Commons Sitting of 26 October 1995

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[MADAM SPEAKER in the Chair]
PRAYERS

  PRIVATE BUSINESS
  CITY OF WESTMINSTER BILL [Lords] (By Order)
  Order read for resuming adjourned debate on Question [26 June]
  Debate to be resumed on Thursday 2 November

Oral Answers to Questions
  NORTHERN IRELAND

    Interviews (Tape Recording)
    Mr. Mullin: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what plans he has to require that all interviews between police and suspects should be tape recorded; and if he will make a statement. [36899]
    The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Sir John Wheeler): All interviews in police stations in Northern Ireland designated in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 are tape-recorded where the facility is available. Electronic recording of interviews with terrorist suspects is currently being considered following my right hon. and learned Friend's announcement on 12 June in the debate on the renewal of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1991.
    Mr. Mullin: I am glad to hear that some progress is being made. I know that the Royal Ulster Constabulary is not keen on tape recording, but it is about time the Minister stood up to it. If he is looking for some sort of concession that shows a return to normality in Northern Ireland and that would enjoy the support of all reasonable people of all political persuasions, is not the tape recording of interviews with suspects, whether terrorist or otherwise, an obvious one?
    Sir John Wheeler: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has pursued that issue consistently for some time. I fully understand the nature of his concern. There is much merit in proceeding with that development. As I have said, it is being considered, and I hope that good progress will be made in due course.
    Mr. Worthington: The Minister will agree that it is very important to keep up the momentum of the peace process. The lack of progress on all-party talks is frustrating, but there are other tracks that we should be pursuing, including the justice system. Before the recess, the Minister announced a review of the emergency legislation, but we still do not know who is to head it or
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    the terms of reference. There was also a statement about a White Paper on the police. On both those points, could the Minister tell us what progress is being made and what time scales are involved?
    Sir John Wheeler: I am glad to be able to tell the House that the Government are aiming to start the independent review of the continuing need for anti-terrorist legislation in the United Kingdom, including the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act and the Prevention of Terrorism Act, as soon as possible. My right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary is taking the lead in this, but I hope that it will be possible to announce the name of the reviewer and the commencement date in the very near future.
    On the hon. Gentleman's second point, I very much hope that the White Paper on the tripartite structure of the policing system in Northern Ireland will be published before Christmas.

    Inward Investment and Tourism
    Dr. Goodson-Wickes: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what assessment he has made of investment inquiries and tourist statistics since the ceasefire. [36900]
    The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Mr. Michael Ancram): The statistics are most encouraging. They show a threefold increase in the number of United States investors visiting Northern Ireland since the ceasefires. Tourism figures are even better now than we estimated at the end of June: the first eight months of 1995 saw a 68 per cent. increase in holiday visitors compared with the same period in 1994.
    Dr. Goodson-Wickes: I am delighted to welcome those agreeable trends, which are clearly the direct result of the brave initiative taken by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State. Relative tranquillity has now been restored, a tranquillity that those of us who served in Northern Ireland in the early part of the 1970s, the bad old days, doubted would ever come about. Although the House will recognise that it is a sensitive issue, does my hon. Friend agree that any significant dilution of the pre-conditions for the next stage of peace talks could put these marvellous achievements at risk?
    Mr. Ancram: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments and very much take his points, given his experience in Northern Ireland. I certainly agree that prosperity, and increases in prosperity, both in terms of inward investment and tourism, will greatly depend on stability in the Province. At the end of the day, that stability can be underpinned only by confidence. Of course we will take seriously any areas where confidence has to be created or could be diminished by other actions.
    Mr. Clifford Forsythe: The Minister is aware that all visitors to Northern Ireland are given a warm welcome. Does he agree that it would be a good idea for the Department of Economic Development, the tourist board and others, including the planning service, to co-operate with one another to provide more accommodation? Will he investigate allegations that Department of the

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    Environment plants are discharging pollution into rivers, which is certainly discouraging fishermen from visiting Northern Ireland as tourists?
    Mr. Ancram: On the last point, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary responsible for the Department of the Environment is sitting on the Front Bench and I am sure that he will have heard what the hon. Gentleman said. Talking about the need to look at providing further accommodation in Northern Ireland is indeed a problem of success. It is also indicative that the tourist board estimates a doubling of holiday visits by 1997, possibly creating as many as 8,000 additional jobs by 1997–98. Some 30 projects to do with accommodation are currently being assisted by the Northern Ireland tourist board and another 24 are in an advanced state of negotiation, totalling £62 million of investment. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will see that, while the problems of success are hard, they are meetable.
    Mr. Tim Smith: Does my hon. Friend support the ambitious targets set by the Northern Ireland Growth Challenge of achieving a 10 per cent. growth in exports, a 5 per cent. growth in gross domestic product and 60,000 new jobs in Northern Ireland by 2000? If so, will the Government work with the private sector to achieve those objectives?
    Mr. Ancram: Certainly, the Government will work closely with the private sector to try to achieve not only those objectives but the best objectives possible. It is interesting to note that the Coopers and Lybrand review published on Tuesday showed that the Northern Ireland economy had out-performed most other regions in the United Kingdom, and predicted that if the ceasefires hold, the potential for Northern Ireland's economy will be higher than it has been for three decades.
    Mr. McGrady: We all share the Minister's delight at the tourist boom with the first summer season of the ceasefire. He is possibly well aware that a gross under-provision of beds and accommodation requires urgent attention. What specific action do the Minister and the Department intend to take to eradicate the enormous amount of red tape and raise the low level of bed and breakfast provision? Will he provide some additional resources—human and financial—to the Northern Ireland tourist board in order to expedite the other projects that he has mentioned, which very often in my experience are bogged down in negotiation? Could he in some way streamline the process? Next summer we hope to have twice as many visitors, and where will they sleep?
    Mr. Ancram: As the hon. Gentleman has heard, we are very much aware of the nature of the problem, which is caused by success. One of the problems that has arisen as a result of growth in Northern Ireland is pressure of applications on Departments and agencies, which has increased commensurately. Obviously, steps are being taken to try to ensure that applications are dealt with as speedily as possible. Wherever possible, the Northern Ireland tourist board is trying to help facilitate such developments.
    Mr. Viggers: Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the increased investment intention of Montupet, which intends to expand its factory in west Belfast? Does he agree that that is a justification of a
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    brave decision and that in the calmer climate in Northern Ireland, there are now excellent investment opportunities throughout the Province?
    Mr. Ancram: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and would certainly give the same words of encouragement. Indeed, in March the Secretary of State visited Montupet in France. Montupet and others, such as Daewoo Seagate, Dae Ryung industries, from Korea, and Fruit of the Loom have between them created an enormous amount of inward investment over the past nine years, totalling more than £1,678 million in Northern Ireland alone. I certainly support and encourage such investment—the more the better.
    Mr. Dowd: I, too, welcome the improvements suggested by the figures that the Minister has given. It is common ground that economic development is a parallel strand of the peace process and is critical if we are to ensure that any settlement will endure. As the role of the Government is vital in sustaining and promoting that development, will the Minister assure the House that he and his colleagues will do all that they can to protect their departmental budgets from the Chancellor of the Exchequer's frantic attempts to find spending cuts, in the vain hope of bribing people with their own money in advance of the next election, and that Northern Ireland Ministers will continue to support that essential investment in peace?
    Mr. Ancram: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his elevation to the Front Bench, and welcome him on his first appearance at the Dispatch Box. We look forward to many more such appearances. On behalf of both myself and my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office, I can assure him that we are always anxious to ensure not only that we secure adequate resources but that we use them in the best practical way for the benefit of the people of Northern Ireland.

    Paramilitary Groups
    Mr. Cyril D. Townsend: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on disarming the paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland. [36902]
    Mr. Ancram: No arms or equipment in the hands of paramilitary groups have been decommissioned to date. There is, however, no place for unlawfully held arms in a democratic society. In order to create the necessary trust and confidence for all-party talks to proceed, the Government believe that progress on the issue is essential. I believe that that progress can and will be made.
    Mr. Townsend: Can the Minister assure the House that the sensible suggestions about decommissioning made by the Secretary of State in his Washington speech earlier this year have not been watered down in any way by the events of the summer? Will he tell us what international support he expects for the decommissioning process at present?
    Mr. Ancram: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I can certainly assure him that the so-called three Washington criteria not only remain in place but represent the only way that the Government can see of creating the confidence to enable all-party talks to proceed. That, after all, is the bottom line. We are now considering, with the

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    Irish Government in what is known as a twin-track initiative, the setting up of an international body to examine the ways in which decommissioning might take place. International influence would, of course, be present there.
    Mr. Maginnis: Is it not a major hindrance that the IRA approaches disarmament merely in terms of its guns and explosives, totally failing to address the moral and ethical aspects of the issue? Can the Minister reassure us that his approach clearly reflects society's justifiable expectations, or is there a danger that he is restrained within the parameters that dictate IRA-Sinn Fein's approach?
    Mr. Ancram: We are talking not only about the IRA arms but about unlawfully held weapons in the hands of all paramilitaries, from whichever part of the spectrum they come. The hon. Gentleman will have heard me say in my original answer that there is no place for unlawfully held arms in a democratic society. The security forces continue to search out, and where possible recover, such weapons. If the hon. Gentleman needs what he said about the morality of the position to be underlined, I can tell him that the vast majority of people not only in Northern Ireland but in the Republic of Ireland, have expressed in survey after survey their desire to see the arms taken out of the equation.
    Rev. William McCrea: Bearing in mind the terrorist credentials of Adams, McGuinness and McLoughlin and their refusal to condemn IRA violence, does the Minister have any firm foundation for believing that the IRA ever intends to surrender its arsenal of weapons of murder and destruction? Far from disarming, is it not true that the IRA is regrouping, recruiting, and restocking, and that it is training its forces? Surely such actions speak volumes about IRA intentions—much more than their propaganda soundbites for American consumption. Who is being fooled by the whole exercise?
    Mr. Ancram: I fully appreciate the hon. Gentleman's personal experience of IRA violence—the whole House is conscious of it. The bottom line is that we must have a situation in which all parties can come together to discuss and negotiate the future of Northern Ireland. To achieve that, we must create an environment of confidence that will allow all parties to come to the table. We have made it clear that we do not believe that those circumstances of confidence will exist until the question s of decommissioning arms has been addressed in the way set out by my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State in Washington.
    Dr. Hendron: An integral part of the problem of disarming paramilitaries is the question of prisoners. The Secretary of State will understand that there cannot be meaningful discussion of the peace process while the plight of prisoners is ignored—whether they be loyalist or republican, in Belmarsh, the Maze or Magilligan. I therefore ask him, and the Home Secretary, to give urgent consideration to the plight of prisoners. I can assure him that thousands of people in west Belfast, in the Catholic Falls road and in the Unionist Shankill road, would be very grateful for such action.
    Mr. Ancram: I hear what the hon. Gentleman has to say. As he knows, I do not have responsibility for prisoners, but my right hon. and learned Friend and my right hon. Friend the Minister of State will have heard the
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    hon. Gentleman's remarks. He must accept, however, as we have said many times, that there are no such things as political prisoners in any part of the United Kingdom. Those in prison are serving terms of imprisonment for committing crimes.
    Mr. Peter Bottomley: In addition to the issue of arms, will the Minister confirm that it is about time that the paramilitary groups dealt with the question of beatings and bodies? They should stop going in for vigilante justice and say where the bodies of people whom they have murdered are, so that the victims' families can know where to find them.
    Mr. Ancram: I very much support what my hon. Friend has said. There is genuine resentment and grievance about the fact that relatives and friends have disappeared with no account of where their bodies are—that must certainly be dealt with. A question that we may reach later today relates to punishment beatings, so I shall leave it to the Minister of State to respond in due course.
    Mr. Campbell-Savours: Has the purchasing of decommissioned equipment from the paramilitary forces ever been considered? I understand that there has been a great deal of experience of that in various parts of the world.
    Mr. Ancram: What is important is not how weapons are disposed of but the fact that they are disposed of. The British Government have made it clear that we want those weapons taken out of commission in a way that will prevent their being used for political ends in future. In the course of that process, all ways of disposing of the weapons which can achieve that objective can be considered.

    Peace Process
    Sir Thomas Arnold: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement about the peace process in Northern Ireland. [36903]
    Mr. Simon Hughes: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what are his intentions for the next stage of the peace process. [36904]
    Mr. Hain: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what is his latest assessment of the prospects for peace. [36908]
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: Northern Ireland continues its welcome return towards normality. There is still a long way to go before a true peace and a democratic settlement are reached. The Government intend, however, to develop the substantial progress already made by steadfastly pursuing their policies, which are already well known to this House.
    Sir Thomas Arnold: Will my right hon. and learned Friend now take further steps to reassure the Unionist parties of the integrity of the Government's intentions?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I hope that no further reassurance on that is necessary. The Government's position has been made consistently and abundantly clear over a long time. I have just given an undertaking of our steadfast determination to pursue it.
    Mr. Hughes: On a specific point, given the good reputation of the five education and library boards for

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    promoting co-operation across the community boundaries, can the Secretary of State assure the House that consideration has been given to whether the proposal to reduce the number of boards to four—for financial reasons, as I understand it—will not have the disadvantage of making the boards far more segregated and far less able to do the very good job that they have done in the past?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: The proposal is under discussion with the parties. That is the first way in which the matter should be examined, and that is what has happened.
    Mr. Hain: Does the Secretary of State agree that prison issues are important in building the trust and confidence needed to carry forward the peace process? Given the new arrangements from 1 November, will he specifically urge the Home Secretary to expedite prison transfer requests so that they go through without unnecessary bureaucratic delay? Will the Secretary of State examine, on compassionate grounds, the case of Patrick Kelly, who is in Whitemoor? He is seriously ill with cancer and wishes to transfer to the Irish Republic, where he can be near his family.
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: The offender whose name has just been mentioned is within the jurisdiction of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary, as the hon. Gentleman knows. My right hon. and learned Friend will have heard what the hon. Gentleman says. It is worth reminding the House that ratification by the Irish Government of the European convention will take effect only from 1 November. Our own country ratified it several years ago—I think in 1984. Thereafter, it has to be a matter for my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary to consider,, in the light of individual circumstances, whether it is appropriate to repatriate, if that is requested, a prisoner to the Republic of Ireland, where he or she is domiciled. I am certain that those matters will be examined by the two relevant Ministers in Dublin and London.
    Mr. Bellingham: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the peace process is not helped by crimes such as the one that took place today, in which a 16-year-old girl was dragged out of her house by paramilitaries in Twinbrook, beaten up and covered in paint? Will he condemn that crime and make every effort to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I condemn that, as everyone in the House will condemn similar brutal beatings. There is no need for the Royal Ulster Constabulary to be encouraged to try to bring those people to justice and to prevent similar crimes from taking place. I agree with the words with which my hon. Friend began his question.
    Mr. Trimble: Is it not the case that, following the action by the Irish Republic last month in giving way to the threats of violence from Sinn Fein-IRA, it is extremely unlikely that the necessary confidence can be created for talks in the near future? In the light of that, is not the best way forward to take up the suggestion made by Unionist parties that there be an elected body so that parties to any future negotiations can obtain a mandate and, in the interval, debate and investigate issues relevant to future negotiations?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his accession to the leadership of his party.
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    This is the first time that we have had the occasion to do that and to say that his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux), was held in great affection by all in the House. We do not doubt that the hon. Gentleman's tenure will be just as distinguished.
    I do not accept the words with which the hon. Gentleman began his question. I do not accept the conclusion that he drew from them. I should like to assure him that the Government are committed, with the Irish Government, to promoting the concept of a twin track or parallel approach. We believe that it is important that all relevant parties and future participants in the negotiations to which we all look forward should have the opportunity to sit down and talk. One of the solutions that the hon. Gentleman and his party hold to is a form of assembly. It is an interesting solution and one which we hope could usefully be discussed in the talks which form the political track. So I hope that that may be a means by which that interesting and possibly fruitful suggestion may be ventilated and explored.
    Mrs. Ann Winterton: Can my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that it is Government policy shortly to introduce remission of 50 per cent. on prison sentences for terrorist offences? If that is so, how can he square it with the life sentences that are served on grieving relatives, for whom there can never be any remission?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the continuing effects of such serious crimes. I thought it right to point that out when I made a speech at Queen's university Belfast on 25 August, setting out the Government's policy on restoring to pre-1989 levels the point in sentence at which an offender is released, if he or she is convicted of a scheduled—that is to say a terrorist—offence and sentenced to five years' imprisonment or more. In 1989, that category of prisoner had entitlement to remission reduced from 50 per cent. to one third, by reason of the need at that time for a greater deterrent factor. As I said in August, the Government believe that current circumstances warrant a restoration of that pre-1989 position. I believe that to be the case and I shall be recommending it to the House. We shall have to see what it has to say.
    Mr. Mallon: I also congratulate the new leader of the Ulster Unionist party, the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) and wish him well, as I wish his predecessor, the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux), a happy retirement.
    Does the Secretary of State agree when I say that I hope that the semantic phase of the peace process will soon be over, and we will stop worrying to death words such as clarification, permanence and decommissioning, as they have clouded the issue and the two central problems? The first is how we rid Northern Ireland politics of arms for ever and the second is how we set up the type of political arrangements and structures upon which to build a peaceful future.
    Will the Secretary of State accept from me that most people who share those objectives fully support the twin-track approach as being the only viable way to deal with those two objectives? Will he also tell the House what alternatives have been presented to him by others who might disagree with that twin-track approach?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I welcome the hon. Gentleman's support for the twin-track approach, which represents

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    perhaps not the only but the best way forward in this difficult position. I very much agree with what my hon. Friend the Minister of State said about the overriding necessity of confidence being established. There is no point in calling a conference to negotiate the political future of Northern Ireland, when it is certain that a number of chairs will be empty. That would destroy the very process on which all future progress depends.
    Mr. Bill Walker: Does my right hon. and learned Friend understand that he enjoys massive support on the Conservative Benches for the firm line that he and his team have taken on the decommissioning of arms? Is he aware that that sends messages to all those throughout the United Kingdom who may be tempted into that kind of activity, particularly the lunatic fringe of the narrow nationalists in Scotland?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I am grateful for my hon. Friend's expression of support. It is necessary to hold to a proper analysis of a very difficult problem and to hold steadfastly to a properly formulated policy for dealing with it. That is what the Government intend to do and I am grateful for my hon. Friend's support.
    Ms Mowlam: As the House has shown, we are at a delicate time in the peace process. The Secretary of State has just argued that building trust and confidence is central to the process, which is why we support the remission legislation on Monday as timely and why paramilitary decommissioning must be addressed. However, can the Secretary of State do all that he can to encourage the implementation of Government policy on prisoner transfers and will he consider expanding the twin-track approach to add a track on reconciliation, focusing on a bill of rights?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I think I should rather leave the question of a Bill of Rights until later: there are interesting arguments to be advanced on both sides.
    Prisoners who commit serious offences in a particular jurisdiction must normally expect to serve their sentences within that jurisdiction according to law. Where there is an international conference or a European convention, it depends on the individual circumstances whether a prisoner will be transferred in accordance with that convention. I have already said that the jurisdiction over a number of prisoners whose names are in the news at the moment rests with the Home Secretary.
    Sir Patrick Cormack: Further to the remarks of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon), does my right hon. and learned Friend accept that the vast majority of those of us who believe in the historic integrity of the United Kingdom have enormous admiration for the courageous initiative and persistence of the Prime Minister and for the diligence and patience that my right hon. and learned Friend and my hon. Friend the Minister of State have been showing over many months?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: We are all grateful for anything of that character passed our way.
    Mr. McNamara: I join the House in welcoming the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Mr. Trimble) to his new position. He has a difficult act to follow. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux) is no longer leading his party.
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    Will the Secretary of State give the House the terms of reference of the new international commission that is to police the problem of decommissioning, and has he now secured the full agreement of all the main parties to the twin-track approach?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: Both Governments consider that there is a lot of promise in the idea of an international commission, comprised as it has been suggested, as forming the first of the two twin tracks that have been mentioned several times today. The terms of reference are not yet formulated. I believe that there is a wide body of support for this approach.

    Paramilitary Groups
    Mr. Connarty: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what actions are being taken to stop paramilitary groups acting in a policing role in the communities of Northern Ireland. [36905]
    Sir John Wheeler: Savage assaults, expulsions and intimidation by terrorist thugs have nothing to do with policing, or justice or democracy. Such actions are against the law and are wholly unacceptable to the Government and to the community at large. The Royal Ulster Constabulary will investigate all such cases, and when evidence is available place offenders before the courts.
    Mr. Connarty: I thank the Minister for that partial reply. Does he accept there have been at least 200 beatings by the IRA and the Ulster Volunteer Force in Northern Ireland since the ceasefire? Is he aware that last Wednesday the Northern Ireland youth parliament voted that men of peace should be prepared to discuss and negotiate with the men of violence? Many people gave the impression that rather than decommissioning being the problem, paramilitary beatings were the symbol of the lack of peace in their communities.
    Will the Government point out to the paramilitaries that the beatings go on in contravention of paragraph 10 of the Downing street declaration? Will the Minister demand from the IRA and the Progressive Unionist Party a condemnation of such beatings before any further progress is made in talks with those groups? Will he take seriously the suggestions for curtailing beatings made by Families Against Intimidation and Terror in Northern Ireland?
    Sir John Wheeler: Between 1 September 1994 and 15 October 1995, 218 so-called punishment beatings have taken place, attributed on the basis of 85 to the so-called loyalist gangs and 133 to Republican groups. I endorse what the hon. Gentleman said. There is no case for this tide of violence in Northern Ireland. It robs the community of confidence in the peace process and it stops the political development of the process. I use this opportunity once again to call on all who have influence over those matters to condemn it and to see that it is stopped.
    Mr. Illsley: Labour, too, condemns the so-called punishment beatings, particularly the most recent action, which has already been referred to. Does the Minister agree that, if the responsible organisations were to put a stop to those beatings, it would reinforce their democratic credentials? Does he believe that he is doing all that he can to stop these appalling attacks?
    Sir John Wheeler: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment to the Labour Front Bench as a

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    shadow Northern Ireland Office spokesman. I endorse what he says: there is no excuse for expulsions, punishment beatings, racketeering and intimidation. They are against the rule of law and I assure the House that the Royal Ulster Constabulary will do its utmost to investigate such crime and bring offenders before the courts. Arrests are being made but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that those who have influence must bring that influence to bear if that evil tide is to end.

    Security Situation
    Mr. Molyneaux: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will make a statement on the security situation in Northern Ireland. [36906]
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I shall continue to be advised by the Chief Constable on the security response warranted by a reduced but continuing threat of violence, and I shall act on that advice. Proscribed paramilitary organisations continue in active existence. Brutal beatings and arson attacks remain a cause of particular concern.
    Mr. Molyneaux: As Her Majesty's inspectorate of constabulary concluded this week that the Royal Ulster Constabulary "is efficient and effective", will the Secretary of State assure us that resources will be made available to counter general serious crime, which can be expected to increase following the reduction in terrorist crime?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I have always made it clear, as has my right hon. Friend the Minister of State, that appropriate resources must be made available to the RUC. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, a fundamental review is in progress and it is important that sufficient resources should be made available to counter non-terrorist crime, which, in some categories, is rising.
    Mr. Wilkinson: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that, given the markedly improved security situation, it would be ironic, to say the least, if Queen's university air squadron, Belfast, the town headquarters of which were destroyed at the height of the troubles, should now be closed? In considering representations, will he bear in mind that it would be wrong for that university air squadron and the Air Experience Flight to be closed uniquely among such institutions in the country?
    Sir Patrick Mayhew: I know my hon. Friend's association with the Royal Air Force and the regard in which those units are held, but this is a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence, who must take some harsh decisions in difficult economic circumstances.

    Marches and Parades
    Mr. Gordon Prentice: To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland if he will take steps routinely to reroute marches and parades where these are to go through areas where the residents do not wish them. [36907]
    Sir John Wheeler: The routing of parades is an operational matter for the police, who are best placed to make decisions. They do so in consultation with parade organisers and local people, and significant progress has been made over recent years in eliminating the problems arising from certain controversial parades. Of more than
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    3,000 parades so far this year, only 11–0.3 per cent.—were classified by the RUC as having resulted in disorder, while just over 20 have been subject to rerouting requirements or had other conditions imposed by the police.
    Mr. Prentice: The Minister admits that at least some marches are provocative, triumphalist and put communities under siege. What happened in July at Portadown was an absolute disgrace. How can the peace process survive such atavism, blood-curdling speeches and calls to arms by the Ulster Unionists?
    Sir John Wheeler: Some parades—very few—result in controversy and difficulty. It must be said that some of those difficulties arise because of the activities of Provisional Sinn Fein and others. It is the duty of the police to keep the peace and the function of the police to negotiate with the local community to ensure that the peace prevails.
    Rev. Martin Smyth: Does the Minister accept that a degree of ignorance was manifested in that question? Does he recognise and agree that the troubles come from those people who sought to turn Northern Ireland upside-down this year, beginning with the attacks during the Prime Minister's visit to Londonderry? Will he acknowledge that there was no parade on the Ormeau road when Mrs. Hughes and others were intimidated disastrously as a result of the actions of elements in that community?
    Sir John Wheeler: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. There is no excuse whatsoever for any violence or criminal wrongdoing, as the House agreed earlier regarding the so-called punishment beatings. It is also true, as the hon. Gentleman says, that some people have a vested interest in trouble.

  PRIME MINISTER

    Engagements
    Mr. Lidington: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 October. [36929]
    The Prime Minister (Mr. John Major): This morning, I presided at a meeting of the Cabinet and had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall be having further meetings later today.
    Mr. Lidington: Will my right hon. Friend take the opportunity to reaffirm his opposition to terrorism and, in doing so, make it his policy to condemn unreservedly the selection by the Labour party in Exeter of a self-confessed terrorist as its candidate? Does not that action illustrate most clearly that the Labour party is utterly unfit fix. government?
    The Prime Minister: I am wholly opposed to any act of terrorism, and I have no doubt that the majority of people in Exeter will feel the same.
    Mr. Blair: Will the Prime Minister confirm that the changes in housing benefit revealed today will mean that thousands of vulnerable people—pensioners, disabled people and families with young children—will lose help

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    and be confronted with poverty or eviction? How can that possibly be fair? Is it not the clearest evidence of the Conservative party's lurch to the right and the death of one nation conservatism?
    The Prime Minister: Indeed it is not. My party remains in the centre of politics, and that is where it will always be. The right hon. Gentleman's outrage is rather artificial because he obviously believes that this morning's story was a leaked document: in fact, it relates to measures approved by the House last July.
    Mr. Blair: The question is whether the measures are right. If the problem is the soaring housing benefit bill, does the Prime Minister accept that that bill has increased under his Government as a result of Government policy? Housing benefit has increased as housing investment has been slashed.
    If the problem, as was suggested by the Secretary of State for Social Security, is private landlords charging excessive rent, is not it sensible to tackle that problem head-on instead of using vulnerable and innocent tenants as pawns to clear up a mess of the Government's own making?
    The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. If he had spent one single day in government, he would know that the Government have to take difficult decisions to control expenditure throughout the budget. This is the Labour leader who said that he was in favour of hand-ups, not handouts; this is the party that has said that it wants to take a very radical look at the whole system of social security to try to ensure that money is spent in the best possible way; yet, whatever Labour Members may say about fiscal control, whenever there is a difficult decision to be taken they will oppose it. That is why they will spend on every occasion and tax on every occasion. If they had had their way, public spending would be half national income and tax would be where it was when they left office.
    Mr. Blair: If we had had our way, we would not have slashed housing investment, which has produced the rise in housing benefit. The Prime Minister is perfectly justified in saying that; if there is a problem, it should be tackled. I have given him a specific way of tackling it. Why does not he tackle directly the excessive rents being charged by private landlords rather than make tenants the victims?
    The Prime Minister: I am pleased to see the right hon. Gentleman commit himself—I hope that the whole country heard it—to rent control. That is what the right hon. Gentleman has done—
    Mr. Blair indicated dissent.
    The Prime Minister: Yes, he has—he cannot shake his head. What he has just said is a Labour commitment to rent control—presumably in the private sector, which would mean no more available lettings. Presumably, in the public sector he would hold down rents artificially and push up the amount of borrowing and tax. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to know how to deal with housing and matters of that sort he should look at some of his own boroughs such as Hackney, Lambeth, Tower Hamlets, Greenwich, Southwark and Islington, which among them have 6,000 empty council houses. They are all in good
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    repair and ready to be let out, but none is available because of the chronic inefficiency and stupidity of Labour local authorities.
    Mr. Viggers: Has my right hon. Friend had time today to see the report of the chief inspector of constabulary which, for the first time, includes some national indicators of the performance of the local, county police establishments? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the report contains some useful ideas, including the use of advanced technology, the increased use of community resources and better targeting of resources? Does he agree that that is a matter on which we can assist the police to be more efficient?
    The Prime Minister: Yes, I have no doubt about that. I have not yet seen that report in detail, but I have asked my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary to study it and report to me on its contents.
    Mr. Ashdown: Does the Prime Minister realise that the number of primary school pupils in classes of more than 40 has risen by 30 per cent. in the past year? Does he understand why parents and governors are deeply concerned about that? Does he still believe that class sizes do not matter?
    The Prime Minister: Of course every aspect of education matters, but what matters most is the quality of teaching, which we are seeking to improve. We have introduced a series of measures to do that in recent years, most of which have been visibly and volubly opposed by the right hon. Gentleman and his party.
    Mr. Nicholls: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the assisted places scheme and grammar schools are immensely popular with parents? What conclusions does he think parents should draw from the fact that, although the Labour party is committed to the abolition of the assisted places scheme and grammar schools, 19 out of 24 members of the shadow Cabinet attended grammar schools or exclusive fee-paying schools?
    The Prime Minister: Extending choice and opportunity is central to our education policy—it is what we believe parents want and we are delivering it. The Labour party's policies are yet another case of double-think: Labour Members go to good schools, but want to abolish them; they send their children to good schools, but want to abolish them. I read that the shadow Cabinet is now going to Templeton college for the weekend—it had better watch out for its future.
    Mr. Gerrard: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 October. [36930]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Gerrard: How can the Prime Minister justify his earlier answers, which defended housing benefit cuts that will attack some of the most vulnerable and poorest people? Does he believe that they should be forced to make up the short-fall in their rent from money that they need to survive—even using money such as their war pensions? Does it not show the Government's complete abandonment of any sense of social justice or priority?

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    The Prime Minister today attacks poor people, but only two weeks ago he stood at the Tory party conference promising to abolish inheritance tax and capital gains tax.
    The Prime Minister: The cheap insults from the Labour party are becoming increasingly silly. I shall tell the hon. Gentleman something about protecting the vulnerable: low-income families with children have received extra help—now worth more than £1 billion a year—since 1988. Extra help for poor pensioners has increased to £1.2 billion since 1988. In the past two years we have introduced help with child care worth up to £38 per week for the least well-off in work. We have introduced jobseeker's agreements that are tailored to individual needs and a package of work incentives worth £700 million. All those initiatives are targeted to the people who are most in need in this country. It is about time that the hon. Gentleman saw what is really being done to help those in need and recognised that that sort of help is possible only if Governments resist some other elements of expenditure.
    Mr. David Evans: May I tell my right hon. Friend that, unlike Labour Members, we on this side are totally united behind our leader? Will my right hon. Friend confirm whether in five years at the Dispatch Box he has ever had to bail out one of his Front Bench spokesmen for total incompetence? Is he aware that last Thursday Bambi, the leader of the Labour party, showed the nation on live television what Conservative Members have known for years: Labour Members are all totally incompetent? In other words, they are men of straw.
    The Prime Minister: I am afraid that I do not have the same gift for understatement as my hon. Friend. We all noticed the Leader of the Opposition trying to rescue the shadow Home Secretary last Thursday—and we all noticed that he failed.
    Mr. Watson: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 October. [36931]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Watson: The Prime Minister will be aware of the recent announcement by the Secretaries of State for Health and for Scotland of the ban on general practitioners prescribing the drug Temazepam in gel-filled capsules. Contrary to the advice of almost all statutory and non-statutory agencies, including the Standing Conference on Drug Abuse and the Scottish drugs forum, the drug remains available in other forms simply to save about £15 million in public expenditure—the cost of prescribing alternatives.
    Does the Prime Minister believe that the loss of young lives, which will continue to occur—particularly in Glasgow, but also in every other major city in the country—as a result of the availability of Temazepam, is a price worth paying for the short-term advantage of the Government's desperate search for pre-election tax cuts?
    The Prime Minister: The depths to which some Labour Members sometimes sink in their questions helps me to understand why the public have such a low opinion of politicians generally. My right hon. Friend the
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    secretary of State for Scotland acted on the medical advice that he received and he will continue to do so in the future.
    Sir Ivan Lawrence: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the proportion of asylum seekers who come to Britain is rising, whereas the number is falling in other European countries? Is that not precisely because this country is not the clapped-out, impoverished nation that the Labour party pretends it is? Is it not time to strengthen our protection against those who have no right to be in this country?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. and learned Friend is right about the proportion of asylum seekers in this country. Other countries have tightened their asylum procedures and we think that we should re-examine them as well. However, some of the stories that I have seen in the last 24 hours and some of the comments that I have heard from Opposition Front Bench spokesmen are entirely absurd. They are inaccurate and misleading and they would better not have been made.
    There is no doubt that we will honour our United Nations convention obligations and there is no doubt that claims will be considered individually. I hope that the activities of the shadow Home Secretary have not raised too many fears.
    Mr. Winnick: To ask the Prime Minister if he will list his official engagements for Thursday 26 October. [36933]
    The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply I gave some moments ago.
    Mr. Winnick: Can the Prime Minister explain the purpose of setting up the Nolan committee if one of its main recommendations—the disclosure of outside financial interests—is rubbished and rejected by Tory Members of Parliament? Does not the Prime Minister understand that the general public will contrast the rejection of the Nolan committee's very important recommendation with the way in which Tory Members of Parliament vote time and again to undermine the position of the poorest people in our society?
    The Prime Minister: As I told the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Mr. Gerrard), we set out innumerable ways—and I will give the hon. Gentleman a much longer list if he wishes—of helping people in great need in this country, and that will continue to be the case.
    The Nolan committee was established to report to the House and did so. A Select Committee is considering its report, and we will consider and vote on the Select Committee's report shortly.
    Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Having known Sir John Templeton well for many years, and having attended the launch of the Templeton college in Oxford, I share my right hon. Friend's sentiments about the dangers of a visit by Labour Members to that college. Does not my right hon. Friend think it extraordinary that the Labour party should accuse the Conservative party of being uncaring when, with unemployment dropping in this country—

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    unlike in most other countries in Europe—we are increasing our social security year by year? Is that the sign of an uncaring Government?
    The Prime Minister: My hon. Friend makes his point most forcefully. Unemployment has dropped more dramatically here than in any other major country of western Europe. Unemployment is also below the level of other countries and our degree of social security
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    protection is above it. As my hon. Friend said, Templeton college is a centre of excellence. Therefore, with this Labour party, it must be in danger.
    Several hon. Members rose—
    Madam Speaker: Order. I will take points of order after we have taken the business statement and questions on it.

Business of the House
3.31 pm
Mrs. Ann Taylor: May I ask the Leader of the House the details of future business?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton): The business for next week and until prorogation will be as follows. I should make it clear that the business for Monday 30 October is different from that which I announced last week.
MONDAY 30 OCTOBER—Proceedings on the Northern Ireland (Remission of Sentences) Bill.
TUESDAY 31 OCTOBER—Consideration of Lords amendments to the Disability Discrimination Bill.
Proceedings on the following Bills, which are consolidation measures Proceeds of Crime (Scotland) Bill [Lords] Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Bill [Lords] Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Bill [Lords] Criminal Procedure (Consequential Provisions) (Scotland) Bill [Lords] Statute Law (Repeals) Bill [Lords]
Remaining stages of the Law Reform (Succession) Bill [Lords], the Private International Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill [Lords] and the Civil Evidence Bill [Lords].
WEDNESDAY 1 NOVEMBER—Until 2.30 pm, there will be debates on the motion for the Adjournment of the House.
Consideration of Lords amendments to the Gas Bill.
Motion to suspend further proceedings on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill until the next Session of Parliament.
Motion to provide an instruction to the Select Committee on the consideration of additional provisions to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill.
THURSDAY 2 NOVEMBER—Motions on parliamentary procedure.
Debate on the Government response to the first report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
FRIDAY 3 NOVEMBER—Debate on fundholding in a primary care-led national health service on a motion for the Adjournment of the House.
MONDAY 6 NOVEMBER—Debate on the second report which is expected to be received from the Select Committee on Standards in Public Life.
TUESDAY 7 NOVEMBER—Consideration of any Lords amendments that may be received to the Criminal Injuries Compensation Bill, followed by consideration of any Lords amendments that may be received to the Medical (Professional Performance) Bill.
Motions relating to Select Committees.
The House may be asked to consider any Lords messages that may be received.
WEDNESDAY 8 NOVEMBER—Subject to the progress of business, the House is expected to be prorogued.
The House will also wish to know that the following European Standing Committees will meet at 10.30 am to consider European Community documents as follows:
[Tuesday 31 October:
European Standing Committee B—Relevant European Community Document: 7942/95, Television. Relevant European Legislation Committee Report: HC 70-xxv (1994–95).
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Wednesday 1 November:
European Standing Committee A—Relevant European Community Documents: (a) 9532/95, Reform of Regime, (b) 9379/95, Reform of the Rice Regime: Standard Quality of Rice. Relevant European Legislation Committee Reports: HC 70-xxv (1994–95), HC 70-xxv (1994–95).
European Standing Committee B—Relevant European Community Documents: (a) 5663/95, Promotion of Employment, (b) 6827/95, Social Action Programme 1995–1997. Relevant European Legislation Committee Reports: HC 70-xiii (1994–95) and HC 70-xviii (1994–95).]
Mrs. Ann Taylor: I thank the Leader of the House for that information. Is he aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Dumbarton (Mr. McFall), the promoter of the Wild Mammals (Protection) Bill, has now agreed a set of amendments with the Bill's opponents? In the light of the support that the amended Bill now commands in all quarters—both in this House and in the other place—will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that the very small amount of time that is needed will be found to allow a Bill that has widespread public support to become law?
Let me now ask about Government business. Will the Leader of the House clarify the position of the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill? Will he confirm that the Bill was introduced by a Minister—the Lord Chancellor—under the "fast track" Jellicoe procedure, as non-contentious legislation, and has completed nearly all its stages in both Houses? Is a long-overdue measure to tackle domestic violence being destroyed by the extreme wing of the Conservative party?
Will the Leader of the House find time, in the very near future, for a debate on nursery vouchers? Does he recall that, in July, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment undertook to consult and to report back in the autumn? Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that, so far, public opinion has been almost universally opposed to the voucher scheme; that there is widespread support for properly funded quality nursery education; and that even the few remaining Tory local education authorities are against the scheme? May we have a debate very soon to discuss who is correct—Conservative councillors in Solihull, or the Secretary of State?
Finally, will the Leader of the House take up the points that were raised earlier in Prime Minister's Question Time, and ensure that we have an opportunity to debate the serious public concern about the changes to housing benefits payments, which Opposition Members voted against? They constitute a miserable attack on a very vulnerable group, which is alarming many people in the House and the country.
Are all those developments—the handling of the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill, the nursery voucher scheme and the cuts in housing benefit—simply more signals of the Government's dangerous lurch to the right?
Mr. Newton: There seems to be a common script for the periods before and after 3.30 pm nowadays.
Let me take the hon. Lady's points in reverse order. Her question appeared to confirm what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said in response to her right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition—that, far from having been leaked, the proposals were discussed openly and agreed by the House.

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I need hardly say that I do not recognise the hon. Lady's description of the position relating to nursery vouchers. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment announced the names of three authorities that will participate in the pilot schemes in phase 1, and others are still considering whether to participate.
A number of points have been made to my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor about the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill, which he has undertaken to consider. I think that entirely appropriate.
It is, I think, well known in the House that the amount of time for private Members' Bills is clearly established at the beginning of each Session, and that is the position in the current Session.
Mr. John Wilkinson (Ruislip-Northwood): May I remind my right hon. Friend that the very important air service agreement negotiations between the United Kingdom and the United States of America failed at the end of last week and that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport was not able to come to the House to make a statement about that matter? Can my right hon. Friend assure the House that at an early date Her Majesty's Government will introduce a full debate on civil air transport, which is of particular importance to the Heathrow area and many other areas in this country?
Mr. Newton: I cannot give my hon. Friend that complete undertaking, but I will bear his request in mind. He well knows, and by implication acknowledged, the importance that the British Government attach to these matters.
Mr. Archy Kirkwood: Recognising that the Leader of the House has had quite a lot of his time tied up in the Nolan Committee, for which we are grateful, does he expect that he will be able to make an announcement about the disposition of the new Select Committees before the new Session starts? I refer him briefly to the two statutory instruments standing in my name and those of my right hon. and hon. Friends, on probation and optical charges regulations. If it is possible before the end of the Session, it would certainly benefit the House if we could have Committee stage debates on both.
Mr. Newton: I note the hon. Gentleman's latter point. In answer to the first half of the hon. Gentleman's question, amidst the profusion of business that I announced, which perhaps indicates the difficulties of fitting in further business, was a reference to the fact that I hoped to be debating motions relating to Select Committees on Tuesday 7 November.
Mr. Tim Devlin: In view of the fact that President Yeltsin has died, would it be possible for us to have a debate, or at least a statement, next week if there are any ramifications for this country's foreign policy?
Mr. Newton: I have myself only just heard what I am sure will be news greeted with sadness and shock in the House. Although I note and understand why my hon. Friend raised the matter, he will understand that I would not wish to comment in quite the way in which he invites me to.
Mr. Ray Powell: Will the Leader of the House read column 713 of Hansard of 23 October, in
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which my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham, West (Mr. Meacher) raised a point of order with Madam Speaker regarding Asda and its decision to stop paying enhanced payments for Sunday work in its shops? Will the Leader of the House find time next week, or between now and prorogation, to debate not only Asda but a number of other retailers who promised the House, when we were discussing the Sunday Trading Bill, that they would agree to pay double time on Sunday and that they would enhance payments? Only 18 months have passed since the Act was introduced, but they are reneging on promises that they made to a number of hon. Members, who would not have gone into the Lobby and voted as they did if they had known that this would happen. Some of us took a principled stand and did not vote. We might have lost jobs in the Whips Office as a result, but nevertheless we took that principled stand.
I think that the Leader of the House should find time for this matter, which is urgent, because in addition to that—I am on my last point, Madam Speaker—Burger King is paying young workers £5 for five hours' work. It is time that the whole question of shopworkers' employment in this country was given time in the House for a full debate.
Mr. Newton: I do not immediately recall the exchanges to which the hon. Gentleman refers, but I am sure that his remarks will be examined carefully by those at whom they are directed.
Sir Anthony Grant: Does my right hon. Friend agree that when the quality and the price in defence contracts are roughly equal they should go to the home industry rather than abroad? Will there be an opportunity before the House rises to debate that policy, when some of us will be able to point out that the 700 military ambulances that are required by the Ministry of Defence can be supplied in excellent quality by the firm of Marshalls of Cambridge, in conjunction with Landrover, and costing £10.5 million less than the Austrian competition?
Mr. Newton: Subject to the rules—national and international—about public procurement, I hope that I may be allowed to wish my hon. Friend's constituents well.
Mr. Thomas McAvoy: I wish to raise the fact that Post Office Counters Ltd. has decreed that it will downgrade Cambuslang Crown post office in my constituency to the status of an agency post office. It has said that it will not consult on the matter and that the public are to have no say. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a statement next week by a Minister at the Department of Trade and Industry to explain why a public service, under the control of the Government, can act unilaterally and refuse to consult the public on a change that will have a grave effect on the public?
Mr. Newton: I should point out that my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade will be answering questions on Wednesday 1 November. I shall bring that putative question to his attention.
Mr. Jacques Arnold: Did my right hon. Friend notice that when the shadow Leader of the House raised the matter of nursery education, she did not say a word about the families whose children have not gained a local government nursery place, nor about the families

1149
whose children attend private nurseries, nor about the families whose children are at playgroups, all of whom will be helped by nursery vouchers? Does not that prove yet again that the Labour party is concerned only with producer interests, especially in local government?
Mr. Newton: I did indeed notice that omission from the hon. Lady's remarks, and I am glad that my hon. Friend has been able to rectify it.
Mrs. Alice Mahon: You may recall, Madam Speaker, that on 13 March this year I requested a statement from the Secretary of State for Health about the little girl formerly known as Child B who is now publicly known as Jaymee. Will he grant time for a debate on who gets treated under the national health service? Has not this gutsy little girl shown that she deserves treatment? Her chances of survival are now much better. Should she and her family be going around with a begging bowl? Should not we have a debate and give hon. Members the opportunity to vote on whether she should get treatment under the NHS?
Mr. Newton: Everyone will understand why the hon. Lady has raised this matter and will want to wish the little girl well. The hon. Lady may have the opportunity to raise the matter again during Health Questions next week, but I must emphasise that it is always for clinicians to decide on appropriate treatment in individual cases. Had the doctors treating Jaymee at Addenbrooke's and the Royal Marsden recommended treatment, it would have been given.
Mr. Harold Elletson: May I join the calls for an urgent debate on Britain's relations with Russia in view of the news of President Yeltsin's death and the fact that there is now a power vacuum at the heart of one of the world's super-powers? May I ask my right hon. Friend to take this opportunity to express the House's condolences to those members of the Russian Duma who were visiting the House and were in the Gallery when news of his death came through?
Mr. Newton: I can certainly accede to my hon. Friend's latter question. As for my hon. Friend's first question, I would not wish to add anything to what I said earlier.
Mr. Thomas Graham: Will the Leader of the House arrange for the appropriate Minister to make a statement on the barbaric killing of one of my constituents and the fact that the two killers received only a three-year sentence? Will he do so as a matter of urgency?
Mr. Newton: I shall bring the hon. Gentleman's request to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Home Secretary and, I suppose, that of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland and, indeed, that of my right hon. Friend the Attorney-General. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will bear his question in mind when the House comes to consider the recently announced proposals on sentencing policy.
Mr. Robert G. Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend arrange for a debate on membership of the House so that we have some idea of who is acceptable as a candidate for the various parties and who is not? Perhaps
1150
we would then have an explanation of why someone implicated in the murder of a 77-year-old woman in Johannesburg is acceptable as a Labour candidate but someone who holds the views of many Labour Members, especially those below the Gangway, is not.
Mr. Newton: I am left to answer a fair number of questions on behalf of the Government, but that appears to be a question directed at the Opposition. I am not even sure that the hon. Member for Dewsbury heard it, but I shall ensure that it is brought to her attention.
Mr. Mike Hall: I refer the Leader of the House to early-day motion 1486:
[That this House demands that the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry refers the impending merger of North West Water and Norweb to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission.]
Many hon. Members who represent the north-west are concerned that a takeover will have major implications such as job losses, service reductions and increasing prices. It is confirmation of a botched privatisation. Will he find Government time to debate this important issue so that we can ask the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to refer the takeover bid to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission? Quite straightforwardly, electricity and water are a lethal combination.
Mr. Newton: The proposed merger is of course subject to the usual procedures: the Director General of Fair Trading advises my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade, who then decides whether to make a reference to the MMC. In those circumstances, it would be quite difficult for my right hon. Friend to make further comment, but, as I have already said, he will be answering questions in the House next week.
Mr. John Marshall: Will my right hon. Friend arrange an early debate on local government in London? Is he aware that Hackney council has now been forced to reinstate its corruption-busting director of housing, who should never have been suspended? Does he not agree that Hackney, Lambeth and Islington are a good advertisement for what new Labour stands for?
Mr. Newton: They are certainly not a good advertisement for the Labour party.
Mr. Tam Dalyell: May I bite your hand, Madam Speaker, which has fed me on Wednesday mornings in the past in relation to Libyan sanctions, Iraq sanctions and Lockerbie? I refer to Thursday's business. Could we have a statement on the gradual erosion of Back Benchers' rights? What has happened to those Friday debates? The Minister with responsibility for science said rightly on Friday that we had had an excellent and useful debate, yet there are now very few Back-Bench debates. How by some alchemy do we no longer get second Adjournment debates? Frankly, on Wednesday mornings, the debates have become Speaker's choice rather than any pretence of balloting. The balloting motion is something of the past. Although often it could be very inconvenient. Everything now seems to be run for the convenience of the Front-Bench teams. Some Back Benchers think that the inconveniences of balloting ought to come back to us and we will be voting against the Jopling arrangements and all the works of the right hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling).
Mr. Newton: There appear to be one or two points that might be thought to be directed at you, Madam Speaker,

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rather than me. I have no doubt that you too will reflect on them. I would make three points. First, the changes have been made in response to recommendations from Select Committees, agreed by large majorities in the House. Secondly, in my judgment at least, the Wednesday morning debates have provided a welcome opportunity for many hon. Members to raise more subjects than they used to have the opportunity to do. Thirdly, elaborating on the second point, if the hon. Gentleman looks at the figures, he will find that infinitely more people have had a chance to raise subjects as a result of the changes than were ever able to under the previous arrangements.
Madam Speaker: Hear, hear.
Mr. Harry Greenway: It is so nice to hear you speak, Madam Speaker. Will my right hon. Friend arrange for a debate or a statement early next week on the projected strike on London Underground—which will so exacerbate the problems that my constituents have in getting to and from work and, indeed, cause the whole of London to suffer greatly—noting that the people concerned are asking for twice the pay increase which has already been accepted by two unions? Is not that a disgrace and very unfair to the people of London?
Mr. Newton: I very much share the hope that my hon. Friend by implication expressed—that the action will be reconsidered. I shall bring his request for a statement to the attention of my right hon. Friend. Perhaps I might also take the opportunity, Madam Speaker, to thank you warmly for giving me your support, just as I always seek to give you mine.
Rev. Martin Smyth: I thank the Leader of the House for giving us a forewarning of when the House may rise. I also thank him for the progress that has been made this year on dealing with Northern Ireland business in the House. Can the right hon. Gentleman assure us that further progress will be made in the forthcoming Session, and that we shall legislate more through Bills and less through Orders in Council?
Mr. Newton: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for acknowledging the progress made this year, and I hope that he will accept that, although I make no further specific commitments, what has happened this year is an earnest of my good faith in hoping to make further progress next Session.
Madam Speaker: Mr. Patrick Jenkin—[Interruption.] Sorry, Mr. Bernard Jenkin.
Mr. Tony Banks: He is the ugly one.
Mr. Bernard Jenkin: Will my right hon. Friend provide time for a debate that would graphically demonstrate that the Labour party is, always has been and always will be the party that it always was? I ask for a debate on the way in which the Labour party has handled social services in Essex. First it promised the earth, then it made a complete hash of the policy, and finally the Labour chairman is resigning his post because he wants nothing to do with the measures now needed to bring the policy back on course.
Mr. Newton: No debate is required to establish the first of my hon. Friend's propositions, which is clearly proved by almost every utterance from the Opposition Benches.
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As for my hon. Friend's second point, as his immediate constituency neighbour I am myself conscious of the problems. A most unhappy situation has arisen concerning Essex social services, and I hope that it will be properly and quickly dealt with. Finally, Madam Speaker, may I add that my hon. Friend's right honourable father might be rather disturbed by my hon. Friend's having been mistaken for him.
Mr. Dennis Skinner: As the hon. Member for Harrow, West (Mr. Hughes) has raised the idea of vetting parliamentary candidates, will the Leader of the House extend that idea and make a statement along those lines, so that every parliamentary candidate, from every party, will be vetted by a kind of toughened-up Nolan committee? In that case, no future candidates would be allowed to enter Parliament with conflicts of interest, or if they were making money on the side and had directorships coming out of their earholes, like the 200 current Tory Members of Parliament who have 550 directorships between them. If candidates were vetted in that way, the House of Commons would be a lot cleaner, and there would be no more conflicts of interest. The people outside would support that.
Mr. Newton: That sounds like a plea for a House of Commons consisting of 651 Bolsovers. The mind boggles.
Sir Patrick Cormack: As one who is not, I believe, an extreme right-winger, may I say how glad I was to hear what my right hon. Friend said about the Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill? Will he confirm that it has been dropped for this Session? And if that is the case, and we therefore have a little spare time, may we at least have a statement from the Foreign Secretary on Monday about our relations with Russia?
Mr. Newton: I note my hon. Friend's second suggestion and shall bring it to the attention of my right hon. and learned Friend. As for his first question, I confirm what I said. I do not have a script in front of me, but I think that that was to the effect that my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor was considering the arguments that have been put to him.
Mr. Paul Flynn: When can we have a debate on the need for electoral reform to control the total sums spent by political parties at national level during general elections? I have introduced two Bills that sought to make that change, and I argued that there was a grave danger that a malign millionaire could spend huge sums in support of an extremist cause. That has now happened. A millionaire is threatening to spend more than all the parties at the previous general election, in support of an extremist right-wing cause. Although the Government previously failed to support my two Bills, will they do so now to save their own skin, and for the sake of the integrity and good reputation of our electoral system?
Mr. Newton: I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but I do not really think that we need the help of his Bills to make sure that our sensible policies are put across to, and accepted by, the electorate.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Representing, as I do, Macclesfield in the county of Cheshire may I tell the Leader of the House that there is concern in all political parties in that county about the resources for

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education allocated under our standard spending assessment? We are not criticising the Government for singling out Cheshire as an example; we are, however, worried about the area cost adjustment, which does not properly take into account the costs incurred by Cheshire in providing a good quality of education.
Will my right hon. Friend find time, if not before we prorogue then perhaps early in the next Session, for a debate on this matter? In it, Members of Parliament who share the concerns of all political parties in Cheshire about the way the county is treated under the standard spending assessment formula can express their views.
Mr. Newton: There may be an opportunity for that point to be made in the debates on the Address which we would expect to follow the Queen's Speech on 15 November, or in the Budget debate that will come shortly afterwards. In any event I would anticipate a statement on local authority finance in the couple of days after the Budget.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours: May we have a statement on the responsibilities of the Deputy Prime Minister, who has defined them as: deregulation, the civil service, and market testing? While the Leader of the House is making up his mind on that debate, will he look at columns 15 to 18 in the Official Report of 16 October and at the nature of the questions that the Deputy Prime Minister was asked in Question Time that day? Will he go on to consider how he answered those questions, when he clearly took responsibility for our defence obligations under various treaties, the Labour party conference, the issue of social democracy and the European Community budget?
I believe that the Deputy Prime Minister is answering questions in the House which go wider than his brief, yet we are not allowed to table questions in the Table Office on those very matters—hence the need for a debate.
Mr. Newton: That is a pretty funny question from an hon. Member who displays an above average ability—I pay tribute to it—to use parliamentary procedures intended sometimes for one purpose to achieve other ends, and to ask supplementaries that do not always appear to be directly related to the principal question.
Mr. Peter Luff: Will my right hon. Friend find time for an urgent debate on the control of pollution? Does he realise that the surprising acquittal of Vitalscheme yesterday in Oxford Crown court means that that company's irresponsible pollution of the rivers of Shropshire and Worcestershire will go unpunished—pollution that caused such concern to my constituents last year? Do not water companies such as Severn-Trent deserve to be supported when they bring such prosecutions to protect our rivers?
Mr. Newton: I understand that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment is looking into
1154
the pollution of the River Tern as a matter of urgency, and is considering what lessons can be learnt for the regulatory regime and what action needs to be taken in this particular case. I shall of course bring my hon. Friend's further question to his attention.
Mr. John McFall: May I add to the remarks by the shadow Leader of the House about my Wild Mammals (Protection) Bill? The right hon. Gentleman is aware of the unanimous support for the Bill in this House. May I further advise him that this morning I held negotiations with the British Field Sports Society and others so that an agreed set of amendments can be tabled in the House of Lords and the Bill will have unanimous agreement there?
Given that we are just a whisker away from passing the Bill, may I ask the Leader of the House to meet me so that we can explore this issue and arrive at a constructive end for a Bill that has massive support in the country and in both Houses of Parliament?
Mr. Newton: I think I am right in saying that the proceedings on the Bill are continuing in another place. Therefore, I am not sure that it would be appropriate for me to undertake to have a meeting on the basis of speculation about what might happen. I must repeat the point that I made. It has been established over many years that the time available for private Members' Bills is set at the beginning of the parliamentary Session by a decision of the House. That remains the position. However, if only as a matter of courtesy and because I understand the hon. Gentleman's objectives, if he feels that it would be helpful for me to meet him against that background, I would be willing to do so.
Mr. Tony Banks: Thank you, Madam Speaker. Patience is rewarded. May we have a debate very shortly on the future use of county hall on the other side of the river? At the back we have Galliard Homes selling flats by means of misleading advertisements to potential purchasers in the far east. At the front, in the riverside block, we have the Shiriyama hotel—which has now given up the possibility of building a hotel—constructing a large aquarium and trying to sell on the shell of county hall to another organisation. Is that not a scandalous situation, brought about by the Government's ideological fixation with making sure that that building on a prime site opposite Parliament should be used for anything except that for which any decent Government would have ensured that it was used. No European Government would have treated such a prestigious building in the way that this shabby Government have treated it.
Mr. Newton: The hon. Gentleman would not expect me to accept, nor do I, his language, which I regard as overheated. I will bring the points that he has made, as far as they can be gleaned within the hyperbole, to the attention of my right hon. Friends.

Points of Order
4.6 pm
Mr. Max Madden: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I wish to raise a matter of which I have given you notice. A document has been passed to me headed "Parliamentary Question by Max Madden MP", signed by an entry clearance officer in the British high commission in Nigeria, dated 17 February 1995. On the second page, under the heading:
"Not for inclusion in draft reply",
considerable concern is expressed by the entry clearance officer that
"we may face criticism on the handling of this application."
It goes on to catalogue unacceptable delays and inexplicable failures of routine procedures. It speculates about action that I might take and that which may be taken by solicitors.
I shall certainly suggest to my constituent that he consider making a complaint of maladministration to the Parliamentary Commissioner, but I wonder whether you, Madam Speaker, would be prepared—clearly, you have not had the opportunity to consider the detail—to deprecate in general terms any actions that are taken by officials or Ministers which are clearly designed to conceal maladministration and to treat Members of Parliament, our constituents and the general public with clear and obvious contempt.
Madam Speaker: That is barely a point of order for me, but the hon. Gentleman was kind enough to give me just a little indication of what he might raise. He tells me that he was concerned about the advice given by officials to Ministers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in drafting the reply to a parliamentary question. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Chair has no responsibility for ministerial answers to questions, still less for officials' advice to Ministers. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will pursue the matter with the Minister involved. As I said, it is barely a point of order, but the point that he has brought to the attention of the House today is very revealing.
Sir Patrick Cormack: On a point of order, Madam Speaker. I have just been out to check the tape, following the exchanges that took place earlier. It would appear from the tape that at 4 pm President Yeltsin was alive.
Madam Speaker: I am sure that the House is pleased to have that news. We are always too much interested in bad news. It is nice to have a little good news for a change.

BILL PRESENTED
  NORTHERN IRELAND (REMISSION OF SENTENCES)
  Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Secretary Howard, Mr. Secretary Forsyth and Sir John Wheeler, presented a Bill to provide for the release on licence of persons serving sentences to which section 14 of the Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act 1991 applies; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed. [Bill 183.]
Orders of the Day
  Mental Health (Patients in the Community) Bill [Lords]
  As amended (in the Standing Committee), considered
New clause 1

  PATIENTS DISCHARGED AFTER SENTENCES OF IMPRISONMENT
  `After section 49 of the Mental Health Act 1983 there shall be inserted the following section—
  "Patients discharged after sentences of imprisonment
  49A. Where a patient has been admitted to a hospital under the provisions of sections 47 or 49 above, discharge shall only take place on the signed assent of the responsible medical officer after consultation with persons nominated by each statutory body responsible for after-care.".'.—[Mr. Timms.]
  Brought up, and read the First time
  4.9 pm
  Mr. Stephen Timms: I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
  The new clause arises from an appalling incident in Newham on 27 July 1994, when Mr. Bryan Bennett, a constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing)—who is unable to be in the Chamber this afternoon—and a user of a social services day centre was tragically killed by another user, Mr. Stephen Laudat, just a few months after the latter's discharge from psychiatric treatment at Kneesworth hospital.
  Mr. Laudat pleaded guilty on the ground of diminished responsibility and was committed by the central criminal court to an indefinite period of treatment in Rampton hospital in December 1994.
  The district health authority and the local council jointly commissioned an independent review of the circumstances surrounding the tragedy in January 1995, under the chairmanship of Mr. Len Woodley QC. That inquiry reported last month. The Minister will be aware that the Woodley report is sharply critical of the Bill. It states:
  "it is difficult to imagine how the proposed legislation would have enhanced Stephen Laudat's care or prevented the death of Mr. Bennett."
  It says that its findings do not support the enactment of the Bill and that the key lies in better resourcing of community care—a point to which I shall return if I am able to on Third Reading later today.
  The new clause relates to one aspect of the Laudat case with which the Bill does not deal. There is immense concern in Newham, especially among the relatives of the man who died, naturally, about how Mr. Laudat came to be released from Kneesworth hospital in December 1993, just seven months before the killing. The Woodley report shows that the hospital had great concerns about him immediately before he was released. There was a series of difficult incidents in October and November 1993 and the ward manager wrote, prior to an after-care planning meeting on 25 November, that Mr. Laudat was subject to the
  "potential and threat of violence to both males and females",

  1157
  and that he was
  "vulnerable and a threat to himself and others".
  Mr. Laudat's prison sentence—the reason for his detention in the first place—meant that he could be released on 6 December 1993. At the meeting on 25 November, it was noted that there were insufficient grounds to warrant his detention beyond the end of the restriction order on 6 December and that he had, therefore, to be released.
  That is the matter that has so deeply concerned myself and my hon. Friends the Members for Newham, South and for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) and which lead to the drafting of the new clause. Mr. Laudat was released because his prison sentence expired and not because anyone had positively concluded that he was ready to re-enter the community. The limited grounds in the Mental Health Act 1983 under which it would have been possible to detain Mr. Laudat further were felt not to have been complied with, so it was felt that there was no alternative but to release him, despite the severe misgivings of those responsible for his care. The truth is that he should not have been released.
  The new clause shifts the onus, so that in such circumstances discharge could take place only on the explicit authority of a medical officer and not merely because the prison sentence had expired, as in the case described in the Woodley report. The length of the sentence clearly bore no relation to the state of Mr. Laudat's health.
  Under the new clause, the patient would be released only if his doctor was positively satisfied that he was not a danger to himself or others. If it had been enacted prior to December 1993, it is likely that my hon. Friend's constituent would be alive today. I hope that the Minister will be able to accept it, to prevent similar tragic incidents.
  Ms Tessa Jowell: I commend my hon. Friends the Members for Newham, North-East (Mr. Timms) and for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) for tabling the new clause. We believe that it should be supported.
  Although such patients will be entitled, when discharged, to after-care under section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983, there is no legal requirement in that section to consult prior to discharge and on many occasions, as my hon. Friend made clear, discharge is poorly, if at all, planned and co-ordinated. We believe that new clause 1 is a practical way of addressing those concerns.
  4.15 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Mr. John Bowis): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Newham, North-East (Mr. Timms) for bringing the matter forward. The hon. Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) did me the courtesy of writing to explain that he could not be here, but that his hon. Friends the Members for Newham, North-East and for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks) would be here to support new clause 1.
  I understand well the concern that lies behind new clause 1 following the Woodley inquiry into the care of Stephen Laudat. However, the present wording of the
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  Mental Health Act 1983 already meets the aims of the new clause, while the introduction of supervised discharge will of course strengthen the provisions.
  The Home Secretary may direct that a patient be transferred from prison to hospital; he may also direct that a patient should be subject to special restrictions. The patient may not then be discharged, given leave of absence or transferred to another hospital without the consent of the Home Secretary. The issue that the new clause seeks to address arises at the point when the prison sentence of a patient in hospital expires. At that point, the restrictions exercised by the Home Secretary also expire. That does not mean that the patient must then be discharged immediately. The patient remains liable to be detained for a further six months unless a positive decision is taken to discharge him or her.
  At the end of the six months, the responsible medical officer must review the case and the detention may then continue if the renewal conditions in section 20 of the Mental Health Act 1983 are met. When the patient is eventually discharged, he or she is subject to section 117 in the same way as anyone else who has been detained for treatment under the Act; that is, the relevant health and local authorities are obliged to provide after-care services for as long as the patient needs them.
  Under the terms of the Bill, as soon as the restriction direction has lapsed, it is open to the responsible medical officer to make a supervision application if, and only if, he or she is satisfied that the after-care arrangements are agreed and in place. New clause 1 would treat transferred prisoners differently from those admitted directly under hospital orders made by the courts. I do not think that that is desirable or necessary and I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel able to withdraw the new clause.
  Mr. Timms: I am disappointed that the Minister has not accepted the new clause, but I am encouraged by what he said. I hope that he is right that the arrangements will ensure that such incidents do not take place in future. In the light of what the Minister said, I shall not seek to press the new clause to a vote and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
  Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn

Clause 1

  AFTER-CARE UNDER SUPERVISION
  Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I beg to move amendment No. 1, in page 2, line 25, at end insert—
  '(7A) If, on the date when a patient ceases to be liable to be detained in a hospital under this Part of this Act, a supervision application has been made in respect of him but the Health Authority have not yet accepted the application, his liability to be so detained shall continue—

  (a) until the end of the period of three months commencing with that date, or

  (b) until the Authority either accept or refuse the application whichever is the earlier.'.

  The amendment aims to press the Government to reconsider the issue with which it deals, which has run through the proceedings on the Bill all the way through from the House of Lords.
  As a Scottish Member, I am entitled to ask the Government to reconsider because clause 4(1), which inserts a section 35A(6) into the Mental Health (Scotland)

  1159
  Act 1984, makes Scottish provisions precisely like those in the amendment. Briefly stated, the objective of the amendment is to prevent patients from being able to walk straight out of hospital just when attempts are being made to arrange their supervised discharge. That is balanced by providing that patients can be detained for only three months so that they cannot be detained for an indeterminate or excessive period.
  The amendment is supported by experience especially in respect of the treatment of schizophrenics. I fully understand the Government's problem in getting the legislative balance right in dealing with schizophrenia, which can cause people to be so ill that they act completely irrationally, as opposed to what I might call normal mental illness. It is difficult to legislate for both sets of patients.
  I understand, too, that there are potential civil liberties arguments, as there always are when we deny people their liberty, even for a determined period of three months. I am not persuaded by the Government's position as stated by the Minister in the other place at the beginning of the Bill's passage, when it was suggested that there would be a gap in the procedure. The Government seemed to accept that there would be a gap and took the view that the patient would be much more likely to stay as a voluntary patient in those circumstances. I wish that I had that confidence. Some schizophrenic patients—perhaps only a small number—might simply go walkabout, which would disrupt the after-care package being put in place.
  I hate to be superior, but we tend to do things better in Scotland. If the provision is good enough for Scotland, why should not it be in the English part of the Bill?
  Mr. David Atkinson: I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will respond positively to the amendment because the Bill presupposes that all the appropriate accommodation and after-care arrangements for the patient will have been put in place by the time his or her detention period is over and that, if they have not, the patient will accept a continuation of his detention voluntarily until they have. As the National Schizophrenia Fellowship has repeatedly pointed out, that flies in the face of experience and reality. Appropriate accommodation is not always in place, sometimes for the best of reasons.
  Nevertheless, patients can walk out, claiming their rights under the Bill, and then disappear through the safety net. That is of great concern to us. The National Schizophrenia Fellowship has suggested that it is better to keep the stable door bolted until we can be assured that proper after-care and accommodation are in place before the release of patients. I hope that my hon. Friend will respond positively to the amendment.
  Mr. Bowis: I am grateful to the hon. Member for Roxburgh and Berwickshire (Mr. Kirkwood) for raising this issue and to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) for bringing the expertise of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship to bear on this point. I hope that I can fill the gap for the hon. Gentleman and, in so doing, reply positively to my hon. Friend.
  As the hon. Gentleman said, the amendment was tabled in the light of the Scottish provisions, under which the sheriff may defer the making of a community care order until he is satisfied about the after-care and medical services to be provided. That reflects the concern, which
  1160
  has been expressed on both sides of the House, about what might happen if the authority to detain a patient were about to expire for whatever reason—possibly because the after-care services that the patient needed were not yet in place—and the health authority had not yet accepted the supervision application.
  However, the way in which the provisions for supervised discharge have been framed for England and Wales makes the amendment unnecessary. First, the detailed requirements for consultation by the responsible medical officer with all those concerned are designed to ensure that a supervision application is made only once all necessary preparations are in place. The requirement for the health authority to consult the local authority before it accepts the application provides a double check on that, and there should be no reason to delay acceptance of the application once consultation has been completed.
  However, in the unlikely event of a delay for some unforeseen reason, I commend to the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend section 20 of the Mental Health Act 1983. The renewal provisions of that section would remain available to enable a patient's detention in hospital to be renewed for as long as necessary. The existing provision is therefore adequate for that purpose without requiring a new procedure for renewing detention to be included in the Bill. The current measures add to that provision. I hope that the hon. Gentleman accepts the existence of that basic assurance and I invite him to withdraw the amendment.
  Mr. Kirkwood: I think that I am reassured by that reply. I know the Minister well enough to know that he will monitor this matter carefully. If there are experiences like those that have been raised as genuine and legitimate concerns, particularly at the hands of schizophrenic patients, I hope that he will make it his business to ensure that any gaps that remain despite what he has said are closed at some stage in the future.
  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn
  Mr. Bowis: I beg to move amendment No. 13, in page 3, line 29, leave out
  `unless the patient has otherwise requested,'.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Geoffrey Lofthouse): With this, it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 14 to 24.
  Mr. Bowis: The amendments relate to the rights of a patient's nearest relative to be consulted and the position that arises when a patient objects. They fulfil the commitment that I gave in Committee to my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson), for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall) and for Sevenoaks (Mr. Wolfson) and to the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) to table amendments to provide for that objection to be overridden in certain circumstances.
  The amendments define two tests that must be satisfied if a patient's objection is to be overridden. First, he or she must have a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour towards others. Secondly, the responsible medical officer must believe that it is appropriate for the nearest relative to be consulted.

  1161
  I am sure that all hon. Members on both sides of the House will understand that, in those amendments, we have found it necessary to walk a tightrope in maintaining a balance between all the different interests. I believe that the balance that we have struck is the right one.
  I commend those amendments to the House.
  Mr. Nicholas Brown: The Minister is right; he is walking a tightrope. Despite his build—and perhaps my build as well—he appears to have made a successful job of it.
  The amendments were a Government response to requests from my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe) and Conservative Members to reconsider that aspect. The Government have tabled amendments relating to the rights of patients to object to their responsible medical officer consulting a nearest relative about placing the patient on a supervision order. As the Bill stands, the patient has the right to object to such consultations.
  I believe that we all understand why, in normal circumstances—inasmuch as any of those circumstances may be described as normal—the patient should have the right to object to such consultations. However, the amendments mean that the patient loses his right to object to the consultation if he has a history of violence or threatening behaviour—and that is where the Minister says that he is walking a tightrope.
  The purpose of the amendments is to strike a balance between the reasonable rights of the patient and the rights of relatives and close family. The amendments are intended to serve as protection for the families of violent patients. They make it less likely that a potentially violent patient can be discharged under supervision without his family being consulted and warned.
  The Government probably have achieved the right balance, and I support the amendments.
  Mr. David Atkinson: I thank my hon. Friend the Minister for responding so positively to the anxieties of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship about the amendments, and I thank our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland for the amendments that are the equivalent for Scotland in those respects. I welcome the amendments wholeheartedly, and once again thank my hon. Friend, for his positive response in listening to us.
  Amendment agreed to
  Amendment made: No. 14, in page 3, line 36, at end insert—
  '(2A) Where the patient has requested that paragraph (b) of subsection (2) above should not apply, that paragraph shall not apply unless—

  (a) the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour towards others, and

  (b) the responsible medical officer considers that it is appropriate for steps such as are mentioned in that paragraph to be taken!.—[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]

  Ms Jowell: I beg to move amendment No. 45, in page 7, line 12, leave out lines 12 to 16.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 46, in page 7, line 12, leave out
  1162
  'A patient subject to after-care under supervision may'
  and insert
  'An application for a patient subject to after-care under supervision to be taken and conveyed (in this Act referred to as a "conveyance application") duly completed in accordance with subsection (4A) below, shall be sufficient authority for the patient to'.
  No. 47, in page 7, line 16, at end insert—
  '(4A) A conveyance application may be made by the supervisor in respect of a patient subject to after-care under supervision, on the grounds that—

  (a) he continues to suffer from a mental disorder, being mental illness, severe mental impairment, psychopathic disorder, or mental impairment, and

  (b) it is necessary for the health and safety of the patient or for the protection of others that he should be taken and conveyed in accordance with subsection (4) above.

  (4B) A conveyance application shall be made to the Health Authority which accepted the supervision application in respect of the patient.'.
  Ms Jowell: These amendments deal with the take and convey powers that the Bill will give to those responsible for supervision or anyone who is nominated by the supervisor. In our opinion, they are the changes in the law that are most likely to create serious difficulties.
  Amendment No. 45 removes the new powers altogether from the Bill. The aftercare organisations responsible for supervision and care would still be able to formulate and impose requirements on the person subject to supervision and would have to conduct a review if the person failed or neglected to comply with them. However, the supervisor would not be able to exercise physical force in seeking compliance. That is not to say that community psychiatric nurses, social workers and other people who will be involved in supervision would be left without legal powers to tackle problems when they occur.
  One can imagine the circumstances in which the new power may have to be used. For example, the person under supervision may be behaving in such a way that the supervisor believes that an urgent assessment is required; or the person may be preventing access to their home, one of the most common difficulties in offering support to seriously mentally ill people in the community.
  Very occasionally, the person's behaviour may be so disturbed as to pose an immediate threat to their own safety or to that of other people or property.
  In each of those situations, ample legal powers already exist and are routinely used by those who are allowed to do so in order to deal with the matter. Assessments are undertaken, if necessary, after a social worker has obtained a warrant requiring a person to give him and the doctor access. The Mental Health Act 1983 and other laws clearly allow professionals to intervene when behaviour is so disturbed as to justify the need for further assessment or to restrain violent or threatening behaviour.
  High-quality supervision and support for mentally ill people in the community depends for their effectiveness not on new coercive legal powers, but on the appropriate use of existing powers and the more effective deployment of professional resources and services for people needing intensive support and help. If the essential success of after-care plans relies on the agreement and consent of the patient and his or her partnership with the professional team, the Minister must tell us how he justifies the creation of new powers that are so controversial with

  1163
  those who will be called on to implement them and so potentially damaging to the relationships that professionals are to have with those in their care.
  4.30 pm
  Let us consider what the Minister is proposing in the Bill. He has not drafted the power so that the supervisor can compel the patient to submit to treatment, occupation, education or training—if one could even contemplate the last two options being possible in practice. The power does not give the supervisor the right to use force to enter premises, nor can the supervisor detain the patient after he or she has been conveyed. Even doctors who have called for new powers find that difficult to understand.
  Professor Chris Thomson, registrar of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, has written:
  "To many psychiatrists and others this is the worst of both worlds. The mentally ill would be subject to the power of 'arrest' to no apparent purpose. Psychiatrists remain deeply sceptical and believe that the Bill will not provide the extra public safety which the Government is hoping for."
  We would not support moves to compel treatment on patients in the community and we believe that the measure may do harm even if it remains largely unused. That harm will be greater than any benefit that may accrue from having this power on the statute book.
  One of the most harmful effects may be to encourage poor professional practice. As I think we all accept, good community care depends on high quality relationships, built on trust, confidence and sensitivity to a person's individual needs and circumstances. The threat or use of force can offer the short cut of gaining a person's compliance with a plan or programme. In place of the careful and diligent development of an effective relationship with the patient, a supervisor can merely call in aid his or her power to take and convey or threaten to get the police in order to use it. We are sure that that will damage community care—driving people from services rather than encouraging them to use them, especially if, as will be likely, supervisors try to get the police involved in using coercion rather than use it themselves. Many professionals are unhappy about the prospect of having these powers. Therefore, the provision may be irrelevant because, as I have said, it may simply not be used.
  We recognise that the House may not be persuaded that the powers should be removed from the Bill. The House may consider it possible to regulate their use in order to deal with the concerns that I have outlined. We have also tabled a compromise amendment. Amendments Nos. 46 and 47 preserve the powers, but require those who wish to use them, first, to submit to the health authority which accepted the supervision a written application setting out the grounds.
  Those grounds require the supervisor to confirm that the person is still suffering from a mental disorder within the meaning of the Act and that the use of the power to take and convey is necessary, not just beneficial or convenient, for the sake of the patient's health and safety and for the protection of others. The amendment therefore links the use of the power to some threat to patients' health or risk to their or other's safety.
  1164
  We believe that the power can be justified only when it is subjected to such clear and explicit regulation. It is only in those circumstances that professionals and patients will be able to see the reason for using the power and any justification there may be for it.
  Mr. Kevin Hughes: I shall be brief in my remarks today as the points were explored in great depth on Second Reading and in Committee. I welcome the fact that the Government have decided to put the issues regarding the provision of care for the mentally ill on the agenda. However, I must also voice my concerns about the legislation that is now before Parliament.
  The Government claim that the Mental Health (Patients in the Community) Bill is "uncontroversial", but my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell) has pointed out that that is certainly not so. The Government have failed completely to listen to the widespread opposition to their proposals. We know that leading health professionals and patient organisations are united in their opposition to the Bill. They are particularly concerned about the proposed power to take and convey people with mental illness to places of treatment. Therefore, I support the amendments moved by my hon. Friend that would remove that power from the Bill.
  First, the proposal is an affront to civil liberties and we covered that ground in Committee. The Bill provides no restrictions on who can exercise the power to take and convey and there is no requirement to inform the patient of the reasons for its use. The Bill allows the patient's supervisor to nominate any other person or agency to take and convey the patient. The supervisor does not have to obtain any additional authority before delegating that power and there are no safeguards to protect the person being conveyed or the person effecting the conveyance.
  Secondly, I question the workability of the proposal. The Bill proposes that patients be taken and conveyed to a specified place, but it does not suggest what should happen to patients once they have been taken and conveyed. It is difficult to see how an unwilling patient could be forced to take part in activities such as education and training, even if that patient has been successfully taken and conveyed to a specified place.
  The proposal seeks to compel patients to use services but, amazingly, it provides no guarantee that those services will be provided. The proposal threatens to damage the relationship of trust between patient and supervisor and there are concerns that, as a result of the Bill, patients in the community will be discouraged from remaining in contact with the mental health services.
  Many social workers and community psychiatric nurses are not keen to take on the new power as they believe that it could put them at risk from potentially violent patients. Some professionals have said that they would not use any of the Bill's provisions—which they regard as unnecessary—as they believe that the Mental Health Act 1983 is adequate. Leading mental health professionals have expressed strong reservations about the proposals on take and convey. My hon. Friend has quoted the remarks of Professor Chris Thomson, registrar of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. It is worth repeating, and I hope that the Minister will listen:
  "To many psychiatrists and others this is the worst of both worlds. The mentally ill would be subject to the power of 'arrest' to no apparent purpose."

  1165
  That concern is shared by many people who work daily with the mentally ill. It is ridiculous for the Government to seek to improve the provision of care for the mentally ill without heeding the advice of the professionals who daily provide that care.
  The Bill fails to address the concerns of the caring professions, who are anxious that treatment for the mentally ill should be properly addressed and funded. The Bill's provisions do not address long-term issues but are a quick fix aimed at mending public opinion rather than mending an outmoded and underfunded system.
  I hope that the Government have noted past debates and those today, will listen to health professions, and will accept the amendments, so that we may all be united in getting behind better services for the mentally ill.
  Mr. David Nicholson: I hope that I have the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) in asking my hon. Friend the Minister to resist the amendments. It is important that this difficult and sensitive subject should be explored at this stage of the Bill and the speeches have been helpful, but my hon. Friend will be aware that the National Schizophrenia Fellowship has briefed us to resist the amendments. The fellowship is not concerned about this particular power. In fact, the NSF thinks that it is sometimes necessary to use that power. Patients found wandering in the streets need to be returned to their accommodation. When offered transport by authorised staff, they are willing to accept it.
  In addition to the NSF's representations, I and other hon. Members are aware of individual episodes in our constituencies. Such a safeguard is necessary for people to accept and support the care in the community measures that the Government have introduced, with widespread support, in recent years. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend that he resists the amendments.
  Mr. Bowls: The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) invited me to join him on the high wire. Although we paled at the thought of the impact on the Chamber, that summed up the balance that we are seeking to achieve. That was evident even on the other side of the House. The hon. Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell) said that the 1983 Act was adequate, while the hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) said that the system was outmoded. Somewhere in the middle is the need to improve the system all the time, for the benefit of patients and the whole community.
  When the Law Commission's report on mentally incapacitated adults was published, it looked to extend the power to convey to guardianship, which the commission said was the unanimous view of everyone that it consulted. We heard a quote from the Royal College of Psychiatrists, but I could quote another report that states exactly the opposite—that the Government are not going far enough. That message has also come from the British Medical Association, and the view of the National Schizophrenia Fellowship suggested that the amendment should be resisted.
  The Labour party must look at its own policy. In the other place, Labour thought that the power to convey was so good that it should be extended to guardianship, yet Labour Members here believe that that power should not apply to anyone. They must explain to the public why that
  1166
  strengthening of care and support for severely mentally ill people and protection for the community is not something that they are prepared to accept. I believe that the public support our proposal, which is in the interests of patients.
  4.45 pm
  I will seek to reunite the hon. Members for Doncaster, North and for Dulwich. We have made it clear that supervised discharge will work largely on the basis of co-operation between all concerned. We therefore see the power to convey a patient being used only rarely—for example, when he or she is temporarily unco-operative, which point was forcefully made by my hon. Friend and the NSF.
  The principle of a power to convey is already present in the Mental Health Act 1983 when a patient has to be taken to hospital for treatment or assessment. That may be valuable in helping to resolve a temporary crisis. It is limited in nature and provides a halfway house before return to hospital is considered. If there were no power to convey, the care team would be in the position of needing to consider readmission to hospital on every occasion that a patient was unwilling to co-operate with the arrangements for his or her aftercare.
  The starting point for the Bill is that for this particular group of patients, the care programme approach is not enough and needs a degree of legal underpinning to make it effective. It is a matter of balance, and I believe that the Bill has the overall balance right.
  The argument that the power to convey in some way contravenes basic human rights ignores the point that in the absence of supervised discharge, the patient might have had to continue being detained in hospital. In that case, the overall effect of supervised discharge is to enable someone to enjoy a greater measure of freedom—even though subject to some constraints—than would have been possible in its absence.
  Amendments 46 and 47 would require the supervisor to make a "conveyance application" to the health authority before the power was used but the whole point about the provision is that it is likely to be needed in an emergency, to enable a patient to be removed urgently from a situation that may present a danger to him or herself or to other people—for example, as a result of drinking. The supervisor, or someone that he or she has authorised, needs the power to ensure that effective action can be taken in such a case. Requiring the supervisor to apply to the health authority would defeat the purpose of the provision.
  This reserve power is designed to help ensure that the patient will receive and participate in the aftercare services that he or she needs. As the NSF said, it could defuse a crisis and persuade previously resisting patients that it would make sense if they agreed to go back home or to see a doctor or psychiatric nurse. It clearly involves less restriction of a patient than the alternative of considering readmission to hospital when the patient ceases to co-operate in the delivery of aftercare services. In that spirit, I hope that the hon. Member for Dulwich will withdraw her amendment.
  Ms Jowell: I want to make it clear that there is no dispute between myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes). My point was that existing powers are adequate to cover take-and-convey as the Minister intends. I was not making the point that

  1167
  existing legislation is adequate. There is increasingly urgent need for a review of the 1983 Act, to address properly the dramatic and correct shift in the last 12 years in the care and treatment of people suffering from mental illness, from hospitals to the community.
  The Minister attempted to confuse events in the other place. My noble Friends were seeking to draw out the distinction between the power to take and convey and the power of guardianship. They appear almost identical, apart from the use of coercion—guardianship is not a coercive power.
  The Minister described the provision as a reserve power that will be used only rarely. The power might be helpful where a seriously ill individual has stopped taking his or her medication and begins to deteriorate—becoming disturbed and disruptive and causing concern to their family, people around them and professionals. If the Minister envisages take-and-convey being used in such circumstances, I would insist that adequate powers are already available in the 1983 Act. Indeed, the circumstances in which the reserve power is likely to be needed are precisely those in which the individual is likely to need to be taken to hospital for assessment and, possibly, treatment. We are not talking about a draconian and coercive power to take someone to a day centre, simply because they choose not to go; at any rate, I sincerely hope that that is not what is being proposed.
  Although I am naturally disappointed that the Minister is not prepared to accept even the compromise proposals, we shall not press the amendment to a vote. We believe that the House will wish to return to these matters at a future date, when a Labour Government will conduct a thoroughgoing review of the Mental Health Act 1983.
  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
  Amendments made: No. 15, in page 8, line 7, after `patient' insert
  `who is (or is to be)'.
  No. 16, in page 8, line 21, leave out
  `unless the patient has otherwise requested,'.
  No. 17, in page 8, line 27, at end insert—
  '(6A) Where the patient has requested that paragraph (c) of subsection (6) above should not apply, that paragraph shall not apply unless—

  (a) the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour towards others, and

  (b) the community responsible medical officer (or the person who is to be the community responsible medical officer) considers that it is appropriate for steps such as are mentioned in that paragraph to be taken.'.

  No. 18, in page 8, line 28, leave out ', after such consultation,'.
  No. 19, in page 11, line 12, leave out
  `except where the patient has otherwise requested,'.
  No. 20, in page 11, line 18, at end insert—
  '(5A) Where the patient has requested that paragraph (b) of subsection (5) above should not apply, that paragraph shall not apply unless—

  (a) the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour towards others, and

  (b) the community responsible medical officer considers that it is appropriate for steps such as are mentioned in that paragraph to be taken.'.

  No. 21, in page 12, line 22, leave out
  `unless the patient has otherwise requested,'.
  No. 22, in page 12, line 29, at end insert—
  '(3A) Where the patient has requested that paragraph (b) of subsection (3) above should not apply, that paragraph shall not apply unless—

  (a) the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour towards others, and

  (b) the community responsible medical officer considers that it is appropriate for steps such as are mentioned in that paragraph to be taken.'.

  No. 23, in page 12, line 44, leave out
  `unless the patient otherwise requests,'.
  No. 24, in page 12, line 48, at end insert—
  '(6) Where the patient has requested that paragraph (c) of subsection (5) above should not apply, that paragraph shall not apply unless subsection (3)(b) above applied in his case by virtue of subsection (3A) above.'.—[Mr. Dorrell.]

Clause 4

  COMMUNITY CARE ORDERS
  Mr. John McAllion: I beg to move amendment No. 2, in page 18, line 26, leave out from '35A.—(1)' to 'the' in line 28 and insert
  `Where a patient has attained the age of 16 years'.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments: No. 3, in page 18, line 39, at end insert 'and
  (c) a community care assessment under section 12A of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 (in this Act referred to as a "community care assessment").'.
  No. 4, in page 19, line 2, after 'appropriate', insert
  'to ensure that a patient receives such medical treatment, after-care services and a community care assessment'.
  No. 5, in page 19, line 22, after 'until', insert
  `a community care assessment of the patient has been carried out and'.
  No. 8, in page 21, line 7, at end add ';and
  (c) the community care assessment of the patient.'.
  No. 11, in page 22, line 14, after 'circumstances', insert
  `and his community care assessment'.
  Mr. McAllion: The amendments were inspired by the Law Society of Scotland and cover a range of issues connected with the Bill's Scottish clauses.
  Amendment No. 2 would ensure that only people over the age of 16 could be subject to community care orders. Let me explain why we consider that limitation necessary. The English and Welsh clauses limit supervised discharge to young people who have attained the age of 16, because it is felt that young people would be more appropriately dealt with under the Children Act 1989. If that is the Government's view in respect of young people in England and Wales, surely they should take the same attitude to young people in Scotland.
  The Minister will know that a young person can be subject to compulsory detention under the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1984, which does not set an age limit. Although it is fairly rare for a young person to be compulsorily detained in hospital, it does occasionally happen in Scotland. The amendment simply covers circumstances in which a young person is discharged from hospital to live in the community.

  1169
  It is suggested that, if further powers are to be taken to control the young person's life in the community, doctors should involve the expertise of the reporter and the children's panel in Scotland, as they would more appropriately control and supervise the lives of such young people. They certainly have the experience and the procedures to consider young people's needs. Surely it is better to involve them than to use the sheriff court procedure.
  As the Minister will know, the Children (Scotland) Act 1995 provides that those responsible for a young person's welfare may apply to the sheriff for a supervision order for a child in need of extra care. Among the conditions that can then be imposed are conditions relating to residence and medical treatment. Those are precisely the kind of matters that might be included in a community care order; however, it would be preferable to use a supervision order, because that too involves the expertise of the reporter and the children's panel.
  On an allied matter, may I remind the Minister of an incident that took place in Glasgow in 1994 and led to the death of a police constable? Philip McFadden was subsequently committed to the State hospital in Carstairs. The Minister will be aware that the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland had conducted an inquiry into the care and treatment of Philip McFadden before the incident took place. Has there been any progress with that inquiry?
  Amendment No. 3 is intended to provide for a person who is subject to a community care order to have a full community care assessment under the National Health Service and Community.Care Act 1990. It would ensure that such a person received the benefits of the new community care system of assessment and care management under the care programme approach, and would make it clear that such an assessment should be carried out before the granting of the community care order. We believe that the sheriff should have the benefit of seeing the full assessment before granting such an order.
  Amendment No. 4 attempts to ensure that the sheriff does not impose conditions on the community care order that are not relevant to the main aims of that order. The Minister will be aware that the provisions in clause 4 which apply to Scotland are very different from those that apply to the supervised discharge procedures proposed for England. Under the English procedures, the special medical officer has the power to say where the patient should reside, what day facilities he or she should use and whether access to medical and social work personnel will be necessary. Those procedures also include the controversial power to convey the patient to treatment, which was mentioned when we discussed the earlier group of amendments.
  We cannot conceive that the sheriff would have it in mind to include in the order any additional powers, but we consider it essential for the legislation to make very clear what the Government have in mind. Is it proposed, for example, that the controversial power to convey could be introduced in Scotland under the sheriff court procedure? Could patients in Scotland be conveyed against their will to day-care and medical facilities? Those who work in the field in Scotland are interested to know exactly what the Government intend.
  1170
  Amendment No. 5 is designed to ensure that the sheriff has the power to defer making an order until he is satisfied that the patient's community care needs have been assessed. Again, we believe that the sheriff should have the benefit of seeing a full community care assessment of the patient before making an order.
  Amendment No. 8 is linked to, and consequential on, amendment No. 2. It is simply an attempt to bring the proposed new system into line with community care procedures now current in Scotland. It would ensure that the person considering whether to make a community care order would consider the information about the patient's needs as set out in his formal community care assessment. Amendment No. 11 is simply consequential on amendment No. 2.
  Mr. George Foulkes: I am grateful for the opportunity to speak, particularly because the report mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion)— the report of the inquiry conducted by the Mental Welfare Commission for Scotland into the care and treatment of Philip McFadden—was published by the Scottish Office today. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for sending me a copy of the report earlier this week: I have now had time to read it in some detail.
  With the permission of the Scottish Office, I sent a copy of the report to the parents of the late Police Constable Lewis Fulton. Lewis and Gette Fulton, who are constituents of mine, bore their tragic and unnecessary loss with great fortitude and dignity. I am happy to place that on record.
  As I am sure the Minister would admit, the report is quite worrying. I shall deal with two issues arising from it which relate to today's debate. First, there is the question of media coverage of such incidents. Section 7 of the report, on page 23, is very critical of the coverage by the Daily Record, which featured the headline
  "Schizo can't be tried for cop killing",
  and an article that described Philip McFadden as a madman. The same issue contained the headline
  "Teenage schizo can't face trial, but judge orders 'Keep this madman in Carstairs'".
  I entirely agree with the comment of the Mental Welfare Commission:
  "Press coverage is very important, because it forms a basis for the public perception of events. The sort of pejorative language used by the Daily Record is deplorable and does not assist an intelligent debate about the problems of community care."
  We need, above all, an intelligent debate. This is a very difficult issue, and if newspapers—particularly tabloid newspapers—employ such expressions, we shall not have that intelligent debate.
  I shall deal with another section of the report at slightly more length—although not in extenso, hon. Members will be pleased to hear. It relates to the position when Philip McFadden was discharged from the psychiatric hospital. When he was in the hospital, he had the support and help of a very experienced consultant psychiatrist, Dr. McCabe—who comes out of the report very well—and a range of specialist support. That support was expensive—rightly so—but it was immediately available, and provided excellent support for a very disturbed young man at a very difficult time. When Mr. McFadden moved out into the community—this point relates to community care—the general practitioner was his first line of support.

  1171
  We all accept that GPs should be the first line of support. GPs are anxious to remind us that people cannot be referred to consultants, that people cannot get any other kind of medical treatment and that they must go to their GP. They demand the right to be the primary support in medical care, but in so being they have some responsibilities to society and, above all, to their patients.
  When Philip McFadden's mother was in desperate need of urgent support and assistance she rightly called her GP. The Minister will confirm, however, that for a substantial period that distraught lady could not get past the GP's receptionist. I have heard of many instances where anxious and desperate patients or their relatives have been fobbed off by receptionists. That is what happened in this case.
  Eventually, after persisting, and with the help of Rosemary Fitch—a psychiatric nurse who comes out very well in the report—she got through but found that not one GP was available in the practice. It is astonishing that this big, busy practice in Glasgow had not one GP available to deal with the mother of a psychiatric patient. By this time, Philip McFadden was wielding a knife and threatening people in the family.
  5 pm
  When Philip McFadden's mother eventually got through to the doctor some time later, he refused to attend. I know of incidents in Scotland where GPs have been assaulted, and we have to take account of that, but this was a difficult situation, and the report says that the doctor should have contacted the police and gone with them so that there was medical and police assistance simultaneously. That was not done in this case. Instead, a young police constable went along on his own and was stabbed to death. In my view, it happened because the system, under which GPs give immediate support to people like Philip McFadden's mother, broke down.
  That is why I am asking the Minister to review the role and responsibilities of GPs. That is important. More young people will be discharged into the community, which is absolutely right in principle, but the necessary support must be available to ensure their protection and the safety of the general public—in this case, a young policeman.
  I hope that the Minister will give an assurance that he will contact the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association, both of which provided experts to give evidence to the commission. Dr. Jim Rodger of the Scottish Council of the Royal College of General Practitioners and Dr. John Gamer of the Scottish committee of the BMA suggested that there should be some improvements, that GPs need to be available 24 hours a day for such emergencies, for which they need clear rules such as how and when to bring in the police to work alongside them.
  This was a tragic death that should never have occurred. In my view, the system broke down. I am not pointing the finger at any individuals, although some are criticised in the report. I hope that the Minister will deal with those criticisms and say how he will respond to them. The Mental Welfare Commission has pointed the finger at certain individuals, but I am more concerned about the system and to ensure that, as far as is humanly possible—it can never be guaranteed—the kind of situation in which Lewis Fulton met his death does not occur again. I know that I am speaking on behalf of his parents and his widow
  1172
  when I say that they are anxious to ensure that such a situation does not occur again, and that no other young policeman has to face the same difficulties.
  The Minister of State, Scottish Office (Lord James Douglas-Hamilton)I share the sympathy of the hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) for the family of police officer Lewis Fulton, and I shall make a full statement on that in a moment.
  I shall deal first with the amendments, which seek to achieve two things. First, they would have the effect of making available community care orders to patients who are over 16, whether detained or otherwise. Although the question of detaining a child under 16 in a psychiatric hospital is a disturbing thought—children can become mentally ill—the existing provision recognises that it may be necessary for a child to be detained in hospital. If there is a possibility of a person under 16 being detained in hospital, it is only fair that that person should have the same rehabilitation opportunities as all others so detained, including access to community care orders. For that reason, an age limit of 16 years, in our view, should not be imposed.
  The amendments also seek to introduce a statutory requirement that the patient should receive a needs assessment, and propose an associated change to the Bill. We do not need to legislate to do that, as local authorities already have the duty, under section 12(a) of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968, to assess people's social care needs. We believe that the duties on authorities to provide aftercare, under section 8 of the 1984 Act, are quite clear, and include, through the Bill, duties to provide aftercare for persons subject to a community care order. We shall also underline in guidance the circumstances in which that duty applies to community care order patients. If there are problems in meeting these duties, they should be addressed administratively, not by primary legislation.
  With that explanation, I hope that the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) will not press the amendments. If there are matters that require the Children Act provision to apply in a case, they can definitely be used, but it is still preferable to have the opportunity to use a community care order if that would help to support a young person on discharge from hospital.
  The hon. Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley raised the very tragic case of police officer Fulton and inquired into the care and treatment of Mr. Philip McFadden prior to the incident on 17 June 1994. I am grateful to the commission for the comprehensive way in which it has carried out its inquiry. Because of the possibility that Mr. McFadden may yet stand trial, if considered fit to do so in future, the inquiry has necessarily concentrated on the care and treatment that he received before the death of police officer Fulton, to whose family we extend our deepest sympathy.
  The commission's report recommended: first, that the Secretary of State and the Royal College of General Practitioners and other appropriate GP organisations consider the need for further guidance for GPs in dealing with potentially violent, mentally disturbed patients in community care. Secondly, it recommended further discussions between the police and doctors to address the issue of collaboration in respect of crisis situations involving people with mental illness who are potentially violent. Local arrangements should be agreed between GPs, psychiatric services, mental health officers and the

  1173
  police to deal with such emergency situations. Thirdly, police training should be appraised to ensure that there is adequate preparation for recognising mental illness and dealing with members of the public who are mentally ill.
  I am glad to confirm that the Government have accepted those recommendations. As a first step, we have written to the national general practitioner and police organisations, enclosing a copy of the commission's report and asking them to agree with us the action necessary to address the commission's recommendations. I shall also refer the report to the Greater Glasgow health board to consider whether any separate action, bearing on the board's responsibilities, is necessary to address the commission's comments and conclusions in relation either to primary care or hospital settings. As I mentioned to the hon. Gentleman, in relation to GPs' responsibilities, the report has been sent to the Royal College of General Practitioners and the BMA, and we will follow up with them how they can address the commission's recommendations.
  I am also sympathetic to the point that it is undesirable for the press to leap to conclusions in cases of this nature. Indeed, the commission's report emphasised that Mr. McFadden received appropriate treatment from the adolescent psychiatry service in Glasgow and dispels any suggestion that he had been inappropriately discharged into the community. It also criticises misleading aspects of the press coverage given to the case, including the suggestion, which was irrelevant, that a shortage of psychiatric admission beds had contributed to the incident.
  Mr. Foulkes: Before the Minister concludes, I should like to thank him. The Government have acted properly in all that they have done and I sincerely welcome the Minister's announcement. It shows that when dealing with such sensitive matters party politics need not play a part and that we can sometimes move forward with agreement. I am especially grateful to the Minister.
  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his welcome for these measures and our actions on the recommendations.
  I can now respond specifically to a point made by the hon. Member for Dundee, East. Under the Bill, there is a much more specific provision than a power to convey in Scotland, which requires the return of the person to hospital for reassessment if his mental condition has deteriorated. That can be done by a member of the care team. The direction to attend hospital for reassessment in such cases constitutes sufficient authority to convey a person to hospital, and an additional power to convey as proposed in England and Wales is not considered necessary. In other words, the technicalities may be different but the purpose is the same, and I thought it necessary to mention that.
  Of course, the decision to detain a person must be made on the basis of clinical diagnosis and has to be of a nature or degree that warrants detention. Detention can be for a period of six months and can then be renewed at 12-month intervals depending on the mental condition of the patient involved.
  Mr. McAllion: I thank the Minister for his prior notification of the publication of the report by the Mental
  1174
  Welfare Commission for Scotland and I associate myself with the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley (Mr. Foulkes) to the effect that the Government have handled the matter properly.
  I should also like to add my support from the Front Bench to my hon. Friend's criticism of the tabloid coverage of the tragic incident. The use of words such as "schizo" and "madman" was disgraceful and wholly unacceptable. It strikes me that the tabloids in particular increasingly exercise considerable power in our society, but with power should go responsibility. In this case, they have shown no responsibility whatsoever.
  I also accept to a certain extent the Minister's explanation about ensuring that people under 16 should have the same rehabilitation opportunities as everyone else. The point is not that they should be denied those rehabilitation opportunities but that their rehabilitation opportunities should be under the supervision of the reporter on the children's panel service. That is the most appropriate way to handle them, as opposed to the sheriff court system in Scotland.
  I thank the Minister for his remarks about improvements that the Government are suggesting for better collaboration between the police and general practitioners and for police training, and for referring the report to the Greater Glasgow health board.
  Finally, I hope that there is to be no scapegoating in this affair. If there are any lessons to be learnt about weaknesses in the system, I hope that we try to deal with them rather than hold an individual responsible. However, I am grateful to the Minister and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn
  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: I beg to move amendment No. 25, in page 19, line 45, after `(3)(a)' insert 'or (f) 'or (3A)'.
  Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this, it will be convenient to discuss Government amendments Nos. 26 to 44.
  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The amendments provide for communication with an intimation to informal carers and, in certain circumstances, the nearest relative. They are proposed in response to representations made in Committee.
  The amendments provide that those who give informal care to the patient are informed of the various stages of the community care order—its making, renewal or revocation, variation of its conditions, a change of special medical officer or aftercare officer or a reassessment in hospital. That is a direct response to an amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Dundee, East.
  The amendments also enable the responsible medical officer, the special medical officer or the aftercare officer, as appropriate, to consult at the various stages with the patient's nearest relative when a patient has a history of violence despite the patient's objections. The right to override the patient's wish would allow those caring for the patient to obtain information from the nearest relative, which might be essential to an assessment of the risk that the patient poses to himself or others. This is in the light of an amendment to the English provisions sponsored by

  1175
  the National Schizophrenia Fellowship and proposed by the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mr. Hinchliffe). I am glad to incorporate them in the Bill.
  Mr. McAllion: I am grateful to the Minister for tabling the amendments-I wish only that he would be as responsive and flexible in dealing with other matters that we raise with him.
  Amendment agreed to.
  Amendments made: No. 26, in page 20, line 13, after '(3)(a)' insert 'or (3A)'
  No. 27, in page 20, line 48, at end insert—
  '(3A) If the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour the responsible medical officer may consult the patient's nearest relative notwithstanding any objection by the patient to such consultation under subsection (3)(a) above.'.—[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]
  5.15 pm
  Mr. McAllion: I beg to move amendment No. 12, in page 22, line 21, after 'force;', insert—
  '(iv) the views of the patient and his or her carers as to such matters, as disclosed to the person making the application for the community care order during consultation;'.
  The amendment would ensure that the person making the report under an application for a community care order must inform the sheriff about the discussions that he or she has had with the patient and with his or her carers. We believe that it is important that the sheriff should understand any problems with the community care order that either the patient or his carers may have. The responsible medical officer will have consulted both before making the application, and the amendment requires him merely to report on those discussions.
  Although the patient has the right to attend the hearing, there is a real possibility that in many cases he or she may be too ill to attend or may be intimidated by the process. The amendment would be an additional safeguard to ensure that his or her views are taken into account.
  Lord James Douglas-Hamilton: The amendment would introduce a requirement that the aftercare officer's report accompanying the application should include the views of the patient and his carers about the proposed order. As drafted, it would be the patient's views, as disclosed to the responsible medical officer.
  I must point out that the Bill requires that patient and carers are consulted by the responsible medical officer before the application is made. The application should reflect the views of those consulted, and guidance will be issued by us. As I am sure the House is also aware, the proposed new clause 35A(2) attracts the provision of section 113 of the Mental Health (Scotland) Act 1984 to the application of a community care order. That means that the patient must be given the opportunity to be heard by the sheriff, either in person or through a representative.
  I hope that the House will agree that an interested and vociferous patient probably will wish to attend the hearing, and that is the best safeguard. We take the view that a patient who is so ill as to be unable to attend the court hearing should probably not be considered for a community care order. In such circumstances, the patient should be cared for in hospital.
  I accept that a patient may choose not to attend the hearing, and we shall use guidance to underline the importance to the application of the views of those
  1176
  consulted and to make it clear to the various professionals involved that patients should be encouraged to attend or be represented at such hearings. Given those assurances, I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
  Mr. McAllion: In view of the Minister's assurances about guidance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn
  Amendments made: No. 28, in page 22, line 33, at end insert 'or (3A)'
  No. 29, in page 23, line 18, at end insert—
  '(3A) If the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour the responsible medical officer may consult the patient's nearest relative notwithstanding any objection by the patient to such consultation under subsection (3)(b)(i) above.'
  No. 30, in page 23, line 20, after 'above' insert
  'and any consultation under subsection (3A) above'
  No. 31, in page 23, line 29, after '(3)(b)(i)' insert 'or (iv) or (3A)'
  No. 32, in page 23, line 36, leave out from 'of' to 'of in line 38 and insert
  `references to subsections (3)(b)(i) and (3A) of this section for the references to subsections (3)(a) and (3A)'
  No. 33, in page 24, line 7, at end insert—
  '(1A) If the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour the special medical officer may consult the patient's nearest relative notwithstanding any objection by the patient to such consultation under subsection (1)(a) above.'.
  No. 34, in page 24, line 13, after '(1)(a)' insert 'or (1A)'.
  No. 35, in page 24, line 31, after '(1)(a)' insert 'or (e) or (1A)'.
  No. 36, in page 24, line 37, leave out from 'of to 'of in line 39 and insert
  'references to subsections (1)(a) and (1A) of this section for the references to subsections (3)(a) and (3A)'.
  No. 37, in page 25, line 43, at end insert—
  '(4A) If the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour the special medical officer or, as the case may be, the after-care officer may consult the patient's nearest relative notwithstanding any objection by the patient to such consultation under subsection (3)(a) or, as the case may be, (4)(a) above.'.
  No. 38, in page 25, line 51, after '(a)' insert 'or (e)'.
  No. 39, in page 25, line 52, at end insert 'or subsection (4A) above'.
  No. 40, in page 27, line 16, at end insert—
  '(2A) If the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour the special medical officer may consult the patient's nearest relative notwithstanding any objection by the patient to such consultation under subsection (2)(a) above.'.
  No. 41, in page 27, line 45, after '(2)(a)' insert 'or (e) or (2A)'.
  No. 42, in page 29, line 28, after 'officer' insert
  ',any person falling within subsection (2)(e) below'.
  No. 43, in page 29, line 43, at end insert—
  '(2A) If the patient has a propensity to violent or dangerous behaviour the special medical officer may consult the patient's nearest relative notwithstanding any objection by the patient to such consultation under subsection (2)(a) above.'.
  No. 44, in page 30, line 4, leave out from second 'the' to end of line 6 and insert
  `persons mentioned in subsection (4) below of the revocation.
  (4) The persons to be notified under subsection (3) above are—

  1177

  (a) the patient and (if practicable) his nearest relative;

  (b) the patient's special medical officer;

  (c) the patient's after-care officer; and

  (d) any person who the Mental Welfare Commission believes plays a substantial part in the care of the patient but is not professionally concerned with the after-care services provided for the patient under section 8 of this Act.'.—[Lord James Douglas-Hamilton.]

Schedule 1
  AFTER-CARE UNDER SUPERVISION: SUPPLEMENTARY
  Ms Jowell: I beg to move amendment No. 48, in page 41, line 32, at end insert—

  'Mental Health Act Commission
  16A. In section 121 of the Mental Health Act 1983, in subsection (4) leave out from the word "the" on the fifth occasion where it occurs to the end of the subsection and insert—

  "(a) the exercise of the powers and the discharge of the duties conferred or imposed by this Act so far as relating to patients received into guardianship or after-care under supervision under this Act; and

  (b) the care and treatment, or any aspect of the care and treatment in hospitals and mental nursing homes of patients who are not liable to be detained.".'.

  The amendment would modify the Secretary of State's powers to extend the remit of the Mental Health Act Commission. It would not require him to extend its responsibilities, but would allow him specifically to require the commission to have a responsibility towards patients who are placed in aftercare subject to supervision and who are received into guardianship. There are ample reasons to believe that the commission should have responsibility for protecting the interests of patients in the community as much as those of patients in hospital
  First, we have seen from recent reports what can be the tragic and catastrophic consequences of neglect, maladministration and the incompetent care of patients living at home. Is the Minister not prepared to see the connection between the poor standards of care and services that those independent investigations have revealed and the absence of any standing body of experts with legal powers to investigate complaints of poor care?
  Secondly, the new legal powers are likely to affect not a handful of patients. but as many as 3,000 at any one time. If, as may be predicted, certain patients remain under supervision for long or indefinite periods, the total will rise well beyond that number. If the Minister justifies the policy behind the Bill by observing that care and treatment has shifted from hospital to the community, the logic of that argument should mean that patients in the community, especially those subject to legal powers, should have the same protection as that afforded to those in hospital
  The third justification for the change is that the commission itself wants this added responsibility because it believes it to be necessary, not simply desirable. It is necessary because the Bill introduces new coercive powers, and the use of those powers should be overseen by an independent body with powers to investigate complaints from patients or from carers. It is one of the important checks and balances that make the difference between law that is fair and law that is unfair
  We know that the Government have no principled objection to such a role for the commission, since in Scotland they are to extend the role of the Mental Welfare Commission to patients subject to community care orders. It is not enough for the Minister simply to distinguish Scottish law from that in England, and to use that as justification for a different approach. We can well imagine how his objections to the amendment would be regarded by those who may be among the 3,000 patients subject to new powers, desperately needing the assistance of the Mental Health Act Commission
  In Committee and today, Opposition Members have drawn attention to the flaws of the drafting and procedure of the Bill. We are most concerned that, in practice, the powers may be used unfairly, often to support poor practice and defensive and unimaginative styles of working, rather than humane and effective care. In our view, such concerns provide all the more reason why the commission should have responsibility from the outset for monitoring the way in which the Act is used—not from a distance, but by being able to receive and consider complaints from patients and others acting on their behalf
  Mr. David Atkinson: While I have no objection to what is proposed in paragraph (a) of the amendment, I must question whether the Opposition have considered the consequences and especially the cost of what is proposed in paragraph (b), which extends the remit of the 1983 Act to all patients, not only those who are detained under the Act. That must be at the expense of the patients to whom the Act applies. We are all aware of the challenges before the commission at present, in fulfilling its responsibility to patients who are detained, let alone extending the scope of the Act to those who are not.
  The amendment is not any substitute for what is needed now: a complete review of the 1983 Act, which is now 13 years old. I do not think that the amendment is the way forward.
  Mr. Bowis: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his last point. Indeed, we have said on occasions that in due course we shall consider that.
  I am grateful to the hon. Lady for tabling the amendment, which raises a debate that we had at some length in Committee and in another place. Before even a permissive power is taken, the full implications need to be properly thought through, and proper consultation should take place. On that basis, it would not be right to accept the amendment.
  I base my view on three factors. The first relates to the priorities for the use of the commission's resources. The commission was set up expressly to safeguard the interests of detained patients. Having been deprived of their liberty, they have a particular claim on the commission's protection. Any extension of its remit to other groups, whether now or in the future, must not be at its expense.
  The second reason is connected with the fundamental changes that the commission is already facing. The commission is undergoing a major reorganisation of its structure and approach to its current remit, and that needs to be allowed to settle before an extension can be considered. Thirdly, it would make more sense to consider the commission's remit in relation to the operation of the Act, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) is also suggesting. We shall want to

  1179
  consider that in due course, when it is possible to assess the impact of supervised discharge in the context of all the other initiatives that we have taken on the care of severely mentally ill people.
  That does not mean that in the meantime the Mental Health Act Commission will have no locus at all in reviewing the use of the new power. Given its general responsibility to protect the rights of patients who are liable to be detained, it will be able to review the procedures for making a supervision application, since the patient at that point must be liable to be detained. The commission's involvement will be similar to its monitoring of section 117 aftercare procedures before a patient is discharged. The extension of the commission's remit in that area is certainly not ruled out for all time, but now is not the right time to be considering it. In the light of that, I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw the amendment.
  Ms Jowell: I add only to my opening remarks concerning the conclusion reached by the Mental Health Act Commission. In its public policy statement on the Bill, it said:
  "Without some extension to the remit of the Commission to enable it to monitor the use of the new powers, and to ensure that the new statutory controls are only used strictly in accordance with statutory requirements, it considers both patients and community may not derive the full benefit from its provisions."
  I listened very carefully to what the Minister said and welcomed his rather veiled undertaking to ensure that the commission keeps those matters under review. The hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson) knows that Opposition Members have long called for a comprehensive review of the Mental Health Act 1983 for the reasons that he outlined. We remain committed to that review and, from what the Minister said, it sounded as if he was at last being persuaded of the need for it.
  In the light of the Minister's rather tentative assurances, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
  Amendment, by leave, withdrawn
  Order for Third Reading read
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That the Bill be now read the Third time.—[Mr. Bowis.]
  5.26 pm
  Mr. Nicholas Brown: The Bill was primarily motivated by the public concern about the plight of people with serious mental illness who are discharged into the community. The plight of such patients has been highlighted by a series of terrible incidents, a disturbing number of which have resulted in fatalities.
  Stephen Laudat stabbed and killed a man in 1994, only eight months after being discharged from a psychiatric department. Jason Mitchell was discharged by consultants and within days had killed his father and an elderly couple—also in 1994. John Rous, a paranoid schizophrenic, killed an untrained volunteer hostel worker, Jonathan Newby, in Oxford in 1993. Christopher Clunis, a patient who had been in and out of psychiatric and social services care for most of his life, stabbed and killed Jonathan Zito on the London underground in 1992. Peter Robak, suffering from a severe personality disorder, killed Anthony and Barbara Rawlings and their 15-year-old son just 11 days after being discharged from hospital in 1990.
  1180
  Those cases show the dangers that are posed to members of the public by a very small number of severely mentally ill people who develop serious personality disorders. We are united with the Government in wanting to see better care for such patients and better protection for the public. The inquiries and reports that followed the tragedies tell us what action could have been taken to prevent the killings. They also make a number of clear recommendations concerning the implementation of the policy of caring for mentally ill patients in the community.
  The literature is plentiful: the Ritchie report on the care and treatment of Christopher Clunis; the Royal College of Psychiatrists' Boyd report on homicides and suicides among the mentally ill; the Audit Commission's report "Finding a Place"; "The Falling Shadow", a report by Louis Blom-Cooper and others into the events surrounding the killing of Georgina Robinson; and the 1994 report of the Select Committee on Health into community care for people with serious mental illness.
  In each case, the authors point to the same problems: lack of liaison among care agencies, and lack of resources to provide care and treatment in psychiatric departments and in the community, which is particularly serious in deprived inner-city areas. There have also been failures to act on warning signals, sometimes with terrible and tragic results. Every report recommends improvement in those areas as a top priority.
  Those are the recommendations that the House should consider, and upon which the Government should have acted when they drafted the Bill. They are recommendations which, if taken up, would both provide better care for severely mentally ill patients and allay public concern about safety.
  However, the Government have ignored the recommendations. Instead of listening to expert opinion and learning from the mistakes of the past, they have succeeded in drafting a Bill that misses the point, is unpopular with those who work in mental health and will do nothing to improve patient care. Indeed, it could well make matters worse. The Bill fails to take the action desperately needed to improve the care provided for the small proportion of severely mentally ill patients who pose a potential danger to themselves or to members of the public.
  A new concept of supervised discharge is the central proposal in the Bill. Supervision orders are to be made in respect of a patient who would represent
  "a substantial risk of serious harm"
  to himself or herself or to others. A supervision order will last initially for six months, and subsequently for periods of a year at a time.
  As part of an agreed aftercare programme, people under supervision may be required to reside at a specific place or to attend for occupation, education or training. A supervisor, who must be a person professionally involved in the patient's care, will be appointed to monitor the supervision order.
  Many people will hear that and think it a good idea. Some patients need extra support and attention while recovering from treatment for serious mental illness, especially if they have a tendency not to comply with their care programme. But such a form of aftercare supervision already exists, and it is known as a guardianship order.

  1181
  Many people who work in mental health community care are at a loss to understand the need for a completely new order when the existing power of guardianship offers an almost identical provision. Although it is used rarely, perhaps because of the strain that it puts on scarce resources, guardianship is effective in the small number of cases in which some form of statutory supervision is required. It facilitates community care, while offering protection to the patient.
  The key difference between a guardianship order and the proposed supervision order is contained in the Bill's most controversial and most strongly opposed proposal—the power to take and convey. The need for a power to convey a person under supervision to a place of treatment, training, education or residence specified under the terms of the supervision order is highly questionable. I do not understand how such a power, which may be exercised by anyone nominated by the patient's supervisor, is appropriate to a co-operative and humane approach to community care.
  If the power is exercised against a patient's will, it is highly unlikely to encourage compliance with his or her treatment plan. There is also a danger that the coercive elements of the new arrangements will compromise the important relationship of trust that should exist between patients and carers. It is important to emphasise the fact that one cannot care for people in a community environment without some consent and trust between the person being supervised and the supervisor.
  The power to take and convey has been opposed by many groups and organisations, including the Law Society, the Association of Community Health Councils for England and Wales, MIND, the British Association of Social Workers, the Mental Health Foundation, the Community Psychiatric Nurses Association, SANE, the Royal College of Nursing, Unison, Survivors Speak Out and Liberty.
  In Committee, the Minister failed to make the case for the power to take and convey, and several hon. Members have shown their opposition to it by signing early-day motion 1487. The power constitutes a significant erosion of civil liberties, with no conceivable benefit to patients.
  The Bill allows the patient's supervisor to nominate any other person or agency to take and convey the patient. The supervisor does not have to obtain any additional authority before delegating the power. The application of the existing provisions for "arrest" laid down in sections 6 and 137 of the Mental Health Act 1983 is subject to strict criteria and numerous safeguards made clear in the code of practice. That code contains guidelines for best practice and sets out the rights of patients, and the responsibilities of care professionals to safeguard those rights—safeguards that are absent from the Bill as it stands.
  We had hoped that the Minister would accept the widening of the remit of the Mental Health Act Commission to include patients receiving after-care under supervision. That would have reduced the likelihood of the power to take and convey being abused, or used to reinforce worst rather than best practice. The idea was backed by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Law Society, MIND and a range of other organisations, including the commission itself, so it is disappointing that the Minister has rejected it.
  1182
  The Minister has not been consistent about how the power will work. In another place Baroness Cumberlege said:
  "Clearly this power to convey would be used only in times of emergency."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 4 April 1995; Vol. 563, c. 156.]
  That begs two questions. What constitutes an emergency? And what kinds of emergency does the Minister believe are not already covered by sections 6 and 137 of the 1983 Act?
  The Minister suggested that the power would be used in different circumstances. He told the Committee:
  "We are providing for a reserve power, as it were, which would be available to the supervisor of that small group of vulnerable and sometimes unpredictable patients, in order to overcome a temporary unwillingness to co-operate."—[Official Report, Standing Committee F, 6 July 1995; c. 94.]
  Baroness Cumberlege said that the power would be used only in emergencies, yet the Minister said that it would be used to overcome temporary unwillingness to co-operate. The two sets of circumstances are different. So nobody will know how or when the power is to be exercised. Perhaps in this final stage, before the Bill reaches the statute book, the Minister will be able to dispel the confusion and make a final and authoritative statement on when the Government intend the power to take and convey to be exercised.
  It is all the more important that the Minister makes such a statement, because the Bill is silent about what will happen once the patient has been taken and conveyed to the specified place. It appears that he cannot be forced to stay there against his will, and it is difficult to see how an unwilling patient, who has probably been further aggravated by being taken and conveyed, can be forced to take part in occupation, education, training, or whatever else he is supposed to do.
  The threat will undermine the relationship of trust that must exist between carer and patient. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell) referred to the views of the registrar of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, Professor Chris Thomson. In an article in the British Medical Journal, Dr. Nigel Eastman, the head of forensic psychiatry at St. George's medical school, expressed even stronger reservations about the power to take and convey:
  "A highly detrimental therapeutic effect is likely to arise from community psychiatric nurses forcing unwilling patients into their cars and taking them to day centres or hospitals where they are then asked to take treatment that they have (presumably) already refused."
  We believe that the proposition is unworkable.
  In introducing the Bill, the Government have acknowledged that community care for the seriously mentally ill is not working effectively. We are united on that point. However, they have not realised the scale of the problem, nor identified the solutions correctly. Coercion is not a substitute for co-ordination and co-operation. Statutory powers are no substitute for well-resourced and focused community care. As a consequence, the Bill will not achieve in practice what it sets out to achieve.
  5.39 pm
  Mr. David Atkinson: I welcome the Bill in its final form, as does the National Schizophrenia Fellowship. We are grateful for the fact that many of our amendments have been accepted. I should also like to take this opportunity to welcome the Minister of State's

  1183
  pre-emptive response in August to the recent report of the social services inspectorate and the clinical standards advisory group, when he called on health authorities to get their act together in three months, to bridge the gap between the theory of community care for the mentally ill and the reality, when it falls short.
  That stark reality was brutally exposed by last month's report of the Woodley inquiry into the death of Stephen Laudat, to which the hon. Members for Newham, North-East (Mr. Timms) and for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) referred. Woodley recommended better co-operation between health authorities and social services, the provision of more day centres, better training in risk assessment and management and a complete avoidance of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for homeless mentally ill people. All those recommendations echo long-standing concerns of the fellowship—to which I would add the need for a wider recognition of mental disability as well as physical disability in the benefits and allowances that are available for the disabled.
  The implementation of this legislation will undoubtedly assist the care programme approach to the mentally ill, by providing more powers and greater flexibility for the supervision of discharged patients. I fear, however, that it will serve only to highlight further the shortfall of psychiatrists and key workers, whose case loads just do not allow enough time for their patients.
  Still, although the Bill represents no substitute for a complete review of the 1983 Act, which was conceived against the background of a bygone age for the mentally ill, I welcome the fact that the Minister has confirmed again this evening that the Government are giving thought to a review of the Act. The Bill confirms that the community care approach to the mentally ill is here to stay, and I look forward to the undoubted contribution that the Bill will make to public safety, which must always be paramount.
  5.41 pm
  Mr. Kirkwood: The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) said a few moments ago that coercion is not a substitute for co-operation. Bearing in mind the job to which he is moving in a few months' time, I am sure that many of his right hon. and hon. Friends will remind him of that statement. I can think of no one better than the hon. Gentleman to replace the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon)—and if the hon. Gentleman uses the power to take and convey as effectively as the hon. Member for Jarrow has done, he will be a great success.
  This is an important Bill, but I share some of the worries expressed about it by hon. Members on both sides, most recently by the hon. Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Atkinson). The Government will get their legislation. Certainly, they could not afford to ignore some of the terrible tragedies to which the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East rightly referred. But I do not think that this is the right measure; I remain to be convinced that it is. The Government's argument was probably the best they could muster in the circumstances.
  I commend the Minister's handling of the Bill throughout its stages, but I sincerely hope that he will take away certain clear messages from the whole process. One is that the opportunity should have been taken fundamentally to review and reform the Mental Health
  1184
  Act. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell) say that Labour would give the subject priority in the new Parliament, should it have any influence in it. And I know the hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) well enough to know that, when we have a Scottish Parliament, it will be high on our agenda there, too. I hope, in the meantime, that the Minister—or his successor—will not forget the undertaking that he has given. The urgent need for reform has been expressed by many pressure groups and by hon. Members of all parties, and I hope that the Government will tackle it constructively.
  As I said on Second Reading, I still feel that we need to deal with the problems not so much of the high-profile tragic cases as of the people who might commit suicide or engage in self-neglect, who make up the vast burden of the cases with which the professionals have to deal. I do wonder whether the Bill will help them; I remain sceptical whether it will. The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East listed some of the professional bodies that remain unconvinced as well.
  It is not a shortage of powers that is the problem: it is a shortage of resources. We need more appropriate accommodation and more employment, training and recreational resources. That is not to say that a blank cheque should be offered, but these are the sort of issues that we would have liked to hear more about from the Department during the passage of the Bill.
  I also fear that there will be a diversion of resources within the provision of mental care and the treatment of mental illness, owing to the new Act. I hope that the Minister will look into that carefully and that, if he finds evidence of people having to divert resources from other equally urgent needs in the treatment of mental illness, he will respond urgently. Moreover, I cannot help but think that the Bill will impose a new raft of responsibilities, of a kind that the Government have not foreseen, on mental health nurses.
  More than anything else, the Bill is a lost opportunity. We shall give the Minister his Bill; in return he must monitor it carefully, and not use it as a substitute for a thoroughgoing reform in the future.
  5.45 pm
  Mr. John Gunnell: I want to ask just one question: why has the Bill caused so much disquiet in communities that include many mentally ill people or people who have suffered from mental illness at some stage but have been restored to good health? The power to take and convey is responsible for that disquiet, yet it is clear from the Bill that it can be applied only to limited numbers of cases. It is certainly clear, judging by the cases cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East, that it is necessary to have powers to protect the public; but the concern is much more widespread than just among those to whom the Bill may apply.
  There are many people on what I might term the fringes of mental illness. They may have spent some time in an institution but have since been integrated fairly well back in the community. But they still entertain uncertainties at the back of their minds about these powers—they trouble them. Surprisingly, perhaps, certain groups of people have been anxious for a change in the powers without really having understood them.

  1185
  I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East that there has been no satisfactory response on the issue of the Mental Health Commission. It could perhaps have been a voice of independence, but there has been no movement on that. People have therefore concluded that there has once again been a lack of consultation and that the Government have been unwilling to compromise on the detail. That only adds to people's fears. There are many people to whom the Minister does not intend this measure to apply, but they still harbour fears—perhaps because at times in the past they have been unable to control their behaviour. They therefore suspect that the Bill's powers might ultimately be applied to them.
  There is a second reason for the disquiet that the Bill has caused. It would be fine if the people whom I have described were set to gain something from the Bill, but it is, as others have said, a lost opportunity. It does not tackle the real problems of community care for the mentally ill. When the Bill was first presented it became clear that it would be unaccompanied by additional resources. One recognises that now limited additional resources have been provided, but those resources have understandably been directed to a small minority of mentally ill patients because the Bill focuses on them. However, the Bill contains nothing for the vast majority of people.
  The Mental Health Foundation has produced a list of the needs of mentally ill people. It says that they need an appropriate place to live, an adequate income, a varied social life, employment and other day activity, help and support, respect and trust, choice and consultation. All those are absent from the Bill. The Audit Commission report made clear how important was a secure place to live for mentally ill people. The Bill does not tackle that issue. The people who have expressed their fears to me feel that they have lost something. They are uncertain about their ultimate freedom in certain circumstances, but they feel that they have gained nothing from the Bill. What is more, the Bill has been accompanied by a squeeze on the benefits system, which has hit some of the same people who will not benefit from the Bill.
  I launched a report in the House some months ago for the Matthew Trust. I am sure that the Minister has seen the document. It contained a list of cases and individuals. Amounts such as £25 or £70 can make an enormous difference to such people, but the benefits system somehow misses them out. People fall through the safety net. A new power is being introduced with which they are unhappy. Their real problems are not dealt with. The squeeze on Government funding and benefits makes their circumstances even more adverse.
  Many of the people to whom I have spoken feel that there is discrimination against people who have mental illness. They have certain difficulties if they live in the community without support. People taunt them. Their appearance may be a little unusual. They feel that there is no anti-discrimination legislation in place to protect people who have mental illness, although legislation exists to protect against discrimination on the basis of race or gender.
  1186
  People feel that the Bill threatens their freedom even though, looking at it rationally, we might say that it does not. I have tried to explain that to some of the people with whom I deal, but they do not want to see the measure on the statute book and they would like to see changes.
  The Bill is a lost opportunity, but in a sense it is more than that. The Government have been intransigent on some of the matters that have been raised. Even if in practice those matters make no difference to mentally ill people, that intransigence is seen as a definite Government programme which could just include them. It is hard to bring rational thinking to people who have such fears.
  We have seen papers which support the legislation and argue that the provision of transport is a good thing. One can talk to people along those lines, but one cannot convince them that the measure does not provide an all-powerful body with a power that could reach down and touch them in their communities.
  The Bill is a lost opportunity. I am glad that my hon. Friends on the Front Bench have said that a thorough review of the Mental Health Act 1983 will take place under a Labour Government. I hope that proper resources will be provided for the mentally ill in our community because the need is certainly great.
  5.53 pm
  Mr. Timms: In the earlier debate on the new clause, I drew attention to the criticisms of the Bill in the Woodley report published last month on the killing of Bryan Bennett by Stephen Laudat in Newham. The critical point is that the Bill does nothing to provide desperately needed additional resources for mental health care. As several hon. Members have said, the Bill could make matters worse.
  I have received a letter from Dr. Ruth Taylor, a Newham GP, in which she commented on some of the criticisms levelled by the Woodley report at a Newham psychiatrist referred to in the report as Dr. B. She says:
  "In 1993 three consultant psychiatrists covered the Newham population of 230,000. Dr. B covered a population of 90,000—approximately three times that recommended by the Royal College of Psychiatrists. She carried this burden for ten years … Help was requested from the management of the psychiatry services … but none was forthcoming. In 1992 the general manager and chief executive were warned in writing by the Newham consultants … that their excessive workload made their standards of practice unsafe. No effective change was brought about to alleviate the problem … when professionals are given an impossible workload, disasters are daily waiting to happen."
  That is the reality of mental health care and the Bill does nothing to help. The family of Mr. Bennett are angry. The family of Mr. Laudat, the perpetrator, are angry. The system failed for both of them and it must be radically reviewed, as hon. Members on both sides of the House have said.
  Things are getting worse. The health authority and local authority in my area, despite shocking reductions in their funding, have managed to set aside additional resources for mental health care next year in the light of the Woodley report, but East London and City health authority projects a £7 million deficit next year. The Woodley report highlights the need for extra resources in east London to avoid more incidents such as the one to which I have referred. So why is it proposed to withdraw large sums of money from the district health authority?

  1187
  That is asking for disaster. I urge the Minister to ensure that those threatened draconian cuts to the East London and City budget do not go ahead.
  There is growing anger in east London on mental health matters. On Sunday, several hundred people attended a festival organised by the Newham needs campaign to highlight the problems of inadequate funding for health services in Newham. Fifty-nine people sent electronic mail messages of protest to the Prime Minister and many more sent postcards to the Secretary of State.
  Another matter raised by the Woodley report has not been picked up by the Bill. Recommendation 5.20 of the report recommends that
  "the Department of Health harmonise guidance on Section 117 registers, proposed Supervision registers, and the Care Programme Approach with Community Care Assessment and Care Management in respect of people who have a severe mental illness and their carers. Such guidance should include clarification of clinical, management and practitioner responsibilities and the importance of choice by the service user in who their psychiatrist or key worker is to be for the purposes of sustaining a therapeutic relationship."
  That guidance is urgently needed. It has been discussed for a considerable period. Can the Minister give the House an assurance that it will soon be issued?
  Great efforts are being made in Newham jointly by the health authority and the local authority to learn the lessons of the report. A detailed joint action plan has been drawn up. My plea to the Minister is at least to stop taking resources away from east London and other areas like it, which is what is proposed for the health authority and the local authority for next year. This cannot go on. I urge the Minister to act to change things for the better.
  5.58 pm
  Ms Jowell: The Bill faces in two directions—backwards to the 1983 Act to correct serious anomalies and forward to the new challenges that community care must face. Very rarely is mental health legislation debated on the Floor of the House. It is complex and often controversial. It involves careful balancing of many interests. It raises issues of personal liberty and professional accountability. It touches on the responsibility of public services to provide adequate and effective care for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
  The law is only one, of a number of influences that must be engaged for good community care to work in practice. The others are the services themselves, the skills and competence of professionals responsible and, of course, ministerial guidance to authorities on the nature and extent of their duties and to professionals on their practice. It is the role of Government and Government alone to determine the respective importance of each of those influences and to orchestrate their working together.
  Public confidence in community care has been badly shattered by recent highly publicised tragedies and that adds a new context to our consideration of legal and policy changes in the area. We can no longer discuss and decide such issues beyond the public's view. For a new contract of trust to be forged with the public, services need to be in place, together with an effective legislative framework, enabling people with mental illness to be properly contained and treated when they are a risk to themselves or to others.
  1188
  As drafted, the Bill will be unfair and probably unworkable. Where it needs to be certain and unambiguous, it remains unclear and open to wide and varied interpretation. The Bill needed to gain the confidence of those who will experience added restriction and interference when placed under supervision. It can do so by providing clear and effective rights and entitlements to services, but it offers nothing new—nothing more than the present vague and unenforceable section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983.
  The picture painted by recent reports on mental health services suggests that Ministers have profound and persistent illusions, or indeed delusions, about the real world in which people with mental illness and those who care for them have to cope. Certainly, we see little sign of a system in practice in which the guarantees and assurances made by Ministers are on offer.
  The Bill needed to win the support of hard-pressed health and social services professionals. It has failed to do so. It merely imposes on them heavy legal and personal responsibilities and furthermore suggests that services to some patients will have to be reduced or discontinued to meet the needs of patients being targeted as a result of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will assure us when he sums up that no one receiving services will have them taken away to enable such targeting.
  The Bill should recognise the need for fairness and equity in the use of coercive powers such as "take and convey". It can do so by making professionals clearly accountable when they use them. As we discussed, the Bill omits important checks and balances. Enhancing the role of the Mental Health Act Commission would be a step towards doing that.
  The Minister should be encouraging the use of existing powers and legal provisions, such as guardianship. Such an aim should be shaping the contents of the new legislation. Instead, as part of the Government's piecemeal approach to tinkering with what is largely obsolete legislation, they intend to create unnecessary and confusing additional powers.
  Many organisations that represent professional staff who will have to use the Bill and those who will be made subject to it have also voiced their concern. They include the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Nursing, the Community Psychiatric Nurses Association, the Mental Health Foundation, the National Association for Mental Health—MIND—and Survivors Speak Out. The support and confidence of such organisations are essential for this legislation to succeed.
  I frequently listen and talk to people who are in touch with and using community care services. For five years I was a member of the Mental Health Act Commission and for 13 years I was assistant director of MIND. All the accounts force us to the same conclusion that we find when reading the recent flood of reports on community care—the Ritchie report on Christopher Clunis, those of the Mental Health Foundation, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper and the Audit Commission and now those of the social services inspectorate and the Clinical Standards Advisory Group, which were published in the summer. They tell us that the crisis affecting care in the community has little to do with the law and much to do with the attitudes, skills and resources of professionals and the very limited community opportunities available to those with enduring and intractable mental health problems. To the extent that

  1189
  problems result from the present state of the law, they will not be addressed by the limited and unambitious measure that we have been debating.
  Before concluding, I must remind the House of the contents of the report that led to this Bill. It was the Department of Health's internal review of legal powers on the care of mentally ill people in the community, which was published in August 1993. It presented the Government with their options for legal change in that area and the principles that should provide the framework for any change. The report said:
  "if … a new power is introduced it is absolutely essential that account is taken in framing it of the criticisms and fears expressed by many of those who gave evidence to us, and that it is applied in such a way as to minimise the dangers they foresaw".
  The review also offered a series of principles to frame the new power. It said that the power should be applied so as to ensure the least restrictive form of care consistent with safe management; that it must have adequate safeguards to ensure appropriate use; that it must be so defined as to minimise the risk of its being wrongly applied to patients who do not need this form of legal constraint; and that it must not discriminate in principle or in practice against particular ethnic or other groups. It also said that it must be recognised that the use of the power implies a reciprocal obligation on the statutory services to provide the support that the patient needs.
  We take the Government back to those principles when judging the legislation before us. They must stand judged by their refusal to accommodate in the legislation the principles emanating from their own review.
  The Bill was an opportunity to rebuild the contract of trust, which is the essential foundation of community care, between the patient, families, professionals and the public. The Government have failed to take that opportunity and it will now fall to a new Government—a Labour Government—to introduce a new mental health Act, to inspire and recreate that contract of trust.
  6.6 pm
  Mr. Bowis: I am tempted to say, "Are you sure?" to the hon. Member for Dulwich (Ms Jowell). I suppose that I should be flattered. I do not know if it is a parliamentary record for two Opposition spokesmen to have to contribute to the same debate to balance a Minister. I appreciate the fact that I am to be balanced and that this is a subject on which we need balance. I also appreciate
  1190
  that, recently, the Leader of the Opposition had to stand in to help out the spokesman on the shadow Home Affairs team, but I have never before heard of a spokesman standing in to help out a leader, which is what we have seen today.
  The House has given the Bill the thoughtful, thorough and critical attention that it deserves. Despite the rather sad little speech of the hon. Member for Dulwich, I am grateful to hon. Members on both sides of the House who have contributed to our discussions at all stages. They have been good, constructive and, on the whole, good-humoured debates.
  My hon. Friend the Minister of State, Scottish Office and his team have worked closely with us to draw up a package of measures that will ensure that some of the most vulnerable patients receive the follow-up care that they need. That is in the interests of the patients, their families, their professional and informal carers and their local communities.
  The introduction of supervised discharge and community care orders is complemented in the Bill by provisions on leave of absence and absence without leave. The scrutiny in both Houses has refined and improved the Bill. Our mental health legislation has evolved over many years and will continue to do so. That is a pledge that I can certainly make to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown). We shall be studying carefully how the new powers are used alongside the existing power of guardianship, but for now we are committed to acting positively to help patients, their carers, families and the professionals responsible for providing services and personal support.
  I should add that this Bill brings to an end the time of yet another Opposition Front Bench health team. As they take their bow and leave the stage, rather like the Von Trapp family in "The Sound of Music"—perhaps the Trappist connotation is appropriate in the case of the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown)—I wish them well in their new roles.
  I believe that these measures will strengthen the care and support of vulnerable people with severe mental health problems. The Bill must be seen in the context of all the investment in services, hospitals and the community that has brought new hope to mentally ill people and their families. We stand four-square behind them and behind the community as a whole, which rightly demands this strengthened level of care and supervision. I commend the Bill to the House.
  Question put and agreed to.
  Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.

  Parliament
  6.10 pm
  The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Tony Newton): I beg to move,
  That the draft Ministerial and other Salaries Order 1995, which was laid before this House on 23 October, be approved.
  Last year, I had to make a somewhat lengthy speech to explain the complications arising from the freeze that had earlier taken place. This year, I think that I can explain the position simply and clearly. During the debate on Members' salaries in 1993, two years ago, I made it clear to the House that the Government thought that the right course thereafter was for the salaries of Ministers to be dealt with on exactly the same basis as those of Members. That arrangement has been applied for the past two years and is straightforwardly the basis of the proposed increases for 1996.
  As the House will recall, the annual increase in Members' salaries is linked to the pay settlement for civil servants in grades 5 to 7. That means that Members of Parliament will receive an increase of 2.7 per cent. on 1 January without the need for parliamentary action. Because the proposals follow established policy, there is no need for me to go into detail except perhaps to say that the increase for Ministers in this House will be 2.7 per cent., precisely in line with the Members' figure. For our colleagues in the other place, because they do not have a reduced parliamentary salary, the increase is equivalent to the overall cash increase received by their counterparts at this end of the building.
  I should remind the House, and with more force than usual in view of the events of the past hour, that the order covers not only Ministers but the Leaders of the Opposition in both Houses, the Opposition Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip in the Commons, and one other Commons Opposition Whip together with the Opposition Chief Whip in the Lords, and, of course, Madam Speaker. Additionally, though they not covered by the order, you will be pleased to hear, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the same increases will be paid to the Chairman and Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means and to the Chairmen and Deputy Chairmen of Committees in the other place.
  I say in the friendly spirit with which I address the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne, East (Mr. Brown) that I might be prepared to accept a manuscript amendment to confine the increase in respect of the Opposition Deputy Chief Whip to the present rather than the prospective holder of the post. That might be attractive, were I in that frame of mind, after the speech that the hon. Gentleman made a few moments ago. Some observations have probably already been made on that. When he finally becomes Deputy Chief Whip and sits two seats along the Bench from where he is now, he would have public executions of hon. Members who spoke at the length that he did in the previous debate. Nevertheless, it was a fascinating speech.
  The policy of a clear automatic linkage for Members of Parliament which is then straightforwardly carried through by order to Ministers and others has provided us with a mechanism that has meant that for the past two years we have been able to settle these matters without substantial controversy. The proposals in the order are sensible and right. I commend them to the House.
  6.13 pm
  Mr. Jeff Rooker: I do not wish to detain the House because this is a repeat of last year's debate. The right hon. Gentleman rightly listed some of the posts included in the order. It goes without saying that the most deserving cases in the order, Mr. Deputy Speaker, are, of course, those of yourself and your colleagues in the Chair.
  I was expecting that the order would be the same, word for word, as last year's order and that only the figures would be different. This is the only detailed question that I have for the Leader of the House. The order is not the same, word for word, because two words are missing from paragraph 2. I do not understand why the words "of salary" have been Snopaked out of this order.
  As the Leader of the House said, the increase is 2.7 per cent., the same as for Back Benchers. That is based on civil service grades 5 to 7, which, I regret to say, have been separated. Therefore, in 1996 some other arrangements will have to be made for Members of Parliament whereas I thought that we had a formula and had put the matter to bed. It appears that we have not.
  It is right that the salary arrangements for Ministers should be dealt on the same basis as those of other hon. Members. That being so, I regret the need for this debate. We are not debating Members' pay having agreed a formula such as that which has produced the 2.7 per cent. increase.
  In last year's debate, on 24 November 1994, I offered the Leader of the House the chance to secure Opposition support to amend the Ministerial and Other Salaries Act 1975 so as to provide the same automatic linkage for Ministers that applies to hon. Members. I have since repeated that offer to the Leader of the House. It should have been taken up. A Labour Government will legislate to clear up the anomaly. If it is not done before the general election, it will have to be done afterwards. It is an utter waste of parliamentary time, bearing in mind that we have dealt with the matter in respect of hon. Members.
  It has been a tough year for Ministers, as the chickens from the false promises made in 1992 have come home to roost. On the other hand, this year the Ministers who will receive this salary increase have had their loyalty tested by the Prime Minister when he put his leadership on the line. They have ended up with a powerful Deputy Prime Minister and First Secretary of State. The right hon. Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine) can well manage on a Cabinet Minister's salary. I am surprised that the order, listing in detail as it does different Ministers by title as members of the Cabinet, does not refer to a First Secretary of State or a Deputy Prime Minister. Clearly, the right hon. Gentleman is a member of the Cabinet but is not listed.
  I know that the right hon. Gentleman has his own special arrangements for official cars; he does not have one but is paid to use his own. He has not done well at answering questions at the Dispatch Box. All we have had from him so far is party-political rants. Who should pay him—the taxpayer or the Tory party? We are not sure whether he is a second Minister Without Portfolio or the Minister with the good bits of everyone's portfolios. In due course, he will answer for himself, as will other Ministers, to the electorate.
  I agree that to participate in public life is both a duty and a privilege. Very high standards of conduct are expected and standards for Ministers are rightly higher

  1193
  than those for others. Notwithstanding the Nolan report, which the Opposition fully support, I believe that Ministers are honourable people carrying out a responsibility placed on them by the Prime Minister of the day. We may not agree with all their actions; we may believe that many of them do not care, are incompetent and out of touch. The answer is to replace them, not deny them a modest increase in pay.
  6.17 pm
  Sir Terence Higgins: My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House pointed out that there have been some improvements in the mechanism for dealing with Members' and Ministers' pay. I feel bound to say that if one takes a long-term view of the way in which we have dealt with those matters, we are now in a situation that can be described only as a crisis.
  Since I first came to the House some 30 years ago, the statistics show that Members' pay in real terms, allowing for inflation, is just back to where it was 30 years ago. Between then and now, it has been below that level, sometimes by a substantial amount. Meanwhile, real incomes in the country as a whole on average have gone up 80 per cent. Members' pay has not gone up at all.
  Even more remarkable, and this is relevant to the motion, is what has happened to Ministers' pay and indeed to the Prime Minister's pay. They are paid less than half what people in the Government were paid when I came to the House 30 years ago. That, too, has happened against a background in which the real income of the country as a whole has risen by 80 per cent.
  The situation is creating a serious recruitment problem. One cannot divorce the issue of Members' pay from that of Ministers' pay because in our system, unlike that of the United States, for example, where the Executive is drawn from outside the legislature, we have to get people into the House of Commons or House of Lords in order to recruit Ministers. So the level of both Ministers' and Members' pay is relevant in this context. An article in today's edition of The Times rounded up the figures, but I suggest that we would need to double Members' pay and treble the Prime Minister's and Ministers' pay to get us back to approximately where we were 30 years ago. If we do not take such a once-and-for-all step, the quality of hon. Members and those fit to become Ministers will become an increasing problem.
  Top salaries outside the House have risen even more. The papers talk every day of "fat cats". Let us look at salaries that, in many ways, are not exceptional. I know from personal experience not so long ago that, if one wants to recruit a good finance director for a public liability company in a risky industry—no one can deny that politics is a risky industry in terms of remaining a Member of Parliament or a Minister—one will probably have to pay £250,000. A good chief executive would have to be paid some £500,000. Meanwhile, this order increases the Prime Minister's salary at £82,000 by £1,500. It is preposterous.
  We must deal not just with the question of pay. I announced a little while ago, following some totally irrational boundary changes and various other matters, that I would not stand at the next election, so I may be in a stronger position than present Ministers or those who
  1194
  will stand at the next election to make this point. Many people have said that the status of Members is not what it was when I was first elected and, alas, that is true.
  Reference was made to the Nolan committee. I can say nothing about that because I sit on the Select Committee that is seeing how its recommendations might be implemented, but I hope that it will do something to restore the standing of Members and that the measures that we have already taken will do so. That is another problem that we must take into account.
  We must consider carefully what should be done. I am particularly worried that the salary now paid to Members is not sufficient to attract the sort of person that used to be attracted here—those with a good degree, someone who has been president of a union or who has a similar background in some other field. They are no longer attracted here because they can earn more than hon. Members in two years after university, and, in some occupations, more than the Prime Minister in five years.
  Another real change is that Ministers currently in office decide that they will not go on. Previously, ex-Ministers remained in the House for one, two or three Parliaments. I can think of a number of hon. Friends who are still here, and it is true of myself. But that will no longer happen. Few ex-Ministers are recycled, so they will take the first available opportunity to leave the House at the next general election. The people on whom we rely to man Select Committees, to engage in debate on the Floor of the House and give experience, will simply no longer be here. That is a worrying development.
  What should be done? We know only too well from the misrepresentations of the increase in Members' pay before the last one, when the press said that it was vastly in excess of inflation—my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House pointed out at the time that that was untrue—that there would be an outcry in the press if Members' salaries were doubled. But we have reached a stage where we must face up to that. We have two possible options. First, as the Nolan committee seems to have remarkable public approval as an independent body, we could refer the question of Ministers' and Members' pay to that body as soon as possible. Secondly, we could ensure that negotiations take place between the two sides of the House on what should be done in the next Parliament. We can do nothing in. this Parliament, but if we were to do something now for the next Parliament, we would at least help to deal with the argument that we were voting for our next pay increase, and the electorate would know where it was.
  I am sorry that the Leader of the Opposition has decided not to take his pay increase. I notice that some Labour Front-Bench Members did not know that that was so. This is similar to some of the worst excesses of Thatcherism, when the previous Prime Minister refused to take her full salary. That was a serious mistake and I am sorry that the Leader of the Opposition seems to be following in Mrs. Thatcher's footsteps in that respect. I hope that, on reflection, he will give further thought to the matter because we must reach an agreement across the House about what should be done to introduce a once-and-for-all change to redress the balance.
  This is now an extremely serious issue. Although my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House says that we can introduce a pay rise now on this basis without it arousing controversy, there is a distinction between having no controversy and ignoring a potentially serious problem.
  6.25 pm
  Mr. Archy Kirkwood: I have listened to the right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) make exactly that speech on a number of occasions, and it gets more compelling with the listening. He makes a powerful case and is in a strong position to do so. I support everything that he said. We now have an opportunity to get a hold of the problem and make matters more realistic before the next Parliament. That would be the proper and honourable way to proceed.
  The right hon. Gentleman's idea of referring the matter to a Nolan-type inquiry ignores top salary pay review reports.
  Sir Terence Higgins: They were all ignored.
  Mr. Kirkwood: If the matter goes to the Nolan committee and is not ignored, that would be a massive improvement, which may be why the right hon. Gentleman makes that suggestion. I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues for the number of hours that the Select Committee has spent examining the Nolan committee's recommendations. It is a sobering thought that the Nolan inquiry would not have been necessary if Members' and Ministers' salaries had been proper and commensurate with normal market salaries.
  The hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker) was right to stress that this order is ludicrous and otiose. It is certainly so as far as I am concerned. The Leader of the House will recognise that, as a member of a minority party, I have no financial interest whatever in this or any other such order. I am shop steward and I do all the hard work for all the minority parties. I do not mind that. It is a great public duty, which I enjoy doing.
  Mr. Newton: Is the hon. Gentleman confirming that the Liberal Democrat party does not expect to form the next Government?
  Mr. Kirkwood: I shall not be tempted to answer such an unfair question. It was a monstrous attack, and it was out of character for the Leader of the House to suggest any such thing to such a humble person as myself. I have written the Leader of the House a letter, which he may not yet have received. It does not necessarily offer him a position in my Government but asks him to consider helping the process of the usual channels. That is a separate issue. The important point that the hon. Member for Perry Barr made is that we should use the fast track procedures to get rid of this order altogether. That would save the House time and we would all be the better for it.
  Many hon. Members are confused about the new way in which Members' and Ministers' salaries are linked with those of civil servants because there has been a revolution in how the civil service is paid since the introduction of performance-related remuneration and job regrading. I am pleased to see that the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who is responsible for those matters, is in his place. I do not know how it will be possible to achieve a sensible link in future. That reinforces my view that a senior salary pay review body or a Nolan-type committee should investigate the matter so that we can prepare recommendations for the next Government to apply in the next Parliament. They can then take effect properly and with a minimum amount of controversy. However, I accept that there will be controversy and I agree with the right hon. Member for Worthing that we should confront that and take part in it positively and robustly.
  1196
  I want to ask a genuine question—I do not make a party political point. Given the obvious change that there has been in the power of agencies and given the number of agencies that are now spawned by Ministers, then if we are to have very small policy units with Ministers in charge—I know that there has been much political controversy about the Home Secretary and the Prison Service—should the inquiry that I and the right hon. Member for Worthing and other hon. Members are suggesting, consider the future and continuing responsibilities of Ministers?
  However, all those matters should be removed from the potential controversy of a debate on the Floor of the House of Commons. They should be tackled by people who can make evaluations sensibly, dispassionately and objectively. They should make recommendations to Ministers and Ministers should have the courage to implement them.
  I should like to think—certainly in as far as I have any influence in any new Government or otherwise—that Liberal Democrat Members would support Ministers if they made sensible recommendations that brought ministerial salaries and Members' salaries into line with ordinary modern market levels.
  6.30 pm
  Sir Peter Emery: I shall be quite brief; I have only three arguments to make.
  First, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) on making a case that I should have thought would be acceptable to all hon. Members. The idea that we must at all times do nothing because the press will snipe at us seems to me to be the worst of all possible arguments.
  I disagree with my right hon. Friend in only one instance. I do not think that the issue of Ministers' and Members' salaries should go to a Nolan-type inquiry. The case is so well proved that three or four hon. Members—some Ministers and some Opposition Members—should be able to get together to hammer out a joint agreement that can be made public, which will operate from the next Parliament. We should not ask someone else to consider the matter—someone whose recommendations we would review and alter before putting the report to one side. The job should be given fairly and squarely to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), so that together they may work out a new structure.
  It cannot be right that the chairman of UK Ltd.—our Prime Minister—is paid less than any chief executive officer of one of the top 100 companies, and probably of many other companies. That cannot make sense. Something has gone wrong with the structure. Whoever the Prime Minister is, that cannot be sensible, and that anomaly should be corrected.
  Similarly, something is wrong when Ministers in charge of Departments are paid considerably less than their chief civil servants and often much less than their deputy secretaries and other people, not only the permanent secretary. That is archaic, wrong and should be corrected—and corrected now, to take effect from the start of the next Parliament.

  1197
  That is the main message that I wish to give to my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House. However, there is one other thing. Will he please get together with the Opposition to work out what shall be the indices that we must apply in 1996 for the adjustment? We have been through that so many times over the years.
  Eighteen months ago, we believed that we had put the thing to bed— that we would never have that debate again. As a result of the alteration of indices, I understand that we shall have to decide on something. Surely that can be done quickly and mutually, because there should not be any dispute about it, and it can be adopted by the House, without any political aspect being brought into it, for the benefit of all Members who will be affected after the 1996 adjustment. Surely that does not need to be referred to anyone. We and our leaders should be reasonable enough to be able to get that done.
  That is a common-sense matter, which would be tackled in that way in any other organisation. Simply because we happen to be in the public eye, we are scared silly that we may be criticised for being greedy or wrong or something of that nature.
  Mr. Dennis Skinner: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
  Sir Peter Emery: I am just about to stop, but of course I give way to the hon. Gentleman.
  Mr. Skinner: It is all right as far as it goes, but the right hon. Gentleman is one of those Conservative Members who will gladly support a minimum wage for Members of Parliament, and in this case for Ministers and others, yet, when it comes to ordinary workers earning £1 or £2 an hour, will undoubtedly walk into the Lobby with all the Ministers to prevent those workers obtaining a miserly £4 an hour.
  Sir Peter Emery: One might have expected the hon. Gentleman to make that sort of comment, but there are some times when he can rise above being extremely negative and derogatory. The position is not as he would imply. I am suggesting that Members of Parliament might begin to approach—not actually approach—a true market value for the job that they do.
  Hon. Members often work 60 or 70 hours a week—not the number of hours that the hon. Gentleman would imply—including working on Saturdays, in time when other people are absolutely free. That is a special job, which needs to be done, and done properly. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing said, we need to attract the best people to do that.
  I hope that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will forgive me for leaving the Chamber. I shall return when he replies to the debate, but a presentation is being made to the Clerk of Committees, who is retiring after 41 years. I shall go, if my right hon. Friend will excuse me, to pay attention and then return to the Chamber.
  6.35 pm
  Mr. Andrew Mackinlay: I believe that I hold a quite different opinion from most hon. Members in the Chamber tonight. However, I endorse some of the
  1198
  comments made about a need to regularise the salaries of Ministers and Members of Parliament for the next Parliament. That is prudent.
  I shall discuss all the people mentioned in the order at least to Minister of State level, if not higher—with the exception of you and your colleagues, Madam Deputy Speaker, whose salaries are a pale shadow of what they should be.
  I broadly agree with one thing that the right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) said. In the unlikely event of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) inviting me to join his Government—perhaps contrary to his better judgment—I certainly would accept the salary of the Minister appropriate to that portfolio, because I believe in the well-established trade union principles, "What you have you hold" and "Take the rate for the job." However, I believe that the way in which we set the rate for the job of Ministers is not appropriate. There are some constitutional dangers, on which I invite the House to pause and reflect.
  The historical reason why Ministers have salaries is that, in the days when membership of the House was a part-time job—it could be and was done part time by the vast majority of people—obviously when Members were given a ministerial appointment they were expected and required to give up outside interests, so there was a case for a salary, which created a disparity between Ministers and other Members of Parliament.
  Nowadays, even if the work of a Back-Bench Member is not wholly full time—although I believe that it should be, and I have no remaining time to give to any outside interest—there is a consensus that it requires a tremendous amount of time and attention. So, of course, does the work of a Minister, but in my opinion a case cannot be made for a disparity of salary between a Back-Bench Member and, at least, a Member who has reached the level of Minister of State.
  I believe that Back-Bench Members of Parliament and Ministers of State work equally hard. They have different roles, and there is a danger of our not recognising the different roles. However, it is important that people should aspire as much to the role of a Back Bencher as they do to that of a Minister.
  The functions of Back Benchers and Ministers differ from one other. There is a need for people who will concentrate on being a Back Bencher—who will probe, criticise, cajole and ferret out information. There is a need for hon. Members who ask questions in the House of Commons on evenings when others might want to get away and move on to other business. Such people might be a nuisance and make aggravating remarks. That is an important role, and it is wrong to suggest that it is less important than being a Minister of State. We must bear that in mind.
  There are other hon. Members with important functions. The deputy leader of the Labour party does not receive any additional salary; the leader of the Liberal party does not receive any additional salary and the Front-Bench Opposition team do not receive a different salary—they are on Back Benchers' salaries. If there is a case for Ministers receiving a higher salary than Back Benchers, it seems that there is a case for those other hon. Members to whom I have just referred receiving a different salary. However, I believe that we should all be equal here.

  1199
  Before people deride what I am saying, they should reflect on the fact that there is likely to be a Conservative Opposition in the not too distant future. The Conservative leader of the Opposition will have to choose people to serve on his or her shadow Cabinet. They will no doubt be required and expected by the party to give their full-time energy and enthusiasm to their shadow portfolios, but they will have to do so on their existing Back Benchers' salaries. At that time, some of them might remember my speech and think, "Mackinlay had a point." When they are sitting on the Opposition Benches, they may well think that perhaps their worth, energy and enthusiasm, with minimum resources, are as important as those of the Labour Members sitting on the Treasury Bench.
  There is a danger of having two tiers of Members of Parliament, which would not be conducive to good parliamentary democracy. There is no doubt that many people come to this place with a burning ambition to sit in a ministerial car. That is a perfectly honourable ambition, but of equal importance are those people who come here to probe and check the Executive.
  Some hon. Members have given long and distinguished service to the House. The late Bob Cryer used to sit below the Gangway on the Opposition Benches and my hon. Friend the Member for Newham, South (Mr. Spearing) works diligently as a Back Bencher. Certainly, millions of people consider my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) to be extremely good value for money. If there were to be a vote, they would want him to have a salary at least equal to that of a Minister of State.
  The system is wrong. I hope that there will be some reflection on the fact that hon. Members should be equal and their salary—their remuneration—should reflect that. Much more important than our income levels are the resources available to us to do the job as Members of Parliament—but that is another debate, as is the subject of hon. Members' salaries. The issue of salaries is important—our cousins across the water in the United States have far more resources than we do to fulfil their roles as legislators.
  Mr. Rooker: Will my hon. Friend please finish his speech?
  Mr. Mackinlay: My hon. Friend asks, from a sedentary position, when I will finish my speech. He makes my point: the relationship in this place between the Treasury Front Benchers and the Opposition Front Benchers is far too cosy. There are occasions when hon. Members need to stand up and demonstrate a degree of independence which is not reflected here too often.
  On that note, I shall conclude my say—I am pleased to have had it. It is time to cut out the cosy relationship and recognise that parliamentarians here are, and should be, equal.
  6.44 pm
  Mr. Newton: I am tempted to say that tonight's debate has been an almost heartwarming experience for a Minister. It started off with Ministers being collectively described by the Opposition Front-Bench team as kindly, honourable people, or words to that effect. A series of speakers, led by my right hon. Friend the Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins), supported by my right hon. Friend the Member for Honiton. (Sir P. Emery) and
  1200
  Opposition Members, then described us as underpaid and overworked. I hope that my right hon. Friends and others will understand that I am not sure that it would be appropriate for me, in my position, to spend the rest of this debate warmly agreeing with every word that they said. I thought that some powerful points were made, on which I shall reflect. I hope that others, including those who comment on our affairs outside the House, will also reflect on them.
  I listened to the characteristically engaging speech of my fellow Member of Parliament for Essex, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Mr. Mackinlay). I cannot say that I agreed with every word, but, as he defined a Back Bencher's role as being a nuisance, I thought that he had established some degree of expertise and should be listened to with appropriate respect.
  I shall now comment on some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr. Rooker), which will enable me to pick up, albeit briefly, points raised by other hon. Members. He asked a technical question about a couple of missing words. I have been given the customary soothing assurances from those who send me such assurances that that was no more than a drafting matter, not a sinister, devious plot. I marvel at the hon. Gentleman's assiduousness; I had better confess that I did not sit down and compare every word of this order—
  Mr. Rooker: I did.
  Mr. Newton: I know: I am returning the compliment that the hon. Gentleman was kind enough to pay to those on the Treasury Bench by complimenting him on his remarkable feat. I am almost tempted to agree with the hon. Member for Thurrock that the hon. Member for Perry Barr has demonstrated the need to be paid more. I certainly note the point raised by the hon. Member for Perry Barr and assure him that there was no sinister intention or error involved, but an attempt to improve the drafting. We are always looking to save a word here or there to save the hon. Gentleman's reading time.
  I recall the offer that the hon. Gentleman made last year relating to primary legislation, which I did not reject then and certainly would not reject now. In my role as the person with responsibility for the legislative programme, may I say that it is necessary to weigh the question of how much time to use on one issue rather than another. Judging from some of the speeches that have been made from below the Opposition Gangway in today's debate and last year's debate, however much co-operation there may be from the Opposition Front Bench, it is not absolutely clear that that co-operation would be universally reflected throughout the House. I note that the hon. Member for Perry Barr has repeated his suggestion.
  I realise that the issue of linkage was raised more in relation to hon. Members' pay than to Ministers' pay and so runs a little wider of the main subject of tonight's debate. I note the concern expressed. As I have demonstrated to the House in the past three years, I have no doubt about the value of a system whereby hon. Members' pay can be increased sensibly and fairly, annually, without the need for an annual debate. I have every intention of ensuring that such a system is sustained.
  A number of interesting suggestions have been made in relation to Lord Nolan and other matters. I hope that the House will understand that, against the background of today's debate and the time pressures—quite apart from

  1201
  the factors that I have already mentioned—it would not be right for me to give an extensive, philosophical speech ranging over all those subjects.
  Mr. David Winnick: Is the Leader of the House aware that a number of points have been made—including some by Conservative Members—that need to be considered seriously? Perhaps we shall return to them soon when we debate the Nolan report. Is the Leader of the House aware that one reason that many of us cannot go along with the suggestion made tonight by the right hon. Member for Worthing (Sir T. Higgins) is that, over the past 16 years, a Tory-dominated Parliament has worsened the position of the poorest paid in this country—those who live on a pittance? All the statistics—even Government statistics—bear that out. In those circumstances, there is no room for cosy complacency between the two sides on the issue of pay.
  Mr. Newton: I note what the hon. Gentleman says and I understand why he makes that point. I shall not use my former experience in the social security area to expand on the many improvements that have been made for less well-off pensioners or for people in low-paid employment with children through family credit. I simply make it clear that I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman's analysis. Beyond that, the hon. Gentleman has not tempted me to make a speech about social security or any other wider subject. Once again, I commend the order to the House.
  Question put and agreed to
  Resolved
  That the draft Ministerial and other Salaries Order 1995, which was laid before this House on 23rd October, be approved

  NORTHERN IRELAND (REMISSION OF SENTENCES) BILL
  Ordered,
  That, in respect of the Northern Island (Remission of Sentences) Bill, notices of Amendments, New Clauses and New Schedules to be moved in Committee may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bill has been read a second time.—[Mr. Newton.]
  6.50 pm
  Sitting suspended.
  On resuming—

  Accommodation Level CrossingsBill (Lords)
  Order for Third Reading read.
  7 pm
  Sir Patrick McNair-Wilson: I beg to move, That the Bill be read the Third time.
  The Bill, which is concerned with safety, was originally deposited in the other place in November 1994. It had a trouble-free passage through both Houses to this point. The Bill is modest but important. Railway Bills used to take the lion's share of parliamentary time but they are now something of a rarity, as a result of both Houses accepting recommendations of the Private Bill Procedure
  1202
  Joint Select Committee—of which I have the honour of being Chairman. This is a somewhat unusual occasion but it is nevertheless important.
  Although the Bill had a trouble-free passage through both Houses, I must explain its purpose. Railtrack is a public limited company registered under the Companies Act 1985. On 1 April 1994, that part of the British Railways Board undertaking that consisted of the management of the railway network in Great Britain and of related property rights and liabilities was transferred to Railtrack.
  Railtrack includes a number of level crossings created for the benefit of owners and occupiers of land adjoining the railway, known as accommodation level crossings. Under the previous arrangements, many of those parts of the railway system were not covered by current legislation. Certain railways within what is now Railtrack were authorised by legislation before 1845. One of them covers my own constituency—the 1830 Act relating to the London and South-Western Railway.
  Those parts of the railway not covered by section 75 of the Railway Clauses Consolidation Act 1845 or by section 68 of the Railway Clauses Consolidation (Scotland) Act 1845 operated a totally different type of penalty for people who failed to close gates on accommodation crossings. Last night, I found in clause 84 of the 1830 Act—and we grumble about the length of Bills today—these words:
  "And be it further enacted, That all Persons opening any Gate set up at either Side of the said Railway to communicate with the adjoining Land shall and they are hereby respectively required, as soon as they, and the Carriages, Cattle or other Animals or Things under their Care, shall have passed through the same, to shut and fasten the said Gate; and every Person neglecting so to do shall forfeit and pay any Sum not exceeding Forty Shillings for every such Offence."
  Clearly, that is a modest fine in today's economic climate.
  The Railways Act 1992 brought up to date fines for all those railways that were subject to post-1845 legislation, but those before that date were not affected. The Bill is designed to bring the whole rail network, and fines for accommodation crossings in particular, up to date.
  The Bill has three clauses, and it will do no more than apply to the pre-1845 Act crossings the same penalties as apply to the amended clauses Acts. If the Bill is passed, all accommodation level crossings throughout England, Wales and Scotland would be subject to the same laws concerning the closure of gates and the lowering of barriers—and the same penalty levels. It is important to note the reference to barriers, because many gates have been replaced by barriers, to which no Act of Parliament makes reference. The schedule comprises a long list of the railways affected.
  This is a modernising and important piece of legislation, and I commend it to the House.
  7.6 pm
  Mr. Brian Wilson: I am sorry that we are not joined tonight by the Secretary of State, but a press release today informs us that he is speaking in Grantham, which presumably has a vacant seat. We wish him well there. I note also that in the awards run by PR Week, Railtrack is a finalist in the category of best internal publication. I did not know that Railtrack had any internal publications—I thought that they all had become public.

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  We have no problem with the Bill, and I endorse the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for New Forest (Sir P. McNair-Wilson). The measure will make a significant contribution to safety, but it must be seen in the context of everything that Railtrack is doing. We question whether everything that is happening on the railways is in line with the measures that the hon. Gentleman is rightly proposing tonight.
  I will share with the House some of the thoughts of Jan Glasscock, who I understand is a safety director with Railtrack South, contained in a memorandum in which he reviews safety issues within his area. He complains about the prescriptive nature of safety regulations on the railways and states that the inevitable effect has been either to close the railway completely for lengthy periods or cause excessive delay, and/or reduce the number of trains that can be passed over a specific route. Jan Glasscock writes that while not wishing to dilute the safety message, they must be mindful of the commercial effect that those requirements are having on the railway industry and on Railtrack as a business. He attaches a list of rules, regulations and instructions that he suggests should be got rid of without compromising safety.
  The most disturbing passage in that memorandum is the final paragraph, where Jan Glasscock concludes with a flourish:
  "It is no good in five years' time saying 'We were the safest railway in the world, but we went out of business.'"
  That is a very disturbing sentiment. We want to be able to say, unequivocally, that we have—as we have had in the past—the safest railway in the world; but we do not want that to be pitted against the commercial interests of a private company. For Jan Glasscock to predict that he might conceivably say in five years' time, "We were the safest railway in the world, but we went out of business" suggests to me an immaturity and conflict of interests in the organisation which are intolerable, and which on their own would represent a very good reason for abandoning the privatisation of Railtrack.
  Jan Glasscock has suggested a list of measures. Some are doubtless fairly marginal, but others are sufficient to make us wonder whether it is really such a good idea to dispense with safety measures that have been built up over time. He suggests, for instance, allowing the use of a passenger train during fog in the event of information that a person has fallen out. I do not know why that is not considered a good idea, but I am sure that I do not want the commercial interests of Railtrack to determine whether that measure should be repealed now.
  Jan Glasscock also wants a more lax regime in regard to train crew route knowledge. I do not wish to detain the House, but the list continues. In regard to signalling, for instance—
  Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Janet Fookes): Order. I think that the hon. Gentleman would be wise to follow his own advice. We are dealing with a narrow Bill—on Third Reading, which makes the debate even narrower.
  Mr. Wilson: I am grateful to you for letting me get this far, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I nevertheless think it important to view safety issues in a wider context—and it so happens that some of Jan Glasscock's
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  recommendations for a more lax safety regime apply to level crossings.
  It is important to put the Bill in that context. If, as a result of privatisation, we are indeed moving towards a regime in which safety is pitted against the commercial interests of Railtrack, it is all the more important to have the measures and penalties that we are discussing.
  I leave hon. Members with that thought from Jan Glasscock:
  "It is no good in five years' time saying, 'We were the safest railway in the world but we went out of business.'"
  What worries me is that in five years' time we could be saying, "We were the safest railway in the world, but then we were privatised and commercial interests took over." That really would be a tragedy for the country.
  7.12 pm
  The Minister for Transport in London (Mr. Steve Norris): The hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) loses no opportunity to blame every leaf on every line—and, no doubt, inappropriate kinds of snow—on privatisation, which has not yet come about. He was remarkably restrained this evening, however: we did not hear of a single leaf, or a single flicker of snow.
  The Bill rebuts the hon. Gentleman's implication—British Airways might have some difficulty following the logic of this extraordinary proposition—that the introduction of private capital and more effective management necessarily leads to lower safety standards. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest (Sir P. McNair-Wilson) pointed out, it is a housekeeping measure, which seeks to bring the penalties imposed on railways built before 1845 for leaving crossing gates open into line with those built after that date. The anomaly is due to the omission of pre-1845 railways from the Transport and Works Act 1992.
  I suppose that, as a previous chairman of the Campaign for Freedom of Information in the House, I should reveal that on occasions such as this Ministers are furnished with sheets of questions and answers anticipating the difficult barbs that may be launched by hon. Members on both sides of the House. I can exclusively reveal—provided, Madam Deputy Speaker, that you promise not to pass the information on—that question 2 on my list reads, "Why missed out?" The answer is "Oversight".
  Mr. Graham Allen: Somebody probably cocked it up.
  Mr. Norris: I am not entirely sure whether that is parliamentary expression, but it is more or less the reason for our being here this evening.
  Mr. Allen: A slip of the quill.
  Mr. Norris: A slip of the quill, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says.
  I do not think that I need add to the succinct explanation offered by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest of why this innocuous measure should not be given its Third Reading.
  Question put and agreed to
  Bill accordingly read the Third Time, and passed.

  Oxbridge Lane Primary School
  Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bates.]
  7.15 pm
  Mr. Tim Devlin: I welcome my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment to her first Adjournment debate. I was very pleased when someone whom I know to be a fellow Landrover owner—and a keen one—took over the portfolio; I look forward to working with my hon. Friend in her new job.
  The debate is about future facilities at a school in my constituency; it is not—as the media seem to expect—a debate about lack of Government funding, the need for repairs or over-large class sizes. Oxbridge Lane is a very pleasant school, although it is small: it is efficiently run and well led, in good repair and with good class sizes. There are two classes of 30, and the rest comprise between 25 and 30. The buildings are in very good condition.
  The debate concerns the future of the school, which is a victim of its own success, with a full roll and parents choosing to send their children to it. The plain fact is that the schoolis simply too small for the number of children who currently attend it, and too small for the number who will want to attend in the future.
  At present, the school has some 450 pupils and 21 teachers. After Christmas, there will be 490 children. Given the current admission of 75 children per year, the maximum number that the school could hold is 525. The Department's maximum, I understand, is 442; the figure is based on an admission of 56 per year.
  Under the Education Reform Act 1988, primary schools must admit pupils up to their "standard number". That was calculated in 1991 as the highest of the following: the number on the roll in May 1991, divided by the number of age groups; the number produced by dividing the capacity of the school by the number of age groups; and, if applicable, the number intended to be admitted under the most recent proposals under section 12 or 13 of the Education Act 1980. In the case of Oxbridge Lane, that figure is 525.
  As a result, the school is so crowded that it has to have split break times and split lunch times, and cannot hold an assembly for the whole school at once because the hall is too small and such an assembly would not comply with fire regulations. There is no room for a library, or for proper physical education facilities as required by the national curriculum. There is only one playing field, across the road and up an alley, recently reclaimed from derelict land by the county council. The school nursery and music facilities are delivered in a Horsa hut, also across the road and up the same alley. There are terrible parking problems in the area, as there is no off-street parking.
  Generally, the staff are doing wonders with what they have. The buildings are warm, dry and well maintained; when working, the school is quiet and well ordered. None the less, it is exceedingly difficult to run split meal times and breaks when children do not concentrate because other children are indulging in other activities outside the window and there is simply not enough space for all of them to be out in the playground at once. The school was
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  built in 1890. It is now 105 years old; it will be 106 in February. The parents have recently raised a lot of money to refurbish the playground, and I pay tribute to them for their efforts and for the support that they have given to the school. The school is hemmed in on four sides by the Victorian streets that it is built to serve, and there is no room for expansion in any direction.
  The children from the Oxbridge area of my constituency deserve adequate facilities so that they can receive excellent access to the national curriculum. Therefore, one of two things will have to happen: either there will have to be a reduction in the standard number at the school, to 60—the physical capacity, which will leave many parents disappointed at not receiving their choice—or a new school building will have to be provided on a site where it is possible to expand.
  A reduction in the number of children would fly in the face of the Government's policy of parental choice. That has been endorsed by the governors and the local education authority, but it is, however, not an ideal solution. For instance, even at the lower standard number, the school would still have no kitchen facilities and all the catering would continue to be delivered on wheels from St. Bedes, some distance away, by lorry. That in turn takes the school hall out of use for a good part of the day. Ideally, if the school is to remain where it is, it would benefit from Marlborough road, the adjacent road, being closed off to give safer access to the grassed area and the nursery up the alley on the other side of the road. The Horsa hut, in which the nursery and drama facilities are housed, would also need replacement, as it dates from before the second world war, even though its present condition is quite good. There would still be no access to playing fields. There would still be no technology suite, and the staff room would still not accommodate all the staff at once.
  The alternative is to consider building a new school. In another part of my constituency, Ingleby Barwick, we have two delightful new primary schools for a whole new community of new houses. But, in my submission, old communities in old houses deserve good schools for their children as well. The site for a new school is already designated. There are two models of what such a school could be like.
  It would be in line with our policy to give parents a real choice if my hon. Friend were to recognise the strength of Oxbridge Lane's claim for capital over the next five years; recognise that it has been top of Cleveland's bid for the past five years; and lobby our colleagues for the necessary funds to start this great project. If she cannot do that, I would very much appreciate her advice as to what should be done.
  7.21 pm
  The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Employment (Mrs. Cheryl Gillan): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton, South (Mr. Devlin) on raising the situation of this school with me, and welcome the opportunity to respond to the points that he has put on behalf of his constituents.
  My hon. Friend is well known as an assiduous and hard-working Member who constantly puts issues on behalf of Stockton, South before the House. His constituents are most fortunate to have him as their representative in this place. I also thank him for his kind

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  remarks, and as a fellow Landrover owner, Madam Deputy Speaker, I shall try to keep this vehicle on the right road.
  I am well aware of the position at Oxbridge Lane primary school, as are officials in my Department. Thanks to my hon. Friend's efforts, I and other ministerial colleagues have corresponded with him about the school on previous occasions. Indeed, my officials visited Oxbridge Lane last summer to see the school at first hand. I have listened carefully to my hon. Friend's description of conditions at Oxbridge Lane and have taken note of the representations that he has made about them. My hon. Friend and others on Teesside believe that there are too many children currently attending the school in the light of the facilities that are available on the current site. They also believe the reason for that situation to be an excessively high standard number, which forces the school to recruit additional pupils at a level above that which is sustainable.
  I shall first of all say a few words about the rather technical system of the standard number and what it is designed to achieve. I shall then make two suggestions to my hon. Friend as to how the current situation at the school might be alleviated, which I hope he will find helpful.
  As my hon. Friend will know, a standard number is a fixed minimum entry number and is intended to be an indicator of a school's capacity, which admissions authorities are required to honour. The intention of the system is to protect the exercise of parental choice. It means that as many parents as possible can have their first choice of school for their children, and I am sure that my hon. Friend would join me in endorsing that principle. We do recognise, however, that standard numbers can sometimes be too high in the light of the facilities that are available at individual schools. We have a mechanism for dealing with that, under which local education authorities can publish proposals for the reduction of standard numbers. Such proposals require the approval of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment. She looks at each case that reaches her on its merits.
  Our expectation is that most successful cases will involve the removal of physical capacity at a school, which implies, of course, that fewer pupils can be accommodated. My right hon. Friend is prepared, however, to take other arguments into account in reaching decisions on proposals for reductions in standard number. It is open to local education authorities to put to her whatever they feel is a convincing case. In reaching a decision, my right hon. Friend would, of course, have regard to the Government's policy of more open enrolment. As many parents as possible should be offered places for their children at the school for which they have expressed a preference.
  We must remember that any reduction in a standard number could mean a reduction in the number of parental preferences that can be met. The case for a reduction must therefore be made with reference to the existing standard number and to the changed circumstances of the school since that number was set. My right hon. Friend will need a clear explanation as to why the current standard number should no longer apply. In the case of Oxbridge Lane primary school, therefore, it would be open to the local education authority to publish proposals to reduce the standard number if it felt that it was too high. Were it to
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  do so, I can promise my hon. Friend that I and my right hon. Friend would look very carefully at any arguments that it put. We would also bear in mind what he said tonight.
  I should add that the initiative in publishing such a proposal lies with the local education authority alone. Whatever impression my hon. Friend's words may have made on me tonight, action would lie in the first instance with Teesside. The local education authority has not published a proposal to reduce the standard number of the school, and my hon. Friend will, I am sure, wish to take the matter up with it directly.
  It may be helpful to my hon. Friend if I comment on a further point about where responsibility for publishing any such proposal would lie. Cleveland county council is currently the local education authority for my hon. Friend's constituency, but from April 1996, Cleveland will, as he knows, be passing that particular baton to the new unitary council for Stockton-on-Tees. If it was the intention that the standard number should be changed before 1 April 1996, it would be for Cleveland county council to publish any proposal. If, on the other hand, the proposal was intended to be implemented after that date, it would be the responsibility of the new Stockton council. We have made explicit provision in regulations for shadow local education authorities such as Stockton to be able to publish proposals before they formally enter into their education kingdoms. There should be no delay in dealing with matters such as this purely because responsibility for education is transferring from one local authority to another.
  My second set of remarks relates to capital funding. If something needs putting right at the school, action must in the first instance lie with the local education authority, which has a statutory responsibility for providing school places in Stockton and for ensuring that the buildings where children are taught are safe. Like other local education authorities, it will have substantial capital resources of its own that it could devote to the kind of work at Oxbridge Lane that my hon. Friend mentioned, if it so wished. It is not for me to seek to influence the decisions that it makes about local spending priorities. I should add, however, that it is open to Stockton-on-Tees council, which will have responsibility for the school capital programme in my hon. Friend's constituency from next April, to put in a bid to my Department for capital resources at the school. Indeed, I know that Stockton made reference to the school in the bid that it submitted to my Department only last week. My Department is currently considering local authorities' capital bids, including that of the new Stockton unitary authority, and final allocations will be announced in December.
  It may he helpful to my hon. Friend if I explain a little about how our system of capital allocation works. As he knows, local authorities are given permission to borrow up to a certain level to fund capital programmes for all their services, including education. Decisions on how to use the resources generated by borrowing are entirely for the authorities: they must decide priorities between services and between projects within services. The borrowing limit is not the limit on authorities' capital spending. As I have already suggested, authorities are also able to invest capital receipts and they can use funds from their revenue budgets for capital purposes if they wish.
  In determining each local authority's share of the national total of capital allocations, consideration is given to commitments arising from projects allowed for in

  1209
  previous allocations, providing new school places in areas of population growth, and implementing cost-effective schemes to remove surplus places.
  After allowing for authorities' liabilities for work at voluntary-aided schools and for approved capital work at special schools, the remaining resources are distributed by a formula to contribute towards the cost of all other capital-related work at schools. The formula is made up of elements to meet improvement work, work at special schools and other work.
  The national priority criteria have been agreed with the local authority associations. They reflect authorities' statutory and contractual liabilities and have remained substantially unchanged for more than 10 years. They are designed to meet the most pressing needs for capital funding in schools.
  One example to which my hon. Friend referred is the construction of two new primary schools in Ingleby Barwick. He should be aware that my Department was able to make a substantial financial contribution to the funding of those projects.
  Each year we undertake a review to determine whether the procedures should be amended in the light of changes in the organisation of schools and of comments from local authorities and other interested bodies. Of course, we would consider carefully any representations for a change in the criteria which attract consensus support.
  I understand that the local education authority and the governors would prefer to replace Oxbridge Lane primary rather than reduce its standard number. However, my hon. Friend will wish to note that, in its past three capital bids, Cleveland local education authority has not bid for a named project for the school in one of my Department's priority categories but has said that it is a project that it wishes to fund out of its improvement/replacement formula. Capital under the improvement/replacement formula is not given for named projects, and it is up to local education authorities how they spend their improvement/replacement resources and, indeed, as I said a moment ago, their total annual capital guidelines allocation.
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  It is always open to local education authorities, however, to bid for additional capital resources in the supplementary credit approval rounds that take place three or four times a year. Supplementary credit approvals are late additions to local authorities' capital allocations for cases where capital could not be issued in the main capital round. They also act as a way of providing for projects that are clearly very worth while but might just fail to meet the strict criteria for specific cover that I have already outlined.
  My Department currently gives priority to projects that involve significant investment from the private finance initiative and those connected with the single regeneration budget. I must, however, emphasise that all bids will be examined on their individual merits. I know that my hon. Friend would not expect me to make any promises here and now.
  Cleveland local education authority has not bid for a supplementary credit approval for the school in question. The next supplementary credit approval round is likely to take place early next year. Any allocations given in that round are for spending before April 1996. Again, my hon. Friend may wish to approach the local education authority on that point.
  Clearly, I cannot guarantee the success of any bid submitted for consideration, but my hon. Friend can be assured that, if a bid is submitted, I shall take into account everything that has been said this evening. If bids are unsuccessful, local education authorities are welcome to ask that their bid should be reconsidered in future capital rounds.
  I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this subject and for the opportunity to discuss some of the issues surrounding school building projects and our policy on admissions. I am always happy to take account of any points that he would like to draw to my attention, especially in connection with Oxbridge Lane primary school, and I have sought to be helpful tonight.
  I have particularly noted my hon. Friend's opening remarks, in which he said that the school is pleasant, efficiently run and well led. There is no doubt that his comments will be reflected on with pride by the teachers, governors and parents alike at that school.
  Question put and agreed to
  Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes to Eight o'clock