Lords Sitting of 20 March 1991

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

Gulf War Costs: Japanese Contribution
Lord Annan Lord Annan asked Her Majesty's Government:
What financial contribution Japan has made to defray the cost of the allied forces in the Gulf, and in particular that of the British forces.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, Japan has made two contributions. The first was of approximately 2 billion dollars, of which the United Kingdom received 50 million dollars. The second was of 9 billion dollars.
Lord Annan: My Lords, does the noble Earl consider that to be an adequate contribution from that country when compared with the contribution made by Germany, having regard to the fact that Germany has faced great financial difficulties over unification and also given very considerable amounts to governments in Eastern Europe? Surely the Foreign Secretary should make representations to the Japanese Government suggesting that they could possibly now do more.
The Earl of Caithness: No, my Lords, I disagree with the noble Lord. I think that it is a very generous contribution.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that it would be more equitable if contributions from Japan and other non-participating countries were made to the coalition under the auspices of the United Nations as a whole and were then divided between the participating countries pro rata according to their individual costs?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we believe that it is for the countries concerned to announce their contributions to whichever country or group of countries they wish. The Japanese contributions have been made to the Gulf peace fund.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, can the Minister say how that will work in practice? Will it be beneficial to the United Kingdom and what is allotted to us? The United Kingdom has made a very substantial contribution to the Gulf conflict and we must defend our interests in this matter.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we certainly seek to defend our interests in this matter. So far the Japanese have made two contributions. We know how the apportionment of the first one was made and out of that 2 billion US dollars we received 50 million dollars. We do not know the apportionment for the second tranche.
Lord Harmar-Nicholls: My Lords, in the context of the situation covered by these contributions, does my noble friend agree that it is more valuable to be able to form a judgment on the nature of a relationship by a spontaneous and voluntary contribution? Is that not better than to give the impression of wanting to dig something out of somebody with a kind of force?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, we are grateful for any and all contributions that have been made to the coalition forces and in particular to the United Kingdom. We are particularly grateful for what the Japanese have done.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, despite the rebuff that I received from the noble Earl last week, can I draw his attention to the possibility that if the Japanese are reluctant to pay into our coffers they may be prepared to pay some money into the coffers of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the Japanese have done an enormous amount for the refugees, as the noble Lord will know. It was with Japanese money that a number of the planes were chartered in the first place.
Lord Mellish: My Lords, may I assume that the Minister has in front of him a list of contributions made by various countries including Japan? If so, can he say something about the contributions that have been made by some of our European colleagues, notably Belgium and Holland, especially as they have a lot of old chat in telling us what to do now?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right. I have a list of contributions from other countries. I covered that in an Answer last week. The Question on the Order Paper is about Japan.
Lord Annan: My Lords, does the noble Earl agree that we are somewhat lily-livered in our approach to this matter? It seems to me that the spectacle of the Foreign Secretary sitting with cap in hand waiting for pennies to be dropped into it, after which he touches his forelock, is not the way in which the Foreign Office should regard this matter. Do we not owe it to our country to make representations about the costs that we have incurred and the comparatively small amounts being paid by countries which have made no contribution at all to the fighting?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I would agree with the noble Lord if it were true that the Foreign Secretary was standing with his cap in his hand ready to touch his forelock. That is not the true situation.

Scottish Fishing Fleet
2.42 p.m.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy Lady Saltoun of Abernethy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will introduce a decommissioning scheme for Scottish fishing boats.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Scottish Office (Lord Strathclyde): My Lords, we have

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no plans to introduce a decommissioning scheme. The Government remain to be convinced that such a scheme would represent good value for taxpayers' money and would achieve the objective of reducing pressure on fish stocks.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that very unsatisfactory reply. May I ask him in the first place, why not? Does he accept that the Government are hated and reviled around the north-east coast of Scotland for the eight day tie-up scheme and the inflexible way in which it has been implemented? Will he put pressure on his right honourable friend to allow him to enter into discussions with the leaders of the fishermen's organisations with a view to devising an effective decommissioning scheme?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, I do not accept that a decommissioning scheme would either work to conserve the livelihoods of fishermen in the long term, or help to reduce the amount of effort of fishing on the stocks that are most under threat, in particular in the North Sea.
The noble Lady asked about flexibility on the eight day rule. I hope that she will recognise that we have introduced flexibility by offering fishermen an alternative to the eight day tie-up; namely, that they can fish with a 110 millimetre diamond mesh, rather than tying up for eight days or using the 90 millimetre diamond mesh which is the current minimum.
Lord Kirkhill: My Lords, does the Minister agree that the Scottish fishing fleet is more greatly affected by the EC mandatory tie-up scheme—about 380 vessels are involved—than any other fishing fleet in the Community? If that is so, will he tell the House why the Government are so implacably opposed to the EC-funded decommissioning scheme?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, the noble Lord is quite right in saying that it is the Scottish fleet that is most affected by the eight day tie-up regulation. That is because the stocks that are most under pressure, cod and haddock, are caught mostly by Scottish fishermen. We catch about 45 per cent. of the Community cod quota and 87 per cent. of the haddock quota in the North Sea.
On the question of European money for a decommissioning scheme, the European Community has no money; it comes directly from the taxpayer of individual nation states. As a net contributor to the Commission that money is rebated to us under the Fontainebleau accord. It therefore would cost the British taxpayer about £60 million to put in hand an effective decommissioning scheme. As I have already suggested, that is not good value for money.
Lord Stodart of Leaston: My Lords, I believe that I heard my noble friend mention the eight day fishing restriction as an alternative. If a fisherman's boat by any chance breaks down, and he dares to put his nose out of the harbour to ensure that the engine is
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working, is that venture outside the walls of the harbour counted against the time that is left to him to go fishing? Is the whole day deducted?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, my noble friend is correct. The point of the eight day consecutive tie-up is that it is exactly an eight day tie-up at the harbour. What one used to be able to do in 30 days one must fit into the remaining 22 days in the month.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, is that not distrusting a fisherman? If he has his engine repaired is he not allowed to take it out on trial to ensure that the engine is working? If he needs a specialised repair which is better undertaken in Peterhead than in his own port, does that count too? Is that not being too rigid with the scheme? Despite the statement made by the Minister in another place in the debate on 5th March, we have had no evidence from the fishermen that there has been any tolerance towards the fishermen with regard to bad weather or boat testing. Will the Minister expand on that?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, there is no question of distrusting fishermen. The aim of the regulation is to cut down on the amount of fishing effort. It is, for instance, to avoid fishermen testing their boats, or doing anything else with their fishing boats that they can do outwith the eight days that they are tying up.
Flexibility is important. One area on which we are keen to be as flexible as possible —and we have instructed the Fishery Protection Service to be so—is that of safety, so that fishermen do not feel obliged to go out (as I am sure none of them ever would) in a severe storm on the basis that they might get caught by the eight day regulation.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, is it not another argument for Scottish devolution?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, it is a European Community regulation. It has nothing to do with devolution.
Lord Kirkhill: My Lords, in the light of the Minister's disingenuous remarks about the Fontainebleau agreement, will he indicate briefly to the House when he believes that such an agreement may be operative?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, in the present conditions I cannot foresee a government-backed decommissioning scheme coming into force.
Baroness Strange: My Lords, will the Minister consider some form of payment to the fishermen of two boats which are currently banned from fishing for sand eels in the Shetland so that the ban continues in perpetuity and the sand eels survive?
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, no, because those fishermen are quite capable of fishing for other species.
Lady Saltoun of Abernethy: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that the alternative to the eight day tie-up scheme—that is using nets with a minimum mesh size

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of 110 millimetres—is totally unrealistic for catches of whiting and haddock? With that mesh size one would catch no whiting and hardly any haddock.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, I am aware that many Scottish fishermen have difficulties in using a net with larger mesh sizes. I am sure that the House will be pleased to know that many fishermen in the United Kingdom have greatly welcomed the flexibility that we have introduced by the alternative 110 millimetre mesh and are in fact using that mesh.

TECs: Advertising Costs
2.50 p.m.
Lord Dormand of Easington Lord Dormand of Easington asked Her Majesty's Government:
What has been the total cost to date of advertising related to the training and enterprise councils.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Employment (Viscount Ullswater): My Lords, the total cost so far of advertising relating to training and enterprise councils is £11.1 million. This consists of £1.1 million spent in 1988–89 and 1989–90 for the initial launch of TECs; £5 million committed in 1990–91 for the current advertising campaign; and a further £5 million committed in 1991–92 to this campaign.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, why is there such a huge increase in TEC advertising at the present time? Is it not the case that many of the councils are not achieving their objectives and that the massive advertising campaign now being undertaken is little more than a cover-up of the Government's failure to deal adequately with training?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I do not agree with the last part of the noble Lord's supplementary question. The timing is particularly appropriate in relation to the development of the training and enterprise councils. Approximately 51 TECs have become operational since April 1990 and a further 20 or so will become operational from Tuesday, 2nd April 1991. Therefore the timing of the campaign to advertise the TECs' existence and to promote training and enterprise could not have been better.
Baroness Turner of Camden: My Lords, is it not a fact that employment training is expected to lose 60,000 places this year as a result of cuts in funding? Despite the Minister's Answer, will that not result in redundancies among training staff, which will be disastrous for the future training programme?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, that is another question. The Question on the Order Paper relates to the cost of advertising TECs.
Lord Carr of Hadley: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that, since the TEC scheme has been perhaps the most important and valuable development in training in this country during my adult
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lifetime, this is the right moment to market it with the greatest possible force and with the maximum resources?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I am happy to agree with my noble friend. The TECs have been most keen to be brought to public attention at a national level so that there is an awareness of their existence and their role, in particular among employers. There is no point in having such help available if people do not know about it.
Baroness Phillips: My Lords, is the Minister aware that many teachers believe not only that the advertising is colossally expensive, but that one advertisement is sexist because the woman is portrayed as being stupid whereas the man appears to be full of information?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the noble Baroness has her own way of reading things into what the advertisement states. I am grateful to her and to her noble friend Lord Dormand for bringing the TECs to your Lordships' attention. I am delighted to think that, whereas the advertising campaign has made its mark with the noble Baroness and the noble Lord, other noble Lords may now become aware of it.
Baroness David: My Lords, is the Minister aware that we have known of its existence for some time. Is he further aware that we are surprised that so much money is being spent on advertising the TECs when they are complaining of being kept short of money? Would not some of the money be better spent on the training?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, research carried out following the launch of the TEC movement revealed a low rate of awareness. It showed that when asked a direct question 5 per cent. of employers knew about TECs. However, with prompting and after a description had been read out 34 per cent. said that they knew about the TECs. After the current campaign we expect awareness to be between 60 and 70 per cent.
Baroness Carnegy of Lour: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that the TECs will welcome the announcement made yesterday by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget, that it will be possible for people undertaking training for vocational qualifications to set the cost of that training against tax? Does my noble friend agree that that will be of great help to TECs in developing their training base?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. The important point about the advertising campaign is that the Government, and from next year the TECs, are spending £2.7 billion on a training programme. It is important that knowledge about TECs should be improved.
Lord Hutchinson of Lullington: My Lords, the Minister referred to the knowledge of Members of this House. Is he aware that those Members who have been involved with the resettlement of offenders have heard, for instance, that NACRO has had to lay off 1,000 trained personnel since the establishment of the

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TECs and as a result of their failure to fund such organisations? Is the Minister aware that many noble Lords have learnt about TECs as a result of that information and not through advertising?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, that is an interesting question. 1f the noble Lord wishes to table such a Question on the Order Paper I shall answer it.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, does the Minister remember that we have corresponded about the subject for months and therefore it is not a matter of an extra Question?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, I return to the central theme about the cost of advertising TECs. It is important that the available help that they are giving nationally and locally should be well known not only among employers but among employees.
Lord Dormand of Easington: My Lords, is it merely a coincidence that a similar increase in the advertising of training—one might almost call it an explosion — took place before the 1987 General Election? Have not the Government now, as then, simply failed to convince the country, the unemployed and the employers about the importance of training?
Viscount Ullswater: My Lords, the department's expenditure on advertising and publicity material has fallen since 1987-88 from £42 million to £27 million, with a budget for £17 million in the next year.

Voluntary Services: Funding
2.57 p.m.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs asked Baroness Ewart-Biggs asked Her Majesty's Government:
What is their response to the NCVO recommendation of an immediate rescue package of £30 million to reduce cutbacks in the voluntary service as a result of cuts in local government funding.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, there have been no cuts in the funding of local government from central taxpayer sources. The Government increased aggregate external finance for next year by 12.8 per cent. It is for local authorities to determine their priorities for spending.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that Answer. It will bring little comfort to the increasing number of voluntary organisations which are facing substantial or total reductions in funding. They are carrying out invaluable work in giving advice and providing housing and community care. Indeed, they are carrying out the increased role that the Government have wished of them. Will the change announced in the Budget yesterday enable local authorities to reinstate some of the funding previously given to voluntary organisations?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, the Government value highly the great contribution made by the voluntary sector and already support it on a large scale. In
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1988–89 government grants exceeded £2 billion. The Government will continue to provide funds for effectively-managed organisations that are providing worthwhile services which meet the Government's objectives. It is up to local authorities to decide which local voluntary organisations to support and they are best placed to determine local priorities.
Baroness Ewart-Biggs: My Lords, will the Minister please answer my question? Will the change announced in yesterday's Budget mean that local authorities will be able to reinstate some of the funds that they previously gave to voluntary organisations?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I am not sure to which change in the Budget the noble Baroness is referring.
Lord Moyne: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that the allocation to the community volunteer scheme in Northern Ireland is being cut by more than 25 per cent? Does he appreciate the importance to the long-term unemployed of the practical skills acquired in working as volunteers and of the confidence given by the training in eventually finding work in that area where it is so tragically scarce?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend. We appreciate the work carried out by all the voluntary organisations. However, as I said, it is for local authorities to decide how they wish to spend their money. They are best placed to choose how to do that.
Viscount Tonypandy: My Lords, will the noble Viscount bear in mind that the community voluntary service represents almost everything that is good in our national life; namely, the young unemployed who do not wish to waste their time and who are giving their services to help the old, the frail, the sick and the needy? There is a crisis in the community voluntary service. Will the Minister's department look at this matter and consider either the possibility of increased help for local authorities or advising on the matter?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, to put the matter in perspective, each year the Government announce the aggregate needed to spend in the following year to provide a standard level of service by local authorities. The total standard spending for 1991–92 is £39 billion —an increase of 19 per cent. over 1990–91. The aggregate external finance for 1991–92 is about £26.05 billion of that—an increase of 12.8 per cent. I shall certainly look into the point raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Tonypandy, and write to him.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that while it is true that local authorities determine their expenditure in an endeavour to remain within the limits laid down by the Government they have had to impose cuts? Is he aware further that those cuts have fallen heavily on the voluntary sector? In particular, some local theatres are in grave difficulties, which adds colour to the Question asked by my noble friend. Will the changes made yesterday enable local authorities to remove the imposition of such cuts?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, it is up to local authorities to balance their books and choose how they wish to spend their money. The voluntary organisations have a turnover of about £15 billion per year of which the Government finance centrally over £2 billion. The rest is raised from tax concessions of some £800 million and local government spending of over £600 million.
Lord Stallard: My Lords, is the noble Viscount aware that the crisis mentioned by a number of your Lordships as regards local government finance is a direct consequence of cuts to local government finance? A direct result of that is that the local authorities now face serious difficulties. Is the noble Viscount aware that voluntary organisations rely on local government for what is called their core funding?. That then allows them to request and receive matching funding from business, commerce and private sources. That core funding is now being cut and in some cases abolished altogether. My noble friend who asked the original Question is asking whether, following yesterday's announcement of relief for local authorities of some poll tax expenditure, the Government will permit local authorities to reinstate funds originally made available to voluntary organisations.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, the purpose of the new community charge grant announced yesterday is to provide for a reduction in the level of the community charge and not to boost local authority spending. The 1991–92 settlement provides already for resources which are adequate for realistic levels of spending. I said earlier, and I will say again, that it is for local authorities to ensure that their services are run efficiently. They must decide how to provide funds for the many voluntary sector organisations in their areas.
Lord Elton: My Lords, in order to clarify the present discussion and possibly to remove a misapprehension which is constantly repeated in this House, can my noble friend confirm that central government's subvention to local government has not been reduced and that the cuts do not consist of an intentional reduction by central government to a particular form of local authority expenditure because the local authorities remain free to make their own decisions?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I confirm the point made by my noble friend Lord Elton. As he pointed out, the Government are giving more money to local authorities.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, perhaps the Minister will join with me in expressing pleasure at seeing my noble friend Lady Ewart-Biggs again on these Benches after her illness. Is he not at risk of misunderstanding the questions put to him about central government contributions to local authority expenditure? He has answered as to last year's changes but is it not a fact that over a number of years central government's contribution, as a proportion of local government expenditure, has declined considerably? Therefore, the anxiety expressed by the National
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Council for Voluntary Organisations is not answered in the way in which the noble Viscount has answered it.
Viscount Astor: My Lords, standing spending assessments include provision for a range of services which include the voluntary sector. We believe that the amount of money paid by central government to local government is sufficient for their needs.
Lord Skelmersdale: My Lords, is not the real problem not so much the amount of money going from central government to local government—or, indeed, from local government to the voluntary organizations—but the timing of the money going from local government to voluntary organisations, as was established by my noble friend Lady Blatch in response to a recent question? Have we not become perilously close to the equivalent of fixing a date for a rate when we should legislate for local authorities to give a date for the amount of money which they will give to charities in the following year?
Viscount Astor: My Lords, I am not sure that I understand fully all the points made by my noble friend. He may be referring to an area in London where local councils have not been able to agree a budget. We hope that they will be able to do so later this month.

Business
3.7 pm
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Waddington): My Lords, as your Lordships know, yesterday my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his Budget Statement in another place that legislation would be introduced to authorise payments of extra grants to local authorities and to ensure that community charge payers would reap the benefit. Subsequently, my right honourable friend the Lord President announced that it is proposed to take all stages of that Bill in another place on Tuesday of next week.
In view of the urgent nature of the legislation, it is proposed that the Bill should be taken through all its stages in this House on the next day; that is, Wednesday, 27th March. That will allow the Bill to be given Royal Assent before Easter. I appreciate fully that the procedure which I propose is unusual. However, I hope that your Lordships will accept that it is necessary that the decision announced should be implemented as soon as possible.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, the noble Lord the Leader of the House has made a significant business statement. Perhaps he will he rather more specific. He will be aware that on this side of the House —and I believe this is true of the whole House—we are always ready to respond to appeals for co-operation whenever possible. However, we are bound to be concerned when we are asked to process a Bill of this importance without detailed examination of it

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beforehand. As I understand it, we are dealing with £4 billion to £5 billion of taxpayers' money. We do not yet know precisely what the Bill is about.
For example, can the noble Lord tell the House, against the background of his right honourable friend's Budget and the points he has made in the statement, whether the Government regard this as a Bill which the Speaker will certify as a money Bill? We recognise that it is an attempt to reverse the immense damage done by the poll tax. Without being party political perhaps I may say that it is a Bill to seek public support in time for the election.
Having said that, my noble friend Lord McIntosh and others will be dealing with the Bill in detail on Wednesday. We shall reserve our position until we have read the Bill and studied all its implications.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, we on these Benches also recognise that it is an important change and needs to be handled quickly; on the other hand, it is a matter of the greatest importance. Once again important matters are being hurried through both Houses with totally inadequate preparation and time for discussion. It is not the way to deal with what is an important development in local government. Is it not possible for us to have more time to enable this matter to be dealt with in a proper parliamentary and democratic manner?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I can assure the noble Baroness that there is no question of inadequate preparation. That will become obvious when the Bill is published tomorrow. I realise that this procedure is unusual. I hope that it will not happen very often. However, it would be unusual indeed if an important proposal of this kind were made in a Chancellor's speech, which involved the mitigation of the burden of the community charge on the charge payer, and Parliament did not respond rapidly in order to put into legislative force that which was announced by the Chancellor.
In answer to the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, I understand that it will not technically be a money Bill. However, it concerns financial matters which are principally the concern of the House of Commons. That does not mean that after the Bill has been published there will not be ample opportunity for noble Lords to peruse the same. There will be opportunity for noble Lords who so wish to move amendments in Committee.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, I am puzzled by the whole procedure. It seems to me that the Bill will be amendable. Although it seems to be a simple Bill at the present time, to many of us it could become a very complicated Bill. For example, as I understand it, the situation may be that nobody in Wandsworth will be paying poll tax, yet I, in Berkshire, will be paying £347. That is an arguable proposition which may need amending. Therefore we need a lot of time to consider these matters in Committee.
A further point arises in regard to Report stage. Having completed the Committee stage, how on earth are we then to have a properly constituted Report
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stage? I am an amateur in these matters in the House of Lords and I need some guidance. But I and other noble Lords will need to be pretty fleet-footed if in one day we are to table amendments between the Committee and Report stages. We shall then need to go to Third Reading, where, in this House, we are also able to table amendments.
The proposed procedure is an imposition on your Lordships' House and ought not to be accepted. I hope that the noble Lord the Leader of the House will reconsider the position and give us sufficient time to discuss the Bill in a proper manner. It may be all right for the Commons to follow that procedure. I hope that this House will not be treated in that way.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, the noble Lord says that it is an imposition on this House. However, the mitigation of community charge to the tune of £140 per charge payer will not be looked upon as an imposition by community charge payers throughout the country. These matters can be discussed through the usual channels. I am no expert on procedures in this House but I see no reason why amendments should not be tabled at Report stage and ample opportunity afforded through our procedures to allow that to happen.
I repeat what I said earlier. It would be very unusual if this House were not to see implemented in legislative form that which had been announced by the Chancellor in his speech, which clearly is of benefit to the community charge payer.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, perhaps my noble friend can clear up one point. If the Bill is only being considered in another place on Tuesday and in this House on Wednesday, when will it be possible to table amendments?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, the Bill will be published tomorrow; noble Lords will have an opportunity to see the shape of the Bill then. There will be no difficulty in noble Lords considering what improvements might be made to the Bill. After the Bill arrives in this place and Second Reading has been obtained, it will be possible to table any amendments which noble Lords wish to discuss.
3.15 p.m.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, the matter is not as simple as the Leader of the House suggests. It is normal to take Bills through all their stages when they are matters of consensus. Noble Lords have no objection to doing that. This is a very different matter. It is not simply a question of shifting money from one pocket to another. It is a question of shifting the whole balance between local and central government. In that sense it borders on being a constitutional matter.
I understand that the Bill will be guillotined in another place; in other words, it will reach your Lordships' House without proper consideration in another place. It is our duty and our role to give due consideration to Bills as they pass through this House. We are proud that we can consider the detail of Bills

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late into the night if necessary, and that we send Bills back to another place in better condition than that in which they arrived in this House.
By going through this procedure we are being inhibited from carrying out our true role on a matter which changes the whole balance of democracy between local and central government.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I cannot say whether there will be any Motion curtailing debate in the other place. However, it is well precedented for a Bill to be taken through all its stages on one day, both where such a Bill confers a financial benefit and, equally, where it concerns financial matters which are principally the concern of the House of Commons. It would be unusual if, as a result of the reluctance of your Lordships to allow this unusual procedure to be followed, additional burdens were placed on local authorities and ultimately on those who finance the local authorities. Local authorities would not be able to adjust their bills and pass on to the local charge payers the benefits they will receive as a result of the Chancellor's proposals.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I do not wish to intervene on constitutional matters; my noble friend Lord Cledwyn has already covered that aspect. However, I wonder whether the House is fully aware of the range of political matters which must arise as a consequence of the Bill.
Whatever the Bill, as finally drafted, contains, major political and contentious issues arise which must be covered. I do not suggest that the noble Lord the Lord Privy Seal can answer today, but I ask the House to consider these matters. For example, will the Bill provide for the abolition of the minimum 20 per cent. poll tax which is now payable and which has proved to be financially, as well as morally, indefensible? Will the Bill contain a commitment to abolish the poll tax as a whole? Will the £140 additional revenue per head be on a flat rate basis to all poll tax payers with the absurd result that we see in Wandsworth and Westminster or will it be on some more equitable basis? Will the Bill be a Bill at all, or will it simply he a paving Bill providing for regulations to be made by the Secretary of State?
Those are the matters which the House will have to consider next Wednesday. Even though we understand from the Lord President of the Council that there is going to be a guillotine applied in another place, I remind the Leader of the House that there is no provision for a guillotine here. Even if we take all stages of the Bill consecutively, there is nothing to stop us tabling a large number of amendments at all stages to cover those important matters.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I fully appreciate what the noble Lord has said. It is the obvious right of noble Lords on any side of the House to put down whatever amendments they wish. I repeat what I said before; namely, that it would be very unusual if this House were not to facilitate the passage of legislation which will confer a very considerable benefit on poll tax payers on whose behalf many noble Lords opposite have spoken eloquently over the years.
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I can answer very simply all the questions which have been posed by the noble Lord. The Bill will not deal with the 20 per cent. payment and it will not deal with the abolition of the poll tax. All poll tax payers will benefit from the reduction in the poll tax in the sense that the amount set by the local authority will in all cases he reduced by £140. There will be no regulation-making powers.
The Earl of Halsbury: My Lords, are we not making mountains out of molehills? What does it matter whether these matters are resolved before or after the Easter Recess?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, it does matter. Some local authorities have already sent out their poll tax bills; many have not yet done so. It would be an absurd situation if, as a result of the reluctance of your Lordships to pass this measure, the local authorities which had already sent out their poll tax bills were unable to correct them, and those which had not sent them out were to distribute entirely inaccurate bills, and in the knowledge that in due course the bills would be very much smaller.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, in defence of the action that the Government are proposing to take, the noble Lord said that Members of your Lordships' House, in considering their amendments, will be able to see the Bill tomorrow. The Bill, as printed tomorrow, may be amended by government-sponsored amendments in another place. The Bill that is produced will not be the one that comes to your Lordships' House, and it will have to be reprinted. We must bear in mind the various stages set out by my noble friend Lord Stoddart; namely, that there will be a Second Reading after which we can put down amendments in Committee; then there will be Report, at which stage we can put down amendments. There will then be Third Reading and we shall he able to make further amendments.
If there is any justification for your Lordships' House, it is as a revising Chamber. Will the noble Lord the Leader of the House tell us whether we shall then be adjourning for three specific periods in order to table amendments so that they can be listed, grouped and serialised in the normal manner? If we are not going to do that, how does the noble Lord expect us to cope with the situation? Is it not completely farcical that we are being denied our normal role?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I do not see why arrangements cannot be made through the usual channels so that amendments can be put down. I have a great deal more respect for the ingenuity of the noble Lord, Lord Dean, than he seems to have himself. As a result of his experiences in another place, I know perfectly well that he will look at the shape of the Bill as presented in another place, and at all its permutations and computations. No doubt he will come up with some very ingenious amendments.
Lord Dean of Beswick: My Lords, the noble Lord has not answered my point. Will there be ample time to place amendments during adjournments if we so

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desire? I do not know whether I shall table any amendments despite what the noble Lord the Leader of the House said. What will be the situation? Will we adjourn? Amendments have to be studied to see whether they are in order when they are on the Marshalled List. To believe that we can simply come here and have a First and Second Reading, and then ride a cycle right through the Bill until it becomes law, is nonsense. If the Leader of the House does not know that, then he does not know his job.
Viscount Davidson: Order!
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Dean, that I may not know very much about this job, but I have worked out this problem. I see no reason at all why your Lordships should not adjourn for a period of time between the conclusion of the Committee stage and the Report stage to enable your Lordships to table any amendments.
Viscount Mountgarret: My Lords, I do not want to make my noble friend's task harder in this matter. I appreciate his problem very much indeed. But we have a responsibility to facilitate the passage of legislation, and urgent legislation at times. I am honestly and personally very concerned about this matter. There is a debate later today in your Lordships' House which gives another suggestion as to how the community charge might be levied. Some noble Lords may agree with the suggestion and others may not. The point is that I do not believe it is possible for any government, however good and however brilliant their members, to get an enormous measure like this through both Houses of Parliament and for it to be carefully thought through so that it will work.
This country cannot afford to make another mistake. An enormous mistake has been made in the way in which the community charge was set up. I am sorry to have to say that. I have always believed in the principle of the community charge but unfortunately the method has not seemed to be right. We cannot afford to make the same mistake again. I ask my noble friend whether he will go back to his colleagues in another place and perhaps convey to them that there may be considerable anxiety, certainly on the other side of the House, but I suspect also on this side of the Chamber. We should think whether what is proposed is the right thing to do. We may have to suffer the community charge for another 12 months; but if that is so, so be it. However, let us give time, and let us try to get the matter right.
Lord Waddington: My Lords, my noble friend is under a misapprehension if he believes that the Bill which we are now discussing has anything to do with the future of the community charge. There will be ample opportunities to discuss any proposals which may eventually be forthcoming for the future financing of local government. All we are talking about today is the proposal made by my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his Budget speech that the scale of the community charge for the year 1991–92 should be mitigated as a result of a small Bill which will give local authorities
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sufficient extra funding to enable them to reduce the community charge by £140 per person. It has nothing whatever to do with the debates which will no doubt take place later concerning the ultimate funding of local authorities.
Lord Tordoff: My Lords, we have been speaking about tabling amendments in the course of Wednesday's discussions. Am I right in supposing that it will not be possible to table amendments at Third Reading?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I think that is correct. I do not think that your Lordships will find that inhibiting in any way. There will be ample opportunities for putting down amendments at Committee and Report stages.
Lord Callaghan of Cardiff: My Lords, would it not be in the interests of the Government to discuss this matter through the usual channels? Otherwise, in the light of some of the issues which have been raised, there will be a procedural shambles. On the substance of the matter, does the noble Lord agree that although this matter has nothing to do with the local elections, the response of the electorate is likely to be, in the famous words of "Lord" Bacon, "I accept every bribe and am influenced by none"?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, I shall not comment on the last point made by the noble Lord. I can assure him that there have been discussions through the usual channels, although I fully recognise that this procedure is not one that we should like to become usual in your Lordships' House. I have discussed the matter with the usual channels, and there is general acceptance that this procedure has to be followed on this occasion.
Lord Sefton of Garston: My Lords, will the noble Lord the Leader of the House agree that a simple way out of the dilemma which the Government have forced themselves into would be to propose a small Bill which defers payments levied by local authorities this year in order to give both Houses of Parliament time to consider the proposals properly?
Lord Waddington: My Lords, with great respect to the noble Lord, I should have thought that if such a Bill were introduced, exactly the same constitutional arguments would be advanced as those that have been advanced concerning this Bill.

Business
3.30 p.m.
Viscount Davidson: My Lords, I should like to say a word about this afternoon's debates standing in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge and Lord Hooson. As the mover is allowed 15 minutes and the Minister should rise to reply not less than 20 minutes before the scheduled end of the debate, in the case of the debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 10 minutes, not nine minutes as stated

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on the list of speakers. In the case of the debate in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, the number of speakers is such that it is not necessary to propose a formal time limit, but I am sure that noble Lords will agree that it would conform with the spirit of these short debates if they would keep their speeches within the 15 minutes which applies to the mover of the Motion.

Disability Living Allowance and Disability Working Allowance Bill
Viscount Astor: My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Henley, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order—
Clauses 1 to 4,
Schedule 1,
Schedule 2,
Clauses 5 to 7,
Schedule 3,
Clauses 8 to 10,
Schedule 4,
Clauses 11 to 15.—(Viscount Astor.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Problems of Developing Countries
3.31 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge rose to call attention to the problems of food shortage, the environment and over-population in developing countries, with particular reference to the present famine in parts of Africa; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I should like to turn the attention of the House from the undoubted pleasures of political controversy to the horrors of real life. In particular, I want to draw the attention of the House to what I believe to be an impending famine of very large proportions.
The very idea of a whole community of all ages wandering from place to place in search of food and slowly starving to death seems to me almost unbearable. Yet there is a growing realisation that that is about to happen. There is a real threat of widespread famine for some 15 million people, half of whom are children. In this case, I am speaking in particular of the Sudan and Ethiopia, as they seem the nearest to total disaster, though not the only places very seriously at risk. All the main non-government organisations, who are the people doing the work on the ground, have made it starkly clear that existing measures will not be enough to meet the crisis by something not far short of a million tonnes of food. Nineteen Members of Parliament in the other place signed an Early Day Motion to this effect about a month ago. I thought it was time to ask the Government to tell us how they thought the crisis could be averted.
The first objective of this debate is therefore to find out where the necessary urgent action is to come from.
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The second is to discuss what can be done in a longer term way to prevent such disasters coming upon us once or twice every decade, not only in the Sudan and Ethiopia but in all the many developing countries which are at risk. I shall devote most of my speech to the first problem, appealing for immediate action, and I shall leave my colleagues and other noble Lords to pursue the second, the long-term and slow-moving effort to help people to help themselves.
I want to know how it can be that, with our technology so brilliantly demonstrated in Iraq, with our great wealth and with our ruinous agricultural surpluses, the West can allow the approach of famine to grow so dangerously near to these 15 million human beings. The Gulf War has taken our eyes off it. There seems now to be a lack of political will.
Let me try to give a picture of the two crucially affected areas. I have been briefed here by the Save the Children Fund, and as it is actually operating there, I think we can rely on its information. The area affected by food shortages in the Sudan is huge—some 400,000 square miles; in Ethiopia it is about 150,000 square miles. Both populations are what we used to call peasants—small men, in other words—earning, in good weather, a bare living from their few cattle and small patches of land, and in bad weather, half starving. When things get bad, they begin to move, wandering elsewhere in fruitless quest for food, ending up as displaced persons in temporary camps in Khartoum and other centres. The wandering is terrible for the children and pregnant women. In both areas infant mortality is high and rising, and deaths from starvation have already been recorded in the Sudan.
A second year of drought has followed poor harvests in 1989 in both countries. The harvest may fail totally through lack of rain in the Sudan, where the price of sorghum, the staple food—I think a kind of grass—is already up by 600 per cent. There are some 2 million people in make-shift camps in Khartoum; 1 million in the Red Sea hills; 2 million in the province of Darfur, where things are especially bad due to lack of drinking water as well as food; another 3 million further south and in Kordofan, with nearly 1 million wandering in from Ethiopia.
Ethiopia itself is no better, with 2.5 million in Tigre, a province controlled by rebels; 2.25 million in Eritrea, also largely controlled by rebels and also short of drinking water; and 1 million elsewhere, all on the edge of disaster. The latest news is that another million has just come in from Somalia—all in all this constitutes some 15 to 16 million souls in this same huge area.
On top of all that, there is steady fighting, which has been going on for years, in both areas. In the Sudan the civil war is concentrated in the south, where the non-moslem Sudan People's Liberation Army has been fighting the moslem government for the past eight years. In Ethiopia the government are fighting on four fronts—a 29-year old war against the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, which now controls most of Eritrea; a 15 year war against the Tigre People's

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Liberation Front in the drought stricken provinces of Tigre and Gondar; and two other continuing struggles further south.
The constant fighting makes local distribution far more difficult, expensive. irregular and dangerous. Meanwhile, cattle are raided and the workers are hindered in their growing, sowing and harvesting. But even so. the local distribution seems to go on pretty well. Both governments are glad to have food brought in and to co-operate. The basic organisation is done by the non-government organisations, known locally as NGOs, such as Oxfam, Save the Children Fund, CARE, CAF0D—which is the Catholic body—the International Red Cross and the Sudan Council of Churches, to mention only some of them.
These bodies co-operate seemingly without a hitch or a breath of competition, taking, if I may be tiresome for a moment, a liberal rather than a Tory view of the advantages of co-operation over competition. It is a wonder that anything gets delivered at all, and we must take off our hats to the NGO employees who are out there trying to organise transport in such appalling circumstances. But all parties assert that, if the stuff arrives, they will get it to its destination. Fuel is desperately short, particularly since the Gulf War. Much used to come from the Saudis, but the Sudan Government's strong support for Saddam Hussein makes any renewal uncertain. Perhaps the Minister can let us know whether this source is likely soon to be reopened.
Everything comes in through three ports, Port Sudan in the north; Assab in the south; Massawa in the middle. The latter was bombed last year but has been in operation since January. Their intake is limited. If supplies do not bunch and are properly spread they can be handled. So neither ports nor local distribution seem to be breaking down. The vital factor will always be the supply of food and its cost.
The main sources of supply are the United States surpluses and the EC surpluses. In 1989 the United States supplied 700,000 metric tonnes. It was expected to supply 300,000 tonnes this year; but it is feared that Sudan's support for Saddam may have halted this—at any rate there is no news of such a delivery. Once again, perhaps the Minister has some information. This year the EC supplied 110,000 tonnes, including 60,000 tonnes direct to Darfur via the Save the Children Fund. I understand that the food is available, and I am assured that all that is needed could be not only supplied but also delivered if the necessary cash was forthcoming.
The question seems to come down squarely to cash. Sudan is some 600,000 tonnes short of its requirements at the moment and Ethiopia is 400,000 tonnes short of its needs, making a deficit of 1 million tonnes between them. At a rough reckoning, it costs about £200 a tonne to buy, ship and move the food to its eventual destination. The cost before us is of the order of £200 million. If there are gaps and delays in its arrival. deaths will begin. I emphasise that the food can be made available, shipped, unloaded and distributed in trucks; and, despite the fighting and many other troubles, it will get there. But this will not
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happen without this huge sum. From where is it to come? The British Government have spent more than £9 million in emergency aid to the Sudan in 1989 and pledged £3 million in 1990. For Ethiopia the Government have committed nearly £13 million since the beginning of 1990, with a further commitment of £5 million. But these figures, though far from ungenerous, are chicken food in relation to the real needs. From where is the rest to come? I believe that, had it not been for the Gulf war, the powers-that-be would somehow or other have come up to scratch to save these lives. I hope the Minister will he able to say something encouraging.
Let me turn now for a minute to the longer term problem, illustrated, oddly enough, by a letter yesterday in The Times. Many people, some in your Lordships' House, have devoted their lives to helping one or other of the developing countries to solve their own problems. But judging from the particular crisis that I am considering today, little progress has been made. In 1984–85, 150,000 died of starvation in the Sudan. In 1988, 250,000 people died of starvation in Ethiopia. Now it is all beginning again. Fighting has paved the way for famine all through history, and today mankind seems as determined as ever to quarrel and kill. It is like the Hundred Years' War, with larger populations and greater killing power, but famines just the same. Efforts to improve general conditions are constantly set back by fighting. Improvements like terracing or water conservation are particularly vulnerable. Nothing is easier to destroy than a large water tank.
Nevertheless, we must keep on trying, and I hope noble Lords will talk about population and its very difficult problems; education; agricultural training; water conservation; and all the other measures which might in due course make these ghastly food migrations ending in death from famine at least less regular in their occurrence.
Above all, I want to hear from the Minister that he agrees that the relief of famine is an imperative international obligation that cannot be shirked, and that the Government will not rest until the full £200 million has been found, wherever it may come from; the food bought, moved and distributed; and the lives of so many saved. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.44 p.m.
Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos: My Lords, we are all grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for tabling this important and timely Motion and for his compassionate speech which has set the scene for our debate. There are many aspects to this vast problem and the noble Lord has touched on many of them. I should like to draw attention to a number of issues which I believe are central to any debate on the current famines haunting many African countries. These are: the massive scale of the problem and the inadequacy of the international community's response; the causes of famine; and, finally, I shall make some comments on the issues raised in the noble Lord's Motion and in his speech.
Exact figures are difficult to come by but all the agencies involved estimate that between 20 million

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and 30 million people are affected. Our own Government have estimated that 29 million people are affected. That is the equivalent of more than half the population of the United Kingdom. These people are spread over many countries in Africa, as the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, indicated. In Ethiopia more than 6 million people need aid, in Sudan more than 7 million, in Mozambique 2 million, in Angola 2 million and in Liberia more than 1 million. Those are the principal countries affected. Yet others too need help. Somalia is in turmoil with refugees fleeing from Ethiopia. Poor harvests have also caused problems in many countries of the Sahel from West Africa to the Horn. We must be prepared to assist them all and we must be in the lead to ensure that the international effort matches the crisis.
Let us consider how the international community has in fact responded. After a decade of famines and uncertain harvests in the Horn, it could be expected that the international community would have been ready and waiting with a smooth emergency response mechanism. The fact is that agencies such as the World Food Programme report that pledges of food aid from donor communities have been inadequate and that the actual delivery of the food in some cases has been "woefully short". That is a depressing picture. Out of an estimated total of 4 million tonnes of food aid needed, only 1.7 million tonnes have so far been pledged.
We know that it takes months between food being pledged and food being delivered. United Nations agencies and non-government organisations emphasise that the crisis in Africa is taking place now, that food must be delivered urgently because time is running out for countless people, and yet major donors such as the European Community and the United States have still to make major commitments. While the ODA has pledged food early—we appreciate that—we could still do more, particularly in the EC where we have a major influence.
I am greatly concerned that the ODA is paying for this year's food pledges from next year's budget. I am even more concerned that the European Community may he prevented from responding by lack of funds. What is needed is a firm commitment from the Government and from other governments to provide new additional money to both the EC and the ODA. I urge Her Majesty's Government to take the opportunity of today's debate to announce new funds to meet these demands. The Chancellor made some concessions in his Budget but he did not seem to be aware yesterday of the magnitude of the problem we are discussing here today.
Let us turn to another aspect. Why have these famines occurred? Why does harvest failure lead to such distressing levels of suffering? The answer, of course, lies in the context in which the failures occur. An obvious underlying theme in all the principal countries affected is conflict. A less obvious theme is poverty. If communities and governments had greater access to wealth they would be less dependent on food aid. If conflicts could be resolved, then refugees could be resettled and harvests would not be disrupted. I shall give one example. In Mozambique and Angola
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the conflicts originating in the fight for independence, and subsequently fuelled by South Africa as part of its policy of destabilisation at the time, may be nearing their end as peace talks take place and, as we hope, apartheid is abolished.
The cost of those conflicts has been enormous. Mozambique is now among the poorest countries in the world. Ninety per cent. of the population live in poverty and 60 per cent. in absolute poverty. Two million people in Mozambique have been forced to leave their homes as a result of this conflict to become displaced people within their own country. Over 2 million people have become refugees in neighbouring countries. It is a tragic scene.
Perhaps I may now turn to another facet of the problem; namely, the Horn of Africa, which my noble friend dealt with. As noble Lords are aware, conflict in that area is much more difficult to unravel, although even here there may be some cause for hope, especially in Ethiopia. We know that the people of that country have suffered from a wickedly incompetent government over several years. However, changes in the Soviet Union could mean that the Ethiopian Government will receive less military aid. The establishment of relief roads, particularly through the port of Massawa, which was referred to by the noble Lord, has brought the combatants together and may lead to further talks taking place. If' there is any possibility of that occurring, I hope that the Government will do all they can to encourage such talks. Perhaps I may add that we warmly welcome the announcement by Mrs. Lynda Chalker on Monday as regards the additional food aid for Ethiopia to be channelled by Her Majesty's Government through Oxfam.
Conflict is both caused and exacerbated by poverty. Throughout Africa massive external debts, lack of appropriate aid, both in absolute terms and in quality, and over-rigorous implementation of structural adjustment packages have all prevented economic growth and development designed to alleviate poverty.
Obviously, Africa's development problems cannot be laid at the door of the industrialised world, but even allowing for the deficiencies of many African countries, it is appalling to note that the 1980s—the decade presented by the Government as one of growth and prosperity in the United Kingdom—should have become a lost decade for development in Africa. Throughout the 1980s the average income per person in Africa fell by 1.7 per cent. each year. Investment, exports and commodity prices fell thus weakening many African economies. That weakness was turned into economic disaster by huge external debts caused by massive lending by the industrialised world in the 1970s and high interest rates in the 1980s.
Noble Lords will be aware that debt repayments often equal or exceed export earnings. Throughout much of the last decade the net transfer of capital was from the South to the North. For example, in 1988 Africa paid the industrialised countries more than 21.7 billion dollars—that is more than the continent received in aid or in loans.

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The situation is slowly changing but crippling damage has been done. We have supported the Government's actions on official debt, in particular the "Trinidad terms" recently proposed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. We also urge the Government to look at debts owed to commercial banks and multilateral agencies. It is extraordinary that United Kingdom banks receive tax relief in debt exposure, and yet do nothing about the debt itself. Last year—I shall be grateful if the noble Earl can confirm this fact—the Government lost more in tax revenue through these procedures than they gave in financial aid to the developing world. It would be farcical were it not so tragic.
I should now like to address the wording of the noble Lord's Motion which indicates that food shortages are linked to environmental degradation and over-population in developing countries. The issues of population growth to which he referred and the environment are principal themes of much policy analysis about third world development.
Time prevents me from going into great detail, but in conclusion I urge the Government to take the following action. They should provide new sources of funding for urgently needed food aid from the United Kingdom and the European Community and should urge other major donors to do likewise, especially our friends in the United States of America. Speed of delivery is vital if mass starvation is to be avoided. Almost as important is long-term support for poverty alleviating development. The Trinidad terms for official debt must be implemented. Commercial and other debt relief must also be introduced. Greater financial aid must also be provided. The economic and political reforms currently being undertaken by many African countries are expensive. I believe that we in the United Kingdom must take a lead in ensuring that fragile democracies in Africa must not be undermined through economic difficulties. As I said during our recent debate on South Africa, most important of all is the need for peace. The peace process needs all the support it can get.
In 1984 we all watched with horror as thousands of people were dying. On our television screens we watched the reports of what was happening. We said that it must never happen again. However, it will happen very soon unless we move very fast and on a massive scale. The Gulf war has just shown what can be done logistically. The battle for life and humanity is as challenging as the Gulf crisis. Voluntary organisations like Oxfam and Christian Aid do their very best and often put us to shame. Let governments and the international community respond with at least equal vigour and commitment.
3.55 p.m.
The Earl of Selborne: My Lords, I too should like to begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for giving us the chance to debate this issue today. I should like to confine my remarks to longer-term food security for Africa and specifically to
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the issues which we in this country should be addressing if we are to make a contribution to what clearly in the long run is an essential strategic policy.
What is so worrying about the developments over the past 20 years in Africa is that they have not just occurred in the countries which have been at war; even in the countries which have not been so directly affected the ability to secure basic food supplies seems to have deteriorated. We have already heard about many countries which are either at war or which, like Somalia, have suffered because of a war in a neighbouring country. Of course, the population projections suggest that even if there is no further disruption by war, the likelihood of many countries in Africa being able to provide even their basic food needs becomes ever less likely.
It must be evident that there is a need for a major international and co-ordinated research programme, probably stretching well into the next century. All of us in the developed and the developing countries must sit down together and work out just what resources can be brought to bear to deal with the matter and how specifically we may contribute.
I have a background as a farmer and I have been involved until recently with agricultural research in this country. I should like specifically to look at how our own agricultural research can contribute to the third world, and especially to Africa. However, I am not so naive as to imagine that agricultural research by itself can do anything very much. We have already heard that if a country lacks any degree of political stability or of economic management, then the best endeavours of any scientist will be disrupted. Therefore, we are looking at an important and perhaps key contribution, always assuming that a number of other parameters will be put in place. One has only to look quite close to home in Eastern Europe to recognise the fact that where science and technology have been present, there have nevertheless been food shortages simply because of the lack of incentive for producers or economic stability. Therefore, it is not surprising that this is such a difficult problem to solve in other parts of the world.
Again, I do not think that we in this country, or those anywhere else in the developed world, should assume that we can automatically set out the agenda. It will be for others who understand much better the resources in the countries concerned and those who understand the constraints of climate, of soil, of labour and of power. Those people will have a major role to play in setting out the strategic agenda.
However, all funding organisations—that clearly includes our own Government—having established the strategic objectives, will then have to determine together how they can best co-ordinate their resources. Again, it is most important to prevent ourselves being accused of what may be described as "scientific imperialism"; that is, the feeling that we in our more sophisticated research establishments have the ability to resolve problems which cannot be solved locally. That may or may not be right. However, it is certainly not an assumption which should be made. I

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repeat, it will be a partnership between the developed and the developing worlds. They will put together the strategic agenda.
I should now like to look specifically at the United Kingdom's contribution. It was salutary to note the evidence from the ODA which was given to Sub-Committee 1 of your Lordships' Select Committee on Science and Technology when it reported in January 1990 on overseas aid. That evidence drew attention to the reduction in resources in this country for overseas agricultural research which arose from the very considerable cuts in agricultural research for this country.
Sadly, when those cuts—I shall not seek to justify or criticise them for domestic purposes today—were made, no one stopped to ask whether there were implications for the ODA and overseas aid. That was a serious planning fault. We lost for all time many scientists with experience of overseas aid. With a little extra expenditure, or no expenditure at all, and a great deal more planning, that resource could clearly have been saved. I therefore hope that when we look at our overall resources for agriculture in this country we shall always remember that the ODA should be one of the sponsoring departments.
Within the ODA there is a natural resources division which has a 10-year research strategy which is reviewed every three years or so. It does some fine tuning or increases priorities at each review. It is good to see that the problems in Africa, for example, are to be given a higher priority. I feel that the ODA is handicapped by being very much a bystander. There arc the universities and the research councils in the shape of the ARC, and within agriculture we have the Priorities Board for Agricultural Research and Development. The ODA is never at the table when the major issues are discussed, and so the natural resources division for which I have a great respect nevertheless tries to put together an ad hoc policy for which it does not have command over the available resources.
Again I make the plea that the ODA be given a central role in planning the use of civic research resources within this country where they might have a relevance overseas. We need strong scientific leadership within the ODA. It must be proactive rather than reactive. I hope that the philosophy of bringing together the resources we have in this country be duplicated internationally. Those of us who are players in the agricultural research league throughout the world will all be pooling resources, determining for ourselves how we can help countries with special needs and consulting, with a degree of humility I hope, those countries to which we are offering help; and then, having determined the policy, we should be prepared to be extremely proactive and not wait just for things to go wrong.
4.2 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for his remarks about the contributions the voluntary organisations make in Africa. It is of their contribution in this country that I wish to speak a
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little. Over the years my commitment and interest has been in Christian Aid, which the noble Lord omitted from his role of honour. What he said applies to CAFOD, the Save the Children Fund, Oxfam, and, I am pleased to say, many many others.
The more we look at the situation in Africa and elsewhere, the more we see that the basic problem is poverty. It is poverty that causes famine to be a disaster. We consider the underlying causes of that poverty as apparently insoluble. Not least, there is the apparently insoluble continuation of civil wars which are a special worry. Faced with those apparently insoluble problems and the recurring cries of disaster and crisis, we are tempted to respond with the time-honoured skills of the ostrich: we do not want to know and we do not want to be told. Those of us who have been involved in making door-to-door collections for Christian Aid and similar organisations, realise that there is a growing apathy. We have, in the Biblical phrase, grown weary of welldoing; we feel that we cannot do anything, that it is not worth trying, and so we do not want to know.
The organisations about which I and others have spoken are important if only because they stop us giving up. They act like a goad—sometimes an unwelcome goad—to prevent us giving up the struggle to do good. It is easy, and often done, to scoff cynically at the readiness of the British people to worry about the peoples of Africa and the problems of distant nations and distant places overseas. Given a choice between a nation that cares for others and a nation that cares only for itself, I know which I prefer. Those organisations ensure that famine remains on the agendas of ordinary people, and especially the ordinary churchgoing people of this country. I am glad of that.
It is important not to underestimate the readiness of people to do good and to give up doing good. Debates like this, and every other opportunity which comes our way, must be seized to encourage us to continue making the effort to show our concern as human beings for our fellow human beings in acute distress. One of the reasons that tempts us to give up is the legend, so assiduously broadcast, that there is nothing that we can do.
The second of the important contributions that those organisations make is that they show us that there are things that can be done. It is astonishing —the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, told us this—that at a time of civil war it is possible for the agencies, working as channels for food and longer-term aid, to help bodies such as the Eritrean Relief Association and the Relief Society of Tigre, in Eritrea and elsewhere, to get things done. There are the practical needs of ensuring that the starving are fed and providing the long-term skills which enable small farmers to grow nutritious local staple crops without overloading the land. They can give training, cheap loans, and support programmes designed to prevent the further erosion of the land.
In Eritrea, Christian Aid funds a terracing programme for four villages. What are four villages among thousands'? That programme enables hundreds of families to return to the homes they left

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during the 1984 famine. Similar work would enable thousands of other families to do the same if resources were available. We should not despair. On a small rather than megascale those programmes enable conditions to be created in which people do not starve. We should rejoice and continue to give our support.
It is perhaps in a third area that those organisations can make a major contribution in this country: in creating a public opinion that wants our Government to be in the forefront of taking steps to improve matters in the short term and the long term. A good deal has already been said about short-term needs. There is a need for food. The food exists in our Western world. It must surely be a government priority to ensure that the food reaches where it is needed and to see that the organisations of which I have spoken ensure that it is not wasted. They must ensure that all the legends about the food being dropped into the sea, and all the rest of it, have no foundation.
In the longer term, I cannot see why steps are not taken by the international community, working through the United Nations, to bring peace to that troubled area. Basically, it is not an area of starvation. Through the centuries it has been self-supporting in food and can be again, given peace. Arising out of the Gulf conflict we talk of a massive conference to bring peace to the Middle East. The problems of Africa are minimal compared with those of the Palestinians; that is, the political problems standing in the way of peace.
I should like to see high on the agenda of Her Majesty's Government some demand, some planning, some programme for a peace conference for Africa. In that way, somehow or other, political decisions can be taken, agreed to by the nations and peoples involved. Thus, there may be a beginning of the end of the problems of poverty and so an end to the problems of famine.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, I was interested to listen to the right reverend Prelate. I followed him entirely until he deprecated the problems of the Horn of Africa as opposed to those of the Palestinians. The latter have received a great deal of attention over the past 20 or 30 years. Purely in numerical terms, it is a comparatively small problem compared with the tens of millions of people who at the moment face starvation in the Horn of Africa.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield: My Lords, I apologise. What I meant by that reference to the Palestinians was that in this context I, as a layman, look at the problem of finding a settlement to the difficulties of Palestine which look almost insuperable politically. To find a settlement to the political problems in the Sudan and Ethiopia does not appear to me, speaking in this context as a layman, as of the same order of magnitude of insolubility. It was only in that connection that I made the reference on the spur of the moment to the Palestinians.
Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe: My Lords, I am obliged to the right reverend Prelate. For somebody from that
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Bench to speak as a layman is an entirely fresh experience in this House. I shall not proceed with the point, but I should like to communicate privately with the right reverend Prelate about it.
I feel privileged to speak in the debate because since the age of 25—and as your Lordships appreciate, that is fairly historic—I have taken an interest in what were then the backward countries, trying to draw the attention of the civilised communities to the problems of people who were in a desperate situation. I am glad that the vocabulary has improved from "backward countries" to "developing countries" then to "newly developing countries".
In the Horn of Africa we are faced with a quite desperate situation. The whole area is riven with internal disputes. In Somalia there is a dispute between the Liberation people and the government of President Barre. Similarly, in Eritrea and in the Sudan there is the persecution of the Christians by the ruling Al-Bashir regime. Sometimes I despair about the situation because when faced with the recurrent problems of drought in the Sahel and the shortage of food which people face, one is almost thrown back to Thomas Malthus and his bizarre idea that the population of the world would be controlled by disease and death through shortage of food.
In this civilised and advanced state of humanity, we cannot accept this. I return to the idea of the Tennessee Valley Authority in the United States during the inter-war depression. President Roosevelt looked at the problems which the country faced: the dust bowl where the soil had been eroded by over-cultivation. He put up the Tennessee Valley Authority as a pilot scheme for socialism in the United States if the project did not succeed. It succeeded and that means that the western world has the expertise to grasp the situation by the scruff of the neck and to resolve it.
I decided to speak in the debate when I heard the Whip announced last Thursday, but I was comforted by the article in today's Telegraph. I apologise to my colleagues on the Front Bench for quoting that newspaper, which mentions the Prince of Wales saying that:
"Fifteen million people in Africa face death because of an apparently unbreakable cycle of drought and environmental degradation".
I happen to support the actions of the Government in dealing with the recent situation when Iraq invaded Kuwait. The success of that military enterprise must be built on, but not in a military sense. I was brought up during the war and, to my great disappointment, soon after the war I found that the Russians, who had been our great allies all through it, suddenly became our enemies. I believe that Lady Churchill was the prime mover in the fund for aid to Russia.
Now, at last, the Russians have dropped out of the equation in the sense that they were always blocking proposals. We only made progress in the Korean war because they happened to be absent from the Security Council when the UN decided to support South Korea against North Korea. We now have a chance through the United Nations to tackle these problems on an international scale. I believe that in East Africa, with the problems of Somalia, Eritrea and the Sudan

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where there is a persecuted Christian minority, we should seek to intervene on an international scale. I believe that if we did that, it would be accepted because it would not be regarded as some belated colonial enterprise, but would be in the interests of the people concerned.
It is a coincidence but I do not feel it is inappropriate to draw attention to the Unstarred Question of the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, today about global warming. As we know, global warming involves anxiety about the changes in the climate because of the release of gases into the atmosphere through industrial and domestic burning. We now have a major superstructure of international agencies concerned about the problem and examining it. Why can we not translate it into an international superstructure, through the United Nations, to examine the whole subject of poverty in East Africa. It is not a coincidence. If we are concerned about global warming, it is because of the climatic changes which we have generated through our own efforts.
Also in the Sahel there is the spread of the desert. I am sure that problems there could he examined by scientists so that we could come up with an international solution to get out of the persistent cycle of drought, poverty and death for large numbers of people who are themselves virtually victims in the situation. I urge your Lordships to think seriously about the proposal. Those of us who are lucky enough to live in an environment which is comfortable and civilised have a great responsibility to those in other parts of the world who are not so fortunate.
4.20 p.m.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, I, too, wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for introducing this desperately important subject. Like the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, I wish to concentrate on some of the long-term agricultural aspects of the problem in the context of one small country in Africa, Malawi, which I know reasonably well. Although the climate in Malawi is not the same as that in the Horn of Africa, the problems of Africa south of the Sahara are comparable in many respects.
When I first went to Malawi about 35 years ago the country was covered with secondary forest and bush. In the bush there were patches of cultivation, and in certain areas there were tea plantations. However, the country was mainly covered by bush. It was occupied by Malawians who practised a shifting agriculture; that is to say, they had a rotation of crops which consisted of about three years of maize followed by about 25 years of bush. That rotation maintained the fertility of the soil and prevented it from being washed away.
The last time I flew over the highlands of Thyolo district in Malawi, it was possible to see small patches of emerald green denoting the tea plantations, but the rest of the countryside was entirely covered with food plots. The plots were poor, the soil was eroded and the crops were poor because the natural rotation was no longer possible. The peasant farmers are still trying to farm on the old system where nature renewed the
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fertility of the soil. However, as there is no more land to move to, they are stuck in one place and therefore the fertility of the soil degenerates rapidly.
When one looks down from the aeroplane, one sees around the tea estates a little spot of green here and there. The reason for that is that if one is an intelligent tea worker, one fills one's pockets with fertiliser before going home and one puts that fertiliser on one's own maize crop. Therein lies the clue to what we should be doing about that situation—by "we" I mean the Malawians, the West and the aid agencies—in supporting and trying to develop the agriculture of Africa south of the Sahara.
Over the years since the war we in this country have developed an agricultural system which, in terms of cereal crops, produces something like four times the yield per hectare that was possible in 1939. That has been achieved through the development of sustainable, high input, high output agriculture. Now the farming community is heavily criticised because it is alleged that that community produces too much. That is a matter for another debate, but I do not believe we are excessively overproducing. We are producing a little too much, but in Africa they are producing a great deal too little. What they need is a little of our medicine, and perhaps we need a little of theirs.
The problem is one of soil exhaustion, soil erosion and poorer and poorer crops. That situation leads to hunger and to the drift to the towns. I am not one of those who criticise our colonial regime, but I believe we made one terrible mistake in that we stopped the babies dying without thinking of the consequences. It is a simple matter of mathematics. If one moves from a situation where one baby in three was dying to a situation where three per thousand are dying, in the first 16 years there will he a rapid increase in population. After that period an exponential rise in population will occur as the additional babies start to become parents.
What is needed is, first, to develop a sustainable high input, high output agriculture which will produce, as far as possible, the food that is needed by the larger population. Secondly, and almost equally important, is the need for education and what the Americans call extension work; that is the need to pass on the information and to ensure that the peasant farmer not only understands how to do the job but is also motivated to do it. In this context—this is perhaps just an aside—we should not ignore the great importance of educating women as trainers. In many traditional African societies today it is still women who are responsible for farms. Therefore women are needed to train others how to manage the farms.
There is one other point on which I wish to touch this afternoon and that is the impact of AIDS. Officially there is no AIDS in Malawi. However, informed sources believe that approximately 30 per cent. of the population is HIV positive. That is a terrifying figure, and it is made even worse if we consider that the percentage is not evenly spread across the population. The worst affected are the middle classes and the educated people who are the natural leaders of the community. We must look ahead to a time when many of the natural leaders of

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the community will be tragically removed by this scourge, at the same time as the population explosion continues unabated among those who are least able to cope with the problems. There will be a desperate need for help from the rest of the world over the coming decade.
4.27 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, one of the great tragedies of the Gulf crisis and war was that the attention of too much of the world was turned away from the crisis in Africa. As has already been said, many more millions are in danger of dying in Africa than the number of people who died during the Gulf war. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, who introduced this debate, for giving us the opportunity to discuss this matter. I entirely support those who have called for emergency food aid to be provided quickly and efficiently to those Africans who face death over the next few months.
However, I do not wish to address the House this afternoon on the emergency issue. Such emergencies have occurred before. Only four or five years ago the famine in Ethiopia was headline news. Those natural and human disasters are increasing during our lifetime. It is surely time that we looked at the root causes and attempted to find methods by which such disasters do not attack the peoples of our world. I wish to concentrate on that point this afternoon.
What are the causes of famine? As my noble friend Lord Cledwyn has pointed out, one cause of famine is war, and particularly civil war. Such civil wars are often fuelled by outside powers. My noble friend mentioned South Africa, but in addition to South Africa, the United States is still supplying arms to UNITA in the civil war in Angola. In the past the Soviet Union has supplied arms although that supply seems largely to have dried up now. Famine is caused by war and the environmental decline of many areas. Again, this is often accelerated by the depredations of outside logging companies.
Above all, there is the declining production of food by Africans themselves. I have been privileged over many decades to work with third world governments, particularly in Africa, along with people like late and greatly lamented noble friends of mine such as Lord Balogh and Lord Kaldor, and also with that remarkable French agronomist, René Dumont.
We have been trying for a matter of 40 years to get the African governments to concentrate on the development of their own agriculture and we have very largely failed. But that is not entirely their fault. I agree that there has not been sufficient conviction put into agricultural policies in African countries, but when they have tried to put them into effect they have met very grave economic hurdles, and it is the whole structure of the world economy which is responsible for these periodic outbursts of famine across the continent.
It has often been said, and was said, in particular by your Lordships' Select Committee on Overseas Trade five years ago, the Aldington Committee, that trade with the developing countries is even more important
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than economic aid for them, but also for us; that this is a joint venture, and should be seen as a joint venture; that we can profit by recognising that Africa is a part of the world economy and that Africans are our partners in the march forward towards a better world.
But this is not happening. In the last decade, exports from the United Kingdom to the developing countries fell from 27 per cent. in 1979 to 19.4 per cent. in 1989, and imports from the developing countries fell from 20.8 per cent. in 1979 to 14.2 per cent. in 1989. I suggest that, along with what my noble friend the Leader of the Opposition said in his opening speech, along with the transfer of resources, this is raising an immense barrier to the development of African economies and, in particular, to the development of their agricultural base, because they are forced by their position within the world economy to export primary goods whose price has declined severely during the last decade. They are forced to concentrate on exports to the neglect of their own economies and, in particular, of their own agricultural economies.
Moreover, right at the moment we are in the middle of discussions on the next GATT round, the Uruguay round. What is this doing for developing countries, particularly in Africa? Surely it can be seen that the whole debate on subsidies is leading to the dumping of agricultural products from Western Europe and North America into the developing countries. Yes, my Lords, that is essential as an emergency measure; but in the long term that is undermining the agricultural development of those countries, and they are being penalised and prevented in some cases from subsidising their own agricultural development.
I have spoken often in this House about the interaction between this country and developing countries, and I bring to your Lordships' attention one small matter which seems to me to illustrate in current form the possibilities that exist. The question is not just one of producing food. Also needed are houses. Those noble Lords who have been to the recent Ideal Home Exhibition may have noticed in one small corner a special project for the building of a £100 house made from tiles and building blocks. That is the kind of housing which could form the basis of industrial activity in this country, providing for the immediate needs of millions of people in the African Continent. It could provide employment here. It could provide shelter and the opportunity for economic development in African countries.
Finally, I should like to ask the noble Earl who is to reply two questions, of which I have given him prior notice. The first deals with the immediate emergency. To what extent have the British Government contributed resources above the ordinary ODA budget, which we know has been cut drastically over the past 10 years, to meet the immediate famine challenge in the African Continent, and when will those resources be available? Are they available now? Have they been provided? Or is it the case, as has been suggested, that they will not be available until after the end of the financial year next month?

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Secondly—and here, again, I come back to something that I have often mentioned before in this House—what is the British Government's contribution this year to the International Fund for Agricultural Development? That is the most efficient and most constructive agency of the United Nations, providing the basis, the investment and the infrastructure for the development of agriculture in the developing countries. It has always had a tiny budget which is a scandal, but I should like to know what is Her Majesty's Government's contribution to the budget this year. What is that budget, and how do the Government see it as the base for building the future collaboration between this country, and the African countries, which is essential for our future and for the future of the Africans?
4.38 p.m.
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Donaldson for introducing this subject for us to debate. I particularly thank him for his analysis and request to us in this country and the world to help combat the famine in Sudan and Ethiopia. I do not know how many noble Lords saw the programme on breakfast television this morning of grain arriving in Port Sudan. My noble friend seemed reasonably relaxed about the distribution problem in Sudan. I am afraid that I do not feel quite as optimistic as he does.
The distance that this grain has to be transported is, on the average, 2,400 kilometres away from Port Sudan. That is about 10 days' drive with a lorry. We are approaching the time when it will soon, we hope, start raining in that part of the world, but then the lorries are often no longer able to get through. If I were one of the starving people in Sudan and Ethiopia I would ask myself: how is it that the United Nations coalition was able to move equipment and hundreds of thousands of men into the Gulf in no time at all? I ask the Minister: is there not a possibility that in order to help these people we could use heavy load-carrying helicopters and all the other equipment that could reach the starvation area in time to combat the famine that is going to take place? I know that it might be difficult to negotiate such an arrangement but it must be considered .because if the aid is taken by road, I believe that it will not reach the people in time.
In a few words I want to concentrate on the over-population problem. I had a very salutary experience some years ago when I was in India and had the privilege of taking tea with Mrs. Indira Gandhi. That was a couple of months before she was assassinated. She was tremendously concerned about the over-population of India. She said, "Do you realise that when India was independent we had 375 million people?" At the time I was visiting her, which of course is now some years ago, the population of India was approaching 790 million. Mrs. Gandhi said, "If we had been able to stabilise our population we would have been the economic miracle of the world." That is true. India has an industrial economy and would have been able to produce an economic miracle; but over-population destroyed that.
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I believe that the place of women in society is really at the heart of development and of population control in Africa as well as in the rest of the underdeveloped world. On the whole, the women of these countries are responsible for subsistence agriculture, for bearing and raising the children and for doing all the domestic labour. For that they get virtually no support and, as a result, most of the time their own health and that of their children suffers. It also results in population growth, high child mortality, poor agriculture and a deteriorating environment. While the only way that a woman can assert herself in these societies consists of having more children than the woman next door the problem will not go away.
What is needed is a complete re-think to make investment in women a development priority. First, there must be adequate availability of family planning. It has been estimated that during the next decade 350 million couples will wish to use contraceptives. Can we supply and distribute what is needed? A much greater involvement by men in the problem of family planning in these societies has to be encouraged. Not enough attention is given to this by the aid societies. Persuasion must be increased and it must be proved to the men that the health of mother and child can be improved if they themselves take an interest.
Secondly, the improvement in the provision of education for girls, with a consequent increase in employment opportunities, would among other things help to postpone the age of marriage and so reduce the pressure on population. I think all of us are aware of the tremendous benefits that would follow from improved education possibilities for women. But that would not be of immediate help for certain types of women in the underdeveloped world. Something must also be done for the enormous number of women who live in remote villages far from any improvement in educational opportunities in the normal sense. For many of them it will come much too late and will not improve the situation. They need help now. We need to make certain that integrated into the provision of family planning and mother and child health care is provision for craft education. That would enable the women in the villages for the first time to become at least partially economically independent.
I saw a wonderful example when I was in the Gambia, where a new unit for the provision of child care and family planning was integrated with the opportunity for women, when they came into the clinic, to be taught certain crafts that they could perform in their own villages. That was wonderful and it was very helpful, but that kind of provision is no good unless at the same time you help them to market the produce they make. The women often live a very long way away from a centre where they can market their produce. Therefore, a marketing exercise is also needed in order to help them.
A change of attitude is required not only on the part of the developing countries but also on the part of the financing countries and the lending institutions. As the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, pointed out, partly because of the enormous burden of servicing their debts to the developed world 37 of the poorest countries have, sadly, cut their health spending by 50

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per cent. and their education spending by 25 per cent. in the past four years. That is a long way from improving the standard of health and education for all; but particularly for women.
Improving the services for women will obviously not solve all the problems of the underdeveloped world but I believe it would be one of the most effective ways of promoting a reduction in the growth of population and that it would help in the development of sustainable growth in these economies.
4.48 p.m.
Lord Thurlow: My Lords, first, I strongly endorse the appeals that have been made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, and others, to Her Majesty's Government to do everything they can to support the international initiatives to seek emergency urgent action to relieve the immediate famine prospects that are on the horizon, and which are indeed already facing East Africa. I do not propose to develop that particular aspect but to concern myself with the long-term problem of the causes of shortages in Africa and the possibilities for solution.
May I say at the outset that I do not endorse the view of the right reverend Prelate that the problems of poverty in Africa are insoluble. I believe that we can see our way to helping the Africans to solve their own problems if we can only pursue the right strategy and supply the relatively modest resources that may be required to prime the pump. I am sure that there is enormous unexploited potential in Africa, south of the Sahara, to grow vastly greater quantities of food. As has been said, production of food has been declining for a variety of reasons which can be identified, but the physical potential of soil and climate make it possible to visualise, with the right co-ordination of action, enormous increases in the capability.
The various factors to which noble Lords referred —food production, health, family planning and debt relief—all interact. At this stage, as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, emphasised, the basic problem is food production. There can be no advance in Africa south of the Sahara without an enormous increase in food production. But how can that he achieved? It certainly cannot be achieved by relying on massive increases in international aid. I warmly support the various appeals that have come from this House in the past year and more for greater resources to be given to the Overseas Development Administration. But overseas aid is only a means to prime the pump. The problem of production in Africa has to be solved, can be solved and I hope will be solved by the Africans themselves.
If international aid cannot do more than prime the pump, how is the rate of increased production to be achieved in a time-scale that is relevant to the danger? The population surge is such that Africa south of the Sahara is rushing toward a stupendous disaster. One of the greatest authorities on population, who for a time served as head of the population division of the United Nations, has predicted that with present trends the population of Africa will reach between 2 billion
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and 4 billion in the 100 years between 1950 and 2050. Already the first 40 years have gone and the trend certainly justifies the prediction. That gloomy forecast may even be too conservative. Judging from the rates of increase of population with which I have been acquainted in countries in Africa in which I have served, and which I have visited in recent years, I believe it possible that the rate of increase could be even faster. Africa may be moving toward a population of 5 billion by the year 2050.
Is it conceivable that such a population could be fed? If so, how? What is the means by which the present states of inertia can be overcome? The problem of food production is basically one of getting through to the peasant farmer how to utilise and apply the results of research which has already been done. The means have already been achieved to grow five blades of corn where at present one grows. So the problem is one of a kind of adult education.
In the past the vehicle for bridging the gap between research and the peasant farmer was the Agricultural Extension Advisory Services, which is an expensive piece of bureaucracy, though that is rather a pejorative term. The organisation does magnificent work but it is a salaried service and the resources are not there to multiply services of that kind on a scale which can meet the needs of the time-scale.
Is there any other way? I venture to believe that there is. There has been a significant breakthrough —an important innovation—in the field of accelerated education. It is the achievement of this country. It is still pretty well under wraps. The research is being conducted at various universities. At the London Business School important work is being done to examine how new methods of crash, accelerated education can be applied in various fields; for instance, in relation to the problems of producing new skills in Eastern Europe to cope with the transition from a command economy to freedom. There is research into management training and also—this is very important—in relation to the possibility of finding a vehicle for crash education in Africa which may bridge the gap between the results of research and the practices of the peasant farmer.
Is that just a utopian visionary dream? No. Serious work is being done. I mentioned the London Business School but there is also a new unit in the University of Glasgow and specialised work being undertaken at the University of St. Andrews. The research is going ahead and the intention is to apply it to pilot projects in Africa at a comparatively early date. If the pilot projects are validated I believe that this will be a form of new adult education which can spread very rapidly throughout Africa.
I shall not try to describe to noble Lords how the new system works. This House is not a school or university. However, in a nutshell, one can look forward to a time when in communities and villages in Africa, with the full support of the whole community, there will be units for relatively short courses covering mainly two separate aspects of this education: first, the agricultural and pastoral methods of the peasant farmer and, secondly, the education of women in hygiene, appropriate technology and family planning.

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I believe that that is the way ahead. When the research has reached the point of asking for support in its application I hope that the necessary support from Her Majesty's Government will he forthcoming.
5 p.m.
Lord John-Mackie: My Lords, from what we have heard in the debate it is obvious that we are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for raising the subject. In my opinion it is one of the most important that faces the world.
I wish to go back to 1930. With my father, I took over a farm on which the previous occupant could not sell his potatoes. He left me to get rid of them. I used a few tons to feed some cattle and the remainder I drove into an empty quarry hole. At the same time my elder brother started farming a dairy farm. He could not sell all his milk; he was pouring it down the drain. I visited Glasgow to buy cattle. From the station to Merklands Wharf, where the cattle were sold, the bus stopped twice, each time at a long queue at an employment exchange. Badly-dressed and obviously badly-fed men were waiting to collect, I think, 16 shillings a week to feed their families. I wondered, "Could they not use my potatoes and my brother's milk?" It made me feel that something was very wrong. It was the first time that I took an interest in public affairs.
Like the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, I watched the Nine O'Clock News on television this morning. A portion of it was devoted to Jonathan Dimbleby's visit to the Sudan. It was pathetic to see what was going on there. He showed photographs of a woman who walked three miles to fetch a bucket of water to steep poison cherries in for a week to feed her children. Imagine that on the scale on which it exists, my Lords. Not many weeks ago I watched a programme about another area which showed children with arms not much thicker than my thumb. The situation must be looked into.
This morning, I received a letter from the Scottish NFU enclosing a document which stated:
"Dilemma. So we have a real dilemma: too much food is being produced".
I was watching the programme yet reading that too much food is being produced. I thought then, as I did 61 years ago: something is wrong. An hour later I picked up the telephone and put my name down to speak in this debate.
Not long after I came to the House in about 1981, the noble Lord, Lord Renton, spoke in a debate on this subject. I tried to look it up in Hansard. He spoke about teaching the thousands of people then starving to grow their own food. That is essential; it has been much referred to. He also made the point that we should be getting the food to those starving thousands. However, what impressed me—the point was made 10 years ago—was his emphasis that both are long-term problems. How right he was. The noble Earl, Lord Selborne, and the noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, made that point, too: it takes a long time to educate under-developed countries in how to increase their food production.
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Ten years later we are still not growing enough food and millions instead of thousands are starving. The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, may have been a little optimistic, but there is no doubt that with education of the people, with modern techniques and so on—he stated that it takes a long time to educate on such matters—food production in such countries as Africa, with a reasonable climate, good land and so on, could be increased. Those countries could do as we have done: since 1930 we have more than tripled food production in this country. We should not be too pessimistic, although it is a long-term programme.
I realise that a huge population explosion has upset plans for food production in some countries. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, mentioned India in particular. Other noble Lords have given figures. The world undoubtedly failed to stop that enormous population explosion. Some figures recently given by experts have suggested that by the end of the century world population will be 8,000 million and that by 2020 the figure will be 10,000 million. I am not an expert. I do not know how one educates in birth control. However, we should assist in that effort in every possible way.
Whether or not we can help in that area, we can produce more food and get it to the pathetic starving men, women and children whom we have seen on television. It seems to be the women and children who suffer more than the men. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, was right to emphasise the importance of attending to the rights of women.
How do we get the food to them? Reference has been made to Oxfam, War on Want, Christian Aid and other bodies, including the specific organisation mentioned by the right reverend Prelate. I refer to it not so much because the right reverend Prelate mentioned it but because if my wife knew that I had missed it out I should be in dire trouble. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, about getting the food to the starving people. There are numbers of ships lying rusting in ports which could be used to get the food to them. An enormous problem is distance. Jonathan Dimbleby emphasised it this morning. The food has to be transported distances of 1,200 miles on lorries. As the noble Baroness mentioned, there are plenty of transport planes to carry bombs and death-dealing equipment weighing hundreds of tonnes. Could those planes not be used on a life-saving mission for a change? I do not know about the airfields situation but there are transport helicopters nowadays. When one considers what money is spent on, something along those lines could be undertaken.
It has been asked, "Who will pay us for this?" Quite frankly, I suggest that if we undertake a major effort to help the starving people immediately—there is no sense in fiddling about—we should not worry about who will pay us. I suggest that salving our consciences would be ample payment.
5.8 p.m.
Lord Walston: My Lords, like all other noble Lords who have listened to the debate, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for giving us the opportunity to take part. As he and the noble Lord,

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Lord John-Mackie, pointed out in a most moving way, the situation in the Sudan, and more particularly in Ethiopia, is horrifying and terrifying. The fact that I shall not deal with that aspect does not in any way mean that I do not share their very deep concern. However, I believe that sufficient has been said on that subject to bring home to all of us the situation in those and other countries.
The noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, pointed out that a similar situation exists in many other countries; for example, Mozambique, Angola and Liberia. The exacerbated reason for that is the absence of peace. In all those countries there is a war of one kind or another which has made the production and distribution of food virtually impossible in many areas. I was particularly struck by the analogy made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, with the Hundred Years' War, when the whole of Europe was in turmoil. It was almost impossible for farmers and peasants to produce food and when it was produced it was almost impossible for the town dwellers to use it. That is happening today in many parts of Africa but on a much larger scale. As the right reverend Prelate rightly pointed out, peace is an essential factor in bringing these appalling crises to an end.
I turn to the long-term aspects of the problem. Even in peaceful countries in Africa hunger will continue to exist unless there are drastic reappraisals and alterations to their situations. First, it is essential that we should do what we can to instigate the redistribution of wealth. Far too much wealth is concentrated in the developed countries and there is far too little in the developing countries. They do not have the money to buy food even if it is produced. Nor do they have the money to provide incentives, including raw materials, to the farmers to grow the foods of which they are capable. The developing countries have an appalling burden of debt. They borrowed money from rich countries at high interest rates. They must now repay that money and therefore cannot spend it on their own countries.
We in this country place an emphasis on the market economy. If one wants more food produced one must offer more money to its producers. That will cost money and although it is difficult to achieve it can be done. However, the answer is not so simple when one is dealing with people who are accustomed to a subsistence economy rather than to a market economy. I give your Lordships an anecdote from Malaysia. A new variety of rubber tree had been developed and the authorities wanted its growth to be spread among the peasant rubber planters. A meeting was held in a remote area and a distinguished scientist spoke to the people. He was warned that the whole village would follow one old man who would be sitting in the front row. If the speaker could get the old man on his side he would win his case. Therefore, he directed his remarks to the old man who smiled and nodded his approval. At the end of the speech the old man rose and said that he was sure he could speak for the whole village which he said was grateful to the distinguished gentleman for travelling such a long way to explain how to produce more rubber. The old man
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said that he would follow the advice because he would need to grow only half the number of trees to have the same amount of income. He would do that and have a more leisurely life rather than a richer life.
Until we change such mentality we shall have an uphill struggle to get more crops grown. We have plenty of knowhow; for instance, we know about terracing, water conservation, new varieties and so forth. However, not many experts know about the people who will implement such knowhow. We must understand the people.
I give another anecdote to illustrate the importance of my argument. The Commonwealth Development Corporation decided to set up a new oil palm plantation in certain parts of Papua New Guinea. There were two sources of extra labour—the coastal people and the mountain folk. Both groups were in need of more work. The people were happily installed and they began work. The corporation decided to give them an incentive to work harder. They approached one or two of the bright young people among the mountain folk and suggested that if they made use of new techniques and used new varieties of plants they could make more profit and would go up in the world. That incentive was avidly accepted by them and worked extremely well. The corporation put the same proposal to the coastal folk but it was met with a complete refusal. The reason was that the coastal folk lived as a community and no one wished to be a leader or to be richer and more prosperous than the other members. They all wished to share and share alike.
Until one knows the people, what makes them tick and what incentives to offer, a great deal of effort will be wasted. I urge upon all those concerned with overseas development to appoint to the extension services not only people with diplomas in agriculture and a knowledge of terracing, fertilisers, disease control and so forth but also people with experience of local customs and local habits. It is not easy to find such people. In the old days the district officers were admirable at such tasks but now, unfortunately, they no longer exist. However, if we can appoint such people it will be possible to institute and promulgate a whole variety of basic reforms and provide incentives to grow more. Basic reforms such as the privatisation of the land and enclosures led to a great upsurge in agricultural production in this country. We must endeavour to get people to realise that cultivating their crops well instead of wasting the land and eroding it will increase the productivity of the land and its long-term potential.
I urge a long-term policy that concentrates on the technical aspects of agriculture and does not forget the enormous importance of knowing what is an incentive to the grower to produce more food and to follow eagerly and happily the advice of the scientists.
5.20 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, listening to the noble Lord, Lord Walston, tell the story of the elder in the village in Malaysia who felt that he would rather have twice as much leisure than twice as much rubber, I am not

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sure that he does not have the right idea. Perhaps we should learn from him rather than take up the position that we can teach him a lesson.
From the wording of the Motion, it may be held that population pressure is the main reason for the hunger in the developing world. It is easy to blame food shortage on overpopulation, especially in the Sahel and Horn of Africa where there is a precarious ecological balance. In those circumstances the felling of trees and the increased cultivation of marginal lands is associated with the degradation of the environment and "desertification"—I prefer the word "desertisation". To blame all that on overpopulation would be to oversimplify the problem.
As the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, pointed out, at the time of colonisation of most of the tropical world, populations maintained their numbers at a stable rate with almost maximal birth rates which compensated for very high death rates in infancy and childhood due to endemic tropical diseases, particularly malaria, on top of the normal range of universal diseases such a diarrhoea, measles, pneumonia and so on. Many societies lost half their children before they reached the age of five. For a variety of reasons, northern technology has cut that death rate by 50 per cent. or more even without easily accessible health services. That still leaves many areas —mostly in Africa—with child mortality rates of 15 to 20 per cent. For that reason, there is still a strong desire among women to have large families to ensure the survival of at least some of their children. There are other social, economic and religious pressures tending in the same direction.
For millenia in Africa those with large numbers of children were considered fortunate and favoured by the gods. The work of those promoting family planning in the teeth of such deeply held beliefs is unlikely to succeed. Many noble Lords may have received a briefing about family planning in Ethiopia from Population Concern which describes the reasons for local resistance to family planning.
However, looking at countries or states with very low per capita income, some have succeeded in dramatically reducing fertility rates in the space of one generation or less. I point to China, Cuba, Sri Lanka and Kerala, a state in the south of India. There are four main similarities in these otherwise very diverse cultures: first, a universally available free primary medical care service which has led to greatly reduced infant and child mortality; secondly, major efforts to eliminate illiteracy, especially that of women; thirdly, a recognition of the status of women and the realisation that that needs to be upgraded so that women can play a greater role in the life of the community; and fourthly, a more equitable land tenure system than in most of the developing world. Family planning facilities are available as an integral part of the primary health care service.
Rapid population increases are not the only—or indeed the main—reason for overcultivation and environmental degradation in the third world. Other factors also create the poverty and land hunger which perpetuates malnutrition, high child mortality and
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high birth rates. That makes for a vicious circle. As I said, high child mortality makes women want to have more children, hence large families.
As my noble friend Lord Hatch pointed out, development policies to date have concentrated on major projects which have helped to increase cash crops for export. They have not been of much help to small farmers growing food crops for local consumption; quite the reverse. The farmers and their families have often been displaced from the best land, low prices have been fixed for their produce and cheap food has been imported from the north. Africa, once a food exporter, has become a net food importer.
World Bank and IMF loans to countries with economic difficulties—possibly because of gross mismanagement—have until now insisted upon adjustment programmes. These have made serious inroads into already meagre social programmes which have been supporting food subsidies and health and educational facilities. It is true that recently the World Bank has realised that the measures may have gone too far. However, I have not read—I should be interested to know if other noble Lords have—of any loan where a condition has been the maintenance or augmentation of provision for the social sector. To do that would ensure a wholly logical investment. It would provide the basis, through education, for diversifying the economy and, through better nutrition and health, lay the basis for health and family limitation.
As several noble Lords have pointed out, African countries must run in order to stay still and most are moving backwards. Some 286 billion dollars net has been transferred from the developing countries of the south to those in the north in the past decade in debt repayment and increasing interest rates. There seems to be little hope that most non-oil African countries will ever work themselves out of the debt trap. That is a disastrous prospect for Africa and not much better for us since those countries have no foreign exchange with which to buy our goods and services, a point brought out clearly by my noble friend. There is now a growing awareness that the debt trap must be ended. But how is that to be done?
The problem is explored most constructively by Susan George in her book A Fate Worse Than Debt. To put her suggestion in a nutshell, the debts of the poorest countries—mainly those in Africa—should be transferred to development agencies within each country and the debt should be paid off to those agencies in local currencies within a 10 to 20-year period.
The development agencies should be internationally overseen using such bodies as the International Fund for Agricultural Development and also local and international non-government agencies. Susan George calls that the 3D solution—debt, development and democracy. In that way, funds could be channelled to help local farmers through loan schemes to improve land, to buy fertilisers and to build small

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dams and water development projects. Non-government organisations and international organisations could be involved. There are enough examples of good local development schemes in Africa to show that that is by no means a pipe dream.
A crucial aspect of the problem is the impact of military spending on civil war in Africa. That has been made more devastating by the export of arms by both the East and the West over the past two decades. Not only in the Middle East, but universally, arms sales must now be controlled and restricted.
The overseas debts of sub-Saharan Africa stand at about £100 billion. When the total cost of the eight-month Gulf war—taking into consideration the loss of oil, the rebuilding of Kuwait and the cost of putting out the oil fires—has been calculated, it will probably amount to twice as much as that. I do not believe that anyone has yet done the sum.
It should surely be possible over a period of several years—not months—for the wealthier nations of the world to invest the same amount of money in rescuing a whole continent from increasing poverty. At the same time it would give our industry a shot in the arm. To provide the £100 million necessary to avert the current famine crisis should be possible when we and the United States were able to go round cap in hand and obtain £100 billion in contributions to the Kuwait war. UNICEF feels that £100 million is required for the famine of East Africa; that is only 0.1 per cent. of £100 billion.
5.30 p.m.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for introducing this important and critical debate. Whereas, as noble Lords mentioned, world attention has focused on the Gulf war, the very scale of the problems in developing countries, particularly in Africa, call for ongoing and urgent action.
A brief analysis of the numbing statistics can hardly mirror the extent of agony and misery for those involved. I say that as a South African, although I am of British descent. As a South African I have not experienced the famine and poverty of the Ethiopian and Sudan situation. However, I have certainly spent much time in Malawi and Zimbabwe. I intend before too long to take the trip from Cape Town to Cairo.
It has been estimated by various aid agencies—as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn of Penrhos—that between 20 million and 30 million people in Africa are facing starvation and famine. That equates to almost half the population of the United Kingdom. It is feared that the scale of the disaster will be worse than that experienced in the 1984-85 famine in Ethiopia and the Sudan.
Today's debate calls attention specifically to the problems of food shortage, the environment and over-population. By inference it relates those topics to the present famine in Africa. However, central to what I have to say today is the premise that famines are not just caused by changes in environmental conditions
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and a decline in food supply, but to a large degree by the absence of effective political accountability in the worst affected countries.
Oxfam released this week a brief headed, Famine in Africa, in which it highlighted Ethiopia, Sudan, Mozambique, Angola, Malawi and Liberia, where a combination of drought and conflict has left over 20 million people facing hunger and starvation. The only country amongst those which is not in a state of civil war is Malawi. In direct contrast to Malawi is the case of Liberia, which bears brief mention. Liberia has never in the past—I speak of 10 years ago—required food aid. It now has a devastated economy as the direct result of civil war. Internal production and distribution of food are totally hampered. Ships are unwilling to use the harbour at Monrovia for fear of their safety.
In my view there can be no resolution to those problems until political stability exists in the country. In the 1960s Africa produced more food than it could eat. As has been made clear by the speeches today, that is no longer the case. Over the past decade farm output in Africa grew by 1.5 per cent. a year while the population swelled at least twice as fast. The Save the Children Fund organisation estimates that up to 12 million children in Africa face food shortages caused by drought, war and economic problems.
In the debate on population growth initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Rea, in May last year, it appeared that the general consensus of those who spoke was that population growth rates in developing countries will not go down without improvements in standards of living. Those improvements can be achieved with relative ease, particularly in the fields of basic health care and primary education. However, there is a lag period between the basic improvements which lower mortality rates and their positive influence in reducing birth rates.
In Africa today 45 per cent. of the population are children. It is noteworthy that immunisation rates of children in the developing world improved dramatically during the 1980s from 10 per cent. in 1980 to the present 75 per cent. It has been estimated that well over 1 million children who are now living active lives would possibly be crippled by polio were it not for the efforts of UNICEF, the World Health Organisation and other agencies.
The 1990 United Nations population statistics showed that there has been a slower drop in birth rates in Africa than was previously forecast. That indicates that the lag period, after improving standards of living in developing countries, will be longer than expected. As a consequence upward revisions have been made to world population forecasts.
That brings me to the subject of the effect on the environment. Increased population pressures have exacerbated soil erosion problems resulting in massive environmental degradation in the third world. That is compounded in Africa by the physical geography of the continent. It lacks an abundance of valley sites suitable for storing water. As a result only 3 per cent. of farms are adequately irrigated. By contrast, the geography of India, for example, provides many suitable sites. It is said that up to 30 per cent. of farms

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in India are properly irrigated. One of the consequences of inadequate water supplies in Africa has been massive malnutrition problems, which obviously affect mostly the children and the elderly people. At the same time half of the continent of Africa's forests have been chopped down this century to provide fuel and shelter or new land for the plough. It is said that the Sahara is spreading southwards sometimes as quickly as 90 miles a year.
In assessing the scale of the problems of food shortages, the environment and overpopulation in developing countries, I have been stimulated by the arguments in the excellent recent book by Jean Dréze and Professor Sen on Hunger and Public Action, where they address practical action to be taken for the avoidance of famine and hunger. They claim that famine is nearly always avoidable, even after gigantic natural disasters. Sensible public action, including appropriate legislation, can eradicate large scale starvation. To this end they draw parallels between India and certain famine stricken countries in Africa.
India relies extensively on cash for work programmes to help those without food. Their prognosis is that if the government of developing countries were to be accountable to the public through elections, free news reporting and uncensored public criticism, then the government also would do its best to eradicate famine. It is not surprising that in the terrible history of famines there is hardly any case in which a famine has occurred in a country that is independent and democratic, with an uncensored press.
In short, their desire is that the governments of even the poorest countries should and can protect and promote the entitlements of the very poor. In their view the solution does not lie in giving more food to developing countries or encouraging them to grow more of their own. Instead they believe that it depends on governments protecting the rights and incomes of their most vulnerable people. One of my concerns which has been well illustrated by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, is that all too often we hear of reports of food aid not reaching those to whom it has been targeted. For example, in Ethiopia time and again it has been proved that once the authorities get their hands on the international charity, it stands little chance of reaching its proper destination but is diverted to the army and the open markets.
I wish to ask the Minister a number of questions. First, what are Her Majesty's Government doing to encourage the effective distribution of food aid through, for example, food corridors such as those which have been established in the Sudan and Ethiopia? To what degree are Her Majesty's Government working in tandem with the independent aid agencies such as Oxfam and the Save the Children Fund which, as other noble Lords have mentioned, are achieving brilliant work in delivering food to war-torn countries in Africa?
In conclusion, there is a lesson of obvious importance for sub-Saharan Africa where the lack of overall economic growth and political instabilities have been major causes for the deprivations
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experienced. Attention needs to be paid to the creation of stable political environments promoting peace, economic growth, jobs and an overall better environmental planning policy. The aid agencies with which I have had some contact also recognise these long-term requirements and apportion their funds in an attempt to accommodate not just emergency requirements but also these long-term challenges. In his concluding speech, will the Minister indicate what assistance and pressure Her Majesty's Government are bringing to bear on strife-riven governments in Africa to resolve their internal problems and to face up to these long-term solutions?
5.42 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, when we in the Liberal Democrat Party were discussing how we should use the afternoon when we had the opportunity of deciding the subject for debate, we reckoned that, quite properly, over the past months the minds of most Members of your Lordships' House and of the people outside have been focused on the immensely important, threatening and then encouraging events in the Gulf. That has understandably distracted our attention from many other issues which in the longer-run are certainly as important, if not more important. It is for that reason that we chose this subject for this afternoon's debate. We are very grateful to my noble friend Lord Donaldson for being prepared to lead on it.
As noble Lords have emphasised, there are two parts to this debate. They are the immediate emergency of famine and the longer-term issues which are referred to in the title of the debate regarding the environment and over-population. The first point is that both these issues are of the greatest possible urgency. It is easier to focus on the urgency and the tragedy of famine in Northern Africa. Many noble Lords have spoken about what needs to be done. There is the absurd fact that if it were a rational world—which only the most foolish person believes that it is—there should be too much food in one part of the globe and so devastatingly little in others. There are also the problems of conveying the food which is in surplus to the places where it is grossly in need.
Those are issues which everybody can understand. It has been emphasised by speaker after speaker that one solution is to find the money which is required. In comparison with money spent on other causes, particularly that spent in the Gulf of which I make no complaint, it should not be impossible to find the sums required to transport the surplus food in Europe and America to those needing it in Africa. Perhaps noble Lords will deny that it is simple and straightforward because I am sure that the problem is shot through with difficulties. However, the food is available. I am the last person to suggest that money can always be found when a suitable case is recognised; but the sum involved is not vast in comparison with the amount of need with which we are confronted. If the sense of urgency were there the money would be found.
I do not wish to carp, but it is sad that the Chamber has been so empty during most of this debate and that there has only been one speaker, excellent though he

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was, from the Government side. That does not suggest that there is the sense of urgency about this issue that we should all like to see. I see the noble Lord shakes his head. That is no answer to the fact that there has been nearly an empty Chamber this afternoon.
I am not going to say any more about famine because so many other speakers have spoken so very effectively on the subject. They have pointed out both the urgency and the ways in which the matter can be dealt with while recognising the reality of the difficulties.
I wish to concentrate more on the longer-term issue and to make the point that this is as much an emergency and a matter of urgency as the famine. I remind noble Lords very briefly what the population figures are. The world population now is in the region of 5 billion. It is "guestimated" that in the 2020s it will be 10 billion or even more unless action is taken. These figures are so astronomical and terrifying that people will just bring down the blinds because they do not want to consider the figures. It is at least a doubling of the world population by that date. Thank heavens I shall not be here when it gets to that figure! and neither will most people here. The noble Earl who has to reply may well be here. We have to get the significance of those figures appreciated because they are terrific. Ninety-four per cent. of the increase is in the developing countries.
As the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, said, in African countries and in Kenya, for example, over half the population is under 15 years of age. When I was there less than a year ago I was told quite openly that they had no doubt in their minds that in 10 years' time there will be no work for them, and it will be impossible to feed them. The measure of the seriousness of the problem simply cannot be exaggerated. It is a problem connected with those of the environment. I am not for one moment saying that all the problems of the environment can be linked directly to the issues of over-population and the developing countries. There are tremendous environmental difficulties coming from the developed world. It would be very easy for people in the developing world to say "It is easy to blame the problems on us; but look at what you in the industrial societies have contributed".
The fact that that is true does not make it any less true that doubling the population, or 94 per cent. of it in the developing countries, must be an environmental threat. What can we do about that? The rapid growth in population is linked with poverty. It has both an effect on poverty and in turn poverty is a cause. In countries where there is no old-age pension, unemployment pay or national health service, there is no one to come to your aid during life's inevitable catastrophes. You have to have children. That is undoubtedly the view taken by people who are too poor to provide for life's emergencies in any other way. As long as that is so, they will go on having children. So it is in our interest as well as theirs that we should tackle the problem of poverty. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch, is right in saying that this will be done only if the developing countries are seen as part of the
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world economy in which we trade and from whom we buy. That means that we cannot allow catastrophes like the breakdown of the Uruguay Round. I know there are difficulties—of course there are—but what those countries need is for us to buy goods from them. Aid is fine—I shall come to that in a moment —but what they need is trade. They have to get the money. As Job said, money does not make for happiness. It does, however, ease the pain. More money in the developing countries would ease the pain quite a lot.
Trade and an attack on poverty is of the first importance. There is also the whole question of family planning. I know it can be said that this is a controversial issue and that it is neo-colonialism to try to encourage family planning in developing countries. But unless there is family planning, there is not the faintest chance that the figures I have given can be curtailed. All the consequences that they imply will then follow. There is the element of education. Other noble Lords have spoken about this. I want to underline once again—I shall not go into it in detail because other noble Lords have done so—the importance of the education of women. The increased literacy of women correlates with the voluntary restriction of family size. It is a matter of the greatest importance. There is a time lag. There is a tremendous time lag between educating women and having the required results in family planning.
In addition, we have to put more resources into family planning. I shall use a word which has not been used in the debate this afternoon in connection with aid and family planning. We have to face the issue of conditionality, of saying that we will give aid—indeed, increased aid—provided some of it is devoted to family planning and some of it is devoted to women's education. I am well aware of all the arguments that can be made against conditionality, but it is a choice between two evils. If one does not do anything, the evil resulting from not doing it seems far greater than the evil resulting from doing it. Therefore I urge that it should be so.
We need family planning in connection with attempting—this is where it links with women's education—to delay the age at which a woman has her first child, and to encourage longer spaces between the births of children. The large number of children born in the very early years of a woman's child-bearing life can then be reduced. The effects of excessive child births in the early years of a woman's life—on population, on the woman and on the standards of family life—are quite horrifying.
We have today in the ODA an outstanding Minister who fully understands these matters. She fully recognises the needs. She recognises it as much or even more than anybody in your Lordships' House. She also recognises that a great deal of the work has to be done through the NGOs for a whole variety of reasons. I have gone on too long and I must not elaborate them. I beg the noble Earl to accept that this problem will not just go away, that the action we are taking at the moment is not enough and that we need combined action between the Government and government agencies working through the NGOs to tackle the multiple problems that we face in this area.
5.56 p.m.
Lord Gallacher: My Lords, we are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject. The response from all parts of the House indicates its importance.
Problems of world food shortages, over-population and the present famine in parts of Africa are by any standard daunting. We are entitled to ask ourselves whether current "food surpluses" in North America, Western Europe and the Cairns group of countries are real or not. They are real enough in the context of the needs of the populations for whom food was grown in the first place. They are not so when measured against world population growth, both actual and projected.
These surpluses can play a vital role in relief work. Yet when sold on world markets they destabilise prices and paradoxically make it harder for poorer countries to earn a living from exports. In developed countries, farm support policies, whatever their form, bedevil the situation. Improved growing methods, aided by new technologies, further aggravate the position.
The resumption of GATT talks on agricultural support distortions is welcomed. The discussions should also take account of the need to let developing countries earn a living on world markets. GATT talks are not just about the European Community versus the United States and the Cairns group of countries. For example, in the Australia News for week ending 8th March 1991, there is a record of a multi-party delegation to the United States, led by the Australian Minister for Trade and Overseas Development, to put Australia's case against the United States export enhancement programme which threatens to damage Australian grain exports to the Middle East, including Egypt. Such cases can be repeated worldwide: the problem is considerable. It is not helped in any way by high interest rate policies.
Restraining population growth in developing countries is a major aspect of solving problems related to present levels of subsistence living in so many areas of the world. Encouraging viable forms of food production by under-developed nations is the other great challenge facing the world, especially our supranational institutions such as the Food and Agricultural Organisation and the European Community. Most observers agree that, if living standards could be raised, population growth would slowly reduce, although improved mortality rates would then probably discount benefits, at least for some time. That point has been well developed by several speakers in the debate.
It is something of a chicken and egg situation, but there is no present alternative to encouragement of population control. As to the form of that encouragement, we can all learn from the instances which have been discussed by several speakers.
Helping local food production depends on many variables. Climate, especially rainfall, presents a major impediment and challenge. Irrigation schemes are expensive but unavoidable in many regions, even allowing for the beneficent effects of biotechnology. Advice on good farm methods is essential. Food aid programmes are still in need of greater co-ordination
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while attempts to channel aid through particular sources are not always successful. For example, the European Court of Auditors in its latest report, is critical of the Community's administration of recent projects, especially in West Africa and Bangladesh. Such deficiencies are partly due to local conditions—not always conducive to honest dealing—and partly to the lack of a permanent framework to distribute fairly. Civil strife can also undermine aid programmes as can poor communications.
Food shortages are regrettably a permanent feature of the world scene. Can the noble Earl who is to reply say whether relief structures are generally of such a nature as to best undertake current and possible future tasks? Are voluntary organisations given the right place within such structures? Are they well supported in the work they undertake? Do they report to the Minister for Overseas Development on their experiences?
Civil war is a wretched factor in causing starvation, a point rightly brought out by several speakers today. How active is the United Nations in attempting to end such civil wars? What standing does it seek in such disputes when innocent people are put at risk by small groups of merciless protagonists? Has the United Nations the peace-keeping resources for such tasks, and does it intend at any future time to deploy those resources accordingly?
In promoting best assistance for agriculture in developing countries, co-operatives have an on-going part to play. Viable farmers' co-operatives can also help to achieve stability in rural areas. As farmers may follow extensive growing systems, the co-operatives may also help arrest the drift of population to the towns where social and housing problems may be great, a problem not unknown even in developed countries.
At one time, the Minister for Overseas Development was assisted by both an adviser on co-operatives and a small consultative committee. The granting of independence to former colonies resulted in a scaling down and eventual abolition of such work. Self-government for former colonies was thought to have eliminated the need for advice on co-operatives. Yet rural problems in developing countries abound; so the opportunities for agricultural co-operatives arc still there. These may be of growers, marketeers, requisite suppliers and even credit societies. Multipurpose types usually come later. How can this need for co-operatives be addressed?
The current change of emphasis in United Kingdom farming is likely to lead to less intensive methods here. The ADAS organisation, which functions at the moment under the auspices of the Ministry of Agriculture, is now promoting extensive methods both on their merits and on environmental grounds. Also under the wing of the Ministry of Agriculture is the recently restructured Agricultural Training Board. A year or two ago, at the Government's request, I took a Bill through the House to permit the Agricultural Training Board to engage in paid overseas work. The board has a good

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record in basic training skills and ADAS has considerable expertise in almost every agricultural department.
ADAS is scheduled to become an executive agency in a couple of years or so and is obviously looking for clients in the field. Could not the Minister for Overseas Development find a joint overseas role for both these bodies as advisers and in practical promotional schemes abroad? Forming and supervising local co-operatives plus training would he a natural field for joint action. Perhaps I may suggest that there should be discussions on this matter between the Minister for Overseas Development, the Ministry of Agriculture and the two bodies I have mentioned.
No one addresses these problems without a total and devastating sense of inadequacy. Yet the challenge does not diminish. One consolation is that there is basic support for action to alleviate and, it is to be hoped, in time to eradicate the worst features of hunger in the third world. This debate has been useful to that end. I hope that the Government will capitalise both at home and abroad on the many views that have been expressed and will bear them strongly in mind at discussions within the European Community, the Commonwealth and the United Nations and the specialist organs of that body.
6.2 p.m.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I have listened with great interest to the wide range of contributions which this debate has provoked. The concerns expressed by noble Lords who have taken part reflect the concerns of Her Majesty's Government. That is why I, too, am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, for initiating the debate and to all noble Lords who have contributed to it.
The Motion refers in particular to the present famine in parts of Africa. I shall deal with that complex problem, but before doing so I shall make one or two points about the Government's long-term development programmes in sub-Saharan Africa.
The UK delivers a high quality, growing aid programme. In this financial year, we are spending £1.62 billion—the sixth largest Western aid donor. Within the aid programme we aim to support effective policies in developing countries, built around open, accountable government and sound economic management with respect for the needs of the poor. We do so through well designed and well managed projects, with a commitment to environmental sustainability, combined with a realistic approach to population issues.
These are the priorities in our long-term development assistance programmes in Africa. Without sound macro-economic and sectoral policies, there is a high risk that development resources and efforts may be wasted. Structural adjustment programmes seek to help countries to improve their fiscal and monetary policies. More than 40 per cent. of total British aid goes to the region. Our bilateral programme to sub-Saharan Africa rose from £267 million in 1986 to £496 million in 1989. In 1989, more than half of all our bilateral aid went to Africa. But we
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must recognise that in countries where famine and civil war o rage, long-term development has to take second place to humanitarian assistance, designed to meet immediate needs. It is this type of assistance which we are providing to help alleviate famine in sub-Saharan Africa.
The food crisis in sub-Saharan Africa is extremely serious. The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, was absolutely right to say that there is a growing risk of tragedy in Ethiopia and Sudan, and possibly also in Somalia, on a scale even greater than that of 1984-85. In these countries, environmental factors, particularly climatic change—one of the factors mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cocks of Hartcliffe—and high population growth rates have served to aggravate and deepen a perennial crisis. But they are not the sole reasons for famine. The disaster of 1984–85 had its roots in high rates of population growth, poor farming techniques; misguided, wrong and unsuitable agricultural policies; and environmental degradation. Unfortunately. little has changed since 1984.
Two successive years of poor rains and crop failures in 1989 and 1990 have deepened the region's problems. In addition, continuing civil wars have frustrated relief efforts and development aims alike. Economic mismanagement, political repression and abuse of human rights have also driven some, notably Sudan and Somalia, further from the international development community, the very community whose help they need to break the recurrent cycle of drought and famine. Because of these factors, about 29 million people in 25 countries in Africa are facing the threat of starvation. Upwards of 15 million of them are in the Horn of Africa—7.5 million in Ethiopia and 7.7 million in Sudan.
In Ethiopia the threat of famine is greatest in the north and Eritrea is most at risk. Crops have failed for the second successive year and farmers have no reserves to fall back on. There are similar problems in Tigre and North Wollo as well as in other regions, which are not traditionally famine areas. The situation is as grave in Sudan. There are food shortages in all regions except the East, but the situation is most severe in Darfur, Kordofan and the Red Sea hills.
Undoubtedly, the scale of the problem in the Horn is greater than in 1984-85, but I am pleased to tell the noble Lord, Lord Cledwyn, that we are better prepared now than we were then to cope with it. Information from British relief organisations and satellite imagery gave us earlier warning of serious crop failures in 1990 and impending food shortages in 1991. The donor community has used this time to preposition food stocks and organise transportation. Thus we have already saved lives. We must now keep the food pipelines evenly stocked through to October, when the next harvest is due, and ensure that the food provided is distributed to those who need it and for whom it was intended.
The World Food Programme estimates that almost 4 million tonnes of food aid will be needed in Africa this year; 2.2 million tonnes for Ethiopia and Sudan. About a third has been pledged so far but its distribution poses major problems.

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In Ethiopia, the regions hardest hit by drought are the areas where civil conflict is most intense. This makes food delivery difficult. But we have achieved major improvements in the channels for transporting food to the needy. Early last year, under pressure from the international community —the House will be pleased to hear that it was the British Government who played an important role in this—the southern line was opened. It is working remarkably well. It has moved well over 125,000 tonnes of food from the port of Assab to Tigre's northern border.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, perhaps I may intervene on that point. I heard today that it has been discontinued because of political reasons and fighting. It is very sad.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I was coming on to that precise point. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, and the noble Lord, Lord John-Mackie, wondered whether airlifts could be used to help in this process. Indeed, we have already done so. Throughout 1990 an expensive airlift was mounted to reach the vulnerable groups in the Asmara area. It has reached up to 700,000 people. The House will be pleased to know that we have just provided a further £200,000 for the Juba airlift.
Perhaps the most important recent breakthrough in the relief effort has been the reopening of the port of Massawa. Relief operations were greatly hampered when the EPLF took the port in February last year. In December, both sides agreed to accept a UN vessel shuttling between Djibouti and Massawa with food shipments. There have been five sailings. So far, 32,200 tonnes of food have arrived at Massawa and have been distributed equally between the EPLF and government relief agencies.
If the use of Massawa can be expanded it will provide a cost-effective way to reach more people. We shall be pressing for improvements but they will need careful negotiation. The new northern line has begun well but there are still problems. Asmara has been shelled by the rebels. There are worries that the land route between Massawa and Asmara may come under fire. Renewed military activity could also affect the prospects for the southern line.
I turn now to deal with the point just made by the noble Lord, Lord Donaldson. I can confirm that we have today heard that the southern line has been closed. However, I can assure noble Lords that we shall be making strong representations to the Ethiopian Government to reopen it as soon as possible. The situation is delicate, but, in Ethiopia, there is relief machinery in place.
The prospects for Sudan are less optimistic. There is continuing civil war in the South, the government continue to mismanage the economy, and they have been slow to acknowledge the scale of the impending food crisis or to seek help from the international community. The UN Assistant Secretary General, James Jonah, visited Sudan last month. The communiqué which he agreed with the Sudanese was promising. However, there have been setbacks. I am
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sure that all noble Lords will agree that we still need assurances on distribution mechanisms; without these, relief supplies simply cannot be delivered.
Our role in this new crisis in the Horn of Africa has been a major one. We have taken prompt and effective action on two fronts. We have provided food and relief assistance. We have also acted through diplomatic channels, together with our European partners and others, to try to ensure that an adequate flow of supplies reaches those at risk, unhindered by continuing civil wars. The speed of our response owes much to the expertise and experience of the British and international NGOs through which we work. They are a vital asset.
The noble Lord, Lord Donaldson, spoke about the good work of NGOs, as did the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield who mentioned a few of them. In fact, there are rather more than a few of them. In 1989-90 we supported 510 projects with 70 NGOs in Sub-Saharan Africa. Moreover, I can tell the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, that we are in regular and daily contact with the voluntary agencies. My right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development—in respect of whom the tribute from the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, was most welcome; it will of course be passed on to her—holds regular meetings with the main British agencies working in the Horn of Africa. I can tell the House that she last met with them on 21st February and that she plans to do so again in due course.
As soon as the first warning signs of food shortages appeared last autumn, the Government reacted very quickly and committed 24,000 tonnes of food and other relief assistance worth £1.1 million to Ethiopia and 10,400 tonnes of food to Sudan. In December, we announced a package of £7.2 million of emergency relief for the five worst affected countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. That was three weeks before the Disasters Emergency Committee launched its "Crisis in Africa" appeal, which so far has raised a magnificent total of £6 million.
Since the beginning of this year my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development has visited Ethiopia and announced further emergency relief. In January, a package worth £8.75 million was agreed for Ethiopia and 20,000 tonnes of food aid announced for Sudan, worth at least £4 million. Last month, a further 1,300 tonnes of food was agreed for the Ogaden; £200,000 for the Juba airlift in Sudan; and £180,000 to help with the new influx of Somali refugees into Kenya. Last week, we made a further allocation of 6,500 tonnes of food, worth £1 million, for the northern line through Massawa. This week, £430,000 has been provided through UNHCR for Somali refugees in Ethiopia. This brings to £860,000 the total amount the Government have allocated for Somali refugees in Ethiopia and Kenya since the beginning of this year.
In summary, since the beginning of 1989, we have provided £145 million of humanitarian assistance to Africa, of which over £123 million has gone to the five worst affected countries and £80 million to the Horn. We expect to provide more in the course of 1991.

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The noble Lords, Lord Donaldson and Lord Hatch, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, suggested that the Gulf War had diverted the Government's attention and their resources away from the needs of Africa. Clearly, that is not the case. Not only did my right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development visit Ethiopia and a number of other African countries during the course of the war, but we also pledged considerable extra assistance to famine relief.
Since the autumn of 1990, when the first signs of famine emerged, we have pledged more than £25 million in humanitarian and emergency assistance to Ethiopia and Sudan. Some of that assistance has already been provided, but the rest will follow during the course of the 1991-92 financial year. I should point out that £16 million of the sum which I mentioned will have been spent by the end of the 1990-91 financial year and £9 million —that is 20,000 tonnes of food aid for Sudan and 25,000 tonnes of food aid for Ethiopia—will be available in 1991-92. Our aim is to deliver that food aid in the second quarter of 1991.
Those who know about food provision will know that food aid has to be planned well in advance. Food will be needed in Ethiopia and Sudan until October. Its purchase and delivery must be phased to reflect both needs and storage capacity in the countries concerned. Our food aid is channelled through British and international relief agencies. In order to help them plan their efforts, we have given as much notice as possible of our intentions.
I am sure your Lordships will welcome Britain's leading role in mobilising this new relief effort. But a long-term solution to the problems in the Horn depends on ending the civil wars. They have not caused drought and crop failure, but they cripple efforts to help. We have urged all parties to seek peaceful solutions to their differences and we shall do more where we can.
Apart from the crisis in the Horn of Africa, there are crises in countries such as Angola and Mozambique. Here years of internal conflict have brought misery to millions of people and made refugees of thousands more. Again the British Government have responded generously. Since the beginning of 1990, we have pledged food and other emergency assistance totalling about £7.5 million for Mozambique and more than £1.5 million for Angola, with around a further £5 million going to support Mozambican refugees in neighbouring countries.
Another major emergency where we have helped is in Liberia. Since February last year, Britain has provided over £4 million. We are probably the second largest contributor to this emergency after the United States. However, as noble Lords will recognise, the British Government cannot do everything. We have tried to mobilise the international community to follow our lead and respond swiftly and generously to the crisis facing Sub-Saharan Africa. My right honourable friend the Minister for Overseas Development has discussed the issue of famine in the Horn many times with fellow European Community development Ministers. She has also written to them,
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to the Commission itself and to her colleagues in Washington and Ottawa stressing the need for urgent action to ensure food supplies are in place in time to feed those in need. I am glad to say that there are signs that those actions are bearing fruit. The Community has pledged 320,000 tonnes of food for Ethiopia and Sudan since November 1990.
As I have pointed out, the food crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa has some, but not all of its roots in problems of environmental degradation and high population growth rates. The linkages are complex and bear some explanation. The world's population has doubled since 1950. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, reminded the House that it would double again to 10 billion or probably more by about the year 2050. The greatest percentage increase will occur in Africa where the population growth rate is about 3 per cent., compared to a global rate of 1.7 per cent. and 2.1 per cent. for developing countries as a whole. I am sure the whole House noted what the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso, said. He reminded us that children represent 45 per cent. of the population of Africa.
The rapid growth of the world's population raises questions about the capacity of the environment to support it. I believe that there are two important considerations in this respect. First, there is the growth of per capita incomes; and. secondly. there is the Government's policy towards the environment. The first is important because environmental degradation is closely linked to poverty. Among the reasons for which people clear forests, for example, is to provide land for agriculture and wood to burn as fuel.
The second consideration is also important—a government's policy may be critical. Policy changes. such as removing financial incentives for deforestation, or charging economic prices for energy, fertilizer or water, can help promote sustainable economic growth and protect the environment. Societies are beginning to make decisions on how they allocate resources among investment, consumption and the maintenance of the environment. Those choices affect the delicate balance of population growth, economic growth and the environment. We must influence them.
The noble Lord, Lord Thurlow, said that the main problem to be solved was that of agricultural production. We do not necessarily disagree with him. About 30 per cent. of UK bilateral aid to Africa goes to agriculture and related activities. On that point, my noble friend Lord Selborne was worried about the research needed. The ODA is seeking fully to involve the overall science base in the universities and research institutions in its long-term research strategy for renewable natural resources. However, we must not overlook the difficulties of implementing any remedies or aid that we may propose.
The noble Lord, Lord Walston, was one of many of your Lordships who reminded us that many of the countries most seriously threatened by famine have chosen to give priority to military aims. Internal wars cripple the economy, disrupt vital transport routes, and drain the countries' material and human resources. We are encouraging all sides to settle their differences by peaceful means. In the meantime, we are

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looking ahead to times when more rational priorities for public expenditure may prevail. That is not easy. It is especially difficult in countries such as Sudan where economic mismanagement and human rights issues have convinced us and others that we can no longer provide effective long-term development aid.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, asked about women becoming trainees. The noble Baronesses, Lady Robson of Kiddington and Lady Seear, mentioned the position of women. We agree that literacy is an important aspect in enhancing women's role in development. They often grow crops, as the noble Lord reminded us. If productivity is to increase women must become literate to enable them to understand basic information about fertilisers, equipment and the techniques necessary to gain access to credit facilities. The ODA is increasing access to training for women. The female percentage of the Technical Co-operation Training Programme arrivals in 1988 was 19.7 per cent. In 1989, it was 21.5 per cent. In some countries, women account for 50 per cent. of in-country trainees. Let us think about literacy. It is a vital ingredient in democracy. To keep women illiterate is to disfranchise half the world's population.
The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, referred to the need to help women with facilities to market the produce that they are encouraged to grow. She mentioned a project in the Gambia. I happen to be well briefed on that project. It was supported through the Heads of Mission small projects schemes and it funded a marketplace of which the noble Baroness told the House. I believe that it was at Sankandi. The person who handed over the cheque is now my private secretary.
The noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, reminded the House of the importance of child health care. I am pleased to be able to tell him that the ODA's priority on health assistance is to strengthen the provision of primary health care and to help developing countries establish sustainable and effective health services for their poorest people. We focus our assistance upon women's and children's health services and the development of services that prevent disease and disability, including family planning and child immunisation programmes. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, reminded the House of the terrible AIDS. Important though that is—it is something of which we must not lose sight —we must also not lose sight of the more mundane (if that is the right word to describe them) less high-profile diseases which affect the people of Africa and elsewhere. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, brought that matter to our attention.
I have one last answer for the noble Lord, Lord Hatch. I have answered all his other questions. He asked about the funding for the International Fund for Agricultural Development. Its budget in 1990 was 40 million dollars and the UK payment during 1990 was 4 million dollars. We are tackling the underlying causes of famine, including high population growth and environmental degradation. I hope that I have convinced the right reverend Prelate that we care and are acting, but that we are by no means complacent. We know that we need to do more and that no one donor can do all that is necessary. We shall continue
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to encourage other donors to follow our lead. We shall urge governments to persevere with peace negotiations and adopt sensible and economic social policies. We know that those tasks are not easy but they will help achieve, on a sustainable basis, better living standards for their people. They are their only hope.
6.25 p.m.
Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge: My Lords, I have the right of reply, but I do not want to do more than thank the Minister for a full reply and to thank everyone who has spoken. We shall all read the debate with great interest. I hope that it will lead to four or five different subjects being pursued in greater detail here or elsewhere. The only question that remains is whether the Minister—I shall write to him about this —is satisfied that enough food will be available to help in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Sudan. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Local Income Tax 6.26 p.m.
Lord Hoosonrose to call attention to the case for strengthening the financial base and autonomy of local government by replacing the community charge with a local income tax; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, when, together with my noble friend Lord Holme of Cheltenham, I put down this Motion last Thursday for debate, there was no inspired leak from the Department of the Environment. There was no hint that we were about to have what I believe to be the second highest rate of VAT in Western Europe. I have reflected upon the disclosures that have been made in the past two or three days, and I believe that it is even more important that we have the debate today. The Government seem to have a speciality of making policy on the hoof, so to speak, by inventing new policies as a reaction to a difficult situation. They do not foresee the consequences of the policy.
I have no doubt that the Ribble Valley by-election concentrated certain minds and shattered certain illusions. Over the past three days, we have reached an absurd situation with regard to the future of local authority finance: how it is to be raised; the functions, structure and responsibilities of our local government system; and what is an acceptable level of VAT.
The Government give the impression of being in a state of panic and of running scared, and to be about to try another bout of lightning reform to try to mitigate the damage caused by a policy which was itself implemented on the hoof. I shall come to the genesis of the poll tax presently. When I opposed the introduction of the poll tax in Scotland in your Lordships' House on 17th March 1987, I said:
"Perhaps I may say on behalf of the Alliance that it is important that we appreciate that the question of local government and its functions and what role we require local government to play in the future cannot be separated from the way in which we raise finance for it .… this Bill provides a remedy which is worse than the evil that it is trying to reform".—[Official Report, 17/3/87, col. 1353.]

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The Government were arrogant and stupid about the poll tax. They were not in a mood to listen or heed and now they have resorted to another panic measure.
There have been only two thorough investigations into local government finance during this century. The first was under the Liberal Government in 1914; then a departmental committee on local taxation was set up under the Labour Government in 1974, and its report was published in 1976. This committee of inquiry was chaired by Sir Frank Layfield who is probably the greatest authority on the subject in the country. He headed a committee of 16, which covered all parties and people who were not in any parties. Between them, the committee members had a great deal of knowledge and experience and were a fine cross-section of the community.
Evidence was given to them by a large number of organisations and individuals. The list of witnesses takes up no fewer than 19 pages as an annex to the report. Among the organisations which gave a great deal of evidence to the committee were the Conservative and Unionist Party and the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party. Not a single individual or organisation which gave evidence to that committee even suggested that there should be a community charge or poll charge.
A study of the proposal did not even warrant one sentence in the report. That is not surprising because it is an entirely regressive tax. Its introduction by the Thatcher Government, in the absence of any proposal of the kind to the Layfield Committee, shows how ill-considered, ill-thought out, unwise and ill-judged it was. On 18th April 1988, Mr. Norman Tebbit said:
"I am an unrepentant supporter of the community charge and have been ever since I invented it in the early 1970s".
I believe that it was invented centuries ago. Wat Tyler's rebellion was a rebellion against it. Nevertheless, let us accept Mr. Norman Tebbit's legitimate claim to paternity. Of course the attitude of the Government, until the composure of their minds by recent events, can be summed up in the words of Mr. David Hunt, the present Secretary of State for Wales, when Minister for Local Government. On 3rd March 1990, only a year ago, he said:
"I believe the community charge will come to be accepted for what it is: simple, straightforward and above all fair. But it will also do local government a power of good".
As the main element for strengthening the financial base and autonomy of local government, it has proved to be entirely unacceptable. It has not done local government any good at all.
This afternoon I shall invite your Lordships' attention to the case for local income tax which was thoroughly investigated and approved of by the Layfield Committee in its recommendations, after hearing and considering detailed evidence and hearing other alternatives. The committee considered it as an addition to the rates. It is quite clear that, local government finance now having fallen into such an incredible mess, and the present Government being in such a complete panic, the Government are now trying at short notice to find an alternative to the poll tax. Any such proposals by them will inevitably have to be regarded as interim and short term, particularly
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if they go back to a hastily considered property tax and/or retain any form of the poll tax which has proved so expensive and difficult to administer.
Therefore, particularly if the result of the hasty unscrambling is to undermine local government itself even further, it behoves everyone to look at the merits of local income tax as considered and recommended by the Layfield Committee. I quote from page 208 of the committee's report, Command Paper 6453 on its conclusions on local income tax, contained in paragraph 104:
"A locally variable tax on all personal incomes could:

(i) raise substantial sums;

(ii) enhance the accountability of local authorities by bearing on the inhabitants of the area concerned;

(iii) bear on individuals according to their incomes; and

(iv) be a feasible proposition if operated by the Inland Revenue, making use of the PAYE system for Schedule E incomes and provided the present national scheme was simplified".

The Layfield Committee concluded, after consultations with the Inland Revenue, that a local income tax scheme could be integrated into the national tax system. At annex 25, page 450 of the report, it sets out an outline scheme for integrating local income tax into the national tax system. I am content to accept that scheme as a possible structure for a local income tax. It was thoroughly looked into and researched by the Layfield Committee, which concluded that a local income tax should be integrated within the administrative framework of the national system for personal taxation.
The committee had before it three research papers which it had commissioned on the way that local income tax was raised in states in the United States, in Canada and in Sweden. As your Lordships know, other countries in western Europe have reverted to the personal income tax and local income tax.
Therefore, I wish this afternoon to concentrate not on the technical details which were investigated by Layfield and considered at length, but on the reasons for the advocacy by the Liberal Democrats and many other interested bodies of the advantages of a local income tax as a main component in putting local government finance on a sound and long-term basis.
At this stage I should make clear that we accept the Layfield view that the local tax on personal incomes should be based on place of residence, for the greater part of local authority expenditure relates to the provision of such things as education and social and environmental services and they relate to where people live. We think also that it is important, as we set out in our Motion, that the autonomy of local government should be safeguarded. It should not become simply a tool of central government.
Of course, adjustments may be necessary in relation to certain properties such as second homes and so on. I do not exclude the consideration which I know my noble friend Lord Holme will touch upon: site value rating, as an addition. The Liberal Democrats base their view that local income tax is preferred to any other form of revenue raising as the main source of revenue from individuals for local government on the basis that it meets four crucial requirements: first, that it is based on an ability to pay. VAT is certainly not based on an ability to pay. Secondly, it must meet the

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crucial test of accountability. Thirdly, it must be capable of producing a substantial and regular yield. Fourthly, it should be easy to collect with the national income tax.
I return to the Layfield Committee report and its conclusion, page 190, where paragraph 37 states:
"The foregoing description has indicated that a local income tax … on personal incomes, levied according to where people live, is the only serious candidate for a new source of local revenue that could give a substantial yield and at the same time maintain or enhance accountability".
VAT will give a substantial yield, but it is unfair. It will not maintain or begin to enhance local accountability.
I wish to turn to the crucial question of ability to pay. Every person in this country old enough to purchase anything in a shop pays national taxes. He or she does so by means of VAT and it is payable, however poor that person is. The average earner or below average earner pays a higher proportion of income in VAT than do the higher earners. It is a regressive tax.
Last night the BBC demonstrated on its computer the benefits and the disadvantages of the announcements made in the Budget in regard to this matter. We have long accepted that the obligation to pay income tax to support our national expenditure should be based on ability to pay. It is fair, reasonable and just that this should be so. Exactly the same principle should surely apply to expenditure at a local level on services provided locally. There is no distinction to be drawn in principle between services provided nationally and services provided locally. Mr. Michael Portillo, the Minister responsible for local government, said on 19th October 1990 that taxes on people's homes are unfair and property values bear little relation to people's ability to pay. He also stated in the same speech:
"Accountability is beginning to work. Local democracy is being reborn".
I am bound to say that was a stillborn hope.
Whether a person lives on his or her own in a rambling run-down house with many rooms but cannot afford to run a car, or whether there are four able young people all on high salaries sharing a flat or a house, each with an expensive car in a garage, does not alter the fact that they should all pay towards local expenditure in accordance with their ability to pay. Quite apart from the inherent impracticability of the poll tax, it was an utterly unfair tax and one which was totally unacceptable to right thinking people in our community.
I turn to the matter of accountability. We on these Benches believe in local democracy. We are opposed to the centralising tendency of this Government. It is our belief that that tendency has been enhanced by the developments of the past two or three days. It is of fundamental importance to bear in mind the fact that the essential quality of local income tax is that the tax rate borne by any individual on his income should be set by his local authority. Rates of tax will vary from place to place, and will be subject to upper limits set in the national interest. Layfield deals extensively with this matter. There should be considerable discretion in
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the setting of the tax. My party proposes that there should be a uniform tax throughout the country with rebates at the end of each year.
This limitation on discretion would have to be made in the interests of national demand management. There are precedents for that in Canada, Sweden and other countries. However, on one's annual income tax demand there would be a clear indication of the amount of tax that was required to meet the local demand in the area in which one has one's principal home. Therefore there would be a clear link between the services provided by local authorities and the local income tax levied. What we have in mind is that national government and Parliament can insist —and do insist—on certain minimum standards to be achieved through local authority services such as education, police services, roads and other services. But there would have to be a much clearer and better defined relationship between central and local government with regard to how these national standards and their financial obligations should be met. That relationship should not be decided in a panic situation as a result of emergency measures to rid the populace of the unfair burden of a mistaken and unacceptable tax. The relationship should be carefully thought out.
Thereafter the main responsibility for the level and pattern of expenditure on local services should be firmly placed on the shoulders of the local authority. As I have said, we deplore the undermining of local government that has taken place over the past few years. We accept that all governments should have at their disposal instruments which enable them to exert influence and control to a degree on local expenditure. However, many of the decisions in which central government now interfere at a local level could best be made without that interference by people who are elected to consider specifically the needs and circumstances of their own areas and to respond to the views and preferences of the people living there.
We take the view that we would be a much happier society in this country if more responsibility was given to local government. We believe that many of the decisions which affect everyday life should be taken by elected people who are responsible to the electors of their areas. It seems to me that the events of the past few days which have been the result of a panic reaction foreshadow the most drastic undermining of local democracy this century. The consequences of the actions that have been taken in the past few days have not been thought out.
I turn to a further great benefit of personal income tax which concerns the amount and certainty of it. Our national income tax yields annually huge sums for national expenditure. The rate of taxation has decreased considerably in the past few years, thanks largely to the income brought in from indirect taxation, particularly VAT and North Sea oil revenues. We tend to forget about North Sea oil revenues. If a considerable chunk of local expenditure is to be met by a local income tax, the national rate levied by way of taxation would probably fall a little. However, one thing is certain. Raising money through a local income tax thoroughly integrated into the

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present system of collecting income tax nationally would be a far more certain way of raising money and making sure that those who are liable to pay do so. The huge unproductive superstructure which local authorities have been forced to set up to administer and police the unacceptable poll tax could be dismantled. I hope the Minister will be able to tell me what the overall cost of setting up the poll tax has been to date in Scotland, England and Wales. That must be an immense sum. We would no longer have a situation in which many of the people Parliament had decreed should pay towards local government expenditure escaped from that obligation. I shall repeat a statement that I made in your Lordships' House on 17th March 1987 when I said:
"The poll tax is the most primitive of all taxes, and it is the most unsatisfactory".—[Official Report, 17/3/87; col. 1351.]
Now, at last, I believe the Government appreciate that fact.
It has always appeared to me somewhat ridiculous to consider the question of raising funds for local government expenditure separately from the question of the functions of local government and the set-up of local government. In another place in 1971 or 1972 I opposed the local government reform legislation on the basis that we should have unitary all-purpose authorities in my native Wales and an elected council, that is a council for Wales, above them. I also proposed regional councils for England. I expressed a view then which I repeat today. I do not believe we should decide such matters as the set-up of local government without considering at the same time local government finance, its boundaries and what functions one wishes local government to perform.
There is a great deal of debate now on the matter of whether our unitary authorities should be county councils or district councils. I believe that in certain areas district councils would be more appropriate as they are much closer to the people. In other areas I can think of, county councils might be more appropriate, but not where large geographical areas are involved. I live in a large county and most local government officials spend a great deal of their time in motor cars as they have to travel a great deal. The whole matter depends on what is acceptable, reasonable and sensible to the people in the area concerned. One must consider where their loyalties lie and which council encapsulates the sense of community which is so necessary in local government. I believe that in my own part of mid-Wales the unitary authority should be the district council because of long historical allegiance and the physical set-up of the area.
I intend to cut my speech a little short, even though we have quite a lot of time available. I have referred to the fact that there would have to be clear lines of demarcation drawn on those parts of local government expenditure which should be met not from national taxation but from local taxation. Let me take education as an example. We have universal education demanded nationally; we have set up a national curriculum and we require national standards to be achieved. That is the minimum requirement. It seems to me that that minimum requirement should be met
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clearly from national taxation and should be reflected by way of direct grant to the local authority. It should be assessed in relation to each unit of local authority at least a year in advance.
However, in certain areas—and I am sure that mine is one of them—there would be a tremendous demand for further expenditure on education to provide additional facilities to study music, for adult education, for additional nursery provision and so on, and that should be met from local income tax.
It is quite clear that, in the process of deciding what is paid nationally and what is paid locally, regard should be had to the difficulties of any given area. For example, an inner city community might require a larger national grant; a remote rural area may require a larger proportionate national grant because of the difficulties and additional expense of meeting national requirements. But the administration of education, the carrying out of the requirements of national government, as well as the provision of additional facilities, should be under the firm control of the local authority. It does not matter what autonomy one gives to schools. Who is to provide supply teachers? Who is to co-ordinate the activities of schools, unless the matter is firmly delegated to the local authority?
I wish to conclude by saying this. I put down this Motion last Thursday, in order to try to get the Government to give a little more considered and mature thought to what should replace the community charge, because it was quite obvious to me by then that it would have to be replaced, and to influence them to produce a measure which they had carefully considered and which had been analysed and its consequences foreseen.
We have now lurched from attacks on all adults to pay for local government, to attacks on all individuals who buy goods in our shops, including children, to pay for the deficiencies in the financing of local government. The Government ought, for their own sake, to hesitate before going any further down this path. Relief might be necessary from the community charge—and I entirely agree with that —for we do not want another crisis in local government finance as a result of what the Government are going to do in a panic. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
6.53 p.m.
Lord Monson: My Lords, I am stunned to find myself with no direct experience of local government, the sole participant from the Back-Benches in this evening's debate particularly as the subject matter is so very topical. The beautifully chosen timing of this debate, upon which the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, must be congratulated, permits a non-expert like myself to fantasise about what the right honourable Member for Henley, in his unenviable hot seat, might have in store for us; an opportunity which one gathers will be no longer available 24 hours from now.
The rates, for all their many imperfections, were something which we had grown used to, and not all of us found them as inherently objectionable as, let us say, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin of Roding, who I am sorry is not here tonight. However, this broad acceptance of—perhaps it would he better to say

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resignation about—rates would certainly not have survived revaluation. That would have proved almost as controversial as what we have at the present time. So it makes good sense to start again from first principles, provided that these are tempered by political realism.
One of these first principles surely is that, just as there should be no taxation without representation so the reverse should apply; there should he no representation without at least a certain minimum of taxation, and the poll tax certainly fulfils those requirements for those who actually register and pay.
Incidentally, it is a great fallacy to claim, as some do, that this principle of no representation without taxation does not apply at general elections. It most certainly does. True, not everybody pays income tax, but even non-smoking teetotallers who do not run a car pay VAT, as the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, has pointed out. They also indirectly pay tax on petrol and derv, both as bus passengers and, more indirectly, as customers of shops to whom goods are delivered by road. So it is in the interest of every single voter to vote for prudent and efficient central government.
There is another fallacy which goes like this: there are vast numbers of people who cannot afford to contribute anything towards local government. That is nonsense. An interesting survey by the London Business School, published at the end of November, revealed that an astonishing 80 per cent. of the adult population would pay up to £200 for the privilege of watching BBC television. If 80 per cent. of the population are prepared to pay an extra £129 for the luxury of improved television they are certainly capable of paying at least £129 for necessities and luxuries provided by their local authority.
The requirement of any new tax is that it should not leave any group vastly worse off, or vastly better off, than under the old regime and certainly not suddenly; nor should it be perceived as grossly unfair. Here, of course, the poll tax in its present form failed dismally and I frequently criticised it for that. But it need not have happened in that way. The poll tax could have been phased in over five years. It could have been banded roughly according to income or the value of property. Or national taxation, including income tax, higher rate tax, national insurance contributions, allowances for mortgage interest relief, pension contributions, and so on, could have been adjusted so that people in general would, broadly speaking, be in the same net position as they were under the old rates assuming —and this is crucial—that they lived in a reasonably efficiently run local authority area.
I can only imagine that the reason why the last did not happen—that is, the adjustment of national tax rates to make them more progressive—is that a large section of the public would have been intellectually incapable of grasping a trade-off between lower central taxation and higher local taxation; and the old maxim that there is no gratitude in politics would have been proved right once again.
Any new tax should also, ideally, be cheap to collect. Here, again, the poll tax fails badly, though it is not unique in that. Witness the curious way in which successive governments foolishly started to dispense
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with stamp duty, which is an extremely cheap tax to collect, very difficult to evade and, provided that it applies to the disposal of property rather than to its acquisition, can act as a rough and ready form of capital gains tax. Instead, the Government go in for more and more complex schemes—BES, extremely complicated capital gains calculations, and so on —all of which are extremely costly both to the public and to the Government.
A new tax should also be difficult to evade and here, again, the poll tax does not score well. The Government could, of course, get around this by calling the public's bluff—given that they are constantly annoyed that the community charge is termed the"poll tax" by the public and the press —and make it a true poll tax. In other words, they could say, "If you don't pay, you don't vote in local elections". Of course, the public could, in turn, call the Government's bluff by saying, "That's fine by me. I would rather keep the money" and they probably would, given that only 30 per cent. of the population vote in local elections in any case. That would leave local authorities even more short of funds than they already are as a result of the high incidence of non-payment at present.
How would the proposals set out by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, measure up? I confess I have not studied the Layfield Report and, for that reason, I have only tenuously grasped his proposals. Provided that there were no personal allowances so that tax was levied on the first pound of income upwards, they would certainly meet the criterion of "no representation without taxation". They would also largely meet the requirement that nobody should be vastly better off or worse off than under the old rating system; the exception being those of the mega-rich who are wholly domiciled in this country. There would be an amazing collapse of house prices in certain London boroughs. I think that I heard the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, say there would be some upper limit to his tax but I do not know whether that applies to the percentage rates or to the individual.
In saying that a local income tax would be easy to collect I have to say that there would be certain snags, and I will come to those in a moment. In theory, it would also be difficult to evade but the reality is somewhat different. For example, there are a very substantial number of expensive house and flats, particularly in London, owned by wealthy people from overseas who spend only a few months a year in this country and who pay little, if any, United Kingdom income tax. Many of these people probably avoided registration for the poll tax, but all of them would have been liable, directly or indirectly, for rates —and quite rightly, because of course empty houses are much more likely to catch fire or to be burgled than occupied houses, notwithstanding that there is less refuse to be collected.
However, that is not the only snag. Unless the link between local income tax and the local authority is tenuous—and rather to my surprise the noble Lord said it would be, which would make a nonsense of the whole idea of local accountability—what about the fact that so many people, particularly those who work

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in London, live in quite a different local authority area from the one in which they are actually employed? What about people in the black economy who pay little or no tax? What about the self-employed, whose incomes are not known until well after the year end? Quite often in the case of farmers, artists, actors or salesmen working mainly on a commission basis, their assumed income for the year is based on the previous year's income but it could be very much lower for one year than anticipated because of a change in their fortunes, thus totally upsetting a local authority's revenue calculations. What would also upset local authority calculations would be the sudden financial collapse of the largest employer in the area, throwing thousands onto the dole. Again, that would lead to a massive shortfall.
No, following the Chancellor's ingenious shifting of much of the burden of local authority funding on to VATI find it hard to believe that poor people pay more VAT than those who are better off, given that so many items like food and children's clothing are exempt, but I suppose I have to take the noble Lord's word for it; however, I should be very interested to see his figures—one is driven to the conclusion that in the absence of any will to make the poll tax more progressive some form of property tax has to be the only answer. However, there are a number of essential provisos and safeguards of which I will list only three.
First, it should certainly not follow Mr. Nigel Lawson's scheme, which would involve no revaluation until a house or flat changed hands, apart from annual indexation in line with the RPI. This would most definitely suit me down to the ground. I bought my London house 31 years ago, when real house prices were at rock bottom. My neighbour, who bought an almost identical house two years ago at the height of the boom, would not be so pleased because his rates would be rather more than seven times mine. Secondly, the powers to cap—so unsuitable when every voter pays, or is meant to pay, the poll tax—must be retained and strengthened if there is to be a reversion to any form of property tax which is paid only by a minority of those on the electoral roll.
Finally, I have one other novel suggestion—I hope that the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, is holding on to his seat—should a property tax be introduced. I do not propose that we go back to 1946, when only those who paid rates were able to vote in local elections, but suggest a rather fairer half-way house. Everybody on the electoral roll would be able to vote once in local elections, in their capacity as citizens. That minority which would actually pay rates would have an additional vote and so would be able to vote twice in recognition of the fact that they pay the piper. This is not so much the principle of "no representation without taxation" but rather the principle of slightly enhanced representation as a quid pro quo for being singled out for taxation.
7.6 p.m
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, I join my noble friend Lord Hooson and the noble Lord, Lord Monson, in referring to the timeliness of this debate.
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It is an extraordinary piece of parliamentary serendipity that between the Scylla of the Chancellor's Budget yesterday and the Charybdis of the Statement tomorrow by the Secretary of State for the Environment this small river of common sense can flow through your Lordships' House. Many millions of words have been said and written about the poll tax and I propose to add a few more of my own in your Lordships' House this evening.
I believe that the poll tax is more than a failed policy: it is a very major failure of the whole system of government in this country. In fact, I think the poll tax is probably the biggest single administrative governmental blunder in peacetime in this century. Before framing that assertion I found myself studying the history of great mistakes in this century and I came up with the groundnuts scheme. Of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, will not remember that any more than I do directly, but I have read about it and seem to remember that it resulted in the resignation of a Minister, the then Colonial Secretary. All I can say is that the poll tax makes the groundnuts scheme look like peanuts.
I think that in any rational, accountable and open system of government there would be some sort of investigation of how this great blunder occurred, and those who were guilty of sins of omission or commission would be identified and would in some way or other be held responsible for what has happened. We have not even had that little word "sorry" from the Government. Perhaps the noble Baroness will remedy that omission this evening, or perhaps being in government means never having to say you are sorry! At all events, I hope that we can get some acknowledgement of the fact that a very great blunder has been made because that would be healthy for our whole system of government. I suspect that that will not happen; but if it does not I trust that at the coming election, when the Government face their final reckoning at the ballot box, they will find the words "poll tax" engraved on their hearts.
The worst aspect about this tragic blunder is that it still is not over: it goes on and on and on. Like the tar baby of the Uncle Remus stories the Government find themselves stickily attached to their own misdeeds; and yesterday's gimmicky Budget illustrates just how serious the situation is and shows that it is still unravelling.
I think we should be quite clear as to what the effect of Mr. Lamont's sleight of hand will be. Not only will local councils have to face yet another series of administrative dislocations and extra interest costs to cover the new borrowing that will now be needed to bridge the Government's credibility gap, and not only will the tax system have been abused for what seems to be a transparent electoral purpose, but the whole relationship between central and local government will have been changed for ever and, in our view on these Benches, changed for the worse.
Of course there is a long-standing case for the reform of the structure and functions of local government; and that review should have come first. There would then have been a case for reform of the system of financing local government; and that should

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have come second. Finally, as a result of these reforms there might well have been a case for tax changes; and that should have come last. A democracy that has succeeded in reversing that process, starting yesterday with a gimmick, which it then attempts to turn at very high speed into a principle, does not seem to me to be fully worthy of the name of a democracy. Are we not behaving exactly like the elective dictatorship to which the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, drew our attention 15 years ago. We have reached a situation of constitutional nonsense on stilts.
A great question of principle underlies this whole debate. It was very well put last week in a leading article in the Independent, which said:
"We have a choice between some form of local solution and some form of central solution".
If we genuinely want local government in Britain we should aim to raise and spend money locally using government subventions to equalise somewhat between prosperous and poor areas but otherwise respecting local autonomy, as my noble friend Lord Hooson said. In practice, despite the history of the post-war Conservative Party, the Government have decided that the gentleman in Whitehall knows best. We are witnessing an unprecedented centralisation of power in the hands of government in London.
Given the experience of the noble Baroness in local government, I wonder how it can be thought right to bring increasingly into Whitehall the functions of local government and the decisions that affect local people, and that we centralise what many of us hoped and believed would be a local democratic system. The solution to be put forward tomorrow to these problems, which has been foreshadowed by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is that effectively local government will become a puppet play put on by Whitehall and Westminster. There will be shadow puppet plays in the localities but all the real decisions will be made in London.
As my noble friend said, a local income tax is not only fair, and by definition easy to collect, but it is genuinely local. I see that the noble Baroness disagrees. No doubt she will tell us why she does so when she replies. I am sure she will concede that income tax is rather easier to collect than the poll tax. There is a very much lower incidence of people not paying income tax than of people not paying the poll tax; particularly in Scotland, as we have painfully discovered in the past two or three years.
I want to try to respond to the point which, to put it positively, must have been in the Government's mind when they launched themselves on the slippery path of the poll tax. No doubt they were looking for local accountability. They were trying to strengthen the connection between locally elected councillors and their constituents. They were trying to achieve greater responsibility and accountability in the system. I believe that a local income tax, particularly if combined with proportional representation (which would eliminate some of the extremist minorities which have given local government such a bad name) would have provided precisely the accountability that is now so lacking.
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My noble friend said that I would refer briefly to site value rating. Historically, that was the main policy of the former Liberal Party. We see some application for the site value principle in place of the uniform business rate. Businesses would be taxed locally according to the value of the site which they occupy. That is not perfect but I ask the noble Baroness to tell us what proposals the Government have for the reform of the uniform business rate which seems almost as unpopular in the business community as is the poll tax with the general public at large.
I make one or two final observations. We have all seen the process of the poll tax produced by a strong Prime Minister acting on an acquiescent Cabinet acting on a docile Conservative Party acting on an enfeebled House of Commons. It is a sequence that does no credit to our constitutional arrangements. If ever there was a time for careful deliberation to consider first the structure and functions of local government, then its financial needs and then how the money should be raised, that was it. If the Government were not to accept Layfield, as I think they should have done, the situation cried out for a Royal Commission.
It is a very exciting part of the new dispensation in Downing Street that Royal Commissions will now be allowed. Surely it is not too late for this country to use its institutional genius, which strangely seems to have atrophied in recent years, to appoint a Royal Commission to consider these matters in the right order and come up with the right conclusions. We should fear the possibility of another spatchcock solution produced at short notice for electoral reasons. The constitutional nature of what we are doing, which was referred to this afternoon in the debate on Government business, is such that measures are being pushed through that will together fundamentally affect the quality of local democracy and our democratic life in this country in a way which does not reflect deliberation or care and which does not bother to obtain a wide basis of support.
Unless constitutional change of the kind that we are undertaking has some wider basis of democratic support than the will of the leadership of one party, I do not believe that it will command public confidence.
7.16 p.m.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I view the debate with somewhat modified rapture. I do not agree that the timing is particularly good. We had an excellent debate instigated by the noble Lord, Lord Rippon of Hexham. If I am to hear attacks on the poll tax, I much prefer to hear them from the Conservative Benches. They are the more genuine for being the more profoundly concealed in recent years.
I do not believe that a serious political party ought to table a Motion for a debate of this kind and not put forward any speakers other than the proposer of the Motion and a Front Bench spokesman to reply. We ought to be jealous of the opportunity given by these limited Opposition debates and make sure that we bring forward matters for discussion which arouse rather more interest at least from the party which

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tables them than has here been the case. That is not to say that I have not enjoyed some of the speeches. I enjoyed the first 20 minutes of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hooson. However, this is not the way to deal with the serious matters which are before Parliament and the House this week. That is not to say that I believe for a moment that the way adopted by the Government is the right way to proceed.
We are experiencing an extraordinary week. On Monday a little Bill seeking to enshrine the principle that Marsham Street knows best about the details of local government expenditure was pushed through and completed its passage through this House. Within hours comes a leak—we are told from Marsham Street itself—indicating that despite all the talk earlier in the afternoon about capping the measure is for one year only and that there will be major changes in the whole basis on which local government finance, structure and everything are to be put before Parliament. It was the quick fix.
On Tuesday we had the quick quick fix. In other words, not only do the Government propose—we gather that it will take place tomorrow—after inadequate consideration and inadequate consultation, to make radical changes to the whole structure of local government, but they now propose, within a period of only a few days, to go back on what had been said about local authority expenditure in the coming financial year 1991-92 and, as was well said by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, to transfer from a completely unjust tax to the next most unjust alternative available, the very unprogressive value added tax. We shall see what that means in legislative terms tomorrow.
If the leak means anything, we shall also have a clearer indication of what will happen in the following years if this country has the misfortune to continue to be governed by the Conservative Party. In the circumstances, the House will forgive me if I do not talk further about the wider issues raised by local government finance. It is not that I am unwilling to kick the poll tax when it is down. I do not think we should be in politics if we are not willing to kick our opponents when they are down. It is that I believe there will be better opportunities to do so. I am sure that parliamentary time will be afforded to enable us to do that.
Before I turn to local income tax in detail, I wish to say a word to the noble Lord, Lord Monson, about the proposal he made which he thought would shock me. If I understand him aright, he is proposing that in addition to the first vote given to all adults, a vote should be given to those who actually pay over the cash for the property tax which he recommends as an alternative to the poll tax. That would not reflect the way in which people have thought about property taxes. I speak now as an opinion pollster. We asked the very simple question immediately after the 1987 election, "Do you pay rates?" Seventy-five per cent. of the adult population answered yes. That means that other adults in the household who may not be handing over the cash themselves see themselves as contributing to the rates. It means in particular that council
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tenants who pay their rates as part of their rent, and not directly as rates, see themselves as paying rates. Those are the people who would be semi-disenfranchised by the proposal made by the noble Lord. They would have one vote, but it would be a lesser vote than that of others.
Lord Monson: My Lords, if one third of the people pay rates, then only that third would have the extra vote. I believe it is fair to say that the noble Lord was once the victim of the loony Left. Does he agree that students, for example, do not pay rates and do not consider themselves as paying rates? Students at universities and polytechnics have nothing whatever to lose, and possibly a great deal to gain, if they vote for loony Left candidates. That is the type of thing that I am trying to minimise.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, that was a very strange intervention. First, I rather resent continuous harping back to the loony Left. Secondly, the noble Lord is just plain wrong. When there were rates, students paid rates. They paid them because the halls of residence in which they lived were accountable for rates and therefore it affected the fees that they paid. If they lived in digs their landlords or landladies were paying rates and the rent that they paid to the landlords and landladies reflected the rates paid. Students paid rates the same as everyone else. Virtually all adults except those who were exempt because of rebates paid rates. To include only those who hand over the cheque or cash for this extra vote is irrational and in contravention of the facts about property taxes as we know them.
I turn to the Motion put down by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson. I note that he talks about "replacing the community charge with a local income tax". As I understand it, the Motion suggests local income tax as the only locally raised source of revenue. That is what "replacing" means. All other revenue would be raised centrally. I shall refer to other points that he raised later. They were very strange.
It would be futile to conceal that I have been a supporter of local income tax for many years. My view has been published on a number of occasions. I can hardly change my spots simply because my party took a different view afterwards. I am on record publicly as supporting it.
I have read the Layfield Report rather more carefully than the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, including the other parts of the argument in paragraph 142 which led the Layfield Committee to come down against local income tax rather than in favour of it, as the noble Lord implied. I was not impressed by the arguments against local income tax. I thought that the Inland Revenue was being reactionary. When it talked about the difficulties of collection I considered that it had not thought them through properly. When I compare the difficulties of collection of the poll tax with the estimate which Layfield made of a collection cost for local income tax of £ 100 million, I am even more convinced that Layfield was wrong to listen to the Inland Revenue's arguments.
I was particularly unimpressed by the argument which the Inland Revenue put, which the committee

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accepted, that one could not possibly have local income tax at district level because of the complexities of people moving from one area to another. Again those difficulties have been dwarfed by the difficulties that we have seen relating to the poll tax. I do not believe that the committee was right to be impressed by those arguments.
Reading again the Layfield Report, I am confirmed in the view I then took which was reflected in the note of reservation by Professor Alan Day. He argued, quite sensibly, that one ought to consider different categories of local authority expenditure, applying a sensible economic political and social judgment to them, and then decide what source of revenue was appropriate to each. He divided local authority expenditure into those areas which were the local administration of central services in which it is entirely appropriate that central government should apply minimum standards and give local authorities the power to top up the expenditure. He then considered as a separate category those services which depend largely on charges to users. He believed that we should consider those in a different way. Finally, he considered those categories which reflect a local view of the services which are necessary for a decent society in the neighbourhood. I paraphrase his words.
He set two criteria for the consideration of local income tax. First, what proportion of local services were the local administration of central services? The higher the proportion which falls into that category the poorer the argument for local income tax. Secondly, how much of grants or taxation power could be delegated to local authorities? The more power that can be delegated to them the greater the argument for local income tax.
On balance Professor Day came down in favour of local income tax because he believed that local autonomy required a greater delegation of powers of decision about the level of local services. However appropriate it might be for local authorities to administer locally central government policies, the degree of autonomy necessary for services required for a decent society was the consideration for determining the balance of local authority services and therefore for determining the financial system to back it up.
I believe that Alan Day was in that note the only person who fully anticipated yesterday's Budget. He said that there was a case for a smaller property tax and "additional VAT or corporation tax". If the bookies had read that passage more carefully, they would not have been quite so taken aback by the Chancellor's suggestion yesterday.
Having been a supporter of local income tax, I came to listen to the arguments put for it by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson. I was really taken aback because, unless I misunderstood, he talked of a uniform national level of local income tax with rebates as appropriate in different areas. That is a recipe for centralisation more extreme than any that I had ever thought possible from the Liberal Party. He then compounded the argument by saying that he agreed with central funding for the basic services of education, with the possibility of top-ups to meet local needs. That may be what the Secretary of State
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proposes tomorrow, although I sincerely hope not. It is certainly not local democracy as we in the Labour Party understand it. It hands straight to central government the most significant and necessarily local of local authority services.
Finally, the noble Lord spoke as though an upper limit should naturally be laid on local income tax by the Treasury. One of my fears about local income tax has always been that it would be much too easy for the Treasury to cap it. The Treasury could always argue to Cabinet that economic management required that there should be some almost theological limit on the proportion of gross domestic product which should be levied through the direct tax system. I have disagreed with that argument since it was expressed 15 years ago by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Hillhead, then a member of the Labour Government, and I disagree with it now. The version of local income tax proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, invites such Treasury interference. Under the circumstances I have no hesitation in rejecting the version of local income tax proposed by the Liberal Democratic Party as being neither liberal nor democratic. It is certainly not in support nor in favour of local autonomy.
7.31 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, while thanking the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, for providing the House with yet another opportunity to address the subject of local government I wish to share the comments of disappointment expressed by the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. I am disappointed because the debate, short as it has been, could well have been subsumed by the debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Rippon of Hexham.
My disappointment was compounded by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Holme of Cheltenham. He did not speak to the Motion but spent his time criticising the Government in respect of the Budget yesterday and his own views on the community charge. That was a great disappointment.
However, our review is the most wide-ranging in scope that has ever taken place. Previous reviews have concentrated on either structure or finance but not the two together. The Motion before us today is concerned with only one aspect of the review. But the questions of what local authorities should do, how they should be organised and how they should be financed are interrelated in a number of different ways. The review is looking at all these issues together. An interim statement will be made shortly.
Although there have already been announcements about the community charge for 1991–92 it is important not to see the current review simply as a review of the community charge. Before yesterday's Budget we had already announced a number of changes for next year which were designed to provide help to a great many charge payers. The Government had already announced extra support of more than £4 billion for local government and for charge payers. The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced in his Budget speech yesterday that the Government are

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providing a further £4.3 billion of extra grant to local authorities in Great Britain in 1991–92 to permit a major reduction in community charges.
Accordingly, the Government will shortly be introducing a Bill which on enactment will mean that the community charges which authorities have set for 1991–92 will he replaced by new lower charges. Each new charge will be £140 lower than the one it replaced, or zero in those cases where the original charge was less than £140. The average charge in England will be £252 compared with £392 which local authorities have set. Charge payers in all authorities will pay less than this year.
The community charge reduction scheme will continue to help those who will still face large increases over their last rates bill. Although the total help that will need to be given through this scheme will he much reduced by the lower charges announced today I expect that, together with the effect of community charge and other benefits, it will mean that the average charge actually paid in England will be less than £170.
The Bill will also require grants to be paid to charging authorities in England and Wales and to local authorities in Scotland. It is our intention that the grants paid under these provisions should provide full compensation for the community charge income foregone and should also fully reimburse authorities for their reasonable additional administrative costs as a result of the reduction in charges. In England we intend to advance the distribution of the non-domestic rates pool to off-set the inevitable cash flow losses which authorities will incur as a result of this measure. Broadly similar funding arrangements are intended for Scotland and for Wales.
Our review of local government is based on a strong desire on the part of the Government to re-establish a more stable relationship between central and local government. That was spelt out in detail in the debate initiated by my noble friend Lord Rippon. We have been anxious to ensure that local government itself is closely involved in the process. We have held discussions with the leaders of the local authority associations and we have asked for their views on the wide range of issues relevant to the review. We have recently received their responses to our detailed set of questions and are considering them.
We have invited all political parties to contribute to our review to ensure the widest possible participation. This offer has been accepted by the Liberal Democratic Party, the Scottish National Party, Plaid Cymru and the Ulster Unionist Party. I believe that they each recognise that we have genuinely listened to and considered what they have to say. It is therefore a matter of real regret to the Government that the official Opposition has not responded positively to our invitation. Instead it has set a narrow precondition that we should have committed ourselves from the outset to the abolition of the community charge—
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, on that basis it may be possible for us to agree to take part in the review after tomorrow.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I do not stand in the way of the noble Lord if he wishes to contribute to that debate. But, as I have said, the review is much wider than that. It is a great pity that the Opposition has denied itself the opportunity to participate in a debate which is of immense importance to all our citizens and which will shape the kind of local government that we have for the foreseeable future.
This intransigence shown by the Opposition has been repeated again and again. We hoped that it might reconsider its position or at least spell out for public scrutiny its proposals. Local representatives of the Labour Party have not been as reluctant to participate as has the parliamentary party. Labour leaders of councils have taken part in discussions with my ministerial colleagues and me. We have also had many constructive letters from the leaders and chief executives of Labour-controlled authorities. They have decided not to let slip a great opportunity to contribute to the debate. Why cannot their national counterparts do likewise?
No such doubt could enter your Lordships' mind as far as the advocates of a local income tax are concerned. The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, has put their case eloquently this afternoon. The Liberal Democrats have published detailed figures for the effect of their proposals in every local authority in the land. They have met the Secretary of State for the Environment to put to him and to discuss their objectives for local government.
Notwithstanding some differences of interpretation of the Liberal Democrats' figures the Government are grateful to them for setting out their case. It has helped the review considerably in its consideration of local government finance.
A number of previous inquiries and Green Papers have set out the considerations against which any local government tax should be measured. These include accountability, fairness, ease of collection and the relationship between local and national taxation.
The noble Lord, Lord Hooson, has put the arguments for a local income tax. He and his colleagues believe most passionately in the rightness of their proposals and, as I have said, I am grateful to him for spelling out those proposals clearly. Noble Lords will understand that it is difficult for me to take up these arguments without appearing to prejudge the outcome of this aspect of the Government's review. But I believe that there are some difficulties with a local income tax which your Lordships' House will want to weigh in the balance when considering this particular Motion.
I have to say that the picture which the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, presents is all too simple and attractive. But it ignores some very real difficulties of philosophy and practice which would attend a local income tax. I shall try to draw these to your Lordships' attention in as dispassionate a way as possible and without prejudice to the outcome of the review. The money raised by the community charge in 1991–92 would mean an average increase in income tax rates of 3 or 5 pence in the pound, depending upon whether it was decided to choose to maintain yesterday's budget changes, which was not made clear by the noble Lord,

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Lord Hooson, in the course of the debate. In some areas the income tax rates would be substantially higher than that and the Liberal Democrats would allow local authorities to spend what they liked without any fear of capping. Alternatively, as a result of what has been said today, would they support limits on local government spending? I believe from what has been said that a form of limitation is to be contemplated. If not, that would surely be a recipe for substantially higher tax rates in many areas. Your Lordships will wish to consider whether that reversal of direction may not place too large a burden of taxation directly on incomes. Rather interestingly, we have now heard about a shift of £17 billion—which is the cost of education—on to the national exchequer. That is an interesting new dimension to the application of local income tax.
A local income tax could well lead to problems of fiscal migration. This is the process by which people with the highest incomes would move to the area with the lowest tax rate. Those who paid no local income tax would have an incentive to move to the high tax, high spending areas and demand services at no cost to themselves. This would create a vicious spiral by which tax rates in some areas would go higher and higher as less people were left to pay the local income tax. It is a recipe for instability.
The Liberal Democrat proposals have within them a suggestion that part of the burden of high spending —and by that I assume high spending over the assumed spending of any Liberal Government—should fall on business ratepayers in an area. We have just ended the system by which local business could be taxed excessively by the local authorities in which they were situated. Business would not welcome a return to that position.
A local income tax would be a buoyant tax. The revenue raised by the tax would increase from year to year as incomes rose, without any need to change tax rates. We have to ask whether this situation would encourage accountability or whether it would simply reduce the restraints on local authority spending.
We also have to ask whether it is a suitable tax for local government. I have in mind that for administrative simplicity, income tax rates are only increased or reduced in half a penny or one penny steps. This would make it very difficult for local authorities to determine their spending plans. With a 5p tax rate, the smallest increases or decreases in tax revenue which could be considered would be 10 per cent. or 20 per cent. of their total revenue. That does not commend the tax as a local source of revenue nor seem to enhance accountability.
Another difficulty is one of predictability of yield. This could be a particularly difficult problem with fiscal migration, which I have already mentioned, but the tax yield, especially for small local authorities, could vary considerably with economic circumstances. Local government needs a steady and predictable source of income.
Your Lordships will also wish to consider whether a local income tax would in fact give a fair distribution of the bills for local authority services. Would it be right that a person with a taxable income of £50,000
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would pay 10 times as much for local authority services as someone with a taxable income of £5,000? Should there be an unlimited degree of redistribution of the tax burden within a local authority area? Is a highly redistributive tax of this kind right for financing local government services or is it appropriate only for national taxation?
Several noble Lords have this afternoon criticised the community charge as being expensive and difficult to collect. I recognise that the advocates of local income tax have striven hard to design a collection system which is cheap and workable. But, your Lordships will want to consider whether the Liberal Democrats have not made unsustainable assumptions about the way in which the national income tax works or have suggested a solution which would remove the main virtues of the PAYE system which are that it greatly simplifies the tax affairs of most people and means that they have little or no direct contact with the Inland Revenue.
With the present national income tax system, the Inland Revenue does not need to maintain a detailed record of where every individual lives at every point in time. It needs a contact address but this need not necessarily be the taxpayer's main residence, the place at which he would presumably be liable to a local income tax. So the introduction of a local income tax collected by the Inland Revenue would mean that the Inland Revenue would in effect have to establish a national register of everyone's address.
Lord Holme of Cheltenham: My Lords, in their review have the Government studied the experience of other countries—notably, the United States—where, as the Minister will know, state income tax is collected without any of the apparent problems to which she refers? Has that been included in the review?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, indeed the Government are studying the taxation systems of many other countries. However, we must start from where we are. We have a system of national taxation where the national taxation office does not have detailed information about every single taxpayer in the country. The PAYE system which operates here has little detailed information about individuals, particularly places of residence.
Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, there is nothing difficult about it. Every taxpayer has an address and postcode. All one needs to do is to punch in the postcode as well as the tax reference and map that information to local authority boundaries. There is no difficulty at all.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, my understanding is that it is the national taxation office which will be interested in the amount of money taken from the individual. Global sums of money will then be given back to local authorities. I am talking about the Liberal Democrat system of local income tax and not that of the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh. However, if the noble Lord has a simpler system which will work, we shall he pleased to hear about it.
Most people who pay income tax do so through the PAYE system which ensures that on every pay-day the

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employer has deducted precisely the amount of income tax due. At the end of the year the taxpayer has paid precisely the right amount. This makes the tax affairs of most people simple. The Liberal Democrats suggest that this approach could be continued if the PAYE system charged in addition to national income tax, a local tax rate which was higher than the rate to which people were in fact liable.
In other words, most people would be expected to put up front, as the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, pointed out, a sum of money which is not related to what is needed by a local authority but a global sum which is greater than that required by a local authority. At the end of the year taxpayers would claim a rebate from the Inland Revenue. That would prove to be a very complex system.
The local income tax rate would be set at a fixed rate nationally at the beginning of the tax year; for example, 7p in the pound. Employers would operate the PAYE system as normal deducting both national income tax and this notional single rate across the country for local income tax. The Inland Revenue would assign the proceeds of the local income tax to local government and pass that back to the areas in which the taxpayers live. Hence, the addresses would be needed.
At the end of each year taxpayers would be responsible for calculating their own local income tax liability and for making a tax return to the Inland Revenue which would issue refunds or demands, depending upon the situation, to individuals based on those returns. To encourage people to make returns the initial local income tax rate would be set at a level where perhaps 80 per cent. of people would receive a refund. Therefore, the initial levy would be higher than that required by local authorities.
It is also not clear how the Liberal Democrats propose to treat individuals with more than one home. We assume that people owning two homes must nominate one local authority as the place of residence and pay the tax rate for that authority. The authority containing the second home would receive no income. Perhaps I may take my own circumstances as an example. Who would compensate Southwark council for what is the equivalent of the standard charge if I chose to pay my local income tax to Cambridgeshire? Or are the Liberal Democrats suggesting that I pay a local income tax of approximately 5p, 6p or 7p in the pound to Cambridgeshire and also pay an additional 5p, 6p or 7p in the pound to Southwark? That particular issue has not yet been addressed.
The noble Lord, Lord Monson, asked an interesting question. He said that unless we had proper representation without taxation, that begged the question whether we were to stop income tax from every pound of earned income; in other words, disregarding personal allowances. That would require registration of all income earners irrespective of whether they fall inside the national taxation system; that is, anyone below the national income tax threshold. Again, that begs an enormous bureaucratic problem.
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I promise the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, that I shall pass on his suggestions, including his very radical one.
The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, suggested that what happened yesterday interfered with the local authority budget. What happened in the Budget yesterday makes no difference whatever to local authority budgets. I do not know whether that was a slip of the tongue. What it will seriously impact on is the cost of local authority services to charge payers.
Finally, noble Lords will want to consider the extent to which a tax deducted directly from the pay packet at the same rate wherever a person lived would aid accountability. The noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, has already queried that link of accountability, and I join with him in that. Apart from taking more tax than was necessary initially, I understand that the idea of an end year rebate is intended to help here. But would it present a clear relationship between spending levels and the amount of tax paid? Would the actual tax payment be sufficiently visible to taxpayers?
There has been considerable interest as to what stage the review has reached and what the outcome will be. Several noble Lords have referred to recent press speculation. I have already said that the review is considering the structure of local government, the functions that local authorities provide and the way in which local authorities should be financed. I am unable to say more in that regard at this time. However, the review is making good progress.
We have had an interesting but short debate about the Liberal Democrats' proposals for local government finance. I hope noble Lords will share my doubts that a local income tax is not the straightforward and simple solution to local government taxation which the Liberal Democrats seek to present. There are considerable objections to a local income tax of both a philosophical and practical nature.
7.52 p.m.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the courtesy and detail of her reply, which I shall read with the same great interest with which I listened to it. She will not be surprised to learn that I disagree with many of her arguments. It is right to say that in the evidence given before the Layfield Committee, many of the objections raised by the noble Baroness were dealt with and carefully considered. Foreign experience did not bear out many of the matters to which she referred.
I defend the timing of this debate for this reason. It is obvious that when the Government are announcing matters that will have a real effect on the future raising of local government revenue, it is important for the public of the country as well as the Government to know that a local income tax is not only put forward in detail by the Liberal Democrats, but also has been considered in depth by the Layfield Committee.
Perhaps I may say to the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh, that he does not seem to have read the Layfield Report properly. The last paragraph of the proposals at page 300, paragraph 67, just before the reservation paper by Professor Alan Day, says,
"There is a strongly held view amongst us that the only way to sustain a vital local democracy is to enlarge the share of local taxation in total local revenue and thereby make

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councillors more directly accountable to local electorates for their expenditure and taxation decisions. On balance, we consider that the administrative cost involved in introducing a local income tax for this purpose would be justified. After many decades of uncertainty in the realm of local government finance the time has come for a choice on the issue of responsibility".
That concluded the report and it certainly came down in favour of a local income tax.
I totally accept the argument of the Layfield Committee that there should be a limit to the amount of the rate of local income tax. That is obvious. Otherwise, a local authority can set up in competition with the national government on such matters as redistribution of income. If there is not a limit the local authority can usurp the position of the national government. Though we are firm believers in local autonomy and local authority independence, we do not believe that the local authority—for example, Lambeth—should be under a local income tax and able to challenge national authority.
It has been an interesting debate. I was interested to know that there were various differences between what we may call the "McIntosh version" of local income tax and that of the Liberal Democrat. Not having investigated the matter in detail, I have followed what is sensible to follow; that is, a two-year investigation by Layfield.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. It was remiss of me not to refer to the specific question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Hooson, regarding the cost of collecting the community charge. The cost of collecting the community charge is approximately twice that of collecting the rates. It is our assumption that it will cost about the same to collect local income tax.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I am grateful for that information. Can the noble Baroness put her finger on the details?
Baroness Blatch Baroness Blatch: My Lords, not at this moment.
Lord Hooson: My Lords, I am obliged. I am grateful to all those who took part in the debate, which has been a helpful contribution to the wider debate on raising revenue for local government. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Motion for papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Global Warming
7.57 p.m.
The Earl of Shannonrose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that the various implications of global warming have been presented to the public for general debate.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, I seek this evening to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to ensure that the various implications of global warming have been presented to the public for general debate. I have done that because I am concerned that outside inter-governmental fora, universities, environmental research centres and the boardrooms of responsible business corporations, the
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public at large finds itself confused and at a loss. Adding to that situation, I fear that government and far too many environmentalists alike have to face claims of a greenhouse conspiracy when urging further action. It is the divided views of environmental scientists and economists as reported by the media —often in an irresponsible way—which may make the public reticent to respond positively and with commitment.
During the debate initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, on, "The Environment: A Comprehensive Strategy", I referred to the then forthcoming international global warming debate, which took place at the premises of the Royal Society in London on 7th and 8th March. Speaking at the debate, which I had the privilege to chair, was a Mr. Peter Thompson, the chairman of Strategy Europe Limited, whose idea it was to hold the debate. The Minister of State for the Environment, Mr. David Trippier, paid tribute to him for his initiative.
In his address on the media and global warming Mr. Thompson said,
"I would hope that readers, listeners and viewers will be as critically alert about editorial environmental reporting by the media, as they are now about party political propaganda and rhetoric".
Without detracting in principle from Mr. Thompson's views, I would mention the positive and responsible role of the regional and local media both he and I found in its reporting of the global warming debate. The BBC, independent and community local radio stations in many parts of the country in their mainline news and current affairs programmes, demonstrated much interest in the debate. This interest applied to the regional press, notably the Yorkshire Post. I am also glad to say that representatives of a number of scientific, technical and academic journals attended the debate and are writing papers and reports on it. However, the national media was another story. The debate would have passed totally unnoticed were it not for the BBC TV "Breakfast News", the Daily Telegraph, Independent Radio News and Sky Television.
In the main, the national media's view can best be illustrated by the comment of the environment correspondent of the Financial Times when he was offered a copy of the statement made by the Prime Minister of Norway, Mrs. Bruntland, to which I shall refer later. He said at that time:
"I don't want to see what she [Mrs. Bruntland] says. She is always talking about global warming".
I am happy to say that there was no such jaundiced view when I had the privilege to relay Mrs. Bruntland's statement to those who attended the global warming debate. Eminent speakers and distinguished delegates, as one, warmly welcomed the Norwegian Prime Minister's deep and moving anxiety for the crisis which we are all facing related to the greenhouse effect and its global warming.
Returning to Mr. Thompson's address on global warming and the media, Professor Patrick Michaels, a speaker at the debate, responded by referring to an article published in a North American journal which discussed the dilemma of debate on scientific thought. He reported the journal as saying:

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"On the one hand, as scientists, we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but … which means that we must include all the doubts, caveats, ifs and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well".
It goes on to argue that, in order to capture the public's imagination, media support is essential, along with some frightening scenario and statistics. It is then up to the scientist to strike the right balance between being effective and being honest. Professor Michaels' illustration has more than a ring of truth in it. It was this type of dilemma which has fuelled media debate and confused the public. That was the background to the conception and setting up of the global warming debate and, I might add, was also the background to this question which I am putting to Her Majesty's Government.
The debate, in association with the Environment Council and supported by the United Nations Industrial Development organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme, covered two days and, within its framework, there were seven mini-debates. The themes of these were: the scientific approach. the economic implications, Eastern Europe, the role of the rainforests (in which we were addressed by Dr. Jane Goodall who flew from Tanzania to be with us and make an address); the media and global warming; transport; energy; the framework policy legislation for the environment; and the business response to global warming.
The structure of the debate was to have opposing positions on all the subjects discussed. Speakers came from five countries and delegates from seven and most of them were environmental specialists and corporate advisers playing a full participating role. I was pleased to see that the Department of Trade and Industry, the Department of the Environment and the Department of Energy had senior representatives at the debate. Although the debate was a-political, it strove to close the gap between conflicting opinion and thereby stimulate a collective response either to advise action to check the rapidity of global environmental damage or to deliberate more effectively and speedily to produce answers before time runs out.
As I have mentioned, the Prime Minister of Norway, Mrs. Bruntland, sent a message for me to read out to those gathered at the debate. Perhaps I may be allowed to read some extracts:
"The threats to our global environment have become even more alarming since the World Commission on Environment and Development presented its report, Our Common Future, in 1987.
In our efforts to save the global environment, a special responsibility lies with the industrialised countries. We have drawn upon the natural capital left to us by our forefathers, we paid little or none of the true environmental costs of our growth, and we have passed on most of the bill to the generations coming after us".
Opening the economic debate, Mr. Nicholas Hartley, senior economic adviser to the Department of the Environment, suggested that there are three ways to lessen global climate risks. First, to intensify the amount of scientific research in order to reduce climate and impact uncertainties; secondly, to foster the development of new supply and conservation technologies; and, thirdly, to make immediate
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reductions in emissions. On the subject of Eastern Europe, professor Zdzislaw Kaczmarek, of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, mentioned in his speech that the world's most developed countries had demonstrated that market mechanisms alone could not sufficiently protect the environment.
The non-CO2 elements of the greenhouse problem, which include population growth, deforestation and others, was addressed by Mr. Malcolm Edwards, commercial director of British Coal Corporation. A new jurisprudence was called for by Mr. Malcolm Forester, director of the centre for environmental law at the University of Southampton. He said it would promote the common interest in the biosphere above absolute sovereignty over natural resources—
"a new De Jure Gentium of the environment".
On voluntary codes of practice, Dr. Horst Wiesebach, deputy director general of UNIDO, stated his organisation's experience shows that voluntary guidelines are broad in their scope and cannot cover every situation which may arise. The principle of their use lacks a mechanism which could motivate the industry to apply them. The subject of carbon dioxide emissions by industry in the united Kingdom was addressed by Mr. Christopher Hampson, chairman of the CBI environment committee and an executive director of ICI. He stated that UK industry is currently a major contributor to the nation's carbon dioxide emissions although these have halved since 1960. He added that if industry was properly motivated, it could effectively deliver desirable change.
Another initiative, which I mentioned during the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, was that a national survey on the corporate policy on environmental safeguards was to be launched. The survey was conceived and conducted by Strategy Europe Limited, with which I have some association. To-date, 4 per cent. of the major companies which received the questionnaire have responded, against the background that the questionnaire asked for no details of the respondent or of his organisation. What this says about public affairs directors, to whom the survey was addressed by name, and about their corporate attitude to environmental responsibilities, I am not quite sure. The responses received, however, have significant importance and merit, in that they proved to be a litmus test of a good cross-section of the industrial sectors.
Three questions in the survey, dealing with the levelling of tax and levies on companies to contribute to global warming and the environmental damage caused by the Gulf war, produced a majority view against. A report on the responses to the survey is to be published, and there is also to be published a comprehensive report on the global warming debate, which will include speakers' addresses in edited form. There will also be audio recordings of the whole of the two-day debate, in edited form. For those who are interested, these can be obtained from the organisers of the survey and debate.
Arising from these frank responses to the survey and from the key thoughts at the global warming

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debate are a number of recommendations to which I hope this Government will give ear. They are as follows. First, that industry should be properly motivated in order to respond positively to effect business practices on environmental issues. Secondly, that the Government should review their dependence on voluntary codes of practice in industrial sectors to see whether their application should be strengthened by further legal frameworks. Thirdly, that legislation should be introduced to protect non-executive directors from their boards, which effect merely cosmetic environmental stances.
Fourthly, that those Secretaries of State appointed to monitor their department's environmental activities should encourage the appropriate media to act responsibly and concentrate on fact rather than fiction. Fifthly, that, in terms of this country, academics and scientists associated with environmental problems should be encouraged by the Department of Education and Science to work together in the interest of public wellbeing. Sixthly, that the Secretary of State for the Environment should ensure that the broadest factors are considered by the IPCC in the development of a framework policy.
Seventhly, that in Eastern Europe, Western environmental expectations should be allowed to be interpreted by countries which are more able to evaluate the resources which they can put to environmental concerns. Eighthly, that the Department of the Environment should establish public debates, in regional areas throughout the United Kingdom, to assess and evaluate public anxieties on the greenhouse effect and global warming and that the cost of mounting these debates should come out of the public purse.
Finally, I should like to put right a statement which I made, in the debate of the noble Lord, Lord Ezra, about European Commission reported legal challenges to the Government for infringement. At that time I was quoting a news item from the Daily Telegraph dated 25th September 1990. After considering a kind note from the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, and one from Mr. Kenneth Collins, a Member of the European Parliament and chairman of its environmental committee, whose statement it was that was the subject of the report, it would seem that the report in the Daily Telegraph was inaccurate.
8.15 p.m.
Lord Hatch of Lusby: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, for putting down this Unstarred Question at what is very much an appropriate moment, as I shall show later. I particularly congratulate him on his chairmanship of the conference to which he referred. It would be of benefit to all of us concerned with the environment if we could be supplied with the papers when they are ready.
I say that this is a particularly appropriate moment to discuss the Government's attitude to the question of global warming so far as concerns the public of this country because the best opportunity that the Government had for initiating a debate among the public was just 24 hours ago. The Chancellor had the
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opportunity in the Budget of showing the Government's hand towards global warming and educating the public at the same time. The House will recall that on many occasions since the publication of the environmental White Paper last year—we have questioned the Government on items in it—we have always been referred to the fact that this was the business of the Chancellor and that we should wait for the Budget. Well, we waited. And we have seen what is contained in the Budget.
I am making the assumption that by now, particularly since the report of the IPCC, it is accepted that there is at least a very strong prima facie case for accepting that global warming is a reality. I refer to the report of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, on this subject in which he and his committee stated clearly that the case was such that we should at least accept what is called the preventive policy, assuming that these changes are likely to take place and that it will be too late if we do not accept the very strong probability that they will take place.
I have been closely associated with the School of Environmental Studies at the University of East Anglia. From my knowledge of the work done there and elsewhere in academic circles, I have no doubt that this is the only sensible—indeed, the only responsible policy—that any government can take towards the prospects of the next 50 years. What do we find in the Government's attitude, as shown yesterday, towards this issue and towards the public, which largely depends on the Government for its lead? We were told in the White Paper that the Government's policy is that the polluter should pay. Let us look at that and let us look at the Government's attitude in the Chancellor's speech yesterday.
First, on the question of carbon dioxide emissions, the use of vehicles is a very important element. We live in the privileged part of the world. We live in the developed half of the world. We in the developed part are responsible for 85 per cent. of carbon dioxide emissions. Those emissions are a consequence of the consumer society. It is the responsibility of all those in public life, and especially of the Government, to bring to the attention of the public the stark realities of the dangers if we continue along the consumer lines to which we have become accustomed over many generations.
We looked yesterday to see what courage the Government had in telling the public that the polluter should pay; that it, the public, would have to pay more for its petrol; that the Government were not prepared to continue to subsidise company cars to the extent of £3.4 billion a year, a grant which is four times as great as the subsidy given to British Rail; and that we should look at road taxing in relation to different sizes of engine. We wanted to see what the Government intended to tell people to encourage them to use catalytic converters.
The Chancellor's speech was timid: it tinkered with all these major problems. Perhaps the right honourable gentleman was frightened, like President Bush, of public opinion. If economic policy is to be governed simply by vote catching, one can see the dangers he foresaw. However, we are talking about

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life on this planet over the next 25 to 50 years. I was glad to hear the noble Earl say in his opening speech that it is now clear that market forces alone will not control the polluting of our planet and the fuelling of global warming.
In this respect one has only to study the United States. President Bush is not prepared to reduce the fuel guzzling of the United States because, as he says, public opinion polls show that the public is against it. That is hardly leadership. Market forces will not reduce the dangers. In this country we have seen the lobbying that goes on. Only today I received a package from a major company which sought to persuade me that what I had been saying about the use of CFCs could not be justified. We have seen the operation of the oil companies in killing the imaginative plan in California for a green policy. It is up to the Government to control those market forces in the way that their own scientific advisers and international scientific advisers have shown is essential if the planet is to be saved from disaster.
We are pleased to see the increase in petrol prices although the differential between the price of unleaded petrol and leaded petrol is not likely to persuade many people to change to unleaded. The tinkering with the taxation of company cars is hardly likely to meet the challenge of the £3.4 billion a year. Road tax is not to differentiate between the size of car engines. Catalytic converters are apparently to receive no encouragement.
More than that, on the other side of the coin of how energy can be saved, the market for energy conservation equipment has declined by 28 per cent. over the past two years. It is 28 per cent. smaller in 1990 than in 1988. Our GDP for the fourth quarter of 1990 was 1.1 per cent. lower than in 1989. In other words, we are becoming poorer. Yet for that same 12-month period, energy use increased by 1.8 per cent. with the consequence that carbon dioxide emissions increased by 1.6 per cent. That hardly promises a stabilisation of carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2005, still less a reduction of such emissions by at least 20 per cent., which environmental scientists believe is essential if global warming is even to be retarded. Yet, on energy saving equipment, this very constructive element in the equation, VAT is still to be charged. If the Government were serious in trying to educate the public into using energy conserving equipment, if the Government were concerned about increasing investment in energy saving equipment, they would remove VAT from it altogether.
When one is looking for a reduction in the waste of energy and for a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and the emissions of other greenhouse gases, where do the Government stand on those other forms of energy which do not pollute the planet? I refer to solar energy and wind power. We see nothing encouraging in the Government's relations with the public on these matters. I have elicited from the Government Front Bench figures for the amount they are investing in research on renewable energy sources. It is a mere fraction of the amount they are spending on research into nuclear energy. Surely that flies in the
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face of all experience and advice concerning the greenhouse effect. Where does one find in the Chancellor's Budget yesterday any consideration of the carbon tax on fossil fuels, which cause 50 per cent. of carbon dioxide emissions, proposed by the previous environmental adviser to the previous Secretary of State for the Environment, now chairman of the Conservative Party?
I hope that the noble Lord who is to reply will not give us the old and now tired answer that the whole problem will be met by the use of nuclear energy. We have had that canard before. We have pointed out that nuclear energy is wildly expensive, inefficient and builds up a legacy of highly dangerous toxic materials with which neither the Government nor anyone else have any idea how to deal. A programme has been laid down of clear scientific advice to the Government. It includes energy efficiency, renewables and taxation of the polluter at such a level that pollution is reduced. These are the methods which all scientific advisers have suggested to the Government and to the public.
However, we are still awaiting a lead. Will the Government have the courage to tell the people of this country the real, harsh and stark alternatives? The public must be educated into recognising the fact that we have to change our form of living in this country and that in the developed world internationally if we are to play our part in saving the planet from disaster.
8.30 p.m.
Lord Hampton: My Lords, I am sure that we are all grateful to the noble Earl, with all his experience on the subject, for bringing the problems which could arise from global warming once more to our attention. As he said, the public are at present confused and at a loss in regard to the matter. The Select Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble and gallant Lord, Lord Carver, produced an impressive report on the greenhouse effect to which the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, referred. We can only briefly mention the subject in this debate. The Committee's first conclusion was an acceptance that,
"greenhouse gases have increased and that global mean temperature is higher now than in 1850".
The Committee went on to say that,
"they consider it likely, though not proven"—
I emphasise the words "not proven"—
"that the observed increase in greenhouse gases has contributed to the warming".
Surely that is enough to show us that we must take seriously the problem that global warming could bring about considerably worse weather conditions and, in some places, devastating flooding. Steps certainly need to be taken to avert a possible crisis. To do so, the public needs to be fully informed on what it can do. While Ministers happily say, "We are all green now", our submission is that not enough is being done.
The 1980s saw the rise in the United Kingdom of the new force of green consumerism. As the public became more aware of environmental issues they started to demand environmentally friendly goods from manufacturers. The speed with which the public moved to CFC-free aerosols and lead-free petrol was a case in point. Such cases have proved time and again

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that, given accurate and comprehensible information, individual consumers are willing to play their part in preserving and protecting the environment.
Survey work carried out for the Consumers' Association has shown that consumers' purchasing decisions are based partly on the environmental effects of the products. In a separate survey of CA members, 81 per cent. of those questioned said that they were prepared to pay extra for goods which were less damaging to the environment. However, in the most crucial area of the relative efficiency of domestic electric appliances, where the most efficient appliances are not necessarily the most expensive, accurate and comprehensible information is not available to the consumer at point of sale.
The Consumers' Association has given me a most helpful brief on this subject. The association says it is convinced that big energy savings are possible in this area and that energy efficiency labelling would provide an excellent way of simultaneously protecting both consumer interest and the environment. For example, as the March edition of Which? reveals, if a member of the public was setting out to equip a kitchen with a new fridge, dishwasher, washing machine and tumble dryer and had sufficient information in all cases to distinguish the most energy efficient appliance in the range, the extra cost of purchasing the most efficient appliances would be £30. However, given average usage, that increment in cost would be saved in running costs in the first year alone. Further, looking to the environment, over half a tonne less carbon dioxide would be contributed to the atmosphere each year; that is, working on the basis that every unit of electricity generated at a coal-fired power station will be adding about one kilogram of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. Let us take another example. Some fridges cost half as much again to run as others. That is due to poor insulation, badly fitting doors and so on.
However, such comparative information is presently hard to come by. Although for many years the Consumers' Association has measured the relative efficiency of major appliances as an important part of its product evaluation for Which? and has, in consequence, built up a unique database of energy consumption by brand and by model, such information is not available to the consumer at point of sale; that is, with the exception of those fridge purchases made at any branch of the John Lewis Partnership.
The Energy Efficiency Office has put forward proposals for a voluntary energy labelling scheme for domestic appliances. However, its proposed starred rating scheme, whereby appliances more efficient than a set minimum will get a star rating from one to five, will fail to identify to the consumer appliances which are less efficient than the standard minimum.
Although we hope that consumer pressure will prompt all manufacturers to take part in the scheme, manufacturers' current belief that running costs are not a priority with their customers, combined with their initial reluctance to make the first move lest it should place them at a commercial disadvantage, suggests the need for a mandatory scheme. The
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European Community has proposed such a scheme which will initially be applied to refrigeration equipment where the greatest scope for efficiency is to be found. However, we remain concerned that, given the current progress of the framework directive, this is unlikely to be implemented in the United Kingdom before 1993. In our view the Government should take the initiative in the matter and implement a mandatory labelling scheme.
Before I conclude, I should like to ask the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish, a few questions of which I have given him notice. First, what incentive is there for the newly privatised electricity industry to encourage the use of more efficient appliances by labelling them in the electricity shops? Is it because they will sell less electricity if they do so? In addition, will the Government accept the fact that market forces often working only in the short term—both the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, and the noble Earl touched upon this point—are not sufficient when consumers do not have the information, and retailers the incentive, to buy and sell efficient appliances? Experience in the United States and in Canada has shown this to be the case. Finally, what are the Government doing about the need for better education on environmental awareness in our schools?
I end with a short passage from the Liberal Democratic policy paper on the environment entitled What Price our Planet? It reads:
"Liberal Democrats believe that each and every person can make a contribution to meeting the environmental challenge. Changes in lifestyle can have a positive effect. But those changes in lifestyle must come voluntarily out of a recognition that we are all responsible to future generations for the state of the environment that they inherit".
The passage goes on to state:
"To ensure that people can make informed choices we believe that far more effort is needed from Government and industry, at all levels, to provide reliable information about the issues, and actions, individuals and communities can take".
Will the Government accept that statement?
8.38 p.m.
Lord Peston: My Lords, while thanking the noble Earl, Lord Shannon, for introducing this short debate, perhaps I may point out that my own contribution is rather inexpert and will, therefore, have to be brief. On the subject of global warming, although I know that there is controversy in this respect, it seems to me that the balance of argument must surely be that global warming has taken place. Further, although I understand that there is some controversy among scientists as to whether there is a greenhouse effect, I believe that the balance of opinion lies with those who say, "Yes, there is".
It is difficult to believe that, as is acknowledged, the fact that the five warmest years of this century all occurred in the 1980s can be a coincidence. This is a subject we must take seriously. Equally, without panicking the public, we must recognise the effects that global warming will have. Action is required because those effects are adverse. There are its well-known adverse effects on trees. If we have global warming all sorts of species will begin to disappear. We have read about the melting of the Polar ice-cap

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and the rising sea level. In addition, there are statements which I do not believe are apocalyptic; namely, that we shall experience more extreme weather as a result of global warming—heatwaves, droughts and hurricanes.
It is a serious matter, and it is right that the noble Earl on this occasion, and other noble Lords on other occasions, have emphasised the importance of dealing with it, and looking for policies. I understand the noble Earl to be saying that education is part of what we should do. We should inform and persuade the public, first, of the seriousness of the problem; and, secondly, that some things can be done and, it follows, some things must be done. I shall make a few remarks on that topic.
I recognise—curiously the Government contradict themselves in their White Paper—that we have made considerable progress. I had not looked at the figures for the past year to which my noble friend Lord Hatch of Lusby referred. Clearly, the economy is in a cyclical downturn. He said that our energy use in the past year has increased. I did not check that figure and I apologise to him for not being aware of it. However, that is a one-year phenomenon. As I understand it, having studied the problem in some depth, if we take the longer view, the energy intensity of our economy has decreased considerably. Whatever else we say about our country and the whole of the advanced industrial world, we are producing more with relatively less energy. In that sense, we are doing something to solve the problem. That is one of the points that puzzles me about the remarks in the White Paper. It says, and I do not disagree with it, that we must approach the problem internationally; that a country cannot act on its own; that the whole matter is of international concern and requires some kind of international framework for progress to be made.
The Government seem then to go too far. Having emphasised the international framework with which I agree, they imply, and in one or two places say, that no country acting on its own can do very much. That seems to me to be wrong. I agree that we need to act internationally, but countries acting on their own can do a great deal. The evidence I have cited, which shows that we are all using less energy and are doing a number of other sensible things, is indicative of the fact that we can do things on our own even though co-operation will play an important part if progress is to be made. I hope that when the Government consider those matters they will realise that they cannot duck out of taking action in our country merely by saying that matters would be a good deal better if we were operating in an international framework. Of course they would, but we have important things to do ourselves.
The important point, as my noble friend and other noble Lords have emphasised, is that the action to be taken is tough and is, unfortunately, unpopular. I do not join my noble friend in attacking the Government for that, because any government will have to face up to that unpopularity. I hope that those of us on this side of the House who look forward to being in power will be willing to be as unpopular as my noble friend
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wants the Government to be. The things we need to do are the things that people do not like. They involve raising taxes on environmentally unfriendly activities. People do not like paying taxes. It may mean some regulation of industry, which industry does not like; but, nonetheless, it is difficult to see that we can achieve much without standards and methods of intervention. If we move to alternative technologies, as we need to, they may involve higher costs. So to obtain the environmental benefits the consumer may have to pay more. That is unavoidable. It is a matter of tough policies, persuasion and education.
Like other noble Lords, I am not persuaded that the public fully understands how serious the problem is. We are faced with the usual position, that people on the whole tend to be shortsighted with respect to their own standard of living. They do not see that their descendants will have a major price to pay if we do not act appropriately. In that connection, I assume that the rubric of the noble Earl's Question enables me to say that one area in which we need a great deal more activity is research. We need more research into global warming and alternative technologies.
Perhaps I may mention a point that is dear to my noble friend's heart: that the technologies that should concern us most are those likely to be used by the developing world. Although the advanced industrialised world has to a large extent been the cause of the problem until now, we are rich enough and determined enough to rein back what we do. The danger is that the emerging world—I do not for one minute blame it for this—is likely to adopt as its way forward the obsolete technologies, because they are cheap. It is our duty to invest in production methods suitable for the emerging nations which will enable them to raise their standards of living and at the same time not pollute the atmosphere.
We must move away from fossil fuels. We have been moving away from them and we must do so a great deal more. Solar energy and wind energy have a key role to play. It is a disappointment to many of us that we have not made the technological advances that we had hoped to make, and in particular we have not made the economic advances that we should have liked. When dealing with wind power we have the standard contradiction which is most irritating. People, notably farmers, try to move into wind power. They do so partly to diversify, because we have been told that as part of the CAP we must diversify. Then, as I understand it, the Department of the Environment announces that windmills are environmentally unattractive, and it tries to prevent progress with the windmills. We lose both ways. We are told that we must not pollute the atmosphere by using conventional fuels. We then go for windmills, people say that they are ugly and that permission will not be given for them to be installed. The Department of the Environment occupies easily the ugliest building in the United Kingdom, and I wonder whether it has had its whole environmental judgment distorted by that building and therefore does not realise that it is supposed to be a department of the environment. I live in Marsham Street and so I have the problem of having to look at that building most days of the week.

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I must speak about nuclear power. As my noble friend is aware, on this I disagree with him slightly. The priority is not to increase global warming. The important point about nuclear power—whatever else is said about it—is that it does not add to global warming. It does not emit any of the gases involved. It may have other environmental disadvantages, but on the whole nuclear power does not increase global warming. If one were to take the view, first, that we do not want global warming; secondly, that we do not want fossil fuel; and, thirdly, that we do not want nuclear power, we shall end up cold in the winter. We have to make up our minds.
My last point—wearing my education hat, and following the noble Lord, Lord Hampton—relates to the national curriculum. Educating young people who will be the future decision makers is just as important as educating ourselves. I am very concerned as to whether there is a place in the national curriculum for this subject. As noble Lords know, the problem is that the compulsory part of the national curriculum does not include any subject like this. The education on it is supposed to happen through what are called cross-curricular themes. Most of us who have taught know that cross-curricular themes tend to he topics that are neglected. It would he a great pity if such subjects were regarded as optional when other disciplines, important though they be, are compulsory. It would be a tragedy if, between the interstices of the individual subjects in the national curriculum, a topic such as global warming which is more generally of the environment, disappears because exam questions must be written more specifically in history, geography, economics and so on.
I have ranged across a number of issues because the subject is so interesting. I end as I began, by thanking the noble Earl. It has been helpful to us to raise the topic. I know full well that he will not let it go away, and even if he did my other noble friends will keep at it. I look forward very much to hearing the Minister's comments on these matters.
8.51 p.m.
Lord Cavendish of Furness: My Lords, I have listened with interest to this debate and especially to the contribution of the noble Earl, Lord Shannon. I am grateful to him for summarising the proceedings of the seminar he chaired recently on the subject of global warming at the Royal Society. Perhaps I may also say how grateful I am to him for graciously withdrawing his earlier criticisms of the Government in respect of compliance with Community environmental law.
Perhaps no environmental subject has so captured public imagination in recent years as global warming. Every spell of unusual weather brings more speculation about the possible impacts of global warming on climate and sea levels. It is important that the public are properly informed about the causes of global warming, the likely effects, and what can be done about them. The debate chaired by the noble Earl made a very useful contribution to this process.
We have consistently argued the need for policy to be based firmly on sound science and have sought to
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keep the public informed of the developing scientific consensus. We have backed up our conviction through our support for the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The IPCC working group on the science of climate change was chaired by the UK. It brought together over 300 of the world's leading scientists in this field who concluded that, allowing for the many uncertainties involved, increases in greenhouse gas concentrations caused by man's activities will result in additional global warming. This has—in the words of the former Prime Minister—given us an "early warning". To that extent, there has been a general consensus in which I find myself agreeing with the noble Lord, Lord Hatch.
The Government recognise the seriousness of the threat. Work must continue on the underlying science of climate change and on predicting and quantifying the effects of such change. The UK's involvement in the IPCC continues to be significant. The establishment of the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research last year gives us a strong base from which to contribute to the international debate.
We are clear that there is sufficient evidence to justify action now given the length of time greenhouse gases emitted by our generation will remain in the atmosphere and the potentially severe effects of climate change. We are pursuing action internationally and at home.
Action must be taken globally. The UK accounts for only a small proportion of greenhouse gas emissions—for example, only 3 per cent. of world carbon dioxide emissions. So there is little point in unilateral action. Indeed, there would be a danger that we would simply export the problem by encouraging greenhouse gas emitting processes to move to countries without a target. I hope that that answers in part the comment of the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that the action needs to be international. Can anything be done here in the UK? Yes, it can. And we shall do it. However, it needs an international effort to get the global emissions down since we produce only 3 per cent. of total CO2 emissions. We are participating to the full in negotiations for a climate change convention. Those negotiations began in Washington last month and should be completed in time for the United Nations conference on environment and development in Brazil in 1992.
At home we have taken steps to inform the public about the greenhouse effect and the implications of global warming. This is at the heart of the noble Earl's Question. In 1989 we published a booklet, Global Climate Change, explaining the greenhouse effect and the threat of climate change. Copies were sent to all schools to capitalise on the strong interest among schoolchildren in global environmental issues and to ensure that the next generation will be alert to the threat and the need for action.
This was followed by the environment White Paper, This Common Inheritance, which again explained the greenhouse effect and the action the Government were taking to tackle the threat of climate change. We produced a short version of that, which was given wide circulation, including all schools. In saying this I

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hope I answer one of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and that he derives encouragement from my answer.
Perhaps I may add something about the environment in the context of the national curriculum, particularly as it was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Peston. There is a long tradition of environmental education in our schools. Pupils have investigated aspects of their environment through a variety of subjects. Teachers have used the environment as a stimulus for pupils' learning. We are now introducing the national curriculum and environmental education has been identified as one of the five cross-curricular themes of the curriculum. There are explicit references to the environment and environmental issues in various national curriculum subjects, particularly in science and geography. History, art, English and other subjects also have a part to play. These measures will provide children with a sound knowledge and understanding of the environment and how it affects our lives, both in the small scale and on a global scale.
Greenhouse gases occur naturally in the atmosphere. Indeed, water vapour is the most important natural greenhouse gas. The problem is that human activity is increasing the concentrations of the natural greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide, which is responsible for over half the greenhouse effect, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. In addition, the chlorofluorocarbons or CFCs, powerful greenhouse gases, are entirely man-made.
The UK has announced that, as our contribution to the global action required, we are prepared, if other countries take similar action, to adopt a target of bringing UK emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, back to 1990 levels by the year 2005. We are also pursuing measures to reduce our emissions of methane, and we are committed, together with other EC countries, to phasing out the production and consumption of CFCs by 1997.
Taking action on all greenhouse gases together, the global warming potential of Britain's emissions should fall significantly, by approximately 20 per cent. by 2005 compared with levels in 1990.
The White Paper set out a first tranche of measures to achieve our carbon dioxide target. We are already taking many practical steps in the fields of energy efficiency, renewable energy, transport and forestry which make sense in their own right as well as controlling greenhouse gas emissions. We have said that we would like to maintain the nuclear option for electricity generation but only if it becomes more economic and the industry demonstrates that it can maintain high standards of safety and environmental protection. The Government will carry out a full review of the prospects for nuclear power into the 21st century in 1994.
Energy efficiency is clearly one of the most cost effective and environmentally sensible measures for us all to take. Energy efficiency helps to reduce emissions of CO2 through using less fuel while also making economic sense. OECD figures show that between 1983 and 1988 the UK's energy intensity—the ratio of energy use to GDP—fell at a faster rate than that of
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most of our competitors, including Japan, which is widely regarded as the most energy efficient nation. Further improvements in energy efficiency could make the greatest single contribution to reducing energy consumption in the short term.
The Government are putting in hand important moves to achieve further improvements in energy efficiency. The Energy Efficiency Office will continue to participate in this, drawing on its experience since the office was established in 1983. Such has been the success of its work that savings of over £500 million a year are estimated to have been made. The EEO's budget has been increased substantially to £42 million in 1991–92.
The Government are acting to make buildings, which account for nearly half of Britain's energy use, more energy efficient. Amendments to the building regulations will improve the energy efficiency of new homes by 20 per cent. The effect of these changes will be monitored to see how they might be further strengthened. A significant part of the EEO's best practice programme relates to buildings and provides independent advice to owners, occupiers and building professionals. For private sector housing the new system of renovation grants enables local authorities to help less well-off people in housing which falls short in terms of energy efficiency. For local authority housing, £60 million has been allocated to the green house demonstration programme to support innovative and exemplary projects. Furthermore, the EEO's new home energy efficiency scheme will complement these initiatives by providing advice and grants for less well-off households in both private and public sector housing.
We are setting an example through our campaign to promote energy efficiency on the Government estate. We aim to achieve savings rising to 15 per cent. over five years. Work on the campaign is being taken forward under the direction of the new ministerial group on energy efficiency, chaired by the Secretary of State for Energy. Each department is represented by a Minister who has been given special responsibility for his department's own use of energy. Each department has appointed an energy manager and has produced a strategy to achieve the 15 per cent. savings target. Many ideas and initiatives to improve the energy efficiency of government buildings have been forthcoming.
The Government are also taking action on appliances and lighting. That point was touched on by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. We are encouraging energy labelling of appliances and pressing for an EC scheme. The EEO is continuing its work with industry, which is responsible for over a third of CO2 emissions, to provide advice and guidance on improving energy efficiency through the best practice programme.
I was interested to hear the results of the survey of industry referred to by the noble Earl, Lord Shannon. I note the rather poor response to the survey, but I do not think that necessarily implies a commensurately low level of interest in environmental issues within industry. Industry is increasingly acknowledging that it is in its own interest to be in the forefront of environmental improvements, under the combined

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pressure of consumers and shareholders, and with an eye to the commercial advantages of developing new environmentally friendly technologies. The progress made by ICI in cutting its energy consumption is but one example of that.
This Government will continue to work with industry but will not hesitate to introduce regulations where necessary to control pollution. My right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will be establishing a forum to allow a regular dialogue between Ministers and business on matters of environmental concern. The Department of Trade and Industry and the Department of the Environment are undertaking a series of seminars for business to encourage environmental management and set out the assistance that the Government can offer. On global warming, the message will be that improving energy efficiency in industry not only helps the environment but also saves industry money, as the experience of the best practice programme shows.
Transport is also a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. About 20 per cent. of the UK's total CO2, emissions come from transport. Transport is, of course, essential for economic and social reasons. Nevertheless, the Government are firmly committed to reducing its impact on the environment. In particular, in yesterday's Budget, my right honourable friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced substantial increases in the duties on petrol and Derv, giving the motorist a strong incentive to choose more efficient vehicles and ensuring that those who pollute most, pay most. He also announced heavier taxes on company car benefits. These will encourage both employers and employees to think more rationally about the choice of vehicles and when and where they should be used. I believe that answers the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch. In his Budget speech my right honourable friend encouraged preventive measures. The noble Lord scathingly mentioned tinkering provisions. However, it is difficult to know what he would recommend in this area. Various other measures are in hand, or planned, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport. I shall mention just a few.
From November 1991 an emissions check will be included in the MOT test and it is planned to introduce speed limiters for heavy goods vehicles from August 1992. The Government are currently supporting massive investment in rail—£7 billion in British Rail and London Transport over the next three financial years. Looking to the longer term, the Department of the Environment and the Department of Transport have jointly commissioned a study of the role that land use planning could play in reducing the need to travel.
At least one noble Lord has argued that all these measures will be insufficient to achieve our carbon dioxide target. I said earlier that these measures were only the first tranche. The White Paper made clear that it will be necessary to take a number of further measures over a period of years. In the long term these will have to include increases in the relative price of energy, perhaps by changes in taxation. But long term measures affecting the relative price of energy can only
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sensibly be taken when competitor countries are prepared to take similar action. Unilateral action could damage the economy and would make little contribution to global warming. We have made clear that tax or other measures directly raising the price of energy outside the transport sector will not be introduced in the next few years.
We must recognise that progress in controlling carbon dioxide emissions will require the involvement of all sectors of society, companies and individuals. The Energy Efficiency Office is conducting a gruelling programme of seminars on different aspects of energy efficiency. I have myself spoken recently at seminars on energy efficiency in modern buildings and on energy efficient lighting.
Steps are being taken, following on from the environment White Paper, to inform individuals of the contribution they can make to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. This is an important part of the ministerial group's remit. We wish to raise the public consciousness of the link between energy and the environment and are seeking media support. We hope that energy efficiency will be featured in soaps, documentaries and local and national radio.
Earlier this month my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for the Environment launched a new booklet, Wake Up —To What You Can Do For The Environment designed to help the general public to adopt an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Some 5 million copies have been printed and it is widely available through the main supermarkets. The Wake Up leaflet will be followed by a major publicity campaign later this year on energy efficiency in the home. Our aim will be to help the public make the link between their own consumption of energy and the threat of climate change. As has been mentioned tonight, that link remains poorly understood. There are many ways in which individuals can help to reduce carbon dioxide emissions as householders and transport users. The Government know that they require the co-operation of all these individuals to achieve results.
We are also working with local authorities to help them to exploit the many ways of improving their own energy efficiency, following on from the work of the Audit Commission which identified a potential for savings of £100 million. We are also encouraging local authorities to provide a lead in their local community. During May environment Ministers, with EEO support, will be hosting a series of seminars for local authorities on energy efficiency.
Turning to the questions that I have not yet dealt with, the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, asked about the disparity between the R&D spent on renewables, as opposed to nuclear. He has asked that question before and I give him the same answer. There is no reason why expenditure on renewables R&D should bear any proportional relationship to nuclear expenditure. Each energy technology requires a different level of investment to carry out the necessary R&D in its development for commercial use. Both nuclear and renewables provide valuable benefits in terms of diversity and protection against the damage which

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burning fossil fuels does to the environment. I believe it would be wrong and artificial to suggest that one is better value than the other.
In answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, regarding the incentives as applied to the newly privatised generating supply industry—and I believe that this should, in a way, interest the noble Earl who also touched on market forces—the new market orientated structure of the industry does not ignore the needs of the environment.
The new regime provides a stable basis in its price controls for the companies concerned, while facilitating the proper economic pricing of electricity. It introduces considerable competitive incentives on generators and suppliers to be fuel efficient and cost efficient, as well as responsive to their customers' wants. The arrangements explicitly recognise the need to take account of the effects of generation, transmission and supply on the environment, and the need to provide economy and efficiency in the use of electricity. There is no reason why energy efficiency cannot go hand in hand with the competitive privatised industries that we have created.
The new structure is capable of evolution in the light of experience, and the director-general has said
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that he will consider the effectiveness of the energy efficiency incentives when he comes to review the price control in 1994. Each regional electricity company has to have a code of practice for the provision of information on the efficient use of electricity, and this is overseen by the Director-General of Electricity supply.
I have spoken for rather longer than I intended. I think it is clear that the Government take the issue of global climate change very seriously indeed. To sum up, we are actively involved in discussions to agree an international approach to controlling greenhouse gas emissions; and we are working to control the UK's own emissions. The White Paper set out the first phase of measures to help achieve our carbon dioxide target. These include action to improve energy efficiency across the whole economy, action to increase the contribution of renewable sources of energy and action to control carbon dioxide emissions from transport. We recognise that the success of our initiatives will depend largely on decisions made by individuals. We are taking steps to ensure that the public understands both why global warming may occur and what they can do about it.
House adjourned at eleven minutes past nine o'clock.