Lords Sitting of 14 January 1987

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR On the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Derby.
Viscount Bearsted—Sat first in Parliament after the death of his brother.

Electricity: Wind Generation
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether it is their policy to encourage the economic generation of electricity from wind power.
Viscount Davidson: Yes, my Lords. To this end, Her Majesty's Government are supporting a comprehensive research and development programme aimed at exploiting the United Kingdom wind research for economic electricity generation. This programme, which since 1979 has cost some £20 million, has largely been directed to the development of large wind turbines for the United Kingdom grid operation and includes major projects on Orkney and Carmarthen Bay.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that welcome reply. But are the Government prepared to introduce new factors to be applied in assessing full rates for this novel kind of installation? A test case, such as the one at Ilfracombe which was mentioned in reply to my previous Question a few months ago, cannot do more than interpret the present system, which may not be relevant and may penalise enterprise and new technology.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, local rates are of course a matter for my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment. But I can tell my noble friend that he has agreed to review the position of rating of private electricity generators in response to a request from my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Energy.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, can the noble Viscount tell us how much electricity is now being generated by wind in Orkney and what is its cost?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot tell the noble Lord how much electricity is being generated. This is part of the research and development programme and it is being supported by the Government.
Lord Strabolgi: My Lords, can the noble Viscount not tell us what percentage of our total energy needs would come from this source? Does he not know that?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I do not know that. If the noble Lord wants a truthful answer, that is it. But
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what I can say is that wind energy is currently emerging as the most promising renewable energy source for generating electricity in the United Kingdom. Department of Energy assessments of the economic prospects for wind energy show that from the year 2000 generation costs could be competitive over a wide range of scenarios. We intend to continue research and development to find out how cost-effective a contribution it can make. I hope that that is a satisfactory answer.
Baroness Nicol: My Lords, does the noble Viscount agree that however excellent the various alternatives may be there is no substitute for a good conservation policy so far as energy is concerned? Can he reassure the House that the Government's present policy of privatising energy sources will not mean that they let up on their conservation programme?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I certainly can confirm that. I can tell the noble Baroness as well that the environmental impact of issues such as noise and visual intrusion will be studied as part of on-going research and development so that their acceptability can be assessed.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, can the noble Viscount give us comparative figures for the amount of money spent on wave research? He will be able to give us, I hope, the figure spent on nuclear research since 1979. He said that we have spent £20 million on wind research.
Viscount Davidson: The answer is, not without notice, my Lords.
Lord Gray of Contin: My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me that the total amount of contribution likely to be made by the year 2000 by alternative energy sources is in the region of 8 per cent. of our total requirement and that this is a very small contribution indeed? Does he further agree that it would be quite ridiculous to divert all our attention to alternative sources of energy when we have already successfully invested so much money in nuclear energy? Should we not be giving every possible encouragement to the nuclear industry to continue its forward march?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I agree entirely with my noble friend, but the Question on the Order Paper is directed to the possible benefits from wind power and my view is that we must not neglect any source of alternative energy.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, reverting to the Question on the Order Paper about wind power, may I draw the noble Viscount's attention to the important export spin-off from this technology? Have we captured any markets abroad and is there a prospect of doing more if we develop this process successfully in the UK?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I agree entirely with the noble Lord. I do not have the figures with me, but I shall write to him.
Viscount Mersey: My Lords; I wonder whether my noble friend will go a little further than he did in an earlier answer that he gave. Is he anticipating that more power will be generated by wind than from tidal schemes such as the Severn barrage and indeed the Mersey barrage?
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I do not think that there is a competitive race in this. We are trying to harness all sources of energy.
Lord Cambell of Croy: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in putting the original Question I was not suggesting that this source of energy should compete with nuclear? But is it not correct that it could make a very useful addition, even though it would be a limited proportion of the energy needed, because it is clean, it does not cause pollution and also our oil will be getting used up?
Viscount Davidson: Yes, my Lords. I can say that wind powered generation is particularly attractive for isolated communities such as islands not connected to the grid, where it would be competing with diesel plants. This also represents a useful export potential for British manufacturers.
Lord Williams of Elvel: My Lords, can the noble Lord tell the House how and in what manner the Government will be reporting on the results of the research? He mentioned the year 2000, which is rather a long way away. Perhaps he can tell us whether we shall get interim reports from time to time and in what manner.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I suggest that the best way would be to put questions down.

Illegal Parking: Police Action
2.44 p.m.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action the Metropolitan Police are taking to combat illegal parking.
The Minister of State, Home Office (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, the Metropolitan Police devote considerable resources to their continuous effort to tackle illegal parking in London. Nearly 1·9 million fixed penalty tickets were issued in the first nine months of 1986. The new fixed penalty system was implemented on 1st October 1986, and wheelclamping was contracted out on 1st December. These measures should improve the effectiveness of the police's enforcement effort.
Lord Brougham and Vaux: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply and should say that I am in favour of the scheme of wheel clamping. Can my noble friend tell the House whether the contracting out will lead to more wheel clamping and can he confirm that a police officer accompanies the units going around London?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I can confirm that wheel clamping teams operate under the supervision of a police constable who decides which vehicles are to be wheel clamped. We anticipate that wheel clampings, which at the moment number about 30,000 to 40,000 a year, will increase up to 100,000. That should certainly have a deterrent effect on illegal parking.
Lord Paget of Northampton: My Lords, have the Metropolitan Police any instructions with regard to clamping invalid driver cars?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, perhaps I can write to the noble Lord on that particular point.

The Lord Chancellor and 1956 Records
2.46 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government why the Lord Chancellor has not resigned in view of the information now revealed in the records of 1956.
The Lord Chancellor (Lord Hailsham of Saint Marylebone): My Lords, in my opinion I have nothing in my personal conduct with which to reproach myself in these matters.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord accept from me that there is no iota of personal animosity in this Question, nor is there any question of the noble and learned Lord's personal conduct? However, is he aware that in 1956, as part of my duties, I had to help Hugh Gaitskell, Jim Griffiths and Nye Bevan to write speeches and broadcasts in which we accused the Government of breaking international law and colluding with the Israelis? We were told we were liars. Has it not now been revealed by the papers published on 1st January that it was the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary who lied and that there was a breach of international law? In that case, is there not at least some case for the application of the principle of collective responsibility?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I must have misunderstood the purpose of the noble Lord's Question. I had not regarded it as a reference to collective responsibility, in which case it would have been a constitutional solecism. I regarded it as a rather clumsy attempt at a personal smear.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, is it not deplorable that a relative newcomer to your Lordships' House, disregarding all its traditions, should abuse Question Time by launching a thinly disguised personal attack upon a distinguished Minister of the Crown?
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I repeat that there is no personal attack whatever attached to this Question. It is a political issue—
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, it is a political issue, and I ask the noble and learned Lord to accept that. Will he further tell us whether, at the time of the Cabinet of which he was a member, which according to the record is now seen to have colluded with the Israelis and to have broken international law, he did not feel that this was a matter of collective responsibility? Will he further tell the House whether it is his department that is responsible for the suppression of those records which were not published on 1st January?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, there are two points. First, I was not a member of the Cabinet until January 1957. Secondly, the Question relates to those records which have been published and not to those which have not been published.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, is it not the case that the suggestion that a Minister of the Crown should resign suggests to most people that that Minister has been guilty of some form of improper conduct? On that basis, is it not an abuse of the practice and procedure of this House to place such an attack on the Order Paper in the shape of a Starred Question, rather than the traditional way, if it is so desired, of putting down a formal Motion?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, I do not think it is for me to answer the question.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, is it not the case that in this particular instance the judgment of the noble Lord in putting down his Question has been rather less sound than usual?
Baroness Seear: My Lords, since the noble and learned Lord has told us he was not at that time a member of the Cabinet, does that not dispose of the whole Question?
Lord Elwyn-Jones: My Lords, in relation to the answer of the noble and learned Lord about documents, may I ask whether we may now feel that all relevant documents have been published; or are some being withheld? if so—and I am making no personal indications here—on whose authority are they being withheld?
The Lord Chancellor: My Lords, as the House will know, the Lord Chancellor's Office in fact decides which papers are to be withheld and which disclosed. I was particularly careful on this occasion to make quite certain that any conflict of interest did not arise. There have been files to which the usual criteria were applied, but in any case in which my own actions were in question I made quite certain that the decision would be taken on the advice of an impartial third authority.

Rules for Severe Weather Payments
2.51 p.m.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper:
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what medical advice they took in determining that a temperature of minus 1.5 degrees centigrade averaged over a Monday to a Sunday was necessary before claims could be accepted for severe weather payments; and whether this temperature limit took account of both night and day temperatures and of wind chill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Security (Baroness Trumpington): My Lords, medical advice is that the groups most at risk from hypothermia and other cold-related illness are people over the age of 75 or under one. We have in fact extended the qualifying groups to include those over 65, under two, or chronically sick or disabled.
The qualifying temperature was set not on medical criteria, but on the basis that help would be given one year in five on average. This is because the scheme is intended to give help only when it is exceptionally cold. The qualifying temperature takes account of daily maximum and minimum temperatures, but not wind chill factors.
It is expected that the qualifying temperatures will be reached throughout the country this week. We have therefore announced that the extra £5 payment will be made available to everyone in the qualifying groups for this week.
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, I thank the noble Minister for that Answer, but I must press her further. If no medical evidence was taken into consideration in fixing the minus 1.5 degrees, surely this is totally irresponsible. Is it not a fact that the Meteorological Office was asked to pick on a datum line that would ensure that the Government only had to deal with the issue on average once every five years? If that is not true, then I invite the Minister to say so. I will try to keep within the Rules of Order and not abuse Question Time.
Noble Lords: Hear, hear!
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, but conceding that, no one has found a real answer to the problem. I want to suggest that it is time we all got together and found some way of giving a winter bonus irrespective of temperatures and ages, so that people do not have to suffer this uncertainty.
May I ask the Minister why the qualifying age for children in families to receive the extra benefit is only two years old? Is it not the case that for the ordinary heating addition, children up to five can qualify? Now I suddenly find that children have to be two years old, or under two years old. So are we not faced with the absurd situation where a family with a two-year-old baby can get an allowance this week but, if the baby has a third birthday next week, cannot get it? Surely this is the sort of rigid arithmetic which shows how useless and stupid this arrangement is.
Noble Lords: Oh!
Baroness Jeger: My Lords, thirdly—it is not unusual for Front Bench speakers to ask three

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questions on such an important matter—we welcome of course the sinners who repented yesterday and who agreed that £5 should be given for this week. But will this be paid automatically? Surely the local offices have the records of all those who are on supplementary benefit. Why cannot they be paid automatically instead of having to apply, to have those applications processed and then to wait until the Ministry can deal with the matter before receiving the money they need so badly?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, with regard to the five-year-olds, we considered the point carfully. But, in the light of the improvements which we have already made for this group—automatic entitlement to a heating addition and an increase in the value of their scale rate of over a quarter—we could not give the matter priority. I would point out to the noble Baroness that the amount spent in 1984–85 was about £400 million annually, compared to spending by the last Labour Government of under £90 million.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, is it not totally wrong that £500 in savings should disqualify people who would otherwise qualify when that sum is hardly more than the cost of a funeral? Secondly, simply on the question of monitoring, is it not absurd that places in Scotland which last week experienced temperatures of 11,16 and, I think, 18 degrees below, did not qualify because the monitoring stations were in a coastal area? Should not the whole monitoring system also be revised?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the weather stations were chosen after consultation with the Meteorological Office. We have concentrated on stations where information can be provided quickly to enable help to be assessed as near as possible to the time of bad weather. SSAC has commented that our proposals are manifestly an improvement on past methods.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, would the noble Minister tell the House what arrangements are being made to monitor hypothermia among the elderly? Will she respond to approaches that I understand have been made by the National Pensioners' Convention, who want to make representations to her in that regard?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the Government are taking the problem of hypothermia very seriously but the underlying causes are uncertain. We are therefore studying the available information closely. We need the right information to produce the right, effective policy.
Lord Avebury:My Lords, did not my noble friend raise a very serious point when he drew attention to the fact that the micro-climate within a region can vary enormously from that measured at the official station? Would not the Government think it desirable, indeed essential, to increase the network of monitoring stations so that people in areas where severe cold is experienced, who at present do not qualify because of the location of the monitoring station, should
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nevertheless get the heating allowance to which, by all objective measures, they are fully entitled?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, it is of course the case that an absolute standard means that help will go to places where at any one time it is actually coldest. That seems to me wholly reasonable. SSAC firmly supports an absolute standard. When there was a comparative system in 1984–85, it was heavily criticised, particularly in Scotland.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness this? We have seen appalling pictures on all channels of British television of British men and women around 90 years of age dying because they are too cold almost to live. I do not find any humour in this situation, unlike some of your Lordships on the Benches to my right. I find it an extraordinarily serious and dreadful situation that every night we should hear of somebody dying because they have not enough money to keep themselves warm. In view of this, would it not be possible for the Government, please, to consider the suggestion that they should contact the British Medical Association, some of the local authorities, and particularly the voluntary organisations, who are concerned with this problem, to try to find a formula which will replace the current soulless, barren, mathematical formula on which they are working?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I think the noble Lord exaggerated greatly in the first part of his question. On the second part, I would say we are already closely in touch with all the voluntary organisations, with whom we are working agreeably.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, will the noble Baroness accept that the statement made in answer to a Question in another place yesterday was generally welcomed by all the voluntary organisations throughout the country as a step in the right direction? But inevitably and predictably the debate has now moved to another plane and other questions are being asked. Is what is being done enough? Will the assistance get to the right people? How will they get it? In particular, how will those people who pay for their fuel by means of a slot meter as they go along get this extra allowance so that they can put it into the meter, and when will they get it? Finally, may I solicit the noble Baroness's support for my Motion which has been going around for a long time? It calls attention to the need for a comprehensive strategy to end fuel poverty and this annual argy-bargy about who gets what, when and why, and calls for the introduction of a proper, decent policy that all governments can pursue.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I think it is important that I tell the noble Lord that advertisements including claim forms will appear in the national press this week. Revised instructions have been issued to local offices on publicity when the conditions for payment are met. This includes local press advertisements and a wide distribution of a specific leaflet, both containing the claim form for help. I doubt whether any scheme will ever be seen as fully satisfactory. We have devised a system which provides a reasonable solution judged over the years.

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Severe winters are not all alike. We cannot keep trying to devise a system based on one year's experience.
Lord Kilmarnock: My Lords, can the noble Baroness just answer my question about whether savings of £500 act as a disbarment to people who are otherwise qualified, and whether this is right?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, the £500 savings comes into the question because the people who are entitled to receive severe winter payments are those who are on supplementary benefit. One might spare a thought for those who are just above the level of supplementary benefit. The level was raised from £300 to £500, but there has to be a limit.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, does the noble Baroness not agree that one of the best ways to help old people with their fuel bills in cold spells is to ensure that their homes are well insulated? Is she aware that some important home insulation work by the Neighbourhood Energy Action Group has been jeopardised by the intended withdrawal of single payments? Can the Minister say whether the Government have decided on a replacement for this very important benefit as far as home insulation goes?
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the information provided.

Business
3.2 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, I should like to say a word about the arrangements for this afternoon's two short debates standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, and the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby. As is customary in short debates, the mover is allowed approximately 15 minutes and the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate. In the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, it means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of six minutes. If any noble Lord should speak at greater length, it will be to the disadvantage of subsequent speakers in that debate.
In the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to propose any formal time limit, but I know that the House will appreciate it if noble Lords confine their speeches within limits compatible with the spirit of these short debates.

Regional Policy: Imbalance in Prosperity
3.3 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe Lord Taylor of Gryfe rose to call attention to the situation which arises from the difference between the prosperity of the South-East of the country and the decline in other areas, and the case for an effective regional policy to redress this imbalance; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. On Monday of this week, eloquent tribute was paid in this
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House to the memory of the late Lord Stockton. I want to recall that in 1936 he fought an election in Stockton and declared in his manifesto:
"I want to bring before the South, London and the Government, the really desperate position of some of the distressed areas (and the North-East in particular) and to demand effective action for the relief of unemployment".
I think it is appropriate to remember our late, distinguished colleague by returning to his concern today, and that is the simple purpose of the Motion before the House.
I suggest that before we discuss controversial matters in relation to regional policy we should try to establish common ground on a number of principles. First, I think we can agree that regional prosperity cannot be achieved in the absence of national prosperity. Secondly, I think we can agree that there is a regional problem and certain parts of our country have suffered disproportionately from the collapse of manufacturing. Thirdly, if there is a an upturn in the economy the disadvantaged regions will be the last to respond, for in the absence of an effective regional policy it is the industries in the prosperous South which have been able to invest and modernise.
Fourthly, the division of our country into a prosperous South-East and a decaying North is unjust, dangerous and wasteful. This does not suggest that there is no poverty in the South-East or pockets of affluence in the North. But measured in terms of unemployment, housing, average household spending and the general quality of life, we are moving towards a two nation situation.
Fifthly, an effective regional policy can make some impact in redressing these imbalances, and the Government have a responsibility to pursue such a policy. It cannot be left to market forces. Here I suspect that the consensus ends. I am arguing that the Government are failing to discharge that responsibility.
I notice that the Prime Minister has recently declared that the North-South divide is a myth. The Sunday Times last Sunday apparently dismissed the concept by the unique device of counting the number of Porsches sold in Newcastle. I live on Clydeside. If the Prime Minister or the Sunday Times reporter will accompany me down to Port Glasgow where one in four of the male population is unemployed, they will receive the true facts of the situation.
These are decent people. Many of them are skilled tradesmen, with families, who seek the same comforts and opportunities as all of us. They have built luxury liners and great battleships. They have sustained and protected us in wartime. Today they feel rejected and humiliated. They are anxious to work. When Nissan advertised 240 vacancies on the shop floor of the Newcastle factory, 11,500 people applied for the jobs. This is the reality of the North-South divide.
In the South-East unemployment is 8·5 per cent. In the North-West it is 14·2 per cent.; in the North it is 16·6 per cent. The average weekly expenditure per household nationally is £156. In the North it is £131. In the South-East it is £186. The South-East weekly average household income was 51 per cent. greater than that in Northern Ireland, which is a special case, and 41 per cent. higher than in the North of England.
The trouble is that, instead of diminishing, these regional disparities are increasing day by day. For example, 94 per cent. of the jobs lost since the Government took office in 1979 have been in the depressed areas of Scotland, the North, Northern Ireland and the Midlands, while the South has lost only 6 per cent. of the jobs in that period.
It is suggested by some market economists—mostly Conservative—that market forces will adjust these regional disparities because if there is a surplus of labour in the North, so the theory goes, it will cause wages to fall and employers will hire more labour; while in the South-East the reverse will take place. If there had been any justification for that view it would have already happened. But that has not taken place. The same distressed areas exist today as there were at the end of the First World War.
The other main market mechanism—the migration of labour and capital—has also failed since it tends to be the employed and the skilled who migrate. Today, because of the high cost of housing in the relatively prosperous South-East, no unemployed person can afford to move—even if he has a bike! The average price of a dwelling in the South-East is 70 per cent. higher than it is in the North. The failure of the market mechanism to correct regional imbalance makes government intervention a necessity.
The present situation is wasteful. Schools, hospitals, houses, transport and recreation facilities already exist in the North, while pressures in the South require public investment in all those services. Such is the pressure on land in the South that a building plot in the South-East costs 28 per cent. of the total cost of a house. In Wales it is 7 per cent. and in Scotland 9 per cent., so there is a continued inflationary pressure on the price of housing.
Everyone in business knows that economic growth depends on the entrepreneur and the innovator. In the absence of employment opportunities in the regions the bright young people inevitably drift to the South and leave the regions impoverished. The tendency towards centralisation in control of large companies following the recent merger mania drains the regions of their bright managerial talent.
Privatisation and the creation of large private monopolies have also contributed to centralisation. The international companies whose investment we have welcomed in the regions tend to have their headquarters elsewhere and the regional plants are branch plants which inevitably suffer with the downturn in any economic activity. It is necessary that we should stress to the Monopolies and Mergers Commisson, which examines cases of mergers, that it should consider the regional dimension.
I am frequently asked whether the regional policy works. The DTI recently asked that question and commissioned two Cambridge economists to study the matter. In a recently published report they revealed that between 1960 and 1981 an estimated 630,000 new jobs were created as a result of positive regional development policy.
I should like to say a word about the Scottish Development Agency. It could provide a model for an effective regional intervention in other parts of the
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United Kingdom. It has an investment function. It supports venture capital projects. It encourages inward investment. It has a responsibility for advisory services to small businesses and initiates schemes for urban renewal. It is a success story. However, I give the Minister a word of warning. Accountability of the SDA and similar bodies to the Minister and his civil servants must never be confused with control. These bodies must retain the freedom of the entrepreneur.
I should like to say a few words about how the Government discharge their responsibility. I confess that, as in other areas of the economy, their performance is sadly inadequate. In November 1984 the Government announced a new policy, the objective being the reduction of regional disparities in employment opportunities. This placed a greater emphasis on support for purely labour-intensive projects and withdrew subsidies from large capital investment, ignoring the fact that it is precisely capital investment in modern plant which will raise the competitiveness of industry, on which the regions depend. The high-technology industries, for example, are not always highly labour intensive. Capital investment provides the necessary stimulus to cost reduction which assists industry to expand.
Behind all the so-called justification for the new policy of November 1984 emerged the distressing fact that in a period of increasing unemployment problems in the regions the Government have cut regional development grants. In 1982–83 the amount was £900 million; in 1983–84 it was £700 million; and it is expected that between 1985 and 1988, £300 million will be spent on regional aid. I ask the Minister: what is the wisdom of this policy that cuts regional support, which is employment creative, and with the money saved pays people to stand idle in the dole queues? It is madness. Perhaps the Minister will pay some attention to employment-creative support in the regions so that he can take people out of the dole queues.
The Government have confessed that their policy will not work. In their submissions to the European Regional Development Fund they confessed that they did not see any possibility of unemployment being reduced right through to the 1990s. I should like some assurance from the Minister as to how he honestly sees this new policy working. There have been two years of it and it is not working. Is it not time that we had some reconsideration of this strategy?
This is not only an economic matter. I should warn the Minister that the present two-nation situation creates dangers for the future unity of this country. People who feel neglected and who feel that their voices are no longer heard may be tempted to pursue desperate solutions. The latest opinion poll in Scotland reveals that 81 per cent. of the voters are opposed to the present Government. Even the separatist Scottish National Party is now attracting 18 per cent. of the votes against 11 per cent. at the last election.
That is the climate in which the demogogues of nationalism can flourish. The citizens of the "other nation" can readily reach a stage of disenchantment with our existing democratic institutions if they feel that they are not being heard. I want this nation to survive as a unit. I want the democratic institutions of

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this country to prosper, but they cannot do so on the basis of these economic facts.
What would the Alliance do to deal with the situation? First, we would take steps to increase the number of jobs as part of a national strategy by spending on investment and infrastructure rather than tax cuts, since regional disparities are at their narrowest when national unemployment is low. Secondly, in calculating government expenditure, including government purchasing and location of Civil Service departments, the regional factor would always be taken into account.
Thirdly, there would be an extension of regional development agencies, on the model of the successful SDA, to other disadvantaged areas and they should work in partnership with private enterprise and be given wider powers to raise finance from private capital markets. I suggest that if these policies were pursued there might be some impact on the present depressing situation of increasing unemployment and hopelessness in the regions. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.20 p.m.
Viscount Brentford: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, for introducing this Motion. This subject is being discussed in the media and throughout the nation at the present time and I believe that it is right that your Lordships should also formally consider it.
As the World Bank has said, we are going through a structural adjustment as the nation moves from its traditional manufacturing base to a wider one including the service industry and new high technology. As the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, said, the decline in manufacturing and the resulting unemployment situation is not the same thoughout each region. Although there are difficult and unpleasant figures that can be quoted, I believe that we need to look at this question not on a regional basis but on the basis of smaller areas. That is what I shall be proposing to you in a moment.
I should like to suggest to your Lordships that there are three underlying assumptions that ought to be kept in mind when we consider this matter since we all aim to be positive and want to produce answers that help toward mitigating this world-wide problem. The first assumption is that we want industry, including high technology, to expand in this country both for the benefit of the nation and in order to mitigate the unemployment situation. This is required particularly in places of highest unemployment. I believe that as high technology industry expands and the computer bases increase so will our young people, who are perhaps the most discouraged by unemployment, receive encouragement.
It is not sufficient for this country to have a service industry. A service industry needs manufacturing and serves it. And, my Lords, manufacturing industry must continue. We must always bear that in mind.
Secondly, I believe that research is vital for industry and perhaps that has not always been sufficiently emphasised over the past 50 years. The pattern needs to be a partnership between industry and the universities. The universities and polytechnics are vital
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for research and for training. We have recently been looking at the reports of your Lordships' Committee on Science and Technology and I believe that there are matters there which need further consideration.
Thirdly, the information that is obtained through research and otherwise needs to be disseminated both formally by means of publication and also by person to person contact. It is important for people who are working in the academic field on a particular subject to have plenty of opportunity to discuss their work formally and informally with those in industry who are dealing with the same subject. I shall return to that topic in a moment.
Let us take the example of Cambridge where, I have been told, very good communication takes place between the university and local industry, not only in formal settings but also in discussions over a cup of tea or the various other kinds of drink that are imbibed. Such communication sparks off ideas and leads to the application of the results of research.
I should like now to turn to my proposal, which is that we need to consider much more clearly the need to focus in one place the resources for one industrial sector. I shall illustrate this by picking out at random the suggestion that all the resources for biotechnology should be focused at Middlesbrough in order to produce a biotech centre for Europe. This would mean that certain requirements had to be met. First, it would mean recruiting key academics in the biotechnology field for Middlesbrough Polytechnic. Secondly, the best courses for biotechnology should be focused on Middlesbrough Polytechnic. Thirdly, there should be special incentives for firms which are working in biotechnology to set up in Middlesbrough. Fourthly, Middlesbrough would need to publicise its role throughout the world by advertisements, exhibitions and so on. Fifthly, leading employers, such as ICI, should participate in this field (in the recent past ICI has cetainly done work in biotechnology).
That is what I should like to recommend as worthy of consideration. It could be argued against the proposal that surely Middlesbrough in the past has had that sort of focus in shipbuilding and steel-making. However, there are two points that I should like to make against the argument that this idea has been tried and failed. First, research needs to be the new factor—a partnership between academics and industrialists. That is the new pattern and is the way forward to the new technological age into which we are moving.
Secondly, surely the lesson has been learned that a new industrial focus is needed before an old industry collapses. We all know that we are living in an era of accelerating change. We cannot get away from the fact that old industries must come to an end and new ones start. That fact has to be faced. Before old industries die it is important that a new industry should be born and started up, ready to take its place. Before the old dies the new must be born. That is my suggested industrial focus strategy for the regions.
3.27 p.m.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, I also should like to echo the thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, for introducing this subject. I am sorry that we

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do not have longer time in which to discuss it. I am certain that almost everyone on this side of the House, and I think some Members on the Cross-Benches, would agree with me that it is a great pity that the consensus to which the late Lord Stockton referred—and which was referred to after the First World War as building a land fit for heroes and encapsulated in the phrase, "Never again will the economic problems of this country be solved by mass unemployment", to which so many politicians in this country subscribe—is not found inside one party. It is indeed a great pity that the present Government are maintained in office because the opposition to that Government is split.
I shall not go into details about the responsibility for that situation but it is a very sad reflection on modern politics. I do not think that there is any need for anyone to argue that there is a North-South divide and that it is severe. There is no doubt about it. If anyone had any doubts about that on the last occasion that we discussed this question, since then they have only had to read the national press—the serious papers—to be convinced of the fact that there is a North-South divide. Amazingly, the Prime Minister does not seem to accept it but seems to think that something could be done locally to get rid of the North-South divide. I think it is about time that someone from the Conservative Party took the lady on one side and whispered in her ear the real truth about our economic situation.
Worse still, however, that kind of attitude illustrates another form of divide. I quote the Secretary of State for the Environment, Mr. Ridley, who said that such areas—he was referring to Merseyside and Tyneside—had been in the firm control of the Labour Party since before the war. The decline was because of forces within our control. He tried to show, and actually said, that the responsibility for the problems in those areas lay fairly and squarely with the people and their leaders, whom he associated of course with the Labour Party. Someone should have told him before he went to the North-West to look up his political history, because in fact over the years of decline Merseyside was fairly and squarely under the control of the Conservative Party.
Is it right to blame Merseysiders for the fact that shipping moved down to the South-East with the advent of the container trade? Of course it is not. Was it right to blame Merseysiders when an organisation such as Tate and Lyle, in which industrial relations were nearly perfect, decided to close, or when Dunlop's decided to close? There were many other firms on Merseyside with excellent industrial relations. Was it right to blame the Merseysiders when they closed? Why did Mr. Ridley come to the North-West to lay the blame on those people? He was simply appealing to the base motive of selfishness. He wants to demonstrate to the Tory heartland that it is not the problem of the people in the South; they can solve their own problems up North.
When we debated the Queen's Speech, the Leader of the House, with pleasure in his eyes, defended his Government's attitude to the problems of the regions and informed us that they had spent £465 million on regional aid. No doubt he was glad to boast about that.
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Let me give your Lordships some of the figures. I put down a Question in the House not long ago to which I received a reply from the Minister. I asked what the difference paid in wages to Civil Service staffs in London was as opposed to anywhere else in the country; i.e. London weighting. I was told that there are 124,000 civil servants in London alone who receive extra payments which in total amount to £150 million per year. That is much more than the aid sent to parts of the North-West.
Not only that, the expense in the South-East is so great that, as I have said before, there is a levy for London on the rest of the country. In parts of London the Government pay to the local authorities £87,685,000 in lieu of rates on government buildings. Let me give a comparison. In Liverpool they pay £9 million and in Westminster alone they pay £53,198,000. Those are only two of the extra costs met in London.
If we add to the 124,000 civil servants in London who are being paid for by the rest of the country support on the basis of one for one for jobs in the community, we have a figure of 250,000 people. Can anyone imagine the consequences if the Government were to transfer 5,000 of those civil servants to any part of the regions? Those 5,000 people sited in the middle of Liverpool would rehabilitate Liverpool and transform the economic situation almost immediately.
What did the Government do? Their first act was completely to destroy the consensus that had been arrived at across the broad political spectrum that at least 3,000 civil servants should be transferred to the area. That was nothing but a pay-off to those people who did not want to see that happen.
Five minutes have already gone. The time allowed is much too short. I conclude by saying that I rarely speak in a debate upon which there is no vote. But if we are serious and if we mean it when we say that something should be done about the North-South divide and about re-establishing the consensus that existed when we thought it advisable that unbridled capitalism should be controlled, we should perhaps make a start here. We should put down a Motion on which we can all vote and express our feelings so that the Government will look at the problem of the imbalance which exists among the regions. That means not only that something should be done about the North but that something should be done about the problems that exist in the South-East, because they are considerably worse than I have heard anyone mention.
3.35 p.m.
Lord Grimond: My Lords, as this is a short debate, I shall confine what I have to say to Scotland which is a part of the country about which I know a little. I should like to start, like other speakers, by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, on his Motion and the admirable speech with which he introduced it.
I take over several of the points made by the noble Lord but I do not wish to repeat them. He started by saying that the problem was a longstanding one, which indeed it is. It is notable that so far our efforts to

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redress the balance between the regions have not been successful. One major cause of that—it is to the major causes that we should look—is the centralisation of this country. Our usual habit is not to go to the cause of our troubles but to try and palliate them. In this case, one of the major causes of the imbalance and failure of the regions is that power and influence are centralised in London. That means political and, following that, financial and social power of all kinds. If we want to strike at that cause, we must look again at devolution, probably for the English regions and certainly for Scotland and Wales.
Recently at any rate all parties have been in favour of devolution in varying degrees and at different times. It is high time, when the feeling in Scotland is rising again, that all parties should look carefully at what can be done to devolve government.
My second point is that the Government are not everything when we come to discuss power and influence. What are important are the major institutions of a country or a region. In those institutions of course I include the head offices of businesses. What is so damaging for Scotland is that constantly since the First World War it has lost control over its main activities and businesses. That is going on now.
The Government cannot do everything, but they can do a certain amount. I should like to congratulate them on some of their efforts. When they wound up the British National Oil Corporation they set up a headquarters in Glasgow. That is an example which they should follow. They also attempted, as the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, said, to move some of the civil servants to the regions and to Scotland. They seem to have lost enthusiasm. They lost a great opportunity when carrying out privatisations, one of their main policies, by not setting up, for instance, electricity and gas corporations in Scotland, and by not going further in the case of the savings bank and having a separate Scottish savings bank or putting its headquarters in Edinburgh. That point is becoming more and more important as services take over from industry, as the noble Viscount said.
One of the most hopeful things in Scotland is that Edinburgh and the central belt may become a centre for financial services and for the higher technologies. They are doing so, but the Government must give encouragement and contracts and see that when they privatise the process of privatisation is dealt with partly through Scottish institutions and that advantage is taken of the opportunity to set up some headquarters in Scotland.
My next point is that there is a considerable amount of saving in Scotland but there are few local means of channelling it into local needs. Other countries have a less centralised banking system than ours. It is desirable to have local outlets for local savings, not just in government stock but in local enterprise and business. A look could be taken at the powers of the Highlands and Islands Development Board. It could conceivably take on some of the functions of a merchant bank and even be authorised to take deposits. Something must be done to keep local savings in Scotland.
Lastly, it seems to me time that the law relating to takeovers was looked at again. The example of
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Guinness and Distillers is horrifying in many ways. One of the most horrifying things about it is that probably one of the largest and most important Scottish companies—Distillers—was taken over by means which are a disgrace to any financial centre in the world. That may have done great damage not just to the reputation of the City and the companies but to the people in Scotland and the working of the Scottish economy. It seems disgraceful that that can happen without there being any effective powers to deal with the matter retrospectively.
It was also, I may say, rather shameful. It was not only the Guinness board, but it was actively encouraged, so far as I can make out, by the board of Distillers. So I hope the Government will look at the lessons to be drawn from this unhappy incident when it is over and take whatever steps are necessary to strengthen their powers in the case of takeovers.
3.40 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, much is being said in this debate about the North-South divide and especially about deprivation in the older industrial areas in the country. The first point I should like to make is that the northern areas are wonderful places in which to live if you have the money: wonderful scenery, excellent road networks, especially around Greater Manchester where I live; warm and friendly people, including many from the ethnic and cultural minorities who enrich our common life. But there is no doubt at all about the disparities we have in this country. As has rightly been said, there have been growing disparities between the comparatively affluent South-East and other regions in Britain.
If you look at the figures, for example, for the city of Manchester and the city of Salford—and these could be paralleled with many of the other older industrial areas—the statistics are quite horrifying. These are places into which back in the late 18th and 19th centuries, people crowded from the countryside and also from overseas—Ireland in particular—and later from other parts of the British Commonwealth or the Empire, as it then was. They manned the factories which made Britain the workshop of the world.
Unemployment in Manchester has now increased from 11 per cent. in 1978 to 24 per cent. in 1985, and in some areas of the city more than half the adult male population is now unemployed. We have congregations in my diocese of Manchester in which hardly a single person has a paid job, and by 1985 nearly one-third of the residents of Manchester were claiming supplementary benefit. That was at a time when not everyone entitled to it in fact claimed it. Unemployment is not of course the only cause of poverty. There is very low pay, and recent research has indicated that nearly half of all those in work in the city of Manchester earn poverty wages. So there are very great disparities in our country today and I think we must take them very seriously—more seriously than any government perhaps have taken them in recent years.
They show themselves in every field of life. If you take health care, for instance, the Black Report back in 1980 showed a terrifying picture of what was happening in inequalities in health care. More recently, Professor Townsend has stated that the

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health gap between rich and poor is widening with an increasing proportion of the population having very poor living standards. When it is said, perhaps rightly, that too many people who live near poverty suffer from ill health, particularly in later life, because they smoke too much, drink too much and eat the wrong kinds of food, it should be realised that this in itself is a result of inequalities and poverty.
As has rightly been said, particularly by the second speaker in the debate, some of the problems that we are facing now are from technological change, over unemployment in particular. In the North-West, textiles were a great employer. Now you can go to those textile mills which are still in operation and see modern machinery being operated by a handful of operatives compared with those who kept the machines going in the past. They are achieving greater output at the same time.
I agree with those who have already stated that we cannot go back to the old days and simply revive traditional industries. But what we must surely do is not to allow change to cause great suffering, as in the days of the Industrial Revolution. One of the things which we have around our area in the North-West is the splendidly imaginative museums which illustrate what life was like in the past. But is is a very sad picture because it also shows the grinding, terrible poverty which afflicted people in the 19th century at a time when much of Britain's industrial wealth was being created. Small numbers of people grew very wealthy; large numbers suffered terrible hardship. Change was not managed well. That must not happen again.
Today we are in the grip of another revolution with even deeper and more far-reaching effects. A recent study from Edinburgh University has put the challenge in front of us very clearly. The problem is how to distribute equitably the benefits of technological change without destroying the incentive to innovate when the technologies being adopted no longer require the kinds of tasks for which large numbers of people are needed.
We are not doing very well in facing up to that challenge. Some people today are getting very much richer and we are not distributing equitably those benefits. This study goes on to point out that we live in a society that is able to produce more goods with less labour time than ever before and which in historical and global perspective is in the midst of a veritable orgy of consumption of colour TVs, hi-fi sets, home computers, video recorders, food mixers, dishwashers and deep freezers; yet governments proclaim that we cannot afford more public services and industrialists insist that we cannot afford a 35 hour week. The real problem is not public expenditure; it is private expenditure.
I do not decry what has been done in the regions. I was very impressed when just before Christmas I visited the Salford Quays development, a partnership between Salford City Council, central government and private developers. But much more is needed and many voices in the North are now calling for a change of policy.
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Mr. John Morris, president of Manchester Chamber of Commerce and Industry, at a dinner attended in December by the Prime Minister, said:
"What we are calling for is an end to 'central' government and a move towards 'national' government … This would represent quite a fundamental change in management as well as policy. It would mean locating government departments where they are most economical, co-ordinating policy and work of all government departments at regional level, developing a national plan for infrastructure development, and consciously seeking to invest in the untapped economic potential of the regions".
We must not assume that jobs will come back in traditional ways, but a prime point of policy must surely be to manage change rather than simply drifting with it, to the hardship of so many people in this country.
My last word comes from a manual of perhaps a personal and even a national instruction over 2,000 years ago:
"A body is not one single organ, but many. Suppose the foot should say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body', it does belong to the body none the less … If one organ suffers, they all suffer together. If one flourishes, they all rejoice together".
Perhaps that is a text for national and international policy today.
3.48 p.m.
Lord Elliott of Morpeth: My Lords, I listened with great interest to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, and I very much appreciated, as I am sure we all did, his sincerity in expressing his fears on the industrial imbalance between North and South and the consequences which he and others fear because of it.
I am taking part in the debate for one principal reason, which is to warn that this constant suggestion of there being two nations within the one is inaccurate. It is potentially immensely damaging not only to the North but also to the economy of the country as a whole. I think we need to face facts a little more than we are doing. It is so easy to stand up and say that there are two nations within the one. It is so easy for a newspaper or a television company to display on the front page or flash on the screen a picture of a derelict shipyard in the North-East of England. It is so easy for us all, I believe, possibly to get the wrong impression.
I live in the North-East of England, I have done so all my life. As my area is one of the principal places always quoted in the context of the North-South divide, I feel it necessary to dispel the engendered impression that my area is depressed, derelict and in despair. It is nothing of the kind. I disagree also with the suggestion in the second part of the Motion, if I may say so to the noble Lord who moved it, that we need an effective regional policy to redress the imbalance. It is my contention that we have an effective regional policy which is working. There is, of course, always room for improvement. I will try, in the short time available to me, to give my opinion on areas of that policy which, from the experience of their success, can be strengthened and play a greater part in the enormous task of converting old industry to new.
This is the basis of the whole problem, and no one should underestimate what an enormous task it has been. But a great deal has been achieved, as I have said on other occasions, not only by Conservative

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governments but by governments of both parties in their periods of office. For instance, in the city of Newcastle there are today two colleges of technology. At this very moment 30,000 young people are getting some form of training. Neither college existed when I became a Member of Parliament for that city 30 years ago.
Training is a problem which remains, and it is one to which we need to give more attention. But, in the North-East of England today—here I refer to the speech of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester—the quality of living is high for those who have the money, that is the 82 per cent. of people who are in employment.
In the North-East of England we have the finest road network in the country—again, a tribute to both parties when in office. The scars of the Industrial Revolution have been largely removed, and this process is continuing. The all-important training in modern skills has been substantially provided. No one should underestimate the enormous problem presented by the decline of old industries but the achievement in redressing the industrial balance should be appreciated.
Many new firms have been encouraged to establish themselves in the North-East; and they are providing ever-increasing employment. There are now 22 Far East companies in the region. In September last year my right honourable friend the Prime Minister opened the largest such enterprise, the Nissan plant. Every area in the country wanted the Nissan plant, but it is right there in the North-East of England. Exactly a week after its opening, I had the privilege of opening a factory for Superbadge Limited of Hong Kong, which will provide 300 new jobs. And we have Komatsu at Birtley, and many others. To us, this movement shows continuing progress.
I turn to the encouragement which regional policy is giving to those parts of the northern area with the greatest difficulties. During the recent recess I visited the area of Derwentside as the guest of the Derwentside Development Agency. I made the visit for two reasons. First, I had been impressed by the success of the agency; indeed, I have spoken of it here on a previous occasion. Secondly, it is of particular interest because, in a region that has known the enormous challenge of industrial change, the challenge was a formidable one on Derwentside. In the space of a few years leading up to 1980, 15,000 jobs in coal mining disappeared. In September of 1980, the Consett steel works closed with the loss of 10,000 jobs.
The Derwentside Development Association was formed in the face of sheer necessity, and it has been remarkably successful. It has known two external substantial aids; one, the involvement of the British Steel Corporation task force, the other—and I quote the chief executive on Thursday last week—
"The superb support of the Department of Trade and Industry and the continued enthusiastic interest in our agency of all Government departments".
There is no doubt in my mind that it was very strong local commitment which led people in this area to get up and go and to refuse to be borne down by the closure of industry. Their own indigenous achievement is a very considerable one. I visited the Consett
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steelworks with a group of students many years ago when I was very young. It was on a dark November evening, and I remember the flames, the heat and the noise. I thought it was the nearest thing to hell on earth I would probably ever see. All that is left of the Consett steelworks today is a large aerial photograph of it on the boardroom wall. The actual steelworks have been demolished. It was the largest industrial reclamation programme in Europe. The 650 acres where the works stood are now green fields. This joint effort on the part of local people and the Department of the Environment was a tangible symbol of required change.
At the other end of the town, there is a new industrial estate. In 1980 there was one empty advance factory there. Today there is only one vacant plot. There are 200 new companies in shining new buildings, and 3,000 new jobs have been created. Best of all, in these buildings are ex-steel workers and ex-miners who are coping with modern skill requirements.
I hope that no one will imagine that this is a temporary situation. City institutions are not reluctant to invest in the North-East of England. It is not a "river flowing uphill" situation, as a letter to the press said a little while ago. There is considerable City interest in the North-East of England. North-East England wants more venture capital and seeks to encourage it. So the town of Consett, which was once said to be dying, flourishes today. There is an example here of what can be achieved in other areas by existing regional policy.
I make one plea finally to the Government through my noble friend. There are areas of recent regional policy which are extremely successful. The local enterprise agency support scheme, which is comparatively new, is good. The pound-for-pound grant is exactly what is needed to encourage local initiative with a helping hand.
I conclude by suggesting that the North-East of England, far from being a depressed region, is one of optimism and determination. I quote the chairman of the development agency in Derwentside:
"We are a proud people. We do not want just straight Government investment here; we want a helping hand".
I believe that, through present development area policy, we are on the way towards solving our major problems.
3.55 p.m.
Lord Parry: My Lords, no doubt the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, will take the courtesies and my respect for him for granted, and perhaps even the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, will accept that I understand and appreciate what he was saying in the contribution he made to this debate.
We are the products, and in some ways the prisoners, of our environment. I was born and bred in Wales and have lived there all my life. It is a beautiful country. It is peopled not by a regional body but by a nation. It has its own language; it has its own culture; and it has weaknesses that are long-standing within its economic background. These weaknesses have not been cured despite the policies which have been entered into by successive governments in Britain since 1945.

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If I were to select at random one constituency, a constituency that was won in 1951 by the noble Lord the Leader of the Opposition who is sitting before and below me, the constituency of Anglesey, we should find there an unemployment rate in excess of 26 per cent. for the male population. That unemployment rate is one which has endured for a very long time indeed; there is long-standing unemployment. That is not deny that the island of Anglesey is beautiful beyond belief. It has mountians that attract people to visit it. It has encouraged industrialists to invest in it; and some of the policies of successive governments have in fact been effective.
I could snatch a number of points at random from the pages of reports I have been reading over the past 48 hours which would prove that there is depression in the economy of Wales; that those very beautiful areas are the most blighted in terms of employment and human opportunity; that the communites that have been built within them have deteriorated beyond all belief through the past 50 years; and that the aspects that sustained them have gone to the wall. Having said that, one must not then stand up in this Chamber to defend in a party political sense the policies of one's government without recognising the vital policies of all successive governments: we have failed to cure the radical imbalance in the economy of Great Britain.
As I am speaking for Wales, let me now identify places and percentages. When you take income tax as a percentage of total personal income, Wales is bottom of the league. When you take personal income before tax (that is, by range of income) Wales is third from the bottom of the league, topping only Northern Ireland and the West Midlands. When you take regional employment, Wales is third from the top, with 16.9 per cent. unemployment—greater than anywhere else other than the northern United Kingdom and Northern Ireland. We cannot get away from this, which is the product of 50 years of political history and of changes in the economy.
More than a quarter of the men have been unemployed for a very long time. If you look at the Employment Gazette for January 1987 it shows that between March 1985 and June 1986 the numbers of employed in Wales fell by many thousands. If you look at production and construction, the numbers fell by many thousands; if you look at production alone, it fell by a great deal; if you look at manufacturing, it fell in Wales. Indeed, one noble Lord earlier referred to the service sector and its inability to provide for the total economy, despite the expansion of tourism, which is vital and a very important contribution to our economy. The service sector increased but it was the only part of the economy that grew. We cannot sustain the British people on a service economy only. That has never been part of my argument nor was it a part of that of the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford. I wholly agree with what he had to say.
Let me take some more figures. The third digest of Great Britain regions tells us that households in Wales were relatively less likely than others in Great Britain to have most consumer durables. We did rather well for washing machines, which is not surprising, since cleanliness is next to godliness in our little country. We did fairly well for deep freezes and televisions. These
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are important, although they are not altogether basic. However, the Welsh people spend less as consumers per head. Expenditure was lower in Wales than in any other region of Britain apart from Northern Ireland and the northern United Kingdom. Within that expenditure the Welsh spent 2 per cont. more on food, drink and tobacco than anyone else in any other region of Great Britain.
The effects of the coal strike on the gross domestic product cause general concern, and there was also a decline in the value of the gross domestic product. However, as a matter of pride, Wales had the highest proportion of all regions of children under five in maintained schools. We were beaten only by Scotland, Northern Ireland and the South-East of England in numbers of pupils aged 16 in maintained schools. We have the third highest figure in Great Britain for school-leavers intending to go on for higher education.
This small nation of Wales is attempting to sustain itself and to make a major contribution within the economy of Great Britain. It is also attempting to sustain its culture and language. The very fact that there are depressed areas in the North or South is reflected within the small nation of Wales. Unemployment is high in the North. The traditional industrial regions are in the South. However, I discovered, in association with the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, who helped me to prepare some of these notes, that there are large pockets of high unemployment and depression very close to the major capital city of Cardiff. There is therefore a complication within that area.
We have a very great problem to which we have to address ourselves. I ask the Minister this question. Are the Government prepared at the end of this debate to say yes, it has been terribly difficult, despite the efforts of the Welsh Development Agency and the commitment of the present Secretary of State for Wales, to cure the difficulties in the economy of Wales? Will they give us time for a debate so that we do not have to race with our figures and tumble over our words in trying to express our concern? Will the Government tell me during the reply to this debate that they appreciate that there is a very great need for the regional imbalance as it affects Wales as a nation to be attacked in a more aggressive way?
4.03 p.m
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, we are very grateful to my noble friend Lord Taylor of Gryfe. I am particularly pleased to have a lucky colleague on these Benches. This is the second time that he has been lucky in one of the ballots for the Wednesday debate and it is the second very topical and important subject he has brought before us.
In 1984 I had the great privilege of being a member of your Lordships' Select Committee on Overseas Trade. I am very glad to see my noble friend Lord Ezra, who also served on that Committee. It is well known that we drew attention to the malaise in this country and the dangerous drift towards which our manufacturing imbalance was leading us. At the end of the period of 10 months during which we sat together one of the most important matters we emphasised was the need for a change of attitude in this country—an attitude towards wealth creation and

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the participation of all people in a new atmosphere of wealth creation which did not include only those who were employed but the unemployed and those who were going to be employed.
Attitudes have changed since we produced that report. Although several of your Lordships have referred to these terms, I am not encouraged by the slogans and catch pharases which unfortunately we are always having to tackle. These days it seems that the press and the media have to over-simplify these problems into one or two words or a phrase. I think that the "North-South divide" and the "two-nation state" are not helpful phrases. I can understand that we are nearing an election—whether it be this year or next—and the two major parties are assuming combative and confrontational postures. This is the way we carry on our affairs in this country. It is something which we on these Benches would like to see changed.
The atmosphere at the moment is creating the kind of article which we saw in the Sunday Times last Sunday and to which reference has been made by my noble friend Lord Taylor. The article began with the very curious point that no such thing as a "North-South divide—as they referred to it—existed because 150 Porsche motor cars had been sold in the Newcastle area. I find that curious not only because it is totally irrelevant to the problem of our nation—but why did they not mention Jaguar? This morning I called the public relations director of Jaguar motor cars, who told me that they too sell a vehicle for what he described as "young thrusting people". I do not know whether we have any young thrusting noble Lords in this House, but the article might well have mentioned a British car. Why mention a German car? Of course it is nonsense. Cars are bought by people who have windfalls or a lot of disposable income. This has nothing to do with the problem.
The article also drew attention to the fact that employment was being created in this country in large shopping centres in retailing and in the service area. This is so but it does not contribute to the new wealth-producing process of this country which we need fundamentally to create. That has been eroded by the disappearance of over 20 per cent. of our industrial base. We need to develop this wealth-producing process, and it can only be developed regionally because of the speed with which solutions have to be reached. The variety of solutions which have to be proposed need to be effected on a regional as well as a national basis. I have to give credit to the article. It pointed out that in one region there has been a great deal of innovation and energy to create interest and employment. Perhaps I may refer to the right reverend Prelate's biblical analogy. The underlying pathology of our problem is very complicated. How we get the arms, hands and legs together will take a great deal of ingenuity and skill on the part of not only government but of everybody in the private and public sector.
I feel that the Government have not entirely failed us in this area. It is fashionable to criticise the YTS schemes, but they have accomplished a great deal. I was talking today to the public relations officer at Jaguar. He told me that he had three sons who were successful. They achieved at school and went straight into employment. However, he had a daughter who
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unfortunately did not achieve that level of attainment. She went to a YTS scheme, which taught her a great deal. At the end of that she developed self-confidence and was exposed to various opportunities where she could express her skills and develop her potential. She is now earning a good salary in the legal profession. I believe that there are many such instances.
We need to develop our real asset in this country: our individuals, our people, and particularly the young. The Government are on the right track but they have to recognise that there needs to be much more input from individuals in the regions. The Manpower Commission is contributing usefully with its Restart schemes and its job clubs. I believe that this will result in young people being able to express themselves, to handle their aspirations, to stop being victims and to take control of their destinies. This will help to counter the malaise to which I have referred. I hope that we shall be able to develop this subject in the future in a longer debate, because it is a vital one.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Belhaven and Stenton: My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, has raised a very important issue in the debate, and I am sure that we are all grateful to him for giving the House an opportunity to discuss it. I feel that I can make a very modest contribution if only because, in the past 12 years, I have spent seven years in the island of Islay in the Hebrides and five in South-East England; so to some extent I have a foot in each camp. However, like the noble Lord, Lord Grimond, I must confine my remarks to Scotland because unfortunately I do not know much about northern England except when I go through it when travelling from Scotland to London.
I should begin by saying that the problem is not new, and I will give a historical illustration. One of my ancestors in the 17th century had 11 sons. He lived in Scotland, and the union with Scotland must have come at a very fortunate moment for him because, of his 11 sons, only one remained in Scotland. One of his 11 sons became Bishop of Salisbury and another the first Scottish barrister to practise at the English bar. I do not know what happened to the rest of them. One could say that it was a family success story, but not so much of a success story for Scotland which had lost a number of obviously rather talented sons. Scotland has been losing talented sons ever since, as have Ireland and Wales, and now in the North of England they are to some extent in the same predicament.
We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, and others that Scottish nationalism is getting more support than it used to. All that I would say about that—and I have thought about the problem for a long time—is that Ireland has tried political independence, but as regards retaining its population and industry this seems to have had no effect whatsoever, good or bad.
What then is the answer? Can we give talented people what they want in their own country and in the area in which they live? I know that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, in his work in the Forestry Commission and elsewhere has practically dedicated his life to the proposition that we can and that we ought to do it. He has emphasised this in what he has said today. Taking the Alliance politics out of it, I would say that I agree

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with most of what he said. I hope that my noble friend Lord Lucas will take serious account of what the noble Lord, Lord Taylor, said. I have no intention of repeating it.
As to regional development boards, tourist boards, the Highlands and Islands Development Board, we have tried them all over many years and they have all in their way contributed towards the aim of giving young people work and incomes in the places where they live. This is all very commendable because no civilised country can willingly allow and connive at wholesale depopulation of large areas of its territory such as happened in the Hebrides in the last century. The Hebrides in particular is aware of depopulation, and, indeed, of dereliction. It is a continuing threat in those areas. One needs no further reminder in the Hebrides than to look at the remains of the old villages of the 18th and 19th centuries, and a few miles beyond them. Therefore, as I say, in that area the threat is not new and unfortunately continues.
The trouble is, I think, that no matter what we do—I am talking of the outlying areas, not of the industrialised areas of northern England and Scotland—it will be very difficult to stop the populations of these areas from falling. One reason I find is that, of the young people who live in remotish islands, the enterprising ones want to get out and find what the world is like. It is not much good creating a few more jobs in hotels, distilleries and so on if they are going to go away. One should try to mitigate it, slow it down, and give the people who want to stay a chance to stay.
If one takes the other side of the noble Lord's Motion, I think the movement of the population into South-East England will continue. I do not think that anyone will be able to stop it in the foreseeable future. It is part of a worldwide trend. We have only to look 300 miles away at Paris to see that the same problem is happening across the Channel.
We will also have to face the fact that people are not just going to come from remote areas into the United Kingdom. I am thinking in particular—because I have been abroad for a few weeks—of the ramshackle socialist economies of eastern Europe where people have no kind of a standard of living that anyone would put up with in this country and where they would leave if they had half a chance. Also, there is the fact that their governments are now less willing to prevent them from leaving so that we are finishing up with visa controls and such like. How long we will be effective in stopping these people from coming here and, indeed, whether we are effective at all in doing so, I do not know, but I leave that as a last thought for your Lordships.
4.16 p.m.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, it is always very difficult to speak for a short period in a debate such as this. I believe that we are already running over time, so I shall try to allow your Lordships to recover some of the time.
One of the worries about the whole question of the North-East divide was brought home to me very forcibly recently when I attended a seminar on the Channel tunnel. I have always been very pro the idea
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of a Channel tunnel. It may seem a strange way to begin to speak in such a debate. It was in about 1964 in another place that I made my first speech about it. In the past few months particularly I have become more and more concerned about the Channel tunnel. What originally sold it to me, I suppose, was the idea that goods would be able to be put on a train in Scotland, the North-East or the North-West of England and driven straight to Italy, Germany, France or Spain. What has become apparent to me now is that we are not really producing any goods in Scotland, North-East England or North-West England that are likely to be sent through by train in that way, so I am having serious doubts about it. I still like the idea, but to my mind the original purpose seems to have gone.
If one looks at the area that I come from, Strathclyde, the west of Scotland, where we are famed for our heavy industries, even up to 1960, 42 per cent. of our population was in heavy industries as against only 38 per cent. for the whole of the rest of the United Kingdom; so one will realise how dependent we were on heavy industries. Since 1974, a matter of 12 years or so, we have lost 20,000 jobs; 56 per cent. of the workforce in metal manufacture, 17,500, which is 56 per cent. in vehicle manufacture; 13,200, which is 42 per cent. of those previously employed in shipbuilding. In textiles there has been a reduction of 44 per cent. of the workforce, and in mechanical engineering a reduction of 53 per cent. of the workforce. That makes it very difficult for me to be enthusiastic about the possibility of our being able to make the use of the tunnel that I thought was going to be one of its major helps to the United Kingdom.
In his introductory remarks the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, spoke about the fact that we had an infrastructure in Scotland and the North of England that it would be quite wasteful in national terms to ignore; in other words, it would be wrong merely to duplicate the infrastructure that we had in the North and leave it derelict while we built up an infrastructure in the South and solved all the problems. I think it was my noble friend from Liverpool who made the point that the South will have its problems if it does not already have them, because the problems are building up seriously in the South.
In the evening Standard night after night I find that many jobs in the building industry are vacant in the South-East and people are wanted to come from the North. I know lads who come from the North. If they are young and have no commitments, they get on very well for a period because they do not need to buy a house and can live in lodgings. However, they cannot really settle down in the South-East, partly because of the incredible cost of housing. That does not mean that I am advocating that houses should be built for them; I want us to get the jobs back up in the North.
The noble Lord, Lord Grimond, talked about centralisation mania and in my view what he said is absolutely true. We have far too much centralisation, particularly in the South of England. We in the North do not want people to move up to the North; we want jobs to go up to the North. I must say that I believe that when my own party was in power it did not do as much as it could have done in this respect. I am not saying that this is a solution to everything but it would certainly be helpful if some of the Civil Service jobs

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could be moved up to Scotland. I do not know what the figures are now, but I shall certainly put down a Question to ascertain them.
Some years ago I put down some Questions and discovered that if a young man or woman in the Civil Service in Scotland wished to stay and work in Scotland they needed a 70 per cent. pass in the Civil Service examination. However, if they were willing to go to Newcastle, then partly because of the big new NHS complex there they could manage with a 60 per cent. pass. But if they were willing to go to work in London they were grabbed if they had a 50 per cent. pass in the clerical examination. In fact, I believe that one could manage with considerably less.
It would be interesting if the Minister could check with his own department and find out where many of the letters for his department are typed. I think he would be surprised to find out that some are typed in Edinburgh, some in Newcastle and some in Liverpool. It seems crazy to me that with the pressure on jobs here we send letters up there to be typed. It is nationally wasteful to build up the South-East in this way. I think that is one means by which we could alleviate the problem.
However, that is only tinkering with the problem. The real problem for British industry is surely the fact that we have never spent enough on research and development and on investment. When I think of the figures for Clyde shipbuilding—the Clyde used to be the greatest river in the world for ships—I realise that Connels Yard—it has now gone and there is nothing left of it at all—spent £2 million on development and they thought that they were doing a great job. At the same time the Swedes were spending £20 million and £30 million on a single yard and we were expected to compete with that.
As a nation we have never, since the Industrial Revolution, spent enough on research and development. When matters were going well immediately after the war industrialists said that we did not need to reinvest, that everything was going well and that we were getting the orders. When the orders began to go down they said that we could not afford to invest any more, and so they did not do so.
I should like to emphasise one of the things that we must do. It is the only solution ultimately for Britain because we cannot get a solution from the City of London. The money that is being made there is fancy money or Mickey Mouse money; it is not real money. I know that the Minister will come back to that matter when he replies, but we have seen in the past few months the ridiculous situation there now is. Huge fortunes are being made, but where they are being made is beyond most of us. We must start investing in industry, and one of the ways to get out of the difficulty that Britain is undoubtedly in is certainly not to be cutting back on university and higher education where the real solutions lie.
There is no quick way out. There will be a slow build-up if Britain is ever to get back again to the position of even having a chance of decent competition with the rest of Europe and the rest of the world.
4.25 p.m.
Lord Winstanley: My Lords, in supporting my noble friend Lord Taylor of Gryfe, who so admirably introduced this debate, I shall restrict my remarks to the two subjects for which I have been given specific responsibility by my party in your Lordships' House: that is, health and broadcasting and the media in general. So far only my noble friend Lord Grimond has not overrun his time. Perhaps I may try to follow him.
Taking health first, we need look no further than the Black Report on inequalities of health to see the extent to which people in the North are disadvantaged from a health point of view as against those in the South-East and in the South in general. In common justice that is something that ought to be remedied. We do not all believe in equality but I think that we all believe in equality of opportunity. Surely that means the opportunity to stay alive and perhaps the opportunity to remain fit and well. We shall not have that kind of equality of opportunity until we remedy the underlying factors—that is, the extent of unemployment, bad housing, low pay and perhaps the decaying environment in which people in the northern industrial cities have to live. It is a matter of justice.
As a matter of justice let us not forget that over the centuries the wealth of Britain has come out of the North. Surely it is time that we put some of it back. If noble Lords go up to the Pennine Hills and look out on either side of those hills they will see spread in front of them monuments to centuries of greed; monuments to taking wealth out and putting nothing back. That wealth should be put back and perhaps the people in the North can deal with it themselves if they are given the opportunity.
Of course, as the noble Lord, Lord Elliott, said, there are prosperous people in the North. The trouble is that so many of them are Londoners. When I use the term London it is customary in the Manchester sense to include Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset and all points south of the Wash. However, it is the recruitment that is in London, and because recruitment is in London people are moved from London up to the provinces. They are frightened to death to start with. If they go to Mancheser they live in Prestbury or Wilmslow; if they go to Merseyside they live in perhaps Formby or the Wirral. They live in fear and trepidation of being promoted and having to move back to London again where they could not possibly sustain the same quality of life as they enjoy up there.
The problem is that those opportunities ought to be available for the people born and bred in the North. However, they are not available to them because the seat of power is down in the South and that is where posts and appointments are made. The noble Lord, Lord Grimond, was absolutely right. What one has to move is power and influence. He spoke of metropolitanisation. Therefore, let me deal briefly with the media and broadcasting. There is no more overmetropolitanised organisation than the BBC. The only badge of success for an employee of the BBC out in the regions is a single ticket to London. It really is time that power and influence in the BBC was moved away purely from London.

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With regard to the Civil Service, the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, talked about thousands of civil servants. Much has been done: part of the DHSS is up in Blackpool and part is in Newcastle, and so on. What is needed is not just exercises like that. One does not devolve by shifting the typing pool from the Department of Transport 30 miles up the Thames. One has to move the top people and one does not have to move many of them. If the control of the National Health Service were situated not in the Elephant and Castle but, for example, in York, then very quickly the heads of those firms which build hospitals would settle around York so as to be close to the people giving out the contracts. The people who supply the drugs—the pharmaceutical companies—would soon settle up there too. One does not need to shift a lot of people; one needs to shift a few top people. Once one does that one gives opportunities back to the North.
I date the beginning of the widening of the gulf between the North and South as stemming from the time when the Manchester Guardian stopped being the Manchester Guardian and became the Guardian and moved editorial responsibility and control down to London, because with that it moved recruitment. We would never have seen journalists like Neville Cardus or perhaps Francis Boyd if recruitment in those days had been purely in London. It is not that people in the North are better; they are just different. They do not get opportunities unless the point of recruitment is situated in the North.
Let us look at the media in general. Let us look at television. I have mentioned the BBC. The idea now is that the independent television companies should give much more of their work—it is said perhaps 40 per cent.—to independent production companies. Where are they? They are all in London. Do we want to finish up with nothing in broadcasting in the North except transmitters transmitting programmes made in London to the North? We need companies like Granada, which has left the seat of power up in the North, recruits in the North and does its work in the North. There need to be opportunities for the other smaller regional companies, Tyne-Tees, Border, Grampian and so on, to make their contribution to the network. One does not want an arrangement whereby there are more and more production companies growing up in London so that recruitment remains in London and opportunities are denied to people in the North.
I conclude by saying that we owe it to the North of Britain to put back some of the wealth which has been taken out of the North over the centuries. That is a matter of common justice. In the North we do not need hand-outs; we merely need power and influence. With that we should soon be able to put our affairs in order and also put affairs in order down in the South as well. My Lords, even the compass points North!
4.30 p.m.
Lord Seebohm: My Lords, I was particularly glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, speak about the North. I spent nearly 20 years of my working life in the North starting in 1932 in Sheffield where I worked until the war. At the time I went there, one in
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three was unemployed. Sheffield was pulled out of the slough of despond but not by government planning which, to my mind, was doing more harm than good. I suffered a 10 per cent. cut in salary which was not very welcome when I had recently married. What really cured Sheffield was war, and the preparation for war, which brought us into a state of prosperity. Perhaps we will have to have another war before we can get back to full employment.
The idea that the Government have powers to cure all these evils is hopelessly exaggerated. Any notion that we can cure or bring down unemployment by one million overnight is not only nonsense; it is dangerous nonsense. We must realise that it is not the Government who will improve the situation. They can help. But they can only do a certain amount. If the Government are so powerful, why is it that British Leyland, one of the jewels in the crown, cannot sell a car or manufacture cars that nobody wants? On the other hand, they cannot take any credit for Jaguar, now producing such a good car that people are apparently paying a £3,000 premium over the list price for early delivery.
The answer is something quite different. It is important to remember that according to the Employment Gazette issued by the Department of Employment there are more unemployed in the South of England than there are in the North. It is no good clobbering the South in order to spread misery evenly over the country. What we must do is reinforce success wherever we see it and, as the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, said, create wealth wherever we can find it.
I am not an industrialist. But one fact that sticks out a mile is that 215,000 vacancies in the job centres are not being filled because people lack the required skills. In the North of England there are very highly qualified people with masses of skills. But they are the wrong skills. They are the skills required in industries that have died. There is a hopeless mismatch of skills. I urge the Government to spend far more money on retraining. This must happen and the North is the place to do it. It is necessary to pay a responsible wage to people while they are being retrained in order to restore their morale.
I have spent all my life in the financial world and I can talk about that. What now clogs investment is the quite ridiculously high interest rate. It is quite scandalous. If one wants to know the real interest rate one looks in the Financial Times to see what rate of interest industrial institutions are prepared to pay on indexed Government stock. It is 3 per cent. or less, That is the real rate. Taking inflation at 3½ per cent. the base rate ought to be 6½ per cent. and not 11 per cent. With industry having to pay probably 12, 13 or 14 per cent. for money in competition with something of the order of 4½ per cent. in Germany, it is possible to see what an enormous disadvantage this represents.
Quite apart from the international disadvantage, I invite the House to consider a company such as GEC which has at times accumulated a billion pounds in cash. All it has to do is put that on the market and earn 10 per cent., taking no risk and doing nothing but look at it. What incentive, frankly, has that company to invest in new enterprises which no doubt carry a high risk and where there is no possible adequate return for

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at least five years with the result that shareholders lose possibly £500 million? If interest rates were reduced, the situation would be quite different.
When I returned from the war, the Bank rate was 2 per cent. In the first five years when we started ICFC, the International Commercial Finance Corporation, all the money was borrowed from the banks at 2 per cent. That enabled us to start small businesses and growth businesses on the basis of 3½ or 4 per cent. The company with which I was concerned issued irredeemable preference shares at 3½ per cent. Something has to be done. It may require international co-operation. I do not know quite what the answer is although if I had more time I could give some possible solutions. If the Government have thrown in the towel in order to protect our foreign exchange rate, heaven help us.
4.35 p.m.
The Earl of Lauderdale: My Lords, first of all I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, in his comment that the Government's powers in this matter are grossly exaggerated. I also agreed with the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, when he said that we do not just want hand-outs. The fact of the matter is that all countries have negative passive regions. Passivity is everywhere exaggerated by two factors. One is the migration of labour-intensive industry to where labour is cheaper. Secondly, there is the consequential freezing up of local entrepreneurial, enterprising skills. All governments, irrespective of party and whether or not they are planners or marketeers, if I may use the term, try to hold the advancing desert at bay. They all try to do so by pumping in activity centres (growth centres as they are called) and infrastructure in an endeavour to make water run uphill.
I refer to Scotland because that is where I belong. What has been done during almost 40 years since 1950 is quite astonishing in terms of infrastructure. At Thurso we have had Dounreay—the Atomic Energy Authority; at Inverness the HIDB; at Fort William the pulp mill; at Dundee a Technology Park; at Bathgate the British Motor Corporation; at Grangemouth and Mossmorran petrochemicals. No fewer than four new towns have been created and no fewer than three new universities have been set up in addition to the five already there.
A motorway network has been developed at great cost with some flamboyant bridges—the Forth Bridge, the Tay Bridge, the Kessock Bridge, the Cromarty Firth Bridge and even a causeway over the Kyle of Tongue. Three international airports have been developed. I approve of this development. But it has all been done for the sake of a population equivalent to half that of London, a population which is one-tenth of that of the United Kingdom—5 million all told.
Still this is not enough. It has not stopped the rot. There is no sign of Scotland developing the atmosphere and the spirit and the go, go, go enthusiasm of Hong Kong or Singapore. The reaction is more like that of the Falklands. The real question is how to regenerate the spirit.
I have only three suggestions. Nationally-based wage bargaining has proved a disincentive to the development of industry and business in the passive
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regions. I well remember that when BMC came to Bathgate the cry went up from trade unions—I have been a trade unionist: I am not against them at all—"We will not let them push our wages down; we will stick out for the highest wages we can get". I am sure that national wage bargaining is a real disincentive to development of the passive regions.
Secondly, local authority power to milk business and industry by means of rates is a disaster. I hope that the Government's studies of the rating problem—we are well aware that this is very much in the forefront of Government's thinking—will take due account of the principle (and I should like to establish the principle) that the power to make rates for business and industry should be a national power and that business rates should be graded according to areas of opportunity or passivity.
The third point worth looking at is the treatment of tax and in other ways of the companies exploring for and developing oil and natural gas. They still have a great future in the North Sea and elsewhere. The Government have many ways of leaning on those companies, and do not hesitate to twist their arms in all sorts of directions, particularly for the promotion of research.
The Government could very well apply a differential system for the levying of royalties on oil and gas developed from the Continental Shelf, and make the diminution—shall I say?—of royalty takings a reward for the creation of work in the workless areas.
The problem is terribly simple yet terribly difficult. It is, first of all, how to make water run uphill. That is what this is all about. The second thing is how to elicit intitiative of the Hong Kong/Singapore style rather than the, I have to say, supine negative attitude that is exhibited—shall we say?—in the Falklands.
I believe that this Government, through the noble Lord, Lord Young of Graffham, are tackling the business of restoring incentives for individual enterprise. I believe that that is the key. I also appreciate the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, opened this debate by saying that it is common ground that in the strength of the economy lies the key to the whole problem.
4.42 p.m.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, I too am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, for initiating the debate. I come from a region of the country, the north-west region of Lancashire, which has boasted over the years of the way in which it has contributed towards the national wealth of the country. We are a proud people. We do not come before the Government at this time with a begging bowl in our hands, but we come asking for what we think is right and due to us, because so much has been taken away over the years.
Let me remind your Lordships of the position as it was, and as it is, in the town whose name I bear in my title, Blackburn. Prior to the 1914–18 war Blackburn was the largest weaving centre in the world, with 80 per cent. of its population employed in the textile industry. Over the years change has taken place, and now we are down to roughly 1½ per cent. of the working

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population being employed in textiles. From 80 per cent. to 1½ per cent. is a big jump.
Your Lordships will remember that shortly after the last war one of the slogans that the Government were using was, "The nation's bread hangs by Lancashire's thread". This was commonly used throughout Lancashire to encourage people to go into textiles. But of course shortly afterwards the developing nations of the world started to use their own textiles, so that Blackburn and towns such as Burnley, Accrington and Colne and all the east Lancashire valley changed from textiles and went into light engineering and also electronics.
At the same time that this was taking place—and this change was a revolution—we in the local authorities were changing too. We were renewing our schools, because most of them at that time were old, Victorian-type schools; and it can be said that over this period schools changed along with industry changing. We realised in education that we had to look at new technology. We have built new technical colleges, and now we have a polytechnic in Lancashire at Preston. All these are making a contribution, but we still face the difficulty of a population that is getting elderly, that is ageing. A lot of our younger people no longer can stay because there are not the jobs. Years ago a lot of them got on their bikes and left.
Also what happened was that when our own people were not going into the textile industry a lot of immigrants came into the textile industry. When the industry went they had nowhere to go, and so they are still left there. Statistics prove that the growth in population is with the ethnic minority. If the ethnic minority go on increasing as they are doing at the present time, they will by the end of this century become the majority in north-east Lancashire, creating problems.
My colleagues in the teaching profession who teach these children at the ages of 14 to 16 see depression written over their faces because they know that there are no jobs for them when they leave school. They know that they cannot get on their bikes and go. They know that they have nothing facing them at all. All the problems come from this, and they grow. These are the difficulties.
In such a short debate time does not permit us to do justice to this subject. It is difficult, because one would like to quote figures and bring in all kinds of arguments to prove our case. We believe in partnership. We believe in partnership with government, industry, local authorities and the churches, because the churches have played an important part in the growth and improvement within the area. But we cannot do this if one partner does not realise its responsibility, and the partner that we want to realise their responsibility are the Government.
We want the Government not just to lay out money on wasted schemes, but we want to improve our infrastructure. We want to improve our drainage system and our housing stock. These are things we rely on and things we cannot do on our own. Therefore I plead in this debate for the Government to look again at the regions and try to work out some system and some help to enable us to go forward as one nation. We
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do not want any division. We want to be part and parcel of the United Kingdom. Therefore we appeal to the Government to see and recognise the problems that we are facing.
4.48 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Taylor of Gryfe in the admirable way in which he introduced this Motion took an objective view of the situation, which has indeed been followed by all other noble Lords who have spoken. It is important that one avoids exaggeration in this difficult situation. To claim that all that is North is in great difficulty and recession is as wrong as to claim that everything in the South is doing very well. What we need to do is to be selective in our understanding of this situation and find the measures within the total economy of the country that will resolve the problem areas.
In order to find the measure of the situation it is important to look at different industrial sectors as well as at different geographical areas. I took as an example the sector of construction—it is one in which I happen to be personally involved—and I therefore contacted the Building Employers' Confederation to get their view on the situation in so far as their industry was concerned. They told me that in their latest quarterly survey they considered that the building industry as a whole has begun to recover from the 1980–81 recession, but that nevertheless there were some inequalities.
For the most part this recovery had been in the private building sector, in house building and in industrial and commercial work. There had been a continuing fallback in the workload in the public sector, noticeably in housing repairs, which I viewed with some alarm in view of the many reports we have had about the poor state of the housing stock in the public sector.
However, the main feature which emerged from their last survey was the continuing gap between the activity of their members in the North and the South. That was illustrated by the fact that their northern firms reporting work at full capacity came to only 32 per cent., whereas in the South it was over 50 per cent. That was associated with an even more disturbing feature because in the North 56 per cent. reported no difficulty in recruiting building labour—that is bricklayers, carpenters and joiners—but in the South only 27 per cent. were in this category. In other words, 73 per cent. of building firms in the South currently have recruitment difficulties.
This is a most unfortunate state of affairs. Natural market forces, far from correcting this, appear to be adding to the problem. The demand is growing in the South and the building firms are finding it difficult to satisfy the demand. The demand is reduced in the North and they have adequate access to skilled labour. So here is a major issue to which we should be addressing ourselves. In the limited time available I cannot quote any other examples, but many have been mentioned during the course of this debate to illustrate the nature of the difficulties between North and South that exists today.
I believe that we need to take much more vigorous action, in spite of all the efforts so far made. What

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worries me slightly about the solutions being attempted at the moment is that there are so many of them. There are a large number of initiatives—Government inspired, privately inspired or jointly inspired—all very admirable and worthy, but there is a degree of duplication and there is a degree of difficulty in knowing which ones are likely to go forward.
I must say that I was very impressed by the remarks of the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, who suggested that perhaps we should concentrate the effort in a structural and sectoral way in different areas, bringing these areas' initiatives together in order to replace by careful selection industries which, by the evolution of time, are going out with those that are coming in. Therefore what I suggest, to sum up in the short time available—and I am giving my successors another two minutes—is, first, that we look at this problem objectively and see what the specific problems are; and, secondly, that we seek to co-ordinate the many initiatives at present being taken to resolve them.
4.53 p.m.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, I spoke on this matter during the economic debate on the Address and again, with your Lordships' indulgence and by sleight of hand on my part, I confess, in the debate on the Canary Wharf railway. I will try not to repeat what I said then, or indeed what has been so well put today in so many of your Lordships' speeches. I particularly do not want to go back on what I said about Teesside last autumn, because I entirely agree with what the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford, said on that matter today.
I think it has appeared today, and indeed on other evidence, to be a gross oversimplification to speak about a North-South divide. But what is quite clear is that there are pockets of stagnating economy in parts of the country, mainly in aggregate in the North, and pockets of vital, moving economy, mainly in the South. The stagnating economies are mainly those of the old manufacturing industries. I so much agreed with what the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, said about that; and that should condition our approach.
However, what one gets is not only stagnation in parts but also a seething increase in economic activity in other parts, which is almost as dangerous. To those of us who remember the late 1940s and 1950s it calls to mind a boiling labour market, resulting in economic inefficiency. There was a shortage of skilled labour, resulting in what were popularly called at the time bottlenecks. The noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, referred to that and the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, has also just referred to it. Those I think are equally dangerous economically: stagnation and a boiling economy, with a not sufficient trained labour force, quite apart from the social evils which have been dealt with today so admirably, notably by the right reverend Prelate.
I hope your Lordships will bear with me if I do not argue every point but rather state the conclusions which seem to me to have been established by other noble Lords. It seems to me there are certain incorrect and inappropriate measures to take. We should view with considerable reserve any proposals to raise vast new sums by new borrowing. The reason for that is
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that borrowing keeps interest rates up, and the more you borrow the more you have to maintain your interest rates and the more you postpone bringing them down. That point, again, was made by my noble friend Lord Seebohm. The second point is this. It is no use trying to prop up a declining industry which is in a secular decline. The noble Lord, Lord Taylor, mentioned textiles. The prime example of that was under the Weimar Republic, where money was poured into trying to keep up a declining textile industry at the expense of new industries, with the result that the economic recession hit Weimar Germany far harder than elsewhere.
I entirely agree with the approach of those of your Lordships—it is also that of the Government—who say that what we need is to replace these industries which are in secular decline with the new high-tech industries. At that point, as will be clear in a moment, I have to part company with the Government because it is clearly the policy of the Secretary of State for Employment—and I put this forward specifically in the employment debate—to relax planning controls in the South-East with the aim of making it easier for new high-tech industries to establish themselves there. That seems to me precisely contrary to what the proper planning approach should be.
It is quite true, as has been said, that by inhibiting development in the South-East you do not necessarily promote it in the North or elsewhere in these other stagnating areas. You do not necessarily do so, but you tend to do so. What you also do is avoid the shortage of skilled labour that was referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Carmichael and Lord Ezra. You dampen down the economy where it is overboiling and you tend to promote it where it needs stimulation.
The other matter of which one should be very wary—this was mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Lauderdale—is government intervention. The fact remains that even the most non-interventionist government—and the present Government are more non-interventionist than any since the war—intervene massively in the economy. One has only to think of the spin-off that will come from the Channel tunnel if it is built, involving great government expenditures even if the Channel tunnel itself is privately financed.
Then there are the universities. I thought that the decision to close university courses in the North, to the advantage of the South, was simply deplorable and quite inexplicable, except on the basis that there was no co-ordination of regional policy in the Government. On the contrary, I so agreed with the noble Viscount, Lord Brentford—
Lord Beaverbrook: My Lords, will the noble and learned Lord give way for one second? I think the House might like to remind the noble and learned Lord that time is of the essence.
Lord Simon of Glaisdale: My Lords, I am so sorry that I have overrun my time. Perhaps I may just draw attention to what was said by the noble Lords, Lord Sefton and Lord Carmichael, as well as by other noble Lords, about our policy of concentrating government in London, giving a London weighting, so as to make it more difficult to devolve it, instead of sending it to the provinces.
5.3 p.m.
Lord Sandford: My Lords, I should like to start by giving the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, top marks for topicality, but, if I was correct in understanding him to be adding his voice to those who see this as a North-South issue, low marks for diagnosis.
My responsibility in these matters is as chairman of the South-East Regional Planning Conference, comprising the 32 London boroughs, the 12 home counties and the 92 shire districts in those counties. To do our work we have to do as my noble friend Lord Elliott said you had to do and look underneath the regional statistics. If you do that, you see something quite different from a North-South issue. You see what my noble friend Lord Brentford described as the world's first industrial nation still undergoing major and painful structural change in all its parts—North, South, East and West. It is not a North-South divide. To think, and still more to act, as though it was greatly hampers and inhibits proper treatment.
Perhaps I may illustrate as briefly as I can the point that I have just made. South Tyneside is a metropolitan borough of 158,000 people, suffering from our decline in the share of the world's shipbuilding. It has 16,000 unemployed. A comparable borough in London, Tower Hamlets, has 145,000 people and, suffering from the total disappearance of the London docks it has the same unemployment figure, 16,000. St. Helens, riddled with dereliction from the early days of the Industrial Revolution, has unemployment of 14,000. Islington, an almost exactly comparable borough in London, has unemployment of 17,000, slightly higher. Calderdale, better known as Halifax, one of the textile metropolitan boroughs which the right reverend Prelate mentioned earlier, has unemployment running at 10,000. An almost exactly comparable borough in size in London, Hackney, has double the unemployment. Unemployment is what concerns us most and that is why I have been deploying those particular arguments based on unemployment statistics.
But other people will look to the home counties and say how affluent they are compared with other places in the North. I ask your Lordships to take Surrey and a factor of affluence—home ownership. Home ownership is high in Surrey but it is higher still in the proud county of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Blackburn, Lancashire. Let us take qualifications in higher education. It will be years before the people living in the boroughs of east London and the shire counties further down the Thames catch up with the level that has been reached by Newcastle. They are about three times lower. Let us take the ethnic minorities, with all their disadvantages. They are far more heavily concentrated in London than in the North. The figure is three times what it is in Manchester and twice what it is in West Yorkshire.
I ask your Lordships to consider the condition of the housing stock. It is a major factor in the matters which we are discussing. One-third of all the unfit houses in the whole country are in London, and whereas in the rest of England the amount of unfit housing is gradually falling, in London the stock is deteriorating rapidly.
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That is the diagnosis and now to the remedies. I first want to agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, and my noble friend Lord Lauderdale that the first thing is to avoid giving the impression that the Government and regional policy can do very much. They can do a great deal to make matters more difficult but they cannot do a great deal to make them better. As the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, said, much more lies within the human spirit itself. The most effective remedy comes into play when more people come to the view, and then act on it, that the revival of their fortunes and those of their neighbourhood lies to a very large extent in their own hands.
But of course there are things that can be done by policy and planning and by local authorities and central government. In the South-East the strands of policy which our members are pursuing (all within their own region) are these. The first is the renewal of the infrastructure and improvement of the housing stock, which is getting worse at the moment, in the inner city boroughs. The work that is being done in the docklands is good, but it is nothing like enough. It is a matter primarily for the local authorities. Then there is the retraining of the labour force, as my noble friend Lord Elliott and the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, said. Until you do that, it is very difficult for much else to happen. Next we seek to encourage development in the east of the region, particularly on the eastern banks of the Thames estuary, and linked with that to make the most of the opportunities provided by the completion of the M.25—not, I hasten to say, by allowing development in the green belt.
None of that planning activity does anything, I submit, to make life more difficult for the other regions. It is quite true that the Channel tunnel, which the noble Lord, Lord Carmichael, and others have mentioned, provides an opportunity to do something for the other regions. Members of conference have just encouraged me to write to the Secretary of State for Transport pointing out that it would be quite wrong for the Channel tunnel to be designed in such a way as to give all the benefits to the South-East. It must be designed in such a way as to enable goods, traffic and passengers arriving to disperse throughout the kingdom.
Finally, I should like to agree with the noble Lords, Lord Carmichael and Lord Grimond, that one of the things we suffer from is an overcentralised system of government. I should like to commend as a defence against that the existence, from which we have benefited for 20 years in the South-East, of a regional planning conference. During the passage of the London government legislation and the Bill to abolish the metropolitan counties, I urged upon the House and on the Government the adoption of this happy arrangement in other parts of the country. That fell on deaf ears at the time. I repeat it again because I think that if the party political divisions and the divisions between the shire counties and the metropolitan boroughs can be overcome and conferences of this kind formed, it will help to press forward the matters which are being discussed this afternoon.
5.12 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the Companion to the Standing Orders gives me approximately one and a half minutes to speak. I hope that the Minister will be able to use a red pencil to give me something closer to the five minutes to which I might otherwise have been entitled. I shall waste a little time in congratulating most sincerely the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, on his initiative. He must be pleased at the standard in this debate as well as at the number of interventions.
I suspect that my colleagues put me up to reply from the Dispatch Box in this debate as a Londoner and that in doing so they thought that it would be possible for me, from the prosperous South, to be generous to the deprived regions of the North. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, has effectively demolished that argument. Indeed, the statistics which have been produced since the topic for debate was put down have reinforced his points very clearly.
In London, since this Government came to power unemployment has increased by 242 per cent., and in the South-East as a whole it has increased by 224 per cent. Differences in gross domestic product per head are not only great between London and other parts of the country but are actually increasing. The GDP per head in London is 125 per cent. of the national average. Generally speaking, it can be said that the pattern of prosperity as well as patterns of employment and unemployment give no support to the simplified ideas of a North-South divide which have to some extent been current.
That is not to say that things are not desperately bad in many parts of the country. The evidence for that comes from the Government's own report to the European Communities in the form of its regional development programme for 1986 to 1990. I shall take only a few examples from the Government's own analysis of regional problems. In the North-East a loss of 200,000 jobs since 1978 is noted. That is almost one in five of the workforce. Almost half the unemployed have been unemployed for more than two years. The report uses the phrase "bleak job prospects".
In Bradford the industrial infrastructure,
"was built to serve 19th century manufacturing industry and is largely unsuited to modern needs".
In Humberside the fishing industry has been devastated by the European Community's common fisheries policy. According to the European Community's second periodic report, Merseyside is the fifth most disadvantaged region in the Community of Ten.
I shall skip over the other regions of which equally devastating things could be said. As regards Scotland, noble Lords will not like what is said as Scotland is described as,
"one of the most peripheral areas in Great Britain".
Lord Lurgan: My Lords, England is peripheral to Scotland!
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, it depends on your point of view, does it not? However, after a horrific survey of many particular areas in Scotland,
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the conclusion about the Orkneys and Shetland is that they now require more permanent jobs, as opposed to temporary oil-related jobs. That is indeed the case and the issue of the temporal and the short-term nature of oil industry related jobs must be referred to.
What is the response of the Government to these problems? Coming to the section on financial resources, we find that the Government almost entirely opt out of serious responsibility for the problems of the regions of this country. The noble Lord, Lord Ezra, referred to the overlapping of measures put forward by government and their consequent inefficacy. However, the fundamental point is that the Government think that,
"expenditure is responsive to the applications made for the various forms of assistance available".
What that means is that the Government are not prepared to put the money there in the first place. They are simply prepared to produce limited measures and then be satisfied if the response from individual employers and individual local authorities is not adequate. The Government are quite honest in saying that they take account of expected European Regional Development Fund receipts when planning public expenditure and that if it were not for the European Regional Development Fund, expenditure would be lower than it is at the present time.
This is not the attitude of a government who really care for the economic prosperity of our country, despite the fact that the report says:
"Regional prosperity cannot be achieved in the absence of national prosperity".
That is the fundamental fact that we have to face. With a government whose idea of economic policy is to strip away our national assets by privatisation and to use up the temporary benefits of oil-related industries in the form of tax cuts rather than in the form of investment in our infrastructure; whose idea of economic policy (and I wish the late Lord Kaldor were here to say this more effectively than I can) is to allow interest rates to be at a level that the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, rightly referred to; in a society and economy where we have insane capital and currency movements between different countries—my Lords, I must be allowed to finish my sentence as I have taken much less than the time I was supposed to take—and where there is gambling in place of economic policy, can it be any surprise to this House that our economy is in the state that it is?
5.19 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Lucas of Chilworth): My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord opposite for breaking in. I have a feeling that the Clerk may very well break in on me in mid-sentence and I therefore feel obliged so to do.
I was disappointed that the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Gryfe, in his opening remarks should have spoken immediately of two nations. Indeed, I believe that in his closing remarks he talked himself precisely into the depression which other noble Lords have been at great pains to lift us out of this afternoon. I do not believe that second time lucky in the ballot is necessarily to his good fortune.

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I think it is with a certain canniness that he picked this subject area. I thought he put down the Motion extremely carefully. It is:
"To call attention to the situation which arises from the difference between the prosperity",
and so on. The Government have never denied the existence of differences between the North and the South, the East and the West, and various other parts of the country. Of course there are differences; to deny that would be to deny our very history. Our nation has developed over hundreds of years and different parts have been influenced and affected by different factors at different times. The resulting variations between different parts of the country are of several kinds. There are economic differences, cultural differences, geographical differences and social differences.
Much is currently being said about the run-down of the North, but particularly in this noble House we must not fall into the trap of oversimplifying the problem and concluding that a simple solution is available. The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, suggested that there exists a trap of oversimplification and that the media sometimes fall into it. There is no simple solution.
The noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Blackburn, spoke about his part of the country. I believe that the North of the country has an awful lot going for it. In the late 1960s I worked up there in Blackburn, Burnley and Bolton. I found there a people hard-working, industrious and proud. I believe that they remain so and are ready to work when the opportunity presents itself. I am certainly not blind to the problems. However, I see no grounds for some of the pessimism that has been expressed this afternoon.
There is much for government to do, especially in creating the overall climate of economic and fiscal policies conducive to the prosperity of all parts of Britain, a point to which several noble Lords referred. However, the Government cannot do everything. Much depends on the contribution of the wealth-creating sector of the economy, especially the private sector. Given co-operation among all the parties, a great deal can be achieved.
Indeed I cite an example in the Garnock Valley in North Ayrshire. Through the combined efforts of central government, the Scottish Development Agency, the British Steel Corporation, district and regional councils and local industry, some 800 new jobs have been created and many more have been safeguarded. The co-operation involved in this programme of regeneration has successfully served as a model for other areas, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Blackburn, in his call for partnership among all the interested people. Such co-operation is important whether it is for that kind of activity or for some of the others which he described.
Heavy industries such as coalmining, steel, shipbuilding and textiles were all pioneers of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the radically different circumstances of the late 1970s and the 1980s their fortunes have changed. Changes in demand patterns, in productivity and in technology have affected all of them, I add not only in this country but worldwide. Inevitably the changes
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have impacted on the geographical areas where such industries flourished and were traditionally concentrated. Their legacy, however, is such that the necessary changes cannot be accomplished overnight and certainly not within the timescale of a single government.
The right reverend Prelate acknowledged that to try to resurrect dead or dying industries located in the North or elsewhere would not help resolve our problems. We cannot go back. We cannot reintroduce outdated practices or outdated machinery. We have to look forward, not in the short-term but over a very much longer time frame. The answer cannot be reindustrialisation as we have known it but there has to be some alternative. We must look at our various strengths and determine how best to harness them to maximum advantage—and that means, I would argue, to the advantage of the nation as a whole.
My noble friend Lord Lauderdale, the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, and my noble friend Lord Sandford expressed the view that central government could do only a limited amount. What is the role that central government should play? It certainly is not a simple matter of drawing a line between the South-East of England on the one hand, and the rest of Britain on the other; nor of drawing a line dividing North and South, or indeed any other lineal division, such as the noble Lord, Lord Sefton, attempted to draw. Other noble Lords referred to the problem in those terms. It does not work that way.
I am certainly not prepared to divide the country into North and South, though some commentators may well be so bold as to do so. There are great variations even between the regions. My noble friend Lord Sandford illustrated the black-spot problems across a wide band of the country. He drew some parallels with a series of figures. There are variations even within the regions, let alone between them. I shall give one example. One can compare an area of high unemployment such as Liverpool with Macclesfield, where unemployment is similar to that of the South-East.
The North is certainly not a huge barren waste. My noble friend Lord Elliott of Morpeth described a few of the newly attracted enterprises and by the example of Derwentside indicated how he thought the problems could be better faced and better met. The noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, in an extremely balanced contribution pointed to some of the areas in the southern part of the country that have problems.
I have been able to outline the complexity of the problems. Inevitably the solutions, too, are complex. There are many aspects—housing, health, education, training and industrial policies. Not one can be taken separately. All are integral to any solution and to the formation of any policy that has to be constructed. Therefore they have to be seen as a whole.
I mentioned housing. We are dealing with this problem through a number of programmes. For those areas with special social needs we have developed the urban programme, with the aim of securing economic regeneration, improving the physical environment and encouraging local initiatives to the benefit of the whole community. An example is our new urban development corporation initiative. Four new urban

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development corporations, in Manchester, Teeside, Tyne and Wear and the Black Country, have been set up to tackle dereliction and to regenerate urban areas. Each UDC will spend between £100 million and £160 million over the next six years. There are very successful employment measures. There is the community programme designed to improve the long-term employment prospects of participants. There is the enterprise allowance scheme, job release, new workers, adult and youth training schemes and others. The Manpower Services Commission is spending, roughly speaking, twice as much per head of the labour force, which includes the unemployed, in the North as it is in the South. I can hear critics saying that these measures do not create jobs and are of little benefit. I say that those critics are wrong. Ridicule the measures they may, but let nobody doubt that they are working.
Much publicity has been given in the press to the new government job figures illustrating just how bad the situation is. There is always a danger of quoting figures in isolation, and this is no exception. First, and very importantly, the 1984 census of employment does not take account of all jobs. It excludes the self-employed whose numbers have grown by 800,000 since 1979. Secondly, since 1983 the picture has improved greatly, with more than 1 million new jobs in total being created in the country, one-third, incidentally, in the North.
The third point is that the average percentage of those becoming unemployed who find jobs within the first six months is little different between those in the South-East and any other region. I think it is worth noting, perhaps in parenthesis and since much attention has been drawn to the so-called wealth of the South-East, that the South-East supports the economies of the less prosperous areas. That support is considerable. With over one-third of England's manufacturing industry by employment and GDP 17 per cent. above the national average, the South-East has considerable wealth-creating capacity, and that gives some support to the less prosperous areas.
During the past two-and-a-half years I and my colleagues have travelled a great deal overseas encouraging inward investment and we have received a number of delegations from other countries about the possibilities of setting up factories in the United Kingdom. I know from these discussions that grants are often low down in their order of priorities. Other considerations before how much grant come first—the stability of the workforce, the investment regime, financial exchange controls, transport infrastructure, and so on. However good the answers may be, one thing is quite clear. We cannot drag companies to the North or to any other part of the United Kingdom if they do not want to go. What we can do is make sure that all the constitutent parts needed to ensure the expansion of industry, wherever it chooses to locate, are there. I believe that we are doing that.
Some people have suggested that the changes we announced in 1984 to the regional policy amounted to sounding the death knell. That is a nonsense. The Government recognise the need for there to be a reduction in regional disparities in employment opportunities on a stable and long-term basis. We remain firmly committed to a regional policy which
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gives the best value possible from the considerable amounts of money which we are spending.
I would be quite wrong if I did not draw attention this afternoon to the announcement that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry has today made in another place with regard to the Government's plans for expenditure on regional incentives in 1987–88. The provision has been set at £419 million—an increase of £36 million on the provisions contained in last year's public expenditure White Paper. I should like to spend more time on that point but I merely draw the attention of your Lordships to it and advise that a press release is available in the Printed Paper Office.
I have listened with great interest to all the points made by noble Lords this afternoon. Many points have been made about what is or is not happening or what should happen in the other regions. I very much regret that there is not sufficient time for me to answer every noble Lord. We believe that we can talk ourselves into a state of depression. It is quite wrong to talk, or even to think, about a divided nation. We are one nation. We always have been and always will be. That differences do exist and may well continue to exist is unfortunate. However, I think I have demonstrated that, while we recognise these differences and the problems, we are convinced that our economic and industrial policies are the right ones to produce long-term solutions for the nation as a whole.
Lord Parry: My Lords, does the Minister have a word for Wales, if only goodbye?
The Deputy Speaker (Lord Airedale): My Lords, I have to say that the time allotted for this debate has now elapsed and I must ask the noble Lord whether he desires to withdraw his Motion.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, I should like to thank all noble Lords from all sides, both critics and supporters, who have participated in this debate. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

International Institutions: Britain's Commitment
5.34 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby Lord Hatch of Lusby rose to call attention to changes in Britain's commitment to international institutions, and to the consequences for Britain's influence on world affairs and the prospects for peaceful co-operation; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: I beg leave to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. Ever since men began to live together attempts have been made through various agencies to develop means of cooperation between them. Right from the days of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia attempts have been made, sometimes by force, to collect people together into co-operative units. The great Mediterranean civilisations of Greece and Rome followed the same

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type of endeavour—again, often with the use of force but not always—with the objective of getting communities to live and work together. The same kind of events were happening in India and China at the same time.
Following that period there were the great Arab empires, also around the Mediterranean and stretching into Asia. Moreover, one should not forget—and many people in this country either do forget or never knew—that the same kind of progression was developing in Africa at the same time. There were empires in Africa. There were the empires of Ghana, of Songhai Mali and Monomatapa. All these endeavours were to get people, by some means or other, to work together for single aims. They were all supranational endeavours.
Perhaps the best and most successful of these attempts can be seen as that of Latin Christendom in Europe during what are called the European Middle Ages—a common language, a common faith, a common church, movement across boundaries and a common community. At the same time so was Islam endeavouring to achieve the same objectives around North Africa and into the Iberian Peninsula. The same attempts were being made during that period in Asia.
However, in the 16th century there was a development which still continues and which constantly threatens the attempts to get communities to work together. I refer to the development or concept of the sovereign state. So we find that there followed a period in which the world was largely under the domination of great powers such as the Iberians, the Dutch, the British, the French, the Hapsburgs, the Ottomans and the Russians with very little attempt to develop any form of international co-operative movement.
After the Napoleonic wars there was a specific attempt in Europe—perhaps the first specific endeavour made in modern times—to get a form of international order and a form of international law. Following the Congress of Vienna and its succeeding congresses, what was known as the Concert of Europe was established. It did not last, but it was attempted. One could perhaps also say that of the Berlin conference later in the century although that had a different characteristic and a different dimension in that it was largely based on the division of the Western world between the European imperial powers. However, there was again an attempt to get some form of order accepted between them.
So we come to our modern organisations: first, the League of Nations after the First World War, and then the United Nations—both of them with many weaknesses and many mistakes, but nonetheless human organisations. The case that I want to argue tonight is that with all their faults, all their weaknesses and all their mistakes those are the types of institution which alone can save mankind for a healthy future.
Nor should one forget that since the end of the war, when the United Nations was established, there have been other attempts on a regional basis, such as the Organization of African Unity, the European Community, the Organization of African States and the South-East Asia Treaty Organization, to bring
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people together for common objectives. I suggest that out of this history one can identify a specific choice between mutuality and polarity, between co-operation and conflict. I believe that that is the choice that lies before mankind today.
In our own generation we have seen the large nations of Europe and the Atlantic bound together in a military alliance, which was unfortunately all too quickly broken at the end of the war. Yet out of that alliance there arose the United Nations, which was again an attempt to establish international law and to establish an organisation in which disputes, quarrels and conflicts could be settled internationally rather than on the basis of national sovereignty. Unfortunately that hope very soon deteriorated into the cold war and into the concept, which I believe the Government have taken up much too readily, that the world is divided between two super powers who are the determinants of everything important that happens in the world.
However, if one looks back over the past 20 years, does one not see that this bipolarity has been crumbling ever since the 1960s? During the 1970s the word detente became not only popular but realistic for the first time since the cold war began. One can mark this period with successes in understanding, partial though they may be, between the major powers: at Helsinki in 1975 and at Reykjavik in 1986. Despite the coming together in understanding of the two great super powers to an extent never seen since before the cold war, there are still in the world those strong forces which, in American parlance, believe in the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, which in America is commonly and rightly known as MAD.
So far as concerns the United Nations, I speak with the full authority of the Labour Party, of which I am a member, because the Labour Party has written into its constitution pledges supporting the international idea and the United Nations in particular. I shall quote just one of the key objectives as stated in the constitution; namely, to:
"Support the United Nations Organisation and its various agencies, and other international organisations for the promotion of peace; the adjustment and settlement of international disputes by conciliation or judicial arbitration; the establishment and defence of human rights; and the improvement of the social and economic standards and conditions of work of the people of the world".
I believe that that declaration represents not just a pious hope but the international character of the British Labour movement.
However, it has too frequently seemed that the Government have been reluctant to accept (and sometimes they have downright sabotaged) institutions of international endeavour; yet they have accepted the concept of super power division of the world and have increasingly hung on to the coat-tails of the United States. For example, the specialised agencies of the United Nations, which are of major importance—and I have frequently raised the issue of the International Fund for Agricultural Development as a good example—have been neglected and starved of funds and yet these agencies are the basic agencies for development, humanitarianism and emergency relief in the world.
And what about the peace-keeping force? The United Nations was set up also to keep the peace. Why

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are there no peace-keeping forces? Why has it never been suggested? Why have the British Government never taken the initiative to suggest that there ought to be a peace-keeping force—perhaps more than one peace-keeping force—in Southern Africa to protect our friends in the front line states against the constant attacks and sabotage from South Africa? Similarly, in Central America, why has there not been any attempt made to mobilise a peace-keeping force to protect the people of Nicaragua?
I cannot go through the whole history of the Government's relations with the United Nations, but it is obvious to anyone who follows that history that frequently this Government have flouted the decisions of the General Assembly. Moreover, Britain is a permanent member of the Security Council, and ten times in five years, from 1981 to 1986, the Government have used the veto on Security Council resolutions, usually on Southern Africa.
Then, what can be said about UNESCO? It was a sad day in the history of this country when the Government took Britain out of UNESCO, which was one of the major attempts made to collect together education, science and culture throughout the world on an international basis. The Government followed the example of the Reagan Administration: But there was a more menacing dimension that came into the decision to withdraw from UNESCO, and I refer particularly to the work of the Heritage Foundation. Two years ago some of us met Gough Whitlam, the former Prime Minister of Australia, who was then the Australian Ambassador to UNESCO, and the stories that he told us—all of them corroborated—of the work of the Heritage Foundation in persuading leading politicians and the media in this country to withdraw from UNESCO make reading that could have been written by John Le Carré.
Perhaps I may remind your Lordships that the Heritage Foundation in the United States, which urged President Reagan to speed up the arms race, to end disarmament talks with the Soviet Union, to increase paramilitary action against foreign governments and to defy SALT II is an organisation that has its own associated organisation in this country; namely, the Institute for European Defence and Strategic Studies. Those stories of wining and dining and the pressures brought to bear on leading politicians and media personnel in this country over UNESCO is something that I believe the Government should look at very closely because that infant organisation in this country is accepted by the Charity Commissioners as a charity.
The British Government have equally refused to sign the United Nations convention on the law of the sea. Why? Surely that convention is based upon a fair share of the wealth of the sea bed. Is that not a worthy international objective? Is it not crucial for this country's future economic prosperity which depends upon international co-operation?
What about the Commonwealth? The Conservative Party used to claim to be the major supporter of the Commonwealth. Let us look at what has happened over the past year. There was Nassau. In a minority of one, or perhaps with one or two satellites supporting them against the whole weight of opinion in the Commonwealth, the Government disagreed with the
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imposition of sanctions on South Africa. There was a rejection of the Commonwealth's proposition for changes in the world's financial institutions and a rejection of the report of the Eminent Persons Group, which Nassau set up.
It is a similar case with the EC. There was similar opposition to the weight of opinion favouring the use of sanctions to undermine the policy of apartheid. Surely the Government will agree that there is a crying and ever-increasing need for international action in the world in which we live for global arms control, for the control of environmental pollution, acid rain, lead in petrol, radioactive discharge and industrial effluent. After Chernobyl, surely the need for international action is apparent to everyone. It is needed to face the debt crisis which shapes not just the third world but a great deal of the developed economy; to meet the famine conditions which have spread throughout Africa and parts of Asia over the past five years; for the task of economic reconstruction and particularly for the finding of jobs when 16 million people are out of work in the EC (6 million under the age of 25); and for the provision of technology and equipment not just for the third world but to help international recovery.
What have the Government done about that when a quarter of the world's population is living in poverty? They have cut aid during their lifetime by 20 per cent. They refuse to give any extra aid to combat the African famine; they reject the two Brandt Commission reports prepared by highly distinguished international economists and politicians, and they have done nothing about one of the central issues of the economic weakness in the world—the varying price of commodities.
Our generation faces a challenge which has never had to be faced before by mankind—just the pace of change. It could well be that the pace of change is so rapid that man will not be able to provide the answers quickly enough for his self-preservation. It could be that by mistake, miscalculation, accident or madness our nuclear age could end the existence of mankind on this planet. The only protection against those dangers is the mutuality in mankind's history of which I have spoken. It is essential for survival. Polarity, conflict and competition between sovereign nation states and insistence on national sovereignty may be fatal to mankind.
Only genuine international co-operation expressed through international institutions can give us, our children and our grandchildren any reasonable hope of life on this planet into the next century. That will be based upon a common security—security between East and West and security between North and South—in which Britain should be playing a full and complete role, because that is in the interests of our people as well as those of the rest of the human race.
It is the Government's job to build confidence between nations and people. They have had an opportunity through UNESCO, through the British Council and through the external services, but aid to them all has been cut. I suggest that by their lack of enthusiasm and frequent opposition to the international organisations upon which mankind's future depends, the British Government are doing the British people and the rest of the human race a grave disservice.
5.56 p.m.
Lord McNair: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, not just on his luck in the ballot but on his speech, with a good deal of which I was delighted to find I could agree. I also owe him an apology. I may have slightly misunderstood his Motion. I hope that neither he nor the rest of your Lordships will find my speech too esoteric, because I want to remind the House and the Government of our commitment to one particular international institution. It is called UNRWA. For the benefit of noble Lords with long memories, I should explain that it has nothing to do with an earlier UNRRA which did its essential work among displaced persons in the chaotic aftermath of the second world war. That was the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Agency. The one about which I want to speak is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East which was established originally in 1950 as a purely temporary institution. It was the collective response of the United Nations to the painful consequences of our relinquishing the mandate in Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel, and of the unsuccessful attempt by Israel's Arab neighbours to prevent its creation.
All those events were highly controversial. One obtains a starkly different narrative and opinion according to whom one asks. I do not want to re-open old wounds or blow on the embers of past arguments. I believe that the minimum requirement of honesty is that anyone who touches on those subjects should make his position clear, at least in outline.
I first became closely involved in the problems of the Middle East about seven years ago when the Council of Europe's Committee on Migration, Refugees and Demography handed me as rapporteur the simple task of writing a report on Palestinian refugees which had to be "non-political".
My study of the UN Yearbooks for 1947 to 1950, my visits to the refugee camps in all the areas of UNRWA's operations, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, my conversations with representatives of all the governments concerned and with many Palestinians, left me convinced, as I had been beforehand, of three things: first, that the events of 1933 to 1945 in Europe had made the creation of the state of Israel inevitable and wholly desirable; secondly, that the Arabs made a fatal miscalculation in not accepting the partition plan which was offered to them by the United Nations and at least trying to make it work; and thirdly, that in a situation where every single party has made mistakes, it is outrageous that the consequences of those mistakes should be visited upon the children and grandchildren of some of those who made them.
I also became convinced at that time, as perhaps I had not been before, that the Palestinian Arabs must not indefinitely be denied a homeland, some adequate territory which they can regard as home and within which they can exercise the same sovereign rights of self-government as every other country. To discuss that question in detail belongs to another debate, a debate which I hope we may one day have, but it does not belong to this evening.
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I must get back to UNRWA. Perhaps I should add that I am still closely in touch with the agency, as chairman of the Middle East Sub-Committee of the British Refugee Council. UNRWA started at the very end of 1949 as a typical emergency operation, supplying food, tents and blankets to about two million refugees who were then in the direst need. Its mandate has been renewed periodically by the General Assembly. It operates in five different geographical areas, in Jordan, Syria, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and, most critically of all, in the Lebanon. It has a little over two million registered refugees of whom just over a third live in camps. It is noteworthy, perhaps, that this is the only substantial body of refugees, so far as I know, which is not the responsibility of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. In that respect, UNRWA is unique.
Moreover, in the course of these nearly 40 years, while the Palestinians and the rest of the world have waited for a just solution to their problems—essentially the problem of a people without a country—the needs of its clients have changed and the agency has altered the nature and emphasis of its operations to meet those needs. Thus, today, we find it operating 635 schools for 350,000 pupils and eight vocational training centres for nearly 5,000 older pupils.
So much for education, which is UNRWA's most important and most expensive activity. However, it also has to run 98 health centres which deal with 4¼ million patient visits a year, as well as 94 supplementary feeding centres for just over 100,000 of the neediest of the refugees. I said that education is UNRWA's most important function. I think this is true, though in no way would I wish to downgrade the importance of the health service which has rightly a very strong preventive element.
Now, about the schools. I wish that every one of your Lordships could have a chance to visit them. You would see 10,000 teachers, all Palestinians, working under conditions which would provoke an immediate walk-out almost anywhere else. Nearly all the schools have to operate a shift system with one set of children coming in the morning and another in the afternoon. You would also see in the children themselves a thirst for knowledge which would make any member of any of our teacher unions green with envy. Discipline is no problem. The punishment for misbehaviour is not being allowed to come to school the next day. That threat is enough to ensure good behaviour. The end product is, I think, as good an education as you can get in that part of the world.
Before I come to Britain's commitment to UNRWA, may I suggest an additional reason why that commitment must be maintained and, I would hope, increase? The humanitarian reasons surely speak for themselves. But, additionally, one has to appreciate that over the years, UNRWA has turned into what one could almost describe as a de facto quasi-governmental authority. By that, I mean that it is supplying to the refugees many of those services which ordinary people expect to get from their governments—a rudimentary health service and a more than rudimentary educational service. This means that when the day comes, as I hope it will, when the Palestinians can order their own affairs within their

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own territory, they will find a substantial part of the essential social infrastructure waiting for them more or less ready made. The contribution which that will make to the viability of the Palestinian state is surely obvious.
What of our commitment? I am glad to assure the noble Baroness that it is no part of my purpose to accuse the Government of excessive meanness. I fully understand the innumerable demands made on our aid programme. But perhaps I could first explain, for the benefit of other noble Lords—and I am sure the noble Baroness knows all about it—how UNRWA's finances are assembled. Quite unlike the UNHCR, it is funded by special contributions which are announced at an annual pledging conference of donor countries in New York. Its budget for last year amounted to 156 million dollars. The United States is, as one would expect, far and away the largest donor, contributing nearly half the total. There are some rather moving token contributions from small places remote from the Middle East-1,000 dollars, for example, from Burma, and 500 dollars from Panama. There is a growing generous and most welcome contribution from Japan, making that country the second largest donor at a figure of 14½ million dollars.
From all the Arab states added together, UNRWA receives a mere 3½ million dollars. Although the historical reasons for this modesty are easy to understand, I have to confess that I sometimes wistfully wish that those who finance the PLO would divert one-tenth of those funds to UNRWA. It would solve UNRWA's problems overnight, and some may agree with me that it would do more to help the Palestinians than any number of Kalashnikovs and Katynshas. From the list of donors there are some notable absentees. Not a single kopeck comes from the USSR or the Eastern bloc.
Now, what of the United Kingdom? If you add to our national contribution our share of the contribution made by the European Community, we just squeeze ahead of Norway and Sweden into third place. We seem to have got stuck. I think it is six years since we made any increase in our pledge. This means that as a percentage of the total it is going down, since UNRWA is as subject to inflation as anybody else. I said I was not accusing the Government of excessive meanness and I repeat that, but I do wonder whether possibly 1987 might be the year in which we consider an upward revision of our national contribution. If that is ruled impossible, perhaps the Government might consider funding or helping to fund one of the special projects for which UNRWA from time to time has to make special appeals.
I could have made a whole speech about the appalling difficulties being experienced in the Lebanon—the destruction of installations and the death of many of devoted employees. There has been a special appeal for reconstruction work in the Lebanon.
In conclusion, I was heartened to see a letter from an official of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office which said that the ODA was in touch with UNRWA about contributing to one of its special appeals. If the noble Baroness could tell me that such contact is heading for a happy ending, then, when I go out to face
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the rigours of the outside world tonight, I shall be a happier man than when I came here this morning.
6.10 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Derby: My Lords, some of you may have seen a recent television programme which showed and interpreted a gathering of the World Wildlife Fund at Assisi. It was presided over by His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh and it was held at Assisi because of the special relationship which St. Francis had to animals and his care for them. What made this gathering so unusual and remarkable was that the World Wildlife Fund had succeeded in bringing to the gathering representatives of all the larger Christian Churches from all the continents, together with leaders of the other main world religions.
One commentator, the son of an Anglican clergyman who had been much involved in arranging the conference, said rightly that the Churches themselves would not have initiated or achieved such a gathering. In the future, as Christian ecumenism and interfaith dialogue progress, the Churches may do so, but here was a voluntary secular organisation leading international Churches and faiths in producing world unity around a shared concern.
That recent event, along with other considerations, stirs my gratitude to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, for introducing this timely debate. By contrast, a letter to the Guardian of 31st December 1986 referred to a disturbing situation. Among the signatories were the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York and other Members of this House. The letter drew attention to the damage being done by the Heritage Foundation of the United States of America to the United Nations Organisation and its specialised agencies. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, has given us some of the facts contained in that letter, and so I shall not repeat what he said or quote from it.
It is a sad reflection that from one of the wealthiest and most powerful nations in the world there should be concerted and sustained attacks on the very organisations which seek to promote co-operation, mutual respect and peace. Thus, there is all the more reason that Britain's commitment to the United Nations Organisation and its specialised agencies should be seen to be firm and strong.
In the complex world in which we live today, it is essential that there be organised international fora where nations, large and small, can meet to exchange ideas and share problems and difficulties. No one nation can expect, nor should it expect, that its policies which affect others should go unchallenged. Sadly, it is this very challenging of the stronger by the weaker which has led in some instances to a lessening of commitment by the more powerful nations.
In the early days of international organisations, most of which date from the 1940s, there was a more clublike atmosphere. Large numbers of nations had as yet to gain independence, and the idea of inter-independence was much less generally accepted than it is today.
It is a temptation to think that it is only the threat and fear of nuclear warfare that keeps nations communicating with each other. While that threat and fear may be real, there are many more positive and

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hopeful reasons for nations to meet and work together, such as cultural exchange, travel, which widens mental horizons and opens eyes to common hopes and aspirations, and the sharing of skills, experience and resources, which happens particularly through the specialised international agencies. One thinks immediately of those which deal with famine and disasters and the exchange of educational and scientific knowledge in a search for fuller human development. Many more reasons could be mentioned, but there are areas of international cooperation in which the Christian Churches are particularly active.
Like the noble Lord, Lord McNair, I find myself having to be selective in material in such a widely drawn Motion. First, there is the co-operation of the Churches on an international basis. The Church of England, like the Church of Scotland and the major evangelical Free Churches of this country, is a founder member of the World Council of Churches. In that organisation our role has changed and modified over the years in ways not unlike Britain's in the secular sphere.
From having had in the early days a more dominant role in a smaller more compact organisation, we have had to learn, not always with ease, that smaller Churches and Churches from different traditions may have very different but equally valid perspectives on topics of common importance. Sometimes, rather strong conflicting opinions are held, but the importance of being in dialogue is always paramount and when resolution is achieved, as it often is, we have found that trust and mutual respect are strengthened.
The basis of all this is that men and women of whatever race or colour are our brothers and sisters. Their experience and their views can be as valid as our own. Belonging with them to a universal society is bound to impose restraint on any infallible nationalism. The Roman Catholic Church is the most effective symbol that there is of world unity. All its parts depend on one another and learn from one another.
I want to pay tribute to the difficult and painstaking work done by the department of the World Council of Churches dealing with international affairs, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs, work on peace and disarmament, defending human rights and religious liberty and playing a part, often off the record, in the resolution of conflicts. One Church alone could not undertake these activities, nor hope to have the variety of perspectives required, but an international Christian agency, informed by and accountable to its member Churches, can do this on behalf of all.
Alongside the Roman Catholic Church and the World Council of Churches, each group of Christians has its own international organisation. Methodism has worldwide links; Lutherans and Presbyterians have world federations; the Churches of England, Wales and Ireland and the Scottish Episcopal Church have the Anglican Consultative Council, which gives a world expression of Anglicanism between the Lambeth conferences of Bishops which are held every 10 years. The next will be held in 18 months' time and its
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membership will be more diverse in race and language even than in 1978.
Obviously these smaller bodies have a more familiar and family atmosphere because each group has its historic roots. However, even in this atmosphere there are areas which lend themselves to disagreement and take time, understanding and patience to resolve. Anglicans in the Falkland Islands and in the Argentine still have need to speak a word of reconciliation to one another and to us.
Within all international Christian gatherings one of the dominant issues today is that of South Africa. Anglicans are particularly proud that one of the leading and most outspoken critics of apartheid is the Archbishop of the Anglican Province of South Africa, the Most Reverend Desmond Tutu. I am sure that many of your Lordships would want to join me in honouring this great leader for justice, whose patience, long suffering and recognition of the Christian faith of his opponents is so remarkable.
Reference to Archbishop Tuto leads me to the second area of international co-operation on which I want to speak briefly; namely, the Commonwealth. Here I am bound to repeat some of what the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, has already said. It was with the profoundest regret and sorrow that the Churches in this country witnessed the inability of Her Majesty's Government to accept and implement the findings of the Eminent Persons Group set up at Nassau because the Government could not accept the proposals of the other Commonwealth members. It is sad that our country should be the one to reject the bulk of such a distinguished Commonwealth report. The Commonwealth is a family institution. All its members share a common language and much common history. The very uniqueness of it makes it essential that Britain encourages and enables all its work and plays a positive and active role in its life.
In closing let me say how much I earnestly hope that this country will increase its commitment to all international organisations, be they the Commonwealth or the United Nations Organisation and its agencies. Let us be seen as a nation which listens sensitively, acts wisely and works for the benefit of all humanity. That is the way of true greatness for this generation.
6.23 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I appreciate the dispensation to speak from the Privy Council Benches not as a Front Bench spokesman but in a personal capacity as Chairman of the United Nations Association. That is an all-party body of which my noble friend Lord Caradon and the noble Baroness Lady Elliot—who was here until a few moments ago—are our honorary presidents. I too thank my noble friend Lord Hatch for opening the debate this evening.
In a few minutes I can do no more than sketch the outlines of a speech. Let me, perhaps strangely, begin with my conclusion. Britain is a medium-sized European power with far less influence in the world than we had when the UN was created 41 years ago. That is clear and obvious. I believe that we are today faced with the same challenge that was put to us a

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generation ago by Dean Acheson when he was then Secretary of State for the United States. He referred to Britain as a nation which had lost an empire and seemed unable to find a role for itself in the world. I believe that we have much to offer that is unique.
In the first place there is no other country which is a member of the Commonwealth, the EC, and the United Nations, as well as all but one of its specialised agencies. We are therefore in a unique position of influence. Secondly, I believe that the diplomatic expertise resulting from our colonial past and from the process of decolonisation, as well as our role in the world today, provides us with an opportunity for service. Thirdly, the technical advisers in many fields of expertise who have been able to visit almost every country in the world under the auspices of the UN and its agencies is again a fairly unique service which we can and do provide.
Fourthly, in Britain we have a network of voluntary organisations such as Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, Christian Aid, Voluntary Service Overseas, the World Disarmament Campaign and indeed the United Nations Association which is itself involved in creating support for the United Nations and at this time is involved in a major fund-raising campaign for refugees, through the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, and especially for the Afghan refugees in Pakistan and for the refugees in Sudan. We are part of a world-wide network, as is the Church, with United Nations Associations in just under 80 countries of the world working through the World Federation of United Nations Associations.
Fifthly, there is a wllingness of the public to respond when they see human misery. I was reminded of this earlier today when I was at the Sudanese Embassy. The British public responds when it sees an urgent need. Sixthly, we have the universites and colleges which are ready to take in students from around the world and enable them to gain experience which can help us and them.
I believe that our historic role is through our skills, experience, energy and resources to promote a better and more peaceful world. How are we responding to this challenge? First, our aid programme, as a percentage of gross domestic product, is not increasing but decreasing. Secondly, we have placed financial obstacles in the way of Britain being the centre for overseas students. I believe that is both to their great disadvantage and to ours. Thirdly, we have isolated ourselves in the Commonwealth by our attitude to South Africa. Fourthly, our influence in the United Nations—since the days when the noble Lord, Lord Caradon, was our spokesman there—has diminished in a variety of ways.
Our voting record on the great issues of disarmament has been in too many respects negative. Only three of the 159 member states of the United Nations supported Britain in the UN's plea both to Britain and to the new government of the Argentine to enter into negotiations about the future of the Falkland Islands and the waters of the South Atlantic. Three countries decided to support us. We were in a very small minority in supporting the United States bombing of Libya. We have greatly angered our friends by our unilateral decision to withdraw from UNESCO, thus breaking the principle of universality
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and reducing our influence for good in improving UNESCO's performance—a task that much needed to be done and for which I welcomed much that the Government were seeking to do. Thus we have failed to sign the Law of the Sea Treaty which we played such an important role in drafting.
In my last three criticisms we seem to have almost slavishly followed the lead of the United States, although there was no reciprocity when it came to the vote in the United Nations Assembly on the Falkland Islands when the United States voted against us. We have set a lead in recent times in what seems to be a concentrated locking of doors by the Western powers in general to refugees from the third world. This is a new and very disturbing element, and seems to include even refugees from Afghanistan.
Those are all criticisms. I could give a balanced list of actions in which the Government have supported the United Nations. It is no part of my case this evening to suggest that the United Kingdom does not give its support to the UN or does not believe in the UN. I am certain that we see this in every Queen's Speech and every manifesto. I have heard moving speeches by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs in support of the United Nations.
I will say also that we are regular payers unlike sometimes the Soviet Union, which is regular, but has made virtually no contribution except to UNIFIL for the peace-making forces provided by the United Nations. Then, regarding the United States, I was horrified to read what the Guardian said yesterday:
"The United States said yesterday it withheld its 1986 contribution to the World Health Organisation because it was short of funds for international bodies and gave priority to those in most serious financial trouble. The US delegate, Mr. Neil Boyer, was explaining to the WHO's executive board in Geneva why Washington did not pay its $62·8 million share of the United Nations agency's 1968 budget of $247·4 million".
It said that it did not have enough to pay its share for all the UN agencies. That is not the case so far as Britain is concerned.
My simple thesis is this. Britain's greatest contribution to world peace—and indeed I believe to our own interests—does not lie in pretending that we are a great power in the sense that the United Nations and the USSR are great powers. It is true that, by history, we are one of the five permanent members of the Security Council and we should use that fact to maximise our influence in the United Nations.
I am especially concerned by some United States attitudes, and reference has been made—which I need not repeat—to the Heritage Foundation, which seems to be putting pressure on the United States Government and, I believe, on Britain too precisely at a time when the USSR seems to be putting more influence on the value of the United Nations. I found this on a recent visit in a delegation to the Soviet Union. When discussing Afghanistan they made it clear that they had great hopes that they would be able to achieve some settlement through the negotiations in the United Nations.
In conclusion, I believe that there are tremendous opportunities for Britain using its links with Europe and with the Commonwealth to establish a position of great influence in the world by far greater commitment to the United Nations.

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The United Nations Association with its branches in all parts of the country will warmly welcome and support a more dynamic role in the United Nations by Her Majesty's Government.
Britain's greatness will never again lie in its military might but in its leaderhip, its statesmanship and its experience in helping, through the United Nations, to create a better, fairer and safer world with far greater emphasis on human rights and equal opportunities.
It may be trite to say that the world is crying out for such leadership, whatever party is in power in Britain, but I honestly believe that this is true.
6.35 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I agree with everything that has been said in the debate so far, which is quite an unusual sensation, at least for me, and, perhaps, for most of your Lordships. I do have to relate that fact to the regrettable fact that there is not a single Conservative speaker tabled to speak in the debate with the exception of the unfortunate Minister who has to wind up. This is one of the areas of politics in which the present Government stand a little bit apart from all other strands of opinion in the country at present.
Intergovernmental aid from the industrialised world to the third world has dropped by one-quarter in the past 20 years, and it now stands at 0·36 of 1 per cent. of the GNP of the industrialised countries. This is a pretty indicative figure, and I start my speech with it because aid is really very largely what the United Nations is about. Between crises, what it does is to transfer wealth and skills from the developed world to the developing world. In the 10 years to 1982 arms expenditure in the third world rose from £7 billion to £100 billion. That fact also speaks for itself. Those two figures together are a measure of what has to be done.
Now: how to do it. The United Nations at present gives us a choice of friends. The two super powers approach the United Nations, each in a manner that I believe we should only find quite unsatisfactory. We and other countries like us stand in the UN between a bigoted and profoundly unprincipled administration in the United States, and a Soviet Union which, though it is becoming more UN-minded, as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has just pointed out, is yet still profoundly skinfint. It pays hardly a penny of what it ought to pay towards third world development.
In this position we could have taken a great opportunity of sticking with the UN and doing the right thing, of taking a lead—the way we all love to talk about taking a lead still—of some sort, particularly with our fellow members of the EC, in being principled, in not being bigoted, in paying up, in having bright ideas. The record is not all black. There have been success stories. I do not know whether the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, would agree with me that the United Nations Children's Fund can perhaps count as one of the success stories.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I used to work for it.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, it has just published an annual report and has marked the 40th year of its existence by making it a bumper issue. It is in itself a
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remarkable achievement as a report. It is excellently presented and sets out clearly both what has been done and what remains to do.
This is one organisation in which the United States is not defaulting on its natural role. It pays 26 per cent. of the governmental contributions, which perhaps we could agree is not far from what it should be. This country pays 3.7 per cent., which is not all that brilliant, but perhaps it is not too far from what we should pay. It is at any rate better than West Germany, which pays 2.2 per cent., France, which pays 1.4 per cent., and of course far better than the Soviet Union, which pays 0.3 of 1 per cent. of the governmental contributions. Let us give credit to our Government where credit is due, and this is one place where we can.
In earlier days the industrial world delighted in finding super-sophisticated solutions to the problems of the third world, and then in just throwing money at the third world countries as if they were indistinguishable from us in everything except capital resources. The result is the familiar sight of hi-tech installations abandoned and of vast schemes misused. Meanwhile throughout the third world millionaire politicians live in luxury and ex-politicians have emigrated and live on Swiss bank accounts.
Our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Bauer, and his teams have chronicled that phase of the developed world's aid policies with a sometimes justifiable glee, and they have pointed out that the best way to help the poor is to help them make themselves richer. If we can help them to make and sell competitively with the rest of us then we shall have done the best we can for suffering humanity. That is now the conventional wisdom.
The director of the IMF has recently spoken of third world countries' difficulties in producing goods which are competitive on the world markets. He has spoken of education and health as particular obstacles to their doing so. That is the new conventional wisdom enshrined by the highest authority. But today Western follies are being committed in the third world equal to any committed in that earlier phase. They are being committed precisely in the name of competition in the world markets, in the name of the new wisdom.
Let us consider drug crops. What could be more competitive? The developed world introduced into the third world the idea of cash crops, and drug crops are the most paying cash crops of all. We call it a crime. The American Army have gone into Bolivia to suppress the production of drug crops; but besides being a crime, it is the purest of free competition.
Let us also consider the arms trade, taking Brazil as an example. For a long time now Brazil has been making military aircraft. It is now making cluster bombs for export to other third world countries. It has developed tactical ballistic missiles. Argentina is still well on the road towards obtaining an independent nuclear weapons capacity if it wishes to to do. Argentina is proliferating.
I dare say that the UN family of organisations and the World Bank and the IMF do not directly and knowingly finance the huge and virtiginously growing third world arms production, but they certainly do so indirectly. They take no precautions against liberating by their own loans and grants the capital resources in the recipient countries which can then go to build up these arms industries.

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The constitutions of the World Bank and the IMF are often said to preclude any kind of control of what is done in the industries of the third world: for example, by precluding the making of grants, loans and transfers conditional on the adoption of certain industrial policies in the third world. I have combed through these constitutions. I find that that of the World Bank says that its operations must be based on economic considerations. All right, they are based on economic considerations and let them continue to be based on economic considerations. It does not say that they shall not also be based on political considerations or security considerations. Indeed, I submit that that which is not forbidden is permitted.
The articles of association of the IMF recite many positive aims. They do not say that anything shall not be done. I can find nothing restrictive in those articles either. If the IMF were to see fit to make their loans and transfers—in the context of the exchanges, balances and payments where they operate—conditional on the adoption of certain other aims besides economic ones, I cannot see that it would offend against their articles of association.
Is not the present situation parallel in two ways with what existed in the 19th century? In the industrialising countries in the Victorian age the wealthy preached virtue to the poor. They went to them with the Bible in one hand and cheap gin in the other hand, and made little attempt, beyond preaching, to prevent its consumption. In the third world now the wealthy countries proceed in the same manner. However, it is not gin now, but arms and drug production, to the great harm of the whole world.
In the 19th century in the industrialised countries the poor managed to get rich by joining together to withhold what the rich wanted of them: namely, their strong arms, their labour in trade union movements. In the 20th century the poor countries could get together and withhold the few things that the rich world wants from them—once again their strong arms for labour, but also their raw materials. They could do that in the interests of attaining power in world councils in the same way as the working classes attained power in national councils 150 years ago.
When we look at the world in that way I think we see that countries such as ours have not only the right but possibly also the duty to exert certain political and moral pressures on the third world for the good of all humanity.
Let us consider the question of Swiss banks. It is now well known that crooked rulers throughout the world can look forward with perfect equanimity to an ill-earned and luxurious repose by salting away in the Swiss banks a little of their gains as they go along. What influence is brought to bear on the Government of Switzerland to cease being a repository of hot and dirty money for the whole world? It does no credit to the Swiss people. It is hard to believe that they would withstand pressure for very long.
It seems therefore that what British, French, West German and other similar governments ought to do is to carve out a position of their own in these matters largely through the IMF, the World Bank, and the aid sector of the UN family of organisations. They ought to be a little bolder about using these potentially very beneficial mechanisms to get rid of some of the great
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evils which haunt the world at the moment. They ought to get rid of the matters which I have mentioned; not only third world arms production but the self-bankrupting of terribly poor economies by the purchase and making of arms. They ought to get rid of the drug crops and the dumping on the third world of pharmaceuticals which we now prohibit our own peoples from using because they are so unhealthy. They ought to get rid of the dumping on the third world of industrial processes which are too polluting to be any longer permitted in our own countries.
It is time for a concerted European move, perhaps concerted with Japan and with the more stable Arab governments, as we are inclined to call them, and other like-minded countries, to turn the world not into a Friedmanite/Bauerite paradise of uncontrolled competition and devil take the hindmost nation—devil take the hindmost people—but into a world where conscious effort is able to be applied to the cause of common improvement.
6.50 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I should like to thank my noble friend Lord Hatch of Lusby for giving us the opportunity to have this debate. When I decided to take part in it I wondered how to approach the subject. I finally decided to share with your Lordships my views on the world as I see it and this country's place in it and perhaps show where we have failed to measure up to our responsibilities.
As I see it, the world is not only divided between East and West, it is also divided between North and South, rich and poor, black and white. Those are all serious divisions. Overhanging us all is the threat of nuclear holocaust.
This country is well placed to make a good contribution to bridging these gaps. We are in the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has developed as a result of the British Empire. Therefore, we are in a position where we should have influence in what is nearly one-third of the United Nations.
The Commonwealth is a microcosm of the world in the sense that there are rich or fairly rich, nations; there are poor nations, very poor; there are nations in between in terms of their development. There are black nations and white nations. Therefore, it is a forum in which the issues I have raised could in fact be dealt with.
We also had an additional advantage because, having joined the European Community, we had another 11 important developed nations over which we could have some influence. We were and are a permanent member of the Security Council. We are a member of NATO; and we are closely allied to the United States of America which is the most powerful country in the Western world.
With these advantages this country ought to be able to have influence in all the fields that I have mentioned, but we have not. The reason why we have no such influence is that for the last few years we have elected merely to be the closest possible ally of the United States and have been prepared to play second fiddle to the United States in almost everything.
As a consequence of that we have not used the advantages we have had in the Commonwealth. They

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take second place to what the United States is interested in. We have not used our place in Europe. Even that takes second place to what the United States wants. Thus we have not been able to influence events.
Mention has been made already of the fact that this country, which ought to have the most influence in the Commonwealth, is in fact isolated in the Commonwealth. Nothing was more revealing to me of the isolation of this country than the vote in the United Nations on the Falklands. Argentina's claim is a colonialist claim and we ought to be able to rebut a colonialist claim within our Commonwealth.
When I put my anti-Argentina case to my Commonwealth friends they all understand it. We do not do that. We answer Argentina's colonialist claim with a colonialist claim of our own. Therefore, what our friends in the Commonwealth are presented with at the United Nations is a choice of two colonialist claims. It is not a choice of progress along the lines of self-determination and the friendships of people living in an area, which ought to be what we put forward. We are quite right to reject Argentina's claim. It is colonialist. We are not right merely to answer it with a colonialist claim of our own.
There is also the sad situation in South Africa, which is the touchstone. Within the Commonwealth we ought to have been able to develop a policy aimed at dealing with what was the biggest challenge to whether or not the world can live together—people of different races can live together in equality and friendship with respect for each other. It is the rejection of that by South Africa which ought to be understood by everyone and rejected by everyone.
We seem to have set ourselves a secondary role, not only that we should be subservient to the United States but that we should protect South Africa at all times. The consequence of setting ourselves these rules means that we have lost status all round. We ought never to have been in that position. We ought to have been in the position where our stand on these issues is respected by all, including those in South Africa who are thinking and recognising the position in which they stand. Therefore, I am hoping that when the Minister replies she will be able to tell me that the Government are beginning to rethink some of these policies.
This subservience to the United States has led us into supporting policies within the IMF which are not in the best interests of bridging the gap between the rich and the poor. They are policies which prolong and worsen the division between rich and poor. We have influence and votes there and should be able to use that influence to get policies geared to reducing the gap. We should not put nations in a position where all they can do is produce enough to pay part of the interest on a debt and are never to be able to repay the debt itself. They have to go on with their families, with their citizens, living at poverty or below poverty level in order to do that. These are the consequences of the policies that we are using internationally.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, that some of the Third World countries make it worse by the policies they themselves adopt. That is exactly what I meant when I said that within the Commonwealth we ought to have been able to work out policies which would deal with both issues, because we have poor
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nations as well as wealthy nations within the Commonwealth. Within that setting we ought to be able to work out real policies geared to bridging that gap. Then we rush because the United States has come out of UNESCO.
We began by saying we wanted to see some changes in UNESCO. Attempts were made to make changes. They may not have been fast enough. But is it not a better policy to try to get the changes we want in UNESCO through working there rather than just following the bad example of the United States and pulling out? These are the ways in which we have not just not used our position to advantage but have used it negatively.
I think now of our position in the EC. We dragged our feet the most in the EC as regards the grant to the Lomé territories. It is we more than anybody else who are responsible for the fact that the funds are so low. We ought never to be doing that. The majority of countries in Lomé are from the Commonwealth. Therefore, far from wanting grants to be lower we should be trying to maximise them. By doing so we should be using our position in Europe to get some of the other European countries to help in financing the development of these territories, which are—shall we say?—our cousins. They are territories which are part of our Commonwealth.
This is very sad. The way in which Lomé has been negotiated and agreed holds out a useful method of dealing with the problem of the rich and poor and bridging that gap. There are a lot of developments within the Lomé agreement that would help greatly in bridging that gap. But you cannot do that sort of thing if the funds are so limited.
Unless you are able to make the contributions that are required, you cannot get the objective that you have in mind. Therefore, it has been sad that this Government have been dragging their feet on Lomé and not encouraging the sort of contribution which would have enabled us to bridge that gap between the developing countries and the developed ones.
There is not the slightest doubt that one of the things that all these countries need most is assured markets at assured prices. That is one of the good things within the Lomé agreement. If the funds in Lomé were ever enough, I personally think that Lomé could make a real contribution towards bridging the gap between the APC countries and the European countries with which they are dealing.
This is one thing on which I hope the noble Baroness will tell me that the Government will have a rethink, because although the Lomé agreement is already made there is nothing to prevent an agreement to add more funds to it. Therefore I hope that this is an issue that the Government will be prepared to look at.
The Government have to try to repair certain damages. The damages are in the Commonwealth and in fact mainly in the Commonwealth. The Government need to repair those damages. If they can repair the damages in the Commonwealth they can use their newly-found position to change their status and position within the UN. Britain is best able to get the influence it needs in the UN through being almost a spokesman for the Commonwealth—I am not suggesting just as a spokesman for the Common-

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wealth, but by being such an accepted leader in the Commonwealth one should get the support in the UN for the policies that are required.
Therefore as I said at the beginning, I am pleased to have had this opportunity of sharing my thoughts, my worries and my fears with your Lordships. I hope that when the Minister replies she will be able to give me some reassuring answers.
7.5 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Hatch has enabled us to debate a subject of importance and interest, and has also delivered a wide-ranging speech. Successive governments have affirmed and reaffirmed their commitment to the international institutions of which the United Kingdom is a member. Looking at the performance of other countries, I think I can say that this country on the whole has as good a record as any in the world in its continuing membership, and loyalty to principle, from the early days of the International Court of Justice and the League of Nations. I have some reservations, and I shall make these as I proceed, but that is my general view.
Today we are members of four international organisations: namely, the European Community; the Commonwealth; the United Nations, and NATO. I do not propose to deal with the latter in this debate. The House will recall the excellent debate initiated by the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury on the 29th October 1985 when he examined our record as a member of the United Nations and its varied organisations on the 40th anniversary of that great institution. My noble friend Lord Ennals, the chairman of the United Kingdom Association of the United Nations, spoke in that debate, and has spoken again with his usual authority and knowledge today.
The general tendency in the debate initiated by the most reverend Primate was that the United Nations is a good institution but that it is less effective than it might be. Mr. Conor Cruise O'Brien, who is a world expert on the subject, has said:
"Hardly anyone has much time for the United Nations."
But I hasten to add that Mr. O'Brien also said:
"The United Nations is the most important international institution that has ever existed and its survival is bound up with the survival of the human race."
I hope that this is a sentiment that both President Reagan and Mr. Gorbachev subscribe to.
I realise that in this debate we are more concerned with our own contribution, but we also know that the ultimate success of the United Nations depends on the constructive membership of the two great powers. We recall the cut in size of the Soviet Union's mission to the United Nations recently, and we can be relieved that the consequences of that were not as serious as might have been the case.
The United Nations is as important to the Soviet Union as it is to any other country. I also believe, as I have ventured to say here in other debates, that Mr. Gorbachev is a new man with new ideas. He is a communist, and a Russian patriot, but he also knows the consequences of war, and I think he wants to raise standards in his country. The United Nations provides Mr. Gorbachev with opportunities for co-operation
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with other countries in several fields. The General Assembly and the Security Council are both crucial forums for the reduction of tension.
My noble friend has referred to some of the agencies of the United Nations, and other noble Lords have followed him. The central worry here is that they are under-funded. This was made plain in the fourth report of the all-party Foreign Affairs Committee of another place which dealt with the ODA programme mentioned by my noble friend, and with the BBC external services and the British Council as well. The report underlines the most serious and progressive under-financing of these agencies.
If we turn to the United Nations agencies, which were dealt with by a number of noble Lords, here again we see the same unfortunate tendency. I do not propose to go into all of the details of the UNESCO affair tonight; but as the Motion in fact refers to Britain's influence in these matters, I think I should quote from the Foreign Affairs Committee of another place—and the Committee had a majority of Conservative Members—and they made some very relevant remarks. I hope the House will allow me to quote from page xxi, paragraph 63, where they say:
We have concluded

(i) that continued membership of UNESCO is an objective which should be pursued in the interests of British scientific, cultural and educational interests;

(ii) that the withdrawal of UK membership of UNESCO is likely to have detrimental effects on the United Kingdom's relations with other friendly countries, particularly in the Commonwealth;

(iii) that the withdrawal of UK membership of UNESCO is likely to advance Soviet-bloc interests in the Third World; and

(iv) that a breach by the United Kingdom of the principle of universality in the United Nations and its Agencies could have long-term, and damaging, consequences for those organisations, and not merely for UNESCO alone.

That is an extremely serious comment on these affairs. So far as UNESCO is concerned, as I have said before, no member should leave a church if he does not like the incumbent minister. He should wait in the church until a new minister comes along. That is what the United Kingdom should have done in the case of UNESCO.
I am sure that the noble Baroness was as impressed as I was by the interesting remarks of the noble Lord, Lord McNair, on UNRWA and its financial problems. I feel sure the noble Baroness will wish to consider this again. I thought also that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, made some very important remarks about the IMF and the World Bank in relation to the build-up of armaments in the Third World. Here is something which the noble Baroness may think is worth reporting to her right honourable and learned friend, as a matter which might be taken up in the United Nations itself in due course.
Noble Lords have also referred to certain resolutions of the United Nations where the United Kingdom's reactions have seemed less than enthusiastic. One of these is Resolution 435 on Namibia, which was mentioned in the House yesterday. I am bound to say that the lack of progress here is frightening and we should be doing all in our power to achieve a settlement based on free elections.

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It would also be helpful if the noble Baroness could comment briefly on the progress made by FAO on the Falklands fishing problems. The Government declared a unilateral zone and we had exchanges in the House about that; but she then said that any FAO recommendations would be very carefully considered by Her Majesty's Government. I wonder whether the noble Baroness can say what progress has been made, as we do not want to be seen to be acting against the FAO, which seems to me to be one of the most useful of all the United Nations agencies.
I should like also most warmly to support what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby said about the significant contribution of the World Council of Churches and his tribute to Archbishop Tutu. The right reverend Prelate, together with my noble friend and my noble friend Lord Pitt, spoke about the Commonwealth. There is a tendency by some on occasion to belittle the Commonwealth and to say that it is of little consequence. That is a grave mistake.
The Commonwealth is a unique organisation, and it deserves to survive because it brings a diverse group of nations with an historic relationship together to discuss matters of common interest. I cannot conceive that it could do harm, but it certainly could do a lot of good. Twenty-nine Commonwealth countries have small or very small populations, but membership of the Commonwealth gives them an opportunity to put their case to the international community, and it also provides backing where necessary. Let me give one example in passing: there are others. Belize would probably not exist today if it were not for Commonwealth support in the United Nations and in other ways.
The Commonwealth provides an important international forum, support in the international community and technical assistance in education, health, science, agriculture, industry and public administration. The chief beneficiaries of all this assistance have been the smaller countries of the Commonwealth. My own view therefore is that it would be an immense mistake to undervalue the importance of the Commonwealth.
As my noble friend Lord Pitt in particular said, the Commonwealth went through a critical phase last summer and there were those who said it would not survive or indeed that it would not matter a great deal if it did not survive. That was a foolish and shortsighted attitude. Things were said by Commonwealth leaders which reflected the tension, due to the Government's attitude towards the South African crisis. But the remarkable thing is that the Commonwealth proved to be tougher and more cohesive than most people at the time thought possible. I am sorry to say that I think our own influence in fact diminished, at least temporarily, at that time, but the Commonwealth emerged stronger and more confident than ever before. The noble Baroness's department will no doubt be studying the full implications of this development and, I trust, drawing sensible conclusions from it.
Finally, our relatively short membership of the European Community, to which my noble friend Lord
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Ennals referred, is in some ways the most important of all, certainly in financial, commercial and industrial terms. Here again, as may be expected, there are periodic strains and stresses as exemplified by attitudes towards South Africa and towards the treatment of terrorism. We have noted, for example, the current tension between the United States and the European Community on the question of selected exports to the United States following the cessation of grain exports to Spain from the United States. The Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary has been talking to Mr. Shultz about this, and perhaps we can be told what is developing between the Community and America. The last thing we want is a trade war with the United States.
My noble friend Lord Pitt spoke movingly of the dangerous divisions in the world today. The fact is that all these organisations which have been mentioned in the debate provide opportunities for us to bridge divisions—opportunities which were unthinkable 40 or 50 years ago. It is for us and other countries, including the Soviet Union and Comecon countries, to use our membership of these organisations constructively and with the utmost goodwill. That should be the objective of our foreign policy.
7.17 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Young): My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, for introducing the short debate today and I should like to say at once that I think we have had a quite extraordinarily wide-ranging discussion. I do not think that in the time available I shall be able to answer all the many and varied points that have arisen, but I shall try to concentrate on the most important of them and certainly study the report of the debate with interest when there is the opportunity to read Hansard tomorrow.
Today international organisations exist in profusion and few people realise how they affect our daily lives. For example, the Universal Postal Union has 168 member countries and works out the rules for international postal services, from which we all benefit. The International Telecommunications Satellite Organisation has enabled us to telephone friends and relatives overseas. The international institutions even impinge directly upon your Lordships' House. Extracts from your Lordships' debates are broadcast to all parts of the world by the World Service, under the auspices of the International Telecommunications Union, another specialised United Nations agency with 160 members.
There are of course many other international organisations in which the United Kingdom plays an active if not a leading part; and of course there is the large United Nations family of organisations. But before turning to those organisations I should like to say a few words about some of the other international organisations of which the United Kingdom is a member.
Since 1949 NATO, the alliance of 16 free and democratic Western nations has defended us and

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preserved peace in Europe. Membership of NATO is the cornerstone of our security policy. Our contribution to NATO is substantial, constructive and widely appreciated. We fully support the NATO policy, based on the twin approach of sound defence and efforts to reduce tension between East and West through the negotiations of balanced and verifiable arms control agreements. We are members of the European Community, which gives Western Europe a framework for progress, and prosperity that is historically unprecedented. I think it is generally accepted that we have had a successful six months in our office of President of the Council of Ministers. Then there is the Commonwealth—49 nations, rich and poor, who share a common heritage and choose to work together, usually far from the limelight, seeking solutions to a host of practical problems.
Your Lordships have also referred to the world's trading and financial institutions, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, which belong to the United Nations family. Then there is the GATT and the OECD. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, in a most interesting speech, referred to the international organisation of the World Council of Churches and the work that the churches do throughout the world.
These international organisations and institutions vary enormously. But their existence testifies to the respect that their members have for basic principles of co-operation and bargaining, rather than confrontation or unilateral gestures. They contribute security, predictability and good order to international affairs—all crucial for international law itself.
The United Kingdom is a nation which historically has worldwide trading and political interests, and so we are well placed to appreciate the value of international structures and we are experienced in their operation. Our basic attitude to international organisations comprises three simple and straightforward principles. We support them if we agree with their aims; we expect them to stick to those aims and carry them out effectively; and last, but not least, we expect them to be run impartially and efficiently. Most international bodies meet these criteria and continue with valuable work.
This evening I should like to concentrate on two important international bodies which we wholeheartedly support: one very complex institution, the United Nations, and that unique association of countries, the Commonwealth. The United Kingdom played a central part in setting up the UN. This was formally recognised by the fact that we have a veto: the charter cannot be amended without our consent. Thus we have a special responsibility towards the UN and its ideals and we have made an energetic contribution to it.
This is not a theoretical contribution. We pay our way. Our financial commitment to the UN system is some £140 million each year. What is more, we always pay in full and on time. I was interested in the point that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, made on that. We believe in the United Nations system and we work hard within it to get results.
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Let me give some positive examples. We pull our weight in UN peacekeeping operations and work hard behind the scenes to help the UN Secretary-General's peacekeeping initiatives. I was disappointed to hear very little from your Lordships tonight on this. But we support UNIFIL's role in South Lebanon and favour the renewal of its mandate. We are a major financial contributor. We spent £5·5 million in 1985–86. We consider that UNICYP continues to play a vital role in Cyprus. Our commitment to UNICYP is demonstrated by the fact that ours is the largest contingent in the force.
The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked about other areas. We have noted suggestions for an international peacekeeping force in Mozambique. Those concerned must discuss this further. But we are committed under Security Council Resolution 435 to the setting up of the UN transitional assistance group to supervise the establishment of a peacekeeping force in Namibia to bring about independence.
We press hard to enhance the UN machinery for countering abuses of human rights. We are actively involved in UN programmes to counter the international drugs menace. Indeed, we have just increased by 50 per cent. our unearmarked contribution to the UN fund for drug abuse control. We contribute to many specialised or less well-known UN agencies and programmes. Only last June we announced an increase in our voluntary contribution to the UN environmental programme. And we fully support the work of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. On that matter, during the current financial year we have spent £33 million, mostly channelled through the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Of course, so far as Afghanistan is concerned, where 5 million people have now fled the country—that is, over 8,000 a month—since the beginning of the war we have contributed £40 million to the refugees since 1980.
The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked me why we felt unable to sign the Law of the Sea Convention. In part it is because it aimed to set up a most unattractive regime for deep sea mining, including an over-elaborate international seabed authority with excessive regulatory powers. This authority would be excessively large, bureaucratic and costly to maintain. What is more, some of its activities would harm the industry it was supposed to oversee. Indeed, it could stop that industry ever developing. In other words, our decision on the Law of the Sea Convention did not signify the start of a general retreat from fundamental notions of peaceful international co-operation. Rather we applied the three principles that I mentioned earlier.
I was glad to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, said in referring to what I thought was a most interesting speech from the noble Lord, Lord McNair, who spoke with such great personal knowledge of the work of UNRWA and, if I may say so, with very great sincerity. Thirty-six years have passed since the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in the Near East began its work on behalf of Palestinian refugees. The agency has brought, and continues to bring, vital

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humanitarian assistance to those in its care, now numbering over 2 million. I am glad to pay tribute to UNRWA and its staff who work with limited resources often in dangerous circumstances.
UNRWA has long suffered from insufficient funding for its activities, and its funding base remains dangerously narrow. The noble Lord gave us some figures on that point. The United Kingdom remains one of the largest contributors to UNRWA. We make a bilateral contribution of £5 million each year and pay one-fifth of the European Community's contribution of £13·8 million. Others, particularly the United States, have given generously. But I hope that all who profess concern for the Palestinians will join us in contributing to UNRWA's work.
There is also an urgent need to improve the economic and social conditions of the Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, not as a substitute for a political settlement but to complement the negotiations that we should like to see. The Community decided last October as a result of a British initiative to rationalise and increase its aid programme to the territories and to slash tariffs on imports from the territories. We announced last December a substantial increase in our own aid programme for the territories to £1 million a year, half of which will be disbursed via Jordanian institutions.
At the end of his speech, the noble Lord asked me a specific question but I am afraid that I shall have to write to him on that point. This central role in the UN's working is guaranteed by our retention of one of five permanent seats on the UN Security Council. This gives us a strong position of international influence. In short, the United Kingdom's record of commitment to the UN system has been good.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, asked me a specific question about the Falkland Islands conservation zone and the FAO. I can assure him that the establishment of the FICZ does not undermine or detract from the value of the FAO's report on the South-West Atlantic fishery. It was essential to set up a FICZ, which, as the noble Lord will recall from when we debated this matter, is an interim measure to meet a conservation need which we must do for the fishing season which starts this February. The FAO report was not ready and the interim action that we have taken was the only sensible course open to us. But the FAO study will be an important document when it is issued. We continue to believe that a multilateral regime is the best way to manage the fishery, and we remain in close touch with the FAO.
If the United Nations is to make a worthwhile impact on global problems, it must be respected and it must make sure that its own house is in order. That is why the United Kingdom welcomed the outcome of recent negotiations on the UN's own budget. A combination of delayed payments, waste and inefficiency had been bringing the UN towards bankruptcy. Now member states will take an earlier and tighter grip on the UN's budget and its programme priorities. The fact that the UN Charter contains great ideals does not excuse the UN itself from an obligation to be a good housekeeper.
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All this shows that international institutions are not endowed with magical properties. They can fall prey to wastefulness and mismanagement, sometimes even abandoning their aims and ideals. This is what we believe happened to UNESCO. That matter was referred to by the noble Lords, Lord Cledwyn, Lord Ennals and Lord Hatch.
We were a founder member of that organisation and committed to the principle guiding its initial remit. It was clearly desirable to establish a multilateral forum to work in educational, scientific and cultural fields. For many years we worked with it. We tried hard, within the organisation, to eradicate the problems from which it suffered: the poor administration, wastefulness, lack of proper priorities and excessive and damaging politicisation. It was with considerable regret that we decided to withdraw. We decided that taxpayers' money could be better used in a wide range or areas such as scholarships and other fields for which UNESCO was responsible.
UNESCO is merely one well-known example of a worrying trend towards wrongly politicising international institutions. There are many international fora for arguing about, for example, the political problems of Southern Africa and the Middle East. But some nations try to carry these arguments over into specialist international bodies. This wastes time and money; and, much worse, it threatens the effectiveness of these bodies and so risks causing immense practical damage.
I repeat again that we value international institutions and we want them to work. International institutions which are working well and helping the international community must not be side-tracked or distorted. Political pressure to this end is unhelpful and damaging. We shall continue to resist such pressures strongly.
I turn now to the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth is a unique and free association of 49 independent countries representing one-quarter of the world's population. To read the press you would think that the Commonwealth consisted of nothing but periodic Heads of Government meetings. Therefore, perhaps it is not surprising that some people find it fashionable to argue that the Commonwealth is anachronistic, pointless or even harmful to Britain. This is not the Government's view.
I shall turn to consider a number of things which we have done within the Commonwealth. However, perhaps I may first answer the point that was raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby and also the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, concerning the Eminent Persons Group. The Eminent Persons Group made a valiant contribution. The negotiating concept remains a valid basis for negotiations in the difficult situation in South Africa. The group showed the way towards achieving dialogue and a suspension of violence on all sides through the principle of matching commitments. We gave the Eminent Persons Group our full support and we deeply regret that it did not achieve a breakthrough. The refusal of the South African Government to respond positively is in our view shortsighted.

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Perhaps it will be helpful if I quote in full what my right honourable friend the Prime Minister said in a speech to the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Conference in September of last year. She referred to our attitude to South Africa and the question of sanctions:
"As free and independent sovereign states we have a legitimate right to our own views, and the right too to hold those views without our motives being questioned. That is the essence of tolerance, so important to the Commonwealth. As one of our great parliamentarians said: 'Tolerance is good for all or it is good for none'".
Within the Commonwealth there are many different federations and associations—over 200 in all—all dedicated to practical work and allowing thousands of ordinary citizens from Commonwealth countries to pool ideas, share experiences and strike up new friendships. The Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind sponsors the world's largest programme for restoring lost eyesight. The Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation oversees a pioneer scheme for the interchange of much-needed technical experts between developing countries. The Commonwealth Foundation supports 32 different professional associations and promotes many research, training and exchange programmes.
We greatly value the practical work of the Commonwealth's different agencies in setting up development projects, educational exchanges, meetings of technicians and experts and conferences of lawyers and parliamentarians. Today we are the largest contributor to the budgets of the Commonwealth Secretariat, the Commonwealth Foundation and the Commonwealth Fund for Technical Co-operation. We also give £2½ million per year to support the Commonwealth Institute in London.
All in all, last year we gave some £14 million to Commonwealth activities. In addition, in 1985 we gave around £60 million to support Commonwealth students. This represented 75 per cent. of our total scholarship budget. In 1985 we gave £443 million in aid to Commonwealth countries, or 65 per cent. of our total bilateral aid programme.
The noble Lord, Lord Pitt, in the course of his remarks about the Commonwealth and our commitment to it asked about the Lomé Convention and our contribution to it. Of the 66 countries benefiting from special aid and trade links under the convention, 35 are in the Commonwealth. In the period up to 1990 some £5.3 billion will be available from this source. Some £90 million is also available from the European Investment Bank. In practice, the financial benefits from the highly preferential trading arrangements are considerably greater than this. In 1984 (the latest figures which are available) some 38 per cent. of the United Kingdom's multilateral aid for developing countries—that is, £202.69 million—was spent in Commonwealth countries. The estimate for 1985 again gives 33.5 per cent. of the United Kingdom's multilateral aid to be spent in Commonwealth countries.
Therefore, I believe that we contribute fully to the Commonwealth and our close links with
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Commonwealth countries bring the United Kingdom very great benefits. Our exports to Commonwealth countries are running at about £9 billion per year. And it is not as well known as it should be that 40 per cent. of our total revenue from overseas investments come from Commonwealth countries.
In short, the Government believe that the Commonwealth is an effective, realistic and practical organisation and are fully committed to it. My right honourable and learned friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs addressed the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference last September. He emphasised the Government's commitment to effective international institutions:
"We of all countries are not in the business of a retreat from multilateralism. Quite the reverse. Almost 30 per cent, of expenditure for which I am responsible as Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, including aid, is directly related to multilateral organisations".
That is the measure of our commitment. There is no question of retreating from it.
7.39 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I should like to thank everyone who has participated in this debate, and particularly the noble Baroness who has made such an extensive conclusion on behalf of the Government. Of course I do not agree with all she has said. I particularly disagree with her analysis of the decision to leave UNESCO, and I was interested to note that she did not take up the issue of Heritage, which has been mentioned several times tonight. That is an organisation which I believe received a congratulatory telegram from the Prime Minister in October 1983 on its tenth unniversay.
The noble Baroness would not expect me to agree with her analysis of the Government's view on sanctions. I strongly support what my noble friend Lord Pitt had to say about the damage that has been done within the Commonwealth by the British attitude ever since the Nassau meeting. On the other hand, I was encouraged by the earlier reference of the noble Baroness to at least considering the possibility of initiating or suggesting further United Nations peacekeeping forces, particularly in Mozambique. I hope she will pursue that idea.
Throughout the debate there has been one theme from all sides, though one has to say again that the Conservative Party has not been represented except by the Minister. That one theme has been that the influence of Britain is diminished by every action which weakens an international institution. We have spread ourselves widely among these international institutions. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, mentioned UNICEF. I remind the House that UNICEF's excellent work is also of benefit to this country. I understand that we receive in orders more from UNICEF than is contributed in capital to it.
I endorse entirely what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby had to say about our admiration for Bishop Desmond Tutu. I am sure he would add to that. Desmond Tutu's friends, Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu, and their wives. I was glad, too, that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, mentioned the United

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Nations Association. Those of us who believe in the United Nations have a duty not just to participate in the work of the United Nations Association but to bring young people into it at the earliest possible moment and to ensure that every school has an opportuntiy to listen to United Nations spokesmen and to join in the work at that stage. I was glad that the noble Lord, Lord McNair, referred to UNRRA. He probably knows that I was also associated with its work for some time.
This whole debate can be summed up in the words written by John Paul Sartre in his introduction to the book The Wretched of the Earth. This is what Sartre wrote:
"And when one day our human kind becomes full grown, it will not define itself as the sum total of the whole world's inhabitants, but as the infinite unity of their mutual needs".
I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Licensing (Restaurant Meals) Bill [H.L.]
7.45 p.m.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now resolve itself into Committee on this Bill.
Moved, That the House do now resolve itself into Committee.—(Viscount Montgomery of Alamein.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.
House in committee accordingly.
[The EARL CATHCART in the Chair.]
Clause 1 [Removal of restrictions on times during which intoxicating liquor may be served with meals in restaurants,
etc. ]:
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein Viscount Montgomery of Alamein moved Amendment No. 1.
Leave out Clause I and insert the following new clause:
("Relaxation of day-time restrictions on hours during which intoxicating liquor may be served with meals in restaurants, etc.

1.—(1) In section 68 of the Licensing Act 1964 (extension of permitted hours in restaurants, etc.) in subsection (1)(a) for the words from "(if any)" to the end of the paragraph there shall be substituted the words "between the first and second parts of the general licensing hours;".

(2) In section 95 of that Act (permitted hours in premises for which restaurant or residential and restaurant licence is in force)—

(a) in subsection (1), for the words "afternoon break" there shall be substituted the words "start of the second part of the general licensing hours"; and

(b) in subsection (3), for the words "afternoon break" there shall be substituted the words "second part of the general licensing hours".").

The noble Viscount said: Perhaps it would be for the convenience of the Committee if I made some general remarks about the series of amendments before us since they are all consequential, one upon the other.
The Committee will recall that during the debate at Second Reading both my noble friend Lord Caithness and the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, expressed concern about the fact that the Bill as originally drafted would enable restaurants to serve alcohol throughout the night if they so chose. These amendments have been prepared in response to that suggestion. The idea is to replace the proposed system of complete deregulation with a much more limited measure which merely lengthens the existing daytime extension of licensing hours available to restaurants by virtue of Section 68(1)(a) of the Licensing Act 1964. The intention is to cover the so-called dry period during the afternoon or, as the 1964 Act calls it, the afternoon break.
The Minister remarked at Second Reading that it was not unreasonable for someone dining at, say, three or four o'clock in the afternoon to be able to have a drink with a meal. The Bill in its new form would be solely confined to such cases. As before, the Bill makes no attempt to tamper with the existing concept of a "table meal" which is contained in the 1964 Act. Moreover, the Bill will make no change in the system of control presently exercised by the licensing justices or, in the case of registered clubs, by a magistrates' court.
Accordingly, in order for a, restaurant to be entitled to the benefit of the extended hours in the daytime, the justices must be satisfied,
"that the premises arc structurally adapted and bona fide used, or intended to be used for the purpose of habitually providing, for the accommodation of persons frequenting the premises, substantial refreshment to which the sale and supply of alcoholic liquor is ancillary".
That is taken from Section 68(3) of the 1964 Act.
I turn for a moment to Clause 2. It may seem rather surprising that I should be proposing that this clause should not stand part of the Bill. I do so because the original Clause 2, assuming that we pass Clause I, is entirely consequential on the original Clause 1. So, with the new Clause 1 as proposed in Amendment No. 1, Clause 2 would not be required at all. That is why it is proposed that it should no longer stand part of the Bill.
The transitional provisions in Clause 3, as amended, will ensure that, on commencement of the Bill, restaurants to which Section 68(1)(a) of the 1964 Act already applies would be able to take advantage of the extension in hours provided for by the Bill. Clause 3 will also ensure that conditions imposed under Section 95 which limits the permitted hours in the case of certain restaurants to the daytime or the evening will apply by reference to the new system of opening hours.
Finally, the change in the Title is merely to bring the Title into line with the general thrust of what we agreed at Second Reading about the Bill in general—the fact that there was cause for modification but that there were certain reservations. As the Committee will have seen from what I have said—and I hope I have given a satisfactory explanation—the intention is to close the gap in the afternoon but not to provide total deregulation. With that explanation, I hope that the Committee will be able to agree the amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: I am grateful to the noble Viscount for putting forward these amendments to his original Bill. He put them forward partly, I think, through the suggestion I made, and indeed the Minister made, at Second Reading. Therefore he no longer proposes that licensed premises should be allowed to be open for 24 hours a day, which was his original intention. This makes a very great difference to the first proposal and goes a long way towards quietening the anxieties I expressed at Second Reading which had been passed on to me by certain organisations concerned with our licensing laws.
The proposals now made by the noble Viscount should content restaurant owners. After all, I understand that they were complaining that latecomers at lunchtime, both foreigners and British people, found it frustrating that they could have a nice lunch but were not allowed to have a drink with it. Therefore I think that the Bill as drafted afresh by the noble Viscount is certainly a great deal more satisfactory and I certainly agree with its intentions.
However, as the noble Viscount is dealing with all these amendments together and therefore spoke in a general way about his new Bill—which is really what it is—perhaps I may briefly make two comments and ask questions that go with the comments. These are addressed to the noble Viscount, but there is one question I have for the Minister.
First, I feel that the Title of the Bill is a little misleading in that it would appear from it that the Bill only affects restaurants, whereas in the body of the Bill it is clear that other establishments are included. The word "et cetera" can only mean public houses in one case. Therefore I feel that possibly the Title of the Bill could be seen as a misnomer. I do not know how the noble Viscount could rectify that, but I feel that one should either be talking about restaurants or about restaurants and public houses. That should be made much clearer in the Title than it is at present.
My second point concerns the right of appeal, because I am not sure whether that is included in the Bill. For example, people could be inconvenienced by a licensed establishment in their neighbourhood and their objections could subsequently be overruled. My understanding is that the 1964 Act includes a right of appeal to a Crown Court for people who feel they are inconvenienced, but it is not clear whether objectors would still have that right under this Bill.
I raise that point because I feel strongly about it. I live in a small Chelsea street which is entirely residential except for a successful and crowded restaurant at one end of it. The residents in the street are undoubtedly very much inconvenienced by the noise, the lack of parking facilities, piles of litter and so on. I should like to think that the residents would be able to object and that if those objections are overruled by the local authorities they would be able to appeal to a Crown Court. I ask that question simply because I think it is important for residents to know the position.
Finally, I put forward a final point to the Minister and perhaps he can help me on this matter. I believe that there are two major anomalies which arise through the interaction of this Bill and the Bill put
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forward by Mr. Allan Stewart in another place. I know that we are only addressing ourselves to this Bill, but if both Bills find their way onto the statute book there would be an interaction and anomalies which I believe exist between them.
The first concerns Sundays. Here I believe there is a direct contradiction between the two Bills. Mr. Stewart's Bill does not appear to apply to Sundays. Indeed, I heard Mr. Stewart on a television programme saying that he intends to leave opening hours on Sundays exactly as they are now. On the other hand, as I understand it the noble Viscount's Bill would permit restaurants—which could encompass public houses with restaurants included—to open throughout Sunday afternoons in the same way as on weekdays. Therefore if the two Bills both become law who would win with regard to Sunday opening? Quite clearly one Bill states that Sunday afternoons would be the same as weekdays, while Mr. Stewart said on television that his Bill does not tamper with Sundays and that the situation would remain as it is.
The second disparity between the two Bills is reflected by the fact that Mr. Stewart's Bill includes the need to apply for a variation order, thus involving the local licensing committee with all that that implies, whereas such a requirement is absent in the Bill now before us. Does not the Minister agree that if it is thought that the best way of revising our licensing legislation is by introducing two separate Bills simultaneously the best hope of that succeeding would be to make them match in essential detail?
Those are the two slight anxieties that I have. As I have said, I agree with the intention of the Bill as now drafted by the noble Viscount. It will be useful for our tourist trade and for the convenience of customers in restaurants. Therefore, I support the Bill in its revised form, but I should be most grateful to have answers to my queries.
Lord Monson: I congratulate the noble Viscount on the skill with which he has thought out and moved this series of amendments. Many of us would, in theory, have preferred total deregulation but one must recognise that whereas no reasonable person could validly object to licensed restaurants or cafes opening throughout the afternoon, support for late-night opening would be rather less than universal.
Many people, including I am sure the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, would be worried about the possibility of nuisance from car doors slamming or engines revving at midnight, or even well after that, where restaurants are located in or on the periphery of residential areas. Therefore although the amendments tabled by the noble Viscount represent a compromise with the ideal they are entirely justified if they ensure that this excellent Bill obtains a speedy and smooth passage, not only through your Lordships' tolerant and worldly House but also through the other place, which often tends to be rather more puritanical and restrictive in these matters.
The Viscount of Falkland: I also congratulate the noble Viscount, Lord Montgomery of Alamein, on what I think is an excellent compromise. Although I

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did not express at Second Reading quite the reserve that was expressed by the Minister and the noble Baroness, I recognise that the road towards liberalisation and towards more responsible drinking in this country has to be gradual. These amendments largely satisfy that requirement. Although it had not struck me before the noble Baroness raised the point that the Title of the Bill is somewhat ambiguous, I myself much prefer that the definition of "restaurant" should be made clear and that no chinks should be left whereby unscrupulous public houses or other outlets could take advantage of this Bill.
Having said that, I think that should the Bill succeed we shall not in any way aggravate the problem of alcohol abuse in this country, which, as I said at Second Reading, is becoming a greater problem, mainly owing to intoxication among young people, with all the ensuing social problems in terms of violence, destruction of property and so on. However, an extension such as we see in this Bill can only add to the quality of life in terms of civilised drinking when eating a meal, with obvious benefits to the tourist trade and others. I hope that this Bill will lead to a greater recognition of the fact that the problem of alcohol abuse and the way with which it is dealt is a matter that is quite separate from normal eating and drinking.
We have to recognise that the consumption of alcohol is not a practice that will just go away. Alcohol is a commodity that has to be treated correctly and with prudence. If this Bill goes through I hope it will ultimately lead to a recognition that alcohol abuse is something which we have to deal with as seriously as we deal with drug abuse. One hopes that the present and successive governments will find a way of dealing with it.
8 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: Perhaps at the outset I may express my thanks to my noble friend Lord Montgomery of Alamein for tabling his amendments. In the course of the Second Reading debate I expressed the Government's reservations on this Bill on two counts. These were that the Bill approaches licensing reform from too narrow an interest, dealing only with restaurants, and, secondly, that by removing all controls over the hours during which alcohol may be served with meals, the Bill went too far.
Understandably, the amendments we are discussing this evening do not tackle our first concern; they do, however, meet the second, in that they limit the effects of the Bill so as to extend the licensing hours for certain restaurants solely during the afternoon period. We are no longer faced with the prospect of restaurants serving drinks with meals late into the night, or even 24 hours a day, without any safeguards against noise, nuisance and the general disorder which, unfortunately, is all too often associated with alcohol. I am, therefore, grateful to my noble friend for his ready willingness to limit the scope of the Bill and in return I can say that the Government look upon his Bill with benevolent neutrality.
My noble friend has explained the effects of the amended Clause 1. I should perhaps emphasise that
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his Bill is not directed at all premises serving food and alcohol. We are dealing at Clause 1(1) with those premises, or parts of premises, whose main function is the supply of substantial refreshment to customers sitting down to a meal and which serve alcohol as an ancillary to that meal. These are the premises which operate under the terms of a full on-licence, a restaurant licence or a club registration certificate and which are now able to serve drinks with meals until three o'clock in the afternoon, when others are required to close at 2.30 p.m. or 2 p.m. on Sundays. The criteria which must now be met for those extensions will apply equally under my noble friend's proposals. Their effect will be, however, that instead of ceasing to serve drinks with meals at 3 p.m., eligible premises can continue throughout the afternoon without a break.
There are, however, restaurants which, because they are open for meals only at midday or only in the evenings, are subject to a condition imposed on their licence restricting the supply of drinks with meals to the midday licensing hours, until 3 p.m. or to the evening period. My noble friend has explained that it is reasonable to allow those restaurants now subject to a cut-off time of 3 p.m. to continue to serve drinks with meals throughout the afternoon until the start of the evening licensing hours. The proposed new Clause 1(2) has this effect and enables licensed restaurants which are open only during the day to benefit from the Bill's provisions in the same way as other eligible premises. The only difference is that, at the start of the evening licensing hours, normally 5.30 p.m. or 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. on Sundays, such restaurants could no longer serve drinks unless the proprietor successfully applied to the justices to vary the restrictions on hours imposed on the licence.
The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, asked me a hypothetical legal question about two Private Members' Bills emanating in different Houses of Parliament. She asked what would happen if they both became law. I do not think I can answer her at this stage because they are Private Members' Bills and therefore not the responsibility of the Government. I am sure that if it were a government Bill we should have tied up the loose ends for her, but I think we should wait and see what happens to the Bills as they proceed through Parliament.
With regard to the point raised by the noble Baroness concerning the Title, it appears from the work that we have done on this Bill that it covers the point adequately and will not lead to the misunderstandings to which the noble Baroness quite rightly referred, at which we should have looked and indeed have done so already.
I do not dissent from my noble friend's wish to harmonise the licensing hours for all licensed restaurants. Indeed, he reminded the Committee of something that I said during the Second Reading, in that it is not so unreasonable for someone dining at four o'clock in the afternoon to want to have a drink with his meal. For these reasons I am happy to support the amended Clause 1 and the amendments tabled in the name of my noble friend.
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: Perhaps I may just thank those who have taken part in this debate. I am very grateful for the support that I have received from all quarters of the Committee. Perhaps I may also mention that I had a telephone message from the noble Lord, Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran, to say that had he been here—and he is very sorry not to be here—he also would have supported these amendments.
I should like to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, that I do not think that it would be entirely appropriate for me to enter into a detailed debate about the definition of "et cetera". That is an issue which we ought perhaps to deal with another time. I am not sure that the addition of the word "et cetera" to the Title would add anything whatsoever to the Bill. Personally, I think it is in place where it is in the text because the definitions of all these matters and the definitions of all the different types of establishment have not in fact been altered and have been taken directly from the 1964 Act where they are spelt out in very considerable detail in Section 201. I think that, if she cares to refer to that particular passage of the 1964 Act, she will find the explanations given in quite considerable detail.
Regarding the second question of the noble Baroness, I am very happy to concur entirely with my noble friend Lord Caithness when he said that of course this Chamber is the House of Lords and the House of Commons is another place and no doubt they will deal with matters as is appropriate.
It seems to me that this Bill stands in its own right. We in this Chamber have put forward the Bill and I hope that it will go forward as it stands or rather as it has been amended, because it seems to me to be worthwhile in its own right.
On Question, amendment agreed to.
New Clause 1 agreed to.
Clause 2 [Minor and consequential amendments 1):
On Question, Whether Clause 2 shall stand part of the Bill?
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein: I have already spoken about this clause and argued that it should be deleted from the Bill. Therefore I think I shall be voting "Not-Content".
Clause 2 negatived.
Clause 3 [Transitional provisions and savings]:
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein Viscount Montgomery of Alamein moved Amendment No. 2:
Leave out Clause 3 and insert the following Clause:
("Transitional provisions.
3. On the commencement of this Act—

(a) section 68(1)(a) of the Licensing Act 1964, as amended by section 1(1) above, shall apply (subject to section 69 of that Act) to any premises to which that paragraph applied immediately before the commencement of this Act; and

(b) any condition in force immediately before the commencement of this Act under section 95 of the said Act of 1964 shall take effect as a condition restricting the permitted hours in the premises so as to exclude any time after the start of the second part of the general licensing hours (within the meaning of that Act), or any time before it, as the case requires.").

On Question, amendment agreed to.
New Clause 3 agreed to.
Remaining clause agreed to.
In the Title:
Viscount Montgomery of Alamein Viscount Montgomery of Alamein moved Amendment No. 3:
Line 1, leave out ("remove the") and insert ("relax the daytime").
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Title, as amended, agreed to.
House resumed: Bill reported with amendments.
House adjourned at ten minutes past eight o'clock.