Commons Sitting of 13 May 1991

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

    Landfill Gas
    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is the number of landfill gas schemes in operation or under construction; and what is his assessment of their potential impact on the reduction of the United Kingdom's carbon dioxide emissions.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Colin Moynihan): My Department is aware of 68 landfill gas schemes in operation, under construction or proposed. With all 68 schemes in operation, and if the gas were used to replace coal, the overall reduction in carbon dioxide emissions would be approximately 1 million tonnes per year.
    Mr. Greenway: I welcome my hon. Friend's reply. Will he remind the nation that carbon dioxide is a killer of all life? Much as I welcome my hon. Friend's announcement, how much more can be done?
    Mr. Morgan: What about trees?
    Mr. Greenway: Trees, of course, absorb carbon dioxide. Would not more trees be a help?
    Mr. Moynihan: If I may, I shall address the important issue that my hon. Friend raised by referring to landfill gas schemes. There are many areas where we can carry out further research and development on environmental matters. Methane is the main component of landfill gas and is 27 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It is therefore important to use the combustion of methane to recover energy. That is beneficial. It removes the methane and disposes of fossil fuels. That is an important environmental step forward and I take on board my hon. Friend's point about other aspects of environmental concern.
    Mr. Lord: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what initiatives the Government are undertaking to promote the development of landfill gas technology.
    Mr. Moynihan: My Department has a substantial programme of research and development assistance and technology transfer to promote the use of methane from landfill sites which has led to the continuing commercial exploitation of the technology.
    Mr. Lord: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that reply, because what we do with our waste is now of enormous importance and we are looking towards the day when much more of what we discard can be recycled. Will my hon. Friend assure the House that, in the meantime, all landfill sites that are to be constructed will be absolutely safe and that there will be no seepage or other emissions from those sites? Will he do that to assure my constituents that they will be absolutely safe? Will he also do all that he can to make maximum use of products like gas from such sites which will prove to be an invaluable contribution to the recycling process?
    Mr. Moynihan: Safety is paramount when considering applications for the development of landfill gas sites. Eleven schemes are under construction and 25 are proposed. I assure my hon. Friend that the safety of those schemes is paramount and that many criteria must be satisfied before permission is given.

    Alternative Energy
    Mr. Tony Banks: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is the current level of departmental expenditure on the promotion of alternative energy sources.
    Mr. Moynihan: The expenditure for 1990–91 in support of my Department's substantial research, development and demonstration programme into renewable energy sources was over £20 million.
    Mr. Banks: Does the Minister agree that that is an abysmally small amount, given the need to find environmentally clean and safe alternative energy sources? That figure compares most unfavourably with the £40 million or so that the Government spent on advertising the privatisation of electricity—an ideological sop as far as the Government are concerned. The only things that are green about the Government's environmental policy are the mould and moss growing on the good intentions and lack of policy.
    Mr. Moynihan: The hon. Gentleman should know that no Government have done more than this Government to develop sources of renewable energy. We are committed to doing yet more and to working towards 1,000 MW of electricity generation capacity from renewable sources by the year 2000. Over £180 million has already been invested in research, development and demonstration.
    Mr. Colvin: Is my hon. Friend aware that the fuel cell is an almost pollution-free source of alternative energy? What is his Department doing to encourage the development of fuel cells? Will he acknowledge that today, the first day of platinum week in London, his Department should promote fuel cells more?
    Mr. Moynihan: I assure my hon. Friend that a great deal of money is being spent by the Government, and rightly so, on fuel cell development at Brogborough. I recommended that my hon. Friend sees that project. I know that he is already well aware of it. It is an important two-phase project carried out under the non-fossil fuel obligation and will be the largest landfill gas electricity project in the United Kingdom, generating 9 MW. The fuel cell development and research associated with landfill gas are a key part of our work.
    Mr. Maclennan: Is the Minister aware that the efforts of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority at Dounreay to develop alternative energy sources are seriously hampered by the Government's discrimination against Scotland with regard to the non-fossil fuel obligation? Will the hon. Gentleman not treat Scotland in a manner which makes the development of wind, wave and other forms of renewable energy more difficult than in England?
    Mr. Moynihan: The Scottish, English and Welsh electricity systems are largely separate and the Government are considering how Scottish generators might contribute to the expansion of generation from renewables in Scotland.
    Sir Antony Buck: Is my hon. Friend aware that my grandfather built the last working windmill in this
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    country? Would my hon. Friend like to say a word or two about the potential for wind, which is perhaps not an inappropriate matter for us to discuss in the House?
    Mr. Moynihan: Wind energy should concern the House. There is much research and development into the development of wind energy, not least at the wind farm in Wales. It is regrettable that many projects for the wind generation of electricity that come before planning committees often face hostile opposition from the very environmental groups who argue for wind generation around the country. I hope that those environmental groups will take note of the important renewable sources of energy in the United Kingdom, to which wind energy can contribute, and not oppose many planning applications on grounds of aesthetic concern. Indeed, even noise has been an issue that has been put to us in opposition to wind projects.
    Mr. Dobson: Must not the Minister agree that the privatisation of electricity is setting back the development of renewable energy because the newly privatised companies are not willing to give long-term contracts? Everything shows that long-term contracts or long-term guarantees for the sale of electricity are necessary if renewable sources such as barrages, windmills or wave power are to be developed on any reasonable scale.
    Mr. Moynihan: I disagree with the hon. Gentleman's assessment. The assumption that contract length has been a constraint on generators seeking to contract within the non-fossil fuel obligation is untrue, because they need the flexibility to offer bankable contracts to sponsors of projects with long pay-back periods. That is why the first tranche of the NFFO was very successful. It is now clear that applications under the second tranche, which was announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, will be considerable.

    Nuclear Energy
    Mr. Simon Coombs: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on his current review of the future of the nuclear industry.
    The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. John Wakeham): The Government will carry out a full-scale review of the prospects for nuclear power in 1994, taking account of all relevant factors.
    Mr. Coombs: Does my right hon. friend agree that the policy of the Opposition parties—of phasing out nuclear civil energy—would be completely disastrous in terms of meeting our international obligations to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases? Does he accept that, in that context, his answer today is disappointing? We run the risk of losing expertise in the nuclear industry if we do not consider and decide how to go forward with the industry before 1994.
    Mr. Wakeham: I agree with the first part of my hon. Friend's question, but I am not sure about the second part. My discussions with people in the nuclear industry suggest to me that they are confident that they will be able to demonstrate that nuclear power is safe and economical. I believe that to be the best safeguard for the long-term future of nuclear power in Britain.
    Mr. Dalyell: Will the Secretary of State revert to a previous incarnation and rebuke one of his colleagues as strictly as he did when he was the Government Chief Whip? That colleague should be the Prime Minister who on Thursday used the term nuclear "dumping" in column 823 of Hansard. Does not the Prime Minister know that there is no such thing as nuclear dumping? There is careful storage in controlled, safe conditions. The Prime Minister should not have used that word.
    Mr. Wakeham: Whatever success I had as Chief Whip in a previous incarnation was as much to do with my relationship with the Prime Minister as with anything else. Therefore, I do not believe that it is my business to comment on something that was said in Parliament last week, when I was in America. I agree with the hon. Gentleman this far—the disposal of the waste from the nuclear industry is an important part of the process of the nuclear industry and, of course, it must be safe and secure. That is a fundamental consideration.

    Lofts (Insulation)
    Mr. Knapman: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what was the number of homes with accessible lofts whose lofts had been insulated (a) in 1978 and (b) in 1990.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. David Heathcoat-Amory): In 1978 some 8·7 million homes with accessible lofts had loft insulation. By 1989 the number of homes with loft insulation had risen to 15·3 million. Figures for 1990 are not yet available.
    Mr. Knapman: I congratulate my hon. Friend on that excellent reply. Are low-income families eligible for financial assistance in these matters? If so, how much money will be made available to them this year?
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: In most cases, investment in energy efficiency equipment or insulation justifies itself financially, but assistance is required for low-income households. I am pleased to say that the home energy efficiency scheme, which was launched in January to give grants to precisely those households, will have a budget of £26 million in the current year.
    Mr. Dobson: Will the Minister confirm that the Government's own figures—before they became so embarrassing that the Government stopped publishing them—showed that if the Tory Government had maintained home insulation at the level that they inherited from the previous Labour Government, 5·5 million more homes would now be properly insulated?
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: No. When the Labour party left office, only about 60 per cent. of homes had loft insulation. The figure now is 90 per cent. That shows that Conservative Government is good for energy efficiency.

    North Sea
    Dr. Twinn: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what was the level of capital investment in the North sea in 1989 and 1990; and what level he expects it will be in the current year.
    Mr. Wakeham: Capital investment in the North sea increased by 30 per cent. from £2·7 billion in 1989 to £3·5 billion in 1990. I expect that rapid growth to continue in 1991.
    Dr. Twinn: Given that encouraging answer and the investment announced last week in the Alba field and the Everest Lomond field, does my right hon. Friend agree that production from the North sea continues to provide good news for Scotland and for England, continues to confound the pessimists who talk down the North sea and brings good news for gas and oil consumers in Britain?
    Mr. Wakeham: My hon. Friend is right. Last Tuesday I was able to announce the approval of two major new schemes. The Chevron-operated Alba field and the Amoco-operated Everest/Lomond CATS—central area transmission system—project involve investment of £2·4 billion. In total, 11 development projects have been approved so far this year. The total value of new orders placed for goods and services for the United Kingdom continental shelf in 1990 rose to a massive £6·2 billion. That is an increase of over 60 per cent. compared with the previous year.
    Mr. Holt: Does my right hon. Friend agree that although those figures are most welcome, there is now a grave danger that there will be a concentration of gas power stations on Teesside and, consequently, of power lines that flow from them, and that it is necessary for the Government to have a strategy, so that power stations are located throughout the country and not concentrated in one area and pylons do not all emanate from Teesside? Although the gas fields are near the north-east coast, it is time that we recognised that other parts of the country use electricity and should take their fair share of the environmental problems.
    Mr. Wakeham: Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend makes a fair point and I understand his constituency concern, but he would not expect me to comment in detail on those matters because he knows that they are, or will be, subject to planning applications before approval and that all considerations will be properly taken into account when they are received.

    Offshore Platforms
    Mr. Anthony Coombs: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is his estimate of the number of new projects being started in United Kingdom yards for the construction of offshore platforms.
    Mr. Moynihan: At the present time United Kingdom construction yards have orders valued at £1·6 billion arising from 18 field development projects.
    Mr. Coombs: Will my hon. Friend confirm not only that last year's figure of £6·2 billion for goods and services from North sea oil is a record but that no less than £4·8 billion of that sum was provided by British manufacturing and other British companies? Does he agree that that is a tribute to the vitality of the North sea oil industry and to the efficiency and competitiveness of British industry?
    Mr. Moynihan: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I simply add that that £6·2 billion represented an increase of more than 50 per cent. on the 1989 figure.
    Dr. Godman: May I remind the Minister that the Scott Lithgow offshore fabrication yard, which is located in my constituency, is one of the finest of its sort in Scotland? Why are the Minister, his officials and the officials at the offshore supplies office so massively indifferent to the needs of that yard and the labour force in the locality, where the unemployment rate is about 13·5 per cent? Why are the Minister and his officials refusing to assist Scott Lithgow to acquire orders from the North sea oil and gas industries?
    Mr. Moynihan: I refute and reject the hon. Gentleman's allegations. The parent company, Trafalgar House, is considering subcontracting work to the yard. I know that Scott Lithgow is actively seeking work. In doing so, it recognises that it is not just a matter of matching orders with yards; it is up to fabricators to decide which orders to bid for and then to be competitive. I am fully aware of the position in the hon. Gentleman's constituency and of the management's determination to seek orders and match them to its capability at the yard.
    Sir Anthony Durant: Do not the figures given in answer to this question and the previous one dispel the doom and gloom that was spread some time ago about our running out of oil and gas in the North sea?
    Mr. Moynihan: They do. Even better news comes from considering the beginning of the cycle. Last year we had another record for exploration and appraisal wells with 224 sites, beating the previous high of 190 in 1984. The prospects for the North sea are good. We can expect future work for United Kingdom fabricators and suppliers and substantial further production of oil and gas well into the next century.

    British Coal
    Mr. Knox: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he next plans to meet the chairman of British Coal to discuss the future ownership of the industry.
    Mr. Wakeham: I meet the chairman of British Coal regularly to discuss all aspects of the coal industry.
    Mr. Knox: When my right hon. Friend next meets the chairman of British Coal to discuss this matter, will he ensure that the views of the miners and others employed by British Coal are considered? Does he agree that privatisation of British Coal will be successful only if it enjoys the support of the employees?
    Mr. Wakeham: I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. It is extremely important that British Coal employees have an opportunity to participate in the privatisation and that they work to make it a success. I know that the chairman of British Coal would want the same.
    Mr. Redmond: The House will be aware of a recent drugs find in Colombian coal imports. When the Secretary of State meets the chairman of British Coal, will he discuss possible ways to stop that transpiring and ensure that the industry's morale is sky high and that there is sufficient coal from British mines to meet our energy needs?
    Mr. Wakeham: Colombian coal imports and their prices are matters for the European Commission rather than for me. I certainly want British Coal to be able to compete for as many orders as it can get. It will do that if
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    it can deliver the coal at competitive prices and in a proper manner, and if its productivity continues to improve, as it has in previous years.
    Mr. Andy Stewart: Does my right hon. Friend agree that British Coal's success will depend not on who owns it but on its efficiency and productivity? For example, the two Nottinghamshire collieries that have led the production league for the past six months are at Welbeck, on an advancing face with 72 tonnes per man shift, and Thoresby, on a retreating face with 157 tonnes per man shift.
    Mr. Wakeham: I agree with my hon. Friend. Following my visits to the coal industry, I have been impressed by the spirit, enthusiasm and skill of those in the industry. The coal industry is making good progress with productivity, which is up by over 90 per cent. from pre-strike levels. However, further productivity gains are essential. The industry has the technology, investment and the skills to achieve those.
    Mr. Morgan: I compliment the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Mr. Knox) on his moderate question, which was quite unlike the views expressed by Mr. Evans, the Conservative candidate for Monmouth, on any topic mentioned. Will the Secretary of State assure the House that any proposals that he has to privatise the coal industry are not based on the principles that were used to privatise the electricity industry? There were price rises to consumers in south Wales, including Monmouth, of 50 per cent. above inflation and enormous pay rises for the directors of South Wales Electricity of up to 45 per cent., whereas directors of businesses in south Wales, according to a survey in this morning's Western Mail, received pay rises of only 2 or 3 per cent., or even pay cuts. The directors of South Wales Electricity are receiving pay rises of £20,000 to £30,000.
    Mr. Wakeham: I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall not discuss such matters with the chairman of British Coal when I next meet him. If I did so, I should be able to point out that any electricity price rises incurred since the Conservative party has been in office are nothing compared to the 2 per cent. rise every six weeks when the Labour party was in office.

    Carbon Dioxide Emissions
    Mr. Rost: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is his assessment of the contribution combined heat and power plant could make to reducing the United Kingdom's carbon dioxide emissions by the end of the decade.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: My Department's most recent estimates indicate that combined heat and power could in time lead to reductions of as much as 5 to 10 per cent. of United Kingdom carbon dioxide emissions. The degree to which this will be realised by the year 2000 will depend on the future development of the United Kingdom power market.
    Mr. Rost: Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that combined heat and power can make a bigger contribution to reducing global greenhouse gases at a lower cost than any other solution? Is he aware that the Government memoranda to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate

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    Change estimated that the potential in the United Kingdom was not 4,000 MW but 30,000 MW? Will he now take measures—they are still required—to remove some of the obstacles holding back industrial combined heat and power, particularly the example that I sent to him from Air Products?
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Yes, I am happy to acknowledge that combined heat and power technology is good for the environment as well as being highly energy efficient. My hon. Friend referred to impediments, but I remind him that the restructuring and privatisation of the electricity supply industry have opened up the market to competitive, alternative, independent suppliers. Indeed, many suppliers of combined heat technology have risen to the challenge.
    Mr. Barron: Does the Minister accept that the freeing of the power market means as much as what the Tories stated in 1983 in debates on the Energy Act? It means as much as what was said throughout the debates in the House on the privatisation of the electricity supply industry. The Government still do not recognise the fact that the energy from combined heat and power technology is not competitive with ordinary generated electricity. It is energy used for the benefit of the environment and consumers. When will the Government take the action that the hon. Member for Erewash (Mr. Rost) mentioned and stop the restrictions still in force against the development of combined heat and power?
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Any regulatory or administrative restrictions that still exist will be dealt with by my Department and the Office of Electricity Regulation, but the main impediment to the spread of CHP technology in the past has been the state-owned, monolithic structure of the industry, which we have dismantled. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to be known as environmentally aware, he should change his attitude towards what we have done in the electricity supply industry in the past three years.

    Renewable Energy
    Mr. Speller: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy how he proposes to assist renewable energy projects to fulfil the non-fossil fuel obligation.
    Mr. Moynihan: My right hon. Friend proposes to assist renewable projects by requiring the regional electricity companies to contract for renewable generating capacity under a series of additional tranches of the non-fossil fuel obligation.
    Mr. Speller: I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful remarks. Is he aware that the public at large, and young people in particular, have accepted and support the clean, renewable energies of wind, wave and tide? Will Her Majesty's Government consider how they can encourage the use of those resources, which are popular, cheap and infinitely renewable, by the grace of the good Lord?
    Mr. Moynihan: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The most important way in which we can help this year is to make a second order under the non-fossil fuel obligation for renewables, which we shall do. We shall take note of my hon. Friend's important point that we should support not just one or two potential renewable sources, but a whole series, and that we should identify separate tranches of the NFFO.
    Mr. Simon Hughes: The Minister will be aware of the widespread support, as the hon. Member for Devon, North (Mr. Speller) said for increasing the proportion of our energy that is produced from renewable sources. However, one inhibition has been the apparent conflict between, for example, a barrage and the conservation interests of wildlife in an estuary, whether it is the Severn or the Usk, Felixstowe on the east coast or the Lyme. Will officials at the Department of Energy put their heads together with officials at the Department of the Environment to try to provide, as a matter of policy, a proper way of evaluating environmental and energy benefits and disbenefits so that we find the best sites for wind, tidal and other alternative sources, rather than having a battle each time a site is chosen? We should have a strategy, not an ad hoc approach.
    Mr. Moynihan: The hon. Gentleman is right to identify a problem that we faced and, I believe, resolved. That problem highlights the additional need for planning policy guidance to be given by the Government to local authorities so that we avoid the sort of diversity described by the hon. Gentleman. Work is under way on a planning policy guidance note, which will be isssued shortly and will go a long way towards resolving the problem described by the hon. Gentleman.

    British Coal
    Mrs. Heal: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy when he last met the chairman of British Coal to discuss the future coal supplies to power stations in the midlands region.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: My right hon. Friend and I meet the chairman of British Coal regularly to discuss all aspects of the industry.
    Mrs. Heal: Does the Minister agree that the short-sighted policy of the rundown of coal production in the west midlands region has gone so far that it even endangers the future of the power stations in that district? What guarantees will he give that no power stations in the west midlands will be closed, other than Meaford and Ham Hall, whose closure has already been announced?
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: As the hon. Lady knows, three-year transitional contracts give security of volume and price so that the coal industry can adjust to the new market in energy. The future size of the industry depends on the future size of the market, so it is up to British Coal and all who work in it to create a reputation as a secure and economic supplier of indigenous energy to the electricity supply market. Substantial progress has been made since 1985.
    Mr. Dickens: When my hon. Friend next meets the chairman of British Coal to discuss coal supplies to midlands power stations, will he impress on him that as long as miners' jobs and pension funds are secure, it matters not whether coal mines are in state ownership or private ownership? There is no doubt that what the coal mining industry needs for survival is capital input. If businesses—whether Shell or the power companies—put money into the mining industry it will fight off competition from abroad. Does my hon. Friend agree?
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Yes. Coal produced by good British pits can compete with coal imported from anywhere. My hon. Friend makes a good point—that the challenges facing the coal industry will be the same, whether it is in public or private ownership.
    Mr. Skinner: Does the Minister accept that productivity in the midlands, west and east has increased at a remarkable rate over the past few years? Following the question of the hon. Member for Staffordshire, Moorlands (Mr. Knox), may I put it to the Minister that when the future shape of the industry is being decided it would not be a bad idea if, following discussions with British Coal, the Secretary of State for Energy were to organise a ballot of the workers in the industry so that he might have their view on privatisation before the general election? There would probably be a very clear result against privatisation.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: I happily acknowledge that the industry has greatly improved its productivity in recent years, albeit from a very low base. Only high productivity can bring security to the industry in the long term. As regards the holding of a ballot, I need say only that we shall be having a general election and that that will show whether people think that the future of the coal industry should be put into private hands.

    Nuclear Electric
    Mr. Page: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what was the total electricity output of Nuclear Electric in the year ending 31 March 1991.
    Mr. Wakeham: Last year Nuclear Electric plc produced just under 45 terawatt hours. This was a record level of nuclear electricity production in England and Wales. It was also more than 7 per cent. above Nuclear Electric's production target for the year.
    Mr. Page: I thank my right hon. Friend for the most encouraging figures that he has just given. Does he agree that it would be beneficial to have a source of energy other than fossil fuels? If we took into account the cost of the effects of sulphur, nitrogen and CO2, emissions—leaving aside the cost of slag heaps—the real cost of electricity generated by fossil fuels would be seen to make nuclear generation a very cheap option.
    Mr. Wakeham: I agree with the sentiment expressed by my hon. Friend in the first part of his question. In 1994 there will be a full-scale review, which will take account of all the relevant factors. The relative environmental costs of fossil fuels is one factor that we shall want to take into account.

    Mains Electricity Supply
    Mr. Amos: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will make a statement on what assistance is available to connect people to the mains electricity supply in remote rural areas.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Under the Electricity Act 1989, all new consumers were given the right to connection on reasonable terms. The Director General of Electricity Supply is empowered to adjudicate in cases of dispute.
    Mr. Amos: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his reply. He will be aware that recently the Rural
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    Development Commission undertook an inquiry into the matter. May I suggest that he meets the chairman of the commission to discuss ways in which the Government might help it to connect the premises of my constituents in rural areas, or at least to give them some assistance? The advertised costs are quite prohibitive.
    Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Yes. My right hon. Friend has been in correspondence with the Rural Development Commission and has pointed out that the position of such customers has been substantially improved. Previously, they had a right to a supply only if they lived within 50 yd of a distribution main; now, the regional electricity companies are obliged to offer reasonable terms for such a supply and the director general can determine what is reasonable in those circumstances.

    Electricity Tariffs
    Mr. Cohen: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy if he will meet the Director General of Electricity Supply to discuss the pricing formula for electricity tariffs.
    Mr. Wakeham: Monitoring and enforcement of the price controls in the public electricity licences issued to the regional electricity companies are matters for the Director General of Electricity Supply.
    Mr. Cohen: Has not the Government's blunder in their inflation calculations last year meant much higher electricity prices than are justified by the rate of inflation this year? Does the Minister agree that the Government have the power, but the people get the bills?
    Mr. Wakeham: There is a degree of illogic about the hon. Gentleman's question. He was arguing for higher increases last year as well. That is what would have happened: the total increase would have been more. It is, of course, right that last year inflation to October was forecast at 6 per cent. Unfortunately, it was higher than that and the price increases recently announced take account of that increase in the rate of inflation.

    North Sea
    Mr. Tim Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Energy what is the current level of capital investment in the North sea.
    Mr. Moynihan: As my right hon. Friend noted in response to a similar question earlier, capital investment in the North sea increased by 30 per cent. from £2·7 billion in 1989 to £3·5 billion in 1990. We expect that rapid growth to continue in 1991.
    Mr. Smith: Is my hon. Friend aware that, as a Shell fellow-elect of the Industry and Parliament Trust, I have been able to see at first hand some of the substantial investment currently going into the North sea? It is good news for the United Kingdom economy. Will my hon. Friend ensure that Treasury Ministers, in so far as he has any influence over them, continue to produce a tax regime favourable for marginal investment in the North sea?
    Mr. Moynihan: As my hon. Friend knows full well, the Treasury has for many years recognised that a stable fiscal framework is essential for operators and investors taking

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    long-term financial decisions in the North sea—a point of which I am sure my colleagues in the Treasury are only too well aware in the context of future decisions.

  THE ARTS

    London Arts
    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Minister for the Arts what is his policy towards the arts in the London area; and if he will make a statement.
    The Minister for the Arts (Mr. Tim Renton): The overall aim of our policy for London, as elsewhere, is to continue to develop a climate in which the arts can flourish. To that end, London will have a new regional arts board from 1 October 1991. Good progress has been made with the appointment of Mr. Clive Priestley as chair, 10 of the 14 other board members and a chief executive, Mr. Tim Mason.
    Mr. Greenway: I welcome the appointment of Mr. Priestley. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that London is the cultural centre of the world in every aspect of the arts? Will he therefore resist the pressure that has come from the House in recent years to divert money from London to the regions? It is right to build up money for the regions—but not at the expense of London.
    Mr. Renton: I agree with my hon. Friend's first point. I regard London as the cultural centre of the world and will do all in my powers to ensure that it remains so. However, it is only right that the regions should have a fair crack of the whip, too. It is true that in recent years more money, on a percentage basis, has gone from the Arts Council to the regions than to London, but I stress that there is no crisis in central Government funding of the arts through the Arts Council. If there is a problem it is down to the London boroughs—individually or through the London boroughs grants scheme—some of which are, alas, withdrawing funding from the arts.
    Mr. Fisher: I join the Minister in welcoming Mr. Priestley's appointment, but he faces a difficult task.
    The Minister, in his complacency, does not seem to understand the urgency or the scale of the crisis facing London's arts, from which £800,000 has been withdrawn under the London boroughs grants scheme budget. Probably more than £3 million in cuts has been forced on local authorities by the Government's poll tax; and the Government's funding, through the Arts Council, of Greater London Arts is well below the rate of inflation. All that will hit arts bodies in London and it is all a direct result of Government policies.
    Does not the Minister see what is going on? Is not he aware of it? Why has he said not a single word while the crisis has been developing over the past few weeks? What will he do about the problem now?
    Mr. Renton: The hon. Gentleman should not quote from a script passed into his hand by some stagehand whom he has just met. The fact is that I have instructed the Arts Council, through Greater London Arts, to make available short-term funding for those of its clients who may be suffering because of a lack of decisions under the London boroughs grants scheme. The problem lies not in the fact that there is no money in the system. Quite the opposite: there is money in the system, but unfortunately
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    some boroughs have decided that funding the arts is a luxury. The shadow Minister should be using his persuasive powers to persuade the London boroughs to continue to fund the arts through the money that they will have under the LBGS.

    Ministerial Visits
    Mr. Holt: To ask the Minister for the Arts when he will next make an official visit to the Teesside region to discuss funding of the arts.
    Mr. Renton: I am due to visit Tyneside in July for the Museums Association annual conference. I hope that my next visit to the Northern region after that will be to Teesside.
    Mr. Holt: Although my right hon. Friend believes that London is the cultural centre of the world, he should learn that Tyneside and Teesside are 50 miles apart and are nothing to do with each other. On Teesside we have a world cultural event every two years—the Cleveland international eisteddfod—which receives little financial backing from the Government. It would perhaps be enhanced if a Minister were to attend. If I told my right hon. Friend that it was to take place in two or three weeks' time, he might say that I was not giving him sufficient notice. However, it will not take place for 18 months, so I hope that I shall not be accused of that and that he will not say that he cannot make commitments 18 months ahead. It is time that the Government showed their commitment to the Teesside region by attending the international eisteddfod, which has a worldwide reputation.
    Mr. Renton: I thank my hon. Friend for his lesson in geography. I was aware that Tyneside is different from Teesside, but I thought that I should point out my general commitment to the north-east. He is being somewhat unfair about the Billingham international folklore festival. In recent years it has won six business sponsorship incentive scheme awards, all of which are matched pound for pound by the Department through the Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts. He should give credit to my Department for that. I hope to accept his invitation and to be with him at the Billingham festival at some stage in the future.

    Art Restoration (Middle East)
    Mr. Dalyell: To ask the Minister for the Arts how many experts have been given grants for art restoration in the war zones of the middle east.
    Mr. Renton: The Office of Arts and Libraries has received no requests for such grants and none has therefore been made.
    Mr. Dalyell: What is the policy towards any requests for help that might come from Kuwait? Should not those who, rightly or wrongly, willed the war, which resulted in the destruction of the shrines at Kerbala and Najaf, at least respond favourably if the Shia community ask for help? Can we be prepared for that?
    Mr. Renton: The hon. Gentleman is an experienced enough Member to know that there is little point in asking wholly hypothetical questions. As I said, I have received no such requests for help in restoring, for example, any religious or cultural items that might have been taken from

    15
    the museums. If we were to receive such a request, I am sure that the conservation departments of our leading museums would do their best to help. They might make a charge, but that would not be unreasonable. However, they have received no such request, nor do we have any specific information about damage to artistic or cultural objects.

    London Arts
    Mr. Bowis: To ask the Minister for the Arts if he will bring forward a plan to remove the arts in London from funding by the London boroughs grants scheme.
    Mr. Renton: The problems surrounding the settlement of the LBGS budget this year have demonstrated that the joint local authority arrangements for funding arts organisations in London are not working effectively.
    My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has included those arrangements in the review of the structure of local government. I am discussing with him possible alternative future arrangements to ensure a stable environment for the funding of the capital's arts organisations.
    Mr. Bowis: Is my right hon. Friend aware that today Tom Stoppard, Tom Conti and others launched a campaign to save the King's Head theatre, which is one of the best in the capital and in the country, from the disastrous cut in grant by the London boroughs grants scheme? Is not it a fact that that scheme not only knows precious little about the arts, but puts them in the bottom category of its priorities? Is not it time that London's arts were rescued from its clutches?
    Mr. Renton: As I said in answer to an earlier question, the difficulty is not that there is no money in the system—there is, from the Arts Council through Greater London Arts and also from the LBGS which, I understand, intends to devote approximately £3 million of its budget, or about 11 per cent., to arts organisations. The problem is——
    Mr. Fisher: The Minister is ill-informed.
    Mr. Renton: The shadow Minister for the Arts says that I am ill-informed, but he has not read his script. He has been too busy reading The Stage and I advise him against that in future. The money is there, in the system. The difficulty is that the LBGS took so long to reach decisions. That is why I had to ask the Arts Council to give interim, temporary help to its clients who were in difficulties.
    Mr. Chris Smith: The Minister must be aware that there is a real crisis of funding in the London arts—in large measure due to the overall financial squeeze that has been placed both by the Government and by the Tory boroughs on the London boroughs grants committee on the funding of voluntary bodies and arts organisations in the capital. It is seriously affecting two theatres in my constituency—the Almeida and the King's Head. Is it not time that the Minister stopped wringing his hands and pretending that he was not responsible for any of that and instead devoted some Government money to supporting the arts in London?
    Mr. Renton: I understand why the hon. Gentleman says that because I know of his great interest in the subject. However, he is being less than just. Greater London Arts is giving an award this year to the Almeida theatre of
    16
    £238,000. That is Government-provided money. Like the hon. Gentleman, I should be sorry if the Almeida, which is one of the most important new writing theatres in the country, went under. It is his council, Islington, and the London boroughs grants scheme which are keeping back £56,000, a mere one fifth of the Arts Council money. The hon. Gentleman should bring his influence to bear on Islington to see that the Almeida does not get into difficulties. Islington is not a Tory borough; I do not think that the Tories are yet in control of Islington.

  CIVIL SERVICE

    Private Sector Recruitment
    Mrs. Gorman: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what percentage of chief executives and senior managers in executive agencies have been recruited from the private sector; and if he will make a statement.
    The Minister of State, Privy Council Office (Mr. Tim Renton): One objective in appointing chief executives is to get the right person for each job. Open competition is now the presumption. Fourteen of the 50 chief executives appointed so far have come from outside the civil service.
    Mrs. Gorman: I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. Knowing, as we Conservatives do, that bringing in the private sector or subcontracting agencies to chief executives refreshes parts that socialist policies cannot reach, will my right hon. Friend think about applying those policies to the Passport Office which, at this time of year, is always under great pressure, which causes a great deal of dissatisfaction to people? I am sure that the Passport Office could be far better run if either the chief executive did it or the private sector were brought in to do it.
    Mr. Renton: It is likely that, when the present chief executive retires, the next chief executive of the Passport Office will be appointed by open competition, so the best choice will be arrived at from applicants within and outwith the civil service. I spent three happy summers at the Home Office, where I was responsible for the Passport Office, and I should be one of the first to agree with my hon. Friend that some of the best and most efficient private sector methods could be applied to passport offices.

    Morale
    Mr. Fisher: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service when he last met representatives of the civil service unions to discuss morale within the service.
    Mr. Renton: I meet civil service trade union representatives from time to time to discuss a variety of issues.
    Mr. Fisher: When the Minister next meets representatives from the civil service trade unions, will he tell them whether it is true that the Prime Minister's new policy unit, headed by Ms. Sarah Hogg, is drawing up a secret agenda for selling off large parts of the civil service? Is that the case? What is to be sold off? Will the Minister be sold off as well?
    Mr. Renton: If there were a secret agenda, I would not know the answer to the question, would I? The hon.

    17
    Gentleman is trying to make castles out of shadows and nightmares. It is perfectly right that the policy unit at No. 10 should look at the further applications of the "next steps" agency process. I was pleased that the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), the shadow Chancellor, spoke favourably about the "next steps" process during his speech last week.
    We have never said that "next steps", turning a large part of the civil service into agencies, is necessarily the end of the road. It is right that some parts of the civil service should be considered for contractorisation and that other parts should be considered as candidates for privatisation. I hope that the hon. Gentleman would support that thesis in the interests of better service for the customer and of a better career structure in the civil service.
    Dr. Marek: If there is no secret agenda to privatise large parts of the civil service, should the Government win the next election, why is the Minister planning the abolition of the central rules for staff appraisal and reporting? If he is doing that, can he assure the House that any changes to staff appraisal will be introduced only after meaningful consultation with the trade unions representing civil servants?
    Mr. Renton: I have no doubt that there will be close consultation with civil service unions on the subject. If we move to greater flexibility in pay determination within the "next steps" agencies—we want to do that, as has been said many times in discussions about the "next steps" process—it is only right that staff appraisal should also be delegated to a greater extent to the chief executives of the agencies. That will mean that the agencies will not follow a wholly uniform pattern at every stage.

    Civil Service College
    Mr. Tony Banks: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what courses on the machinery of government are run by the Civil Service college.
    Mr. Renton: The college runs over 40 courses a year on machinery of government issues. They benefit greatly from the contribution of Members of the House—including the hon. Member for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks), for which I am most grateful.
    Mr. Banks: It is my pleasure.
    Will copies of Sir Bernard Ingham's new book "Kill The Messenger" be made available at the Civil Service college as a teaching aid for civil servants, to show them how to stitch up elected Ministers at the request of the Prime Minister? Perhaps the Minister will tell us that the best thing to do is to cut through it all and appoint card-carrying members of the Conservative party to the chief posts in the civil service?
    Mr. Renton: That latter remark was wholly unworthy of the hon. Gentleman. As he has spent time—for which I thanked him—lecturing at the Civil Service college on the value of Question Time, I hoped that he would make better use of his opportunity today. It will not be necessary for us to make available at the Civil Service college copies of Sir Bernard Ingham's memoirs; my impression from reading yesterday's Sunday Times is that it will be freely available on the bookstalls.

    Women Returners
    Mr. Dunn: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what arrangements are being made in the civil service to encourage women with children to return to work in Government Departments.
    Mr. Renton: Government Departments and agencies have adopted a range of measures designed to enable those women who so choose to return to work in the civil service. They include flexible working arrangements, career breaks and child care provision.
    Mr. Dunn: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for that reply. Does he agree that, of the items that he listed, the one that needs the greatest encouragement is the adoption of flexible working patterns? That will permit a number of women with children and other family responsibilities to take up a career while abiding by those responsibilities.
    Mr. Renton: Yes, I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. When I was responsible for various departments connected to the Home Office, I was aware that recruitment for the department in Croydon was aided by the introduction of flexible working patterns. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that the proportion of women now working part time is 13·7 per cent., as opposed to just under 5 per cent. seven years ago. He is right to emphasise the importance of these matters.
    Mr. Madden: Will not many women be discouraged from joining the civil service when they consider the unhappy treatment of Colette Bowe in the Westland affair? If the book will not be supplied to the Civil Service college, will the Minister ensure that a video of Sir Bernard Ingham's television interview last night is shown? It was most disturbing to see senior civil servants violently contradicting each other on the Westland affair. One senior civil servant even contradicted a senior Cabinet Minister. Will the Minister institute an inquiry into the Westland affair? It is time that we knew who was telling the truth and who was lying.
    Mr. Renton: The answer to the hon. Gentleman's second question is no; I have no intention of instituting an inquiry. As for the first part, I think that he would be the first to complain if we distributed free copies of Sir Bernard Ingham's book, or free copies of the video, to members of the civil service.

    European Fast Stream
    Mr. Knapman: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what progress has been made with the European fast stream initiative to encourage civil servants to work in the European Community.
    Mr. Renton: The European fast stream has attracted more than 4,000 applications this year. We have already allocated more than half the 30 places available.
    Mr. Knapman: How long will it be before these fast streamers are working in Brussels? Will they ensure that Britain's interests are even better represented in the European Commission?
    Mr. Renton: My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that five European fast-streamers are already in post, that the first European fast-streamer was a woman and that 20

    19
    places are currently on offer. I intend to ensure that the under-representation of the British in European Community institutions is adjusted in our favour.
    Dr. Godman: Will the Minister outline the criteria by which his civil servants are chosen to work in Brussels? For example, are they assessed on their views about the United Kingdom's role in the European Community?
    Mr. Renton: I shall gladly send the hon. Gentleman some of the documents that are issued to those who apply for such jobs. Those people undergo a thorough and detailed examination. He will be interested to know that on our new joint drive with the Commission, there were more than 12,0000 requests for application forms from graduates from all backgrounds in the United Kingdom. If the hon. Gentleman would like to receive more details about the examination I shall see that he gets them.

    "Next Steps" Agencies
    Mr. Dickens: To ask the Minister for the Civil Service what steps are taken to give executive agencies set up under the "next steps" initiative freedom in the management of the delivery of services to the public and their customers.
    Mr. Renton: A fundamental objective of "next steps" is to improve the quality of Government services provided to the public. Agencies are given the managerial freedoms that they need to achieve that.
    Mr. Dickens: Many people are concerned that the various Departments will not give enough freedom to the new agencies to manage their own affairs. Is the actual position different from what people think?
    Mr. Renton: That is a fair question. My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that there are already some good examples of greater freedoms in and better customer service by the existing agencies. He will also be pleased to know that in October we announced that we would ask the efficiency unit to undertake a study of the relationship between individual Departments and their agencies to make certain that we were moving towards giving sufficient freedom. I expect a report of that study to be published shortly.

    STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &C.
    Mr. Speaker: With the leave of the House, I will put together the four motions relating to statutory instruments.
    Ordered,
    That the draft Broadcasting (Independent Productions) Order 1991 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.
    That the draft Veterinary Surgeons Act 1966 (Schedule 3 Amendment) Order 1991 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.
    That the draft Motor Vehicles (Wearing of Seat Belts in Rear Seats by Adults) Regulations 1991 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.
    That the draft County Court Remedies Regulations 1991 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker.]

Adjournment (Spring)
Motion made, and Question proposed,
That this House, at its rising on Thursday 23 May, do adjourn until Monday 3 June.—[Mr. Nicholas Baker.]
3.33 pm
Mr. John Biffen: I hope that the House will be unashamed of the coming recess, and will not fall for any of the modish comments in some of our tabloid newspapers that the House is doing any less constructive work in the country than it does at Westminster.
As the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) will verify, I have used such opportunities before to raise the question of health services in the county of Shropshire. I did that in the context of the funding and impact of the district general hospital that has been constructed at Telford and its consequences for health care elsewhere in the county. I am returning to the subject because many cottage hospitals in Shropshire have lost their traditional role. That is true of the cottage hospitals in my constituency at Oswestry, Newport, Ellesmere and Market Drayton, and it applies more widely in other parts of the county.
The loss of a cottage hospital within the national health service structure in no sense inhibits local communities from wishing to see those premises being used for a caring role in connection with the work of the NHS and the Department of Social Security. Thus, throughout the county of Shropshire—obviously I speak specifically for my constituency—determined actions have been taken to provide the resources and dedication to enable the cottage hospitals to have a continuing and caring role.
The pattern will, of course, be different from what existed before the creation of the Telford district general hospital, but in some senses it increasingly reflects the consequences of the application of the Griffiths reforms in social services. The change has been a great challenge to the communities who have seen their hospitals alter their traditional roles. Those communities have sought to raise the necessary finances to give the hospitals a prolonged and vigorous life.
A constituent of mine, Mr. T. G. Whippey, of 33 Rowan road, Market Drayton, has circulated a letter to all hon. Members co-signed by Mr. K. Cooper from Newport and Mrs. J. Hodgson from Shifnal. Doubtless they will be interested in this debate.
Mr. Whippey was perhaps taking a line from my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), who has said, "We want our money back." My right hon. Friend made that assertion in a totally different context relating to our relationship with the European Community. Mr. Whippey, however, feels that the loss of the cottage hospitals has created a challenge, whereby the resources that they represent should be returned to the communities to which they hitherto belonged.
That point was made in the letter circularised to hon. Members which states:
"Many localities, especially the rural and isolated, have a very real public transport problem in addition to the humanitarian, and, with the frail elderly in mind, expect to retain these units to continue as prior to 1946"
Mr. Whippey is referring to the inception of the NHS under the National Health Service Act 1946.
Obviously, I do not expect my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to answer the specific point that I
22
shall raise in my short contribution, but I very much hope that he will forward it to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health. That will supplement the letter that I have already dispatched in that direction.
If one goes far wider than the county of Shropshire, there are many areas where hospital closure has inevitably become part of the recasting of the health service. Those affected want a clear statement on the ownership of those properties under the National Health Service Act 1946.
I suspect that, inevitably, that legislation gives a great deal of discretion as to how the resources realised from hospital closure will be used. In that case, I should like a statement of policy on guidance as to the use of those resources from the Department of Health, the district health authority and the area health authority.
The use of the resources realised by hospital closure runs at the very heart of the conduct of the health service and relates to wider considerations within the social services. It is happening within the context of change, where one is frequently seeking a partnership between the public and private sectors. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be seized of the point that, in the disposal of the assets of cottage hospitals, attention should be paid to enabling equitable help to be given to all the voluntary effort that takes place, to ensure that such hospitals remain in caring service, even if they are not within what was formerly the NHS structure.
It would be advantageous if the 1946 Act was interpreted so that the communities that have been stripped of their NHS hospitals can at least expect partnership finance when those hospitals begin a new and caring role. That is not a theoretical proposition; it is a matter of immediate reality in the county of Shropshire, where the changes subsequent to the establishment of the district general hospital in Telford means that a new role is now being sought—overwhelmingly by voluntary effort—for those buildings that performed the role of cottage hospitals.
I cannot believe that their emerging role, which is intended to be a bridge between social security and the national health service and a variety of other interests—and not least between public and private commitments—does not create the opportunity for guidance to be given to encourage the voluntary work now being undertaken in Shropshire. In that way, we should be able to ensure the maximum care and use of buildings that were once national health service cottage hospitals.
Several Hon. Members rose——
Mr. Speaker: May I take this opportunity to thank the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) for his brief speech. If others follow his admirable lead, all of them will be called.
3.39 pm
Mr. Alfred Morris: There are some who think that this short debate ought to have been timed to take place after the Monmouth by-election on Thursday when, we are told by unidentified Whitehall sources as reported in sections of the press, the Prime Minister will finally decide whether to take the plunge and call a June election. Nevertheless, we are asked by the Leader of the House, who is presumably one of the Ministers said to be counselling against a June election, to assume that the period 23 May to 3 June will be one of

23
parliamentary recess and not of electioneering. If the right hon. Gentleman will confide his thoughts to us today, they should be a most interesting feature of the speech with which he concludes this debate.
There are some important issues that I want very briefly to raise and on which I seek an assurance from the Leader of the House that there will at least be ministerial statements before 23 May. The first is that of the very serious effect of value added tax on charities and, in particular, the cost to the Paterson Institute of Cancer Research in south Manchester.
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the recent increase in VAT—which is in effect a poll tax surcharge—means that Britain's charities now have to pay an additional £33 million per annum. This brings their total irrecoverable VAT bill to nearly £250 million a year. Some charities are facing an irrecoverable VAT bill of over £1 million a year.
Most of that money will have been donated by caring individuals to help, not the Billy Bunters of the Treasury, but people who are much less fortunate than themselves. The Chancellor spoke in Monmouth last week about "the mugging of taxpayers." His policy on VAT can be described as the mugging of this country's good samaritans, and in no case is this more apposite than the milking by the Chancellor of funds donated to the Paterson Institute for Cancer Research.
The research done by the institute includes new drug development, the use of growth factors in cancer treatment, bone marrow transplantation, the development of a cancer vaccine and the study of heritability of cancer, as well as basic studies on cancer and its early diagnosis. Professor David Harnden, the distinguished director of this renowned and internationally respected institute, told me before the Budget that this research is funded largely by the Cancer Research Campaign. In order to ensure its continuance, it is now necessary to modernise the institute's building to meet the needs of modern technology and current legislation. This work can be carried out over a period of four years with minimal disruption to the institute's work. The estimated total cost in early March was £8·5 million, including some £1·2 million in VAT.
"The only sources of finance open to me,"
said Professor Harnden,
are charitable funds."
In a letter to the Chancellor on 4 March, Professor Harnden wrote:
"If you agree with me that the present law is unjust, will you introduce new legislation that will remove the liability for VAT from buildings which are built for a charitable purpose and funded with money which has been donated for that charitable purpose? This might just bring completion of my programme within the bounds of possibility."
Instead of removing the institute's liability to VAT for work which is of life-saving significance, the Chancellor in his Budget increased the burden from 15 to 17·5 per cent. The institute's bill from the Treasury now rises from £1·2 million to £1·4 million, and I am sure most hon. Members will regard that as totally unjust and disgraceful. I wrote to the Chancellor two months ago, in advance of his Budget, and still await a reply. From the Leader of the House, I now seek an assurance that there will at least be a statement from the Chancellor before the House goes into recess.
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The second issue I wish to raise is that of the hundreds of redundancies among Dan-Air engineering staff at Manchester airport. They are a skilled work force of very high standing and, unless action is taken quickly to save jobs, they will soon be scattered.
As the Leader of the House must be aware, unemployment in Greater Manchester is already unacceptably high. The total is increasing and, in direct consequence of the Government's policies, it is set to go on increasing. There, more than anywhere else, we just cannot afford the further loss of skills that will result from the policy now being pursued by the Danish company that recently purchased the engineering side of Dan-Air for the purpose, it is argued, of asset stripping. Not only highly skilled engineers, of long experience, but many apprentices are affected by the new owner's decision to disband the present work force at Manchester airport.
At a recent meeting in the House, my right hon. Friends the Members for Salford, East (Mr. Orme) and for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman), together with my hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Blackley (Mr. Eastham), for Manchester, Withington (Mr. Bradley), for Heywood and Middleton (Mr. Callaghan) and for Makerfield (Mr. McCartney) and I, among others, met a large delegation of the people now facing redundancy. They believe that Ministers have a role to play in helping to save their jobs and representations have been made on their behalf to the Secretaries of State for Employment and for Trade and Industry. We have also had contact with the Danish ambassador and now wish the two Secretaries of State to meet a delegation of concerned right hon. and hon. Members to discuss this still further very serious body blow to skilled employment in Manchester.
The delegation from the work force was concerned that not only employment issues, but also legal questions arise from what has been done by the Danish purchaser from Dan-Air and would very much appreciate all the help and guidance that Ministers can offer. Hence my concern, as the Member most directly involved, since Manchester airport is in my constituency, to secure an urgent ministerial response for them either in the House or in a meeting between the two Secretaries of State and the right hon. and hon. Members who wish to see them. I know that the Leader of the House will want to reply to me about this as constructively as he can.
My third issue, which I shall also raise briefly, is the Government's failure to ratify the UN convention about the rights of the child. The Leader of the House will know that there is strong and increasing pressure for ratification in the interests of Britain's reputation in the world and of needful children, not least sick and disabled children, in the United Kingdom and its dependent territories.
Right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have called for ratification without further delay. In doing so, they reflect opinion not only in this country, but among the peoples of Britain's dependencies for whose well-being this House and the Government have ultimate responsibility. If not a debate, there should at least be an early ministerial statement about the Government's intentions before the House goes into recess. That is surely a reasonable request.
The final issue that I want to raise is that of the Government's attitude to NHS patients who were infected with AIDS virus by contaminated blood transfusions, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden (Mr. Galbraith) has given informed

25
leadership over a long period. His concern, and that of right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House, is for the plight of road traffic victims and women who have been infected by blood transfusions during childbirth—among others—who now seek compensation for the grievous harm they suffered during NHS treatment.
Graham Ross, the solicitor who speaks for the lawyers of 14 afflicted patients in the north, has said:
"These are men, women and children who are dying because they were given infected blood. Time is not on their side."
About 170 transfusion patients are thought to be infected, and Graham Ross also says:
"The Government have compensated the haemophiliacs as an act of compassion. I cannot see why that well of compassion should suddenly run dry for transfusion patients whose tragedies are equally real."
His inability to see why patients who suffered the same injury cannot be compensated in the same way is shared not only on both sides of this House, but by people of all persuasions all over Britain. I most strongly urge the Leader of the House to promise a ministerial statement on this profoundly moving issue, about which there is now such mounting public concern, before the motion now before the House is approved.
At the same time, I hope that he will tell us the Government's response to the disclosure by The Sunday Times yesterday about patients, not least haemophiliacs, who have been infected with a new and potentially fatal virus, hepatitis C, by blood transfusions. The virus causes liver cancer and kills 700 people in Britain every year. One of those infected is my constituent Peter Mossman, who is a haemophiliac. He is justifiably angry now to have to bear this further burden and also about the Government's refusal to fund a new testing programme at a cost of £10 million. Again, it must surely be reasonable to request an update for the House on the Government's approach to this vitally important issue.
3.51 pm
Mr. William Powell: I thoroughly endorse the early sentences of my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen). Although certain elements of the media may imagine that, when the House is in recess, right hon. and hon. Members do nothing but go on holiday, nothing could be further from the truth. All hon. Members must strike a balance between our attendance in the House and our presence among our constituents. Our constituents expect us to be present in our constituencies, an not merely bob up and down on television screens for all to see. I, like the overwhelming majority of right hon. and hon. Members, will go through an intensive period of constituency engagements and activities. It is only right and proper that we should have recesses to give us a greater opportunity to do constituency work than is possible when our attendance in London is so demanding.
I very much appreciate the remarks of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) about VAT and charities. All hon. Members are associated with certain charities. The right hon. Gentleman's remarks, although directed at specific charities, can be taken in the general context that any rise in VAT would affect charities. I point out to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House that charities have undoubtedly been adversely affected by the rise in VAT. I hope that the
26
Government may yet find some solution to the awful fiscal burden that VAT places on them. I know that my right hon. Friend has sympathy with certain charities.
However, in the House I have often referred to village halls, and will continue to do so. The Finance Bill 1989—when my right hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Mr. Lilley), the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, was responsible for such matters—did a great deal to alleviate the burden of VAT on village halls. Village halls do much important voluntary work, not only in rural areas such as those which my right hon. Friend and I represent but in urban areas. In 1989, I was surprised and delighted to receive robust support from Opposition Members who represented entirely urban constituencies but who nevertheless had active village halls in their constituencies seeking to raise money for improvements.
As a Member of Parliament from the county of Norfolk, my right hon. Friend will be only too well aware of the enormous sums of money raised to keep historic churches in a proper and proud state of repair. The money has to be raised from somewhere, and VAT must be paid on it. That adds to the burden. I refer my right hon. Friend to the speech made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Lawson) in the Budget debate. Many of his comments were controversial, but he said that the gap between zero and 17·5 per cent. was perhaps too wide. Sooner or later, the Government will have to come to terms with the fact that the gap between goods and services which are zero-rated and those subject to the single rate of 17·5 per cent. may impose too great a strain on the system. Those are arguments for another day.
As far as I am aware, the main matter about which I wish to speak has not been raised in the House on any occasion. It is exhibitions and exhibition sites in Britain. When we learned history at school, we all learned about the great medieval trade fairs. By and large, such fairs have died out in Britain, although, of course, the small street markets are derived from them. We also have the great national exhibition centres at Earls Court and Olympia in the capital city and the national exhibition centre in Birmingham. But when that provision is contrasted with that in almost all sizeable cities in the rest of continental Europe, one realises that this activity of commerce and trade is paid far too little attention in Britain.
Earls Court and Olympia are aging sites, which will undoubtedly require refurbishment, and that will probably be exceedingly expensive. But we have a few modest exhibition sites in Britain of the type taken for granted in towns and cities of 100,000 people or more in France, Germany and Italy. The trade fairs in those towns and cities attract international trade to the local area and promote the local products. They are almost continuously in session. There is a striking contrast between the number of trade fairs in the cities of Lombardy, Germany or southern France and that in Britain.
We all know about the Ideal Home exhibition, the boat show and the motor show, but there are many opportunities for much smaller trade fairs. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) talked about Manchester airport. The magnet which is most likely to attract trade fairs to Britain is active regional airports. They bring in trade and commerce. There is no doubt that close to airports there are possibilities—if only they can be opened up—to encourage

27
trade and commerce through constantly holding exhibitions one after another in the area. Clearly, Manchester is an ideal position in the north-west for holding fairs to encourage such commerce.
There is no doubt that the opening of the new terminal at Stansted opens up opportunities for the east end of London, Essex and East Anglia. It will bring international business, business men and customers into the area via the airport to attend exhibitions held in the area.
A new national exhibition site should be considered for the royal docks area of docklands and the east end of London. The infrastructure is currently being put in place in the area, where there is remarkably little other development. From Stansted airport, it takes little over 25 minutes on an excellent road system to reach the area. In order to have that sort of activity, it is necessary to have not merely transport infrastructure, but hotels, restaurants and all the other facilities which will make the place attractive to international commerce for its trade exhibitions. I stress that I am talking not about a one-off affair which takes place once a year or every other year, but about sites which can be in continuous use, as happens in continental Europe.
There is no reason why nearly every town and city of 100,000-plus people should not have an exhibition site, which can be used for regional, national and international promotions, surrounded by hotel developments and the rest which are needed to make it attractive. In my area, for example, there is no reason why Northampton, Peterborough and Cambridge should not have exhibition centres which can hold such functions. The truth is that they do not. Indeed, they come nowhere near doing so. Yet a city of about 120,000 people on the continent would take such a facility almost for granted.
Why is it that we do not have such facilities? First, for a long period we have allowed our old mediaeval trade fairs to be run down. That has not happened in continental Europe. Secondly, their development falls between the stools of Government, local government and the private sector, which means that they are never properly co-ordinated and allowed to develop. It would simply not be possible to establish any sort of exhibition centre without the closest possible co-operation between the public and private sectors, not merely over planning, but over the whole range of activities. Obviously, I must be careful' about how deeply I go into the role of central Government through the Department of the Environment, but clearly national policy should have a pump-priming role.
If we were to establish a national exhibition centre in docklands, which would essentially take over from Earl's Court and Olympia—two aging sites which are unsuitably situated in west London—and rival in terms of size and prestige similar centres in Frankfurt and elsewhere, it would cost at least £300 million. That is a sizeable sum, and it would be wrong to expect it to be raised in any way other than through a co-operative pump-priming venture, involving the public and private sectors and, possibly, the European Community. For a more modest exhibition centre in the towns of Northampton, Peterborough and Cambridge, which I have already mentioned—there are many other examples that one could identify, such as bigger cities, including Bristol, Southampton and Leeds, as
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well as towns of 150,000 people—the investment would be more modest, but substantial sums would have to be raised.
Some in the private sector are capable of running exhibitions successfully and well, but the facilities simply do not exist in sufficient numbers or across a wide enough area. One of the best ways of promoting regional policy would be to enable such facilities to develop in areas which desperately need investment, especially investment in infrastructure such as I am talking about. That is so important.
There is only one other matter which I wish to mention this afternoon. We are in the early stages of having to develop a national and regional strategy for exhibitions, but it must be done. I am aware of that only because I was privileged enough to enjoy an Industry and Parliament Trust fellowship in the past year or two. For the first time, I had to think about such matters, and I found that there were big gaps.
Although all hon. Members have had a background in industry or professions such as teaching, we all have a narrow background—it could not be otherwise. I came to the House having spent 15 years at the criminal bar among crime and criminals. I always say that some of my best friends are bank robbers—[Interruption.] Even the careers of Opposition Members have a narrow base, but we must grow beyond those roots.
The Industry and Parliament Trust enables hon. Members who wish to enjoy its facilities, opportunities and privileges to learn in depth about matters that they have not previously considered. I am grateful for the opportunity that I had. I hope that serious consideration will be given to the recent remarks made by the right hon. and noble Lord Prior, chairman of the trust, about how industry must start to make facilities and arrangements available for those who work for it to spend at least some of their careers in public life. He also spoke of the need for adjustments in pension arrangements, and those important points deserve serious consideration.
Although it is right that we should adjourn, it is also right that we should not do so until we have had the opportunity to raise matters such as those mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Minister and Opposition Members. Once they have been aired in the House, I hope that we shall go off for our Whitsun recess and see our constituents with enthusiasm, and that we shall return renewed by our contact with the real world rather than merely with the gossip of the hothouse that is the Palace of Westminster.
4.7 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner: The Leader of the House will be aware that, on several successive Thursdays, Opposition Members have asked for debates on unemployment. He has continually refused, and I should like to raise the matter before we go into recess. We should have had a major debate on unemployment to enable my hon. Friends to discuss the problems in their areas. We must have one now because, if it is true that we shall have thirteen and a half weeks' recess in July, August, September and part of October, the opportunity for many of us to raise such issues will be reduced. I assume that the reports in the tabloid press are not true and that we shall have more opportunity to discuss the dole queues, not only in relation to the ex-Prime Minister, the right hon.

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Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), who is shedding tears at having lost one job but who is not on the dole, but in relation to those of our constituents who have lost their jobs.
One thing is certain—unemployment is now a major issue throughout the country. Although some people say that it is now hitting the south and some other regions, it is also hitting the north, Scotland, Wales and parts of the east midlands. In the old coalfield areas, pits and other parts of manufacturing industry are still being closed, despite increased productivity. Unemployment now stretches across the whole country and 69,000 people are unemployed in the south. The service industry has been hit and will continue to be hit until the election and beyond. In districts that we represent in the north and the midlands, many other workers are being thrown on the scrap heap.
Some people talk about unemployment as though the figure were down to 6, 7 or 8 per cent., but we all know that the average figure is about 12 per cent. or more because women who have been in work and have not registered for unemployment benefit should be added. In addition, some miners and others on special schemes are not included in the figure and many young people leave school and go straight on to the Government's slave labour schemes. In total, there are more than 3 million people unemployed at present.
On top of those problems, about three weeks ago I received a letter from constituents in little villages called Pilsley and Stonebroom, where two factories are to close some time in July, with the loss of 180 jobs. I am not talking about a pit or part of the steel or textile industries, which have been hammered in the east midlands and elsewhere throughout Britain—one of those factories is more than 100 years old. The factories have been taken over by a firm called Plaxton's, one of the big three coach manufacturing firms in Britain—the other two are Alexander and Volvo-Leyland.
Plaxton's has taken over the little firms that were manufacturing small buses, mainly for the home market, although they also exported. The Government introduced deregulation and privatised the buses. As a result, many firms are not buying buses and there are now 30-year-old buses trying to move round Britain's roads. Someone in the industry told me that the number plates of some of the buses in London are worth more than the buses. That shows the state of the economy.
Plaxton's took over Reeve Burgess in my constituency and, when the employees assembled in the factory hall the other Thursday, thinking that they were to be praised for massive productivity gains, the gaffer—Matthews of Plaxton's—came along and said, "I am not here to talk about productivity, but to say that the Government's policy of giving aid to buses means that buses are not being bought, so I have got to sack you all."
That was only half the story. The other half is that Plaxton's was also playing fast and loose with the workers at Pilsley and Stonebroom. The owner had another factory at Scarborough, which was not bringing in many orders for its 600 workers. Pilsley and Stonebroom factories were receiving a lot of orders, so the owner decided to "rationalise"—the clever word used nowadays. He thought that he would keep production going at Scarborough by sacrificing the two factories in Derbyshire, with the result that 180 workers will be added to the pile of human misery known as the Tory dole queue.
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The Government should intervene in this case, which is nothing short of asset stripping. Why is it that the Government intervene in all sorts of matters when it suits them, but do not do so when 180 workers are to be thrown on the scrap heap, many of whom have worked at the two factories for 30, 40 and, in some cases, 50 years? The Minister has just received a request from the hon. Member for Corby (Mr. Powell) to intervene in trade fairs. Why do not the Government do anything about the factories? The Minister says that it is not Government business, but if the coalfield district in which the factories are situated had received the grants of other districts, there is just the possibility that those factories could have survived.
However, the Conservatives do not care about unemployment and never have cared. It is part of their incomes policy to have people queuing up for every job. I am told that, recently, a job vacancy occurred in Huntingdon, the Prime Minister's constituency. Somebody said, "There's a job!" It was a position as a caretaker and people were queuing up for it. That is what unemployment means even in a supposedly plush constituency.
The Government have allowed Rolls-Royce to sack several thousand workers. Their attitude is that they have the whip hand and will give contracts on the understanding that there will be no wage increases, despite inflation of 7, 8 or 9 per cent. Unemployment is a deliberate part of the Government's policy. It is intended to ensure that wage increases are minimised. Thus, 180 people in these two small factories have been thrown out of work, with no possibility of redress.
My hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) has also been approached by these people, as some of them live in his constituency. He, too, received a petition that was presented to me. Signed by nearly everybody in the villages, it calls on the Government to twist the arm of this fellow, Matthews, the chairman of Plaxton's, in an effort to persuade him to get on with the job of saving the factories so that people will not be thrown out of work.
Mr. Harry Barnes: Plaxton's is a very profitable group. The international edition of the stock exchange year book gives details of its standing. The firm has even taken out a full-page advertisement in that prestigious journal with a view to encouraging people to invest in the area. That confirms what my hon. Friend said—that it is involved in asset-stripping.
Mr. Skinner: There is no doubt about that. Most of the employees have said that the order books were full. Indeed, they expected to be congratulated on having made such a great effort. On going along to the factory, however, they were told that they were about to be sacked, but that the Scarborough jobs would be saved. Those jobs may be safe for a while, but when orders for buses disappear, they, too, will go. Then perhaps Alexander's—one of the other bus manufacturing firms—will go, followed by Volvo-Leyland. It is all part of the Government's policy, but we hope that it will not last much longer. It will certainly cease when the Prime Minister calls a general election.
The Government should do something about such factory closures. What could they do? First, they could encourage firms to start to buy buses. Secondly, some of the buses that are already on the road should be inspected. Many of them are road-unworthy. [HON. MEMBERS:

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"Unroadworthy."] Yes, unroadworthy. Where I come from, some people, if they got mixed up with a big word, used to say, "Chesterfield". There should be proper inspections to ensure that the buses on the streets of every town and city are fit for people to ride in.
It is time to reverse the grants policy so that factories in these areas, including some old coalfield areas, are enabled to carry on.
A short time ago, I called on the Leader of the House to tell the Department of Trade and Industry that, if it really means business, it should meet the workers of these two factories with a view to their setting up a co-operative. What would be wrong with that? The order books are full. If the workers want to set up a co-operative, why should not the Government help them? Why does not the DTI meet people from Reeve Burgess with a view to helping them to take over some of the units at Stonebroom or elsewhere in the constituency? Those people believe that they could do the job better than Plaxton's.
Unemployment is a big issue. Every Opposition Member knows of factory closures and redundancies that are occurring at present. This is not confined to the south. Yes, the south is being hit. The result of the latest by-election showed that thousands of people who thought that they would not be the victims of unemployment now realise what the Tory Government are up to.
We say that it is time the Government changed their policies or got out, so that someone can come to power who will save the jobs of the thousands who have been thrown on the scrap heap, or who may be thrown on it, and so that we can start rebuilding the manufacturing base of Britain once again with a Labour Government.
4.19 pm
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: I wish to raise three matters which I believe should be discussed before the House adjourns for the spring recess.
The first concerns my constituent Mr. Andrew Croall, who has been suspended from his position as deputy director of Nottinghamshire county social services department. Having held his position for some time, Mr. Croall was suspended following the programme "After Dark", which went out for three hours after midnight on 9 March. It is alleged that his suspension is not due only to that programme, but it certainly relates in part to it.
During the programme, my constituent made a number of comments rooted in his Christian belief, about abortion and child abuse. I do not agree with either of his comments, but I defend absolutely his right to hold and mention those views. His Christianity cannot be divorced from his professional life: nor should it be. There is widespread concern about the case not only in Nottinghamshire but nationally. It has been covered in a number of national newspapers. The first issue raised by the case is that of freedom of speech for my constituent. The second concerns whether there is a conflict between his beliefs as a Christian and his role as deputy director of social services. Doubtless both matters will be discussed by the county council in its internal inquiry, but I have three points to make about that.
First, the county council must complete its inquiry in the usual way. I accept, of course, that it is not for me as the local Member of Parliament to second-guess what will
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happen in the inquiry, but the council must complete its inquiry and must be allowed to do so. Secondly, the inquiry must be completed as quickly as possible, not least because this is an extremely expensive post—deputy chief of the social services department. I am concerned that someone in such a senior position should be suspended on full pay while so many challenges and important tasks face him in his department.
Thirdly, because of the intense local interest in this matter and because of the broader issues that it raises, I make it clear that if, at the end of the inquiry, I do not feel that my constituent has received his rights, and if I believe that there has been a breach of natural justice, I shall seek to persuade you, Mr. Speaker, to allow me to raise the matter on the Adjournment.
Before the House adjourns, we should also discuss the Audit Commission, whose role I had the good fortune to discuss in an Adjournment debate last month. In that debate I mentioned a number of important areas into which its role could usefully be extended. I hope that the Leader of the House will consider the possibility of a full day's debate on the Audit Commission.
The role of the commission and what it has been doing have never generated greater public interest than now. A tremendous amount of that interest stems from the work that the commission does. A recent article appeared in Readers Digest, so I have no doubt that millions of people with bad teeth will be much better informed now about the commission's role. The Audit Commission seeks to promote value for money and quality of service. It also promotes economy, efficiency and effectiveness, primarily in local government and, as from last year, in the National Health Service. But its role is not mainly that of a cost-cutter or cost-saver. It sometimes recommends far greater investment in the services that it examines. One need think only of the maintenance backlog in council housing and hospitals, dealt with by the commission, to remember its specific recommendation of greater investment.
A similar conclusion was drawn from the Audit Commission's work on the police fingerprinting service, so there is no suggestion that it is merely an aim of central Government to try to cut local government spending. The commission seeks to ensure that money is spent in the best interests of the people who are paying for it—local people who pay through local and central Government taxation.
Secondly, the Audit Commission is clearly independent. Eight studies have considered the effect of ministerial directives and guidance on local government. Such work is as painful for central Government as the work that is directed towards local government can be for those who run local services. Included in those eight studies were community care, capital control, homelessness and food safety legislation. The work carried out by the Audit Commission on those wide-ranging subjects is extremely important and needs wider understanding and coverage in the House for the benefit of the broad mass of the population and for the taxpayers who pay for the services that the Audit Commission examines.
"Quality exchange" has been developed by the Audit Commission to consider performance measuring. I hope that the Audit Commission will extend quality exchange and develop quality measures in the national health service as an extension of the role given to it last year in the National Health Service and Community Care Act 1990. There needs to be greater emphasis on management

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processes and on the need to adapt work to local circumstances. I am sure that the commission could do that.
Potential savings already identified by the commission are approximately £4·2 billion, but that is perhaps not the most important aspect. Much more important are the value improvements that it identifies and opportunities to save £1,300 million each year have already been identified. The measure of the success of that work is that approximately £662 million of the value improvements have been achieved based on the actions taken by local authorities and based on the local auditor's advice. That means that value-for-money work in local authorities has achieved savings of about 40 times the cost of the work undertaken by the commission. That is a good payback for the taxpayer and the charge payer on the work carried out by the commission.
Two significant independent academic studies of the work undertaken by the commission have been published. One was funded by the Joseph Rowntree Memorial Trust and was called "Inspecting the Inspectorates". The main conclusion of the report was that from all the case studies carried out by the trust, the Audit Commission emerged as the only one of the three inspectorates involved whose reports made an impact on the corporate decision-making process of local authorities. That is an extremely significant finding.
There are three points with which I shall end my consideration of the commission. There is a range of activities in which the expertise of the Audit Commission will be extremely helpful in achieving better value for money, such as the courts. There is plenty of evidence that the money spent on the courts is not best spent. There is an accounting black hole in the way in which we judge how money is spent on the courts which could be dealt with by the skills of the Audit Commission.
Secondly, opted-out schools may have valuable lessons to teach schools that have not yet decided to opt out. The commission's skills could also be valuably deployed in connection with housing associations. It is the Government's declared objective—which I strongly support—to increase the role of housing associations in the provision of public housing and to diminish the role of councils. It is important to involve the commission's skills in housing associations so that they may advertise widely the best practice within housing associations to other providers of public body housing while trying to eliminate some of the worst practices.
Another area is the Metropolitan police. The Audit Commission looks at all the other police forces in the country, but not at the Met. I am sure that I am not alone in the House in suspecting that the skills of the Audit Commission, which are deployed so successfully in the provincial police forces, could usefully be deployed in the Met, too. I am sure that no one believes that the Met is more efficient than the forces outside London. It would be valuable progress if the Audit Commission examined the Met as well.
Last weekend, the Prime Minister made an excellent speech in Perth in which he developed his theme for a citizens' charter empowering individuals to get the best out of public services. There is no doubt that the Audit Commission could be a most valuable executive arm for the individual citizen in seeking the best out of local services. The Audit Commission has the grasp, the understanding and the information locally, and its role in
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developing the concept of the citizen's charter is extremely important. I very much hope that the Government will consider in an open way how the skills of the Audit Commission can be used in that respect.
I am deeply disappointed by the Labour party's plans to set up a quality commission which would emasculate the Audit Commission. Such a move would directly transfer power away from the consumer and the user of the services back to the providers. It would have a bad effect on the work of the Audit Commission and would mean that it could never again be as tough with those who do not provide good value for money as it has been. More importantly, the proposal shows that the Labour party has learnt nothing from the past 12 years or from the past eight years' work of the Audit Commission, which has done so much to promote value for money in local services. I very much hope that the Labour party will reconsider its stance on the future of the Audit Commission.
Dr. Norman A. Godman rose——
Mr. Mitchell: I give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Dr. Godman: No.
Mr. Mitchell: I thought that the hon. Gentleman sought to intervene.
Dr. Godman: No.
Mr. Mitchell: I now realise that it was his keenness to follow me.
I want to make a final point——
Mr. Andy Stewart: The final point?
Mr. Mitchell: I want to make the final point in this section of my speech about the £20 billion Arthur Daley promise made by the Leader of the Opposition last week. It must be a matter of intense irritation and annoyance to the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith), the shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, that whenever he has tried to get across the point that the Labour party will not allow resources to be put into public spending until the additional resources earned permit, the Leader of the Opposition immediately announces that he is pre-empting all the spending of any extra money available.
The truth is that, when the Leader of the Opposition spoke last week, he pre-empted all of any growth that might be achieved during the term of office of a next Labour Government over five years. That seems to be the economics of Arthur Daley. I thought that it was common practice among all parties that one should not promise to spend money until one has it, but that point does not appear to register with the Leader of the Opposition.
The Leader of the Opposition also showed an unbalanced approach to public spending.
Mr. Skinner: The Tory Government are borrowing again.
Mr. Mitchell: Instead of deciding either to repay some of the borrowing, as suggested by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), or that the tax take should be diminished for the least well-off, the Leader of the Opposition appears to have pre-empted all that and to

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have said that the whole £20 billion, a figure no doubt plucked from the air, should be put into additional spending on services. I am amazed by that.
It appears that no lesson has been drawn from the fact that higher spending and higher taxation of the well-off diminish the income of the Exchequer. That is the lesson of the past five years and the lesson from the United States, yet the Labour party persists in believing against all the odds that additionally taxing and soaking the rich will lead to an increase in revenue for the Exchequer. Clearly, that is not true.
If one accepts that the Labour party has learnt some lessons from the early 1980s about the loony left and about the difficulties that it has presented in terms of elections, one is still left with the fact that Labour appears to have learnt little about taxation since the 1960s and the early 1970s.
In 1964, Harold Wilson, now Lord Wilson, said:
"Over the period of a Parliament I believe we can carry out our spending programme without any general increase in taxation".
What actually happened was that, between 1964 and 1970, the tax burden on the British people increased by £3,000 million—the equivalent of £3 10s a week for every family, worth £50 a week in current values.
In 1966, Lord Callaghan said:
"I do not foresee the need for severe increases in taxation".
What happened between 1974 and 1979? The basic rate of tax rose by 5p, from 30p to 35p. Personal allowances were cut in real terms, bringing 2·25 million more of the low paid into the tax net. The top rate of tax went up to 83 per cent. The effective top marginal rate of tax on unearned income rose to 98 per cent.
The Labour party is again mouthing the promises of the 1960s and 1970s, using similar wording. Such suggestions repeated in the early 1990s will not fool the British people. Indeed, I am amazed that the Labour party should even consider making the sort of promises that were outlined in the speech of the Leader of the Opposition.
At the last general election, the Leader of the Opposition said that he would increase spending on the national health service by 3 per cent. above the rate of inflation. That was considered to be a remarkable statistic. Over the past four years, the Government have increased it by no less than 3·35 per cent. We have achieved far more than the Labour party promised at the last election.
I do not believe that the fraud that the Labour party is seeking to perpetrate on the British people will be successful. The public will not fall for it. I hope that, before the House adjourns, we shall find time for a full-scale debate on the Labour party's economic promises—especially those made by the Leader of the Opposition in his speech last week—so that the public will be more enlightened about their effects.
4.36 pm
Mr. Ray Powell: I can inform the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) that, in my constituency in 1979, we had an unemployment rate of 3·7 per cent. among an electorate of 84,000. After 12 years of Tory government, with an electorate of 54,000 as a result of parliamentary boundary changes, we have an
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unemployment rate of 9–7 per cent. I could go on at length about the facilities and amenities of which my constituents have been deprived over those 12 years.
We shall be adjourning for 10 days. An early-day motion, signed by 125 of my hon. Friends, asks the Leader of the House to make time available for us to discuss the financial and administrative decisions of the mid-Glamorgan training and enterprise councils. I have attended the House on numerous Thursday afternoons and have asked the Leader of the House whether he is prepared to make time available for that to be discussed. On each occasion, he has said that Parliament is too busy, that the Government's programme is too full for him to make time for debates on early-day motions.
Some people suggest that early-day motions are not worth the paper they are written on. There used to be an agreement that, if an early-day motion had more than 100 signatures, the matter could and should be considered. It would be a good idea if we shortened the spring Adjournment, or if, between now and 23 May, the Leader of the House found time for a debate on this issue. I do not believe that the Government should have time off for good behaviour or good attendance. They could not even field 100 Members to ensure that the Cardiff Bay Barrage Bill—which they supported—was passed. The would not qualify for 10 days off for hard work. Only Opposition Members would qualify for that.
The only major legislation between now and when the Government are prepared to stick out their necks and call an election is the Finance Bill. Why can they not find time to debate some of the issues that I have raised? Opposition Members have raised other issues and will probably raise them again in the debate. I am sure that we would all like a full debate on some of the statements by Cabinet Ministers in Monmouth and elsewhere. For example, the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) who is the chairman of the Tory party, claims, as did the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell), that Mr. and Mrs. Britain and their two children are better fed and far better off than they were 12 years ago. The right hon. Gentleman claimed that taxes were down, that the national health service was vastly improved, that education was much better and that family incomes were up by a third.
I visited St. Paul's cathedral the other day and saw an inscription about its architect Christopher Wren which reads, "If you seek his memorial, look around you." That is good advice. We should look around us to see whether education and health provision are better, whether taxes are down and whether family incomes are up by a third.
In debates such as this, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) usually speaks about unemployment. Unemployment is escalating in Ogmore, as it is throughout the country, but we do not seem to have time to debate it. When the Secretary of State for Employment or the Secretary of State for Wales give the statistics about unemployment, how many of us recall visits by the unemployed to our surgeries and think about the desperate situation of people who become redundant? More often than not, both husband and wife become redundant. They have mortgages and hire purchase commitments which were taken on because of the Government's repeated belief that there is either no recession or that, if there is, it is bottoming out and that everything in the garden will look lovely. In Wales, unemployment has never looked lovely, and it has got appreciably worse in the last 12 years. The Government seem content to let it escalate further.

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The week before last, Rolls-Royce announced that 5,000 people were to be laid off. It appears that there will soon be redundancies at the Ford engine works in Bridgend in my constituency. Last week in Ogmore, a major factory attached to the Crystal Tyler group announced more than 1,000 redundancies.
Our schools have crumbling walls and outside toilets and pupils are begging and borrowing books, or at least begging their parents to pay for them. Roofs leak and ceilings are falling down. School meals are deplorable compared to what they were 12 years ago, and teachers who have spent most of their lives in the profession are deciding to leave it. Some pupils are not being taught at all. What sort of future will there be for the nation if we allow that to continue?
At one time, homeless people were found only in London or in the major cities such as Manchester and Liverpool. Now they are to be found in places such as Bridgend. Some Tory Members smile at my mention of the homeless. They should join me at midnight for a visit to cardboard city under the bridge at Victoria. Such conditions are becoming commonplace throughout the country. Tory Members could ask the people in cardboard city whether they could get a mortgage or a loan to enable them to be housed.
Then we could look at roads and traffic jams and at the thousands of car owners who pay licences to have decent roads but are now travelling by rail and tube, not only from parts of Wales but from the east coast. We recently travelled by train to Eastbourne for a by-election and noted the danger, dirt and unreliability of the system.
Over the past few weeks, I have asked taxi drivers about the current state of business. They told me that there are no tourists in London even though it is the spring season. The major hotels are empty. American and other tourists are not coming, not only because of the cost of hotels but because of rubbish in the streets, parks and playing fields. Street lamps are rarely lit, police are not always available and crime is escalating. Such a city will not attract tourists from America or any other country.
Twelve years ago, the cost of water was included in the rates, and few people realised that they were paying for water or sewerage facilities. Now they understand the meaning of the privatisation of water, because most of them are struggling to pay rising bills. Private organisations and plcs have been established to provide gas and electricity, solely to ensure profit for Tory Members and their friends. We could also look at the profits made by those who invest in the City and at the lot of people who have been evicted from bed-and-breakfast hostels.
Look at the queues for national health service treatment. Perhaps some of us should feel the pain of those waiting for operations, sometimes for years. If one has the cash and can pay £7,500, one can save the life of one's child if it needs a heart operation, provided one goes to an opt-out hospital.
That is what has happened in the past 12 years. Conservative Members talk about what has happened in their constituencies, but they should visit some parts of Wales that have always suffered a depression since the 1920s and the days of the national strike.
I say to the House and the country that we cannot afford to allow the health service to collapse. It was created
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to ensure that people received medical attention when they needed it. We did not agree to establish a medical service from which people would gain financially.
I am sure that the Government will call an election after Thursday, when I am confident that a Labour candidate will be elected at Monmouth. He will come to the House to prove to the Government that it is time for them to go. It is time for them to call an election, and I hope that it will be sooner rather than later, so that all the issues that I have raised can be put to the electorate.
At that election, 12 years of Tory misrule will be given the heave-ho by the electorate. My right hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) will be in No. 10 and we shall have a Labour Government who will share with and care for the community.
4.51 pm
Sir Robert McCrindle: I hope that the hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) will forgive me if I find it a little difficult to endorse his final remarks. However, I am sure that he will welcome the fact that I intend to follow him and his hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) by referring to unemployment.
I hope that my tone will prove to be a little less hectoring than that of the hon. Member for Bolsover. The focus of my speech will be more specific than that of either Opposition Member, as I wish to discuss white collar unemployment. That phenomenon, if that is the correct word, has emerged during the current recession to a far greater extent than it did during the previous economic downturn of the 1980s.
I make no apology for raising this subject. My constituency is situated about 25 miles from the City of London and we have virtually no industry. However, the administrative and clerical headquarters of the Ford motor company is situated in my constituency. Unfortunately, it recently announced that many hundreds of jobs are likely to go in the next few years as a result of computerisation.
About 70 per cent. of my working constituents commute every morning to the City of London. They are predominantly employed in the service industries. In the I 980s the service sector over-expanded, but there can be no doubt that it is now facing an economic downturn.
The 1980s were characterised as the decade of the yuppie, excess and the unacceptable face of the City. However that may be, and apart from the opportunities that were available to the yuppies in the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of my constituents were then able to obtain employment in the City in a variety of menial jobs. Those opportunities have now been replaced by difficulties, especially for those leaving school, who look to the City of London, as my constituents have done for many years, for employment.
Dr. Godman: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his characteristic courtesy in giving way. Presumably when his commuting constituents are made unemployed they register at the local unemployment offices. How great has been the increase in unemployment in his constituency? In my constituency, unemployment is now approaching 13 per cent., which is dismally high.
Sir Robert McCrindle: I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that it is not has high as that, not least because

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one of the effects of the downturn in the City of London—largely brought about by increasing costs in the City—has been a certain decentralisation.
On a net basis, my young constituents are not presented with as many employment opportunities in the service industries as in the past, but some such opportunities are being recreated in my constituency. It is important to draw attention to the net effect of the economic downturn in the City, but I suspect that it is not as extreme as that in the constituency of the hon. Member for Greenock and Port Glasgow (Dr. Godman). I suspect that most of that unemployment stems from industry rather than commerce.
About 40 per cent. of the current increase in unemployment has occurred in the service sector-dominated south-east. In 1990 about half of company liquidations also occurred in that region. It is important to stress, however, that many of those liquidations and a good deal of the unemployment stem from industry, including, for example, manufacturing and construction. However, whereas the number of service-sector company liquidations during the 1980s recession was small, the same cannot be said now.
The service sector has been hit harder than the manufacturing sector and hit twice. It has been hit by the general economic downturn, a fact which we must now concede, and by a deep structural downturn. As a result of the big bang on the stock exchange a few years ago, we are arguably a good deal more efficient, but it is easy to overlook the fact that machines have tended to replace people. I appreciate that that has been happening in industry and commerce for a long time, but the impact of the downturn in employment in the City has been considerable.
It is also important to take into account the emerging challenge from Europe. I suspect that most hon. Members welcome that challenge, but, whereas the City was once pre-eminent in banking, insurance and investment services, it is now facing great competition from the European centres of Paris, Milan and Frankfurt. The natural economic downturn resulting from the recession has combined with a structural downturn. It is difficult to know how to address that problem.
I believe that the overall demand for some services will decline in the next few years. There is no doubt that that decline has already occurred in house building. I accept that that, in itself, is not a service industry, but such construction is reflected in the demand for mortgages. Many of my constituents are employed in banks and building societies. We all hope that, as a result of the Government's present economic policies, the demand for housing will grow in the near future to relieve the problems now experienced.
There has also been a substantial downturn in recent months in the tourist industry. Once again, it is to be hoped that, as the standard of living of the British people returns and as the international recession begins to fade, people will again begin to enjoy tourism, with more of them coming from abroad to enjoy tourism in this country. There is one way in which the Government could be of considerable assistance to the service industries.
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Recently they have advanced, through the Secretary of State for Employment, a relatively small sum of money to encourage the tourist industry.
I am most grateful for what they have done, but I believe that there should be a major marketing campaign to try to revive the tourist industry, which is so important to this country in terms of invisible exports and the balance of payments. I hope that a far more substantial sum of money will be made available, provided—this will, I think, be echoed by my right hon. Friend—that the tourist industries are prepared to match, I hope pound for pound, all the money that the Government make available.
Britain's recession and our entry into the exchange rate mechanism have led to a sustained period of high interest rates to control inflation. That must be right. I have no quarrel with the policy that the Government have followed. In turn, that has led to a prolonged squeeze on domestic demand and that, in turn, has affected a number of service industries. When the general standard of living is not rising, as it has throughout most of the period during which the Government have been in office, people tend to put off the purchase of insurance and other forms of investment. Once again, it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the Government's succeeding in beating back inflation and restoring a rising standard of living—the single most important contribution that the Government can make to the restoration of the prosperity of the service industries.
The hon. Members for Bolsover and for Ogmore concentrated, understandably, on the manufacturing industries, but growth in the manufacturing industries will overtake that of the service industries towards the end of this year. Some people say that it will stay that way until at least the mid-1990s. That is welcome news for the manufacturing industries, but I have always felt that a balance between manufacturing industries and service industries is the way for a truly effective economy to proceed. Therefore, I hope that I may be permitted to say that it would be unfortunate if we did not manage to sustain the rate of growth that we achieved during the 1980s in the service industries.
I accept that, if service sector companies are to survive, they will have to adjust. The pattern of tourism is changing. The demands in terms of investment, banking, savings and insurance are changing. I do not wish to give the impression that there is a magical way in which the Government can assist, but my reason for raising this important subject is that it has been all too easy to overlook the fact that there is white collar unemployment in this country. That is because it is a relatively new phenomenon. It is very easy, therefore, for the Government's efforts to be directed towards improving the position of manufacturing industries and for them to overlook the fact that they also need to turn their attention to the service industries.
There is concern about takeovers and mergers. I concede straight away that some people in the City benefit greatly if they are employed by a European company that wishes to make a particular takeover, but there is considerable concern among others who are employed in companies that are likely to be the subject of takeovers. That trend is likely to increase rather than decrease in the services sector as we approach 1992. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry would be well advised, therefore, to look again at the policy on mergers, monopolies, takeover bids and the like.

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I am not alone in believing that in present circumstances it seems to be extremely easy for a German, French or Italian company to make a successful takeover bid for a British company, whereas it remains extremely difficult for a British company to do the same in reverse. If that is even remotely so, we are a long way from the level playing field that I have always felt is the sine qua non of a successful 1992.
I have deliberately chosen to address the House on one subject that is of considerable concern to me and to the 70,000 people whom I represent. I note with approval the Government's current advertising campaign relating to unemployment. I have no quarrel with that campaign, but, try as I may, I can find little in their advertising approach that is of great interest to those of my constituents who, in the past, would have had no difficulty in finding clerical or administrative employment in the City of London.
The Government's advertising campaign seems to me to be focused substantially on unemployed people who are seeking employment in manufacturing industries. I do not wish to suggest that that should not be so, but it is symptomatic of the fact that, because we are unaccustomed to white collar unemployment, we tend to overlook the problem in the service industries.
I use this opportunity, therefore, to draw to the attention of the Treasury Bench the very real need to take account of the growing problems in the service industries. White collar unemployment, I repeat—I think for the third time—is a relatively new phenomenon in this country. It affects, in particular, my constituency and a good many other constituencies around London and large provincial cities.
There is not one simple policy change that would make the problem disappear, but I respectfully suggest to the House, and in particular to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, that by recognising that the problem exists and taking account of it in the policies that we evolve, particularly the advertising campaigns that we are directing towards assisting the unemployed, we shall make the country, and my constituents in particular, feel that their needs, as unemployed people, are just as important as those of people who are seeking re-employment in the manufacturing industries.
5.7 pm
Mr. David Winnick: I wish to follow up one point to which the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir R. McCrindle) drew our attention—the huge increase in white collar unemployment. Before I do so, however, I should point out that, before the House goes into recess, there should be a ministerial statement on what was said by Mr. Bernard Ingham over the leaking of the Solicitor-General's letter. Some may say that that happened five years ago and that it is irrelevant and a matter of no great concern. I do not accept that; nor do my right hon. and hon. Friends. What happened was totally unjustified. The House will remember that the Attorney-General was absent and that the Solicitor-General was in charge. He wrote a confidential letter—certainly confidential, to say the least, within the machinery of Government. That letter was leaked to the Press Association. I cannot possibly accept, therefore, that it is of no consequence at all and can be dismissed.
Last night, Mr. Bernard Ingham denied that No. 10 was in any way involved. Responsibility was clearly laid on the
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then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Mr. Ingham did not say so, but that was his clear implication—that the person who did the leaking was Sir Leon Brittan. If only to clear up the honour and integrity of Sir Leon Brittan, the Government have a responsibility to make a statement, and to do so before we go into recess. What came out last night was official confirmation—if one likes, for the first time—of the rather murky way in which so much was undertaken during those years when Bernard Ingham was the chief press officer at No. 10 Downing street.
Although the Leader of the House was not apparently a victim, it might be of interest to him to learn that Bernard Ingham confirmed the rubbishing of Ministers. One of the prominent casualties of that rubbishing was the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), who initiated this debate. It could be said that another right hon. Gentleman who was rubbished and humiliated in a manner that no one in Government should find acceptable certainly had his revenge. He is not present in the Chamber now, but we know what happened as a result of his revenge.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: Did my hon. Friend notice that Bernard Ingham also said:
"I told Bowe that I had to keep the Prime Minister above that sort of thing"?
Does that not show that he was quite aware, as a senior civil servant, of crooked misbehaviour?
Mr. Winnick: I tend to agree with my hon. Friend. I am sure that he would agree that any attempt to blame another civil servant—Colette Bowe—would be totally unacceptable. I hope that that is clearly understood.
I draw attention however to the continuing job losses in the west midlands. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar was right to refer to the increase in white collar unemployment. I have been involved for many years with a union that organises white collar employees. White collar unemployment is not necessarily a new phenomenon. However, I agree with the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar that the escalation in the number of white collar unemployed is new. White collar workers in the south-east used to think that they would have reasonable prospects of obtaining other jobs if they were made redundant, but that is no longer the case. Getting another job is now far from easy and no doubt the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar understands what has happened to so many of his constituents.
Between August and October last year, there were notified redundancies at 27 establishments in the west midlands. Between last November and April this year there were notified redundancies at 80 establishments. I have referred to "notified" redundancies, but the figure is likely to be higher. Between November and April, there were nearly 10,000 redundancies in the metropolitan part of the west midlands.
The number of redundancies is bad enough, but in many cases plants have been closed as well. I have a list of the redundancies that have occurred over the period to which I referred and that list includes the names of firms that have decided to close down. The majority of the job losses in the west midlands were in engineering and the causes in most cases were falling orders and a drop in demand. No one can claim that the latest recession has not bitten deeply in the west midlands.

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What worries many of us who have the honour to represent west midlands constituencies is that we are approaching almost the sort of situation that existed 10 years ago. As the House is aware, there were large-scale redundancies and many factories were closed, never to re-open. Far too many people lost their jobs and were unable to find other jobs for a considerable period. The Government said at the time that those circumstances were necessary. They said that it was a one-off and that it had to happen to shake out manufacturing industry and over-manning.
The right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher) gave a much publicised interview last week in which she referred to the difficulties of adjusting to losing her job as Prime Minister. I can understand that an ex-Prime Minister might find it difficult to adjust, particularly given the circumstances in which the right hon. Lady—most likely to her surprise—found herself out of No. 10 Downing street. However, what about people who have been made redundant recently, or indeed those who were made redundant 10 years ago, who are left with no job at all? I in no way underestimate the difficulties of young people, but 40-year-olds and 50-year-olds who are made redundant may also be discriminated against because of their age and may never be able to work again. That is certainly tragic.
Mr. John McFall: Over the past few months, the Conservative party has painted itself as the caring party, and Conservatives have said that they are interested in elderly people and in the community. Given their track record and the way in which they treated their former heroine and dumped her so cynically, what credibility do they have when they say that they care?
Mr. Winnick: Perhaps I am being unfair to Conservative Members, but they seem first and foremost to care about themselves. Perhaps I am being unduly cynical, but Conservative Members will know whether I am right or wrong.
The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar may be aware that I tried to introduce a Bill that would have made unlawful advertisements for jobs in which there was a reference to age. However, the Government decided not to support it. The Government do not appear to be too concerned with the difficulties facing the people to whom the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar and I have referred, whether they be manual or non-manual employees. People who are made redundant and have tremendous difficulty finding other jobs live on a pittance and when they retire, their occupational pensions are reduced as a result of their redundancy. We should not underestimate that factor.
We need a strong manufacturing base now as much as we needed one in earlier years. Manufacturing investment has fallen below the level that existed when the Conservative Government took office in 1979. Investment overall—not just in manufacturing—is forecast to fall by 10 per cent. during this year. That is hardly good preparation for 1992 and the single market.
I know someone in the House—not a Member—with a rather clever contraption comprising a watch with a calculator attached to it. As I come from the west midlands, one would expect me to ask him whether it was
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made in the United Kingdom. He said, "You must be joking." We have reached a sad state when so much new technology is manufactured abroad and imported into this country. Some no longer believe that we can produce such goods, but of course we can. We still have the talent. We were the first country to industrialise with all those skills in the west midlands. Unfortunately, so much has gone by the way and our forecast in 1979 that the Government were out to undermine manufacturing industry has unfortunately proved all too true.
The Government have failed manufacturing industry, and they have failed the west midlands. No doubt the Prime Minister will take into account the local election results and what happens in Monmouth later this week before he decides the date of the next general election. However, when it comes, it will be the duty and responsibility of Labour Members and candidates to explain to the country what has happened and describe the failure of British industry and manufacturing industry in the west midlands and throughout the country in the 12 years of this Tory Government.
5.18 pm
Mr. Keith Raffan: I speak in this debate as a Scot by birth and upbringing and as a Welshman by political adoption. There are not nearly enough Celts on the Conservative Benches, as I am sure my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House would agree—even if he cannot agree with anything else that I am about to say. Indeed, there are not many representatives of Scottish or Welsh constituencies on the Conservative Benches. They number a mere 16 out of a total parliamentary party of 369. Disraeli's oft-quoted remark comes to mind:
"The Tory Party, unless it be a national party, is nothing."
Although we obviously have the numerical authority to govern, it is increasingly questioned whether we have the moral authority to do so. That will cease to be questioned only when we have a much broader geographical spread on this side of the House and reasonable parliamentary representation in Scotland and Wales. Too often, the Conservative party in both countries is seen—justifiably seen—as no more than the branch of a predominantly English party without its own distinctive identity, even though, in Scotland, the Conservative party has its own separate organisation.
It has been my belief, and one that I have consistently held for over 20 years, that we as a party should pursue and implement a policy of parliamentary devolution. When I first contested a Scottish parliamentary constituency 17 years ago, that policy was supported by my right hon. Friend the present Secretary of State for Scotland and by his predecessor, although of course both have done a volte face since.
Whether they like it or not, devolution is now back on the political agenda. Indeed, the word is occasionally now uttered from the Treasury Bench, which, a few months ago under the previous Prime Minister, would have been a capital offence. Yes, devolution is back on the agenda, and it is back because the Government have put it there.
Even the most ardent devolutionists had to accept that, as long as we had so many tiers of local and national Government—town and community councils, district councils, county councils, the Westminster Parliament and the European Assembly—it was difficult to argue for yet

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another tier. The local government review—the near-certainty of single-tier authorities within the foreseeable future—changes everything.
As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will know from recent opinion polls in Scotland, the vast majority of Scottish people—83 per cent. in the most recent—want an Assembly or even more than an Assembly. I am sure that even he will agree that that is well without the margin of polling error. There is also a considerable majority for devolution in Wales. As a party we must respond to the aspirations and needs of the Scots and the Welsh. I am not alone in saying so. Mr. Michael Hirst, the former hon. Member for Strathkelvin and Bearsden and president of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association, said last week:
"It is essential that we have the widest ranging debate possible on this issue."
Mr. John Mackay, the former hon. Member for Argyll and Bute, former Scottish Office Minister, former chief executive of the Conservative party organisation in Scotland and now ennobled in the recent list of working peers—all Conservative Members will welcome his return to Parliament—said:
"Public opinion in favour of devolution cannot be ignored. We cannot ignore the debate that is taking place in Scotland and we have got to take part in it."
Mr. Struan Stevenson, one of our liveliest parliamentary candidates north of the border and prospective candidate and next Member for Edinburgh, South—[Laughter.] Opposion Members may laugh, but they will be laughing on the other sides of their faces when they hear that result in the next election. What I am saying is borne out, as they know, by the local election results just a week ago. Mr. Stevenson said:
"We must admit that we have been wrong to shut our ears to the demands from Scotland for more self-government."
As Conservatives, we believe in one nation, in a united kingdom, but we must recognise that the major strength of the United Kingdom is the variety of the different parts that constitute it. Each must be allowed to make its own distinctive contribution that will strengthen, not weaken, the whole. That will strengthen, not weaken, the union. The identities of Scotland and Wales, as all hon. Members know—I am glad to see so many Scottish Members opposite listening closely to my remarks—are rooted in different cultures, geography and history, quite separate from those of England.
Scotland has its own judiciary and legal system, its own Church and educational system. Wales has its own language and highly distinctive culture. There is something inconsistent and illogical in the present British Government's concern about the possible loss of sovereignty, in European monetary and political union, while ignoring the demand for greater sovereignty from countries that actually constitute the United Kingdom.
The English may see Europe as a threat to their national sovereignty. The Scots and the Welsh see Europe as an opportunity to give new hope and fresh life to their own national identities, to bring about not a dilution, but a strengthening, of their sovereignty.
The extent of constitutional change already brought about by developments within the European Community is hardly appreciated in this House, let alone in the country. That process is bound to be accelerated by the treaties that will follow the two intergovernmental
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conferences that are currently taking place. We in this House, in our parliamentary institutions and governmental system, must adapt to that.
There is nothing heretical or anti-Conservative about devolution. Historically, this party played a principal role in the establishment of the Scottish Office and in the creation of the post of Secretary of State for Scotland.
Decentralisation, diffusion and the dispersal of power and control are central to Tory philosophy. We have only to look at current policies to see that philosophy at work. In education, the local management of schools is devolving, from the local education authorities to the schools themselves, to the headmaster, to the teachers, to the governing bodies, the actual running and financial management of schools. In the health service, with self-governing hospitals, there is devolved, from health authorities to doctors and to nurses in the front line, the actual management and running of hospitals. If we can have devolution in education and in health, I do not see why we cannot have it also in government and in our parliamentary institutions.
If we also believe that education and health require such radical reform less than 50 years after the last major education reform, and less than 50 years after the NHS was set up, surely the institutions of government and of parliament itself might merit similar treatment. We have clung to the Victorian vision of the unitary state and its institutions, which are no longer capable of delivering efficient government or the effective scrutiny of Government. We cannot cling to institutions that have hardly changed since that time and leave them fossilised as they are. Our constitution surely should not be frozen in one moment of time but must be allowed to evolve. It is capable of improvement. We should look to the experience of many of our European allies and learn from their constitutions what might serve us well here.
Devolution would increase democratic control and the accountability of Ministers and civil servants. If we can agree on nothing else—I think we agree on quite a lot—Scottish Members on the Opposition side of the House will share the frustration we experience in Wales in monitoring and scrutinising not only legislation but also the decisions of Ministers. They have no Scottish Select Committee. We, fortunately, have a Welsh Select Committee, but even Select Committees and Grand Committees are not sufficient for the purpose of checking the Executive. We need far more time to debate Scottish and Welsh issues on the Floor of the House, but we never get it.
Westminster hardly faces a light load of work. Year in and year out, we are faced with heavy legislative programmes that are barely digestible and are spewed out at each Session's end, after insufficient debate and scrutiny. There is never sufficient time for the debate of European directives and issues on the Floor of the House. We are now dealing with the complex, highly technical legislation of the 1990s with a parliamentary machinery that has barely changed since the 1890s.
During this Parliament, the Government have made radical proposals for the reform of education, requiring much higher standards of teachers. We have made radical proposals for the reform of the health service, requiring greater efficiency and better value for money from doctors and nurses. We have carried through a major reform of the legal system to bring the legal profession up to date. As a Government, we are ready to tell everybody else how they can and should do their job better. Yet our system of

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government, of parliamentary democracy, more inefficient, more ineffective and more desperately in need of reform than all those professions put together, remains untouched.
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland said last week that devolution would undermine the stability of the United Kingdom. It would not. What would undermine the stability of the United Kingdom is if we did not listen and respond to the legitimate desires and demands of the vast majority of the Scottish and Welsh people.
5.29 pm
Mr. Simon Hughes: We are debating a motion that we should adjourn for a week for half-term. Some of us wish that we were adjourning for a general election, although that wish might not be universal. The reason why I wish that we were about to have a general election is that, in the past 11 years, we have never had a Government who had the majority support of the British people. Until we force a constitutional change, we shall not have a Government who have the majority support of the British people. As long as we continue to have minority Governments, we shall continue to have elected dictatorships who tyrannise the country and act against the popular view. I hope that, whenever it comes, the election will enable that change to take place and that the movement towards fair votes and electoral reform will at last force this place to be a democratic assembly.
In the meantime, there are certain matters of which it would be useful for the public to be aware before Parliament rises towards the end of next week. Some of the issues have been alluded to. They are the subjects of the most current topical debate. They are how well the economy is doing, what the Government are doing about the education service, what they are doing about the health service and the facts and figures about the economy, our education and our health. I shall comment on these matters at the local and the national levels.
I wish to start at the local level. The other day, I attended, in my capacity as president, the annual general meeting of the Southwark chamber of commerce. I have never before heard an outgoing chairman make such political comments—political with a small "p". In his address, he said:
"The way the government and the banks have handled things is like throwing a drowning man a lead lifebelt."
That was a man who had worked in a local firm for many years. It was an engineering firm which had been in Southwark for almost a century. His firm went into liquidation only a few weeks ago.
Fewer than five people at that meeting believed that the recession was bottoming out or that we were coming out of it. The rest of the Southwark business community represented at the chamber of commerce meeting believed the opposite. That is not surprising, because, although it is true that unemployment was falling until a year ago, since then lit has increased considerably in inner London. I listened to the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir R. McCrindle) speaking on behalf of Essex commuter employees. Unemployment has increased by nearly 25 per cent. in the last year in constituencies such as mine. The position is no different in other inner-London and dockland constituencies either.
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There is no doubt that the economy is not in good shape. Neither is there any doubt that at local level the education service is not in good shape. Many of our schools are in great need of capital spending for repairs. Many of our schools face great difficulty in recruiting, and even more difficulty in retaining, teachers. We still have no guarantee that the service can meet anything like the needs that exist. Swimming pools are being closed. Swimming lessons are being prevented. The youth service is being decimated. Youth club provision, which is part of the non-statutory education service, is being reduced wholesale in many parts of inner London. The budgets for our youth services have been reduced enormously.
Our state and county education systems, now administered in inner London by the borough councils, are in a desperate state. At the same time, favoured islands of opportunity receive huge sums of government money. In one corner of my constituency a city technology college receives about £10 million of government money. That is about 10 times the capital which all the other schools in the London borough of Southwark put together receive. That £10 million is for fewer than 1,000 pupils out of a total youth population in a borough of 225,000. That is a gross imbalance.
To cap it all, only two weeks ago, with timing that could only be described as inept, the Lewisham and Guy's hospital trust announced cuts. One of the ironies about the announcement made in the second part of April was that the Guy's and Lewisham Trust News was edited and produced by a company called Healthy Relations Ltd. If it is healthy relations or healthy public relations to announce in such an inept way cuts of £6·8 million and a further saving of £6 million and cause a political earthquake such as that which followed, "healthy relations" has a new meaning.
When the health authority handed over responsibility to the trust on 1 April, it did so without being certain that there would not be further cuts. I and other local Members of Parliament from both sides of the House met the health authority last Friday. It told us that it did not know that the budgetary cuts that had since been announced would be the total and final result. Furthermore, it had not subsequently met as a health authority to say that it was satisfied that it would be possible to provide the same level of health care as had been promised before the cuts.
Much of the local community, if not all of it, does not believe that it is possible to cut £6·8 million and take a further £6 million out of a budget of £128 million—that is 10 per cent.—with a potential loss of 600 jobs, to be announced later this month, without affecting the service. We believe it even less when, on asking how the authority will judge how effective the service is, we are told that it will be judged by the throughput of the patients. We all know that it is possible to kick patients out of beds sooner but that the patients do not necessarily have better care. That is against a background of bed cuts.
The hon. Member for Norwood (Mr. Fraser) and I and others also attended another meeting at which it was confirmed to us that in the South-East Thames region the inner London health authorities have suddenly been told that the indices of deprivation by which we have traditionally had our funding adjusted to take account of the unarguable extra difficulties of inner urban areas have been removed and replaced by criteria that do not allow for any such compensation for the difficulties experienced in our part of the world.

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I do not find it surprising that I have received only a holding answer to a parliamentary question that I asked on 2 May when I requested figures on the number of beds available to NHS and private patients in Guy's, King's College and St. Thomas's hospitals and in each of the three relevant health authorities. I asked for the number of beds to be listed for each financial year since 1979. I wonder whether the Government will ever find a time when they will find it possible to print the answer without being gravely embarrassed.
Mr. John Fraser: To be fair to the regional health authority, we were told that there was some good news. It was that, with mortality rates rising, we might receive more money.
Mr. Hughes: The hon. Gentleman is right. He and I remember that, on other occasions when we have raised anxieties about the Government's underfunding of the health service in inner London—it was not a single party issue—the most famous reply that we have been given is that we might have cause for complaint, but the chairman of the local authority was bullish about the prospects. Someone lying in a corridor for three days in King's College hospital might feel somewhat less bullish about the prospects of the health service being safe in the Government's hands.
To compound the announcement of cuts, we now know that a massive amount is being spent on new management jobs in the health service. The BMA News Review of March 1991—I had better be careful with the quotation and make sure that there is no uncertainty about the source—contained an article bearing the headline:
"£80 million management explosion"
It said:
"The amount the NHS spends on administrators' salaries seems likely to go up by at least £80 million this year as a direct result of the government's reforms … during the six months from May to October last year, health authorities advertised for almost 1,800 new staff to fill administrative posts."
That is only administrative posts. The article went on:
"This is almost six times the £14 million which the Government promised in December to cut juniors' hours and twice the £35 million which the Health Secretary put towards cutting waiting lists in January."
In South-East Thames region alone, 140 new administrative posts were advertised between May and October. Clearly, the economy, education and health are unsafe in the Government's hands.
At a national level, the current row about public spending commitments which features daily on our television and radio programmes, must leave the public bewildered. The Government are defending an education service, a public transport service and a health service which everyone, from professional to lay person, knows is underfunded. The Government expenditure programme in this year's Red Book makes it clear that although, suddenly, in the run-up to the general election, they are investing more money in the health service, in the years after 1991–92 the increase will drop substantially.
The Labour party, in the same breath as attacking the Government's record—I join it in that—rules out tax increases and makes spending commitments about which even it does not sound convinced. The Labour party says that it will spend extra money that will exist only if the Conservatives reduce taxation to 20p in the pound. We now also learn that that is less than the Government
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themselves budget to spend. The Labour party says that it is worried that the Government will fund that extra spending from increased value added tax.
If Labour Members are so worried about that, why did they not vote with us against the last VAT increase? In reply to the Government, the right hon. Member for Islwyn (Mr. Kinnock) says that his party would not be willing to provide more funds for the health service unless there is economic growth. That will not reassure people in hospitals, such as Guy's and Lewisham or anywhere else.
Before the House rises next week, the public would benefit from knowing the policies of all three parties and how they propose to fund those policies. We say unequivocally that we need to spend more on public services and we are sufficiently realistic to say also that, if necessary, we shall raise taxation to pay for that. We are in no doubt about that. A penny on the pound would go to education. That will release extra resources for the health service. [HON. MEMBERS: "What?"] Yes, an increase in taxation from 25p to 26p in the pound would provide extra money which would be devoted entirely to education and training. Therefore, it will not be necessary to redirect existing money to education because extra education spending would be funded from new income. [Interruption.] The Government have stated clearly that they will not ask people to pay more. Indeed, they still have a policy of reducing taxation to 20p in the pound.
It is clear that Tory Members are worried about that. I have been to Monmouth, as I know some Tory Members have, and certainly the electors there are worried about it. They are looking to the three parties for answers to the questions: are the parties willing to spend more and to ask people to pay more? If the public get that information from the three parties before we adjourn, the position will be clearer. Certainly, the public would be clear that only one party says that it will spend more and is willing to ask people to pay more as well.
5.43 pm
Mr. Robert G. Hughes: During my speech, I shall make some comments which may seem unkind about the Labour party's taxation policy, but, having heard the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) expound what may be called the Paul Daniels approach to taxation——
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John MacGregor): Paul Daniels is much better.
Mr. Hughes: My right hon. Friend says that Paul Daniels is much better. All I ask is that anybody who considers the taxation policies of the different parties, particularly the electors in Monmouth, should study the hon. Gentleman's words. What a lot of nonsense and double accounting. His party must come up with something more substantial than that to convince anyone of its policies.
I have been impressed by hon. Members on both sides talking about their worthy projects for the recess, should we agree to this motion. They have told the House what they will do in their constituencies and what they will find out about. I intend to reintroduce myself to my daughters and to remind my family who I am.
Mr. Tony Banks: Why should they suffer?
Mr. Hughes: My daughters are young ladies of eminent good taste and seem to enjoy my company. They just cannot remember when they last had it.
The first of two matters which I wish to raise in this debate is serious and affects constituents of Members on both sides of the House. Racial attacks are not new. Part of the problem is that they do not affect many people, yet those who are affected are affected severely. The problem is brought to mind particularly because of reports of racial attacks in the Thamesmead area and the death of an Asian over the weekend.
I am talking not about the odd attack here and there, but about systematic attacks on Asian and coloured people by a small number of white people. The Asian community fear that, if they talk too much about the attacks, they will be thought to be whingeing and not wholly wedded to life in this country, and that that will somehow instigate further attacks. There is some justification for all those feelings, but there is no justification either for the way in which many people have ignored racial attacks or for believing that this is not a major problem for many Asian and black people.
Before the recess, we should debate an idea which was proposed some 11 or 12 years ago by the Select Committee on Home Affairs, but which has never been adopted. It is simple, but it has merit. The suggestion is that a racial attacks squad should be set up in Scotland Yard. After all, we have a serious crimes squad, a serious fraud squad, a drugs squad, a pornography squad, a murder squad and doubtless several others. Why should we not also have a racial attacks squad?
We have those centres of expertise in Scotland Yard because a local police unit, comprising a chief superintendent running police officers, cannot be reasonably expected either properly to investigate repeated racial attacks or to deal with the problems of the families who are subject to such attacks, without recourse to a centralised unit which has knowledge of and can co-ordinate what has been happening, and the necessary expertise. The matter should come before the House because it is of enormous concern to many of my constituents and to many constituents of other hon. Members in their daily lives. We should be failing in our duty if we did not point out to the police and the Home Office that more can be done and that we expect more of them.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) said that the Labour party's economics were those of Arthur Daley, and that analogy stands up. However, it is well known in the Labour party but less well known in the Conservative party that they are not the economics of Arthur Daley but rather those of "Only Fools and Horses" —[Interruption.] Labour Members should be patient. They reveal that they know what I am going to say, and it is rather embarrassing for them. Members of the Labour party and the national executive committee have nicknamed the leader of the Labour party "Rodney" and the shadow Chancellor "Del Boy", because of the nickname that Del Boy has for Rodney, and that is how they are known in the House. Anyone who has ever watched the television programme will know that it is not a flattering nickname. The wry smiles on the faces of Opposition Members show that they, too, have heard that and are rather embarrassed.
We must examine not what the Labour party says but what it writes. It recently produced a document entitled
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"Opportunity Britain", which the House should debate because it contains over 100 spending proposals. They are not all bad—many are desirable—but we do not know what they will cost. One has only to listen to Labour Members in the Chamber or speaking on amendments in Standing Committees, or to share a platform with a Labour Member, to see that every problem is met with a promise of new money. To an extent, everyone knows that the promise is unsustainable.
There has been much talk about unemployment, and the problem is taken seriously on both sides of the House. However, we did not hear much from the Labour party when unemployment fell for 40 consecutive months. The Labour party seemed to forget about it then; it seems to be a problem only when unemployment rises. The Opposition know that their proposal for a minimum wage would add dramatically to the unemployment level. They will set it at 50 per cent. of average male earnings, on a rising scale. Do they accept that that would add 750,000 to the number of unemployed, or do they have another figure? If so, where does it come from, and what is their estimate of the unemployment effects of their minimum wage proposals?
The hon. Member for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) spoke about the privatisation of the water industry, but he forgot to remind the House that it has led to the biggest ever investment programme in the water industry. This year, private industry has invested £28 billion in the water industry. What scale of investment does the Labour party believe is necessary? Clearly, the hon. Member for Ogmore thinks that there has been too much investment, because he said that the bills were too high. If the investment is not paid for by consumers and the borrowings of private limited companies, where would the money come from? Where would the Labour party find the money to invest in the water industry?
What would be the standard rate of income tax under a Labour Government? The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) promises that 14 out of 15 basic rate taxpayers would not be worse off. How can the Labour party know that, when it has not announced its plans? If it has made plans, it should tell the House.
The Labour party does not understand that lower income tax stimulates economic growth. It is called supply side economics and it has worked here, in the United States and even in many European countries run by socialist Governments. The proof is contained in the figures for the top 5 per cent. of taxpayers, who now pay substantially larger proportions of tax than they did under the previous Labour Government.
When one considers the Labour party's spending and taxation proposals, it is not a question of reading their lips but of reading about the expensive promises contained in their policy documents.
5.55 pm
Mr. Bruce Grocott: I shall not try to reply in detail to all the points raised—as usual, a wide range of subjects have been raised—but shall concentrate on one or two important issues that are currently the subject of debate outside the Chamber.
Several hon. Members, including a number of my hon. Friends, concentrated on the key issue of unemployment. The subject was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) and

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my hon. Friends the Members for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) and for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick). Interestingly, it was also raised by a couple of hon. Members of other parties. The hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir R. McCrindle) specified white collar unemployment, and the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) stressed the dangers of unemployment in his constituency. It would be remiss of me not to associate only myself and the Labour party with the deep concern about unemployment in all sectors of the economy and in all parts of the country.
One of the consequences of high unemployment has emerged in today's reports of what is happening at Rolls-Royce. Over the weekend, 34,000 Rolls Royce employees were given notice and were guaranteed reinstatement only if they accepted substantially worse conditions of employment. That is a classic symptom of high unemployment. Employers have the whip hand and can impose conditions that would be unacceptable in normal circumstances. It is dreadful that such an employer-dominated diktat can be imposed and it is yet further evidence of the way in which normal traditions of collective bargaining and national and company agreements, which have served us well over the years, have been eroded by the Government's legislation and high unemployment policies.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North pointed out the irony that much of the problem arose under the leadership of the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Finchley (Mrs. Thatcher), who seems incapable of coping herself with the consequences of unemployment. Her unemployment is pretty cushioned, as she still has a job that is deeply envied by many people—she is a Member of Parliament. However, she seems to be temperamentally incapable of accepting that she is on the scrap heap, having been personally responsible for putting so many of her fellow citizens on it. Nothing could better summarise the distorted values of the former Prime Minister than her unforgettable quote last week,
"Home is where you come to when you have nothing better to do."
That was said by the former leader of what press releases tell us is the party of the family. Nothing could demonstrate more unequivocally how totally out of touch this Administration have been during the past 12 years. For so much of that time, it was led by someone who places a value on the home that would be unrecognisable by the vast majority of my constituents and by people throughout the country. I do not wish to minimise the critical importance to people of work, not only for their standard of living but for their self-esteem and sense of worth. That importance has been dreadfully eroded by the Government, and it is essential that we have a debate on unemployment before the House rises.
Mr. Ian McCartney: Behind the scenes, the Government are dramatically cutting back expenditure on those with disabilities and special educational needs up and down the country, including my constituency. My local training and enterprise council is about to announce the almost complete withdrawal of access by the disabled to training programmes that help them to maintain employment and give them job opportunities. That information brings the Government into great disrepute.
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They are not only attacking able-bodied people but are cynically withdrawing financial resources to maintain in employment those with serious disabilities.
Mr. Grocott: My hon. Friend has made an extremely important point, and the issue of the general underfunding of TECs was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore. It is further evidence that the Government, whatever their rhetoric and press releases say, have a fundamental lack of concern for the issues of most importance to our constituents.
Another issue that was touched on during the debate and which is central to political debate outside the House, is the announcement of the date of the next general election. It is not that I do not like doing this job, but I fervently hope that this is the last time that I have to participate in a recess Adjournment debate. It is not that such debates are unattractive, but it is clear that this Parliament and Government have run out of steam and it is time that the matter was settled in a general election.
Several Conservative Members have made a number of assertions about what the country wants. There is only one way to settle that issue—in the form of a vote. Early-day motion 819, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) sums up the matter. It states:
"That this House expresses its concern at the terminal decline of the present Parliament, elected in 1987; and seeks to encourage the Prime Minister to take the necessary action to end the painful suffering of an administration, which has come to the end of its time".
The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey thinks, as we do, that it is time for a general election. However, I cannot agree with him that the right way to settle the matter would be a system of voting that would ensure permanent control by minority parties in the centre. That does not strike me as a fair way of determining general elections.
Mr. Ray Powell: My hon. Friend is talking about the general election. It was predicted in the press that, if the Government lost the Monmouth by-election, we would have to wait through a hot, steamy summer, until October or November. The opinion poll just announced by HTV gives 41 per cent. to Labour, 33 per cent. to the Government and 21 per cent. to the Liberals. Does my hon. Friend think that, in the light of that, we shall have to have another such Adjournment debate before the summer recess?
Mr. Skinner: There is another poll relating to Monmouth, which asks how people would vote if it looked as though the Labour party was likely to win. The result of that poll is even better—51 per cent. voted for Labour, 35 per cent. for the Tories and 13 per cent. for the Liberal Democrats.
Mr. Grocott: My hon. Friends are joyous bearers of good news. I have been unable to see the news bulletins tonight.
The downside is that we all know that the Prime Minister, in his agony of indecision, and having failed to get any clear message from the computers that he set to work on the local election results, is anxiously awaiting the outcome of the Monmouth by-election before he can make up his mind. I doubt whether he will be able to do so then.
The Leader of the House, and certainly the Government, owe it to us to make a decision. It is high

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time that the indecision about the election date was sorted out. If the Prime Minister is not going to have an election in June, it is up to him to make it plain to the country that he will not have one until later in the year. There is a clear precedent for that. The last Prime Minister who became Prime Minister by accident, and to his and everyone else's surprise, was Sir Alec Douglas-Home. After playing around with the election date for a while, he had the sense to make it clear that he would not have an election until late in 1964. This Prime Minister should do the same. Whatever the Leader of the House feels about the election date, he must agree that constant uncertainty cannot possibly be to the benefit of the country.
Sir Robert McCrindle: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Grocott: No, I will not give way.
It is essential that, by this time next week, when the Prime Minister has been able to assess the result of the Monmouth by-election, he should at least announce whether there is to be a general election in June.
Sir Robert McCrindle: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Grocott: No: if I give way, it will eat into the time of the Leader of the House, for which he would not be grateful.
I have a fairly clear idea why the Prime Minister is not keen to call a general election quickly—he does not want to go down in history as the shortest-serving Prime Minister this century. A little bit of statistical analysis that I have been able to carry out as I while away the time shows that the shortest-serving Prime Minister this century was Bonar Law, who served for 209 days. The current Prime Minister has had 167 days and, according to my calculation, he will have to keep going until at least 25 June to avoid earning the title. If he wants to beat Sir Alec, he will have to keep going for a year, and he will just about beat Sir Anthony Eden if he goes on until February 1992.
Sooner or later, we shall all know what the Prime Minister has decided. It is crystal clear—[Interruption.] Conservative Members were angry when I started my speech, and, having heard the results of the opinion polls, they are even more wound up. I can understand that. The prospect of unemployment is deeply distressing for Conservative Members.
Another reason why we need absolute clarification on the election date—the Leader of the House is in a better position to acknowledge this than anyone else—is that the House is running out of things to do.
Mr. MacGregor: Rubbish.
Mr. Grocott: The Leader of the House says, "Rubbish," but on three occasions last week the House rose by 9 pm. I shall inform the House for the record, because it is worth checking the statistics, that the House has not risen before 9 pm twice in a week at any time in the past 13 years. Last week, it happened three times because the Government are running out of things to do——
Mr. Andrew Mitchell: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Grocott: I shall not give way. Conservative Members are getting very excited. Like them, I wish that we could resolve this in a normal manner. I hope that they will impress upon the Prime Minister the absolute urgency of calling a general election, so that we do not have rows across the Chamber, but the voters can sort out the matter in the polling booths. Although Conservative Members do not like to hear it, it is extremely rare for the business of the House to fold up as early as it did three times last week.
I shall certainly give way if Conservative Members wish to challenge me on the following point. There are three crucial debates taking place in the House this week—I hope that hon. Members who have spoken in this debate will forgive me if I do not include this one. Those three crucial debates are, first, the one on the health service and opting-out hospitals tomorrow, which was called by the Opposition and is to be held in precious Opposition time. The second one is on famine in Africa and on the effects of famine and related matters in Bangladesh, as well as matters affecting the Kurds. That debate will be initiated by us and will take place in our precious parliamentary time.
The other crucial debate—it is indeed crucial; hon. Members get very excited and jump up and down when the subject is discussed—is on public expenditure. On Wednesday, we shall debate the Government's public expenditure plans. Opposition Members have requested this debate week after week after week, but the Leader of the House has repeatedly refused it. I know that the Government find this information uncomfortable. The Leader of the House has only to check Hansard to see repeated confirmation of what I am saying.
Sir Robert McCrindle rose——
Mr. Grocott: If the hon. Gentleman wants to comment on the specific points to which I have been referring, I shall gladly give way.
Sir Robert McCrindle: I am glad that I have finally managed to persuade the hon. Gentleman to give way.
In pinpointing the admittedly very important subjects that the House, on the Opposition's initiative, is to debate tomorrow, the hon. Gentleman seems to have overlooked entirely an extremely important debate that is to take place on Thursday. On that day, we shall debate the question of planning—a matter of enormous importance to a great many of our fellow citizens. Perhaps the reason for the hon. Gentleman's lack of interest in that debate is that he will not be here on Thursday. Like many of his hon. Friends, he will be at the Monmouth by-election. The reason for the early rising of the House on three occasions last week was that there were no Members on the Opposition Benches.
Mr. Grocott: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman would care to accompany me to any pub of his choosing in Britain. I will give him £1 every time planning is mentioned if he will give me £1 every time unemployment or the health service is mentioned as a key subject facing the nation.
The Leader of the House should be defending the interests of hon. Members. He should ensure that, before the House rises for the Whitsun recess, we are given an opportunity to debate the declining standards of ministerial accountability. That matter should concern the right hon. Gentleman. It certainly concerns my hon. Friends and myself that Ministers are not answering

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questions properly. The Government's tactic has been to use agencies to move Ministers one step away from responsibility for the running of their Departments. That is a well-established practice. Why does a question to a Minister get a far less effective response than did the very same question two years ago?
Let me give a specific example involving a matter that is important to me and which I understood at one time was important to Conservative Members. I refer to the cost of running quangos. One of the Government's many broken promises is that it would reduce the running costs of these bodies. This is a specific and serious matter. Two years ago, I asked the Civil Service Minister to state the total cost of running quangos in each of the previous 10 years. I received a detailed answer, for which I was grateful.
Last month, I tabled a similar question, and, in reply, was told to look up the figures in the Library. If that is to be the Government's practice, we might as well simply have a ministerial stamp for every question. Any figure can be provided by the excellent research staff of the House of Commons Library. It is outrageous that the Government are ever more frequently using such a device as a means of avoiding answering specific questions. One might imagine that the Government could at least get their own act together.
Many Opposition Members, in their attempts to obtain information, have to put identical questions to all members of the Cabinet. Very recently, I tabled a very simple question to a number of Ministers. I asked each of them to list the Government appointments for which he or she—in the case of the present Cabinet, it is always he —would be responsible in the next 12 months and in the 12 months after that. Those appointments will, of course, become the responsibility of the incoming Labour Government. Whatever Conservative Members may think, that is a totally legitimate parliamentary question. It is entirely right that we should want to know about these appointments, about length of service and about the salaries. Repeatedly I received the standard reply:
"Information about the number and levels of remuneration of people appointed to public bodies by my Department is given in 'Public Bodies 1990', copies of which are available in the Library."
There were a couple of honourable exceptions. The Secretary of State for Education and Science gave a detailed and valid reply, and the Secretary of State for Defence at least provided page references to enable me to find the answers in various Government documents.
The response of the great majority of Ministers is another illustration of the way in which the Government treat hon. Members with contempt. It is high time the Leader of the House discharged his role and put these matters to rights. In fact, what we want is a rapid end to this tawdry Government. They have gone on for far too long. The endless election debate cannot be allowed to continue. Matters should be put to the people in a general election as soon as possible.
6.15 pm
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John MacGregor): I shall follow the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mr. Grocott) in one thing—and in one thing only, as I have rather less time than he occupied. I should like to answer all the questions that have been put to me, but, because of the shortage of time, I shall not be able to do so.
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I shall begin by dealing with the matter which has been at the heart of much of this debate. It was raised by my hon. Friends the Members for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell) and for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) and by the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and, by implication, by every other Opposition Member. We have always known that the Labour party is weak on economic policy and on spending. In the general election in 1987 it proved just that, and was crucified as a result. Opposition Members are getting into the same shambles today. Indeed, on the question of spending and tax, they are getting more rattled, muddled and shrill.
Let me direct the attention of Opposition Members to two things that have happened today—on the "Today" programme this morning, and in this debate. On the "Today" programme, John Humphrys said to the right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith):
"Let's be clear that that is what your are saying: 'Twenty billion pounds on top of the £40 billion—that's the extra that we're spending in the coming three years."'
In fact, the figure is £38 billion, but John Humphrys rounded it up.
"Is that what it's about, John Smith?"
The right hon. and learned Gentleman replied:
"What Neil Kinnock did was to use as an example the fact that if you get 2·5 per cent., which is about the trend rate of growth of the British economy, that's what you get in extra public expenditure. That was a perfectly simple and perfectly clear example"—
[Interruption.] I am quoting exactly what the right hon. and learned Gentleman said, and it is not at all surprising that Opposition Members do not like to be pressed on the point. It is crucial, and, if necessary, I shall devote my entire speech to it.
In reply to John Humphrys, the right hon. and learned Gentleman said:
"We do not add that on top of all the public expenditure forward programmes that have already been announced. We do not accept that's a reasonable way of doing it because it's to add on top, and we never said that, and it's a total misinterpretation to do that."
I have never heard such a meaningless piece of a sentence. The reason for it is that, on this point, the Labour party is absolutely on a hook.
Mr. Ray Powell: What is the relevance of this?
Mr. MacGregor: I will come to its relevance in a moment.
The Labour party is on a hook. If the right hon. and learned Gentleman meant that £20 billion was not being added—if he accepted the figure of £38 billion as the increase in public expenditure, to which he would not add anything—what is all this about? It is that the Labour party will not spend anything more. That is the answer to practically every speech made in this debate.
If, on the other hand, the hon. Gentleman did not mean that, and he really meant another £20 billion on top of the £38 billion already announced, that presupposes——
Mr. Grocott: No one believes this.
Mr. MacGregor: But it is crystal clear. If the hon. Gentleman does not think it a fair point, he knows nothing about economics, taxation or spending. If the money does not come from growth or from the £38 billion, where will it come from? It will come from extra taxation——
Mr. Skinner rose—
Mr. Grocott rose——
Mr. MacGregor: I will finish my point first. The money will come from extra taxation, not from increased growth, because that is already provided for. Will the money come from more taxation? I give way to the hon. Member for The Wrekin, who can tell us the answer.
Mr. Grocott: We will not take any lectures on economic management from a Government who, in 12 years, have managed to achieve record interest rates, record mortgage rates, record balance of payments deficits, reduced industrial production and investment and a shambles of the economy. We will take lectures on many things, but not on economic management. This country has been run by Arthur Daley for the past 12 years.
Mr. MacGregor: The House will have noted that there was no answer to the question; the Labour party does not want to answer it, because it does not want even to hint that it will increase taxation. The Opposition want to imply that they will increase spending on all sorts of things and then try to get out of the difficulty by spurious reference to economic growth. The fact is that that is impossible in the next three years because the spending plans already provide for that growth. So the money must come from increased taxes. The electorate will take note of that. The Prime Minister was right to say in Perth the other day that Labour's plans would mean another 2p in the pound on income tax each year.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West pointed out, the Opposition are always asking for more spending across the board. Their Treasury spokesman has told us that there will be increased spending only on child benefit and pensions, but the rest of the Opposition call for increased spending all the time on whatever happens to interest them. They were at it again today. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Wythenshawe (Mr. Morris) wanted more money for charities. The hon. Members for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and for Ogmore (Mr. Powell) wanted it for unemployment—as did the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick)——
Mr. Alfred Morris: Answer my questions.
Mr. MacGregor: I shall come to them if I am allowed time.
The hon. Member for Ogmore wanted spending on training and enterprise councils, and the hon. Member for The Wrekin had his agenda. We have and constant calls for more public spending. That is at the heart of the argument, and I am right to concentrate on it, because it is what Opposition Members have spent all their time doing.
Opposition Members cannot add up the figures. The hon. Member for The Wrekin did not answer the point that I put to him. The Liberal Democrats are just as bad. I found what the hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey said extraordinary. He may not have meant it, but he said that the Liberal Democrats would raise an extra £2 billion from another 1p on income tax. At least his party is fair in saying where the money will come from. But the hon. Gentleman said that the Liberal Democrats would spend it on education, which would enable them to spend less on the national health service. I do not understand that, given that the rest of his speech was about
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spending more on the national health service. Perhaps he only meant spending more on Guy's hospital—it happens to be in his constituency—and letting the rest go.
Mr. Simon Hughes: I did not say that we would spend less on the national health service. I said that we would not have to raise the money that the health service needs from additional taxation, because that money would go to education. The health service would be funded by us to the tune of an extra 2 per cent. every year over a five-year Parliament.
Mr. MacGregor: Given that we have already agreed that there are already spending plans to use the economic growth, presumably the money will not come from that. So if the Liberal Democrats are going to spend more on the national health service, presumably they will have to raise income tax by more than 1p in the pound.
There is a more serious point for the Liberal Democrats. The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey talked of raising £2 billion from income tax to increase spending on education. His party voted against the proposal in the Budget to increase VAT from 15 to 17·5 per cent., thereby losing £3·9 billion in revenue. Those figures do not add up, either.
The clear message from this debate is that the Opposition want to spend more across the board. They have got themselves in a muddle on tax and spending plans and they cannot get out of it now.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) discussed whether we were rising for a week to go on holiday. I am sure that we are all going to do all sorts of other duties—but I shall leave that matter aside, in view of the time. He also mentioned the health service in Shropshire but did not ask me to answer his specific points, which I shall forward to the Secretary of State for Health; but he made a general point about the ownership of cottage hospitals. As he will know—I have to put this in a very condensed form—under the National Health Service Act 1977, health authorities can take into account resources that come from property and any money arising from its sale, which must be used within the national health service to provide better care for patients. My right hon. Friend will know that that is what we have done; the sale of assets can be and is directly devoted to the service and to patient care.
The right hon. Member for Wythenshawe raised a number of points, three of which I will pick up quickly. He mentioned VAT on charities. As he will know, the Government have done a great deal to increase the resources that go into charities, not only by more than doubling in real terms the grants to charities but by a wide variety of tax relief measures which encourage more voluntary giving to charities. I could go through the figures, but they are very large.
The value of all tax reliefs on charitable giving to charities is about £800 million a year. The hon. Gentleman's point about the health service—I am not talking here about the Paterson institute—was answered by my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Treasury on 28 March:
"I have agreed that in the special case of the health programmes, the additional costs to health authorities should be added to existing provision as a claim against the reserve. This will also apply to comparable expenditure in Scotland and Wales. The increased provision will be granted to the

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national health service in supplementary estimates for 1991–92, to be presented in due course later in the year."—[Official Report, 28 March 1991; Vol. 188, c. 519.]
The right hon. Gentleman will also know that the rights of the child convention was signed by the United Kingdom on 19 April 1990, and it will be ratified as soon as possible. I am sorry that I do not have time to go into his point about AIDS.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling discussed the case of a constituent. As he recognises, it is fundamentally a matter for the county council, but he raised several important points and it would be quite proper for him to consider raising the matter on the Adjournment if he were not satisfied in due course.
My hon. Friend also discussed the local government Audit Commission, of which I have always been a strong supporter. It is admirably led and it has produced a number of excellent reports which, if followed through, would achieve greater cost-effectiveness and efficiency and much better value for money. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment undertook in an Adjournment debate to consider a number of my hon. Friend's points, and that he is doing.
As a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and bearing in mind my time at the Department of Education and Science and what the commission said then, I endorse what my hon. Friend the member for Gedling said about its importance, and I shall certainly bear in mind the possibility of a debate. As in so many other areas, the commission's activities show that the effectiveness of provision of services stems not just from the amount of money spent but from how it is spent. So I am happy to go along with what my hon. Friend said about it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Sir R. McCrindle) raised a number of points about unemployment in the white collar industries. I noted that he said that he had no quarrel with the polices to get inflation down, and, as he will agree, they are crucial to long-term employment. He also mentioned tourism. I remind him that, in 1990–91, the Government are spending about £533 million on tourism.
I should very much like to debate Scottish devolution with my hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Raffan)——
Mr. Raffan: And a Welsh Assembly.
Mr. MacGregor: Indeed. I spent a great deal of time when in Perth last week discussing that, but time will prevent me from doing so today, because I want to finish on two important issues raised by the hon. Member for The Wrekin.
First, the hon. Gentleman said that the House was running out of business. That is simply not true. About 25 Bills are still to be completed in the next few months—a big programme. The reason why the House rose early last week, which I am sure was welcomed by those hon. Members who complain that the House rises too late, was that there were no members of the Opposition to scrutinise the Finance Bill and other Bills. I gave the normal amount of time to discuss the Finance Bill, and usually the House takes it all.
We have had many debates on economic issues and on unemployment, and I welcome them. The Opposition outlined a policy of implementing a social charter and strengthening it immediately, of imposing a training levy of 0·5 per cent. and then, as I think they said, increasing it
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pretty quickly, and of imposing a national minimum wage. I can think of no package of measures designed to lose more jobs than the combination of those three ideas.
We welcome the opportunity to continue to debate the alternative approaches to employment. I am happy to have that opportunity, and there will be many such occasions in the near future but, above all, the debate shows that the Labour party is the party of high spenders. It has proved that time and time again, but it does not want the electorate to know about tax concessions.
6.31 pm
Mr. Tam Dalyell: As there are three minutes to go, may I ask the Leader of the House, first, what will he do about rate capping in Lothian? Secondly, what will he do about Heveningham hall, which is near his constituency? In the early 1970s, the Secretary of State for the Environment offered to buy it from the Government, but he was told by the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath) that no Minister in his Government would buy a house like that. Since then, it has been shrouded in mystery.
May I ask a direct question: are Ministers sure that the Swiss bearer bond holders are not operating for the Government of Iraq and have never done so? Was the hall at any time the property of Saddam Hussein, because many people in Suffolk believe that it was? An inquiry should be set up under the likes of Lord Charteris, with whom I have been in contact to establish the clarity of the future of Heveningham hall.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) mentioned Mr. Ingham. A statement should be made, because we should know what is the position of John Mark. By implication, his private secretary has been adversely affected in the press by Mr. Ingham's memoirs. What is the position of Colette Bowe and that of Leon Brittan——
It being three hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 22 (Periodic adjournments).
Question agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House, at its rising on Thursday 23rd May, do adjourn until Monday 3rd June.
Mr. Ray Powell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Only you can deal with this issue, perhaps through Mr. Speaker.
Today, I tabled a question to the Minister for the Arts, and it was referred to the Welsh Office. I have now received a reply from the Welsh Office to say that the Welsh Arts Council, which was the subject of the question, is not responsible for museums in Wales. My question was about the funding of museums:
"To ask the Secretary of State for Wales, whether he has met the Chair of the Welsh Arts Council to discuss funding for museums in Wales."
The Ministry referred my question to the Welsh Office, and the Minister there in turn replied:
"The Welsh Arts Council has no responsibility for museums in Wales."
With your knowledge of the House, of Committees and of everything else, Mr. Deputy Speaker, can you tell me where I should submit my question—to Mr. Speaker, the Chairman of Ways and Means or someone else?
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): I confess that I do not know the answer to the hon. Gentleman's question. I can say only that I have no responsibility for determining who shall be responsible for answering specific questions. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will leave it with us and that the hon. Member for Lewisham, East, (Mr. Moynihan), the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy, has taken note and will get a response for the hon. Gentleman. I have no responsibility in such matters.
Mr. Powell: I am grateful for your reply, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but I raised the issue because it is important for those of us on the Back Benches to receive answers to our questions. We do not want Ministers to transfer our questions hither and thither and then find that we do not receive a reply from any Department.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is fair to complain. What the hon. Gentleman says should be noted to ensure that he gets a fair response.
Mr. Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend refers to a point of order for Mr. Speaker or, indeed, for the Procedure Committee. It will be within your recollection that the late John Silkin, passionately against the advice of some of us, agreed to limit the summer and other recess Adjournment debates to three hours. This was sacred private Members' time, yet once more it was being eroded. This afternoon, we have seen the Front Bench—and I must say, that it was both Front Benches—use the occasion for the usual exchange of party politics. The summer Adjournment is an opportunity for Front-Bench Members to raise matters, however controversial.
Mr. Frank Haynes: Back-Bench Members.
Mr. Dalyell: My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) raised the specific issue of unemployment. This is the occasion to raise matters relating to our constituencies, not for the normal party yah-boo. We can raise not only matters relating to our constituencies but urgent matters such as that raised by the hon. Member for Walsall, North (Mr. Winnick) about the Government's reaction—or otherwise—to the behaviour of Mr. Ingham. This is the only opportunity that we shall have to do so, and it is essential to establish what Mr. Ingham and Sir Leon Brittan are doing.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is skilful, but I suspect that he is now trying to raise the issues that he might have raised had he had the opportunity to participate in the Adjournment debate. As to the content and way in which the debate is conducted, the yah-boo political arguments came from all sides of the House.
The extent to which the debate is in order is a matter for the judgment of the Chair. Although much caused me concern, nothing this afternoon caused me to rule a speaker out of order. The duration of the debate is more properly a matter for the Procedure Committee, and I have no doubt that the hon. Gentleman will want to make representations to that Committee. Now, perhaps we might move on.

Coal Industry (Restructuring)
6.37 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Colin Moynihan): I beg to move,
That the draft Coal Industry (Restructuring Grants) Order 1991, which was laid before this House on 15th April, be approved.
The order, which was laid before the House on 15 April, is the fifth annual order under section 3 of the Coal Industry Act 1987. The House may recall that section 3 was amended last year by section 2 of the Coal Industry Act 1990 which extended by one year up to March 1993 the period over which the Government may pay restructuring grant and increased the total limit on grant from £750 million to £1,250 million. The ceiling is further increasable by order up to £1,500 million.
The order has three main purposes.
Mr. Andy Stewart: I am sorry to interrupt so early in the Minister's speech. I have a copy of the schedule; can the Minister explain why heads 3 and 4 have been left out?
Mr. Moynihan: I shall attempt to explain. Head 4 was excluded last year. The House may recall that the Coal Industry Act 1990 provided for the corporation's accumulated group deficit at the end of March 1990 to be covered by a deficiency grant, if my memory serves me correctly. That included an exceptional provision for about £1,500 million for concessionary fuel supplies. That deficiency grant provision extinguished the need for the Government to pay restructuring grant for concessionary fuel liabilities. My hon. Friend also raises the question of the social welfare activities heading in the schedule. British Coal has never claimed under that heading.
The order specifies the restructuring expenditure for which grant may be paid in respect of costs incurred in the present financial year 1991–92. After the explanation that I have just given about the types of expenditure set out in the schedule, I must point out that they are the same as those of last year.
The order establishes the proportion of this year's restructuring costs which will be met by grant. The corporation's financial results are sensitive to the rate of grant contribution towards restructuring costs. Although it remains our policy to transfer the costs of restructuring to the corporation at a rate that reflects its ability to bear them, the market conditions faced by British Coal continue to be difficult and to affect the rate at which the corporation can move towards full commercial viability.
I trust that hon. Members will agree that it is desirable for the corporation to be able to continue its policy of carrying out the necessary restructuring of the industry through a process of voluntary redundancy. That is possible only by offering generous redundancy terms. To safeguard the industry's longer-term financial prospects and not to jeopardise the financial position in the short term, we propose to continue the rate of restructuring grant of 90 per cent., which applied in 1990–91, for the current financial year.
The third main provision, which I touched on earlier, is that paragraph 6 seeks to increase the limit on the aggregate amount of grant that may be paid from £1,250 million to £1·5 billion, as empowered by the 1990 Act. The total restructuring grant payments made by the

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Government between April 1987 and March 1991 have been £1,045 million. The Department's estimated provision for 1991–92 is £300 million. If the full provision is drawn down this year, the total payments will be over £1·3 billion and the ceiling needs to be raised to allow payments above £1,250 million to take place.
6.41 pm
Mr. Kevin Barron: I welcome the opportunity to raise a number of issues of great importance to the British coal industry and its communities. The Minister made claims about the difficult market that British Coal now faces. In our debate last July on the 1990 restructuring grants order, I expressed our concern at the lack of progress on the start of negotiations between the generators and British Coal on the post-1993 contract. I said that the negotiations were vital for planning the future of the coal and electricity industries, and for boosting the morale of everyone in the coal industry.
We are still waiting for progress to be made. In March this year, the new chairman of British Coal said:
"Everybody is aware that the power contracts—their length, tonnage and price involved—are the key to the future of British Coal. Indeed, they will determine whether there is to be a future for coalmining in Britain at all."
Once again this weekend, we have seen negotiation by press release. The Financial Times says that PowerGen will cut its order from British Coal by half to between 10 million tonnes and 15 million tonnes, and that National Power will follow suit.
Real negotiations, not informal talks or threatening rumbles through the media, must begin now. If they do not, we shall have not only a coal industry unprepared for the demands that it will face, but an electricity industry that will rush to fuel its power stations with no thought for the long-term needs of its customers or the nation. In such circumstances, the Government cannot continue to stand aside and allow the continued contraction of the industry, the loss of national resources and the effects of increasing coal imports on our balance of payments. The Government would be better off spending their time bringing about negotiations rather than holding competitions to appoint a financial adviser on the privatisation on the coal industry.
As in previous years, the order contains an element for expected redundancies in the industry this year. Over recent years, the industry has had to react to the shock waves of threatened and real pit closures and job losses. Every miner who picks up his newspapers to read headlines such as "British Coal strategy—a further 16,000 jobs at risk" must wonder how long his job will last. The industry has recently forecast that another 5,600 jobs will be lost in the coming year with the closure of another seven collieries.
Those are not ideal circumstances for urging British miners, as the hon. Member for Wells (Mr. Heathcoat-Amory), the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy did last week, to increase productivity, which he acknowledged to have increased already by more than 90 per cent. over the past six years. It is vital for miners and their families and for the country that a new era of stability should be heralded in the industry as soon as possible.
The order also makes provision for the money for British Coal Enterprise Ltd., for opportunities for retraining and resettlement and for attracting a diversity of
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industries and employment chances. Those are of major importance to the coalfield areas. We have registered our concern——
Mr. Spencer Batiste: The hon. Gentleman referred to the work of British Coal Enterprise Ltd., in helping to retrain people and to mitigate the consequences of the closure of collieries. In the past, the Opposition have been less than complimentary about the work of British Coal Enterprise. Will the hon. Gentleman now take the opportunity to confirm his and his party's full support for its work?
Mr. Barron: If the hon. Gentleman will contain his excitement a little longer, he will find out what I have to say about British Coal Enterprise.
We have in these debates in the past registered our concern that the opportunities offered by BCE are inadequate to meet the needs of the areas in which it operates. The shortcomings of BCE's job and career change scheme, or JACCS, are of particular concern. The main shortcomings are that the training period that can be funded is often insufficient to enable people to get recognised industrial qualifications, that before training is made available they have to show that there is a job to go to at the end of the training period and that the time limit within which funding must be secured is only six months from the date of accepting redundancy. Anyone who has studied long-term unemployment in the coal mining industry before the scale of redundancies of the past five years will know why the JACCS scheme is not meeting the needs in mining areas.
Other problems are the slow and cumbersome process of determining applications, and the fact that anyone who takes short-term work soon after the closure of a colliery can easily find himself ineligible for assistance. The JACCS scheme is out of step with most other organisations in training and economic development which emphasise the enhancement of the individual's skills irrespective of the immediate availability of appropriate employment.
BCE's operations, despite the shortcomings, have been allocated approximately £5 million and British Coal itself another £1 million or so from the European Coal and Steel Community funding under RECHAR. All the evidence points to the funds being used to replace British Government funds instead of supplementing them.
About £3 million is earmarked for JACCS. To demonstrate additionality—a word that crops up regularly when discussing European Community money for mining areas—some or all of the training places funded, the length of training and the unit costs of training should be increased. BCE has yet to explain how it intends to use the new RECHAR money.
Nearly £1 million is allocated to BCE's job shops—the advice centres set up at pits that are closing to counsel redundant mineworkers about job vacancies in their area. Once again, BCE has not been able to show any increase in the scale of job shop services. Is this another case of non-additionality for the Government?
Mr. Batiste: The hon. Gentleman referred to the RECHAR programme. He will be aware of my concern last year, when the map for it was being determined by Commissioner Bruce Millan of the European Community. Parts of my constituency that were facing pit closures were not included in the map. I understand that the Coalfield Communities Campaign and the Labour party have made

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representations to Commissioner Millan. Will the hon. Gentleman support representations made by the Government to include my constituency in the RECHAR map?
Mr. Barron: I shall obviously do that. I shall deal with recent developments relating to the RECHAR programme and say what we expect of the Government. At this stage, I am more concerned about the money that comes through the RECHAR programme directly to the Department of Energy, and about what the Department does with it. Notwithstanding the money that I have just mentioned, nearly £1 million is allocated for subsidising BCE's operating losses.
The subsidy is to be calculated in proportion to the ratio of former mineworkers to all jobs in BCE-supported businesses and managed workshops. As BCE is supporting these jobs anyway, it is hard to see that the subsidy is anything other than a straight substitution of EC funds for United Kingdom Government funds.
British Coal is destined to receive some RECHAR funds, partly for its early retirement scheme for non-industrial employees and partly for its skill scope scheme, which gives employees an opportunity to take up specific training packages to enhance their skills. Unless British Coal can demonstrate that the £300,000 that it is to receive from RECHAR will represent additional training for its employees, we can only assume that it is another example of the substitution of the source of the funds.
Mr. Allen McKay: My latest information on RECHAR is that Commissioner Millan will not let the money come into this country unless the Government give assurances that it will be additional money and will not go into the Treasury by the back door.
Mr. Barron: That is right. Bruce Millan knows exactly what has been going on for a long time regarding European Commission grants for coal-mining areas. On this occasion, he will not let the Treasury get away with it. He has my full support on that, and the support of the Coalfield Communities Campaign and many local authorities.
We need to ensure that assistance is getting to the places where it is most needed, and questions need to be answered. The Government have totally mismanaged the RECHAR programme. First, they have refused to pass on in full the EC aid to coalfield local authorities in Britain—over £100 million. I agree with the hon. Member for Elmet (Mr. Batiste) that any areas in his constituency that are losing coal-mining jobs should be covered by the RECHAR programme. We should ensure that the Treasury does not hold that money once it has been allotted.
Mr. Batiste: The hon. Gentleman's comment does not sit well with the comment that he made a few moments ago. He has said that he fully supports Commissioner Millan's decision to withhold money from the United Kingdom.
Mr. Barron: If the hon. Gentleman wishes to represent the mineworkers in his constituency—as does my friend Colin Burgon, whose name the hon. Gentleman has heard before—he should not be a stooge for the Treasury, which
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has withheld £100 million from coal-mining areas. Labour Members will not do that, and the hon. Gentleman should think again.
Mr. Peter Hardy: The hon. Member for Elmet (Mr. Batiste) challenged my hon. Friend, who responded properly. My agent, Mr. Richard Russell, has been assisted by British Coal Enterprise Ltd. Some of us appreciate the work done on the ground, but do not necessarily relate that to the sort of people with whom the hon. Gentleman associates.
We responded to the hon. Gentleman's challenge; now would he care to respond to that offered by my hon. Friend? Will he join us, and make it clear to the Government that people in ex-coalmining areas bitterly resent attempts by the Treasury, and other Departments, to stop Brussels sending money to help us—or to allow any money sent to us to assist the Treasury to extricate itself from the mess that it has got into?
Mr. Barron: Yes, that is what we should ensure. The Treasury's intention to sink the money into its coffers has forced the European Community to withhold the cash, delaying or stifling completely the grants and cheap loans that would be of such benefit to mining areas.
It now appears that the money designated to help redundant mineworkers acquire new skills, and consequently new employment prospects, is not going to British Coal and British Coal Enterprise as additional funds, as was intended by the Commission, but is being substituted for British Government funding. Can the Minister demonstrate the additional character of the funding provided to British Coal and British Coal Enterprise Ltd. under the RECHAR programme? If not, only one conclusion can be drawn; not content with trying to get their hands on the money that should be going to coalfield local authorities, the Government are ripping off redundant mineworkers.
Mr. George J. Buckley: My hon. Friend makes a significant point about the Treasury creaming off money from the EC. I understand that, if a local authority receives this money, it will be taken into account when the Government decide whether the authority should be poll tax-capped. It is a double indemnity against the Government's putting money into mining communities.
Mr. Barron: My hon. Friend makes a good point. If the Government do not change their attitude, the money will not come into the country to go into the Treasury's coffers. I support the Commission's stand on that. Conservative Members who say that they represent coal-mining areas should have the courage to tell Treasury Ministers that it is wrong to withhold help to coal-mining areas that have suffered job losses in the past five years under the Tory Government.
Mr. Andy Stewart: The Treasury and the Department of the Environment calculate the additionality money on the same basis as other European countries. The local authority grants have been top-sliced by an additionality of £46 million. A large slice of that will come to my constituency through my local authority, yet Opposition Members would deny my constituents some of that £46 million.
Mr. Barron: The only people who are denying the hon. Member's constituents such help are the Government he

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supports. A few months ago, I went with representatives of my local authority to the Department of the Environment to discuss funding from the European Commission and additionality. The Minister said that he fully supported our view that money should not be withheld by central Government; that money should be provided in addition to the moneys paid from the Exchequer. The only people who will not change their minds are those at the nasty Treasury.
The hon. Members for Elmet (Mr. Batiste) and for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) may have to face the consequences of the Government's actions in the next few weeks or months. They now want to move the responsibility from the Treasury to Brussels.
Mr. Batiste rose——
Mr. Andy Stewart rose——
Mr. Barron: I shall not give way again.
The debate gives us an opportunity to refer to some crucial and important matters concerning the coal industry. Restructuring grants have been the order of the day since 1987—£1,500 million for restructuring the coal industry. Nothing has been said about the long-term consequences for the industry and the country.
During Question Time today, my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) asked the Minister about a ballot within the industry on its future. The Minister said that we would have such a ballot shortly: the next general election. That may solve many of these problems. We cannot wait for that ballot to take place.
6.58 pm
Mr. Andy Stewart: The order shows yet again our Government's continuing support for the coal industry. Since 1975 almost £7 billion of new investment has been committed. The significance of that——
It being Seven o'clock, and there being private business set down by direction of the CHAIRMAN OF WAYS AND MEANS under Standing Order No. 16 (Time for taking private business), further proceeding stood postponed.

East Coast Main Line (Safety) Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
Mr. Bob Cryer: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Standing Order No. 27(1)(a) in the Standing Orders dealing with private business lists the criteria for the depositing of maps and plans for works to be carried out under a private Bill. The Bill before us does not list any works to be carried out, but a series of works is implicit in it. Ten level crossings are all authorised by previous Acts, and Standing Order No. 27 requires plans to be submitted where works to be carried out have been so authorised.
The promoters' statement makes it clear that the board intends to carry out works. For a start, to close up a foot crossing requires some alteration to the authority given by previous Acts for public access. Even a fence or the securing of a gate constitutes a work. More than that, paragraph 5 of the promoters' statement makes it clear that the board is discussing or endeavouring to discuss with the highway authority for each crossing—and 10 are listed—the possibility of diversionary or alternative routes for the ways in question. That could mean the building of a bridge which would involve considerable works; some of them would be on land owned by the board.
It seems that the Bill does not conform with Standing Order No. 27, because, although the Bill does not specifically list the works, the fact that it lists crossings that are proposed to be stopped up implies the carrying out of works, and therefore some plans and maps should have been deposited. I am sorry to say that no such plans or maps have been deposited, because British Rail has chosen to take a narrow view of a diversion which implies the carrying out in some places of extensive works.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): I have instigated inquiries into the matter, and I am assured that the examiner of petitions has examined the Bill and reported that Standing Orders have been complied with.
Mr. Martin Redmond: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The House will recall that, some time ago, a Bill that had gone through all its stages here went to the other place, where it was found to be defective and amended. The Clerks are excellent, but they are human and sometimes make errors of judgment, as they erred in a technical part of that Bill. Will you consider a short adjournment, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to enable you and your officers to examine the matter in depth to make sure that no error of judgment has been made in the Private Bill Office?
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Further to that point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You have told my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) that the examiners looked at the point that he raised. Will you confirm that they did examine that point, rather than simply satisfying themselves that, in their view, the procedures were being carried out? My hon. Friend made an extremely valid point. Did the examiners determine whether plans and maps should have been submitted with the Bill?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The House will have noticed that, during the points of order, I have been seeking advice. I should be unwise if I did not fully accept, and show full

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confidence in those who have assured me, that there is nothing in the Bill that does not comply with the requirements of the Standing Orders.
Mr. A. J. Beith: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am bothered by the fact that the short title of the Bill refers to the stopping up of certain level crossings on the east coast mainline railway and contains no general additional item about related matters or other purposes. Part II of the schedule refers to the stopping up of a level crossing
"whereby the same footpath is crossed by the Leamside Branch railway."
How can that be proper when the Bill's title refers specifically and exclusively to the east coast main line railway?
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The technical point on which the hon. Gentleman seeks assistance is probably a matter for the debate. I assure him and the House that the examiners have been through the Bill and are satisfied that it complies with the requirements of Standing Orders.
7.6 pm
Mr. Gary Waller: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The tragic accidents in recent years at Clapham, Purley and Lockington have helped to heighten public interest in and the critical importance of rail safety. Our railways are extremely safe and have a good record. The challenge to British Rail and to other rail operators is to continue to build on that hitherto excellent safety record and to meet the new challenges presented by a 21st-century rail system. High-speed lines on which trains will travel at up to 125 mph with projected speeds of 140 mph are one such challenge.
British Rail is certainly not resting on its laurels, and positive action is being taken to promote safety. For example, new signalling systems and automatic train protection are two innovations being developed by British Rail in tandem with its new high-speed route proposals to help build a better, safer railway.
The tragic accident at Carr lane, Doncaster, which I do not think is in your constituency, Mr. Deputy Speaker, in which a young woman and two children of four and seven were killed on a crossing which is also a footpath and a bridleway, revealed the need to examine the risks of open public access to high-speed lines. People may be surprised to learn, as I was, that there are well over 100 pedestrian level crossings on the east coast main line.
British Rail firmly believes that it must do everything feasible to improve safety for customers, staff and the public in general. Some people have said that because pedestrians do not endanger trains and their passengers, they should be allowed to take their own risks. The public also count. British Rail is concerned about the safety of people, particularly children, who may be on the line for one reason or another.
Mr. Cryer: When British Rail management were considering all the safety aspects was it moved to consider, for example, providing warning bells activated by an approaching train or warning lights at foot crossings? Or did the high-quality decision makers of British Rail come to the startling conclusion that the only way in which they
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could tackle the right of people to gain access to the other side of the line—a right enshrined in the original legislation granting authorisation for the railways—was to stop up the whole thing?
Mr. Waller: I note the hon. Gentleman's important point about warning lights, but I hope that he will forgive me if I deal with it later.
Mr. Redmond: The hon. Gentleman has referred to British Rail's passion for safety, and he said that it would bend over backwards to ensure that safety was paramount. That is not the picture of British Rail that I and many other people get. If it is so concerned about safety, why has it delayed dealing with the problem of carriage doors that open, causing people to fall out? That is one example of British Rail's lack of concern about the safety of passengers on its trains. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will slightly temper his comments about British Rail's concern for safety.
Mr. Waller: I am sure that you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would have little patience, and rightly so, if I dealt with the issue of carriage doors now. This Bill has quite different objectives. I accept that that problem is important, but it is being dealt with elsewhere.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett rose——
Mr. Waller: I shall give way again, but I hope that hon. Members will accept that I must then get on with my speech.
Mr. Bennett: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can explain why high-speed trains have been running on the east coast line for the past 10 years. Until the accident on that line, British Rail had done nothing to make such crossings safer.
Mr. Waller: That is an inaccurate statement. I have visited a number of crossings during my work on the Bill, and I have seen some of the measures taken by British Rail. In the past, it has attempted to use existing legislation to achieve the objectives of the Bill, but without success. It is that failure which promoted the introduction of the Bill.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Can the hon. Gentleman give me one example to illustrate his claim? I do not believe that there is a single bit of evidence to prove that British Rail has done anything in the past 10 years to close or divert any of the footpaths.
Mr. Waller: That is untrue.
Mr. Bennett: Give me one example.
Mr. Waller: British Rail has sought to use section 119 of the Highways Act 1980 to close or divert crossings, but it has been held——
Mr. Bennett: Where?
Mr. Waller: British Rail attempted to do so at a crossing in Hertfordshire, but it was held that, because section 119 did not cover safety specifically, British Rail was exceeding its powers by seeking to close or divert a crossing. The Ramblers Association has suggested that British Rail is going to unnecessary lengths by using the private Bill procedure to change the law when it could use the existing statute. That is untrue. If that were possible British Rail would have adopted that course. It has

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attempted to use existing law, but, because the law does not require that safety factors should be taken into account, that attempt was unsuccessful.
The former chairman of British Rail, Sir Robert Reid, publicly claimed that "no accident is acceptable". British Rail's safety policy document also states that the board is aiming for a reduction in the number of accidents to zero. I am sure that we all applaud that objective. In that context, British Rail believes that many of the 146 crossings on the east coast main line are incompatible with train speeds of 125 mph or more.
For the purposes of the Bill, British Rail has sought to close 10 crossings only—those that are lightly used or offer the public using such crossings a poor sighting of oncoming trains. Those 10 crossings may represent a small proportion of the total, but their closure represents an important step in improving safety and has the major benefit of reducing the stress of drivers who travel the route each day.
Mr. Redmond: The Bill deals with 10 crossings, but there are many more than that on the line. If this compassionate British Rail is so concerned about safety, why have we not got a Bill that seeks to block up the lot of them? I do not believe that British Rail is being consistent. Why has it chosen to close 10 crossings? Why not more?
Mr. Waller: The hon. Gentleman's argument is a curious one. If the Bill had incorporated all the crossings on the line, he would probably complain that we were using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The board believes that the Bill is an important step towards achieving greater safety. British Rail has singled out those crossings for which the case for closure is strong, either because they are relatively infrequently used or because there are specific dangers—ones that I hope even the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) would recognise were he to travel in the cab of a class 91 locomotive.
When British Rail asked me to speak on its behalf when the Bill reached the House, I asked whether it would be possible for me to travel in the cab of a train on the east coast main line. I did so a few weeks ago. It was a revelation to me just how busy a driver is on such a train for the entire journey. I was also struck by the fact that, if a pedestrian was sighted on the side of the track, the train reached that pedestrian in no time at all. Drivers have extremely nerve-wracking moments every day because they are not absolutely certain of the intentions of pedestrians at the side of the track. It is important to note that ASLEF and the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union are sympathetic to the Bill's objectives.
It takes one and a quarter miles to stop a train when it is travelling at full speed. Bearing in mind the curves in the track as it approaches some crossings, a driver may have just a few hundred yards in which to stop before a person on the line is reached.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: If this Bill is passed, will it be British Rail's intention to introduce a further Bill to work slowly through all the 146 crossings on the east coast main line? Does it intend stop with just 10?
Mr. Waller: It is fair to say that British Rail wants to see the House's response to this Bill. It believes that it is an important step to achieving greater safety. I have already said that it is British Rail's intention to eliminate
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pedestrian level crossings on high-speed lines. That does not mean that all pedestrian crossings on British Rail's network should be eliminated. Trains travelling at 70 mph are common on other lines, and British Rail has no objection to the continuation of pedestrian crossings on such lines. We are talking about high-speed lines.
Whether further legislative measures have to be taken may depend on any changes that are made by Parliament to the private Bill procedure. However, an illustration of the responsible attitude adopted by British Rail is that it is not prepared to wait for such changes to take place at an unknown date in the future. It is anxious to get on with the job as soon as possible. That is why it is taking this step.
It has been suggested that British Rail is oblivious to the concerns of the users of pedestrian crossings. The reality, I suggest, is far from that. British Rail is currently working with the highways authorities responsible for the 10 locations, where they are willing to co-operate, to try to find suitable diversions for users, where there is evidence of use. Some of these crossings appear to be little used. Indeed, one or two of them appear not to be used at all. It is regrettable that some people object to closure on principle without taking into account the fact that some of these crossings are generally not used at all.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: Will the hon. Gentleman give way on that point?
Mr. Waller: I shall give way in a moment.
British Rail is confident that in nine out of 10 cases there is a reasonable alternative. I shall give way once more to the hon. Gentleman. I am sure, however, that if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he will have the opportunity to make his own speech. I hope that he will restrain himself now, because, with the leave of the House, I hope to be able to respond to some of the points that are raised in the debate.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: If the hon. Gentleman could have answered the points that we put to him, he might have curtailed the debate. If he can establish that people do not use these paths, there are perfectly good procedures under the Highways Act. There is no problem about closing paths if they are not used. It puzzles me, therefore, that British Rail should use this massive parliamentary procedure when it is unnecessary if no one is using the paths. Can the hon. Gentleman therefore tell us which paths are not being used and why British Rail did not ask for their closure on that basis?
Mr. Waller: Under the Highways Act, it is normally a requirement that the highways authority should make the application for closure. Although British Rail has endeavoured to persuade some authorities to move in the direction of either closure or diversion, the difficulties implicit in the relevant sections of the Act have discouraged those authorities from taking such steps. Where there have been any objections, the authorities have generally said that they do not see it as their responsibility to act—that, essentially, the responsibility lies with British Rail. I believe that, in concert with the changes that are to be made to the private Bill procedure, the Highways Act will be altered both to allow British Rail to make applications and to allow safety factors to be taken into account. At present, I am afraid that that is not permitted.
As for the 10 crossings, I have not the slightest doubt that, if the Bill goes into Committee, each of them will be

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dealt with in the minutest detail and that the petitioners against the Bill will produce witnesses to speak about their personal knowledge of usage and of the need for each crossing. I suggest, therefore, that this is not the time to go into detail about the crossings. That can be much better dealt with in Committee.
Mr. Redmond: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for the number of times that the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) has given way. However, hon. Members who are here for the debate have a right to be given the details of the Bill. It is not good enough for the hon. Gentleman to say that some Committee elsewhere will go into the Bill in depth and minute detail. Is it not right and proper for the hon. Gentleman to give way if hon. Members wish to raise points now in order to seek clarification of the Bill? Is not that the sensible way forward? I ask for your guidance.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: The hon. Gentleman is perfectly aware of the convention regarding interventions during speeches: it is entirely a matter for the hon. Member who has the Floor. In any case, the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) has not yet completed his speech. He still has things to say to us. He has already offered to seek the permission of the House to reply to the debate, if that becomes necessary. I understand that both the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues are waiting for an opportunity to contribute to the debate. On that basis, perhaps we ought to get on.
Mr. Cryer: On a different point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I have been to the Private Bill Office, as you know, to look for a further deposit of information by British Rail. Can you confirm that the only information British Rail has provided is through the promoters—in the seventh paragraph of a piece of photocopied paper running to about 150 words? So far as I know, no other printed information has been provided by British Rail. I shall be grateful if you will confirm that.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Over a long period I have learnt that my advisers are very reliable and very competent in their professional duties. I have told the House twice already, and I say it for the third time, that I was assured by them that the Bill satisfies all our Standing Order requirements.
Mr. Waller: If the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) chooses to deal with one or more of the individual crossings in depth, that is his right. I shall seek, so far as I am able, to allay his concern. However, I say again that I think that the private Bill procedure provides an opportunity in Committee for these matters to be dealt with in a great deal more detail than can be done on the Floor of the House. If hon. Members are concerned about particular crossings—I recognise that, with some justification, they may have such concerns—I hope that their view would be that the Bill should be allowed a Second Reading so that it exists in principle. If, however, they wish to argue that some of those crossings should be removed from the Bill, in due course the House may decide to move in that direction.
Concern has been expressed tonight that the use of parliamentary powers to close footpath crossings is in some way unusual and undemocratic. I readily accept that
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the process that we are undertaking is not the ideal solution. The fact that the Government are seeking to amend the Highways Act's references to level crossings reflects that fact. However, hon. Members must take into account the fact that, under the Highways Act 1980, a level crossing may be closed by a local authority order where a more convenient route exists. Regrettably, many local authorities do not regard this as one of their priorities. I suppose that some hon. Members may say that they have many other priorities and limited resources to deal with those priorities. Therefore, closure on the grounds of safety is not provided for, whatever the Ramblers Association may think. Above all, it is for reasons of safety that British Rail is promoting the Bill. Safety appears in its short title. There is no reason to promote the Bill other than on the ground of safety.
I know that many hon. Members agree with the necessity to protect the public, but they would like to see other measures—whether they be footbridges, underpasses or warning lights at crossings—to allow the exact footpath route to be maintained. British Rail would always consider such innovations, where appropriate, but in almost every example in the Bill, the crossings have such a small amount of use that such a formidable investment—we are talking about £200,000 for a footbridge and double that for a subway—cannot be justified. It would be possible to purchase better safety improvements for that money than by providing bridges or subways that inevitably would be little used.
The hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) referred to warning lights. There are great difficulties with respect to such lights. It has been argued that there is a deterioration in safety if warning lights are used on pedestrian crossings. The time that different kinds of trains take to travel certain distances varies enormously. The five lines at the Carr lane crossing at Doncaster are used by trains which travel at very different speeds. Pedestrians may have seen goods trains passing regularly on the lines. Those pedestrians may not anticipate, when a light is flashing, that an express train travelling at 125 mph is on the line. Pedestrians have often tried to cross lines when lights have begun to flash. At the very least, it would be necessary to incorporate costly equipment that took into account the speed of the train when the lights started to flash. Even then, there would be difficulties and we could argue for some time whether we were building in greater or less safety.
Mr. Cryer: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Surely BR could use modern techniques to provide that information. As the hon. Gentleman referred to cost, will he give us some idea of the cost of installing flashing lights at the most used crossings listed in the Bill? I suspect that the cost would not be much greater than the cost of promoting this private Bill. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the promotion of private Bills is very expensive.
Mr. Waller: I am afraid that I cannot give the hon. Gentleman a reliable figure about the cost of lights. I can only say that I am sure that we are talking in terms of five figures for some of the most sophisticated lighting systems that he might like to see. The costs cannot be minimised. As I have already said, we could argue whether we would get value for money in terms of greater safety, and no doubt the Committee will address that subject. To some

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extent, subjective judgments must prevail and perhaps other hon. Members may want to raise the issue later. I shall be happy to respond.
Where crossings are closed, BR is anxious to pay for necessary improvements to minimise the risk of trespass. There has been some concern about the fact that in one or two cases the stamps of footpaths may remain and people may be encouraged to trespass. British Rail is anxious to prevent that and to talk to local authorities about ways to avoid such occurrences. British Rail will also invest in signing and fencing where diversions have taken place and in some cases it will pay to improve adjacent level crossings.
In the great majority of cases, we are talking about diversions of a few hundred metres at most. In many cases, there are footpaths not far away which would enable the line to be crossed safely via a bridge or subway. With regard to Carr lane in Doncaster, British Rail is anxious to talk to the local authority about a diversion that would provide for an alternative recreational footpath which did not necessitate the crossing of the line. I am sorry to say that, as yet, I understand that Doncaster district council has not been willing to negotiate with BR about that.
Mr. Redmond: May I assure the hon. Gentleman that, as you well know, Mr. Deputy Speaker, Doncaster district council is a most reasonable authority and it will, of course, give due consideration to any proposals put forward by BR. However, it will not sell short the residents it represents. The hon. Gentleman is completely wrong to say that Doncaster will not discuss meaningfully any solutions to the problem.
Mr. Waller: I will seek advice, but as I understand it Doncaster district council has not responded favourably to an invitation from BR to discuss an alternative recreational footpath that does not require a level crossing of the line.
Some people would like to picture the Bill as a struggle for and against the freedom of individuals to follow ancient rights of way. The Bill is not about that. I have often spoken in the House in favour of libertarian arguments and I made my maiden speech on such an issue. I am a strong supporter of the Ramblers Association and I enjoy recreational walking. Other things being equal, I would certainly resist the closure of a footpath for anything other than a very important safety reason.
British Rail is not trying to create a precedent; nor is it seeking carte blanche to close every crossing in the country. We are talking essentially about high-speed lines. British Rail is trying to take a meaningful step towards improving public safety on and around high speed rail lines and to prevent a repetition of the tragedy at Carr lane. I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading and that the concerns that have reasonably been expressed can be examined in more detail in Committee.
7.35 pm
Mr. Martin Redmond: We should not give the Bill a Second Reading this evening. However, first of all, we should offer sympathy to the families of the young lady and the two children who were killed on the crossing at Can lane. No matter what we do, we cannot bring those people back to life. There are lessons to be learned from the tragedy, but regrettably BR always seeks to redress problems after the event and not before.
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It is no secret that crossings throughout the country have been a source of embarrassment to British Rail for some years, but BR appears to have taken no action. The young lady and the two children who were killed on that crossing were your constituents, Mr. Deputy Speaker, but the crossing is in my constituency. The young lady and the two children were killed as they crossed the line to visit Potteric Carr, a well-known nature reserve which has been a source of enjoyment for many people in Doncaster and the surrounding area. That nature reserve is well managed, well used and much appreciated by the public. The crossing's closure will end a source of enjoyment for people who live on the east side of the crossing.
There is a large housing development on the east side of the railway, and there are obviously lots of children as well as adults on that new housing estate. It should therefore be appropriate for BR to ensure that the crossing is safe for the general public to use to cross from the east side of the line to the west side to enjoy Potteric Carr.
Having read British Rail's proposals, the House should consider fetching British Rail representatives—Bob Reid in particular—to the Bar of the House and finding them guilty of bringing the House into disrepute. According to documentation in support of the Bill, there does not appear to be a problem, because a number of authorities have expressed their willingness to adopt British Rail's proposals. British Rail has said that Doncaster is quite willing to discuss the matter and find a solution. If British Rail is not bloody-minded, discussions can take place and agreement can be reached.
Why is British Rail wasting the time of the House and wasting public money? After all, the public provide British Rail with the money to pay the promoters fat fees to pilot the Bill through the House. That is why British Rail should be charged with bringing the House into disrepute.
Mr. Cryer: In view of British Rail's new-found concern with safety after the Clapham junction accident, one wonders why it did not take into account the provision of bridges at level crossings, such as the one that provides access to Potteric Carr, when it sought investment for the electrification of the line. If, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) suggested, it is a bridleway and therefore exists for greater usage than a footpath, that should have been taken into account in estimating the cost of the construction of an appropriate bridge. British Rail surely must have known—it was not a secret—that, after electrification, trains would be travelling at 125 mph or faster.
Mr. Redmond: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that point. One can sum it up—British Rail does not give a damn about the general public's attitude. It is quite willing to forgo anything to save money.
Mr. Peter Snape: I should hate my hon. Friend to think that I shall stand here tonight as a defender of British Rail and all its works—I have fallen out with British Rail probably more than he has over the years. However, my hon. Friend will recollect that the investment case for the east coast main line electrification spent considerable time on Tory Ministers' desks. The case was gone through with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. My hon. Friend will know that, when it was approved, like other investment schemes it had to generate a 7 per cent. return—it is now 8 per cent.—on the money invested. Given the draconian rules that the Government themselves

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have laid down, to add another £0·25 million to provide a bridleway over the five newly electrified tracks in my hon. Friend's constituency may have led to civil servants either delaying approval even longer or rejecting the scheme altogether.
Mr. Redmond: I am most grateful for that enlightenment. Regrettably, it does not change my attitude to British Rail. I accept that the Government have placed many restrictions on British Rail. However, if they were sufficient men, British Rail executives could have said to the Government, "We require X amount to cover not only the electrification but the additional safety measures." The Government continue to say that safety is paramount and that money is no object.
If the board members of British Rail had said, "We intend to resign to highlight the problem of safety and Government money," they might have received that extra money. I am certain that the Government would not have wanted to be exposed for their appalling track record in dishing out money and, in effect, saying, "Do as we say, not as we do." The Government appear not to react until there is a disaster and lives are lost. We then see crocodile tears and some poor track signalman being blamed for failing to carry out his job, when the equipment may leave a lot to be desired.
Mr. Cryer: I entirely agree with the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) that the responsibility rests heavily on the Government's shoulders in controlling investment by British Rail so rigidly and tightly, to the detriment of the travelling public. Does my hon. Friend agree that, if an amount had been included for safety features, British Rail management would have had an important and bold advantage in propaganda terms if the Government had said, "That is a superfluous luxury; we are not prepared to invest in safety"? One of the difficulties is that BR top management always seems a little too supinely to accept the dictates of the Government.
Mr. Redmond: My hon. Friend makes his point well. Regrettably, British Rail management will not stand up and be counted until an accident occurs. British Rail then blames all and sundry bar its own neglect. The Government would not be inclined to refuse to give British Rail money for safety improvements; they would not take that risk. British Rail is refusing to demand money to guarantee the safety not only of passengers and crews but of people who need to cross railways for a variety of reasons, as they have done over the centuries.
I entirely accept what was said about having more knowledge about British Rail and an understanding of finances. However, I am still entitled to my opinion that British Rail does not appear to seek to avoid accidents, because it will not demand money to guarantee safe public transport until after an accident such as the one at Carr. It has come up with a blanket proposal not to consider what the public require but deliberately to say, "We are not interested in a solution." If it was interested in a solution, it would allow ample time for discussions and would be prepared to ensure that money was spent to continue access to the other side of the railway. It appears that it is not interested in that, and I cannot understand why.
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Everyone is aware of the environment and green issues. Surely children on the east side of the line can learn better to appreciate the environment if they go to a nature reserve such as Potteric Carr on the other side of the line. Children can develop an appreciation of nature and the wilderness, which will stay with them throughout their lives.
Mr. George J. Buckley: My hon. Friend made a point about the Government and British Rail seeking to rectify safety aspects after a tragedy. Peculiarly, in this case British Rail has taken a different tack. In respect of Clapham junction and King's Cross, the relevant Minister said, "We have a bottomless purse for safety." In this case, it is promoting a private Bill to minimise the cost of protecting the general public from high-speed trains.
Why, in this case, are British Rail and the Government not taking the line that there is no limitation on expenditure on safety? Why the change? I suggest that the change is that British Rail is not too worried about protecting the general public. It may rightly be more worried about protecting its passengers. Only when the Minister of State, Department of Transport goes to the scene of a disaster, with all the attendant publicity, are millions of pounds spent on rectifying what ought to have been right in the first place.
Mr. Redmond: I know that the Minister was listening intently to what my hon. Friend said. I feel sure that, when he tells us the Government's stance on the Bill, he will give in great detail the clarification that my hon. Friend wants. I have every confidence, in view of the Government's track record, that my hon. Friend will receive no clarification, but nevertheless it is better to ask.
British Rail appears to be seeking to mislead the House. The hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) said that he had had the opportunity to travel on one of the high-speed trains. He forgot to mention, or I did not hear, what section of the line he had travelled on. He may have travelled from Leeds to King's Cross to get the whole picture. All that he needs to do is to nod his head. Would he like to say——
Mr. Peter Bottomley: Get on with it.
Mr. Redmond: If the hon. Gentleman wishes to intervene, I am happy to give way.
Mr. Bottomley: I was hoping to make a speech, but at this rate there may not be time.
Mr. Redmond: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being in the House, but I am seeking to make my objections, as I think that they ought to be made, although that may not please the hon. Gentleman. He should have persuaded his Government to cough up some money in the past. The hon. Gentleman is a previous Transport Minister. It is no wonder that he is feeling irritable about the criticism of Government spending.
Mr. Bottomley: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman invited me to say what I wanted to say, which was that I hoped to make a speech. The only reason why I was muttering, perhaps more loudly that I should have been, was that the hon. Gentleman seemed to be inviting other hon. Members to intervene in his speech. Would it not be a good idea if he returned to his point, which may be a fair one, and then allowed others to speak?
Mr. Redmond: It pleases me no end that the hon. Gentleman is feeling irritable.
The hon. Member for Keighley said that he had had the opportunity to ride with the driver on a high-speed train. It could have been for a short or a long distance. The more experience one has as a passenger in the cab of a 125 train, the better one can judge. The hon. Gentleman said that he had driven once in the cab. Many drivers do the journey from Doncaster to King's Cross in one hour 40 minutes. There is every possibility that that time will be reduced to one hour 30 minutes. The trains will be travelling faster, so there is more need for safety.
I take second place to no one in the Chamber on safety. If anyone wants to check my track record, I sat on the Doncaster coal board area safety committee. When I was on the committee, the number of accidents declined year in and year out. I was proud of that track record. I am interested in safety, and I want safety for not only the cab drivers and passengers but the people who need to cross the lines. It appears that the penny-pinching attitude of British Rail will deprive many of your constituents, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and certainly many of my constituents, of access to Potteric Carr.
I hope that, even at this late stage, the hon. Member for Keighley will seek leave to withdraw the Bill, to enable us to have fruitful discussions and arrive at a sensible solution. British Rail's proposals are not sensible.
Mr. Waller: The hon. Gentleman asked me a direct question about the routes on which I travelled. I travelled from London to Doncaster and visited the site of the crossing at Cantley where the lady and two children were killed. There is no doubt that the drivers in the cab, who have great experience, would be pleased to see the measures in the Bill enacted.
As the hon. Gentleman asked me a question, perhaps I could put one to him. Is he aware of the short time that is available to a driver travelling at 125 mph before the train reaches the Carr lane crossing in his constituency? If he is not aware, perhaps I could enlighten him when I respond to the debate, if I am able to do so.
Mr. Redmond: I do not know the exact time, but we are talking about seconds, not minutes.
Mr. Waller: It is about six or seven seconds.
Mr. Redmond: I accept that the driver has little opportunity to brake in time to avoid anyone on the lines. It is for that reason that I would support any sensible measures that would bring about a safety improvement at that crossing.
Mr. Don Dixon: Does my hon. Friend accept that the essence of the Bill, according to the sponsor and to British Rail, is safety aspects of British Rail's operations on the east coast line? May I give my hon. Friend an example from my constituency? An accident took place some considerable time ago—by which I mean about 15 months ago. A young girl, one of my constituents, was killed on a level crossing on the Newcastle-Sunderland line at Newton Garths.
I wrote to the Secretary of State for Transport and I contacted British Rail and the local authority. Everyone, including the residents who live adjacent to the crossing, wants the crossing to be closed. British Rail could close
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that crossing without coming to the House with a private Bill. It could close it tomorrow if it wanted to do so. All that I am getting from British Rail is procrastination.
I want to avoid another accident at Newton Garths level crossing. Children cross the line to go from Biddick hall estate to Boldon comprehensive school. In the not-too-distant future, there could be another fatal accident. In the meantime, British Rail is doing nothing. It cannot be very worried about safety.
Mr. Redmond: Could my hon. Friend clarify which crossing in the Bill he is referring to?
Mr. Dixon: My point is that the Bill deals with 10 crossings on the high-speed line. British Rail is introducing a Bill under the private procedure to close 10 crossings. I am giving my hon. Friend an instance of where British Rail could close a crossing with the support of the residents and the local authority, without the need to introduce a private Bill. If it is worried about safety, British Rail could close the crossing tomorrow.
Mr. Redmond: My hon. Friend has helped to clarify the point that I made earlier. British Rail is not consistent on safety aspects. It is an absolute scandal. The crossing to which my hon. Friend refers is still there, apparently in spite of everyone agreeing that it should be closed.
The hon. Member for Keighley said that British Rail already had sufficient power to close a crossing. Obviously, it means holding consultations and, again, British Rail appears not to be interested in discussing the best ways of finding a solution. Instead, it is using the draconian measure of this private Bill as a sledgehammer to ensure that it gets its way and to hell with anything else.
Mr. Cryer: Does my hon. Friend agree that, for the crossing in his constituency which concerns him and which gives access to Potteric Carr, it is within the jurisdiction of British Rail to put a permanent speed limit on the section to reduce any possible hazard? It may add on an extra minute's journey time, but as most trains wait at stations because they move so briskly between stations, it would not increase the overall journey time. If there is anxiety, a permanent way speed restriction could operate. That would demonstrate British Rail's concern about safety and underpin this application to the House.
Mr. Redmond: My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. Last night, I got on a train at Doncaster which was stuck in the station for 15 minutes waiting to leave. Regrettably, it did not leave until it had stood for 16 minutes waiting for an Edinburgh train which for some reason had been delayed up north. If British Rail is so concerned about safety, to shut it down altogether is the ultimate safety measure, but that is not a practicable solution. The solution could be backed up by the expenditure of a little money.
While we are talking about safety and avoiding the cul-de-sacs that the letter from the promoters of the Bill mentions, it occurs to me that I do not know how we would stop kids crossing the line. As a little boy, I used to cross from our village to the other side of the line because there was more of an adventure playground on the other side. The same is probably true in this case. Most kids are averse to bath water, but they are certainly not averse to playing in water for recreational purposes. I can visualise a whole host of children trying to cross the line, certainly not accompanied by an adult because an adult would not

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allow a trespass. Given our high-speed trains and the fact that they will get speedier in future, there is a great danger to children.
We spend millions of pounds promoting pelican crossings. Children are advised to go to a pelican crossing, press the button and wait for the lights to change before crossing the road. Ladies assist children to cross roads. From nursery school onwards, children are taught to go to the appropriate crossing point. If British Rail is seriously interested in safety, it would be beneficial to provide some sort of crossing, with the necessary lights and all the signal equipment alongside the line.
I certainly do not accept British Rail's figure of £25,000 for the installation of a lights warning system. I do not know what price British Rail puts on the life of a child or an adult, but human life is priceless. In future, there will certainly be accidents at this spot unless a sensible safety measure is taken.
It is in the hands of British Rail to ensure that there is a crossing that children can use safely. As I have said, when I was a youngster wanting to cross the line, although we knew that we were trespassing on British Rail land, first we made sure that the village constable was nowhere in sight and then that there were no trains on the line. In those days, the highest speed of steam engines was about 90 mph, so we had ample time to scamper across and get up to those things which lads get up to. That is bound to take place today.
I am asking British Rail to ensure that there is a suitable crossing for my constituents and, possibly, for those of the hon. Member for Keighley. He said that he had a loose association with the Ramblers Association. Obviously, many of his constituents also enjoy walks in the country and the environment of a nature reserve. It would be quite consistent for the two to marry, but they can do so only if costs are thrown out of the window. Obviously, £20,000 would provide an adequate crossing.
The alternatives that are cited include a conventional footpath costing £175,000, one suitable for cycles, prams and wheelchairs costing £220,000, or tunnels through an embankment from a main road costing £400,000. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman can explain further how British Rail reaches those figures. Those high costs are certainly beyond me.
I know many lads who work at Rossington pit and a hell of a lot who used to do excellent tunnelling for British Coal. I feel sure that they could construct a tunnel for a damn sight less than the sum that British Rail is quoting, and do a damn good job. Of course, that would have one disadvantage for British Rail—it would maintain accessibility from one side of the line to the other. British Rail is willing to spend £2,500, or even £10,000, to block public access. The fact that British Rail will continue to push to get this Bill through the House, when it should be talking to the relevant local authorities about reaching agreement, leaves a little to be desired.
The hon. Member for Keighley said that agreement had been reached with some of the local authorities affected for access to be stopped or an alternative found. If such marvellous progress is being made, I cannot understand why British Rail is being so bloody-minded in seeking to deprive many of our constituents who live on the east side of the line from enjoying what is on the west side. I hope
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that the hon. Member for Keighley will seek to provide a suitable alternative this evening. Although that presents problems, I hope that a solution will be found.
Several petitions have been presented against the Bill. I hope that British Rail will take cognisance of the authorities that have petitioned, even if they do so only to find a sensible solution and because they are interested in safety. British Rail appears to be considering only the cost involved and not the enjoyment that people could have from such crossings.
As several other hon. Members wish to speak, I shall give them the opportunity to do so. Suffice it to say that local authorities already have the power to stop the Bill going through unless British Rail shows that it is interested in seeking a solution to the problem. That does not appear to be the case, and I shall listen intently to the hon. Member for Keighley when he winds up the debate to see whether he answers some of my questions. British Rail can avoid the use of this valuable time in the House by seeking more sensible solutions from local authorities.
8.12 pm
Mr. Peter Bottomley: The House will be aware, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that if you were not in the Chair you would be contributing to the debate and holding the attention of everyone here.
I wish to echo the comments of the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) and my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) that when people die unnecessarily on the railways, the House should be concerned and the relevant Members should be present at debates such as this. The House understands why the hon. Member for Don Valley feels so strongly about safety and retaining access from one side of the railway line to the other.
The hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon)—[Interruption.]—who is trying to interrupt me, should allow me to respond to the point that he made in an intervention. He argued for stopping up footpaths on another line. It was a fair and valuable point to make on Second Reading, and I am sure that the promoters of the Bill will see what can be done to solve the problem in his constituency. An advantage of single-Member constituencies is that Members of Parliament are aware of every transport and housing problem in their constituencies. For example, I have been campaigning for many years for a replacement footbridge above the New Eltham line at Middle Park. Although I can take up the matter directly with British Rail, it is justified and in order to mention that within the context of the Bill, without going into detail.
The problem that the House is presenting to British Rail might be described as being presented with extravagant language. To argue that British Rail—its staff, its board and everyone who works in it—is not interested in safety is to contradict the facts. People are not perfect, and neither is British Rail, but it is worth noting that, if all the distance travelled on the roads was travelled on the railways, there would not be 5,500 killed but 150. The railway is much safer than aeroplanes, and aeroplanes are much safer than roads. If we paid as much attention to saving the lives of pedestrians away from the railway lines as we are rightly paying to protect the lives of those who wish to use the footpaths and bridleways across railway lines, we should have a potential 1,700 lives a year to save.

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Naturally, British Rail and the Government must decide how much money to make available. British Rail must make safety decisions. Although its safety record has been improving in the past few years, there are many other ways in which it can spend money. When I was a junior Minister and in contact with British Rail, it was spending money on the problem of bridge bashing. An open report published on the problem considered the chances of a serious loss of life and injury if a bridge were carried away by a heavy goods vehicle. People sometimes drive loads that are too high, or tipper trucks with the forks up, under a low bridge, risking a train falling down on a road. Conversely, a vehicle could go through a guard rail and land on a railway line when an express train was passing.
British Rail must decide how to reduce risks and achieve the greatest benefit in terms of safety and improving the service. Indirectly, there are many lives to be saved if people switched from travelling by road to travelling by rail. The hon. Member for Don Valley referred to the time that it takes for British Rail to go from Doncaster to London and vice versa. He spoke of the possibility of saving an extra 10 minutes, which is one of the answers to the hon. Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer), who suggested that trains should slow down to give them enough time to stop, where at present there is a six second interval between seeing and crossing level crossings. If British Rail were to slow down their trains at each of the 140 footpaths on the east coast main line, everybody would travel by car or even walk, which might be faster.
We must have not the best compromise but the quickest gain in safety. I hope that those who will take the opportunity to object to and speak on the Bill will not prevent it from receiving a Second Reading. If that happens, it will be difficult for those in British Rail who want urgently to reduce avoidable risks to say, "Let's go to Parliament as soon as possible to get all the improvements that we can, whether or not we face pressures to improve the safety of crossings of unused or unnecessary footpaths in Jarrow, Eltham or elsewhere".
They must take decisions and they have decided to come to the House for powers that, in the future, may be analagous to those of a highway authority, enabling BR to stop up footpaths or make diversions.
Mr. Redmond: No one is opposed to improving safety. Nor does anyone wish to restrict safety measures that will, in theory, save lives, pain and suffering. The Bill seeks to empower British Railways to stop up 10 level crossings and, given that there are many more on the east coast line, it will be better and quicker if British Rail met the local authorities concerned with an open mind on how to find a solution. That has not happened in any of the cases mentioned in the Bill.
Mr. Bottomley: I am not trying to take up all the measures mentioned in the Bill but to do what hon. Members should do—push for safety and improvement as soon as possible. It appears that British Rail could have included other lines and other footpaths in the Bill and there have been interventions to that effect. It also appears that, of the 10 put forward, nine are not controversial. Regarding the tenth, the promoters' statement says:
"The board are … endeavouring to discuss with the highway authority concerned"
and endeavouring to find a
"proposal to put to the highway authority".
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It would be sad if it happened, but if the House did not give the Bill a Second Reading, we would not only lose the nine cases on which there appears to be agreement—or, at least, a willingness to let the Bill proceed to Committee—but we might find that the pressure normally pressing a Bill towards Committee was removed.
Mr. Ivor Stanbrook: We all agree that we should legislate to improve public safety, but there are other considerations contained in the Bill. One is the wholesale way in which British Rail wishes to deal with the problem that has up to now been dealt with piecemeal. Another consideration involves access to the countryside. The Bill creates huge no-go areas up and down the country and has the potential to apply them to other districts. That would deny access to the countryside to many people who currently enjoy it. There is a risk involved, but the measure should include British Rail improving the system with audible warnings of the approach of trains, even those travelling at 125 mph—that must be technically possible. We cannot legislate for 100 per cent. safety for the public, but must let them use their own judgment on the risk. Therefore, we should consider that objection to the Bill as well as the issue of public safety.
Mr. Bottomley: I think that my hon. Friend will enjoy his time in Committee. I think that he has just made a point that could well be made in Committee.
We could make the same argument about a footpath across an airport runway, where aeroplanes may be approaching at 125 mph on landing or take off. When put that way, the argument seems laughable. If we were talking about trains going at 55 mph or some comparable speed, where there has been no significant change over the years, either in the frequency of trains—which, on the east coast line, is limited—or in the increase of their speed—which has been pretty dramatic—and if there were no prospect of a further increase in speed, we could perhaps tell people to accept the risk that they had accepted in the past. However, when speed is increased, the risk and danger are increased. As we increase the number of trains using a line, we increase the danger. That was tragically shown even on lines that are not on the east coast main line, where there were deaths that could have been avoided.
I do not want to delay the House——
Mr. Redmond: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Bottomley: No, I am sorry I shall not. I listened to the hon. Gentleman for 35 minutes and, if he will forgive me, I should like to wind up.
Mr. Redmond: The hon. Gentleman is misleading the House.
Mr. Bottomley: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman if I have misled the House, because I shall want to withdraw what I said.
Mr. Redmond: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman.
The hon. Gentleman said that agreement had been reached on nine out of the 10 cases. According to the document, it appears that British Rail has reached some sort of agreement or found some solution. It states that there will be no objections to some of the footpaths across railway lines being closed. I gather that everyone present this evening is interested in safety, and if British Rail is interested in safety, it should realise that provisions already exist within local authorities. It would speed things

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up if British Rail were to come to an agreement with the local authorities. We would not even have to wait for a Bill to go through the House. If British Rail is interested in safety, it should approach local authorities and use existing powers.
Mr. Bottomley: There is always a different way of doing things, and there is nearly always a Member of Parliament who will argue for a different way. We should be asking whether we can act today to let the Bill progress to Committee. I shall vote for that if it comes to it. I am not suggesting that there are not problems with any of the other cases, but the problem with the one to which the hon. Member for Don Valley referred is not as major as he makes out.
I was pleased that, during my time at the Department of Transport, capital investment in railways was increasing. We should be careful about dragging too many party political comparisons into the debate. I checked the figures for London Underground recently and discovered that, in the year following the Labour party's "Fares Fair" policy, capital investment fell when everyone thought that it should go up. I am pleased that investment in London Underground has doubled and doubled again since then.
Most of the public support for British Rail has been running at a higher level than that for the national roads programme. When people start considering whether cars should, by law, be allowed to travel faster than 70 mph, one of the reasonable arguments against a 90 mph speed limit is that roads are too crowded and the risk of more crashes would be too great. We should hold the speed limit for cars and allow faster and faster trains to be developed, so that the relative advantages of the railways become more obvious to more people. I hope that we shall not lift the 70 mph speed limit on roads and I hope that the Bill will be given a Second Reading. We should look for higher standards of safety, not accept those that were acceptable in the past.
8.26 pm
Mr. A. J. Beith: I agree with the case against raising the 70 mph speed limit and the case for chanelling high-speed traffic and a great deal of freight by rail.
As I listened to the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) I thought that the Bill should be called the "Wrong Side of the Tracks Bill"—closing off the delights of the east to those living on the west. His descriptions were so alluring that I thought that I should pay a rapid visit to his constituency. I have often admired Potteric Carr as the train goes through—not always at high speed because there are often delays there.
It was intriguing to discover how we have come to have a separate East Coast Main Line (Safety) Bill. The British Railways (No. 2) Bill already before the House contains similar measures in respect of two level crossings in Kent and Cumbria. There was an intriguing article in the most recent issue of Modern Railways on the review of current railway legislation. It stated that the British Railways board had sought powers in respect of the east coast main line by means of a separate Bill in the hope that the less emotive general powers Bill would not be delayed by petitions against this Bill.
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We are spending an evening discussing a Bill that one hon. Member believes should be pressed ahead with separately because we have been shunted into a siding. The operation is being considered separately in the hope that it will not delay other British Railways legislation before the House. The article mentions that the Ramblers Association, the British Horse Society and the Open Spaces Society have lodged a joint petition opposing the principle of footpath closures by a private Bill. It referred to objections received from Durham and Nottingham county councils and Doncaster borough council.
We set the legislation in context when we reflect that its subject matter could have been dealt with by other legislation already before the House. Those of us who represent different parts of the east coast main line were surprised when the Bill appeared, in light of the spate of other British Railways Bills before the House.
The Bill specifically refers to a series of crossings on the east coast main line, one of which was the scene of a tragic, but rare, accident. As the hon. Member for Eltham (Mr. Bottomley) said, the accident record of pedestrians involved with moving vehicles on the roads is infinitely worse than anything we can imagine on railways. That does not remove the case for trying to do something about circumstances such as those that led to the Potteric Carr tragedy, but there are many options to consider when dealing with the safety problems of pedestrian crossings on fast railway lines. Those options include footbridges, underpasses, warning lights, gates or barriers that are automatically controlled using the same principles applied to the modernisation of road level crossings up and down the line, where modern technology is used to ensure that a barrier falls and lights flash in ample time to deal with the rapid speed of trains.
All the arguments that we have heard about how little time the train crew has to see what is happening and how quickly the train will reach the crossing, apply equally to road crossings up and down the east coast main line that are currently being modernised.
Another option is to close the footpath where the crossing is not used. It is alleged that some footpaths fall within that category. However, that could be done under existing procedure.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: If paths are not used, they cannot present a safety problem.
Mr. Beith: I suppose the safety problem is a theoretical one. People might look at a route on a map and decide to try to follow it, not realising the danger that they were putting themselves in. I accept that, if a footpath clearly were not used, that theoretical danger could be removed by following existing procedures.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: One of the problems about this closure is that one cannot erase the public right of way from all the ordnance survey maps that are likely to be in use for many years.
Mr. Beith: That is one of the problems about closing any footpath. I do not like to see footpaths closed, but I am at least prepared to consider a case. What I do not want is the development of a new practice whereby footpaths are closed by way of private Bills. Every so often, British Rail might come along and close several more footpaths outside the normal procedures available under the highways authority, which I should prefer to see

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used. I hope that those procedures will continue to lead to very few closures. Indeed, it is the fact that they have led to very few closures that has brought British Rail before the House with this Bill.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that footpaths should not be stopped up and pedestrians made to go unnecessarily on long detours. However, I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not saying that footpaths across high-speed lines should be allowed to continue. The whole House should say very clearly that we must find ways of getting rid of these private paths across high-speed lines—in some cases by the construction of a bridge or tunnel, and in others by diversion. We must give strong support to British Rail—management, staff and unions—in the elimination of unnecessary risks as soon as that is reasonably practicable.
Mr. Beith: I have listed a series of options for dealing with this problem. Some involve separating pedestrians from high-speed trains by means of footbridges or underpasses, and some involve the same technology as has to be used to enable cars to pass over a line. We are not talking about a line that can be isolated from all crossing traffic. That is accepted. There are vehicle level crossings, which in most cases are used more frequently and pose a greater risk of accident. The technology has to be developed to make those crossings safe. That is what is being done up and down the east coast main line.
Mr. Snape rose——
Mr. Beith: I must give up the habit of allowing regular interventions, but I cannot deny the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) his opportunity.
Mr. Snape: I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for my opportunity. He has—in typically artful and typically Liberal fashion, if I may say so—managed to sketch out all the options that are open to British Rail. With reference in particular to the controversial crossing about which we have heard so much tonight, can the hon. Gentleman tell the House which option he would plump for? Does he think that the bill—and, according to British Rail, a bridleway, rather than a footpath, would cost£250,000—could be met by British Rail under the existing investment rules?
Mr. Beith: I am not qualified to say which is the best option. That is very much a decision for the local people. It is particularly Liberal to say that local people should make the decision. Indeed, that is a very strong Liberal principle. It is obvious to all concerned that one of the things involved is access to a much-valued nature reserve, which has become increasingly popular and which, incidentally, was created by the structure of the railway system, which gave that piece of undisturbed land its special quality.
The notion that we should have a Bill before Parliament to deal with one crossing becomes even more absurd if, simply because British Rail has not so far managed to reach agreement with Doncaster borough council on the best option for this crossing, we must have not just a clause in another Bill but a clause in this Bill, so that the argument about Doncaster borough council will not delay the British Rail (No. 1) Bill. We seem to be entering an "Alice in Wonderland" world, where decisions are taken for the most extraordinary reasons.
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But the Bill has other odd features, to which I referred earlier when the Chairman of Ways and Means was in the Chair. At that point I asked him about the Leamside branch railway. All the crossings referred to in this Bill, except one, are on the east coast main line, as the title suggests. In one case there is a reference to a loop off that line. There is a footpath that crosses both the Leamside branch railway and the main line. I still do not understand how that can be within the ambit of the Bill. One of the most obvious things about the Leamside branch railway is that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a high-speed line on which trains can travel at 125 or 140 mph. Most hon. Members who travel from and to the north-east know that. From time to time, we travel on the Leamside branch railway. But one travels on that railway only if a train has been diverted off the east coast main line because of breakdown or for purposes of signalling work. Indeed, we are experiencing a lot of that sort of thing now—especially signalling work.
On Saturday, I had a very pleasant tour round Eaglescliff for exactly that reason. In Northumberland, it is not possible to divert in that way once a train passes the Blyth and Tyne diversion, as there is only one main line. Signalling work there seems to be very protracted. Every time it is completed, someone comes along and takes away several miles of cable. This has become an extremely regular occurrence. It is time British Rail developed some new security procedures for its cabling. Certainly, a great deal of disruption is being caused on that line. So we have become used to travelling on lines like the Leamside. Invariably, a journey on that line drastically reduces the speed of the train and adds greatly to the time of the journey—pleasant though it is, now and then, to look at the less disturbed part of the Durham countryside.
However, it is pretty difficult to advance the same argument in respect of the crossing over that branch line as is advanced in respect of the east coast main line. That is quite apart from the procedural puzzle of the inclusion of this in a Bill that does not apply to any other line, and it is not possible to make it the subject of the same arguments.
At the heart of the objection to this Bill—most of us will have received correspondence from organisations representing ramblers and riders—is the feeling that this is only the beginning and that this legislation will lead to the closing up of crossings by other private legislation. It is felt that, if British Rail is allowed to do this once, it will want to do it again. It is felt that it will come before us with another Bill, or that it will want to have something included in a general Bill. Some would say that British Rail will try to get a more general power to treat crossings in this way, or that frequent Bills listing crossings for closure will come before us. That is why some of the objections to the Bill go far beyond the objections to some of these crossings and refer to lines travelling through entirely different areas. It is felt that this would be a dangerous and damaging precedent, as well as a procedure that would lead to the closure, without any redress, of some crossings that are currently in use.
British Rail is not always very conscious of or careful about footpaths. Before coming into the House for this debate, I was going through the day's correspondence. I read a whole series of reports from footpaths officers in my constituency. The southern end of a footpath about which I have had to complain on behalf of a constituent in the parish of Adderstone-with-Lucker has been obstructed by

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British Rail. The footpaths officer has taken up the matter with the area engineer at York. The obstruction seems to have been caused not by the line but in the course of some other British Rail activity. It is a common feeling among ramblers and others who love to walk on our great network of footpaths that British Rail and all sorts of other organisations think last about footpaths. Footpaths are not high on its list of priorities.
We all know that the enforcement activities of local authorities in their attempts to keep footpaths open are stretched far beyond the limits. I discovered a difficulty in my constituency. The principal footpaths officer had been off for more than a year, and his one assistant was struggling to keep up with a deluge of complaints of this sort. Ramblers understandably feel that everybody is against them. They have to fight every inch of the way to keep footpaths open. Then they find that legislation going through Parliament bypasses all the normal procedures, closes a whole series of crossings, and opens up the possibility that the same technique will be used in the future.
It has been said several times in this debate that pedestrian crossings over high-speed lines should be eliminated. If that is the objective, the number of footpaths around the country likely to be closed is very large. The high-speed trunk lines that run through the country—the east coast main line, the west coast main line, the lines down to the west country and south Wales—intersect a great many footpaths. If this is to be the principle, our footpath network will be drastically carved up—hence the anxiety of many of those who have raised objections to the Bill.
I move on to another curious factor which I had not appreciated until some recent correspondence with British Rail. As the House will know, I have been involved in extensive arguments with British Rail about sleeper services to the north-east of England and the borders, in the course of which it emerged that British Rail has a new policy on the maintenance of the east coast main line. British Rail has, according to the chairman,
"taken delivery of new maintenance equipment and are now planning to carry out much of the work on weekday nights rather than disrupting journeys at weekends. Overnight closure of one route offers substantial benefits of lower staffing costs and more efficient management of engineering work."
He is referring to the east coast main line, which it appears will be closed down completely at night.
There are some mysteries about this. I do not understand how regular freight traffic will continue to operate or how the planned Edinburgh-Newcastle-Paris-Brussels sleeper will make its way to the channel tunnel overnight as intended. But the chairman of British Rail says that instead of closing the east coast main line for periods during the day at weekends—or rather of delaying trains on it—the line will be completely closed, allowing maintenance crews to take possession and get on with their work. If so, there will be times of daylight in the late summer nights and early mornings when the line is closed, and there will be no reason why people should not use the footpaths if warning lights and so on are provided.
During the early stages of the argument this idea of overnight closure was advanced and then dismissed, but it has clearly emerged again as a major factor in British
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Rail's thinking about the future of the east coast main line, and in a debate such as this we should be told whether there will be periods during the 24 hours, when the line is not operating regularly or at intervals and is closed to all traffic, when it will be reasonably safe and when properly arranged pedestrian crossings could be used.
Mr. Snape: Does the hon. Gentleman anticipate many ramblers wandering across the line between midnight and 6 am, whether or not it is closed?
Mr. Beith: People cross the lines in the early morning when they want to look at, for instance, a nature reserve. The best time to do that is at 5 or 6 o'clock on a summer morning, when they can hear the dawn chorus and see the birds. Keen enthusiasts go to places such as Potteric Carr at that time of day.
There is another reason why such issues must be raised in the context of this Bill and it concerns the basis on which its promoters ask us to allow the Bill to proceed to Second Reading. The promoters in their statement mention the discussions that they have had with the highway authorities:
"The board are discussing or endeavouring to discuss with the highway authorities concerned with each crossing the possibility of diversionary or alternative routes for the ways in question … in all other cases"—
except the Potteric Carr case—
"possible diversionary or alternative routes have been devised and are being discussed with the highway authority."
On that basis, the board says that we should let the Bill go ahead—all these matters can be settled out of court, as it were.
I have some experience of trying to "settle out of court" with British Rail on the basis of understandings which should mean that we let the Bill proceed. When a previous British Rail Bill was under discussion at a similar stage, British Rail gave an undertaking that it would restore overnight services on the east coast line in 1991, if the results of a study that it was going to carry out were satisfactory. That undertaking has not been kept. British Rail is still refusing to restore sleeper services to the east coast main line, thus depriving Newcastle, Tyneside, Teesside and the borders of sleeper services or any overnight services to London.
British Rail has done this on the basis of information that has not changed anything to the advantage of its case in the meantime. But when the undertaking was given and reported to the House, Members thought it reasonable to allow the legislation then under discussion to proceed. British Rail is asking us to do the same tonight on the grounds that it is likely to be possible to arrive at alternative arrangements for many of these footpaths. Hon. Members are asked to take account of such arrangements and of the possibility that they will be fully honoured, and to allow the Bill to proceed.
My advice to Hon. Members is not to believe British Rail's assurances in circumstances such as these. My experience is that it does not keep them. It will give assurances designed to assist the Bill's passage, but it will ensure that they are not so precise as to be absolutely enforceable; and if it suits British Rail, it will seek a means of backing out of their implications later. If we allow the Bill to go ahead tonight, some of the agreements with local authorities may not work out or may break down, and the procedure under this Bill may be used to the full to close these footpaths.

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Experience of the east coast main line sleeper services should teach Members—I include myself in this—to view British Rail's assurances with the greatest circumspection. If parliamentary procedures allow us to tie British Rail down more tightly, we should do that. If the procedures that British Rail seeks to put through Parliament reduce the rights of the public to get their point of view across and to object, we should be very suspicious of those procedures. If we allow the Bill through, a whole new way of closing footpaths will exist and the arrangements with other authorities may not work out. That is an insufficient basis on which to proceed.
8.47 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Patrick McLoughlin): It may be helpful at this point if I give the House the Government's view on the Bill.
At present the promotion of a private Bill is the only means available to British Rail to secure the stopping up or diversion of rights of way across a railway on grounds of public safety. In view of British Rail's statutory duty to operate its railways safely, my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State decided, when asked for his consent to deposit the Bill, that it was reasonable for him to give it so that British Rail could have its proposals tested before Parliament. It must be right that there should be a method of considering whether it is in the public interest that footpaths should be stopped up.
The Government remain neutral on the merits or otherwise of the detailed proposals; that must be a matter for the Select Committee if the Bill is given a Second Reading. It will be for British Rail to demonstrate to Parliament that it has looked carefully at the amount of public use made of these level crossings, at the scope for establishing alternative routes across the railway, and at the possibility of using safety devices to keep the existing crossings open.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: I am sure that the Minister does not want to mislead the House. The Ramblers Association states that British Rail applied for a closure in Taunton Deane on the grounds of safety—and got it under present legislation. How was it possible to obtain the closure of a footpath across a railway on the grounds of safety when the Minister has just said that that is impossible? I also wonder whether he can tell us the outcome of the railway inspectorate's inquiry into safety at level crossings, especially pedestrian crossings.
Mr. McLoughlin: I can say only that the information that I have just given is correct—this is currently the only way for British Rail to proceed. As for the inspectorate's reports, those documents are published when available and it is open to members of the Select Committee and to petitioners to make the relevant case.
Mr. Cryer: Is the Minister saying that the railway inspectorate is conducting an investigation into the safety of level crossings and that the document is in the course of preparation, but not yet available to hon. Members during consideration of the Bill?
Mr. McLoughlin: No, I was responding to a question asked by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr.
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Bennett). If the inspectorate publishes a report it will be available in due course. That was what the hon. Gentleman asked.
Mr. Bennett: Will the Minister confirm that last summer the Secretary of State specifically asked for the railway inspectorate to consider safety on pedestrian crossings over railways and to prepare a report? Surely he can tell us how far that report has got.
Mr. McLoughlin: My right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr. Parkinson), the former Secretary of State, issued various instructions when an accident which was referred to earlier occurred. I cannot give the hon. Gentleman any information about the progress of the report.
As I said, Parliament will need to be assured that the interests of users of footpaths have been adequately covered. I note that there are four petitions against the Bill. The petitioners will have the opportunity to present their objections to the Select Committee. The Committee will be in a much better position than we are tonight to examine in detail the issues involved and it will have the added advantage of hearing expert evidence. The House will know— —
Mr. Redmond: Does the Minister agree that any safety improvements should be at British Rail's expense and should not be borne by the local authorities?
Mr. McLoughlin: I do not want to get into that issue now. Local authorities may want something and British Rail may want something else. Discussions may have to take place about costing and if the authorities want something to be provided, they might have to contribute. It is abundantly clear from the debate that the Government are continually pressured to increase investment in British Rail to make it a more attractive venture for the travelling public to use. That usually means increasing the speed of trains to get from A to B.
If we are persistently asked to slow down trains, one must question the supposition that such investment should be made. I remember the arguments about the electrification of the east coast line and the tremendous pressure for that to be done. In the end, the Government decided that it met the criteria and the investment was made. Now we are being told to slow down trains or not to take account of serious accidents that have happened. The accident that occurred in the constituency of the hon. Member for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) was horrendous and affected all hon. Members who dealt with the incident and read the report on it. It was a tragedy.
The House will know that the Government have proposed that consideration of these matters should be taken out of Parliament, as the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure recommended. We hope to be in a position very shortly to announce our conclusions about that.
I hope that the Bill will be given a Second Reading so that it can proceed to Committee for detailed consideration.
8.54 pm
Mr. Peter Snape: Like many hon. Members, I was intrigued by the fact that the Bill which seeks authority to close 10 level crossings has not been incorporated in a general powers Bill, but has come

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to the House in splendid isolation, if that is not too mixed a metaphor. The Minister referred to the accident at Carr lane crossing and we were all appalled by that accident and the tragic circumstances surrounding it. That accident perhaps provided a catalyst for British Rail to act to prevent similar tragedies.
As I said in an intervention, it is by no means unusual for me to stand here or on the Back Benches to criticise British Rail, and especially its management, who all too often appear unresponsive to pressure from passengers —or customers, as they are called these days—or from hon. Members. Having read the Bill, I appreciate the fears that have been expressed, especially on behalf of organisations such as the Ramblers Association, but I have some sympathy with British Rail in this case. In my experience as a former railway signalman, farm trucks, horses, pedestrians and high-speed trains do not make an especially safe mixture. The more non-rail users can be segregated from the railway, the better for safety purposes.
There is some concern about the nature of our proceedings in this place. On other occasions, I have referred to the unsatisfactory nature of the private Bill procedure, and I hope that the authorities in this place will find a better way to deal with such matters. I understand from British Rail that the unsatisfactory nature, in its view, of the Highways Act 1980 is the main reason we are discussing this measure tonight. BR tells me that the grounds for closure or diversion of footpaths are limited to disuse or the creation of an easier route, but do not include safety. BR states in a note that any changes in existing rights of way are actively contentious and that local authorities are "frequently unwilling" to undertake them.
I shall reply to some of the points raised tonight. BR believes that seeking an order by this route—the Highways Act 1980—can take up to 10 years, even if the highway authority does not drop the matter as soon as it attracts any opposition. Therefore, any alternatives to the admittedly unsatisfactory nature of our proceedings are, to say the least, time-consuming.
The crossings that BR proposes to close, provided that the House gives the Bill a Second Reading and that the Committee—which, from what I have heard tonight will be fairly protracted—agrees to the measure, are a mixture of crossings. BR says that eight out of the 10 have little or no use. It is said that there is some use of the crossing at North Mymms in Hertfordshire. The crossing at Cantley in Doncaster to the Potteric Carr nature reserve is, in British Rail parlance, marked as "used". Presumably it is, as a bridleway, the busiest crossing of the 10 crossings proposed for closure in the Bill.
Mr. Redmond: Does my hon. Friend agree that, because there is a facility on the other side of the track, kids will invariably want to cross the line? Short of putting up a 10-foot high wall along several miles of that section, there could be no guarantee that kids would not cross the line at that point—tragically, without adult supervision. As my right hon. Friend will be aware, the railway inspectorate is in the process of preparing some guidelines on footpath and bridle-way crossings. Would not it be better to wait for that report so that we can cure not only the problem of the Potteric Carr crossing, but the problem of the other bridlepaths and footpaths throughout the country?
Mr. Snape: I do not know what will be in the report or whether it will be as detailed as my hon. Friend claims. It is pretty unlikely that the railway inspectorate or anyone else will propose the construction of a bridge or a tunnel under five railway tracks. If the railway inspectorate—or anyone else—looked at the crossing in my hon. Friend's constituency, it is unlikely—I put it no higher than that —that it would recommend the expenditure of anything from £250,000 to enable users of the bridleway to cross five tracks of main line.
I cannot, of course, prejudge the report. Until reminded of its preparation by my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Cryer) a few moments ago, I was not going to make a point about it, because I had forgotten about it. I am sure that we are grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding us of it. Any such report is likely to recommend the segregation of walkers or horse-riders from the railway track, especially as railway speeds are increasing generally and as the speeds on these tracks will be as high or higher than the speeds on any other railway track in the United Kingdom.
My hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) said that it would be necessary to build a 10-foot fence to prevent children from crossing the line. Regrettably, if one put up a 50-foot high chain metal fence along the railway line, people would find a way in which to get over or under it. A considerable proportion of British Rail's expenditure is used in repairing fences alongside railway tracks. The fences are regularly broken down, usually by adults seeking a short cut, within days or weeks of their repair or installation. I have listened with interest to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley, but I do not believe that his point about people finding ways across railway lines is very valid.
Despite—I am not talking about the crossings in the Bill—the apparent belief of the great British public that a fenced-off railway line merely presents a challenge in their quest to get from A to B in the shortest possible time, it is right that British Rail should do its best to ensure that safety remains paramount, especially in the light of the accident to which other hon. Members have referred.
It has been said that some agreement has been reached with the local authorities about nine of the 10 proposals, and that only one crossing, to which I have referred, is controversial. Agreement on it has not been reached, and British Rail told me as recently as last Friday that it has not been possible even to hold a meeting with the metropolitan borough of Doncaster. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley will use his undoubted influence with his local authority—I do not blame the authority, because I am only repeating what British Rail told me last Friday—to ensure that a meeting takes place sooner rather than later about the possible diversion of the footpath and about the closure of the crossing.
During my time as a British Rail employee, I met two or three operating staff members and two or three engine drivers—as they used to be called—who had been involved in fatal accidents, some at crossings such as this and some on lengths of plain track. For signalmen, platelayers and especially drivers, the horror of that moment never leaves them.
This tragedy involved one driver for whom the accident was even worse than it was for his colleague. It was the second such incident in which he had been involved, and he has been unable to resume his duties as a driver ever since. That pales into significance compared with the

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tragedy experienced by the bereaved, but it shows the views of railwaymen and women who regularly face such problems. The sooner such pedestrian crossings are diverted and the sooner people, whether ramblers, bird watchers or courting couples—to whom the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) delicately referred; or perhaps he delicately chose not to refer to them—cease to cross the tracks in front of high-speed trains, the better.
I hope that my hon. Friend will use his best offices to bring about such a meeting.
Mr. Redmond: We cannot diminish the horror faced by the victims and their families, and by the drivers involved in fatalities on British Rail. I appreciate the drivers' views about being involved in such a horrible accident.
I was involved for many years in negotiations with management. One could always negotiate when there was a willingness for people to talk, but we used to hit a stumbling block when management sought to dictate the terms. They would ask us to agree to their proposals and sort out a solution afterwards. Experience has taught me to be a little concerned about "jam tomorrow". Had British Rail adopted a more reasonable approach, it might have received a suitable response from Doncaster council.
If British Rail is willing to find a solution, that will be in everyone's interest. Kids will cross that line even if the footpath is stopped. If we are concerned about safety, we should provide reasonable access across that line, either by a bridge or by a tunnel—which I do not think is practicable. When a new housing estate is built, many footpaths may be provided, but people will find the natural footpath—the shortest path from A to B. I shall check with the authority tomorrow, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for drawing the matter to my attention.
Mr. Snape: If a meeting takes place, proposals and alternatives can be explored. British Rail's representatives are not here officially, but they are present and will have heard that exchange. Perhaps they will react accordingly.
What about the alternatives, some of which were mentioned by my hon. Friends the Members for Bradford, South and for Don Valley? I am informed that every road crossing on the east coast main line is a proper barrier type crossing under the supervision of a signalman, not necessarily at the crossing but through closed-circuit television. I understand that there are 146 footpath crossings on the east coast main line, and the cost of providing such facilities at every one of them would be enormous.
Railway expenditure is scrutinised far more closely than expenditure on any other mode of transport, and the prospects are minimal of getting a system of automatic half-barriers covered by closed-circuit television past the eagle eyes of the civil servants at the Department of Transport.
My hon. Friend 'the Member for Bradford, South suggested a speed restriction. However, one of the attractions of a high-speed railway is, of course, its speed. Electrification not only saves energy but enables travelling times between our major cities to be decreased.
The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed suggested warning lights or an audible warning at crossings. At a speed of 125 mph and a future speed of 140 mph, it is difficult to see how warning lights without a physical barrier to prevent people crossing will be anything other than an additional hazard rather than an additional safety
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precaution. The crossing at Carr lane has five railway tracks, and warning lights would be flashing almost all day —in deference to the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, I shall not say, all night.
Most people, including those who are up at 5 o'clock in the morning bird watching, and the others to whom I referred who have other things in mind at midnight or I am, normally demonstrate an aversion to waiting. If lights are flashing for a long time because of the approach of a number of trains, their message could be ignored. That has happened, often with fatal results.
The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed artfully raised the issue of the sleepers on the east coast main line, and mentioned British Rail's broken promises. I had expected the hon. Gentleman to raise those matters on earlier British Rail Bills. It was obvious that they might be raised by other hon. Members, and I decided to carry out some research. British Rail provided me with figures about sleeper usage north of Newcastle. I do not say that the figures are right because, as we know to our cost, British Rail's figures are not always 100 per cent. accurate. However, the figures show that the peak usage time for the sleeper train north of Newcastle is Thursday evening, when it is used by hon. Members. Apparently no one else uses them for much of the working week.
The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed may disagree with that, but I am only repeating the figures provided to me by BR. Although my admiration for the hon. Gentleman, if not his party, remains constant, I do not believe that the provision of a mobile mattress—much as he might need it—would pass the eagle eyes of those civil servants in the Department of Transport who are responsible for passing or rejecting, and always delaying, BR's investment proposals.
It looks as though BR is saying that the hon. Gentleman is on his own in the sleeper—at least no moral aspersions can be cast against the hon. Gentleman in such circumstances. I fear that his case is yet to be made, given BR's figures.
Mr. Beith: Some of the hon. Gentleman's colleagues, including the hon. Members for Wansbeck (Mr. Thompson) and for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) will not be very happy when they read what the hon. Gentleman has said. They have been active, along with many others, in campaigning for the restoration of sleeper services. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is not complaining about those hon. Members who use the train as opposed to those who claim their car allowance by driving an enormous distance home when there is a perfectly good train service available.
Most of the traffic on sleepers is towards London rather than away from it. A considerable amount of such traffic was generated from Newcastle as well as from the borders. If it is possible to run a sleeper service from Carlisle and Preston, it should be possible to do so from Tyneside.
Mr. Snape: To say that I have raised a hornet's nest is the wrong metaphor, given that there is only one hornet in it. However, I understand the hon. Gentleman's argument and I hope that those responsible for providing the figures will reconsider the matter. They appear to believe that more people travel between Newcastle and London rather than from further north. I appreciate that BR does not even run a sleeper service to Newcastle, but its excuse is

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that it has other services that run late at night and early in the morning, so the demand is catered for. However, I am not seeking to defend BR's spurious figures.
It is a brave Member who dares to argue with people in the Ramblers Association, which packs enormous power and influence. That association has criticised BR for its use of the parliamentary procedures to introduce its Bill—that is not an unreasonable criticism, given what we have heard. I hope that the Minister will study BR's reasons for that, and will tell the Committee whether they are valid. It has argued that the Bill is the only way in which to tackle safety matters, as the Highways Act 1980 precludes such discussion.
The 13th point in the Ramblers Association's brief to hon. Members suggests the depths of its cynicism:
"The crossings in the Bill have existed for over a century. If they are now dangerous it is because BR has made them so by increasing the speeds of trains for commercial gain."
Given the policies of the present Government, it is inevitable that commercial gain is considered whatever the supposed service. That argument is rather tendentious, given that most of us are in favour of getting from A to B as quickly as possible. It is unfair to criticise BR for that.
Mr. Peter Bottomley: I suspect that that objection would come as a great surprise to most members of the Ramblers Association and to those who are on the side of the pedestrian and the rambler. Most of the pedestrians and ramblers I know want British Rail to carry more and more passengers to help to reduce the increasing number of cars on our roads.
Mr. Snape: I am sure that, as a rambler himself, the hon. Gentleman will seek to make that point to the Ramblers Association.
Point No. 14 does not have a great deal to say in favour of the Bill. The Ramblers Association refers to people being forced to walk or to ride a horse along the road, once the bridleway or pathway has been diverted. It says that, if there is no convenient grass verge, that is not most people's idea of improved safety. I venture to suggest that that is far safer, even though it may not be the most desirable or safe method, than cantering a horse across a railway line when trains are travelling between 100 and 140 mph.
Mr. Redmond rose——
Mr. Snape: I promised that I would give way to my hon. Friend.
Mr. Redmond: I think that I ought to clear up the earlier point about Doncaster borough council. Doncaster was first made aware of the proposed Bill on 6 November 1990, when British Rail submitted the Bill to Parliament. There had been no consultations or discussions between British Rail and Doncaster borough council. British Rail had never asked for discussions with the council. It seems to me, therefore, that British Rail was at fault. Doncaster is the relevant authority for the area. British Rail ought to have asked for discussions with the council so as to find a way round the possibility of similar accidents in the future. It ought to have held those discussions with the council in the summer. British Rail ought not to have waited until it was ready to deposit the Bill.
Mr. Snape: I am grateful for that clarification, but it does not alter the fact that the Bill is before us. I understand that the letter sent to Doncaster borough council was couched in exactly the same form as the letters sent to the other nine local authorities. I understand that some discussion has taken place. I understand also that there has been a measure of agreement. I keep using that caveat, because my information came from British Rail only last Friday. All of us have to seek information wherever we can obtain it. However, British Rail's point is that a letter identical to that sent to Doncaster borough council has not resulted in a meeting.
I repeat the plea that I made earlier—that bruised and ruffled feelings are one thing, but when the future safety of people using crossings is at stake, discussions ought to take place sooner rather than later. Nevertheless, I accept my hon. Friend's view that this is a well used crossing and a treasured local amenity. Unusual though the measure may be in being presented in this form, I believe that the Bill is worthy of support.
Mr. Beith: The hon. Gentleman gave me the opportunity to check that he quoted British Rail's figures correctly. I discovered that he did not. On southbound journeys by sleeper, the average for over a year amounted to 21 passengers from Tyneside and Teesside, 2·5 passengers from the borders, with the remaining berths generally being filled by passengers from Edinburgh.
Mr. Snape: That was another pretty artful intervention. I have no wish to drag out the debate. I notice that the northbound journeys were not quoted by the hon. Gentleman, perhaps—I put it no higher than this—for the reasons that I outlined. The hon. Gentleman may feel that I should not have outlined them, but it seemed to me to be too good a debating point to overlook.
We are not making debating points about the Bill. I repeat that the segregation of non-railway users from high-speed trains is a desirable objective. I hope that the House will allow the Bill to go forward. If there is a Division, I shall vote for the Bill.
9.23 pm
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape), because he is in extremely good form. I know that he has had a pretty heavy weekend, since his football team has managed to gain promotion from the fourth to the third division. There is a great deal of excitement in Stockport at the prospect. I was pleased to hear that he is in favour of increasing train speeds. He is one of the better-known supporters of Stockport County, and people are dredging up all sorts of stories in the town.
I am sure my hon. Friend will want to deny one that is circulating—that, when he was working a signal box in Cheadle Heath one Saturday afternoon he slipped all the signals to red and nipped into Stockport County ground to watch a match for some time, only to discover when shouting with great enthusiasm for his team that one of his supervisors was not far behind him in the crowd. My hon. Friend had to make a hasty return to his signal box. I do not know whether that story is true, but it is circulating at the moment in Stockport.
Mr. Snape: With regard to my hon. Friend's point about celebrations over the weekend, although I support

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Stockport County and saw them gain promotion on Saturday, my constituency football team, West Bromwich Albion, was relegated from the second division to the third. As a result of that, any joy that I might have expressed publicly had to be muted.
The story that my hon. Friend recounted was broadly accurate. However, the signals were not turned to red, they were turned to green. I had switched the signal box out to go and watch the cup match.
Mr. Bennett: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for clearing that up. I wonder who he will be supporting next season in the third division.
My name stands against a motion that the Bill should be read a Second time in six months' time. Hon. Members often regard such motions as ridiculous, but I believe that such a delay would be appropriate for this Bill. In that time, perhaps British Rail could repair some of the damage that it has done as a result of the way in which it has introduced the Bill and I would hope that it could begin useful negotiations with the local authorities, the Ramblers Association and others involved in the issue.
Instead of wasting the time of the House on Second Reading and then taking up the time in Committee of four hon. Members, who presumably will have to visit all the sites and consider the details, and then perhaps having to take up the time of the House with amendments, the matter should be resolved with common sense and without involving parliamentary procedures.
I argue that the Bill has little to do with safety. British Rail is simply trying to shift liability for accidents from its shoulders to other people's shoulders. That is clear from the way in which British Rail has treated the House with contempt. As I understand it, following the tragic accident at Doncaster, the Secretary of State for Transport sensibly recognised that there was a substantial problem with crossings on the east coast line and elsewhere where British Rail was trying to speed up trains. The Secretary of State asked the railway inspectorate to carry out an inquiry into the problem, take evidence and discover what could be done to resolve the issue.
Although there may not have been any accidents on the east coast line in the 10 years that British Rail has speeded up trains on that line, we are all aware that on other crossings, in particular on vehicle crossings, there have been accidents. We must recognise the terrible distress caused to people who have lost members of their family in those accidents and we must also recognise the horror experienced by the train drivers involved.
As trains move at such high speeds, it is no longer possible for a driver to see someone on a crossing and take any sensible action to stop the train hitting that individual. We must also recognise that in many places it is not safe for someone to look up the track to see whether a train is coming. It is no longer possible for crossings to be manned simply by people looking and seeing. It is, therefore, odd that British Rail and the railway inspectorate have had powers for the past 10 years to suggest that safety measures should be taken including the installation of warning lights and barriers, but no such measures have been adopted on the east coast mainline or elsewhere.
It is therefore odd that British Rail should suddenly decide to rush the Bill through the House and pre-empt the railway inspectorate inquiry in such a way as to put up the backs of local authorities. All local authorities along the line first heard about proposals to close the crossings when
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the Bill was presented to Parliament, rather than hearing from British Rail that it had a problem and asking whether something could be done.
I am not surprised that Doncaster council has been reluctant to meet British Rail about the matter. The production of such a fait accompli with a parliamentary Bill is not the right way to start negotiations. I can understand why Doncaster and some other local authorities are upset. It is totally inappropriate for British Rail to act in that way. It should have started negotiations. Only when it could prove that negotiations had not produced the desired effect—that is, making it safer for people to cross from one side to the other, and safer for British Rail—should it have introduced the Bill.
Mr. Redmond: Having been on Doncaster council and knowing the rest of the councils, the officers who work for them and their caring attitude and concern about the tragedy that took place, I know that they are anxious to find a solution. The dictatorial attitude of British Rail in saying, "This or else," means that the council cannot win either way. The council is searching for a solution. My hon. Friend would agree that British Rail should adopt a more reasonable approach and have meaningful discussions with the council to find a solution. Kids will cross that land, and they will do so without the supervision of an adult.
My hon. Friend is perfectly correct. British Rail appears to want to shift responsibility to whoever is involved in an accident because they should not have been on that line. I agree that councils need to be consulted. Nobody wants a tragedy like that to happen again.
Mr. Bennett: I certainly accept my hon. Friend's intervention. We must look at history and remember that almost all railways were promoted through parliamentary Bills in which compromises were worked out between the requirements of people to get from one side of the railway to the other and the requirements of the railway to have a fairly safe passage. In most early railway Bills, Parliament insisted that a substantial number of underpasses for farm animals and pedestrians or footbridges and, in some cases, trackways for animals were built. It was only with some later parliamentary Bills that British Rail began to persuade Parliament that it was perfectly safe to put in level crossings, whether for pedestrians, animals or vehicles.
It is a little unfair for British Rail now to say that, because it wants to speed up trains—we all want trains to be speeded up—it should take away people's right to cross from one side to the other. Although in some instances not many people will be involved, the crossings will be important to them. They will have bought property and planned where to work on the basis of those crossings.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East says that there is controversy about only one of the 10 crossings. That is not the case. There is certainly controversy at Doncaster and there is also controversy about the crossing at North Mymms, which is on the way to London. About 20,000 booklets have been published showing that route. The hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller) claimed that that had been subject to a closure order which had been denied. The truth is that it was subject to the closure order before the 1980 legislation, so it has not been subject to an order or an attempt to get an order over the past 10 years. The attempt to obtain a

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diversion was turned down not on the basis that it was unreasonable to provide a diversion because of safety, but on the basis that the alternative route suggested was also unreasonable and that if British Rail had been able to make a reasonable proposal for the diversion at that point, the Secretary of State might have been minded to grant that application. It seems that there is slightly more controversy than the hon. Gentleman suggested.
Mr. Snape: I understand, again from British Rail, that at the crossing to which the hon. Gentleman referred, North Mymms, it is proposed to divert the footpath 295 yd to the north and thence via Skitmans bridge, which takes Bull lane under the railway and links up with the footpath network. I do not know whether that proposal meets with any greater favour than the one to which he referred. My information from British Rail is that the basis of the negotiations with the local authority is the proposal to move the footpath 300 yd. I know nothing about the area, but a diversion of less than 300 yd to avoid crossing the railway line altogether does not seem unreasonable.
Mr. Bennett: I do not intend to go into the details, but, if that was possible, why did not British Rail implement the proposal last summer? Why did it wait to promote a Bill which inevitably will take a long time? If it could find a solution through negotiations and allow local people the right to appear at an inquiry and put objections, surely that would be a better way to proceed than to ask Members of Parliament to deal with the matter. My hon. Friend admitted that he did not know the detailed local geography. I certainly do not. I doubt whether many other hon. Members know the exact details. Probably only the hon. Member for that constituency knows the detail. I have not seen any hon. Members jumping up to make a comment on it. Surely negotiation would be the way to proceed rather than to continue with the Bill, especially as it raises the fear among ramblers that, after 10 crossings being closed this Session, another 10 will be closed next Session and another 10 will be closed in the Session following that.
Mr. Chris Smith: While my hon. Friend is on this point, has he considered why these 10 specific crossings have been put before us in this Bill? We have little information about why these 10, of all the various crossings, have been selected by British Rail.
Mr. Bennett: I have not been able to find an exact reason. British Rail has not said that these are the most dangerous crossings. British Rail has not said that all the crossings are on curves. I have already suggested that, with the speed at which trains travel, even on a straight piece of track it is not realistic to rely on people looking down the track and anticipating how soon the train will arrive. We must consider the provision of some effective warning by lights or other means.
British Rail has adopted an inappropriate approach to implementing the measures in the Bill. The original railway promoters negotiated along the entire length of the track and said that they had to have a certain number of crossings. Perhaps where five crossings were proposed before the railway line was built, the promoters managed to persuade local people and Parliament that they could be
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replaced by three. Such negotiations can take place and people can be persuaded. Everyone accepts that a walk across the railway track is not particularly safe and that it would be far better to put a tunnel underneath or a bridge over the top. But that is expensive, so instead of putting in one for one, British Rail proposes to put in one bridge or tunnel for two previous crossings.
Mr. Cryer: Does my hon. Friend accept that, when the orginal Acts went through Parliament, landowners often insisted that a bridge should be provided where lines crossed sections of land? By a quirk, in the 19th century the land was perhaps owned by several landowners and no bridge was provided but now people need to cross a railway from side A to side B. In those circumstances and to recognise the change in the pattern of people's behaviour, should not the Government ensure that British Rail has an adequate grant to provide facilities such as bridges to take into account factors that, if they had existed when the orginal legislation went through, would have been provided for by the orginial promoters?
Mr. Bennett: I accept that argument. In agreeing that it may not be possible to replace every crossing with a safer one, I firmly argue that someone must come up with money for safety. It is not appropriate for the money to come from British Rail's capital grant. That problem must be addressed, just as the rights of people to follow traditional routes must be addressed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. Redmond) pointed out, if safe crossings are not provided, young children in particular will cross anywhere and in great danger. We must consider the problem, but the Bill is wholly inappropriate.
I was disappointed that the Minister did not tell us what happened to the inquiry or that the Government were investigating the whole question of crossings. Instead, he said that the Government were agnostic about the Bill. The problem will not go away. We need a solution that will be satisfactory to walkers and those who travel on trains.
Mr. Redmond: At Mexborough there was a crossing from one side of the station to the other. The old railway sleepers provided a crossing for prams and wheelchairs. Because of some improvements and the 125s from Manchester coming at a greater pace round a curve, British Rail tore up the track without consulting anybody. There is a footpath across the railway lines, but, regrettably, British Rail's solution for disabled people who must get to the other side of the station is for them to travel to Doncaster, change platforms, come back on the return train, and to hell with the inconvenience caused. That is British Rail's attitude.
When we asked British Rail to provide an alternative to the footbridge for mothers and disabled people, the answer was that, provided that South Yorkshire passenger transport authority coughed up the money, it would install an alternative. South Yorkshire PTA is strapped for cash. The local authority is strapped for cash. It is British Rail's property, but it is refusing to fund such a facility for disabled people. That is the attitude which prevails. British Rail does not care what happens, so long as it does not have the responsibility.
Mr. Bennett: I fully accept that.
Will the hon. Member for Keighley or, if he does not get a chance to reply because so many others want to speak,

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British Rail state clearly whether this proposal to close 10 crossings is the thin end of the wedge and the intention is to introduce further Bills to close more, or whether 10 is the final number? Will it be explained why British Rail succeeded in closing a path at Taunton Deane on safety grounds, yet the Minister has claimed that it is not possible to use those procedures for the crossings in this legislation? Will the Minister explain why British Rail regularly manages to close footbridges temporarily, on safety grounds when they get into disrepair? As I understand it, British Rail has plenty of powers to deal with such issues, at least temporarily on safety grounds. Such issues must be put to local inquiries; that is a far better way to proceed.
We need a comprehensive approach to the problem. We should not approve the Bill. It would be a great breach of parliamentary procedure to give a Bill a Second Reading, which would inflict on other hon. Members the duty to scrutinise it in detail. British Rail could approach the problem perfectly satisfactorily under existing legislation, and I hope that the House will reject the Bill.
9.43 pm
Mr. Bob Cryer: I entirely share the anxiety of my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett).
When private Bills are introduced, we get a single sheet of paper with half a dozen paragraphs of information. I have complained before that that is a contempt of the House. Promoters may be used to doing the minimum amount of work for the maximum amount of money. For example, I understand from a reliable source that those promoters can charge local authorities—and, no doubt, British Rail—£500 an hour for a consultation. The House recently laid down a scale of charges for legislation that ran into several thousand pounds, so it is not cheap. One of the cheapest contributions to Parliament could be more information than we have been given in the seven paragraphs on one side of a single sheet of paper.
The House is also entitled to better information than we have received from the Minister. He was obviously not aware of an investigation by his Department into standards of care on level crossings. He should have come to the House prepared. Although the Department of Transport has an enormous number of civil servants—I realise that only a tiny proportion is devoted to the railways—none of them is in the Box today to provide the Minister with information. When we have asked him for information, he has simply discarded our wish in an act of callous contempt.
The Bill seeks to provide an outside body with additional powers and we are supposed to approve it without the requisite information. If we seek to obtain that information, we are told that it is not available. That is not good enough; nor is it good enough to say that a Select Committee will look into the matter, because we know how Select Committees work. They are lovely for the lawyers; they charge an astronomical sum, which causes Tory Members hardly to raise an eyebrow. In the same breath Tory Members speak about urging those who do useful jobs to curtail wage claims and about lawyers who charge hundreds of pounds a day. The lawyers speak slowly so that the days stretch out into long refreshers. No wonder they feel refreshed when they spend so many days going through the measures. I have never sat on a Committee considering a private Bill. That is not an
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invitation to put me on one—I do not want to be on one, as my duties on other Select Committees take a great deal of time.
Because the Chamber is important—all 650 Members have access to it—information should be provided there and not hived off. It does not matter what the procedure is; we cannot take part in Select or Standing Committees to obtain information but should be informed here.
Mr. Redmond: My hon. Friend said that we received one page of scant information on the Bill. That seems to be the trend. The Government give us little detail on which to base our judgment because too much knowledge could be dangerous. Regretfully, there appears to be a nasty practice of ensuring that Bills reach their Committee stage where the Government have the right to nominate a chairman. Committees can therefore he loaded by a Government who seek to push Bills through. My hon. Friend is correct about the lack of information, but will he comment on the way in which Chairmen are appointed to Committees?
Mr. Cryer: My hon. Friend is right and simply provides some details to endorse what I said.
The Chamber is the most important place in Parliament. We hoped that it would be invigorated with the advent of the television cameras and, by and large, it has been. But whether it is invigorated by good attendance on some occasions and sparse ones on others such as this, information should be available to Members.
Mr. Chris Smith: I am grateful to my hon. Friend and agree with everything that he said about the inadequacy of the information that tends to come from the Government on such occasions.
Paragraph 4 of the seven short paragraphs that constitute the promoter's statement, which should contain the fundamental point behind why British Rail is introducing the Bill, states that it
"represents the first stage of a more comprehensive review of the position on high speed lines."
It says nothing about the nature of the review or of the parameters within which the review was conducted. It also says nothing about the safety considerations that formed part of the review. It simply tells us that a review has taken place. Surely it is ridiculous that we are asked to make decisions about a Bill based on a review about which we are told absolutely nothing.
Mr. Cryer: My hon. Friend is right. The statement could usefully and relevantly have said that the review was being conducted in conjunction with the railway inspectorate's examination into safety at level crossings.
Having got that point of information out of the way, I should say that, although I do not have a financial interest, in railway debates I always like to decare that I have five £10 shares in Keighley and Worth valley light railway, which has two level crossings. I have never received a dividend and I never expect to, but my contact gives me a background in the operation of railways, albeit ones on which the trains run more slowly than those under consideration tonight.
On the Worth valley railway, as on every other, safety is of the utmost priority. Those of us who are considering the Bill critically are not critical of safety: we are arguing that safety standards should be maintained at all times.

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The limited and sparse information that we have includes a letter circulated by the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. Waller), which states:
"There is a real need to minimise the risk of another tragic accident such as that which occurred at Carr Lane, Doncaster, last year, when a woman and two children were killed".
He is right, but one wonders why, almost 12 months after the accident occurred, British Rail has done nothing. If the matter is so pressing that it requires the resources of Parliament, why has not British Rail undertaken safety measures such as linking approaching trains with some sort of light or bell-warning device on that crossing? That is a legitimate question.
Mr. Waller: I do not know whether, like me, the hon. Gentleman has visited Carr lane crossing. If he has, he will have seen the safety measures that have been adopted, the signs that have been erected and the way in which the approach to the crossing has been altered to try to do the best for people crossing the line. I do not have time to go into detail, but there are great defects with lights, and it is possible that, if lights were installed as the hon. Gentleman suggests, we would kill more people than we save.
Mr. Cryer: I know that signs are displayed there. I followed the case carefully because it was such an horrific and tragic accident. I was thinking of something more positive, such as the operation of barriers or the construction of a bridge. It might be said that those are costly measures—the bridge might cost £250,000—
Mr. Waller: A lot more.
Mr. Cryer: The hon. Member for Keighley says, from a sedentary position, "A lot more." What is life about? If people want to go to an important nature reserve, why should not the Government invest that sort of money? The hon. Member for Keighley does not raise an eyebrow when the Secretary of State for Defence says that we are to spend £7,000 million on a European fighter aircraft or when we put Tornados, at £21 million apiece, out of use because there are too many of them. Why do we have two standards—one for defence expenditure and one for facilities that help and widen people's experience by allowing them to go to a nature reserve near an urban district? That will be made more difficult.
The cost would be £250,000—perhaps a bit more—but that would not apply to every crossing. This crossing has become the focus of attention because it was the site of a tragic accident. Let us find the money somewhere. If the Government want to do something, they find the money. It is important that we get these things in perspective. Why do the Government always act in such a penny-pinching way in respect of projects designed to broaden experience or to maintain and develop life?
As my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Snape) knows, the civil service pours out money for bypass roads. I am thinking, for instance, of the provision that is made for the heavy vehicles that take traffic from the railways. There seems to be no limit to the amount of money that the Department of Transport is prepared to spend on such schemes. Of course, some of them are intended to increase safety, but others are for fairly lavish purposes that many of us question. The
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number of civil servants devoted to railway matters is about 70, whereas the number devoted to roads is about 2,000.
In terms of annual Government expenditure, the amount involved here would be very tiny. The Government should look more closely at the circumstances. For one thing, such expenditure would help to create jobs. I realise that that would be a very unusual attitude for a Government who, over the past 10 or 11 years, have destroyed jobs. However, why should they not turn over a new leaf and decide to provide some jobs in the civil engineering industry, which is very much in the doldrums, and help people in Doncaster at the same time?
Mr. Redmond: My hon. Friend is quite right. The Bill seeks to make access to Potteric Carr a damn sight more difficult and more dangerous. I question some of the figures given by those talking about the cost of a solution. No doubt any number of redundant miners would be quite willing to provide a solution costing a damn sight less than the amount that we have been given.
Mr. Cryer: I agree with my hon. Friend. The Government cannot find £250,000 in this case, yet they were able to spend £6,000 million to attack the miners in 1984. That is why thousands of miners are redundant. The Government found £10,000 million to pay off the debts accumulated by the public utilities—the family silver—that were sold off. Consider also the amount that was spent on the employment of City gents in various merchant banks and financial advice institutions to promote privatisation. It is mind-boggling that the Government cannot find a few thousand quid to provide a bridge that would give ordinary working people the advantage of being able to cross a bridge to Potteric Carr nature reserve. It is absolutely outrageous.
Mr. Waller 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 64, Noes 38.

Division No. 141]

[9.58 pm

AYES

Arnold, Sir Thomas

Irvine, Michael

Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

Kirkhope, Timothy

Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

Knapman, Roger

Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

Knight, Greg (Derby North)

Boswell, Tim

Knowles, Michael

Bowis, John

Latham, Michael

Bright, Graham

Lawrence, Ivan

Carrington, Matthew

MacGregor, Rt Hon John

Chapman, Sydney

Maclean, David

Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

McLoughlin, Patrick

Conway, Derek

Mans, Keith

Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

Cope, Rt Hon John

Monro, Sir Hector

Currie, Mrs Edwina

Moss, Malcolm

Davis, David (Boothferry)

Moynihan, Hon Colin

Emery, Sir Peter

Nicholls, Patrick

Franks, Cecil

Oppenheim, Phillip

Freeman, Roger

Paice, James

Goodlad, Alastair

Porter, David (Waveney)

Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

Redwood, John

Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

Ground, Patrick

Sackville, Hon Tom

Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

Skeet, Sir Trevor

Harris, David

Snape, Peter

Haselhurst, Alan

Steen, Anthony

Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

Stevens, Lewis

Hunter, Andrew

Taylor, John M (Solihull)

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Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

Wolfson, Mark

Thurnham, Peter

Wood, Timothy

Trippier, David

Walker, Bill (T'side North)

Tellers for the Ayes:

Widdecombe, Ann

Mr. Gary Waller and

Winterton, Mrs Ann

Mr. Peter Bottomley.

NOES

Alton, David

McCartney, Ian

Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

Beith, A. J.

McNamara, Kevin

Bermingham, Gerald

McWilliam, John

Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

Martlew, Eric

Buckley, George J.

Maxton, John

Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

Carr, Michael

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

Pike, Peter L.

Cryer, Bob

Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

Dixon, Don

Skinner, Dennis

Duffy, A. E. P.

Smith, C. (Isl'ton & F'bury)

Dunnachie, Jimmy

Spearing, Nigel

Foster, Derek

Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

Galloway, George

Wallace, James

Godman, Dr Norman A.

Wells, Bowen

Hardy, Peter

Wray, Jimmy

Haynes, Frank

Hood, Jimmy

Tellers for the Noes:

Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

Mr. Martin Redmond and

Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett.

Upon the report of the Division, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER declared that the Question was not decided in the affirmative, because it was not supported by the majority prescribed in Standing Order No. 36 ( Majority for closure or for proposal of Question).
It being after Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed on Thursday.

Coal Industry (Restructuring)
Postponed proceedings resumed on the Question,
That the draft Coal Industry (Restructuring Grants) Order 1991, which was laid before this House on 15th April, be approved.
10.9 pm
Mr. Andy Stewart: The motion shows yet again the continuing support given to the coal industry by our Government. Since 1979, more than £7 billion of new investment has been committed. The significance of that was grasped by the Union of Democratic Mineworkers and, by their example, productivity has increased by more than 100 per cent. Providing grant aid to British Coal of about £17 billion has enabled it to undertake major restructuring of the industry with remarkable success. There has not been a single compulsory redundancy. Men who wish to stay in the industry have always been offered alternative employment.
The size of the coal industry will be determined by the size of its market and not by Government decisions. However, the decision last year to write off British Coal's debts of £6 billion, which was equivalent to a reduction in the price of coal of £9 a tonne, has transformed its financial structure. With its new financial base, the industry has the technology, the investment and the skills to continue to improve its competitiveness and its profitability.
The coal industry is an extractive industry and collieries will naturally become exhausted. That accounts for 2 million tonnes of capacity every year. At the same time, British Coal will have to determine the overall production level to meet its customers' requirements. The order provides £300 million in respect of likely redundancies in 1991–92.
Has my hon. Friend the Minister considered the long-term consequences to the coal industry if the Labour party policy document "Opencast Coal Mining—Too High a Price?" were ever implemented? The money provided tonight would cover only a fraction of the compulsory job losses. The implication of Labour's vindictive policy, at the behest of the National Union of Mineworkers, would be catastrophic for the Nottinghamshire miners. Thousands of jobs would be lost.
Mr. Kevin Barron: How many jobs will be lost in opencast coal mining if the document is implemented?
Mr. Stewart: The document is there for everyone to read.
Mr. Barron: How many jobs?
Mr. Stewart: I did not hear the question.
Mr. Barron: I asked the hon. Gentleman whether he could tell me how many jobs will be lost in opencast coal mining when the policy document is implemented.
Mr. Stewart: If the hon. Gentleman waits, he will hear how many jobs will be lost in Nottinghamshire.
Mr. Barron: In opencast coal mining.
Mr. Stewart: The hon. Gentleman should listen, and he will then get the answer. Thousands of jobs would be lost. The reason is that 13 of the 16 Nottinghamshire collieries require low-chlorine coal from the opencast sites to sweeten their product, on a ratio of six tonnes deep-mined

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to one tonne opencast, before it is accepted by the power generating companies. The loss of low chlorine coal by itself would be disastrous, but the loss of the £200 million annual profit from the British Coal opencast division, which is used to subsidise deep-mined coal, would increase prices by almost £5 a tonne, leaving British Coal with no market and no jobs for its miners.
The Labour party has dropped that bombshell at a time when Nottinghamshire miners are continually breaking production records. It shows the Labour party's lack of faith in and support for the coal industry, and it shows why Nottinghamshire miners abandoned socialism in 1985.
The generous restructuring grants and redundancy payments provided by the Government for the coal industry and miners wishing to leave it shows our continuing commitment. I support the order.
10.14 pm
Mr. Peter Hardy: I agree with one thing that the hon. Member for. Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) said. Almost in passing, he referred to the tremendous achievements of the mining industry; its increase in productivity in recent years has been unmatched in almost any other part of British industry and commerce. Despite that splendid achievement—which this country will appreciate more in a few years' time than it does now—morale has declined and the destruction of jobs has accelerated. The hon. Member who now represents Sherwood boasts about the Government's commitment to opencast mining when there has been an unparelleled reduction in the number of jobs in deep-mined coal. He should be ashamed of himself.
I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that, for various reasons, his constituency may have returned him at the last general election, but his speech tonight expressing a commitment to opencast mining will not only damage the prospects of Conservative Members representing coal-mining areas in Nottinghamshire, but will have sweeping implications for Conservative votes in every coalfield in Britain.
Mr. Barron: Would my hon. Friend care to ask the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) why, before the publication of the Labour party's policy document on opencast coal, Blidworth mine in his constituency closed although it had millions of tonnes of coal? The hon. Gentleman never uttered a word in the House about that.
Mr. Hardy: I do not wish to be unkind to the hon. Gentleman, but we are accustomed to hearing him speak frequently in mining debates. Some of us do not read our speeches, and it is possible that no one had given the hon. Gentleman a speech to inflict on us as he carefully read it. It is not my habit to read speeches in the House, and I do not need to read a speech on the mining industry. Over the past few years, we have lived with the destruction of our local economy.
The Minister has been to my constituency. I attended a church service yesterday. We received a banner, and saw an exhibition about a local colliery that has closed. If the Minister had been to a hillside a few years ago, he would have seen head stock after head stock. Not one of those
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pits can be seen from that point now, because they are no longer there and the jobs that the men need do not exist either.
The hon. Gentleman said that there had been no redundancies and that jobs had been offered to miners who had been declared redundant when their pits closed. The hon. Gentleman should know that men who, over the years, have developed skills in electrical and mechanical engineering, safety and technology—he has been down a colliery, and should recognise what the work involves—were told that they would not be made compulsorily unemployed and would be given alternative jobs. They were also told that they could have no assurance that they would have the skilled jobs for which they had trained, and which they might have practised for many years. Many men skilled in the various trades that allow collieries to be maintained did not want to do unskilled work, but British Coal offered them no promise of opportunities for skilled work.
I will give way to the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr Stewart).
Mr. Stewart: The hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) accused me—
Mr. Hardy: The hon. Gentleman is intervening on my speech.
Mr. Stewart: Yes, but I wanted to make the point to the hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy) so that the hon. Member for Rother Valley would get the message. The hon. Member for Rother Valley accuses me of not raising the subject of the closure of Blidworth colliery. That is completely untrue. I raised it in the House at the time; if he reads Hansard, he will see that.
Mr. Hardy: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could tell us when and in what context he offered a protest. Some of us protest vigorously about colliery closures and although the hon. Gentleman attends debates on coal, he frequently does so in order to make minor party political points rather than joining in the debate with the passion that the argument should receive.
This is another distressing debate because it is about provision for the industry to contract, to provide compensatory arrangements for redundant miners. We have heard about British Coal Enterprise Ltd. and the arrangements for redundancies. As the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) reminded us, over the past few years the industry has demonstrated what can be achieved. However, world coal prices are dangerously low and do not permit investment to enable international production to be sustained. Because of that, we are likely to develop an utterly unwise dependence on imports.
The Minister may not be prepared to listen to the Opposition, but he must be prepared to listen to those of his political persuasion. The people of whom I speak are more likely to be of his political persuasion than ours. They are employed in British Coal and are eager to see it privatised, perhaps for personal profit. However, they recognise that the world coal trade is such that Britain should not allow itself to become completely dependent upon it. Contraction will continue because more collieries are to close in 1991, and that means that dependence on imported coal is bound to increase unless the Government urgently reconsider their policy.

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The Government could argue that this measure and others that they have introduced over recent years show that they have taken a positive interest. However, in Nottinghamshire, Yorkshire and other areas, large sums have been invested in collieries which closed shortly afterwards. Vast reserves of coal have been locked away, perhaps for ever, and in many cases it has happened after substantial public investment. That is the approach of madness, and it is why some of us become rather concerned in coal debates.
We must plan with intelligence and recognise that in addition to provision for the closure of exhausted collieries, where redundancy may be unavoidable, we should ensure that Britain's coal capacity can be maintained to avoid reaching the position outlined today or yesterday by Mr. Edwards of British Coal which could result in a balance of payments deficit of more than £8,000 million. The Government have destroyed huge swathes of British industry. Our capacity to export manufactured goods is very much smaller than it should be, and it will be extremely difficult to make up the current balance of payments deficit. To add to that millions of pounds worth of imported coal is ridiculous.
I urge the Minister and his Treasury colleagues to pay more attention not only to a long-term economic appraisal of the international coal trade and Britain's position, but to the position that is likely to develop in the next three or four years and which may already have started to develop.
The Government frequently claim that they support and are interested in research on the clean combustion of coal. Ministers often go prancing round the country; they get up in the morning and are taken out of harm's way from the Department of Energy. One Minister recently visited Grimethorpe and expressed great interest in the work there. However, we may soon approach the point, if we have not already done so, where there is no need for resources for basic research, but a need for more resources for the development stage that should proceed.
The combined cycle technology could have enormous implications for the clean burning of coal and the long-term future of British industry. It would be useful if the Minister could assure the House and the coal industry that such research will be backed adequately and that there will be no stinting on resources. He should assure us that there will be no examples of hypocrisy when Ministers congratulate those involved in the research and then do not provide the funds that such development needs.
The Government are obviously obsessed with the right-wing dogma they serve. Although they may be eager to secure the privatisation of coal, they should not privatise it simply to allow a few profitable pits to create profit for a relatively small number of people. That would ensure that the pits that could not guarantee to provide a particularly odious level of profit would have no future.
The Government should be prepared to show some interest in and give some attention to the British mining engineering industry. If that industry takes advantage of the increasing opportunities that will be created as man scratches a little more deeply below the surface for the mineral resources that we need to develop, it will have an increasingly important international role. That industry's role will not be as important as it should be if the home base—the number of collieries in Britain—is diminished.
People in the mining industry the length and breadth of Britain now estimate that the number of collieries remaining by the end of the decade will be counted on the
114
fingers of two hands, if not one. That is a dangerous situation, not least for hon. Members such as the hon. Member for Sherwood.
I have one colliery left in my consituency; there were 12 when I entered the House. Jobs in the area have gone and the plight of the area has been created by the hasty greed of the present Administration. Enormous problems have been created, but the problems will get even greater in other areas if the Government do not act with more wisdom than they have shown so far.
It is all very well to seek approval for tonight's order, which is designed to assist the coal mining areas to weather the ravaging storms that have assailed them in recent years. Such orders, however, are not enough. If the Government rely on such orders and refrain from using a bit of vision and common sense they will attract even more unpopularity than they deserve to have given the comments of the hon. Member for Sherwood.
10.28 pm
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: I apologise for missing the two opening speeches of the debate, but as it is a Monday I did not get down from Scotland in time. I did not expect the debate to start quite so early and I am glad to have the opportunity to make a contribution now.
I want to know why we are increasing the funding to British Coal for restructuring, given the questions that must be posed relating to British Coal's record. What will it use the money for? I shall cite two specific examples to illustrate my point. I am concerned that, given additional funds, British Coal will use them to accelerate closures and to vandalise pits that, if not operated, could be maintained on a care and maintenance basis.
I am greatly puzzled about why coal is treated differently from other reserves such as oil and gas. The Minister is familiar with the oil and gas licensing system. He knows that the state owns oil and gas and licenses the oil companies to extract it. All our coal reserves, however, are owned by British Coal, which is not required to produce an annual report on possible or probable recoverable reserves, such as those in the Department of Energy's Brown Book on oil and gas reserves. Consequently, British Coal can happily and glibly abandon pits that contain substantial coal reserves, without any record having been made of what has been lost for exploitation in the immediate future or by future generations. Given that the abandonment of a pit is usually irreversible, that seems to me to be irresponsible. It is extraordinary that to date the Government have taken no steps to put that right.
During the last five or six years a substantial number of pits have been closed and abandoned. I have taken a particular interest in the matter since I served on the Standing Committee that considered the Bill that became the Coal Industry Act 1987. It was drawn to my attention that pits were being closed, even though alternative operators had applied to British Coal for licences to take over those pits. Their applications were refused outright. There was no discussion. British Coal was not interested. The Government were not prepared to intervene in the management of British Coal.
I refer specifically to Betteshanger pit in Kent, the first one drawn to my attention. A miners' consortium was put together and applied to British Coal for a licence to take

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over the pit. British Coal turned down the application, vandalised the pit, removed the machinery and flooded it irretrievably. That pit was lost for ever.
At about the same time, British Coal mothballed the Monktonhall colliery in Midlothian. The Minister will no doubt know that that pit has substantial reserves of low sulphur coal—admittedly in a narrow seam. Nevertheless, it is a pit which British Coal says that it is willing at least to keep mothballed until it concludes its review next month. The miners' consortium there has had a little more time than the Kent consortium had; it had precisely six weeks from the moment that British Coal announced closure to the point at which it abandoned and flooded the pit. British Coal gave the Monktonhall miners three years' notice. The consortium that has been formed has therefore used that time to promote its case energetically and with a great deal of enterprise.
The consortium has tried to identify how much support there is within the local community for reopening the pit. There are many skilled miners in the area who were made redundant as a result of the closure. Many of those miners —I have met a number of them—are working on buses or as security guards, and so on. They are anxious, interestingly enough, to get back to their pit. They believe that they can make it pay. Regrettably, however, every attempt to have their case supported at political level has been frustrated. The charge falls mostly on the Government. Their attitude has been, "The licensing of coal mines is entirely a matter for British Coal. We are not prepared to intervene in the management of British Coal."
If we had a written constitution or proper accountability, no Government would be allowed to get away with that statement. They are the custodians of our coal reserves. They should be accountable to this House. However, the Government refuse categorically to be accountable to the House. The consortium told me that it made numerous requests for meetings with Ministers or civil servants, that it has had replies from 18 different civil servants in the Department of Energy, but that on no occasion has any official or Minister been prepared to meet it, under any circumstances. Members of the consortium held a press conference in the House last week which was attended by five hon. Members. It was apparent that their frustration was reaching its limit. They were extremely angry about the way they were being treated.
Conservative Members should be aware that that consortium comprises skilled miners who have said that they are willing to acquire shares in a company owned by the consortium to take over the running of their old pit. They are willing to put up £2,000 each of share capital and they have been offered finance by private institutions. They are not looking for one ha'penny of public money or public funds to take over the pit. They simply want the right to secure the licence and operate the pit and so demonstrate whether they can succeed where British Coal has failed.
Some people have been sceptical, but, as the consortium has pointed out, there has been no constructive response to the proposals. The consortium has simply been greeted by a blank wall. That is a disgrace.
It is important that we hear the Minister's response to my points. However, there is also considerable frustration and disappointment in the community about the treatment
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that the consortium has received from the local Labour party. The Labour party has not been supportive, because it insists that, if the pit is to reopen, it should be reopened by British Coal. That is a betrayal of the interests of working people in the area who are prepared to put money where their mouth is and who have skill and commitment, but who have received no support from the Labour party.
The community concerned has no quarrel with the National Union of Mineworkers. The workers have all said that they are willing to be NUM members and that would substantially increase NUM membership in Scotland which has been devastated. The Labour party and the NUM seem determined to ensure that British Coal continues to run the pit, in spite of its record of destroying pits and failing to make the pit in question profitable.
Mr. Barron: The hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) is making a point about people letting those workers down. The Scottish NUM is against the proposal and the hon. Gentleman says that the Labour party is against it as well. The hon. Member for Gordon was a member of the Standing Committee that examined last year's Coal Industry Bill which restricted the number of people who could work in a coal mine to 150 and there have been numerous parliamentary questions about that since. Does the hon. Gentleman know of any mine run by British Coal at the moment which has long wall faces underground at the depth of the face at Monktonhall that could sustain a work force of 150 at that face? If he cannot name such a pit, are not he and others misleading the miners because, under current legislation, they could not run that mine anyway, never mind all this waffle about investment?
Mr. Bruce: The hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) should meet the miners concerned and hear what they have to say. They are prepared to put their money where their mouth is. They believe that they can do it. They know the pit and all they want is for the Labour party not to oppose what they are trying to do or to frustrate them in their attempt to secure the licence for their own mine. They are not asking the Labour party to back them and they are not asking for public money. They simply want to know why they are being opposed and frustrated and why only a particular option is to be considered. Those miners have no confidence in British Coal ever making the pit a success if it reopens it—and that is doubtful.
A review is to take place in June, although British Coal has not said exactly when. The assurance I seek from the Minister is that if British Coal, in reviewing the pit by the end of June, has not made a clear statement that it intends to reopen the pit by an agreed and realistic date and begins to take back the miners involved in the consortium and others, the Government will intervene to allow alternative licences to be operated and will recognise the consortium's commitment and its right to have an opportunity to take over the licence. That is the minimum that it is entitled to expect from the House. The refusal to date even to offer members of the consortium a meeting is a disgrace. I assure both parties that there are people in the county of Midlothian who are extremely angry at the way they have been treated after more than two years of determined commitment.
The hon. Member for Rother Valley rightly referred to the Coal Industry Act 1990. He will remember that I tabled an amendment to the Bill, suggesting one of two options

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—first, that the ownership of coal reserves should be transferred to the Department of Energy and that the Department should allocate licences, as with oil and gas; secondly, as a moderate fallback position, that when British Coal refuses to offer a licence there should be a right of appeal to the Secretary of State. Therefore, people could not be treated with the stonewall of silence and non co-operation. One would have thought that, of all people, Tories would like to encourage such enterprise from people in their own communities who know their own industry.
I have been so concerned with this matter that I have tried to explore what pressures might be brought to bear. I took up the matter initially with the Director General of Fair Trading, Sir Gordon Borrie, indicating that British Coal was abusing its monopoly position. Quite reasonably, he replied to me saying:
"I have to say that although I recognise your concern at the possibility of British Coal's deciding to close Monktonhall colliery without giving the others the opportunity to operate it, I am not able to intervene in that matter under the United Kingdom competition legislation. This is because the treaty of Paris gives the European Commission the exclusive jurisdiction to investigate the possibility of a producer of coal abusing its market power or behaving anti-competitively."
I have done what Sir Gordon Borrie suggested and I have passed the entire correspondence to Sir Leon Brittan, the Commissioner responsible for competition in the European Community, and suggested that he should investigate the matter. My suspicion is that the reason why the Government have not been prepared to intervene is that they have made it clear that they wish to privatise British Coal. As with other privatisations, they want to privatise a monopoly—a single entity—and the last thing they want to see is the emergence of a possibly successfully managed pit under different ownership that will in some way depress the flotation price of British Coal.
I challenge the Government to demonstrate whether they have any real commitment to enterprise when it is demonstrated in a local community, and allow them a chance—that is all they are asking—to prove themselves.
On many occasions during the coal strike Conservative Members asked, "Why don't you give the miners the chance to run their own pits?" Now that miners are asking for a chance, what do they get from the Government? They get complete and absolute silence and a refusal to address the issue. That suggests a double standard.
I have also contacted the Select Committee on Energy on this matter. I heard an indication of interest from the
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Chairman of the Committee, who thinks that pits should be offered to miners. Other members of the Committee have also indicated that they will want to know from British Coal—indeed, the Committee has written to British Coal—the outcome of the review. I have no doubt that if the outcome of the review is that it intends to close the pit without offering any other operators the chance to take it over, the Committee will wish to investigate British Coal's motives.
I noticed the Minister exchanging sly glances with the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes). This is a very interesting test case. The hon. Member for Rother Valley is entitled to say that he does not believe that that consortium can operate profitably. I wholly accept that the hon. Member for Rother Valley has long experience of mining. I do not dispute that. However, counter to that is the fact that if a consortium of miners who have worked a pit, know a pit, have their own mining consultant, and financial backing which requires no investment of public money, wish to take over that pit which British Coal has not succeeded in mining profitably and apparently has no interest in continuing to operate, surely even the hon. Member for Rother Valley could conclude that they should be given a chance to prove whether they are right. It is only their money and their backers' money that has been put at risk.
Mr. Andy Stewart: When the Blidworth colliery in my constituency closed, we did exactly what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. Miners and another operator wished to reopen the mine and were refused by British Coal to operate under a scheme which would have been viable. I can understand the hon. Gentleman's expression of anger.
Mr. Bruce: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I know that other hon. Members have been involved in similar schemes. We still have not had any satisfactory response from government sources. I repeat that the Government's performance has been disgraceful.
The chairman of the consortium, Jackie Aitchison, said to me, "If we had come to Government as Japanese offering the possibility of creating 500 jobs in a depressed part of Scotland and required no public investment, would we have been treated in this way for showing indigenous enterprise in our own community, or would we have been treated differently?" We know the answer; the Government's behaviour stinks.
10.45 pm
Mr. Frank Haynes: I wish to make a speech in this debate and I have saved it until the end. The Government have a nerve to talk about restructuring the coal mining industry and providing money to do it after they have destroyed the industry. I went into the industry in 1944. We had an industry then, but we have a tiny industry now. This Government have destroyed it.
It is all right for the hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) to try to protect his back by telling the House what he did about Blidworth. When we had the debates about pit closures, he went into the Aye Lobby for the closures. He did not tell the people at Blidworth about that. I will tell the hon. Gentleman something else. I spoke to the gentleman who chaired the public meetings supported by the Bishop of Southwell to stop the closure. What did Bernard Savage, the chairman of the group in the village of Blidworth, tell me? The hon. Member for Sherwood did not lift a finger to help stop the closure of the Blidworth pit. But that was only one pit closure.
Then the hon. Member for Sherwood tried to cover his back by making it look as though he was fighting for the industry. He shouted his mouth off to the Nottingham Evening Post about Labour Members not being in the Chamber to vote against the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill. That was how he tried to cover his back.
Mr. Barron: Where were all that lot?
Mr. Haynes: Indeed, where were all that lot? I will tell the House where the Minister was. He was the Minister for Sport. What does he know about mining?
Mr. Barron: He went down a pit.
Mr. Haynes: When?
Mr. Barron: Once.
Mr. Haynes: When did he go down a pit? If we had a crack in the floor, he would fall into it and we would lose him. I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, the Minister in a pit. All that he was bothered about was boxing, football, rugby, rowing. He got a Cambridge blue. [Interruption.] He should watch out from time to time for my left hook. What does the Minister really know?
Mr. Moynihan: It was at Oxford.
Mr. Haynes: It is no good the Minister talking to me from his seat. He should get up at the Dispatch Box. I will give way to him if he wants to have a go. We have already had a go today. I told him straightforwardly that I was going to belt him tonight. He does not know anything about the mining industry. They have put him up to handle this one tonight. We know what has happened in the industry and the way in which the Government have destroyed it, and how the hon. Member for Sherwood has helped them to destroy it. We fought against pit closures on the Opposition Benches along with the Liberals.
The Liberals were opposed to pit closures, I give them that. I remember the speeches that the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) made on behalf of the coal mining industry in the debates on the Coal Industry Bill. We did not always agree with what he said, but the principle that he supported was the interest of the mining industry. Yet Conservative Members were in favour of closure after closure.
Mr. Andrew Mitchell rose——
Mr. Stewart rose——
Mr. Haynes: I shall give way to the hon. Member for Gedling (Mr. Mitchell). He is only a young lad yet. He does not know a deal about mining either, but I shall be interested to know what the intervention is about.
Mr. Mitchell: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. It is most kind of him. May I take him back to the Associated British Ports (No. 2) Bill and ask him to explain something which has been bothering me——
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): No, no, no. One industry at a time.
Mr. Haynes: I will not follow the hon. Gentleman down that path.
Mr. Andy Stewart: The hon. Gentleman is scared.
Mr. Haynes: I am not scared. It is the hon. Gentleman who is scared. He has been scared by the recent district election results and he knows what will happen in Sherwood. We shall have a Labour Member elected there to represent the miners and he will sit on the Government side of the House after the general election, when the Prime Minister dares call it. We will have that ballot and there is no doubt that the miners in Sherwood will express their view of the hon. Gentleman and his representation of them. I ask you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. He has not fought for the miners—not like we have. We have fought from day one to save that industry, but the Government are talking about restructuring and finding the money.
Not long ago, the hon. Gentleman said that he supported opencast mining. He wants to have a word about it with the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim), who is never here when we have a coal mining debate. Yet he fills the local papers with what he will do about the Government's policy on opencast mining.
Mr. Jack Thompson: Is my hon. Friend aware that 50 per cent. of the opencast coal that we produce comes from my county? The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) is suggesting that, to save pits and miners' jobs in Nottingham, we must despoil the county of Northumberland. Is that how people should be treated?
Mr. Haynes: I am grateful for that comment but opencast mining will destroy part of my constituency and part of the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who usually sits here. I remember our debate on opencast mining on the Coal Industry Bill and how this Government agreed to its extension. It will destroy the beauty of the place and beautiful lovers' walks. All that, destroyed for the sake of opencast mining.
The hon. Member for Sherwood has a beautiful constituency. It is correctly named Sherwood. It is beautiful, but he is agreeing to its destruction. The miners back there will remember the comments that have been made here today. Make no mistake about it, we will continue to remind them of what he said about opencast mining.
RECHAR involves money from the European Economic Community to help communities in areas where these Tories have agreed to pit closures. Mr. Millan is right to stop that money. He is holding it back because the

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Government are interfering. They want to spend the money on what they want. The important point is that EC Commissioner Millan says that that money should go to help communities cope with pit closures. This Government are on the fiddle again. They are always fiddling, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and they are trying to fiddle this RECHAR money away from where it should go. That is why we are saying what we are today. Bruce Milian is right to hold it up while this lot is on the Treasury Bench. I hope that the young Minister will let the Treasury know in no uncertain terms what we feel about this. That money should not be touched. It should be allowed to go to the mining communities for the purpose it was meant for.
I shall finish on this point—[HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] I will go on a hit longer, then. Now hon. Gentleman have upset you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You do not want me to go on too long, but they have encouraged me to do so. Yet I will live up to the Chair. I always respect the Chair. It is not often that you have to call me to order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I did not follow the road on which the hon. Member for Gedling tried to take me.
Conservative Members must realise—Labour Members realise it only too well—that when a pit is closed all the workers' facilities also disappear. They have been provided for the community and village after village in Nottinghamshire, especially in my constituency and in Derbyshire, has lost the welfare facilities that were provided for the community. Once the pits go, no contributions are made towards the welfare facilities.
In my constituency, the local football club, Sutton Town, which has been going since 1895, goes to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) to play the team at the pit where he used to work.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is in my constituency.
Mr. Haynes: It might be in your constituency, Mr. Deputy Speaker—I do not blinkin' know. All I know is that the team of my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley comes to my constituency to play my local team.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order.
Mr. Haynes: You are out of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. You dragged me into this position. I did not intend to mention you. You should be independent and should not enter the argument. You brought yourself in and are now making me look a twerp.
Sutton Town football club, of which I happen to be the president, went to play the team at the welfare ground of the pit where my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley used to work. We drew 4–4. Because that pit is still working, the welfare facilities are maintained, but further down the road, where the pit has been closed, the welfare facilities have gone.
If the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Lewisham, East (Mr. Moynihan), is listening, he will realise the great loss to those mining villages when their pits are closed. I know that he understands sport, because he was involved in it at university and, a few years after he entered Parliament, that lady at No. 10 appointed him as Minister for Sport. He and I are so interested in sport that, one night, we shaped up between the doors of the Chamber. He was about to throw a left hook when
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Madam Deputy Speaker walked through the door and he did not know what to do with himself. Sport is destroyed when pits are closed.
I want the Government to refrain from what they are trying to prove tonight. I want a real restructuring and proper money invested. Let us save the remaining mining industry so that money is made available to do the job properly and those who have jobs do not have to be laid off, as they have been since 1979 when the Government came into office and created real problems in the mining communities.
If the Minister comes to my constituency he will see the problems that the Government have created there, and he will see them if he visits Sherwood. They are particularly noticeable at Blidworth, where work has been destroyed because the pit has gone. The hon. Member for Sherwood agreed with that happening and did nothing about it. His constituents will remember that when the Prime Minister calls an election and will do something about it. I want the Government to leave the money from RECHAR to help the mining communities, as it is meant to do.
10.57 pm
Mr. Kevin Barron: With the leave of the House, I should like to take up the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) on RECHAR. I know that it is not entirely a Department of Energy responsibility, but will the Minister say exactly what will happen about redundancies?
The hon. Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) must explain his attack on the Labour party. We have said nothing more than what the Flowers Commission said when it looked into coal and the environment and what many other organisations have been saying for many years. It said that opencast coal should be limited. If the hon. Gentleman is in favour of it, he should be addressing the question not just to hon. Members who are present, but to his hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) and many more, including his hon. Friends the Members for Leicester, North-West (Mr. Ashby) and for Cannock and Burntwood (Mr. Howarth) and those in the north-west of the country, including his hon. Friends the Members for Bury, South (Mr. Sumberg), and for Chorley (Mr. Dover), and the Minister for the Environment and Countryside, in whose area there are major plans.
The Coal Industry Act 1990, which the hon. Member for Sherwood supported last year, extends into the private sector the right for people to go out, look for and mine opencast coal. It will be a major problem in future years if it is not curbed. It is something about which the Government have done nothing.
I do not know where the hon. Member for Sherwood got his information, but I do not accept his argument about having to keep 15 pits open. Anybody who has studied the subject for many years will know that that is not so. That argument is used by the opencast mining executive of British Coal and people involved with private opencast coal mining, but that is an entirely different issue from whether deep-mine pits are being kept open.
I should like to place on record exactly what is happening at Monktonhall colliery. The hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) mentioned the Select Committee on Energy. When it sits to take evidence, any hon. Member can go and listen in the public gallery. I was there last

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Wednesday, when the chairman of British Coal was giving evidence on the future of the coal industry and coal markets. He went into some detail about the position at Monktonhall as seen by British Coal.
The reason why the pit is in its present state is not that given by the hon. Member for Sherwood. Direct questions were asked about Monktonhall. Dr. Ken Moses, a senior member of the board who was present, told the Committee of the current state of Monktonhall. He said that the shafts had sunk and there were pit bottom roadways and nothing else. He said that it would take anything up to 2,000 yd of driveages to get a long wall face. The hon. Member of Gordon shakes his head, but I shall explain what is happening in Monktonhall and why organisations such as the Labour party and the Scottish National Union of Mineworkers are arguing that it should be opened by British Coal.
Some 1,000 to 2,000 yd of roadway must be sunk, which costs about £1,000 a metre. Capital investment must be obtained for face machinery that costs anything from £5 million to £7 million, depending on the type of equipment used. Dr. Moses estimated that opening and working one coal face at Monktonhall would cost about £10 million and £20 million—I wrote the figure down, although I do not have it with me.
I think that Monktonhall should be opened. The only reason why it has been mothballed is the state of the Scottish electricity industry and the stream of pressurised water reactors, which has created an over-production of electricity in Scotland. The electricity cannot be removed from the country, because the interconnectors are not strong enough to get it to England. Monktonhall is a national asset that we should hold on to. I wish that all the 500 miners could go back to Monktonhall next week, but to have to put in £2,000 each to open up the colliery is not right.
Another important factor, given that coal is to be produced there, is how it will be sold. Inevitably, it is likely to have to be sold through British Coal, which undertakes the major marketing for the private sector in this country. British Coal concludes the marketing agreements. It costs the private sector money for British Coal to sell the coal.
The best way of opening Monktonhall is through the public sector. I, like the hon. Member for Sherwood, would like to hear something from the Minister tonight to show that the Government are committed. If the colliery is not opened in that way, the project will fall flat, as have collieries in Kent and south Wales, where consortiums and international companies have taken them over. We have heard only hype and seen only failure. However, everyone should argue next month that British Coal should reopen Monktonhall. That is the way to secure its future.
Mr. Malcolm Bruce: I shall not pursue the argument at length, because the consortium will make its own case. It has established markets, and it believes that the operation can be successful. Whether it achieves success is a matter of opinion. However, if British Coal decides that it will not reopen at the end of June—that would be a sign that it sees no future for Monktonhall, as that decision would be based on a judgment that it could not get a return on its investment—would the hon. Gentleman support the consortium? Would he take the view that, in those
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circumstances, the consortium should be given a chance on the basis that the alternative is complete closure and the abandonment of the pit?
Mr. Barron: In those circumstances, my answer would be yes. As I said earlier, however, under the law it is not possible to have more than 150 employees at any one time in this context. The hon. Gentleman should know that, because he was a member of the Committee that considered the relevant legislation last year. As I said, the public sector offers the only chance, perhaps, of keeping the mine open.
Mr. Allen McKay: Blidworth colliery made a clear profit of £2 million. The question that managers ask is where the £10 million came from for investment at the coal face.
Mr. Barron: My hon. Friend puts the issue in a nutshell.
As I said, British Coal gave evidence last week before the Select Committee on Energy. It said that the pit would be offered to a consortium, but within the terms of current marketing restraints. I do not hold out much hope, but I do not wish to be accused of pouring cold water on hopes for the future. I am in favour of keeping the mine open. That would be good for Scotland and good for the nation generally. There is the problem of overproduction of electricity in Scotland, but that will not be with us for ever. The solution of that problem may open the door for Scottish coal.
Mr. Jack Thompson: The hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) talked about thin seams. If he is right, it will be costly or uneconomic to install equipment to extract coal. Will my hon. Friend elaborate on that?
Mr. Barron: I am not sure about thickness, but the coal is mineable. I think that we should leave it at that. If the coal were not mineable, British Coal would not have spent about £500,000 a year to keep the pit ventilated and open after the work force left.
I hope that the Minister will respond to my call that coal-mining areas that are losing jobs should be offered help, including retraining. I hope that British Coal Enterprise Ltd. will support new jobs in coal-mining areas that are losing out.
11.8 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Colin Moynihan): First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr. Stewart) on his excellent contribution to the debate. He is the miners' friend. No hon. Member makes more representations to my Department or more assiduously lobbies my ministerial colleagues in the Department than my hon. Friend, the miners' friend. I congratulate him again on making a forceful and powerful contribution to our proceedings.
We have concentrated on the RECHAR debate this evening. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ashfield (Mr. Haynes) for explaining that responsibility for local government finance rests with the Department of the Environment and the Treasury. There have been recent discussions between the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of the Environment and Commissioner Millan about the United Kingdom's policy on additionality. As Opposition Members said, the Commissioner pressed for fundamental changes in the way

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that EC grants are treated and to the British public expenditure system. Ministers have agreed to consider the implications of what he has said.
Opposition Members have been critical of British Coal Enterprise and have questioned whether the finance made available to BCE from the Government and the RECHAR scheme is adequate.
First, it is extraordinary that the hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr. Barron) should criticise BCE. The management of BCE have achieved remarkable successes since the start-up in 1984—successes recognised by some Opposition Members. The hon. Member for Wentworth (Mr. Hardy), for instance, recognised them in a sedentary intervention earlier. The management have assisted in the creation of about 70,000 job opportunities in mining areas. In the job and career change scheme, singled out for criticism by the hon. Member for Rother Valley, on average 85 per cent. of those seeking another job have found alternative employment. Under the soft loan scheme, BCE has approved more than 3,000 loans to new or expanding businesses, including about 40,000 new job opportunities. Under the managed workshop scheme, BCE is supporting about 90 workshop sites on which about 10,000 people are employed. They provide a sheltered environment in which young businesses can grow until they are ready to move into a normal market environment.
Secondly, the hon. Member for Rother Valley seems to be under the misapprehension that RECHAR finance is already available for BCE. The United Kingdom has applied, as he knows, for RECHAR funds in respect of BCE. Those funds should be received within the next year or so. They have not yet been received, however, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Ashfield for correcting his original remarks to the effect that they have already arrived.
Thirdly, the level of assistance to BCE, including a £60 million credit facility and annual restructuring grant assistance of about £5 million a year has been quite enough to fund all BCE management's proposals for job creation. The source of BCE funding—so far, it has been Government money—has not in any way limited BCE's activities. We shall welcome the RECHAR finance when it is received, but I make the important additional point that BCE is increasingly recycling repayments from successful business schemes backed over the past few years. In many ways, that is the true measure of its success.
The hon. Member for Rother Valley rightly mentioned expected redundancies. As the order, which allows the payment of restructuring grant for 1991–92, is linked to expected redundancies, it is only right in the current financial year that I should discuss the redundancies in a little more detail.
Hon. Members will know that it is for British Coal to decide what manpower it requires in the light of the tonnage that it can profitably produce and sell in competition with other fuels. The Government need, however, to make some estimate of the number of redundancies in the year in order to seek the necessary estimate provision for restructuring grant. This cannot be an exact science, given the uncertainties involved in the process of consultation and review with the unions and work force that British Coal goes through before any closure is finally confirmed.
This year, the total provision for restructuring grant, being sought is £300 million. That figure is estimated to be
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sufficient to meet the costs of about 6,500 industrial redundancies, after allowing for grant expenditure in respect of some 2,000 workers who left towards the end of the last financial year but who did not attract restructuring grant payments until the current year. The Government will continue to meet the costs arising from past restructuring through other grants. In particular, weekly payments to beneficiaries under the redundant mineworkers payment scheme, which closed to new applicants in March 1987, are not affected by this order.
The order must been seen in the context of the continuing changes occurring in British Coal's commercial environment and of the Government's continuing support for the corporation's firm and businesslike response to those changes. Although British Coal's latest results are still being audited, the corporation expects to have made a modest bottom-line profit in the past financial year. The corporation also managed to live within the external financing limit of £905 million set by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State at the beginning of last year, with an expected outturn of about £889 million, representing a saving of about £16 million.
The average colliery output per man shift was 4·7 tonnes overall, an increase of about 8·8 per cent. on 1989–90. I am sure that Opposition Members will join us in congratulating British coal's work force on their achievements and in expressing our hope of more to come.
The debate on Monktonhall has been interesting and important. The complexity of the issue was shown by the exchanges between Opposition Members whose knowledge of Monktonhall is far greater than mine. I understand that meetings are under way and I was surprised to hear what the hon. Member for Gordon (Mr. Bruce) said. I shall look further into the issue and shall consider what he said carefully. I shall ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State with responsibility for coal to respond. I give an undertaking to the House that that will be done, not least because the hon. Gentleman made some strongly worded and deeply felt comments about the lack of a response from the Department. I listened carefully to what he said and I am sure that others outside the House—especially British Coal—have also listened carefully or will read carefully what he said and that that will lead to action.
On one point, the hon. Gentleman drew my attention to my responsibilities in other sectors of energy, especially oil and gas. There is a clear statement of reserves in the report and accounts of the British Coal Corporation. In detail on page 8, under "Reserves"—I shall not quote it all—it says:
"The Corporation's estimate of coal in place in the United Kingdom (that is in seams over 60 cms thick and less than 1,200 metres deep, minus coal which has already been worked) is 190 billion tonnes."
It goes on to detail technically recoverable reserves. It is valuable, not least because it parallels much of the important information available in the Brown Book on the oil and gas sector.
I have not covered every point in detail. If there are any specific points that I have not covered, I shall study Hansard and take them up.
I commend the order to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That the draft Coal Industry (Restructuring Grants) Order 1991, which was laid before this House on 15th April, be approved.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): With permission, I will put together the next two motions on the Order Paper.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE
That the draft European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 1991, which were laid before this House on 16th April, be approved.
That the draft Representation of the People (Amendment) Regulations 1991, which were laid before this House on 16th April, be approved.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

REPRESENTATION OF THE PEOPLE (SCOTLAND)
That the draft Representation of the People (Scotland) Amendment Regulations 1991, which were laid before this House on 18th April, be approved.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
Question agreed to.
Mr. Deputy SpeakerWith permission, I will put together the next two motions on the Order Paper.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

ESTATE AGENTS
That the Estate Agents (Undesirable Practices) (No. 2) Order 1991 (S.I., 1991, No. 1032), dated 19th April 1991, a copy of which was laid before this House on 19th April, be approved.
That the Estate Agents (Specified Offences) (No. 2) Order 1991 (S.I., 1991, No. 1091), dated 29th April 1991, a copy of which was laid before this House on 29th April, be approved. —[Mr. Kirkhope.]
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith pursuant to Standing Order No. 101 (Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.).

VETERINARY SURGEONS
That the draft Veterinary Surgeons Qualifications (EEC Recognition) (German Democratic Republic Qualifications) Order 1991, which was laid before this House on 25th April, be approved.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]
Question agreed to.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
Ordered,
That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 4084/91 relating to action to protect the environment in the coastal areas and coastal waters of the Irish Sea, North Sea, Baltic Sea and North East Atlantic Ocean (NORSPA) and 4548/91 relating to establishment of a financial instrument for the environment; endorses the Government's intention to take an active part in the NORSPA scheme and promote United Kingdom interest in this area of environmental importance; and supports the Government's aim to ensure that any new Community financial instrument for the environment contains clear and specific objectives, and respects the principle of subsidiarity. —[Mr. Kirkhope.]

SITTINGS OF THE HOUSE
Resolved,
That

(1) this House do meet on Thursday 23rd May at half-past Nine o'clock;

(2) notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 17 (Time for taking questions), no Questions shall be taken, provided that at Eleven o'clock Mr. Speaker may interrupt the proceedings in order to permit questions to be asked which are in his opinion of an urgent character and relate either to matters of public importance or to the arrangement of business, statements to be made by Ministers, or personal explanation to be made by Members; and

(3) at Three o'clock Mr. Speaker do adjourn the House without putting any Question, provided that this House shall not adjourn until Mr. Speaker shall have reported the Royal Assent to any Acts agreed upon by both Houses.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]

NORTHERN IRELAND COMMITTEE
Resolved,
That, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 88 (Meetings of Standing Committees), the Chairman of the Northern Ireland Committee shall, not later than two and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the Matter of the proposal for a draft Fair Employment (Amendment) (Northern Ireland) Order 1991, put the Question, That the Committee has considered the said Matter.—[Mr. Kirkhope.]

Insurance Industry
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Kirkhope]
11.17 pm
Mr. Andrew Hunter: I doubt that I shall compete with the drama and passion that we have witnessed during the past hour or so, but I nevertheless welcome the opportunity to introduce a short debate on the Financial Services Act 1986 and the insurance industry —subjects in which I have a strong constituency interest. Earlier today, I gave my hon. Friend the Minister a draft of what I proposed to say.
A primary purpose of the Financial Services Act is to give the public adequate protection when buying investment products and services. However, there is broad agreement that, as far as retail financial services are concerned, the Act is in some respects not working well. That has arisen partly because the practical effects of some of the regulations run counter to the original intentions, and partly because the market for financial services has evolved so quickly in recent years that some of the fundamental regulations require updating and amendment.
Consequently, the Securities and Investment Board plc is currently conducting a wide-ranging review and has recently received a consultative paper on the subject. I welcome the review and look forward to an amended regime which will, to quote Mr. David Walker, the chairman of the SIB, be "robust and enduring." The SIB regards the review as urgent, but because the issues are complex and require extensive consultation, speedy changes cannot be expected. There seems no question of a new regime being introduced this year. Although the SIB may disagree, past form gives no great confidence that changes will become effective much before 1993. Meanwhile, there is an important issue of consumer protection which requires immediate action. That is the issue to which I wish primarily to draw attention.
An important principle of the Financial Services Act 1986 is that every seller of retail financial services should be authorised and supervised directly by the SIB, or indirectly by recognised self-regulatory organisations or recognised professional bodies. That is intended to ensure that all selling practices conform to the principles of the Act and that the public should have a clear line of recourse in the event of a breach.
The self-regulatory organisations have their own rule books which must at least match up to SIB standards. One such organisation is the Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association, which has responsibility for independent financial advisers. Such advisers are agents for the customer and are required to fulfil quite stringent conditions to secure and maintain authorisation.
The second regulatory organisation is the Life Assurance and Unit Trust Regulatory Organisation, which authorises the suppliers of financial services, such as the life assurance companies. It makes them responsible for the compliance of their tied intermediaries who may be employed salesmen of the supplying company, or an individual or firm that has contracted to sell its products. The tied intermediaries are agents of the supplier and not of the customer, and they are restricted to selling only the investment products issued by the supplier. Thus, the
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structure is complete. The independent adviser is authorised and monitored directly by FIMBRA and the tied intermediary is policed by the supplying company, which is itself directly authorised and monitored by LAUTRO.
For the most part, the structure works well. However, one area in which major difficulties arise is that of the tied intermediary who is not an employee of the supplying company. Such an individual is formally known as an appointed representative and is bound to the supplier by an agency contract under section 44 of the Financial Services Act 1986.
Appointed representatives in practice come in two colours. Some are organised as a formal sales force, although they retain their self-employed status, but many others act as independent businesses, whether trading as a limited company, as a partnership or as a sole proprietor. They come in all shapes and sizes, from one-man operations to large financial institutions. The number of firms that act in that way has been growing substantially in the past year or two. Their principal operations need have little or no connection with financial services. Such firms may be an estate agency, a bank, a building society, a travel tour operator or even a football club.
With the best will in the world, it is not possible for the supplying company to exercise the same standard of supervision and direction with independent businesses as the standard that it can give its own employees. Experience has shown that adequate compliance with the regulations requires close and frequent examination both of the business practices and of the detailed sales documentation of the appointed representative. LAUTRO has had to crack the whip more than once in the hope of improving standards, but without evident success.
My many contacts in the industry who are close to the situation simply do not believe that the necessary standards will ever be achieved in practice through the current regime. It has been put to me that the appointed representative, being an independent business, tends to resent and resist the very close supervision of affairs which is required. However, sometimes being unable or unwilling to meet the stringent requirements imposed by the regulations on independent financial advisers, the appointed representative has settled reluctantly for a contractual tie to one supplier. It will often be financed through loans from the supplier for commission, yet to be earned or for what is often described as "business development". Firms will often look around for the supplier willing to give the best deal and some will think nothing of changing suppliers if they get a larger loan or better terms elsewhere.
The supplying company is sometimes reluctant to be too harsh in its supervision for fear of losing a valuable sales outlet, which will often owe it a substantial debt, which may prove hard to recover. There is a strong conflict of interest between its duty to supervise an appointed representative and its desire to retain a profitable business relationship with it.
Yet that, although important, is only part of the problem. The Financial Services Act regulates only the sales of what it defines as investment business. In this context, that would primarily be life insurance, pensions and unit trusts. The supplying company is required to monitor and take responsibility for only' those types of business. The appointed representative, however, may on his own account be offering financial services to his

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customers that are not subject to the Act, such as mortgage broking, the taking of deposits or the holding of customers' money for purposes unrelated to the Act.
It is often too much to expect the general public to distinguish between financial transactions that are regulated under the Act and those that are not. Often, what to the customer is one transaction—for example, buying a house—will involve investment business covered by the Act, financial transactions not covered by it and, frequently, elements that are not financial at all. Customers are likely to suppose that they have protection under the Act for transactions when in fact no such protection exists. Moreover, they may well believe that the supplier to whom the appointed representative is contracted—perhaps a respectable and long-established life assurance company—will stand behind all the transactions. The supplier, however, has no such obligation in relation to any transaction not covered by the Act.
Supplying companies have often chosen to stand behind such transactions for the sake of their good names; but that is a shaky foundation on which to build consumer protection, and one quite inconsistent with the purposes of the Act, which were to buttress protection in financial matters with the force of law. It would, moreover, be wholly unreasonable to expect the life company to stand behind a transaction carried out by the appointed representative on behalf of another supplier, such as a building society, whose deposit-taking business was outside the scope of the Financial Services Act. Yet the customer is likely to think that the protection of the Act, and the obligations of the life company, will protect his interests against, say, the fraud or negligence of the appointed representative.
Having debated the matter extensively with members of the industry, and after long thought, I conclude that appointed representatives can be adequately supervised only by being directly authorised, and not by authorisation at second hand through the supplying company. Only thus is it possible to escape the conflict of interests that I have described, and to ensure the proper monitoring of the appointed representative's investment business. That authorisation could be given and supervised by one of the existing regulatory organisations.
Such authorisation would make it much easier to clarify for the customer which financial products came within the scope of the Act, and the opportunity could be taken to ensure the financial adequacy of the appointed representative at a level appropriate to his financial liabilities, together with the provision of suitable professional indemnity insurance. The buying public need the assurance that all intermediaries are adequately capitalised and responsible.
I do not propose any change for the employed member of a supplier's sales force. Because he is employed, the supplier can give its employee the close supervision that is required; can direct which classes of business that employee may undertake; and must, in any event—quite apart from the Financial Services Act—stand behind the employee's actions. Thus, the public are already protected, in the full spirit of the legislation.
I am aware that LAUTRO is advocating some proposals that are directly aimed at the problems of the
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appointed representative. In themselves the new proposals are good, but they suffer from a fundamental flaw; they still depend on regulation by the supplying company, not on direct authorisation. Without direct authorisation, no additional proposals will be effective in practice. Can we afford to wait while LAUTRO's proposals are finalised, implemented and observed in action, when all experience tells us that they will be nothing more than a palliative? Is that a risk that we want the buying public to run for a day longer than necessary?
I do not expect all existing appointed representatives to welcome such proposals, particularly those who are experiencing an unfair advantage under the present regime. But those—I am glad to say that there are many—who are scrupulous in their professional conduct will welcome the clarification in status that only direct authorisation will give.
There will certainly be greater expense, much of which will fall on the shoulders of the appointed representatives. We should remind those who jib at this that they have chosen to operate as self-employed individuals or as independent firms rather than subject themselves to the direction of an employer. There are great advantages in acting as an independent contractor, but business independence has its price, and those who practise it should be willing to pay that price.
To return to the broad revisions currently being investigated by the Securities and Investments Board, I notice that a novel proposition is being informally canvassed. It concerns the possibility of an additional class of intermediary which would act as agent for a limited number of companies—that is to say, a class lying somewhere between an independent financial adviser and an appointed representative. Direct authorisation would certainly be necessary for such a hybrid intermediary if total confusion about who is answerable to whom is to be avoided. Consequently, the argument for the direct authorisation of appointed representatives is quite consistent with the steps that the SIB is exploring.
In summary, I suggest that the current method of controlling appointed representatives through the actions of their supplying company bring about a conflict of interest and in many instances cannot be practically carried out to the standards envisaged by the Financial Services Act. I have further argued that the public are frequently misled, perhaps quite innocently, into believing that they have the protection of the Act and the strength of the supplying company behind them when this will often not be the case. It is important to rectify that, and the direct authorisation of appointed representatives is a clear way forward.
11.30 pm
The Minister for Corporate Affairs (Mr. John Redwood): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mr. Hunter) for raising on the Adjournment this most important issue, which is of great interest to the insurance industry.
Independent financial advisers, including those advising on life insurance and unit trusts, are authorised by the Securities and Investments Board or by one of the self-regulatory bodies or by a recognised professional body. My hon. Friend's worry relates to tied agents and appointed representatives regulated under section 44 of the Act. They are exempted from authorisation if they are

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employed under a contract for services setting out the type of investment business and the clients the agent is allowed to approach. The insurance company has to accept in writing responsibility for the investment activities of his agent.
These requirements rest not just upon the rules of Lautro but also upon the provisions of the Financial Services Act approved by Parliament. Many companies using appointed representations ensure a good quality service to clients and customers. Like my hon. Friend, I am worried when things go wrong and consumers lose money. We all have an interest in seeking, where possible, to avoid such future problems. I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that, with the best will in the world, it will not be possible to stop all fraud.
However, we can and should make it as difficult as possible, and concentrate the right resources on its detection to act as a deterrent.
As my hon. Friend said, day-to-day regulation by the SIB and LAUTRO is being improved in several ways. The SIB's new core rules lay down the basic principles for controlling appointed representatives. LAUTRO is working on new rules which will require that a representative's work for the insurance company must be carried out separately from any other financial business that he has. This may require different premises and different stationery. The appointed representative must also make clear on his stationery the nature and scope of his authorisation. My hon. Friend fears that that of itself will not be sufficient. I will ensure that the content of the debate and the report of his excellent speech is passed to the SIB and the SROs when they consider these matters further.
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An appointed representative or an independent financial adviser registered under the Financial Services Act may sometimes carry out unregulated business as well. Therefore, insisting on separate authorisation would not entirely prevent the problem. None the less, it should be looked at. The Securities and Investments Board is currently doing that, because it is investigating the whole question in its thorough review of retail regulation.
I understand my hon. Friend's wish for speed in these matters, but proper consultation should be undertaken, because it is most important to the industry and to customers that the SIB should get the answer right. The regulatory system must be cost-effective and should not place unduly onerous burdens on financial service providers. That would merely serve to limit choice by making some business more difficulty, and would also mean passing higher prices to consumers.
LAUTRO estimates that there are about 90,000 self-employed individuals and a further number of incorporated appointed representatives in the marketplace. If each one of them had to be separately authorised, the cost could become very large, and many thousands of individuals at present self-employed might decide to give up business altogether or to become employees. Such a development would be opposed by many interests—just as much as it is favoured by my hon. Friend and others.
I shall ensure that my hon. Friend's worries about the quality and style of regulation are passed on to the SIB and to LAUTRO. I shall ensure that they are taken into account in the wide-ranging review of regulation undertaken by those bodies.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes to Twelve o'clock.