Sitting of 28 April 1976

Preamble
The House met at half-past Two o'clock
PRAYERS
[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]
ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS
  FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS

    Rhodesia
    Mr. Laneasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make a further statement on recent developments in Rhodesia.
    Mr. Whiteheadasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement about Rhodesia.
    Mr. Biggs-Davisonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement about the latest situation in Rhodesia.
    The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Anthony Crosland): My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in his former capacity as Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, set out in his statement of 22nd March the terms on which Her Majesty's Government would be prepared to become involved in further efforts to negotiate a settlement. Recent events in Rhodesia can only have underlined the need for the white community to face up to the realities of the situation and to do so soon.
    Mr. Lane: As it is increasingly clear that the only hope of a secure and peaceful future in Rhodesia for both European and Africans lies in a negotiated settlement leading to early majority rule, has not the time come for a new British
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    attempt to stop the drift to disaster and to disaster and to restart negotiations—subject, of course, to the hesitation of the Secretary of State—for example, by calling together a conference outside Rhodesia to which the right hon. Gentleman could invite not only Mr. Smith and the African leaders but perhaps some representatives of neigh bouring States?
    Mr. Crosland: No, Sir. I have considered this very carefully, as obviously my predecessor did, and I share his view that no further direct intervention by Her Majesty's Government would be effective unless there were a prior commitment on the part of the Smith régime in Rhodesia to the four preconditions set out by my predecessor in his statement of 22nd March. Otherwise we should simply start off again on that long, stony road that we did not advance up but tried to inch up over the last 12 years.
    Mr. Whitehead: I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his new responsibilities, and on the elevation of Grimsby to be one of the chancelleries of Europe. Could he now perhaps accept that the whole House would welcome the Kissinger acceptance of the British Government's initiatives, and particularly the undertaking on the part of the American Administration to repeal the Byrd amendment concerning the sale of chrome by Rhodesia to the United States? Will not my right hon. Friend agree that there is now a case for saying to the Rhodesian people, black and white alike, that Her Majesty's Government will talk to any representatives of both communities there who will move for a settlement not by the cosmetic means now being employed by Mr. Smith?
    Mr. Crosland: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his congratulations. I approach this new task with great diffidence, and I hope that hon. Members will be tolerant if during my apprenticeship I fail to answer all their questions to their total satisfaction.
    On the substance of my hon. Friend's question, I entirely agree with him. Dr. Kissinger's speech is, of course, a major contribution to African policy. What it makes clear is that the views which my predecessor and I have been expressing on Rhodesia are not simply those of the British Government. They are not simply

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    those of the leaders of African Governments. They are the views of all the other members of the European Economic Community and also now the views, clearly expressed, of the United States. This is a major contribution—in my view, at any rate—to a possible solution of this problem.
    Mr. Maudling: I add our congratulations to the new Foreign Secretary, and hope that he has a very successful and very brief tenure of office. Will he confirm that it is really his intention to do nothing whatsoever about Rhodesia?
    Mr. Crosland: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and, indeed, grateful for the letter he wrote to me in the columns of The Times. It at least had the advantage that I did not have to send an acknowledgement.
    On the substance of the question, I adhere to what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on 22nd March. This is a matter which obviously I had the privilege of discussing with Dr. Kissinger when I met him last Saturday. It is my view that as of now, until the Smith regime accepts the four preconditions set out by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, a direct or personal British initiative would not contribute.
    Mr. MacFarquhar: I add my congratulations to my right hon. Friend. In the light of the very important Kissinger speech, would it not be wise for Her Majesty's Government at least to explore whether behind the brave words that Mr. Smith is putting out in Salisbury there may not now be a realisation that he is totally isolated in the Western world and that it is time to come to terms with the African majority?
    Mr. Crosland: I shall certainly continue to consider—and consider daily—whether there is a new initiative that I could take, or that Her Majesty's Government could take, that would ease the situation. But for the moment the essential thing is for the white community in Rhodesia to grasp the full significance of the Kissinger speech, which means that they are dealing not just with the British Government and the four presidents, but with an opinion now held by the whole world community.
    Mr. Biggs-Davison: Is the right hon Gentleman aware that, although we wish him well, he and Dr. Kissinger have made a bad start in Africa and that between them the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and the American Secretary of State are undermining every moderate person in Rhodesia and giving comfort to Soviet imperialism in Southern Africa? Since Southern Africa is vital to the European economy and to Western strategy, how does the right hon. Gentleman now propose to make his stand to defend those vital British interests?
    Mr. Crosland: Apart from questions of morality and justice about majority rule, which I leave aside for the moment, if the hon. Gentleman is talking about legitimacy in terms of national interests and in terms of the global balance of power, I suggest to him that. if the United Kingdom Government and Dr. Kissinger had not taken the line that we have taken, we should have undermined every single moderate black leader in the entire continent of Africa.
    Several Hon. Members rose—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. This subject arises again.
    Mr. Brocklebank-Fowlerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement on Rhodesia.
    Mr. Crosland: I would refer the hon. Gentleman to my reply to the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane).
    Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that in the light of Mr. Smith's response to Dr. Kissinger's speech yesterday, the Government should now recognise the apprehensions that are felt by all minority groups in Rhodesia, and not only white minority groups, as to their future in an independent Zimbabwe? In those circumstances, will he now publicise Her Majesty's Government's proposals for their protection during any transfer of power and afterwards?
    Mr. Crosland: No, as of now I am not prepared to go beyond what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said on 22nd March. As the hon. Gentleman knows, my right hon. Friend said that

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    any consideration of safeguards and guarantees for the white minority must come in stage two, after, not before, the Smith regime has announced its acceptance of the four preconditions mentioned in his statement. That still seems to be the right order in which to proceed, but this is something that I am keeping very much in mind in case the situation changes.
    Mr. George Rodgers: Does my right hon. Friend agree that Mr. Smith has proved a very slippery customer who has utilised every gesture and overture that has been made by the British Government to extend his period in power? Is there not a danger that even a progression of two years, as suggested by Dr. Kissinger, towards majority rule would be utilised for further procrastination?
    Mr. Crosland: There is no doubt that there has been a lot of procrastination on the part of Mr. Smith over the past 12 years. The "18 months to two years", as the Prime Minister put it, is not a period during which we think no movement should occur. It should be a period during which the elections to provide majority rule must occur. Of course, it will take some time to work out electoral arrangements. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to take a period of 18 months to two years. Should any change in the situation occur which alters our view, we shall still be able to alter it.
    Mr. Churchill: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that Dr. Kissinger's one-sided approach to the problem of Rhodesia, an approach that was made without even going to see the situation at first-hand or informing himself of the position of the Opposition, is widely regretted? Furthermore, is he aware that any decision to give economic assistance, either by the British Government or the American Government, to Governments which are countenancing the use of their territory for terrorist activity against British territory is widely resented by millions of people in this country?
    Mr. Crosland: The question of British aid to Mozambique has been many times discussed at Question Time. We have made it clear more than once why we think that the aid should be given. They are the reasons which were repeated by Dr. Kissinger in his speech in Lusaka
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    yesterday. It seems a proper stance to adopt, to be one-sided in support of democracy.
    Mr. Maudling: What representations has the right hon. Gentleman made to President Machel of Mozambique about the actions of terrorist gangs from Mozambique, such as committing armed robbery and murder in the British territory of Rhodesia?
    Mr. Crosland: I deplore that incident as it was reasonably and properly deplored by the South African Government. Such incidents are regrettable wherever they occur and whoever is responsible, but we have said repeatedly that violence is inevitable in Rhodesia unless agreement can be reached on a rapid transfer to majority rule.
    Mr. Maudling: What representations are being made by the Foreign Secretary?
    Mr. Crosland: There have been no representations—
    Mr. Churchill: Disgraceful!
    Mr. Crosland:—because acts of violence will be committed in different parts of the sub-continent by different sides as long as there is no sign of any settlement over Rhodesia. It is impossible to make representations every time an act of violence occurs. The lesson to be drawn from the violence is the need for an early settlement of the Rhodesian problem.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend look further into the interesting question put to him by the hon. Member for Norfolk, North-West (Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler) about closing the border between South Africa and Rhodesia, since clearly to impose the widest sanctions will drive home to white Rhodesians that they are totally isolated?
    Mr. Crosland: I will look into that matter, but I stress, as I did in answer to the Question, that there is a limit to our power or, indeed, influence in a matter of this kind.
    I should like to see sanctions tightened up. We constantly attempt that, but the experience of the last 12 years has shown that sanctions alone will not solve the problem. I regret to say that the problem has become not an economic but a political and military one.

    Foreign Embassies (Parking Fines)
    Mr. Jesselasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what representations he has made to foreign embassies in London concerning the number of parking fines unpaid by personnel on embassy staffs enjoying diplomatic immunity.
    The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Roy Hattersley): Every month a formal note is sent to the head of each diplomatic mission in London enclosing a list of the fixed penalty notices cancelled for members of his staff on the grounds of diplomatic immunity and requesting the head of mission to take appropriate action.
    Mr. Jessel: As 53,477 fines were cancelled on grounds of diplomatic immunity in 1975—more than 1,000 a week—can the Minister of State say why other people in London should have to endure worse traffic jams just because diplomats who ought to obey the laws of the host countries in which they are working are exploiting their immunity for a purpose which was never intended? What does the right hon. Gentleman intend to do about it?
    Mr. Hattersley: Other people do not enjoy the same benefits because other people are not covered by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which makes two matters quite clear. One is that we cannot distinguish between one sort of crime or offence and another. The other is that we must either sign the convention—every part and every aspect of it—or not sign it and thereby put our own diplomats abroad under grave threat and at very difficult risks. I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes and, as a London driver and occasional parker, I share some of the difficulties which he has described. But I do not believe that there is any alternative to the present system.
    Mr. Goodhart: As the most persistent offenders, apart from Cuba and Egypt, are the oil-rich States of Iran, Nigeria and Saudi Arabia, ought not we to consider some form of rate surcharge on the embassies of those States—[Interruption]— since the cost to London is £250,000 a year?
    Mr. Hattersley: I did not quite get the final part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question because of the unanimous support for it which seemed to come from both sides of the House. However, I am sure that questions of a rate surcharge have to go to a Department other than the Foreign Office. On the general application of fines, I think that there is nothing that we can do.
    Mr. Tugendhat: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this problem is probably worst in my own constituency and that there are sections of the diplomatic community who behave in flagrant disregard of the interests of the people of London? Does not he agree that, if he cannot do anything else, the Foreign Office could at least publish a list of offenders so that we might see which missions behaved in an irresponsible fashion and abused our hospitality so grievously?
    Mr. Hattersley: I am sure that on reflection the hon. Gentleman will agree that it would not make any contribution to good international relations or serve the purposes which we hope that missions in this country are intended to serve were we to publish such a list. What would most certainly be revealed by such a list is that, although there are bad offenders, there are other missions which behave in quite the opposite way and, although they are under no obligation to do so, occasionally refund the total costs of ignored parking fines immediately. But I do not think that discriminating between the good and the bad by publishing their names would really do very much to help.

    Young People (Exchange Fund)
    Mr. Steenasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if the Government will establish an exchange fund, on a permanent basis, with the aim of stimulating reciprocal programmes involving young people.
    The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Evan Luard): Her Majesty's Government are in favour of programmes for the exchange of young people but allocations of finance for such exchanges are made in the light of the available resources, the priorities of competing demands for funds,

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    and our cultural relations with other countries. Separate and reciprocal exchange funds would offer no advantages and might prove less flexible in application.
    Mr. Steen: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman has not got the point of my Question. I am suggesting that when he meets the Council of Ministers he should try to persuade it to set up a fund pari passu each youth population in each of the Common Market countries so that young people from all the Common Market countries can involve themselves in community work in each of the countries in proportion to the numbers of young people in each of those countries. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could—
    Mr. Speaker: Order. That is enough for now.
    Mr. Luard: I was fully aware of the point in the original Question. I am also aware of the proposals of the working group of which the hon. Gentleman was chairman. The Government are very much in favour of the maximum possible exchanges between the young people of the Community countries. We have to consider the best way of doing this, and the British Council is already considering the proposals of the hon. Gentleman and his team. We must await its report.

    United Nations
    Mr. McCrindleasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he or one of his Ministers plans an early meeting with the Secretary-General of the United Nations.
    Mr. Luard: Neither my right hon. Friend nor any of his Ministers has any plans to do so at present.
    Mr. McCrindle: Although I appreciate the reluctance of the Front Bench team to answer my Question, when the Foreign Secretary or one of his Ministers next visits the United Nations will he take the opportunity to reaffirm this country's support of that international body and draw attention to the concern felt in many parts of this country at the seeming double standards of the United Nations when on occasions it appears to condemn aggression and on others to condone it depending entirely, apparently,
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    on whether the aggression comes from a Third World country?
    Mr. Luard: First, I welcome the hon. Gentleman's support for the United Nations and its purposes—a support shared by Her Majesty's Government with which I personally agree very much. As to whether the hon. Gentleman agrees with individual resolutions, I am sure that he will agree that no country will ever find itself in agreement with every resolution passed by the United Nations. It is dangerous if the United Nations appears to display double standards. But unless the hon. Gentleman is a good deal more explicit than he has been, it is impossible for me to answer the second part of his supplementary question.
    Mr. Luce: On the subject of double standards, was not the recent resolution passed by the Security Council on 31st March condemning South African intervention in Angola after the South Africans had withdrawn their troops and without even mentioning Cuban or Russian intervention utterly one-sided and hypocritical? Will the British Government go to the United Nations and seek the withdrawal of Cuban and Russian imperialism from Southern Africa?
    Mr. Luard: I cannot accept the hon. Gentleman's criticism of that resolution. He should bear in mind that when that resolution was being put forward there were still South African forces in Angola, completely against the will of the Government already established in Angola, which had been recognised by a large proportion of the nations of the world, including Her Majesty's Government. In that situation, it was not surprising that the United Nations should seek to pass a resolution condemning the continued presence of those forces in Angola against the will of the Angolan Government.
    Mr. Ioan Evans: As well as reiterating our commitment to the United Nations, will Her Majesty's Government also work within the United Nations to bring about majority rule in Namibia and Rhodesia, especially in view of the new American initiative, and at the same time try to take off the agenda the item which has been there longest, which is the item to work to end the apartheid system in South Africa?
    Mr. Luard: On Rhodesia, my hon. Friend knows that we are committed to the principle of introducing majority rule and that we have asked the Smith Government to agree to this within two years. That has now been supported by the United States Government.
    As for Namibia, I agree that we should do everything possible to ensure that there, too, a Government elected and accepted by the majority of the people come to power.
    South Africa is a much more difficult question. But we are committed as a Government against the principles of apartheid applied there at present.
    Mr. Gordon Wilson: When the Minister visits the General Secretary of the United Nations, will he tell him that the British Government accept the general terms of Dr. Kissinger's recent declaration and that on those grounds it will not object to the admission of an independent Scotland to the United Nations?
    Mr. Luard: We support and welcome the statement made by Dr. Kissinger on Rhodesia, but that is irrelevant to whether there should be an independent Government of Scotland.

    United States of America
    Mr. Peter Morrisonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he has any plans to pay an official visit to the United States of America.
    Mr. Frank Allaunasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he has any plans to pay an official visit to the United States of America.
    Mr. Crosland: Yes, Sir. I look forward to accompanying Her Majesty the Queen and His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh on their State visit to the United States of America from 6th to 11th July.
    Mr. Morrison: When the right hon. Gentleman goes to the United States will he make sure that he gets his priorities right and that if, for example, he meets the President or Dr. Kissinger he will not require him to get up at 5 o'clock in the morning to fly to some out-of-the-
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    way airport simply to suit his own party political whims?
    Mr. Crosland: The ignorance of British geography which must exist in Chester is very remarkable. Lincolnshire and that whole area of Humberside is one of the premier parts of the country and, in my view, Grimsby is one of the most remarkable towns in the whole Commonwealth. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall get my priorities absolutely right when I go to the United States.
    Mr. Allaun: Will my right hon. Friend ask Washington to keep the CIA out of Britain and to stop it recruiting mercenaries for Africa?
    Mr. Crosland: I shall certainly consider my hon. Friend's suggestion very carefully indeed. There is a later Question about mercenaries.
    Mr. Amery: In any further conversations the right hon. Gentleman has with Dr. Kissinger when he visits the United States, will he bear in mind that Dr. Kissinger's speech in Lusaka had ominous echoes of Mr. Foster Dulles' attempt to pre-empt Soviet diplomacy in the Middle East in the 1950s? Will the right hon. Gentleman also bear in mind that many of us feel that he has encouraged Dr. Kissinger to cook a dinner which is more likely to be eaten by the Soviets than by the West?
    Mr. Crosland: Dr. Kissinger and I had breakfast together, not dinner. If there are echoes of a previous speech, they are echoes of Mr. Harold Macmillan's "wind of change" speech. The right hon. Member has close and cordial and familiar links with Mr. Macmillan and I imagine that he strongly supported that speech. I believe that Dr. Kissinger's speech was a major event for good in Africa. If he had not made it or had made a speech of a contrary character, the possible effects—apart from the morality of the matter—on the world balance of power would have been disastrous.
    Mr. Tugendhat: When the right hon. Gentleman goes to the United States, will he ensure that he meets Democratic candidates for the presidency as well as the Republican candidate? Is he aware that in a recent article on Mr. Jimmy Carter

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    in the Economist, a picture of the candidate showed him wearing a prominent "England get out of Ireland" button? Does that not show that Mr. Carter must have disregarded Mr. Cosgrave's speech to Cogress and representations made by the British Government to which the American Government have so far helpfully responded?
    Mr. Crosland: I shall seek to meet the leading Democratic candidates for the presidency. I certainly support the implications of the hon. Member's remarks about American arms for Ulster, which the police are constantly uncovering. I shall do whatever I can to strengthen the efforts already being made by the British Government to persuade the American Government to take every possible action to prevent this flow of arms.

    Namibia
    Mr. Formanasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he has any plans to make an early visit to Pretoria.
    Mr. Crosland: I have at present no such plans.
    Mr. Forman: When he does have talks with members of the South African Government, will the right hon. Gentleman impress upon them the importance of early progress being made on a timetable for independence for Namibia so that the world can avoid witnessing in that country the kind of bloodshed I now feel to be inevitable in Rhodesia?
    Mr. Crosland: I very much agree with the hon. Member. My hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has already referred to our view on Namibia, which is much in line with that of the hon. Member. Early progress in this direction is crucial if we are to avoid another of the racial situations which are proving so disastrous in Southern Africa.
    Mr. David Steel: May I offer the right hon. Gentleman congratulations on behalf of my party on his appointment? I do not know whether he has been to Pretoria in a previous capacity but, if not, is he aware that he will find it a distinctly less congenial place than Grimsby? However, is he aware that we hope that he will not hesitate to go there if he thinks that a visit to his opposite
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    number in South Africa would help the situation in Rhodesia or Namibia?
    Mr. Crosland: If I thought a visit would help to contribute to a solution of the racial problems in South Africa, I should not hesitate to go, but at the moment it does not seem that anything particularly profound or good would follow from an early visit.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: If my right hon. Friend does consider going to Pretoria, will he make clear that the British Government oppose apartheid with such vehemence that there is no question of any South African defence commitment being allied to NATO?
    Mr. Crosland: I would certainly make that clear. It is on the record and our total opposition to apartheid has been stated many times.
    Mr. Brocklebank-Fowler: What discussions has the right hon. Gentleman had with the South African Government about the possibility of closing South Africa's road and rail links with Rhodesia and blocking Rhodesia's access to foreign exchange?
    Mr. Crosland: I have not had discussions on this subject in the three weeks I have been in office. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but we have no particular power to impose policies on South Africa, whether we want to or not. There is a limit in practice to the influence we can bring to bear.
    Mr. Frank Allaun: In the light of six recent revelations of vast exports of arms from Great Britain to South Africa, will my right hon. Friend tell Pretoria there will be no more—either direct or indirect—and that this is part of the programme on which we fought the General Election?
    Mr. Crosland: Defence equipment is a matter for my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Defence and Trade. On trade in general, it has been our policy to trade with all nations, regardless of their internal political structure.
    Rear-Admiral Morgan-Giles: As part of his apprenticeship, as the right hon. Gentleman so charmingly put it, will he resolve to put British interests first and consider where we are to get our uranium and chromium rather than moralising

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    about the internal problems of other countries?
    Mr. Crosland: In my period of apprenticeship, to which the hon. and gallant Member has referred, I am new to considerations of foreign policy, but I have always assumed that the foreign policy of this country under successive Governments must be a reasonable balance between national self-interest and morality. The difficulty is in drawing the line where it should be drawn, but I can assure the hon. and gallant Member that I am not lacking in national patriotism.

    Israel
    Mr. Luceasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he plans to meet the Foreign Minister of Irael.
    Mr. Hattersley: My right hon. Friend will be delighted to meet Mr. Allon, but there are no plans for a meeting at present.
    Mr. Luce: As it is in the British interest to see peace in the Middle East, will the right hon. Gentleman seek an opportunity of telling the Israeli Government that, whatever the injustices they have suffered over the past few years, their policy of deliberately establishing Jewish settlements in Arab-occupied territory in contravention of United Nations resolutions is likely to exacerbate the situation and to increase tensions in the area? Will the right hon. Gentleman convey that view to the Israeli Government?
    Mr. Haftersley: I share the hon. Gentleman's view that to continue building settlements in occupied territory can only impede negotiations and the beginning of negotiations. As I hold that view, I am pleased to hear it articulated by the hon. Gentleman and to endorse it.
    Mr. Robert Hughes: Will my right hon. Friend seek an early meeting with the Foreign Minister of Israel to express disquiet about reports that Rhodesian forces are at present training with and awaiting shipments of Israeli-made machine guns? Will he make it clear to the Foreign Minister of Israel that it would be a great disappointment to many of Israel's friends in Great Britain if Israel were to conclude an arms deal
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    in respect of arms and equipment to South African forces?
    Mr. Hattersley: As I have not heard of such reports, I am reluctant to comment on them. I share my hon. Friend's view that, if such reports were proved to be accurate, they would represent a great mistake, and many of Israel's friends in this country, among whom I number myself, would be deeply grieved.

    Cyprus
    Mr. Atkinsonasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what is the latest position in regard to the Cyprus situation; and if he will make a statement.
    Mr. Hattersley: Her Majesty's Government hope that genuine negotiations at the intercommunal talks will soon be resumed. We maintain warm support for the efforts of Dr. Waldheim.
    Mr. Atkinson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the interests and future of the island are being sacrificed and that the island is being used as a pawn in terms of ageing oil politics, possible membership of the European Community and as a means, possibly, of gaining NATO arms? Is it not time that the British Government, as a guarantor nation, decided to take some initiative to help bring bout a solution and an agreement on the so far unacceptable proposals submitted by both Turkey and Greece?
    Mr. Hattersley: I do not think that any of the causes that my hon. Friend lists have contributed towards a failure to make the sort of progress that both he and I wish to see. The real basis of the difficulty is that old hatreds, fears and exploitations are now being played out in new circumstances. I assure my hon. Friend that Her Majesty's Government are willing to take whatever initiatives seem practicable and possible. Although both my hon. Friend and I can only decry the unhappy situation in which the island now finds itself, all of us find it much more difficult to suggest remedies that the United Kingdom could apply. Therefore, I fear that the situation must continue until the intercommunal talks make some real progress.
    Mr. Geoffrey Finsberg: What steps will the right hon. Gentleman take to ensure that goods in the ownership of Turkish

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    Cypriots which are now in one of the two British sovereign bases on the island, are returned to their legitimate owners? Secondly, what will he do to prevent the importation to this country of illegally seized Greek Cypriot works of antiquity?
    Mr. Hattersley: The second part of the hon. Gentleman's question involves a matter which needs a good deal of qualification and a legal interpretation. If the hon. Gentleman needs an answer to that issue, he must table a Question so that the Law Officers are able to give a considered judgment upon it.
    I understand the hon. Gentleman's first point very well. He refers to the problems associated with goods which are now in the sovereign bases. This is not a matter of Britain holding on to them illegally or according to its wishes; it is a technical problem rather than a problem of our desires. The sooner all the problems associated with what happened at the sovereign bases, thanks to the refugees which it was our duty to look after during the early months of the civil war, are sorted out, the happier will be the British Government in general and the Ministry of Defence in particular.
    Mr. Hurd: Is it not a fact that the bilateral talks to which the Minister has referred, which are taking place in Vienna, have broken down as a result of the resignation of Mr. Clerides as the representative of the Government of Cyprus? If that is so, do not Her Majestys Government have distinct responsibilities, as the right hon. Gentleman indicated, to take some initiative to get the talks going again, or, if that is not possible, to find some other way of making progress towards a solution?
    Mr. Hattersley: Unfortunately, Mr. Clerides has resigned, but new negotiators have been appointed from both sides and I understand that they enjoy the support of both communities on the island. The task now is to get them talking, leading to intercommunal talks. We are doing all that we can quietly and privately, which is often a rather more successful approach in these matters than publicised initiatives, to make sure that the talks begin and continue satisfactorily. If the hon. Gentleman has any practical suggestions, or if any of my hon. Friends have any practical suggestions about what
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    else we should be doing, I shall be happy to consider them, but practical suggestions in this area have been very scarce.

  EUROPEAN COMMUNITY

    Foreign Ministers
    Mr. Blakerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when he next expects to meet the other Foreign Ministers of the EEC.
    Mr. Skinnerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he expects to meet EEC leaders in the near future.
    Mr. Crosland: I shall be meeting the other Foreign Ministers of the EEC in Luxembourg on 14th and 15th May.
    Mr. Blaker: Does the Foreign Secretary agree that one of the areas in which the Community has the best prospect of making progress is the concerting of foreign policy? In that connection, will he pay attention to the situation in Yugoslavia, to which country concerted EEC and, indeed, NATO policy is desirable in view of the clear evidence that the Soviet Union is making preparations to attempt to put Yugoslavia under Soviet control?
    Mr. Crosland: I agree with the hon. Gentleman's general proposition that one of the most fruitful lines of development in the Community should be to concert foreign policy. Indeed, it was in the belief that that was possible that I first became a supporter of our entry into the Common Market. [Interruption.]I am still, on the whole, a supporter as long as the EEC allows the fisheries policy to come all right. I have no statement to make on Yugoslavia.
    Mr. Skinner: Will my right hon. Friend ask Common Market leaders to produce a joint list indicating all those occasions when other Common Market countries have contravened the Treaty of Rome? Has not the issue been highlighted by the recent shipping convention, which seemingly allows three Common Market nations to take part in an activity which contravenes the article about free competition at a time when we in Britain are being weighed down by VAT, surrounded by surpluses, and have a massive

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    trade deficit with the rest of the Common Market which seemingly British trade unions are now being asked to resolve by having a pay policy of 3 per cent. or whatever goes with it?
    Mr. Crosland: It is on the tip of my tongue to give my hon. Friend the latest house building figures, but I know from long experience of his deep concern for the rule of European law. I should like seriously to consider his suggestion.
    Mr. Marten: On Rhodesia and the Foreign Ministers of the Common Market, as all the EEC countries are in favour of a transfer to majority rule as speedily as possible—one of the few occasions on which they have spoken with one voice—will the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether Common Market Ministers agree with Dr. Kissinger's policy as well?
    Mr. Crosland: Common Market Ministers have certainly reinforced and publicly supported the Prime Minister's statement of 22nd March. As I understand Dr. Kissinger's speech—like the hon. Gentleman, I have read only a summary of it—it is very much on the same lines as the Prime Minister's statement. If so—I do not know whether there are differences in detail—I think that it can be assumed that the Common Market Ministers support it.
    Mr. Jay: Is my right hon. Friend wholly satisfied with the Common Market fisheries policy?
    Mr. Crosland: No, Sir. Even though people in Chester do not know where Grimsby is, I shall certainly make sure that other countries of the Common Market know where it is. My right hon. Friend will not be surprised to hear that I propose to take a personal interest in the renegotiation of the common fisheries policy, which is absolutely crucial to the future of the British fishing industry.

    Democratic Control
    Sir A. Meyerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what proposals he intends to put forward for effective democratic control of the EEC.
    Mr. Hattersley: The Council of Ministers, where the important Community decisions are taken, consists of Ministers of the Governments of the member States,
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    each of whom is accountable to a democratically elected Parliament. We see this as providing the main effective channel of democratic control at the present stage of the Community's development. The European Parliament can also play a useful rôle, as we recognised in our proposals to strengthen financial control in the Community.
    Sir A. Meyer: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is as unhappy with that answer as I am. Now that he has a new Secretary of State, will he make it plain that he has the opportunity of improving on the lamentable and purely negative record of his predecessor? Instead of clucking about in Europe like a wet hen, he should start making proposals to the people who expected the British to have something to say about democratic control.
    Mr. Hattersley: I am not unhappy with that answer, not least because I wrote it myself. I know the point that the hon. Gentleman is making. I must say that I fear it, not only as one who wants to be realistic about the EEC, but as one who supports the EEC and wants it to gain support throughout the entire Community, because people like the hon. Gentleman, who constantly want the Community to do more, without defining what "more" should be and the value of more, do the Community more harm than good.
    Mr. Raphael Tuck: Has my right hon. Friend read the various letters in The Times recently by prominent members of the European Movement who maintain that the European Parliament should have the power not only to influence the decisions of the Council of Ministers but to reject them if necessary? If that is not the complete abrogation of national sovereignty and is not federalism rearing its ugly head, I should like to know what is.
    Mr. Hattersley: I have read those views, but I do not share them.
    Mr. Dykes: Is the right hon. Gentleman worried that the momentum towards direct elections by 1978, or close to it, is now fading away? Does not that underline the importance of the July meeting of the European Council?
    Mr. Hattersley: I am always worried by metaphysical concepts such as momentum towards integration and other things which

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    I hear both in this House and in Brussels and which I find it difficult to describe or draw or give any quantitative value to. I am sure that most member nations, like Great Britain, are prepared to see direct elections when they are practically possible. I think that some other countries now realise something that we discovered a year ago—namely, that there are some technical and constitutional difficulties involved in preparing for direct elections and in ensuring that Governments who have committed themselves in Brussels and elsewhere have the support of their domestic legislatures. We have always accepted that position and we accept it today.
    Mr. Hurd: Following that answer, when will the Government put before the House practical proposals for a Select Committee, which the former Foreign Secretary announced in our debate on this subject well before Easter?
    Mr. Hattersley: I do not think that I should transgress any further. The next Question is directly concerned with direct elections, so perhaps I should leave that answer to the subsequent Question.

    Direct Elections
    Mr. Martenasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a further statement on direct elections to the European Parliament.
    Mr. Moateasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will make a statement on the present position with regard to direct elections to the European Parliament.
    Mr. Gowasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs whether he will make a statement about direct elections to the European Assembly, following the meeting of EEC Heads of State in Luxembourg.
    Mr. Hattersley: The European Council asked the Foreign Ministers to do further work on the subject and to report back to the Heads of Government in July. The Council of Ministers will consider the matter further at its meeting on 3rd and 4th May.
    Mr. Marten: May we have an assurance from the Minister that after that meeting he will come to the House and make a statement on what went on,
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    because this House is very much in the dark as to what goes on? Will he tell the House what the French proposed at the Council meeting?
    Mr. Hattersley: It is not possible to go into many details about suggestions made by our colleagues in preparation—[HON. MEMBERS: "Why not?"]—for negotiations carried on by the nine Foreign Ministers. Indeed, it has been the tradition of the House, accepted by all other than those who always make that kind of noise when I explain the conventions of the Council of Ministers, that the negotiations carried on by the nine Foreign Ministers are best not carried on in a blaze of major publicity. The idea that the French Government have put forward as perhaps the best solution is a Parliament or an Assembly of approximately the same size as that which has previously not been elected, and that idea has appeared in newspapers and is well known. If the hon. Gentleman wants a statement after next Monday or Tuesday, I shall be happy to make one. The record in the House following Councils of Foreign Ministers is clear. When a statement is not made, hon. Members complain. When a statement is made, they are bored. I shall do what I can to meet the wishes of the House.
    Mr. Moate: What is the British Government's reaction to this French proposal as reported? Would the right hon. Gentleman consider that one advantage of a smaller number, roughly the same size as the present Assembly, would be that, if an individual country did not wish to proceed to direct elections, we could continue to send the same number of Members as at present without any extra burden on the House?
    Mr. Hattersley: The Government have made clear that, when they come, we should like to see direct elections to an Assembly of a rather larger size than the present Assembly. We should find it very difficult to proceed to direct elections on the basis of the French proposals. That would produce a situation which was altogether unsatisfactory.
    As to whether some countries have to move at different speeds, that will be determined and decided on the ability of Foreign Ministers to come to agree on

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    a generally acceptable scheme in which we can take part on the same dates as the others. That is certainly our wish, but it may be impossible if the constitutional proprieties cannot be observed and the tehcnicalities cannot be completed.
    Mr. Jay: As a Select Committee is to be appointed to inquire into this whole problem, will my right hon. Friend assure us that the Government will take no decisions until the Committee has reported and its report has been debated by the House?
    Mr. Hattersley: I certainly assure my right hon. Friend that the Government's wish is to do exactly as he describes. But this must be a two-way process. The other Governments of the Community want to move quickly on these matters. Therefore, if we are to move as a Government one step behind the Select Committee, the Select Committee will have to carry out its functions with a great deal of dispatch. If there is good will on both sides, I am sure that we shall observe the principle that my right hon. Friend has laid down, but there will be pressures on both the Government and the Select Committee.
    Mr. Gow: Does the Minister understand that his answers are entirely unsatisfactory even to those of us, including myself, who voted "Yes" in the referendum last year? Does he further understand that crucial to the issue of direct elections to the European Parliament are the powers of that Parliament and the future organisation of the constitution of the European Community? Will the right hon. Gentleman tell us the Government's thinking about that crucial subject?
    Mr. Hattersley: I did so at the end of the two-day debate on direct elections three weeks ago—a debate, if my mind serves me correctly, in which the hon. Gentleman did not take part. It took me 10 minutes to describe the constitutional provisions governing the power of the European Assembly. Its powers are as described in the Treaty of Rome. They cannot be changed without the support of this Parliament, and I cannot imagine this Parliament giving support for excessive increases in the powers of the European Assembly.
    Mr. Atkinson: Will my right hon. Friend reconsider his answer on the international discussions taking place at the Council of Ministers? Is it not an absolute outrage that he should suggest that these discussions take place in private? Is not this some indication that the declaration of the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House that we were to move towards open government is to be very short-lived
    Mr. Hattersley: I think that on reflection my hon. Friend will agree that for progress to be made in international discussions, with nine Foreign Ministers trying to come to a consensus and general compromise, it is not always the wisest course either to announce what we propose to say at the beginning or to announce what we are prepared to accept at the end. Let me mention two facts. We have always been willing to make a statement after Council meetings describing the conclusions reached on those occasions. Secondly, there is the most absolute safeguard about direct elections. Nothing can happen without legislation in this House and the will of the House being demonstrated by its votes. There is no question of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary, or the Prime Minister or anyone else, doing something without my hon. Friend's knowledge.
    Mr. Hurd: Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is not much use his urging the Select Committee to make speed when the Government have not produced proposals for the Select Committee? When will these proposals be made?
    Mr. Hattersley: I hope that the announcement of the Select Committee's terms of reference, or suggestions for it and suggested membership, can be made to the House very soon. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House is present. He is well aware of the need for progress. I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that there is an announcement in the very near future.
    Mr. David Steel: Has the Minister of State discovered whether the new Foreign Secretary is any more open minded or far-sighted on the question of the method of electing representatives to the European Parliament than his predecessor?
    Mr. Hattersley: I do not quite understand the implication of that question, and I fear that if I did I should be unwilling to answer it. The simple position is that the Government feel themselves committed by their treaty obligations to hold direct elections, and that we shall do as soon as constitutionally and practically possible.

    Harmonisation
    Mr. Cryerasked the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he is satisfied with the moves towards harmonisation within the EEC.
    Mr. Hattersley: Provided our national interests are safeguarded, we support measures to remove technical barriers to trade and to facilitate fair competition. We do not, however, believe in gratuitous harmonisation or harmonisation for its own sake.
    Mr. Cryer: Will my right hon. Friend explain to the House what he is doing to curb the apparently insatiable zest for harmonisation by the Brussels bureaucrats, from dressed poultry to skimmed milk? Will he comment on his earlier answer on the votes of the House given towards Community proposals, bearing in mind that on the skimmed milk Order the votes of this House made not a whit of difference? What moves on harmonisation are we making on wages, which are generally higher in the other Community countries, and on holidays, which are generally fewer in the United Kingdom? Will those two matters be harmonised?
    Mr. Hattersley: On the final point, I doubt it. On the previous two points, on the skimmed milk directive the House proceeded in a way recommended and endorsed by the Scrutiny Committee, which said that it knew that there might have to be progress made before the wishes of the House were finally known. Notwithstanding that, the Leader of the House made it clear that there could be a second debate on this subject, and no doubt there will be. My hon. Friend also refers—if I may mix a metaphor—to the hoary old chestnut of eviscerated chicken. This is one of the occasions, as is so often the case, when something that the Community is doing is wholly approved of by the domestic Department. As I understand it, the Minister
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    of Agriculture believed that proposition to be in the interests of hygiene. It so happens, in the current state of national opinion, that the Community gets blamed for these things and is accused of reckless harmonisation. It happens to be a good thing, as are so many of the Community proposals.
    Mr. John Davies: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in accepting the comment on the subject of skimmed milk he is dealing with something on which there is no harmony at all, nor any harmonisation envisaged? Perhaps he will also recognise that by introducing the principle of the optional directive on harmonisation the Community is greatly assisting intra-Community trade and has done nothing but good in this field. Will he encourage the Community to proceed with this line?
    Mr. Hattersley: The new principle of optional harmonisation is altogether desirable. It helps to facilitate those measures to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade without bearing over-onerously on individual member Governments. I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman drew that to the attention of the House.
    Mr. Bidwell: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the previous Prime Minister quite recently described the common agricultural policy as a nonsense, or alluded to the nonsenses of its operation? Does he also agree that most people thought that there would be economic advantages in remaining in the Common Market but that no one thought that there would be much advantage from retaining the so-called common agricultural policy? What hope does my right hon. Friend hold out for a British contribution to changing the situation fairly rapidly?
    Mr. Hattersley: The House has been told by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture every month that we have made substantial alterations to the CAP during the past two years. We made them during renegotiation and have made them since. We intend to continue making those improvements which we regard as essential if the CAP is properly to reflect the needs of consumers as well as producers.
    Sir B. Rhys Williams: While it must now be obvious that to proceed to economic and monetary union as originally

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    suggested in the Werner Report would be futile, have not the last few weeks shown that it is highly desirable to co-ordinate our exchange rate policy and interest-rate policy with other members of the EEC?
    Mr. Hattersley: I certainly subscribe to the hon. Gentleman's first point—that the old concept of economic and monetary union was something which would never work and which has now been demonstrated as certain to fail. The hon. Gentleman's second point is more appropriate for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
    Mrs. Dunwoody: Is my right hon. Friend aware that his right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food goes to Luxembourg for an emergency meeting of the Common Market Agriculture Ministers tomorrow? We hope that he will strongly resist any attempt to change the rate of the green pound, as to do so would add considerably to the food bill in this country and make it totally impossible to continue a decent incomes policy.
    Mr. Hattersley: I assure my hon. Friend that there is absolutely no question of the green pound being changed in any way which does not observe the assurances and safeguards for British financing within the common agricultural policy which were specified in the Treaty of Accession.

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY (MEETINGS OF COUNCIL OF MINISTERS)
The Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr. Roy Hattersley): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a statement about business to be taken in the Council of Ministers of the European Community during May. The monthly forecast for May was deposited yesterday.
At present, four meetings of the Council of Ministers are proposed for May. Foreign Ministers will meet on 3rd and 4th May and on 31st May and 1st June, Finance Ministers on 17th May and Agriculture Ministers on 17th and 18th May.
As part of the follow-up to the European Council meeting on 1st and 2nd
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April, Ministers at the Foreign Affairs Council are likely to resume consideration of the Tindemans Report and direct elections to the European Assembly. Passport union is also to be discussed. Ministers will hope to conclude negotiations with Portugal and to discuss the resumption of negotiations with Spain. There will be preparations for an Association Council meeting with Cyprus and consideration of the negotiating mandate for Greek accession. Ministers are expected to consider the Community's external commitments, including the insertion of financial chapters in the Mashraq agreements.
Ministers are likely to consider the stage reached in the continuing dialogue between industrialised and developing countries. This will entail a review of the work to date of the four Commissions of the Conference on International Economic Co-operation, and consideration of the Community position for UNCTAD IV in Niarobi. Foreign Ministers will also consider the question of the siting of the JET experiment, which is to be the centrepiece of the Community's five-year fusion programme up to 1980.
Ministers at the Finance Council are likely to have their regular discussions of the economic situation in the Community and may consider Commission proposals for reform of the budget unit of account.
Agriculture Ministers are likely to consider amended arrangements for beef imports, the proposed Community sheep-meat regime, arrangements for New Zealand butter imports for 1978–80 and a number of proposed measures for improving agricultural structures. They may also discuss improvements in the market organisation for fish.
Mr. Hurd: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his usual comprehensive statement. Does he accept that we are in some difficulty about the discussion by the Council of Ministers of direct elections? The Minister told us earlier that the Foreign Ministers will discuss this subject at their meeting on 3rd and 4th May. Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that we have had no clear statement from the Government of their view on the vital question of the size which they will advocate for the European Parliament at this meeting? As this is of such

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importance to all hon. Members, particularly those representing Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, will the right hon. Gentleman ensure that before 3rd May we know what proposals the Government will take to that meeting?
Secondly, will the Minister say something about the emergency meeting of Agriculture Ministers which I understand from the Press, is being held tomorrow. It does not perhaps, by a few hours, fit into his statement today, nor did it fit into his previous statement. Will he confirm that one purpose of the emergency meeting is to consider the high rate of subsidies paid by the Community under the common agricultural policy to this country to help protect British consumers from the failure of British Ministers to sustain the value of the pound?
Mr. Hattersley: The hon. Gentleman again asks me to make a precise statement of the position we shall take up during what is essentially a negotiation, and I think that he will understand why it is impossible to do that. I assure him that the Government's position on the size of the Assembly remains as it was when the matter was debated in the House three weeks ago, when the Prime Minister—the then Foreign Secretary—made clear that we favour larger alternatives rather than smaller, because larger alternatives give a better chance of a proper distribution of seats within the entire United Kingdom and a better chance of the creation of manageable constituencies by individual European Members of the Assembly. We are on the side of size and will do our best to make the Assembly fit those needs and those justifications.
The hon. Gentleman is right in assuming that tomorrow the Agriculture Ministers will consider the present rate of the green pound and proposals made for a change in its value by the Agricultural Commissioner. Of course, the hon. Gentleman will not expect me to comment on the political remarks he felt it necessary to make at the end of his question. Let me assure him that the Minister of Agriculture will not accept any revision in the green pound rate—as I said in reply to an earlier question—which does not make sure that the guarantees of costs and advantages within the CAP which
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are stipulated in the Treaty of Accession are properly observed.
Mr. Spearing: In respect of the discussions about UNCTAD IV at the next Foreign Ministers' Council, will my right hon. Friend confirm that the new Foreign Secretary is also de jure the Minister for Overseas Development, and will he explain to the House the extent to which any decision taken at that meeting will bind this country in respect of negotiations at UNCTAD IV in a way which it would not have done before we became a member of the Community?
Mr. Hattersley: The United Kingdom will be represented individually at UNCTAD IV. While I hope that we can assume a common position with our colleagues in the Community on these matters, the word "bind" is inappropriate to the decision we might take in what I hope is the inconceivable prospect of the nine members of the Community disagreeing on what the decision should be.
Mr. Blaker: Should not trade Ministers be making an effort to concert policies on trade credits for the Soviet Union? Does not the position in which member countries are falling over each other to be more and more generous to the Soviet Union at the expense of their taxpayers need re-examination? Will the Minister invite his right hon. Friend to ask his colleagues to meet him to discuss that subject?
Mr. Hattersley: I can almost never resist answering questions which are in part concerned with substance rather than business, but as that question is concerned entirely with the substance of Government policy I must ask the hon. Gentleman to put it down to the appropriate Minister.
Mr. John Mendelson: Is it not clear that the Opposition—particularly Front Bench spokesmen—are again trying to belabour my right hon. Friend, who is making a simple announcement about the forthcoming business at Common Market level? Questions of policy arise which cover at least half a dozen Ministers. Should not the Select Committee on Procedure have referred to it the vital business of how to deal with policies which affect the Common Market so that

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a reasonable procedure can be established for considering all policies, instead of expecting my right hon. Friend to act for six Ministers each time he makes a simple announcement?
Mr. Hattersley: I am a passionate supporter of the point of view put by my hon. Friend. I perform this task each month because it is required of me under the Government's acceptance of the Foster Committee's Report on how the House can be informed of Government proposals and commitments to the EEC Foreign Ministers during the following month. I share my hon. Friend's implied comment that what the statement amounts to is an invitation to any hon. Member to ask any question he chooses about any aspect of Government policy. I cannot help wondering whether hon. Members find it a rewarding exercise, as I am not qualified to answer seven out of 10 of the questions put to me.
Mr. Gordon Wilson: If I may add to the Minister's temptation, may I ask him to comment on the fact that the renegotiation of the Common Market fisheries policy does not figure amongst the business for this month? There is only the merest mention of fish marketing. Does he realise that unless the fisheries policy is renegotiated there may be no fish to market? Will the Minister comment on the part played by the Scottish Office in such negotiations in the Council of Ministers?
Mr. Hattersley: Representing Her Majesty's Government, I propose to make a further statement about our need—I do not think "demand" is too strong—for changes in the common fisheries policy, I hope at the beginning of business on Monday afternoon. Although it is not a formal item inscribed on the agenda, I shall be under the strongest instructions to make a number of robust points. I cannot tell the hon. Gentleman of the involvement of the Scottish Office in terms of ministerial attendance on Monday and Tuesday. but It has been the practice for Scottish Office Ministers to attend those meetings when they believe that a Scottish point of view has to be put. My right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Scotland—a job which he
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occupied with distinction for so long—came to Luxembourg some weeks ago. I have no doubt that the present Secretary of State for Scotland will continue to take such an interest in these matters.
Mr. Leadbitter: My right hon. Friend has mentioned that in May the subject of the siting of the JET project is to be discussed by the appropriate Ministers. Bearing in mind that my right hon. Friend has admitted that he is not qualified to make a categoric reply to many questions, may I ask him to take the opportunity of assuring the House that the Secretary of State for Energy will come here and make clear what is the Government's policy? May we know what stand the Secretary of State will take, bearing in mind the serious interests we have in the Culham Research Laboratory?
Mr. Hattersley: By a happy chance this is a question which falls into the category of the 30 per cent. of the questions I am almost entitled to answer. I can assure my hon. Friend that it continues to be our view that the JET project should be located at Culham. We shall continue to press for that.
Mr. Biffen: Arising directly out of that last question, may I ask the right hon. Gentleman to say whether the siting of the Joint European Torus will be discussed at the Ministers' meeting on 3rd and 4th May or at the later meeting of 31st May–1st June? In the light of the motion that has already been passed by this House, can the right hon. Gentleman say who from the Department of Energy will accompany the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Minister at this meeting to ensure that the technical factors which overwhelmingly point to Culham as the site for this project are fully maintained and sustained in the discussions?
Mr. Hattersley: The first discussion is to be held at the early meeting, on 3rd and 4th May. It is not our intention to have a Minister from the Department of Energy present because it is the wont of Common Market Ministers to go over the general and sometimes political implications of a project before it is dealt with in more detail, and perhaps more sensibly, by technical Ministers. On this occasion there is a meeting of research

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Ministers scheduled for 18th June, when a Minister from the Department of Energy will represent the United Kingdom and will make the technical points to which the hon. Gentleman refers. On Monday and Tuesday it is a matter of making the political points about Culham. The hon. Gentleman will understand that perhaps argument about the siting, which we believe overwhelmingly favour Culham on technical grounds, may also have some political content. It is that argument which will take place on Monday and Tuesday.
Mr. Skinner: In view of my right hon. Friend's earlier suggestion that Back-Bench Members will not be allowed to know what is taking place in the discussions at the Council of Ministers, may I ask him to take advance notice from me of two subjects which I should like to see discussed by the Council, namely, the question of removing some of the coal stocks that are piled up in this country—30 million tons at present—and also, as regards employment, the suggestion that there should be retirement at the age of 60 for all those engaged in heavy industrial work?
Mr. Hattersley indicated assent.
Mr. John Davies: In view of the right hon. Gentleman's anxiety about being exposed to such a wide range of problems in this period, might I ask him whether he does not recognise that the very democratic form of control which he was advocating just now requires the House to be informed in this way so that it may be in a position to probe Ministers on these issues? For instance, without wishing to ask the right hon. Gentleman a specific question of substance, might I say that it would be of great interest to the House to know whether a change in the unit of account as applied to the budget would have a profound effect on the budgetary contribution of this country. It would be interesting to know what effect there would be in the years 1975–76 and 1976–77. It would be unreasonable for the House to expect the right hon. Gentleman to reply to that question but it is a valuable opportunity to be able to put it.
Mr. Hattersley: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his confidence. I am happy to reiterate that I am per-
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fectly prepared—indeed, I am under instructions—to make the statement for as long as the House wishes it to be made. I am also prepared—it is one of my principal duties—to ensure that the Committee which the right hon. Gentleman chairs and other organs of the House are given the opportunity of expressing their views on Community matters in time for them to influence the judgment of the Government. I have made the point because my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone (Mr. Mendelson), with some wisdom I thought. drew attention to the shortcomings of this procedure. If anyone has a scheme by which more authoritative answers can be given and departmental Ministers can be enabled to answer on behalf of their Departments, thereby satisfying the needs of the House in a much better way, I would not stand in the way of such a scheme.
Mr. loan Evans: As regards the meeting of Agriculture Ministers tomorrow, may I ask my right hon. Friend to convey to the Minister of Agriculture our views about the harmonisation of high food prices in the Market which are causing discord among consumers, especially when accompanied by a British beef mountain and a British dried milk mountain? Will my right hon. Friend suggest that the Minister of Agriculture goes to this meeting not to amend the common agricultural policy but to end it?
Mr. Hattersley: My hon. Friend knows that it is not within the power of the Minister of Agriculture to end the common agricultural policy. I am sure that he will take note of what my hon. Friend has said. I feel that much of the spirit of my hon. Friend's comments is shared by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture. I am sure that he will take with him tomorrow some of the sentiments which have been expressed.
Mr. Dykes: Can the right hon. Gentleman say when the Council of Ministers will get round to discussing the draft proposals for a European export bank? Will the right hon. Gentleman give a firm assurance on behalf of the Government that this will not be proceeded with further without a searching scrutiny of the operational consequences and the financial implications of such an institution?
Mr. Hattersley: In reply to the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question, I can say "Certainly not next month." I can assure him on the point he has raised in the second part of his question.
Mr. Jay: Since my right hon. Friend is representing the whole Government, at the Box at this moment anyway, may I ask him to give an assurance that Ministers, whether at this week's meeting or at any other meeting, will not accept further manipulations of the green pound which will lead to further rises in food prices in this country?
Mr. Hattersley: Yes.
Mr. Marten: As the Commission has now taken over negotiations on behalf of the United Kingdom with our old Commonwealth sugar producer partners, and as I understand that in these negotiations the Commission is fairly grinding down the faces of the Commonwealth sugar producers to reach the minimum price possible, may we have the opportunity of a statement from the Minister as soon as possible, perhaps early next week, following some of the meetings on the list that he has given us, dealing with this most important subject? Otherwise Parliament will lose all control and influence over the Commonwealth sugar-producing countries and their agreement with the Common Market.
Mr. Hattersley: I shall certainly suggest to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture that such a statement would be welcome, at least in some quarters of the House. I do not accept, of course, the preamble to the hon. Gentleman's question. Without the Community, there would not be the stable, assured market for Commonwealth sugar which now exists—
Mr. Spearing: It is not assured.
Mr. Hattersley:—and without which we would have had a period either of intense sugar shortage or of high sugar prices. That is the simple fact of the matter.
Mr. Atkinson: Is it not the case that the Minister is competent now to make a statement whether the Government will support the admission of Greece into the Economic Community? Would not my right hon. Friend also agree that with-
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out that knowledge it is impossible for the House to make sense of the sequence of meetings he has announced? With regard to the middle five of the meetings that have been announced, may I ask how sense can be made of them in the absence of any knowledge about possible Greek membership of the Community?
Mr. Hattersley: I am competent to answer that question, first, because it is directly relevant to my departmental responsibilities and, secondly, because our position has been made public for the past three months. Of course, we accept the accession of Greece to the Community.
Mr. Raphael Tuck: Can my right hon. Friend answer a question which I have asked on a number of occasions but to which I have never received a satisfactory reply? In the event of direct elections to the Community, what are the issues upon which such an election might be fought in this country?
Mr. Hattersley: That is a matter for the parties rather than for the British Government. As hon. Members, notably those on the Conservative Benches, have discovered, it is never very easy to decide before an election is held what are the issues on which the election will be fought. It will be up to my hon. Friends and me and people like us to decide the issues in the same way as issues in other elections are decided.
Mr. Peyton: May I ask the right hon. Gentleman to call the attention of his right hon. Friend the Leader of the House to the rather absurd position he has been put in today? Will he point out to the Leader of the House the need to set up the Select Committee on Procedure so that this matter may be discussed sensibly and reasonable accommodation may be made for European business?
Mr. Hattersley: I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House will have had his attention drawn to that point and will have noted it. The Government are prepared to go on serving the House as the House chooses in providing as much information on the subject as possible. That is our policy and that we shall do, according to the liking of the House.

COMMITTEE OF SELECTION
Mr. Ridley: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wish to raise with you a matter which seems to me to be important. The Committee of Selection is meeting in 10 minutes' time and will be considering its policy for appointing members of Standing Committees and Select Committees in accordance with the change in the representation in the House of the various political parties. That policy will be of fundamental importance to the future of the legislative programme and is a subject which is exercising hon. Members on both sides of the House.
Before the Committee of Selection proceeds to that task, it seems to me right that the Committee should be representative itself of this House. At the moment, five of its members are supporters of the Government and only three represent the Opposition parties. Indeed, there are no members of the Committee who represent the four minor parties which sit on this side of the House. That seems to me to represent a totally undemocratic situation and one which should not be allowed to proceed.
The Committee does not report to the House and have its policy approved by a motion, and the House does not have the opportunity to approve the general principles upon which the Committee will be proceeding. That means that the Committee could proceed to nominate Standing Committee representation which could be totally unrepresentative of the House. It is for that reason that it seems to me all the more important that the Committee itself should a least carry parity of membership from both sides of the House before it deliberates on its policy.
I have informed the Leader of the House that I wished to raise this matter. I merely invite him to try to get a motion on the Order Paper, perhaps in time for tomorrow, to appoint an equal number of Members from each side of the House to the Committee of Selection. I am sure that the Committee would be prepared to suspend its sitting until that motion had been carried by the House, and then we would all feel that we could see that justice 0had been done.
Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman gave me notice of his intention to raise
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this matter, and I am much obliged to him for so doing. The selection of the Committee of Selection is a matter for the House and not for me. Therefore, no point of order arises out of it with which I can deal.

MINISTERS' STATEMENTS (EEC MEETINGS)
Mr. Marten: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Yesterday, I asked whether we were to have a statement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer on his ministerial meeting in Brussels. I asked for that statement because, as I understand it, our Common Market partners agreed with the Government's economic policy in today's situation, whereas the Opposition in this House disagree with it and, therefore, with our partners in the Common Market. The principle of democracy here is that, if we get a conflict between the two parties or between Governments in the Common Market, we have a debate, and that is why I ask for a statement. Have you had notice of the intention of the Chancellor of the Echequer to make a statement?
Mr. Speaker: I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on getting in order. The answer is "No, Sir."

BLENNERHASSETT COMMITTEE (AVAILABILITY OF REPORT)
Mr. Norman Fowler: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. May I seek your guidance? The Blennerhassett Committee's Report on drinking and driving has been published today. A week or so ago, when the transport consultative document was published, we raised the question that it was made available both to the Press and to other interested bodies many hours before becoming available to hon. Members. The same thing has happened again with the Blennerhassett Report, with the added refinement that at 11.30 a.m. Mr. Blennerhassett held a Press conference at the headquarters of the Department of the Environment. It was, however, not possible for a Member of this House—I gather on the instructions of the Department—to get a copy of the report from the Vote Office until 12 o'clock, half an hour after the Press conference had begun.

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This seems to me to be an extension of a situation which many of us on both sides of the House regard as already unsatisfactory, and the position seems to be that a newspaper correspondent has the opportunity not only of studying the report but also of asking questions on it before Members of this House. Because of the deplorable failure of the Government to make a statement in the House on the report today, we are not having an opportunity of questioning at at all.
It is not a satisfactory position for hon. Members that they should have fewer rights than either newspapers or other interested organisations. This is the second time this sort of thing has happened within a few weeks with reports emanating from the Department of the Environment, so may we have an assurance from the Leader of the House that he will examine the position, because I believe that it is regarded as unsatisfactory on both sides of the House?
The Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr. Michael Foot): Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Through no fault of the hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr. Fowler), I heard that he was raising this matter as a point of order in the House today only a minute or so before I came into the Chamber, so I do not know the full details. But, on the general point that he raised, I can say that we are inquiring into the question whether we could alter the practice, which has prevailed for many years, of supplying this kind of document to the Press before hon. Members. Whether we can alter it I do not konw, but we are looking at it to see whether there is the possibility of doing so. The matter raises considerable questions, and we shall make a statement to the House as soon as we have come to a conclusion.
As I have said, I have not all the details concerning the question raised by the hon. Gentleman. But I understand that the document was in the Vote Office at 11 o'clock and not at the time he stated, so I do not think that his criticism arises there. I understand that at an earlier date certain allegations were made, and that these are being investigated.
Mr. Norman Fowler: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his state-
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ment and for his assurance that an investigation is taking place. We hope that such a statement will be made at the earliest opportunity.

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.
Ordered,
That the Farm Capital Grant (Variation) Scheme 1976 (S.I. 1976, No. 547) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.
Ordered,
That the draft Farm and Horticulture Development (Amendment) Regulations 1976, be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &c.—[Mr. Foot.]

CONSUMER PROTECTION (MOTOR VEHICLES)
3.57 p.m.
Sir George Young (Ealing, Acton): I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the law on consumer protection with respect to the advertisement for sale of motor vehicles; and for connected purposes.
The object of my Bill is to prevent motor car manufacturers from advertising their new cars at prices which bear little relation to what the public eventually pay. In particular, it would prevent advertisement of prices which exclude the cost of seat belts and number plates, both of which are legally necessary, or which exclude delivery charges.
The principle of the Bill is supported by the Consumers' Association. In its April 1973 publication there was a feature on hidden extras. On page 79 it said:
"seat-belts and number plates—each as integral a part of your car as steering wheel or headlights—shouldn't be extras at all: their cost should be included in the car's price".
It went on to say:
"Delivery charges should also be included in the price of the car, or at the very least, fixed and enforced by the manufacturer. You don't pay extra for a fridge to come from the factory to the shop. What's so different about car shops?"
The principle of my Bill is also supported by the Motor Agents Association. Its code of practice for the motor industry, drawn up by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, the

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Motor Agents Association and the Scottish Motor Trade Association, in consultation with the Director General of Fair Trading, states in paragraph 6.6:
"In principle, a price quoted should be a price at which the consumer can buy the goods. Manufacturers and dealers should therefore quote prices for new cars, whether in advertisements or in show-rooms, inclusive of the price of any extras known to be fitted to the car together with the appropriate VAT (quoting the rate applicable) and car tax."
That is not being done.
I also have the support of the Office of Fair Trading, with which I have been corresponding on this subject. In a letter to me dated 29th December 1975, the Deputy-Director General said:
"However, I remain of the opinion that in principle the display of prices which exclude part of the minimum sum which the consumer must pay in order to buy the goods or services concerned is an undesirable practice."
In the same month the Office of Fair Trading sent out a consultative letter which dealt with the practice of pricing goods and services. It said:
"At present some prices are displayed or advertised which exclude part of the minimum sum which the consumer must pay in order to buy the goods or services to which they relate. I think that in principle this is unfair to the consumer. If a price figure is quoted, that figure should be a price at which the consumer can buy; the quotation of amounts lower than this misleads and confuses the consumer."
It went on to say:
"Misleading pricing of this kind takes many forms …the omission from car prices of obligatory charges for delivery, seat belts and number plates."
I have seen a range of invoices which show that the so-called extras add up to a significant sum. On a Fiat costing £1,347, the delivery charge, number plates and seat belts came to an extra £56, or 4·2 per cent. of the total cost. On a modest vehicle which I purchased recently, seat belts, number plates and delivery charges came to £51·19.
There is no reason why car manufacturers should not be required to advertise their products at a price at which the consumer can buy them. Some cat manufacturers have a standard delivery charge which is now included in the advertised price. Number plates and seat belts, which are an integral part of a car, should be an integral part of the price. I have seen advertisements by an
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enlightened distributor which advertise cars at an all-inclusive price. It can, therefore, be done. But manufacturers show no signs of implementing their new code of practice—that the price quoted should be a price at which the customer can deal.
Some of the advertisements show how the recommendations of their own society are being flouted by car manufacturers. For example, an advertisement for a Citroen entitled "GS Comfort" states:
"Prices start at £1,898·91 for the well equipped 1015 c.c. G. Special."
However, this well-equipped vehicle cannot be bought at that price since the equipment excludes seat belts and number plates. Further, since the vehicle is locked in a distributor's depot, and will remain there until a delivery charge is paid, the price is additionally misleading. That advertisement appeared in the Sunday Times on 11th April.
In the Sunday Times of 18th April there was a full-page advertisement for an Audi. It stated:
"The Audi 80 range starts at £2,548."
Of course, it does no such thing. The small print says that this price includes VAT and car tax, but it does not say that it excludes delivery, seat belts and number plates. This advertisement flagrantly conflicts with the code as the omissions are not made explicit.
That advertisement begins as follows:
"Why is it that your car so often seems to use so much more petrol on the road than it does in advertisements?"
It seems to add insult to injury by making the car seem cheaper than it is on the road. I have since spoken to the company, which has agreed that the advertisement breaches the code and it has promised that it will change it.
An advertisement for a Renault 30 T.S. states:
"The Renault 30 T.S. costs £3,952·26."
It does not, since that price excludes delivery, front seat belts and number plates.
The Vauxhall Chevette is also advertised at a fictitious price, as are the Chrysler Alpine, the Vauxhall Cavalier and the Peugeot 104. But, to its credit, Peugeot includes seat belts in the recommended retail price However, the

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Peugeot advertisement for L states:
"At just £2,782 it will enable you to join the ever increasing group of discriminating motorists who are already 504 owners "—
but only if one sat in the car with no number plates or seat belts, locked in the distributor's car park. Few discriminating motorists wish to do that.
I shall not weary the House by quoting from any further advertisements, but most hon. Members know from experience that constituents who buy cars face an additional burden about which they are not told when they read about the cars in advertisements. I know of no other commodity which is advertised in this way, and I find the practice misleading and offensive. The industry is clearly reluctant to introduce realistic advertising voluntarily. I hope, therefore, that hon. Members on both sides will support this modest measure to introduce honesty into motor-car advertising.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Sir George Young, Mrs. Lynda Chalker, Mr. Anthony Steen, Mr. Peter Bottomley, Mr. Giles Shaw and Mr. Tony Durant.
Mr. Andrew Faulds: The hon. Gentleman may include my name as well.

CONSUMER PROTECTION (MOTOR VEHICLES)
Sir George Youngaccordingly presented a Bill to amend the law on consumer protection with respect to the advertisement for sale of motor vehicles and for connected purposes; and the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 14th May and to be printed.
ORDERS OF THE DAY SUPPLY
[18TH ALLOTTED DAY]—considered

LOCAL GOVERNMENT
4.5 p.m.
Mr. Timothy Raison: I beg to move,
That this House believes that the newly elected district councils in England and Wales resulting from the forthcoming local elections will best serve the interests of ratepayers and the country at large by committing themselves to—

(a) maximum value for money in local services and a rigorous management of their budgets;

(b) making the best use of existing housing stock, including the sale of council houses to tenants; and

(c) strict limitation of municipal trading and direct labour.

As the House realises, the debate is directly related to the local government elections next Thursday. I make no bones about that or about the fact that I regard these elections as crucial. We believe that there is a need to evict Socialist majorities and to replace them with Conservative-controlled councils dedicated to certain objectives—good housekeeping, concentration on essential services, the conviction that local government has enough to do without having thrust upon it new powers and duties, the conviction that it is not the job of local government to set up in unnecessary and unfair competition with the private sector and the commitment to a housing policy aimed at value for money and sustaining human aspirations rather than a paternalistic pattern of social ownership.
I wish to speak briefly about my general approach to local government. I have served in local government and I believe in it deeply. My outlook has been influenced by it in a number of ways. I feel deeply about it for several reasons. At its best local government is capable of responding to local feelings and needs in local matters, in a way which is more accurate and legitimate than even the best intentioned pressure group.
Councillors should not be apologetic for doing those things that they are elected to do and we should be grateful to them for what they try to do on our

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behalf. Local government has a great tradition. It has a Victorian philosophy of improvement, coupled with dedication and imagination. But it also has its bureaucracy and slackness over spending and manpower. Those must be watched and curbed, but I do not believe that they outweigh or override the merits of local government.
Mr. Andrew Welsh: There is tremendous dissatisfaction with local government in Scotland. Will the hon. Gentleman explain why the official Opposition made this debate exclusively English?
Mr. Raison: The elections next week take place in England and Wales. I shall be surprised, Mr. Speaker, if you were to prevent an hon. Member speaking about local government in Scotland on a Supply Day when the interpretation of the motion is usually fairly liberal.
Mr. Speaker: First, I always dislike canvassing and, secondly, we shall keep to the terms of the motion.
Mr. Raison: I stand rebuked, Mr. Speaker. I know that you will be as austere as ever.
Local government is important because our political system is based on a true democracy. But at a time when power over the Government's economic policy is increasingly being taken out of the hands of the elected body, it is particularly important that we should retain at local level an additional form of true democracy. Local government is therefore vital. If we believe that, local elections are equally vital.
I hope for a high turnout, whatever the result, and for an electorate which is prepared to cast its vote on local as well as national issues. As realists we must recognise that the latter looms large. The metropolitan and non-metropolitan district elections are also important because they mark a stage in the development of local government. They are taking place in the new authorities created by the 1972 Act.
The shaking-down period is largely over and we are at the stage when we can move on to consultation and the real advantages which can be derived, perhaps particularly in the strong non-metropolitan district councils but also elsewhere. In many parts of the country
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—in my own county of Buckinghamshire, for example—I believe that the bigger districts will be able to show the advantages of their greater clout, to use the fashionable word, compared with the old district councils. I think that a number of the metropolitan districts will be able to deal more effectively with, for example, housing within their new boundaries.
It is true that in time there may need to be further adjustment of the pattern of local government. Most of us recognise that the final decision about the allocation of planning powers have yet to be taken, and that perhaps in time we should look at the work of the metropolitan counties, the Greater London Council and so on. But the need now, as I believe the country recognises, is to get on with the job.
What is the background to that job? Inevitably, it is the public expenditure situation and above all the desperate condition of the pound. We know that local government is a large ingredient in public expenditure. For that reason it is legitimate to say that public expenditure is bound to dominate discussion of local government at present.
It is tempting to say that public expenditure is out of control. Indeed, I have said that myself, but it is not quite accurate, because what has happened is that this Government have deliberately engineered a vast expansion of public spending since they came to power in February 1974. As I think most of the country now recognises, it was an utterly irresponsible expansion for which we shall pay the price for years to come, but it was a deliberate expansion and in that sense it was controlled by Labour politicians rather than being out of control. It was a shameful episode in our politics.
The result of the refusal for so long to face the economic crisis can now be seen in all sorts of ways. It can be seen in the cuts and curtailments, such as they are, which are now being made, although they are sometimes cloaked. An example is the increase in public housing rent of about £1 a house per week which we are likely to see next year. It can be seen above all in our appalling public sector borrowing requirement, which is roughly equivalent to the total cost of our education and health service put together.

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The need to curtail public spending is the overriding fact in local government. It has led, under pressure from our side of the House, to the introduction of cash limits for local government. It has also led, although to varying extents, to local government looking more critically at its own spending. The result is that rate increases are down overall compared with last year. After two horrendous experiences in many parts of the country, this year is not so bad, particularly in the districts where the elections are taking place. Some have held over from last year money which they were able to keep in the till.
The fact remains that the increases are still very large in many parts of the country by any normal standards. The overall amount may be in single figures, although that is not very creditable, but outside the cities the bill for ratepayers, including the water rate is up by about 15 per cent.; according to the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy figures. It is a grim picture, even if the amounts are lower than the£40,£50 and£100 of previous times.
Mr. Jim Marshall: The hon. Gentleman mentioned two horrendous years. I assume that he was referring to 1973–74 and 1974–75. Is he aware that the amount paid in rates as a percentage of personal disposable income was less in 1974–75 than in 1938?
Mr. Raison: The hon. Gentleman overlooks the fact that a sharp increase in one year is what really concerns people. There were enormous increases for two years running, increases of more than 40 per cent. in my constituency. Many people were brought to a state of absolute misery as a result. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that, as I believe Ministers did at the time.
I congratulate the councillors and officials in many areas on their efforts to bring expenditure down. But in other areas Socialist councils in particular are still showing no recognition that, to use the words of the previous Secretary of State, the party is over. Indeed, it is being said that to some extent the Government depend on substantial Tory gains throughout the country if they are to implement their new public expen-
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diture policy, because they cannot trust Socialist councils to do the lob that must be done.
If local government is tightening up on spending in many areas, there is still a good way to go. In particular, there is no doubt that pay and pensions in local government have all too often left the private sector standing. I want to quote a short extract from the Local Government Chronicle of 9th April. Under the heading
"Local government pays best for lawyers and accountants"
it said:
"Solicitors and accountants in local government continue to earn more than their counterparts in private industry, according to a survey of salaries published by Accountancy Personnel Ltd. and Legal Personnel Ltd. on Monday.
Senior accountants/auditors at St. Helens MBC can expect to earn between£4,689 and£5,250, while the man in private industry would earn between £4,000 and £4,500; a cost assistant at Norwich would be on between £3,825 and £4,095, some £625 above the starting point in private industry.…The picture is the same for solicitors, with an assistant solicitor post at Lewisham LBC advertised at£5,000, a solicitor for Arun DC being offered between£5,000 and£6,000, and an assistant prosecuting solicitor for Suffolk CC between£4,689 and £5,250l; the equivalent salaries in the private sector would be£4,000 to£4,250, £3,400 to£4,250, and £3,500 to£4,000 respectively.
The loading in favour of the public sector is increased by generous fringe benefits, examples quoted being car allowances, loan schemes for housing, flexible working hours, and resettlement expenses."
The House may find the reading out of those figures a little tedious, but they represent an important reality which is causing a great deal of resentment in the country. Local government officials not only have higher pay but in most cases have the advantage of absolute security of tenure.
This is an important part of what is going on. It is not so much that one begrudges officials their salaries. No doubt most of them work hard for those salaries. But an imbalance between local government salaries and salaries elsewhere in the public sector and in the private sector generally will produce great resentment.
Mrs. Millie Miller: Will the hon. Gentleman kindly tell us when this phenomenon began?
Mr. Raison: I make no bones about it. It has been going on for the past year or two. I do not dispute that it began under a Conservative Government, but many people believe that it has got out of hand. It is up to the Government to try to influence what is going on. I am not saying that they should take Draconian powers beyond those that they took last summer in their counter-inflation policy. But they have influence, and in their amendment they boast of their influence. The country expects something to be done.
The previous Secretary of State adopted a rather ambivalent attitude towards public expenditure. He was very committed to public spending, but at least he had enough economic understanding to realise that his commitment to public spending could not be allowed to run unchecked.
The right hon. Gentleman had one achievement for which I pay tribute to him. I refer to his creation of the Consultative Council, which was a useful innovation. It may have done something to make the attempt to control local government spending a little more effective.
But what about the new Secretary of State, whom we see here today? Perhaps I could welcome him. I welcomed him the other day when he had a rather stormy first appearance at the time of the publication of the transport review document. I must say that my hopes of what he will do in this field are not terribly high. He has the reputation of being a pretty classic obscurantist old-fashioned Socialist dedicated to the "We know best" approach. I am anxious to give him the benefit of the doubt and also to give him a little advice as to how he might avoid some of the worst features of Labour's approach to local government in recent times. I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that our motion is designed to help him.
Despite the protestations of virtue, which are repeated in the Government's amendment, the truth is that the Government have treated local government very roughly and even, sometimes, brutally, in a number of ways. In other respects they have shown a serious misunderstanding of what local government ought to be about. There is, as the
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House knows, a phrase in the Government's amendment about
"a new and closer partnership between central and local government."
In fact, that is a mockery when one looks at what is being done. First of all they have weakened the power of local government in one or two important ways. The most obvious example, perhaps, is over secondary education. A Bill is now in Committee which alters the delicate balance of the 1944 Education Act. I suppose that this Education Bill is an example of this new and closer partnership. I also suppose that a ventriloquist and a doll have a close relationship, too, because, in this respect, that is what the Government are after. They are trying to take away from local government a decision they have been free to take since 1944.
They have also taken away the ability of the local authority side in the pay negotiations—at any rate, that was the case last year. What happened in the local government pay negotiations early last autumn was that the Government told the employers firmly that they had to pay the full £6 regardless of the Government's earlier protestations that that was a maximum rather than an entitlement. They told the employers that they must pay up and that if they did not, the Government would give them no backing. That is an example of a closer partnership but not a very creditable one.
The Government are also now proposing to place a difficult burden on the district councils by their new tied cottages legislation. I would quote briefly from the Explanatory Memorandum concerning Clauses 28 and 29:
"Clauses 28 and 29 place a duty on the housing authority concerned to rehouse a protected occupier or statutory tenant, on application by the employer, if vacant possession of the dwelling-house is needed in order to house a new employee, the employer is unable to obtain vacant possession himself by any reasonable means, and, in the interests of efficient agriculture, the authority ought to rehouse him. If the authority are satisfied they arc required to use their best endeavours to provide suitable alternative accommodation, taking account of the urgency of the case and the competing claims on the accommodation they can provide."
I believe that that places the local authorities in an impossible position. how are they to make this decision

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between the person who has had to leave his so-called tied cottage and another person who has been on the housing list perhaps for years and who has an equally powerful case for housing?
There was a letter in the Daily Telegraph yesterday from Commander Lock, the Chairman of the Association of District Councils. It referred to this problem. He said:
"District councils have already a general statutory duty for housing in their areas. They exercise that duty by deciding each case on its merits but—and this is important—housing stocks are limited and there are seldom enough to meet all demands. The more special cases therefore that have to be met, the longer will those on council housing waiting lists have to wait their turn for accommodation."
As I said, this places local authorities in many parts of the country—my own, for example—in a very difficult position indeed.
Equally damaging to local government is the Community Land Act. Above all, it would be if it were ever to reach the second appointed day. It imposes a duty which much of local government does not want. On the face of it, it increases local government powers but I believe that it may do harm to local government. First, it will certainly arouse hostility and resentment as compulsory purchase spreads. The powers for takeover for genuine planning reasons, after all, have existed since the 1971 Planning Act and, indeed, earlier than that. There is no reason for these additional powers and they will inflame feeling where they are offered. It will add to the bureaucracy and cost, and we all know about that.
It has also led to the imposition of land acquisition and management schemes. In spite of the notion that this is some sort of new strength for local government, the reality is that the powers lie in the hands of the Government.
There is a real danger, which has not perhaps been stressed in much of the discussion so far, that local authorities may use their powers to dispose of land they have acquired in order to block schemes which they do not like. In other words, there is the possibility that they will refuse to sell land that they have acquired to users of whose purpose they disapprove. There has already been an ugly foretaste of this possibility in an
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instance which was quoted in The Times of 12th April. This was a story headed "Councillors oppose new hospital" It said:
"Members of a London borough council are trying to use planning procedures to thwart proposals for a new private hospital, which they object to on the grounds that it may increase National Health Service staffing difficulties.
The proposal is for a surgical unit with 90 beds in the grounds of the Priory Hospital, a private psychiatric nursing home in Roehampton.
After modifications to the original plans, the scheme was put before Wandsworth council's planning applications sub-committee with a recommendation by planning officers that it should be accepted.
The committee, however, deferred consideration and ordered the officials to seek a wider range of views, including those of the area health authority and community health councils.
The decision angered some Conservative members of the Labour-controlled council, who say that the committee has allowed politics to interfere with what should have been a simple planning decision.
Mrs. Margaret Morgan, chairman of the committee, says she shares the view that the development ought to be stopped, but fears that will not be possible under present planning laws."
The fact is, as I understand it, that present planning laws make it clear that considerations affecting applications must be of a genuine planning nature. I ask the Secretary of State or the Minister for Planning to make clear that they will not countenance this sort of threatened abuse of planning procedures. If they are used poltically in this manner, they will discredit the whole planning system. I also ask the Secretary of State to make clear where the Government stand about the reports that there are discussions going on in Labour Party circles, and elsewhere, about so-called worker participation in local government. We had a rather healf-hearted reassurance about this the other day, but the fact is that the Labour Party is brooding about this, and there was a rather perturbing example of the kind of thinking going on in an article in the Local Government Chronicle of 23rd April about a man called John Daly, of NALGO, who attended a conference at Leeds University. It said:
"John Daly, on the other hand. considered that too many limits on the powers of worker representatives on committees or council would devalue the whole exercise. There was

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a danger that the process would thus be reduced to the level of the old joint consultative committees, which had not had an out standing record."
Mr. Daly went on to consider that:
"seats on committees and councils in proportion to their membership, and their powers should include the right of voting at committee levels even if not at full council meetings."
This is something which has aroused a great deal of anxiety in the field of local government and it is why I hope the Secretary of State will take this opportunity to set out the Government's views on this matter.
This is still in the hypothetical future. I now want to turn to the recent past, and, perhaps, the most serious damage to the spirit of local government which has been done by the Government and the Labour Government. I refer, of course, to the Housing Finance (Special Provisions) Act. It was an Act which let off those councillors who defied the Housing Finance Act of 1972 from both surcharge and disqualification and substituted the rent loss certificates. I will not go through the whole of this sorry story again, but it was a shaming example of a Government helping its own political friends who had broken the law. Again, I suppose, this is an instance of the new and closer partnership between the Government and local government that their amendment speaks about.
The Government's view during the passage of the Bill was that the odium for incurring rent and/or rate increases would be some form of deterrence. The hon. Member for Manchester, Ardwick (Mr. Kaufman), who was then Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, said in Committee, speaking of the councillors who had broken the law:
"they will all have to face the electorate in their areas to justify a rent or rate increase as a result of the Bill. That is no mean burden to have to carry on to the doorsteps and into the polling booths."—[official Report, Standing Committee D; 8th April 1975; c. 25.]
I hope that the electorate will now note what the Minister then said.
We are now beginning to find out where the law was defied. Rent loss certificates have been issued for the old councils of Conisbrough, Derby, Don-caster, Eccles, Halstead, Long Eaton, Mansfield, Skelmersdale and Holland. There may be others whose names have
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not yet been made available to the House. The names of the councillors who defied the law are listed in those certificates and I hope that, when they stand in elections, their electorate will take note of what has happened. After all, the integrity of local government is of paramount importance. The Government should be concerned to uphold it, not to diminish it as they did in that Act. The Government have not served the true interests of local government well, and the electorate should take the chance to say so next Thursday.
We know that national and local politics are now closely intertwined, but these elections are primarily about the composition of district authorities and their power and will to act on behalf of their communities. In our motion, we pick out three areas in which they can do that.
The first is to stress the need for maximum value for money in local services and the rigorous management of their budgets. The reasons for this are obvious enough. I have already referred to the public expenditure crisis and the soaring increases which have fallen on the ratepayer— domestic and perhaps particularly commercial. The commercial ratepayer has felt particularly bludgeoned by this Government over the last two years.
In the longer term, there is clearly a need, which we fully accept, for a drastic reform of the rating system. We await the publication of the Layfield Report with great interest. But immediately, and I am afraid for years to come, the need will be for the tightest possible management— not Scrooge-like reasons but simply because, if we do not have the tightest management, both the country in general and essential local services in particular will suffer. I do not say this with pleasure, because temperamentally I find it easier to think of ways of spending more money than of saving more money, but at the moment we must save.
As I said, many councils have gone to work, perhaps not with enthusiasm but very responsibly, on pruning their budgets, and impressive, savings have been obtained in some places. Some of them will not easily be repeated in future years, but at least a new determination to protect the ratepayer and the

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national economy can be seen in those areas.
In the local government debate on 9th April, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed) quoted some Tory examples. He talked of the staff reductions of 280 in Stockport without any redundancies having to be incurred. He talked about the effective use of private house building sales for new council house building in Sefton to save time and 20 per cent. in costs. He also talked about the impressive reduction of the district rate by 6·3 per cent. in Leeds since the Tory leadership took over last year. That performance has been outstanding. My hon. Friend referred to the speech by the leader in Leeds, Mr. Bellow. It seemed an absolute pattern of the style of thing that we should be going for today.
This kind of development has been seen in many parts of the country, but against this there are still Socialist authorities which are cocking a snook at the Government's pleas. As I have said, for them the party is still on. For example, there is South Yorkshire's refusal to listen to the Government's policies on fares and the continued extravagance of authorities such as Wandsworth, Hillingdon and others which are well known or not so well known, and the sheer glorying in spending in the borough of Camden. This last was vividly described in an article in the Evening Standard on 13th April by Christopher Booker:
"Three minutes walk from where I live, half way down Fitzjohns Avenue, there is a corrugated iron fence. It has been there for some years—and behind it is an acre of derelict land for which, three years ago, Camden paid the staggering sum of £520,000.
Every penny of that sum was borrowed. Nothing has been done with the land for three years. And yet the interest charges alone to keep that piece of waste land empty are costing the council more than £80,000 a year—or £1,500 a week!"
That is an appalling example of financial irresponsibility. Alas, Camden has no elections this year, but that example shows what Socialism can mean in practice.
Much of this trend is due to a kind of municipal folie de grandeur. We can see this above all in housing, especially in the astonishing story of the massive sweeping away of viable houses to be
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replaced by the barrack blocks of a few years ago. Alas, this is still going on. This inhumanity, which has been so well documented in places like Sunderland, from which the Under-Secretary of State comes, is persisting.
I am intrigued by the Government's amendment when it comes to housing. It talks of
"…a substantial programme of house building and improvement for owner occupation, renting and other forms of tenure."
I have been wondering, and I look forward to hearing, what other forms of tenure they mean. After all, they mention owner-occupation and renting, whether local authority, private or housing association. I suppose that this could be a reference to co-operatives or coownership—I do not know—but the other form of tenure that the Government have stimulated is squatting. There has been a substantial programme in that direction.
The Government are belatedly making obeisance to the need to make better use of the housing stock. They have raised the improvement grants rateable value limits after long pressure from us. The Minister for Housing and Construction even made a speech on this theme on 13th April, in which he went so far as to say:
"We shall also, in the course of the coming Rent Act review, be looking at the particular problem of securing improvements to private rented housing …"
That is a welcome change of heart compared to what he used to say about the private rented sector and social ownership.
But on one point, the Government are still obdurate—the sale of council houses to sitting tenants. Astonishingly, they persist in their flat refusal to allow new town houses to be sold, and they have done all that they can to stop the sale by local authorities with their circular 70/74, which said that it was generally wrong to sell them.
As the House knows, the Conservative Party is utterly committed to the view that council houses should be available for sale to sitting tenants, and we shall give every encouragement to local authorities which pass under Tory control on 6th May to initiate schemes for sale. When we were in power, we helped to stimulate very good schemes for sale and they produced admirable results.
Mr. Joseph Dean: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that, under the last Conservative Government, the figures for the sale of council houses dropped?
Mr. Raison: The figures for the sale of council houses reached a high level around 1972 and then dropped inevitably in 1973, with a deteriorating economy, as there was unquestionably—[Laughter.] This is the point that we have tried to make over and over again. In the latter half of 1973, the economic crisis began and the present Government took two years before they were prepared to recognise the fact. Things began to go wrong before the end of 1973, as oil prices soared ahead, which had an effect on the country's economy, and for the present Government to try to deny that that happened is shameful.
There are great advantages to be gained from the sale of council houses. For a start, it does not diminish the overall stock of housing and adds greatly to the overall stock of human happiness. Second, it encourages a commitment to the maintenance and improvement of housing, as well as giving people an added stake in the community. Third, it benefits public expenditure. The revenue from sales in 1972–73 was £351 million. This was down, by 1975–76, to £47·2 million at 1975 survey prices. What nonsense that Labour, nationally and locally, should be going all out to prevent it.
I hope that every council house tenant in the country understands what is at stake in this respect. Support for the sale of council houses is spreading on all sides, even among unexpected people such as Mr. Frank Field of the Child Poverty Action Group. In a pamphlet which was quoted in our debate on new towns he spoke of
"the growing sourness in the council estates themselves as tenants become more and more aware of the extent of the serfdom imposed on them by their council tenancies."
Those may be colourful words, but on social grounds the case for the sale of council houses is overwhelming. Labour's housing policy is now cracking under the twin pressures of financial crisis and human desires.
Our motion calls for a strict limitation on municipal trading and direct labour. On municipal trading the point has been made effectively in this House on several occasions this year, and the House has
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already given a bloody nose to the schemes of the West Midlands County Council and the GLC. It was right to do so. But it is still official Labour Party policy to encourage both. The Minister for Planning and Local Government reiterated the point in relation to municipal trading on 16th April last year in reply to a question on conveyancing, running taxis and other services. The Minister for Housing and Construction has repeatedly talked of his desire to see direct labour extended. He set up a committee on its operation but significantly did not include anyone on it from private industry.
The Minister has failed to take up suggestions in the, CIPFA report on direct works undertaking accounting, published last June, the recommendations of which provided for fair and decent standards for the use of direct labour. We believe that they provide a basis for ensuring competitive efficiency and that they could be implemented straight away, thus avoiding abuses, unfairnesses, and incompetence which so often occur.
We quoted examples of this in the debate earlier this year, but I will quote one more recent example. The magazine Building on 19th March had an article headed:
"Southwark loses £500,000 on direct labour housing schemes".
The article reads:
"A scathing 100-page report published by the London borough of Southwark last week reveals that the council's own direct labour department overspent by £1·3 million on two recent housing contracts originally priced at £889,906. Included in the overspending is a loss of £570,000 for which the department is held directly responsible."
Mr. Donald Anderson: Will the hon. Member put that into perspective by mentioning the loss made by the Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council, when I was a councillor there, on the World's End scheme, of several million pounds to a private contractor?
Mr. Raison: I believe that in that scheme there were very difficult industrial disputes over a very long time.
Over the last year or two a truly formidable dossier on the misuse of direct labour has grown up, and there is widespread concern about what is happening in direct labour departments. Astonishingly, as we see from the Daily Telegraph

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today, the Wandsworth Borough Council proposes to add a further 73 administrative staff to its direct labour division. What folly that is.
Let me sum up our case and the reasons why we hope and believe there must be a massive swing away from Socialism next Thursday. Socialism is suffocating the country at all levels. One Tory Slogan which I like is that of the Oxford Tories, "Let Oxford live". That catches the spirit of what we are putting forward. Socialism is leading to extravagance, paternalism, and to the relentless placing of the collective above the individual. It is denying far too many council tenants and others the chance of obtaining the housing they really want.
Socialism is concerned with the folly of expanding municipal activity for its own sake when every effort should be concentrated on the cost effectiveness and maintenance of essential basic services. Socialism regards commercial and domestic ratepayers as people to be milked rather than served. It is a worn-out creed and on 6th May millions of the electorate will have a chance to show that they are sick of it.
The House can give a splendid lead by supporting our motion tonight and rejecting the Government's entirely unconvincing amendment.
4.45 p.m.
The Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Peter Shore): I beg to move, to leave out from 'large' to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
'if they and the Government are committed to—

(i) the maintenance and development of the new and closer partnership between central and local Government which has already contributed significantly to the fight against inflation; and

(ii)sensible economy in the use of resources which affords priority to vitally needed services including a substantial programme of house building and improvement for owner occupation, renting and other forms of tenure.'

Before addressing myself to the terms of our amendment and before commenting on the matters raised in the speech that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) I hope that the House will allow me to
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make, on this the first occasion that I have addressed it on local government affairs, some general observations on local government and on the economic circumstances in which we all have to operate today.
The hon. Member in the early part of his speech—and what a long time ago that seems—paid his tribute to local government. I should like to commence my term of office as Secretary of State for the Environment by paying my tribute to local government and to the members and officers of local authorities who have achieved so much, often in very difficult circumstances and rarely with the recognition that those achievements deserve.
We all acknowledge the immense part played by local authorities in our national life and in particular in building up and maintaining the wide range of services on which so much of our social life depends. But local authorities have a special claim to our attention and support. Except for this House, local authorities are the only element in our constitution—so far—based on direct election.
Local Government in Britain is run and the services are provided not by prefects or major-generals or special commissioners but by ordinary people elected by their own communities and responsible to their electorates. If we believe in democracy, in the arrangements of our affairs by discussion, as I believe we all do, I am sure that we will wish in all possible ways to help make local government effective.
I pay my tribute all the more willingly because local authorities have recently come under intense and sustained attack. Much of it I believe to be unfair, although the reasons can be readily explained. From the point of view of the ordinary householder, rate increases in particular have been a major source of grievance. In the Press and on radio and television local authorities have been criticised because of the number of staff they employ and the size of their overall expenditure on local services.
It is, of course, true that both these totals have been increasing, but what so many of the critics fail to recognise is that this expansion of services is in the main a response by local authorities to public demands—demands which have been actively encouraged for the most

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part by successive Governments at Westminster. Consequently, we have seen a great expansion in recent years in education, in social services, housing, transport, leisure services and amenities, and inevitably employment in local government has increased, because so many of the services that local government provides are labour-intensive. And, of course, a higher level of services has to be paid for. In these circumstances it seems to me quite wrong to point the finger of blame at local government for meeting public demands.
Now, of course, we and the local authorities face far more difficult circumstances than we have known in the past. It is not that the wish to provide or indeed the demand for local government services has in any sense diminished It is that our capacity to meet new demands has been seriously, though temporarily, impaired. We have had to give priority to the urgent task of strengthening the economy, and in particular to defeating inflation, to reviving investment in industry, and to closing the hideous gap that opened up three years ago in our balance of payments.
As my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer has made clear, these objectives necessarily entail restraint in the growth of public expenditure—a restraint which in our present judgment must be maintained for some years ahead. As the House will know, our broad assessment was spelt out in the Public Expenditure White Paper published in February this year.
Table 1.4 of the White Paper makes plain that total public expenditure, which reached some £46,000 million in 1975–76, is to fall slowly to £44,600 million by 1979x2013;80. Within this total of public expenditure, local authority expenditure in England and Wales, which reached £11,100 million in 1975–76, is estimated to run at £10,300 million in 1979–80.
This is bound to be very unwelcome to all those in local government who see the pressing needs of their communities and who wish to make further provision for them. I understand and share their concern. But let no one assert that this is a brutal and Draconian attack on local government services, or that we envisage uniform and unselective cuts across the whole field of local government services. But the new constraints mean that we
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shall need very close co-operation and understanding between local government and the Government in the period ahead, and they also mean that we shall require a very firm determination of priorities—subjects to which I shall turn at a little greater length later. It is against this background that I now want to comment on the views expressed in the speech we have just heard from the hon. Member for Aylesbury and the views expressed in the Opposition motion.
I found the hon. Gentleman's speech extraordinarily discursive. It covered ground which, on the face of it, did not, as it were, directly relate either to the subjects which are itemised in the Conservative motion or, indeed, to matters which I would consider to be of major national concern.
I am aware, of course, that there is an election in a week's time. The fact that that election is about to take place may have had more to do with the nature of the hon. Gentleman's speech and the quality of his argument than the facts themselves on which he purported to comment. I shall not, therefore, say a great deal about his speech. What I shall do instead is to comment on the three propositions, which I assume were thought about and which appear on the Order Paper—propositions which the hon. Gentleman reached, I thought, at a very late stage in the course of his remarks.
He spoke about value for money. I am sure that that is a sentiment which no one in the House, or indeed in local government, would seek to challenge. Let me assure the hon. Gentleman that we entirely support his view that everyone should be encouraged to seek value for money.
The second theme in the motion is
"making the best use of existing housing stock".
That is an equally impeccable sentiment, but in this context there are two particular points which deserve further comment. I was surprised that in this context we did not hear more of the hon. Gentleman's own proposal for making, as he would hope, better use of existing housing stock. This proposal formed the theme of a speech he made outside the House a week ago, which I think it is fair to describe as a recommendation for some form of shorthold. I think that is the term used.

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I do not believe that this is a serious solution to the problem; nor do I think that it is a very attractive one. It is a variation of the plea that landlords should let property outside the Rent Act. It would mean the creation of lettings without security of tenure and with no obligation to rehouse when the short lease expired. We plan to review the Rent Act, but we shall certainly not go back on the fundamental and sound principle of security of tenure.
Mr. Charles Morrison: In the light of what the right hon. Gentleman said about shorthold, may I ask whether he has studied the scheme introduced by the North Wiltshire District Council? If so, would he care to comment on that? Looked at objectively, that scheme would seem to have the merit of providing an indirect security of tenure.
Mr. Shore: Yes, I will comment on the North Wiltshire scheme. I understand, incidentally, that it has now been taken up by some 40 district authorities. I regard that scheme in a rather different way. It is an interesting and worthwhile experiment and we are watching its progress very closely. It is, I am told, now several months since the Department asked Sir Dennis Pilcher and Mr. Derek Wood to undertake a study of the practicalities of leasing arrangements of this kind. As soon as we have their report, we shall aim to issue general guidance on such schemes to local authorities.
Mr. Michael Shersby: Before the right hon. Gentleman leaves the subject of shorthold tenancies, will he indicate whether he would agree with the proposition that in a number of cities, London and elsewhere, there are many thousands of people who require accommodation for a short period of time and who do not require the kind of security of tenure offered by the Rent Acts? For example, there are nurses and many young people working in big cities who want temporary accommodation and would benefit from this type of shorthold tenancy.
Mr. Shore: It would not be right for me, at this stage of my career as Secretary of State, to give a blanket and categorical reply to the lion. Gentleman's
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point. I was seeking to comment on this proposal in the context, as it were, of its being a major contribution to the solution of the general problem of getting the best use out of our housing stock. I do not believe that there is anything of great value in this proposal, and I see very many difficulties in it. It contrasts with the North Wiltshire scheme, because in that scheme the important aspect is that there is an obligation on the local authority to rehouse at the end of the leasehold period. That gives a measure of security, which other arrangements lack.
The other proposal put forward by the hon. Member for Aylesbury—again it is in the motion—is to sell off council houses. I do not wish to be dogmatic about this. We do not want to dictate to local authorites. But, as was made clear in our Circular 70/74, issued in April 1974, whether selling is right or wrong must depend on local circumstances and, above all, on the effects that it would have on housing shortage and housing need. Obviously, the situation in the inner areas of London is different from that in the rural counties. There must, therefore, be a proper and balanced assessment of local housing situations before decisions are made.
Mr. Raison: The right hon. Gentleman says that there should be regard for local circumstances, and that is a sensible point. However, he has taken steps in the new towns and in Circular 70/74 to make it virtually impossible in any circumstances to sell off council houses or new town houses. The present figure of council house sales is virtually nil.
Mr. Shore: The fact that there is very little sale of council houses in different parts of the country is not the consequence of the circular. Obviously, we have given advice there. But if certain local councils, in the light of that advice, think it to their advantage or think it right to sell council houses, they are able to do so. I hope very much that they will take full account of that guidance. If they do not, they will not be properly serving the interests of their people. But, as one of my hon. Friends pointed out to the hon. Member for Aylesbury, the fall in the sale of council houses had already taken place during the period in

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which the hon. Gentleman's party was in power.
Mr. Michael Morris: Still on the subject of new towns—
Mr. Shore: I shall not give way to the hon. Gentleman now. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Planning and Local Government has the most enormous expertise in new towns policy. I shall ask him specifically to deal with this question when he winds up the debate.
The third part of the Opposition motion calls for a strict limitation on municipal trading and direct labour. This is predictable stuff, and I do not propose to spend time going over ground so heavily trodden in past debates. I do not recall any major initiatives on the practice of direct labour when the Conservatives were last in power, apart from the miserable decision not to allow direct labour departments to build houses for sale. Our view is that local authorities know best their own requirements in this respect, and we propose to make certain changes so that direct labour departments may operate across the boundaries of their own authorities where this will lead to a better use of resources.
On municipal trading, I suspect that there is a more serious division between the two sides of the House. The division is between those who believe that local authorities should be encouraged to expand their activities for the good of the community in a spirit of initiative and enterprise and those who wish to see authorities limited to a list of closely defined functions. If the speech of the hon. Member for Aylesbury is any guide, gone from the Opposition Benches is that spirit which inspired local authorities in the past to develop essential services like gas, water and electricity or which led Neville Chamberlain to work for the establishment in Birmingham of the Municipal Bank. Of course, local authority enterprise must be organised on sound and efficient lines, but let us look forward to its expansion, not its restriction.
So much for what is in the Opposition motion. But what I find much more interesting and much more significant is what was omitted. First, I am sure that the House and the country will have noted
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that in the Opposition's advice to the newly-elected councils no reference is made whatever to the need to add to the housing stock. There is not a word about new house building. We know that during their last period in office local authority house building fell year by year until, in 1973, they achieved the lowest figure of housing completions that we had known in any year since 1947 and the lowest level of public housing starts since long before the Second World War. Are we now to infer that their policy is to improve still further on their previous performance by building still less? Indeed, are we right to deduce that local authority house building is to be the prime target of Conservative public expenditure cuts if they were to be returned to power?
I pause. The hon. Member for Aylesbury has his moment. Am I right in assuming that the absence of any mention of the need to expand the stock of houses in the Opposition's official motion is evidence of the fact that it is their intention to build still fewer houses than they did in 1973 and to focus upon house building one of the main thrusts of their attack upon public expenditure?
Obviously, there is to be no response from the hon. Member for Aylesbury. In that case, we are entitled to draw appropriate conclusions.
The second omission from the hon. Gentleman's motion—I assume that he was responsible for it—follows closely from the first. It is the failure of the Conservative Opposition yet again to take this opportunity of telling the nation just where their local authority expenditure should be cut. I understand very well why Opposition spokesmen are shy about these matters, but it really is not good enough for the Shadow Chancellor to complain week after week about the excesses in public expenditure without telling the country, himself or through his hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury the orders of magnitude which he proposes to retrench in local authority spending.
Of course, we know the drift of the Shadow Chancellor's thinking. In the public expenditure debate on 9th March 1976, he mentioned the figure of £4 billion and in his list of specific complaints he included housing subsidies and

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the acquisition of building land. This is a splendid opportunity for the hon. Member for Aylesbury to tell us precisely what he and his colleagues intend. We are not prepared to be lectured about public spending in general and nor shall we take notice of particular complaints unless and until the honourable Gentleman and his colleagues have the courage to tell us what it is that they really propose.
Let us have an end to waffle and cant of the kind that we heard earlier this afternoon and let us know what is really in the mind of the hon. Member for Aylesbury. I agree with the Shadow Chancellor, who has addressed himself to these matters before, that this is a time when the political parties have to come clean. They have to tell the people what it is that they believe has to be done.
We have said what we think, and we have backed our judgment. We have put it in print. We have gone through a long process of debate. We are now entitled to have a response from the Opposition.
Mr. Raison: Will the right hon. Gentleman give just one example of the candour of which he boasts? Will he confirm that the level of rent increase that he expects in the next financial year in respect of local authority housing is about £1?
Mr. Shore: The answer to that question depends upon a number of factors which we cannot at this stage turn into an answer in terms of rents. What we have done is to indicate what our approach is to housing subsidies in the public expenditure White Paper.
Mr. Joseph Dean: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Housing Finance Act imposed initially an increase of £1 when inflation was running at a far lower rate than it is today? Is it not unworthy of Opposition spokesmen to be highlighting a £1 increase next year with the rate of inflation running at the level that it is today?
Mr. Shore: The one factor of which I am certain—and this is part of the reason for the difficulty in expressing public expenditure figures in terms of actual rent increases—is that the level of inflation is one of the unknowns in the period lying ahead of us.
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I now turn to our amendment. The first point we stress is the need for a new and closer partnership between the Government and local govenment and this is not a matter to be derided. In the past there have, of course, been regular and detailed discussions on the level and distribution of the rate support grant, but only perfunctory exchanges between the Government and local authorities on the planning of national expenditure. It is our aim to bring local government fully into national expenditure planning—into the annual PESC exercise—and at a time sufficiently in advance of a decision for the views of local government to be taken into account.
This is the reason why we set up last year the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance which provides a forum for a regular discussion between Ministers and elected members and local authorities. This has, I believe, already shown its worth. I am grateful for the tribute the hon. Member for Aylesbury paid to my predecessor on this matter.
There are three particular areas where I think we have all benefited. First, it has greatly eased the task of achieving the desired changes in public expenditure. Last year we had to stem the rapid increase in local authority expenditure. This was achieved, but I do not think that it would have been possible to have brought about so marked a change in trend without the discussions in the consultative council and the whole-hearted co-operation of the local authorities that ensued.
Secondly, we have had welcome and effective co-operation from the local authorities in our efforts to keep the rates down. This, of course, is an essential part of our general counter-inflation strategy. On average we expect domestic rates to rise by no more than 10 per cent. this year. Just how great an achievement that is can be seen by recalling the level of domestic rate increases in recent years—13 per cent. in 1971–72, 14 per cent. in 1972–73, 9 per cent. in 1973–74, 17 per cent. in 1974–73 and the really serious inflation-reflecting 34 per cent. last year.
The rate support grant settlement for this year and its expenditure base were the subject of full discussion in the consultative council. Local authorities knew what the Government wanted; we knew

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their difficulties. We managed together to achieve what most will regard as a fair deal for the ratepayers.
Thirdly, we have sought local authority co-operation in the stabilisation of man-power. We have agreed with local authorities through the consultative council a joint exercise to watch and examine manpower in local government. The purpose of this exercise is to supply a more comprehensive and more up-to-date information on a quarterly basis about total employment in local government.
The joint watch was established only six months ago, so it would be premature to draw any firm conclusions as to its effects, but the latest returns published on 14th April show a stabilisation of local government manpower. We have also just launched a joint manpower study Its purpose is not to tell individual authorities how they should organise their own affairs, but to ensure that all have ready access to the benefits of collective local authority advice when they are making management decisions which involve manpower. My right hon. Friend the Minister for Planning and Local Government and I will continue to discuss in the council the large financial questions that are of interest to the Government and local government. One of the most important of these will undoubtedly be the consideration of the Layfield Report, which I hope to see published very soon.
I now turn to the second of our amendments—the crucial question of priorities. Those who have studied the public expenditure White Paper will recognise that within the overall restraints on public expenditure we have preserved services to which we attach high importance at the expense, inevitably, of others. Road construction and maintenance have been obvious casualties. The transport policy review again shows our approach in seeking to establish priorities. We asked in the document which has now gone out for consultation, a number of questions to enable us to choose specific priorities, to help to decide where we must concentrate our resources to the best effect.
In the distribution of rate support grant we are also seeking to establish priorities. over the past two years, we
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have worked to bring about a distribution of the grant which will favour areas of greatest stress, where the gravest social problems lie—the big conurbations. Inevitably other areas have done less well. Housing has been—and rightly so—our first priority. Public expenditure on housing now amounts to £4,000 million—a very substantial increase on the 1973–4 figure of£3,330 million.
I have already referred to the lamentable total of new starts in 1973. Since then, there has been a remarkable and welcome change. New starts in the public sector rose from 113,000 in 1973 to 147,000 in 1974 to 174,000 in 1975. We have achieved this by the encouragement of local authorities and the provision of adequate Exchequer support for new building. Nor has this marked improvement been achieved at the expense of private sector construction.
We inherited a serious slump in private housebuilding. A mortgage famine had developed and the confidence of the private housebuilder had been seriously shaken. From the boom of 1972 and early 1973 new starts began to fall away dramatically towards the end of 1973, with the result that starts were only 105,000 in 1974.
We acted by encouraging local authorities to buy the newly completed houses which were standing empty for want of buyers and by providing £500 million in lending facilities for the building societies. These loans prevented seemingly inevitable increases in the mortgage interest rate and provided more funds for lending. They were the first step in the stabilisation arrangements that we have continued to develop with the building societies. We can now see confidence returning. We look forward to about 160,000 private sector starts in 1976.
These figures expose the absurd charge that the Labour Government are indifferent to owner-occupation. The percentage of housing in owner-occupation grew substantially during the period of the 1964–70 Labour Government when for the first time owner-occupation reached 50 per cent. of the housing stock. It is now 53 per cent. and we hope to see it continue to grow.
We must not only expand the housing stock, but make the best use of existing

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housing. This means improving it. In fact we are now spending three times as much in improving local authority housing as the Conservative Government did five years ago.
The programme for municipalisation is also contributing to the best use of housing stock. Indeed, it is an essential part of the machinery we must use to improve living conditions in the inner urban areas. It is a policy not of indiscriminate acquisition, but of using resources primarily for the acquisition of older private housing in the areas of housing stress in order to secure its improvement and to bring empty properties into use.
Mr. Shersby: Can the Secretary of State tell us how the municipalisation programme has provided a net housing gain?
Mr. Shore: By bringing into use houses which were previously unoccupied and in many cases helping to make habitable houses which were previously uninhabitable.
I fully recognise the difficulties now faced by local authorities and the Government, but I do not think we should approach our task in a spirit of gloom. Resources available fall short of what we wish, but compared with the expenditure levels of only a few years ago there are far more resources for the councils that will be elected next week and the people they serve.
Providing we avoid the savage and mindless cuts implicit in the Opposition motion and in the whole Opposition approach, the new councils can look forward to a period of great opportunities to serve their communities and to provide the vital services on which the standard of life of ordinary people depends.
5.21 p.m.
Mr. Wyn Roberts: I add my welcome to that already extended to the Secretary of State in his new office. Perhaps the welcome would be less muted if I had detected some glimmers of a change of policy on the part of the Government. Perhaps it is early days to expect such changes, but they may come in the light of experience.
I am bound to tell the right hon. Gentleman that the Opposition have spelt out
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clearly their thoughts on public expenditure cuts by their opposition to the Community Land Act and to other measures which the Government have put forward. They have all been very costly measures.
I shall say a few words about local government in Wales, which is in a more agitated state than local government in the rest of the United Kingdom. The agitation has arisen largely because of the implications of the Government's devolution proposals. There is general agreement that if the proposals are implemented we shall have one tier of government too many in Wales.
Those who favour devolution argue for further local government reforms, by which they mean, in effect, the abolition of the county councils and the setting up of unitary authorities. It is ironic, to say the least, that the devolution proposals, which were inspired by a desire to bring Government closer to the people, should have as one of their first consequences the corollary that a tier of local government will have to be eliminated which is very much closer to the people than any tier of regional government can ever be.
The fear that the county authorities will have to be abolished in the event of devolution is very real. That will be readily agreed by those who have read the county councils' submissions on devolution. I shall quote the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Rhondda (Mr. Jones), who said:
"There will be no diminution of local government power and influence."—[Official Report, Welsh Grand Committee, 7th April 1976; c. 91.]
The Welsh Counties Committee takes a very different view. It foresees that the counties' powers will be eroded, and that the powers that might have been given to them will be given to other institutions responsible to a Welsh Assembly.
I feel that the Government will not propose further reform of local government before implementing the devolution proposals. They will be content that we shall be over-governed while the Welsh Assembly is establishing itself. Thereafter, some changes are clearly inevitable if we are not to be one of the most over-governed countries in Europe. The changes are bound to be at the expense of the existing local authorities.

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In the past, the Opposition have expressed the view that Wales needs an indirectly elected council which, as one of its functions, has the task of coordinating the local authorities, of bringing them together and acting as an apex for them. There is still a great deal to be said for that proposal. It would certainly help to avoid a conflict between regional and local authorities, a conflict that seems inevitable under the Government's devolution proposals. Such a council might also, if it included Members of Parliament, improve the relationship between Wales and Westminster, a relationship which is likely to deteriorate under the present devolution proposals.
The prospect of devolution overshadows local government, as so much else in Wales. The majority of district councils and county councils are demanding a referendum on the issue. Underlying this concern about constitutional change is a more immediate concern about our economic and social wellbeing. We appreciate the need for cuts in public expenditure and we are willing to bear our share of restraint, but there is a suspicion that we are being manipulated into a financial straitjacket and that an ever-increasing proportion of the financial resources available to Wales is slipping beyond our control.
In the event of the Government's devolution proposals coming into effect, the rate support grant for the Welsh authorities will be part of the block grant for the Assembly. The Welsh authorities will have to haggle with that body for their share rather than directly with central Government alongside their English counterparts, as now.
The Government argue—in my opinion, superficially—that the local authorities will have a more direct influence. Again, I quote from the debate of 7th April in the Welsh Grand Committee. The hon. Gentleman said:
"Welsh local authorities would have a more direct influence on their grant allocations than they have now as a small part of the negotiating machinery covering England and Wales as a whole."—[Official Report, Welsh Grand Committee, 7th April 1976; c. 91.]
But the resources of the Assembly will be finite and already negotiated with central Government. The rate support element in the block grant will have been predetermined, and the Assembly and the
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local authorities will have very little scope for manoeuvre in their negotiations.
Currently the local authorities are going through a difficult period in Wales as elsewhere. They are subject to a great deal of popular criticism on account of staff increases, rising rates and inadequate services. Undoubtedly, some of the criticism is justified. When I last checked staff increases I found that the two most significant increases were in construction staff and in education staff. Although the increase in the number of teachers was justifiable, I could not say the same of the increase in construction workers, whose jobs could have been done by outside contractors engaged on an ad hoc basis. The Government have surely accumulated enough adverse experience of direct labour by now to convince them that direct labour employment does not generally provide good value for money either to the taxpayer or the ratepayer.
I received Written Answers on 20th February 1976 from the Secretary of State for Education and Science relating to the Soulbury Committee's recommendations for increases in the salaries of education advisers employed by local authorities. The increases were very substantial and came as a shock to my local authority of Gwynedd. The right hon. Gentleman told me that it was not his role to accept or reject recommendations from the Committee. I believe that he should have such a role, especially in stringent times such as these. I should be grateful if the Government considered the possibility of establishing such a role. The cost increases entailed by these recommendations can have a very serious unbalancing effect on a local education authority's budget.
The county precept in Wales for 1976–77 is 66·63p in the pound on average–10·6 per cent. up on last year and about 8½p higher than the average for English counties. Of course, we get a higher domestic rate relief which helps us with our higher water rate as well as the local authority rate. But the business community—the small shopkeeper—is not similarly assisted. There is no doubt that small businesses are suffering badly under the heavy rate burden. That is particularly regrettable in Wales, because we have such high unemployment. Wales, for the most part, is an essential area and

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there is no doubt that the rate burden is a considerable disincentive to employment.
Generally, the public welcome the attempts which are being made to restrain local authority expenditure. I believe that the public wish to encourage those attempts, and I am sure that they will be looking hard at their candidates in the forthcoming elections from this point of view.
The elimination of waste and the obtaining of value for money in services to which citizens are entitled are the ratepayers' priorities, and I believe that they are popular priorities. We all know of instances of waste in local authority expenditure. Our constituents also know of those instances. I believe that there is a new awareness and anxiety on the part of the public about getting value for money, and we are right to mention that particular desire on the part of the public in our motion. I hope that these priorities will have an even more respected place after the coming elections.
We must appreciate that the demands on local authorities have increased over the years. The Association of District Councils has pointed out that the number of children in care in England and Wales rose by 26 per cent. between 1966 and 1971 and that the number of people over 65 rose from 7·7 million to 9·5 million—an increase of 23 per cent—between 1961 and 1974. There has been a considerable additional demand on local authority services, and Parliament has laid further duties upon local authorities. Therefore, we must not be entirely unsympathetic to the difficulties of local authorities.
The number of council houses has also risen from 4·4 million in 1960 to 6·23 million in 1974—an increase of 42 per cent. I fully support the argument put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) for the sale of council houses to sitting tenants not only because, as a constituency Member, I am constantly under pressure from council tenants who wish to acquire their own homes, but also because those homes are becoming such a burden on local authorities that I doubt whether the taxpayer and the ratepayer can sustain that burden for much longer.
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We in Wales have the same problems with our local authorities as the rest of the United Kingdom. But, as I said at the beginning of my speech, we have the added problem that the shadow of the Government's devolution proposals now hangs over us. That shadow has, in turn, produced a significant fear among local authorities that they will be subject to yet further reorganisation. Whatever we may have learned from the last reorganisation, it would certainly gain agreement in this House that it is a costly and difficult business. The main concern of local authorities at present is that they will be subjected to yet further reorganisation in the not too distant future.
5.36 p.m.
Mr. Frank Hatton: I welcome the opportunity of supporting the amendment. I was delighted to hear my right hon. Friend, at the outset of his remarks, express appreciation for the work done by members and officers of local authorities. I believe that we owe a great debt to them, because they provide the vital services which people desperately need.
I was saddened that the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), in his reference to some of the things which he said were damaging to local government—I will not go over the details again—did not recall the great damage which was done to local government by the recent reorganisation. I make no apology for reiterating that point.
I represent a constituency in one of our major conurbations. Indeed, I had the privilege of serving on one of the city authorities. I am no longer a member of that authority, but I know from my colleagues who serve on it how they view reorganisation and how it affects our major conurbations.
It is disastrous that we should now have a county authority where previously we had a major city authority which provided all the services. Chief officers of local authorities in our major conurbations could often solve their problems by crossing the corridors of their town hall. Now they are involved not only in writing long letters but in attending meetings in many other parts of the city.
That is not all. One of the tragedies of reorganisation was that two major services—water and health—were taken

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away from democratic control. I make no apology for raising that matter. Whatever the Government do in future about the reorganisation of local government—it is difficult to think about reorganisation again in terms of the upheaval created for the staff involved—I can see no reason why a keen look should not be taken at the possibility of returning water and health to democratic control in local authorities.
A consultative document
"Review of the Water Industry in England and Wales"
was published only a few weeks ago. In paragraph 43 there is a reference to the fact that representations have been made by a number of local authorities for an increase in their representation on water authorities. Then I read:
"Given that most of the water authorities necessarily cover wide areas, any substantially larger scale of local authority representation could mean that their membership would be increased very greatly"—
note this—
" to the detriment of the efficient management of the water authorities and of the influence of individual members."
I do not know who wrote that, but I know that the North-West Water Authority is largely the old Manchester Corporation Waterworks undertaking which supplied water practically to the whole of the North-West in a most efficient manner. I have read today of areas of the country which are likely to be affected by drought in the ensuing months. It is scandalous to think of the efficiency of the old Manchester Corporation Waterworks and the fact that the authority does not have one representative on the North-West Water Authority. That state of affairs should be remedied very quickly.
I turn very briefly to some of the propositions that appear in the motion on the Order Paper, and first to the phrase
"maximum value for money in local services."
In my experience in local government, that is what we were always looking for. We always had to look for it. It was a very difficult task. Some people generalised and said that we ought to cut the rates, but in the main, the man in the street, or the person one met at the advice bureau or the bus stop, was always saying on what one should spend
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money. Such people were dissatisfied with some of the old schools, and with the highways and street lighting. There was always a list of things that needed doing, so one was searching constantly for ways in which one could obtain value for money in order to satisfy those by whom one had been democratically elected to the local authority.
We ought not to forget some of the additional services that local government has had imposed upon it. I am proud of the fact that Manchester has an extremely fine record in terms of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. During the period of this Act, more than 21,000 cases have been registered, over 4,000 telephones have been installed, nearly 4,000 aids have been issued, and over 1,000 bus passes have been issued. We ought not to forget all the administration involved in this and the need for staff.
I turn briefly to the second proposition in the motion, on the subject of the sale of council houses. I cannot imagine any more dishonest electioneering slogan than this. As one who comes from a major conurbation and knows the problems of housing, I can illustrate this very easily. There are very many people who have no hope of a new home at all unless it is provided by the local authority. In latter years many local authorities have built dwellings—they are really not worthy of a better word than that; deck access accommodation and multi-storey flats—that are not the best of homes and are not the most suitable places in which to bring up families. However, if local authorities sell off their housing stock, those are not the units that will be bought. It will be the best houses on the suburban estates that will be bought, and the poorest people will be left with the choice of only the deck access accommodation and multi-storey flats. Let that be said when electioneering slogans are being put about in the next few days. I hope that many electors in the major conurbations who may be caught by slogans about selling council houses will remember that it will make a great difference to their choice if the best council houses are sold.
I come finally to the subject of direct labour. I come from a city that has an outstanding record in this matter and a major direct labour department. That

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department is not merely building houses. At the time when this country was in need of teachers, it was building teacher training colleges at a rate that could be compared with any of the best building organisations in Britain. It was erecting new primary schools in three months, and doing that at a competitive rate and a rate that gave value for money to every elector in the city.
Many other hon. Members who have a genuine interest in local government wish to take part in the debate. I conclude briefly by saying that for the people of this country, the best thing that could happen is that the Labour-controlled councils in Manchester should return again on 6th May.
5.45 p.m.
Mr. Michael Shersby: First, I add my congratulations to the Secretary of State on his assuming his new post at the Department of the Environment. I have had the interesting pleasure in the last year or two of facing him across the Dispatch Box in his former incarnation, and I wish him well in his new job.
I speak today as one who served for 12 years in local government before entering this House, on two London local authorities. I therefore have a fairly good knowledge of the problems that face local authorities in a large city such as London. The motion on the Order Paper provides the House with a useful opportunity to discuss the operation of local government and the need for ratepayers to ensure that they get value for money.
Many of those who will be voting next week in the forthcoming district council elections will have value for money uppermost in their minds. That is right, as the Secretary of State has pointed out. They will make a judgment on the record in office of the councillors and they will vote accordingly.
Another important question that many people will have in mind is the degree to which they, as members of the public, feel that they have been consulted by their local councillors on the matters that vitally affect them—matters that councillors will decide on their behalf and matters involving millions of pounds of ratepayers' money. They will want to be sure that the men and women whom
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they are electing to serve them as councillors will not forget the electorate when they are elected, that they will not be remote, and that they will not act in a high-handed or doctrinaire manner. Those are the qualities for which the electorate looks in its elected councillors.
Up and down the country one can find many fine examples of excellent public service by local councillors that set a high standard. People will want the local councillors they elect to represent all the people in their ward. They will not wish them to be too party-political and they will want them to have regard to important matters such as the conservation and the preservation and enhancement of the environment in which they live.
The voters will, therefore, make their choice on the basis of the individuals who offer themselves as candidates in the elections. They will make their choice, as well, on the programme that is offered to them by the political parties. This will mean, inevitably, that they will have to make a comparison between the policies of the main political parties, and in my view, one of the most important criteria they will consider is the ability of a particular party to control and reduce public expenditure. That means that many people will choose between the Conservative Party, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) has said, is clearly dedicated to controlling and, where possible, reducing public expenditure—certainly reducing unnecessary public expenditure in local government—and the Labour Party, which is soft-pedalling this particular issue. I cannot speak for the Liberal Party, which will no doubt speak for itself.
Therefore, before the electorate cast their votes next Thursday, they will have much to think about. In most cases they will be presented with a clear choice between candidates of differing political views. That is not the case in some elections, such as those for parish councils, which are still, happily, non-political—
Mr. Joseph Dean: The hon. Gentleman must be joking.
Mr. Shersby:—and where people vote for the local vicar or local people who stand as independents and are genuinely

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independent, dealing with parish pump matters.
Whatever Labour Members may say from a sedentary position, the fact is that today there are still many parish councils that are, happily, elected on that basis.
All those who vote in the district council elections next week are indeed fortunate. They are certainly more fortunate than the electors of Greater London, in which my constituency is situated, who will have to wait for another two years before they can pronounce judgment on the record of the councils which were elected some two years ago. However, if the people of London have to wait, at least the example of what is going on in some of the Labour-controlled London boroughs can be a dreadful warning to others of what can happen if they do not elect men and women who will control public expenditure and respect the rights of individuals.
I was interested to hear the Prime Minister in his television broadcast on the night he was appointed say that he wanted the Labour Party to stand for individual freedom. I strongly agree with that. I hope that what he said will be felt right through the boroughs and will be remembered by councillors of all parties when they exert their powers in the new councils.
I want to take as my example the Labour-controlled council of the London Boroughs of Hillingdon in which my constituency is situated and which may have come to the attention of the Secretary of State and other right hon. and hon. Members. It gives me no pleasure to do so, for I am proud of the borough in which my constituency is situated, but I cannot be proud of the record of this local authority Labour Party, and it is for that reason only that I mention Hillingdon.
The Labour Party gained control of Hillingdon in 1971 by a minority vote. It controls the council because of the way in which the ward boundaries are arranged—a situation which the Labour Party is trying to perpetuate. At the time Labour took over, Hillingdon had one of the lowest rate increases over a two-year period, but it now has one of the highest rates in the pound in the whole of Greater London. Local councillors rightly say that much of this is
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due to inflation, but inflation hits other local authorities thoughout the length and breadth of the country. In 1974–1975 Hillingdon had a rate increase over the two-year period of 113 per cent. That is more than any other London borough. On its own admission, Hillingdon was spending at the rate of 42 per cent. above the national average for 1974–1975, and the only reason why this year's rate has remained steady is that the taxpayer is bailing out the borough by means of extra grants.
Little or no attempt seems to be made by the Labour Party to control public expenditure. On the contrary, the Labour Party seems to revel in it. The massive expenditure by the council has been constantly criticised, not just by the Conservative opposition on the council but by the Press and the local ratepayers' associations, and it is now attracting unwelcome national attention. I say "unwelcome" because it is unwelcome to the people who live there and do not necessarily support the Labour Party's policies. A recent article in the Daily Mail appeared under this title:
"What the hell are they playing at in Hillingdon?"
What are they playing at with my money on my doorstep?
In case it should be thought that I am exaggerating, I would explain that the council is spending £15 million on a new civic centre—air conditioned of course. It was originally estimated to cost £3·2 million. It incorporates a Swedish telephone system, personally chosen by the Labour leader of the council, which can take special video equipment enabling callers to see as well as speak to officials—a doubtful privilege.
Mr. Anderson: The hon. Gentleman is trying to be as fair as possible, so will he also examine the escalation of costs for the new town hall of the Conservative-controlled London borough of Kensington and Chelsea and, if he wants to pursue the financial competence of councils, will he look at the London borough of Bexley which is also Conservative-controlled?
Mr. Shersby: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for saying that I am fair. I will examine the points he made. When he has heard what else I have to say, he may think that the experiences of other

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local authorities pale into insignificance. The cost of the luxury telephone equipment to which I referred has risen to a massive£692,000. If the Secretary of State does not think that is extravagance on a massive scale—by any political party—I should be interested to hear why.
We have a wonderful new Olympic ski-slope which will cost the ratepayers £103,000. I am all in favour of leisure activities, but at a time of economic stringency when the Chancellor of the Exchequer is exhorting the local authorities throughout the country, individuals and firms to exercise restraint, this type of expenditure is beyond understanding.
The motion refers to
"making the best use of existing housing stock, including the sale of council houses to tenants".
I believe—I hope that the Secretary of State believes—that making the best use of the housing stock means encouraging the improvement of owner-occupied private housing by means of improvement grants, as well as modernising local authority accommodation. That is vitally important, not only in the centre of towns but in the outer areas of the big cities where houses built in the early part of the century now need modernisations. Improvement grants are an important instrument for improving the housing stock, but they are not easily come by in many boroughs which are Labourcontrolled—certainly not in the Labour-controlled borough of Hillingdon.
Making the best use of housing stock also means encouraging the owner-occupier by assuring him that his home is his castle and that no attempt will be made to dispossess him by means of compulsory purchase orders unless that is necessary in the national interest. Compulsory purchase orders should not be used like a shotgun. They should not be spread around and used to intimidate owner-occupiers to give up their homes. That creates a tremendous sense of unease in the area and leads to a rundown in the condition of the housing stock.
Only a Conservative-controlled council will give the owner-occupier the kind of encouragement and assurance of security in his freehold that he is entitled to expect. I say that because I have seen for myself the infamous policy of the
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compulsory purchase of private houses and gardens by my local authority. This policy of municipal winkling has attracted the attention of no less a person than Bernard Levin. The Minister may have seen his excellent article published recently in The Times entitled:
"How municipal victims are winkled out of their homes".
In that article Bernard Levin compares the municipal winkling by Hillingdon with the Rachmanism of the 1950s. He based his article on an excellent Bow Group pamphlet by Councillor Michael Lawrence, a Conservative member of the Hillingdon council.
Bernard Levin suggested that we needed a new noun to describe those who behaved in that way. He coined the word "Hillinger" to describe them. What a shame that the name of a beautiful borough should be used to describe municipal winkling. But that is what my local Labour Party stands for, and it is not chastened by Bernard Levin's words in The Times. Alderman John Bartlett, the Labour leader of Hillingdon council in a letter in The Times on Monday wrote as follows:
"The job of the local authority is to provide homes for people in housing need: the private developer operates entirely to make money. The developer, of course, can look for land anywhere in the country, but the local authority, in the present way in which we arrange things, can only look for land in the area which it covers. At the present moment there is virtually no undeveloped land in this area, other than 14,000 acres of Green Belt and open spaces, and therefore the only way of increasing the number of council houses for letting is by redevelopment of land occupied by low density housing to a higher density, so that housing gain can be achieved."
That is an interesting statement. With the new powers available to local authorities under the Community Land Act, owner-occupiers will have less security than in the past. They may not even have the right to a local inquiry if a compulsory purchase order is made on their home. I say to the electors in the district council elections that they should heed the example of Hillingdon and make sure that the Labour Party in their borough is not in a position to put a compulsory purchase order on their homes or engage in this type of disreputable municipal winkling.
What is required is the encouragement that is so vitally necessary for the private

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home builder to build homes for sale and to balance public home building by the local authorities. The Secretary of State said today that expenditure of£4,000 million was involved in municipal home building but that this was not at the expense of the private householder. He spoke of the encouragement which the Government have rightly given to building societies. He mentioned the encouraging figures for new housing starts in the private sector this year, which I welcome.
Will the right hon. Gentleman or his right hon. Friends say firmly that it is the policy of the Government to encourage both private and public home building to achieve a balanced community? Will he say clearly to his Labour colleagues in local authorities that it is not the policy of the Labour Government to encourage municipal development to the exclusion of the private developer? I see the right hon. Gentleman nodding. I am glad. I hope that he will issue a circular to that effect. I ask him seriously to think about the desirability of doing so. At the least perhaps he could spare the time to send an individual letter to the Hillingdon Council.
I would be grateful, when the Minister replies, if he would say what is his policy for making more land and homes available, in the new towns, for example. I have in mind, particularly, young people who live in the cities and the urban conurbations, many of whom see me at my weekly surgery, looking for a home. They are seeking the opportunity to have a small home and garden somewhere where they can bring up their children. New towns provide that oportunity. Unfortunately, many young people are understandably unwilling to move from the area in which they have grown up or spent a large part of their lives. Much more needs to be done to encourage young people to be more mobile and to seek their future in the new towns where new jobs and homes are available. We cannot afford to go on developing and redeveloping the urban and suburban areas of our towns for ever. New towns offer the opportunity for new growth points to which young people can move.
I come now to the sale of council houses, which is referred to in the motion. It is wise and sensible for local authori-
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ties to sell council houses and council flats to those tenants who wish to buy them. I do not say that they should sell them all. I say that local authorities should decide what proportion of their housing stock they ought to sell. There are many council tenants who wish to buy their own house and who are prevented from doing so by doctrinaire decisions taken by Labour councils. This has to stop. I hope that the electors next week will make it possible for many local authorities to take those decisions. I beg the Government to have another look at this question.
I remind the Secretary of State of the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury when he drew attention to the considerable revenue available to local authorities from the sale of council housing which enables new building to take place more easily.
I hope that when those fortunate electors in the district councils cast their votes next Thursday they will have read of the activities of the one Labour-controlled local authority which I have described today. I hope that those electors will vote for wise men and women who will serve them well and get rid once and for all of the Socialist tyranny I have described.
6.5 p.m.
Mr. Jim Marshall: I hesitate to follow the remarks of the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) at all except perhaps to say that the spiritual presence of Bernard Levin in the hon. Gentleman's speech renders further comment from me upon that speech somewhat superfluous.
It is tempting for me to do a number of things today. First, I am tempted to criticise the two-tier system of local government and implicitly or explicitly to criticise the former Tory Government which introduced that system. I do not think that today is the time to do that, even though the two-tier system is not the most efficient way of providing services to electors. I am also tempted to make a non-political speech—the type of speech made many times this afternoon—praising the virtues of my Labour colleagues in next week's non-metropolitan district elections, particularly those Labour colleagues of mine seeking re-election in Leicester who have done a good job so

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far and who, I am sure, despite the hon. Gentleman's remarks, will be successful in next week's elections. Again, I do not feel that this is the time to make those comments.
I am also tempted to praise my Government colleagues for the additional powers they have given to local government, particularly those given under the Community Land Act. Those of us who served on the Committee which considered that measure know the extent of the powers which have been given to local government. Again I do not think this is the time or place to do that. It is not often that we get the opportunity to discuss local government at peak parliamentary times. Perhaps it is not peak listening time but it is peak parliamentary time.
I wish to concentrate on something about which I feel a great sense of urgency, namely, the relationship between central and local government. This is referred to in the Government's amendment and it is one of the reasons why I shall be supporting the Government tonight. In many ways the lack of understanding of this relationship has given rise to much of the mutual suspicion that has existed for many years between local and central Government. We could spend a good deal of time discussing what the relationship ought to be between local and central Government. At one extreme there are those who say that because local councillors are elected by a separate and distinct electoral process they ought to be entirely independent of Government. At the other extreme there are those who say that local government must slavishly carry out the diktats of Whitehall.
I do not consider that either of those extremes is the truth, if the truth can be found. The balance probably lies somewhere between the two. Whatever the relationship may or may not have been in the past, in the future it must be one of partnership. We must have a new era of partnership between local and central Government. No one would deny that the independence of local government cannot mean the freedom to operate without proper regard to overall financial constraints and within the overall national policy laid down by the Government.
Local government cannot expect a blank cheque, which amounts to 25 per
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cent. of the public sector expenditure, to distribute as it will. Nor can it expect a corresponding amount the following year, with additional sums to cover additional commitments. However, the central Government must also recognise that, once the overall financial expenditure of local authorities has been determined, the local authorities must be free to determine how that money should be spent, bearing in mind—I say this in the light of the views on comprehensive education expressed by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison)—the Government's overall policies.
The partnership must be based on a close and continuing dialogue between central and local government. In my view—which I am sure is not shared by all my colleagues in local government—the central Government will inevitably be the senior partner, and local government must accept that. But even within that constraint, the partnership will flourish and be sustained if it is built upon four essential pillars.
The first pillar is the agreement of both sides on the main policy objectives; the second is improved channels of communication between and within central Departments and local authorities; the third is greater realism in the basic economic data pertaining to local government; the fourth is regular performance reviews so that we get away from the situation in which people think that local authority expenditure is not under control. It is because of a lack of regular performance reviews that this myth has been allowed to perpetuate. Local authority expenditure is under control, but we must be able to show—and one can do so only by reconciling various figures—that it is.
Inevitably, the central Government will have the responsibility of ensuring effective consultation with local government and seeking agreement on all major items of policy with which both are concerned. However, once the broad policy outlines are agreed, the individual local authority should be free to pursue its policies within that context. We must have less of government by circular, whereby, in effect, local authorities are asked or cajoled—one may choose one's own verb—to carry out certain policies within certain specific constraints. I would like

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to get away from that situation. Once the broad policy outlines are determined, the individual local authority should be allowed freedom and should not be the slavish puppet of Whitehall.
The sense of partnership will inevitably depend on a free flow of information between central Government Departments and local government. Up to 12 months ago, at the centre at least, there has often been a lack of cohesion, in many senses a rivalry, between various Departments dealing with local government, with the result that resources available for local government have not been optimised in the interests of local government. In a sense, each Department has vied with the others to obtain as much as possible of the central financial pie available rather than taking into account the overall needs of local government.
Far more effort must be spent in ensuring that we have co-operation between the central Departments rather than competition for the available financial resources. This process has, in effect, already started in local government—or is supposed to have done—since the policy and resource committees are supposed to ensure that the financial resources available to the local authorities are optimised to the best advantage. One hopes that this sense of co-operation will also take place within central Government.
It is essential that Government policy on the deployment of resources should be made clear, especially if the total of local government expenditure has to be controlled in the interests of the economy as a whole. It is equally important that the central Government should receive the best advice from the local authorities about the resource implications of the Government's policies. There is urgent need for a continuous two-way flow of information between central and local government, particularly to improve forward planning. This should bring benefits to the central Government in managing the national economy and helping to remove the occasions when the central Government appear to make major policy changes without any idea of the resource implications at local authority level.
I have mentioned the need to have greater realism in the basic economic planning data pertaining to local Govern-442
ment. I mention this because, at present, local government expenditure is only loosely incorporated into the public expenditure survey system, despite what my right hon. Friend has said. Even then, it is done only on the basis of the most recent rate support grant negotiations available. There has hitherto been no consultation with the local authorities on the growth rates which appear in the annual White Paper. Nor has consultation taken place since. But it is my view—and I think that now the Department is coming to a similar view—that such consultation should take place, since it would encourage local authority forward planning on a much firmer basis than hitherto. It would in no way undermine the central Government's need to alter the approved level of expenditure if the overall economic situation so dictated.
It is no excuse for the central Government to say, "we have the job of managing the overall economy, and therefore we cannot allow the local authorities to be involved in the planning process which goes to make up the economic models used by the Treasury when determining the course of the economy over the next 12 months."
Again, to counter the unjustified assertion that local authority expenditure is out of control, there should be a demonstrable reconciliation between the annual expenditure forecast in the White Paper, the annual rate support grant settlement, the combined budgets of the local authorities, and the final outturn figures. Until this reconciliation is carried out, the myth will persist that local authority expenditure is out of control. It is up to us in this House to do away with that myth and to provide the mechanism for doing the reconciliation.
I hope that the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance will be the vehicle for carrying out some of the ideas I have attempted to bring to the attention of the House. When the idea of the council was first mooted 10 months ago, I viewed it with a great deal of cynicism. Having been active for many years in local government, I thought that here was yet another Treasury vehicle to curtail freedom of action of local government. That was my initial view. But experience over the past ten months has removed some of my cynicism. At least local authority associations appear to

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like playing the game—whatever the game may be.
The Association of District Councils says of the Consultative Council:
"The problem of central and local government relations is a fundamental one and we are confident that the Consultative Council on Local Government Finance will, in due course, go a long way towards ensuring that the voice of local government is heard in national deliberations on the assessment of the value of funds which are available for local government services."
The Association also makes other pleasant noises about the council. The council can be a vehicle, but we must escape from the situation where only finance can be discussed. There are no formal terms of reference, but perhaps the use of the word "Finance" in the title is unnecesary. All the problems of local government should be discussed by the council. I am sure that if the Government wish to see a worthwhile and developing relationship between central and local government they will make the remit of the Consultative Council as wide as possible so that all problems may be discussed.
Another virtue of the council is that for the first time all the right people are in one place at the right time. The chair is taken by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment and Members include other Ministers from spending Departments, including the Welsh Office—if that spends money at all—the Department of Health and Social Security and the Department of Education and Science. Ministers from the Treasury are also represented. The right people are there to discuss with their colleague from local government the problems which local government faces.
The council is only 10 months old and we must ensure that it develops and that it does not die a death of slow strangulation once the promised upturn in the economy materialises. The mutual suspicion felt by central and local government towards each other can be dispelled only by a continuing partnership between them.
In the past, every time there was a major policy change by central government, local councillors wanted to jump on the next train from Leicester, Sunder-
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land or Birmingham to cajole or threaten their political colleagues in Parliament or harangue Ministers if they represented a different political party. We must try to escape from that state of affairs. If the Consultative Council continues to develop in the right way is augers well for the future of local government. With renewed confidence and increased vigour, local government will stride into the future as one of the main agents of democracy. That will be good, not just for parochial politics but for the country as a whole.
6.25 p.m.
Mr. Stephen Ross: I welcome the speech by the hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall). It was instructive and I wish that I could have delivered such a speech. I hope that it will be read by many hon. Members who are not present in the Chamber. It was a good lesson on how local government should develop and I congratulate the hon. Member. I also congratulate the Secretary of State on staying so long in the Chamber and I hope that he will not leave during my speech.
I agree with a few of the opening remarks by the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison). I agree about the important role of local government. That has always been important to Liberals, because we believe that democracy itself is important. We want to see a strong and healthy local government. But it is too important a matter to be treated as a party political extravaganza as the hon. Member for Aylesbury treated it. I agreed with his opening remarks but with not much more. I was left wishing that we could return to true independence for local government and remove party politics from it.
I suspect that this debate is a cover-up and an effort to hide and ignore the defects of the past. It is an attempt to criticise the present Government for policies and problems for which they are not wholly responsible. The hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) in an intervention dealt with the reference to wage structures. To refuse to accept responsibility for the fixing of those structures was almost insolent because they were fixed centrally and councillors on the interim committees were virtually told what sums they had to pay. The

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Conservatives cannot dodge that responsibility.
Some unnecessary local government appointments have been made since then, but generally, local government has behaved responsibly. Most of the present wage structures hearken back to that time so that today two-thirds of local rates are used to pay council employees. It may have been desirable at the time to inflation-proof local government pensions but we are stuck with it now. I should like to know what the Opposition intend to do about that. Are we to embark on a round of cutting chief executives' salaries? Are we to say that their pensions are no longer inflation-proof? I assume that we are not and that the intention is to do the right thing and try by natural wastage, to run down some of the extravagant appointments which have been made. That will take a long time and the responsibility for the present situation must be laid squarely where it belongs—with the Opposition.
The tragedy about the elections on Thursday is that many able councillors who have given years of worthy service to the community will be cast on one side because of the popularity or otherwise of the national political parties and their leaders. I have sympathy for councillors of whatever political allegiance who serve local government today. Many were elected three or four years ago hoping to achieve great things for their communities, only to have their visions cast aside one after another by lack of finance and Government interference and diktats.
No wonder many leading citizens, who in years past would have wished to play their part in local affairs, shy away from the prospect. Who can blame them, faced as they are with false claims and the nonsense which is published in some local government election addresses. I feel strongly about the Conservative election address for the Medina borough in my constituency which says:
"For the past three years the Medina Borough has been dominated by its Labour councillors who have generally had the support of the Liberals—and Lib.-Lab. policies have held sway. The results have been, as we all know, massive increases in rates without any corresponding benefits in services provided."
It does not say that the council comprises 33 councillors, 11 of whom are Labour, three Liberals and the rest Tories and
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independents. In fact, the rate was cut this time and most decisions were made on a fairly unanimous basis. It is deplorable that we should put up with such statements. That one is not true.
I have no specific criticisms of the Conservative motion. As I said when we debated the new towns, I favour the sale of council houses where local conditions are favourable. I agree with what the Secretary of State said about that. I believe that there is an increasing number of areas where waiting lists are shortening and authorities should be encouraged to adopt this policy.
In the debate to which I have referred I asked questions about waiting lists in new towns. Because I did not receive all the answers, I asked some Written Questions. I was told that Bracknell has a waiting list of only two to four weeks, Northampton four to eight weeks, Peterborough one to two weeks, Stevenage eight to 12 weeks, Aycliffe up to 12 weeks, and Redditch 10 weeks. Those are low figures.
I know from conversations with officers serving new towns that they would very much like to be able to sell some of their properties. I understand the problems, and I know that it is part of the conditions that purchasers should have a job, which presumably is difficult at present. But houses are available, and I agree with the hon. Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby) that we should be encouraging young people and others to go into new towns and buy property when they can. It seems to be readily available, and there must be other parts of the country, not necessarily new towns, in a similar situation.
However, I accept that where waiting lists are long and growing, as some unfortunately are—Medina borough in my constituency is an example—this policy should not be pursued, particularly where there is a plentiful supply of private houses to purchase. That is true in most of my constituency. I must tell the hon. Member for Aylesbury that I knocked on many doors over the Easter Recess, particularly on council estates, and only one person expressed the wish to buy his own house. There is no great demand there, though the position may be different in other parts of the country.

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Selling council houses means saddling the buyers with a mortgage at very high rates of interest at present. The rate is now 10½per cent., but it is likely to go up, so they could be paying rates of between 10½per cent. and 14 per cent. Many people should not be encouraged to take on such commitments, although admittedly the situation is more favourable now than it was two or three years ago, as wage rates have increased substantially.
I am all for encouraging the sale of council houses in the right areas, but in many parts of the country it should not be encouraged and local authorities should maintain their stock. I was impressed by the speech of the hon. Member for Manchester, Moss Side (Mr. Hatton), who talked about the situation in the inner urban areas, where the more desirable homes would be sold first and the high rise flats would be left.
I should like to leave the matter entirely to the local authorities. I hope that the Secretary of State will reconsider the question and see whether encouragement can be given to certain areas to sell some of their properties, because the housing revenue accounts are getting deeper and deeper into debt. That cannot go on.
In answer to a recent Written Question I was told that the average percentage contribution of rent towards total housing costs in England is now only 53 per cent. of unrebated rents. In some inner London authorities it is as low as 26 per cent. In Scotland it is 46 per cent., in Wales 54 per cent. and in Northern Ireland 38·2 per cent.
We cannot bear these costs indefinitely. The new councillors should give urgent consideration to how best to reduce them. There have been glowing tributes to certain Conservative councils. I do not normally make party points in local government debates, but perhaps I may draw attention to the Liberal Adur council in Sussex, which already obtains 65 per cent. of its housing revenue from rent and which has produced a number of interesting schemes, such as assisting elderly people out of under-occupied accommodation by purchasing their homes and re housing them, and then renovating and selling the houses to young married
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couples. The council has also negotiated nomination rights with four building societies and is initiating joint schemes with private builders. I know that other authorities have done that, but it has done it for the construction of low-cost homes.
The council has the lowest rate of any district in Sussex, where the majority of councils have been Conservative-controlled over the past three years. Since 1974 the Adur rate has gone up by only 6·9 per cent., compared with 9·6 per cent. in Conservative Horsham, 19·6 per cent. in Conservative Chichester, 20 per cent. in Conservative Mid-Sussex and 32·8 per cent. in Labour Crawley. Liberals have fought hard to obtain control there. Now that they have control, they run their affairs very well. I am not saying that there are not perfectly good, ably run Labour- and Conservative-controlled councils, but it is time other parties occasionally paid tribute in the House to a third party which has done a good job and deserves to succeed in the coming elections.
Liverpool has gone in for building houses for sale, and has managed to reduce its waiting list from the very high figure of 22,000 to 16,000. It has also managed by this method substantially to reduce the charges going on to the housing revenue account, but it would be wrong to weary the House with figures.
We must encourage tenants to take over far more responsibility for maintenance and management of their estates. Councillors could do a great deal to assist by talking to council tenants and trying to persuade them to form co-operative groups and to take more responsibility. One knows how often when canvassing one is asked to see the back door which needs to be repaired, a window which needs painting, or a tap which needs a new washer. One feels that such mattters could be dealt with more cheaply by a local management group.
Savings can be made where local authorities have compulsorily acquired short-life homes for future demolition. They should be able to hand them over to housing associations which can renovate them much more cheaply. Some of the London boroughs have done this, but it could be done on a larger scale. I am involved with a housing association

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which now has the help of volunteer labour. Such bodies can take people off the housing list at a cost of about£2,000 a property compared with £7,000 or£8,000 under the local authority. That is a considerable saving. It is by such methods that we shall get our housing revenue accounts into some sort of sense. If new councillors adopt some of those ideas, they can help enormously to make constructive moves in their councils and produce much-needed finance.
We seem to have interminable arguments about direct labour. It is surely a matter for councils to decide, provided they adopt the proper criteria, which have been set down. The Liberal Party has nothing against councils carrying out their own building repairs, but one sees money being wasted. Only recently I saw new windows left to rot on council estates for more than six months. That sort of thing does not inspire full confidence in all direct labour teams.
There needs to be strict control. In present circumstances private contractors can often do the work more cheaply and efficiently, but that is by no means always the case. I ask the official Opposition to remember the situation three years ago, when it was very difficult to get a builder to do anything and work cost many local authorities double the money that it need have cost because they had to do the job all over again.
I am totally against any extension of municipal trading. I trust that we have heard the last of the subject after the demise of the West Midlands County Council Bill.
There is little to cavil at in the Government's amendment, except the glaring omission of any reference to the private rented sector. If the Government really mean, as they should, to make sensible use of resources in housing, that is an area in which they could act now, by bringing into immediate use properties that are lying empty or that private owners wish to lease for short, definite periods.
I urge them, and I urge the new Secretary of State, now he has come into office, to look again at the provisions of the Bill in the name of the hon. Member for Cambridge (Mr. Lane) which was sadly dismissed by this House. It went a long way to meeting both sides by bring
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ing into use premises such as those over shops or accommodation for students. There was a lot to that Bill and it was a shame we had to turn down only to be told that the Government were going to look again at the position relating to the contracts but that this will not happen for a couple of years, and two years is far too long. I accept that the North Wilts scheme is an admirable one but it is slow to get off the ground and some authorities are not desperately keen to take it up because they have worries about being able to honour the contract they have entered into at the end of the lease.
Looking back on my own seven years in council work I realise now that there was probably far more I could have achieved when I was there, even with the limitations then imposed. I would urge newly elected councillors to try to reach agreement across party lines right at the outset about their priorities.
As a start, those local authorities which have day-time meetings should now all revert to evening sessions. In doing so, I suggest, they could cut out some of these expenses about which we are hearing so much and which are inevitable if councillors are giving up day-time work. In some cases I think local authorities have been unfairly criticised, but there are certainly some isolated cases where the situation appears to have got completely out of hand. This is an area which local authorities themselves should look at to see whether they cannot reach some voluntary agreement.
I should like to see new councillors attacking waste whether in empty buildings or in their own offices. They are using too many properties which were handed over by the old authorities, which are probably grossly wasteful of heat and so on. They should look at some of the road schemes which are often too expensive and unnecessarily elaborate. They ought to look at the insulation of houses, a point which has not been made fully clear to local councils by the Department of the Environment. There are grants available, certainly where council housing is concerned, but many authorities have not taken up these grants. They should look at possible recycling schemes. There are many areas in which cuts could be made and better use made of actual resources.

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I also wonder what consideration has been given to the usefulness of running a lottery. We fought very hard for a much higher figure to be included in the Act, but there is a£40,000 limit. If such a lottery were run including some volunteer labour, it could provide much needed sports facilities or even possibly a day centre which local authorities would like to provide for the elderly. I am sad that, as far as I know, no authority has yet taken this up.
There is also the Government's own job creation unit. Unfortunately, only some authorities have made proposals under the Scheme and this is sad, particularly where unemployment is high. In my own constituency a scheme has been passed and we have taken advantage of it. Councillors coming in might think about this. They ought to find out what grants are available from the Government and make full use of them.
Above all, new councillors should try to improve their communication with their electorate so that the ratepayers know what is actually happening and the reason behind the decisions taken. When I was chairman—for a short time—of the policy resources committee, it was my intention to go to various meetings within the constituency and explain why we had fixed a certain rate. If this is put over clearly by councillors not hiding behind the officials, the ratepayers themselves should understand the reasons why certain decisions have been made and probably accept them. Councillors do not need expensive PR men to put this across. It is their job to do it themselves and I hope that they will.
One outcome of the Bains Report was the corporate management structure and corporate planning. I believe that if properly used—the hon. Member for Leicester, South was getting very much towards this—this is the right way to proceed. The experience we have had over the past three years shows that this system can contribute to the successful working of a local authority provided it is not allowed to dominate. It is rather sad, therefore, to see the system breaking down in some authorities. I urge perseverance.
I condemn councils and councillors who, having gone through the whole exercise, from the officers' team through to
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the recommendation of the policy and resources committee, following agreement about what the rate is to be, in full council, where, for some political advantage, someone proposes a penny cut, throw the whole project out of line again. This was done on my own county council, by one vote which cut l½p off the rate, which was already cut to the quick, and we are now having enormous problems over education. This is the sort of thing which should not happen after the proper procedures have been gone through.
Finally, it must be said that the Liberal Party does not believe that any Government will be able to avoid for much longer further reform in our local government structures. On Friday 2nd April last my colleague, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith), outlined our views on this subject to otherwise empty Opposition Benches though they were amply filled by him alone. I am not going to outline them again, but I draw attention to this subject in our own amendment, which has not been selected, and no doubt we shall be able to debate the matter more fully when the proopsals for English and Welsh regionalism are published.
There are, however, some minor steps which the Government can take with advantage now. I ask the House to consider them. There are certain areas in the country where it is quite obvious that the two-tier structure is wasteful and is not working. I think that in these cases we could create all-purpose authorities like the old county borough which was in my belief the finest form of local government. My own constituency happens to be one of those but there are other areas where pressure has been put on—I know that Hereford is one, but I shall not name others. There are areas where this could be done and it need not lead to a further great upheaval.
Why must we adhere rigidly to the two-tier structure where it does not make sense? There are far too many councillors who seem to appear on both authorities anyway. There are 18 in my own area on the two districts who also serve on the county council. There seem to be far too many who are playing this dual role. I ask the Secretary of State seriously to consider transferring all planning to the districts and to speed up the introduction of neighbourhood councils into urban areas.

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There are great gaps in towns of some 20,000 population or more where people do not have truly local councillors to whom they feel they can talk at the lowest level. Parishes have this quality. It is true some successor town councils have been set up in a few areas and have worked rather well by expressing local views on planning and on traffic regulations, but it is a shame that we will apparently have to wait a great deal longer before we can do anything to extend the system more widely into urban areas. I would ask the Secretary of State to see whether he cannot do something about this.
The Government can also help by a dramatic cutback in circulars and paperwork, particularly the Press handouts pouring forth in ever-increasing amounts from the right hon. Gentleman's own Department. It absolutely appals me. Now the Community Land Act seems to be getting slowly off the ground. To ask local government officers to assimilate all this legislation is too much and every effort must be made to try to cut back on it. As it happens, I asked for a circular from the Department the other day about surcharges on rating. I hope that the Secretary of State will not cut that one out, but he can cut many of the others.
We must give local authorities far greater responsibility for decision-making in matters which do not adversely affect the Government's own economic structure. About 4,500 Liberals will be standing in these elections. That is not a bad effort—I think, more than ever before. I think that we shall have some successes and I wish those candidates well.
As we cannot, unfortunately, vote on our amendment, because I have some sympathy with the Government for being landed with a local government structure which both they and my predecessors on this Bench opposed at the time, and because I find in their amendment much with which I agree—I admit that I do not disagree with all that much in the Opposition motion—we shall be supporting the Government tonight.
6.51 p.m.
Mrs. Millie Miller: I take as an earnest of the sincerity and wild enthusiasm of the Opposition for local government the attendance of their
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Members in this debate. However, it is a great improvement on the last time that I addressed the House. Their average attendance has increased by 500 per cent.—from none to five. Perhaps my arithmetic is at fault, but the last time I spoke the only occupant of any Opposition Bench was the hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith) who, like the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) today, was supporting the Government's view on local government. This attendance is a rousing start to the Conservatives' intention to take over vast areas of local government in a few days.
There were moments during the speech of the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) when I thought that we were entering the realms of farce rather than of serious discussion of vital local government matters. As he talked about slackness, over-spending and increases in manpower, my mind went back to the origins of those evils. They were begun and encouraged during the disastrous period of Conservative Government from 1970 to 1974. Much as I wish to resist the temptation, I shall have to go back over at least a few of the causes of the present situation.
I earlier asked the hon. Member what had precipitated the vast salary increases. He vaguely admitted that they had been going on for a year or two. Of course they have. They began when the Conservative Government told local authorities what salary structures were to be and when, against the strongest protests, they fixed structures which involved, as I have said before, sometimes doubling the salaries of chief officers.
Then the whole of the local government salary structure moved up to accommodate differentials and to create a promotion pattern. Without doubt, in many ways that started the drive for increased wages. The fact that local government professional salaries are now so much higher does nothing to destroy my case that they set off the inflation in wage demands which we are still trying to overcome in many areas of industry and the public service.
The Conservatives talk about value for money, but there is another way of looking at that—that we pay for what we get. If local government services are

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cut or extended in a profligate way, we are bound to run into disaster. In this way, one fixes a pattern of expectations of more than can be provided, or of dejection at what is provided, which distorts the pattern of relationships between local government and its electors.
The Conservatives talk of brutal treatment of local government organisations by this Government. I recall the AMC Policy Committee tearing its hair month after month at the absolutely arbitrary decisions forced on it by the previous Government. Recollections such as that make me think that the Conservatives must have been living in cloud-cuckoo-land during the terrible years 1971, 1972 and 1973.
It was then that the Housing Finance Act was imposed on this country. I shall say more about that later because I am freer to say it now than I have been in the past. It was then that the National Health Service was being reorganised, when the water reorganisation and the second round of local government reorganisation were being proposed. Much of this was decided against the opposition not just of Labour councils but of Labour, Conservative, Liberal and independent councils and councillors throughout the country.
When we hear snide references to the opposition of many people throughout the country, including Conservatives, to the iniquitous Housing Finance Act, I cannot avoid mentioning Lord Devlin's attitude to conscience. I willingly admit that I was opposed as strongly as it was possible to be to the Government's measure—as were hundreds of my colleagues throughout the country—and I never asked to be let off the hook. I opposed the then Government on this matter because I sincerely thought, as did my colleagues, that they were deliberately imposing penalties on council tenants to keep them in line with the exploitation of property values which was otherwise distorting our economy.
Part of the pattern of rents which was proposed was to keep council rents in line with the impossible costs being imposed on the whole community by gambling in property—one of the worst features of the previous Administration. Now that the Government have decided to deal
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with this matter as they have, I say that if a Government impose a measure such as the Housing Finance Act which is contrary to the conscience of those who oppose it, such people have the right in conscience to show their opposition. I make no excuses for that.
Implicit in this is the fact that the then Government had powers in their own hands to end any so-called abuse right from the outset through the mechanism which they had devised of the housing commissioner but which they forbore to use. They therefore share responsibility in this matter.
In the reorganisation of the health and water services, the country has been overburdened with additional expenditure, particularly on administration. I agree absolutely with the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight in what he said about the Conservatives' continual demands for public expenditure cuts. What exactly would they cut? Would they sack all the chief officers or all the office boys? Would they take away all pension entitlement or would they get rid of the home helps? Public expenditure cuts must come from somewhere and the Conservatives are not ready to say where.
There is a tremendous well of endeavour in local government that is still untapped. Large numbers of people have tremendous enthusiasm to improve the situation in their own areas. They will not be encouraged by not the words of the Opposition motion, but the intention behind it that we have heard from the hon. Member for Aylesbury.
Of course everyone wants the best value he can get for every penny he spends. There is nothing very original in that. But cuts in public expenditure are not quite as simplistic as the Conservatives would have us believe. The Opposition are merely being, as they have been in the past, penny wise and pound foolish.
If there is a surplus of council housing, it is fair enough that there should be an opportunity for people to buy their homes. But even in new towns with short waiting lists there are serious considerations about the future. Today's new town, composed almost entirely of young and active families, may be a domitory area in 20 years' time if everyone gets the opportunity to buy his new town house today. There will be no mobility. People

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are not keen to move about. They do not want to tear up their roots and go elsewhere. After the war the London County Council built a vast estate in my constituency to house the young families of that time. Today it is almost entirely an old people's dormitory. The sale of council houses in that kind of area would be a serious deterrent.
There is another point about owner-occupation generally. Two days ago the Nationwide Building Society issued its latest occasional bulletin on housing trends and told us among other interesting facts about the growing number of people taking on mortgages at a more advanced age than in the past. A serious problem is in store for us, because the older the age at which a person takes on a mortgage, the greater the problem when that person reaches pension age. If people buy council houses, even at cut prices as in some areas, and if they take on a mortgage equal to 54 per cent. of their current income, when they get to pension age and their income is halved—because the coming generation will not benefit from the recent pensions legislation—they will be able only to afford to pay the remainder of their mortgage. That is a serious warning for the future.
Local authorities have been bedevilled in recent years by Government pressure. The structuring of the rate support grant, and the way in which successive kinds of circulars introducing new legislation have been putting additional pressure on local government services have made it extremely difficult for people working in local government, especially in a voluntary capacity, to cope with the complications. Stop-go policies have meant that councils which sincerely plan ahead to do certain task suddenly find their opportunities of doing the work being undermined. That is especially so in housing.
To get the best possible use from the available housing stock we in the Labour Party have repeatedly appealed for the use of empty housing. It is no use asking councils to acquire empty houses. The councils which do not do so—the Conservative councils—often have the largest stock of empty property. One only has to look at Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea to know that the pressure areas in inner London will not be relieved by the voluntary acquisition of empty property. Young couples should have the
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opportunity to spread out. But the opportunity exists for them on their own doorstep, where their jobs and families are, if it were only taken.
I deeply regret that the Government have taken so long in their short lifetime to start thinking up a proper policy for housing which will benefit from the use of all the housing stock. Much more should be done on council estates to use the housing stock properly. There are many opportunities for co-operation, better management and imaginative use of the properties which already exist. If only the Government will come off the hook about this and say that they positively want local authorities to act in this sphere, without changing their mind half way through and taking away money that they have already indicated will be available, if we had a consistent policy on housing, we should begin to see a breakthrough.
Housing is a subject about which many of us on the Labour side have talked, dreamed, and had nightmares for many years. I believe that everyone has a right to a house and that housing is a social service. As a former member of a local authority, and as a Member of this House who has served on Select Committees such as that on violence in marriage, I know how terrible are the pressures of inadequate housing. I know what it means to a woman on her own, or a couple trying to bring up children in an inadequate home, and how much that adds to the social costs of society.
We used to talk a lot in local government about cost benefit analysis. If only we could talk about social benefit analysis and look at the way in which we spend our money; if only we could ask whether value for money is being obtained by the right spending! I am not talking about cutting expenditure, but about using it in areas where of greatest need. I am talking about cross finance, not merely between, for example, the Department of Health and Social Security and the National Health Service, but between other Government Departments and local authorities.
Local government is a subject on which there are many experts in this House. I shall therefore take only my allotted time. I could say so much more. The Government have shown in their two years, in spite of my serious criticism on

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housing, that they have made great strides and shown an understanding of the needs and the problems of local government. As vice-president of the AMA I know how much this has been appreciated by the bigger local authorities, and I hope that the Government will not draw back from the path on which they have set themselves—that of developing this excellent relationship and make the whole of Government and the democratic system far more fruitful for all concerned.
7.9 p.m.
Mr. D. E. Thomas: I agree almost entirely with the hon. Lady particularly, on cross-finance between central Government Departments and local government departments. We have the right to expect central Government, as a result of such things as the CPRS paper on the joint approach to social policy, to take a lead to inspire local government into cross-financing between services.
I agree entirely with the hon. Lady's comments about empty properties in London. I have a strong interest in empty or partially empty properties. Twenty per cent. of the housing stock in one council area in my constituency is empty for most of the year. These are second homes. I have advocated the utilisation of these for the winter period by young couples.
It is quite miserable to have many cases in constituency surgeries of young people who have been forced out of these properties for the summer period because of the lack of adequate housing stock. If we had better control over second home development, and either a voluntary or a compulsory scheme for utilising this stock outside the summer period, we could alleviate much of the housing crisis in rural areas.
As to the amendment, I am in a similar position to the spokesman of the Liberal Party, in that I shall support it tonight in the hope that the Government takes its words seriously. The first part of the amendment refers to the relationship between the Government and local authorities. I am bound to look at this in the context of the Government's proposals to devolve power from the House to Edinburgh and Cardiff. There is a growing consensus within the Labour
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Party in Wales—I am sure that the hon. Member for Swansea, East (Mr. Anderson), if he catches your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, will bear me out on this—as well as within the Liberal Party that there ought to be a total reappraisal by the Welsh Assembly of the local government structure.
In a recent Welsh Grand Committee debate on devolution, we pressed the Secretary of State for Wales to make a statement on this very issue and to indicate that he considered it would be appropriate for the Welsh Assembly, as one of its priorities, to take a new look at the structure of local government. We hope that an examination will be made not only of the two-tier system, which has been much criticised in the debate, but also of the structure of the other arms of central Government, the location of offices such as DHSS and the Department of Employment, and the functions now being carried out by nominated bodies and agencies within Wales. We could then devise for the first time ever, a local government system which is answerable and sensitive to the needs of the people. When that has been done, it is the district council that will be the fundamental unit, developing, on the basis of the existing councils, most-purpose authorities.
In the interim, there ought to be more effective links between county and district levels, with far more use made of the joint committees. This is particularly urgent in sparsely populated rural areas, where the travelling time to Caernarvon, Llandrindod Wells, or wherever the centre of county government happens to be, makes the place even more remote from the people it is intended to serve.
But not only must we seek an opportunity, in the context of devolution, to restructure local government in Wales. We must also seek an opportunity to make that system more efficient. We have already heard a tremendous amount from the Conservative Opposition about efficiency in local government, yet there has been an increase of 14,000 in the numbers employed by local government in Wales as a result of the 1972 reorganisation.
I find the anti-bureaucracy posture of the Conservative Opposition in the debate rather odd, because they arc the people who have created bureaucracy not only

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in local government but in the National Health Service, as well as in the water and sewerage services—particularly in that great monstrosity called the Welsh National Water Development Authority. It is urgent, in my view, for reasons of bureaucracy and efficiency as well as for reasons of answerability, that both local government and the all-Wales bodies, such as the water authority, should be restructured.
The return of the water services and the sewerage services to the local government sector is an urgent reform. I am very much opposed to the recent antics of the Welsh Water Authority in starting up a system of direct billing. This means that the rebate system, which functions as part of the charge in the rating system, will not be able to function as part of direct billing. I hope that the Secretary of State for Wales, if he reads my comments, will take this up with the water authority.
But the major crisis facing local government in Wales, as in England, is financial. The hon. Member for Leicester, South (Mr. Marshall)—I agree entirely with most of what he said—inquired whether the Welsh Office was a spending Department. I am sure that the Under-Secretary will confirm that it is a spending Department. It is, in fact, a reducing spending Department, and it is with the reduction in capital spending by Welsh local authorities that I am concerned tonight.
There is to be a scheduled drop by a staggering figure of£25 million in real terms in 1976–77 as compared with 1975–76, and for the following three years, as we see from the White Paper on Public Expenditure, a further reduction of£26 million. This will mean not only the abandonment of capital projects, but undoubtedly we must also be concerned about redundancies that will occur in the direct labour units of district councils. Indeed, the terms of the Conservative motion will no doubt be carried out by the cuts of the Government.
These cuts are particularly severe in the Welsh context when we take into account the identifiable per capita expenditure in Wales. In important sectors it is already below the United Kingdom average. Spokesmen for the Government in Wales are always telling us how much higher public expenditure in Wales
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is, and what a marvellous benefit it is, therefore, for us to be part of a centralised United Kingdom system.
Mr. Joseph Dean: The hon. Member stated that the public expenditure in Wales per capita was lower than the average in the United Kingdom. Would he say that the per capita expenditure in the Principality is lower than in the English regions? I think, with respect, that the hon. Gentleman is confusing the issue, and that he will find that it is lower there. The proportion per capita in Scotland is the one that inflates it, not the English one.
Mr. Thomas: I take part of the hon. Gentleman's point but I referred to specific sectors. If we take the general figure, public expenditure per capita in Wales is higher, but it is higher because it is inflated by the massive expenditure in Wales on social security benefits. The figure for England was£126 per head in 1974–75, and the figure for Wales was a massive£151 per head. This results from the higher percentage of elderly people and the higher percentage of low income people in Wales. It is our dependance on social security benefits that makes us the recipient of higher public expenditure per head, and not direct investment in the improvement of services.
I should like to highlight specifically the expenditure per capita on housing. The figure for England in 1974–75 was£74, but the figure for Wales was only£65. This is despite the fact—
Mr. Anderson: Is not that figure accounted for by the higher proportion of owner-occupation in Wales as compared with that in England?
Mr. Thomas: I am coming to that. Part of the problem in Wales is that we have a higher figure of owner-occupancy, but much of that owner-occupied sector is in property which is substantially in need of improvement. Therefore the need for public expenditure on housing in Wales is greater than it is in the United Kingdom generally. There are comparisons which can be made with other regions in England, such as the North-East in particular.
There is to be a real reduction in the housing allocations to local authorities in Wales despite the fact that 45 per cent. of our housing stock is pre–1918. The

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fact is that one in seven of all houses in Wales has been officially classified as unfit, in the house condition survey. We have more than 61,000 people on Welsh council house waiting lists–11,000 more than 12 months ago.
What is the Government's response to the Welsh housing crisis? We saw a peak figure of 17,236 new houses completed in Wales last year, the highest since 1969. I give credit to the Government for that figure, which is a substantial improvement on the annual performance of the Conservative Government, who managed to build only 4,000 public sector houses annually in Wales.
But if that figure is compared with the international league table, we find that Wales is the lowest in Europe, with the exception of Italy. The United Kingdom figure for dwellings completed per 1,000 of the population compared with European Community and OECD countries is extremely low, and this is where we must make up the leeway in the course of the next five years. But there is no indication from the Government that they intend to make up this leeway in house building or house improvement, despite the wording of the second part of their amendment. That is what I meant by saying that I supported the amendment in the hope that the Government took it seriously.
Time and time again, the research department of Plaid Cymru has put forward the figure of 25,000 new houses per annum if we are to tackle our housing problems in Wales—problems not only of an older housing stock with the consequent need for improvement, but such problems as homelessness and other serious matters like housing stress through the over-occupancy of properties. This figure has not been challenged by the Welsh Office and, when we present it with yet a further study of housing needs in Wales—we hope tomorrow—this again bears out the discrepancy and the inequality in the housing position in Wales compared with the United Kingdom as a whole and other European countries. Therefore, we want to see a relative increase to meet that gap in the allocations to district councils in Wales both for new building and improvements and not the kind of reduction that we see in the public expenditure White Paper.
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I am concerned about the Welsh Office's latest attitude, which is to say that it is giving priority to new building rather than to house improvement. We were told last year when we had the totally unexpected and unjustifiable freeze on local government lending that these reductions in local authority mortgages and the reductions coming this year in the money available for improvements both to the councils' own stock and the improvement of private housing stock were due to a new priority which the Government were giving to house building. This is a totally wrong attitude.
When dealing with a situation in Wales where there is a preponderance of older housing stock with its need for improvement, we require not only a programme of new building but a parallel programme of improvement, otherwise the existing housing stock gets worse, with the result that the problem of new building in future years will be even worse than it is now. In other words, the shortfall in real terms will be worse in future because improvement has been neglected.
I press the Welsh Office to look again at this. Many arguments have been put forward that good, cheap improvements are more beneficial in the short term for an improved housing stock. I am certain that, bearing in mind the situation which is likely to exist in 1977–78, the Welsh Office must review its allocations.
I am not happy about the way in which these allocations have been set out in the circular to local authorities dated 27th February. The Welsh Office has lumped together all the categories for the improvement and conversion of dwellings, acquisitions from the private market, environmental work and capitalised repairs. The argument put forward by the Under-Secretary of State for Wales was that this was being done to ensure that local government had more flexibility. But the true result is that local government has been given more flexibility but substantially fewer resources with which to be flexible.
What has happened is that in Blaenau Ffestiniog, for example, the district council planned to acquire 40 empty properties which had come on to the market but now cannot do so. What will happen to them? They will become second homes,

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and the housing crisis in the town will be made even worse. I press the Under-Secretary to talk to his colleagues in the Welsh Office about this issue and about the needs of certain district councils with older property and second home problems in their areas with a view to seeing whether the Welsh Office cannot be more flexible in its approach.
The Government's present tendency is that which was reflected in a parliamentary answer which appeared in column 639 of Hansard of 3rd March to the right hon. Member for Anglesey (Mr. Hughes). The tendency is that these allocations are arbitrarily based on last year's performance in terms of what is achieved by various district councils and not on real need.
The housing crisis in Wales will be a major issue in the present campaign in the district council elections. Since other hon. Members have referred to the candidates representing their respective parties, the least that I can do is briefly to follow suit.
We are fielding more than 360 Plaid Cymru candidates throughout Wales, not only in the industrial valleys—like the Rhymney Valley, where we are fighting to gain control for the first time—but in rural areas where many independent candidates are now fighting under a political label as a response to what they see to be the increasingly arbitrary interference of the Welsh Office in the policies and priorities of district councils. Naturally, I wish them well. I hope to be able to return to the House next week after the local government elections with a Plaid Cymru control in at least three authorities in the industrial valleys.
7.27 p.m.
Mr. Terry Walker: Having studied the motion tabled by the official Opposition and having sat through the speech of the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) it strikes me that there is a definite lack of understanding of the needs of our society at the moment among Opposition Members.
When I heard the hon. Member for Conway (Mr. Roberts) say that people were coming to his surgeries to put pressure on him about buying council houses, I reflected that in my own constituency I experienced a completely
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different situation. The kind of person who comes to my surgeries every week wants a roof over his head and has not the resources to buy a council house. He needs to have one provided for him to rent. Many of these people are separated from their families because they cannot find homes of their own. Many are separated from their children. The need is to build more houses to rent. I make no apology for saying that, because I believe it to be the predominant need in urban areas like Bristol.
My own constituency of Kingwoods inherited a waiting list of some 1,400 people. After three years of an independent Tory residents' control, the number on the waiting list is still about 1,400. This is not good enough.
But our position in Bristol and in Kingswood is aggravated by the fact that we have a reactionary Tory-controlled council in the County of Avon, and we very much regret that the previous Tory Government refused to give metropolitan status to Bristol and South Gloucestershire. This was a political move, because they knew that if South Gloucestershire and Bristol became a metropolitan area, it would be Labour-controlled. So instead they chose to add part of rural Somerset, so making sure that the new County of Avon stayed in the hands of the independents and their supporters, the Conservative Party.
I resent the fact that this political motion has been tabled by the Opposition. I believe that people are more important than politics. When we see the political actions which created the Avon County Council that we now have to endure, it is a matter of regret that we have a motion of this kind under discussion today. When talking about local government, we cannot consider district councils in isolation. We must also look at county councils.
Bigger local government has not meant better local government. The 1972 Act has resulted in large increases in administration and bureaucracy, particularly in the Avon area. There are too many chiefs and not enough workers. The rates have increased, but people have not received value for money. In an area like Avon, local government spending has increased because of the large

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salaries being paid to officials. Things are getting out of control.
New districts like Avon have been a let-down. Considerable control has been taken out of the hands of elected councils and is now held by officials. The area I represent is coming off worse in social services, education and roads because the local councillors are not members of the ruling Conservative group. The Tory achievement in Avon has been a kind of dictatorship, which I completely abhor.
Social services, which include provision for the homeless, should be transferred to district councillors. A large part of my area is being used to rehouse homeless people from throughout Avon. Those houses should be given to the 1,400 people on the district council waiting list. This is one area in which urgent reform is needed.
The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act seems to have been forgotten in Avon. When the council is asked about the provision of telephones under the Act, the reply is that they cannot be provided because no money is available. The district council made representations about home adaptations and was told that if people liked to pay for the work, they could have it done. If they could not afford it, nothing would be done.
We have heard much today about the possibility of Tories winning control of councils next week. If this is an indication of the platform on which they will be standing, it leaves a lot to be desired.
More money must be made available to district councils. We must come to terms with the overriding practices of counties like Avon which are controlled by politically motivated men who pay no regard to the needs of the community.
We also need to consider the planning laws relating to district councils. Hon. Members who hold constituency surgeries will know of people who have not been consulted by local authorities about planning matters.
If we are talking about serving the interests of the ratepayers, we must ensure that ordinary folk do not lose confidence in local government, as have two of my constituents, one of whom has been legally prevented from occupy-
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ing his own home for the last four years because the local authority has not ensured that a developer brought roads up to the required standard. My constituent has used all the proper channels to seek to remedy this serious injustice, but has received no help from local authorities.
Unless such matters are remedied, local government will continue to fall into disrepute, as it has since the 1972 Act.
The Labour Party is seeking to retain control of large cities like Bristol in the elections next week and also to control areas like Kingswood. We want to bring fairness and compassion back to local government. It is the only way to overcome the cynicism which has grown up over the inactivity and reactionary actions of Tory local authorities since the new councils were created.
7.36 p.m.
Mr. Michael Morris: I would not wish to follow the remarks of the hon. Member for Kings-wood (Mr. Walker) too far. Unlike him, I think it is appropriate that we should debate local government just before local elections. Far too often in the past Westminster has been divorced from local government and it can only be healthy to have more involvement.
I am sorry that the new Secretary of State is not here. That is not a reflection on the Minister for Planning and Local Government, who is on the Front Bench, though I suspect I know the answer he will give me to a question I shall be asking later.
The Secretary of State looked at the facts local government has to face and there are two facts we should always bear in mind. First, in the period from before the Second World War until 1960, local government expenditure, under successive Governments, totalled about 10 per cent. of our gross national product. In the early 1960s we saw the start of the change which has resulted in nearly 20 per cent. of GNP now being spent by local government. Expenditure has doubled in real terms. Secondly in that same period the number of local government employees has increased from½million to 2½million. These are worrying statistics. They indicate part of the problem we face.

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The Chancellor of the Exchequer has referred in the past to people in non-productive work and many workers in local government fall into this category. That does not mean that they do not do their job seriously or conscientiously, but it is non-productive work.
It is too easy for the Government to say that the faults of local government reorganisation lie with this side of the House. They know that the first phase of the reorganisation took place in London in 1965, and that was reasonably successful. We did not have the problems experienced in the later re-organisation.
The reason for this can be found in the nature of the people in charge of local government since that time. It is a sad fact that the majority of district councils, particularly in urban areas, are controlled by the Labour Party and have been so for the last three years. So, too, are many county councils, and we have also had a Labour Government for just over two years.
One of the reasons for things having gone wrong has been the lack of financial discipline in local government in the past two or three years. I accept as willingly as anybody that inflation has been a major problem. However, if the Government had taken a grip on local expenditure at an earlier date than the current financial year, many of the problems would not have been on the present scale. Even now we have only a rather weak apology for cash limits. If the hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends believe in cash limits, the time has come for them to say so. I am sure that in their hearts they wish that they believe in them. If they have a belief in cash limits, they should implement them.
The third problem area is the level of legislation. The hon. Gentleman is one of the main causes of excessive local government legislation. Local government is now having to digest the Community Land Act—
The Minister for Planning and Local Government (Mr. John Silkin): Is the hon. Gentleman attacking my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, the hon. Member for Greenwich (Mr. Barnett)? He keeps on referring to "the hon. Gentleman" and suggests that he is responsible for exces-
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sive legislation. My hon. Friend has been a Minister in the Department of the Environment for only a week.
Mr. Morris: I was referring to the night-and-day sustenance which he gave to the Minister for Planning and Local Government to keep him going.
My right hon. and hon. Friends are worried that the Labour Government's attitude as reflected through the district councils, is that on the whole it should De the council that does things, that only as a last resort should voluntary labour be introduced, should the private sector be used.
I turn to the motion and the three aspects that it highlights. I deal first with housing. We must examine the best use of the housing stock. It is regrettable that the Minister for Housing and Construction is not in the Chamber. We constantly hear him saying what a good job is being done. Press releases to that effect leave his Department almost daily. However, examining the figures in detail makes it clear that as a country we are not doing a very good job.
The hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Thomas) mentioned our performance in relation to Europe. It is a great pity that up-to-date statistics are not available, but for 1974, the last year for which statistics are available, the public and private sectors in the United Kingdom produced five dwellings per 1,000 inhabitants. That compares with France producing 9·5; Denmark, 9·6; Germany, 9·7; and the Netherland, 10·8. Regrettably they are not all Conservative-controlled countries, but nor are they all Socialist-controlled. The figures suggest to me that Britain is not performing very well in absolute terms, regardless of where the mix lies within it. We have little about which to pat ourselves on the back.
The Minister for Housing and Construction persistently suggests that the homeless situation is not as bad as is made out. On 31st March, in a Written Answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Burton (Mr. Lawrence) the hon. Gentleman gave some statistics which indicated that in London there were 13,500 homeless families and 15,364 in the rest of England. Do we really think that there are only the best part of 29,000 homeless families in Britain, or

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that there were in 1974? Surely there is sufficient evidence from Shelter, from Shack, from local authority symposiums and from our own experience as Members of Parliament that the figure is considerably in excess of 29,000. It seems that the Government are pulling the wool over our eyes in suggesting, by the use of official statistics, that the figure is as low as they say.
Further, we are not doing very well in producing municipal housing at a reasonable cost, regardless of the number of units that are produced. Perhaps there will be an argument about the number of units that should be produced, but surely it is common grounds that the cost of municipal housing is totally out of hand. It is good to see that the hon. Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) has returned to the Chamber. Her former borough probably heads the league table in producing the most expensive housing in the country. With average deficits running from£1,200 to£1,400 per unit for municipal housing, it seems that things are getting out of hand. No wonder the Government's borrowing requirement is increasing.
The Secretary of State mentioned improvements. Britain's performance in the improvement sector can only be described as pathetic. From a peak of 361,000 in 1973 the number has declined to last year's figure of 126,900. That is not a good performance by any yardstick. There is a major need for a review.
There is evidence of waste. The Secretary of State and his hon. Friends were very keen to seek details from my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) as to where we should cut or save. However, they have direct evidence from their own housing advisor, Mr. Roger Warren Evans. In a report submitted to the Government it was suggested that inefficient councils wasted a staggering £140 million on house building. I refer to the report that was submitted in September 1975. Apparently, the councils were wasting the money because they were employing too many architects, paying over the odds for design and building, and taking too long to start work on site.
At lunch time today I passed a site in my former borough—namely, the
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London borough of Islington. The site was owned by the Greater London Council when I was elected in 1968. I am sorry to say that even now not one family has been housed on that site. The development is still being built. As I have said, the site was in the ownership of the GLC nearly 10 years ago. I suspect that it has been owned by the GLC for well over 10 years.
Mr. Warren Evans slates parts of local government for failing to impose tight schedules on builders and refusing to stick to standard designs. I suggest that local authorities, especially Labour-controlled councils, are not making the best use of resources.
I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman saw a television programme during the recess in the "Man Alive" series. It was on council housing. If he did not, I recommend him to ask his officials to provide time to show it to him. He will be pleased to know that it was a completely non-party-political programme. Some features of the programme were very worring for those of us who know local government in some depth.
For example, there were two huge blocks in Liverpool that were totally empty and it transpired that the local authority had approached his right hon. Friend for permission to demolish. They were post-war blocks. The programme also dealt with blocks of flats in London where the external features were falling off. The reaction of the borough officers was that their research department suggested that it should not happen.
It should not be for individual authorities to undertake their own research. We have a research station to undertake that work. It must be a waste of manpower and resources for every local authority to set up its own research department. If the results are as appalling as they appeared to be in the television programme to which I have referred, it seems that we could well do without local authority research departments in any case.
As the right hon. Gentleman knows full well, people want to own their own homes. I appreciate that it is within his power to try to prevent people from buying their own homes, but it does not make sense to adopt that approach. It

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does not make sense when in 1976 a Labour-controlled council, as it will be for another seven days, is selling council houses, when all-party development corporations that command widespread support want to sell houses.
The waiting lists have dropped dramatically, as I forecast. They have dropped again according to the figures quoted in reply to the hon. Member for the Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross). They were four to eight weeks, and they have dropped again. I suggest that before long the right hon. Gentleman will have to give way, or he is sticking his head in the sand.
I turn now to value for money—something which we all seek. The problem is that the Conservative Party tends to achieve that more often than the Labour Party. Examples have been quoted from Hillingdon, Sunderland, Coventry, Leicester and other places. There are too many examples where, mainly in direct labour, value for money is not being achieved.
I was interested to note that, before the right hon. Member for Cardiff, South-East (Mr. Callaghan) became Prime Minister, Cardiff reckoned to spend about £25,000 a year on civic entertainment. That, by any yardstick, is quite a sum for any city to spend on entertaiment. I hope it will not go up now.
The Government have made it clear that they will expand direct labour, and expand it outside their own boundaries. Indeed, that was an advance in terms of Government policy from what we understood even a week or so ago.
We have had some horrifying figures quoted. I suppose that some of the most horrifying come from Salford where more than £1 million was lost on the direct labour scheme. The CIPFA report suggested that we should never know the true figure. The Government should not ignore the CIPFA report. The Government tended to suggest that perhaps direct labour should be looked at, and they would set up another working party to look at it. When an independent organisation has already done the work in a thorough and detailed way, as CIPFA has, it seems a waste of time, energy and resources to do it again. I think that the Government should accept, at least on an interim basis, the majority of the recommendations in that report. If they want to go over the ground again, I suppose
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that is their right, but it would seem a waste of time.
We refer specifically to municipal trading. The Conservative and Labour concepts of trading are totally different. We have seen created in the West Midlands the concept that local authorities should, in effect, take over almost every aspect of trading. They are still intent on annexing for themselves as much of small business and shopkeeping as they can get hold of.
The Conservative Party totally rejects the concept of municipal trading. We have no evidence that the public want it, that it works, or that it will succeed. But we have evidence that it has failed consistently. That is hard evidence. Municipal trading has cost ratepayers dearly throughout the country. Above all, financial resources are so tight that this is no time for responsible local government to contemplate extending its services into the wide range which the West Midlands County Council Bill sought to enter.
I turn now to staffing. I think that the Government are to be congratulated, because there is now a detailed review of the number of persons employed in local government. The two quarters' figures which we have had show little movement. However, I suggest that the time has come for us in this House and local authorities to reappraise what local authorities should be doing. We should ask ourselves whether there are not too many architects directly employed by local government. Are there not too many planners, engineers and administrative educationists? Have we got the wrong mix of teachers? Are we not beginning to question whether Seebohm was right and that the deficiencies of the all-embracing social worker are demonstrating themselves all too clearly? Above all, we probably have too many traffic wardens. However, that may be a personal irritant.
In addition—this is where Government supporters are unfair to my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury—the biggest increases in staff have been in the London boroughs. Those increases were nothing to do with the reorganisation which was carried out when we were in power. When I was the leader of the London Borough of Islington, staff numbers did not increase. I should like to quote from

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the Islington Gazette of 13th February this year. That responsible paper headlines:
"Did you know that if the borough's population continues falling as fast as Islington Council continues recruiting extra staff, then by 1984, everyone in Islington will work for the Council!"
The council has taken on 700 extra staff in just four years. That is a shattering number of people to take on. When I asked Islington ratepayers whether housing conditions had improved since we lost control in 1971, whether the repairs were done any better, and so on, the answer I got was that they had not. The answer in the Islington Gazette is that they certainly have not.
The inner London boroughs have been the most profligate in terms of staff numbers in recent years. I should be the first to agree that not all Conservative-controlled councils are perfect, just as not all Labour controlled councils are disasters. However, there is hard evidence that the new Conservative-controlled councils are doing a good job.
Leeds—a tough and difficult area—is a prime example where a deficit of£4·8 million has been turned into a surplus of£2·6 million. Stockport has reduced its staff by over 280 in six months without redundancies, merely by natural wastage. In Kent there has been no growth of expenditure.
On 7th May there will be more Conservative-controlled councils, because the people who vote—we all hope that they will vote in greater numbers this time than previously—will want good housekeeping and better value for money. There was a time, not so long ago, when the rates formed a tiny part of the ordinary housekeeping problems of life. Now they represent a major burden for families. The rates burden increasingly affects both domestic and small and, indeed, large business ratepayers. There is no room for complacency.
We all know in our hearts that the rating system has had it and needs to be replaced. However, it was only my right hon. Friend and his colleagues who were prepared in 1974 to stand up and say that the system had had it and ought to be replaced. The right hon. Gentleman the Minister and his hon. Friends shelved
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the problem, and the Layfield Report. We were promised that report in December. I forecast before Christmas that the report would not see the light of day before the local elections on 6th May. It will be interesting to see whether it will see the light of day in the next week. I suspect that it will not and that it will be conveniently delayed.
We believe that local government has an essential role, geared to essential services, and that it ought to draw back from so many of the fringe areas into which it has been tempted, at least until it can perform its essential services properly. We do not believe that it should be involved in all the fringe areas.
The Government should set real cash limits. We urge the right hon. Gentleman to be tough with local authorities, tough in terms of setting strict cash limits. However, we urge that local government should then be allowed to decide without interference how to spend its cash.
Above all, we at Westminster need to recognise that we must cease flooding local government with more and more legislation, because it cannot cope. We should encourage local government, the people who are in it and those who will be seeking election in the next few days.
I am thankful that we have had the opportunity of this debate today. Many districts will change controlling hands. I am confident that my own town of Northampton will be won back—and towns like it—for two reasons: electors know that the Conservatives are better at housekeeping and electors know where the blame for the current problems of our economy can be laid.
8.3 p.m.
Mr. Joseph Dean: I hope to take a little less time than that taken by the hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris), because hon. Members on both sides of the House wish to make contributions which they think merit attention.
The Opposition's motion on the Order Paper and the Government amendment illustrate the division of philosophy between the Government and the major Opposition party. After listening to the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison), I wondered what sort of case he was presenting. In view of its inadequacy of

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content, I suggest that he ought to have a look at who is advising him on the facts about local government and its quite recent history.
It is relevant to look at the performance of the present Government over the past two years or more and that of the previous Conservative Government of about three years, and to see what both of them have done. I welcome the Conservative Party's acceptance and embracing of local government. I am delighted that the Conservatives have been converted. It is a marriage of convenience.
I had to be involved in local government when the measures that the Conservatives introduced almost destroyed some of the best features of the existing system in local government. At the time, some of the major stress areas which were well run and providing all-embracing services were quite brutally emasculated. Some of these areas were very progressive in education services. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Walker) said, Bristol was one of the first areas to introduce the comprehensive system. However, this is no longer a totality. This has happened also in Stoke. The Conservative Party talks about believing in democracy, but it is a charade because it does not believe in that system.
The Conservatives also set up the new water authorities. These wonderful new bodies were set up, we were told, to save money. The chairmen of these authorities were plucked out of the hat, but, needless to say, in the main they were Conservative supporters. They were given jobs at salaries of about£12,000 or£13,000 a year and were answerable to no one. Some of these men—I make this statement quite specifically—were among the biggest hindrances to local authorities which were trying to develop an increased water supply to meet increasing demand. However, these men were put in such prominent positions.
I hope that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Planning and Local Government is taking note of this point. I know that he has the matter under consideration. I hope that in replying to the debate, he will make a statement about the very serious situation in regard to water supplies in certain areas. I hope that he
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will be delighted to do so, because the House will expect that.
I return to looking at what the Conservative Government did about helping local government financially. I am talking with big city experience behind me. If one wants to see the bitter stresses and to ascertain where the emphasis ought to be put, one must look to the London boroughs and the six or seven major conurbations. I have heard Conservative Members weeping about 25 per cent. to 30 per cent. increases in rates, when they caught up with them. I have news for them. Under Conservative Governments the major cities were suffering vast increases of between 15 per cent. and 25 per cent. because of the actions of Conservatives, and they got no increase in help such as that provided by the present Labour Government.
In 1971 the situation had become absurd. The rate support grant was supposed to be worked on the basis of 60 per cent. of expenditure being found by central Government and 40 per cent. by local authorities from rates. In the stress areas of London, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool—taken as a rule of thumb—because of the inadequacies of the rate apportionment system, those authorities were receiving only about 40 per cent. and were having to find the 60 per cent. Some of that was caused by the same Conservative Government.
During that period, the Alf Morris Bill—the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act—was passed. Everyone welcomed that. However, as a prominent figure in local government, I did not welcome it because it arrived without an accompanying cheque. I did not welcome it because it crucified the rates in the stress areas. Although it was not a mandatory Act, if one had any compassion as regards introducing its main features, one could appreciate that it exploded the rates in areas such as Leeds and Manchester, upwards of 20 per cent. immediately, to provide the basics of what the Act requested. We had a saying then that every time the right hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Sir K. Joseph), the then Secretary of State for Social Services, opened his mouth, he put 2p on the rates but we got nothing from the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

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Conservative Members are now saying that they care for local government. But they do not. The AMC sent a deputation to appeal to the then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Sidcup (Mr. Heath), to try to correct this inadequacy. He met the deputation. I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North (Mrs. Miller) was a member of the deputation, as were Sir Robert Thomas, from Manchester, and Sir Albert King, from Leeds. The then Prime Minister fully agreed with them. He said that it was totally unfair. However, he did nothing about it. That is the Conservatives' form of consultation. They did nothing to alter the situation.
In the next 12 months there was a change of Secretary of State for the Environment and the disaster of local government reorganisation, which also left in the pipeline the worst building record since the war in the public building sector, which was brought about by the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker), now on the Back Benches, where he does well to languish, because if his record in those two spheres is any indication of his ability, that is where he ought to remain for a long time.
That is the type of situation with which we were faced when the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham (Mr. Rippon) listened to representations and decided to alter matters. He suddenly found that the rates in Conservative areas would have to go up because some people in those areas who were paying less than half the rates paid by people living in big cities would have their rates dramatically increased. The Conservatives talk about rate increases of 80 per cent. but that figure did not bring the rates anywhere near those already paid in the stress areas. The Conservatives said that they would have an equalisation system until, under pressure from the Tory county authorities, they withdrew that suggestion. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Grimsby (Mr. Crosland) was appointed Secretary of State for the Environment we had rate equalisation, and it was welcomed. Why should rural areas receive 13p on the domestic rate element and Leeds and Manchester receive only 7p?
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In July 1974 the Labour Government made a mistake—no doubt with the forthcoming October General Election on their mind. In Leeds the original inhabitants paid a certain rate poundage, but the people who had been absorbed into Leeds and who occupied similar semidetached houses, because they had been paying low rates before and their rates had gone up above 35 per cent., were given a handout. Is there anything more ridiculous than two families living on different sides of the road paying rates at a different level in the same authority? I criticised that decision then, and I do so again.
I come now to the Housing Finance Act. I do not accept the standpoint of the Clay Cross councillors. I do not believe that we can get away from democratic decisions, however unpalatable they are. What did you do? The decision that you rammed down people's throats—
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Bryant Godman Irvine): Order. I have no such powers.
Mr. Dean: The decision that the Tories rammed down people's throats was one reason for the Clay Cross reaction. There was no need for the Housing Finance Act. Historically, local authorities had to balance the housing revenue accounts. The Manchester local authority had to raise rents periodically to finance large municiple house building programmes. We sometimes had to face unpopular election results, but we did not run away from that task. The Conservative Party introduced the 50p increase immediately and the £1 a few months later. Such a system had never been known before, and that was done in advance of the legislation which authorised such increases.
The Conservatives are the champions of owner-occupiers. I am an owner-occupier and I am not against the sale of council houses where they are surplus, but it is criminal to sell council houses when there is no surplus.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Why?
Mr. Dean: You have only just walked in. I have been here all the time.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman must address his remarks to the Chair.
Mr. Dean: The hon. Member lot Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) has only just walked in. Had he taken more interest in the debate he might have caught your eye later, Mr. Deputy Speaker. If the municipal tenant had received a tax rebate on the same basis as the owner-occupier on the money he was paying for the council house there would have been no need for any subsidy on council houses before 1974. The figures are there to prove that, and it is deplorable that we have not considered this aspect.
The hon. Member for Aylesbury spoke about Mr. Frank Field and his declaration about the sale of council houses. Anyone is entitled to his opinion, but that does not make him an expert. There may be some merit in certain of Mr. Field's comments on housing but there are others with which I violently disagree. I should like to quote from the editorial in The Guardian of 12th April which deals with what Mr. Field said:
"There are more serious objections, however, to the wholesale transfer of council houses to tenants. To begin with it would probably increase public expenditure because the cost of a council house gradually decreases whereas tax relief on mortgages—given the frequency of reselling—rises steeply. Secondly, in areas such as London"—
and, I would add, the other major stress areas—
"where there is already a chronic housing shortage, who would house the next generation of low income workers? If all the existing stock is sold off, councils would have no cheaper housing to offset the economic cost of the new houses that they might build. They would, of course, have the proceeds from the houses that they have sold but this would not be nearly as valuable as the property. Clearly, a minority of the poor would benefit from the transfer but an even larger group would suffer."
Mrs. Millie Miller: Does my hon. Friend recall during that period a leaflet written by an eminent local authority officer, Mr. Henry Aughton, in which he referred to successive Conservative Chancellors of the Exchequer who must have had sleepless nights at the thought of council tenants purchasing their own homes?
Mr. Dean: I recall that, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member
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for Ilford, North for the tremendous career and work she has had in local government. The editorial goes on:
"Poor people in privately rented accommodation would not only miss out on a home of their own but would also find it more difficult to transfer to a council house."
This is the second occasion during the last few weeks when the Opposition have chosen housing as the subject for debate on a Supply Day. On the last occasion we debated the sale of council houses. I do not understand why the Conservatives think that this is an election winner. I recall that when the Conservatives brought in a scheme for 20 per cent. discount for a period of maximum tenancy when the tenant wished to buy his council house, good pre-war houses were sold, but I know of no tenant who bought a council walkup flat. The houses that the tenants want to buy are the best houses. What happened was that desirable post-war houses were being undervalued and sold for£1,900 after discount. As soon as the five-year convenant expired, those houses were bought back by the local council for between£9,000 and£10,000 for rehousing needy housing cases.
The Opposition amaze me when they pose as the guardians of the public purse. Who do they think they are guarding? My hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood is grief-stricken because his authority has a waiting list of 1,400. He has a simple problem in comparison with other authorities. The city of Leeds has a waiting list of over 20,000 and its building programme is slowing up. As a Leeds Member, I must deal with the point raised by the hon. Members for Aylesbury and Northampton, South. They said that the Tories had achieved something in Leeds and had reduced the rates by 6p. They have done so by hitting the most underprivileged section of society—the old, the handicapped, mentally handicapped children and children at primary and nursery schools.
A fortnight ago I had the privilege of showing some handicapped children from Leeds round the House. The teachers were tremendously upset about some of the things that were having to be denied to these children because of the cuts by the Leeds authority. Are Opposition Members telling me, as people who are

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supposed to look after society, that that is good politics? The City Council in Leeds stands accused of dereliction of duty towards handicapped people. There is no question about that. There are certains sections of the community who can be looked after only by a local authority. Unfortunately, these are the very people whom Conservatives attack when they take control. They do not attack at the top. They attack the weakest section of the community. They always have done and they always will do.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Absolute humbug.
Mr. Dean: Would the hon. Member mind speaking for himself?
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I am. Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Dean: No. The hon. Gentleman should have been in earlier.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I have been in a Select Committee dealing with preventive medicine.
Mr. Dean: The hon. Member did not take enough of it.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Touché. I have a few doses left if the hon. Member will give way.
Mr. Dean: The hon. Member is not big enough.
Mr. Nicholas Winterton: He is bigger than you.
Mr. Dean: Let us carry on with the serious business. The clowning is over. I return to the time of the passage through this House of that great democratic measure the Housing Finance Act. I was part of a deputation which met the then Secretary of State for the Environment, the right hon. and learned Member for Hexham. It was a high-powered deputation of which I was a junior member. It was made up of members of the TUC and the AMC. The two leaders were Sir Robert Thomas from Manchester and Vic Feather.
People talk about increases of 15 per cent. or 20 per cent. and say what a terrible crime it is. I produced figures at that meeting showing that over an 18-month period municipal tenants in some areas had suffered rent and rate increases
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of 40 per cent. What was so tragic was that the figures were accepted by the right hon. and learned Gentleman. He did nothing about them. In those circumstances why should the Opposition be surprised when some people over-react?
I have never believed in the phoney argument that council tenants can be told that their rent is static for all time. That is like saying that the price of a loaf of bread will never rise. I had better not mention potatoes. There has to be some sense of balance. My view is that the stress areas of the country which are historically Labour-controlled have been badly done by in past years under Tory Governments. The hon. Member for Aylesbury ought to have a closer look at the history of his own party. Quite blatantly it did not place the emphasis on the stress areas. Only three or four years ago, in the days of the AMC, figures were produced showing that some Conservative-controlled areas were receiving more money by way of education grant than they were spending on the whole of their budget. They were actually saving and being enabled to reduce the following year's rates as a result of the money received in education grants.
I will give one example. The Tory-controlled Hampshire authority had£6 million that it could not spend. This was at a time when the London boroughs and cities such as Leeds, with all the strains and stresses of overcrowding, and with homeless families moving into the area, could not get an extra halfpenny These are the people who are now hoping to take control of local authorities next week. That would be the biggest disaster imaginable.
There has been talk of direct labour departments. I have been heavily involved in the administration of such a department and I do not believe that direct labour organisations are altogether free from faults. I do not say that there cannot be any improvements made. But I do not believe that the private sector is any different. I do not condemn every private builder. I would not want to see a situation in which direct labour operated in a monopoly position, where the market was not tested. I believe in testing the market. I do not believe in giving hand-outs to direct labour departments. When, following the Barnwell Report, the procedure was adopted of

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awarding one contract with the two following ones to be negotiated on the basis of the first one, the private sector grabbed at it because it gave it the chance of continuity of building, to which it was entitled. I make no criticism of the private sector when it performs well. We must be fair to direct labour departments when they operate successfully.
The hon. Member for Northampton, South mentioned Salford. He did not, however, mention Manchester, which has the biggest direct labour organisation outside the GLC area and Glasgow. He did not mention the fact that Manchester broke the back of its primary school problem in three years. He did not say that it has just finished the largest educational project in Europe, carried out in competition with private enterprise. The Conservatives showed their concern for the ratepayer when they won control by saying, after a short time, "Smash the direct labour organisation." If the hon. Member for Macclesfield wants to look it up, there is an Adjournment debate, reported in Hansard, in which evidence that I sent at the time was quoted.
Because the direct works department had been so successful, the Tories passed a resolution that in future it would only be able to build houses and to maintain the fabric of corporation buildings—in other words, that it would be denied the opportunity to build such things as community centres, schools, sports and educational facilities. The excuse was not that the department could not build successfully but that it could build houses cheaper than it built schools, for example. Nothing was further from the truth.
The city treasurer, Sir Harry Page, a distinguished gentleman, was instructed to carry out an investigation. He showed clearly that on educational projects there had been a saving of between 7 per cent. and 10 per cent. measured against the lowest private tenders. The Conservatives who ruled Manchester at the time did not think about the ratepayers. When a large contract came up for educational provision, the tender of the direct works department was the lowest by 2½per cent. The Tories decided that the contract should go to private industry. Such are the people the Opposition are now saying are best fitted to guard the public purse. Everything that I have said can be confirmed. It is on record.
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I began by saying that there is a deep difference between the philosophies of the two parties. But there would be no point in our having the House of Commons if there were not. Politics is about power and applying policies. The type of policy supported by the Opposition is what the ruling Conservative group has followed in Leeds, with its attack on the chronically sick and disabled, the elderly, handicapped children, and the educational services in general. The Opposition are debasing public debate, and I hope that tonight's vote will show the contempt of the House for them.
8.32 p.m.
Mr. Geoffrey Dodsworth: The debate has been full of substantial and well-informed contributions, making clear that there is in the House a high level of expertise in and knowledge of local government. I hope that the constituencies of England and Wales will listen carefully, but I doubt it. I believe that on Thursday next week democracy will be on trial. The real test is how many people will bother to vote. That must be the critical issue.
We have a problem of communication both in national and in local government. The issues in local government are complex and perplexing. We have heard interesting illustrations of the difficult social choices and economic priorities facing those responsible for the conduct of affairs in local government. I share the view that it has been the practice of the Government to set out requirements, lay down the criteria and make demands, without necessarily willing the means.
Over the years, standards have been set on education, housing and the social services, but the means have never been willed by Parliament. That fact has emerged from some of the speeches in this debate. My concern is that the debate at local and national level is not reaching the ears of those affected—the ratepayers and electors.
The simplicity of the rate demand is such that it comes as a blow. It is a missive in the post, something which can be received with a gasp very often, with heart-searching as to how it is to be paid. But it is capable of rapid assessment. It is not easy, however, to work out how the figures are calculated. On the back of the demand is a series of complicated

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poundage calculations which one has to make in order to arrive at how the rates are spent. It is difficult also for people to assess the performance of their local authority. I do not think that on the whole people are able to say whether a good job is being done.
The financial affairs of local authorities are complex. A simple illustration is the ability to finance capital expenditure by a mixture of long-term and short-term borrowing which requires judgment y local authorities. forecast has to be made on the level of commitment in either direction. If, for example, the authority feels that it should borrow money cheaply on a short-term basis, because that is the condition of the market at the time, it may suddenly find itself having to meet rising interest costs. Equally, it might find that it is not able to arrange its long-term finance on a satisfactory basis.
A substantial part of the revenue of local authorities comes from the Government through the rate support grant. Often the Government set the standard and form of the services to be provided but supply only half the income required by local authorities.
The Hertfordshire county authority has faced serious problems caused by both the rate support grant and inflation. Half its increased rate costs are caused by inflation and half by the problems of the rate support grant. I shall refer briefly to some of the difficulties which that has presented. I have tabled an Early-Day Motion, signed by hon. Members from Hertfordshire constituencies from both sides of the House, drawing attention to the deficiencies of and the dissatisfaction with the present system.
This year Hertfordshire increased its rates by 20 per cent. That was substantial but it was caused half by inflation and half by the problems of the rate support grant.
A further illustration of the difficulties of planning in local government is that it was assumed that the adjustment involved in assisting the London area would involve£5 million loss in grant for Hertfordshire, but the sum turned out to be£8 million. The authority scratched around to make last-minute adjustments in its spending programme, having al-
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ready set itself a rational target. That had to be changed at the last minute. and that is not satisfactory.
The chairman of the finance committee of the Hertfordshire County Council has been making representations to the Department of the Environment for many years. The chairman is a member of the Labour Party. He pointed out that the county council had suffered loss of grant for two years but had had to make special payments to staff because of the area's proximity to London.
The resources element of the rate support grant is designed to augment the rate resources of the so-called poor areas, and that brings me to the complex of the calculations involved. The complex distribution arrangements for the needs and resources elements illustrate the difficulty of communicating to the public the method by which rates are calculated. For the needs element eight different factors have to be taken into account, except in outer London boroughs, where there are nine, and in the inner London boroughs, where there are 10.
It is impossible for a member of an authority to communicate that problem to the electors to whom he is accountable. It is clear that we must seek a way to restructure the financing of local authority operations. I was concerned about the suggestion in the debate that there should be no change, that the status quo was fine and that in making changes we had destroyed good things. I understand that difficulty.
I had the pleasure of working in a local authority for many years. I enjoyed the experience, and learned that the officers and councillors were fine people, dedicated to the service of the public. But they have a difficult problem of communication. We need a source of income which is much more related to the ability to pay, much more related to the prosperity of the area to which the services are being provided.
We should have a dual system, maintaining the present rating by occupation for certain services. In that way we can bring the control of all the expenditure under the one umbrella of the authority. I understand the need for co-operation with the Government and the need to communicate about the standards of service, but I believe that local government is very good government, and that the

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more local it is, the better and more democratic it is likely to be. On that basis, control over the income is more likely to bring true democracy in the deployment of local resources.
There is one thing which can be done by local authorities and which represents a true opportunity for economy. Many of us are dissatisfied with the quality and standard of local transport. We believe that there are services which could be used if licences were made available to local operators. My inquiries lead me to believe that services could be provided at only half the cost to the local authority in providing subsidy and with a substantial reduction in fares.
This is a classic illustration of how there could be economic benefit to the community at large. It would require a political decision. It would mean a change from the status quo. Some Labour Members have suggested that the Conservatives have destroyed existing situations, but we are always seeking a better way. There is a better way to do everything. Change must be made on a controlled and logical basis. In the case of local transport, it is clear that there are operators available, that the resources exist and that there is a travelling public with a need.
I hope that next Thursday we shall see substantial interest by the public in the way in which we conduct our local authority affairs. I think that that day will be a turning point in local government democracy. I hope that it is an opportunity that the people will not miss.
8.44 p.m.
Mr. Donald Anderson: The hon. Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Dodsworth) may know that the Government have set up a steering committee to look into the problem of flexibility of transport in rural areas.
I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman that we look forward hopefully to a good turn-out in the elections on 6th May. Those elections are the reason for the timing of this debate. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) was in a dilemma. He did not know whether he should indulge in a political knockabout because of the proximity of the local elections. Certainly, in the
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flourish of his speech, he began talking about a suffocating Socialism and about setting Oxford free. The only freedom characteristic of the Opposition during this debate has been the wish to be free of their own rather embarrassing record when in office in matters such as the erosion of local democracy, the Housing Finance Act and others which have been dealt with by my hon. Friends.
Apart from that, there has been the repetition of rather synonymous platitudes in the motion. Indeed, this is the most obvious impact on reading through the motion and the two amendments. They are almost competing, one with the other, in the repetition of fairly unexceptionable statements. We are told that the Conservative Opposition believes in "maximum value for money" and in "a rigorous management" whereas the Government, for their part, believe in "closer partnership" and "sensible economy". The Liberals believe in efficiency and realism. No one has added apple pie and mother to these unexceptionable statements.
I was surprised by what the hon. Member for Aylesbury said about the erosion of local independence. I have mentioned already the extent to which the record of his own party in office stands as an answer to that charge. I was also surprised by his suggestion that he did not know, in relation to the effect of the legislation on tied cottages, how a local authority was to take a decision on competing claims between those on their housing waiting list and those—who must be relatively few in any event—from tenants in tied cottages who may be displaced. I do not know what experience the hon. Gentleman has in local government, but taking decisions on competing claims is something which housing departments are doing every day. That is part of the normal work of local housing departments.
I would applaud what the motion says about making the best use of the existing housing stock. One feature of the housing situation in Britain today is the crude surplus of housing as against households. I hope the Government will look closely at providing a better allocation of housing resources. This could be done, for example, by encouraging mobility of tenants and avoiding a situation of under-utilisation of a three-bedroomed council

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house. Perhaps the people of sheltered accommodation could release a large part of such housing stock for younger families. One could also look at the possibility of encouraging council tenants to take lodgers in order to have greater flexibility in the system. This would certainly be applauded.
In relation to what the Government amendment says about tenures, I might say in passing that I have been impressed with the personal commitment of the Minister for Housing and Construction to look more closely at developing new forms of tenure and, particularly, to try to ensure greater flexibility in the system. At present there is only the owner-occupied stock and the council stock. The mobile, the single, and the student find difficulty in obtaining accommodation. Different forms of tenure could add greater flexibility to the system.
I turn briefly to what the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Thomas) said about the Welsh housing situation. I was glad that he paid tribute to the good figures of council completions. They are very impressive. In 1973, the figure was 2,700, in 1974 it was roughly 3,000 and then there was a massive increase, of 140 per cent., in 1975—to 7,300. Although the hon. Gentleman criticised the projections in the public expenditure White Paper about housing in Wales, he will note that there is an open-ended commitment to the building of new houses, which is very significant.
I take the hon. Member's point that there has to be a balance, particularly because of the structure and the age of the housing stock, between the improvement of our older housing stock and the building of new accommodation, but I believe that that balance is being maintained in the Government's public expenditure projections.
I want to dwell briefly on only one point in relation to Wales—local government reorganisation. There are at the moment two key factors in local government in Wales—first, the continuing effects of the 1973 local government reorganisation, and second, the poor image of local government within the Principality, in part necessarily because of the rates increases and the consequent unpopularity. There is also the increase in manpower to which the hon. Member for
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Merioneth referred and the evident overlap and duplication of functions between the two tiers of local authorities.
This dissatisfaction and the unpopularity of local government in Wales has been used by both sides in the devolution debate. The anti-devolutionists are saying that the Welsh Assembly would lead only to more bureaucracy on the lines with which we are already familiar in local government reorganisation, while the pro-devolutionists say that this is just the opportunity for change and for getting rid of the old system that they have been waiting for.
Welsh local government is haunted by the spectre of yet further reorganisation. The Government give the impression of being unwilling to face this issue, just as, in terms of devolution, they still appear to argue what I think is a self-delusion—that there can be no effects as a result of devolution on Westminster or the voting system. Yet devolution will have profound effects, first, on the powers of local government. The argument has been cogently put in submissions by the County Councils Association which have been sent to hon. Members. But more important in my present argument, it will have important effects on the structure of local government.
It is easy to criticise the present system for duplication, overmanning and various other problems which have arisen. Rather more difficult is it to give a constructive alternative to the present system. It is always easier to form a coalition against a particular proposal than to have a clear majority in favour of an alternative.
The two suggestions for local government reorganisation which were mooted in Wales in the late 1960s—that in 1967, which broadly foresaw a tidying of the existing old structure, and that in 1970, which foresaw some large unitary authorities in Wales—both appear now not to be seriously regarded. What is being discussed is a system of perhaps 20, perhaps 30, multi-purpose authorities within the Principality. That suggestion has a certain attraction, but it has considerable dangers and needs to be carefully thought through.
Is it suggested, for example, that these multi-purpose authorities will be responsible for the big spending areas such as education, social services, and highways? If not—and there is a need for

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co-ordination—would the groupings of these authorities mean the re-creation of the county councils in a new guise? If there are too many authorities, and they are too small—one is reminded of the Redcliffe-Maud suggestion of a 250,000 population, which many argue is not appropriate in Welsh conditions anyway—there is the danger of more and more power slipping to a rather remote all-Wales authority and the possibility of that authority having to set up agency functions as with the Welsh Land Authority and the Welsh Development Agency.
There is general dissatisfaction with the existing system, but no agreement on an alternative. Each alternative would have to be looked at carefully because of the attendant dangers. There is uncertainty in Wales about local government reorganisation. That is wrong for the public, wrong for members of local authorities and wrong for the staff when there is a prospect of redundancy, given the small number of authorities and redeployment, just when they were beginning to adjust to the new responsibilities of the 1973 reorganisation.
Certainly devolution will have a profound effect on local government in Wales. The Government cannot avoid this issue. There is uncertainty, and that will continue until the Government make some statement about their intentions on local government reform. It is now incumbent upon the Government to give some indication of their views on this vital issue.
8.57 p.m.
Mr. John MacGregor: I apologise for being unable to attend the whole debate, owing to inescapable commitments elsewhere. Last year I was fortunate enough to win a place in the Ballot for Private Members' Bills, and I chose from a vast range of alternatives a Bill to give rate relief to small businesses. The Minister for Planning and Local Government told me then that he could not accept my Bill because I should await the Layfield Report.
I introduced that Bill because I was aware of the burden of the rates on small businesses, and the more I have looked at the situation and received representations since, the more I have believed that the burden of rates on small, medium-sized and, sometimes, even quite large
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businesses, is becoming increasingly onerous. My modest Bill may not be sufficient to alleviate the problems for some, but it would help.
Rates can be a very heavy burden on businesses when their turnover and profits generally are not increasing. The other difficulty for businesses is that the impact of the rate burden cannot be planned from year to year. Businesses have to try to anticipate their other costs—wage costs especially—and they are finding nationalised industry, fuel and other costs rising heavily, and there is often a significant increase in total overheads through the rates burden.
We should look very seriously at the impact of the rates on the productive and private sector. This was illustrated very graphically at the annual conference of the Rating and Valuation Association which I attended last year to speak about my Bill. Several councillors, mainly from the north of England, made the point that British local government is the best in the world, that its services are the best, that ratepayers get a marvellous deal, and that the overall rates burden has not increased all that much.
Another speaker then said that during the evening as a local councillor he was trying to plan local services and during the day he was an accountant mainly involved in the liquidation of businesses. He found very often that it was what he had been doing in the evening as a councillor that had produced the last straw, as it were, for the businesses he was winding up during the day. That contribution brought the whole point out very clearly indeed to those who had up to then looked at only one side of the equation.
Just as the rate burden cannot be planned for businesses for the ensuing year, it cannot be planned for individual ratepayers. We are moving into an era in which net take-home pay will not increase by very much at all, as a result of the pay policy, and I welcome that. Next year's rate burden, although modest in comparison with that of the year before, will for many domestic ratepayers take up the whole of their increase in net take-home pay.
We have the major problem now of the burden of local authority expenditure on the individual recipients. Domestic ratepayers have some ultimate sanction—

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which has gone some way in restraining expenditure this year—in that that they have a vote in local elections. Whatever we do in the light of the Layfield Report, one of the worries we all have is that if we remove some of that sanction in regard to the domestic ratepayer, the industrial and commercial ratepayers may find themselves carrying a bigger part of the can, without any form of sanction or discipline over the local authorities, because they have no vote whatever.
Some local authorities that are particularly profligate and that do not look at the effects on the local community of their increasing expenditure may feel that it does not matter what they do to local businesses. Unless we get this matter right, we shall be doing a great disservice to a great many businesses in the community at large.
It is only too easy for people to draw attention to the services which are being affected, and to the desirable social services in which we should like to see expansion. But the profligate local authorities, however well-meaning they may be, can easily spend other people's money on a very large scale without seriously looking at the effects of that spending.
I accept fully that we all want to see increases of expenditure in these desirable areas, but we should now question whether we have the right balance between the expenditure on these desirable services and the burden we are putting on the productive sector. I do not think that the balance is right.
Those on the other side who say that we are arguing for cuts in desirable expansion should look also at the burdens they are inflicting on businesses and on the people who are creating employment for the local communities. We must, therefore, make sure that the balance is right This may mean that some pipe dreams will have to be abandoned.
This leads me to a thought which has been increasingly borne in on me in studying the whole problem of local government finance in the past year. I refer to cash limits. I am increasingly beginning to feel that the only way to tackle the problem is by imposing cash limits, not just on the Government grants to local authorities, but on the totality of local government expenditure.
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I believe that this is necessary for two reasons. The first is the enormous impact that local government expenditure now has on public resources as a whole and on the gross national product. The level that local government expenditure as a whole reaches therefore becomes a very substantial matter of concern for the House.
All the various suggested methods of reform of local government finance and rating lead to the conclusion that unless we transfer the whole of local authority expenditure to Government grant, we still run the risk that local authority expenditure in any given year will be excessive in relation to what the economy can bear. That leads to the conclusion that perhaps we should consider establishing cash limits to the expenditure of individual local authorities.
Another reason why this may be desirable is that well-run local authorities, which over the past two years have been making tremendous efforts to contain their expenditure, naturally feel very aggrieved when they see countless examples of authorities in other areas still undertaking expenditure of the sort which ratepayers and the national community through the taxpayers should not be bearing.
I have been looking at some of the salary levels paid by local authorities and asking questions about salaries each time an individual example has been suggested in the national Press of excessive salaries being paid to individual local authority officials. Recently, the Manchester University Appointments Board drew attention to the fact that among its graduates last year it found that some local authorities were prepared to pay almost double what the same type of graduate was getting for the same type of job in the private sector.
I wrote round to local authorities to discover what they were paying, for example, in their planning departments. I am pleased to say that in my own county the district councils were well within the limits paid in the private sector. But other boroughs, some of them in London, confirmed that what the university appointments board said was correct. These local authorities appointed people on the legitimate salary scales, but well up them, no doubt in the belief that

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they still had to do that to attract people to their staffs. They had not understood that in the private sector, among chartered surveyors, for example, quite different salaries were being offered.
This sort of thing goes on quite often in local authorities, and it is one factor which accounts for excessive expenditure in local government, and it is only one example. I believe that cash limits would end that.
It will be said immediately that if individual cash limits are applied to individual local authorities, we shall erode local authority freedom. I believe that the right way to get this balance is to say that in establishing overall cash limits for local authorities, at the same time we should say that from the Government we have much less detailed control over the way in which individual local authorities carry out their expenditures. In other words, we should have stricter control over the totality but much greater discretion in the detailed control, and then the local authority authorities would have clearer choices.
I have not yet come to a final conclusion on cash limits because I see the difficulty of taking discretion from local authorities. But it may have to come, and I believe that the Government's position on cash limits for local authorities is still unsatisfactory from a different point of view, which is that we cannot yet be sure that they will establish proper cash limits on local authorities in the same way as they are in terms of central Government expenditure.
I want to put one point to the Minister on the way in which the cash limits for the rate support grant increase order have been calculated. I sit on the General Sub-Committee of the Public Expenditure Committee. Recently, we questioned a senior Treasury official on cash limits. We were told that the estimate for wages and salaries in local government in terms of cash limits fixed for the increase in the rate support grant was based on an assumption that the increase would be of the order of between 5 per cent. and 10 per cent.
I make no criticism of that, because it had to be drawn up last autumn, and since then the Government have moved back in their estimate of what the economy can bear after 1st August this
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year in terms of the total increase in the incomes policy. It was between 5 per cent. and 10 per cent. in the autumn. When they came to look at central Government expenditure in November, they scaled it down to 5 per cent., and the Chancellor has indicated that he will now go for 3 per cent.
Assuming that the Chancellor is successful in getting 3 per cent., or a little over 3 per cent., what will happen to the calculation of the local authority rate support grant increase order? That will have to be based on an increase of between 3 per cent. and 3·5 per cent. Therefore, the assumptions in the original White Paper must be scaled down.
When we asked the senior Treasury official about this, he said that it had been indicated to the local authorities that there might be an adjustment if the wage situation proved different from the estimated increase of between 5 per cent. and 10 per cent. Then we asked him whether it would be an adjustment upwards, or both upwards and downwards. His reply was "upwards only". I think that we have to get it clear now that the rate support grant limit must be downwards.
During my two years in this House, I have liaised very closely with the local authorities in my area and they are trying hard to keep down expenditure. It is increasingly frustrating to them that so many of the factors which cause the rate burden to rise are outside their control. Of course, they cannot explain this to their ratepayers.
Increases in the cost of fuel, postage and travel are created by nationalised industries, over which local authorities have no control. The general level of interest rates is rising, particularly as older debts become due. This is a direct effect of inflation, over which local authorities have no control.
More serious is the fact that wages and salaries form a major part of local government expenditure, yet individual local authorities cannot have much impact on the size of wage increases. With a new pay limit, this may not matter too much, but it mattered last year before the£6 pay limit was imposed. I believe that many local authorities could not afford the full£6, and this has been

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another major cause of the increased rate burden.
I think that, in the interests of getting agreement on the pay policy, the Government connived at and encouraged a settlement by the management side in the national negotiations on pay for local authority workers at the£6. The Government should have been trying to get a lower settlement. If we are to get local authority spending under control, we shall have to look at the way in which wages and salaries are negotiated.
The rate support grant is a key factor for all local authorities and the switch of resources to London has made a material difference to the rate burden in country areas. But for the switch to London and the difference in the way the needs element has been drawn up, Norfolk County Council would have received an extra£9·3 million. It would have received that much extra if the grant had been worked out on the basis used between 1971 and 1974, when the Conservative Government was in office. The changes will add 17 per cent. to the rate burden in Norfolk this year.
Local authorities also have no control over the impact of Parliament's actions. The councillors and senior officials of authorities in my area have been pressing this point on me almost weekly. They despair of the extra burden we impose on them with legislation, which is often well-meaning and is sometimes passed with the agreement of the whole House.
Local authorities have obligations under the Health and Safety at Work Act, and the poultry inspection regulations which are to go through soon will have a significant impact on the inspectorate. Local authorities are also given extra work by Home Office regulations affecting the Probation Service.
Local council officials have been trained through a lifetime to carry out these requirements to the best of their ability, but we ought now to question, every time we pass legislation which has a bearing on local authorities, whether the additional expenditure we shall be imposing on them is justified.
The Chief Secretary to the Treasury told the General Sub-Committee of the Expenditure Committee that he was
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aware of this problem and that the committee he had set up to scrutinise cash limits of public expenditure would regard as a major element of its work the impact of our actions on local authorities. I hope that he will get the support of all Government Departments and that the House will be able to carry out a monitoring role. It is not satisfactory that this task should be done by the Chief Secretary alone. It must become a major responsibility for us all.
The Government could do a great service by helping the local authorities which are fighting to contain their expenditure because of the burden on ratepayers. However, I see no evidence that the Government are trying to help these authorities.
Finally, I refer to the Layfield Report. Clearly, we shall have a long debate on the report when it comes before the House. There are many aspects of local government financial assistance which are clearly in need of reform. In particular, I believe that we shall need to have significant reforms for the domestic ratepayer. However, I suspect that the Government will be unable to put forward positive proposals to the House before the next General Election. In view of the increasing burdens which local authorities are imposing on businesses, it is incumbent upon the Government, prior to major reform, to come forward with specific proposals to tackle the problem.
I do not think that many ratepayers can wait for the three, four or five years which will inevitably ensue before we get a fundamental change in the method of local government finance. Prior to rating reform, I hope that the Government will take fully on board the importance of containing local expenditure, bearing in mind the impact that it has had on many of those who have had to pay for it. I ask the Government to take the side of the local authorities which are carrying the real fight on their behalf at the front line.
9.17 p.m.
Mr. George Park: I suppose that it is difficult in framing a motion or an amendment on a subject such as this to avoid the all-embracing approach. If there is one thing that has emerged from the contributions of Members from both sides

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of the House it is the immense variety of circumstance and need that comes under the umbrella description of local government.
There is an immense difference in the way in which different local authorities tackle or respond to the circumstances as they see them. The hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) almost had the grace to admit that his speech was more related to propaganda than fact. He came close to making that admission. His speech sounded like an election address. He used the time-honoured tactic of calling for something to be done which is already taking place so that he would be able to claim credit for it.
In paragraph (a) of their motion the Opposition talk about "rigorous management". I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows as well as anyone else that local authorities throughout the country have made tremendous efforts to limit their expenditure. It was evident to me that the 50 local authorities in the Midland region that I studied had made great efforts to restrict their expenditure. The average of the 50 authorities was an additional 10 per cent. on domestic rates after taking into account inflation and including water authorities.
I support my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Dean). I ask my right hon. Friend to deal with the water shortage. In industrial areas it is assumed serious proportions.
The subject of rates brings us inevitably to the Layfield Report. I noted with interest that the hon. Member for Aylesbury called for reform. That is in some distinction to what his right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition calls for—namely, the abolition of the rating system. She does so without saying what will take its place.
This is not a new matter for those who have been involved in local government. It has been the subject of many investigations over the years. So far we have failed to provide a viable alternative. I hope that we can do so, but it is not easy. No one should imagine that there is a simple approach.
As regards local authority expenditure, I welcome the fact that the authorities are now involved in the planning of national expenditure on a continuing basis through the consultative councils. This is
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a big step forward. I hope that it will be nourished and encouraged. The fact of life in local government is that expenditure cannot be turned on and off like a tap. I hope that there will be a more corporate approach. I have vivid memories of coming here and having three meetings where one would have done.
The hon. Member for Aylesbury said "Take a chance next Thursday". I hope that the people in Coventry will remember the last time that they took a chance. I hope that they will remember the shambles that we had to pick up.
9.20 p.m.
Mr. Keith Speed: I should like to draw the attention of the hon. Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Park) to the Daily Mail today which points out that Coventry has
"Plans to spend£7,000 modernising 20 houses; private builders could do the same work for between£3,000 and£4,000."
I have no doubt that Coventry electors will have that in mind tomorrow week.
I should like to add my greetings to the Secretary of State on his appointment to his important position and define where we can agree, because there are many areas where we cannot agree.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about and pay my tribute to the councillors and officers of local authorities throughout the country, who are often unfairly criticised. They do an extremely difficult job. It is a difficult job at any time, but it is particularly difficult in a labour-intensive industry, as local government is, at a time of high inflation.
I agree with all hon. Members who called for a high turn out at the elections next week. It cannot please anybody here that often only one or two in every five people bother to vote at local elections. I hope that we can improve on that situation.
I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that often the public demand increases in services which require increases in staff and therefore push up the costs. I hope that over the next few years—indeed, over the next few weeks—we can try to educate the people we represent to the fact that for the next two or three years it will not be possible to increase standards and to meet every no doubt worthy desire for improvement in services. That message does not appear to have got

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through to some Members who have taken part in the debate today. The fact of the matter is that the money is not available. The Chancellor of the Exchequer is now saying that, and it is about time that all parties said it. By doing so, we would be backing those local authorities which are cutting their suits according to their cloth and are often roundly criticised for doing so.
The Secretary of State said that the Government's first priority was to defend the economy. However, looking at the Community Land Act, the Rent Act 1974 and the secondary reorganisation Bill which is now going through, to name three pieces of legislation affecting local authorities, I am inclined to say "Come off it", because those three measures have nothing to do with the economy. At best, they are irrelevant. At worst, they are downright damaging.
We call for cuts in local authority expenditure just as the Chancellor and the Treasury team have to call for cuts not because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) said, we believe in cuts for their own sake—like my hon. Friend, I am an expansionist at heart—but because we are living beyond our means. That cannot be said too often.
That being so, there are three areas where we can save money. The first is efficiency. I gave many details regarding efficiency in the debate on 9th April. I gave details of various local authorities which are carrying out cost cutting exercises and are saving a great deal of money. I do not care what local authority it is, but there cannot be one in the country which cannot save yet more money by improving its efficiency. That goes for Government Departments and businesses as well.
Secondly, there is the nonsense of the Community Land Act with a net cost of£312 million over the next few years. We regard the major municipalisation programme, involving quite a few hundred million pounds, as another nonsense.
Thirdly, we must face the fact that lower standards will unfortunately be the rule in many local authority services. I do not think that we should try to burke that issue. The unions and people concerned and the consumers will not like it.
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We, as elected representatives, will not like it. But we are deceiving ourselves if we do not accept that in many cases a no-growth policy means substantially lower standards in certain services.
I turn now to good housekeeping. Leeds has been mentioned. I reject what was said by the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Dean). The various economies which Leeds has made since the Conservative Party became the largest party there last May have not been at the expense of the poor or the handicapped. That was made clear in the budget speech, which I read in its entirety, by the leader of the Leeds City Council. Most of the savings have been in administration and direct labour. There have also been savings on internal transport, post, telephones, and not filling 1,200 vacancies.
Mr. Joseph Dean: The hon. Gentleman refers to the Leeds direct labour department. Building is one of the smallest of its activities. It does not build anything. It only demolishes. How there will be a saving by ceasing to demolish, I do not know.
Mr. Speed: The hon. Gentleman ought to listen. I said that economies had been made primarily in administration and in the direct labour department, and that there are 1,200 vacancies which have not been filled. At the same time, Leeds has managed not only to reduce its rate demand and, indeed, the overall cost, but not radically to affect ally of the main services.
Mr. Joseph Dean: Rubbish.
Mr. Speed: I am prepared to leave it to the judgment of the citizens of Leeds next Thursday, who will give the Conservatives overall control.
I put a particular point to the right hon. Gentleman the Minister for Planning and Local Government when we had our previous little debate—we are always having these little debates—on 9th April. He has now had a few days to think about it. It is a specific "for instance" that would save the Secretary of State—although he was not the Secretary of State then, he might be interested—a great deal of money on the local authority building programme. A few days ago I outlined the housing programme of the Sefton Metropolitan

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District Council, which happens to be Conservative-controlled, building the Marsh Side housing project, using standard designs and a good local builder building attractive houses that are going down extremely well with those living in them. It is saving over 20 per cent. in cost, which on this particular project is£500,000. Extrapolating that nationally in the council house building programme, it is about£200 million to£300 million.
I invited the Minister then to endorse this scheme, which has been approved by the regional office of the Department of the Environment in Manchester. I invite him again, in winding up the debate, to endorse it and to encourage other local authorities to have such a building scheme. I accept that in one or two minor aspects it does not meet Parker Morris standards, but the houses are infinitely more attractive than are most council houses elsewhere. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will endorse this scheme. It is one way in which the nation can save a great deal of money almost straight away.
The Secretary of State got himself into a little muddle about the sale of council houses. He was strangely selective in his statistics about improvements five years ago. That was all right. It was 1971. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) pointed out, there was a constant build-up in improvements to local authority houses and to private houses, and that build-up has now gone right down again.
Perhaps what is more important is that the Secretary of State did not say why—I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will answer this—if he has this apparently flexible view about tenants being able to buy the houses in which they live, that should not apply to new town tenants. My hon. Friend gave a clear example in Northampton of a very small list and the development corporation wishing to sell houses to its tenants. It would help us all if the right hon. Gentleman could say that he accepts this open-minded flexibility, as the Secretary of State has accepted it, and that very soon there will be a circular enabling new town tenants to buy their houses. That would save a great deal of time for new town corporation committees as well, and
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it would help the Government in many ways.
One can see—there have been little strains of this in the debate—certain Socialist councillors who live in their own homes but seek to deny a council house tenant the right to buy his home. One can see others who may be Socialist councillors who send their children to independent schools or fashionable comprehensives but who are seeking to enforce no-choice neighbourhood comprehensives on their fellow citizens' children. There are always clinical reasons why a particular councillor should receive private treatment in a single-bed ward when under Government legislation only apparently the Arabs will, by choice, have such a facility.
That is the sort of approach that I have been seeing in the election campaigns over the last few weeks. That sort of approach is now being seen through by the great British public. They regard it as a fair degree of humbug.
Mr. Joseph Dean: Terrible.
Mr. Speed: I agree that it is terrible. I agree with the hon. Gentleman about that.
I come to direct works and municipal trading. I was interested that the Secretary of State came back to Neville Chamberlain. In the previous debate on this subject Joe Chamberlain was mentioned. To try to reconcile 1976—after the enormous increase in the scope of local authorities, the enormous increase in local authority staff and the enormous increase in the local government share of the gross national product—with the old municipal traditions of Birmingham 60 years ago will not wash.
What has come out of the debate is the enormous pressure upon officers and councillors. Local authorities account for over 30 per cent. of public expenditure. Is there such an abundance of talent among officers and councillors that they can go into these entrepreneurial municipal schemes? We know what will happen. The schemes will run up losses and at the end of the day those losses will be paid for by the ratepayer, often the same ratepayer who is discriminated against because he is trying to run a small business. That does not make much sense.

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What certainly does not make sense is the Government's attitude to direct labour. As my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South pointed out, the CIPFA recommendations have been in being for nearly a year. We have not had from any Minister a reply that makes sense. Even on an interim basis, the Government could at least say that if the local authorities adopted the CIPFA recommendations until the interdepartmental committee reported, it might improve their efficiency. Do the Government believe that the recommendations will not improve local government efficiency? If they do, let them say so. If, on the other hand, the Government believe that the recommendations from this independent and expert body are a step forward, it would be perfectly reasonable for them to say, albeit on an interim basis, that they go along with them. If they said that, the Government and the Opposition might get a little closer together on the vexed subject of direct labour.
We are not against direct labour but we say that we should first see whether it is needed. If it is needed, we must make sure that it is done on a properly accountable and competitive basis, which is what the CIPFA say. If we can agree on the CIPFA report we shall have come a long way towards meeting each other. I invite the right hon. Gentleman to try to meet us on this and to say that the CIPFA report is at least a basis for action in the interim before we receive the report of the committee which the Minister for Housing and Construction set up.
There has been mention of the corporate approach. The Bains Report had a lot to say about that. That report was a series of guidelines, not a management blueprint. One problem is that too many local authorities have taken it as a blueprint. Undoubtedly, the consultative council has been a success, and I welcome it. We must build upon that success and make the council even more successful.
One example from my constituency is an indication that something is wrong with the system. There was a proposal to build a new magistrates' court at a cost of £500,000. Kent County Council, realising that we are in a difficult economic situation, said that the project
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should be postponed with the resultant saving of£500,000—which is an idea which should appeal to us all. But the Home Office says that if the magistrates' court is not built, not only is there no chance of getting money in future for the magistrates' court but the money will be earmarked for something else. There would be no saving there. What can we do but say that the money will be spent on building the magistrates' court? As the Member for Ashford I would happily make my sacrifice on this.
The present system penalises the local authority that wishes to be thrifty and rewards the spendthrift. That cannot be right. I know that it has gone on under all Governments. We need to take a long hard look at it, and at Government Departments other than the Department of the Environment, particularly the Home Office, and the Department of Education and Science which is apparently encouraging local authorities to spend, often against the better judgment and instincts of the Secretary of State for the Environment.
The Secretary of State made some play of the manpower watch on local authorities. That is fine, but what of the Whitehall Departments? Local government is beginning to do its stuff. We have had examples from Stockport, Leeds and elsewhere of reductions being made. At least the rise in the number of local government staff has stopped. It is not unreasonable that in the Department of the Environment, the Department of Education and Science and elsewhere there should be matching reductions in the number of civil servants, not necessarily by wholesale sackings but by the methods used by local authorities. It would be helpful if in his reply the right hon. Gentleman could tell us what progress is being made towards this.
We have heard a lot of talk about wages and salaries in local government. I was told in a parliamentary reply not long ago that between April and October last year the salary bill in the Department of the Environment rose by£45 million. That is a great deal of money. Surely it is not unreasonable to ask, if local authorities are having to make cuts and look closely at their vacancies, for a progress report on what is happening in the Government Departments which oversee local authorities.

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The question of reorganisation has raised its head on a number of occasions. Apparently reorganisation has been said to be responsible for the high level of salaries and for all the troubles and problems of local government. That is total nonsense, as the right hon. Gentleman was honest enough to admit in part when we last debated the subject. As my hon. Friends have pointed out, London was reorganised 13 years ago. The Labour Party has been in power for nine of those 13 years. If London government were wrong, the Labour Party has had ample opportunity to do something about it. Yet we know that the London boroughs and the Greater London Council have exprienced rises in costs and staff. Their rate levels have risen every bit as much as those of the districts and counties in other parts of the country. The facts are there for all to see. Let us cut out this reorganisation alibi.
I shall he interested to see what excuse the Labour Party gives when it is fighting the London elections on the next occasion because it cannot fall back on the reorganisation argument as it is trying to do in the district elections. The fact of the matter is that we believe that there has to be overall control of local government expenditure. We very much believe that there has to be a greater freedom within that overall control. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Norfolk, South (Mr. MacGregor) that there has to be much less legislation and fewer circulars. We have to examine the rate support grant system. The Conservatives certainly intend, over the period of a Parliament, to replace the domestic rating system and to do something specifically for small businesses.
The Labour Party use local government as an agent to carry out its policy of social engineering. The Labour Party, which has been drifting inexorably Left-ward in this House, has been drifting in a similar direction in local authorities. We have seen the municipal excesses of the West Midlands County Council. We have seen the chaos at County Hall with the GLC. We can look to that unhappy part of the North-East which has been groaning for far too long under a local administration which even its best friends would not claim as the most efficient, the most
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social or the most democratic in the country.
We certainly reject the approach of the Government. We believe that local authorities should provide the wide range of social and environmental services at local level which they can do better than central Government or free enterprise. We believe that local government is a valuable check and balance on the power of the Government and central bureaucracy. We reject the social engineering concept which far too many Socialists have put forward.
I invite the House to support this motion and I am quite convinced that a week tomorrow there will be important Conservative victories. They will be important for three reasons. First, they will enable many more local authorities. including many of our major towns and cities, to put Conservative policies into practice. Secondly, a strong Conservative local government will be a bulwark against the Left-wing nonsense which the Government have to pursue to satisfy the mindless militants within and without this House. Thirdly, the Conservative victories will show people at home and abroad who are fearful for this country that we have a future, that the British people are rejecting Socialism and turning back to free enterprise and the Conservative Party in the only way that counts, which is through the ballot box. I commend the motion to the House.
9.40 p.m.
The Minister for Planning and Local Government(Mr. John Silkin): The House has listened with great interest to the speech of the hon. Member for Ashford (Mr. Speed). He made his points as courteously as he always does. But I could not help feeling, as I watched him and as the temperature of his voice grew, that he felt somewhat uncomfortable. After all, as he himself hinted, this is the sixth debate on local government in the past four months.
I have no doubt that he is, like myself, a strong protagonist of local government, but I wonder whether his uncomfortable feeling is not due to the belief on his part that the Opposition may be going for overkill. I imagine that he suspects, as I do, that once the local government elections have taken place next week, we

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shall hear no more of the subject from the Opposition until the next local elections.
The Opposition motion is framed in such a way as to make the hon. Member feel even more uncomfortable. The first part of the motion is plain platitudinous. The second part is a positive insult to local government and to the many devotees of his own party as well as of mine who play their part in it.
The motion ignores entirely the efforts that have been made under this Government to achieve, for example, by the setting up of the consultative council and the metropolitan conferences, at which I personally take the chair, a partnership approach to the thorny problems of value for money and the use of resources about which the Opposition claim to be so concerned. The truth is, as the Government's amendment makes clear, and as my right hon. Friend has said, that it is only by the maintenance and development of such closer partnership between the Government and local authorities that we can achieve the right results of providing the greatest service for our people as economically as possible. The balance between local government and central Government is a very delicate one, and I hope that the House will agree that, while the central Government must very often lead and guide, they must avoid destroying the independence of a system of local government that is far older than that of Westminster itself.
The true attitude of the Opposition towards the independence of local government is revealed by the intervention they seek to make in the matter, for example, of municipal trading. I had thought that the Opposition would at least say "Let us leave things as they are; let us agree that local government should have its independence". But no. Yet the cases in which local authorities have indulged in municipal trading have a very respectable history as my right hon. Friend said, despite Neville Chamberlain.
Many councils are responsible for extremely large budgets and are not unfamiliar with the management of large municipal enterprises. Many authorities run extremely good civic restaurants; many have good entertainment facilities; some for example, have very fine
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municipal orchestras performing in extremely good places of entertainment. Local authorities run markets, harbours, and cemeteries and crematoria as well. There are other instances where private enterprise is not providing the facilities that should be provided, and there again municipal trading can play its part.
There is yet another case where, as I understand it, hon. Members opposite have taken the view that municipal trading should be encouraged. I refer to the gambling business. My predecessor as Minister for Planning and Local Government, the right hon. Member for Crosby (Mr. Page), fought very hard to introduce his Lotteries Bill whereby municipal authorities might have run lotteries. If I had started this part of my speech by saying that I could surely take hon. Members opposite with me in agreeing that local authorities ought to be allowed to gamble with their ratepayers' money, there would have been a scream of protest from them. But it was right hon. and hon. Members opposite who tried to introduce the Lotteries Bill in the Session before last.
The question of municipal trading is simply one of judgment in each particular case. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Mr. Smith), who was in the Chamber earlier, asked me last year what my view was on this subject and I told him:
"I certainly sympathise with any local authority which seeks responsibly to use or to extend its powers for the communal good, but specific proposals need to be considered on their merits."—[Official Report 11th November 1975; Vol. 899, c. 674.]
That is my view, it is the Government's view, and it is the correct view.
Sir Derek Walker-Smith: The right hon. Gentleman previously referred to cemeteries and crematoria. Is he putting them within the ambit of trading?
Mr. Silkin: I think it is a lucrative form of trading.
I turn now to the Opposition motion and the existing housing stock. It is interesting that the Opposition appear to be confusing this with obtaining the maximum value for money. Even in this they appear to be in a quandary.
There are three possible methods by which council houses might be disposed

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of: they can be sold at market value, at market value less a discount of perhaps 20 per cent., or, as the right hon. Member for Worcester (Mr. Walker) recommended, they can be given away after a tenant has occupied one for 20 years. All three of those suggestions have been advocated by Conservatives and I wonder whether the real Conservative spokesman will now stand up.
Are the Conservatives proposing to sell council houses at market value, or at market value less a discount? It is not clear whether the Opposition know whether they will sell at a discount or give them away. If they sell them at a discount, they will not get the maximum value out of the house. The truth is that the best use of housing stock is not to dispose of it in every case, but it is to use it for the benefit of those who need it. That, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Mr. Walker) eloquently pointed out, is the way it should be done. The sale of council houses should he seen in that perspective.
I have been challenged a number of times to state why I have adopted a policy of stopping the sale of new town houses to sitting tenants, what the policy is and whether it is logical. It is curious that the Opposition do not appear to have read the consultative document which says:
"It would be a mistake if the new towns did not make some provision for people who want to own their own homes. It would be an even greater mistake if the new towns did not provide for those people whose only hope of a decent home is a house or flat for rent. Until it becomes possible to build enough housing in the new towns to meet the whole range of demand, there will inevitably remain a need to strike the right balance at the margin between the various categories of people concerned."
The hon. Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Morris) and the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) have made my point for me. The latter said that in Bracknell the housing waiting list was now only two weeks. Two years ago, when I came to office, it was one year. The former said that the waiting list in his constituency was only six weeks. Two years ago, when I came into office, it was a year in Northampton, South. Who was right to hold up the sale of council houses?
I do not say that there should not be a review of the situation. But we have
514
always rightly taken the view that as long as there are people in need, we must satisfy that need. We believe that need is the criterion of housing. After the need is satisfied, by all means let us return to what was the Labour policy in the days when we were producing the largest number of houses ever built in this country.
As my right hon. Friend pointed out, it is significant that the Conservative motion deals merely with the existing stock of housing. Of course it does, because it is based on the assumption that there are sufficient houses. That no doubt accounts for the fact that in the last year of Conservative Government the number of completions of new houses went down to the lowest total for 30 years. It has been up to a Labour Government to start to alter the situation, to bring us up again, as last year to more than 300,000 houses—to 310,000.
My right hon. Friend asked the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) how much of the housing he would cut. The hon. Gentleman did not reply: I suspect because the Shadow Chancellor did not wish him to reply and he had been so instructed. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will now reply. I resume my seat.
Mr. Patrick Cormack rose—
Mr. Silkin: When the hon. Gentleman becomes Shadow Secretary of State for the Environment, he can answer. Perhaps he will answer anyway.
Mr. Cormack: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I was on my feet. The right hon. Gentleman had sat down. My hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) did not rise, and therefore his speech had terminated.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Oscar Murton): The right hon. Gentleman was making an invitation to the hon. Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Raison) on the Opposition Front Bench.
Mr. Silkin: I was dealing—
Sir D. Walker-Smith: Further to that: point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Surely there must be a limit to time for which a Minister or any other Member may remain seated without any other Member catching your eye. Surely in

515
those circumstances my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire, South-West (Mr. Cormack) was entitled to seek to catch your eye.
Mr. Deputy Speaker: That is entirely a matter for the discretion of the Chair, and on this occasion I think that the time was not adequate.
Mr. Silkin: I feel immensely complimented that two of the greatest intellects in the House are trying to stop me from continuing with my speech.
The hon. Member for Aylesbury mentioned the Community Land Act, as did his hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge (Mr. Shersby). The hon. Member for Uxbridge asked whether any guidance had been given about private housing taking place on municipally-owned land. The answer is "Yes". There are two circulars on the matter. I shall write to the hon. Gentleman about it.
As to the Act, the hon. Member for Aylesbury said "What a terrible thing it is! You are destroying the independence of local government. You are giving it powers." That is how one destroys local government—one gives it powers. The hon. Gentleman added "This will mean that a creeping Socialism will take place. Thank God we have the district council elections!" He was not very confident about the result, but he just hoped.
It may interest him to know that as a result of researches by regional offices of the Department we found that an overwhelming number of Conservative councils as well as Labour councils are anxious to avail themselves of the advantages of the Act. The hon. Gentleman is a bit out of date. The Act has become part of the life of our country.
Like the hon. Member for Isle of Wight and the hon. Member for Merioneth (Mr. Thomas), I find it increasingly curious that an Opposition which railroaded health, water and, above all, local government reorganisation through a lukewarm House of Commons and a resentful population four years ago—many of whose members, incidentally, are doing their best to dissociate themselves now from their own endeavours—should dare to speak about getting value for money in local government. The effects of the
516
Local Government Act 1972 are still very much with us, but not everyone remembers the promises that went with that reorganisation.
Let me quote from the Explanatory and Financial Memorandum to the Tory Local Government Bill:
"Since the Bill is mainly concerned with altering the structure within which the existing powers and duties of local government are exercsed, it will have little direct effect upon either local authority finance or expenditure overall. Reorganisation of local government will in the long run enable staff to be more effectively and economically deployed."
How long is a "long run"? This particular run would seem to me to be in the nature of a boundary.
Incidentally, the hon. Member for Aylesbury, talking of rent increases, brought into the general picture the water rates. As was said by my hon. Friends the Members for Leeds, West (Mr. Dean) and Manchester, Moss Side (Mr. Hatton)—who I am glad to see back in the House after what I know has been a very difficult illness—it was also the reorganisation of water taking place at the same time as the reorganisation of local government which added monumentally to the costs, manpower and extravagant bureaucracy which has been created. Yet this feeble, divided, trivial Opposition came in for the sixth time in four months to try to debate local government with us. It is ridiculous.
Certainly, the newly-elected district councils in England and Wales will have to play their part in serving the interests of their voters and the country at large. With that I entirely agree. But they can best serve those twin objectives if they play their part with central Government in maintaining and developing those closer relationships which have emerged since the formation of the consultative council. In the special case of the metropolitan districts they should continue in the metropolitan conferences their discusions with central Government to help to identify in cost-effectiveness the priorities which can best assist the people who live and work in their areas.
Above all, the district councils must help in providing the housing, by whatever method of tenure—by owner-occupation, renting, or anything else—which so many of our people so badly need. It is in a spirit of pride that we

517
should aproach local authorities, not in a spirit of shame. It is in that spirit that I ask the House to support the amendment and totally reject the foolish and trivial motion of the Opposition.
Question put. That the amendment be made:—
The House divided: Ayes 289, Noes 250.

Division No 113.

AYES

10.0 p.m

Abse, Leo

Ennals, David

Litterick, Tom

Allaun, Frank

Evans, Fred (Caerphilly)

Leyden, Eddie

Anderson, Donald

Evans, loan (Aberdare)

Luard, Evan

Archer, Peter

Ewing, Harry (Stirling)

Lyon, Alexander (York)

Armstrong, Ernest

Faulds, Andrew

Lyons, Edward (Bradford W)

Ashley, Jack

Fernyhough, Rt Hon E.

Mabon, Dr J. Dickson

Ashton, Joe

Flannery, Marlin

McCartney, Hugh

Atkins, Ronald (Preston N)

Fletcher, Raymond (Ilkeston)

McCusker, H.

Atkinson, Norman

Fletcher, Ted (Darlington)

McElhone, Frank

Bagier, Gordon A. T.

Foot, Rt Hon Michael

MacFarquhar, Roderick

Barnett, Guy (Greenwich)

Ford, Ben

McGuire, Michael (Ince)

Barnett, Rt Hon Joel (Heywood)

Forrester, John

Mackenzie, Gregor

Bates, Alf

Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)

Mackintosh, John P.

Bean, R. E.

Fraser, John (Lambeth, N'w'd)

Maclennan, Robert

Beith, A. J.

Freeson, Reginald

McMillan, Tom (Glasgow C)

Benn, Rt Hn Anthony Wedgwood

Freud, Clement

McNamara, Kevin

Bennett, Andrew (Stockport N)

Garrett, John (Norwich S)

Madden, Max

Bidwell, Sydney

Garrett, W. E. (Wallsend)

Magee, Bryan

Bishop, E. S.

George, Bruce

Mahon, Simon

Blenkinsop, Arthur

Gilbert, Dr John

Mallalleu, J. P. W.

Boardman, H.

Ginsburg, David

Marks, Kenneth

Booth, Rt Hon Albert

Golding, John

Marquand, David

Boyden, James (Bish Auck)

Gould, Bryan

Marshall, Dr Edmund (Goole)

Bradley, Tom

Gourley, Harry

Marshall, Jim (Leicester S)

Bray, Dr Jeremy

Graham, Ted

Mason, Rt Hon Roy

Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)

Grant, George (Morpeth)

Maynard, Miss Joan

Brown, Robert C. (Newcastle W)

Grant, John (Islington C)

Meacher, Michael

Buchan, Norman

Grocott, Bruce

Mellish, Rt Hon Robert

Buchanan, Richard

Hamilton, James (Bothwell)

Mendelson, John

Butler, Mrs Joyce(Wood Green)

Hardy, Peter

Mikardo, Ian

Callaghan, Rt Hon J. (Cardiff SE)

Harrison, Walter (Wakefield)

Milian, Bruce

Callaghan, Jim (Middleton & P)

Hart, Rt Hon Judith

Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)

Campbell, Ian

Hatton, Frank

Miller, Mrs Millie (Ilford N)

Canavan, Dennis

Hayman, Mrs Helene

Molloy, William

Cant, R. B.

Healey, Rt Hon Denis

Morris, Alfred (Wythenshawe)

Carmichael, Neil

Hooley, Frank

Morris, Charles R. (Openshaw)

Carter, Ray

Horam, John

Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)

Carter-Jones, Lewis

Howell, Rt Hon Denis

Moyle, Roland

Cartwright, John

Howells, Geraint (Cardigan)

Mulley, Rt Hon Frederick

Castle, Rt Hon Barbara

Hoyle, Doug (Nelson)

Murray, Rt Hon Ronald King

Clemitson, Ivor

Huckfleld, Les

Newens, Stanley

Cocks, Michael (Bristol S)

Hughes, Rt Hon C. (Anglesey)

Noble, Mike

Coleman, Donald

Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)

Oakes, Gordon

Colquhoun, Ms Maureen

Hughes, Roy (Newport)

Ogden, Eric

Concannon, J. D.

Hunter, Adam

O'Halloran, Michael

Conlan, Bernard

Irvine, Rt Hon Sir A. (Edge Hill)

Orbach, Maurice

Cook, Robin F. (Edin C)

Irving, Rt Hon S. (Dartford)

Orme, Rt Hon Stanley

Corbett, Robin

Jackson, Colin (Brighouse)

Ovenden, John

Cox, Thomas (Tooting)

Jackson, Miss Margaret (Lincoln)

Owen, Dr David

Craigen, J. M. (Maryhill)

Janner, Greville

Padley, Walter

Crawshaw, Richard

Jay, Rt Hon Douglas

Palmer, Arthur

Crosland, Rt Hon Anthony

Jenkins, Hugh (Putney)

Pardoe, John

Cryer, Bob

Jenkins, Rt Hon Roy (Stechford)

Park, George

Cunningham, G. (Islington S)

John, Brynmor

Parker, John

Cunningham, Dr J. (Whiteh)

Johnson, James (Hull West)

Parry, Robert

Davidson, Arthur

Johnston, Russell (Inverness)

Paviit, Laurie

Davies, Bryan (Enfield N)

Jones, Alec (Rhondda)

Peart, Rt Hon Fred

Davies, Denzil (Llanelli)

Jones, Barry (East Flint)

Pendry, Tom

Davies, Ifor (Gower)

Jones, Dan (Burnley)

Perry, Ernest

Davis, Clinton (Hackney, C)

Judd, Frank

Phipps, Dr Colin

Deakins, Eric

Kaufman. Gerald

Prentice, Rt Hon Reg

Dean, Joseph (Leeds W)

Kelley, Richard

Prescott, John

Delargy, Hugh

Kerr, Russell

Price, C. (Lewisham W)

Dell, Rt Hon Edmund

Kilroy-Silk, Robert

Price, William (Rugby)

Dempsey, James

Kinnock Neil

Radice, Giles

Doig, Peter

Lambie, David

Rees, Rt Hon Merlyn (Leeds S)

Dormand, J. D.

Lamborn, Harry

Richardson, Miss Jo

Douglas-Mann, Bruce

Lamond. James

Roberts, Gwilym (Cannock)

Duffy, A. E. P.

Latham, Arthur (Paddington)

Robinson, Geoffrey

Dunn, James A.

Leadbitter, Ted

Roderick, Caerwyn

Dunnett, Jack

Lee, John

Rodgers, George (Chorley)

Eadie, Alex

Lester, Miss Joan (Eton & Slough)

Rodgers, William (Stockton)

Edge, Geoff

Lever, Rt Hon Harold

Rooker, J. W.

Ellis, John (Brigg & Scun)

Lewis, Ron (Carlisle)

Roper, John

English, Michael

Lipton, Marcus

Rose. Paul B.

Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)

Strauss, Rt Hon G. R.

Weetch, Ken

Ross, Rt Hon W. (Kilmarnock)

Summerskill, Hon Dr Shirley

Weilzman, David

Sandelson, Neville

Swain, Thomas

Wellbeloved, James

Sedgemore, Brian

Taylor, Mrs Ann (Bolton W)

White, Frank R. (Bury)

Selby, Harry

Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)

White, James (Pollok)

Shaw, Arnold (Ilford South)

Thomas, Ron (Bristol NW)

Whitlock, William

Sheldon, Robert (Ashton-u-Lyne)

Thorne, Stan (Preston South)

Whitehead, Phillip

Shore, Rt Hon Peter

Thorpe, Rt Hon Jeremy (N Devon)

Willey, Rt Hon Frederic.

Short. At Hon E. (Newcastle C)

Tierney, Sydney

Williams, Alan (Swansea W)

Short, Mrs Renée (Wolv NE)

Tinn, James

Williams, Alan Lee (Hornch'ch)

Silkin, Rt Hon John (Deptford)

Tomlinson, John

Williams, Rt Hon Shirley (Hertford)

Silkin, Rt Hon S. C. (Dulwich)

Tomney, Frank

Wilson, Alexander (Hamilton)

Silverman, Julius

Torney, Tom

Wilson, William (Coventry SE)

Skinner, Dennis

Tuck, Raphael

Wise, Mrs Audrey

Small, William

Urwin, T. W.

Woodall, Alec

Smith, John (N Lanarkshire)

Varley, Rt Hon Eric G.

Woof, Robert

Spearing, Nigel

Wainwright, Edwin (Dearne V)

Wrigglesworth, Ian

Spriggs, Leslie

Walden, Brian (B'ham, L'dyw'd)

Young, David (Bolton E)

Stallard, A. W.

Walker, Harold (Doncaster)

Stewart, Rt Hon M. (Fulham)

Walker, Terry (Kingswood)

TELLERS FOR THE AYES:

Stoddart, David

Ward, Michael

Mr. Joseph Harper and

Stott, Roger

Watkins, David

Mr. Peter Snape.

Strang, Gavin

Watkinson, John

NOES

Adley, Robert

Eden, Rt Hon Sir John

Jones, Arthur (Daventry)

Aitken, Jonathan

Edwards, Nicholas (Pembroke)

Jopling, Michael

Alison, Michael

Elliott, Sir William

Joseph, Rt Hon Sir Keith

Amery, Rt Hon Julian

Emery, Peter

Kaberry, Sir Donald

Arnold, Tom

Eyre, Reginald

Kilfedder, James

Atkins, Rt Hon H. (Spelthorne)

Falrbairn, Nicholas

Kimball, Marcus

Awdry, Daniel

Fairgrieve, Russell

King, Evelyn (South Dorset)

Baker, Kenneth

Fell, Anthony

King, Tom (Bridgwater)

Banks, Robert

Flnsberg, Geoffrey

Knight, Mrs Jill

Bell, Ronald

Fisher, Sir Nigel

Knox, David

Bennett, Sir Frederic (Torbay)

Fletcher-Cooke, Charles

Lamont, Norman

Bennett, Dr Reginald (Fareham)

Fookes, Miss Janet

Lane, David

Benyon, W.

Forman, Nigel

Langford-Holt, Sir John

Berry, Hon Anthony

Fowler, Norman (Sutton C'f'd)

Latham, Michael (Melton)

Bitten, John

Fox, Marcus

Lawrence, Ivan

Blaker, Peter

Fraser, Rt Hon H. (Stafford & St)

Lawson, Nigel

Body, Richard

Fry, Peter

Lester, Jim (Beeston)

Boscawen, Hon Robert

Galbraith, Hon T. G. D.

Lewis, Kenneth (Rutland)

Bottomley, Peter

Gardiner, George (Reigate)

Lloyd, Ian

Bowden, A. (Brighton, Kemptown)

Gardner, Edward (S Fylde)

Loveridge, John

Boyson, Dr Rhodes (Brent)

Gilmour, Rt Hon Ian (Chesham)

Luce, Richard

Braine, Sir Bernard

Gilmour, Sir John (East Fife)

McAdden, Sir Stephen

Brittan, Leon

Glyn, Dr Alan

McCrindle, Robert

Brocklebank-Fowler, C.

Godber, Rt Hon Joseph

Macfarlane, Neil

Brotherton, Michael

Goodhart, Philip

MacGregor, John

Brown, Sir Edward (Bath)

Goodhew, Victor

Macmillan, Rt Hon M. (Farnham)

Bryan, Sir Paul

Goodlad, Alastair

McNair-Wilson, M. (Newbury)

Buchanan-Smith, Alick

Gorst, John

McNair-Wilson, P. (New Forest)

Buck, Anthony

Gow, Ian (Eastbourne)

Madel, David

Budgen, Nick

Gower, Sir Raymond (Barry)

Marshall, Michael (Arundel)

Bulmer, Esmond

Grant, Anthony (Harrow C)

Marten, Neil

Burden, F. A.

Gray, Hamish

Mates, Michael

Butler, Adam (Bosworth)

Griffiths, Eldon

Mather, Carol

Carlisle, Mark

Grist, Ian

Maude, Angus

Chalker, Mrs Lynda

Grylls, Michael

Maudling, Rt Hon Reginald

Channon, Paul

Hall, Sir John

Mawby, Ray

Churchill, W. S.

Hall-Davis, A. G. F.

Maxwell-Hyslop, Robin

Clark, Alan (Plymouth, Sutton)

Hamilton, Michael (Salisbury)

Mayhew, Patrick

Clark, William(Croydon S)

Hampson, Dr Keith

Meyer, Sir Anthony

Clarke, Kenneth (Rushcliffe)

Hannam, John

Miller, Hal (Bromsgrove)

Clegg, Walter

Harrison, Col Sir Harwood (Eye)

Miscampbell, Norman

Cockcroft, John

Hastings, Stephen

Mitchell, David (Basingstoke)

Cooke, Robert (Bristol W)

Havers, Sir Michael

Moate, Roger

Cope, John

Hayhoe, Barney

Monro, Hector

Cordle, John H.

Heseltine, Michael

Montgomery, Fergus

Cormack, Patrick

Hicks, Robert

Moore, John (Croydon C)

Carrie, John

Higgins, Terence L.

More, Jasper (Ludlow)

Costain, A. P.

Holland, Philip

Morgan, Geraint

Craig, Rt Hon W. (Belfast E)

Hordern, Peter

Morgan-Giles, Rear-Admiral

Critchley, Julian

Howe, Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey

Morris, Michael (Northampton S)

Crouch, David

Howell, David (Guildford)

Morrison, Charles (Devizes)

Davies, Rt Hon J. (Knutsford)

Hunt, David (Wirral)

Morrison, Hon Peter (Chester)

Dean, Paul (N Somerset)

Hunt, John

Mudd, David

Dodsworth, Geoffrey

Hurd, Douglas

Neave, Airey

Douglas-Hamilton, Lord James

Hutchison, Michael Clark

Nelson, Anthony

Drayson, Burnaby

Irving, Charles (Cheltenham)

Neubert, Michael

du Cann, Rt Hon Edward

James, David

Newton, Tony

Durant, Tony

Jenkin, Rt Hn P. (Wanst'd & W'df'd)

Nott, John

Dykes, Hh

Johnson Smith, G. (E Grinstead)

Oppenheim, Mrs Sally

520

521

Page, Rt Hon R. Graham (Crosby)

Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)

Thomas, Rt Hon P. (Hendon S)

Pattle, Geoffrey

Shelton, William (Streatham)

Townsend, Cyril D.

Percival, Ian

Shepherd, Colin

Trotter, Neville

Peyton, Rt Hon John

Shersby, Michael

Tugendhat, Christopher

Pink, R. Bonner

Silvester, Fred

van Straubenzee, W. R.

Price, David (Eastleigh)

Sims, Roger

Vaughan, Dr Gerard

Prior, Rt Hon James

Sinclair, Sir George

Viggers, Peter

Pym, Rt Hon Francis

Skeet, T. H. H.

Wakeham, John

Raison, Timothy

Smith, Dudley (Warwick)

Walder, David (Clitheroe)

Rathbone, Tim

Speed, Keith

Walker, Rt Hon P. (Worcester)

Rees, Peter (Dover & Deal)

Spence, John

Walker-Smith, Rt Hon Sir Derek

Rees-Davies, W. R.

Spicer, Michael (S Worcester)

Walters, Dennis

Renton, Rt Hon Sir D. (Hunts)

Stainton, Keith

Warren, Kenneth

Renton, Tim (Mid-Sussex)

Stanbrook, Ivor

Weatherill, Bernard

Rhys Williams. Sir Brandon

Stanley, John

Wells, John

Ridsdale, Julian

Steen, Anthony (Wavertree)

Whitelaw, Rt Hon William

Rifkind, Malcolm

Stewart, Ian (Hitchin)

Wiggin, Jerry

Rippon, Rt Hon Geoffrey

Stokes, John

Winterton, Nicholas

Roberts, Michael (Cardiff NW)

Stonehouse, Rt Hon John

Wood, Rt Hon Richard

Roberts, Wyn (Conway)

Stradling Thomas, J.

Young, Sir G. (Ealing, Acton)

Ross, William (Londonderry)

Tapsell, Peter

Younger, Hon George

Rossi, Hugh (Hornsey)

Taylor, R. (Croydon NW)

Rost, Peter (SE Derbyshire)

Taylor, Teddy (Cathcart)

TELLERS FOR THE NOES:

Sainsbury, Tim

Tebbit, Norman

Mr. Spencer Le Marchant and

St. John-Stevas, Norman

Temple-Morris, Peter

Mr Cecil Parkinson.

Scott, Nicholas

Thatcher, Rt Hon Margaret

Question accordingly agreed to.
Main Question, as amended, put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House believes that the newly elected district councils in England and Wales resulting from the forthcoming local elections will best serve the interests of ratepayers and the country at large if they and the Government are committed to—

(i) the maintenance and development of the new and closer partnership between central and local Government which has already contributed significantly to the fight against inflation; and

(ii) sensible economy in the use of resources which affords priority to vitally needed
522
services including a substantial programme of house building and improvement for owner occupation, renting and other forms of tenure.

EXPENDITURE
Ordered,
That notwithstanding the Order of the House of 18th November in the last Session of Parliament relating to nomination of Members of the Expenditure Committee, Mr. Alf Bates he discharged from the Committee and Mr. Michael Ward be added to the Committee for the remainder of this Parliament.
Ordered,
That this Order be a Standing Order of the House.—[Mr. Walter Harrison.]

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY (SOUTH-WEST REGION)
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Pendry.]
10.17 p.m.
Mr. Arthur Palmer: I have on several occasions attempted to get this subject of the position of the construction industry in the South-West raised on the Adjournment of the House by the usual method of the Ballot, only to find myself successful on an evening when I have just returned from Select Committee business elsewhere in the country. As a result, I have not had the opportunity to prepare my argument in perhaps the detail that I should have liked.
I begin by agreeing that the depression in the building and construction industry is common to the whole country and not simply to the South-West. I also agree that it is not likely to right itself until the excess of inflation in the economy is checked and industrial profitability and productivity restored.
There is this to be said about the building and construction industry. It is an industry which follows the general level of industrial and commercial activity and normally does not precede it. However, the decline in building and construction in the South-West has perhaps been more steep than elsewhere because there was, only two or three years ago, a very high level of activity.
At that time, we had a property boom, a fair amount of speculative building, industrial building and fair council housing development, certainly in the larger cities of the South-West. Unfortunately, the reverse is now true. The property development market has collapsed and private building has declined. Although Bristol has a very good public building programme, to which I pay tribute, I doubt whether this is matched by the great majority of local authorities in the South-West. The rapid change in the situation in the past two or three years has resulted in large-scale unemployment in the building industry, bankruptcies of small and less stable firms, and a general
524
decline in building and construction of all kinds.
The building workers' trade unions have argued forcefully that building employees are taking more than their fair share of unemployment. The whole industry has gone into reverse, nationally and regionally, in the past two years. Output is down by between 8 per cent. and 10 per cent. and if the decline in the South-West has been greater, as I say, it is probably because the peak of activity was once that much higher.
I am told by building trade unionists in my constituency that there is no real sign of the situation improving. It is sometimes thought that the South-West is an area of fair prosperity, but the unemployment figures do not bear this out. According to the Department of Employment, the general unemployment rate in the South-West is 6·2 per cent., which is above the national average and which compares most Unfortunately with the 3·9 per cent. unemployment rate in the South-East. Unemployment among South-Western building workers is three times the general rate of unemployment.
Every section of the construction industry has been affected—labourers, skilled men, large firms, small employers and the architectural profession. There are several youngish, highly-trained architectural assistants in my constituency who are unable to get work of any kind. The Minister may argue that this is a matter for the Department of Employment, but the first cause lies elsewhere
The problem with stop-go policies in the construction industry is that when an overheated boom is followed by a chilly period, such as the one we are now going through, firms contract and do not pick up again very easily. Fewer trainees are taken on and when the revival conies, the industry is in poor shape to take advantage of it. In Bristol and the South-West the strongest representations have been made to hon. Members by both sides of the industry who, in a recent joint deputation, asked us to assist with remedial measures.
The unions' position is clear enough They want more public expenditure in order to stimulate employment. The position of the employers is more ambiguous. Many of them, in other

525
capacities, are advocates of cuts in public expenditure. Many of them would say that reductions in Government expenditure leading to taxation relief would bring about more private investment and stimulate their trade.
That appears to be the argument of some employers, but I am not so sure about its validity. I do not believe that there is any rigid dividing line which implies that all public spending is bad and all private spending is good. There is wasteful public spending and wasteful private spending. It should be common ground that in present national circumstances the country needs to spend less individually and collectively on current consumption and more on increasing the stock of productive national capital.
If we apply that rule to public spending, I argue that while expenditure on new town halls, for example, can hardly be justified at the moment, there are other forms of local authority construction that are justified. I believe, for instance, that housing is a way of building up productive national capital. Bad housing leads to ill health, social dislocation and a general loss of national efficiency. The building of schools and colleges, especially those devoted to offering a technical and technological education, is productive expenditure.
I agree that in a mixed economy there is much good productive private sector investment that should be assisted where appropriate. New units of housing accommodation are always welcome outside the public sector—for example, units provided for owner-occupation, units related to co-operatives and housing associations.
Industrial and commercial development, especially for the export trade, also needs to be encouraged in every way. I know that last September my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer made an allocation of about £32 million. It was supposed to assist the construction industry, but in the same month construction orders fell back by £132 million. I fear that my right hon. Friend's allocation was just a drop in the ocean for all the effect that it had on stimulating employment in the construction industry.
There are other forms of private investment which should be encouraged. For example, grants should be given at
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favourable interest rates for heat insulation for buildings. That would meet my test of adding to national efficiency here through energy conservation.
I do not want to be too long in developing these arguments as I recognise that they are probably fairly familiar to my hon. Friend, but I think that the Government should now be considering the possibilities of long-term capital works, especially those which are in full or in part revenue producing, where the full costs can be spread over a decade or more ahead and where the preliminary work would give stimulation and hope for the future, a kind of declaration of intent.
Water is an obvious example. Certainly there is still a great need for an improved supply. Such water works are usually spread over a long period. Many could now be started without the financial effect falling on this year's accounts, or on next year's. The effect could be spread into the future. In the South-West, my extra candidates would be the Severn tidal barrage for power production and the electrification of the railway system from London to Bristol and on to Exeter. These two large projects—one is almost fully revenue producing and the other is part revenue producing—would add materially to improving employment prospects in the construction industry in the South-West.
I should like to know what national measures the Government have in mind to bring about the revival of the construction industry, and the more that my hon. Friend can relate his remarks to the situation in the South-West, the better I shall he pleased.
10.31 p.m.
The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer) has raised a very important matter. I am glad to have this opportunity of discussing in the House the state of the construction industry in Bristol and the South-West.
Unemployment in any family or in any part of the country is a serious human problem. My hon. Friend is right that no industry has suffered more from the sudden lurches, as it were, between the trough and the peak situations which we have had in the past.

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We are well aware of the problems which face the construction industry. We have a frequent and continuing dialogue with the industry both at national and regional level. Concerning the South-West, I would mention that my hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Construction attended a meeting of the Department's South-West regional joint committee for the building and civil engineering industries in Bristol last July. I visited the region and took part in a television programme about the problems of the industry in the region in January. My hon. Friend will be receiving a deputation from the regional joint committee in a few days. We have also carefully studied the various memoranda which have been produced by the industry's emergency joint committee for the building, civil engineering and extractive industries in the South-West. If we were in danger of being complacent in any way—which we are not—I should mention that we have been subject to considerable, very proper, lobbying by Members of Parliament, as my hon. Friend said, because of their great concern.
The construction industry nationally employs over 2 million people and accounts for 14 per cent of all industrial production. Its role in the provision of houses, roads, factories and buildings and services of all kinds is vital to the national economy and to the success of the measures that we are taking to deal with our present economic difficulties. I should make it clear at the outset that the Government are deeply concerned about the problems which the industry faces.
In the South-West the rate of unemployment in the industry is 17 per cent. That represents a great deal of human tragedy. I realise that it is of little comfort to the region or to my hon. Friend to be told that this is part of a national problem, as my hon. Friend indicated, and that there are other parts of the country, including my own—the Northern Region—where there is a similarly bleak picture in the industry. Indeed, the unemployment level in the industry as a whole is 15 per cent.
This problem is not limited to one region or, indeed, to this country. I do not wish to minimise the seriousness of
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the situation, but it is a small consolation that there has been no increase in construction unemployment since the beginning of the year either nationally or in the South-West Region.
While the period ahead will not be easy, the position is not one of total gloom. As a result of the substantial measures that we have taken to encourage housing in both the public and private sectors, there has been a considerable improvement in house building. The number of housing starts in the South-West in 1975 was 28 per cent. higher than in 1974. In February there were over 37,000 houses under construction in the region, and this is a near record figure.
The House will recall that, in the measures which we have taken to counter unemployment, we have paid particular attention to the needs of the construction industry—though I would not claim that they can do more than make a modest contribution. I know that this is little consolation to a skilled tradesman who happens to find himself out of work, but I want to give the whole picture.
Last October we announced that arrangements were being made to commission an additional£32 million worth of new work to help provide employment where it is most needed in the industry. Nearly £2 million was provided in the South-West for improvements to publicly-owned housing, and for projects relating to the National Health Service, education, and other local authority services. In February, we allocated a further £50 million for the improvement of public sector housing, and the South-West's share was£3 million, making a total of£5 million in all.
While the constraints on public expenditure have inevitably led to reductions in public sector construction work, I should make it clear that the scale of the programme still remains very substantial. Public sector construction output in 1975 in Great Britain totalled over£6,000 million.
There are numbers of projects providing employment in the South-West. For example, since the beginning of the year, four contracts worth more than£20 million have been let for improvements to the A30 and A38, and another two

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contracts for road improvements are expected to begin later this year. The Property Services Agency has also let a contract for new Government offices in Swindon worth more than£1 million, and another worth nearly £400,000 for a new headquarters building at the Royal Naval Air Station at Yeovilton, and the new sorting office extension in Bristol will cost over £150,000. The regional health authority has schemes in Bristol worth just under£500,000, and other major public projects in the city include a school at Hanham costing£900,000. Some 1,000 staff from my Department are due to move to Bristol, a move which is likely to generate expenditure of over £500,000 on office conversions later this year. Also, there are other major schemes taking place elsewhere in the region.
The measures we are taking to stimulate industrial investment generally should also help the construction industry. We have made considerable sums available for the acceleration of capital projects by individual firms and last September an extra £20 million was allocated for the building of advance factories. There is a rolling programme of advance factory building in the South-West, and the construction of 12 units with a total area of 100,000 square feet is either in hand or due to begin within the next few weeks.
In addition, regional development grants continue to generate building work. These grants have assisted in the provision of over £5 million worth of building work in the South-West in 1974–75.
Mr. Palmer: My hon. Friend will agree that these regional grants apply only to part of the South-West. Is that not so?
Mr. Armstrong: Yes.
Special measures have also been taken to maintain the training effort and the Training Services Agency and the Construction Industry Training Board have made a number of grants available for this purpose. These bodies are making special arrangements to assist redundant trainees and one means currently being considered is the provision of site training schemes to give on-site training for those who have completed their off-site training. Looking to the future, the industry strategy committee of the
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Economic development committees for the building and civil engineering industries has just produced a report on construction into the 1980s, and the recommendations are being studied in my hon. Friend's construction industry liaison group.
We recognise, as my hon. Friend emphasised, the importance of seeking to ensure a reasonably stable level of demand in the industry. We already have some action in hand in order to help in achieving this. We are examining very fully the idea of creating moving shelves of projects. These could provide a reserve of fully designed projects which could be brought forward more quickly when circumstances justified encouraging a growth in demand.
We are also providing much more information than before about future public sector work to help the industry with its own planning. By our giving as much notice as possible of changes in levels of public expenditure, as we have done over the last 12 months, the industry is better able to adjust. But we need to remember that public sector work accounts for only about half of total construction output. There is scope, too, for the industry to seek to help itself, and I am pleased that the building EDC is undertaking a study to demonstrate the benefits of new industrial building.
I do not wish to suggest that the action which we have been able to take provides anything like a complete answer to the problems facing the construction industry. I am sure that my hon. Friend will appreciate that in the present economic position the scope for action is limited. Nor is it possible to insulate the construction industry from the effect of the measures that we have to take to manage the economy. But we shall continue to give whatever help we can to the industry.
I assure my hon. Friend that I and my Department are concerned about the construction industry and are very much aware of the situation in the South-West. We are certainly not complacent. I shall study carefully again the position in the context of my hon. Friend's helpful speech.
Question put and agreed to.
Adjourned accordingly at nineteen minutes to Eleven o'clock.

NORTHERN IRELAND
  Expenditure
  Expenditure
  Criminal Injuries Compensation
  Criminal Injuries Compensation
  Statutes (Printing)
  Statutes (Printing)
  Agent in Great Britain
  Agent in Great Britain
  Children and Young Persons
  Children and Young Persons
  Criminal Injuries Compensation
  Criminal Injuries Compensation
  Hospital Vehicles
  Hospital Vehicles
  Local Government Employees
  Local Government Employees
EMPLOYMENT
  Unemployed Persons
  Unemployed Persons
  Community Industry (Anglesey-Arfon)
  Community Industry (Anglesey-Arfon)
  Birmingham
  Birmingham
  Stockport
  Stockport
HOME DEPARTMENT
  Holidays
  Holidays
  Citizenship (Duality)
  Citizenship (Duality)
  Unification Church
  Unification Church
  Maxwell Confait (Inquiry into Death)
  Maxwell Confait (Inquiry into Death)
  Mentally Handicapped Persons
  Mentally Handicapped Persons
  Television Licences
  Television Licences
  Fire Precautions
  Fire Precautions
ENVIRONMENT
  Housing (Stockport)
  Housing (Stockport)
  Drinking and Driving (Blennerhassett Report)
  Drinking and Driving (Blennerhassett Report)
  Vehicle Licensing
  Vehicle Licensing
  Vehicles (Safety)
  Vehicles (Safety)
  Vehicle Testing
  Vehicle Testing
  Rents (Alnwick)
  Rents (Alnwick)
  Pelican Crossings
  Pelican Crossings
  Pollution (Royal Commission Report)
  Pollution (Royal Commission Report)
  Operation Bridgeguard
  Operation Bridgeguard
SOCIAL SERVICES
  Family Benefits
  Family Benefits
  Psychiatric Services (Children and Adolescents)
  Psychiatric Services (Children and Adolescents)
  Blood Transfusion Service
  Blood Transfusion Service
  Unification Church
  Unification Church
  Parents (Status)
  Parents (Status)
  Czechoslovakia (Reciprocity)
  Czechoslovakia (Reciprocity)
  Fire Precautions
  Fire Precautions
  Homeless Persons
  Homeless Persons
FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH AFFAIRS
  Falkland Islands
  Falkland Islands
  Rhodesia
  Rhodesia
  Mozambique
  Mozambique
  Chile
  Chile
  Diplomatic Missions (Commercial Representation)
  Diplomatic Missions (Commercial Representation)
  Iceland (Fisheries Dispute)
  Iceland (Fisheries Dispute)
  Ministerial Visit (Far East)
  Ministerial Visit (Far East)
  Passports
  Passports
  Electoral Rights
  Electoral Rights
  India
  India
  Taiwan Badminton Team
  Taiwan Badminton Team
  Lebanon
  Lebanon
EUROPEAN COMMUNITY
  Electoral Representation
  Electoral Representation
  Elections
  Elections
  Portrait Exhibition (Palace of Westminster)
  Portrait Exhibition (Palace of Westminster)
  Documents (Publication)
  Documents (Publication)
SCOTLAND
  Fishing Industry
  Fishing Industry
  New Towns Staff
  New Towns Staff
  Mentally Handicapped Persons (Programme Planning Group)
  Mentally Handicapped Persons (Programme Planning Group)
  Electrical Therapy
  Electrical Therapy
  Mental Patients (Surgical Treatment)
  Mental Patients (Surgical Treatment)
  Tuberculosis
  Tuberculosis
CIVIL SERVICE
  Government Forms
  Government Forms
DEFENCE
  South Africa
  South Africa
  Aviation Jersey Ltd
  Aviation Jersey Ltd
ENERGY
  Natural Sources
  Natural Sources
  Coal Industry Estates
  Coal Industry Estates
  Mining (Land Restoration)
  Mining (Land Restoration)
  Coal Imports
  Coal Imports
  USSR
  USSR
  Radioactive Waste
  Radioactive Waste
HOUSE OF COMMONS
  Catering Committee (Inquiry)
  Catering Committee (Inquiry)
INDUSTRY
  Washing Machines
  Washing Machines
  Leeds and Bradford
  Leeds and Bradford
NATIONAL FINANCE
  Overseas Debt
  Overseas Debt
  Tax and National Insurance Payments
  Tax and National Insurance Payments
  Public Sector Capital Transactions
  Public Sector Capital Transactions
  Value Added Tax
  Value Added Tax
  Fuel Excise Duty
  Fuel Excise Duty
  Public Expenditure (Nationalised Industries, Roads and Transport)
  Public Expenditure (Nationalised Industries, Roads and Transport)
OVERSEAS DEVELOPMENT
  Mozambique
  Mozambique
TRADE
  British Petroleum Co. Ltd.
  British Petroleum Co. Ltd.
  Newsprint
  Newsprint
  Airports (Charges)
  Airports (Charges)
  Renown Policies
  Renown Policies
WALES
  Ear, Nose and Throat Treatment (Gwent)
  Ear, Nose and Throat Treatment (Gwent)

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

AID TO ZAMBIA
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will extend economic aid and military guarantees to Zambia in view of its difficulties arising from the practice of sanctions against Rhodesia.
The MINISTER of STATE, FOREIGN and COMMONWEALTH OFFICE: (Lord Goronwy-Roberts): My Lords, we shall continue to maintain close consultation with the four presidents, including President Kaunda, on all matters relating to Rhodesia and its effects on their countries, including aid.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, while there is less isolation in Zambia than when I tabled this Question, does not the Minister agree that it has suffered severely from its heroic participation in sanctions upon Rhodesia and that now there is a lack of industrial equipment, unemployment, a lack of consumer goods and a rise in copper prices? In view of Dr. Kissinger's speech in Zambia yesterday, would the Government consider, with the United States of America and the United Nations, providing credits in order to allow for rural development, consumer goods and necessary spare parts?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, since 1965 we have extended aid to Zambia in recognition of the part it has loyally played in applying sanctions, to its own economic detriment, against Rhodesia. We are continuing to do this and, as I have said, we are in touch with Zambia and other African States as to the best way in which we can peacefully assist them.
Lord CARRINGTON: My Lords, would not the noble Lord agree that probably the most difficult situation which has been facing Zambia has been the decline over the past year or so in the price of copper, and, since the price has now greatly increased, that perhaps is the best thing that could happen from the Zambian point of view?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Certainly, my Lords, an appreciation in the price of the major commodity in which Zambia deals would greatly help its economic position, together of course with a resumption of its normal transportation system.
Lord PAGET of NORTHAMPTON: My Lords, does not the maladministration account for a great deal more than does the price of copper? Before Zambia was independent she was about the richest of all the African countries and always ran a large surplus. Why has she been thrown into bankruptcy?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I do not think my noble friend's philosophy or his economics would commend themselves to Central Africa.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, can the Minister give the House the figure of the aid we have given Zambia since 1965 to which he referred?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: Yes indeed, my Lords. The information goes into some detail, and if the House would like to have it now I will give it; otherwise I will make more detail available through the Official Report in the appropriate manner. I find that assistance to Zambia to offset the effects of IDI amounted to nearly £24 million between 1965 and 1968. From 1969 to 1972 Her Majesty's Government agreed to release Zambia from certain obligations in connection with the financing of the Kariba hydro-electric scheme. The resulting commitment for us amounts to about £15 million spread over the period 1972 to 1989. I think that gives a fair picture of the extent to which we have constructively assisted Zambia over a very difficult period and in a peaceful way. If the noble Lord would like me to give further details I would, in response to the appropriate question, seek to do so.
Lord BALFOUR of INCHRYE: My Lords, I thank the Minister. I wished to have the total.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, does my noble friend notice that this Question suggests that we should extend economic aid and military guarantees to Zambia, and has he anything to say about this request for extra military guarantees, bearing in mind that many people in this country do not want to get involved in any bloodthirsty activities in that part of the world?
Lord GORONWY-ROBERTS: My Lords, I am afraid I have nothing to say on military guarantees because Zambia has not asked for them.
Lord BROCKWAY: My Lords, is the Minister aware that when I tabled the Question I had in mind the danger to Zambia from what is happening in Angola?

HOMELESSNESS IN LONDON
2.42 p.m.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they have taken to deal with the situation revealed by the television programme "Johnny Come Home".
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the Working Group is considering the problems of homeless people and has almost completed its work. Meanwhile the Government have provided funds for a voluntary body's leaflet warning young people of the problems facing them if they come unprepared to London, and voluntary organisations which have planned information services at Euston and Victoria coach station have been invited to apply for a grant for that purpose.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, in view of the fact that this very serious matter was brought to the notice of Her Majesty's Government and to the notice of everybody else in the country at the time the film was produced, and in view of the fact
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that the producer of that film as recently as 9th April said, "We have achieved practically nothing and I think this is a very damning indictment of society", does not the noble Lord feel that it is important that something should be done at once? Does he feel that any red tape should be cut and, as soon as this report is published, immediate action should be taken to deal with this extremely serious problem?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is not possible in every situation to take immediate action. I do not know what my noble friend means when he says that the director of the film says that we have accomplished nothing. I do not know who "we" is. The Department of Health and Social Security certainly have accomplished a good deal. The Department set up a Working Party. Until we know what the problem is, the extent of it, and what can be done, we cannot put into operation the things that need to be done. We have the Working Party made up of representatives of NACRO, Child Health Care, Homeless, and they are considering the best possible thing that can be done. We have had negotiations with British Rail. As a good many Members of your Lordships' House will know, in a democracy it is not easy to get things done quickly when a number of points of view have to be taken into account.
The LORD BISHOP of LONDON: My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister aware that the readiness of Her Majesty's Government to provide funds for the West End Volunteer Co-ordinated Services, who are prepared to sponsor these information bureaux, will be greeted with great satisfaction? Will my noble friend also take note that, as reported in the article in The Times of 9th April, British Rail are making it very difficult for a bureau to be established at Euston Station? Will my noble friend bring as much pressure to bear as he can to ensure that British Rail co-operate in this vital piece of work?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I am obliged to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of London for his comments and observations. In fact, we have had, and are still having, discussions with British Rail. We are hopeful of achieving

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the kind of outcome we want. I should like to point out to your Lordships that the Government have printed 50,000 leaflets and about 7,000 posters which have been distributed and placed in strategic towns and areas from which young people are likely to come to London. These leaflets and posters set out the reasons why it would be unwise for them to come to London.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister realise that there is grave anxiety about this matter? As soon as the report is issued, will my noble friend take immediate steps? It is no good talking about Government reports and other reports which take years to be put into practice. This is a tremendously urgent matter. Will my noble friend see what can be done with regard to the decision recently given at a court, in which the very place in Piccadilly where the trouble is most imminent was given a licence for a further three years to carry on its activities? Is there no way in which some kind of action could be taken by either Parliament or the Government themselves to remedy such a situation?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, my noble friend Lord Janner is perfectly right. The permit was withdrawn, but it was restored on appeal to the courts and the courts restored the licence. If a court has decided so to do, I think we have to accept the decision of the courts in these matters, no matter how we may feel about it.
Lord JANNER: My Lords, with the greatest respect, while I appreciate the fact that once a court makes a decision we have to abide by it, may I suggest that it is surely the duty of Parliament—if a decision on a judicial matter is one that does not meet with the approval of the public—to ensure that some kind of action is taken in order to alter the law?
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, can the noble Lord the Minister tells us when the Working Party is expected to report?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I cannot go beyond saying that the Working Party is very soon reviewing its discussions. I cannot say how soon that will be. As I have already mentioned, there is a
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group of representatives of voluntary social work groups who are very well informed on these matters, and we hope it will report fairly soon to the Department, making recommendations as to how best to deal with this situation in the future. We are hopeful that the report will help very considerably.

LOCAL RADIO BROADCASTING: CARDIFF
Lord AYLESTONE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will now approve the setting up of an independent local radio station to serve Cardiff, the capital city of Wales, thus bringing that city into line with London, Edinburgh and Belfast.
The MINISTER of STATE, HOME OFFICE (Lord Harris of Greenwich): My Lords, the Government do not think it would be right to authorise any further local radio stations while the Committee on the Future of Broadcasting under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Annan, is still sitting, since the future of independent local radio is one of the matters which that Committee has under review.
Lord AYLESTONE: My Lords, is the noble Lord the Minister aware that there were 20 planned stations when the Government guillotine fell at 19? Is he aware that the 20th station would have been at Cardiff? If before the Committee of the noble Lord, Lord Annan, reports they could consider one exception in Cardiff, independent local radio would then be equated with the BBC, who have 20 stations. I should think this would bring some pleasure to the constituents of Mr. Speaker of another place, and of the Prime Minister.
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, on the latter point, I think we would all go to considerable lengths to keep content the constituents of my right honourable friend the Prime Minister and of Mr. Speaker. I think the answer to

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the first point made by my noble friend, if he will forgive my saying so, is that the Government did not bring down the guillotine on the figure 19. When the Government came into office the agreed figure was 13. The Government agreed to increase that number to 19. That was done. We do not think it is appropriate to increase that number further at the moment, because at the beginning of next year we hope to have the report of the Committee headed by the noble Lord, Lord Annan, and that Committee will determine what will be the future of broadcasting in this country.
Lord AYLESTONE: My Lords, can my noble friend say when the Annan Committee Report may be expected?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, I hope early next year.
Lord MAELOR: My Lords, can the Minister tell me when we can hope to have a Welsh language TV service in Wales?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, as I hardly need to tell my noble friend, that is a slightly different question. As my noble friend is aware, a committee of inquiry went into this point, but the Government, with regret, came to the conclusion that in the present national financial climate, this service could not take priority. Certainly we are well aware of the need for such a service.
Lord WYNNE-JONES: My Lords, does my noble friend mean that Her Majesty's Government do not consider that Wales is even 5 per cent. as important as the rest of the country?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, indeed we do not take that view. First of all, there is already another independent radio station in Wales, in Swansea. As I indicated in my answer to the first question, the position is simply this: we are to have a report within 12 months from the committee of inquiry headed by the noble Lord, Lord Annan. Until we receive that report it seems to be wholly inappropriate to authorise any more independant radio stations.
Lord LEATHERLAND: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that if a Welsh language programme were put on in Wales most of the people there would not be able to understand it?
Lord HARRIS of GREENWICH: My Lords, it is necessary to be cautious in answering questions of this kind. All I would say is that there are also, I suspect, a number of English-speaking people in Wales who, for rather different reasons, would also welcome a fourth channel in Wales.
Lord MAELOR: My Lords, the Minister will remember, too, that the whole of Britain at one time spoke Welsh.

HEALTH SERVICE COMMITTEES: MEMBERSHIP
2.54 p.m.
Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNESIDE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they will give an assurance that the controversy which has arisen over the appointment of members of the Royal College of Nursing, a professional association, to hospital and health committees will not result in any change in the appointments already made.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, no change has been made in the rights of nursing and other Health Service staff to appoint representatives to the joint staff consultative committees from nationally recognised staff organisations, including the Royal College of Nursing. Nor has any change been made in the status of such representatives already appointed.
Baroness WARD of NORTH TYNESIDE: My Lords, I am very grateful for that Answer, which I think will give great satisfaction to those who are interested. I hope the noble Lord will convey to all concerned what a very wise decision he has stated in his Answer to my Question today.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, it is a great pleasure to me to be able to give a satisfactory Answer to the noble Baroness.

EEC COUNCIL OF MINISTERS: MAY BUSINESS
Baroness LLEWELYN-DAVIES of HASTOE: My Lords, a Statement has been made in another place today about business to be taken in the EEC Council of Ministers during May. I will, as usual, arrange for the Statement to be made available in the Official Report.
Following is the Statement referred to:
"With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will make a Statement about business to be taken in the Council of Ministers of the European Community during May. The monthly forecast for May was deposited yesterday.
"At present 4 meetings of the Council of Ministers are proposed for May. Foreign Ministers will meet on the 3rd and 4th of May and on the 31st of May and the 1st of June; Finance Ministers on the 17th and Agriculture Ministers on the 17th and the 18th of May.
"As part of the follow up to the European Council meeting on the 1st and the 2nd of April, Ministers at the Foreign Affairs Council are likely to resume consideration of the Tindemans Report and direct elections to the European Assembly. Passport Union is also likely to be discussed. Ministers will hope to conclude negotiations with Portugal and to discuss the resumption of negotiations with Spain. There will be preparations for an Association Council meeting with Cyprus and consideration of the negotiating mandate for Greek accession. Ministers are expected to consider the Community's external commitments, including the inclusion of financial chapters in the Mashraq agreements. Ministers are likely to consider the stage reached in the continuing dialogue between industrialised and developing countries. This will entail a review of the work to date of the four Commissions of the Conference on International Economic Co-operation, and consideration of the Community position for UNCTAD IV in Nairobi. Foreign Ministers will also consider the question of the siting of the JET experiment which is to be the centrepiece of the Community's 5 year Fusion Programme up to 1980.
"Ministers at the Finance Council are likely to have their usual discussion of the economic situation in the Community and may consider Commission proposals for reform of the budget unit of account.
"Agriculture Ministers are likely to consider amended arrangements for beef imports, the proposed Community sheepmeat regime, arrangements for New Zealand butter imports for 1978–80 and a number of proposed measures for improving agricultural structures. They may also discuss improvements in the market organisation for fish."

THE SOCIAL SERVICES
2.56 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG Baroness YOUNG rose to call attention to the development of social policy in relation to the needs of the community; and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, since I first put this Motion down on the Order Paper a number of your Lordships have kindly inquired what I meant by it. Coming from Oxford, as I do, I suppose the correct reply would be: "Do you want the short answer or the long answer?" The short answer is that I have drawn the terms of reference widely in order that we may debate the philosophy of the social services and in so doing make use of the great experience of many of your Lordships. The long answer is that the House, so far as I can ascertain, has not debated the philosophy of the social services before, and I believe that the time is ripe to do so.
It is now 25 years since the inception of the modern Welfare State. Looking back to what the late Lord Beveridge had to say, I quote:
"The plan for social security is designed to secure by a comprehensive scheme of social insurance that every individual, on condition of working while he can and contributing from his earnings, shall have an income to keep him above want when for any reason he cannot work and earn."
It is interesting to measure how far we have fulfilled this aim, for it is, too, just over 25 years since the start of the National Health Service scheme and the system of comprehensive National Insurance. Not only should we consider the results of the Beveridge policies, but look at them in relation to three major changes that I see have taken place in society in the last quarter century.
The first major change is one of demography. There are now 2½million more people over the age of 65 than in 1950. The number of those over 75 will rise by another 25 per cent. by 1984. These facts are coupled with a falling birthrate, from a peak of 20·4 births per 1,000 in 1947—it was even 18·8 per 1,000 in 1964—to only 12·2 births per 1,000 in 1975. These figures most profoundly affect long-term planning for health, social and educational purposes. They mean,

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for example, that now 45 per cent. of all hospital beds are occupied by those over 65, that 65 per cent. of all social security expenditure goes on the old, 94 per cent. of all local authority accommodation for old people, and 75 per cent. of the home help services. When we add to this the estimated number of people, 920,000, who do not claim supplementary benefit but who, it is thought, are entitled to do so, one has some measure of the expenditure which will go very largely on the elderly.
We live, too, in an era of rising expectations, and at the same time of economic crisis. Many professionals working in the field believe that there has been too much legislation recently, introduced, quite rightly, in each case to meet public demand, but each time with too few resources to implement it. In the last eight years there have been no fewer than six major Acts of Parliament affecting social service departments. It is true, at the same time, that the amounts of money available for the social services are very large. The most recent public expenditure White Paper shows that in 1976/77 spending on education, libraries, science and the arts is expected to be about £6,000 million, on health and welfare services, including supplementary benefits, about £10,000 million. Add to this housing subsidies of £1,400 million and food subsidies of £400 million, and the total conies to £22,800 million—the equivalent of £415 per annum for every man, woman and child in the country, or approximately £1,175 a year for each family.
Yet with all this legislation and expenditure there is still dissatisfaction. Because the automatic response to so many difficult and different social problems has been more legislation, society has looked to the State and local government for a solution. Not unnaturally, those working in social service departments feel often that they have been given an impossible task to do, and are resentful when they are blamed whenever something goes wrong. For it is difficult for the State to catch up with the latest problem. Take youth, for example. Two years ago the great problem was drugs. Now, fortunately, that does not appear to be quite so serious, but violence among the young does. New needs are uncovered, battered babies and battered wives and the plight
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of the one-parent family, and an ever higher standard of services is demanded. How can the machine of State alter course quickly enough to satisfy any of these demands immediately?
Frequently, therefore, public expectations remain unfulfilled. Not only are professionals concerned that they are blamed when things go wrong, but the public is worried about the qualifications of professionals for the difficult tasks that they are called upon to perform. It is true that great strides have been made in the training of professionals. In 1950 there were only ten qualifying courses in the country; today there are 140. Even so, only 40 per cent. of those working in the field are qualified, and, more serious still, only 4 per cent. of those in residential establishments are qualified.
I shall not attempt to define what is meant by that oft repeated phrase "the permissive society", but what is clear is that over the last 25 years has come a new attitude to the family and its responsibilities. Two recent examples illustrate this. The National Council of Civil Liberties' evidence to the Law Commission proposing that the age of consent should be lowered to 14 implies that at 14 a girl no longer needs the protection either of the State or her family. For the first time in at least 100 years physical maturity means adulthood. Childhood, and with it parental responsibilities, has been shortened, putting the position back to what it was at least 100 years ago. The second example is the reported remarks of the mother of a child who was said to be a prostitute while in the care of the Bedfordshire County Council. It was reported that the mother blamed the social services department for her daughter's behaviour, and appeared to consider that she herself had no responsibility at all in the matter—an attitude accepted by the media, and, I suspect, by many members of the public, as being right. Twenty-five years ago such attitudes would, I believe, have been unthinkable.
I have touched briefly on three bigchanges in our society. They are all big issues; each one, in itself, a subject for debate. But pointing to some of the great changes which have taken place in the last 25 years

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is not enough, and I should like to make some tentative suggestions as to the principles we should be adopting as we look ahead. It was, I believe, Sydney and Beatrice Webb who said that the study of the social sciences would make people socialist. I would beg to differ from that view, and would suggest that the Conservative Party has a great deal to offer to the social services. One need only look at its record between 1970 and 1974 for proof of this: pensions for the over eighties; the attendance allowances for the old and the disabled; and, above all, the proposed tax credit scheme. This scheme was the most imaginative way I believe yet devised of helping those most in need, without a means test and with a guarantee of take-up of the benefits. Care for the young, the sick, the old, and the handicapped is not a prerogative of any one political Party.
That said, in questioning any of the accepted principles which have guided thinking for the past 25 years, I hope I shall not be accused of being someone who either has not looked at the facts or, worse still, does not care having ascertained what they are. Let us look first at some of the consequences of the Beveridge concept, with its universal benefits. I have already touched on one problem, that of finance. It is a fact that over the last 25 years expenditure on the social services has more than quadrupled, but now we have reached the point where we cannot get any more money by increasing taxes. Already we have a position where a widow of 60 with only her widow's pension, or someone on long-term supplementary benefit, has become liable for income tax. There is a growing number of families who are caught in the poverty trap, where any increase in their earnings is largely, or even completely, cancelled out by a combination of taxation and loss of entitlement to means-tested benefits. In August 1974 200,000 families would have had 75 per cent. of any increase in earnings cancelled out by a combination of taxation and loss of entitlement to means-tested benefits. As a result of a combination of the changes in the Budget and the increases in social security contributions, this figure will now be considerably higher.
Not only, therefore, are the very poor taxed, but so many benefits which come
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from the taxes of the average citizen go into subsidising the average citizen. It is the fact that the standard of, and the money for, the social services depend on the private enterprise system—what I call the creative society working profitably I believe this to be not simply a matter of economics but one of morality. Without profits there can be no wealth; without wealth there can be no taxes from which to pay for the services. Too often I think those in much of society, and sometimes in the social services, look on those in industry as concerned only to make money but not to do good. You cannot do good, or at least not much practical good—and, after all, who wants just sympathy?—without money.
Neither industry nor the social services are doing a better or a more worthwhile job than the other. Those in real need require both. This is a philosophy—the understanding of the relationship between the profits of industry and the level of the social services—which needs to be believed by far more people in the country than at present believe it or understand it. it affects everyone, whether they are dependent on the statutory services or are in an occupational pension scheme. The understanding of this fact must remain at the centre of any argument about resources. And when resources are stretched, as at present, we should not forget that by taking too large a proportion of earnings away from individuals we force an ever-increasing number of people into dependence on the statutory services, leaving less help for each person, particularly those who have never been in a position to provide for themselves. And to me the most telling argument against inflation is that it forces into dependence on the State thousands of people who had expected to provide for themselves in their old age, but who now find themselves caught by rising costs and a fixed income.
There is, therefore, everything to be said for doing whatever is possible to help those who can provide for themselves, and to ensure that for people in retirement the value of their pension is maintained. It would be encouraging to hear from leading trade unionists, millions of whose members are now covered by occupational pension schemes, that they understood this as well. The tragedy of the falling pound is not simply that the price of

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food will rise for those who can earn; it is the permanent lowering of living standards for the retired.
Next we should take a long, clear look at indiscriminate subsidies. One of the oft quoted examples is whether or not it is sensible to subsidise every council house tenant. We have trodden this ground many times before and I do not intend to tread over it again this afternoon, although many tenants are in occupation of their houses because they have been fortunate enough to come to the top of the council house waiting list many years ago, and not necessarily because they are most in need of help today. But this illustrates the difference between indiscriminate subsidies and other subsidies.
At the same time it is often found that social service departments cannot meet all their commitments, particularly to the chronically sick and disabled and mentally handicapped, because they have not the staff to do so and cannot afford to employ more. The result is selection of a kind. Those left without help are often those whose needs remain undiscovered. There is thus no rational basis upon which the choice is made, no basis on which it can be discussed, and it is simply left to chance who is helped and who is not. It is surely questionable at a time of scarcity whether indiscriminate subsidies, particularly in housing and food, should go to anybody regardless of income, and that we should find that the subsidies go to those who do not need them while many in need get nothing at all.
My third point is this: I believe that we should make a determined switch in policies to an increase in domiciliary services and social support of all kinds rather than increase the provision of residential accommodation. I was glad to read these recommendations in the Government's own Consultative Document. I deliberately did not choose to debate that document in itself, not because I find myself in disagreement with it but because I believe that its terms of reference are very limited, and I wish to go wider in this debate today.
I was glad to see these recommendations because I believe there to be thousands of
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old people in hospital who could be in homes in the community and thousands of old people in residential local authority homes who could manage in sheltered housing on their own, given domiciliary help. Such a policy would be far better for the individuals concerned. Who, after all, does not value his independence and dignity in old age? And, of course, it would be cheaper, too. It is estimated that an old person's home might now cost as much as £400,000 to provide, with running costs of at least £50,000 a year, to provide accommodation for 40 or 50 people, whereas a local authority home help service might be able to provide help for at least 7,500 people in a week.
The same argument applies to children's homes. There are, of course, children who need residential care, and some must be provided, but there are many children who would be better off in foster homes if only there were the staff able to make the necessary arrangements. And it would be cheaper, too. The same is true of child minding. In one London borough it costs £1,200 a year to provide one nursery school place, whereas a child minder can look after a child for £250 a year. Who is to say that this is necessarily worse care? In any event, one of the tragedies, for me at any rate, of the present situation is that often it is the most difficult or most tragic cases which end up in "homes" where, as I have indicated, there is the least qualified staff. Such a shift in emphasis would begin to hand back to the individual, in so many cases the old, a freedom of action to be independent, an opportunity to help themselves, a support for the family; and the family needs support, for the whole of our society is still based on the family unit.
Lastly, we must make better use of personnel, both professional and volunteer. I have had many suggestions put to me, but I like the idea of a more specialised training course. Specialism need not be on the same lines as before, dividing specialisms by types of case, but a specialised course designed to meet today's problems; for example, a course on different ways of providing substitute care or a course on inter-departmental communication and understanding. If only those in the hospital services communicated better with those in the local authority services and vice versa, and,

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within local authorities, if only education, housing and social service departments communicated better, tragedies such as Maria Colwell might be avoided. It is often tempting to try to legislate for good social work practice, but this is never possible and would never work; but better social work practice can undoubtedly come with better training. Not only would better training be of help but professionals would be helped by the training of auxiliary helpers. It has been estimated that only one-third of social workers' time is spent on the client. The rest is spent on administration.
The debate that we had in the House last June not only emphasised the value of volunteers and the voluntary organisations but indicated the many different ways in which both can help. Two arguments seemed to me to be compelling. One is that a grant to a voluntary organisation is often a better and cheaper way of giving a service than to legislate and set up a statutory department; the other is that by using volunteers one can immediately deal with an immediate need, and no better case of this was illustrated than the Question we had today about children who run away from home.
In the last 25 years I believe that as a country we have tried through the Welfare State to produce universal benefits for all. We have long since abandoned any idea that some kind of insurance system would pay for all the benefits, and an elaborate system of taxes and subsidies has been built up. Now we find that the whole system is creaking very badly and one reason for this, I believe, is that the State can never provide for all the varied needs of individuals. I have been asked what solution I would give to the problems I have proposed. My answer is that there is no one solution that is right; different problems call for different solutions and I have tried to point the way to some of them. By introducing this debate today we on this side of the House are trying to make a positive contribution to thinking about today's social problems because we, too, care deeply about them. My Lords, I beg to move for Papers.
3.16 p.m.
Baroness WOOTTON of ABINGER: My Lords, in September 1974 a certain
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Mr. Lewis—that is not his real name but the name which I propose to use—got a job at a wage of £30 a week and for that reason came off supplementary benefit on which he had previously been living. I should explain that Mr. Lewis was living with a woman to whom he was not married, but a divorce was pending. He was maintaining this woman, who, to save time, I will call his wife and the two children of her marriage, one of school age and one younger. His return to work created formidable domestic and financial problems. The first thing that happened was that the income tax man appeared on the scene and Mr. Lewis was given an emergency code which made no provision for the two children. The result was that he was reduced to a level lower than he had previously had on supplementary benefit; he must, therefore, have regretted taking the job. However, he had a friend who had some professional knowledge in this sphere and he got his friend to conduct a continuous correspondence over a month with the income tax office and as a result of this the tax inspector was allowed to make a temporary code which put Mr. Lewis back in a position above supplementary benefit and allowed for the two children. That went on for more than a year but I regret to say that a week or so ago the discretionary power of the tax inspector was withdrawn and Mr. Lewis is back again now paying £1·70 a week in income tax.
Then family income supplement, which I will call FIS, turned up. At the beginning Mr. Lewis was not eligible for FIS but after July of last year the limits of eligibility were raised and he was able to apply for FIS. So he asked his wife, who was then eight months pregnant, to get the leaflets from the post office. She went to the post office but the leaflets were not available there, so she had to go to the social security office. That office was half an hour's walk away and, having walked there, she not unreasonably came back by tube and that cost her 40p. She found the leaflets rather difficult to fill up so she again referred to the friend who had some experience and who would be able to help. Getting in touch with him, further travel and so on brought her total expenditure up to a total of 65p. She completed the form, mentioning that her baby was due the following month, and sent it in.

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When it came back no allowance was made for the baby, which by this time was on the scene, and her husband was asked if he would like to make a new application, whereupon he said that he could not do that because it would mean sending in his FIS book, the family allowance book already being out of their possession for another reason. In fact, the family allowance book was out of their possession because as soon as the baby was born—and babies must often be born to the knowledge of the family allowance organisations—she had sent in her family allowance book in respect of the other two children. It went to Newcastle and she expected to get it back by return with the new name on it. What she got back by return was a request for her to explain why the new baby had a different surname from the other members of the family. This she was able to do without help and she sent the form back immediately. She instantly filled up the form with the new surname and sent it back by return of post, but I regret to say that it took the office in Newcastle 10 weeks to understand it and during those 10 weeks no family allowance of any kind was payable to the family. The arrears were paid in the end but that is not quite the same thing when one is living at that level.
Next they thought about free school meals. As long as Mr. Lewis had been on supplementary benefit he was eligible for free school meals automatically for the older children, but now he had to apply for them on the grounds of his smaller income. His wife went to the education office. This was in the school holidays and by now she had the new baby, so she had to trail round with the two older children and the new baby to the education office. That enterprise took her two hours and cost her 64p. The baby was less than a month old and she was herself barely that long out of hospital. She got all the details and gave them to the education office. Then there came the question of school clothing. She got a form authorising her to get the uniform from Marks and Spencer's. She went to Marks and Spencer's and got it and then went back to the education office with the form. So that one went fairly smoothly. Then came rent and rate rebates. I am sure that your Lordships will be delighted to hear that rent and
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rate rebates were dealt with all in one. This went smoothly except that she had of course to go to the housing department rather than the education department, which was a further fare of 36p. She filled in the form, giving all the same information all over again.
Then everything was fine until she was asked for husband's last five wage slips. She said, "I can't send those because they are up in Blackpool with the FIS organisation to settle that question." I shall not take that story any further. That is as much as I can tell your Lordships in the time. The story is not finished: there were further difficulties about the maintenance of Mr. Lewis's ex-wife, but those I will spare the House. The end of the story is that this family is paying £1.70 a week in income tax and receiving £1.80 in family income supplement. It is impossible to imagine a greater absurdity.
If I may, I should like to add a second story about what happens in the country. Mr. Shaw—and, again, that is not his real name—is a sick man. He has six children, all of school age and he lives on a combination of supplementary benefit and sickness benefit. These come in two separate Giros, one on Tuesday and one on Saturday. Mr. Shaw lives 19 miles from Bury St. Edmunds. To get to Bury St. Edmunds from his village one must take a bus which goes on Wednesdays and on no other day and which costs slightly under a £1 for the return fare. Alternatively, one can telephone at one's own expense, or ring from an inquiry office in the village where there is one officer and no privacy at all. One has to give all one's personal details over the telephone for everybody else to hear.
I need hardly say that sickness benefit, being computerised, does not come very quickly. It takes three weeks and during that time the gap has to be filled by supplementary benefit—I suppose, while the computer is getting up and having its breakfast and going to work. All this is all right until something goes wrong and I am afraid that something not infrequently goes wrong. One day, Mr. Shaw sent off his medical certificate on a Monday and nothing came during the week. His wife telephoned on Thursday morning. She was told that they could not trace the

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papers and asked to ring again in the afternoon. It is quite expensive to telephone a distance of 19 miles and when one gets through, the answer generally is, "Yes, I will find the right man," following which the right man has to find the right papers. This therefore becomes quite an expensive enterprise. In this case, Mrs. Shaw again telephoned on Thursday afternoon and they still could not find the papers. She telephoned again on Friday morning and the papers were still missing. Then she managed to mobilise somebody who knew something about these matters and who was more authoritative and he telephoned and asked to speak to the man in charge of the section. The latter was very surprised to hear that the papers had not been able to be found because they had in fact been on his desk for two days. He said that the matter had been dealt with and the money sent out.
The next disaster happened on a Saturday. On a Saturday, one cannot telephone to the DHSS office in Bury St. Edmunds because it is closed. Nor would it be any good going there when the office was closed, but it would in any case be impossible because the bus only goes on Wednesday. There was no money in the house. What was Mr. Shaw to do? He telephoned the social services emergency office in Bury, which was open. A social worker came out 19 miles at our expense to lend him £2 to get over the week-end. However, when the week-end was over and Monday came his money had still not arrived. I do not know which day it came. I was not told that, but about a week later exactly the same thing happened all over again. I do not know whether Mr. Shaw was lent money on this occasion or what happened, but I feel that I must leave him at this point.
Those are individual examples of the position we have reached. Now let me mention a general picture. Last year we passed the Child Benefit Act. This was to give the single parent the benefit for the first child which it is hoped will later on be available for all children of a family. There are about 650,000 people—mainly widows —who are responsible for one or more children as single parents. Of those, rather more than half are drawing either supplementary benefit or widowed mother's allowance. When those people are taken out, one is left with around a
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quarter of a million or probably a few more. That means that one is left with those women who are able to go out to work and earn something.
When they do so, in comes the tax collector again and they are taxed not only on their earnings but on this new benefit of £1·50 for the first child. The tax officer insists on the assumption that this is being drawn and, as it is taxable, they are coded as drawing it. They cannot say that they would rather not draw it because they do not want to pay the extra tax. They are taxed on their earnings and lose any rebates which they may already have on school meals and other benefits such as rent or rate rebates. As a result, very few of them end up by being better off and some may end by being worse off as a result of this nice benefit of £1·50 which we gave them last year. One commentator who has gone into this has made the rather cynical suggestion that the only people who are likely to be quite sure of getting their benefit in full are single mothers under 16, who of course have no right to be mothers anyway.
This means that people do not get what they are entitled to. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, has referred to the difficulty in getting take-up of benefits and to the large number of people living below the supplementary benefit level. From official figures published only last October it appears that about 1½million people are in that position; that is to say, they have incomes below the level that is supposed to he the minimum living income in this country—an income which they are entitled to receive. It is also estimated that about one-fifth of those who are eligible for free school meals do not claim them. Claims for welfare milk were heavily advertised round about 1971 or 1972. The number then rose to about 84,000. It has since dropped to about 11,000, though whether that is a result of people being better off or of the campaign having faded away is for others to judge. It was also estimated at about the same time that there are about 875,000 people who are entitled to rent allowances but who do not claim them, and that there are at least 1 million people who do not get rate rebates but should do so.
The real trouble with this low take-up is that those who need the money most

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are those who are probably least well informed and who do not get it. It is also true that when the Government of the Party opposite introduced the family income supplement they hoped they would get an 85 per cent. take-up. They got a 50 per cent. take-up in the first instance and we are now claiming that the take-up level is about three-quarters. It is rather difficult to believe that, when the numbers of people drawing FIS are in fact falling. This is the Welfare State, so-called. This is what it means for individuals for whose welfare it is apparently run. I believe that it is time to ask two questions. First, how did we get into this muddle and, secondly, how can we get out of it?
I was delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Young, say that she intended to make some constructive suggestions. Some of her suggestions coincide with mine, but some very much do not. We got into the muddle, I think, even though we started on a fairly sound principle, even before Beveridge, in the days of the first insurance Act, the Lloyd George Act of 1911 which covered only a limited part of the population. But that part of the population which it covered, it covered without further question. They were insured, and once they were insured their benefit was automatic. There was no more fuss and they got it. We then gradually have extended it, as the noble Baroness said, to cover practically the whole population.
We have since made two new kinds of discovery. We have discovered new categories of people and we have discovered new kinds of needs. We keep on discovering them, and as the noble Baroness said we shall never get to the end of discovering all these needs. We have discovered recently low pay and tried to provide for that by FIS. We have discovered single parents and we are trying to provide for those by a special single parent allowance, if we follow the Finer Report. We have discovered, or rather rediscovered, the disabled, and we have discovered that they need rather more things than money; they need ability to get about, they need aids to mobility, and they sometimes need people to help take care of them at home. We have also discovered that people have expenses which they cannot meet. We have dis-
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covered that they cannot pay their rates and rent, and therefore they need to have help which is earmarked for that purpose, to have these paid for them instead of having enough money to pay them. We have discovered all these things under separate rules, some local, some national. That is how we got into the complicated situation.
So, my Lords, my first plea is: could we please have some simplification? Attempts at simplification have been made. Not so long ago a body of people got together to try to make a simplified form. I have to admit that I have not seen this form, but I have seen an account about it in a professional paper which I think must be well informed. The form does not cover two of the most important things—namely, supplementary benefit and FIS—but it tries to cover other things. It is six foolscap pages long, it asks 15 questions, aiming to get 58 separate pieces of information. It is accompanied by a very helpful booklet of 10 pages, which a sardonic commentator has described as chiefly concerned in telling you when not to use it.
My Lords, we do not need a form like that. We need a place where someone can go, where there is a sitting or walking encyclopaedia and a sitting or walking computer which does not have to spend all its time getting ready for work. That place should certainly be attached to a post office. We should have the information, both national and local, concentrated in one person, or in one person aided with suitable machines. That person should be able to say what is one's entitlement, with one form, and give one the money to go on with. That is the first point. Secondly—and here I differ from the noble Baroness—I think that we must get back to the principle of universality. We started with universality in the very obvious things, like old age and sickness, and we added family alowances. It is remarkable that the child allowance —the family allowance—is the one service which has practically a 100 per cent. pick up, because there is no means test and the allowance is available straightforwardly every week at the post office. We must get back to that kind of principle. That means that we give it to everybody. Of course that sounds immensely expensive, but it is much easier to give the allowance

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to everybody and then take it back from those who ought not to have it, using one form, which would be their income tax form, than it is to start sorting it out into many separate allowances, deciding whether A, B or C is entitled to it. There-for I very strongly urge that we go for simplification and universality.
We already pay allowances in respect of almost all children, and when we get round to including the first child, allowances will be paid for all children. We are paying nearly all children a certain sum of money, through their parents, merely for being alive. We pay nearly all old people for the same reason, merely because they are still alive, even if perhaps they ought not to be. Well do I remember in 1908 my mother—who was a very good Tory—being in a state of absolute mental disturbance because it was proposed to pay old age pensions to persons over 70 years of age who had incomes of less than £21 a year, not a week, because the pension was five shillings a week. My mother walked up and down in dismay from room to room, seeing the beginning of the end. Perhaps some of your Lordships will think that she was right. But many of your Lordships, myself included, are now walking about cheerfully, proudly taking the practically universal retirement pension for persons covered by social insurance.
These two classes—the old, not always the very old, but some of the very old, and the young—are getting their payments without a fuss and practically without any dispute. In between there are all these ranges of people going through what Mr. Lewis and Mr. Shaw were going through. There must be very few households in this country in which something is not coming in out of what are called the benefits of the Welfare State. I realise that this is looking ahead, but I plead with your Lordships that we should work more and more towards the idea that everybody is entitled to a guaranteed minimum income, and if one has not got it all one need do (whether one calls this negative income tax, or whatever) is go to my one encyclopaedic person and fill up one form—an income tax form—show that one has not got this guaranteed minimum income, and then it is made up to one. Then, if there are extra things to be dealt with, that would be a different matter. Therefore, I wish to conclude
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by pleading with your Lordships that we should make our aims easy access to information, simplification, and universality.
3.37 p.m.
Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON: My Lords, first I wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for giving us the opportunity to debate this most important subject. Not very long ago an Indian friend of mine visiting England said to me, "Isn't it tragic that a nation that can afford a Welfare State no longer needs it, and a nation that really need, it can't afford it at all." There is much truth in that statement, but I do not believe that it is 100 per cent. true. Yet I felt very sad when I listened to it because it made me realise how long overdue is a real assessment of priorities within our Welfare State. I feel that it is tragic that it takes economic difficulties of the present order to concentrate our minds on whether we are getting value for money and whether we are spending our money in the right way.
It is particularly tragic because when we are in a state of economic difficulties, such as we are in at the moment, it is increasingly difficult to change the pattern. As has been mentioned, since the war expenditure on social policies has been accepted as a desirable aim by all political Parties. I particularly wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, for her reference to a member of my political Party, Lloyd George, for being instrumental in the introduction of the Welfare State. I was saying that since the war all political Parties have agreed about the desirability of expenditure on social policies, but cynically one could say that this has been very easy because in a growth economy, which we have lived in until quite recently, the problem of increasing social aid to members and sections of the community more or less took care of itself on the back of economic growth in general. It was merely a question of deciding how we made the best use of the money available. This decision on what use we made of the money available was often made in the competitive bidding for support at General Elections.
I am not mentioning this because I believe there is not a real, genuine feeling

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on behalf of all members of all political Parties to create a situation where social policies are instrumental in establishing a just and fair society. What we have to ask ourselves—and this has been asked from two angles already—is whether, in the days when we were a reasonably affluent society, we achieved the ends that we hoped to achieve through our social policies; and the answer, I am sure we will all agree, is obviously, No. It has already been mentioned by both the noble Baronesses who have spoken that a number of citizens on our society are still living below the poverty line, that this number has not really been substantially reduced, and the social benefits created by the growth economy have not always gone to the people who needed them most. I believe this has happened because the money available for social needs was too easily available, without our having to assess properly the needs of society.
However, we have now come to a completely different era. We have left for the moment the growth society, particularly in this country; and we have also entered, and are suffering from, a period of unprecedented inflation. It is at this point that there is an alternative economic impact on our social policies which can become very damaging if allowed to continue. During the period of growth we may have wasted our resources, or some people may have felt that we did, because we did not concentrate on the right priorities. But that is in the past. What is worrying me now is that, in a highly inflationary economy, even maintaining the services that we have created becomes virtually impossible through increased costs—and those services were not all bad or wasteful. Secondly, the problem of maintaining those services is made more difficult in an inflationary economy because the Government themselves—and here I would say it is true of whatever Government we have—tend to use social policy in an attempt to contain inflation. This is done mostly by the introduction of general subsidies, which in themselves are, without a doubt, inflationary, because they increase Government expenditure. But I am also worried about them because they remove expenditure from the fields of real need. In other words, the nation cannot afford the two, and so we tend to neglect the
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people who really need the help that we should be giving them.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, has ranged widely over the whole field of social policy, whereas the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, has concentrated mainly on social security problems within our Welfare State. There are many eminent speakers whose names are down on the list and who are experts in various fields, and I should therefore like to confine myself to the problems of the health and personal social services, in which I am personally involved. In 1974, when the health services of this country were amalgamated with the local authority health services, this went some way towards achieving what we were looking for; that is, a co-ordinated Health Service for the whole of the country. However, again, it happened at the beginning of a period of financial restraint and at a time of extreme inflation; and although for the first two years the Health Service was inflation-proofed to a certain extent, as from this year it is no longer so. I am not complaining about that. I welcome the restraint on health and social services resources because of what I said in my preamble; namely, that it helps us to concentrate our minds on what are the priorities. But we cannot change a pattern in a matter of a few months, and we shall need a very long period in order to change the priorities within the health and social services.
The other day the Department of Health issued its consultative document on priorities in health and personal social services in England, with the aims of which I agree; but I should like to ask how, in a period of financial constraint, we can achieve the aims of this document. The underlying aim is that priorities should move from expenditure on hospital and institutional services to expenditure on the domiciliary services. I am a great believer in this, and I hope that the suggestion has not come because it is assumed—and I must emphasise "assumed"—that it is economically cheaper to give people domiciliary services than to give them hospital services. I hope it has been suggested because it will provide a better and more satisfying service for the citizens of this country. But that type of change necessitates a very close co-operation

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with local authority social services departments, which are having to work at this time under perhaps even stricter financial restraints than even the health services themselves; and even within the Health Service and that part of the local health services that was taken over in 1974 the change is difficult although it is now under one authority, because, again, the change necessitates bridging finance.
It is not very difficult to produce figures to prove that certain moves would be economically advantageous to, and probably (as I believe) more satisfying for, the persons who are having to make use of the services available. Let us assume that we have 80 per cent. of the old people who have been referred to earlier in this debate living in the community and in receipt of some form of community services or family services, and that we have 20 per cent. hospitalised, not all because of necessity but because there is no alternative service. In order to change the emphasis, it would be, to my knowledge, perfectly possible to return between 5 and 10 per cent. of those elderly people in hospitals to the community if the services existed. Let us say it was 5 per cent. That would add 5 per cent. to the cost of the community services, but it would reduce the hospital services by 25 per cent., because it would be reducing the occupation of hospital beds by those people by that amount. But we cannot close the hospital beds before we have created the services for the elderly which are necessary in order to be able to return them to the community.
So, however much one hopes and wishes to achieve a change in emphasis of the health and social services that we provide for our nation, it is a very difficult problem in a time of financial constraint and at a time when some of the regional health authorities, quite rightly—and, again, I agree with this step—have had their allocations reviewed in order to make the allocations over the whole of the nation fairer as between regional health authorities. I accept that. But we cannot at the same time take three different steps. You must make up your mind which is the one you are going to follow. I should prefer to follow the principle which reduces to the greatest possible extent the number of people having to stay in hospitals and in institutions, but I hope that
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the nation realises that this cannot be done without bridging finance being at the disposal of the authorities in charge. I am not trying to look at difficulties, but when we are looking at priorities in the various aspects of social services that this country provides for its citizens, we must be absolutely clear what are the financial implications and how we are going to set about it.
3.50 p.m.
The Lord BISHOP of SOUTHWELL: My Lords, in the order of speaking today I find myself as a Bishop among five Baronesses. I feel very much like a thorn in a bunch of roses. But in taking part in this debate I am conscious that my role is to stick to my last. It is the expectation of society that the Church should help the community, and the individuals who comprise it, to discover the norms and standards by which life should be lived. With this in mind, I trust that I shall be allowed to try to ask some of the questions which at this time we should be asking ourselves if we are to establish a wholesome philosophy of social action.
When we are considering the development of social policy, we need to ask ourselves not only in what way it is actually developing but also in what way it should be developing. I have no doubt that your Lordships would at points give very different answers to that question. For some, it is a question of interfering as little as possible in the lives of others, leaving them to be free from "busybodies", free to stand on their own feet and enjoy life in the way that suits them best provided they do not deprive others of a like freedom. This philosophy of social policy means providing appropriate help for those who, for one reason or another, cannot cope with life because of inadequacy or ill fortune, poverty or sickness.
For others, such a policy smacks far too much of an "I'm all right Jack" attitude. They see social policy not as interference but, certainly, as social engineering, as an attempt to mobilise all the resources of the community so that the district is a better place to live in and each individual has a chance to live a full and happy life, giving to other people as well as receiving from them. This is to be achieved by social workers and ordinary people playing their respective parts under

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a local authority which is ready to try to provide the resources to make such an effort possible.
My Lords, I am one of those who believe that the development of social policy should not be governed by the attempt to impose a political dogma on people, not even a religious dogma for that matter; but by the attempt to let communities be themselves and develop a complex of human relationships that are unselfish and fulfilling. It is very easy for us with the best of motives to endeavour to impose our way of life on others. There is a danger that social policy can become a politicians' battleground. It is for this reason that I welcome this afternoon's debate. We cannot afford a partisan approach to the ongoing task of social development, with changes of direction as Governments with different philosophies take over.
I wonder, my Lords, if I should command assent if I were to say that the aims of our social policy should be something like this: to enable people to be human in the deepest and fullest sense of that word; to create the right social environment for that to be possible; to rescue and relieve those in distress; to curb and reorientate the anti-social and delinquent; to recast our institutions, however time-honoured, to assist in this creative process; and so to build real community life.
If, my Lords, this very imperfect attempt to define aims has any support—indeed, whatever the result of our effort to define just and wholesome objectives—we then have to ask ourselves whether our policies are the best to achieve such objectives or whether we have any personal or political axes to grind which are partisan, selfish or divisive. One thing is certain—we shall never achieve the ideal; although we must not forget the importance of ideals as objectives. We can, however, get our priorities right. Indeed, it is just such a policy which is forced upon us by the financial stringency of our times.
My Lords, I am of the opinion that this financial stringency could, in one way, be a blessing in disguise in that it will make us review the potential of voluntary agencies afresh and harness the immense potential of the community to help itself. In social
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work we are tending to come full circle. Social work began as voluntary work which has properly been taken over by the State. Are we perhaps discovering that no State, however wealthy, can ever meet all the social needs of its citizens? Indeed, that it ought not to do so for fear of inhibiting the far greater benefits that accrue from people being responsible for helping one another. There is an amazing capacity for neighbourliness and compassion to be found in areas where there are real community ties and loyalties—often in the poor and very deprived parts of our big cities.
I hope you will allow me, my Lords, to pursue the place of voluntary work in the development of social policy. Of course, as a Christian and a Churchman I have, as it were, a vested interest in the right use of voluntary work. The Church and charitable organisations have a long and honourable history in this field. That does not mean that we therefore have a right to go on doing work of this kind in the changed circumstances of today, or that we have the right to go on doing it in the same old way. There is a proper place for the voluntary society today but it is not necessarily the same place. In some instances voluntary societies are still doing good, progressive work which is recognised by the State as being of such calibre that it can well be the agency for that particular work and no further provision needs to be made. More often, however, voluntary societies will have to recognise that the time has come to bow out gracefully because the State can make better provision. Where this is so, it does not mean that voluntary work is less necessary, merely that it must be different.
I, personally, believe that there are still endless social work projects to be pioneered which are best done by voluntary effort. People need and enjoy the opportunity to work, for instance, in support of a Cheshire home or to run outings for the physically handicapped, or to provide musical instruments for a youth band. Social policy must surely endeavour to determine what provision is better made by the statutory bodies and what provision is better made by voluntary effort. Some help is only acceptable if it is seen as unofficial, and some good voluntary work is killed stone dead by being authorised and made official.

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It is, surely, the whole aim and purpose of the Seebohm Report to stress that a community can and does generate its own resources if given the chance to do so, and to allow it to do so is ultimately for the health and happiness of that community. We have not yet learned how best to integrate the voluntary with the statutory. Amazing strides have been made and there is much good will; but it is understandable if at times there is a failure in communication between one or the other; a lack of understanding of each other's ideas; a failure to observe the proper boundaries of their work; an inability to trust each other's experience and expertise; an inability to give each other the authority to do the job the other must do. Statutory workers can be possessive, and voluntary workers can be unobjective. But I believe that the development of a trusted working relationship between statutory and voluntary workers is at the heart of a developing social policy that is big enough to meet the manifold needs of our society today.
As your Lordships can imagine, I give a lot of thought to the role of the Church in society today. It is changing role and, if I may, I should like to use it as an illustration of that change in attitude that must mark all relationships in social work in the future. The Church of England has had for a long time the privilege and opportunity of serving the country through its parochial system. The aim of that system is to provide a Church presence in the midst of the people always available to them in order to help them cope with the problems of living and dying. In days past its activities may well have been authoritarian, patronising and with very definite ulterior motives, but this stance is entirely inappropriate today. Today its task may still be to provide a Christian presence in the midst of the people readily available to them, to help them cope with the problems of living and dying. But today the Church is a partner, not the boss, and none the worse for that. Today it is just one of the agencies at work in the local situation.
The Church is still looked to as a source of volunteers and it is no longer necessary for it to set up organisations of its own. Its members are found taking a full and often considerable part in secular organisations. The change that has taken place is that of shifting authority from the tra-
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ditional providers of help to the local people who, in varied and enthusiastic ways, make the locality hum with life. In my part of the world this picture is much more true of village life than it is of urban life. We have a lot of ground to make up in establishing the same pattern of community responsibility in urban areas, where it is all the more necessary because of the shift in population and the redevelopment of whole areas of our big cities, with the consequent loneliness and restlessness of so many people. Not only the Church but the social services, too, have to be ready to abdicate the authoritarian role in favour of encouraging local responsibility. The role of the expert and the specialist is that of the enabler, the one who provides the encouragement, the advice, the pump-priming finance perhaps, which may make all the difference between success and failure.
In the final analysis, my Lords, social policy depends upon the mobilisation of the total resources of the community, using the different agencies and individuals appropriately, according to their capacities and not in ways that are beyond them. I am personally often staggered at the capacity of the community to meet a wide variety of needs. I call to mind a piece of social work, sponsored by the local Council of Churches, in the London borough of Waltham Forest, where one solitary housewife with no social work training manned a telephone throughout the week to receive requests for help from any who rang up. She never failed to find someone to meet each request, whether it was a question of finding someone to take children to and from school while a mother had to take another child to hospital, to exercise a disabled person's dog, to sit by a sick old person at night, or indeed to meet far more complicated and prolonged commitments. Social workers at times throw at voluntary agencies their most troublesome and intractable cases. Because this housewife never failed to meet a request, the service became one which could be relied on. It was extensively used by social workers, who generally had too much to do themselves, and the local authority started putting money into the venture; so that what started as one housewife on a telephone became, at very moderate cost, a valued piece of ongoing, reliable voluntary work, in which people from all over the district were mobilised to help as they

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were able in a neighbourly and uninhibited way.
Perhaps the ultimate question we have to answer is this: Does our social policy make people more responsible, more unselfish, more caring of one another, or does it make them more dependent, more demanding and more self-seeking? If we achieve the former, not only will we be establishing real and happy communities, but we shall also be preventing a lot of unsocial, destructive behaviour, and have the caring services freer to provide money and time for those who most need help because they are least able to help themselves.
4.7 p.m.
Baroness MACLEOD of BORVE: My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Young for introducing this debate this afternoon. All too rarely do we have the opportunity to debate this type of issue in your Lordships' House. I want to look at the social services as they are today—not as we want them to be in the future, nor as they have been in the past, but as they are today with all the financial stringencies and problems as a whole.
Before I do so, I should like from my own knowledge to pay a tribute to those who work in the social services. They are undermanned, overworked and often underpaid. But in this country today there is so much more expected to be done than ever before yet no more money is available to recruit the necessary numbers to do the work. People are becoming more and more used to relying on the social services instead of relying on each other. Now, through financial stringencies our backs are to the wall and the people of our country will always rise to a challenge if it is put to them. We have become much too used in this "nanny" Welfare State—and it is more of a nanny than anything else—to being looked after from the cradle to the grave. Now the time is coming when we have to be prepared to look after not only each other, but ourselves.
There are three areas on which I should like from personal knowledge to touch this afternoon. The first is the hospital
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services. I agree with the right reverend Prelate—and how nice it is to have three men among nine women taking part in a debate!—that in this area specifically we must try to get better organised voluntary services. In the hospital services there are 279 voluntary services organisers. It is their job not only to organise the voluntary services within their hospitals, but also to act as liaison officers between the social services and those hospitals. In some areas of this country this is being done very effectively indeed. What happens is that the social services get into trouble and, as has been suggested already, perhaps pass over the difficult cases to the voluntary services organiser, who contacts somebody on her or his list who is willing to do whatever service is necessary. That service is done, and done by voluntary people.
Another problem I have discovered recently is that very often geriatric patients are discharged from hospitals on Friday afternoons. As has also been mentioned, the social services obviously do not work full-time at week-ends; nor is there a full meals on wheels service, at least not generally throughout the country. Very often elderly people are left high and dry without their families knowing that they are coming out of hospital, and there are no meals on wheels or social services to help them at that time. I should like to suggest that this is one way in which volunteers could act as voluntary service organisers, either attached to the borough or to the hospital, and assist in this way.
Another area I am concerned with is the courts. As your Lordships will know, throughout the country we are trying to operate community service orders instead of using other means of bringing a citizen up short when he or she is tending to slide down the slippery slope of crime. This is one area where the community service orders are becoming very effective indeed throughout the country. However, certainly in my own area and in others I have heard of, there are not nearly enough people to man the service or oversee people in connection with community service orders. For that reason alone, the community service orders are not always able to be made when they could or should be. I have heard this morning from the probation staff of my

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court that if only there were more voluntary people to come forward and help them in the many areas where they are trying to help not only the delinquents in our community but the wives of prisoners and so on, their workload would be very much less than it is now—and I can tell your Lordships that in any case the workloads of probation staff now are far too great.
Another area of which I have some knowledge concerns a large borough about which tribute has been paid today by the area organiser to a vast number of voluntary people who help local organisations. Among them, to name but a few, are the WRVS, Welfare and also the Mentally Handicapped Association. I could go on to name many more voluntary organisations which are assisted by voluntary helpers. I should like to say here that these organisations take great note of this help and encourage young people to come forward, more than I have found elsewhere in the country. I believe that if young people come forward to help the social services, even in a minor capacity—since, of course, they are not qualified—it does them a great deal of good. They certainly give of their time and effort to help those in need.
In spite of a long list I have from my own borough of the kind of help given to the community, much more help is needed primarily to ease the pressure on the social workers. I also suggest that it is not necessary to have educational letters after one's name to be able to help and advise others. Experience of life, gained from years of coping with one's own and other people's problems, is just as useful to anyone needing help and advice. There are many people who, despite present financial conditions which may necessitate having to work part-time—and most of us do—still have a few hours in which to give time, effort, sympathy, guidance and help to assist their neighbours and the social services. There are plenty of people around: they only have to be asked. Therefore, I am suggesting today that perhaps the noble Lord the Minister will encourage the social services to increase the numbers of voluntary people they ask for help. If we can do that, then perhaps some of the people in this country will not go without the help they need.
4.16 p.m.
Baroness MASHAM of ILTON: My Lords, I also should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for providing this opportunity which today's debate is giving us to discuss some aspects of social policy which I think need bringing to your Lordships' notice. Today during this very wide debate I should like to speak on some of the needs of disabled people living in the community. It is now nearly six years since the passing of the 1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act. This has been called "the charter for the disabled". Up and down the country I hear the same thing from ail sections of people interested in the needs of the disabled, from directors of social service departments, voluntary workers and the disabled themselves; that is, that the Act must be made stronger. It is too permissive and, because of this, is ineffectual. Section 4 of the Act, concerning access to and facilities at premises open to the public, should be made mandatory, in my view. A few months ago I was asked to open officially a community centre in our local county town. This is an excellent place for all the community, and it has cost £250,000. But on arriving I found two steps, and on inquiring why there was no ramp, which would have been so easy to incorporate, I was told it had been thought unnecessary.
If planning committees go on approving buildings such as these and ignoring the 1970 Act, how is access ever to be improved? Many new councillors coming on to planning committees have never heard of the Act. The local authority officers do not tell them of its existence because nothing is laid down in law saying that they must do so. If the example set in the adaptions to your Lordships' House and another place were followed by the community in general, perhaps there would not be this need.
There has been a very disappointing response over the co-opting of disabled persons on to local authority committees. There is no doubt in my mind that, even if they never open their mouths, by their presence alone disabled persons help councillors to remember their needs. One director of social services told me she had co-opted a disabled person on to committees and he had to be carried up and

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down stairs to every meeting he attended. As long as these things are shelved, the disabled people will not feel they are part of a community.
The Consultative Document, Priorities for Health and Social Services, states that among their priorities are the disabled. On page 46, on the hospital side, it is stated that the most important need is for the establishment of a spinal injuries unit in the South of England. I have been very pleased to see this in print. As we are discussing today the community, I mention this because of the great distances, expense and hardship both relatives and patients have to bear by travelling such long distances. This unit is so important. May I ask the Minister where it is to be? Knowing of the appalling waiting lists at Stoke Mandeville, I should like him to say that there will be one in London and one in Bristol.
As a member of the Spinal Injuries Association, I am aware of the great need of extra care attendants to make it possible for very severely disabled people to remain in the community. I should like to bring to your Lordships' notice the Crossroads scheme, which was founded by the television programme of that name and one of our members who had broken his neck. A care attendant comes into a house and gets the disabled person out of bed and allows him to go off to work, thus relieving the rest of the family and making it possible for the family unit to stay together. There is a tough selection to get the right people. This scheme is operating in Rugby, and I hope that Area Health Authorities will study it, as the benefits of keeping the severely disabled person in the community when all the people involved wish this to be done must mean that this is the correct solution. With so much short-stay surgery and out-patient operations, together with elderly sick and handicapped people in the community, the Red Cross have launched a short-course scheme this year called Nursing for the Family, which is aimed at helping people to cope with these problems. I should like to see more education of this kind as part of the school curriculum.
We are experiencing the problems of the young generic social worker. Very often she works in an aura of theory with
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little practical experience of some of the specialised problems that will arise. One young girl told me that she was the most junior person in her social work department, but had been put in charge of aids for the handicapped. Because of this lack of knowledge and expertise many more voluntary specialised groups have been formed. I recently attended a meeting of many voluntary organisations and social workers, and their unanimous conclusion was that there should be more specialists working in social service departments, so that the basic grade social workers can get the advice they need. For someone with no experience to try to work with clients with severe defects is a waste of time causing frustrations all round.
Emerging from some specialised voluntary groups is the wish of certain members to help fellow sufferers back along the road into the community. This help can be given by advising a patient in hospital before he goes home, and by visiting in the home and supporting him and the family until they feel ready to cope. To enable these schemes to work there must be co-operation between the voluntary organisations and the professional staff. There is a great deal of good will in many people, but sometimes the statutory social worker seems jealous of the volunteer. To plan a discharge means multi-disciplinary groups working together, including the volunteer when necessary, so perhaps the Government will encourage this aim. I was delighted to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod, also say this.
To pave the way for my Question on 5th May, I should like to bring to your Lordships' notice Her Majesty's Government's policy of withdrawing invalid vehicles from disabled people in category 3 on the grounds that they are no longer in employment. Is this not the most monstrous act which could be performed against rehabilitation for retirement from work? Her Majesty's Government state that to allow these very few people to have their vehicles for the rest of the time they could drive them would be unfair to the many people who, despite equal disabilities, have never qualified. But the people who have worked have not only paid their way in life, making great efforts to do so; they have saved on other services such as

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home helps as they have been made independent, and they have not been a constant drag on their families.
A disabled man in Doncaster has had his three-wheeler taken away. He continued to work after being injured at work in 1963, but he now cannot even get to the Post Office to collect his pension. He says that he is just a prisoner in his own home, dependent on others, after years of striving. His Member of Parliament wrote to me on 13th April and said:
"I think it was an atrocity to take away this man's trike as soon as he finished work; after a lifetime of work he is now left to gravitate slowly towards the grave."
Another desperate person wrote to me saying that she had contracted tubercolosis since the struggle over the withdrawal of her three wheeler. The numbers involved are very small, but the desperation of the individual is immense. If there is this kind of policy, without regard to the individual, I am not surprised that so many social workers leave the service. The noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, knows very well some of the problems that come my way, and I should like to thank him for all the help he gives me.
I would make one more point. I find that housing is one of the greatest difficulties, as this involves the whole family. When a new house is needed, a disabled person is so often offered one outside his neighbourhood, which means that children have to be disrupted at school and wives are moved from their friends. But when an offer is turned down, which sometimes happens because of pressure from the family, the housing authority seems to lose all interest and makes no further effort to help that individual. I hope that this hard-line, impersonal attitude will die and that the social policy of the future will produce a more sympathetic, flexible and caring approach, considering the individual and the whole family.
4.27 p.m.
Lord REDESDALE: My Lords, like other speakers, I must thank the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for giving us this opportunity to debate this big and important subject. It is indeed a big and important subject; so big, in fact, that I feel I can touch on only one small
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aspect of it. But it is an aspect in which I have an interest which I have already declared, in that I have two foster children. Those people who have interests tend to go on a bit. so I shall try to exercise some self-discipline and not talk at too great a length on this aspect, which I should like to draw to your Lordships' attention.
We are talking about the community service, and more and more this means the care of the individual. There are some 85,000 children in care at the moment, which means that there are 85,000 individual, separate problems and they are all different. The point is that they are all individuals. When one talks about subjects of this kind, it is so easy to gloss over and generalise. I am interested in fostering which is just one aspect of care. I do not intend to generalise or to say that fostering is the only answer; I just say that it is one aspect, and I want to make that very clear at the start.
There are so many conditions which affect a child in care—his mental state, his age, his health and so on. So many have to go into community homes because they need to be assessed, or there are other problems which mean that they cannot be put out for either adoption or fostering. We have a rather low proportion of children boarded out, and that is a pity. Only about half of our children in care are boarded out. This compares with Sweden where about 80 per cent. of the children are boarded out. Massachusetts has a scheme, and there are hardly any children in homes. It is easy enough to quote these examples and say that these are wonderful situations which should come about in this country; it is just one of those generalisations which you cannot pick up. However, let us say that there is a ceiling figure which is probably close to the Swedish figure—let us hope it is, anyway.
I think it would be better for the children if we could get up to this figure of 80 per cent., but it does not stop at just being better for the children—and I sincerely mean that it is better for the children. There is a financial advantage and it is a very big and important one, especially when we are in a period of nil growth. So often when we talk about community schemes in your Lordships' Chamber we

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say that we must put more money into something. I appreciate that one cannot always be asking for money; the money is not there to give. I am saying that fostering provides a means of releasing more money and if we can increase the number of children who are boarded out we can make savings which will mean that the service is not cut back but maintained.
This is an important point and to back it up I have with me some figures relating to a London borough. These are 1975 figures, so they will have gone up and my point becomes even more valid as inflation continues. Last year it cost this London borough £4,253 to keep a child in one of their community homes. One has to set this against a figure for a voluntary or a charity organisation of about £2,383. It is still a lot of money, but then one has to set that figure against what it costs to keep a child boarded out. That figure is only £981 and includes the social services—the visiting of the social workers and everything else. This is a big saving. As I said earlier, this can apply only to some children, but it could apply to more children than is presently the case.
When one turns to the really agonising problem of the disturbed child the cost rockets. In some cases, depending on occupancy (where, for some reason, it can be put on a low occupancy figure) the cost can get up to as high as £12,000 a year to keep a child. The Department of Health and Social Security has mentioned to local authorities the need for secure units. Many local authorities feel that this is "pie in the sky"; that is, that you cannot keep these children in secure units when the cost is becoming so high. Therefore, schemes like the Kent scheme, which I want to talk about later, are important because they could make a big contribution.
I feel that we must give credit to the social workers and other people who have so much enthusiasm and who have given so much of their time in order to develop fostering schemes. There is a multitude of these operations starting up at the moment and it is important for us and for the media to support the social workers. It is a question of morale. If the morale of the social workers goes their performance also goes, so please let us try to keep up their morale by giving them all the
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support that we possibly can. We have to accept that at the moment many children are at risk. As we know only too well, from the Children Act and everything else, social workers cannot rush into a home and seize a child just because they think that child is either at risk or in danger. They have to wait until something happens. This is a sad state of affairs, but a very necessary one. You cannot have people seizing children from their parents.
At the same time we must accept that this is a real problem for social workers. When a tragedy occurs it is so easy for people to say, "Oh, it's the fault of the social services". It is their fault, but most of them, or nearly all of them, are doing their very best, and when a tragedy occurs it is often because a somewhat inexperienced social worker is dealing with the family. It can be said that inexperienced social workers are supervised and that it is a management responsibility because it goes up the line to the supervisor. But one must remember that it is the social worker—perhaps this inexperienced social worker—who has to see the family, make an assessment of the situation and report back. Therefore the whole problem goes up the line. It is on that information that the situation is assessed by the supervisor, and as the work load goes up and up it is very hard for them to supervise and see each individual child. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and also the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, spoke about the proportion of trained to untrained social workers. Unfortunately, it is only 40 per cent. qualified as against 60 per cent. unqualified. This is an area where we must try to give support—perhaps by saving money in some way along the line—and encourage the senior practitioner grades. As doctors gain experience, it becomes more important for them still to be active, to carry out operations, and so on. Therefore we must concentrate on the senior practitioner grades so that they do not become just pen pushers but remain active and so that we can use their experience, although they are fully administrative people.
The advantage of using the senior practitioner grades arises when we think about the growing need for greater specialisation, especially in the care of children—for instance, in the finding of foster homes. There are other aspects

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where a social worker can be employed on just one particular aspect. An excellent job is being done at the moment by the Adoption Resources Exchange. It is a great pity that this scheme is not applied to fostering. There is, in fact, a great wastage of foster parents. One local authority may have a parent but not a child while another local authority may have a child but not a parent. This scheme could utilise, to a greater extent, the unfortunately relatively rare foster parent. There are, of course, different kinds of foster parents, from short stay through to long-term fostering.
Another aspect to which I should like to draw the attention of the Minister is that it would be a great help if the registration scheme were standardised across the country. If a fostering scheme could be introduced to enable parents from different boroughs to be matched, with a standardised registration scheme delays would be obviated. As I have said, the real problem is to get families. Fostering, as I know only too well, is not easy but it is very rewarding. I feel that everybody who is concerned with social welfare must try to help those schemes which are starting up now to gain parents.
For instance, the "Mums and Dads" scheme, for which I am wearing a lapel badge now, started within the last month. There are many similar schemes. One scheme which we ought to look at very carefully has been tried before and now is successful. This is the Kent scheme which is trying to board out particularly difficult adolescents. They are paying a relatively high fee—round about £32—to get them boarded out. Obviously this is much cheaper than any other scheme. They are not having to apply the same degrees of vetting that would have to be applied if they were trying to board out a baby because adolescents can vote with their feet. However, the scheme is starting to work and, like all the schemes I have mentioned, it is important that the experience gained should be collated and that there should be seminars. Seminars cost money but in the end they will save money. If we can give support to seminars so that this information can be exchanged, I feel that it will result in a higher number of boarded out children.
May I mention some of the other problems which exist. For instance, it is
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easier, as we can see from the figures, to board out children in rural areas than in the centres of cities. It gets harder to board them out as you come into towns and there is a quite simple reason. It is a question of housing. You have more room in rural areas and less room in the centres of cities. But I hope the Kent scheme will pave the way for something to happen in this particularly difficult area of adolescents. Another scheme which has been running is the Soul Kid Scheme for coloured children, and in October of this year the National Foster Care Association are running a Foster Care Week. I note that the DHSS Consultative Document speaks of the need for fostering. I feel that perhaps greater emphasis could be given to this need and to the support that could be given, because this is a vital service. At this stage we must try to support the scheme because it will result in savings which will keep the community services in this particular area running when money is very short. I would just ask that tangible support should be given to this scheme because of what it can produce not only in financial results but also in human terms.
4.41 p.m.
The Earl of LONGFORD: My Lords, like the noble Lord who has just spoken so movingly, I should like to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Young, on initiating this debate and also on the incisive and comprehensive way in which she dealt with this vast subject. I hope that perhaps in 20 years' time she will initiate another debate; some of us may have to watch it from afar, but I have a feeling that when she does so she will not be quite so depressed about the heavy burden constituted by senior citizens. At the beginning of her speech she pointed that out as one of the hardest problems confronting us; that is, that such a large proportion of the population was elderly. I suppose that would apply to this House even more than any other collection of human beings of similar mentality. But I hope that in years to come she will feel that the older citizens can also be very beneficial.
Like other speakers I must concentrate on one or two themes. I am starting from the fundamental proposition of my old master, Lord Beveridge, who is quoted

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selectively on these occasions. People usually bring him in to suit their own purposes one way or another, but I start from his fundamental proposition that State action should provide what he called the floor, and voluntary action should build up to the ceiling. I am not going to concern myself with the precise relationship between central Government, local government and voluntary action. We all agree that that should be as harmonious as possible; and we leave out another all-important issue which has perhaps hardly raised its head, because there is today a kind of understanding—almost a ukase—that nothing must be said that is controversial in any Party sense. I believe that if I were to make a Party point somebody would move, "That the noble Lord be no longer heard", and it would be carried unanimously. On the question of the distribution, and how much of the distribution, of the nation's resources are to be given to the social services, I can only say that those of us who believe in the more equal distribution of wealth would call for a much higher allocation than those who believe in a less equal one. I will not pursue the Party point any further than the noble Baroness, who began spelling out the advantages of a Conservative approach to the social services.
My topic is different; I am concerned with the priorities within the total amount of the provision, taking that total amount as given for the purposes of the discussion. Of course there are any number of issues here. There is the very important one dealt with by the noble Baroness, and in the powerful speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, on the question of universality. In that connection I merely say that I am entirely on the side of the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, but I will leave it for them to sort out among themselves.
At the risk of over-simplification, my thesis is that we must set out to do for psychological needs what Beveridge and those who followed him did for physical needs. I am not saying that we do nothing for those who are psychologically disadvantaged, and it would be equally untrue to say that nothing was done before Beveridge for those in physical need. But I am saying that a much higher priority should be given within the total provision
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for those who, for psychological reasons, do not benefit in practice from the Welfare State to the extent that on paper they are supposed to benefit.
For the purposes of illustration—and others will provide examples from their own wide experience—I will touch on three categories: The single homeless—and particularly the single homeless young; the prisoners and ex-prisoners, and the black community. I may be told that if we are talking of psychology, the mentally sick and the mentally handicapped provide the most glaring case of all. In their case, of course, the psychological factor is the essential element; it is recognised and pinpointed. To a lesser extent, that is true of the old. But in the cases just mentioned this aspect of psychological disadvantage is ignored. The collective will of our people—and I am not saying that other countries are any better—is reluctant to do more for groups such as those I have mentioned than is done already, because basically it is felt they do not deserve that more should be done for them. For example, most people would agree that the disabled deserve better treatment than they are getting, but the groups to which I am referring are not, on the whole, regarded sympathetically by the general public. The feeling is understandable but superficial, as we shall see when we look at the problem.
Take the homeless young, for example. When, some years ago, I and others started a centre in Soho for homeless, drifting young people, I assumed that those in need would be immediately anxious to take advantage of any help that was offered to them. That was, and is, far from the case. I learned then what the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, referred to in another context, that many of those in the greatest need of help are the most reluctant to accept it.
No one who has any contact with the single homeless could say that they have what might be called a normal sense of expectation. Many years ago, in my hearing, Ernest Bevin used to quote John Burns as saying:
"the tragedy of the working class is the poverty, of their desires".
I suppose today there are those who would say that is not true of the working class generally, and regret it. In so far

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as it has ceased to be true, I welcome the change. However, the tragedy of large sectors of our society remains the poverty of their hopes. They simply do not believe that anybody is going to help them. To come to a concrete issue, it will not be easy to eliminate such pessimism and inner hopelessness, but one thing at least the Government can do is to establish the rights of those concerned beyond question. Last summer in this House a number of us urged the Government to lay down minimum rights for the single homeless. I am under the impression that the Government will be making some announcement fairly soon, but let us hope and pray that it will induce the local authorities to make provision for the single homeless, and to make it as a statutory duty.
So with ex-prisoners. The provision of aftercare for ex-prisoners is somewhat better than it was, say, 20 years ago—which is saying very little. At least we now have a national Probation and Aftercare Service—terribly overworked, as was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve. It is far less effective than it should be, not through any fault of the Service, but simply because it is overworked. But we still spend ludicrously small amounts on penal treatment and aftercare generally, because in the last resort we as a nation consider—whoever happens to be in power, whatever the Ministers and officials may feel—that prisoners do not deserve a larger share of the national cake when many more deserving citizens are going short. We as a community seem unable to bring ourselves to understand that, whether we like or do not like them, prisoners and ex-prisoners are handicapped persons just as much as if they were suffering from physical disability. They are handicapped by their temperament, by their experience in prison, and by the way they are treated afterwards.
It is so with the black community also. I am talking of the community as a whole, without pointing a finger in any particular direction. We still cannot realise the handicap under which they labour from the beginning of life, even when born and brought up in this country. I do not mean just the colour prejudice, although that exists, but the educational handicap from which most of these people suffer,
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the deep feeling of alienation, of being outside what they call the host community—and that expression alone is evidence of the alienation I have mentioned. The Melting Pot, a centre for young black people in Brixton, of which I am honoured to be a patron, is receiving valuable help from official sources and is truly grateful, but those concerned keep raising the question of why more black people cannot be employed in the social services. I hope the Government will be sympathetic to that aspiration at least.
My Lords, I expect some of your Lordships will have read in The Times of 13th April an impressive article by Mr. Mark Bonham-Carter, chairman of the Community Relations Commission, which arose from the argument as to whether the black people are committing more than their share of crime, and, conversely, whether the police are treating them fairly. Mr. Bonham-Carter wrote:
"Mutual recrimination between the police and the black community will help no one save those who want to sensationalise race relations. What is required is the means of bringing the police and the black community together, not to blame each other but to work out ways of helping both to achieve civilised relationships".
We have scarcely begun to scratch the surface of the problem, in spite of a good many efforts made in this House and elsewhere. We still think we have done our duty by the black community if we tackle positive discrimination with intermittent energy. We cannot realise that here again—and this time without any fault; in the case of prisoners you can talk of fault, but you cannot talk of fault here—the black community is suffering from this built-in disadvantage which can only be redressed by positive action in their favour. I am not asking for vast sums of money, the provision of which would impede the development of our justly admired services, the great services of health, education and social security for example. I am urging that our eyes should be opened to the need for a new, additional dimension which would render our social services more humane, more civilised and more relevant at the crucial points.
In my view, we shall never arrive at this enlightenment unless we clear our minds about the place of merit or desert in our social provision. Most of us will remember the words of the Gospel—it is

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not those who are well who need a physician, but those who are sick. That notion, admittedly, is a large factor already in our social provision, if the idea of sickness is extended to cover those who are unable to earn a living, to the old, to the unemployed, to children, for example. But the next sentence of the Gospel is less regarded:
"I have come not to call the just, but sinners to repentance".
No one who has listened to those in authority, Ministers for instance, expressing reluctance to spend more on penal treatment, can suppose that the second part of the Gospel message, the call to sinners, has got home, and it is high time it did.
My Lords, a little while ago, a prisoner who for many years had been in an American prison—a prisoner befriended by the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger—described the untiring efforts of those who tried to help him, and he asked what justification there could be for all this noble exertion on his behalf. There was nothing in himself, he realised, which should have drawn it forth. The only answer he could find was this, and I quote his own words:
"There was my great need, but that is enough for real champions".
If we accept the test of real need, psycho-logical as well as physical, our sense of humanity soon directs our gaze to large numbers of men and women who are today too psychologically disadvantaged to obtain the benefits of the Welfare State, which we persuade ourselves in our well meaning way, are available to them. It is with these psychologically disadvantaged groups in mind that our social priorities should be adjusted, not only in their own interests, but in those of the British community as a whole. The well being of the respectable members of society cannot be divorced from theirs, bearing in mind that we are all members of a single family.
4.55 p.m.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, as a former Director of Social Services, and one whose profession has been that of a social worker, I must declare an interest in this debate. I am indeed grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for initiating it. It is perhaps inevitable that
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I should view social policy in relation to the community through the eyes of local authority social service departments, voluntary social work agencies, and as a member of the British Association of Social Workers. Perhaps even more important, I view this debate through the eyes of those who come to posts in social services or voluntary agencies with a problem in the business of living which cannot be solved by their family, by their friends or by their neighbours.
My Lords, I seek to take up the position of counsel for the defence of social workers. In your Lordships' House there is much understanding and much sympathy for the social service departments. But there has been widespread criticism arising out of certain cases during the years since 1970. Social workers—and I count myself as one of them—would be the first to admit that we have made mistakes. In fact, I would submit that growth cannot come about without mistakes. We do not wish to have excuses made for us, but we wish the circumstances to be understood. Therefore, with the permission of your Lordships, I should like to look first at the past six years, the present, and the future.
There are many people who are regretting the passing of the childrens' departments, the welfare services and the mental health departments. I speak with much diffidence because the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, is in the House, and he will know better than I the personal findings of the Seebohm Committee Report. I remember very well sitting in my office one day as a children's officer, when a woman came in insisting that she see the children's officer because she was owed money. I saw her. Whenever one thinks the accounts are going wrong, one always sees someone. The woman said to me, "You owe me money". I asked her why. "Well", she said, "there are six of you from the town hall visiting me. That is six cups of tea and six biscuits a week; and I should be grateful for a home help to clean the place while I am looking after you all". This is bad social work. It is waste of manpower, and it is a waste of travelling time. For this reason, social workers supported the noble Lord, Lord Seebohm, in his recommendations in the report of his Committee.

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In the last six years we in the social services, have realised that "the buck stops here". Social services are the last port of call. If anything goes wrong with any other department, or if a person has been unable to get any help, or the help has gone wrong, then it is to the social services finally that the case presents itself. May I touch on one or two things—first of all housing. The problem of housing the homeless in the last six years has been absolutely appalling. The social service departments have been inundated. When at one stage I did some statistics, I found that the staff were spending 60 per cent. of their time dealing with homeless families, and only 40 per cent. of their time dealing with work which was rightly theirs by legislation. Since February 1974 the housing of the homeless has reverted to—or at least is now—the responsibility of housing departments. Nevertheless, if there is a failure to house a homeless family, under Section 1 of the 1963 Act the case goes to social services. On neither side of your Lordships' House and on neither side in another place has a solution been found for the homeless, despite the massive building programme and the large number of empty properties in this country. I would merely say, as I said earlier, that the problem of housing the homeless has bedevilled the work of social services departments.
I then come on to building. There has already been a debate in your Lordships' House concerning the type of building, council houses and sheltered accommodation, that we are putting up. I would ask particularly that note be taken of insulation for heating; that expensive underfloor heating by electricity should not be put in. It only means that people cannot pay their bills, that ultimately either they are cold or they run up expenses they cannot meet. I speak particularly of the elderly, who if they have no proper heating suffer so badly from hypothermia.
My Lords, I turn to planning. I speak withs much diffidence, because the planners must have had great difficulty. I think it is cause for sadness and concern that we in this country have had this massive building programme and we have not planned our areas, except in a few instances. For instance, no play space for children, which has meant the adventure playground and the National Playing Fields Association
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finding space and money to make good this loss. We have built high rise flats. Some people are happy in high rise flats, but I cannot believe that it is right for families to live in such flats. I know of many families where the children are given aspirin to keep them quiet because the parents cannot put them outside and constantly watch them. Those who cannot tolerate the problems arising out of high rise flats and high rise living ultimately come to the social services departments.
My Lords, I was going to speak on the subject of poverty. I would have spoken with diffidence, having spoken on it before. But having listened to the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, speak so ably on this and on the whole question of benefits, I will perhaps leave that subject out. But may I make one comment. Reading the history of trade unions, one cannot but be moved by their past objective to help the poor. It is a cause for mystification and some concern that the TUC appears now to further the interests of their more vocal and better paid members, doing much less for the workforce caught in the poverty trap and on low wages.
Turning to the Supplementary Benefits Commission, I would say that the relationship and the organisation of that service has greatly improved; there is a very much better relationship as between social services and the Supplementary Benefits Commission. There again, as has already been mentioned, at the end of the day a family without money has to go to the social services, because they have a weekend and evening and night service.
May I mention the public services: gas and electricity. Whenever anything goes wrong with the gas or electricity services, such as we have experienced in the past few years, the social services have to deal with the matter—that is, not only the social services but the health visitors and the health service. I well remember, during the various strikes we have had in the public services, how devastating was the work of visiting the elderly who might not have heating.
My Lords, I should like to touch on one more point. I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, whether he is quite sure that there is the necessary cooperation and understanding and communication as between Government

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Departments that have a common problem, dealing with the same people. In local government there has been corporate planning. It has not always been easy, but at least everyone knows what everyone else has been doing. Perhaps I had better look to the beam in my own eye. First, in the last few years the social services have carried very heavy legislation; it was legislation all of which, I am sure, was required: the Children and Young Persons Act 1969; mercifully, the Children Act of 1975 has not yet been fully implemented, and, although it is a pity it would not be possible with the present manpower. Then there is the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970; the Health Services and Public Health Act, Sections 12 and 13, giving a service to the elderly; the change of policy from hospital and residential to community care.
We have, too, and rightly, so, been beset by pressure groups—Shelter, Age Concern, Mind and the Disablement Income Group. I should also say—and I think it is fair to say it —that the social workers had great enthusiasm with the passing of the Local Authority Social Services Act in 1970. Perhaps, it may have been the case—and certainly I was guilty of this—that one attempted to attract to one's department as much work as possible, hoping that one was meeting the needs of our new departments. In Oxford, for instance, with a population of 110,000, in the first year we had 10,000 callers at the office. With the new Act, with the pressure groups, the expectations of the community were enormous and, as has been said before in this debate, it was their problem. I think that the social services are now realising that there must be a reappraisal and a reassessment and the boundaries must be set. They are fully aware of the cold climate of the cutback due to inflation. One of the things which social workers have fully appreciated is the fact that responsibility must be put back where responsibility should rightly rest; that is, with the neighbourhood.
First, may we look at the alternatives. It has been suggested by somebody—not today—that there should be a cutback in one of the services. My Lords, which one? If there were to be a cutback on the elderly the Lord Mayor of London, whose special interest is the elderly, Age Concern and Help the Aged, would
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protest. If there were a cutback on services for the disabled then certainly the Under-Secretary of State for the Disabled would have something to say, not to speak of the Disablement Income Group.
May I say that the Minister was in Manchester a fortnight ago and congratulated the Manchester social services along with the chairman of the Spastics Society on their excellent service to the disabled. I would say that this applies elsewhere, although there may be gaps in other areas. As regards the mentally ill and the handicapped, we could not cut services here. As has been said before in this debate, it would mean either people being left in hospital or that they come out of services with a community care.
The Social Services Department is also responsible for children and their families. If time had allowed I would have wished to speak at length on service to children and their families. It is a subject basic to the wellbeing of the nation, and ought surely to be the subject of a full debate. The situation is growing critical and crucial. Statistics show that those aged under 17 years commit 25 per cent. of all serious crimes, more than 40 per cent. of burglaries, and nearly one-sixth of all violent crime. It is no wonder that the police and the Association of Magistrates call for a change in the Children and Young Persons Act 1969.
However, I would make two points. First, this law is a non-law. As directors of social services we made mistakes, though I must say that many of us never sent a child home immediately where a care order had been made. This law is a non-law because we have not had the resources. The police understandably call for secure accommodation. This should certainly not be in prison. In a community home there are ways of providing a child with the kind of life which can hold him or her. Even if the law were to be altered there would still not be the resources. The Kent scheme, already referred to, for fostering difficult children is less costly than residential care, but to be successful it needs and requires qualified social workers to get the scheme under way and to support the foster parents.
My second point is perhaps even more fundamental. I would say that I had already written this speech when I heard

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the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, on the wireless the other night and I feel both proud and humble to have written, I would almost say, what she said. By the time a child, or young person, reaches court it is, as I am sure my probation officer colleagues would agree, almost too late. The damage is done. Prevention would have been better than cure. The damage was done along the years of that child's life, and I am one who believes that it was done in the early years. The damage lies in the social conditions and the family life of the child up to the appearance in court. This may sound like doom and gloom, and must be set against so much in family life in this country which is on a firm footing.
We shall continue to have problems until we have a constructive and coordinated policy fot the development of children: a policy overall, and not of one Department but of several Departments; the Department of Health and Social Security, the Department of Education and Science, the Department of Labour, and so on. The policy should offer a service in the broadest sense to children, as far as is practical and possible in the setting of their families, and, if not, in a setting which meets the needs of the individual child. This is clearly brought out in the book, Children who Wait, by Jane Rowe. The National Children's Bureau showed the effect of social policy on the development of children who are, after all, the best investment a country has, and, more important, demand our compassion.
My Lords, I am bound to say to you that some of us have tried, and are trying, to meet this need. When I was a director there was an arrangement as between our education department and our social services department whereby teachers in schools who, at an early age, found children difficult, disturbed, unhappy, perhaps not cared for, should refer them jointly to the education department and the social services. The city council, the Ministry, had approved the building of two children's homes of a new type and nature, and we were to accept the children into the children's homes; some for the week, some for the weekend. The school would give them special classes. We hoped in this way at the same time to support the parents. Thus we hoped to
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prevent juvenile delinquency, and to prevent the lives of children from becoming unhappy. Two days before I left the Department we had a note to say that there were to be no further projects, and that these projects must be put in cold storage. Therefore, I would say that the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 is an Act we believe in, but we have not the tools to carry out that Act and to carry it out well.
Social workers are very well aware that they cannot be doing all the work that is laid at their door, and therefore they are developing neighbourhood projects. They are attempting to put work back to the neighbourhoods, and back with families. I would say that the volunteers, and voluntary workers, are of inestimable value to social services departments and they are, to my certain knowledge, being used to a very great extent. There is just one thing I would say on the question of staff, and this applies not only to social services but to education and to the hospital staff, and it has already been mentioned. There should be a two-tier promotional ladder whereby people may attain promotion and yet remain in touch with the work on the grass roots. If the good teachers remained in the classrooms, if the good nurses remained as sisters, if the good social workers remained at the grass roots, I think we would not have had many of the troubles that we have had. This is not to say that I do not approve or like or respect young social workers. They have been magnificent and have carried a burden which perhaps we should not have asked them to carry.
A great deal of self-help is growing up and so are many self-help organisations. These, I am sure, should be supported and I would mention one group, the child minders. Registered child minders care for more children than all local authority, private and factory nurseries put together. It is the major form of day care of children in their first two years. Child minders look after the children of, by and large, mothers who are unskilled; of course they are not all unskilled. Child minders do not stick to hours and they have no training. I do not think that we have harnessed, used or helped this service adequately. The subject of training has been mentioned and I hope that whatever else we may have to cut back on, it will

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not be training; and I hope particularly that this will be borne in mind in relation to the residential staff who carry the most difficult cases in the social work world.
It is a realistic fact of life that to improve a service and change direction there must be some money. The personal social services can, and I am sure will, deploy their staff, use neighbourhood schemes and volunteers and co-operate with voluntary organisations, but society cannot have it both ways; it cannot blame and arraign the social services for doing their work inadequately and at the same time not be prepared to meet the cost. Should there be more drastic cuts, then the community will need to provide a service for itself. Social workers realise that, to be effective, a balance must be struck between the preservation of and incentive towards a life of self-reliance and independence on the part of all members of the community, while at the same time adopting towards those realistically in need a policy of support given in such a way that the person in need and the social worker together seek to resolve the problem, maintaining and preserving the dignity of the individual.
5.23 p.m.
Lord HUNT: My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, has drawn the terms of her Motion so widely that I, like others, find it difficult to decide at what point in this wide social spectrum to fix my thoughts. Unlike others she has mentioned, I did not get in touch with her about the Motion to try to find out exactly what she meant in case I might be discouraged from taking the line which I hope to take, the more so because it has to do with a subject which was debated in this House only recently and in which she played a notable part. I am, therefore, risking riding a hobby-horse on the premise that almost every speaker has managed to alight on a different subject without being, so to speak, redundant.
Having missed the debate to which I am referring — it was about juvenile delinquency—I wish to take this opportunity to deal with two aspects of the treatment of young people who are in trouble with the law. I have of course studied the Hansard of that debate and in particular the speech made by the noble
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Baroness, Lady Young. Since then there has been a debate in the other place on the Report of the Expenditure Committee on the working of the Children and Young Persons Act and I understand that a White Paper is now awaited. First, policy; I shall be touching briefly on policy and on provision. In both the debates I have mentioned there was a good deal of discussion about the principles underlying the Act and whether the very alarming increase in juvenile crime was due to some faulty thinking behind the Act or a failure to supply adequate resources to make its provisions workable. As we know, there are a number of factors, and the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, mentioned one, the high rise flats situation.
Not all the factors which have a bearing on this worrying situation are fully understood, but I think that one principle in the Act, apart from the matter of resources, has something to do with this problem, and that is the principle of selecting a date in the life of a young person and saying, in effect, on the one hand that under the age of 17 he or she should be treated differently by a different service for committing an offence, even perhaps a very serious offence, with the court exercising no control after making an order committing that person to the care of the social services and the local authority, while on the other that same offence above that age and after that date becomes overnight a matter for a quite different approach being dealt with by a different service which is answerable to a court of law.
In my view this situation is unrealistic, unnecessary and therefore wrong. For one thing, it is generally too old an upper limit. Many, perhaps most—I do not have the statistics—young people in trouble with the law have been for up to a year away from school or college by their 17th birthday. They think of themselves as adults; they think of themselves and behave as though they are entirely free of parental control. They need to be treated for failures in responsible behaviour exactly on that footing. I also think that the lower age limit, 13, needs to be looked at afresh. Juveniles are committing serious offences at a younger age year by year. It may be true, as the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Greenwich, said in the debate in January, that

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the incidence of juvenile crime among the under 14s has been steady for the last four years, but I believe—I am subject to correction—that it is growing younger. I am not sure that it is right for some of these precocious, highly anti-social 12-yearold hooligans to be treated as not having responsibility for their misdeeds, or how realistic it is to place the whole of the onus of blame on the parents.
The wrongness of that upper limit was implicit in a statement made by Mr. Alex Lyon, speaking then as Minister at the Home Office, in the recent debate in the other place on the Expenditure Committee's Report, when he said that it was "not possible to phase out the use of the Probation Service in children's cases"—which the Act requires and which the Expenditure Committee had recommended should be hastened—and it will continue to be wrong as long as it is deemed right to retain two separate services, the Probation Service and the social services, to meet distinctively different kinds of social need. I hasten to add that, for my part, I find it right that this distinction should continue. To blend those two services into one comprehensive service would produce the worst of both worlds and would therefore be a false economy. I believe that this has been shown to be the case in Scotland. Certainly it seemed that it did not provide for the adequate supervision of the more serious offenders in the community on parole while I was chairman of the Parole Board for England and Wales. The plain fact is that the Probation Service, backed by the courts, has the expertise to deal with certain youthful perpetrators of crime—I shall not call them criminals—through what one might call a "no nonsense" approach which I believe, by and large and with no disrespect to them, the social services lack.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and other speakers have touched on training. One of my worries, which is shared by a number of other people, is the Government's policy of training both services through the same system—what is called the "generic" approach—in the Central Council for the Education and Training of Social Workers. I believe that this is a mistaken policy and another false economy. Penal treatment is an area for specialists, not general practitioners. Indeed—and this is the important point—a condition of
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making progress in treating more offenders, both adult and juvenile, in the community (because we must remember that progress in that direction depends on public confidence), is to have a service which masters the difficult skill of combining discipline with a caring relationship with its clients.
To sum up on this first point of policy, I suggest that either the age divide should be fixed at a younger upper limit—perhaps it might be the school-leaving age of 16—or that there should be an intermediate period of transition, perhaps between the 15th and 16th birthdays, instead of an arbitrary age divide during which a decision as to which service should have the supervision of the young offender should be at the discretion of the courts considering each case on its merits. That system would be my strong preference. It postulates a very close relationship and liaison between the magistrates, the Probation Service, the social services and the police. I am well aware that in some other forum than this that latter proposition might be shouted down and that I might be thrown out, but, in my opinion, there is far too much suspicion, arising in no small degree from lack of understanding about the attitudes and real roles of the various bodies concerned, between the three public services and as between the social services and the Probation Service, on the one hand, and the courts, on the other hand. There is too much playing of the one against the other.
Young people, in particular, are not slow to exploit a situation of that kind. I have no doubt at all that police liaison officers working with young people are doing excellent work and it would quite often be the more effective for being carried out in less enforced isolation from the other services. I should like to see more of the small integrated team approach to social problems involving young people which could include the education service as well on a neighbourhood basis. There is a lot of room for closer co-operation at ground level.
Secondly, and finally, I turn to resources. Even in times of financial stringency but really at all times it is no economy in the area of crime and delinquency to restrict the provision of the most important resource of all—men and women, professionals and volunteers, working together. As regards the professional side, I must voice my concern lest the Home Office's

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manpower target for the Probation Service in 1979 may not be met. It is not simply a matter of numbers but of the balance within the service in respect of age and experience—what one might call the age structure of the service. It would seem that neither the requisite numbers nor the equally necessary matter of balance between mature entrants and the younger ones coming straight from college or school will be realised if, as I understand, the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work has no plans to develop Phase 2 of its training programme. Older people with some solid experience of life beyond college to put into the service when they come in are invaluable. It is not just a question of strength; it is invaluable to the whole tone of the service.
A number of speakers have mentioned volunteers and I shall not dwell on that point beyond saying that more voluntary associates than we have succeeded in bringing in so far are highly desirable in the penal aspects of social work. We are far behind some Continental countries—for instance, Sweden and Holland—in this respect. For example, I understand that, in Sweden, there are something like 12,500 volunteers as against a small professional body of 300 people who are the equivalent of probation officers. Comparable figures here are, I believe, about 5,000 professionals to 5,000 volunteers. That is a very big contrast. Of course, at any rate so far as the Probation Service is concerned, it is not a matter of substituting the volunteer for the professional; it is a question of making the work of the professional more effective by increasing the contacts with his clients by introducing the invaluable factor of a non-professional relationship. In times when economy is the order of the day, it is worth noting that in one probation area where I made inquiries the estimated annual cost of a probation voluntary associate has worked out at under £6.
5.38 p.m.
Baroness VICKERS: My Lords, I am very pleased to have the opportunity of following the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and of thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Young, for having initiated this very interesting debate. I should like to say that I agree entirely with what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said about ex-prisoners,
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as I did with the noble Earl, Lord Longford. While I was in Plymouth I used very often to go to meet those who had come out of Dartmoor. Some had been there for such a long time that it took them several months to reorientate and they had difficulty in knowing what money meant, and so on. I learnt a great deal from them.
Being the first speaker in this debate who has been in the other House, I must pay tribute to my many constituents who in those days taught me practically all I know now and who helped me to bring in four Bills dealing with the social services. I was particularly interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, said about benefits. I should like to add two more points. A married woman living with her husband is not allowed to claim supplementary benefit. Her husband must claim for the family and any resources that he claims for the wife must be treated as his. Secondly, to be eligible for family income supplement, the head of the family must be in full-time work. That might be a woman or a man, but it must be the head of the family. If a married woman is supporting her husband who is out of work and she has children, she is not entitled to family income supplement. These seem to me to be two points which should be looked into. It would be very helpful to many people if this were done.
I was particularly interested in what the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, said because she clearly has great knowledge of the subject. Also, I am sorry that the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell is not here at the moment because I should have liked to argue with him as regards his remarks about communications. I am not professing to be a Christian but I am professing to be a churchwoman—there is rather a difference between the two—and it is the Church which has failed to communicate. It is one of the sad things about the Church of England that it has failed to communicate. That is why the churches are so empty. When the right reverend Prelate mentioned the woman who was telephoning he eventually said that she got a grant from the local authority. Surely, if it was Church work, the Church should have supported it. I was very disappointed that the right reverend Prelate should have made that remark.
I shall certainly support the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, in her

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request regarding invalid tricycles, and I give the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, warning of this. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, is not here at the moment, but with regard to foster children he may be glad to know that a woman in Plymouth fostered over a thousand children and was awarded an honour by Her Majesty the Queen. I enjoyed every word spoken by the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, who is, I suppose, one of the greatest experts on this subject.
First, I wish to draw attention to voluntary work, particularly that undertaken by the Women's Royal Voluntary Service, which has just published its report. We seem to have been talking at some length about what the Government could do, but it is interesting to see what a voluntary organisation such as the WRVS can do. The WRVS stated in its recent report that it provided over 14 million meals-on-wheels, 1½ million items of clothing, and 3¼ million meals at luncheon clubs. It received 36,000 emergency calls for medical aid, and undertook extra work in hospitals, canteens, prisons, clubs for the elderly, and provided books-on-wheels. Furthermore, 29,000 helpers have been to hospitals and over 2,000 welfare workers have dealt with the disabled. Those are a few major items which I have picked out of the report.
I want to stress that most of the women involved in this work are not the youngest women in our society. They are doing great work, and I believe that at this time of stringency we should make as much use as possible of the older women, particularly those who have been trained and who could perhaps take up part-time work. Play groups are springing up, as are toy libraries for the handicapped. The Red Cross does a considerable amount of work, and there are the Cheshire Homes and the Sue Ryder Foundation. All these organisations are contributing tremendously to work undertaken for those in need.
I wish to mention as an example a small organisation, Plymouth Age Concern, which has recently been set up. It undertakes night care for people who are very ill, and 36 attendants have undertaken 279 night care assignments. Day care assignments have totalled almost 800, with 86 attendants, and over 1,215 welfare projects have been undertaken. Use is made of school pupils to do jobs and
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almost 1,000 jobs were done in the past year. I believe that this is really advantageous, particularly following the raising of the school-leaving age. Quite recently a rehabilitation centre was set up for those who had suffered minor strokes. I have visited the centre myself and it is interesting to note that a number of the people are now fully able to look after themselves, and two are quite rehabilitated and able to live on their own.
My theme today is that people come first. Social policy should be concerned with the wellbeing of people, with the way that we and our families live, and want to live, our every day lives, keeping families together. I believe that we have lost a great deal by splitting up what used to be known as the extended family system. Good housing must be priority number one, with improved social security, better pensions (when the time comes) and help for the elderly and handicapped. We are always being asked in Opposition what we would do about extra expenses, and I want to suggest one or two ways in which I believe we could cut public expenditure. Let us take, for example, school building and extensions. As has been mentioned by the noble Baroness, the population is falling at present. We should also consider the question of the extension of hospitals. We have been discussing bringing people out of hospitals into homes. Consideration could also be given to cutting expenditure on some minor roads. Similarly, spending on local museums and galleries should be considered. Many people may not like this particular suggestion, but in some ways these museums and galleries are a luxury.
We should concentrate on the training of good teachers, nurses and doctors. We have seen that many teachers who have to teach in old buildings can teach equally well and can keep up good standards in these circumstances if they are well trained themselves. They know that in this age of quick technical change they must train the future generations. There has recently been a very interesting report from Lancaster University which shows that we need to concentrate on the real teaching as was done in previous generations in the older schools, although now of course with more modern methods.
Another way to save money would be, for example, in delaying the operation of the Community Land Act which I

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gather will cost £400 million a year. I should very much like to see that delayed, and there are many other expensive Acts which could be delayed until the right time, because to my mind people come first, and that is why I suggest that we might take this action. For example, since 1950, the European Community has achieved a sustained rate of economic growth unparalleled in the history of Europe. In 1972 the EEC issued a communiqué at the Paris Summit meeting. Part of the communiqué stated:
"Economic expansion is not an end in itself. Its firm aim should be to enable disparities in living conditions to be reduced"—
I do not think that any of us would argue with that.
"It must take place with the participation of all social partners. It should result in an improvement of the quality of life as well as in standards of living."
We are now a Member of the EEC and I hope that we will try to live up to what was said in that communiqué.
I wish to return to the question of housing because I consider, though I may be entirely wrong, that inadequate housing is the root of most of the evils of our present society. There is, for instance, overcrowding. There are still many slums, and while in some cases the houses may not be actual slums there are too many people living in them. There has been an increase in the battering of babies. I made a study of this and brought forward a report to the Council of Europe, which was accepted. There is also the bashing of wives. I believe that it is scandalous nowadays to have to set up centres—I believe that there are 40 in all—in our main cities where wives can go when they are battered. The other day, apparently, a husband actually drove his car in an attempt to push in the front door to get at his wife.
Consider, also, vandalism. Why is there so much vandalism? The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, knows a great deal about this subject. But I believe that many of these young people cannot stay in their overcrowded homes, so they go out into the streets and get into trouble. Perhaps they meet up with a gang and this leads them to further trouble in the future. Young boys and girls are leaving home. This is a matter which the noble
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Earl, Lord Longford, touched upon. I am a member of a committee which has set up, and is setting up, hostels for the centre of London. These hostels are for young boys and girls—14 in each hostel, as we like to keep them small—who have run away from home. They have run away because they cannot get on with their parents or because they may have had a bad love affair. They may think that the London streets are paved with gold, or they may come to a hostel simply because they cannot tolerate sleeping, say, six or seven in a room.
We must also consider divorce. Many people are now getting divorced and I think that much of this is due to overcrowding. For example, I recently took the chair at a conference on housing, arranged by the Exeter diocese. The conference was held in Plymouth and we were provided with a very good document. Research had been carried out into overcrowding in the Plymouth area. One couple with two children, aged three years and 14 months, said that they could not get any help from the housing department or the social services. All that the social services would say—probably the services had no alternative—was that the children must be taken into care. The couple did not want to be separated from their family so they went squatting. Another family with three children, aged 10, 4, and 18 months, eventually went to their church and they have since been sleeping in the church hall. Those are only two cases; the document referred to many others.
I think that housing should take priority and soft loans, or easy loans, should be given to people to build their own homes, as has been done in some areas. Any money available should be given for this purpose. In North America and Europe there are family budget standards drawn up by the State. These involve expert views on needs relating to food, clothes, fuels, rent and rates. Budget standards are an essential foundation for decisions by the local and national Governments if allowances, tax reliefs and local benefits are to have a rational basis. I think that in North America and Europe this system has worked very well, and I think it is very regrettable that we do not have the family budget standards in this country.

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I should also like to draw attention to the question of the thousands of workers who are entitled to the statutory minimum wage of either £23 or £35 a week and who, illegally, are being under-paid. This has gone on—I have the figures for the last five years—to the extent that £8½ million has been saved in this way. The wages inspectorate have recently recovered nearly £400,000. I think this position should be rectified, that nobody should be paid under the statutory minimum wage, in which case those concerned would not need the extra social security grants. It does not encourage anybody to work when it is known that if people do not work, and if they have, say, two or three children, they can get more than this for doing no job at all.
Then there are the home workers. Recently I made a radio broadcast in regard to this because I was very worried about the conditions. To my amazement, not only did people write in and tell me their difficulties, of course, but quite a number wrote in begging me to put them in touch with firms so that they could earn this meagre amount. Of course, they are exploited. In one case, a woman gets £1·60 a week—she is disabled—for painting 500 miniature footballers. These sell, at their retail price, at 11 for 50p. I think it is really outrageous that she should be paid so very little, and that such a great profit should be made. Another woman covers games boards for £2·50 per thousand boards; and when you are wearing your little cap at Christmas, having pulled your cracker, you can think of a woman who has to make nearly 4,000 caps and who, for that, earns £1·80 a week after working for 36 hours. I should like to suggest to your Lordships that the sort of example that I have given today should be looked into in the future. My Lords, in the few words that I have said today I hope I have conveyed the view that, whatever else comes out of this debate today, we should see that people come first; and then, perhaps, we may have a happier society.
5.53 p.m.
The COUNTESS of LOUDOUN: My Lords, one of the major hindrances to the growth of community-based mental health services has been the continual lack of adequate funds going into the social services. The balance of expenditure on
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the mentally ill has been heavily weighted in favour of the health services. In 1973/74, £300 million was spent on hospital services, compared with £15 million on personal social services for the mentally ill, of which only £6½ million was spent on residential and day-care facilities. Now, economic pressures and restrictions on the public expenditure programme mean that establishing priorities is an important exercise at the present time, and I understand that the Department of Health and Social Security will be issuing policy and planning guidelines to health and local authorities in the spring of 1977.
In the consultative document issued recently by Mind, the National Association for Mental Health, it is suggested that the four following criteria should be borne in mind when selecting priorities: first, changes in demand by client groups; secondly, areas of past neglect; thirdly, best returns on available resources; and, fourthly, the use of joint planning and jointly-funded projects. They see the mentally ill as a priority area for expenditure over the next four years, but, recognising the economic situation, there must be an emphasis on low-cost solutions. An increased programme of local authority services has been suggested, with £4 million annually providing 1,200 day-centre places and £3 million annually providing 350 residential places. However, even to meet present needs (for 30,000 day places and 12,000 residential places), at this rate of growth we shall achieve what is needed now in something over 20 years; and this estimate of present need does not even cover some of those people still in hospital who could be successfully rehabilitated with help from the hospital and local authority.
There is a big campaign, "Home from Hospital", being launched tomorrow by Mind. I expect some of your Lordships may have seen the World in Action programme on Monday evening, dealing with the housing needs of the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped and appealing for specific offers of accommodation and other voluntary community help. I am pleased to say that the response to date has been very encouraging, with many concrete offers of help. But for the achievement of real community care the active concern, tolerance and understanding of the public is vital. I think,

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too, that both central and local government have too often hidden behind the cloak of apathetic or hostile public attitudes as an excuse for not getting on with the job of providing homes, hostels and social support outside the hospitals.
There also seems to be a lack of coordination between the hospital and the local authority, and insufficient concern for the quality of life people will lead outside hospital, which has led to the "dumping" of groups of patients in seaside boarding houses and poor lodgings in areas with overloaded social services departments. Yet there are still only 4,500 places in homes and hostels in England and Wales, 30 per cent. of which are provided by voluntary organisations. Much more day-care is needed, where people can socialise, share problems, learn to look after themselves again and acquire new occupational skills. Surely more use could be made of less capital-intensive methods, such as using adapted premises rather than expensive, purpose-built ones; sharing premises for day centres with a youth club, for example.
During a recent visit to America I managed to visit two sheltered workshops where patients from local subnormality hospitals were taken daily. One class was doing pottery, bicentennial mugs and plaques, and they had more orders than they could supply. The work was first-class, but, naturally, they were a little slower than is normal. Another class was counting and packeting birth announcement cards and envelopes. Here, the work of some groups had to be checked, but others were working quite independently. The boost to their morale and sense of independence which this gave them was remarkable.
The Government propose to introduce a mechanism for jointly-funded projects, where the initial cost will be shared between the health authority and the local authority, with the local authority taking over full responsibility after a number of years. This I welcome. It will enable more homes, hostels and day centres to be provided. Let us make a determined effort now to get our priorities right and take a real step forward in our care of the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped, thus enabling them to look with greater hope to the future.
6 p.m.
Baroness ELLIOT of HARWOOD: My Lords, as the last Back-Bench speaker in this debate, I do not propose to delay your Lordships for very long but on this occasion mine is the only voice to speak for Scotland. Very often there are a number of Scottish speakers, but on this occasion I am the only one. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, described most eloquently and interestingly her experience as director of social work at Oxford. I may say that I spent some 20 years or more first as chairman of the chidren's committee and then the education committee, and then, when the Seebohm Committee reported and we all turned ourselves into social work committees, I remained chairman of that committee too; so that I have had a good deal of experience in this field. As in other fields, the more experience one has, the more one realises, how little one knows how to deal with each situation. However, one can just have the experience and, for what it is worth, I should like to make my contribution to the debate today.
I think it most interesting that while in this debate we have had some 14 or 15 speakers, nobody has said the same thing on this subject, because there are so many varied facets of social work all of which I think are of vital importance to the community. I should like to support every word of the noble Countess, Lady Loudoun, about the question of help for the mentally handicapped. This is certainly desperately important, and she knows a great deal about it. My feeling at the moment is that what has been said, and rightly said, about the importance of concentrating on doing work in the community, with the community, as near to the people as possible, is absolutely the right principle. As the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, has said, the people come first; and when the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, described the appalling experiences and enormous difficulties of the two people who were trying to get help from services which are there to help them, I felt this to be a form of red tape and form-filling which we should really insist upon being altered because it completely defeats the object for which all this legislation has been passed.
It is by no means easy to talk about social work as one of the great services. Some

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people criticise it because it is not a cure. Certainly, it is not a cure. Some people criticise it because it does not prevent enough disaster. It does what it can; but it cannot do everything. Some people feel that only the failures get into the Press. This, in my opinion, is probably true. Social work can only be effective when it is concerned with individuals, when it is concerned with the families, with the places where they live, where things are done and where people are cared for; and not by filling in forms, not by writing letters, but by being in close contact with people.
When, under the Seebohm Committee Report, we reorganised the social services, we had various different specialists. We had the person who was very good with children, the person very good with geriatrics and the person who was very good with the mentally handicapped and so on. They all had to be welded into a team. It was not easy, but I am sure it was the right thing to do. It was the team of social workers that made the work very much more effective, certainly in my experience. It is impossible for one person to be an expert on everything; it is impossible for one person to take the responsibility for everything that comes up in a social work case; but it is quite possible to have a team in which you have two or three people each of whose expertise can be pooled to make a policy for that case. That is what happened when the Seebohm Report was put into effect.
As their chairman, I have always said to the social workers with whom I have had the honour to work: "Whatever happens, spend most of your time out in the district, in the towns and in the country and the minimum of time in the office". If we have not got all the records absolutely perfect, it does not matter if the cases are perfect and we do not get the battered babies and deserted wives and the tragedies like Maria Colwell and so on. That, I am bound to say, was successful and so far as my area was concerned in all the 29 years I was there, we never had a case that appeared in the Press. They were always being dealt with by the social workers. That principle, I think, is vitally important.
I agree entirely with all the people who said: "Do not take people away from their own homes. Use all the domiciliary services you can." It is most unfortunate
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that in some of the economies that have been made in local government services recently, some local authorities have taken things like the home help service, the domiciliary services or the meals on wheels and tried to economise on those. I think that those are the last things we should economise on. There are many others we could economise on; but those services to the people in their own homes, and keeping them in their own homes, are absolutely vital.
We did one thing which has not been mentioned in this debate and which was extremely successful. We established day centres for old people to go to and also a day centre for mental care. Both of these centres were tremendously useful and they have been enormously successful. If we could duplicate them now we would do so, but there is not the money. Those centres to which people living in their own homes come for the day have proved tremendously successful. I should think that that was something which was both economical, because you are not troubled with the housing problem, and effective in that it does care for people. One of the things that have happened several times and it has horrified me is the tragic case of old people who have died in their homes and this has not been discovered until the old person has been dead perhaps for some days or a week. That seems to be a terrible criticism both of the community and, to some extent, of the social work department, although they may not have been in touch with the social workers. I am sure that if we could have more community services for the old, something disastrous like this could not happen without people realising that the old person had not been seen for a day and, somehow or other, getting into the house. This point, I am sure, is vital.
I agree with those who spoke about family life being the centre of our activities. Even when family life goes wrong, which it can, it still remains vital that in some way part of the family should be kept together if it is a fact that the husband and wife have parted. Still, I think it is possible in many cases to keep the family together. On the other hand, we have had cases where the ill treatment or bad management of a foster home has not been spotted quickly enough by either the social worker or the health visitor who have

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sometimes not had the courage to report it sufficiently strongly. In Scotland the other day, a child died because it had been starved by its foster parents. That is a terrible thing. While I think it is rare, I think the social worker must have great courage to take a decision, perhaps, in consultation with the rest of the team, to remove a child if they think it is in the child's interest and not wait until it is too late. There are a lot of people who can pull wool over the eyes of even some of the most experienced people. It is necessary at times to be rather drastic and take action in a very courageous manner.
It is not easy to choose the right foster parents; in fact it is jolly difficult at times. Removing a child to safety is also not easy. It is always difficult to take away a child, but sometimes it must be done. Having standards which differentiate clearly between what we believe to be right and wrong and sticking to them, however difficult that may be, is something which we should all do, and we should encourage our social workers to do this, too.
The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, spoke about one of the troubles that we are faced with in problem families. It is that we do not have enough supporting services. We do not have the back-up services for many of the Acts of Parliament which are passed and then, when we want to implement them, particularly in regard to delinquency, which the noble Earl, Lord Longford, was talking about, we do not have the equipment, the places, and so on. Certainly in Scotland we have nothing like enough schools for mentally handicapped and disturbed children—List D schools as they are called. There are not enough methods for treating delinquency. Often all that happens is that the child is put back into its home under supervision, and the home may well be one of the reasons why the child is a delinquent. We do not have the services, and that is very unfortunate indeed. A variety of treatments is seriously needed, and the lack of places is very serious indeed.
The noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, referred to the disabled persons' Act which we all supported with tremendous enthusiasm. I back up what she said: many local authorities are not sufficiently conscious of it. I do not say that they have not done certain things, but I had a
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similar experience to the noble Baroness when a new technical college was built in my area and I wanted to send a handicapped boy there for training after he had left ordinary school, which he had been able to attend. He could not go to the college because there were no facilities for his wheelchair and the college doors were not wide enough. The child had to be sent to Edinburgh for training because he could not attend the local technical college which had just been built. I was furious hut, not being on the committee, I did not know that this had happened.
There is another point about housing which I should like to mention. It may be that this does not happen in other places, but far too often houses are built too elaborately; they are built as all-electric houses. I had a tremendous battle with our local authority because they built a new housing estate which was all-electric. The bills were not being properly paid. The Electricity Board complained and there was a frightful row. I asked why they did not put in alternative heating. They said: "We cannot have an open fire". I said: "There is no reason why you cannot have one so that people can get fuel, and so on". In country districts fuel can be picked up cheaply. The local authority were horrified; they thought this was a retrograde step. Finally, I persuaded them to have alternative gas heating, because we had North Sea gas. Mistakes of that kind are costly and should not occur in this day and generation.
I also support what the noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilion, said about the physically handicapped being kept in the community. It is absolutely vital that today physically handicapped people should be treated, in so far as it is possible, as ordinary, normal people. Facilities should be provided in order for this to be so. I hope that this matter will be pressed very strongly; I am sure it will be, as the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, probably agrees with every word I say. I know from the Government document that many of these things have been noted.
I am sure the Government will receive this debate and what we are saying with great enthusiasm, knowing that we shall back them up in every way we can to get these services provided through the local

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authorities. It is not easy today. Noble Lords on this side as well as on the other side of the House know the financial situation. Nevertheless, so far as we can, we must all help to provide community services locally and to encourage every local voluntary organisation to take an active role in helping social services. During the war years we had activities to enable the ordinary life of people to go on under very difficult circumstances. We managed to do that then, and so, with the help of the voluntary organisations and with this feeling of urgency which we have in this matter, I am sure that we can overcome some of the difficulties, even though, naturally, we should like much more money for buildings and so on. All of us in this debate have shown how keen we are that the social services should be improved and, above all, should belong to the community and be in the community, and we hope that this keenness may have some effect.
6.17 p.m.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, first, I should like to thank my noble friend Lady Young for introducing this very interesting debate. We have had 13 speeches so far, all of which I have listened to with the greatest of interest. I am sure that noble Lords who have not taken part in the debate have noted, as I have, the immense expertise which resides in this House on every aspect of social policy. It has been noted several times already this afternoon that different aspects of the total subject have been touched upon. I should like to congratulate my noble friend in drafting the terms of her Motion so widely as to enable this to happen. Perhaps it would be impossible to draw the threads together, but in attempting to concentrate a number of matters into one acceptable form, I have had the greatest difficulty in seeing a total view of the situation that we are in. I think the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, who is to reply, will agree that one of the central issues is the economic one. It has arisen from the situation in which we find ourselves. From the late 1940s, the 1950s, the 1960s and up to today, the middle 1970s, economic growth, on the comparatively modest scale in which it has taken place in this country, has been enough to make the escalator of the social services grow at the same time and in a manner in
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which it meets to some extent, but not totally, the rising expectation of people in this country.
We have had many useful suggestions this afternoon on how the policies of the present Government could be greatly improved by the establishment of a change of view and the alteration of course to a number of low-cost policies. I think the noble Lord will agree that there have been a number of constructive proposals which may be laid before Her Majesty's Government, and we hope they will be acted upon. Let us look at some of the causes, my Lords. One of the fundamental causes for the present situation is housing. This has been touched upon by several of your Lordships. I am particularly glad to have heard the speech of my noble friend Lady Vickers on this subject. She knows a great deal about this, both from the constituency point of view and from wider aspects. It is interesting to note that so many of the speakers in this debate spoke also on the Unstarred Question on homelessness, as I did myself, last summer. This is really the point at which so many of the social policies fail to co-ordinate at the present moment.
We heard mentioned this afternoon planning aspects and the question of high rise flats and their unsatisfactory nature for families. The question of pollution has also been mentioned. There is no doubt about it, my Lords, that we are asking, through Her Majesty's Government, for the assistance of specialists in the field of planning, building and construction in looking at a subject that we believe they have got wrong. Perhaps it is unfair to single out one profession, but I think it should be mentioned that we do not believe the architects have got the sum right. In the post-war years a number of errors have been made in the public housing programme which are all too easy to see. If they cannot be corrected, at least we should not repeat the errors in the late '70s and '80s. Let us learn from our mistakes. If we cannot adapt the buildings, can we not at least recognise the fact that if high rise flats are to perform a useful function as part of the housing stock, it is far better that young families should not have their homes there? There are other groups which could find them, if not satisfactory, at least reasonable.

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The subject is a very wide one, but in looking at so much of it I feel that prevention is better than cure, and I would congratulate the Government on a document they brought out comparatively recently called Prevention and Health: Everybody's Business. As a re-assessment of public and personal health, surely this should be a matter of very great concern and the fact that it has been published in the spring of this year should surely call our attention to the need for a personal solution.
I should like to dwell at a little length on the question of sickness rather than health—the other side of the coin—and the question of hospital admissions. From the publication I have mentioned it is quite evident that the hospital admissions currently taking place could be greatly reduced. We learn from the Consultative Document Priorities for Health and Personal Social Services that in 1972 hospital admissions numbered no fewer than 4·6 million, and during that year there were half a million in Scotland. Perhaps my noble friend Lady Elliot may be able to tell us more about that on another occasion. These figures represent globally about 8 per cent. of the population. How can they be reduced? Surely in the accident field there is an opportunity for reduction, particularly in road accidents where the tragedy is quite enormous—no fewer than approximately 12,000 deaths each year. There are also industrial injuries and accidents in the home. In all those fields the work of safety committees and the working of the Health and Safety at Work Act will surely be beneficial.
With regard to preventable disease, there is a case for at least some degree of congratulation. It has been possible in the past century to achieve a remarkable degree of immunisation. Even in the past 20 or 30 years diseases which were once very widespread, such as diphtheria, have been almost eliminated. I think I am right in saying that in the last 12 months there were only seven or eight cases of this killing disease which took such a very heavy toll of life among children as late as the early 1940s.
In the field of mental health there is another opportunity for improvement. Your Lordships will be aware that in England alone no fewer than 5 million
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people consult their general practitioner about questions of mental health. At the lower level, this may involve purely cases of depression; but is this not a matter in which, again, all of us should be involved? The curing of mental illness is obviously a specialist field, but nevertheless the question of depression, of which many of us may have had personal experience, is surely one field for investigation and concern.
I should now like to turn your Lordships' attention to the Resource Allocation Working Party, because many speakers today have mentioned the use of resources. I was delighted to listen to the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, about this. She asked a number of pertinent questions and particularly: is money being wasted? I think this is really the centre of my speech because I, with others, believe that money is being wasted. My noble friend Lord Redesdale suggested that foster parents were being wasted. The noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, suggested that travelling time and resources were being wasted, and that electricity was being wasted because of unsatisfactory design in under-floor heating. The noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, mentioned the mis-allocation of resources, not necessarily within the social services, but within the global national Budget. I strongly support what she said—that the Government, in our opinion, have their priorities wrong in, for instance, allocating £400 million to the Community Land Act and its implementation, when so clearly there are a very large number of urgent priorities which need to be fulfilled, many of which would cost far less than that figure.
I should like to refer to the Consultative Document itself. I read it twice; the first time in order to get the picture of the whole, and the second time to underline particular aspects of it. I sympathise most strongly with those who had to draft the document, because in seeking priorities very nearly everything in the end turned out to be a key element. The phrase "key element" recurs over and over again all the way through this document, and in it the priorities are laid before us. How difficult—almost impossible—it is to choose between priorities! In a democracy we all accept that to govern is to choose; and the

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Government, in our opinion, seem to be making a number of incorrect choices at the present moment. If by means of this debate we can persuade them to change the course of their actions, the debate will have fulfilled a useful function. In this regard, I would suggest that perhaps it might be beneficial to seek the assistance of the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, and ask that copies of this very interesting debate be furnished to the members of the Resource Allocation Working Party. I also feel there are a number of aspects which no doubt the noble Lord will be bringing to the attention of his right honourable friend, the newly-appointed Secretary of State. From this side of the House, I should like to accord congratulations to him on his appointment, and an assurance that those policies he is adopting and which have our support will be most strongly supported, and those which do not will be criticised in full.
There are a number of aspects in cognate fields of the environmental sphere to which I should like to draw your Lordships' attention, and emphasise what has already been said. It is so clear that an interdepartmental approach to many aspects of the health and social services field should be adopted; and the question arises here: to what extent at the present moment is there interdepartmental consultation? We are unaware of the degree to which the Secretaries of State for the Environment and Social Services are jointly consulting, and it may be possible for the House to be informed at a later stage.
Specific aspects of planning have been mentioned and should be emphasised here. My noble friend Lady Faithfull mentioned the lack of play space for children. This is surely one aspect of planning which arises. All too frequently the lack of playing fields has a quite detrimental effect, and I should like to emphasise once again that this is one of many important aspects. The question of legislation has been raised by a number of noble Lords on this side of the House, and the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 has been mentioned in this regard. In addition to that, I should like to mention the Children Act 1975 and associate the same problem, because the lack of resources will almost certainly have a detrimental effect upon its implementation. If that is not so, perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, will say so.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I understood the noble Lord to say 1965.
Lord SANDYS: My Lords, I said 1975, but your Lordships must judge. In regard to the question of voluntary workers, virtually every speech, with I think the exception of that of the noble Baroness, Lady Wootton, mentioned the value of voluntary workers. Perhaps the most significant fact emerged from the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and I must say that I was staggered to hear that the cost of servicing a volunteer in the Probation Service is as little as £6. This question of assisting the Probation Service should surely receive the attention of Her Majesty's Government as a matter of urgent priority.
Having spoken for 16 minutes, I feel that that is very nearly long enough, but I should like to emphasise one point in regard to the mobility of labour, which has been brought out by a number of your Lordships. This is a subject which is as important as any, and perhaps it is one about which we should have a special debate when it is possible to fit one in. Around this subject revolve so many of the most important problems of all—of employment, of housing, of the location of the education and social services and, especially, the social costs arising from mobility of labour. These have been mentioned in some detail this afternoon. I believe it was the right reverend Prelate who mentioned the fragmentation of the family, and this point was also referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, and a number of other speakers.
In her opening speech, my noble friend Lady Young made a point of saying that the whole of the social services should be based upon the family. Inevitably, in seeking mobility of labour, fragmentation of the family is almost certainly the direct result leading to isolation of the older members—the grandparents and, in later years, the parents—and the migration of the children. The question therefore arises: is the benefit to be derived from a policy of mobility of labour such as to be truly advantageous? I think it must be an open question. Inevitably, the social costs are high and in drawing up a balance sheet, as we are attempting to do in the course of this debate, we

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must list those as some of the most serious.
6.35 p.m.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I was quite certain that the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who holds her political views as strongly and as deeply as I hold mine, would have begun this afternoon by giving us some indication of (shall I say?) Conservative philosophy behind social policy. I was so certain of that that I spent a disproportionate amount of time at Easter thinking out the philosophy behind the social policy of my own Party, getting it down in writing and revising it, and I came here this afternoon prepared to tell your Lordships all about it. On reflection, I decided that it would be rather embarrassing if too many of your Lordships crossed the Floor, and as the noble Baroness decided not to do so, and because of the time factor and there being so much that I want to say, I shall not bother to deliver it myself.
It would be a truism to say that the debate has ranged widely, and there have been—and I do not say this lightly—many stimulating ideas on social problems and social policies. This is the first debate that I can remember in your Lordships' House where everyone who took part has remained to the end. I never recall that happening before. When we have, as we do now, both social change and limitations on public expenditure, it is all the more important to re-examine priorities, policies and practices to ensure that the best possible advantage is taken of the resources which are available.
It is the tendency—and we have to face the fact—of all Governments to legislate for the social conscience of the community, which is often ahead of public opinion and frequently in advance of the resources—financial and suitable personnel—which are needed to carry the intentions of the legislation to a successful conclusion. In some fields public expectations demand action, but this does not always mean that the community is willing to face up to the cost involved. This is apparent in trying to deal with unpopular client groups, as my noble friend Lord Longford said—drug addicts, alcoholics and offenders. Much has to be left to voluntary enterprise and voluntary organisation, and this is
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a suitable time to say, as we all believe, that we owe not only a great debt of gratitude to voluntary organisations, but a debt which cannot be expressed in the cold lines of a few words. They are making a supreme contribution and it pleases me, as a member of the Ministerial team in the Department of Health and Social Security, to have discovered since I have been there that we spend a vast sum every year in grant-aiding voluntary organisations—in the current year £3 million. The importance of the contribution of voluntary organisations was touched upon by both the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell.
The community is evolving in ways which are difficult to predict and, when we talk about what can be done, we have to look at the problem to see how much we know about it. While I say that the community is evolving in ways which are difficult to predict, and for reasons which it is often hard to perceive, the relationships between an individual's behaviour and his or her family's social, environmental and economic surroundings and educational opportunities are complex, but they have to be taken into account when policies for the various social programmes are being developed and when the services themselves are trying to provide the right kind of help for individuals. In the last analysis we have to deal not so much with groups. Social work all the time means dealing with individuals and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull, will agree, no two individuals are alike. So much is happening about which we have, not little knowledge but no knowledge at all. We really do not know the cause of violence. We all have our own ideas but I do not think that many of us know the cause of baby bashing, wife bashing, increasing delinquency and all other kinds of anti-social behaviour. Some of us will put it all in one basket while others will put it all in another, but I do not think that we really know. We know the effects but not the underlying causes, and without such knowledge we have to face the fact that it is necessary to be careful and undogmatic in developing the relevant social policies concerned.
Some types of problem are especially familiar. The increasing number of old

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people without families who are willing or able to support them places particular responsibilities on the health and personal social services and also has implications for housing policies. There has also been an alarming growth in delinquency, to which the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, drew our attention. Whatever the appropriate remedies in individual cases, whether through the family, in schools, in law enforcement or in the social service care and treatment of young offenders, there can be no doubt of the need for effective action to combat this growing problem. Other changes in social behaviour have led to the rapid increase in the number of one-parent families, again a problem which has been touched upon. If there is to be an effective response, and, let us face it, immediate help is necessary in so many cases, it has implications again for social security, for child care and for housing—in fact for the whole community.
In some localities, integrated communities in which care has been provided spontaneously for vulnerable members—the old, the young, the lonely—have been broken up, as we know only too well, by environmental factors: new industries, roads and housing schemes. For years—and I am talking about a succession of Governments and am not on this occasion going to apportion blame—we have been like a vast army locked in battle trying to defeat the enemy and not having time to disengage to see whether we are really fighting on the right front. Regardless of what has been said today, this is going to be the pattern, unfortunately, for some time to come.
Other problems clearly arise from the present level of unemployment, a level which is quite unacceptable to every one of us here. It is intolerably high, and everybody in your Lordships' House knows not only the evil of, but the evils which stem from, continuous unemployment. While we are endeavouring to tackle the economic problems which lie at the root of unemployment we must cope with the social problems, the majority of which are depressing and distressing, that it causes.
There has also been a fundamental change in what is regarded as the best form of treatment and care for the mentally
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ill and the mentally handicapped. The trend is away from old-fashioned institutional care towards a more selective approach, with greater emphasis on community care. This is precisely what we want. We talk so glibly, though, about "community care" which today means little or no personal involvement for most individuals. It should not mean just leaving it to an already overworked body of local authority social workers. In my submission. in every locality there are enough people to act the role of the "good neighbour" in their immediate neighbourhood. I believe that the mentally and the physically handicapped, the aged and the infirm could more appropriately be watched and helped by their neighbours. In the war we had street wardens. We should now have "good neighbour wardens" who would be responsible for half a dozen, or eight or ten houses. Then there would be somebody on the spot the whole time.
In saying this, I am not unmindful of the tremendous help which is given in our society today by a vast army of individuals working independently, many of them through social organisations; but I still feel that the efforts made by a good many social workers who are visiting cases who must be visited could be made just as well by mature people who are going to offer care and compassion although not expertise. The social worker could then become the specialist. I believe that we could deploy our social workers better than we are doing at present. I like the approach of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Southwell to this—the creation of what I call a "good neighbour brigade".
In the past few years there has been a growing recognition of the need for a general change in the approach to social care. The Seebohm reorganisation, if the noble Lord does not mind me putting it like that, of the social services stemmed in part from this. The legislation—the Local Authority Social Services Act, the Children and Young Persons Act and more recently the Children Act and the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons' Act—reflects the general recognition that Government, both local and central, have increasingly large responsibilities. This does not mean that

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voluntary organisations have a lesser role to play. Indeed, they have been among the foremost in urging the Government to respond to recognised needs. As I think was said in this Chamber today, a very good job can be done, perhaps less expensively, by using voluntary organisations and I hope that in some way this can be done.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, raised the question of taxation. The Government are well aware of the delicate balance which needs to be kept between public expenditure and the public services they provide, between the need for industrial investment and personal consumption. In the survey of public expenditure up to 1979–80 that the Government published in February of this year we acknowledged that point. It reads:
"Popular expectations for improved public services and welfare programmes have not been matched by growth in output or by willingness to forgo improvements in private living standards in favour of these programmes. The public expenditure strategy is to stabilise the total level of spending on the expenditure programmes for the time being so that enough resources are available for increased exports and investments. This should in turn improve the economy so that there will be more resources available to finance the essential social programmes. In the meantime all the expenditure programmes will have to forgo some development."
I think this is what I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, at this point. Planning and improving the services against this background of pressure and change is, I think we would all appreciate, going to be very difficult and it is bound to be made harder by the country's economic difficulties.
The recent public expenditure White Paper sets out plans for broadly stabilising the level of resources taken by the expenditure programmes for 1976 and 1977. Within total expenditure a higher priority will be given to expenditure which is designed to maintain or improve our industrial capability, and to give us a better chance of success as the economy picks up. In spite of that, the Government have managed to allocate some resources for growth in revenue expenditure in the health and personal social services.
Those of your Lordships who are familiar with the document will know that the revenue expenditure on the National
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Health Service will be raised by 1·8 per cent. a year between 1976–77 and 1979–80, and the personal social service is projected to increase by 2 per cent. This is not as much as those of us involved in the health and personal social services would like to be able to spend, but the growth that has been allowed for is sufficient to keep pace with demographic changes and to maintain standards. In the circumstances this growth represents a substantial priority, but it is lower than past levels of growth. It is now more than ever important to direct resources towards the greatest needs. This means thinking hard about priorities not only within particular policy areas and services, but between them. I hope nobody will feel that the notion of priorities is incompatible with a concern for justice and equality. It is not. Especially in the present economic climate, it is obviously impossible to tackle every problem at once.
Viscount AMORY: My Lords, I wonder whether the noble Lord would make it clear, with regard to the figures he has just quoted concerning the growth of expenditure, whether he was speaking in money terms or constant prices?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I must just think back.
Viscount AMORY: My Lords, I am sorry. It was a minute or two ago when the noble Lord quoted the increase of 1·8 per cent.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I think it is in money prices, but if I am wrong about that I will let the noble Viscount know.
In the present economic climate it is obviously impossible to tackle every problem at once. We must decide which social problems we think are most important. In our view planning priorities should not be left only to small groups of experts and professional planners, occasionally making concessions to the most vocal minorities—which so often happens. Rather it means, in our view, taking positive steps to involve as wide a range of people as possible in deciding priorities so that we may understand better the concerns of the community and, equally important, gain from the ideas and the enthusiasms which exist in the community at the present time.

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To encourage the discussion of priorities in my own Department's sphere of health and personal social services we have published a consultative document which aims to turn planning into a co-operative enterprise. Copies were placed in the Printed Paper Office, and I know that a number of your Lordships have read it—the noble Baroness, Lady Summerskill, and I had some interesting exchanges at Question Time the other day about its proposals for maternity services. It is not intended as a detailed blueprint, but to help people realise where the greatest needs are and what might best be done within the available resources. One of the purposes of the document is to show how the future development of the services can be achieved within the resources available.
What I am going to say now I think will give heart to ex-directors of social services as well as directors and deputy directors of social services. We in the Department are very conscious of the criticisms levelled against us and of our own failures. We know that we have been criticised very severely in the past, and still are being criticised, for advocating priorities without proper regard to their expenditure implications and without showing which services should be held back to accommodate them. The consultative document is in part designed to respond to this criticism. Local priorities will naturally be affected by a whole range of factors —demographic, social and practical—particular to individual areas, and it is accepted that local plans will often not correspond to the order of national priorities proposed here. What the document sets out are suggested priorities on which those with actual experience of applying policies in local circumstances are being asked to express their views. We have made clear that we will be ready to modify these strategic plans in the light of these views before issuing policy and planning guidelines to health and local authorities in the spring of next year. In this way we, the DHSS, feel that we are taking the initiative. As I have said, we invite comment and observation.
The document is a comprehensive review of the services, but some general themes are given particular emphasis. One is the very great importance of the field and
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community services, both in the personal social services and in the Health Service. We suggest a particular expansion in the home nursing and health visiting services, financed, in effect, from the restrained growth elsewhere in the National Health Service, and in the primary health care services as a whole. The special needs of the elderly, children, the mentally ill and the mentally handicapped are also recognised, as is the special importance of social work training.
Another major theme is the importance of joint planning of the health and personal social services. Many social problems are complicated, as your Lordships know, by ill health; and many people who go to their doctors or to hospitals have problems that can be greatly helped with better social care. It can be done much better—and I think this is the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington—in the community. It is a question of getting round to it. We are introducing new arrangements for joint planning between the health and personal social services. I should like to emphasise that this is not just another piece of bureaucratic machinery; we are backing this initiative with cash, through a new method of joint financing. I hope that this document, and the consultation and planning activities that will follow it, will lead to a wide and more informed discussion of the future development of the health and personal social services.
Of course, social policy goes beyond the personal social services and the Health Service. As I have already said, it includes housing, education (including training), aspects of employment policy and aspects of environmental policy. Indeed, there is no clear distinction between social and economic policy—at least I do not think there is. A suitable and successful economic policy is essential to the achievement of social aims. However, there can never be a grand, single strategy for social policy in the same way as this Government has an economic strategy; the services are too wide and varied for an overall blueprint. But we are determined that all the social services should be viewed together so that there can be a better co-ordinated approach to the most pressing and important social and community problems.
That is why the Government asked the Central Policy Review Staff to do a study

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leading to proposals for a joint framework for social policies. Because we thought that the issues deserve wider debate, we took the relatively unusual step of publishing last summer what is an internal study. The study is not intended to make specific proposals for particular areas of social policy. Its purpose was for the first time to give the Government the means of looking at the social programmes overall. We are carrying through a work programme which includes the general development of better presentation and analysis of information needed for informed decisions on social policies. There are also several studies in progress including work on the relationship between housing and other social policies; the working arrangements between central Government and individual local authorities in so far as they affect the handling of the problems at local authority levels; some aspects of financial policy and related policies; further development of current work on the disabled already being done under the auspices of my colleague the Minister for the Disabled, and the longer-term implications of changes of population structure and distribution.
Particularly in the present difficult economic situation, improvements are bound to come less fast than any of us would wish, but an essential ingredient in all progress in the social sphere is wide and informed public debate. Herein lies the importance of the debate we are having today. The Government have taken important initiatives to encourage this, and many of your Lordships, even though not on this side of the House, have been generous enough to acknowledge this. As well as those I have dwelt upon, I might have mentioned my Department's consultative document on prevention which, in fact, was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sandys, and also the consultative document on transport policy of the Department of the Environment. This document also has important social implications.
I should like to try to answer some of the points your Lordships have put. I do not presume to say that I can answer them all, but I do not think I have missed ally. If I have, perhaps those involved will draw my attention to it afterwards and I will endeavour to see what can be done. The noble Baroness, Lady Young, raised the
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question of the National Council for Civil Liberties wanting to reduce the age of consent. All I want to say on that is that the overall question is being considered by the Policy Advisory Committee on Sexual Offences, the chairman of which is the noble and learned Lord, Lord Edmund-Davies. The Government at present have no plans for any legislation on the subject. I think that is all I want to say at this stage.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and also the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, raised the question of domiciliary care. I am glad to be able to tell both noble Baronesses that we are glad that they agree with our emphasis on the domiciliary services. As they said, within the resources available we are planning for an expansion of the health visiting and home nursing services, of home helps and meals-on-wheels. All these services help people to remain in their own homes. Of course, there will be people who need residential care because they are too infirm to manage in their own homes, however much help could be given in other ways, but I am glad that there is general agreement on the general direction of policy.
The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, raised the question of specialist training. The statutory responsibility for promoting social work training rests with the Central Council for Education and Training in Social Work, which was represented on a Working Party set up by the Department of Health and Social Security in the autumn of 1974. The Working Party has reported, and its report should be published in the summer. The Working Party placed great importance on the development and promotion of specialist training, and among other things recommended further training for staff with a basic qualification to develop special expertise in their chosen field. The recommendations of the Working Party will be the subject of discussions between the Department and the local authority associations in the near future.
Again I want to emphasise that, while I myself am very much wedded to the need not only for training but for selection, I think the two things must go together. They are of supreme importance. We must remember that we cannot train a

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person to be compassionate; we cannot train a person to be caring, as is understood by the professonal social worker. I was reading an article quite recently which dealt with the Central Council for Education and Training of Social Workers, and the writer of the article took the initials and said, "Can Colleges Educate and Train Social Workers?".
My noble friend Baroness Wootton of Abinger and again the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, raised the question of universality and selectivity. I should like to read what has been said but I doubt whether it would be possible to devise any system that would satisfy the points which have been put forward. I am informed that selectivity tends to make the system more complicated, and that is obviously unsatisfactory in itself. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, mentioned food and housing subsidies. Food subsidies, which are not, of course, likely to be a permanent feature of the economy, are much more important to the lower income groups, as the noble Baroness will appreciate. As a proportion of income, the benefits are three to four times as great for the low income groups as for the higher income groups, and rent and rate rebates are directed especially at those who are badly off.
The only other comment I want to make as far as my noble friend Lady Wootton of Abinger is concerned is that I do wish that our attention had been drawn to the particular cases—it could have been done in confidence—of difficulties that certain people were having, because we like to follow up difficulties of this kind.
Baroness WOOTTON of ABINGER: My Lords, if my noble friend will forgive me for interrupting, may I say that the cases which I quoted were by no means rare ones that I had come across by searching. They were drawn from a very large file, and I can add to them from my own immediate neighbourhood. My noble friend would have been overwhelmed had I brought them all to his attention.
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, I was not suggesting that I should receive them all. If one has a number of specific cases one can then take up the matter, and very often that is much more effective than issuing a directive. It gets round very quickly.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Robson, referred to the transfer of services from hospitals to local authorities. We are glad that the noble Baroness has raised the important question of the shift from institutional care to the care of the community for many groups, particularly, of course, the elderly. I am glad also that the noble Baroness has given such a positive response to my Department's Consultative Document on priorities. Many of the proposals outlined in that document in a sense reflect her own views for improved levels of community care. We have made these proposals not because they are often cheaper as an alternative, but because care in the community for many people provides a more suitable and more humane type of care than institutional treatment. I mentioned earlier the new arrangements for joint financing. The money is intended really for social service projects, directed at groups in the community who without them would need an expanded health service. This is an important new development designed to help overcome the problem which the noble Baroness raised.
I found myself in some considerable sympathy and agreement with what the noble Baroness, Lady Macleod of Borve, said, because I know her own contribution is born out of a good deal of personal experience. The noble Baroness, Lady Masham of Ilton, raised the whole question of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Act and said that in her view it should be made stronger and, in certain respects, mandatory. This is not a matter with which we are not dealing. It is not an easy matter to deal with, as she knows only too well. There is the question of the cost. But this is a matter—and I ask her to accept what I say on this—that we are looking at very often. With regard to the withdrawal of vehicles, I hope she will excuse me if I do not deal with that today. She has a Question down, and I am sure we shall do battle on that on the appropriate day. I am grateful for her expression of thanks for what help I am able to give her. I now recognise her writing before I open the letters, and I know what is in store for me two or three times a week.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, raised the question of the boarding out of children. It has long been my Department's policy to encourage the boarding out with foster parents of children in

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the care of local authorities. We have taken active steps to try to effect a far better response. As he knows far better than I do, the main difficulty is the recruitment of foster parents. From time to time national advertising campaigns are mounted to facilitate the recruitment of foster parents. I believe the most recent, as he will remember, was last year. My Department is familiar with many of the initiatives undertaken by local authorities and other bodies and welcomes them. A close eye is being kept on the matter, and we shall continue to do what we can to draw the attention of the public to what is a particularly important piece, not so much of community work but, let us say, of family environmental work.
My noble friend Lord Longford raised the question of homeless young people. Following the screening of the television programme "Johnny Come Home", a Working Group was established to consider the problem of homeless young people, with particular reference to the problems of unaccompanied young people arriving in London and other large cities without arrangements for their accommodation and maintenance. The Working Group, which should be in a position soon to report—and I answered a Question on this at Question Time today—consists of representatives of a number of Government Departments, the Home Office, my own Department, the Department of the Environment, the Department of Education and Science, local authorities and voluntary organisations. The Government fully realise that action must be taken to help and protect homeless children, and I can say that we are quite determined to do everything we can to promote such action.
The EARL of LONGFORD: My Lords, the noble Lord does realise that that deals with only one small part of the total problem even of the young homeless?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: Yes, my Lords, and I am well aware that my noble friend raised other matters. I listened with considerable interest to the noble Baroness, Lady Faithfull. I remember when she was ennobled it was said that there will be at least one highly trained and competent professional social worker
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in your Lordships' House. She was at some pains, and I thought it was very generous of her, to point out to the Press that it would mean that there would be two, but modesty prevents me from telling your Lordships who the other person is.
The noble Baroness referred to cooperation between Government Departments. I can assure her that everything is done to maintain and improve co-operation between Government Departments on services which are the responsibility of different Departments. I know that this is going on, I was going to say at the present moment, when they have an interest in a particular group of people in need. For example, there has been close co-operation between my own Department and the Department of Energy over the problem of old peoples' heating bills. This interdepartmental committee has also been dealing with problems of homeless children. So this is not something which has gone by default; it is something which is being practised at the present moment.
I do not think I ought to enter on the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, on the question of the ages of responsibility and the line of demarcation between juvenile and adult. I walk a number of thorny paths, and this is one I do not want to walk at this particular stage, other than to say that he is President of the National Association of Probation Officers, and I am Vice-President, so perhaps we can talk about it privately.
The noble Baroness, Lady Vickers, raised a number of matters which exercise my mind, and spoke about the possibilities of cutting back in other directions in order to release more money for the social services. I only hope that she will appreciate at this stage that I cannot commit the Government in any of these fields, but I personally would like to read Hansard when it is printed so that I may draw the attention of the appropriate people to it. The eligibility of married women for supplementary benefit and family income supplement was another matter which the noble Baroness raised. The position, to put it very broadly, is that these benefits are payable to the head of the family unit. If the wife is on her own she is entitled to these benefits. If

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the husband is with the family, then, as she quite rightly says, he is clearly regarded as the eligible partner. It would be difficult to administer benefits, I believe, on any other basis. But if the noble Baroness was expressing concern about some particular aspect of the scheme, or has some individual person's problems in mind, I wonder whether she would care to write to me. We will leave it like that, and she can rest assured that I will certainly do all I can in the matter.
I do not think that the noble Countess, Lady Loudoun, is here. I have in fact already covered some of the matters she raised. I so often find myself in complete agreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Elliot of Harwood. It was my privilege for a long time to work very closely with her on a particular project, and I do not suppose there is anybody in your Lordships' House who knows how hard she works in the social welfare field, particularly for the disabled—and who will go on foot. I am told that there are many people who will go miles for a free glass of sherry, but she will walk miles in order to get £100, and has done so to my knowledge, and has raised that in six figures before now.
The only other comment I want to make is on the use of untrained and poorly trained social workers. We ought to bear in mind that there has been a very great increase in the number of social workers since the passage of the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 which has resulted in a good many junior social workers. But the position is not so bad as is sometimes made out. I think that more and more local authorities are getting accustomed to the idea of doing something by way of in-service training.
Baroness FAITHFULL: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord what position the Ministry holds with the National Joint Council and the Whitley Council for persuading them to implement a two-tier promotional ladder so that experienced people remain in the field?
Lord WELLS-PESTELL: My Lords, the noble Baroness has taken me off training. I do not mind leaving it one little bit. The need for a career structure for social workers who elect to stay in the field was considered by a Working Party
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on Manpower and Training for the Social Services whose report is expected in the summer. The Working Party considered that without a separate career structure, senior social workers would be drawn into administration, and most of the work with clients would continue to be undertaken by junior and, in some cases, unqualified staff. As a result, the standards of practice would have little chance of improvement. I think I know what is in the noble Baroness's mind with regard to a two-tier structure, perhaps going parallel, and this is in the mind of the Working Party, but they will not be reporting yet awhile but their report should be available in the summer.
I apologise to your Lordships. I did not realise that I had been talking for so long. You have been very generous in permitting me to do so. I am rather ashamed at having spoken for so long, but this is a measure of the importance of the debate which the noble Baroness has raised. I think it has been valuable. I think it has been an interesting debate in which a number of matters have been discussed, and it has given us in the Department something to look at and something to consider. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, and to all those who have taken part, for staying, because it again indicates the importance that your Lordships attach to this matter.
7.24 p.m.
Baroness YOUNG: My Lords, I should first like to extend my great thanks to the many people who advised me in the preparation of my speech. I am particularly grateful to the many social workers who did so in the midst of their busy lives. I hope that when they come to read Hansard they will at least be able to say, as a sort of report on my efforts, that "she tried hard". I should also like to thank all those who have taken part in this debate. Those of us who are interested in the subject know how attractive it is, first, to be doing something practical and, secondly, to be discussing it. Like myself, I expect some people find it much more difficult to put pen to paper and put their thoughts on view for other people to read later. I am very grateful for the trouble that has been taken, and for people staying so long. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Longford, will not feel in any sense that I was being critical of the House of

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Lords in my observations about old people, because surely there could be no better examples than some of the Members of the House of Lords who may be wise in years but young in heart.
I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Wells-Pestell, for the trouble he has taken in answering this debate. I hope he will feel that the many practical suggestions that have been made are worth following up. I am glad that he touched on the point which I believe to be the centre of the whole debate; that is, the need to understand the relationship between a healthy economy and the standard of social services. I have read the Government's own published White Paper. But I believe it is more than just a statement of intent that is needed; it is a fundamental understanding in society as a whole that you cannot have good social services unless you are rich enough to pay for them. This means that one must understand about profits and the way industry works.
The debate has ranged over the questions of universality of social services and particular points, and I should like to reply in detail but time does not allow. I would only say on this general question that if benefits are universal and equal it is true that those who do not need them can have the money taken away by taxation. This appears to be simple. But for those who are completely dependent upon benefits, it is very unlikely that the money will ever be enough to allow them to live at a reasonable standard. Therefore, one finds oneself in a world of increasing complexity of supplementary benefits in their widest meaning, and one ends up with all the problems that the
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noble Baroness, Lady Wootton of Abinger, described so well. As we know, if benefits are all to be universal and equal, it makes it very difficult to know how all the many particular hard cases that have been named are to be helped. That is why I think there is a point about universality and selectivity that needs to be thought about, and thought about very carefully indeed.
I have not come here this afternoon to conduct a political dispute; what I hope I have done is to advance political thinking on the matter, and in so doing I hope that not only has the House found it a useful debate and an opportunity to consider matters of great importance to the community as a whole, but that it has been an opportunity for those of us who care very much about these services to think about them and to talk about them, and, I hope, to make some constructive suggestions about them. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

ANGLIAN WATER AUTHORITY BILL [H.L.]
Petition against, from the National Coal Board, withdrawn.

POLICE PENSIONS BILL [H.L.]
Reported from the Joint Committee on Consolidation Bills with an Amendment and recommitted to a Committee of the whole House.
House adjourned at twenty-eight minutes past seven o'clock.