Commons Sitting of 27 January 1995

Preamble
The House met at half-past Nine o'clock

PRAYERS
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
9.34 am
Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. Have you received a request from the Secretary of State for Defence to make a statement later today, or would you allow him to do so, to clarify the apparent conflict and embarrassment that arises from the fact that his parliamentary private secretary, the hon. Member for Norfolk, North-West (Mr. Bellingham), has declared in the Register of Members' Secretaries and Research Assistants that Mr. John Kennedy of John Kennedy Associates, a public relations firm, is his researcher or secretary?
I draw the matter to your attention because John Kennedy has been the spokesperson for the unrecognised Bosnian Serb Government and for Radovan Karadzic in London. Clearly, on the face of it, there is an acute conflict of interest and it is an embarrassment to the Secretary of State in his difficult diplomatic task, at home and abroad, of promoting the interests of the United Kingdom and carrying out the necessary international brokerage to reduce the problems of that dreadful conflict. We need some clarity and a statement today to explain that link.
Madam Speaker: That is a rather convoluted point of order. The Government have not informed me that they want to make a statement today, although there is time for them to do so, should they so wish. If that is the case, time will be set aside.

Orders of the Day

  Activity Centres (Young Persons' Safety) Bill
  Order for Second Reading read.
  9.36 am
  Mr. David Jamieson: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
  It is a rare honour that the House bestows on a Back-Bench Member to have the pleasure and privilege of introducing a Private Member's Bill. It offers me a special opportunity to present a Bill on behalf of my constituents, which is relevant to parents throughout the country.
  Sometimes, when a tragedy occurs where no one is at fault, it leaves us with a feeling of helplessness because no law, however well-intentioned, can overcome human error or an act of God. Sometimes, however, a profoundly significant event highlights the need for a change in the law and galvanises people of determination and good sense to change it—an event that was totally avoidable and was due, not to human frailty, but to human neglect. The Lyme bay tragedy was one such incident and because that event triggered the Bill, hon. Members will understand if I refer to it several times during my speech.
  In March 1993, four teenagers from the Southway school died in Lyme bay. That was no accident. They died due to the criminal neglect of the people whom they and their parents thought were responsible for them—the people running the St. Alban's activity centre. The managing director of Active Learning and Leisure, Peter Kite, is now serving a three-year prison sentence for manslaughter.
  Parents, governors of schools, local education authorities, teacher unions, organisations involved with running activity centres, the townswomens' guilds and many others, have called for action in this important matter. They have done so because the strongest instinct in any parent is to protect their children from danger. It is an instinct that is so strong in parents that they will often put their child's life before their own.
  The parents who lost their children at Lyme bay are here in the House today, as are some of the survivors of that appalling incident who tried to rescue their schoolfriends. My constituents Dennis and Jackie Walker, Noel and Sylvia Dunne, Carolyn and Bob Langley and Gerry and Jackie Sayer have all suffered the greatest loss that any parent can suffer—the loss of a child. It was such an unnecessary loss, of four young, healthy people in the very prime of their lives.
  Over the past 22 months those parents have borne the overwhelming pain of their loss with great dignity and, with extraordinary courage, they have turned grief into action. Realising that their own children can never return, they have campaigned unstintingly to ensure that no other parent will suffer in the same way.
  My constituents, as well as many other parents, sent their children on activity courses because they believed that young people should have challenges, and the experience and excitement of the outdoors. There should be opportunities for young people to push their strength and endurance to the limits, and to find in themselves

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  hitherto unknown capacity. In an age of television games and videos, the challenge of the outdoors is of even greater importance, especially for children who live in our great conurbations and monotonous inner cities. Those children, some of whom lack play space, need to find genuine adventure.
  The national curriculum recognises that the outdoor environment has an important role in the physical, emotional and intellectual development of our young people. Our society puts greater stress on outdoor activities. Those who support the Bill support such activities for children, and want to see them grow and expand. But we must distinguish between activities that are exciting and challenging, and activities that are dangerous. We must distinguish between activities that are adventurous and exhilarating, and those that are hazardous.
  Abseiling can be fun and exhilarating with ropes that are in good order and a competent instructor, but abseiling can be dangerous, as in a case recently reported in The Times Educational Supplement. It stated that Alan Cottle, the outdoor education manager for Surrey, visited Hyde house centre in Dorset and found that children were abseiling from a tower, but the instructor did not know how to use the braking mechanism. In his report on the incident, Mr. Cottle said:
  "I was alarmed to see some appalling practice which was totally unsafe".
  It is significant that the Hyde house centre is owned by Devon and Dorset Holidays, whose owner, Chris Reynard, had shares in Active Learning and Leisure, the company fined £60,000 for manslaughter in the Lyme bay case.
  I wish to examine briefly the present position of activity centres and the framework in which they operate. There has been a rapid growth in those wishing to participate in such activities. Local education authority centres have declined in number as more funds have been delegated to individual schools and less has been held back by authorities. Squeezes on budgets have meant that many local education authority centres have closed and commercial centres have filled the gap.
  I have no intention today of exploring the philosophical or political arguments on the ownership of the centres, which is not at issue in the Bill. Whoever owns the centre, it must be operated to standards that make it safe for our children to use. At present there is no need for anyone who sets up a centre to register. Anybody can set up a centre, almost at will.
  It is a curious irony that we live in a society in which, if we send our dog to a boarding kennel, we can be assured that it is registered and meets high minimum standards, yet if we send our child to an activity centre, there is no requirement on the centre to register and no legally required minimum standards. In a civilised society, consumers have the right to expect high minimum standards of quality and care, whether in old people's homes or dogs' homes or hygiene in food shops. The Bill extends the right to safety standards for our children at activity centres.
  A Health and Safety Executive report was published on Tuesday this week into activity centres inspected since April 1994. The report confirmed my belief that most
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  centres work to satisfactory or high standards and some centres, both commercial and local authority, work to excellent standards. However, in their detailed examination of 192 centres, the executive reported:
  "some areas for improvement were noted and appropriate action was taken to deal with both serious and less serious concerns."
  The executive also established that 76 per cent. of centres with five or more employees had a written safety policy. That means that 24 per cent. of centres did not have a written safety policy. It also stated that 87 per cent. of centres had undertaken risk assessment of the outdoor activities provided and 13 per cent. had not undertaken that risk assessment. Some 92 per cent. of centres had procedures and equipment in place to deal wilh emergencies, such as procedures for evacuation from, and communication with, remote locations and 8 per cent. of the centres did not have such safety procedures. It found that 84 per cent. of centres ensured that formal or informal training was provided for instructors, while 16 per cent. did not provide that training.
  I wonder how many of us would fly in an aeroplane knowing that 16 per cent. of pilots had not received training and that 24 per cent. of airlines did not have a written safety policy. Yet that is the very environment of risk into which we launch our children when we send them to outdoor activity centres. In all, it is estimated that there are 3,000 such centres around Britain. There is no register—no list—so we do not know whether that figure is accurate. The Health and Safety Executive's report appears to show that about 10 per cent. of the centres work below a satisfactory safety level. That means that 300 centres do not meet the required standards and each of those centres takes hundreds, if not thousands, of children through its doors each year.
  It is also estimated that 75 per cent. of children are booked into centres by their schools and the other 25 per cent. are booked in directly by their parents. We must ask: how do parents and teachers distinguish between good centres and bad centres, and how do they know when they are making their choice that they are choosing a safe centre that works to high standards?
  The position for teachers, governors and parents was made more difficult by the four-point plan introduced by the former Secretary of State for Education in November 1993, in which governors were made corporately and legally liable for the safety of children from their school booked into an activity centre. The situation in grant-maintained schools is even more difficult, in that the governors are individually and corporately legally liable for the safety of children engaging in these activities. Therefore, governors have rightly said that they cannot take responsibility for matters which they are not competent to judge.
  Under the Bill teachers will still have a general care of duty, in loco parentis, and nothing can take that duty of care away from them. But how does that extend to a teacher who in good faith hands over responsibility for an activity to a person who he believes is an expert instructor in that activity? That is precisely what happened at Lyme bay. The teacher handed over responsibility for the canoeing activity not knowing that one of the instructors had a qualification that an eight-year-old could have achieved in an afternoon and that the other instructor had barely more.

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  The Bill will be welcomed by all responsible centres, and I know that many people are concerned about these matters. Evidence in recent months to the Select Committee on Education has come in droves, and it all states the same thing. It is almost as if those providing it are working from a script. They all say that there needs to be compulsory accreditation and inspection and a framework of law to cover these centres.
  It is interesting to note that much of the evidence has come from the industry and that many centres report that in the past 15 months business has fallen by up to one third because public confidence in it has been undermined. Some of them say that a huge burden of paperwork and bureaucracy has descended upon them as schools and local education authorities seeking to meet the criteria of the fourth point in the four-point plan ask for lengthy questionnaires to be completed for each trip. Sometimes an inspector from the local authority calls as well to ensure that the documentation has been correctly completed. It is rather as if each passenger who gets on a bus has to ask the driver whether he has a PSV licence and the bus has an MOT certificate.
  Only by compulsory accreditation of all centres will we restore confidence in the outdoor activities industry, relieve good centres of all unnecessary bureaucracy and form-filling and ensure that teachers and parents will know which centres are working to high safety standards and which are not. At the end of the Lyme bay trial Mr. Justice Ognall said:
  "The potential for injuries and death is too obvious to be left to the inadequate vagaries of self-regulation."
  Hardly a parent in the country would disagree with that assertion.
  I shall now outline the Bill's main provisions. It sets out to raise standards of safety for providers of facilities for adventure centres in total or part for young people under the age of 18. Centres that cater exclusively for those of 18 years or over are excluded from the Bill. The facility would have to include some form of leadership or instruction and I do not intend the Bill to cover providers of equipment such as boats on a boating lake where there is no instruction or leadership.
  When the regulations are drawn after consultation it is most important that family outings and some social and voluntary groups are excluded. We shall need to take great care when drawing up regulations to ensure that the line is drawn in the correct place.
  The Bill contains four main elements. First, it sets up a licensing authority which will oversee the accreditation and licensing of activity centres. In particular, centres will have to agree to follow a code of safety practice which will include the suitability of equipment and the qualifications and experience of instructors. The code of practice that is currently being finalised by the Activity Centres Advisory Committee will, I am sure, form an excellent basis for that.
  Secondly, the Bill establishes an inspectorate to ensure that centres abide by the code of practice. When the inspectorate encounters activities that are causing immediate danger to children it will have powers to stop that activity at that point. If it encounters sloppy or potentially hazardous activities and practice, it could issue notices of improvement to give centres a period of time to improve standards. I hope that over time that would lift
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  the standards of centres that are currently not operating to proper safety standards and allow them to continue trading, but, of course, to higher safety standards.
  The ultimate sanction on a recalcitrant centre that continued to ignore high standards of safety and put children at risk would be the removal of its licence, after which it would be an offence for the centre to continue trading. If it did, the result could be a heavy fine or imprisonment.
  Thirdly, the Bill sets up a complaints procedure for consumers or others who have reservations about the safety of activities at a particular centre. Such complaints could be followed up by competent independent inspectors. If that procedure had been in place in 1992, Joy Cawthorne, the former instructor at the St. Alban's centre, who warned the managing director that unless his safety standards improved he would have to explain one day to parents why their child was not coming home, would have had somewhere to take her complaints and a competent authoritative body could have acted on them. Had such a remedy been available we might not have needed this debate, four children might not have lost their lives and Mr. Kite could still be trading.
  Fourthly, following some Government pump-priming funds the scheme should be largely self-financing with centres paying for their accreditation. I liken that to car owners who currently pay for MOT certificates.
  The Bill is a piece of enabling legislation which sets out the framework for safety in outdoor centres. If it becomes law, following a period of consultation with the industry and other legitimate interests, statutory instruments will have to be laid before the House for the detailed legislation. I hope that the Minister will assure the House that if the Bill becomes law he will act without delay to ensure that the secondary legislation is introduced. I hope that that can be completed before Christmas to allow the legislation to take effect early in 1996. I ask the Minister to make it plain that he agrees with my desired timetable.
  Sir Peter Emery: I am listening with great interest to the hon. Gentleman because, as he knows, Lyme bay is partly in my constituency. Could he expand a little on his ideas about financing? Does he accept that the fees paid by local authorities and persons may be variable? How does he see that operating? Obviously, it is important that we do not make these activities so expensive that parents cannot afford to have their children carry them out. There is considerable concern about that and, although I support the Bill, that issue needs greater explanation.
  Mr. Jamieson: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question, which has a good motivation. No one who supports the Bill wants centres to go out of business. However, in the current unregulated environment, many are going out of business because people do not have the confidence to use them. The right hon. Gentleman will understand that it would have been wrong of me to present the Bill today and try to put precise detail on a charging scheme for centres. The Bill provides for consultation with the industry and other interested parties before decisions are taken on such matters.
  It is my intention to follow the ACAC's guidelines. It has already costed the voluntary programme of accreditation that the Government had in mind. It suggested a scheme that initially was pump-primed to set

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  up a small licensing body, which could then charge fees, at differential rates, depending on the size of the centre. We must remember that some centres are multi-million-pound organisations. They have said they would be willing to pay a small fee to become accredited so that people would have the confidence to use their centres. The hon. Gentleman will understand why, although I am telling him my thoughts, I am not putting any detail on the costings. That must be part of the consultations.
  Mr. Edward O'Hara: Does my hon. Friend agree that, although there may be a case for differential charging based on the size and volume of a business, that must never be allowed to lead to differential standards between centres?
  Mr. Jamieson: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his remarks. The thrust of the Bill is that there should not be differential standards at centres. They must all follow high standards of safety for children. However, we must not financially penalise small centres or people who want to set up small organisations to the extent that we put them off. When we reach the secondary stage of the legislation, we must carefully consider that point to ensure that those who want to come into the industry and start a small business can do so.
  In drawing up the Bill, I was anxious to ensure that it covered only aspects of safety for children. It does not cover other aspects such as hotel arrangements and other general provisions at centres. Those are matters on which sensible teachers and parents can make decisions. If a teacher or parent who visits a centre before the proposed holiday does not like the look of the hotel arrangements or the cleanliness of the premises, he can quite properly make a decision about that, acting as a sensible adult. However, what a teacher or parent cannot sensibly do when he arrives at the centre is to make an assessment of whether the instructors are competent to carry out the activities and whether the equipment is suitable for the task.
  Mr. Gary Streeter: As a fellow Plymouth Member, I greatly support the Bill. I can recall what the hon. Gentleman referred to as the sense of shock and trauma in Plymouth when the tragedy occurred. I commend him for the way in which he has introduced the Bill, which is a balanced and sensible response to what was obviously a gaping hole in our law. He has my entire support.
  Mr. Jamieson: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support.
  I make no apology for having been deeply critical of the Government over the past 22 months for not taking action in this important matter. The campaign for a change in the law has been a long, hard fight with many harrowing experiences on the way for the bereaved parents, especially the three-week trial of those accused of the manslaughter of their children.
  It is difficult for an Opposition Back Bencher to get a Government to change their mind. Therefore, I come here today in some humility to welcome the Government's recent change of heart. I thank the Minister for his co-operation and the guidance that I have received from his Department in recent days. I also thank him for
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  making a statement on Tuesday not only showing his support for the Bill, but positively welcoming it. I hope that we can work together in the coming months to get the Bill through Parliament to Royal Assent and then, as urgently as is prudent, to get the statutory instruments through the House.
  I am also grateful for the support of many other hon. Members who have encouraged and assisted me, in particular the hon. Members for Plymouth, Sutton (Mr. Streeter) and for Cornwall, South-East (Mr. Hicks), both of whom share my concerns. I am also grateful to many of the teaching unions, in particular the National Union of Teachers and its leader Doug McAvoy and his staff. They have worked behind the scenes talking to teachers and others.
  The hon. Member for Cornwall, South-East may not know this, but Doug McAvoy and I went abseiling at Kit Hill in his constituency last year. I leave him to surmise why it was me who went down the rope while Doug stood by and watched.
  If the Bill reaches the statute book, it will be a fine testimony to the many who have campiagned for it, in particular the bereaved parents who lost their children in Lyme bay and who have selflessly turned their grief into action—not for their children, but for other people's children. Their courageous determination has inspired me and, I am sure, many others who have a cause in which they fervently believe, that, through people power, Governments can be moved.
  Most of all, if the Bill becomes law the names of those young people who died at Lyme Bay—Rachel, Simon, Claire and Dean—will be engraved upon it.
  The House is perceived to be at its worst when we appear to be in constant disagreement. The Bill is an opportunity for it to be seen at its very best—putting aside the usual differences on a matter that transcends the party political divide: the safety of children.
  10.7 am
  Sir Jim Spicer: I pay the warmest of tributes to the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson). He has been at the forefront of the campaign, and it has been his determination and his will that something could, should and must be done which have brought us to this point today.
  My interest lies in the fact that the St. Alban's centre is in my constituency. On that tragic day I shared the thoughts and feelings of so many people—how could it possibly have happened? Everything that has followed, including the trial, has emphasised more and more the need for positive action to be taken, and such action not. to be left to a self-regulatory body but to be imposed upon centres so that they have no choice.
  The ACAC's report clearly shows that there is no way forward other than by statutory legislation, and I accept that. However, it is important that we bear it in mind that any such control must relate, first and foremost, to the training and the capability of staff. We certainly should not—and here I look to my hon. Friend the Minister—over-legislate or write out what I would term the "acceptable risk". There is such a thing as acceptable risk. If we take it away from young people, they will say, "I don't want to do this; I'd rather stay at home playing a video game than go to a so-called activity centre only to be cossetted and mollycoddled." Can we bear in mind, therefore, the need to legislate but not to over-legislate?

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  The Lyme bay tragedy illustrates only too clearly the opposite ends of what is acceptable. On the day of the accident, two groups of young people were involved in waterborne training in the Lyme bay area—one group at the "so-called" St. Alban's challenge and activity centre.
  I feel a slight sense of guilt over this matter. Of course, I knew about the St. Alban's centre and its general role, but I had always seen it as a residential centre. I had not been told or informed in any way that it was moving into this wider field of activity. Had I known about that, because of my background, I would have visited the centre and taken an interest. I would not say that I could have avoided problems, but I would certainly have looked at the centre with a keen eye, knowing what should and could happen in such a place.
  All hon. Members know what happened at the St. Alban's centre on that day. Just down the road on the Cob at Lyme Regis, an adventure, training and education centre was still open, although sadly it has now closed. It was run by Dorset county council. Two groups of youngsters, those at the centres at St. Alban's and at the Cob, were involved in waterborne activity on that day.
  The Cob centre was run by totally competent staff. On that morning, the manager did not allow the youngsters to go outside the harbour. Capsize drill in the harbour was the only activity undertaken. That was because the manager had looked out, was a local person, knew the sea conditions and had been properly trained. He looked after the children who were in his charge, as he had done for the last 25 years.
  Mr. Andrew Miller: Could the hon. Member advise us whether the centre is still open and who managed and ran it?
  Sir Jim Spicer: As I said, sadly, the county council has closed the centre. That is a tragedy. The centre should still be open. One of the reasons for the closure is that Lyme bay and all activity centres have seen a downturn in usage. The influence brought to bear to keep that centre open might have worked, had it not been for the fact that so much bad publicity surrounds activity centres in general. Any centres associated with Lyme Regis, however, will have an uphill battle in restoring the confidence of schools and individuals. That is sadly the case.
  The problem was the difference between the way in which the two centres were run. That highlights the need for action to be taken and the need for action by the Government.
  I was driving from London to my constituency listening to the radio and I heard this remark by Mrs. Langley:
  "My daughter Claire will not have died in vain if ways can be found of stopping such a tragedy ever occurring again".
  As Mrs. Langley and the other parents are in the Gallery, it would be right to say that those words would be echoed by all parents and by every hon. Member in the House.
  The hon. Member for Devonport made it clear that he wanted the legislation to move ahead quickly. I hope and expect that, when he comes to reply, my hon. Friend the Minister will stress that fact. Let us be clear that, as from today, no centre in the country can neglect the measures that they know will be imposed on them shortly. As from today, any centre that has not already set in train all the measures that are outlined in the Bill and that will follow in the next two or three months, can take it for granted
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  that they are out of business. A warning should go out to all centres that, as from today, they cannot afford to ignore the need for safety allied with qualifications.
  On what happened in Lyme bay on that day, I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport has already received the file on the coastguards and on the investigation that followed. I have an assurance from him that he will consider closely the internal coastguard investigation and the evidence at the trial.
  All my points are made with hindsight and always with the thought, "If only". On that day and every day, we have around our coastline harbourmasters who are capable and competent of playing a part when waterborne activity takes place at sea. If there were a requirement for any group of young people, or anyone in charge of a group of young people, to book in with the harbourmaster and to say, "We are going to do X today," two things could happen. First, the harbourmaster could say, "In my view and with my local knowledge, you can do that, but make sure that you telephone back to me the moment your exercise is completed"; or he could say, as could have occurred on the day of the tragedy, "I do not think it is a right and proper for you to engage in that activity today. My advice is don't do it."
  I hope that we will make better use of harbourmasters' skills because they are on the spot. Those in Lyme bay have far more local knowledge than the coastguards, who are based at Portland—far removed from the scene. If the harbourmaster had known, much could have been different.
  The world is full of "if onlys", but all hon. Members and everyone in the country will applaud the Bill and will be delighted that the Government have seen fit to endorse it. We hope that it will be on the statute book in short order.
  10.17 am
  Mr. Tom Cox: It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer). I am sure that his comments, and those that many other hon. Members will make today, will be warmly appreciated and accepted by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
  I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on his luck in the ballot, and on his choice of subject for his Bill. My hon. Friend referred to the shambles that often exists in the Chamber. We know what our constituents feel about that. Thankfully, this is one of the good days for Parliament. It is a pity that there are not more good days, when Bills, such as those that my hon. Friend and, indeed, Conservative Members introduce, have the cross-party support that I am sure exists today.
  I offer the deepest sympathy, not only to the parents of the four young people who died in the canoeing accident, but to all the people who suffered in the tragedy. Their lives have been spared, but we all know that the suffering caused by that event will long continue. One often hears of accidents and loss of life. One often asks what one could have done to avoid such occurrences. In this case, clear evidence exists that standards and the lack of positive supervision were a major factor. I am sure that my hon. Friend's proposals will be strongly supported by parents and all those involved with activity centres.

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  I have here a copy of Wednesday's Daily Express which contains the headline
  "One in 10 activity centres still a risk".
  The article states:
  "The new report, by the Government's Health and Safety Executive, found that 8 per cent. of outdoor centres have no plans for dealing with emergencies."
  It continues:
  "Criticising the delay in introducing controls, he"—
  Mr. Denis Walker, whose daughter Rachel was killed in the tragedy—
  "said: 'I find it unbelievable that the Government has waited 22 months to act.'"
  This press comment reveals that problems still exist. I do not wish to make this a party political issue as it is far too serious for that but I wonder whether the Government would really have acted if my hon. Friend had not introduced the Bill. Twenty-two months is a very long time for no action to be taken, which is why it is so important that my hon. Friend's Bill is supported not only today but in Committee.
  The press report makes it clear that, after tragedies of various kinds, it can take an enormous length of time to get the relevant authorities to take meaningful action that will save lives and avoid any recurrence of such events.
  Mr. Gyles Brandreth: I am following closely what the hon. Gentleman says and, like all hon. Members, I was moved and impressed by the way in which the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) presented his Bill, which I am sure we shall all support. The hon. Gentleman speaks of the need for speedy action but I advise an element of caution, having some years ago been involved in a knee-jerk reaction on the issue of playground safety.
  There are times when, as it were, the best can be the enemy of the good. The important thing is that we know that we cannot live in a risk-free world and that what we are trying to establish is a minimum standard to ensure that such tragedies do not occur. The widest consultation will be essential to ensure that we increase the activities available and do not reduce them by hasty over-reaction and the introduction of instant bureaucracy to solve a crisis that does not exist everywhere.
  Mr. Cox: That is a fair point but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport said, there are some very well run activity centres and it is their standards that we seek to establish everywhere. There are already superb guidelines.
  Young people can be extremely keen and full of enthusiasm. Our experience with our own children tells us that they often have no fear or fail to see potential dangers. As my hon. Friend said, it is important that parents, teachers and youth workers are aware of that fact and know that there are clear guidelines on safety and supervision at all activity centres.
  The Minister has yet to speak but I hope that he will give a commitment that the Government will support my hon. Friend's Bill. It is in Committee that matters of genuine concern can be ironed out and I hope that that will be so in this case but what concerns me in this instance is the phrase "in principle". We know that it can
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  mean anything to the Government of the day. Anyone can say that he supports the Bill "in principle", but we need the Minister to say what that really means.
  Since I have been a Member of Parliament I have heard several comments such as, "Yes, it is a good idea and we shall support it but someone else must do it and take the responsibility"; "Yes, these proposals are needed, but we must not force them on authorities"; or, "Oh yes, it is an excellent idea but we must consider the costs involved." We hear such things all the time, from Government's of all parties.
  The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr. Eric Forth): Perhaps I could save the hon. Gentleman's time and that of the House by drawing attention to clause 1, which states:
  "The Secretary of State shall by order designate a person … to exercise such functions as may be prescribed by regulations relating to the licensing of persons providing facilities for adventure activities."
  That could not be clearer. So that the hon. Gentleman does not get hung up on the phrase "in principle", I repeat what I have said outside and foreshadow what I hope to say later—the Government support the Bill. If we support the Bill and the Bill contains such a notion, there can be no doubt about what will happen.
  Mr. Cox: I am delighted, and hope that that clear commitment is imprinted on hon. Members' minds, but I must point out that another measure—the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill—was also supported by hon. Members of all parties, and we all know what happened to that. However, I heard what the Minister said and will listen with interest to his forthcoming speech.
  Mr. O'Hara: Further to my hon. Friend's point about the phrase "in principle" and any safeguard that it may offer, has he read clause 1(4), which states:
  "In exercising their functions under regulations made under this section the licensing authority shall have regard to any guidance given to them from time to time by the Secretary of State"?
  Should it not be made clear that that would in no way compromise the independence of the person charged with carrying out the functions outlined in the first line of the long title of the Bill?
  Mr. Cox: My hon. Friend makes a valid point, hut we shall have to wait for the Minister's comments and until the Bill reaches Committee where, as we know, the nuts and bolts will be sorted out. I am sure that my hon. Friend's point will be examined at that stage.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Devonport said that we may well get complaints from activity centres once the Bill has been passed. They might say that too much pressure is being placed on them or that the costs involved are too great but if any activity centre does not support the principle of the Bill it should not be in business. It is as simple as that. I am sure that hon. Members, parents and those who work with young people would warmly welcome the demise of any such organisation.
  I may well be the only London Opposition Member to speak in this debate so I must stress that activity centres are of great benefit to young people living in London. Many young Londoners visit the centres to enjoy a wide range of facilities and that is to be welcomed. I am sure that hon. Members who represent constituencies in other large cities would make the same comment. The centres, are, however, often a long way from the areas where the

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  young people live and go to school. The Bill is important in dealing with the problem of the distances involved. It is often impossible for teachers to make visits to the centres to convince themselves and, in turn, to convince the youngsters' parents of their safety. Teachers cannot say, "I have been to see the centre. It is good, it is in pleasant surroundings, the equipment is superb and the supervision is superb. I am happy to take your youngsters there." That is why there must be tougher standards for the centres.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Devonport touched on this next point. We know that many centres have in recent years been run by local authorities. I am sure that we welcome that. There has, however, been a change in policy and many centres are now commercially run. Local authority and Government involvement has diminished in many aspects of life. Sadly, the previous standards no longer exist.
  One of the largest hospitals in south London is in my area. I can come to the House to put questions to Ministers about standards at the hospital. I am now told, "The hospital is nothing to do with me. The hon. Gentleman should take the matter up with the hospital trust." That is a weakness. I am not prepared to accept voluntary codes of conduct; they are just not good enough for the safety of young people.
  The Bill may not meet the wishes of some people who operate activity centres; that is too bad. As the hon. Member for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer) pointed out, we are dealing with the safety of young people. It is our duty as Members of Parliament to ensure that suitable legislation is passed. Governments have the power to introduce legislation over night, if they wish to. Those of us who have been in the House a while have often seen that when, sadly, something has gone wrong, legislation is introduced over night which seeks to overcome the weakness identified. That is why I am somewhat concerned to hear that it may be another 12 months before the legislation comes into force.
  Money is involved in all legislation. I hope that the Minister will outline how local authorities should deal with the legislation. We assume that local authorities will be the local watchdogs on standards at local activity centres. We know that organisation will be needed. Few local authorities have spare cash. In view of the importance of the proposals, local authorities should not be requested to have in place someone whose job it is to check standards and supervision without being given sufficient money. The supervision of residential homes for the elderly, for example, sometimes leaves a great deal to be desired. That is my concern about this Bill.
  Mr. Forth: Again, I shall spare the hon. Gentleman his obvious misery and discomfort. With the permission of the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), may I say that I think that I understand the way in which the Bill is intended to work. We must not presume that local authorities will have the responsibility for enforcing standards. As the hon. Member for Devonport said, we shall have consultation. We want to study the question of who should have that responsibility.
  As the hon. Member for Devonport also made clear, the intention is to make the system self-financing. I hope that the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) will not worry excessively about additional burdens or additional financial burdens on local authorities. We have not settled
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  matters; that is precisely why there will be extensive consultation. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not prejudge the matter.
  Mr. Cox: I have followed the Minister's point with interest. He says that the system will be self-financing—okay. I hope that it will not push up charges—
  Mr. Forth: It may do.
  Mr. Cox: The Minister says that it may do. That may mean that, sadly, the very people whom we would wish to use the centres will not, for a range of reasons, be able to do so. We have the right to consider that point. The Minister made an interesting intervention; all of us will follow his further comments with great interest. He says that the system will be, in the main, self-financing. Presumably, a lot of additional responsibility will be put on the centres. Supervisors will need to be trained and that is—
  Mr. Anthony Steen: Costly.
  Mr. Cox: Yes, it is costly. Trained people are entitled to expect a reasonable salary for their work, their training and their responsibilities. Charges could be substantially higher. I shall follow that matter with great interest.
  I realise that this is a crucial debate. I realise that some hon. Members were, sadly, deeply involved in the tragedy in the west country. I welcome the Bill, but I believe that, as with all Bills, hon. Members who welcome legislation have a right to put questions on matters about which they are concerned. That is our duty. I remember that the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland)—I will not get too involved with this matter—made that point during the passage of the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill.
  I fully support the Bill, but I point out to the Minister and to my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport, who will pilot the Bill through Committee, that there are things that we need to be told now. We cannot wait until the Bill becomes law because all the problems may then start to come to the fore. Things may happen that we never thought would happen.
  I wish the Bill a speedy passage through the House. I am sure that hon. Members on both sides support it. Even more importantly, people outside, especially those with children, support it.
  10.37 am
  Mr. Michael Stern: I join colleagues on both sides of the House in welcoming the Bill. It has support from both sides and we all wish it to be speedily enacted into effective legislation. That is especially true of those who, like me and the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson), come from the south-west of England and who have been especially affected by the tragedy that helped to create the impetus for the Bill.
  The hon. Member for Devonport may be surprised to see me speaking in support of the Bill. The Bill provides for increased regulation and the hon. Gentleman would normally expect me to oppose such a Bill, as I normally look for less regulation from this place rather than more. On this matter, however, the hon. Gentleman has convinced hon. Members on both sides that the existing code of practice applied, especially by schools, in overseeing standards in activity centres is not sufficient.

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  Indeed, I shall refer later to comments made by one of my local schools on that very subject. However, the hon. Gentleman has certainly made a case for the need for statutory regulation of some form and I congratulate him on doing so.
  Like the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox), I shall make a number of detailed comments on the Bill. The hon. Member for Devonport has rightly and sensibly drafted his Bill so that much of the detail will be provided in regulations. Clearly, we are dealing with many different activities, set up in many ways in different parts of the country and we must ensure that the regulations eventually passed by the licensing authority, which have the force of law, can be applied to a wide variety of circumstances.
  I hope that in a number of areas, which I shall detail, the hon. Gentleman will ensure that he gets some idea from the Minister in Committee of the way in which the Government believe that the regulations should be drafted and applied. It is easy for too much to be left to subsequent regulation without the principles at least being defined in Committee. The hon. Gentleman will need to pin the Government down on those regulations; until the Minister is
  "pinned and wriggling on the wall"
  in Committee, the hon. Gentleman should not be satisfied that he has got the Bill that he wants.
  The hon. Gentleman will have to be careful to ensure in several detailed areas that he gets what he wants. In the Bill there is a lack of definition of providers of facilities. We all know, from accidents that have occurred, what we think of as activity centres, but, in fact, the term can be used in a much wider context than special residential centres designed to provide a wide range of facilities.
  I shall give the hon. Gentleman an example of that range of facilities. In that example, and in others to follow, it will be apparent that my limited experience in the area is at least partly based on my involvement many years ago in climbing. Indeed, I am still involved in mountain walking. It certainly used to be the case that a climbing party, of whatever age, which hired its equipment, would take a great deal of advice and assistance from the climbing shop. It would often organise a day's climbing on the advice of the specialist in the climbing shop on such matters as the equipment required.
  As I interpret the thrust of the Bill, that shop would not be considered as a centre. However, the hon. Gentleman may explore in Committee the possibility that some subsidiary levels of regulation may be necessary for those who give specialist advice to schools and teachers who are organising parties of young people, especially for climbing and other mountain activities. Mountains are no strangers to accidents involving young people, whether supervised or not. We need to establish the extent to which the Bill should cover that area in detail.
  In clause 1(2)(b), the hon. Gentleman defines the facilities to be covered as those which
  "include some element of, instruction or leadership."
  I hope that he will define that further to ensure that activities include some element of instruction and leadership.
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  Again, in climbing, only a few years ago it became necessary for teachers leading parties in mountains to have a mountain leadership certificate. Previously, parties were taken out, often with the best of motives and entirely safely, by wholly unqualified leaders and often on the basis that the party relied on common sense rather than an element of leadership. When an activity requires leadership, I hope that the regulations in the Bill cover it regardless of the existence of leadership at the time.
  Clause 1(3)(f) has already been referred to in a little detail in the debate. However, it is important to consider the levels charged for licences because the licensing authority may deem it entirely appropriate to charge a different level for a large, organised activity centre, which caters for a substantial number of parties from schools from all over the country, to that charged a small centre which takes only three or four people at a time arid provides a limited range of activities, often involving only limited danger.
  I am thinking especially of centres which provide facilities for adults and for young people. There are many such centres. The hon. Gentleman will need to explore in Committee whether the same fee should be applicable to centres which are exclusively for young people and centres that may take young people almost by chance. For example, a number of activity centres in the home counties, designed exclusively for rock climbing training, take adults and young people. The majority of people on those courses at any time is more likely to comprise adults, but people under 18 may well be included. There will need to be differential fees.
  I hope that the regulations in clause 1(3)(h) which cover
  "the investigation by the licensing authority for complaints concerning licence-holders;"
  will be explored in Committee and, most important—I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on including it—the provision in paragraph (k) of
  "the bringing of appeals to the Secretary of State against such decisions of the licensing authority".
  We are dealing with an area in which there is frequently a difference of opinion. Reference was made earlier to abseiling. The hon. Gentleman may be aware that there have been considerable advances and considerable differences of opinion among climbers in recent years on the extent to which particular types of equipment are appropriate and are applicable to types of abseiling. Those differences can often be crucial.
  I remember being on a climbing course in the Alps when we were using very simple abseiling equipment. But, in a moment's inattention, combined with a gust of wind and an especially difficult ice face down which a friend was abseiling, the abseiling rope turned in seconds into a garrotte. Only the frantic efforts of those near the climber saved my friend from serious injury.
  Differences of opinion will be drawn to the attention of the licensing authority and since it will be staffed by specialists in particular sports and in particular aspects of safety, there will always be differences of opinions, for which an outside body may be needed for the right of appeal. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on ensuring that that outside body is involved from the start.
  The date of the commencement of the Act has already been referred to. Like the hon. Member for Tooting I am sorry that the Act cannot be introduced more quickly than

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  the hon. Member for Devonport has provided for. His time limits are sensible. They are not even unnecessarily lenient. However, if the hon. Member can press the Minister in Committee about the content of some of the regulations which will eventually be laid under the Act, I hope that he will be able to publicise that detail sufficiently to enable activity centres to apply those standards in advance. I want to see as much as possible of what will eventually be provided under the Act available this summer and not next, and available this winter and not next.
  Mr. Jamieson: The Activity Centres Advisory Committee has almost completed its work and it has now drawn up a code of practice for centres. I believe that that code of practice should form the core of what the activity centres have to agree to. That code is in place. If my Bill becomes law, activity centres will know that the code will be legally obligatory for them in 12 months, time rather than voluntary.
  Mr. Stern: I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's intervention, which was most helpful. I hope that what is said in our debate today, and what is said in Committee, will encourage the advisory committee to tell activity centres, "Look, this is what is likely to be the law: apply it now. Don't wait for it to become law." If that were to happen, I should be delighted.
  I return to my opening point: the burden which, under the existing code of conduct, has been placed on schools and staff to enforce standards for their pupils which may well be inappropriate for the school or the education authority—not all education authorities have experts available to them in respect of all forms of outdoor activity—to impose. That code is to be replaced—unusually for me, I welcome that—by legal regulations.
  I represent a city constituency and an area where school staff are particularly reliant on outside advice in terms of the activities in which pupils are engaged. With the indulgence of the hon. Member for Devonport, I want to quote from a letter that I have received from Henbury school in my constituency:
  "Staff, even those with great expertise, have great difficulty assessing the quality of the many centres throughout Britain and find that much information published by individual centres is confusing or inaccurate.
  When involved in the organisation of a new course, we have to write to the centre and obtain assurances from the centre about the residential accommodation, the equipment and the qualifications of the staff. Although the centre can give their current details, they cannot guarantee that they will not have staff changes in the average 14 months that elapses between organisation and actually visiting the centre. Many teachers do not have the training to interpret the reply received from the centre, eg whether a T.I.(B.C.U.) is a sufficiently high qualification for a group of 8 pupils on Grade 2 Water for Canoeing. (It isn't!)
  A centre may be suitable for a trip one year but lose the qualified staff and become unsuitable the next. However, the responsibility for the trip is at present on the school and the teachers taking it."
  I congratulate the hon. Member for Devonport on introducing a Bill that will relieve that school and many others from the heavy responsibility they currently carry and which they are probably not capable of carrying.
  10.53 am
  Mr. Menzies Campbell: I desire not only to congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on coming first in the ballot—
  Mr. Jamieson: Second.
  Mr. Campbell: I beg the hon. Gentleman's pardon. I congratulate him on coming second in the ballot and on the most measured and informed way in which he introduced his Bill. If I may respectfully say so, it was a model of how a Second Reading debate should be introduced in a case of this kind.
  Some hon. Members have already mentioned—I would like to take this opportunity to mention it again—the fact that, in the activities that we are considering, there can never be a total elimination of risk. It is the risk itself that is often the element that provides the challenge for young people. If we chose to, we could wrap our children in cotton wool and expose them to no risks, or to as few risks as we could possibly imagine. However, for many young people, the opportunity to take part in outdoor activities provides a welcome challenge, which often assists them in the development of their personalities and, out of achievement, gives them a far greater sense of their own abilities and, in a sense, of their own dignity.
  My interest in these matters springs from my former membership of the United Kingdom Sports Council and of the Scottish Sports Council, in the course of which I had a very tenuous responsibility for such outdoor centres run by the sports councils as Glenmore lodge in Scotland and Plas-y-Brenin in Wales. Those two centres are interesting examples to cite in this debate because they are illustrations of the highest possible standards of equipment, training and tuition.
  While I do not for a moment suggest that all centres for outdoor activity should meet the high standards that those two centres have demonstrated over a long period, those centres show that, in the furtherance of outdoor activities and facilities for adventure activities, it is important to realise that the standards of equipment and of training and supervision are extremely important. However, we cannot escape the conclusion that, if we are to lay down standards about the quality of equipment and training and hence the ratio of supervision, that will have financial consequences, which may substantial.
  All hon. Members would regret it if, as a consequence of what the Bill quite sensibly proposes, access to the opportunity for adventure activities for young people was inhibited. This is not the occasion to discuss the way in which that access can be maintained. However, I believe that investment in the opportunity for such outdoor activity is extremely important.
  If hon. Members had ever, as I have, seen the look on the face of someone from a city who, in normal life, would probably not have the energy or will to walk from one end of a street to another but who, by means of cajoling, bullying and, perhaps at the very end, pushing, one had managed to get to the top of a mountain of more than 3,000 ft in Scotland, they would have seen on the face of that person a sense of personal achievement. If they had heard the way he had boasted about it afterwards, it would be clear to anyone with a connection with that activity that one can do a remarkable amount for the sense of achievement and for the personality development of young people.

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  If, as a consequence of this highly desirable measure, we have to find funds to ensure that people who would otherwise be debarred from these activities can participate in them, that is a cause with which I would wish to be associated and which I believe deserves the support of the whole House as much as the Bill deserves our support.
  Clause 1(2) refers to certain exceptions. The hon. Member for Devonport referred to them when he introduced the Bill, but he did not explain the reasoning behind them. For example,
  "facilities for adventure activities … does not include—
  (a) facilities which are provided exclusively for persons who have attained the age of 18".
  I understand the hon. Gentleman's thrust to deal with the position of children. However, a poorly run adventure activities facility open only to people above the age of 18 could put those people at great risk. Perhaps there has been an exchange between the hon. Gentleman and the Minister of which I know not, and indeed, could not know, but there is a question which, if the hon. Gentleman catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, he might answer.
  I have always inclined to the view that, even when public opinion presses, it is important that consideration is given and time is taken before legislation is introduced. I say that as one who, in a professional capacity, has had to wrestle with what apparently was the expressed intention of Parliament in a statute, but which, even to a legal mind, has proved to be somewhat ambiguous or even difficult to understand.
  We can think of many examples of legislation, hastily introduced in response to legitimate public opinion, which has subsequently proved to be inadequate, to have inherent ambiguities, or indeed, to be unable to meet the very mischief with which it was designed to deal. We still have the legitimate support of public opinion for a measure such as this. We know also that the measure has had the benefit of exchanges between the hon. Gentleman and the Government, that consultation has already taken place and that more is to be instituted.
  On that basis, it is highly desirable legislation, which has been introduced in a measured and considered way and which carries public opinion with it. It deserves the support of the whole House. From the speeches that we have heard, I deduce that it is bound to receive it.
  11.1 am
  Mr. Robert Hicks: I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on his success in the ballot. His choice of subject is most appropriate and timely, given his involvement as a constituency Member in the events that followed the tragic accident in Lyme bay a couple of years ago. As the hon. Gentleman's parliamentary neighbour, and one who shares the same media, I pay tribute to the restrained, responsible and objective manner in which not only he but the parents of those who lost their lives, and all those associated with the Southway school have conducted themselves since the tragedy. It has been an object lesson in how to campaign for a certain set of measures in a tenacious but constructive way. No doubt that process was frustrating at times.
  The hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) mentioned his reservation not about the Bill but about too-hasty action in response to public pressure.
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  There is great validity in his argument. When he made it, I said, "The Dangerous Dogs Act." We must not allow ourselves to fall into that trap. On this occasion, I do not think that we are.
  I say to those who have borne frustration and annoyance at times that, provided that we get it right, the Bill is what is required of us today. Provided that we get it right, the most pertinent tribute that the House could pay to those who lost their lives would be putting on the statute book the necessary provisions to at least minimise the chances of such a tragedy recurring.
  One reason why the Bill commends support is that, at the time of the tragedy, we all knew in our heart of hearts that it could have been our children, the children of relatives or the children of friends who were so tragically affected. After all, they were involved in a normal school activity, an outward bound adventure activity—something that is repeated every day by schools throughout the United Kingdom.
  Given the experience of that occasion, we owe it to all pupils to prove that the House of Commons is prepared to provide the necessary support and security in future. Of course we cannot totally eliminate risk, nor would it be desirable to try to do so. The element of challenge attracts young people to participate in such activities in the first place, and rightly so. It is part of the growing-up experience. It provides opportunities to participate that people would not normally have.
  As a sponsor of the Bill, I shall make a couple of general points and one specific point. One or two people have said to me that they are somewhat surprised that a Government who have opted for deregulation in recent years should now support the Bill. My response to that is that we are dealing with young people, schools, local education authorities and so on. We wish to encourage parents to allow their children to participate in that way. Therefore, it is incumbent on us to provide the statutory support when required. I do not believe that a voluntary system would work.
  I am always reminded of the comparison that I noted when I first moved to my constituency in 1970. My daughter was then six, and she went to the village primary school. After a couple of months, I said to the head teacher, "You don't have a parent-teacher association here." He said, "No, I don't need one. I can always raise the necessary additional funds and so on by direct means. One of the disadvantages of a parent-teacher association is that you see only the parents of the children whom there is no need to see and you never see the parents of the children whom you would most like to see." That argument applies to these circumstances. Of course responsible establishments would sign up readily, but the more dubious ones might be reluctant to be forthcoming.
  Like the hon. Member for Devonport, I wish to draw attention to the recent report of the Health and Safety Executive. I appreciate that it was damaging in respect of a minority of cases. A minority do not meet the required standards. As has been said, hon. Members are always tempted to respond too quickly on the basis of the particular rather than the generality. In this case, which involves young people, the circumstances justify the need for a positive response from the House.
  My specific point relates to adventure centres, outdoor centres or activity centres—call them what we will—which provide for all ages and for a variety of functions. The hon. Member for Devonport knows that my

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  constituency contains the Lanlivery field studies centre, a residential centre providing outdoor activities for handicapped people. It is a first-class, well-run centre, which provides excellent facilities. Courses there vary considerably, from ones which people of my generation might describe as a geographical field trip, to music courses.
  The centre also provides for adventure and recreation, such as climbing on Bodmin moor and sailing on the River Fowey. How will the provisions contained in the Bill affect well-run centres such as Lanlivery? I am not questioning the standards of the Lanlivery field studies centre, but how will it fit into the provisions in the Bill?
  As one of the sponsors of the Bill, I whole-heartedly support the provisions contained in it. I know that, in due course, we shall obtain a positive response from my hon. Friend the Minister.
  11.10 am
  Mr. Peter Kilfoyle: I am aware that many hon. Members want to speak in the debate, and I am conscious of the pressure of time. I shall try to be the model of brevity in the comments which I shall make. Much of what has been said has been self-evidently true, and has been supported by hon. Members on both sides of the House.
  As the Opposition spokesman and as a sponsor of the Bill, I must say that this is a time for both congratulation and sad reflection. It is welcome news that the Government are meeting the demands of parents, teachers and the general population. We must consider, however, that we have wasted many years, and that a whole succession of Governments—Labour and Conservative—have failed to act on the matter.
  From the tragedy in the Cairngorms 24 years ago through the loss of four boys at Land's End to the tragic loss of the children at Lyme bay which brought about the Bill today—not forgetting the other four children who died in the same year in outdoor pursuits—young lives have been needlessly and thoughtlessly lost for years, while the most basic measures would have prevented most of those untimely deaths.
  Mr. Steen: Does the hon. Gentleman have any statistics or figures—I have not been able find any—showing how many fatalities there have been in the past 20 years in activity centres? I know that there have been accidents, but am I right in thinking that fatalities have been virtually confined to the regrettable Lyme bay disaster?
  Mr. Kilfoyle: That is certainly not true, but as far I can ascertain no statistics have been collated in this area, and we need to address that. I can recall the Cairngorms tragedy, and there was a incident in the Alps some 10 or 12 years ago when children were lost. Children's lives have without doubt been needlessly lost, and the Minister can perhaps tell us later how we can find the statistics.
  Mr. O'Hara: Does my hon. Friend agree that we should not confine ourselves to considering fatalities?
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  Should not we be equally concerned about the unacceptable risk of serious accident—a child may be maimed for life, for example—in activity centres?
  Mr. Kilfoyle: It is certainly true that we must address the question of injuries—both serious and relatively minor—but it is a sad fact of life that it is a fatality which grabs the public's attention.
  May I echo the sentiments that have been expressed from both sides of the Chamber regarding the credit that must be given to my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson)? He has conducted a long, persistent and dignified campaign on behalf of the families who were caught up in the Lyme bay tragedy. He has acted on behalf of all youngsters who attend activity centres, and his industry and compassion have been creditable. All of us—not just as Members, but as parents—appreciate very much the work that has led to the Bill coming before Parliament today.
  The result of that work is a short enabling Bill of six clauses. The Opposition welcome the Bill, but with some reservations. We are particularly concerned about the lack of clarity concerning instructors' individual qualifications, as opposed to those of the centre. We are concerned also about the scope of the Bill concerning centres which can be perhaps defined as field study centres. The hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) commented on centres for those who are over 18, but are still in full-time educational institutions. It is a fine distinction for a teacher who is organising a sixth form trip to check up on whether people are 18 or 19. The teacher would do it, but it complicates—perhaps unnecessarily—the task of the organiser of a trip.
  I appreciate that these matters are still to be explored and refined, but it is important to note that there are dangers therein. While there is no need to nanny people or introduce over-zealous regulation, we believe that there is still a responsibility on the Government to ensure the fullest protection for all our young people. Attempts in the past to regulate through the Activity Centres Advisory Committee and the British Activity Holiday Association were not successful. The latter, which was formed in 1986 and represents private operators, inspected the St Alban's centre from where the ill-fated canoe trip on Lyme bay originated.
  That centre is only one of approximately 3,000 such centres operating in this country. One of the first major difficulties which my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport encountered in trying to organise the research behind the Bill was to ascertain exactly how many centres there were. That should be one of the first objectives to be set in drawing up the legislation of the centres.
  I say that there are approximately 3,000 centres, because all attempts to count them have failed and the figures are constantly changing. That is particularly the case with regard to local education authority centres. A Sports Council survey found that, between the Education Reform Acts of 1988 and 1994, nearly 12 per cent. of LEA centres had closed, while another 22 per cent. were under serious threat. I am fortunate that my local LEA has a fine, well-equipped centre in north Wales. Nevertheless, that centre is—like many others—under threat.
  A consequence of that is that the slack in provision is increasingly being taken up by the private sector, especially since—quite rightly and understandably—the

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  national curriculum encouraged outdoor activity. Ironically, in doing so, the national curriculum stressed that safety features should be maintained.
  Centres are subject to the Health and Safety Executive and relevant legislation, but, given the reduction in the number of Health and Safety Executive inspectors and the limitations of their remit, it has clearly been the case for many years that their function has been insufficient for the proper inspection of outdoor activity centres. Meanwhile, the responsibilities of LEAs, governors and teachers remain. However, there are too many gaps in their legal position to provide effective monitoring where it really matters—at the activity centres themselves and with those people who are directly charged with youngsters' safety.
  One matter which the Minister may be able to clarify is that governors of grant-maintained schools are particularly vulnerable in law. Whereas governors of county schools are personally liable in extremis, the governors of grant-maintained schools do not have the financial support of a local authority behind them. Will the Minister enlighten me at some point—not necessarily this morning—as it seems peculiar that a governor of a grant-maintained school should be more exposed than a governor in the county sector? It has been suggested that that is the case.
  It is gratifying that we have reached the stage of considering a Bill in the House. The Opposition have maintained that to ensure effective safety in activity centres five requirements must be fulfilled. A licensing authority must be created, with registration of centres. Conditions must be clearly set out for the granting of such licences. Acceptable standards of premises, equipment and management must he laid down. Staff must be properly qualified. Regular and thorough inspections must be made. Today's Bill is a major step in that direction, but we must recognise that time is of the essence in following up the Bill with the necessary secondary legislation. That should enable centres to meet the prescribed higher standards where those standards do not currently obtain.
  I cannot conclude without referring to some comments made by the hon. Member for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern) which confused me greatly. He spoke about the mountain leadership certificate. Whether he was confused or I am confused, I know not.
  The hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East referred to the Plas-y-Brenin centre in north Wales. I attended a residential course at that centre 24 years ago when I was obviously younger and certainly much slimmer.
  Mr. Andrew MacKay: How long ago?
  Mr. Kilfoyle: My memory fails me on that point. I remember going to the centre on a residential course to obtain the mountain leadership certificate. I went under the aegis of Christ college, which the hon. Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) was later to represent.
  I remember the thoroughness with which the Central Council of Physical Recreation ran the centre and the effectiveness with which the instructors ran the course. It was not just a matter of taking that particular course. We
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  went on an introductory course then went away and filled in our log books for a couple of years with the various activities that we led. Then we went back for our assessment. While we were there, we followed not only the basic rules of safety in the mountains but fundamental rules on checking equipment, the type of equipment that should be used, how a party should be organised and all the safety precautions that should be taken. The training was very effective.
  The hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East said that we could not expect every centre to attain tomorrow the same very high standards. While I appreciate that, it is a salutary reminder that, 24 years ago, courses were run of such a high standard in Britain. The shame is that in that time we have not encouraged other centres to aim at least halfway up that particular ladder.
  I hope that in his reply the Minister will deal with inspection. I appreciate that some hon. Members on both sides of the House would have grave misgivings about, for example, local education authorities being the inspection or licensing authority. I know that, out there in centres such as the CCPR centres, there is a huge reservoir of expertise which should be used if we are to deal with the question of safety, particularly in mountainous areas.
  11.22 am
  Mr. Mark Wolfson: I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on introducing this most important Bill. The Bill is at least one good thing to result from the terrible agony and avoidable disaster of the Lyme bay tragedy. For more than 30 years, I have been intimately connected with the work of the Brathay Hall Trust in Cumbria. The organisation uses the outdoors to develop people young and old. I was there as a 28-year-old as warden and I am now chairman of the trustees.
  The centre was founded 50 years ago through the philanthropy of a generous family, the Scotts. The trust has continued to fund the centre through those 50 years, although now to a lesser degree. Our work was originally with young adults. It is now with all ages, from 12-year-old schoolchildren to senior managers. It is from that experience that I speak in the debate.
  Safety must be balanced against the importance of adventure and, therefore, as others have said in the debate, of some risk. There is a real possibility that safety could become so dominant a theme that the thrill, excitement and challenge of the activities could be squeezed out. Safety standards must be high, exacting and sensible, but an acceptable risk is and should remain part of the activity. It is probably right to say that those brave and splendid children who died in Lyme bay, their companions, of whom we have read much and for whore I feel greatly, and their parents were attracted to that opportunity because of the very adventure that it provided.
  I hope that the specific points that I have to make will be useful markers as further work on the Bill progresses. These views in general terms represent the thinking of many of the activity centres of the highest quality and the longest established members of the outdoor training industry. The first point is the need to put the matter into perspective. It is a very safe industry. I do not in any way wish to lessen the importance of the Bill, so I hope that I will not be misunderstood. The Bill is a necessary sledgehammer to crack a nut, the nut being those very

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  few cowboy centres. They must go. Therefore, the Bill is justified. They must either go or their standards must be dramatically raised.
  Mr. Steen: Does my hon. Friend agree that, unfortunately, more and more legislation is for the minority rather than the majority? I had the privilege to pilot the Dartmoor commons legislation through the House. It was necessary only because a few cowboys were exploiting the natural facilities of the moor. The vast majority of farmers were behaving responsibly.
  Mr. Wolfson: That is a perfectly proper point to make. I hope that my hon. Friend will have the opportunity to develop it if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker.
  I make it clear that my remarks are intended to put the matter into perspective. The Bill is an enabling measure. The way in which the safety improvement is made will be important. It is important that it is not done in too heavy-handed a manner. Let us look at the perspective. More children are killed or injured on the roads on the way to and from activity centres than at the centres themselves. A survey by the Outward Bound Trust showed that more children were hurt by falling downstairs at the centres than ever were hurt by the activities. Where drama was part of the activities, as it often is, it was the most dangerous activity. As children fenced in drama classes, they hurt each other with the sticks.
  None of what I am saying should be taken as an attempt to lessen the tragedy of Lyme bay, which has led to our debate today, but let us examine the safety pattern in primary schools. Apparently, 25 per cent. of primary schools have a serious accident involving children each term. In 25 per cent. of primary schools no clear safety or first aid policy is laid down. I do not excuse that. I do not say that it is right. I am simply trying to put the outdoor activity industry and its safety record in proper perspective.
  Mr. Brandreth: When putting the matter in perspective, it is worth remembering the contribution that it makes to children's overall well-being. Notwithstanding the tragedy, about 300 children are killed on our roads each year—many because they are playing in streets that are not safe for them. It is important for them to have the opportunity to go to adventure centres, as it helps them to play and grow in safety. We want that safety to be enhanced. Far from reducing the number of activity centres, we hope that this legislation will increase it, because more people will have confidence in them.
  Mr. Wolfson: I would not have been involved in a voluntary capacity in such work for 30 years if I did not agree with my hon. Friend.
  The title of the Bill may need to be reconsidered. A better description might be "activity providers", because other organisations undertake such activities, but not necessarily from centres. They may use tents, huts, hotels or barns, or carry out the work at a Butlins or similar holiday camp.
  Mr. Jamieson: Perhaps I may assist the hon. Gentleman. Providers of the activities are covered in clause 1(3)(a) of the Bill.
  Mr. Wolfson: I am grateful for the intervention, which is helpful, but it is not helpful if the title of the Bill is misleading.
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  All the major players that have been in the business for many years support the Bill, albeit a little reluctantly, because they do not believe that the legislation will change anything that they do, but it will add additional costs to their operations, as many hon. Members have said. Those costs must be kept low to encourage the maximum number of young people to make use of the opportunities that they provide.
  Lady Olga Maitland: Does my hon. Friend agree that established activity centres will undoubtedly benefit from the Bill? Without it, they might suffer—we heard this week that the Outward Bound Trust has been losing customers because of the lack of confidence. Everyone will benefit from the Bill—the cowboy outfits will be brought back into the mainstream, or closed, and successful centres can only gain public confidence.
  Mr. Wolfson: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I was about to say that high-quality providers welcome the Bill because it will establish a level playing field. The difficulties that the Outward Bound Trust has recently experienced are well known.
  It is important that we consider the criteria necessary for safety. It would not be sensible for the Health and Safety Executive to be the main promoter of those criteria in these circumstances, because its job is to remove all hazard in industry. As has been said, the code of practice that the United Kingdom Activity Centres Advisory Committee has drawn up is the benchmark on which I hope that the regulations will be based. The group established to ensure that those standards continue should include representatives from the Council for Outdoor Recreation, or a subsidiary, the Ministry, the Health and Safety Executive and possibly Ofsted and the Consumers Association.
  I do not want to take up too much more time, but I must mention qualifications. The national governing bodies of sport have a certification system, but it may not always be sufficient to measure the competence of staff. Four key ingredients are necessary for competence—technical qualifications, experience, cultural attitudes towards safety, as that has to be in the bloodstream of those working at such centres, and the need for judgment or good common sense. Judgment will be built up from technical qualifications, experience and having safety in one's bloodstream. In capable people, those ingredients can be balanced so that they still provide the chance for adventure and acceptable risk.
  It is important to include organisations such as the scouts, guides and the Duke of Edinburgh's award scheme in the framework in some way. They should not be left out. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) will comment on that from a scouting point of view, if he has an opportunity to speak. It would not necessarily seem sensible for each troop to have a licence, but the key centres and headquarters of those voluntary organisations should be brought into the licensing system as they set parameters for training and leadership.
  We must not forget the enormously important work that unpaid people have voluntarily undertaken, and will continue to undertake, in outdoor activity training and opportunities. It would be utterly wrong if the Bill squeezed them out, or made it more difficult for them to contribute.

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  Finally, it will obviously be necessary at some stage to include appropriate provisions of the Bill in legislation for Northern Ireland, so that the same criteria can apply there.
  11.36 am
  Mr. Andrew Miller: As a co-sponsor of the Bill, I am pleased to be able to speak. I was delighted when my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) asked me to sponsor the Bill, as I had been involved in discussions with him about the Lyme bay incident from the very day that it occurred.
  I became involved because, for many years, I have had experience of deep-sea canoeing. As soon as I heard the first press reports of the terrible tragedy, I knew that something had gone drastically wrong. It was not an accident—I encourage hon. Members to use that word cautiously—and it was avoidable, because some crass errors were made, which have been described at length during the debate and in the court proceedings.
  Of course risks exist in deep-sea canoeing. They are due to a range of factors—the elements, the physical fitness of the canoeists, the quality of their equipment, training and their knowledge of other vessels, especially large vessels that cannot see small ones in high seas. There are many risks, but steps can be taken to minimise them. People, particularly young people, engaged in outdoor activities should be encouraged to think along those lines. They should be encouraged to develop a culture of safety—to use the words of the hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson), who made a wise point. They should be encouraged to develop a culture of safety so that they analyse the risks and take the necessary steps.
  But young people cannot do that off their own bat; they need the expert training of instructors and teachers around them. That is exactly the philosophy that underlies the provisions of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. Of course, people at their workplace are expected to work safely, but the culture of safety must start from the top of the organisation and flow down to every level. That is precisely what did not happen in the Lyme bay incident.
  My hon. Friend the Member for Devonport said that 24 per cent. of activity centres had no safety policy statement. In its report, the Health and Safety Executive, in typically exact and fairly cold language, states positively:
  "76 per cent. of the 158 centres with 5 or more employees had a written safety policy."
  However, in the appendix to the report, the HSE said that the principal health and safety legislation relevant to outdoor services—the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974—required that such centres should have a written statement of policy.
  It is extraordinary that, 19 years after the Act came into force, 26 per cent. of such centres were in direct breach of a statute of this land. It is outrageous that centres should have taken that cavalier view towards the law of the land. Against that background, we cannot treat the Bill as a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is an important piece of legislation targeted at the large number of centres that have failed miserably over the years to carry out their
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  statutory functions. That is not to say that the greatest percentage of centres have not done a splendid job. In the 1960s I attended such centres and joined in activities such as learning to canoe and abseil which were character forming and taught me important lessons about team work. I know that there are centres of great excellence throughout the country, but a significant number fail.
  On the whole, centres work well, but one needs to consider who should provide regulation. One could have argued, in the context of the Lyme bay centre, that the local education authority was the appropriate inspector. Perhaps the HSE would have been appropriate, or a private organisation such as the British Canoe Union.
  To respond to the point made by the hon. Member for City of Chester (Mr. Brandreth), who is not in his place now, we need to make it quite clear, as the HSE said in its conclusion, that
  "there is no room for complacency."
  The HSE continued:
  "Most providers will still be keenly aware of the Lyme Bay tragedy, but it could be easy with the passage of time for vigilance to fall."
  We must identify the appropriate regulator and inspector of the facilities and ensure that all steps are taken to maintain vigilance.
  Mr. O'Hara: Does my hon. Friend agree that, grateful though we are to the Activity Centres Advisory Committee for its code of practice—which will serve as an interim code and may be the basis of future regulations—the regulatory body should not be entirely composed of people within the industry?
  Mr. Miller: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention and agree with him. Working out exactly what the appropriate body should be will form an important part of the debate. I firmly believe that inspection must include a significant element from outside the industry.
  It is encouraging that there is now such widespread agreement on what we are trying to achieve this morning. Hon. Members on both sides of the House will be slightly amused at the unanimity between themselves and the National Union of Teachers, which has had a fair amount of stick from Conservatives recently. A parliamentary briefing from the NUT dated 24 January states:
  "The Bill is the result of a long campaign, with the support of teachers, parents, local authorities and others. Given the support of the Government and the industry itself, we urge all Mps to support the Bill and ensure its passage through Parliament. There must never be a repeat of the incidents that led to the Lyme Bay canoeing tragedy when young teenagers were killed and injured."
  Clearly that must be the case.
  In its briefing, the Consumers Association touched on a number of matters—which have been mentioned in the debate—relating to the specific need to identify some of the regulatory practices. In Committee we must consider most carefully the advice that has been received and the points that have been made on the Floor of the House today.
  It would be inappropriate not to congratulate the Minister of State and a number of his colleagues on their eventual conversion on the road to Damascus. On 21 March 1994, the Minister of State said:
  "There are existing general statutes imposing duties with respect to health and safety and especially, as has been referred to more than once, the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. Within

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  the general framework, there are specific regulations such as the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992 and others which apply to activity centres as well as to other premises … Given the range of existing provisions, there might be a serious danger that additional requirements—even of the kind outlined by the hon. Gentleman"—
  my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport—
  "would add burdens on both suppliers and customers of services, including the schools themselves, increasing costs and possibly, therefore, acting as a deterrent to the provision of activities which the hon. Gentleman conceded at the outset form such a valuable educational contribution to the curriculum of schools."—[Official Report, 21 March 1994; Vol. 240, c. 116.]
  Statements by the Minister outside the House show that the Government have changed their position. That is most welcome, as are the comments of the hon. Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) who in that same debate could not see why regulation was necessary. He said:
  "if statutory rules and regulations had been laid down the accident would have happened."—[Official Report, 21 March 1994; Vol.240, c. 113–14.]
  I do not accept that. If regulations had been in place and enforced the incident would never have happened.
  Mr. Steen: I do not want to enter into an argument during this poignant and sad debate. I understand that there were two highly qualified canoeing instructors in the St. Alban's centre. However, they were not leading these young people on that particular trip. If they had been, the accident might not have happened, but if there had been statutory rules and regulations I cannot believe that they would have stated that those two instructors had to lead those young people.
  Mr. Miller: That is just the point. The Bill requires that persons with appropriate qualifications should lead. It would not allow people with minimum experience, even if they had the best will in the world, to lead such an expedition.
  The Bill would also do what the hon. Member for Sevenoaks suggested, in that it would engender a culture of safety. The Bill is part of that vital process. I do not want to pursue the point. I shall only underline the fact that I am pleased that the Government have changed their position dramatically.
  The issue now is where do we go from here. Statutory instruments relating to the Bill will be important and perhaps we should look at equipment and training issues in those instruments in conjunction with the language contained in the Deregulation and Contracting Out Act 1994. It would be helpful for the Government to acknowledge and give a commitment that issues covering training and the inspection of equipment and so on will be specifically exempted from the provisions of that Act. Clause 27 of that Bill gave rise to controversy in Committee last year and should be seen to apply to matters that are different from those covered by the Bill.
  I pay tribute to the bravery of the parents who were involved in the Lyme bay tragedy. As my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport said, their persistence was about the lives of other children and I hope that we can all learn from past mistakes. Without their persistence and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport and the knowledge of some of the important issues that came out in the subsequent court action, there would not be such agreement throughout the House.
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  As the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) said, the House should reflect not just on the safety of young people but should examine other issues. Perhaps that topic is outside the scope of the Bill, but those issues involve the improvement of safety for other people in other environments. The House has an important responsibility to ensure that at every possible stage for every group of people in society a safe and healthy environment is provided in all respects. Vulnerable young people need the protection that is outlined in the Bill, but that must be within the context of support by the House for the continuation of the important work that goes on in the many successful outdoor activity centres throughout Britain.
  11.55 am
  Mr. Anthony Steen: I join other hon. Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on achieving the objective of the campaign that he has waged since the disastrous Lyme bay tragedy in March 1993, in which four young people from Plymouth lost their lives. I pay tribute to his determination, dedication and commitment. The House owes him a debt of gratitude. The death of the children in Lyme bay aroused the emotions of the nation, and the hon. Gentleman was right to use the opportunity of winning the ballot to introduce his Bill.
  I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson), who has an illustrious track, record in a variety of charitable work. He spoke from experience, and I hope that the Minister will read his measured speech and take it into account when drafting the rules and regulations.
  The House is concerned to ensure that, when parents send their children to activity centres which are miles from their homes and schools, they can rely on the standards of safety. They must be sure that children will not be placed at additional risk because of inadequacy at the centre. However, outdoor activity centres and the like are involved in pitting young people against the elements of nature. That is the essence of such centres. Activities such as canoeing on rivers, sailing on the high seas or abseiling are inherently dangerous and one must be extremely careful as to how far one nannies children and prevents them utilising the activities to develop strength and character and to obtain the skills which the centres aim to develop.
  As far as I know, over the past 10 years there were comparatively few fatalities in activity centres. I have managed to dig out some research on the issue which I am sure that the House would like to hear. In May 1985, I am afraid that there was a drowning at Land's End, when four children were swept off the rocks. In April 1988 in Austria—of course, the Bill and the rules and regulations will not cover activities there—four children slid over a precipice. In August 1989, there was an abseiling fatality of an instructor in Wales, and in August 1990, in Scotland, a school teacher slid over a precipice. In May 1992, a child fell during a night walk. An instructor was drowned in a cave in June 1992, as was another in October 1992. In May 1993, there was the dreadful disaster at Lyme bay.
  My point is that, other than the eight to 10 children who should not have died, but did die during the past 10 years, the only other deaths at activity centres have been instructors and schoolteachers. We need to put the matter

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  in perspective when considering the 3,000 activity centres that operate most days of the year, where no tragedy occurs.
  I want to reinforce the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks about the number of children who, unfortunately, are killed on the roads going to and from activity centres. We must add to that figure the 180 children under the age of 16 who each year die in accidents in their homes, despite all the legislation.
  Mr. Kilfoyle: Is the hon. Gentleman giving a comprehensive list of those who have died at activity centres during his specified time span, or is he merely giving examples?
  Mr. Steen: I have cited the figures that I have been able to find. There may have been one or two accidents in other countries visited by school parties. The Cairngorms accident, which has been mentioned, happened some 20 years ago. I understand that there have been accidents in Switzerland and Austria, but unfortunately the Bill would not deal with such incidents.
  We have only to look at the numbers of hon. Members in the Chamber on a Friday to realise how successful the hon. Member for Devonport has been in turning the spotlight on the safety of activity centres. Largely because of his good fortune in coming second in the ballot, he has persuaded the Government to pay further attention to the safety of activity centres. Last summer the Government, like me, doubted whether there was a need for further rules and regulations, but he has persuaded us that a voluntary code of conduct may not be enough. I pay tribute to him for his measured speech and for the way in which he has handled the introduction of the Bill.
  We all want to do everything possible to prevent a similar tragedy from occurring again. I, the hon. Gentleman and others have all said that in the debate. It is the least that we can do for the children's families, who are here to listen to our debate. We want them to feel that their children's lives were not lost in vain. That is why I believe that what the hon. Gentleman has done with his Bill is of such great importance. The nation remembers the children.
  Before Christmas, it was reported in the media—which cannot always be believed—that while I was obviously in favour of doing everything possible to prevent accidents in activity centres, I had serious reservations about whether setting up statutory registers and passing Acts of Parliament would do much to help. We must remember that very few serious accidents have occurred at the 3,000 centres during the past 10 years, so I doubted whether passing another Act of Parliament would be the best way forward. I had doubts about the Bill then and I have doubts about it now. As the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) said, the purpose of a debate such as this is to air doubts and express reservations.
  I was a youth leader for 10 years. One of the interesting points about this debate is the range of experience on both sides of the House in the subjects under discussion. The hon. Member for Devonport was a distinguished schoolteacher. My hon. Friend the Member for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) is well known for his scouting activities. It is therefore right that hon. Members with such a range of experience should be called to speak in this debate.
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  As I said, I have certain reservations. I have worked with young people and I have launched and worked with two national charities. Therefore, I hope that the House appreciates that what I am about to say does not mean that I lack any compassion or concern. I simply believe that they are fair points to make at this time.
  The key to the future safety of activity centres is the quality of training, the experience of the instructors and the development of the instruction. The instructors are the people to whom ultimately we trust our children's safety. The aim must be to raise standards at the point of delivery. Unfortunately, I fear that not enough thought has been given to that aspect of the Bill. When registering with a central body, each activity centre will have to state which activities it intends to offer and what level of qualification the instructors in each activity have reached. The Bill states that the body will have the power to refuse accreditation to centres that are not working to adequate standards.
  That is all well and good, but is it not attacking the symptom rather than the cause? As I have said, the activity centre at Lyme bay had two highly qualified members of staff, so possibly it would have been accredited under the Bill. The question is whether those two members of staff would have been out with the children or whether the management could have made other arrangements.
  How will the new body, through its inspectors, do anything different from the existing inspectorates? The Island Cruising Club in Salcombe in my constituency is nationally known as one of the best yachting, sailing and canoeing clubs in Britain. It tells me that, even without the Bill, it is already monitored by seven agencies. It receives visits from officials who look at all aspects of its activities. I shall tell the House which bodies monitor that club.
  First, the club plays host to the Department of Transport Marine Safety Agency. It is always knocking around Salcombe; I think it likes my constituency. It visits the club fairly regularly. Not content with that, along comes the Royal Yachting Association. It seems to like the air in Salcombe. It looks around the club and satisfies itself that it is doing an effective, interesting and valuable job. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Mr Miller) mentioned the British Canoe Union. It does not want to be left out, and it comes to Salcombe probably twice a year to check that the canoeing aspects of the club are safe.
  Mr. Jamieson: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
  Mr. Steen: I will do so once I have finished my list.
  There is the Salcombe harbour authority—a distinguished and august body. It is paid for and supported by the South Hams district council. Then there is the Health and Safety Executive. My hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks was not too enthusiastic about that body

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  masterminding the Bill's rules and regulations. It is already at it, coming down to the club to look around and satisfy itself that all is well.
  Mr. Jamieson rose—
  Mr. Steen: I have not yet finished my list.
  In the summer months, Salcombe gets very full. The hotels are packed with officials visiting the Island Cruising Club. The South Hams district council's environmental health department also comes to look at the club—
  Mr. Hicks: It does not have to come very far.
  Mr. Steen: My hon. Friend is right; he knows his geography well. It is only a 20-mile drive from the council offices to Salcombe.
  Last but not least, the Devon fire and rescue services visit the club. That is seven organisations with seven lots of officials all visiting just one activity centre year in and year out. Why does the hon. Member for Devonport believe that an eighth organisation will make things better?
  Mr. Jamieson: I wish that the hon. Gentleman had given way in the middle of his list because I could have spared him finishing it. He has successfully made the point about why we need the Bill. At the moment, centres suffer a great deal of bureaucracy and unnecessary inspection by various bodies because no statutory framework for their operation exists. If one set of people undertake accreditation and one set of competent people inspect, we may cut the number of organisations going to the centres. On that basis, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support the Bill.
  Mr. Steen: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting observation. I have an office in Dean's yard. A new card entry system has been installed there. I asked the Serjeant at Arms whether, as the card had been introduced, he would do away with the two security guys that were inside the building—who do marvellous work—and an administrative guy. He said, "Of course, once we have the entry card, we will be able to reduce the number of officials who stand there." I have received the entry card, but the number of staff inside the building has nearly doubled and another entry service is being installed.
  Lady Olga Maitland: I agree with my hon. Friend for today, the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on the point about multiple agencies checking out activity centres. They all have different benchmarks for the standards required. The Bill proposes that we have one rigorous benchmark that no one could misunderstand.
  Mr. Steen: The example that I gave of Dean's yard entry system made my point very well. When one introduces a new system that one believes to be safer, one does not do away with the other systems—one has them as well. If the hon. Member for Devonport can tell me for certain that the seven inspections of the Island Cruising Club by all the different agencies will stop, I will support him 100 per cent. My fear is that the Bill will add to the seven inspections. That is why I am concerned.
  Mr. O'Hara: Will the hon. Gentleman please accept that he is unnecessarily burdening the House? He must accept the simple fact that, if after A, B sometimes occurs, that does not imply that after A, B always occurs. That is
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  at the centre of the Bill. Unsatisfactory procedures are in place and the Bill simply sets out to put adequate and satisfactory procedures in place. I urge the hon. Gentleman not to burden the House further with such irrelevant trivia.
  Mr. Steen: With respect to the hon. Gentleman, I cannot agree with him. If he were part of the Island Cruising Club management, and were visited by seven organisations throughout the year, asking about safety and various other regulations, he would question whether an eighth organisation_would do away with the other seven. I would give the measure whole-hearted support if that were the case. If it means, however, that an eight organisations will undertake inspection, the bureaucracy, rules and regulations will become considerably worse. Many well-run organisations will find that the amount of paper and bureaucracy will increase.
  Mrs. Llin Golding rose—
  Mr. Steen: I shall not give way for the moment. I must make progress. I am being chastised. I would always give way to the hon. Lady, but I ask her to let me make a little progress.
  Our aim is to ensure not only that activity centres are as safe as possible, but that as many children from as many walks of life as possible are able to enjoy them. I fear that the enterprise of the hon. Member for Devonport will result in an elite, and in far fewer activity centres. Perhaps 20 per cent. of the existing 3,000 centres may go out of business because they will not be able to afford, not just the cost of accreditation, which we know will not be too expensive, but the cost of recruiting and employing higher qualified instructors, who will have to go on longer courses.
  The Government will have to provide more grants and staff will have to gain more and more skills, which will cost centres more and more money. One must think through the consequences of the arrangements. Although one welcomes higher qualifications and higher skills, one must also recognise the on-going cost. One may say, "Well and good. It is worth doing."
  Mr. Wolfson: I support the Bill, but I believe that my hon. Friend's point about increased costs is a key factor. I know that the best-run and safest centres have heavy expenses. That is an important point to consider in the progress of the Bill.
  Mr. Steen: I welcome that intervention. I am not pursuing my argument to be frivolous. I am concerned that children from all walks of life, from the inner city of Plymouth, as well as from the rural areas around it, have the opportunity to go to the best activity centres and to find that they can afford them. We must be concerned about the on-going cost to the public purse of longer training courses and higher pay for instructors. If it will be self-financing, we must consider the consequences. I was chastised by Opposition Members, but I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks for putting the matter in perspective.
  Mrs. Golding: What cost does the hon. Gentleman put on a young person's life? Surely that is what we must consider and that is what the Bill considers.
  Mr. Steen: Of course one puts an enormous cost on a young person's life. Indeed, no real price can be put on

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  it. The 10-year track record of activity centres is not appalling. Nor can one say that there has not been supervision. As I said, one activity centre has been inspected by seven organisations. I support what the Bill proposes, but such on-going cost may prevent the very young people from the poorest homes who should enjoy such activities from enjoying them. I am sure that the hon. Member for Devonport would not like to have elitist activity centres as a result of the Bill.
  I must bring my speech to an end, even though I have some other useful points to make; they can be made later. I am sure that all hon. Members support the spirit and aim of the Bill—who would not? I have some doubts about the statutory commitments and serious doubts about the consequence of more rules and regulations. The track record is very good as it stands. I wish the Bill well. I hope that it will do what we all hope that it will do.
  12.17 pm
  Mr. Win Griffiths: It gives me great pleasure to support my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) in co-sponsoring his Bill, although we can take no pleasure in the circumstances surrounding it. Almost every hon. Member who has spoken this morning has referred to the distress and agony experienced by the parents who lost children in the Lyme bay tragedy.
  I follow the hon. Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen), who, although he expressed his support in principle for the Bill, unfortunately introduced a slightly discordant element by implying that excessive cost will arise if one introduces a statutory framework that seeks to eliminate, as far as possible, the errors that led to the Lyme bay tragedy. There is no doubt that, had the Bill been enacted a few years ago, the operators of the centre would have been outside the law and unable to take the risks that they took in sending instructors on the particular course. They could have argued—and did—that they were acting reasonably.
  In paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Devonport, I suggest that had he not introduced this Bill we should probably not have had a debate in Government time on the safety of children at activity centres. In this case, fortune has favoured the brave and the persistent in that my hon. Friend won the No. 2 slot in the ballot. It is salutary for us to remember that this debate would not be taking place without that good fortune.
  Until my hon. Friend came second in the ballot, the Government's position was that there was already enough guidance and legislation to ensure a satisfactory framework for activity centres. Of course, we know that that was not the case. As the hon. Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) made clear, there is a debate among the deregulation maniacs and those who put profit before safety and the lives of children. Fortunately, thanks to the tremendous campaign waged by the parents of the children involved in the Lyme bay tragedy, we have been able to persuade the Government to reconsider safety at outdoor activity centres.
  There may be concern about the cost of regulation but it should not have been that which was outlined to the House today; the real concern about cost is simply to ensure that any system of regulation is run as cost effectively as possible. It should have nothing to do with
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  scare stories about 20 per cent. of centres having to close because regulation will be too costly. If the system that we introduce proves too costly for some centres, it is probably just as well that those centres close; we shall then know that children will not be put at risk.
  Not only in connection with activity centres but in many other circumstances we are all too often told that, if a death has not occurred or nothing serious has happened in the past 20 years, extra regulation is not needed. When, all of a sudden, a tragedy such as that at Lyme bay occurs, our minds turn to the issue of safety. I am, therefore, pleased that my hon. Friend has introduced the Bill.
  As many hon. Members have said, there is a voluntary system, and various centres offer accreditation—such as the English tourist board, the Activity Centres Advisory Committee and the Welsh tourist board. The British Activity Holiday Association also has a code of practice. But, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle) said, representatives had visited the St. Alban's centre but presumably felt that its standards were satisfactory.
  Under the Welsh tourist board's scheme, a centre that does not want to be included is simply not inspected. If it is inspected and does not meet the board's standards, it does not have to close; it can carry on with its activities but is not included in the board's promotional literature.
  Mr. Kilfoyle: Before my hon. Friend concludes his remarks, may I ask if he is aware that a garage that rented out surf boards was considered to be an accredited centre under the Welsh scheme?
  Mr. Griffiths: No, I was not aware of that particular case but it reveals the need for a proper regulatory framework.
  I conclude by drawing attention to the Health and Safety Executive's interim report, to which a number hon. Members have referred, and by pinpointing one or two issues that have not been dealt with. Of the centres that did provide training, 25 per cent. did not do so under the auspices of the national governing body of the activities involved. In addition, 8 per cent. of the centres did not record accidents and 45 per cent. of the centres examined were not aware of their legal responsibility to do so. The HSE found that only 50 of the 107 accidents that occurred and which should have been reported were, in fact, reported, so the seriousness of the problem is clear. It also found that 10 per cent. of activity centres gave cause for concern.
  In a survey conducted in Wales by the Institute of Higher Education in Swansea, the results of which are contained in a report entitled, "Managing a Safer Product", published in July 1993, it was found that 25 per cent. of centres in Wales did not have satisfactory safety standards.
  I deal now with the points raised by the hon. Member for South Hams and others about centres abroad. Schools usually book such centres abroad through British agents. Will the Government consider placing a duty on those agents to ensure that overseas centres operate to the standards applied in Britain? In any event, I look forward to the Bill rapidly completing all its stages and being enacted and working within the year.
  12.27 pm
  Mr. Jacques Arnold: I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on his extremely good fortune in obtaining second place in the ballot for private Members' Bills. It is very much to his credit that he has devoted his Bill to this important subject which was, of course, brought to our attention by the tragedy in Lyme bay.
  It is right for the House to review the arrangements and regulations that apply to such activities. In recent years, there has been a proliferation of activity centres and providers of facilities; some are clearly cowboy operations. It is right for these matters to be looked at carefully. I counsel the House, however, to be extremely careful about what it brings to the statute book because it is only too easy to throw out the baby with the bath water.
  I have the honour to be secretary of the all-party parliamentary Scout Association group. About one third of hon. Members have passed through the Scout Association during their young lives. The association is one of the greatest providers of outdoor activities, including canoeing, sailing, mountaineering, abseiling, potholing or orienteering. All those activities are potentially dangerous. Just as we have benefited from them, however, so today many boys and girls, many from deprived or inner-city areas, are enjoying those activities in which otherwise they would not be able to take part.
  The Scout Association has developed thorough systems of training, qualification, regulation and authorisation to do its best to avoid tragic accidents. It has harnessed the work of unpaid volunteers and provides a wonderful programme of activities. In all those activities, it has to strike a careful balance between the provision of exciting adventure and the needs of stringent safety controls. My hon. Friends the Members for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer) and for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) were right to refer to the balance of risk. Young people can be very safe if they never venture from their homes and if they get their only thrills in life out of computer games and the like.
  The Scout Association, through regulations and care, has an extremely safe record. It has standards on which parents can rely. That comment does not, of course, apply only to the Scout Association, but to others such as the Girl Guides Association, the Boys Brigade, the Sea Cadet Corps and many others that are properly regulated and have safety very much in mind. The challenge of the Bill is to extend the scope of safety arrangements to all, but not to jeopardise good-quality activities provided by responsible organisations.
  It is a sad fact that bad accidents can lead to bad law; firearms legislation provides one example. The Bill provides for a licensing authority to settle regulations, for inspection and for licence fees, all of which inevitably involves bureaucracy. The ensuing bureaucracy could add terrific costs which would be a practical and financial disincentive for organisations that already have excellent safety records. It could cause a switch from the youth organisations that I have mentioned to others that have far less tried-and-tested structures; indeed, it could lead to no activities at all for our young people.
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  My plea, therefore, is that there should be close consultation with organisations that have a track record, such as the Scout Association. In clause 3(3), there is a requirement that
  "Before making an order or regulations … the Secretary of State shall consult the Health and Safety Commission and such other persons (if any) as he considers it appropriate to consult."
  I suggest strongly that the Secretary of State and the Health and Safety Commission should consult the Scout Association and similar organisations. The Standing Committee might like to consider an amendment to require consultation specifically with appropriate youth service interests.
  In terms of setting standards and regulations, the Committee should consider delegating licensing to responsible, accredited organisations that already enforce standards. It is worth considering the point that the Lyme bay tragedy could not have happened at a scout centre. The requirements imposed by the Scout Association about the qualifications of the personnel involved, the standard of equipment and the weather conditions would have prevented that expedition.
  The idea of delegating licensing to qualified voluntary organisations is not new. Licensing for the driving of minibuses by volunteers is covered under the Minibus Act 1977, which gives the authority for issuing section 19 permits to organisations. The responsibility was delegated to designated bodies, including the Scout Association. There are precedents and we should consider the possibility of delegating licensing.
  I support the Bill. There is a solemn responsibility on the Standing Committee and, subsequently, on the licensing authority to raise safety standards at the bottom to the highest that prevail in highly respected organisations and to keep a close eye on the costs which might divert funds away from these wonderful activities for young people.
  12.33 pm
  The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr. Eric Forth): May I, as is traditional but nevertheless heartfelt, congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on winning the No. 2 spot in the ballot for private Member's Bills? Such success always throws the limelight on any hon. Member and I am sure that we all agree that the hon. Gentleman has used his privilege and good fortune in the ballot to the best possible effect in introducing this Bill. What I hope will be the extreme brevity of my remarks should in no way be construed as reflecting any lack of interest, concern or support for the Bill or, indeed, be any reflection on the quality of the debate. However, I am very conscious of time.
  As so many hon. Members have said, this debate reflects the concern of the House for the families of young people who lost their lives, not only the deaths at Lyme bay of Claire Langley, Rachel Walker, Simon Dunne and Dean Sayer but Hayley Hadfield, who tragically died in a previous accident at an activity centre, Mrs. Trotter, whose son was also affected, albeit in a slightly different way, and others before that. The memories of those people are very much in our minds when we debate the aims and effects of the Bill.
  I was going to rehearse at little length the background to the Bill and the Government's attitude to it, but I shall say only that I believed at the time, and would say so

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  now, that our response as Government and as a Department, certainly to the Lyme bay tragedy, was, by Government standards, rapid and appropriate. Surveys on activity centres, the publication of results of inspections, guidance issued by my Department to schools and so on were put in place and were having an effect. In fact., many hon. Members have said that there was every sign that centres had been made aware, through those measures, of their responsibilities and had sought to improve their standards. That was very welcome.
  A number of things have happened to cause us to want to look at this subject again and to lead us to support the Bill, not least the fact that the Activity Centre Advisory Committee, which we hoped would introduce a voluntary scheme of accreditation for centres, has considered matters for some time and has concluded that a statutory scheme would be preferable. That obviously carried a lot of weight with my colleagues and me.
  The words of the judge at the trial of the Lyme bay incident, which have already been quoted, not least by the hon. Member for Devonport, included comments on the centres, among other things. He said:
  "I believe that authoritative control, supervision and, if necessary, intervention, is called for."
  His views were reinforced by Dorset police, who provided us with key extracts from the proceedings. Some very weighty words were added to the argument for statutory measures.
  Mr. Wolfson: My hon. Friend is dealing with the judgment. As I understand it, the managing director of the company was found guilty and punished, but the local manager was exonerated on a technicality. If I am right, would my hon. Friend consider that point as appropriate? It should not be able to happen again—we now hope that it never will—if a similar situation ever arose.
  Mr. Forth: The point of which I want my hon. Friend and the House to take account is the fact that the judge, having presided over the trial and taken into account all the circumstances, gave his view that further measures were required. That is the important context in which I quote the judge's words.
  The Health and Safety Executive report, which has rightly been frequently quoted in the House today, said that although standards were generally fairly good, serious shortcomings had emerged from its surveys that required attention. That therefore led my colleagues in government and me very readily to extend the support, which I gladly repeat to the House, for the Bill and its thrust.
  Although I fear that I may be treading slightly on the territory of the hon. Member for Devonport—I hope that he will forgive me for doing so—it may help the House if I give a preliminary Government response to some of the questions that have been asked in the debate. That may help hon. Members to reach their conclusions about the Bill.
  Much has been said about the time scale. I am clear that we want to have the regulations that will flow from the Bill in place as soon as is properly possible. However, we must bear in mind that we have to deal first with the Committee stage. It will then have to pass its further stages and receive Royal Assent. During some of that period, we may be able to embark on the extensive and
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  detailed consultation that everyone wants, not least because of the many points that have been made in this debate, before introducing regulations, for which we hope to obtain the approval of the House.
  With the best will in the world, I believe that that will take most of the rest of this calendar year. However, I hope that all the regulations will be in place in time for the 1996 season—if I can put it that way. That is a reasonable timetable, to which I hope we can adhere. I am sure that there will be co-operation from hon. Members on both sides of the House.
  My hon. Friends the Members for Dorset, West (Sir J. Spicer) and for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) and the hon. and learned Member for Fife, North-East (Mr. Campbell) referred to the balance that we must strike in seeking not to over-regulate and remove every conceivable risk and, in other words, seriously damage this very important activity, which adds so much to the pleasure and character development of young people.
  That balance must be in our minds as we progress through the Committee stage and the consultations that will give rise to regulations. I am sure that we are all conscious of that point. We must balance safety and risk and cost and accessibility. Those issues must be in our minds as we proceed with the later stages of the Bill.
  Several questions were asked about the definition and detail that will arise should the Bill receive its Second Reading today. My hon. Friends the Members for Bristol, North-West (Mr. Stern), for Cornwall, South-East (Mr. Hicks) and for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) made important points of detail about the definition of activity centres and the kind of organisations that may be affected.
  It was vital for those points to be raised in this debate. They will be picked up further, perhaps in Committee but more probably during the consultation process, when it will be very important that we try, as far as possible, to ask all the appropriate questions of all the appropriate and interested organisations in order to frame the regulations better to make them as effective as possible, but with that balance of lightness of touch and effect that has been maintained throughout. I envisage that that will be of the greatest importance during the consultation process.
  I believe that many of the points will be covered by exemptions being incorporated in the regulations that will seek to define the bodies that will not necessarily have to comply with the requirements of the Bill and of the regulations.
  Mr. Jamieson indicated assent.
  Mr. Forth: I see that the hon. Member for Devonport agrees with that.
  I want now to deal with an important point that was made by the hon. Members for Tooting (Mr. Cox) and for Liverpool, Walton (Mr. Kilfoyle). They wanted to know whether local authorities would be the licensing authority. The answer is that local authority inspectors could not be designated as licensing authorities simply because clause 1(1) provides for a person to be designated. That could be a body—and, in my view, very probably would be—but not individual inspectorates from more than one authority. The way in which the Bill is framed at present precludes the possibility of local authorities picking up the very important responsibility that is so central to the Bill.
  Mr. Steen: Will my hon. Friend assure me that the seven organisations that I mentioned, including the

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  Department of Transport Marine Safety Agency, will, as a result of the passage of the Bill, no longer have to burden existing activity centres with further inspections? Will he assure me that the Bill will set up a new arrangement that will remove the existing arrangements so that only one body—and not seven, eight or nine—will carry out inspections?
  Mr. Forth: Much as I would like to give my hon. Friend that assurance, in all conscience I cannot do so, mainly because we have not settled the important detail of how the legislation would operate under regulations. Equally important, having heard what my hon. Friend said, I suspect that many of the functions carried out by those bodies may overlap with the functions envisaged for the Bill but would not entirely replace them.
  Therefore, although I hope that some organisations would take cognisance of the responsibilities flowing from the Bill and may see fit not to continue inspections, I could not give that guarantee. They would have to be responsible for assessing how far that overlap was complete or partial. If it were complete, I hope that an arrangement could be made to eliminate duplication. If it were only partial, I should have thought that an element of duplication may regrettably have to continue.
  I have been brief. That does not mean that I under-estimate the importance or value of the Bill—I do neither. However, the debate has been wide ranging and informative, and it will help the hon. Member for Devonport during the Committee stage, which I hope will follow soon after Second Reading. The debate will enable my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and others to take responsibility for seeing the Bill through into effective regulations, which will do everything possible to ensure that, wherever possible, such tragedies never occur again.
  12.45 pm
  Mr. Edward Leigh: The Bill is prompted by a terrible tragedy. As parents, our hearts go out to the parents of those concerned. I congratulate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on his care in bringing forward the Bill. However, we are entitled to ask whether it is the right approach. We are entitled to ask the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Minister for further and better particulars before the Bill reaches the statute book.
  We all want activity centres and we want them to be safe, but we do not want them to be confined to the better-off because of costs loaded on to activity centres. The Government must consider their response very carefully, if the Bill becomes an Act, when drawing up the regulations. The Government have a duty to consider their response carefully and not to be over-influenced by crisis, tragedy or public pressure. Important as those matters are, the Government have a duty to ensure that we do not always legislate for the minority. We must legislate for the majority.
  The overwhelming majority of activity centres have ensured safe and successful activity and projects for young people for a long time. Therefore, we want legislation and regulations that do not drive up costs or drive too many people out of business. We must remember that many such operations are very small. They are naturally independent organisations, run by people who are dedicated to climbing or sailing, for instance, and
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  we must not over-nanny them or those who attend their activity centres. We must not over-regulate for a risk that might be very small. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) said, more youngsters are killed on the roads on their way to activity centres than are killed as a result of the activities.
  I remind the Government of their own documentation on the Deregulation and Contracting Out Bill. Many statements made it absolutely clear that the Government were committed not to more regulation but to less regulation. For instance, they insisted that there should be a compliance cost assessment—a new regulation—and that there should be risk assessment and management. The Government said:
  "Those responsible for drawing up new regulations to protect from some perceived risk must assess whether that risk is so grave or is likely to occur with sufficient frequency to justify the burden imposed by the new regulation. They must consider whether there is a better way in which the risk can be managed."
  I could speak for longer, but there is no time. Many Government statements have made it absolutely clear that the Government are conscious that new regulations can drive up costs and force people out of business. As has been made clear many times this morning, my hon. Friend the Minister is aware that activity centres are already regulated by the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1992. Section 3 of the 1974 Act places a general duty on employers and the self-employed to ensure
  "so far as is reasonably practicable"
  that the activities do not expose to risk people not in their employ. Under section 7 of the Act, an employee has a duty
  "to take reasonable care for the health and safety of himself and of other persons who may be affected by his acts or omissions at work".
  Activity centres are already regulated. I took the liberty today of ringing the British Activity Holidays Association, because we have not heard a great deal from it today and because the association's members are the people who are in the business. It is concerned that qualifications are required to suit the circumstances. For instance, much canoeing is conducted in safe conditions in swimming pools or small ponds, and not necessarily in the sea.
  We want to ensure that the right standards are applied in the right circumstances. That will be a difficult task for my hon. Friend the Minister in drawing up the regulations if the Bill becomes an Act. We also want to ensure that the regulations do not discriminate against private operators in favour of local authority operators. I very much hope that the British Activity Holidays Association will be closely consulted during the course of the Bill.
  My hon. Friend the Member for South Hams (Mr. Steen) made some pertinent points, and it was unfortunate that he was derided by some Members when he was doing so. My hon. Friend is a caring and effective legislator who wants to ensure that we have safe activity centres, but he does not want to impose costs on centres which will simply drive them out of business or ensure that they become elitist.
  I shall end with a quote from Christina Hardy, writing in the Daily Telegraph. She herself was quoting Cardinal Newman, who said more than 100 years ago:
  "We are so constituted that if we insist upon being as sure as is conceivable in every step of our course, we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar."
  12.51 pm
  Mr. Piers Merchant: I shall be very brief, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on grasping the initiative? I am naturally and instinctively reticent about supporting extra regulation and legislation, but the hon. Gentleman's restrained and thoughtful approach has convinced me that, in this case, it is necessary, and I can support the Bill.
  I have spoken to parents in my constituency who send their children to activity centres and who want to be able to do so because of the benefit that their children derive from the centres. They also want to do so in the knowledge that the safety requirements at the centres are adequate to protect their children. They support the Bill.
  I have spoken to the director of education at the local authority which serves my constituency, Bromley. The director of education and the authority are strongly in favour of the Bill because they want to continue to send children from the borough to activity centres. They too want to do so in the knowledge that proper protection is being afforded.
  I have spoken to a teacher who leads children to such centres, and who has considerable experience in doing so. She too is strongly in favour of the legislation. She has seen improvements in standards during the past two years—I wonder why—and she realises that, in the very nature of activity centres, there is bound to be risk. She realises that teachers have responsibilities, and she does not in any sense want to duck that. Bearing in mind the culture of the centres, the characteristics of the people who run them and the feelings of children when they are there, it is difficult for a teacher to step in and say, "No, you cannot do that." That teacher needs to be backed up by legislation, and that is why teachers almost universally support the Bill.
  I am worried about the nature of some of the people who have been employed in the past by activity centres. I do not want in any sense to suggest that this is the norm or the rule, and I hope that the practice has diminished. However, there are cases on which I have been given information where outdoor activity centres have in the past employed as guides and leaders people who have no qualifications. In some cases, people who have come from abroad—Australia and South Africa, for example—and are illegally working in this country have been employed, and back-packers and rough boys have also been employed.
  These people have probably been entirely well motivated, but when it comes to a crisis they simply do not have the training or the skill to deal with it. That sort of thing must not be allowed to continue. One cannot allow chance or good hopes to prevent repetitions of such occurrences. Legislation is necessary to ensure that qualifications and the standards of operators and their personnel are adequate and can provide absolute safety in the application of their skills.
  The tragic events of Lyme bay and the publicity and concern that have followed from them have achieved a good deal in improving standards, but there is always a danger that time will pass and complacency will return. Legislation is necessary to prevent that. We cannot legislate completely against risk in human activity—it is impossible—but we can legislate to prevent complacency. That is why I support the Bill.
  12.54 pm
  Lady Olga Maitland: It is with great pleasure that I warmly congratulate at the end of the debate the hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Mr. Jamieson) on introducing this most important Bill. I share his concern that far too much emphasis has been placed in today's debate on the costs of introducing regulations, proper organisation and monitoring of activity centres. When a child's life is at risk, we cannot put money before that child's life. Although we should have a sense of proportion and common sense, when a child's life is at stake we have an obligation to go to the ends of the earth to get a Bill that is right and appropriate in terms of safety.
  Anyone who has read the Health and Safety Executive report will agree that it makes sobering reading. Two Opposition Members have pointed out some of the factors that came up in the report. I should like to point out a couple more. The report made it clear that 8 per cent. of the activity centres visited had no procedures or equipment in place to deal with emergencies. For example, they had no arrangements for communication with remote locations or emergency evacuation from them. Six per cent. had no system to ensure that equipment was well maintained and safely used. That is plain scandalous. Any activity centre that fails to come up to scratch should have the activity brought to an end or simply the whole show closed down. I take a robust view of the matter.
  I am a member of the Education Select Committee, which is looking into activity centres. We have received 86 submissions in all. The vast majority are in favour of some compulsory scheme of registration, accreditation and inspection of outdoor activities. Anyone who has read some of the submissions and contacted some of the people who have made them, as I have done, will realise the importance of regulation. I spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Peter Hadfield of Salford, who told me the distressing story of their 11-year-old daughter, Hayley. She died in May 1992 after attending the Manor adventure centre in Shropshire. What Mrs. Hadfield told me was hair-raising. It was a story of blinding incompetence on a scale which leaves us speechless. I hope that those experiences will never be forgotten.
  In that context, I am worried when I hear my hon. Friends say that we should worry about the costs of implementing the Bill. If they listened to Mrs. Hadfield, they would think again. This is an enormously important Bill. I have spoken to head teachers of schools in my constituency. They have recently stopped sending their young to activity centres because of the lack of confidence and the breakdown in safety measures. We want to get those children back out to the centres to experience those enriching life styles. I wish the Bill greatest speed. It deserves it. It is not before time. I wish to see the Bill implemented so that my children in Sutton will be able to enjoy the experiences that can only enhance their lives.
  12.58 pm
  Mr. Jamieson: This has been a useful debate, with many helpful contributions and I pay special tribute to the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) for her impassioned cry on behalf of children.
  I do not want to delay the House for more than a few moments, but I must answer some of the questions posed during the debate. The hon. and learned Member for Fife,

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  North-East (Mr. Campbell) asked why the provisions in the Bill were restricted to people under the age of 18. I feel that that group of people is the most vulnerable. Children are the least able to assess the risks involved in an activity and the immature and inexperienced need to gain experience knowing that there is a framework that guarantees them a certain level of safety. Also, most centres provide for a variety of ages—for those over as well as under 18. If we find that those that provide exclusively for the over-18s are giving cause for concern, the Liberal Democrats might introduce another Bill, if they win the ballot.
  The hon. Member for Cornwall, South-East (Mr. Hicks) mentioned the excellent centre in his area, which deals with people who have various disabilities. By and large, the Bill might not cover the sort of activities that it provides. If they are covered, the centre would have to accredit once. Such centres not only provide activities themselves, but often go to other centres for different activities. They would therefore have the assurance that when they booked into another centre it would be accredited under the law. The Bill will therefore help such organisations.
  The hon. Members for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) and for Gravesham (Mr. Arnold) rightly mentioned the scouts and guides. May I add the Youth Hostels Association, with which I have had some discussions. I envisage that those organisations will have to accredit once, if they have centres or undertake activities that fall within the remit of the Act, if the Bill is enacted.
  Each and every brownie and guide pack or scout group would not have to accredit separately—that would be ridiculous and, when we draw up the finer points of the regulations, we want to be sure that that would not happen. The Bill will help the scout and guide movements considerably, because, when they employ another centre to provide activities, they will know that it is working within a legal framework—they buy in most of the more hazardous activities from outside sources.
  I am pleased at the widespread support for the Bill from the House today. I hope that with cross-party support we can develop a new safety culture for our children. I hope that, when the Bill becomes an Act, it will reassure parents, teachers and governors and, most of all, that it will create a new environment of safety within which activities can grow and flourish.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed to a Standing Committee, pursuant to Standing Order No. 61 (Committal of Bills).

Insurance Companies (Reserves) Bill
Order for Second Reading read.
1.3 pm
Mr. Oliver Heald: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
I introduced the Bill on 14 December, to amend the law relating to insurance companies and, in particular, the Insurance Companies Act 1982. The Bill could not be more topical. The worst earthquake for 70 years struck Japan last week and the industrial port and city of Kobe was devastated, with many injuries, deaths and damage to 50,000 buildings. It was a tragic event, which highlighted the sudden and volatile nature of property catastrophes.
This country suffered smaller property catastrophes in 1987 and 1990. On those occasions, United Kingdom insurers were called on to pay out claims for storm damage and flooding that were four times the annual average. When such losses occur, policyholders look to London, because it is the world's insurance and reinsurance market, with a third of the world's business. Our institutions bear the loss when such events occur. The Bill would provide added security for policyholders and smooth premiums for certain classes of insurance.
The general insurance market is competitive. In Japan, property catastrophe reinsurance renews on 1 April this year. British companies will be competing for business at a disadvantage. Insurers elsewhere have better tax treatment. The Bill is a step on the road to remedying that.
I am grateful for the support of the industry—the Association of British Insurers and the London Insurance and Reinsurance Market Association—and all the main parties. I particularly welcome the support of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary, the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) and, I believe, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell), who is in his place on the Opposition Front Bench, and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith).
The Bill's main purpose is to confer on the Secretary of State the power to make regulations requiring the maintenance of reserves by insurance companies. I have introduced the Bill in order to pave the way for a system of reserves known as equalisation reserves, to be held by insurance companies. There are good potential grounds for the Secretary of State to require such reserves.
The purpose of equalisation reserves would be to recognise the inherent instability of certain types of insurance business which means that, if the company is to meet its obligations to its policyholders on time, it needs to set aside a reserve from profitable years to finance exceptional claims when they occur. Equalisation reserves are a recognised technique already used in other countries, including Japan and Germany.
The Secretary of State, using powers derived from European legislation, already requires insurance companies writing credit insurance business to keep such reserves but, unfortunately, he cannot use those powers to require equalisation reserves to be maintained by all United Kingdom insurance companies or for any other description of business.
Clause 1(1) is the Bill's main provision. It inserts in the Insurance Companies Act 1982 a new section 34A, which requires certain insurance companies to maintain reserves

635
in accordance with rules that will be prescribed in regulations to be made by the Secretary of State. The regulations may make provision, among other things, for the circumstances in which, and the times at which, the amounts must be placed into, or taken from, reserves. They may also cover other matters incidental to the maintenance of such reserves.
The new obligation does not apply to all insurance companies. Most insurers with head offices in member states other than the United Kingdom are excluded because, since 1 July last year, such companies have been subject to regulation in their home state only. In addition, the Secretary of State may provide in the regulations that the obligation to maintain the reserves should not apply to companies of a prescribed description.
The provisions would not apply to Lloyd's of London because Lloyd's has its own powers to introduce the provision for such reserves. I have been in contact with Lloyd's of London. It assures me that, although the Bill will have no direct effect on it, it takes an interest in the developments in the context of its corporate capital providers. In future, Lloyd's will seek to assess how any arrangement ultimately adopted by insurance companies may be adapted to ensure parity for its corporate vehicles.
Clause 1(2) inserts a new provision in the 1982 Act providing that any such reserves should be treated as if they were liabilities for the purpose of the calculation by an insurance company of its solvency margin. That requirement was inserted to reflect our obligations under the EC insurance directive, and it follows the same formulation as that adopted for credit insurance equalisation reserves. Under European law, those reserves should be treated as liabilities.
Clause 2 amends and inserts a new provision in section 68 of the 1982 Act dealing with solvency margins. Section 68 enables the Secretary of State by order to modify the application of various sections of the 1982 Act and regulations made pursuant to those sections in their application to insurance companies.
The new provision inserted by clause 2 enables the Secretary of State to provide in regulations that section 68 should apply to new section 34A and corresponding regulations. At the moment, no clear need for this power in relation to the new requirement to maintain reserves is foreseen, and it is not thought appropriate to include it. However, the power to attract section 68 is included should the Secretary of State think it necessary to bring the matter back to the House in due course.
Clause 3 covers the short title, commencement and extent of the Bill. Clause 1 will be brought into force by commencement order, which it is intended should be made at the same time as regulations. Clearly, new section 34A can have effect only when such regulations are in place.
For some time, the industry has sought the introduction of a scheme for the maintenance of equalisation reserves on the basis that such reserves would qualify for tax relief. It argues that, at present, companies need to reserve part of the profit on which they have paid tax in good years to pay for losses in bad years, and that it is not right that they should have to set up such reserves from taxed profits.
The industry points to examples in some European countries, notably Germany, where companies are allowed to set up reserves for such business while
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deferring tax payments. When I discussed that with the Association of British Insurers, I was told that that is a competitive disadvantage and that, if the change could be made, companies would be able to compete more effectively, particularly with the large German reinsurers and insurers.
There is a clear case for insurance companies to be treated differently from other companies in respect of their reserving requirements. The factor that distinguishes an insurance business from almost any other is that the price to be charged for the product has to be determined before the cost of delivering it is known. By far the most important element of cost is claims. There is therefore a strong case for the ability to make both provision and reserves against uncertain future claims from untaxed income.
As the provisions of the third directive are implemented in European Union member states, the single market for insurance products becomes an increasing reality. The UK industry points out that it is at a competitive disadvantage because others are allowed to reserve on a basis which receives more favourable tax treatment. Insurance is an international business in which the UK has an excellent record, and the Bill makes a change that will continue that success.
I have already spoken about the windstorms in the United Kingdom in 1987 and 1990, which caused significant losses to companies underwriting property business. Many hon. Members will be aware that forecasters are predicting an increasing number of catastrophes as a result of changes to the climate in the UK and worldwide.
Another benefit of an equalisation reserve scheme is that, as a company's equalisation reserve builds up, it will have the opportunity to retain a greater proportion of risk for itself and will be able to reduce the costs and the risks of buying reinsurance. Companies will always need some reinsurance, but reductions reduce the commission and the profit that is paid away.
If tax relief is granted it would mean that, for the first time, a company could decide between reinsurance and internal reserving without having its choice distorted in any way by the fact that the first gets tax relief as an expense whereas the second does not. My hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway) is in his place, and I know that he and members of his committee have been fully briefed on the Bill by Lloyd's and by the insurance industry.
The Bill is the first essential step in setting up an equalisation reserve scheme which could qualify for tax relief. It does not prescribe the details of such as scheme nor does it provide tax relief, which will be a matter for Treasury Ministers. I hope that, when the Bill is passed, the Department of Trade and Industry will be able to implement by regulations a detailed scheme. I have spoken to my hon. Friend the Minister of State, Treasury, who has assured me that he and his Treasury colleagues would be prepared to consider providing tax relief for an acceptable scheme. I believe that such a scheme can be developed.
The Association of British Insurers has led a working party which has included representatives from the Department of Trade and Industry and from the Inland Revenue. It has devised proposals that could form the basis of regulations and that have already been the subject

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of widespread consultation with members of the ABI and with bodies representing the company sector of the London market.
After considering the pattern of claims experience in this country for a period of 12 years, the working party has recommended that equalisation reserves would be suitable for a number of volatile classes of business. It has looked at the experience peaks of claims. I have already mentioned property, but others include marine, aviation, nuclear and certain reinsurance business. Reinsurers have borne much of the brunt of recent catastrophes and they need equalisation reserves just as much as direct insurers. It is thought that, following Kobe, much of the reinsurance loss will be incurred in the London market.
The ABI's proposals envisage that payment into the reserve would be based on a proportion of premiums. Withdrawals would be triggered where there were exceptional levels of claims. Maximum levels would be laid down for the reserves as it would be neither reasonable to expect companies to hold excessive reserves nor, if tax relief is granted, for the Treasury to allow unlimited amounts of deferred tax. I know that that is an issue on which the hon. Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) has written and spoken at some length.
It is proposed that the rules should be varied according to the different classes of business, with those of a less volatile nature having smaller reserving requirements than those that are more volatile. The details of the scheme are not yet finalised. The DTI and the Inland Revenue are reviewing the working party's proposals. It is proposed to issue a consultative document in the spring, setting out the detailed proposals for comment by the industry. Once again, those could become the subject of regulations.
If the results of the consultation are looked upon favourably by the Chancellor, there would be an opportunity to announce tax relief in the November 1995 Budget, with the scheme coming into operation at the beginning of next year. The urgency of the Bill is that, without it, no scheme could be established before 1997 at the earliest.
The House has fully supported the single market generally and, by approving the regulations implementing the third directives for both life and general insurance business, it has supported the single market for insurance in particular. It has also supported a regime of prudential regulation for insurance companies, in the interests of policyholders.
The Bill is good for consumers, for policyholders and for the industry. It is good for Britain because it will enable it to hold its place in the world insurance market. The Bill would further the cause of UK companies in the single market and their prudential supervision. I commend it to the House.
1.18 pm
Mr. Stuart Bell: The House is grateful to the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) not only for presenting the Bill, but for the way in which he did it. He mentioned added security, smooth premiums and, interestingly, Japan and our insurance companies that are competing there. In all my briefings we have talked about Europe, especially France and Germany, but we have never talked about Japan. The hon. Gentleman also mentioned Lloyd's—I shall return to that in a moment—and he referred to competitive
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disadvantage. He has given us not only the outline of his Bill, but the reasons why he feels it should be passed by the House today.
As I said earlier to the Minister, victory has a thousand fathers and so, too, does a successful private Member's Bill. The Bill has the support of the Government and of the Opposition. The hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North referred to my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling). The Bill has the support of the Department of Trade and Industry, and of the Association of British Insurers, notwithstanding Lloyd's lukewarm approach, which is less vigorous than I would appreciate and would wish. It calls itself an innocent bystander, but says that, if the Bill is passed, it will take advantage of it. Does the Bill, however, have the support of the Treasury? That is the key to the debate and to the questions involved. Does it have the support of the Inland Revenue?
I imagine that the Bill is a framework. It will give powers to the DTI, but the big question is: how will the Inland Revenue and the Treasury view the Bill? I stand to be corrected, but I think that I am right in saying that, if the Bill passes into law and regulations are created by the DTI, they will be as dust if the Revenue and the Chancellor of the Exchequer are not satisfied with the scheme. I do not say for a moment that they will not encourage or approve the scheme, but they will need to be convinced that tax relief should be given on the claims equalisation reserves.
As I said, the Inland Revenue has its own rules in the United Kingdom. They allow carry-back of losses over a three-year period. That is not felt, however, to give insurance companies the same ability to deal with fluctuating results as our European competitors. As the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North said, the single market legislation that was passed was widely accepted in the House. There is general agreement that Europe should at least be a free trade area. If that is the view of many of our Euro-sceptic and Euro-rebel friends, they too would welcome today's legislation. We are all Europeans now, and we hear often enough that there should be a level playing field in relation to insurance, taxation and competition.
Only a few weeks ago, I stood in the centre circle at St. James' Park and looked down to one goal and then to the other goal. There was no sight of Eric Cantona on that occasion. I take credit for that. I had a look around but he was not there. There is no such thing as a level playing field. No football pitch is straight and the level playing field is a metaphorical myth that we like to perpetuate in the furtherance of any argument that we advance.
The insurance industry is telling us that, if the European insurance industry has claims equalisation reserves, this country should have them too. If they are good enough for the French and the Germans, they are good enough for us, and they are certainly good enough for our insurance industry.
Last July, the third non-life directive came into effect. United Kingdom companies are now in more direct competition with European insurance companies. The hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North talked about competitive disadvantage. I am glad to see that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) has joined us.

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I always treat the idea of competitiveness with a certain dose of scepticism. Often in the past, competitiveness has been synonymous with unemployment, with jobs lost and with cuts. The burden of work then increases for people who stay in work on short-term contracts, so I am always a little worried when we talk about competitiveness.
I am not sure that we are in a position to compete with the French and Germans in the world of insurance at this stage. It is early for us to be in competition with them. I noted that Commercial Union recently bought out a French insurance company. It wishes to implant itself in that sector simply by buying a company, rather than by selling insurance.
Competitiveness is rather like a level playing field. We have to consider it and agree on it, but it is not necessarily the big argument, although I understand why the insurance industry pushes that view with the Inland Revenue and the Treasury in seeking to persuade them that it needs tax relief to become competitive. It is the buzz word at the moment. That is the buzz word of the moment and I hope that the Treasury and the Inland Revenue will accept it as such.
In his book "The View from No. 11", Lord Lawson said that Parliament—the same goes for the Executive—can do two things: it can legislate and it can create a fiscal framework. It can introduce tax relief and make tax adjustments. The Bill seeks to establish the necessary legislative framework and the fiscal framework will have to follow. The adjustment to the latter has been a long time coming and my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, Central (Mr. Darling) raised the matter in the Committees examining previous Finance Bills.
In his 1993 Budget, the Chancellor of the Exchequer accepted that there could be a case for claims equalisation reserves with tax reliefs. As has been said, there was a consultation document in July 1993; there have been consultations with the Inland Revenue, and certainly with the Department of Trade and Industry; and there will be a further consultation document in spring.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: I have been listening carefully to my hon. Friend. If tax relief is being granted to insurance companies, the Exchequer will lose some revenue. Someone will have to make up for the lost tax, so the suggested intervention will result in the ordinary taxpayer paying more. As is the case with debt relief given to banks which write off irrecoverable debts, someone has to pick up the tab. How much money are we talking about? Has my hon. Friend got any figures?
Mr. Bell: My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Of course, that also works in reverse, in that, if the Government are saying, as the Prime Minister did the other day, that they want to reduce income tax to 20 per cent., they might not accept this scheme which takes money from the Revenue. As my hon. Friend said, the crux of the matter is how much it will cost. It is why the Inland Revenue and the Treasury have not so far said that they will support the scheme. We shall have to sit down and discuss the pounds, shillings and pence, as we used to say before decimalisation, but we shall not do so in Committee because, if the Bill is granted a Second Reading today, its Committee stage will be short.
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There have been various consultation exercises and new regulations are coming to provide a final opportunity for the industry and Parliament to examine all the issues. A t the end of the day, we shall want to know the views of the Inland Revenue and the Treasury. It may be said:
"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small",
but certainly not as slowly as the mills of Whitehall. It has taken two years to get this far, and we are not yet out of the thicket of Whitehall legislation, procedures and bureaucracy. After a statutory framework, we are hoping for the smack of decisiveness and firm government. We hope that the Chancellor and the Inland Revenue will go along with these proposals.
Nevertheless, the Association of British Insurers is to be congratulated on taking the initiative and reviewing possible fiscal and other distortions in the industry arising from the creation of the single market. As the House may have perceived, the Inland Revenue has yet to be convinced. In an era when shareholders are avid for ever higher dividends, it might be helpful to insurance companies to create claims equalisation reserves. It might be helpful to take funds from the balance sheet where they appear as profits and transfer them across as reserves, thus reducing the amount that shareholders perceive as being available for their dividends.
Mr. Skinner: From the second part of what my hon. Friend has just said, can we assume that, if the Bill is passed, it will allow insurance companies to put large sums in their reserves to offset any hurricanes or whatever that result in large insurance claims? Is it the case that tax relief could not be introduced under the Bill, but could come later only if the Government decided to introduce it? The insurance companies, therefore, would be doing something of a technical nature. If the Government and the Inland Revenue agreed to tax relief, the insurance companies could benefit from it. In itself, the Bill is a mechanical exercise which enables insurance companies to be prepared if the Government and the Inland Revenue come to an agreement.
Mr. Bell: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I almost said that this is the house that Jack built. It is actually the house that the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North has built. This is a small, three-clause Bill which will provide the framework within which the Department of Trade and Industry can put a house together. Whether that house is populated by claims equalisation reserves will then depend on the Treasury. This is not a finance Bill. In a sense, it is a harmonisation Bill which harmonises our legislation with that of France and Germany within the framework of the European Community where tax relief is allowed.
I was talking about shareholders and about their seeking ever higher dividends. I was talking about the advantage of taking what are now profits off the balance sheet and placing them into reserves. That would reduce the amount that shareholders perceived to be available for dividends, which would add to the stability of the industry.
The Bill may also help to reverse the trend in our business community for dividends to be the be all and end all of owning shares. Companies are destabilised and the amount available for research and development is reduced simply to keep the share price high and to keep the predator at bay. I am a great believer in the law of the

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unforeseen consequence. If one of the unforeseen consequences of the Bill is that it reverses that trend, I welcome it.
Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend has referred three times to the fact that the Bill will bring us in line with the European Community. I am not a supporter of the Common Market. I know that many Labour Members have a different view; I am unreconstructed. I think that the Common Market is grinding to a halt. If anything stops in its tracks, the next movement is in reverse. That is what is happening to the Common Market.
Can the Bill stand on its own irrespective of what happens in France, Germany or any other country? In other words, it has nothing to do with the Community. Is my hon. Friend merely saying en passant that other countries in the Common Market have such legislation already? Can he assure me that the Bill has no European Community context?
Mr. Bell: I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. I made a slight tactical error, because I sought to incite Euro-rebels and Euro-sceptics on the Conservative Benches. I signally failed to do that, although I managed to rouse a Euro-sceptic on my side. Nevertheless, my hon. Friend's point is right. The Bill is, in computer terms, stand-alone legislation. After completing its passage through the House, it will stand alone as a beneficial framework for the insurance industry.
I hate to go back to the weather forecaster who told us all that there would not be a hurricane, after which the hurricane came along and swept the roofs off our buildings. We sometimes have volatile weather conditions; we have hurricanes and unforeseen situations. The framework will enable insurance companies to set aside reserves for such situations. The technical details of the framework have been worked out by the Association of British Insurers, but are in line with what the Treasury perceives to be in the national interest.
I note, too, that the accumulated claims equalisation reserves will add to a company's solvency. I imagine—no doubt the Minister will be able to confirm it today—that any claim equalisation reserves would be in addition to the present solvency margin requirements, which are regularly scrutinised by the Department of Trade and Industry's division of insurance overseers.
In my opening remarks, I said that the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North mentioned Lloyd's and that the Bill had the support of Lloyd's, even though Lloyd's is not affected by its provisions. Lloyd's has its own special reserve fund available only to individual names. My slight criticism of Lloyd's earlier, which I wish to repeat, is that it should bestir itself somewhat to ensure that, in the event of there being a claims equalisation reserve framework, it is a part of that framework for its corporate capital providers. If the future of Lloyd's is to be underpinned by such corporations, it is essential that it has the same claims equalisation reserve framework with the same tax relief as insurance companies.
We should all be conscious of the contribution that Lloyd's has made to our national economy—some £16,000 million to the United Kingdom's invisible earnings since 1984. If we are back to level playing fields, to mythological metaphors, the level playing field should also cover Lloyd's corporate providers as well as the rest of the insurance industry.
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I hope that I have convinced Conservative Members of our great support for this Bill and I hope that I have satisfied my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover that my heart and mind are in the right place.
1.36 pm
Mr. John Greenway: I shall begin by trying to give the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) some reassurances because he has raised one or two pertinent points, on which we need to comment. As I understand it, the Treasury and the Department of Trade and Industry, in consulting the Association of British Insurers about the provision of equalisation reserves, have made it clear—it was in the consultation document—that any tax relief would have to be financed by compensating charges elsewhere.
In other words, the Treasury is not looking at this issue in the light of giving away revenue to the insurance industry. I hope that that reassures the hon. Gentleman that we are not talking about the corporate boardrooms of the City of London being wealthier as a consequence of the Bill and that there would be certain tax neutrality.
In addition, in any event, the Finance Act 1994 provided for the introduction of insurance premium tax in October. Now, all policyholders effectively have to pay 2.5 per cent. tax on their premiums. So the insurance industry is already contributing about £800 million of additional revenue to the Exchequer from that mechanism alone.
The only thing that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) could have mentioned, in what I thought was a excellent presentation of the proposals—I do not say that disparagingly—was that policyholders will benefit if the Bill is passed. We are talking not so much about the ability of United Kingdom insurance companies, especially in the domestic market, to compete in international markets, although that is important in respect of international business, as I shall say in a moment, as about whether our insurance companies have the financial strength that they need to continue to provide insurance for our domestic market.
When we debated insurance premium tax, I well remember right hon. and hon. Members on the Labour Benches expressing concern that some cherry picking by insurers was already making it difficult for some people to get the insurance that they needed. The cost of insurance was undoubtedly a factor. If companies do not have the reserves that they require to continue to underwrite business, with the experience of bad losses, there is only one way in which they can recover money—to put up the premiums.
If companies have the reserves to meet their claims—and that is what the Bill is about—they do not have to raise their premiums by quite so much. I hope that that will help the hon. Member for Bolsover. I am glad that he is here and is taking an interest in the debate. If he were not here, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) would be the only Opposition Member present. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough has to be present, as he is the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman. He has a very clear understanding of these matters and much of what he said today made a lot of sense.
Mr. Skinner: The thing that intrigues me is that, every day of the week since this Tory Government came to power, I have been told—as the rest of the country has

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been told—that the only way to make things happen in the world of economics and finance is to allow the market to be totally unrestrained. We are told that the market will settle everything and that the Government cannot intervene. They can shut pits and do all sorts of things like that. The Government must not intervene.
However, here we have a gang of Tories in the House on a Friday who want the Government to intervene, on a fairly substantial scale, in the insurance market because the unrestrained market forces cannot resolve the problem for the Tories' insurance companies, many of which have Tory Members on their boards. The Tories are saying that they want the Government to intervene and to back them up. That is roughly why I find this whole thing very intriguing. From Monday to Thursday, the Government tell us that we should not intervene—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order.
Mr. Skinner: And now Madam Deputy Speaker is intervening.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker is intervening because interventions should, by their nature, be short. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) was making a speech.
Mr. Greenway: It is not Back-Bench Tory Members who are seeking to intervene: it involves all parties. The Bill has all-party support. It certainly has the support of many people who no doubt will vote for the Labour party, as they have done in the past, who work in the insurance industry. Not everyone in the insurance industry votes for the Conservative party. Those people would be disappointed if they thought an important measure for the future of the industry in which they work did not have the support of all Opposition Members.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North on his success in the ballot and on choosing this important issue. The all-party insurance and financial services group, which I chair, has for almost five years taken a very close interest in this matter.
As my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs is aware, we have made many representations to Ministers about the issue and that is partly why the working party was established and why the matter has been brought to the first hurdle of introducing the enabling legislation to allow the Department of Trade and Industry to require companies to make the reserves so that the scheme can be up and running.
The issue was seen initially as, and, as the hon. Member for Middlesbrough pointed out, remains essentially, a single market issue. However, that does not mean that we should underestimate the international dimension. My hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North referred to Japan. The international market based in London is extremely important and it will benefit greatly from the Bill.
However, as I have already said, there is a very important secondary objective, which is the need to preserve the strength of the insurance industry which, despite recent setbacks, is one of the United Kingdom's greatest success stories. It is very important in terms of jobs and invisible earnings.
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London remains the world's pre-eminent insurance marketplace. United Kingdom invisible earnings from insurance were £4.6 billion in 1993. A very large part of that was accounted for by international business transacted in the London market. That is quite distinct from our domestic market, to which I have already alluded in trying to reassure the hon. Member for Bolsover.
It is important to recognise that about 60 per cent. of that market is accounted for by insurance and reinsurance companies, not Lloyd's. Lloyd's has about 40 per cent. I agree with the hon. Member for Middlesbrough that, if the Bill becomes an Act and such a scheme, which we all want, is created, it must apply to Lloyd's corporate capital. It would find it difficult to compete for the capital that it would need for the corporate market unless the scheme applied to it. I shall certainly encourage it to take a healthy interest in the matter.
To be fair to Lloyd's, it did not raise the issue. It is the companies which need those reserves. It is inconceivable that the Conservative Government, of all Governments, should not seek to support that important industry.
A further point about taxation, which I hope again will help the hon. Member for Bolsover, is that such a provision would mean more business, not less business, being transacted. The insurance industry contributes significantly to the Treasury's coffers. It is the old law of diminishing returns: if we do not help the industry lo obtain business, the volume of business will reduce and it will pay less tax. In every respect, the measure will at least be self-financing and it is more than likely to help to contribute more revenue, not less, to the Exchequer.
I have worked in the insurance industry for 25 years. I declare that general interest. I work closely with brokers, but this is not really a broker issue. We are not seeking special favours or the introduction of arrangements that would give the United Kingdom a competitive advantage. On the contrary, we are seeking to ensure that the United Kingdom is not disadvantaged.
The hon. Member for Middlesbrough made the good point that there is no such thing as a level playing field. He is right. One can make sure that the rules and regulations are the same, but there is one reason above all why the hon. Gentleman is right and why London will benefit from the measure, and it is that pre-eminent skills are based in London. The world's leading actuaries, underwriters, brokers, loss adjusters and so on are based in London. If taxation arrangements in London are on a fair and equitable basis with the rest of the world—that Is not easy; we are talking about Europe—the unique advantage of London, from all its experience, will come into play. That is why the United Kingdom can win an even bigger share of that important market.
London is unique, for the reasons that I have stated. However, in recent years it has become more apparent that it is nonsense to treat the insurance business, particularly aspects which can involve catastrophic losses, as an annual profit and loss exercise for taxation purposes. An annual profit and loss period does not embrace the cycle of profit and loss on insurance. Catastrophes do not occur every year—if they did, they would not be catastrophes. By their very nature, they occur once every three, four or five years. The best examples in modern times are the dreadful winds that hit the south-east of England, in particular in 1987 and again in 1990.

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My hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North referred also to the position in Japan, which highlights how, for example, marine and aviation losses can accumulate. All of a sudden, there are two or three incidents and then nothing on the same scale for three, four or five years. It is too soon to tell, I understand, the UK market's exposure to what happened in that dreadful earthquake in Japan except from the television pictures that I saw of that horrific incident.
How fortunate we are in the United Kingdom that we have never experienced anything like that. The television pictures of Kobe harbour showed marine cargoes, and I bet that many of them were insured through the London market. A fair bit will be insured through Lloyd's, but, as the hon. Member for Bolsover pointed out, Lloyd's is not affected by the Bill.
That example shows the importance of ensuring the financial strength of the insurance industry so that it is able to meet claims and not put up premiums with swingeing effects following a knee-jerk reaction. Setting aside premium income to reserve in good years to meet liabilities in bad years—it is as simple as that. That is what the Bill is about.
The key question is whether that reserve should attract tax relief. I believe that it should. It certainly has tax relief in France and Germany, and that provides the single market dimension. We need the same arrangements because, as the single market of domestic business develops, it will provide greater opportunity for UK domestic insurers to penetrate the market on the continent. The disadvantage of having no tax relief on equalisation reserves would become obvious very quickly. We would see business not being written here, but written on the continent. It is important that we avoid that.
Aside from the single market issue, it is a matter of basic prudence. The prudential supervision of insurance is the Department of Trade and Industry's priority in the industry. It is important that companies receive the encouragement and the incentives which they need to create those adequate reserves, and tax relief is crucial to that.
I pay tribute to work that has been undertaken by the working party, and to the principles that it has established that there should be a scheme for claims for equalisation reserves to be focused. We know which classes of business are affected. The scheme must be valuable for insurers and reinsurers alike, it must be simple to operate and certain as to its operation, and it must be extremely transparent in terms of the taxation arrangements.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North gave the good news to the House this afternoon that the Treasury seems now committed to agreeing to tax relief, subject, of course—this is understandable—to a proper scheme being agreed between the industry and the Treasury. We should back our insurance industry—one of our great success stories of the past—in the way in which we are proposing today to ensure that the years ahead are as glorious as the years behind.
1.52 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs (Mr. Jonathan Evans): I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) on bringing the Bill to the House and on the competence and clarity with which
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he outlined what can be a complex matter. Although he may not have achieved all that he would have wished in terms of the understanding of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), I thought that—in dealing with matters as complex as this—my hon. Friend showed the competence that he has demonstrated since he first came to the House. He deserves those congratulations.
In deciding to introduce the Insurance Companies (Reserves) Bill, my hon. Friend has taken on a measure of considerable importance to the insurance industry. It is a very worthwhile and welcome Bill, and one which I believe—from the flavour of the debate—enjoys wide-ranging support on both sides of the House.
During his initial remarks, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) suggested that victory has a thousand fathers. If we are discussing parentage, I suppose part of the parentage of the measure might be ascribed to my hon. Friend the Member for Ryedale (Mr. Greenway). I am also pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers), who also takes a particular interest in insurance matters.
As we have heard, the insurance industry has for some time sought the introduction of a scheme for establishing equalisation reserves. Industry leaders have made it clear to me that they regard this as a matter of great importance to their future competitiveness. I also welcome the measure as an addition to the regulatory options available to us.
I must make it clear to the hon. Member for Bolsover that the Government do not take the view that no law or regulation is necessary. The difference in approach between the Government and the hon. Gentleman is that we believe that when a law is passed it should be proportionate and should address and improve the market, rather than legislate in just about every area of the economy.
Mr. Skinner: The truth is that the Government brag that, when industries go to the wall, it is not the Government's job to intervene and pick them up. They pride themselves on that. There have been countless examples in the past 15 years, and 4 million people on the scrap heap without a job are the casualties. Thousands of firms every year go to the wall as a result of the Government's refusal to help. So I do not want any lectures from the Minister about the Government intervening just because this is an old pals' Bill with their friends in the insurance companies.
I am of the opinion that, instead of making those charges, the Minister should tell us how much exactly will be needed from the Government—from the taxpayer—to implement not only the proposals in the Bill but the tax set-offs that would apply if the Bill became law and the Treasury agreed to them. How much money are we talking about'?
Mr. Evans: It was obviously an error to give way to the hon. Gentleman. He demonstrated in that intervention how much he fails to understand the approach of the Government in the same way as he fails to understand anything about the Bill, as it was outlined so competently by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North.
The insurance reserves should assist insurance companies in settling exceptional levels of claims in bad years from funds put aside in good years. Therefore, we are not talking about giving tax relief. If a scheme is

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ultimately approved by the Treasury, it will involve tax deferred rather than tax relief. The Bill is an important first step towards establishing such a scheme.
I wish to clarify the Government's position on two specific matters. Then I shall draw on some of the matters that have been raised by hon. Members in the debate. While the purpose of the Bill is to enable the Secretary of State to require insurance companies to keep reserves against exceptional levels of claims, I must make it clear that the Bill does not and is not intended to cover the details of how the system of reserves ultimately would be established and operated. It is important to recognise that that is a matter for secondary legislation. I hope that the hon. Member for Bolsover is paying attention. It may be helpful to hon. Members if I say a little about the work that has already been done and about the Government's plans.
Although no final decisions have yet been taken on the details of the regulations which will be introduced if my hon. Friend's Bill is successful, officials in my Department and the Inland Revenue have been involved, as we have heard, with a working group led by the Association of British Insurers in carrying out a considerable amount of the preparatory work on a proposed scheme. The working group has already made certain recommendations about the details of the scheme and a report has been sent to Government and circulated to a wide cross-section of ABI members. I am pleased to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the ABI and its members and to thank them for the work that they have undertaken.
The insurance industry has generally declared its support for the working group's recommendations and it is now the Government's intention to issue a second consultation paper. In this, we will give details of a proposed scheme which will incorporate many of the industry's recommendations. We hope to issue the paper for consultation in the spring. We look forward to the representations that may be forthcoming from all parties in the House, including perhaps both sides of the Labour party. The industry and other interested parties will also have the opportunity to comment on the regulations. It is our intention to publish them in draft form before they are laid before Parliament.
Secondly, as we have heard so much during the debate, there is the matter of the tax treatment of such reserves. That is for Treasury Ministers to consider and any legislation would have to be included in a Finance Bill. My right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary has said that the Treasury will be prepared to consider tax relief for an acceptable scheme. Before any such scheme was introduced, however, we would want to ensure that it was acceptable to the industry, Treasury Ministers and the President of the Board of Trade. The taxation aspects would subsequently be subject to an affirmative vote in the House.
The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) had the courtesy to warn me that he intended to express his concern about the way in which the Department assesses companies' solvency and whether that would be affected in any way by the passage of this measure. I am happy to be able to tell him that we do not expect that system to be altered in any way. He will be aware that the solvency
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of companies is the subject of a Europe-wide review and the report is expected by 1997. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be somewhat reassured by that.
Finally, I thank the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North once again for his work on the Bill and I am grateful for the cross-party support that he has received. The Government welcome the Bill and intend to assist the hon. Gentleman in securing its safe passage. I am grateful to him for introducing the Bill and to the hon. Members who have spoken in support.
2.2 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner: I wanted to speak in this debate and to ask some serious questions because I find it odd that this Government, who have prided themselves on saying that the market should do the business and that they should not intervene, have decided to support the Bill, which was introduced by a Tory Member, and will allow insurance companies to set up special reserve funds for hurricanes and other acts of God that create a massive drain on their resources.
According to the Minister, the Government will finance those reserves by allowing tax relief in subsequent legislation. The Minister is shaking his head, but that was what he said. He said that the Government and the Inland Revenue would agree to allow tax relief on the funds set aside for special purposes.
I do not quarrel with insurance companies setting aside large reserve funds for the times when they might have difficulties, such as the 1987 hurricane, which ripped up many of the trees in Kent, in Kew and elsewhere. If they want to set aside money, in this unrestrained market, I should have thought that a Tory Government would say, "Go ahead, but don't call on us to reduce taxation, for the Chancellor of the Exchequer's benefit, to use for other purposes."
Mr. Heald: I must apologise to the hon. Gentleman for not adequately explaining about the tax relief in my opening speech. Tax relief is granted when such losses occur, but the reserve funds will mean that such relief is granted year on year. There is no question of granting more tax relief overall. It will simply mean deferring the relief and planning it better. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept my reassurance on that matter.
In London, 60,000 jobs depend on the insurance industry. The people who speak for those employees are telling me that their jobs depend on the Bill being enacted. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will also accept that.
Mr. Skinner: I would like to accept that. However, the hon. Gentleman is looking at it from an angle that is different from that of the Under-Secretary of State for Corporate Affairs. I asked his hon. Friend, who is speaking on behalf of the Government—unlike the hon. Gentleman—a question. If the funds are rolled over, there may not be a call on them—there is no call at present on the funds of the Exchequer. The reason I asked the Minister the question was to discover whether he could satisfy me that no extra funds would be needed.
He has refused to answer my question, so it seems that the Government know that the scheme will result in more money being set aside. Consequently, tax relief will be

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greater and the Chancellor of the Exchequer will have to call on funds from somebody else in order to make up the shortfall.
Mr. Peter Ainsworth: My recollection is that my hon. Friend the Minister replied to the hon. Gentleman's inquiry, but at that time the hon. Gentleman was too busy talking to the hon. Member for Derbyshire, North-East (Mr. Barnes) to hear my hon. Friend's reply. The hon. Gentleman is trying to make a crisis out of a drama.
Mr. Skinner: I am concerned about those people who have to pay taxes in Britain. Tory Members are always saying that they are the taxpayer's champion. I want the Minister to get up and tell us specifically, without equivocation, whether—whatever new Treasury proposals are introduced, following the Bill's passage—there will be any call on public funds. I invite the Minister to say that there will be no expenditure. I know that no expenditure results from the Bill, but I am talking about subsequent negotiations that will result in tax relief over a number of years.
Mr. Jonathan Evans: I had already said to the hon. Gentleman—I despair of him ever listening—that the scheme involves the deferral of tax. If, ultimately, the catastrophes do not occur, the funds will become subject to tax. We are talking about introducing order into catastrophe insurance. The issue does not involve the political contention that the hon. Gentleman is desperately scratching around for.
Mr. Skinner: It is significant that the Minister has still not answered the question. My question was simply whether there would be a call on public funds. He answers questions that I am not asking. People will note his refusal to answer a simple question.
In some years—perhaps not all—there will be a call on public funds that there would not otherwise be. The Government are intervening in the market so as to bail out insurance companies because they form part of the group that finances the Tory party. The Government probably want to cosset those companies in the run-up to the next general election because some of them have decided not to give the Tory party any money.
Mr. Tom Cox: My hon. Friend is making a valid point. He asks a clear question of the Minister. Earlier today, when we were discussing the Activity Centres (Young Persons' Safety) Bill—a crucial measure that was supported by hon. Members on both sides of the House—we were told by the Minister of State that no Government help would be given towards setting up such centres and the salaries for supervisors. The Minister of State clearly told us that there would be no Government help and that the schemes would have to be self-financing. We were talking about the safety of young people. We all know of the tragedy of the four youngsters who lost their lives—we were told that the schemes, in that case, were to be self-financing. Now, my hon. Friend is simply asking the Minister to give the Government's position and state whether taxpayers' money will be involved.
Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend has demonstrated once again that, when it comes to helping good causes and people like those covered under the Activity Centres
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(Young Persons' Safety) Bill—a measure designed to take account of the tragedies that can occur—the Government are not prepared to come up with the money.
By his refusal to tell us about the drain on public funds, the Minister has twice made the position clear. I am absolutely convinced that the Government know that, in future years, the amount held centrally by the Exchequer will be reduced as a result of negotiations which would take place after the Bill is passed. The net result of that would be that Joe Soap, the taxpayer, whom the Government are always talking about and asking for support, would finish up having to put his hand in his pocket to pay these insurance companies.
If insurance companies want to set up a reserve scheme, they should go ahead. I do not mind them saying, "Look here, there were hurricanes in 1987 and 1990 and we need to make sure that we can roll these over in an orderly fashion year on year instead of getting hit in one year." However, it is not right and proper that a Government who are constantly ramming it down our throats that companies have to stand on their own two feet without Government assistance are now doing this because of their friends in the insurance companies.
We should bear in mind that many Tory Members are connected with the boards of insurance companies, making money on the side. They have now introduced a different ethic. In other words, it is double standards. It is all right for their friends but not for anyone else.
Mr. Harry Barnes: Is not the clearest indication that there will be a call on public funds already provided in information supplied to us by the Government, although not by the Minister? With the Bill, there is a business compliance cost assessment. That is available in the Library, and it is published by the insurance department of the Department of Trade and Industry. The assessment states:
"The insurance industry is of the opinion, provided the Inland Revenue permit tax relief on equalisation reserves, there should be considerable benefit UK competitiveness."
Knock-on arrangements by the Treasury are built into the cost compliance provision.
Mr. Skinner: There it is in a nutshell. My hon. Friend has been to the Library, which serves us well, and has found out part of the answer that the Minister refused to give us—that is, that the Inland Revenue is worried about the consequences of the Bill. It knows that it would cost money. That money should come from the insurance companies. They make large profits, so why are they calling upon the Inland Revenue, the taxpayer, to foot the bill when they are truly responsible for this new arrangement?
Mr. Cox: I have a copy of the Bill. In an intervention, the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald) spoke about the industry employing 60,000 people. As a London Member, I can tell the House that London certainly has some of the highest unemployment in the country. Therefore, irrespective of party, I will support anything that safeguards jobs. I have great sympathy for anyone who has lost possessions or property, but people in my constituency rarely write to me about that. However, they write to me about holiday insurance.
Will the Bill cover the continuing problems of people who, for a range of reasons, did not have a good holiday and whose claims were totally rejected by the insurance

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companies? That is the sort of complaint that. I get, especially during the spring and summer. Perhaps the Minister or the hon. Member for Hertfordshire, West will comment on that.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman's intervention was too long. Perhaps he was not in the Chamber when I gave a warning about such abuse.
Mr. Skinner: The Bill is not about the cases to which my hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) referred; it is about the people who run the insurance companies. No one should get the impression, even if some Tory Members try to give it, that because I oppose the Bill and am asking some serious questions, my action will adversely affect people who are insured with companies in Britain. The Bill will not bail out any of the people to whom my hon. Friend referred. It will not bail out anybody who has insurance with British companies.
The Bill is all about insurance companies saying to Tory Members and the Government, "We want a nice cosy arrangement. Forget about market forces; operate double standards and allow us to roll over the reserve funds in an orderly way." Of course, that would mean regulation. I am not against regulation; I am a member of a party that believes in intervention in the market. However, it is a bit rich that the very Tories who ram down our throats every day the belief that we cannot intervene because the Government do not have the money to do so—it is taxpayers' money—are then prepared to pass a Bill that will enable insurance companies to operate a nice little fiddle.
Lady Olga Maitland: The hon. Gentleman is trying to wreck the Bill. Does he realise that, if he does so, he will have on his conscience the fact that he is putting at risk not only 60,000 jobs in London, but 350,000 nationwide? Is it not sheer hypocrisy to try to crack the Bill when he should be safeguarding jobs?
Mr. Skinner: That is a bit rich coming from the hon. Lady, who last year had to apologise to the House for her actions in almost single-handedly—of course, the Minister helped—stopping the progress of the Civil Rights (Disabled Persons) Bill. She came to the House with what she purported to be her own questions, which turned out to have been written by the Government. Yet she accuses me of wrecking a Bill when all that I am doing is pointing out that the Government have double standards.
As I said earlier, the Bill will not affect a single insurance job. It will not affect a single policy. It is all about arranging things in favour of the bosses of the insurance companies so that they can get increased directors' pay and all the rest of it. Tory Members on the boards of insurance companies might make a bob or two.
I can tell the hon. Lady something else—the Bill is not just about insurance companies; it is a trailer for Lloyd's. The Government do not fool me. The Bill might seem to be innocuous, but it is all about setting a pattern so that eventually the Government or another Tory Back Bencher will come to the House and say, "Let's have another equalisation scheme, not for the insurance companies but for Lloyd's." Then they will say, "We had all-party support for the previous insurance Bill, so as a precedent has been set, we will do it again for Lloyd's." The 30
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Tory Members of Parliament, many of whom would be declared bankrupt in other circumstances, would then be let off the hook by the taxpayer.
If the Bill is passed today, the Government will be able to say that the next one will be for Lloyd's so that they can bail out their friends.
Mr. Heald rose—
Mr. Skinner: I shall give way to the hon. Gentleman because I believe that the Lloyd's briefing gives the game away and I shall refer to it in a moment.
Mr. Heald: The hon. Gentleman should be aware that his colleague, the hon. Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson) called for equalisation reserves in 1993 in the Committee that considered the Finance Bill. Early in 1994, in an article in Post Magazine: The Insurance Weekly, he again called for those reserves. His Front-Bench team support them, and 350,000 jobs are at stake. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) is trying to talk the Bill out. I call on him to support the people of Britain and people in the insurance industry.
Mr. Skinner: Once again, to put it on the record, let me make it clear that, in relation to the Bill, no jobs are at stake for the people who work for insurance companies. What my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Watson) said in Committee was his business. Everyone answers for themselves in here. This is a private Member's day.
The hon. Member for Hertfordshire, North gave the impression that, somehow or other, he introduced the Bill at the Government's behest. This is a Friday. Has he forgotten that? This is a day when Back Benchers introduce their own legislation. The hon. Gentleman has introduced legislation to suit his Government.
Mr. Heald: And the Front-Bench spokesman of the Labour party.
Mr. Skinner rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It may be a private Member's day, but the rules still appertain.
Mr. Skinner: Absolutely right. If my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central thought in Committee that it might be a decent idea to introduce equalisation reserves, that was his business. The Bill is a trailer for Lloyd's. Why has Lloyd's sent a document around that makes it clear it supports the Bill because it is
"thought likely a tax deduction will follow."
Those are not my words; they are the words of Lloyd's. It is clear that Lloyd's has an interest in the Bill.
Lloyd's says that the Bill has no direct effect on it but it takes an interest in the developments
"in the context of its corporate capital providers. In the future, Lloyd's will be seeking to assess how any arrangement ultimately adopted by the insurance companies might be adapted to ensure parity for its corporate vehicles."
There it is. The cat is out of the bag. It is not just about the insurance companies. It is about the fact that Lloyd's has realised that a hole in the fence exists which it can eventually go through to resolve some of its problems.
Everyone knows that Lloyd's has been badly hit over the years. The result is that many Tory Members and others have lost significant amounts of money. For many

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years, there has been a campaign in the House to get the Government—the taxpayer—to foot the bill for the gamblers at Lloyd's.
Lloyd's is the posh gambling den—that is all it is. It is not like Ladbrokes, but the same principle is involved. People do not bet on horses at Lloyd's; they bet on disasters. Sometimes they have to pay out more than they expect. Many Conservative Members and many other people in Britain who are gamblers at Lloyd's lost large amounts of money. They are not like the people who go to Ladbrokes, who know that they have lost when they lose. The Lloyd's gamblers want the money back. They have decided to gamble.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Bill does not deal with Lloyd's. He must address himself more closely to the Bill.
Mr. Skinner: I tried to explain earlier that I did not think that the Bill was about Lloyd's until I got hold of the document. I then realised it had a big interest. It has decided to issue the briefing to Members of Parliament. It says that the Bill is not a bad idea, that it should be passed and that it will benefit Lloyd's if it is passed. It states:
"In the future, Lloyd's will be seeking to assess how any arrangement ultimately adopted by the insurance companies might be adapted to ensure parity for its corporate vehicles."
It seems that Lloyd's has realised the opportunity of using the Bill to move in and to call on the Government to give it the same sort of treatment as other insurance companies that are affected by the Bill.
Mr. Barnes: Is there not a sense in which the briefing shows that Lloyd's is only one of the interests involved? The assessment compliance shows that it is the insurance industry in general—of which Lloyd's is only one example—which is pressing for these measures and which clearly has support from trade and industry in saying that there will be knock-on consequences in respect of tax relief.
Mr. Skinner: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Some years ago, the Government decided to write off the banks' bad debts but they do not write off the bad debts of millions of ordinary people in Britain. Nearly every family has debts, but they do not have the opportunity to ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer to write them off because Aunt Annie will not pay them. However, when the banks ask for their bad debts to be written off and set against tax relief, the Government say yes. It has cost the British taxpayer £5,000 million over 10 years to bail out the banks, and the same principle is at work here.
Mr. Peter Ainsworth: This grotesque display of ignorance and prejudice would be amusing if it did not put so many jobs at risk. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will apologise to all my constituents who will be made redundant because of his blind stupidity this afternoon.
Mr. Skinner: I know that Tory Members do not like what I am saying—I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman might have to declare an interest—but no jobs are at risk. In any event, the Tories have a cheek talking about jobs being put at risk when they have closed the shipyards and nearly every pit in the country. There are 4 million people out of a job, even taking into account the
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fiddled figures, yet the Tories have the cheek to claim that they are worried that some insurance jobs might be put at risk.
The Bill has nothing to do with jobs. If anyone is stupid it is the hon. Gentleman, who does not understand what this is all about. The Bill is a trailer to enable Lloyd's to offset some of its debts and make taxpayers pick up the tab later. That is one reason why I oppose the Bill. I am not satisfied with the Government's answers. I have asked the Minister two or three times to stand up and say that under no circumstances will there be a call on public funds when the Inland Revenue and the Government decide to roll over the reserves in respect of tax relief. He has not answered.
I understand what the Bill is all about. It is not about jobs but about looking after the directors of insurance companies, many of which are represented on the Tory Benches. I have not heard any Tories declare an interest—perhaps they do not have any—but it is odd that the Government are always looking after insurance companies and banks and now want to look after Lloyd's. Why? Because Lloyd's is their friend. The Government then accuse us of standing up for the workers, the real creators of wealth in Britain.
Mr. Barnes: It is doubtful whether the Bill is an attempt to deal with catastrophes. Catastrophes, some caused by the weather, occur regularly in this country—for example, recently in Bradford. If there were a genuine attempt to help in this respect, would not the Bill be linked to, for example, the Bellwin rules and at what point they are triggered so as to provide money to local authorities and others to help in such cases?
Mr. Skinner: Millions of people are affected by tragedies and not bailed out. In the past two days, some of my constituents have had their electricity supply cut because of the snow, but the Government are not concerned about them. They are concerned only about looking after their friends. I call again on the Minister to stand up and to tell us whether the Bill will involve a call on public funds. Will he answer yes or no?
Mr. Heald: I do not think that I need to say anything further at this stage.
2.29 pm
Mr. Harry Barnes: A number of questions need to be answered. There are some peculiarities in the document to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) referred which should be fully pursued. It is interesting that, although there are so many private Members' Bills on the Order Paper today, some of which have not been reached, this Bill is the only one that applies to Northern Ireland. Generally, I am all for measures being applied to Northern Ireland. I should like to know, however, why in this case—
It being half-past Two o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.
Debate to be resumed on Friday 3 February.
Mr. John Greenway: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) said that no Conservative Member had declared his interest. You, Madam Deputy Speaker, were in the Chair when I declared my interest. I also declare that what

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we have just seen is the true face of the Labour party. The Leader of the Opposition should not be in Leeds trying to persuade people that the Labour party has really changed.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Hon. Members will be aware that it is the responsibility of the individual Member concerned to declare an interest, if there is one. In the absence of such a declaration, one must suppose that no such interest exists.
Mr. John Whittingdale: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have been in the Chamber since 9.30 am so that I could support the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, North (Mr. Heald)—not because I have any involvement in the insurance industry, but because I want to protect the jobs of my constituents who work in the insurance industry. Is it in order for the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) deliberately to talk out a Bill that is supported by his own Front-Bench spokesman and by everyone else in the House today?
Madam Deputy Speaker: If the hon. Member for Bolsover had not been in order, I would have intervened.

CHARITIES (AMENDMENT) BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: Object.
Second Reading deferred till Friday 3 February.

HOME RULE (SCOTLAND) BILL
Order for Second Reading read.
Hon. Members: Object.
Second Reading deferred till Friday 17 February.

WATER CHARGES (AMENDMENT) BILL
Hon. Members: Object.
Madam Deputy Speaker: Second Reading what day?
Mr. Menzies Campbell: On behalf of the hon. Member concerned, Friday 3 February.

CHANNEL TUNNEL RAIL LINK BILL
Ordered,
That Mr. Jamie Cann, Mr. Den Dover, Sir Anthony Durant, Glenda Jackson and Mr. David Tredinnick be members of the Select Committee on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill.—[Mr. Wells.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE
Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Wednesday 1st February, the Speaker shall not later than Ten o'clock put the Questions necessary to dispose of proceedings on the Motions in the name of Mr. Secretary Gummer relating to Local Government Finance; and those Questions may be decided after the expiry of the time for opposed business.
Ordered,
That, at the sitting on Thursday 2nd February, the Speaker shall not later than Seven o'clock put the Questions on the Motions in the name of Mr. Secretary Lilley relating to the draft Social Security (Incapacity Benefit) (Transitional) and (Incapacity for Work) (General) Regulations 1994.—[Mr. Wells.]

SPECIAL STANDING COMMITTEE
Ordered,
That, during its consideration of the Children (Scotland) Bill, the Special Standing Committee may meet between the hours of one o'clock and half-past three o'clock in the afternoon.—[Mr. Wells.]

A13
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Wells.]
2.32 pm
Mrs. Teresa Gorman: I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to discuss in the House the fate of the A13, a major highway. I declare an interest. I have the dubious pleasure of driving up and down this very congested road every time I visit my constituency.
I apologise for the absence of my hon. Friends the Members for Basildon (Mr. Amess), for Rochford (Dr. Clark), for Southend, East (Sir T. Taylor) and for Castle Point (Dr. Spink) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Channon), all of whom would have loved to be here this afternoon because their constituencies are equally affected by this important road. They had prior engagements in their constituencies, but they are, of course, here with us in spirit. They all agreed that, with my competence and the Minister's tolerance, we would be able to sort the matter out amicably between us.
I seem to have spent half my life in Parliament talking about transport problems in south Essex. There is the infamous London, Tilbury and Southend railway, which we nominated as the misery line. In the winter, other railways are held up by leaves on the line. The LTS is the only line that used to get held up by dead sheep on the line, which frequently caused enormous inconvenience to constituents in the area, enormous numbers of whom come up to London to work. That line, of course, has been well taken care of by the Government, who generously put £50 million into the signalling, as I recall. We very much hope that the line will soon be taken on by the private sector as one of the first of the new privatised railway lines.
There is an awful stretch of the Mile End road where the A13 comes into central London, especially between the Blind Beggar and the Brown Bear; two famous, or infamous, pubs. Again, the Minister heard our cry. Whereas before it was reduced to two narrow lanes with a street market on either side and parking and double parking at all times of the rush hour, the Minister has sensibly instituted legislation, or whatever the proceedings are, to put double red lines along that road, which will enormously improve the journey out of London for people making for the M11 and the M25, as well as the Al2 and the A13. We are looking forward to those improvements.
Now to the A13 itself. I was very dismayed indeed to see that the Department of Transport, which had raised all our hopes to believing that this stretch of road was about to be put right, has now told us that it is to put on hold a part of that work—the bit between Wennington and Mar Dyke, which would link the road to the M25.
This new stretch of the A13 is being constructed in three parts. Incredibly enough, the middle part of that road is being built now, but the two bits which connect it to London at one end and to the M25 at the other are likely to be delayed, as I understand it. That is why I have taken the opportunity to bring the Minister to the House to explain that to my constituents, who are extremely annoyed and upset. That little bit of road in the middle will be like one of those old Essex barges that we used to put the criminals in, but without moorings. It will be
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bobbing about in the middle of the marshes where nobody can get at it or use it. I cannot think of anything more foolish.
So, like Pip, here I am with my great expectations. For many years, we have felt that it was time that Mr. Magwich, our benefactor, told us how he would improve matters for the people who live in the vicinity of the Essex marshes and want that road improved.
We are all aware and I know that the Department is aware that the present Al3 is totally incapable of coping with the demands of the traffic using it. For a large stretch, it is nothing more than a country road, with two lanes of traffic—one up, one down—yet it carries one of the most enormous amounts of traffic in the country.
Ford motor company at Dagenham uses it. Ford's is an enormous organisation, as we know. It employs about 35,000 people, and those people rely on Ford's having good access to transport in and out of its area. I know that Ford's has talked from time to time about whether there is a need to relocate its premises simply because of the problem of getting its great trailer lorries, full of new vehicles, out on to the road and around the country.
The Tilbury docks, which are close to the A13, feed an enormous number of trailer lorries, carrying great big containers full of products all over the country. They are huge lorries and there they are, trailing along behind the Ford trailers. Also in that part of the world, there are many tips for rubbish from London, so there are great big lorries with skips on their backs on the road too.
Those lorries, which incidentally distribute quite a lot of rubbish along the side of the road and make it one of the least attractive areas, are on their way to an area I have discussed in this House before: Mucking Flats, a name many motorists can be heard muttering as they are stuck behind those lorries. The journey into and out of London is made almost impossible because, almost from one end to the other, there are trails of gigantic lorries up and down that stretch of the motorway.
I have yet to mention Shell Haven, the location of the two largest oil refineries—for Mobil and Shell—in the country, which are both in my constituency. Those companies send huge oil tankers up the road. One can see the picture in one's mind's eye—a gigantic lorry with a container from Tilbury docks, followed by a Ford trailer with ten motor cars, followed by an enormous lorry carrying skips full or rubbish on its way from London, followed by a gigantic lorry carrying petrol or oil. There are processions of these lorries along the A13. I have sometimes followed a line of 50 lorries along that road. No other road in Britain is as heavily congested as that.
In addition to that, many people in Southend, Billericay and Thurrock use the road because the railway line has been so poor in the past. Many coaches carry commuters out in the mornings and back at night. If I am painting an horrendous picture of that road, I promise the House that I am not exaggerating in the slightest.
Lakeside is one of the most widely used shopping areas in the country and Lakeside is just off the A13. On Sundays, the world and his wife come to Lakeside. They come from Kent in great hordes across the bridge and they cross the river through the tunnel. They come from London and they come from Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridge and Oxford. It seems that the whole country comes down to Billericay and Thurrock to use Lakeside. On Sundays, when we might expect a rest from the traffic on the A13

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so that we can nip around quickly, we run into all that traffic. The traffic is almost worse on a Sunday now than it is in the week.
The A13 is a crucial link and a crucial part of the economy of our country and it handles enormous volumes of traffic. If ever a roadway needed to be built in a hurry, this is it. I hesitate to suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister for Transport in London that he might get a bit of money from the European Community for all this.
I take my holidays in the south of Portugal. In the past two years, the Portuguese have built a road from Faro practically to the end of the west point in Portugal, Cape St. Vincent. They built that huge stretch of road in two years with European money. We have been waiting since 1964 for our piece of road. Although it goes against everything I believe in, if the Minister is short of money, perhaps he should go to Europe cap in hand and see what he can get out of them; anything to get the road built.
The population of Essex has increased enormously in the past few years. As it is such a vibrant area with lots of jobs, thanks to the Government's economic policies which keep Essex in very good heart, we need to increase road provision generally in Essex, because an awful lot more people have moved in. In the past two decades, the population has increased by about 50 per cent. To illustrate that point, after the war there was only one Member of Parliament for the whole of the area, but there are now nine. That shows how much the population has increased. However, we still have this old two-lane-wide country road to service those people and their needs.
We do not need to persuade the Department of Transport because it carried out a study in 1990. It said:
"traffic flows, between 25,000 and 50,000 vehicles per day, and a very high commercial vehicle content"
used that road. It stated that, unless work begins soon, there is little doubt that the increase in traffic wishing to use this piece of roadway will cause grave deterioration in conditions, not only along the trunk road, but also on those routes which are perceived by drivers as a way of avoiding the A13. That involves drivers nipping around the back streets and disturbing residential areas. The people of Essex have had to cope with the problem for much too long.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister because the existing improvements incorporate plans to minimise the impact on the environment. In fact, the new piece of road goes through land which is not used for anything because it is reckoned to be industrially polluted. We are not disturbing the environment by building the road. There are practically no objectors to it. That must be a miracle in this country because, if one wants to build a new road, one can reckon on 10 years of people sitting in trees to try to stop the road being built. There are no trees in Essex, so no problem. The Minister has carte blanche from the environmental lobby. Even the greens are on our side for a change.
By moving the road into that part of the world, we are improving the air quality. All those horrid exhaust pipes, which I hope we will clean up one day, will squirt out their noxious gases down in the Essex marshes, where there are probably a few wild birds to disturb, but apart from that they will cause no disturbance. There will be no cyclists to get in the way, and so on. It is a very important road.
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My hon. Friend the Minister will be aware of all those arguments. I know that he is enormously sympathetic. I have the greatest admiration for the way in which he has taken on board other complaints that we have made, particularly, as I have said, about the Mile End road and other parts of the area. The improvements that we need, which have been on the drawing board since 1964, are absolutely essential.
The Department report asserts:
"The benefits of the proposals‖reflect the Government's policies"
for the improvement of the economy as well as taking vehicles off congested roads. I could not possibly have said it better. I might have more sympathy with the Department if the plans had come up against obstinate local resistance, but, as I have said, there is none. No resistance exists; the road is essential; the plans have been laid; and we were looking forward to the second part of the road starting this year. We then received the awful news that the project was being put back.
In February, the Department announced that, despite cuts in work on the Wennington to Mar Dyke improvement, which is the piece that will link it to the M25, it would begin in 1994–95. I much regret to say that that urgent work, which has brought me here today to discuss the matter, is absolutely vital. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to give all those involved in making the decision a good talking to and a flea in their ear, because there is not a more deserving section of the country or of our roadways that needs his attention. I look forward to his having an opportunity to reassure me that, after all, my plea has made him change his mind and that that bit of roadway will be started straight away.
2.46 pm
The Minister for Transport in London (Mr. Steve Norris): I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) for introducing the debate, because it gives me a chance to record the present position with regard to the A13 between Dagenham and Mar Dyke.
I am not terribly good on Dickens, but I am probably right in saying that Mr. Magwich possessed a substantial criminal record. I hope that my hon. Friend will not mind, therefore, if I am less than enthusiastic about the appellation. However, this is not the first time that that has happened to me. Not long ago, I launched a vessel on the Thames called the Ebenezer Scrooge. There were those who were unkind enough to interpret that as a description of the Government's economic policy. I pointed out to them, of course, that Scrooge saw the light at Christmas and turned out to be a very nice chap after all.
Who knows, if we can use Dickens as our base, there may be hope for us all in what I agree with my hon. Friend it is an important matter. Its importance is reflected in the representations that I have also had from my hon. Friends the Members for Rochford (Dr. Clark), for Basildon (Mr. Amess), for Upminster (Sir N. Bonsor) and for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire). All of them have spoken to me about that road.
I hope that my hon. Friend, therefore, will allow me to address one or two points about transport needs in south Essex generally. She rightly said that it is of great interest to all of us. I say "us" because I have the honour to represent an Essex constituency. Incidentally, my hon.

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Friend is right about the London, Tilbury and Southend line. It is no longer a misery line. It has been hugely improved. I look forward to the challenges and opportunities of privatisation, a matter on which my hon. Friend and I strongly agree.
In that context, one of the things that my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford said to me only yesterday was that we always seem to have been the poor cousins. He made the point—my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay also mentioned it—that, whereas from every other point of the compass the roads into London tend to be substantial dual carriageways, for an awful lot of its length the A13 is a single carriageway. I know that myself because my excellent constituency secretary Tricia Gurnett lives in Grays, and therefore I frequently have cause to sit behind Ford trucks, waste trucks and so on in the endless line which my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay described. I have every sympathy with her predicament.
Therefore, I shall make some things clear and put them on the record. In her letter to the Secretary of State immediately she learned of the settlement my hon. Friend started by saying that the Government "absolutely cannot" abandon the extension of the A13. That was in her usual graphic style. Let us be quite clear—the A13 is not being abandoned. The schemes are there, and they are important. We are talking about the phasing of the schemes, and that is a point to which I shall return.
Bluntly, there is no easy answer. I am sure that my hon. Friend will be the first to recognise—she has constantly preached the message herself—that government is often a process of making some hard choices. She and I would agree that, in terms of the Government's macro-economic policy, the most important thing is to make sure that we reduce the burden of taxation on business. In attempting to do that, the most important thing is to control Government spending. From the little experience which I have of Government, I have to say that controlling Government spending is never going to be easy.
Churchill talked about everyone believing in reductions in general, and expenditure in particular. The transport analogy to that is, in my experience, that every hon. Member believes in abandoning the roads programme except in his own constituency, where there always happens to be a scheme of absolutely superlative quality.
I shall not disguise from my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay that none of the decisions that the Secretary of State was obliged to make around the time of the annual settlement was easy. The A13 was not the only scheme that we were not able to take forward at a pace that we would have liked. I say genuinely to my hon. Friend that the A13 is a scheme to which we attach a great deal of importance.
I shall say a word on the other schemes in Essex which concern my hon. Friend and her colleagues. The A130 is one such scheme, and again many people in south Essex are extremely concerned about it. The council has put in bids in each of its last three transport policy and programme submissions for the A130—a route that crosses the A13, linking Canvey island with Chelmsford and the Al2. It is a very large scheme. Stage 1 is estimated to cost some £44 million and the whole project amounts to more than £100 million.
That makes it a daunting scheme and, bluntly, one which—in terms of financing a new project of this size from the local transport resource—is very difficult to see
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happening in the immediate future. It might be better to consider the A130 as a potential trunk road, in view of the strategic importance that Essex rightly bestows on it. I have asked for that proposition to be pursued. We must not get caught in a bureaucratic bind in which it is said that the A130 is not a trunk road, so it must be financed from the local settlement, but as it costs more than £100 million, it is too much for the local settlement, so it is constantly deferred out of the local settlement itself. We must break that administrative log-jam, and I am certainly keen to ensure that we do what we can, although the project still represents a great deal of money.
The Al20 is a scheme which is of considerable importance to hon. Members in that area. That is the road that copes with the pressure from Stansted and brings relief to local communities. It is being developed by Essex with the aid of a 100 per cent. grant from my Department. We hope to republish the orders after they are reviewed later this year. Once the statutory procedures are completed, construction can begin as soon as funds are available. We understand how disappointed people are about the delay, but the county council—as the developing authority—will have to decide how best to proceed.
My hon. Friend mentioned Lakeside. As she knows, the Highways Agency has let a commission to look at the improvement of capacity of the M25 junction 30 with the A13 and the M25 junction 31. This includes the second stage of the Lakeside development A13 link roads funded by the developers, who have entered into a formal agreement with the Department for this purpose. That would have the effect of increasing the capacity of the A13 to improve access from the shopping centre and from the M25. Various options will be investigated before the proposals are published at a public consultation in about 12 months.
I shall not narrate the points that my hon. Friend made about the importance of the Al3 trunk road except to say that it is, indeed, a corridor which provides one of the main opportunity areas around London for expansion and new jobs. The draft Thames gateway planning framework, which was published last September, identified a number of major development sites on the north bank of the Thames. As well as the Royal docks, they include the former Beckton gasworks, Barking reach, Rainham marshes and the Grays waterfront. Accessibility is one of the major constraints in attracting investment into these large sites. So we see the Al3 improvement as important in that context.
It is also simply one of the most important radial routes into London from the east. It will provide a fast, safe road from docklands to the M25. It is a vital transport link to the developments which have already taken place or are in hand. My hon. Friend and I are familiar with some of them, but there will be benefits to the communities of Dagenham, Rainham, Purfleet, Mar Dyke and others further to the east.
So the issue is how the scheme is being taken forward. The history of it so far is, as my hon. Friend suggests, that there are three sections. They are Thames avenue to Heathway, Heathway to Wennington and Wennington to Mar Dyke, running from west to east. The schemes for the improvement of the Heathway to Wennington to Mar Dyke section of the A13 were first published in 1988. New orders for dual three-lane carriageways were published in March-April 1990. The proposals were then

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complicated by the need to take into account development proposals at Rainham marshes, but the developer has since withdrawn the plans. However, the local urban development plan retains the same intention for the area.
The effect of the new road on the marshes was fully discussed at the public inquiry and the decision to proceed was made in the light of the information arising from that discussion. A public exhibition took place in June 1994, to which the local Members of Parliament and local councillors were invited. The exhibition explained to local people how the construction activities would progress.
My hon. Friend was right to say that the proposals had generally been supported throughout the statutory procedures. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch (Mr. Squire) was consistent in reminding me of the need for the scheme and its importance to the national and local economy. Local authorities are generally in favour of the proposals, as are the majority of local residents and residents' associations.
The scheme presents an opportunity for environmental improvements. Ecologically, the marshes are changing in character since the construction of the sea defences along the Thames estuary. Salt water no longer floods the marshes, and fresh water draining into the river is gradually flushing out the remaining saline water. In the absence of salt water, the salt marsh will continue to dry out. That will have some effect on nature conservation interests, but there will be considerable opportunity for creating habitats for birds, plants and so on. Our proposed mitigation measures will, in the long term, be beneficial to the ecology of the area.
As to the scheme, and the points that my hon. Friend has raised, we have made a good start and construction is in hand on two contracts. I want to make this point clear, because my hon. Friend might have been under a misapprehension. Without meaning to sound patronising, the schemes are almost impenetrably complex to those who do not have to live with them every day.
In fact, two schemes are up and running now. The first is being undertaken by AMEC Civil Engineering Ltd. It is an £11.8 million scheme for work including the relocation of warehouse and storage facilities at Ford's, the construction of a new water treatment plant by the
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River Beam and the construction of access roads and two trial embankments. Work started in February 1994 and will be completed in the spring.
The second contract was awarded in February 1994—it is a £106.9 million contract for the construction of 2.8 miles of new three-lane dual carriageway between Thames avenue, Dagenham and London road, Wennington, which will cross Rainham creek and Rainham and Wennington marshes. The work started in March 1994, is not affected by the recent settlement and is expected to be completed—just as the sign boards say—in 1997.
Two contracts remain, to which we are not committed in this year's settlement, but they remain very important to us. One is for 1.7 miles of main carriageway works between Heathway and Thames avenue, with an estimated cost of £86.9 million. The scheme will provide a full interchange at Choats Manor way and pass through the Ford motor works to connect with the interchange now being provided at Manor way. I should like to thank Ford's for its tremendous co-operation. The company has had to integrate with us in all of the preliminary works on this important project and has been exemplary.
The other remaining contract is for two miles of main carriageway works between a new interchange at London road, Wennington and the M25, at an estimated cost of £26.5 million. Both remaining contracts are priority 1 in the national road programme. They remain a high priority, and work will start on them as soon as funds are available That is a form of words to which we are accustomed in the Department, but I hope that my hon. Friend and all those hon. Members who read this debate will gain some reassurance from them.
The scheme is up and running. More than £100 million is already committed to it, work is under way and none of it is affected by the difficult settlement that we have had to make this year—a difficult settlement in which many of the projects that people prized had to be put on hold, at least temporarily.
I hope that I have demonstrated to my hon. Friend that, despite that slight interruption in what might have been an ideal timetable for the scheme, the Department appreciates its importance for all the people of south-west Essex, including those whom my hon. Friend represents.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at one minute past Three o'clock.