HL Deb 14 December 1989 vol 513 cc1426-34

4.51 p.m.

Debate resumed.

Lord Prys-Davies

My Lords, I have been waiting patiently for over half an hour for this opportunity of thanking the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, for his summary of the Supplementary Estimate which this order will approve. We have been told by him that the substantial part of the special funding requested of Parliament by the Department of Economic Development is committed to two very important privatisation programmes completed earlier in the year. And it is agreed that it is vital for the economy of Belfast and the economy of Northern Ireland generally that Short Brothers plc and Harland and Wolff Holdings plc should be trading successfully and at least maintaining their present labour force.

I should say from this side of the House that we condemn the bomb outrages at the Short premises recently. I hear that there may be grounds—and I put it no higher than that—for some concern about Harland and Wolff Holdings, or rather about one or two of its subsidiaries. I should therefore welcome an assurance from the noble Lord that there are no grounds for anxiety.

We welcome very much the additional expenditure on industrial research and development. This must surely be right. The comparative studies reveal continuing low average productivity in Northern Ireland. I believe it is around 80 per cent. of that of Britain and not more than just over half that of West Germany. I read somewhere that this is due in part to the low value that has been attached in the past to research and development and in part to the low education of the labour force and training. This is obviously a point for the Department of Education and we will come to that department later on this evening.

Turning to the additional funding requested by the Department of Health and Social Services, high unemployment is an outstanding characteristic of Northern Ireland and it is therefore not surprising that we see an inheritance of poverty in many parts of the Province. As the noble Lord is the Minister in charge of this department, there are just two matters that I should like to draw to his attention this evening.

First, it must be worrying that up to £5.6 million of family credit may not have been taken up, notwithstanding the publicity campaign to which the Minister referred. Manifestly something is wrong somewhere. Is the department investigating in detail why there should be this apparent low take-up? Do the overall statistics on uptake conceal wide variations between urban and rural areas and between office and office within the same district? Perhaps the Minister can assure the House that the department is asking the right questions and seeking the correct answers.

Secondly, I want to refer to the home help service. There is no need to emphasise the important role that this service plays in community care. However, I become anxious when I hear many voices proclaiming the inadequacies of the service in parts of Northern Ireland because it is under-resourced. Perhaps the Minister can confirm whether it is accepted that it is under-resourced in parts of the Province.

I am also wondering whether the Minister knows why the Eastern Health Board recently refused to receive a deputation from the home helpers whom it employs. It seems to me that the board is acting rather insensitively. Unless the Minister is able to give a satisfactory explanation for the board's action in refusing to receive this deputation, we urge him to take steps to find out in some detail what is happening in the eastern board and, if the complaints have substance, the department should spare no effort in correcting them.

Clearly there is no shortage of problems and no absence of challenges, but I do not propose to trouble the Minister further this evening as the House needs to go on to the discussion of the education reform order, which is the next business on the Order Paper.

Lord Hylton

My Lords, I should like to start by warmly welcoming the fairly modest amount of good news that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, was able to give us about economic development and job creation. Beyond that, I wish to raise two points of which the Minister has already had notice. I am sure that he will be just as helpful as his predecessors in office were in answering points of that kind.

The first concerns afforestation in the poorer farming areas of the western counties of Northern Ireland. The noble Duke, the Duke of Abercorn, raised this matter in your Lordships' House in a debate on 3rd February 1988. He then suggested that European Community Directive No. 1820 should be applied to these counties. This is all the more reasonable as it already applies in the adjoining counties of the Irish Republic. When the noble Lord, Lord Lyell, came to reply for the Government, he spoke for 30 minutes but devoted only two sentences to the directive and indeed brushed it completely aside. Surely it is the duty of the Department of Agriculture and Forestry to make sure that Northern Ireland gets its fair share of whatever EC grants may be available.

I should like to ask what progress has been made since early last year. Will the directive, known as the Western Package, soon be applied in Northern Ireland? What steps are Her Majesty's Government taking to ensure that this matter is worked upon in a proper regional manner and is not hidebound by national boundaries? This is all the more important because of the continuing high unemployment and limited industrial opportunities in the western counties of Northern Ireland.

My next point is totally different. Politically motivated violence and terrorism have continued, alas, for 20 years in Northern Ireland. The present right honourable gentleman the Secretary of State recently made a somewhat controversial reference to this. He aroused so much comment that I need not quote his words. Suffice it to say that the total eradication of terrorists from within a democratic state is a very difficult matter. This is why recent proposals to restrain the worst excesses of internal conflict may be so important. The Geneva and Hague Conventions have since 1864 done much to restrain the barbarity of war between states. A similar approach to internal strife has been taken by Dr. Hans Peter Gasser of the International Committee of the Red Cross and by Professor Theodore Meron of New York University. They separately published a code of conduct and a draft model declaration on internal strife.

These documents apply existing principles of international and national laws and human rights treaties to situations of insurgency or terrorist struggle. They apply equally to governments and armed oppositions. They stipulate, for example: first, civilians, and especially women and children, must be spared; secondly, hostages must not be taken and opponents must not be made to disappear by killing; thirdly, the wounded and sick must receive prompt medical help even if they are enemies; fourthly, prisoners must be treated humanely; fifthly, the use of force must be limited to the minimum strictly necessary.

Have Her Majesty's Government made a study of these rather new documents? If not, will they do so? Do they think that they may be applicable and indeed helpful in the Northern Ireland situation? I entirely accept that principles of the sort I have outlined have in general, and usually, governed the operations of the security forces. Nevertheless, it could well be of benefit to adopt such codes of conduct in a formal way.

It would further expose the barbarity of many recent terrorist attacks to the full force of world public opinion. It could help the Government with their sometimes difficult relations with Irish Americans and other members of the Irish diaspora throughout the world. Lastly, it could strengthen the hands of the doves as opposed to the hawks within individual terrorist groups. I look forward very much to hearing the Minister's reply.

5 p.m.

Lord Dunleath

My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord the Minister for the way in which he has introduced this draft appropriation order. Of the only two Votes that we are considering this afternoon I have one point to make on the first, it being under the heading of the Department of Economic Development. At the risk of wearying your Lordships perhaps I might be permitted to return to the subject of the European monetary system and the exchange rate mechanism.

These are points about which I understand there are in some areas certain divergences of opinion. I have raised the matter three or perhaps four times before in your Lordships' House. On those occasions I was referring to the disadvantage that we suffer in Northern Ireland due to the imbalance brought about by monetary compensatory amounts. Of course there is no Vote on agriculture this afternoon, but perhaps I could mention briefly the effect that this has on business.

Quite a few of my friends and colleagues are engaged in businesses in Northern Ireland that export to quite a large extent to the Republic of Ireland. The varying disparities between the pound and the punt make it extremely difficult for them to do advanced planning and to price a contract in such a way that they can be sure of getting a reasonable profit margin on it. When one considers that for quite a period of time one punt was equivalent to between 68 and 72 pence and now it is worth about 92 to 93 pence, that is a substantial difference. I can make the difference between whether a contract turns out to be profitable or unprofitable.

I would urge Her Majesty's Government under this heading of economic development to give careful consideration to that point. Perhaps we in Northern Ireland are more vulnerable to this varying disparity than other industries in the rest of the United Kingdom because of our proximity to the Republic of Ireland. Of course we suffer from the same difficulties as businesses in Great Britain when exporting to Europe.

Whenever I have asked about this before I have been told from the Government Front Bench that we will join the European monetary system when the time is right. That somehow rings a bell. It sounds familiar. I have heard it elsewhere. When is the time going to be right? I respectfully suggest that perhaps it was right the first time that I raised this two to three years ago, when our inflation rate was commendably low and our currency standing was perhaps more favourable than it may be now or may be in the future.

Turning now to the other Vote, we are considering this afternoon on the Department of Health and Social Services, I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I return briefly to the subject of the hospice movement. First, I should like to thank him sincerely for the encouraging statement that he made last week over the general budget for health and social services. I think that he has done a good job for Northern Ireland in bringing about that particular budget in the face of all the competition that exists from other spending departments.

To the best of my knowledge he did not say anything specific about the hospice movement. Certainly I have heard nothing since I left home yesterday morning. If the noble Lord has any information that he can give us this afternoon I shall most gladly convey it to my friends and colleagues when I go home tomorrow. Maybe it is too soon for him to be able to say anything. If in fact he and his department and his colleagues are not yet in a position to make up their minds, perhaps I should mention briefly that when I was speaking in the debate on the hospice movement inititated by the noble Earl, Lord Longford, on 31st October I may not have made it clear that the hospices are not looking for unlimited financial aid. They are not looking for open-ended financial aid. Indeed, that could possibly be counterproductive because it might militate against the very good public support from voluntary fund raising that they have already.

Rather I think I quoted Scotland, where the Secretary of State agreed in that instance to subvent the hospices pound for pound up to 50 per cent. and 50 per cent. was the limit. This may not be the ideal formula for Northern Ireland. I thank that the noble Lord, Lord Blease, when he was speaking in that same debate felt that it might not be ideal. However, something equivalent would be needed, because the important thing is that the hospice movement should be able to get away from crisis management.

Like any business it ought to be in a position to make a realistic cash flow projection and therefore draw up its plans not just on a month-to-month basis, watching how far the bank account has gone into the red, but rather be able to plan ahead as to progress and development. I feel that would not discourage voluntary public effort, but encourage it. If it felt that the hospice movement was firmly founded and had a base level that made it financially secure, then the public would know that any funds raised by voluntary effort would be going to an organisation that was in a viable state rather than just trying to tide over from one crisis to another.

What is needed is a two-pronged effort with the Government and voluntary workers operating in partnership—in double harness, so to speak. That would encourage the movement and give it security. I ask the Minister to bear that point in mind. If he is not yet ready to make a statement on the subject, then, when preparing his decision on that matter, I shall be grateful if he will bear in mind this feeling of partnership and working together because I believe that is something to which the general public in Northern Ireland would respond.

Lord Monson

My Lords, I am very conscious of the fact that the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, is extremely anxious that irrelevant topics are not introduced into this debate on the appropriation order. I believe what I have to say is not wholly irrelevant, but, should the noble Lord think otherwise, I hope he will forgive me as I shall be extremely brief and I seek only a brief answer from him. In passing, I hope that this matter was not touched on when I had briefly to leave to make a telephone call.

I hope noble Lords will have noticed reports in yesterday's press which reveal that Northern Ireland has a lower overall crime rate than any of the 42 police force areas in England and Wales. The rate for theft is particularly commendable; the murder rate is of course high as a result of terrorism.

Nevertheless, it is worth noting that the murder rate in Northern Ireland, despite terrorism, is lower than in the United States of America.

There are many people abroad, mainly in the United States, who take every opportunity to blacken the name of Ulster, although in my experience continental Europeans are much more understanding and sympathetic. Unhappily, there is a great and growing number of people in this country who also jump at every opportunity to run down Ulster, the better to justify their secret yearning to sell the Province down the river. Will the noble Lord and the Northern Ireland Office go all out to frustrate their knavish tricks by giving the maximum publicity both at home and abroad to the commendably low crime rate in Northern Ireland, upon which the people of Ulster must be congratulated?

5.15 p.m.

Lord Skelmersdale

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. I was taken by surprise as much as other noble Lords by the fact that we had a little interregnum in the middle of the debate. On behalf of the Front Bench on this side of the House I apologise for it and I assure the House that I had absolutely no bearing on the matter.

In introducing his remarks, I am particularly glad that the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies agreed that Short Brothers and Harland and Wolff should be put firmly on a suitable financial footing. This apppropriation order seeks to do that. However, it is only fair to warn the House that in this connection there may be one or two more appropriation orders, though probably not this year. Almost certainly they will refer to Harland and Wolff and Shorts.

Harland and Wolff has a proud history and has occupied an important position in the Northern Ireland economy. Its transfer to the private sector offers a genuine and real chance for a new beginning for those who work there. The workforce is particularly important, and I agree with the noble Lord opposite on that point. The Government have promised a significant amount of support, and the future of the company and its subsidiaries is now firmly in the hands of the management and workforce, which is where it should be.

The noble Lords, Lord Hylton and Lord Prys-Davies, mentioned the recent reports of low average productivity in Northern Ireland. I agree. The Government were not unduly surprised at that situation. I welcome the fact that the local chapter of the Confederation of British Industry has taken note of the problem and is currently investigating ways to encourage firms to do something about it. The Government will do all they can to help in this very necessary endeavour.

The noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, asked me what steps were being taken to ascertain the reasons for the much lower than expected take-up rate of family credit. When I first arrived at the department I was very conscious of the low level of take-up of this particular benefit. I discovered that at the beginning of this year a personal letter was sent to every family on the child benefit register. That did not do particularly well. Therefore, in order to encourage more claims I was concerned to have a second campaign. This took place shortly after I arrived. It involved television and press advertising; there was also special publicity provided to employers. I am glad to say that claims received as a result of this campaign—at least I assume that is the reason—have risen by 43 per cent. a week; that is from 700 to 1,000.

The reasons why some families do not claim family credit are not known, but using such publicity measures will encourage claims from those who think they may be entitled. I am intending to have another publicity campaign early in the New Year. We do not have an answer to the question of whether family credit is dependent on the area in which the claimants live and work, because it is a centralised benefit. It would need an enormous amount of research to reach an answer. Having listened to the comments of noble Lords I shall look into the question of whether such research would be productive.

I am sure the House will know that I had the privilege only last week of announcing an extra £84 million for the health and social services in Northern Ireland. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath, for welcoming that additional sum. In making that announcement, I made it quite clear that I should like to see some of this extra money going to the social services and to the provision of home helps in particular. That is about as much as I can do to by way of encouragement. I have no means of enforcing such desires. The level of resources devoted to the home help services is a matter for each health and social services board to determine.

The demand is increasing. None the less resources are finite and some boards have had to review the level of provision. There has been no cut in the level of provision in any board area compared with last year. The Eastern Board—in particular in the South Down and Ards unit of management—has found it necessary to reassess who is getting home help and the number of hours for which such help is given. The Eastern Board refused to receive a deputation from the home helpers in its employment. That is a matter not for me but for the board to answer. I shall endeavour to find out and I shall write to the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies.

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, raised again, as he pointed out, the matter of afforestation. The United Kingdom has recently requested approval by the European Commission under the forestry action programme of both the woodland planting grants scheme and the farm woodlands scheme. These grants, which are of course applicable in Northern Ireland, are in several respects more generous than those provided under the programme and should, if they receive approval, bring planting on either side of the Border into much the same financial regime. We have no plans to extend our forestry grants further either in Great Britain or in Northern Ireland.

The noble Lord, Lord Hylton, also referred to internal strife and terrorism. In this connection I welcome the condemnation by the noble Lord, Lord Prys-Davies, of the recent bomb outrage at the Harbour Airport in Belfast, which belongs to Short Brothers. The United Kingdom has a tradition of protecting and advancing human rights by means of specific laws and commitments. I note that those laws and commitments are not always totally approved of either by the European Court of Justice or by organisations such as Amnesty International. That is why we continue to look both at the operation of such laws and at the formulation of new laws. It is important to make the point when we are dealing with terrorism that, if we as a government and our agencies such as the RUC or indeed the Army do not abide by the laws in force at any moment, we descend to the level of the terrorists themselves. That must be wrong and it is something which the Government are determined to avoid.

While tackling a major terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland, the Government have always been ready to investigate matters of public concern and to take independent advice on measures necessary to safeguard the individual's rights. There is a proven record of removing justifiable grievances, extending civil rights and reconciling emergency measures with respect for individual liberties. We shall look most carefully at any studies that have a bearing on these important issues.

The note that I have in front of me to answer the noble Lord, Lord Dunleath, on the exchange rate mechanism of the EMS says, as he suspected, that the Government have undertaken to join the exchange rate mechanism when the time is right. I could put a tiny gloss on that because of the way the noble Lord spoke about this arrangement. We have been waiting for the removal of credit controls in Europe, which I understand will take place within the next 18 months. In the meantime, as the noble Lord mentioned, we have a different level of inflation—although I am glad to say that it is coming down—from that which pertained when he first raised the point. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister has made it quite clear that these two matters will have to be taken into account in deciding when the time is right. Much as I regret it, I cannot stand at the Dispatch Box and put a date on that.

The noble Lord, Lord Dunleath, also mentioned funding arrrangements for hospices. There are 1⅛ hospices, because, as the noble Lord will know, the construction of a new one in Londonderry is due to start soon. I am convinced of the need to change the funding arrangements for hospices in Northern Ireland to put them on a sound financial basis. This needs a tripartite discussion between the department, the boards themselves and the hospice movement. This is currently going on. I hope to make an announcement about the Northern Ireland position before the end of the year. I should not like to be any more definite at this stage because there are still agreements to be entered into.

Lord Dunleath

My Lords, is the noble Lord referring to the calendar year or the financial year?

Lord Skelmersdale

The financial year, my Lords.

I agree very much with the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that we must take note of the many good and exciting things happening in Northern Ireland. He referred to the fact that crime rates in Northern Ireland are lower than those in Great Britain and the United States. The Government look for every opportunity to publicise the good points in Northern Ireland. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State is currently making a special study so that whenever we go out and about in the course of our business, whether in either House of Parliament or abroad, we can use these points to prove that the negative side of Northern Ireland, which I must freely admit exists, is not nearly as negative as is sometimes portrayed in the media generally.

I think that I have answered most of the points raised. If I have missed any I shall be only too pleased to write to the noble Lord concerned. In the meantime, although the order is slightly complicated and although two different areas of expenditure need to be looked at, I believe that noble Lords consider it to be in order. I commend it to the House.

On Question, Motion agreed to.