Lords Sitting of 24 March 1993

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.

Education Support and Training: Funding
Lord Judd Lord Judd asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether, in the light of representations by the Local Government Drugs Forum and others, they will review their decision to discontinue the GEST (Grants for Education Support and Training) support for health education co-ordinators.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Blatch): My Lords, when the grant was introduced in 1990–91 it was made clear to local education authorities that it was for a limited period only. There was no guarantee of funding beyond 31st March 1993. That point was also confirmed in the department's circular No. 10/92, which was issued on 13th August 1992.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the noble Baroness not appreciate that there is widespread anxiety about the consequences of the decision? Furthermore, there was great respect for what the health education co-ordinators were achieving. How does she propose that the DFE should play its part in the prevention, publicity and education advocated by the Department of Health?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I agree that there is widespread anxiety about the matter. However, it is important to put the grant, which was a pump-priming grant, into perspective. Of 109 local education authorities approximately 84 had only one co-ordinating post. The total spending for education is £19 billion and we are talking about £5 million helping to pioneer new ideas to tackle problems. If local authorities believe that the pump-priming has worked—that it is important—there are a number of ways in which they can deploy their own resources in imaginative ways.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is this not an extraordinary time to endanger the training work that has been carried out? There is a rise in the number of drug addicts and the incidence of drug abuse leading to all kinds of problems for young people. Is the Minister satisfied that in each authority where the money is no longer available there will be in post someone to carry on the vital work?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I should like to think that local authorities were not entirely dependent upon £5 million of pump-priming money from government when they have £19 billion to deploy on what they consider to be their priorities. The Department for Education is making it a fundamental, core part of learning that young people should
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grow up knowing how to live healthily., to eat well and to behave well; and to do so in a moral and spiritual context. That is the job of education.
Lord Boyd-Carpenter: My Lords, will my noble friend tell the House who health education co-ordinators are and what they do?
Lord Hailsham of St. Marylebone: My Lords, they co-ordinate health education.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I heard my noble and learned friend's aside, which is the obvious answer. Local authorities took up those small amounts of money in order to employ one person to look across a range of services and see how they could impact on improving the lifestyles of young people. The important point is that in practice families have a role to play as do the education service, school teachers and liaison with health districts. That is what the co-ordinators do. Once they have done their job it is for local authorities to continue and to develop that work.
Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is not a matter of lifestyle; indeed, some of us believe that the Government are interfering far too much in people's lifestyles? It is a matter of danger to the health and well-being of such people who will be breaking the law if they take hard drugs. That is what my noble friend is talking about and that is why the Government ought to give the matter close attention.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I hope that I have conveyed to the House that the Government take the matter seriously. They have played their part by making available an education support grant, which this was, limited to three years in order to heighten the awareness of local authorities to their role in combating drug and alcohol abuse and other aspects of unhealthy living. In addition, I have here an example of a good publication which warns people of the dangers of becoming involved in drug abuse.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, how many co-ordinating jobs have been lost since the pump-priming grant ceased?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, there lies a happier story. Most local authorities saw the benefit in using somebody to co-ordinate within the authorities and to liaise with other agencies. I do not know the precise figure but I know that most local authorities which took advantage of the grant have continued the work and have built on it.
Lord Molloy: My Lords, does not the noble Baroness agree that the idea of the scheme was to aid the young people of our country? Is there anything better that we can invest in? Is not abolishing that aid the worst thing that we can do?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Molloy, that there is nothing more important in which we can invest our money. However, we invest £19 billion in the education of young people which subsumes some of this education.

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We are talking about a small tranche of money which was used to ask local authorities to think specifically about how they could combat those awful scourges on modern society.
Lord Judd: My Lords, if the Minister really believes that there is nothing more important, what continuing lead will the DFE give in that respect? Does not the Minister recognise the link between this issue and the widespread juvenile delinquency about which almost every Member of this House is deeply worried?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I am clearly having difficulty conveying to the noble Lord that we take this matter seriously. The noble Lord's knowledge and understanding of how the education support system works has caused a gap in his understanding of the problem. We make available £19 billion to local authorities. We make available £337 million so that local authorities can direct their attention to what the Government believe are national issues. Of that, £5 million was to be spent on the prevention of drug and alcohol abuse and, later, on health education. We have not said that those matters are not important. However, now that the local authorities have used three years' worth of pump-priming money they should now know how best to organise all their services—health, education, social services and even the police authority—to carry out their work, having had that pump-priming money to pioneer ideas.
Lord Judd: My Lords, does the noble Baroness understand that this is not a gap in understanding? It is a gap between—
The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Wakeham): My Lords, I believe that it is the turn of this side of the House.
Lord Rippon of Hexham: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many of us believe that the Government should give more responsibility to local authorities in many fields and that we welcome what she has said today?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I thank my noble friend. The way in which the education support grant system works allows the greatest possible collaboration and co-operation between national and local government. By that means, we achieve the best of all worlds.
Lord Richard: My Lords, is the noble Baroness aware that, even for her, one of her answers was perhaps somewhat abrasive? In those circumstances, does not the Leader of the House believe that my noble friend Lord Judd should be allowed to ask his question?
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, of course I apologise unreservedly to the House if that was the interpretation put upon my reply. However, I believe that I should be allowed to question whether I was making myself clear because the noble Lord, Lord Judd, came back three times on the same point.
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, of course the noble Lord should have an opportunity to ask a
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supplementary question. However, I was seeking to ensure that questions are put first from one side of the House and then from the other, as I believe is the tradition in your Lordships' House.
Lord Judd: My Lords, will not the noble Baroness accept that we are concerned about the yawning gap between "easy speak" on this issue and action? We are looking for sustained action by the Department for Education.
Baroness Blatch: My Lords, I do not indulge in "easy speak". I never have done and I never shall do. This is much too serious a subject for that. The grant system works by national government working together with local government. Each year the priorities change and there is a moving about from one important issue to another. As I said, £19 billion is deployed in the interests of young people and we must ensure that that is spent to its best effect. I believe that we get the best of both worlds and that does not mean that we do not take the issue seriously.

Organophosphates: Sheep Dips
2.47 p.m.
The Countess of Mar The Countess of Mar asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they will agree to suspend licences for sheep dips which contain organophosphates, if they are presented with convincing evidence of long-term effects upon human health.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Earl Howe): My Lords, the independent Veterinary Products Committee advises Ministers on such matters, and will be considering the question of sheep dips tomorrow. If the current scientific evidence convinces the committee that organophosphate dips are harmful to human health, even when used in accordance with the specified instructions, then the committee could recommend that the Government suspend the licences. However, we must wait and see what conclusions the committee reaches.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, I thank the noble Earl for his courteous Answer to my Question. Is he aware of the work of Dr. Goran Jamal of Glasgow's Southern General Hospital? He recently undertook extensive tests on 16 farmers drawn randomly from a list of farmers who considered that they had suffered from organophosphate poisoning and he compared them with 16 controls. In every case he found extensive peripheral nerve damage which is untreatable and permanent. Will the Minister please ask the Veterinary Products Committee to consider this matter very seriously?
Earl Howe: My Lords, I am aware of the work of Dr. Jamal, which was featured in a recent television programme. Information about Dr. Jamal's study will be considered by the Veterinary Products Committee tomorrow. We await its advice on this and the other issues which it has been asked to consider. I understand that the findings support a toxic effect in

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the individuals concerned, but further studies are required to identify the causes and to characterise the mechanism.
Lord Carter: My Lords, is the Minister aware that nerve damage resulting from organophosphate sheep dip poisoning is permanent, irreversible and untreatable? Is he also aware that in the early 1950s a report to the Ministry of Agriculture recommended that sheep dip labelling should have the words "deadly poison" on it? As far as I am aware, that recommendation was never acted upon. On a number of occasions in recent months we have been told that the scientific evidence on the safety of the dips is inconclusive. If the meeting tomorrow of the VPC also says that it is inconclusive, does the Minister agree that, with material as dangerous as this, there should be an assumption that it should not be used until it can be shown beyond any doubt that the material is not a hazard to human health? In other words, should it not be regarded as guilty until proved innocent?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the labels of all veterinary medicines, including sheep dips, are kept under review by the Veterinary Products Committee. Over the years statements of the dangers and precautions to be taken have been regularly updated to reflect the latest advice from the committee about operator and environmental safety. So far as concerns an immediate ban, the Government take such issues very seriously. However, it is important that any decisions on the future of sheep dips are based on an objective assessment of scientific evidence. That is why we have decided to turn, once again, to the independent Veterinary Products Committee for up-to-date advice on the matter.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, is the Minister aware that there is a history of damage to wildlife, and so on, from sheep dip? Obviously the evidence available today shows that there is a danger. Has the Government's research produced evidence of sheep dips which are not a danger either to wildlife or human life; in other words, can he recommend dips which will do the job and not be a danger?
Earl Howe: My Lords, as regards the latter part of the noble Lord's question, I fear that I shall have to write to him because I do not have the answer. However, the overall number of incidents affecting wildlife is small—probably, I am advised, in single figures. The information is collated from various sources, including the NRA and the Wildlife Investigation Scheme of the Ministry of Agriculture. It must be said that when water is polluted the effects can be quite severe, with many fish killed in one pollution incident.
Baroness Masham of Ilton: My Lords, as there is now no compulsory regulation for sheep dipping, will the effect of not dipping sheep be monitored and will there be any regulations for European sheep dipping?
Earl Howe: My Lords, as to the latter part of the noble Baroness's question, the answer is no. It is of course up to the individual farmer to ensure that proper standards of welfare in his flock are
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maintained. The Government will treat seriously any reports of neglect by farmers. Therefore, in the end, it is their decision as to whether to continue dipping.
Baroness Mallalieu: My Lords, in view of the growing disquiet among farmers about the matter, will the Minister give an undertaking that, before farmers dip their sheep this summer, they will either ensure that such licences are withdrawn or that some reassurance from the Ministry will be received that what farmers have to do is not harmful to them or others?
Earl Howe: My Lords, the noble Baroness raises an important point. I can tell her that as soon as the committee's conclusions have been received, an announcement will be made without delay.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, is the noble Earl aware that regulations in the United States of America state that diazinon (which is a principal constituent of sheep dip) is not permitted to be used for dipping sheep; it is allowed to be used only for spraying sheep? Is he also aware that the regulations regarding protective clothing require a full face mask with respirator to be worn as well as complete protective covering? Will he also bring that matter to the attention of the Veterinary Products Committee?
Earl Howe: The Veterinary Products Committee will be considering the practical aspects of administering sheep dip, including, I am certain, the matters to which the noble Countess referred.

The Mentally Ill: Care Programme
2.54 p.m.
Lord Mottistone Lord Mottistone asked Her Majesty's Government:
What evaluation of the care programme approach for mentally ill people has been received from regional health authorities and what judgment has been made of the effectiveness of the new arrangements.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health (Baroness Cumberlege): My Lords, each regional health authority has supplied information about the implementation of the care programme approach to the Department of Health. From that it is clear that some authorities are more advanced than others. Regional health authorities are undertaking further work to ensure that the care programme approach is fully applied to all patients for whom it is intended. The department's NHS management executive will continue to monitor progress.
Lord Mottistone: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that reply. It is, of course, early days to obtain a full picture on the matter. However, is there sufficient information to indicate whether there will be enough care in the community facility in all the regions? Further, can my noble friend say whether it might be a good plan to slow down any closing of beds in mental hospitals until such reassurance has been obtained?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, regional and district health authorities are well aware that they must not close hospital beds until there is adequate provision in the community for those people who are in institutional care. That is a very clear directive to those authorities. The Government expect them to fulfil that aspiration.
Lord Marsh: My Lords, does the Minister agree that while most people accept the complexity of the problem—which is a very real one—they are becoming increasingly concerned about the very large number of people on our streets, especially in London, who are clearly, and by any standards, incapable of looking after themselves?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am sure that every Member of the House shares that concern. But research shows that those people who are on the streets are not people who have been discharged from mental hospitals. It shows that they have a form of mental illness. They need care; but they have not been discharged from long-stay mental institutions.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, from the studies that she has made—
Baroness Robson of Kiddington: My Lords, can the Minister assure the House that when a mentally ill person is returned to the community the agreement of the carer (which is usually the family) has been obtained before he or she is returned home?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, the care programme approach is very specific: the carers must be consulted and their views considered when the programme is drawn up.
Baroness Fisher of Rednal: My Lords, can the Minister give any evaluation of what the hospitals that are closing down are doing? Are they making any of the land upon which the hospitals are situated available to housing associations so that such people may be rehoused in the areas where they have been resident for a very long time?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, once a hospital is closed, an assessment is made to see whether other health care is required on the site. The health authority has to make that decision. But, on the whole, the value of the site is assessed and the income from it is then redeployed in community services.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, the noble Baroness said that carers have to be consulted. But does that include the right of the carer to refuse?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am not quite sure what the noble Baroness means. Perhaps she would be kind enough to explain.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, does such consultation include the right for the carer to refuse to take the person coming out of the institution back into the family home?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, that would be very much part of the care programme approach. It would be up to the professionals involved in the assessment to take into account the views of the carer.
Noble Lords: Order! Lord Ennals!
Baroness Seear: My Lords, does that mean that, having said they do not want the person in the home, the carer can be forced to take that person back? That is the point I should like clarified.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I think that it would be impossible to ensure that someone discharged from a mental institution would be looked after at home without adequate care and support.
Noble Lords: This side!
Baroness Faithfull: My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister tell me whether in her research or that of her department figures from the Salvation Army have been sought? I ask that question because the Salvation Army, together with Guildford University, carried out research on the subject.
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I am sure that the mental health task force which is led by David King will have consulted a number of voluntary organisations which have expertise in the field, including the Salvation Army.
Noble Lords: Lord Ennals!
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, I think that the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, has been trying very hard to put his question and has been very gentlemanly in his behaviour by giving way.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, up to now I have given way, but always to noble Baronesses!
From the studies that she has made of the regional reports and the knowledge that she has of local authorities, is the Minister satisfied that local authorities will have their services in place on 1st April when they take on the new responsibilities? Further, has she yet reached a different conclusion as regards the matter which was debated in the House; namely, that local authorities are very dissatisfied with the amount of money that has been transferred to them to carry out their new responsibilities?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, we are entering a very new world and I can understand that local authorities have misgivings about the amount of resources that are being made available. That is a natural apprehension. We are monitoring very closely what local authorities are doing at the moment. Quarterly reports are being produced by the social services inspectorate. It is my aspiration and that of the Government that these schemes will be put in place. I refer particularly to the pilot scheme being run by Kent County Council which shows what can be achieved.
Lord Peyton of Yeovil: My Lords, will my noble friend bear in mind that one of the tests by which the

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new arrangements will be judged is the length of time it takes for effective action to be taken to look after any particular case of need?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I agree very much with my noble friend. I remind your Lordships of the words of H. L. Mencken:
"For every difficult and complicated question there is an answer which is simple, easily understood and wrong".
Lord Carter: My Lords, are health and local authorities obliged to purchase the services that they assess to be necessary? If that is the case, there is no incentive to alter the patchiness of the care programme to which the Minister has referred.
Baroness Cumiberlege: My Lords, the care programme assesses the needs of individuals and decides whether they require care in the community or in institutions. But local authorities will have to take into account the resources that are available. Clearly aspirations that go beyond those resources cannot be met.
Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, in view of the growing doubts about the way our well intentioned care programmes are actually working, does my noble friend agree that it might be sensible for the Government to look again at their recent decision to remove sheltered and village communities from the list of provision which local authorities are encouraged to support? Might not sheltered and village communities come to be a welcome haven for the mentally ill as well as for the mentally handicapped?
Baroness Cumberlege: My Lords, I understand that my noble friend is discussing this issue with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State and I am sure that she will have views on this.

Parking Attendants: Pay
3.2 p.m.
Lord Campbell of Croy Lord Campbell of Croy asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether it has yet been decided how parking attendants, employed by local government councils to work in public streets and squares, will be paid; and what view has been expressed by Her Majesty's Government.
The Minister of State, Department of Transport (The Earl of Caithness): My Lords, it will be for the individual local councils to determine how their parking attendants should be paid. We have not issued any guidance on this.
Lord Campbell of Croy: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for his reply. Does he agree that payment related to numbers of parking tickets issued would be short-sighted and open to abuse? The best results are fewer offences following conscientious patrolling. How many councils are employing, or are intending to employ, this new kind of official who is different from a traffic warden? Is Westminster Council one of them?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, the answer to my noble friend's final question is, yes, Westminster Council will employ the new attendants. Some 11 councils in London employ the new attendants and all the boroughs in London will take over this responsibility by the middle of next year. I believe that any method of payment has potential for abuse but proper enforcement is very much part of the law.
Lord Ewing of Kirkford: My Lords, one of the powers of these new traffic attendants is that if they come across a vehicle, which presumably is illegally parked, and they discover that the owner of the vehicle has not paid a number of parking fines that have been levied on that vehicle, they have the power to clamp that vehicle and have it towed away against the background of the non-payment of fines. Is the noble Earl aware that one of the big problems in London is the number of diplomatic corps cars which have parking tickets attached although the fines are never paid? Does that mean that one of the new attendants will be empowered to clamp the American Ambassador's car because parking tickets have not been paid?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I am sure the American Ambassador would never put himself in that position.
Lord Swinfen: My Lords, will Her Majesty's Government consider making it impossible for someone to obtain a licence for his vehicle unless all parking fines have been paid?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, that is an interesting question, but it is rather wide of the Question on the Order Paper.
Lord Carmichael of Kelvingrove: My Lords, I am sure that the whole House will agree with the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Croy, that any suggestion that there should be payment by results would be a bad step as it would increase the tension between the new attendants and the public. The Minister said that Westminster will employ the new attendants. Will he tell the House whether Camden will accept the new system? Camden and Westminster are adjoining authorities and those authorities apply different time restrictions on their meters. In one authority the meters may cease to operate at half past six while in the other meters may cease to operate at half past eight. I see grave problems arising from that position. Can the Minister make any suggestions about co-ordinating meter times in those adjoining boroughs?
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, I can confirm that Camden is one of the boroughs that employs parking attendants. However, I am sure the noble Lord would agree that it is up to all of us as motorists to study the meters and determine what hours we can legally park.
Baroness Oppenheim-Barnes: My Lords, does my noble friend agree that one of the most important aspects of enforcement is that it should be consistent? Is he further aware that it is by no means consistent in London? I speak from bitter experience.
The Earl of Caithness: My Lords, my noble friend will be pleased to know that she will have certain advantages under the Road Traffic Act 1991 because if she feels aggrieved, as she obviously has done in the past, she can make representations to the relevant local authority. If she is not satisfied with that, she can make an appeal to the independent parking adjudicator.

Business
3.6 p.m.
The Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne: My Lords, in the anticipation that your Lordships will agree to the Motion which is about to be moved by my noble friend the Leader of the House, I should like to say a word about this afternoon's debates standing in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Bonham-Carter and Lord Mayhew. 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 Bonham-Carter, this means that all other speeches should be limited to a maximum of 12 minutes and in that of the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, 14 minutes. If any noble Lord were to speak at greater length, he would be doing so at the expense of subsequent speakers in that debate.

Business of the House: Debates this Day
Lord Wakeham: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper.
Moved, That the debates on the Motions in the names of the Lord Bonham-Carter and the Lord Mayhew set down for today shall each be limited to 21 hours.—(Lord Wakeham.)
On Question, Motion agreed to.

Inner Cities
3.8 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter Lord Bonham-Carter rose to call attention to the condition of those living in the inner cities, with particular reference to ethnic minorities and young people; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, as a result of tabling this Motion for debate this afternoon I have received a great deal of material from people outside your Lordships' House. I have received a letter from a person who is professionally involved in the issue which we are discussing today. He writes:
"There is now an emerging underclass, a burgeoning group who are outside the scope of local provision and existing within alternative values, norms and lifestyles. Drug, crime, and alcohol abuse are common features in this scenario and the state, in pushing more young people out of school through exclusions—"
by that he means expulsions—
"is not helping the situation … Although race relations in places such as Brixton tends now to be judged on whether or not there are riots, the reality is that there is a potentially desperate situation developing in our inner cities which requires strong leadership and direction along with targeted programmes to help the needy".
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It is in the context of those words that I will be speaking this afternoon. Perhaps the most serious consequence of the recession—the longest and most profound recession since the war—has been its impact on the young, on the young in the inner cities, and in particular on the young in the inner cities who are members of ethnic minority groups.
When Beatrice Webb was asked what was the most significant change in her long life she replied that it was the disappearance of beggars from our streets. Today the beggars are back. They are back after a decade of extremely rapid economic growth. During that decade of rapid economic growth there was no trickle down effect. On the contrary, on one measurement, between 1979 and 1989 the standard of living of the poorest 10 per cent. dropped by 6 per cent. while the richest 10 per cent. enjoyed an increase of 50 per cent. Such is the nature of the economic miracle we have survived by the skin of our teeth.
Not only was there was no trickle down of wealth, but at the same time there was a massive transfer of wealth to those who were already well-to-do. Accompanying that upward redistribution, benefits were reduced and there was the outright abolition of benefits for groups of teenagers. In addition to those factors the Government were engaged in dismantling a number of employment protection laws. On top of all that, there is the present massive unemployment.
In the light of those circumstances it is hardly surprising that the numbers on low wages have increased. The number of workers below the Council of Europe's decency threshold was 7.8 million in 1979. In 1991 it amounted to 10 million; namely, 47 per cent. of those in employment.
Of all those factors the greatest contributor to poverty is unemployment, which carries with it a whole series of consequences, all destructive. Above all, it is immensely expensive. The Employment Secretary, speaking to the Employment Select Committee recently, estimated that, taking into account extra benefits, loss of income tax and loss of indirect tax, each unemployed person costs the taxpayer £9,000 per annum.
The impact of all those factors—the redistribution of wealth upwards, the removal of the protection of employment laws from the low paid, the absolute increase in the number of low paid, and massive unemployment—has fallen with particular weight on our inner cities and on the resources available to them, and on the young and the ethnic young in particular. Unemployment among those between the ages of 16 and 24 rose from just under 500,000 in 1990 to 914,000 in October 1992; that is, from 8.5 per cent. to 17 per cent. Unemployment among ethnic minorities is generally estimated to be double that among whites. According to the International Labour Organisation, unemployment rates for that age group in June to August 1992 were: whites, 13 per cent.; Afro-Caribbeans, 29 per cent.; Indians, 18 per cent.; Pakistanis 21 per cent.; and Bangladeshis, 26 per cent.
The difference in those figures, ranging from 13 per cent. among whites to 29 per cent. among Afro-Caribbeans, is partly explained by discrimination, for there is indubitably still substantial racial

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discrimination in our society. It occurs in recruitment, in promotion and in training. For example, in 1987 the Ministry of Defence had no ethnic minority trainees out of a total of 918. By 1989 1 per cent. were from ethnic minorities. In 12 supermarket chains there were 21 ethnic trainees out of a total of 2,685. At the end of youth training in 1992, 50 per cent. of the white trainees found work, 33 per cent. of the Asians and 22 per cent. of the Afro-Caribbeans.
In so far as they reflect the impact of discrimination, those figures reinforce the argument of the Commission for Racial Equality that the provisions of the Race Relations Act should be strengthened. It is an oddity that the antidiscrimination law in Northern Ireland should be so much tougher than the racial discrimination law in this country. One is tempted to conclude that one of the reasons why that is so is that there is more violence in Northern Ireland, but it is a dangerous and horrible conclusion to reach.
The law is not the whole answer, for the figures which I have quoted show a difference within and between the ethnic groups. That is a fact which can be verified statistically. That difference has increased in recent years and reflects a change from the early days of immigration when the spread was much more evenly distributed among the various groups.
There are two approaches to the problem of escaping from the poverty trap and the inner cities. To simplify the position greatly, the route followed by the groups comprising those Asians who came from East Africa and from India has been twofold: first, self-employment, and, secondly, the professions. Both routes outflank the impact of discrimination significantly. Other groups, who have gone into the service industries or manufacturing industry, have found themselves far more vulnerable both to cyclical movements and to overt discrimination. That is a significant difference in the patterns of development which we cannot afford to neglect.
However, there is yet another route out of the poverty trap and out of the inner cities. That depends on government policies and on the resources made available by local and central government to deal with the manifestations of disadvantage. It is when one examines that aspect that one finds oneself disappointed by the results of the Autumn Statement, which led to the running down of Section 11, the urban programme and Safer Cities projects. The impact on local authorities has been drastic and will become more so as it bites.
I ask the House to consider the situation in two local authorities as an example of the situation on the ground. Take, for example, Lambeth on the one hand. Lambeth has 20,000 refugees, not from the new Commonwealth but from Eritrea, Somalia and elsewhere. They are not helped by Section 11. Further, in Lambeth 108 languages are spoken in addition to English. In Lambeth 36,000 people come from minority groups. In Lambeth unemployment is extremely high.
Let us consider Tower Hamlets. It has an extremely high proportion of Bangladeshis. Bangladeshis are the most recent immigrants. They still suffer the
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disadvantages of newness. It means that language training is essential. The language training programme has been largely financed under Section 11. Under the urban programme I believe that I am right in saying—I speak from memory—that it will lose £1.3 million this year and £1.5 million next year. Tower Hamlets is one of the poorest boroughs in the whole of this country. Such cuts in the resources made available to local authorities to deal with the special problems which face our inner cities are short-sighted. The long-term social consequences will be far greater than any short-term saving.
I understand that it may be difficult to expect any government to restore cuts so recently made. However, at present the Government are reviewing their allocation of resources to local authorities. I plead to them that in the course of that review they consider carefully such indicators of deprivation as homelessness, unemployment, single parent families and refugee or ethnic minority population. Having examined those indicators, I urge that they ensure that resources are made available to the local authorities in which those indicators are high so that the cuts which have been made are minimised and that the resources are made available to deal with the disadvantages and the deprivation with which those local authorities struggle. That seems to me a crucial message which we should drive home in the course of the debate.
I wish to remind the Government that the problem is a serious one which will be with us for many years. We should not forget the lesson of Los Angeles. In Los Angeles a section of the population simply opted out of formal society. It did not vote; it did not participate; it was out of touch with all the established authorities. When those people rioted it came as a bolt from the blue which was totally unforeseen. That is the condition which my correspondent whom I quoted at the beginning of my speech stated might develop in this country: that those people in our inner cities who have been left out of society will take themselves out of society. They may suddenly erupt or, more than at present, they will take to crime, drugs and a wholly antisocial mode of living. It is that condition that we have to combat. We can combat it only by the measures that I have sought to describe; and by a leadership and a determination to tackle the problem which, I promise your Lordships—I believe that all noble Lords will agree—is a matter of great urgency. I beg to move for Papers.
3.24 p.m.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, I am sure that we all thank the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for a moving introduction to a timely debate.
The term "inner cities" conjures up a wasteland where the tide of prosperity has gone out leaving stranded the old, large families on income support, the unemployed, the ethnic minority, the single parent and the young single homeless among the debris of empty factories, derelict sites, boarded-up shops, and cannibalised cars. According to the Home Secretary last November, inner cities are harbouring a growing underclass of the alienated poor, black and young. The Home Secretary identified the problem as the

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most formidable challenge facing western democracies. That underclass is a separate class, different from us, by implication scrounging from us, and subverting our values. Is that really so, my Lords?
Perhaps it is time in today's debate to try to nail that stereotype. All the evidence is that we are talking not about a class apart but about people who share the values of us all, who are desperately hungry for work, deeply caring about their families, and much distressed about the decaying physical environment. They are indeed often marginal, and physically and economically disconnected from the wider society and economy. But that marginality has been manufactured by us. Those people may be homeless and unemployed, poor, on the edge of the criminal twilight, and almost certainly young and black. But they are homeless because, as young single people they are not able to get a home. They are unemployed because they have given up the search for work when there is none. They are poor because, especially if they are young, they are refused income support. I referred to their being on the edge of criminality. As Sir Peter Imbert said last July,
"If a map of the most deprived areas in London was superimposed over another showing the worst areas of crime, the areas would correlate closely".
Of course we should be tough on crime. But we should he equally tough on the causes of crime for which we all share responsibility. Poverty and crime are linked, but that should be a reason for tackling poverty not the deprived. That poverty and that deprivation in the inner cities is increasing. The Policy Studies Institute report on urban trends last year showed that the gap of deprivation between inner cities and mainland England not only has not narrowed in the past decade but has widened.
Let us take housing. Housing starts in England were down in the past decade by half. In the inner cities they were down by three-quarters. In 1989 London completed 12 million square feet of office space and just 300 local authority houses. Deprived areas have twice as many homeless and eight times as many people in bed and breakfast accommodation. The young single people—the most highly vulnerable—those without parents, coming out of care or serving a probation order cannot be housed by half the local authorities. If such young people are homeless, almost certainly they are jobless.
As the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, stated, although the national average of unemployment may be 9 per cent., typically the figure is up to 20 per cent. in inner cities and up to 30 per cent. among young blacks. That is not because those young people will not work. An advertisement for a shelf-packer in Sainsbury's will attract 200 applicants. Of a class of 30 young school leavers in Handsworth, Birmingham, only one is able to go on to a job. As there is little local industry, there are few local training places. Over half the TECs cannot meet the Government guarantees. After training such young people are less likely to find jobs. They give up. We find therefore a quarter of all unemployed 16 and 17 year-olds without work, not at
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school, not in training and not on income support. Of those young people, 80,000 are destitute. They beg and steal.
What of their well-being, my Lords? Infant mortality in inner cities is 50 per cent. above the national average. While in the remainder of England the pupil teacher ratios improve, they are worsening in the inner cities. Truancy escalates. Fifty per cent. of truants become offenders. In our inner cities we see two or three times the national average of children in care, and double the number of households on income support. By every indicator of social stress—poor health, low educational attainment, homelessness, unemployment, and offending—the situation in the inner cities is bad. It is getting worse, especially for the young and for the black, and it seems unlikely to improve.
Why is that, my Lords? We have had 20 years of programmes targeted on the inner cities and their dreaded underclass. The earliest and best of such schemes was the urban programme launched by the noble Lord, Lord Callaghan, in the late 1960s in the wake of the Watts riots and the "rivers of blood" speech. By now the programme works in 57 of the poorest authorities in the country, funding nurseries, language centres and training schemes. It is administered by local authorities, and builds up the social as well as the economic fabric of those communities. However, from 1980 urban development corporations, and from 1981 enterprise zones, switched from rebuilding communities to property-led physical regeneration. That was a disastrous mistake.
The regeneration is led top down by unaccountable quangos of businessmen, free of planning controls, often free of business rates, declaring UDI from their local communities. Their wealth-creating activities were meant, but failed, to trickle down. They created new jobs, but the new jobs mostly came from elsewhere. As the DTI's own research shows, for every three new jobs created in task force areas, two had been displaced from elsewhere.
As to the much vaunted private investment, it collapsed with the end of the property boom. Six UDCs are now in deficit by £66 million and if that had been incurred by local government the authorities would now be surcharged. In Docklands, which has taken £4 in every £10 of urban money, we see house prices beyond the reach of local people. We see 10 per cent. of its property empty and the neighbouring borough of Newham trying to house 1,000 homeless families a year.
To UDCs and enterprise zones have been added estate action schemes, city action teams in 1985 and task forces in 1986 to co-ordinate and cross-cut programmes which were in turn overlaid in 1991 by the Secretary of State's city challenge. We now have in the Housing and Urban Development Bill before the House the urban regeneration agencies which again, like the other initiatives, have been property-based top down, unaccountable, as though the lessons of the last decade had not been understood or learnt.
It is not surprising that in 1989 the Audit Commission condemned the urban programmes as a patchwork quilt of complexity and idiosyncrasies in

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individual cities: of programme overkill in a strategic vacuum. We have had a hotchpotch of programmes, each financed by cutting the previous one so that the urban programmes—still the best —were halved to fund the UDCs. They and the housing programmes were top sliced to fund city challenge and the regeneration agency was funded from existing initiatives, thus satisfying the Treasury demand for cuts and junior Ministers' hunger to announce new initiatives simultaneously.
To his credit, the Home Secretary recognised this and even when the economy was growing, he said:
"it was not automatically the case that it will trickle down so that the inner-city resident will get a fair share of it".
Government help was needed, he said, but that was only days after the Chancellor's Autumn Statement which cut the urban programme of 1992 to a third by 1995 and scrapped city challenge.
What do we now have on offer? We have an urban programme frozen and its 34,000 jobs (more than the entire mining industry) now at risk; city challenge abandoned; one new UDC proposed for Plymouth; a tightly circumscribed urban regeneration agency replicating all the physical regeneration problems of previous initiatives and a minuscule capital partnership releasing perhaps £20 million. That is the inner city strategy for the next few years. It lifts the heart, does it not? It really will transform the life chances of the young, the black and the poor in our cities, will it not?
What needs to be done? Actually, the Home Secretary himself spelt it out. What we need is a partnership between statutory and voluntary agencies and private companies so that local communities, with government help, can find their own solutions and own them. What does that mean? It means frankly the reverse of virtually all the Government's inner city so-called initiatives of the past decade. We know what inner city residents want; they tell us. They want affordable housing; local employment and training; they want a better physical environment and safer communities. We know too that, as the Home Secretary said, property-led economic regeneration—the fallacy of the last decade—will not trickle down to local people, the unskilled, the young, the black, the disadvantaged, unless the contracts target their labour and customise their training. In other words, it will not trickle down unless we can insert into employment contracts precisely those contract compliance clauses which the Government have banned local authorities from including in the name of competition.
We know too that we need to ensure that personal incomes, income support and the social wage of local authority services should not—as is happening—fall further behind the rest of mainland England. Inner city local authorities, as we know, have to spend more on more people at greater cost with fewer resources. Therefore, the cuts in rate support grants and revenue support grants that they have had are perverse. We know too that to build safer communities we need a range of measures with street lighting, better estate design and community policing. We know all that and we know, above all, that if it is to work, it must be
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rooted in partnership and be bottom up, based on local plans and initiatives. It must be accountable to local people and owned by them.
If we wanted to invent an agency which had that local knowledge, which had the moral authority to lead partnerships; which had professional, financial, planning, legal and research skills; which had experience of customised training and of land assembly; of building infrastructure; an agency which was democratically accountable to local demands and local communities, which had staying power—and that is important when so many schemes fold when the Government pull out—which was not dependent on the vagaries of the market or the property boom; if we wanted all this, an agency with all those qualities—as inner cities certainly do—what would we do? We would invent local government.
Instead, this Government have marginalised it, fragmented it, undermined it and done nearly their best to abolish it. The unelected quango state now spends more money than elected local government which has been capped, cut, and controlled by central government.
In a different debate we might have been able to celebrate our cities, to enjoy their public space, to welcome civic leadership, to cherish civic pride, to regard our cities as centres of culture, power houses of energy, the source—as a 19th century Liberal would say—of that divine restlessness which fuels our moral, social and economic energy. Instead, we seek in our inner cities only to pacify, discipline and contain—the mark of a decade of failed government policies; the mark of a ghettoised Britain.
3.36 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Sheffield: My Lords, when I knew that I had the privilege of sharing in the debate I wrote to some of the clergy in my diocese of Sheffield asking what they wanted me to say. I could spend a good deal of my time telling the House. I found what they wrote distressing in what it had to say of wasted young lives; frightening, because of what it had to say about the fear of crime in our inner cities and most of our communities; and deeply moving because of what it said about what was being done to help people, not least by teachers in schools, by those much criticised social workers and, I dare to say, by the clergy and ministers resident in the communities.
However, noble Lords know all that so I shall only read a little of what two people wrote to me. Richard writes:
"Recently I remember having heard during the clay various people discussing the moral state of the nation and calling on the churches, among others, to give a proper lead. Late that evening, I went across the road to talk with the group of lads in their early twenties who spend their evenings in our Church porch smoking cannabis, consuming large quantities of cider, urinating publicly, and shouting at those who pass by. I recall feeling quite powerless. Certainly the need for a moral lead was more than clear, but these are young people who have already spent time in jail, who are addicted to substances and alcohol, who thieve to feed these addictions, who have never worked, who truanted from school, … young people who, most seriously of all, appear to have no constructive thoughts and hope for the future. I wondered where I or indeed a

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relatively small inner-city church were to find the time and resources to give the lead that society as a whole is unable to provide.
Not so long ago the local youth worker declared that he would no longer run a club or do much other work with these lads aged over 14 since those he was working with were now too destructive and dangerous. Subsequently the club for younger children had to be closed because the older group disrupted it so much".
The letter goes on to say:
"there are signs of hope. A local project to build training workshops … The youth club run by an elderly local couple that persists despite everything. Schools that use Telethon and 'Children in Need' money to fund trips and activities that broaden experience and horizons".
That describes one side of Sheffield.
The following letter comes from the other side of Sheffield:
"Young people: The 'forgotten generation' I call them. I watched a particular group of youngsters though all their 'teens'. They were at Primary School when we arrived—a first class school for teaching and discipline from which the youngsters benefited. However, due to poor home conditions, lack of parental control, broken homes … the youngsters became 'streetwise' at an early age and became prey to the drug teams which led to continuous theft from homes and motor vehicles".
He says that media publicity did not help; and continues:
"And this was not only a rich/poor divide, it was also an age division. The older residents rejected the existence of young people in their midst and, in Parson Cross … like other similar housing areas, the inevitable periodic rioting occurred.
I can cite you four examples of boys from the same class of 13 year-olds 7 years ago.
All 'wagged' from school as often as they could—parental discipline was at a minimum, and through cuts in local government spending, Truant Officers are now non-existent.
Boredom and lounging around made them prime targets for drugs—they having first off-set boredom with 'kicks' from glue and aerosol sniffing.
By the age of 17, and for two years, they graduated through cannabis and crack to heroin injecting. At £20 a fix and car radios bring £5 each, the crimes against motor vehicles rocketed.
Now one of the young men is serving 2 years for burglary, one has served a jail sentence and, sadly is still a heroin addict, one, thankfully, has a job and the fourth is still unemployed (has never worked) and actually does 2 half-days a week gardening for me for a small remuneration.
One other point I would make is there is a real feeling of frustration within the teaching staff in the local schools with the joint dangers of testing results being published and parental choice of school for their children. This is already resulting in a creaming-off of the talented and well-supported children to schools outside the area. If this continues many schools … will, in just a few years, become backwaters of education and who could blame teachers for not wishing to work in such places. There will be only one loser—the young people".
I read out that letter to root what I have to say in that sort of reality, which I know is familiar to all noble Lords. But the word that underlies the situation over and over again is "unemployment". We are almost frivolous on both sides of this House in our response to that issue. If we follow the advice of the noble Baroness who just spoke, we shall spend a great deal more money. I do not doubt that it will help. On another occasion I could tell your Lordships how much it would help. But it would not solve the problem of unemployment.
If we follow the advice of this side of the House and put our trust in the passing of the recession and the growing of prosperity, that will help. It might even
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reduce unemployment from 3 million (dare we say it?) to 1 million. But if we had reduced unemployment to 1 million, it would make no difference at all to the places of which I speak. Young people would still be going to school and leaving school with no expectation of work. For people in those communities work has ceased to be part of their culture. I do not see in the policies of any of us anything that will make work a part of their culture again. I believe that that is a matter of desperate seriousness.
I believe that we are made for work. We become ourselves through working with others. If we are prevented from doing that, we never grow up. That is the mark of those young people whose behaviour is so distressing to themselves and to others. They have not grown up. They have not grown up because they have been deprived of the hope and expectation of work. It has coloured their schooldays. It has coloured their taking part in the various training schemes that are thrown at them. They know, and they expect, that they will not work.
By profession (as noble Lords see) I am a priest and a pastor. By hobby I am a historian. I see why our cities and communities were built. I am particularly aware of that in our mining communities, many of which were built in this century to meet the (believed) infinite need for coal. People came to those places from all over the country to find work. There is no work now. Even before the mines are closed, there is next to no work. In one of the parishes whose vicars wrote to me 7 per cent. of last year's school-leavers are working. There is very little work, yet the people are there. Our great cities—I know particularly Sheffield and Tyneside—were built to provide homes for a massive workforce in heavy industry. It will never be like that again. We built our housing estates without realising that they would have homes but not work. We know, tragically, the results of that situation.
I believe that we have to be infinitely more radical than any of us has dared to be so far, and that our starting point has to be a culture in which people work. It will be a different sort of work to what it was in the past, and will need a different sort of economics. I know that I tread ground where I am particularly out of my depth. But the alternatives are unthinkable—at best, 1 million unemployed, and it could well be 2 million. The recession never came to Sheffield because it had never stopped. That is even more true on Tyneside. Twenty or 30 years ago I went round the housing estates on Tyneside and heard people say: "Of course, we will never work". And they never have.
Somehow or other, the starting point of our response to that situation must not be simply one of offering palliatives—either an end to the recession or schemes for this or that —but a determination to put people first. That means bringing work for "people first". I draw all other conclusions from that starting point. When we see the need that exists for things to be done, and when at the same time we see that we have 3 million unemployed and a desperate need for things to be done to make life in our communities and our lifestyle better, I do not believe that it is totally beyond our ability to say: it is a different world that we live in from that of 50 or 100 years ago. Our starting

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point needs to be people, and finding ways in which they can find work; ways in which they can learn the disciplines of work and can learn how to grow into adults by working alongside other adults; ways in which we can create a community which is people-based and in which there is work for all.
3.48 p.m.
Lord Elton: My Lords, one cannot in 12 minutes reply to a debate of this sort, particularly as one is only half way through it. But it is clear that, for a start, I shall not be able to make the speech which I brought into this Chamber because so much has been said which has triggered new ideas in my head. I want to refer only passingly to the two opening speeches. The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, drew close attention to the difficulties caused by Section 11 changes. I think it fair to balance that by saying that he made no mention of the various programmes such as the Safer Cities projects whose funding will increase from £5.8 million next year to £7.4 million in 1995–96; the capital partnership programme, which will release into the economy up to £1,750,000 from capital sales by local authorities by Christmas this year; or the net increase in the training programme of £125 million. I say that only to try to restore the balance a little. It will be for my noble friends on the Front Bench to deal lethally and finally with the first two speeches in this debate.
I must respond to the right reverend Prelate's stimulating and challenging speech. I come to this debate by a progression through teaching, the Territorial Army and the Home Office to charity and the charitable sector. That has consistently developed my sympathy and given me an insight into the predicament of young people, their relationship with crime and the means by which it may be countered. That is relevant to both the terms of the Motion and the right reverend Prelate's remarks.
As a teacher I met the very young right up to young adults. I saw in them the huge and marvellous potential, which exists in every child brought into this world, to develop into a full, whole and contributing member of society. Later I was to see what happened when the circumstances so ably described by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, from her Front Bench closed around them. In the Territorial Army first and later in other embodiments I saw again and again that it was possible to take the precious flame which God gave us to live and build with and direct it away from destruction and toward creation.
Nine-tenths of crime is built of frustration. It comes from the need, first to be somebody and to know who you are. The young lad from the Falls Road in Belfast is known as his uncle's nephew, his mother's boy, his sister's brother or even the lad with red hair until he has done something. Then he is the hard man; he knows who he is. If that entails custody—probably even if it does not—he has adopted a role model which, if one does not intervene swiftly, is adopted for life. I am concerned with the intervention in that process of the forces for good in order to divert those young people from the paths of crime and evil which almost universally coincide.
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There are many ways to do that. I mentioned the Territorial Army. I remember at the end of a drill night two youths who came off the street to jeer, having nothing else to do. They stayed to become interested. Because they were apparently rebellious, on the edge of criminality and potential thugs on the verge of practising thuggery, they were caught at the right moment. Both those youths had stripes on their arm and were highly efficient NCOs within 18 months. That is an existing structure—or was. I am an unpopular voice in the wilderness crying that we ought to return to a stronger Territorial Army. In a lower voice I sometimes wonder whether we would be better off with National Service as well. That need not necessarily mean military service but service which teaches that there is a purpose in rules and organisation which is beneficial to those who contribute as well as to those who receive. Once young people have been a part of that process, they begin to understand what makes society tick.
But sometimes all they see of society is their desolate friends, who are perhaps younger than those described on the church porch by the right reverend Prelate. We must stop the beautiful young people of childhood turning into the desolate, wasted people of early middle age that he described. If all that young people see around them are derelict buildings, the occasional police car and the spontaneous riot, the only way they can become "persons" is by contributing to that scene and answering the challenge that has been presented to them, whether it be the school rules, the teacher or the police. That is the challenge and that is how one becomes somebody.
I went on in my educational experience to chair an inquiry into discipline in schools for Kenneth Baker when he was Secretary of State for Education. I was able to see the way in which children who saw school and staff as the opposition to be rebelled against, and the means by which one became somebody as outwitting, escaping or destroying, could turn that school into "our place". There was a whole raft of measures—138 recommendations—with which I shall not detain your Lordships. But the central project in which I am now engaged, and to which three groups of pupils and teachers testified in another part of this building earlier today, is the process by which the pupils themselves engage in developing the school rules out of their own felt needs into a simple, workable and easily respected code of behaviour which affects everything they do, be it in the classroom, the playground, the corridor, the sports field, the canteen or the school bus. Pupils who have helped to make the programme are those who make the programme work. School rules are not applied to them; the youngsters apply them to each other. The youth with the spray gun is no longer one of them; he is a public enemy. The same goes for classroom behaviour.
The subject of our debate is inner cities. We are not specifically talking about the schools within them. I only mention with regard to schools in inner cities that among the many schools we visited in this country and abroad some of the best were in the most beaten up city centres and some of the worst were in the leafiest

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suburbs. So the method of recognising the worth of young people and channelling it into a constructive purpose can work. The right reverend Prelate painted a picture of the dangers of the future. I fear that his picture may not have been black enough. He spoke about places where there has been no employment for many years. We are all aware of the high level of unemployment that exists throughout the country. I am told that at this moment there are means available and affordable in modern technology to render something like 30 per cent. of existing jobs unnecessary. In fact, unless we do something about the situation, we shall be faced in the future with a frighteningly small amount of work.
It goes beyond this debate to discuss whether we should remodel the whole of our working lives, whether we should share work and whether people ought to expect to work a quarter of a day. I shall not address those issues now since this is a debate about the inner cities. But for the interim we have to tackle quickly the black areas in some conurbations where there is a coincidence of high unemployment, disenchantment with society and poor resources. My noble friend will remind your Lordships of the figures that I gave of the Government input, all of which I applaud.
I turn from the macro to the micro and to my particular charity which is called the Divert Trust. It was set up to take on the work done by the Intermediate Treatment Foundation, with which no doubt some noble Lords are familiar. Over the past years it has helped to fund no fewer than 1,400 small local initiatives designed to keep young people out of crime and custody. It aims to intervene before they offend or to rescue them after an offence has been committed which otherwise would put them into custody. It works on the same principle of directing that sacred flame—there is no other adequate way to describe the human spirit in a young person before it becomes tainted with the confused and corrupting motivations of society—into a constructive activity which engages the loyalty, understanding and sympathy of the person concerned.
Very often those schemes are the first experience people have of the close interest taken by an adult human being in their welfare. They come from deprived or broken families. They are probably the last of many children and may be unwanted. They have already made trouble at the reception class and been put at the back of the room. They have become, as it were, an enemy of the school and they come to us through the magistrates' courts and the higher courts. Putting those youngsters into the kind of framework of which I spoke, where they are given challenging things to do under close adult supervision and an understanding of the reason for discipline, actually converts many of them into constructive, contributing members of society.
I am glad to say that the Home Office has given us a grant for core costs, and so has the Department of Health. I hope that the Department of the Environment, which will be obliged to read the debate, will be aware of our application to them. It
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would be nice if it made a troika and we were able to play this vital role in the areas spoken of by the right reverend Prelate and became the bridge between the great unemployed and the great employable of the future.
In my last minute I wish to say that I applaud central government co-operation between departments to intervene in the endless cycle of crime and reoffending and deprivation. But it is not to be expected that all but the core costs can be borne by the voluntary sector. I have become a professional beggar in obtaining extra money and when I do the bidding of departments I say to those I am approaching, "If you set this up, I will give you this little bit of money and that will help you to obtain some more". That is the most effective way of operating. I commend it to your Lordships. I wish that I had another 20 minutes but my time is up. I thank your Lordships for your patience.
4 p.m.
Lord Beaumont of Whitley: My Lords, one of the functions of Parliament and therefore of your Lordships' House is to:
"Speak up for those who can not speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute.
Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy".
Most Members of your Lordships' House, and certainly those on the episcopal Benches, will recognise that as a quotation from the Book of Proverbs; and it should be the text of the debate.
So far in the debate we have heard an extraordinarily high standard of contributions. No one in this House is unaware of the plight of the inner cities. Our society does its best to see that the problems that have arisen are hidden away in ghettos where they will not offend our fastidious eyes and nostrils. But we do not succeed and I cannot travel to this House from my home in "prosperous" Clapham on any day without dispensing money to beggars. It is very good for my soul but an appalling commentary of the society that we have fashioned since the maligned 1960s.
Our cities are multi-racial societies. It is not true of our country as a whole and we do not necessarily do right if we legislate for the whole country on the basis that we are a multi-cultural, multi-racial society. But it is true of the inner cities and we must face up to that reality.
The party in government has spent a lot of time —and still spends a little time—saying that the solution to the problem is not to throw money at it. In spite of a few excesses by doctrinaire authorities (which could easily have been curbed by sensible measures such as a representative electoral system in local government), I do not believe that anyone ever did throw money at the problem. The workers on the ground have always been far too stretched; they have always had to make every penny count.
But it is clear that unless we find the resources to pay for some changes we shall be landed with an increasing amount of poverty and misery and—which will frighten us far more—an increasing amount of violence and crime. Unfortunately since it is not the

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subject of the debate we do not have time to enter into discussions regarding the changes in wholesale economy to which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield referred. I am certain that we shall have to rethink the whole way in which we run our society. But those of us who are responsible must find some way of applying the resources we have. Though at the moment we may not be a rich society, nevertheless we are a society with a lot of extremely rich people in it.
Generalisations can be repeated ad nauseam but they must go on being repeated until it percolates through that the nausea arises not from the repetition but from the prevalence of the facts that are being repeated. In this debate I wish to draw your Lordships' and the Government's attention to three specific points as a matter of high priority in a sea of other priorities. The other priorities include the ending of the urban programme and the need to provide money to help victims who are supported by victim support schemes. Again in Clapham, where there is a high prevalence of victim support, all the evidence indicates that the victims need financial support to get by. A year ago they probably had something tucked away which they could use to tide them over for a week or so. Now they have nothing and the victim support bodies should be funded more.
Those are the priorities on which I am not concentrating. The first of the three on which I am concentrating is that the social fund must be completely rethought. There must be a supply of grants. Loans will not do. Debt is the problem, not the solution. The grants are needed to rescue families from the worst problems of poverty, particularly the unexpected ones, so that children can be brought up in some decency and not in total squalor.
My second point is the problem of the post-16 year-olds which must be tackled. It will not be simple for it is part of the whole problem of which all speakers so far have spoken. There is work to do. The noble Lord, Lord Elton, may be absolutely right in saying that in a lot of traditional work areas there is more unemployment to come. But one only needs to look around our society to see that labour intensive care is needed—care for human beings and for the environment. There must be care to recognise that we err if we believe that the ordinary man in the street cannot be provided with training and help to provide that core for themselves. We need to care for each other. There is a great deal of that kind of work to be done.
The problem therefore is not in finding work; it is in finding the economic mechanisms to pay for it. Until we do we are rearing a whole generation of teenage prostitutes of both sexes, vandals and thieves. Some noble Lords will have seen the recent report of Barnardos and Youth Aid, which came out yesterday or the day before, regarding the necessity of helping the 16 to 18 year-old group with some basic support which they are supposed to be receiving but are not. I draw your Lordships' attention to those recommendations.
My third point concerns the problem of the integration of the ethnic minorities in our society
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without which we will breed even more ethnic violence than we have already, and that is not negligible. In particular, we need to increase the amount of Section 11 funding. I shall not go further into that because my noble friend Lord Bonham-Carter more than touched on it. Those in the front line see that more fundamental reforms are needed than just increasing the money, although that is needed also.
Whatever detailed answers the Minister may give to these and other points which noble Lords will be making, the overall impression gained by all of us who are involved with the problems—whether in Church Action on Poverty, in local government or overall policy rethinking, as I think and hope many of us are —is that the Government and the party which supports them are totally unable (of course there are many exceptions) to face up to the needs of the inner cities. They would prefer to pretend that those needs do not exist, and are able to do so to such an extent that many of their supporters believe that they do not exist. They are not prepared to tell society that it must,
"defend the rights of the poor and needy",
if not for reasons of justice and compassion—because those could be said to be the province of the "do-gooders" —then at least in order to prevent a progressive breakdown of society spreading outwards from the inner cities; and that their supporters, and therefore the people of this country, will have to find ways of using the very real resources which we still have to see that this happens. It may mean a major revolution in our economics and in the way we organise our lives, but it is quite clear that we must embark on something of that kind or we shall certainly reap the whirlwind.
4.10 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for raising this vitally important subject. He referred several times to the dangers of going down the same road as the United States, but we can already see an inner city picture rather like that in the United States, with an exodus of many of the middle class and the more mobile members of the skilled working class from the inner city to the more salubrious outer city or to new towns. At the same time, many from the North and other areas which were particularly badly hit by the first recession of the 1980s moved into London and other big cities in search of a better life. In the recent recession this migration has not been so evident since unemployment has been as bad, or worse, in the South.
Ethnic minorities moved here in the 1950s and the 1970s when the going was good and they were much needed, but now they and their children are stuck in the inner cities. They do not have the resources or necessarily the wish to get out, the one exception being those extremely enterprising former East African Indians mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, who are entering the professions and rising up through the social scale. People from other ethnic minorities find it more difficult to get jobs than equivalently qualified white people, as was pointed out fairly clearly by the noble Lord. These young people, both black and white, feel resentful and unwanted.

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Training courses are available, though not enough, as pointed out by the Barnardos' Report mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont. The main problem is that those courses which do exist do not automatically lead to jobs. Only a minority of people find jobs at the end of those courses.
Working as a doctor in an inner city practice I am very aware of the feelings of alienation felt by young people, both black and white. Despite the opening of a number of hostels for homeless people in London there are still far too many who are rootless and living in inadequate accommodation. The borough of Camden, where I work, has recently produced a Community Care plan for 1993–94. I should like to quote one or two paragraphs from it. The plan states that in 1991–92 housing department figures showed that,
"2,874 new cases were taken on by the Homeless Persons Service. This is a 36 per cent. increase on the previous year. Of these 1,828 were accepted as homeless and in priority need (a 48 per cent. increase over the year.)"
Camden is not, apparently, the worst borough. Lambeth, Haringey, Hackney and Hammersmith are worse. In Camden there were 1,275 people sleeping rough in the last OPCS count.
The Minister may well say that the position has improved as a result of the emergency accommodation that has been built in London, but I am afraid that "cardboard city" is only too evident to anyone who walks around London with his eyes open. Many officially homeless people get a roof over their heads with the help of local social services and housing departments at great cost to local poll tax and council tax payers, a point made by my noble friend Lady Hollis. Camden has at last managed to end bed-and-breakfast accommodation —that expensive racket which enriched many owners of small and shoddy hotels over the years.
I could quote at length from this excellent report which reveals the enormous problems which Camden faces. One paragraph makes instructive reading. It states:
"According to a study made by the London Research Centre, while black households account for just 6 per cent. of all Camden households, one in three homeless households is black. In contrast, while white households account for 86 per cent. of all Camden's households, they only constitute 55 per cent. of priority homeless households. These figures may indicate that black households are more likely to become homeless than white ones".
The report also points out an increase in the numbers of people with mental health problems presenting themselves as homeless. The mental health unit of Bloomsbury and Islington Health Authority concluded that there may have been as many as 2,000 homeless people in the district in 1991 who suffered from mental health problems. These figures represent only those who had been in contact with services.
If I may, I will jump from the London borough of Camden to the whole of England. In an article in the British Medical Journal of 13th March entitled All the homeless people— where do they all come from?, Julian Leff, professor of psychiatry at the Maudsley Institute, states that in numerous surveys of homeless people in residential settings on both sides of the
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Atlantic the prevalence of severe mental illness was between 25 per cent. and 45 per cent. Only a small minority of those had ever been in long-stay mental hospitals and most of those who had been discharged as part of the rundown of mental hospitals had been housed in special units. Very few of them became homeless. My experience as a general practitioner confirms that. The article states:
"One of the economic changes that is leading to increasing homelessness is the disappearance of low cost rented accommodation. People suffering from severe psychiatric illnesses are particularly vulnerable to this change because of their high level of unemployment, low earning power, and lack of social support".
Another problem to which, as a GP, I can again testify is the increasing difficulty of admitting acutely ill psychiatric patients to hospital. Professor Leff states:
"Resulting deficiencies in the treatment of acutely ill patients can place intolerable burdens on their families and increase interpersonal friction, which may culminate in patients leaving home abruptly and being unable or unwilling to find alternative forms of shelter … Instead of assuming that the discharge of patients from psychiatric institutions is to blame we should be studying carefully the pathways that lead mentally ill people into homelessness and destitution".
He points out:
"The fact that severely mentally ill people roam our streets without adequate accommodation and medical care is an inescapable indictment of our society".
He concludes:
"If we are successful in identifying [the reasons for this] the opportunities may exist to prevent a situation that is desperately difficult to cure".
Leaving aside those who are mentally ill, many young people are disaffected and angry, as several noble Lords have pointed out. Being mainly quite able-bodied young people they naturally look around for something to do. As the right reverend Prelate pointed out extremely clearly, the promoters of a ready made and totally absorbing lifestyle are only too willing to entice them to their world—that of drug addiction. Here the achievement of a "high" and the subsequent transient relief from all tensions is only part of the game. The quest for drugs and the means to pay for them is virtually a 24-hour activity.
Tales of exploits of housebreaking, shoplifting and blatant trickery are swapped with glee. Many drug abusers are major or minor pushers themselves. An average drug addict has to find between £60 to £100 daily to finance his habit. It has been mentioned on many occasions in this House that that is very costly to society. Possibly up to £1.5 billion-worth of goods per annum are being stolen to pay for the drugs, although the drug users themselves get only a minute part of that sum—something like 10 per cent. From my own experience I am convinced that most of the recent increase in crime, especially in our district of London, is drug related.
We are seeing unemployment, homelessness, racial discrimination, untreated mental illness, drug addiction and crime increasing and becoming major problems in our inner cities. It is quite easy to cry disaster. However, I believe that every noble Lord who has spoken so far has also tried to be constructive. I shall point to possible solutions which I consider important in rank order.

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First, as I believe all noble Lords have said, is job creation. Then we need more low-cost housing. Councils should be allowed to spend the full amount which they have received on council house sales in order to build low-cost, socially necessary housing (although some of the inner London boroughs have not gained very much from the sale of their properties: they are not necessarily very popular properties; so they need more help than other boroughs, as my noble friend mentioned).
There should be more imaginatively-run drug treatment and rehabilitation centres and not fewer, as would seem to be happening if the Community Care (Residential Accommodation) Bill is enacted as it stands. There should also be better mental health services. If those matters are tackled vigorously the crime rate will fall dramatically and a spirit of hope might start to return to our cities.
4.22 p.m.
The Lord Bishop of Bristol: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for giving us the opportunity of considering the conditions in which people live in our inner cities and, not least, those concerned with young people and the ethnic minorities. Noble Lords have already heard a very full analysis of the situation and it is complex indeed. My friend the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield indicated that unemployment is a serious matter requiring imaginative solutions.
I would like to take the time of the House to look at the context in which many of our young people live and especially those who are part of our ethnic minorities. Housing is one of the most important factors concerned with crime, family, health and the social unrest which many of us perceive and live with. We know what has happened since the Second World War: the high-rise flats, the fortress complexes, the quality of housing which has not lived up to our expectations.
Many people have tried to solve those particular problems. Many of our inner cities have houses from the 19th and early 20th centuries which, because they are large—and we now have poor families living in them—deteriorate quickly. They are often put on the market and bought by people who pay prices far beyond those which local people can afford. The houses improve, but the poor no longer have the housing which made them part of that local community.
Perhaps I may share with the House the situation in the City of Bristol, not least concerned with homelessness. The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, said that the beggars are back. But behind the begging lies a considerable amount of hidden homelessness. Bristol has over 2,000 people every year who go to the day centre run by the Cyrenians. Something like 850 are under the age of 26 and of those about 200 are women. Most of them are homeless, not only technically but practically as well.
In the 1991 census the figure for Bristol was 142 people sleeping rough and yet the Shelter and Cyrenian figures suggest that it was well over 600. That is a large number of people who have no home
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at all and who are effectively undermining, and being undermined by, the kind of community in which they live.
As regards the ethnic minorities, certainly in the past in Bristol their homelessness has been hidden because there has been greater community acceptance of those who are without homes. They have been absorbed into families already there. But in the past year double the number of those belonging to the ethnic minorities have applied to the local authority for housing. The housing associations have received a similar increase. The problem is getting worse.
In fact, Bristol City Council told me that over the past two years the number of people claiming to be homeless and applying for some help has risen by over 10 per cent. The picture is not of a situation which is getting better, but of one that is getting worse.
I return to the comment made by the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, pointing to the possibility that Los Angeles might arrive on our front doorstep. I have to tell the House that it arrived in Bristol last July. The Hartcliffe riots were in part concerned with a lack of hope, work and poor accommodation. A local government official said that every examination of the causes and issues led back to the need to build up family and child care. He said that good housing is an essential component of that programme.
I believe that that is perhaps our highest priority —the provision of good, affordable housing. As far as I can tell, government figures and those given by housing associations, local authorities and those involved in the housing charities, all suggest that we need at least 100,000 new housing units every year for the rest of this decade to even begin to try to solve those particular problems. If that is true—I see no reason why it is not—then perhaps we need have an imaginative redistribution of our wealth and priorities.
I am told that some of the largest increases in unemployment have something to do with the building industry. Work, unemployment, resources and housing go together. If we are really serious about the nature of our inner cities, our housing estates and the problems which we all face, and if we really want to do something about them, it requires a change of will not only on the part of government but also by local authorities and the public at large.
I believe there is a will, in fact I know that there is a will, in which an imaginative partnership between central government, local authorities—and the large number of voluntary organisations to which people give their time because they are concerned about homelessness—can find a way to address some of those problems and perhaps find some solutions.
I am amazed to find that in the Avon Housing Forum over 80 organisations (in the main voluntary) are trying to deal with the issue of homelessness, poor accommodation, and help for young people and the ethnic minorities. There is no lack of good will, but there is a lack of our prioritising and deciding where our resources need to be placed. In a country which prides itself on being civilised, I hope that this House will agree that the poor have a right to a home which does not depend on their ability to pay. I believe that

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the time has come for decent, secure housing to be accepted as a fundamental right for all our citizens. That, combined with a concern for unemployment, may begin to address some of the desperate problems which we see in our inner cities.
4.29 p.m.
Lord McNair: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friends for calling for this debate and particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Bonham-Carter for his lucid, detailed and moving introduction. The title of the debate does not specify the United Kingdom so, with the permission of the House, I intend to devote a large part of my speech to the situation in Germany. I hope that noble Lords will take as read in what I have to say my agreement with the description of the situation in our inner cities given by most previous speakers. Conditions in Germany are different from those in this country. However, they may show what could happen if attitudes are allowed to harden further. The problems facing ethnic minorities are Europe-wide.
What concerns me is that the effect of increased intolerance towards ethnic and religious minorities in several European countries could spill over into the United Kingdom and that the despair in our inner cities could give rise to expressions of anger and frustration which might have been prevented by the sort of timely action many speakers have suggested. I am particularly worried that individuals (making up a disaffected under-class, as described by the American Professor Murray and by many noble Lords today) will, out of despair, opt out and exist in a twilight world of drugs, crime and educational failure.
We are concerned, as a party, that legislation on equal opportunities in this country is not matched by similar legislation in other countries of the European Community nor indeed by any European legislation. Community directives cover much valuable ground and also quite a bit of absolute nonsense but, as far as I know, the possibility of a directive on equal opportunities has not been given serious consideration. This defect should be remedied with all possible speed to give direction to those countries where the concept of equal rights has evidently not taken root, even at the official level.
The anti-discrimination legislation in this country is far from perfect; nor is it perfectly applied in practice. However, it does set the tone for what is acceptable in national and local government and in private enterprise. However, racial attacks (or fear of them) and overt discrimination are all too common in the United Kingdom despite our having had legislation in place for a number of years. They are part of the daily experience of too many of those who make up our ethnic minorities. What is needed is some kind of charter for minorities which would be expressed in both national legislation and as an EC directive. That would, of course, only be a beginning, but it is a necessary beginning.
It appears that we may be emerging from a particularly deep recession. However, if the Government simply bask in the reflected glory of a
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cyclical rise in economic activity and do nothing about the severe problems relating to our economic structure which, my noble friends and other noble Lords have spoken about in recent months, then it is clear that the upturn will simply lead to a rise in imports (as we saw last week) and to overheating of the service sector. To create long-term jobs for all our people it is necessary that the Government are effective and successful in rebuilding our manufacturing industry, for nothing less than that is required.
Our long-term economic stability is also vital to the democratic process here and in Europe. If we are successful in this, our standing and our voice in Europe will be enhanced. And it is vital that we make that voice heard as a voice of reason and a voice of powerful moderation.
The rise of xenophobia and neo-Nazi activity in Germany is probably the most disturbing threat to racial harmony in Europe. I am chairman of a newly formed Commission to Investigate Racial and Religious Discrimination which has been established to look into all such cases brought to its attention. It is focusing on Germany in the first instance, although all countries will receive its attention in due course. It has many cases under investigation already.
Another horrid aspect of the behaviour in Germany is the savage treatment meted out to disabled people by fascist thugs. The idea of lebens unwertes leben—a life not worthing living—is so alien to our way of thinking that we may have difficulty in confronting the evil that is becoming manifest in Germany. If we do not confront it, I fear that the extremist elements in present-day Germany will drag Europe into a new barbarism. The situation in Germany is dynamic, whereas, although dangerous and potentially explosive, the situation in this country is more stable.
There are dangerous signs that elements within the present administration in Germany are giving tacit support to the extreme right-wing elements that seem to be making the running today. The renowned German writer, Günter Grass, in a recent full-page article in the European newspaper, accused the government of Chancellor Kohl of bending with whatever political wind was blowing at the time. The present German wind of change is blowing in a dangerous direction and threatens to become a tornado which tears apart the political fabric of Europe which we have been painstakingly working to construct since the end of the war.
I realise that great efforts are being made by the democratic elements in Germany to mobilise public opinion in the direction of tolerance and racial harmony. There have been huge marches against the neo-Nazis: I warmly applaud that. I hope that Her Majesty's Government are making it clear to the German Government how very important we feel it is that democracy and tolerance should overcome reaction and discrimination.
The noble Earl, Lord Ferrers, replying to the debate on Wednesday, 17th March, on the rise of crime and support for the police and the courts, observed that civilisation is a very thin veneer which can easily be stripped off exposing only raw humanity.

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His words apply as equally to the threatened position of racial and religious minorities in Germany as they do to the fabric of our own society.
In case anyone were to get the impression that I am simply having a go at Germany, let me make it clear that I understand its problems in respect of additions to the ethnic minority population. Apart from the economic difficulties which affect us as well as Germany and which have caused large-scale unemployment, Germany has to face the problems of reunification and the influx of refugees. I do not think that we could face such an increase in population with equanimity.
However, it is a sad but inescapable fact that the German Government are not providing sufficient moral leadership in the present situation. The resulting moral and political vacuum is being filled by the skinheads with nice haircuts. They and their mentors, the old Nazis who have been biding their time, are taking advantage of the situation to turn the clock back to the thirties. In the process they are corrupting and exploiting a generation of German youth.
Returning to this country and looking at another aspect of life for people in the inner cities, I was startled by figures I obtained from SELCA, the South East London Commissioning Agency, which is made up of three former health districts covering the London boroughs of Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark. In 1991 there were 12,342 births in that area and 6,900 abortions. In other words, 36 per cent. of all pregnancies in the area during that year ended in abortion. I think that it is probably also safe to say that not all the pregnancies that did not result in abortion were planned and wanted.
That statistic horrified me. First, although not being vehemently anti-abortion, I do regard each abortion as a tragedy for the individuals and for society. Secondly, it suggests a failure of practical sex education. Thirdly, an abortion necessarily results from unprotected sex and that has obvious consequences for the spread of HIV infection.
Too much moral education that is and has been imparted to young people is in the form of, "Don't". It is easily shown that if you tell someone not to do something, you fix their attention on that course of action. What is needed is a commonsense, positive and, for today's world, secular moral code which is taught to our children, to young adults, before they become parents, and most definitely to those in penal institutions. Following and living by such a code, which would indicate the way to a happy and fulfilling life, would enable people to acquire or regain their self-respect and, genuinely respecting themselves, they would develop respect for others. That would in time apply universally. It would be a first step to righting many wrongs and to giving people who felt that they had no hope of a satisfying and productive life a means of creating the life which they wanted for themselves and their families.
In a pluralistic society with many different faiths or none at all it is clear that the different theologies cannot all be right in a literal sense and that each
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expresses a different version of a universal human aspiration to goodness, wholeness and spiritual progress.
4.40 p.m.
Lord Pitt of Hampstead: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for giving us the opportunity to discuss the condition of the inner cities. The condition of people living in the inner cities is affected by the policies of central and local government. The Government's economic policy, with its attendant high unemployment, has made life difficult for people in this country. That is particularly so in our inner cities. I was thrilled to hear the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield appeal to the Government to take seriously the issue of unemployment.
A recent research paper published by the House of Commons Library showed that the 25 constituencies with the highest rate of unemployment were in the inner cities. With unemployment comes deprivation, and it is true that those same constituencies dominate the table relating to homelessness and households in temporary accommodation. They are low on the list of housing completions and a high percentage of their population is in receipt of income support. The pupil/teacher ratio in primary schools in those areas is bad and continues to worsen. Perinatal and infant mortality are higher in many London boroughs than in the rest of the country. The standardised death rates are also higher. That has been the case for the past 15 years in spite of all the Government's initiatives. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, referred to those initiatives so I shall not burden your Lordships with them.
We are obviously dealing with a serious, deep-seated problem which requires maximum effort on all sides. That calls for strong motivation from the key players: the leaders, the people who are responsible for dealing with such matters. The problem requires local participation, support, and flexibility so that different methods can be adopted in different areas. Of course, it also requires private and public partnership and public investment in housing and infrastructure. All those initiatives are required if inner city regeneration is to take place.
The Government's latest initiative is the urban regeneration agency. Will the Minister tell us how long it will take for the new initiatives to have effect? What measures will be introduced in the meantime? Will the urban regeneration agency, acting within its brief, be able to find solutions to other aspects of inner city problems such as health and education?
It is in those surroundings that many ethnic minority citizens live. Let us remember that they came here during the war to join the Armed Forces. Some came to work in the factories which produced the sinews of war. After the war there was a shortage of workers and so workers were recruited from the West Indies. London Transport had a recruiting office in Barbados. That meant that the newcomers had jobs and the issue of unemployment did not arise.

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However, the problem was housing; it was in securing housing accommodation that the ethnic minorities suffered most discrimination.
Originally they helped themselves by forming partnerships which enabled them to buy houses that they shared. But of course the houses, like the jobs, were those which the natives did not want. In those days local authority housing was difficult to secure because the authorities worked on the principle of first come, first served, and the newcomers were low on the waiting list. They were, therefore, a prey to unscrupulous landlords. They were also discriminated against by the funding agencies and estate agents and were able to buy or to rent properties only in certain areas. The situation has improved, but we must remember that those people were housed on the less attractive estates and still have unsatisfactory accommodation.
The Government's home ownership policy has benefited those who were allocated houses when housed by the local authority. However, it has not benefited those who were allocated flats because often they were on run-down estates and their purchase would be a liability rather than an asset. The Government's policy of restricting council house building has created difficulties for those on the waiting list hoping that their time will come. Those citizens have, just as they did in the beginning, endeavoured to help themselves and have joined the housing association movement. There are now several black-led housing associations.
The Government's policy of restricting the expenditure of local authorities has been most detrimental. It is a sad thought that the local authorities which have the highest degree of deprivation are capped. That has meant that the help which they would have given to the communities in need, and to the young to help with training and other important services, has been severely restricted. Many community services are suffering because of that restriction on local authority expenditure. I am speaking from knowledge. I am president of an organisation called Open Door, which is exactly what it says. It keeps an open door for youngsters in need of psychiatric help and counselling. They can walk in and receive help from psychiatrists and psychiatric social workers. The service received funding from the local authority as well as the local health authority. However, the local authority has been forced to reduce its funding and that has caused the service of Open Door to be reduced, thus reducing the help that was being given to the youngsters.
There are many such projects which were previously funded by local authorities which are suffering in that way. Now there is mass unemployment and of course members of ethnic minority groups are high on the unemployment list. Therefore, they lead the plea for Government action to relieve unemployment.
They would certainly benefit from a house-building programme as many of them were employed in the building industry. That is an area in which the Government can stimulate the economy, relieve
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homelessness, reduce unemployment and improve the general situation. The Government owe it to the community to concern themselves more with unemployment than they seem to be doing. I wish to join the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield in pleading with the Government to make full employment a goal which they will strive with might and main to secure.
4.52 p.m.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, in choosing this subject for debate, it was not our intention to embark on a party political knock-about. We are all aware that this is a subject about which we are all concerned. It is a subject on which, despite the concern—we recognise that the Government have put forward a number of schemes with very good intentions—we are not succeeding. We all know that we are not succeeding. I thought that this would be a subject on which we could have an all-party discussion and, perhaps, all-party agreement about what should be done. It is in that spirit that I make my speech.
Although real efforts have been made, in many ways matters are getting worse and not better. Until there is an outbreak of violence or some dramatic incident, people do not bring the problems to the forefront of political discussions because they are too difficult. We do not know what to do and we try to hide it. As my noble friend Lord Bonham-Carter said, that is exactly what was done in Los Angeles. It is all too easy to look at other issues—and there are plenty of them—and to ignore this issue until it forces itself upon our attentions in a particularly undesirable way.
I wish to concentrate particularly upon ethnic minority problems in inner city areas. Although many other issues arise, in most of our inner cities, although not all, there are concentrations of a variety of ethnic minorities. Undoubtedly their problems are particularly grave and particularly difficult to deal with.
Although I live in Lambeth, it came as a great surprise to me—and I remind your Lordships of it —that in the Lambeth area 108 languages are spoken in addition to English. It is a horrifying thought. I do not say that it accounts for the distinguished muddles which arise there but it must contribute to them in no small degree. I am a great supporter of local authorities, but if the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, lived in Lambeth, she would not be quite so keen on leaving it all to local authorities.
Ethnic minorities have exceptional difficulties. As many other noble Lords have said, there should be a partnership between all the authorities and all the people who have an opportunity to make some sort of contribution.
The problems of ethnic minorities are getting worse rather than better. They get worse when the economy gets worse as a whole because people at the bottom of the pile are always those who suffer most when conditions get worse. That is what has happened. I shall return later to the question of unemployment to which I attach the greatest importance.
However, it is not only a problem of unemployment. Harassment—and I still call it that—is getting worse and not better. The Commission for Racial

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Equality reports an increase in the number of attacks on racial groups. Although we have not had the outstanding and conspicuous kind of extreme Right-wing anti-racist activity that there has been in other parts of continental Europe, we have our own very nasty Right-wing groups, far away from the policies of the present Government, which have been responsible for nasty incidents of harassment.
Our legislation makes it illegal to incite racial hatred. I ask the Minister whether he is satisfied that the law is being used in as tough a manner as it should be used against those people who are responsible for racial harassment. I know that the Government do not support that kind of activity, but if they would make that much clearer and demonstrate by pressure that the law should be used in those cases, it would benefit us al! and would reassure members of ethnic minorities that the law applies equally to people with white skins as to those with black skins when the law is broken, particularly in that extremely detestable way.
While we are still on the subject of the law, there have been disquieting reports carried out by reputable organisations which have shown great differences between the convictions and sentences of people of ethnic minorities as opposed to white members of the community. There are also differences between different courts. There could be good reasons why different courts handle cases in different ways. However, studies have shown that in some courts the fact that a convicted person has a black face tends to lead to a tougher sentence than if that person had a white face. I have no doubt that the Minister has read some of those reports and I should be interested to hear his comments on them. I ask whether any steps can be taken to ensure that justice is even-handed between people from ethnic minorities and the white people of this country.
Undoubtedly in my mind the question of unemployment is central. If young men in particular do not have jobs, they have nothing to do and they become totally bored. That is a recipe for them finding their way into crime. I have been on the receiving end of that. I am quite certain that on some of the occasions on which I have been burgled, it has been done for the sheer hell of it so that the culprits can go back to their friends to boast about their exploits. They do not take much. I believe that they are looking for money but they are also looking for excitement. They are bored stiff. It is extremely exciting to commit a burglary. I have not committed a burglary myself but If can understand that one can get quite a kick from it. Youngsters commit those crimes because they have nothing else to do. High levels of unemployment rates among youngsters of ethnic minorities in our inner cities is almost certain to lead to a large increase in crime. Therefore, if one used the most hard-nosed kind of argument, it would save money if we could train those youngsters in such a way that they could obtain jobs rather than being diverted into criminal activities.
The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who is not present in the Chamber today, once remarked when talking on the subject—and he has had considerable experience
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on the Parole Board—that in his experience everyone needed adventure in their lives. He, after all, is an expert on adventure. He was convinced. I am sure that he is right: people do need adventure. The best adventure you can have if you are out of work in an inner city, and living in an overcrowded house, is to commit a burglary. Surely we can do better than that.
But if we are to give people jobs, we must start in the schools. I wish to stress the point most strongly that inner-city schools in places like Tower Hamlets need the best teachers. High starting ratios and additional help is required if they are to provide the sort of education that will give members of ethnic minorities a reasonable chance of competing in the labour market. In many cases it is more difficult to get staff for such schools; in fact, where they need more they have less. The starting ratios are worse rather than better. That is the exact opposite of what it ought to be.
I move on now from schools to training opportunities and, therefore, to jobs. Some of the TECs are monitoring their intake as regards training opportunities for ethnic minorities, but many of them are not. It is quite clear that discrimination is taking place in the employment field. The TECs are in a very good position to find out what is happening. If they want to ensure that there is no discrimination first, in training opportunities and then in placing——indeed., if we all want to see that there is none —surely it is not too much to ask that the TECs should monitor what happens in relation to ethnic minorities both as regards getting a place on training schemes and, more importantly, obtaining jobs after completing such schemes. Surely the TECs can make inquiries and insist that the people with whom they deal and contract for training programmes also monitor what is going on.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield said that he did not think there was enough work to go around. We live in a very hungry world which, in many places, lacks the things which most of us take as being the obvious necessities of life. We are not running out of work; we are running out of people trained to do the work and the ability to pay for it. If we are to hold our own in this country, and if we are going to be able to pay for all the services that we want —that is, better educational opportunities, better housing in inner cities and all the other things that we need which all take money—we need the best possible training.
I believe that members of the ethnic minorities are capable of taking that training. As we all know from our own experience, many of them are certainly capable of setting up very successful small businesses. The TECs could also contribute in that respect. They could monitor the situation and let us know what is happening in the setting up of small businesses by members of ethnic minorities to fill some of the many needs that we all have. We are not running out of work; indeed, we are a long way from that position as regards services. There is a whole range of things that need to be done in this country and elsewhere. Section

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11 is very important. It will enable local authorities to make their contribution. However I should like to concentrate on what the TECs can do.
This is not a party matter; it is a matter about which we are all concerned. When outbreaks take place in Liverpool, London and Bristol, we are all horrified and appalled. Then everything subsides and, although we think back, we really do very little about it. The purpose of today's debate is to stress that this should be high on the agenda of the issues with which we deal. It is a very good investment to put money into ensuring that such horrors do not occur in the inner cities and into giving people from ethnic minorities a chance. After all, we did not bring the people from foreign countries here for love; we brought them here because we needed them to do the work that we did not want to do ourselves. Surely the other side of that coin is that we should give them a reasonable chance to continue to contribute.
5.5 p.m.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of the Environment (Lord Strathclyde): My Lords, I begin by thanking the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, for bringing to the attention of the House the important issues concerning the condition of our inner cities. We have heard some thought-provoking speeches on a wide range of issues affecting the quality of life in cities. I listened carefully and with great interest to the points made by all noble Lords. Although it will clearly be difficult for me to deal with all the comments made about individual schemes, I am pleased to have the opportunity to reinforce the Government's commitment to tackling the problems of the inner cities.
Since the House last debated the issue of inner cities, there have been many achievements in regenerating those areas. I shall cite just one example. In the North East, Teesside and Tyneside have been transformed from districts without hope to areas of optimism and opportunity. Similar examples can be found across the country. But the Government are not complacent. There is, indeed, much more to be done. The problems of the inner cities are diverse and interrelated—from derelict land to low educational achievement, poor housing and health, high unemployment, crime, and so on. The end result is that local people feel helpless. They lose pride in their cities to the extent that they lose respect in themselves and in their environment. Graffiti and litter are but indicators of that fact.
The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said that the debate was not party political. I agree with those intentions and the realisation that such problems need to be tackled across a broad front. The Government are alive to those problems and are committed to tackling them in a co-ordinated and integrated way. However, most people recognise that the Government cannot achieve regeneration on their own. The overriding key to success is partnership—real partnership, which includes local authorities, commerce and local people, indeed all those with an interest in the health and vitality of our inner cities. I
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am therefore delighted to echo the sentiments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol, the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, and even those of the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis.
Solutions cannot be imposed from the top. We have to be sure that our approach has the support of local communities and businesses. To ignore that risks failure. That is why partnership is so important—and it is partnership across the board. The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, accused the Government of destroying local government. That, of course, is not true. We want responsible local government. What was responsible about Lambeth or about Liverpool in the past? I understand that there are enough empty council properties in Labour-controlled London boroughs to house all the capital's homeless; indeed, there are probably enough to house all the homeless people in the country. However, I do not have that statistic to hand.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham: My Lords, will the Minister please give way?
Lord Strathclyde: No, my Lords; this is a timed debate and I will not give way. I have only just started my remarks. At central government level the philosophy of partnership is embodied in the Action for Cities initiative which ensures the co-ordination of all major programmes and policies which have a bearing on inner cities. At the local level city action teams provide the mechanism for co-ordinating government action in all the major cities and ensure effective targeting of resources.
I refer especially to City Challenge. Such was the success of its first round, it is now entering the second. It has used the stimulus of competition to encourage local authorities to enter into new partnerships and develop innovative approaches to tackle social deprivation and support regeneration. I can tell the noble Baroness that we have not scrapped City Challenge. There is to be no competition this year. But my colleagues and I are impressed by the achievements of the pacemakers. We are convinced that that success will be repeated in round two. We are currently taking stock of the lessons learned. When the results of the 1991 census are available, we shall give thorough consideration to a round three in the not too distant future.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, said that the Government's support to inner cities had been cut. That is not so. Following the Autumn Statement the planned spending on my department's urban group of programmes was increased by £90 million for 1993–94. Total spending in these areas will be over £1 billion next year. Indeed, resources to the inner cities have increased fourfold in real terms since 1979 and by 43 per cent. since 1987. The noble Baroness, Lady Seear, said that this should not be a party political debate. I shall therefore not add to those points.
The success of the urban development corporations and other programmes provides a wealth of experience and a valuable foundation on which to take forward our proposals for an urban regeneration agency which are contained in the Housing and Urban

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Development Bill currently before your Lordships' House. I invite the noble Lord, Lord Pitt, to join us in those debates when we discuss that agency.
Getting our inner cities back to work is clearly a crucial aspect of improving the quality of life. Preparing people for work starts at a young age. We have a range of programmes in place, from education in schools, to training schemes, to job creation itself. Over a third of Employment Service unemployed placings are of inner city residents. Performance-related funding encourages the TECs to train ethnic minorities. People needing English language training have immediate eligibility for employment training. Obviously, job creation is essentially a private sector function but the Government set the framework for business expansion and development. We recognise that businesses in inner city areas are faced with increased difficulties and may require additional help to succeed. The loan guarantee scheme helps new or expanding small businesses by providing an additional source of finance when efforts to obtain conventional finance have proved fruitless. Regional enterprise grants and regional selective assistance may also be available to help inner city firms.
The noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, in his introductory speech said that unemployment rates among ethnic minorities were higher than unemployment rates among white people. It is true that unemployment rates among ethnic minorities have risen more than those in the white population. However, that reflects the nature of the rise in unemployment. The greatest rise in unemployment rates have occurred in the regions and in the age groups where ethnic minorities are concentrated. Many people from ethnic minorities are employed in low skill jobs which are among the first to be shed in a recession. However, more people from ethnic minorities are now staying on in education. English language proficiency and literacy also play a major part. There may have been some discrimination in the selection for jobs and in the selection for promotion and training but increasing numbers of employers are recognising the value of providing equality of opportunity. That is a trend we hope will continue and that we must encourage.
There is one development in particular, announced last week in the Budget Statement, about which I am particularly excited and that is the community action scheme. I suspect that the scheme is fully in line with the views of my noble friend Lord Elton on national service. It will give 60,000 people who have been unemployed for more than a year the opportunity to use their time constructively by doing work of benefit to the local community. The programme offers endless possibilities for the inner cities by enabling the long-term unemployed to keep in touch with the labour market while giving them a worthwhile and valued role in the community. The range of projects that could benefit is enormous. Renovation of housing and environmental improvements are obvious examples but there are many others in the care sector; for example, supporting people caring for elderly relatives. The programme is to start this summer. There will be plenty of local publicity so that
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unemployed people know what is on offer. That is an example of the Government's commitment to addressing the needs of those people who would benefit from such action.
I shall now deal briefly with education. I am conscious that the subject was discussed at some length yesterday and therefore I shall not spend much time on it. The reforms are designed to remove barriers to achievement, including those that result from low expectations, prejudice and discrimination. Greater involvement in school government by parents and the local community, greater objectivity in assessment, and emphasis on values in education will all support genuine equality of opportunity.
Many noble Lords, including the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol, referred to poor housing conditions in certain parts of our inner cities. Improving housing conditions is undoubtedly essential for enhancing the quality of urban life. Many inner city areas are characterised by the predominance of local authority housing and we believe it important to continue to invest in such council housing as effectively as possible. I must inform the noble Lord, Lord Rea, that housing benefit, which is available to poorer tenants and pays up to 100 per cent. of eligible rent, has doubled in real terms since 1979 to just short of £5 billion in 1991–92.
We are doing much through the housing investment programme and large-scale schemes such as Estate Action and housing action trusts which help tackle some of our more difficult estates. Throughout the country we are spending some £330 million on 360 Estate Action schemes this year. Many of those are in inner city areas. Next year we plan to spend a further £350 million enabling another 160 new schemes to start.
Estate Action schemes enable money to be invested to turn rundown housing into areas where people can again be proud to live. Over the past couple of years Estate Action has become a key vehicle for the regeneration of our towns and cities. We have moved the programme forward from piecemeal changes. Our emphasis now is to target the larger estates which require a comprehensive and strategic approach. I am sure that I have the support of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol when I say that we are determined to widen the choice for all tenants, including those from the ethnic minorities, giving them greater opportunities to be involved in the management of their homes and the running of their estates. We also need to ensure the best possible performance by local authorities in managing their housing stock. I am sure that many housing problems can be attributed in no small measure to the inadequacies of local authority management over a number of years. If all local housing authorities could achieve the standard of the best, we could substantially improve overall housing performance and reduce housing waiting lists.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Sheffield made an important and thoughtful speech. The right reverend Prelate, together with many other noble Lords, voiced his concerns about crime in inner cities, and in particular youth crime. I wish to take this

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opportunity to reassure the House that the Government are concerned about this matter and are acting to deal with crime and to remove the fear of crime that is experienced by all too many inner city residents, the young and the elderly alike. However, there is no single cause of crime. Many people have disadvantages but do not offend. Crime has risen in times of low unemployment. There is no excuse for crime and there should be no support for crime from this House, or for the theory that crime is acceptable because the perpetrator is unemployed. That is not to say it is not important to find jobs for offenders. A wide range of schemes exists at various levels in prisons and in the probation service to improve offenders' skills and their self-confidence.
I must tell the right reverend Prelate that the Home Office programme development unit is funding a number of projects aimed at preventing criminality. Among those projects a multi-agency group in Sheffield proposes to establish a range of school and community based skill development programmes to address the links between schools, family, social learning and delinquency.
The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, asked about support for the victims of crime. I can assure him that the needs of victims of crime are given a high priority. In 1990 we published the victims' charter, and we increased the budget for victim support to £8.4 million next year with schemes covering 98 per cent. of the country. I can also tell the noble Lord that £144 million was paid out last year in compensation to victims.
The noble Lord, Lord Rea, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear, mentioned serious racial attacks. There are several government initiatives to tackle racially motivated crime. They include issuing guidance to forces on the response to such crimes; promoting the multi-agency approach; funding a pilot multi-agency project in Newham; producing a booklet in several languages; and ensuring that the issue is seen as a top priority by the police.
The noble Baroness asked about discrimination in the criminal justice system. Those engaged in the administration of criminal justice have a duty to avoid discriminating against anyone on the basis of race, gender or any other improper ground. Section 95 of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 requires the Home Secretary to publish information annually to assist practitioners in the fulfilment of their duty. Ministers are currently considering how best to extend ethnic monitoring through the criminal justice system.
We do not shy away from our responsibilities to provide an effective framework for the prevention of criminality—the police, the courts and the treatment of offenders themselves. The proposed introduction of the new secure training order for sentencing the small hard core of persistent juvenile offenders is just one of our latest initiatives to consolidate that framework. However, the whole community must play its part by being good neighbours and responsible parents.
I turn now to Section 11 funding, which was a concern of the noble Lord, Lord Bonham-Carter, and the noble Baroness, Lady Seear. I fully appreciate
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their anxieties about the reduction of funding under Section 11 of the Local Government Act 1966, which supports the cost to local authorities of employing additional staff, mainly in teaching. The Government very much value the important work which has been, and continues to be, carried out by teachers and others supported by the grant. My right honourable friend the Home Secretary is anxious to encourage constructive dialogue with local authorities on how the substantial funding which remains under Section 11 can best be deployed for the benefit of ethnic minorities. We are anxious to be as flexible as possible in administering the grant. I hope that that comforts the noble Lord, Lord Pitt.
Noble Lords have expressed anxiety about the new arrangements for the urban programme. I am happy to repeat earlier assurances that there is no question of the urban programme being cut off. We announced last November that after the end of this month no new projects will be approved under the programme. However, projects already approved will continue to be funded for the agreed period. For voluntary sector projects that could be up to another four years. For example, in 1993–94 there will be a substantial programme, amounting to £156 million, to fund continuing commitments.
I have explained that we now have a range of measures in place to continue the regeneration process initiated at the end of the 1960s by the urban programme. Some £20 million has already been agreed in principle as the urban partnership fund element of the new capital partnership programme. The fund will support over 80 projects in 46 urban priority areas in 1993–94. That money will boost the amounts available to local authorities as a result of the relaxation of capital receipts rules which were announced in the Autumn Statement.
I am conscious of anxieties about funding for revenue projects. As I explained, City Challenge resources have been substantially increased and over £1 billion will be available to the 31 areas for their five-year programmes. In those areas, comprehensive, targeted regeneration programmes will benefit all sectors of the community. Most of the City Challenge areas have ethnic minority communities, and all have young people. Through City Challenge, local partnerships are aiming to improve the areas and bring lasting benefits to those who live and work in them. That means expanding the work of the urban programme in developing the potential and capacity of inner city areas and ensuring that all sectors of the community share the new opportunities and work together to tackle current problems, including housing conditions and juvenile crime, both of which have been the subject of much debate today.
In closing my speech I stress the Government's commitment to regenerating rundown inner cities and outer estates. We have put in place initiatives and programmes which, through proper targeting, will encourage sustainable renewal. Partnership, imagination and innovation are the key, stimulated by the challenge of competition. By tapping the rich

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resources of local communities and involving their young people we can give the inner cities a chance to shape their own futures.
I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate. I believe that it has been constructive. The Government will continue to play their part in that partnership by providing the necessary framework for social and environmental regeneration and, most importantly, economic recovery and growth.
Baroness Seear: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down perhaps I may say that I did not hear him answer my point about pressing the TECs to monitor. That is very important. They are the people who can deliver the training. We want to know whether it is being delivered on a proper basis.
Lord Strathclyde: My Lords, I made the point that the TECs have an incentive to look after the needs of ethnic minorities. Whether that is monitoring I am not sure. I shall certainly make inquiries and write to the noble Baroness.
5.25 p.m.
Lord Bonham-Carter: My Lords, I should like to take this opportunity to thank all noble Lords who participated in the debate. I agree with my noble friend Lady Seear that the purpose of the debate was to try to raise the problems of inner cities, and in particular of the young and ethnic minorities, higher on the political agenda. Those problems are all too easily forgotten or buried.
This is not the occasion on which to respond to the noble Lord's reply to my initial speech. However, debates of this kind tend to make it appear that ethnic minorities are in some way a problem. I have frequently tried to disabuse people of that interpretation. Indeed, in the debates on the asylum Bill I tried to point out, and I reiterate, that one has only to look around this House and the country generally to see what we have gained from immigration in the past and what we are gaining in the present.
Today's debate has centred around the three central issues of employment, housing and education. Those are the three critical issues upon which any discussion of this matter must concentrate. That means, however, that policies to deal with the problems arising in our inner cities have to be co-ordinated because at least three Ministries are involved. It has always been the responsibility of the Home Office, as the lead department, to co-ordinate policies concerning race relations. Since the earliest days the Home Office has steadfastly refused to do so. It is high time that it got down to it and co-ordinated policies in that field instead of doing nothing until there is a riot.
I believe that the debate has been useful. I should like to reiterate my thanks. However, one point still worries me. Education and schooling are crucial in this matter. Local authorities such as Tower Hamlets are dependent upon Section 11 funding for educational schemes and English language training. That is critical. If that funding is to be cut, I should like to have an assurance at some time that new funds
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will be made available for the schemes and for helping in the education of the ethnic minorities—who in this case are immigrants because in Tower Hamlets it is Bangladeshis who are the newcomers. It is essential that those funds should not disappear and that those services should not be withdrawn.
Leadership, determination and resources are required from the Government. We hope that the resources will be applied in the right places at the right time. Meanwhile, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Nuclear Weapons: Non-Proliferation
5.28 p.m.
Lord Mayhew Lord Mayhew rose to call attention to the case for preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and ending all nuclear testing; and to move for Papers.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, the world is faced with many serious problems, but it may be that this Motion raises the most urgent and important of them all.
We are faced with the prospect of nuclear weapons slipping into more and more insecure and irresponsible hands. The first nuclear powers, the five permanent Members of the Security Council, have, with one or two lapses, handled their possession of nuclear weapons with a proper degree of responsibility. However, possession has passed to South Africa, India, Israel and, at present, to Khazakhstan, Ukraine and Belorussia. It may soon pass also to Iran and North Korea. It is not inconceivable that from there it may pass in crude form to the hands of terrorist organisations, drug barons and the Mafia.
This danger, of course, had been seen from the moment of the explosion of the first bomb. The world did well to form the non-proliferation treaty 23 years ago. When we look back we see that since then fewer countries have obtained nuclear weapons than many people believed was likely. I have heard today encouraging news of a statement by President de Klerk that South Africa made six nuclear bombs which they dismantled. They were all dismantled by 1990 at which time South Africa joined the non-proliferation treaty. The President has invited the International Atomic Energy Agency to inspect South Africa's nuclear facilities. That shows that the position is not all gloom: that the non-proliferation treaty has results. For example, in Latin America, under the statesman-like leadership of Argentina and Brazil, the whole area is well set to achieve a non-nuclear weapon zone. That is the target that we must surely have in mind. We must apply the same non-proliferation regime to the remainder of the world.
What is needed to do that? I believe that there are two measures which will be agreed on all sides and which are accepted by the Government. First, in 1995 we should ask for and negotiate the indefinite extension of the non-proliferation treaty, as the treaty stands, rather than trying to amend it, which might well be counter-productive. Secondly—this is an issue which will be generally agreed —the powers of the

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International Atomic Energy Agency need to be greatly strengthened. That was most dramatically and clearly proved by the Gulf War. Before the Gulf War, Iraq had joined the non-proliferation treaty. It had permitted inspections by the agency in declared sites. However, because the agency had no power to inspect non-declared sites, the whole of Iraq's powerful efforts to achieve a nuclear weapon went totally undetected by the agency. But then, after the Gulf War, when the Security Council had armed the agency with much more intrusive powers, the agency was able to identify and destroy Iraq's nuclear facilities, although even then it was difficult, and even now perhaps some element of doubt remains.
It seems to me clear that, whereas such intrusive powers are a threat to the sovereignty of any country subjected to them, nevertheless so great are the issues at stake that I believe all countries ought to be willing to pay that price. Countries which evade or resist inspection, or bypass or breach the treaty, should be met in the first instance, as appropriate, by diplomatic pressure, offers of security guarantees, and the withholding or granting of aid. But in the last resort those countries should be coerced by the Security Council.
Such action could be politically possible if, and only if, the five nuclear powers which are primarily responsible have carried out most scrupulously the obligations laid on them by the treaty. That they are not yet doing. It is true that, belatedly, the Americans and Russians have fulfilled the first obligation on them in the treaty. That was to end the nuclear arms race. They have also taken steps towards the second obligation, on general and complete disarmament. However, the other three permanent members have taken no notice of those obligations. In particular, the United Kingdom, unbelievably, is actually increasing its nuclear weapons capability, first, by raising the range, accuracy and number of war heads on the deterrent and, secondly, so it tells us, by contemplating a new, additional air-to-surface nuclear missile system.
It is hard to imagine a greater provocation to the non-nuclear members of the non-proliferation treaty. My guess is that when the noble Baroness replies, she will say, "We have not said that we shall have more warheads on Trident. We have not said that we shall have an additional nuclear missile system". But if that is so, why on earth do we not say so? As it is, we are putting ourselves wholly out of court with the treaty and its signatories. How will British delegates attending the conference, or the preparatory sessions which begin this year which will lead up to the conference, answer the strong and understandable resentment of the non-nuclear countries? Will they say to them, "Unlike you, Britain can be trusted not only with the possession of nuclear weapons but to increase them—and, incidentally, to keep the increase secret"? If the noble Baroness wishes to tell us how many warheads are going on Trident, we shall be very interested.
Knowing that those figures and facts are essential for disarmament verification, the United States and
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the Russians tell us the number of their warheads. But again, the Government seem to believe that they have a privileged position on concealing from the world the number and nature of our nuclear weapons.
If the non-proliferation regime is to be strengthened, the nuclear powers, not only Britain, need to develop some humility and self-criticism. It was not North Korea which introduced nuclear weapons into Korea; it was the Americans. It was not Iran or Iraq which introduced nuclear weapons into the Middle East; it was Israel, supported by American business and with the open connivance of the United States Government.
However, the worst infringement of the treaty by the nuclear powers has been their failure over the 23 years of its operation to negotiate an end to nuclear tests. On that subject I speak with the support of the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, who regrets that he cannot participate in the debate. He is a world authority on the subject and his recent article in Nature ought to be required reading for us all.
On 11th March, the noble Baroness said, quite rightly, that a comprehensive test ban treaty would be no guarantee against proliferation of nuclear weapons. Of course, that is right, although I am not aware of anyone who has ever taken that line. It is equally clear that such a ban would be a severe discouragement to would-be proliferators. In 1980, in the Defence White Paper, the Conservative Government said,
"Non-proliferation would also be served by a comprehensive ban on testing nuclear weapons".
That is the position of almost everybody. It shows that earlier Conservative governments took a much more responsible line on nuclear weapons than the present Conservative Government.
In 1990 the Americans and the British, to the open resentment of the remainder of the non-proliferation treaty members, refused to enter negotiations for a comprehensive test ban treaty. Since then the American attitude has changed. It has joined Russia and France in declaring a moratorium on tests. There is now Congressional legislation, which was opposed by President Reagan, but is apparently now supported now by President Clinton, laying down that tests shall be limited to 15 only in future, and that there shall be no tests after 1996. It also calls for negotiations for a comprehensive test ban treaty to be completed by 1996.
The noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, speaking for the Government on 16th November, 1992, described the Congressional legislation as "unfortunate and misguided". He was supported by vigorous canvassing of Congress by the British Embassy in Washington against the proposed ban or the limitation of tests.
That resistance by the United Kingdom to the ending of tests is not only a set-back to the non-proliferation regime, but it points us in the direction of a very awkward confrontation with our closest ally. It is entirely unnecessary. Again, I quote the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, who said on 16th November:

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"any future testing from now relates not to the safety of the Trident system itself but very much to the safety of future systems and the capabilities of the teams we have in place in this country" [Official Report, 16/11/92; col. 448.]
So no tests are needed for our strategic deterrent. That is very important.
However, what are the "future systems"? I am genuinely puzzled and perhaps the noble Baroness will enlighten us, as it is an important matter. After all, the "future systems" seem to be the sole reason that we confront the American Congress in resisting tests. What are they? What is meant by them? I believe that we should know.
There is a further question. If, for the benefit of the "future systems", the Government wish to test after 1996, where will they conduct the tests? I believe that that question is unanswerable. I suspect that the noble Baroness will reply that the Government do not intend to conduct tests after 1996. But if that is so, would it not have been wiser, instead of castigating the Congressional legislation, to have welcomed it and to have worked with the United States towards a comprehensive test ban treaty in 1996? That would be welcome on this side of the House and it should be the policy of the Government.
To sum up, there is a real prospect of preventing further nuclear proliferation. We have had welcome news from South Africa. There is a real prospect: but it needs a stronger contribution from the five Permanent Members of the Security Council and from the United Kingdom Government in particular. The Government are increasing the fire-power of our strategic deterrent. They propose an additional air-to-surface nuclear missile system. They pay lip service to a comprehensive test ban treaty, but in practice, as everyone can see, they hold up progress towards it.
Those policies are not assisting the cause of non-proliferation; they are holding it up. I urge the noble Baroness to use all her influence to get these policies changed. I beg to move for Papers.
5.43 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, first, I wish to thank the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for introducing the debate at this important time. He was quite right to point out the danger that other countries—and he mentioned them, so I need not go through them—will have the capacity to develop nuclear weapons. I agree with the view that, although with the ending of the Cold War the world is not facing a great danger of a confrontation, a holocaust or a battle between one major side and the other, we now face the much greater danger in reality of minor conflicts because there is a much less stable situation.
I think the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, was wise to raise the subject at this time because of the meeting that we hope will shortly take place between President Clinton and President Yeltsin. One of the issues on their agenda will, of course, be how to move forward towards a comprehensive test ban treaty. It is most important that the President should hear from a Foreign Office Minister that we support the policies that are being pursued at the moment by both those two countries which have declared a moratorium,
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rather than what I thought was the rather disturbing statement of the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. I am glad that the reply is being given by a Foreign Office Minister and not by the Minister with responsibility for defence.
President Clinton was known to have a different policy from his predecessor, and it was unfortunate that just a few days after the American election we should appear to have been challenging the decision of Congress on this vital issue.
We are looking at two different regimes and I wish to say something about both of them. The first is the nuclear proliferation treaty. When the treaty was negotiated in the late 1960s it was given an initial operating period of 25 years. In 1995 there will be a conference to decide on the future of that treaty. We certainly cannot assume that it will be guaranteed. We should like to see it extended and I hope that the Government would like to see it extended. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, it will very much depend on the policies of the nuclear weapon countries.
It is widely acknowledged that without the non-proliferation treaty the world would be a more dangerous place. The outcome of the 1995 conference will depend in no minor part on how the policies of the. United Kingdom and the other nuclear weapon states are perceived by the other parties, especially those, from the less industrialised world. Although the, functioning of the NPT is judged by almost all nations to have been of benefit, it is certainly not without controversy. I know that because I led the British delegation to the review conference of the NPT in 1975, when a great deal of concern was expressed, Happily, at that conference we were able to reach agreement at the end. I am afraid that in 1980 and 1990 the review conferences were so divided that no agreement was reached.
There is great anxiety and many non-nuclear weapon states believe that the treaty has discriminated against them and that the nuclear weapon states operate on a double standard: "Do as we say and not as we do". It will not be easy; at the 1995 conference an extension of the treaty will not be plain sailing. We must recognise that, in return for renouncing nuclear weapons under the NPT, the non-nuclear weapon states expected, first, arms control negotiations to reduce the worldwide stocks of nuclear arms. All right, that is happening at the moment and it is art encouraging situation. Secondly, they expected negotiations to end nuclear testing. I shall come to that in a few minutes. They expected security assurances for protection against attack by nuclear weapons and free access to nuclear power for peaceful purposes. The perceptions by non-nuclear weapon states of how those expectations have been fulfilled will influence the intentions and behaviour of many of those states at the 1995 conference. I think that we must address those issues now and certainly, as a depository state of the NPT, the United Kingdom has a major role to play.
The second regime is the partial test ban treaty. It has been the agreed policy on both sides of the House

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that that should be extended, when it can be, to a comprehensive test ban treaty. In 1963 the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, failed to get a comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons. Since then he and we have had to be satisfied with a partial test ban treaty. However, he made it absolutely clear in his negotiations on behalf of HMG that the wish of the Government in 1963 was to have a comprehensive test ban treaty. It was the aim of the Government then to achieve a comprehensive agreement and to the best of my knowledge that has always been the case—except now when we have reason to be concerned about where the Government stand. Certainly, when I was at the review conference in 1975 I reaffirmed the intention of the British Government to negotiate energetically to achieve a comprehensive test ban treaty.
Members of this House will remember that at Question Time on 11th March, my noble friend, Lord Healey drew the attention of the House—and the same Minister replied—to what had been said by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, as Foreign Secretary, when addressing a conference of the United Nations Association in 1980. I happened to be present, and a distinguished speech it was. The noble Lord said:
"A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty … will demonstrate our good faith towards those countries which, under the NPT, have formally surrendered the right to develop nuclear weapons … The countries which have signed the NPT expect the Nuclear Weapon States to honour their undertaking to seek an end to nuclear testing".
That was a very important statement.
I was also interested in the comment made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hailsham, when on the same day, 11th March, he said that,
"the situation with which we were then confronted has altered dramatically since the collapse of communism … we were then faced with a confrontation between two power groups … we are now faced with something rather like a number of loose cannons rolling about on the quarter deck and running into each other. Fragmentation is the danger … that dramatically alters the nature of the argument that we are now pursuing?".—[Official Report, 11/3/93; col. 1147.]
The purport of what he said was that from that point of view we are now in a more dangerous situation than we were then.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, pointed out that the other nuclear weapon powers in most cases seek to bring about an agreement. We know that a moratorium has been accepted by the United States, as it has by President Yeltsin. I feel sure that they will confirm that at their meeting in a few days' time. France has also entered into an agreement about a moratorium—a very welcome and encouraging sign. China is not currently conducting a moratorium. Her traditional position regarding a ban on nuclear testing has been that the United States and the USSR should reduce their strategic arsenals by 50 per cent. before China would consider becoming involved in talks. That is now in prospect. It appears unlikely that China would remain outside a comprehensive test ban treaty negotiation if all other nuclear weapon states participated. It is therefore absolutely vital that the British Government should say what their position is and whether they are prepared now to negotiate an agreement together with the other four nuclear
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powers. The Threshold Test Treaty Ban in 1974 and the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty in 1976 limited the yields of tests. Neither treaty was ratified until recently, and as the yield limit is so high they are widely considered to be of little value. Nevertheless, the 1977 tripartite talks resumed and some progress was made.
It is essential that we look at the American position and, I believe, support it. In October 1992 the US Congress passed the FY 1993 Energy and Water Appropriations Bill, which initiated a nine months' moratorium on American underground nuclear tests until July 1993, after which the US may conduct a further 15 underground nuclear tests before September 1996, with no more than five in any one year. The US legislation has gone further. It will mean an end to all United States and UK testing after September 1996. President Clinton is currently preparing a plan for the resumption of negotiations with Russia towards a comprehensive treaty with a view to achieving the treaty by 1996. If there is a movement towards, and a strong possibility of, a treaty by 1996, the review conference in 1995 is likely to extend the life of the non-proliferation treaty, and that is what I hope we will do.
Where do the British Government stand? Obviously, we hope to get a clear and encouraging statement from the Minister. Certainly, the statement made by her noble friend Viscount Cranborne, was very discouraging. I thought it was a bit rich to endanger our relationship with the United States so soon after it has a new President. Although the British Government continue to say that a comprehensive test ban treaty remains a long-term goal, they cited arguments in favour of continuing testing. One argument is reliability. All weapons are said to have a "shelf life" necessitating the testing of a representative sample to ensure reliability. The Army Minister, Mr. Hamilton, said on 24th February this year:
"As other nuclear systems are developed we have to be able to test them and we must be able to test improvements in safety, and so on. If that is not done, the viability of the deterrent deteriorates".—[Official Report, Commons, 24/2/93; cols. 893–4.]
Another argument is safety—the development of safety techniques and the safeguarding of technology. But that applies only to future systems, not to the Trident programme, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, when he introduced the debate.
It remains to be seen how the UK will react if asked to participate in resumed CTBT negotiations. Certainly it will be asked to participate. The position of the British Government must be clear, and it must be positive. I believe that a refusal to participate would be a break with the policy adopted by previous UK governments and could be construed as obstructive to the US policy of seeking a comprehensive test ban treaty by 1996. It would be extraordinary, given that the UK uses US facilities at which to conduct its tests. Not only would it be extraordinary, it would be tragic at this moment in our history when the prospects of getting a world-wide agreement are better than they have been; when Russia is taking a position quite different from that taken by the Soviet Union; when the United States is taking a position quite different

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from that under President Bush; when China is moving in the right direction; and when France has declared a moratorium. Now is the time when there could be progress. It would be a tragedy if the British Government were to drag their feet and prove to be the one member of the five permanent nuclear powers which seems to be against a comprehensive treaty. I therefore hope that the Minister will give us firm, clear and encouraging assurances that the British Government are in favour of the position now taken by the American President.
5.57 p.m.
Earl Attlee: My Lords, I feel very humble, following the two previous speakers, who spoke with such great experience. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew for introducing the debate. I see that we have 14 minutes for each speaker. Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I have no intention of speaking at such length.
I should like to understand why the original nuclear powers are prepared to allow the proliferation of their technology to anyone with the means to pay for it. The list of countries with a nuclear reactor research programme is so long that I would tax the patience of noble Lords were I to read it out. According to Greenpeace, there are at least 34 non-G7 countries which have a research nuclear reactor. Some interesting members of that club are: Algeria, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Syria. If I have unfairly named any country I apologise.
I believe I am right when I say that all those countries have vast fossil fuel reserves. What possible justification can they have for a civil nuclear programme? For instance, take Syria. In the early 1980s Syria's proven oil reserves were 1,890 million barrels of oil. Its gas reserves were 91,000 million cubic metres. Why is there investment in that very expensive nuclear technology, which must absorb many of its best scientists and engineers? Surely burning fossil fuels in local power stations or diesel generators would be much more economic than having a nuclear power programme. The answer is that Israel is a nuclear threat to Syria. Israel has a nuclear programme and it is suspected that it has a nuclear weapon, as the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said. The same argument applies to Iraq and Iran. What peaceful use can they have for nuclear power when they have such large fuel reserves? I accept that there may possibly be a case for countries which do not have oil reserves—Japan, for instance—to have a civil nuclear power programme.
Once foreign governments have a civil nuclear programme, they have access to all kinds of plant that is of no use outside the nuclear industry. What use has a uranium hexafluoride compressor outside the nuclear industry? If those countries were not allowed a nuclear civil programme, they would not have access to nuclear technology at all.
I turn my attention to this Government's testing of nuclear weapons. Initially it seems surprising that we continue to test nuclear weapons when others are ceasing to do so. It would be interesting to be told officially the technical reasons for that. However, I doubt whether the noble Baroness herself knows; the
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reason being that, like other noble Lords, she does not need to know. Presumably her right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Defence in another place has been convinced by the technical reasons and the case for continuing the tests against the opposition of so many.
I am not privy to any classified information in this area. I can only guess that the reasons for the tests must be to test new designs of warhead. One test may be to determine the yield from a device. It is not a very convincing argument. Compared with a one mega ton bomb, a 1.25 megaton bomb will make much the same sized bang and both will do considerable damage. A small difference in yield would not make much difference to the deterrence value of the weapon. However, closely allied to the yield test must be the issue of whether a device will produce a clean or a dirty explosion with lots of radioactive or toxic fallout. The latter would be a little like a poison pill and might not have the deterrent value of a clean weapon. Presumably, today third world nuclear devices would be dirty.
Another purpose may be to determine reliability—the certainty that the device will detonate at the desired moment. Surely that is determined by statistical analysis of the component parts and calculation of the reliability of the whole device.
Many people are worried about the safety of nuclear weapons. Could a nuclear explosion be initiated as a result of a serious road traffic accident? Would a conventional explosion near a nuclear warhead initiate it? If so, would the explosion develop its full yield and if not how much would it yield? Would it have to be a dirty explosion? Could the warhead be initiated if fired on by small arms when on a transporter in the UK? Such information can only be determined by experiment. I hope that the result will be a new generation of warheads that are even more resistant to premature explosion than their predecessors.
With regard to the already developed Trident warhead, there may be modifications which have to be tested. The suggestion has been made that there is no need to test because the threat is now comparatively low. That is obviously true. Apart from the safety issue, there is another problem. Once having stopped testing, it will be very provocative to start it again, especially in a period of rising tension. One cannot quietly test a nuclear device.
I do not like the idea of nuclear testing but I cannot pass judgment on it because I do not officially know the technical reasons for doing the tests. I am sure however that we should never have allowed the proliferation of a civil nuclear programme, let alone nuclear weapons.
6.5 p.m.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, the noble Earl said that there may be technical reasons to continue nuclear testing which have not yet been vouchsafed or revealed to the public. I am sure he will agree that if such technical reasons are valid for this country, equally they must be valid for other nuclear nations.

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If they can manage without tests, why do we alone seem so enthusiastic to continue testing and so reluctant to enter into a treaty to forbid it?
Earl Attlee: My Lords, perhaps the noble Lord will give way. There is the possibility that our weapons may be more reliable than their weapons.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: There are all kinds of possibilities, but such possibilities apply equally to other nations. If there are such good reasons to continue testing, why are we not told what they are? Is it so secret? Surely there can be no good reason for concealing the matter. I suspect that there is a feeling that somehow or other we have got into a test regime and once in that situation it is difficult to renounce it, especially as we are somewhat behind the Americans in developing Trident and its missiles. There is a certain, if not large, differentiation in the development area and perhaps we feel that need.
However, it seems to me that we have learned to live with the bomb. There are certain dangers in that. In the period immediately after the one and only time the bomb was used in warfare and in anger, the world as a whole was shocked by what it had done. For the first time in a single action we —I say "we" because in a sense it was the collective responsibility of mankind—had destroyed about 55,000 people, just like that. That was a new experience for the world. We were alarmed at the revelation of the new powers that we had taken unto ourselves. We were frightened that we might misuse those powers. Indeed, we had a shrewd suspicion that we had already misused them and that the explosions at Nagasaki and Hiroshima were a grave error of judgment. They launched the world into a position where the bomb had been used.
However, time marched on and there appeared to be no accidents and no further use of those bombs. I said "no accidents", but there were some accidents as the years passed and some people lost their lives as a result. But there was a bump of alarm and this country—I admit, under a Labour government—decided to develop the hydrogen bomb, which was a very substantial development of the original bomb. We saw the kind of damage that the bombs had done at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and we wondered what kind of situation could arise when bombs which were many times more powerful began to spread throughout the world. That is the background against which we are talking since we got used to the situation. It is not something that we can approach or leave alone as we wish.
The world is in very great danger. The fact that we have got used to it does not make the situation any better. Perhaps to some extent it makes it worse. We have begun to take it for granted. We have lost the sense of urgency that we once had and the feeling that we had to get rid of the bomb or it would get rid of us. That feeling is no longer with us. We feel that we should like to get rid of the bomb, but if we do not manage to do so perhaps we can continue to live with it.
I suspect that a number of speakers have in the backs of their minds the fear that we are approaching
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the time when we can no longer live with the bomb. As the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said in opening the debate, proliferation means ultimately that the bomb finds its way into less responsible hands. That is not because smaller nations are more wicked; it is that the process of their development and administration is less than it is in the larger nations. There arises therefore the possibility suggested by the noble Lord that the hands may not be even those of government. It is conceivable that they are the hands of anti-government groups and of terrorists.
That is not an impossibility because another alarming factor is that the physical size of the bomb is becoming smaller in proportion to the damage it can cause. Much smaller weapons are now capable of wreaking many times the havoc of the Hiroshima bomb. The position therefore is extremely dangerous. It is against that background that we are speaking tonight.
The motives of government are not usually difficult to discern. But in the case of nuclear weapons the Government appear to be speaking with a forked tongue. On 15th March at col. 1220 of Hansard, the noble Baroness said,
"the benefits of restraints on testing in countering proliferation must be examined carefully".
I am not sure what that means, especially as a little later she said,
"a determined proliferator could still produce and deploy crude nuclear weapons without first establishing their safety or reliability through testing".
What do those two statements together mean? If testing is not essential to a pre-nuclear state, and it is not essential—with the possible exception of China—to existing nuclear states, why is it essential to us? Why is it even desirable to us? Perhaps I am dim, but I have not heard the Government give a convincing answer to that question. Why are we alone the main power to say, "Irrespective of what the rest of you do, we must be more careful than you; we must be more cautious than you; we must approach it so slowly that people will think that we are walking backwards rather than advancing towards a non-nuclear world. We are retreating into the spurious safety that we believe our own nuclear world will give"? There is no such safety to be found in the nuclear world.
My first question therefore is why is it necessary for us? I hope that when the noble Baroness answers the debate she will try and clarify that point. The Minister said that the Government are not opposing the comprehensive test ban treaty. But nor are they supporting it. Where precisely do they stand in the matter? They certainly have no enthusiasm for it, we can be sure of that. Is the Government's real position that if possible they want all testing to stop except ours? That is the only conceivable conclusion to which we can come in the face of the rather confusing answers we have been given on the point. Such a proposition may seem ludicrous but I suspect that that is what the Government really want, if it is possible.
As the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, and my noble friend Lord Ennals, said, or at least suggested, an ounce of example is worth a ton of precept. Since the noble Baroness spoke, the Prime Minister emphasised in another place the need to develop an effective

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system of verification. What do the Government say to the widely held view that it is time to give the IAEA the necessary powers and teeth to carry out that verification? What is the Government's position on that? Do they agree with the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, who made the point at an earlier time, and with the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew? Why should not the IAEA he asked to do the job? It is eager to do it if given the power and authority to carry it out.
If we could obtain answers to those two simple questions this evening we should be able to clarify the position. Once clarified we can march with greater hope towards the ultimate aim which we must surely all share; that is, to finish up with a world free from the immediate threat of nuclear destruction.
6.16 p.m.
Lord Mackie of Benshie: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for introducing the debate. I am happy to say that I agree with everything that he said, which is most unusual. There is no question but that we in this country should be much more virtuous. It is absolute nonsense to proliferate the number of warheads when we have a new and more efficient system. To ballot in the face of the world for more is a provocation to all the decent countries which are sticking to the treaties they have agreed and which do not wish to see the spread of nuclear weapons.
However, as has been said so far by every speaker, we are living in an extremely dangerous world. There is little doubt that it is even more dangerous now than when there were two opposing systems. If those stable blocs had been mad enough to start a war, we would have found ourselves in a holocaust but in fact, because of their stability, they backed off whenever there was a danger of nuclear war. However, now we are in an extremely unstable position. We have had proliferation through the break-up of the Soviet Union. The Ukraine now claims control of the nuclear weapons in its territory. They say that the Russians are in full control in Kazakhstan and Belorussia. That may be so. But the situation inside Russia is terrifying.
Most people probably saw the article in The Times of 10th March, corroborating many other stories, headed:
"A Russian army out of orders".
The incidents mentioned are disturbing. In the Russian forces, both in the forces still stationed in Eastern Europe and those who have joined the Ukraine Army, there is a lack of pay and an inability to feed their families. They are selling weapons in order to keep the whole system going. There is corruption on a grand scale. The Black Sea fleet is full of nuclear capability, and is next door to one of the most tricky areas with which we are dealing. It is next door to Iraq, a country which we cannot trust and which is still trying, illegally, to develop nuclear capacity, totally against its commitments under the treaty.
Other countries around the globe are like that and, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, said, they are unstable and in many cases are populated by people who believe, with good cause, that the next world may be a better place than this one. That view is not
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entirely held in this country, where the standard of living is much higher, but those countries have a terrorist position. The late Lord Cheshire, who had good reason to understand this, was very frightened at the prospect of a terrorist taking a simple atomic bomb—if there is such a thing—in an aircraft and dropping it on some great city of the West. That is perfectly feasible in today's climate.
One of the best points my noble friend made in his speech is that much greater power should be given to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Without that I do not see how we can control the dangerous situation in which we find ourselves. My noble friend said that if other methods fail we have to consider the use of force. That must be right. We have the case of North Korea at the present time. The maximum pressure should be put on North Korea and it should understand that if it does not conform action will be taken.
All our present day actions over Bosnia and the former Yugoslavia indicate that we do not have the political will to do so. It is important that the Minister should address the point. Without a new role for NATO, which is not yet defined, without a definite and far greater cohesion within Europe and the Western European Union and without co-ordination of the nuclear sections of the British and French forces we are unlikely to have the political will to deal with the great dangers facing us around the globe. It appears to me that that is the main problem facing us. We have the equipment. I agree that the first thing we must do is to show that we mean what we say and to show that Britain and her allies are virtuous. We must also make up our minds that we will tackle the dangers to peace which confront us in a great many parts of the world.
6.23 p.m.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, I shall talk principally about two cases—the case of North Korea and the case of Ukraine. I am glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, is with us today. At Question Time last week, perhaps trying to get rather too much into a supplementary, I began to set out some of the reasons why I thought North Korea had taken the distressing action which it has taken. She inferred from that that I was sympathetic to the North Korean position. Well, not really. I was only reporting a part of the world in the way that others see it, which is always worth doing in this House.
I say at once that if either she or I had been the dictator of North Korea, I am quite sure that we would not have left the treaty non-proliferation system. But we are not, and no one like either of us possibly could be. Communist dictatorships breed a special kind of person with a limited view of the world—they are sensitive and, as their number decreases and they become smaller and weaker relatively, they become more sensitive and more paranoid. It is important that one should at least know, without sympathising, how they see the world.
What has happened in international law is that we are about to see one new country added to the list of non-signatory weapons states of the non-proliferation

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treaty. Going out of the non-proliferation treaty is expressly permitted by the treaty if in the judgment of the country concerned its supreme national interest is threatened. Moreover, there is nothing in international law or in United Nations resolutions which prevents North Korea going for nuclear weapons when it is no longer a signatory of the treaty.
We have to understand why this has happened. For many years an exercise called Team Spirit took place. This was a large inter-service joint exercise by American and South Korean forces on the territory of and the seas off South Korea. It was extremely large, and the North Korean government over the years took it amiss. They felt threatened by the size of it. That might have been among the reasons why in 1991 President Bush announced not only that there would be no Team Spirit exercise in 1992, but also that he was withdrawing all American tactical nuclear weapons world-wide. North Korea had signed the NPT in 1985, but it was only in 1991—and I suggest because of President Bush's wise decision—that it accepted international agency inspection. At the same time North Korea began to negotiate with South Korea about a whole range of things, including—this is the important point—non-nuclear status for the whole Korean peninsula. It was a moment of high hope in that part of the world.
To achieve this non-nuclear status it would have been necessary for all three countries concerned to agree to inspection: a potentially nuclear North Korea, a non-nuclear South Korea, and the greatest nuclear power in the world, the United States, which had weapons stationed in South Korea. Unfortunately, the United States would not agree to the inspection of its bases in South Korea, although it had stated that it had withdrawn all nuclear weapons. North Korea had to rely on the word of South Korea that there were no nuclear weapons left there.
Then towards the end of last year, when his electoral campaign was beginning to flag, Mr. Bush thought better of all this, and felt perhaps that a bit of sabre rattling might revive his campaign. He reinstated Team Spirit for the spring of 1993. It was, I believe, an extraordinary mistake of the incoming Clinton Administration not to cancel the Team Spirit exercise earlier this year. But it did not, and thus we have seen what has been the most massive military exercise in the world for I do not know how long—120,000 men using both the new American nuclear bomber types, Stealth and B1-B, which are of course nuclear capable platforms and are designated as such under the SALT and START agreements, as well as aircraft carriers, submarines and live ammunition. Wisely enough our Government, who had taken part in Team Spirit in earlier years, stayed out of it this year. It is noticeable that Mr. Clinton had doubts about it while it was even going on; he said that they wished they could terminate it. One might have thought that perhaps they could.
The United States is apparently now reviving its last year's plan to take out North Korea's nuclear capacity by bombing. It dropped this plan last autumn when China and South Korea objected to it. It would
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have to be a unilateral action if it carried the plan out, because the Security Council is quite unlikely to authorise any such thing. China, moreover, has said that it will veto it. China does not want war on its doorstep; nor does Japan; nor does South Korea, as it informed the US Administration last autumn. President Clinton does not need a war: he is quite popular and sensible enough, and may well appreciate just how gravely international law was undermined by the bombing last January of what the Bush Administration claimed was an Iraqi nuclear-related building. Nevertheless, well-connected columnists in American papers are still writing about the need to take out North Korea's suspected nuclear facilities. Of course, no country has any right whatever in international law to bomb the nuclear facilities of any other. Israel had no right to bomb Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981, and much good did it do them.
I am continuing to narrate how North Korea sees the world. North Korea believes that the evidence for the development of nuclear weapons on its territory has been fabricated by the United States. The story is that the United States has produced satellite images showing two buildings near the known nuclear plant in North Korea. It maintains that the effluent from those buildings shows that North Korea has been separating plutonium for a longer period than North Korea says it has.
Mr. Blix is the head of IAEA. His proposal, made a year or two ago, was that the agency should have its own satellite intelligence operation. But objections to that proposal forced him back on the present strange procedure, of which I would like to remind the House. Member states of the IAEA may, if they wish, submit evidence to one of his underlings, but not to him. That is perhaps because he does not have US security clearance, since he is Swedish. Evidence of the kind in question can never come formally before the agency and to its board, as such.
If that is even roughly the shape of things, it would mean that the military installations of one signatory to the NPT —in this case North Korea—would have to be opened up on the say-so of the intelligence activity of a more powerful adversary, in this case the United States, which is also a member of the agency. If that were so in this case, all other signatories' military installations, not only nuclear ones, would have to be opened up on the say-so of one other member country. I say "not only nuclear ones", because the North Koreans maintain that the two buildings in question, although military, are not nuclear.
The consequence of such a situation requires a good deal of reflection. What does the rest of the world say? Let us listen to what it says about the situation in East Asia in general now. The chief of the Japanese general staff says that foreign pressure on North Korea would be unwise. Russia is against timetables for inspection requirements from the international agency: the agency has recently moved from requesting North Korea to do the right thing to requiring it to do so.
All through East Asia the situation is sharply deteriorating. China is accelerating its arms procurement. With exercises like Team Spirit being conducted

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in the neighbourhood, can one be surprised? Indonesia is buying one-third of the East German navy which includes 30 frigates, landing ships and minesweepers; and is getting three new submarines from Germany. President Kohl has stopped Taiwan buying 20 German frigates and submarines, but Taiwan is nevertheless buying from the United States and France. We must clearly hope most urgently that the behind-the-scenes contacts in Peking between the United States and North Korea lead soon to a fruitful outcome.
A year ago in a debate on proliferation, I said that if we wanted to avoid it we had to address individual countries' motives for wishing to develop and hold nuclear weapons. That is still so today. I now turn to Ukraine. Mr. Yeltsin's decision to rule by personal decree, in defiance of Russia's constitutional court, has provoked Ukraine to state that it will not hand over the ex-Soviet strategic nuclear weapons on its soil to Russia and—here is the point—will not sign the non-proliferation treaty, as Yeltsin's Western supporters could have anticipated. But that is for next week's debate.
Mr. Yeltsin has been suggesting that the international community should recognise his right to interfere throughout the ex-Soviet Union. But Ukraine is frightened of Russia. If we want to stop proliferation, that is the issue which we must address. It is the fears of weaker countries which are yet strong enough to become nuclear. It is not enough to keep repeating in this case that Mr. Yeltsin is a very good man for free markets.
There is also the whole shape of the 1968 non-proliferation treaty. That was a deal struck between the nuclear-capable powers and, broadly speaking, nuclear weapons-incapable powers. The deal was that no more countries should get nuclear weapons. That is well remembered, and that is what we always debate.
There were two other parts to the deal. One was that the nuclear weapons countries, as they then were, should negotiate seriously and in good faith and make progress towards disarmament. That was begun only about four years ago, although it has been the duty of those countries for the past 25 years. The third part of the deal was that certain security guarantees were offered by the nuclear countries to non-nuclear weapon signatories. They were an inducement to them to sign the treaty. I wonder where those guarantees are now, in the case of the Korean peninsula.
As regards testing I have little to add to what the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, and my noble friends have said. I have always been in favour of Britain independently holding nuclear weapons as long as any other country did. I have also long thought it quite mistaken for our Government to suppose that, while we depend on the United States for the weapons and for testing them, that amounted to our holding the weapons independently. The Government are dependent.
Where do the Government want to carry out these famous tests in future? The only place I can think of is Novaya Zemlya, which the Russians would surely let us do if we paid them. The fact is that the
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Government have been caught by the end of the Cold War at an awkward moment in the replacement cycle of their own nuclear force. I think we can all understand that. This fact, which is awkward financially, politically and even industrially, should give rise to a big rethink, and that should be done in common with France. I do not know whether that feeling has anything to do with the fact that no single Conservative Back-Bencher is speaking in support of Government policy this evening. I hope that it does, because I do not feel that any government can maintain the present position much longer—that is to say, being the only country to test, with nowhere to do it, and being the only country to have rising levels of nuclear armament.
6.38 p.m.
Lord Plant of Highfield: My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for initiating the debate. I certainly agree with a good deal of what he had to say. I wish to start by declaring an interest which is perhaps an odd thing to do in a debate on nuclear non-proliferation. But it is an interest which explains why I am speaking this evening. My department at Southampton University has been the centre of a programme for promoting nuclear non-proliferation., an international programme funded to the tune of many hundreds of thousands of dollars by British, American, German and Japanese charities and foundations. It is directed by my colleagues Professor Simpson and Dr. Howlett. It conducts academic work on technical and political aspects of non-proliferation and publishes widely respected news briefs and studies. I know that many Members of your Lordships' House subscribe to those publications.
The programme in Southampton also brings together diplomats and officials from nonproliferation treaty (NPT) states, as well as officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency, for conferences and for consultation to create a climate of serious work on problems of non-proliferation in between the review conferences of the nonproliferation treaty. Officials from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office also attend those consultations. The programme had NGO status at the last non-proliferation treaty review conference.
The key problem facing the regime of nonproliferation is that its cornerstone, the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, is due to be extended at a conference of its 157 parties to be convened for that purpose in the spring of 1995. The treaty acts as the cornerstone since it is the legal instrument through which states renounce their freedom to acquire nuclear weapons and accept safeguard inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency to assure others that they are conforming to that commitment. Without those two elements, the existing non-proliferation regime would probably fragment and collapse.
In 1995 the treaty does not terminate, nor has it to be renewed: the sole issue is how long it will continue. The parties to the treaty face three choices: to extend the treaty for a single period of time after which it will terminate; to extend it for a series of fixed periods and

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agree a mechanism for moving from one period to the next; or to extend it indefinitely which, I understand, is Her Majesty's Government's expressed wish.
Two processes exist for taking the decision: by a vote of a majority of the parties (that is, by 79 states voting for one of the options) or by a consensus decision of all the parties present at the conference. The majority of the parties to the treaty are developing states. The first process suggests an absolute need to make sure that a majority of the parties are present at the conference who agree on one of the options. Its drawback is obvious—that a significant number of parties may not agree with the option chosen, and vote against it. Such public disagreement among the parties would result in a weakening of the authority and credibility of both the treaty and the regime.
The second process—the consensus approach—is the more desirable as it demonstrates that all parties present at the conference support the extension decision. Yet the evidence of previous NPT conferences suggests that this is unlikely to be feasible unless the nuclear weapons states, including the United Kingdom, are seen to be negotiating seriously to achieve a comprehensive nuclear testing ban. This is not necessarily because such an agreement will produce a significant brake on proliferation, but because developing states have always insisted that the NPT involved a bargain under which they would forfeit their rights to acquire nuclear weapons in return for the nuclear weapon states engaging in a process of nuclear disarmament. Indeed, that is not just the view of the developing states. The Federal Republic of Germany, for example, took the same view, as Willy Brandt made clear in an interview in Die Welt on 18th February 1967 when the treaty was under consideration. The Italian Government took the same view in the same period. For the past 20 years, the test of whether the nuclear weapons states were fulfilling their disarmament pledges has always been regarded by the developing states, on whose votes the renewal of the treaty rests, as their willingness to engage in negotiations for a comprehensive test ban treaty.
If the British Government wish for a consensus decision on the extension of the NPT for a long period of time, and even possibly indefinitely as is their current policy, their willingness to negotiate a comprehensive test ban treaty (CTBT) is the price they may have to be prepared to pay for that. The choice may indeed become very stark: either negotiate on a CTBT at the expense of reducing future options for Britain's own nuclear weapon capabilities (if that is how it is seen) or see the nuclear non-proliferation system become significantly weakened in the conference in 1995. The latter alternative cannot be desirable.
The changing international environment has left us with four groups of states which raise concerns over their nuclear weapons status. The first are states which, as parties to the NPT, have failed to fulfil their undertakings not to seek to develop nuclear weapons; the second are states which have significant nuclear facilities that they have not placed under IAEA
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safeguards; the third set comprises some of the states emerging from the break-up of the USSR which still have nuclear weapons on their territory; and the fourth are states with civil nuclear facilities which feel insecure as a consequence of the loss or degradation of nuclear guarantees from the former nuclear bloc leaders.
In the first category, it is essential that the British Government continue to take a firm line over Iraq: it will be many years before it can be trusted again with nuclear technology. Similarly, it may be necessary, as the noble Lord, Lord Mackie, argued, to refuse to accept the withdrawal of North Korea from the NPT and to insist that the uncertainties uncovered by IAEA inspectors are resolved, as well as pressing for greater transparency for all nuclear activities in all NPT parties.
In the second category, the British Government, both unilaterally and through the EC, should encourage a nuclear confidence-building process in the Middle East. They should also seek to encourage such a process between India and Pakistan by offering development assistance, which might include civil nuclear material or otherwise, in return for more binding non-proliferation commitments.
In the third category, a similar strategy of developmental carrots and sticks should be pursued over Belarus, Kazakhstan and the Ukraine, by making it clear that not acceding to the NPT will lead to a withholding of the development aid that might flow to them were they to accede to the treaty.
Finally, it is necessary to tackle urgently the perceptions of insecurity that may follow from the degradation of the security guarantees provided by the nuclear alliance leaders. The British Government, as a nuclear weapons state, are well equipped to take an initiative in this field by making proposals to strengthen both the positive security guarantees that the US and the Soviet Union offered through UN Security Council Resolution 255 of 1968 and the negative assurance unilaterally offered by the Government to non-nuclear weapons states in 1978 that they would not use nuclear weapons against them except in certain specified instances. Such initiatives would also have the important effect of strengthening the prospects for a smooth extension of the NPT in 1995, as obtaining such assurances has been high on the agenda of influential developing states such as Egypt and Nigeria. In short, they could kill two birds with one stone: extend the treaty and make the world a safer place.
6.47 p.m.
The Earl of Clanwilliam: My Lords, I am most grateful to your Lordships for allowing me to make what I promise will be a very short intervention. It takes the form of a somewhat hypothetical question to my noble friend on the Front Bench. I must apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for being unable to be present to hear his speech.
Several noble Lords have spoken about the danger of atomic powers being in the hands of terrorists. My anxiety over that relates particularly to South Africa. I believe that Mr. Mandela has been quoted as being

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the state president in waiting and I, for one (like, I am sure, every Member of your Lordships' House) would have great faith in his activities if he were to control a nuclear power, which is what South Africa is. However, toppling state presidents is the name of the game at the moment, and Mr. Mandela may not get there. What worries me is that if he were to be toppled, it would be the first time that an acknowledged terrorist force has had access to fully prepared nuclear capabilities. I wonder whether my noble friend Lady Chalker could comment on that point.
6.49 p.m.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: My Lords, I shall speak only briefly and should like to resist the indulgence of repeating what other noble Lords have said this afternoon. Like others, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Mayhew for initiating the debate. I think that we have all benefited from the exchanges that have taken place.
I was interested in what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Plant, about the studies in progress at Southampton University. They may be known to others but were not previously known to me. I hope that some steps will be taken to bring them to the notice of a wider audience because on the basis of what he said tonight there are important matters to learn.
I wish to focus briefly on the central issue. In so doing, I shall inevitably endorse a great deal of what has been said. It is a depressing irony that, having lived for a generation under a bipolar system sustained by a balance of nuclear terror, when the system came to an end we found ourselves in a world seriously destabled and therefore representing a greater threat. In that respect I agree with the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Mackie, and the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. It would be pleasing to believe that once the threat of a nuclear war between East and West had departed we should return to a more peaceful world where we could see a de-escalation of our nuclear forces and a greater hope of living in peace. That has not been the case. Today we are seeing a return to the diplomacy of a pre-1914 period. We are learning from the long history of the rise and fall of the great powers and their unforeseen consequences.
One of those consequences is reflected in the actions of North Korea. I do not know but I am prepared to believe that the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, was correct in saying that the United States exercise, "Team Spirit", played some part in the decision which was taken. However, I doubt whether that is the whole story. Either way, it is likely that had it not been for the ending of the role of North Korea as a client state of the Soviet Union we might not have seen ourselves faced with the events of recent times.
It follows from the disordered world in which we all live that we must be careful to retain a sufficient capacity for our proper defence. I say that because I should not wish anyone to pretend that because we are concerned with the dangers of proliferation, we are less concerned with the proper defence of Britain, which must continue to contain a nuclear element. Of course, there have been changes; and of course we
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must look at our conventional capacity which was employed in the Falklands and in the Gulf and now in a different role in Yugoslavia. However, I do not believe that simply because the Cold War has come to an end we can drop our nuclear shield and believe that there are no comparable problems in the uncertain world ahead.
A dozen years ago I thought that there was no need to replace Polaris with Trident. That was too expensive a system and would divert many of our resources. But that time has passed and I should be satisfied if, as my noble friend Lord Mayhew said, the number of warheads on the new Trident boats were restricted to 48. That seems to be compatible with a proper and necessary nuclear defence and with what is required in the world today.
Nothing in the need to maintain a nuclear defence justifies abandoning a comprehensive test-ban treaty to which successive governments were committed for many years; or pursuing less energetically the objects of the non-proliferation treaty. If the shock of the events in North Korea does anything it emphasises the importance attached to non-proliferation. The remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Plant, about the way in which the several countries should be approached with a view to their support for non-proliferation were wise words. Whether in the Middle East or in the Far East, encouraging countries to sign and remain within the non-proliferation treaty must be a major objective of the policy of the United Kingdom Government.
I do not believe that there is any direct causal relationship—certainly none can be demonstrated—between a comprehensive test-ban treaty and proliferation. But equally it is the case—and that has been the view of successive governments—that it was at least more likely that we should be able to prevent proliferation if the existing nuclear powers were riot seeking to improve their weapons through testing. Even if that is no more than a balance of probability and there is no direct causal relationship, surely it is a cause to which we should be committed.
There have been several references today to the remarks made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, in this House on 11th March. The words that she chose to use were interesting. She said:
"We would contest his conclusion [the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman] that a comprehensive test ban would itself be an effective counter-proliferation measure".—[Official Report. 11/3/93; col. 1145.]
The important words are "would itself". I do not believe that any of us would argue that by itself it would be an effective counter-proliferation measure. All we are saying is that it could be a contributory factor. The noble Baroness went on to say:
"I cannot agree with those who say … that a comprehensive test ban among existing nuclear powers would be sufficient to prevent others from pursuing the acquisition of a nuclear capability".—[Official Report, 11/3/93; col. 1146]
I agree that that would not be sufficient but if it is a factor which influences other countries towards our non-proliferation objective, it is a course worth pursuing.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and other noble Lords referred to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, made on 24th October, 1980. It was in a

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sense an attempt to say that a comprehensive test-ban treaty would represent good faith, which was a fair summary of the position. No reference has been made today to a later statement made in another place by the then Minister of State, David Mellor in a Written Answer. Those of us who are aware of the ways of government will know that a Written Answer from a Minister of State is an indication of an important policy decision which the Government believe needs putting on the record without too much attention being drawn to it. That was the nature of the statement made at that time.
If it were not the case—and I see that the noble Baroness looks sceptical—why was that statement made in that way at that time by that Minister? Did it not represent a major change of policy? It might be said that between the remarks made in 1980 by the noble Lord, Lord Carrington, and the remarks made in 1988 by David Mellor there were other significant shifts in government policy. The noble Baroness nods her head. I should be grateful if she could refer precisely to when they were made. I know of no remarks made on the record by Ministers in either House of Parliament which indicate that before the statement made by the Minister of State on 27th June 1988 there had been a significant shift of policy—
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I do not know what the statement contains, and the noble Lord has not read it out. Will he do the House the courtesy of reading out the statement so that we can see the import of his comments?
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: My Lords, it is a fairly long Written Answer; but, as the noble Lord has requested it I shall read it. It states:
"For the foreseeable future the United Kingdom's security will depend on deterrence based, in part, on the possession of nuclear weapons. That will mean a continuing requirement to conduct underground nuclear tests to ensure that our nuclear weapons remain effective and up to date … A comprehensive test ban remains a long-term goal. Progress will be made only by a step-by-step approach".—[Official Report, Commons, 27/6/88; col. 66.]
He then refers to verification.
Taken as a whole, it was a commitment to a comprehensive test ban but it was clearly pushed further away. I seek from the noble Baroness an indication as to why that statement was made and why there was a change of policy at that time. Was it related to the break up of the Soviet Union? It seems to me that it predates that event. Was it something in our nuclear programme?
Indeed, there are alternatives. It could be that over a long period of years successive Ministers in different governments were playing an elaborate game of bluff and that we never intended to sign a comprehensive test ban treaty. We kept on talking about it up to the moment when it became a possibility, and at that moment we decided that we did not want it after all. Is that the other possibility? There are three possibilities: an elaborate game of bluff; an unexpected need to test; a major change of policy. Which of those alternatives was it?
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for reading that out. Can the noble Lord say who asked that Question? Knowledge of another place and knowledge of who asked the Question might indicate why the statement was made.
Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank: My Lords, I confess that I do not know who asked the Question. I have spoken rather more fully than I intended. Having set out the question which I wished to put to the noble Baroness, I do not wish to pursue these issues further this evening.
As I say, it is a balance of argument which leads us to believe that, irrespective of the merits of a comprehensive test ban treaty, it seems more than likely that our pursuit of a comprehensive test ban treaty and preparedness to sign one would at least push those countries which at present do not have nuclear weapons towards signing a non-proliferation treaty.
The dangers are very real. I have not argued for a great leap in the dark. I have sought only to persuade the Minister, in keeping with the debate which my noble friend has initiated, to look back again at previous policy. If it has not changed, will she explain to the House why that statement was made five years ago and why she spoke in the terms that she did in this House less than a week ago?
Lord Howell: My Lords, we could not be debating these issues at a time of greater concern for the future of our world and at a time of greater political complexity. Therefore, we must all be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for providing us with this opportunity today.
As the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, said, it is a day with some remarkably good news from South Africa. I do not believe that the noble Earl, Lord Clanwilliam, could have yet digested that news. South Africa has dismantled its atomic bombs in accordance with the non-proliferation treaty. That is excellent news which I hope the noble Earl will welcome in spite of what he said about state president Mandela lying in wait. That was a regrettable part of his intervention.
The Earl of Clanwilliam: My Lords, I did not say that he was lying in wait. I said that he is a state president in waiting, as has been said in The Times.
Lord Howell: My Lords, I accept that but the inference is that as a state president in waiting of a country which possesses nuclear weapons, he could hardly be trusted. I do not take that view, but I am grateful that the South African Government have moved as they have done today.
I endorse the position which the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, has adopted. I am an unrepentant multi-lateral disarmer and I remember many battles with former colleagues. However, the point to make is that I was a disarmer. I believe that that was the position of my colleagues on the Labour Benches. We were multi-lateral disarmers. We did not want to give up our nuclear weapons unilaterally but we believed that we should continue to move towards disarmament. That is the stance we take now.

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I rather liked the phrase used by my noble friend Lord Jenkins of Putney who spelt out the dangers of the Government's present position when he said that we have learned to live with the bomb. That is the danger which faces us at this time.
I am glad that the position of the Labour Party was itself re-stated last week in a statement from the Parliamentary Committee which expressed the view, following the break-up of the Soviet Union and the signing of the START 1 and 2 agreements, that the time is now right to take further steps to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons by means of a comprehensive test ban.
We must be critical, as so many noble Lords have been this evening, of the British Government's refusal to join France, Russia and the United States which have announced a moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons. I find it odd that our Government are in the sole company of China as regards that decision.
The Labour Party does not believe that the Trident programme requires us to carry out any further tests, and I shall return to that matter. We accept that any further work can he conducted under laboratory conditions, a view which commands wide support among the scientific community. The non-proliferation treaty should be made permanent or strengthened long before it is due to expire in 1995.
Finally, the Labour Party has stated that we believe that the Government must be much more vigorous in assistance to such countries as the Ukraine in ensuring that they honour their commitments to rid themselves of nuclear weapons.
We are well aware of the present crisis in Russia. We hope and pray that the people there will be able to solve their conflicts sensibly and will return to good order. However, I do not believe that it would be right —indeed, it would be a great mistake—for the West to make any assumptions this time to the effect that any Russian Government would go back on their signature to the START agreement. That would be a profound mistake and I do not believe that it would be correct.
Therefore, we believe that the Government are making a great error of judgment in not endorsing the moratorium on testing of nuclear weapons, especially in departing from the position of our principle ally; namely, the United States. So many people have pressed the noble Baroness as regards that matter that I shall not take it any further. However, I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to comment in detail on that matter and I endorse the welcome given to the fact that she is replying to the debate.
We are aware of the position that President Clinton has taken. I believe that he is giving decisive leadership, and so is the US Congress. No one can doubt that underground testing in Nevada will soon come to an end. In October last year, Congress passed the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill which initiated a nine-month moratorium upon American underground tests. After July of this year, 15 further tests may be conducted before September 1996 (of which I believe three may be British). But after that time, all US and UK tests will be banned unless a
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foreign state carries out a test first. That point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew. I fully endorse it.
It is incomprehensible to me to believe that we can persist with a policy of wanting to carry out underground tests in Nevada when the Congress of that country says that all such tests are to come to an end. If it is not absolutely necessary, I think that it is also important for us to end the testing regime, especially from the point of view that we must give no encouragement whatever to any foreign country to start testing or to continue with present testing. That seems to me to be the essence of the American position. It will be a national shame for us if we, the British, do not support it.
In practice, I believe that we have no choice, the US Government will cease to test in Nevada and so we will not be able to do so. We look forward to hearing the answer to that dilemma in Government policy.
The noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne, has been quoted many times, but when he said in Hansard on 16th November last (col. 467) that the position of the United States is, "unfortunate and misguided", I think that that can only apply to his own remarks. Given the present circumstances, it seems to me that no Minister has ever made a more unfortunate or misguided statement. It is not a tenable position in which to find ourselves.
It is no academic question. I should like to spend a few moments on the question of underground testing. While it is certainly preferable to air or surface testing, it is not free from serious danger. Underground tests generate large quantities of radioactive material. Massive quantities of radio active waste are left unmonitored with no safeguards, except the assumption that the ability of the rock will contain the effect of such testing for a thousand years. In fact, a nuclear explosion underground fractures the rock, even where the geological situation is stable, such as in Nevada. However, there already seems to be evidence of the venting of radioactive gases and there is certainly a concern about pollution of the water table. No wonder President Clinton and Congress want to bring the situation to an end.
I am pleased to note that our Prime Minister seems to be edging very slowly in that direction. We should encourage him to do so. I notice the reply that he gave in another place on Monday of this week in a Written Answer to a Question from Mr. Paul Flynn. It reads:
"We support the ultimate goal of a comprehensive test ban. The factors which will influence the rate at which progress towards a ban can be made will include the need to develop an effective system of verification. We will also need to be confident that we have the necessary technologies and expertise to maintain the safety of our nuclear weapons at the highest level without testing".—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/93; col. 467.]
It seems to me that those are reasonable assumptions. I believe that those assumptions have been met, as has already been said in the debate. There are many authorities one could quote. For example, Mr Ray Kidder, who is a senior scientist at the Laurance Livermore, said in 1987:
"Warheads that have been thoroughly tested prior to deployment can be expected to remain reliable".

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Moreover, Mr. J. Carson Mark, head of the theoretical division at Los Alamos National Laboratory, said:
"The reliability, effectiveness, safety and security of our nuclear arsenal can be maintained without nuclear tests".
I entirely agree with what noble Lords have said, especially the noble Lord, Lord Mackie. The noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman himself, whom we all respect in this House as an authority on the matter, has thoroughly endorsed those statements. There is no need to continue testing in order to maintain the adequacy of our own nuclear weapons. That is a matter of major importance.
It seems to me that we cannot prevent the dangers of proliferation unless we start here at home. Why on earth do we need more and more nuclear warheads? When I used passionately to argue the case for multilateral disarmament, I remember always saying that the policy was successful because no one else had ever dropped a bomb since Hiroshima. All we needed was the ability to make potential enemies understand that we could deliver one bomb effectively if we wanted to do so. But how can we move from that argument to the belief that we must have hundreds and hundreds of nuclear warheads? That is the situation. Why on earth do we need all these nuclear warheads?
Let us remind ourselves that the bomb at Hiroshima killed 70,000 people and wounded 90,000 others. A US congressional paper in 1989 estimated that a Polaris was capable of inflicting between 6 million and 21 million casualties. Therefore, what justification is there for the Government's position? I believe that the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, raised that issue. The Trident needs even more warheads than Polaris. It is inconceivable to me that we should adopt a policy on that basis. Polaris has 192 warheads, (48 per boat) while Trident is planned for 512 warheads —whether or not they are all provided; that is the provision —which means 128 per boat. That is the logic of the madhouse.
The late Lord Louis Mountbatten expressed himself very strongly and very intelligently when he said:
"During my six years on the NATO military committee, I never missed an opportunity of saying loud and clear, that the actual use of tactical nuclear weapons could end in the escalation to global nuclear destruction and for that reason no one in their senses would contemplate their use".
I do not know that I would go entirely the whole way with Lord Mountbatten but, nevertheless, we all fully understand what he was saying. Mercifully, no one has yet used tactical nuclear weapons. But, on the other hand, it is worth saying in parenthesis that conventional wars seem to be spreading like wildfire at present.
It may be something of an aside, but I cannot resist expressing my own view that the Government would be better advised to review their Options for Change policy in the direction of switching some of their financial resources from the nuclear to the conventional field. I believe that that would make much more sense in the world in which we live.
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The essence of the debate is to ask the question: how best can we prevent other nations from taking up the nuclear option? In that regard, we have not yet had a proper explanation from the British Government as to whether either knowingly or unknowingly we were involved in breaching our own guidelines on the export of nuclear weapon technology to Iraq. We must hope that Lord Justice Scott will uncover the truth of the situation. As has been stated, we must remember that Iraq signed up for the nuclear test ban treaty. It was only after the Gulf War that Iraq was found to be in a rather contemptible breach of the treaty.
I shall not go through the list of the other nations that have been mentioned because of the lack of time. However I should like to say a few words about the Ukraine. As a member of the Technical Committee of the General Assembly of NATO, I take heart that the Ukraine has invited us to visit the country in a month or two and participate in a seminar on these matters. We shall watch that situation carefully.
Finally, I support the view that has been expressed that we should move towards a fully comprehensive test ban. That means giving more authority and power to the United Nations and to NATO and giving full support to the International Atomic Energy Agency. It is important that we support the IAEA in every way we can by facilitating frequent inspections, particularly of undeclared facilities, and by establishing it as a national intelligence agency. We must refer to the Security Council any requests of the IAEA for inspections that are refused.
The Korean peninsular, the Indian Sub-Continent, the Near East, the Middle East and the Far East are all areas that give rise to concern. That situation should drive us to develop a policy to prevent nuclear proliferation by all means in our power. In that area the British Government should show us the leadership we expect from them. I hope the Minister will announce a change from the Government's previously stated position when she replies to the debate tonight.
7.21 p.m.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Chalker of Wallasey): My Lords, I wish to say right at the outset how grateful I am to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, for giving us a longer opportunity to discuss these critical issues than would ever be possible at Question Time. Proliferation is a grave threat to international security. With the ending of East-West confrontation we are turning our attention to the important task of seeking to reduce the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons.
I wish to pay tribute to the Southampton University Group—that was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Plant of Highfield—and its director, Professor John Simpson, for the work it does on non-proliferation. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Plant, that we share his desire to achieve a consensus decision for the indefinite extension of the NPT at the 1995 conference. I shall go into that in a little more detail in a moment.
I was interested to hear the noble Lord, Lord Howell, in winding up for the Opposition, refer to the

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statements of the Prime Minister on 22nd March (at col. 467 of the Written Answers of Hansard of another place). The Prime Minister, in writing about this matter, used the most appropriate phraseology it was possible to use. I am delighted that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, with all his authority, wished to put that on the record. I can only endorse every word of the Prime Minister's statements. In the same column of Hansard of another place my right honourable friend the Prime Minister used the phrases I have used when I have replied to questions. He wrote:
"A comprehensive test ban would not in itself prevent a proliferator from producing and deploying a crude nuclear weapon without recourse to testing, and from obtaining the materials with which to do this. But associated measures for verification and inspection, if sufficiently rigorous, and applicable to the stales concerned, might constrain potential proliferations".—[Official Report, Commons, 22/3/93; Col. WA 467.]
Those are obviously measures that we wish to implement. As I said recently at Question Time—this was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Plant—Iraq has graphically demonstrated the dangers to which the Prime Minister referred in his Written Answer of 22nd March. It is quite clear that despite being a party to the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons —the NPT——and despite being subject to a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iraq made considerable progress in developing a covert military nuclear programme.
However, as many noble Lords have said in our debate tonight, there are also risks in the former Soviet Union. A state with a vast nuclear arsenal has splintered into a number of separate states. This has raised an enormous number of acute questions about the nuclear status of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, where former Soviet nuclear weapons are stationed. It has also raised concerns, quite rightly, about the control of nuclear materials and expertise. That is why I say, beyond any doubt, that to act against proliferation, international co-operation is absolutely essential. Steps to counter proliferation taken by individual states acting alone can have only limited effect. They may encourage but they will never achieve what we are after, which is the indefinite extension of non-proliferation. I believe we also need total international co-operation if we are ever to achieve the ultimate goal of a comprehensive test ban.
There has been some good progress. The outstanding achievement is the conclusion and signing of the new Chemical Weapons Convention. This for the first time bans the possession and stockpiling of chemical weapons. Perhaps the most notable feature of that convention is its far-reaching verification provisions. In the nuclear field the Nuclear Suppliers Group has been reactivated and last year adopted controls on nuclear dual use items. That is progress but more is needed.
The noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, in opening this debate, and also the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, spoke of the challenges ahead. There are two major challenges. The first is to achieve the indefinite extension of the NPT, as I have already said. The second, which is no less important, is to strengthen the verification of compliance with the NPT. Without
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strengthening the verification of compliance with the NPT, which is the responsibility of the IAEA, the use of an extended NPT will not be complete.
The NPT came into force in 1970 for a period of 25 years. The 1995 conference will decide by how long, not whether, it should be extended. As a co-depositary of the NPT, with the United States and Russia, the United Kingdom is already working for that indefinite, extension. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, that we most definitely want that indefinite extension.
There are still 34 states, some of them nuclear threshold states, which are not parties to the treaty. A further objective therefore must be to continue to increase the number of parties to the treaty. Good progress has been made recently with the accession of China, France and South Africa. We have heard a little more about South Africa tonight and I shall, return to that matter later if there is time.
As for verification of compliance with the treaty, we are working to strengthen the safeguards regime administered by the IAEA. I believe it was the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, who referred to strengthening the safeguards regime. It has been strengthened by the reaffirmation of the IAEA's right to conduct special inspections of undeclared but suspect sites. It is necessary that this right is upheld, particularly in the case of North Korea as I told the House some days ago. I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, that I believe it was the action of the IAEA in conducting the special inspections in North Korea—whatever the grounds for that, that body had the right to conduct the inspections—that caused the action of North Korea. I do not believe it would have mattered where the information given to the IAEA came from, that body would still have protested because of what that country was seeking to hide from inspection.
Tonight and in recent weeks many noble Lords have discussed the case for a comprehensive test ban and how, in the opinion of noble Lords, such a ban would contribute to efforts to counter the proliferation of nuclear weapons. We all wish to stop the development of nuclear weapons.
As a number of noble Lords have reminded us, there have been two previous periods in which negotiations have been conducted towards a comprehensive test ban. On neither occasion was the objective of a fully comprehensive test ban achieved, despite the great efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, and many other noble Lords and Members of another place in discussions.
Those earlier efforts were made under the threatening shadow of a nuclear arms race. An end to testing was seen as the most promising means of bringing that frightening competition under control. Today the international scene is very different. The arms race has gone into reverse. The United States and Russia, the possessors still of by far the largest nuclear arsenals among the nuclear powers, have agreed to reduce their deployed strategic warheads to around one third of the totals at which they stood when the last comprehensive test ban negotiations were broken off in 1980. Many more tactical nuclear

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weapons are being withdrawn from deployment, a process to which the United Kingdom is making a significant and substantial contribution, as I outlined to the House earlier this month.
The challenge we now face is different, but no less critical. It is to ensure that the welcome reductions in the arsenals of the recognised nuclear powers are not counterbalanced by the proliferation of nuclear weapons to states which have not hitherto possessed them, and in particular to states which might be tempted to use the possession of nuclear weapons to increase instability.
Tonight many of your Lordships, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Mayhew and Lord Ennals, and others, have left the listener with the impression that the UK is out of line with the other nuclear powers. Perhaps I may explain the position. The United States is conducting a thorough review of policy. Legislation passed by Congress in October 1992 recognises the need for more tests for safety purposes. It does not say that they are unnecessary. France has indeed announced a moratorium. It extends to April this year and may, subject to the views of the new government in France, be extended. We understand that in France, too, searching questions are being asked about the implications of stopping all testing for its national deterrent. Russia has conducted a testing programme which has led to enormous environmental pressure for it to stop. The economic pressures are also likely to be great in Russia. Russia has made it clear that it may well test again before 1996.
Why is there no UK moratorium on testing? The noble Lord, Lord Howell, specifically put that question to me. When the legislation was introduced in the US last year to suspend nuclear testing we did not announce our own moratorium. However, we accepted and made clear publicly that that meant that we would not be testing while the US moratorium continued. We were not convinced that unco-ordinated and unnegotiated moratoria were the right next step towards an international regime for restraints on nuclear testing. As I have said previously, it is critical that we move together in a united way to make sure that a comprehensive test ban would be totally effective in stopping any proliferation.
There have been many calls for a comprehensive test ban treaty to be negotiated in advance of the NPT extension conference in 1995. The NPT is the most effective measure for countering nuclear proliferation. The arguments in favour of its indefinite extension are strong, as many of your Lordships have said, regardless of how far we have progressed towards an end to nuclear testing. We need to ensure that that extension of the NPT is not held hostage to the conclusion of any test ban negotiations, which will inevitably take time if they are to achieve the results that we all want.
We must also ask whether we can be confident of succeeding in securing the agreement of all parties to such a ban to a fully effective verification regime. The Government believe that such a regime would necessarily have to include provision for intrusive
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monitoring for it to be fully credible. The most important factor would be stronger means of verifying compliance with the non-proliferation treaty itself.
In the UK we must also ask ourselves a further question: what are the implications of a comprehensive test ban for our own ability to maintain over time a safe and credible deterrent. In maintaining our support for a comprehensive test ban as an ultimate goal we constantly address that question. It has rightly been raised on all sides in both Houses of Parliament.
I believe that it was the noble Earl, Lord Attlee, who questioned the purpose of testing. I should now like to take up the questions that he, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney, and the noble Lord, Lord Mackie of Benshie, raised.
Our minimal programme of testing since the partial test ban treaty came into force in 1963–21 tests in total—has enabled nuclear warhead scientists to keep their designs under review and to deepen their understanding of how those highly complex weapons work. By testing their design assumptions against an observed result they are able to maintain the competence to modify designs and to improve the safety of devices such that the confidence in the inherent safety of our deterrent has been made at the highest possible level. It is not a question, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins, seemed to believe, of it being difficult to give up that testing. The question is when it will be safe to do so. I suggest to your Lordships that it will be safe when we have a proper and internationally verifiable test ban and the non-proliferation treaty is extended indefinitely with the means to verify it.
Lord Jenkins of Putney: My Lords, may I ask the noble Baroness a question on that? Will she add to what she has just said? Why is it the case that other nations, including the United States, believe that it is safe to give up now whereas we do not?
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, a moratorium, which is what the United States has agreed upon and which I have just touched upon in my recent remarks, does not mean that they have given up testing for all time. I believe that we have to have agreement on an international basis before even the United States will take that step.
The safeguards regime of the IAEA is the most important matter for the near future. Our experience with Iraq, as the noble Lord, Lord Plant, said, has highlighted that. The IAEA has already taken a number of steps to overcome the shortcomings which it found in trying to carry out its work with Iraq. We consider that an important element of the inspection regime is that right to conduct special inspections, as was the case in North Korea.
We have to be quite clear that in aiming to maintain confidence in those weapons which we have and hope never to use we must have the best means of ensuring that they are safe. We have already referred in Questions to the alternative techniques of simulation in computer modelling. Those already contribute valuably. However, as I said two weeks ago, we are not yet satisfied that they represent an entirely

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adequate substitute. This is an area where we are seeking to develop our capability to reduce reliance on testing.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness will allow me to ask one question. I quoted the noble Viscount, Lord Cranborne. We have been informed that it is the Government's view that testing is riot required for the safety of Trident but only for future systems. In my speech I asked the noble Baroness to explain what are those future systems.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I did hear the noble Lord in that question. I shall wish to consider what my noble friend Lord Cranborne said. I shall also wish to find out what lay behind his Answer to the House because it would not be right for me—I am not a defence Minister—to reply off-the-cuff to the noble Lord. I shall do so by letter when I have examined the matter more fully.
In carrying out the thorough review in the US of the nuclear testing policy, the United States has assured us that British interests are being taken fully into account in its review. We have begun the process of exploring with the United States how best we might reconcile the needs that I have outlined tonight: the need to maintain the highest possible level of confidence in the safety of our nuclear weapons; and the need for effective action in support of a strong counter proliferation regime.
When the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, asked what future systems testing was needed, he was, I believe, referring to the WE177 free fall bombs. That was the matter to which my noble friend Lord Cranborne had referred. I am told that those go out of service in the next decade. We are satisfied that the development of a warhead for any new option could be completed before 1996, but perhaps we shall be successful and that will not be needed. I shall come back to the noble Lord on the wider issue that he raised a few moments ago.
The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, asked me about the safety arguments applying only to new systems. I believe that we have a responsibility to ensure that we maintain the safety of all our weapons over time. Testing has certainly played a most important part in enabling us to do that. The noble Lord also asked me what security assurances were needed to help in ensuring the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. Our negative security assurance already applies to all non-nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT and to other internationally binding commitments not to manufacture or acquire nuclear explosive devices. That assurance is that the UK will not use nuclear weapons against such states except in the case of an attack on the UK, its dependent territories, its Armed Forces, or its allies by such a state in association or alliance with a nuclear weapons state. That is the official definition and answer to the noble Lord's question.
The noble Lord, Lord Attlee, asked me about safety of warheads. Perhaps he was thinking of a road accident or something of that kind. We are confident that even in a very severe motorway accident there
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would be no hazardous release of warhead material. But of course, we would seek not to move it around anyway. However, I understand his genuine inquiry.
The noble Lord also asked me how we prevent those countries who do not need civil nuclear programmes from acquiring them. Obviously countries which accede to the NPT as non-nuclear weapon states undertake to sign safeguard agreements with the IAEA of their civil facilities and not to develop or seek to acquire nuclear weapons. But it is not open to any single member state to stop a state which wishes to develop a civil programme from doing so. We cannot speculate on whether or not countries need to have civil programmes due to their large oil reserves. That must be for them to decide.
A number of noble Lords today have asked questions about other countries. In the brief time for the remainder of the debate, and allowing the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, time to respond, let me say this in response to the noble Lord, Lord Kennet. He spoke about Exercise Team Spirit. That is not an occasional thing. Exercise Team Spirit has been a regular event run almost every year for at least a decade. The noble Lord also spoke in the debate about North Korea. He spoke as though North Korea was already out of the NPT. The Democratic People's Republic or Korea having been a party since 1985, and having signed early in 1992 a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, it is not out of the NPT at this moment. Indeed, what we should do in view of what has happened is to seek to persuade North Korea to change its mind and remain in. It will remain a party until at least 12th June.
The whole of the action by the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is unprecedented. It requires a firm but measured response by all states concerned to uphold the non-proliferation regime. The objective of the international community must be to find a way to persuade North Korea to change its mind but not at the expense of weakening the non-proliferation treaty or the IAEA safeguards regime.
An extraordinary meeting of the board of governors of the IAEA on 18th March adopted a resolution which affirmed confidence in the director-general of the IAEA and confirms that the DPRK remains bound by its safeguards agreement. There will be a further meeting of the board on 31st March to consider what action should be taken if North Korea fails to meet tomorrow's deadline for complying. As the noble Lord, Lord Kennet, no doubt knows, the board is empowered to refer non-compliance with the agreement to the Security Council. We shall therefore wait to see what happens at the board on 31st March.
Many noble Lords spoke of the dangers in the Ukraine. Perhaps I may say this to them all. The Ukraine Government have publicly and repeatedly committed themselves to a future without nuclear weapons. Last month President Kravchuk told the Prime Minister, here in London, that he was determined to see those commitments fulfilled. They have made it clear to us and to others that they will not be able to do that without difficulty. I fully accept what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, said. We have helped them by addressing their security concerns and

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have made it clear that when they accede to the NPT we are prepared to make the security assurances to them based on the assurances that we have given to all non-nuclear weapon states which are parties to the NPT and our commitments to the CSCE framework. The US and Russia have said that they are prepared to do likewise. I sincerely hope that that will go ahead.
Lord Kennet: My Lords, the noble Baroness does not state—does she?—that the Ukraine has not stated in the past couple of days, since Mr. Yeltsin's speech, that it would not be signing the NPT.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, no, I have not stated that. I have said exactly what the situation was when President Kravchuk was in this country, when we talked to him about it. To the best of my knowledge, that remains exactly the situation. Certainly nothing to the contrary has been received.
In response to a question that the noble Lord, Lord Plant of Highfield, asked about India and Pakistan, perhaps I may say that we have frequently urged both countries to accede to the NPT. They have significant unsafeguarded civil nuclear facilities and they are both widely believed to have the capability to build nuclear weapons, as his group will have told him. We need them to resolve the speculation about their nuclear programmes. Of course, we shall support all proposals aimed at building confidence and promoting security between those countries. We welcome Pakistani and American proposals for five-power talks on nuclear restraint in South Asia. We urge India also to participate. I sincerely hope that both those nations, and all others, will refrain from efforts to deploy ballistic missiles.
Early in the debate the noble Lord, Lord Mayhew, and subsequently my noble friend Lord Clanwilliam, made comments about South Africa. South Africa's recent accession as a non-nuclear weapon state to the NPT was most welcome. Since then it has demonstrated a considerable degree of co-operation with the IAEA allowing inspectors to visit undeclared facilities. That is exactly what North Korea has refused to do. Perhaps I may say this to my noble friend Lord Clanwilliam. Should Mr. Nelson Mandela be elected president in the future, I am quite certain that the wish in that nation, as in all others, and among many members of the black community who fully support the ANC, will be that South Africa continues to be a signatory to the NPT and to make sure that we have peace in that nation. I see no danger such as my noble friend implied; nor do I see any in the response by the noble Lord, Lord Howell.
We in this House are all well aware of the dangers of Iraq's nuclear weapons programme and I shall not go over it again.
I should like to use my last few minutes to try to respond to the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, in his questions about the comment of my noble friend, Lord Carrington, in 1980 and the Written Answer by David Mellor when Minister of State in the Foreign Office in 1988.
I do not believe that David Mellor's statement reflected any major change in policy or any reaction to
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a particular event. I was already a Foreign Office Minister at the time and I think it is a matter of putting the situation on the record. I do not know who the questioner was, I cannot give the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, the answer to that at the Dispatch Box tonight. However, policy and security matters have to keep pace with the changes in the environment in which that policy is made. As I explained earlier in the debate, we live in a very different world now. The world in 1988 was very different from the world in 1980. Of course, it was in 1980 that the last CTB negotiations stopped. I shall have a further look at the logistics of the comments and write to the noble Lord, Lord Rodgers, but I think he seeks to introduce something into the debate which is not a difference at all.
I chose my words with care on 11th March in answering the Question of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins of Putney. I said that I would contest the conclusion of the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, that a comprehensive test ban would itself be an effective counter-proliferation measure. Since then, I have written to the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, about that and sent a copy of the letter to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkins. In our efforts to achieve a comprehensive test ban, which I am sure will come, we have to be sure about the defence of this country at each and every stage.
In conclusion, perhaps I may repeat the words of the President of the Security Council which he used following the summit last year:
"The proliferation of all weapons of mass destruction constitutes a threat to international peace and security. The members of the Council commit themselves to working to prevent the spread of technology related to the research for or production of such weapons and to take appropriate action to that end".
Non-proliferation is not a new objective. It has achieved a new prominence, not just because of the bad news such as North Korea, but also because of good news: the conclusion of the Chemical Weapons Convention which was a major step towards a safer world. The immediate challenge for the NPT regime is clearly to resolve the North Korean situation in a manner which keeps North Korea in the treaty but without weakening it or the accompanying safeguard system.
However, in the longer term our goal is achieving the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. It has served us well for a quarter of a century and it continues to attract new parties. Many states have already pledged themselves to support this goal and we shall carry on working to persuade others to do so, as well as urging those few remaining non-parties to accede to the treaty. We do that because we have seen just how valuable a tool the NPT has been in turbulent times. We know that without it, the world would have been a far more dangerous place.
We are working for the future and for a better future. While I may not be able to give noble Lords all the answers that they have sought tonight, I ask them to think carefully that we go through uncertain times and are determined to make the world a safer place.
7.54 p.m.
Lord Mayhew: My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to the debate. It gave particular pleasure to my noble friend Lord Rodgers and myself to find ourselves speaking in perfect harmony with the noble Lord, Lord Howell, on nuclear weapons in the manner in which we did year after year in the 1960s in the Labour Party against CND.
I should also like to thank the noble Baroness most warmly for her detailed and patient answers to our questions. I am afraid that as things stand the British delegates to the non-proliferation conference will have a tough time. It occurred to me that the noble Baroness is most likely to be given the role of British representative at the conference. No one would perform the role better than her, but if I may venture a highly respectful recommendation, I recommend that she does not take it on until there are changes in British policy. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

UNESCO
7.56 p.m.
Lord Judd Lord Judd rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the role and future development of UNESCO; and whether they will seek to re-establish British membership of that body.
The noble Lord said: My Lords, I have the highest regard for the commitment and conscientiousness of the Minister in her humanitarian work. She sets herself a gruelling pace. It is therefore particularly encouraging that she has personally found time for this brief and timely exchange on UNESCO today; aptly timed to follow the debate on world security.
Across the Atlantic, it is clear that the new Clinton presidency will approach the question of US membership of UNESCO positively and with an open mind. This could well prove an embarrassment to us in the UK because our own failure to rejoin is increasingly bewildering. I therefore fervently hope that the Minister will use this exchange today to spell out clearly what really is the current policy and to give a firm indication of when the UK will rejoin.
UNESCO was set up in 1946 with 20 member states. Today it has 172. The distinguished and universally admired Conservative statesman, Rab Butler, was, of course, one of the founding fathers. He envisaged its post-Second World War role as promoting global educational, scientific and cultural co-operation. Over the years, UNESCO has itself directly undertaken an impressive range of projects and supported many more: for example, its Herculean relocation of Philae, the historical temple complex on the Nile which was threatened by rising water levels; its launch in 1990 of the International Literacy Year Campaign and support for numerous international organisations such as the International Oceanographic Commission, the International Geological Correlation Programme and the International Hydrological Programme.
UNESCO's current work includes leading the fight to restore Dubrovnik, drawing up plans to protect the pyramids from the excesses of tourism and taking responsibility for safeguarding over 400 designated world heritage sites of outstanding and universal value. It is also responsible for setting up schools in Somalia—the Island of Peace project —as part of the UN's efforts to reconstruct civil society in that country; training ex-soldiers in Cambodia to work as literacy instructors; and for helping to establish the World Foundation for AIDS Research and Prevention.
UNESCO's founders were very clear about what its aims and objectives should be. Their vision was shaped from experiences moulded by the rise of fascism and by the devastating world war which had been necessary to stop it. The inability of the League of Nations to act as a bulwark against the dictators convinced world leaders that they had to take positive action in the aftermath of the Second World War to promote international co-operation and to construct diplomatic mechanisms which would function effectively to prevent conflict or secure its quick resolution through dialogue and diplomacy.
The international community therefore put its weight behind the United Nations. It is testimony to the vision of the founders that they sought to strengthen the UN's foundations by establishing UNESCO as an organisation which was to concentrate on improving relations between nations, and on enhancing international tolerance and understanding. UNESCO's constitution states:
"Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed".
That was not an easy task because the good will and idealism fostered by the fight against fascism and the collective determination that things would be very different after the war soon evaporated with the onset of the Cold War. That sad state of affairs dragged on right up until the mid-1980s, when events improved dramatically with the emergence of President Gorbachev and his rapprochement first with President Reagan and then President Bush, and the correlated collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.
The spirit of trust and co-operation that existed between the two former rivals produced a revolution in the prospects of the United Nations. For example, the international action against Iraq was possible only as a result of that dramatic improvement. But ultimately, any sustained, positive development in the role of the UN will depend upon the mutual respect and spirit of co-operation existing between UN member states. It is in that sphere that UNESCO can make an important contribution.
As I stressed, UNESCO was originally given responsibility for constructing the defences of peace. In a world in which, despite all the post-Cold War high hopes, the renewed upsurge in conflict and political instability has again accentuated the need for effective international arbitration, such defences remain critical to the future of the whole UN system, especially if the latter is to adapt to the new, more dynamic world role which unfolding global events have forced upon it. The resurgence of xenophobic

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nationalism, racial and religious persecution and the horrors of ethnic cleansing are directly relevant to the purposes of UNESCO and the UK's part within it.
The Government announced their withdrawal from UNESCO in December 1984, a year after President Reagan announced that the US was pulling out because it considered the organisation incompetent, profligate and overtly political. Admittedly, there were serious problems evident in UNESCO's structure and organisation, and with the direction it was taking under its then director-general. But it is evident that President Reagan's decision to withdraw owed more to blinkered Right-wing ideology than to anything else.
The Minister will recall that the decision of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, (then Mrs. Thatcher) was taken despite the pleadings of the Commonwealth and our European Community partners, many of whom shared our concerns but nevertheless urged the United Kingdom to remain inside and to campaign for change from within.
Unfortunately, the then Mrs. Thatcher proved impervious to such appeals and the UK withdrew—a development which did our international standing no favours at all and was lamented by all our friends. It can, I think, be confidently claimed that the withdrawal of the UK was more about the close relationship of the then Mrs. Thatcher with President Reagan than a result of any clear attempt to understand what was happening at UNESCO or to devise a positive strategy to improve its functions. Sadly, Britain's withdrawal was simply, as one commentator put it at the time, "Ron's Christmas box from Mrs. T". That view is certainly supported by subsequent events at UNESCO, where Dr. Federico Mayor became the new director-general in 1987. Dr. Mayor was committed to reforming the organisation. It was a major tragedy that the US and the UK, both of which apparently shared his commitment to reform, were not present to assist him with the task.
The new director-general quickly introduced a whole series of reforms, ranging from administrative reorganisation to the abandonment of controversial initiatives such as the highly questionable "new information order", which advocated that states be allowed to register journalists; and "people's rights", a proposal that in effect threatened to attenuate the international emphasis on and commitment to human rights as usually conceived. Indicative of the sea change within UNESCO, the organisation is currently involved in a wide range of activities designed to promote democracy, freedom of the press, and respect for individual human rights.
Central to the reform process was the work of the Commission chaired by Knut Hammarskjöld, nephew of the late Dag Hammarskjöld and himself a distinguished international public servant held in high esteem. Those reforms have made a considerable impact, to the extent that in June 1992 Knut Hammarskjöld was able to tell a US congressional hearing that:
"UNESCO is now an extremely well-run organisation".
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Moreover, UNESCO itself invited the United States General Accounting Office to conduct a review of its operations. The General Accounting Office expressed general satisfaction with UNESCO's work and organisational structure, and made a series of proposals at UNESCO's request. I have here a copy of a fax sent by Mr. Miyabara of the GAO only yesterday to UNA. It says:
"Attached is the GAO report on UNESCO management. GAO is prepared to testify to Congress that the management problems of the past are no longer a valid reason to justify U.S. non-membership. If you have any questions please call me directly".
(Perhaps the Minister will note that).
It is also worth noting that Howard Berman, chairman of the US Congress Committee on Foreign Relations Subcommittee on International Operations, wrote on 25th February last to Ambassador Madeleine Albright, US Permanent Representative to the UN, and said:
"The findings of the General Accounting Office and of independent outside experts who closely examined management reforms at UNESCO establish that the agency is better managed than most U.N. agencies in which we do participate, and could indeed serve as a model for U.N. system-wide reform. I very much hope that this Administration will take a fresh look at the question, and not be swayed by the rather tendentious record on this issue established by the last one".
In an Adjournment debate on UNESCO in May 1992 Douglas Hogg, the Foreign and Commonwealth Minister, welcomed many of the changes, but stopped short of announcing when the United Kingdom would rejoin. He said, however, that the Government would approach the question of rejoining "with a genuinely open mind". It therefore seems curious that the same Minister did not even mention UNESCO during last December's debate on the UN, despite the promptings of various Members to do so.
Perhaps I speculate, but I imagine that the Minister's uncharacteristic reticence on the subject may have been attributable to embarrassment, because the Government's "foot dragging" now hinges on funding alone. The Minister certainly referred to that during the course of the debate in May, when he stated that the British Government would have to make "a genuine assessment of priorities", and would have to identify,
"our points of interest and see where the benefits and priorities lie".
He added:
"We must measure spending through UNESCO as against spending under other parts of our aid budget".
That message was the same as that conveyed in a letter from the Foreign Secretary to Dr. Jack Cunningham earlier this month. I should like to quote from it:
"We have welcomed the positive steps taken by UNESCO towards reform, and we recognise the importance of the Organisation's General Conference later this year. However, there would be a price to be paid if we were to rejoin UNESCO. The cost for 1993 would be about £8 million, and almost £10 million a year thereafter. These resources would have to be diverted from bilateral aid projects—an unwelcome prospect. The costs of additional staff in both London and Paris would also need to be considered. Against that, it is not clear what in concrete terms the UK loses by not being a member of UNESCO".
—a curious and uncharacteristically myopic comment from that normally imaginative and internationally minded Minister.
I find it strange, however, that the Government cite cost as the major hurdle, especially since the UK was and is a major net beneficiary of UNESCO funds. Reflecting that, UNESCO expenditure in the United Kingdom during 1991, while we were not members, was, according to UN figures, £9,523,000. Between 1984 and 1990—again during our absence from the organisation—it averaged £8,555,000. Furthermore, unless I am mistaken, the Government's aid budget was not cut by the size of our subscription when the UK withdrew in 1984.
I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the Government have wanted this issue to slip from view. That is why our debate is so important. I sincerely hope that the Minister will use this opportunity to offer a clear outline of the British Government's current position. Failure to do so will, frankly, appear increasingly absurd, particularly as President Clinton is expected to make a quick decision on the matter.
There are other factors which the Government would find it wise to consider. It will not have escaped the Minister's attention that our position on the UN Security Council, for example, has come under increasing scrutiny. I hope she will accept that that position will become still more questionable if we fail to play a full role in the work of the UN and its agencies. In that sense the benefits of rejoining UNESCO are obvious.
The era of splendid isolation is now a dim recollection from the history books. In the century ahead our international relations will be crucial to our national interests. Nothing is more important than education and the development of human resources for the creation of a prosperous and stable world. For that reason alone it is high time that we put an end to the misguided Thatcherite isolationism and started to pull our weight by rejoining and fully supporting UNESCO. At the same time, to remain outside weakens our links with other states and diminishes our influence internationally. Let us be clear about it. That is the real price that the United Kingdom will continue to pay as a result of any further procrastination or obscurantism.
We accept that there were problems in the mid-1980s prior to Britain's withdrawal. But it would have been much better if the United Kingdom had remained and campaigned to reform the organisation from within, as our friends so strongly urged us to do. We and the United States, previously two of UNESCO's most influential members, feebly marginalised ourselves at precisely the time when Dr. Mayor was looking for allies to help him reform the organisation. That said, we should now waste no time in rejoining.
Under the direction of Dr. Mayor, UNESCO has convincingly undergone considerable change. The criticisms which the Government originally made in their attempt to justify our withdrawal have now largely been met Perhaps therefore the noble Baroness can illuminate why we still have not announced our intention to rejoin. I am certain that my personal mystification at that failure is shared by the Commonwealth, our EC partners and the current
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membership of UNESCO who, I am told, will be awaiting the result of this exchange with considerable interest.
Today the noble Baroness should give those interested countries a very clear signal by stating categorically when the UK will resume its membership. It is particularly humiliating that the UK is still outside such an important organisation at a time when the role of the UN and its agencies has been stretched and expanded by the pressure of unfolding world events. Further delay would be inexplicable, shameful and deeply harmful to our overseas interests. The House looks to the Minister, with her enviable reputation for a genuine sense of global responsibility, to give a positive reply.
8.13 p.m.
Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn: My Lords, few great dreams are simple to realise effectively. So it has proved with UNESCO. At the end of World War II, we saw the foundation of the United Nations as the successor of the League of Nations, with the aspiration toward a new world order. The Cold War cast a blight upon that initiative. Only in the past couple of years have we seen a new clarity of purpose and a new confidence at the United Nations. Along with the aspiration in 1945 for that new world order came the hope of co-operation among nations at the intellectual level for a meeting of minds. It took shape at the London conference in that year where the constitution for UNESCO was written, promoting co-operation in the fields of education, culture and science.
The new organisation started well with a series of valuable projects, a number of which were outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I am sure that we are grateful to him for having raised the issue this evening. Among those projects was the UNESCO Convention on Antiquities and Works of Art. It is for me a personal sorrow that the United Kingdom has not yet felt able to ratify that convention. But the organisation was not immune to bureaucracy. Unfortunately, it was so ill managed that Her Majesty's Government had to inform the director-general of the day, Mr. M'Bow, that if there were no improvement, the United Kingdom would have to withdraw. We left in 1985.
I agree with most of the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, but it would perhaps be disappointing if there were not one or two points of disagreement between us. Certainly, I could not agree with his evaluation of the motivation for our leaving UNESCO; nor could I agree with his judgment on the justice of that decision. It did not make sense to pay good money to sustain not only an organisation which was inefficiently run but an organisation with whose objectives, at any rate as carried forward in practice, we could no longer feel entirely at one. But we certainly have seen a significant change. There I am happy to be back in agreement with the noble Lord who asked the Question today. We share the aspirations enunciated in the framing of UNESCO and under the supervision of the new director-general, Dr. Mayor, the deficiencies have in large measure been

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rectified. It is indeed generally agreed that had UNESCO been run in 1985 as it is run today, we should certainly not have left it at that time.
I regretted the need to leave at the time we did so. For two years I was a member of the United Kingdom National Committee for UNESCO which, as I recall, met in the offices of the ODA. In view of her unparalleled experience in that Ministry, I should like to say how pleased I am this evening that my noble friend Lady Chalker will reply. I am sure that she has the sympathy of the House in having to reply to two debates on the same evening, but I am sure she will reply to this one with the same effectiveness and coherence that she brought to bear a few minutes ago. However, I am a little disconcerted that she and I, along with her noble friend and colleague on the Front Bench and my noble friend and colleague on the Back Bench, are but a handful of individuals on this side of the House who are present for the debate.
If, nearly 47 years ago, there was a new world order, that is once again the case today. The Soviet Union is no more but is composed of a number of what seem increasingly mutually hostile states. Eastern Europe is in the process of transition—we hope in many areas for the better. But the noble Lord, Lord Judd, was right to refer to the appalling situation in Yugoslavia, which depends largely on perceptions of ethnicity. The new order certainly has many optimistic points to it: a new Administration in the United States; the European Community in process of evolution; realignments in the Pacific, with the Pacific Rim to the fore; and the hope before too many years of change in China when the present tired old men who rule that country have passed on. The Moslem world is developing in a variety of ways, not all of which we find easy to understand but which will certainly have a great influence. There is also the new South Africa which clearly transforms the prospects for Africa in the future.
Few of those transitions have been of a military character and none has been of a purely economic character. Most relate to changed perceptions in the world in which we live. One of those, as I mentioned, is the resurgence of old ethnicities. As an archaeologist I am appalled at the way in which the past is consistently misused at the present time in the name of national aspirations and ethnicity. That is one of the fields where greater cultural understanding and education could bear fruit. It is a sad verdict upon our time that it is in these times that the concept of "ethnic cleansing" has been formulated.
What should be the place of Britain in this new world order? What positive reasons are there for rejoining UNESCO, assuming that there are no strong negative ones? Let me begin with the altruistic position. The first reason for rejoining would be because of what Britain has to offer. We can offer our facility in what is now the one world language, which is not only the language of Shakespeare and the Romantic poets, but also the language of James Joyce, Rabindranath Tagore and of Hemingway, and of many African writers today.
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The next factor to allude to is our own scientific tradition; the tradition of Newton, Darwin, Crick and Watson and of so many brilliant and successful scientists of our own time. There is then the tradition of liberal thought going back not only to the great parliamentarians, but to John Stuart Mill or to great philosophers. Indeed, a number of the philosophers were not born in this country but came to this country precisely because of that tradition. I am thinking of Wittgenstein and more particularly of Sir Karl Popper. We clearly have also an outstanding educational tradition. I shall not speak at length about the universities, but in schooling, despite the parsimonious phrase which the noble Lord, Lord Glenamara, felt able to give to the present educational system yesterday, he was fulsome in his praise of the nation's primary schools and I believe that secondary schools also offer an education of distinction.
There is then the field of publication. Communications is an important part of the field of interest and influence of UNESCO. We have the BBC with its apposite motto, "Let nation speak peace unto nation". We have also the great effectiveness of Britain in the field of publication. All those qualities ought to be freely at the disposal of UNESCO; sadly they are not.
Secondly, let us consider Britain's place in the world. We may no longer be in the first rank of military powers. We can scarcely claim to be in the first rank of economic powers. But few would deny that we can claim still to be in the first rank in the fields of education, science and culture today. For instance, if we look at the contemporary arts in this country and at sculpture, there is no doubt that contemporary sculpture in Britain is one of the world's leaders as a field of artistic activity.
It has been correctly pointed out that Britain holds a permanent place on the Security Council of the United Nations. But is it appropriate for a major power to hold back in this important area which we are discussing? A number of us in this country have anxieties in the new world order as to whether Britain will retain its seat on the Security Council in the long term. It is a strange way of securing our place to absent ourselves from one of the major agencies of the United Nations.
The third reason is economic. It may be relevant to the case which will be made by my noble friend—I hope a case which both she and the Government will accept—that if the cost of re-entry to UNESCO is of the order of £8 million to £10 million a year, there will be many spin-offs of various kinds. We have already heard of the direct input which UNESCO continues to bring to this country. But if we participate fully in the range of activities of which I have been speaking, not least publications, then we shall receive economic benefits in terms of growth and influence which ought significantly to outweigh that contribution.
To this day we continue to obtain a number of benefits from UNESCO. The register of world heritage sites to which allusion has been made, includes not only major international sites like Abu Simbel, Angkor Wat or Mohenjo Daro, but it includes Stonehenge, Avebury, Fountains Abbey and

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Hadrian's Wall. Already that system has played a significant role in securing the position of those sites in this country. The factor of world heritage status has been quoted and found to be influential when planning applications have been made to undertake works which would be detrimental to the environment of those sites. English Heritage has found it convenient to be able to rely upon it. That is one way in which UNESCO, although we are not now part of that organisation, continues to be influential and one would wish to see that influence extended.
We do not need to envisage immediate benefits on a great scale. But it is important that we should take part in shaping the future of that organisation. A number of us may feel that Britain was slow to join Europe and that we continue to suffer the disadvantages of being slow. We shall, I fear, suffer the same disadvantages if we stand back too long from rejoining UNESCO. We should play our part in shaping a more thoughtful world, a more enlightened world, a world which sets a high value on education, culture, science and on international co-operation in those fields. I hope that my noble friend will be able to offer us hope of an early return.
8.27 p.m.
Lord McGregor of Durris: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for providing us with this opportunity to discuss UNESCO. I intend to focus narrowly on the press because that was a significant factor in our withdrawal in 1985. But I believe that it is no longer a ground for our continued exclusion from the organisation.
First among the guidelines provided by UNESCO's constitution was a call for collaboration in the work of advancing the mutual knowledge and understanding of peoples through all means of mass communication, together with such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free flow of ideas by word and image. As a political body then made up of 159 member states, UNESCO had a duty to draw up international standards and agreements for the fields of activity for which it was responsible. Thus the international media and discussions of a new world information and communication order fell directly within its remit.
The phrase, "new world information and communication order" was coined by the non-aligned movement and entered the language in the early 1970s with the emergence of the North-South division as a major issue in international relations. The demand for a new order became a recurrent theme of the claims which developing societies made upon industrialised countries. That insistence stemmed from the dissatisfactions and anger of third world countries with what they regarded as their dependence on western media for news, information and entertainment. They talked of the delivery of these services, often by multi-national companies, as a cultural imperialism that constituted a form of neocolonialism that imperilled their economic growth, impugned their cultural autonomy and undermined their national identity and sovereignty. These and many other items in a catalogue of discontents soon
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brought the concept of a free flow of information into question, and it came to be seen as no more than a device to sustain the world-wide dominance of western news agencies and media. The next stage in the argument was to affirm the need for some form of international control to prevent western media abusing their power. Naturally, the Soviet Union and the other communist countries strongly supported such views and became ardent advocates of the new world information and communication order.
Among UNESCO's member states, lines were soon drawn between the large majority, supporting the new order, which treated their media as instruments of government with a duty to justify and explain official policies, and a small minority of opposing states in which media are independent critics of government and all other concentrations of power.
The new world information order made its way in UNESCO's world. In 1976 a conference in Nairobi discussed a Soviet-inspired "Draft Declaration on Fundamental Principles Governing the Use of the Mass Media in Strengthening Peace and International Understanding and in Combating War Propaganda, Racism and Apartheid". The director-general, M'Bow, moved the debate on to a new plane by setting up a 15-member International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems under the chairmanship of Mr. Sean MacBride. The commission reported in 1980 and proposed a range of governmental interventions to control the international press and news agencies and to emasculate them as critics of government and reporters of news, as well as imposing an international licensing system for journalists in which UNESCO would have played a major part and would have been the administrator of such restrictions on the world's free press.
Senior officials of UNESCO stumped the world to promote the attack on freedom and to publicise the narrow, peevish, cultural nationalism embodied in their new communication order. Western governments and media were slow to respond effectively to this development. In Britain a committee chaired by Sir Edward Pickering succeeded, after initial difficulties, in alerting the Foreign Office to the dangers of what was happening. I hope that it is not improper to mention the name of a now retired senior official, Lord Nicholas Gordon Lennox, who brought the anxieties of the Pickering Committee to the attention of Ministers, after which they became active in stating the Government's concern at many UNESCO gatherings.
In the United States a World Press Freedom Committee had already been set up as a result of what had been happening in UNESCO and it was reporting the concerns of the American press to the State Department. The State Department notified the director-general, M'Bow, that it would withdraw from UNESCO because its experience had,
"extraneously politicised virtually every subject it deals with; exhibited hostility towards the basic institutions of a free society, especially a free market and a free press; and demonstrated unrestrained budgetary expansion".
Britain also withdrew from UNESCO for similar reasons in 1985.

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The situation has now changed completely in all these respects though I shall mention only the press in order to save time. When Federico Mayor was elected director-general in 1987 in place of M'Bow, he immediately promised new policies. In a lecture which he gave three months ago in Washington he said:
"UNESCO's new strategy in communications … has three aims: to ensure the free flow of information at national and international levels, to ensure wider and better balanced dissemination without any obstacle to the freedom of expression, and to strengthen communication capacities in developing countries especially through our International Program for the Development of Communication … The adoption of democratic language and free-press principles led directly to action, to concrete, practical programs and results. The new communication program commits UNESCO to work for the development of free, independent and pluralistic media both in the public and private sectors".
Mr. Mayor demonstrated great determination and courage in seeking to return UNESCO to democratic and realistic policies as far as the press is concerned even before this task was eased by the collapse of the Soviet Union. UNESCO has now so transformed its policies and attitudes towards the international press that I understand that the World Press Freedom Committee in Washington believes that the United States should re-examine its position and indeed is urging the State Department to do so. I hope that Britain will do likewise.
A number of positive reasons for our returning to UNESCO were listed impressively by the noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn. I wish to add one positive reason—the value of UNESCO in promoting a free press not only in developing societies but also in those societies now attempting to substitute democratic for authoritarian regimes. They all face extraordinarily difficult problems of financing a free press and they are also having to deal with the problems of regulating the press. Many countries in eastern Europe, for example, are now having to face the issue that, to many of the new governments, the vigorous criticism to which they are being subjected by their newly freed press appears simply as attempts to undermine democracy itself. All those countries are urgently concerned to discover some means by which a press can be regulated by an institution which stands between the press and the government, which imposes ethical standards on the press but does so without endangering freedom of criticism of political institutions. It is for that reason that many of these countries have been showing a particular interest in what is happening in that respect here at home.
I believe that UNESCO is singularly well-equipped to assist in that vital development. It is perfectly true that over the years Britain has provided a very great deal of bilateral assistance to the press in developing countries and currently to the press in eastern Europe. But I believe that it is desirable that that assistance should be accompanied and balanced by the efforts of an international organisation which is now dedicated to establishing and assisting a free press.
When we return to UNESCO and in the course of considering what might be done, I hope that the Government will examine carefully why it was that so many of those developments which I have been talking
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about came as a shock to civil servants and Ministers in the late 1970s and early 1980s. I believe that a very important factor in the situation was that too much of the content of UNESCO's work and its programmes was being monitored by junior officials and was not being effectively scrutinised by senior Ministers. On our return I hope that that deficiency may be remedied.
8.43 p.m.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I intended to make only a few points in support of my noble friend's Question. In fact, he has made his case so comprehensively (and the two noble Lords who followed him have also added such good arguments) that I shall be very largely repeating those arguments but in slightly different words.
The first point is one which my noble friend developed initially. It is that most of the reasons why the United States and Britain withdrew from UNESCO in 1984–85 have now been put right. He quoted Government Ministers as admitting that that was the case. Doctor Mayor has made impressive progress in tightening up the administration of UNESCO and targeting programmes more effectively. The unconstructive and inappropriate Left-Right and North-South confrontational positions of UNESCO when it was under the direction of Mr. M'Bow, as the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, pointed out very clearly and described in great detail, have largely now been defused. A much more co-operative climate prevails.
Very recently, on February 23rd, the Foreign Secretary is reported to have said:
"If the United Kingdom was considering leaving UNESCO now they certainly would not leave".
On that occasion he was speaking to a group of MPs of all parties, together with Douglas Hogg and Foreign and Commonwealth Office officials. Other noble Lords have pointed out that it is very much to our advantage to be within UNESCO for several reasons. Conversely, we lose out by not being a member. As the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, and my noble friend Lord Judd have pointed out, we gain economically from being in UNESCO and we still do even though we are not a member of it. We certainly did when we were. According to Cyril Townsend MP, who was a long-term supporter of the United Nations, we regularly used to earn more money from UNESCO than we put in in any one year.
I feel that that alone should demolish the argument that we cannot afford to be in UNESCO. It is true of course that the money does not come directly back into Government coffers as such, but it comes back to the United Kingdom economy. We could do with more arrangements like that just now. We should not forget that the organisation was formed here in Britain only a stone's throw from your Lordship's House: at the Institution of Civil Engineers. Its founding fathers embodied many ideas from British cultural and scientific leaders. In fact they were the instigators of the organisation as the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, has pointed out. If we do not get back into UNESCO, we shall lose influence in the world, not only culturally and scientifically but because of the principle of

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universal membership of United Nations organisations that all permanent members of the Security Council should hold.
As my noble friend pointed out, our position on the Security Council as a permanent member is now being strongly questioned, particularly by Germany and Japan—and with some justification. We definitely weaken our position in our argument for staying on as a permanent member by staying out of this important United Nations organisation. If we re-enter UNESCO soon we shall be in a position to compete for some of the most important offices in the organisation and we can influence it powerfully from the inside. Already "Francophonie" is asserting a bid to be the most influential force in the organisation. Japan is anxious to buy in to increase its influence. I feel that it is quite urgent for Britain to get in, if possible, before the United States does so. They are going to do that quite soon. With their much bigger financial clout, they will be in a position to occupy top positions and steer policy—possibly not to our advantage.
I am sure that one of the arguments which the noble Baroness will put forward—unless tonight she is going to announce that it is the Government's decision to rejoin—is that the cost of joining will be at the expense of other vital ODA activities. If she is going to argue that, I fully agree in advance. That must not happen and it need not. Looking at debates held in another place, I note that Cyril Townsend points out that the £9 million required to rejoin UNESCO represents just two tanks in the Rhine Army.
We shall do far more for Britain and the world by being in UNESCO which is a strong weapon against Beveridge's three evils of ignorance, disease and squalor, than we will by maintaining two tanks when there is no longer an enemy in sight.
8.48 p.m.
Lord St. John of Bletso: My Lords, I join in thanking the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for introducing this evening's debate which has certainly come at an opportune time now that almost all of the objections to Britain, the United States and Singapore leaving UNESCO in 1985 have been met and of course following the election of the new Administration in the United States. I used to question the efficacy of UNESCO and of the Commonwealth. However, against the recent global trend of ethnic and cultural intolerance, the population explosion, violence and civil wars, famine, environmental pollution and destruction, and the consequential human misery caused, the need for a meeting of minds representing all countries and engendering mutual understanding and common values becomes all the more important.
Clearly, the anti-Western and anti-free market rhetoric of UNESCO before the election of the current director-general, Dr. Federico Mayor, has ceased to be a major problem to critics of UNESCO, which has now developed a more independent, professional and dynamic management. While many would argue that most of UNESCO's past weaknesses have been overcome, it will take many more years to totally rectify all of them. I have heard several arguments that Britain should not have left UNESCO in 1985 but
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should have worked from within the organisation. I personally am of the view that Her Majesty's Government were justified in leaving UNESCO in 1985 and that that, together with the more enlightened approach of the new director-general as well as Britain's, the USA's and Singapore's non-membership of UNESCO, has effectively promoted the current reforms to the organisation. However, all that is in the past. As has been argued by all noble Lords this evening, surely now is the time to rejoin the organisation and thereby promote future reforms by taking a more positive and active role within UNESCO.
It is well known that UNESCO is currently experiencing a major cash crunch with a large deficit of, I believe, almost 80 million dollars, largely as a result of the failure of the Commonwealth of Independent States and Brazil to pay their dues. UNESCO's spending—I am again speaking from hearsay—runs to approximately £150 million a year. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, has already mentioned what UNESCO has contributed to projects in the United Kingdom since we left that organisation in 1985. Surely the money saved from not being a member of UNESCO (and thus not subscribing) is totally out of proportion to the overall benefits, not just in terms of what Britain can get out of UNESCO but also in terms of what it can contribute to the organisation.
Among the major reforms achieved by the new director-general, he has trimmed the budget and achieved an overall reduction in costs. He has not only achieved a better management of financial resources but human resources have been strengthened also. There has been increased decentralisation of staff and activities from the Paris headquarters to the field. I understand that he has also reduced the major projects from 15 to seven. Her Majesty's Government have raised that point in the past as one of their objections to rejoining UNESCO.
As many noble Lords have mentioned, the organisation has abandoned its controversial media policy and is now committed to promoting a free press. That point was illustrated and elaborated upon by the noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris. Clearly, the director-general is determined to be practical and more focused.
As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, mentioned in his opening remarks, the objectives of UNESCO include the promotion of environmental research, the improvement of global education and literacy, the protection of members' cultural heritage and the provision of a forum of discussion on general global problems.
Turning to a point stressed by the noble Lord, Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, it is my premise that education has a major role to play in resolving many of the major problems facing the world today. It is noteworthy that the director-general has recently commissioned Jacques Delors to head an international commission to seek ways in which education can be employed to fashion a more tolerable and less violent world. It is Dr. Mayor's contention that non-violence, equality and liberty should be,

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"the basis for education in all countries no matter what their beliefs, cultural sensibilities or religious principles are".
The director-general is clearly committed to not allowing UNESCO to be used as a political tool, as it was pre-1985.
So where do we stand today? In a Written Answer to the honourable Member for Lewisham West, the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, on 16th December last year, listed the scope for further concentration of programmes, the need for better evaluation of programmes and the need for more decentralisation as the major current objections of HMG to rejoining that organisation.
Considering the extent of the reforms so far achieved since 1985, which we have all mentioned, and the fact that UNESCO is the only major international forum for intellectual, scientific and cultural exchanges, I hope that the Minister this evening can give us some assurance that HMG will soon be rejoining this worthwhile organisation. To paraphrase the late Lyndon Johnson, is it not better to be inside the tent facing out that on the outside facing in?
8.56 p.m.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, I could complain that the luck of the draw has made me the last Back-Bench speaker and that everything has already been said, but I do not look upon it in that way. I look upon it as winding-up a debate of remarkable unanimity. I hope that the Minister will not break the wonderful spirit that we have established in the Chamber because the same message has come from all Benches, which I should perhaps say are not packed in case those who read the report of the debate think that they are. There may have been some slight differences between us as to whether it was right or wrong to leave UNESCO at that time, but all of us have said that the time is now right for Britain to re-enter. If we delay very much, it will be to our loss.
I should like to join those who have paid a tribute to Dr. Mayor. His election as director-general has changed the situation dramatically. I am certain that the Government would not disagree with that. He has been very generous in the sense that during the period when Britain has been out and he has been in, he has always demonstrated his wish to see us back in and has sought to give us assurances that so many of the issues which caused the Government to feel that the time had come to get out have now been resolved. This debate has emphasised that point.
Perhaps I should have begun by declaring an interest—or rather two or three. I was chairman of the United Nations Association in 1984–85 when the United Kingdom Government were planning to pull Britain out of UNESCO. I was involved, unsuccessfully, in seeking to persuade them not to do so—and I was not alone in being unsuccessful. An all-party campaign was unsuccessful. If we are going to pay tributes I should like to pay a tribute to Bowen Wells in another place who has been absolutely constant in sustaining his commitment to get Britain back into UNESCO.
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The other interest is that I am joint president of the Friends of UNESCO which, since the opt-out, has worked extremely hard to keep the spirit of UNESCO alive in Britain, especially among academics, educationalists, scientists, librarians, archaeologists and, indeed, politicians. There has been a sustained campaign both to keep the spirit of UNESCO alive in Britain and to seek to persuade the Government to return Britain to our rightful place in UNESCO, having played such an important part in bringing it into existence.
If I am paying tributes to Members of Parliament, I should also pay tributes to two or three other people who are not Members of Parliament, but who have been vigorous in their commitment to UNESCO. One of them is Dr. Maurice Goldsmith, who is a former chairman of the Friends of UNESCO. Another is Rashid Kareh who, for the United Nations Association, has shown constant commitment and interest. I shall mention the names of Malcolm Harper, director of the United Nations Association and David Church, who was secretary of the UK National Commission for UNESCO until 1985. There are many other names that I should like to mention but those people deserve credit as well as the all-party parliamentarians who have sought to press the Government.
In my view it was a mistake to leave. The quotation given by the noble Lord, Lord St. John, was an indication that it is better to be in because one can fight better from the inside. We should have resolved some of the problems more quickly if Federico Mayor had had the support in UNESCO of British and American Ministers in trying to resolve some of the real difficulties. All of us have recognised that there were valid criticisms but I believe that the principle of universality of the UN and its specialised agencies is of great importance. The list of countries which have opted out or withdrawn from the UN or its agencies is not distinguished. I look forward to the time when Britain is a member once again and can proudly claim the universality of the membership of the UN and its agencies.
Having fallen over myself yesterday to congratulate my noble friend Lord Judd on the speech which he made it may be a little repetitious of me to do so again today. However, I believe that he has judged the mood absolutely right and that we have won the argument. The statement made by Mr. Douglas Hogg in another place echoed that. It is sad to think that it can only be that we cannot now afford to rejoin. We should look at how much we have lost by being out and perhaps we shall see that we could have afforded membership had we not been out. However, I am pleased that the Minister who is to reply is the Minister who presumably holds the purse strings; of course, with the approval of the Treasury. The money comes out of her budget and I cannot but believe that she is enthusiastically campaigning for Britain to rejoin at the earliest moment.
My figures are not those of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, because many figures flush around. I was told that in 1985 the UK put £6.4 million into UNESCO and received £50 million in consultancy fees, books

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and so forth in return. That would be as much the case today as then. If the auditors did their work we should find that, of each year of Britain's membership, it received from UNESCO in terms of fees and payments more than it put in. I believe that that will prove to be the case when we are a member once again.
I wish to make two points about the sad period of Britain's opt out. We followed the United States but I hope that we shall now lead the United States in rejoining. We know that we shall be followed by the United States. From my impression of the views of Congressional leaders and from what one hears of the new President there is no doubt about that. It would be a sound move for us to rejoin first and for once to be seen to be giving the lead.
Secondly, I suppose that in 1985 the UK Government hoped that many other UNESCO member states would follow suit and that our leaving would result in a disintegration. We must have thought and hoped that our colleagues in the Community would have followed and that more than only one member of the Commonwealth would have followed us. It must have been hurtful that only three countries quit UNESCO following the United States' lead.
I want to see us back in as members. I do not know how many existing member states care about whether we return but I like to believe that they do and that they will respect us for rejoining at this time. There are many good reasons why Britain should be back in UNESCO. I received a letter only today from the Royal Society of Chemistry. I am not a chemist but I thought that its argument was strong and I wish to quote two paragraphs from its letter. First, it stated:
"Although scientific links of some kind have continued through the funding of the Overseas Development Administration, the UK could benefit from rejoining the evolving UNESCO activities in the environmental sciences and UK expertise in the management of science and technology (and in its evaluation) could be useful".
The Parliamentary Affairs Officer of the Royal Society of Chemistry put forward a second argument. He stated:
"The Society … is also mindful of the important work that there is still to do in the science and environmental area — such as the need in 1992–95 to provide advanced training to 3,000 mathematicians, physicists, chemists and biologists; to award research grants; and to establish 15–20 pilot projects for up-dating teaching materials and science curricula".
The Friends of UNESCO organised a highly successful conference in the Palace of Westminster. It took place in February and the Grand Committee Room was packed. Many points were raised by people from all parties and the different interest groups about the reasons for our rejoining. Language is one reason. It was said at the conference that the English language is our intellectual North Sea oil. That is right; it is an enormous advantage. But unlike North Sea oil, which will disappear, our language will grow and gain but only if we are inside the organisation. It is a global language of trade, commerce, finance, communications, computers and education. I believe that we must capitalise on that. British educationists need to join UNESCO's expert networks, in particular at the higher education level. I believe that British influence
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is widespread via the Commonwealth and that we can use our influence in education a great deal more than we do.
UNESCO provides a unique scientific global forum and we want to be in on that. In thinking about some of the changes, I made reference to the environmental challenges which Britain can face within UNESCO. In looking at sustainable development, Britain can benefit from and contribute to UNESCO's activities in the UNCED follow-up process, particularly as that is the only UN body concerned with science training, scientific capacity building in developing countries and with a sustainable management of environmental systems and ecosystems. I believe that resumed UK membership of UNESCO would re-establish UNESCO's cultural agenda at the heart of the UN system and would strengthen the ability of UNESCO to deliver its programme objectives. Rejoining UNESCO would enable UK artists and experts once again to participate fully in international programmes and to enhance cultural understanding in addition to maintaining cultural standards in the preservation of the national heritage. I could continue with argument after argument as to why Britain should be inside and not on the outside looking in, as was said by my noble friend.
I hope that the Minister will agree with those arguments. I hope that she will give us some encouraging news. If she does not tell us today, I hope that the Prime Minister will make a Statement within the next few weeks. I hope that he cares enough about the arguments voiced in this House to state that Britain wishes to rejoin UNESCO. He must recognise its importance for us in our role in the UN. His presidency of the Security Council in January of last year was extremely important. The Prime Minister now has the opportunity to show a degree of leadership in relation to our role in UNESCO which would be to his advantage. I want Britain to be back in UNESCO, and I want the Prime Minister to play his role in that.
9.10 p.m.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, the House will be grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, for providing us with this opportunity to debate an extremely important subject. I am grateful also to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate.
At the opening of UNESCO in 1945 it was written:
"Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed".
Coming, as this debate does, immediately on the heels of a debate on non-proliferation, I thought that those words are truer tonight than I have ever believed them to be before. There was only one error in that quotation. Of course, in 1945 we talked only of the "minds of men" but this evening I should like to add the words "and women".
It has been an interesting debate and it is too long since we debated in this House UNESCO, its role, and the United Kingdom's relationship with it. The last debate was on 14th January 1987. However, as some noble Lords have pointed out, the issues have been debated in another place most recently on 22nd May

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and 4th December of last year. They have been discussed more and more as a very energetic campaign for rejoining UNESCO has warmed up. I do not believe that I have ever heard the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, speak more energetically than he did this evening as regards rejoining UNESCO.
During the May debate, the Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Douglas Hogg, gave an assurance that he approached the question with a genuinely open mind. I confirm to your Lordships that that is still the situation and it is certainly my position.
Serious problems caused us to leave UNESCO in 1985 but I must point out to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, that it was not for the reasons which he gave but rather for the reasons given by the noble Lord, Lord McGregor of Durris. It does not come well from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, to make the remarks that he did about my noble friend Lady Thatcher when she was Prime Minister.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, it was the Prime Minister who signed. That is obvious.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, it is not obvious. I shall take on the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, as regards this matter. Although at that time I was not a Minister in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I remember looking into what was going on at that time. The noble Lord, Lord McGregor, was extremely fair and interesting when he gave an extremely full explanation of what went so totally wrong with that committee of 15 people as regards the essential question of freedom of the press. Of course the Prime Minister of the day must undersign our membership or withdrawal of membership of any organisation. However, what I was saying to the noble Lord, Lord Judd—and from the look on his face he knows that I am right—was that he was wrong in the motives which he ascribed to my noble friend Lady Thatcher. It was the state of UNESCO under Mr. M'Bow which caused us to leave in 1985, as the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, said.
I want to welcome the steps that Dr. Mayor has made since 1987. My goodness, what a task he had to take on because the organisation was indeed in a perilous state. The noble Lord, Lord Ennals, made a claim tonight that we might have hoped for the disintegration of UNESCO. He was entirely wrong in that statement; what we wanted was the reform of UNESCO. I shall return later to the stage that that reform has reached.
Many noble Lords accepted that the problems were real, but they still believed that we should not have left. The inimitable phrase that, "we should have stayed in the tent and not gone outside" was used. However, I have been told many times over by people in this country and by other UNESCO members that the fact that the United Kingdom—a founder member of UNESCO—found it necessary to leave acted as a stimulus to the reform process.
It is possible that the politicisation of UNESCO which the noble Lord, Lord McGregor, described so well—now a thing of the past—might have become a
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dead letter in any event as a result of the sweeping changes in the world's political system over recent years. I firmly believe that without our being outside the organisation, and yet still strongly encouraging from our position as an interested observer, the progress achieved in such matters as administration, management, budgetary improvements and programme planning and evaluation would have been much less marked than it is.
I should like to pay a very sincere tribute to Federico Mayor and his team of reformers. The noble Lord, Lord Rea, was absolutely right, they have made impressive progress. But that does not mean that there is not more to be done. Of course, I am well aware of the parliamentary interest with over 200 signatures to the Early Day Motion in another place and of the parliamentary interest in this House. However, I have to say that the progress that is being made is something that we need to keep seeing develop. I shall return to that aspect in just a moment.
I think that the aims of the organisation now are so much clearer and better. The noble Lord, Lord McGregor, described them and I shall not repeat what he said. Ensuring the free flow of information, a wider and better balance and strengthening the communications capacity is exactly what we always hoped UNESCO would achieve from the beginning. For reasons of, perhaps, lack of interest on the part of some member nations, they went diametrically in the opposite direction towards the end of the 1970s.
One of the reasons for our withdrawal in 1985 is now a dead duck. However, I believe that the new UNESCO is fully aware of the problems now to be tackled. There are so many newly-emerging democracies. UNESCO needs to co-operate to promote the concept of a free and pluralistic press in those democracies. They are not the only people doing that work; indeed, I have been very glad that through the know-how funds we have been able to give much help to the emerging democracies of Eastern Europe. We welcome the action that was taken at the Windhoek Conference of UNESCO in 1991 and at the Alma Ata Conference last year when declarations were issued in support of the free flow of information in Africa and Central Asia respectively. That is what UNESCO was set up to achieve. It is now being achieved gradually. But I must say that many countries both in Africa and Central Asia have some way to go before they achieve that free flow of information and a free and fair press. I believe that we should always be mindful of that fact in all the other decisions that we take about assistance to those developing countries.
I was most interested to hear the quotation given by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, about the General Accounting Office. I think that he probably knows that he has been exceptionally lucky to have a copy of the review which was presented only yesterday to Congressman Bermon in the US Congress. The State Department in Washington has a copy, but I have to tell the noble Lord that the United Kingdom Government do not yet have a copy, so I shall be borrowing his if he will allow me.
Lord Judd: My Lords, I shall be delighted to lend my copy.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I am much obliged to the noble Lord.
Of course, I understand that the document is broadly favourable to UNESCO. But, once again, it is pointed out that no progress has been made on decentralisation. I should like to tell the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the noble Lord, Lord St. John of Bletso, that there are still some outstanding reforms. The latter noble Lord said that there were fewer programme activities. It is true that some progress has been made, but noble Lords may be aware that, at the last executive board in October, a clear impatience was displayed by members that so much more needs to be done to concentrate the minds, settle the priorities and work clearly for those priorities without spreading the efforts over too wide a field.
There have been improvements, most noticeably in administration and management. Certainly, good work is being done by bodies under UNESCO's auspices such as the World Heritage Committee, the Inter-Governmental Oceanographic Commission and the Inter-Governmental Council of the International Hydrological Programme. Although we do not contribute to UNESCO's general budget, we have retained our membership of those inter-governmental bodies and we have been able to contribute to selective bodies such as these. They have been of benefit to the UK, and what the UK has been able to contribute has been of great benefit to UNESCO.
However, those organisations represent only a small part of UNESCO resources. That is why I still contend—I know that the director-general is seeking to change the position —that the organisation continues to lack sufficient focus. I am uneasy at a recent decision of UNESCO to increase by two-thirds its participation programme at a time when it has a cash flow crisis. At such a time it is quite mad to add 10 million dollars of expenditure to the participation programme which is not even properly evaluated. It is a programme where member states make bids to get funds for projects but there is absolutely no follow-up at all. If the money that goes into UNESCO, whoever contributes that money, is going to be properly used in the way we demand our aid programme money is properly used, there must be a proper evaluation and follow-up of the resources that are put in. While the noble Lord, Lord Ennals, may disagree with me on some matters, I am delighted to see that he appears to agree with me in this instance.
As I said, there have been some improvements. The draft programme is better, as is the budget document for 1994–95. But, frankly, past experience shows us that just publishing documentation—although that process has improved—is not enough because it has borne little resemblance to the reality of spending. Therefore it raises big question marks in the mind of even the most enthusiastic but objective observer.
The noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Rea, commented on the benefits of UNESCO to the UK. Of the £9.5 million cited by UNESCO as expenditure in the UK, £5 million went to meet the salaries of UK staff. However, those staff were not necessarily located in the UK and the resources were not necessarily
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deployed in the UK. Some of the staff were in Paris and in other places around the world. Therefore, the figure of £9.5 million is rather misleading.
I am aware that we benefit from UNESCO's spending and from the contribution that we put in and receive from UNESCO. However, I must warn noble Lords that the total financial benefits to the UK do not outweigh the cost of membership. The figures show that most of the money spent over the years has been spent on UK citizens employed by UNESCO. I am not yet convinced that resumption of membership will bring us great extra financial benefits. Perhaps that is not what should be uppermost in our minds. I believe that all noble Lords would agree with me that the principal concern is whether we are getting real value for money and whether we can truly improve the situation if we decide to resume membership.
Lord Rea: My Lords, I just wish to mention a small point. We referred to the financial aspect not because we felt it was important but because we felt the Government might consider it important.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, I believe that I have put the matter in context. I would say to the noble Lords, Lord Judd and Lord Ennals, that the American Administration have not yet decided whether to rejoin. That administration have difficult resource implications to consider which amount to about 55 million dollars a year. We shall take our own decision based on British interests and British priorities. We await confirmation of various pieces of information. We are certainly in close touch with the Americans, not only here in London but also in Washington and in Paris. There is no question of our hanging on to their coat tails or trying to beat them to it. It is a question of value for money and what we might otherwise be doing.
I turn now to that question of cost and what we might otherwise do with the money. Considerable costs would be involved if we were to rejoin, both on the diplomatic wing and on the aid wing, where funds are under enormous pressure. We estimate that should we rejoin on 1st June our contribution would be £4.5 million this year. In addition we would be required to make an advance payment of £610,000 to UNESCO's working capital fund. Any such payments this year would simply be redistributed to existing members under the UNESCO rules. They would not go towards projects which would not otherwise be undertaken, as I believe many Members of both Houses have assumed. In 1994, provided no change is made to the existing budget level, our membership contribution would be about £10 million. It would rise thereafter.
It is not only the budget which we must consider. There are also staffing costs. We would have to face staff increases in London and once again set up a permanent delegation in Paris. Such money for UNESCO would have to come from existing programmes. I would have to consider whether those existing programmes, which are giving us excellent value for money, are worth sacrificing to rejoin UNESCO, for reasons which may be sound on some

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counts. However, on other counts the situation has not yet improved sufficiently to make me certain that we would achieve better value for money.
We have had a good debate tonight. I am glad that we have had the debate. I believe that we have some way to go before we come to a decision. I am appreciative of the efforts of those who are so much in favour of rejoining. However, as an old hand in these matters, perhaps I may give one word of advice to the noble Lord, Lord Ennals. It is important that we should view the matter objectively. I say to him only that the follow-up from UNCED will be fully covered not by UNESCO but by the Commission for Sustainable Development and the United Nations Environment Programme, and some of the development issues by UNDP. Therefore, we should not claim for UNESCO a role which it will not have in the future.
Lord Ennals: My Lords, is the noble Baroness saying that the Commission for Sustainable Development will not turn to UNESCO for some of its scientific work? I understood that it would.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey: My Lords, it is a moot point as to whether it will be UNESCO as an organisation. Persons who contribute to the work of UNESCO are likely to be the same persons involved in advising the Commission on Sustainable Development. However, it is not a role of UNESCO
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to carry out the follow-up to UNCED. I understand that that is the role of the Commission for Sustainable Development, which will call on scientists.
There is a real problem, which the comments that have been made bring fully to mind. There is a real problem in the UN organisations as a whole of overlap and, from time to time, duplication. I am a great supporter of the UN organisations, but, goodness me, it would be so much better for the people they seek to help if there was not so much overlap and if people were not second-guessing others and trying to invent the wheel.
I come to my final remarks. I believe that we must wind up the debate. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, is tempting me to allow a further intervention but I shall not be tempted tonight.
We shall continue to review our position on UNESCO. I am grateful to noble Lords for their contributions and I want to ensure that all your Lordships' views are taken fully into account in reaching the decision. I believe that I have said enough for noble Lords to realise that the decision is a difficult one. We have to balance the excellent arguments advanced by noble Lords against our duty to gauge, in the light of considerable competing pressures on our resources, where our priorities lie and how the interests of the recipients of our aid budget can best be served. I shall do that to the best of my ability, but it will not be an easy decision.
House adjourned at half past nine o'clock.