§ Mr. John Ward (Poole)I beg to move amendment No. I, in page 2, line 6, at end insert—
`(f) any harbour authority which has not received any grant from public funds other than any grants under the Enterprise Scheme during a period of five years ending with the passing of this Act.'.The amendment would exempt from compulsory privatisation any port that had not received subsidy from the taxpayer during the past five years. The House will know by now that my constituents are satisfied with the present arrangements for the management of Poole port and harbour. They do not wish to have a change of management forced on them by Government.Apart from satisfying local people, the present harbour commissioners have not received a penny piece in direct subsidy from the Government in over 20 years. It seems wrong that they should be under threat from an action by a future Minister which would place at risk the good relationships and control of environmental conditions which are in place.
I have so far been unable to persuade the Government that the compulsion element should be removed from the Bill. The amendment would mean that only ports that have needed public subsidy in the recent past could be privatised by compulsion. The amendment would exempt ports such as Poole from compulsory privatisation, and I hope that hon. Members will support it.
§ Mr. Robert Adley (Christchurch)I rise to support my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Ward)——
Mr. Deputy SpeakerOrder. Not calling the hon. Member by name was a temporary lapse on my part. He and I have known each other for many years. Mr. Adley.
§ Mr. AdleyI am sure that it is permissible, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for us to forget each other's names momentarily once every 21 years.
My hon. Friend the Member for Poole is a fellow Dorset Member who may be too modest to say that he never misses an opportunity to protect, as he sees it, the interests of his constituents and his constituency.
I should, by way of declaration of interest, point out that in a few days' time the company with which I am connected, Holiday Inn, will be signing a contract with Poole borough council to build a hotel. I say that lest any mischievous journalist thinks that I am speaking for any reason other than in support of my hon. Friend.
We Dorset Members like to stick together. Poole is undoubtedly one of the most efficient, well-run ports in Britain, and my hon. Friend made the valid point that a port which has not been in receipt of any central Government financial assistance should be entitled to have 1000 some control over its own destiny. Even my hon. Friend, who perhaps occasionally shades his politics slightly differently from me, will not object to my saying in supporting him that the presumption in favour of privatisation regardless should always be tempered by local and national circumstances. On that basis, I hope that the Minister will pay heed to the pleas of my hon. Friend, who, I reiterate, always does so much to protect the interests of his constituents.
§ Mr. McLoughlinI understand the concerns of my hon. Friends the Members for Poole (Mr. Ward) and for Christchurch (Mr. Adley), who takes a great interest in all transport matters, not least in those that we are considering tonight. My hon. Friend the Member for Poole has made many approaches to me on the subject. I visited Poole harbour with him on a day when the weather was not wonderful and was given a noisy welcome.
I have listened to the arguments put by my hon. Friend, but I am afraid that I cannot accept the amendment. My hon. Friend has shown understandable concern during the earlier stages of this Bill for the well-being of Poole harbour and its users and his views, as well as those of the harbour commissioners, about the proposed reserve power of compulsion are well known. Nevertheless, I am sure that he is at one with the Government in supporting the main purpose of the Bill, which is to enable those trust ports that wish to do so to transfer themselves to the private sector.
Unfortunately, the amendment that he has tabled to clause I would deny this benefit to a very large number of ports, simply because, for whatever reason, they are not among those that benefited from public money during the recent past. Indeed, some of the ports excluded by the provision would be precisely those that have shown the most enthusiasm for privatisation, and it would make no sense to penalise them because they have not received any grant from Government in recent years.
§ Mr. SpearingI can see why, for technical reasons, the Minister feels that the amendment goes too wide. Has he any response to the excellent document sent to various hon. Members on both sides of the House? Does he agree that returning power to the people, in line with the announcements that we heard earlier today, is one of the Government's objectives? Why cannot he undertake to move, in another place, an amendment stipulating that trust ports that do not wish to be privatised will have the freedom to decline?
§ Mr. McLoughlinThe hon. Gentleman has perhaps missed some of our earlier deliberations on the enabling powers in the Bill, under which trust ports can propose themselves for privatisation. The Government believe that the larger trust ports should be in the private sector, but the Bill includes only a reserve power. It does not say that all trust ports will necessarily be privatized—an important distinction. As I have often said, if the Government intended to privatise all the trust ports, the Bill would say so. But the Bill recognises the differences among the many trust ports. My hon. Friend the Member for Poole speaks for Poole; the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) would, I am sure, make a good case, as he saw it, for Lerwick. We cannot judge all the trust ports in the same way, which is why the Bill is drafted as it is.
1001 For the reasons that I have explained, I cannot accept the amendment, and I hope that my hon. Friend will feel able to withdraw it.
§ Ms. WalleyThe amendment has a great deal to commend it. We have just heard from the Minister another example of the back-pedalling that seems to be taking place on this Bill. He seems to be saying that all trust ports are equal, provided that they have a turnover of more than £5 million and regardless of what some of that £5 million has to be spent on—important dredging work, and so on. However, quite apart from the attempts that we have made to create exemptions for environmental protection or on grounds such as those offered in this amendment, the message seems to be that some ports are not as equal as others in the matter of compulsory privatisation. It seems that, if an hon. Member can make a strong enough political case and bend the ear of the Minister, he can gain assurances that the Secretary of State will not use these draconian powers in his constituency.
I am sorry that the Minister dismissed the amendment out of hand. We believe that it would clarify the issue and remove some of the trust ports from the net of compulsory privatisation by which they do not want to be caught. Sooner or later, we will be able to see exactly what the Minister's proposals are.
Like the Minister, I visited the port of Poole. It was a fine day and I suspect that my welcome was probably warmer than his. He at least had the grace to tell the House that he had a noisy welcome. It was a noisy welcome because everybody in Poole is united in the view that, however much this may be a piece of enabling legislation, they do not want is forced upon them.
9.45 pm
I understand that the chief executive, Hamish Green, will be speaking against compulsory privatisation at the debate on 15 May at Bournemouth polytechnic. I suspect that many, quite apart from the chief executive, the harbour commissioners and Poole and District Fishermen's Association and its secretary, Ray Knight, whom I met yesterday, including the environmentalists, agree wholeheartedly with the amendment.
If the Minister is not prepared to take on board, openly and honestly, the ideas behind the amendment, he should face the fact that the Government have not been able to convince the trust ports of the merits of privatisation. If he does not choose to apply the compulsory parts of the Act to them, he should at least be able to tell the House on what grounds he will be excluding certain ports. For that reason, the amendment has our support.
§ Amendment negatived.