Commons Sitting of 8 February 1991

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

  Public Safety Information Bill
  Order for Second Reading read.
  9.34 am
  Mr. John Bowis: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  I thank hon. Members on both sides of the House who are present to take part in the debate. If any hon. Member is present because he or she was not able to get home, I commiserate, but I hope that he or she will enjoy participating in the debate.
  Every good text should be headed by an adage or a quote. My first is from Cicero:
  "Salus populi suprema est lex"—
  the safety of the people shall be the highest law. The second quote is a couplet by Charles Churchill:
  "In full fair tide let information flow.
  That evil is half-cured whose cause we know."
  Those two quotations sum up the purpose and meaning of the Bill, so perhaps we may bear them in mind as we proceed.
  Two years ago last December, there was a disaster in my constituency. I vividly recall that morning at Clapham junction, Battersea rise when we saw the carnage of a rail crash. We saw the courage of everybody involved—those who were on the trains and those who came to support and, where possible, to rescue them. We were all moved on that occasion, as we have been on other occasions. Any hon. Member who witnesses such scenes immediately feels helpless. As a constituency Member, there is precious little that one can do beyond sympathising and encouraging. After such an event, one examines whether there is any way in which one can help in future. Also, one becomes more determined to find out whether there is anything that one can do to prevent such a thing happening again. That is our constituency and democratic duty.
  When we read the Hidden report, we saw that there was something that we could do and that such an event did not need to happen. That report and others have often pointed out that information has been received in the past by authorities with responsibility for venues or transportation operations when there has been a disaster, and that something could have been done if that information had been acted on. Throughout disasters one hears the cry of people whose family who went to a certain football match or travelled on a certain train—"If only we had known that the risk was there, we would not have gone that morning. We would not have let our family travel or go to that event." That cry is repeated in disaster after disaster.
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  Some of my constituents' relatives were killed in the King's Cross fire. I was more than happy to sponsor the Bill presented by the hon. Member for Gateshead, East (Ms. Quin). That Bill was too low in the ballot and it was deemed to be too complicated and in need of too much scrutiny to allow it to be passed on the nod. Although 368 Members of Parliament supported an early-day motion urging that that Bill should be given a fair passage, that was not possible. I do not complain about that. On this occasion, through the luck of the ballot, I am able to introduce a Bill which has an opportunity for such scrutiny. I hope that there will be no opposition to the Bill's proceeding to the next stage, for detailed scrutiny in Committee.
  The Bill is designed to save lives, protect limbs and health and encourage the faster rectification of perceived risk. It is in the tradition of the public's right to know. I welcome my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Employment to the debate and advise him that all such measures have been passed during periods of Conservative government. The maiden speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) was on a private Member's Bill, the Public Bodies (Admissions to Meetings) Bill, which became the 1960 Act. That measure was extended in the Local Government Act 1972, which allowed access to local authority committees. In 1984 the Government enacted the Data Protection Act.
  However, alongside those Government measures, there has been a series of private Members' Bills, none of which could have been enacted without the support and acquiescence of the Government. Those Bills range from the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 and the Health Service Joint Committees Consultative (Access to Information) Act 1986 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire), through the Access to Personal Files Act 1987 and the Access to Medical Reports Act 1988 in the name of the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood). Those private Members' Bills also include the Environment and Safety Information Act 1988 in the name of the hon. Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) and the Community Health Councils (Access to Information) Act 1988 in the name of the hon. Member for Warley, East (Mr. Faulds). Each of those measures succeeded under this Government because they were simple, straightforward and deliberately limited in scope. They coped with proven difficulties and provided a simple solution. My Bill is in that tradition. It is designed to be limited and to provide a simple solution to proven problems and difficulties.
  Alas, no measure of mine or of any other hon. Member can prevent disasters. Sadly, disasters will always happen because of human frailty and error, sometimes because of mechanical failure and sometimes, alas, because of malicious acts by individuals. We cannot prevent disasters, but we can make them less likely to happen. We can do that if we make perceived risks public.
  I want to thank people who helped me produce the Bill. In particular, I thank the community rights project and its officer Rachel Pitkeathley who helped me to draft this Bill. The community rights project helped me with my earlier attempt and I believe that we have refined the principle considerably into a measure that is acceptable to just about everyone to whom I have spoken.
  The community rights project was formed in 1983 to assist Parliament and local government to provide the

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  public with sensible access to local and public authorities. My Bill is a further step in its campaign and I salute the project and its efforts.
  I want particularly to thank the Under-Secretary of State for Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth), his colleagues and officials at the Department of Employment and the officials in the Health and Safety Executive. They went to extraordinary lengths with great patience and perseverence to ensure that I understood their concerns about the Bill and together we have drafted and redrafted the Bill to meet those concerns.
  I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will accept that I have met the problems that he raised about the Bill. He also helped me to identify problems that other Departments might have with the Bill. That has enabled me to talk to other Ministers and Departments. In each and every case where I have spoken to Ministers and their officials, I have been able to satisfy them. I have been able to do that because the perceived problems were based on misconceptions about the Bill. There may have been perfectly valid reasons for those misconceptions because in some cases officials examined my earlier Bill and assumed that I was trying to do the same thing in the same way, or they were not aware of amendments that I had incorporated in this Bill or of amendments that I intend to bring forward in Standing Committee.
  All the Departments have been helpful and I am not aware of any Minister who has found difficulty with the Bill once the details and sequences were explained. Problems such as the cost to local government have been eliminated through the removal of part of the sequence that would have involved local government in operating the Act. Local government's only role now is to provide information to the public on request. I have been told that local government does not believe that that will have any staffing or additional cost implications. If local government is a safety authority, it has a role but that is separate and involves seeking and identifying risks.
  There were also problems about costs to industry. The only cost to industry under the Bill would be the cost of correcting things that industry should have put right anyway to protect the public.
  Mr. John Ward: A number of my constituents suffered bereavement in the Clapham rail disaster which also left some of my constituents seriously injured. The relatives and friends of those people have asked me to be present today to support the Bill. However, there is a difference between the Bradford fire, where things were known in advance, and the Clapham disaster. Can my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) assure me that in the Clapham case my constituents would have been able to receive a warning, under this Bill, of the potential dangers which were all too real in the event?
  Mr. Bowis: My hon. Friend represents families of people who suffered bereavement and injury on that dreadful occasion. I have received messages of support from many hon. Members who have experience of people who have been involved in disasters elsewhere in the country.
  The simple answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Ward) is that there are some disasters for which
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  one can identify how my Bill would have been triggered immediately and directly. For other disasters, there is the potential for it to have been triggered indirectly. The Clapham junction disaster was one of those disasters where it would have been triggered indirectly. It would have been possible for British Rail employees or anyone else who knew of the warnings that had been received to draw them to the attention of the railway inspectorate or any other safety authority which might be involved. The safety authority would have investigated the representations and the procedures in my Bill would then have operated. It would have been an indirect procedure, not a direct one.
  I am also grateful to the British Safety Council and its assistance in drafting the Bill and its constant support. I thank also the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents and others, including the National Consumer Council for England, Wales and Scotland, and the Consumers Association. The Association of British Insurers has been helpful, as has the civil protection co-ordination group. I am particularly grateful to Sir David Napley who came forward with some ideas which I have mostly been able to incorporate. I am also grateful to the Public Bill Office for its patience in helping to draft and redraft my Bill to get it right.
  I am also grateful to hon. Members on both sides of the House. I welcome the presence of the hon. Members for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) and for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes). My Bill is an all-party measure and it has received tremendous support from colleagues on both sides of the House. Not one hon. Member has said, "This is a measure I wish to oppose." Perhaps above all one should remember and pay tribute to the group that comes together under the newly formed organisation, Disaster Action, which has given such inspiration and support to the Bill. It is a compassionate support. The group is made up of families of victims and the survivors of various incidents and disasters. I pay tribute to them because their first instinct must be one of great sorrow. If one has lost someone in such a disaster, that sorrow can develop into simple anger that the disaster happened and could happen again. Those people have formed groups to help each other by talking about the incident and helping families through the trauma. Above all, they have been determined that from the lessons of the disaster which affected them they will formulate proposals to help others.
  Mr. John Butterfill: I, too, had many constituents who were killed in the Clapham rail disaster. Several of the relatives have written to me to say how grateful they were to my hon. Friend for introducing the Bill.
  Mr. Bowis: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and he and I are grateful for their support and guidance.
  I have had many letters on this matter. I draw the attention of the House to two that sum up the views. The first is from someone who was involved, as the House will hear, in a disaster. It says:
  "On 12 December 1988, I was hauled out of the crashed train outside Clapham Junction with a fractured spine. Fortunately I survived but 35 fellow passengers were killed. At the subsequent inquiry it became apparent that similar faulty wiring, which had caused the crash, had been identified as a hazard on five previous occasions. It was only because of this inquiry that these previous 'wrong side' failures became known.

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  I feel sure that, if this information had been made readily available to the public, the press and particularly to British Rail passengers, the pressure for remedial action would have proved irresistable … I believe that this straight-forward measure will allow the public rightful access to such information and increase pressure for preventative action to be taken on safety hazards, which in the specific circumstances of the Clapham train disaster, might have saved the lives of 35 people."
  That is from one of the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Poole. It explains how in that instance the Bill would have helped.
  The second letter is from Mr. Ronnie Farley, former leader of Bradford city council, who wrote to me:
  "On 18th July 1984, when I was Leader of this Council, we received a letter … concerning the Bradford F.C. ground, which included a report with the words, 'the timber construction is a fire hazard and in particular there is a build-up of combustible materials in the voids beneath the seats …
  This information never reached the public or the elected Members, as there was no legal requirement for it to do so. No-one deliberately suppressed it—an error of judgment was, however, clearly made. Had the Public Safety Information Bill been law, the letter would have been made public and the matter would have been discussed in public at the next meeting of the relative Council Committee…the public gallery would have been packed; the story would have been front page news in our local papers.
  In these circumstances I can not conceive it possible that no remedial action would have been taken, in which case the fire would not have happened and people would be alive today … I personally knew people who went to the ground in ignorance of the dangers and died in the fire."
  Mr. Robin Squire: Is my hon. Friend aware that councillor Farley was instrumental in helping the Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 through this place. The Act requires that when—to take the example that my hon. Friend gave—information comes before a committee it is made available. But if there is no reason or need for the matter to come before a committee, my hon. Friend is absolutely right that the matter remains in confidence. That is why my hon. Friend rightly seeks to change the law today.
  Mr. Bowis: My hon. Friend is right. Happily, Mr. Farley has confirmed that Bradford council now follows as closely as possible the procedures proposed in my Bill. But Bradford was a case where there was a specific warning to which the Bill would apply. Lives could have been saved. Sometimes we can identify a specific warning. Even though the warning was not deemed sufficiently substantial to close the ground, it was much stronger than an improvement order. However, in cases that my hon. Friends have identified, one must consider the future in hypothetical terms. No one could expect me to say whether my Bill would apply in a certain circumstance. For that reason, although 1 can look back and give examples of where my Bill would have applied, it would be wrong and absurd to seek to identify specifically whether my Bill would apply on any possible future occasion. That is why the Bill gives great discretion to the health or safety authority. That must be the right way of achieving what we seek.
  We know that in the case of the King's Cross fire, warnings were given. There were 46 escalator fires between 1945 and 1988 and reports were received from the fire brigade, the police and the fire prevention committee. Following the Oxford Circus fire in November 1984, the fire safety task force was set up but no report had been published by the time of the King's Cross fire in 1987.
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  The report of Desmond Fennel said:
  "I view with dismay, the suggestion that information gained by a statutory authority, which has a bearing on the safety of the public using a system for mass transportation, should not be made publicly available. The travelling public have a right to know about the safety arrangements made by transport operators and the safety of places in which they habitually gather."
  That could not be clearer, but there will always be cases where individuals could take action—perhaps, to take the Zeebrugge case—the captain of a ferry. If he previously spotted that there was a gap in the safety procedures because there were no lights on the bridge to identify whether the bow doors were closed, he could make sure that a procedure was implemented. The Zeebrugge disaster took place on 6 March 1987. Two years later, on 26 March 1989, The Sunday Times reported that 12 ferries were operating passenger and freight services from British ports but failing to comply with the safety standards adopted after the Zeebrugge disaster. The Government safety check on six ferries showed that they could not be brought up to standard. Six ferries failed the test, but could be modified. Those were only the important ones. The officials said that they had not said that the boats must be made to comply by a certain date. They had left it to the owners to bring them up to standard as soon as they could. That may have been sufficient legally, but it was not sufficient for the passengers of those ferries. Passengers should have been warned that the measures identified in the report on the Zeebrugge disaster had not been implemented on the ferries and so they travelled at their own risk.
  Having said that, I make it clear that my Bill specifically requires the operators and occupiers to remain responsible to the public. The Bill does not remove any form of public liability. The Clapham tragedy, to which I have inevitably referred many times, led to the Hidden report which showed that there had been five previous similar incidents of faulty wiring, as the letter that I quoted shows. Hidden said that the result of those previous reports was simply
  "a flurry of paperwork … which provided important information, but on a very limited circulation … those lessons should have been learned and had that happened, there would have been no accident at Clapham Junction on 12 December 1988".
  In other words, if the public and the press had known, Parliament would have known. Pressure would have been put on and there would have been questions in the House to the Secretary of State for Transport so matters would have been put right before that occasion.
  The Bill does not deal simply with major disasters; it covers the smaller incidents and tragedies as well. We have evidence of problems with fire escapes in residential homes, with lifts in nursing homes and with security at zoos. The problems do not have to result in death; they can be a health hazard as well as a safety hazard.
  I want to draw the attention of the House to a report that has recently been highlighted. It was given to British Rail in 1957 and pointed out that the habit of flushing train loos on to the track was a health hazard which could lead to dangers to passengers, to people living alongside the track and to railway workers. That has been amply underlined recently in a television programme in which some of the railway workers were interviewed about the risks that they took. The risks were identified as typhoid, dysentery, hepatitis and tetanus. I suspect that one might now have to add AIDS. Yet that report was kept secret for 34 years after it had been received. Nothing has been done

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  and 80 per cent. of trains that have lavatories still travel without the sealed containers that could be emptied at depots. That is a health hazard which the public would probably think was unacceptable. If they had known about it at the time of the report, we should have had 30 years of campaigning by this place, as well as outside, to put matters right.
  The Bill has a simple sequence and it has been made simpler thanks to discussions with my hon. Friend the Minister and with others to take out some of the chain of command. A ministerial colleague said to me that the Bill was in danger of being like "the king told the queen and the queen told the dairymaid". I accept that—although by the time he told me, we had removed some of the sequence.
  The sequence now is simply that the safety authority —the statutory authority—identifies a risk that it deems to be substantial. It gives a warning to the occupier or to the operator and at the same time issues a notice to that occupier or operator which has to be put on public view at the point of access to the premises. At the same time, it provides the local authority with a copy of the full warning and the local authority, through its environmental safety office, makes that available to the public on request. The notice remains there and it is up to the public, the press, Parliament and local councillors to take it further and to put the pressure on. The next step is that when the risk is deemed to have been removed, the authority permits the notice to be taken down. Nothing exempts the occupier from public liability.
  I have already mentioned some drafting amendments.
  Mr. Patrick Ground: I notice that clause I applies to "any means of transport". Does my hon. Friend intend that that should apply to aircraft? Presumably they are movable structures within the meaning of the Bill. If my hon. Friend does intend that, will he tell us a little about how he thinks that it would help air safety?
  Mr. Bowis: The Bill could apply to any form of transport to which the public are admitted. It would not cover the private vehicle or the private aeroplane. It would not override any existing safety legislation. I am about to deal with a change to the Bill that may help my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Ground). He may be thinking of a case in which the Bill which would not work and in such a case it would not apply. If safety legislation already covers the operation of an aircraft or of an airport, the Bill would not undermine that. The only thing that the Bill can do is to provide the safety authority with a measure short of closing down the airport or taking the aeroplane off the runway. The decision will have to be made as to whether a case is severe enough for existing legislation to apply or whether the Bill should apply. That is not my judgment, or the judgment of legislation—it will be the judgment of the safety authority concerned.
  I wish to deal now with the changes made to the Bill, which may help my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston. We originally thought that we should list all the safety authorities, and the Acts under which they operated, to which the measure would apply. In all humility, I thought that I was asking too much of
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  myself. We decided to include exemptions and we exempted matters of terrorism and of national security. That applies considerably to airports and to flights.
  However, we had discussions with officials at the Department of Employment and they offered—I checked with them yesterday and they are still offering—to come forward before the Committee stage with a list of all the safety authorities that they think would operate under the Bill and of all the Acts under which they would be operating. The advantage of that is that it would also provide for another gap in the Bill—the appeal procedure, which I acknowledge should be included. However, I was loth to include a great new paraphernalia of appeals procedures, and the relevant Acts already have their own appeals procedures. I decided that the measure should follow that route without adding to the legal complexity of the process. I hope that that will answer the point raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston.
  Mr. James Arbuthnot: My hon. Friend referred to the small extent to which the Secretary of State may exempt matters. Would it be preferable for the Secretary of State to be able to order that certain types of premises would not be subject to the Bill? My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Ground) asked whether aeroplanes would be subject to the Bill. I suspect that there might be some difficulty with aeroplanes which are registered in other countries and fly to this country only occasionally.
  Mr. Bowis: We propose to remove clause 1(4). We propose to take out the whole business of exemptions by including the positive requirement to include the areas that the Bill would cover.
  The other changes are comparatively minor. Through a typographical error, we missed out the London boroughs when we referred to England and Wales in clause 2(2). That should also apply to the London borough councils. We did not seek to exempt them. Even more staggeringly—I take all the blame for this—I missed out two important local authorities: the sub-treasurer of the Inner Temple and the under-treasurer of the Middle Temple. I hope that the House will forgive me.
  We intend to delete clause 2(3) because it would be unnecessary. It is clear from what I have already said that under clause 2(5) the public safety officer would not have to serve the written warning; the local authority, as the safety authority, would issue that notice. That change is to be made in response to helpful suggestions from the Department of Employment and its officials, and I happily concur with that. It meets the arguments about "the king asked the queen and the queen asked the dairymaid".
  My final concession is a sad one. I had thought that I could go to the ramparts to defend the imperial system, but I am told that it is not permitted and that I must go metric. Thus, in clause 2(6), the term 2 ft by 1 1/2 ft is no longer allowed and the Bill must use metric terms, such as a fraction of something, times something. I regret that, but such is progress.
  The Bill's merits are that it is flexible and allows a degree of discretion on the definition of "substantial." We shall have the opportunity to discuss that word in Committee, but discretion rightly exists for the safety authority. It will provide the safety authorities with an

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  additional weapon in their battle to protect the public. I hope that the Bill is sensible in what it excludes and includes.
  The Bill is certainly not costly—any costs incurred will be negligible. Local authorities will acknowledge that, in terms of their role of providing information to the public, as they do constantly, the Bill will not require them to make extra provision. The cost to the occupiers will simply be the cost of putting risks right. The safety authorities have already said that they are willing to meet any necessary costs, but nobody has approached me to say that there will be significant additional costs in policing by the safety authorities.
  To say that the Bill will have no cost implications would be absurd. There will be some costs in sending out notices and, to a greater extent, in checking existing risks. However, I invite any hon. Member or right hon. Member who says that the cost will be too high to remember the Clapham junction crash and the damage to individuals' lives that it caused. There was a cost in lives and all the costs of a disaster. There was a cost to the rolling stock, the track and the disruption of the railways. There was a cost to the emergency services—the police, and fire brigade and the ambulance service—and to the local authority services, which attended without hesitation, from early in the morning until several days later, putting right the area affected. There were costs to the medical services—the nurses, the doctors, the helicopter flights and the blood transfusion service.
  Furthermore, there were costs to the bereaved families and the expense of insurance compensation. Thank God that British Rail immediately admitted liability and agreed to pay up. There was the additional expense of counselling the bereaved and those people traumatised by sights that most of us would wish never to see. All those costs are enormous, although I doubt whether they have ever been quantified. Any expenses that the Bill might involve therefore pale into insignificance beside the cost in individual lives and the financial price of a disaster. I hope that I have put any worries about cost into context.
  I believe that the measure will be effective, whether modestly or dramatically. The Bradford disaster shows that it will work and the Clapham junction disaster shows that it could work. There are many other occasions when we think that it might work. The Bill will succeed even if it is never used, because the pressure of having the provisions on the statute book will encourage more people to remove risks to members of the public. I refer to the maiden speech of my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley when promoting her Public Bodies (Admission of the Press to Meetings) Bill. She quoted from the Franks committee report, which stated:
  "Publicity is the greatest and most effective check against any arbitrary action,"
  and said:
  "That is one of the fundamental rights of the subject."
  She later said:
  "the paramount function of this distinguished House is to safeguard civil liberties rather than to think that administrative convenience should take first place in law."—[Official Report, 5 February 1960; Vol. 616, c. 1351–57.]
  If the House will not listen to my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley, perhaps it will listen to the Health and Safety Commission, the authority set up by the Government to monitor the situation in relation to work,
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  information and risks. Its 1985 policy statement on access to health and safety information by members of the public states:
  "The public should be in a position to understand the nature and extent of important hazards, and where their own immediate safety or health could be at risk, should be in possession of information enabling them to understand their position."
  That is what the Bill is about.
  I shall quote Dr. Johnson, as one perhaps always should, who in his common-sense way said:
  "About things on which the public thinks long, it commonly attains to think right."
  The public have thought long about this subject, and have had many reminders over the years as to why they should think long and hard about what is necessary. I believe that the public have come to the conclusion that they should have their right to know extended. The public are right, and I hope and believe that the House will concur.
  10.17 am
  Mr. Nigel Spearing: Of course the public are right and, of course, the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) is right, as are the purposes of the Bill. As I understand it, he wishes to provide a sort of safety ombudsman with statutory authority who, having looked at an application, can draw it to the attention of councillors, Members of Parliament or the respective statutory authorities, including the Health and Safety Executive, the railway inspectorate, the mines inspectorate and the Department of Transport.
  However, I have less faith than the hon. Member for Battersea in Finchley Central methods, because they do not always work—much as I support the Bill's purposes and the establishment of a national safety ombudsman. In my experience, when a Member of Parliament, let alone a councillor, raises such matters, the reaction of officials, including Her Majesty's Government, is not the desired one.
  The Zeebrugge, Piper Alpha, King's Cross, Marchioness and Bradford incidents all have a set of features in common: the neglect or omission of factors that, in retrospect, appear more or less common sense. Those elements include extra equipment or even seemingly small acts such as brushing up the rubbish, routines, keeping visible standards, making checks, agreeing and carrying out drills and having bow doors closed.
  Sometimes people chafe against the drills and difficult regulations introduced in the services. However, we all know that they allow for checking that otherwise might not take place.
  The hon. Member for Battersea said that there was waste and cost—of course there is. Where cost to property is involved, the insurance markets can weigh the risk of hazards and require threshold standards to be built into the system. But, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, we are primarily concerned with loss of life and damage and injury to families, which I agree cannot be quantified.
  I shall give examples of my activities during the past few years involving risks and hazards in London, above the ground and underground. The best example is that of Newham way, the A13, in London. It is one of the busiest dual carriageways in the country and includes a reserve bus lane that has to cross at right angles to enter the traffic stream. I wrote to the Department of Transport 10 or 15 years ago asking for a bus-activated light signal, because the danger of a lorry full of girders of 20 tonnes or more

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  smashing at right angles into the side of a bus was horrific, and could happen. I am sorry that the then Minister, one of my hon. Friends—it was that long ago—wrote back to say that my proposal was not cost effective. I wrote back and said that, if an accident took place at the spot I would send the Minister's letter to the coroner. He is no longer a Member of this House; indeed, he is dead now, so I can mention his name—Ken Marks. He had a high reputation in the House and he was possessed of sufficient knowledge, humanity and common sense to change his mind. The bus crossing that is there now, for which all busmen and passengers bless Ken Marks, is an example of what I am driving at. However, I fear that the change of heart was due primarily to anxiety about the decision coming to light in a spectacular way in a coroner's court or at a subsequent inquiry.
  There are particular hazards in London due to the onward march of techniques—in many respects, they make life easier, but they increase hazards at the same time. Clapham junction is a good example. The hon. Member for Battersea praised the ambulance services. I submitted a petition from the ambulance personnel of London a few Fridays ago, to the effect that the underlying causes of the unhappy dispute of a few months ago have not been dealt with and that the standards of ambulance response time in London are still declining. I received a written answer the other day claiming that the Orcon standard response time has increased by one minute, due to the increased density of traffic. That answer from the Department of Health was unworthy of any Government. If the density of traffic increases, thereby preventing ambulances from getting through, the number of ambulances should increase correspondingly, although not necessarily pro rata.
  The hon. Member for Battersea talked about Clapham, and much of what he said was true. But we all know that the difficulties with the signal wires arose because the man concerned had been working overtime for a long time because of a great shortage of staff. I have been told, although I do not allege, that changed arrangements for British Telecom wages, willed upon the company by the Government and by this House, has an effect on the availability of skilled staff in British Rail.
  In any event, I wonder whether, even if someone had written to the safety officer pointing out that people were working overtime and that not enough men were dealing with the signals, any action would have been taken. We can imagine the sort of answer that a Minister would have given: "British Rail is doing all it can to recruit more staff." We know the sort of jargon in which Whitehall couches these answers— [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Patnick) may think that I am being a little hard, but he has not heard the end of my speech yet.
  In the south-east of England, we have one of the most complex commuter rail transport networks in the world, unique for social and historical reasons. The frequency of junctions, the shortness of signal sections, the speed and the braking of trains and the reactions required of drivers are all unique. Until fairly recently, we had been proud of that record, but for reasons that we all know, it is getting a little tarnished now.
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  Some time ago, I pointed out to the former Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon), that drivers on Southern region were retiring before retiring age, and I asked him why. That is the sort of issue that the safety officer appointed under this Bill would investigate, but it should be investigated now as well. The buffer stop crash and the problem with observation of signals at Cannon Street and Purley were connected with driver morale—and it is particularly strange that, at least until a year ago, these drivers were retiring early.
  Now, to make matters worse, British Rail proposes to take guards off the trains on Southern region and on inner networks. That is a retrograde step because it must, by definition, increase the hazards to passengers on this unique network. The new safety equipment will cost a great deal, but we must also remember the importance at Clapham, for instance, of the fact that a guard went back and stopped a third train from crashing into the first two. Guards are there to protect passengers, and station staff are disappearing, so guards' presence on trains is all important.
  British Rail is doing this with the connivance of the Government—some would say, as a result of certain requests and regulations that are still in the air. I do not want to make this debate too partisan, but these facts are common knowledge and they may have knock-on-effects —just as the knock-on effects of the market for telecommunications engineers were important in my previous example. I hope that, as a result of my speech today, British Rail will think again about its programme of taking guards off trains on Southern region; and I hope that every constituent of Conservative Members who uses these trains will write to British Rail to say that they agree with me.
  So far I have discussed a plan that has not been implemented yet, but what has happened with London Underground is even worse. Two or three years ago I read with consternation that London Underground planned to take guards off deep level tubes. There is a case—although I do not agree with it—for taking guards off the Circle, Metropolitan and District surface lines. Even that would increase hazards, but taking them off deep level tubes would be a very different matter. In any case, I wrote to the then chairman of London Underground Ltd. and protested, and I made my views public in my local paper too. In short, I acted exactly as the hon. Member for Battersea suggested that we should, and no doubt as his safety officer would.
  The response from London Underground was negative. I asked whether it had worked out the cost of putting on guards for an underground section only. Again the answer was no. I asked about the ridiculous idea of evacuating trains by the method known as leapfrogging—a mind-boggling process. I was told that the inspectorate was happy with that. I do not think that that is true, but the Department said it was.
  A letter appeared in The Guardian—[Laughter.] I am sorry that the Minister finds that a subject for mirth—
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Eric Forth): The Guardian is a subject for mirth.
  Mr. Spearing: In this case, The Guardian was guarding the lives of the people of London, as its name suggests. A

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  driver on the Piccadilly line protested at this practice and said that there would be a disaster sooner or later, and that if there was not, it would be no thanks to those who had taken this decision—
  Mr. Butterfill: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that some of the drivers' own practices are even more dangerous? Does he recall the practice known as a "home run" whereby a driver who has completed the outward journey and should then travel back as a passenger agrees to take over the rota of a driver who should be doing a U-run, so that the incoming driver can go home? is that not frightfully dangerous, putting as it does enormous strain on drivers who have already completed a rota and is it not far more dangerous than what the hon. Gentleman describes?
  Secondly, does the hon. Gentleman agree that a much greater contribution to safety is being made by the huge investment going into new signals equipment, which has been neglected by successive Administrations over many years but which is now being effected by the Government?
  Mr. Spearing: I have not often experienced such an intervention. I am trying to make a speech that could save 300 to 400 lives by removing some of the existing hazards. The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood my point. Of course such irregularities, such breaking of the rules for a degree of satisfaction that we can all understand, is wrong. How often has the hon. Gentleman gone to the Whips and asked to be allowed to leave quickly? That is human nature.
  Despite my requests and the clear increase in hazards facing people on the deep underground lines, London Underground Ltd. and other people have agreed that matters should be regularised. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) has not distinguished between a deliberate breaking of the rules and regulations that I outlined and the deliberate lowering of standards and the increase of hazards to save a marginal amount. London Underground, with the apparent connivance of the rule safety inspectors—with whom I disagree—is doing that.
  I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport at that time, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson), some of whose constituents no doubt travel on the Piccadilly line. I had a reply from a junior Minister, saying that he saw no reason to intervene. I hoped that it would not be necessary to forward that letter to a disaster inquiry.
  Mr. Arbuthnot: The hon. Gentleman spoke about drivers leapfrogging from one train to the next. That must be put in context because it would happen very rarely. Is the hon. Gentleman aware of its ever happening?
  Mr. Spearing: I think that the hon. Gentleman is in the legal profession. Mathematical chance is surely irrelevant. The question is whether it is right practice. Of course the chances of disasters are millions or thousands to one, and can be calculated. All the disasters about which I spoke, including the one at Zeebrugge, occurred because of a combination of circumstances which one hopes and believes could never happen. When they do happen, what is the result? The point is not merely about leapfrogging but about such things as fire or a power failure. There is a procedure for conducting passengers away from a train
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  when the driver dies. As I read the rule book, a driver leaving the train from the back puts a passenger in charge of the train behind. Does the hon. Gentleman agree with that?
  Mr. Arbuthnot: In the context of that sort of event, I do, because it is a sensible procedure. I did not mean that the chances of a disaster were 1 million to one, but that those were the odds that applied to leapfrogging. The disaster would happen only after that.
  Mr. Spearing: So far we have not had a disaster on the Piccadilly line, and I hope that we do not. I mentioned the leapfrogging procedure as one of the hazards inherent in this regulation, but I also mentioned others.
  About an hour and a half ago, there was an announcement at South Kensington station to say that the fire brigade had been called and that there was an emergency on the Piccadilly line. I do not know what sort of emergency it was. It could have been some horrible potential incident between South Kensington and Knightsbridge, but it is more likely that it has been avoided purely by chance.
  When my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman) was a Minister, he had second thoughts. I hope that the present Ministers in the Department of Transport will have second thoughts about operator-only trains on the deep lines of the underground and about increasing risks to passengers by removing guards from Southern region. Some people have said—this is not an accusation—that, in the search for reduced costs, the Government and the railway operators are indirectly increasing the hazards for passengers by bribing the staff. If that is untrue, the Government must say so.
  10.35 pm
  Mr. James Arbuthnot: I entirely agree with much of the speech by the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing). However, it is necessary to do our best to save money on the operation of the underground, so that the savings can be put into improved safety procedures and operating practices. The hon. Gentleman and I may disagree on some points of detail, but there are many matters on which we agree.
  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) on doing so well in the ballot, although I am not sure whether that is a matter for congratulate or commiseration. I also congratulate him on choosing an extremely important subject. I apologise to him and to the House as I shall not be able to be here at the close of the debate due to a constituency engagement.
  I am one of the Bill's sponsors, although I became conscious of that only at a late stage when my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea wrote to me telling me so. I do not remember agreeing to be a sponsor. I immediately wrote to my hon. Friend saying that I did not remember, but he assured me that I had agreed and, of course, I accepted that. In view of my obvious forgetfulness I can only take comfort from the words of somebody called Elbert Hubbard who said:
  "A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness".
  On that basis, I am very great indeed.
  The Bill is introduced against a background of a decade of disasters—from King's Cross to Purley, from Bradford to Hillsborough. The experience of my hon. Friend the

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  Member for Battersea in the Clapham rail crash will always be in his memory, just as it will always be in the memory of the victims of that crash. I suspect that some people listening to this debate were involved in one way or another in that crash.
  After each such tragedy the natural reaction is to ask why on earth it happened and whether it could possibly have been prevented. Some accidents are acts of God which cannot be prevented and nothing that we can do will stop them, although we are getting better all the time at preventing disasters such as floods and at minimising the effects of events that were once cataclysmic. However, there is a limit to what humans can do and we should be careful not to be so arrogant as to think that we can abolish all risk or danger, because we cannot. In many cases, neither would we want to, and the Bill makes no attempt or pretence at that.
  Having thought about whether a disaster could have been prevented, the next question is whether it should have been prevented. While it is easy to be wise after the event, it is rather harder to be wise beforehand. We are all human and subject to human error, and all mechanisms are subject to mechanical failure. One of the characteristics of being human is that we are able to learn from our mistakes. The comment that we learn history but that we learn nothing from history was clever but untrue. Therefore, we should try to ensure that, when there are lessons to be learnt and actions to be taken, we should learn those lessons and take that action. We shall sometimes fail, because as humans we frequently fail, but we should try to succeed.
  We already have a great deal of legislation aimed at ensuring that we learn those lessons. The Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, for example, imposes quite heavy burdens on employers and on the self-employed, requiring them to ensure that the public are not exposed to safety risks. Yet, despite that legislation, disasters happen. Some disasters appear to be, if not exactly carbon copies of earlier disasters, sufficiently similar as to be ones which with a little foresight could have been avoided. Those are the disasters that not only could have been but should have been prevented.
  The Bill seeks to make disasters of that type less likely in two ways. First, substantial threats of danger to the public will, in theory, be made known to the public so that they will have the informed knowledge with which they can decide whether to go to places where there are risks. Secondly, the very fact that, in theory, the public will have been informed of those threats and danger will encourage or pressure the owners of premises to act more quickly than they might otherwise have done to reduce the dangers.
  I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea is correct in his belief that those two aims will be achieved if the Bill becomes law. I have questions about both those aims, questions on which I shall touch briefly so as to have my reservations allayed by my hon. Friend in due course. As regards the first intended effect of the Bill—improving the information available to people—there seems to me to be a risk that the Bill as drafted will mean that the statutory authorities that have to be involved in the procedure might well decide to take great care not to determine that there is a substantial threat of danger to the
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  health or safety of the public, as any such determination would bring the authority extra work that it might not be able to afford to carry out.
  Mr. Bowis: I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that point, but it is a reflection on the integrity of the safety authorities. I do not believe that they would act in that disreputable way. Moreover, if they did and it was shown after a disaster that they had not taken action under the provisions of what I hope will become an Act, they would be open to severe criticism. I believe that they will be as nervous of that as of any extra work which might flow from these provisions.
  Mr. Arbuthnot: I am not sure that I would describe that as a disreputable way to act. Statutory authorities would have to make decisions based on the balance of priorities, and the finance avaiable to them would have to be one of those considerations.
  Mr. Peter Bottomley: I do not have a direct answer, but this may help to illuminate the subject. If there were a transport casualty reduction executive, it might say that, as the 8 per cent. of car crashes caused by mechanical faults get all the publicity at coroners' inquests, it should spend its time trying to work on that minority cause rather than dealing with the majority—95 per cent.—cause of accidents, which is human error. If one got defensive health and safety executive type work, one would be deliberately getting the experts to kill more people rather than save more people. That is one of the problems of working on the publicity approach. I have some things to say later on, but that may help my hon. Friends the Members for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) and for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot) by leaving them sitting on the same shelf.
  Mr. Arbuthnot: I was trying not to end up on the shelf. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clearing that up, at least to some extent. I know that my hon. Friend the Member of Battersea has the support of 200 or more local authorities and, with that support, my fears about the reaction to the Bill may be over-cynical. Nevertheless, I raise the point as a possible reaction to the Bill.
  If my hon. Friend is right to say that warnings would be served in any event, there is then the possibility—in many cases it would be a probability—that if the notices were put up at the entrances of football grounds, nobody would read them. Some people get tired of seeing notices at the entrances to public places. Nobody ever reads the byelaws of parks or those put up at the entrance to amusement parks. It is possible to have a surfeit of safety sermons. It might even he counter-productive to have too much preaching about safety. However, the very fact of notices gives rise to the second operation of the Bill—putting pressure on the owners.
  The provisions in the Bill for a register that would be open to the public are a little heavy handed because, as I understand it, there are registers of enforcement action already available under the Environment and Safety Information Act 1988. I have been told, and I am not surprised, that few people read them. They are hardly the most riveting of reading.
  Mr. Bowis: I am sorry to keep interrupting my hon. Friend, but he has courteously explained that he will not be here for my winding-up speech and I should like to answer his points now. The safety notices may not be read

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  by everybody, but they would be noticed by local journalists, so the case would be raised in the right places. The problem with existing regulations requiring registers to be held by local authorities is that nobody knows that they are there. The Bill, if enacted, would trigger the following sequence: the public would be warned, the press would notice, they would investigate at the environmental safety office and the matter would become public.
  Mr. Arbuthnot: The Bill operates in two ways. First, notices are put up so that people will read them; secondly, pressure is put on owners because the newspapers will ensure publicity. I am suggesting that the first way will not be so effective as the second. For example, if there is a notice at the entrance to a football match, one of the last things that a man who has paid a day's wages for his ticket and has queued for hours to get to his place will do is to read the notice and decide to turn round and go home because he has seen that there is combustible rubbish under the north stairs. Most British people take the view that accidents happen not to them but to somebody else. Experience tells them that accidents always happen to someone else—until a disaster actually involves them. Nevertheless, if notices had to be displayed at the entrance to football grounds, for example, at least the public would have the knowledge upon which they could make their own informed choice. The decision to take a risk would be theirs, having had the opportunity to avoid it. At present, that choice is not available. There is something to be said, all other things being equal, for providing it.
  At present, any Health and Safety Executive warning relating to a public venue is confidential. There may be a good reason for that, but I cannot imagine what it is. It is only after a major fire, or some other disaster, that the public become aware of the risks that they have been running. It is hardly surprising that they then take the view that there must be a better way of avoiding such tragedies. The Bradford City stadium disaster in May 1985 provides a classic example, because in that case warnings had been given by the Health and Safety Executive before the disaster, in which 50 people died. The dangers were known, but they remained confidential.
  Some supporters of the Bill make the argument that the public have the right to know, but that phrase somehow makes me uneasy and I think, instead, of a presumption in favour of a well-informed choice. Whether or not the Bill is the right vehicle for creating that presumption and choice is for right hon. and hon. Members individually to decide. But that choice ought to exist.
  The second purpose of the Bill, and that upon which my hon. Friend mainly relies, is to shame owners into reacting quickly to notices served on them. Although the average football supporter may not read notices, the local journalist certainly would, and such a notice could be a constant source of embarrassing headlines. There would be no question of warnings being tucked under the carpet and of nothing happening. There is nothing like the fear of bad publicity to spur owners into action.
  The Bill is one of many ways of trying to increase safety levels, but one can go too far. Safety should be the first consideration in respect of passenger trains and football grounds—but it should not be the only consideration. Safety should be a hugely important factor, but far from all-consuming. We lead immensely complicated lives, and many aspects of them must be taken into account.
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  In the past, many activities have been undertaken without any thought being given to safety. The King's Cross underground fire is but one example of the possible consequences. It was obvious to all that underground safety needed to be dramatically improved, and since that tragic fire occurred safety has risen to a very high place on London Underground's safety agenda—so high that it is beginning seriously to disrupt the service.
  My constituents in Wanstead and Woodford—stuck at the end of the Central line—are among those who suffer as a result of that serious disruption. Two days ago, I made a tour of the Central line with London Underground officials and discussed safety requirements, particularly those imposed by the fire brigade. I learned that the fire services must be called and a station evacuated at every report of the smell of smoke. That may sound sensible, but it takes away from station managers discretion, where that could be valuable. Time and again, station managers find that smoke reports have no foundation, but, until the fire brigade has arrived and completed its investigation, the station has to be closed and train services are disrupted. It is time that the fire brigade and London Underground got together to work out a sensible balance of safety as I am not sure that such a balance currently exists.
  Mr. Hugo Summerson: My hon. Friend is absolutely correct in his remarks, particularly as the smell that some people think is smoke is only the consequence of a train's brakes being applied.
  Mr. Arbuthnot: My hon. Friend, whose constituency is also served by the Central line, knows that only too well. The huge investment to be made in the Central line will, I hope, reduce the frequency of such reports, and my constituents will certainly welcome that.
  It is interesting to contrast the attitudes of British Rail and London Underground in respect of reports on safety precautions. Reports relating to British Rail stations are kept secret, whereas London Underground makes such information available to the public. Perhaps the best aspect of my hon. Friend's Bill is that it would create greater openness in bodies such as British Rail, and help to establish a better atmosphere of open information.
  British Rail instituted a safety management system following the Clapham disaster, with the aim of achieving total safety, supported by systematic auditing. British Rail felt that maximum safety could be attained only by sustained effort at all levels of its organisation and through effective monitoring. The railway inspectorate's latest annual safety report on British Rail commented:
  "No one should underestimate the practical difficulty of achieving total safety in a large and scattered organisation, where so much depends on individuals."
  I do not believe that total safety can be achieved. Yesterday's incident in Whitehall showed us how fragile is our safety and that there is little that we can do to achieve total safety. That is not an argument for not trying to achieve it, but an argument for setting realistic goals.
  The Bill has good points and less good points, points with which I agree and several with which I do not. I have strong reservations about whether the Bill will achieve its aims, modest though they are. I am not even sure that if its provisions had been in place at the time of the disasters that have been mentioned it would necessarily have prevented them. The Bill places some burdens on industry,

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  and some on the statutory authorities to which it refers. However, at least my hon. Friend is having a stab at the problem and for that he should be congratulated.
  10.58 am
  Mr. Simon Hughes: I anticipate that my speech will not be far gone before this debate is interrupted for the private notice question, so I will deal with the preliminaries now, and make my substantive points afterwards.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: The hon. Gentleman means that he will ramble on later.
  Mr. Hughes: No, I shall not ramble on.
  I am grateful for the invitation to serve as one of the Bill's supporters. Unlike the hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot), I remember being asked, and assented willingly. I do not make any deductions in terms of memory, other than that.
  I am indebted to the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) for taking the opportunity of gaining a place in the ballot to debate a subject which we are all at times made aware—if we are not aware already—is one of massive significance to large numbers of people.
  I also pay tribute to the community rights project which has done the work. That organisation is a constituent of mine, as it has always been since 1983, and has been assiduous throughout various staff changes to ensure that the House is confronted with the opportunities and given the support to bring forward legislation like this Bill.
  My final tribute is to the British Safety Council, which, as the hon. Member for Battersea said, is always there trying to encourage good practice and the opportunities for the House to do its bit. I am delighted that at last we are getting an opportunity to—
  It being Eleven o'clock, MR. SPEAKER interrupted the proceedings pursuant to Standing Order No. 11 (Friday sit tings ).

Sleeping Rough (London)
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours(by private notice): To ask the Secretary of State for Social Services what emergency action can be taken to deal with people sleeping rough on the streets of London during the inclement weather.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tim Yeo): Five hundred extra bed places have been made available in emergency shelters which were operating last night. Those will remain open while the very cold weather continues, and 200 of the places, at the Paddington Green and Soho Square hospitals, will remain open until the beginning of March. These shelters are being funded by the Department of the Environment and the Department of Health, but I should like to pay tribute to local authorities and voluntary bodies which have responded very quickly to the cold weather by organising these shelters.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: I thank you for granting a private notice question on this important matter, Mr. Speaker.
Last night, along with many of my colleagues from the north of England and Scotland, I found myself snowbound at Euston. While returning to the House, we witnessed some of the most appalling sights imaginable —ill-clad people shuffling through the streets with nowhere to go, and people sleeping rough in indescribable squalor, caked in snow, lying on pavements and in shop doorways.
I understand that people in London this morning have been expressing the deepest concern over what has happened. I understand that deaths and innumerable cases of hypothermia have been reported in the capital. Something has to be done—not next week, not tomorrow, but today—now. I am afraid that 500 places are simply not enough. We are dealing with thousands of people. We need action now.
The bad weather has been forecast for as long as a week. Not one of the thousands of people whom it is estimated are sleeping rough should be left to sleep on the streets of the capital tonight. Will the Minister announce a state of housing emergency in London, with the requisitioning of a number of major public properties? Will he get the police to set up an emergency rough sleepers' search programme in the capital and instruct them, where possible, to collect those people in need and ferry them to locations such as school premises, empty Government buildings, church halls where available and whatever public buildings can be found to take these people off the streets? Can he ensure that hot food and bedding are made available? Most of all, people need a roof over their heads tonight. We are confronted with a real crisis in the capital today. Something must be done, and it must be done now.
Mr. Yeo: I entirely share the hon. Gentleman's concern about the fact that, during the past few weeks, people have been sleeping rough in central London. As it happens, we have asked the voluntary organisations, which are in the front line of contacting rough sleepers in the streets, to conduct a careful count for us of those people sleeping rough at present. There are a number of organisations which specialise in different parts of central London. The

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count, which was conducted towards the end of last month, showed that just over 1,000 people were sleeping rough at that time.
The voluntary organisations, which have a great deal of expertise in this field—I am glad that we have Mr. Nick Hardwick on secondment to my Department, since he has considerable experience in this field—have agreed with us that the programme that we have put in place is sufficient to meet the needs as they see them on the ground.
Our aim is to ensure that there is no need for anyone at all to sleep rough in central London during this very cold weather. There is no need for anyone to go without food, because it is available, both in the night shelters and day centres, whose location is well known to outreach workers for the voluntary organisations and the police in central London—who have also been very co-operative. I can assure the House that my Department is reviewing the situation not just every day, but every hour, and if we find that it is necessary to make additional places available, we shall do so. Additional places may be made available even before this evening.
Mr. Hugo Summerson: While my hon. Friend's response is very welcome, will he ensure that all steps are taken to publicise the availability of these beds? Will he continue to keep the matter under review and does he agree that our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's statement yesterday on cold weather payments is very welcome and shows that the Government are prepared to take action where necessary?
Mr. Yeo: My hon. Friend is quite right about the very rapid response announced by the Prime Minister on the availability of cold weather payments. As regards publicising the additional places that we have made available in the past few days–we have increased the number of places by 250 since the beginning of this week —we are confident that the most effective way to do so, in a manner which will reach potential rough sleepers who will need the places, is through the voluntary organisations' outreach workers and through the police.
Steps have been taken to ensure that, where additional places have been made available, as they will be from 9 o'clock tonight, people likely to come into contact with potential rough sleepers are aware of the location. Indeed, if someone who is on the point of sleeping rough on a very cold night arrives at one of the shelters where places are fully occupied, we are trying to make arrangements for them to be tranported to another shelter where space is available.
Mr. Simon Hughes: Of course what the Minister has said is welcome, but it does not go far enough. When I was dropping off my colleague, the hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr. Wallace) at Hyde Park underground station at 6 o'clock this morning, people were sleeping there. People are liable to be sleeping rough in every tube station, railway station and road in central London.
Would it be a good idea, first, to ensure that the Red Cross and the St. John Ambulance—whose workers are indentifiably people who care—are asked to go out tonight in uniform, supported by the outreach workers, who may be unknown and therefore may arouse more suspicion in those sleeping rough, as might the police? As angels of mercy, they would identify the people who are sleeping on
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the streets and say to them, "Come with us and we'll take you somewhere safe." They could be backed up by the ambulance service.
Secondly, could a phone number be provided which is commonly available in the capital, which could be used either by anyone in need or by anyone who indentifies someone else who is in need? It would not merely be for those sleeping rough but for the elderly and the sick, who may be vulnerable because their homes are not sufficiently heated.
Mr. Yeo: The hon. Gentleman's last point goes rather wider than the original question, but I shall draw that matter to the attention of my colleagues.
As regards the people that the hon. Member and his colleague may have seen last night, we are advised that spaces were available in the increased places that we have made available this week, and were not taken up. If we are not communicating the message sufficiently well to people who are still sleeping rough I shall consider his suggestions about other voluntary organisations and find out whether there are any other ways in which we can publicise the existence of places. I reiterate that our aim is to ensure that no one needs to sleep rough. Perhaps, although we are making extra capacity available, we need to review how that message is being communicated to people on the streets.
Mr. Harry Greenway: Is my hon. Friend aware that I have frequently gone out on the Salvation Army soup run to those people who sleep rough, and that the Salvation Army should be praised more than any other organisation in our nation for the wonderful work it does? Is my hon. Friend aware that we need to persuade some rough sleepers who have no confidence in the authorities to come into shelter and that we must make sure that that shelter is provided? The Salvation Army has the confidence of those people, who will willingly talk to Salvation Army officers and confide their needs. Will my hon. Friend therefore do everything he can to back that organisation and ensure that it has the extra support that it will probably need to do its wonderful work?
Mr. Yeo: I gladly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the Salvation Army's work, which is of immense value. I also had an opportunity of touring the streets before Christmas, in an entirely unpublicised study of the problem on the ground. I was impressed that the voluntary organisations concerned not only commanded the confidence of many of the people who were sleeping rough but had a detailed knowledge of the problem. They seemed to know the background of many individuals concerned. We see the interface where the voluntary organisations act, and we are providing resources.
It is clear that the immediate problem has nothing to do with financial resources; it is purely a matter of making sure that we have the physical capacity, that we are able to staff the extra places that are being made available and that the people concerned who might want to use them are aware of them. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that the role of the voluntary organisations and their workers is critical in that function.
Mr. Nigel Spearing: The Minister mentions voluntary organisations and says that it is not a matter of financial resources. Is he aware that the various financial restrictions that the Government have placed on

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London borough councils, including poll tax capping and the restriction of expenditure, have forced some of them unwillingly to cut the grants to some of the very organisations that are trying to address the problem? Will he now give an assurance that any expenditure by such affected councils will be made, and will be made legally, by them without risk of prosecution and going against the restrictive and anti-social legislation that he and his hon. Friends have imposed on the people of London?
Mr. Yeo: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman should demonstrate such complete ignorance of the subject. This matter has absolutely nothing whatever to do with the excessive community charge that is levied in many parts of London. Although I recognise that many local authorities have been very helpful in the past few days, organisations that are in the front line of dealing with rough sleepers are not under-resourced in terms of meeting the needs of the next few days of extremely cold weather.
To the extent that people were still on the streets last night, it is, as far as I can tell, the result of those people not being aware of the additional spaces that we have made available and resourced.
Mr. Hugh Dykes: May I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for what he and the Government are doing in this matter? As he rightly says, it involves a relatively small number of people, which means that it can be solved with determined and co-ordinated action. Once one has the proper estimate of the figures, which should not take too long, bearing in mind the fact that we anticipate, unfortunately, that the cold weather will last for some time, surely the Government can bridge the gap. Only the Government have the strength and financial resources to bridge the gap between voluntary bodies and their own determination.
Will my hon. Friend seriously discuss with his colleagues in the Government bringing in the Army, the Territorial Army Volunteer Reserve and the police, who have installations and buildings that could help to meet the gap? It is unacceptable in our prosperous society that even one person should be on the streets in these conditions. Has my hon. Friend any estimate—I know that it is difficult to say—of people who are suffering from mental disabilities? The full horror of that problem will come home to all hon. Members.
Mr. Yeo: My hon. Friend is entirely right. The problem is relatively small in terms of numbers and therefore can be solved. I believe that the programme that we have in hand will not only solve the immediate difficulty of this cold weather, but, over the next few months, through the extra hostels, medium-term hostels and the move-on accommodation that we are making available during 1991 will be sufficient to ensure that none of the people who are currently sleeping rough need still to be doing so, even in crisis shelters, by the end of this year.
On the possible role of the Army and the TAVR, at the moment the voluntary organisations and volunteers are best placed to meet the immediate need in terms of sweeping up people off the street. They know where they are most likely to be found. As has been said, they are more likely to command the confidence of people who
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might be deterred from making contact with someone who appeared to be an authority figure. Nevertheless, we shall consider the suggestion.
As I have said, financial resources are no part of the problem. It is a matter of finding physical accommodation, and the volunteers and staff to operate it, and making sure that the people who might want to use it are aware of it.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind hon. Members that the private notice question of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) concerned people sleeping rough in London. I have no doubt that many of them may have come from Scotland, Wales and elsewhe Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind hon. Members that the private notice question of the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) concerned people sleeping rough in London. I have no doubt that many of them may have come from Scotland, Wales and elsewhere, but questions should be directed to London, please.
Mrs. Audrey Wise: Does the Minister accept that we are astounded by his statement that voluntary organisations are not under-resourced, but are actually satisfied with the Government's actions on this issue? It does not tally with our messages from voluntary organisations. Will he further accept that the problem in London is exacerbated by physical and financial under-resourcing in the regions, which then has a direct effect on the London situation? Will he assure us that local authorities in London and wherever else necessary are given all encouragement—indeed, direction if they are reluctant—and financial recompense for any actions that they take in this emergency?
Mr. Yeo: I can only reiterate that, following the meetings that my hon. Friend the Minister of State and I have had with the main voluntary organisations dealing with the problem—the ones that are experienced in meeting the needs of people on the streets—for the purpose of actually providing crisis accommodation in this period of extreme weather, they are not under-resourced. Such organisations may have wider aims and longer-term ambitions for which they would like additional resources, but, for the purpose of actually providing accommodation tonight and for as long as the period of extremely cold weather lasts, I do not believe that the organisations have a financial problem.
I forgot, in answer to the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes), to respond to his point about how many of the rough sleepers may have a history of mental illness. When the voluntary organisations conducted their recent survey, they tried to establish the different reasons why different groups of people on the streets actually got there. It is quite true that a number of people who are sleeping rough or who have been sleeping rough have such a history and that is something about which we shall talk to our colleagues at the Department of Health and the Department of Social Security.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: Does my hon. Friend accept that, whatever the reason, people are roofless in London and they should not be at this time? The House gives a great welcome to my hon. Friend's announcement today and to the announcements that have been made during the past few weeks about arranging for emergency shelters. Will my hon. Friend pick up the point that was made by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and encourage local newspapers and local radio to give out the telephone numbers

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of social services departments, so that those who are not presently roofless but who are in great need can be referred to those who can give help?
Will my hon. Friend recognise that we are concerned not only about the established contacts of charitable organisations that night after night pay attention to the needs of roofless people on the streets, but about people from overseas and others who come to London for the first time, who are not yet in established places where the voluntary services can make contact with them? It is worth doing extra work to sweep those people into a system in which they can have a roof and warm food during this exceptionally cold period.
Mr. Yeo: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks on the initiatives that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning and I have taken in the past few weeks. We shall do all we can to encourage the local press and radio stations to give as much publicity as possible not only to the location of direct access accommodation but, equally important, to the statutory and voluntary organisations that can counsel people who have not reached the point where they face the prospect of sleeping rough. My hon. Friend made the important point that a number of rough sleepers and potential rough sleepers may have recently arrived in London from abroad. There are advice centres that are specially able to counsel people in that position, but I shall follow up the point and see what else we can do.
Mr. Jimmy Wray: Does the Minister agree that Scotland will need some extra cash during this crisis weather—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Member of what I said a moment ago.
Mr. Wray: Irrespective of where they are, the Government have had 11 years to clear up the problem, and there should not be one person lying out in the street. Does he agree that the social fund has created dire poverty? There were record refusals in October and November—60 per cent. in loans, 50 per cent. in grants and 10 per cent. in crisis loans. Will he speak to the Minister responsible to obtain extra resources?
Mr. Yeo: That question did not bear even a tenuous relationship to the subject that we have been discussing for the past 20 minutes. However, as the hon. Gentleman has ranged more widely, I am glad to say that in England, London and Scotland the quality and quantity of the nation's housing stock has never been so good.
Mrs. Llin Golding: Will the Minister listen to his colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on housing, of which I am chairman? Will he listen to the voluntary organisations about their inability to cope and their lack of funding? Is he aware that the Salvation Army is facing a £7 million deficit this year, that a housing trust has lost five schemes this year, that Centrepoint says that it is in real danger of running, into difficulty because it has too many responsibilities, and that Stonham housing association will carry a large deficit this year amounting to two thirds of its funding? When will he listen to his colleagues and to the voluntary organisations, which cannot be expected to cope with these crises?
Mr. Yeo: It is precisely because we do not expect the voluntary organisations to cope on their own that we are
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resourcing through my Department and the Department of Health this rapid and flexible response, which we have demonstrated this week, to meet the needs of rough sleepers in cold weather. I recall running quite a large voluntary organisation before I came to this place. My then colleagues in the voluntary sector and I were skilful in putting across a constant image of tremendous financial crisis.
The voluntary organisations have wide-ranging aspirations, which I do not denigrate, but it is not for the Government to meet all those needs. The question is on the problem of people sleeping rough in extreme weather in the past two or three nights and possibly over the weekend. I am confident that, if there are any constraints on our ability to respond to this distressing situation, they are imposed by the difficulty of finding accommodation, whether it be in disused hospitals or schools, and have nothing to do with money.
Mr. Donald Anderson: The severity of the current weather has been forecast for up to a week. To what extent was machinery put in place in preparation for that? Although one must concede that this is primarily a metropolitan problem, with your indulgence, Mr. Speaker, I must say that people are sleeping rough in all the major cities of this country. To what extent will analogous provision be available through local government and voluntary agencies in those other major cities?
Mr. Yeo: My Department's ability to respond to the forecasts of cold weather has been demonstrated by the fact that last weekend we made available 250 additional places, on top of the existing 2,100 direct access places in London. Since last weekend, as we have observed the weather getting colder and have read the forecasts, we have made available a further 250 places, making the total of 500 to which I originally referred.
The possibility is that, following the check that we are making this morning on occupancy levels last night, we shall make additional spaces available tonight. Although the question is confined to London, the problem in central London is different from that in other cities, because people are coming into London from other parts of the country. The Department is playing a co-ordinating role, but in other cities it is a matter for the relevant housing authority to respond to.
Ms. Dawn Primarolo: I refer the Minister to column 926 on 30 January, where the Minister for Housing and Planning said that the Department's estimate of homeless people in London alone was between 2,000 to 3,000 people. That shows how Government policy has failed, particularly with direct access hostels, for which the Government are offering little help.
How do the Government intend to deal with the current scale of the crisis, because 500 places is not sufficient? If the Government expect voluntary groups to take the major pressure of this crisis, what resources will be made available to them and what proposals will the Government bring before Parliament to ensure that homelessness is dealt with and that we recognise that there is a crisis not just during the cold weather but all the time?
Mr. Yeo: The hon. Lady refers to the estimate that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning quoted in response to a parliamentary question. It was because we felt that our figures were out of date that we asked—and

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we received full co-operation from them—the voluntary organisations most experienced at dealing with rough sleepers in London to carry out a more recent count. The estimate that they produced came to 1,046. We may have to give or take a few here and there, but that count was conducted by people who have been working in the front line of the problem for some considerable time. We shall therefore use that figure to replace the earlier and out-of-date estimate quoted in the parliamentary answer.
If the hon. Lady had paid any attention to debates and Question Times when this problem has been discussed in the past two months, she would know full well that the 500 places to which I referred have been an emergency response to an emergency situation. We have a bigger and far wider-ranging programme to deal with the problem. This year, we have 500 longer-term hostel places coming on stream, of which 250 will be available within a month. We have 800 places in move-on accommodation and in shared and self-contained flats and houses, which will come on stream this year, of which 500 will be available by the end of next month. We are spending £15 million in the current financial year and £81 million more over the next two years to deal with the problem.
Mrs. Ann Clwyd: I share the concern and anger felt by my hon. Friends. I am amazed by the Minister's complacency. His estimate of the number of homeless people sleeping rough in central London does not square with the parliamentary answer that was given by the Minister for Housing and Planning. On 30 January 1991, he said:
"My Department estimates that there are about 2,000 to 3,000 people sleeping out in central London, and up to 2,000 in other cities."—[Official Report, 30 January 1991; Vol. 184, c. 926.]
Why is there an enormous gap in the statistics between the estimate of his hon. Friend, the Department's estimate and the estimate that the Minister has given today?
The daunting problem of London's homeless has been raised by my colleagues on many occasions. The Government cannot shelter behind their late and puny action. This is a crisis of the Government's own making. What action are they going to take to tackle the root causes? We heard no answers from the Minister today. The root causes include the Government's failed community care policy, which means that people leave long-stay hospitals for the streets. They also include the economic failures, which mean that unemployed young people are driven away from their homes to search for work in London. Those unemployed young people come from Scotland, Wales, the north-east and all other parts of Britain. They include the Government's social security policy, which denies 16 and 17-year-olds money to support themselves. They include also the Government's housing policy, which denies young people and poor people affordable housing. The Minister has failed to address those matters today.
The main problem facing us today and over the next few days is the 2,000 to 3,000 people who are sleeping out in London in this bitterly cold weather. What is going to happen to them tonight, tomorrow night and the night after that? The fact that thousands of old people, young people and mentally ill people are forced to sleep rough is a national scandal which surely even this heartless
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Government cannot continue to ignore. What is the Minister going to do about that? The cold weather hits those people particularly hard.
When the weather is as cold as this, the homeless are not just sleeping rough: they are sleeping dangerously. They are threatened with frostbite, pneumonia and hypothermia. Will the Minister make emergency payments available for food? We understand from the charities that some youngsters have not eaten for two days. Will he make that emergency payment available immediately?
Will the Minister also give rents to people for accommodation? People will need accommodation tonight. Will the Minister promise the House that he and his officials will personally accompany me and some of my colleagues around the streets to see the people sleeping rough tonight, so that we can find out what the problem is and what those people need?
Also, the Minister has not clearly explained what assistance he is giving to the charities and voluntary organisations to provide shelter for the homeless. Most of all—
Mr. Summerson: Too long.
Mrs. Clwyd: I am not taking too long. This is a very important problem.
Mr. Speaker: Order. This is a private notice question. It is not a statement.
Mrs. Clwyd: The Minister made several points, and he has not responded to the concerns expressed by my hon. Friends. It is right and proper that we should have full answers to all those questions. Unless that happens, many of the people about whom we are concerned today will die over the next few days.
Mr. Yeo: I apologise to those hon. Members who are hoping to take part in the debate in which the Under-Secretary of State for Employment, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Mr. Forth) will be speaking shortly. However, the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Mrs. Clwyd) clearly wrote out her question before she listened to my earlier reply. I dealt with nearly all the points about which she went on at excessive length.
I certainly will not, and neither will my officials, respond to the hon. Lady's invitation to accompany her around the streets of London on some kind of publicity stunt. We are out there, without television cameras, looking at the situation for ourselves. My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning and I, as I did before Christmas, and my officials are involved in that. We will continue to work in the closest possible co-operation with the voluntary organisations, to which I pay a warm tribute for their excellent role in responding to the situation. We are very glad to have the services of Mr. Nick Hardwick on secondment from the voluntary organisations to my Department.
Clearly the hon. Member for Cynon Valley was not listening to me. I said that the figures I gave were the most recent estimate carried out by the voluntary organisations on the ground. They show the number of people sleeping rough in central London towards the end of January.
The hon. Member for Cynon Valley also raised one or two additional points, whose connection with the private notice question was somewhat obscure. However, I remind her that, in this country, every 16 and 17 year-old has a right to training. Any youngster who is not employed or in

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further education can take part in a training scheme. If the hon. Lady had any concern for the youngsters she claims to be worried about, she would be urging those who are not taking advantage of those training opportunities to go out and register for a training scheme right now.
With regard to the severe hardship payments, I am advised that the local social security offices have some discretion to make severe hardship payments to those youngsters who have not yet registered for the youth training scheme.
In conclusion, I can assure the House that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning and I are profoundly concerned about the problem. We are not in any way complacent about it. We are, with our officials, reviewing the situation not just from day to day, but from hour to hour, and we will continue to do that.
Several Hon. Members: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I am on my feet. We have an important private Members' day before us and it would be unfair to the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis), whose Bill is before the House, if he did not have adequate time. That would put his Bill in jeopardy. We should return to the Second Reading.
Mr. George Foulkes rose—
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is a Front-Bench spokesman. I will take his point of order, but it must be one that I can answer and not a point that he would have liked to raise on the private notice question.
Mr. Foulkes: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. You never fail to remind us every month at Scottish Question Time that this is a United Kingdom Parliament. I know from experience yesterday that many of the people sleeping rough—
Mr. Speaker: Order. I will stop the hon. Gentleman there. I have called an hon. Member representing a Glasgow seat; I called an hon. Member from Wales; and the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson is also from Wales; I called an hon. Lady who represents a midlands seat; and I also called the chairman of the Back-Bench committee; I have also called London Members. On a private notice question on a private Members' day, I cannot call everyone who wants to participate.
Mr. Alan Meale: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Perhaps you can give the House some guidance. I am seriously concerned that the Minister may have misled the House.
Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must find another opportunity to raise matters of that kind.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that it is not easy on most Fridays to have a private notice question and to call everyone who wants to speak. I am not talking about myself—I am thinking about some of my colleagues.
Mr. Speaker: Order.
Mr. Skinner: Let me finish the point of order.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman always tries to be extremely helpful to me, but he would be the very first to complain if an hon Member on his side of the House or even he himself had been fortunate in the ballot for private Members' Bills—
Mr. Skinner: Let me explain.
Mr. Speaker: No, I do not need an explanation, because I think I know what the hon. Gentleman is going to say.
I granted the private notice question. If the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) raises points of order of this kind, naturally the Chair may become less disinclined to have business interrupted.
Mr. Skinner: The point that I want to make is that you have said several times that this is a private Members' day. It is, and that is important. However, I must tell you that you may not be aware of the fact that, later on today, the Government spokesman is going to block the Public Safety Information Bill, so this private Members' day will not be a private Members' day.
Mr. Speaker: Order. If the hon. Gentleman persists in making points of order, there will be no need to block anything.
Ms. Marjorie Mowlam: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Have you heard anything from the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry about whether he intends to come to the House this morning to make a statement on a problem which does not have the immediacy of the crisis with which we have just dealt but which affects many of the small investors whom the Government have encouraged to invest? Part of the financial regulatory structure is about to crumble: the Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association is likely to become insolvent or go into liquidation. It is essential that we have a statement from the Secretary of State on the seriousness of the problem.
Mr. Speaker: I have had no indication that the Government want to make a statement about that matter. I must confess that I do not know anything about it myself. We should return to the Bill.

Public Safety Information Bill
Question again proposed, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
11.39 am
Mr. Simon Hughes: Before the private notice question—which I am grateful to you for allowing, Mr. Speaker—we were debating the Public Safety Information Bill of the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis). I had completed the acknowledgement section of my speech; I now want to come to the substance.
The most important philosophical and political issue raised by the Bill is the overriding and in some ways uniquely British attitude to safety. We have an almost pathological belief that matters should be kept secret. The number of matters that are still kept secret in Britain would surprise even the informed observer. Minute pieces of information held by Government Departments, of absolutely no security relevance, are still secret information.
It is a paradox that on transport matters, it is possible to learn more from abroad than at home about events that take place here. One can obtain more information about British Rail and reports compiled by it if they end up in the United States, because of the rights under the American constitution and legislation. That is unacceptable. The Bill seeks to make it obligatory that information about safety information produced by someone with authority, which comes into the hands of someone with authority, is put in the hands of the public. What the public do with it is a secondary issue.
The hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot) rightly said that there is not even parallel response or duty. I and, I expect, other London Members receive regular reports from the local fire and civil defence authority and London Underground when inspections are carried out on underground stations in our constituencies or those in which we have an interest. London Underground and other elements of London transport produce that safety information. British Rail does not, as the hon. Member for Wanstead and Woodford rightly said. There is not logical reason why the same standard of provision of information should not apply to public transport—whether underground, bus, railway, ferry or aeroplane—and public venues such as night clubs, football grounds, cricket grounds, sports stadiums or any other venue.
Mr. Forth: Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind what the Bill says? I have followed his remarks closely, and I have a feeling that there is a danger that he might have misunderstood the Bill, at least as I understand it—my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) may wish to correct me. The Bill refers to statutory authorities. In cases where such authorities have identified a substantial threat, the information must go through the process in the Bill. Some of the examples which the hon. Gentleman gave would not come into that category and would not be covered by the Bill.
Mr. Hughes: They would come into the category if the information relating to the football ground or bus came into the hands of the relevant statutory authority. The hon. Member for Battersea quoted the former leader of Bradford city council, who came by information about the ground which never came into the public domain.
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I accept that the Bill is limited. Many of us would have preferred it to go further. I expect that the hon. Gentleman would have preferred to make it go further. We all know that for private Members' Bills to have a chance of becoming law there must nearly always be a compromise. There is always a Government Department, like a black cloud, saying, "We shall allow only this much to go through. If you go any further, we will bring in our troops on a Friday afternoon." Whether the Government could have done so today in sufficient numbers, I do not know. The Bill has that limitation. It requires that the information percolate through to the relevant authority. It would then go on to be publicised. Even so, it is welcome that the Bill covers a whole range of activities. There is no logical reason for inconsistency.
I wish to cite two examples in support of my case. I shall be explicit, critical and even rude about the Department of Transport and British Rail. My first example is inevitable. It is the case of the Marchioness, which sank, as the House will remember, on 20 August 1989 in the Thames.
After that incident, which caused the deaths of 51 people, a copy of the then draft report on the Marchioness compiled by the statutory body, the marine accident investigation bureau, came into my hands. For the first and so far only time in my life, I decided to leak parts of an unpublished report, because a substantial burden of the report was critical, not of individuals such as the skipper of the Marchioness or the Bowbelle or any other vessel on the river, but of the public authorities and in particular the Department of Transport, which failed to take heed of warnings which it had been given.
In March 1990, almost a year ago, I released excerpts of that draft report. I did not release the whole report, because I was conscious as a lawyer of the duty not to prejudice individuals' rights and the right to defend of anyone who might be taken to court as an individual to defend himself. In the event, one person has been taken to court and the trial is pending. That matter is sub judice.
The report was clear. Written by the proper investigative agency, it said, among other things, that poor visibility on passenger launches and the inadequacy of warning lights were recognised following a series of minor accidents between 1981 and 1983. The draft report went on:
"The general consensus of opinion, especially among those who operated the larger vessels, was that something had to be done quickly to prevent a major accident occurring between their craft and a passenger boat."
Those incidents
"were recognised at the time as providing a warning of the possibility of a major accident … as time passed the perceived need for special caution gradually relaxed.
It is not considered that, in all respects, action taken by the Department in the last few years has gone as far as it should have."
It is paradoxical that, as a result of some of the accidents in the 1980s–48 collision accidents were recorded by the Port of London authority on the Thames, and there were nine previous accidents involving the Bowbelle—Ready Mix Concrete, the owner of the Bowbelle, had written in 1983 to the Department of Transport about its worries on safety on the river. That information came into the hands of a public authority. The Department of Transport chose not to take action—or at least, not sufficient action. It is notable that once the Marchioness collision occurred and 51 people died, speedy action was taken—which I recognise and for which I was

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grateful—by the then Minister for Public Transport, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo) and the then Secretary of State for Transport, the right hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson) and others to implement measures, many of which could have been implemented earlier.
I have absolutely no doubt that, for example, keeping passenger lists, controlling sound systems so that the people on the bridge could hear more clearly what was going on, displaying notices which make clear where the exits are on vessels and dealing with inadequacies of design —which still have not entirely been dealt with—would have increased the probability either that the collision would never have happened or that the number of dead would have been lower. You do not have to have been with me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, at the Southwark cathedral memorial service for the victims to know what grief, pain and anguish are caused to people, especially if they feel, with justification, that it need not have happened at all.
Mr. Spearing: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman who knows of my interest in river matters and in this tragedy especially. Is he telling us that there was notification to the Department of Transport, or to a public body within it, that there had been as many as nine incidents relating to the Bowbelle and that that was recorded and known by the Department? Can he tell us, within the constraints of the sub judice rule, which he and I both respect, whether action was taken consequent on those nine incidents?
Mr. Hughes: The hon. Gentleman knows that I have to be careful. My understanding is that the PLA kept a record of the incidents, which was available on request. I requested it myself and was grateful to receive it. I understand that the Department of Transport would have known of those incidents and of the concern expressed by users of the river from 1981 to 1983. I understand that no specific action was taken on any of those matters from 1981 until the implementation of the regulations in the autumn of 1989, after the Marchioness sank.
I must concede, as it is right to be correct, that some of the regulations passed in 1989 covered or overlapped with some of the concerns expressed in 1983 and were a result of general European initiatives. However, the regulations did not deal with the incidents explicitly, they did not appear to respond to the concerns of 1983 and they did not deal explicitly with the sequence of collisions, some of which involved these vessels, and some of which involved others. Collisions had been a persistent fact of river life. Some were serious, whereas others involved only glancing blows and were not of great importance. However, the collection of incidents should have given proper cause for concern about navigation on the Thames.
My other target is British Rail. A constituent of mine, Paul Elvin, died in November two years ago having been electrocuted when working as a fitter at Euston station. I knew him and his family before he died. In 1989, Kevin Doherty, the brother of a friend of mine, died while working at Epsom station. Those two people died on British Rail property. In the first case, a prosecution was eventually taken out against the sub-contractors. I was grateful to the Attorney-General and his officers for investigating whether the Director of Public Prosecutions should take out a prosecution for corporate manslaughter
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against British Rail or others. In the event, the charge brought was a health and safety charge against the sub-contractors and a conviction was secured.
Before the trial, the case was, quite properly, the subject of an investigation by British Rail. However, as in the case of the Marchioness, the report, which was produced a long time ago, is still not in the public domain. Even recently, the family of Paul Elvin have been told that they cannot now get the report, even though no criminal proceedings are pending and the case has been dealt with, unless they start civil proceedings. Only then, on discovery, will the report be released.
Mr. Forth: So that we are all on the same ground here and in the spirit of trying to be helpful, may I remind the hon. Gentleman again that the Bill deals with matters of public safety? I suspect that the hon. Gentleman is very much on the ground of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, which is concerned with health and safety in the place of work. I have ministerial responsibility for that. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be fair with the House and make it clear that the cases he is mentioning would not be covered by the Bill.
Mr. Hughes: The last two cases I have mentioned are, of course, health and safety at work examples. The hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd) and I have acknowledged the fact that private contractors on a private building site would not be covered by the Bill. However, someone on a public transport site such as Euston station, who may be going to use a train owned by British Rail, or someone who may be going to use a bus owned by London Regional Transport is in the domain of public safety because the public have access. The Minister seems to be nodding his head.
Mr. Forth: No.
Mr. Hughes: The Bill would govern the publication of information. I hope that the Minister will bear with me for a second. The Bill would have had a material effect on the fate of my constituent and of others in the future. I want to tie the two points together.
If the report on the Marchioness had been published immediately it had been finalised, the public at large would have been able to judge whether they felt that the safety of boats on the river was such that they could use them. The publicity about the report in the press, in the House and at places of embarkation would have made that information clear. Information would have been displayed for prospective users to see.
There is no excuse for the report still being secret. If the report is kept secret, things may not be done that should be done and the public will then be at greater risk. As representatives of the public, we have no assurance that public safety has been guaranteed.
The Paul Elvin case gives a similar example. The British Rail report, of which I have not seen even a draft copy, may have identified a failure. It may have confirmed that there was no publicly available sign to show that the overhead wire was an electric cable and that people had to stay safely away from it. There was also no warning sign telling people to keep away from the building works, as I saw for myself.
I went to the station with Paul Elvin's cousin a couple of weeks after he died. We were able to go on to the site and there was no warning sign telling people to keep out.

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We were able to go on to the site, to climb on the scaffolding and to walk around the site without let or hindrance. If such incidents can be avoided by a Bill such as this, which will ensure that the risks are made clear and that what reports have said is made public, we shall have achieved our objectives.
Mr. Bowis: I hope that we can clear up any misunderstanding between the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Minister. The Bill, as I understand it—I hope that I understand it—deals with areas to which the public are admitted. An employee who was injured in one such area, at Euston station or anywhere else, would be a beneficiary of the measure. However, if he was injured while working on the tracks, he would not be covered by the Bill, because the public are not legally entitled to walk along the tracks.
Mr. Hughes: Paul Elvin was electrocuted on the platform at Euston station. He died the following day in University College hospital. Kevin Doherty was killed as a result of having come in to contact with a live rail, in a slightly different case. In the second, it was in an area to which the public could have access, although they should not. At Euston, there is no doubt that it was a public platform.
We need the Bill. I hope that we shall then go on to make four other changes. First, the present law must be properly enforced. If there is meant to be a sign saying, "Danger—Keep out"—if there is meant to be a warning sign—whether it's at Euston station or elsewhere, it should be there. There is no excuse for it not being there. I believe that Paul Elvin would not have died if the proper precautions had been taken on Euston station.
Secondly, we must change the order in which events are investigated. Official reports should be published as soon as they are available. The argument against that is that they might prejudice a trial. Let the authors of the report be able to be called in the trial and to be cross-examined. Let us have the report first, so that we have all the information when we decide whether somebody should be prosecuted.
Thirdly, let us make it clear that the system of inquests will be changed, so that those who are bereaved or who represent the deceased have a full right to have any questions they want aired at the inquest. In that way, all the prospective evidence about the cause of death will be placed before the coroner.
Finally, it is a great grievance of people who are bereaved that, when a prosecution takes place or is considered in relation to anyone or any firm that might be guilty—for example, British Rail, the owners of the Marchioness, the owners of the Bowbelle, or Townsend Thoresen which is the owner of the Herald of Free Enterprise—the relatives should have a chance to have their say. They should have a right to at least an interview with the prosecuting authorities and to place the questions they want answered on the agenda. Therefore, when the trial took place they would feel satisfied that their interests were being looked after and could feel that the people who had died had not died in vain.
The people who know most about the circumstances of an accident that causes death are the families of those who died. They make it their business to find out. People are
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often interested only when motivated by tragedy or personal crisis. We should use that experience. Such people would say that the best way forward was for any available, authoritative information to go into the public domain, so that the public can make it clear that they will not accept the answer, "We should have known better—we could have done it another way."
12.3 pm
Mr. Neil Thorne: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) on doing so well in the ballot and on bringing before us the subject of public safety information. I am sure that all hon. Members agree that it is important to be properly informed in the interests of public safety.
The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) spoke of finding out more about what happens in this country by listening to those from overseas. On defence, we can learn a lot more from the Americans about what is happening in this country than we know ourselves. As a nation, we have been inclined to be secretive about such matters. Perhaps politicians and those in authority thought that they knew best, but that is not always so. In this day and age, with universal education of a high standard, we should involve ourselves much more in the process.
I am concerned about one or two aspects of the Bill. I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea because I have to attend a constituency engagement—the same one that my hon. Friend the Member for Wanstead and Woodford (Mr. Arbuthnot) mentioned earlier. He has already departed and I shall have to chase after him to catch up. It is a local authority commitment and we both represent the same local authority district.
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea will consider my worries and give them proper attention in Committee. I have two specific anxieties related to practicalities and my fear that there may be so many notices that their importance will be cheapened. In the King's Cross fire, the escalators were made of wood that was thought to be incombustible, although nothing, including steel, is absolutely incombustible. In that case, would we have to notify everyone that there was a problem at King's Cross because the escalators were made of wood? If polystyrene tiles were used on the ceiling and painted over—which many people acknowledge is a recipe for disaster—they would become a dangerous fire hazard, but apart from taking them down and starting again, there is not much that we can do about such a product. Would it mean that, at every station where anybody could join the network and finish up at King's Cross, it would be necessary to have a statement that it could be hazardous to alight at King's Cross? That could be a problem.
I am anxious about that, because many other such problems could be identified on different parts of the network and there could be many notices—all using metric units rather than imperial ones, about which I, too, am sorry. If there were too many notices, people would have to arrive at the station 10 or 15 minutes early for their journey to examine them, which could be a disadvantage. Familiarity would breed contempt and people would not bother to read the notices, so the whole point would be missed. That issue must be addressed.
I am also worried about manpower. When a new process is introduced, although the general cost may not

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be high, the fact that people are involved in it means that other people have to be diverted from different tasks or more people have to be employed. If the job is to be done properly, we must address that problem. There should be sufficient manpower in local authorities. I am already worried that planning enforcement in my district is not carried out as well as I would wish.
I have many constituents who say that their complaints are not dealt with quickly enough. When industrial sewing machines are used in a terrace of houses and disturb the immediate neighbours, investigations are carried out to establish whether there is a legitimate case for complaint —that involves manpower. The same is true with complaints about noise nuisance. People have to be sent from the local authority to check whether there is a noise nuisance. Other ways of dealing with such problems can be expensive in terms of time and employing professional advice. Therefore, the local authority is the natural authority on which people rely for help. We do not want people to be diverted to other jobs when we are already short of staff to deal with existing problems.
Mr. Bowis: I entirely accept that there is a specific problem in terms of the number of notices along the transport system and we must consider that problem in Committee. The report on King's Cross related specifically to risks due not merely to the materials in the lift, but to the gaps that led to the collecting of rubbish underneath.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) referred to local government manpower. No additional local government manpower will be used except where the local authority is the safety authority, which is not the case in transport facilities. They are linked to health and safety and the Department of Transport. London Underground Ltd. has set up its own authority. Therefore, the proposal should not involve manpower implications. My hon. Friend should compare the cost of checking that the report on King's Cross is effectively monitored with the cost incurred after the fire, the renovations and the new staffing arrangements that had to be made.
Mr. Thorne: Local authorities are responsible for issuing licences for a considerable number of sites, including places of entertainment and football grounds.
I accept that local authorities have no direct relationship with transport nationwide; certainly some of them are involved with transport although not in London. However, they are engaged in licensing entertainment premises, for instance. A disco redecorated with oil-bound paint and polystyrene tiles would become a fire hazard, and that would be a matter for the local authority. Under the Bill, would that involve the authority in extra investigations and inquiries and in ensuring that it had enough staff to check every time premises were redecorated? I fear that local authority staff will be diverted to such tasks and away from dealing with other problems.
I do not say that this is not an important function: it is. I should like the responsibility for such matters to be vested in the people who take the action in the first place. Architects or owners of buildings who allow combustible materials to be used should be made responsible for any resulting hazards to life and limb—that is better than making the local authority check. Local authorities must not become more bogged down in the process.
Mr. Bowis: I repeat that we are discussing only cases in which a substantial danger has been perceived by local authorities that are safety authorities. Under their present licensing and monitoring arrangements I assume that they do no less, and if they need more staff to carry out inquiries they should already arrange their financial affairs so as to be able to afford them.
Mr. Thorne: Is my hon. Friend saying that when a licence comes up for renewal a local authority will have to carry out a full inspection before it issues another licence—
Mr. Bowis: I am saying that if that already happens and will continue to happen under the present law, the Bill will not affect the process. The Bill will be triggered only if, in the course of such an inspection, a substantial threat to the public is perceived. There should be no great manpower implications or shifting of resources beyond what a local authority should engage in anyway if it perceives a threat.
Mr. Thorne: So the legislation will be activated only if such a threat happens to come to a local authority's notice and no additional burden on it is implied?
Mr. Peter Bottomley: I have been following this discussion all morning. If a safety authority sees a danger that needs to be eliminated, such dangers are already prohibited and the Bill will not be triggered. But if a safety authority for any reason perceives a danger about which it believes people should know—a danger that is not the subject of prohibition but is not insignificant—notices should be displayed and the local authority should add the incident to its register. Is that correct?
Mr. Thorne: Indeed. So may I take it that there is no additional pressure on local authorities to discover such information? If dangers come to their notice they are required to notify the public under the Bill, which I hope will become an Act. But if dangers do not come to their notice they will not be infringing the law and everything will be the same as now—
Mr. Bowis: The only person who would be infringing anything would be the occupier of the premises who permitted a risk to the public to continue, assuming that he knew about it. Once the matter had been drawn to the attention of the safety authority it would be expected to look into it and, if it considered that it constituted a substantial danger, that would trigger the mechanism of the Bill.
Mr. Thorne: I am grateful to hear that no extra burden will be placed on local authorities. They are very busy and carefully watching their community charge bills, and we do not want to add to their responsibilities.
The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) said that removing guards from trains detracted from safety standards. I disagree. There are other ways in which to improve safety on the railways. Instead of employing additional staff, the railways would be better advised—the hon. Member for Newham, South, should support this idea—to move to the system being so effectively used on the docklands light railway, where electronic equipment takes over driving the train and opening the doors and the train captain can devote his or her attention to the safety and comfort of the passengers. We should explore that idea in the context of the underground and elsewhere.

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No less than £1 billion has been earmarked over the next 10 years for London Underground. The money will be used for leaflets, staff training, heat detectors, fireproofing and construction on the underground, much of which was built so many years ago.
One of the good results of the sad events at King's Cross was the complete ban on smoking on the underground. That has considerably improved the safety, comfort and convenience of passengers.
The hon. Member for Newham, South talked about Southern region disposing of guards on all lines. The region is extremely congested, having more junctions than any other comparable network in the world. We should spend the available money on sorting out those junctions and grading them to reduce the great number of potential causes of accidents, not on unnecessary guards. The hon. Gentleman suggested that passengers on Southern region write to Members of Parliament demanding that guards be reinstated throughout the network, but we should remember that when a crew member fails to turn up because he is ill, say, that can often mean that a train does not go out; whereas with single-manning that does not happen, and it is hoped that there would be enough reserves to provide adequate services for the long-suffering commuters on Southern region.
When this matter is discussed in Committee I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea will tell us how his Bill would cover incidents such as the Zeebrugge disaster. Much of the information that came out of that was dealt with only within the company and never entered the public domain. If the Bill deals only with matters in the public domain, incidents such as Zeebrugge will not be covered by it, unless a mole in the system leaks the information to the public.
Mr. Bowis: Perhaps my hon. Friend did not hear my speech. I referred to the indirect benefits of the Bill in incidents such as Zeebrugge. It would not be a mole, but the captains of the vessels, who had warned the company about the need for lights on the bridge to show whether the bow doors were open. If they believed that they were getting no satisfaction from the company about putting it right, I have no doubt that, were such a channel available for information to reach the safety authority, which could investigate whether there was a substantial risk, it would be used.
Mr. Thorne: I assure my hon. Friend that I have been here throughout the debate. It was not clear from his speech whether he appreciated that it is not easy for staff to put private company matters into the public domain. Employers consider these matters to be private and if they are drawn to the attention of the public the employee will not attract the accolade of the employer, especially if a programme to put the matter right is expensive.
I am worried that such internal matters may never enter the public domain unless a captain or a steward, or a mole in the system, draws them to public attention. That frequently happens in Government Departments. Moles sometimes appear, but they are rarely from the civil service. It is disgraceful that it happens. If such matters reach the attention of the public I am sure that a reporter, if he felt the matter was of public interest, would make it an issue for debate.
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It is important for people not to be besieged by notices of one sort or another dealing with all the affairs in which they become involved. People could become so confused that they would not take the matter seriously. The Bill must separate important and unimportant matters. We must not allow people to be so deluged with unnecessary information that it loses its usefulness. I certainly hope that we can promote and improve public safety information.
I am sure that my hon. Friend knows of my considerable interest in the St. John Ambulance and of the amount of work that I have tried to do by drawing attention to the need for adequate safety provision at sports grounds. That is a considerable problem because while some football clubs, for example, are extremely helpful and readily provide facilities, others are extremely reluctant to make funds available for adequate public safety. Publicity tends to fall on deaf ears.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wanstead and Woodford said that no one really expects a catastrophe to happen to him. People think that catastrophes happen to others. At Hillsborough, Bradford and other places, matters could have been vastly improved if the first-aid facilities made available for the use of St. John Ambulance and others had been much better. I hope that we can properly look into and advance the cause of public safety in all walks of life.
12.24 pm
Mr. Peter Bottomley: In his interesting speech my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) spoke about St. John Ambulance and its services. I am in the middle of correspondence with the Ministry of Transport and British Rail about first-aid facilities for passengers at Victoria station. We need to be aware that in some areas where provision might be expected there is no statutory responsibility. I would not argue that we should do only those things required by statute, but where large numbers of people are gathered together, such as at rail and other transport terminals, we should consider what the provision ought to be, either directly or through the St. John Ambulance or others, so that those who find themselves in need can receive immediate attention rather than waiting for an ambulance to be taken to hospital. Thousands of people passing through Victoria station do not seem to have the provision that is found in many places of entertainment and sports stadiums. I do not ask my hon. Friend the Minister to give an immediate answer to that, but I use it to link my speech to that of my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South.
We need to distinguish between risk and casualty reduction on the one side and the improvement of safety on the other. It is easy to increase safety without bringing about any reduction in the numbers of people who are killed or injured. That comes out most obviously in one area with which I have had an association—reducing casualties on the road. It also links to the work of the Health and Safety Executive when I served in the Department of Employment about six years ago.
With relatively small numbers of inspectors and a large number of establishment, it is easy for an inspector to spend all his time without having any impact on casualty reduction. Inspectors could make sure that the right notices are displayed and try to ensure that they visit all the

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premises for which they are responsible, if that is possible, but that would not necessarily focus on the issues that matter most.
Much of the garment trade is located in the east of London and there the inspectors are right to concentrate on matters likely to lead to catastrophes. There may be people working in premises in which the fire door is padlocked, and there can be even greater danger if the person who has the key to the padlock is off somewhere else. Inspectors are right to concentrate on inspection systems for boilers, because an exploding boiler could have the same impact as a mortar bomb landing in the garden of No. 10 Downing street. It may not get the same attention, but it could be just as disastrous.
The Bill does not include the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) not only on raising this subject but on the work that he has put into the Bill and his speech. However, I counsel him that if he is advised to incorporate the provisions of that Act into the Bill, he will end up with a huge computer print-out. There are many provisions in that Act and when piled up, they would probably be about 1 m—or 3 ft 3 in, to use the old imperial measure—deep.
As my hon. Friend said, information would probably have saved the lives of people at Bradford. There were warnings about a specific potential cause of a dangerous fire. No one could have predicted that the fire would lead to so many deaths, but the Bill would have led to action being taken. We would then not have known that lives had been saved.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea mentioned the Clapham crash and other hon. Members mentioned the Marchioness. By itself, the Bill would not have affected either of those tragedies because nobody could have said in advance that a specific risk was evident.
Having a culture of risk reduction, and giving people more opportunities to make a fuss—even if they are accused of having bees in their bonnet, as I often am—
Mr. Forth: Never.
Mr. Bottomley: My hon. Friend is too kind. Some people want to whistle blow because they are concerned about their responsibility to their passengers who are their fellow human beings. Here, I am thinking mainly of transport, although the Bill applies to other sectors. People who make their views known achieve results.
One way to achieve results is to realise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea does, the importance of trade union membership. The trade union health and safety representatives do a great deal of unsung work in this. They co-operate with employers as well. Trade unions, together with organisations such as the Industrial Society and training boards, deserve credit for what they have done in this sector. They are a bit like the people teaching in primary schools. Their achievements are not noticed until some years afterwards when the statistics make them clear.
In organisations large and small, a positive approach to trade unions is important I say this with some force because my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea was the national organiser for the Conservative trade unionists before he came to the House. I hope that more people will follow his footsteps so that the interests of people at work are represented by both sides of the House. People's
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interests are served by more than just giving them more money or extra skills. Safety at work is part of the unsung, unpaid work of 200,000 shop stewards and safety representatives in every industry.
More attention to detail might have helped in the Clapham and Marchioness disasters.
Much of the support for the Bill comes from people who have been involved in tragedies. My experience has been mainly of road casualties. Every day, 14 people die on the roads. Those who suffer from the results of such tragedies and not organised, apart from the Campaign Against Drinking and Driving. I say to anyone who would ignore the interests of those who have been involved in disasters, whether Lockerbie or the Marchioness, or of those who have been bereaved by them, that they should try the experience of sitting in a room with 300 people who have nothing in common except that, for each of them, a member of his family has been killed in such a way. That provides a focus for what too many of us ignore because we take it for granted that someone else will deal with it.
Information, especially if it is given in public, or more often if it is given by a public authority, is ignored. When I was a Minister in the Department of Transport I was concerned about the risks to railway passengers if a bridge over a road was carried away by an oversized vehicle. In co-operation with many others, the Department produced a report called, in plain English, "Bridge Bashing". It dealt with how we would cope with the one in 10 chance that, over the next 10 years, there would be a major disaster when a bridge over or under a railway is carried away, with the result that a train with 400 people on board will come to an abrupt halt. It will not be like Cannon Street—it will be an even greater tragedy.
We set out to halve the risks, but that still leaves some risk. Some bridges are too low to allow the passage of an articulated lorry with a container. We put up signs by these bridges, but still people crash their containers into them and leave the container behind. So far, a bridge has not been carried away. There is information about that risk and there has been a public approach to reducing the risk in a cost-effective way, but we know that such behaviour continues, with the certainty of injury which increases with every day that passes.
The Department also endeavoured to bring to the attention of highway authorities the desirability of making roads as skid-resistant as possible. It calculated that by spending a relatively small amount of money each year—not just on national roads, but the 96 per cent. of highways that are the responsibility of local authorities—to raise their level of skid-resistance to a cost-effective, appropriate level, there would be a significant return on that investment, in terms of the number of casualties that would be avoided.
By using a monitoring machine, it is possible to determine roads where the coefficient of friction is too low according to the standard. However, what was to be done where local authorities could not immediately arrange for contractors to undertake the necessary resurfacing? The answer, which is roughly in accordance with the provisions of the Bill, was to require an authority to erect a sign warning of a slippery road ahead. However, that has led to a rash of such warning signs, which I fear some people might tend to ignore.
When road conditions are as bad as they are at this moment, everyone drives more cautiously—but I hope that road users will respond more to warning signs even in

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normal circumstances. That is one example of how public safety information can allow an individual to modify his or her behaviour and to reduce the risk to which they and others are exposed. There are some elements of public information already enshrined in law, such as that relating to the limit on the number of persons who can travel in a lift, and the legal obligation on places of entertainment to publicise that they are licensed by the fire authority to accommodate only a certain number of people. One might think also of the notices displaying the prices in bars or restaurants, but that is to move away from the serious issue of reducing casualties.
I will not speculate on the causes of the Cannon Street disaster because it is the subject of an inquiry. All railway and plane crashes should be the subject of an open inquiry as quickly as possible, so that their cause can be identified. I take the view that prosecution is a secondary issue and that the matter of first primary importance is to determine how and why a disaster occurred.
One reason why buffer crashes cause a large number of injuries and, sadly, sometimes death, is that passengers have the freedom to open the door of the train while it is still moving and to stand in the door frame. If the train comes to a sudden halt even when it is travelling at only 5 mph, any person who does that is at serious risk of suffering extra injury. I shall not cross-question my hon. Friend the Minister about whether he thinks that train doors should have a sign warning of that danger, but even general awareness of the risk does not stop people taking it. Therefore, we must respect my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea for taking a limited approach.
It is not meant as an all-singing, all-dancing Bill; it is aimed at filling gaps in the provision of information to the travelling public. It is part of the nature of life that people may eventually take such information for granted. One reason for having parliamentary debates of this kind is not just to give guidance to public administrators, safety inspectors and others and to attempt to change the law, but to educate the media, which are the source of information for the majority of people. That is illustrated by the importance of advertisements and editorial publicity relating to product recalls for safety reasons, whether the product be an anorak or a motor car.
It is the unusual which gains most attention. Disasters such as King's Cross or Kegworth, both of which I attended with sadness, are unusual, but if they have the effect of prompting people to travel by road instead of by rail or plane, that will lead to more rather than fewer casualties.
While we are giving illustrative examples about some of the crashes and disasters in the air and on the road, we need to recognise that if the distance travelled on the roads were switched to the airways, instead of 5,400 deaths there would have been 650, and if all the miles travelled on the roads were switched to the railways there would have been only 150 deaths last year.
Sometimes we spend our time considering how to spend hundreds of millions of pounds to try to save a few lives and turn our back on issues that will predictably affect hundreds of thousands of people this year, and which we could change at virtually no cost.
As a public authority, we should put a sign outside the Palace of Westminster saying that if people cycle out of
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here without a cycle helmet, they have a 60 per cent. greater chance of dying if they are in a crash, because 80 per cent. of cyclists die in crashes in which only their head is injured. Medical research has shown that in 80 per cent. of those cases, their lives could have been saved by wearing a crash helmet. I shall not make this point directly to the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing), who I know is a cyclist, but I think that we have some responsibility when we know that people leave here relatively unprotected. Wearing a helmet is an example of how people can reduce their own risk. Often that is less exciting than having arguments in our professional lives about our responsibility to others. If we are to have a culture of hazard reduction we need to consider all aspects of safety issues.
I would make a similar point to authorities that provide cars for people to travel in. One of the curiosities about my move from the Department of Employment to the Department of Transport was that at the former I was driven around in cars with rear seat belts, whereas when I was at the Department of Transport and was supposed to be exhorting people to wear seat belts, my replacement car had no rear seat belts and it took two weeks to have them put in.
Rear seat belts provide protection and can cut out two thirds of the risk of injury to the wearer. Under the provisions of my hon. Friend's Bill, the Government car service should put a sign in every Minister's car stating that the rear seat belt provided will reduce the wearer's risk of injury in a crash by two thirds and will halve the passenger's risk of injuring the driver. As an unrestrained projectile hitting the driver, who will be wearing a seat belt, the passenger is unnecessarily adding to the risk to someone else at work. However, that provision is not likely to be made in the Bill because it is unfashionable to be concerned with practical, low-cost measures to reduce casualties on the roads, although that is as important as some of the other issues that have been mentioned.
I support my hon. Friend's intentions in the Bill, although I do not know whether it is the right way to achieve them, but that can be considered in Committee. My hon. Friend rightly wishes to let people act and behave in the full knowledge of what is happening. He is providing that people will not be unnecessarily ignorant. A journalist in the Financial Times, Christian Tyler, who was describing an Austrian scientist, quoted him as saying that the biggest problem is not AIDS—although that is important—but AIGS, which stands for apathy, ignorance, greed and stupidity. My hon. Friend's Bill is aimed mainly at the apathy, and provides that if a risk is known to some people it should be made known to other people, if there is
"a substantial threat of danger to the health or safety of a member of the public."
The Bill will affect many Government Departments. From my experience of studying the responsibility map of the Health and Safety Commission, let alone the Health and Safety Executive and the various Government Departments with an interest in such matters, I doubt whether there will be unanimity that the provisions in the Bill are a good idea or that it is a good idea for information to be shared by everyone. Fortunately, at the moment I do not have to concern myself with that, because I am a supporter, rather than a member, of the Government.
If the Bill is successful this year, people who have been less than enthusiastic will recognise that it has no dangers

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for them and has some benefit for the public. If the Bill does not manage to progress instantly, I hope that Ministers who believe that it is either of neutral or positive benefit will see whether it is possible to incorporate it in the general programme of work of the Health and Safety Executive.
A clause was inserted in the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 by the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer). One cannot use the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act to reduce the level of safety available to people. I suspect that where information is known, it could be caught by the Act, although it would be a rather more administratively cumbersome way of making progress. Most of the regulations in the Act could incorporate some of the responsibilities that my hon. Friend would put on others.
People look for comparative information. That applies to product liability just as much as to safety. I shall not speak for too long about product liability, because it is not relevant to the Bill. However, I am still trying to persuade motor cycle manufacturers to make leg protectors available on their bikes, especially those ridden by people in their early years of motor cycling. That would cut out two thirds of the risk of serious leg injury in crashes with cars. It would also probably eliminate two thirds of cycling injuries. Yet not one motor cycle or moped manufacturer makes that equipment available even as an option, although it has been demonstrated by the transport and road research laboratory to be effective. I hope that—if not under this Bill, under a similar Bill—every motor cycle will carry a notice stating, "It is known that it is technically possible to reduce the risk of injury in crashes but we have not chosen to make that option available."
Safety is not just about notices; it is about people's dedication to carrying out their duty not to go beyond precise regulations and the requirements of their contract of employment to help people to move around safely. The hon. Member for Newham, South was right to say that it is necessary to stick to regulations in a positive sense.
I pay tribute to the staff on the railways and the roads. In the past two or three days, they have been doing all that they can to help people to move around safely. In these Siberian conditions they have not been fully successful, but hon. Members in the warm House of Commons Chamber should recognise the work of those who, probably through the hours of darkness, worked hard so that we could move around safely and make these points.
12.47 pm
Mr. Tony Lloyd: I thought that there was interest in this Bill from other quarters. Perhaps I am wrong.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) on his Bill. The official Opposition are not opposed to the Bill and we shall do everything we can to ensure that it makes progress. I hope that it will receive unanimous support, but I am beginning to doubt whether it will.
We do not regard the Bill as a panacea. It is a necessary part, but not the major part, of several measures that are needed to ensure safety in the public domain. I shall refer later to some concerns that arise out of the Bill. In its recent policy document, the Labour party made it clear that it will fully support the concept of the right to information and that
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"Labour will give the travelling public the right to basic information about safety and security matters. This will complement Labour's proposed Freedom of Information Act."
The Bill will at least save us some trouble if it is passed. It is important to recognise the role of information.
We have already heard accounts of many disasters that have taken place in recent years. We have just had the decade of disaster, central to which has been the role of central Government, who have underfunded public bodies, whether they be the Health and Safety Executive, various inspectorates or whatever else.
Mr. Forth: The hon. Gentleman said that the Health and Safety Executive is underfunded. On what basis does he make that serious charge? He must know that Dr. John Culler, the chairman of the Health and Safety Commission, is on record as saying recently that it has all the resources that it requires to carry out its responsibilities. How does the hon. Gentleman's serious allegation fit with that?
Mr. Lloyd: It fits because the Minister's quotes are wrong. Dr. Culler said that its resources are sufficient for it to carry out its programme of works, which is not the same as carrying out its responsibilities. I have said in this place and elsewhere that I do not believe that the Health and Safety Executive or the Health and Safety Commission are fulfilling the obligations that the Government have set them.
The director-general of the HSE recently made it clear that it can no longer respond to all complaints from the public. The Minister's claim that the standards of the HSE and the HSC are higher than in the past is not true.
I invite the Minister to arrange a debate on health and safety in Government time. It would be helpful for him to put the case as he sees it and for me to put the Opposition's case. I say that because I am conscious of the fact that it would not be right and proper to take up time in this debate, although those matters are of critical importance.
The Government have underfunded other public sector bodies, such as British Rail. Some disasters on British Rail have been a direct consequence of old and outdated rolling stock and equipment. At least part of the cause of the King's Cross disaster was that cost pressures bearing down on management were so tight that they were unable to make safety a priority. That was more than regrettable, and it was condemned by Labour Members. The Government are central to that series of disasters.
The House must recognise that the Government cannot run away from their responsibilities. I say that because, today, they will once again refuse to play their part by allowing even this fairly small measure. They will attempt to kill it off, by stealth possibly, as they did two years ago, when my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) introduced a Bill. He was successful only because he was able to prove the dishonourable role that the Government had played.
Provision is made in the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 for some of the measures that the hon. Member for Battersea is trying to introduce. I hope that the Minister will comment on that. Section 3(3) says:
"In such cases as may be prescribed, it shall be the duty of every employer and every self-employed person, in the prescribed circumstances and in the prescribed manner, to give to persons (not being his employees) who may be affected by the way in which he conducts his undertaking the

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prescribed information about such aspects of the way in which he conducts his undertaking as might affect their health or safety."
That rather complex parliamentary language means that the Health and Safety Executive could impose on every employer a duty to ensure that members of the public are aware of when their health and safety may be affected by what happens at a place of work. That would clearly cover the tragic and disgraceful case of Paul Elvin, which was cited by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes).
That specific power was provided in an amendment to the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Bill. The amendment was tabled by Lord Whitelaw, who was leading for the Opposition. I understand that he persuaded the then Minister of State, Department of Employment, who is now the Chairman of Ways and Means, to accept the amendment, because it was agreed on an all-party basis that the provision of information was central to safety at the place of work and to providing a safe place of work for employees and for the general public. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that and agree that something that was acceptable to Lord Whitelaw all those years ago should now be acceptable to him when he addresses the wider issues involved in this Bill.
I have some concerns about the way in which the Bill would operate in practice. I do not say that with any hostility. I recognise that, in order to have safety, we need more than just the provision of information. Information is vital to the structure, but we need more than just information.
I dealt with a problem in my area not so long ago, involving the traffic commissioner in the north-west. I will not mention the name of the bus company concerned, but I can say that, after a time, it got its act together and began to put safer buses on the road. The traffic commissioner became aware that that company was operating unsafe buses which presented a danger to the travelling public. He decided not to prohibit the operation of those buses; he allowed those dangerous buses to run. I entered into lengthy correspondence with Mr. Albu, who was the commissioner concerned, and with Ministers. They all seemed to think that it was perfectly reasonable for unsafe buses to ply the roads of Manchester.
I believe that Mr. Albu had been frightened off when he lost, on appeal, previous attempts to restrain the activities of a particular bus company. I place that on record, because, like the hon. Member for Battersea, I believe that it is important that we scrutinise our public officials. Those officials should be aware that if they make decisions that are open to criticism, they will rightly deserve that criticism when the decisions become public. The traffic commissioner to whom I have referred failed in his responsibilities to the travelling public.
If we apply the powers under the Bill, that same traffic commissioner could decide not to move on to the public notice stage. In effect, he could decide that his decision not to prohibit the running of the buses could be open to such criticism that he would be foolish to signal that he had taken that decision by insisting that the operator gave public notice of the fact that its buses were less than safe.
I hope that the hon. Member for Battersea will accept that that analogy applies not just to transport undertakers,
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but across the range. At the margin, such action could constrain the behaviour of safety regimes if they are left to operate as they do now—underfunded and demoralised.
We must consider the relationship between central Government and the statutory bodies that are designed to ensure safety in Britain. We do not have a safety culture and safety is not deemed to be automatic. For example, Which? recently published a survey of ferries. I was involved from the Opposition Front Bench in the Herald of Free Enterprise affair. That massive tragedy caused the deepest agonising among hon. Members on all sides of the House. It should now be impossible for a passenger-carrying ferry operator to operate ferries that are not completely safe.
However, the Which? report made it clear that six ferries using British ports still rely on passengers climbing down rope ladders to life rafts as a primary means of evacuation. Which? points out that those companies are operating within the letter of the law; they break no laws by using that mechanism. It is not a procedure which would allow the publication of a notice such as that enshrined in the Bill. The ferry operators breach the principle of safety but no other principle.
As long as the Department of Transport is prepared to conspire with the ferry operators to allow them to operate ferries in an unsafe way, no provision of information will get over that immediate hurdle. That is central to safety in Britain. At present, we simply cannot trust the regulatory agencies. That is a serious challenge, which I make in full knowledge of what I say. The regulatory safety bodies now in existence simply are not doing the job that the travelling public and other people are entitled to demand.
Until we begin properly to resource regulatory safety bodies and make safety paramount at the place of work and wherever the public confront potential danger, we shall not have the climate and culture of safety which the House should demand. If we do not have a structure, especially in the Health and Safety Executive, within which reports on disasters or even accidents that do not lead to tragedy are monitored, the safe working practices which we are entitled to demand will not be translated into practice.
The attention of the House has already been drawn to the Clapham disaster. There is no doubt that faulty wiring had occurred previously on an almost outrageous scale. The attention of British Rail had been drawn to those faults on several occasions. It was not a new problem. It is also clear that safety reports had been examined by British Rail. The inquiry made it clear that the problem was a failure to disseminate the information sufficiently widely.
A secondary, but equally important, problem is that there was no mechanism or public body within either the Health and Safety Executive or the Department of Transport that could ask British Rail precisely what it had done to implement the conclusions of previous safety reports. That is fundamental.
The Minister could come to the Dispatch Box today and do two things. First, he could say that he intended to implement section 3(3) of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 and make sure that information is made available to the public now. There is no need for today's Bill to be passed for him to do that. He could do it today.
Secondly, the Minister could tell the Health and Safety Commission that he expects it immediately to set up within the HSE a mechanism for monitoring previous safety

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reports. If he does that, he will take a significant step forward for the safety of people both at work and generally. I challenge him to do that.
If we are to create a climate of safety it is important that we have in place penalties for those who transgress safety regulations. Reference has been made to various disasters. It is clear that those who were culpable in those disasters were not brought before the courts in a way that exposed them to penalties that would serve as a warning and a sanction to others, and would show the severity with which the House and society treat transgressions of regulations which put health and safety at risk.
During a recent Question Time, my hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Mr. Pike) referred to Holts Plastics. My hon. Friend said that the case had gone as far as the courts allowed. The judge made some condemnatory statements about one of the partners. The transcript shows that the judge made it clear that he found himself unable to pass the sentence that he wished to pass because the wrong person was before the court. He gave a prison sentence but suspended it for a considerable time.
There is still no case of any individual serving a custodial sentence for breach of health and safety legislation. I am not one to argue for long prison sentences for the sake of them, but, as in other areas of criminal law, custodial sentences show the sincerity and seriousness of the attitude of the House to those who break the law. Health and safety and placing someone's life or health at risk should be treated sufficiently seriously that those who transgress face long prison sentences. I make it clear from the Dispatch Box that the Labour Government will make sure that such penalties are used.
There is much in the Bill that we welcome. I do not intend to continue at length, although there are more points worth putting on record. My hon. Friends, the hon. Member for Battersea, and his hon. Friends have already made some valuable points. I am concious of the fact that there may be an attempt to kill the Bill by stealth today. I hope that the Minister will consider long and hard before he takes part in such an attempt.
I remind the Minister of the role of his predecessor, the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Mr. Nicholls), who was caught with his hand in the till, so to speak, two years ago, when my hon. Friend the Member for Islington, South and Finsbury (Mr. Smith) introduced a similar Bill. The then Under-Secretary of State for Employment wrote a letter to the Leader of the House which made it clear that his Department intended to frustrate both the House and the Bill.
I see that the Minister is now receiving something that will enable him to respond properly. The letter made it clear that the then Minister intended to frustrate that Bill, which dealt with safety and, ironically, as a result allowed my hon. Friend to push through his legislation.
I remind the Minister of the comments of the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. As a former Trade and Industry Minister, the hon. Gentleman may have some sympathy with them. In the foreword to the 12th annual home accident surveillance system report, the Under-Secretary wrote:
"The starting point for working to prevent consumer accidents is good information."
What is essential to one Under-Secretary—a willingness to insist that information is central to providing a safe and healthy working regime and safe and healthy access to public facilities—should be taken on board by another. I
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hope that the Minister will make it clear that he does not intend to talk out the Bill by drawing the debate out to 2.30 pm. The Opposition support the Bill and wish the hon. Member for Battersea all speed with it.
1.7 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Employment (Mr. Eric Forth): The concern for the important subject matter of those who have participated in the debate is obvious from the tone of the debate. I pay a warm tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) for using the privilege of his place high in the ballot to bring such an important issue before the House. The contributions that we have heard from hon. Members of all parties show that he has done no more than reflect a view that is widely held among all hon. Members. It has been demonstrated that he was right to reflect that concern in such a Bill.
I am stating the obvious, but it is worth noting that in many cases the contributions of hon. Members have reflected their direct involvement, at different times and in different ways, in disasters and catastrophes such as those described to us. It is understandable that for those who have been involved, whether as Members of Parliament or, in the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley), as a Minister, with people whose lives have been touched by disaster, the emotions generated are that much more powerful. That has been apparent in the speeches that we have heard today. Anyone who reads the report of today's proceedings will have no doubt of the extent to which the tragedies and losses felt by so many people have been expressed in this place. That is as it should be.
In that spirit, I will as carefully as I can pick my way through what is a very difficult proposition for the Government—to respond properly to my hon. Friend's Bill and the issues that it raises. Before doing that, I want to do something that may seem rather tedious. I want to read out some short extracts from the Bill so that they are on the record and so that we can relate the contributions that have been made today to the Bill. Many hon. Members who have spoken, including some of my hon. Friends, have not fully understood what the Bill seeks to do. Many of them have expressed concerns and suggested that the Bill, once on the statute book, would resolve the problems that they have presented to the House. I believe that they are wrong. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea may wish to correct me. Clause 1(2) states:
"This Act applies to premises, being—

(a) land or buildings other than nuclear installations … or

(b) any means of transport,

to which members of the public are admitted, either on payment of a fee or otherwise."
The Bill operates primarily on premises and means of transport. It continues:
"In this Act information on a matter of public safety … is information identified by a relevant statutory authority concerned with matters of public health and safety".
Many hon. Members who have spoken today have suggested that, in some way, information that is already available, in almost any form, will be dealt with by the Bill, but that is not so. The Bill refers to information identified by the relevant statutory authority. I hope that hon. Members present today will bear that in mind when they contemplate the Bill and decide how to react to it.
Clause 2 states:

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"Where the authority"—
—the relevant statutory authority—
"has determined that there is a substantial threat or danger to the health or safety of the public, it shall serve upon the occupier of the premises concerned a written warning"
The Bill then sets out the detailed provisions.
I shall return later to the tragic case mentioned by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), involving a constituent of his at Euston station. I want to give the House a little background information to that case. I am convinced that the Bill would not have made any material difference to that case, had it been in force at that time.
Mr. Lloyd: Will the Minister comment on my earlier point that section 3(3) of the existing Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 would have covered precisely the case mentioned by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey? Could not the Minister bring that section into effect immediately?
Mr. Forth: I do not believe that that section would cover that case. I am advised by officials in the Health and Safety Executive that it would not. This is neither the time nor the place to be diverted into the esoterics of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act, although I realise that it is of prime importance. However, I shall undertake to consider the matter again, as the hon. Gentleman asks, to see whether there is any scope within that Act to do what the Bill seeks to achieve. I am advised at present—I will consider the matter further—that it will not have the effect that the hon. Gentleman suggests.
Mr. Lloyd: Will the Minister undertake to place that advice on the public record if the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey asks for it in a written question?
Mr. Forth: It goes without saying that, whenever any hon. Member puts down a written question to me or to any other Minister, he receives a full, prompt and direct answer, as would be the case here. I do not wish to be diverted into that case, because, although it is important, I am not sure that it is germane to the provisions of the Bill as laid before the House today.
I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea and I will not fall out over the Bill at this stage. As I understand the procedures of the House—I am open to correction—the purpose of today's debate is to consider the text of the Bill as printed and to decide whether to give it a Second Reading.
My hon. Friend told the House in his excellent opening speech that in discussions with me and others he has already identified areas in which the Bill might be improved, and that is certainly true. It can indeed be improved. Today I intend to stick to the Bill as printed, despite our discussions, because that is the only basis upon which we can proceed. We all know the fragile nature of private Members' legislation. Whatever Members may say about the Whips' role, at least they impart a certain degree of predictability to what may happen to legislation. I do not want to go into details that might embarrass my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Kirkhope), but I can reveal that with effective whipping we can at least structure the progress of legislation and give it
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a certain predictability—too much predictability, Opposition Members might think, but they would not think like that if our roles were reversed.
The difficulty with private Members' legislation is that once a Bill goes into Committee it is subject to the free will of Members of Parliament, acting as individuals, representing their consciences and constituents. That sounds good—at least I hope it does—but it renders unpredictable what may happen to a Bill.
I cite as evidence of this what the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey said. The hon. Gentleman will have noticed how carefully I listened to his speech. He expressed a wish that the Bill should go further than it does. If the Bill goes into Committee by decision of the House there will those on the Committee, like the hon. Gentleman, who want to go further—
Mr. Bowis: Just as my hon. Friend has said that he will follow the usual rules and not consider amendments that I have announced, I hope that he will not dwell too much on admendments that no one has announced or claimed that they want to table. After discussions with my hon. Friend and his colleagues about the amendments that I have in mind, I offer the Minister my pledge that if I do not table them in Committee, he will do so and I will support him; and if the Committee overrides them, I will support my hon. Friend on Report.
Mr. Forth: As ever, my hon. Friend is kind and generous. Of course I will not talk speculatively about amendments which may not be made to the Bill; I shall talk about the Bill as printed. I cannot acknowledge what my hon. Friend has said about amendments to the Bill today because we cannot be certain that the Bill would emerge in that form, even given my hon. Friend's undertakings. He might table amendments in Committee, and I might want to support them, but we can only act as individuals there. But other hon. Members can do as they please and judge best in Committee—
Mr. Peter Bottomley rose—
Mr. Forth: I thought that I might tempt my hon. Friend.
Mr. Bottomley: The Minister has indeed tempted me. In my experience, many private Members' Bills leave Committee with much less in them than they they go in as a result of the careful ministrations of the Ministers and Whips surrounding the hon. Member bringing in the Bill.
Secondly, next time a Government Bill returns from Committee dramatically altered from its shape on Second Reading, I shall assume that I can go home at 7.30 pm and not wait around, whipped, to get through 400 amendments in an hour and a half at midnight.
Mr. Forth: I must leave that to my hon. Friend and the Whips Office. I am not sure whether he was talking about a private Member's Bill or a Government Bill in that case—
Mr. Bottomley: It does not matter.
Mr. Forth: The two are not the same. The key difference between Government Bills and private Members' Bills is that Government Bills—let us give them the benefit of the doubt—have been carefully thought through and have perhaps been the subject of commitments in a manifesto or in the Gracious Speech or of examination by officials and

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civil servants in one or more Departments. They are subject to the scrutiny of committees that I am not allowed to mention, the existence of which we normally deny. All those things happen to a Government Bill. Unfortunately, private Members' Bills do not go through this process. Some people might say that they are the better for it, but in many cases private Members' Bills suffer from not going through it. This Bill has suffered in that way.
The Bill has a number of defects, some of which are due to the fact that it has not gone through the process for Government Bills. That is my cue, lest people think that I am speaking over-long, to deal with the substance of the Bill. First, we have a number of objections to and difficulties with the Bill and they extend over broad areas. Current arrangements about public safety and access to safety information are adequate in most areas. Some provisions have been brought about as a result of the disasters about which many hon. Members have spoken. I shall return to that, because in a number of cases we have legislated or changed the law in response to the tragedies that have been mentioned.
Secondly, the procedures envisaged by the Bill are overly long and bureaucratic and I shall go through them in some detail. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea has said that he is prepared to consider changes, going through the Bill's provisions will illustrate some of the dangers that still exist. The Bill will place burdens, which many hon. Members have underestimated, mainly on statutory authorities, certainly on local authorities, and even on the private sector. Those have been somewhat glossed over, although my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) rightly dealt with them in his speech.
Finally, there are some small technical difficulties in the Bill of the kind that would certainly need to be examined in Committee. As my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea has said, London is omitted from the Bill and he, as a London Member, will want to correct that and has said so. We would have to look at certain Northern Ireland dimensions to the Bill. Some other relatively detailed matters would have to be examined if the Bill reaches Committee.
I shall outline the current arrangements to see whether I can satisfy the House that what the Bill seeks to do would in most senses be superfluous. First, the Government and all the Departments that have looked at the Bill's provisions think that there is already adequate provision for public access to information about safety hazards.
The Government are committed to the principle of openness about health and safety, which several hon. Members have mentioned. In that context many of the criticisms in the debate have been levelled at bodies that are not Government bodies but either independent public bodies or nationalised industries, over which the Government do not have day-to-day operational and management control. There must be a limit to the extent to which the Government, even by legislation, can guarantee that in day-to-day operational matters, things are made as public as many people should like to see.
Therefore, it is apparent that the primary responsibility in this area lies with managers, owners or employers to ensure the safety of the public in and around the premises in which they work or which they visit. If they fail in that responsibility, they may be prosecuted. However, I do not share the apparent desire of the Opposition for prosecutions in as many cases as possible. There was
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reference to a recent question in the House about a particular case. Although there is a role for prosecution in these matters, I am not sure that it is the overriding role, as is sometimes suggested; nor do I think that in some sense prosecution should be seen as persecution. We want to get this in context, so while there should always be the mechanism for bringing prosecutions, it should be not the first call but the last resort, after all the other techniques have been brought to bear.
The Health and Safety Executive has always made it clear, and I support it, that before deciding on prosecution, it goes through a number of different procedures, mainly to do with the provision of advice, guidance, help and support. In its judgment, all these are much more effective in making sure that the myriad undertakings for which it is responsible in both public and private sectors make progress in health and safety. There is a difference of emphasis, if nothing else, between the approach taken by Opposition Members and by the Government.
Mr. Butterfill: There was considerable sympathy from both sides of the House and from the general public for the plight of the train driver in the Purley crash. Many thought that he should not have been sent to prison. Surely we should not seek retribution but merely address what has gone wrong.
Mr. Forth: That is an important point. We should make a distinction between, for example, the case mentioned by the hon. Member for Stretford (Mr. Lloyd), in which the people involved were employers and had an employer's responsibility under the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, and the hon. Gentleman was not satisfied that they had been sufficiently pursued by the authorities, and that mentioned by my hon. Friend. I see that the hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) takes this point. The individual involved in the latter case was an employee, albeit one in a responsible position, and I am aware that many doubts were expressed about whether he should have been pursued in the way he was. That case illustrates the difficulties. Under the existing provisions, which in most cases are adequate, what action should be taken is always a matter of judgment for the authorities involved. No matter what they do, they are open to criticism. The hon. Member for Stretford criticised them for not taking enough action and my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, West (Mr. Butterfill) criticised them for taking too much action. That usefully emphasises a point inherent in the Bill; that no matter what provisions we make—I argue that the present provisions are adequate and my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea has argued that the Bill will improve them—it will be up to the statutory authority to make a judgment about the appropriate action to take.
We have heard two different suggestions today. One is that the Bill will deter people from taking the action for which many hon. Members have asked. In other words, confronted with the responsibilities that the Bill will give them, statutory authorities might draw back from giving the public the warning required by the Bill, and thereby notifying the public. It has also been suggested that the effect will be quite the opposite and that, to cover themselves, the authorities will issue a large number of notices and go out of their way to find as many threats to

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the public as possible and issue notices about them to ensure that they cannot, in any conceivable circumstances, be accused with hindsight of being less than diligent.
Mr. Bowis: It sounds to me as though the balance that my hon. Friend is striking, with those two pressures on the safety authorities, will ensure that they get their judgment about right.
Mr. Forth: My argument is that they do that now. I have yet to be convinced that the Bill would materially change that position.
Mr. Bowis: Hon. Members have repeatedly said that one of the benefits of the procedure in the Bill is that in practice it will never be used because the additional weapon that the safety authorities will have will ensure that occupiers will remedy the threat to the public before the authorities have to go through the procedure.
Mr. Forth: If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will address that point when I compare the existing position with that which would obtain under the Bill.
The statutory authorities covered by the Bill—it relates only to statutory authorities—already have extensive powers to protect the public where there is a perceived danger or where, in the words of the Bill, they identify
"a substantial threat or danger to the health or safety of a member of the public."
In the case of a serious or imminent threat, the authorities may, under the existing provisions, issue a prohibition notice or order to close down parts or all of a building, or stop a particular type of work or activity, until the hazard has been removed. In such cases, the public will be banned or removed from the area or activity that is the source of the hazard until such time as the situation is remedied. The actual requirements imposed will vary across different areas of responsibility—depending whether one is dealing with sports stadiums, transport undertakings, buildings, or whatever—but they must be observed by the occupier, owner or operator of the premises and the public will not be allowed to re-enter until the area is safe.
Under that type of notice or order, the manager or owner of the business affected is likely to be losing money while work is slowed down, or stopped, or parts of the building are shut or made inoperative. In the case of a fairground, a ride would be out of action until made safe, and the owner would be losing money until that was done. In such instances, business people are likely to act quickly, so that their business can resume as normal and to ensure that the circumstances that led to the enforcement action do not recur. Pressure is built into the existing system of prohibition notices and orders because statutory authorities can already close premises or cause activities to cease and are thus empowered to exercise the same kind of coercion that is embodied in the Bill.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: My hon. Friend's remarks are helpful, but they rather go outside the scope of the Bill. I thought that the exchange involving my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne) covered the prohibition power, so perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will leave that aspect and the other de minimis issues to one side and stick to the ones in between. I refer, for example, to the situation in which the statutory authority warns the operator that action must be taken
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because of a significant or substantial risk of danger to the public of which the public themselves are unaware. That may be a more fruitful area for my hon. Friend the Minister to explore.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his guidance, as always. However, in view of some of the speeches that have been made—my hon. Friend has been present for the whole debate—it occurred to me that some hon. Members do not understand the purpose of the Bill, and are under the impression that it would materially affect some of the matters that have been mentioned this morning. My contention is that, even in its amended form, the Bill would not do so.
Perhaps I may press on with the point that I was making because it relates to arguments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea and I do not want to short-change him.
Another option is provided by the improvement notices issued by the Health and Safety Executive, fire authorities, or local authorities, which can insist that improvements are undertaken by a certain date. It is unclear whether the Bill covers them.
Mr. Bowis: It is clear that it will not be covered. As my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) rightly pointed out, if there is a prohibition or a detention notice, the public are not admitted, and therefore the Bill cannot operate. Equally, if there is an improvement notice—as helpful officials in the Minister's Department who deal with marine safety have informed me—it means that there is such a low level of risk that it would not in any circumstances be deemed to be substantial. We need to concentrate on times when there is substantial risk. It would be helpful if the Minister would take the Bradford fire as an example, show his concern in that case and say how the Bill would not help.
Mr. Forth: In that case, as my hon. Friends the Members for Battersea and for Eltham have requested me to do so, I shall immediately come to the analysis of the Bradford fire case, which I had intended to mention later in my speech.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eltham said that the Bill would have saved lives at Bradford, but that is not the advice that I have been given. I shall read carefully the advice that I have been given about Bradford, because it is important that we all understand where we are.
Mr. Justice Popplewell's interim report on the Bradfod event, which was published in 1985, said that on 18 July 1984, as a result of a visit by an engineer from West Yorkshire county council, a letter was written to the secretary of Bradford City football club about the state of the ground. Two fire risks were mentioned, and they were as follows. As regards the main grandstand,
"The timber construction is a fire hazard and in particular there is a build-up of combustible materials in the voids beneath the seats. A carelessly discarded cigarette could give rise to a fire risk … Egress from the grandstand should be achievable in 2·5 minutes."
The Popplewell report explains that the Bradford City football ground was not a designated football ground, for which a safety certificate was required, and West Yorkshire county council had no statutory authority to restrict or prohibit the use of the ground. Therefore, the county council sent a copy of their letter to the fire service. The fire service took the view, which is crucial to the whole

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case, that it was a matter of good housekeeping for the occupiers of the football ground to deal with and saw no reason to take the matter any further.
My conclusion is that the position that existed in 1984 was that the first authority had no power to take any action and the second authority—the fire service—decided not to do so. Had the fire authority decided to take action, it would not have been able to issue a prohibition restriction order without first going to the courts. The key to this part of the argument is that, as a result of the Bradford tragedy, the law was changed in 1987 and a local authority with responsibility for safety at a sports ground can now issue a prohibition or restriction notice, whether or not the ground is required to have a safety certificate and without first applying to the courts. I therefore make two points. First, it is our analysis of the Bradford case that the Bill would not have made a substantial difference. Secondly—and equally important—changes to the law resulting from Bradford, and since, mean that much greater powers are now available to authorities than those contained in my hon. Friend's Bill. For those two important reasons, it is not correct to tie Bradford into this argument.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: The story that my hon. Friend the Minister has rehearsed, which was familiar to me at the time of the incident, is accurate but omits the suggestion that the statutory authority inspectors could, if the Bill had been law, have required a notice to be put up. I am sure that the fire service would have supported that, because it was a matter of good housekeeping to clear the rubbish away and thus prevent a fire. We all accept that one could not predict the number of casualties in the tragedy.
Secondly, if my hon. Friend the Minister is saying that there is no circumstance in which putting up a notice, as provided for in the Bill, could help, it would require a speech lasting about one and a half minutes. However, if he is saying that a notice could help but might not be right, or that other factors must be taken into account, that is fine and we can continue listening in good cheer. One ought to recognise that that provision could have been appropriate at Bradford. Instead of prohibition, there would have been warnings so that the local authority, the fire service and the owners of the ground would know.
Mr. Forth: It is a matter of judgment whether that would have been the case. Perhaps our judgments must be different on this matter. Interestingly, what my hon. Friend has outlined could have been interpreted as an improvement-type warning which, according to what my hon. Friend said a few moments ago, might not have been covered by the Bill if one looks at it from that point of view.
On the second point from my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham, of course I would not say that if we could wave a wand and have the Bill nothing would be improved. I should be ill-advised to say anything like that. Nevertheless, we believe on balance that whatever benefits may accrue from the Bill—they are fewer because of the improvements that have been made since Bradford and the like—the cost that will be incurred or will be likely to be incurred by undertakings, by statutory authorities and by local authorities will probably far outweigh the likely benefits of the Bill. Again, that is inevitably a matter for judgment.
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I want to demonstrate that the costs of tragedies are greater than many hon. Members have suggested. I have listened to the argument that the costs of tragedies are so monumentally great in terms of human life and material loss that they would surely outweigh the on-going cost of such a Bill, and it is a tempting argument, but it is very difficult to sustain, as my hon. Friend and others are probably aware. In that broad sense, cost-benefit is something with which we are not familiar, not very good at, and have not yet brought into the way in which we determine such matters. That is an argument for another time and another place. I do not think that the House would agree that we should get involved in it and I am not sure whether it would be very fruitful so to do.
Mr. Bowis: Of course measures have been taken after disasters. It is because the public have become aware of the causes of disasters. They have become aware of secret reports hidden in drawers and filing cabinets and have demanded action. This measure will enable that demand to take place before a disaster. There was clearly a substantial fire risk at Bradford, but there was no improvement order. This measure would have prevented the fire. We are talking not about the cost of putting right unacceptable risks—that should be in the budget anyway—but about the costs of this small measure compared with the enormous costs post-disaster to the people involved, the premises and the local community.
Mr. Forth: I must disagree with the first part of what my hon. Friend said. The House should not get the impression that we are talking about a large number of cases in which problems have been identified by statutory authorities of the kind that the Bill is addressing—substantial threats or danger to the public—and have been hidden in drawers and nothing has been done about them. I am not qualified to say that that has never happened and I should not want to suggest that, but I do not think that it is right to leave unchallenged the suggestion that, time and again, statutory authorities or responsible authorities have identified a substantial threat or danger to the public but have simply hidden the information away in a drawer and done nothing about it. In many of the cases in which it is alleged that that has happened, it was not the statutory authority which identified the problem, so it would not have been covered by the Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea suggested that as a result of the Bill, it is much more likely that the kind of information that is out there somewhere—or, more properly, in there somewhere—will be brought to the public's attention. I am not sure whether that would be so either.
On costs, the difficulty is that if we embarked on cost measurement we should have to measure the continuing cost of the procedures in the Bill, day by day, up and down the length and breadth of the land, cumulatively, as against the highly identifiable cost of occasional large tragedies and disasters. I have not made that cost calculation and I am not in a position to do so, but the balance of cost would be more even and would probably tip in a direction other than that which my hon. Friend is suggesting. That is as far as I can go without doing the arithmetic, but when I deal with the burdens that the Bill would place on local authorities, and related weaknesses in it, hon. Members will see that the dangers and difficulties are greater than we thought.

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The Environment and Safety Information Act 1988 has been mentioned. That established
"registers of certain notices served concerning health, safety and environmental protection"
to be easily accessed by interested members of the public. Under that Act, all statutory authorities, including local authorities, must keep a register of all enforcement notices issued that concern the safety of the public. That register must be indexed and readily available to the public on request and those provisions are considered more than adequate to ensure public access to safety information. That is a major part of my hon. Friend's Bill.
Experience so far, albeit in the short period during which that Act has been on the statute book, suggests that those registers are rarely consulted and that there is little demand for the information on them. That is somewhat at odds with the vision of eager-beaver journalists consulting registers regularly and writing stories on the basis of them. Significantly, no hon. Member has offered the House examples of journalists using the procedures already on the statute book, which are rather similar to those envisaged by my hon. Friend, to bring to the attention of a concerned, eager and anxious public the information that the Bill seeks to offer. Therefore, the limited example of how these mechanisms might work shows that there is not much evidence—nobody, including my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, has offered very much evidence—that such information not only would be sought but, more importantly, would be used were we to pass the Bill.
Mr. Bowis: That is the point of displaying notices where the public and the press will see them. People are not aware of the registers and do not go to the public library on the off-chance of seeing something interesting. If a sports journalist saw a notice at a football ground he would immediately spot a story with a public safety angle, which he would then pursue.
Mr. Forth: The new provisions on sports grounds contain powers to close them, or parts of them, if a substantial threat of danger to the public is perceived. Those considerable, if not draconian, powers are already available to the authorities. I am not yet convinced that the addition of a notice or the provision of a register would add materially or substantially to public safety, health or well-being. We shall return to that when I consider the argument for registers.
As part of its drive to make the public more aware of possible dangers, the Health and Safety Executive keeps its own register of possible hazards to the public. Many firms and undertakings are required to notify it, because their activities are subject to certain legislative provisions, such as the Explosives Act 1975 or the Asbestos (Licensing) Regulations 1983. Each executive area office has a publicly available register of local undertakings which have been notified under such legislation.
I will say before anybody else does—I concede this immediately to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea—that the Health and Safety Executive has a relatively limited number of area offices—20, if my memory serves me right—whereas my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea is suggesting that more than 300 district councils would hold the registers.
I have conceded to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea that one important element of the Bill is to try to
576
find a way of making available to the public through the registers at the local town hall the information that would flow from the procedures in the Bill. That is obviously one of the Bill's most important provisions and it is one of the main differences apart from the warning notices, between the existing provisions and the Bill.
I want to ensure that the House understands that under provisions in the Environment and Safety Information Act 1988 and the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1984 there is some degree of warning for the public and the possibility of notices for the public.
One of my main arguments about the Bill involves the bureaucracy of the procedure. I want to tie into that argument the delays that exist, even under the streamlined procedure that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea and I have discussed.
In his opening remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea said that he believes that the Bill is a simple solution to the problems of threats to public safety. I want to explain in detail—
Mr. Joseph Ashton: Oh, no.
Mr. Forth: If the hon. Gentleman does not want to listen to the details, he does not have to sit there. I am going to give the details to the House anyway because they are relevant to the consideration of the Bill and the way in which it would work.
Several hon. Members have said that they do not believe that the burdens on local authorities would be substantial. I do not agree. All of us who have at heart the desire to keep the burdens on local authorities and the cost burdens on authorities and community charge payers as low as possible will be interested in my arguments.
Under the Bill, a statutory authority that has discovered
"a substantial threat or danger to the health or safety of the public"
to such an extent that an enforcement notice will usually have been issued has 14 days in which to notify the district council. The local authority then has a further 14 days in which to issue a public safety notice to the offending occupier and place the warning issued under the enforcement notice on a register available to the public. The notice as specified in clause 2(5) and 2(7) must contain certain detailed information, some of which the public may not fully understand, for example, if the fault was fairly technical. We may want to simplify that in Committee.
Let us consider the way in which the mechanism would work. If the danger to the public is serious enough to warrant a prohibition notice and the occupier of the premises is not able to run his or her business as usual, the cause of the problem would be remedied as quickly as possible to prevent further damage to the business. I suggest that that would often happen in a matter of days or even hours so that, in the occupier or operator's interests, normal business could be resumed.
However, the procedure envisaged by the Bill paints a different picture. The statutory authority observes a potential danger to the public. Let us assume that the officer concerned is extremely efficient, as he would be, and he deals with the paperwork that evening and posts the notification to the local authority the next day. Let us also assume that the postal system is as efficient as ever and it delivers the notification the next day. The very efficient

577
local authority immediately sends the occupier the public safety notice which is received one day later, and enters the details on the public register immediately.
I concede, in fairness to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea, that were the Committee to make the changes that I believe he has in mind, at least part of that process would be short-circuited. However, it leaves the possibility of a delay being built in between the initial identification of the problem and the communication by the statutory authority of that problem to the local authority.
Mr. Bowis: My hon. Friend the Minister began this point by saying that he intended to show how the Bill would be an additional burden of cost to local authorities. As we know that the procedure in the Bill as drafted will not be the eventual procedure but will be the subject of an amendment in Committee with, as far as I am aware, the support of the whole House, will my hon. Friend remember that this is a Second Reading debate on the principle, not the detail, of the Bill and keep his remarks for Committee?
Mr. Forth: I am sure that you, Madam Deputy Speaker, would pull me up if you thought that I was not addressing the Bill directly. I took care at the beginning of my speech to say that I wanted to refer to the Bill. I have even read out parts of it. I hope that I am being careful to stay in order. I believe that I am right to draw the attention of the House to the provisions of the Bill. In a moment I shall strengthen my argument about the burden to local authorities. The burden will increase in ways which my hon. Friend may not have foreseen. I may yet have a surprise for my hon. Friend. It may not be a great surprise, but it will be a surprise none the less.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: My hon. Friend may not be aware that he is illustrating the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowls) in introducing his Bill. My hon. Friend the Minister responded to the previous intervention by saying that he was in order. That seems similar to the legal approach which is taken at present to safety in public places. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea seeks to share useful information with members of the public who have an interest in it. That seems roughly what my hon. Friend the Minister is turning his attention to, after a speech of three quarters of an hour in which he has given way several times to those who sought to make him focus on the purpose and the short title of the Bill.
Mr. Forth: As ever, I am grateful for the guidance that I am receiving from behind me. It is almost like being under the tutelage of a back-seat driver, to use a recent analogy. I shall do my best to please my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham, but I hope that he will allow me to approach the matter in my own way. I wish to make several points. I will speed up my delivery, if that will help him. I have a great deal of ground to cover and—good Lord!—time is getting on.
Even assuming that the procedure to which I have just referred—I shall not repeat it because that would be regarded as—
Mr. Spearing: Tedious repetition.
Mr. Forth: I thank the hon. Gentleman.
We have established that when the hazard was discovered, two days would pass before the information
578
was put on the register. Three days would pass before the public safety notice was displayed, but in the meantime the conscientious occupier or operator might have remedied the problem. So the register might say that there was a hazard when the premises had been put right.
The Bill says that the occupier could not remove the notice until the authority had given permission in writing. That implies that there would be a mechanism to make sure that the entry had been corrected. Already we can see the problems that would arise, even from the streamlined procedure which my hon. Friend suggested. There must be a process whereby a serious threat would be identified arid notified to the local authority directly or indirectly. The local authority would then put it on the register. A monitoring procedure would be necessary and the statutory authority would have to satisfy itself that the threat had been lifted. I suggest that in many cases the threat might be removed quickly—perhaps the same day or a day or two later.
A procedure would have to be in place to make sure that the register was maintained up to date. Once it was established that the threat had been removed and the notice could be lifted, the register would have to be purged of that entry. It is possible that there would be problems of discontinuity between the threat to the public arising, and being identified, notified and corrected. In the meantime the local authority would be struggling to maintain the register sufficiently up to date so that it was not positively misleading to the public, not to say damaging or dangerous to the business affected.
Mr. Bowis rose—
Mr. Forth: Does my hon. Friend wish to guide me?
Mr. Bowis: If I may. The safety authority, as it already does every day of the week, would perceive risks, draw them to the attention of the occupier and make sure that action was taken. The only difference that the Bill would introduce is that the public would be alerted to the risk. No great bureaucratic machine would be added to the health or safety authority. The Bill is simply a request that the authority informs the public and the council.
Mr. Forth: That part of my hon. Friend's argument is correct. I am concentrating more on what would happen at the local authority end. A number of hon. Members have said today that they dispute whether the additional burden on local authorities would be significant. I am trying to make suggestions about the phasing of the operation. I have already conceded his streamlined procedure to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea. I broke my own rule because I said at the beginning that I would talk about the Bill as printed. If I were to dwell on my hon. Friend's point, that would be an even lengthier and rather tedious procedure. However, in the generous mood in which I now find myself, we can leave that to one side.
I do not wish to let slip a point about the maintenance of the register if it is to be of any use to the public or to have any effect on them. We should need to ensure that information was recorded accurately. More importantly, we should need to ensure that when the information was no longer appropriate, it was removed from the register. That part of the burden on local government would he substantial and there is no getting away from that.

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In the privacy of the Chamber, I must say that, although my admiration for officials is second to none, I suspect that with the ingenuity of officials in local government, they would find a way to make this a pretty heavy-handed and bureaucratic procedure one way or the other and that we should end up with something quite elaborate and rather Rolls-Royce when maintaining the register, if it is to have the importance that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea suggests.
There is another important matter about which the House should know. No hon. Member has mentioned the subject of appeals this morning. Under similar legislation covering similar areas, there is an appeals procedure. The Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 is an example. Under that Act, where a notice is served because of a serious risk of personal injury, appeals can be lodged within a set time span of the notice being served, although that appeal has no effect on a notice that remains valid during that period.
The question that arises is whether we envisage an appeals mechanism under the Bill. Such a procedure is not contained in the Bill at present. I think that I am right in saying that in his introductory speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea conceded that there should be such a procedure. I welcome that, but I must say that if we now build into the Bill an appeals mechanism, it raises other questions of delays and resources—or it may do. That is properly a matter for the Committee to consider.
However, it is right on Second Reading that the House pauses and considers whether we envisage that an appeals procedure would be appropriate, with all the effects that it might have on the public and on business undertakings. No hon. Member has picked up that point. I do not know whether they accept what my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea suggested and we have no means of knowing. However, it is important for us at least to acknowledge that the Committee might decide to build an appeals procedure into the Bill, so we should have to identify the way in which it worked, which body would hear the appeals and the time scale involved. My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea is about to help us.
Mr. Bowis: My hon. Friend may not have heard me earlier. I said, and I based my remarks on the helpful advice of his officials, that we would use the appeals procedure in relevant Acts that relate to the statutory authorities that would be listed in the Bill. The procedures are all there. If there were unreasonable delays, it would be because there are unreasonable delays now.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clarifying the matter to the House. He has also helped us because he has said that he wants to look positively at the suggestion that the Bill should include a schedule of authorities to be covered. He and I discussed that and we felt that it was an area of doubt in the Bill. My hon. Friend's remarks will give the Committee some guidance.
I do not want to dwell on the appeals procedure. The enforcement of the procedure is also important. There would have to be enforcement of the terms of the public warning notices either by the statutory authorities—I presume that they would take on most of that role—or, in some cases, by the local authorities. There would have to be a procedure, although I am not sure that it would be
580
very different from those that exist at present. As the existing procedures cover most of what we want to do, I should have thought that that point would be covered fairly adequately.
We must not forget to mention the burdens on the private sector—the business and wealth-creating sector. I have responsibility for small businesses as well as responsibility for health and safety and other matters at the Department of Employment and I have a passing interest in the effects that some of the Bill's provisions might have on small businesses. I do not want to over-emphasise that, because many of the existing provisions and procedures already in force probably have similar effects, but I thought that the House would want to be aware of that issue before deciding whether to give the Bill a Second Reading.
I have already mentioned briefly that we should have to return to other matters when considering the Bill further. Those issues include the definition of the enforcing authorities, coverage of the local authorities, whether or not the security provision in clause 1(4) would need to be redrafted, which it probably would, and the difficulties that arise in the detailed provisions of the notices' dimensions and other matters. Those are all matters of detail that would have to be considered subsequently.
There are also some difficulties surrounding the applicability of the Bill to Northern Ireland. I am advised that, as the Bill is a transferred matter, under the Northern Ireland Constitution Act 1973 the Bill should not extend to Northern Ireland—as is the case with so many Bills. Therefore, if the Bill were to become law, consideration would have to be given to a separate Northern Ireland Order in Council. I said that almost in passing, although we must never forget the different and unique requirements of Northern Ireland when legislating. The House should be aware that we would have to address that issue.
Mr. Spearing: The Minister has been giving the House considerable detail of the matters that we would need to look at if the principle of the Bill was agreed by the House. Will he help the House by stating whether he will give it the opportunity to make a decision on Second Reading?
Mr. Forth: As the hon. Gentleman knows, that is not a matter for me. It is for the House of Commons to decide whether to give a measure its Second Reading.
Mr. Spearing: Will the Minister give us the opportunity?
Mr. Forth: The hon. Gentleman knows that the House may vote on the substance of a measure on Second Reading, as it did last Friday, or it may be required to show its support for a measure by the requisite number of people being present in the House at 2.30 pm. The hon. Gentleman has been in the House longer than I and knows that.
Mr. Ashton: The Minister has spoken for an hour on a two-page Bill, covering points that could easily have been made and tabled as amendments in Committee. He must be in a position to say whether he will allow a Second Reading or talk out the Bill.
Mr. Forth: I find these questions strange—[Interruption.] Opposition Members are beginning to get

581
slightly agitated. I am delighted to see them coming in to hear my closing sentences. All that they are doing is prolonging my time at the Dispatch Box.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I understand that a telephone call has been received from someone in a village called Dodder Hill in Mid-Worcestershire. A man has rung in to say that his Member of Parliament is called Mr. Eric Forth. The man wanted another hon. Member to get up in the House of Commons and object to the fact that his Member of Parliament was trying to block a Bill that was important to the people of Worcestershire. I wonder whether the Member for that constituency might be prepared to grant this gentleman's wish and give the House a chance to vote on the Bill—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. We have not obtained high technology yet at the Chair; I have no mobile telephone. That is not a point of order for the Chair.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. If a man makes the effort to ring the House from a little village in the Minister's constituency, he is clearly very upset. The Minister can respond to his request that he give the Bill the chance of going into Committee. I appeal to the Minister—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I am sure that if the Minister were allowed to make progress, he would make his position clear.
Mr. Skinner: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is just conceivable that the matter is connected with what happened at 11.30 am, before you took the Chair, when I happened to tell Mr. Speaker, who was in the Chair, that the Minister was going to talk out this Bill. Mr. Speaker was not aware of that, and, since you know no more about the man from the Minister's constituency than I do, it is just possible that he may have heard what I said and wanted to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the debate should be stopped and the Bill allowed to go through—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I call Mr. Forth.
Mr. Forth: Labour Members are trying to prolong our proceedings and I find that disgraceful. I am always interested in views allegedly expressed by my constituents, of whom I have 85,000, and my job as a Member of Parliament is to judge what they think. The gentleman referred to is only one of 85,000 and, although his view is important, I shall make my own judgment in these matters, as the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) would expect.
I was just coming to the conclusion of my remarks before this disgraceful effort by Opposition Members to prolong proceedings. I cannot imagine why they want to do that, but what they have said is on the record—
Mr. Peter Bottomley: Many of us who have been here throughout the debate know that the hon. Member for Workington (Mr. Campbell-Savours) was here for the private notice question but not otherwise, and the same applies to the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner)—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is about time we made progress with the proposed legislation.
Mr. Forth: I agree, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Although I well understand the motivation behind my hon. Friend's bringing forward this Bill and although he has been amply and ably supported in a number of heartfelt speeches, I have tried to set out my views and those of the Government. We are not persuaded that the Bill would make the contribution to public safety that is claimed by its supporters. We believe that the costs of introducing the Bill as printed would be heavier than has been suggested, for the reasons that I have given. We believe that existing provisions in the law, which have partly come about as a result of the tragedies described earlier, have led to significant improvements in our ability to respond to such accidents. And we believe that taking into account the Bill's likely contribution to public health and safety on the one hand and the costs and difficulties associated with it on the other, it will not, on balance, be beneficial. Of course, I shall listen to other contributions and then see how the House decides to proceed.
2.13 pm
Mr. Patrick Ground: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) on his success and on the Bill, in so far as it demonstrates his belief in the value of greater publicity and discussion of safety matters. He has shown that he has considerable faith in the effect of informed public opinion on these matters and that he wants to give greater publicity to the risks inherent in the activities concerned.
The debate has certainly achieved a useful discussion of safety and has drawn attention to a number of statutory responsibilities of which some hon. Members were unaware before this morning. We must look at the mechanism that my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea has selected for the Bill and ask whether it will achieve the objects that have been canvassed for it. Will it bring about any improvement or does it contain risks of detracting from the clarity of existing statutory responsibility? It is important for the House to bear it in mind that the Bill deals with cases in which the relevant safety authority will have determined that there is substantial threat or danger to the health or safety of the public. When such a situation arises and the authority has given that warning, the Bill contemplates a period of at least 28 days before the notice which is referred to could be exhibited.
Mr. Bowis: I do not know whether my hon. and learned Friend was here when I set out the provisions of the Bill.
Mr. Ground: I was.
Mr. Bowis: In that case, my hon. and learned Friend will have heard me say that the Bill does not propose that procedure. We have a much simpler measure. My hon. and learned Friend says that he is concerned to see that the detail is right. I hope that he will join us in Committee and help to get it right.
Mr. Ground: The Bill deals with very serious cases that the statutory authority has upgraded as sufficiently serious to go as far as to say that there is a substantial threat or danger to the public. I am not satisfied from the debate that the Bill's provisions would have avoided any of the disasters about which hon. Members have spoken. Mr. Justice Hidden identified the cause of the Clapham disaster as faulty wiring during signal modernisation. In such a case the Bill would have operated only when the railways

583
inspectorate had decided that there was a substantial threat or danger to the safety of the public. There was no such decision or warning and, therefore, the Bill could not have provided an antidote to that case.
In the case of the Zeebrugge disaster the internal memorandum containing the warning was a company document and dealt with the need for a warning light on the bow door. That would not have come to light under the Bill. The Zeebrugge disaster has been referred to many times in the debate and hon. Members have referred to press comments. The House must bear in mind that a jury has just acquitted the ferry company, all its responsible officers and the ship's officers of manslaughter. That decision must undermine many of the glib comments in the press about that disaster.
Mr. Forth: My hon. and learned Friend emphasises a point that I hope I was able to make clear in my brief contribution. It is to make sure that the House understands that the Bill deals with matters that are dealt with by statutory authorities in the course of their duties. It does not cover and was not designed to cover internal memoranda or other documents of the kind to which my hon. and learned Friend has referred. It is important for the House to understand that before deciding how to deal with the Bill, because much of the support for the Bill may well be misplaced.
Mr. Ground: I am not satisfied that the Bill would effect any improvement in the law and there are some risks about it. If a responsible authority identifies a major danger, that authority should exercise its responsibility and take immediate action to remove the danger or deal with it. We should not be relying on public information.
Mr. Bowis: I should make it clear, as my hon. Friend the Minister made it clear, that the Bill has nothing to do with culpability in law. It is to do with the triggering of a mechanism for public information on a perceived safety risk. My hon. and learned Friend is right to say that the history of the Herald of Free Enterprise tragedy would not have been affected by the provisions of the Bill. One hopes that if such a case were to happen again, the captains, the marine unions or some bodies with responsibility for safety would bring the problem to the attention of the marine safety authority, which would then set in train the provisions of the Bill.
Mr. Ground: There are statutory authorities with responsibility for safety in all the sectors about which we are concerned. Such authorities have the necessary powers to take action, as the Minister has said. In the case of Bradford, there was a fire authority and now there are other authorities that can take action. I am concerned that the Bill may discourage statutory authorities from taking action under their responsibilities and putting an end to a danger.
If, in certain sectors, there is not a relevant safety authority with the necessary powers to act, the House should provide those necessary powers. I support that in principle, but I do not support the fobbing off of those responsibilities on to the public, who, in most cases, would not know what to make of the warnings.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: The hon. and learned Gentleman has made a significant point. As he says that he
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would support a suitable amendment, will he allow us to debate the matter in Committee? I assure him that my hon. Friends will support him if he tables reasonable amendments in Committee. In the light of that undertaking, will he take his place? I understand that his constituents in Feltham and Heston may want the Bill to go into Committee. Will he not respond to that?
Mr. Ground: I shall speak about the effect on my constituency later, because the Bill has potentially far-reaching effects on my constituency and on the airlines and other businesses which operate there. The hon. Gentleman has misunderstood me. I was saying that there are bodies with clear statutory responsibilities and duties in all the matters touched on in the debate. The relevant authority has power to take immediate action where there is a significant risk to public health or safety. I do not want to discourage authorities from exercising that responsibility.
Mr. Hugh Dykes: For many decades, the House has accepted the principle that a private Member's Bill could be sent to Committee to be amended, provided that the original central structure of the Bill met the general mood of the House. I have great sympathy with what my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) and other sponsors have in mind in the Bill, but I doubt whether that applies in this case.
Mr. Campbell-Savours: Doubt?
Mr. Dykes: I am being polite. I should not be tempted to respond to a sedentary interruption, but with my characteristic politeness I am using the word "doubt". The Bill's bureaucratic structure is the characteristic which deters even those hon. Members in all parts of the House who sympathise with its ultimate aims.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Mr. Ground) and I share many things in common, but we also represent the two largest constituencies in greater London, which means that many of our constituents are very interested—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that he is tending to make a speech, rather than an intervention.
Mr. Dykes: I did not mean to incur your displeasure, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I had to make that point, in agreeing with my hon. and learned Friend—albeit reluctantly, and with some sadness—that the bureaucracy embodied in the Bill is unacceptable.
Mr. Ground: I thank my hon. Friend—
Mr. Bowis rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put:—
Question put, That the Question be now put:—
The House divided: Ayes 50, Noes 0.

Division No. 62]

[2.25 pm

AYES

Adley, Robert

Cox, Tom

Anderson, Donald

Crowther, Stan

Ashton, Joe

Dixon, Don

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

Dobson, Frank

Benn, Rt Hon Tony

Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

Boateng, Paul

Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)

Bowis, John

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

Campbell-Savours, D. N.

Golding, Mrs Llin

Clwyd, Mrs Ann

Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

585

Haynes, Frank

Short, Clare

Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

Skinner, Dennis

Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

Soley, Clive

Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

Spearing, Nigel

Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald

Squire, Robin

Knox, David

Stanbrook, Ivor

Lawrence, Ivan

Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

Livingstone, Ken

Waller, Gary

Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

Ward, John

Loyden, Eddie

Wareing, Robert N.

McNamara, Kevin

Wigley, Dafydd

Madden, Max

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Meale, Alan

Wolfson, Mark

Mowlam, Marjorie

Wray, Jimmy

Owen, Rt Hon Dr David

Pendry, Tom

Tellers for the Ayes:

Primarolo, Dawn

Mr. Peter Bottomley and

Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

Mr. Gerald Bermingham.

NOES

Nil

Tellers for the Noes:

Mr. Hugh Dykes and

Mr. Steve Norris.

Madam Deputy Speaker: Fewer than 100 Members having voted for the Ayes, the Question is not decided in the affirmative.
Debate to be resumed on Friday next.
It being after half-past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
Mr. Ashton: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a tradition of the House that the vote shall follow the voice. The only voice that cried no against the closure was that of the Minister, not the Whip, yet nobody voted no. There must be something wrong with that.
Madam Deputy Speaker: I shall certainly not name the hon. Members who called out no, but they are in the Chamber at present. It was quite clear that they were the hon. Members who opposed.
Mr. Simon Hughes: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. My copy of the Bill has on it the name of the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Mr. Norris). I understood that, from where he was standing, he was a Teller opposing the further progress of the Bill. That seems to be inconsistent.
Madam Deputy Speaker: It is certainly not a matter for the Chair which hon. Members are determined to be Tellers and which hon. Members are supporters of Bills.
Mr. Steve Norris: Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As a matter of personal explanation, I am sure that the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes), who questioned my role in today's proceedings, will appreciate that, had my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) not been able to call a Division, he would not have had the opportunity for his Bill to succeed. As there were no other persons present in this Chamber who were prepared to be Tellers for the Noes, I undertook that obligation to ensure that my hon. Friend had that opportunity.

Private Members' Bills
  REGISTERED HOMES (AMENDMENT) BILL
  Read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

  TRADE DESCRIPTIONS (ANIMAL TESTING) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till 22 March.

  GREYHOUND BETTING LEVY BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  WRITTEN CONSTITUTION BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

  HOUSING (HOMELESS PERSONS) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Not printed. Second Reading what day? No day named.

  BRITISH RACING COMMISSION BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  COAL MINING SUBSIDENCE (DAMAGE ARBITRATION, PREVENTION AND PUBLIC AWARENESs) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day? No day named.

  HUMAN RIGHTS BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Not moved.

  FOOTBALL SPECTATORS BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  PROTECTION OF BADGERS BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

  LOCAL GOVERNMENT FINANCE (PUBLICITY FOR AUDITORS' REPORTS) BILL
  Bill read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 40 (Committal of Bills).

  ROAD TRAFFIC (RANDOM BREATH TESTING) BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Not printed.

  DOMESTIC SMOKE ALARMS BILL
  Order for Second Reading read.
  Hon. Members: Object.
  Second Reading deferred till Friday next.

Waiting Lists (North East Thames)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker.]
2.41 pm
Mr. Bernie Grant: I have asked for this Adjournment debate following the leaking to The Guardian of a letter sent by Mr. Terry Hunt, the regional manager of North East Thames regional health authority, or NETHRA as it is fondly known, to district managers in the region.
In the letter, Mr. Hunt addresses the problems of NETHRA's huge waiting list, which is the worst for its size in the country, on which no fewer than 65,744 people are waiting for operations. More than 22,109 people have waited for more than a year, which in itself is scandalous.
Among Mr. Hunt's proposals for reducing the waiting list is one that deserves the attention of the whole country as it marks a departure from the principles on which many of us had believed our national health service is based. He proposes that a list of medical conditions are to be
"deemed inappropriate to place on waiting lists in the future."
In other words, those medical conditions will no longer be available for treatment under the national health service.
The conditions to be excluded include varicose vein operations, lumps and bumps, wisdom teeth without symptoms and in vitro fertilisation, unless, he says,
"there is an overriding clinical need."
We are told that other conditions may be added to that list.
The Government repeatedly assure us of their support for the founding principles of the NHS, yet, because of a lack of funding, the principle of a universal and comprehensive health service available to all is being formally abandoned in NETHRA.
I want the Minister to tell the House whether that is Government policy and, if not, what she intends to do about it. Is she prepared to see the NHS become merely a first-aid service or does she believe, as I do, that it should be a comprehensive service? Other questions need to be asked about this decision. Who made it? Who was consulted? Were the community health councils consulted about this major change in policy? Would we have known about it had there not been a leak to a national newspaper?
On the face of it, the decision appears to have been made secretly by an NHS bureaucrat. Bureaucracy in the NHS has largely been abandoned, but it cannot be right that a decision of such significance can be covertly concocted and carried through without scrutiny and behind the closed doors of NHS management.
There are several clinical and social concerns about the list of excluded treatments. Let us consider the example of non-malignant lumps and bumps. A doctor has written to a national newspaper about his concerns. He asks:
"How will anyone know that lumps are benign if they are not to be treated—and will people cease to seek medical opinion on life threatening conditions once they hear that lumps will no longer be treated by the NHS? Furthermore, there are many lumps and bumps which might not need removing or treating for medical reasons but which are socially and physically disabling nonetheless."
I am reminded in particular of one of my constituents who has a lump on her foot. It causes her considerable pain and she had hoped to have it removed. She is a carer. Her husband is suffering from cancer and it is making life

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even more difficult for her. When her GP referred her to North Middlesex hospital, she was refused treatment because of that new policy, which is quite disgraceful.
Had I the time, I could run through the other prohibited conditions to show that there are similar good, preventive and social reasons why they should remain available through the national health service. However, I shall confine myself to saying how cruel it is to deny women the right to IVF treatment on the NHS. I should like the Minister to visit my constituent Mrs. W. and explain to her why she cannot have IVF treatment. She has been trying to have a child for seven years and had finally begun pre-treatment for IVF. After many months of taking pills she is distraught because she has been told that she will not now receive the treatment.
Mr. Hunt's decision also raises the issue of the relationship between the NHS and the private health sector. It is no coincidence that the private hospitals are thriving on exactly the sort of work that North-East Thames regional health authority is now abandoning. Is it part of Government policy to encourage the private sector by starving the NHS? That is what it is beginning to look like to my constituents.
The trouble is that very few of my constituents can afford to pay £1,000 to have their varicose veins treated or the thousands of pounds involved in having private IVF treatment. To them, Mr. Hunt's ruling means that they will never be able to have the treatment that they need. Frankly, I shudder to think what other treatments will be added to the list. We are going down a very dangerous road when income is the determinant of whether one receives treatment.
I have no doubt that the Minister will reply that the NHS is not funded from a bottomless purse and that priorities must be established. No one would quibble about that or with the need to find constantly more efficient ways to run the NHS. However, Mr. Hunt's decision is a panic measure taken against the background of chronic starvation of funds by the Government to the health authority. It is bringing the NHS in the region to its knees. As elsewhere, managers are struggling to run an underfunded service and at the same time responding to political pressure to keep the waiting lists down by manipulating the figures—in time, no doubt, for a general election.
In the North East Thames regional health authority areas people will not be deceived. In 1989–90, 28,514 operations were cancelled, with a record 8,095 operating sessions not taking place. We have lost 31 hospitals since 1979 and a further 16 have been partially closed. 1[n the same period we have lost 3,295 acute beds.
This year figures will certainly be far worse. Of 28 districts in the regional authority, 13 are making cuts in excess of £1 million this year, including 10 inner London districts, as a result of the foolish insistence of Ministers that they clear all debts before the start of the remodelled NHS in April.
In my district of Haringey, 75,149 people were waiting for operations in March 1990, 31 per cent. of whom had been waiting over a year. That is quite appalling. Yet by August the district was overspent and it has had to find ways of containing a projected £1·8 million overspend in the current year. That meant the closure of the orthopaedic theatre at St. Ann's hospital before Christmas and the closure of the orthopaedic ward at St. Ann's at the beginning of January this year. The work has been moved
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to the North Middlesex hospital, and the operating time reduced to one half-day session a week, with beds having to be shared with general surgery, which is severely limiting the progress of the general surgery waiting list. The 18-bed infectious diseases ward at St. Ann's has also been closed, to be replaced only by six beds at the North Middlesex. In all, three wards have closed, one operating theatre has been lost, and the building that was supposed to replace the facilities at St. Ann's has been cancelled due to capital shortages.
In October surgeons were told to reduce operations by 50 per cent. and then on 1 December they were told to halt all non-elective surgery altogether until 1 April 1991. I suggest that it will take some skilful manipulation of the figures to disguise the massive increase in the waiting list which will result.
Figures are one thing, but the effect on patients and their families is another. I receive scores of letters from people who are affected by the problem. Let us take, for example, the case of Mr. James Breslin who lives in my constituency. He is 63 and needs a hip replacement badly so that he can continue to work to pay his exorbitant mortgage. After waiting many months he was finally given a date of 16 March 1991. He has now been told that the operation has been cancelled, and that he must expect at least another six months' delay. Mr. Breslin's daughter wrote to me last month and I quote from her letter:
"He doesn't know yet—we are afraid to tell him. He is in constant excruciating pain. It is terrible to watch him, his face contorts with agony when he tries to get up or sit down, and when he tries to walk. I am afraid of what this news will do to him—the only thing keeping him going was the fact that 16th March was growing nearer. Please help my father."
When I wrote to the surgeon, he could only explain that Mr. Breslin was one of 52 of his patients who would not be operated on until next year and many of them had had their operations cancelled twice. He said that it was impossible to plan elective surgery.
In NETHRA, there are thousands of people like Mr. Breslin, who are being short-changed by the NHS. According to the Greater London Association of Community Health Councils, which does such excellent work to represent the views of health service users, with such limited resources, the situation in NETHRA is approaching chaos in many parts of the region.
Districts such as Haringey can no longer look to other neighbouring authorities to tide them over difficult periods, for they are all in the same boat. The picture is one of wards being closed and beds being left empty while people are crying out for the treatment that they so badly need. I am reliably informed of an instance recently when cardiac patients at Bart's were put in armchairs for the day, because emergency medical admissions needed their beds. In the region as a whole, emergency admissions are rocketing and patients are being denied operations until their condition necessitates their admission to hospital on an emergency basis.
I began by expressing my concern about the abandonment of the fundamental principles of the NHS, as exemplified by the decision by the managment of NETHRA to abandon certain kinds of treatment. I should like the Minister to state the principles on which the NHS is currently operating. I hope that she will not attempt to pull the wool over our eyes by quoting bogus statistics to demonstrate that matters are improving. They most definitely are not.

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The NHS was created in the spirit of universalism which followed the second world war. I end by quoting from another letter which I recently received, from a pensioner in Tottenham who has also had his operation cancelled and who fought in that war. He wrote:
"I am now wondering what the hell I fought for."
Does the Minister intend to allow our service men and women now fighting in the Gulf to be left asking themselves the same question?
2.53 pm
The Minister for Health (Mrs. Virginia Bottomley): I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this opportunity to discuss the position in his health authority and, particularly, to clarify several important points causing great anxiety in the North East Thames regional health authority. The hon. Gentleman has raised questions about the health service on several occasions in the House. We respect and understand his interest and anxiety. That anxiety is shared by the Government. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we are determined to ensure that we use the record resources going into the health service and the record number of people working in it to provide a high standard of care of the people of Britain.
The hon. Gentleman began by asking me about the principles of the national health service and whether we held to the essential founding principles. I can give him an unequivocal assurance that the national health service is, and will remain, available to all, free at the point of delivery, financed largely out of taxation and funded to a record level that many would have thought inconceivable only 10 years ago. That is so, with regard to not only the numbers of people working in the service and the way in which they are paid, but the knowledge, the pharamaceuticals and the technology available to the hon. Gentleman's constituents and to mine. However, it is precisely because of the growing and developing nature of medical care that we cannot avoid change. We need to rationalise and to develop the ways in which we provide care.
The hon. Gentleman referred several times to bed closures and to hospital closures. It is a simplistic view of the health service to regard it as primarily concerned with beds. It is primarily concerned with patient care. We must always get the balance right between the provision of acute care and operations, which are enormously important to those who need them, and the broader care—the community care—and the services for the priority groups, such as the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped.
A distinguishing feature of our national health service, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, is the family doctor service. I hope that he will set the way in which that services has developed in recent years in his constituency alongside his concerns about acute care, with which I shall deal in a moment. In the hon. Gentleman's family practitioner committee area—now the family health services authority area—there are now three times as many practice nurses as there were three years ago. Over the past 10 years, there has been a fall of more than 100 in the number of patients on the average GP list in his constituency. There has also been an increase of 13 per cent. in the number of GPs in his family health services authority area and there have been great developments in the care provided by the hospitals in his area.
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I will give an example about which the hon. Gentleman will wish to tell his constituents. Between 1988 and 1990, the number of day cases undertaken by the major hospital in his area increased by nearly 50 per cent. That is an achievement of which to be proud. Only recently, the Audit Commission took a number of health authorities to task for the lack of speed with which they had moved towards day cases. There has been an increase of about 60 per cent. in London as a whole, which is excellent, but the hon. Gentleman's area has done particularly well.
It is not our intention to put people into beds and leave them there indefinitely, but to use the resources to the full to provide better care. That certainly applies to operating theatres. The recent Bevan report dealt with the essential need to use operating theatres to the full. The hon. Gentleman said that operations had been cancelled, but "cancelled" is not the right word. Some have been postponed for a variety of reasons, the lack of validation of a list and the lack of proper planning to ensure that staff would be available. Sometimes emergencies have occurred and the non-urgent cases have been put back. Alongside that, about 10 per cent. of patients do not show up for their appointments.
We must ensure that the national health service manages its services effectively and that the public and the patients realise that it is not a cost-free service. It may be free at the point of use for our constituents, but next year costs will approach £30 billion. The onus is on all of us to ensure that we understand the range of resources brought together through the work of the district health authority and the family health services authority and integrated under the umbrella of the region. We must ensure that we evaluate and monitor our work to continue to push forward the frontiers.
The hon. Gentleman has centred the debate around a letter sent out by the regional general manager of the North East Thames regional health authority. I welcome the opportunity to clarify the matter. The idea that the letter was leaked is fanciful. It was a routine letter, which I have with me, and there is no question of its being confidential or private. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman can confirm that there is no mention of its being secret, confidential or private. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify the issue. Duncan Nichol, the chief executive of the national health service management executive, has written to all regions to put the position more clearly. In order that there should be no misunderstanding, I intend to place a copy of the letter in the Library of the House. Misunderstanding and mischief often lead to unjustified anxieties among patients.
Waiting lists and waiting times are important in terms of the length of time an individual waits, rather than the exact number on the waiting list. We have made it clear that we want action to be taken on the long waits. Our health service treats patients according to clinical priority so that 50 per cent. of patients are admitted immediately because they are urgent or emergency cases. Of the 50 per cent. of patients who are not admitted immediately, half are admitted within five weeks, so three quarters of all patients are admitted immediately or within five weeks. We share the hon. Gentleman's concern about those who are not admitted within that time scale and for whom there are sometimes unacceptable delays. Inevitably, there are the ones who do not require urgent, acute operations. The

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hon. Gentleman will know that it causes anxiety and uncertainty to the patients and their families if it is not certain when they will be admitted.
The number of patients waiting more than a year reduced by nearly 7 per cent. in the year to 31 March 1990, and provisional figures show that that downward trend is continuing. The North East Thames authority has bettered those figures—there has been a reduction of long-wait patients of 28 per cent. In the year to 31 March, provisional figures show that the region's figures are continuing the downward trend. I am pleased to see the great strides being made in the region in terms of dealing with long-wait patients especially since, as the hon. Gentleman is well aware, the North East Thames authority has had a particular problem with the number of such patients.
In the district health authority covering the hon. Gentleman's constituency of Haringey, the period from March 1989 to 31 December 1990 saw a 35 per cent. decrease in the total number of in-patients waiting, so the authority has done particularly well in recognising and meeting that challenge. In the year ending March 1990, Haringey reduced the number of in-patients waiting more than a year from 842 to 385—a 54 per cent. reduction. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will want to join me in congratulating Haringey health authority on so clearly and strongly identifying that problem as one needing action. However, there is room for more action. That is why the management executive and the Secretary of State have identified long waits as a special priority in the health service.
We have been working with the special waiting list fund. During the past five years we have spent £154 million to enable hundreds of thousands of extra patients to be from the waiting lists. Next year, £35 million will be allocated to health authorities from that fund, and the regions will supplement that with a further £25 million from their own resources. The North East Thames authority, which covers the hon. Gentleman's area, will be allocated £2·63 million from the fund, which the authority will match, making a total of £5·26 million.
It is not just a case of increasing resources, but of increasing efficiency. I have spoken about the importance of validating the lists, of some of the administrative tasks which need to be undertaken and also of clinical validation.
The aspect that the hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr. Grant) mentions applies to clinical validation. It is important for clinicians to examine the list, to check and to satisfy themselves that the people on it are in need of surgical treatment. I think that the hon. Gentleman will agree that there is the world of difference between a varicose vein which may be unsightly, but is not troubling a gentleman who wears long trousers all day and causes him no pain or difficulty, and a varicose vein which is extremely unsightly, possibly ulcerated, or causing great difficulty. Similarly there is a difference between a tattoo which can be seen by no one and, although disliked by the patient, cannot be said to be causing distress or pain and a tattoo which causes great psychological distress and is a source of great concern. Wisdom teeth can be in need of clinical attention and can cause pain and difficulties to the patient, but patients may also simply wish that they did not have wisdom teeth although there is no clinical need for their removal.
North East Thames regional health authority was seeking to identify a range of operations where districts and,
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especially, clinicians would wish to satisfy themselves about the clinical aspects. It would be quite wrong to think that that list constituted a prohibition on those operations—on the contrary—but a need has been identified to check on the clinical need for such operations.
Mr. Bernie Grant: If the Minister is saying that this is not a definitive list, has she instituted some sort of appeals mechanism so that if, for example a clinician says that an operation is not urgent, the patient's doctor and other evidence can be brought before some sort of appeals committee?
Mrs. Bottomley: In our national health service patients are always admitted to hospital on the basis of clinical need. We do not have a waiting list in the formal sense that the first person on the list is the first person seen. That is why 50 per cent. of people are admitted to hospital immediately and a further 50 per cent. within five weeks. Some of those patients admitted immediately, or within five weeks, will get to hospital much sooner than people who have been on the list for longer. However, their clinical need and priority are greater. They are in need of urgent attention and have a deteriorating or a life-threatening condition.
The key point about the letter from the general manager of the regional health authority, spelt out even more clearly by the letter from Duncan Nichol, which I hope that the hon. Gentleman will read carefully, is the requirement to establish clinical need in those areas. I quote briefly from the letter:
"It is important that we do not create the impression that the NHS is seeking by blanket managerial declaration, to rule out whole categories of treatment … without reference to the clinical priority of individual patients."
I hope that the hon. Member for Tottenham will be at pains to explain that to his constituents and more widely.
It is important to continue to validate lists and to ensure that we provide the sort of pioneering health care which is a feature of our national health service. For example, last weekend we were all concerned about the well-being of the child Tamara Rainey at Addenbrooke's hospital—a child in acute need. Our national health service is able to provide treatment at the frontiers of science. We can continue to provide such treatment, free and available to all, if we use our resources effectively and well.
We must see, for example, whether GPs can undertake some minor treatments because GPs are now increasingly involved in minor surgery. We must ensure that the family health services authority and the district health authorities work together effectively and comprehensively. We must ensure that we do not think only in terms of acute medicine and the importance of tackling waiting lists. We must also remember those, such as the mentally handicapped and geriatrics, who require care in the community. Although it is costly, we all want to see better standards of care for such people.
The constituents of the hon. Member for Tottenham have seen the establishment of the North Middlesex hospital as a first-wave NHS trust. The hon. Gentleman will find that to be a centre of excellence able to provide better care and to inspire great confidence among his constituents. I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman and his constituents and I thank him again for allowing me to explain these matters.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at ten minutes past Three o'clock.