Lords Sitting of 24 January 1990

Preamble
The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Leicester.

Tropical Forests: Preservation
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
What action they are taking in concert with the governments of like-minded countries to secure the preservation of tropical forests.
Lord Reay: My Lords, since October 1988 the Overseas Development Administration has been managing a forestry initiative to promote the wise and sustainable use of forest resources. In November last year my right honourable friend the Prime Minister announced that we would aim to commit a further £100 million bilaterally to tropical forestry activities over the next three years.
Internationally, we work with other donors and developing countries through the Tropical Forestry Action Plan. We strongly support the International Tropical Timber Organisation. We continue to encourage other bilateral and multilateral donors to give the same priority to forestry that we give.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that encouraging Answer. While the Government are clearly giving high priority to providing finance for afforestation abroad, can more be done to prevent the cutting down of tropical forests which is happening on a huge scale? The pace of destruction is running far ahead of renewal.
Lord Reay: My Lords, I entirely agree that the destruction of the tropical rain forests would be a tragedy. We believe that the best way of preventing it is for the aid-donor countries and international agencies to act in co-operation with the governments and people of the countries in which the forests are to be found, and to take initiatives to save those forests. That is our policy.
Lord Taylor of Gryfe: My Lords, does the Minister agree that one method of relieving the pressure on overseas forests is to encourage domestic forestry? Is he aware that this country's total bill for imported forest products is now £6 billion per annum, while our planting programme is falling far short of the Government's target?
Lord Reay: My Lords, the development of forestry in this country has an important role to play in supplying timber requirements. As regards the suggestion that imports from developing countries should be banned, we believe that it would be wrong to prevent developing countries from enjoying the
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benefits of their natural resources. However, it is important to ensure that that is achieved on a sustainable basis.
The Earl of Kimberley: My Lords, can my noble friend name any of the unco-operative countries which have national forests, or can he approach the question the other way and name any which are co-operative?
Lord Reay: My Lords, it is important to secure the co-operation of the governments and the people of the developing countries. The Overseas Development Administration is now involved in the running or preparation of 165 projects in 25 different countries. Therefore, there is a wide measure of co-operation.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the problem of cutting down forests in those countries is linked with their population explosion and poverty, and there is an urgent need for policy to be directed towards those issues?
Lord Reay: My Lords, I agree that the main cause of deforestation arises from the poverty of the people living around the forests. In many countries the population is growing rapidly. People need land for agriculture, and wood for fuel for cooking and heating. We must address ourselves to those problems.
Lord Taylor of Blackburn: My Lords, is the Minister aware of the work being carried out into tropical forest preservation by the Overseas Development Natural Resources Institute at Chatham? What additional money are the Government making available for its work?
Lord Reay: My Lords, I do not have the particular figures available, but I shall write to the noble Lord and send them to him. The Government believe that the non-governmental organisations in general have a valuable role to play in conserving tropical forests. In total, the ODA supports 38 such projects worth £3 million.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, is the Minister aware of the debt for development scheme now operative in Sudan? Thereby, instead of repaying debts to certain banks —notably, Hambros, Deutschesbank and Midland —the Sudanese Government pay them to UNICEF to be spent on development projects concerned mainly with afforestation schemes. Will the Minister say what the Government are doing to encourage other banks to take part in the scheme, and to assist a country such as Brazil in preserving its rain forests?
Lord Reay: My Lords, the noble Baroness is referring to what is sometimes known as "debt for nature swaps". We believe that where they are voluntarily agreed between the holders of debt and developing countries, they can make a useful contribution.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the destruction of rain forests also involves the destruction of whole tribes and their primitive cultures? Can anything be done to try to stop that happening, as was the case with the Red Indians and others?
Lord Reay: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend that it is extremely important to take to heart the interests of the people who live in the forests.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, is not the key point of the entire discussion that we should try to make it profitable for countries to keep their rain forests? Does my noble friend agree that unless we can manage to do so, we shall continue to be on a loser, and that sooner or later we shall have no rain forests whatever?
Lord Reay: My Lords, the noble Viscount has made a good point. The forests are an important asset for the developing countries, and we must encourage them to develop them on a sustainable basis.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, what do the Government think can be done on the other side of the equation —that is, looking towards countries which are richer than us and perhaps less conscientious and whose imports of tropical timber constitute a greater part of the problem?
Lord Reay: My Lords, as I said, we do not believe that we should pursue the path of restricting imports of tropical timber; rather, we should seek better management of the forests so that that can be done on a sustainable basis.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister say more about the Tropical Forestry Action Plan which he mentioned? How wide internationally is the participation in it, and from where is it organised and directed?
Lord Reay: My Lords, the Tropical Forestry Action Plan was drawn up in 1985 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the World Bank, the United Nations development programme and a North American NGO, the World Resources Institute. It provides the main mechanism by which donors can have a dialogue with developing countries about their forestry policies. Accordingly, our own forestry programme in each country is, where possible, carried out within the framework of the TFAP.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, do the Government believe that the present rate of extraction of rare hardwoods and their use can be sustained by a policy of the growing nations? Is it not a fact that the present rate must deplete the stock of timber?
Lord Reay: My Lords, I certainly agree that the tropical forests are being depleted at an unsustainable rate. My point is that the main cause of this deforestation arises from the poverty of the
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people living around those forests. Commercial logging is a factor, but is not the main cause.
Lord Moran: My Lords, do the Government propose to take advantage of the forthcoming visit of the new President of Brazil to discuss this problem with him?
Lord Reay: My Lords, I am sure such matters will be discussed when the president visits this country.

NHS: Staff Ratios
2.45 p.m.
Lord Orr-Ewing Lord Orr-Ewing asked Her Majesty's Government:
By how much the balance between medical and non-medical staff in the National Health Service has changed each year since 1979.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Hooper): My Lords, for the UK in 1979 there were 49,200 medical and dental staff—by that I mean doctors and dentists —and 927,000 non-medical staff. That figure includes nurses. By 1988 there were 55,900 medical and dental staff and 953,700 non-medical staff. That shows an increase in medical and dental staff over the period of 13·6 per cent., with non-medical staff increasing by 2·8 per cent.
For the convenience of the House I have placed tables showing the position year by year in the Library.
Lord Orr-Ewing: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for those interesting figures. Is it not alarming and a tremendous challenge to the management that the NHS now employs over 1 million people and is thereby the biggest employer in the whole of Europe, with the one exception of the Red Army? Is it not also satisfactory that the number of people concerned particularly with patient care —the doctors and dentists —has increased by 7,000 in the 10 years and that the number of nurses has increased by 60,000? Those groups now number over half a million. That is a very great achievement for the organisers and all those dedicated to this wonderful task.
Is it not satisfactory that as a result of putting matters out to contract the ancillary staff has fallen in this period by no less than 74,000?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for informing the House that the National Health Service as an employer is second only to the Red Army. I am also grateful to him for drawing attention to the very encouraging trend in the provision of direct patient care. The number of ancillary staff has fallen by 33·4 per cent., and although administrative and clerical staff have risen by 12·9 per cent. the nursing and midwifery, medical and dental staff have risen by 13·2 per cent. and 13·6 per cent. respectively. I believe those are very encouraging figures.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I understand the staff of the Red Army is now being cut, but perhaps that is not relevant.
What conclusion does the Minister draw from those interesting figures? Do they in any way explain the current disturbing trend towards the treatment of fewer patients rather than more, which was confirmed by figures from her department last week? Those figures show a 42,000 fall in in-patient treatment together with the closure of 5 per cent. of the total of NHS beds —a reduction in one year of 14,000. Does one flow from the other?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the conclusions I draw from the figures —and indeed other figures —are that they are proof that we are spending more on our National Health Service than ever before; proof that we have more doctors in the National Health Service than ever before; and proof that even taking account of the reduction in nurses' working hours, nursing staffs have increased by 13·2 per cent. since 1979, which must speak volumes for our patient care.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, that is spending more on fewer patients, is it not?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, as the noble Lord will realise, with technical advances many of the treatments that have to be provided are far more expensive than they were.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is the reduction in in-patients mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, to some extent due to the great increase in day-patients?
Baroness Hooper: Yes, my Lords. I am grateful to my noble friend for making that point.
Lord Hunter of Newington: My Lords, will the Minister tell the House whether the recent campaign to recruit more nurses has been successful?
Baroness Hooper: Yes, my Lords. The nursing campaign has proved to be successful. We are in the process of fully implementing the recommendations of the KÖrner Steering Group on Health Service Information which will provide us with more information on nursing trends.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, can the Minister tell us her estimate of the increase expected in administrative staff as a result of the implementation of the new health and community service Bill? The noble Baroness told us that there has been an increase of 12·9 per cent. between the years 1979 and 1989. I believe that the House will be very interested to hear how much the figure for administrative staff will increase under the new conditions.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, what is interesting about the increase in the number of administrative and clerical staff to which I referred is that the major increase is in relation to the direct support
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of clinicians. The number of non-clinically-related administrative and clerical staff has in fact decreased by almost 10 per cent. In regard to the effects of the White Paper, it is too early to give the noble Baroness any detailed figures. There is a document called Working Paper 10 which outlines future proposals for the service. This paper is now out for consultation. The consequences arising from that consultation will be effective somewhat later. In due course we shall have the relevant information.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, does the noble Baroness not agree that simply to keep pace with expenditure on the NHS in 1979 we have to spend more? Is she aware that many nurses and junior doctors are concerned that they have to do work which was formerly done by ancillary staff? Does the Minister further agree that this state of affairs is damaging the National Health Service? Other important people in the NHS —for example, the ambulance drivers —are also upset. Therefore we have junior doctors, nurses, ancillary staff and ambulancemen who are all disgruntled with the present manner in which the NHS is being organised by this Government.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, we have an important programme of education and training going forward. Perhaps I can cheer up the noble Lord by saying that, as a result of the improvement in the ratio between consultants and junior doctors, a greater proportion of medical care is given by fully-trained doctors.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I ask the Minister whether she will reject the disparaging remarks concerning ancillary staff made by her noble friend who asked this Question. They are an essential part of the National Health Service. Is the Minister aware that since the reduction in such staff and the privatisation of some services there has been increasing complaint about the state of some of our hospitals? I suggest to the noble Baroness that that proves that the ancillary staff are essential to a good, working National Health Service.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I cannot speak for my noble friend, but I am sure that he did not intend to be disparaging about the important work done by many ancillary staff. The decrease in staff of nearly 74,000 between 1979 and 1988 represents a reduction of 33·4 per cent., to which I referred. That decrease reflects a more efficient use of staff in this area and the effects of competitive tendering.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester: My Lords, does the noble Baroness not agree that the employment of staff in privatised services of this kind has often led to severe underpayment among people who are often already very poorly paid?
Baroness Hooper: No, my Lords.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am disturbed that the noble Baroness did not reply to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Robson. Is it really true that another place is now considering the National Health Service and Community Care Bill without

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knowing what the extra administrative burden will be? Can the noble Baroness give the House an assurance that before the Bill reaches your Lordships' House we shall know what are the implications in terms of the administrative burden?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I give the noble Lord an assurance that I shall give the House the best information available at that point.
Lord Carr of Hadley: My Lords, perhaps I may return somewhat nearer to the original Question by asking my noble friend whether she will comment further on the alleged reduction in treatments referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. Can the Minister say whether it is really a fact that the number of treatments has been reduced, or rather that the number of patients staying overnight in hospitals has declined? If it is the latter, can the Minister say whether we should expect that to happen because so much more treatment is now given on a without-stay basis?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the encouraging trend in hospital care is towards more day care in order to avoid the unnecessary use of beds.
Baroness Masham of Ilion: My Lords, can the Minister say whether therapists are classed as medical or non-medical staff? I am referring to occupational and speech therapists and physiotherapists. Does the Minister feel that there are enough of these therapists to carry out the rehabilitation needs of patients within the National Health Service?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I believe that therapists come within the category of professions allied to medicine. In terms of statistics I believe that they come within the definition of medical staff. Manpower requirements are a matter for local bids and for the regions to consider.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, perhaps we can get this matter into perspective. The National Health Service is a magnificent service. Does the Minister not agree that in the past 20 years —never mind the past 10 years —there has been a dramatic improvement in the quality and the knowledge of medical staff? That situation is now being reflected in patient care. Does the Minister not agree that it is a fact that a few years ago, for example, we had never heard of hip replacements; of transplants or some of the other advances which are now taken for granted? I suggest that we should give credit where it is due.
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I am very happy to give credit where it is due. We have an excellent National Health Service which we intend to improve and keep absolutely up to date.
Noble Lords: Next Question!
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that we have now spent 20 minutes on
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two Questions? That is the amount of time we are supposed to devote to all Questions.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, 21 minutes!
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, does my noble friend not agree that we should speed up a little?
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords —
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Belsteacl): My Lords, I think we should take the next Question. I know that the noble Lord would like to speak. Perhaps we can take his supplementary question and then pass on to the next Question.
Lord Wallace of Coslany: My Lords, can the noble Baroness explain why, if the numbers of nurses and doctors have increased, waiting lists are getting longer and longer?
Baroness Hooper: My Lords, I believe that in part that is due to the fact that expectations are increasing and there are new methods of treatment.

Homelessness: Local Authority Funding
2.57 p.m.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal Baroness Fisher of Rednal asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will quantify the financial and other resources made available to local authorities in order to fulfil their obligations to house the homeless arising from the recent review of the homelessness legislation by the Department of the Environment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Hesketh): My Lords, the Government's overall aim in their housing policy is that a decent home should be within reach of every family. This will be achieved through much improved targeting of public expenditure.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, in addition to the remarks that he has just made, can the Minister say how many new lettings he expects to be provided as a result of these new statistics? Further, can the Minister say how far they go towards satisfying the demands of the homeless?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, in 1990–91 the total capital expenditure on housing will be some £4·41 billion. I am sure that the noble Baroness will be aware that, on top of that figure, over the next two years the Government have a commitment to provide £250 million specifically for the relief of homelessness.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that, while we bounce statistics across the Dispatch Box to one another, the Government's own report on this subject shows a requirement for a million new homes to be built for rent by the turn

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of the century? Is the Minister further aware that the consensus opinion of the people grappling with this problem is that the only way to solve it is through a substantial increase in the building of low-cost property for rent so that a low level of rent can be reflected in the cost of the housing? Have the Government any plans for dealing with this matter? The present building programme is totally inadequate to deal with this problem and its current dimensions.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, in answer to the first part of the noble Lord's question, I am sure he does not believe that this question provides a suitable means for dealing with the matter of housing requirements in this country between now and the year 2000 and the provision of a million units, to which he referred. However, I can assure your Lordships that the £250 million to which I referred relates to some 15,000 units in London and the South-East. The Association of London Authorities has referred to a figure of some £208 million. It is clear from those two figures that the Government have more than met the demand in the greatest area of pressure that we face today; namely, to remove the homeless from bed and breakfast accommodation.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, if that is the case, will the Minister explain why, day by day, the number of homeless people in other major cities is increasing dramatically? What is the answer to that problem, or do the Government not have one?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the Government certainly do have an answer to the problem raised by the noble Lord. With the new capital resources introduced by the Local Government and Housing Act 1989, we have produced the new generalised needs index, which we believe will accommodate those requirements outside the pressure area of the South-East and London.
Lord Murray of Epping Forest: My Lords, given the fact of the high and rising proportion of homeless people who are former in-patients of psychiatric hospitals, can the Minister confirm that resources are to be made available under the new mental health grant scheme to house between 300 and 500 of those people? Can he also say what provision will be made for the rest of these people, as at least 1,000 people discharged from psychiatric hospitals are not in squats or in bedsits but are now sleeping rough on London's streets alone?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the Government are well aware of the problems raised by the noble Lord. Part of the problem goes wide of the Question on the Order Paper. The Government have nonetheless recognised the problem of homelessness. We have suggested and produced a figure of £250 million, which, as I pointed out earlier, is in excess of the figure suggested by the Association of London Authorities to alleviate the problem in London and the South-East.
Lord Murray of Epping Forest: My Lords, perhaps I may point this out. More than 40 per cent. Of
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homeless people on the streets of London have histories of mental instability and of being in psychiatric hospitals and my question was far from being wide of the Question on the Order Paper. It dealt with the central issue of homelessness which is referred to in the Question.
Viscount Brentford: My Lords, in addition to the financial contribution being made for people released from institutions and those who are members of homeless families, is my noble friend contemplating any provision for the single homeless of whom there are many around our streets?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the Government recognise that "homeless" as a definition encompasses all of the population, and not only families.
Earl Russell: My Lords, will the Minister comment on the work done by the Salvation Army in providing shelter for the homeless, and in particular on the recent financial difficulties of Salvation Army hostels? How far might these result in problems in the system of payments by the Department of Social Security, especially in regard to the habit of paying benefit in arrears?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the Government recognise and welcome the contribution made by the voluntary sector. I would point out that within the financial package for the homeless which I mentioned earlier, some £2 million is allocated to the voluntary sector.

Housing: Private Rented Sector
3.3 p.m.
Lord Dean of Beswick Lord Dean of Beswick asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the Housing Act 1988 is working well, in particular the provisions relating to the private rented sector, in the light of Shelter's recent comments.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, we believe that the new Housing Act is encouraging the supply of privately rented accommodation, offering tenants greater choice and providing a better return for landlords. Furthermore, the Shelter report Forced Out contains evidence that the tough new sanctions which we introduced against harassment in that Act are proving to be effective.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, is the Minister aware that of the 26 local authorities surveyed, 85 per cent. of them noted an increase in harassment and illegal evictions? Is it not sad that out of the 255 complaints made, only 13 led to prosecutions? Is he further aware that those figures are a direct contradiction of what he says? It was not good enough for the newly appointed Minister in another place to try to discredit the report by saying that the Act had not been in place long enough to indicate what was happening, when he himself had been in the department for less than a fortnight. This is a

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serious report. When the Bill was being discussed the Government were made aware of the fears of noble Lords that this might well happen. Will the Government take urgent action to prevent the problem growing and indeed do something to get rid of it completely?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I am sure the House will be interested to know that only 48 out of 412 local authorities were actually contacted regarding producing these figures. However, it is important to show that the Government believe that we are seeing satisfactory success from the Act. In Lambeth, a tenant received total damages of £46,000 under the new Act; in Blackpool, a tenant received damages of some £17,000; in Reading, a tenant received some £8,500; and in Westminster, one landlord received six months in prison.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the figures he announced refer to only a small part of the nation? Is he further aware that Shelter has from time to time been both a guide and a critic of all governments? Can he say precisely whether or not he in particular has read Shelter's recent comments to which my noble friend referred?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, not only do I have in my folder a copy of Forced Out, but I have actually read it. The Government believe that we must increase housing provision in this country partly by using the private sector. I remind the House that in 1919 90 per cent. of the population lived in rented accommodation. That figure has fallen to some 8 per cent. It is below the 30 per cent. figure in West Germany and France. The initiative shown in the Budget whereby the return of the institution of providing capital encouragement by taxation in the business expansion scheme has produced investment of some £370 million which would not otherwise have existed and which should be added to the total overall housing provision. That rented accommodation will provide relief to local authorities where people who do not wish to buy will be able to move out into a restored private rented market.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, the Minister's replies do not bear any relationship to the facts. These facts come not only from Shelter but from surveys up and down the country. The Minister's statistics were even more selective than the ones he accused Shelter of producing. The Housing Act 1988 has failed in its alleged objective of producing more housing for rent. Landlords are now finding it easier to obtain evictions.
Noble Lords: Question!
Lord Stallard: My Lords, is the Minister aware that landlords are now finding it easier to obtain evictions? Is he further aware that there are now more illegal evictions than ever? Does he accept that homelessness is on the increase? Does he further accept that the houses that are being emptied as a result of the provisions of the Act are not being returned to the rented sector but are being sold
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because of their high capital value to the landlord? Does he not accept that something has to be done about the Housing Act 1988?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the Government are committed to broadening the basis of housing and the choice that is available to the population. The Government are interested in the consumer. The Government do not have the obsessional hatred of landlords which resulted in the abolition of one-third of the housing sector of this country.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Government have an obsessional hatred of local authorities? Is he confident that the housing associations will be able to take over the role of local authorities in providing the massive number of houses that are needed not only in London and the South-East but all over the country? Is he confident that the Housing Corporation and the housing associations will be able to provide housing not only for the homeless but for the thousands on housing registers?
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, the fact is that the Government have absolutely no intention of taking over the local authorities' housing stock. Local authorities have some 29 per cent. of the housing stock. We believe that local authorities should be the directors and the enablers, and that in future the housing associations should be the new arm of development for public sector housing.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, in his earlier reply the Minister indicated once again that the Government saw this particular Act as a major solution to the question of rehousing the homeless. However, he did not give us any concrete evidence other than the fact that one person had received a prison sentence for violating the law. Therefore that person can no longer be deemed as homeless. Can he now give us figures to indicate in any respect whatever how many people have left the homeless queue and been rehoused in private tenanted property as a result of the Act? I should tell him that I cannot find evidence of any.
Lord Hesketh: My Lords, I am most: surprised that the noble Lord, Lord Dean, should try to confuse your Lordships by returning to the previous Question on the Order Paper. The Government have provided an initiative which has surprised everyone in the way in which it has been taken up. The housing, or rent, provision, which is additional —I repeat, additional —to those figures which were projected, provides opportunity of a diverse nature in housing in this country.

Business
3.10 p.m.
Lord Denham: My Lords, with the leave of the House, I should like to say a word about the two short debates standing in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, and the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter. It is customary in short debates that

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the mover is allowed approximately 15 minutes and that the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debates. In the case of the short debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of five minutes and in that of the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, to eight minutes. If any noble Lord should speak at greater length, it would be at the expense of subsequent speakers in the debate.

London Traffic
3.11 p.m.
Lord Tordoff Lord Tordoff rose to call attention to the deteriorating state of London's traffic and the need for comprehensive initiatives to tackle the problems; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the purpose of this debate is to give your Lordships the opportunity to discuss the discussion document on initiatives to tackle the problems of traffic in London which was issued by the Department of Transport in December. Before I continue, perhaps I may say how pleased I am that so many Members of the House have put their names down to speak. In fact, I rather wish now that we had made this a longer debate, but one can never judge these matters in advance. Indeed, normally transport debates attract only a limited number of speakers. At the same time, I should like to suggest that noble Lords be absolved from the necessity of thanking me for putting forward this Motion. I think that that will probably save about 20 minutes.
I do not think that there is any need for me to dwell upon the magnitude of the problem. There seems to be general agreement that the traffic situation in London has reached a very serious stage; nor is there much reason to argue about the major cause, because I think that there is also general agreement in that respect. The fact is that there are too many motor cars in too little space. The answers to the problem become more controversial. We could of course increase the space available, but in a city like London it becomes increasingly difficult to do so unless you do so to the detriment of the rest of the community. But even if you did expand the space, cars would tend to expand to fill the space available. That is the new "Parkinsonian" law, of which there are many examples throughout the world.
We must try to do something to reduce the number of cars, otherwise we simply move the problem from point A to point B. However, in doing so we must not forget that the motor car is a great liberating force for many people. It provides the ability for people of all shapes and sizes to move from door to door without having to wait at draughty bus stops or on crowded railway platforms. Moreover, it is weatherproof, it is warm and dry and it takes a lot of luggage.
The problem is that we rather cheat ourselves when costing our journeys. We treat each individual journey as if it were costing the marginal cost of
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petrol. We only mentally reckon that fact when deciding whether to go by car or by public transport. We forget the depreciation, the maintenance and the insurance. It is a very seductive argument to say, "I'll go by car because it is a bit cheaper". Therefore the answers to the problem lie in the area of trying to dissuade car users from bringing their cars any more than is absolutely necessary into a crowded city like London. We must also make public transport more attractive. At this point I suspect that we begin to diverge.
The Government are locked into a political philosophy which, I believe, inhibits the bringing forward of necessary measures. Perhaps I should state clearly that I do not believe that the free operation of market forces will relieve London's congestion. There must be co-ordination; there must be intervention; and there must be financial support on a large scale. On the question of co-ordination, my attention was drawn to an interesting article which appears in today's Evening Standard. It reads:
"The same traffic flows in and out of Westminster, Kensington, Chelsea and Camden. It is too unrealistic for example to imagine that the borough authorities and London Transport and the relevant minister could actually decide or be ordered to set up special bodies to plan and co-ordinate London traffic and transportation and take responsibility through the electoral system for the results?"
The fact that the article was written by Mr. Enoch Powell gives me some pause for thought. But, nevertheless, I think for once that we are on the same side.
I believe that the discussion document is flawed because it does not accept those facts. I have received an enormous amount of correspondence since this Motion appeared on the Order Paper. I should point out that all of it, to a greater or lesser degree, has been critical of the document. Two basic comments have been made. First, a public transport system in a great city such as London cannot rely on fares alone without becoming unattractive; and, secondly, there is some need for a London-wide authority capable of co-ordinating road, rail and Underground systems. However, instead of that we are in danger of further fragmentation.
When we consider how far the Government proposals will discourage cars and encourage the use of public transport, what do we find? We find, for instance, that Network SouthEast is having its subsidy reduced which means that fares will rise and that will in turn encourage people to get into motor cars. We also find that British Rail is having to consider schemes only on the basis of their commercial attractiveness and therefore, Park-and-Ride schemes are less profitable than others and have so far been dropped from the future programme. Again, we have a missed opportunity.
We are told that London Underground is increasing its fares in order to dissuade people from travelling. That, again, will encourage people to travel in motor cars. In each case the separate organisations are pressurised to maximise their own sectoral balance sheet. That is to the detriment of the traffic situation as a whole. Meanwhile, the investment situation has been terribly slow and there is an enormous backlog. As we know, trains are

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old-fashioned, signalling is antiquated, buses are unreliable and staff are demoralised and under-paid in relation to London living costs.
Yes, there is greater investment in the pipeline. But, again, we find that the reliance on market forces distorts the decisions. The badly needed British Rail cross-London links are at least delayed. For example, the east-west link is delayed for a year at present and may be delayed even further, and the north-south link seems to have disappeared from the agenda.
However, we are to have a Jubilee Line extension. That is nice to know. We are to have this because it will go to Canary Wharf and because the private sector is injecting money into it. I have no objection to encouraging private sector funds to be directed into our transport system. But this particular line makes the least possible contribution out of all the possible lines to relieving congestion. Moreover, any cost benefit analysis of the various schemes would have given the lowest priority to the Jubilee Line extension.
I do not pretend for a minute that there is not a massive cost to be faced. For example, new rolling stock is necessary for Network SouthEast, with better acceleration and sliding doors which will speed up the station stops and provide the opportunity for more trains to run on the system. Higher wages are needed to attract key workers into areas such as signalling, where safety is involved, and to produce more drivers so that there are fewer train cancellations on our commuter lines because of driver shortages. Instead, Network SouthEast will lose all its PSO grant within the next couple of years, which will lead to higher fares and more cars.
However, the discussion document has a magic ingredient. It is called "Red Routes". We are told in the document that they are a fundamental part of the Government's approach; that people's aspirations to own and use a car should not be artificially constrained. There we are: a motor car free-for-all lies at the heart of government policy. Therefore, we must not restrict parking spaces; we must not have physical restraints; we must not increase the tax on company cars; we must not increase the tax on fuel; and, at all costs, we must not have road pricing. The answer lies in none of those solutions nor a combination of them; the answer is red routes so that more cars can be encouraged to go more quickly to the big jams in the middle of the city.
All right, with red routes and with severe penalties, our major roads may be freed to a degree. That is not necessarily a bad thing. The RAC is broadly in support, but it points to the fact that enforcement will not be easy. To enforce the type of parking restrictions that there will be on 300 miles of red routes is no mean feat, so Batman is to be brought to the rescue in the shape of the traffic director of red routes. However, we find that he is not to be in day-to-day organisational control. He will merely be there to monitor the activities of the local authorities and the police.
We shall have a new breed of traffic warden —if they can be recruited. The AA points out that at present the force of traffic wardens has been under establishment for years. The department blames that
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upon the uncertainty of future employment. That may be, but I do not believe it. It is more likely that people do not become traffic wardens because it is a rotten, uncomfortable, unpopular and underpaid job. If a full establishment of traffic wardens is not achieved red routes will fail.
If the proposal succeeds, it will help to free the bus lanes. Buses are a crucial element in disentangling the London traffic problems, If they run to time, buses provide a vital link within the transport network; but at present they are being strangled out of existence. Otherwise, the vicious circle continues: more cars, more congestion, less reliable bus services, more cars, worse bus services, and so we go on down the terrible spiral until nothing moves and London literally chokes to death.
I say "literally chokes to death" because I have not so far discussed the environmental problem. Last summer I believe that we came close to experiencing the type of situation which occurs, or used to occur, in Los Angeles. We were on the brink of a photochemical smog, where the sunlight acts on the gases produced by car exhausts to produce dangerous conditions in the air. By 2001, the beginning of the next millenium, the CO2 level in London will be 50 per cent. higher than it is today, so when I say "chokes to death" I mean it literally.
In the short time that I have, I cannot deal with the whole range of other aspects of this complex problem. The difficulties of the disabled are one instance. GLAD (the Greater London Association for Disabled People) estimates that about 500,000 Londoners are handicapped by poor public transport. I hope that that is an issue to which we can return when the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, finally manages to get a Question on to our Order Paper. I should like to contribute to that debate when we reach it.
I have not discussed the impact of the Channel Tunnel, which will cause considerable problems in Central London; I have not mentioned the need for a speedy rail link to Heathrow, which is crucial to the development of our aircraft and airport policy; I have not mentioned helicopter access, although I understand that there is likely to be an increase in the number of helicopters flying into the Charing Cross area; I have not talked about the better use of the Thames; I have not talked about the dangers of the deregulation of the buses which, heaven forfend, the Government may spring on us one of these days. I beg them not to deregulate the buses in London because that will be the death of the London bus service.
I have not talked about single manning on the buses, which is another extremely contentious problem. I have not talked about the problems of pedestrians, pedal cycles and motor cycles. I am sure that my noble friend Lord Falkland will touch on that subject when he speaks.
All those problems, and more, need investment on a far larger scale than the Government are prepared to contemplate or support. They need a comprehensive and co-ordinated approach which will be achieved only by a London-wide traffic and transport authority. The dogmatic, penny-pinching and piecemeal approach of the Government, which

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is contained in the discussion document, does not begin to address the problem of London's traffic. I beg to move for Papers.
3.26 p.m.
Lord Lucas of Chilworth: My Lords, in the short time that I have at my disposal I should like to concentrate primarily on four principles, and none of the detail, contained in the discussion document. I give a general welcome, albeit somewhat guarded, to the document. I said when my noble friend the Minister repeated the Statement on 14th December that there was a general welcome for it. Whatever one may think about red routes or through routes, in a certain measure they will take some of the traffic away from crucial areas. That is not the point of what is before us, because in the discussion document the department talks about the change since 1983. In fact, the change has been occuring since about 1953. Successive governments have failed to recognise the importance of traffic and transportation for the country's general economy; hence they have always put it near the bottom of their investment list.
We now arrive at a crucial point which demands serious consideration by the department. It commissioned four studies. The great pity was that there was no co-ordinating body among those four separate consultants. All have produced worthwhile reports, but in the discussion document they have been treated as four separate issues —as four villages, if one likes to put it that way. Unfortunately, in looking at each of those villages, the Government have dispensed with the more radical, dramatic and bolder solutions which the consultants put forward.
First, we have a four village summary, unconnected apart from a traffic director. I share the concerns expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, over the traffic director's responsibilities. In parenthesis perhaps I should thank my noble friend the Minister for responding to my Question on 14th December about the traffic director's responsibilities.
I have always wanted, looked forward to, and even now believe that we should have, a co-ordinating body, because no one director with the limited authority which I perceive he will have can embrace the interests of those four villages.
I move quickly from that point to question of expense. The department has sought to discover the cheaper —if there is a cheap option —option for solving London's traffic problem. I do not believe that the more expensive option is necessarily the correct one, but I believe that the bolder and longer-term attitude is the right one to take, almost irrespective of cost. When he comes to wind up, my noble friend the Minister will no doubt tell us of the amount of money that is currently being invested in the general road network and in this problem, which we discussed in December. That is not true. There is no total and firm commitment over the long term —10, 15, 20 years —to spend a particular amount of money. It will always be subject to the Treasury and to the PES round, and one cannot enter into a long-term investment with those kinds of constraint. So I see real problems there.
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I believe that when examining the longer-term considerations we must consider the planning implications. We must streamline the planning procedures, which are desperately expensive and time consuming. As each year goes by, the cost of road building increases proportionately. We cannot allow that: we should take some notice of what happens on the Continent. The general planning of the route should be prescribed and those injuriously affected —and only they —should be allowed to enter the inquiry. They should be properly recompensed; in its submission the RAC talks of something like 140 per cent. This is the type of principle which I do not believe the Government have addressed.
3.30 p.m.
Lord Jay: My Lords, I hope that we can all agree that the present traffic confusion cannot be ended by building major new roads in inner London. Those of us who in the 1960s opposed inner London motorways always argued that major new roads in inner London would simply generate more traffic. That has since been proved correct. Minor improvements, yes, but major new roads and widening schemes would cause great destruction, involve enormous cost and simply shift the bottlenecks half a mile or more further on.
The London problem is mainly the commuter rush hour to and from the centre. There are basically only two ways in which that can be eased. I say "eased" because cured I do not think it can be. One way is by slowing down and steering more of the commuters off the roads and on to the Underground and suburban railways. The other way is a wider use of regional policy which will restrain the pressure of employment and population on London and the South East and use instead the capacity and labour unemployed elsewhere. However, at present the Government are doing almost exactly the opposite in each case. They have virtually abandoned any effective regional policy.
Further, far from making it easier for people to travel by rail rather than road, the Government have imposed financial targets on both British Rail and London Regional Transport which have led to crippling shortages of manpower on those services, a sharp rise in fares and delays in maintenance, all of which have in turn worsened the service and in some cases, I believe, threatened safety.
Far from learning from these lessons, the Government are now cutting still further the revenue grants to both British Rail and London Transport. The latter will receive no more revenue grants at all by 1993–94. Since 1984 British Rail has cut its staff by 25 per cent. London Regional Transport has stated officially and candidly that the rise in fares is intended to deter passengers from using the Underground. The effect of deterring commuters from the Underground can only be to push them back on the roads, unless they are to give up working altogether.
The purpose and justification of a revenue subsidy to public transport —as almost every other capital city in Europe has found —is to avoid the chaos otherwise produced on the road. I do not blame the

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management either of British Rail or of London Regional Transport. They are simply trying to carry out the Prime Minister's decree that in all this the profit and loss account must come before service to the public and everything else.
To give one example, at least one constructive and sensible policy on this issue has been introduced by British Rail in the past few years. That is the development of large free or cheap car parks on surplus land at suburban stations around London. That is a policy which benefits everybody by reducing the traffic in London and by helping the commuters at the same time. But we now learn that British Rail have been compelled by these financial cuts to cancel plans for their further programme of developing these suburban car parks. That seems to be folly.
What can be done now in practice? First, that foolish decision on station car parks around suburban London should be reversed. Secondly, a continuing revenue grant should be restored to British Rail and London Transport in compensation for their public service in at least helping to keep some traffic off the London roads; and the present undermanning and lack of staff on both rail and bus services should be ended. Thirdly —and here I disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff—we should proceed with the Jubilee Line from central London to Docklands. I think that the Government have the priority right there. Fourthly, we should do something effective in the Budget to check the present major abuse of what are called company cars. They certainly contribute to the chaos.
Finally —and this costs very little —the Government should enforce efficiently parking restraints on main London roads both by night and by day. Unless the object of the whole operation is to improve public services rather than simply to save money, very little will be achieved.
3.42 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Southwark: My Lords, in his response to the debate last May on this subject, the noble Lord, Lord Brabazon, outlined the steps which the Government were then taking to improve road conditions in London and which are further described in the report. He then dismissed the need for a strategic authority for transport in London on the grounds that we want, "action and not bureaucracy". However it is difficult to avoid the clear impression that the Department of Transport is actually being forced to set aside more and more resources in order to provide some kind of strategy for London's traffic. Good and comprehensive initiatives require good strategy, as the noble Lords, Lord Tordoff and Lord Lucas, have already pointed out.
There is surely no necessary connection in a pejorative sense between having a central strategy and bureaucracy. No other capital city that I know of leaves major decisions about transport needs to this curious mixture of a department of central government and numerous independent local authorities.
My concern as a London Bishop is twofold. First, there is the social cost of doing too little and too
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late. I know that "social cost" is a vague phrase and we do not yet have precise ways of measuring it in financial terms, though it exists in part for assessing road building schemes. But it is surely beyond dispute that certain things are happening which exact a very high toll on increasing numbers of people and that these are directly attributable to the state of London's traffic and transport.
I should have liked to say more about this, but I shall simply mention briefly these factors: accidents; pollution (immediate and long term); stress and ill-health; consumer costs. Nobody intends that these should happen, they flow from a rising standard of living and a multitude of individual decisions which we all make to use a car or a lorry because it seems to be cheaper or convenient or both. But now we are beginning to realise the cumulative impact and to see that the operation of the market in transport is actually delivering a set of consequences in our cities which it is becoming impossible to contain.
The Victorians learnt the hard way. Their successive governments found they had to tackle public sanitation, health issues, public education, the problem of the mentally ill and other matters because neither market forces nor private charity could cope with the scale of the problem. There were social needs and social costs in the new cities which the whole community had to recognise and address in other ways.
My second concern relates to the question of rail fares and the danger of putting rail travel beyond the reach of the low paid. We have already heard that fares may be put up literally to dissuade people from using the train. Last May the Minister said:
"it is BR which runs the railways and not Ministers … A blanket subsidy to keep fares artificially low perpetuates inefficiency and insulates management from the customer. It cannot be justified".
We all accept that British Rail manages the railways. I am equally clear that we do not wish to perpetuate inefficiency or overmanning. However, it is the Government who decide the level of capital grants which British Rail and the Underground receive, as well as their capital spending. Without more help it is difficult to see how one can avoid further deterioration through lack of investment as well as fares rising well above their present level and driving yet more people onto overcrowded buses and roads.
I wish to stress that point more strongly by comparing it with housing. It is an important comparison to make. Both adequate transport and adequate housing are basic needs of a civilised community. Strenuous efforts have been made to reduce indiscriminate subsidies in the housing field, as these have contributed to artificially low rents for people who could afford to pay more, as well as distorting the market in house prices with mortgage interest tax relief. This has been done by putting more funds into the Housing Corporation and by introducing thereby mixed funding. However, all the time there is a balance to be maintained between subsidising the building and subsidising the person.
What is now absolutely clear in the housing field is that one cannot do away with capital subsidy altogether if one is to provide adequate housing for

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all at rents people can afford, especially those on low incomes but incomes that are just above the level which would entitle them to housing benefit. Such subsidy must be considerable in London and other places where land values are high. The point I am making is that the same thing surely applies to public transport in London.
I, alas, am running out of my time but I wish to stress that we must learn the lesson that we are learning in one area and apply it to this other crucially important area too. That is absolutely essential if we are to have a comprehensive set of initiatives which takes genuine account of the present unacceptable social costs which all of us living in London now endure in one way or another.
3.43 p.m.
Lord Quinton: My Lords, I hope that I shall not try the patience of your Lordships' House if I begin my few remarks with a short personal recollection. Some years ago when driving through the recently reconstructed Bullring area of Birmingham —that area was not particularly familiar to me, anyway —I found myself faltering in deciding which way to go. I was amazed when a policeman came up to me and addressed me in the local dialect. Although I was not able to interpret precisely what he said, his message was clear enough. It was that I should get a move on. That was an extraordinary experience as I do not think it had ever happened to me before when driving in England. Usually every influence that is brought to bear on a driver is directed towards slowing him down.
In Paris, the faces of the police are set in rictuses, if that is the plural of frenzy, while they endeavour to get one moving freely. In New York, there is a special category of public official. These officials are dressed in brown uniforms and are known as traffic police. They supplement the mechanical and insensitive inadequacy of traffic lights at busy intersections by overriding the instructions of the traffic lights in order to enhance the rapid movement of cars.
I hope that the corps of traffic wardens, in the envisaged enlargement of their responsibilities, will take on more of this work and that it will compensate for what was quite rightly referred to as one of the unattractive features of their present employment, which is that they tend to generate a measure of hostility as their immediate contact with the public is of a somewhat distressing nature to those they address. That contact excites revengeful attitudes.
The role I envisage for the traffic wardens is one along the lines of the New York traffic police. That role will bring upon them only gratitude for preventing unnecessary clogging at intersections. I regret to say that much of that clogging is brought about by a certain form of individual enterprise; that is to say, by people who "shoot" the red light because it looks as though they can get into the intersection. As a result of that, although the intersection is crossed it becomes blocked and an enormous magnification of delay is brought about.
I do not believe in the general principle that was implied by something said by the noble Lord, Lord
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Tordoff, that a given increase in the volume of traffic passing through a road system leads to an absolutely arithmetically correlated converse increase in delay, or an arithmetically correlated decrease in speed. There are all kinds of lubricating or palliative actions that can be performed. One simple one would be some slightly more far-seeing way of giving licences for building work, of which there is a great deal in London at the moment. The number of streets on which people appear to be licensed to have skips permanently parked, as it were, on either side of the road seems to represent some kind of administrative breakdown. I should have thought that a large Battle of Britain type map which indicated the sites of licensed building work would at least ensure that no building work was allowed to start in a given bit of roadway until the work that was already being carried out had been brought to its close.
Perhaps the same principle could be applied longitudinally, as it were. In recent months, for example, drivers on the M.40 have been experiencing something like the existence of a damned soul in hell. One passes the Hillingdon ski slope where one has been warned that delays are likely from April 1988 but one imagines they will continue into the distant future. After a long digestive ordeal, one proceeds down the hill and not far away is Acton where highly desirable but readily deferrable barriers are being interposed between the two main lanes of traffic. My earlier suggestion about not allowing building work on both sides of a road was for the benefit of traffic. My next suggestion may be more to the benefit of drivers. I believe that general congestion would be alleviated if it were rationed out so that one given approach to London did not sustain so much of it at one time.
Noble Lords have rightly alluded to the fact that they are in one way or another opposed to any attempt to alleviate the problem by massive road building. That surely must be correct. However, there is one area where we seem to be in a position to benefit from foreign experience and that is along the banks of the Thames itself. The traffic in Paris in recent years seems to have benefited from those fast, low-slung roads hanging onto the sides of the banks of the Seine. I should have thought it was trickier to construct such roads along the Seine than it would be along the Thames, which is a considerably wider river. No doubt there is an engineering problem as regards putting supports under such roadways, but one would not have to buy anything from anyone; nor would anyone have to be displaced. Further, one would not have to interfere with any continuing activity on the banks. The next danger to avoid would be that of having too many exits off such roads. However, at this point I must cease to unveil any other intoxicating possibilities of improvement.
3.48 p.m.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, in a debate of this kind everyone will have a story to tell and a remedy to propose. I would only say that in 1930 when I used to travel from Fulham to Westminster —I have

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always lived in the same borough —it took 20 minutes on a No. 11 bus. Last week when I travelled from the Savoy to the House of Lords in a cab it took 40 minutes, mainly because of the roadworks down the Strand, Whitehall, Parliament Square and Trafalgar Square. I do not understand why it is necessary to dig up the middle of the roads. There was no formal explanation for that.
The Government's proposals are interesting but, in my opinion, totally useless as they again suggest transferring more responsibility to the boroughs. Such a system is bound to be inefficient as each borough will operate a totally different policy. That will only add to the total confusion. The introduction of a new traffic director for roads has been proposed. However, as we have heard this afternoon, everyone is hammering the case of the car. Let us not be mealy-mouthed about this. We encourage people to buy cars. It helps the economy. However, if they use the car they are polluting the atmosphere and clogging up the roads. If they park on a double yellow line they will receive a stiffer sentence than if they hit an old lady over the head. So we already hammer the car user.
My solution is different. I am delighted that the previous speaker mentioned the matter for the first time. Why do we allow so much freight to pass through the capital city? This morning coming along the Embankment I noticed that there was something like five very large freight lorries to every car passing along the embankment. No other capital city allows that. The policy of previous govenments —one of which I had the honour to serve in —was to have a co-ordinated approach combining road and rail. That has all gone by the board. Of course freight is cheaper by road. Consider the problems created by deliveries. When I sat as a magistrate deliveries had to be made before 8.00 o'clock in the morning. What has happened to that regulation? I attribute the slowness of traffic through the city to the fact that we allow too much heavy freight traffic.
As for the property developers, they epitomise the Government's view of what our society should be like. They pull down a perfectly good building, tart it up again and charge the unfortunate tenants three times as much. In the course of that process they clog the roads with delivery lorries. Having an office in central London I have suffered as a result. Vans deliver one piece of wood and are left there for the rest of the day.
Some of the remedies are immediately to hand. However, I say only that there has to be a co-ordinated approach. The GLC could have carried out such an approach. It is no good suggesting that there will be a few red routes and that responsibility will be handed over to the boroughs. That will not work. There has to be a co-ordinated plan.
Why do people not want to travel on public transport? I have lost staff because they will not come into London. London Underground is dirty and slow. Trains wait for hours in tunnels, and it is dangerous. People will not travel on the Underground as they used to. Heaven help us, you would never get anywhere now if you travelled by bus.
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We have to recognise that there has to be a co-ordinated approach and that freight is as much at fault as the private car.
3.52 p.m.
The Viscount of Falkland: My Lords, traffic in London has become intolerable to those who use the city roads every day. I have long since taken to two wheels. I admit that I am rather lazier than I was and I now use a motor cycle to come to your Lordships' House although I have on occasions used a pedal cycle. It is on behalf of those who use or could use the pedal cycle that I should like to devote my limited time in your Lordships' debate today.
Every day some 12,000 people use company cars in the London area. That is a monstrous waste to the taxpayer. It costs more than £2 billion a year. Nevertheless the company car seems to be part of our culture. It is a matter of status. I have known from my own experience endless wrangles within companies about the kind of car that is given to different grades of executive. Valuable executive time is used up in arriving at those decisions. Even then those who receive the company cars are not satisfied. They get into their company cars and sit in traffic jams all day. Indeed today I saw in the newspaper —I think that it was in the Evening Standard—that on average each week people who use their company cars regularly lose about two hours eighteen minutes, stationary in traffic jams.
If one considered the transfer of those people from cars to bicycles what a difference that would make to the life of the nation. I suggest that it would not only ease the problem that we are discussing today, it would have an immediate effect on the environment by lessening pollution. It would reduce the wear and tear on the roads. It would have an enormous effect on the fitness of those who used bicycles.
I am told by the organisation which deals with cycling in London that according to their records —I do not know how they check this —in the London area there are about 1·25 million bicycles. I am afraid that during the week most of those bicycles are kept in basements or chained to railings because for one reason or another people prefer not to use them. It was noticeable that during the recent Tube strikes the number of people cycling increased enormously. The number of people who walked also increased. It may seem a trivial matter but there seemed to be, rather as there is in this country during wartime, an enormous difference in people's manner and behaviour.
Normally if one looks at people in a traffic jam one notices the pallor of their faces, the tension on their faces and the white knuckles on the steering wheels. On one occasion last week I happened to be behind a lady who was at the head of a queue at a temporary traffic light at roadworks. She had clearly had some bad experiences with roadworks because every three seconds she pumped on her horn. Such was the fury and anger of her impatience that everybody was astonished and nobody complained. In the end she went against the red light, nearly causing an accident. I suggest that such was the strain and stress of travel to that lady that she had become

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nearly unbalanced. I do not suppose that she is the only one—indeed, yes, my Lords, that also apples to men. I should not like to enter into that argument.
More people could use their bicycles and would like to do so. There needs to be encouragement from government and the idea should be promoted, particularly with the railways. The railways used to offer free transport in the guard's van for bicycles so that people could bring them into London on the train. Now that is very rare. When that became difficult I bought a bicycle which folded up. It was known as a Creaker. I put it into a bag and put it onto the luggage rack. That was not a satisfactory arrangement because one day it folded up on me involuntarily as I was going round Parliament Square. So I should not recommend that solution to your Lordships. However, I believe that British Rail could be encouraged to provide facilities for people to take their bicycles on trains.
I see that my time is up. I do not believe that I have done the subject justice but I hope that noble Lords get my drift.
3.58 p.m.
Viscount St. Davids: My Lords, this is a problem which has many possible answers. I do not believe that any one of them will solve the whole problem. It is a matter of a number of different solutions, each of which will produce some effect.
I have looked at the situation in Los Angeles where the problems seem to be even worse than it is here. They always seem to be a little ahead of us. They have recently tried out a joint venture between private enterprise and the municipal authorities involving investment in small electrical runabout vehicles. I do not call them cars because I believe that a full-sized electric car is possibly not the answer.
We are not talking about pollution, although the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, mentioned it. We are talking here about road pollution and the blockage caused to our transport facilities. That is mainly due to the fact that every individual on the road uses far too much road space. Although I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, that we must not try to rationalise these matters, we must have some way of making sure that people use less road.
For that we need smaller vehicles. That is what Los Angeles is doing. It is going in for small, electric runabouts which take up less road space and can be used from special municipal parking areas. They take up much less road space than the vastly expensive cars do at present.
One does not need much horsepower to navigate our roads. Bicycles use little horsepower. Although motorbikes are noisy and use a great deal of horsepower, they take up much less space. We do not need to use all the space that we use at present per car. It is a matter of using small cars, bicycles and motorbikes.
I am keen to deal with the question of pollution; but, with respect to the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, perhaps I should deal with that in another debate. However, on the question of what one might call
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road pollution —the taking up of too much space —I stress that we must go in for much smaller vehicles. We must make more use of the small electric runabout and of public buses, although they already carry many people in a small amount of space. There must be a general realisation that we are now talking about the amount of space per human being. That is what we should now consider.
4.4 p.m.
Lord Gisborough: My Lords, we have worried about the amount of traffic in cities for many years. It is certain that, as the roads improve and more cars use them, traffic will become worse. Sooner or later it will be necessary to face the facts and some unpalatable decisions must be taken over the next 100 years.
I should like to make four points. First, one can divide traffic in London into four categories. One cannot expect residents not to keep cars in London. However, the noble Lord is quite right, we must encourage by economic means greater use of small cars, electric cars and bicycles. I recommend bicycles from personal experience. There are then delivery vans which one cannot do without; but, again, they should be economically encouraged to make greater use of night-time and early morning. There are casual visitors who must come in for one reason or another. But the one great problem is the rush hour. We see people clogging up the capital, usually with only one person per car. It will one day be necessary —we should prepare for it now —to say that they cannot come in, and to close the gates between 8 and 9.30 in the morning. In that case, there must be park-and-ride facilities, but they cannot be offered at the moment because there is such a crush on the tube services. There is more room in a sardine can than in some of the tube services at rush hour.
Secondly, there is a vital need for more and better public transport so that people may park and ride, but that might take 20 or 30 years to sort out. There is little inclination now to park and ride because of the crush. If there were fewer cars on the road, buses would move much faster.
Thirdly, London's connections with Heathrow and out to the north and south are crowded and few and far between at certain times of the evening. It is easy to miss an aeroplane because of the lack of tube services to Heathrow. There is to be a fast train service from Paddington. If one is going on holiday and there is no time factor involved, one can take two hours to reach the airport by the tube service. That is fine. The people who need the fast train to Heathrow are those from the City, Whitehall and Fleet Street who are on a flying visit to or from the continent and when time matters. I wonder whether they will take the tube from the City, trundle away to Paddington, wait 10 minutes and then catch the train. They will probably take the tube all the way. Plans must be made now to extend the fast train service from Paddington to Whitehall and the City. Once there is a fast train to the City with very few stops, it should also serve the park-and-ride facilities so that people from the City may go straight to their cars near Heathrow. That kind of transport will encourage people to use park-and-ride facilities.

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My final point concerns Heathrow. Every time I come down from Teesside, the aircraft is delayed in taking off and is then an hour late landing. That is usually because it has then missed its slot or because there are too many aircraft coming in to Heathrow. That situation will only become worse as the years pass. We must plan for the next 100 years —certainly 30 years —and support plans for high-speed trains and monorails into the City centre in order to take the pressure off aircraft travel.
We should plan our transport needs not only for 20 years ahead, but for 100 years ahead. We must think in those terms. It takes a long time for large structural plans to be achieved. As the population and its wealth increases, the number of cars will increase and we must therefore prepare for some radical decisions.
4.8 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I read in the papers the other day that, according to a recent survey, the Exchequer loses £113 million a year through people failing to licence their cars. My poor mathematics therefore leads me to believe that over 1 million people dodge the tax. It would be a great help if, instead of going into the Exchequer, that money went towards helping London. Eighty per cent. of all cars going into London receive some financial help. Of those, at least 40 per cent. are company cars. I am not against company cars but it seems to me that most of the cars only have one person in them —that is, the driver. I must admit that I myself do not often drive into London. I hold the strong belief that people are given company cars as a status symbol. That is fine but therefore they use those cars. They drive into London, park—possibly in a company car park —and in the evening drive home. They never use the car during the day.
I feel that such people are mad, because it is far easier to go by train. If the company car is taken away or priced out, people will then resort to using their own cars and will demand massive increases in their salaries. There is one group of people —company representatives —who use their cars during the day, but for those who do not one of the simplest solutions would be to make a surcharge of, say, £3 a day for anyone who drives into London and parks but does not in fact need his car. That would be a fairly simple matter.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff. He managed to get a wonderful sneer into his voice when he was speaking about red routes. I do not think that red routes will work. Last Wednesday I mentioned bus lanes and the fact that the police never seemed to do anything about cars parked in them. If the bus lanes worked and were free from obstruction that would speed up the buses.
I turn to London Underground. We have been told that it intends to increase fares to such an extent that it will drive people away from the Underground service. They will not turn to the buses at the moment because the buses are unreliable and slow. People will travel by car. That will put even more cars on the road. It is absolutely crazy. London Underground is installing wonderful automatic gates. However, no
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matter how often London Transport says that they all work very well, when I started to attend to your Lordships' House there were never any queues going into the stations or coming out of them. Now at rush hour there are long queues in both directions. It seems to me that that is very silly. It is no good saying that the gates work, although I admit that their reliability has much improved.
Presumably the gates have been installed to stop fare fiddling. I think that most of the Fare fiddling was probably done by staff who took the excess fares and put them in their pockets. That is fairly well documented, although I do not make any accusations.
The Government say that they will build more roads in London. That would be a fatal step because, as the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, said, if one builds more roads one will get more cars. The classic example of that is the millions of pounds that were spent on the Hyde Park underpass to relieve the traffic around Hyde Park. It did so; but it simply moved the traffic jams 50 to 60 yards further down the road. That was very silly.
Finally, I think that the idea of the bicycle put forward by the noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, is a lovely one except that bicycles are fairly slow and the cyclists breathe in fumes all the time. As an asthmatic I certainly would not do it. I tried commuting on a moped but stopped because I got fed up with continually being knocked off it by motorists.
4.14 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, it is obvious that there will be no miracle cure for London's traffic problems. All that one can do is identify a few of the problems and suggest some partial remedies.
One might start at random with the one-man operated buses, which were touched on briefly by the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff. These are buses where the driver collects the fares. The new single decker buses, which have evidently been designed for midgets, are bad enough but at least there is a flat fare of 60p. Far worse are the double decker one-man operated buses where a variety of fares have to be proffered so that boarding takes twice as long, with consequent traffic obstruction. That difficulty could be partially alleviated if books of tickets could be sold at tobacconists, newsagents and similar retailers, as happens in Paris, preferably at a slight discount in order to encourage passengers to buy their tickets in advance at those outlets rather than wait until they board the bus.
As has been mentioned, there is a lack of co-ordination in planning and synchronising road works. Surely that could be partly alleviated by giving local authorities greater powers to regulate such works. Another factor contributing to congestion is that the utilities —both public and, even more shockingly, privatised utilities —have evidently been exempted by the Government, as I discovered the other day, from any requirement to compensate local authorities when those utilities appropriate parking spaces in order to carry out sundry repairs and improvements. For example,

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about 250 yards from where I live in London British Telecom sterilised no fewer than three parking spaces for a total period of well over four months. One of the reasons was that British Telecom had botched the job in the first place and had to start it all over again. If the borough council had been allowed to charge British Telecom for every day that each parking space was sterilised, there would have been some incentive to get the job right in the first place and complete it speedily. I suggest that remedial legislation should be introduced as soon as possible.
Another cause of severe congestion —albeit happily less frequent since recent public order legislation was enacted —is demonstrations. By that I mean marches rather than static demonstrations, which cause practically no problems. All such marches in future ought to be confined to weekends, except in instances when the marchers agree with the police to walk in single file along pavements and wait to cross at traffic lights just like everybody else.
Road pricing has hardly been mentioned. It will surely have to come as soon as some foolproof method can be perfected. But it is essential that any such road pricing should bear down particularly heavily on heavy goods vehicles. On no account should it be confined to private cars.
I suggest that two-tier fixed penalties should be introduced. The current fixed penalty is quite adequately severe for motorists who, for example, park illegally at parking meters: after all, such people cause no obstruction. However, for motorists who park on double yellow lines in a busy traffic artery, whether it be on a main road coming into London, such as King's Road, or a narrower but still vital artery such as Beauchamp Place, the present fixed penalty should at least be doubled. Conversely, vehicles should only be towed away when they are in fact causing an obstruction; otherwise, the tow-away trucks more often than not cause more problems than they cure.
I agree with my noble friend Lord St. Davids and the noble Lord, Lord Gisborough, that cars of excessive and unnecessary length certainly contribute to traffic congestion. Let there be a differential road fund licence that varies with the length of the car. There would, say, be the present £ 100 for cars up to 13ft. long, £110 for cars between 13ft. and 14½ft. long and £125 per annum for cars longer than that.
I agree also with the noble Lord, Lord Jay, and other noble Lords that company cars could well be more heavily taxed. I understand that Britain has the highest proportion of company cars in Europe.
Finally —and here I must declare an interest as I hold a handful of shares in the company that at present operates the service —let us do everything possible to encourage riverbus services. The difficulty which this service has encountered stems mainly from the fact that Britain is a nation of litter louts. There is almost as much litter in the Thames as there is on the streets of London, which is really saying something. This flotsam and jetsam fouls the engines of boats so that they frequently have to slow
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down or even be taken out of service. Once that problem has been overcome, the Thames can become an invaluable bypass artery which will divert some of the pressure from the almost fatally clogged tarmac arteries of our capital city.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, there is one way, and perhaps only one —I beg the pardon of the noble Baroness.
4.20 p.m.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes: My Lords, I would happily have spoken after the noble Lord.
I am delighted that this debate is taking place, because I wish to say something about the loss and inconvenience caused by building works obstructing roads. It enables me at least to mention the point today. I believe that we have to seek a comprehensive solution because the problem is very complex and not easy to solve. Without doubt there could be a larger role for local authorities in helping the flow of traffic. I have heard it said that the GLC dealt with that well. I believe that it was one of the matters that it did handle well, but I do not wish to see such a huge bureaucratic system again. However, control by strategic planning by means of road plans was a very good scheme. I was vice-chairman of one area —such schemes were broken down into areas. I notice that in the article in today's Standard it states that the Greater London area is too big. The area was never operated as a whole but was broken down into a number of areas and a central area. That worked very well.
There are many things that local authorities can do even now. The most important is to be able to take a much greater role in enforcement of existing parking controls. Indeed I have been asked to bring forward fairly soon local government miscellaneous legislation which will seek power for local authorities to carry out the enforcement of parking controls within their own areas. That is supported by all the London local authorities.
As has been mentioned, there are not enough traffic wardens. We all feel that the police would be better off if they were freed from the burden of enforcing ordinary traffic parking restrictions in order to be able to deal with criminal cases or other serious and major infringements of the law.
I believe that the red routes mentioned will be a very good idea. However, everything comes back to enforcement. When a policeman is present in the Brompton Road in the morning, pulling up anyone who is in a bus lane, the bus lane system works very well. For the rest of the day when no one is enforcing the bus lane scheme it is ignored totally. This is the typical pattern almost everywhere. Unless such a system is enforced it is no good.
I mention to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, that the Secretary of State has already confirmed that there will be higher fines for the red routes, although I do not think the fines are as high as they would need to be in order to deter people from stopping on those red routes. I do not believe that Beauchamp Place will qualify for a red route, as the noble Lord had rather hoped.

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The most effective means of enforcing parking restrictions is without doubt the clamping of cars or removal of vehicles. People may not like to have to pay a large sum but they are much more irate when they undergo the inconvenience of having to wait until their car is unclamped, or discover that it has been removed when they believe that it has been stolen.
Other things can be done to help the traffic flow. Since time is short, I shall have to run through them quickly. London is one large building site. If one leaves this House and turns into Great Peter Street, half the road is occupied by large building works. The same is true of Brompton Road and Hyde Park Corner. I could go through dozens of examples within reach of this place. I believe that the law we passed last year may give the local authorities the right to do what is called lane charging: that is charging the developers for occupying a portion of the road that is normally available for traffic and instead has been removed from use. I hope that that will prove to be so. I understand that the local authorities are shortly to submit a list.
Last year we had burst water mains causing obstructions in Russell Square for up to four months.
There must be a total strategy for London. I should like to see a small bus moving round the centre of London on a clockwise and an anti-clockwise run. The GLC tried to do that with a large yellow bus which was constantly stuck in traffic. There are numbers of people who wish to go from north to south across Hyde Park, and from Piccadilly to Oxford Street. In order to do so they have to get on and off one bus after another. If there were a small bus circulating, with a flat fare charge, and one hopped on and paid as one went, everyone would be able to get around. I believe that that would move more people more rapidly around the centre of London.
The bus lanes are good in the right place; but they are terrible in the wrong place. I am very pleased that we have been informed that the bus lane immediately outside this House on this side of the road has gone because it has been extremely difficult to get out of our own car park. I hope that that will improve matters a little.
4.25 p.m.
Lord Ardwick: My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness for jumping in before my turn. I assure her that I do not drive like that. However, I have followed the noble Lord, Lord Monson, so often that it has now become force of habit. I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me.
There is perhaps one matter on which we can all agree, including Her Majesty's Government. The London traffic problem is bad, it is getting worse; and something must be done about it. But what should be done? There is the rub. I suspect that there is a wide difference between thoughtful Londoners and the Department of Transport. It seems that the Secretary of State has decided wisely, and not before time, to appoint a London traffic director. But to whom is the director responsible? The answer, it seems, is the Secretary of State himself. Surely
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Londoners reject this old Romanian idea of democracy and demand that the traffic of this great capital be the responsibility of a directly elected strategic authority.
I admit that there are signs of grace in the Department of Transport. But they are faint. We shall have to make them plainer. By "we" I mean Members of both Houses of Parliament backed by local traffic associations that Londoners have thrown up and by mass meetings that such associations can organise among angry and apprehensive citizens.
The department still believes in the old remedies —once effective but no longer so —for clearing congestion from our streets; namely new roads, widened roads and enlarged junctions. These remedies are no longer effective. Road improvements would be useful only if the volume of traffic was constant and not growing as it is. But the evidence is compelling. Road improvements generate more traffic and impair the efficiency and the resources of public transport. Hope of having managable and flowing traffic in London depends on creating and facilitating public transport, practising firm traffic management and making imaginative approaches to traffic restraint. This will demand over the years massive capital expenditure and heavy subsidies. It is a problem, however, on which Conservatives, Liberals and Socialists can all agree. Five borough councils in west and south-west London, controlled by Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour, have a united approach to the problem based on improved public transport and traffic restraint.
The assessment study report for west London produced by consultants appointed by the Department of Transport echoes the traditional view of their paymasters. However, with scanty evidence the study concludes that better public transport can make no significant contribution to the problems. It states that improvements to British Rail and rail community services would be costly but would not persuade many car drivers to make what is described as a modal transfer and to leave their cars at home. Nor do the consultants seem able to accept that if buses were more frequent, more dependable and less expensive many more people would use them. I would make the modal transfer tomorrow if the Nos. 22 and 11 routes were more frequent and more dependable.
The report too lightly dismisses the park-and-ride facilities used in the United States. It cannot deal with the inadequately taxed company cars which make it cheaper for thousands of people to commute by private instead of public transport. Surely it is common sense to recognise that, with the number of cars constantly increasing, some form of restraint will become eventually inevitable.
Some day, not too far away, a government will have to face that fact. Perhaps it will require a major incident, such as central London being brought to a standstill —it happened some years ago in Kingston —for drastic action to be taken. The solution may require road pricing, rationing by registration numbers, with odd numbers only on odd dates, peak hour restrictions on private cars or discouragement of all-day car parks in central

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London. All these solutions sound grim. But so is the problem. So is the condition of the people who stand for long in the cold and wet awaiting an erratic bus. So is the condition of people crammed in the Tube or a commuter train —surely, an unwitting denial of a human right.
Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, before my noble friend sits down, will he accept that it is not really a question of roads against public transport? It is really a matter of roads and public transport. The London system is inadequate—
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, this is a timed debate and the time is very short for each speaker. I think we ought to get on with the debate.
Lord Howie of Troon: My Lords, I have to yield. I have made my point.
4.31 p.m.
Earl Russell: My Lords, the Liberal Democrats are the only party which take a truly empirical attitude to the free market. The Government are in favour of it. The Opposition are against it. We suspect both of them of knowing the answer before they know the question. We should like to know: suitable to what, and suitable to achieving what purpose?
London is one of the places to which the notion of free markets is particularly unsuited. I have been many times reminded recently of the political atmosphere of 1963 when, once again, we came to the end of 13 years of Conservative rule with massive complaints about congestion, overcrowding and homelessness in London. It is not a coincidence that it was car commuting in London that the noble Lord, Lord Jay, was discussing when he said that this was a case where the pursuit of each person's convenience becomes the cause of everyone's inconvenience. But I would not mind so much if the Government were consistent in their own principles. Principles honestly followed usually in the end rub up against experience. What we do not have is a level playing field in London's transport markets.
The roads—and I know that we pay for them in one way or another —are free at the point of delivery. We therefore have a distorted market in favour of roads. We have the tightest requirements of return on capital and the lowest proportion of subsidy to fare in any major city in Europe.
Occasionally I ask myself whether London's transport has really run down as badly in the past few years as I thought. Last week I had the rare pleasure of a night off and watched an old film on television which included some shots taken at Piccadilly Circus Underground Station. I was quite astonished by how clean, smooth and tidy it all looked and that film was made in only 1973. The decline has been even worse than I remembered.
Among many hundreds of examples of the state of London's transport, I shall mention the escalator at Bond Street going down to the Jubilee Line. I regularly have to use it at about 11 o'clock on a Monday night. My wife assures me that for 16 consecutive Mondays it has been switched off. I
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was reminded of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Ackner, concerning court clocks. It occurred to me to wonder whether the requirements of return on capital for London Transport are acting very much in the way of a cash limit and compelling them to withdraw services, because otherwise they cannot meet their financial targets. It is a point worth thinking about.
We are told —indeed it is in danger of becoming conventional wisdom —that London Transport is reaching saturation point. But when I was young trains used to run through Tottenham Court Road station every 90 seconds. London Transport now claim that the average wait is 3·3 minutes. I do not know any passenger who believes that. Why can we not have more trains? Instead, we are being offered London road assessment studies carried out by a flawed method, rightly described by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas of Chilworth, as four village surveys. We are finding, as we found in the debates on the ILEA, that this Government have no concept of a social unity called London, but there are plenty of Londoners who do.
We have had the point made that roads generate traffic. I shall quote in support of that studies by my colleague, Dr. Adams, on the North Circular Road. When roads generate traffic, the cars have to go off somewhere else. So, as in the case of the Piccadilly-Hyde Park underpass, you simply shift the jam from one place to another. Roads also cause vast destruction of housing. I listened with interest to the exciting proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Quinton, for a road along the bank of the Thames. But it occurred to me that one of the casualties of such a road would be this House and I, for one, would regret it.
I have not forgotten either an occasion 20 years ago when I had to stand on the pavement at Swiss Cottage at 4 o'clock on a hot Friday afternoon. In that circumstance, the phrase of my noble friend Lord Tordoff about choking to death seemed entirely apt. We have had surveys quoted which show that the public are opposed, so there is the opportunity of making the situation worse at vast expense in order to lose popularity. I ask the Government: is it worth it?
4.37 p.m.
Lord Milne: My Lords, that the position is getting worse is generally accepted, but I do not believe people realise the degree unless they live on a main thoroughfare. In North Barnes, suffering from north, south, east and west traffic, the rush hour now lasts about three hours starting at 7 a.m. and again in the evening at 5 p.m. Observation that this is steadily increasing is borne out by the statistics given in the working document. It points out that the working population, car ownership, incomes, etc., are all on the increase and gives projections for the future.
Due to the closure of Hammersmith Bridge to heavy traffic, our problem is almost entirely car commuting and it is notable, as other noble Lords have said, that almost every car has but one occupant. The fact that 80 per cent. of private cars carried but one occupant was pointed out in 1986, in Stage 1 of the West London Assessment. On the

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basis of one occupant per car, it takes 100 cars to carry the same number of commuters as a London bus, though at about 50 times the space.
Yet at Section 4 of the same document the Minister says that,
"Car commuting into Central London is not the main problem yet."
It appears to decry any serious means of physical or financial restraint. At least the Chancellor has seen the light by increasing taxation on company cars, though these are still subsidised.
At Section 5 we learn that, so far as cars are concerned, the expansion of public transport would not much affect the situation; not apparently because the 14 per cent. of car commuters could not be assimilated, but due to their preference for private cars. At Section 2 it is stated that the Government,
"looks upon restraint of the car very much as a policy of last resort."
The Government might like to know that this is not the view held by the inhabitants of our general area, its councillors and local associations. Here in three meetings, each of about 1,000 people, and a petition to Parliament containing about 10,000 signatures, they and the general area have shown their deep indignation at the options proposed and have passed a resolution to the effect that restraint on traffic was number one priority.
I fully appreciate the difficulties involved in organising the car commuter but it is there where I believe the trouble lies and the greatest and speediest benefits can be gained. Most major schemes take years to fructify and in the meantime the trouble becomes worse.
Today, quite suddenly, we have become aware of our environment and of all kinds of pollution caused by the car. I believe that, by an organised campaign pointing out the benefits in terms of time saved and increased traffic flows during rush hours the car commuters could be convinced to make a concerted, voluntary effort to pool their resources. The failure to do so may mean that coercion is the only alternative.
4.40 p.m.
Lord Renwick: My Lords, I am glad to be the first speaker to thank the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, for the opportunity to debate the subject, because it is of the utmost importance. London has a tremendous future and a wonderful past but it is being strangled to death. The through-ways of London are important not only to the people who live here but also to those who work here and transport goods. In real terms, the cost of the delays in London's traffic are quantifiable and I do not believe that today they have been too accented.
To an extent the Government's proposals published last December recognised that. Like my noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth, I was surprised to learn that four separate consultants were used in the London assessment studies. The problem needs to be looked at strategically. The four consultants were given briefs which were difficult to carry out in isolation and individually.
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The problem demands radical thinking. I may be at odds with Her Majesty's Government, but "planning" appears to be a dirty word; it appears to smack of bureaucratic state control, and so forth. However, as regards subjects as important as London's life-blood I believe that an overall planning strategy is important. I welcome the improvements that have been suggested and the extension of the Jubilee Line. An extension of another Underground line will be announced next year. As noble Lords have pointed out, doing too much at the same time causes even more disruption to London's traffic.
The assessment studies present problems because I believe that some of their proposals are flawed. For example, the West London assessment study suggests a western environmental improvement route. As a result of the proposal, I was asked to chair a local association called the Cheney Walk Trust. I was interested to do so not only because I live in Cheney Walk but because of my interest in London as a whole.
The WEIR, as it is called, is neither environmentally desirable nor an improvement. Basically, its purpose is to serve as a bypass around the Earl's Court corridor, which we all know is a bad spot in London. I believe that even the assessment of the Department of Transport is that after the opening of WEIR the Earl's Court corridor will be just as bad and WEIR will be blocked from end to end. I ask Her Majesty's Government to reconsider WEIR and I hope that my noble friend will give me hope.
4.45 p.m.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, I promised myself that if I was to speak late in the debate and might repeat what had already been said I should choose not to speak because of the time factor. I shall try not to repeat anything that has been said, but I should like to pick up one theme that has been established by almost every speaker. Noble Lords on all sides of the House —I see that most speakers are not members of my party —have pointed out the need for a co-ordinated policy with regard to transport. It is a theme which a quarter of a century ago the government of the day enshrined by allowing a man named Buchanan to prepare a report for the nation entitled Traffic in Towns.
I shall not enter into the details of the problems of London. They have been dealt with ad infinitum so it would be ad nauseam to repeat them. However, I wish to make one small point about the hypocrisy of some people who are responsible for transport in London and the effect of that. I have seen the stupid advertisement placed by London Transport which states that if you are in a bus lane you are a clot and you are clotting the arteries of London. First, I could find a word other than "clot" to describe a person who stops in a bus lane. Secondly, there is a supposition that the only arteries in London are bus lanes. Anyone who drives in London during the rush hour on any evening, particularly anywhere near Clapham Junction, knows that one of the contributory factors to the congestion on Wandsworth Road is the one-man operated bus. The driver takes all the time in the world to allow people

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on. What is it for? It is not to improve the bus service but to save money; that is all. That is the hypocrisy that we face.
The Buchanan Report, Traffic in Towns, was widely hailed all over the world as a good analysis of city problems in regard to transport. It pointed out the affinity between land use —that is how you use the land, how you create employment and how you create the demand for transport —and the planning of cities. London Regional Transport has a strategy for policy; it has a strategic officer. As I have said before in this House, during a meeting at which he was present I asked what he considered to be the consequences of building on the site at the south end of Vauxhall Bridge. It was an undertaking which would create 6,000 more demands from people wishing to be moved in and out of the area. London Transport did not even know that the site was to be developed nor where it was. It certainly had no idea of the consequences.
During our debate on the London Docklands Light Railway I tried my utmost to persuade Members of this House that before beginning the building it was necessary to find out the consequences of creating 80,000 more jobs for people who would then need moving through the city. What was the response of this House? I could not even find a seconder.
I tabled a Question asking what the Government intended to do about the site at the back of the Tate Gallery, and I hope that today the Minister can comment further on that. The site cost £350 million and the PSA bought it. I asked the Government why they wanted it but they did not know. They knew only how much it cost and that was the end of the matter. Is that planning? Now we are told that MI5, MI6 and God knows what other government departments are to be situated right on top of Whitehall, right behind this Chamber. Ask London's transport authorities, when they are preparing their plans, whether they are taking into account that little effort. The answer will be no.
My time is up. I have been told before that if we have five minutes we have to stop when the clock shows four. I will finish on this one note. Given all the complaints, all the suggestions, concerning London's transport, it is clear that the problems will never be resolved without a comprehensive examination of the question of land use in our capital along with transport and other allied subjects. Creating a new London County Council is not the only way to do it; we need a combination of local and central government. Central government is deeply involved in this question and should by now have sent out of London all those civil servants who are determined not to move. It should also have persuaded all those private industries that have no need to be here to move out of London. The chances of that are very remote when the rest of the country subsidises London to the extent that it does in regard to wage weighting and payments for civil servants. But that is what is needed.
4.51 p.m.
Lord Mountevans: My Lords, I appreciate that time is pressing but perhaps I may start with two
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personal comments. My first is to express my regret that the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, has had to delete his name from the list. A transport debate, for those of us who specialise in transport, is not a transport debate without the noble Lord. I am sure my transport colleagues will join me in wishing him a speedy recovery.
My second is to thank the noble Viscount, Lord Davidson, who is to reply tonight, for his amazingly detailed response to those of us who were here last Wednesday when we debated railways and roads.
Last week I said that I was not looking for more subsidy or for more investment. Having listened to the debate today I feel that perhaps we do need to spend more, but I hope we will not set out to spend more on the peaks. No one in industry invests to cope with peaks. Shell, BP, Mars and Unilever do not invest to satisfy peak capacity; they set out to spread the demand.
One of our first tasks must be to examine why we are failing to make use of what we have at the moment. I give three examples. The first is, inevitably, rail. It is often said that trains are always full, but British Rail's trains are only full for two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening, five days a week. That is a total of 20 hours which could perhaps be stretched to 24. It means that for six days a week the trains are running at less than 50 per cent. occupancy. Should we be investing to cope for those two-hour periods? I believe we should not.
Lord Ardwick: Yes we should.
Lord Mountevans: We should seek other means —and there are other means —to cope with the problems we face. One which is very close to hand is flexi-time. This is practised in much of enlightened industry in Britain. It is practised by government departments. In fact, I am indebted to officials for reminding me that the Department of Transport practises flexi-time. However, members of staff must be at work by 10 o'clock and to satisfy that requirement must travel in the peak. So they miss the economic fares available after 9.30. Perhaps we need a culture change to alter our working habits.
Similarly we have a problem on the roads. Roads have peaks. To read the tabloid newspapers or listen to some of the speakers today you might feel that the roads in London are perpetually choked. They are not. There are lengthy periods of time in the 168 hours of a week when travelling on our roads is easy. However, we have an opportunity to make better use of our roads.
Baroness Phillips: Perhaps I may interrupt the noble Lord. When is central London not full to the brim whith traffic? Which hour of the day?
Lord Mountevans: I walked today from Regent's Park to the South Bank and from the South Bank to Parliament. Between 9 and 10 o'clock this morning the traffic between Regent's Park and South Bank was moving pretty well. I walked along the road between Waterloo and here, across the bridge, and the traffic was moving pretty well. That is an instant

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answer for the noble Baroness based on personal experience. During the past five or six years we appear to have lost touch with car sharing. Several noble Lords have mentioned making more use of the available road capacity. We passed legislation on car sharing to make it more simple and the department ran a campaign to make it more attractive. Again on my walk today —and I intended to mention this without prompting from the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips— I hardly saw a car with more than one person in it. Will the noble Viscount tell the House what happened to car sharing? It seems to me that it may be a short-term solution to some of our problems.
Taking the medium term, on the edge of London we have our airports. I am delighted that the Heathrow Express is at last making progress. I am grateful that Westminster has withdrawn its petition against the Heathrow Express Railway Bill. We have what I will call the "Stansted Express", because as yet it has no other name, coming on stream. When the Government blessed and endorsed the Heathrow Express proposals, they promised a study which I believe was called the Heathrow and South West Quadrant Study. Can the noble Viscount tell us anything about progress on that? I ask because the purely local demands of west London are putting that area under pressure.
Airport demands and airport traffic are growing. We thought airport traffic growth would slow down; but year on year it increases. Traffic to Heathrow in December had increased by 7·1 per cent. The M.4 and M.3 corridor traffic is growing. Are we making any progress on road access to Heathrow?
My final point —because my five minutes are up —is to ask: what are we doing about our river, that great unused transport resource that runs through central London? Have the Government any proposals to make?
Taking a five to six year view perhaps I may mention the Secretary of State's new objectives for British Rail. To abolish subsidy for Network SouthEast, I believe, is right. I do not believe that the poverty-stricken citizens of Tyne and Wear should subsidise through their taxes the affluent people who live in the South. However, if we aim for an 8 per cent. return in 1995 on Network SouthEast's assets —perhaps £4 billion to £5 billion —we will not only have to abolish the subsidy, which I think is right, but we will so have to increase fares that people will, force majeure, be driven back on to the roads. That does not seem to me to be the integrated transport policy which so many of your Lordships have asked for today.
4.57 p.m.
Lord Nugent of Guildford: My Lords, I welcome the Government's new initiative in their discussion document. I believe that it will make a big improvement as regards London traffic. Incidentally, I have observed that the majority of vehicles in London are light delivery vans, not private cars.
The first and fundamental feature of the new initiative is the appointment, despite constitutional
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objections, of a London traffic director by the Secretary of State who will be responsible for all road traffic movement within a designated area which will be bigger than any London borough. The next major point to welcome is the priority attention to be given to the enforcement of parking regulations on all trunk roads in the area during the heavy commuter traffic flows in the morning and evening.
The concept is that these roads must be kept clear of all parked vehicles during those periods: three hours in the morning and three hours in the evening. Even one parked vehicle at the kerb will deny movement to a whole lane of traffic. The logic is simple. The primary objective is to keep the whole width of the road clear for moving traffic. The result is that double the amount of traffic can move along the road. Even loading and unloading goods vehicles cannot be allowed during these peak periods. Obviously much careful planning will be needed to accommodate the central commercial requirement; neither private cars nor skips should be allowed, as one noble Lord observed.
The area chosen for the initiative is essentially the central London area of the West End and the City, including an important area south of the river. There are strong arguments for making it bigger, but the drastic nature of the proposals is such that the right policy is to introduce these stringent new disciplines into a limited area which can be closely monitored so that difficulties can be ironed out as they occur. When this scheme has been proved a success, public support can be won for the extension of the scheme to other areas and, I would hope, to the whole metropolis later.
The relationship between the traffic director and the London boroughs concerned is obviously of key importance. Although the Secretary of State proposes to give the traffic director reserve powers, it is obviously essential that there should be a partnership between them. I also include the City in the partnership. Seventy per cent. of the roads in the designated area are trunk roads and therefore they are already the responsibility of the Secretary of State. Furthermore, he is prepared to pay the considerable extra cost for enforcement and sign-posting which will be needed in the area.
The core area proposed is evidently the minimum which can give a real prospect of increased traffic movement. In American cities it is normal for the traffic commissioner to be responsible for the traffic in the whole city. He can then use his powers to control the traffic flow from the periphery of the city to the centre by co-ordinating the traffic lights and phasing them. Preference is given to through traffic and the crossing traffic is reduced to a small part of the traffic light phasing. I do not doubt that that method will be carried out in the designated area. Eventually I hope that, the scheme having been a success, the Secretary of State will consider extension of the arrangement to the whole area because the full benefit can be achieved only by the commuter flow being given free movement in and out.
The constitutional difficulties have been rightly commented on by the noble Lord, Lord Ardwick. However, the scheme suggested is the only way to

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achieve sufficient authority at the centre and funding so as to obtain the maximum mechanical benefit of a traffic flow going from the periphery to the centre to the benefit of everybody. My noble friend and his right honourable friend the Secretary of State will have to get out and about in order to persuade local authorities and the general public of the benefits of the scheme for everybody. In that way the Secretary of State will have a fair wind when he comes to legislate. He has a formidable task.
5.2 p.m.
Lord Ezra: My Lords, the stage has been reached in this important debate, so effectively introduced by my noble friend Lord Tordoff, to begin the winding-up process. I propose to do so under four heads. The first is the problem. It is very clear from every noble Lord who has spoken in this debate that they all feel that not only at present is there a very serious transport problem in Greater London, but that in all likelihood it is going to get worse.
Many noble Lords have contributed their own particular horror stories by telling us of the problems that they or people they know have encountered in getting around London. The cost of this problem has been very carefully evaluated by the CBI. A number of figures have been mentioned, taking the situation on a country-wide basis, though the problem is even greater when applied to Greater London where congestion is greater. The cost of congestion in one form or another, whether commercial or personal, adds up to £5 per household per week which is equivalent to two pence on income tax. If ever there was a factor bearing on inflation that is it, and the sooner we eliminate or reduce it the better.
Secondly, there are the solutions. The solutions so far tried have been piecemeal. Noble Lords who have spoken also felt that was so. Something has been tried here and there. The most recent proposition that the Government have put forward is the red road system. That is a system of traffic management which has many attractions. However, it is only one part of the whole problem. The fear is that if we go on applying piecemeal solutions, the piece that is dealt with will in turn only create more problems for the other pieces which are not being dealt with at the same time.
I come to my third point. What should be the solutions? They are much more fundamental and long-term than anything that has been proposed so far. The first and obvious truth that emerges from consideration of the London traffic problem is that we have too little road space for the vehicles using it. That was a point made initally by my noble friend and repeated by many other noble Lords who have spoken. Simply adding to the road space will not solve the problem because that space will be very quickly filled to overflowing.
Very clearly, there has to be some plan for bringing the number of cars coming into the metropolis into line with the space reasonably available. That cannot be achieved, even by the most repressive measures, unless there is an alternative way of getting into the capital. I have been advised that Singapore
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introduced road pricing on a large scale. Initially the scheme did not work because the level of alternative public transport was inadequate. However, as soon as public transport was improved, the scheme began to work. Therefore, the second leg of the exercise is that, very clearly, we have to concentrate on improving public transport.
To begin with, the mere fact of restricting the flow of cars into the limited road space will itself free the movement of surface public transport. In addition, we have to do very much more with the Underground system. I use Sloane Square station and each time I get out there I have to trudge up to street level because nine times out of 10 the elevator is not working. I then think of the many questions that have been asked about this in the House: when are we going to get the system working properly and adequately? That is just one part of the problem.
From what has been said one must conclude that a combination of limiting the influx of cars on the one hand and improving public transport on the other, are the long-term proposals. The question which has arisen time and time again is the need for the co-ordination of effort. There are no fewer than 39 different bodies which are concerned with transport in London. There are 32 London boroughs. There is the Minister for roads and traffic who is responsible for trunk roads. There is the Minister responsible for public transport investment. The Secretary of State for the Environment is responsible for land use planning. The Metropolitan Police Commissioner is responsible for parking enforcement. London Regional Transport has its responsibilities, and there is also British Rail. Finally, and much to my surprise, I found out that the London Residuary Body deals with London's computerised traffic signal network and data on road traffic accidents.
How on earth can 39 different bodies deal with a problem which is integrated, linked and ascertainable and which needs effective co-ordinated action? The sooner we have a co-ordinated body either at ministerial or other level to deal with this problem, the sooner we shall get a solution.
5.8 p.m.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Underhill has a heavy cold and he is sorry that he is unable to be here today. As the noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, said, it is hardly a transport debate without the presence of my noble friend. Knowing him extremely well, I am sure that he will read every word of what is said today and he will no doubt raise these matters in a future debate.
There are ways of looking at the transport problem in London. I believe that the final summing up of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, was most explicit and covered many of the important points. In the first instance, we can look at the immediate problems and solve one or two of the difficulties. But we shall not in that way tackle the real problem of traffic congestion in London. We shall find ourselves continually improvising and thinking that we have improved the position. However, as London becomes even more congested with traffic, any

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alterations may make fundamental change even more difficult.
Noble Lords have made many useful and important points in this interesting debate. Several speakers referred to the one-person operated buses and to the delays and dangers caused by them. This point has been discussed in transport debates both in your Lordships' House and in another place. It was said that one-person operated buses may be fine for the suburbs and for outlying areas where there is more space but that they cause problems in the centres of cities. One noble Lord referred to Oxford Street. Assurances were given that these buses would not be used in Oxford Street. Although most of the buses being used in that area have conductors, new buses will be operated by one person. Another difficulty with one-person operated buses is the sheer inconvenience they cause to passengers. I am thinking especially of passengers having to wait in severe weather to board a bus. Everyone wants to get rid of the one-person operated bus in city centres.
One point was raised by nearly every noble Lord. In this connection I could imagine my noble friend Lord Underhill saying, although he would not say it, "I told you so". I refer to the Home Report. My noble friend has referred to it in every transport debate over the past three years. The Government have had the report for about three years but we have yet to hear of their attitude to it, never mind what powers they propose to take to implement it. When first I came to London I thought that the traffic system was better than I had seen elsewhere. A time-limit was given to roadworks and building works. We have heard today that London is virtually one large building site. People complain about builders' skips, portakabins and lorries. As my noble friend Lady Phillips said, lorries sometimes come along with one piece of timber and stay all day. That is possibly an exaggeration but it gives a flavour of how people feel about lorries, roadworks and building sites.
Company cars have been mentioned. I referred to the issue in some detail last week and I notice that more and more noble Lords are raising it. In Britain we have many more company cars than other countries. In some European countries 15 per cent. to 20 per cent. of new cars are bought as company cars. In Britain more than 60 per cent. of new cars are bought by companies for their employees.
Car sharing can help to reduce the number of cars being brought into London. The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, has probably seen some of the problems in San Francisco where out of sheer necessity cars are segregated on the Golden Gate bridge. A car containing only one person has to use the slow lane to cross the bridge. It is claimed that people have been found with tailor's dummies beside them in their cars in order that they can cross the bridge in a faster lane. Car sharing can help but we must not pretend that it is a long-term solution. I agree with my noble friend Lord Sefton, who said in his usual cogent manner that fundamental changes are required and that there should be control over land use planning in the city of London.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, made a marvellous introduction to the debate and set the scene very
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well indeed. He referred to the Jubilee Line. I do not believe that the Jubilee Line is the answer. It strikes me that the Jubilee Line proposal is put forward in order to help Canary Wharf pay its way. A proposal involving one of the other lines would be very much better.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, about planning permission. A Select Committee of which I was a member suggested some time ago that fairly liberal compensation should be given, although people should still have the right of appeal. We need a controller for London. As the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, said, 39 different bodies look after London. The city used to be admired for its standards of municipal organisation. Now, that organisation is fragmented. Helpful suggestions have been made, but in the long term we must be more radical and shrug off some of our prejudices. We need to get around the table and think of something more advanced than the Minister's suggestion of 14th December.
5.17 p.m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I think I can start by saying that this has been a rush-hour debate. I am sure that noble Lords will not expect me to answer or comment on all the points that have been raised but I shall do my best. I can assure the House that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport will read with the greatest of interest the debate in the Official Report.
There are two features of debates in this House on transport. One is that all those who speak have their own personal experiences; the other is that they can all find something to complain about. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, for providing the House with the opportunity to debate the important subject of traffic in London, and for providing me with the opportunity to explain the Government's initiatives for tackling the problems.
The Motion before the House calls attention to the deteriorating state of London's traffic and the need for comprehensive initiatives to tackle the problems. During the next 20 minutes or so I intend to prove to the House that the Government are not only fully aware of these problems, but have already put into operation plans to resolve them. Moreover, the Government have announced further programmes which are both far-sighted and far-reaching to deal with the anticipated growth in both road and rail traffic in London in the foreseeable future.
I have to say to the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, that the Government are always prepared to listen to constructive criticism and constructive ideas, but in the end it is the Government who have to take the initiative in implementing many of the measures which are necessary to deal with the problems. And that is exactly what we are doing.
It is worth emphasising that traffic problems are neither new nor unique to London. Other capital cities have many of the same problems. In London's case, many of the present difficulties are the result of the up-turn in London's economy ghat started in the mid-1980s. The Government are proud of having created the conditions that made this growth

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possible. And we are responding with a coherent approach which looks at the operation and development of London's transport systems, both road and rail. The main elements of this approach are: providing through traffic with good alternative routes around London; making the best possible use of existing roads; ensuring that London is properly linked to national and international transport networks; tackling congestion black spots in inner and outer London; and meeting the growth in demand for rail transport to, from and within central London.
The aim of this approach for London's traffic is to ensure that people and goods can move around London safely and efficiently. Wherever possible we want heavy and through traffic to move on safer, high standard roads rather than on unsuitable local roads. We are working with the local authorities, the public transport operators, the police and others to achieve that aim. We are improving trunk roads to take traffic around London and to serve developing areas. We are supporting borough road schemes, encouraging better parking controls and using new technology to improve traffic management. In addition, and most importantly, we are promoting safe, efficient and attractive public transport services: rail, underground and bus.
If someone had said in 1980 that we would now be so concerned about growing demand for rail transport and that new lines under London would be a possibility, that person would have been laughed out of court. Throughout most of the 1960s and 1970s, demand for rail travel into London declined, as did investment, while deficit subsidy steadily increased. Then, in the early 1980s, as the economy strengthened, demand for rail travel boomed to an extent that could simply not have been foreseen, and that certainly was not planned for in the 1970s. As a result, the transport operators have had to do a great deal of catching up. Tough financial disciplines set by the Government have fostered a more efficient, productive and responsive railway which has been able to generate more revenue and justify ever-increasing amounts of new investment while reducing its call on the taxpayer.
The action to improve transport in London is being supported by massive investment. The trunk road programme in London will cost over £1 billion over the next 10 years. British Rail plan to invest £2 billion on Network SouthEast over the next five years; and London Regional Transport will be investing £1–7 billion over the next three years. This investment excludes the proposed extension of the Jubilee Line and further additions to London's rail network arising from the Central London Rail Study.
Last month, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport announced a further major series of initiatives for improving traffic conditions in London. These included consultation on a number of ideas for new public transport projects and for a limited number of road schemes, mostly to improve existing roads, arising from the assessment studies. They also included a range of traffic and parking proposals, including the creation of a 300-mile red route network. We are seeking views by the end of February.
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I shall now try to deal with most of the points which have been raised during the course of today's debate. The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark spoke of the need for a strategic authority in London. We do not see the need for such an authority. We want action, not more bureaucracy. The traffic director proposed for the red routes and the parking strategy is quite different. He will be there to help existing highway and traffic authorities implement proposals in a coherent manner.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, said that more people would be coming into London. I do not think that it is inevitable that more people will do so. Indeed, the number of cars entering London during the morning peak has fallen by 10 per cent. since 1983. The noble Lord suggested that more capacity would lead to more traffic and commuting by road into Central London. Routes provide for orbital as well as radial traffic. The additional capacity can be used to draw traffic off unsuitable side and residential roads and some of the capacity could be used to provide extra facilities for buses. However, we have invited comments on the matter and will listen to the views which have been expressed. The noble Lord also asked why the Jubilee Line was chosen for extension. It is not a question of giving priority to that extension. We are not yet in a position to make a decision on which of the Central London Rail Study lines should be built first.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, also suggested that reducing subsidies to Network SouthEast would push up the price of fares and therefore force people on to the roads. We want to see carefully phased reductions in subsidy. That should be possible without excessive fare increases. There is no point in subsidy if people are prepared to pay a fair price. Previous administrations recognised that blanket subsidies are inefficient and benefit the better off. However, we shall consider capital grants for local services where needed to secure external benefits, for example, relief of road congestion.
So far as concerns fares, the objectives do not require massive fare increases. Based on BR's plans, there should be a less than 10 per cent. real increase for London commuters over the next years. There is a general policy that the taxpayer should meet a lower proportion of the cost.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, also said that British Rail's investment projects are judged by their commercial attractiveness only. On Network SouthEast, which is supported by the PSO grant, the majority of investment proposals are for the renewal of existing assets. Investment is appraised with the aim of finding out which option is the most cost-effective to continue to run the existing service. There is no requirement to earn an 8 per cent. rate of return in these cases.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, also suggested that investment in Network SouthEast is insufficient and slow. Investment of about £× billion is planned for the next three years —as I have already mentioned —of which 70 per cent. will be spent on new rolling stock, both replacing old vehicles and providing for growth. There will be a 30 per cent.

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increase in real terms compared to the previous three-year period. That is the highest level of investment for a generation.
My right honourable friend the Secretary of State has approved the construction of 1,000 new vehicles over the past two years. He also approved five major schemes in 1989 worth £450 million. I should point out that this Government have never turned down an investment submission from British Rail. If progress is slow it is the result of the long lead times involved; for example, developing new trains and getting them right for the passenger is a costly and lengthy process, but one which BR would not wish to rush.
The noble Lord, Lord Tordoff, also spoke about the question of London buses. I must tell the House that LRT has been successful in halting the long-term decline in bus usage. The reliability of services has generally improved despite busy roads, and service levels are increasing dramatically —that is, by 4 per cent. last year and another 5 per cent. increase is expected this year. However, more remains to be done and the objectives announced by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport in December give LRT measurable targets for performance.
My noble friend Lord Lucas of Chilworth spoke about the assessment studies and strategy. I can tell him that the assessment studies are only one of the initiatives pursued to make London a better place in which to live, work and travel. We have a coherent policy, as set out in Traffic in London, for road building where necessary and encouragement of public transport. We propose new initiatives on public transport and the consultants have taken full account of the results from other studies and other studies will benefit from the assessment studies.
The noble Lord, Lord Jay, suggested that the safety of railways had suffered because of BR's harsh financial targets which are set by the Government. I must point out to him that the railways are still one of the safest means of transport; indeed safety is of paramount importance to BR, and the Government support that view. About £250 million in expenditure is already planned by BR on specific safety measures over the next five years. The noble Lord also asked about company cars as did the noble Earl, Lord Attlee. It must be said that some company cars are not just a perk; they are required for essential business use. The Government would be reluctant to take steps to interfere to an unreasonable extent with choices on travel assistance made by businesses. Of course, the level of taxation on company cars is a matter for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In the last two Budgets car benefit scale rates have been increased substantially and tax charges for fuel have increased. There is no intention to penalise those to whom the company car is an essential tool of their business.
The noble Lord, Lord Jay, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwark spoke about pricing off through fare increases. LRT is responsible for fare levels. At present the Underground is running at full capacity and it is necessary to check further demand while investment is taking place to meet future needs. The noble Lord, and other noble Lords,
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also mentioned the Park-and-Ride scheme. The Government are encouraging transport operators, London boroughs and commercial operators to look at the opportunities for providing such facilities.
In a delightful speech, my noble friend Lord Quinton raised the question of the need for more traffic police to get the traffic moving. We believe that a more productive solution is the new technology, principally traffic-responsive traffic lights. New urban traffic control systems now cover all of central London and 52 per cent. of all London traffic lights. Moreover, 240 of central London's signals are controlled by SCOOT, with approximately 120 signals being added to the system each year. If noble Lords wish to know what SCOOT is, I can tell them that it is the split cycle off-set optimisation technique. It is a most important innovative development.
There is also the Autoguide system which it is to be hoped will be coming on stream in the near future. We invited private sector proposals for the London Autoguide system last January and in July 1989 the Secretary of State announced the winning proposal. The Government are now negotiating with GEC regarding the licence for the London pi lot scheme. I should point out that the Road Traffic Act 1989 demonstrates our commitment to new technology.
The noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, advocated a co-ordinated transport plan. As I have already said, we believe in a coherent approach to the matter. We do not want a detailed master plan to cover every facet of transport in London. It would take too long to prepare, is inflexible and quickly out of date. The noble Baroness also spoke about heavy vehicles and freight coming into London. I can tell her that the number of heavy goods vehicles in London has declined by about 20 per cent. since 1980. The decrease has resulted in part, of course, from the completion of the M.25.
The noble Viscount, Lord Falkland, asked why BR does not use more guards vans, because the lack of them makes it difficult for cyclists to travel by rail. That is an operational matter for BR. I understand that BR chooses, with its suburban trains, to maximise seating capacity. The train formations depend upon demand. It is for BR to assess that demand. BR will no doubt take note of the noble Viscount's comments.
The noble Viscount, Lord St. Davids, suggested that we should try to reduce the amount of traffic in cities. I fear that that is a pious hope. No doubt many people would like to reduce the amount of traffic in cities so long as they did not have to pay or change their journeys. Pricing would affect people's lives dramatically. They might have to pay a charge to take the children to school, to do the shopping, to visit friends and not just to drive to work.
My noble friend Lord Gisborough suggested that the Heathrow Express line will not be quick enough for business travellers because of the need to travel via the Tube to Paddington. He suggested that there should also be through connections to the City. There will be a faster journey time. It is currently about 45 minutes from central London (Piccadilly Circus to

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Heathrow) on the smallest size Tube stock. The Heathrow Express will take 16 minutes from Paddington to the airport on brand new, pupose-built, air-conditioned trains. Cross-rail schemes are being considered (east-west cross-rail schemes from Paddington to Liverpool Street), and a decision will be announced in time for a Bill this year for at least one new line. We shall have to wait until then to see which line is the most viable.
The noble Lord, Lord Monson, and many other noble Lords spoke about the need for road pricing. It is becoming increasingly fashionable to advocate road pricing. It is an ideal market mechanism to remove congestion from our roads, especially in London; but pricing has so many practical drawbacks that there is no possibility of a London-wide road pricing scheme being introduced in the foreseeable future. At present only a handful of cities charge traffic and none is remotely comparable with the size of London. Other problems with road pricing are: how to enforce it; how the exact area to be charged would be chosen; how to cope with the effects at the boundary of the area; what method of pricing would be suitable, proven and reliable; what the level of charge would be; and who, if anyone, should be exempted.
The noble Lord also asked about high fixed penalties. I shall answer that by quoting what my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport said in his red route announcement, which included the following proposal:
"I strongly believe that the fixed penalty level for illegal parking on the red routes and possibly elsewhere in London should be increased. The Government will consult representative organisations on possible legislation and the appropriate level of fine".
My noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes talked about the need for better parking enforcement. Again, I quote from the red route announcement:
"Effective enforcement of traffic and parking regulations will be a key element. The police and traffic wardens will remain responsible for enforcing parking bans. The role of the traffic wardens will be enhanced. They will be given powers to authorise removals and wheel clamping. Local authorities would take on the control of parking at meters and residents' bays, allowing traffic wardens to concentrate their efforts on the red routes and the more serious offences".—Official Report, Commons, 14/12/89; col. 1184.]
The noble Lord, Lord Ardwick, asked about the traffic director. We propose that his main function will be to ensure that local authorities introduce the priority routes on their roads in a timely and orderly way. Once the network is established, we propose that he will ensure that it is managed in accordance with my right honourable friend's objectives and maintained to an appropriate standard. It is also proposed that he encourages better co-ordination of parking controls off the main routes. In short, his job will be to help bodies with their existing responsibilities. On the noble Lord's more general points about improving public transport, I have to tell him that massive investment is already going into public transport, but that will not of itself solve the traffic problems. We need a balanced approach, including road improvements, mostly to existing roads. New roads generate more traffic, but prosperity also generates more traffic. The objective
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is take traffic off residential roads on to major routes. We need to provide better access in areas in need of development.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Phillips, complained that the Underground is unsafe, slow and unreliable. I disagree completely. Great improvements in the quality of service have been made in the past year. Full provision has been made for all safety expenditure in the light of the Fennell Report into the King's Cross fire. Finance will not be a barrier. LUL estimates that £1 billion will have to be spent on safety by 2000. LUL announced quality of service objectives on 20th December last year and it has set performance targets for reliability, mileage, lifts and escalators, and performance against targets will be published regularly.
My noble friend Lord Renwick also mentioned assessment studies. They looked into the four areas of London that suffer from the worst congestion. They came within the Secretary of State's broad strategic approach. Objectives for the studies were agreed with the local authority associations, the London Planning Advisory Committee, major transport operators and the police. He also spoke of his concern about WEIR. We recognise the strength of the opposition of those outside the immediate Earl's Court area, and the feeling among those overlooking the route. No final decisions on WEIR will be taken until after the end of the assessment study consultation period on 28th February 1990. If the go-ahead is given, it is almost certain that a public inquiry will be held before an independent inspector. WEIR is justified because of the severe problems faced by the Earl's Court one-way system and other north-south routes.
The noble Lord, Lord Sefton, asked about transport and land use planning. The Government have issued London local authorities with strategic planning guidance. That addresses the land use issues and includes a transport chapter for the local authorities to take into account in developing their new unitary development plans.
On the question of one-person operated buses causing delays, London Buses takes congestion into account when appraising each route conversion. A high level of pass card usage speeds boarding times. There are no plans for 100 per cent. one-person operated buses, and crewed buses will remain on the busiest routes.
The noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, and other noble Lords, asked about car-sharing. In theory, car-sharing schemes might produce benefits to individuals and to the community; in practice, it has proved difficult to find people willing to share their cars even, for example, where companies have provided services for matching addresses or road lanes have been reserved for high-occupancy vehicles. He also asked about the need to improve road access to Heathrow. All I can tell him is that the objective of the HASQUAD study is to improve the reliability of journey times from London to Heathrow.
I probably have another five minutes left in which to speak, and I shall try to answer the other questions.

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The noble Lord, Lord Mountevans, also asked about BR investing to meet peak hour demand and trying to spread the peak. I shall write to him on that matter.
My noble friend Lord Nugent asked about the traffic director, and I welcome his comments. The traffic director will be working with the Department of Transport and local authorities looking at central London and the busiest routes for through traffic, including those in outer London where the traffic growth is greatest and where public transport does not have the flexibility to meet people's needs.
I have more to say, but I want to leave a few minutes for the noble Lord, Lord Tordoff. So in conclusion I should like to stress that the Government are pursuing a wide range of measures and initiatives to deal with the problems facing London's traffic. They are doing so within a coherent framework and in a way which provides a balance between public and private transport. Our prosperity today requires us to invest in infrastructure and equally our prosperity today enables us to do so. Record amounts are being invested in public transport and in strategic road links. The need for them has come about largely due to the success of London as a premier financial centre. Their purpose is equally to maintain London and the City as competitive business and cultural centres in the century ahead.
The Government have a leading role but they are not alone. They need the co-operation of everyone concerned, including the boroughs, the transport operators and the enforcement authorities, and we are encouraging them all to join us so that London has the transport systems it deserves.
5.38 p.m.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I had a check list of matters that I had not mentioned. I am glad to say that virtually all have been mentioned. One of them was the Horne Report which I left deliberately, because I had assumed that the noble Lord, Lord Underhill, would deal with it. I join with other noble Lords on the normal transport circuit in your Lordships' House and very much regret his absence today. We hope to see him back shortly.
The Minister has assured us that the Government have a coherent approach. That is not altogether obvious from what he said today or from what appears in the discussion document. He said that the Government will listen to what is being said. I hope so. This is virtually the only occasion upon which Parliament will have a chance to debate the issue. The response from the Government Front Bench does not indicate that they will do anything other than assert what they had on their brief before the debate started. I hope that that is not the case.
We are reminded that fares must rise on Network SouthEast because people have to pay for things; that the Underground has to increase fares to stop people travelling on it. All these points have been made throughout the debate. The overwhelming balance of the debate has been very much in favour of the two basic issues that were raised right at the
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beginning: namely, that there has to be a restraint on cars, and an overall strategy with a co-ordinating body if sense is to be made out of the chaos into which London's traffic is declining at the moment. The point has been well made from all round the House. I hope that the Minister will take note of what has been said and take some action on that basis. I thank everybody and beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Hong Kong
5.40 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter Lord Bonham-Carter rose to call attention to the situation in Hong Kong; 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.
Let none of your Lordships suppose that we on these Benches think that the situation of either the Vietnamese boat people or the people of Hong Kong is easy and one which has easy answers. On the contrary, it is extremely difficult. It demands from the Government a mixture of flexibility, compromise and firmness. I am glad to say that listening to the ITN one o'clock news today I noted that some encouraging developments were reported. It was reported first, that the 29-nation UN conference on refugees had reached an agreement, which would be announced, that there would be a moratorium of six months on forcible repatriation in order to give voluntary repatriation time to work. Secondly, it was reported that an effective and swift means of processing Vietnamese boat people who arrived in the new season would be established.
It was further reported, as I understand it, that the United Nations High Commission for Refugees would supervise and monitor these arrangements. Such was the report that I heard on ITN. It repeats almost word for word all the recommendations made by my right honourable friend Mr. Paddy Ashdown in another place on 19th December, before Christmas, and in a succession of letters to the Foreign Secretary. I am very willing to congratulate the Government on taking his excellent advice, and I only wish that they had taken it a little earlier.
The fact is that the Vietnamese boat people have always been an international problem which can only be effectively handled on an international basis. I am delighted to hear the progress which appears to have been made. I add that the prospects for voluntary repatriation are not discouraging. Under the UN scheme, 1,000 people have been repatriated already and the forecast for the coming year is 10,000 —a not insubstantial figure.
However, two matters which are of importance and significance were not mentioned in that report. Both refer to the difficult problem of how to stem the flow of further refugees leaving Vietnam, with or without the knowledge of their Government, and coming to Hong Kong. First, it is generally agreed that a substantial proportion of the Vietnamese boat people are economic refugees, driven to take the desperate course of sailing to Hong Kong to escape the poverty in which they find themselves. Thus one

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would suppose that it was in our interests to do what we could to diminish the poverty of Vietnam which has been brought about by the policies of the Government, by the effects of war, and by the aid embargo which we have imposed on that wretched country. It seems folly in the circumstances in which we are struggling with this flood of refugees who impose themselves on Hong Kong, that we should maintain this aid embargo. I hope that at the conference a further agreement was reached with the assent of the United States that the aid embargo would be abandoned forthwith. If it was not, I think that this country should abandon it unilaterally.
Secondly, arrangements should be made and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees should be helped to disseminate information within Vietnam, to stem the exodus, to discourage people from going to Hong Kong. On this I should have thought we should engage the co-operation of the Vietnamese Government as one of the quid pro quos for resuming aid. I also hope that the BBC's external services and other broadcasting organisations should collaborate. That seems to me about all I can say on the subject at present.
The settlement of the situation in Hong Kong must depend and fall finally as a responsibility on the United Kingdom, Hong Kong and China. Since the terrible events at Tiananmen square this summer, the Government of the Chinese People's Republic, driven by fear and insecurity —and we know that fear is always a bad adviser —far from relaxing their internal or external policy, have done neither.
If we look at the internal manifestations of the Government's policy, we thought—and it was presented as such —that it was a relaxation when martial law was lifted. However, it did not show much signs of being a relaxation. When martial law was lifted, there was no suggestion that the 150,000 troops in Beijing and around it would be withdrawn. They are still there. It was reported in a Hong Kong newspaper that 40,000 of the troops had simply changed out of military uniform into the uniform of paramilitary police. At the same time, a new municipal law was published banning strikes and demonstrations. Therefore, I have seen little sign of relaxation in the internal policy.
As to their posture towards Hong Kong itself, it has unquestionably hardened. In July, the Chinese Government insisted that Chinese troops should be stationed in Hong Kong after 1997. At the Commonwealth Conference they objected to what they called the "internationalisation" of Hong Kong. Since then they have demanded that the pace of democratisation should be modified. More recently, they have suggested the introduction of a two-tier legislature. Only 15 per cent. of those elected should have the right of abode abroad. More recently still, they have objected to the package of 20th December.
The question which we must face is: how do we respond? The answer is that of course we have to continue to negotiate with the Chinese People's Republic, no matter how intransigent it appears, because we hold cards much stronger in the
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negotiating position than is sometimes represented. It is our duty to try to persuade it of this. Further, we have to persuade them that the name of our policy is not appeasement. The idea is prevalent in some quarters and was given plausibility, I regret to say, by the secret visit of Sir Percy Cradock, the Prime Minister's personal foreign policy adviser, to Beijing. That was a most unfortunate venture in personal diplomacy. It was widely interpreted as going behind the back of the Foreign Office and a sign of weakness.
The criterion by which British policy must be judged is whether or not it increases the confidence of the people of Hong Kong. Does it or does it not encourage them to stay put? Does it help to reduce the haemorrhage of emigration which is running now at about 1,000 people a week? Although they are by no means the only bargaining counter we have, our strongest bargaining counter must be the skills and talents of the people of Hong Kong. Therefore it is important that we do everything in our power to stem that flow of emigration. If one applies that criterion to democratisation or to a Bill of Rights, we should support the OMELCO proposals for hastening democratisation simply because that is the consensual view of the people who are most important to the prosperity of Hong Kong. They are the people who make Hong Kong so fundamentally important to China. I support a Bill of Rights not only because the former Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, pledged himself to it in July of 1989, but also because it is the view of those who live in Hong Kong that it is desirable for itself and as a confidence building measure.
On the question of passports let us apply the same criterion. We must ask ourselves whether the December package of 50,000 families or 225,000 people covered by it which Mr. Tebbit so strongly objects to and which has also caused confusion in other quarters is sufficient as a confidence-building measure. I say in all seriousness that the way we should decide the answer to that question is whether that number is sufficient to act as a trigger to mobilise international co-operation in an effort to increase that number.
I have said from the beginning that I believe we should try to mobilise our friends in the European Community, in the Commonwealth and in the United States to collaborate with us in providing a place of abode, in the event of the worst possible case occurring, to the population of British citizens in Hong Kong. The question we have to answer is whether our December package is big enough to persuade them. I ask most urgently that the Government call at the earliest possible moment a meeting of our colleagues in the European Community, in the Commonwealth and in the United States so that they can help in assuring the future of those people for whom we have a special responsibility. Such an international effort makes the problem facing us much more manageable. It would also provide the kind of confidence that would stem the haemorrhage and would increase the pressure on the CPR to act in the spirit of the joint declaration and in the idea of one nation, two systems.
I have said that I do not think we should underestimate our bargaining position, nor do I need to remind your Lordships of the immense and vital contribution that Hong Kong makes to the Chinese economy. That is astonishing when one thinks of the size of that place. It is astonishing that it creates 70 per cent. of total industrial investment and 33 per cent. of foreign currency. Two million people in southern China are directly or indirectly employed from Hong Kong. Trade between Hong Kong and China has increased in the past 10 years by 1,500 per cent. to £23 billion. That is quite apart from the huge investment being put into Hong Kong, for example in the port and sea development scheme.
Our policy therefore should be to be firm, to encourage the confidence of the people of Hong Kong and to do everything in our power nationally and internationally to provide security for the citizens of Hong Kong in the event of the worst possible case occurring. The Chinese People's Republic cannot want to inherit a ghost town. I beg to move for Papers.
5.55 p.m.
Lord Wyatt of Weeford: My Lords, the Liberal Democrats have been very helpful in putting down this Motion. I am sure your Lordships will agree that it is important to keep developing events in Hong Kong under frequent review. The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, made a wide-ranging and interesting speech. I agreed with quite a lot of that speech. I congratulate the Government on making some movement on passports. It is not enough, but it is a start. I am sure that if the Chinese are looking really nasty as 1997 approaches, the warmhearted British public will be willing for the numbers with right of abode to be increased. However, we now have something which we can show to other countries to encourage them to give similar help to Hong Kongers.
The Government must be admired for their courage in taking on the section of the Tory Party which has forgotten the pride with which the old Conservative Party honoured its obligations to protect citizens of the once great and benevolent British Empire. Mr. Tebbit and his friends have a blind spot. They cannot distinguish between immigrants from British Empire countries which sought and obtained their independence and those in Hong Kong whom we are about to hand over to a President Ceausescu-type of communist regime. The former were not refugees from political persecution. Hong Kongers have a high probability of becoming victims of it.
I believe that the Government will get through the necessary measures to obtain the limited number of passports. I am sure there are many Labour Members and non-Conservative Members in both Houses who are too decent to support the strange official Labour line that either all Hong Kongers should be given proper passports, or none. That effectively means, as it is intended to mean, that none will get them.
The feeling of bitterness in Hong Kong against Britain is still strong. However, the feeling is not as angry as it was. But the mood is nervous and volatile.
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It could erupt into ugly scenes as 1997 approaches, making Hong Kong increasingly difficult to govern. China is ruled by men who are frightened by the amazing overturn of seemingly solid communist governments in Europe and even in Mongolia. This induces them to make menacing threats to Hong Kong. The Basic Law now being formulated in China, with little input from Hong Kong, may contain a provision against Hong Kong being used as a base for subversion. This would rapidly be interpreted as grounds for censoring the press and television, although all democratic rights now existing in Hong Kong were guaranteed in the joint declaration of 1984.
Recently Li Peng, the Chinese Prime Minister, said that even if Mr. Martin Lee and Mr. Szeto Wah were elected to the Legislative Council by a 100 per cent. vote before 1997 they would not be allowed to keep their seats afterwards. That is because they have criticised China's attitude since 4th June. Peking is terrified of democracy. The provisions for electing the chief executive, the equivalent of the governor, will ensure that no one disapproved of by China could have the job. China jibs at the very modest proposal of OMELCO for direct elections to the Legislative Council. It is amazing that after more than 150 years there is still no one voted on to that body by popular suffrage.
OMELCO asks that in 1991 one-third of the council should be elected by popular vote, one-third should come from indirect elections in the functional constituencies and one-third should be officially appointed. For the 1995 election it asks that half should be elected by popular vote and half should come from the functional constituencies. Peking says no. By 1995 only 30 per cent. should be popularly elected, with 50 per cent. from functional constituencies, plus a sinister 20 per cent. from a so-called election committee. Those will be Peking's yes-men. No laws would be passed without the consent of those election committee members as well as of the rest. However, it is said that rejected Bills could be resubmitted and passed by a simple majority. I doubt it.
The election committee would be a second chamber, with Peking holding the veto. For 1999 OMELCO proposes 67 per cent. be directly elected, with 33 per cent. from functional committees. Peking says only 40 per cent. can be directly elected and the election committee members will have 10 per cent. of seats, thus retaining the veto from Peking.
The British Government are about to give their verdict on the composition of the Legislative Council in 1991–1995, the last time elections will be held under British rule, with the subsequent election due in 1999. The Government adopt a paternalistic attitude. They advise Hong Kongers not to annoy Peking by pushing for more than Peking proposes or beyond what the British Government consider it is safe to propose without outright rejection by China. We are behaving as though Hong Kongers are our children for ever and we are their nanny. We are not.
If the British Government proposals do not meet Hong Kong's expectations they will be rejected by

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the Executive Council. The governor would then have to override the Executive Council. That has never happened before. It would be a wonderful present of a precedent for China whenever it wanted the chief executive not to take the advice of the Executive Council or the Legislative Council. If the Governor persisted in pushing in adequate British proposals the Legislative Council would amend them. Otherwise the people of Hong Kong would throw them out, as communist governments all over the world are being thrown out for not following the people's will.
The British Government warn against the risk of annoying China, but it is the Hong Kongers, not us, who take that risk. If there is a reasonable government in Peking in 1997, all will be well. If it is the same Stalinist government as today it will have the embarrassment of openly reducing democracy in Hong Kong. Hong Kong would then be no worse off than if it agreed to China's present proposals.
We are out of date in trying to repress popular demands for democracy. They cannot be put back in the can. If we tried to do that, the Hong Kong people might even demand and seize complete independence now, just as parts of the Soviet Union are trying to do. Where would we be then if Chinese troops came in before 1997 to assert Peking's despotism? The joint declaration would be meaningless.
China is anxious that we should endorse the Basic Law when it emerges in its final form in February and March. That gives us a weapon to insist that any part of it which conflicts with the joint declaration should be removed. The other weapon belongs to the Hong Kongers; it is to insist on a strong element of genuine democracy before 1997. I advise them to go for broke and ask for 100 per cent. to be elected by popular vote in 1991. The longer such a system is in place the harder it will be to destroy.
Long happy with the rule of law and the democratic processes of British administration, Hong Kong has only recently realised the need to run its own affairs. How can we say to those intelligent, able and industrious people that they are less qualified to have one person, one vote than Romanians or Indians? Hong Kongers may not have had complete democracy but they know what it is all about. They will struggle not to be left out of the full democracy tide sweeping through the world. We must help them, not hinder them. We must hope that by 1997 there will be a more or less democratic government in Peking which will allow Hong Kong genuine autonomy and remove all our problems over Hong Kongers fearing to stay in Hong Kong.
6.6 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, it is a rare privilege for me to be able to speak in this House on a subject other than health. I am grateful to my noble friend on the Front Bench for permitting it. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for introducing the debate, and grateful too to the Foreign Secretary for having invited me, together with Timothy Raison, to go to Vietnam and submit a report on the boat people. My main contribution
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to the debate will concern the problem of the boat people with its obvious profound implications for Hong Kong.
I have been to Hong Kong on so many occasions that I should like to say two sentences on the broad issue. First, in my view it would be a shameful end to the long history of the British Empire and subsequently the Commonwealth if we were to betray our trust to the energetic, industrious people of Hong Kong. Secondly, Britain must, even though belatedly, push forward the process of democracy, as has been so powerfully argued by the people of Hong Kong themselves. Time is both short and precious and we must lay the foundations for a genuinely democratic system in Hong Kong before 1997.
If my first point has been the need for courage now to avoid the need for a mass flood of refugees from Hong Kong, then my second point and the rest of my speech must be dedicated to those who have fled from Vietnam as refugees or asylum seekers since 1975. They, too, were fleeing from communism. They were also, especially in recent times, fleeing from poverty. Of those whom Timothy Raison and I met who had been returned by plane on 12th December and who had wished to improve their standards of life in other parts of the world, none claimed to be refugees. They had hoped that they could be able to go to Australia, the United States, Canada, New Zealand or elsewhere, as nearly a million of the population had been able to do in the years before.
Vietnam's poverty cannot be blamed on its government alone. It has suffered from long years of occupation. It has struggled against occupation by Japan, the United States and France. It has been denied any form of compensation for the appalling damage that was done to the country during long years of war and for the boycott on trade imposed by the United States, with the support of Britain and other countries within the Community. I am certain that, although it obviously takes some time to see the effects of economic aid, at this moment it would bring great hope both to those in Vietnam —and discourage them from departure —and to those in Hong Kong —and encourage them to return —if Vietnam were incorporated within a world system of aid to the benefit of its people.
It would be unfair to blame the boat people for leaving. So many before them had left. If one considers the group of people interviewed by Timothy Raison and myself, one sees that they all left on 10th or 11th June 1988 and arrived on 20th June 1988. The rules changed on 16th June when they were half way there. They left with the entitlement to be refugees, arrived with that entitlement removed and quite rightly joined the screening process.
I thought it quite proper, although some people might say that it was a little late, that we should decide to draw a line between those who are refugees fleeing from persecution or fear of persecution and those hoping to find a better life in another country. It is vital for the long-term interests of refugees that that definition should be drawn. If we were to say that all who flee from wherever to wherever for a

1109
better life are refugees, there would be no definition of refugees left and all the guarantees provided for them since 1950 and supervised by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees would be lost. It is therefore right that the definition should he drawn.
Because Vietnamese citizens have for 10 years been permitted to be accepted as refugees on arrival in Hong Kong, one must try to understand their plight. In a sense they must still be treated as a special case. I was delighted to learn of the agreement reached in Geneva. It was exactly what had been recommended and hoped for. One of the first things I did after publishing our report was to have long discussions with UNHCR about how it would accept the responsibility. The United States' decision to come up with a genuine, orderly return programme after six months' strengthening of the voluntary programme was right for all concerned.
In our report we said that the most important issue was voluntary return. It is best if one can get people to do it because they want to do it. It is fascinating to note that some of the members of the group that we saw complained that they had been kept waiting. They all knew that they would go back o Vietnam. They did not complain about being back in Vietnam. They were complimentary about what had happened to them since they returned.
We have a major responsibility to help in the resettlement programme and to help boost the return programme. That means two things. As we said in our report, it means a major education programme in Vietnam which the Vietnamese Government are prepared to carry out. Much is already being done. Video material is now being prepared and I hope that it will be used with the help and backing which Britain can give to ensure that it is shown throughout Vietnam. Many organisations indicated that they would be ready to support that. It is essential that the message gets through to the camps in Hong Kong. I heard many people, including those whom we interviewed, say that they were not fully informed about the opportunity of volunteering to go back. The six-month moratorium which has been decided today is of great importance.
There is more that we can do to help those people who have returned. For example, the fishermen whom we interviewed went off their with their boats and came back without them. Vietnamese fisher families not only fish from their boats but live on their boats. If they do not have a boat, they have neither a job nor a place to live. That is the kind of aid that we can give them. We can help them with the money needed to make a boat. We can also help others, including farmers, agricultural workers and carpenters, with the tools of the job to enable them to settle back properly. If the British Government are responsive to the proposals made in our report and at the Geneva conference, a proper and effective solution might be found to the problem which is so sad for Vietnam, Britain and Hong Kong.
6.15 p.m.
Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke: My Lords, I wish to acknowledge most sincerely the courteous and gracious manner in which your Lordships received
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my admittance to your Lordships' House. I wish, too, to acknowledge in advance the usual courtesy extended to one who is making his maiden speech. I hope that your Lordships will accept that I have made strenuous efforts to sanitise my speech to ensure that I do not breach the convention which commands your Lordships' respect and attention.
It is in that spirit that I have to declare my special interest in the subject of this debate. I am chairman and chief executive of Cable and Wireless plc which currently owns 75 per cent. of Hong Kong Telecommunications Ltd., of which I am also chairman. Hong Kong Telecom provides Hong Kong's domestic and international telecommunications networks. It is Hong Kong's largest company with over 18,000 employees and a market capitalisation of over £4 billion.
Hong Kong is one of the world's most successful economies. It is in fact the eleventh largest trading territory in the world and little Hong Kong has achieved a level of exports nearly one-third of that of mighty Japan. Britain has a special role in Hong Kong as the sovereign power. That includes an obligation to maintain Hong Kong's stability and prosperity up to 1997. But, apart from moral and legal obligations, I believe that it is in Britain's economic self-interest to help Hong Kong.
The list of British equipment bought by Hong Kong Telecom includes satellite earth station equipment, broadcasting towers, fibre-optic cables and pay telephones. Those purchases are part of the £1 billion a year of visible exports from Britain to Hong Kong. Moreover, the dividends that Hong Kong Telecom pays to Cable and Wireless are part of the £1 billion a year of invisible earnings which the UK derives from the services of all British companies operating in Hong Kong. Other examples are power generation equipment for the electricity companies, rolling stock for the mass transit railway, cranes at the container terminal and the structural steel for the Hong Kong Bank's magnificent headquarters building; all these have been bought from Britain.
Those exports have been achieved because of the considerble British commercial presence in Hong Kong. British-managed or controlled companies have a gross stock market value of £20 billion which is 40 per cent. of the Hong Kong stock market. That far outweighs any other national business influence in Hong Kong which is an excellent base for expansion of British influence in the Asia Pacific region before and after 1997.
I should like to speak briefly about the so-called brain drain which is one of the most serious problems facing Hong Kong today. Although many Hong Kong people were optimistic when the joint declaration was signed, emigration has since accelerated and the tragic events of last June make it likely that that trend will continue. I believe thal there is very little disagreement on the reason for that emigration. People in Hong Kong fear uncertainty about the kind of lives that their families will have after 1997. They therefore seek the insurance policy of a foreign passport. At present, the only way to obtain one is to leave Hong Kong and spend several years abroad.

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I hope that the nationality package which was announced before Christmas will go some way towards alleviating the problems of emigration and I emphasise that the objective of the package is for the Hong Kong recipients to remain in Hong Kong.
I should like to refer noble Lords specifically to one key part of the Government Statement made in your Lordships' House and in another place on 20th December last which has been virtually lost sight of in the welter of emotion —much of it, I fear, ill-informed —which has followed. Here I quote:
"within the total numbers I have given, the Government propose to introduce a special measure designed to help companies and institutions in Hong Kong to retain their key personnel … The companies and institutions concerned would arrange secondments of key personnel for work or training in the United Kingdom for relatively short periods of time, thereby minimising any disruption to their work in Hong Kong."—[Official Report, 20/12/89; col. 281.]
It is clear that under this part of the package those concerned, having come to the United Kingdom for a period of secondment to work for a British company, will then have to return to Hong Kong for a much longer period before they can acquire the right of residence here. I welcome the targeting of the scheme at key workers whose presence is vital to Hong Kong. I know that it is not the Government's intention to give citizenship to a wealthy elite, and I hope that the legislation will make that clear.
I know that the scheme has been criticised as divisive but in my experience Hong Kong people are not jealous of their neighbours. They do not begrudge them success or good fortune. Rather they aspire to emulate them. Indeed when I visited Hong Kong a few weeks ago no one was opposed to the package on the grounds that it would cause jealousy or resentment. Their disappointment was that only 50,000 heads of household would benefit and not more.
I should like to end on an optimistic note. I believe that Hong Kong will weather this storm, that China's economic self-interest will prevail and that Hong Kong's success will continue long after it becomes a Special Administrative Region. That belief has been strengthened during my recent discussions with the CITIC, an external agency of the People's Republic of China, about the acquisition of a significant stake in Hong Kong Telecom. Here is China wanting to invest billions of Hong Kong dollars of hard currency in a Hong Kong company. That investment will bear fruit only if Hong Kong's capitalist system and way of life are maintained. I believe that this is a sure sign of China's long-term good intentions.
Boileau, the eminent French philosopher, said: That which is accurately conceived is accurately expressed. I hope that your Lordships will extend to me your sympathetic understanding if, on this special occasion, I have strayed from that splendid maxim. I should be grateful to your Lordships for your indulgence in accepting my speech as non-controversial, even if I have tested the limits of that indulgence. I confess that I look forward to the freedom of future opportunities to address your Lordships in a less restrained manner, recognising as Lady Bracknell said: "On these occasions it becomes
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more than a moral duty to speak one's mind. It becomes a pleasure".
6.22 p.m.
Lord Geddes: My Lords, it is a considerable honour to be the first to follow my noble friend Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke. He has spoken not only with great lucidity but also from a very real depth of knowledge regarding Hong Kong. He happens to share with one of my forebears the illustrious name of Eric, though I must say I hope that any axe which he may have (dare I say it?) is not as sharp. He shares with me the wonderfully therapeutic recreations of music and gardening. On behalf of the whole House I congratulate him most sincerely on his excellent maiden speech and hope that we shall hear him often in the future.
In thanking the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for introducing this timely debate on Hong Kong, perhaps I may also say how very sorry I am that the noble Lord, Lord MacLehose of Beoch, is not able to be in his place this evening. I hope that it is in order on behalf of all your Lordships to wish the noble Lord a speedy and successful recovery from his operation.
The joint declaration of 1984 is,
"a formal international agreement, legally binding in all its parts".
It represents,
"the highest form of commitment between two sovereign states".
Paragraph 4 of that agreement states that during the transitional period leading up to the restoration of Hong Kong to China on 1st July 1997 (for the third time I quote),
"the Government of the United Kingdom will be responsible for the administration of Hong Kong with the object of maintaining and preserving its economic prosperity and social stability".
This evening I propose to outline to your Lordships the only way in which I and, I believe, many others suggest that the United Kingdom can acquit itself of those responsibilities. I should like to begin by repeating what I first said to your Lordships on 21st May 1984:
"Hong Kong has one, and really only one, resource—its people. Without them and their confidence in the system, Hong Kong basically is nothing". —[Official Report, 21/5/84; col. 112.]
In order to hand over to China a Hong Kong which bears some resemblance to the territory for which it negotiated in 1984, Hong Kong's main resource must be intact: its people must still be there.
Even before the events in China of June last year the people of Hong Kong were understandably nervous. But now there is a genuine and, I would say, wholly justifiable fear for their future. The recent events in Eastern Europe, particularly Romania, if anything should increase our concern for the people of Hong Kong. The demonstration in Hong Kong on New Year's Day this year which called for the downfall of Ceausescu's China highlighted the parallels only too clearly, and the extent to which it has drawn China's ire shows what a sensitive spot it hit with that country's leaders.
The Chinese will not relax their vigilance to search for and stamp out popular movements for democracy; quite the reverse. Martial law may have been lifted but the new PRC envoy to Hong Kong,

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Mr. Chou Non, is described —I quote from an article in the press —as an,
"unsympathetic, smooth talking hard liner who is likely to take a tougher line on Hong Kong matters than his predecessor".
Despite the commitment in the joint declaration that,
"the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region will enjoy a high degree of automony [and] will be vested with executive, legislative and independent judicial power",
Peking announced as recently as the 20th of this month that only 18 members of Hong Kong's 60-seat Legislative Council would be directly elected in 1997. Even that 30 per cent., as the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt, reminded us, will have their power curtailed by a two-tier voting system which would give blocking powers to indirectly elected members. We cannot acquiesce in such a situation and must ensure greater and faster democratisation.
The 1984 joint declaration and its accompanying Chinese memorandum said that China was not opposed to Britain giving passports to Hong Kong people and that it was entirely an internal matter for the British Government. Less than a year ago the same Mr. Chou Non and Mr. Qian Qichen, the Chinese Foreign Minister, separately stated that Britain's decision on how many Hong Kong citizens would be granted citizenship was an internal affair of the British Government. But now Peking is criticising this Government's brave — I use the word deliberately —nationality package and even stated that any Hong Kong resident who has the right of abode in any country other than China will be disqualified after 1997 from holding senior government jobs.
I base my case this evening on the United Kingdom's duty to fulfil its contract with China. I have not raised what to my way of thinking is the equally forceful argument of our duty to the people of Hong Kong. As that is an argument which apparently has no weight with certain Members in another place, I have altered my line of reasoning in case they are more readily convinced by our obligations to China under the 1984 joint declaration. I must say that I was more than shocked by some of the opposition to the Government's recent nationality package. Frankly, to me it smacks of racism. It is apparently based on what can only be described as the amoral and immoral excuse that it is a vote loser. This Government to my knowledge have never been known to shirk their responsibilities on that score —and heaven forbid that they should start now.
Those who make the claim that it undermines the Government's pledge not to allow any more full-scale immigration have entirely missed the point. The point is—as has been reiterated time and again—that granting the right of abode in this country to the people of Hong Kong is the surest way to prevent large-scale immigration. No one can any longer be in doubt that the only way to encourage the people of Hong Kong to remain there is to give them the freedom to leave.
We should make no mistake. If China finds itself presented in 1997 with a Hong Kong devoid of its main resource there will be little or no incentive for
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it to abide by its side of the 1984 contract and nothing in the Chinese leadership's behaviour should lead anyone to expect that it will honour its commitment without a powerful incentive.
A great deal is being said at the moment about the internationalisation of the Hong Kong question and the provision of an international safety net for Hong Kong. What that means in practical terms is surely that countries such as Canada, the United States and Australia will in an emergency accept Hong Kong people. But obviously they will accept only those people whom they see as an asset to themselves. The force of world opinion, and this country's undoubted higher duty towards Hong Kong, will be such that this country will be forced to take the remainder. Quite apart from the Government's duty to China, or even to Hong Kong, that is surely not the way to fulfil our obligations to the citizens of this country.
If we hand over to China a Hong Kong devoid of the majority of its key personnel, China may well say that the subject matter of the contract has been altered and that it is no longer bound by the terms of the 1984 joint declaration. We have the clearest obligation to do all that we can to avoid that situation.
6.32 p.m.
Lord Diamond: My Lords, we should certainly consider ourselves fortunate to have been able to listen to such a well-informed and timely maiden speech as that recently made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke. It is indeed fortunate that with his enormous knowledge of affairs in Hong Kong he is able to speak at this time. I congratulate him most heartily on his speech and in particular on its confidence-building atmosphere. Too many of the speeches that we make in our attempts to improve the situation ignore the fact that our first duty is to restore, not to destroy, confidence in the future of Hong Kong. I therefore repeat my congratulations to the noble Lord.
Speeches by those who are particularly well-informed, such as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, have been made with regard to the boat people. Therefore in the time available to me I shall restrict myself purely to comments about the economy of Hong Kong and the need to sustain confidence in it. In spite of the obvious fact that the major interests of the three parties in a prosperous Hong Kong are at one, and that the common accord between the two Governments in their negotiations on the Basic Law existed before June, there is no doubt that he events of Tiananmen Square created what has rightly been described as a haemorrhage of key personnel leaving their country, and a consequent need to take some overt action to restore confidence by attacking the malaise at its root level. By "malaise at its root level" I mean that every resident in Hong Kong would say to himself, "Things are fine now, but what if after 1997 they develop in such a way that my personal liberty and prosperity are such that I must go?" It is to answer that question that the Government have come forward with their proposals which I warmly welcome and support, as do all my colleagues on these Benches.

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It is admittedly a minimum response that clearly will go some way towards restoring confidence and ensuring efficient government in the meantime. I very much hope and believe that it will encourage those who have already made a great contribution to follow our lead. Moreover, key workers who have an alternative choice —a right of residence in this country—quite obviously will not feel so much at the mercy of those who negotiated with them, as they would have done if they had no such rights, since they are likely to receive more sympathetic consideration.
I am sure that my long-term confidence is shared by the majority of people who know Hong Kong. I believe that it is still justified by the continuation of those economic policies of China—and I speak of Chinese mainland—which came into effect before June last year; namely, the movement towards a market economy and greater openness in foreign relations, especially towards the West.
I was particularly pleased to hear the noble Lord who has just made his maiden speech say that there is evidence of communist China taking a capitalist interest in the affairs of Hong Kong. Perhaps I may add that when I was in Canton less than two years ago my colleagues and I were being entertained by the authorities there. The main topic of conversation was the creation of a communist stock exchange in Canton. One may at first blush think that that is not necessarily the most obvious topic of conversation to arise in those circumstances.
There is a special Chinese angle to these matters. The Chinese Government have shown no difficulty in understanding the need to continue a capitalist market economy in Hong Kong and have reaffirmed their commitment under the joint statement. I see no reason, either because of current conversations with China —and I was talking to those in the embassy for two hours only a few days ago—or because of the precedents that China has set in the past, to believe that China will not honour its commitments in the way in which it entered into them, and which it has now reaffirmed. That may be considered somewhat naive. I do not believe that one achieves anything by doubting the honesty of nations when they have shown no propensity to be otherwise. Therefore I am glad that the Government have taken these steps which I am sure will help enormously.
I hope that the noble Lords will be good enough to bear in mind that by entering into the joint declaration of 1984, and by approving for so many years ahead the continuation of two systems in Hong Kong, the parties demonstrated that they had resolved the argument between sovereignty and economic prosperity. They decided that it was far better to have a prosperous Hong Kong open market economy than to exercise absolute sovereignty. I see no reason for believing that that will not continue.
Finally, as to democratisation, I hope that the Government will not rush the matter. I remember very well first hearing Clem Attlee's wise advice that a good statesman should only go as far as he absolutely needs. The Government need to negotiate, as they are doing, as favourably as possible.
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So far as the 1991 elections are concerned, I believe that as we move away from the crisis of last year, the Government would find the atmosphere much more favourable, if they negotiated the rest of the plan at a much later date. They have no need to do it now. We approve these proposals and we believe that the House as a whole should similarly do so.
6.41 p.m.
Lord Eden of Winton: My Lords, I too should like to congratulate most warmly the noble Lord, Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke, on his maiden speech. Like the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, who has just spoken, I found particularly warming the encouraging message which he gave to your Lordships' House. But I think we all recognised that, speaking as he does with such knowledge of Hong Kong and with such authority from his long experience of Hong Kong and of China, the words he spoke here will be faithfully recorded and reported, and much spoken about throughout Hong Kong.
In that sense, I am sure we should also thank him for the encouragement which he is giving through his speech, for the work he is doing in Hong Kong, for the condidence he is showing in the future of Hong Kong and for the encouragement he has given to its people. I should also like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for having taken the initiative to bring forward this debate. It is, as has been said, an extremely opportune and timely one.
Recently, in relation to Hong Kong the Government have had three extremely difficult decisions to take. I do not think anyone should underestimate how difficult they must have been. There has been the matter of the determination of the nationality package; there has been the whole difficult question of the Vietnamese economic migrants and the refugees associated with them; and there has been the question of democratization—to use that rather nasty, contrived word—which covers a much larger problem than perhaps is recognised.
On the first two, the Government have already announced their decision. On the third—democratization—they have not yet done so, but it seems that their decision is likely to be taken and announced very shortly. I hope very much that they will accept the proposals of the Hong Kong Legislative Council. They are modest. They are not in any way to be seen as excessive demands. They are the product of much debate and discussion internally within Hong Kong and as such they should carry considerable weight with us here.
Considering this matter reminds us that the United Kingdom Government still have sovereign responsibilities for Hong Kong right the way through to 1997, and it is essential that we are seen to be exercising our proper role in respect of those responsibilities. It would be unfortunate if the impression were to be given that on major matters we were falling too far over towards the views expressed from Beijing. However, that is not to say that we should ignore those views. It is absolutely essential, particularly in respect of democratisation, that we take those views very much into account. Therefore I recognise that there may have to be some form of

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compromise, perhaps over the phasing, over the number of steps which are taken for the introduction of democratisation.
I do not think that we can go immediately, or, as the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt of Weeford, wants to do, go for broke, 100 per cent. It would be much more sensible to go by degrees, because the important thing here surely is not the precise percentage that is taken as a first move but that the first move leads on to subsequent moves and that those subsequent moves and what they enshrine are secured for all time into the future. In other words, what is most important in the terms of democratisation is continuity after 1997, so that we have the commitment of the Chinese Government to back it all the way through and continue its development after 1997.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, made a most interesting and informed contribution on the Vietnamese economic migrants, and he has done tremendous service in the careful study that he made of this subject. It could not have been easy for Ministers—I know he recognises this fact—to take the decision that they did to return a number of Vietnamese economic migrants by compulsory means. I am sure it is right that they did so. If it is now the case, as appears to be so, that there is some form of agreement for a six-month moratorium, I hope that that will at least provide for the treatment to be given to the new influx of refugees that may he expected from March, because it would be foolish indeed for the international community to close their eyes to the fact that more are likely to come as soon as the weather conditions permit.
I also hope that if there has been this agreement which has been signalled to us this afternoon, it indicates that the United States attitude has changed and that no longer will we have what a senior official recently said to me when I was in Hong Kong: "You must remember that for the United States Vietnam is still the enemy". That time is now past and it ought to have been buried in the past. I agree with those who have said that it is time to look ahead, to give economic aid to bolster up, to improve and strengthen the economy of Vietnam in dealing with this difficult situation.
Lastly, I want to say a word on the nationality package. I support very much the proposals of Her Majesty's Government. I believe that we have this commitment in this country which should be honoured and I would be dismayed if, by one means or another, however contrived, another place were to reject the Government's proposals when they come to legislative form. This is the very least we can do and I think that all Members of the other place should support the Government in the decision that they have taken.
What we have to ensure is that we do whatever we can between now and 1997 to secure and promote the economic strength of Hong Kong. I ask your Lordships to compare the successes of Hong Kong, about which we heard earlier today, with the circumstances which have overcome the people of Eastern Europe or those of other states where freedom of the individual is denied.
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In Hong Kong we have a shining example of a free market system with free people. I hope that it will not be too long before the Government of China recognise the fact that even though freedom may carry some risks (and what system does not?) a free people, given free choice, offers a much better prospect of happiness for all their citizens and the opportunity for the security of government. That is what we have achieved in Hong Kong and what we shall shortly be bequeathing to China. It must deserve the inheritance that it is gaining.
6.50 p.m.
Lord Derwent: My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for introducing the debate. The fact that the House shows such a continuing interest in the future of Hong Kong is a positive factor in reassuring the people there that they are not forgotten and abandoned.
Apart from giving myself the pleasure of speaking after the noble Lord, Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke, to whom we listened with the greatest attention, I had not intended to intervene in today's debate until I read the intemperate attack on the Governor printed last Sunday by one of our leading newspapers. The report speaks of "furious British business giants" who are alleged to have described Sir David Wilson as a "puppet of Peking" and to have called for his removal from office. The newspaper's editorial described him as a "lack-lustre errand boy".
I have no direct knowledge of what any British businessman or businessmen may have said to the press and I do not necessarily believe everything that I read. However, as some noble Lords may know, I am closely connected with some of the largest Hong Kong businesses controlled by Hong Kong Chinese people. I declare an interest in that respect. I wish to assure your Lordships that none of my friends would wish to be associated with any such denunciation of the Governor. Indeed, there is considerable admiration for the patient and dedicated way in which Sir David is trying skilfully to advance the cause of the people of Hong Kong. We find it to be profoundly unhelpful when the press or businessmen say anything which may undermine the authority of the man who must negotiate on our behalf with the People's Republic of China.
Tonight I wish to say only that I hope that one of the signals which will go out from this House to the Government in Beijing is that the Governor enjoys the full confidence of all noble Lords.
6.53 p.m.
Lord Bramall: My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sharp, on his most impressive and knowledgeable speech and thank the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for the opportunity to discuss a most important subject.
However much one approves of the historic agreement on the future of Hong Kong after 1997—and I happen to believe that it remains in the long-term interests of its people—this country will, whichever way one looks at it, be handing over more than 4 million people to the tender mercies and ultimate authority of a form of government

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which at the moment, has few if any attractions for the people of Hong Kong. When one sees the way in which people throughout eastern Europe have rejected forms of authoritarian government to which they have not even been handed over but have actually grown up with, we can appreciate what a major step that is.
China's compliance with the spirit as well as the letter of the agreement, giving a large measure of autonomy to Hong Kong for 50 years, will greatly ease the transition and soften the landing. But unless the Basic Law is tightened, excuses could be found to water down that autonomy. After the Union flag comes down and the British armed forces have left there can be no guarantee that China's view of autonomy will be the same as ours or that of Hong Kong.
It is not surprising that we, who took Hong Kong by an act of war and ruled it for 150 years (except for three years), who benefited from, and helped with, the self-generated and manifest success story, and to whose people, therefore, we have deep and binding obligation have some real problems on our hands.
Basically, other than the important problem of refugees which has already been fully covered, these fall into two parts. The first is to whom, and to how many of those who now live and work in Hong Kong, should we give the right of abode in this country? The second is to what extent we introduce soon a predominantly elected democracy as opposed to the merely free society which now exists, albeit in the guise of a benign autocracy.
As regards the first problem, the Government have taken a courageous and, I believe, correct stand. They have done so on the basis that, if certain people had a guaranteed escape route, they would not wish to leave Hong Kong—that is, at least not unless China manifestly shows (and we hope that it will not) that it does not accept the kind of freedom and autonomy which is hoped for if not expected under the treaty—and that they will certainly stay long enough to work towards the handover of a going concern in 1997 which, under the treaty, is our part of the bargain.
Peking, or Beijing, may not like that questioning of its ultimate good faith. However, there is little that it can do about it because in a free society no one can stop people leaving. All that it can do is to threaten, as it appears to have done, that after 1997 anyone so protected by us will not be employed or protected by it. If that happens we must expect all those who have been allowed to come to us or to go to other areas in Europe to do so. But in a world in which all areas are becoming more cosmopolitan I find nothing unacceptable about that. I believe that some people have greatly underestimated the ease with which such friendly, immensely able and innovative people can be absorbed into our society and the contribution that they can undoubtedly make to our general wellbeing. We should be under no illusions about what will hapen. As has been said, we may even have to take more people if something goes wrong.
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The other part of the problem is more difficult, as the right honourable gentleman the Foreign Secretary is no doubt finding, perhaps giving an occasional, cursory thought to his erstwhile literary treatment of another traumatic if hopefully different scenario in Hong Kong in one of his novels.
When I was in Hong Kong during the 1970s it was the conventional wisdom that there could not be an elected democracy there because China would not like it. It was believed that China's particular friends would always have to win such an election and that if they did not all hell would break loose. Sadly, however much we should be moving forward together with China—and no stone must be left unturned to do so—some of that cautionary tale still applies. That is for the simple reason that at this moment, and since the fiasco of Tianaman Square, China fears the repercussions of a truly democratic society within its borders even more than it welcomes the enormous economic advantages of a profitable, foreign exchange earning powerhouse to help with its modernisation.
Of course, in time all those things may change and hopefully for the better. But for the moment, even the direction let alone the timing of any change is uncertain. On the other hand, Hong Kong probably sees such a logical development not only as a sensible way of governing itself freely and effectively over and after the transitional period, but also as an insurance policy within China and internationally against too many liberties being taken with its self-government after we have left. However much Hong Kong seeks to keep out of Chinese internal affairs, a conflict of interest is all too obvious.
As has been said, there may be some negotiable compromise and I sincerely hope that there is. But if not, Her Majesty's Government have the difficult job of deciding where they put their weight and influence. Loyalty and our own political system—the responsibility for Hong Kong is entirely ours—would seem to point to our meeting these most understandable and ultimately inevitably aspirations of the Hong Kong people. If we do, are we prepared for any confrontational situation which may then arise if China sees it as a strong incentive to change and democratise a political system before it is right to do so?
Are we prepared not only to maintain, but if necessary to enhance, a strong garrison in support of the police to ensure that while we are in charge no undue pressures can be put on the citizens of Hong Kong nor liberties taken, as has happened in the past?
If we proceed along this path—and, as my noble friend Lord Wyatt said, we may have no option but to do so—we must have the courage and resources to see it through. On the other hand, in the longer term can Hong Kong be certain that it is in the interests of the people who remain there to embark too early on such a high profile course of constitutional reform in advance of any prospect of changes in China which must in any case one day come about when Chinese goodwill is so fundamental to a harmonious transition? Certainly such political development will always remain a

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good bargaining point. One day, perhaps not too far off, it may be accommodated without friction on either side as China herself becomes, we hope, more democratic. However, only in Hong Kong will it really be possible to tell where this balance of advantage lies and what would be the best timing. For the moment very careful thought and statesmanship are required; and I know well that Hong Kong possesses citizens and public figures with just those qualities and capabilities.
The task of this country is to support in every way we can the true interests of the people of Hong Kong. Our responsibilities do not end when the Hong Kong ship of state has been piloted through the outer reefs and into the grand harbour of Chinese sovereignty; but only when she is safely and happily berthed alongside. There is still so much to do before we have fully met our obligation.
7.2 p.m.
Lord Willoughby de Broke: My Lords, I should like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for initiating this debate. I join with other noble Lords in praising the noble Lord, Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke, for his excellent maiden speech. I declare some sort of fellow interest because I too made my maiden speech on the subject of Hong Kong.
We all recognise what a thorny problem the Government have in Hong Kong, and it is all too easy for us as outsiders to propose, while the Government have to dispose. The question of passports has in particular exercised everyone concerned with Hong Kong. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt, and my noble friend Lord Geddes that this is an opportune moment to congratulate the Government on their resolute stance in the face of strong opposition both in China and, regrettably, in another place. In an ideal world Hong Kong would have wished for more passports, but I believe the Government now deserve encouragement rather than criticism.
Leaving the passport issue on one side, it is now clear that we must answer the need of Hong Kong for a firmly entrenched guarantee of more rapid progress to democratic government. Until June of last year it was possibly true that Hong Kong was vulnerable to the criticism that there was little interest in politics and that representative government was low on the agenda; but that was only partly true. The governor's powers have always been exercised after thorough deliberation with EXCO and LEGCO. There was democracy, if not in form at least in substance. However, the opinion polls, the demonstrations and feedback to members of LEGCO, all indicate great support for a fully elected representative government in Hong Kong sooner rather than later.
This case was eloquently and persuasively pressed by Dame Lydia Dunn and Alan Lee on their recent visit to this country. Their question—and I put it to this House on their behalf—is this: why the hesitancy in granting a limited step forward? What is the bone sticking in the Government's throat that stops them
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from swallowing the OMELCO consensus for a minimal increase to 20 directly elected seats in 1991—as we have heard, that is rather modest and only one-third of the total of 60 seats in the legislative council—and a further increase to half the seats by 1995? This would mean that until 2003 there would not be a fully directly-elected Legislative Council; 13 years from now. That is a far cry from the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt, for 100 per cent. in 1991 and even less than the recommendation of the All Party Foreign Affairs Committee in the summer of last year which recommended that half the seats be directly elected in 1991 and all by 1995. I ask again: why the hesitation?
Our record in granting self-determination has been honourable. Our former colonies in Africa were given their freedom with a Westminster model for democracy as a parting present; in some cases it was with almost indecent haste that they were shown the door to independence with a bare year or two to assimilate and understand an alien system of representative government. We went to war over the wishes of the Falkland Islanders to be free. I understand that we have offered to help Romania organise its first free elections. We endorse freedom wherever we find it. All this is entirely to our credit. Why then do we still haver over the now strongly expressed wishes of the citizens of Hong Kong to participate more fully in their own destiny? Surely we cannot know better than the people of Hong Kong what is good for them. They above anyone else care about the stability of that territory in which they live.
We all realise, both here and in Hong Kong, that there has to be a dialogue with China; but dialogue not monologue. It was very encouraging to hear the words of my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary that this does not mean finding out what China wants and then doing it. It means putting Hong Kong's interests above the fear of treading on Chinese toes. It means not allowing China to eviscerate the joint agreement by altering the provision for an elected legislature. Of course, there has to be dialogue and we have to allow for the concept of "face"; but we too have "face", which is our duty to the expressed needs of the people of Hong Kong who, it is worth noting, were not consulted on their future at the signing of the agreement with China in 1984.
At 30th June 1997 the only protection they will have is what we give them now; thereafter, they will be on their own. How then can we deny them what they ask? They are willing to take the risk. They are not asking us to take the risk for them. This country risks nothing, yet it would help Hong Kong so much if we were to grant what are, after all, limited requests with ready good will rather than having each concession wrung from us as though we were not all on the same side.
I believe that in giving Hong Kong what it now seeks in terms of electoral freedom, the Government would be supported wholeheartedly not only in this House but by all sides in another place and there is nothing that would at this moment be more warmly welcomed in Hong Kong.
7.8 p.m.
Lord Gridley: My Lords, in opening my speech, I should first like to express my appreciation to the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for the Motion moved by him and also great appreciation for the maiden speech made by the noble Lord, Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke. It is a great example of the assistance that can be given in your Lordships' House and of the people of his calibre and experience who come here to give us the benefit of their experience in such situations as we are considering today.
It is customary to make some comment on the speech of the previous speaker and although I do not wish to go over what has already been said in the speeches of other noble Lords this evening, I agree wholeheartedly with what he said about giving the responsibility for the government of Hong Kong to the people themselves long before it is anticipated that they should have it. However, before I come to that, I should like to say that we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for calling attention to the issues involved in returning Hong Kong to China after the year 1997. These issues are bound up in securing the future happiness of the people of Hong Kong and the responsibility lies heavily upon Her Majesty's Government to achieve that, or at least endeavour to do so.
Perhaps I may say that it is not as if the grant of independence to Hong Kong and its procedures follows the pattern observed by Britain hitherto when granting self-government to other member countries when the former British Empire was being dissolved. That procedure has not been followed because it has not been possible to do so. In that procedure, and long before the territories to which I have referred were later advancing towards independence, the people within those areas were being given by the British Empire experience and responsibility within various administrative posts in the progress towards democracy and independence. That progress occurred in the territories for which they were responsible. They lived and worked in those territories while Britain was exercising a light and loose control. That has not been the procedure so far leading up to 1997 when Hong Kong will be handed back to China.
I find myself with a certain amount of anxiety concerning other matters. I refer to the 225,000 people from Hong Kong who will settle in Britain in certain circumstances. I do not believe that the people of this country markedly object to that. However, they tend to say that we, in the parliamentary sense, consider that we should help people who are in difficulties and not consider all the implications involved in a decision of that kind; namely, of absorbing that number of people without difficulty, and besides the question of the British interests involved. That is all I have to say. I have spoken for a very short time. Those are the matters that I wished to bring to the attention of your Lordships.
7.11 p.m.
Lord Butterfield: My Lords, I also add my appreciation and congratulation to the noble Lord,
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Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke, on his very impressive maiden speech. I wish to make his remarks almost the central theme of the few points that I want to make. I congratulate him on the remarkably good internal and international telephone service in Hong Kong, which I have enjoyed. I wish all strength to his equipment and activities on that front.
I am on my feet because I am the chairman of two education trusts in Hong Kong, which means that I spend quite a lot of time talking to young people who wish to pursue higher education in this country or elsewhere in the Commonwealth. I am embracing the importance of information because I find that the students surprise me from time to time with the strength of their feelings about what is taking place in Hong Kong. They have a very real concern that we shall be deciding with Beijing rather than with them in the future.
I was with some of the students at lunch today because they were all anxious that the chairman should entertain them to lunch in time for the Chinese New Year on Saturday. I must convey to your Lordships my surprise that in the past these young people thought that we feared that China might be very upset if we indulged in widespread democracy in Hong Kong. The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, made the point. The students resent, and feel very bitter about, the fact that we have not given them much opportunity to have a voice in their future.
The message that comes through is that all of us who have the opportunity must, whenever we can, give the people of Hong Kong an opportunity to express to us their point of view. I fully support all that the Government are doing. I believe that their strategy so far has been excellent. I am anxious that we improve the intelligence service as best we can. I hope that any noble Lords who get strong signals about a lack of confidence in what we are doing will make sure that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office hears what is in people's minds.
I am sure that all noble Lords who know Hong Kong are aware of how mercurial the situation is there. I believe that is reflected in the dreadful attack on the remarkable Governor, Sir David Wilson, who seems to embody all that is best in what we are trying to do in Hong Kong. He is leaving Hong Kong with a development programme concerning airports, communications, tunnels, education and health which is going to run well into the next century. That is exactly the way one would wish to see a strong man providing leadership and giving people confidence. I applaud all that he has proposed.
One of the interesting features about talking to students, which is inevitable when the students are in this country and therefore less concerned about passports, is that they are now beginning to believe there is more concern in Hong Kong about people having a vote. In a way a vote is more valuable in general to the younger people of Hong Kong than the possession of a passport. As an aside, I must tell your Lordships that I was a little disappointed when I explored the question of where they would like to go it they leave Hong Kong. There is no doubt that the new world, particularly Canada, seems to them

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to be a more glowing home for them and their families in the future. I fear that is because we diminish all the time the amount of money we are putting into research, which is a very important matter for students.
I wish to convey to your Lordships how much we are going to need strong nerves. We shall need to increase our personal information by listening to what these wonderful people of Hong Kong are telling us. We must have strong nerves in being willing to argue out with them whether the line that they are pursuing at any moment is right. Like the rest of us, they are empiricists and great opportunists. I apologise to your Lordships for another aside. A student said to me today: "I understand that your foundation gives £500 a year to the department where I work, but I do not seem to be able to get any of it to travel to London or to go to meetings".
I explained to him that the reason we give £500 to the department where he works is to offset all the incidental expenses that he incurs; for example, for electric light and even soap. As soon as that was explained to him he understood. That is part of my argument for embracing the need for the exchange of as much information as possible in the Far East and Hong Kong. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, made the point that we are just beginning to make communication with Vietnam by using videos in order to try to slow down the flow of the boat people. That is another example of rather late communication with the Vietnamese.
We have heard from noble Lords two instances of the way in which the people of Beijing are prepared to embrace capitalism when it appears to be in their interests. These are pieces of information which we need to build into our own store of knowledge so that we are not blown off course by any unexpected development. The students said that there may be demonstrations in the streets of Hong Kong concerning voting. We shall need strong nerves to support our Foreign Secretary and the Governor if and when that situation comes about.
All the people I know who are involved with education in Hong Kong are absolutely committed to help the people there. My main signal to the students today was to say that all the trustees with whom I am concerned and who are interested in finding scholarship people in Hong Kong want it to be made quite clear that they intend to continue visiting Hong Kong while there is strength in their bodies, and long after 1997. There is no question that any of the people of that kind—any more than, I imagine, industrialists, commercial people and bankers—want to pull out from supporting this wonderful group of people.
7.20 p.m.
Lord Glenarthur: My Lords, of the issues of burning concern in Hong Kong at the moment, I should like to refer to two; the Vietnamese boat people and, almost as briefly, the process of democratisation.
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On the former, the current reduced rate of new arrivals, compared with the scale we saw last summer, should not lull us into a false sense of security. As my noble friend Lord Eden of Winton said, the sailing season will shortly be upon us again. The prospect of a further dramatic influx is all too real. I know from bitter experience how such an influx is likely to test, possibly even more dramatically than last year, the ability of Hong Kong to cope, and at the same time to strain further the patience of people in the territory. Whatever the facilities that might be developed to handle continued arrivals, not to take steps to discourage the continuation or the prospect of a further influx is unsupportable. I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, that the issue is one of international significance.
Voluntary repatriation is only one element in bringing this sad story to a satisfactory conclusion. Moreover, I doubt that its pace could ever be adequate. Beyond that I say only that I should like to examine in detail what has been achieved today at Geneva, glad as I am that agreement has been reached. We all share humanitarian concern for the boat people, but such concern is at least tempered when set against the true reasons for about 90 per cent. of them leaving. I sincerely hope that if there is to be a six-month moratorium on forcible repatriation, it will not lead to a new and damaging influx. I am bound to say that there is a real risk that it might.
I should like to turn now to constitutional reform. For some time the wish of Hong Kong was indistinct on how representative government should develop. There was no clear view about how the proportion and totals of elected and other representatives to compose LEGCO should be made. The Government argued, and it is understandable that they should still argue, that due regard must be given not only to any emerging consensus, but also to the likely impact of any decision upon China and what that impact might mean for the continuity of approach up to 1997 and beyond.
I do not think that we or the Chinese authorities can pretend that the ambiance within which earlier consideration of this issue took place is now the same as it was before 4th June. Not only are the events of those days fresh in all our minds, but since then we have seen dramatic moves towards democracy in eastern Europe. Surely there is a moral dimension in this. It really is difficult to encourage democracy in one part of the world and adopt a more restrained approach in another. Members of LEGCO know that should the Government support their consensus view on constitutional reform, the United Kingdom's opportunity to influence matters if changes are made post 1997 will be non-existent. The force of the argument that adopting the consensus, based as it is partially on a degree of hope, is one of risk and of potentially damaging consequence is absolutely clear to me. I do not believe for one minute that it is lost on the people of Hong Kong. The greatest risk is that what we sign now could be unravelled in 1997, doing unique damage to the progressive mechanism of developing democracy and already transferred sovereignty.

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From all I have heard, however, OMELCO certainly acknowledges this dilemma. It realises that we could not help in that event. So does this not introduce another moral aspect, one of respecting the risks which OMELCO itself acknowledges? The difficulty of reaching a decision on this is all too apparent. I do not go so far as the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt, in suggesting that direct elections should be complete by 1991. But after much consideration it is now my clear belief that we should take careful note of the reasoning behind the OMELCO consensus, and with its clear understanding of the risks of adopting it, endorse it as the right way forward. The issue, as the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, said, requires very careful, measured judgment. Nevertheless, the effect on confidence in Hong Kong of adopting it now will be considerable, and the prospective damage of not doing so, as the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt, said, very real. Like him I suspect that arrangements in place in 1997 will not perhaps be as easy to dislodge as some fear. The balance of argument, I suggest, has tipped measurably in favour of adopting the LEGCO consensus.
7.26 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, some while ago it was agreed that not every speaker would congratulate a maiden speaker on his speech. However, I intend to continue to break the rules, for the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Sharp of Grimsdyke, was so exceptionally brilliant and so extraordinarily relevant and valuable in today's debate that one can congratulate him on his contribution, not just as a matter of courtesy but with the greatest sincerity.
As one would have expected, at the beginning of the debate my noble friend Lord Bonham-Carter, divided the subject into two parts. He dealt with the question of refugees and then with the future of Hong Kong. In dealing with the refugees, he drew on the welcome news which we heard today, though only on television —we have not had it officially confirmed—that there has been a United Nations agreement to a six months' moratorium on compulsory repatriation. This will give a chance for the voluntary scheme, apparently, as the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, indicated, inadequately advertised in the past and inadequately understood by the people concerned, to succeed.
My noble friend also stressed strongly that the reason why so many people who do not pretend to be political refugees want to escape from Vietnam is the stark poverty of that country. Therefore, if we want to avoid a continuation of attempted emigration from Vietnam, it is essential, whatever we may think about the government there and whatever we may have felt about them in the past, that we should get together internationally to do something to relieve poverty there. That would be in the interests of the people of Vietnam and also very much in our interests and in the interests also of the people of Hong Kong. That was my noble friend's message on that aspect of the subject.
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My noble friend said that democratisation in Hong Kong should be speeded up. He referred also to the important question of right of abode in this country and attitudes towards the Government's proposals. My noble friend said today, as he and honourable friends in another place have repeatedly said, that this is essentially a matter to be tackled on an international basis. Surely it is time to make yet another attempt to get our colleagues in the European Community, in the Commonwealth and in the United States to share the problem of giving assurance to the people of Hong Kong. It is very much in our interests and in their interests so to do because what everybody must want and what China must want is that people should stay in Hong Kong and not come here.
I know that what I am about to say has been said before, but it must be underlined. It would be better if it is known by the Chinese that there is somewhere where the passport holders of Hong Kong can go—be it Canada or Australia, it does not matter where it is. We are perhaps a little apt to forget, although we have been told this, that not all the world regards the United Kingdom as the most desirable haven in the world. Indeed, we were told by the noble Lord Lord Butterfield, that the young are rather more interested in going to the wide open spaces of Canada where the monetary opportunities can be found. If Canada can be encouraged to take them, good luck to them. It would ease the problem.
As regards the bargaining of the Hong Kong people with China, not only before 1997 but also thereafter, surely the knowledge that they have somewhere to go will strengthen their bargaining hand. That is the issue. However, if China knows that they have nowhere to go and they have no rights of abode, then the Chinese authorities can grind the people into the ground in any negotiations which take place. But if the people of Hong Kong can say, "If you push us that far we shall go off', China will surely wish to maintain these moneyspinners who, as the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, made clear, contribute such a remarkable amount to the economy of that part of the world.
Once again, we beg the Government not to be frightened about numbers and to give guarantees on an international basis that will make it possible for the people of Hong Kong to put up an effective defence in arguing with the people of China.
I have recapitulated briefly what my noble friend Lord Bonham-Carter said. I did so because I assumed, as I had the task of winding up the debate, that my job would be to reply to the people who opposed the point of view put forward and the issues raised by my noble friend. However, my difficulty is that no one has opposed them. Of course I should say that I noticed there is a total absence of speakers on the Labour Back-Benches. Indeed, the only speaker in today's debate from those Benches will be the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn.
Noble Lords: Lord Ennals has spoken!
Baroness Seear: My Lords, I actually referred to the Back-Benches. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, will reassure us that in the general drift of the arguments which have been put forward today,

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on which there has been such unusual unanimity throughout the House, we should read no significance into the fact that there are no Labour Back-Bench speakers. I hope that he will also confirm that we can be reassured that the Labour Party—the official Opposition—supports the main arguments which have been so powerfully voiced and so strongly supported in your Lordships' House today.
It remains only for me to address the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne—that indefatigable warhorse on the Front Bench. We know that he cannot give us straight answers to these questions today; but the feeling of the House must be plain to him. Can he not say that the Government will at least look at the issue of increased aid to the people of Vietnam? Can he say whether they will respect and perhaps even attempt to extend the period for voluntary repatriation and that they will do a great deal more to ensure that the people concerned know what are the opportunities and conditions? Can he also confirm that the Government will cease to be so frightened about giving rights of abode in this country?
I find it very difficult to understand why this capitalist Conservative Government is so frightened of letting the people of Hong Kong into this country. Indeed, such people seem to me to be the archetypal marketeers and the best source of prospective yuppies, so beloved to the Tory Front Bench, that they could possibly find. Therefore, the idea that such people would be a burden on the country is hard to accept. I would lay a wager that for every person from Hong Kong who comes into this country, there will be two new small businesses within two years of his arrival.
Will the noble Lord please say that the Government are open-minded in this matter, and that they are prepared to change their attitude from the miserable, guarded and nervous attitude which they have adopted up until now?
7.34 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for enabling us to have this debate today, and for his thoughtful and stimulating opening speech. As usual, we have heard a number of expert speeches on the subject. I join noble Lords who congratulated the noble Lord, Lord Sharp, on his maiden speech. He made an admirable and witty speech and spoke with great knowledge, experience and wisdom. We look forward to hearing many speeches from him in the future.
The noble Lord, Lord Sharp, referred to the Foreign Secretary's Statement following his visit to Hong Kong. I shall refer to the main points contained in Mr. Hurd's report. However, before I mention those, I must acknowledge the fact that Mr. Hurd had a very difficult task to perform in an atmosphere of apprehension and uncertainty. He conducted himself with dignity and sincerity. I feel that I must say this even if I do not agree with every detail of government policy. The difficulties facing the Government are complex. I am conscious that they would not be less so if they had to be tackled by a Labour Government. I hope that that remark satisfies the noble Baroness, Lady Seear.
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When the House debated the joint declaration in 1985, we did so in a reasonably relaxed atmosphere, as noble Lords will recall, because we had some confidence that after 1997 Hong Kong as a special administrative region would continue to enjoy essential rights and,
"a high degree of autonomy as well as executive, legislative and independent judicial power including that of final adjudication".
These and other constitutional details are included in the Basic Law which is still under discussion. The tragedy, as many noble Lords have pointed out in their speeches, is that the events in Tiananmen Square shook the confidence of the Hong Kong community and that of the rest of the world. As the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, made plain, it is against that background that this debate is being held.
The Basic Law now under discussion is crucial. It is the Basic Law which will decide the future of Hong Kong. The proposals of OMELCO on the Basic Law appear to me to be reasonable. In last Wednesday's Statement, the Foreign Secretary said that the joint declaration must be made to work. He said:
"An important element in that is the extent and pace of movement to democracy in Hong Kong before and after 1997".—[Official Report, 17/1/90; col. 681.]
We agree with that. But, at that point, Mr. Hurd was not able to go into detail. He said that he would announce a decision within the next few weeks. Moreover, when the Prime Minister spoke to Dame Lydia Dunn yesterday she repeated that assurance. We hope that there will be a constructive outcome and that OMELCO's proposals for the evolution of the Legislative Council can form the basis of the development of a democratic structure in Hong Kong.
The acceptance of the OMELCO formula would give great confidence to the Hong Kong community, especially the financial and business community. OMELCO's recommendation is a modest one because there is a case for all members to be elected by 1995.
The point to note here is that this is well within the provisions and the spirit of the joint declaration. After all, autonomy means home rule, and home rule—that is, except foreign affairs and defence—can operate through the agency of a directly elected legislative council which will in turn help to sustain the outstanding Hong Kong economy which is and which will continue to be so important to China. That point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Diamond, in his speech. We must continue to negotiate with the Chinese Government, but I see no good reason why that government should not accept this, as Mr. Deng himself envisaged two systems of government operating in one country. What is to be the difference between the two systems of government? Further, what difference did Mr. Deng envisage when he made that statement? He must have had in mind the difference which results from the fact that Hong Kong has been a British territory for a long period, and that therefore the influences of Britain in terms of democracy would be felt in Hong Kong.

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We shall await the Foreign Secretary's Statement on democratisation with interest. Perhaps I may assume that he will make it before Easter, which would be helpful. The House will recall that last July Sir Geoffrey Howe said that a Bill of Rights listing the rights and freedoms of the people of Hong Kong would be passed. Can the Minister indicate what progress is being made on that, although I understand that it is primarily a matter for the Hong Kong Government and not for the United Kingdom.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, and other noble Lords dealt with the problem of the Vietnamese boat people. As I have no time to go into detail, I shall merely say that that is an almost intractable problem, and I fully agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, that it cannot be satisfactorily resolved without international understanding and co-operation.
The United States Government have far more responsibility for the state of affairs in Vietnam than the British Government, but Britain is left to find the answer to that awful dilemma.
We have all read the report prepared by my noble friend Lord Ennals and Mr. Timothy Raison. We listened to my noble friend's constructive speech with great interest. The report makes important recommendations. I hope that the Minister will be able to give the Government's response to them when he winds up.
As the steering committee is sitting in Geneva at present, perhaps the Minister can give us the latest information. We are delighted that progress has been made, and, like the noble Lord, Lord Glenarthur, I welcome the agreement on a six month moratorium on forcible repatriation.
The main purpose of the Foreign Secretary's visit to Hong Kong was to explain and to hear the community's reactions to his nationality proposals which he had announced here on 20th December. He then said that everyone he met had said that they hoped the proposals would have made provision for more people but welcomed them because they would keep more people in Hong Kong. The Foreign Secretary had a difficult decision to make. We also know that whatever solution he produced, it would have been open to criticism from some quarter or another. So it has turned out, with Mr. Norman Tebbit especially on his high horse. But the Government's proposed scheme deserves careful consideration. It has some flaws which must be scrutinised carefully when we come in due course to debate the Bill. For example, a points system will be difficult to operate, as we know from long experience. We shall need to go into that system in great detail. A fair system which does not discriminate in favour of the "top bracket" is essential. It seems to me to be our duty to help to achieve that. Like the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, I hope that it will lead to a greater response and readiness from other countries which have far more space than this country. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, mentioned Australia, Canada and the United States. Given time, and patient
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discussion and negotiation, I have some faith that there will be a response from our friends in the Commonwealth and other countries.
We should not forget that there are others whom we must accept, such as stateless persons, war widows (few in number now) and Crown servants under the British Nationality Act 1981, as well as people who would clearly be at risk if they could not leave; but we shall come to those matters again in due course.
Like the noble Lords, Lord Derwent and Lord Butterfield, I should like to pay a tribute to Sir David Wilson, the governor of Hong Kong, for the wise and calm manner in which he has conducted his duties over the past few difficult months. Criticisms of him were not helpful to Hong Kong's future. His recent visit to Peking was not easy. No doubt he had to argue for democratic advance against those who are afraid of it. Things will change over the next few years. I listened carefully to the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, and his proper warning, from his long experience, against over-optimism. We should heed his warnings carefully.
A warm tribute is due to OMELCO; and, as I have said before in these debates, we should all heed its views carefully. In close agreement with OMELCO and the Government of Hong Kong, the Government here must talk, persuade and seek international support for their arguments. I hope that the Government of Japan, whose influence in Peking is significant, is being kept informed. They more than most will appreciate the importance of Hong Kong to mainland China.
Much can be achieved in seven years, as we in Europe know only too well, and if we proceed with patience, determination and a commitment to a just and fair settlement, I believe that we can succeed.
7.45 p.m.
The Minister of State, Department of Trade and Industry (Lord Trefgarne): My Lords, I join with all those who have paid tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for providing this further opportunity to debate Hong Kong at a time when the affairs of the territory are at the forefront of our minds. This evening's debate has once again demonstrated the detailed knowledge and experience which your Lordships bring to bear on matters affecting Hong Kong. I shall try in the time remaining, or perhaps a little less, to answer as many of the specific points as I can.
I must start by reiterating the tributes that have been paid to my noble friend Lord Sharp on his maiden speech. He was, as has been said, drawing upon a great depth of experience and authority on matters concerning Hong Kong and his speech will have greatly assisted your Lordships.
Today's debate has set out clearly the central issues of concern to Hong Kong, which include the continuing and fundamental importance of the 1984 Sino-British joint declaration and the need to maintain a dialogue with China in order to turn the joint declaration into a reality; the need for Britain to do all it can to reassure the people of Hong

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Kong that its commitment to their future remains undiminished, and in particular to control the outflow of talented and enterprising people from the territory; the need to build up a democratic system in Hong Kong in the remaining years of British administration which will develop up to and beyond 1997; and finally, the need to deter a further influx of Vietnamese boat people into Hong Kong this year.
Our fundamental objective is to build a secure future for Hong Kong. We continue to believe that the joint declaration provides the best framework to achieve that objective. No one has been able to suggest a better alternative.
Unlike other British colonies, Hong Kong has never had the prospect of independence. Under international agreements whose validity we have never disputed, 92 per cent. of its territory would revert to China on 1st July 1997. The remaining 8 per cent. could never have been viable on its own. Those are the realities of history and geography that cannot simply be ignored. We negotiated long and hard with China to ensure that Hong Kong reverts to China on the best possible terms.
What Britain achieved in the Sino-British joint declaration was agreement on specific arrangements for Hong Kong's future which would preserve its basic freedoms and way of life for at least 50 years after 1997. Our task now is to ensure that the safeguards in the joint declaration remain real and credible and that the undertakings given in that agreement are honoured. The Chinese leadership has repeatedly confirmed its commitment to the joint declaration and to the concept of one country, two systems. That is something we welcome.
The destiny of Hong Kong is inevitably bound up with the destiny of China. Any viable future for Hong Kong must depend upon successful and secure co-existence with China. That objective is enshrined in the joint declaration.
The firmest guarantee of any agreement is that it is based on common interest. China has a massive interest in Hong Kong's continuing success. Hong Kong provides one-third of its foreign exchange earnings and two-thirds, no less, of its foreign investment. It is China's largest trading partner and its gateway to the whole international system. That huge stake has not been diminished by recent events in China.
Our relations with China are undoubtedly going through a difficult period. It is right that we should seek to rebuild them. There must be a continuous dialogue with the Chinese Government about all aspects of Hong Kong's future.
It is in no one's interests, least of all Hong Kong's, for differences to be aired publicly or, as my noble friend Lord Carrington once said, for our relations to be conducted through megaphone diplomacy. That is why we are keen to return to rational discussion through private exchanges. The fact is that there are many issues related to our joint responsibility for Hong Kong which must be discussed. That is why we have been seeking to maintain a dialogue at various levels through the
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work of the Sino-British joint liaison group and through the recent visits to Peking by Sir Percy Cradock and the Governor of Hong Kong.
As my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary made clear during his recent visit to the territory, there is no question of the Government simply sitting back and letting the clock tick on towards 1997. As we have already demonstrated by the announcement of our citizenship scheme, we have not flinched from taking difficult decisions when these are necessary.
Over 40,000 people emigrated from Hong Kong last year, many of them key professional and business people. This year the figure is expected to be at least 55,000. Continued emigration on this scale would threaten the competitiveness of Hong Kong's economy and the efficiency of its public service. Without the package of measures which we are offering, more people would make up their minds to emigrate. That is something we must try to prevent, not only because we have a duty to Hong Kong but also because if confidence in the territory collapsed completely we could then be faced with a much more serious problem.
We hope that other countries will now follow our lead in offering similar assurances to Hong Kong. Of course Hong Kong is a British responsibility. But it is also an international financing and trading centre and its major trading partners have a strong interest in its continuing stability and prosperity. Some countries have already found ways to give Hong Kong people assurances without their having to leave the territory. This is welcome. We have been taking every opportunity to encourage others to take comparable measures and we shall continue to do so.
Hong Kong is rightly taking a positive view of its own future. An example of this is its plans for a £10 billion airport and port project. This is a major undertaking by any standards and one of the largest projects of its kind in the world. I should like to add that Britain supports these projects because of the positive contribution which they will make to the economy and that our companies are actively engaged in their pursuit. There is an opportunity here for Britain to work with Hong Kong to help it achieve the prosperous future which its energies deserve.
So we and the Hong Kong Government are doing all we can to build up confidence in the future of Hong Kong. But we do not pretend that it is the whole answer. China also has an essential part to play in helping to shape that future. The drafting of the Basic Law has now reached a crucial phase. The outcome of that process is a matter of major concern to the British Government. It will be a Chinese law. But as co-signatories of the joint declaration, we have a responsibility to ensure as far as we can that the Basic Law fully reflects the joint declaration. We have therefore been following the Basic Law drafting process very closely, including the recent meetings in Canton, and will continue to take every opportunity to underline to the Chinese the importance of a Basic Law which commands widespread support in Hong Kong.

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A key section of the Basic Law is the chapter on the future political structure, and this is the focus of intense debate. Discussion of the Basic Law and the provisions for constitutional development after 1997 have also stimulated interest in the pace of democratisation before 1997, which is a matter for decision by the British and Hong Kong governments.
Your Lordships have rightly drawn attention to the strength of feeling in Hong Kong on the subject of democratisation in the territory. A substantially larger number of directly elected seats will be introduced in the elections to the Legislative Council in 1991 than was hitherto envisaged. Our aim will be to ensure that the system we introduce before 1997 is durable and capable of further development after that time.
The best outcome would be one which reconciles the wishes of Hong Kong people for a substantial step forward in 1991 with the continuation and further strengthening of democracy after 1997. We are seeking to reconcile these two because that is clearly the best way. But if the best way is not attainable we shall have to take our own decisions in the best interests of Hong Kong. My right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary has already made clear that the Government will be announcing their intentions very shortly.
The debate has also focused on one of the other immediate concerns of Hong Kong —the heavy burden on the territory of the Vietnamese boat people. Here again, the Government have not flinched from the need to take difficult decisions. In December we authorised the Hong Kong Government to proceed with the mandatory repatriation of 51 Vietnamese boat people. This was not something which we relished. But the plain fact is that Hong Kong cannot be expected to cope indefinitely with an endless stream of migrants from Vietnam, most of whom have no prospect of ever finding a new home. It is therefore imperative that we find effective ways of ending this futile exodus.
I should like now to pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and my right honourable friend Mr. Raison for the determination and dedication they showed in undertaking their arduous mission to Vietnam and for their thorough and comprehensive report. I am pleased to say that their report has been placed in the Library of the House. We are naturally glad that the noble Lord, and my right honourable friend were able to confirm that there is no evidence that the 51 people have been ill-treated since their return to Vietnam.
It is also clear from their report that the message has not yet got across in Vietnam that no country is willing to take those boat people who are found not to be genuine refugees. In this regard, we welcome the report's recommendation for a campaign of education. We shall be studying this and other recommendations in the report very carefully with a view to implementing them as quickly as possible.
Perhaps I may turn now to some of the specific points that have been raised. First, regarding the outcome of the Geneva meeting, I am sorry to say that the statements about that outcome which were
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made by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter —I am sure in the best of faith and in accordance with some press reports that have been received —were both premature and over-optimistic. When he spoke, the conference was still in session. I understand that it has now finished and has failed to reach a consensus.
The United States and Vietnam are still standing out against the consensus. We very much regret that, but we understand that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees now intends, at the request of the committee, personally to carry out a round of urgent consultation. We hope that the United States and Vietnam will subsequently decide not to block what would otherwise be a full consensus.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, also suggested that there might be an international conference on the right of abode. We have already been doing everything possible in multilateral fora and bilateral contacts to rally international support for Hong Kong. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister raised the matter at the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Conference and at the Madrid European Council.
We have taken every suitable opportunity to press our friends and partners to follow our lead in announcing a package of assurances to give people the confidence to remain in the territory. We are certain that this is the best approach and the one most likely to achieve the desired results.
The noble Lord was concerned too about China's attitude to Hong Kong. There is, I must emphasise, no question of appeasing China. We negotiate firmly and tenaciously in the best interests of Hong Kong. Of course, if that does not involve immediate rejection by China, that is an added bonus. But in order to achieve the best results it is essential that we keep our channels open. That was the purpose of Sir Percy Cradock's visit which took place, contrary to some views expressed, with the full knowledge of the Foreign Office and in full accord with the Madrid declaration. That declaration did not in any way prevent contact by senior officials, of whom Sir Percy is one. Indeed, Sir Percy, having served as ambassador in Peking in years past, was a good man to undertake that mission. I can think of none better.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, spoke about the need to end the aid embargo to Vietnam. It is of course desirable that conditions in Vietnam should improve so that its people are happy to stay there. That will require sensible economic policies on the part of the Vietnamese authorities. It is equally clear that international aid will have an important role to play. We are already giving financial assistance to help those being reintegrated back into Vietnam, but in order to qualify for full programme aid Vietnam must demonstrate that it is a responsible member of the international community. It must, for example, be ready to fulfil its responsibilities to its own people by agreeing to take back those screened out as non-refugees who have no future other than in their own country.
My noble friend Lord Willoughby felt that the Hong Kong people had not been properly consulted

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about the 1984 agreement. However, the Hong Kong people were given an opportunity to express their views on the draft joint declaration. A thorough survey was carried out with independent monitors and it was the clear view of the great majority of Hong Kong people that the agreement was the best that could have been achieved at that time.
The noble and gallant Lord, Lord Bramall, suggested that China had ruled out beneficiaries of our scheme for jobs after 1997. The Chinese have said that a small number of top posts will be reserved for Chinese nationals after 1997. I believe they are thinking of a number around 50. That is tiny compared with the 50,000 beneficiaries of the scheme that we have announced.
As many of your Lordships have pointed out this afternoon, confidence in Hong Kong is still at a low ebb. It cannot be rebuilt overnight. We do not underestimate the difficulties involved, but I can give a firm assurance that Britain will defend and promote Hong Kong's interests in any way we can. I do not imagine that we alone can lay the fears of Hong Kong wholly to rest, but Hong Kong and its people have the assurance of our good will, our support and our unstinting effort on their behalf. We are determined to do all we can to ensure that the final chapter in our long administration of Hong Kong is an honourable one and that our last substantial colony passes successfully through the remaining eight years of British rule.
8.2 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I shall not keep your Lordships long following a constructive debate which, broadly speaking, has revealed a like-minded approach among your Lordships to the problems confronting Hong Kong. I wish to thank all those noble Lords who have participated in the debate. I wish to say in particular how much I enjoyed and how much I learnt from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, based on his experience in Vietnam. I found it a great pleasure for once in a while to be speaking in agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Wyatt of Weeford. That is an event which does not occur every day of the week.
The general view, it seems to me, has been one of encouragement to the Government to practise firmness and flexibility in their policies towards Hong Kong and to do everything they can to build up confidence there. There are only three points on which I disagree with what the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, said. On the question of a conference on the right of abode for British citizens in Hong Kong, I am not surprised that in the past there has not been much response to overtures from the Government to our friends. I do not think we can expect a response until we put our money on the table. Having put our money on the table, we shall be in a much better position to ask others to join us in that endeavour.
I am deeply sorry at the news that the United Nations conference on refugees has ended without agreement. One can only hope that the efforts to reach agreement involving the United States and
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Vietnam and the other parties will prove successful. Finally, I was rather disappointed by the noble Lord's response to the proposal, which was generally supported, that the aid ban to Vietnam should be discontinued. He naturally said that to send money to Vietnam until one knew that money was being used in a proper way and until one knew that the government was one for which one could have respect was a dubious policy. However, I can only say that I would prefer to send money to such a government than to send back men. We are prepared to do the latter but I think we should also do the former. This has been, I hope, a useful and timely debate. I shall not keep your Lordships any longer. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Probation Service
8.5 p.m.
The Earl of Longford The Earl of Longford rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what are their plans for the future of the probation service.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, in reflecting on the future of the probation service I pay a strong tribute to its remarkable achievements. I shall quote, with approval, a passage from the document entitled Probation: The Next Five Years. That document was published on behalf of the probation service in July 1987. It states:
"Over the last two decades the probation service has taken on major new tasks: statutory aftercare, including parole, probation work in prison and community service, as well as significant developments in its working approaches and methods".
The probation service can point with pride to great achievements and developments in the period 1979 to 1986. While retaining the confidence of the courts in probation supervision and negotiating its high success rate, the service has achieved a 48 per cent. increase in probation orders. That has increased its proportionate use from 5.7 per cent. of all indictable cases in 1979 to 8.4 per cent. in 1985. Eighty per cent. of people who commence probation complete it successfully. The figures available to me give the House a hasty, superficial picture in statistical terms of the achievements of the probation service. They can really however only be measured in much more human terms.
I, like others here, have at all times supported proposals to expand the role of the probation service, even with its present scale of commitments. I, like others, have always urged that more resources should be made available to it. I have a weighty document published by the Audit Commission. It is entitled The Probation Service: Promoting Value for Money. I shall not deal with that document today. It is concerned with the economics of probation. No doubt noble Lords will wish to consider the document on another occasion or possibly even tonight. However, I must deal with what I consider to be more fundamental aspects of the matter.
One would think that a bright future lay before the probation service. I believe that to be true. One would also think that members of the service would

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approach the 1990s in optimistic mood. That, I am afraid, is far from the case. It is that aspect of the problem on which I shall mainly concentrate. There is widespread apprehension, justified or unjustified, throughout the probation service. That is undeniable. I shall illustrate the situation briefly. I shall quote from NAPO News of October 1989 which states:
"This unifying theme of the government White Paper will be transition from punishment in prison to punishment in the community. The strategy is viewed by many in the Home Office as the most radical government policy on criminal justice since the war. Its success depends on the transformation of the probation service into an agency of social control."
I cannot speak for individuals, but the probation service as a whole is showing itself to be immensely suspicious of what that transformation might involve.
NAPO makes the point, with which I agree, that the success of the government plan will in any case depend on the co-operation of the judiciary. All progress in penal reform in the years ahead depends on inducing the judiciary, by whatever means, to send far fewer people to prison or to send them for shorter periods. I have said that ad nauseam in this House, and others have said the same.
Tonight I shall content myself with calling urgent attention to the programme of sentencing reform. It may be that my acting leader for tonight, my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs, will say more about the Labour Party programme of sentencing reform which has been set out in a new Labour Party White Paper on criminal justice. If that is not discussed tonight it soon will be in view of the number of White Papers and Green Papers coming from the Government. I should add that the probation service itself has recently published an impressive paper on sentencing in the Crown Courts.
I turn now to probation itself. In this House I and others of various parties have more than once expressed approval of the principle of punishment in the community. I cannot imagine a society in which those who break the criminal law are not liable to be punished. If we are to have punishment, as I am sure that we must, it seems to me that punishment in the community —which could be just as severe but much more constructive —is far superior to punishment in prison. There are other aspects of punishment, such as the deterrent effect, which I shall not discuss now. However, if we consider the constructive aspect of punishment, it can work much more effectively in the community than in prison.
I believe that if we set about it in the right way and all parties co-operate we should fairly soon be able to punish in the community 10,000 people who would be in prison under the present system. Can anybody say that in principle if that is feasible it would not be a good result?
Punishment in the community must be constructive. It must be meaningful to the prisoner. Above all, and now we come to the question of who will operate it, it must be compatible with the ideals and the values and traditions that have made the probation service admired so widely not only here
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but all over the world. That is the issue —how we can achieve that double purpose.
The probation service is very suspicious. On the face of it there may seem to be an impasse. Not only the Government but well-intentioned people like myself who have been concerned with penal reform for half a century are convinced that punishment in the community is the way forward. However, if the whole idea repels the probation service how do we move forward?
I have toyed with the idea of some other service. A new service —not the police and not the prison service —might be created to do the job if the probation service would not. I am sure that that is wrong and that madness lies along that road. Therefore we have to think of some way of securing the co-operation of the probation service in giving effect to what seems to me, in principle, to be good ideas put forward by the Government.
That is by no means impossible, provided no one stands on their dignity and we do not quibble over words. As an old university teacher, quibbling over words was for a long time my profession. A habit acquired early in life sticks. However, whether one calls it punishment or something quite different, whether one calls it supervision or surveillance, in the last resort it is important to reach agreement with the probation service as to how to go forward.
That is my message tonight. We —by which I mean the community, although I am speaking in particular to the Government who must act on our behalf—must find a way of giving effect to the idea that in the future thousands of people who have committed serious crimes (because people will go on committing serious crimes) will be dealt with in the community but in a way which the probation service will be proud to handle.
The probation service has achieved a great deal in the past. Perhaps its greatest achievement lies in the future if it can widen and deepen its vision. It is in that spirit that I have opened this debate tonight.
8.17 p.m.
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, as the noble Earl has explained, this short debate is taking place when the probation service is at a crucial point in its history. Like the noble Earl I understand from press reports that the Government have it in mind to publish a White Paper and a Green Paper covering this very topic. I imagine that the Minister will not be able to say very much in advance this evening, not that that is entirely without precedent. This is however an opportunity to put forward views to which the Government will no doubt listen. We may also have the bonus of discovering what the policy of the Labour Party is, a matter on which I remain in some doubt.
I am conscious that much has changed in the probation service since I had some direct involvement with it. Some of the underlying problems about which I used to wonder have not changed all that much. Recent developments in the criminal justice field have now brought those problems to a head, as the noble Earl has so clearly explained.

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I should like at the outset to pay my tribute to the dedicated work which men and women in the service have rendered over the years and are continuing to render. We have indeed much to thank them for.
All the same, it is a service with a number of somewhat remarkable characteristics. Although the Home Office provides most of the money, it has only a limited responsibility for saying how the service should operate. The local authorities put up a very modest proportion of the total but have a large share in settling the size of the service. The courts have no financial responsibility, but it is they who in practice decide how the service should be used. The lines of accountability are hazy.
The 56 separate probation areas and their probation committees can still to a considerable extent pursue their own separate ways. Although there is a great deal of good local experimentation and enterprise, the pattern varies greatly and the arrangements for evaluating those enterprises and making knowledge more generally available leave something to be desired. There can hardly be said even now to be an overall strategy.
Although a great deal of valuable work is undoubtedly done, for example, in preparing reports to the courts and in supervising discharged prisoners —a point crucial to the Carlisle Committee recommendations —the fact remains that in this country, as elsewhere in the world, it has proved extraordinarily difficult to evaluate the success of much of the work. The Audit Commission report to which the noble Earl referred suggests for example that over the past 10 years —it says over the last decade, but the decade has not yet ended —the fact that there have been more probation orders by the courts is mirrored by the fact that there have been fewer fines and other minor penalties, rather than because of any reduction in the number of those sent to custody.
There have been previous crises. I recall that, when we went in for prisoners' after-care and prison welfare services, there was quite an argument then for setting up a separate service or adding those functions to those of the prison service before it was in the end decided to entrust them to the probation service. When the committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Seebohm was considering the future of the local government social services, the rather rough people then in charge in the Home Office warned him off the grass so far as the probation service was concerned. However, I suspect that, if he had been given a free hand, he might possibly have recommended the course of action which has been taken in Scotland where, as I understand it, the probation service has ceased to have a separate existence and has been rolled up with the other local government social services. When community service was introduced here, there were some tremors about the probation service taking on any responsibility for something which has a punitive tinge to it. Even now, the individual who is required to undergo community service does not do so under the direct supervision of a probation officer.
I realise that the Home Office has for some time been wrestling with problems of financial control
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and accountability, the targeting of resources —to use the modern jargon —setting out objectives and principles and measuring performance. But the present crisis goes deeper than that, and I fear that it cannot be solved by the choice of suitable words.
The Government are, very properly, concerned that too many people in this country are sent to prison and have been looking around for new methods of treating offenders in the community, as they explained in their Green Paper Punishment, Custody and the Community which we discussed in some detail on an earlier occasion. That Green Paper has been followed up by experiments in, for example, electronic monitoring or tagging.
However, as I understand it, the Government believe that the courses outlined in the Green Paper will provide effective alternatives to custody only if they are regarded by the courts and the public as being not soft options but forms of punishment. The Government have given a clear sign that, if the probation service will not go along with the idea of enforcing sentences which, although they do not involve custody, are nevertheless punitive and intended to be seen as punitive, they are prepared to consider establishing a new service to administer those new penalties. If that happened, it would be inevitable that that new service would take over some of the existing responsibilities of the probation service.
I am not privy to Home Office thinking, but it would not altogether surprise me if there were contemplation that if, after all, those new responsibilities were entrusted to a refreshed probation service, it might be best to tackle the problems of accountability and inconsistencies between the different areas by going in for some form of nationalisation. After all, the Home Office could claim to have denationalised the national fire service at the height of the Labour Party's enthusiasm for nationalisation. What better department could there be than the Home Office for going in for a spot of nationalisation now? But all that is pure speculation and may be totally misconceived.
To return to my main theme, that punitive approach must be anathema to the ordinary probation officer, with all the traditions of the service since the early years of the century and its origins in Victorian times. It is not all that much of an exaggeration to say that the individual probation officer is likely to see much of his present responsibility as being to supervise the return to the community of one who has finished his punishment or, alternatively, as looking after the well-being of someone who has been entrusted to his care as an alternative to punishment.
It is a painful dilemma. On the one hand, can the probation service depart from its traditions and philosophy and accept that it should adopt a changed role in carrying out the Government's new policies of punishment within the community and face the prospect of substantial changes in its organisation if it agrees to go down that road with the possible benefit of more staff and more money; or, alternatively, is the solution to turn aside from the probation service and to create some kind of new

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service to discharge those novel responsibilities? If that second course is followed, would not the justification for a separate probation service be considerably diminished? Would not the arguments for following the Scottish precedent and putting the service along with the other local government social services be correspondingly strengthened?
I am the last person to underrate the difficulties, but I hope that the leaders of the service will in the end opt for the first of those hard choices and that they will be able to bring the individual members of the service to accept that decision.
8.28 p.m.
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, it always gives me great pleasure to follow my old boss in any debate in this House, but particularly on this occasion, because the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, has made a particularly thoughtful speech, with the contents of which I agree without reservation. Like him, I welcome the fact that the noble Earl put down this Unstarred Question, although the debate is taking place only a relatively short period before the Government publish their White Paper on criminal justice policy.
I want to raise three issues tonight: first, the Home Offices's statement of national objectives and priorities for the service which was published in 1984 and the degree to which the statement has been accepted by the service; secondly, the further development of non-custodial alterations to imprisonment; and, thirdly —an issue touched on specifically by the noble Lord, Lord Allen —the relationship between the service and government. That seems to be a matter of exceptional importance at this moment for the reasons explained by the noble Lord, Lord Allen.
By way of introduction let me say that we are discussing these issues at a time when it appears that prison numbers may have peaked, for the time being at least. Nevertheless, the numbers still held in custody are alarmingly high, conditions in many prisons remain squalid (as was demonstrated in our debate on the chief inspector's report on Wandsworth Prison) and there is the clearest evidence that imprisoning defendants unnecessarily is likely to increase rather than diminish the future level of crime.
It is self-evident that these problems cannot be resolved unless we succeed in diverting large numbers of defendants from custody. That cannot be achieved unless the probation service enjoys the full confidence of the courts, has adequate resources and deploys those resources intelligently. That brings me to the first issue that I want to raise: the Home Office statement of national objectives and priorities.
As the noble Earl will be aware, the statement sets out three principal tasks for the service: first, the provision of reports to the courts, which may include reasoned advice on sentencing; secondly, supervising offenders subject to probation supervision and
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community service orders; and, thirdly, providing through care for offenders sentenced to custody and exercising supervision after release in cases where required by law. In short, the service is seen primarily, though not exclusively, as a criminal justice service.
The statement does not argue that the service's civil work should be entirely dropped. However, it says:
"The proportion of resources allocated to civil work should be contained at a level consistent with local circumstances and the foregoing priorities".
I agree entirely with that view. I know that many probation officers do most valuable work in the civil courts. In some cases at least they often enjoy it a great deal more than work in the civil courts. In the civil courts they are often concerned with making extremely difficult decisions in highly sensitive cases and long hours of work are involved. But that work is performed entirely on behalf of the Lord Chancellor's Department because the Home Secretary has no responsibility for work in the civil courts.
I find it distinctly odd that the probation service should still continue to do this work without receiving any financial support from the government department on whose behalf it is working. I believe that this issue deserves a great deal more consideration than it has received in the past. On the wider issue —that is, the national statement —I should like to put to the noble Earl this question: are the Government satisfied by the response of the service to this statement of national objectives? It is a highly important document. When it was published it was welcomed unreservedly by many Members of this House in the debate that we had at that time.
However, the noble Earl will be aware that the National Audit Office, in its relatively recent report published in May last year, raised some serious questions as to how far the statement of policy made by the Home Office on that occasion had been adopted by the service. The issue is dealt with in paragraphs 2.9 and 2.12 of the National Audit Office report. I should be grateful for anything that the noble Earl could say on that point.
I turn now to the question of non-custodial alternatives to imprisonment, which we have discussed in this House on many previous occasions. I think that we all would certainly accept that community service has been an outstanding success. It was introduced on a trial basis by the Government of Mr. Heath. It was extended to the rest of England and Wales by the succeeding Labour Government, who also provided the resources for that extension. I believe that we all accept that it has been one of the most hopeful developments in penal policy since the war. I remember having a slight difference of opinion with the noble Earl, Lord Longford, not long after the extension of community service. We had an argument in this House about how many people had in fact been diverted from custody as a result of the introduction of community service.
The Earl of Longford: My Lords, did my argument turn out to be right?
Lord Harris of Greenwich: My Lords, I think that the evidence was ambiguous, as it always is when one looks at criminal justice statistics. I am sure that we all accept that many thousands of people have been diverted from custody as a result of community service. There is no doubt that without it the prison system might well have faced the breakdown which so many people have anticipated during the last decade. So much for community service.
I should like to ask about progress in two other areas which are highly relevant to the work of the probation service. First, where are we now so far as bail information schemes are concerned? I know that there has been substantial progress. Such schemes have been introduced in the areas of 50 magistrates' courts and I understand that extensions are planned. However, I think that one should ask how long it will be before these admirable schemes, which are undoubtedly having a beneficial effect on the size of the remand population, can be extended to the rest of England and Wales.
I believe that the Association of Chief Probation Officers estimated that in the areas concerned where these schemes have been introduced there has been a 13 per cent. trend in favour of bail in respect of defendants who have appeared in court for the first time. That is encouraging but I repeat that what we want to know is how long it will be before such schemes can be introduced in the rest of England and Wales.
Speaking entirely for myself at this point, I find it extremely disappointing that such schemes, which were introduced on an experimental basis in the 1970s, did not make greater progress. I am afraid that the reason for that was the strong resistance to the work of volunteers in the courts by many members of the probation service in the three experimental areas which were set up during the lifetime of the Labour Government. It was on narrow trade union grounds of that sort that these schemes did not proceed further. Unfortunately, as a result of that opposition many people went to prison unnecessarily. That is another reason why I very much hope that the probation service at all levels will be as positive as possible when reacting to policy initiatives —I hope well-meaning—by the Government.
The other non-custodial disposal to which I want to refer is far more controversial. It is the question of tagging. I know that many people in the probation service, and, it has to be said, outside it, oppose it resolutely —indeed, without any form of qualification at all. Yet were it to be established that tagging of defendants led to a situation in which fewer defendants were in custody, would it be right to continue to oppose in principle the introduction of tagging? My own answer to that question is: no, certainly not.
My noble friend Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge unhappily cannot be with us tonight. With his notable record in the field of penal reform, he has asked me to say that he would support the principle of using it for category C prisoners on the governor's recommendation and at the prisoner's express request, thus shortening the period of incarceration
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of the individual concerned. However, the case has still to be proved. Neither of us would support it unless there were clear indications that there was a serious prospect that it would reduce the number in custody. After the evidence from Nottingham, it is obviously right to proceed with further experiments before coming to a firm decision on the introduction of tagging in the remainder of Britain.
I come now to my third and final point: the relationship between the probation service and government. It is inevitable that there will be a row from time to time between the probation service and any government in this country. Of course there will be. It is altogether healthy to have vigorous arguments in public over questions of penal policy. But nothing would be more damaging than to allow these differences to lead to a situation in which the service threatened a policy of non-co-operation. In my view there have been far too many such threats in the past.
There was the fierce opposition —which was alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale —by some members of the probation service at the time of the introduction of community service which has undoubtedly diverted thousands of offenders from prison. Al other times there were suggestions that they would refuse to supervise certain categories of offenders. And there was the folly —and it was folly —of the one-day strike ignored by the majority of members of the probation service, but undermining its reputation as a caring profession and, I fear, damaging itself substantially in the eyes of the judiciary.
In the situation that I have described there is certainly a corresponding requirement that government should listen seriously to the views of the service and not seek to impose highly controversial policies on an unwilling probation service unless there is clear evidence that the public interest so requires. I believe, as do both the noble Earl, Lord Longford, and the noble Lord, Lord Allen of Abbeydale, that the probation service has immense opportunities before it. There is now widespread public agreement that our prison population is intolerably high and that steps must be taken to reduce it. The principal vehicle for that change can only be the probation service. It has been given substantial additional resources both by this Government and by their predecessor. I hope that the service will seize this moment of opportunity.
8.44 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, it is a very great pleasure for me to speak from the Front Bench in support of another attempt by my noble friend Lord Longford to bring attention to some improvements to some aspects of our penal or prison system. I am very glad —it has been echoed —that he gave such a well deserved tribute to the work and achievement of the very important and dedicated service that we are discussing this evening.
I was very interested, and thought it very relevant, to hear the noble Lord, Lord Allen, stress that the probation service was at a very crucial period of its existence. He then traced the movement of the

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probation service from its inception and described how it has moved towards taking on more responsibilities. That points to the fact that there is now the fear that the service is on a slippery slope and has moved too far away from the purpose which it took up in the first place.
From everything that has been said this evening, and from what we know, there is very little doubt that probation plays a vital role in our penal system. In such a debate as this it is important to re-assess the different parts of our criminal justice and the roles that they undertake in dealing with crime. First, we use custody in order to punish the offender, and —and many people think this very important —to provide deterrence, and a reflection of society's condemnation of wrongdoing. I believe that most people would say that the second objective —that of reflecting society's condemnation of wrongdoing —is achieved more effectively by custody than the first objective of deterrence. There is unequivocal evidence of a re-conviction rate of 60 per cent. within two years of those convicted for a custodial sentence. That is very high indeed.
Probation services start from the same standpoint: it is working towards a deterrence of offenders and therefore towards the protection of the public. However, they try to achieve the same goal but by an entirely different route. It is important that one approaches whatever the problem by a variety of different routes. The position is exactly the same if someone has an extremely bad headache. Some might take half a dozen aspirin and have a nasty stomach ache afterwards; and others might try to decide why they have a headache and to find some remedial system to deal with it and to prevent it happening again.
As has already been described this evening, members of the probation service are concerned that their methods of providing assistance, advice and supervision will be undermined through being asked to administer an additional system. It is described in the Green Paper, Punishment Custody in the Community; that is one of surveillance and monitoring. They feel very keenly from everything that I have heard that their traditional role must be kept entirely separate from the administration of punishment. The two should never be allowed to overlap.
The yardstick for the success of the probation service is impressive, although, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has said, it is very difficult to evaluate. Nevertheless, the re-conviction rate among those following probation orders is 40 per cent. However, more significantly there have been studies that have shown that non-custodial sentences for comparable offences have a better result than prison sentences. There has been certain evidence that that is true. Moreover, the probation service is not convinced that some of the methods mentioned in the Green Paper, such as electronic tagging, tracking and intensive probation, will produce good results. In fact, they believe that they might even have the negative effect of increasing the number of breaches. Whatever the noble Lord, Lord Harris, has said —and I quite understand his point —with regard
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to the need for further experimentation with electronic tagging, he may agree with me that so far the experiment does not look very successful. As many as 60 per cent. of those tagged have breached already. That is a high level of failure. When one looks at the American experiment, it is significant that electronic tagging, although begun there, has been used extremely little. The probation service feels that the focus on punishment is already well met by the excessive use of custody, and that it is the alternative remedial services that it provides to deter re-offending which need strengthening. This is a view which has a great deal of support.
That is the first point; namely, that the Green Paper suggests that the probation service should be asked to administer a new order, thereby going down a more punitive path, in spite of the fact that the punishment process is utterly alien to the service's outlook. So the first question to the Minister is: what exactly do the Government want the probation service to do? On the one hand, the Government appear to be telling it that it is doing an excellent job; and, on the other hand, they seem to be suggesting a change in its traditional role. So it is a very valid point that there seems to be an inconsistency in the attitude of the Government towards the probation service and there is a lack of clarity on which I hope we shall be getting some answer this evening.
The next source of unease in the service comes from wondering what will be in the criminal justice White Paper and in the further Green Paper. This is most significant, for the service and the changes to its structure that might be contained are of immense importance. As the noble Lord, Lord Allen, has said, the Minister will no doubt tell us that we shall have to wait and see, that we shall have to wait for the criminal justice White Paper. But the anxieties as to the number of probation areas which might be changed and which will affect officers' jobs, and the fact that the level of Home Office control might change are of fundamental importance to the service. Therefore there is very little mystery as to why there is a great deal of undermining of morale within the service, which my noble friend Lord Longford mentioned this evening.
I should like to make two brief points in conclusion. First, I should like to mention the views of New Bridge, of which I am chairman, which was founded by my noble friend Lord Longford, and which carries out work which is supportive of the probation service through its befriending service and its employment service. An organisation which is a voluntary agency is able to go further, as it can be more innovative in its approach and its volunteers can also become more involved with the offenders with whom it works.
There is little doubt that New Bridge would be most concerned to see the probation service joining the punishment process, as it believes this would go right against the whole concept and ethos of the probation service which it as an organisation always has had. Moreover the Penal Affairs Consortium, made up of 16 agencies working in penal affairs and which now has a very strong voice, certainly recognises full well the difficult job facing the probation officers. Those agencies are

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organisations which are very well placed to do so. They acknowledge the important role in keeping down the number of people in custody which is carried out by the probation service, and all 16 agencies agree that there should be increased funding for the service. That has also been mentioned this evening.
My other brief point concerns the Labour Party's White Paper on criminal justice which my noble friend has already mentioned. They comment at length on expanding the probation service. They recognise the contribution of the probation services in providing effective and constructive alternatives to custody. They envisage an expanded probation service; expanding not at the expense of other alternatives to custody, which has so often been the case in the past, but taking an increased percentage of those offenders now in prison.
However, the paper adds that they feel that the service needs to communicate more effectively with other agencies and, in particular, with those who pass sentences, if it is to win greater acceptance of its approach to tackling offending. The paper also refers to the range of flexibile alternatives to custody already in existence, and how the availability of these options varies from area to area, and it states that the full range of non-custodial sanctions should be available to all courts.
It too, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, mentioned, talks of reforming the bail process and mentions the provision of more bail hostel accommodation, the establishment of bail information schemes at magistrates' courts throughout the country and ending the 28-day custodial remands introduced by the Government. There are many other points which it makes, but naturally I shall not go into them this evening.
Finally, may I ask the Minister whether he really will answer the questions put to him this evening? Will he also explain why the Government have adopted such a confrontational style with the service, as has been mentioned already this evening? Why instead do the Government not concentrate on strengthening the service by, for example, following up some of the Audit Commission's recommendations? That has also been put forward by all speakers this evening. Moreover, why do the Government also reserve so much criticism for the probation service and never find anything wrong with the judiciary? It, after all, plays a very important part in the criminal justice system and certainly comes in for blame from certain quarters. Again, the Labour Party in its document refers to its commitment to establishing a sentencing council.
So there has been clear agreement this evening that the probation service is vital, that it must be improved and not undermined, and that for the Government to stress the word "punishment" seems unnecessary, for everyone would agree that there is a punitive element already in a probation order. None of us would be particularly happy to serve a probation order.
So why are the Government insisting on stressing that word "punishment"? One can only believe that it must be because some element in the Conservative
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Party wishes to be appeased, that there are certain Back-Bench MPs who would like to think of there being punishment rather than another form of dealing with criminality. There are also certain ladies at the Conservative Party conference, and on the tabloids, which are very strong influences.
However, stressing the word "punishment" is completely indigestible to members of the probation service and goes right against their view of their traditional role. So I think all speakers this evening have said that they would like to see the probation service expanding if it is necessary to take in these orders, but that the confrontation really goes against some successful accord with the service. So we ask the Government to try to come to that accord, and I very much look forward to the Minister's answer as to what are the Government's plans for the future of the probation service.
8.58 p.m.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Earl Ferrers): My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Longford, for having introduced this debate on the future of the probation service. The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, said, as she sat down, that she hopes I would provide all the answers this evening. She knows full well that I will not provide all the answers this evening if there is likely to be a White Paper and a Green Paper in a short while. It would be more than my life was worth. But I shall do my best to answer such questions as I can, and to put your Lordships into the picture of how we feel the probation service is going and the sort of guidelines we feel it ought to follow in the future.
The probation service, as we all know, plays an important role in the whole of the criminal justice system. It is, after all, responsible for supervising all those offenders whom the court places on probation or on community service, and all prisoners who are released on parole. It is a very important part of our system. It is crucial therefore that the courts and the public should have confidence in the probation service and in what it does.
The basis of our present thinking was set out in the Green Paper, Punishment, Custody and the Community, published in July 1988. The document argued that those who commit serious and violent offences should continue to be sent to prison for long periods. We have ensured that tough sentences are available to enable the courts to do that. But the offences of some who break the law are far less serious and they could effectively be punished in the community. I believe that in general your Lordships would agree with that. However, I noticed that the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, did not believe that we should use the word "punish". Her noble friend Lord Longford had no hesitation in saying that he thought that people should be punished and that there is nothing wrong in punishing because it is giving retribution. Our view is that there is scope for doing that in the community.
The advantages of a community penalty are that offenders are not removed from society and placed in the company of hardened criminals. They can

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perform work of real value to society through a community service order. They can be made to discuss their wrongdoing and be shown ways of avoiding further offending by attending a day centre as a condition of a probation order, for example, and by remaining in the community. By doing so they are better able to learn self-control and take responsibility for their actions. In many cases a community penalty may be a more effective way of keeping them away from crime in the future than would be a prison sentence.
I do not believe that any noble Lord would disagree with that view. The probation service has developed a considerable degree of expertise in helping the offenders whom it supervises to come to terms with their offending behaviour and to see how it can be avoided in the future.
One of the aims of the Green Paper was to increase the number of offenders punished in the community as opposed to being sentenced to custody. In order to do that we need to convince the courts that probation and community service are not soft options. That entails developing methods of supervision which are appropriate for the more persistent but, nevertheless, less serious offender who at present goes to prison. That work is not dissimilar to the work already done by the probation service with the offenders under its supervision who otherwise would normally have received custodial sentences. It means that the officers in the probation service must put a greater emphasis on the control of offenders but not at the expense of their other skills.
The noble Earl, Lord Longford, approved of the words "punishment in the community." The punishment lies in the restriction which it imposes on the liberty of the offender and the demands which it makes on him. A community service order may require an offender to give up many evenings and weekends when he or she would rather be doing something else. The work should be demanding and it may be difficult. A probation order may have conditions attached to it which require an offender to report to a probation officer at a day centre several times each week. It is not easy for anyone to have to face up to their wrongdoing and the effects which it may have on other people. It is a salutary experience to have to do so.
The Green Paper published in 1988 initiated a wide-ranging debate on the best way to deal with such offenders and the role of the probation service. We have considered the many responses that we received. As noble Lords know, and as the noble Lord, Lord Allen, reminded us, we hope to publish our proposals shortly.
As did every speaker, the noble Earl, Lord Longford, referred to widespread apprehension within the probation service. I hope that that is not so and I agree that we must find a way forward. The noble Lord, Lord Allen, also referred to that matter, as did the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who hoped that the probation service would be as constructive as possible. I agree with him. The noble Lord also hoped that the Government would listen to the views of the probation service. Indeed, we shall.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, said that punitive measures should be separate from the work of the probation service. The effectiveness of our criminal justice policies depends to a large extent on the probation service. If punishment in the community is going to work —and we all want it to work —there must be a shift of emphasis and a new style of probation officer; that is, one who is conscious of his or her role as an officer of the court as well as of his or her traditional duty to advise, assist and befriend offenders. Those roles are not dissimilar but a shift of emphasis is required.
The probation service of the future needs to exercise authority and care over those whom it is called upon to supervise. The noble Lord, Lord Allen, asked whether there should be a new service and whether we should follow the Scottish pattern and allow it to become part of the local authority services. The noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, asked what the Government want the probation service to do and said that we must not be confrontational. It is not our desire to be confrontational but one cannot have a change in the system if one does not also have a change in attitude. As I have said, it is a question of shifting the emphasis.
It is not the view of the Home Office that there should be a new service, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Allen. We do not intend to set up a new service. But we should like to bring the working practices in every probation area up to the standard of the best. There is no point in destroying what is good. We see a considerable future for the probation service if it can grasp the challenge of carrying out punishment in the community—
Lord Allen of Abbeydale: My Lords, I wish to point out that the idea of setting up a new service was not mine but one that derived from the Green Paper.
Earl Ferrers: My Lords, I did not mean to imply that it was the noble Lord's idea. I meant to imply that he asked the question.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, asked what would be the impact of the statement of national objectives which was issued in 1984. The impact has been good. The Audit Commission said that, overall, the statement had a profound effect. It has accelerated the move from a service consisting of a loose network of independent practitioners to a much more coherent organisation with a clearer pattern of management.
The noble Lord also asked whether the probation service should receive financial support from the Lord Chancellor's Department for its civil work. The financing of the probation service is one of the issues concerning the organisation of the probation service which we will examine following the publication of the White Paper. I am bound to say that there are no plans at present to receive support from the Lord Chancellor's Department.
Both the noble Baroness, Lady Ewart-Biggs, and the noble Lord, Lord Harris, referred to tagging or, more appropriately, electronic monitoring. The

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success of electronic monitoring so far has been that the results of the pilot projects are coming through and are being carefully evaluated. We want to assess the results of all these experiments before we decide what the next steps will be.
I said that the courts need to have confidence in the value of what the probation service does; and so they do. We have sought to increase the courts' confidence in one sphere, through the introduction on 1st April 1989 of the national standards for community service. These represent an attempt to ensure that the best of local practice in community service is implemented throughout the country, and that a community service order will make consistent and tough demands on every offender who is sentenced to it. The evidence we have is that the probation service is changing in order to accommodate these standards and we hope that the courts will recognise this; but it is as yet too early to say what effect the standards have actually had on the sentencing decisions of the courts.
We have also tried to increase the confidence of the courts in the way in which the probation service deals with young adult offenders —those who are aged between 17 and 20 and who are at risk of going to prison.
Shortly after the Green Paper came out we issued a document called Tackling Offending, which urged local probation services to review their policies and practice in relation to this group of offenders —the 17 to 20 year-olds. We asked each probation area to draw up an action plan which would concentrate on those offenders who are most at risk of going to prison; provide individually-tailored programmes of supervision to address each offender's wrongdoing; aim at arrangements for closer co-operation with other agencies who are working in the criminal justice system; and monitor the results of probation efforts to see how effective the action plan is in diverting offenders away from custody and in reducing reoffending.
Most of the 56 area probation services have sent us copies of their action plans, and they are implementing them locally. Again, however, it is too soon to say what effect they have had. There will need to be other changes in the way in which the probation service operates. Many probation officers are themselves, I think, aware of this.
The recent Audit Commission report on the service identified some scope for concentrating the efforts of the probation service more specifically on offenders who are at risk of custodial sentences. The report also suggested that the service could make progress in demonstrating the effectiveness of probation programmes in reducing reoffending; in disseminating examples of good practice more effectively; and in aiming for more effective working relationships with other agencies.
Nevertheless, the service is in good shape, and its achievements over the past decade give us an encouragement for the future. My right honourable friend the Minister of State recognised this in a letter which he sent to the Association of Chief Officers of Probation just before Christmas.
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The service is supervising more serious offenders. The proportion of those who are on probation and who are known to have had a previous custodial sentence has risen from 20 per cent. in 1979 to 36 per cent. in 1988. The number of offenders who are beginning probation has increased by 52 per cent. since 1979, while the proportion of offenders who were sentenced for indictable offences and who received a probation order has increased from 6 per cent. in 1979 to 9 per cent. in 1988. The number of offenders who are receiving community service orders has increased by 122 per cent. since 1979. The recent decline in the remand population —down by 1,200 in the 12 months to October 1989 —may in part be the result of the increased numbers of bail information schemes and bail hostels which are available.
The noble Lord, Lord Harris, wondered whether I could give him any information on those schemes. We find it encouraging that bail information schemes are developing as well as they are. They are at present operating in 45 courts in England and Wales on a full or part-time basis and provision has been secured for schemes in more than 100 courts by April 1992. We are also examining how the bail information schemes and accommodation networks can best be integrated.
An extensive development programme is already under way to provide an additional 1,000 bail places at approved hostels by April 1993. I am glad to say that more than 150 places are already on stream. All this shows that more people are now serving their period of punishment in the community. In short, over the past decade, the probation service has dealt increasingly with more serious offenders and it has taken on a higher proportion of those who are sentenced for indictable offences. In my view, all that is good progress.
We are looking to the probation service to build on this in the next 10 years, and to draw confidence from its achievements to date in order to meet the new professional and organisational challenges which the future will bring. In all this, we recognise that the work of the probation service has increased greatly over the past decade. The probation service obviously needs sufficient resources to do its job properly, and my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made provision in his Autumn Statement for nearly 300 more probation officers and ancillaries in the year 1990–91. This is an increase of nearly 4 per cent. on current staffing levels.
Central Government expenditure on the probation service rose by 51 per cent. in real terms between 1979–80 and 1988–89. On top of this, we have provided for an increase in the specific grant which is payable to local authorities in support of capital and current expenditure on the probation service from £184 million in 1989–90 to £206 million in 1990–91.
It is important that the probation service of the future should have the resources which it needs in order to cope with the increasing demands which will be made of it. These increasing demands are, I suggest, a mark of the confidence which we feel in

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its capacity to do the important work for which it was set up. We have seen very considerable progress in what has been done. We hope that there will be more progress in the future.
I have done my best to answer the noble Earl's very important Question today within the constraints which inevitably apply. As the noble Earl knows, the Government intend to issue a White Paper shortly, and it would be peculiarly imprudent, and indeed unwise, of me to trespass on what it
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might say, and, even worse, to divulge it. However, I hope that what I have been able to say will at least have given some indication of the guiding principles on which it will be based.
The House will I know be grateful to the noble Earl for once again having displayed his assiduity and knowledge of a subject on which he is known to have such a keen and intense interest.
House adjourned at seventeen minutes past nine o'clock.