Commons Sitting of 19 July 1990

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

    REDBRIDGE LONDON BOROUGH COUNCIL BILL (By Order)
    Order for consideration of Lords amendment read.
    To be considered on Tuesday 24 July at Seven o'clock.

    MEDWAY TUNNEL BILL [Lords] (By Order)
    Order for Third Reading read.
    Queen's Consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified.
    Read the Third time and passed, with amendments.

    BRITISH RAILWAYS (No. 2) BILL (By Order)
    Order for consideration, as amended, read.
    To be considered on Wednesday 25 July.

    BIRMINGHAM CITY COUNCIL (No. 2) BILL (By Order)
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question proposed [26 February],
    That the Bill be now considered.
    Debate further adjourned till Wednesday 25 July.

    LONDON UNDERGROUND BILL (By Order)
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question proposed [ 12 July],
    That the Bill be now read a Second time.
    Debate further adjourned till Tuesday 24 July at Seven o'clock.
    Mr. Speaker: As the remaining seven Bills set down for Second Reading have blocking motions, with the leave of the House I shall put them together.

    VALE OF GLAMORGAN (BARRY HARBOUR) BILL [Lords] (By Order)
    Orders for Second Reading read.
    To be read a Second time on Wednesday 25 July.

    LONDON REGIONAL TRANSPORT (PENALTY FARES) BILL (By Order)
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question proposed [10 May],
    That the Bill be now read a Second time.
    Debate further adjourned till Wednesday 25 July.

    SOUTHAMPTON RAPID TRANSIT BILL [Lords] (By Order)
    Orders for Second Reading read.
    To be read a Second time on Wednesday 25 July.

    EXMOUTH DOCKS BILL (By Order)
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question proposed [29 March],
    That the Bill be now read a Second time.
    Debate further adjourned till Wednesday 25 July.

    KILLINGHOLME GENERATING STATIONS (ANCILLARY POWERS) BILL [Lords] (By Order)
    Order for Second Reading read.
    To be read a Second time on Wednesday 25 July.

Oral Answers to Questions
  NORTHERN IRELAND

    Republic of Ireland (Transport Links)
    Mr. Stott: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he last met the Irish Minister for Tourism and Transport to discuss transport links between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Peter Bottomley): The day before yesterday.
    Mr. Stott: I thank the Minister for that most encouraging reply. Is he aware that my right hon. and hon. Friends and I fully support the plans agreed between Northern Ireland Railways and the Irish railway company for the upgrading of the Belfast to Dublin line? Will the Minister confirm that the £54 million grant provided by the EEC regional fund for that project is specifically dedicated to making cross-border and other improvements to the line? In other words, is not it a dedicated budget? Does the Minister have any idea of when the Irish Government will give the plan their seal of approval?
    Mr. Bottomley: Mr. Seamus Brennan made it plain that the Irish Government are committed to improving and maintaining the line. I cannot confirm dedicated funds for the line. That is as much for the Irish as for us to speak to the Community about. We have agreed with the Irish Government to undertake a detailed examination of the costs and benefits, and I hope that we shall be able to report progress to our respective Parliaments shortly.
    Mr. Kilfedder: May we have an assurance that the IRA will not be allowed to destroy that important link between Belfast and Dublin? Does the Minister agree that the IRA's campaign to destroy it is indicative of its opposition to a rapprochement between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic and between the people of Ulster and the people of the Republic of Ireland?
    Mr. Bottomley: Yes. The IRA's action is essentially partitionist. I remind the House of the words of the Republic's Justice Minister, Ray Burke, that it is only by an act of God that there has not been a major disaster. The IRA is relying on the security forces to get every incident exactly right. I hope that those who mourn over the level crossing crash outside Ballymena will realise that the IRA risks such accidents every time that it places a real or hoax bomb on the line.
    Mr. John D. Taylor: As Northern Ireland exports only 5 per cent. of its products to the Republic, does the Minister accept that as we move towards the single market, a first-class rail and road system between Belfast and Dublin is a necessity? Does he share the disappointment of most people in Northern Ireland that the Dublin Government seem to be rejecting the offer of financial assistance made by the European Community, to provide a fast rail link between Belfast and Dublin? Is not that a further example of Dublin saying no to co-operation with Northern Ireland?
    Mr. Bottomley: I think that my earlier remarks made it plain that the opposite is the case. I trust the Irish Transport Minister when he says that the Republic is committed to improving the line. A rail link between the two capitals of Ireland must make more sense and represent a better option than having to drive between the two. In the same way, it would be a good idea if the railway from the north-west ran to Belfast and on to Dublin. That, too, would be a better option than driving. Both would make sense in terms of the environment and reducing road casualties. It would also help the economic grography of Northern Ireland to improve rather than worsen.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: It is important to keep the rail link open, but has the Minister had discussions about the channel tunnel? Which way will its traffic run? Is he aware that a large sum of money has been granted to the Irish Republic to strengthen culverts and to widen roads, but nothing seems to be done north of the border to maintain the present level of traffic through Larne port?
    Mr. Bottomley: The Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wiltshire, North (Mr. Needham), who is responsible for the economy, and I had a meeting with the Belfast chamber of commerce. We all agreed that we must give business in Northern Ireland a choice of routes. The Dublin chamber of commerce has also made it clear that much business in the south prefers the roads and railways in the north and that is why so much of its traffic goes through Warrenpoint, Belfast and Larne. We aim to maintain our competitive advantage while seeing improvements north and south.

    Extradition
    Mr. William Ross: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many requests have been made by the Royal Ulster Constabulary for the extradition of persons sought for (a) terrorist crimes and (b) other crimes since 1 April; and how many persons in each category have been sent back to Northern Ireland as a result of those requests.
    The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. John Cope): The answer to both parts of the question is none, Sir.
    Mr. Ross: Does the fact that the Royal Ulster Constabulary has not seen fit to make any requests for extradition finally confirm the impression of many people in Northern Ireland that the Government now believe that there is no chance whatever of the Irish Republic ever honouring any international obligation in relation to the extradition of those charged with terrorist crimes in the United Kingdom in general, not merely in Northern Ireland? Will the Government now stop making excuses for the Irish Republic, which has behaved most abominably in that regard?
    Mr. Cope: I do not make excuses, but the RUC sends a request for a warrant from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland, first when there is good reason to believe that a particular individual is in the Republic and, secondly, when we have sufficient evidence to succeed with a warrant and, we hope, to mount a prosecution when an individual is returned. Since 1985 the general record has improved and we are working to improve it still further.
    Rev. William McCrea: Bearing in mind the number of guilty persons roaming about in safety and comfort in the Irish Republic because the Dublin Government will not take the necessary steps to extradite known terrorists to the United Kingdom and the fact that there is alarm and concern at the imprisonment in the United Kingdom of four innocent persons—the UDR four from Armagh—when will action be taken to provide proper extradition proceedings between the United Kingdom and Dublin and to allow the four innocent men from Armagh to be released?
    Mr. Cope: We are constantly promised new evidence on the so-called UDR four, but so far we have not received any that would allow the case to be sent back to the courts and we shall not impose a political judgment on the sentence of the courts. Since January 1988, 14 people have been returned to the United Kingdom, orders for delivery in respect of a further six people are the subject of appeal proceedings before the Irish courts and the Irish state has successfully appealed against the decision of the district court not to order the return of a further two persons. Therefore, a number of terrorist and non-terrorist cases are still pending.

    Transport Infrastructure
    Mr. Clifford Forsythe: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what plans he has to improve Northern Ireland's transport infrastructure.
    Mr. Peter Bottomley: The proposals are in Northern Ireland's transportation programme, 1989–1993, presented last September to the European Commission.
    Mr. Forsythe: Will the Minister explain why his Department has not yet taken action on Northern Ireland Railways' urgent request in August 1989 for authority to fit automatic half-barriers to 11 open crossings? Is he aware that those crossings include the one at Slaght, the scene of a fatal accident in March this year, and Umbra, the scene of a near accident last month? Will he urgently introduce that legislation and alert road users by publicly listing those 11 crossings?
    Mr. Bottomley: I shall do what the hon. Gentleman asked at the end of his question. I should like to make sure that the Department and all others concerned provide all the evidence to the inquiry into the Slaght tragedy before we start giving out evidence across the Floor of the House. All of it will be made public.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does my hon. Friend accept that an important part of the improvement to Northern Ireland's transport infrastructure would be an improvement in British Rail's infrastructure from the channel tunnel to the land-sea link to Northern Ireland? What representations is my hon. Friend making to his colleagues in the Department of Transport and to British Rail to ensure that Northern Ireland can take full advantage of the channel tunnel when it is open?
    Mr. Bottomley: We work closely with the Department of Transport. Most of the links to Northern Ireland will also bring improved services to my hon. Friend's constituency.

    Anglo-Irish Agreement
    Mr. Skinner: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what further discussions he has had about the Anglo-Irish Agreement; and if he will make a statement.
    The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Peter Brooke): Both the United Kingdom and the Irish Governments remain committed to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which provides a valuable framework within which they can discuss issues of mutual interest and concern. However, in the context of any discussions on possible future arrangements for the government of Northern Ireland, I would give serious consideration to any implications for the agreement that such arrangements might have.
    Mr. Skinner: Is not the truth of the matter that the Anglo-Irish Agreement, which was brought in before the previous general election, has turned out to be nothing more than a house of cards? The Government, along with some others, are trying to find another type of superstructure before the next general election, as many Governments have done for the past 20 years. If the Government and other parties can cheer the collapse of the Berlin wall, it is high time that we got rid of the border and brought out the British troops.
    Mr. Brooke: As I remarked at a previous Question Time, the views expressed in the last part of the hon. Gentleman's question do not enjoy widespread support in the House.
    Mr. Gow: Is my right hon. Friend beginning to understand that whose who are best able to represent nationalists in Northern Ireland are those who have been elected as their representatives to this House rather than the Government of that only foreign power whose constitution lays claim to Northern Ireland?
    Mr. Brooke: In answer to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), I gave the Government's attitude to the Anglo-Irish Agreement. I am sure that I am joined by the rest of the House in paying tribute to those in the House who represent the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Maginnis: Since the Dublin Supreme Court has found in the case of McGimpsey and McGimpsey v. Ireland that the Anglo-Irish Agreement is complementary to the territorial claim enshrined in articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution, is the Secretary of State surprised to discover that the Dublin Government have vetoed his political initiative? Is not it the case that the Irish Republic has a constitutional imperative to be obstructive when there is any chance of acknowledging that Ulster Unionists should have a right or rights?
    Mr. Brooke: No one has vetoed the initiative on which we are engaged, although I acknowledge that it is within the power of anybody to slow progress. It was said of the great cricketer, Denis Compton, that when he called someone for a run it was not so much an instruction as the opening of negotiations. In order to secure the opening of negotiations, it is not within my power simply to give an instruction.

    Disabled Pupils
    Mr. Bowis: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many (a) primary schools and (b) secondary schools have wheelchair access for disabled pupils.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Dr. Brian Mawhinney): Schools designed for disabled pupils include 38 primary and 22 secondary special units and 46 special schools, which cover both primary and secondary age groups. Specific adaptations for disabled pupils have also been made at 62 other primary and 29 secondary schools. Many other schools, especially primary schools, are accessible without adaptations.
    Mr. Bowis: Does my hon. Friend agree that it is good news for children with disabilities and their parents that many more such children are able to participate in mainstream schools? However, they are able to participate in mainstream education only if they have the same choice as other children. That choice often depends on adequate staffing and therapy levels and, of course, on adequate physical access. Too many schools, particularly secondary schools, are not yet able to provide that true choice of education.
    Dr. Mawhinney: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I am sure that what he said in the first part of his question will be widely accepted. I certainly accept it. It is important that children with a disability have a degree of choice and educational excellence. As far as is possible within Northern Ireland, we try to ensure that that choice is available, especially in the secondary sector.
    Rev. Martin Smyth: Does the Minister accept that many schools still have not made the necessary adaptations, so that we are simply conning ourselves when we speak of parental choice? Is not that choice severely limited not only because of a lack of access to the schools, but because of a lack of proper access to classrooms within the schools?
    Dr. Mawhinney: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says. It is important that as great a choice as possible should be available, and we are agreed on that. I cannot recall any instances of concern about secondary schools being expressed to me, although I accept that there tends to be more difficulty with secondary than with primary schools. If the hon. Gentleman would like to bring specific instances to my attention, I should be happy to hear from him. Given the concern that he has expressed, I shall certainly make appropriate inquiries.

    Political Parties (Discussions)
    Mr. Andrew MacKay: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on his recent discussions with political parties in the Province.
    Mr. Brooke: During the past six months I have had a series of discussions with the political parties in Northern Ireland and with representatives of the Irish Government, each of which accepts that talks would need to address, as part of the process, internal arrangements, north-south and east-west relations. The constructive approach taken by everyone has produced a large measure of agreement
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    about the various preliminary points of principle and also about the structure, format, and timing any talks might have.
    It is, of course, for the other potential participants in the talks to assess the best interests of those whom they represent. However, given the potential benefits of political dialogue, my judgment is that, with continuing goodwill, the outstanding matters that divide them could be resolved so that talks could be announced. I am ready to continue my efforts to facilitate the process, but such an announcement clearly cannot yet be made.
    Mr. MacKay: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the whole House wishes him godspeed in those delicate negotiations? Does he agree that the political leaders of the various constitutional parties in the Province have shown exemplary restraint during the past few weeks while negotiations have been taking place? It must have been difficult for them in their constituencies and elsewhere. It is an encouraging development, and we should wish them well.
    Mr. Brooke: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for the sentiments that he expressed at the beginning of his question. I concur with him in praising the restraint that everyone has shown during the past fortnight in ensuring that the possibility of talks remains and can be advanced.
    Mr. Ashdown: Notwithstanding the question and the answer, with whose sentiments I agree, did the Secretary of State note the comments of Bishop Cahal Daly at the funeral of yet another young sectarian murder victim yesterday? He said that those who would put obstacles in the way of the talks initiative would be letting the people down. Would not those who would put obstacles in the way of the talks bear a heavy responsibility if those talks were to fail?
    Mr. Brooke: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the nature of his question. I would not wholly concur with Bishop Cahal Daly—although I am grateful for his comments—about being able to embark on such talks without conditions, because I think that there are perfectly understandable conditions that everyone would bring to the talks. The fact that the bishop expressed that thought is a vivid index of the desire in Northern Ireland for talks to begin.
    Mr. Peter Robinson: Does the Secretary of State accept that if agreement were reached on the subject matters that he has listed to the House, in effect it would be a new agreement that would replace the Anglo-Irish Agreement? Has progress been made since he last spoke to the House, and do those with whom he has spoken since then share his view that the gap has narrowed?
    Mr. Brooke: Obviously, in the fortnight since I last addressed the House on the matter, talks with several parties have continued for a fairly long time. The gap has been narrowed, which gives one encouragement in persisting in the task, but there is still a gap.
    Mr. Mallon: Does the Secretary of State agree that all those involved in discussions over a long period of time, like the right hon. Gentleman himself, have also shown great restraint and have been consistently constructive? Does he agree that political parties in Northern Ireland are under enormous pressure and that such restraint augurs well for the future? Before he considers camping on the

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    racecourse, he should realise that a weekend is a short time in Northern Irish politics and that every last effort must be made to ensure that proper discussions and negotiations begin as soon as possible.
    Mr. Brooke: I join the hon. Gentleman in endorsing the restraint and the confidentiality that have been shown throughout the negotiations, which demonstrate the desire of the parties to make progress. The hon. Gentleman asked about camping on the racecourse. That metaphor was constructed for a particular purpose, and every time I reflect on it I am struck by what a dangerous process it would be. Therefore, the hon. Gentleman can be assured that we should want to take every step before doing that.
    Mr. Stanbrook: Was not my right hon. Friend's honest initiative doomed from the moment the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic insisted that the Irish Republic should be consulted at every stage of the negotiations? Was not the Anglo-Irish Agreement the biggest mistake the Government have ever made? Why should a foreign state have a say in the government of Her Majesty's subjects?
    Mr. Brooke: I should not want in any way to amend my hon. Friend's question, but he was slightly tempting providence in calibrating the scale of the mistake that might have been made. The involvement of the Irish Government in internal talks has not been an issue between the two Governments. As I told the House during the debate on the renewal of powers, the Irish Government have acknowledged that they would not be directly involved in any inter-party talks about internal arrangements for the government of Northern Ireland. However, there is general recognition that any comprehensive political accommodation must emerge from a process of dialogue involving all the main constitutional parties in Northern Ireland and the British and Irish Governments.
    Mr. John D. Taylor: As the Anglo-Irish Agreement gave a veto to many parties including the Dublin Government, and as it now appears that that veto is being exercised, will the Secretary of State consider those matters of reform and progress in Northern Ireland that are not connected with the Anglo-Irish Agreement, such as giving British Members of Parliament for Northern Ireland the same rights as English, Welsh and Scottish Members, and reforming the system of local government in Northern Ireland or, as a cricketing fan does he prefer to spend the entire summer at Malahide and the Mardyke?
    Mr. Brooke: I understand the subjects that the right hon. Gentleman raises. The Government have agreed that they should he happy to consider them and to discuss them with Opposition Members. However, it would be preferable to consider such issues as elements in an overall accommodation rather than reviewing them in isolation.
    Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that it is up to the House and the political parties in Northern Ireland to decide what is the best form of devolved local administration for that sovereign part of the United Kingdom that we call Northern Ireland and that whether we choose to consult the Government in Dublin is a matter for us and not for that Government?
    Mr. Brooke: I hope that I gave my hon. Friend some reassurance in the answer that I gave a moment ago. The scope of the discussions that we now envisage would go
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    beyond the present agreement. It is generally acknowledged that any comprehensive political accommodation must address all aspects of the problem and involve all those concerned.
    Mr. McNamara: In his initial answer the Secretary of State did not talk about making a statement before the House rises. Although we respect the right hon. Gentleman's desire to make a statement to the House—I wish that many of his colleagues would do so more frequently—if he feels that it would be in the best interests of the talks and negotiations that are taking place that a statement should not be made to the House, I am sure, speaking for the Labour party and, I think, for the whole House, that we would rather he made progress than that we should insist on any sort of statement.
    Mr. Brooke: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the constructiveness that underlies his question.
    Rev. Ian Paisley: Lest what the Secretary of State has said today at the Dispatch Box should be misunderstood, will he confirm that he stands by what he wrote to the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux), my colleague across the way, and myself: that the Government are prepared to consider an alternative to and a replacement of the Anglo-Irish Agreement?
    Mr. Brooke: I gladly repeat the words that I uttered earlier this afternoon: that in the context of any discussions on possible future arrangements for the government of Northern Ireland, I would give serious consideration to any implications for the agreement which such arrangements might have. The hon. Gentleman will know that the Taoiseach and the Irish Government have expressed a similar view.

    Eastern and Northern Health and Social Services Boards
    Mr. Beggs: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what consideration has been given by the Department of Health and Social Services in Northern Ireland to the merits of rationalisation of hospital provision between the Eastern and Northern health and social services boards; and if he will make a statement.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Richard Needham): The precise pattern of services in each area is a matter for each board to decide in consultation with other boards, as required. Any major changes or closures are likely to require the approval of the Department of Health and Social Services.
    Mr. Beggs: I thank the Minister for his reply. Does he accept that the working group set up by the Northern health and social services board to examine the Moyle hospital report on the case for the retention and development of acute services at Larne does not inspire confidence that an impartial assessment will be made? Is the Minister aware that the four officers who have been appointed are too closely associated with promoting the board's own policy, which will never be accepted in Ireland? Can the Minister assure the House that this Department will seriously consider this new report and that an enlarged group will be set up that is competent to deal with the issue of cross-board rationalisation? Will he

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    also reassure us that justice will be done to this report, which has been professionally researched and presented, when it is examined?
    Mr. Needham: As the hon. Gentleman knows, my noble Friend the Under-Secretary of State has written to those who produced the report and told them that he will look carefully at its contents. He has also made it clear that any rationalisation proposals for acute care will clearly have cross-board dimensions and that they will have to be taken into acount by the boards working together. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman's point will be taken into account by my noble Friend.
    Mr. Kilfedder: I am deeply concerned about the drastic cuts that have been imposed by the Eastern health board. Will the Minister set up a review into the effects that the cuts are having on the hospital and caring services in North Down?
    Mr. Needham: Since I have been a Northern Ireland Minister the amount of money spent on health care has risen from about £650 million a year to over £1 billion—hardly a cut. As for the particular point that the hon. Gentleman made, I shall draw it to the attention of my noble Friend.
    Mr. Jim Marshall: The Minister must be aware, however, that public disquiet continues over the proposal to downgrade Moyle hospital to the level of a community hospital, and of the strong belief locally that if that plan is eventually carried out it could involve loss of life in the area. In view of that disquiet, cannot the Minister give a firmer guarantee that he and his ministerial colleagues will review the decision in the near future?
    Mr. Needham: What will lead to loss of life in an acute hospital is that it is not properly staffed and does not have the right amount of equipment. Small local acute hospitals find it increasingly difficult to take on and retain the right staff and afford the right equipment. The key point about rationalisation is to ensure that we have modern acute facilities, led by the best doctors and nurses to look after our people. That is what we are doing by building the new Antrim hospital at a cost of £30 million.

    Drainage Council
    Mr. Mallon: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland when he last met the Drainage Council for Northern Ireland; and what matters concerning the constituency of Newry and Armagh were discussed.
    Mr. Peter Bottomley: Last month the council determined that Camlough lake feeder drain No. 2 should be treated as designated. It accepted the drainage scheme recommended by the Department of Agriculture.
    Mr. Mallon: May I commend the Minister on having obtained a positive response to a problem that has existed for upwards of 40 years? I assure him that those whose agricultural land has been affected by the problem will welcome it and that it will also be welcomed by the roads executive which has spent almost £500,000 making good the damage done? Will the Minister pursue the work quickly and vigorously so that the harm can be undone before the turn of the days?
    Mr. Bottomley: Yes, Sir. May I take this opportunity of making the broader point that we do not intend to become involved in more major agricultural drainage schemes because of the environmental impact. We want to maintain the courses that have been designated so that we can avoid the high cost to the roads service, referred to by the hon. Gentleman, and some of the consequences to agriculture. We will always consider the cost-benefit analysis and the environmental impact.
    Mr. William Ross: As the Minister has said that he is considering broader points, what consideration are the Government giving to the consequences of global warming on sea defences? What commitment will the Government make to the maintenance of existing sea defences, especially in regard to agricultural land?
    Mr. Bottomley: We wish to ensure that we obtain the benefits from spending extra money on sea defences. Where it is not possible costeffectively to protect land, we shall not be able to do so. It strikes me that on the one occasion on which the sea defences were breached, there was a fast response by the drainage service. I think that the farmer concerned has been able to get back into production, although I have not yet revisited him. People should realise that we can spend money only where it produces a return. There is no guarantee that the forces of nature can be tamed even by the best civil engineers.

    Paramilitary Actions
    Mr. Alton: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people have been killed or injured in Northern Ireland as a consequence of paramilitary activity since 1969.
    Mr. Brooke: Since 1969, 2,804 people have been killed and 32,700 people injured. Four of those deaths have occurred since I last answered questions on 21 June. Constable Harold Beckett and Constable Garry Meyer, both full-time members of the RUC, were murdered as they patrolled the city centre in Belfast. William Sloss was murdered by the Irish People's Liberation Organisation and Martin Hughes by the Ulster Freedom Fighters in sectarian attacks.
    However, the police and the Army continue to make important finds of arms and ammunition. They also made a number of significant arrests in recent weeks. In particular, I know the whole House will join me in praising the exemplary courage of the young RUC constable who drove off a heavily armed Provisional IRA gang in Dungannon. But for his quick thinking and bravery, I am sure that he and his colleague would be dead today.
    Mr. Alton: I am sure that the House will concur with the sentiments expressed by the Secretary of State. Does he agree with what Dr. Cahal Daly said yesterday that sectarian killings are the product of sick minds and twisted attitudes? He described those actions as loathsome and despicable. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that at some time the House will have to decide that those who pursue the strategy of the armalite and the bomb in one hand and the ballot box in the other will have to forgo the right to stand for election to this Parliament?
    Mr. Brooke: I join the hon. Gentleman in endorsing the comments expressed yesterday by Bishop Cahal Daly and I am sure that the whole House would do the same. The

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    second part of the hon. Gentleman's question related to the proscription of organisations. I keep that matter constantly under review.
    Mr. Barry Porter: Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is time that we listened to half the advice given by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and stopped this pretence of saying that the Anglo-lrish Agreement has achieved any of its fundamental aims? It has not. That emperor has no clothes. I wish my right hon. Friend every success in the discussions, but will not he concede that there is no reason to blame my hon. Friends who represent the Unionist cause on both sides of the House as they have expressed good will towards reaching some agreement. If the talks fail, let us place that blame where it lies, and that is on Dublin.
    Mr. Brooke: My hon. Friend has asked a comprehensive question. The question asked by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) perhaps had a conclusion different from that suggested by my hon. Friend. We are more likely to make progress in the talks if we concentrate on looking forward and on the positive aspects rather than questioning the motivation of anyone who is involved in them.
    Mr. Hume: In answer to the hon. Member for Wirral, South (Mr. Porter) and some other Conservative Members, will the Secretary of State confirm that we will not have lasting peace and stability in Ireland without the full agreement of the Irish Government and all constitutional parties in Northern Ireland?
    Mr. Brooke: I endorse what the hon. Gentleman says about uniting people of peace and good will to ensure that the terrorist is defeated.

    Economy
    Mr. Hague: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the state of the Northern Ireland economy and its future prospects.
    Mr. Cope: I do not underestimate the longstanding problems of the Northern Ireland economy, but there has been a significant improvement in recent years. The latest figures show that, compared with a year ago, manufacturing output has risen by 5 per cent., the number of employees in employment in March 1990 had risen by nearly 4,000 and it was announced today that the number of unemployed people in June 1990 had fallen by 9,100.
    Mr. Hague: Will my right hon. Friend emphasise that today's unemployment figures, which show a fall in male and female unemployment, are part of a continuing and healthy trend? Should not that be a source of encouragement and optimism to everyone inside and outside the Province who believes that it will have a prosperous future, irrespective of its various difficulties, as it increasingly shares in the economic growth of the United Kingdom?
    Mr. Cope: I entirely share the sentiments expressed in the last part of my hon. Friend's question and I confirm that the reduction is part of a trend. The unemployment figures announced today were the lowest for just over eight years.
    Mr. Molyneaux: Does the Minister agree that the unemployment figures could be further reduced if terrorists stopped destroying businesses, even in their own areas, and if paramilitaries stopped intimidating employers and employees, again in their own areas, while, with typical hypocrisy, complaining of the shortage of jobs?
    Mr. Cope: I entirely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Terrorists and their activities are most damaging. It is their intention to damage the economy and other aspects of life in Northern Ireland, and they certainly affect the figures that I have given. The greatest boost to the economy of Northern Ireland would be the defeat and ending of terrorism.
    Mr. Ian Bruce: Has my right hon. Friend considered the economic success of the Republic of Ireland compared with Northern Ireland and how it has been affected by the decision that it took many years ago to fix the punt to other European currencies, as opposed to the pound floating more freely?
    Mr. Cope: As some of the figures that I gave earlier are better than those for the Republic, my hon. Friend might like to reflect on his question. So far as I know, there is no intention to have a separate currency for Northern Ireland.

    Shipbuilding
    Dr. Godman: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the shipbuilding industry in Northern Ireland.
    Mr. Needham: Harland and Wolff was returned to private sector ownership in September last year. I understand that the company's current order book extends into 1993.
    Dr. Godman: I am pleased to hear of those developments, and my pleasure will be shared by many of my constituents who have relatives and friends in Northern Ireland. May I press the Minister to resist proposals—offered, I think, by ministerial colleagues— that the European Community shipbuilding intervention fund be further reduced? Similarly, will he urge Harland and Wolff, where it uses those funds, to purchase engines and equipment from manufacturers in the United Kingdom?
    Mr. Needham: The very fact that Harland and Wolff is now in the private sector means that almost all aspects of its business are going up: productivity is up, orders are up, and confidence is up. The only thing going down are its losses. Morale is up. That is all due to the fact that Harland and Wolff is out on its own and has a full order book which will last until the middle of the decade.

    Further Education
    Mr. Dover: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on his Department's consultation document on further education.
    Dr. Mawhinney: Further education has an important contribution to make to the economic and social life of Northern Ireland. The consultative document "Signposts

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    for the 90s: A Review of Further Education" highlights the main issues which need to be addressed and identifies a number of ways forward. The consultative period will last until the end of the year and I look forward to receiving the views of the many interested parties.
    Mr. Dover: Does the Minister agree that the proposal to allow further education students to study university module courses for two years is revolutionary and innovative and that it will open up the possibility of higher education to many more Northern Ireland students?
    Dr. Mawhinney: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is one of a number of proposals that we are seeking to canvass during the consultative period, not least because it would make a particularly significant contribution in Northern Ireland, which no longer has a polytechnic.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. John Greenway: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 19 July.
    The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. I also participated in the deputation from the House which attended on Her Majesty the Queen Mother. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Greenway: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the defeat of inflation demands that, as well as central Government, local authorities must exercise restraint and responsibility in their spending plans? What conclusions does she draw from the fact that North Yorkshire county council, under Conservative control, increased its spending this year by less than any other shire county, yet regularly achieves some of the best exam results in the country; while the actions of high-spending Derbyshire county council, under Labour, have been declared in the High Court to be vindictive, illegal and a flagrant abuse of power?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. Sound financial discipline is crucial to good management control of the economy. I congratulate North Yorkshire county council on its record and especially on its good education record—on a comparatively low community charge, lower than other people's. That shows that it can be done and that it is not the amount spent but the way that taxpayers' and charge payers' money is managed that matters.
    Mr. Kinnock: Will the Prime Minister accept that the concern about the family which she expressed in her speech yesterday is widely shared and indeed praiseworthy? Given that concern, can she tell us what she thinks most damages families? Is it the highest mortgage rate in history? Is it the poll tax that has been imposed? Is it the freeze on child benefit, or the abandonment of community care?
    The Prime Minister: The greatest support that we can give families in material terms is to keep the economy going so that it produces the highest number of jobs we have ever had in our history, the highest standard of living
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    we have ever had in our history, and the best social services; and, as I said in my speech yesterday, it is to give particular support to lone parent families.
    Mr. Kinnock: That reply shows that there is an unbridgeable gap between what the Prime Minister says is her concern about the family and what she is actually prepared to do about it. Does not she understand that the announcement yesterday that the Government are ratting on their pledge to provide help for people who care for disabled and elderly people at home shows contempt for some of the most needy, and certainly some of the most deserving, people in the whole of the land?
    The Prime Minister: I remind the right hon. Gentleman that local authorities are spending half as much again on personal social services over and above inflation as they were in 1979. There are 22 per cent. more day-care places, 26 per cent. more home helps and 13 per cent. more meals served to the elderly and disabled. As for the Government support for the elderly in nursing and residential homes, for every £1 Labour spent we are spending £100. Labour Members talk; we deliver the goods.
    Mr. Kinnock: Will the Prime Minister explain to the House, and to the millions outside, why the Government are effectively forbidding the necessary help to be given to people who are caring for loved ones with Alzheimer's disease and other dreadfully disabling diseases, thus saving the community and the taxpayer billions of pounds? Why has the Prime Minister ratted on the promise that she made?
    The Prime Minister: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, certain aspects of community care are going ahead. He also knows that—as I have said—the Labour party's record in government of looking after the elderly— [Interruption.] Of course Opposition Members do not want to hear about that; they only want to hear the hot air that the right hon. Gentleman pours out. For every £1 that the last Labour Government spent on residential nursing homes for the elderly, this Government are spending £100. We have created the wealth, looked after it well and ensured that it reached some of the people who needed it.
    Mrs. Ann Winterton: Will my right hon. Friend do all in her power to ensure that the corridors of peace in Angola are opened to allow urgent humanitarian aid to reach all needy Angolans, bearing in mind the terrible famine that is afflicting that country?
    The Prime Minister: It is beyond our power to keep those corridors open. As my hon. Friend knows, when we receive urgent requests for humanitarian aid because people are greatly in need of food and water, we usually meet them.
    Mr. Darling: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 19 July.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Darling: The Prime Minister now says that she is concerned with the family. Why, then, did she block the EC directive that would have given three months' parental leave per child? Have not we something to learn from the West Germans who, in addition to having a very successful

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    economy, give 12 months' parental leave per child—soon to be increased to 18 months—and, in addition, 14 weeks' paid maternity leave?
    The Prime Minister: The draft directive to which the hon. Gentleman refers will not be published till September.
    Mr. Carrington: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 19 July.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Carrington: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, in a recent list of the world's top 500 companies, Britain was shown to have the third highest number? We were behind only Japan and the United States of America, and way ahead of our European partners. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this gives the lie to those who never miss an opportunity, either at home or abroad, to run down our industrial performance?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, I saw the report: 43 British companies are represented on that list, which is the third best number after the United States and Japan. We should also realise that, of the 50 best-performing companies in the European Community, 28 are British. They are performing well. We have great opportunities for more businesses to be set up under this Government. As my hon. Friend knows 1,700 new businesses a week have been set up this year.
    Mr. Ashdown: Does the Prime Minister now regret her support for the barbarians of the Khmer Rouge?
    The Prime Minister: As I have told the right hon. Gentleman, we have never supported the Khmer Rouge. What we did support, along with many other people, was an alliance under Prince Sihanouk which happened to include the Khmer Rouge, for a seat in the United Nations. We said that we would look at that again along with our other permanent member partners in the United Nations.
    The right hon. Gentleman should also remember that a goodly number of the Hun Sen Government of Cambodia were also members of the Khmer Rouge.
    Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 19 July 1990.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Sir Michael McNair-Wilson: Perhaps I may start the fraternal batting by asking my right hon. Friend whether she is aware that it takes between 13 and 15 years for a major road bypass scheme, such as that announced in Newbury today, to be approved and completed. In view of the importance of the road programme to our nation's economy, may I suggest that it would be wholly beneficial to find a way of reducing cumbersome and long-drawn-out planning procedures and enable new roads to be completed more swiftly?
    The Prime Minister: I have a good deal of sympathy with my hon. Friend. The problem is to balance the need for public consultation and the right to make objections with the need to get on and build the roads. The longer it takes, the more the price goes up. A planning Bill is expected in the next Session of this Parliament. We hope
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    and believe that it will contain measures to enable higher compensation to be given to those whose property is compulsorily purchased. That, too, should help to speed up the process.
    Mr. Maginnis: No doubt the Prime Minister was dismayed by the Supreme Court ruling in Dublin in the McGimpsey and McGimpsey v. Ireland case where it was found that the Anglo-Irish Agreement was complementary to the territorial claim enshrined in articles 2 and 3 of the Irish constitution. What will the Prime Minister do to support the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in his efforts to bring political peace to Northern Ireland arid overcome the obstructiveness of the Government of the Irish Republic?
    The Prime Minister: As the hon. Gentleman is aware, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has the full support of Her Majesty's Government and, I believe, of most people in seeking a good basis for the peoples of Northern Ireland to go ahead together to find a better basis for government in the Province. He has our full support, and I hope that he will be successful in his efforts.
    Sir Patrick McNair-Wilson: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 19 July 1990.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Sir Patrick McNair-Wilson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the current strength of sterling on the world markets is further evidence of the correctness of her Government's economic policies? Is not it clear that the people of Britain can look forward to lower inflation and falling interest rates in the months ahead, now that the difficulties of the 1987 crash have been finally exorcised?
    The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend. It is a great vote of confidence in the policies of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. A strong pound will exert downward pressure on unit wage costs which will mean that our goods will become more competitive arid we can continue to increase our exports. We prefer a strong pound, whether in or outside the exchange rate mechanism, or—to put it the other way round—whether outside or eventually in the exchange rate mechanism.
    Mr. Ron Brown: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for 19 July 1990.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Brown: The Prime Minister's Government encourage state schools and hospitals to opt out. Those are spurious rights, of course, but what about Scotland? Is not it entitled to opt out of the system, too? Is not it entitled to its own Parliament, or is that extending democracy too far? If it is not, she should have a word with Mr. Gorbachev because he will argue for self-determination. He has said that much.
    The Prime Minister: Hospitals in Scotland may become self governing, but that is not equivalent to opting out of the health service; it is a different way of being governed within it. The hon. Gentleman is aware that it takes longer for schools in Scotland to opt out, because, whereas all

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    schools in England have school boards or courts of governors, that is not the case in Scotland. We had to set up those boards initially before we could proceed to the next stage.
    Mr. Conway: To ask the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Thursday 19 July.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Conway: Is my right hon. Friend aware that in the county of Shropshire there are more than 2,000 beds in private nursing homes and homes for the elderly? Is not it staggering that this Government have spent more than
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    £990 million supporting the elderly in those homes, as opposed to the £10 million spent under the previous Labour Government? Are not their weasel words ultimately their downfall?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, Sir. I am grateful to my hon. Friend as that is the mesage I have been trying to get across to the Opposition during this Question Time. We have talked rather less than them, but spent a lot more on looking after those who are sick and ill. The benefits for carers have also increased enormously under the Government. Spending on invalid care allowance, for example, has increased from £8 million in 1979 to more than £180 million now. They talk, we act.

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother
3.30 pm
Mr. Speaker: I have to tell the House that today, together with other right hon. Members, I attended upon Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, to deliver the House's message of congratulation on her 90th birthday—[HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear".] Her Majesty made the following reply:
"Members of the House of Commons:
I thank you from my heart for your kind message which I am delighted to receive. I am, indeed, most touched that you should have come here to Clarence House in the midst of your many commitments to wish me well on my birthday.
To me it seems just the other day that in this same room I accepted your greetings on a previous anniversary, and I am delighted that, ten years on, there should be here, today, four members of that delegation.
One of the consolations of growing older is to find pleasure and interest in the younger generation, whose qualities became very evident to me during the 25 years that I was Chancellor of the University of London.
My belief in the fundamental good sense, wisdom and integrity of those in whose hands lie the destinies of our country is as firm now as it was in the long years of the Second World War.
Throughout my life I have seen changes and developments, new patterns of behaviour and fresh outlooks—much has been transformed but the loyalty and devotion of our people to the Crown remains constant.
It is my prayer that with God's help our country will go forward from strength to strength in the years ahead.
And now, once again, may I tell you how touched I am by your message of good wishes at this time."
Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Business of the House
3.32 pm
Mr. Bruce Grocott: May I ask the Leader of the House what is the business for next week?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Sir Geoffrey Howe): Yes, Sir. The business of the House for next week will be as follows:
MONDAY 23 JULY—Motion for the summer Adjournment.
Proceedings on the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill.
TUESDAY 24 JULY—Opposition day (18th allotted day, 2nd part). There will be a debate on an Opposition motion entitled "Government mismanagement of the economy".
Remaining stages of the Contracts (Applicable Law) Bill [ Lords].
Motion on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Orders.
Motion on the EEC Merger Control (Consequential Provisions) Regulations.
The Chairman of Ways and Means has named opposed private business for consideration at seven o'clock.
WEDNESDAY 25 JULY—Remaining stages of the Courts and Legal Services Bill [Lords].
THURSDAY 26 JULY—Debates on the motion for the Adjournment.
The House may also be asked to consider any Lords amendments which may be received.
It may also be for the convenience of the House to know that the business of the House for the first week after the summer adjournment will be as follows:
MONDAY 15 OCTOBER—Debate on financial services and the single European market on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
The Chairman of Ways and Means is expected to name opposed private business for consideration at seven o'clock.
TUESDAY 16 OCTOBER—Progress on remaining stages of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill [ Lords].
Motion relating to health authorities regulations.
WEDNESDAY 17 OCTOBER—Completion of remaining stages of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill [Lords].
Remaining stages of the Caldey Island Bill.
The Chairman of Ways and Means is expected to name opposed private business for consideration at seven o'clock.
THURSDAY 18 OCTOBER—Debate on a motion to take note of the outstanding reports of the Public Accounts Committee to which the Government have replied.
FRIDAY 19 OCTOBER—There will be a debate on a motion for the Adjournment of the House, subject for debate to be announced.
Mr. Grocott: Following this week's price rises, first for water and yesterday for telephone bills, may we have an early debate on the way in which privatised monopolies are hitting the consumer? In particular, may we have a debate on the way in which former Cabinet Ministers, well paid, are advising those monopolies?
May we have a debate on the family, particularly following yesterday's crass sense of timing by the Prime Minister, when she made a statement on the family on

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precisely the day when the Government withdrew from important pledges that they had made, particularly to families with sick and elderly relatives? I hope that the right hon. Lady will be present for that debate because it will be interesting to hear her views.
In regard to poll tax, when shall we have statements on Scotland and Wales? That information should be available —the statements should be made today—and it is unacceptable that those matters are not being dealt with today.
We appreciate why the Government are anxious to rush for the recess, following a year in which they have suffered a steady loss of credibility through by-elections and Cabinet Ministers, but those are important matters and we need time to debate them.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I dare say that the hon. Gentleman will find time to take part in the debate on the motion for the Adjournment. The first topic that he raised will apparently be germane to the motion selected by the Opposition for debate next Tuesday afternoon. I hope that Opposition Members will then pay tribute to the way in which privatised industries—former public monopolies —are achieving rising profits and immense expansions of efficiency, with prices falling in real terms, a welcome change from what preceded the present state of affairs.
As for the family, I am glad that the hon. Gentleman noticed the importance of the speech made yesterday by the Prime Minister. I shall bear in mind his request for a debate on that and the many topics on which my right hon. Friend touched.
As for Scotland and Wales, the Secretaries of State will be making an announcement before the House rises for the summer Adjournment.
Mr. Jeremy Hanley: Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider holding an urgent debate on the behaviour expected of aspiring statesmen when travelling abroad? Or does he believe that the advice given during that debate would be totally ignored?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I hope that any such debate would emphasise the word "aspiring" rather than "statesmen".
Mr. James Wallace: Will the Leader of the House clarify what he said about an announcement by the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales about community care and the community charge? Does he mean that there will be an opportunity for hon. Members who represent Scottish and Welsh constituencies to question the respective Secretaries of State at the Dispatch Box? If that is not what he means, will he agree to have a debate in the first week we return on the proposals of the Scottish Constitutional Convention, which will be more necessary than ever given the way in which Scottish and Welsh hon. Members have been treated this week over community care and the community charge?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman need not get so worried about the matter. It is customary for the Secretaries of State for Wales and for Scotland to make statements following a statement by the Secretary of State for the Environment. Each of them will be making statements before the House rises, when they can be questioned in the ordinary way.
Sir Anthony Grant: May I join the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) in asking for an early debate on the subject of the family, because the speech of the Prime Minister will be particularly welcome to those many taxpayers who have been outraged in recent years at having to subsidise the fornication of irresponsible fathers?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend puts the point with classic and characteristic clarity. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister will welcome his support for her speech.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: Is not it a fact that because of difficulties with the computer, unless we make a decision on the recommendation of the Select Committee on Procedure on questions before July, there is no chance that it will come into operation next Session? Would not it be wise at least to do that business before the end of July?
What has happened to the report of the Select Committee on Members' Interests on the delicate issue relating to the Select Committee on Defence? Is it satisfactory that that matter festers and festers?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: As the hon. Gentleman will appreciate, the last question is one for the Select Committee itself rather than for me. I agree about the importance of making the changes recommended on questions. I hope that the necessary motions will be tabled before the House rises.
Sir William Shelton: Has my right hon. and learned Friend seen early-day motion 1281, entitled "Sexual Offences Bill and Procedure for Private Members' Bills"?
[That this House notes with concern that the Third Reading of the Private Members' Bill the Sexual Offences Bill, introduced by the hon. Member for Streatham, was blocked, despite the fact that it received an unopposed Second Reading, was unamended both in Committee and Report Stage, and had the support of both front benches and almost universal support in the House; and therefore urges that the procedures for Private Members' Bills should be reviewed in the light of this occurrence.]
Does he agree that the time may have come for a review of the procedure for private Members' Bills? Will he be prepared to look favourably on an amendment embodying this vital legislation to any relevant Home Office legislation in the next Session?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: While I can understand my hon. Friend's interest in the subject of that Bill, I cannot give any undertaking about its attachment to any other legislation that may be before the House next Session. Procedure for private Members' Bills is a matter for the Procedure Committee and I shall draw the matter to its attention.
Mr. Bob Cryer: May we have a debate next week before the House rises on the United Nations nuclear non-proliferation treaty? The Leader of the House will be aware that the Government signed that treaty. Yet they are blatantly in breach of clause 6, by embarking on the £10 billion Trident nuclear missile programme. In a review conference, non-nuclear nation after non-nuclear nation will denounce this country for breaching the treaty while at the same time expecting

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non-nuclear countries to remain non-nuclear. Is not that pure hypocrisy and outrageous? Is it not time that we had a debate on that?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not accept any of the hon. Gentleman's points. I am surprised that he advanced them this afternoon as he is likely to have a debate on that subject in the proceedings on the Consolidated Fund (Appropriation) Bill.
Mr. Harry Greenway: May I ask my right hon. and learned Friend for an early debate next week on early-day motion 1136, on religious education in maintained schools?
[That this House, recalling that agreed syllabuses for religious education in maintained schools must now statutorily reflect the fact that the religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian, whilst taking account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religions represented in Great Britain, believing that religious education in schools should respect the integrity and identity of each religion studied within the agreed syllabus, and should in turn promote respect, understanding, and tolerance for those adhering to different faiths, further believing that thematic teaching approaches which blur the distinctions between religions tend to undermine their coherence and should be avoided, and recognising that for good educational reasons only two, or at the very most three, religions can be studied in any worthwhile depth within the normal constraints imposed on religious education by schools' weekly working timetables, urges the Secretary of State for Education and Science to monitor, assess, and if necessary, correct local education authorities' syllabuses in the field to ensure the proper reflection in those syllabuses of the ideals spelt out above; and further urges the Secretary of State to issue supplementary guidance to local education authorities on the subject.]
It would be particularly relevant to Ealing where pupils are required to follow a syllabus which is supposed to be Christian-centred, but which does not mention God, the Bible or Jesus himself and which was drawn up by the Labour council. Urgent action is needed and the House should debate the matter.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I can understand my hon. Friend's concern about the matter if the state of affairs is as he describes. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Science has already received representations about locally agreed syllabuses for religious education and he is considering them.
Mr. Max Madden: What arrangements is the Leader of the House making to allow the House to vote on whether hospitals should opt out of the national health service and become self-governing trusts? I ask that because in Bradford, where four hospitals are due to opt out of the national health service, Yorkshire regional health authority has concentrated the phoney consultation period during the summer months of July, August and September, knowing that most people will be away on holiday and that most organisations do not meet. There will be little opportunity for any community test of opinion. What does the Leader of the House intend to do to enable the Secretary of State for Health to be told clearly that there is massive opposition in Bradford and elsewhere to hospitals opting out of the national health service?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not see why I should take great trouble to give the hon. Gentleman an opportunity to amplify or to represent his views when they are founded on so many misconceptions. We are concerned not with hospitals opting out of the national health service but with arrangements in accordance with the legislation approved by the House for hospitals to have self-governing status within the health service. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will make that well understood in his own constituency.
Sir Robert McCrindle: In view of the confusion surrounding Sunday trading, which has persisted since the failure of Government legislation some years ago, and of yesterday's court decision, is not there an argument for a further debate, to test the opinion of the House, and through it the opinion of the country, on any change to Sunday trading laws—or are we to presume that there will be no further legislative proposals in that regard during the lifetime of this Parliament?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: It is 30 years almost to the day since I first published an article on that very topic under the simple heading, "Set the shopper free." It seems to have been a long time maturing. My hon. Friend raises a point of concern, but a single debate is not likely to resolve the areas of continuing disagreement between the various parties. If it were possible to secure agreement, the Government would certainly be willing to give sympathetic consideration to making legislative progress.
Mr. Tony Banks: I draw the attention of the Leader of the House to early-day motion 1275, signed by 91 hon. Members:
[That this House expresses its extreme concern at the apparent intention of the Hong Kong authorities to continue trading in elephant ivory after the reservation ends at midnight on 17th July; recalls the many undertakings given by Ministers that the trade would end on the appointed day; and calls upon Her Majesty's Government to keep their promises to the House by instructing the Hong Kong authorities to cease all trade and not to defy the CITES ban.]
The right hon. and learned Gentleman will recall the concern expressed by hon. Members about the loophole that the Hong Kong authorities were clearly intending to exploit, whereby the trade in ivory could continue under the guise of personal effects after the reservation ended at midnight on 17 July. Is the Leader of the House able to say whether that loophole has been closed? If it has not, may we have an early debate on that important subject?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman's interest in that topic is strong, so I am not surprised that he has returned to that theme. As was made clear by my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office in a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre (Mr. Mans),
"The Hong Kong Government have already enacted legislation to implement the CITES ban on international commercial trade in ivory. The legislation will come into effect when our reservation is withdrawn on 18 July 1990 … Hong Kong legislation now fully reflects the CITES convention." —[Official Report, 18 July 1990; Vol. 176, c. 553.]
Mr. Ivan Lawrence: As the laws that we pass in this country apply both to Scotland and to the United Kingdom, and given that we are so closely allied as to have in the United Kingdom a Lord Chancellor who is a Scotsman, will my right hon. and learned Friend ask the

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Attorney-General, when he comes to speak on the Courts and Legal Services Bill next Wednesday, why the unacceptable parts of the proposed law reforms are to be dropped in Scotland but not in the rest of the United Kingdom?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I shall certainly bring that point to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Attorney-General. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) will recall the premise of his own question and that the arrangements for the constitution of this country make provision for different laws to be made for Scotland than for other parts of the United Kingdom. They may make legitimate debating points, but it would be remarkable if they were always coincident in every respect.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Will the Leader of the House spend some time during the recess thinking about and walking carefully around this building, with early-day motion 1307 in his hand?
[That his House believes that the Palace of Westminster should be made fully accessible for people with disabilities; calls for study to be made of the necessary improvements to the entrance, toilets, telephone and refreshment facilities and the installation of induction loops where appropriate; and further believes that visitors to the Palace of Westminster should not have to suffer the indignity of waiting outside to be admitted, being unable to get any refreshments without the presence of a member.]
Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman first review the appalling provision for disabled people who visit or work in this building, and the lack of wheelchair ramps, induction loops, and documents written in Braille? Many people also experience difficulty hearing properly from the Floor of the Chamber and the Strangers Gallery. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider also the lack of facilities for visitors, who in the winter months are forced to queue outside in the rain and are unable to obtain any refreshments unless they are accompanied by a Member of Parliament.
The facilities here are, frankly, archaic and a disgrace to the country. It ill behoves the House to pass legislation requiring adequate facilities for the disabled in public buildings throughout the country if such facilities are not provided here [HON. MEMBERS: "Too long."] This happens to be a very important matter. As the Leader of the House has not announced a subject for debate on 19 October, perhaps he will bring forward proposals as the subject of such a debate on that Friday morning.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman has the almost unique capacity to make a significant, important and worthwhile case sound almost positively unattractive. All the matters that he has raised have been and are almost continuously the subject of consideration and arrangements have been improved recently as a result of recommendations made by the Services Committee. The arrangements under consideration by Sir Robin Ibbs may help us to improve the way in which we address some matters. It is also necessary to acknowledge that in a building of this kind and antiquity it is not possible to make every change that we might desire for the benefit of
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the disabled because of the sheer physical construction of the building. But the hon. Gentleman's case deserves to be considered more sympathetically than he suggests.
Mr. Barry Field: Will my right hon. and learned Friend consider arranging a debate on the structure of local government, particularly as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment yesterday announced his response to the Boundary Commission's proposal for a unitary authority on the Isle of Wight, stating that he acknowledged the force of the arguments but that there was no prospect of primary legislation during this Session of Parliament? However, I understand today that the deputy leaders of Isle of Wight county council have announced that they are to seek a private Bill to put that proposal into effect, and it would be helpful if the House had an opportunity to discuss the restructuring of local government into unitary authorities throughout the United Kingdom.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: My hon. Friend's constituency interests may well be represented by the private Bill that is now in prospect, but I do not know how widely shared would be his enthusiasm for a far-ranging, comprehensive reconstruction of local government. I suspect that there would be limited enthusiasm for that. At all events, his request for a debate will have been heard by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment who is sitting beside me.
Mr. Merlyn Rees: Will the Leader of the House follow up the point made by the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Field)? One hears that the Local Government Boundary Commission is making the most incredible proposals for changes between district councils. Not only will they have profound effects on parliamentary constituencies, which is one thing, but the commission seems to be erecting its own ideas about the divisions between districts—for example, using motorways —and ignoring people's feelings. May we have a debate because there will be great anger in the House at reports coming from the centre of London, which do not understand what is going on outside?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I know from my experience that it is important that the Local Government Boundary Commission should be sensitive to particularly expressed local anxieties and should not place too much reliance on its own inspired approach to topics. In that spirit, I shall bring the right hon. Gentleman's point to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment for him to pass on to the commission.
Mr. Chris Butler: Will my right hon. and learned Friend find time next week to discuss the activities of the Anti-Poll Tax Union, one of the leaders of which, from my constituency, has called for the magistrates to be kidnapped?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Such a matter may well deserve to be investigated by the law enforcement authorities. It is clear that that union's activities are contributing to additional costs for fellow citizens to the disadvantage of our society.
Mr. Frank Field: Can the Leader of the House give a commitment that the two new Committees that will replace the Select Committee on Social Services will be up and running at the beginning of the new Session?

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If he cannot give such a commitment now, will he be able to do so in the form of a letter to the Committee before we rise for the summer recess?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I hesitate to give a precise commitment on timing now, but the hon. Gentleman knows that we are committed to the division of the Committee and I shall make sure that my answer is communicated in an appropriate form as soon as possible.
Mr. John Marshall: Will my right hon. and learned Friend arrange for an early debate on the Post Office's annual report and the poor service that it provides in north-west London? Does he agree that such difficulties are more likely to be defeated by the introduction of competition than by the maintenance of a state monopoly?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I understand the philosophy that appeals to my hon. Friend and I shall bring his point to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry.
Mr. Harry Ewing: Is the Leader of the House aware that missing from the Report stage of the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill when we consider it in the first week after the recess will be the legislative proposal to reduce substantially the period of consideration in divorce actions because Opposition Members on the Bill's Standing Committee forced the Secretary of State for Scotland to drop it? Would the Leader of the House like to thank those Opposition Members because, had not that happened, the Prime Minister would have been in the ludicrous position of saying yesterday that there should be an extended period for consideration in divorce cases, yet legislating for a shorter period?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Many factors need to be considered on such a matter, including the fact that that part of the legislation was originally proposed by the Scottish Law Commission. No doubt the House will be ready to deal with the Bill on Report.
Mrs. Teresa Gorman: Can my right hon. and learned Friend find time to discuss early-day motion 1247, which was originally tabled by me, but which is now supported by my most distinguished hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Sir C. Irving)?
[That this House notes that the phenomenal success of the House of Commons gift shop has nevertheless produced congestion in the access to two of the Commons's most popular restaurants, the Members' and the Strangers' cafeterias; and urges the re-location of this popular facility within Westminster Hall, where shopping facilities have traditionally existed, and which is conveniently placed at the end of the line of route usually taken in conducted tours by honourable Members' constituents.]
The motion calls for the gift shop to be relocated from the downstairs corridor to Westminster Hall. Its phenomenal success in its present location prevents the progress of people who are in pursuit of pies and Pepsis in the restaurant at the end of the corridor.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am sure that the House will be grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the success of the gift shop, which contributes substantially to the trading success of the Refreshment Department.
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Sensible questions need to be considered about its location, and I shall see that that is done in the context of the space audit for the whole House.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Has there yet been any discussion in the House of Commons Commission about the wages paid to people in the Refreshment Department? Does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept the proposition, which I put months ago, that hon. Members should pay more for their food so that people in the Dining Rooms can be paid more?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman will recollect that the Member responsible for answering on behalf of the Commission, the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), answered a question on that topic on Monday and drew attention to the well-established arrangements for determining the pay of those who work for the House.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. In view of the pressure of time, hon. Members should ask questions only about the business that has been announced. I shall call those who were here for the business statement.
Mr. Barry Porter: That brings me back to the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill. I am somewhat puzzled by the reply given by my right hon. and learned Friend to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) in relation to the fact that it seems clear that there is a distinction in principle between what is happening in Scotland and what is happening in England. I am aware that there is a difference between Scottish and English law.
Mr. Speaker: Order. This must be about next week's business.
Mr. Porter: It is indeed, Mr. Speaker. The Government have accepted that in Scotland the lenders, that is the banks and building societies, cannot represent the borrower, although that is not the case in England. May we have an early debate on that, either tied up with a debate on English law or within the context of the Scottish Bill, I care not which? The principle is exactly the same.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The debates in the first week of our return from the recess should provide an opportunity for those issues to be raised.
Mr. Allen McKay: Would the Leader of the House consider the fact that between now and our return from the recess local authorities will try to come to terms with poll tax capping and will have assessed the damage to local authority services and to our constituents? Does he agree that it would be wise to have a debate as soon as we return so that the House can look at the assessment of that damage and at any litigation that has taken place as a result of the statement later today by the Secretary of State for the Environment?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not propose to anticipate my right hon. Friend's statement.
Rev. William McCrea: Will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on the statement by the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, that any

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alternative to the Anglo-Irish Agreement must have the consent of the vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland? Bearing in mind that criterion and the fact that the Anglo-Irish Agreement as at present enforced does not have the consent of the vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland, is not it about time that the House had a full-scale debate on the agreement?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The House had an opportunity to consider closely related questions during the full-day's debate on Northern Ireland the week before last.
Mr. Dick Douglas: Will the Leader of the House be more than his usual charitable self, and tell us whether on any—and preferably on which—of the four days available for debate next week the Secretary of State for Scotland will make a statement on community care and the proposals for the community charge, or will we have to accept a written answer to a question tabled by the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart)? If we are to discuss how to run a business properly, could we have a little more respect for hon. Members, especially those in opposition, and have some clear answers to our questions?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: For the third time this afternoon —and it may be that on the two previous occasions the hon. Gentleman was talking too much to listen—
Mr. Douglas: Come on.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Once again, the hon. Gentleman cannot stop talking long enough to listen to my answer. I say for the third time that my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland will be making a statement on that very topic—
Mr. Douglas: When?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Before the House rises.
Mr. Tony Marlow: May I support the plea of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Field) for legislation to enable local authorities to become unitary authorities—not to force a uniform change of local government across the country, but to allow areas that wish to choose a form of unitary authority to do so? There is a great deal of sense in that.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Without commenting on the case for unitary authorities, I acknowledge that there has always been a good case for a more discriminating and variable pattern of approach to local government reform, of the sort originally available under the Local Government Boundary Commission, but which disappeared towards the end of the 1950s.
Mr. Alan Meale: Following last night's decision on the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill, supported by 200 Conservative Members, and the dramatic effect that that will have on the coalfield communities, will the Leader of the House find time before the House rises for its summer recess for a full and frank debate on the needs of those communities?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I do not anticipate an opportunity arising for a debate of that sort, but the Bill has been extensively debated in the House over many months.
Mr. Bill Walker: Reverting to the earlier question on the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill, which will be debated in the week that we return, my right hon. and learned Friend will be aware that loyal supporters of the Prime Minister and her policies were also opposed to the divorce proposals. They were not Government proposals, but those recommended by an outside body. Have not we saved the House a great many problems by having those proposals removed?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I dare say that that point can be made during the debate in the week that we return.
Dr. Norman A. Godman: The Leader of the House outlined the timetable for the further deliberation on the Law Reform (Miscellaneous Provisions) (Scotland) Bill. May I point out that, as a member of the Standing Committee, I have been deeply concerned about the poor management of the Bill? It has meant that four new clauses that I tabled, which had as their objective the better protection of children in sexual or physical abuse cases, will not now be heard. Does he agree that we need a debate on the protection of children when they are giving evidence in such cases?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: It is not my business to agree on the merit of that proposal, but there will be up to two full days for discussion of various aspects of the matter when the House returns in October.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: When the Leader of the House replies to the Adjournment debate on Monday, will he refer to the article in the Prime Minister's favourite tabloid on Monday of this week, which suggested that he was about to be sacked?
Mr. Speaker: Order. The question should be about the business next week. Please concentrate on that.
Mr. Skinner: Next week, the Leader of the House will be answering the Adjournment debate. I am asking whether he intends to reply to the article in the Prime Minister's favourite tabloid. I want to give him some advice. If ex-Cabinet Ministers are sacked, they obtain fewer directorships than those who leave on their own accord for family reasons. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman is to get a directorship, he should go now.
Mr. Speaker: Order. That is not about business next week.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I shall answer the debate and not newspaper articles, least of all those that attract the attention of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).
Mr. Greville Janner: After visiting Glenfield district hospital in my constituency this morning, I ask the Leader of the House to arrange for a debate on the disastrous crumbling of the national health service in Leicestershire, where wards are closing, staff are struggling to provide services and some patients are waiting more than two years for an appointment with a consultant. As that hospital has a reduced budget of less than £26 million and it needs £3.6 million just for maintenance, surely that scandalous situation should be debated in the House, where hon. Members of all parties take exactly the same view.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. and learned Gentleman knows, because he has raised the matter on more than one occasion, that the allocation of money to the Leicestershire health district is a matter for Trent regional health authority. The district received significantly more money this year, amounting to a real terms increase in its budget of nearly 3 per cent. I have no doubt that he and/or some of his colleagues will find an opportunity to return to the matter in the Adjournment debate next week.

Adjournment Motions
Mr. Speaker: I remind hon. Members that on the motion for the Adjournment of the House on Thursday 26 July, up to 10 Members may raise, with Ministers, subjects of their own choice. Applications should reach my office by 10 pm on Monday next. A ballot will be held on Tuesday morning and the result made known as soon as possible thereafter.

Local Government Finance
4.6 pm
The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Chris Patten): With permission Mr. Speaker, I should like to make a statement about the Government's proposals for the local authority financial settlement for England for 1991–92 and about the review of the community charge. My right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Scotland and Wales will be making separate announcements about the arrangements in those countries in due course. I apologise at the outset for the inevitable length of my remarks.
In recent years there has been substantial growth in local authority spending. In the current year, local authorities are planning expenditure of £36.4 billion. That is an increase of 13½ per cent. over the comparable figure for 1989–90, and that came on top of a 9 per cent. increase over the previous year. So spending has grown by very nearly one quarter in only two years.
Local authorities, like other public sector bodies, should play their part in restraining expenditure if we are to maintain economic progress and limit the burden of national and local taxation.
As part of the settlement, the Government have to make an estimate of the total amount which it would be appropriate for local authorities to spend. That figure is known as total standard spending. From it is derived a standard spending assessment for each authority, representing the amount it should cost to provide a standard level of service.
For next year I propose to set total standard spending at £39 billion, compared with £32.8 billion for this year. This is over 7 per cent. more than likely expenditure this year. £39 billion should adequately fund local authority services next year, taking account of the additional pressures and burdens local government will face, and the scope for improved efficiency. Spending above that amount should not be necessary.
Most local authority spending is financed by Government grants and the business rate. This year those funds, known as aggregate external finance, were set at £23.1 billion, compared with about £10.5 billion from charge payers after allowing for rebates and transitional relief. I propose that the amount of aggregate external finance for 1991–92 should be £26.050 billion. This is an increase of very close to £3 billion or 12.8 per cent. above the amount being provided this year. This significant increase will necessarily mean that less can be afforded for other Government spending programmes next year. I expect authorities to pass on the benefit to their charge payers in their bills, rather than increase spending too much once again. As I shall make clear shortly, I shall be prepared to use my capping powers to ensure that that happens.
Proposals for the distribution of grant, including any changes which may be made to the methodology for standard spending assessments, will be announced in the autumn in the usual way. Earlier this year, I made it clear that I would be willing to consider new evidence about the way the standard spending assessments are calculated.
This year, with many councils overspending, the average charge after capping was £357. That, alas, is the position from which we will start next year. If local authorities play their part, as we have played ours by
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increasing external finance by nearly £3 billion, the average charge next year should be close to the community charge for standard spending of about £379. The majority of areas have charges below that figure this year, and many will benefit because no authority will have to pay into the safety net next year. Efficient authorities should be able to set charges below this figure, as should authorities who will still be receiving grant from the safety net.
Those local authorities which are not prepared to budget sensibly should know that I shall be prepared to make vigorous use of my powers for charge capping next year. As Secretary of State, I have power to cap in two ways. I can cap a council's excessive budget, or cap excessive increases from one year to the next. This year it was impracticable to use the latter power. Next year, I shall not hesitate, where authorities budget above the standard spending assessment—or SSA—for 1991–92, to use either or both powers to protect charge payers.
In deciding what is an excessive increase in an authority's budget, I propose to distinguish between those authorities which budget well above their SSA and those which spend above SSA by a smaller margin. I would expect to see smaller annual increases for the higher spenders, because the more profligate the authority the greater the scope for savings. As it would be the first time that authorities were capped on the basis of excessive budget increases, I have decided specifically for this year to give an advance indication of the proposed criteria for capping so that local authorities may take them into account in reaching their budgeting decisions.
In summary, while I would expect most authorities to budget at or below their SSAs, I intend to use my powers to protect charge payers. I want to ensure that the substantial amount of extra money contributed by national taxpayers to local government is not wasted in much higher spending but helps to keep charges to reasonable levels.
I now turn to our review of the community charge. The basic principle that all local people should make some direct contribution to the cost of local services through a charge levied on almost all adults has been accepted increasingly widely, but it would be surprising if a change of this magnitude did not require some adjustments in its second year of operation.
We have received many constructive suggestions from hon. Members and others. My proposals concern the standard community charge, non-domestic rating, the area safety net, the transitional relief scheme, the administration of the charge and improvements in accountability.
An issue which has given rise to a great deal of concern is the standard community charge. This charge applies where domestic property is no one's sole or main residence. It is right that owners of such properties should contribute towards the cost of local services. We have given local authorities a wide discretion in setting multipliers for the various classes of standard charge payer for the year ahead. It is disappointing that many have not used this discretion sensibly. There are many people, for example, who are required as a condition of their job to live in a particular property. They quite naturally wish to maintain another property which they would regard as their home, even though it is not their sole or main residence. The law allowed local authorities to set out a different approach to these cases, and I regret that many local authorities did not do so.

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I therefore propose a number of changes for next year so as to reduce the maximum standard charge which local authorities can levy in a number of exceptional cases. Among those who may benefit are people such as clergy men, service men and some teachers who are required as a condition of their job to live in a particular property; people who have houses with an empty "granny flat"; people who find themselves paying a standard charge when their home is empty following repossession; people who have an empty flat over a shop which it would be difficult to let for security or other reasons; students who face a reduced personal charge, but who can face a double charge if they own a home elsewhere; people whose homes are empty because they have gone to look after a relative or friend, or to be looked after; and farm owners who have empty dwellings on their land which, because of planning restrictions, can be occupied only by agricultural workers.
We are also proposing to help people who are having difficulty selling a property, either on a move or after they have inherited it, by extending the period during which it is subject to a zero charge. Full details of all these changes are set out in a consultation paper published today.
These and other proposed changes will, I hope, be widely welcomed. Subject to consultation, we propose to bring forward regulations which will come into force before the end of 1990 so that authorities can give effect to these changes from 1 April 1991.
There has been concern about the position of owners of small businesses who live "over the shop". They pay rates on their business property, but they are, of course, also liable to pay the community charge. That is not in fact an anomaly: all adults have to pay a personal charge irrespective of where they live, and rates are paid on all business property. It would therefore be inappropriate to change the fundamental liability for either the community charge or the business rate for people who happen to live on their business premises. Like other businesses, they may qualify for transitional protection against large increases in rate bills and, like other former domestic ratepayers, they may be eligible for community charge transitional relief. However, I recognise that this group of businesses may need more time to adapt to the higher bills which they face under the new system and I propose to amend the business rate transitional arrangements, for what are called small composite hereditaments, so that from 1991–92 annual increases in the business rate will be limited to 10 per cent. in real terms instead of the current maximum of 15 per cent. That will help the occupiers of 95,000 properties in England.
There has also been concern about the liability for non-domestic rates of people who provide bed-and-breakfast accommodation in their own homes. The present exemption for people who make accommodation available for fewer than 100 days a year has caused some difficulty. We therefore plan to change this rule from 1 April next year. We will shortly issue a consultation paper canvassing a range of options based on the amount of accommodation which the household proposes to make available rather than the time for which it is available.
These are the main changes to the community charge and non-domestic rates. I am also proposing a number of minor changes, designed for the most part to improve the administration of the charge by local authorities. These are also included in the consultation paper which is being sent to local authorities today. Copies are in the Library and the Vote Office.
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I also have in mind improvements to the community charge bill. The contribution of individual authorities to high charges is not clear enough on the face of the bill, and charge payers are inclined to think the council whose name appears on the top of the bill is responsible for the whole of any excessive spending.—[ Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. Many hon. Members are interested in the statement and are anxious to follow it. It is difficult to hear when hon. Members make comments from sedentary positions.
Mr. Patten: I shall therefore be proposing changes to ensure that the respective contributions of preceptirig and charging authorities to over or underspending are shown much more clearly. This will increase accountability. I propose to make—
Mr. Dick Douglas: This would not be necessary if it was not for you lot—
Mr. Speaker: Order. May I say to the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas), who is shouting and pointing across the Gangway, that it is very bad behaviour. He should know better.
Mr. Douglas: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Douglas rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. It is no reason to raise a point of order, just because I have called the hon. Member to order. Please desist.
Mr. Douglas: He is sponsored by Gilbert and Sullivan.
Mr. Patten: I propose to make an alteration to the area safety net. The safety net is designed to protect charge payers in those areas where the ending of cross subsidies under the old rating system caused the largest changes.
As the House will know, in 1991–92 gaining areas will not have to contribute to the area safety net, and this will enable 20 million charge payers to benefit by up to £75. I expect the authorities concerned to ensure that this benefit is passed on to charge payers, and is not swallowed up in higher spending. For those people in areas receiving the most support from the safety net, which is paid for from the Exchequer, I propose that support should be withdrawn more slowly than previously proposed, at a maximum rate of £25 per adult per year. This will help almost 3.5 million people living in 25 areas where the support received in 1990–91 was more than £100 per adult. This could be worth up to £28 a year for the charge payers affected.
Finally, I propose a substantial increase in comunity charge transitional relief in 1991–92. The transitional relief scheme was designed to help former ratepayers, and pensioners or disabled people who were not ratepayers, who faced significant increases in their bills as a result of the change to the new system.
I do not propose, as some have suggested, to change the basis of calculation to take account of actual charges set by local authorities. That would merely channel extra help to the areas where authorities have increased spending fastest. I propose changes which will, none the less, help those most affected by the switch from the rates to the community charge—typically, people who lived in a property with a low rateable value.

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The improvements will more than double the amount of relief to be given in 1991–92 from the planned level of £260 million to £570 million. This is an increase of £310 million. I propose to distribute this extra help by requiring authorities to calculate relief in 1991–92 so that most households face no more than an increase of £2 a week because of the structural change from rates to the community charge. In other words, the threshold will be cut from £3 to £2. I also propose to postpone the phasing out of the relief for two years and to extend the scheme by two years to 1994–95. In all other respects, the scheme in 1991–92 will be unchanged. It will continue to be based on assumed charges for 1990–91, and will apply where people stay in the same home.
These changes will mean that every household receiving transitional relief at present will not only keep that relief in full next year but will see it increased by £52. Pensioners and disabled people who were not former ratepayers will also have an extra £52 of relief in their own right. On top of this, postponing the withdrawal of relief will be worth up to £13 in 1991–92 to everybody already entitled to relief this year. Many couples, instead of losing £26, will gain £52. In other words, as a result of these changes they will be £78 a year better off than they would otherwise have been. About 7.5 million people will gain in this way.
Furthermore, the lowering of the threshold will bring almost another 4 million people into transitional relief for the first time. These are people who lost between £2 and £3 a week as a direct result of the change to the new system. They will gain up to £52 a household. These changes will require amendments to the regulations which will be brought forward in the autumn. My officials will be discussing the administrative implications with the local authority associations.
The settlement I have proposed envisages 12.8 per cent. more support from Government grant and business rates towards local authority spending. That is generous by any measure, reflecting a substantial increase in real terms. If authorities budget sensibly, the average community charge in England should be close to the community charge for standard spending of about £379. But I can assure the House that if they do not I will use my powers to protect charge payers from excessive demands. I expect local authorities to set prudent budgets, so that the extra grant being provided goes to help charge payers through moderate charges, and not to boost spending.
The changes I have announced to transitional relief will benefit an extra 4 million people on top of the 7.5 million who already receive relief. They will represent a further £310 million of help on top of the previously planned £260 million for the relief scheme in 1991–92. Among those who will benefit will be elderly and disabled people who qualify for extra help under the current scheme. Almost 3.5 million people will benefit from the changes to the safety net. Many individuals and small businesses will benefit from the proposed changes in the rules concerning second homes, composite hereditaments, and bed and breakfast.
My announcement today means substantially more relief to those who most need help in the changoever to the community charge. It means a realistic financial settlement for local authorities. I believe that we have played our part in helping to smooth the introduction of this major reform. Now it is up to local authorities to play their part.
Mr. Bryan Gould: That statement is a double admission of failure which will disappoint many hon. Members on both sides of the House, and many millions of people outside as well. It is an admission, first, that the poll tax is and has been a disaster; and secondly, that it is a disaster from which nothing can be salvaged. The statement leaves the poll tax where it has always been: unfair in principle, unworkable in practice and fatally flawed.
Is not the message for the poll tax payer that no relief is in sight, and that for the majority, the bills will go up sharply yet again next year? Why should anyone rely on the Secretary of State's estimate of average poll tax bills, when he was so hopelessly and spectacularly wrong last time round? Is not his estimate for this year in any event more than £100 higher than his similar estimate for last year? Even the changes to the transitional relief scheme leave it still based on the same fairy-tale figures which have already meant that it is no more than a sham and a charade for millions of people. Will the Secretary of State confirm that, because the transitional relief scheme is still to be calculated on assumed rather than real figures it will provide no help to many poll tax payers who will be much more than £2 a week worse off?
Is not the message for local authorities from the Secretary of State's statement that they are again to be short-changed by the Government, that their independence is to be further eroded, and that, even after taking account of the shameful betrayal of those who pinned their hopes on community care, services will again have to be cut?
Has the Secretary of State learnt nothing from the disastrous experience of the past 12 months? Does he not recognise that it was his and his predecessor's insistence that local government spending would be £3.6 billion lower than it turned out to be which forced up the poll tax bills for this year, since every penny of that shortfall fell on the hapless poll tax payer? Why does he persist in repeating and compounding that error this year? Can he name any local authority association—including those under Tory control—that agrees with his assessment of local authority spending for 1991–92? Is not it the case that it is the hard-pressed poll tax payer who will again pay the price for the right hon. Gentleman's mistake?
What estimate has the right hon. Gentleman used for inflation—or is he too embarrassed to say, following his assertion last year that it would be less than half what it turned out to be? Will he confirm that the national non-domestic rate will be raised in line with the actual rate of inflation? What estimate has he made of the cost of new commitments imposed on local authorities by the Government, and how are those new commitments to be paid for? Will it again be the poll tax payer who picks up the total bill? What estimate has the right hon. Gentleman made of the costs of collecting the poll tax, and of the shortfall faced by local authorities in the light of worryingly low collection levels, not least in his own constituency? Is not his hint that he intends this year—unlike last—to publish his capping criteria in advance evidence that, whatever other lessons he has failed to learn from charge capping, he now concedes that penalising local authorities for breaking rules imposed on them after the event was a serious and damaging mistake? Is not the truth that this is a paltry package that fails to live up to its advance billing and represents yet another battle lost by the Secretary of State at great cost to other spending

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programmes? The right hon. Gentleman has squeezed out of the Treasury a package worth only a touch more than £2 billion. With that sum, he has first to try to make good the errors made last year; secondly, to allow for inflation, now rising fast; thirdly, to meet the cost of new commitments imposed by his Government; fourthly, to remove the most glaring anomalies from the first year's operation of the poll tax, and, fifthly, to allow for a frighteningly low level of collection. It cannot be done.
Mr. John Lee: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: I do not recollect that anything has happened that needs my immediate attention. What is it?
Mr. Lee: As the House rises for the recess next week, Mr. Speaker, would it not be possible for you to grant an extra five minutes to the hon. Gentleman—
Mr. Speaker: That is not a point of order, and it delays the House.
Mr. Gould: In view of that attempted abuse of the House's procedures, I will repeat that last paragraph.
With a sum of just over £2 billion, the Secretary of State now has first to try to make good the errors of last year; secondly, to allow for inflation, now rising very fast; thirdly, to meet the cost of new commitments imposed on local government by his Government; fourthly, to remove the most glaring anomalies from the first year's operation of the poll tax; fifthly, to allow for a frighteningly low level of collection. That cannot be done: the circle cannot be squared.
The message is therefore, a grim one for local authorities and for poll tax payers alike. Happily, it is also a grim message for a Government who are uniquely responsible for the mess that they have created.
Mr. Patten: I suspect that it is conceivable that the hon. Gentleman's questions were drafted before I made my statement. He suggested—it was the first of a series of clichés that were trooped before the House—that there was no relief in sight. There is relief in sight, in the form of more transitional relief for 7.5 million who are already receiving it. We are talking about 4 million more people receiving transitional relief, and 3.5 million being helped because of the modifications that I have made to the safety net. It is worth noting that as a result of the benefits that we provide, which are more generous than those available under domestic rates, and as a result of transitional relief, while the average community charge set for this year after capping is £357, the actual average charge paid is £286. The difference between the two is made up through benefits and transitional relief.
The hon. Gentleman said that community charge standard spending was much higher than community charge standard spending last year. He referred to the increase in total standard spending. We have had to take, account of a 13.5 per cent. increase in local authority spending— an increase of almost a quarter in two years. If we had not done so, unfortunately people would have faced community charges which were much too high in the coming year.
The hon. Gentleman said that local authorities were being short-changed, and referred to a £3 billion-plus package as "paltry". That reminded me of a remark made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford (Mr.
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Tebbit) about a large Government subsidy. He said that, if that was beating someone to death, it was the first time that it had ever been done with a cheque book.
Mr. Gould: How is it £3 billion?
Mr. Patten: I shall go through the £3 billion. The £3 billion is a £2.95 billion increase in aggregate external finance and £310 million in transitional relief. With great respect, the hon. Gentleman does not yet understand local government finance. He cannot, and I cannot, say what the contribution from the non-domestic rate pool will be until September, because we do not set the multiplier until September. Of course there will be a contribution from business rates, just as there has been in the past.
Mr. Gould: How much?
Mr. Patten: The hon. Gentleman and I cannot say until we set the multiplier. The hon. Gentleman should recognise that if the cash did not come from the business ratepayer—I assume that even under the Labour party's proposals, when they emerge, businesses will pay something—it would come from the taxpayer.
Mr. Gould: The right hon. Gentleman has made a mistake.
Mr. Patten: I have not made a mistake. Unfortunately, the hon. Gentleman has shown once again that, even with his hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) sitting beside him, he does not understand local government finance.
The hon. Member for Dagenham referred to local authority spending assessments. He said that at least some of the local authority associations proposed a substantially increased figure for total standard spending over what we have suggested.
The figure of £39 billion that I suggested would mean an increase of over 30 per cent. in local authority expenditure over three years. Many of my hon. Friends will regard that as spectacularly too high. The figures suggested by the hon. Gentleman and some of his hon. Friends would imply a 40 per cent. increase in local authority expenditure.
The hon. Gentleman has to come clean. Not only must he tell us what the Labour party would do in place of domestic rates and the community charge—the Opposition have wriggled, squirmed and turned on that month after month and year after year—he must tell us how much more the right hon. and learned Gentleman the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer thinks that he should commit the Labour party to spend on local authority spending. Is it £1 billion, is it £2 billion, is it £3 billion? How much more than £3 billion should local authorities have next year?
The hon. Gentleman will not tell us. He cannot tell us. It is a vacuous and cynical response that the Labour party makes to our proposals.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the House that we have a heavy day ahead of us. We have a series of Lords amendments to two Bills and, of course, the important debate on the televising of the House, to which the House is looking forward. I ask hon. Members to bear it in mind that there will be other opportunities to debate this

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statement. I shall allow questions to continue on it until half past 5. Then we will move on to the next business. I ask right hon. and hon. Members to ask single questions.
Mr. Terence L. Higgins: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the changes that he has announced will be greatly welcomed? In the first part of his statement, he made no reference to those prudent local authorities, such as West Sussex, that have spent below their SSA. Those local authorities have been unfairly treated for many years because the money from central Government has been going to profligate authorities to bail them out.
Could my right hon. Friend refer to the provisions relating to flatlet houses? Many owners of such houses are being charged the community charge whenever their accommodation happens to have one empty flatlet.
Mr. Patten: On my right hon. Friend's first point, I join him in commending those local authorities that have been prudent over the years and spent regularly at or below target. They have given extremely good value for money to their ratepayers or charge payers. Invariably they have provided a high level of service at the same time.
I hope that my right hon. Friend noted that, when I referred to capping for the future, I referred to those authorities that spent above their SSAs, either by a small amount or by a larger margin. It is on those authorities that we shall need to concentrate our particular attention. It would be intolerable if they were able to use the generous settlement announced this afternoon to push their spending higher, rather than to help their community charge payers.
I assume that my right hon. Friend was referring to what are sometimes known colloquially as granny flats. We propose to set a zero multiplier for such flats. All the proposals we are making on the standard community charge are contained in a consultation paper published today. We shall be anxious to hear contributions from right hon. and hon. Friends and others on those proposals. Once we have received those observations, we shall make a final announcement in the autumn.
Mr. Simon Hughes: Does not the Secretary of State realise that this will be an unsuccessful and expensive attempt to conceal the real unfair nature of the community charge for a little longer —until the other side of the general election? Does he not realise that a dozen sweeteners do not provide any substitute for a healthy diet? Will he come clean with the House by saying that all he has done today is to announce that he is buying votes and buying time? He has traded accountability of local government to local people for accountability to himself.
Mr. Patten: I am providing a decent and reasonable settlement so that local authorities can provide good value for money while they also provide the schools, fire services, and other community services that people want in their area. They want those services at a reasonable price.
I am bound to say that £3 billion-plus strikes me as more than a few sweeteners. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be interested to know that his constituents will benefit from the proposals that I have made on the area safety net system.
Mr. Cranley Onslow: May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the excellent package he has outlined, which will be extremely welcome to a great many people up and down the country, in spite of the churlish response it has had from the Opposition?
How will those who will benefit from the transitional relief changes—the disabled and pensioners—and those likely to benefit from changes in the standard charge, as well as all potential beneficiaries, know exactly what is proposed? How will they know what those changes mean to them, given that we cannot rely on the Opposition to give an honest picture of them?
Mr. Patten: It is interesting—we saw this in some of the advertisements that Labour local authorities financed earlier this year—that the Labour party, even when it talks about the take-up of benefit, is apparently more anxious not to let people know about the benefits to which they are entitled.
Mr. Gould: That is a disgraceful assertion.
Mr. Patten: If the hon. Gentleman considers the example of the Association of London Authorities—a Labour organisation—he will know that that is true. I could have made that point a great deal more strongly in the past than I have this afternoon.
I shall certainly do what I can to ensure that the additional benefits that I have announced this afternoon, the extension of transitional relief, are made clear to all those who could receive greater assistance as a result.
Mr. Peter L. Pike: Will not the Secretary of State realise that the package he has announced this afternoon clearly has the next general election in mind more than tackling the basic problem of the poll tax, the ability to pay? Nothing that the right hon. Gentleman has said today deals with that matter.
Will the right hon. Gentleman also admit that too many people on low incomes have to pay the full poll tax? Will he assure us that, when rebates are considered, he will use each of his votes in Cabinet to ensure that rebates are given to those people on higher levels of income?
Mr. Patten: The hon. Gentleman refers to ability to pay. I must point out that about 25 per cent. of all community charge payers are in receipt of assistance. A large number of them get 80 per cent. relief from their community charge with the rest covered by income support. In England, we are spending in all more than £2.5 billion in benefits for community charge payers. That recognises our responsibility to help the needier members of the community.
Mr. Robin Squire: Against the background of the most generous settlement for many years —[HON. MEMBERS: "Come on."]—factually, the most generous—my right hon. Friend deserves particular congratulations on sending additional support to 4 million households that previously did not benefit from transitional relief. Will my right hon. Friend also note that the shallow criticisms by the Opposition Front Bench spokesman are more accurately reflected in the sparse attendence on the Benches behind him?
Mr. Patten: I had indeed noticed how interested the Labour party was in next year's local authority financial settlement. I wonder whether more Opposition Members will turn up on that afternoon, to which we are looking

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forward, when the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) outlines the labour party's policy on such matters. I am sure that it will be standing room only, but we might have to wait rather a long time for it.
My hon. Friend was right to refer to the size and generosity of the settlement. We are putting a large amount of money from taxpayers and business rate payers into local authorities. We have played fair by local authorities; local authorities should now play fair by the community charge payer.
Mr. John Fraser: I congratulate the Secretary of State on delivering a long, intricate and difficult obituary on the creature produced by the right hon. Members for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker) and for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley). The right hon. Gentleman's statement simply demonstrates that the concept of restraining local government expenditure has gone out of the window, as has the concept of accountability. Why does he not bury the corpse and go back to a system based on ability to pay?
Mr. Patten: I believe that the proposals for which we have legislated and the announcement I have made this afternoon will mean—I argued this in the debate a couple of weeks ago, part of which the hon. Gentleman attended—that there is a much more direct transmission mechanism between local authority spending decisions and local electors. People are already looking with a far beadier eye at the spending decisions taken by local authorities. Unfortunately, when we introduced the community charge, a number of local authorities thought that they could spend up and blame the consequences on the new system rather than on their spending decisions. It would not be right to let them get away with that indefinitely.
Mr. Timothy Raison: May I, as a critic of the community charge, congratulate my right hon. Friend on the amelioration he has brought forward today? Have the Government any plans to reduce the excessive assumed level of income from capital above the limit of £3,000 for the purposes of rebates?
Mr. Patten: I am sure that my right hon. Friend welcomed as much as I did the announcement that the Chancellor of the Exchequer made in his Budget statement on the capital limit. There is some misunderstanding about the implications of interest rates that are implied by the increase in the capital limit to £16,000. First, no account is made of the first £3,000 of savings. Secondly, benefit is not withdrawn at the rate of £1 for £1 of income, but at the rate of 15p for every £1 of income. That means that, at the top level, at almost £16,000, the most that somebody can lose is £7.80, which is an implied interest rate of about 2.5 per cent., so the position is not quite as some of my hon. Friends have sometimes argued. Nevertheless, I am sure that, with his customary courtesy and eloquence, my right hon. Friend will continue to pursue that argument with the Secretary of State for Social Security and with the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Mr. Terry Fields: I am sure that the general public will never cease to wonder at the hypocrisy of the Government. Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that yesterday—perhaps to obtain publicity for herself—the Prime Minister eulogised the family? Does he appreciate that the measures he has
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announced today will do nothing to stop the split-up of families because of economic pressure or for the conflict faced by women who are having to bear the poll tax charge for husbands, leading to the breakdown of families, or for the homeless in our streets? Is he aware that there is a vast army of people out there whose resolve will be reinforced by his statement today, and that the poll tax will be the rock on which the Government will perish?
Mr. Patten: When one is talking of hypocrisy, those whom I think of first are those elected members, whether of this House or local authorities, who are refusing to pay the community charge and who are urging—without, it must be said, according to a recent survey conducted by the BBC, much success—others to do the same, people who are attempting to act as free riders or freeloaders on the backs of the constituents.
Miss Emma Nicholson: As a strong critic of the sharpness of the initial introduction of the community charge, I warmly congratulate the Secretary of State and thank him for the tremendous way in which he has shaken the pockets of the Treasury and made highly intelligent and receptive spending decisions on the sums of money that he has achieved. Will he remind the Opposition that, under the old rating system, 18 million people paid and 5.5 million received relief, and that under the new system, with his statement today, 36 million people will be financially enfranchised locally and about 25 million people will have assistance to help them pay?
Mr. Patten: My hon. Friend is right. As I said, the average charge paid by community charge payers this year is £286, which is a reflection of the generosity of the benefits and transitional relief. The benefits available are much more generous than they were under domestic rates, a point which has never been recognised by Opposition Members, who are regularly—indeed, institutionally, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Mr. Onslow) pointed out earlier—churlish.
Mr. Bernie Grant: Does the Secretary of State agree that the fact that he has been forced to increase external financing by £3 billion next year and transitional relief by £310 million this year means that he has grossly miscalculated the revenue support grant settlement and the SSAs for local authorities in this financial year? Will he, even at this late stage, do something about the finances of local authorities, especially in view of the redundancies that will be caused by his clearly wrong figures this year? Will he also do something about the cuts in services that will come about as a result of his miscalculations?
Mr. Patten: I have not miscalculated. Local authorities have increased their expenditure by 13.5 per cent.
Mr. Michael Jopling: Is my right hon. Friend aware that, while his statement is welcome, there are areas where local people increasingly find it difficult to acquire houses in the face of outsiders buying holiday or weekend homes? Will he give an assurance that, as a result of the changes that he has announced affecting second homes, the locals will not find themselves having to pay more to pay for the reliefs on houses that are purely holiday or weekend houses and which fall outside the categories he mentioned?
Mr. Patten: I hope that my right hon. Friend will be reassured when he sees the consultation paper that we have

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published this afternoon. The proposals to which I referred dealt with particular categories of people who, in the rather unhappy phrase used by my Department, are involuntary second home owners. The categories mentioned by my right hon. Friend are not covered in the consultation paper, and I hope that that reassures him. I hope that hon. Members in all parts of the House will respond to the consultation document. We are keen to try at this stage to remove as soon as possible any legitimate grievances that may have arisen over the standard community charge.
Mr. Alfred Morris: Does the right hon. Gentleman recall the several cases I have drawn to the attention of the Government for the Spinal Injuries Association, among other voluntary bodies, where families which include a severely disabled person have had to pay over £700 a year more than they paid in rates? That arises from the repeal of the previous Government's Rating (Disabled Persons) Act 1978, when the poll tax became law. Should not those families have far more protection than the right hon. Gentleman has announced so far?
Mr. Patten: With respect to the right hon. Gentleman, who knows a great deal about these matters, he is wrong to say that there is a connection between the consequence that concerned him and the Rating (Disabled Persons) Act 1978. Under the rating system, it was occasionally the case that disabled people would make changes or alterations to their property that would increase the rateable value of that property, and there was, properly, relief against that. The community charge is not in any way a levy on property: it is a levy on individuals.
The right hon. Gentleman should take account of the enhanced benefits for the disabled that have been introduced by the Government. If he is as concerned as I am sure he is about the impact on the disabled and others of the community charge in some parts of the country, I hope that he will be urging the leaders of Labour local authorities to set moderate levels of community charge.
Mr. Graham Riddick: My right hon. Friend's announcement, particularly in the way in which it relates to the extension of the transitional relief scheme, is welcome because it provides extra help and support for those who live in terraced houses with historically low rateable values, many of whom are pensioners and on modest incomes. But will he confirm that at the end of the day the level of the community charge in my constituency depends on the spending decisions of the local Kirklees council, and will he join me in urging it to get rid of the extravagance and wastage which undoubtedly now exist?
Mr. Patten: I am sure that my hon. Friend, particularly after the representations that he made to me on that point, will welcome the changes that we have made to the area safety net, which will benefit his local authority to the tune of £2.2 million. That is very much a result of the representations that he made to me and to the Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities. My hon. Friend is right to say that the level of community charge depends clearly and explicitly on the spending decisions taken by
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local authorities. We have provided a reasonable settlement. It is now up to local authorities to play their part.
Mr. Dave Nellist: We can cut through the Secretary of State's Elastoplast politics this afternoon and ask him if it is a fact that the aggregate external finance level that he has announced this afternoon is £1 billion less than the Tory-dominated Association of District Councils said was necessary next year merely to maintain existing services, and inevitably means hundreds of millions of pounds worth of cuts in jobs and essential services.
Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the promise of limited jam tomorrow will not cut any ice with the 28 million people who are worse off this year because of the poll tax? Is he also aware that hundreds of councils are in chaos because of their inability to collect the poll tax following the strike action that is occurring because of the millions of people who are unable or unwilling to pay? Is he further aware that shuffling the deck chairs on the Prime Minister's flagship will not turn it into anything but her Titanic?
Mr. Patten: The whole House, whether properly or inappropriately, has from time to time taken a particular and keen interest in the hon. Gentleman's own relationship to the community charge. The whole House knows that the hon. Gentleman is—at least for the time being—better off on two counts: first, because he is a resident of Wandsworth and secondly, because in his own community he does not pay the community charge, but leaves it to his constituents to carry him.
Not all the local authority associations are endorsing the figure politically at the moment, but they are putting forward a paper drawn up by their officers—the equivalent in governmental terms of a bidding letter. They have suggested that they would need to spend £40.7 billion next year and I referred to that point earlier. Over three years, that would represent an increase in local authority spending of 40 per cent.
I should have thought that even the Labour party, especially given the Gladstonian fiscal rectitude of the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), would regard that as grotesquely excessive. It was, of course, a Labour Government who were the only Government in recent memory under whom local authority spending actually fell in one year by 6 per cent.
Mr. David Howell: At first hearing, the arithmetic of my right hon. Friend's package sounds extremely attractive. He deserves to be congratulated on bringing his package forward in this way. Can he reassure the House that people living in areas of low-spending or prudent-spending local authorities—[Interruption.]—who this year face an enormous increase in their total bills, will not have the gains from his package eroded by further wildly optimistic estimates by the Treasury about the rate of inflation?
Mr. Patten: First, while my right hon. Friend was referring to low-spending and prudent authorities, he was interrupted by the hon. and learned Member for Leicester, West (Mr. Janner) and by the hon. Member for Newham,

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North-West (Mr. Banks)—my unofficial pair. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] He was interrupted with the suggestion—
Mr. Tony Banks: You had better withdraw that.
Mr. Patten: I make it clear straight away that all I am referring to is the fact that the hon. Gentleman and I have a relationship in the House of genial contempt, which has seen us through many long nights together. I do not want to get the hon. Gentleman into any difficulty.
The hon. Gentleman interrupted my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Mr. Howell) to suggest that he was referring to rich or Conservative local authorities. With a bit of difficulty, I can think of one or two reasonably prudent, reasonably low-spending Labour authorities. [HON. MEMBERS: "Dagenham."] Yes, like Dagenham. We want all local authorities to provide value for money. At the moment, it is mainly Conservative authorities that do so.
Secondly, my right hon. Friend referred to the arithmetic of the settlement. In bringing forward this settlement, I have been absolutely determined to put forward proposals that would not only sound attractive in July, but would look equally attractive in September and in next March. We are talking about an increase in aggregate external finance of 12.8 per cent. and about an increase in total standard spending over this year's budgeted spending of 7.1 per cent. Those are extremely robust figures.
Mr. Alex Salmond: Can the Secretary of State explain—as no one else has today—why, when it comes to imposing the poll tax on the people, Scotland is first in the queue, but when it comes to hearing a Secretary of State explain the changes, we are the last in the queue? Does the Secretary of State not understand that one cannot solve the poll tax disaster by nibbling at the edges of injustice or by throwing money at it? The only way to make the poll tax acceptable is to relate it properly to ability to pay. Until that is done, the campaign of resistance and non-payment in Scotland—represented by half a million people 15 months into the poll tax imposition—will continue and intensify.
Mr. Patten: I am sure that, when my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland makes his statement, it will he as sensible and realistic as my statement this afternoon. I am sure that my right hon. and learned Friend will draw attention to the fact that, in its second year of operation in Scotland, one of the consequences of the community charge is that a number of local authorities have moderated their spending decisions.
Mr. David Nicholson: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's proposals this afternoon, especially those on transitional relief and on business proprietors who live over the shop, and I also welcome his response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling).
Will my right hon. Friend examine how, between now and his announcement on SSAs in the autumn, he can ensure that charge payers in shire counties operate on a more level playing field than do charge payers in inner London and other local authorities, who have been rather well looked after this year?
Mr. Patten: We have made it clear, as my hon. Friend knows, that we are prepared to consider fresh evidence on the methodology of the standard spending assessments. I know that some shire districts and shire counties have expressed a number of criticisms. There has occasionally been a problem this year when the lack of level ground on the playing field has been a result of some of the spending decisions that have been taken by shire counties.
Mrs. Alice Mahon: When the Secretary of State leaves the House, will he acquaint himself with the levels of income on which those on income support and state pensions have to live? Is he aware that the lowest income group in my constituency—those on income support—pay at least £4.95 a month in poll tax and that they were not properly compensated by the Department of Social Security for the poll tax?
When will the right hon. Gentleman do something about a pensioner in my constituency—and about many more like her—who has had to sell her mother's sideboard to pay the poll tax this year for herself and for her husband? When is the Secretary of State going to do something about people who are devastated by poverty and—
Mr. Patten rose—
Mrs. Mahon: —I have not finished yet. It is time that the Secretary of State started concerning himself about that—[Interruption.]
Mr. Speaker: Order. This does not help the hon. Lady's other colleagues.
Mr. Patten: I am not sure whether the hon. Lady is now paying the community charge, but—
Mrs. Mahon: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. What on earth have how and when I pay my bills got to do with the Secretary of State?
Mr. Patten: For one very simple reason. If the hon. Lady is refusing to pay her community charge, as I believe is the case, a consequence is that her constituents, including some of those to whom she has referred who are less well off, will have to pay higher community charges in due course.
It is preposterous for the hon. Lady to behave in that sanctimonious fashion. I am sure that she will be delighted to know that Calderdale is one of the areas that will benefit from the area safety net adjustments. My hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Mr. Thompson), who also represents a constituency in Calderdale, has made that point to me on a number of occasions. Calderdale will benefit to the tune of £2.2 million.
Sir David Mitchell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that local government spending has moved from a seething cauldron of public indifference to a position in which the public are taking an acute interest in what councils are spending? Many local authorities are now looking at their spending plans far more prudently than ever before.
Mr. Patten: My hon. Friend is entirely right. One consequence of the introduction of the community charge is that public debate in local authority areas about spending decisions has become more acute and more lively.
Mr. Allen McKay: I take it from the Secretary of State's remarks that transitional relief will be extended in my constituency for a further lengthy period. It is currently £40 per annum for the next three years, but I presume that it will be reduced. I understand that the unified business rate is also being reviewed, and that an amount will be transferred to compensate for the different amount of relief that is being given to private poll tax payers. Therefore, businesses in my area that expected some relief—the initial relief, although it was spread over 10 years, was welcome—will now find themselves zero-rated. I take into account the increase in mortgage and tax rates as well. May I also know—
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Member has taken three bites.
Mr. McKay: Just a further little one, Mr. Speaker. Will all the services that have been lost as a result of trying to find savings of £10.5 million be returned?
Mr. Patten: The hon. Gentleman represents a constituency which, because of modifications to the area safety net, will benefit to the tune of £2.1 million additionally next year. In the hon. Gentleman's constituency and all others, the postponement of any phasing out of transitional relief will obtain. As I said earlier, we are extending that scheme for two years. As to the uniform rate, large and small businesses in constituencies such as Barnsley are among the main beneficiaries of the changeover to uniform business rate and of revaluation.
Mr. Richard Alexander: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the people most disappointed at the outcome of his statement today will not be charge payers but the Opposition, who see the community charge issue disappearing fast as one that can help them to win the next general election?
I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the problem confronting prudent district authorities within high-spending county councils. Can he assure those district councils that, when he caps high-spending county councils, he will do so promptly, so that district councils know that their charges can remain steady and will not have to be revised?
Mr. Patten: Hon. Members opposite will look even more long-faced when the Opposition announce their alternative to domestic rates and the community charge, but we may have to wait some time for that. I sympathise with my hon. Friend's remarks, because I also represent a prudent district council which has to send out bills that are much larger than they should be, because of the county council's spending decisions. We must review the effects of high-spending county councils. I referred to our proposed changes to the Bill, and I hope that those relating to capping will help to ensure that county councils spend more sensibly in future.
Mr. Jim Cousins: Does the Secretary of State accept that his statement will create a group of 4 million people who he recognises have paid too much this year? We have constantly pressed their case. They include low-income earners, pensioners, the thrifty, and people generally who would rather die than be in debt. The Secretary of State now says that next year, they will be
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helped by £1 per week. Does the right hon. Gentleman believe that the spirit, integrity, consciences and values of those people are so cheap that they will be bought by £1 per week in the form of a post-dated cheque?
Mr. Patten: I am not seeking to do that, but to provide, at the expense of the taxpayer, greater assistance—perhaps to many receiving benefit. I am seeking to provide greater relief for those charge payers whom I think need it. It is preposterous to say, whenever a benefit is increased in a Budget or on other occasions, that, because that has not been done before, people who do not receive that increase are in some way disadvantaged.
Sir Ian Lloyd: My right hon. Friend has made a most ingenious and valiant attempt to respond to the many intense, varied and often contradictory pressures that have been brought to bear on him from all parts of the House. I wonder whether he shares my more fundamental concern. He will be raising some £3 billion in public expenditure, which the nation may understand better as a figure of roughly £60 per head of the population, or £250 per family, to deal with a series of phenomena which arise partly from profligacy and partly from inflation. Is not it dangerous at any time to encourage the nation to believe that phenomena of that kind can ever be dealt with fundamentally and finally by increasing public expenditure, when we already have 10 per cent. inflation?
Mr. Patten: I have a good deal of sympathy with my hon. Friend on two counts. First, he mentioned that I had been the beneficiary of a good deal of advice. He was right to say that it was not always consistent. Secondly, he is also right to say that we cannot continue indefinitely to bail out local authorities with increased support from taxpayers. Local authorities intend to increase their spending this year by 5.5 per cent. in real terms. From 1985 to 1991, they will have increased their expenditure in real terms by the best part of 20 per cent. That is a massive rise and it must be paid for by someone. Community charge payers will increasingly recognise that they will have to pick up the bills because of the lack of value for money offered by their local authorities.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: Is not the truth that there has been a cut of more than £3,000 million in local taxes paid by the residents of large and expensive properties? The Secretary of State cannot for political reasons claw that money back. Is not that his dilemma? Is not that why £3 billion of taxpayers' money must now be found? My constituents in west Cumbria think that the poll tax is monstrous and appalling, and they look forward to a Labour Government who will abolish it.
Mr. Patten: As we all know, the Labour party's alternative involves local authorities spending more, but people being taxed less and also receiving free Esperanto lessons. The hon. Gentleman is wrong on every count. I am certain that he would not want to defend a system in which single pensioners, for example, pay exactly the same as a family of four or five wage earners living next door. Nor would he defend a system, I am sure, in which poorer families subsidised the domestic rates of better-off families. The real problem is the tendency of too many local authorities to spend too much money.
Sir Philip Goodhart: I wish that my right hon. Friend had been responsible for the community

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charge from the beginning. As to transitional relief from the uniform business rate, that disappears as soon as the premises change hands. Does my right hon. Friend intend to modify that arrangement, which hits small businesses in London and the south-east in particular extremely hard?
Mr. Patten: No, we do not intend to change that arrangement. One could not do so without also ensuring that similar provisions applied to new as well as existing property. In most circumstances, it would be very difficult to reach a decision. The transitional arrangements are intended to help business rate payers who were not aware before revaluation that their liability would dramatically change. That is not the case when someone moves premises.
Mr. Elliot Morley: The review acknowledges the hardship that the poll tax has brought upon many people, and a sensible Government would never have imposed it. But it does not recognise the effect on non-working partners, mainly married women, who must carry the full burden of the poll tax. Nor does it recognise the effect of the poll tax on small towns dominated by large businesses. They have lost a great deal in terms of the business rate, but they still have capital charges to carry. Nor does the statement acknowledge the stupidity of the standard spending rate calculations, which bear no relation to a local council's spending, be it Labour or Tory controlled. The review only serves to perpetuate an unfair, immoral and unconstitutional system which, if the Secretary of State had any integrity, he would denounce today.
Mr. Patten: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman completely misunderstands the situation. Under the old system, if a local authority received a large amount in business rates from a big local employer—a point on which the hon. Member for Dagenham has been wrong on a number of occasions—the rate support grant would have been adjusted downward.
Mr. Robert Banks: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his statement, which has the hallmarks of practicality and common sense. In considering changes to the methodology of the SSAs, will my right hon. Friend give particular consideration to relating the system under which a notional sum is arrived at for the revenue from interest on capital that an authority receives to the actual revenue from an authority's capital? Secondly, will he bear in mind the importance of the tourist industry and the necessity to give a fair deal to authorities which have a large number of visitors?
Mr. Patten: As I said earlier, we are prepared to look at new evidence on the SSA methodology before we distribute grant later this year. I should make it clear that none of my proposals will involve primary legislation, although some will involve secondary legislation. The only change that we have not discussed which affects the business rate in a way which will involve legislation is the change that we have to make on caravans.
Mr. Greville Janner: Does the Minister not understand that the people whom he is threatening all the time, saying what he will do to them, are local councillors who have been elected to provide services for local people? Does he not recognise that the more disadvantaged the area and the less well off the people in
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it, the more they need those services and the more anguished the decision for local councillors, Labour or Conservative, whether to cut education, social services or libraries—cuts which really affect people in their daily lives? Will he please stop hectoring councillors and understand what they do for local people in areas such as Leicester and elsewhere, where they are prudent and careful and deeply resent being called profligate when they are trying to serve the people who have elected them?
Mr. Patten: I should be surprised if even the hon. and learned Gentleman thought that an increase of 12.8 per cent. in aggregate external finance to local authorities, including the one in which his constituency resides, was insufficient.
Mr. Robert Hicks: I particularly welcome the extension of the transitional relief arrangements, but will my right hon. Friend confirm that, among the 4 million additional individuals who will benefit are those lone-parent families with sole earners whose income levels make them ineligible for relief at the moment and who have been obliged to pay between £4 and £5 per week per household as a consequence of the changes in local government finance? Unless they are assisted, the measures that my right hon. Friend has announced today will not be as effective as most of us would wish.
Mr. Patten: The 4 million that I mentioned earlier are those who will now benefit from the transitional relief scheme because their losses in the move from domestic rates to the assumed community charge were between £2 and £3. Now that we have reduced the threshold to £2, they will benefit from the transitional relief scheme. I hope that many of those to whom my hon. Friend referred will also benefit from the enhanced assistance that we are giving in other ways.
Mr. Tony Banks: The Secretary of State has sorely tempted the geniality of my contempt for him this afternoon with what he has announced, which was not so much a statement, more a redrafting of the poll tax legislation, made that much more cynical because he is attempting to bribe the electorate before the next general election. What calculation has he made of the increase in pay and prices that local authorities will face in 1991–92? What will the poor people of Newham have to do in terms of their further contribution to the safety net? [ Interruption.]
Mr. Patten: One or two of my hon. Friends are making remarks about what the hon. Gentleman's constituents might do which lack gallantry even if they are pointed and relevant. The figures that I mentioned earlier involve, as I said, increasing total standard spending from £32.8 billion to £39 billion, and an increase of 7.1 per cent. in the total standard spending figure over local authorities' planned spending for this year. Those are helpful figures.
Mr. Richard Tracey: I believe that the review will be seen as a thoughtful response by the Government to the concerns of many people, and I imagine that my constituents will be pleased, particularly those with low rateable values and those such as vicars and teachers who have to live in second homes while they buy properties for their retirement. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, as

1205
time goes on, any party that comes up with the idea of returning to some sort of domestic rating system will be seen as going back to the dark ages?
Mr. Patten: My hon. Friend is entirely right. He will know as well as I do some of the things which Opposition Members have said about the inequities of the domestic rating system, and he, like me, will have come to the conclusion that it is inconceivable that, after saying some of those things, they could even consider going back to domestic rates.
Mr. Max Madden: I am refusing to pay the poll tax because eight out of 10 of my constituents lose under the poll tax compared with the rates. Nothing that the right hon. Gentleman has said today will lessen their anger at the unfairness and injustice of the poll tax. Will he give an assurance that the people of Bradford, who last May exercised their local democratic rights by turfing out the Tories from control of Bradford city council, will not be penalised by any Government actions between now and the next general election?
Mr. Patten: I certainly will not penalise anybody, but the way in which I react to local authorities will depend what they do. Once again I must say that it is astonishing that the hon. Gentleman should take the view that his constituents should face larger bills so that he can have a free ride.
Mr. Anthony Beaumont-Dark: Will my right hon. Friend accept, from someone who does not love the community charge, that I think that he has done extraordinarily well to get £3 billion extra out of the Treasury? Is it not somewhat alarming and disturbing to hear £3 billion called "a piffling sum"? If £3 billion is a piffling sum, God knows what the socialists would spend.
Surely the whole idea of local government is that it should be local and that it should be government, so that the people know that, when they vote for a local government they are voting for one kind of authority or another. Instead of charge capping, which puts the albatross of overspending firmly around the Government's neck, why not put it firmly where it should belong—around the local authorities' necks, and penalise them a pound for every pound spent over the SSA?
Mr. Patten: We have both been in the House for the same period, and my hon. Friend will recall that we have in the past had clawback systems which approximated to the proposal he makes but they are not uniformly popular —for example, with my hon. Friends. My hon. Friend is right to say that the amount of money that we are proposing as an increase to aggregate external finance is substantial. For the Opposition to witter on about it not being £3 billion is equivalent to their saying that money raised through corporation tax and spent on public services is somehow not a contribution from the public Exchequer.
Mr. Bob Cryer: The Secretary of State has been wittering on about local authorities increasing their expenditure, but is not it true that that expenditure has been on important services such as home helps, provision for the mentally handicapped, education,
1206
housing and other obligations placed on them by the Government; and that local authorities have also had to cope with the inflation created by the Government's economic policies? Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that, when this malevolent and wicked tax was produced by the Government, it was said that it would be simple? Who will pay for the massive administration that his proposals today will entail? Will it be borne entirely by the Government? Does he realise that, as a result of his threat today to poll-cap every local authority, he has shifted from the liberal wing to the jackboot tendency in his party?
Mr. Patten: I leave knowledge of jackboots to the hon. Gentleman. It is entirely possible to provide good-quality services for the amounts that I have mentioned. It is also entirely possible for local authorities to provide a good standard of service with increased spending of 30 per cent. over three years. Plainly the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) has his work cut out to convert the Labour party to fiscal probity.
Mr. Ian Gow: Is not the additional allocation of £3 billion to local authorities next year more than they could reasonably have hoped for? Is my right hon. Friend aware that there is still an enormous gulf between the best and the worst local authorities in terms of price and quality of service? What steps will he take to bring greater efficiency, greater economy and greater effectiveness to local government?
Mr. Patten: The answer to my hon. Friend's first two questions is a strong affirmative. The answer to his third question is that we all look to the Audit Commission to continue to press for greater efficiency in local government. For example, the commission has identified £650 million-worth of possible savings that have still not been made. It has also pointed to about £150 million-worth of savings that could be made through energy efficiency, and no doubt all hon. Members would agree about that. There is plenty that could be done to achieve the objective to which my hon. Friend properly and eloquently referred.
Mr. David Blunkett: I congratulate the Secretary of State on an undoubted sleight of hand, in which he was aided and abetted by the headline writers in some of our broadcast media, in pretending that an allocation of £3 billion is in some way a gift of Government through the grant system. Grant has increased by only £2 billion, two thirds of what has been talked about. The remainder comes from the national business rate.
The Secretary of State's announcement is a fraud. Will he confirm that the year-on-year increase in spending to which he has referred from last year, is well accounted for by the removal of creative accountancy measures, including the use of capital receipts? Authorities cannot be blamed for high poll tax charges, nor can they be blamed for spending cuts that are being considered by the Cabinet in its public spending review.
The amount of £2 billion is peanuts. What happened to the £5 billion that we heard about only a few weeks ago, and what happened to the Government's promise that they would look at those who had no income, people such as mothers looking after small children at home? What

1207
happened to the 43 suggestions put to him by his Back Benchers and what has become of the promised fundamental review of the poll tax?
Mr. Patten: I wondered whether the hon. Gentleman would continue with his list of rhetorical questions and ask what happened to those Labour Back Benchers who are not here, and what happened to the Labour party alternative. [ Interruption.] I shall deal with the hon. Gentleman's question, about which his hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham shouts from time to time. The hon. Gentleman knows too much about local authority finance to believe what he said.
Aggregate external finance to local authorities this year is £23.1 billion. Next year it will be £26.05 billion. That difference of £2.95 billion is made up of revenue support grant, specific grants and contributions from the non-domestic rate pool. For the hon. Gentleman to say that one should take no account of contributions from the business rate pool is like saying, as I mentioned earlier, that corporation tax should not be included in Government revenues because it comes from business. The hon. Gentleman's argument is ridiculous. He is trying to find some specious intellectual justification for spending the whole afternoon being churlish.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am sorry that it has not been possible to call all those hon. Members who have been rising. I shall give them some precedence and further opportunities, possibly in the Adjournment motion next week.
Dr. Keith Hampson: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The whole House knows the problems that you face, but may I point out that some Conservative Members with northern seats who will benefit from this package suffer from high-spending local councils?
Mr. Speaker: It is terribly difficult to call all hon. Members who wish to participate. As I have said, there will be other opportunities.
Mr. Dave Nellist: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps you will consider that on a day on which the Government put down a business motion requiring us to stay here all night, and as there is no pressure for business to finish by 10 o'clock, it should have been possible to call all hon. Members who were rising.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman rose—
Mr. Speaker: No. I have to have regard to the legitimate interests of hon. Members who wish to participate in later debates. It is desirable for some hon. Members who wish to get in early at Question Time, but that means that other hon. Members have to wait until late in the night.
Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. We heard the Labour voice of Lancashire but we did not hear the Conservative voice. We should like to thank the Secretary of State for what he has done.
Mr. Speaker: Perhaps the Conservative voice will be heard next week.
Mr. Barry Field: On a point or order, Mr. Speaker. Can you explain how the only hon. Member who represents an entire county can express his view on this important package?
Mr. Speaker: What about trying next week? The hon. Gentleman has not been deprived in any way. He was called at Question Time today.
Mr. Cecil Franks rose—
Mr. Speaker: Yes, I suppose I shall have to hear hon. Members' complaints.
Mr. Franks: Further to the point of order by my hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman), Mr. Speaker. We all appreciate your problems and accept your rulings. Will you bear in mind that you called the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), which is a Labour voice for Cumbria, but did not call any Conservative voice for Cumbria?
Mr. Speaker: I shall do that next week.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
Mr. Speaker: With permission, I shall put together the two motions on statutory instruments.
Ordered,
That the draft Crown Agents (Additional Powers) Order 1990 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.
That the draft European Commission and Court of Human Rights (Immunities and Privileges) (Amendment) Order 1990 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Sackville.]

Orders of the Day
  Government Trading Bill
  Lords amendments considered.
Clause 1

  NEW PROVISIONS IN CONNECTION WITH GOVERNMENT TRADING FUNDS
  Lords amendment: No. 1, in page 2, line 23, at end insert—
  "(5A) An order establishing a trading fund for operations carried on by a person appointed in pursuance of any enactment may provide—

  (a) for the fund to be under the control and management of that person instead of the responsible Minister and, accordingly,

  (b) for this Act to have effect as if—

  (i) the reference to the responsible Minister in section 3(1) of this Act and the first reference to him in section 4(1), and

  (ii) such other references in this Act to the responsible Minister as may be specified in the order, where they are references to him in the exercise of his function of controlling or managing the fund,

  were references to that person."
  5.37 pm
  Dr. John Marek: I beg to move, as an amendment to the Lords amendment, amendment (a), after first 'the', insert 'continuing operations of the'.
  Mr. Speaker: With this it will be convenient to consider amendment (b) to the Lords amendment, after 'managing', insert 'the continuing operation of'.
  Dr. Marek: Amendment (a) is a probing amendment. Consideration of the amendments should not detain the House for long because in principle the Opposition have no problem with any of them. We are pleased with amendment No. 2 and amendments Nos. 3, 4 and 5 are technical or consolidation measures. Perhaps the Economic Secretary will confirm what I have said. I sympathise with the Economic Secretary who has been landed with the Bill at short notice because of the departure of the former Financial Secretary to the Treasury. We shall proceed gently in seeking some assurances.
  My noble Friend Lord Bruce of Donington raised three points in Committee in the other place. One point that he made when Lords amendment No. 1 was being considered in the other place was whether a corporate body could be a person. Could the Bill be construed in such a way that a corporate body could be appointed by statute to run a trading fund or an agency? The Earl of Caithness said:
  "On the first point raised by the noble Lord, I do not believe that there is a need to cover corporate bodies because the Bill refers to a person appointed pursuant to any enactment."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 June 1990; Vol. 520, c. 229.]
  I am sure that the Government have considered that point in detail and I should like clarification of it. It would cause some consternation among the Opposition if the Bill were to allow a corporate body to run a trading fund. It is important that the original intention of the Bill is made clear—that trading funds should be run by the responsible Minister. It was later discovered that some people were
  1210
  appointed by statute to run trading accounts. We accept that it would be wrong for such people to be required to hand over the management of those trading funds to the responsible Minister.
  We are not opposed to Lords amendment No. 1, but we are concerned about how wide it may be interpreted. Wherever possible, we want responsibility to lie with the responsible Minister, who is accountable to Parliament. If my supposition is right, it could be open to future Governments, of either party, to move trading funds so that they could be run by corporate bodies. That would introduce all sorts of problems. It raises the fear of privatisation without primary legislation, although I think that Lords amendment No. 2 reassures us on that matter.
  My noble Friend sought reassurance that Lords amendment No. 1 was principally concerned with the day-to-day management of the funds. He also sought reassurance that, ultimately, responsibility lay with the responsible Minister, not with some civil servant or person appointed by statute. The Earl of Caithness gave my noble Friend that assurance, but it would be nice to hear it from the Economic Secretary.
  Amendments (a) and (b) are linked. There is some confusion about the Lords amendment. I hope that its intention—that a person appointed by statute can run any fund—means that he or she runs it on a continuing basis, from day to day. If a fund had to be wound up, I hope that the responsible Minister would intervene. The Lords amendment—its drafting may be defective—provides
  "for the fund to be under the control and management of that person instead of the responsible Minister".
  By inserting the words, "continuing operation", the sentence would read,
  "for the continuing operation of the fund to be under the control and management of that person instead of the responsible Minister."
  That may be otiose, but it makes it clear that the day-to-day management of the fund is under the control of that person, and if it were to be wound up or if there was anything that was not part of the continuing day-to-day operation of the fund, the responsible Minister would have to take responsibility.
  I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, first, about the points made in another place and, secondly, about the reasons for the Lords amendment.
  The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Richard Ryder): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wrexham (Dr. Marek) for his kind remarks. I appreciate the work done on this legislation by Lord Bruce of Donington. I shall deal first with the amendment and then with the specific points that the hon. Gentleman raised.
  A fund will usually be under the control and management of the responsible Minister, who will also be carrying on the funded operations. Lords amendment No. 1 is concerned with funds for operations carried on by a person appointed in pursuance of any enactment. An order establishing such a fund may provide that its control and management be with that person. One example of that would be the Chief Land Registrar, who is appointed under the Registration Act 1925 to carry on
  "the whole business of land registration under the Act."
  In such cases, once a fund is established the operations will continue to be carried on by the office holder, pursuant to the relevant legislation, just as they were previously. The Lords amendment relates only to the control and

  1211
  management of the funds in such cases. It sensibly provides that it may be placed with that office holder by the order establishing the fund.
  I understand that the hon. Gentleman's amendments stem from a concern about the winding up of a fund that is under the control and management of a statutory office holder. As with any fund, new section 4A would apply. The responsibility for making appropriate orders under section 4A will remain that of the responsible Minister. Lords amendment No. 2 puts beyond any doubt the fact that the winding-up powers are not concerned with funded operations ceasing because they are being privatised.
  I shall take the hon. Gentleman's specific points in turn. His first point related to a statutory office holder. As a matter of construction, the reference to a person appointed pursuant to statute does not extend to bodies corporate. That was not the Government's intention, and they had nothing like that in mind. That question was raised in another place, but, as far as I am aware, no one has yet identified a corporate candidate that has inadvertently been caught by that provision. It should also be remembered that funds can be established only in relation to the operations of a Department of Government.
  I cannot rule out privatisation of trading funds, and would not wish to do so. However, if that were to happen, it would require further primary legislation, such as happened with the Crown Suppliers. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman. The Bill does not provide the means to bypass the need for further legislation, and the amendment places that beyond doubt.
  Mr. James Hill: My hon. Friend may recall—and it goes back a number of years—that a trading fund was set up for the Ordnance Survey headquarters in Southampton. I am sure that he has used that as a model of what can be achieved. It has succeeded in competing in the private market, even though it is a trading fund. It is moving forward with great prosperity and is creating a vast amount of employment in the area.
  Mr. Ryder: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful observation. As he knows, the orginal legislation was passed by the House in 1973. The purpose of this Bill is to update that legislation in the light of developments that have been put in place by my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Arts, who is also responsible for the civil service. Perhaps I can add a rider to that by informing the House that the Ordnance Survey is not regarded as a trading fund.
  Amendment to the Lords amendment negatived.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): The Question is, That this House—[Interruption.] We have just been debating the amendment to the Lords amendment.
  Dr. Marek: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. There was some confusion when Mr. Speaker called the first amendment. He asked me to move amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 1. If that was the case, what you have just said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, is perfectly correct. I certainly was not going to shout, "Aye" when you put the Question on amendment (a). I do not know whether that helps you, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: I do not need any help. I assumed that the hon. Gentleman, having been called to do so by Mr. Speaker, had moved his amendment to the Lords
  1212
  amendment. I put the Question that amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 1 be made and there was no response other than "No", so I declared that the Noes had it. Therefore, the amendment to the Lords amendment was negatived.
  Lords amendment No. 1 agreed to.
  Lords amendment: No. 2, in page 6, line 8, after "or" insert
  "while continuing to be operations of a department of the government"
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.—[Mr. Ryder.]
  Dr. Marek: First, I should like to thank my hon. Friend Lord Bruce of Donington for moving the amendment in another place and securing its acceptance there. My hon. Friend in the other place took a great interest in the Bill, did a lot of work on it, and I am sure spent a considerable time examining it and making sure that there were no further pitfalls or loopholes in it. It has been 17 years, since the Trading Funds Act 1973, before the Government have had to introduce more legislation because of what they considered to be a lacuna in that 1973 Act. There is nothing wrong with taking careful measure of any Bill to see whether it is watertight. I am certainly most grateful to my hon. Friend Lord Bruce of Donington.
  I should like to pursue the point that I raised about privatisation. I very much approve of the Economic Secretary's reply to amendment (a) to Lords amendment. No. 1. He said that the privatisation of trading funds cannot occur without primary legislation.
  The Paymaster General, the Earl of Caithness, did not reply fully to my hon. Friend Lord Bruce of Donington when he moved the amendment. He said that he was advised that there was no question of any possible privatisation without future primary legislation, but unfortunately he did not say it categorically. He said simply that he was grateful to Lord Bruce for tabling the amendment and recommended that the House should accept it. He said:
  "It proves the diligent work which the noble Lord has carried out on this Bill. It is something that we have come to expect from him and he had not let us down. He had given careful and detailed study to this measure."—[Official Report, House of Lords; 18 June 1990, Vol. 520, c. 604.]
  He then moved on to another point with which I shall deal in a moment.
  The Economic Secretary has already satisfied me in his reply to amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 1. However, it is an important point, and I hope that the House will forgive me if I mention it again. Privatisation of parts of the civil service that have trading funds will not be possible without primary legislation and the House being given the opportunity to discuss the matter. I am very pleased about that.
  The Earl of Caithness then talked about how annual reports and accounts would be presented. I have a letter—
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The amendment merely seeks to insert the words
  "while continuing to be operations of a department of the government."
  It is difficult to relate what the hon. Gentleman is saying to the Lords amendment.
  Dr. Marek: I hope that you will bear with me for about 30 seconds, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have the Hansard of the

  1213
  debate on Report in another place, considering what is now Lords amendment No. 2. The Paymaster General spoke about annual reports and accounts. If you bear with me for a moment, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall be as quick as I can.
  I have a letter from the Earl of Caithness to Lord Bruce of Donington, in which he makes it absolutely clear that copies of reports and accounts in the continuing work of the Government trading funds have to be laid before both Houses. Towards the end of the letter the Paymaster General states:
  "If exceptionally the annual report is published separately, then the Treasury would use its powers of direction under section 4(6A) to ensure that the annual report is available to Parliament, either by laying it before both Houses or by placing copies in the Libraries of both Houses."
  If those reports were made separately, it would be very useful for them to be laid on the Table of the House as they would automatically come to the notice of hon. Members. If they were simply placed in the Library, the onus would be on hon. Members to seek the information required. I hope that the Economic Secretary will assure me that the reports and accounts will be placed on the Table of the House.
  I have made only two quick points: the first concerns privatisation, and the second is about reports and accounts being placed on the Table of the House. I should be interested to hear the Economic Secretary's reply.
  Mr. Ryder: I am happy to elaborate on the Government's commitment on privatisation as it is relevant to the Bill. There are differences of opinion between the two sides of the House, but the "next steps" agency's document made the position clear. The Prime Minister said:
  "Next steps is primarily about those operations which are to remain within Government…Where there is a firm intention of privatisation when an agency is being set up, this should be made clear."—[Official Report, 24 October 1988; Vol. 139, c.14.]
  Thus, in the rare cases when we anticipate privatisation, that will be made clear when the agency is set up. Of course, not all agencies will become trading funds, but for those that do, the position is now equally clear. Although we cannot rule out privatisation of funding operations, that would require primary legislation to deal with the winding up of funds as, for example, happened with the Crown Suppliers.
  Lords amendment No. 2—an Opposition amendment that was accepted by the Government—put that beyond doubt by making it clear that the winding-up provisions are not concerned with finding operations ceasing because they are being privatised.
  As for the hon. Gentleman's other point, I am happy to say to him that it would be for the convenience of hon. Members if the reports and accounts of trading funds were given the widest possible circulation in the House, compatible with the existing arrangements. The hon. Gentleman knows that we have already committed ourselves to putting those documents in the Libraries of both Houses. We shall certainly do everything we can to ensure that, compatible with the existing arrangements, they are given the widest possible circulation, outside the two Libraries, within the Palace of Westminster.
  6 pm
  Dr. Marek: Would it be possible for them to appear on the pink slips in the Vote Office? That would make a big difference. If they appear on the pink slips, they come to the attention of every hon. Member as a matter of course.
  Mr. Ryder: I have no objection to them appearing on the pink slips, provided that that arrangement is compatible with what happens in other related spheres. I shall certainly look into the matter with a view to trying to achieve that aim on the hon. Gentleman's behalf.
  Dr. Marek: I am grateful to the Economic Secretary for his reply. I can ask no more than that he should look into the matter and try to achieve that aim.
  Question put and agreed to.

Clause 2

  ASSETS AND LIABILITIES OF FUNDS
  Lords amendment: No. 3, in page 8, line 28, after "require" insert—
  "(6B) Where any enactment (other than this Act) requires, in whatever terms, a report to be prepared for any period as to the funded operations and sent to any person, or laid before Parliament, or both or so sent or laid by any time or times, an order may provide for that requirement to be treated as satisfied by preparing the report for the financial year and sending it to that person, or laying it before Parliament, or both, as the case may be, so sending or laying it by the time or times specified in the order."
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.—[Mr. Ryder.]
  Dr. Marek: There was a debate in the other place about whether the amendment should have been tabled. As far as both I and their Lordships were able to discover, it was tabled simply to take account of practices in the Patent Office.
  I wonder whether an amendment could have been tabled simply for the Patent Office. I do not disagree with the Lords amendment, but a little information about it would be helpful. Is it just the Patent Office that is covered, or does the amendment cover other bodies?
  Mr. Ryder: The amendment is intended to deal with a problem which, so far as we know, is confined solely to the Patent Office. However, the amendment would cover any other similar problem. The Patent Office is required by the legislation to produce an annual report on a calendar-year basis. The intention underlying sections 4(6) and 4(6)(a) of the 1973 Act, as amended by the Bill, is that trading funds should be able to produce and publish combined annual reports and accounts. Since the Patent Office works on an April to March financial year, which it would be likely to retain if it were to become a trading fund, if it is to meet that requirement, the Patent Office will either have to change its financial year to the calendar year or publish two separate annual reports. The amendment solves the problem by making it possible for a report that is produced for a trading fund's financial year to be treated as satisfying any other statutory reporting requirements.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Lords amendment: No. 4, in page 9, line 11, at end insert—
  "(5) That Act, as amended by section 1 of this Act and this section, is set out in Schedule (Government Trading Funds Act 1973, as amended) to this Act."
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.—[Mr. Ryder.]
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment No. 5.
  Dr. Marek: This is another technical amendment. However, I should like the Economic Secretary to put on record his assurance that that is the case—that the Government Trading Funds Act 1973, as amended, is being reprinted in the schedule to the Bill and that the amendments deal with purely consolidation matters.
  This is a small Bill on which both the Government and the Opposition have collaborated to improve it. If the Economic Secretary can reassure me on that point, I believe that, together with the other amendments that have been made in both Houses, the Bill is now a better Bill.
  Mr. Ryder: The purpose of the amendments, however lengthy they may be, is extremely simple. The Bill amends the Government Trading Funds Act 1973. However, it is not easy to follow the final result simply by reading the Act and the Bill together. Therefore, we considered that it would help those who will use the legislation if the Bill reprinted the 1973 Act, as amended.
  For the avoidance of any doubt, I should make it clear that the amendments make no change whatever to the text of the Bill. They reflect all the amendments that have been made to the Bill during its passage through both Houses, including Lords amendments Nos. 1 to 3, which have just been agreed to by the House.
  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his assistance in ensuring that the Bill has been improved. Both he and his noble Friend Lord Bruce of Donington gave us useful advice.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Lords amendment No. 5 agreed to.

Aviation and Maritime Security Bill
Lords amendments considered.
Aviation and Maritime Security Bill
  Clause 5

    OFFENCES RELATING TO SECURITY AT AERODROMES ETC. 1982 C. 36
    Lords amendment: No. 5, in page 10, line 10, leave out "course of his duty" and insert
    "exercise of the power conferred by section 20(2)(aa) of this Act"
    Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [20 June], That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.—[Mr. McLoughlin.]
    Question again proposed.
    6.8 pm
    Mr. Tony Banks: Since Lords amendment No. 5 relates to clause 5, as well as to identity documents and security, may I raise with the Minister a case that throws a little light on the clause. It is an important issue. It relates to security arrangements at Gatwick airport and to statements in connection with identity documents, as set out in clause 5.
    The case is that of a constituent who has asked his Member of Parliament to draw the matter to the attention of the House. The constituent is me and I am my own Member of Parliament, so I know something about the case. It is not often that one has the opportunity to raise a case in such a direct way. However, it may help to amplify some of the issues raised in the amendments.
    I shall not bore the House with the details, but I am sure that many hon. Members have experienced being parted from their luggage when travelling from one country to another. From 1 to 3 July I was on official business in Innsbruck in connection with the Council of Europe. I returned from Innsbruck in the company of two Conservative Members of Parliament. On 3 July we travelled to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Unfortunately, that visit coincided with an air traffic dispute. We were therefore unable to catch our connecting Dan-Air flight No. 986 from Paris to London. We went to the Dan-Air desk where I produced my baggage receipt. The chap on the desk was very helpful. He said that since we needed to get back here to vote we should travel to London by other means. Therefore, we decided that the best method of travel would be by train and ferry. He took details of my baggage receipt number and said that he would be more than happy to ensure that my case was handed on to me at the House of Commons. There were two labels on my bag. One said, "Tony Banks MP" and the other had my name and home address on it. There was no doubt to whom the luggage belonged. We then went on to London. It took us a great deal of time to get here but we made it eventually.
    I did not bother about my luggage because I assumed that it would catch up with me eventually. I knew that the dispute would last for a day or so longer. There is a theory that one of the rings of Saturn is made up entirely of lost airline luggage. I can only assume that my luggage has now been added to that collection. I have been waiting for my luggage to be returned from Gatwick airport by Dan-Air authorities. It has not turned up. The manager of the Thomas Cook office in the House has been assiduous in trying to track it down. Some 10 days after I returned,

    1217
    when I was beginning to become a little concerned about the whereabouts of my luggage, he was told that it had been collected on 10 July. The baggage receipt label had remained in the possession of the Thomas Cook office all that time. Obviously, I had not collected it and I wondered who had. I asked Mrs. Banks whether she had collected it unbeknown to me but she insisted that she had not. I began to get rather worried.
    This matter is related to the amendments because someone must have seen the luggage in the baggage handling area, pretended to be me and collected it. I have the details of the person who seems to be most concerned; the managing director of Gatwick Handling, which has handed over my luggage to someone purporting to be Tony Banks, Member of Parliament, without my knowing anything about it. When asked whether the luggage had been signed for, Gatwick Handling said it had not. The manager of the Thomas Cook office here asked on what authority the luggage was handed over. He was told that it had been handed over on authority but not what the authority was. It could not have been the baggage receipt because that has remained at the House of Commons. My luggage has disappeared.
    I should like the Minister to make representations on my behalf to Mr. Peter O'Boyle, the managing director of Gatwick Handling, and to Dan-Air to ask what the hell a Member of Parliament has to do to ensure that something is done other than raise the matter with his Member of Parliament, which I have done, and for his Member of Parliament to raise it with the Minister, which I am now doing. This is outrageous. Someone has impersonated me and made off with some of my finest gear. If that is security at Gatwick airport, these amendments are sorely needed.
    Mr. Peter Snape rose—
    Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. It is only because so many amendments are linked that I have not yet had the opportunity to find out to which amendment the hon. Gentleman was addressing himself.
    Mr. Snape: Mr. Deputy Speaker, your customary ingenuity, together with that of my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), will have to be brought into play if I am to comment in any detail on the sad sequence of events outlined so graphically by my hon. Friend. Although the matter is worrying from the point of security, it is difficult to believe that anyone could imitate my hon. Friend. He is one of the best known Members of the House, and it is a surprising breach of security that someone can purport to be Mr. Tony Banks and not be recognised. That is perhaps the most significant aspect of the issue. I hope that the Minister will treat the matter with the seriousness it deserves and that we will be given a proper explanation.
    As you have said, Mr. Deputy Speaker, a large number of amendments are linked together, but I shall confine my remarks to amendment No. 41, which says:
    "to take such steps—(i) to ascertain what practices or procedures are being followed in relation to security".
    I want to deal particularly with the detection of substances such as semtex or, bearing in mind the experience of Dr. Jim Swire, marzipan. The Minister will be aware that the machinery currently being tested at Gatwick airport is primarily the TNA system, which cannot discriminate
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    between various plastics, some of which contain nitrogen. I understand that there is a problem in distinguishing between wool and explosives.
    I have a copy of a letter from Ferranti International to the Secretary of State, which was passed to my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). Both Ferranti International and my hon. Friend have asked me to raise this matter. I understand from the letter that Ferranti recently invited the Secretary of State to a demonstration in London of some evaluation trials on what is known as the EGIS system.
    Both sides of the House will be aware of the importance of the detection of plastic explosives. Ferranti's claims for the EGIS system suggest that it is superior to the TNA system. Did the Secretary of State go to the demonstration, and if so, what are the Department's views about its efficacy, bearing in mind the extensive trials held throughout Europe last year and this year? I will not press the Minister if he does not have the information to hand immediately. I know that he will agree that the detection of such substances is one of the most important aspects of airport security.
    I should be grateful if at some stage during the debate he can tell the House whether the Secretary of State, Ministers or civil servants have any experience of the system and whether the claims made by Ferranti have been substantiated by his Department. I hope that we can have the fullest possible details of the Department's intentions on the testing of the machines at Gatwick and our other leading airports. This is the issue upon which hon. Members, both in Committee and on the Floor of the House, have expressed the greatest concern.
    The Minister for Aviation and Shipping (Mr. Patrick McLoughlin): I am sorry that the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) was not able to make his speech a little earlier, because some of his points would have given the sketch writers some amusing thoughts and ideas. I remember the hon. Gentleman's visit to Paris, because I think that we met each other on the Gatwick express and I gave him a lift back to the House. I can assure him that I do not have his luggage—[Interruption.] I always try to be helpful, as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull, East (Mr. Prescott) knows.
    I shall look into the points made by the hon. Member for Newham, North-West and I promise—
    Mr. Tony Banks: That was not the occasion on which the Minister gave me a lift. I came back with two of the Minister's colleagues and we were forced to come back by train and ferry because of the dispute. We never made Gatwick airport.
    I have raised this issue in a reasonably light-hearted way, but there are serious implications involved if someone can simply go along and satisfy the authorities that he is a Member of Parliament. It is not about me particularly but it demonstrates that there is something wrong with security at Gatwick.
    Mr. McLoughlin: I accept that. I shall look into it and take the matter up with the appropriate authorities. I did not realise that the hon. Gentleman went abroad as often as he seems to.
    The hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) asked about the TNA machine and the Ferranti letter to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. As he knows, the TNA machine is now in place at Gatwick. We

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    are looking at the progress that it is making, and we will be monitoring its effectiveness closely to see if it has a proper role to play. I should like to take the opportunity to go through some notes on the Ferranti machine and write to the hon. Gentleman.
    Question put and agreed to.
    Lords amendments Nos. 6 to 11 agreed to.

Clause 6

  AIR CARGO AGENTS
  Lords amendment: No. 12, in page 12, line 26, leave out "by them" and insert
  "(whether by them or any other person)"
  Mr. McLoughlin: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment No. 34.
  Mr. McLoughlin: The amendments introduce no new points of principle. They revise the definition of cargo agents to include those who do not deliver cargo to an aircraft or ship but use a third party, such as a haulage contractor, to make the delivery.
  Without the amendments, cargo agents would be able to escape from the effect of the security directions—and from the intentions of the clause—simply by using a haulage contractor to deliver cargo. I am sure that hon. Members will appreciate the significance and wisdom of these two small amendments.
  Question put and agreed to.

Clause 17

  INTERPRETATION OF PART II
  Lords amendment: No. 13, page 20, line 30, after "British Dependent Territories citizen"
  insert
  "a British National (Overseas)"
  Mr. McLoughlin: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
  This is purely a technical amendment which adds the term "a British National (Overseas)" to those found in clause 17(1)(a). The term is derived from the provisions of the Hong Kong Act 1985 and brings the terms used in paragraph (a) up to date.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Lords amendment No. 14 agreed to.

Clause 22

  POWER TO REQUIRE HARBOUR AUTHORITIES TO PROMOTE SEARCHES IN HARBOUR AREAS
  Lords amendment: No. 15, in page 24, line 47, leave out from "then" to "any" and insert
  "subject to subsections (3A) and (3B) below, if a constable or"
  Mr. McLoughlin: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment No. 16.
  Mr. McLoughlin: The amendments seek to strengthen the rights of private householders in harbour areas where a search of their home is necessary.
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  The amendments present two safeguards for householders who, often by accidents of geography or history, live within harbour areas. First, in line with general practice, only constables with a warrant will be able to carry out searches of private residences, and, secondly, only certain constables will be able to carry out such searches. Searches of private dwellings outside harbour areas are not possible under the terms of the Bill.
  Clause 22 has been substantially amended, but the Government never intended to use the powers in the Bill to require private residences to be searched by security guards. Where there was a need for a private residence within a harbour area to be searched—that would be agreed to only after the most careful consideration—the Secretary of State would require it to be carried out by the appropriate constables. That has been formalised by the amendments.
  Mr. Snape: The amendments touch on an important point of principle. Hon. Members will agree that the redrafting of the regulations for the searching of private premises within harbour areas is welcome.
  There was an exchange in anoher place between the Minister and my noble Friend Lord Underhill about the port of Harwich. I do not press the Minister if he does not have the information immediately to hand, but doubt was expressed about whether clause 22, as amended by their Lordships, would cover specific problems in and around a port.
  If the Minister has any information, we should be delighted to hear it, but we rest content on the important point of principle that it will be impossible to search private homes within a harbour area without the acquisition of a proper warrant.
  Mr. McLoughlin: I confirm what the hon. Gentleman has said. We were concerned about how this problem came to light and we have substantially amended the clause to meet some of the objections that he made.
  Mr. Merlyn Rees: If a private security guard approaches a constable, on what grounds does the constable make a search?
  Mr. McLoughlin: I shall try to help the right hon. Gentleman, but I am aware of his tremendous knowledge on the subject. The only people who will able to carry out searches of private homes in harbour areas are constables.
  Mr. Rees: I understand that, but on what grounds does the constable carry out the search? Does he question the security guard before making a decision?
  Mr. McLoughlin: A search would be carried out under the necessary direction by a constable of the appropriate forces. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman understands the words "appropriate forces".
  Question put and agreed to.
  Lords amendments No. 16 to 19 agreed to.

Clause 25

  MATTERS WHICH MAY BE INCLUDED IN DIRECTIONS UNDER SECTIONS 21 TO 24
  Lords amendment: No. 20, in page 29, line 12, leave out "In so far as" and insert "Where".
  Mr. McLoughlin: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
  Mr. Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments Nos. 21, 22 and 39.
  Mr. McLoughlin: The amendments have their origins in an amendment to what is now clause 25, which was moved in Committee by the hon. Member for Southport (Mr. Fearn).
  The amendments to clause 25(4) and the equivalent amendment to the Aviation Security Act 1982 provide that a person receiving a direction which requires searches to be carried out or other measures to be taken by the police should inform the local chief officer of police or, in Northern Ireland, the Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary if the direction requires the searches or other measures to be undertaken by armed police.
  Directions proposing the arming of police are likely to be issued infrequently; none has been issued under the powers of the 1982 Act. Nevertheless, I am sure that hon. Members will agree that it would be wise to have this power available in case urgent and direct action is necessary in the event of an increased threat of a terrorist act.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Lords amendments Nos. 21 to 34 agreed to.

Clause 54

  SHORT TITLE, COMMENCEMENT AND EXTENT
  Lords amendment: No. 35, in page 49, line 12, after "repeals" insert
  "in the Criminal Jurisdiction Act 1975."
  Mr. McLoughlin: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
  Hon. Members will note that clause 54 postpones for two months after Royal Assent the commencement of several provisions, including schedule 3. Paragraph (3) of that schedule amends section 2(1)(a) of the Criminal Jurisdiction Act 1975. Therefore, the corresponding repeal in schedule 4 should be postponed for the same period, and the amendment will achieve that.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Lords amendments Nos. 36 to 39 agreed to.

Schedule 1

  FURTHER AMENDMENTS OF THE AVIATION SECURITY ACT 1982
  Lords amendment: No. 40, in page 54, line 2, at end insert—
  "(aa) for the words from "any person authorised" to ""authorised person")" there is substituted "an authorised person","
  Mr. McLoughlin: I beg to move, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.
  Mr. Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to consider Lords amendment No. 42.
  Mr. McLoughlin: These amendments provide for the retention of the term "authorised person" in section 20(1) of the Aviation Security Act 1982 but delete the wording that defines that expression. The wording is unnecessary because the definition of "authorised person" is set out in paragraph 16 of schedule 1.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Lords amendments Nos. 41 and 42 agreed to.

Televising of Proceedings of the House
Mr. Speaker: I must announce to the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and other hon. Members.
6.29 pm
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Sir Geoffrey Howe): I beg to move,
That this House agrees with the Select Committee on Televising of Proceedings of the House in its First Report (House of Commons Paper No. 265—I).
It might be worth recording my impression that one reason for the lack of overwhelming enthusiasm for attending this important debate is the fact that an equally important presentation by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is taking place in another theatre in a different part of the House. I dare say that interest will increase as we proceed.
As the House will be aware, the Select Committee, which I chair, published its report last week. Our verdict, simply put, is that the experiment has been a success and our recommendation—with only one dissentient, for rather special reasons—is that televising should become a permanent feature of the House. The report is long and covers all the matters of potential concern to the House, or about which particular anxieties have been expressed.
Let me begin by expressing, on behalf of the whole House, my thanks to all those whose efforts and expertise have made the experiment possible. They are listed in paragraph 6 of our report, but I wish specifically to mention the broadcasting organisations and Broadcasting Communications, which produced the signal. We should also pay tribute to the occupants of the Chair in this House and also to the Chairmen, members and staff of Select and Standing Committees, the Parliamentary Works Office, Mr. David Doig, the Clerk to our Committee, and most notably, if I may say so, the supervisor of broadcasting, Mr. John Grist, whose role has been a source of great reassurance to some hon. Members who were initially doubtful about the experiment.
I turn now to the Committee's detailed findings about the conduct of the experiment in the Chamber and in Committees. Paragraphs 16 to 33 of the report review aspects of televising in the Chamber itself, including the cameras, which have proved a great success technically, without being unduly obtrusive; the control room which, although extremely cramped, has worked remarkably well; and the cooling and ventilation system, which has, on the whole, been adequate to the task of dissipating the extra heat from the upgraded temporary space lights.
The lighting was probably the subject of the greatest apprehension before the experiment began. Certainly, the additional brightness—although it is at the margins of acceptabilty for television purposes—can be tiring on the eyes, especially towards the end of a long sitting. Equally certainly, the makeshift temporary lights that we can see above us can hardly be regarded as the embodiment of good taste and aesthetic excellence. But, by and large—I realise not everyone will agree—the House seems to have grown accustomed to the increased light levels, and has tolerated them as part of the experiment.
I should, incidentally, make it clear that if we vote for permanent televising, we shall have to live with the
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temporary lights for another Session while detailed work continues on the suitable design of a permanent replacement lighting system.
Let me next deal with the subject of sound in the Chamber, for this matter has been raised on the Floor of the House more than any other during the experiment. Its importance is reflected in the great emphasis which we give to it in our report. Our approach to the subject is set out in paragraph 23, from which I quote:
"We recognise that the first requirement of a debating Chamber such as the House of Commons is that it should be possible to hear the Member who is speaking, save only in extremely noisy conditions. The House is entitled to expect that every effort will be made to take full advantage of technological developments so that the standard of audibility in the Chamber is the best available. That being said, we think it right to emphasise at the outset"—
I am still quoting from the report—
"that the basic sound system in the Chamber has not been modified for the televising experiment."
I strongly emphasise that.
The sound system currently in use—that is to say, the microphones and the bench amplifiers—although it was the subject of significant modifications in 1970–71, was first installed as long ago as 1951. Technical advice, not surprisingly, is that—irrespective of televising—the system will need to be replaced or radically overhauled some time during the next five years. Work is already proceeding more urgently than that.
The files of the old Sound Broadcasting Committee, whose responsibilities we inherited, demonstrate clearly that complaints about audibility in the Chamber are not new, although I acknowledge that their number and frequency have grown since the start of the experiment. Quite why that should be is a question which has perplexed the Select Committee and its advisers. As the report makes clear, apart from some minor adjustments of the microphones near the Dispatch Boxes, there have been no changes to the sound system since the introduction of televising. I must also stress, as this was raised again in the House only the other day, that the bench amplifiers have been turned up as high as is consistent with the avoidance of feedback. They have most certainly not been altered—least of all turned down—to suit the whims of the broadcasters.
Nothing that I have said detracts from the seriousness with which the Select Committee views the genuine anxieties about audibility in the Chamber. It is for that very reason that the Committee has established a working party, under the chairmanship of the supervisor of broadcasting, to advise on the technical options for modernising the sound system. The working party, which is assisted by Mr. Richard Wright, head of sound operations at the BBC, will make its recommendations as early as possible in the next Session, with a view to any necessary work being carried out during the 1991 summer recess. The new equipment will almost certainly have to last as long as the present system, so a year spent now making sure that any proposed changes will work effectively is, in the Committee's judgment—and I hope that of the House—a price worth paying.
There are, it should be said, some very real constraints, which the Committee identified, on the scope for improvements in audibility in the Chamber—given what the report describes as
"its distinctive lay-out, architecture and political character."
We do not have desks in front of us, we do not have individual microphones, and the House will not hold all

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hon. Members at the same time. When the House is very noisy—whether we like it or not this happens with some regularity—the Committee says that
"only a system of individual microphones would be able to cope".
That is not feasible. The Committee has rightly assumed that the House would not be willing to countenance fundamental changes in its practice and procedure to achieve total, continuous audibility.
We certainly shall, however, be aiming to secure the most efficient sound system consistent with these practical limitations, because I have no doubt that that is what the House is entitled to expect. We will try to bring it up to date, to the highest standards possible.
It is only right to end this section of my remarks on a positive note. As we point out in the report, the production of a television signal of broadcastable quality from the Chamber is a demanding operation, and it has been carried out, the Committee concludes,
"with great skill and proficiency".
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: In the event that the House were to approve the report tonight and accept permanence as a principle, does the right hon. and learned Gentleman believe that it is highly unlikely that the House would ever wish to reverse such a decision, given that the public clearly want cameras in the Chamber?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The development of opinion in the Committee, which I think is reflected in the House, is the best pointer. The Committee included several people who originally voted against the experiment. At the end of the day only one still dissented, on a conditional basis. I think that opinion has moved strongly in the direction of permanence.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Does that mean that it is irreversible?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Nothing is irreversible. We cannot bind our successors. Some eccentric successors may come along and undo all our good work, but I hope not.
On the whole, the Select Committee concludes that this aspect of the experiment has been handled "both efficiently and resourcefully." That judgment appears to be shared by the overwhelming majority of Select and Standing Committee Chairmen. That is not to deny that there have been problems—notably with the operation of the microphones and with the temperature in Committee Rooms on hot days—although, again, both are matters which predate televising. In addition, tripod-mounted cameras are less than ideal because of the amount of space that they take up, and many Chairmen would prefer the installation of remote-controlled equipment, as in the Chamber. Certainly the Select Committee takes the same view. I must point out that, even if we assume that the House will approve the Committee report today, the considerable additional costs involved make it unlikely that that development will come about before any permanent televising arrangements are in place.
Let me say a word about the effect of all that on the House itself. Before the experiment began, fears were widely expressed that the presence of the cameras would have a number of undesirable effects on the way in which the House conducts its business. For instance, it was claimed that hon. Members would "play to the gallery",
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that speeches would become a series of quotable "sound bites", and even that standards of discipline would deteriorate.
No one could claim, with hand on heart, that the House has continued to behave as though the cameras were not there. We have all grown accustomed to the initially disconcerting practice of "doughnutting"—although "doughnuts" appear to be in short supply tonight. We have all noticed some colleagues appearing in unfamiliar places to benefit from the more becoming backdrop of the panelling under the galleries, and it would be surprising if hon. Members—especially, perhaps, those of us who are able to speak from the Dispatch Boxes—were not conscious at times of addressing a rather wider audience. Even if we allow for all those factors, however, it is difficult to sustain the argument that the basic character of the House as a lively, often intimate debating forum has been changed to any significant degree.
In regard to standards of conduct—one always hesitates to pronounce judgment about them—our report strikes a mildly encouraging note. Despite recent manifestations of what might be termed "July Syndrome", fewer Members have been named or ordered to withdraw from the Chamber during the experiment than in recent comparable Sessions. As for the general level of noise in the Chamber, we record in our report your impression, Mr. Speaker, that it had not increased markedly during the experiment.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: For the record, it should be said that withdrawal from the Chamber is often related to the behaviour of the Prime Minister. If there were another Westland, doubtless it would happen again.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman can be trusted to make an original intervention in any debate—
Mr. Bruce Grocott: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree with that?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I would not dream of responding, in that sense.
I have dealt so far with the way in which the television pictures of the House's proceedings have been produced—a process over which the House has been anxious to retain firm control. However, right hon. and hon. Members are equally, if not more, interested in the result—that is, how the televised material reaches viewers. Those matters fall within the editorial judgment of the broadcasters.
The Select Committee commissioned a comprehensive study from the parliamentary research group at the university of Leeds, and the group's final report is published in full as annex 4 to the Select Committee's report; I simply draw attention to its conclusions on regional coverage. The group judges that the broadcasters have fully met the assurances that they gave before the experiment began as regards achieving reasonable balance and reflecting local interests. On political balance generally, the report mentions two points of concern, but also lists a number of qualifying factors that made reliable conclusions on that sensitive subject hazardous. For those reasons, the Select Committee deliberately refrained from comment, instead drawing attention to the statutory machinery to deal with complaints in that regard.
In the Committee's view—confirmed by the Leeds group—the volume of coverage in the Chamber has been

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pretty well as expected, with the emphasis overwhelmingly on extracts used in news and current affairs programmes. However, Committee coverage has, in the words of the report, been "vastly in excess" of what was predicted, and the amount of live coverage has been especially encouraging, given the fears before the experiment that there might be none at all.
Audiences for specialised programmes have been steady, although not spectacular; it is through news programmes that most of our constituents see the work of the House. As those bulletins are watched by many millions of people, we should not underestimate the extent to which the televising of our proceedings has opened up the House to a much wider audience. If the Select Committee has any significant regret, it is about the lack of an evening round-up programme of the day's parliamentary business on any of the terrestrial channels—although we recognise that that is a matter for the editorial discretion of the broadcasters.
Mr. Tony Banks: The right hon. and learned Gentleman qualified that latter remark by referring to "terrestrial channels". There is an excellent evening round-up programme on British Satellite Broadcasting—BSB—called "Left, Right And Centre"; I am an occasional presenter, along with other hon. Members. Perhaps that format could be urged on other television producers, and there could be a televised equivalent of "Today in Parliament".
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman has underlined my point. I think that the Committee, as a whole, hoped for something of the kind. I suspect that, with the multiplication of channels, there will be an amplification of coverage of various kinds. I shall say more about that when I deal with the dedicated channel.
The House will be aware that the rules of coverage—the types of shot that the television director is permitted to take—were relaxed after about two months of the experiment, to allow a somewhat wider range of reaction shots and to enable the director to use a "mid" or group shot. In addition, a second wide-angle feed has been made available to the broadcasters, strictly for editorial purposes.
Mr. Dalyell: I am not complaining, but will the Leader of the House satisfy my curiosity? By what alchemy have the rules suddenly become more and more relaxed? I am not saying that it was wrong, but, after all the firm assurances that we have been given, I think that we are entitled to ask how it happened.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: There is no question of alchemy. The Committee was not a Committee of alchemists but a Committee of parliamentarians operating in accordance with the rules laid down in last year's report, and those rules were quite clear. The hon. Gentleman says that he is satisfying his own curiosity; he could do so completely if he were to study last year's report, which said that this was an experimental process but that, throughout the days of the experiment, variations in the rules should be permitted. Flexibility was encouraged, under the discretion and the control of the Committee of which I was Chairman, and it was in response to representations made by the broadcasters that the variations were made.
The Committee concluded that the rules, as now framed, afford
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"a reasonably clear, accurate and lively account of the House's proceedings."
That does not mean to say that they have necessarily reached a final, immutable form. The Select Committee—or, more accurately, its successor—will remain ready to consider any suggestions that may be made for changes in the rules; however, it is my guess that they are likely to be no more than marginal in character. We seem to have reached a reasonable modus vivendi.
Mr. James Hill: Before he leaves that point, will my right hon. and learned Friend tell us whether the Committee examined the quality of the commentaries aligned with the programmes? I find that in a certain programme broadcast on Sunday mornings, the two commentators treat the subject in a very glib style, and I am not sure that they do any good to the presentation of the film.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I note what my hon. Friend says. That point was not raised with the Committee. However, my hon. Friend can raise it directly with the broadcasters.
If the House agrees with us that the experiment should be regarded as a success and that televising should be placed on a permanent footing, how are we to proceed from here? The report proposes that the current administrative and financial arrangements—whereby the broadcasters fund a company, House of Commons Broadcasting Unit Ltd., which subcontracts the production of the signal to an independent operator—should continue until 31 July 1991. In the meantime, the Select Committee's successor should work out the details of a permanent televising system, which would be submitted to the House for its approval by Easter 1991 and would come into effect in autumn next year.
We shall continue with the present arrangement—if it is the wish of the House to make it permanent—and, during the next six months, we shall work out the permanent arrangements that will thereafter come into place.
Mr. Tony Benn: Is it proposed that the Committee, when it is reconvened—assuming that the House agrees—will examine the non-broadcast use of material from the House? As the right hon. and learned Gentleman knows, I have written to him about that, and I hope to raise the matter if I am called. Will it be within the terms of reference?
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Yes, indeed. The right hon. Gentleman has been in touch with me on more than one occasion on that matter. We have had several applications from outside broadcasters and composers to use material from the television archive that has not been broadcast. We have not found it easy to come to principled conclusions on the matter, so we have put it to one side and we shall look for principles to guide us in making the right reaction in due course. Most of us believe that the right answer will come with the introduction of a dedicated channel. That will put everything in the public domain and people will be able to do what they like. The televised material will then be like a copy of Hansard. It will be as available as Hansard.
Mr. Benn: The problem is not availability. Hon. Members can obtain any debate from the archives but must sign a statement that it will not be used. Like Hansard, non-broadcast material is available but one must undertake not to use it.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: That is right. It is available in record form but it has not been broadcast. There is no lack of sympathy with the right hon. Gentleman's points, but if we move into that territory we must have rules to guide us.
Mr. Richard Tracey: My right hon. and learned Friend mentioned a dedicated channel. It might be of use to the House if he would talk a little about his thoughts and expand on the points about a dedicated channel. As he knows, an amendment has been tabled by 168 hon. Members calling for a dedicated channel in the fairly near future. It would be of great use if we could bear my right hon. and learned Friend's thoughts in mind.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The most unsurprising thing that I am likely to say in my speech is that I did not need my hon. Friend's encouragement to address myself to that topic. Clearly, I shall have to deal with that.
I shall deal first with the two alternatives that we have identified for permanent television and come on to the dedicated channel after that. The Committee identifies two main options for permanent arrangements. One is a House broadcasting unit, which would own or lease the necessary equipment and would be directly responsible for producing the signal and supplying it to the broadcasters. The other is an independent unit answerable to a Select Committee and contracted to or licensed by the House to produce the signal and supply it to the broadcasters. In either case the production of the signal could be carried out as an integrated operation incorporating coverage of Committees and another place, assuming that their Lordships are willing to consider such a proposition.
I know that some right hon. and hon. Members are attracted to the idea of a House unit constituted as a Department of the House. The Committee will certainly examine that option seriously. However, we shall want to explore carefully the extent to which the legitimate desire of the House to retain control over the form of the signal necessitates in practice the employment of the relevant broadcasting staff by the House itself. Equally, if the idea of an independent unit is pursued, we shall need to be assured that the interests of the House are properly safeguarded and that the broadcasters are protected against unfair exploitation by a monopoly supplier of the signal. Whichever alternative is adopted, the House can be assured that it will retain control over the televising operation through the Select Committee and, on a day-to-day basis, through the Supervisor of Broadcasting.
The financial arrangements could in theory range from total public funding to a scheme in which the broadcasters pay the full cost of generating the signal—perhaps through some form of subscription. Obviously, I must not anticipate the Committee's eventual conclusions, but I think it fair to state as a general principle—it may be only my view—that the initial onus lies on those who favour public funding to show why the broadcasters should not continue to be responsible, as they are now, for meeting the major part of the costs. The House might take the view that the division of expenditure on the experiment is broadly correct. The Parliamentary Works Office met the cost of changes to the fabric of the building, the House was responsible for the staffing of the Select Committee, including the Supervisor of Broadcasting, and the broadcasters paid for the equipment. All those matters will receive the Select Committee's urgent attention next
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Session and I hope that the House will understand why, given their complexity, we did not attempt to reach conclusions on them in time for this debate.
I now come to a dedicated channel, about which many right hon. and hon. Members feel strongly. It was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton (Mr. Tracey). It is reflected in the amendment which you said that you intended to call, Mr. Speaker, tabled by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). Should we have a dedicated channel devoted to continuous transmission of the proceedings of the House—gavel to gavel, as the transatlantic jargon has it, although we do not have gavels in the House? The advantages of such a development are obvious. It would ensure complete coverage. It would avoid the problems of editing and compression into unrepresentative highlights which worry the House.
The Select Committee needed and needs no persuasion of the merits of a dedicated channel. The case for that was firmly upheld in the Committee by my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale). His case was, indeed, totally accepted by the Committee. Paragraph 172 of the report says:
"We reiterate our belief in the need for a dedicated channel providing continuous, unedited coverage of the House's proceedings and we recommend that this should be provided at the earliest opportunity, as an adjunct to the permanent televising of the House."
That is as far as the Committee goes. There is absolutely no doubt about our position. The House will be interested to know that discussions are already taking place on one possible scheme which, at first sight, appears rather promising. So there need be no doubt that this is an issue which the Committee has taken and will take extremely seriously, and on which we propose to take evidence in the autumn, if the House approves our report tonight.
The amendment appears to mean that the House's approval for the Committee's report, and hence for the principle of permanent televising, is conditional on the existence of a fully operational, permanent dedicated channel within 12 months. Strictly speaking, if no such channel were established by then, and despite the promising proposal that I mentioned, that certainly cannot be assured. So televising at that point would either come to an end or we would need to make it subject to annual renewal by the House. That would run completely counter to the main thrust of the report, which is that the principle of permanent televising should be settled once and for all now.
The amendment is also unhelpful in that it seeks to tie the hands of the House in advance before it has seen the outcome of the evidence which the report says that the Committee proposes to take on the subject next Session. In my judgment, the amendment is unhelpful even to the fulfilment of its own objectives.
Nothing that I have said detracts from the importance of the objective of establishing a dedicated channel. The Select Committee goes out of its way to endorse that strongly in the report. We considered the proposition which is explicit in the amendment. After considering it carefully and tightening the drafting, we concluded, with only one dissenter—my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North—that our conclusion was right.
I advise the House that we should now come to a conclusion on the main question. It must make sense to decide whether we shall say yes or no to permanence

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today. That will not in any sense diminish the zeal with which I and the Committee will pursue the establishment of arrangements for a dedicated channel.
The Committee proposes to follow up several other matters if our report is agreed by the House. They include the requirements of the archive. That embraces the point of the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). Last, but far from least, we shall consider the needs of the deaf. No fewer than 4 million of our fellow citizens are classified as hard of hearing, of whom some 2.5 million suffer from a hearing impairment sufficiently serious for them to benefit from subtitling. For that reason, a whole section of our report is devoted to the needs of the deaf and to the trials of subtitling and signing which the Committee has organised on their behalf. Access for the deaf to our proceedings is an important topic which will be high on the new Committee's continuing agenda.
In conclusion, I remind the House that the Select Committee's report is the outcome of a careful and considered evaluation of the experiment by 20 right hon. and hon. Members, seven of whom voted against the original decision to hold it. The fact that my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North now remains the lone dissentient—only in a qualified sense, but he can speak for himself later—is some measure of the extent to which the experiment has proved that the House can be, as the report states,
"exposed to a wider audience through television without losing its special character."
The success of the experiment reflects credit not only on those hon. Members who have always been in favour of televising, but on those who honourably held—some still do—a contrary view, but who co-operated fully. They bore with fortitude the inevitable changes in the appearance and working conditions of the Chamber and Committee Rooms.
We have been able between us—broadcasters alongside politicians—to develop an important interpenetrating partnership in which each has come increasingly to understand the other and in which, so far at least, we may all have some modest pride.
After decades of debate, not just inside the House, but outside, prompted by such notable and diverse pioneers as Sir Robin Day and Aneurin Bevan, who spoke strongly in favour of television in 1959, the House has the opportunity tonight to settle one way or the other whether it wants its proceedings to be televised on a permanent basis. The Select Committee's report gives a clear lead in favour of permanent televising and I commend it to the House without condition, qualification or amendment.
7 pm
Mr. Bruce Grocott: I strongly support the motion in the name of the Leader of the House, but although I voted for the televising of the Commons and the establishment of the experiment, I am by no means an unqualified and uncritical supporter of it.
I had certain reservations about the way in which the experiment would work in practice. First, I was concerned about the effect of televising on the behaviour of the Chamber—I hold different views about that from Conservative Members. Secondly, I was concerned about the balance of coverage between the House and its Committees. My third concern was the political balance of coverage between the Government and the Opposition.
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My anxieties have been removed on several grounds, but I am still anxious about one matter, about which I shall speak later.
I do not want to miss the wood for the trees. I want to emphasise the main thrust of the Select Committee that the televising experiment has been a remarkable success. Thankfully, we are not dependent upon anecdotal evidence to judge its success.
I join the Leader of the House in paying tribute to the people involved with the report at different stages. I especially want to pay tribute to the Institute of Communication Studies of the university of Leeds for its research on the televising experiment. Its report contains a wealth of information and it means that our judgment can be based upon a proper detailed assessment of programme output, not on the views of individual hon. Members.
As a result of the research undertaken by the BBC on the public's reaction to the experiment and that undertaken by the Independent Broadcasting Authority on the reaction of hon. Members, we have a substantial body of research from which we can form our judgment.
The unequivocal message from the research is that the experiment should cease and televising become a permanent feature. The BBC research into public reaction to the experiment revealed that the overwhelming majority of people, 83 per cent., felt that the televising should continue. The public also made some interesting observations about us: 70 per cent. of them thought that most hon. Members were quite intelligent—I do not know where they got that figure from—59 per cent. thought that we worked very hard, which is undoubtedly true, and as many as 40 per cent. thought that we were trustworthy. The crucial figure is the 83 per cent. of the public who feel that the experiment has been a success. We should be answerable to them were we to switch off the cameras.
The IBA conducted a survey into the reaction of hon. Members to the experiment and it revealed that the proportion of hon. Members who supported the televising of the Commons grew as the experiment proceeded. I hope that an overwhelming majority of the House now want that experiment to become permanent.
The most interesting research was that conducted by the Institute of Communication Studies on the way in which broadcasters dealt with the material that we sent out. That material is no use unless it is broadcast in a way in which people find it watchable and can be assimilated by them. On page 35 of the Select Committee report, the researchers at Leeds university conclude:
"Broadcast reporting of Parliamentary proceedings has evidently been extensive, serious, responsible, balanced in many respects, even at times creative … It is thus hard to find a single criterion by which their record and performance during the experiment could be seriously faulted."
That is praise indeed and it is based upon an assessment of the output.
It is also important to consider the audiences that we have reached via the various programmes. The report details the audience figures for "Westminster Live" on BBC 2 and its coverage of Prime Minister's Question Time, which ranged from 800,000 to 2 million. The "Parliament Programme" on Channel 4 attracts audiences of between 200,000 and 250,000. "Westminster Week" on BBC 2 attracts an audience of 300,000, as does "Week in Politics" on Channel 4. Even "Westminster"—one would have to be an addict to watch it since it is broadcast at the dreadful time of 8.15 am—attracts 100,000 of our fellow

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citizens—an average of 150 per constituency. If any hon. Member could address 150 of his constituents at that time in the morning, he would have a better means of communication with them than me.
Those figures are remarkable, especially when one compares them with the previous potential viewing figures. The Strangers' Gallery has the capacity for 157 people, but compare that with the lowest viewing figure of 100,000—those who watch "Westminster" on BBC2, broadcast the day after the events in the House. That demonstrates the success of television in making our proceedings available to our democracy as never before.
The overwhelming thrust of our findings is that the experiment has been a success. I shall consider the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) in a moment, but I hope that all hon. Members will be cautious before voting for any amendment that says, in effect, because we cannot provide a single dedicated channel within a set time, we should switch off the signal currently received by so many of the public.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: My hon. Friend used the words "switch off the signal". Did he hear the reply that the Leader of the House gave to me when I intervened? He said that he could not bind his successors. He was speaking for the Government. It is not, therefore, the Government's intention to see television removed from the House through their initiative. That means that the right hon. and learned Gentleman accepts that, in the event of the 12-month period running out, another motion will be tabled next year. How does that mean the signal would be switched off? That is my case, but my hon. Friend has misrepresented me.
Mr. Grocott: I am not misrepresenting the words on the Order Paper that we must follow. My hon. Friend's English is the same as mine and the words on the Order Paper say:
"provided that within 12 months from the date of approval of this resolution, televised proceedings of the House are broadcast on a dedicated channel".
That can mean only that, if they are not, the Select Committee recommendation is not approved. I must leave it there because time is short and I am sure that my hon. Friend is anxious to make his own speech.
Fears were expressed about the effect of televising our proceedings. The first fear was that it might seriously affect the way in which the Chamber operates. Many hon. Members, particularly Conservatives, were fearful lest we might become unruly and disruptive. My anxieties were the reverse of that. The evidence is not that television makes people unruly and disruptive. Particularly for public figures, the evidence is that television makes them bland and rather boring. Most television presenters are incredibly bland and boring, in my view. Television sanitises events on many occasions, and that particularly applies to sporting events. Horses do not thunder over fences but flow over them on television, and one never feels the crunch of the tackle in football.
My fear was that we should lose our passion and genuine anger of this place, remembering that justifiable anger develops sometimes when we speak on behalf of our constituents. Indeed, there is some slight evidence that that has happened and that this has become a less rowdy place.
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Personally, I hope that that trend does not develop further. I want it to be a real place occupied by real people, and I am thankful that, by and large, television has not greatly affected the House.
The person whom television appeared to affect most in the early stages was the Prime Minister. For the first three months she was almost unrecognisable to my hon. Friends and me. She stopped sneering and started smiling at us. She looked up and appeared to enjoy life for a change. Thankfully, she has reverted to type and the snarls have returned. I am glad that television is consistently showing people as they are.
My anxieties about the coverage were accentuated by my dislike of the rules of coverage that we approved some months ago. I am pleased that in January we relaxed the rules, and I hope that the rules of coverage will be relaxed further, not so that things get out of hand, but because we should leave to the television directors the professional judgments that they can make about which shots to use. I hope that there will be more reaction shots. We have nothing to fear from such a development or from what I should like to see—the establishment of a television unit as a Department of the House. So I should like to see more reaction shots and more freedom given to the director, and perhaps we can relax the rules on disorder, to which there is reference in paragraphs 81 and 82 of the report.
Another fear that we need no longer have is that television might somehow neglect the engine rooms of the Commons, the Select and Standing Committees. There has been no such neglect. Indeed, there has been remarkably extensive cover of Committees. The statistics in the report show that 93 Select Committee meetings and 36 Standing Committee meetings were covered during the period of the experiment. What is more, they got good viewing figures when carried live. That applied particularly to Select Committees.
There is no secret why such meetings are popular with the public. It is because they are intelligible. It also has something to do with the fact that people taking part in Select Committee proceedings talk in language that people can understand. The proceedings do not sound as if what is happening is occurring in a club. For example, people talk to each other using their names. Like all hon. Members, I am proud of my constituency and mention it whenever I have the opportunity, but in the real world people call each other by their names rather than by their constituencies. That helps Select Committee proceedings to be intelligible to the public, and I believe that in the long term we have lessons to learn from that, from the point of view of the way in which we organise our proceedings on the Floor of the House.
Another pleasant surprise has been the regional coverage, which is of great importance to many hon. Members on both sides. I ask the House not to rely on my personal views but, again, to examine the study carried out by Leeds university, which said:
"The interesting and imaginative record of Parliamentary coverage in the regions was particularly impressive not only for amount but also for its distinctiveness.
Mr. James Kilfedder: I dispute the findings of Leeds university on that point because, as other hon. Members who represent Northern Ireland constituencies will agree, the coverage of the House in Northern Ireland is extremely limited. It is biased against many hon. Members and in favour of only one or two. The

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way in which the proceedings of the House are broadcast—I should say, are not broadcast—is a disgrace to the people of Northern Ireland.
Mr. Grocott: I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman put his views to the Select Committee or to the research group. It has been encouraging to note how little criticism there has been of the coverage at regional level. I can go only by the results of the research group, which show that that coverage has been most satisfactory.
I urge Conservative Members not to think that the changes for which they have voted relating to the broadcasting system could have no effect on the way our proceedings are covered. I find a curious split personality on the part of Conservative Members. On the one hand they constantly encourage the broadcasters by saying, "We must have more coverage of Parliament. It must be serious and praiseworthy". On the other they say, "We must throw television to the commercial winds." There are points at which those two objectives are not compatible, and the research shows that regional coverage in particular might be affected. On page 36 of the report, the Leeds university group said:
"Attention is drawn in the body of the report to several signs of BBC-ITV differences in regional television approaches to Parliamentary coverage, which might well be accentuated as competition intensifies on the commercial side of the British television divide."
It is all part of the argument about television quality and variety of programmes. Conservative Members cannot have it both ways on such issues.
On regional and Committee coverage the experiment has been a great success, but I draw attention to our recommendations that there should be two additional Committee Rooms equipped for television, that we should have remote cameras for coverage in Committee Rooms and that the ITV companies must try to find a better way of spreading the cost of Committee coverage so that single companies that want only one Committee covered for their region are not severely financially disadvantaged in the way that they are now. At present, if 10 companies want the signal, the cost is the session divided by 10. If one company wants it—and all too often the one is a smaller ITV company—it must bear the whole cost, and that position needs changing.
Mr. Roger Gale: I hope that I shall have an opportunity of contributing to the debate later. In the meantime, I refer to the hon. Gentleman's apparent aversion to commercial television and private enterprise. Will he explain why, when an amendment was put before the Select Committee that would have offered the general viewing public start-to-finish coverage at public expense, every Labour member of the Committee rejected it?
Mr. Grocott: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I am not averse to commercial television. I worked for it for eight happy years. He knows that the amendment was opposed because it would have made acceptance of the report conditional on that one consideration. The hon. Gentleman has a worthy obsession, for a dedicated channel, and we know that it comes from an hon. Member who has been consistent in his opposition to the principle of television coverage.
Mr. Clifford Forsythe: I refer the hon. Gentleman to a study for the Hansard Society entitled "Cameras in the Commons", which said, referring to Northern Ireland:
"the 1 March Questions also brought growing anger in Northern Ireland—mutually among MPs and broadcasters—on the way 'outsiders' were trying to get into the act, whether because their whips wanted it or because the Members wanted to be seen on television."
It also said that in mid-March
"only questions 6 and 17 among the first 20 were from Ulster Members. At that point the BBC and Ulster Television cancelled their plans for live cover of NI Questions both for 29 March and for early May. Before television, the ballot rarely went beyond 25 entries, almost all from within the Province. Now it was over 100."
Televising the House has not advantaged Northern Ireland Members and it has changed the attitude of the House to Northern Ireland questions.
Mr. Grocott: The hon. Gentleman will make his own speech in his own time. However, he knows that the report from which he quoted is also supportive of the experiment and of the effects of the experiment.
The other issue, which is more serious and more contentious between the Government and the Opposition, is that of political balance and of the coverage that Opposition and Conservative Members receive. The disparity between the coverage of the Government and of the Opposition is shown clearly in the research. I am fairly relaxed about that because I do not expect us to be in opposition much longer. However, as a matter of principle the figures should be of some concern.
I have always felt that television runs the risk of helping whichever party is in power. Governments have tremendous advantages with the media. Prime Ministers—notably this Prime Minister—can obtain media opportunities whenever they want them. They can appear on virtually any channel, at any time, with an interviewer of their choice and with the questions vetted beforehand. As we all know, the Lobby access and the Parliamentary Press Gallery access of Government Departments is phenomenal. At the most recent check, there were 166 Government press officers. Governments always have a huge advantage in getting their message across.
I was concerned—as was the Leeds university research group—when looking at the figures in table 6 on page 15, on actuality coverage—that is, clips from the Chamber—to find that there were 268 clips of the Prime Minister, 105 of the Leader of the Opposition, 445 of the Cabinet, 197 of the shadow Cabinet, 295 of non-Cabinet Ministers, 112 of shadow non-Cabinet Ministers, 770 of Conservative Back-Bench Members and 622 of Labour Back-Bench Members. I know that there are qualifications to the figures and they are spelt out in report. Clearly, Governments will have more coverage because, for example, Ministers will be answering questions. However, there is no doubt—and the research group spelt this out, so it is not just my opinion—that that should be an area of concern. It needs more research and I put in a plea to the Leader of the House—and I hope very much that whoever happens to be a member of the successor Select Committee will agree—that we need to continue to monitor the output of television from the House. It is no use monitoring it only in the six months of the experiment and it is no use relying on complaints from the public or from hon. Members. There must be continuous, serious monitoring of output. I hope that money will be forthcoming to ensure

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that research continues so that we can all make our own judgments and do so on the basis of factual material.
Assuming that the House approves in principle today the televising of the Commons—and I very much hope that that will be the case—many important issues need to be considered. My hon. Friend the Member for Workington raised the question of a continuous, dedicated channel. At the risk of re-emphasising an obvious, but important point, I must tell my hon. Friend that the Select Committee was quite unequivocal in its support of a dedicated channel. In paragraph 172 of its report the Committee said:
"We reiterate our belief in the need for a dedicated channel providing continuous, unedited coverage of the House's proceedings and we recommend that this should be provided at the earliest opportunity, as an adjunct to the permanent televising of the House."
I strongly support that. However, the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington makes the continued televising of the Commons conditional on the success within a year of the negotiations. That has massive disadvantages.
Although we may all agree with the principle of a dedicated channel, we should not lose sight of the fact that only a small number of people are capable of receiving it. The figures need to be put on the record. A dedicated channel can operate only by means of satellite, which people receive either directly or via cable. I have already given the viewing figures for the most important programmes, although I did not give figures for news programmes, for which the number of viewers is even greater. At present, 21.5 million households can receive the terrestrial channels. The number capable of receiving the single, dedicated channel on which my hon. Friend the Member for Workington is so keen are as follows. At present, 800,000 people have satellite dishes and 93,000 people are connected to cable, many of whom, but not all, will get the satellite—
Mr. Austin Mitchell: Households.
Mr. Grocott: Yes, I have given the figures for the number of households capable of receiving satellite transmissions, although not all the cable stations deliver satellite programmes. The total is 893,000 households—that is, 4 per cent. of households—that might be able to receive a dedicated channel if it comes about. The amendment proposes that unless we can devise a means to deliver a single, unedited channel to 4 per cent. of our fellow citizens, we shall switch off the transmission to the 96 per cent. who depend on terrestrial transmissions.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: The amendment does not say that.
Mr. Grocott: That is what it says.
Mr. Harry Greenway: The hon. Gentleman has made a most interesting speech and he has been generous in giving way. Parliament is currently censored because we show what the producers choose to show. This is a serious matter, although the experiment is working interestingly. The suggestion of a continuous channel could overcome the problem. At the most recent Education Question Time, we had an important question on discipline in schools. The BBC transmission the following morning truncated that question. It did not
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show the question as it should have been shown and as it happened. It dealt not with the issue of discipline in schools, but with the behaviour of the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist). That is a serious abuse.
Mr. Grocott: There will always be difficult editorial judgments and no one disputes that. However, the survey gives a tremendous plus to the way in which the signal has been dealt with, however much we might dislike individual decisions.
The issue of a single, dedicated channel as a prerequisite is a red herring. Only a few people will be able to receive it and that is the crucial factor.
Mr. Gale: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Grocott: No, as I want to finish my speech now and I have already gone on longer than I intended.
My hon. Friend the Member for Workington proposes to continue the uncertainty for another 12 months. An issue dear to my heart—and one in which I am strongly in favour—is to have a Department of the House delivering the signal in due course, with staff recruited to do so, rather on the model of Hansard. We are, after all an electronic Hansard. However, we cannot even begin to think about that if there is continued uncertainty for another 12 months, which is what the amendment would mean. We cannot start thinking about all the important, permanent matters, which the Leader of the House has already spelt out in some detail. I strongly hope that hon. Members will resist the amendment, which would not produce any desirable effect that the Committee has not recommended already and which would run the risk of wrecking the whole system.
There are other issues that we must resolve in the next 12 months if the House votes "Yes" tonight. It is important to resolve the problem of serving deaf viewers. We spent a lot of time on it this year, and I hope that the Committee will continue to do so next year. We must resolve also the issue raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn), in respect of the principles that lay behind the use of non-broadcast material. Those difficult questions must be answered in the course of the next 12 months.
Finally, and most importantly, we must decide on permanent arrangements for the broadcasting of our proceedings that will stand the test of time. I hope that the House will agree that the only way to do that is to recruit the people whom we need ourselves, and not run the risk of constant staff turnover, which inevitably occurs in freelance companies. We need a proper arrangement of the sort that works so well for Hansard.
It has been a pleasure to sit on a Select Committee that appears to be achieving results. It is a double pleasure when neutral observation suggests that its work has been successful. I hope that the House will this evening make permanent the televising of our proceedings.
7.30 pm
Mr. Anthony Nelson: I join the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) in supporting the motion of my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House, and in urging the House not to accept the amendment that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) will move shortly.

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It is a matter of particular pleasure to me that the House stands on the brink of the permanent broadcasting of its proceedings, as I had the honour of introducing in 1988 the original motion for the experimental televising of Parliament, and of delivering the vote to the House with the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), who is in his place today. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman agrees that even since then, rather than over the 20 years that the proposal has been debated, there has been a sea change in attitudes inside and outside the House. Many of the worst alarmist fears have not been realised. In true objective fashion, right hon. and hon. Members acknowledge that television represents a new form of communication that is to their advantage and to that of their constituents.
It is appropriate for at least one member of the Select Committee to express its thanks. First and foremost among the recipients of those thanks is my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House, who chaired its proceedings so ably, sensitively and with such gentle leadership. The fact that the Committee was able to achieve near-unanimity on all aspects of the report, and that our proceedings were businesslike and reflected the views of right hon. and hon. Members in all parts of the House, in no small way mirrors my right hon. and learned Friend's qualities and abilities.
I pay tribute also to my right hon. and learned Friend's predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, South and Maldon (Mr. Wakeham), and to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wirral, West (Mr. Hunt), both of whom played a long and active part in the Committee's considerations. No small degree of thanks is due to them both. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) has just left his place, but it should be recorded that he, too, played an active, supportive and positive role over some years in the Committee's proceedings.
Gratitude should also be expressed, as it is in the report, to the Supervisor of Broadcasting and to the co-ordinator of the technical management. They and others delivered an experiment that reduced fears among right hon. and hon. Members and promoted the repute of the House outside. We must thank also the broadcasters themselves, upon whom many aspersions were cast—and no doubt that will continue to happen. They fulfilled their role responsibly, broadly abiding by the restrictions and rules promulgated by the House. The breadth of the editorial coverage they provided has done a real service to Parliament and the public. Many proponents in the television companies themselves have experienced frustration over the years and, I dare say, in their negotiations with the Committee. Nevertheless, they have our thanks, and we hope that they will continue to play as positive a part in the future.
It is important to assess the experiment in terms of both parliamentary and public reaction. Many right hon. and hon. Members who voted against the experiment in February 1988 have since changed their minds in the light of experience. That was evident in last July's debate, when the Select Committee presented a report that the House generally felt was too restrictive. The general tenor of that debate was that a more liberal approach should be taken, and that was reflected in decisions that the Committee subsequently took, which made the television coverage mirror reality rather more. At the same time, we have
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guarded against giving undue publicity to disorder or to the conduct of right hon. and hon. Members other than those who catch Mr. Speaker's eye.
The televising of Parliament has not changed the House substantially. To the extent that it has, it has been for the better. Some speeches have been more pithy. Perhaps they have not been a collection of sound bites, but the experiment has concentrated minds on using simple language that can be understood not by a professional political audience but by the people whom we represent.
One aspect of the experiment more than any other that has endeared the concept of the permanent televising of the House to right hon. and hon. Members is the unexpected popularity of, and interest in, the work of Select Committees. It is not widely understood among the public yet that a large proportion of a Member of Parliament's time is spent on Select Committee work—and very important it is, too. The spectacle of a civil servant wriggling on the parliamentary hook in an inquiry before a Select Committee not only makes good television but is what this place should be about. It is one reason why proponents believed that television would help to hold the Executive accountable. If there continues to be coverage of the detailed work of the House and of the probing of civil servants and others with an authority that is not available elsewhere, the experiment will have proved the predecessor of a permanent system that will gain widespread respect.
The case for permanently televising the House will be made by those who recognise that the experiment has, above all, introduced a new dimension to the task of communicating our parliamentary system that will be seen by history as a major constitutional advance. I believe fervently that it will strengthen the power of Parliament to hold the Executive accountable, rather than rely vicariously on those who report or edit our proceedings, personalities or words. Our constituents will be able to watch and to see in our eyes the true nature of the House and witness the atmosphere in which we argue a point of view. We cannot afford to ignore that added dimension at a time when television has become the principal means of communicating with millions of households.
The spectacle of the joust at Prime Minister's Question Time, the depiction of the emotion created in the House when issues such as abortion or the future of Hong Kong are discussed, and even coverage of the House when it is deliberating on what may sometimes seem dry or boring topics but which nevertheless have huge importance for vast sections of the community, can be properly imparted only by television. The experiment has shown that we have everything to gain and little to lose by making the televising of Parliament permanent.
If we were to turn the cameras off, that action would be widely misunderstood outside the House. Nor should we entertain an amendment that would make our permanent arrangements conditional on the provision of a dedicated channel—much as I am in favour of one—that will for the moment reach only a minimal public audience. It would be widely misunderstood by a public who have come to regard the broadcasting of the House as a welcome new dimension of our parliamentary democracy.
The proceedings of the House were originally held in camera, in secret, for the good reason that it was not the practice of the House to let the monarch of the day know what was going on. That was why there was no verbatim transcript of proceedings here and why no stranger was allowed access. But that is history and the evolution of our

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parliamentary democracy has been towards increasing openness with the arrival of Hansard, newspaper lobby coverage and correspondents, sound broadcasting and now television itself.
We deny our own power, we increase our impotence, if we cannot communicate. After all, half of any job should be doing it and the other half should be telling people what is being done. It is we who will suffer, in defence of the people whom we represent, if we allow Government and Parliament to have a monopoly of communication which we can choose to use and use at any time. We exercise a self-denying ordinance by not allowing a permanent arrangement.
Permanent such an arrangement must be because we have had long enough to debate the matter and to consider how best to televise our proceedings. If we fail to make that decision clearly this evening, we simply will not, in practical terms, have the investment in the equipment, skills and personnel that is needed to make a success of permanent broadcasting.
I defer to no one in my enthusiasm for a dedicated channel. I believe strongly that we shall have full representation of the House only when people can see an unexpurgated version of events, not the extreme aspects plucked from a debate, with the hotheads of each extreme shown on the news at 6 o'clock or 9 o'clock. Only when the length and breadth of the arguments are presented will people understand what Parliament is about and why Members of Parliament take the views that they do on contentious issues of public concern.
When we have—perhaps it should be mace-to-mace rather than gavel-to-gavel—coverage of our proceedings we will find a latent audience outside the House of people interested in our proceedings. First and foremost, they will be in the schools among the students of politics, those who should be able to see the way in which we operate so that they can assess our parliamentary system at work rather than through the text books. There are the farmers, the special interest groups, and the clergy. One can think of numerous groups who would like to see a complete debate rather than a report of it in The Times or a synopsis of it in a magazine or on television.
The experience in countries such as Canada has shown that there is a surprisingly large audience for the televised proceedings of the House and I do not think that there are any objectors to that among the proponents of the amendment. But I do not wish to imperil the permanence of our broadcasting by a condition that we must, within a finite period, have a dedicated channel. Whether we vote for that or not, the broadcasters outside are already getting on with a dedicated channel. Not all hon. Members may know that we had full coverage of the proceedings of the House in November and December last year on one of the Sky channels. As the Select Committee's report points out, later this year, with the new satellite that is being sent up from Guyana, there will be another 16 channels. There is no doubt that Sky would be able to do something about that. We hope that it will.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Why Sky?
Mr. Nelson: It could be any other proposer. There are others who, even within the past few days, have been
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putting forward proposals for partial coverage of the House of a much more extended nature, and that is to be welcomed.
One important matter on which I may not carry every hon. Member with me, and by no means all my hon. Friends, is my strong belief that, as a matter of principle, when we eventually construct permanent arrangements for an electronic Hansard or for the broadcasting of the House, we should not rely on independent people from outside. It should be legitimate for Parliament to vote public money for the supply of the signal and for the televising of our proceedings. I feel strongly that at some future stage a conflict of interests may arise from the involvement of outside people. The televising of the House and the building up of an electronic Hansard over the years must be kept firmly within our control if we are to preserve their integrity. We should be able legitimately to say to the taxpayer that it is an essential part of democracy that we should be communicating on their behalf and that it is a proper call on public funds to do exactly that.
There may be ways in which one could rightly defray costs, such as by the selling of a licence, and I am all for that. I am all for a commercial approach, with archives selling what they can outside the House. But now, just as much as when we originally debated the matter in February 1988, grave suspicions would arise among hon. Members if we were in any sense to relinquish control over the broadcasting of the House to outside influences, however responsible they have been during the experiment. That would be dangerous.
In conclusion, we should not only be considering permanent broadcasting in the domestic context. There is a fantastic opportunity here for the proceedings of the House to be an electronic beacon to the emerging democracies from the Baltic to the Balkans, from Iceland to Tunisia. We should not underestimate the extent to which people are buying satellite dishes, the extent to which communications and broadcasting companies are taking messages and signals from satellites, and the extent to which people rely on a free democracy and communication from this House as well as from others in the EC.
It will be greatly to Britain's advantage and our proper influence in wise and world councils for us to go ahead and develop with proper and urgent speed a dedicated channel which will enable us to be seen in whole, not just in part.
The amendment would make televising proceedings of the House conditional; if we accepted it, the amendment would be seen as a wrecking one. It would have the effect of giving two bites of the cherry and extending the experimental period. Surely we have debated this enough. This is the time for a decision. The experiment has gone well. Let us have the courage of our convictions and take this historic step.
7.47 pm
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: I beg to move, at the end of the Question to add
'provided that within 12 months from the date of approval of this resolution, televised proceedings of the House are broadcast on a dedicated channel, unedited, from the start of the sitting to the rising of the House.'.
First, I proffer to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, an apology for the great inconvenience to which I put you during the debate the other evening. I apologise to you for that.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Thank you.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: My problem, as has been stated by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell), is that it has always been believed that I am an opponent of televising the House of Commons. Let me explain how that arose and why I have always been misrepresented.
Two years ago I went to a Granada studio in Manchester where a programme was being made in a mock House of Commons on the televising of Parliament. On that occasion I spoke against the televising of the House by way of edited excerpts and I supported the principle of a dedicated channel. The editing led to the removal of the reference to the dedicated channel and I was seen as an opponent of televising the House. As of that date, I have always been known as an opponent of televising the House when that is not the case.
I have always supported the televising of Parliament by way of a dedicated channel and that was why I moved the amendment last year which led to the accusation that we had tabled a wrecking amendment. That is precisely my motive this year in moving a similar amendment, but again we stand accused of moving a wrecking amendment. That is not our intention.
After my intervention the Leader of the House proved my case when he alluded to the Government's commitment to proceed. By inference, that means that the Government will seek to continue the televising of Parliament. He said he could not speak for his successors, by which I assume he meant a Labour Government who, I assure him, would not wish to stop televising.
The public have seen Parliament in operation. A decision has been taken and the public would not expect it to be reversed. Equally, they expect an additional service and that is what the amendment would secure. Last year I voted against television because we were not to have a dedicated channel. I wanted no other method of televising the Commons, but this year I shall not vote against the main proposition because the public clearly want television to remain in the House.
I shall continue to press my case for a dedicated channel and shall return year after year with amendments until we get it. Last year 98 hon. Members supported my amendment. I was accused then of being in the pay of Murdoch, of being employed by Sky television and of having shares in Amstrad dishes. Nonsense, rubbish and garbage fuelled the campaign to discredit my case for a dedicated channel. People thought that we were threatening future televising, but all those stories were totally untrue and sought to discredit what I believe to be the way forward.
On today's Order Paper my amendment is supported by 189 other hon. Members. During the day that list has been reduced by 23 and the reason for it is simple: once again people were fed the stories about Murdoch and Sky television and were completely misled into thinking that this is a wrecking amendment. That has never been the case. There was concern because some hon. Members think that my amendment may be accepted. Some people are angry about that and I have had some heated discussions today about it. Equally, I have been aware of the considerable pressure exerted on many of my hon. Friends to withdraw their support for my amendment.
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The tactics of my hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) are clear. He has said that if we do not comply with the conditions in my amendment the signals will be turned off and the right to televise will be removed. That is rubbish because that cannot happen. The Leader of the House knows that he could never publicly sustain such a decision.
Sir Geoffrey Howe rose—
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I am not giving way to the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He replied to my intervention and now he may want to attach conditions to that reply. He would do well to read his reply.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: The hon. Gentleman must allow me to intervene. The argument being advanced by him is his, not mine. My argument is perfectly clear and is built upon the hon. Gentleman's words. He says that until he gets a dedicated channel he will return year after year with an amendment. If his amendment is carried there would be no permanence about televising and we would have debates year after year. In the absence of such certainty there would be no confidence in the arrangements for making televising permanent. I do not think that any hon. Member is against a dedicated channel, but we want to secure a permanent commitment now. Thereafter we can have a dedicated channel as soon as we can get it. That will not be helped by the hon. Gentleman's assertions about my words.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I understood from what has been said that the arrangements for administering transmission will remain the same for the next 12 months. Therefore, we are not moving forward during that time.
Mr. Grocott: My hon. Friend knows that arrangements for the permanent televising of the Commons are quite different from temporary arrangements. They require much planning and proper recruitment of staff and the establishment of facilities. The House cannot possibly do that until it knows for certain that, without qualification, the Commons will be permanently televised. My hon. Friend's amendment would prevent that.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: If my amendment were accepted, I am sure that there would be some swiftly convened meetings at which decisions would be taken. They would decide how the channel was to he funded and who would meet the cost. They would construct the arrangement for the dedicated channel, if only to secure the survival of television in the Chamber after June next year. That is the sort of pressure that must be exerted on broadcasters to make them come to their senses. At the moment many of them say, "What is in it for us?"
Mr. Austin Mitchell: It is not the broadcasters.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: They are behind the Commons broadcasting unit and have some responsibility. The amendment places an onus on people and organisations to come up with the goods, the dedicated channel. They would respond because they would be aware of the pressure. Last year's report said:
"If our orders of reference are extended as we have recommended, we ourselves propose to monitor closely developments in this field during the course of the experiment, so that any arrangements about the arrangements for permanent televising … can be taken on the basis of the most up-to-date information possible."

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We expected developments this year but nothing has happened. All the resolutions moved in Committee by the hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) were defeated. The monitoring and the initiatives that we were promised last year have not occurred. The Committee will examine these matters next year, but is it any more likely that decisions will be taken then? We must exert pressure now to ensure that very important decisions are taken as soon as possible.
To those who ask whether a dedicated channel is a practical proposition I reply that one has already been in place. Most people and most hon. Members are unaware that for three weeks last year the House had a dedicated channel that transmitted from the beginning of proceedings until late in the evening. It was set up at a moment's notice because an operator dropped his commercial interest in a transponder that he had been using for transmission to the Netherlands.
Mr. Grocott: People could not watch it in Workington.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Anyone in my constituency with an Amstrad transponder receiving dish could have watched our proceedings for three weeks at the beginning of this Session. Some of my hon. Friends will endorse that. I inquired today about how long it would take me to set up a dedicated channel and I was told that it would take 48 hours.
Mr. Austin Mitchell: How much would it cost?
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Within 48 hours a dedicated channel could be operating and could cover the whole of the United Kingdom on Astra or Amstrad dishes. The technology is there and the dishes are being sold. As more of them are sold we could get national distribution by way of a dedicated channel.
Mr. Mitchell: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I shall do so in a moment.
Mr. Mitchell: My hon. Friend said that last time.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: My hon. Friend the Member for The Wrekin spoke about other ways of televising our proceedings. I understand that the Leader of the House is thinking about cable, but I do not think that my hon. Friend is considering that because he knows that most of the country will never see cable. I shall never see it in west Cumberland. It may be installed in parts of Birmingham, or Manchester and in the centre of other major cities, but we shall not see it. If my hon. Friend is thinking about other forms of public service broadcasting, he will have to talk about big money. The state will not foot that bill.
The hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson) talked about satellite transmission by way of an Astra transponder of which there are 16. I understand that one of those would be the cheapest way to get national coverage for the House of Commons at the earliest possible opportunity. It could come to the House within 48 hours. However, because things here move slowly, the House may take 365 days for what I could do in a couple of days. My amendment would allow 363 days of further delays, which arise out of the way that things happen in this place. I believe that we should go down that route as rapidly as possible. The technology is available. We are
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told that it will cost £5.5 million to hire a transponder and to fund the uplink, which I understand to be the means of lifting the technology from earth to the satellite.
Where will the money come from? The public should pay nothing. It could be partly funded through public subscription from multiple users of television equipment receiving the astral transmission. It could be partly funded through specialist advertising. It might be that, in the early years, it could be pump-primed by a small amount of public money, although I do not think that that is essential. The major television companies are used to subscription services because they use the Press Association and Reuters.
Where is the market? It will be at centres of learning, universities, schools, further education colleges, libraries, local authorities, financial institutions, corporate bodies, private viewers and, perhaps the most interesting, regional stations. Let us take the example of Border Television. Perhaps its chap in Westminster has telephoned to say that I have done a 30-second slot. Why should Border Television have to ring down to London to arrange for it to be fed up the line on some complicated basis? There could be a television in a studio in Carlisle picking up a continuous transmission from London by way of the astral satellites. The company could then select precisely what it wanted and avoid all that nonsense that it has to go through at the moment. We are going the long way round because that is convenient for people who are London based or who are in the business, and want to protect their position. I am not saying that especially about Border Television's representative in the House because I know that he has far wider duties and he does some excellent programming. There are vested interests in maintaining the present structure.
Why do we need a dedicated channel? We want more comprehensive coverage, which would help the public to gain a more balanced view of our proceedings. It would enable regional television more effectively to monitor for excerpts that it thinks are important to its local viewers. It would redress the balance between Front-Bench and Back-Bench Members by giving more exposure to Back-Bench contributions, which invariably come later in the debate. All the research shows that, to some extent, the Front-Bench spokesmen hog much of the broadcasting time. I am not saying that that is unreasonable; it is because Front-Bench spokesmen come earlier in the debate.
A dedicated channel would help to end the advantage to those who are often given preference in debates. We all know who we mean—the budding Fathers of the House. I say in the presence of my fine and right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) that that applies to Privy Councillors who also receive preference. People complain, but nothing is done about it. A dedicated channel would deal with that unreasonable preference. It would provide greater coverage of Committees. The Chairman of the Select Committee on Agriculture said that his Committee had important business, yet often the broadcasters came only for the humdrum stuff because there were few slots available for material from Select Committees.
A dedicated channel would counteract the splitting of questions for sound bites from the Floor. I have been worried on a number of occasions because the questions asked on television are not the same as those that I heard asked on the Floor. Indeed, Ministers' answers are also

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split. Perhaps those who do the editing do not think that it is important to carry the whole question, but I think that it is. It could lead to a misrepresentation of the question or of the answer. If there was a dedicated channel, at least the true text would be available.
A dedicated channel would stop the sort of incident that happened during the Public Accounts Committee debate last year. Much as I love my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—fine parliamentarian that he is—his contribution to the debate should not have received the television coverage that it did. The debate on the Public Accounts Committee lasted for three or four hours and we examined a number of value-for-money reports from the National Audit Office and from the Committee. But what was broadcast that night was an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover in which he challenged members of the Select Committee. I make no criticism of my hon. Friend because he did not select the material to be broadcast. He said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Mr. Sheldon), the Chairman of the Committee, "You are all on the Select Committee and you are all part of the cosy consensus in this place. You all work together and you are all compromised. I will not have any part of it."
That was the sole contribution from the Public Accounts Committee debate in the broadcasting of the House of Commons. That is wrong and we cannot proceed on that basis. It misrepresented the proceedings of the debate. A dedicated channel would put an end to that sort of broadcasting and people could see exactly what happened.
I ask hon. Members to support my amendment. It puts pressure on those who are responsible to set up a dedicated channel. They know that it could be done rapidly.
8.6 pm
Mr. Roger Gale: As the only member of the Select Committee who voted against the adoption of the report, I wish to place on record my appreciation of the tremendous technical work and achievements of John Grist, who ran the experiment, Patrick Harpur, the originating television director, and his camera and technical teams. I say without reservation that they have delivered a technical experiment of the finest quality in the world.
There are technical problems that still need to be overcome, and my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House referred to some of them. I notice that the lighting in the Chamber tonight is miraculously at a slightly lower level than usual, but it still causes problems for some hon. Members, especially those on the Back Benches who get more of the glare in their eyes. The sound system is archaic. That is no fault of the broadcasters; the system was taken over by them and has not been modified for television. It it clear that, if the televising of the House is to proceed, the sound system must be replaced urgently. That would be to the benefit both of the television audience and of hon. Members, who are finding it increasingly difficult to hear if the Chamber is full and noisy.
Hon. Members have referred to the televising of Committees. Technically, they also leave a great deal to be desired. If we are to proceed, it is high time that at least some of the Committee Rooms were equipped with the same sort of remote cameras as there are in the Chamber.
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I do not think that there is any doubt in the minds of hon. Members that the cameras in the Committee Rooms are obtrusive. They also take up space that democratically might be better used. It is ironic that that was especially true during the proceedings on the Broadcasting Bill, when cameras took up space that members of the public wanted to occupy.
The Hansard reporters have made it abundantly clear that they find the sound systems in the Committee Rooms intolerable. A balance has to be struck between the microphones being used for broadcasting and for the provision of tapes for the Hansard transcriptions. Those highly professional people find it extremely difficult to do their job. If we are to proceed, I hope that that difficulty will be addressed with all possible urgency. I should like to think that the sound systems in the Committee Rooms might be unceremoniously ripped out and replaced during the summer recess.
Those technical criticisms are valid, but they do not detract from the professionalism and technical expertise that has gone into the experiment. It justifies the work that the original Select Committee put into the preparation of the experiment. That Select Committee was severely criticised by hon. Members, including some who are in the Chamber tonight, for inordinate delay. Apart from those who were hellbent on getting the cameras in at any price, most hon. Members probably recognise that almost a year of preparatory work was extremely worth while. We were able to learn from the experience of others, and as a result we were able to require and be given a state-of-the-art experiment. I am most grateful to all those who took part in it.
The Select Committee report touches on some vital matters that will have to be addressed in future, but it omits others. It is still a tremendous sadness to me that we have cameras in the Chamber and in some Committee Rooms, yet we are not prepared to provide Members of Parliament with the communications and information systems that the Canadian Parliament, which contributed so much to our understanding, already enjoys.
The Oasis system is available to all Canadian Members of Parliament and is quite exceptional, but even that is becoming outdated. It is now technically possible for every right hon. and hon. Member to have in his or her office a fax machine and a printer producing, for example, an electronic Hansard. There is no reason for us to destroy the Amazon rain forests that are lying on the Benches now. All that could appear on screen in our offices alongside coverage of the Chamber, recalled coverage of the Chamber from the Library, the databases that are already available, and a host of other material.
One of my original objections to the experiment was that I believed then, as I do now, that it is an experiment in "info-tainment" that does very little to enhance the working lives, the abilities and the performance of right hon. and hon. Members. I am sad that the Select Committee report does not address the ways in which we may improve our performance on behalf of our constituents by using to the best possible advantage the technologies that are now available.
Mr. Nelson: One of the arguments often adduced against us having that obvious and necessary facility to represent the interests of our constituents is that the House would be less live and that fewer hon. Members would be present in the Chamber. It seems to me that all hon.

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Members would attend debates that they wished to attend and those who were not in the Chamber would be better informed about the debates if they had that facility. The argument is complete nonsense and should be turned on its head.
Mr. Gale: There is an irony in that. As my hon. Friend will recall, I voted against the original experiment but, when the decision had been taken, I voted for a free-for-all. I wanted the cameras to show the Chamber as it is. The House—including some Opposition Members who voted for the experiment—decided to restrict what the cameras could show, so that, were we to have a dedicated channel, the viewing public would not be aware that there are now precisely 17 Members in the Chamber.
We cannot receive what is happening in the Chamber in our offices, but I find it hard to believe that there will be fewer than 17 hon. Members here were we allowed to watch the proceedings while sitting at out desks. Quite the reverse could happen. There is a strong argument that, if an hon. Member sitting in his office saw, for example, the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) making his compelling although misguided speech, he might wish to rush down to the Chamber to intervene, so such a facility could bring more hon. Members to the Chamber.
My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House referred to provisions for the deaf. The Select Committee has done a considerable amount of work and has taken evidence from a number of interested bodies, including the Royal National Institute for the Deaf. If the televising of the House is to proceed, we must urgently make provision for the deaf. That is part of the Select Committee's continuing work. We cannot emphasise too strongly our strength of feeling about that important matter.
I now come to the crux of the debate—the dedicated channel. I have listened with great interest to my hon. Friends and colleagues on the Select Committee who do not share my view. I should like to retrace the history of just a tiny part of the televising debate and to recall some comments that have been made in the past 10 years.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) sought to introduce the televising of the House in a short debate on 2 November 1983. Of course, there was no experiment then. The hon. Gentleman said:
"What is the relevance to the lives of the public of a series of impressive, well-considered debates if they hear little of those debates?"—[Official Report, 2 November 1983; Vol. 47, c. 876.]
He used that argument for the introduction of the cameras into the Chamber. That debate was lost, but I have never forgotten those words. What is the point of us speaking here if the public can see or hear little of our debates? Now we have television cameras in the Chamber, but the public can still see or hear very little of our debates.
On 12 June 1989, we debated the first report of the Select Committee on televising the House. The hon. Member for Holborn and St. Pancras (Mr. Dobson) referred to a dedicated channel as an amendment similar to that on the Order Paper had been tabled. He said that most people favour it
"as soon as it is technically possible … Having taken part in the Committee's deliberations, I am reasonably convinced that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee want a dedicated channel as soon as that is technically possible."
Unfortunately, he also said:
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"our investigations have shown that there is no prospect of achieving such a dedicated channel by the beginning of the experiment."—[Official Report, 12 June 1989, Vol. 154, c. 618–22.].
My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), who won that debate and is largely responsible for the fact that we now have cameras in the Chamber, although I do not hold that against him, addressed the amendment that was similar to that on the Order Paper today by saying:
"I will explain why the first is a wrecking amendment."
He used the same words that he used tonight.
"We are concerned with an experiment and the House is concerned that the Select Committee should bring forward recommendations for its implementation. Not unreasonably, it is trying to impose it by the autumn of this year."
He addressed the provision of a dedicated channel, saying:
"it is not a practical arrangement for the short term. If it were made a condition of the package of the main motion it may result in the whole experiment being dropped. It should be seen for what it is: a wrecking amendment which should be dismissed by the House."—[Official Report, 12 June 1989; Vol. 154, c. 649.]
He used precisely the same words this evening.
Earlier this evening my hon. Friend referred, as did the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), to the fact that the House has had a dedicated channel for three weeks. He put forward an extremely compelling argument for a dedicated channel. Therefore, I hope that he will support us in the Lobby. He referred to the dedicated channel experiment, and he did so with some pride. I have to confess that it was I who told the hon. Member for Workington that it would be possible to set up a dedicated channel in 48 hours. However, to set the mind of the House at rest, it is not quite that easy.
During the last summer recess, I spent some time with people at Sky Television, who were interested in demonstrating that this could be done. I also went to see the Astra television people in Luxembourg. To set the mind of the House further at rest, Mr. Rupert Murdoch does not own any shares in Astra.
The Astra television people said they were willing to provide a transponder. British Telecom was also helpful. As one of the companies that is capable of uplinking a signal, it said that it would be willing to donate its services for a trial period. To its eternal credit, House of Commons Broadcasting Ltd. was not obstructive. It said that for a period we could have the signal free.
Therefore, we had the satellite transponder, the company to handle the signal—Sky—the company to uplink it—British Telecom—and the signal from House of Commons Broadcasting. That which we were told this time last year was technically impossible happened at the start of the experiment. On day one—the state opening of Parliament—the House had a dedicated channel. However, the House did not have the courage to go through with it, because it costs money.
Much has been made of the success of the experiment. The hon. Member for The Wrekin quoted reams from a Leeds university report. He also quoted figures. It is curious that both my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester and the hon. Member for The Wrekin derided the satellite audience—800,000, they said—while quoting figures of, at the lowest, 100,000 viewers and a maximum of 1 million viewers to demonstrate that the experiment has been a success.
Mr. Grocott: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gale: Of course I shall give way. I tried to intervene during the hon. Gentleman's speech for exactly this reason.
Mr. Grocott: The hon. Gentleman must compare like with like. One has to compare the number of people who are able to receive the terrestrial channels—21.5 million—with the number of people who can receive satellite and cable television, which is fewer than 900,000. He cannot compare the viewing numbers using the one system with the maximum number of people who are capable of using the other system. Who knows how few would watch our proceedings were they available on cable and satellite? That would be the real comparison.
Mr. Gale: I do not think that the hon. Gentleman can quantify democracy. A large number of people are able now to receive satellite transmissions, either by dish or from satellite to cable head end, by cable. That number will grow astronomically over the next few years. That has been used as an excuse for doing nothing. The electorate have been denied the democracy that my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester and the hon. Member for The Wrekin referred to as being the reason for going ahead with the experiment.
My hon. Friend used grand words: he referred to emerging eastern European nations. He also used the word "beacon." Where is that beacon? It is available now, technically, to those emerging eastern European nations by satellite, but they cannot get it because we are denying it to them. It is time that we put our cards on the table and decided whether all that we are doing is providing clips to tart up "'The Nine o'clock News" or "The News at Ten" or whether we believe in something more significant. If we do, it is time that we got on with the job.
Mr. Lewis Stevens: My hon. Friend is enthusiastic about imposing a dedicated channel on the nation, but is he really enthusiastic about one, two or three channels? Earlier speakers have referred to the great success of televising the Select Committees. If one dedicated channel shows the proceedings in this Chamber, it appears that my hon. Friend would be satisfied to have clips from the important Select Committees and Standing Committees, which would be on a different basis.
Mr. Gale: Let me deal with that technical argument. A year ago, we were told that we could not do it at all, but we debunked that theory and proved in three glorious weeks that it could be done, and it was done. However, that was not enough. Now we must demonstrate how it can be taken forward. The train is leaving the station. The amendment is valid. If we do not move forward quickly, there will be another excuse.
We lost the Astra transmission because the last Astra transponder was sold for commercial purposes. Later this year another Astra satellite, with 16 channels, is to be launched. Some of the channels have been sold in advance of the launch. However, some of them are still available. Shall we come back here in a year's time and say, "We should love to do it, but unfortunately no transponders are available because they have all been sold"? Or shall we take the decision now and allow the electorate to see the House properly at work? It can be done. By the time that the House sits again in the autumn, it would be possible to connect us up, if we chose to do so, in a couple of days.
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We have to ask how it is to be done. My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester asked a salient question. The C-Span organisation in the United States has been cited as a shining example of televising democracy. C-Span is funded by the United States Congress. First and foremost, it is paid for by the state.
Mr. Austin Mitchell: C-Span is financed by the cable industry. It takes 3 cents out of every dollar going to cable. That is how the money is provided. The signal is provided by Congress; the funding is by the cable industry.
Mr. Gale: I have to correct the hon. Gentleman. It was I who first introduced him to C-Span. He ought to be aware that originally C-Span was funded entirely by Congress.
C-Span now has two dedicated channels, not one, because it is necessary to show the House of Representatives and the Senate at work, with explanatory interviews and the work of the committees.
Mr. Richard Tracey: And it shows the House of Commons live.
Mr. Gale: Yes, that is an irony. My hon. Friend says that it shows the House of Commons live. Is it not perverse that the American nation can see the House of Commons live more frequently than we can in the United Kingdom? The answer is that, eventually, we shall need more than one dedicated channel if we are to do the job properly, but let us try to walk before we run. Let us go for what is possible now. What is possible this autumn is one dedicated channel. There would be no great difficulty about providing it. The next argument, therefore, if technically I am right, and I believe that I am, is how it will be paid for.
I moved an amendment in the Select Committee. That is why I voted against the report. Part of the amendment was adopted. The Committee was a little mealy-mouthed about it. In the amendment to the report, I said that, as a prerequisite to the permanent televising of the House, a dedicated channel should be provided, if necessary at public expense. It will be no great surprise when I say that the words "if necessary at public expense" stuck in the craw of some people. It was unacceptable to them. Therefore, I was prepared to go part way and agree the word "adjunct" with my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester who gave me particular support. Nobody, however, could agree about funding.
It has been said, correctly, that approaches have been made to House of Commons Broadcasting. Let me put my cards on the table. The approach was made by United Artists. It approached a number of hon. Members for advice. It is investing heavily in cable systems. Originally, it was interested in supplying the House on a gavel-to-gavel basis. It would have been made available to relatively few cable viewers.
Most of us said that that was not what we wanted. We want as many people as possible to be able to see this House when they want to, not when somebody tells them they have to. Today United Artists has been talking to John Grist, House of Commons Broadcasting and various others to see whether they can come up with a proposal. That is one expression of commercial interest already.
Those of us who believe that satellite is the answer do so because it is the best and quickest blanket-delivery system. The outlying farmhouses that will not get cable for

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a long time—the type of house referred to by the hon. Member for The Wrekin—can have a dish. However, we do not want every rooftop in London or Birmingham to be covered in dishes. We hope and believe that Britain will be cabled as soon as possible. The best way of delivering the House of Commons and many other services to those households is by satellite to cable head end and by cable to the home. The satellite is available now. We must take it before the train leaves the station and before we can use it again as an excuse for doing nothing.
That will cost money. The rough estimate is that it will cost about £5.5 million a year. Who pays? The hon. Member for The Wrekin went through a shopping list of people who might pay. It may be necessary to put public money into the establishment of a House of Commons unit and a dedicated channel. I am prepared to see that happen. If we believe that this has something to do with democracy—the House has apparently voted for the presence of the cameras on the assumption that it does—we must take that to its logical conclusion. If the public—both of those who watch—want the service, they must be prepared to vote the means. That is taxpayers' money.
I am no great advocate of the expenditure of more public funds, but I believe that the public will get their money back. I am prepared to see the establishment of a House of Commons unit and, if the House wishes, I am prepared to see the franchise offered to the highest bidder. That person will make money out of an experiment such as this and out of a dedicated broadcasting system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nuneaton (Mr. Stevens) asked about Committees. As we know, the House sits from 2.30 in the afternoon to about 1 am or 2 am on most nights. Occasionally it goes all night. However, on many nights there are probably about 12 hours of air time when the House is not sitting. That could be available for Committee coverage, political discussions, interviews and, if necessary, advertising. However, I do not think that we need go down that route.
The satellite system is by far the best method of delivering the signal of the House to the small independent television companies. The hon. Member for Ross, Cromarty and Skye (Mr. Kennedy) is in his place. He has a particular interest in the reception in Scotland. The fastest way to get the signal to his viewers is by satellite. We all know that, if a major story is breaking in the House and the hand is sweeping round towards 6 o'clock, the big companies with the greatest clout such as Granada, Central and the London stations will have the line time. The small companies are pushed to one side. By satellite, every company can have access to what it wants when it happens. I believe that satellite delivery to independent stations and to BBC regional stations is the cheapest way of delivering the signal. It would save enormous sums on line costs, and I believe that those stations would be prepared to pay.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: May I ask the hon. Gentleman a simple question? He said that the transponder lines will be lost unless we take them up now. What will happen if they are lost? Are any other satellites coming on stream? When will the window open again?
Mr. Gale: The Hughes Corporation of America has said that it intends to launch a satellite with 104 channels.
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However, that will not be for another two years, because it intends to go for digital picture transmission and that is a developing technology. I am not saying that there are not other potential channels available to us, but if we choose to take the plunge we have a simple and ready-made system now. We know that it works because we have tried it.
In addition to the independent companies that I believe will wish to subscribe, we have those which already subscribe such as C-Span, American television which finds the House of compelling interest. In fact, it finds it of greater interest than does the United Kingdom audience. There is Canadian political television and the Commonwealth in its entirety. There will be a demand for European satellite transmissions. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester said, the sooner we can show the work of this House as a democratic assembly on satellite to the developing democracies of eastern Europe, the better. We can do it now.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes: My hon. Friend has listed a number of commercial television companies in this country, such as C-Span and Canadian television, which he said would pay towards the running of the highly expensive transponder. Does he have any indication from any of those companies that they would be prepared to pay? I do not believe that they would pay anything.
Mr. Gale: I am interested in the phrase "highly expensive". My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) has worked for the BBC. He will know that, in broadcasting terms, £5.5 million is a drop in the ocean. To many people that sounds like a lot of money, but to Independent Television companies and to the BBC it is peanuts. It is peanuts that are readily and easily recoupable. The answer to my hon. Friend's question is yes. I cannot remember whether he came with us to Canada when we took evidence from the Canadian House. The Canadian media get their signal free, but I am sure that he will recall that, when I asked the press gallery in Ontario whether it would be prepared to pay, the answer was an unequivocal yes.
I believe that there is a market in the City. I see no reason why City institutions and industries who find the workings of the House of value in their business life should not be prepared to pay a subscription. If we go down this road and create an additional arm to the democracy of the House, as I hope we will, the British electorate must have this service free of charge. I see no reason why those who have a commercial interest in the re-broadcasting of material should not be prepared to pay for it. The principle is well established. Commercial companies subscribe cheerfully to Reuters as a news service, the Press Association and Visnews, which produces television pictures which those companies buy. There is no reason why they should not subscribe and possibly save money on line costs.
What have we come down to? The system can be paid for by the taxpayer if the House wills it, or the money can be recouped from industry. It is technically possible now. There is nothing in the amendment, which I and another 180 hon. Members have signed, that will deny the continuation of the experiment. The suggestion that if we take this route the House will be switched off is nonsense. We are seeking to concentrate the mind of the House. A year ago, we were told that this was a wrecking

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amendment. We will not buy that argument tonight. We have demonstrated that it can be done. We believe that, if it is to go ahead, the public will want it done. It can be done within the next 12 months, and we should get on and do it.
We have a chance to decide tonight either to treat the United Kingdom electorate like grown-ups and allow them to decide what television from the House they see, or we can go on allowing Auntie BBC and Uncle ITN to decide which bits of the House are fit to be seen. I believe that the former is infinitely desirable. It is possible now, and I hope that the House will vote for it.
8.38 pm
Mr. Charles Kennedy: I welcome the success of the experiment. Congratulations have come from both sides of the House. I hope, with the exception of the amendment, that the outcome of the rest of the votes at the end of the debate will be something of a foregone conclusion in that the House will clearly show its support for putting the televising of our proceedings on a permanent basis.
The history of these debates, not least of the past two years, stretching back to when the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) was introducing Bills and agitating—
Mr. Austin Mitchell: Positively prehistoric!
Mr. Kennedy: I acknowledge that fact.
It is heartening that the principle of televising is not the subject of debate and that technicalities or aspects of that principle are engendering more heat across the Chamber.
Two fears were expressed at the outset, the first of which was the intrusiveness of cameras in the Chamber. Despite the various physical problems that have been experienced from time to time, with heat more often than sound, no hon. Members have found them too intrusive. The second fear stemmed from the visit of members of the Select Committee to the Ottawa Parliament. Listening to its members increased hon. Members' apprehension that there would be a massive amount of play acting and staged demonstrations in the Chamber. That has not happened.
Constraints were placed on the much maligned broadcasters. In the original debate two years ago, the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) was characteristically offensive about broadcasters and made predictions of what would happen to our procedures as we became pawns at their disposal. That has not happened, despite the ludicrous constraints that we placed on professional broadcasters to produce an accurate visual image of this set. They are to be congratulated on, the journalistic flair that they brought to the task, on the originality of their programmes and—this anxiety is often expressed by hon. Members—the sense of humanness and sense of humour which, where appropriate, they have injected into their coverage of events.
The broadcasters have been faithful to the character, traditions and personality of the House. All too often, pomposity attaches itself to our proceedings and certainly to some of the egos or personalities in the Chamber. When hon. Members do not like what is portrayed on the screen or how it is portrayed on the radio airwaves at 8.40 each morning at the end of the "Today" programme or in "Yesterday in Parliament", they tend to blame the messenger, to say that the fault lies in the stars and that it
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cannot possibly lie with us. In the portrayal of 650 hon. Members, who at times are idiosyncratic and certainly highly individualistic, one cannot blame the broadcasters for seeking to draw out that humanness. In my anecdotal experience—I am not untypical in this respect—over the period of the experiment, without missing the political messages that hon. Members try to send, without losing their ability to judge a good or an unsound argument, a Government decision that is justifiable or one to which they are not sympathetic, as much as anything else the public have responded to the human interest of Parliament. Rather akin to the lead character in "Death of a Salesman", hon. Members who live or die by their ability to sell themselves, political ideas and parties should not knock a medium that is broadcasting this institution and adding more human interest than might have been the case before.
There have been problems for broadcasters. They have made commendable contributions to regional emphasis, but none the less they have occasionally run into practical difficulties. As the hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) alluded to my interest in Scotland, I again underscore the need for something to be done about the chamber at the old royal high school in Edinburgh to overcome its sound difficulties. It is a high irony that, for once, this is an issue on which we can predate the Government. If one leaves aside developments beyond what used to be known as the iron curtain, in western Europe we have the most ready-made, modern and supposedly parliamentary debating chamber in Edinburgh, but its sound capacity is absolutely disastrous for modern broadcasting requirements. At some stage, an exercise should be carried out to see what the requirements were when it was thought that if devolution was agreed the chamber would be up and running within 10 years as a modern parliamentary base.
In general, within the constraints that have been placed on them, broadcasters have done a tremendous job. The problem is that they must reflect a House of Commons that is elected by a first-past-the-post system of politics, which makes the Labour and Conservative parties predominant. The layout of the House is based on a confrontational view of politics. It is not a hemicycle, as in many European countries, so its procedures reflect the usual channels and a two-party system.
As the televising experiment has continued, it has given rise to difficulties for representatives of third parties. Although I spoke as a Liberal Democrat member of the Select Committee, I was mindful throughout that I was a representative not of my party but of all third parties, if I can so describe them. Issues and implications for televising, which perhaps members of third parties feel acutely, are, none the less, extremely relevant to Conservative and Labour Back Benchers. In the submission made by my party, which was included in the final published report of the Select Committee, we highlighted a few of the implications for the political balance and the procedures of the House. I wish briefly to deal with them because they are in the report for any Member of the House or the public to read.
There is live coverage of the House on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. We know from the monthly rotation of departmental question time that some question times will not be covered live. Questions on Wales, transport and energy are often asked on Mondays. Scottish questions, which are always on a Wednesday, are covered live in

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Scotland—I am not complaining about that—but other question times that fall on Monday or Wednesday will never be covered live. Will broadcasters review their schedules—obviously, they want to cover Prime Minister's Question Time because it is the highlight of the show twice a week—or will the House revise its procedure on the cycle followed for departmental questions?
There has undoubtedly been an increase in the length of the speeches of Front-Bench spokesmen, and the figures will bear that out. The length of Opposition responses to Government statements has also increased. The net effect is that Back-Bench speeches—Second Reading debates being the most obvious example—are pushed further and further back and are less likely to appear in the main news schedules. That is true of hon. Members speaking for the Ulster Unionists, Liberal Democrats or one of the nationalist parties.
Mr. Kilfedder: And the Ulster Popular Unionist Member.
Mr. Kennedy: Or speaking as a respected Member of the House. In a debate on Northern Ireland there may be lengthy speeches by the Secretary of State, followed by a shadow spokesman and another Conservative Member. If the leader of the Ulster Unionists is called, it may be after 6 pm, by which time his legitimate viewpoint on a salient issue will not be heard. That is the practical impact, which is of concern to members of third parties, but equally it should be of concern to Back-Bench Members of the two main parties in this House. Another effect is that more people are being forced into the 10-minute rule period of debates, which I am not against in principle, but the 10-minute rule barrier now falls on speeches earlier in the evening.
Finally, televising has meant increased pressure on Question Time, and the figures contained in the report are disturbing in that respect. The extent to which non-Labour or non-Conservative Members are called within departmental Question Time appears to be suffering.
There are implications for broadcasters in the points that I have mentioned, but televising also has implications for the House—it affects the way in which we organise and run oursleves. I hope that the Select Committee on Procedure will examine that aspect. The excellent report by the university of Leeds, which refers to my party on page 14—I shall not detain the House by quoting it now—highlights the difficulties that have arisen.
I see from the Order Paper that eight of my hon. Friends have signed the amendment tabled in the name of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), which the hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) spoke about in detail and with such clarity. I am prepared to go a long way down the line of their arguments because, like most hon. Members, I am in favour of a dedicated television channel. The problem is that we have to separate that principle from the pragmatics of what the Select Committee has been trying to deliver. While I remain committed to the principle, and I hope to the delivery of a dedicated channel, given the present limited spread of satellite availability in this country, I cannot see how we do Parliament a democratic service by making the service available 24 hours a day to a limited number of
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people, while, unsatisfactory though it is, we are delivering selected excerpts to the vast majority of people. On that basis, the amendment will not have my support.
In the past, when this place has reformed itself there have always been those who have predicted that the reform in question would mark the end of civilisation as we knew it. The debates on votes for women offer a classic example in this century. There were those who predicted much the same for televising, but I think that at the end of the day it has enhanced Parliament and made it more accessible. When one's constituency is as far from London as mine, that is an overwhelming vote in its favour. People's votes elect Parliament, people's taxes pay for it, so surely the public have the right to see what is being done in their name. Added to that right is the right of the deaf community to follow our proceedings. That has been the subject of attention—I hope that it will give it continuing attention—by the Select Committee.
I hope that we shall become more relaxed about and more trusting in the professionalism of British broadcasters, and drop the remaining restrictions. Anyone sitting in the Strangers' Gallery of the House can see with his own eyes what happens on the Floor of the House. The same right of access to that information must be given to someone sitting in the comfort of his own home with the television switched on. We cannot continue to deny people that.
Despite my concern about the impact of television coverage on Back Benchers and third parties, I shall certainly support the Select Committee report tonight, if only in the hope that it will act as a spur to bring the entire institution of Parliament into the 20th century just as we begin to head towards the 21st.
8.54 pm
Mrs. Marion Roe: I shall endeavour to keep my remarks brief and to the point, as I certainly would not wish to deprive fellow hon. Members of air time on this important issue.
I believe that the one-year experiment in televising the proceedings of the House has been a television success but a political failure. I certainly endorse the points made by the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale). Televising has provided entertainment at low cost for the television stations. Edited highlights appear on the evening news bulletins, enabling the political correspondents to spice up their coverage of the proceedings of the House.
If all that the intrusion of television cameras in this place had produced was a handful of happy journalists with a few innocuous highlights on the evening news, I would have been happy to vote to keep the cameras here. But, as every hon. Member knows full well, that is not the end of the story. For example, the arrival of television has had a strange and unforeseen effect on the behaviour of many hon. Members. None of us is blameless, but all of us are dealing with a powerful force beyond our control. Television has brought out the worst in us all. Hon. Members are not, even at the best of times, publicity shy. Indeed, as we all know, there has to be a streak of the actor in every hon. Member. The successful politician certainly cannot afford to eschew publicity. To succeed in politics one has to get noticed—on the hustings, in speeches, on

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television or on radio. There is nothing that the average politician likes to hear more than the sound of his own voice.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: Or her voice.
Mrs. Roe: Yes, with respect to my colleagues, his or her voice. Until the arrival of television cameras in the House, there was a series of moderating influences on what might be called the theatrical tendency. New Members of Parliament learn that certain forms of behaviour and dress are unacceptable in the Chamber. The House of Commons is the nation's most important forum for serious debate on matters of the utmost importance to our future. It is not, as some cynics derisively claim, a talking shop. What is happening in the Chamber matters.
Attention-seeking tactics are out of place in such an environment, and time-wasting exhibitionists have little real contribution to make to serious political debates. Until now most hon. Members have recognised that fact. Those hon. Members who are incapable of doing so—wilfully or through sheer dimness—have to contend with the wrath of the Whips, or with you, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the ultimate sanction against cases of what are, in effect, political exhibitionism was the fact that it was unlikely to get much publicity. It was pointless and puerile, and that was so until the arrival of television cameras in the House.
Now the rules have changed, and the effects have been largely inimical to serious debate and good government. I disagree with the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott). The arrival of the television cameras has given show-offs the big audience for which some of them certainly yearn. More than that, as my right hon. and learned Friend mentioned earlier, television has forced many perfectly sensible Members of Parliament to go to absurd lengths so that they can be seen "on the box". The average television viewer, seeing his Member of Parliament on the screen, will assume that such a sighting is mere chance. In fact, it is more than likely that the hon. Member carefully positioned himself—or herself—so that he would be picked up by the television cameras.
Little does the unsuspecting viewer know the lengths to which certain hon. Members will go to be seen on national television. It is a sad fact that hon. Members check up on who is asking the Prime Minister questions beforehand so that they can sit next to the questioner and be guaranteed to appear on television screens in millions of homes during the evening news bulletins. Other hon. Members gravitate towards Mr. Speaker's Chair so that they can be seen when the television cameras zoom in on you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
None of that is especially surprising; now that the cameras are in the House, it is understandable that hon. Members should want to be seen doing their job by their constituents. I am sure that many hon. Members who are here tonight have participated in lengthy debates, only to be asked by a constituent after the event, "Where were you?". The answer is that the hon. Member was there all right, but in the 90-second package for the 10 o'clock news—which condenses six hours of debate, with perhaps 20 different speakers and as many interventions—not every contribution is covered.
The sight of hon. Members scrambling to sit within camera shot reminds me of those outside television broadcasts in which an interviewer speaks to camera with
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a couple of young children bouncing up and down pulling faces in the background. Who, after all, can resist the lure of publicity?
In addition, to those who merely scheme and plot in an honest fashion to appear on camera, there are the hon. Members who deliberately try to draw attention to themselves. Every Back Bencher knows that the contribution most likely to make it through the cutting room to the evening news is the absurd, the insulting, the provocative or even the jocular, and it is well known that outrageous points of order raised after Prime Minister's questions have a very good chance of finding their way on to the television screen.
The past year has proved that good television and good government are not synonymous, although I attach no blame either to broadcasters or to hon. Members. Hon. Members are merely responding to the introduction of a medium that forces them to behave differently; broadcasters are merely giving the viewers the choicest morsels of the day's proceedings to keep them entertained.
The failure of televising the House in its present form can be summed up in two words—design and money. If the Chamber had been specifically designed to accommodate television cameras, things might be different. A modern circular Chamber, with every hon. Member assigned a place, would help to get round the ludicrous problem of hon. Members stalking round the Chamber trying to find a spot where they are likely to be seen on the box. As for the other problem—money—the broadcasters say that they cannot afford the substantial set-up and running costs of a dedicated television channel. But if a television channel were set aside for the proceedings of the House and its Committees, the public would be able to see a far more balanced picture of what happens here. As it is, all that the great majority of the population see are a few brief edited highlights on the evening news. As well as giving the public a much fairer view of what hon. Members do, I suspect that a dedicated television channel would have the advantage of encouraging hon. Members to behave in a slightly less publicity-hungry fashion.
I do not wish to be wholly negative about the televising of the House. I believe that it is good news that a wider audience has been able to witness the exchanges between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition every Tuesday and Thursday: those weekly sessions have contributed to my party's continuing popularity in my constituency.
9.3 pm
Mr. Tony Benn: There are many ways in which this issue can be examined. One is the purely technical one about the changes in technology that would make it possible for more people to see more easily what happens here and elsewhere. There has even been the introduction of a financial element, in terms of the investment opportunities that might be created by a dedicated channel.
I am primarily concerned with the politics of the matter—the effect the cameras have on the relationship between the electors and their representatives. People have often spoken about the rights of hon. Members, but it has always seemed to me—indeed, I wrote an article in TV Times in 1957 calling for the televising of the House of

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Commons—that the real case for it is that the electors who sent us here would know what we were doing in their name. I think that that is the most important point.
It is long overdue. What a terrible loss to posterity that former hon. Members such as Winston Churchill, Clement Attlee and so on were not filmed. We would have had them on archive. Now that we have introduced the televising of our proceedings, I do not want to run any risk of terminating it because of the difficulty of establishing a dedicated channel.
Despite what was said by the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe), most of the fears about the behaviour of hon. Members have been laid to rest. No one who knows the House or its history believes that only television caused disturbances. The King came here when there was no television and tried to arrest five Members of Parliament. He was not seeking publicity. There have been disturbances on many occasions. My father used to tell me about the fighting that occurred when the Irish Nationalist Members were here. Charles Bradlaugh was brought to the House. The other day I visited the room where the Supervisor of Broadcasting works. It is the prison cell where Bradlaugh was imprisoned for trying to take the oath although he was an atheist.
Some hon. Members are slowly beginning to discover that if they want to be given attention they should not put on a new suit, get a clean shirt or have a better hairdo; they should raise the quality of their argument. If that message gets across, it will entirely justify televising.
Enormous tributes have been paid to the mass media. I am an old broadcaster. I started work after the war as a BBC producer and I still have an interest in it. We must recognise that there is a conflict between those who claim the right to speak because they work in the media and those who claim the right to speak because they have been elected. That is the essential conflict that has been tilted in our favour by the televising of Parliament.
To appear on "Question Time", we have to be invited by the producer. We are made up. The microphone is placed behind us so that no one at home can see that it is there. We are interrupted by Robin Day all the time. But in the House it is not like that at all. We are lucky to be called. If we are called, Mr. Speaker does not name an hon. Member and say, "Now it is time for a speaker from the hard left", or, "Now it is time for an hon. Member from the Tory wets." We are called by our constituencies. People can make up their minds about us according to what we say. We are not made up and we are not interrupted. It is important to recognise that there are important differences.
I often think about the qualifications needed to be a Member of the House of Commons. What is so marvellous about it is that there is none. That is why it is such an interesting assembly. The only qualification that we have is that we have been elected. I got my calculator out today to find out how many people had voted for me since I arrived in the House. I can tell the House that 379,056 people have voted for me in the 14 parliamentary elections in which I was elected. Those are my only qualifications, but they are the qualifications that every hon. Member has to be heard. That is what is important.
Although it is true that it has been much better to have our proceedings televised than not, I share entirely the
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view that exchanges on Tuesday and Thursdays between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition are simply transmitted to zip up the evening bulletins. Previously we were given a picture of the people speaking and perhaps some of the sound broadcasting. Now we have the whole exchange. Television material has been an opportunity to illustrate the way in which the media want to cover politics. That is very bad. That is why I am strongly in favour of a dedicated channel, which I shall deal with in a moment.
Some examples have been given today. Let us take the debate on embryology and abortion, which aroused strong feelings. Views for and against were not confined to one side of the House. It would have been much better to have produced an edited version of the debates and made them available not only on the air but in videos which could be used by sixth forms, universities and so on.
In a debate before Christmas the hon. Member for Tatton (Mr. Hamilton) was lucky in the ballot and moved a motion stating that socialism was dead. It was the first time that I have heard socialism discussed since I have been in the House. Certainly, a debate on socialism has never been promoted by my party. A few of us got together and tabled an amendment. It was, dare I say it, a marvellous debate. The hon. Member for Tatton was provocative. The chairman of the Conservative party came in. My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Heller) spoke. All sorts of hon. Members spoke.
A few days later I met two young women who run a video company, 20th Century Vixen. Being rather slow on the uptake, it took me a long time to realise the parallel with 20th Century Fox and that they were feminists. They edited the five-hour debate on socialism and called it "The Commons on Socialism". It was an absolutely brilliant job. Every speaker was included and the balance was absolutely fair. I wrote to the Leader of the House about it, and showed it to the Supervisor of Broadcasting and the hon. Member for Tatton, but the Committee did not turn its mind to such projects.
It is absurd that our speeches are not freely available on video because, dare I say it, the quality of the debate, when one forgets the partisan exchanges on Tuesdays and Thursdays, is of a high order. People do not get here just by accident; they have experience and when hon. Members choose to speak they usually know what they are talking about, but many of those contributions are left out because they are not newsworthy.
I hope that the ban on the use of material is lifted. Hon. Members will be aware that anyone can buy a five-hour video tape for £20—that is what I paid for "The Commons on Socialism". If hon. Members buy such videos or want to make them available to sixth forms, what is wrong with that? People might argue that such videos would be selective, but Hansard is available without any copyright restriction. If one had a 40-minute summary of the debate on socialism, which was held that Friday and with it went the copy of Hansard, made available to sixth formers or students of the Open University, it could be a useful resource. The video I purchased offers an important precedent and it is worth while developing it.
I hope that the Committee will consider a wider use of our material. I understand that it was afraid that people would use such videos as a vehicle for advertising or to make fun of hon. Members, but, as Harry Truman once said, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen".

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We cannot stand on our dignity if people want to see our proceedings and nothing could be more amusing or damaging than "Spitting Image" is.
A lot of other things that go on in the House should also be considered for broadcast, for example, the relationship between hon. Members and their constituents. Is there any reason why the full, mature life of an hon. Member should not be reflected when they are lobbied by pensioners, war widows and the like? The record of our parliamentary debates should not just reflect hon. Members' speeches—they represent a fraction of our work in comparison with the correspondence into which we enter, and the petitions and lobbies we receive.
We must also look at the House itself in the light of this new opportunity. I know, Mr. Speaker, that with your wig you are extremely popular all over the mid-west of America. I believe that C-Span has made you known from Ohio to Wyoming.
A party of sixth formers from a school in my constituency went round the House the other day with a guide. When I met them I asked them what happens in here and there was an awfully long pause before they could answer. The intelligibility of this place is not improved by its quaint methods and procedures.
Without going too far beyond the subject of this debate, in the years that I have been here the House has lost many of its powers. There are 30,000 American troops stationed here over whom we have no control whether or not we pass the annual Army order. Brussels has taken responsibility for our legislation and we cannot reject it when it comes back to us. The International Monetary Fund and perhaps the Bundesbank will increasingly take responsibility for our financial affairs. What does the House have left? The answer is that it is the great forum of the nation.
On Monday I had a discussion with you, Mr. Speaker, so far as it was in order so to do, about whether we should discuss the interview given by the former Secretary of State for Trade and Industry on Germany and the European Community. We have our rules and procedures which you interpret, Mr. Speaker, as you are required so to do by our Standing Orders. I do not believe, however, that the public understood why the one place—here—that could not discuss that matter was the place where the action was. We should have more contemporaneous debates because if we do not discuss what the people are considering, we shall become irrelevant as a forum as well as a legislative body, which is already happening fast.
When we come here as hon. Members we have certain clear things to do. The first is to represent our constituents, and any hon. Member who rises to his feet to defend a constituency interest is doing his job and should be respected, even if it is badgering, as it sometimes is, or disorderly, and I have known that to happen too.
Secondly, we have a duty to explain what is happening, because it is a puzzling world and I find that there is today a great thirst for understanding which in many respects is not best met by the mass media, which want to oversimplify or in some way to mystify. The media sometimes put up the experts or present matters in such a way that a n incident here is only a party battle. People want explanations and we are, in a strange way, uniquely qualified to give them.
But, above all, this House—if it could get through to the public on a dedicated channel—could recover democracy for the people from the media. Politics in Britain is now a spectator sport. People stay at home,
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watch television and wonder who will win the World Cup. Or they watch "Newsnight" and wonder who will win the general election. They do not see any difference between their role in the World Cup—because not everybody can play the game—and their role in the election.
The media, the pollsters, the people who hype it up and the public relations people who engage in politics have taken the democratic process away from us and made it something that highly paid experts want to manage for us. This House is made up of people whose commitment to politics is real because we are answerable to our constituents. When I am in Chesterfield tomorrow, everybody I see will be my employer. That is the difference between our role and pleasing a producer so that one may get on the telly. We meet our employers.
The House has an opportunity to do something about that state of affairs, particularly if it demands a dedicated channel. I would have redrafted my hon. Friend's amendment. I do not want to make it conditional, so I would simply have amended it to read,
"and instructs the Committee to finance and provide a dedicated channel by this time 12 months."
Had my hon. Friend worded it in that way, I would have voted for it. I fear that at present the amendment might be interpreted as demanding a pause instead of a decision.
Whatever we do, let us remember that this place is a talking shop, a place where people's ideas can be heard and where debate can be real. The older I get, the less impressed I am by the abuse and the tricks played between parties, because I want to hear the argument. I want to know what the case is for and against the ERM or any other issue, and how we should deal with the debt crisis and so on. I suspect that people sitting at home, not being engaged in the daily business of these affairs in the way that we are, want to know what we really think.
The hustings are enough for the election. But the people want to know our views, and television offers a unique technical opportunity. It has come too late for my satisfaction, but it is providing us with a chance to do something. It must, of course, be under our control and not handed over to someone to make money, because it is possible to make a lot of money. We should control and finance it. If we give every candidate free postage in a general election so that all the candidates, including those who lose, can get their views over to the general public, why cannot we finance, for educational purposes—for our education as much as theirs—a dedicated channel?
I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) not to make the amendment conditional. A dedicated channel is essential, or we shall simply become new pawns in a media game in which they will use the bits that they think fit their pattern. In many cases they are writing dramas in which we are allowed to play our part if we fit their script, but not if we do not. I have described what should be the basis of our approach to this issue.
9.18 pm
Mr. James Kilfedder: I subscribed my name to the amendment standing in the name of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours), consistent with the way in which I voted when this matter previously came before the House. I voted wholeheartedly for the televising of our proceedings, for the simple reason mentioned by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr.

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Benn)—that the people of the United Kingdom are entitled to hear and see what is being done in their name. They have the right to see what is happening in this Chamber. That is why I believe that a dedicated channel is essential and that that channel should be completely under the supervision of the House.
Democracy can flourish only with open government, when the people feel close to Members of Parliament and to what is happening here at Westminster. There can be no doubt that, in the constant battle between the Executive and Parliament, the televising of our proceedings must help to give some muscle to hon. Members who wish to impose some restriction on the powers of the Executive. I am wholly committed to the permanent televising of the House.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes: I understand my hon. Friend's long attachment to the televising of Parliament. Did he catch the important point made at the end of his speech by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn)? He made virtually the same point that my hon. Friend is making, but he also made the distinction that to link the permanent televising of the House with a dedicated channel within 12 months could make the amendment a wrecking amendment for the permanent televising of the House. If those who say that a dedicated channel may not be possible are proved right, the amendment will turn out to have been a wrecking amendment. We must be cautious about the amendment in its present form.
Mr. Kilfedder: I want to emphasise that the amendment is not a wrecking amendment. No hon. Member who has added his or her name to it wants to wreck the possibility of televising Parliament. What the hon. Member for Workington and all hon. Members who subscribe to the amendment are doing is showing that we are determined to get a dedicated channel. The only way to do that is for us and for Parliament to flex our muscles. In that way, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) said, we should be able to have a dedicated channel within 12 months. Even if it did not come within 12 months, the televising of Parliament would proceed. However, the only way to get a dedicated channel is by showing our determination to have one.
As I made clear in my intervention, I am not satisfied with the present broadcasting of the House. People outside see on their television screens only what the television producers and editors permit them to see, and that is contrary to the democratic principle. Why should we permit the media manipulators to censor the televising of our proceedings? What is taking place now is censorship. That applies to all parts of the United Kingdom, but especially to my own region of Northern Ireland.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, South (Mr. Forsythe) will agree that the coverage of speeches made in the House by most Northern Ireland Members is limited and, in some cases, non-existent. I have spoken in the Chamber on a number of occasions since television was introduced on matters that I regard as important not only to my constituents, but to everyone in Northern Ireland. Yet none of those speeches was broadcast by local Ulster Television or by BBC Northern
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Ireland, although they say that they are providing the people of Northern Ireland with a proper record of what is taking place in Parliament.
I should have thought that Northern Ireland, of all parts of the United Kingdom, needs to have Parliament projected into the homes of all its people—not only because of the terrorism there, but because we are being ruled by direct rule, an undemocratic system of government which can be given some democratic flavour only by the fact that the people of Northern Ireland hear what Members of Parliament are saying and what contributions they make to debates in the House.
Whatever the reasons for that shortcoming, the people of Northern Ireland are being denied proper coverage of the proceedings of this House and of contributions by Ulster Members of Parliament. That is not true in all cases. There are exceptions. Ulster Television is very fond of giving coverage to my hon. Friend the Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley) whenever he contributes to our debates here.
I have consulted Scottish and Welsh Members and with Lobby correspondents covering those areas of the United Kingdom, and it is beyond doubt that those Members of Parliament, together with others throughout the United Kingdom, receive proper coverage. Why is the same not done for those representing Northern Ireland constituencies? I speak not only of Unionist representatives. For example, I know that the hon. Member for South Down (Mr. McGrady), who represents the SDLP, makes a similar complaint. It is wrong that Northern Ireland Members of Parliament should be discriminated against in that way.
I do not know why UTV and the BBC fail to provide proper coverage, but that matter ought to be investigated. It is an appalling situation, and I trust that the Leader of the House agrees that there should be a review of the coverage given by BBC Northern Ireland and by Ulster Television of our proceedings, especially of the contributions of right hon. and hon. Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies.
The only way that we can ensure that the people of Northern Ireland and of the rest of the United Kingdom do not suffer a form of television censorship is to have a dedicated channel. There could then be no tampering with transmissions to the public, with coverage confined to snippets on the one o'clock or six o'clock news. Instead, the public could view the whole proceedings and hear everything that is said. Until such a service is provided—and the sooner the better—we shall not be allowing the public to enjoy parliamentary democracy in its fullest sense, which they deserve.
9.27 pm
Mr. Austin Mitchell: I do not believe that a debate on the experimental televising of Parliament should degenerate into an orgy of self-congratulation, perhaps with the exception of the remarks of the hon. Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) and of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours). Nevertheless, I admit that such self-congratulation is deserved because the experiment was a great success, and ours is a healthier democracy because of it.
I may add, however, that that success was entirely predictable and predicted. All the findings of the

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Independent Broadcasting Authority, Leeds university, Aston university, the BBC and the Hansard Society say that it is a great success, but the researchers have the air of parents congratulating their child on being toilet trained at the age of 10. I am not sure what the usual age is—or what it was for my kids, because in those days fatherhood was not a life sentence—but it is much younger than that. The question is why it took us so long to do something so necessary and so right, which has enhanced our standing, increased interest in Parliament among the public, and provided us with a feedback that strengthens our case against Ministers. The televising of our proceedings allows us to do our job better in testing the cases made by Ministers for their policies, and in putting the arguments before the public.
All the quibbles about whether the behaviour of right hon. and hon. Members has degenerated, whether they are wearing brighter ties, or whether some have been given a franchise to become egomaniacs are simply silly.
I hope that we shall surrender tonight the veto that we have over television. What is of importance is not how television may change this Chamber—and the changes have been minimal—but the effect that it has outside, which is uniformly beneficial. That is what we should be talking about.
We have achieved that success as much by good luck as by good management. We have evolved a rather curious, ramshackle structure for our television, part public, part private, which was produced at the last minute after the Committee had wasted nearly a year. I make no criticism of the contractors. They have worked brilliantly, particularly the contractor responsible for the Committee coverage, which has been a major success.
Technically, the coverage is the best of any legislature that I have seen and the efficiency of the touch screen system and the quickness of response is brilliant. But the structure has turned the mother of Parliaments into a scrounger, looking to other people to finance the service that we should be providing ourselves as part of the public's education, as part of doing our job.
That service should be provided, as Hansard is provided, free of charge. What we are providing is a Hansard in the electronic medium from which people obtain their news and information on current affairs. We should be financing the service, not looking to the BBC or ITV, which are already strapped for cash, largely as a result of Government policy. That makes us dependent on them and it makes it more difficult to move to the next stage, which is dedicated coverage. The people to whom we could look to finance that are now using such sums to finance the coverage that we should be paying for.
Far too much time has been devoted to the amendment. It took an hour to make a point that was Jesuitical in its casuistry. We should of course have a dedicated channel. We always should have had a dedicated channel. It always was essential and we should now set out to provide it with urgency. But it is not an alternative to the coverage on existing channels through news and current affairs programmes.
As a supplement to what has been done already, we need a public affairs channel in Britain, like C-Span in the United States, on satellite and from that into cable, which will carry the Commons, the Lords and the Committees, full time, gavel to gavel—or gabble to gabble in my case. When Parliament is not sitting, that channel could carry
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public affairs, whether in the form of conferences, press conferences, lectures, seminars or any other form of public affairs.
Such a channel would give to the political nation its own channel in the same way as the sports enthusiasts, the movie buffs and the news freaks have their own dedicated channels. That would allow them to watch what they want, to follow the argument without interposing the authority of television producers, who have been overwhelmingly effective and sensible in their choices but who, nevertheless, are interposed between us and the public.
It must be said that television producers do have a preference for the show biz, the sensational, or, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn) said, the gambling horse race element in politics. That is one reason for the excessive coverage of Prime Minister's Question Time rather than the coverage of the job that we do well, which is testing the argument, in many cases to destruction when it comes to this Government, through serious contribution to the debate.
I support, actively and energetically, a dedicated channel, but I am suspicious of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington and the hon. Member for Thanet, North coming bearing in gifts. They have been opposed to the principle of television on the terrestrial channels for so long that I cannot help seeing, their amendment as another means of carrying on their old and dead arguments against coverage.
The amendment is a pistol to the head of the House and I do not want to endanger the game that we play in any way at all. I want to achieve a dedicated channel. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield that it would have been better if the Committee had had a deadline of a year and been told to achieve it and provide it. It should have been left at that and not been made dependent on anything. It is the next great advance and is all about an educated, involved and informed democracy that knows what is being done in its name by its elected representatives. I hope that achieving that dedicated channel, which is the next thing that we need, does not take as long and is not subject to as many frustrations as the achievement of what we are commemorating today.
9.35 pm
Mr. David Amess: I fully recognise that as a consequence of my speech I shall receive less regional television coverage. I doubt whether in any future capacity I will receive an offer to chair a chat show.
I regret that we ever embarked upon this experiment and I certainly do not think that it has been a success. That is because politicians by their very nature are not modest creatures. For whatever reason, we have allowed ourselves to be seduced by the media. Increasingly, the House seems to be more media-driven than the other way round, and I regret that. Some hon. Members seemed to think that if we were seen on television we would be better loved by our constituents. Politicians all want to be loved, but over the last year I have not seen anything that has improved our esteem.
Some of the claims in favour of televising our proceedings were flawed. First, it was said that television would bring hon. Members back to the Chamber. It has certainly not done that tonight. People crowd in here only

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at peak TV times and it is difficult for Back Benchers to squeeze into the key positions that enable them to be seen by their constituents.
A distinguished hon. Member said that this place is a theatre. I resent that description, because anyone who knows anything about the theatre knows that it is bad television. The House is a special place. This is the mother of Parliaments and our proceedings have been copied by countries all over the world as a shining example of how things should be done.
Television has spoiled the special atmosphere of the House. It is extraordinary to define democracy as the ability of people to watch their Member of Parliament on television. Many people do not watch television, and many do not wish to watch it. I do not support an experiment that has not even improved the general standard of behaviour. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe), who said in her excellent speech that Prime Minister's Question Time is popular. However, I do not know how on earth my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister can hear the questions put to her above the noise and the racket. Not many people will be impressed by that.
We have trivialised our proceedings, and Members of future Parliaments will never know how this place used to be. Although I am opposed to the televising of our proceedings, if we must have television cameras in this place I should like people to see us warts and all. That is why I support the amendment calling for a dedicated channel.
9.38 pm
Mr. Richard Tracey: As one of the members of the Select Committee on Televising of Proceedings of the House, I should like to be associated with the expressions of thanks and appreciation voiced by hon. Members for the work carried out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons and by his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy. They ably chaired the Committee, kept us all at work and helped us to produce constructive findings. Equally, I wish to be associated with the thanks expressed to Mr. John Grist, the Supervisor of Broadcasting, and to Professor Blumler of Leeds university. Mr. Grist advised on the technical aspects and Professor Blumler on the measure of interest and support among both Members of Parliament and the public. Without those people working with us, our job would have been exceedingly difficult.
There is no doubt that the experiment has been a success, and that was stated in the Select Committee's report. One clear piece of evidence for that is the very lack of large numbers of hon. Members in the House tonight. When we had a major debate on the matter two and a half years ago, initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), the Chamber was full and there were some lively contributions. A number of those came from the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. Ashton), who took the view that televising this place would lead to the frothy bits going out on the air and the whole procedure being high theatre. He certainly thought that that was the intention of the producers, and that the House and the public would get nothing out of it other than high theatre.
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During that debate, I made a speech that since has characterised me as an opponent of the televising of the House. I share the desire of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) to clarify the position. I said that the only way to televise the House was through a dedicated channel, from the beginning to the end of our proceedings. I said that we were probably four or five years too early and that, eventually, technology would reach a point where such a service to the public could be provided—not only through satellite, but through more terrestrial channels. Indeed, the phrase used this evening—and it was used in that previous debate—was "a Hansard of the air." That should be our objective. We could then deliver to the British public information on the workings of this House in exactly the same way as they would receive that information if they came to sit in the Gallery to listen to our debates, or if they were to read the Official Report.
Although I said in that debate that we were conducting the experiment too early, and I voted against it for that reason, I accept that it has been successful, and that it has proved a number of things. First, it has proved that the cameras are not intrusive. The Select Committee took longer in its deliberations than the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) would have wished. He said a number of times in the press, on television and on radio that we were dragging our feet. He also said that he was up to his ankles in envy because he was not serving on that Committee. No doubt he would have made some valuable contributions.
Although our deliberations took a long time, we drove forward the technology, so that the manufacturers of the cameras and a great deal of the other equipment seriously took on board the fact that we did not want cameramen and all the other encumbrances of television in the Chamber. We wanted the smallest possible cameras and the most sophisticated lighting. Because of the time the Select Committee took and the study that it made, we have achieved that.
Where do we go from here? Like my hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) and the hon. Members for Workington and for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder), I want to make it clear that I am not associated with the amendment as a wrecking amendment. I am sure that others who have put their names to the amendment would share that view. The House now has to focus precisely on where we go from here. If setting a time limit such as 12 months will make the House focus on a dedicated channel, we must do that.
Mr. Patrick Thompson: I am listening to the debate with great interest and with some uncertainty about how I shall vote on the amendment. Can my hon. Friend explain what would happen in the event of a dedicated channel not being in place after 12 months, despite the will of the House?
Mr. Tracey: My hon. Friend was not here earlier when that matter was raised. A perfectly acceptable view has been put forward that, because the House appears to be universally devoted to continuing televising proceedings, a motion will be tabled to extend the operation of televising. I do not want to speak for much longer before we hear again from my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House.
Mr. Grocott: We are Members of Parliament, and our trade is words and language. If what the hon. Gentleman is saying is true—that voting for the amendment will not in any way risk the continuation of the present televising arrangements—why does the amendment not say that? Why were those words not put specifically in the amendment when it was drafted? Why is the amendment being proposed and seconded by those who have consistently opposed the televising of the House?
Mr. Tracey: Unnecessary paranoia is creeping into the debate. Many of us have said quite clearly that we want to improve the televising of the Chamber and make it more available so that people can see our proceedings without selective editing or in selected parts.
My constituents and others who know that I am a member of the Select Committee have told me that they wish to see far more live televising of the House. The only proceedings that they know will be live are Prime Minister's Question Time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and possibly special occasions such as the Budget. Otherwise, most people do not know of precise live transmissions from the House. I do not believe that too many people want to get up at 8.30 in the morning to watch the workings of the House of Commons.
As my right hon. and learned Friend the Leader of the House said, it is unfortunate that there is no late evening programme on the major terrestrial channels, although there may well be one on BSB, as we heard from the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) earlier in the debate. Apart from the recorded extracts and the pull-together programme with commentators, the public want to see live transmission of the House, and the more of it the better, judging by the remarks made to me by people in industry and in the City. I was with a leading industrialist from the defence industry today, who said that it would be useful to see an entire transmission of a Question Time that was particularly relevant to that industry.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chichester was arguing against the amendment, but told us that he believed that schools and universities would very much welcome a dedicated channel and continuous broadcasting. From my point of view, and that of my hon. Friends, the amendment was tabled in good faith. We want to improve the televising of the House so that the British public can see us absolutely as we are and listen to the development of arguments. I rest my case on that premise and I invite hon. Members to vote for the amendment.
9.49 pm
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I thank hon. Members, in particular my hon. Friends the Member for Surbiton (Mr. Tracey) and for Chichester (Mr. Nelson), for the thanks that they extended to me and in particular to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, South and Malden (Mr. Wakeham) for our chairmanship of the Committee. Our report laid a good foundation for the debate. Virtually nobody argues against the televising of the proceedings of the House being put on a permanent basis. However, there had to be one exception—my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon (Mr. Amess). I am glad that the breed is not wholly unrepresentative, but that puts the matter in perspective.
I thought for a moment that my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mrs. Roe) was joining the same
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camp. She set out a substantial catalogue of television's characteristics: that it is selective, that it is entertainment, that it is trivial. Has she never read the parliamentary sketch writers? What does she think about their selectivity and the entertainment that they provide? The same characteristics have always applied to the press. I thought that her arguments were adequately rebutted—I rarely say this—by the right hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benn). Let us therefore assume that most hon. Members want the televising of our proceedings to be made permanent.
A number of topics have been raised by hon. Members in all parts of the House, and the Committee will have to apply its mind to them. My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet, North (Mr. Gale) and other hon. Members referred to the need to improve the quality of sound in the House. Yesterday, the sound in the Edinburgh chamber was bad. We must improve the facilities for the deaf and provide adequate access to the archives. The right hon. Member for Chesterfield should not imagine that we have rejected, without having thought about it, his request for an edited video of debates. The Committee has not yet been able to agree on a set of guidelines that would reconcile the legitimate demand for wider access to our proceedings with the need to protect the rights of the House and individual Members. We shall certainly consider that important point.
My hon. Friend the Member for North Down (Mr. Kilfedder) referred to the television coverage of Northern Ireland debates as an example of unfair regional coverage. The general verdict on regional coverage was favourable. We received no evidence on that point from Northern Ireland. The Leeds group did not exempt Northern Ireland from its generally favourable verdict on coverage. If, however, my hon. Friend the Member for North Down wishes me to do so, we could ask the Leeds group to re-examine its raw data on that question and find out whether there is any cause for concern. In any event, we shall keep the matter under review.
Different views were expressed about the rules of coverage. As the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) suggested, they will be kept under review. Political coverage will be a matter of permanent and continuous interest to us all. All those matters will form part of the Committee's agenda in the months ahead.
My final point, which is at the heart of the debate about the amendment, is that the discussion takes place on the premise that all hon. Members are dedicated to a dedicated channel. No hon. Member has said that he does not like what we have now. However, all of us would like a channel that carried the whole of our proceedings from beginning to end, for reasons that to me make entirely good sense.
Everyone who has access to the channel will receive an uncut, unedited and completely comprehensive presentation of our proceedings. Those who say, "I shall vote for the amendment because I want a completely dedicated channel," are missing the point of the debate. We all want a dedicated channel. Paragraph 172, which was referred to by the hon. Member for The Wreking as well as by me, could not put it more plainly. The wording takes account of suggestions made by the hon. Member for Thanet, North:
"We reiterate our belief in the need for a dedicated channel providing continuous, unedited coverage of the House's

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proceedings and we recommend that his should be provided at the earliest opportunity, as an adjunct to the permanent televising of the House."
—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) is muttering that we said that last year. I do not want him to rise to his feet, however, so he can mutter from his sedentary position.
During the year, we have been looking at all the possibilities for promoting a dedicated channel and we shall go on doing so. The case for a dedicated channel is accepted. The case against the amendment is that it makes permanence conditional. The extraordinary wording at the beginning of the amendment says:
"Line 2, at end add 'provided that within 12 months from the date of the approval of this resolution'".
The question that must be resolved once and for all is whether television stays in the House. Wording such as that in the amendment would achieve what the hon. Member for Workington wants, which is the prospect of a debate every year.
Mr. Campbell-Savours rose—
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am sorry, but I will not give way. If that were hanging over the industry, confidence would disappear and uncertainty would take its place.
Mr. Campbell-Savours rose—
Sir Geoffrey Howe: I am sorry, but I will not give way.
The Committee and I have been taking part in discussions with organisations already as to how we can move towards a dedicated channel. We want to address ourselves to the question whether we have an independent unit for the House or a House unit. The Committee has to get such questions under way. We have to decide on promoting arrangements, who shall be in charge, recruiting people and arranging for them to be recruited. If all that were to be subject to an annual debate in the same way as the Army Act, which was abolished some years ago, it would be absurd.
If we vote in favour of the amendment, the press and outsiders will see it as a vote for uncertainty. We need to achieve a permanent answer to the question whether television stays in the House.
The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Mr. Mitchell) put the issue simply when he said that we are not required to choose. We are all saying that we want to have permanent dedicated television and we do not want it to be subject to a hangover condition such as that contained in the amendment.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I understand that there is to be a free vote tonight. Can the right hon. and learned Gentleman assure me that Ministers are permitted to vote in different Lobbies? That is all I seek.
Sir Geoffrey Howe: This matter has always been the subject of a free vote, and it will be no different tonight. It has also been the subject of consideration by mature Members from both sides of the House over the past 12 months. As I said when the matter was last voted upon, seven of the 20 on the Committee considering the matter voted against it but, as a result of our work together over the past 12 months, all except one have concluded in favour of the words recorded in our recommendations—[Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Thanet,
1274
North campaigned against it and, to be fair to my hon. Friend the Member for Surbiton, he was not there when we had the critical vote. However, the overwhelming majority of the Committee, having thought about it carefully, said, "For heaven's sake let us go ahead with it." That seems to be the right conclusion to reach for both sides of the House.
For the benefit of those who were not here a moment ago I shall repeat the phrase that the hon. Member for the Wrekin and I have both emphasised. In our recommendations upon which the House is invited to vote tonight, we said:
"We reiterate our belief in the need for a dedicated channel providing continuous, unedited coverage of the House's proceedings and we recommend that this should be provided at the earliest opportunity, as an adjunct to the permanent televising of the House."
That is the objective to which I, with the help of the Committee, shall dedicate myself. We want to achieve it as quickly as possible. That would be made more difficult if my hon. Friends and others were to vote for the charter of conditionality which begins:
"provided that within 12 months from the date of the approval of this resolution".
We want not a proviso for permanence but permanence itself, and I ask the House to vote for it.
Question put That the amendment be made:—
The House divided: Ayes 67, Noes 94.

Division No. 308]

[10 pm

AYES

Arbuthnot, James

Lightbown, David

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Maclean, David

Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Malins, Humfrey

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Marlow, Tony

Bottomley, Peter

Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Bright, Graham

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Monro, Sir Hector

Buck, Sir Antony

Morris, M (N'hampton S)

Butterfill, John

Moynihan, Hon Colin

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Pendry, Tom

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Pike, Peter L.

Carrington, Matthew

Portillo, Michael

Cash, William

Roe, Mrs Marion

Chope, Christopher

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Cran, James

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

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

Summerson, Hugo

Fallon, Michael

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Forman, Nigel

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Forth, Eric

Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Franks, Cecil

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Gale, Roger

Tracey, Richard

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Trippier, David

Gordon, Mildred

Ward, John

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Watts, John

Ground, Patrick

Wells, Bowen

Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

Williams, Rt Hon Alan

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Wilshire, David

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Winterton, Nicholas

Janman, Tim

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Kilfedder, James

Younger, Rt Hon George

King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

Kirkhope, Timothy

Tellers for the Ayes:

Kirkwood, Archy

Mr. David Amess and

Knapman, Roger

Mr. Clifford Forsythe.

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

Question accordingly negatived.
Main Question put:—
The House divided: Ayes 131, Noes 32.

Division No. 308]

[10 pm

AYES

Arbuthnot, James

Lightbown, David

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Maclean, David

Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Malins, Humfrey

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Marlow, Tony

Bottomley, Peter

Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Bright, Graham

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

Monro, Sir Hector

Buck, Sir Antony

Morris, M (N'hampton S)

Butterfill, John

Moynihan, Hon Colin

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Pendry, Tom

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Pike, Peter L.

Carrington, Matthew

Portillo, Michael

Cash, William

Roe, Mrs Marion

Chope, Christopher

Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

Cran, James

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

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

Summerson, Hugo

Fallon, Michael

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Forman, Nigel

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Forth, Eric

Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Franks, Cecil

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

Gale, Roger

Tracey, Richard

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Trippier, David

Gordon, Mildred

Ward, John

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Watts, John

Ground, Patrick

Wells, Bowen

Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

Williams, Rt Hon Alan

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Wilshire, David

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Winterton, Nicholas

Janman, Tim

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Kilfedder, James

Younger, Rt Hon George

King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

Kirkhope, Timothy

Tellers for the Ayes:

Kirkwood, Archy

Mr. David Amess and

Knapman, Roger

Mr. Clifford Forsythe.

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

NOES

Alexander, Richard

Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

Allen, Graham

Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

Arnold, Sir Thomas

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Batiste, Spencer

Chapman, Sydney

Bevan, David Gilroy

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

1275

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Cope, Rt Hon John

Meale, Alan

Cormack, Patrick

Miscampbell, Norman

Cryer, Bob

Mitchell, Sir David

Dewar, Donald

Morley, Elliot

Dixon, Don

Mudd, David

Dobson, Frank

Needham, Richard

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Nicholls, Patrick

Durant, Tony

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Dykes, Hugh

Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

Evennett, David

Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Paice, James

Fisher, Mark

Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)

Fookes, Dame Janet

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Foster, Derek

Rathbone, Tim

Fraser, John

Redwood, John

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

George, Bruce

Renton, Rt Hon Tim

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Riddick, Graham

Grocott, Bruce

Ruddock, Joan

Hampson, Dr Keith

Sims, Roger

Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

Skinner, Dennis

Harris, David

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Haselhurst, Alan

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Haynes, Frank

Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Stern, Michael

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Stevens, Lewis

Howard, Rt Hon Michael

Thorne, Neil

Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Howells, Geraint

Tredinnick, David

Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

Vaz, Keith

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Viggers, Peter

Illsley, Eric

Wallace, James

Irvine, Michael

Warren, Kenneth

Jack, Michael

Wheeler, Sir John

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Widdecombe, Ann

Kennedy, Charles

Wigley, Dafydd

Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

Wood, Timothy

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Yeo, Tim

Lilley, Peter

McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

Tellers for the Noes:

Maclennan, Robert

Mr. Austin Mitchell and

McNamara, Kevin

Mr. Anthony Nelson.

Division No. 309]

[10.13 pm

AYES

Alexander, Richard

Dobson, Frank

Allen, Graham

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Arbuthnot, James

Dykes, Hugh

Arnold, Sir Thomas

Evennett, David

Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

Fenner, Dame Peggy

Batiste, Spencer

Fisher, Mark

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Fookes, Dame Janet

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Foster, Derek

Bevan, David Gilroy

Franks, Cecil

Blackburn, Dr John G.

Fraser, John

Bottomley, Peter

Garel-Jones, Tristan

Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

George, Bruce

Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Buck, Sir Antony

Gordon, Mildred

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Greenway, John (Ryedale)

Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

Grocott, Bruce

Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

Ground, Patrick

Carrington, Matthew

Hampson, Dr Keith

Cash, William

Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

Chapman, Sydney

Harris, David

Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

Haselhurst, Alan

Cook, Robin (Livingston)

Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Haynes, Frank

Cope, Rt Hon John

Henderson, Doug

Cormack, Patrick

Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

Cryer, Bob

Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

Dewar, Donald

Howard, Rt Hon Michael

Dixon, Don

Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

1276

Howells, Geraint

Pike, Peter L.

Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

Rathbone, Tim

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Redwood, John

Hunt, David (Wirral W)

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

Hurd, Rt Hon Douglas

Renton, Rt Hon Tim

Illsley, Eric

Ruddock, Joan

Irvine, Michael

Sims, Roger

Jack, Michael

Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

Kennedy, Charles

Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

Kilfedder, James

Stern, Michael

King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

Stevens, Lewis

Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

Summerson, Hugo

Kirkwood, Archy

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Lilley, Peter

Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

Thorne, Neil

MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Maclennan, Robert

Tracey, Richard

McNamara, Kevin

Tredinnick, David

Madden, Max

Trippier, David

Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

Vaz, Keith

Meale, Alan

Viggers, Peter

Michael, Alun

Wallace, James

Miscampbell, Norman

Warren, Kenneth

Mitchell, Sir David

Wheeler, Sir John

Morley, Elliot

Widdecombe, Ann

Morris, M (N'hampton S)

Wigley, Dafydd

Morrison, Sir Charles

Williams, Rt Hon Alan

Moynihan, Hon Colin

Winterton, Nicholas

Mudd, David

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Needham, Richard

Wood, Timothy

Newton, Rt Hon Tony

Yeo, Tim

Nicholls, Patrick

Younger, Rt Hon George

Nicholson, David (Taunton)

Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

Tellers for the Ayes:

Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

Mr. Austin Mitchell and

Paice, James

Mr. Anthony Nelson.

Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)

NOES

Amess, David

Molyneaux, Rt Hon James

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Patnick, Irvine

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Pendry, Tom

Chope, Christopher

Portillo, Michael

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

Powell, William (Corby)

Durant, Tony

Riddick, Graham

Fallon, Michael

Roe, Mrs Marion

Forman, Nigel

Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

Forsythe, Clifford (Antrim S)

Skinner, Dennis

Forth, Eric

Stradling Thomas, Sir John

Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

Taylor, Teddy (S'end E)

Janman, Tim

Ward, John

K
Kirkhope, Timothy

Wells, Bowen

Knapman, Roger

Wilshire, David

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

Lightbown, David

Tellers for the Noes:

Maclean, David

Mr. Tony Marlow and

Malins, Humfrey

Mr. James Cran.

Question accordingly agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House agrees with the Select Committee on Televising of Proceedings of the House in its First Report (House of Commons Paper No. 265—I).

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).
STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.

  HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS SHIPPING SERVICES
  That the draft Undertaking by the Secretary of State for Scotland with the consent of Her Majesty's Treasury and of Orkney Line Ltd. and Shetland Line (1984) Ltd., which was laid before this House on 28th June, be approved.—[Mr. Patnick.]
  Question agreed to.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).
  That the draft Undertaking by the Secretary of State for Scotland with the consent of Her Majesty's Treasury and of Shetland Line (1984) Ltd., which was l
  aid before this House on 28th June, be approved.—[Mr. Patnick.]
  Question agreed to.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  SEA FISHERIES
  That the draft Sea Fish Industry Authority (Levy Powers) Order 1990, which was laid before this House on 27th June, be approved.—[Mr. Patnick.]
  Question agreed to.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101(5) (Standing Committees on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

  LEGAL AID AND ADVICE
  That the draft Legal Advice and Assistance (Scope) (Amendment) Regulations 1990, which were laid before this House on 12th June, be approved.—[Mr. Patnick.]
  Question agreed to.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 102(5) (Standing Committees on European Community documents).
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

  GAME AND RABBIT MEAT
  That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 9825/89 and the Supplementary Explanatory Memorandum submitted by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food on 2nd May 1990, relating to game and rabbit meat; and supports the Government's aim that any Community measure resulting from this proposal provides consumers with adequate public health safeguards but does not impose unnecessary burdens on game producers and processors.—[Mr. Patnick.]
  Question agreed to.

Radioactivity
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Patnick.]
10.25 pm
Mr. James Cran: I raise tonight a question of importance not only for my constituency but nationally. That question is radiation, and hon. Members will agree that it is a sensitive subject that causes concern to everyone, and in particular to those involved with its containment.
To that end, I cite the Baxter report, which was commissioned by the East Yorkshire health authority as a result of a cancer cluster problem in my constituency. That report requires public comment by the Government—by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution and by the National Radiological Protection Board—because the report's recommendations, if they are correct and scientifically based, raise national implications for the exposure to radiation of the work force in non-nuclear industries.
I am not a scientist. The report was actioned by a collection of scientific heavyweights, led by Professor Baxter, a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. He has a personal chair at Glasgow university and has 24 years' research experience in the area with which we are concerned. He was aided by Dr. East, Dr. MacKenzie and Dr. Scott, all of whom have similar backgrounds and scientific credentials.
A critique has been prepared on the subject. It has been sent to me—not by the National Radiological Protection Board, because it was prepared for that board by Mr. Hipkin, Mr. Stather and Mr. Wilkins—and it says on the front page:
"This document has been prepared for internal use within NRPB. The contents should not be quoted or the document made available outside NRPB without the consent of the Head of Industrial Operations Department."
My constituents cannot read the report because, as I say, it is confidential. But they can read the Baxter report, so the Government and the agencies that represent the Government in this area must come out into the open with their conclusions about what the report says. The Baxter report and the NRPB critique illustrate the great difficulty for the public when experts on crucial matters such as this fall out. I have no option but to elicit a response from the Government by quoting those recommendations.
The first recommendation is startling. It is that there should be an urgent reassessment of the radiation exposure limits for employees in industries such as mining, coal-fired power generation and chemical production. That means that, according to Professor Baxter, there should be a re-examination of the Radioactive Substances Act 1960 and particularly of the exemption orders. A governmental response is required. The upshot of all that is that Professor Baxter says that after 30 years of improved scientific understanding—and this is the important point—that means that the old statistical limits are several hundred times too high. That is a considerable order of magnitude and has considerable implications, if true, for the workers who are exposed to radioactivity at work at normal industrial companies.
The whole issue is illustrated clearly in my own constituency in the case of a company called Capper Pass. That company has been the subject of investigation for radiation emissions before. I must make it clear that the

1279
company has always observed the advice it has received from Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution and from the National Radiological Protection Board, so no blame attaches to it. The question is what advice the company is being given. If Baxter is correct, it would seem that the work force in that company and in similar companies throughout the country are being exposed to radiation limits that could—I emphasise that word—be too high.
The additional problem with the 1960 Act is the many exemptions attached to it. Baxter says that the provisions do not cover the great majority of Capper Pass feed materials—that is, the raw materials going through the works. Yet he points out that, in 1984, the NRPB assessment of those very raw materials suggested that workers could be being exposed to radiation doses that were 10 times the present public level. If true, that is extremely worrying. I hope that my hon. Friend will be able either to reassure me and say that the report does not have any credence or to say that it does, and that he intends to act.
Baxter also says that there is another considerable problem in relation to these companies and to the way in which the raw material is processed, which is that there is inadequate attention to what is called the ALARA principle—as low as reasonably achievable. That merely means internationally agreed requirements that attention has to be paid to the reasonable minimisation of exposure to radiation. Baxter says that, if attention had been paid, the consequences of the growing obsolescence of the 1960 Act, to which I have already referred, would have meant that the whole question would have been less significant. It seems, therefore, that, if Baxter is correct, he may raise questions about the official advice that companies are now being given.
The scientific validity of the Baxter report is clearly open to some dispute if the critique prepared by the NRPB is correct. I am not quoting that report here, because it is confidential, even supposing that I might be able to do so. I am not quoting it, because my constituents cannot read it, so I am looking to my hon. Friend to tell me why the scientific validity of the report is unsupportable.
Baxter says that there has been a dramatically improved understanding of the same radio-nuclides as in the Capper Pass raw materials. It is now believed that the exposure radiation from these is 30 times greater than was the case 30 years ago—which, coincidentally, is when the 1960 Act was passed.
Baxter is saying clearly and roundly to the Government that the 1960 Act needs clear revision. He says that it is outdated, that it does not take account of the latest scientific advances, and that therefore the Government should act. The Act permits large-scale handling of ores, of intermediates and of waste products, some of which may contain uranium and thorium, which will expose workers to radiation beyond the recommended limits. I know perfectly well that my hon. Friend is sufficiently aware of the requirements for health and safety. If he were convinced that that was the case, he would act. The question is whether or not the advice that we are being given is accurate.
I do not have time to discuss this highly technical subject in the depth that I would like, but I hope that I have imparted to my hon. Friend the Minister the importance of the issue for health and safety reasons.
1280
There can be little doubt about that, and the Government must make up their mind as to whether or not the report is correct.
From a constituency point of view, the excessive radiation exposures at Capper Pass may be relevant to the cancer cluster problem in my own constituency. I remind the House that the recently-published Gardner report highlighted the apparent association between the incidence of leukaemia among youngsters at Sellafield and the radiation levels to which their fathers were exposed at the Sellafield station. If Baxter's conclusions are correct, perhaps they should not necessarily be confined to just the nuclear industry.
The problem is a serious one for my own constituents, but it also raises national issues. Little has been heard from the relevant bodies, including the Government. I do not criticise them for that, because time is needed to assess conflicting advice and to move public opinion along at the same time. Nevertheless, I ask my hon. Friend the Minister for a statement on the Government's current position, and what they feel that they should do for the further protection of workers in non-nuclear companies in this country.
10.36 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Patrick Nicholls): I very much welcome the opportunity that my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley (Mr. Cran) has provided to review the controls that are exercised over exposure of workers to radioactivity in what is termed "non-nuclear industry". It is not a single industry but covers a range of commercial and service activities that either intentionally utilise the properties of radiation and radioactive materials or involve incidental exposure to them.
Much attention has rightly been given, in this House and elsewhere, to the civil and defence applications of nuclear material and the exposure to radiation that can result. Many forget the wide range of activities that "non-nuclear industry" embraces. They include, for instance, medical, veterinary and dental practices. We are all familiar with the use of x-rays for diagnostic purposes, but these days radioactive preparations are also administered to people as a diagnostic aid. In addition, controlled exposure to very powerful radioactive sources is a well-established form of treatment for certain forms of cancer.
In industrial manufacture, various plant and consumer products contain radioactive sources, such as measuring gauges, smoke detectors, and emergency signs. Also, the medical preparations to which I have referred must be manufactured before they can be used.
There is also industrial radiography, in which powerful x-ray or radioactive sources are used to radiograph welds in pipelines and other heavy metal fabrications, to ensure their integrity. Such work is carried out either in purpose-built facilities or on site, in fields, or even offshore by divers checking North sea oil platforms.
All those activities involve the intentional use of radiation, but there are other activities where the exposure to radiation that arises is incidental to the process. Examples are metal smelting, to which my hon. Friend referred, in terms of his own constituency, and to which I shall return, where there are radioactive impurities in the raw materials, and some forms of mining—especially tin

1281
mining—where there are accumulations of the naturally occurring radioactive gas, Radon. As discussed recently in the Select Committee, Radon can also occur in significant quantities in above-ground work places.
In the last two or three years, there have been pressures to take action to reduce the legal dose limits controlling exposure to ionising radiation. Those pressures have been resisted, for reasons that I shall explain fully in a moment.
Occupational exposure to ionising radiation is possibly the most closely regulated of all occupational exposures to harmful agents. The legal provisions have a firm, internationally agreed, scientific basis which is, quite properly, subject to review and, if necessary, revision as technological changes or relevant new data become available. I think that it would be helpful if I briefly placed that in context. Since 1985, all work with ionising radiation, whether or not it is part of the nuclear industry, has been regulated by the Ionising Radiations Regulations 1985. Those regulations replaced earlier legislation made under the Factories Act 1961. They extended the legislative cover to include all uses and users of ionising radiation, such as university research, which were previously unregulated.
The Ionising Radiations Regulations lay down an annual exposure limit for workers of 50 mSv a year. A particular feature of the new regulatory framework is a requirement to keep doses as low as reasonably practicable, and not merely below dose limits. In addition, doses that exceed 15 mSv a year must be investigated. The dose limit for members of the public is 5 mSv a year.
In practice, most public exposure to radiation from work activities arises from the disposal of radioactive waste in its various forms. Disposal of hazardous wastes requires authorisation from Departments other than mine, but I understand that those authorisations impose tight requirements which result in doses very much lower than the 5 mSv limit that I have quoted.
The Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, under which the regulations were made, requires the views of all interested parties to be sought and considered before any proposals for regulations are submitted to Ministers. Moreover, the structure of the Health and Safety Commission, the statutory body responsible for proposing such legislation, consists of members who represent the interests of employers, workers, local authorities and—a recent welcome addition—the public. That ensures a fair consideration of all views and legal provisions that have been accepted as appropriate and workable by those most affected.
In addition, we have the National Radiological Protection Board, statutorily appointed in 1970, to advise Government of the acceptability of the international recommendations on which, as I have said, our regulations are based.
The dose limits currently in force correspond to those in the European directive, known as the basic safety standards, that the regulations implemented. In turn, those were based on the recommendations of the International Commission on Radiological Protection that were current at the time that the directive was agreed by member states.
However, since then there has been further international revision of the scientific basis for the estimates of
1282
the risk from exposure to radiation, largely as a result of more evidence becoming available about the survivors of the Japanese atomic bombings.
The ICRP is therefore reviewing its recommendations in the light of that later information and in February this year issued revised recommendations in draft form inviting comment on its proposals. It hopes to publish its finalised recommendations early in 1991.
The next step will then be to revise the basic safety standards; again we will consult widely within the United Kingdom to agree the line that our permanent representative will pursue during the negotiations to ensure that the revised directive contains suitable and acceptable provisions. There will then be further consultations before the provisions are finally translated into national legislation.
The Health and Safety Commission issued a consultative document in February this year containing proposals for interim measures pending receipt of revised recommendations from the ICRP. That would focus attention on those relatively few workers who still receive higher doses—defined as more than 15 mSv in a year. That action was in response to advice from the National Radiological Protection Board that it would be prudent for employers to constrain their workers to no more than an average of 15 mSv a year over several years in the light of the changing views on the estimates of risk from exposure to radiation.
I make those points to show that there are ample opportunities for people with differing views to try to influence the final product. I am pleased to say that, since 1985, worker exposure in all industries, nuclear and non-nuclear, has generally decreased. The picture is generally satisfactory, and bears out our belief that there is no need for precipitate action to change the legal dose limits.
My hon. Friend mentioned his interest in the Capper Pass smelting plant, which is well known. His concern about radiation is understandable, as smelting of tin is one of the activities I mentioned in which the presence of radioactive material is incidental to the process carried on.
The consequences of that type of activity for the work force, for the general public, and for the environment are complex. Some of the points made by my hon. Friend related to pollution and public health. He will understand that they are more properly the province of my right hon. Friends in the relevant Departments. I shall try to respond to my hon. Friend in terms of my responsibilities for the health and safety of the work force and the general public. I shall specifically draw the debate to the attention of my right hon. Friends in the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health.
The Capper Pass smelter uses a range of natural ores and recycled by-products as raw materials. That means that a wide range of materials other than tin pass through the process. They include lead, cadmium, arsenic and also polonium, which is radioactive. The presence of polonium came to light in 1984, when a customer found traces of it in some alloys supplied by Capper Pass. Extensive tests and measurements were carried out, by the Health and Safety Executive and other organisations, which established that existing controls were adequate to control any radiological risk to workers or members of the public.
Health and Safety Executive inspectors have visited the Capper Pass plant on numerous occasions both before and since the detection of polonium. They have considered the

1283
full range of potential health problems at the plant, not merely those connected with radiation, and enforcement efforts have concentrated on those problems judged to have potentially the most serious consequences. These were the general standards of occupational hygiene and dust control throughout the plant. A survey of the plant by the executive's inspectors was undertaken in September 1989.
There has been public concern about the risk of radiation from the plant and, as we know, in 1988 the East Yorkshire health authority commissioned a study by Professor Baxter of the Scottish Universities Research and Reactor Centre to review radioactivity in and around the Capper Pass smelter. Professor Baxter's report was delivered in March and it was followed by the press statement by the health authority. It brought fresh attention to possible problems of radioactivity arising from the smelting processes.
It has been suggested—my hon. Friend has raised the matter—that there may be an association between the clusters of leukaemia in the locality and radioactive emissions from plants such as Capper Pass. At this stage I can do no more than quote from Professor Baxter's report:
"We cannot, in any way, attribute excess cancers to the practices at, or discharges from, the plant.
All we can say in summary is that there is far too little information on which to form a sound judgment."
In response to the concern about the plant, the Health and Safety Executive has undertaken further surveys, which will be followed by the executive's inspectors in the usual way.
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To place the issue in context, my hon. Friend will recall that, in response to one of his questions in 1988, my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, our hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, East (Mr. Moynihan), said that an assessment by Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution of samples from the main chimney stack at Capper Pass indicated that the most exposed member of the public would receive less than 1 per cent. of the dose received from natural radiation. I think that my hon. Friend said as much in opening the debate.
In a debate such as this, there is obviously a limit to the detail and the extent to which we can go into the subject. I hope that I have been able to assure my hon. Friend that the Health and Safety Executive continues to take a keen and active interest in this matter. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the way in which he has raised in the House on a number of occasions the concerns expressed by his constituents about Capper Pass.
As I have said, I shall draw the debate to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and to the attention of my right hon. Friends in the Department of Health. If, on reflection, my hon. Friend feels that there are matters within my responsibility that he would like to take up with me, I shall be pleased to see him.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twelve minutes to Eleven o'clock.