replying to me on 4 September, the Secretary of State for Defence spoke of an operation that would be "short, sharp and quick".
President Johnson was told the same at the beginning of the Vietnam war. He was assured that in 12 days the Vietcong's military depots could be bombed out of existence, yet 12 years later—after 350,000 bombing raids, the dropping of 8 million tonnes of bombs, and the loss of 57,000 American troops and 2 million Vietnamese—America was defeated.
Iraq does not possess the same kind of ragged, ill-equipped army that fought for North Vietnam in the 1960s, precisely because it has been so well-equipped by Russia, France, Germany, Switzerland, Britain, China, America and the rest.
This Christmas, 90,000 mince pies are being sent from Britain to the Gulf, together with 10,000 body bags. America is sending 100,000 body bags. The Pentagon has plans to send 800 gallons of blood a day to the Gulf, and it has made available 5,000 military beds. There are also three American navy hospitals. Described as prepacked and climatically controlled, they are said to offer the most sophisticated facilities in the world. Each has 500 beds, six operating theatres and 950 medical staff.
Think of the good that such a facility could do in Asia or Africa, or even nearer to home. About a week ago, the Prime Minister admitted to me that there are four American air force hospitals on former RAF sites in this country. One in the Cotswolds has 1,500 beds, with everything from the soap to the linen wrapped in plastic and ready for world war three—or perhaps now, for when war breaks out in the Gulf. Imagine how those facilities could have been used to shorten Britain's hospital waiting lists.
A war in the Gulf will not be "short, sharp and quick". The Pentagon estimates that 30,000 Americans and 90,000 Iraqi troops would be injured within the first 12 days. The French Defence Minister spoke of 100,000 injured. At the end of November, The Daily Telegraph wrote of hundreds of thousands of lives being lost on the Iraqi side, and The Independent estimated 400 British dead a day. Let us see what public opinion will be when those bodies arrive back at Northolt.
The most decorated American soldier in North Vietnam, Colonel David Hackworth, has spoken of 50,000 casualties in the first two weeks of a Gulf war, and Brigadier Patrick Cordingley was quoted in an article in the Evening Standard that appeared under the elegant headine,
"Prepare for a blood bath."
That is the prospect for the young men and women of Britain, America and Iraq if a war breaks out in the early weeks of 1991. That is the scale of the loss of life that could be the consequence of such a war.
Other consequences were touched on earlier, in the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow. He spoke of the ecological repercussions if only 30 of 300
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Kuwaiti oil wells apparently deep-mined by the Iraqis are destroyed. As to the use of chemical weapons, we learnt from Chernobyl of the years of distress that can result from one major explosion. We saw that in the hill areas of Wales and Scotland, as livestock died over a lengthy period. We saw enough of the results of the factory explosion at Bhopal to realise what a conflagration of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons could mean in the middle east.
The economic consequences should not be pushed aside as though they were less important than the loss of life. Many of the economic consequences for countries in the so-called third world and in eastern Europe could lead to a loss of life in a sharp winter. Poland spends 30 per cent. of its hard currency on oil, but in two weeks' time the USSR, which for many years has supplied oil at a subsidised price of $7 a barrel to the eastern bloc, will move to market prices in hard currency and will be charging $25 or $30 per barrel. According to Sheikh Yamani, the price will be more than $100 per barrel if there is a war. At a price of $25 per barrel Poland would have to spend 30 per cent. of its hard currency, Czechoslovakia 75 per cent. and Bulgaria 100 per cent. to buy the oil for this winter. At $30 per barrel, Czechoslovakia would spend 90 per cent. and Bulgaria would spend 120 per cent. of its hard currency reserves. That would be a body blow this winter for those newly emergent countries, coming out from under the yoke of Stalinism after 40 years into a "brighter" future. If there were a war they would be condemned to a winter in which thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands, of people would die of cold.
Three or four weeks ago a sub-committee of NATO spoke of the severe and catastrophic recession in eastern Europe, with the possibility of Chilean-style military regimes emerging because of its economic consequences. The impact throughout the rest of the world would be no less severe.
In Britain, in December the CBI news bulletin spoke of military experts that it had consulted suggesting that a war in the middle east would not be protected, and that the United States should be able to overwhelm Iraq. It said that in those circumstances, even if the production installations had been damaged, there was a good chance that a victory in the middle east could effectively break OPEC and leave secure supplies of relatively cheap oil for the latter part of the 1990s.
That may be a rosy scenario, but it shows the CBI's view of one of the main aims of a war—the breaking of the OPEC cartel and the securing of cheaper oil supplies in the 1990s. Lack of time prevents me from reading most of the report, which goes on to talk about the severe depression which would last for five or six years if there were a war and the oil price rose.
I do not have time to catalogue all of them, but in the ex-colonial, or so-called third world, many countries such as Bangladesh are entirely dependent for oil upon the middle east, and the remittances of about 450,000 workers from the Gulf have been stopped. One third of its foreign exchange earnings have been stopped because of the lack of earnings from migrant workers, who were formerly in the middle east, principally in Kuwait.
Uganda's oil bills will rise from $7 million to $10 million a month. Pakistan needs an extra $600 million to meet the oil price rises, and is losing an estimated $400

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million in Gulf remittances. India has lost 40 per cent. of its normal oil sources and the remittances of 180,000 expatriates in Iraq and Kuwait.
A recession has already begun in this country and it could be speeded up and triggered in exactly the same way as the war between Israel and the Arab countries triggered the first of the 1970s recessions, and a similar major rise in the oil price towards the end of the 1970s triggered the recession which, between 1981 and 1983, cost my city almost 40,000 jobs in factories.
So the economic cost would be huge. I do not have enough time to develop the theme of the political costs in the middle east—not merely the ecological flames of war, but the political flames of revolution. I predict that especially in Egypt and Jordan, but possibly in other countries, some of the leaders who have tied themselves to the exhaust pipe of America's F111s because of the support that they have been getting in subventions from America will find that a war polarises the countries between the occidental and the oriental—as King Hussein put it—between the white north and the colonial arab peoples, between the imperialism of the oil companies and the Arab peninsula. When the position is seen in that context, some of those rulers may be toppled.
I am not one of those—they include people whom I respect as friends as well as political comrades—who have called for an extension, or even an implementation, of sanctions against Iraq. It is not a question of appeasement. Replying to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow, the Minister said that the destabilisation of Iraq was not happening fast enough because of sanctions. What that means, in cold terms, is that there is not enough pressure from the young, the old and the poor in Iraq to get rid of the leadership.
That is what sanctions are about. Saddam Hussein has been able to hide the preparations not only for chemical weapons but, according to the most recent edition of The Sunday Times, for nuclear weapons. Apparently they can be constructed within a year or 18 months: Saddam Hussein has been able to import from Coventry, the midlands, Germany and elsewhere the machine tools, lathes and milling machines that he needs to make the centrifuges and to turn the shell cases to be ready to develop nuclear weapons and to convert uranium to weapons grade uranium-235. If he can hide all that, he can certainly hide food supplies for himself, his family and the elite in Baghdad. They would not suffer from sanctions; the ordinary population would suffer.
I do not think that any worker in this country would want such action to be taken against working people in Iraq. He would, however, want action to be taken against the dictatorship, the army and the brutal oppressors of the state machine in Iraq.
I may be in the minority in the Labour party in that I have a jaundiced view—cynical, some might say—of the worth of the United Nations. I think of the United Nations as the Tory Governments of Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and America; its members get together with the butchers of Tiananmen square, and suddenly they are all supposed to be liberal socialists. I do not think that that happens: I do not think that they change their spots when they leave this country, or any other European country, and become socialists overnight when they get to New York. Similarly, if I had a factory in Coventry where the workers were in dispute with the management I would not call in the CBI as an independent arbitrator, because I do
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not think that it represents interests other than those that it has always represented. I do not think that calling on the United Nations is the answer.
I want dictators like Saddam Hussein to be brought down, but in precisely the same way as the Stalinist dictators were brought down in eastern Europe—by the mass action of millions of people on the streets of Leipzig, Bucharest, Budapest and Prague. That task can be completed only by the Arab peoples in the middle east, who must rise up—with our support, where we can give it—and overthrow the dictators. Just as I think that we need a Labour Government in this country to solve the problems of working people, socialist, Labour and democratic Governments need to emerge in the middle east.
This is not a war about democracy. I know that many people in this country have realised for the first time just how bad is the dictatorship in Iraq. That is natural, when a paper such as the Daily Mirror is publishing headlines like that of 21 August, which quoted an unnamed Iraqi Government official as saying, "We'll eat your pilots". It is no wonder that working-class people think, "If that is what the regime is like, let us do all that we can to get rid of it."
With the possible exception of the elements of parliamentary democracy represented by the freedom of newspapers and civil rights that exist in "lesser" Israel, within the pre-1967 boundaries—not the occupied territories, and they do not exist for Arabs within the pre-1967 boundaries—no country in the middle east deserves that title, yet we have put all those British troops into Saudi Arabia. If the British people knew a tenth about what happens in the other countries of the middle east, they would probably want to go to war with all of them.
Saudi Arabia is run by a king. It does not have a Parliament. The king rules by absolute decree. Most of the Ministers are members of his family. Political parties are banned, as are elections. Executions take place regularly. Stoning to death is the sentence for adultery and the sentence for theft is amputation of a limb. How many mothers in this country would want their sons to die on the desert sands of Saudi Arabia if they knew that women there are not even allowed to drive cars?
Last July, over 1,500 pilgrims were killed in a tunnel in Mecca. King Fahd observed that the disaster was God"s will. He said:
"Had they not died there, they would have died elsewhere at the same predestined moment."
That is the regime that British troops have been sent to defend. On 8 November the king promised that a consultative council would be set up. That promise was first made three kings ago, in 1962. However, the king will appoint the 50 male members of the consultative council. It will hardly be the most democratic of institutions.
The Minister will no doubt quote extracts from Amnesty International's report on Kuwait. I urge him to read the whole of Amnesty International's report—it is available in the Library—on Saudi Arabia. It refers to the 111 people who were executed, 16 of whom committed political offences, during the past 12 months. If that does not suit, I urge him to read the digest on human rights that The Economist published in 1986. I am not quoting from partial left-wing sources. The digest gave Saudi Arabia a human rights rating of 28 per cent.—one of the lowest in the world.

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Syria is our new ally in this battle. Only two weeks ago the Foreign Secretary restored diplomatic relations with Syria and gave his seal of approval to that vicious, reactionary dictatorship. In 1982 Syria ordered the murder of 20,000 Muslims in the village of Homs. Syria's security police are no less effective than those of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. Executions are carried out regularly, just as happens in Saudi Arabia.
If invasion is the criterion for going to war under United Nations resolutions, Syria invaded Lebanon on more than one occasion. It has also successfully invaded and colonised a substantial chunk of the Lebanon. It has created what President Assad calls "greater Syria." The Minister could have read about all that in Amnesty International's report or in The Economist digest.
There is a hereditary monarch in Jordan. For 22 years, until last year, there were no elections, but there were regular executions. I urge the Minister to read The Economist and Amnesty International reports. As for the emirates in the Gulf, all of them are feudal autocracies.
In the United Arab Emirates, seven absolute monarchs regularly carry out executions. The Emir of Qatar is an absolute monarch. He is also the Prime Minister. There is no Parliament and there are no political parties. The Sultan of Oman is head of state and has absolute powers. Executions are held regularly. Again, there are no political parties. Executions also take place regularly in the Yemen. North Yemen has an executive president who is elected by a 159-member constituent people's assembly. The president selects its members by presidential decree. Bahrain has an absolute monarch. Its last national assembly was abolished in 1975.
In Egypt there is an obscene contrast between business men who import Mercedes-Benz cars and pay £75,000 tax on them and the poor of Cairo who live and sleep in graveyards because they have no homes. The Minister can check such statements by referring to The Economist and Amnesty International reports. Plenty of things need to be changed in the middle east. If the press here had devoted the same amount of time, energy and attention to those problems as has been devoted to Iraq during the past four or five months, the working people of this country would want action to be taken against those countries, too, so that their brothers and sisters could be released from the dictatorships under which they live. It is the job not of tanks, planes, boats or armies up to 1 million strong to solve these problems but of the people of the region.
I hope that there is no war. If war breaks out, I shall demand in the House that this country does not send a bomb or a bullet to it and withdraws its troops. Not a young man or woman from this country, America or Iraq should die on the sands of the middle east for this war over oil and the strategic interests of the western powers. The Labour movement should have an independent position. I know that I am in the minority in believing that, but I am confident that in the weeks ahead that argument will gain more ground.
I hope that when we have a change of Government and a new United Kingdom policy on the middle east we shall play a little part in establishing fairer, better, more democratic and, I hope, socialist societies in the region which will co-operate and build a federal future that will recognise the rights of minorities, be they Jews, Kurds,
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Palestinians, Kuwaitis or Arabs. I hope that they will guarantee national and democratic rights in the region. War will not do those things. I know that there will be no vote at the end of the debate, but I am grateful for the opportunity to place my point of view before the House in opposition to the war that I fear is coming.
7.40 am
Mr. Donald Anderson: With the leave of the House, I shall intervene again. I recall, rather hazily, speaking earlier. I have not changed my views since that time and nor, I suspect, has the Minister after nocturnal reflection.
It may sound a little hollow to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) at this hour of the morning after a long night, but I do so. He made many points well. He referred, for example, to the nature of the Iraqi regime. He mentioned the Kurds, his membership of the campaign against repression and for democracy in Iraq, which I have been linked with, and gave a long exposé of the deficiencies of that regime.
It is an interesting case study that the hostility of western and world opinion can suddenly be against Iran, as the source of all evil in the region, but then switch to Iraq. One sees a similar transformation in relation to Syria. My hon. Friend made that point well.
My hon. Friend spoke of the civil rights deficiencies of the countries involved. He spoke of the importance of oil, but the importance of oil is not so much the interests of the western countries as the fact that, on 2 August, Saddam Hussein marched into an oil-rich neighbour—one of the greatest acts of perfidy in recent times, given the lack of warning and the way in which he had said that he wanted to negotiate. However, the so-called volunteers marched into Kuwait and now he seeks to obliterate a sovereign country recognised by the United Nations and previously was recognised by Iraq. That is the uniqueness of the case.
My hon. Friend made good points about selectivity, the nature of the regimes, and so on, but he sees the trees and misses the wood, which includes the uniqueness of the invasion and, perhaps more important, the significance of the response of world opinion to Iraq's invasion on 2 August. Whether the international community succeeds in this test case will have fundamental effects on international relations in years to come.
It is clear that, in the past 40 years, the middle east has been the flashpoint of the world. Whatever generalisations can be made about improved international relations and the prospects for peace in southern Africa, Cambodia, central America, Afghanistan, or wherever, they are followed by the qualification, "with the exception of the middle east". If the international community can assist in establishing a more stable and peaceful order in that region, it could address the problems of other regions where the problems are not so fundamental as those of the middle east.
The immediate problem facing the world community is the Gulf war. If the United Nations succeeds, it will have an enhanced authority and that added credibility will enable it to address other seemingly intractable problems in the hot spots of the world. It is vital for the international community to succeed. My colleagues and I do not accept the strictures that my hon. Friend addressed to the United Nations. We believe that it is the best hope for the world.

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If the United Nations and the international community fail in the Gulf, their authority will be reduced and international anarchy will be given a substantial boost.
My hon. Friend has identified the problems associated with Palestine and Lebanon. It is possible for people to argue that the international response to those problems has been selective. I must remind my hon. Friend, however, that United Nations resolution 242 does not refer to the self-determination of the Palestinians.
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is never a right time to attempt to solve all the problems of the middle east. I share my hon. Friend's concern at the policy of the Israeli Government. We are extremely critical of the current and threatened deportation of Palestinians from the occupied territories, which is in clear breach of international agreements and conventions.
If the United Nations is to make an impact in the middle east, it can do so only when the Security Council resolutions in respect of Iraq have been fully complied with. If the United Nations fails in that, it will be in no fit state to consider the other problems of the region. Failure to resolve those problems is one of the great tragedies of the middle east, but there are now prospects for improvement.
My hon. Friend will be aware that the Labour party has pressed for an international conference covering all the problems of the middle east, including justice and self-determination for the Palestinian people. We want the long ordeal of the Palestinian refugees to end and security for all states in the region, including Israel. We also want the torment in Lebanon to cease. We share my hon. Friend's strong argument in favour of the removal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons from the entire middle east.
That international conference can take place only under the auspices of a United Nations which emerges with credit from the Gulf crisis. For that reason, we look forward to the full implementation of the Security Council resolutions. If the United Nations does not succeed, despite our earnest hopes, we fear the consequences for the world.
7.49 am
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr. Douglas Hogg): This is the second time that we have discussed this subject during the debates. I should like to begin my remarks as I began my response to the earlier debate by stating that the views expressed by the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson) and those which I wish to express are wholly identical. I am glad that Opposition and Government Front-Bench Members share a common position on the matter.
Although it is the second debate on the subject, this is a different debate. Therefore, it is right that I should summarise where we stand. We should begin by reminding ourselves of what Saddam Hussein has done. As the hon. Member for Swansea, East said, an act of aggression of the most perfidious and gross nature has been committed. On 2 August Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, a sovereign state and his neighbour, with which he had been in negotiations and to which he had given assurances of non-aggression. Many people were killed in the invasion. After the invasion was complete, he embarked on a
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systematic policy of oppression, murder, pillage and—it now seems—torture. That is the Government with which we are dealing.
To that challenge the United Nations responded in an impressive and powerful manner. A series of resolutions were passed, culminating in resolution 678, which contain three essential conditions: the immediate release of the hostages who were being held when resolution 678 was passed; complete and unconditional withdrawal from the state of Kuwait by 15 January; and the restoration of the lawful Government of Kuwait. Of those three conditions, one has been largely fulfilled—the release of the hostages. The other two conditions have not been but must be fulfilled. I wish to make it plain that the resolution is not a timetable for war. It provides ample time for withdrawal. But it requires and provides for complete and unconditional withdrawal by 15 January. Nothing short of complete and unconditional withdrawal will do. If Saddam Hussein does not withdraw completely and unconditionally by 15 January, he will be driven out by force. We hope for peace. We shall do all that in conscience we can do, but we shall not hesitate to use force if it is required in order to implement the Security Council resolutions.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist) made many points, and I shall seek to respond to them. First, he focused on trading relations with Iraq. If he will forgive me for saying so, he has either misunderstood or somewhat misrepresented the position. Since 1985 or thereabouts there has been a total prohibition on the sale of arms to Iraq. Before that time a restricted regime governed the sale of arms to Iraq. It is perfectly true that there has not been a prohibition on the sale of non-military products, but then again we trade with many, indeed all, nations. We positively disagree with many of them. Merely to have ordinary non-military trading relations with a country in no way implies support for the regime or approval of its policies. It is simply to have ordinary trading relations with a country.
The second point on which the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East focused was this. He criticised the nature of the regimes in Kuwait, in Saudi Arabia—indeed, in most, if not all, the Gulf states. It is perfectly true that the regimes that he described are not the kind of regimes to which we are accustomed in western Europe. It is perfectly true that they are not democracies or truly accountable Governments in western terms. Some may well agree between themselves that it would be desirable if they were different, but the plain truth is that the nature of the regimes in those parts of the world is intrinsically and essentially a matter for the people living there and not for us. The fact that one may not like the regime in Kuwait is not a reason for saying that we must not oppose military aggression against that state or not seek to reverse the aggression that has been committed against it. In the end, the people of each country in the area must determine the nature of their own political system.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East said that the argument was exclusively about oil. He is entirely wrong about that. If the issue was primarily about oil, we would have settled it in some way or other. It is manifestly undesirable for Saddam Hussein to have the oil resources of Kuwait and Iraq because that will enable him in the long term to distort the oil markets in various ways; but we would not contemplate the use of force for that reason. Perhaps more to the point, the many Arab states that have

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deployed forces in Saudi Arabia would not contemplate the use of force for that reason. Notwithstanding the fact that the world is currently deprived of oil from both both Kuwait and Iraq, oil supplies are adequate to meet our present requirements.
The hon. Gentleman focused on the fact that the United Nations has not been wholly successful in the past in dealing with acts of aggression and concluded that it would therefore by hypocritical and wrong to try to meet the act of aggression that has taken place. I agree with him that there have been imperfections and that in the past the United Nations has failed to do what we would have liked it to do. The present situation presents a particular challenge because it involves the first exercise of collective will in the post cold war world.
I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Swansea, East that, if we do not stand behind the United Nations at this critical moment in its development, it is difficult to believe that it will ever have any authority in future. If the United Nations has no authority, we shall have the prospect of international anarchy.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East referred to the position in Palestine. I accept—I think that we all now accept—that there is unfinished business in Palestine and that it is unquestionably a flashpoint on which we must focus. But there is no linkage between what has happened in Kuwait and the problems of Palestine. It is true that, once we have secured the withdrawal of Saddam Hussein—completely and unconditionally—we must turn our attention to the business of Palestine. We must do all that we can to achieve two strategic objectives—first, the right to self-determination for the people of Palestine, and, secondly, the integrity and security of the state of Israel.
The hon. Member for Coventry, South-East spoke passionately about the beastliness and horror of war. War is, indeed, a beastly and horrible business and it is wholly unpredictable. Nevertheless, from time to time in history, one must be prepared to use force to maintain the world order and, in this case, to enforce the collective will of the United Nations.
If the hon. Gentleman is wholly honest with himself, he will recognise that nothing that he said in 50 minutes or so offered any solution to the problem. He made it plain that he rejected sanctions as being inappropriate. He said that he thought that the United Nations was an irrelevance of which he disapproved. His only solution was to call on the peoples of Iraq to pull down Saddam Hussein. He could have said that at any time during the eight years of the war with Iran, or to the people of Nazi Germany or Stalin's Russia, but he would have done so to no avail. Were we to follow the hon. Gentleman's policy, nothing would happen, Kuwait would continue to be oppressed and Saddam Hussein would continue to threaten the peoples of the middle east and to arm himself. That is not something that we can accept.
It being Eight o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, pursuant to Order [13 December], without Question put.

Basildon (Transport)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. David Davis.]
8 am
Mr. David Amess: I am conscious of my good fortune in being able to raise on the Adjournment motion a matter of great importance to my constituents—transport to and from Basildon. I recognise the keenness of my hon. Friend the Minister for Shipping and Public Transport to be here to respond for the Government to the points that I raise on behalf of my constituents.
I am grateful for the opportunity to comment briefly on the Department of Transport because for 18 months I was involved in the workings of that Department as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister of State with responsibility for public transport and other matters. During that time, I served with a number of Ministers who acquitted themselves in their offices with great distinction. In particular, I recognise the invaluable work done by my right hon. Friends the Ministers for Southend, West (Mr. Channon) and for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson), both of whom, in their different styles, led the Department extremely well. In time to come, the general public will benefit immeasurably from their great efforts and courageous decisions as Secretaries of State for Transport. I pay tribute to the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities who, as Minister with responsibility for public transport, tapped many an untried source to get more money into the Department in terms of public finance. I also remember warmly the efforts of my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley), who left his mark in terms of road safety. I shall refer later to a great contribution that he made in my constituency. Towards the end of my time at the Department, my hon. Friend the present Minister for Sport conducted a meeting with the leader of the Conservative group in the highways department of Essex county council who, I know, listened carefully to the points that we raised about the allocation that Essex was to get.
Drawing on my time in the Department, I cannot think of any sector of Government policy where our economic successes have bitten more deeply than in transport. It is clear that many more people than ever before now use cars, British Rail, London Underground, buses and taxis, and fly. That is a direct result of the success of the Government's economic policies. At the same time, the increased use of transport created many problems for Transport Ministers. I can think of no sphere in which there is a more parochial insight into Government operations than that of transport.
Hon. Members were keen to have more trains, so long as the new lines did not run through their constituencies. They were keen on road improvements, so long as the road works did not disrupt the traffic in their constituencies. They were keen to enjoy more flights, so long as the extension of runways did not increase noise over their areas. I make no apology for being guilty of the same sin of parochialism today.
No town has seen more changes in transport than Basildon. It was mentioned in the Doomsday book, so although it is the oldest and largest new town in the country, it goes back a long way. At the turn of the century it consisted only of quiet roads and lanes. The pioneers who built the town after the second world war built most

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of the roads barely wide enough to take one car. Now we live in an age when young people no longer save up to acquire their first banger at the age of 17. They automatically have cars, and many families own two or three. That has added to congestion on the roads of Basildon.
My hon. Friend the Minister can relax. I do not intend to subject British Rail to a harangue today. I am pleased to report from the sources that I consulted before this debate that, since the timetable changes in May this year, there have been real improvements in the quality of service on the Fenchurch Street line. Ministers with responsibility for British Rail have willingly and sadly acknowledged that the Fenchurch Street line compares unfavourably with all other heavily used commuter lines.
I have, however, a few complaints to record this morning. My hon. Friend the Member for Southend, East (Mr. Taylor) has for many years brought to the attention of the House the difficulties that commuters in his constituency have experienced, but Basildon has suffered even more.
I want first to praise the services at the three stations in Basildon—Pitsea, Laindon and Basildon itself. The staff do a wonderful job in difficult circumstances and have coped very well with the changes instigated by British Rail since May. Pitsea station has a village atmosphere. The staff are popular with the commuters and usually win the annual garden contest conducted by British Rail. It is important to recognise such small points. The staff remain courteous in the face of irate commuters.
We have an excellent commuter group in Basidon. It held a public meeting last year when the manager of Network SouthEast addressed an often hostile audience and dealt fairly with questions. I am delighted to tell the House that the chairman of the commuter group says that the present timetable is the best that we have ever had, although obvious revisions are necessary. We need three, not the present two, trains during the daytime for Laindon and Pitsea. That is not an awful lot to ask. Network SouthEast obtains more revenue from Basildon, Pitsea and Laindon than it obtains from stations on any other part of the line. The chairman of my commuter group thinks that British Rail should show more imagination by raising money through exploiting the assets of the system. That could be done by advertising on trains, sponsorship, letting, or general new ideas. I was shown around the three stations by the new public relations man and told about the expansion of car parking space at Pitsea railway station. We need more details about that. If my hon. Friend the Minister cannot provide them now, perhaps the Minister of State will provide them in writing.
I was told that in this new atmosphere of enterprise there would be more commercial opportunities to improve the facilities at our three stations. So far, there has been no evidence of that. I agree with my ever-expanding commuter group that there are opportunties to improve the facilities at our three stations. I hope that better quality toilets and waiting facilities can be provided. We should not give in to vandalism, and my constituents have every right to enjoy the most comfortable service that can be provided.
The Basildon commuter group has criticised staffing levels and maintains that the higher the staffing levels the more people are reassured. Many commuters write to me complaining about the frequency of points freezing on the Fenchurch Street line. That means that trains are cancelled
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and the commuter's excuse to his boss that he has missed the train begins to wear a little thin. The Minister may say that if people got up earlier they could overcome such problems, but extra effort should be expended on that line.
Fenchurch Street has a magnificent revamped station, thanks to the Government's investment in the line, and when new signalling and new carriages come on stream, the system will be further improved. Perhaps the Minister will tell us about any further improvements envisaged for that line. I and my colleagues in Essex applauded the introduction of the penalty fares scheme on the Fenchurch Street line. It will benefit my constituents if we can recoup the money that is lost because of fare dodging.
I recently heard from some constituents, who are clearly not fare dodgers but who seem to have been penalised unfairly. One of them told me in a letter that when his annual season ticket was left at home he was asked to pay a £10 penalty fare. He had understood from an announcement by the Department that anyone with a valid excuse would not be expected to pay the penalty fare. The Department's spokesman also said that British Rail was not after honest people but was out to catch fare dodgers. With that in mind, my constituent refused to pay the £10 penalty but said that he was willing to pay for a return fare which could be reclaimed at a later date.
The ticket inspector maintained that my constituent had travelled without a ticket and was therefore liable for the penalty. After much argument, and on being told that he was making a fuss over nothing because he could later reclaim the money, my constituent agreed to pay the £10 fine. He was given an envelope and supplied with the address to which to send his complaint. Having been given this assurance, my constituent then agreed to pay the rail fare.
However, it then occurred to my constituent that he needed a ticket to get home, and the inspector saw fit to tell him this only after he had gone back to check the matter. My constituent phoned British Rail's customer relations department. He was amazed to learn not only that what had happened was correct but that forgetting a ticket was not a valid excuse. Therefore, he would not be able to get a refund on the £10 penalty. Had my constituent realised that he had forgotten the ticket before he travelled, he could have bought a ticket at the station and claimed it back later.
I do not want to bore the House on this subject, but it is nonsense for British Rail to behave in this way. I am sure that the aim of the penalty fare scheme is to attack fare dodgers. It was not meant to penalise honest people, such as my constituent. Goodness knows, we are all capable of loss of memory. Sometimes, I can hardly remember the names of my children, so the fact that my constituent forgot his season ticket once in four years of commuting on the Fenchurch Street line hardly makes it fair that he should have to pay not only the £10 penalty but the extra fare. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will look at that problem.
With regard to roads, I must begin by praising the chairman of the highways committee on the council, Mr Ron Williams, who came with me to the meeting with my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Atkins) that I mentioned earlier, asking for extra resources for roads in Essex. He came to the House a few weeks ago and met all hon. Members representing Essex constituencies a t a fruitful meeting. We brought concerns to his attention, and in a short time he has already acted on them.

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I have another question for the Minister. Again, if he does not have the details, perhaps he or his colleague will write to me about the A127. When I reported a tragic accident, in which a young child ran out of school across the A127 and was killed, my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham ordered the installation of crash barriers all the way along the A127. I am sure that that has saved many lives, but we also now need barriers on the A13, particularly near the Blue House farm. This is a dangerous area, and my constituents would be grateful if we could have crash barriers there.
We have the largest shopping centre in Europe, and the Round Acre roundabout has been completed. That has made shopping in Basildon this Christmas a delight. No one should be put off travelling to Basildon to get his Christmas goodies. The Round Acre roundabout works have been completed, and traffic flows are excellent. However, I should be interested to hear from my hon. Friend any details about the Fortune of War roundabout. There is some confusion about what is happening about the flyover there, and some delay in the opening of the roundabout.
It is no small thing to ask my hon. Friend the Minster whether we could have slightly better road signing. A few years ago, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Mrs. Chalker) was kind enough to improve the road signing of the M25/Al27. We should have the "Nuclear free zone" signs taken down, and instead Basildon should have one or two nice signs saying, "Welcome to Basildon". Furthermore, there is no driving test centre at Basildon. My constituents have to travel to Hornchurch or Southend. When I have raised the matter before with the Department of Transport, it has been said that road conditions are not difficult enough in Basildon to warrant the provision of a centre. I think that that is clap-trap. There are all sorts of road conditions in Basildon and it is about time that we had our own test centre.
As for buses, the Eastern National Bus Company is doing an excellent job. The market has been freed and my constituents are enjoying facilities that are bettered by none. The company ran a bus route which passed along Halstow way when there was no great demand from my constituents, and I am concerned that it seems to be doing that again with a route which includes Emmanuel road and Vowler road. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will take that on board.
The taxi and private car-hire owners in Basildon do an excellent job. I have the privilege to be the president of the Basildon taxi and licensed private hire fund for children, which in only four years has raised £20,000. It organises charity runs to Clacton and it has organised a Christmas show each year. It is taking socialist-controlled Basildon district council to the High Court because there are only 83 licensed hackney carriage owners and 300 licensed private hire cars. The fund does not believe that the council has issued enough hackney carriage licences.
I have referred briefly to some transport difficulties in Basildon. I can say with confidence that Basildon is the finest new town in the country and the finest town in the south-east. It has excellent communications. There is an airport and an excellent road infrastructure thanks to the Commission for the New Towns and the Government's excellent policies. Basildon welcomes the single market in
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1992. Basildon means business. Basildon will welcome any business people. They certainly should not be put off coming to the town through any traffic delays.
8.22 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Patrick McLoughlin): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess) on securing the debate on the Adjournment. He rightly referred to his long period of work in the Department of Transport. During that time he was not able to raise transport matters on the Floor of the House, but he used forums other than the House to raise them with assiduity and vigour. I am sure that his constituents know that. Indeed, he opened this debate at an early hour this morning and talked about the opportunities that come with certain infrastructures and Government investment. I shall try to deal with all the matters that he raised. If a shortage of time precludes me from taking up some of them, I shall write to my hon. Friend in due course about specific problems.
I realise that for Basildon and the rest of south Essex the Fenchurch Street line is an important link. Many commuters depend on it to get into and out of London in the morning and evening. For some time, the service on the line has not been as good as British Rail, the Government and the passengers on the line would like it to be. I was pleased, however, to hear about the improvements of recent months to which my hon. Friend referred.
Our joint commitment to achieving a modern, efficient service throughout the network is not in doubt. Over the past few years, there has been a prolific increase in the number of commuters using the railways. Since 1983, the number of peak-time arrivals in London has increased by 23 per cent. so that now almost half a million people arrive in London by train every weekday. The amount of money being invested in Network Southeast has also risen dramatically. Over the next three years, NSE will be spending £1.3 billion on new rolling stock and associated infrastructure improvements such as electrification and resignalling. This should bring about a significant improvement in the standard of rail services in the south-east.
As far as the Fenchurch Street line is concerned, peak punctuality and reliability is improving this year but is not yet at a satisfactory standard. On a more positive note, however, it is pleasing that, last year, the level of overcrowding fell considerably compared with 1988.
The existing resources that Network SouthEast has to operate the service on the Fenchurch Street line are out of date. The trains are some of the oldest on the network and it is also time for the signalling to be renovated. I can assure my hon. Friend that both British Rail and the Government are keen to see the complete upgrading of the line. At present NSE is working up plans completely to replace the rolling stock fleet and to resignal the entire route. Those new trains will be a version of the new generation networker trains which will be coming into service from the end of next year on lines through south London and north Kent to relieve overcrowding and improve service quality. In the short term, more modern stock is coming to the Fenchurch Street line from the West Anglia and Great Eastern lines to replace the unreliable rolling stock currently used for off-peak services.

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The news is not all bad on the Fenchurch Street line. One notable event this year was the community policing experiment. That provided additional British Transport police to give a high profile train and station presence. The results are extremely encouraging. Crime of all sorts has been reduced and travellers' perceptions of personal safety have been improved. NSE is now evaluating the experiment in more detail and considering how it might be extended to other parts of the network.
My hon. Friend has already mentioned penalty fares, which were authorised by Parliament last year. A pilot scheme came into operation on the Fenchurch Street line at the end of October. The line was chosen because it was considered to be best equipped to safeguard the honest customer with staffed booking offices and ticket machines at every station. The scheme has been very successful at catching and deterring fare dodgers. NSE tells me that it has been flexible in dealing with passengers who have left their season tickets at home. However, I am disturbed to hear of the case mentioned by my hon. Friend. The first time it happens—and for a limited period—NSE's penalty fares office has decided to waive the penalty. If the pilot scheme continues to be successful, it will be extended to other parts of the network in order to recoup the estimated £35 million that it loses each year from dishonest travellers. That £35 million is the equivalent of 18 new trains. My hon. Friend fairly said that people who dodge fares dodge others out of a better service. As I said, I am disturbed to hear about the case that he raised, and I shall investigate it.
My hon. Friend is no doubt aware that the specific road matters that he raised are for the local highway authority, Essex county council or the Commission for the New Towns, which he should approach for details of plans or timings for any works.
The flyover scheme close to the Fortune of War roundabout was promoted by Basildon new town, now the Commission for the New Towns. Once the commision has completed the connections to the local highway network at either end, the Department will publish the necessary orders to eliminate the roundabout. The Five Bells roundabout is part of an Essex county council scheme that
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has been accepted by the Dept for transport supplementary grant for 1991–92. Work at Roundacre in Basildon was promoted by the Commission for the New Towns. The Department has no details about it, but understands that the work, comprising roundabout improvement, is now largely complete, and that, I am sure, is welcome.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of road signalling, and especially his wish for "Welcome to Basildon" signs to be erected. I can certainly understand his wish if all that there is at the moment is a sign saying that Basildon is a nuclear-free zone—whatever that means. My hon. Friend no doubt wants a more positive approach to Basildon. He is noted for his positive approach to the town that he represents, which contrasts with the whingeing that we hear from local authorities when they run down their towns. My hon. Friend has been positive about the benefits of his constituency. When anyone mentions his name in the House, instantly the thought of Basildon leaps to mind. I assure him that should proposals for the signs that he wants be put forward the Department will certainly give sympathetic consideration to them. I am glad that the local highway authority is not under the control of those who run the local district council.
I hope that, from what I have said this morning, my hon. Friend will accept that we have recognised some of the problems that he described and that the Department and British Rail are trying to bring about the necessary improvements.
On my hon. Friend's point about crash barriers on the A127, I hope that he will understand that I want to study that proposal, and the experience that he described, in more detail. If he thinks that crash barriers at other sites would be of considerable benefit, I shall also carefully consider that proposal. I shall write to my hon. Friend with full details once we have studied the matter.
I would rather not comment on the question of taxis and hackney carriages. I am sure that my hon. Friend understands that, because there is a case outstanding in the courts which would be best settled by the courts, it would be wrong of me to comment.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at half-past Eight o'clock.