Commons Sitting of 12 November 1991

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]
MESSAGE FROM THE QUEEN

  QUEEN'S SPEECH (ANSWER TO ADDRESS)
  The Vice-Chamberlain of the Household reported Her Majesty's Answer to the Address, as follows:
  I have received with great satisfaction the loyal and dutiful expression of your thanks for the Speech with which I opened the present Session of Parliament.

PRIVATE BUSINESS

  LONDON UNDERGROUND (SAFETY MEASURES) BILL [Lords]
  Order for Third Reading read.
  To be read the Third time tomorrow.

  LONDON UNDERGROUND (KING'S CROSS) BILL
  Order for consideration read.
  To be considered tomorrow.

  COMMERCIAL AND PRIVATE BANK BILL [Lords]
  Order for Second Reading read.
  To be read a Second time tomorrow.

Oral Answers to Questions
  EDUCATION AND SCIENCE

    Student Loans
    Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he has any plans to change the student loans scheme.
    The Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Kenneth Clarke): No, Sir.
    Mr. Bennett: Does the Minister agree that the loans scheme has turned out to be an administrative nightmare and that it has caused a great deal of bureaucracy and hardship to students, especially since they have been removed from the safety net of social security? Is not it hard that all those measures have been placed on students at a time when they find it particularly difficult to get vacation jobs or part-time jobs in term time and when those who graduate find it increasingly difficult to get jobs to pay off the overdrafts that they have had to incur as students?
    Mr. Clarke: I do not agree with any of those premises. First, the scheme has been extremely well run and the loans company has met its target of getting the loans to those who have applied within 21 days in almost all cases. The majority of students have not felt obliged to take out loans as they have not thought it necessary. Those who have done so have enjoyed the benefit. The loan plus the grant is 30 per cent. higher than the grant alone two years ago. There is no evidence of significant student hardship, despite a somewhat half-baked campaign by the National Union of Students to try to suggest that there is. We have provided an access fund to the institutions to enable them to deal with the few cases of hardship that genuinely occur.
    Mr. Pawsey: If the situation is as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) describes it, why has the number of applicants to advanced education increased and why does the number of admissions to universities and polytechnics show a substantial increase? Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that student support in the United Kingdom continues to be the most generous in the western world?
    Mr. Clarke: I am unable to answer my hon. Friend's first question; it puzzles me, too. We had been told that the loans system would deter people who might otherwise have gone into higher education because of the so-called financial hardship that they would face. In fact, since it has been introduced, the rate at which student numbers have increased has been unprecedented and we expect it to increase by 10 per cent. again this year. All the evidence refutes the nonsense that we have heard about the impact of the student loans scheme.
    My hon. Friend is right that we have the most generous system in the developed world for supporting students. I make no apology for that. It is Government policy to continue to extend opportunity for students in that way.
    Mr. Straw: Why is the Secretary of State so contemptuous of the evidence about student hardship when it comes from sources such as the citizens advice

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    bureaux and from scores of cases sent to him by hon. Members on both sides of the House? Does the Secretary of State recognise that the access funds are in no sense a substitute for student eligibility for social security and for vacation hardship allowance and that mature students in particular have been plunged into severe hardship by the Government's policies? In the light of that, will he reconsider the abolition of vacation hardship allowance, especially as it was abolished in clear breach of undertakings given in the House that it would remain as a safety net following the abolition of social security provision?
    Mr. Clarke: I have looked at the evidence of so-called student hardship and I do not accept that the "scores" of cases stand up to examination. There have always been some students in serious difficulties. Mature students and those who do not receive the parental contribution towards their grant have always been a problem. It is somewhat eased for some by the student loans system. It can also be addressed by using the access funds provided by the Government. The average student is much better off under our arrangements of a combined grant and loan scheme than previously. The few that are not—those with high housing benefit—can be helped through the access funds. The vacation hardship allowance was almost unheard of and was not being demanded. When we abolished it there was scarcely any take-up.

    Grant-maintained Schools
    Mr. Colvin: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science how many schools in Hampshire have now applied for and achieved grant-maintained status; and if he will make a statement.
    The Minister of State, Department of Education and Science (Mr. Tim Eggar): Four schools in Hampshire have applied for and achieved grant-maintained status. I am pleased that the parents of pupils at those schools have voted to take up this option for their schools. I hope that many more in Hampshire and, indeed, throughout the country will follow their example.
    Mr. Colvin: May I take this opportunity to congratulate Hardley school in my constituency which was the first in Hampshire to achieve grant-maintained status? Does my hon. Friend accept that opting out, as it is called, is a misnomer because schools which achieve grant-maintained status are opting into a new educational regime of higher morale, better educational opportunities and more money? What percentage of schools in Hampshire will have to achieve grant-maintained status for the local education authority to become redundant?
    Mr. Eggar: I hope that the local education authority will encourage schools to go grant maintained. There is much evidence from a recent survey that that is beneficial to schools and pupils. For example, of the schools replying to the survey, 90 per cent. reported an increase in the number of pupils applying, 65 per cent. reported more teachers in the schools and 75 per cent. reported an improved teacher-pupil ratio. That is evidence of the success of the GM policy.
    Mr. Hardy rose—
    Mr. Speaker: The question is about Hampshire.
    Mr. Hardy: I know that it is about Hampshire, Mr. Speaker. Will the Minister offer the House any justifycation for the provision of more money to schools in Hampshire because they happen to serve the current dogma of the present Government?
    Mr. Eggar: The money is allocated to Hampshire on the normal standard spending assessment basis. Grant-maintained schools rightly get money which would otherwise be spent on administration costs by Hampshire. Those grant-maintained schools are using that money effectively for the benefit of the school and, more importantly, of improving education for the pupils attending those schools.

    Foundation for Sport and the Arts
    Mr. Mans: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what responsibilities he has for the sports and arts foundation.
    The Minister for Sports (Mr. Robert Atkins): The Foundation for Sport and the Arts is an independent trust which decides the allocation of its own funds. Under the trust deed I appoint a Government observer and am consulted on the appointment of the chairman. In practice, I keep in close touch with the work of the foundation.
    Mr. Mans: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the Football Trust gets an extra £20 million from the 2·5 per cent. reduction in the betting levy which goes towards the safety and improvement of football grounds?
    Mr. Atkins: That is certainly part of the money that is made available as a result of the far-sighted decision of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. When one adds to that the £40 million or so from the trust, my hon. Friends at least will recognise that the Government can lay claim to spending more money on sport than any party has done for many years.
    Mr. Pendry: Is not the Minister somewhat ashamed of himself? Despite the various amounts that come from the Foundation for Sports and the Arts—given at the whim of the trustees in a haphazard fashion—they do not compensate in any way for the £60 million cut in real grant from the Government since 1986. What answer will the Minister give to the chairman of the Sports Council, who described the recent cuts as a kick in the teeth?
    Mr. Atkins: I am delighted to see the hon. Gentleman in the Chamber; he should be on the Opposition Front Bench as their spokesman for sport, as my shadow is not here. Perhaps something should be read into that.
    This year the increase in grant to the Sports Council is 4·4 per cent., which is more than the rate of inflation and equivalent year on year to what we have pledged ourselves to provide. I repeat that if one adds to that the £40 million from the foundation, the £20 million a year for football and the 1 million that I found for the champion coaching scheme, it is clear that our commitment to sport is greater than anyone's.
    I spoke to the chairman of the Sports Council this morning and pointed out that the increase in grant is in excess of inflation. Therefore, his comment was wrong.
    Mr. Menzies Campbell: Does the Minister understand that, despite what he has just said, there is still

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    considerable apprehension that the Government will use the existence of the foundation as an excuse for not funding sport properly? The Minister is aware that the Sports Council's plan did not represent a standstill, but involved the development and expansion of all its activities. That is why the settlement of 4·4 per cent. is rightly described as a kick in the teeth.
    Mr. Atkins: It is extraordinary that even though the Government found an extra £40 million for sport in the last Budget, which is near enough double the expenditure on sport year on year, Opposition Members criticise us and suggest that we are not providing the necessary resources for sport. The first tranche of money from the foundation of £3·7 million—[Interruption.] Do stop interrupting.
    Mr. Speaker: Order. I am supposed to say that. Can we get on?
    Mr. Atkins: I was referring to the hon. Member for Blackburn (M r. Straw). He is supposed to believe in discipline in our schools, but his behaviour is singularly ill-disciplined. As a public school boy, he should know better.
    I have sought to demonstrate that the claim of the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) is fatuous, because we are spending much more money on sport than in the past.
    Mr. David Evans: Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour's charter for sport is about more interference, more committees, more regional committees and, most of all, more costs? Will sport be subject to Beckett's law? Will it be a top priority, a priority, or what? Does not that contrast with the Conservative policy of reducing the betting levy by 2·5 per cent., which has given £100 million to sport and increased the Sports Council grant to £50 million—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. Let us have a question please.
    Mr. Evans: Does not it mean that we are the party of hot money, not hot air?
    Mr. Atkins: I can do no better than to draw the attention of the House to this statement in Labour's charter for sport:
    "We will … review the composition and powers of the Sports Council … to free them from political bias".

    However, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Small Heath (Mr. Howell), who is supposed to be the shadow spokesman on this subject, suggested that Labour would encourage a greater ministerial role in the Sports Council. May we know which is which?
    Mr. Cormack: Does my hon. Friend accept that much as many of us welcome the sports and arts foundation, we would infinitely prefer to have a national lottery, which would produce far more money for sport and the arts?
    Mr. Atkins: I am sure that my hon. Friend recognises that there are a number of views on this subject. My views are well known., but it is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

    Derbyshire County Council (Funding)
    Mr. Skinner: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science whether he will increase the educational funding for Derbyshire county council.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Michael Fallon): Councils' current spending on all services next year should be 7·2 per cent. higher than this year, but it is for Derbyshire to decide its level of spending and priorities between services. Capital spending in schools, supported by annual guidelines, is set to rise from £472 million this year to £524 million next year, an increase of 11 per cent. Derbyshire's allocation will be announced before Christmas.
    Mr. Skinner: Will the Minister confirm that in the summer he met a group from Derbyshire county council who asked for £140 million, spread over the next three years, to get rid of all outstanding repairs and make necessary improvements? After 12 years of Tory rule, little toddlers must still run across playgrounds to get to outside toilets. We have the citizens charter, the parents charter and every charter under the sun. When will the Government put their money where their mouth is?
    Mr. Fallon: I confirm that Councillor Young came to the Department in July with five hours' worth of videos showing how Derbyshire had been running down its schools. I allocated Derbyshire £21 million this year, the fourth highest allocation of any education authority in England. I now understand that Derbyshire is planning to siphon off £5·5 million of capital spending to pay for extra redundancy and personnel costs at county hall.
    Mrs. Currie: Might the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) want more money for Derbyshire so that it can employ more people such as his brother, who is employed as a personnel liaison officer for Toyota, his sister-in-law, who is employed in the county publicity department—[Interruption.]—and such as another sister-in-law, who is employed in the education department? The hon. Gentleman is always talking about jobs for the boys. Should not that include brothers and sisters as well?
    Mr. Fallon: Derbyshire not only employs some pretty odd people, but it makes some rather odd choices. This year, Derbyshire has chosen to cut music and swimming while spending over £5 million keeping school meals at 1981 prices.

    Greater Manchester Schools
    Mr. Tony Lloyd: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will make a statement on the staffing levels and the conditions of schools in Greater Manchester.
    Mr. Fallon: In January 1991, the 10 local education authorities in Greater Manchester reported 230 full-time permanent posts unfilled, a vacancy rate of I per cent. below the national vacancy rate of 1·5 per cent. Vacancy figures in September showed a significant improvement, with only 15 vacancies reported for the whole of Greater Manchester at the start of the school year.
    Mr. Lloyd: I am not surprised that the Minister failed to mention the condition of schools in Greater Manchester. Will he confirm that in every year and for

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    every authority recently in Greater Manchester, the amount of money that the Government have allowed them to spend on capital projects has been way behind what they have needed, with the result that there is now a backlog of repairs and maintenance? Is he aware that one head teacher recently told me that not only do they have to teach in unsavoury conditions, but they are now having to teach in unsafe conditions? The Government are putting the health and safety of children at school at risk. What will the Minister do to make sure that that state of affairs does not continue?
    Mr. Fallon: For the 10 councils in the Greater Manchester area, I increased capital guidelines from £32·6 million last year to £41·6 million this year. I shall be annou0ncing the individual allocations for next year before Christmas.
    Sir Fergus Montgomery: Will my hon. Friend confirm that the worst-ever cuts in education took place in 1976 under a Labour Government? Will he further confirm that the 11 per cent. increase in the autumn statement is bound to be helpful?
    Mr. Fallon: Yes, the 11 per cent. increase for school buildings next year is a good outcome, given that the level of inflation is only about 4 per cent. and given the drop in construction prices. Trafford education authority has received about £13 million in the past two years to help it reorganise and improve its schools.

    Higher Education
    Mr. Battle: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he next expects to visit Leeds university and Leeds polytechnic to discuss funding for higher education.
    The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. Alan Howarth): I will be visiting Leeds polytechnic to open the Higher Education for Capability office on 27 November. This is a joint project of the polytechnic and the university.
    Mr. Battle: Is the Minister aware that at Leeds university top-quality alpha-grade research in technical and scientific subjects can no longer be funded? Will he give an assurance that in future research at Leeds polytechnic will be funded under the new joint proposals? Is he aware that such cuts in academic research will prove to be economic short termism with vengeance?
    Mr. Howarth: Our policy is that high-quality research should be supported in departments of universities and polytechnics, wherever they may be. The Universities Funding Council and the Polytechnics and Colleges Funding Council will embark jointly on a new research and assessment exercise next year. As a consequence, up-to-date ratings of quality will be made, department by department, across the spectrum of higher education. Every department that scores highly in those assessments will benefit accordingly. That is a thoroughly fair system.
    Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Will the Minister make absolutely certain that the funding councils use up-to-date figures? Universities such as Lancaster are going steadily and rapidly up the poll and are doing very well indeed.
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    However, the 1988 criteria are not as good as current ideas, so it is important that the universities that are forging ahead should be encouraged.
    Mr. Howarth: As always, my hon. Friend is eloquent in championing the university in her constituency—and rightly so. The new research assessment exercise has been brought forward in anticipation of ending the binary line and bringing together the polytechnics and universities in one sector. As a result of the exercise to be carried out during 1992, the assessments of research quality will be based on the most up-to-date data.
    Mr. Andrew Smith: When the Minister discusses higher education funding at Leeds, will he confirm that it is Government policy to increase basic funding in line with the increase in student numbers? Given the pressures on laboratories, libraries, teaching and student accommodation, and the real cut in capital funding in this year's autumn statement, what is the Government's policy on capital expenditure?
    Mr. Howarth: I am delighted to be able to tell the hon. Gentleman that our policy on capital expenditure is to encourage and enable higher education institutions to invest, as they need to do, to accommodate the dramatic increase in student numbers as well as provide facilities for the research of remarkable quality which takes place in so many of our universities. Capital funding available from the polytechnics has increased by 50 per cent. since 1989–90, when the PCFC sector was established. I am pleased that, in the new settlement that has just been announced, we have secured an extra £9 million of capital funding for the higher education institutions.

    School Inspectors
    Mr. Spearing: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science when he next expects to receive a report from Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools.
    Mr. Kenneth Clarke: The senior chief inspector's annual report is being prepared now and will be submitted to me on completion.
    Mr. Spearing: Does the Secretary of State agree that, whatever the merits of Her Majesty's inspectors being involved in the advocacy of method, their function of providing independent and publicised reports on the quality of education has never been in question? If he wishes to make an adjustment, would not it be more sensible to detach their role from advocacy of method and confine it solely to inspection? Is not his solution of private consultants to be engaged by competitive schools asking for trouble, because it creates an automatic conflict of interest and renders their reports suspect by definition?
    Mr. Clarke: With respect, the hon. Gentleman appears to be slightly confused about what we are doing. First, I accept that the inspectors' production of an annual report and other reports on our schools is extremely valuable, as they base their advice on the inspections that they carry out. The Education (Schools) Bill will continue that. Indeed, we strengthen the independence of Her Majesty's chief inspector of schools in producing those reports by detaching him, to a much greater degree than in the past, from my Department. Secondly, the new role for HMI will be to monitor the quality of all those inspectors who will

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    carry out the new inspections in individual schools throughout the country and to give, for the first time, reports to every parent about those schools.
    Mr. Spearing indicated dissent.
    Mr. Clarke: The hon. Gentleman dismisses that. Does he think that we should employ 5,000 HMIs to carry out inspections, or does he prefer the Labour party's solution—that only local councils should be allowed to inspect schools? We are giving Her Majesty's inspectorate a key role in monitoring the quality of those permitted to carry out that public service.
    Mr. Amos: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the whole purpose of the reforms is to increase the number of inspections in schools, not reduce them, and that the monitoring and regulation of the new system will be such that it would not be in the professional interest of any inspector to try to fiddle a report?
    Mr. Clarke: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Last year Her Majesty's inspectors produced and published about 150 reports on individual schools and, usually, no parent saw the reports. Our arrangements will lead to about 6,000 inspections each year, and each parent will receive, without requesting it, a straightforward description of the inspection. We state that the teams of inspectors should be monitored and approved by Her Majesty's inspectorate. The new, independent Her Majesty's inspectorate will have the duty of giving a little lion stamp to those inspectors and ensuring that they are up to the mark.
    Mr. Straw: Flow can the Secretary of State conceivably claim that Her Majesty's inspectorate is to be strengthened when its numbers are to be cut by two thirds and it is to be subject to clear and specific direction from the Secretary of State? Will the Secretary of State confirm that the privatisation of the inspectorate inherent in the Education (Schools) Bill goes far further than that presaged in the schools charter and includes, under the guise of additional inspectors, the substitution of private money-making firms to do the work currently carried out, not just by local inspectors but by the chief inspector of schools?
    Mr. Clarke: I have carried out several privatisations in my time in commercial and industrial departments, and my understanding of the word privatisation is that one takes something currently managed in the public sector and transfers it to the private sector—the last such transfer in which I was engaged involved British Steel. In this case, Her Majesty's inspectorate is not being transferred and its role will remain the same except that as a public organisation it will be made more independent of the Secretary of State. The hon. Gentleman's complaints are based solely on the fact that the total number of staff in the inspectorate are to be reduced. The Labour party judges such matters only on the number of employees and trade union members on the books, which is not the test that we shall apply. We shall give Her Majesty's inspectorate powers and duties and the number of staff that the chief inspector and I think are required to fulfil those roles.
    Mr. John Browne: Will Her Majesty's chief inspector report on the case of Kings school, Winchester, which was denied grant-maintained status as a direct result of the local authority using public funds to wage a campaign against it?
    Mr. Clarke: I do not think that Her Majesty's inspectorate can look at that case. A parental ballot was carried out on grant-maintained status and the parents decided to vote against the application for that status. I agree with my hon. Friend that Hampshire county council waged an extremely vigorous campaign against the proposal. I do not agree that Hampshire presented the case fairly, and I keep trying to obtain undertakings from Hampshire county council that, even if it cannot support Government policy, it might at least present a more detached account of the case to parents when grant-maintained options are on the table.

    Gateshead CTC
    Mr. Mullin: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is the proposed per capita capital spending per pupil in 1991–92 at (a) Gateshead city technology college and (b) all secondary schools in the borough of Sunderland.
    Mr. Eggar: My right hon. and learned Friend's planned capital contribution to Emmanuel college, Gateshead in 1991–92 is £259,000. The funding agreement with the CTC allows for 300 pupils in 1991–92. The Department does not hold figures for the proposed capital expenditure on secondary schools in the borough of Sunderland in 1991–92.
    Mr. Mullin: I am not surprised that the Minister declines to give us the figures because is not the truth that about 60 to 80 times the amount of money is being spent per capita on students at the city technology college than is spent on pupils at secondary schools in Sunderland and surrounding boroughs? Can the Minister point to any country apart from South Africa where such large sums are spent on a small elite group at the expense of the majority?
    Mr. Eggar: I am not sure where the hon. Gentleman gets his figures from—perhaps from the same Labour party briefing on which the hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) relies. The hon. Member for Blackburn produces wholly fictitious figures which compare the new building costs for new schools or for the conversion of schools to CTCs over a period of three years with the capital expenditure borrowing guidelines for 14 authorities in one year. That shows that he has not reached level 1 in mathematics, and nor has the hon. Gentleman.

    Student Grants
    Mr. Bowis: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will review the criteria for student grant eligibility.
    Mr. Alan Howarth: The Education (Mandatory Awards) Regulations are reviewed annually. Extending them to a substantially wider range of courses or students would, however, require primary legislation. We have no present plans for that.
    Mr. Bowis: Is my hon. Friend aware that in many local education authorities, not least in London, it is a prerequisite for a discretionary award that a student lives for at least three years within the borough concerned? Will he give at least gentle guidance to LEAs suggesting that it is not reasonable for students to be excluded from

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    discretionary grants merely because their parents have moved home? Or will he try to find some other way of funding such students?
    Mr. Howarth: The regulations do not impose any specific requirements on how local education authorities should treat people ordinarily resident in the United Kingdom when considering their applications for discretionary awards. It is for each LEA to construct its own policies in respect of discretionary awards. "Discretionary" means what it says: it is not our policy to intervene or even to lean gently on authorities in this matter.
    Mr. Simon Hughes: Does the Minister accept that it is no good being eligible for a mandatory award if it is then not paid? What steps is he taking to ensure that this year local authorities such as Southwark, which a week or two ago had paid less than one fifth of its mandatory grant cheques to eligible students, pay up, so as to minimise student hardship? And what will he do to ensure that in future years the system pays up at the beginning of the year, not a third of the way through it or later?
    Mr. Howarth: We have a student support system as generous as any in the world, but under long-established arrangements local education authorities administer the award system, and students depend absolutely on those authorities playing their part. We have substantially increased resources for students, providing more money for more of them. It is a disgrace if students are in difficulty on account of administrative failures by local education authorities. I have already made my views clear: officials have written to every education authority about which we have received evidence of a failure to carry out its statutory duties—and we will continue to pursue the matter vigorously.
    Mr. Hannam: Is my hon. Friend aware of the problem that some mature students, particularly women with home commitments, have to take their degree courses in the form of part-time courses and that they are therefore not eligible for mandatory grant? Will he look into that?
    Mr. Howarth: My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the changing pattern of higher education. There has been a dramatic expansion of participation, and there are more mature and part-time students and more people working their way towards qualifications on the basis of credit accumulation and transfer. We shall keep our administrative and financial systems under review in the light of these trends.
    Mr. Cryer: Does the Minister accept that a local authority such as Bradford, which tries to provide a wide range of discretionary awards, is inevitably limited by the amount of money that it can give? If central Government provided more assistance, the Minister may rest assured that such LEAs would provide more students with the opportunity of further and higher education through the application of discretionary awards.
    Mr. Howarth: The hon. Gentleman would do well to go back to Bradford and ask the authority one or two questions. The assumption on education spending that underlies the revenue support grant to local authorities this year allowed for increased spending on discretionary
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    awards of 15 per cent. in 1991–92. If authorities are failing to increase their spending on discretionary awards commensurately, that is their decision.

    Primary Schools (Funding)
    Mr. Robert Hicks: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what steps he is taking to assure himself of the adequacy of the funding arrangements for local management of smaller primary schools; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Fallon: Local education authorities have considerable flexibility to provide additional assistance to small primary schools, through the small school protection factor, but it is for each authority to devise its own scheme and to choose its priorities within that scheme in the light of local needs.
    Mr. Hicks: Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be regrettable if the objectives of local school management could not be met because of inadequate funding? Is he aware that there are problems not only in respect of teachers' salaries, actual as opposed to average, but in respect of responsibility for the funding of the older village primary schools which predominate in rural areas? There is a clash here between the local authority and the governors.
    Mr. Fallon: Yes, that is an important point which was impressed on me when I recently visited Cornwall. The Cornwall scheme protects small primary schools with fewer than 12 staff by paying most of the difference between average salary costs at the school and the average salary costs across the local education authority area.
    Ms. Armstrong: Does the Minister realise that many small primary schools are now under enormous pressure in terms of delivering the full curriculum because they do not have the additional resources to enable them to employ the staff to teach it? Will the Government stop pressurising authorities to cease supporting small primary schools through additional support across the county? That pressure is making the future of many rural primary schools very unpredictable.
    Mr. Fallon: There is no such pressure. Three years after the Act was passed, the hon. Lady still does not seem to understand that local management of schools funds the pupils and not the teachers. It is open to any local education authority to tilt its scheme towards primary schools and I have been encouraging local education authorities, where appropriate, to revise their schemes with precisely that aim.
    Mr. Allason: Is my hon. Friend aware that despite the success of local management of schools, staff are still very worried that experienced older teachers who qualify for the higher salary scales will be discarded in favour of less experienced younger staff?
    Mr. Fallon: That is precisely why we allow local education authorities the flexibility to devise schemes to accommodate the particular circumstances of small schools and those with very high inherited salary costs.
    Mr. Matthew Taylor: The Minister is right to commend Cornwall county council for its efforts to help small primary schools. Nevertheless, the problem of average

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    teacher costs strikes hard in rural areas that have many small schools. That problem will increase, thereby penalising schools with the most experienced and loyal teaching staffs. Will he go some way towards reviewing the process?
    Mr. Fallon: Yes, we shall be reviewing the teaching cost issue in 1993. Cornwall still has much to do to meet our requirement of 85 per cent. delegation to school budgets. It has not yet reached that target and I urge it to re-examine its spending allocations to make sure that it does. I was struck by the fact that Cornwall seems to be overspending on roads and underspending on its schools.

    Adult Education
    Mr. Harry Greenway: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he has any plans to expand the adult education service; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Eggar: The Government's proposals for transferring further education colleges to a new independent sector are designed to increase the number of people studying at those colleges and to improve opportunities for all in further education.
    Mr. Greenway: Will my hon. Friend confirm the Government's total commitment to adult education and its comparative cheapness in providing excellent courses for so many people? In particular, will he confirm that the Government see leisure courses and non-vocational courses as being equal in value to vocational courses and will they ensure funding for all?
    Mr. Eggar: I can readily confirm to my hon. Friend, to whose long-held interest in education I pay tribute, that we are committed to continuing to fund adult education of all kinds—vocational, leisure, basic education and English as a second language. The increased recent trend of more adults studying in their own community is greatly welcomed and is exactly what the White Paper seeks to underline.
    Mr. Fatchett: Is it not clear from Government statements that the future of the adult education service is at great risk? Will the Minister give a commitment that the present adult education programme will be built upon and secured, or are the Government pulling the ladder away from thousands of our fellow citizens who have prospered from adult education in the past?
    Mr. Eggar: What is becoming increasingly clear is that the Labour party is trying to do nothing other than promote scare stories so as deliberately to frighten people who have traditionally relied on adult education courses. The hon. Gentleman knows that we are determined to sustain adult education, to extend it and to ensure that it is properly based in the local community. The hon. Gentleman should admit that.

    Local Management of Schools
    Mr. Brandon-Bravo: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Science what is the average amount of money being held back by local education authorities in England and Wales, per pupil, under the system of local management of schools.
    Mr. Fallon: Across the 97 local education authorities operating local management of schools, the average amount of the potential schools budget retained centrally is £260 per pupil.
    Mr. Brandon-Bravo: Is my hon. Friend aware that the tyranny that controls education in Nottinghamshire holds back £10 or more for each and every child above that national average, that it is somewhere around two thirds of the way down the merit table for putting resources where they belong—at the school—and sits on about £3 million at the centre, which is the same as holding back £5,000 for every school in the county? Does that not prove that we need the parents charter? Will my hon. Friend ensure that every parent in the county gets one?
    Mr. Fallon: Yes, Sir. My hon. Friend will be interested to know that Nottinghamshire holds back nearly £43 million and that its total administrative costs are 4·4 per cent. of the schools' budget—twice as high, for example, as those in Northamptonshire.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Trimble: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November.
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Trimble: Now that the by-election in Kincardine and Deeside has focused attention on the issue of Scotland once again, and with the continuing difficulties in establishing a democratic local administration in Ulster, will the Prime Minister consider initiating consultations with other parliamentary parties with a view to reaching agreement on common structures of government throughout the United Kingdom?
    The Prime Minister: I understand why the hon. Gentleman makes that point, given all the difficulties in Northern Ireland and the historical perspective there. It is precisely to deal with those problems that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been having so many discussions over the past year.
    Mr. Ashby: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Ashby: Has my right hon. Friend seen the good producer price figures issued today? Do not these support the contention of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer that the economy is beginning to turn around?
    The Prime Minister: I saw the producer price figures issued this morning, and they are good news. They show a continuing collapse in inflation and that can only help the competitiveness of industry and thereafter the growth of the economy and the creation of jobs.
    Mr. Kinnock: Given that the Prime Minister correctly said last night that Maastricht will be an important stage

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    on the road to even closer European union, what does he say today to those of his right hon. Friends who say that he has already gone far enough down the road to political and monetary union and, in their words, we should stay where we are?
    The Prime Minister: I have made it clear over recent months, and am happy to repeat today, that we are seeking an agreement at Maastricht that will be acceptable to the House and will enable Europe to move forward together. That is true on economic and monetary union and on political union. There is some way to go before I could sign the political union treaty that is before us. There are still matters to be agreed on the monetary union treaty, but in both cases we are making progress.
    Mr. Kinnock: The Prime Minister says that he recognises, in his words, the
    "potential impact on our influence and prosperity were we to take a different decision from our principal competitors".
    In saying that, is he recognising that isolation would mean the sacrifice of influence that is essential to the vital interests of the British people—[Interruption.]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The Leader of the Opposition.
    Mr. Kinnock: Will the Prime Minister take this advice:
    "We have nothing to gain by sitting on the margins … while others frame new structures without us"?
    The Prime Minister: As the right hon. Gentleman knows, this Conservative Government have been the leader in Europe for the past 12 years. The single market would not have come about but for this Conservative Government. The change in rebates would not have come about without the Conservative Government. The Fontainebleau abatement would not have come about without the Conservative Government. We propose to remain within the centre of the Community, framing the future of the Community in the interests of the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe.
    Mr. Kinnock: So now perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will answer my first question; what does he have to say to those of his right hon. Friends who say that he has gone far enough and should stay where he is?
    The Prime Minister: I answered that question some moments ago.
    Mr. Day: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Day: Will my right hon. Friend accept my congratulations and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends for the massive increase in health spending that the Government recently announced, which shows beyond doubt the Government's commitment to the principles of the national health service? Does he agree that that is in stark contrast to the contributions that have been made by Opposition Members, who have nothing to offer the NHS but smears and attacks on staff and patients, and on the care that patients receive? Will he give the House some positive information about the success of the reforms that the Government are making, which will save the NHS for the year 2000?
    The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. There has been yet another substantial increase in resources for the NHS, and that will enable a continuing reduction in waiting lists and better service for all those who use the NHS. Trusts are effective and efficient and they are the future. Increasingly, they are proving that.
    Mr. Ashdown: Will the Prime Minister take the opportunity of the vote that will take place on Thursday to think again about Scotland? Does he realise that the real potential danger to the Union of Scotland with Britain lies not with the separatists but with his Government's refusal to listen to the voice of the people of Scotland? So I ask him again: will he listen and will he think again?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman sounds from what he has just said as though he is a separatist. I can tell him frankly that the Government are not separatist. The Government remain fully committed to the Union between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom.
    Mrs. Roe: Will my right hon. Friend join me in welcoming the £24 billion programme for public housing over the next three years detailed by the Department of the Environment yesterday? Will he join me also in condemning the inefficiency of Labour councils, whose failure to collect rents and fill empty properties is a major barrier to the provision of homes for the homeless?
    The Prime Minister: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. As people can see throughout the country, the reality is that Labour authorities leave houses empty even when people are in need of them.
    Mr. Andrew Smith: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Smith: Will the Prime Minister join me in congratulating the Cowley workers, the trade unions and the management on the launch today of the excellent and new Cowley-designed and Cowley-built Rover 800? Will he explain why, at the hands of his high-tax Government, the car will face total sales taxation of 27·3 per cent., when its BMW competitor faces tax in its domestic market of only 14 per cent? Is it not time that he started backing the British car industry in the way that the Germans support theirs?
    The Prime Minister: The hon. Gentleman can certainly be certain that I congratulate Rover on its splendid new product, and I hope that it will be immensely successful. As an owner of Rover cars for many years, I am sure that it will be. Rover and other car manufacturers are now so successful that they are exporting to Japan and elsewhere.
    Sir Gerrard Neale: Can my right hon. Friend find time during his busy day to congratulate the management and staff of Rover on the fact that over the past 12 months not one single minute of production time has been lost through industrial disputes? Will he contrast that excellent achievement under Conservative trade union law with the undoubted industrial chaos that would result in the unlikely event of the Labour party's returning to government?
    The Prime Minister: What my hon. Friend has said is certainly the case at Rover, but it has also been the case throughout industry during the past year, when there was the lowest number of strikes for more than 45 years. I welcome that very much. Of course, if we were to revert to legalising secondary action, flying pickets and the other actions that the Opposition propose, I do not doubt that strikes would return.
    Ms. Hoey: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Lady to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Ms. Hoey: What has the Prime Minister to say about the comments of the last Conservative leader of Lambeth council, who in a letter published in The Guardian on Saturday said[Interruption.] I want to quote it, and he said, "The Government is failing in its treatment of the mentally ill"—[HON. MEMBERS: "No quoting."]
    Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Lady can paraphrase, and she is doing so.
    Ms. Hoey: Conservative Members do not want to hear what a former Conservative leader has to say. He said that the Government were out of touch with homelessness and with the hopelessness of large sections of society, and that they had forfeited their right to govern.
    The Prime Minister: I have not seen the remarks quoted by the hon. Lady, and neither have I seen the context in which they were put or what else was said. However, I say to the hon. Lady and to the alleged author of that statement that, frankly, I disagree. As a former Minister with responsibility for the disabled, I am well aware of the immense amount of work and care that has gone into the care of the disabled. As a former Lambeth housing chairman, I do not take lectures from anyone in Lambeth about housing.
    Mr. Burt: Is my right hon. Friend aware that he carries the support of the vast majority in this House and in the country in his refusal to rule out a single currency on our terms at some future time? In displaying the consistency of involvement and leadership in the Conservative party with regard to Europe, is he not finally giving this country the role that it lost with the empire?
    The Prime Minister: We must consider the longstanding interests of this country when we make decisions on the treaties, and that is what I will do.
    Mr. Cohen: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagement for Tuesday 12 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the rely that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Cohen: As crime in London increased yet again last year—by 13 per cent.—has the Prime Minister read the
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    comment by police commander David Stevens that the police are not responsible for crime any more than doctors are responsible for disease, and that crime is an indicator of economic and social malaise? As the Conservative party has been in power for 12½ years, who does the Prime Minister think is responsible for the economic and social malaise?
    The Prime Minister: Crime prevention begins in the home and in the treatment of people from an early age. On the questions of prevention and punishment of crime, the Government have taken committed and sustained action for more than a decade. That includes providing a strong and effective police force. We are spending 67 per cent. more, over and above inflation, than in 1979. No Government could have done more against crime than we have, and no future Government would be able to do more than we will.
    Mr. Bowis: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Tuesday 12 November.
    The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Bowis: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the level of community charge or council tax depends partly on the efficiency of the local council and partly on the proportion of local government spending which is required to be raised by local taxation? Does he further agree that if that proportion were to be raised to 20 per cent., overnight every household bill would rise by 50 per cent? Is he not astonished that that is the Labour party's proposal?
    The Prime Minister: No, I am not astonished because, two years after announcing its local government plans, the Labour party still does not know how they would work. My hon. Friend makes some pertinent points. We will make sure that local tax bills are restrained and, where councils are extravagant, unlike the Labour party, which would let extravagance run wild to the cost of the local taxpayer with no let or hindrance, we will cap them.
    Mr. Speaker: Mr. Sillars—question 9.
    Hon. Members: Where is he?
    Mr. Speaker: I call Mr. Dennis Turner.
    Mr. Turner: Has the Prime Minister one shred of sympathy for Britain's beer drinkers? Prices have increased way beyond the rate of inflation and the Government's legislation to check monopolies is a complete fiasco. When will the Government do something to protect the British beer drinker?
    The Prime Minister: With regard to having sympathy for them, I would say to the hon. Gentleman that I am one of them.

NATO Summit
3.31 pm
The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): With permission, Mr. Speaker, I shall make a statement on the NATO summit in Rome on 7 and 8 November which I attended with my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary.
Last July, in London, NATO agreed to adapt its strategy to the changed situation in Europe and to build up a new partnership with the countries of central and eastern Europe. At the summit we agreed on how to carry forward both those tasks.
The strategic concept reflects the British Government's objectives. These were to ensure that NATO remains the linchpin of western security, charged with dealing with whatever security problems might threaten. The strategy reaffirms the need for a collective defence based on NATO's integrated military structure; and also on the need for both nuclear and conventional forces, kept up to date where necessary, but at significantly lower levels. Alliance forces in every NATO country will be smaller, more mobile and more flexible. At the summit we endorsed the establishment of new rapid reaction forces, in which the United Kingdom will command the land element.
The summit declaration establishes a North Atlantic Co-operation Council. This forum will enable NATO to discuss common security issues with the Soviet Union, the Baltic states and the countries of eastern Europe. At Britain's suggestion, the first such meeting will be held at Foreign Minister level in Brussels in mid-December.
We have agreed a wider role for NATO. Henceforth, NATO will not just be keeping the peace; it will be actively promoting peace. It will be prepared to help the countries of eastern Europe in planning defence forces in a democracy, with civilian-military relations, and in converting defence production to civilian purposes. The relationship may well develop still further.
The NATO summit also, for the first time, considered in depth the European defence identity and the alliance. We affirmed some important principles: first, the principle that NATO is the essential forum for consultation and agreement on policies bearing on the security and defence of alliance territory; secondly, endorsement of the British proposals to use the Western European Union as the means of strengthening the European pillar of the alliance; thirdly, the need to establish clear and open relations between NATO and the Western European Union and to involve other allies on issues discussed in the Western European Union which affect their security.
Heads of Government received a report on Yugoslavia following a meeting of Community Foreign Ministers with Lord Carrington. In view of the grave situation in Yugoslavia and the repeated breaches of the ceasefire, Community Governments agreed in Rome on a series of restrictive measures. They include suspension of the trade and co-operation agreement; suspension of benefits under the general scheme of preferences; suspension of the PHARE—Poland and Hungary Assistance for Economic Restructuring—programme; and the restoration of quotas on textiles. Community Governments asked those member states that are members of the Security Council to promote measures in the Security Council to tighten the arms embargo, and to take steps towards imposing an oil
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embargo. We are now consulting other members of the UN Security Council about the introduction of such measures.
Community Governments also decided that positive action should be taken to benefit the parties which were being co-operative in the peace process. Taken together, these measures will increase the pressure on those responsible for appalling bloodshed and suffering in Yugoslavia. NATO Heads of Government issued a separate statement making clear the allies' strong support for the efforts of the European Community to promote peace in Yugoslavia.
We also discussed developments in the Soviet Union. We publicly supported economic reform and democratisation. We stressed the need for the authorities in the republics, as well as at the centre, to respect their obligations—on human rights, on arms control and on economic policy. In particular, we urged them to do everything necessary to implement the CFE—conventional forces in Europe—and strategic arms reduction treaties, and to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
We are living through a dramatic revolution in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. We have to use all the means at our disposal—the European Community, the conference on security and co-operation in Europe and NATO—to help them to build stable democracy in their countries. NATO remains the core of our defence. Were we again to face a military threat, NATO would be there to meet it; but NATO is now reaching out to the countries of eastern Europe to help to provide stability and a sense of security. All of us at last week's meeting agreed that the continuing American and Canadian presence in Europe is vital to both defending and promoting peace in Europe. Britain will have a central part in that task, both in the alliance and in the European Community.
The decisions of the NATO summit provide important guidelines for the negotiations leading to the European Council in Maastricht. I hope that the House will welcome the outcome of the summit as a significant contribution to a sound defence and to democratic stability in Europe.
Mr. Neil Kinnock: I thank the Prime Minister for his statement.
First, let me welcome the broader definition of security that was reached at the Rome summit, and the shift to a strategic concept of co-operative security through which European states can address their common security concerns—as the Prime Minister has pointed out—in partnership.
Especially welcome is the recognition that, in the words of the strategic concept, the threats of the past "have effectively been removed", and the focus for allied strategy should be on the "multi-faceted … risks" of the future. In that context, we welcome the leading role allocated to the United Kingdom in the rapid reaction force.
The proposal for cuts in both conventional and nuclear weapons confirmed by the declaration and the calls for further negotiations made in it are, naturally, commendable. Will the Prime Minister tell the House whether he will be supporting the non-proliferation measures referred to in the declaration by actively pursuing negotiations for a comprehensive test ban treaty? Will he also tell us what steps his Government are prepared to take to promote what the Rome declaration calls
"welcome prospects for further advances in arms control in conventional and nuclear forces"?

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Can the right hon. Gentleman say how Britain would participate in negotiations to achieve such advances? Will he, in any event, take account of Norwegian concerns, and urge our other partners in NATO to respond to Soviet requests for talks about reducing maritime forces?
Let me turn to the declaration itself. Is the Prime Minister satisfied that its terms guarantee the primacy of NATO in matters of security? Does he agree that the parallel development of any European security identity and defence role must not detract from the central importance of NATO and the transatlantic relationship with the United States and Canada?
In view of the welcome establishment of a North Atlantic Co-operation Council with eastern European countries, could the Prime Minister tell us how he sees that new council's relationship with the conference on security and co-operation in Europe? Does he foresee any possibility of further developments that might in the future include the granting of associate membership of NATO to some eastern European countries?
We welcome the NATO statements on developments in the Soviet Union and the need to use all means possible to strengthen pluralism and democracy. In the interests of achieving clear and dependable progress with disarmament, does not the Prime Minister agree that the variety of political and economic contacts which Britain and other NATO countries have with the Soviet republics should be used to emphasise the need for their Governments to adhere fully and readily to all relevant treaties agreed by the Soviet Union?
While welcoming the NATO statement on Yugoslavia and the Prime Minister's further information today, may I ask what efforts the British Government are making to provide the humanitarian relief that is referred to in the Rome communiqué, which is daily becoming more necessary as the tragedy in Yugoslavia continues?
In the strategic concept, established at the Rome summit, it is clear that the NATO countries are adopting policies that seek to take full advantage of the new opportunities produced by the historic change in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. People and countries, east and west, will doubtless benefit from these deliberate efforts to replace the peace of tension with the peace of trust and co-operation.
The Prime Minister: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his welcome of the strategic concept and of the United Kingdom's role in commanding the land-based rapid reaction corps and for much else that he had to say. There is a measure of agreement on many of the matters that he touched upon.
We are working towards a test ban treaty, but it is some way away. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there are many difficulties. To hold talks on reducing maritime forces would be premature. I can confirm his remarks about the primacy of NATO. That is secure. It was quite specifically realised and accepted at the NATO summit that that was the case and that the role of the United States and Canadian forces was central in maintaining the peace of Europe and remaining on the land continent of Europe.
As for the North Atlantic Co-operation Council, there will, over time, develop a relationship with the CSCE—very probably an informal one. I expect, over time also, that there is an aspiration that we should move towards associate membership of NATO for some of the eastern European countries. I would not expect that to happen at
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an early stage, but the North Atlantic Co-operation Council expressly exists in order to establish a bridge between western and eastern Europe and removes so many of the fears and concerns that have existed for so much of the post-war period.
As for the Soviet Union, I can expressly confirm to the right hon. Gentleman that we are expressing both to the Soviet Union, at the centre, and, equally important, to those representatives of the republics whom we now meet so regularly the need to adhere to treaties signed by the Soviet Union, the implementation of which may pass to the republics in the months and years ahead.
Returning to the strategic concept, I reaffirm that the principles upon which the alliance is based are those set out in the strategic concept: that NATO is the essential forum for defence and that that is where we shall discuss policies based on security and defence, on collective defence and, most critically, the appropriate mix of nuclear and conventional forces.
There are plans for humanitarian relief for Yugoslavia, much of which is likely to come through the European Community. In view of the problems in Yugoslavia, there are huge difficulties with that at the moment. There is much discussion about it. When I am in a position to do so, I shall write to the right hon. Gentleman with the details.
Sir Geoffrey Johnson Smith: I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend's statement, particularly the initiative taken with the North Atlantic Co-operation Council. Can he say a little more about the European pillar, the Western European Union? While Members on both sides of the House accept that there is a role for the WEU in a European security identity, what reassurance can my right hon. Friend give that the core of the NATO alliance will not have its vital strategy affected by possible control by the European Community over the Western European Union?
The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend makes an important point. The intention behind building up the Western European Union is to use it as a vehicle for building up the European contribution to our collective defence. It is not our policy that the Western European Union should be subordinate either to NATO or to the European union. It is expected that there will be organic links, and no doubt that will be a matter to be discussed as we come towards a treaty at Maastricht. There are several things that we are clear about concerning the WEU. It should not duplicate NATO decision-making; it should not duplicate NATO structures; it should not be subordinated either to the union or to NATO; and it should not discriminate between European allies favouring some against others depending on their membership of the Community or not.
Mr. Paddy Ashdown: I congratulate the Prime Minister on a broadly successful NATO summit. May I welcome in particular the initiatives taken to draw in the emerging democracies of eastern Europe and to widening the strategic concept of NATO?
May I also tell the Prime Minister how welcome are the steps, limited though they are, that Heads of Community Governments have taken on Yugoslavia? In view of the daily increase in the oppression and brutality of Croatia and the bombardment of Dubrovnik, does he realise that

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many of us sometimes wonder whether we have done all within our power in that tragic situation and whether we have done enough to stop those events?
On the broad thrust of the Prime Minister's statement, does he agree that there is nothing inimical between support for NATO and the establishment of a common security and defence policy for Europe? Will he confirm, as I asked him to do the other day, that the Government's policy on the matter remains that stated in the Anglo-Italian declaration less than six weeks ago—to work for a common security and defence policy in the inter-governmental conferences on political union?
The Prime Minister: We are looking for a common defence policy. The European defence identity is important, and it should be built up, but not as subordinate to the European Council because that would inevitably lead us into the position where we would be establishing competing structures to NATO and, in so doing, would weaken NATO. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman shares my view that the primacy of NATO is essential not merely for the security of our country but for the peace of Europe. I think that our position on that is entirely clear.
I was grateful for the welcome that the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) gave to the strategic concept and for his earlier remarks.
As regards Yugoslavia, it is a great and increasing tragedy and does not seem to be susceptible to reason. I very much regret that. The Hague conference made no progress on 5 November. I am delighted to say that Lord Carrington is returning to Belgrade today at the request of European Community Foreign Ministers, who were meeting this morning. I hope that he will be able to make progress, but there does not seem to be much indication on the Yugoslavian side that it will return to the peace conference and negotiate constructively.
Mr. William Powell: My right hon. Friend deserves the warmest congratulations for the successful and necessary outcome of the conference. Does he agree that the one weakness of NATO is the reluctance of the republic of France to join the integrated command system? Will he make it clear that it would be widely welcomed by the rest of the members of the alliance if France could find her way to rejoining what she left?
The Prime Minister: France is an important member of NATO and a long-standing ally of ours inside NATO and without, but I certainly share my hon. Friend's view: I would welcome its return to the integrated structure.
Sir Patrick Duffy: Is the Prime Minister aware that the North Atlantic Assembly extended associate delegate status to former members of the Warsaw pact some time ago and that it brought the Baltic states into the same relationship at its Madrid conference last month? I know how welcome in those circles the proposed North Atlantic Co-operation Council will be, and how commendable was the part that the Prime Minister played; he is to be warmly congratulated. However, is he aware that in those same circles and further afield within the alliance any proposals, such as the recent French proposal, that may impinge on the responsibilities
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of NATO for the security of Europe or that will weaken the transatlantic bridge will be viewed with deepening anxiety?
The Prime Minister: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman's third point. He is a specialist in these matters, so his support is especially welcome and I am grateful for it. Events have proved how far-seeing and correct the North Atlantic Assembly was in its actions some time ago. I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's confirmation that the new co-operation body that we have established will meet with a welcome.
Sir Jim Spicer: My right hon. Friend has rightly stressed that we are offering a helping hand not only to eastern Europe but to the Soviet Union. It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that in the next few months we shall see the total collapse of the distribution network within the Soviet Union. In those circumstances, does my right hon. Friend envisage that we might be called upon to provide necessary infrastructure by the use of NATO troops offering the hand of friendship to the Soviet Union?
The Prime Minister: I do not believe that that will be necessary. It is certainly possible that there will be difficulties with food distribution and the availability of food, and, in particular, with animal foodstuffs in the Soviet Union. We are seeking to arrange with our partners in the European Community a proper distribution system to meet that eventuality. There is now the equivalent of about $10 billion of assistance available to the Soviet Union. Much of that cannot be disbursed until the completion of meetings with the Soviet Union to determine where the need is and how we can most appropriately meet it without duplicating the assistance that is already available.
Mr. Merlyn Rees: Will the Prime Minister clarify part of his statement on the NATO summit? The second page states:
"Heads of Government received a report on Yugoslavia following a meeting of Community Foreign Ministers with Lord Carrington."
What is the status of the "report"? The statement is about a NATO meeting. Too often the EEC has been greatly influenced by the policies of Italy and Germany and by support for Croatia, and has not concerned itself with the wider problems of Yugoslavia. What is the role of NATO in all this? Will it play a part? The EEC has been great at talking, but little else.
The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is being unfair to the activities of the EC. A great deal of effort has been expended to alleviate the situation in Yugoslavia. Thus far it has not been successful. It is the view of the NATO partners, collectively and individually, that the European Community's action has been helpful and should continue, and that it provides the most likely forum to bring the parties together at a peace conference to obtain a satisfactory conclusion and the ending of bloodshed. On the basis of that collective view, the Foreign Ministers who met, whose Governments are members of NATO, reported to Heads of Government and NATO, so that NATO could issue its own statement.
Mr. Churchill: May I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his sound leadership at the recent NATO summit and on the fact that he managed to secure

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agreement on new links between eastern Europe and NATO, and recognition of the primacy of the role of NATO in European defence? Will he confirm that, so long as there is a Conservative Government in this country, American troops will always be welcome on British soil, in contrast to the approach of the Labour party which, for many years, has campaigned to have American bases removed from the United Kingdom?
The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. I confirm that American troops will be welcome in this country. I believe that that is the view of our partners in Europe. It was clearly expressed in that fashion during our discussions of the past few clays. I speak with particular interest in this matter, as there is a large American air base in my constituency. American troops are welcome here and I hope that they will continue to stay.
Mr. Chris Mullin: Should we not welcome the prospect of a European defence and foreign policy as a way of escaping from our humiliating status in relation to the United States? Would not it have the advantage that we would never again have the degrading spectacle of Ministers coming to the Dispatch Box and defending the bombing of Vietnam, terrorism in Nicaragua, the invasion of Grenada and many other disreputable episodes in post-war history, to which we have been shackled by our long relationship with the United States?
The Prime Minister: On the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question, I welcome communal European policies on defence providing they are agreed intergovernmentally and agreed by unanimity. When that happens, it strengthens the foreign policy of the individual countries and of the European Community collectively. That is the way in which we have been operating in the past few years.
I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman's assessment of our relationship with the United States or with the individual examples he gave. One of the reasons why he has the freedom to stand here and express such views is that the success of the alliance depends largely on the Americans, who have remained here since the 1940s to help to protect Europe.
Mr. Julian Brazier: I welcome my right hon. Friend's excellent statement. Does he agree that one of the tragic features of the previous occasion when Europe was in a state of reformation, just after the first world war, was the American decision to withdraw? Will my right hon. Friend confirm that he has never been a member of an organisation that has poured scorn on the United States, picketed their bases, and spat on American service men?
The Prime Minister: I can certainly confirm that. The United States will stay in Europe, although it is now recognised that it will reduce the number of its troops here as a result of the changed circumstances on the German border. Clearly there is now a much smaller need for a large military land-based presence than there was when the Soviet Union had troops in eastern Germany. There will be changes, but the commitment to the defence of Europe will remain.
Mrs. Margaret Ewing: The Prime Minister and his NATO allies have discussed developments in the
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Soviet Union and argued that there should be no further proliferation of nuclear weapons. Can the right hon. Gentleman therefore explain to the House what arguments he uses to the Soviet Union to explain the decision of the Government, and indeed of the official Opposition, to have four Trident submarines as part of their defence strategy? Is he aware that hardly a single tear was shed in Scotland this weekend when the Poseidon submarines left the Clyde, yet we are now expected to accept Trident while at the same time our conventional forces, including the regiments, are being cut. How does he square the circle?
The Prime Minister: The hon. Lady may not be fully aware of what has been happening. NATO has agreed that an 80 per cent. reduction in nuclear weapons is in prospect. That will involve the elimination of all nuclear artillery and short-range Lance missiles. That reduction has come about because NATO was so staunch in recent years in keeping its nuclear weapons, which forced upon the Soviet Union the need for negotiated reductions on both sides of Europe. That is the reason for the reduction in the nuclear threshold. That reduction is welcome and has been achieved through the policies of the Conservative party, not those advocated by the hon. Lady.
Mr. David Tredinnick: Faced with the apparent collapse of central control in the Soviet Union and the new assertiveness of the republics such as the Ukraine, which wants to control its own nuclear weapons, is my right hon. Friend happy with the way in which NATO proposes to handle future arms negotiations with those fragmented republics? Should the republics take their own line on nuclear weapons, is my right hon. Friend satisfied that there are enough safeguards in place?
The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend touches upon an important point. In future it will clearly be much more difficult to carry out negotiations on nuclear reductions until the circumstances in the Soviet Union are clarified and until we are clear precisely who has control over nuclear weapons in the Soviet Union and who can negotiate for them. It is precisely for that reason that we made it so clear in our statement that we expect the republics to honour the START agreement and the CFE agreement and to look towards non-proliferation. There is a great deal of discussion to be had upon this matter, and the North Atlantic Co-operation Council will be one forum in which that can begin.
Mr. John McFall: Given that the Rome summit renounced any extension of the geographical limits of its competence in 1949, and mindful that the real threat today is the political and economic stability of the former Russian empire—witness the decision of newly independent states over the renunciation of their commitment to hand back nuclear weapons—does the right hon. Gentleman agree that that is a matter for regret? Does he agree that the political talks already agreed with eastern European Foreign Ministers should be continued through military talks as well?
The Prime Minister: I am not sure what conclusion one would draw from the hon. Gentleman's first assertions. It is certainly true that the threat from the Soviet Union has changed and perhaps is changing. That is no reason for us to lift our vigilance in any sense, and there is no mood among NATO members to do so. But there is a mood in NATO to enter into much closer dialogue with the east

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European nations, including the Soviet Union, to help to continue to diminish both the threshold of armaments and the balance of risks that has existed in the past. That is of critical importance, but it must be done steadily, carefully and without putting our own security at risk.
Mr. Ian Bruce: Has my right hon. Friend seen any indication from the French Government that they might rejoin the military command structure of NATO? Will that form part of his negotiating stance on a European defence policy, having France back into NATO fully, with possibly even Eire joining the alliance?
The Prime Minister: I have had no indication that the French Government are likely to move back into the integrated military structure. As I said, we would welcome that in NATO. While I do not think it is imminent or something that we are likely to see for quite a few years, there is no doubt a willingness among NATO to accept it. As for discussions within the European Community, I do not think that that would be a practical negotiating point, even though it would be welcome.
Mr. Robert N. Wareing: I understand the Prime Minister seeming to throw up his hands in despair over Yugoslavia, but may I ask whether he is aware of the appeal by the mayor of Dubrovnik for assistance in relieving the trapped people of that tragic city? Is he also aware of statements apparently made by the Presidents of Croatia and Serbia for the first time recognising the need for a peace-keeping force? Does he agree that it is imperative for there to be an early meeting of WEU with the authorities in Croatia and Serbia to test the credence of the statements of those Presidents?
The Prime Minister: To keep the peace one must first have a peace, and that was the purpose of trying to ensure, through the conference, that a peace was established. I do not believe that in the absence of that secure peace, and in the absence of both sides being prepared to keep the peace and be anxious to see a peace-keeping force there, it would be a prudent or wise proposition to send troops there.
Mr. Jonathan Aitken: Further to the question asked by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Mr. Wareing), at a time when the eyes of the world are focused with horror on the destruction of the ancient and historic city of Dubrovnik, does my right hon. Friend appreciate that there is some disappointment that there appears to be no discussion about the possibility of short-term or emergency measures to alleaviate or in any way relieve that catastrophe? In particular, there should be discussion of the fact that some criticism should be levelled at those European countries which are clandestinely supplying arms to the contestants in Yugoslavia. Is it possible to put a stop to that practice?
The Prime Minister: I appreciate the point that my hon. Friend makes, but it is extremely difficult to see what in practice could be done while the fighting continues. There is absolutely no doubt that there is a will to assist, when it is possible and practicable to assist. At the moment I cannot immediately see how we could do that. I assure my hon. Friend that the point is of great importance and that we shall keep it under review.
Dr. Kim Howells: The Prime Minister reported the difficulties that surfaced at the meeting when it came to the idea of involving western European forces in Yugoslavia. How did the discussions view the possible proliferation of nuclear weapons in Kazakhstan and the Ukraine, both Governments of which have said that they would like control of their nuclear weapons? If we cannot interfere with the nationalisms of western Europe, how can we interfere with the nationalisms of far-flung areas of the world?
The Prime Minister: To be technically correct, it is not proliferation in those republics because the nuclear weapons are already there. We seek to ensure that those nuclear weapons are under a single central control so that we are in a better position to assure our own security. There is complete understanding of that in the republics. We have made it clear in the Rome summit and elsewhere that we shall take those securities into account when we discuss the economic and other assistance that we may be able to provide to the republics and to the Soviet Union centrally.
Mr. Michael Latham: Is it not an essential strategic objective of the NATO powers to assist the forces of democracy and liberalisation in the Soviet Union against the dangers of a counter-coup? Will my right hon. Friend assure us that the NATO powers will do all that they can to assist the Soviet Union in its immense difficulties?
The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend raises a central point, and I am happy to give a categorical assurance. Much of the assistance may be economical and through forums other than NATO, but his point is none the less entirely valid.
Mr. Harry Ewing: I welcome the decision to strengthen the Western European Union. However, will the right hon. Gentleman forgive me if I sound rather sceptical about that proposal because when the WEU presidential committee sought expert advice on armed intervention in Yugoslavia the prospect of getting it from the British and French defence Ministries and from the Institute for Defence Studies was vetoed by Herr Genscher, the current president of the ministerial Council? The WEU feels that it is being side-tracked on all those important issues. It needs the confidence of knowing that it has an important role to play.
The Prime Minister: I share the hon. Gentleman's views, as crystallised in his last couple of sentences. It is important that the Western European Union should be confident that it has an important role, and that that important role is clearly defined. We began to define it at the Rome summit and it will be crystallised further once we have completed the discussions at Maastricht. However, that the WEU has an increasing role in the defence of Europe as the European pillar of the alliance is undoubted.
Several Hon. Members rose—
Mr. Speaker: Order. We have a heavy day ahead of us. I shall allow questions to continue until 4·15 and then we must move on. I hope that hon. Members will ask brief questions so that most hon. Members will have an opportunity to participate in the debate.
Mr. Michael Grylls: Will my right hon. Friend say a little more about a rapid reaction force? Is not there a real danger in multi-country political control resulting in nothing happening if there is a real crisis? Does he agree that it is different from the previous situaton in NATO, when there was clearly only one real enemy and everyone knew where the threat came from—[Interruption.] In future, however, that may not be the case and a rapid reaction force with multi-country political control may never happen. Will my right hon. Friend comment on that?
The Prime Minister: I regret to say that I could not hear every aspect of my hon. Friend's question. A rapid reaction corps is a new system. It is a new way to respond more flexibly and speedily to the changed circumstances in Europe and the need for a different form of defence in Europe. It is under a different command. We command the land forces in the rapid reaction corps. The NATO assessment is that that is the right way to proceed and will maximise defence at minimum cost to the alliance.
Mr. Jeremy Corbyn: Given that NATO was a creation of the cold war in 1948, does not the Prime Minister understand that many of us are disappointed that the NATO summit did not use the opportunity to wind up the organisation altogether and rid itself of nuclear weapons rather than prolong a military alliance that could have been transformed into a peaceful alliance of European countries?
The Prime Minister: NATO has played a great role in ensuring the freedom of the whole of eastern Europe, and I think that the hon. Gentleman should welcome that. If his suggestion is that NATO should be wound up because there is now no military threat, I say to him that the huge stock of nuclear weapons that still exists on Soviet Union soil is of such a scale that I believe his opinion will be shared by very few people.
Mr. John Browne: Will my right hon.Friend accept my sincere congratulations on Britain's role in what was obviously an historic, far-reaching and forward-looking meeting, especially its role in ensuring the promotion of peace throughout Europe and the maintenance of the essential link with the United States of America? Will he confirm that, when he mentions the word "peace", he means not peace alone, but peace with freedom, which has always been demanded by the people of the United Kingdom and the United States? If he agrees, will he include that small but vital word in future NATO communiqués?
The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend's definition, but I believe that it is implicit in the way that the term is used in the declarations made from the Rome summit. I am grateful to him for his earlier remarks and reaffirm my view that the United States linked with NATO and United States troops in this country are both essential for our freedom.
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: When the Prime Minister discussed with other NATO leaders his determination to go ahead with the tactical air-to-surface missile weapon system, did not some of the other leaders suggest to him that it was a little odd for Britain to be going ahead with a new weapon system when the main threat of the talks involved non-proliferation and
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disarmament? Did he discuss with the west Germans whether they would be happy for us to base such a system on their soil?
The Prime Minister: It was not a matter of discussion at the NATO summit, but we need an appropriate mix of nuclear weapons, both now and in the future. If the day comes when we do not, no one will be more pleased than me, but at present we need a proper mix of nuclear weapons, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.
Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): May I express my appreciation for my right hon. Friend's constructive work in ensuring that there is no incompatibility between strengthening Europe's contribution to its own defence and retaining the primacy of NATO for the defence of alliance territory? Are other countries of the Western European Union assigning permanent representatives to NATO to the WEU ministerial Council as we are? Have plans been advanced to encourage the WEU to take a more active role in out-of-area operations and contingencies?
The Prime Minister: The answer to the latter question is yes, and we have suggested to our partners that they should assign their permanent representatives to the new organisation. They have not all concluded precisely how they will react, but I have great hopes that they will do so.
Dr. Norman A. Godman: A few moments ago the Prime Minister was reminded of the fact that the last United States' navy nuclear submarine sailed out of the Firth of Clyde at the weekend. Could not that significant event be seen as an advance signal of the eventual American withdrawal of its membership of NATO? Is there not a growing body of opinion in America that believes that Europe should be defended exclusively by the forces of European nations?
The Prime Minister: The answer to the hon. Gentleman's first question is no. The Americans will have much longer range submarines in future, but there is no doubt that it is, and has been for many years, the policy of the American Administration that the Americans should continue to play a key part in the defence of Europe. That view was expressly reaffirmed by the President at the Rome summit.
Mr. Gerald Howarth: May I join my hon. Friends in congratulating my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the significant personal role he played in securing for NATO its position as the linchpin of western security and on ensuring that there is a continued welcome for the United States and Canada to help in the defence of the north Atlantic? Is that not evidence that as long as my right hon. Friend retains his present position the defences of our country will be secure?
The Prime Minister: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind remarks. I regard it as a matter of prime importance that defence should remain central to our policies and that no risks should be taken with British defence. No risks have been or will be taken.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: The Prime Minister referred to a possible economic blockade of Yugoslavia. Is

913
not that interference in another nation state; and how would he respond if other countries in Europe or elsewhere told him how to organise Northern Ireland?
The Prime Minister: If we were not seeking to stop the bloodshed in Yugoslavia, the hon. Gentleman would be the first Member of this House to criticise us.
Mr. Anthony Nelson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that in uncertain times, and with the possibility of loose nukes in eastern Europe, in the Soviet republics and elsewhere, it is essential that under his leadership the Government not only retain that last guarantee of our national independence and security—the British nuclear deterrent—but that we improve and modernise it?
The Prime Minister: I entirely agree. Some reductions in nuclear weapons are in prospect, as I said earlier, but I can affirm that we propose to update Polaris and that we propose to build and keep Trident. That is the absolute guarantor of our defence, and that will remain our policy in future.
Mr. Tony Banks: Was not the plea that reportedly came from Croatia and Serbia today for military involvement in Yugoslavia not so much for a peace-keeping force as for an intervention force to separate the two sides so that a political settlement can be reached? The two sides simply cannot trust each other with ceasefires arranged from The Hague that do not hold on the ground. Is it not time that the Government went to the Security Council seeking sanction for a military intervention force so that a political settlement can be
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found? If they do not, we shall have to witness these people slaughtering each other, and that is disgraceful in a European country.
The Prime Minister: I do not believe that that would be the right way to proceed—for the practical reason that I do not believe that it would be successful. It would perhaps increase and extend the fighting to Bosnia, Macedonia and elsewhere, which would not be in the interests of Yugoslavia as a whole, if it still exists. The only way forward for the time being is to try to proceed as we are and to hope that Lord Carrington's latest mission to Belgrade is successful.
Mr. Patrick Thompson: Bearing in mind the almost unanimous support given in the House this afternoon for the continuing role of NATO as the linchpin of Western security, would my right hon. Friend be surprised to be reminded that only a year or so ago the Norwich city council banned a NATO exhibition? Would he be further surprised to learn that the council is controlled by the Labour party? Does he not therefore think that its support for NATO is skin deep and that it is vital that he remain in charge of these matters up to the next election and beyond?
The Prime Minister: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I am surprised that such a sensible area as Norwich should have a Labour council, but I am not surprised by its action.

NATO Summit

  NEW MEMBERS
  The following Members took the Oath or made and subscribed the affirmation required by law:

  Ashok Kumar Esq., for Langbaurgh

  Derek Anthony Enright Esq., for Hemsworth

  Nicol Ross Stephen Esq., for Kincardine and Deeside

Points of Order
Mr. Tom Clarke: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have not raised this matter before. I have no wish to question your ruling. I am a member of the Select Committee on Health and, as you know, the House has referred to the Select Committee on Privileges the important issue of the leaked report. In view of doubts that have been raised in the House and elsewhere, may I ask for clarification on whether the Privileges Committee is free to consider the role of the Secretary of State for Health and senior officials in his Department and, most important, the role of the parliamentary private secretary to the Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Esher (Mr. Taylor)? Can you make it clear that these matters will be dealt with urgently and, in view of the credibility of all Select Committees, will you ensure that a firm conclusion is reached?
Mr. Speaker: I confirm that the Committee is free to look into all those matters.
Mr. Phillip Oppenheim: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is not it extraordinary that Opposition Members are sanctimoniously concerned about leaks when their Front-Bench spokesmen live off leaks from Departments?
Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for me.
Mr. Gerald Howarth: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek your guidance about a matter on today's Order Paper that is causing some confusion. Early-day motion 117 commends the Bolshevik communist revolution. [HON. MEMBERS:"Hear, hear."] Some Opposition Members say "Hear, hear". As you
916
know, Mr. Speaker, the new model Labour party has been assiduously trying to distance itself from its Bolshevik friends. However, a Labour Whip has signed this motion. Can you clarify Labour party policy by saying whether Labour is in favour of Bolshevism or against it?
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman and the House know that early-day motions are expressions of opinion. The motion was in order when it was put down and it is open to any hon. Member to support it—or amend it—if he or she wishes.
Mr. Ian Bruce: Further to the previous point of order, Mr. Speaker. On Thursday, a correct point of order was raised with Mr. Deputy Speaker about what one should do with matters arising from the first report of the Select Committee on Health. It was ruled clearly that as this was being automatically sent to the Select Committee on Privileges, it could not be discussed on the Floor of the House. However, just before the point of order was raised, a group of Labour Members came in and raised, on spurious points of order, allegations against the Secretary of State for Health arising from matters that did not appear in the report. They implied that these allegations were in the report. How can we refer this matter? Is it for you, or is it a matter for the Select Committee on Privileges? There was a conspiracy among Labour Members to put on the record points that do not arise from the report.
Mr. Speaker: Did I hear the hon. Gentleman say that this happened on Thursday when I was in the Chair? This is Tuesday and it would have been appropriate for him to have raised this matter then. We can go no further on this point today.

Orders of the Day

  Local Government Finance Bill
  [SECOND DAY]
  Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question, That the Bill be now read a Second time—[11 November.]
  Question again proposed.
  Mr. Speaker: I must announce to the House that I have not selected either of the amendments on the Order Paper, but they may be referred to during the debate.
  4.25 pm
  The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Ian Lang): At the height of the first day's debate on the Second Reading of the Local Government Finance Bill, there were six Labour Back-Bench Members present. There are now about 24, but that count is falling fast. I am sure that the House will start to fill rapidly as I address it at the start of the second day of debate on the Bill. After all, the Scottish clauses comprise a substantial proportion of its contents. The House will be aware that, for the most part, these are closely equivalent to the clauses which relate to the introduction and operation of the council tax in England and Wales which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment described yesterday. It is important that we have this opportunity to concentrate on the Bill as it affects Scotland.
  We have already done some of the groundwork for the new tax. It was necessary, if we were to meet the target of I April 1993 for introduction of the tax, to ensure that the first step towards the levying of the tax—the valuation of properties—was begun as soon as possible. Therefore, we enacted, before the summer recess, the Local Government Finance and Valuation Act 1991. That enabled a considerable amount of groundwork for the valuation exercise to be undertaken over the summer. In Scotland, the assessors, in discussions with the Inland Revenue valuation office in Scotland, have been preparing for the actual task of valuation, which will get under way shortly. Therefore, we are very much on course for the introduction of the new tax in 1993.
  Clauses 84 to 92 carry over and develop the arrangements for valuation set out in the 1991 Act and provide for changes to be made in lists to take account, for example, of new properties and appeals against taxation. The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) described our valuation arrangements for Scotland as a recipe for disaster. I am sure that he did not intend to insult thereby the professionals involved—the assessors—who will be responsible for the valuation and the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, who are responsible for ensuring consistency in the way in which the valuation is undertaken throughout the country. I am glad to reassure him that all is on course and going smoothly.
  Our decision to give the assessors that responsibility reflects the views put to us during the consultation which persuaded us that they were best placed to undertake the work and to do the job well within the timetable allowed. Our decision to give the Commissioners of Inland Revenue responsibility for overseeing the work reflected our understanding of the demand in Scotland for consistency in the way in which taxes operate throughout Great
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  Britain. The arrangements are working well and I have every confidence that the job will be completed satisfactorily on time.
  Clauses 70 to 73 provide for the introduction of the council tax set separately by the regional, islands and district councils in respect of dwellings in their areas. Clause 74 provides for the valuation bands into which dwellings are to be placed and which have already been described in the Domestic Property (Valuation) (Scotland) Regulations 1991. It also provides for the range of tax payable for the bands.
  I think that it would be helpful now if I described in some detail what the effect of the banding arrangements will be, as there has been considerable misunderstanding of the provisions. The hon. Member for Garscadden said last week that he finds it incomprehensible that many properties may stay in the same band in perpetuity. But why should they not? A dwelling in Scotland that is placed in band D will have been assigned that band because its value at 1 April 1991 is over £45,000 but does not exceed £58,000. That value is around the Scottish average. Of course, the Bill includes provisions to allow the assigned band to be changed if the value of the property changes sufficiently to take it into another band. If the band is higher, however, the change can be made only on change of ownership of the dwelling. If there is no such change, the banding decision will remain unchanged.
  The banding system irons out much of the effect of relative changes in property values within an area which, under the rating system, brought regular pressure for revaluation. The need for general revaluations is therefore much reduced. If, however, such a revaluation were required, say, 20 years hence, the same house in band D would probably remain a band D house, provided that its relative position within the range of property values had not changed so much as to take it outwith the new parameters for that band.
  Clause 74 places an upper limit on the amount of tax that any person can be liable to pay. This aspect of the arrangements—inevitably, I suppose—has produced the standard response that the rich are being protected. That neatly ignores the imperfect correlation between people's circumstances and the value of their home. It demonstrates only the Labour party's vindictive desire to extract the maximum revenue from high-value properties regardless of the circumstances of their occupants, or any relationship between the tax burden and the services that are provided.
  Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: Will my right hon. Friend explain to a simple fellow like me why it is considered sensible to return to a system of socialist taxation based on the capital value of an asset that produces no income and that is unrelated to the services for which the occupant is paying and to the income of the occupant, this asset being normally called a home?
  Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend gives an admirable description of the so-called fair rates proposals of the Labour party, to which we do not intend to return.
  Clause 75 defines liability to pay as an individual liability that is dependent on the relationship that persons have with dwellings. This liability would fall in the first instance on the resident owner, then the resident tenant and so on.

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  Clause 79 provides for discount where there is only one or no resident in the property. These arrangements will be fair and simple to administer.
  During our debate on the Gracious Speech last Wednesday, we heard a different story from Opposition Members and especially from the hon. Member for Garscadden. The hon. Gentleman is determined, as ever, to see administrative nightmares where none exists. His contacts in local government have told him, presumably before even seeing the Bill, that discounts will be difficult to administer, and uncritically he believes them.
  When it comes to the hon. Gentleman's examples of why the system will be difficult to administer, what do we find? There is a complete misunderstanding on his part of how the discount proposals will work in practice. As the mouthpiece of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities, he asks whether authorities are supposed to send out bills for 100 per cent. of the liability to everyone and leave discounts to be claimed by householders. The answer is to be found in paragraph 4 to schedule 2. Local authorities are required to take reasonable steps to ascertain entitlement to discount, but in the absence of firm information they can send out an undiscounted bill. In other words, as a matter of sensible administrative practice, authorities should make efforts to ascertain discount households before sending out bills. [HON. MEMBERS: "How?"] By referring to existing information.
  Mr. Allen McKay: Can the Secretary of State tell me how local authorities will do what he describes?
  Mr. Lang: They can make reasonable efforts by examining existing information or by carrying out a canvass. There are local authority housing tenancy lists. Authorities will be able to examine electoral rolls. They could even study community charge registers. They are most definitely not required to know the composition of every household in their areas before billing. There is no question, therefore, of a register being required.
  We come now to what might be called COSLA's auntie problem. The hon. Member for Garscadden quoted COSLA as being concerned about what would happen if someone's aunt came to stay for a couple of months. Again, the answer is in the Bill—in clause 79 for Scotland. Discounts are calculated according to who is resident in a dwelling, and "resident" means having one's sole or main residence there—a concept not unfamiliar to Labour Members.
  In the case described in our earlier debate by the hon. Gentleman, the local authority would make its decision to withdraw or not to withdraw discount on the basis of whether it thought that the dwelling in question was the auntie's sole or main residence. In fact, if she were there for two months, it would be unlikely that it would regard her as a resident. However, there will be a right of appeal against any decision.
  Clauses 81 and 83 make provision for the appeal arrangements that will apply in Scotland. As the House will be aware, appeals under the community charge are, for the most part, made initially to the community charge registration officer and thereafter to the sheriff under summary procedure. That system has, by and large, worked well. However, we are aware of the concerns that have been expressed about the system as compared with the arrangements in England and Wales, where appeals are
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  made to valuation and community charge tribunals. We have taken note of those concerns in formulating the arrangements for the council tax. Appeal on questions of valuation liability and levying of the tax will therefore lie with valuation appeal committees, with further appeal on points of law to the Court of Session.
  Clause 94 and schedule 7 make provision for capping. They re-enact the arrangements already provided in the Local Government Finance and Valuation Act 1991, which is to be repealed and replaced by the Bill and do not, therefore, make any changes to the present arrangements. The House will be aware that I announced last month the principles that I am minded to adopt next year in considering whether planned expenditure is excessive or has increased excessively.
  At this point, it might be appropriate to spend a few moments on a specifically Scottish aspect of the Bill.
  Mr. David Nicholson: Before my right hon. Friend passes on to a specifically Scottish aspect, I wish to raise a general point. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and my hon. Friend the Minister are on the Front Bench. I agree with my right hon. Friend that the intervention of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) aptly summed up the Labour party's position.
  My right hon. Friend will be aware that most Conservative Members accept that, while some taxes may fall on income and others on spending, there is scope for a modest tax to fall on what we might describe as the amenity of property. One lesson that we learnt from the transition from domestic rates to the community charge was the injustice of the former rates system to the single-person household. My right hon. Friend is probably aware that there is considerable pressure from single-person households for an increase in the 25 per cent. discount. Will he and our right hon. and hon. Friends, over the next few weeks, consider whether there is scope for increasing that discount to something more related to the ability to pay of the single person?
  Mr. Lang: My hon. Friend made a point that obviously concerns him, and he did so lucidly. I and my right hon. Friend are grateful for his support for the underlying principle of the Bill. I am sure that he will wish to develop that issue in Committee, if he is fortunate enough to be a member.
  We gave close consideration to the appropriate discount level and I am sure that my hon. Friend will agree that there is a certain symmetry and element of justice readily apparent in the concept of a 25 per cent. discount for a one-person residence and a 50 per cent. discount for a house that has no resident occupant.
  Mr. Frank Haynes: What will the Scottish electorate think when they discover what the millionaire Secretary of State for the Environment, who is sitting on the right hon. Gentleman's left, has to pay? Will they think that he is getting a massive discount, as he will have to pay only a small amount? No doubt the Scottish electorate will think that he drafted the Bill to suit himself.
  Mr. Lang: If my right hon. Friend were fortunate enough to be resident in Scotland, he would find that about 89 per cent. of the cost of local government services was funded by central taxation. If my right hon. Friend is fortunate enough to be in the circumstances described by

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  the hon. Gentleman, he is making a far larger contribution as an individual to income tax and other central Government taxation than would otherwise be the case.
  As to the Scottish electorate, I reassure the hon. Gentleman that they were at the forefront in seeking the abolition of domestic rates and they will be at the forefront in resisting their reintroduction by the Opposition.
  I want now to discuss an important aspect of the Bill which affects Scotland—the council water charge set out in schedule 11.
  Mrs. Ray Michie: Can the Secretary of State tell us something about the effect of the council tax on the agricultural community? I have already had queries about what will happen. Many farmers and tenant farmers live in big old rambling houses. Crofters lost their 50 per cent. derating with the introduction of the poll tax and, given the present state of agriculture, there is considerable concern about what will happen under the council tax.
  Mr. Lang: The hon. Lady will know that the market value of such houses will reflect the present state of agriculture and the demand for such houses. Therefore, they are likely to be put in a lower band and so attract a relatively lower tax than under the community charge. If they are tied houses of the sort that the hon. Lady described, that would be reflected in the market value. Therefore, no particular difficulty arises.
  Let me press on to the important subject of the council water charge which is set out in schedule 11. Hon. Members will be aware that at the same time as we consulted about our council tax proposals, we issued a consultation paper in Scotland about water and sewerage charges. Among other things, that paper proposed that sewerage charges should be separated out from the new council tax in the same way as water charges are at present separately levied.
  However, it became apparent during the consultation that separate charges would have borne most heavily on those about whom the hon. Lady is concerned—people in rural areas. It would also have meant higher administrative costs which would have had to have been borne by charge payers. Therefore, we have decided that it would not be appropriate to introduce separate charges for sewerage and the provisions in the Bill for water and sewerage charges in Scotland will essentially maintain the existing system whereby regional and island councils set the appropriate levels.
  Mr. Donald Dewarindicated assent.
  Mr. Lang: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's support.
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Many will welcome that sensible proposal, but can the right hon. Gentleman underline it with a categorical assurance that the Government have no intention of privatising water in Scotland either this side of an election or afterwards?
  Mr. Lang: I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that, to use the time-honoured phrase, we have no present plans to undertake such an exercise.
  Water will continue to be charged via either the council tax, linked to property value bands, or the non-domestic
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  water rate, linked to the rateable value of premises, or by direct metered charges. Sewerage will continue to be charged via the council tax or the non-domestic sewerage rate. All the discounts that will apply to the council tax itself will also apply to the water and sewerage charges.
  No fundamental changes are, therefore, proposed in the Bill, but we have taken the opportunity to make two improvements in the way in which the charges are levied. One is that the Bill will extend to all consumers in Scotland the option of being able to pay for water by metered charges if they wish, having the amount that they use recorded and being charged direct. That is a useful extension of consumer choice. It offers an option to Scottish consumers which is available in England and Wales and which I am sure will be welcomed.
  Some small businesses may also benefit from that option since the Bill abolished the minimum threshold of rateable value which a business previously had to meet to be eligible for a metered supply. We have also taken the opportunity in the Bill to provide for water to be supplied free of charge for fire training purposes and for other emergency purposes as well as fire fighting.
  Mr. Dewar: There will be a widespread welcome for the Secretary of State's announcement about sewerage, if only because up to now, if I remember rightly, the water charge has not been included in the rebate scheme. Are there any plans to bring it within the rebate scheme?
  Mr. Lang: I have no announcement to make about that at present, but, as the hon. Gentleman will have heard, I made it clear that the discounts would apply to water and sewerage.
  The claim has been repeatedly made by Opposition Members, and most recently by the hon. Member for Renfrew, West and Inverclyde (Mr. Graham), who is not in his place today, that we are starving local government of resources. That is simply not true and I shall outline the facts. Starting with financial support, Government grants to Scottish authorities—rate support grant or revenue support grant and specific grants—have increased in real terms from £2,562 million in 1979–80 to £2,809 million in 1991–92. Therefore, far from Government support having been reduced during the period that the Government have been in office, there has been an increase in real terms of 9·6 per cent.
  Then there is the alleged deterioration in local authority services; again, the facts are different. In education, since 1979 the percentage of pupils staying on until the fifth year has increased from 35 per cent. to 54 per cent. and the percentage staying on until the sixth year from 14 per cent. to 25 per cent. The percentage entering higher education has increased from 16·8 per cent. in 1978–79 to 24 per cent. and is still rising fast. Expenditure per pupil has increased in real terms by 49 per cent.—[Interruption.]
  Mr. Sam Galbraith: The Secretary of State is yawning at his own speech it is so boring.
  Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman is supposed to be in the medical profession, so he will know that that was not a yawn; I was choking.
  The number of field social workers has also increased from 2,985 to 4,700, an increase of 47 per cent. There has been a 26 per cent. increase in all social work staff and a 13 per cent. increase in home care staff. The number of

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  places in local authority day care centres is up by 152 per cent. for the elderly, 59 per cent. for the mentally handicapped and 49 per cent. for the physically handicapped.
  Mrs. Margaret Ewing: The Secretary of State has just referred to the number of social workers. What decision has he reached about funding social workers involved in the Orkney inquiry?
  Mr. Lang: It would not be appropriate to answer such a question in a debate on the Local Government Finance Bill. Any answer will be given in the appropriate way at the appropriate time.
  Mr. Harry Ewing: I am grateful to the Secretary of State. He has been most generous in giving way. All the increases that he has just quoted—in the number of pupils staying on to the fifth and sixth years and in the number of social workers—are down to the fact that all the regional authorities in Scotland are controlled by the Labour party and they see as their spending priorities the need to create educational opportunities for young people and to provide home helps for old people. Now the Secretary of State is telling them that he will cut their budgets next year to stop them increasing the number of educational opportunities and social workers. The Secretary of State cannot have it both ways.
  Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman is seeking to disguise the fact that under the Government in which he served the quality of service under the headings that I have just listed was vastly inferior to the quality of service provided under this Government.
  Local authority expenditure during the 12 years since we took office has risen by 26 per cent. in real terms. It is an astonishing 30 per cent. higher in Scotland than in England and Wales, a fact for which COSLA has been unable to give any credible explanation.
  To help sustain that substantial expansion of local government expenditure, the Government have shifted the burden so that central Government now bear up to 89 per cent. in Scotland with only 11 per cent. borne at local level. But now we are told that the Labour party plans to increase the local contribution to no less than 20 per cent.
  Mr. Bryan Gould: Before the Secretary of State repeats that totally misleading canard, will he kindly check with his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State the percentage that he quoted? I think that 22 per cent. was the claim that the right hon. Gentleman made on behalf of his Government in exactly the same week that, in response to a question, I used the figure of 20 per cent. At that point, the Secretary of State and I were operating on a particular definition of local government spending. The fact that the Prime Minister then chose to use a totally different definition of local government spending seems to have eluded the Secretary of State and many of his right hon. and hon. Friends. Will they kindly sort out which statistical base they are using, because otherwise they simply confirm that the Government are, literally, at sixes and sevens?
  Mr. Lang: It is interesting to note that the discussion centres simply on the amount by which Labour intends to increase the burden on local government spending.
  The hon. Gentleman must be aware that the basis in Scotland differs from that in England and Wales: 11 per
  924
  cent. of council expenditure in Scotland comes from local tax-raising, whereas in England and Wales the figures is 14 per cent. If the hon. Member for Garscadden can reassure me categorically that the next Labour Government will not increase the local contribution to 20 per cent., I shall be interested to learn to what level they will increase it.
  If, before Labour even increased the actual spending level, a £300 local tax bill were increased by that proportion in Scotland, the charge would rise to nearly £600. Labour may claim that it proposes to reduce direct taxation through income tax or VAT—although, given Labour's record in that regard, we should be very sceptical about any such claim. The doubled figure that Labour would bring about, however, would appear before capping was lifted and before Labour transferred to local authorities a raft of new responsibilities.
  Labour's policy document "Power to Act" contains a nightmare list of proposals for the extension of local authority power to training and economic development and intervention in local enterprise companies, health boards, community housing associations, transport, consumer protection, the environment, equal opportunities, crime prevention and community safety. The cost of such an explosion of power—with local councillors intervening in every sphere of activity—is not, of course, given; but to lay that burden across the weak framework of a revived domestic rating system would be to court disaster.
  I seek elucidation on, in particular, Labour's proposals for capping. The purpose of capping is to protect local residents from extravagant local authorities: to protect, for example, the residents of Edinburgh, who were faced with a disgraceful and irresponsible proposal to levy a £584 poll tax until the Government stepped in. Capping, however, is also a measure of public expenditure control. Local authority expenditure accounts for a massive proportion of total public expenditure in Scotland. Next year's Scottish Office budget totals some £12·5 billion and local authority spending not only accounts for over half total public expenditure—54 per cent. this year—but has risen from 45·5 per cent. of the total since we came to office. Local government expenditure consumes millions of pounds that could be devoted to other cherished projects relating to health, roads or the environment.
  Every year, a subsidy must be transferred from the Scottish block grant to meet current local authority spending levels and to try to protect local taxpayers. Labour has committed itself unequivocally to abolishing capping. I invite the hon. Member for Garscadden to confirm today that that is still his party's intention. What estimate has the hon. Gentleman made of the impact of that decision on public expenditure by a future Labour Government? Will it increase public expenditure in Scotland alone by £1 billion, £1·5 billion or more? Will the proportion of Scottish Office expenditure accounted for by local authorities rise from 54 per cent. to 64 per cent., or 74 per cent.? Perhaps it would not; we know that Labour is also committed to vast public expenditure increases, totalling some £35 billion, across the whole range of Government policy.
  The right hon. and learned Member for Monklands, East (Mr. Smith) must, however, preserve at least a figleaf of fiscal responsibility. What clearance did the hon. Member for Garscadden obtain from his right hon. and learned Friend to unleash such a surge of expenditure right

  925
  across the board? To what level will local authority expenditure be allowed to rise before Labour reneges on its commitment to abolish capping?
  Mr. George Foulkes: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. With my hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg), I have been perusing the Bill in an attempt to find the part that covers what the Secretary of State is now discussing. There is no such clause. Will you please ask the right hon. Gentleman to return to the content of the Bill?
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Paul Dean): I have heard nothing from the Secretary of State which is out of order.
  Mr. Lang: Capping is central to our proposals; it is central to the protection of residents from the extravagance of local authorities; and it is one of the central issues of disagreement between the Government and the Labour party. I want answers to my questions and I expect to hear them later from the hon. Member for Garscadden.
  Several Hon. Members rose——
  Mr. Lang: Labour Members do not like what I am saying, because it goes right to the heart of the matter.
  What other programmes will be cut to fund the insatiable extravagance of local authorities, while enabling them to meet public expenditure targets? Will Labour cut health expenditure, as a Labour Government did between 1974 and 1979? Will it cut expenditure on roads, as it did in that period? Or will it make cuts across the board, as it did then? Who will pay? Will it be the local resident, the national taxpayer or both—with the IMF thrown in as well? Under Labour, when will the party be over?
  Mr. Andrew Welsh: It seems that the right hon. Gentleman, as Secretary of State for Scotland, does not want extra billions to be spent on Scottish services, so that people can return to work and the country can start moving again. If he is worried about the cost, why does not he turn to the oil revenues—which could fund the full amount—rather than slating local government, which is doing a good job on the minimum that he chooses to give it?
  Mr. Lang: Certainly I want Scotland to be on the move economically—as, indeed, it has been under the present Government. The only sense in which the hon. Gentleman wants to move Scotland is that he wants to move it outside the United Kingdom. He wants to erect tax and customs barriers and to shut Scotland off from the rest of the United Kingdom and Europe.
  I have another question to ask the Labour party: what will be the effect of its proposals on business ratepayers? We all know that Scottish business rates are higher than those in the rest of the United Kingdom. I acknowledge that that is partly because Scotland's rating base is slightly smaller and partly because of the dominance of council housing. The central and underlying reason, however, is the huge extravagance of Scottish local authorities over the years. As I mentioned earlier, local government expenditure in Scotland is no less than 30 per cent. higher than it is in both England and Wales.
  Businesses have no vote. Business rates are a direct on-cost. Year after year, under Labour councils, they have
  926
  risen by more than the rate of inflation. They are perceived as arbitrary, unfair and oppressive and economically they are very damaging.
  We have set out to introduce fairness and equity to business rates. We have been harmonising valuation practice and ironing out the anomalies. We have committed ourselves to introducing a uniform business rate over five years or so to achieve a level rate across the United Kingdom.
  Mr. Robert Hughes: Why is the Secretary of State now reading a speech that he clearly had not seen before he came to the Dispatch Box? [Interruption.] I cannot help it if the right hon. Gentleman cannot read his civil servants' handwriting.
  In the earlier part of his speech, the Secretary of State gave Scottish local government credit for the increase in the number of pupils staying on at school and in social work expenditure—for the improvement in all services that are provided directly by elected local government representatives. In the later part, he has rubbished the lot. The right hon. Gentleman really should be able to do better than that.
  Mr. Lang: This may be poor stuff, but it is mine own.
  The point that I was making—it may have been lost on the hon. Gentleman—was that, because of our prudent management of the economy, the Government have been able to expand services and increase in real terms the funding of local authorities. They have allowed the economy to develop, prosper and have left people better off. In contrast to that, Labour's irresponsible approach—its proposed abandoning of all the controls that have made our achievements possible—would place burdens on our people that would cause immeasurable damage.
  The cost of business rates has been reduced by some £270 million as a result of the steps that we have taken to bring them down to a level that would be comparable across the United Kingdom. Last year, they rose by 1·5 per cent., the rate of inflation being over 10 per cent. We have brought about a gradual convergence and I hope that we shall be able to do more this year.
  Labour would undo all that. Labour would dismantle all the progress that we have made and all the justice that we have introduced; it would tear away the protection that we have brought in—especially for small businesses—and let business rates rip. I assume that the party would not take such action lightly: presumably it has thought it through and considered the consequences. I have another question for the hon. Member for Garscadden.
  Mr. James Wallace: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Lang: No, not at the moment. This is an important point. The hon. Gentleman will want to hear the answer, as it will affect businesses in Orkney and Shetland just as it will affect businesses in Dumfries and Galloway. By how much does the hon. Member for Garscadden expect business rates to rise in the first two years after he has taken off the controls that we introduced on business rates? How many jobs will be lost as a result? How many businesses will close? Scottish business deserves and awaits answers to those questions. Those whose jobs would go deserve answers to those questions. I expect the hon. Gentleman to answer that question in his speech.

  927
  The Labour party wants to embark on a three-point programme to punish local government.
  Mr. Wallace: Will the right hon. Gentleman now give way?
  Mr. Lang: Yes.
  Mr. Wallace: The 1986 Green Paper foreshadowed special arrangements for business rates in Orkney and Shetland, because of the anomaly created by the oil terminals. What progress is being made to implement the social arrangements promised by the Government?
  Mr. Lang: As the hon. Gentleman knows, since he and I have had many exchanges on this subject across the Floor of the House, Orkney and Shetland almost always have special arrangements. These matters are continually up for review and reconsideration, but his representations will, as always, be borne in mind.
  The Labour party has a three-point programme for punishing local government. Simultaneously the Opposition want to return to the worst injustices of the domestic rating system. They want to remove all safeguards to protect local taxpayers through capping. They want to expose the business community and its employees to the horrors of runaway council spending. It is an extortion racket that would make the mafia look like a children's charity.
  If the Labour party really wants to get rid of the poll tax, it should help the Bill through. If not, the inescapable conclusion will be that it wants to stop the Government abolishing the poll tax for its own dark reasons.
  What we are proposing is a tax based upon property and upon the people who live in it. It is a tax that will recognise that taxes are paid by people, not by buildings. It is a tax that will take account of the needs of single-person households, many of which contain pensioners, students, student nurses, apprentices and trainees, and of the needs of the young, the old, those on low incomes and those who live in high-priced areas. It is a tax which will be administratively simple, which will require no register to determine liability and which will provide a firm basis for local government finance. In other words, it is a fair tax, a sensible tax, a workable tax and a tax which I commend to the House.
  5.1 pm
  Mr. Donald Dewar: That was an entertaining performance, by the standards of the Secretary of State for Scotland. It contained one or two memorable lines. I was interested in the concept of the Secretary of State not yawning but choking over his script. I imagine that that is something he gets used to. I was also intrigued by the concept that somewhere in the International Monetary Fund there are a number of gentlemen who are very worried in case Stirling district council is not capped in 1996.
  Before dealing with the Bill, may I say a few words about the way in which the Bill is to pass through the House and the parliamentary timetable. What is proposed—and what will no doubt happen, because of the power of the Whips—is an attack on Parliament itself. This is a complicated and controversial Bill that will be forced through its Committee stage in three weeks. The Committee will meet almost literally day and night. There will be no possibility of proper consideration. There will be
  928
  no detailed scrutiny of very important matters that will have an impact on everyone. It is a straitjacket that makes a total mockery of the parliamentary process.
  Mr. Nicholas Budgen: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that it will be impossible within this three-week period, if the House votes for the three weeks, for there to be any proper consultations with interested parties and any sort of repetition, by means of which the ordinary person in the pub may understand what is to be visited upon him, and that it will be a complete abortion and distortion of the way in which Parliament ought to consider a complicated piece of legislation?
  Mr. Dewar: I have a great deal of sympathy for what the hon. Gentleman says. I was about to refer to the constant approaches to me by professionals. I am referring not to politicians but to officials and assessors who are extremely worried about the practicality of many of the Bill's provisions. Poor souls—they approach me because they say that it will be possible, of course, to obtain the answers in Committee and to tease them out there. That will not be so. I do not want to enrage the Secretary of State, if that is not a contradiction in terms, by asking him about COSLA's views. For those on the Conservative Benches who are not familiar with the Scottish scene, that is the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities. Local authorities of every political colour are members of COSLA. Its recent circular deals with the need for a statutory canvass which it says many people believe to be essential. The circular continues:
  "No doubt these are issues which will be debated more fully within the Committee stages of the Bill".
  COSLA appeals to its members to send in detailed suggestions for improvements and amendments.
  Within that three-week period it will be very difficult to separate the Scottish provisions from the English provisions. There are differences—differences of starting base and differences of tradition. This is a very serious departure from the standards that we expect from a Government when dealing with the House of Commons.
  In a letter to me on 30 October the Secretary of State said that, whatever else, he was sure
  "that the Scottish interests will be dealt with appropriately."
  If the Secretary of State thinks that this is dealing with Scottish interests appropriately, he is not living in the same world as I am. It will be met with deep cynicism and deeper dismay in Scotland.
  Mr. Budgen: Is there not a serious risk that the problem of peope refusing to pay may become worse if they feel that the proper authority of Parliament has not been given to the Bill by means of proper discussion and argument?
  Mr. Dewar: All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that I very much hope that that is not the case. As he knows, my colleagues and I have turned our face against non-payment from the very beginning of this argument. We are opposed to such a policy. I would not want to see anything that encouraged that problem, either under the present system or any successor system.
  May I put a point to the Secretary of State in very muted terms, because I do not wish to overstate it? It is extraordinary that one of the last Conservative politicians in Scotland should argue that Westminster is the right forum properly to look at Scottish legislation, to dissect it and to make sure that it reaches the statute book in a way

  929
  that is a credit to the legislative process. It is extraordinary that the Secretary of State for Scotland should be responsible for and should be backing the kind of timetable motion that has been put before the House. It is an abuse of the parliamentary process that goes beyond the ordinary. It is a cop-out by the Secretary of State for Scotland, who gives the impression of having given up by allowing such a thing to happen.
  As for the Second Reading debate, the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) gave a spirited performance yesterday. I use the word performance advisedly. He is a little bit faded these days, compared with the bright years of his youth, but undoubtedly it was a triumph of technique. He knows that when one is in difficulty one does not talk about the Bill that one is defending. One attacks, because that is the best form of defence. I suppose it is something that he learnt in the old days in the combined cadet force at some public school. He certainly did that during the exchanges.
  It was interesting to listen to the arguments put forward by a string of distressed loyalists, who got little in the way of a response from the Secretary of State for the Environment. Their only consolation will be that the Hendon Times, the Brent Bugle and other local papers will record that they asked the questions, but they will not be able to record any of the answers to the worries that clearly exist among their Back Benchers, particularly in the south-east of England. That gives added force to the points that are being put forward from our side about the way in which the Bill is being railroaded through the House.
  In particular, I noticed that the hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) asked a question about the revenue support grant in the south-east of England. He was told by the Secretary of State that it was an important point and that he would deal with it specifically in his speech. I read the speech with great care this morning. There was not even an attempt to provide an answer. That is typical of the way in which the debate was conducted yesterday and has been conducted again today by the Secretary of State for Scotland.
  The Secretary of State for Scotland made some interesting remarks about how we deal with sewage charges in Scotland and I believe that he was right, but I fear that the main reason that they were paraded was because it took up a few minutes without him having to deal with the fundamentals of the Bill. He went on to give a litany of hatred about local government and its responsibilities.
  I do not want to spend a great deal of time on this subject, but it must occur to the Secretary of State that if he creates such an abrasive atmosphere, if on the one hand he says that local government has done well and he claims the credit while on the other hand blaming it for everything that goes wrong, he is undoubtedly creating a situation in which there will be continuing difficulties. With a better atmosphere, one could get more reasonable results for most parties. One of the tragedies has been the constant confrontation. I do not think that that area of policy has been conducted with any form of common sense in recent years.
  For the Secretary of State to lecture us about the non-domestic rate—the business rate—and say that fear of
  930
  that is driving companies out of business takes one's breath away. When I talk to business men, when I look at the records of insolvencies, liquidations and business failures, people talk to me about Government economic policy and the recession and not about some sort of hypothetical concern that lives large only in the mind of the right hon. Gentleman.
  As regards the Bill, a number of our past arguments are clearly highly relevant to the debate. I said earlier that the Secretary of State was not noted for his phrases but, to be fair, he introduces them occasionally. He was the first person that I have heard talking about the dampening effect of banding and it may well be his modest monument. However, I object strongly to that phenomenon. I do so because I know that it is a form of protection racket, although I know that that is a phrase that Tories have found offensive, but it makes the point. To be fair, Conservative Members have not tried to hide that fact. They have said that they want to protect those in the upper range of the property market. They accept that there is a link between income and the housing that most people live in and they want to protect people who are likely to have substantial incomes. They want artificially to protect them by squeezing the range of banding—it is unashamed and unabashed.
  The answer is that modest home owners such as first-time buyers will inevitably pay more than they otherwise would have done. The other day I described—I shall not do so again to save embarrassment, although it is the Conservatives' and not mine—all the tears that were shed for those at the bottom of the home ownership market, especially council tenants who bought their property who we were told would be victimised as the Labour party would take vengeance by taxing them on the full value of their houses when they had bought at a considerable discount. If that is not hypocrisy and if it was genuinely meant, there must be some troubled consciences on these Benches when Conservative Members consider what they are introducing.
  It is not merely a question of the elimination of the discount in the local taxation system; there is also the weighting to which I referred which will clearly be a considerable problem for those people. I do not believe that there is misunderstanding of the system or that there is such lamentable ignorance on the Conservative Benches that they did not understand the argument when they made it so vociferously only a year or 18 months ago. When the Government defend what they once condemned we are looking at plain hypocrisy.
  The right hon. Member for Henley lectures us about the politics of envy. I think what he means by that is that he does not want a system that is too progressive. It occurred to me that I should argue that that would be an odd thing to suggest because if one applied it to income tax one would have a regressive and unfortunate situation. However, when I consider what the Government have been doing to the tax system in the past year or two, it could be an argument that appealed to them. I have to repeat that it is not merely a matter of trying to protect or victimise. It ought to be a question of the fair distribution of the burden. The present rigging—if that is not too cruel a word—or, if we want to be more mealy-mouthed, the present adjustment of the banding system, ensures that there will not be a fair distribution. That also has another effect which has given rise to great discontent in areas such as Hendon. I see that one of the Members representing

  931
  Hendon, the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) is here. The problem with banding, even with an eight-band system in place, is that in some areas virtually all the properties fall into one or two bands. As a result, one is suspiciously near to a flat-rate tax system of the type that we are supposed to be abandoning.
  My second serious point is the question of the complexity of the new tax and I shall put that in general terms. I listened carefully to the Secretary of State but I was not convinced. I noticed in the Financial Times this morning the suggestion that the right hon. Member for Henley does not know anything himself but
  "knows a man who knows."
  I was quite impressed until I discovered that that man turned out to be the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo). That was a strange accolade for a man who only a few months ago thought that the poll tax was a vote winner. In any event, he may have some grasp of some of the technical details, but I am not convinced that the Secretary of State for Scotland has the same grasp. When I listened to him musing about when a register becomes a list, I could only conclude that he wants to duck out of the controversy and leave it all to local authorities.
  The Secretary of State knows that if one talks to people who will be involved, it is nonsense to say that everything is on course and is going smoothly. I shall give one example. In the middle of September, as the Secretary of State knows, a draft circular on the Local Government Finance and Valuation Act 1991 was issued. It dealt with the financing of the new valuation process. In mid September local authorities replied, raising a number of important issues. Unless the midday post brought something unexpectedly, since then there has not been a cheep out of the Scottish Office. We have not got the circular. There is a great deal of confusion and hiatus because understandably local authorities want to know about funding arrangements, practical details and want answers to their questions about the use of private sector surveyors and they have not had any answers. They are not being obtuse or refusing to act. They have waited week after week for the circular but it has not appeared and the timetable is slipping by. If that is things going smoothly, the Secretary of State is talking a different language from the ordinary people of Scotland.
  That is a painful contrast with the way in which preparations for the passage of the Bill are being bulldozed through with no respect for the niceties of the parliamentary process.
  Everyone knows that Opposition Members are concerned about the discount because we do not believe that it is a properly targeted concession. Many people argue that a statutory canvass is essential. I notice that the Secretary of State disagrees and says that it is very much a matter for local authorities to take what he describes as "reasonable steps". However, given that it is all on a daily basis and that it might not be an auntie but perhaps a youngster who moves from address to address—that happens frequently in my constituency and perhaps even in the Secretary of State's constituency—all the problems with identifying the number of folk in the house, which sank the administrative basis of the poll tax, will to a large extent arise again under this system. It is no good saying that it will be up to the local authority to take reasonable steps and then going home to Bovril or Horlicks and thinking that the problem has been solved.
  932
  I shall cite one example and I invite the Secretary of State to stop me if I am wrong. It is likely that I am because, although I have taken good advice, no one is sure that they know exactly how the system will work, but let me try. Let us consider students. That is fair because there has been a recent announcement and it will be fresh in the Secretary of State's mind. He will be able to keep the House right and that may also save time in Committee, which is important given the lack of time that will be available.
  As I understand it, if a student lives in a hall of residence, he will be exempt. I am sure that the Secretary of State will nod his assent.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart) indicated assent.
  Mr. Dewar: The Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), who is slightly more animated, is doing so. I distinctly saw his sideburns move in the wind. The advice that I am given is that if a student is not in a hall of residence but is in a flat where he is the liable person, either because he is the owner or tenant, and no one else lives there, he will not be exempt. Am I right?
  The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. Michael Portillo): No.
  Mr. Dewar: We are making progress. The Minister is shaking his head.
  Mr. Foulkes: The Scottish Minister of State is nodding.
  Mr. Dewar: It is very complicated indeed to read the signs. It will be by guess and by God, and certainly not by good advice.
  In Scotland the impression, as explained to me by several experts, is that the liable person, if he is a student owner or tenant, will get a 50 per cent. reduction—25 per cent. because he is a single person and 25 per cent. based on his status. If he is the liable person but he is married, even if he is married to another student, he will get only a 25 per cent. reduction. If he is at home with one parent, he will get a 25 per cent. reduction. If he is at home with both parents, the full charge will be payable by that household. If there is a group of students in a flat, the position is not at all clear, unless they will be exempt under clause 4 in England or clause 72 in Scotland. It is a matter for interesting speculation what happens if one student fails his examinations so that one failed non-student is staying in the flat.
  We in Scotland are proud that our failure rate is below the national average, but we did not realise that it would be a financial necessity to coach our colleagues through to avoid this chaos. I accept that I may have got that example wrong, but I hope that the Minister understands that I do not make these suggestions lightly. I have tried to canvass the best opinion that I can find, and that is the best advice that I can get.
  Mr. Portillo: The reason why the hon. Gentleman is not entirely clear is that much of that will be covered by regulation. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have made these points clear in press conferences and the Secretary of State for Wales made it clear in his reply last night. Since the hon. Gentleman is obviously unclear about this, I undertake to make it clear in my reply this evening.
  Mr. Dewar: That is a handsome offer and—I will not say that it ensures my presence, as I would have been here out of curiosity in any event—I shall certainly be present.
  The point that I am making, perhaps rather over-lengthily, is that there are great areas of confusion, which are compounded by the fact that the system operates on a daily rate. I understand what the right hon. Gentleman says about a person having to have a principal residence or dwelling and that if somebody comes casually to visit that will not count. Nevertheless, there are great problems. I can think of categories of people, for example, Members of Parliament, and of interesting little tricks of the trade that may arise there. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] Yes, that may well be. The position is not clear.
  The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Michael Heseltine): I am interested. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will explain what he means by "tricks of the trade" by Members of Parliament.
  Mr. Dewar: I certainly hope that no right hon. or hon. Gentleman would in any way seek to escape his liability. I have no doubt that sometimes people do. I can think of privatisation issues where rules have been bent. Those are exceptional cases. All I am suggesting is that there are great complexities and doubts.
  I will give the right hon. Gentleman another example—the oil rig worker. As we know, under the poll tax there has been endless litigation and no satisfactory outcome. Such a worker may be away from home for over half a year, when the days are aggregated. That raises the question of how his liability can possibly be calculated on a daily rate.
  Mr. Heseltine: Have we not seen the clearest example of scaremongering, invention and allegations without foundation? When challenged about the "tricks of the trade", the hon. Gentleman has nothing to say because his comment was wholly without foundation.
  Mr. Dewar: The right hon. Gentleman has gone red in the face and he is making himself look ridiculous. I repeat that in a large number of areas there will be complexities and difficulties of interpretation which will lead to great confusion and a good deal of unhappiness.
  Mr. Heseltine: That is a climb-down.
  Mr. Dewar: It is not a climb-down at all. The right hon. Gentleman is, to say the least, seizing at any straw, if he is reduced to using that as an argument.
  The other day the Secretary of State for the Environment put up a pathetic display about the 20 per cent. rule. When challenged to say why it could not be abolished in April next year, he said it was simply because income support levels had been set and it was impossible to change them. The reason is beyond me. We all know that every hon. Member is agreed that the 20 per cent. rule is indefensible. We have had it from the Audit Commission that its collection results in a net loss to the Exchequer. I cannot see that the technicality behind which the right hon. Gentleman shelters is any defence for the clear breach of principle in allowing an inhumanity and a financial nonsense to continue in a system where it has no place. It should go in April 1992. If the right hon. Gentleman had the courage of his own arguments, it would go then. To suggest otherwise is contemptible.
  934
  My view—I have to put it as bluntly as this—is that the Bill is a disorganised hypocrisy and few of its authors believe in it. Some at least would admit that in private. The Scottish Office team, largely still intact, attacked the so-called roof tax—a property-based system with capital valuations and a single person in the household liability—as an abomination. The team made it clear that it was a wholly unacceptable concept and said of the family home that it would be the family millstone, yet the team has ended up in exactly the same area.
  Mr. Lang: When will the hon. Gentleman get round to answering the questions that I put to him during my speech?
  Mr. Dewar: I know that the right hon. Gentleman does not like this, but I am talking about the proposals in the Bill before us and I intend to continue to do so. I am extremely interested in the arguments used in this debate in the past 24 hours or so.
  Mr. Heseltine: Another "trick of the trade".
  Mr. Dewar: It may well be.
  Mr. Foulkes: Does my hon. Friend recall that the right hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger) had himself registered at a fictitious address in the town of Ayr to deceive the electorate that his principal home was in Ayr and not, as we all know, in Stirling? Is that properly described as a "trick of the trade"?
  Mr. Dewar: I have no idea, but that is an interesting anecdote.
  On 11 November the Secretary of State for the Environment was challenged by the hon. Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell), who said that the Government should just add a further 2·5 per cent. to value added tax. The right hon. Gentleman said that the Government were determined to make progress, but that they did not believe that progress would be made by the imposition of a further 2·5 per cent. to VAT. He said:
  "the inevitable conclusion on my hon. Friend's proposals … is that every authority's spending is fixed precisely. Authorities have no capacity to raise additional revenue, and, to the most minute detail, central Government fix their expenditure. That would not be the right way to progress."
  I am grateful for that information, but I do not believe that that principle is operating in local government now. I do not believe that that is the general thrust of the policies advocated by the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues.
  The Secretary of State also argued that the council tax would maintain accountability. He said:
  "Thirty-eight million of the 42 million adults in Great Britain—that is, more than 90 per cent.—will be directly taken into account by the council tax."—[Official Report, 11 November 1991; Vol. 198, c. 786–789.]
  I regard that as sophistry. I remember trying to argue that under the old rating system, and the successor that we were proposing, everyone in a household made a contribution towards its running and should be taken into account and counted as being part of the taxation system. I was vilified by Scottish Office Ministers for holding such a view—vilified is a word that I can take seriously. I was told that only one person was legally liable and therefore only a small percentage of the electorate was covered by the taxation system. I was told that that was totally unacceptable.
  Now the right hon. Member for Henley has the brass neck to repeat that argument and attach it to a system to

  935
  which, in terms of the arguments that he and his colleagues used for so long, it does not apply. I thought that that was the most outrageous claim from the right hon. Gentleman in recent weeks until I remembered some of his other remarks. He said that the Scots had complained when they got a separate poll tax bill and asked why they should complain now that they do not. That was a remarkable statement. The right hon. Gentleman also said that the only thing standing in the way of the abolition of the poll tax was the Labour party. Such comments will merely lead the right hon. Member and his colleagues into disrepute.
  Mr. Malcolm Bruce: Surely it is remarkable that, when the Secretary of State for the Environment was asked why he did not oppose the poll tax in Scotland when he did so in England, he replied that he thought the Scots had wanted it. Is that not a sign of how out of touch Ministers are with the people of Scotland?
  Mr. Dewar: That is unfair to the right hon. Gentleman as I believe he is being misquoted. What he said was even more alarming. He said that he had asked the Secretary of State for Scotland if the Scots wanted it, and then he believed him.
  Mr. John Butcher: It is the duty of the Opposition to oppose and the hon. Gentleman is doing so with great vigour. I pay tribute to the Scottish Labour party for spearheading the Opposition's view on the community charge and local government reform. If the hon. Gentleman's speech is to have any intellectual and moral integrity on behalf of the Scottish Labour party, he should, in all conscience, answer the specific questions put to him by my right hon. Friend. The hon. Gentleman, more than any other hon. Member, has a duty to state his party's proposals and their effects on the Scottish people.
  Mr. Dewar: If the hon. Gentleman believes that the relationship with local government should depend for ever on the ever pressing presence of capping power, he takes a gloomy and miserable view of the future of that relationship.
  The Secretaries of State for Scotland and for the Environment have a great influence on spending in local government because they control the revenue support grant and the ability of additional expenditure to attract that grant. There are a number of ways in which they can, should and will influence responsibly, but the idea that one must spend one's time in a constant war over capping is mistaken.
  In recent weeks the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) has made his stand against a single currency in Europe. He said that if we had such a machinery it would leave the Chancellor of the Exchequer
  "as nothing more than the treasurer of a rate-capped local authority."
  That tells us something interesting about the disunity on the European issue, but in the context of the Bill it is also interesting. The right hon. Member for Chingford is not noted for his lack of imagination or his inability to think of vindictive comparisons. Obviously he could think of nothing more wounding to say about the Chancellor than that he should be compared to the
  "treasurer of a rate-capped local authority."
  The Government should not seek to rely upon such capping powers. We do not want such a machinery and we would not rely upon it.
  Mr. Lang: The hon. Gentleman will recall that his former colleague, Lord Ross of Marnock, said that a Secretary of State should have
  "necessary reserve powers to restrict grants where an authority fails to maintain standards or spends excessively."
  The hon. Gentleman's predecessor thought that such capping powers were necessary, as did Bruce Millan, now a commissioner of the European Community. Will the hon. Gentleman now answer the questions that I put to him?
  Mr. Dewar: I have already answered—we do not believe that such powers will be necessary.
  The Secretary of State was a decade out when he spoke about this recently. We put section 5 of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1966 on the statute book because it was thought to be necessary at the time. I was not party to that decision. However, no Secretary of State ever found it necessary to use it and we would not wish to see those powers restored. We would not contemplate using those powers and therefore the comparison is wrong.
  Mr. Bill Walker: Can the hon. Gentleman tell us why real deductions in local government expenditure took place in Scotland under the Government of 1978 as a result of the decision taken—quite properly in my view—by central Government to control expenditure? The reductions were not small, but massive.
  Mr. Dewar: I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who so often rides gallantly to the rescue of his enemies. That is exactly the point I was seeking to make earlier. The decision in 1978 was an unpleasant one, but it was thought necessary at the time. The reductions were made by cutting the rate grant support from central Government. That machinery is always open to a Government. At that time the Government rightly chose not to use the capping powers that existed.
  Mr. Harry Ewing: I apologise to my hon. Friend for intervening and I know that he has been generous in giving way. The Secretary of State referred to the late Lord Ross but it is important to clarify that the Secretary of State is not talking about capping powers—those powers were described as indicative costs. At no time did any Labour Secretary of State, either Lord Ross or Bruce Millan, allow a local authority to set its budget and then cut that budget in the knowledge that cuts would then be made to public services. Unfortunately, the Secretary of State has deliberately misrepresented the late Lord Ross.
  Mr. Dewar: I appreciate that my hon. Friend speaks from his experience in the Scottish Office.
  Ministers are fond of complaining bitterly about the draconian way in which Labour Governments have controlled local authority spending in the past. It seems rather odd therefore that they should now complain that we would not use the capping machinery. We regard such machinery as redundant.
  I have given way a great deal and I do not want to prevent other hon. Members from contributing to the debate. In conclusion, I believe that the story of the past two or three years has been an unhappy and disreputable one. Those who have followed the debate in the past few weeks will know that I have read the press releases that were put out in the past by hon. Members who are now part of the Scottish Office team. My fax machine used to go mad every Sunday when yet another letter to cheer me

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  up was sent by the then chairman of the Scottish Conservative party. Hon. Members will remember when the Minister of State at the Scottish Office had that dignity.
  I re-read one such letter from the hon. Gentleman this morning and it was full of words such as "deceitful" and "disreputable". The hon. Gentleman predicted that a property-based tax on a capital valuation, taking everything else as it was at that time, would produce a tax of between £30 and £40 per £1,000 of the value of a house.
  I accept that the £140 sweetener must be taken into account, but the figures are so dramatically wrong, even taking account of that, that I can think only that they were put about with malice as scare stories. Such malice would, no doubt, be engaging at a fringe meeting of Young Conservatives, but it is alarming coming from a Minister of the Crown.
  When I read the Minister's remarks, the words "disreputable" and "deceitful", which he used cheerfully about Labour Members, struck me as a useful vocabulary when considering his efforts. I find intellectually contemptible the way in which Conservative Members have stood on their heads when adducing such arguments.
  We then had strong advice from the right hon. Member for Henley to read the Municipal Journal. When I examined the issue of that publication for 8 November, I noticed a splendidly robust quotation from Mr. Roger Humber, director of the Housebuilders' Federation, who said:
  "Mr. Heseltine is talking absolute nonsense."
  Mr. Humber will find that the right hon. Gentleman has a habit of doing that, certainly when dealing with local government taxation and house building statistics.
  From Conservative Members and Ministers we have had bluff and bluster. They are attacking proposals from the Labour party which are sensible and coherent. In Scotland we have a valuation base that was put together in 1985 and is still hardly out of date, even if the system had run on. It is intact and would be a practical starting point. We propose to build on it, to move from that practical starting point to a reformed, improved and modernised rating system. That would be infinitely preferable to a scheme which was spawned by political disaster, and cobbled together in considerable panic.
  The Secretary of State said that his system was fair. We question that. He also said that it was welcomed. As he said, no tax is likely to be popular. It is interesting to note that in the MORI poll of 1 November it was discovered that fewer than one in five favoured the so-called council tax. That poll was better for my hon. Friends than for Conservative Members, and that is true of most polls these days. At least we reached the 25 per cent. mark. The Liberals achieved only 11 per cent. with their proposals. I take some consolation from that.
  We have a Government who dislike and distrust local democracy, and the reason is obvious. It is because, as the Secretary of State has constantly said, local authorities tend to be controlled by the Labour party. That does not happen by magical chemistry or conspiracy. It happens because people vote for and elect Labour candidates.
  There is something shabby in a Government making great play of the fact that they lose elections at the local level. The result is that we are plunged into a situation in which, despite the quotation from the Secretary of State for the Environment to which I referred—about the need
  938
  to prevent local government being controlled in every detail by central Government—in Scotland, only 11 per cent. of revenue is in local government control. The Secretary of State has only one argument and policy, and that is ever more brutal capping. That is not an argument for local democracy. Rather, it is an argument against the Government and their attitudes.
  I fear that the Bill will do no service for Parliament. Nor will it be of service to the people of the United Kingdom and particularly to the people of Scotland. In Scotland it will buttress and reinforce the conviction that the Government are running out of energy and ideas and, best of all, running out of time. They should go.
  5.43 pm
  Sir Richard Luce: I enjoyed the speech of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) because it was entertaining. Although he spent much time criticising the council tax, only towards the end of his remarks did he touch on the alternative proposed by the Labour party and he did that without enthusiasm. Indeed, he failed throughout to answer the challenging questions put to him by the Secretary of State for Scotland. I can only conclude that the hon. Gentleman is not convinced that the Labour party has better proposals for dealing with local government taxation.
  In 21 years in this place, I have not before found it possible to speak with enthusiasm about any local government taxation system. At least on this occasion I can give a modest welcome to the council tax. It is certainly a marked improvement on the community charge and it is infinitely better than Labour's proposals for a return to the rating system, remembering the intense pain that that caused to many people through the 1960s and into the 1970s. The fact that the Labour party is not proposing to introduce a formula which would allow for restraint in public expenditure by local government means that its ideas could prove disastrous.
  Mr. Harry Barnes: The right hon. Gentleman says that the council tax is an improvement on the community charge. In which way is it an improvement?
  Sir Richard Luce: I was talking not about the Labour party proposals, but about the council tax—
  Mr. Barnes: Answer my question.
  Sir Richard Luce: If the hon. Gentleman will listen, he will see why the council tax is an improvement on anything that we have had in post-war years. It is a vast improvement on the rating system as proposed by the Labour party.
  The four factors that must be looked for in a local taxation system are a measure of fairness, some reflection of ability to pay, an adequate measure of accountability and the maximum of administrative simplicity. No one can have any illusions about any form of local government taxation being perfect. It is almost an area in which one cannot win. There is bound to be an element of rough justice. But the Government's council tax proposal achieves a judicious balance of those elements. It may not be perfect, but it is better than any of the alternatives.
  Mr. John Maxton: I assume that the alternatives about which the right hon. Gentleman is speaking include the poll tax. If my memory serves me

  939
  right, he was a Minister when both poll tax measures went through the House. If he felt that that system was so wrong, why did he remain in that Government?
  Sir Richard Luce: The hon. Gentleman has got me wrong. On all the taxation system that we have had since the war, including the rating system and then the community charge—he is right to say that I supported the latter—the council tax represents an improvement. That is all that I am saying.
  I hope that, when replying to the debate, the Minister of State will deal with some points that I have to make about the standard spending assessment. But first I have some general comments on the Bill, in particular on accountability. It is important to bear in mind the fact that the Government are allowing local taxation to be increased to the extent of 15 per cent. of total resources. Some would argue that if it is to be at that low level, relatively speaking, we should do away completely with an element of local taxation and fund it all from central Government.
  I believe that it would be a profound mistake to do that. For a Government who believe in decentralisation, it would be a damaging policy. I should have preferred a larger element of local funding to central grants and other forms of revenue. Indeed, had not Labour-controlled authorities in the past driven small businesses out of the inner cities and acted in a thoroughly irresponsible way, creating unemployment in those areas, I should have preferred more flexibility in the business rate system. However, experience does not encourage that.
  I am glad that the single bill which people will receive under the council tax will contain two elements—property and personal. Constituencies such as mine have large retired populations and I am concerned about the effect of the Bill on widows and single people. They were heavily hit under the old rating system and the position of most of them was eased considerably under the community charge system. I watch with considerable anxiety to see whether they will lose out under the new council tax. I should be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister will reassure me on that matter when he winds up.
  As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, in two-tier authorities it is important that bills should contain two elements to make it clear to members of the public what element relates to the county, for example, and what element relates to the district. Hitherto, one misfortune of the systems has been that people are not sure who is responsible for certain expenditure.
  I have corresponded endlessly with my hon. Friend the Minister and his predecessors on the standard spending assessment. He will no doubt be saying, "Thank God he is leaving Parliament at the next election". Nevertheless, the issue will remain because, under the new council tax system, it is essential that local authorities and the public have absolute confidence in the fairness of the method of or criteria for calculating the standard spending assessment. It becomes even more acute because the Government—rightly—decided to extend the potential to cap authorities spending less than £15 million. The standard spending assessment system must be based on local authorities having as much confidence as possible. In my area, the two district councils of Arun and Adur—one of which is Conservative and the other Liberal—are profoundly concerned about that issue.
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  I realise that, whatever system we have, it will be complex. The previous system was even more complex and the Government have done much to simplify it. The present system has six major service blocks, ranging from education to highways and maintenance. The "other services" block contains issues such as environmental health. Also taken into account are population factors, commuters, visitors, density and sparsity of population and the social index, which are all designed to reflect the physical, demographic and social characteristics of each area, so it is bound to be fairly complex. I accept the argument that some complexity cannot be avoided and that there will be an element of rough justice, but the experience in my constituency demonstrates that rough justice can go too far. The disparities in the per capita grant received in my district compared with the neighbouring districts of Worthing and Hove have been such in the past two or three years that much injustice has been caused. Anyone who glances at those areas—it is no disparagement of the neighbouring authorities—will see that the social conditions in my area are acute compared with those in neighbouring areas, yet the per capita grant that my area receives from central Government is much lower. Something is wrong with that and the formula is too crude.
  Will my hon. Friend undertake, over a reasonable period and before the council tax is introduced, to carry out an independent review of how that works, taking into account the views of a cross-section of authorities? That review should be published and an adjustment to the standard spending assessment should be considered. In the meantime, there are some arguments for suggesting that the smaller the authority, the rougher the justice and the cruder the formula. Therefore, there is an argument for the higher authorities—in my case the county council—to have an element of discretion in dispersing funds so that they can iron out the worst anomalies and disparities between the various district councils. I hope that when my hon. Friend winds up he will comment on that and consider my proposals, which are intended to be helpful, as positively as he can. I give my encouraging support to the Bill.
  5.55 pm
  Mr. Jimmy Wray: It must be made clear that the Labour party is not to blame for the poll tax which the Government introduced. The nation should he told about the chaos, poverty and hardship that the Government have created in deprived areas throughout the country. I am not too worried about the new council tax because I doubt whether it will see the light of day. Will the nation vote the Government back in? They will be voted out and it will be a long time before we have a Conservative Government in Britain again.
  Let us consider democracy in local government and the three Secretaries of State for the Environment who have had a go at local government taxation. The right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley), the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Patten) and now the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) have all been unsuccessful and got it wrong. Who would have thought that, as we enter the 21st century, 7·5 million people would have been served with warrants? Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Scotland made a statement condemning local councils for overspending. The poll tax

  941
  collection rate throughout Britain varies from 33 per cent. to 93 per cent. Non-collection is not confined to Strathclyde and Glasgow but applies also to the shires, which collected only 82 per cent. and inner London, which collected only 66 per cent. Scotland is owed some £437 million in unpaid poll tax.
  Local authorities should be given some money to get them out of the mess. Although the Secretary of State for Scotland condemned district and regional authorities such as Lambeth, Hackney and Strathclyde, no one could say that they have not tried to collect that money. Strathclyde regional council even decided to hold an auction because the ruthless Government have allowed it to deteriorate. It is nearing bankruptcy and has had to make 720 employees redundant, which is a sorry state of affairs.
  Mr. William McKelvey: There are difficulties in collecting the charge. Strathclyde authority undertakes the task diligently, but still faces problems. I received a letter this morning from the social security office stating that it cannot take anything off the income support of one woman who is being pursued for arrears because she is too poor. However, the Government refuse to abandon their policy of making everyone pay 20 per cent. although they know that it costs twice as much to try to collect it as the amount that they actually collect. They penalise poor people such as my constituent.
  Mr. Wray: I sympathise with my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Mr. McKelvey) but surely he has been a Membeer long enough to know that the Government do not care. Conservative Members are not interested in the poor, but are interested only in their own shares and in the rich. During the Government's term of office they have cut £600 million from the Strathclyde budget for services, so that council has to increase its bills this year by 32 per cent. The Government are guilty of mismanagement, gross neglect and maladministration, and should be turned out tomorrow because they are not fit to govern.
  It annoys me when I hear the criticisms that come from the Secretary of State for the Environment. He talked about what my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) said. I shall quote a couple of paragraphs to see if anyone knows who said them:
  "Once implemented and through transition, 1 believe the new system will prove enduring and a vast improvement on the status quo."
  It was said at the annual conference of the Association of District Councils on 1 July 1988. [HON. MEMBERS: "Who was it?"] Maybe hon. Members will know who it was when they hear the next part. Three years later the same person said:
  "I'll tell you about the poll tax. We were bounced into it quickly because there was such a fuss about rates in Scotland and we were bounced without thinking because of the political fuss."
  That was said by the Prime Minister. It was easy to see that he was running for his job then.
  Why do we have to wait until 1993 before the poll tax is abolished? We know what the position is. In Strathclyde alone, 1·25 million warrants have been issued; many others have been issued in various constituencies. The position is so bad that the sheriff officers are afraid to go into homes. The saddest story I heard was of a sheriff officer going to a door to collect items that were to be sold at auction. He
  942
  said that the woman in the house had only a table and television, and had spent the night before polishing the table so that it would bring in a wee bit extra to clear her debt. Is that the sort of Government we have? Yes, they do not care.
  Why will not the Government abolish the 20 per cent. rule? Why are they allowing the ratepayers and taxpayers of this country to go on throwing money down the drain? It costs the Government 19 per cent. of what they collect if they collect 6 per cent. of the charges. Why do not the Government abolish the whole damn lot and give the people a free run for Christmas? They should do so if they have any compassion.
  Mr. George Howarth: They are stony-hearted.
  Mr. Wray: Yes, they are stony-hearted.
  I have taken a long look at local government finance. The Government collect only about 14 per cent. of the charge and the rest comes from central Government—is it worth collecting it? Some £4·25 billion has been thrown away on trying to get the people out of the mess into which the Government have placed them and £5,795 million has been poured in to try to save the Government from embarrassment. But the people of Scotland and Britain will never forget the sad 13 years in which people have been brought to their knees. The most deprived regions are still suffering from cuts in social services, the police force and education. The Government are hoping to carry on and according to the Secretary of State for the Environment the people will have to put up with the tax until 1993.
  The Government have made a mistake with the new tax from the very start. They have valued the average house at £80,000. They were told months ago when they first set out valuations that they were wrong by between 16 and 26 per cent. Some of the houses that were valued at £80,000 were worth 26 per cent. less and others 16 per cent. less. The Government were warned about their assessments by the Local Government Information Unit and by building societies. When they try to collect the money, with all the various bands involved, they will need the St. Francis pipe band to get out of the mess. They are worried about the people in the top bands and they are ensuring that those in the highest band cannot be made to pay more than three times the amount charged to those in the lowest band. The Government are protecting very wealthy people.
  What nonsense it is for the Government to say that they will give a 25 per cent. discount for everyone in every household—25 per cent. for a pensioner in the poorest slum district and 25 per cent. for a millionaire living in a penthouse. If they consider that to be fair they have got it wrong again.
  The Government do not want to get rid of capping and have retained it in the Bill. The only reason that they have not capped local authorities as much as they would have liked is because of the word "unreasonable" contained in the legislation to implement the poll tax. However, the new Bill does not contain the word "unreasonable". If that word had not been included in the poll tax legislation, the Government would have capped about 31 local authorities in Scotland for overspending by a small percentage. It is a sad day when the Government put the jackboot into local authorities because of their expenditure—democracy and accountability have gone out of the window. The new

  943
  system is a costly business for local authorities because big changes have to be made, computers are brought into education departments and offices which means extra cost. Local authorities also have to consider gearing. When a local council increases a bill by £1, it means a 6 or 7 per cent. increase for the charge payer, which is bad news for them.
  The poll tax meant a bonanza for private landlords—the Rachmans in Britain. About one week before the Act came into force to abolish rates those landlords were running about trying to get their tenants to sign to agree a rent increase, and they will do the same thing with this legislation. How will the Government deal with multiple occupations? They will tell the Rachman landlords to collect the money. They might get half the money—the other half will go in the landlord's pocket. There will be no registers. When the properties are valued they will be looked at from the outside so there could be 30 or 40 people inside. I know one place in Alliston street in which there are 20 or 30 people in one room sleeping in hammocks. If valuers do not go inside the properties, how will they be able to value them? In some streets all the buildings look alike although they may contain three, four or even six apartments, and it is unfair to place them all in one band.
  The Government say that they will use the services of estate agents. Two or three of them have been out to value my place and have given me three different valuations—none of them right.
  Mr. McKelvey: I advise my hon. Friend not to tell us what the valuations were.
  Mr. Wray: I certainly will not; I am afraid to.
  Even some Conservative Members have been grumbling about the bands and asking for another two or three at the top of the ladder because of the jump from £160,000 to £320,000. But some houses in this city are worth £2·5 million. What band should they come under? I hope that a new Government will come to power so that the council tax cannot be implemented. [Interruption.] I am running out of material.
  Mr. John Battle: But my hon. Friend is using it well.
  Mr. McKelvey: Before my hon. Friend stood up to speak he told me that it was a scandal that so little time is being allowed for a Bill of this magnitude. It is all the more astonishing that Scottish Conservative Members should not have learnt the lessons from the implementation of the poll tax which they—backed by the legions of Tory Back Benchers who are not here today—thrust on the people of Scotland. They should at least have learnt not to push through legislation like this in so short a time, thereby denying the opportunity to discuss it thoroughly.
  Mr. Wray: It is difficult for any Government to justify the type of legislation that has been passed here over the past three years.
  The average council tax in England will be £400, in Scotland £270 and in Wales £163—or so we are told. But I think that the figures are wrong. The Government should realise that the time has come to fund local authorities centrally. Democracy has been thrown out of the window by this Government and we shall return to democracy only
  944
  with the return of a Labour Government pledged to bring in a fair tax system based on ability to pay. Our document takes incomes into consideration; the council tax does not.
  I will be glad when a Labour Government are returned to power and we implement the fairer system known as fair rates.
  6.13 pm
  Miss Emma Nicholson: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said yesterday that, despite the Opposition's fears and unyielding opposition to the proposed council tax, they managed to muster only 20 Members for the debate. I see that that number has fallen still further today—[Interruption.] Despite the laughter, only 14 or 15 Opposition Members are able to be here at this early hour for what will be a lengthy debate. What is more, I see that the Liberal Democrats cannot be bothered to be present at all, such confidence do they have in their proposals and their amendment. [HON. MEMBERS: "Where are the Tories?"] I shall not respond to blandishments inviting me to criticise my hon. Friends for not fielding more people. After all, we support the Government. We have no need to summon up armies to support our logic. It is the Opposition who need to oppose our proposals, and that they have significantly failed to do, to judge not only by numbers but by the lack of content in their speeches.
  I welcome the council tax, and I find it difficult to understand the reasoning behind the Opposition's staunch refusal to see its virtues. I am forced to conclude that their opposition is comparable to their opposition to the £140 reduction in the community charge, against which many Opposition Members voted. Their opposition derives from a mulish obstinacy which directly harms the electorate; it does not rest on logic or reasoning, and it is not worth listening to.
  The council tax, by contrast, responds to the electorate's wish to maintain a tie between local government revenue-raising and housing, thus identifying a centuries-old notion of ability to pay. I suggest that that notion of ability to pay still applies. Most people who live in large houses are more able to pay than those who live in small ones. Whether or not that is an accurate assumption, it became clear in the lengthy debate on the community charge that the electorate wanted us to retain that tie.
  Mr. Maxton: It is interesting to hear the hon. Lady stress the centuries-old tradition of the link between property and ability to pay. That being so, why did she support the poll tax, which did not meet that criterion for a local tax?
  Miss Nicholson: I do not blame the hon. Gentleman for not listening to some of my statements on the community charge, but I pointed out at the time——
  Mr. John McAllion: Yes, but how did the hon. Lady vote?
  Miss Nicholson: I pointed out at the time and in the way I voted—and I say again now—that it is the country's perception that a house provides a notion of ability to pay, even if it is not a truly accurate assumption. We all know, for instance, that under this Conservative Government wealth has been created more readily, so people have had more money to spend, and they do not spend it just on

  945
  where they live. Their sense of self-worth is not based solely on their dwelling place. They also buy video recorders, tape recorders, televisions by the armful, cars and all sorts of other things. People's wealth is visible in a variety of ways. But, as I said, the electorate at large still believes strongly that the house in which someone lives reflects at least in part his or her ability to pay.
  This tax is a light touch on local wallets, since it raises only 25 per cent. of local authority revenue, the remainder being raised from and distributed by central Government taxation systems. I give credit to the Government for this considerable and generally welcome innovation. That leaves the United Kingdom with the second lowest rate of value added tax in the whole of Europe. That is due to our large 25 per cent. of zero-rated items. We are managing an extraordinarily intelligent mechanism to raise more money while still having the second lowest VAT average in the Community. I congratulate the Government on that splendid achievement.
  The council tax recognises the duty and the desire of the responsible citizen to contribute to local services. Opposition Members may smile. Some irresponsible Opposition Members did not wish to make a contribution. Several of them had such a desire to duck their contributions that they were found guilty in court. The desire to contribute to services is a badge of civic dignity, and the Bill will help to build a responsible society.
  The council tax will exempt or grant a quarter discount to students, student nurses and YTS trainees and will thus build a caring society. It recognises the crucial importance of food production, thus contributing to the building of a practical society. It is thoroughly sensible—and what more could one ask of a mechanism for raising local government revenue?
  The Opposition do not wish to be sensible, but that is nothing new. That gives me an opportunity to look at their uneasy and uncomfortable proposals which smack of their obsession with the continuance of the command economy. Perhaps I should say command extravagance and incompetence and, ultimately, the stagnation by command that socialist systems produce. The Opposition propose large-scale meddling in private matters, and that lies at the heart of Labour's obsession with a fair rates system. Their system would not work without an army of snoopers. [Interruption.] There is an overlarge army of Scottish Opposition Members. If I had my way, there would be a fair system of Scottish representation. There would be fewer Scottish Members, and none of them would be Labour. [Interruption.] The Opposition cannot down a good Conservative.
  Labour's fair rates system smacks of that party's usual incompetence and, even more sadly, of their naive and unrealistic belief in the perfection of man-made systems. What does Labour propose? First, in the most incorrigible, sad and old-fashioned belief, it is determined to return to the rating system based on 1973 values, a truly crazy idea. Secondly, Labour proposes a new system of valuation, a second earthquake after its reversion to the early 1970s, and that system will be based on a rolling revaluation of 22 million properties based on four values, the first of which is maintenance and repair costs. Someone will have to call to see whether I have managed to replace my back door with one that has glass panes instead of wooden panels. It
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  is important that maintenance and repair costs are taken into the rolling revaluation on the critical first valuation. How does Labour propose to work out rebuilding costs, the second of its four values? The other two are rental values and insurance values. One can see the chaos and confusion that such a dreaded system would create.
  The hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said that people would pay more than they needed to pay, but that is possible only if one of two events occurs. First, it can happen because of extravagance on the part of those who spend taxpayers' money such as, dare I say it, the councils in Lambeth and Camden where 40 per cent. of the electorate leave every year. Those people vote with their feet and get out. The second cause for people to pay more than they need to pay would be the introduction of a cumbersome mechanism for identifying and collecting tax revenue. The fair rates system smacks of both those matters.
  I suggest that Labour's proposals are not even supported by its Front-Bench spokesmen. We do not need to go far to find all too revealing quotes. On 5 October, on "Any Questions", Mrs. Margaret Beckett said——
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. We usually refer to hon. Members by constituency.
  Miss Nicholson: She said that there was "no question" but that they would replace the council tax with their rates system. On 17 October another Opposition spokesman said that Labour would "amend the council tax" and scrap the 1973 rates stepping stone. A third Opposition spokesman said that Labour
  "would … repeal it in almost all circumstances",
  but might pick up the council tax valuation register.
  I think that I am correct in saying that over the past four years Labour has adopted 70 different positions on local government finance. That puts the author of the "Kama Sutra" in the shade. Labour has suggested capital value rates and a twin tax—which sounds like Dracula and his brother—of local income tax and roof tax. It has suggested a floor tax which gives me, and I suggest the electorate, cold feet. I shall tell the Serjeant at Arms about that because we need more floor space in the building for our secretaries.
  Labour has been twisting and turning and has offered a variety of local income taxes that puts even Heinz to shame. It has adopted a number of positions that I have already referred to in perhaps an unseemly manner. I could not support those proposals even if I were the daughter of a coal miner. I am the daughter of an MP who actively assisted coal miners and I am remarkably glad to support the Government's sensible and sane proposals.
  As I have said, the Liberal Democrats have so little confidence in their proposals that they seem to have left the SDP to carry their banner, which I am sure that that party could do with far greater competence than the Liberal Democrats. The local income tax would be difficult and complex to create and to continue, tasking the Inland Revenue, as it would, as the agent of collection. It offers the horrific uniformity of a rate throughout the year that will be the same for everyone. Thus far does the Liberal Democrat imagination take one, and, lo and behold, it proposes a variety of adjustments at the year end. Is that really local initiative? The Liberal Democrats would tax wealth creation and there would be a little bureaucrat in every town hall. A high local income tax would create debtors, destroy jobs, and drive out wealth creators.

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  The Inland Revenue operates on the basis of where people are employed and not on where they live. Those of us who have been employed all our lives in real businesses know that. Therefore, the hugely complex computerised Inland Revenue system would have to be recreated. A new collection point would have to be added to the existing system. This new machinery would be created for a fictitious local additional accountability that would give more authority to local councils. There would be a creation of new power bases for no new benefits to the electorate.
  Both Opposition parties offer systems that do not help individuals or families—the people whom we, the Conservatives, are pledged to serve. Instead, they offer more bureaucrats.
  Mr. David Nicholson: My hon. Friend has made an effective attack on the proposals of both the Labour and Liberal parties, but she has not mentioned one of the greatest weaknesses in those proposals, which is that both parties have consistently voted against the Government's attempts to curb excessive local government spending through the capping mechanism. The Labour party—I should not be surprised if the Liberal Democrats thought this way too, but I have not explored their policy on this—is committed to abolishing the capping mechanism. Would that not leave council tax payers open to the burden of extravagance in local government?
  Miss Nicholson: I wholly agree with my west country colleague. We see things sanely and sensibly there.
  Both Opposition parties are pledged only to help bureaucracy. In the case of the Liberal Democrats, that is their favourite repository of power—the local council officials. As a result of the Labour party proposals, new armies of snoopers would arise. If Labour Members fail to see the truth of that, then they are even more foolish than I thought. Only the Conservative proposals will raise the necessary sums of money for appropriate local government expenditure with a light touch and with fundamental fairness and sureness. I support the Government.
  6.32 pm
  Mr. John Cartwright: The kindest thing that I can say about the speech of the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) is that she obviously believes that attack is the best form of defence, although I notice that she did not go into a great deal of detail in defending the Bill.
  It may seem a strange charge to level against this Government that they are imbued with the philosophies of Leon Trotsky, but when it comes to local government, this Administration seem to believe in the Trotskyite theory of permanent revolution. We used to have a local government Bill every two or three years, but now we have two or three local government Bills a year. No sooner do we get one system in place and local authority officials beginning to understand it than it is torn up and something new is put in its place.
  We should spare a thought for the officials in finance departments in town and county halls who are trying to sort out the last remnants of the rating system while fighting a losing battle to cope with the problems of the poll tax. On top of all that, they are being asked to prepare for a completely different system which is apparently being worked out as we go along on some sort of do-it-yourself
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  basis. Any hon. Member with recent experience of trying to help constituents with poll tax rebate problems knows that the system is creaking badly and is under considerable strain. It is at least possible that it will be unable to meet the timetable that the Government have laid down for this change. If it does, I expect that the resulting quality of service will be pretty poor.
  The great tragedy is that the lessons of the poll tax fiasco have not been learnt. Once again, we shall drive complex legislation through the House at breakneck speed, with all the risk of major flaws not being discovered until it is too late. Perhaps there is a more fundamental lesson to be learnt. Once again, Ministers are trying to persuade a bewildered public that they have stumbled on a magic solution to the age-old problem of local government finance. We have seen them waxing lyrical about the Bill. Two Secretaries of State, on two successive days, have been ecstatic about the Bill, but we saw the same fervour and enthusiasm marshalled, a couple of years ago, behind the poll tax. How are we to believe that, this time, they have got it right? The more enthusiastic Ministers become, the more disillusioned the punters will be when the reality of the situation finally comes home.
  I may sound cynical, but all my experience at the sharp end of local government, leading a London borough council, in the local authority association and as an original member of the Layfield committee, leads me to believe that there is no ideal solution to the problem of paying for local council services. We can think up no system—fair rates, council tax, poll tax or local income tax—that would be regarded as fair by everybody and that would have no snags, drawbacks, anomalies or defects.
  Every time that we change the system, there are gainers and losers. We should by now have learnt that the gainers take their gains and, saying nothing, scuttle away to enjoy them, while the losers complain long and loud. That is an old political truth which I suspect the Government will once again discover when the full impact of the council tax hits their traditional supporters in London and the south-east.
  If there is no perfect system, we are looking for the least worst solution, the one with the fewest drawbacks and injustices. I make no apology for saying that, ever since Layfield reported, I have been convinced that the best solution and the one with the fewest injustices is a local income tax. All those Conservative Members who painted spine-chilling pictures of the adverse impact of local income tax should explain why the system works in Europe and, beyond Europe, in North America. Are we so incompetent that we cannot make it work at least as well as it works in other nations?
  The injustice of a property-based tax is evident. The value of a home is only a rough guide to the affluence of the person who lives in it and in many cases is no guide at all. We can all think of circumstances in which the value of somebody's home has gone up through no effort of his own. The area becomes fashionable, property values go up and suddenly he is sitting on an asset that does not reflect his income. For example, although the London borough of Hackney is not widely recognised as a centre of gracious living, 70 per cent. of the households there are in bands D, E and F, but in Rotherham, 84 per cent. of households are in bands A, B and C. That shows the impact of London property values on the tax.
  Many of the people in higher-banded properties in Hackney, Greenwich, Southwark and other London

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  boroughs will be council tenants who have no choice about where they live. They have to go where they are put and accept the property that they are offered. If that property has a high theoretical market value, they will have to pay a high council tax. The only answer that Ministers give to this problem is the celebrated dampener. It protects, to some extent, those in upper bands, but only at the price of imposing larger burdens on those in the lower bands.
  I was interested to read the Conservative party's research department document on the Bill, dated 26 April this year. It said about the impact of the council tax:
  "There will be no return to the very big bills that characterised the rates."
  With considerable courage, it went on to say:
  "Indeed, the Government believes that only those who can afford to are likely to have to pay more in council tax than in Community Charge."
  Armed with that brave statement, I looked at the impact of the council tax on my constituents in the London borough of Greenwich. The Government have helpfully provided us with figures showing how the council tax can be worked out on the basis of this year's council spending. It makes frightening reading for my constituents. In the London borough of Greenwich, the average home is in band E.
  Couples with a property in that average band would this year have been paying £213 more than they are paying in poll tax. Only 2 per cent. of households in Greenwich would pay less than the sum that they pay in poll tax. Single people would be even worse off. Those in average property in band E would be paying double what they are now paying in poll tax. That is £547 compared with £242. No single person in Greenwich would pay less than they are paying now. For many of my consituents, the switch from poll tax to council tax will be turning a crisis into a disaster.
  It is not only Greenwich that has high-value property, but I have no doubt that Ministers will say that the outturn lies entirely with the borough's spending. That is true because Greenwich is spending 14·1 per cent. in excess of its standard spending assessment and grants will continue to be based on the SSA. It has been said already that the system is riddled with anomalies.
  Does any local authority accept that its SSA accurately reflects its need to spend? I have never accepted that civil servants in the Department of the Environment in Marsham street, however sophisticated their computer programmes may be, can decide better than those on the spot what a local authority needs to spend.
  I shall give one example of anomalies in the SSA system. The child populations of the London boroughs of Greenwich, Lewisham and Wandsworth are almost identical, yet the social service SSA per child is set at £271, £437 and £514 respectively. How can anyone accept that the methodology and the system are fair and reasonable when there is that sort of variation?
  That leads me to capping. I speak about it with some authority because the London borough of Greenwich—I represent one of the constituencies within its area, and that is where I live—must be in the "Guinness Book of Records". It has succeeded in getting itself capped every year since capping began. It is the only local authority in the length and breadth of the land that can claim such a record. We know something about capping in Greenwich.
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  I accept that the system limits total spending, but it does so at a pretty high level. It does not, however, protect local people from the impact of spending curbs.
  The local authority has not been encouraged by capping to make itself so efficient that it can deliver good-quality services at a lower price within the spending limit. Indeed, the reverse has happened. Sensitive services have been cut to some of the most needy groups to enable the borough to make the political point of blaming the Government. That was entirely predictable. Unplanned cuts have been made at the last minute wherever they could be made quickly. As a result, day centres for the handicapped have been closed, the home bathing service has been scrapped and home help services have been cut. Basic services, including the provision of public toilets, have been brought to an end. Grass in parks has not been cut.
  Throughout, the council has said, "It's not our fault, guy. It is not us. This is the result of poll tax capping. It is that rotten Government who have made us do all these terrible things." That is the basic problem with capping. It undermines the accountability of local authorities. It gives a poor local authority a perfect excuse to shift the blame off its shoulders and place it on someone else's. In a borough such as Greenwich the result is the worst of all possible worlds—high bills and a poor quality of service.
  Mr. John Marshall: Does the hon. Gentleman believe that it is significant that Greenwich, which has a Labour council, seems unable to elect any Labour Members? Does that suggest to him that the Labour-controlled council of Greenwich may be the borough's greatest asset?
  Mr. Cartwright: That thought often strikes me when I return home after an evening's canvassing. I think that I should sink to my knees and offer a prayer of gratitude to the London borough of Greenwich. Whenever I think I am in trouble, another inspired piece of lunacy comes forward which guarantees that I find more support, especially on council estates. Nevertheless, it is monstrous that we should have a capping system. It produces high taxation and a poor quality of service.
  The Bill's epitaph may be "Another Chance Missed". When the Secretary of State for the Environment began this round of local government changes, I thought that at last someone had understood the fundamental error that had found its way into every previous attempt at reform for the past 30 years. The right hon. Gentleman seemed to want to try to find changes that would stick and that would bring some much-needed stability to local government. Once again, however, complex legislation is being driven through the House without any search for consensus and with all the risk that such a speedy process involves.
  Once again, it seems that Ministers are convinced that they have found a magic solution to an age-old problem. Once again, we are changing local government finance in isolation from its functions and structures. I do not believe that the proposed tax will turn out to be any better or any more popular than the poll tax. I do not believe that it will work. We have been round the course many times before and I suspect that it will not be long before we have to go round it yet again.
  6.46 pm
  Mr. Bill Walker: I welcome the opportunity to talk about the Bill. As the House will be aware, one part of it refers exclusively to Scotland. Unlike many others, I have no complaints. I think that we have been presented with a sensible way in which to legislate. Where there is commonality throughout the United Kingdom, Scottish sections should be included in English Bills where that is possible. That removes much of the girning and grieving that is often the result of the timing of legislation rather than its content.
  When examining local government financing we must consider the history of local government if we are to understand why we are where we are now. Earlier in the proceedings I intervened in the speech of the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) to remind him of the problems that were caused by the Labour Government. I did not do so accidentally. Anyone who remembers the trust that used to exist between local government and central Government will realise that that trust began to vanish rapidly during the administration of the Labour Government and especially during the winter of discontent.
  It is not surprising that that trust disappeared. During the period to which I have referred, local authorities were upset because that Government had, properly, in an attempt to control the economy, decided to reduce local government funding and, therefore, local government expenditure. A new set of problems was created and the trust that had previously existed, which all Governments had enjoyed, began to vanish. Against that background, the incoming Conservative Government of 1979 found that Conservative-controlled authorities had followed substantially the edicts and wishes of central Government and had restrained their expenditure, while many Labour-controlled authorities had become profligate to offset the impact of the reduction in support from central Government. The Labour authorities had decided to enable that to happen by increasing the rating burden.
  When examining local government spending in 1979 it is essential to understand that central Government had to control the national economy. That was especially important during 1977 to 1979, when the country was rapidly going bankrupt and it was necessary, at the behest of the International Monetary Fund, to introduce measures that had a substantial impact on local government funding and expenditure. That was certainly so in Scotland, the area about which I shall speak.
  When the Conservative Government came into office in 1979, there was a Conservative district council in Perth and Kinross and a Labour district council in Dundee. The Dundee council proceeded to spend in every way that it could and, accordingly, pushed up the rates. As a result, the Government had to introduce measures to control local government expenditure. The blunt instrument of cutting central Government grants meant that the pain had to be shared, but the view was taken that the measure should be implemented. Therefore, Perth and Kinross had to share some of the pain with Dundee. At the time, that appeared to be unjust and unfair and my view has not altered. It is sad that that lack of trust between central and local government has resulted in the councillors no longer running the councils. The truth is that the chief executives and the executives run the councils. In Scotland, the councils are substantially being run by NALGO.
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  We must find ways and means to achieve a balance between expenditure and accountability. I am not 100 per cent. enthusiastic about every dot and comma in the Bill, but I have been assured that I will have an opportunity in Committee to speak about the matters that concern me.
  Mr. Ernie Ross: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Walker: I am happy to give way to the hon. Gentleman, with whom I collaborate regularly.
  Mr. Ross: The hon. Gentleman said that he disagreed with Dundee council's decision to make up for the spending spree of the former Tory-controlled council, which was an attempt to bribe the electorate by spending all the reserves, with the intention of ensuring that the services provided would be reflected in the rates charged. He lauded the actions of the Angus and Perth district councils which did not follow that line. Would he tell the House who has run Dundee, Angus and Perth district councils since then?
  Mr. Walker: During the period to which I referred, Dundee council was controlled by the Labour party. I stuck to specific areas and times. The hon. Gentleman is right that Angus district council is currently controlled by the SNP. He and I agree that it is most unsuitable to run anything, especially as it has no respect for the rule of law. Yet again, the SNP is not represented in the Chamber, which is usual when we are debating important Scottish legislation. Indeed, the SNP is even more part time than the Liberal Democrats, who I accused of being part time only the other day.
  Although the hon. Gentleman and I rarely agree on political philosophy and thought, I respect his views. He is one of the few people whose views I do respect, because he holds them honourably and he does not trim them for personal advantage. Dundee is fortunate to have a man of his integrity representing it.
  Mr. Maxton: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman referred to people not trimming their views. I hope that he will face the fact that he was one of the most loyal and ardent supporters of the poll tax. We should be grateful to know why he is now supporting at least the principle of a property tax. We should like to know how he intends to vote tonight. Quite clearly, this Bill should be called the "Abolition of the Poll Tax Bill". As he was such an ardent supporter of the poll tax, I wonder whether tonight he will vote "Aye" or "No" for this Bill.
  Mr. Walker: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to put my views on record. He should have at least done me the credit of reading my paper, in which I made proposals for the structure and financing of local government. That is what fundamentally influences my attitude tonight. The Government took on board substantially what was contained in my—paper[Interruption.] I do not claim that that was by design; it could have been by accident—[Hon. Members: "Answer the question."] I am answering the question. My attitude to the Bill is conditioned by the proposals and objectives that I put forward.
  I want to retain the community charge, but at much lower levels. I want to resolve the problems that resulted from the rebates. My paper dealt with those issues, but that is one aspect that the Government did not take on

  953
  board. However, because they took on board substantial parts of my paper and because I am an honourable man, I feel that the least that I can say is that, although there are some matters with which I am unhappy, I support what they are attempting to do.
  Mr. Harry Ewing: The hon. Gentleman has let the Minister off the hook. It is a mighty relief to the Minister to think that the country believes that the Bill is the brainchild of the hon. Gentleman—if that is a correct description of the hon. Gentleman. The Minister has been getting the blame for it for the last six months.
  Mr. Walker: It is easy to see that the hon. Gentleman has the "about to retire" feeling. He has lost his edge and his sharpness. There was a time when the shafts of his interventions would have hurt. His shafts tonight were wide of the mark. I do not lay claim to inventing the Bill. I am explaining why it would be churlish of me not to recognise that the Government have accepted my proposals for resolving the problems of the community charge.
  The point that I was making is fundamental. In the absence of trust, and where councillors are not really in control of a local authority, much of what they do is restricted by the wishes of organised labour. If the Government of the day, regardless of political complexion, are to control the national economy, they must have levers to control local government expenditure. That was why I intervened on the hon. Member for Garscadden. It was the blunt instruments used by the previous Labour Government that led to the winter of discontent. Labouv employees and Labour councillors lost faith and confidence in their Government and the trust that had previously existed was broken—[Interruption.] Labour Members do not like it because it is true. Central and local government used to work in tandem and harmony, but that disappeared.
  It is because of that history that the House again faces the problem of what to do about the funding and financing of local government. The fact that the local element of the tax which will be met by the community is 11 per cent. of expenditure means that the tax can be contained at levels that everyone can accept. That is important. The problem with the community charge was substantially the level of that charge on individuals. That is why I and others suggested ideas to deal with the problem.
  Some people in Scotland, including myself, feel that any tax related directly to property is not based on a sound principle. However, if we can keep the tax at a low enough percentage of the whole, it will go some way to resolving the problem. That is the message that I want to leave with my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Front Bench.
  Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. Walker: I shall give way in a minute to my hon. and learned Friend, whose views I hold very dear. [Interruption.] The Opposition find it funny, but I would never dream of looking into anything to do with Scottish legal matters without first consulting my hon. and learned Friend. There is no question in my mind but that if one wants the best advice that is the place to go.
  The important thing to recognise is that any tax will be acceptable as long as it is kept at acceptable levels.
  Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: I am most obliged to my hon. Friend for his compliment. However, let me advise him that if he ever comes to me for advice he must realise that he is coming to a simple fellow who sees his problem simply.
  Mr. Maxton: And charges high fees.
  Sir Nicholas Fairbairn: And never receives them.
  Let me ask my hon. Friend a simple question. To steal only 11 per cent. of an old woman's possessions is no justification for stealing. How can my hon. Friend justify us going back to a tax on a capital asset called a home which does not bear an income and which bears no relationship to the services that it receives or does not receive, or to the income of the occupants, however many or however few? How can he justify going back to the wrongness of that simple concept?
  Mr. Walker: I thank my hon. and learned Friend for putting his finger on the flaw in any property tax. I do not argue with him on the principle. However, I hope that I have made my position clear. As a member of the Standing Committee I shall have the opportunity—I hope that other hon. Members who will be commenting on the Bill tonight will volunteer to serve on the Committee—to address that aspect of the Bill. I promise my hon. and learned Friend that I shall not be silent and he will know from my track record that I am not likely to be.
  Dr. John Reid: In the spirit of collaboration which is pervading the evening, I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on having disclaimed the authorship of the tax which earlier I thought he was claiming. That could have been the worst mistake of his political career. Let me ask him an equally simple question to the one asked by the hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn). The hon. Gentleman has said that a vital feature of the tax is its reasonable level. I should have thought that any tax passed at a reasonable level relative to the ability to pay would have been acceptable. But since the hon. Gentleman has decided to distinguish between the two, can he answer this question? Given the same level of reasonableness of the council tax that he is espousing tonight and the poll tax to which he was previously committed, which would he have preferred? If it is the poll tax, and he assumes that the same amount of money could have brought the poll tax to a reasonable level, why is he not voting against the council tax tonight?
  Mr. Walker: Obviously I failed earlier when I explained that, because I am a sensible and reasonable chap and because the Government have substantially taken on hoard what was contained in my local government paper, which includes the structure of local government and other matters, not just finance, and which I believe was important, although I personally would have preferred to retain the community charge, which was never a poll tax—I made that clear to anyone who wished to discuss the matter with me—it perhaps should have been but it was not, it was a community charge—[Interruption.] It is not funny. It had nothing to do with the poll tax.
  Local government in Scotland has seen a 9·6 per cent. increase in real terms in grants received from central Government over and above inflation since 1979, so all the nonsense that we hear about cuts must be properly addressed. Local government, at the behest of NALGO, is

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  saying that it will not be able to cope in the year ahead because central Government are cutting its support too much. The facts do not stand up to that. There has been a 9·6 per cent.increase over and above the rate of inflation. During debates on the Bill the Government must make clear the additional support that has come from central taxation in real terms so that we can destroy the myth that somehow there have been cuts. The only real cuts that ever occurred in Government expenditure occurred under the previous Labour Government.
  7.5 pm
  Mr. John Battle: In the last twelve and a half years the British people have become used to the Government's approach of attempting to govern by image management. They are getting used to the Government introducing instant paper initiatives which, with regard to housing, health and local government, are sometimes not even worthy of the back of the envelope on which they are written. There is an illusion of substance, but often their proposals never address the real issues.
  No member of the Government has a greater reputation for that strategy than the Secretary of State for the Environment. In his previous incarnation in that job in the early 1980s, he earned his spurs by throwing acronyms at inner cities, publishing Government press releases on urban programme monitoring initiatives, urban development grant schemes and city action areas, all of which fizzled out once the headlines had faded away. It was all done for local effect to create impressions of competence. Now, after twelve and a half years of that carry-on, the British people see through what is put before them.
  We were told earlier this year that the Government had turned round completely and abolished the poll tax. During the local council elections I can even recall Conservative candidates putting out leaflets telling people that they would not be getting another bill at the beginning of this financial year. There was even the view that, because the delay to those bills had been deliberately engineered by the Government by changing the rules so often, people would not get those bills until the election was over and so would believe that the poll tax had gone. Sadly, some did, only to discover a few weeks later another poll tax bill.
  Mr. Simon Burns: Before polling day in May this year, the Chelmsford local authority was most anxious that those bills should be on the doorstep and, as a result of the £140 reduction in the community charge, we saw for the first time in eight years the Conservative party taking control of Chelmsford borough council and driving out what is now the opposition party.
  Mr. Battle: II is interesting that the hon. Gentleman refers to the £140 reduction being received by the people of Chelmsford. Elsewhere in the country people did not receive that rebate. It was a case of buying votes in some areas to protect Conservative seats but making sure that other areas went down. On television and in the media the Government created the pretence that they had abolished the poll tax there and then. But the people were not conned by that argument because the British people are not stupid. They were not prepared to forget who introduced the poll tax in the first place. The chaos caused by administrative
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  changes that were imposed on local authorities only weeks before the end of the financial year meant that only a few could send out their bills on time.
  The Government promised that everyone would receive a £140 reduction in their poll tax bills. The problem is that the Government often do not associate local government with social security provision. Because of the reduction in transitional payments, those receiving social security benefit—particularly pensioners—did not receive the full £140 refund. That is the reality; but the Conservatives were prepared to propagate the myth.
  Mr. John Marshall: The hon. Gentleman has given the impression that some councils were not able to reduce the charge by £140. Does he acknowledge that all headline community charges were reduced by that amount?
  Mr. Battle: It is all headlines for the present Government. There is headline inflation, and now there is a headline community charge. What the £140 headline meant in practice was that many people in receipt of benefit would not actually receive the money. That was an election con. It was a hollow promise, especially for those who bore the harshest consequences of the poll tax burden.
  The Government have also blindly refused to tackle the basic injustice that has been inflicted on those who cannot pay. They still insist that everyone contribute a minimum of 20 per cent.; they do not relate the charge to people's ability to pay. The 20 per cent. must be paid regardless of income—or, more precisely, regardless of the lack of income.
  I remember the political abuse that accompanied the introduction of the poll tax. Conservative Members tried to create the impression that some people were simply refusing to pay, describing those who receive 100 per cent. rebates as scroungers. The Prime Minister said at the Dispatch Box that the purpose of the tax was to ensure that everyone paid something, regardless of whether they had any money with which to pay. I am glad to see that, in this Bill, the Government have finally conceded the fundamental injustice of the 20 per cent. rule in principle, and have accepted the idea of 100 per cent. rebates.
  If the 20 per cent. rule is indeed unjust, however, why can it not be dispensed with now? That would take the pressure from the housing benefit crisis that most authorities are experiencing because of the link between housing benefit assessments and the 20 per cent. minimum. Such a provision should surely be contained in clause 1 of the Bill. It would lift repression and injustice from some of the poorest members of the community, who are currently paying the price of the poll tax experiment.
  A Sunday Times article, headed
  "How we've been landed with a new gentry",
  analysed the new squirearchy, and featured a picture of the Secretary of State for the Environment at home wearing plus-fours. The article told us:
  "So much does Heseltine play the patrician that he is paying this year's poll tax for his 20 staff."
  Why does the Secretary of State feel that it is his duty to relieve his staff of that burden, when it was he who imposed it on them in the first place? The Government are prepared to give—inch by inch—only when put under pressure by Labour and the country.
  Not only are the poor paying the price of the poll tax; it is an inefficient policy to maintain the 20 per cent. rule. It costs local authorities more to collect the minimum charge than they receive by collecting it. According to the

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  Audit Commission, for every £15 that authorities spend in collecting the 20 per cent., they receive only £6 in return. The waste and inefficiency that the Government ascribe to local authorities is occurring at the centre, and is quite deliberate.
  The Audit Commission predicts that, by the end of 1992, the introduction of the poll tax will have cost the country £19 billion. This afternoon, the Secretary of State for Scotland spoke of local authorities' "insatiable extravagance"; but, with the £19 billion that has been spent on a wasteful experiment, we could have tackled all the public and private housing problems in my city of Leeds. We could have dealt with all the derelict land in the inner city, regenerated the local economy, rebuilt and replaced all the older schools in the city, provided an adequate number of home helps for the elderly and ill, introduced measures to make sense of community care, built sheltered housing and day-care facilities, set up an integrated transport policy and provided nursery education for every child under five—and we could still have had money left over. That £19 billion could have been devoted to the real, practical, down-to-earth problems that face local authorities. But, instead of financing much-needed action, the money was spent on the introduction of an instrument to repress local government and reduce its ability to meet local needs.
  Clause 54 of the Bill retains the draconian capping powers that were applied to the poll tax. Despite what was said by the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker), who is no longer in the Chamber, the Government are continuing to reduce the amount available to local authorities. They have reversed the previous arrangement under which 60 per cent. of local government resources were contributed centrally. Now, central Government give local authorities only 40 per cent. of what they need, and 60 per cent. must be raised locally. Authorities must squeeze another 20 per cent. out of the poll tax system without capping, simply to stand still. Local budget settlements have yet to be set against the council tax measure; the evidence demonstrates that, so far, standard spending assessments do not measure up to the real needs of the community.
  Will the council tax be any fairer than the poll tax? The top band covers property worth £240,000 or more—my constituency does not contain many of those, of course. Although such properties must be worth at least eight times as much as those in the lowest band, their occupants will pay only three times as much as the occupants of properties in the lowest band. I see no redistributed justice there. This is just another hotch-potch provision—another pretence that the Government are introducing a measure of equality.
  What will be the local impact of the council tax? Leeds city council cannot forecast that, nor can the Government, because there is so little detail in the Bill. The Department of the Environment knows the number and valuation of the properties in Leeds, but the figures are bound to be affected by the number of single people in the area, the number of people who will receive the 25 per cent. discount and the categories—students, for instance—who will be disregarded. If the local authority cannot anticipate the position, it will be unable to work out its income under the new tax, or the natural impact on local people. How can
  958
  the Department of the Environment know who lives alone in Leeds, or who is eligible for a discount, unless the local authority can give it the information? Yet the local authority does not have that information.
  When the poll tax was introduced, we discovered that registers were costly and difficult to maintain. Between April 1990—when the tax was introduced in Leeds—and September this year, 534,000 amendments have been made to the register. We do not want to go through that nonsense again, but the Bill does not make clear what the position will be.
  According to the crude figures that the Government have announced, a single person living in a property in Leeds that costs more than £68,000—band C—will have to pay more than he or she pays now in poll tax. So much for helping single elderly persons living on their own. Many of my constituents will end up subsidising and helping the rich elsewhere.
  The Government claim that they are consulting people all the time. When the Secretary of State visited Leeds in February, the local authority advised him not to mix a property tax and a head tax; it would be a nightmare scenario that would cause administrative chaos. If the Bill goes through in its present form, it will be impossible to implement that proposal. That is why we should not allow the Bill to proceed. However, it seems that, sadly, the Secretary of State overrules any consultations that there may have been, in just the same way as he is prepared to overrule genuine consultation here.
  Water metering is being introduced compulsorily by water authorities, such as Yorkshire Water. They now insist that all properties built after April 1990 should be metered. The argument is that they cannot refer to rateable values, which were abolished when the poll tax was introduced. The Government propose to return to rateable values, so that argument no longer holds good. Can the Minister assure me that residents in new houses will have a choice and will be able to say to the water authority that they do not want their water supply to be metered? The newly-privatised water authorities forced them to have meters, regardless of their circumstances.
  It is still unclear how students in private accommodation—few students in Leeds are in halls of residence—will be treated, or how student nurses—there are many in Leeds, which has a large teaching hospital—will be treated. Schedule I defines the word "student." When it comes to nurses, it all depends on whether they are on Project 2000 courses and receive a bursary or whether they are on conventional nursing courses and receive a training allowance. The incomes of the two groups of student nurses may be similar, but the Project 2000 students will have to pay 20 per cent. of the tax while the other student nurses pay the full 100 per cent. Although those nurses may be working together making the same beds and caring for the same patients, when they come off duty one nurse will pay the full council tax while the other will pay only 20 per cent.
  As for joint and several liability, will that not live on after the death of the poll tax? Women had to pay their husbands' bills, and vice versa. Under the new council tax and what is quaintly called in clause 6 the "hierarchy of liability", the hierarchy will consist of two tenants who, if they are at the same level in that hierarchy, could become responsible for each other's council tax jointly and severally. A tenant could be held responsible for an absentee landlord, in exactly the same way as couples

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  living together are held to be responsible for each other's liabilities. That is unfair and unjust. It will also require checks to be made, leading to the return of the iniquitous snooping system in order to decide who is liable to pay.
  On close examination, it is evident that the Bill is a hotch-potch. It is a shoddy Bill. It was interesting to hear Conservative Members claim that they are against the poll tax now and that the best thing to have happened since the invention of sliced bread is the council tax. If the Bill is so good, why do the Government have no confidence in it? Why are they not confident enough to discuss it? Why do they have to bludgeon it through Committee? Why are they going to guillotine it in Committee without allowing proper time for discussion?
  When the Prime Minister became the newly elected leader of the Conservative party, he said in the Daily Mail that the party had been bounced without thinking into the poll tax. In this debate, we are in danger of repeating the poll tax tragedy, this time as a farce. The Bill is not worth discussing further and should be rejected by the House. In the meantime, the reality of the dreadful poll tax will, sadly, have to drag on for the people of this country until there is a change of Government.
  7.24 pm
  Mr. John Marshall: I knew the new hon. Member for Hemsworth (Mr. Enright) as a Member of the European Parliament, where he was hard-working, conscientious and a man of principle. I welcome his election to the House. He provides one of the vagaries of political life, in that in 1984 he was deselected as a European candidate because he believed in the European Community, whereas he was imposed as the Labour party's candidate a few weeks ago——
  Mr. Harry Ewing: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Is it in order that a new Member of Parliament who has not yet made his maiden speech should be attacked in this way by the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall)? A Member who has not yet made his maiden speech should not even be mentioned, far less attacked in the way that the hon. Gentleman is cynically going about it.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: It is not unusual for a new Member to be welcomed, despite the fact that he may not yet have contributed to our proceedings.
  Mr. Marshall: Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for those words of wisdom. If to tax and to please, no more than to love and be wise, is not given to man, may I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment on seeking to do the impossible. When I tell people that I spent 10 years in the European Parliament, they tell me that I was a hedonist. When I tell them that I spent 17 years in local government, they tell me that I was a masochist. I suspect that I was a masochist twice over.
  There is no doubt that the old rating system was based on the nebulous concept of a fair market rent. There has been no free market in residential property since the early years of this century. It was decreed that the old rating system should seek to produce a value based on a free market in property, but the House destroyed that free market in property during the first world war. That is why valuation, under the old rating system, was a most inexact science. That is why it had to be abolished.
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  Capital values at least have the benefit of being related to a market, although I am sure that many owners will seek to convince their bank managers that their property should be in band H while they seek to convince the rating authorities that their property should really be in band F.
  During my 17 years in local government I served as the chairman of the finance committee in Ealing. We were able to boast of having set the lowest rates in west London and of providing sufficiently good services to attract the Leader of the Opposition to Conservative-controlled Ealing from Liberal-controlled Richmond. As a man who spent 17 years in local government I have a sense of shame that yet again there has to be another attempt to reform local government finance, due to the incompetence, extravagance and doctrinaire opposition to competitive tendering of Labour councils.
  If Labour councils had listened to the advice of the Audit Commission, if historically they had collected rents, rates and the community charge, we should not he faced with our present difficulties over local government finance. Labour councils, throughout the length and breadth of the country, have delighted in presenting high bills to ratepayers and charge payers and in providing poor services. They are renowned for planning delays, empty council homes and poor education results. All too often Labour councillors dream of monuments to municipal munificence—which, incidentally, bear the name of the councillor who had that dream.
  I congratulate the Government on accepting the case for regional banding as between Scotland, Wales and England. My hon. Friend the Minister of State represents an outer London borough and he would be surprised if I did not at least briefly mention the position in the London borough of Barnet. Under the Government's proposals, taxpayers in Barnet will pay a lower tax than they paid under the discredited rating system which the Government abolished and they will pay less than they would under the Labour party's proposals.
  I ask my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench to study closely the problems that affect house owners in the south-east and in London. There are great regional variations in house prices, illustrated by the fact that in the London borough of Barnet 1 per cent. of properties will be in bands A and B, 6 per cent. in the three lowest bands and 46 per cent. in the top two bands.
  Some people in the Labour party believe that high house prices mean high living standards and affluence. However, the net monthly mortgage repayment in London is £539; it is £478 in the south-east, £263 in Yorkshire and Humberside and £255 in the Northern region. Monthly mortgage payments in London and the south are twice those in Yorkshire, Humberside and the north.
  I hope that if my right hon. and hon. Friends cannot accept the case for regional banding for London and the south, they will reconsider the problems that the revenue support grant can produce for London. I am one of those who believe that the revenue support grant makes the Schleswig-Holstein question a model of clarity. There is an undoubted risk that the high bandings that apply in London and the south-east could lead to an outflow of grant. That is terribly important because under the council tax 85 per cent. of local expenditure will be met centrally. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) pointed out yesterday, it is important that we get the grant for London and the south-east correct. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to give some

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  commitment to that this evening. We look forward to a generous settlement in a few weeks' time when he might deal with the London Regional Transport anomaly which is afflicting us as Members representing outer London.
  It is important to remember that there is a tight timetable for the introduction of the new tax. The difficulties associated with the introduction of the community charge were not caused by the time taken for the Bill to pass through the House, but by the fact that a large number of regulations relating to the charge were passed close to its introduction.
  Will my hon. Friend the Minister give us some assurance that regulations relating to the council tax will be in place by the end of this year? Local authorities will need a substantial amount of time to ensure that their information technology is correct and is in place to deal with the council tax. It was not in place to deal with the community charge.
  Mr. Battle: If that is to be the case, both systems will have to run parallel, which will be an extra burden on local authorities. So far the Government have not even given a commitment to reimburse the full cost of that.
  Mr. Marshall: Of course, there will be the process of introducing the council tax as there would be if we listened to the Labour party and introduced its tax. The trouble with the Labour system is that it would spend many more years trying to introduce it before it could get rid of the poll tax.
  I welcome the fact that the Government are committed to capping a large number of local authorities as part of the introduction of the council tax. Every change in local government finance, whether by revaluation or the introduction of the community charge, has been accompanied by a large element of extravagance by many local authorities.
  Mr. Allen McKay: There are about 400 local authorities. How many is the hon. Gentleman talking about?
  Mr. Marshall: It would be fair to say that a substantial number would be included. In my estimation, the number of extravagant local authorities——
  Mr. McKay: How many?
  Mr. Marshall: I am answering the question.
  Mr. McKay: The hon. Gentleman does not know the answer.
  Mr. Marshall: The number of extravagant local authorities would be more than 100.
  There are many benefits of compulsory competitive tendering in London, but many local authorities resisted it. The Minister told me the other week that compulsory competitive tendering can produce savings of 8 per cent. in street cleaning in London. Why did not local authorities do that a long time ago? All the authorities that refused to indulge were extravagant. They were putting the jobs of members of the National Union of Public Employees before the good of charge payers and of the local authority. Those authorities that indulged in competitive
  962
  tendering and got the jobs done more quickly were able to expand the level of services and reduce the cost to the charge payer.
  Mr. William O'Brien: What about the quality of service?
  Mr. Marshall: One need not assume that the quality of service is lower——
  Mr. O'Brien: What happened?
  Mr. Marshall: I am telling the hon. Gentleman what happened. Yesterday my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment presented an award to the best street cleaner in London. He came from an authority which put the service out to compulsory competitive tender some time ago. The best street cleaner in London does not work in a direct labour department in Hackney, Lambeth or Lewisham. He was working for Westminster council, an authority which went out to tender some time ago. Whose streets are cleaner—Westminster's or Camden's? The answer is Westminster's.
  Compulsory competitive tendering provides better services at lower cost to the charge payer in London. Therefore, many local authorities which, as a matter of principle, refused to go out to competitive tender were extravagant high-cost local authorities, unconcerned about the good of their citizens and of the charge payer.
  Mr. McKay: My authority went out to tender to test prices long before the House thought about it.
  Mr. Marshall: I must congratulate that authority on doing what so many other Labour authorities refused to do. All too often Labour councils were reluctant to go out to competitive tender.
  I once sat on a Labour-controlled council which went out to tender and would not accept the lowest tender because it did not come from a direct labour department.
  Mr. Phillip Oppenheim: What does my hon. Friend think of the actions of Derbyshire county council, which refused one low-cost tender because it came in the wrong coloured envelope and ended up accepting a higher tender from its own work force at an enormous extra cost to charge payers?
  Mr. Marshall: Am I allowed to use swear words in the House? I suspect not. All that I can say is that the actions of Councillor Bookbinder are so incredible as to defy belief. My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) is a lucky man. Councillor Bookbinder was his opponent at the last election, if I am not mistaken, and I am sure that he at least doubled my hon. Friend's majority.
  Mr. Oppenheim: He trebled it.
  Mr. Marshall: The level of arrears of community charge is a side issue connected to the introduction of the new tax. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to tell the House that there will be no amnesty for poll tax dodgers and that however high and mighty—be they Members of the House, Labour councillors or whoever—no one will receive an amnesty for refusing to pay the community charge. As for old-age pensioners, one such Member of the House was slow to pay her community charge bill to the London borough of Barnet, but then a friend paid it for her.

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  Some of my hon. Friends and the hon. Member for Glasgow, Provan (Mr. Wray) have suggested that central Government should pay more of the cost of local authority expenditure than the Bill provides for. Although superficially attractive, that would present a huge constitutional problem. If central Government are to pay even more of the cost, there must be greater control over the activities of every local authority. It would be a question, not of capping a minority, but of central Government determining how much should be spent by each local authority and how it should be spent. I do not want central Government to say how many teachers should be at a school in Barnet or how much should be spent on books in Barnet. I much prefer the system of devolved power to individual schools either by their becoming grant-maintained schools or through the local management of schools. If 100 per cent. of local authority expenditure were financed centrally, it would be disastrous for the future of local government and for the linkage of powers between central Government and local authorities.
  Later this evening we shall debate a guillotine motion on the Bill, which will provide a chance for a constructive, positive Committee stage. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has always shown himself to be a listening Minister. Earlier in the debate we were told how he listened to my hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker), who is no longer here. I hope that in Committee he will listen to the pleas of Members representing Greater London and the south of England because they are dear to my heart and may to some extent be dear to his.
  7.41 pm
  Mr. Harry Ewing: I have listened with great interest, if some difficulty, to the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall). First he supported the legislation and then we heard his special pleading for his constituency. That is precisely what is wrong with the legislation. There are so many anomalies that of the 650 Members who make up this House of Commons, including Mr. Speaker himself, each one of us could present the Government with a list of the anomalies in the Bill the length of our arm.
  We are discussing a Bill that will never be implemented. There are two reasons for that. The principal reason is that the Government will he defeated in four or five months' time and be replaced by a Labour Government who will take the Bill off the statute book as soon as they come to power. Even if that does not happen—I am realistic enough to know the vagaries of elections—the legislation will not be implemented in the form in which the House is discussing it tonight. That is my forecast, although I will not be here to see it unfold. The evidence on which I base it is that, within three weeks of the White Paper being introduced in the middle of this year, there were 15 announcements of changes to the proposals now in the legislation. Even since the legislation has been published, it has been made clear that the Government will introduce amendments in Committee—that against the background of the guillotine timetable under which the Committee will operate.
  To my colleagues on this side of the House I say that I shall not object too much to the guillotine for one simple reason: I hope that they will take it as a model for the in-coming Labour Government. I hope that they will use
  964
  the guillotine procedure when they deal with the damaging legislation on the health service, the poll tax and many other matters that Conservative Governments have passed through this House during the past 13 years.
  As I shall leave the House at the general election, one of the saddest features of this debate is that the Bill is one more attack on local councillors. In more than 20 years here I have seen many pieces of major legislation which were designed to attack the standing of local councillors. I do not care whether they are Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democratic, independent or, in Scotland, Scottish National councillors. All those who stand for election submit themselves on a sincere platform and with a will to serve the electors from whom they ask for support.
  When the hon. Member for Hendon, South attacks Labour councils as he did so vehemently, it is almost as if they were not elected. People voted for them. He must have fresh in his memory the fact that in May this year, not many months ago, the Conservative party lost 500 seats in England and Wales in the local government elections. Despite all the criticisms that he has levelled at Labour-controlled local authorities, it is an inescapable fact that in England, Wales and Scotland Labour-controlled authorities are there by virtue of the democratic decision of the people. That is how it should be but, of course, that is not what the Government want.
  If I may, I shall for a minute trace the history of attacks on local government, the constant reorganisation of local government and the uncertainties created for councillors in my time here. In 1972 local government reorganisation in England and Wales set up the Greater London council and the metropolitan borough councils, and brought changes to all local government. It was quickly followed in 1973 by the reorganisation of local government in Scotland. At that time there were also two major housing acts: the Housing Finance Act 1972 for England and Wales and the Housing (Financial Provisions) (Scotland) Act 1972—the Rent Acts as they were referred to. Later legislation abolished major elements of the local government structure that had been set up under the 1972 Act. The metropolitan borough councils were abolished, not because they were not doing a job but because they were Labour. The authorities were abolished to silence them.
  I think that it was the hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker)—I apologise if I am misrepresenting him—who said that councillors no longer run councils and that councils are run by officials. The simple explanation for that is that when local government was reorganised we reduced by 50 per cent. the number of elected members. In other words, we reduced the democratic element by 50 per cent. It was as plain as a pikestaff, as sure as night follows day, that the bureaucratic element would double. When people complain that local government is being run by bureaucrats, it is simply because there is not enough democratic input.
  I do not know what form the reorganisation of local government or local government finance will take in the years to come. However, I do not waver from my belief that the democratic input in local government must increase not only in Scotland—I say that in the presence of the Secretary of State and the Parliamentary Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, West (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton)—but throughout England and Wales. If the House moves further down the road of bureaucracy, all it will do is store up trouble for itself.

  965
  We are now faced with another piece of major legislation that represents another attack on local government and yet another major reorganisation of its structure—the seventh we have had in the past 20 years. How on earth can any organisation be efficient when it is continually subjected to the type of reorganisation that the House has inflicted upon local government in the past 20 years? There has been no cohesion or consistency of approach.
  By and large, councillors do everyday jobs and devote some of their leisure time to try to make conditions better for the people in their locality. It is unacceptable to expect such councillors to adjust to the changes that are imposed upon them by the House in such a draconian way and with such monotonous consistency.
  The council tax Bill has its origins in the demise of the former Prime Minister and the loss of 500 seats in the local government elections. It was cobbled together in a hurry, as is obvious from reading it. The hon. Member for Hendon, South has already demonstrated, and far more ably than I could, the deficiencies and anomalies in the Bill.
  If any local authority had squandered the amount of money that Ministers are guilty of squandering on the poll tax in the past four years there can be absolutely no doubt that councillors would have been surcharged under local government legislation. How can one try to explain to a councillor how on earth inefficient Ministers can get away with squandering millions of pounds of taxpayers' money? However, if that same councillor is "seen" to squander between £40,000 and £50,000, the Secretary of State for Scotland or the Secretary of State for the Environment would be on his neck like a ton of bricks. The councillor would be surcharged for seemingly squandering that money. However, the real guilty people are Ministers who have squandered billions of pounds of taxpayers' money, but they have got off scot-free.
  Those same Ministers then come to the House and with brass neck defend the introduction of a council tax with the same conviction with which they condemned the principle of a property tax when the poll tax was introduced. Recently the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of State went around Scotland attacking the concept of a property-based tax. The Minister said that we would never return to a property-based tax. In fact, the Minister is on record as saying that just three years ago, but the backbone of the Bill is a return to a property-based tax.
  I believe that the rating system of England and the revaluations that should have taken place, but never did, were the basis of the problems in England. However, I bow to the superior knowledge of English colleagues in all parts of the House when it comes to the English system.
  In Scotland, however, at the time of the 1983 revaluation three factors combined, the effects of which no local taxation system could have withstood—not even the Liberals' proposal for a local income tax. The first factor was the reduction of 12 per cent. in the rate support grant from the Government to Scottish local authorities. The then Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), directed the assessors to switch the burden from industry to the commercial and domestic ratepayers. That was followed by a dramatic
  966
  increase in the property values valued by the assessors. No system of local government taxation could have withstood those three factors and their combined effect.
  What did the Government do? To try to repair the damage that they had done they switched the burden to the commercial and domestic ratepayer. The Government told the assessors to make that switch and they then introduced a system whereby any ratepayer, commercial or domestic, whose rates had increased by a factor of three could get rating relief. A small number of people qualified for such relief, but the Government wondered at the outburst that followed. As a result of that we got the ill-thought-out and ill-fated poll tax.
  I am a devotee of the rating system—I speak for myself when I say that—and at the time of the introduction of the poll tax I do not believe that a sufficiently vigorous defence of the rating system was made. Those of us who supported the rating system failed miserably to argue for its retention and development.
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Robert Key): I am listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman as I respect the fact that he has been a Member of the House for 20 years and a member of a Government for five years with special responsibility for devolution. The hon. Gentleman understands the working of Government and the inter-relationship with local government.
  What is the hon. Gentleman's opinion of the current attempts to reorganise local government? I share his frustration at the fact that for many years local government has been considered from a financial point of view only. Local government finance has been reorganised many times, but now the Government are considering that together with local government structure and its functions. The Government are also considering the internal management of local government—how and who makes the decisions. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that such an approach is likely to be more constructive?
  Mr. Ewing: To be honest, I would have to study the hon. Gentleman's question before I answered. To study local government finance and local government structure at the same time is not a new concept. The Layfield commission sat at the same time as the Wheatley commission in Scotland—one studied local government finance, the other studied local government structure. Whichever Government are in power—I hope and pray that it will be a Labour Government next time—they must tread carefully when it comes to the reorganisation of local government to ensure that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. There is a lot to be said in favour of local government, but because other hon. Members wish to take part in the debate, I will not be led down that path.
  I have made it clear that I am a supporter, indeed a devotee, of the rating system. I would be willing to debate that issue in public with any hon. Member and to explain the advantages of the rating system. It had the one major advantage of being collectable; 90 per cent of people paid their rates bills. Nobody could claim that for the poll tax, and the council tax will, I fear, have the same fate. To keep the value of properties up to date, it would have been simple to update valuations each year in line with inflation.
  Do the Government wish to be responsible for central economic management, including managing the finances of local authorities? If so, that is bound to lead them to the

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  100 per cent. financing of local government services. The Government must make up their mind on this issue. Do they wish to decide the level of services that local communities should have? If so, will they use their capping powers to achieve that end?
  The Labour Government of which I was a member never used capping powers. We had a system of indicative costs in Scotland. If the Government intend to be responsible for the level of services of local government, they must be prepared to take the responsibility for funding those services. Or perhaps they will do what I would prefer, and that is to allow councils to decide the level of services that their communities should have. If low rating levels are satisfactory to an electorate, that will be expressed through the ballot box. If higher rating levels resulting from the provision of better services are acceptable to the electors, that too will be expressed through the ballot box.
  I cannot understand why the Government want to become so involved in the management of the affairs of local authorities. In the last 13 years they have made a big enough mess of the nation's economy. Why do they now wish to get so involved in local authority expenditure? The Bill should go no further and I advise the House to reject it absolutely.
  8.2 pm
  Mr. Phillip Oppenheim: I welcome the Bill. In effect, the council tax will be a modernised and updated version of the rates. One of the biggest problems with the rates was that the system of assessing rates on the basis of notional rentable values created enormous difficulties. Not only was virtually every house rated differently, but problems were caused when people went in for relatively minor improvements to their properties and suffered disproportionate rates increases as a result. Capital value hands will not solve the problem entirely, but the system will address the issue to a significant degree.
  All hon. Members must have received complaints, and been told on the doorstep, about the way in which the single person living alone in exactly the same house as that of his or her neighbour paid about the same rates, even though the neighbour may have had a large family with a number of people living in the house. The council tax will, to a significant degree, deal with that injustice which was inherent in the old rating system. I also welcome the protection enshrined in the Bill for students and student nurses, with rebates for those on low incomes, rebates for people in training and a rebate of 25 per cent. for single person households.
  Most Opposition Members believe that the rebate for single person households is unfair. I appreciate that the basis of their argument is that the council tax is son of poll tax and that some account is taken of the number of people in households. If they believe it unfair to give a discount, even a small one of 25 per cent., to people living alone, I hope that when he winds up the debate for the Opposition the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) will make it clear that the Labour party is committed to abolishing the single person household discount. I will gladly give way to the hon. Gentleman if he will give a clear commitment to that effect. Does he intend to intervene now?
  Mr. David Blunkett: I will make my own speech in my own time.
  Mr. Oppenheim: Characteristically, the hon. Gentleman backs off from giving a firm commitment. I do not blame him. After all, a commitment to abolish that discount would be fiercely unpopular in the country, not simply among those who live alone but among those who live in homes containing several people and who recognise the fundamental injustice of people living alone having to pay exactly the same rate as themselves. The country will have noted the failure of the hon. Gentleman to answer my question.
  It was commonly said of the community charge that it would have worked if only the bills had been lower. I accept that had the Government limited increases in local authority spending in year one of the community charge, the bills would have been significantly lower, not least due to the gearing of the system, and that may have made the charge more acceptable.
  Hon. Members in all parts of the House must face the fact that, whatever system is introduced, if councils, whatever their complexion, spend unwisely—I accept that some Conservative-controlled councils are equally guilty—bills will become high and possibly unacceptably high. In my area, the rates for many years, including the poll tax, ended up being far too high because of the profligate spending of the county council. I shall not dwell on that subject. We accept that priorities in public spending at national and local level are difficult issues because choices must be made and it is difficult to make them. Even so, some priorities appear strange. When a county council has, since 1981, increased its overall staff by 8,000, the largest increase in England and Wales, yet is the only county with fewer policemen in the Derbyshire police force, that is strange.
  It is a strange set of priorities for a council to spend millions of pounds pegging school meals to 1981 prices in a way that does not benefit even the children of the least-well-off—because they get free school meals anyway—yet is in the process of sacking hundreds of teachers. It is strange for a council which pleads for more capital for school buildings and repairs to spend £5 million of its capital allocation on the redundancy costs of sacking teachers.
  A council has a strange set of priorities when it says that it cannot afford Home Office offers of more policemen, yet can find plenty of jobs for the cronies and friends of the leader of the council, such as the former Labour councillor who got the plush job, at £40,000 a year, of being in charge of the so-called Derbyshire enterprise board, or such as the chairman of Derbyshire Labour party, one David Skinner, who got a well-paid job supposedly escorting Japanese business men around Derbyshire, despite the fact that he had been sacked for corruption by the council in the 1970s from his job as a road ganger. The former Labour Member, Reg Race, was given a highly paid job as a chief executive of Derbyshire county council, despite the fact that most people believed that he was unsuitable for that task. In defence of Mr. Race, I should say that, when he realised the policies that the council was following, he had the honour to resign his post. Unfortunately, he did not have enough honour to refuse the golden handshake which the council offered him to buy his silence about what he had learnt during his brief tenure as chief executive.
  Should a Labour Government come to power, would they cap such excesses? The hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) has criticised the Government for capping local authorities, yet he said on the "Today" programme

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  that a future Labour Government would cap local authorities "in extremis". What did "in extremis" mean? Would they cap Lambeth, Derbyshire or Haringey, or are they not in extremis enough? It should not be forgotten that the Labour party supported Liverpool council against the Government in the mid-1980s. Yet history has shown what a discredited bunch those Liverpool councillors were. Would they have been in extremis enough to be capped by a Labour Government?
  I condemn the Opposition's attempts to slay the Bill. Indeed, I do not know how they have the face to do so when, after 12 years in opposition and almost as many changes to their policies on local government finance, they have simply come up with a system that deals with none of the fundamental problems inherent in the old rating system. The individual household valuations which they propose would be extremely complex, and they have already said that they would take no account of single person households. Those are two of the most basic problems of the old rating system which they want enshrined in their so-called fair rates. Above all, they have not said how their valuations would be carried out under their so-called fair rates scheme. How do they have the cheek to oppose the Government's proposals when they have no real alternative? They should be ashamed of themselves.
  The confusion goes further, because the Opposition do not even know what they would do if they came to power. On 5 October, the shadow Chief Secretary, the hon. Member for Derby, South (Mrs. Beckett), said that Labour, should it come to power, would replace the council tax with fair rates. However, 12 days later, the hon. Member for Brightside said that it would not abolish the council tax but would simply amend it. On 27 October, the hon. Member for Dagenham said that the Labour party would repeal the council tax. Clearly the Opposition Front Bench do not even know what the Labour party would do if it came to power. It is confused, is talking at cross purposes and has no real proposals to put before the House.
  I welcome the Bill. It offers a relatively simple system that ensures that a high proportion of people will pay but, at the same time, takes account of people's ability to pay. I recognise that no tax will ever be popular. But I do not see how the Opposition can, in all honesty, oppose the Bill when they have called for the abolition of the poll tax and cannot even say what the basis of the valuations that they propose would be. For a party that has been in opposition for 12 years, that is a disgrace. Above all, it shows that it deserves to remain in opposition.
  8.15 pm
  Mr. Harry Barnes: There is something odd about this debate. Those hon. Members who served on the poll tax Committee and were therefore involved in the last great discussions on local government finance have been represented among Opposition Members but not by Conservatives. Conservative Members who were on the Standing Committee that dealt with the poll tax have deserted the Floor of the House rather than bring their expertise to bear. We had a third day's discussion of this subject during the debate on the Queen's Speech. The hon. Member for Spelthorne (Mr.
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  Wilshire), who was on that Committee, turned up on that occasion but he talked about the reorganisation of local government rather than local government finance. So why is there this great peculiarity? Why are the Conservative Members who have tussled with the arguments and listened to the alternatives not around?
  When a Bill of the magnitude of the Local Government Finance Bill is presented to us, those who speak in its favour should say how it overcomes some of the manifest defects that need to be altered. In that general context, we need to understand what they are saying about this Bill. That is never done by Conservative Members, with the exception of the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), who talked yesterday about some of the things that were wrong with the poll tax. People outside will be very cynical about the Government's position if Conservative Back-Benchers refuse to say what they think is wrong with the current situation and why fresh legislation needs to be introduced.
  The Opposition know why fresh legislation needs to be introduced. We have constantly said what is wrong with the poll tax. We have expressed our opposition in the House, in debates on the subject, on the guillotine motion that was debated on that measure, in Committee, in Committee debates on statutory instruments, some of which emerged only recently, and in meetings and campaigns. We have strutted the country and argued about what is wrong with the poll tax. I have been to the constituencies of two of the Conservative Members present—the hon. Members for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) and for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin)—to tell people what is wrong with the poll tax. The hon. Member for Amber Valley has already spoken, but it would be nice if the hon. Member for Portsmouth, South would say what he believes is wrong with the measure and needs to be overcome.
  Plenty was wrong with the poll tax. It was the worst taxation system that was ever introduced into a democratic society at any time. It was quite unbelievable. Its unfairness was astonishing and led to all sorts of interferences with civil liberties and rights, with knock-on consequences. The Government had engaged in a vast centralising activity, so that the Department of the Environment took over masses of power and local government was run even more centrally than through other measures which the Government had introduced. Conservative Members, who are supposed to believe in great freedoms—freedoms of the market place and decentralisation—could not see that point. If they saw it, they chose to ignore it in their contributions.
  Compared with the poll tax legislation, the Bill makes significant changes, which the Government should tell us about. For instance, although there is a minor distinction between the bottom and the top bands—those on the top pay only three times as much as those on the bottom—it is an important principle. The House debated that principle in the so-called Mates amendment. Under the provision suggested by the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Mr. Mates), people on salaries below taxation levels were to pay half the poll tax and some were to pay the full poll tax, while those on a surtax level were to pay one and a half times the normal poll tax. The difference between the highest and lowest amounts to be paid was a multiple of three. For many Opposition Members that provision did not seem to make a great difference, but it was important to Conservative Members because it

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  involved a change of principle that could later be extended. If some people were to pay three times the amount paid by others, that principle should have been discussed. In the same way, the property-based aspect of the legislation is significant and should be debated, but we have not heard much about that.
  The present Bill also differs from the poll tax legislation in that the exemption list has been improved. Under the poll tax provision, those serving in overseas forces and residing in this country and foreign diplomats are excluded from paying the tax. As far as I understand it, under the new Bill they are not excluded from paying the tax. If I am right, why do we not hear Conservative Members arguing in favour of that change?
  The case is being argued in a most cynical fashion. The argument has not been in terms of the principle of local government finance, but merely on the grounds that political difficulties arose in relation to implementing the poll tax and urgent action had to be taken, especially in the light of the election of the new leader of the Conservative party, the promises being made and the general position of the party at the time. Therefore, this measure was introduced and attempts are being made to push it forward as quickly as possible.
  We should keep producing within their constituencies the voting records of Conservative Members to show where they stood on the poll tax. Conservative Members who have spoken in the debate have tried to show that they were minor rebels and to imply that some sort of mass rebellion took place. When was that rebellion and when did we eagerly await votes in the House to see which side had won? The voting results were not close, but showed solid majorities.
  The Committee that debated the poll tax legislation included three Conservative Members who were liable to rebel at any time, but never rebelled in unison because that might have caused a drawn vote and could have resulted in the legislation being returned to the Floor of the House. The hon. Member for Ealing, Acton (Sir G. Young) has since repaired his breach with the Conservative party. The mildest of the rebels was the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. Dykes) and the late Sir Brandon Rhys Williams was probably one of the major rebels. He wanted to have a low poll tax instead of a high one, but was not particularly arguing against the principle.
  Where did the Secretary of State for the Environment stand on all those issues? What of his famous rebellion that was supposed to take place in the House? He made three speeches and two interventions on the subject during the 1987–88 Session proposing differing views. When we debated subsequent measures such as statutory instruments he was not present. During the 1988–89 Session and the 1989–90 Session he made no contributions when we discussed measures associated with the poll tax. Where was the rebellion? As the parliamentary record shows, the Secretary of State was not present very often. He was out canvassing for the leadership of the Conservative party and did not take part in many of the votes.
  The measure includes some other oddities. Why does clause 117 (5) state that the legislation does not extend to Northern Ireland? The poll tax was never introduced in Northern Ireland, but the argument being used in favour of the new tax is that it is superior and will be the answer to all sorts of problems relating to local government finance. If so, is it the intention to introduce legislation relating to Northern Ireland? We are normally given some
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  sign that that is to happen. It is possible to introduce wide measures via Orders in Council whether by negative or positive procedure. It seems that Northern Ireland will not be touched by the legislation because it still has a reasonable and viable system of raising local government finance which the mass of the people pay. The rating system still applies in Northern Ireland, where they have never suffered the nonsense of the poll tax.
  Why does the legislation contain no mention of the changes that need to be made in standard spending assessments? With the exception of an authority in Dorset, my constituency receives the lowest grant per poll tax payer and has the lowest standard spending assessment. Anyone who knows anything about the district will realise that it suffers from social deprivation and requires funds. How can a formula be worked out which does not allow decent standard spending assessments and decent grants for such districts? I have previously explained to the House the fiddles involved and why the conditions of the standard spending assessments hit North-East Derbyshire harder than any other authority, although others are sorely hit. If we are reviewing the whole of local government finance, we should include debates on that subject. It was not just the principle of the poll tax that hit the authorities; the nonsense of standard spending assessments helped to push up the poll tax in many districts because money was not made available to local authorities.
  The most important element missing from the legislation involves what is to be done to overcome the harm to electoral registration that was and continues to be caused by the poll tax. A survey carried out by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys revealed that 1 million people are missing from the register. The problem began in Scotland when the poll tax was introduced there and moved to England and Wales. It did not occur in Northern Ireland because it never had the poll tax. What action is being taken to restore 1 million people to the electoral register? What will the council tax do about that? Why are we not spending as much to encourage electoral registration as is being spent overseas to encourage expatriates to register and vote in this country?
  The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) said that the poll tax was not a poll tax because it had nothing to do with the electoral register. It had everything to do with it. We have a little time before the next election in which to put matters right if it is fought on next February's register. In the meantime, what legislation will we pass and what expenditure will we sanction to overcome this greatest of evils? Hon. Members should be more worried about the electoral register problem than about any of the other erosions of our civil liberties. The problem arose because of the unfairness of the poll tax. People dived for cover and kept themselves off the register—an understandable mistake by people facing bills which they could ill afford.
  I conclude with an historical analogy and a warning to the Government. It concerns the introduction of the first poll tax, which was promulgated not in 1371, but was introduced in 1367 as a flat rate measure which great masses of the poor did not pay. That is fantastically similar to the modern poll tax. Two years later, in 1369, a further measure was introduced—the poll tax mark II—bearing some similarity to this poll tax mark II. It was to be banded according to differing levels of wealth. On that occasion it was the rich who did not pay and who thus breached the legislation.

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  So in 1371 the country returned to the principle of a flat rate payment and that was when the peasants' revolt broke out. Thank goodness, in this repeat performance we will not have a mark II or mark III version of the poll tax. The legislation for the mark II version may be passed, but because of the coming election it will bite the dust along with the poll tax. Labour's proposed measure will be enacted instead. If it is not, and if Labour does not win the election, the farce that took place in the 14th century may be repeated.
  8.32 pm
  Mr. John Bowis: I shall refrain from returning to the 14th century.
  This evening we have heard two confessions of paternity. The hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Ewing) claimed to be the father of the Labour party's return to the rates. My hon. Friend the Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) suggested that he had some involvement in the conception of the council tax. I shall not compete with him for that paternity because I suspect, along with the hon. Member for Woolwich (Mr. Cartwright), that paternity in matters of taxation is to be avoided if at all possible.
  There may be some surprise that I, who represent Battersea in the London borough of Wandsworth, should welcome the transfer of local government finance from the community charge to the council tax. In Wandsworth we showed how the community charge could and did work. I am not ashamed of the principles behind the community charge. They were the right answer to the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes). But there were good reasons why those principles could not be followed in practice.
  The proof of the pudding was in the electoral results in Wandsworth. In my constitutency last year the number of Conservative councillors there increased from six to 18, an increase repeated throughout Westminster, Ealing, Hillingdon and places such as Derby and West Lancashire. That showed that when people perceived that their vote could make a difference to the community charge, they used it in the Conservative cause.
  The electors in boroughs such as Lambeth, however, did not perceive that a vote could change control of the council, so they said "Ouch" to the Government, in effect. In Wandsworth the community charge has not even been an issue—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) will pay our zero rates this year, so no doubt he will support me. There is no point in our romping to victory in Wandsworth, with the help of the secret vote of the hon. Gentleman, if our party is not as successful elsewhere.
  Mr. Tom Clarke: The hon. Gentleman seems to feel that his party met with great success in Wandsworth. Would he be willing to agree to the same financial contribution by central Government being provided to my district of Monklands so that we can see whether his enthusiasm will be shared there?
  Mr. Bowis: I will not contrast like with unlike, but I can compare like with like in the form of Wandsworth and next door Lambeth, a similar London borough. The grant per head of population from central Government to
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  Lambeth council was £1,500 compared with £1,000 to Wandsworth, in the year when Wandsworth's community charge was £148 and Lambeth's £548. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will learn and inwardly digest those figures and then ask his colleagues in the Labour party why they could not produce the same high-quality services at the lowest cost as those for which Wandsworth—unlike its socialist neighbours—has been known in London.
  There are reasons for this change. There have been some anomalies, and this Bill tackles some of them, not least those involving students, student nurses, apprentices and people on youth training schemes. Perhaps, too, we underestimated the involvement of spouses in joint decisions on households and family spending—they were probably more conscious of the costs of local government than we thought.
  Some Opposition Members question our failure to abolish the 20 per cent. minimum, but the reason for that is that it is incorporated in income support levels. People on income support in Wandsworth are not particularly anxious that the system should be changed, because if an element for the community charge is incorporated in income support but a person pays zero community charge, he is inevitably quids in. A person living in a high-spending Labour authority begins to suffer, however——
  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones: Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge that the majority of people being hauled before the courts for non-payment of the poll tax are the very people who should have paid the 20 per cent. contribution? Would it not make economic sense if the Government acknowledged that and abolished it immediately?
  Mr. Bowis: The people being hauled before the courts in Labour council areas are being so hauled because those councils did not keep the community charge low enough for them to afford to pay it. The overspending by Labour councils has been a prime reason for this change. We know that in the year that the community charge was introduced Labour local authorities' spending plans increased by 30 per cent. That is why the system was painful and why we had to find a better way to raise money. Conservatives care not only about the quality of local services but about the cost to the local charge payer because that is as important to the vulnerable as the quality of service.
  The Opposition seek to return to the discredited rates system and the hon. Member for Falkirk, East can claim the credit for that. It would be a return to a system in which each property has to be valued and where home improvements are deterred. Its rolling revaluation would be based on a valuation that is 20 years out of date. Labour would insist that 20 per cent. of local government's costs be raised by local taxation. Overnight, that would increase every household bill by 50 per cent.
  The Leader of the Opposition is often quoted as having condemned the rating system. I shall quote not the right hon. Gentleman but his right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Mr. Kaufman). Writing in The Daily Telegraph, and probably hoping that his hon. Friends would not see it, the right hon. Member for Gorton said:
  "The rates are irrational, inefficient and highly resented. The rating system makes no sense whatsoever. The right thing to do is to abolish it once and for all."
  I am not surprised that the right hon. Gentleman was banished to foreign affairs.

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  Much of the debate has centred on whether it is right to cap. It is argued that capping is wrong if accountability suffers, but capping is necessary because of the unwillingness of Labour authorities to be reasonable in their spending. Wandsworth has shown that targets can be met or even bettered. That is why Wandsworth's community charge started at £148, dropped to £136 and was reduced to zero as a result of the Chancellor's £140 grant last year. Wandsworth now provides much better services than before.
  I had to look at services in Lambeth during the Vauxhall by-election and I saw dereliction and despair and people who are desperate for home ownership, which has been denied them. By comparison, the neighbouring council in Wandsworth has made efficiency savings that have enabled it to improve the quality of service. Tendering has produced savings of 33 per cent. and even when work remains in-house, tendering results in savings of 25 per cent. Staffing ratios have been cut to 2·1 per 1,000 compared with the inner London average of 3·7 per 1,000. A saving of 50 per cent. has been made in refuse collection. One tonne of refuse is collected per man per day in Southwark compared with 4 tonnes per man per day in Wandsworth.
  Library costs have been reduced by 45 per cent. but there has been a 30 per cent. increase in book lending. In the first 12 years of Conservative control in Wandsworth there have been £50 million worth of efficiency savings, and the 123 services provided by that council cost each resident £136 before the change in the last Budget. The results in Labour authorities are quite different. In Hillingdon the Labour council was ousted last year and the new Conservative council dropped the community charge from £435 to £370. In Merton the reverse was the case because on the day after Labour took control it announced that it would double the community charge.
  I shall give some more examples of how cost savings do not mean lowering the quality of service. Wandsworth recently took over education from the discredited Inner London Education Authority and is already providing free nursery education for every child. It is spending £71·03 per 1,000 of population on higher and further education compared with the inner London average of £51·50. The inner London average on special needs is £38 but Wandworth is spending £49. The inner London average at the chalk face, the money that goes to schools, is £144 per 1,000 of population but the figure for Wandsworth is £146. Bureaucracy in inner London costs £124 per 1,000 of population whereas Wandsworth spends £50.
  That is why we need to consider capping. Overspending does not have to occur because good quality services can be provided at reasonable cost. That is what capping is all about and it is why I welcome the element in the Bill which provides for that and deplore the Opposition's commitment to abolish it.
  We must look at income as well as spending. Wandsworth has rent arrears of £4 million. In Lambeth the amount is £35 million and in Southwark it is £60 million. In Wandsworth there are 90,000 housing benefit claims per year and 1 per cent. await assessment, not for weeks, which is the average in inner London, or for months, which is the average in Lambeth, but for two days. Labour high spending is not to improve services as the Opposition would suggest. Labour Liverpool spent £250,000 on councillors' media rooms and the Labour council in Dudley spent £21,000 teaching teachers how to
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  clap. Labour Hackney spent £70 million on new offices and Labour Lewisham sent advisers to the Caribbean for two months to learn about youth and leisure.
  London is fed up with Labour's level of service. People support the concept of capping and we support the Government's new proposals for the council tax because, ultimately, it will be fair. According to the Department's figures, in Wandsworth the A to G bands will produce a range of community charge on the same basis as this year—8 per cent. spending below target—of £90 in band A and £224 in band G for a two-person household. That shows that the charge will be manageable, even in an area such as Wandsworth which has shown that the community charge can work. It will be manageable as long as the grant settlement continues to take account of the borough's needs.
  I welcome the Bill's provisions for dealing with non-payment. It is not a question of can't pay, but can pay won't pay, and that is deeply resented by law-abiding citizens. In March last year my right hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Mr. Baker) wrote to the Leader of the Opposition saying that the Anti-poll Tax Federation was Militant-inspired. The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) replied that that was a hysterical smear. He was right. Not only was Militant involved, but Mr. Steve Nally, the organiser, was also a member of the Labour party. About 30 members of the party and many Labour councillors have campaigned for non-payment. Such antics should be penalised when it comes to serving on a council and dealing with other people's money.
  I deplore the statement by the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) who, writing in Marxism Today, said:
  "I do not describe not paying the tax as civil disobedience."
  Decent people do consider that to be civil disobedience and unacceptable. That is why I believe that when the people of this country have an opportunity to vote, they will vote against the party that stands for non-payment and for high spending, inefficient, low-quality councils. They will vote for the party producing better quality, lower-cost councils under the council tax system.
  8.49 pm
  Mr. John Home Robertson: The hon. Member for Battersea (Mr. Bowis) spoke of the "can't pay, won't pay" campaign. In previous debates on the poll tax, I have pointed out that I and almost all hon. Members fall into the category of those who can pay, and should pay, more. What is so morally wrong about the poll tax is that those who are better off pay considerably less, with the consequence that people on the lowest incomes pay more. The people have found that out and that is why the poll tax is so unpopular.
  One of the most interesting changes that I have seen in any Parliament—I have been around for far too long—is that which has occurred in this Parliament. Back-Benchers who for years have been loyally supporting their Government are now performing in a different role. They seem to think that they are already in opposition, because they spend all their time attacking the Labour party. Conservative Members supporting the Bill have been signally absent in this debate, probably for a good reason.
  As I said, I have been here for some time and I vividly remember the Second Reading debate and the Committee sittings not only on the Bill introducing the poll tax for

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  England but on what became the Abolition of Domestic Rates Etc. (Scotland) Act 1987. We are all familiar with extravagant claims by Ministers in winding-up speeches in Second Reading debates. I have here a quote from a Mr. Michael Ancram, who once represented a Scottish constituency and who has most recently been seen in Devizes, seeking, for the third time, selection in a constituency. He will soon qualify for the golden carpetbag.
  On 9 December 1986, in winding-up the Second Reading debate on that Bill, Mr. Ancram said:
  "The Bill is no short-term stop gap."
  Talking about poll tax, he continued:
  "It is no hurried or temporary expedient. It is a well considered and well worked out reform which sets up a new and viable system for financing local government for generations to come. It creates a new balance, a new fairness and a strengthening of local democracy and accountability which will stand the test of time."—[Official Report, 9 December 1986; Vol. 107, c. 275.]
  He did not stand the test of time and nor did a number of his colleagues. [HON. MEMBERS: "Name them."] I served on the Committee and I remember them vividly. I have the Division list which followed that resounding speech from Mr. Ancram. Those who voted for Second Reading included John Corrie, Alexander Fletcher, Peter Fraser, Barry Henderson, Michael Hirst, Anna McCurley, John MacKay and Alexander Pollock, and Gerry Malone was a teller. They all lost their seats, as did the unfortunate person who chaired the Committee, Sir Albert McQuarrie.
  Mr. Tom Clarke: My memory on these matters is not terribly good. Is the Mr. Gerry Malone mentioned by my hon. Friend the same Mr. Gerry Malone who, as a delegate to the Tory party conference, demanded the poll tax for England "now"?
  Mr. Home Robertson: That may be so and he may be sorry about that because he will be standing in Winchester at the next election.
  What is even more interesting about the list is those who did not vote for Second Reading. The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) did not vote for it, although he has told us that he supports the poll tax. A significant person who voted for Second Reading was the right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine). Some of these people should show a little contrition.
  Mr. Foulkes: As my hon. Friend is going through this list of people, can he tell us whether the hon. Member for Dunfermline, West (Mr. Douglas)—Honolulu Dick as he is known—was there?
  Mr. Home Robertson: That is erroneous. He was not in Honolulu; he was in Houston on private business. My hon. Friend must not go down that road.
  In fairness to the Secretary of State for Scotland, who opened today's debate, he has been remarkably consistent in his attitude to the poll tax. He was supporting it through thick and thin, against all the evidence, until fairly recently. He described it as a great success story, while at the same time describing the council tax as a roof tax, something that he reviled only a few months ago.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) said earlier, the vultures are coming home to roost for the Tory party in Scotland. However, the Tories must not be allowed to forget the
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  misery and chaos of the poll tax, the distress that it has caused to so many of our constituents, of the disruption of local government that it has caused. Above all, they must not be allowed to forget the discredit that the poll tax has brought on the House of Commons and on Parliament. There is something fundamentally wrong with a Parliament that can allow such legislation to be inflicted on our people. Frequently, we hear Tories say that they voted for the Scottish Bill because it seemed a good idea at the time, or because they knew that the Tory party in Scotland was in difficulties and felt that it should be supported. That is the line taken by the right hon. Member for Henley. They did it, although they are now trying to wash their hands of it. They are responsible for the poll tax that has brought such discredit.
  Even if the Bill is passed, the poll tax will be with us this year and next year. The poorest people will still have to pay 20 per cent. of that poll tax. To add insult to further injury, the people whom I represent in the Lothian region—this is true of other regions—are heavily penalised by the shamelessly discriminatory system of distributing revenue support grant in Scotland. I know that the same applies in England and Wales.
  The quicker and far less risky way out of the poll tax—the way proposed by the Labour party—is a return to the rates. We know that that system can be made to work acceptably and efficiently. I would not leave it at that. Having returned to the rates, we should embark on a wide-ranging independent inquiry into local government finance, including local income tax and any other system. If a consensus were to develop that there was an alternative that should be pursued, we should get on with it.
  The Government have learnt nothing. The last local government Act introduced the poll tax. It was a panic reaction to what the Government perceived as a problem arising from the revaluation in Scotland. They legislated from the hip and shot themselves in the foot and they are doing it again. This will be another disaster that will reflect badly on them. If we do not vote against the Bill, it will reflect badly on Parliament.
  8.57 pm
  Mr. David Martin: No new tax can be considered in isolation from what has gone before. The original Elizabethan rating system, as everyone knows, outgrew its useful shelf time some time during the 19th century. Instead of tackling increasing inadequacies at their roots, Governments from the end of the 19th century until almost the end of this century grafted on to the system changes of monumental and often Byzantine complexity. The one sacred principle until modern times seemed to be the retention of the notional rental system with periodic revaluations—a system which few understood either in its origins or in its modern version.
  Government grants, both general and specific, funded out of central taxation took an increasing share of the burden of the rating system as the tasks of local government grew in quantity and depth. The way in which the various grants were calculated and distributed and the way in which they related to the original property element of the rating system meant that local government finance needed the ingenuity of an Abbé Sieyès for detailed explanations of their niceties and of precisely how they worked. Council treasurers began to be looked on almost

  979
  as those who in ancient times understood the Eleusinian mysteries. At last the problems were faced radically and head on with the creation of the community charge.
  Few people quarrelled with the principle that everyone should pay something. Even now, I find that people's minds have not changed on that. The crucial questions were how much and what was the bottom line in each individual case. If the headline amount of any tax is too much and the rebate or allowance system too miserly or unfairly based, the system will be unsustainable. Fortunately, these objections are met fairly and squarely in the proposals set out in the Bill.
  The council tax, with its banding arrangements, does not take an unreasonable amount even at the top of the scale, while the discounts and exemptions are based on reason as well. I thoroughly approve of the transitional arrangements and the capping powers that are designed particularly to stop councils shielding greatly increased expenditure in the first year of the new tax, as happened in the change from rates to the community charge. That was the single most damning feature of the charge on its introduction in Portsmouth and elsewhere. It was expected that the final bill would be under £200 a head and it turned out to be £308·50. Overspending meant that the rebate system was not properly triggered and from then on, if only because of the amounts, the principle underlying the community charge became impossible to defend.
  I spoke to a typical pensioner couple with a small occupational pension. Their rebated rates bill had been under £200 and between the two of them they were paying £617 under the community charge without a rebate being triggered. When told of that, I recalled Emperor Tiberius's answer to a governor who had written to him to recommend an increase in the burden of taxation. Tiberius replied that a good shepherd sheared his flock; he did not skin it. The Bill has many features which makes the shearing—it must never be a pleasant operation for the sheep, I imagine—at least defensible.
  The Labour party roundly criticises the Bill's provisions, yet Labour Members propose nothing better than a return to the old rating system, without any effective capping on unreasonable expenditure. During the afternoon and evening we have heard examples relating to the likes of Lambeth, Haringey, Hackney, Brent and Derbyshire. Such examples, when added to all the others, would result in a nightmare for London and many other unfortunate areas. However, under the Labour party—I think that it was Anthony Crosland who tried to stop this happening in the 1970s—it would be back in full swing.
  I turn briefly to an argument that has been advanced by some of my colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall), for regional banding to be introduced for valuations in London and the south-east. Attractive though such an idea seems at first—who does not want his constituents to pay less, even if it is at the expense of others—the more the practicalities are investigated, the less it appeals. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to define a fair boundary of any such region and outside that region there would be many with similarly valued properties who would clamour to receive the same treatment. This would be a fertile area of endless dispute. It would soon be reflected in the ballot boxes, let alone in further legislative changes in the House.
  Nor must we fashion a large and significant part of the proposed tax system, as we did with the community charge, around admittedly genuine worries about single,
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  elderly people—they are usually widows—who often remain in highly valued family homes and who will not love us for reintroducing a property tax. The 25 per cent. rebate for a single person is extremely welcome, but who would not wish for more on behalf of his or her constituents?
  Even though some will blame us for bringing back a more expensive tax compared with their experience with the community charge, I ask them to compare what they will pay under the council tax with their old rate bills, the rates being a system to which the Labour party has promised to return. I remind the House and those outside that under a Labour Government, bearing in mind all the spending plans of the Opposition, it would not be long before all the valuable contents of many people's homes—for example, the cherished walnut table bought for 30 bob in 1937 that is now valued at over £2,000—would fall to be taxed. Not far from any Labour Government is the desire, after a while when they need the money, for a wealth tax.
  Finally, I welcome the sensible arrangements in the Bill for students, which were caricatured ridiculously by the hon. Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar). I welcome also the recognition of other suitable candidates for special consideration, including student nurses. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister of State to take on board the fact that the relevant provisions will require detailed regulations. In the hope that councils can make progress in setting up the necessary arrangements, including the relevant software, I look forward to the rapid introduction of regulations. It is important that councils know where they stand so that they can pass on the relevant information to our constituents. I know that Labour Members are anxious that that should happen, as are Conservative Members. When the Bill becomes an Act and when Opposition Members find themselves on people's doorsteps, they will face the same questions—this always happens to them—time and time again. These are as follows: "What are you going to do? How are you going to pay for it?" When that happens, the virtues of what we propose will be extremely clear.
  9.5 pm
  Mr. David Lambie: I wish to make only one or two points in the short time available to me. I am disappointed with the attendance in the Chamber today, as I was with yesterday's attendance. This Bill is the flagship of the Government's legislative programme, and Labour Members are opposing it hook, line and sinker.
  Mr. John Marshall: All six of them.
  Mr. Lambie: It is a six-line Whip.
  The general public and those who watch our proceedings on television must wonder whether we are really fighting. We should have had a general election last Thursday, rather than three by-elections. We have only to look around the Chamber to know that this Parliament is finished; it is dead. A general election last Thursday would have settled once and for all the political policies that the country will follow for the next few years.
  The hon. Member for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker) said that he was glad that there was only one Bill covering England, Wales and Scotland. That will not go down well in Scotland. Scotland has its own system of local government that is quite different from that in England

  981
  and Wales. We have district councils and regional councils. We have a different system of valuation. In Scotland, it is carried out by assessors who are employed by the regional councils. In England and Wales, it is carried out by a branch of the Inland Revenue.
  I do not understand why we should be dealing with local government finance in Scotland in a Bill that covers the United Kingdom. The only reason is that after the by-election in Kincardine and Deeside only nine Conservative Members representing Scottish constituencies are left in the House, and the majority of those sit on the Government Front Bench. There would be no Scottish Tory Members to man a Standing Committee on a separate Scottish Bill. That is a disgrace both to this Parliament and to the Tory party in Scotland. If the Government cannot man a Committee, they should draft in English Members. The Scottish people would then realise that it is the Labour party, not the Conservative party, that represents Scotland.
  Scotland was the first area to have poll tax imposed on it. Why? I made many speeches during the passage of that legislation. I blame both local councillors in Scotland and Scottish Members of Parliament, from both sides of the House, who were stupid enough to allow revaluation in Scotland to continue after the English stopped it in 1973. The Inland Revenue said that it did not have enough workers to carry out the revaluation in England and Wales, so from that date there were no revaluations of property.
  In Scotland, Members of Parliament from both sides of the House and local government employees and councillors stupidly said that they would continue with the revaluation, and so we had five-year revaluations until 1985. The way that the assessors in Scotland attacked the valuation of domestic property led to a revolt among Scottish Conservative voters living in the big houses of Scotland. As the Member of Parliament for my former constituency, I represented the town of Troon, a very Tory town that had more millionaires per head of population than any other area in the United Kingdom.
  That was the area that was attacked by the Tory Government in their valuations and that is why we had the revolt. That is why the people of Scotland rose up against the rating system. It was not because the rating system was bad, but because of the way in which the rating system was being carried out, attacking certain areas of domestic property, and, because the English had not carried out a revaluation since 1973, Scotland got out of line. Unfairly, the Scottish domestic ratepayer was badly hit and, in the area near to the constituency of the then Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Ayr (Mr. Younger), the majority were Conservative voters. We had to change and the poll tax was introduced in Scotland a year before it was introduced in England and Wales. Stupidly, the English followed us and made the same mistake.
  At present local taxation accounts for only 14 per cent. of local government expenditure in England and Wales and only 11 per cent. in Scotland. This is a point that I have made often in the House and on which I think that I have the support of the Adam Smith Institute which I hope will also be supported by many Conservative Members. Instead of local taxation in Scotland accounting
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  for only 11 per cent. of total local government expenditure, why do not the Government pay 100 per cent.? Why do not we set an example in Scotland, as we did for the poll tax? Why do not the Government abolish local rates in Scotland and pay a 100 per cent. grant to the Scottish local authorities, basing local accountability on the principle that local councillors will determine how that money should be spent?
  If we did that, we would do away with all these debates about local taxation, whether we should have the rating system or another system such as the poll tax or the council tax, and we would have a system which, at the end of the day, would give the local people the opportunity to determine priorities. This is one case where, again, I make the point that I am proud to stand here and support the policies of the Adam Smith Institute which every Tory Member should also support, but unfortunately they are afraid to do so because they are facing a general election, knowing that they will be out of power within six months.
  9.12 pm
  Mr. David Blunkett: During the past two days we have heard a vast number of contributions and I pay tribute to the common sense and foresight of Labour Members who have not only pointed out the inequalities of the system that is still in being but the pitfalls that we see ahead of us.
  To begin with, I pay tribute to an intervention made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) who, earlier today, rightly pointed out that in a democracy Parliament should be expected to debate a measure such as this in a sane and sensible fashion.
  The guillotine motion after 10 o'clock tonight will attempt to preclude sensible contributions, attempt to preclude people from dealing with the difficulties and technicalities in the Bill, and pose a real problem for those of us who believe that local government is not a political football to be kicked about at whim, but an essential part of our democracy for the provision of essential services. The hon. Gentleman was brave to say what he did.
  The hon. Gentleman was far more brave than the hon. Member for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) who has adopted the role of reading out central office briefs in the House to apologise for the Conservative party. She invented a new phrase tonight about the council tax being a light touch on people's wallets. I believe that Dickens used that phrase in "Oliver Twist". It will have a similar connotation when people discover what drops through their letter boxes if they are foolish enough to vote Conservative at the next general election.
  We have also heard some honest interventions, however, The hon. and learned Member for Perth and Kinross (Sir N. Fairbairn) staggered to his feet to tell us that he did not believe a word of what Ministers were saying. He did not believe in the new property tax; he believed that it would constitute theft from the old ladies living down the road, who would consequently vote against the Tories.
  The right hon. Member for Shoreham (Sir R. Luce) thinks that we should change the standard spending assessments. The hon. Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) said the same yesterday, but Ministers were unable to enlighten him about the method that might be used. The previous Secretary of State—the right hon. Member for Bath (Mr. Patten), now chairman of the

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  Conservative party—had promised two years ago that he would have a look at SSAs; that promise, however, came to nothing, as has every other Government promise relating to local administration.
  Yesterday, we heard 10 interventions from the Tory Benches on the Secretary of State's speech. They came from the right hon. Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson); from the hon. Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall); from the hon. Member for Lancaster (Dame E. Kellett-Bowman), who wanted to retain the poll tax—I do not think that anyone has told her yet that the Conservatives propose to do away with it. The hon. Member for Rochford (Dr. Clark) had some worries. The hon. Member for Norfolk, North (Mr. Howell) said that VAT should he increased: I suspect that he was giving away a secret Tory agenda.
  We heard from the hon. Member for Leeds, North-West (I)r. Hampson), and from the hon. Member for Warrington, South (Mr. Butler). The hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) spoke of abolishing the poll tax by April 1992. We could not agree more with that; we proposed it on 13 December last year, when the Government were introducing the Community Charges (Substitute Settings) Bill. A bigger waste of time has never been seen, for that legislation will be overturned by this Bill. We offered the Government time, saying, "Let us not waste each other's time: let us abolish the poll tax now, and get rid of it by April 1992." Would the Government agree? Of course not; at that stage, they were still clanging to the poll tax.
  The hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Hargreaves) also intervened in the Secretary of State's speech yesterday, expressing anxiety about the new tax. The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) mentioned Derbyshire county council; I remind the hon. Gentleman that Labour took Amber Valley in the local elections in May.
  Hon. Members seem to think that the council tax is the best thing since sliced bread, but we know that the sliced bread is extremely stale. This is the same sort of tripe that Conservative Members came out with when they were defending the poll tax; the poll tax was indefensible, and the council tax is going the same way.
  As my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Mr. Home Robertson) rightly pointed out, surely it is time for a little contrition. Surely it is time for the present Home Secretary—who started all this in Cabinet, along with the right hon. Member for Cirencester and Tewkesbury (Mr. Ridley)—to apologise. The present Secretary of State for Employment saw the poll tax legislation through its Committee stage; perhaps he too will apologise. Perhaps the current Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and the current Secretary of State for Wales—both of whom were responsible for the implementation of that legislation—will do the same. All those Ministers were promoted as a result of their work in that regard.
  The present Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities was still defending the poll tax at the time of the fated Ribble Valley by-election, only a few months ago. I shall not go into details about his speeches; that was done at great length on 12 June, and people can read the speeches at their leisure. The Minister declared, however, that any form of property tax would constitute a betrayal of what was then seen as the Thatcherite mantle, of middle England—Conservative England—and of those who had scrimped and saved to secure their homes. But times
  984
  change. People stand on their heads and wiggle their feet in the air. Some cannot tell whether people are standing on their heads or their feet, because the same kind of rubbish comes out. That is why we should be receiving apologies tonight from Conservative Members. Some bare their souls on their feet and some bare their souls in the bars.
  Behind the scenes, many who sit on the Conservative Benches are betraying their concern even before the Bill has received its Second Reading. They are as worried as we are about the implications for the people of this country. Those Conservative Members and the electorate know that we are not to blame for the mess that we are in. The Conservatives introduced the poll tax and made a mess of implementing it. The British people will hold them to account at the election.
  Local government faces nothing short of a catastrophe. Debt stands at unprecedented levels. The debt in England alone amounts to £1·5 billion. Two thirds of the Scottish population have warrants out against them. We expect 7·5 million orders to be issued against people in England. The law is in disrepute. Collection of the tax is in a shambles. Conservative Members, however, have the cheek to suggest that that is the fault of local government, not theirs.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Leyton (Mr. Cohen) yesterday asked the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), whether he would consider the abolition of the minimum 20 per cent. contribution. That is to be found at column 860 of Hansard. My hon. Friend said that it should be abolished this year, or at least in 1992–93. The hon. Member for Salisbury got to his feet and made the most amazing pronouncement in the two-day debate. It was one word. He asked "Why?" Why? Because it costs two and a half times as much to collect as the money that is received.
  The Audit Commission pointed out that 4 million people would be lifted out of the penury of having to pay it and that it would be possible to concentrate on those who can genuinely afford to pay but who do not. The administrative burden would be lifted from local government; it would then be able to concentrate on the job in hand. The Minister, however, does not give a damn about what is happening to people on the lowest incomes; he does not even understand what is happening to local government.
  It is no wonder that Ministers do not understand the problems local government faces in having to prepare for the final year of poll tax, in having to work out how to collect the current year's poll tax, in having to prepase the software for collection of the council tax. Local government is on the verge of collapse, but who gives a damn on the Conservative Benches about that and what it means for local government services? Instead of contrition, instead of apology, constant and unmitigated attacks are made on Labour councils that are struggling, in the most difficult areas of the country, to provide services.
  Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: What about rents?
  Mr. Blunkett: Does the hon. Lady wish to intervene? I see that she does, so I shall certainly give way to her.
  Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: It is not only a question of many Labour-controlled councils not bothering to collect the community charge. Many of them do not even

  985
  bother to collect rents. Not even the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) can defend their policy not to collect rents.
  Mr. Allen McKay: The hon. Lady does not know what she is talking about.
  Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman: Rubbish.
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. Come along now—the hon. Lady has had her say.
  Mr. Blunkett: My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay) could not have put it better. The hon. Lady's response admirably sums up, in one word, what the council tax is all about—absolute and unmitigated rubbish.
  Councils throughout the country are doing their utmost, including court cases that the police will not assist with and that the Home Office will not instruct the police to assist with, to collect the poll tax and, of course, any outstanding rates bills.
  We have a system of local government finance which has concentrated its attention on the poll tax payer, bringing in gearing which has resulted in enormous increases in bills, without any material increase in spending or improvements in services. We have witnessed the abolition of the local domestic business rate, the introduction of the non-domestic business rate and the way in which that has concentrated the power of decision-making still further in the hands of Ministers. It is a shambles, which has resulted in local government being undermined and the role of the local community being seen as a threat rather than as a partner trying to rebuild broken economies, help the unemployed and do something about essential services.
  Every time that Labour local authorities spend more money on education or social services Ministers claim credit for the increase in spending. Every time that it comes to capping regulations, those same authorities are blamed and pilloried for the spending for which Ministers have happily claimed the credit.
  Instead we need a sensible system with decent values, not a tax which assaults families. The present proposal, in all its glory, with the present valuation and discount system is an attack on the family.
  I do not know whether Conservative Members have given any thought to what the present discount system is likely to do—it is more likely to accelerate the disintegration of the family than to bring people together. It is the Norah Batty syndrome, if I may be sexist, where far from losing a million people off the register as happened during the last census because of the poll tax, in the next census men will be sent to the shed at the bottom of the garden to keep out of the way. We will have a nation of single widows, with men escaping from the tax and their spouses claiming the 25 per cent. discount.
  In the past two days we have heard a lot about students. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Garscadden (Mr. Dewar) rightly pointed out some of the anomalies that the Minister says he will reply to, such as the marrried student with two children who will receive a 25 per cent. discount but who will be exempt from the tax if he leaves his wife and family and moves in with his student friends down the road. That is the nonsense. Students in halls of
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  residence will allegedly be exempt from the tax. However, many halls of residence will have to pay business rate because many of them undertake business activities in the recesses. Those who know anything about the way in which universities and polytechnics work know that they are businesses and not merely halls of residence. Are we presuming that those students will not be expected to pay anything in the charge that they pay for staying in the halls of residence? If not, will halls of residence pay a business rate only during the recesses? Will it be assessed on a daily basis as the amount of council tax will be? Those are the types of question that need answers before we know what sort of chaos we are going to face with the council tax.
  Mr. Oppenheim: As the hon. Gentleman is clearly so hostile to the concept of a single person household discount, will he state clearly and unequivocally whether any future Labour Government would abolish it?
  Mr. Blunkett: Our fair rates proposals make the situation unequivocally clear. We say that we will protect single retired people, we will ensure that the rebate system is improved not only to help those people, but to target help on all those who need it and we will ensure that what people pay is based on their ability to pay and not on their status. We are not in the business of giving handouts to the Duke of Westminster because he happens to move out of the present matrimonial home and into a single person's flat. We are not in the business of expecting other people who can ill afford it to pick up the cost of a single person's discount for the rich. We are not in the business of putting on the backs of the poor the cost of the 50 per cent. discount that second homes will be accorded. That, too, is in the Bill.
  Every time the Government bring in something to protect the rich, the burden is passed to the rest of us. The poor will pay for the protection accorded to the better-off. That is what the proposed valuation and banding are all about. That is why we are so opposed to the system that charges the richest person in Westminster only £273 a year but the poorest person in Wigan £339 a year. That is why we are opposed to the poorest person in Westminster paying only £3 a week less in council tax than the richest, including some Tory Members.
  The banding system and property valuations are devised deliberately to protect the rich at the expense of the rest. That is why we know that people will not only feel that it is unfair and understand that it is unfair, but will at the general election bring home to roost the chickens that many Tory Members will be voting on at 10 pm tonight.
  The same applies to much else that languishes in this tax as an alternative to the ill-fated poll tax. Not for Tory Members the speed, simplicty and certainty of the broad-based tax that we should have. Not for them the buoyancy, cost-effectiveness, fairness and progressiveness that "Fair Rates" offers to the British people. Not for them the comprehensibility or even the logic spelt out by the Prime Minister shortly after his election as leader of the Conservative party when he rightly said that there was something wrong with a tax that resulted in 50 per cent. of the population having to receive a rebate or discount on the amount that they paid. Yet that is exactly what the council tax will involve.
  With the intricacies, unfairness and technicalities, it is no wonder that the Secretary of State for the Environment has declined to serve in Committee. No wonder he will not

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  join us three days a week from now until Christmas. Instead, he will have a fortnightly visit to Brian Walden on Walden's weekly interview. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) corrects me: it is rather that Brian Walden will visit the Secretary of State for lunch and take the cameras with him. No wonder the Secretary of State has been given a roving brief across Europe. He fails to understand even the one that he has.
  Mr. Oppenheim: Get on with it.
  Mr. Blunkett: A Tory Member shouts, "Get on with it". That is not surprising because it is difficult to protect the Secretary of State from his own inadequacies. As my hon. Friend the Member for, Garscadden said earlier this afternoon, the Secretary of State has to rely on his Minister—the AA man, as he was described in the Financial Times. Although the Secretary of State knows nothing about the Bill, he knows the man who does, and that man does a good job.
  In the 40 minutes that we shall have to debate each clause it will be difficult to point out to Tory Members the Bill's inadequacies. It will take us until clause 100 before the poll tax is abolished. It will take more than the three weeks to reveal the confusion that abounds, but we shall do our best.
  We know that if, in the introduction of the council tax, the Government inflict on the British people what they did with the poll tax—the £10 billion that it has cost us, the increase in VAT to manipulate it and the innumerable changes to make it more acceptable—local government and the British people will face the same sort of inadequacies and misery.
  We have heard Conservative Members talk about the necessity of capping. We were told that capping would be necessary until the poll tax was introduced as that would bring accountability. We were then told that only a handful of high-spending authorities would be capped. Then we were told that when the poll tax really bit, capping would not be necessary. Now we are told that universal capping is necessary because the Secretary of State and his colleagues are frightened of trusting local people to make local decisions under the new banded system. No wonder they are frightened, because the way in which the council tax will be implemented will confuse people to the point where they will be unclear about who is paying what and who is making the decisions.
  The gearing procedure will result in a 1 per cent. increase in spending, incurring an average increase of between 7 and 8 per cent. in the local tax. The proposed national business rate will ensure that the narrowness of the domestic base under the council tax will inflict misery on local people. That is why our "Fair Rates" proposals offer a different solution.
  The 20 per cent. contribution will be abolished, the rebate system will be improved and single retired people will be protected. All that will ensure that the tax is fair and progressive. It will also ensure that it has a broad base and that the business rate is decentralised. We will introduce rebates for small businesses to protect those who are setting up in business or struggling to stay in business.
  The Labour party believes in fairness and justice. In the weeks ahead it is therefore beholden upon us to get across
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  the message that, once again, the Government have got it wrong. We are witnessing the third change in three years, a change that will produce further misery and confusion.
  My colleagues and I do not believe that the British people will be fooled a second time—one can take a horse to water but one cannot make it drink. The general election will be the opportunity for which we have waited. That opportunity has been delayed too long. That general election will be fought not simply on fair rates, but on a fair Government. The people of Britain will understand clearly that to achieve that they must vote Labour.
  9.36 pm
  The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. Michael Portillo): We have reached the end of the third full day's debate on the council tax. We had one day on the Queen's Speech, and now we have had two full days on Second Reading. I am bound to say that I do not believe that this debate has reached the level of fizz that one might have associated with a Bill that was to be fought doggedly tooth and nail by the Opposition.
  At the climax to the debate a few minutes ago the hon. Member for Cunninghame, South (Mr. Lambie) was addressing a single Labour Back Bencher. During much of the debate we have had no representation from the Liberals or the Scottish Nationalists. Indeed, when the wind-up began this evening there were no Liberals or Scottish Nationalists present.
  It has been an exhausting three days for the Labour Whips as they trawled the corridors of the Palace to try to find people who they could wheel in to speak in this debate. None the less, fortunately there have been fine contributions to the debate from the Conservative Benches. We have had such contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Torridge and Devon, West (Miss Nicholson) and for Tayside, North (Mr. Walker). My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) included in his speech one of the pithiest denunciations of the rates that I have ever heard. We also heard fine contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Amber Valley (Mr. Oppenheim) and for Battersea (Mr. Bowis), who has a quarry of good stories from the London borough of Wandsworth.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth, South (Mr. Martin) provided us with a model of how much can be put into a brief speech. My right hon. Friend the Member for Shoreham (Sir R. Luce) asked me to consider the standard spending assessments. I assure him that we look at them every year, but he is aware, as he said during his speech, that there are two different objectives: one is to make the assessments as simple as possible; the other is to make them as fair as possible. The two objectives do not necessarily lie in the same direction.
  The Opposition raised the canard that some sort of register is required under the council tax. We have denied that categorically. It can only be obtuseness or a refusal to believe that can still lead the Opposition to make that claim.
  The basis of the council tax is, first, a property element. In that respect it is like the rates. We want to give discounts to single people—the Labour party does not—and single people will have every incentive to make themselves known. It is not like a council tax register with people not wishing to make themselves known. Single people have every reason to come forward and declare that they are

  989
  entitled to a discount. But if they do not come forward, there is no penalty. There is no statutory requirement to hold a register of such people. There is all the difference in the world between finding out who the single people are and having a statutory register as we have under the community charge.
  There is no difference in principle between what we propose for finding out about single people and what is proposed in the so-called Bill put forward by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett), in which he would need to identify pensioners, pensioner couples and people on low incomes. There is no difference, either, between what we have under the community charge and under the rates in respect of identifying people who are entitled to help through social security benefit, if they are on low incomes.
  There has been a misunderstanding of the Government's plans from the point of view of social security benefits. Just as with the rates, when people in receipt of social security benefit had living with them someone who was not in receipt of benefit, there was a system known as non-dependent deductions—the hon. Member for Brightside will be well aware of that system—so, too, under the council tax it will be possible for the claimant—the person liable to the tax—simply to let us know, through a single declaration, about the other people in the household who may not be eligible for income support and who may be eligible to make a contribution to the council tax bill.
  There has been some confusion—I do not know why there should have been because it was made clear last night by the Secretary of State for Wales—about the position of students. There are two issues. First, students should not be counted as adults when we are deciding whether the single person discount should be given to a household. Students, including all student nurses, YTS trainees and apprentices, will be invisible. In other words, they will not count as though they were adults in a household. They will not stop a single person who is not in one of those categories from being able to qualify for the single person household discount.
  The second issue is that, if a household is composed entirely of students, it should be exempt. It is easy to do with halls of residence, but it is also easy to do where students are living in digs or even when they are the owners of properties. Where they are all students, they will be exempt and no payment will have to be made. In this case we include student nurses on Project 2000 because they are, like other college students, not eligible for social security benefit. In this second category we do not include other student nurses, YTS trainees and apprentices because all those people are entitled to social security benefits.
  If their incomes are low—if, for example, a student nurse has a low income—there will be no difficulty; she will be able to claim social security benefit, so there is no reason why she should be entitled to the exemption available to other students. I hope that that puts the matter beyond doubt, and I believe that my hon. Friends will greatly welcome that important development in the new council tax.
  The Government have chosen to have regional banding for Scotland, Wales and England. The council tax is
  990
  composed 50 per cent. of a property tax. I sometimes think that some of my hon. Friends who would like to see the tax in some way equalised between one place and another are hankering after a tax which this tax is not. With a tax based on property, it follows as night follows day that the amount people pay will vary according to where they live and the properties in which they live. Those who would like the tax to be the same for everyone, no matter where they live and no matter what property they live in, will be disappointed by the council tax because, frankly, it is not that sort of tax.
  Being a property tax—there is not now any contention between the two main parties about that—we can either tax the kind of house and say, for example, that all three-bedroom properties shall be taxed the same, in which case my hon. Friends should be aware that we would soon have tremendous anomalies as the same tax is placed on a Mayfair flat as is put on a flat in a mining village, or we can have regional banding, and then there must be boundaries between regions.
  There are no natural boundaries between property price regions, so let us assume that one would use the standard regions—the south-east, the east midlands, the west midlands and so on. There would then be extraordinary anomalies. For instance, taking a semidetached house worth £60,000 in Milton Keynes and a semi-detached house also worth £60,000 in Northampton, the household in Northampton would pay £88 more in tax simply because it happened to be across the regional boundary. Hon. Members should try to explain that to people in Northampton and Milton Keynes.
  Alternatively, people in an average house in Southampton would pay £89 less than people in Salisbury. I doubt whether my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key) would be amused by that. People living in a semi-detached house in Cambridge would pay £89 more than people in a similar house in Oxford simply because they were in East Anglia rather than the south-east, even though the semi-detached house in Oxford had cost much more.
  Therefore, the only basis on which we could have a property tax and valuation would be on a national banding system because that would be understandable and objective. I agree that such a tax system based on the capital value of houses, on a national banding system, would be unfair unless we had taken care to provide for compressed rates of taxation. We do not say that if a house is worth eight times as much as another the tax bill should be eight times as much. That has been the position of Labour speaker after Labour speaker, but we could not tolerate such an unfair system. For people living in the same area, those in the most expensive properties should pay not more than three times as much—the maximum variation—as those in the least expensive properties.
  However, that is only part of the answer. The other part is what has already been done—the massive and permanent shift in funding from local to central taxation. In future, 15 per cent. of local spending will be raised in local taxation only in England and 11 per cent. of spending will be raised in local tax only in Scotland. My hon. Friends may fear that in some parts of the country we shall return to the oppressive and unfair bills which people received under the rates system. That is certainly not the Government's intention, and the Bill does not provide for that.

  991
  For example, in Barnet, the borough of my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon, South, the rates bill on a four-bedroomed detached house used to be £986. We now propose a council tax that would have produced a bill this year of £617. Last year, two of my hon. Friend's constituents in such a house paid £676 in community charge, so this year's council tax would have been cheaper for them—[Interruption.] My right hon. Friend the Member for Brent, North (Sir R. Boyson) takes the prize, because the rates bill in Brent on a four-bedroomed house was £1,826. The council tax bill would have been £706, making the bill £1,120 less under the council tax. We heard yesterday from my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes). A four-bedroomed house in Harrow, West was charged £1,137 in rates. The council tax would have been £588, a reduction for his constituents of £549. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochford (Dr. Clark), whose rates bill on a four-bedroomed house was £1,280, would have received a council tax bill of £510—a reduction of £770.
  Mr. Gould: The Minister is giving extremely persuasive and interesting figures. Given the huge disparities which are of such enormous benefit to those at the top of the scale, who will pick up the bill? Who will bear responsibility for paying every penny of savings gained by top people?
  Mr. Portillo: I have already explained that the most important change that we have made is to shift the balance between what is paid centrally and what is paid locally, so I can answer the hon. Gentleman's question. If he fears that in some houses lurk people on high incomes, those people will pay vast sums in income tax, VAT and corporation tax to provide the grants for local government.
  Mr. Gould: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Portillo: This is my speech, not the hon. Gentleman's, and I warn him that if I give way now it will be for the last time.
  Mr. Gould: In what the Minister has just said, I detect exactly the same argument that he and many others used to justify the flat rate principle of the poll tax. Is he not conceding and making clear something that was always true: the 2·5 per cent. VAT required from everyone who buys anything, which is paid to local government taxpayers, is entirely for the benefit of those who are most wealthy and best able to meet the bills?
  Mr. Portillo: As the hon. Gentleman knows, the people who spend most on VAT are those who spend most on goods that attract VAT; they are not the poorest in society. Children's clothes, food, transport and fuel are all zero-rated under the VAT system. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that, if he were in power, he would repeal the increase in VAT? He spent much time today and yesterday denying that he would increase from 14 to 20 per cent. the proportion paid by local taxpayers. He now appears to be saing that he would repeal the increase in VAT. If he is not saying that he would repeal the increase in VAT, he is simply speaking out of both sides of his mouth at the same time.
  Mr. Gould: Will the Minister give way?
  Mr. Portillo: No.
  Mr. Gould rose——
  Mr. Speaker: Order. I think that I heard the Minister of State say that he would not give way.
  Mr. Portillo: We have just heard from the hon. Gentleman that all our proposals for discounts for single people and alleviation of the top rates of the tax are anathema to the Labour party, which wants to return to the full rigours of the rates. Under Labour, people in a house worth £200,000 must pay five times as much as people living in a £40,000 house, regardless of regional disparities or anything else.
  Wherever the Labour party detects that there might be someone who could pay more under the rates, it wants every last penny out of that person. That is what we mean when we say that the Labour party is advocating an envy tax. We have just heard the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) dismiss the argument that people pay more income tax and VAT if they are on high incomes.
  What about the discounts? We have heard many Labour arguments against them. The Labour party fears that somewhere there might be a single person who is also a millionaire who could benefit from a single person's discount, so it is absolutely against the proposal. Under a Labour Government, there would be no relief to widows, single mothers or young people starting out in life who live on their own. According to the hon. Member for Brightside, under Labour's proposals there is to be a discount for single retired people, even if they are billionaires.
  There have been 70 changes of Labour party policy. I do not include in that 70 the number of occasions when the hon. Members for Brightside and for Dagenham have said contradictory things. I have always assumed that Brightside had it right and Dagenham was merely contributing a series of Gouldisms to the discussion.
  Among the many popular items in this Bill is the provision that councillors who will not pay their community charge or their council tax will not in future be entitled to vote on setting a budget for their local authorities——
  Mr. Blunkett: Come on.
  Mr. Portillo: The hon. Gentleman says that because there is a lingering interest among Labour Members in people who have avoided the community charge. We heard it yesterday from the hon. Member for Dagenham, who referred to the community charge register as a threat to civil rights. He talked of the hundreds of thousands who traded away their votes so as not to register for the community charge. The Labour party cloaks under expressions such as "attack on civil rights" the fact that such people have not registered for the tax and have been indulging in tax avoidance, a practice for which the Labour party still shows some sympathy.
  The Government are accused of changing their mind over local authority finance. I am accused of that; I am even accused of changing my hairstyle because of my attitude to local authority finance. Certainly I defended the community charge, which gave Labour councils in many areas the fright of their lives. I am asked whether I am sorry. I am sorry that we did not manage to pin the overspending of Labour authorities on those authorities and that we did not have a chance to repeat across the

  993
  country the electoral triumphs that we enjoyed in Trafford, Southend, Brent, Hillingdon, Ealing, Wandsworth and Westminster.
  So I am happy to say that the Government have changed their mind on local authority finance, but the world still goes round and the Conservative party is still a Conservative party. Has the Labour party ever changed its mind? Has it changed its mind on unilateral nuclear disarmament, or on the Common Market, or on nationalisation, or on trade unions, or on the free market? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes."] Has the Labour party changed its mind on capitalism, or on the Soviet Union? Is there anything on which the Labour party has not changed its mind? [HON. MEMBERS: "Yes: the poll tax."]
  One principle has been rescued form the wreckage of socialism—the principle that local authorities should not be capped and should be allowed to spend and spend as though there were no tomorrow. For the Labour party, there is no tomorrow.
  Is there one honest man left in the Labour party? Perhaps it is the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), who fought an election on an honest programme and was defeated. Then there is the hon. Member for Coventry, South-East (Mr. Nellist), who is willing to go to prison for his views. Perhaps it is the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), who is willing to continue to enunciate the principle that there is no such thing as a free lunch. And what is the uniting feature of all these people? I have discovered a dress code among Labour party members. If an hon. Member's jacket and trousers do not match and his clothing in general does not reach the heights of elegance, we know that he is an honest man. The dark suits of the Labour Front-Bench spokesmen betray those who have turned their coats.
  The council tax is based on a new distribution of local and central finance. It consists of a property element and a personal element. It is fair and will be accepted as fair by the people. We shall take it through the House, despite the Labour party's opposition.
  Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—
  The House proceeded to a Division——
  10.2 pm
  Mr. Bob Dunn(seated and covered): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I understand that there is a bomb scare, and that hon. Members are finding it difficult to get access to the Lobbies. Will you advise us as to what can be done?
  Mr. Speaker: I am aware that there is some difficulty in getting into the building. I am having the matter looked into, and I shall make a statement about it in a few minutes.
  Later——
  Mr. Peter L. Pike( seated and covered): On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The time has elapsed when the doors should be locked. We all know that there is some disturbance outside—you have already said that you will make a statement on that—but it is unusual for the doors not to be locked by this stage in a Division.
  Mr. Speaker: There is a slight problem. There is some difficulty in Members getting to the House because a street has been closed. I propose to allow a further 10 minutes before the doors are locked.
  The House having divided: Ayes 334, Noes 245.

  Division No. 4]

  [10 pm

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Alexander, Richard

  Day, Stephen

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Allason, Rupert

  Dicks, Terry

  Amery, Rt Hon Julian

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Amess, David

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Amos, Alan

  Dover, Den

  Arbuthnot, James

  Dunn, Bob

  Arnold, Sir Thomas

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Ashby, David

  Dykes, Hugh

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Eggar, Tim

  Atkins, Robert

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Atkinson, David

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Evennett, David

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Fallon, Michael

  Baldry, Tony

  Farr, Sir John

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Favell, Tony

  Batiste, Spencer

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

  Bellingham, Henry

  Fishburn, John Dudley

  Bendall, Vivian

  Fookes, Dame Janet

  Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Benyon, W.

  Forth, Eric

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Fox, Sir Marcus

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Franks, Cecil

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Freeman, Roger

  Body, Sir Richard

  French, Douglas

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Fry, Peter

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Gale, Roger

  Boswell, Tim

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Bottomley, Peter

  Gill, Christopher

  Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Glyn, Dr Sir Alan

  Bowis, John

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Brazier, Julian

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Bright, Graham

  Gorst, John

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

  Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Gregory, Conal

  Budgen, Nicholas

  Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

  Burns, Simon

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Burt, Alistair

  Grist, Ian

  Butcher, John

  Ground, Patrick

  Butterfill, John

  Grylls, Michael

  Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Hague, William

  Carrington, Matthew

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Archie

  Cash, William

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Chapman, Sydney

  Hannam, John

  Chope, Christopher

  Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

  Churchill, Mr

  Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

  Clark, Rt Hon Alan (Plymouth)

  Harris, David

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Clark, Rt Hon Sir William

  Hawkins, Christopher

  Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

  Hayes, Jerry

  Colvin, Michael

  Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

  Hayward, Robert

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Heath, Rt Hon Edward

  Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Cormack, Patrick

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Couchman, James

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Cran, James

  Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Curry, David

  Hill, James

  995

  Hind, Kenneth

  Moss, Malcolm

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Moynihan, Hon Colin

  Hordern, Sir Peter

  Mudd, David

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Neale, Sir Gerrard

  Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)

  Nelson, Anthony

  Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

  Neubert, Sir Michael

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Hunt, Rt Hon David

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Irvine, Michael

  Norris, Steve

  Jack, Michael

  Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

  Jackson, Robert

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Janman, Tim

  Page, Richard

  Jessel, Toby

  Paice, James

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Patnick, Irvine

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)

  Key, Robert

  Patten, Rt Hon John

  Kilfedder, James

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Pawsey, James

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Knapman, Roger

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Knight, Greg (Derby North)

  Portillo, Michael

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Knowles, Michael

  Price, Sir David

  Knox, David

  Raffan, Keith

  Lamont, Rt Hon Norman

  Raison, Rt Hon Sir Timothy

  Lang, Rt Hon Ian

  Redwood, John

  Latham, Michael

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Rhodes James, Sir Robert

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Rost, Peter

  Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

  Rowe, Andrew

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Rumbold, Rt Hon Mrs Angela

  Lord, Michael

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Luce, Rt Hon Sir Richard

  Sackville, Hon Tom

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Sainsbury, Hon Tim

  McCrindle, Sir Robert

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Macfarlane, Sir Neil

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Maclean, David

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Shelton, Sir William

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

  Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Madel, David

  Shersby, Michael

  Major, Rt Hon John

  Sims, Roger

  Malins, Humfrey

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Mans, Keith

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  Maples, John

  Speed, Keith

  Marland, Paul

  Speller, Tony

  Marlow, Tony

  Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Squire, Robin

  Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Mates, Michael

  Steen, Anthony

  Maude, Hon Francis

  Stern, Michael

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Stevens, Lewis

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

  Mellor, Rt Hon David

  Stewart, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Stokes, Sir John

  Miller, Sir Hal

  Sumberg, David

  Mills, Iain

  Summerson, Hugo

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Mitchell, Sir David

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Moate, Roger

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

  Moore, Rt Hon John

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Morris, M (N'hampton S)

  Thorne, Neil

  Morrison, Sir Charles

  Thurnham, Peter

  Morrison, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  996

  Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

  Wheeler, Sir John

  Tredinnick, David

  Whitney, Ray

  Trippier, David

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Trotter, Neville

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Wilkinson, John

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Wilshire, David

  Viggers, Peter

  Winterton, Mrs Ann

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

  Wolfson, Mark

  Walden, George

  Wood, Timothy

  Walker, Bill (T'side North)

  Woodcock, Dr. Mike

  Walker, Rt Hon P. (W'cester)

  Yeo, Tim

  Waller, Gary

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Walters, Sir Dennis

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Ward, John

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Warren, Kenneth

  Mr. David Lightbown and

  Watts, John

  Mr. John M. Taylor.

  NOES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Allen, Graham

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

  Alton, David

  Dewar, Donald

  Anderson, Donald

  Dixon, Don

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Dobson, Frank

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Doran, Frank

  Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

  Douglas, Dick

  Ashley, Rt Hon Jack

  Duffy, Sir A. E. P.

  Ashton, Joe

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Eadie, Alexander

  Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

  Eastham, Ken

  Barron, Kevin

  Edwards, Huw

  Battle, John

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Beckett, Margaret

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  Beith, A. J.

  Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)

  Bell, Stuart

  Fatchett, Derek

  Bellotti, David

  Faulds, Andrew

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Fearn, Ronald

  Bennett, A. F. (D'nf'n & R'dish)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Benton, Joseph

  Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Fisher, Mark

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Flannery, Martin

  Blair, Tony

  Flynn, Paul

  Blunkett, David

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Boateng, Paul

  Foster, Derek

  Boyes, Roland

  Foulkes, George

  Bradley, Keith

  Fraser, John

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Fyfe, Maria

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Galbraith, Sam

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

  Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  George, Bruce

  Caborn, Richard

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Callaghan, Jim

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Gordon, Mildred

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Gould, Bryan

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Graham, Thomas

  Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Carr, Michael

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Cartwright, John

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Grocott, Bruce

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Hain, Peter

  Clay, Bob

  Hardy, Peter

  Clelland, David

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Cohen, Harry

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Heal, Mrs Sylvia

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Corbett, Robin

  Henderson, Doug

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Hinchliffe, David

  Cousins, Jim

  Hoey, Kate (Vauxhall)

  Cox, Tom

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Crowther, Stan

  Home Robertson, John

  Cryer, Bob

  Hood, Jimmy

  Cummings, John

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Howells, Geraint

  Dalyell, Tam

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  Darling, Alistair

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  997

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Parry, Robert

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Patchett, Terry

  Illsley, Eric

  Pendry, Tom

  Ingram, Adam

  Pike, Peter L.

  Janner, Greville

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Prescott, John

  Jones, Ieuan (Ynys Môn)

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Kennedy, Charles

  Radice, Giles

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Randall, Stuart

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

  Redmond, Martin

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  Kumar Ashok

  Reid, Dr John

  Lambie, David

  Richardson, Jo

  Lamond, James

  Robertson, George

  Leighton, Ron

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Rogers, Allan

  Lewis, Terry

  Rooker, Jeff

  Litherland, Robert

  Rooney, Terence

  Livingstone, Ken

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Livsey, Richard

  Ruddock, Joan

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Salmond, Alex

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Loyden, Eddie

  Sheerman, Barry

  McAllion, John

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Short, Clare

  McCartney, Ian

  Skinner, Dennis

  Macdonald, Calum A.

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  McFall, John

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

  McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

  Smith, Rt Hon J. (Monk'ds E)

  McKelvey, William

  Smith, J. P. (Vale of Glam)

  McLeish, Henry

  Snape, Peter

  Maclennan, Robert

  Soley, Clive

  McMaster, Gordon

  Spearing, Nigel

  McNamara, Kevin

  Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

  McWilliam, John

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Madden, Max

  Stephen, Nicol

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Stott, Roger

  Marek, Dr John

  Strang, Gavin

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Straw, Jack

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Martlew, Eric

  Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

  Maxton, John

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Meacher, Michael

  Turner, Dennis

  Meale, Alan

  Vaz, Keith

  Michael, Alun

  Wallace, James

  Michie. Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Walley, Joan

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'l & Bute)

  Warden, Gareth (Gower)

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

  Morley, Elliot

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Wilson, Brian

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Winnick, David

  Mullin, Chris

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Murphy, Paul

  Worthington, Tony

  Nellist, Dave

  Wray, Jimmy

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  O'Brien, William

  O'Hara, Edward

  Tellers for the Noes:

  O'Neill, Martin

  Mr. Frank Haynes and

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Mrs. Llin Golding.

  Question accordingly agreed to.
  Bill read a Second time.
  Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills), That the Bill be committed to a Committee of the whole House.—[Mrs. Margaret Ewing.]
  The House divided: Ayes 241, Noes 322.

  Division No. 5]

  [10.24 pm

  AYES

  Abbott, Ms Diane

  Anderson, Donald

  Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Allen, Graham

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Alton, David

  Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

  998

  Ashton, Joe

  Fraser, John

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Fyfe, Maria

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Galbraith, Sam

  Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

  Garrett, Ted (Wallsend)

  Barron, Kevin

  George, Bruce

  Battle, John

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Beckett, Margaret

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Beith, A. J.

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Bell, Stuart

  Gordon, Mildred

  Bellotti, David

  Gould, Bryan

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Graham, Thomas

  Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Benton, Joseph

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Bidwell, Sydney

  Grocott, Bruce

  Blair, Tony

  Hain, Peter

  Blunkett, David

  Hardy, Peter

  Boateng, Paul

  Harman, Ms Harriet

  Boyes, Roland

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Bradley, Keith

  Haynes, Frank

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Heal, Mrs Sylvia

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Henderson, Doug

  Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

  Hinchliffe, David

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Hoey, Kate (Vauxhall)

  Caborn, Richard

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Callaghan. Jim

  Home Robertson, John

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Hood, Jimmy

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Howells, Geraint

  Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  Carr, Michael

  Hoyle, Doug

  Cartwright, John

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Clay, Bob

  Illsley, Eric

  Clelland, David

  Ingram, Adam

  Cohen, Harry

  Janner, Greville

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Jones, Martyn (Clwyd S W)

  Corbett, Robin

  Kennedy, Charles

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Kilfoyle, Peter

  Cousins, Jim

  Kinnock, Rt Hon Neil

  Cox, Tom

  Kirkwood, Archy

  Crowther, Stan

  Kumar, A.

  Cryer, Bob

  Lambie, David

  Cummings, John

  Lamond, James

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Leighton, Ron

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Dalyell, Tam

  Lewis, Terry

  Darling, Alistair

  Litherland, Robert

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Livingstone, Ken

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Livsey, Richard

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

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

  Dewar, Donald

  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Dixon, Don

  Loyden, Eddie

  Dobson, Frank

  McAllion, John

  Doran, Frank

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Douglas, Dick

  McCartney, Ian

  Duffy, Sir A. E. P.

  Macdonald, Calum A.

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  McFall, John

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

  Eadie, Alexander

  McKelvey, William

  Eastham, Ken

  McLeish, Henry

  Edwards, Huw

  Maclennan, Robert

  Enright, D. A.

  McMaster, Gordon

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  McNamara, Kevin

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  McWilliam, John

  Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)

  Madden, Max

  Fatchett, Derek

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Faulds, Andrew

  Marek, Dr John

  Fearn, Ronald

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

  Fisher, Mark

  Martlew, Eric

  Flannery, Martin

  Maxton, John

  Flynn, Paul

  Meacher, Michael

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Meale, Alan

  Foster, Derek

  Michael, Alun

  Foulkes, George

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  999

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'I & Bute)

  Short, Clare

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Morgan, Rhodri

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

  Morley, Elliot

  Smith, Rt Hon J. (Monk'ds E)

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Smith, J. P. (Vale of Glam)

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Snape, Peter

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Soley, Clive

  Mullin, Chris

  Spearing, Nigel

  Murphy, Paul

  Steel, Rt Hon Sir David

  Nellist, Dave

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Stephen, N. R.

  O'Brien, William

  Stott, Roger

  O'Hara, Edward

  Strang, Gavin

  O'Neill, Martin

  Straw, Jack

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Parry, Robert

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Patchett, Terry

  Thomas, Dr Dafydd Elis

  Pendry, Tom

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Pike, Peter L.

  Turner, Dennis

  Prescott, John

  Vaz, Keith

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Wallace, James

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Walley, Joan

  Radice, Giles

  Wardell, Gareth (Gower)

  Randall, Stuart

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Redmond, Martin

  Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)

  Reid, Dr John

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan

  Richardson, Jo

  Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

  Robertson, George

  Wilson, Brian

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  Winnick, David

  Rogers, Allan

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Rooker, Jeff

  Worthington, Tony

  Rooney, Terence

  Wray, Jimmy

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Ruddock, Joan

  Salmond, Alex

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Mr. Andrew Welsh and

  Sheerman, Barry

  Mr. Ieuan Wyn Jones.

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  NOES

  Adley, Robert

  Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Alexander, Richard

  Burns, Simon

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Burt, Alistair

  Allason, Rupert

  Butcher, John

  Amess, David

  Butterfill, John

  Amos, Alan

  Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

  Arbuthnot, James

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Arnold, Sir Thomas

  Carrington, Matthew

  Ashby, David

  Cash, William

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda

  Atkins, Robert

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Atkinson, David

  Chapman, Sydney

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Chope, Christopher

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Churchill, Mr

  Baldry, Tony

  Clark, Rt Hon Alan (Plymouth)

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Clark, Rt Hon Sir William

  Batiste, Spencer

  Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

  Beaumont-Dark, Anthony

  Colvin, Michael

  Bellingham, Henry

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

  Bendall, Vivian

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

  Benyon, W.

  Cormack, Patrick

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Couchman, James

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Cran, James

  Blackburn, Dr John G.

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Curry, David

  Body, Sir Richard

  Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Day, Stephen

  Boswell, Tim

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Dicks, Terry

  Bowis, John

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  Dover, Den

  Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard

  Dunn, Bob

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Brazier, Julian

  Dykes, Hugh

  Bright, Graham

  Eggar, Tim

  Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

  Emery, Sir Peter

  1000

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Knight, Greg (Derby North)

  Evennett, David

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Fallon, Michael

  Knowles, Michael

  Farr, Sir John

  Knox, David

  Favell, Tony

  Lang, Rt Hon Ian

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Latham, Michael

  Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Fishburn, John Dudley

  Lawson, Rt Hon Nigel

  Fookes, Dame Janet

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Forth, Eric

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Fox, Sir Marcus

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Franks, Cecil

  Lloyd, Sir Ian (Havant)

  Freeman, Roger

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  French, Douglas

  Lord, Michael

  Fry, Peter

  Luce, Rt Hon Sir Richard

  Gale, Roger

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Macfarlane, Sir Neil

  Gill, Christopher

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Gilmour, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Glyn, Dr Sir Alan

  Maclean, David

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Goodlad, Alastair

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Michael

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Madel, David

  Gorst, John

  Major, Rt Hon John

  Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

  Malins, Humfrey

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Mans, Keith

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Maples, John

  Gregory, Conal

  Marlow, Tony

  Griffiths, Sir Eldon (Bury St E')

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Griffiths, Peter (Portsmouth N)

  Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

  Grist, Ian

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Grylls, Michael

  Mates, Michael

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Maude, Hon Francis

  Hague, William

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Archie

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Miller, Sir Hal

  Hannam, John

  Mills, Iain

  Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Harris, David

  Mitchell, Sir David

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Moate, Roger

  Hawkins, Christopher

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Hayes, Jerry

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

  Moore, Rt Hon John

  Hayward, Robert

  Morris, M (N'hampton S)

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Morrison, Sir Charles

  Heseltine, Rt Hon Michael

  Morrison, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Moss, Malcolm

  Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

  Moynihan, Hon Colin

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Neale, Sir Gerrard

  Hill, James

  Nelson, Anthony

  Hind, Kenneth

  Neubert, Sir Michael

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Hordern, Sir Peter

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

  Norris, Steve

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

  Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Hunt, Rt Hon David

  Page, Richard

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Paice, James

  Irvine, Michael

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Jack, Michael

  Patnick, Irvine

  Jackson, Robert

  Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)

  Janman, Tim

  Patten, Rt Hon John

  Jessel, Toby

  Pattie, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey

  Pawsey, James

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Porter, Barry (Wirral S)

  Key, Robert

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Kilfedder, James

  Portillo, Michael

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Powell, William (Corby)

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Price, Sir David

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Raffan, Keith

  Knapman, Roger

  Raison, Rt Hon Sir Timothy

  1001

  Redwood, John

  Tebbit, Rt Hon Norman

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Rhodes James, Sir Robert

  Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

  Thorne, Neil

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Thurnham, Peter

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

  Rost, Peter

  Tracey, Richard

  Rowe, Andrew

  Tredinnick, David

  Rumbold, Rt Hon Mrs Angela

  Trippier, David

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Trotter, Neville

  Sackville, Hon Tom

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Sainsbury, Hon Tim

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Viggers, Peter

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Walden, George

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Walker, Bill (T'side North)

  Shelton, Sir William

  Waller, Gary

  Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

  Walters, Sir Dennis

  Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)

  Ward, John

  Shersby, Michael

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Sims, Roger

  Warren, Kenneth

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Watts, John

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  Wheeler, Sir John

  Speed, Keith

  Whitney, Ray

  Speller, Tony

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Squire, Robin

  Wilkinson, John

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  Wilshire, David

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Winterton, Mrs Ann

  Steen, Anthony

  Winterton, Nicholas

  Stern, Michael

  Wolfson, Mark

  Stevens, Lewis

  Wood, Timothy

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Woodcock, Dr. Mike

  Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

  Yeo, Tim

  Stewart, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Stokes, Sir John

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Sumberg, David

  Summerson, Hugo

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Mr. David Lightbown, and Mr. John M. Taylor.

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Question accordingly negatived.
  Bill committed to a Standing Committee.

  Local Government Finance Bill

    BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
    Ordered,
    That, at this day's sitting, the Ways and Means Motion and the Motion relating to Local Government Finance Bill (Allocation of Time) may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Wood.]
    10.38 pm
    Mr. Andrew F. Bennett: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. The whole House will feel that what happened between 10 o'clock and 10.20 pm was unsatisfactory. I appreciate that it was extremely difficult for you to decide what to do in the circumstances of some
    1002
    hon. Members being unable to get into the House. The information that you had extended the Division time by 10 minutes was available to those of us in the House, but not to those outside it. As I understand it, some hon. Members could not get into the House before the Division was completed. Could you give some thought to what happened? We hope that it will never occur again, but if it does, may we have clear guidance so that those outside the House will know that if the police warn that it is unsafe to come into the House the Division either will or will not be extended? The present situation is unsatisfactory. I hope that clear guidance can be given in case this happens again.
    Mr. Peter L. Pike: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I raised a point of order earlier. I recognise the difficulty of your position and the difficulty that arose. May I ask you to consider what happened in case it should recur, which we all hope it will not? Surely a Division should be brought to a conclusion only when hon. Members have unimpeded access to the House in accordance with the Sessional Orders. If there is any question about that, the extended time limit tends to be arbitrary, so I ask that consideration be given to the matter.
    Mr. Speaker: I shall reflect carefully on the matter. I had to exercise my discretion and I decided in the light of the report from the Serjeant at Arms that 10 minutes was an adequate period. I hope that this will not happen again. If I had decided to call the Division again, up on the screen would have gone the sign "Division Off" and Members would have drifted away. I have to exercise discretion. If hon. Members know that there is to be a Division at 10 o'clock, they should get here well on time.

    LOCAL GOVERNMENT FINANCE BILL [MONEY]
    Queen's Recommendation having been signified—
    Resolved,
    That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Local Government Finance Bill ("the Act"), it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of—

    (a) the remuneration of, and any expenses incurred by, listing officers in carrying out their functions under the Act (including the remuneration and expenses of persons, whether or not in the service of the Crown, to assist them);

    (b) any sums required to enable valuations to be carried out in accordance with the Act;

    (c) any expenses of the Secretary of State incurred in consequence of the Act; and

    (d) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other enactment.—[Mr. Wood.]

    WAYS AND MEANS

      LOCAL GOVERNMENT FINANCE BILL
      Resolved,
      That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Local Government Finance Bill ("the Act"), it is expedient to authorise the payment into the Consolidated Fund of—
      1004

      (a) any sums received by the Secretary of State in consequence of the Act; and

      (b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable into that Fund under any other enactment.—[Mr. Wood.]

  Local Government Finance Bill (Allocation of Time)
  10.41 pm
  The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. John MacGregor): I beg to move,
  That the following provisions shall apply to the remaining proceedings on the Bill—
  Committee
  1.—(1) The Standing Committee to which the Bill is allocated shall report the Bill to the House on or before 5th December 1991.
  (2) Proceedings on the Bill at a sitting of the Standing Committee on the said 5th December may continue until Eight o'clock, whether or not the House is adjourned before that time, and if the House is adjourned before those proceedings have been brought to a conclusion the Standing Committee shall report the Bill to the House on 6th December.
  2.—(1) The Standing Committee to which the Bill is allocated—

  (a) shall meet on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at half-past Ten o'clock and half-past Four o'clock; and

  (b) shall allot 18 sittings to the consideration of the Bill.

  (2) The proceedings to be taken on each of those sittings shall be as shown in the second column, and shall be brought to a conclusion at the time specified in the third column, of the following Table—

  TABLE

  Sitting

  Proceedings

  Time for conclusion of proceedings

  1st

  Clauses 1 to 5 and 70 to 74 and Schedule 5

  —

  2nd

  Clauses 1 to 5 and 70 to 74 and Schedule 5 so far as not disposed of

  —

  3rd

  Clauses 1 to 5 and 70 to 74 and Schedule 5 so far as not disposed of

  —

  4th

  Clauses 1 to 5 and 70 to 74 and Schedule 5 so far as not disposed of

  10.00 p.m.

  5th

  Clauses 6 to 13 and 75 to 80 and Schedule 1

  —

  6th

  Clauses 6 to 13 and 75 to 80 and Schedule 1 so far as not disposed of

  —

  7th

  Clauses 6 to 13 and 75 to 80 and Schedule 1 so far as not disposed of

  —

  8th

  Clauses 6 to 13 and 75 to 80 and Schedule 1 so far as not disposed of

  Midnight

  9th

  Clauses 14 to 19,81 to 83 and 97 and Schedules 2 to 4, 6 and 8

  —

  10th

  Clauses 14 to 19,81 to 83 and 97 and Schedules 2 to 4, 6 and 8 so far as not disposed of

  10.00 p.m.

  11th

  Clauses 20 to 29 and 84 to 92

  —

  12th

  Clauses 20 to 29 and 84 to 92 so far as not disposed of

  8.00 p.m.

  13th

  Clauses 30 to 52,65 to 69,93,95,96,98 and 99

  —

  14th

  Clauses 30 to 52,65 to 69,93,95,96,98 and 99 so far as not disposed of

  Midnight

  15th

  Clauses 53 to 64, 94 and 100 and Schedule 7

  —

  16th

  Clauses 53 to 64,94 and 100 and Schedule 7 so far as not disposed of

  10.00 p.m.

  17th

  Remaining proceedings

  —

  18th

  Remaining proceedings so far as not disposed of

  8.00 p.m.

  Report and Third Reading
  3.—(1) The proceedings on consideration and Third Reading of the Bill shall be completed in two allotted days.
  (2) The proceedings to be taken on each of those days shall be as shown in the second column, and shall be brought to a conclusion at the time specified in the third column, of the following Table—

  TABLE

  Allotted day

  Proceedings

  Time for conclusion of proceedings

  First day

  New Clauses

  10.00 p.m.

  Second day

  Remaining proceedings on consideration

  8.00 p.m.

  Third Reading

  10.00 p.m.

  Procedure in Standing Committee
  4.—(1) At a sitting of the Standing Committee at which any proceedings on the Bill are to be brought to a conclusion under this Order the Chairman shall not adjourn the Committee under any Order relating to the sittings of the Committee until the proceedings have been brought to a conclusion.
  (2) No Motion shall be made in the Standing Committee relating to the sitting of the Committee except by a member of the Government, and the Chairman shall permit a brief explanatory statement from the Member who moves, and from a Member who opposes, the Motion, and shall then put the Question thereon.
  5. No Motion shall be made to alter the order in which Clauses, Schedules, new Clauses and new Schedules are taken in the Standing Committee.
  Conclusion of proceedings in Committee
  6. On the conclusion of the proceedings in any Committee on the Bill the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any Question.
  Dilatory Motions
  7. No dilatory Motion with respect to, or in the course of, proceedings on the Bill shall be moved in the Standing Committee or on an allotted day except by a member of the Government, and the Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.
  Extra time on allotted days
  8. If an allotted day is one to which a Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 20 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration) stands over from an earlier day, paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted business) shall apply to the proceedings on the Bill for a period of time equal to the duration of the proceedings on that Motion.
  Private business
  9. Any private business which has been set down for consideration at Seven o'clock on an allotted day shall, instead of being considered as provided by Standing Orders, be considered at the conclusion of the proceedings on the Bil on that day, and paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted business) shall apply to the private business for a period of three hours from the conclusion of the proceedings on the Bill or, if those proceedings are concluded before Ten o'clock, for a period equal to the time between Seven o'clock and the conclusion of those proceedings.
  Conclusion of proceedings
  10.—(1) For the purpose of bringing to a conclusion any proceedings which are to be brought to a conclusion at a time appointed by this Order and which have not previously been brought to a conclusion, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall forthwith put the following Questions (but no others)—

  (a) any Question already proposed from the Chair;

  (b) any Question necessary to bring to a decision a Question so proposed (including, in the case of a new Clause or new Schedule which has been read a second time, the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill);

  1007

  (c) the Question on any amendment or Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of any Member, if that amendment is moved or that Motion is made by a member of the Government;

  (d) any other Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded;

  and on a Motion so made for a new Clause or a new Schedule, the Chairman or Mr. Speaker shall put only the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.
  (2) Proceedings under sub-paragraph (1) above shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.
  (3) If an allotted day is one on which a Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 20 (Adjournment on specific and important matter that should have urgent consideration) would, apart from this Order, stand over to Seven o'clock—

  (a) that Motion shall stand over until the conclusion of any proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order, are to be brought to a conclusion at or before that time;

  (b) the bringing to a conclusion of any proceedings on the Bill which, under this Order, are to be brought to a conclusion after that time shall be postponed for a period equal to the duration of the proceedings on that Motion.

  (4) If an allotted day is one to which a Motion for the adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 20 stands over from an earlier day, the bringing to a conclusion of any proceedings on the Bill which under this Order are to be brought to a conclusion on that day shall be postponed for a period equal to the duration of the proceedings on that Motion.
  Supplemental orders
  11.—(1) The proceedings on any Motion made in the House by a member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order shall, if not previously concluded, be brought to a conclusion one hour after they have been commenced, and paragraph (1) of Standing Order No. 14 (Exempted business) shall apply to the proceedings.
  (2) If on an allotted day on which any proceedings on the Bill are to be brought to a conclusion at a time appointed by this Order the House is adjourned, or the sitting is suspended, before that time no notice shall be required of a Motion made at the next sitting by a member of the Government for varying or supplementing the provisions of this Order.
  Saving
  12. Nothing in this Order shall—

  (a) prevent any proceedings to which this Order applies from being taken or completed earlier than is required by this Order; or

  (b) prevent any business (whether on the Bill or not) from being proceeded with on any day after the completion of all such proceedings on the Bill as arc to be taken on that day.

  Recommittal
  13.—(1) References in this Order to proceedings on consideration or proceedings on Third Reading include references to proceedings at those stages respectively, for, on or in consequence of, recommittal.
  (2) On an allotted day no debate shall be permitted on any Motion to recommit the Bill (whether as a whole or otherwise), and Mr. Speaker shall put forthwith any Question necessary to dispose of the Motion, including the Question on any amendment moved to the Question.
  Interpretation etc.
  14.—(1) In this Order—
  "allotted day" means any day (other than a Friday) on which the Bill is put down as first Government Order of the day, provided that a Motion for allotting time to the proceedings on the Bill to be taken on that day either has been agreed on a previous day, or is set down for consideration on that day;
  "the Bill" means the Local Government Finance Bill.
  (2) Standing Order No. 80 (Business Committee) and Standing Order No. 103 (Business sub-committees) shall not apply to this Order.
  The House has already had three days of debate on the Bill, so hon. Members will understand why it is so important. Let me now spell out why the timetable motion is necessary.
  As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and my hon. Friend the Minister have made clear, the community charge is to be replaced at the earliest opportunity. The council tax is a fair, balanced and carefully thought-out approach to local government finance which builds constructively on previous attempts at reform and takes full account of the consultations that my right hon. Friend initiated a year ago.
  Following a full day of debate on the Loyal Address and two days on the Second Reading of the Bill, the country is none the wiser about what the Labour party proposes on local government finance, save in one crucial respect: we now know that it is committed to ending all control on local authority expenditure. Its one positive policy is to allow high-spending Labour local authorities to impose a crippling burden of local taxation on those areas where they operate, on top of the crippling burden on national taxation which its £35,000 million of extra spending commitments would impose on all taxpayers.
  We want to ensure that the Bill is taken through Parliament with appropriate speed, yet allowing full time for debate, for one simple reason: local authorities and local taxpayers need to know where they stand. For local authorities to set their budgets in good time for the start of the financial year, they expect as much advance notice as possible of the level of central Government grant and how the total is divided between the various local government services. They need that information before they finalise their budgets. They also need to know how much they will have to finance from locally raised taxation—from the community charge or its replacement, the council tax. How much more important, therefore, to give them as much time as possible when we are changing the whole basis of the local tax and they will have to collect the council tax for the first time.
  It is crucial to understand one issue in order to understand the need for the motion. We all agree on the abolition of the community charge at the earliest possible moment. At least that is what we thought we had agreed, but we now seem to be in some doubt whether that is what the Labour party wants. Before the Opposition changed their mind on the need for speed, or appeared to do so, they sometimes taunted us by saying that we should have already moved ahead with the replacement of the community charge. That shows how little the Opposition understand the practical realities.
  First, we had to undertake consultation and then frame the legislation. Now the parliamentary consideration of the legislation will commence. There then follows a crucial practical stage on which I wish to dwell—publishing the regulations following the Royal Assent to the Bill and the preparation by local authorities for the introduction of the council tax.
  Mr. Nicholas Budgen: I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that one of the most important aspects of parliamentary procedure is to allow proper consultation between the various stages at which a Bill is read. How much time will there be between the end of the 18th sitting of the Committee and the Report and Third Reading? Can my right hon. Friend satisfy the House that there will be a genuine attempt to

  1009
  allow local authorities to consider what has been done in Committee and to make their proper representations on Report?
  Mr. MacGregor: That is a fair point. We shall ensure that between the Committee stage and Report the normal time is given—
  Mr. Budgen: How long?
  Mr. MacGregor: We will give the normal time and we will come to that when we come to it.
  Mr. Budgen: How many days?
  Mr. MacGregor: The number of days is stated in the motion that we are debating.
  Mr. Budgen: I apologise to my right hon. Friend, but plainly I did not put my point with sufficient clarity. I am talking not about the number of days on which the 18 Committee sittings are held, but the number of days that elapse between the last of the 18 sittings and Report.
  Mr. MacGregor: I cannot tell my hon. Friend the precise number of days because we never can at this stage. We will observe the normal rules. I am sure that my hon. Friend will appreciate that I misunderstood him. [Interruption.] I thought that my hon. Friend was talking about the number of days for Report, which is mentioned in the motion. My hon. Friend sought to correct me from a sedentary position, but I now understand from the intervention made in the normal way that he was talking about the number of days between the end of the Committee stage and Report. I have already said that we will follow the normal rules, but at this stage I cannot say exactly how many days will elapse. [Interruption.] If the Opposition do not want to hear the arguments for the guillotine, it is up to them. I shall not be drawn further because one is never so far ahead when announcing the business of the House. It is also important to remember that there will be a great deal of time for consideration of the Bill in another place.
  Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): My right hon. Friend, I am sure inadvertently, has given the impression of being disingenuous on this matter. I thought that the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) was perfectly clear. My hon. Friend asked how long there would be between the conclusion of the Committee stage and the beginning of the Report and subsequent stages of the Bill. Is it not the normal practice of the House that there should be a week, often two weeks, between the various stages? My right hon. Friend is more expert in such matters than I, given that he is the Leader of the House. Can he therefore tell us what that interval will be, because the Government must have planned for it?
  Mr. MacGregor: I did not understand and I was not being disingenuous. We will follow the normal rules for the period between—
  Mr. Budgen: How many days?
  Mr. MacGregor: Just a moment. We will follow the normal rules for the period between the Committee stage
  1010
  and Report. I cannot say at this stage, given that we are talking about December, exactly what the business will be that week and I shall not be drawn further on that matter.
  Mr. Bryan Gould: Answer the question.
  Mr. MacGregor: The hon. Gentleman knows that one does not announce now the business for December. There is nothing unusual about that and I have been absolutely clear.
  Mr. Gould: Surely the Leader of the House can at least give his hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) a sensible answer. We would understand it if some emergency occurred which made his answer invalid, because of the circumstances that arose. But he must be able to answer in terms of the Government's current intention about the length of time they think would be appropriate between the two stages.
  Mr. MacGregor: We shall follow the normal rules—[Interruption]—and I cannot be clearer than that. It is perfectly straightforward.
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. MacGregor: We are wasting time.
  Mr. Budgen rose—
  Mr. MacGregor: I must get on because I have made the position clear.
  Mr. Budgen rose—
  Mr. MacGregor: I will not give way again. As for the suggestion that it would be reasonable to announce now the business of the House for December—
  Several Hon. Members rose—
  Mr. Dick Douglas: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. Speaker: I will hear the hon. Member, but at present four or five hon. Members are on their feet.
  Mr. Douglas: Perhaps you can help us and the Leader of the House, Mr. Speaker, as the learned Clerks are present. Can you explain what the normal procedure is? The right hon. Gentleman does not seem capable of telling us.
  Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for me.
  Mr. MacGregor: The House knows what it is. We shall provide the normal period of two weekends for consideration of the Committee stage. That is perfectly obvious.
  Mr. Budgen rose—
  Mr. MacGregor: No, I must get on, having made the position clear.
  I had only started to develop the argument on why it was essential to have this motion. We all agree that 1 April 1993 is both the earliest and latest date for the implementation of the council tax—the earliest because we cannot do it earlier and the latest because we want to have the council tax in as quickly as possible. The Opposition have not faced up to the practical implications of that.
  There was a delay of one year and eight months between getting Royal Assent for the community charge and its introduction. That shows the formidable task that

  1011
  will face the Department of the Environment and local authorities in implementing the council tax, when it is in place.
  There are at least a dozen major areas for regulations, several of them involving more than one set of regulations. We intend to consult on the most important before Christmas and to have the regulations ready shortly after Royal Assent. We are also trying to speed up the introduction of the regulations by not giving the usual two months after Royal Assent before the Bill starts to come into practical effect. That is designed to assist local authorities. Others of the regulations will be tabled in the summer of 1992. I have a list of all the regulations that will be required, or at least the major areas for them, and they are quite formidable.
  If we did not get the Bill until towards the end of May, for example, it would be serious for local authorities. Only when Royal Assent is achieved can both the Department and local authorities have an assurance about the ways in which they can proceed on the implementation of the council tax.
  Mr. Douglas: What investigations will take place between the Scottish Office and sheriff officers about their role? It is becoming clear that the role of the sheriff officers in Scotland is extremely unsatisfactory. Does the Scottish Office intend to have such consultations and to make a report when, in particular, schedule 8 comes before the Committee?
  Mr. MacGregor: That is a matter for debate in Committee rather than for this debate on the timetable motion.
  Local authorities now say that they need a year after the major regulations have been made available to them, so there is a clear need for speed in this legislation if we are to give local authorities enough time to implement the council tax effectively and meet the 1 April 1993 deadline. Indeed, in the internal discussions now taking place between the Department and the local authorities, the latter are saying that they want the draft regulations and guidance on them as soon as possible and the formal regulations as soon as possible after that—[Interruption.]They need both. We intend to get the draft regulations on the major issues out for consultation before Christmas, but local authorities need the formal regulations as soon as possible so that they know exactly where they stand.
  Local authorities need the regulations for a variety of reasons, such as the introduction of the computer system. As anyone with experience of introducing a major computer system will know, it involves a huge number of man hours. Therefore, local authorities need to know many details as soon as possible before they can begin that. They also need them for the administrative systems—working out who is entitled to discounts—to set up the benefits and collection systems and for information gathering. The Department needs to have much of the feedback from local authorities by September so that it can work out grants, central Government expenditure implications of discounts, RSG distribution and so on. That is a clear reason why we need the Bill to move quickly.
  For all those reasons, we cannot meet the April 1993 deadline unless we move on the timescale that we have proposed to the House. We want to get on with the Bill quickly, but, at the same time, we want plenty of time to
  1012
  press the Opposition as hard as we can for an explanation of their policies on local government finance and to carry through the detailed consideration of the Bill.
  I suspect that the Labour party will oppose the timetable motion. Is that because, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State asked, they want to keep the community charge? Labour Members say no. They say that they have promised co-operation in repealing the community charge, but everyone knows that one cannot repeal one form of local government tax without replacing it. Now that we have a replacement in the form of the council tax, where is Labour's promised co-operation in getting rid of the community charge?
  I have already stated clearly why we need to follow the timetable to get the replacement in place by 1 April 1993. I suspect that Labour's opposition to the timetable motion is mainly to do with the absence of a clear policy on their part. Instead, they complain about the parliamentary proceedings that we are following. The timetable motion breaks new ground and I have explained the fundamental reason for that. It concerns the implementation of the council tax. However, I was also asked about the procedural point. I believe that this way of proceeding ensures a properly structured debate, which is in the best interests of the House and the country.
  Mr. Budgen: Will my right hon. Friend give way?
  Mr. MacGregor: I have not yet elaborated my argument. Once again, I am not allowed to do so before my hon. Friend asks me to give way, but I always give way to my hon. Friend.
  Mr. Budgen: Does my right hon. Friend agree that all that talk about a properly structured debate simply means that the Government are taking away from the Opposition their right to put proper pressure on the Government and to clear the Government's minds about which points are important and which points can be conceded?
  Mr. MacGregor: No, I do not agree. Since 1979–80, we have had timetable motions on Bills after they have started in Standing Committee on 27 occasions. In so many of those, the guillotine motion was proposed after the Committee stage had started, but often at a point when no reasonable progress has been made.
  Our practice in the House as regards timetable motions has been to fall back on them as a response to much time being taken in Committee on the first few clauses of major Government Bills. Inevitably, with the pressure of other legislation on the time of the House, that means that discussion of what is left of timetabled Bills is taken at an accelerated pace. I am not making a party political point, because there are examples from both Labour and Conservative Administrations.
  In 1967–68, the Transport Bill, which had 169 clauses, took 91 hours in Committee to reach clause 38 before a guillotine was imposed which allowed a further 100 hours for the remaining 131 clauses and 18 schedules.
  In 1974–75, the Petroleum Submarine Pipe-lines Bill, which had 49 clauses, took 60 hours to reach clause 19 before a guillotine was imposed which allowed a further 22 hours for the remaining 30 clauses. A long time was spent on a few clauses and a short time was spent on the remaining large number of clauses. Exactly the same pattern has been followed with some of the most important Bills since 1979. In 1984–85, the Local

  1013
  Government Bill, with 98 clauses, which was not very different from this year's Bill, took 86 hours to reach clause 16 before a guillotine, which allowed a further 59 hours for the remaining 82 clauses.
  Mr. Thomas Graham: The Government are being shifty on the poll tax and the council tax. Local councils are facing terrible problems trying to collect money and people are having enormous difficulties paying their poll tax. The Government are now talking about giving a 100 per cent. rebate on the council tax. Why will they not give us time to debate the matter so that if the council tax comes into operation it will at least eliminate the problems of people who genuinely cannot pay and the difficulties faced by local authorities because of the subsequent lack of money? Will we have the chance for such debates, or will we continue to have such shifty debates when we do not discuss the fundamental issues?
  Mr. MacGregor: We are not having shifty debates. The hon. Gentleman's point can of course be debated in Committee. If he wants the 100 per cent. rebates which he mentioned to be implemented, he must want the Bill to be enacted as quickly as possible, which is another reason for moving on with the Bill.
  Many Bills, including the Local Government Finance Bill of 1987–88, spend a long time in Committee where a few clauses are discussed, the guillotine is then used and a much shorter time is spent discussing a much greater number of clauses. This Local Government Finance Bill has 117 clauses and 14 schedules. The timetable motion provides for just as much time to be spent, proportionately, on those clauses as did all the other Bills from the outset.
  Mr. John McFall: I was a member of the Committee that discussed the Local Government Finance Bill in 1987 when 182 clauses were proposed by the Government. More than 200 Lords amendments were proposed, with the result that the final legislation was thoroughly bad—so bad that today each and every Member encounters problems with the poll tax in their surgeries. Will those problems be repeated with this legislation because of the guillotine? That is what Members from all parties are afraid of and that is the nub of the problem which the Leader of the House should resolve.
  Mr. MacGregor: The hon. Gentleman should address the point that I made earlier: if he wants the council tax to be in place in April 1993, it is essential to follow the sort of timetable that we are suggesting.
  I should like to make a point that I have proposed as a personal point of view to the Select Committee on Sittings of the House chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling). It seems that the best use of precious parliamentary time is to ensure that the whole of a Bill of such importance is subject to adequate discussion and scrutiny and the timetable motion allows for precisely that. It will be for the Standing Committee to determine how long it spends on the various parts of the Bill. The timetable motion establishes a framework designed to guarantee that the
  1014
  whole Bill is given adequate discussion in Committee, despite any attempts to delay and filibuster on particular clauses.
  The times specified in the motion for when the knives fall on various groups of clauses merely determine when the Questions are put in Committee. If the Committee so wishes, there is nothing to stop it carrying on after that point on the next group of clauses, thus increasing the time available overall for discussion.
  Mr. Allen McKay: The right hon. Gentleman is missing an important point about Committees. It is all very well cramming all the hours in Committee into one week, but Oppositions depend on outside bodies—local authorities, local authority treasurers and local council leaders—to give them information about Bills. There will not be enough time for that with this Bill and that is a denial of democracy.
  Mr. MacGregor: I understand that, but there has been prolonged consultation on these proposals and the Bill has been available for a considerable number of days.
  We have to strike a balance between parliamentary consideration, which will take several months, and the need to get the council tax into operation by April 1993——
  Mr. David Blunkett: Given that the Committee will meet three days a week, starting at 10.30 am and breaking in the afternoon, does the right hon. Gentleman really believe that discussion after midnight is the right way to apply detailed scrutiny to legislation of this sort? We all know about the difficulties of debating at that time of night. Would not a debate held so late at night be more about mice and pumpkins than about the legislative framework for a sensible, democratic Parliament such as ours?
  Mr. MacGregor: I well recall debating Finance Bills introduced by the last Labour Government well after midnight in Committee. I repeat: we must endeavour to strike the right balance between a reasonable amount of time for parliamentary consideration and getting Royal Assent in time to introduce the council tax——
  Mr. John Maxton: One danger of the timetable motion is that, because the Bill has not been thought through properly by the Government, they will use the Committee stage to table large numbers of their own amendments to try to improve the Bill. The Chair will then give those amendments precedence over Opposition amendments. So the bulk of the time will be taken up with trying to clear up the mess that the Government have created.
  Mr. MacGregor: I can only repeat that we must strike a balance between parliamentary consideration and putting the council tax in place. I assure the hon. Gentleman that the Bill has been thoroughly thought through.
  A timetable motion along these lines enhances the consideration of any Bill. That is why in my memorandum to the Select Committee on Sittings of the House I made clear my view that a much greater use of timetabling, as recommended by the Procedure Committee—the Chairman of that Committee is in his place this evening—would be an important improvement in the effectiveness of our procedures.

  1015
  If the Labour party opposes this motion, it can only be for one of three reasons. Perhaps Opposition Members fear the amount of time that we shall provide to expose the bankruptcy of their policies on local government finance; or perhaps they wish to deny the House enough time to debate the Bill in a structured way; or perhaps they wish to prevent the council tax from being properly prepared and implemented by 1993. That is why it is right to present the motion and to ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to support it.
  The details of the motion are self-explanatory, but I should like to repeat one important point. As I have already made clear, nothing in the motion prevents the Committee from sitting after the guillotine falls in order to spend extra time on the clauses in what could be described as the next compartment. Ministers would obviously reflect the views of the Committee as a whole in deciding when to move the adjournment. I assure the House that, if it wishes, the Committee can sit much later into the night. Thus the total number of hours provided by the motion is very much a minimum. The times at which the guillotine falls have been agreed following discussions, but I am sure that none of us would wish to lay down to the Committee exactly how much time it must take.
  The proposals in the motion provide adequate time for debate to ensure that the whole of this vital Bill is subjected to proper parliamentary scrutiny. We must ensure the minimum amount of time for the regulations to be promulgated, for guidance to be given to local authorities and for them to make the detailed preparations for the introduction of the council tax. If that is not done, the tax will not be in place by April 1993, which is what most hon. Members want and what we should like. I commend the motion to the House.
  11.11 pm
  Dr. John Cunningham: The Leader of the House started his speech with an error and made a totally unconvincing case for the motion. He started by saying that the Bill has already had three days of debate. Presumably he was counting a day of the debate on the Gracious Speech which took place before the Bill had been published. He cannot say that the House had a day's debate on a Bill that it had not seen.
  Mr. MacGregor: I am afraid that, uncharacteristically, the hon. Gentleman started with an error himself. I did not make an error. The Bill was published on the Friday before the debate on the Gracious Speech.
  Dr. Cunningham: The right hon. Gentleman went on to say that he was following normal procedures. The motion owes everything to the Government's failed election strategy and nothing to the proper scrutiny of legislation that will affect every home in the land.
  Once again the Government are setting unenviable records with their summary attitude to important legislation. We have seen and heard it all before. For a decade the Government have offered local taxpayers salvation. First, there were the targets and penalties set by the Secretary of State for the Environment when he formerly held that office. Local Government Finance Bills came thick and fast throughout the 1980s and guillotines fell upon them with monotonous regularity. Targets and penalties, rate capping, retrospective legislation and the poll tax were all guillotined and railroaded through the
  1016
  House in the so-called interests of local taxpayers. They were all said to be the final solution to the problems of more accountability and a fairer deal for ratepayers. Here we are again with the latest Tory tax.
  The Conservative justification for those actions makes hilarious reading. Hansard is replete with justifications for the need for haste and change and the reason why the latest piece of Conservative manic legislation would put everything right. It never did. The consequences for local taxpayers, local services, local authority jobs and, of course, for local government in general are not funny. It was all incoherent opportunism then and it is all incoherent opportunism now, but it is again about to be given the force of law.
  The Government still lack any coherent philosophy on local government, or any principles on which to base their approach to local government in Britain. The poll tax—their flagship—is now to be ignominiously scrapped, but not for at least one more year.
  We have heard the same hollow arguments and transparent claims paraded by the Leader of the House and his right hon. and hon. Friends—a fairer system; it must be guillotined; it must be on the statute book as soon as possible. No one believes any of this any more. We have had too many bitter experiences. This time, the Tory imperative is not to save the taxpayer but—a vain attempt—to save their political skins.
  There were three lines about the poll tax in the Tory manifesto at the last general election. They cost the people of Britain £15 billion—£5 billion a line. When the Bill to introduce the poll tax was guillotined into law, the Secretary of State for Energy, who was then Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Colchester, South and Maldon (Mr. Wakeham), praised it. He said:
  "Our proposed community charge will introduce the accountability which is currently lacking … The Bill will achieve those objectives through the replacement of domestic rates by a fairer community charge, the introduction of a simpler and more stable system".
  Who believes that any more? He continued:
  "Local electors and local businesses are crying out for a change from an unfair system of local revenue raising to a more equitable one that will increase local government accountability and strengthen local democracy."—[Official Report, 22 February 1988; Vol. 128, c. 28–32.]
  All that is to be thrown out of the window now. The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities actually said at the Tory party conference that the poll tax would be a vote winner. If it is so wonderful, why the headlong rush to get rid of it?
  When he was Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Colchester, South and Maldon adduced in support of the guillotine the fact that the Conservatives had a mandate for the poll tax. This is the first time that I can recall—it is probably a constitutional and historical first—a Government using a guillotine not to get their manifesto commitments in but to get their manifesto commitments out. That is what the Leader of the House is asking the House to do.
  It is instructive to reflect on how the House treated the poll tax Bill or, more fairly, the way that the Government treated it. On Second Reading, it had 131 clauses and 12 schedules. By the time that it came out of Committee, because of huge amendments and additions, it had 164 clauses and 16 schedules. It then went to another place, where it stayed for quite some time, and came back with

  1017
  417 new amendments on 66 pages. They too were railroaded through the House of Commons in a few short hours.
  The Leader of the House and his right hon. and hon. Friends no longer have any credibility on these matters, and they have the brass neck to come to the House and ask us to put up with it all again. Several times the Leader of the House spoke of following normal procedures when he is recommending abnormal procedures.
  Mr. Budgen: Is it not plain that the Leader of the House was saying that he hoped to have the minimum possible period between the end of the Committee stage and Report? That may be a legitimate way to deal with a non-controversial Bill that does not require a great deal of consultation, but this is a major constitutional Bill on which we want the responses not only of officers in local government but of locally elected people and the population generally. There ought to be not a bare minimum but a proper period of national consultation.
  Dr. Cunningham: The hon. Gentleman is right, and I know that in truth the Leader of the House shares his view. Recently the right hon. Gentleman attended a sitting of the Select Committee on Sittings of the House, which is chaired by the right hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling). In evidence, he said:
  "The Opposition must have adequate opportunity to oppose, and its legitimate rights must be sustained."
  That is what the right hon. Gentleman said only a few days ago. Yet here he is flattening at one fell swoop by means of a guillotine motion the Opposition's right to oppose. The right hon. Gentleman cannot face both ways, one way in the Chamber and in an entirely different way when giving evidence to the right hon. Member for Westmorland Lonsdale and others. As my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay) said, there will not be adequate time and opportunity for Government Back-Bench Members to obtain briefing on amendments, let alone Opposition Members.
  There has been talk of normal procedures. As the proposed Committee will sit on three consecutive days each week and sometimes, on the admission of the Leader of the House, late into the night, will he guarantee that Committee Hansards will be available in the normal way for Committee members to scrutinise what Ministers have said in debates that may not have finished, or in debates that may be germane to subsequent debates and amendments? Will the right hon. Gentleman give us the assurance that the reports will be available? Would he like to give us that assurance now? Come on! The answer is no answer at all. That is the response of a Minister who a few moments ago was telling the House that normal procedures would be followed. We know that no precedent for the procedures that we are discussing has ever been proposed before by any Government on any Bill, not even on a tuppenny-ha'penny Bill of no consequence let alone a Bill of the magnitude and significance that we are discussing.
  The Government's proposals would be easy to understand if they had a reasonable record on these matters, but I have made clear briefly that their record is abysmal. The hon. Member for Enfield and Southgate (Mr. Portillo) and others have abandoned their commitment—this certainly goes for the Under-Secretary
  1018
  of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett) and most Conservative Members—to the poll tax. All of them—I say that unless a Conservative Member wants to intervene to say that he opposed it—marched through the Government Lobby in support of it, and did so on many occasions. They supported also guillotine motions that related to it. They seem to have changed their tune somewhat tonight.
  The poll tax legislation was guillotined in and it will be guillotined out, but it will not entirely disappear until we have a Labour Government after the next general election.
  We face a familiar scene but one that has a new twist. There is to be unprecedented forcing of legislation through the House. It is clear that when the political future of Tory Members is at stake they care little about the proper scrutiny of tax proposals and the expenditure of public money.
  The poll tax Bill and the new Tory tax Bill bear some comparison. The earlier measure had 131 clauses and 12 schedules when it began its tortuous journey through the House. The Bill that is before us has 117 clauses and 14 schedules. The previous measure was in Committee for 72 hours before it was guillotined. Unlike that which the Leader of the House implied, there was no question of any filibuster. I led the opposition to it on behalf of the Labour party and, far from filibustering, I recall that the Government tabled more amendments in Committee than the Opposition. We were anxious to proceed to the important parts of the Bill. In total, that Bill had 136 hours in Committee. For a Bill of not dissimilar length and importance, the Leader of the House is suggesting 80 to 100 hours for scrutiny, yet he has the nerve to say that he is proposing normal procedures. In fact, he is breaking with all precedent, and he knows it.
  This guillotine motion is symptomatic of a Government who have come to treat the House of Commons, and, for that matter, the British people, with total contempt in their approach to local government finance. It is a Government who cannot be trusted with the reform of local government finance, just as they cannot be trusted with the future of the national health service, our children's education or the handling of the economy.
  The timetable for the council tax Bill has been determined by one criterion above all others—the panic-stricken attempt by the Prime Minister to hang on to office, with a discredited group of Ministers hanging on to his coat tails. That is the real reason why we are here tonight. The motion makes a mockery of the procedures of the House and its proper role in the scrutiny of Bills. We should not be surprised by the way the Government are acting in forcing through yet another of their ill-conceived pieces of local government legislation, because that has been the hallmark of their time in office.
  Why is the House being asked to accept the unprecedented step of having a Standing Committee for a major Bill that sits on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and, from what the Leader of the House implied, could be in almost continuous session?
  The Prime Minister should seriously consider the proposal of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, which is rightly concerned that poll tax collection will become even more difficult in coming months because of the mess and confusion that the Government have created. The AMA has suggested a national advertising campaign drawing the public's attention to their liability to pay the poll tax, which is not yet even abolished. There could even

  1019
  be a large poster sited across the road from 10 Downing street for the Prime Minister's benefit. After all, the Government have always been more than ready to spend millions and millions of pounds of taxpayers' money on lavish advertising campaigns to promote other aspects of Government policy, so why should not they do so on this occasion?
  The unpalatable fact remains for us all that every person who gets a poll tax bill in this financial year will find one dropping on his doormat next financial year as well. No one is in any doubt about where the responsibility lies for that. In spite of the bluster of the Leader of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) and others have repeatedly offered to co-operate, as we did in the last Session of Parliament, on Bills to abolish the poll tax immediately. The delay in abolishing that piece of Tory folly is entirely due to the Government's unwillingness to co-operate in getting rid of it as quickly as possible.
  Try as the Government might, fiddle with the evidence as they might, the Government will not escape, first, the responsibility for poll tax itself, and, secondly, their unenviable record in railroading rotten legislation through the House. For those reasons, we shall certainly oppose the motion.
  11.28 pm
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) enjoyed making that speech and the House enjoyed some of his remarks. The trouble is that many of them were carbon copies of speeches made from that Bench over the past 20 years.
  I and many hon. Members in the House tonight have listened to a vast number of guillotine debates. They are predictable. I have not participated in one before, but I thought that it was perhaps worth making a contribution on this occasion, for a variety of reasons—[Interruption.] If my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) bothered to listen, he would discover why I am making this speech. I shall listen to his speech without the discourtesy of interrupting him.
  What clearly emerges is that the Government want the Bill to go through. Every Government wants its legislation to go through. Every Opposition express their anger at the contempt with which the House is being treated and the contempt with which local government is being treated and always accuse the Government of flagrantly abusing the processes of democracy.
  It is easy to make the sort of speech that the hon. Member for Copeland made. He merely has to look back at speeches made by hon. Members from both sides of the Chamber during the past 20 years, changing the quotations, the odd word arid the title of the Bill. In that way he can make his speech without any preparation. He adapts the words of his predecessors and the Government spokesman does the same. The tragedy is that none of the speeches will alter a single vote when it comes to the Division.
  Mr. Budgen: Does my hon. Friend appreciate that in the whole of the period between 1945 and 1951, when the House was considering the most major social changes, there were only three guillotine motions, and that in 1988 there were 13? Does not my hon. Friend think that at the
  1020
  very least he should address the allegation that the Government have got into the habit of bashing their legislation through under the guillotine?
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: Some of us were elected to carry through legislation detailed in election addresses, and I propose to continue to do that. As for the other point that my hon. Friend made, that is such a hoary chestnut that it has been answered over and over again and I do not propose to waste the time of the House repeating ad nauseam the arguments which, if he had been present, he would have heard on previous occasions.
  The purpose of the motion is, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said, to give enough time to discuss each clause sensibly. Let me now say why I decided to speak in the debate. My first experience of participating in a guillotined debate was when I was a junior Minister with responsibility for housing in 1979–80 when we put through the right-to-buy legislation. We sat afternoon and night, ploughing on, wasting time on early clauses until the macho characteristics of the Opposition had been sufficiently satisfied and the Government business managers had been sufficiently satisfied to table a guillotine motion. The trouble was that much of the argument was useless because it was addressed to unimportant clauses and many of the important clauses were not properly dealt with. That was not the way to proceed.
  Timetable motions always lead the Opposition to claim that not enough time has been given. Let me draw the attention of the House to the report of the Select Committee on Procedure which was published on 23 April 1985. On page 25, it says:
  "Timetables on controversial bills"—
  no one would argue that this is not a controversial bill—
  "should be introduced much earlier than at present. To this end there should be a Legislative Business Committee … of thirteen Members appointed by the Committee of Selection".
  It goes on to say that that Committee
  "should consider all Government bills committed to a Standing Committee. If it considers that a Bill is likely to require more than twenty-five hours in standing committee"—
  I guess that everyone thinks that—
  "the LBC should recommend a maximum number of hours for consideration of the Bill by the standing committee."
  My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has recommended a minimum, not a maximum, number of hours. It goes on to say:
  "Such recommendations … should be implemented without debate."
  That report was carried by eight votes to one with the support of Labour, Liberal and Conservative Members. That is the point that should be addressed. I am speaking of the considered view of the Procedure Committee, not some decision made by a fly-by-night business managers' Committee. The Procedure Committee is a very distinguished body.
  Mr. Wilkinson: No one is casting aspersions on the Procedure Committee, or disputing its merits; I am sure that it was both distinguished and wise. None the less, we must conduct our affairs according to the procedures that are currently in place.
  Furthermore—if we are to deal with hypothetical examples—it could equally be said that a pre-legislative Select Committee should be established to take evidence from experts. My hon. Friend's remarks derive from a recommendation based on the proposition that a

  1021
  pre-legislative Committee should decide how much time should be allocated. No such consensus is involved in our procedure, however; we must decide on the merits of the motion that we are debating.
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: The Leader of the House has read the Procedure Committee's report, and has decided that this is how we should proceed. I remind the House that among the members of that Committee was the right hon. J. Enoch Powell, who gave his approval—and there was no stauncher defender of the rights of Parliament. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton (Mr. Maxwell-Hyslop) is another great expert on these matters. Such people will not be bludgeoned into presenting foolish proposals.
  Mr. Allen McKay: The hon. Gentleman misses the vital point that the Select Committee is composed of Members of all parties. This pig's ear of a motion has been decided by hon. Members on only one side of the House—perhaps by only one or two people. That is a negation of our responsibility to decide, as a House, what the House should do. It should not be a case of the Secretary of State's deciding what the Opposition should do. It is one thing for a special Committee, perhaps a Select Committee, to make a judgment; it is another for a motion such as this to be rammed down our throats.
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: The hon. Gentleman puts his case very reasonably, but I cannot agree. If the Procedure Committee, having received masses of evidence, weighed that evidence and reached a conclusion with the support of all parties in the House, says that a maximum number of hours should be laid down, and my right hon. Friend proposes a minimum number, it is clear that he has gone beyond what the Committee proposed. I think that that is more than reasonable.
  Mr. Martin Flannery: The hon. Gentleman has omitted a vital point. He has not told us what happened when the House received the report from that—as he described it—distinguished Committee. What did the House do about it?
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: Alas, like so many Select Committee reports, it was not adopted. Long ago, I served on that Committee. It produces extremely good reports, but, unfortunately, they are not always given debating time, and they are not always accepted. I hope that, when the House accepts the motion later tonight, a precedent will be set.
  Let me be frank. I should like all legislation to be timetabled. That was hinted at in a review of legislation presented a long time ago by Sir David Renton, which was warmly supported.
  Mr. Budgen: Will my hon. Friend give way?
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: I promise that I shall do so when I finish this passage; I would not dream of not giving way to my hon. Friend.
  There is no point in the House deciding that it will examine the hours during which it sits and the conditions in which it works if it does not intend to reform the structure of legislation. That is why I hope that the passing of the motion will create a precedent. It will affect both
  1022
  sides of the House. Governments become the Opposition and the Opposition become the Government. [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, Hear."] Of course. I am looking ahead to the year 2000. On this occasion, though, I am trying not to be too partisan; it is too important an issue. We must try to ensure that the House is given sufficient time to consider legislation so that all the clauses can be considered properly.
  Mr. Budgen: Does my hon. Friend agree that respect for the authority of the law arises not because the Government have bashed legislation through but because that legislation has been subjected to the full procedure then in force, so that by the time it has been considered each and every one of us can be said to have given our consent to it? The danger when dealing with legislation of this sort, which has been the subject of contempt and non-collection, is that those who pay reluctantly may feel that the legislation that comes out of this truncated procedure has not been accorded the proper majesty of the procedure and that in some way it can be treated with contempt, as though it were lesser law.
  Sir Geoffrey Finsberg: It is a pity that my hon. Friend prejudices his case by using the words "bashed through." They are not words that his predecessor would have used. Moreover, I do not believe that what he has said is relevant to the debate. The mere fact of having three times the amount of time to consider the legislation would not necessarily make it any better. We might hear more speeches from my hon. Friend, but the legislation would not necessarily be improved in any way. Therefore, the House would be well advised to pass the motion. We know from the start exactly when each clause will be given time and we shall be able to decide how much time we want to spend on individual clauses.
  I have tried to get away from the usual quoting of five guillotines in one night and X number of guillotines in 1945. That is not the point. The point is whether this is the way to space out the legislation, giving sufficient time for consideration of each clause. What we do not want to do, as so often happens, is to find that 10, 20 or 30 clauses have to go through on the nod because the knife has come down and that we have to leave it to the other place to do our work for us. By this means we shall do our work in a more efficient way than we have done up to now.
  11.42 pm
  Mr. David Bellotti: At the beginning of the speech of the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg), I thought that the Government had written his script, but as he proceeded I realised that even the Government could not have written it for him.
  After listening to the debate, it seems to me that the Government are in a very large hole which they continue to dig. There has been no consultation on the timetable with the Opposition parties. They may have wished to suggest how the Government should proceed. No Opposition Member likes the council tax, but we dislike the poll tax, too, and we are only too willing to help the Government get rid of it at the very first opportunity. However, having introduced the poll tax and inflicted such suffering on the people of this country, the Government

  1023
  are only too pleased to grab at the first thing they see in an effort to get themselves off the poll tax hook as quickly as possible.
  The proposed timetable is absolutely crazy for the size of the task. Local government finance is one of the most complex issues that the House will ever have to debate. Although we shall have 75 hours plus—depending on the time that some of the sittings finish—the proceedings will have to be concluded in just two weeks and two days. There will be little time for reflection between one Committee sitting and the next. There will be little time to consider something that is very important, such as whether a particular clause that was considered at the previous sitting will have an effect on following clauses.
  Why are the Government rushing the Bill through in such a way? If the council tax has merit, surely they will want to persuade hon. Members and the general public that it is worth looking forward to. But no, the reverse is true. This must be a deliberate act by the Government because they do not want people outside to realise what the tax will be like for them.
  Conservative Back-Benchers have shown their dislike for the council tax in the debate on Second Reading. If they showed such dislike at that stage, clearly there will be considerable disputes in Committee and even more disagreement when the general public learn about the tax. That is why the Government have to rush the Bill through before too many people realise what the tax will be like.
  The rush also displays the Government's attitude towards local government. I was first elected to a district council in 1979—a very significant year. Every year since then the Government have attacked what that local authority, on which I sat for 12 years, has tried to do, whether it be the delivery of services, or raising the resources to pay for them. The Government have centralised control and in some cases they have inflicted a vindictiveness which is not merely unwelcome but which stops the local authorities providing some of those services.
  Central Government should be working in partnership with local government. The Bill should be discussed until local government reaches the consensus that it also believes that local taxation is the right method to pay for the services that they and not the House have to deliver.
  When one considers the costs that the Government are prepared to allocate to set up the council tax, all is revealed. They will meet only three quarters of the cost, in the same year that local government will continue to lose millions of pounds of poll tax which they cannot collect as a result of action by the same Government. Not only will millions of pounds be lost, but millions of people will lose out under the council tax because the charges will be greater for them than they were under the poll tax.
  The Government have already got many of their sums wrong. They have over-estimated the value of properties and, as a result, the tax will go up. The Government still have not answered some questions to the satisfaction of the House—including some Conservative as well as Opposition Members. For example, if they are going to exempt the majority of students and those on income support from 1993, cannot they exempt everyone from the 20 per cent. of the poll tax that they have to pay from 1992? That could be provided for in a clause in the Bill. We could pass it with the timetabled Bill and we could stop some of
  1024
  the suffering. A number of right hon. and hon. Friends have suggested that during the past two days of debate, but we have heard nothing from the Government about it.
  It will be necessary carefully to study some of the clauses in the 163 pages of the Bill. The Government believe that students will be exempt, but there is a grey area. What happens if some students live in a property with some working adults? The Government have not answered that question, so we shall need to debate it and table amendments.
  The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. Michael Portillo): I provided the answers.
  Mr. Bellotti: I was here for the winding-up speeches and I am not satisfied with the answers. We shall have to consider the matter carefully in Committee and there may be a case for some amendments.
  Another grey area is the right of entry to property. It cannot be right that the House could pass a law that would permit estate agents to enter homes at 24 hours' notice to ascertain what they are like inside. That right is in the Bill. There need to be more safeguards and the 24 hours' notice needs to be extended. Is it right that banks, building societies and other institutions should be required, with 21 days' notice, to give information about valuation of properties? The contract between an individual and a bank or building society will be deviated from because the Government could require that information to be given to a valuation officer. Many aspects of the Bill will require serious consideration in Committee and the timetable motion does not provide the time necessary.
  Dr. Norman A Godman: Does not the timetable motion simply make plain the Government's contempt for this place? At a moment when there is growing uncertainty about the power of this place vis-à-vis central institutions of the European Community, the Government make matters worse by treating the House so disgracefully.
  Mr. Bellotti: The hon. Gentleman makes a telling point. The Government want to centralise decision-making and keep power here at Westminster. They do not want local authorities to have powers to raise funds or to deliver services. That is the crux of the Bill and all the local government legislation that the Government have introduced since 1979.
  There is another reason why the motion is so necessary and it becomes clear when one looks at how the council tax will affect individuals. I shall give one example, although there are dozens. Hon. Members will understand why I choose West Oxfordshire. Under the poll tax two people there pay £481, but under the council tax that sum will increase to over £500. In the south-east, in particular in Eastbourne and Sussex, there are dozens of such examples. The majority of people will be worse off under the council tax.
  Obviously, the Government are trying to rush the Bill through Parliament as quickly as they can, hoping to attract as little attention as possible, and to get the general election over with in the hope of being returned. They are in for a shock. People are waking up. After the poll tax fiasco, they will look carefully at the council tax. They will not allow it to pass as they did the poll tax.
  The Government had other opportunities that they could have taken, but they turned their face against them.

  1025
  As an hon. Member said earlier, this is another missed opportunity for local government finance. The Government made great play of accountability, but local government can be made accountable in other ways—not to the House, but to the people who elect them to deliver services. There should be and is no need to cap a local authority. One could introduce a fair voting system. Whatever system we have, councillors should be accountable to their local electorate, not to this place.
  I am disappointed that the Government have not yet seriously considered the one tax that has been proved to work in other European countries and the north Americas, and that is a local income tax. No one can dispute that it is easy to collect. It is cheap to administer—certainly cheaper than the rates, the poll tax or the council tax. We will not have an opportunity to debate that in Committee, so it is right to draw attention to it now. Above all, to use a phrase which the Government, Opposition and general public have used many times, a local income tax is certainly related to the ability to pay. It, too, could be in place by April 1993—the exact timetable that the Government have for the council tax.
  The Leader of the House began by saying that the proposals were carefully thought through. I cannot understand how he can stand at the Dispatch Box and say that when, clearly, they have been rushed. He said that the proposals were balanced, but they are unfair. People will find it an unfair tax. The proposals are certainly not well thought out. The Leader of the House said that they were. Does that mean that there will be no Government amendments in Committee? That would be interesting.
  The Bill and the guillotine come from a Government who are on their last legs. With the poll tax the Government shot themselves in the stomach. With the council tax they will shoot themselves in the head.
  11.54 pm
  Mr. John Biffen: I do not believe that the House, confronted by a Bill of this complexity and contentiousness, can be altogether happy about the arrangements for its consideration in Committee. However, I know that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is operating under constraints and that he feels that those arrangements represent the best way to proceed.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) demonstrated characteristic generosity in trying to elevate the nature of the debate into a consideration of timetabling generally. We know that procedural reform is now in vogue and that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House has a strong disposition towards general and automatic timetabling. It is a disposition with which I wholly agree.
  On this occasion the House is entitled, given the nature of the automatic timetable, to stop for a moment and to put a question mark against whether the organisation of automatic timetabling should be within the gift of the Whips' Office—the usual channels, that immaculate organisation whose skill and credibility is admired by all—or whether the House, perhaps in a mood of self-survival——
  Dr. Godman: Generosity.
  Mr. Biffen: It depends on how one judges such things. Would the House seek to be the authority for such automatic timetabling?
  This evening the usual channels, through my right hon. Friend, are the authors of the automatic timetable. I accept that, but the House would be well advised to suspend judgment on whether that authority should lie with the usual channels or, more generally, with the House.
  The hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Mr. Flannery) mentioned what was said on this subject in the excellent report produced by my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) and his colleagues. The words of Hansard speak little, but the Division lists say it all: they are padded with payroll. The House may well wonder why. Were all the Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State turned into constitutional enthusiasts? I suggest that the usual channels have a strong interest in seeing that they control this important piece of procedure. That may be what the House will accept, but let the House be fully aware of the nature of the decision.
  11.57 pm
  Mr. Michael Foot: I am glad to have the chance to follow the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), whom I certainly regard as far and away the most successful Leader of the House in all my time here. It was following the right hon. Gentleman's removal from that high post that the Government fell apart. I accept that it has taken a few years for the process to be completed, but everyone who studies the history books will be able to trace the downfall of the Thatcher Government—as some may still call it—to the time when she was foolish enough to remove the right hon. Gentleman from the duties that he was carrying out so successfully.
  Because I have such regard for the right hon. Gentleman, it makes me all the more discontented to disagree with him about the proposition of permanent or automatic timetables. Of course, if such a procedure were adopted by the House it would be better to have it subject to agreement between the usual channels than merely on the diktat of the Government. That would be an improvement. Even so, there is a great deal to be said against timetable motions. I have attended more debates on these matters than any other hon. Member and I vividly recall many of them. But on none of those occasions did I put the case in the way that the Leader of the House put his case tonight, making it all the more necessary for us to oppose him now.
  I never put the case for a timetable motion on the ground that we should make it a permanent feature of our parliamentary procedures. I took that view for many good reasons, partly because I always believed that it would play far too much into the hands of the Government. All Governments like to have the opportunity of introducing guillotines at certain times, but that desire should be resisted for the good reasons put forward by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen). That is why we should be cautious about proceeding in the way proposed by the Leader of the House.
  Although I listened with interest to the case adduced by the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), the Chairman of the Procedure Committee which has made the recommendations, I still believe that the House would

  1027
  be making a great mistake to accept the motion, for it would add to the automatic nature, as it were, of debates and would play into the hands of the Government of the day, thereby strengthening their position over that of the House.
  Let us not forget the experience of the past 10 years, during which time we have had more experience of guillotine motions than in the whole of the previous history of Parliament. The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West contrasted that with what was done by the great reforming Government of 1945, who put through the House a huge weight of measures. That Government were able to carry through virtually all that legislation with hardly any resort to guillotine motions.
  It was, of course, more difficult in the 1970s, when Governments did not have majorities of that nature. Such circumstances add to the temptation on Government, and sometimes the temptation must be accepted. But progressively more guillotines have been introduced. They have also been introduced earlier on measures and Ministers have come forward, as though it is a matter of no significance, to recommend new guillotine procedures, some in novel circumstances. That poses a great danger to the House.
  The right hon. Gentleman made the weakest speech in favour of a guillotine motion that I have ever heard from a Leader of the House and that is saying something. He really had no case—[Interruption.] I repeat a proposition that I made to a previous Leader of the House. If hon. Members would like to debate the five guillotine motions that I introduced, I should be happy, if the Leader of the House was prepared to give us time, to debate those matters. Hon. Members would then see what good measures I introduced and with what democratic reticence I did it, which is more than the Leader of the House can claim for the way he adduced his case tonight. At the time when those measures were being skilfully and carefully introduced, we were also carrying through a whole range of highly necessary reforming legislation. Had the right hon. Gentleman followed that example, he might have put forward a better case tonight.
  Mr. Douglas: Will the right hon. Gentleman reconsider the generosity he bestowed on the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen), who moved the guillotine motion on the original poll tax measure applying to Scotland? Some of the strictures of the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North should, perhaps, be considered again.
  Mr. Foot: I did not know that the right hon. Gentleman had that black mark on his past, and I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for pointing it out. It shows that none of us is perfect, not even the right hon. Gentleman. I hope that it will be a lesson to him in future. It is a reason not for more guillotines, but for fewer.
  The truth of the matter was expressed by the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Mr. Shepherd), who has spoken so well on such questions in recent years arid protested each time the Government resorted to fresh guillotine motions. He said that, together with the Bill, the Government had presented
  "the most extraordinary guillotine that has ever been introduced into the House"—[Official Report, 11 November 1991: Vol. 198, c. 858.]
  1028
  That is a perfectly good description, especially as this is not just a procedural matter. How the House conducts its affairs, particularly on questions affecting taxation of our constituents, is of great importance.
  The Government have introduced a tax that has not been a triumphant success. I do not wish to embarrass the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr. Portillo), who thought that the poll tax was a winner. He is an extremely agile performer. Indeed, he needs to have that agility to defend such contradictory positions on subsequent occasions and it is noble of him to come along tonight and not insist that his leader, the Secretary of State for the Environment, who called it the "Tory tax'', should be present. It is a disgrace that the Minister responsible for the Bill is not present for such an important guillotine motion. I am sure that, when the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North was Leader of the House and presented a guillotine motion, he always sought to ensure that the Minister responsible was present. I cannot recall an occasion since I have been in Parliament when a Minister sent along an underling, however agile and accomplished he may be. The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate is indeed accomplished in defending all those propositions.
  It is an additional insult to the House that not only has a motion been introduced in extraordinary circumstances, but it has been brought in to deal with a tax that will affect all our constituents. People throughout the country will ask what hon. Members had to say on each clause. In the poll tax debates we were told, "Of course the country is in favour of it. The arguments are overwhelming. We'll push it through under the guillotine." My hon. Friends and I warned the Government what would happen if they tried to push through legislation in that fashion, but they would not listen. They said that they knew best and had to get their legislation speedily on to the statute book to ensure that local authorities would have the maximum time to deal with it. Now, they have had to eat their words on every aspect of that legislation.
  One would think that a Government responsible for one of the worst Acts of Parliament ever introduced in the history of Parliament, and having introduced it so recently, would, in trying to remedy the situation, at least invite both sides of the House to give their views on the subject. Several Conservative Members have shown that they know much more about the Bill than does the Secretary of State, who does not even dare to come to the House and deal with the questions himself.
  This is a unique case because the Leader of the House implies that, if he gets away with the motion this time, the Government will introduce more and more such motions. Although there will be few opportunities for the Government to do so, I hope that no future Government will agree to the permanent timetabling of motions.
  Such a system would reduce a power of Back Benchers to oppose the Executive and it would be wrong for us to embark on it. Therefore, I hope that all Members, not just Opposition Members, will throw out this motion. The Leader of the House could make a great contribution if he were to say that, having listened to the debate, he had decided to withdraw the provision on his own authority without giving a fig for what the Cabinet might tell him tomorrow morning.
  12.10 am
  Sir Peter Emery: It is always great fun to follow the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot), particularly when he uses such a charming argument that every guillotine motion moved by the socialist Government is marvellously democratic, and every such motion moved by the Tory Government is to be condemned and thought to be absolutely useless. The right hon. Gentleman suggested that there was no need to have guillotine motions in 1945 when the Labour Government were proposing a massive legislative programme. In those times, the House sat more frequently until 9 am, having sat all night, than at any other time in the history of the House this century. It is an attempt to overcome such problems that Governments of different parties have moved towards using timetable motions in order to enact legislation.
  Mr. Budgen: Does not my hon. Friend agree that such sittings impose a good discipline on the House, particularly from a Tory viewpoint? We used to believe that it would be good to have less legislation. If legislation is inconvenient for the House of Commons, there may be less of it and it may be better considered.
  Sir Peter Emery: The interesting fact is that the amount of Government legislation has decreased during the past four parliamentary Sessions—we are working towards exactly what my hon. Friend was urging. That is not a bad proposal for all of us to accept.
  Mr. Bob Cryer: Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Government who were elected on the claim of taking legislation from people's backs has produced much more delegated legislation than the previous Labour Government? While the Conservative Government may have taken business off the Floor of the House, they have handed it to Ministers to produce orders and regulations which, as the hon. Gentleman knows, receive very little scrutiny.
  Sir Peter Emery: The hon. Gentleman knows that he and I would agree absolutely that the amount of delegated legislation from all Governments has greatly increased over the years and, I believe, should be decreased.
  It is of interest to consider which issues the House should address when deciding whether to proceed with a timetable motion. Whether or not we like it, there has been a major move among Members towards dealing with legislation in a sensible manner and using timetable motions. Such a movement never existed when I entered the House in the late 1950s. John Silkin, a former Labour party Chief Whip, told the Procedure Committee that he had been massively against any timetable motion when he took the post, but was persuaded absolutely and he gave evidence to the Committee that the best way to deal with legislation was to move more and more towards sensible timetabling.
  I take the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) about the danger of leaving timetabling only in Government hands. He will know that, after the Government turned out a greater number of Ministers, Parliamentary Private Secretaries and Whips to defeat the Procedure Committee's recommendations on a one-line Whip than on any three-line Whip that Session, the Procedure Committee reconsidered how to deal with the matter.
  1030
  It was then recommended that each Committee should nominate at the time of selection a number of Members who if necessary could act as a sub-Committee and who would decide after 12½ hours whether there was any need to appoint a date when the Bill should be ordered out of that Committee. If they decided that the Bill was proceeding normally, no action was to be taken. If it was thought, however, that there was undue delay, a date was to be stipulated. If after another 12½ it was still seen that the Bill was not proceeding sensibly, the timetable was to be put into operation by the Members considering the Bill, to ensure that every clause of the Bill was considered before it was reported. That would have put the power in the hands of the Committee itself, and it would be very much better than leaving the matter in the hands of Government—but the system does not obtain now, which is why this motion has been tabled.
  Mr. Maxton: At long last the hon. Gentleman has got to the point. His speech so far would have been fine had we been discussing the procedures of the House and a Select Committee report on them—but tonight we are debating a specific motion on a specific piece of legislation which the Government are railroading through the House.
  Sir Peter Emery: That is precisely because the Procedure Committee's recommendation was not implemented. Now the Government have to decide when the legislation should be on the statute book to allow local authorities to operate it properly. Having made that decision, it is right that they should try to ensure that every part of the Bill is discussed by the date that they have set.
  Do the Opposition really suggest that it makes sense to spend the first 12 or 15 sittings debating clauses 1 to 5, followed by a guillotine and then six or seven sittings on the whole of the rest of the Bill? That is how guillotines have worked in the past. It is bad for legislation, bad for procedure and bad for the House.
  Mr. Wilkinson: If that happened, it would not necessarily be a bad thing, certainly in the case of this Bill. In most legislation, the early clauses are the most important, and subsequent clauses are virtually consequential. Clause 5, on banding, is crucial to the interests of my constituents, and it merits much more time than is allowed for it in this motion.
  Sir Peter Emery: I can understand my hon. Friend's point, but four days of debate, three of them to run to any hour, have been allowed for the sort of debate that he wants.
  Mr. Budgen: Long debates on the earlier stages of legislation are usually held in the knowledge that there will be a guillotine. If there were no anticipation that the Government were going to resort to the guillotine, it would he in the interests of the whole Committee to consider the parts of a Bill that were not contentious quickly and then to concentrate on the politically sensitive issues, on which the Government would have to make concessions from time to time. It is because Governments have so frequently recently resorted to guillotines that they have distorted and corrupted the way in which Committees consider Bills.
  Sir Peter Emery: I do not accept my hon. Friend's judgment. In a perfect world what he suggests may be the case, but this is not a perfect world. In practice, most of the

  1031
  time before a guillotine is spent on a few clauses because the Opposition, in trying to prove their virility, stage a long debate at the beginning of the Bill to try to force the Government to impose the guillotine. It was the same when we were in opposition.
  Mrs. Maria Fyfe: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Sir Peter Emery: I should like to deal with one intervention before I accept another.
  After the imposition of the guillotine the rest of the Bill frequently goes to the House of Lords with major parts of it not debated. That cannot be right.
  Mrs. Fyfe: When did the hon. Gentleman last serve on a Standing Committee?
  Sir Peter Emery: In the year before last.
  Having decided when the Bill should be ordered out of Committee, the Government will try to ensure that every part of it can be properly debated. The Opposition might want to spend more time on the Bill, but do they not want every part of the Bill to be debated? If they do, and if the Government want the Bill to leave the Committee by a set date, the guillotine is justified.
  It is much better to have the guillotine at the start of the Bill than to introduce it after eight or 10 sittings, causing the remainder of the Bill to be rushed through. Such a rush would be most unsatisfactory for the Opposition and for organisations which wish to have their case presented by the Opposition. I am not necessarily in favour of a guillotine on the Bill, but as there is no better way it is preferable to introduce it now than to leave it until later.
  12.22 am
  Mr. Tom Clarke: The Chairman of the Procedure Committee, the hon. Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery), was somewhat unconvincing. If he had said that, as a matter of principle and policy, we should make the changes that he advocated rather than saying that we should make them in a pragmatic and opportunistic way on a specific issue, we might have taken a different view.
  The House is being treated almost with contempt because of what the Government see as necessary in terms of their election date strategy. The legislation has nothing to do with the role of local government in a democratic society, with the provision of vital local services or with the contribution of local people. It is being hurried through because of the Government's political difficulties. That is not the best way to approach important procedural matters.
  Shortly before I came to the House in 1982 I was active in local government. I remember sitting in the Visitors' Box and listening to a debate on the rate support grant settlement for Scotland, and being appalled that an order on something that affected every house, family and ratepayer in the land was rushed through in an hour and a half, and decided on the basis of the payroll vote.
  If I was appalled then, I am even more appalled tonight. The Government are attempting to railroad through a measure that does not take on board the spectacular failure of their last attempt to deal with local government finance—the poll tax. They might have had the modesty, before coming to the House with a Bill such as this, to ask whether the system set out in it will work. I humbly suggest that it will not. Rushed through as it was, the poll tax had
  1032
  immense repercussions that included not just the removal of the Prime Minister but difficulties in one local authority after the other so that dedicated people of all political parties had to spend their time not as they wanted, serving their electorate in committees and departments, but in coping with the agonies of an undemocratic system that could not be administered, does not work and has failed to collect £370 million over the past two years. Now we are asked by the Government who introduced that system to accept a banding arrangement that is based on hostages to fortune and is clearly aimed at helping the better-off. Ability to pay has been forgotten.
  When the hon. Member for Hampstead and Highgate (Sir G. Finsberg) rebuked the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen), he said that both stood on the same election manifesto, and implied that that meant that they were both committed to the poll tax. If that is so, and if the Government are changing a major part of their platform at the last general election, the people of Britain should be asked for their opinion.
  The Government are trying to push through a major policy change that does not take on board, as every councillor in the land would be entitled to argue, the importance of relating local government finance with local government structure. In Scotland, the Secretary of State refuses to appoint a commission and to involve himself in real consultations, although he is a party to these changes. In the debates on earlier major changes—in England with the benefit of the Maude report, in Scotland with the Wheatley report, and there was also the Layfield committee, to which I gave evidence—there was an attempt to tie together the two issues of finance and structure. However, that is not being done in the proposals in the Bill.
  I was glad that the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) spoke in the debate. For all his faults, he attempted to be a genuine leader of all the House. I am sorry that the Leader of the House is temporarily absent and cannot hear me say that he would do well to emulate the pattern set by the right hon. Member for Shropshire. North.
  He would have given more thought to these issues. He would have involved himself in more consultation with hon. Members on both sides of the House. Bearing in mind that the Leader of the House should serve right hon. And hon. Members on both sides of the House, I do not believe that the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North would have made the personal attack on my hon. Friend the Member for Langbaurgh (Dr. Kumar) that was made by the Leader of the House last week. Clearly the right hon. Gentleman felt that it was necessary to do so, but the House is not being well served by him. If it were, the proposals that are before us would not be debated in this way.
  My right hon. and hon. Friends have rightly put up a fight for local democracy. They have reminded the House of the importance of the relationship between itself and local government. It is crucial that we retain good local services, but the best people to decide how good or how bad their local services, should be are local electorates. The Government's further attempt at centralising these matters is unacceptable. Local authorities are facing enough problems as it is. There has been the colossal problem of coping with the poll tax, along with the problems of warrant sales, debtors' legislation and all that has arisen from the Government's policies.

  1033
  Many right hon. and hon. Members will have shared my experiences in their surgeries. I find that one of the main issues is safety on the streets—law and order. Some of my colleagues and I met the new chief constable of Strathclyde, who made it plain that the service is grossly undermanned. How can Coatbridge, a town of 50,000 people in my constituency, be serviced by six policemen for an entire weekend?
  The Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart) rose——
  Mr. Clarke: If the Minister wishes to intervene, I shall be happy to give way.
  Mr. Stewart: Will the hon. Gentleman explain why Strathclyde regional council has consistently employed a policy of keeping its police force below the Scottish Office authorised establishment, a policy that is followed by no other regional council in Scotland, including all the other Labour-held regional councils?
  Mr. Clarke: I thought that the hon. Gentleman would advance that argument and so I was delighted to allow him to intervene to enable him to do so. Strathclyde regional council gave the answer to the chief constable. If the Minister gives a little of his time to talking to the chief constable, as my colleagues and I did——
  Mr. Stewart: I have done that.
  Mr. Clarke: If he does so, first, he will learn that Strathclyde represents half of Scotland, and inevitably has greater difficulties than the smaller regions, and, secondly, he will understand that it has to match the resources that are made available from the Scottish Office. If the Government are hammering Strathclyde day after day on these issues, the problems will not disappear.
  If the Minister is lucky enough to be re-elected, he will find himself on the Opposition Benches. He knows, however, as he sits on the Government Front Bench, that the revenue allocation for the policing of the whole of Scotland this year was £9 million, half of which was taken up not by Strathclyde—the largest authority that represents half of Scotland—but by Dumfries and Galloway. That arose because of the revenue consequences of capital expenditure. Let us not pretend that the Minister, the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Stewart), can blame Strathclyde for its problems and for those of other parts of the country. Is it suggested that the Government can implement their health service policy, including the rundown of the mental health sector in greater Glasgow, without causing problems for the social work department in greater Glasgow and the housing departments in the 19 districts?
  In a case in Hamilton today, the sheriff very reluctantly sent a man with mental health problems to prison for two years, and he made it clear that it was because he had nowhere else to send him. That is community care in Strathclyde. The Government time after time make it difficult for local authorities by reducing rate support grant and housing support grant, by introducing legislation with a guillotine, by changing social security arrangements, by being mean-minded over housing benefits and so on, and the consequence is the sort of case that occurred in Hamilton today.
  1034
  Lord Pym had a point when he said that a landslide victory could be abused. A large number of hon. Members may support the Government tonight, but they will be unhappy. To be fair, some of them have made that clear, including the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen). They will be even more unhappy in a few months when the public reach their conclusions. Even more important than that, if we believe in parliamentary democracy, in a positive role for local government and for duly elected local councillors, and if we see a future in Europe—whatever the arguments—it cannot be right that the Government again and again should bully local authorities into taking the sorts of decision that are clearly as unacceptable to them as they are to the most vulnerable of their electorate.
  What is happening tonight is another exercise in the arrogance of intellect and the brutality of power. Because that is so unhealthy, the British people will reject it, and they will do so before very long.
  12.36 am
  Mr. Nicholas Budgen: I shall not detain the House in arguing about the proposals that were put forward by the Select Committee on Procedure and then rejected by the House. I shall make just one observation about that. If those proposals had been approved by the House, they would have given much greater power to the Government of the day, and there is no doubt that the House would have balanced that granting of greater power in one direction by checks and balances in other directions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) had an idea of how that greater power might be checked.
  Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends will be uncomfortable if they support the guillotine motion tonight. I shall offer a few words on two points, perhaps to increase their discomfort. Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends must feel some embarrassment about their personal position on what is now openly described as the poll tax. It is now said by those who give guidance to the press that there was no genuine majority for the poll tax in the Cabinet. It is also said that there would have been no genuine majority if there had been a free vote in the House. I do not know whether that is so. However, while the people who guide the media are offering those words out of the corners of their mouths, they might reflect that it would be good if there were at least open discussion in the House of the substitute for the poll tax.
  That is particularly important because of the way in which the public have scandalously disregarded the law on the collection of the poll tax. That is not a small matter. I may speak as a pompous lawyer, but the disregard of the law that has occurred in relation to the poll tax is a serious matter. Surely respect for the law involves the belief in the public as a whole that the procedures of law-making have been meticulously followed. If not, there is a danger that the law will be seen as "Major's" law, "Heseltine's" law or "Thatcher's" law and will not have the authority that it should have as emanating from Parliament, after a period of discussion, consultation, argument and voting upon all the issues. That must be important on this tax.
  The more one looks at the way in which my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House gave what was a rather unfortunately vague answer when he was asked about the time lapse between the end of the Committee stage and the

  1035
  Report stage, the more it becomes obvious, does it not, that those who will have to enforce the tax will not feel that they have been properly involved in the legislative procedure?
  Who are the people who will be involved in enforcing the tax? They will be, for instance, police officers. We hear that at present the police are telling the magistrates courts that they are sorry but they do not have time to chase up poll tax defaulters. That is an unfortunate attitude for the police to take.
  If there is no proper period of consultation, how, for instance, will the land and house agents feel—those in the private sector who will be involved in the assessment of the bands? How will the councillors feel if they have not been properly consulted? Shall we just have some response from the various associations of metropolitan authorities, the umbrella organisations, without any proper consultation?
  Mr. Tony Marlow: My hon. Friend has expressed concern that some of his colleagues may feel some discomfort later this evening. We should be concerned if my hon. Friend were to suffer any discomfort later this evening. Therefore, so that we know that he will not be suffering such discomfort, perhaps he would like to take this opportunity to confirm to the House that he only voted for the poll tax reluctantly, with his arm twisted firmly behind his back, and that when the timetable motion for the poll tax was tabled, or any such motions, he voted against those as well.
  Mr. Budgen: I voted for the timetable motion on the poll tax and, of course, every hon. Member compromises to some extent on those measures which they support and those which they oppose. I am not pretending for a moment that my record of fearlessly and carefully considering every piece of legislation that comes before the House is better than that of anybody else. But my point is that the performance of the Conservative party generally in relation to the poll tax is not one of which most of us are frightfully proud and most of us who feel slightly embarrassed by it all would say that at the very least on this second attempt we might try to consider it rather better.
  As most Conservative Members have a certain amount of scepticism of Governments and of the legislative procedure, we take the view that we few prejudiced party politicians do not encompass the wisdom of the nation. It is not a bad plan to have at any rate a few of the views of the ordinary people who will be paying the tax and of the professional people who may be enforcing it, whether they be estate agents, local government officers or councillors. Our embarrassment, surely, should make us slightly more respectful of other, different opinions.
  Those of us who are Unionists are particularly anxious for the authority of this Parliament to be recognised in Scotland. We do not concede the argument that the Tories have no mandate to rule there; but the Tories, and the present Government, have a mandate only for such time as they follow the procedures of the House and are genuinely able to tell the people of Scotland, "The procedures of the House—which are rarely truncated—fully take into account your minority views, your support for Labour candidates and the fact that there are so few Conservative Members in Scotland." When we truncate those procedures, as we are doing tonight, we damage the rule of
  1036
  law and the authority of the present Conservative Government; and, in my view, we misbehave in a very short-sighted way.
  Those splendid gentlemen who are saying, out of the corners of their mouths, that there never was much support for the poll tax are also saying that there is now a new spirit within the Government: a spirit of consensus, good manners, listening to others and not shouting them down. In other words, there is a general negation of both passion and rudeness. There is undoubtedly much to be said for consensus and politeness. Although I am not good at either myself, I fully recognise the advantages of that style of political leadership.
  Surely, however, the high point of what I suppose even the Tory papers described as Thatcher triumphalism occurred in 1988—and 1988 marked an all-time high in the number of guillotine motions. There were no fewer than 13. As I have said, only three were needed to achieve the great socialist revolution that took place between 1945 and 1951.
  If the current Administration wish to demonstrate that they have some concern for views with which they disagree, I suggest to the Prime Minister that that is not best achieved by means of, for instance, a well-publicised meeting with a leader of the homosexual community. It is best achieved through respect for the House of Commons; through tolerance of the boredom and inconvenience of debate; and through not regarding the legislative procedure as though it were a kind of factory.
  Above all, we should demonstrate our wish to conciliate—and our understanding of different points of view—through a recognition that the proper following of the procedures of the House, unwillingness to truncate debate and the acceptance of passion and inconvenience can show that we truly accept that ours is a divergent society, in which many views exist and all must be respected.
  12.48 am
  Mr. Andrew Welsh: The hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) said that he was not frightfully proud of the Government's record on the poll tax. I think that I have just learned what understatement really means.
  The hon. Gentleman said that the Government's mandate in Scotland would be lost when they refused to follow the procedures of the House. He should appreciate that the Government are doing precisely that by not implementing Standing Orders and forming a Scottish Select Committee. In the hon. Gentleman's own language, the pass has already been sold.
  This is a major measure that will affect every man, woman and child, because of the nature of local government services, and every local authority throughout the length and breadth of the land. Therefore, it is incredible that the Government advocate the minimum amount of discussion rather than the maximum amount of scrutiny of the measure. The last occasion when similar arguments were put forward about curtailing the debate on local government finance was when the Government introduced the poll tax. They got it wrong then; they have got it wrong now.
  The Leader of the House described the Bill as fair, balanced and a carefully thought out approach, based on experience. Actual experience amounted to rushing

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  through the poll tax legislation, which was an absolute disaster. The Government made a hash of it then by adopting these tactics. They are repeating the same mistakes now. The Leader of the House was clearly flustered and unable to explain the timetable and the Government's real reasons for acting in this fashion. With Christmas approaching, this measure is being rushed through the House as quickly as possible—the very opposite of cool, clear consideration of a fundamental measure that will affect everybody in the land.
  Mr. Marlow: These are important issues and I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman says. How does he react to the fact that the legislation on the poll tax and the legislation on this Bill will probably take up about ten times as much parliamentary time as the legislation that comes out of Maastricht, which is probably 10 to a hundred times more important than these very important issues?
  Mr. Welsh: This is a massively important issue that deserves the closest scrutiny. As a Scottish Member of Parliament, I find it ironic that important Scottish measures are lumped in here, at the back of what is basically an English Bill. It is intolerable and unacceptable that my country should be treated in this way by the House of Commons.
  Mr. Maxton: I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I, too, find intolerable the way that Scotland is being treated, due to the fact that there is no separate Bill for Scotland. However, the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends opposed the poll tax on the basis of a non-payment campaign in Scotland. They withdrew from the non-payment campaign on the day that the Government announced that they would introduce the council tax. In other words, they withdrew their opposition to the poll tax on the basis of the council tax. I do not understand, therefore, why they oppose this measure.
  Mr. Welsh: I can understand the hon. Gentleman's confusion, because his party is thoroughly confused on this issue and has backslided at every opportunity in carrying out the behest of a Tory Government. My party's stand has been absolutely clear. As a result of the campaign that we fought we not only defeated the poll tax but we brought the Government out. If the hon. Gentleman looks at his own party's record, he will find that it is not one of which he can be proud.
  By means of the guillotine motion the Government seek to curtail debate and scrutiny as they throw their second attempt at local government finance reform at us. I want the poll tax to be abolished and thrown where it deserves to be—on the scrapheap of history—but its replacement has to be better scrutinised than this. Local government finance is to be fundamentally altered by the ridiculous procedure of a rushed guillotine timetable. The Government got it totally wrong last time. I have absolutely no confidence that they will not get it equally wrong this time.
  The Government had no mandate to introduce the poll tax, and they have no mandate for this Bill or for the guillotine. The Scots have rejected the Conservatives in opinion polls and at elections, yet this new tax is to be imposed without proper discussion. This so-called
  1038
  listening Government seem to be amazingly deaf when it comes to by-elections, but the people of Scotland, and elsewhere in the United Kingdom, are telling the Government exactly how they feel about measures such as this.
  I find it even more ludicrous that this situation should arise as the Government's power wanes at the tail end of a Parliament. They are determined to squeeze the last ounce out of their waning power and are frightened to face the people to get a new mandate. When that day arrives I am sure that they will not get a mandate.
  If we allow this timetable to happen, it is not democracy in any shape or form; it is simply a large majority being forced through by a whipping system, irrespective of how the people feel.
  This legislation is typical of the unrepresentative nature of the House when dealing with Scottish matters. Scottish clauses are being lumped on to legislation that is basically English, with minimal time for scrutiny. It is not good enough and it is certainly no way to run my country.
  Past mistakes are being repeated and if the Government had any sense they would realise what they are doing. They are lumbering on without learning from what they have done. In Scotland they tried to change local government structure massively by altering it before they altered national Government. Sensible reconstruction of local authorities in Scotland can take place only once the national parliamentary situation has been sorted out.
  Similarly, the Government got local government finance wrong with the poll tax. Now the self-same Tory Gadarene swine are rushing towards an unworkable council tax. The Government should have learnt. The poll tax was thrown through without proper scrutiny or discussion and the council tax is being treated in exactly the same way. In the case of the poll tax the result was that the Government put an immense burden on to local authorities, which could not cope with an unworkable, uncollectable and vastly unfair taxation system. I have no faith that the Government have learnt their lesson and will get it right this time. This is simply a Government panic. Here we go again—half baked, poorly scrutinised, guillotined legislation is being churned out against the wishes of the people.
  Local authorities are reeling under the effects of the ghastly poll tax. They are telling the Government that the council tax is unworkable and badly conceived but, once again, they are not being heard. In spite of that, the tax will be speeded through Parliament and through the local authorities in the same pathetic way that gave us the poll tax fiasco.
  When Scotland needs to be protected against ill-thought-out and totally inappropriate legislation, tonight's guillotine does entirely the opposite. If anything, it illustrates the need for a Scottish Parliament, where we could consider the real needs of our country in the required detail and produce appropriate and workable legislation. The House cannot do that.
  This legislation is being produced by a House of Commons that is prepared to ignore its Standing Orders and will not set up a Select Committee for Scotland. The tax is perfect material for consideration by such a Committee, or surely we could send the Scottish clauses to the Scottish Grand Committee to be debated thoroughly and be given more time, or a Commission could consider

  1039
  it. However, none of that is happening because of the Government's procedure which is producing minimum scrutiny of this legislation.
  The only guillotine that counts is the one that will soon fall on the Government, when they are at last forced to meet the people, and to face up to their responsibilities and past actions at the next general election. Tonight's action—using Whips and their majority and stopping scrutiny—does not stop criticism, nor does it stop the Government from again making fundamental and costly mistakes. If they will not listen to us, perhaps they will listen to some of their Back Benchers, who are telling them where they are going wrong.
  The amendment tabled by the Scottish National party was not selected but we are certainly against a council tax Bill which does not base the level of taxation cm the fundamental principle of ability to pay, which perpetuates the bureaucratic expense and the complexities of the poll tax and which does not abolish the basic minimum 20 per cent. charge levied on the poorest and most vulnerable sections of society. The council tax continues that section of the law on diligence in Scotland that allows the continuance of warrant sales, which are abhorrent to modern democracy.
  The Government are again making fundamental and unnecessary mistakes. The guillotine shows that in their dying days they are intent on not listening to the people, but the day of reckoning is fast approaching and I look forward to it.
  1 am
  Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): Tonight the Leader of the House, whose arguments are normally replete with Scottish intellectual rigour, was unusually laid back, almost blasé, in his proposal of this guillotine motion. He said that the guillotine was a normal procedure and went on to adduce the argument that it was in line with the recommendations of the Select Committee on Procedure. The Government, by use of the payroll, voted down those recommendations. It would have been more appropriate for him to use that argument had he first tabled a motion and sought consensus across the House and our approval of those recommendations. Indeed, he departed from his usual good-humoured, earnest desire to please and his main intent seemed to be to get this embarrassing, awkward business out of the way as soon as possible.
  I did not vote against the Second Reading of the Bill. After all, it is, if one dares use the metaphor, the flagship of this parliamentary Session. Moreover, the previous flagship, the poll tax, was launched with its torpedo tubes open. We do not want to repeat that performance. We need to learn from the mistake of the passage of the poll tax into legislation without appropriate consideration.
  The Bill has 117 clauses and 14 schedules. I very much doubt whether they can be properly considered within the timetable laid down. The poll tax legislation had 19 days in Standing Committee. This Bill has but nine and it is certainly no less complicated. Indeed, experts on local government on both sides have said that local government finance is perhaps the most complicated subject that we have to address in the House of Commons. If it is so complicated, most of us who are neophytes or certainly relatively inexpert will need proper time to address the matter sensibly.
  Mrs. Fyfe: The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that the poll tax legislation had about twice the length of time in Standing Committee as this Bill will have. Moreover, the Scottish Bill preceded it, so the Government had the opportunity of a learning curve, yet still they managed to make an unholy mess of it.
  Mr. Wilkinson: The hon. Lady makes her arguments in her own way and they are relevant.
  Not only are we to have but nine days in Standing Committee, but we are to have only two for Report and Third Reading. I take it also from the reluctance of the Leader of the House to spell out how much time there will be between Committee and Report that the period will be relatively short.
  On Report those of us who were not members of the Standing Committee will have only a short time in which to deal with the serious issues raised in that Committee and, perhaps more significantly, with those that have been brought to our attention in the brief interval between the Committee stage and Report.
  We are assured that the council tax will be fairer. I wonder whether people outside will consider it to be fairer if it has not been considered properly. Their experience with the poll tax was a painful one and that tax was not considered properly.
  Mr. Donald Anderson: Might the explanation for the Government's haste simply be that they have no confidence that the House could ever improve a piece of legislation that comes from the draftsmen?
  Mr. Wilkinson: I do not believe that to be the case. The real reason is that given by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Leader of the House. I wish my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and his team well with the Bill and the last thing that I want to do is to make their task more difficult. The reason for the haste is that the Government must allow sufficient time for the Bill to he implemented in 1 April 1993. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House says that that date is the first and last day for implementation—the alpha and the omega. I hope that it is not the dies irae for the British people.
  I am not sure that the precedents are wholly reassuring. In the previous Session we had a guillotine on the Dangerous Dogs Bill—I acknowledge that it was before the Second Reading—and a guillotine on the Community Charges (General Reduction) Bill. Perhaps of more significance is the guillotine, again after Second Reading, that was placed on the Counter Inflation (Temporary Provisions) Bill—the incomes policy legislation—in the 1972–73 Session. That Bill proved fatal for the Administration of my right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr. Heath). In the 1977–78 Session we had a post-Second Reading guillotine on the Wales and Scotland Bills, the devolution measures, which was fatal for the Administration of Lord Callaghan.
  I hope that my right hon. Friends will think again. I was not seeking to be reactionary when I said that our old procedures have some merit. I argued in favour of front loading—for more time, which is the normal state of affairs—for the earlier clauses of the Bill even if we have to face a guillotine on the later clauses.
  Clause 5, which relates to banding in England and Wales, and clause 74, which relates to banding in Scotland, are to be taken together with other clauses in two days. I

  1041
  know that the sittings may go late, but that does not necessarily mean that the difficult subject of banding and how to secure equity will be addressed sufficiently in the time available.
  I know that my constituents, if they are in band E or above—that is nearly all of them—will pay more under the council tax than they do under the poll tax. It is proposed that clause 11 and the other discount provisions relating to single people living alone—perhaps retired people and single parents—shall be discussed in only two days. I also question whether that will prove sufficient time.
  With the best will in the world I wish the measure success and hope that the council tax proves fair. No legislation could be riddled with more inconsistencies than the old poll tax and I appreciate that need for its abolition. But the guillotine which is proposed is a bad precedent for the House and I doubt whether such a tight timetable will give our constituents confidence in the Bill. Although I voted in a positive spirit for the Second Reading, I cannot vote for the timetable motion tonight.
  1.11 am
  Mr. Allen McKay: The poll tax was introduced because at a conference the Prime Minister, shooting from the hip, decided to get rid of the hated rates. When the poll tax measure was in Committee, objections were raised by Opposition and Conservative Members. The Government decided that no Opposition, and few Conservative, amendments would be accepted. The result was the poll tax mess that we predicted would occur.
  Almost the same thing is happening with the council tax. The Government promised to get rid of the poll tax in the way that they promised to dispose of the old rating system. The result is this pig's ear of a Bill, which is being rushed through. Normally, a guillotine is introduced after parts of a measure have been debated in Committee, with the understanding of both sides of the House and with both sides agreeing on the clauses that should be debated in the time available.
  When any measure is debated in Committee, the Opposition rely on advice from various outside bodies. When we debated the poll tax in Committee, hon. Members on both sides put forward constructive arguments, our constituents having made representations. The timetable motion as proposed will not permit that to happen, even though the Leader of the House said that we could sit through the night, every night.
  If we are to debate the council tax on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays through the night, how shall we be able, with such a continuous performance, to take advice from interested parties and at the same time represent the interests of our constituents? In other words, the Government are not allowing hon. Members to pursue their duties on behalf of their constituents. It is no ordinary Bill. It will affect every citizen. We shall not have time adequately to represent the wishes of our constituents.
  In the poll tax debates my hon. Friends and I were accused of wanting to retain the rating system. Time and again the Government quoted stories about little old ladies paying more rates than others. I asked the treasurer of my local authority what would happen under the council tax
  1042
  system and discovered that everyone, even the little old ladies, would pay twice as much, even four or five times more than, as they are paying in poll tax. Had the rating system been in force, 70 per cent. of my constituents would have paid less.
  Some of those aspects should be reflected in the Bill, but we shall not have the time. Because of the interest in the Bill, which affects all hon. Members and their constituents, hon. Members on both sides of the Committee will want to enter the debate. Normally, before a Bill is guillotined the Government ask their side to be quiet so that they can get the Bill through, but once a Committee debate is guillotined, the Bill starts to go through. The normal time element for opposition to a Bill does not exist purely because Conservative Members, quite rightly, want to take their full time, knowing that the guillotine rather than the normal channels will stop the debate.
  I am also concerned that a precedent is being created. People will not forget how the House has been treated. I am afraid—I hope that it will not happen—that other Ministers will take a cue from the Secretary of the State for the Environment and guillotine Bills before they reach their Committee stage. I hope that a Labour Government will not use this precedent when introducing their legislation because it is against democracy. People look to this place to be democratic and they will judge how the House has been treated. That, in turn, is how people outside are treated—by not having their views fully explained.
  1.17 am
  Mr. Bryan Gould: There were few apologists for this measure in the debate—I counted perhaps one and a half. That is hardly surprising, given the draconian nature of the guillotine and the weak and unconvincing case that the Leader of the House made in its support.
  The motion leaves the House and the Committee bound and gagged. It denies the Opposition their proper role and prevents proper debate of this important measure. Moreover, it reduces to vanishing point the chance of properly scrutinising the Bill.
  The debate has not been about the principle of automatically timetabling legislation, although an interesting debate could be had on that question, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) and the right hon. Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) said. Rather, the debate is about the precise measure, which does not just truncate debate or structure it to suit the Government, but compresses that debate into just nine days, and those nine days into a total period of just 16 days. That compression damages the proper process of the House and makes the Committee's work impossible. That was the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. McKay) in an intervention.
  People outside the House may not fully understand our objections. They may think that we are objecting to long hours and hard work—far from it. Hon. Members should know that, if a Committee is to do its work properly, its members need time to think, consider and respond to Ministers. We need time to draft amendments and prepare the arguments. Above all, we need time to consult outside interests and organisations that have views to express, as well as time to deliver speeches and conduct the debates.

  1043
  That is to say nothing of the time that will undoubtedly be taken by Government amendments because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) pointed out, the poll tax Bill was substantially amended by the Government. Indeed, that is one of the bad habits that the Government have got into. Not only have they formed the habit of introducing guillotine motions—26 since they took office in 1979 and 13 in a single Session—but they have also fallen into the bad habit of introducing literally hundreds of amendments to their own badly drafted Bills.
  The motion shows a complete misunderstanding of one of Parliament's major roles—a point made by the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen). One of the functions of the House is to act as a sounding board, a public forum and a means by which debate can inform the public who can then influence the debate. Unless we have time for that process, the hon. Gentleman is surely right. He described a difficult issue in a delicate and sensitive manner—the baleful way in which the poll tax has reduced respect for the law. That respect can hardly be increased if the successor to the poll tax is yet again rushed through the House without proper debate.
  Why is the measure being advanced——
  Mr. Douglas: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Gould: No, I am sorry, but we are short of time. As many hon. Members have said, a guillotine motion is usually introduced in response to delaying tactics from the Opposition which have resulted in a failure to achieve reasonable progress. However, that is not the case with this measure. There has been no opportunity for delay as today and yesterday are the first two days of proper debate of the issue in this Session of Parliament. There has certainly been no opportunity for the Opposition to delay matters; the guillotine motion was prepared and programmed long before Second Reading.
  It cannot be argued that the Government are forestalling what they fear might be delaying tactics. The Opposition have always made it clear—and I say it again directly and with all the sincerity that I can command—that the Opposition have no interest in filibustering. We have always made it clear that we would be prepared to consider and talk to the Government about a reasonable timetable that would not jeopardise the Bill's passage. The Opposition have never been given the chance to discuss those subjects with the Government. We were simply told of the timetable peremptorily and unilaterally, and informed that it would be enforced by guillotine.
  As the Leader of the House and the Secretary of State for the Environment have to their discredit sometimes tried to pretend, Ministers might wish to make themselves buffoons by suggesting that the Opposition want to keep the poll tax. I do not believe that anybody could seriously believe such a ridiculous assertion, but it does nothing for an already disreputable measure when Ministers take refuge in such patent and ludicrous dishonesty.
  The Government's next excuse is that it is necessary to truncate debate to meet the timetable required to get rid of the poll tax. If that were true—I do not believe that it is—it would be nothing more than the Government yet again entering a plea of guilty. Who created the need to act so quickly and in a manner which abuses the House? The Government who created the poll tax are now in a panic to dissociate themselves from the measure. They turned down the most direct and sensible way to get rid of the poll
  1044
  tax on a reasonable timetable. The Government saddled themselves with the timetable and the need to abuse the procedure of the House as they now propose.
  It is not true that there is a need for speed on the Bill if the 1993 timetable is to be adhered to. All the local government experts agree that that goal is virtually unattainable, but the obstacles to it have nothing to do with the legislation; they have to do with the administrative burdens now borne by local government. Those problems include having to deal with the dying days of the poll tax and, as the Prime Minister says, having to collect an uncollectable tax. The difficulties relate to setting budgets and responding to capping levels which have not yet been announced. If the Government are sensitive to the needs of local government, why have they delayed making those announcements and thus increased the problems facing local government treasurers? The delays relate to the difficulties in preparing the necessary software highlighted by the software companies and to the new valuation registers—matters which are certainly not dependent on the Bill. The delays also relate to the preparation of lists, whether or not they are called registers or are required under the Bill.
  Given the doubts and the difficulties, it is little wonder that there is a real question whether the 1993 date can be met. But none of that is relevant to the case for forcing through this Bill. The real reason for the unseemly haste, as my hon. Friend the Member for Monklands, West (Mr. Clarke) pointed out, is the Government's electoral timetable. They dare not face the electorate without this Bill on the statute book. It matters not whether it is implemented, or whether there are lengthy delays. Just in case the Government should, one of these days, summon up the nerve to face the electorate, perhaps in March or April, they have to have the decks cleared and this measure enacted into law. That is why this ridiculous timetable is being forced on us.
  Another and even less reputable reason for the haste is that the Government know full well—there has been ample evidence of it already—that if the House is allowed to do its job properly, there will be time for proper debate and time for concern in the country to grow—for knowledge about the Government's proposals to spread, for public fears to find their expression, for hon. Members to understand their constituents' problems, for responses to be made to the excuses and explanations offered by Ministers. The haste is just as much to gag Conservative Members as to gag the Opposition.
  This is a breathtaking piece of irresponsibility. What was it that went wrong with the poll tax? Surely no one now defends the poll tax, or pretends that it was anything other than an unmitigated disaster—for local government, for millions of people and families, and for respect for the law. Have Conservative Members forgotten all the confident and optimistic predictions made about the poll tax—those blithe assurances, the refusal to listen, the arrogant sweeping away of objections, the scorning of the doubters, the pressure put on the rebels; and then, as the true scale of the disaster became apparent, the gradual wringing out of concessions, the prices paid to buy off the Opposition, the late changes rushed through, the chaos that ensued, the billions of pounds thrown at the problem, the political upheaval which did for a Prime Minister and brought about a change of leadership in the Conservative party? Have Conservative Members learnt nothing from all that? Are they prepared to go through it all again,

  1045
  accepting the assurances, blocking their ears, listening to no criticisms? I cannot believe so. Surely they will not accept all those assurances and predictions again.
  There can be no excuses this time, no pleas of innocence. Conservative Members will not be forgiven if they allow through yet another hastily prepared, ill-thought-out, disastrously applied piece of legislation. Yet that is the risk that we probably now run. To those with any regard for good government, this measure is a disgrace. It will shame all who vote for it. There is an increasingly notorious offence which I understand is called ram-raiding. This measure is certainly an example of ram-raiding. There is only one defence against this sort of action by a Government. Hon. Members on both sides of the House should do their job and meet their responsibilities. I ask them to do precisely that.
  1.28 am
  The Minister for Local Government and Inner Cities (Mr. Michael Portillo): During the debate, the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Mr. Foot) referred, not unkindly, to my junior position in the Government. I hope that I approach the debate with due humility, given that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House and two former Leaders of the House have contributed to it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Shropshire, North (Mr. Biffen) led us into consideration of questions such as whether Bills should be timetabled from the outset; and, if so, whether such decisions should be in the hands of the Government or of a Select Committee. He was right to raise those weighty issues, although they are not issues on which I wish to give an opinion now. My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Mr. Budgen) reminded us more than once that we should speak to the motion.
  The House was privileged to hear from the "Big Daddy" of the guillotine motion, the right hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent. No debate on such a motion is complete without him. Like the Flying Dutchman, condemned for ever to roam the world's oceans, the right hon. Gentleman is condemned for ever to attend debates on guillotine motions in an attempt to expiate his past sins in that area. I listened with great attention to the right hon. Gentleman and agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Honiton (Sir P. Emery) that it was a most disappointing experience. His reasons for using the guillotine in the past, which were appropriate at the time but are inappropriate now, were apparently that Labour legislation was very good and his guillotine motions showed the requisite democratic reticence. The House found that an unconvincing explanation.
  We have spent three days debating the council tax. The hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) made a shaky start by saying that the first of those days, during the debate on the Gracious Speech, was before the Bill was published. That is wrong because the Bill and the Local Government Bill were published before that. During those three days the Labour party engaged in a great struggle to get people to fill the Opposition Benches and to speak. It has been an exhausting experience for the Opposition, who, although they imposed a three-line Whip, have not been able to keep the House on their side. Many Opposition Members who will obey the three-line Whip
  1046
  and vote against the motion will do so with a heavy heart. That is because they believe that the correct way for the House to organise its procedures is to have a timetable motion from the beginning.
  Mr. Blunkett: That is a different matter.
  Mr. Portillo: The hon. Gentleman's intervention gives away the identity of at least one hon. Member who agrees with that view.
  Mr. Budgen: Surely that is a proper attitude for a Labour politician. Labour believes in legislation, in plenty of state intervention in everybody's affairs. Generally speaking, that is not the attitude of Tories.
  Mr. Portillo: I was asked to concentrate on the motion and the Bill and that is what I intend to do. I want the Bill to be properly debated. It was breathtaking to be told by the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) that we should have approached the Opposition to see whether we could negotiate a deal. I did that and was told straight away that no deal was possible. I would not normally reveal such matters, and do so only because the hon. Member for Dagenham, who was not present at the discussions, was nevertheless involved in putting out a press release after the discussions. No deal was available and we are proceeding with the guillotine.
  Dr Cunningham: I am reluctant to intervene, but I cannot allow the Minister to get away with that. He is misleading the House.
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Miss Betty Boothroyd): Order. I am sure that even at this late hour the hon. Gentleman will wish to withdraw that.
  Dr Cunningham: I withdraw my comment about misleading the House. The Minister is not being candid with the House. Neither the Minister nor the Leader of the House made any attempt, nor was an attempt made through the usual channels, to hold any serious discussions about the passage of the Bill.
  Mr. Portillo: The hon. Gentleman is not being candid. My version of events is that the Labour party said from the outset that it would be unable to negotiate a deal. The hon. Member for Dagenham was not there, so he cannot comment on it. I do not blame the Labour party for not being able to reach a deal with us on that. However, the hon. Member for Dagenham should not say that there was no effort to do a deal. There was an offer of a deal, but I understand why the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside (Mr. Blunkett) could not accept it.
  Mr. Blunkett: It is important that we get the facts on the record. I have a simple question for the Minister: is it true that the Government said that, whatever the deal might be, they intended to get the Bill through the House by Christmas?
  Mr. Portillo: Yes, and that is our absolute intention. We have been addressing two audiences throughout the debate—the outside audience, whom the Opposition want to convince that this is a shock horror experience, and the audience in the House. It is known in the House that the reality is a choice between many hours in Committee characterised by filibuster and slow progress, and a number of hours in Committee in which we make reasonable progress.

  1047
  My hon. Friend the Member for Wolverharnpton, South-West said that there were three guillotines between 1945 and 1951 and 13 in 1988. That tells me much more about the behaviour of Oppositions than about the behaviour of Governments. It would not have been possible for the Government of 1945–51 to get through the legislation if they had faced the delaying tactics that have characterised the progress of Bills in the past 11 to 12 years.
  For example, in 1988, the Local Government Finance Bill was going through its stages in the House. After 61 hours in Committee, only 16 clauses had been considered. Consequently, the other 115 clauses had to be handled in 62 hours. After 58 hours in Committee, only nine clauses of the Water Bill had been considered. Consequently, the other 171 clauses had to be considered in 61 hours. Only five clauses of the Football Spectators Bill had been considered before the guillotine was introduced. Although I am sure that he did not intend it, it sounded as though my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton, South-West was saying, "Never mind the quality, feel the width." What matters is not how long we spend in Committee, so that we can report those hours to people outside, but what we achieve in that time.
  Mr. Jeff Rooker: I was struck by the Minister's litany of the hours kept by the Committee considering the Local Government Finance Bill because I served on the Committee. Before the guillotine motion, the longest speech in those proceedings was by the then Minister of State.
  Dr. Cunningham: Two hours.
  Mr. Portillo: If the Minister spoke for two hours, that means that in the other 59 hours the Committee considered 16 clauses, so the hon. Gentleman's intervention does not alter my point.
  The timetable has been organised in such a way that the divisions in the debate—knives as we call them—fall in places that allow the most time in debate to be given to the most contentious issues. Furthermore, the divisions will allow the Scottish points to be taken with their English equivalent so that we can have a single debate on common issues.
  Mr. Maxton: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Portillo: Let me finish my point. One of the great advantages of this method of proceeding is that we can guarantee a debate about Scottish questions. We do not risk, as we would have done if we had handled the Bill in any other way, leaving those matters which come at the end of the Bill—as the Scottish provisions do—not to be debated fully. As a result of the way in which the knives fall, all the Scottish provisions can be thoroughly debated, although they will not be debated separately.
  Mr. Maxton: Will the Minister allow me?
  Mr. Portillo: Three weeks is not a long time to debate a Bill, but the number of hours that we can devote to the Bill during that period will be perfectly adequate.
  Mr. Maxton: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is it in order for a Minister to lay down to the House how the Chairman of the Committee that has been established will decide how the debates in Committee will take place? That is what the Minister has told us.
  Madam Deputy Speaker: Barracking the Minister is not benefiting the debate. The House should listen to what the Minister has to say in the last few minutes of the debate.
  Mr. Portillo: I am convinced that we shall have adequate time to discuss the Bill and that because we have organised the time and allocated it we shall have a higher quality of debate. More issues will be debated fully and the Bill will be better scrutinised than many of the measures that have been cited as precedents. I believe that the public want us to get on with abolishing the community charge and replacing it with the council tax. We owe them that and I think that the House should approve the guillotine motion.
  Question put:—
  The House divided: Ayes 293, Noes 233.

  Division No. 6]

  [1.40 am

  AYES

  Adley, Robert

  Cope, Rt Hon Sir John

  Aitken, Jonathan

  Cormack, Patrick

  Alexander, Richard

  Couchman, James

  Alison, Rt Hon Michael

  Cran, James

  Allason, Rupert

  Currie, Mrs Edwina

  Amess, David

  Curry, David

  Amos, Alan

  Davies, Q. (Stamf'd & Spald'g)

  Arbuthnot, James

  Davis, David (Boothferry)

  Arnold, Sir Thomas

  Day, Stephen

  Ashby, David

  Dickens, Geoffrey

  Aspinwall, Jack

  Dicks, Terry

  Atkinson, David

  Dorrell, Stephen

  Baker, Rt Hon K. (Mole Valley)

  Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

  Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)

  Dover, Den

  Baldry, Tony

  Dunn, Bob

  Banks, Robert (Harrogate)

  Durant, Sir Anthony

  Batiste, Spencer

  Dykes, Hugh

  Bellingham, Henry

  Eggar, Tim

  Bendall, Vivian

  Emery, Sir Peter

  Bennett, Nicholas (Pembroke)

  Evans, David (Welwyn Hatf'd)

  Benyon, W.

  Evennett, David

  Bevan, David Gilroy

  Fallon, Michael

  Biffen, Rt Hon John

  Favell, Tony

  Blaker, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Fenner, Dame Peggy

  Body, Sir Richard

  Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey

  Bonsor, Sir Nicholas

  Fishburn, John Dudley

  Boscawen, Hon Robert

  Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)

  Boswell, Tim

  Forth, Eric

  Bottomley, Peter

  Fowler, Rt Hon Sir Norman

  Bottomley, Mrs Virginia

  Fox, Sir Marcus

  Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)

  Franks, Cecil

  Bowis, John

  Freeman, Roger

  Boyson, Rt Hon Dr Sir Rhodes

  French, Douglas

  Brandon-Bravo, Martin

  Fry, Peter

  Brazier, Julian

  Gale, Roger

  Bright, Graham

  Gardiner, Sir George

  Brooke, Rt Hon Peter

  Gill, Christopher

  Brown, Michael (Brigg & Cl't's)

  Glyn, Dr Sir Alan

  Bruce, Ian (Dorset South)

  Goodhart, Sir Philip

  Buck, Sir Antony

  Goodlad, Alastair

  Burns, Simon

  Goodson-Wickes, Dr Charles

  Burt, Alistair

  Gorman, Mrs Teresa

  Butterfill, John

  Gorst, John

  Carlisle, John, (Luton N)

  Grant, Sir Anthony (CambsSW)

  Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)

  Greenway, Harry (Ealing N)

  Carrington, Matthew

  Greenway, John (Ryedale)

  Cash, William

  Gregory, Conal

  Chalker, Rt Hon Mrs Lynda

  Grist, Ian

  Channon, Rt Hon Paul

  Grylls, Michael

  Chapman, Sydney

  Gummer, Rt Hon John Selwyn

  Chope, Christopher

  Hague, William

  Churchill, Mr

  Hamilton, Rt Hon Archie

  Clark, Rt Hon Alan (Plymouth)

  Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)

  Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)

  Hampson, Dr Keith

  Clark, Rt Hon Sir William

  Hanley, Jeremy

  Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)

  Hannam, John

  Coombs, Anthony (Wyre F'rest)

  Hargreaves, A. (B'ham H'll Gr')

  Coombs, Simon (Swindon)

  Hargreaves, Ken (Hyndburn)

  1049

  Harris, David

  Neale, Sir Gerrard

  Haselhurst, Alan

  Nelson, Anthony

  Hawkins, Christopher

  Neubert, Sir Michael

  Hayes, Jerry

  Newton, Rt Hon Tony

  Hayhoe, Rt Hon Sir Barney

  Nicholls, Patrick

  Hayward, Robert

  Nicholson, David (Taunton)

  Heathcoat-Amory, David

  Nicholson, Emma (Devon West)

  Hicks, Mrs Maureen (Wolv' NE)

  Norris, Steve

  Hicks, Robert (Cornwall SE)

  Onslow, Rt Hon Cranley

  Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.

  Oppenheim, Phillip

  Hill, James

  Page, Richard

  Hind, Kenneth

  Paice, James

  Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)

  Parkinson, Rt Hon Cecil

  Hordern, Sir Peter

  Patnick, Irvine

  Howard, Rt Hon Michael

  Patten, Rt Hon Chris (Bath)

  Howarth, Alan (Strat'd-on-A)

  Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth

  Howarth, G. (Cannock & B'wd)

  Porter, David (Waveney)

  Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

  Portillo, Michael

  Hughes, Robert G. (Harrow W)

  Powell, William (Corby)

  Hunt, Rt Hon David

  Price, Sir David

  Hunt, Sir John (Ravensbourne)

  Raison, Rt Hon Sir Timothy

  Irvine, Michael

  Redwood, John

  Jack, Michael

  Renton, Rt Hon Tim

  Jackson, Robert

  Rhodes James, Sir Robert

  Janman, Tim

  Ridsdale, Sir Julian

  Jessel, Toby

  Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm

  Jones, Gwilym (Cardiff N)

  Roberts, Rt Hon Sir Wyn

  Kellett-Bowman, Dame Elaine

  Roe, Mrs Marion

  Kilfedder, James

  Rossi, Sir Hugh

  King, Roger (B'ham N'thfield)

  Rost, Peter

  King, Rt Hon Tom (Bridgwater)

  Rumbold, Rt Hon Mrs Angela

  Kirkhope, Timothy

  Ryder, Rt Hon Richard

  Knapman, Roger

  Sackville, Hon Tom

  Knight, Greg (Derby North)

  Sayeed, Jonathan

  Knight, Dame Jill (Edgbaston)

  Scott, Rt Hon Nicholas

  Knowles, Michael

  Shaw, David (Dover)

  Knox, David

  Shaw, Sir Giles (Pudsey)

  Latham, Michael

  Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')

  Lawrence, Ivan

  Shelton, Sir William

  Lee, John (Pendle)

  Shephard, Mrs G. (Norfolk SW)

  Leigh, Edward (Gainsbor'gh)

  Shersby, Michael

  Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark

  Sims, Roger

  Lester, Jim (Broxtowe)

  Skeet, Sir Trevor

  Lilley, Rt Hon Peter

  Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)

  Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)

  Soames, Hon Nicholas

  Lord, Michael

  Speed, Keith

  Luce, Rt Hon Sir Richard

  Speller, Tony

  Lyell, Rt Hon Sir Nicholas

  Spicer, Sir Jim (Dorset W)

  Macfarlane, Sir Neil

  Squire, Robin

  MacGregor, Rt Hon John

  Stanbrook, Ivor

  MacKay, Andrew (E Berkshire)

  Stanley, Rt Hon Sir John

  Maclean, David

  Steen, Anthony

  McLoughlin, Patrick

  Stern, Michael

  McNair-Wilson, Sir Patrick

  Stevens, Lewis

  Madel, David

  Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)

  Malins, Humfrey

  Stewart, Andy (Sherwood)

  Mans, Keith

  Stewart, Rt Hon Sir Ian

  Maples, John

  Stokes, Sir John

  Marland, Paul

  Sumberg, David

  Marlow, Tony

  Summerson, Hugo

  Marshall, John (Hendon S)

  Tapsell, Sir Peter

  Marshall, Sir Michael (Arundel)

  Taylor, Ian (Esher)

  Martin, David (Portsmouth S)

  Taylor, Sir Teddy

  Mates, Michael

  Temple-Morris, Peter

  Maude, Hon Francis

  Thompson, D. (Calder Valley)

  Mawhinney, Dr Brian

  Thompson, Patrick (Norwich N)

  Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

  Thorne, Neil

  Mayhew, Rt Hon Sir Patrick

  Thurnham, Peter

  Meyer, Sir Anthony

  Townend, John (Bridlington)

  Miller, Sir Hal

  Townsend, Cyril D. (B'heath)

  Mills, Iain

  Tracey, Richard

  Miscampbell, Norman

  Tredinnick, David

  Mitchell, Andrew (Gedling)

  Trippier, David

  Mitchell, Sir David

  Twinn, Dr Ian

  Moate, Roger

  Vaughan, Sir Gerard

  Monro, Sir Hector

  Viggers, Peter

  Montgomery, Sir Fergus

  Wakeham, Rt Hon John

  Morris, M (N'hampton S)

  Waldegrave, Rt Hon William

  Morrison, Rt Hon Sir Peter

  Walden, George

  Moynihan, Hon Colin

  Walker, Bill (T'slde North)

  1050

  Waller, Gary

  Wolfson, Mark

  Walters, Sir Dennis

  Wood, Timothy

  Ward, John

  Woodcock, Dr. Mike

  Wardle, Charles (Bexhill)

  Yeo, Tim

  Warren, Kenneth

  Young, Sir George (Acton)

  Watts, John

  Younger, Rt Hon George

  Whitney, Ray

  Widdecombe, Ann

  Tellers for the Ayes:

  Wiggin, Jerry

  Mr. David Lightbown and

  Wilshire, David

  Mr. John M. Taylor.

  NOES

  Adams, Mrs Irene (Paisley, N.)

  Eadie, Alexander

  Allen, Graham

  Edwards, Huw

  Alton, David

  Enright, Derek

  Anderson, Donald

  Evans, John (St Helens N)

  Archer, Rt Hon Peter

  Ewing, Harry (Falkirk E)

  Armstrong, Hilary

  Ewing, Mrs Margaret (Moray)

  Ashdown, Rt Hon Paddy

  Fatchett, Derek

  Ashton, Joe

  Faulds, Andrew

  Banks, Tony (Newham NW)

  Fearn, Ronald

  Barnes, Harry (Derbyshire NE)

  Field, Frank (Birkenhead)

  Barnes, Mrs Rosie (Greenwich)

  Fields, Terry (L'pool B G'n)

  Barron, Kevin

  Fisher, Mark

  Battle, John

  Flannery, Martin

  Beckett, Margaret

  Flynn, Paul

  Beith, A. J.

  Foot, Rt Hon Michael

  Bell, Stuart

  Foster, Derek

  Bellotti, David

  Foulkes, George

  Benn, Rt Hon Tony

  Fraser, John

  Bennett, A. F. (D'nt'n & R'dish)

  Fyfe, Maria

  Benton, Joseph

  Galbraith, Sam

  Bermingham, Gerald

  Galloway, George

  Blair, Tony

  Garrett, John (Norwich South)

  Blunkett, David

  George, Bruce

  Boateng, Paul

  Gilbert, Rt Hon Dr John

  Boyes, Roland

  Godman, Dr Norman A.

  Bradley, Keith

  Golding, Mrs Llin

  Bray, Dr Jeremy

  Gordon, Mildred

  Brown, Gordon (D'mline E)

  Gould, Bryan

  Brown, Nicholas (Newcastle E)

  Graham, Thomas

  Brown, Ron (Edinburgh Leith)

  Grant, Bernie (Tottenham)

  Bruce, Malcolm (Gordon)

  Griffiths, Nigel (Edinburgh S)

  Caborn, Richard

  Griffiths, Win (Bridgend)

  Callaghan, Jim

  Grocott, Bruce

  Campbell, Menzies (Fife NE)

  Hain, Peter

  Campbell, Ron (Blyth Valley)

  Hardy, Peter

  Campbell-Savours, D. N.

  Hattersley, Rt Hon Roy

  Carlile, Alex (Mont'g)

  Haynes, Frank

  Carr, Michael

  Heal, Mrs Sylvia

  Cartwright, John

  Healey, Rt Hon Denis

  Clark, Dr David (S Shields)

  Henderson, Doug

  Clarke, Tom (Monklands W)

  Hinchliffe, David

  Clay, Bob

  Hoey, Kate (Vauxhall)

  Clelland, David

  Hogg, N. (C'nauld & Kilsyth)

  Cohen, Harry

  Home Robertson, John

  Cook, Frank (Stockton N)

  Hood, Jimmy

  Cook, Robin (Livingston)

  Howarth, George (Knowsley N)

  Corbett, Robin

  Howell, Rt Hon D. (S'heath)

  Corbyn, Jeremy

  Howells, Geraint

  Cousins, Jim

  Howells, Dr. Kim (Pontypridd)

  Cox, Tom

  Hoyle, Doug

  Crowther, Stan

  Hughes, John (Coventry NE)

  Cryer, Bob

  Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

  Cummings, John

  Hughes, Simon (Southwark)

  Cunliffe, Lawrence

  Illsley, Eric

  Cunningham, Dr John

  Ingram, Adam

  Dalyell, Tam

  Jones, Barry (Alyn & Deeside)

  Darling, Alistair

  Jones, leuan (Ynys Môn)

  Davies, Rt Hon Denzil (Llanelli)

  Kennedy, Charles

  Davies, Ron (Caerphilly)

  Kilfoyle, Peter

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

  Kumar, Ashok

  Dewar, Donald

  Lambie, David

  Dixon, Don

  Lamond, James

  Dobson, Frank

  Lestor, Joan (Eccles)

  Doran, Frank

  Lewis, Terry

  Douglas, Dick

  Litherland, Robert

  Duffy, Sir A. E. P.

  Livingstone, Ken

  Dunnachie, Jimmy

  Livsey, Richard

  Dunwoody, Hon Mrs Gwyneth

  Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)

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  Lofthouse, Geoffrey

  Redmond, Martin

  Loyden, Eddie

  Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn

  McAllion, John

  Reid, Dr John

  McAvoy, Thomas

  Richardson, Jo

  McCartney, Ian

  Robertson, George

  Macdonald, Calum A.

  Robinson, Geoffrey

  McFall, John

  Rogers, Allan

  McKay, Allen (Barnsley West)

  Rooker, Jeff

  McKelvey, William

  Rooney, Terence

  McLeish, Henry

  Ross, Ernie (Dundee W)

  McMaster, Gordon

  Ruddock, Joan

  McNamara, Kevin

  Salmond, Alex

  McWilliam, John

  Sedgemore, Brian

  Madden, Max

  Sheerman, Barry

  Mahon, Mrs Alice

  Sheldon, Rt Hon Robert

  Marek, Dr John

  Short, Clare

  Marshall, David (Shettleston)

  Skinner, Dennis

  Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

  Smith, Andrew (Oxford E)

  Martin, Michael J. (Springburn)

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

  Martlew, Eric

  Smith, J. P. (Vale of Glam)

  Maxton, John

  Soley, Clive

  Meacher, Michael

  Spearing, Nigel

  Meale, Alan

  Steinberg, Gerry

  Michael, Alun

  Stephen, Nicol

  Michie, Bill (Sheffield Heeley)

  Stott, Roger

  Michie, Mrs Ray (Arg'I & Bute)

  Strang, Gavin

  Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)

  Straw, Jack

  Moonie, Dr Lewis

  Taylor, Mrs Ann (Dewsbury)

  Morgan, Rhodri

  Taylor, Matthew (Truro)

  Morley, Elliot

  Thompson, Jack (Wansbeck)

  Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)

  Turner, Dennis

  Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

  Vaz, Keith

  Mowlam, Marjorie

  Wallace, James

  Mullin, Chris

  Walley, Joan

  Murphy, Paul

  Warden, Gareth (Gower)

  Nellist, Dave

  Wareing, Robert N.

  Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon

  Watson, Mike (Glasgow, C)

  O'Brien, William

  Welsh, Andrew (Angus E)

  O'Hara, Edward

  Williams, Rt Hon Alan

  O'Neill, Martin

  Williams, Alan W. (Carm'then)

  Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

  Wilson, Brian

  Parry, Robert

  Winnick, David

  Patchett, Terry

  Wise, Mrs Audrey

  Pendry, Tom

  Worthington, Tony

  Pike, Peter L.

  Wray, Jimmy

  Powell, Ray (Ogmore)

  Young, David (Bolton SE)

  Prescott, John

  Primarolo, Dawn

  Tellers for the Noes:

  Quin, Ms Joyce

  Mr. Ken Eastham and Mr. Martyn Jones.

  Radice, Giles

  Randall. Stuart

  Question accordingly agreed to.

Benefits (Student Entitlement)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Patnick]
1.53 am
Mr. John McAllion: This debate is taking place in the early hours of the morning, but the presence of so many of my hon. Friends underlines the importance which the Opposition attach to it, which contrasts starkly with the importance that the Government attach to it.
The debate is officially designated
"the subject of loss of student entitlement to housing benefit and income support".
I do not think that there can be any quarrel with those terms. I suspect that not only would the Under-Secretary of State for Social Security concede that students have lost their entitlement to housing benefit and income support; she would probably boast that it is the Government's official policy that students should lose such entitlement.
On 23 August 1991 the Minister wrote to me setting out clearly the Government's attitude. She reiterated the Governments view
"first expressed by us in 1985 that the majority of full-time students should not have access to benefits as a means of supporting themselves whilst studying."
That view—first expressed six years ago—has now been given effect, and it is universally accepted that students are denied housing benefit and, in the majority of cases, housing support. The disagreement between the two sides of the House arises in regard to the effect that that has on students.
The Government would have us believe that students have never had it so good. In a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson), the Prime Minister said that the Government's introduction of student loans had given students more money to cover their living costs—25 per cent. more in 1990–91 than in the previous year. He described that as a substantial real-terms increase and a generous package of support.
The Prime Minister is not alone in making such claims. They are made by all Ministers who are confronted with allegations of student poverty and hardship. In a "Dear Colleague" letter circulated to all Members of Parliament, the Secretary of State for Education and Science warned us earlier in the year to beware of students who came to us during the recess pleading poverty. He went on to repeat the Prime Minister's bland assurance that, far from experiencing poverty, most students were better off than they had ever been before.
The Secretary of State acknowledged that some students might be genuinely worried about their finances. He asked students, "Are you really trying hard enough to get jobs during the vacation? Don't just look for a job in jobcentres"—after all, the Government have closed down most of them—"but get out and actively look for temporary work elsewhere."
Mr. Huw Edwards: "On your bike".
Mr. McAllion: As my hon. Friend says, it was a variation on the advice offered to the unemployed by a former Tory Minister. Such advice is becoming as offensive, ignorant and out of touch as it was when first uttered by the right hon. Member for Chingford (Mr. Tebbit) many years ago. The Government's claim that

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students are better off as a result of student loans simply is not true; nor is it true that loans make up for the loss of income support and housing benefit.
Let us look more closely at the Government's argument. In his "Dear Colleague" letter, the Secretary of State referred to the benefit that students could previously have claimed. He lumped together housing benefit, income support and unemployment benefit, arriving at an average benefit entitlement over the summer recess of £327. He did not explain how he arrived at that figure, but it turns out—conveniently—to be £93 less than the £420 student loan that the Government are now making available.
The Secretary of State concluded that students were now being more than compensated for the loss of their benefit entitlement. But how does he arrive at that figure of £327? Others have arrived at very different sums. Using the Government's own figures, the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux has calculated that an unemployed claimant aged between 18 and 24—as most students are—would have received £31·15 a week income support during the 12-week vacation: a total of £373·80. That is a much higher figure than the one given by the Secretary of State.
The association also calculated that, over and above income support, the same claimant would have received £360 in housing benefit, on a typical rent of £30 a week. It calculated that a typical out-of-work student entitled to housing benefit and income support could have expected to receive £733·80 over the 12-week vacation. It is that position of fundamental weakness and poverty that forces them to apply for the Government's student loans.
Ministers will try to hide from the reality. In his "Dear Colleague" letter the Secretary of State tells us that the uprating of student grants in 1990–91 was over and above the extra money made available through student loans. They say that an additional £420 in student loans and an uprating of 5.5 per cent. in grant is the basis for their claim that students have never had it so good—that they are getting more money now than ever before.
I have already dealt with the £420 loan, which does not even come near to compensating students for the loss of £733 in housing benefit and income support. But what about the 5.5 per cent uprating? When it was introduced in September of last year, the rate of inflation was almost twice 5.5 per cent.: it was 10.9 per cent. Admittedly we should compare the average rate of inflation for the whole of 1991 with the previous year. When we do so, we find that the inflation rate comes down somewhat, but it comes down to 7.9 per cent., which is still 2.5 per cent. above the Government's so-called uprating. The reality is that, far from being an uprating over and above other increases, this is yet another real terms decrease in students' real incomes. This year the grant has been frozen at last year's level, with no uprating for inflation.
What are we left with? First, with the withdrawal of housing benefit and income support and their replacement by student loans, students now get less, not more, money. Secondly, the so-called uprating has also meant that, in real terms, there is less, not more, money for students. Ministers can claim until they are blue in the face that students are getting more money and that they have never had it so good, but they cannot justify those claims by reference to the facts, which show that students are
1054
significantly worse off than they were previously. As a far better man than anyone in this House once said, "facts are chiels that winna ding", even for Tory Ministers.
The citizens advice bureaux evidence compared student incomes with the incomes of those who are in receipt of income support, which represents the minimum subsistence level below which no one in our society is meant to fall. What are these minimum subsistence levels? For a single claimant in the age bracket 18 to 24, it is £1,619.80 in income support per year, plus £1,560 for full housing benefit. That amounts to a total yearly income of £3,179.80. What is the subsistence level for students? It is £2,265 for the full grant and £420 for the student loan—in total a yearly income of just £2,685. That is almost £500 below the minimum subsistence level for the poorest people in our society.
That level of income has been described by the Prime Minister and the Government as a generous settlement for students, but the citizens advice bureaux provide a very different description. They say that student grants, taken together with student loans, cannot provide enough to cover even the most basic needs of the poorest members in our society. The Prime Minister answered a question that I put to him earlier this year by referring to the fact that he did not believe that I live in the real world. In view, however, of what he said about student support, compared with what the citizens advice bureaux say about student support—the citizens advice bureaux deal with real students suffering real hardship in the real world, while the Prime Minister hides himself away behind locked gates in 10 Downing street—there is only one conclusion that can be arrived at: that the citizens advice bureaux are right, because they live in the real world. The Prime Minister and all the other Ministers are wrong because they do not live in the real world.
Their reply will be, "What about the access funds?" Given that only £25 million were allocated to access funds for the whole of the United Kingdom, the answer must be, "What about the access funds?" The Government's intention was that these funds would be a way of helping with one-off exceptional circumstances affecting only a small minority of students, but the reality is that once again they have been shown to be completely wrong. Throughout the country access funds have been stretched way beyond the limit. Many colleges ran out of money long before they ran out of students needing help. The Minister of State, Scottish Office, shakes his head, but he knows that the Government conceded this point when they announced that they would allow colleges to anticipate up to 10 per cent. of next year's allocation to relieve the pressure on this year's inadequate allocation.
In Dundee in the first year more than 2,000 students applied to the access fund and more than £300,000 was allocated to them. It is not enough. The truth is that we are dealing not with one-off exceptional cases of hardship, affecting only a small minority of students, but with a widespread and damaging problem affecting thousands of students.
During the recess I held a number of surgeries in Dundee colleges, which were specifically for students. I was not short of students who applied for help in the most distressing of circumstances: mature students with spouses and children, who had been denied housing benefit and income support to which they had previously been entitled; landlords pressing for rent payments and students with no money to pay; arrears of rent building up; poll tax

1055
arrears building up; overdrafts being extended; electricity supplies being cut off, in some cases to parents and children. Again and again I heard the same story of deepening poverty driving students to take the decision to drop out of education.
Recently Aberdeen university carried out a survey which revealed that 15 per cent. of students were considering quitting their courses because of financial hardship. That is an appalling situation, but it is made more appalling because it mainly affects students from the poorest backgrounds, those whose parents are on low incomes and who get no financial help from their parents because they cannot afford to give it. Mature students with young families, who are on their own financially and are burdened with the heaviest of financial commitments, are having to scrape by on an inadequate student grant and an even more inadequate student loan.
Dundee is an area of high unemployment, with few jobs to be had. I came across a number of cases where, in an attempt to increase their chances of employment, people had returned to college to try to get better qualifications. However, because they had been unemployed, they had not earned enough money in the previous three years to qualify for the mature student allowance, and so it was denied to them. They also lost their entitlement to housing benefit and income support, upon which they had been very dependent as they were unemployed. Many had children. Under income support regulations they were allowed £17 for each child every week, but under the student grant regulations they were allowed just £8 for each child per week. They too have children, with similar needs, but they are allocated much less because, rather than staying on the dole, their parents wished to return to college and get qualifications to get them back into work. All of those things were barriers, discouraging and preventing access to education for the poorest people in our society. Those are the people who need access to education most of all.
All those facts give the lie to the Government's claim that they are extending educational opportunity to everyone and that they are genuinely interested in creating a classless society. I am prepared to be convinced that that is not the case and that the Government mean well and intend to try to open up educational opportunity to everyone, no matter their class background. But if I am to believe that, when the Minister replies to the debate she will have to commit herself to two very simple propositions: first, that the Government will institute a full review of student financial support as a matter of urgency; secondly, that they will commit themselves to restoring to all students the housing benefit and income support that the Government have taken away from them. If that commitment is not made, the Government stand condemned of having betrayed a whole generation of the poorest people in our society by taking away their only means of escaping from poverty, access to education opportunity.
2.9 am
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Social Security (Miss Ann Widdecombe) rose—
Mr. Ernie Ross: Come on, get on with it. Do better.
Miss Widdecombe: The hon. Gentleman's attitude does not do justice to the seriousness of this debate. I take the matters raised by the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) very seriously and I suggest that we debate them in a sensible manner.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Dundee, East for raising these issues. He has mentioned most of them in earlier correspondence with me and I see many hon. Members on the Opposition Benches who have also mentioned them, either in correspondence or in parliamentary questions. I especially welcome my hon. Friends from the Scottish Office to the debate.
The hon. Gentleman will know that the changes made to students' entitlement to housing benefit and income support were not made in isolation. The withdrawal of most full-time students' entitlement to those benefits took place at a time when substantial additional resources were being made available to students through the education system. The issues were discussed many times both in this House and in another place last year, and the social security regulations which gave effect to the changes were fully debated and approved by both Houses. Nevertheless, it would be helpful if I were to explain the background to the Government's overall policy on the financial support of full-time students.
As long ago as 1985 we set out our intention to remove students' general entitlement to certain benefits. Since that point we have taken a number of steps to reduce students' reliance on benefits. That culminated in the general withdrawal of income support and housing benefit in the 1990–91 academic year.
Our view then, which is undiminished today and is at the centre of the debate, is that it ought not to be the function of the social security system to support students, not only because of the administrative burden placed on the Department's local benefit offices and local authorities, but because there already exists a maintenance system for those in full-time education. Therefore, as I have frequently said in letters to Opposition Members and to my hon. Friends, we regard the support of students as the proper duty of the education system, rather than of the social security system, although there are exceptions that we support under the social security system.
The Government have often been accused of singling out students for special treatment under the rules. That is because there are alternative sources of financial support—provided from public funds—available to them. Opposition Members may wish to argue about the level of those funds. The thrust of the debate is whether the education system or the social security system is the right source of student support. I should have hoped that there was some consensus on both sides of the House that the responsibility for student support should remain with the educational maintenance system.
Our commitment to that principle was given greater weight by the fact that benefit claims for students frequently presented administrative problems out of all proportion to the amounts of benefit finally awarded and the duration of the benefit periods. Benefit offices faced periodical surges in claims which were complicated to assess and frequently resulted in no award of benefit being made. It seemed to us nonsense that the benefit system should be duplicating the role of educational provision in that way. It also seemed undesirable for students to become dependent on benefits while in full-time education. Social security benefits are intended to assist those people

1057
who, for whatever reason, find themselves in circumstances where they are unable to support themselves and those circumstances could not reasonably be avoided.
Of course, we recognised that we would have to provide the wherewithal for students to support themselves. In the current academic year, the full-year loan facility plus the grant is more than 30 per cent. higher than in 1989–90. This support is 6 per cent. more than was available in 1991.
These increases will have resulted in the vast majority of students being better off overall. Research commissioned by the Department of Education and Science indicated that the average loss of benefits among students who actually claimed them—and they were a minority—would have been some £327 in the past academic year. By comparison, the average loan available is £420.
However, we are well aware that there are some students who, even with the increase in support from the grant and loan, may experience financial difficulties. That is why the Government have established the access funds.
It has been a fashion among Opposition Members—indeed, this was reported by the hon. Gentleman tonight—to suggest that the access funds alone are intended to compensate for the withdrawal of benefits generally and that the £25 million, which he correctly quoted, must, therefore, be inadequate. This is not the case. These funds are only one element of the package of extra resources for students which I mentioned a moment ago.
As I have already said, most students will have extra financial support available to them without having to call upon the access funds. Those funds are there to assist students who face particular financial difficulties and who, as a result, may not be able to take up or resume their studies.
I think that it would be helpful if, at this point, I were to remind the House that we have made special provision for students in certain groups. Hon. Members will appreciate, I am sure, that there are some students who have financial needs above and beyond those of their peers. I am thinking in particular of disabled students and students with children. The benefit regulations make specific provision for those students, or in some cases their partners, to receive both income support and housing benefit provided that they meet the general qualifying conditions for those benefits. The new top-up loan provides additional resources for those groups as well as for other students. The existence in the benefit system to which they have access of a generous £10 weekly disregard on income from a top-up loan means that many students in those vulnerable groups will be better off under the new arrangements.
I know that the hon. Member for Dundee, East is particularly concerned about students' ability to meet accommodation costs from within their resources. Clearly, this is one area of student expenditure that can vary quite markedly throughout the country. The student grant has always been intended to provide for accommodation and therefore to some extent reflects variations in costs. The regional variation in the level of grant has been, and continues to be, reflected in the way in which housing benefit for eligible students is calculated. Housing benefit is not payable for the first £16·25 of rent outside London or £23·45 of rent within London for any student. For some years housing benefit has not been available to students in
1058
halls of residence or similar accommodation. Therefore, students generally only really looked to housing benefit to top up their accommodation needs and only then if they were in property not owned by their college.
In fact, only about half of young higher education students live in privately rented accommodation. The Department's own statistical information suggests that in May 1989 fewer than 15 per cent. of students were claiming housing benefit and only 2 per cent. claimed in the summer vacation.
In recent months a good deal of concern has been expressed about students no longer having access to benefits over the summer vacation. The impression one gets is that, in the past, every student relied on income support, at least over the summer period. That is a fallacy. In the summer of 1989 DSS local offices kept a count of student claims; there were 135,000 during that long vacation. That represents less than a quarter of the student population affected by the benefit changes. Clearly, some students called upon the access funds in the summer period. In July, the higher education institutions were told that they could anticipate up to 10 per cent. of their access fund allocation for the 1991–92 academic year.
The hon. Member for Dundee, East called on us to promise a review, but that comes down to a running review and immediate flexibility. In this academic year the Department of Education and Science has also provided additional guidance to institutions administering the access funds. That is intended to assist them in determining how the funds might best be dispersed. The Government remain of the view that the educational establishments are well placed to assess the financial needs and priorities of their students.
Mr. McAllion: In common with the Minister from the Scottish Office, the Minister rightly says that the institutions are best equipped to know the needs of their students. Those responsible for the access funds at Dundee university wrote to me to say that their funds had run out even before the summer recess had begun. There was no additional help for students who found themselves in trouble in the summer. What advice would the Minister offer to a student who has a full student grant and a student loan but who is still £500 below the income support level, the minimum subsistence level for any individual in society? That student is unable to get help from his educational institution because it has run out of its access funds. What should that student do?
Miss Widdecombe: The grant and loan system is designed to cover the entire academic year, not just part of it.
Secondly, access funds are administered by the institutions, which are best able to decide what is needed. We have reviewed the problem that occurred and, as I said, we have issued additional guidance to such institutions to try to make sure that the problem does not recur. Students, with a combination of loan, grant and access funds, are well provided for over the course of an entire year.
Hon. Members will be aware that the access fund allocations for the current academic year have already been made. As before, their distribution among institutions takes account of student numbers and regional variations in housing costs. The institutions are required to

1059
monitor their use of the access funds and the Secretary of State for Education and Science has undertaken to review the operation of the funds in due course.
The hon. Member for Dundee, East raised a number of important issues this evening. I am grateful for the opportunity to put the Government's views on the matter, but underlying all that I have said is a fundamental conviction that the education system, not social security benefits, should provide for the maintenance of students.
It makes no sense for two such complex systems of financial support to attempt to meet the same needs other than in the most exceptional circumstances. The educational maintenance system is specifically designed with the financial needs of students in mind and we have made substantial new resources available to ensure that those needs are met.
Mr. Huw Edwards: Why do the Government believe that for people on low incomes in employment the social security system, especially through family credit, has a vital role to play, yet for people on low incomes in education the social security system, through housing benefit, plays no role?
Miss Widdecombe: Because, until the Government introduced family credit, there was no comprehensive assistance for people in work on low incomes in terms of
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the benefits system. There is assistance available for students' education through the educational maintenance system and what is currently in operation is the best method for the support of students. There is no point in running two systems side by side.
If the hon. Gentleman has specific cases of hardship which he wishes to raise, there is a straightforward means of doing so. He should write to the Secretary of State for Education and Science setting out the problems, and the same goes for problems in respect of Dundee university. If there is a specific matter in the system which is the Minister's responsibility and which is causing concern, the Minister can respond to it.
I see no point in taking an already elaborate system and running it alongside another elaborate system, rather than having one straightforward source of student income. Indeed, it must be more comprehensible to, and dignified for, students to get the whole of their resources from the education system rather than from a mixture of social security and the education system. So there is an administrative advantage and an advantage in terms of comprehensibility in having a single system. The Government's point is made.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at twenty-three minutes past Two o'clock.